"Not at all. If there were lots and lots of CPU architectures, OS's would have to be written to run or be ported easily to another processor architecture. This would open up competition to the "best" processor, rather than the best implementation of the X86 command line."
I said (or attempted to say, but failed to say) the same thing (or at least a related thing), and got modded down. But this is one of my biggest general peeve nowadays in software development. Too many programmers are just building for situational functionality, instead of transferable, scalable, and modifiable, functionality. This is keeping us tied to (granted, arguably) inferior architectures. Unfortunately, write once, run anywhere is appearing harder than it appeared it would be in the nineties. To not write with that philosophy, however, condemns us to perpetual rewrites and safe (read minor) developments in hardware logic.
"We all agree one major platform is better than many wildly different platforms right? One processor architecture (x86) is better than four completely different, and one computer platform (PC) is better than many (even Apple understood that.. and effectively sells shiny PC-s loaded with OSX right now)."
I don't agree with that at all. It does have one merit: cost of production should be lower. Personally, I think having wildly different platforms is the way to go. If some hardware manufacturer creates a new architecture, they should publish the hardware interfaces, let the software writers write a layer of code to interface with it. Instead of basing the entire project around that architecture, abstracting that layer, and writing generic code at higher level layers is the way to go. Largely, this IS what is done nowadays, but incompletely, and hence imperfectly. Having wildly different architectures would force better abstraction, and improve program design. Code would then be more responsive to changes in hardware technology, and software developments could more readily demonstrate needed changes in hardware design.
As well, having different platforms makes sense due to different use requirements. There are many real world uses that make an Intel platform, or whatever, less than ideal. Having hardware available which suits the intended use cuts out needless hardware bloat. If my device only needs an 8-bit math-processor, I don't need all the bells and whistles (including energy use, size, and unit cost) associated with a more all purpose solution. (This would still apply, though less so, if we are simply talking about desktops.)
...I'd get some opinions on the likely success of this by some of my better scientists, and if they thought it was pretty promising, I'd go to the big health-care insurance companies, and make a deal. "If we develop this, and it works, we want you to provide insurance coverage exclusively for our brand for 5 years at X price. Just sign here..."
Maybe some anti-competitive laws would be broken there, I don't know. But if not, you'd have a pharmaceutical company taking an intelligent risk on something that could pay out big for a few years, and as the insurance companies, you'd be taking very little risk, since failure doesn't cost anything, and success would only lower your costs of treatment, especially in the long term. I guess the question would be: would the costs of testing and approval be offset by that 5 year profitability.
I tried reading it, but doubt I picked up most of the actual legal meaning behind it, so I have a question:
Assuming this had been in place during the Katrina disaster, would these actions have been prosecutable?
1. I am hired by a charitable organization or some philanthropist (some Church group, Bill Gates, or whatever) to put up a site where people can make donations for relief.
2. A link is included on the page to "write your congressman demanding more governmental aid".
3. I make over $25,000.00 for my efforts.
4. More than 500 people visit the site.
5. I haven't registered for a lobbying number.
It seems doubtful that anyone WOULD prosecute that, but is it possible that it COULD be prosecuted successfully?
Oh, jeez, China and India have an unfair competitive advantage! They're allowed to consume resources and energy an' poor ole US can't! Poor ole US.! [This, and the following, are not intended as a bash against the US, but against western consumption and conceptions...]
Get some perspective. Per capita, in terms of environmental impact, the US far outstrip China, India, or locusts, in stress to our planet. If you wish to consider this issue along nationalistic/patriotic/capital protectionistic lines, then you really have no conception of the (admittedly) potential dangers of the situation we face. First world countries, my own included, really have no argument for limiting China, Bangladesh, or The Sudan from becoming economically competitive, WITHOUT making those fundamental, structural changes to our own output and consumption. Are the Chinese fscking up the environment? Absolutely! But people who live in glass houses, gobbling the worlds resources and tolerances well beyond their global per capita rate, have no reason to bitch about silly notions of capital competitiveness without doing some major cleaning in their own houses.
What do people expect? The entire world can suck on the teat of consumption to the same level as the US and similar nations? It's unrealistic. Fearmongering and jingoistic garbage about economic competitiveness miss the main point: The world's resources, and the environmental impact, of our current level of western consumption are not scalable. We want to bitch about unfair limitations placed on our own industry, and yet reap the benefits of that level of industrialization. Yet when a a poorer nation (per capita) gets a few breaks in order to achieve a comparable level of livability that we have, we jump all over it, call it unfair, and continue to dump energy in a way unheard of in those countries.
