...a bitter and angry Rob Malda told reports looking for a quote to "Get the hell off my lawn".
Funny you mention that.
For some reason it always irritates the hell out of me hearing Digg backers and enthusiasts ranting about people "ripping them off" (you can hear the same from Redditers, and D.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.e.r.s, and every other subclass of the same "listing of content elsewhere" class, all sure that they invented what they do out of thin air, with no inspirations or sites that they "ripped off").
I remember being involved in some threads on here years back where the topic often devolved into complaints about our submissions not being selected for "publishing". Frequently one of the participants would mention that there should be a place where we can all look at all of the submissions (the submission queue was, basically, Digg+Reddit, only we didn't get to see), all categorized into their areas, and then we could moderate them, a moderation that could help them choose what gets on the front page.
And of course this is hardly innovative or without precedent either. I've barely ever used it, but I believe that Kuro5hin has always worked on a model like that, but moreso with original content rather than just link jacking.
Giving JavaScript the power to do random network accesses may make AJAX possible
The XmlHttpRequest functionality doesn't allow "random network access", but instead is limited to calling the source website (in all browsers but IE. In IE the requests can go anywhere).
I predict 2 weeks before there's a FireFox update for this, and 2 years before MSIE fixes the problem.
Fix what though? The submission seems to be that someone has a big surprize that they're going to release at a conference, and for all we know they could be full of shit, talking big to get a lot of attention. Personally I would rather that this story was shelved until there's actual details that can be addressed/rebutted. Instead it's like lame nightly news teasers.
"Coming tonight at 11 - Someting ordinary in your home that can KILL YOU! Now back to The Family Guy."
"I could not care less" is a very good attempt at burning the bridge behind him.
That isn't even remotely close to bridge burning. Bridge burning would be to exit with some destructive SCM changes, maybe an airing of dirty laundry, and so on. In this case it just sounds like someone was angry about someone or something, or a combination thereof, and they'd had enough. People recover from that sort of exit regularly, often stronger from it.
SourceForge is littered with ads. Why not whine about that?
Because I'm not arguing this as "Google versus Sourceforge". It's simply inescapable that soon enough it'll be littered with ads, and it just seems disingenuous for it to be portrayed any other way.
Are you so far behind the times that you don't have AdBlock installed?
Generally I don't block ads (yeah it gives me tiny pangs of guilt that I'm "stealing", as in "if you have a problem with the ads, then take your browsing elsewhere"). I do block popups, as that is over the top however.
As I said, until ads actually appear, it's silly to whine about them.
It isn't silly whatsoever. With systems like these there is intrinsic lock-in (if just acclimatization and fear of change), and Google is basically selling a false bill of goods. Everyone knows that Google's going to switch to an advertisement model soon enough, but instead of being honest and upfront about their business model, they're trying to get lots of projects in there, along with some momentum.
From a business perspective there is nothing irregular about their activities, but as a user who knows, with absolute certainty, that the boom will fall after the product sees activity, it's something that I keep in mind.
They didn't have ads on their search pages because AdSense didn't exist
Huh? What sort of recursive, bizarre logic is that?
"They didn't have ads because they hadn't created the structure to sell the ads."
Uh huh. Google did what was necessary to get marketpresence, which they did brilliantly, and then started cashing in. There is absolutely no reason to presume that they won't do the same with this, so any differentiation based upon ads is a false difference.
IMO, all the products you mentioned above fit well into Microsoft's core-competency
What is Microsoft's "core competency"? If you say "software", that's enormously too vague of a focus, not to mention that it's a hugely diverse marketplace. Building a IM is nothing like building a corporate accounting system.
"What's your core competency?" "Building things that move."
and make good business sense under the MS umbrella. Also, none of them are too risky, so there is no major threat to shareholder value by keeping them.
