That works, but I agree that violating DNC should carry very heavy pernalties. If I put my number out there specificlaly to say "don't call me", then I damn well don't want to be called.
Now, if they could just get those "This is an automated message from account services... Press one if you would like to lower your interest rates to as little as..." assholes, that would be great...
Sorry to burst you bubble, but there's no way in hell that DRM alone is responsible for a factor of 10-50 change in purchasing. I'd be surprised if it's even a factor of two. Most people don't even know. Of those who do, most don't care. Of those who do, some of them buy anyhow (because they see it as ethical, or because they want to stay on the right side of the law, or because they don't want for somebody to crack the DRM and upload the file, or... lots of possible reasons).
Also, bear in mind that the intention of these DRM schemes is not for a pseudo-purchase. They're for on-demand streaming, effectively a video rental (Netflix and friends). I have no problem with DRM used in that scenario, so long as they don't charge me for something I can't watch. I am not OK with DRM on "purchased" media of any kind. I'm not aware of any sites which allow you to "purchase" video that can only be watched through a browser plugin.
Right-clicking the Start button has *always* done something on Windows. It just used to be something less convenient (better for specific purposes, but definitely less convenient).
Win+X is not inherently discoverable, but there are lots of lists of Windows shortcuts out there on the Internet, including some from Microsoft, or at least their employees, which were published even prior to Win8 RTM.
If you're concerned about productivity "FULL STOP", why the fuck are you opening programs using a mouse anyhow? Win key -> type a few letters of a program name -> Enter, and you can launch anything on the system faster than you can find the item you want even in the Most Commonly Used section of the Start menu. If you have menu animations turned on (which I'm guessing you don't, but most people do) you can be launching a program before the menu finishes drawing itself.
This has existed since Vista. It took a step back in Win8, when "Apps" and "Settings" Start search results were segregated, but it was still usable there. On 8.1 they're integrated again. If you're still launching programs with the mouse and yet claiming you're only concerned about productivity and that's it, you're frankly a liar. You're just whining They Changed It And I Don't Like It like so many other people.
Alternatively, set keyboard shortcuts (possible since at least Windows 2000, still possible on Win8) for the programs you use most (for example, Ctrl+Alt+I to launch your favorite web browser, Alt+Shift+C to launch your development environment, etc. and whatever). That's faster still, once you memorize them, although it won't work on other peoples' computers.
This is almost always something you can override pretty easily (copy the installer to writable media, change a config file that controls accepted upgrade configurations) but then you're even further off into unsupported-land than a normal in-place upgrade (which MS technically supports, but which nobody in the industry including any MS engineer I've ever spoken to really recommends).
Win+F for files (that one's actually legacy, going back at least as far as Vista).
Just because it was possible doesn't mean it wasn't a total hassle. You could actually move between search result pools by keyboard, but it was a total pain. Now I won't have to do it again... thank goodness.
Ironically, launching Control Panel on Win8 is actually faster than on Win7 (by default). Right-click the Start button (yes it exists; it was just hidden by default) or hit Win+X, and select "Control Panel" from the menu that appears. Easy and straightforward.
My biggest gripe with Win8 is the Start search segregation. I don't want to need to use different keystrokes when searching for a "Setting" instead of an "App". Aside from the BS about which is which ("Disk Management" or "Create and format hard disk partitions" is under Settings, but if you type "diskmgmt.msc" it shows under Apps even though it's exactly the same thing), I just don't want to have to deal with switching result pools. This is fixed in 8.1, which is a big enough improvement to make me happy, personally.
There are quite a few ad remover extensions (in Microsoft-ese, "add-ons") for IE, although they aren't widely used relative to the browser's market share.
However, IE 9 and later (and 8 with enough finagling) include a feature called "Tracking Protection" ("InPrivate Filtering" on older versions) which is intended as a privacy enhancer, but works quite well as an ad-blocker too. By default, if you enable it in automatic mode, it will block any third-party request that it has seen across at least ten sites. Obviously, this rapidly catches all the major ad servers. The number of sites is configurable, and you can also manually block (or manually allow) specific sites or URLs. It's also easy to turn the filtering on or off for a given page; there's an icon which appears in the address bar when blocking something (or when something would be blocked but the blocking is disabled).
