"The control over what webserver you will use is typically limited by your hosting provider. While many provide the choice between Unix-based servers and Windows-based servers, many do not."
Which is why not only the web-server used but the OS used were key criteria when I picked my last 2 hosting providers.
Users still have choice. They just need to exercise it.
Yes, there have been issues found with Firefox. The differences?
1) Compared to the severity of exploits found in IE, the FF ones have been relatively minor 2) They are patched extremely quickly
Typically, by the time MS gets around to patching IE for something, it's because a few thousand computers a day are getting 0wned as a result, being turned into spam-zombies or being rendered unusable due to spyware/adware. A FF fix, on the other hand, seems to involve patching some theoretical exploit that, if the stars are in perfect alignment on the 3rd Tues in March on a leap year, could be exploited. But you don't tend to see any exploits actually in the wild.
Basically, it boils down to a quote I saw somewhere that went like this:
What would you rather have? 100 litterbugs or 10 arsonists?
ATMs are being replaced rapidly with newer models running Windows code. A lot of the color-screen units being installed now run Windows
Yep, those would be all the ones with the BSODs.
And I'm not just being a random MS-basher here. The number of ATMs, flight-info displays, and price-check terminals with BSODs these days is staggering. For all you MS-apologists out there: when was the last time you saw an ATM with an error that wasn't an Window error?
We can't both preach that "HTML is a Markup Language, not a layout language" (which is true) and at the same time propose it as an alternative format for documents from programs in which exact fixed layout on a given medium (printed paper of a certain size) is expected. Web pages on the other hand resize and reflow and are supposed to adapt to different screen sizes and devices of different capabilities/fonts/etc.
Two different types of files for two different purposes.
I've tried gpdf and Evince. The problem is, they don't read all PDFs correctly.
Example: I have one which began life as an OpenOffice document. It contains a large PNG image that has a transparent background. I used OO to export as PDF. In the Adobe Acrobat reader, the document looks fine. In gpdf and Evince, the transparency in the image isn't honored and appears as a black box around the graphic, blocking out part of the surrounding text.
Not good.
Other PDF readers might be smaller, faster, and integrated into the UI better... but only Adobe's consistantly displays PDFs correctly for me. I was very happy to see it hit the FreeBSD ports system (ahem... a WEEK ago. Nice to know Slashdot is on the ball)... and have been using it ever since.
For some reason I had this nightmarish image of advertisers combining pop-ups and/or "floaters" with EULAs:
"Use of this website implies reading and agreeing to XYZ Corp's End-User License Agreement (EULA), which dictates leaving pop-up advertisements open. By closing this advertisement, you agree that you have read the alternate _No-Popup_End-User_License_Agreement_ and to be bound by the terms and conditions contained therein. These terms include (but are not limited to) acceptance of the installation by XYZ Corp of various third-party tracking software onto your computer without your interaction..."
Except that, as LavaSoft showed us with Ad-Aware dropping detection of When-U... the companies supposedly protecting us can have rather different ideas about what is "spyware" or "adware" than the majority of the user population.
What reasons/incentives might cause these differences of opinion are left as an excercise for the reader.
While I entirely agree to the harsh reality of the statement, there are two remaining facts here:
1) Lots of places thinking exactly like this is what put us in the situation where companies offload and outsource all non-corporate tech support to India (which plenty of slashdotters bitch about). Sucks to be at the other end of this, doesn't it? No one wants to deal with the home user when they're at the collecting end, but when they ARE the paying home-user, they wonder why they can't get decent service.
2) SOMEONE needs to cater to the home user tech support market. They have computers too.
I guess I missed the part where users asked for a security hole in their web browser the size of a semi so that they could play games online without having to do that pesky click to download first? Where they also asked for the worldwide epidemic of spyware, adware, and viruses which has resulted?
Good business for the people selling the antispyware/antivirus software maybe...
I don't care if 95% run Windows. If that 95% are doing something wrong in their implementation of an idea, then it's still wrong.
And by the way, I don't run Linux. And not running Windows doesn't imply Linux. There are Macs, which are the primary platform of many schools and families I know. And personally, I don't run MacOS or Linux... I run FreeBSD.
It was originally the next generation evolved from NS4. It looked mostly like NS4. Netscape opened the source. And is was a mess. Mozilla took one look at it and realized they'd do better to start over.
A downloadable version of the online virus scanner would compete with the retail version.
Meanwhile, unintentionally-installed ActiveX trojans and spyware are competing with legitimate user-intentioned use of their own computer.
Like the other person said: download a real offline scanner and use it like a normal person. They work better anyways. In addition, more and more scanners have to run in safe-mode anyway to catch things, as the crap sneaking in via ActiveX is getting smarter at hiding itself.