To make a long story short: The western level of consumption, resource use, and environmental impact is not sustainable when applied globally. So what's the option? Keep us on top, and them in some second world limbo? Or admit the fact that we, personally, are consuming more than our share, and try to find some reasonable middle ground where we mitigate the global environmental damage which seems to be on the horizon? Screw my competitive advantage, as one who reaps the rewards of out of control industrialization and avarice. Our infrastructure is unsustainable globally, and I have no problem having limits placed on it, nor on the Chinese having different rules applied to them, when, man for man, our consumption of energy and resources is so unbalanced.
To make a long story shorter: Human equality, resource-wise, should outstrip your jingoistic suggestions of nationalistic capital advantage.
Even shorter: ooops... I'm assassinating my karma.
"When some piece of shit like you starts spouting about how she got what she deserved, well, I can only hope you share your opinion to as many people as possible in person. You'll get what you deserve too."
Nice. Truly. If you had read what I wrote, you'd have noticed I mentioned nothing about whether the woman deserved it. I said she did something stupid, which I think is hardly disputable. And I said she did it, most likely, through ignorance. Whether that equates to her deserving death or not is a completely different issue. Whether anyone deserves to die due to stupid behaviour or ignorance is not something I'm even sure I have an opinion on.
The point is: she freely chose to do something, and that thing was fatal. She should have known better for three reasons: Death by water consumption is not such an unheard of phenomenon, actually. I suspect most endurance athletes have heard of it, many medical people, and many livestock farmers as well. Not the majority by a long shot, but it's not exactly esoteric knowledge either. Secondly, it's just common sense that ingesting vast amounts of anything is dangerous, this should come as a surprise to no-one. Thirdly, our bodies have this amazing ability to signal us when we are consuming too much of something. Go try to drink a two litre bottle of water right now, you'll see what I mean. If she was so unaware of her body, she was being ignorant, if she was ignoring it, she was being stupid. Deservedness is irrelevant.
Why the station should be considered more responsible than the woman herself, for what was happening in the woman, is truly beyond me. If we really needed to be shepherded away from behaving in such a stupid fashion, one would think our beaches, river banks, bathtubs, and swimming pools would be littered with the bodies of people who lacked such sense. I haven't noticed that happening. Is it unfortunate? Definitely! Is it tragic? Definitely. It's too bad for her, her kids, and everyone else who cared about her. That doesn't mean the station should be held responsible for a bad decision that the woman made. The woman made a bad decision, a stupid decision, and unfortunately died because of it.
It may feel good to blame the station, but it isn't exactly rational. If they should have researched it more, why not the woman? Why is the station more responsible for finding out the dangers of what the woman puts in her mouth than the woman herself? It's really taking "save us from ourselves" a little too literally.
I'm just waiting for the Richard Dawkins/Kevin Bacon Evolution Boardgame, to put that snotty Kurt Cameron in his place. Maybe they could use little rubber crosses for the pieces...
I hate this kind of crap. Are we all children who need corporate guidance and someone to blame everytime we f*ck up? The woman did something stupid. Most likely out of ignorance. The station did something stupid, most likely out of ignorance. Who's at fault. THE WOMAN. It was her body,and her DECISION. If some maliciousness on the part of the station could be proven, maybe things would be different, but as it stands, a group of ignorant people did something stupid and one of them died. They all freely chose what they were doing.
Personally, I don't want any company protecting me from myself. For that, I have myself, and some scientifically based government warnings and programs. I'm all for certain types of warnings: "This may be radioactive" etc. . But only for things which I would have no reasonable way of detecting myself, especially without expensive equipment. Drinking too much water is hazardous? Well, duh! So is consuming too much ketchup, or hair, or heroin. This is common sense: consuming pretty much anything can be dangerous if you consume too much of it. What kind of sorry world do we live in where people don't realize that? If the station does get sued, I hope they win. The last thing we need in this world is a bunch of self-serving ass-coverers trying to protect us from ourselves. Really, government has gone too far in this regard as well, but there is still a nugget of credibility, and at least they are theoretically under OUR control.