In addition, there are "Tracking Protection Lists" which you can subscribe to and which provide automatically updating block (or allow) rules for Tracking Protection. The automatic lists can be overridden by your personalized list, but they provide a good way to block tracking (or ads) before you see them at all. EasyList (makers of a popular AdBlock Plus list) offer a TPL, as do many others.
While less flexible than AdBlock Plus and its ilk (can't block ads hosted by the site you're actually visiting, for example; only third-party requests are blocked), it's a surprisingly effective fix that is built into one of the most widely used browsers.
Relatively few web apps require allowing the user to write raw HTML anywhere. The vast majority (estimates typically range around 90%, and based on my personal experience, that's accurate) of web apps have at least one XSS vulnerability, though. With that said, you're both wrong; string literals (I'm assuming GP meant JavaScript strings) are just one of many places that XSS can be found. The techniques for correct output encoding, and the sets of dangerous characters, vary by context.
Preventing SQLi by sanitizing input is possible, but it's error-prone (as the PHP developers discovered when they had to deprecate an API intended for exactly that purpose) and inefficient. Parameterized queries are a much more elegant solution to the problem, and on at least some database engines they are also more performant. In that area, I agree with you completely (including the bit about needing to use the tools correctly, thought that's a[nother] really stupid bug in PHP, if they're actually not verifying the type).
FWIW, IE offers a different take on this: block third-party *requests* from sites you don't like/don't trust/are on EasyList (yes, EasyList for AdBlock Plus also publishes their block list for IE, as do many other such lists). I don't hugely care if a site wants to set a cookie on my browser, so long as they can't retrieve that cookie when I'm on any other sites.
It also breaks that stupid "X of your friends of Facebook liked this!::THUMBSUP:: if you do too!" thing that a bunch of sites use; the request from Facebook is silently ignored, so the site can't even tell if you have an account. You can also easily (it's a button on the address bar) disable this filtering on a per-site basis (same as turning off an ad-blocker, which it also works quite effectively as). The feature is called "Tracking Protection" and is present in IE9 and newer.
Leaving aside the entire point that you're making a really stupid argument ("the whole point of a privacy feature is that it not be active by default..." WTF??) you're also flat-out wrong.
Fact: IE does not enable DNT by default. If you dismiss the first-run dialog (not the same as clicking the "enable this enumerated list of configuration options" button) it will not send DNT. Fact: Right below the "enable this enumerated list of configuration options" (which of course includes the DNT option), there's a button saying "don't enable those for me; let me decide them individually".
There was a thread in the discussion of Microsoft's YouTube app (for WP8) not showing ads. Some fool suggested that Google update Chrome to block all Microsoft ads, and see how they like it. The problem is, the slice of Microsoft's income that comes from ads is smaller than the (tiny) slice of Google's income that *doesn't* come from ads. If Google did what that airhead had suggested, Microsoft would simply have resonded in kind... which would have been a huge blow to Google's business model.
Before anybody shouts "but but MONOPLY!!!", please bear in mind that at this time, Chrome and IE are about neck-and-neck for market share in most of the world, and such an update would likely only target the newer IE versions (the ones with some ad filtering capability already built in).
Chois is good, but $DEITY help the closed-sourse software that recommends a choice even if it's the most user-friendly one!
*Note: I use quite a lot of open source software, and have contributed to a few projects and published a couple of my own. I do it pragmatically, not out of zealotry, though.
There's a dialog in IE10 on first run that asks you, among other things, whether you want to enable DNT. It's true that Microsoft made DNT the recommended setting (meaning, if the user selects "give me the recommended settings", it will be enabled), but the user is informed what those recommended settings are beforehand, and they don't have to accept them. Microsoft they certainly didn't make the decision for you. Grow the fuck up.