Games have been downloaded and run for a long time before ActiveX, and even before the web. We don't need ActiveX making it easier for people to hose their computers by blowing security out of the water and keeping the naive end-user from realizing what they're doing.
The fallout isn't worth the benefits. The real-world example in this post-ActiveX world has proven that already. Now 80-90% of all Windows PCs are infected with spyware/adware/trojans/viruses/etc. The cry of "well now at least we can play games online!" falls pretty weakly compared to the mess it has created.
Which acceptable cross-platform standard for 3D games exists?
If none exists, and there's demand, then one should be developed. The solution isn't ActiveX though, anymore than the solution to getting more fresh air in your house is to use a few kilos of TNT to blow out the wall.
Web browsers are for viewing content. They aren't front-ends for gaming. If you've already got a binary that only runs on that one OS then it should be downloaded as any other executable and run independently of the browser. At least then the user is conscientious of the action and should realize better what it is they're doing.
The problem with ActiveX is it blurs the line between a safe activity (reading) and an unsafe activity (running programs). Users that would never knowingly download a program and run it because they are too nervous will never think twice of playing some ActiveX game.
And yes, XPIs are by-default restricted to ONLY work from update.mozilla.org and flat-out fail if they are from anywhere else. IE's defaults for ActiveX are quite a bit different...
Well, Windows Media might be one of the top 2 most-utilized codecs... but just like Windows is the top-used OS, that doesn't mean it's the best or that everyone else who doesn't use it should get the finger.
Incidentally, I view Windows Media on my FreeBSD box all the time using mplayer.
There are other codecs available though that are far better-supported across different platforms/browsers/OSes. By using them, a company can open its media to a wider audience (and the non-Windows audience continues to grow). The line to draw from that to more profits is a short one.
Windows Media is closed, owned and pushed by Microsoft to be only used on Windows on i386 platforms. Quicktime, although pushed by Apple, is well-supported by other OSes and browser, far more than Windows Media. And there are many other codecs too. Considering it's Microsoft, it's no big surprised that the masses have been brainwashed into using it. The repair of that needs to start somewhere. If it means being hardline about it and not using/supporting Windows Media, I'm fine with that.
One thing that will help is to not only point out the benefits ($$$) of using a codec supported by other platforms, but the actual dangers of using Windows Media
How do you make a Direct3D game load from a web site without loading through an ActiveX control?
You don't. You use something that's actually cross-platform and isn't Windows-specific. Not all internet users run Windows (I sure don't). It's the internet, not the Wintelnet.
What about client-side apps that access the file system, such as an ActiveX virus scanner?
They shouldn't. That's not the place for such things. Convenient? Sure. Worth the price? Hell no. There are far better ways to scan for viruses than to give websites full access to every file on your computer.
An analogy would be saying that unless you leave your doors unlocked at all times, how is the cable guy going to fix your TV? Or the telephone guy fix the static on your lines? Or the furnace guy fix the boiler? Sure, we get robbed ever week... but we've GOT to leave our house unlocked for these other things.
And some of us run operating systems that don't get viruses anyhow.
The other sad fact is that by compensating for the sites that use ActiveX, you stop giving them any incentive to stop using it.
They win, we (including you) lose.
The whole idea is to pressure sites to clean up their code, make it standard, and stop using ActiveX. You do that by increasing the marketshare of browsers that DON'T accept bad/nonstandard code and DON'T use ActiveX.
If you allow sites to be crap, they'll happily do so. It's the whole "give them an inch..." thing.
Someone once referred to this as a big game of chicken. Netscape loses by blinking and putting in ActiveX. This removes a lot of the pressure sites have to wake up and stop making their pages IE-only.
It was a slightly-customized version of Mozilla 0.6 suite.
I seem to remember a project that WAS trying to make a Java-based version of Mozilla, but it didn't get far and got virtually no press or users. I'd be very surprised if you actually used it. I had trouble obtaining it when I actually wanted to find it.
The reason Netscape 6.0 sucked so bad was because it was based upon a premature version of Mozilla and the code just simply wasn't ready for prime-time yet. That's why Netscape waited a long time until 6.1, which was based upon Mozilla 0.9.2.
Slashdot Mirror
"The control over what webserver you will use is typically limited by your hosting provider. While many provide the choice between Unix-based servers and Windows-based servers, many do not."
Which is why not only the web-server used but the OS used were key criteria when I picked my last 2 hosting providers.
Users still have choice. They just need to exercise it.
Define "had to".
Yes, there have been issues found with Firefox. The differences?
1) Compared to the severity of exploits found in IE, the FF ones have been relatively minor
2) They are patched extremely quickly
Typically, by the time MS gets around to patching IE for something, it's because a few thousand computers a day are getting 0wned as a result, being turned into spam-zombies or being rendered unusable due to spyware/adware. A FF fix, on the other hand, seems to involve patching some theoretical exploit that, if the stars are in perfect alignment on the 3rd Tues in March on a leap year, could be exploited. But you don't tend to see any exploits actually in the wild.