This stuff makes me so mad I could spit. I better call Samsung, though, and make sure they think it's safe for me to spit in front of my monitor. Sigh.
I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I doubt he'll win this. It doesn't sound like he had any problem with things when he was recognized for going beyond and above... I would think that would make it look like he recognized that the code belonged to the police. It certainly gives that impression.
Still, I feel kind of disgusting.... I'm siding with a cop.
I'm the very model of a modern pirate national:
Links to movies, music, and the porn you love with hash and all.
On my island you won't find things nearly quite as factional,
Since information's free! and not so loutishly transactional.
A "pb" will be put in every single little DNS,
And everyone will know just what it takes for you to link to us.
But how we'll hook up to the net is really anybody's guess,
Since laws are made for media to forward all of their interests.
Maybe fibre-optic or the using of some satellites
Will give the bandwidth that we need to soften all the copyrights.
We are really worried, though, and we can hardly sleep at nights:
A simple cut beneath the sea can cut off all our bits and bytes.
"However, if the software is written adequately, then there's no need for it to try to do more than it should, so then I'd only get the one initial warning."
Really, that's a tautology, nothing needs to try to do more than it should. As described in the article:
"when a consumer wants to download and install a game demo off the Internet, they must first click past the IE warning dialogs, and then respond to the security elevation dialog Vista pops up"
So, assuming TFA is accurate, what St. John is talking about is a download with install. I wonder if Windows Updates using IE will also require that IE trap and then the Vista trap. Either way, it seems like a fairly common action. I would think IE should be able to recognize the nature of the intended transaction (a download with install), and pass on the request to the OS security dialog. This would certainly lessen the propensity of mindless dialog acceptance, and hence, improve security. Perhaps I am completely misunderstanding the model which IE is capable of communicating with the OS, but it seems such a dialog should already be available. If there are directories which have admin privileges, and the user attempts to save a page in one of them, they surely get the OS trap, correct? So, if that browser to OS security mechanism is already in place, it seems fairly trivial for IE to recognize the nature of the transaction request (download with install), and pass that on to the OS dialog, and then have the OS confirm that IE should download.
Really, it ends up being a useabilty concern, more than a security concern. A single dialog accepting or rejecting the transaction may lessen click-through behaviour, though likely that is fairly minor. The extra dialogs may provide extra security over a single dialog, but I am unable to recognize how. It strikes me as an extra, needless level of user response. I'll be interested to see if Windows Update behaves the same way with a download-with-install transaction.
The thing is, couldn't this level of functionality have been achieved with a single dialog? Something like: "Warning! Microsoft cannot assure the legitimacy of this software: If you wish to install foo.exe from http://www.bar.com/ please enter your user account and password below, and press "Continue". I don't think it's reasonable to complain about MS attempting to provide security, but if the same functionality can be achieved with fewer dialogs, and a well written explanation, isn't some criticism valid? The more dialogs needed to get things done, the more likely people will either entirely avoid that functionality, or mindlessly click through without assessing the ramifications.
It's rich when a MS employee criticizes another company's business model. A company that has an anti-trust conviction, and which tends to use their market dominance to (unethically) damage competitors (by breaking standards, keeping interfaces secret, and spreading unsubstantiated rumour (such as Ballmer's statements on the Novell deal)), does not strike me as having a particularly commendable business model itself.
I also think this:
"But these are the natural and normal cost of doing business in the modern world; if you can't evolve and grow and change with the rest of the planet, your business dies, and good riddance."
would have been a fine realization for MS to have had during the years of the EU case against them.... Or better yet, during their US anti-trust case.
Really it's not that hard.... Exclusively use global variables, people, global variables! Software practically writes itself at that point.
Also, don't let other departments steel your interfaces. You wrote them, damnit, and they're your secrets!
On a more serious note, I'm more interested in who knows how to make it easy. From my experience, writing non-trivial software is an inherently difficult process, but perhaps there is something nobody is telling me...
"So, exactly what aspects of this person were being "poked fun at" by having a stream of giant wiggling penises hurled at her again? Being a woman? Wow, that's really good satire right there. Stupid woman. Going around in public being a woman. Hi-fucking-larious. That'll teach her."
That's your interpretation, not mine. We seem to place a fundamental value difference on the absurd. I tend to find it humourous, you don't. I can't imagine there being any point continuing this discussion further.