Windows 8 doesn't run on anything except x86/x64. Windows RT (not "Windows 8 RT") is a separate product, for all that it's a nearly identical codebase.
Don't get me wrong, I think the requirement for unremovable Secure Boot on WRT is stupid and anti-consumer, but your post was nonetheless redundent to mine.
Where the fuck did you get the idea that the battery only lasts a year of heavy use? That's backed up by exactly zero real-world data. Most electric or hybrid cars get around 10 years on their batteries.
Cost more to run? Bullshit. Pure bullshit. Much lower maintenance costs, and (assuming you don't charge off the grid at peak times, but instead charge at night or off solar or something) lower energy costs as well.
Have limited range? My 18-gallon car can beat the top-end Model S range, yeah, but a lot of my friends with 12-15 gallon tanks cannot. Besides, the exorbitantly vast majority (well in excess of 99%) of non-commercial driving is under 100 miles/day; even the lowest-range Model S can handle that with plenty of capacity left over. Oh, and you can charge up the car at parking lots and such as well (most malls/theaters/etc. in my area have a few electric charging stations these days, and no, I'm not in California).
Toxic materials? You mean like gasoline, motor oil, and transmission fluid? Not to mention lead and sulfuric acid (in your lead-acid battery)? Oh, and brake fluid... Or how about emitting toxic chemicals; it's totally the electric cars that emit carbon monoxide, right? OK, electric cars have different toxic chemicals than gasoline cars, but claiming that electric cars are *worse* than gasoline cars is, once again, total bullshit.
Not sure if you're trolling or just a complete idiot. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt, though (I do also have mod points).
Actually, no... Ethernet is a protocol, defining things like a packet format (Ethernet frames) and an addressing scheme (MAC addresses). Ethernet operates on a number of different connections; 10BASE-T (Ethernet over Twisted Pair, which uses RJ45) and its descendants offering greater speeds is the most common on home PCs today. Mobile and embedded devices frequently use Ethernet over USB. NICs from the 80s and 90s frequently featured coaxial connectors of various types (10BASE5 "thick ethernet" and 10BASE2 "ThinNet" being common examples).
A 8P8C connector with RJ45 wiring is a port. The thing a dongle (which itself takes an 8P8C connector with RJ45 wiring to carry Ethernet data) plugs into is a port.
If you're going to call people "asshole", at least get your facts right...
Microsoft mandates that all Windows OEMs who implement UEFI Secure Boot for WIndows 8 also allow the user to disable Secure Boot. Even Microsoft's own Surface Pro has this option. This has been widely reported for months now, there are easy-to-find tutorials online discussing how to do it, and...
People are *still* complaining about that? Really?
Ubuntu is adding Secure Boot support so that you can leave Secure Boot enabled while running Linux, as a protection against malware attacking or replacing the bootloader (either on the internal storage or removable media). This is a reasonable enough goal. However, it is not and never has been required if you want to dual-boot or want to replace Win8 entirely.
That just says they're maintaining the status quo, nothing more. As I mentioned, you can pay a hundred bucks for the right to publish on Xbox Live's marketplace. There are already tons of publishers who appear to be fine with this scheme, and apparently that's carrying over to the Xbox One, so... whoop de doo?
Surface Pro is actually selling well. Surface RT not that well, but better than (for example) Chromebooks or most Android tablets. Nobody seems to be calling out Google for releasing "flops" though...
Windows Mobile was actually a reasonably popular smartphone OS in its heyday, although the smartphone market was tiny compared to today back then. Windows Phone is solidly in third place right now, and its share is growing (not explosively, but steadily).
Leaving aside the tens of thousands of Windows programs that it *is* compatible with (Windows Store apps are still "Windows programs"), it's actually quite easy to run re-compiled native apps or recent.NET apps on RT, and for closed-source native apps, there's a dynamic recompilation layer which does a decent job with older or low-demand software.