Microsoft product teams have limited leeway in how they implement things, because they need to ensure that what they do doesn't step on other teams too much, that it doesn't limit the sellability of other products (e.g. such as how the IE team was ordered to stop innovating before they uncut the entrenchment of Windows), and that it pushes the agenda of other teams. On the one hand these teams are leveraging the work of other teams, but on the other they have often been hobbled by craptacular implementations they were forced to embrace, running way behind schedule as every slip affects the entire software ecosystem.
No one trusts Microsoft, and extremely few want to partner with them. Microsoft is finding that every product is getting shunned by the industry because people have bad experiences with Microsoft, not to mention that they almost certainly are current or future competitors of Microsoft in other areas, and they know that every Microsoft initiative has to fit in the grand plan (e.g. a product will be sabotaged if it threatens another product).
It would make tremendous sense for Microsoft to split into a number of companies. The Office team can build the best damn office suite, for example, without requiring incestuous relations with the OS team -- indeed, they could port it to countless platforms, leverage the web even if it undermined Windows lock-in, and so on.
Big shake-up going on at Microsoft. I wonder if this is related to Limbo Longhorn, or if something else is in the works. Change in direction, maybe?
Executive branches of large organization often work as loyal "teams" these days, which is why the departure of a high-level executive (e.g. CEO) often quickly leads to the departure of a large number of their underlings as well. Not only do they often resist the inevitable change, but the new guy/gal often wants to feel that they molded things in their own image (rather than carrying on the old guy's legacy), so they gently nudge theh last guys crew out, building their empire from scratch.
Apart from the ascent of Ozzie, and now the virtually immediate department of Bill, a lot of executive level change is afoot. Ballmer's days are almost certainly numbered, and his and Bill's crew know it.
I can often accomplish more in 15-30 minutes of face-to-face conversation with a colleague than in an hour or more over the phone or video conference, even with fancy collaboration tools like Lotus Sametime and Microsoft NetMeeting.
Obviously ever person, team, and project will yield different results with different levels of physical collaboration, however I call shenanigans: My experience has been that the people who think that face-to-face is superior for "getting things done" measure completely ridiculous criteria as progress, when it's nothing of the sort.
I worked on a project where the project manager insisted on incredibly frequent meetings, scheduling about two dozen people for every meeting. He'd put out agendas, comprehensive minutes including detailed transcripts, lots of project plans, etc. He'd often commend the team (really himself) on the great progress we were making, and wasn't it so productive that we were getting together to hash over these issues.
The only problem is that we were getting nothing done. Absolutely nothing. Every meeting was a retread of the one before, going over the same issues with barely invested users. Collaboration was killing the project.
You're of course right for.COM domains, however the only GoDaddy TLDs I've seen for sub-$3 prices are the non-.COM ones, where the Verisign-tax doesn't get charged. I don't think I've ever seen GD sell.com for less than $8.95, so I presumed that the OP was talking about the alternate TLD.
If you let your domain lapse, they'll usurp it and auction it off to the highest bidder.
GoDaddy sends quite a few warning letters before a domain lapses, and then have (like all registrars) a period where only the original registrar can have it. Traditionally what happens then -- what ALWAYS happens next -- is that adpage sites buy the domain when it becomes available, so why the big difference when GoDaddy "usurps" it? Someone in that situation would have lost it anyways.
The lesson seems pretty obvious -- don't let your domains expire.
What uninformed people. Registrars have to pay $6/domain. Selling domains for $2 is selling them at a *loss* of $4 each. No way to stay in business doing that unless you're making it up somewhere else.
Don't queue off other people's ignorance without checking it out. The base fee for registrars is $0.25 (yes, 25 cents).
This little episode reveals one of the ways they're making up the loss.
Don't be a moron. Network Solutions decided to replace domain lookup failures with an IP to their own ad page -- you see businesses don't just "make up" theoretical losses -- they maximize profits regardless.
Whats next, are you going to tell me that used car dealers can be less than fully honest? SAY IT AINT SO!
Why? How complex do you think hosting a name <-> IP table is, especially when the basic, long-proven infrastructure costs are spread across tens of millions of domains.