Apparently a different one than you. I also don't consider Jon Stewart is exerting any sort of power over George Bush when he's poking fun at him. Nor do I consider it having anything to do with exerting power over Adam West when the Family Guy pokes fun at him. To do so, IMO, equivocates so badly that the word "power" becomes meaningless.
I don't consider your analogy flawed due to moral differences, and I'm not entirely sure many people did. But, as an example of two other situations I also DON'T consider analogous: Posting a video of someone dressed in an penis costume in a mall and showing peoples' reactions, and posting a video of a rape are quite different, and only analogous insofar as they are both posted videos, with the most tenuous connection to sex. I don't see any the comparability between the humiliation, personal powerlessless, or trauma of the one, with the silliness and startle factor (even if it is used to poke fun) of the other. It has nothing to do with morality (or degree) whatsoever, but entirely different properties.
Somebody blew representational-me up with a representational-grenade in Medal of Honour a few years ago, and I'm taking this one to the wall. I think the actual name of the crime might be "Wrongful Death By Pixelized Proxy Resulting in Emotional Distress". Come on, think of the children.
"If I bought a used car and then later found the locks did not work, I might tell a friend and I'd certainly call the dealer. I wouldn't, however, put an editorial in the paper including my car's description until I had a solution to the problem."
...you meant that you WOULDN'T publicize it, not that you sometimes WOULDN'T. It turns out, we are in agreement on this point. I also wouldn't *always* publicize the exploit. As I pointed out, I would hope that if I had software exploits in my code, a responsible history of dealing with such things would lead to the discoverer to respect my competence and efforts and give me the heads up. I would tend to do the same thing if a company had an excellent record of dealing with such things. Different customers may have a different view in either case, as to the excellence of that record, and should act accordingly.
Personally, I think I would *usually* publish the exploit, since I find most companies to be quite lax on the matter, although my bar for what is a reasonable effort at providing security may be higher than some others'. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not at all. If there were lots and lots of CPU architectures, OS's would have to be written to run or be ported easily to another processor architecture. This would open up competition to the "best" processor, rather than the best implementation of the X86 command line."
I said (or attempted to say, but failed to say) the same thing (or at least a related thing), and got modded down. But this is one of my biggest general peeve nowadays in software development. Too many programmers are just building for situational functionality, instead of transferable, scalable, and modifiable, functionality. This is keeping us tied to (granted, arguably) inferior architectures. Unfortunately, write once, run anywhere is appearing harder than it appeared it would be in the nineties. To not write with that philosophy, however, condemns us to perpetual rewrites and safe (read minor) developments in hardware logic.
"We all agree one major platform is better than many wildly different platforms right? One processor architecture (x86) is better than four completely different, and one computer platform (PC) is better than many (even Apple understood that.. and effectively sells shiny PC-s loaded with OSX right now)."
I don't agree with that at all. It does have one merit: cost of production should be lower. Personally, I think having wildly different platforms is the way to go. If some hardware manufacturer creates a new architecture, they should publish the hardware interfaces, let the software writers write a layer of code to interface with it. Instead of basing the entire project around that architecture, abstracting that layer, and writing generic code at higher level layers is the way to go. Largely, this IS what is done nowadays, but incompletely, and hence imperfectly. Having wildly different architectures would force better abstraction, and improve program design. Code would then be more responsive to changes in hardware technology, and software developments could more readily demonstrate needed changes in hardware design.
As well, having different platforms makes sense due to different use requirements. There are many real world uses that make an Intel platform, or whatever, less than ideal. Having hardware available which suits the intended use cuts out needless hardware bloat. If my device only needs an 8-bit math-processor, I don't need all the bells and whistles (including energy use, size, and unit cost) associated with a more all purpose solution. (This would still apply, though less so, if we are simply talking about desktops.)
The same goes for homogenization of the OS.
...I'd get some opinions on the likely success of this by some of my better scientists, and if they thought it was pretty promising, I'd go to the big health-care insurance companies, and make a deal. "If we develop this, and it works, we want you to provide insurance coverage exclusively for our brand for 5 years at X price. Just sign here..."
Maybe some anti-competitive laws would be broken there, I don't know. But if not, you'd have a pharmaceutical company taking an intelligent risk on something that could pay out big for a few years, and as the insurance companies, you'd be taking very little risk, since failure doesn't cost anything, and success would only lower your costs of treatment, especially in the long term. I guess the question would be: would the costs of testing and approval be offset by that 5 year profitability.