It's not (yet) possible to run anywhere near the full breadth of Windows software, no... but it'll run a reasonable portion of it, with more being added all the time (either through recompiling apps, or through the x86 layer adding support for required capabilities of more apps).
The silly thing is, aside from literally a single flag in the kernel*, it *is* just a simple recompile of Win8. Dig into that "jailbreak" on XDA-Devs, and you'll see it really is just a single value that needs to be changed. Microsoft really should have made a way for users to do that themselves. I can understand the value to some people of having a very locked-down system where all third-party code runs in a sandbox, but sometimes I want to run third-party code that *isn't* going to run in a sandbox, dammit!
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That works, but I agree that violating DNC should carry very heavy pernalties. If I put my number out there specificlaly to say "don't call me", then I damn well don't want to be called.
Now, if they could just get those "This is an automated message from account services... Press one if you would like to lower your interest rates to as little as..." assholes, that would be great...
Sorry to burst you bubble, but there's no way in hell that DRM alone is responsible for a factor of 10-50 change in purchasing. I'd be surprised if it's even a factor of two. Most people don't even know. Of those who do, most don't care. Of those who do, some of them buy anyhow (because they see it as ethical, or because they want to stay on the right side of the law, or because they don't want for somebody to crack the DRM and upload the file, or... lots of possible reasons).
Also, bear in mind that the intention of these DRM schemes is not for a pseudo-purchase. They're for on-demand streaming, effectively a video rental (Netflix and friends). I have no problem with DRM used in that scenario, so long as they don't charge me for something I can't watch. I am not OK with DRM on "purchased" media of any kind. I'm not aware of any sites which allow you to "purchase" video that can only be watched through a browser plugin.
Right-clicking the Start button has *always* done something on Windows. It just used to be something less convenient (better for specific purposes, but definitely less convenient).
Win+X is not inherently discoverable, but there are lots of lists of Windows shortcuts out there on the Internet, including some from Microsoft, or at least their employees, which were published even prior to Win8 RTM.
If you're concerned about productivity "FULL STOP", why the fuck are you opening programs using a mouse anyhow? Win key -> type a few letters of a program name -> Enter, and you can launch anything on the system faster than you can find the item you want even in the Most Commonly Used section of the Start menu. If you have menu animations turned on (which I'm guessing you don't, but most people do) you can be launching a program before the menu finishes drawing itself.
This has existed since Vista. It took a step back in Win8, when "Apps" and "Settings" Start search results were segregated, but it was still usable there. On 8.1 they're integrated again. If you're still launching programs with the mouse and yet claiming you're only concerned about productivity and that's it, you're frankly a liar. You're just whining They Changed It And I Don't Like It like so many other people.
Alternatively, set keyboard shortcuts (possible since at least Windows 2000, still possible on Win8) for the programs you use most (for example, Ctrl+Alt+I to launch your favorite web browser, Alt+Shift+C to launch your development environment, etc. and whatever). That's faster still, once you memorize them, although it won't work on other peoples' computers.
This is almost always something you can override pretty easily (copy the installer to writable media, change a config file that controls accepted upgrade configurations) but then you're even further off into unsupported-land than a normal in-place upgrade (which MS technically supports, but which nobody in the industry including any MS engineer I've ever spoken to really recommends).
Win+F for files (that one's actually legacy, going back at least as far as Vista).
Just because it was possible doesn't mean it wasn't a total hassle. You could actually move between search result pools by keyboard, but it was a total pain. Now I won't have to do it again... thank goodness.
Ironically, launching Control Panel on Win8 is actually faster than on Win7 (by default). Right-click the Start button (yes it exists; it was just hidden by default) or hit Win+X, and select "Control Panel" from the menu that appears. Easy and straightforward.
My biggest gripe with Win8 is the Start search segregation. I don't want to need to use different keystrokes when searching for a "Setting" instead of an "App". Aside from the BS about which is which ("Disk Management" or "Create and format hard disk partitions" is under Settings, but if you type "diskmgmt.msc" it shows under Apps even though it's exactly the same thing), I just don't want to have to deal with switching result pools. This is fixed in 8.1, which is a big enough improvement to make me happy, personally.