Basically, it boils down to a quote I saw somewhere that went like this:
What would you rather have? 100 litterbugs or 10 arsonists?
ATMs are being replaced rapidly with newer models running Windows code. A lot of the color-screen units being installed now run Windows
Yep, those would be all the ones with the BSODs.
And I'm not just being a random MS-basher here. The number of ATMs, flight-info displays, and price-check terminals with BSODs these days is staggering. For all you MS-apologists out there: when was the last time you saw an ATM with an error that wasn't an Window error?
Uh ... isn't most of the planet pissed at America right now?
Yup, including a huge number of us Americans.
We can't both preach that "HTML is a Markup Language, not a layout language" (which is true) and at the same time propose it as an alternative format for documents from programs in which exact fixed layout on a given medium (printed paper of a certain size) is expected. Web pages on the other hand resize and reflow and are supposed to adapt to different screen sizes and devices of different capabilities/fonts/etc.
Two different types of files for two different purposes.
I've tried gpdf and Evince. The problem is, they don't read all PDFs correctly.
Example: I have one which began life as an OpenOffice document. It contains a large PNG image that has a transparent background. I used OO to export as PDF. In the Adobe Acrobat reader, the document looks fine. In gpdf and Evince, the transparency in the image isn't honored and appears as a black box around the graphic, blocking out part of the surrounding text.
Not good.
Other PDF readers might be smaller, faster, and integrated into the UI better... but only Adobe's consistantly displays PDFs correctly for me. I was very happy to see it hit the FreeBSD ports system (ahem... a WEEK ago. Nice to know Slashdot is on the ball)... and have been using it ever since.
portupgrade firefox :)
And if we can't get them home, they carry 150mg doses of KCn to make things easier in the end.
I wasn't aware of this, and wanted to read more about it but couldn't find anything. Do you have any references?
Have you ever tried to compile GNOME from source?
/usr/ports/x11/gnome2
:)
Yep. Every time I install it, in fact.
cd
make clean install
Voila. Everything I need, including all dependencies, in the proper order. Come back after a while, it's done and just works. Rather easy.
Of course, KDE is just as easy for me. But I'm a Gnome guy myself.
I'd love to get a copy of this from you somehow. It would be useful here... heh.
For some reason I had this nightmarish image of advertisers combining pop-ups and/or "floaters" with EULAs:
"Use of this website implies reading and agreeing to XYZ Corp's End-User License Agreement (EULA), which dictates leaving pop-up advertisements open. By closing this advertisement, you agree that you have read the alternate _No-Popup_End-User_License_Agreement_ and to be bound by the terms and conditions contained therein. These terms include (but are not limited to) acceptance of the installation by XYZ Corp of various third-party tracking software onto your computer without your interaction..."
Popup ads? Huh? What's a popup ad?
Except that, as LavaSoft showed us with Ad-Aware dropping detection of When-U... the companies supposedly protecting us can have rather different ideas about what is "spyware" or "adware" than the majority of the user population.
What reasons/incentives might cause these differences of opinion are left as an excercise for the reader.
While I entirely agree to the harsh reality of the statement, there are two remaining facts here:
1) Lots of places thinking exactly like this is what put us in the situation where companies offload and outsource all non-corporate tech support to India (which plenty of slashdotters bitch about). Sucks to be at the other end of this, doesn't it? No one wants to deal with the home user when they're at the collecting end, but when they ARE the paying home-user, they wonder why they can't get decent service.
2) SOMEONE needs to cater to the home user tech support market. They have computers too.
I guess I missed the part where users asked for a security hole in their web browser the size of a semi so that they could play games online without having to do that pesky click to download first? Where they also asked for the worldwide epidemic of spyware, adware, and viruses which has resulted?
Good business for the people selling the antispyware/antivirus software maybe...
I don't care if 95% run Windows. If that 95% are doing something wrong in their implementation of an idea, then it's still wrong.
And by the way, I don't run Linux. And not running Windows doesn't imply Linux. There are Macs, which are the primary platform of many schools and families I know. And personally, I don't run MacOS or Linux... I run FreeBSD.
There was no NS5
Actually, there was. I had it. It sucked.
It was originally the next generation evolved from NS4. It looked mostly like NS4. Netscape opened the source. And is was a mess. Mozilla took one look at it and realized they'd do better to start over.
Which they did.
Firefox is new, it's not based off Mozilla... now Mozilla is based off Firefox.
This is horribly incorrect. Please do some more research.
I dislike having to use IE for those sites instead of Firefox, so selective enabling of ActiveX would be OK with me.