Network Solutions, the other end of the cost scale, has hardly been a model of good registrar behaviour. In fact most people consider them the scummiest, shadiest of the group.
"Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word.."
Should actually read something like:
"Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him, to spreading the word.."
I think the punctuation was entirely intention, and correct. Scoble's position at Microsoft was largely "spreading the word" aka evangelizing. One topic, phrased as an extent of the set, was what Microsoft could have done to keep him doing this -- What Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word.
I should add the clarification that I don't know what fee(s) they charge, if any. Nonetheless, self-employeeing through toothless organizations is hardly a new or novel concept.
And somehow I suspect that Microsoft's Partner program is a world larger and more popular than this one.
I guess almost all software developers are independent (Some people in my company still don't think so - that's off topic). How does any vendor qualify for this independence?
This organization looks like bunk. The origin of ISV came from the bowels of Microsoft - it was used to denote independent vendors creating software for the Windows platform (e.g. they were creating for Microsoft's platform, but were independent from Microsoft - ISVs). Using it as a general term for software firms is inane and nonsensical.
Furthermore, their about page claims:
The OISV is the Largest Organization of Independent software vendors, marketers, retailers and distributors in the World! Our membership represents thousands of software professionals who create, sell and supply shareware and trial software in 90 countries.
Yet their main page says that the first 2000 sign-ups get a free t-shirt (OMG A FREE T-SHIRT!), with a scary "There are 1906 pending applications". OMG! HURRY! SIGN UP NOW! GET THAT FREE T-SHIRT.
I looks like another bullshit "someone trying to make a career out of sign-up fees" organization.
Ah. Yes, you are retarded. Listen, I'm sorry about being a bit mean in the other email.
You see, young one, phishing is considered "hacking" because the culprits almost always (if not -always-) used hacked or maliciously obtained websites to host the fake site. Not to mention that it usually uses some technical client hack to deceive the user about the site in question.
Every non-retard on the planet calls phishers hackers. In practice, non-idiots realize that phishers are almost exclusively hackers.
No, actually you're just getting spam. Heard of it, yes? I receive phishing attempts also. Most of them are for places, banks usually, with which I've never done business and do not hold an account. Please don't imply that because you get phishing spam that hax0rz are trying to get all your personal data. That's really a terrible example to use for your argument. Most of the phishing email I've seen relies on you to give out your information.
Are you retarded? The fact that you gave the definition of phishing really takes the cake -- Did you think anyone is unsure what phishing is?
The point, which you so amazingly missed, is that phishing casts a wide net, via the amazing capabilities of automation, to try to gather personal information (yes, that's the point of phishing) from a large number of small targets. The "one-off rich guy" target is absolutely inane, and absolutely contrary to the reality of hackers.
If you're on someone's machine, there are many things you could do to circumvent the checks and securities, so that's pretty much game over.
However the GP post is claiming that simply having access to network traffic was sufficient to mount a MITM attack. Of course it isn't (apart from flawed implementations), and that scenario was specifically design against.
f you look at the settings, next to every checkbox for "sync this", there is another check box for "encrypt this". Literally everything it can sync can be encrypted.
Nice that they added that, however the FAQ points seem to imply that it's a transport encryption, and that it is unencrypted once it's at Google headquarters (which seems confusing as I would expect just SSL). If that's the case, then there's a serious vulnerability for users who have saved passwords for their banks, etc -- I think Google is a great company, but there's no way I'm sharing such info with them. It just takes one criminal employee (because most data losses/thefts are inside jobs, not movie-style hackers), or a lost database tape, for trouble to begin.
People that have access and sufficinet skill and the motivation, find much more profitable ways to exploit their power than to read your ultimately important personal data from gmail. I find it interesting that people have such an ego boost that they imagine that from the half a billion interactive net users, they and their pocket money are the targets of all the hackers.