There are quite a few ad remover extensions (in Microsoft-ese, "add-ons") for IE, although they aren't widely used relative to the browser's market share.
However, IE 9 and later (and 8 with enough finagling) include a feature called "Tracking Protection" ("InPrivate Filtering" on older versions) which is intended as a privacy enhancer, but works quite well as an ad-blocker too. By default, if you enable it in automatic mode, it will block any third-party request that it has seen across at least ten sites. Obviously, this rapidly catches all the major ad servers. The number of sites is configurable, and you can also manually block (or manually allow) specific sites or URLs. It's also easy to turn the filtering on or off for a given page; there's an icon which appears in the address bar when blocking something (or when something would be blocked but the blocking is disabled).
In addition, there are "Tracking Protection Lists" which you can subscribe to and which provide automatically updating block (or allow) rules for Tracking Protection. The automatic lists can be overridden by your personalized list, but they provide a good way to block tracking (or ads) before you see them at all. EasyList (makers of a popular AdBlock Plus list) offer a TPL, as do many others.
While less flexible than AdBlock Plus and its ilk (can't block ads hosted by the site you're actually visiting, for example; only third-party requests are blocked), it's a surprisingly effective fix that is built into one of the most widely used browsers.
Relatively few web apps require allowing the user to write raw HTML anywhere. The vast majority (estimates typically range around 90%, and based on my personal experience, that's accurate) of web apps have at least one XSS vulnerability, though. With that said, you're both wrong; string literals (I'm assuming GP meant JavaScript strings) are just one of many places that XSS can be found. The techniques for correct output encoding, and the sets of dangerous characters, vary by context.
Preventing SQLi by sanitizing input is possible, but it's error-prone (as the PHP developers discovered when they had to deprecate an API intended for exactly that purpose) and inefficient. Parameterized queries are a much more elegant solution to the problem, and on at least some database engines they are also more performant. In that area, I agree with you completely (including the bit about needing to use the tools correctly, thought that's a[nother] really stupid bug in PHP, if they're actually not verifying the type).
FWIW, IE offers a different take on this: block third-party *requests* from sites you don't like/don't trust/are on EasyList (yes, EasyList for AdBlock Plus also publishes their block list for IE, as do many other such lists). I don't hugely care if a site wants to set a cookie on my browser, so long as they can't retrieve that cookie when I'm on any other sites.
It also breaks that stupid "X of your friends of Facebook liked this! ::THUMBSUP:: if you do too!" thing that a bunch of sites use; the request from Facebook is silently ignored, so the site can't even tell if you have an account. You can also easily (it's a button on the address bar) disable this filtering on a per-site basis (same as turning off an ad-blocker, which it also works quite effectively as). The feature is called "Tracking Protection" and is present in IE9 and newer.
Some... idiots.
Leaving aside the entire point that you're making a really stupid argument ("the whole point of a privacy feature is that it not be active by default..." WTF??) you're also flat-out wrong.
Fact: IE does not enable DNT by default. If you dismiss the first-run dialog (not the same as clicking the "enable this enumerated list of configuration options" button) it will not send DNT.
Fact: Right below the "enable this enumerated list of configuration options" (which of course includes the DNT option), there's a button saying "don't enable those for me; let me decide them individually".
IE has also been able to block third-party cookies (for longer than Firefox has even existed). The capability for this is nothing new.
Ha, indeed. Too bad I already moderated here.
There was a thread in the discussion of Microsoft's YouTube app (for WP8) not showing ads. Some fool suggested that Google update Chrome to block all Microsoft ads, and see how they like it. The problem is, the slice of Microsoft's income that comes from ads is smaller than the (tiny) slice of Google's income that *doesn't* come from ads. If Google did what that airhead had suggested, Microsoft would simply have resonded in kind... which would have been a huge blow to Google's business model.