I tried reading it, but doubt I picked up most of the actual legal meaning behind it, so I have a question:
Assuming this had been in place during the Katrina disaster, would these actions have been prosecutable?
1. I am hired by a charitable organization or some philanthropist (some Church group, Bill Gates, or whatever) to put up a site where people can make donations for relief.
2. A link is included on the page to "write your congressman demanding more governmental aid".
3. I make over $25,000.00 for my efforts.
4. More than 500 people visit the site.
5. I haven't registered for a lobbying number.
It seems doubtful that anyone WOULD prosecute that, but is it possible that it COULD be prosecuted successfully?
Oh, jeez, China and India have an unfair competitive advantage! They're allowed to consume resources and energy an' poor ole US can't! Poor ole US.! [This, and the following, are not intended as a bash against the US, but against western consumption and conceptions...]
Get some perspective. Per capita, in terms of environmental impact, the US far outstrip China, India, or locusts, in stress to our planet. If you wish to consider this issue along nationalistic/patriotic/capital protectionistic lines, then you really have no conception of the (admittedly) potential dangers of the situation we face. First world countries, my own included, really have no argument for limiting China, Bangladesh, or The Sudan from becoming economically competitive, WITHOUT making those fundamental, structural changes to our own output and consumption. Are the Chinese fscking up the environment? Absolutely! But people who live in glass houses, gobbling the worlds resources and tolerances well beyond their global per capita rate, have no reason to bitch about silly notions of capital competitiveness without doing some major cleaning in their own houses.
What do people expect? The entire world can suck on the teat of consumption to the same level as the US and similar nations? It's unrealistic. Fearmongering and jingoistic garbage about economic competitiveness miss the main point: The world's resources, and the environmental impact, of our current level of western consumption are not scalable. We want to bitch about unfair limitations placed on our own industry, and yet reap the benefits of that level of industrialization. Yet when a a poorer nation (per capita) gets a few breaks in order to achieve a comparable level of livability that we have, we jump all over it, call it unfair, and continue to dump energy in a way unheard of in those countries.
To make a long story short: The western level of consumption, resource use, and environmental impact is not sustainable when applied globally. So what's the option? Keep us on top, and them in some second world limbo? Or admit the fact that we, personally, are consuming more than our share, and try to find some reasonable middle ground where we mitigate the global environmental damage which seems to be on the horizon? Screw my competitive advantage, as one who reaps the rewards of out of control industrialization and avarice. Our infrastructure is unsustainable globally, and I have no problem having limits placed on it, nor on the Chinese having different rules applied to them, when, man for man, our consumption of energy and resources is so unbalanced.
To make a long story shorter: Human equality, resource-wise, should outstrip your jingoistic suggestions of nationalistic capital advantage.
Even shorter: ooops... I'm assassinating my karma.
Yeah, you might get butter in the works!
"When some piece of shit like you starts spouting about how she got what she deserved, well, I can only hope you share your opinion to as many people as possible in person. You'll get what you deserve too."
Nice. Truly. If you had read what I wrote, you'd have noticed I mentioned nothing about whether the woman deserved it. I said she did something stupid, which I think is hardly disputable. And I said she did it, most likely, through ignorance. Whether that equates to her deserving death or not is a completely different issue. Whether anyone deserves to die due to stupid behaviour or ignorance is not something I'm even sure I have an opinion on.
The point is: she freely chose to do something, and that thing was fatal. She should have known better for three reasons: Death by water consumption is not such an unheard of phenomenon, actually. I suspect most endurance athletes have heard of it, many medical people, and many livestock farmers as well. Not the majority by a long shot, but it's not exactly esoteric knowledge either. Secondly, it's just common sense that ingesting vast amounts of anything is dangerous, this should come as a surprise to no-one. Thirdly, our bodies have this amazing ability to signal us when we are consuming too much of something. Go try to drink a two litre bottle of water right now, you'll see what I mean. If she was so unaware of her body, she was being ignorant, if she was ignoring it, she was being stupid. Deservedness is irrelevant.