I'm amazed that anyone would still say something this stupid (and that others would actually moderate it up). I seem to get several dozen phishing attempts per day, with people trying to gain access to my PayPal, Ebay, bank accounts, and other online services. I guess I must be stupid and rich to gain the attention of such target limited hackers, right?
No, of course not. Not only are there countless hackers out there with nefarious intentions, but usually their dirty work can be automated -- e.g. a simple trojan that your cousin has on his laptop, which then takes over your router in a method only possible from the inside (or installing a net listener), then automatically relaying whatever information they want. This is ignoring the fact that carriers aren't exactly the pinnacle of security, and it's entirely possible that curious or criminal employees have net monitors, and that's not even including the whole government angle.
The "security doesn't matter because no one cares about you" angle was dumb when people were saying it in the 90s. Now it just strikes me as unbelievable.
I have zero trojans of viruses on my PC (despite your defeatist "why bother fighting them?" attitude), and I want sensitive communications to be encrypted. Everyone should demand the same.
Ps. if you are familiar with how SSL or any exchangeable keypair based encryption protocols work, you should realize that people who have constant access to your network traffic, will find out your information anyway.
Wow, really? Care to enlighten us on how that could be, apart from some temporary implementation defects in a couple of clients (such as Internet Explorer). I call bullshit, and say that the entire foundation of your argument is ignorant nonsense.
How did we get from "a lot of extraordinarily poor programmers" to "some poor programmers".
Microsoft has (tens of) thousands of software developers. Yes, they have a lot of extremely poor programmers. There are quite a few products out of Microosft that are pure garbage. There are also some great products, but that wasn't my point.
I have no idea what you mean.
You claim that Microsoft is hobbled by the "8088 legacy" (ignoring the fact that the NT line of software carries virtually no legacy from the DOS days), which would only make sense if they were a) still writing software for the 8088 (which of course they aren't), b) modern x86 shares the similar problems. Of course the latter is only laughably true, and modern x86 is extremely rich and full featured.
I think you quest to fall over yourself in praise of Microsoft has led you to confuse yourself.
That's exactly the myth that my post was intended to provoke. Thanks for falling for it.
What sort of idiotic comment is that? Are you disagreeing with even the thought that Microsoft has some poor programmers? Grow up.
How did we get from the 8088 to the "modern x86"? The 8088 and 8086 have far more in common with the 8 bit 8080 than they do with Intel's current processors.
Your claim was that Microsoft was constrained and limited by the "legacy of the 8088 platform". Carry your own argument forward, moron.
Slashdot Mirror
...a bitter and angry Rob Malda told reports looking for a quote to "Get the hell off my lawn".
Funny you mention that.
For some reason it always irritates the hell out of me hearing Digg backers and enthusiasts ranting about people "ripping them off" (you can hear the same from Redditers, and D.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.e.r.s, and every other subclass of the same "listing of content elsewhere" class, all sure that they invented what they do out of thin air, with no inspirations or sites that they "ripped off").
I remember being involved in some threads on here years back where the topic often devolved into complaints about our submissions not being selected for "publishing". Frequently one of the participants would mention that there should be a place where we can all look at all of the submissions (the submission queue was, basically, Digg+Reddit, only we didn't get to see), all categorized into their areas, and then we could moderate them, a moderation that could help them choose what gets on the front page.
And of course this is hardly innovative or without precedent either. I've barely ever used it, but I believe that Kuro5hin has always worked on a model like that, but moreso with original content rather than just link jacking.
Giving JavaScript the power to do random network accesses may make AJAX possible
The XmlHttpRequest functionality doesn't allow "random network access", but instead is limited to calling the source website (in all browsers but IE. In IE the requests can go anywhere).
I predict 2 weeks before there's a FireFox update for this, and 2 years before MSIE fixes the problem.
Fix what though? The submission seems to be that someone has a big surprize that they're going to release at a conference, and for all we know they could be full of shit, talking big to get a lot of attention. Personally I would rather that this story was shelved until there's actual details that can be addressed/rebutted. Instead it's like lame nightly news teasers.