In this case, it't no different. You're not enabling ActiveX. You're viewing the page in IE. It's just wrapped up within a Netscape window.
I dislike having to use IE for ActiveX to. So I cast my vote by not doing it.
A downloadable version of the online virus scanner would compete with the retail version.
Meanwhile, unintentionally-installed ActiveX trojans and spyware are competing with legitimate user-intentioned use of their own computer.
Like the other person said: download a real offline scanner and use it like a normal person. They work better anyways. In addition, more and more scanners have to run in safe-mode anyway to catch things, as the crap sneaking in via ActiveX is getting smarter at hiding itself.
Games have been downloaded and run for a long time before ActiveX, and even before the web. We don't need ActiveX making it easier for people to hose their computers by blowing security out of the water and keeping the naive end-user from realizing what they're doing.
The fallout isn't worth the benefits. The real-world example in this post-ActiveX world has proven that already. Now 80-90% of all Windows PCs are infected with spyware/adware/trojans/viruses/etc. The cry of "well now at least we can play games online!" falls pretty weakly compared to the mess it has created.
Which acceptable cross-platform standard for 3D games exists?
If none exists, and there's demand, then one should be developed. The solution isn't ActiveX though, anymore than the solution to getting more fresh air in your house is to use a few kilos of TNT to blow out the wall.
Web browsers are for viewing content. They aren't front-ends for gaming. If you've already got a binary that only runs on that one OS then it should be downloaded as any other executable and run independently of the browser. At least then the user is conscientious of the action and should realize better what it is they're doing.
The problem with ActiveX is it blurs the line between a safe activity (reading) and an unsafe activity (running programs). Users that would never knowingly download a program and run it because they are too nervous will never think twice of playing some ActiveX game.
And yes, XPIs are by-default restricted to ONLY work from update.mozilla.org and flat-out fail if they are from anywhere else. IE's defaults for ActiveX are quite a bit different...
Well, Windows Media might be one of the top 2 most-utilized codecs... but just like Windows is the top-used OS, that doesn't mean it's the best or that everyone else who doesn't use it should get the finger.
Incidentally, I view Windows Media on my FreeBSD box all the time using mplayer.
There are other codecs available though that are far better-supported across different platforms/browsers/OSes. By using them, a company can open its media to a wider audience (and the non-Windows audience continues to grow). The line to draw from that to more profits is a short one.
Windows Media is closed, owned and pushed by Microsoft to be only used on Windows on i386 platforms. Quicktime, although pushed by Apple, is well-supported by other OSes and browser, far more than Windows Media. And there are many other codecs too. Considering it's Microsoft, it's no big surprised that the masses have been brainwashed into using it. The repair of that needs to start somewhere. If it means being hardline about it and not using/supporting Windows Media, I'm fine with that.
One thing that will help is to not only point out the benefits ($$$) of using a codec supported by other platforms, but the actual dangers of using Windows Media
How do you make a Direct3D game load from a web site without loading through an ActiveX control?
You don't. You use something that's actually cross-platform and isn't Windows-specific. Not all internet users run Windows (I sure don't). It's the internet, not the Wintelnet.
What about client-side apps that access the file system, such as an ActiveX virus scanner?
They shouldn't. That's not the place for such things. Convenient? Sure. Worth the price? Hell no. There are far better ways to scan for viruses than to give websites full access to every file on your computer.
An analogy would be saying that unless you leave your doors unlocked at all times, how is the cable guy going to fix your TV? Or the telephone guy fix the static on your lines? Or the furnace guy fix the boiler? Sure, we get robbed ever week... but we've GOT to leave our house unlocked for these other things.
And some of us run operating systems that don't get viruses anyhow.
The other sad fact is that by compensating for the sites that use ActiveX, you stop giving them any incentive to stop using it.
They win, we (including you) lose.
The whole idea is to pressure sites to clean up their code, make it standard, and stop using ActiveX. You do that by increasing the marketshare of browsers that DON'T accept bad/nonstandard code and DON'T use ActiveX.
If you allow sites to be crap, they'll happily do so. It's the whole "give them an inch..." thing.
Someone once referred to this as a big game of chicken. Netscape loses by blinking and putting in ActiveX. This removes a lot of the pressure sites have to wake up and stop making their pages IE-only.
It's very unfortunate for all of us.
Netscape 6 wasn't a Java-based browser.
It was a slightly-customized version of Mozilla 0.6 suite.
I seem to remember a project that WAS trying to make a Java-based version of Mozilla, but it didn't get far and got virtually no press or users. I'd be very surprised if you actually used it. I had trouble obtaining it when I actually wanted to find it.
The reason Netscape 6.0 sucked so bad was because it was based upon a premature version of Mozilla and the code just simply wasn't ready for prime-time yet. That's why Netscape waited a long time until 6.1, which was based upon Mozilla 0.9.2.