Why the station should be considered more responsible than the woman herself, for what was happening in the woman, is truly beyond me. If we really needed to be shepherded away from behaving in such a stupid fashion, one would think our beaches, river banks, bathtubs, and swimming pools would be littered with the bodies of people who lacked such sense. I haven't noticed that happening. Is it unfortunate? Definitely! Is it tragic? Definitely. It's too bad for her, her kids, and everyone else who cared about her. That doesn't mean the station should be held responsible for a bad decision that the woman made. The woman made a bad decision, a stupid decision, and unfortunately died because of it.
It may feel good to blame the station, but it isn't exactly rational. If they should have researched it more, why not the woman? Why is the station more responsible for finding out the dangers of what the woman puts in her mouth than the woman herself? It's really taking "save us from ourselves" a little too literally.
I'm just waiting for the Richard Dawkins/Kevin Bacon Evolution Boardgame, to put that snotty Kurt Cameron in his place. Maybe they could use little rubber crosses for the pieces...
Arg
I hate this kind of crap. Are we all children who need corporate guidance and someone to blame everytime we f*ck up? The woman did something stupid. Most likely out of ignorance. The station did something stupid, most likely out of ignorance. Who's at fault. THE WOMAN. It was her body,and her DECISION. If some maliciousness on the part of the station could be proven, maybe things would be different, but as it stands, a group of ignorant people did something stupid and one of them died. They all freely chose what they were doing.
Personally, I don't want any company protecting me from myself. For that, I have myself, and some scientifically based government warnings and programs. I'm all for certain types of warnings: "This may be radioactive" etc. . But only for things which I would have no reasonable way of detecting myself, especially without expensive equipment. Drinking too much water is hazardous? Well, duh! So is consuming too much ketchup, or hair, or heroin. This is common sense: consuming pretty much anything can be dangerous if you consume too much of it. What kind of sorry world do we live in where people don't realize that? If the station does get sued, I hope they win. The last thing we need in this world is a bunch of self-serving ass-coverers trying to protect us from ourselves. Really, government has gone too far in this regard as well, but there is still a nugget of credibility, and at least they are theoretically under OUR control.
This stuff makes me so mad I could spit. I better call Samsung, though, and make sure they think it's safe for me to spit in front of my monitor. Sigh.
I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I doubt he'll win this. It doesn't sound like he had any problem with things when he was recognized for going beyond and above... I would think that would make it look like he recognized that the code belonged to the police. It certainly gives that impression.
Still, I feel kind of disgusting.... I'm siding with a cop.
I'm the very model of a modern pirate national:
Links to movies, music, and the porn you love with hash and all.
On my island you won't find things nearly quite as factional,
Since information's free! and not so loutishly transactional.
A "pb" will be put in every single little DNS,
And everyone will know just what it takes for you to link to us.
But how we'll hook up to the net is really anybody's guess,
Since laws are made for media to forward all of their interests.
Maybe fibre-optic or the using of some satellites
Will give the bandwidth that we need to soften all the copyrights.
We are really worried, though, and we can hardly sleep at nights:
A simple cut beneath the sea can cut off all our bits and bytes.
"However, if the software is written adequately, then there's no need for it to try to do more than it should, so then I'd only get the one initial warning."
Really, that's a tautology, nothing needs to try to do more than it should. As described in the article:
"when a consumer wants to download and install a game demo off the Internet, they must first click past the IE warning dialogs, and then respond to the security elevation dialog Vista pops up"
So, assuming TFA is accurate, what St. John is talking about is a download with install. I wonder if Windows Updates using IE will also require that IE trap and then the Vista trap. Either way, it seems like a fairly common action. I would think IE should be able to recognize the nature of the intended transaction (a download with install), and pass on the request to the OS security dialog. This would certainly lessen the propensity of mindless dialog acceptance, and hence, improve security. Perhaps I am completely misunderstanding the model which IE is capable of communicating with the OS, but it seems such a dialog should already be available. If there are directories which have admin privileges, and the user attempts to save a page in one of them, they surely get the OS trap, correct? So, if that browser to OS security mechanism is already in place, it seems fairly trivial for IE to recognize the nature of the transaction request (download with install), and pass that on to the OS dialog, and then have the OS confirm that IE should download.
Really, it ends up being a useabilty concern, more than a security concern. A single dialog accepting or rejecting the transaction may lessen click-through behaviour, though likely that is fairly minor. The extra dialogs may provide extra security over a single dialog, but I am unable to recognize how. It strikes me as an extra, needless level of user response. I'll be interested to see if Windows Update behaves the same way with a download-with-install transaction.