"Coming tonight at 11 - Someting ordinary in your home that can KILL YOU! Now back to The Family Guy."
That isn't even remotely close to bridge burning. Bridge burning would be to exit with some destructive SCM changes, maybe an airing of dirty laundry, and so on. In this case it just sounds like someone was angry about someone or something, or a combination thereof, and they'd had enough. People recover from that sort of exit regularly, often stronger from it.
Because I'm not arguing this as "Google versus Sourceforge". It's simply inescapable that soon enough it'll be littered with ads, and it just seems disingenuous for it to be portrayed any other way.
Generally I don't block ads (yeah it gives me tiny pangs of guilt that I'm "stealing", as in "if you have a problem with the ads, then take your browsing elsewhere"). I do block popups, as that is over the top however.
As I said, until ads actually appear, it's silly to whine about them.
It isn't silly whatsoever. With systems like these there is intrinsic lock-in (if just acclimatization and fear of change), and Google is basically selling a false bill of goods. Everyone knows that Google's going to switch to an advertisement model soon enough, but instead of being honest and upfront about their business model, they're trying to get lots of projects in there, along with some momentum.
From a business perspective there is nothing irregular about their activities, but as a user who knows, with absolute certainty, that the boom will fall after the product sees activity, it's something that I keep in mind.
They didn't have ads on their search pages because AdSense didn't exist
Huh? What sort of recursive, bizarre logic is that?
"They didn't have ads because they hadn't created the structure to sell the ads."
Uh huh. Google did what was necessary to get marketpresence, which they did brilliantly, and then started cashing in. There is absolutely no reason to presume that they won't do the same with this, so any differentiation based upon ads is a false difference.
If their business model is unsustainable, it's not the end-user's responsibility to prop it up.
It is amazing how many stupid comments are made under Slashdot contain confused concepts of "business models".
What is Microsoft's "core competency"? If you say "software", that's enormously too vague of a focus, not to mention that it's a hugely diverse marketplace. Building a IM is nothing like building a corporate accounting system.
"What's your core competency?"
"Building things that move."
and make good business sense under the MS umbrella. Also, none of them are too risky, so there is no major threat to shareholder value by keeping them.
It would make tremendous sense for Microsoft to split into a number of companies. The Office team can build the best damn office suite, for example, without requiring incestuous relations with the OS team -- indeed, they could port it to countless platforms, leverage the web even if it undermined Windows lock-in, and so on.
Big shake-up going on at Microsoft. I wonder if this is related to Limbo Longhorn, or if something else is in the works. Change in direction, maybe?
Executive branches of large organization often work as loyal "teams" these days, which is why the departure of a high-level executive (e.g. CEO) often quickly leads to the departure of a large number of their underlings as well. Not only do they often resist the inevitable change, but the new guy/gal often wants to feel that they molded things in their own image (rather than carrying on the old guy's legacy), so they gently nudge theh last guys crew out, building their empire from scratch.
Apart from the ascent of Ozzie, and now the virtually immediate department of Bill, a lot of executive level change is afoot. Ballmer's days are almost certainly numbered, and his and Bill's crew know it.
I can often accomplish more in 15-30 minutes of face-to-face conversation with a colleague than in an hour or more over the phone or video conference, even with fancy collaboration tools like Lotus Sametime and Microsoft NetMeeting.
Obviously ever person, team, and project will yield different results with different levels of physical collaboration, however I call shenanigans: My experience has been that the people who think that face-to-face is superior for "getting things done" measure completely ridiculous criteria as progress, when it's nothing of the sort.
I worked on a project where the project manager insisted on incredibly frequent meetings, scheduling about two dozen people for every meeting. He'd put out agendas, comprehensive minutes including detailed transcripts, lots of project plans, etc. He'd often commend the team (really himself) on the great progress we were making, and wasn't it so productive that we were getting together to hash over these issues.
The only problem is that we were getting nothing done. Absolutely nothing. Every meeting was a retread of the one before, going over the same issues with barely invested users. Collaboration was killing the project.
You're of course right for .COM domains, however the only GoDaddy TLDs I've seen for sub-$3 prices are the non-.COM ones, where the Verisign-tax doesn't get charged. I don't think I've ever seen GD sell .com for less than $8.95, so I presumed that the OP was talking about the alternate TLD.
If you let your domain lapse, they'll usurp it and auction it off to the highest bidder.
GoDaddy sends quite a few warning letters before a domain lapses, and then have (like all registrars) a period where only the original registrar can have it. Traditionally what happens then -- what ALWAYS happens next -- is that adpage sites buy the domain when it becomes available, so why the big difference when GoDaddy "usurps" it? Someone in that situation would have lost it anyways.
The lesson seems pretty obvious -- don't let your domains expire.
What uninformed people. Registrars have to pay $6/domain. Selling domains for $2 is selling them at a *loss* of $4 each. No way to stay in business doing that unless you're making it up somewhere else.
Don't queue off other people's ignorance without checking it out. The base fee for registrars is $0.25 (yes, 25 cents).
This little episode reveals one of the ways they're making up the loss.
Don't be a moron. Network Solutions decided to replace domain lookup failures with an IP to their own ad page -- you see businesses don't just "make up" theoretical losses -- they maximize profits regardless.
a company selling $2 domain names is shady!!!
Whats next, are you going to tell me that used car dealers can be less than fully honest? SAY IT AINT SO!
Why? How complex do you think hosting a name <-> IP table is, especially when the basic, long-proven infrastructure costs are spread across tens of millions of domains.
Network Solutions, the other end of the cost scale, has hardly been a model of good registrar behaviour. In fact most people consider them the scummiest, shadiest of the group.
I think the punctuation was entirely intention, and correct. Scoble's position at Microsoft was largely "spreading the word" aka evangelizing. One topic, phrased as an extent of the set, was what Microsoft could have done to keep him doing this -- What Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word.
Not too confusing, really.
Hey pal. How are things?
Want to get a drink after work, and watch the World Cup?
I should add the clarification that I don't know what fee(s) they charge, if any. Nonetheless, self-employeeing through toothless organizations is hardly a new or novel concept.
And somehow I suspect that Microsoft's Partner program is a world larger and more popular than this one.
This organization looks like bunk. The origin of ISV came from the bowels of Microsoft - it was used to denote independent vendors creating software for the Windows platform (e.g. they were creating for Microsoft's platform, but were independent from Microsoft - ISVs). Using it as a general term for software firms is inane and nonsensical.
Furthermore, their about page claims:
Yet their main page says that the first 2000 sign-ups get a free t-shirt (OMG A FREE T-SHIRT!), with a scary "There are 1906 pending applications". OMG! HURRY! SIGN UP NOW! GET THAT FREE T-SHIRT.
I looks like another bullshit "someone trying to make a career out of sign-up fees" organization.
Ah. Yes, you are retarded. Listen, I'm sorry about being a bit mean in the other email.
You see, young one, phishing is considered "hacking" because the culprits almost always (if not -always-) used hacked or maliciously obtained websites to host the fake site. Not to mention that it usually uses some technical client hack to deceive the user about the site in question.
Every non-retard on the planet calls phishers hackers. In practice, non-idiots realize that phishers are almost exclusively hackers.
So again, I apologize for being so mean.
No, actually you're just getting spam. Heard of it, yes? I receive phishing attempts also. Most of them are for places, banks usually, with which I've never done business and do not hold an account. Please don't imply that because you get phishing spam that hax0rz are trying to get all your personal data. That's really a terrible example to use for your argument. Most of the phishing email I've seen relies on you to give out your information.
Are you retarded? The fact that you gave the definition of phishing really takes the cake -- Did you think anyone is unsure what phishing is?