The thing is, couldn't this level of functionality have been achieved with a single dialog? Something like: "Warning! Microsoft cannot assure the legitimacy of this software: If you wish to install foo.exe from http://www.bar.com/ please enter your user account and password below, and press "Continue". I don't think it's reasonable to complain about MS attempting to provide security, but if the same functionality can be achieved with fewer dialogs, and a well written explanation, isn't some criticism valid? The more dialogs needed to get things done, the more likely people will either entirely avoid that functionality, or mindlessly click through without assessing the ramifications.
It's rich when a MS employee criticizes another company's business model. A company that has an anti-trust conviction, and which tends to use their market dominance to (unethically) damage competitors (by breaking standards, keeping interfaces secret, and spreading unsubstantiated rumour (such as Ballmer's statements on the Novell deal)), does not strike me as having a particularly commendable business model itself.
I also think this:
"But these are the natural and normal cost of doing business in the modern world; if you can't evolve and grow and change with the rest of the planet, your business dies, and good riddance."
would have been a fine realization for MS to have had during the years of the EU case against them.... Or better yet, during their US anti-trust case.
Nah, it'd never work.... Someone would just start attacking him with giant penises.
Really it's not that hard.... Exclusively use global variables, people, global variables! Software practically writes itself at that point.
Also, don't let other departments steel your interfaces. You wrote them, damnit, and they're your secrets!
On a more serious note, I'm more interested in who knows how to make it easy. From my experience, writing non-trivial software is an inherently difficult process, but perhaps there is something nobody is telling me...
"The usually (sic)[sic] jackasses are the reason..."
"Us[sic] jackasses that have been hear[sic]..."
My pedantry trumps your pedantry.
That's being said, I'm pretty much in complete agreement with your post.
As I said, I see no point of further discussion on this. We have a fundamental difference of opinion on what is absurd, and/or the value of it.
"So, exactly what aspects of this person were being "poked fun at" by having a stream of giant wiggling penises hurled at her again? Being a woman? Wow, that's really good satire right there. Stupid woman. Going around in public being a woman. Hi-fucking-larious. That'll teach her."
That's your interpretation, not mine. We seem to place a fundamental value difference on the absurd. I tend to find it humourous, you don't. I can't imagine there being any point continuing this discussion further.
Apparently a different one than you. I also don't consider Jon Stewart is exerting any sort of power over George Bush when he's poking fun at him. Nor do I consider it having anything to do with exerting power over Adam West when the Family Guy pokes fun at him. To do so, IMO, equivocates so badly that the word "power" becomes meaningless.
I don't consider your analogy flawed due to moral differences, and I'm not entirely sure many people did. But, as an example of two other situations I also DON'T consider analogous: Posting a video of someone dressed in an penis costume in a mall and showing peoples' reactions, and posting a video of a rape are quite different, and only analogous insofar as they are both posted videos, with the most tenuous connection to sex. I don't see any the comparability between the humiliation, personal powerlessless, or trauma of the one, with the silliness and startle factor (even if it is used to poke fun) of the other. It has nothing to do with morality (or degree) whatsoever, but entirely different properties.
That's your whole problem.... The first sign of success, and you give up!
Perhaps you'd agree that the logical error was a "faulty analogy" then? :P
Hey!!!!
Somebody blew representational-me up with a representational-grenade in Medal of Honour a few years ago, and I'm taking this one to the wall. I think the actual name of the crime might be "Wrongful Death By Pixelized Proxy Resulting in Emotional Distress". Come on, think of the children.
Oops. I thought by this:
...you meant that you WOULDN'T publicize it, not that you sometimes WOULDN'T. It turns out, we are in agreement on this point. I also wouldn't *always* publicize the exploit. As I pointed out, I would hope that if I had software exploits in my code, a responsible history of dealing with such things would lead to the discoverer to respect my competence and efforts and give me the heads up. I would tend to do the same thing if a company had an excellent record of dealing with such things. Different customers may have a different view in either case, as to the excellence of that record, and should act accordingly.
"If I bought a used car and then later found the locks did not work, I might tell a friend and I'd certainly call the dealer. I wouldn't, however, put an editorial in the paper including my car's description until I had a solution to the problem."
Personally, I think I would *usually* publish the exploit, since I find most companies to be quite lax on the matter, although my bar for what is a reasonable effort at providing security may be higher than some others'. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.