The point, which you so amazingly missed, is that phishing casts a wide net, via the amazing capabilities of automation, to try to gather personal information (yes, that's the point of phishing) from a large number of small targets. The "one-off rich guy" target is absolutely inane, and absolutely contrary to the reality of hackers.
If you're on someone's machine, there are many things you could do to circumvent the checks and securities, so that's pretty much game over.
However the GP post is claiming that simply having access to network traffic was sufficient to mount a MITM attack. Of course it isn't (apart from flawed implementations), and that scenario was specifically design against.
f you look at the settings, next to every checkbox for "sync this", there is another check box for "encrypt this".
Literally everything it can sync can be encrypted.
Nice that they added that, however the FAQ points seem to imply that it's a transport encryption, and that it is unencrypted once it's at Google headquarters (which seems confusing as I would expect just SSL). If that's the case, then there's a serious vulnerability for users who have saved passwords for their banks, etc -- I think Google is a great company, but there's no way I'm sharing such info with them. It just takes one criminal employee (because most data losses/thefts are inside jobs, not movie-style hackers), or a lost database tape, for trouble to begin.
People that have access and sufficinet skill and the motivation, find much more profitable ways
to exploit their power than to read your ultimately important personal data from gmail. I find
it interesting that people have such an ego boost that they imagine that from the half a billion
interactive net users, they and their pocket money are the targets of all the hackers.
I'm amazed that anyone would still say something this stupid (and that others would actually moderate it up). I seem to get several dozen phishing attempts per day, with people trying to gain access to my PayPal, Ebay, bank accounts, and other online services. I guess I must be stupid and rich to gain the attention of such target limited hackers, right?
No, of course not. Not only are there countless hackers out there with nefarious intentions, but usually their dirty work can be automated -- e.g. a simple trojan that your cousin has on his laptop, which then takes over your router in a method only possible from the inside (or installing a net listener), then automatically relaying whatever information they want. This is ignoring the fact that carriers aren't exactly the pinnacle of security, and it's entirely possible that curious or criminal employees have net monitors, and that's not even including the whole government angle.
The "security doesn't matter because no one cares about you" angle was dumb when people were saying it in the 90s. Now it just strikes me as unbelievable.
I have zero trojans of viruses on my PC (despite your defeatist "why bother fighting them?" attitude), and I want sensitive communications to be encrypted. Everyone should demand the same.
Ps. if you are familiar with how SSL or any exchangeable keypair based encryption protocols work,
you should realize that people who have constant access to your network traffic, will find out your
information anyway.
Wow, really? Care to enlighten us on how that could be, apart from some temporary implementation defects in a couple of clients (such as Internet Explorer). I call bullshit, and say that the entire foundation of your argument is ignorant nonsense.
How did we get from "a lot of extraordinarily poor programmers" to "some poor programmers".
Microsoft has (tens of) thousands of software developers. Yes, they have a lot of extremely poor programmers. There are quite a few products out of Microosft that are pure garbage. There are also some great products, but that wasn't my point.
I have no idea what you mean.
You claim that Microsoft is hobbled by the "8088 legacy" (ignoring the fact that the NT line of software carries virtually no legacy from the DOS days), which would only make sense if they were a) still writing software for the 8088 (which of course they aren't), b) modern x86 shares the similar problems. Of course the latter is only laughably true, and modern x86 is extremely rich and full featured.
I think you quest to fall over yourself in praise of Microsoft has led you to confuse yourself.
That's exactly the myth that my post was intended to provoke. Thanks for falling for it.
What sort of idiotic comment is that? Are you disagreeing with even the thought that Microsoft has some poor programmers? Grow up.
How did we get from the 8088 to the "modern x86"? The 8088 and 8086 have far more in common with the 8 bit 8080 than they do with Intel's current processors.
Your claim was that Microsoft was constrained and limited by the "legacy of the 8088 platform". Carry your own argument forward, moron.
Go troll MySpace personas or something.