Before anybody shouts "but but MONOPLY!!!", please bear in mind that at this time, Chrome and IE are about neck-and-neck for market share in most of the world, and such an update would likely only target the newer IE versions (the ones with some ad filtering capability already built in).
The open source philosophy*, apparently:
*Note: I use quite a lot of open source software, and have contributed to a few projects and published a couple of my own. I do it pragmatically, not out of zealotry, though.
Um... BULLSHIT.
There's a dialog in IE10 on first run that asks you, among other things, whether you want to enable DNT. It's true that Microsoft made DNT the recommended setting (meaning, if the user selects "give me the recommended settings", it will be enabled), but the user is informed what those recommended settings are beforehand, and they don't have to accept them. Microsoft they certainly didn't make the decision for you. Grow the fuck up.
Windows 8 doesn't run on anything except x86/x64. Windows RT (not "Windows 8 RT") is a separate product, for all that it's a nearly identical codebase.
Don't get me wrong, I think the requirement for unremovable Secure Boot on WRT is stupid and anti-consumer, but your post was nonetheless redundent to mine.
Where the fuck did you get the idea that the battery only lasts a year of heavy use? That's backed up by exactly zero real-world data. Most electric or hybrid cars get around 10 years on their batteries.
Cost more to run? Bullshit. Pure bullshit. Much lower maintenance costs, and (assuming you don't charge off the grid at peak times, but instead charge at night or off solar or something) lower energy costs as well.
Have limited range? My 18-gallon car can beat the top-end Model S range, yeah, but a lot of my friends with 12-15 gallon tanks cannot. Besides, the exorbitantly vast majority (well in excess of 99%) of non-commercial driving is under 100 miles/day; even the lowest-range Model S can handle that with plenty of capacity left over. Oh, and you can charge up the car at parking lots and such as well (most malls/theaters/etc. in my area have a few electric charging stations these days, and no, I'm not in California).
Toxic materials? You mean like gasoline, motor oil, and transmission fluid? Not to mention lead and sulfuric acid (in your lead-acid battery)? Oh, and brake fluid... Or how about emitting toxic chemicals; it's totally the electric cars that emit carbon monoxide, right? OK, electric cars have different toxic chemicals than gasoline cars, but claiming that electric cars are *worse* than gasoline cars is, once again, total bullshit.
Not sure if you're trolling or just a complete idiot. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt, though (I do also have mod points).
Actually, no... Ethernet is a protocol, defining things like a packet format (Ethernet frames) and an addressing scheme (MAC addresses). Ethernet operates on a number of different connections; 10BASE-T (Ethernet over Twisted Pair, which uses RJ45) and its descendants offering greater speeds is the most common on home PCs today. Mobile and embedded devices frequently use Ethernet over USB. NICs from the 80s and 90s frequently featured coaxial connectors of various types (10BASE5 "thick ethernet" and 10BASE2 "ThinNet" being common examples).
A 8P8C connector with RJ45 wiring is a port. The thing a dongle (which itself takes an 8P8C connector with RJ45 wiring to carry Ethernet data) plugs into is a port.
If you're going to call people "asshole", at least get your facts right...
Microsoft mandates that all Windows OEMs who implement UEFI Secure Boot for WIndows 8 also allow the user to disable Secure Boot. Even Microsoft's own Surface Pro has this option. This has been widely reported for months now, there are easy-to-find tutorials online discussing how to do it, and...
People are *still* complaining about that? Really?
Ubuntu is adding Secure Boot support so that you can leave Secure Boot enabled while running Linux, as a protection against malware attacking or replacing the bootloader (either on the internal storage or removable media). This is a reasonable enough goal. However, it is not and never has been required if you want to dual-boot or want to replace Win8 entirely.
That just says they're maintaining the status quo, nothing more. As I mentioned, you can pay a hundred bucks for the right to publish on Xbox Live's marketplace. There are already tons of publishers who appear to be fine with this scheme, and apparently that's carrying over to the Xbox One, so... whoop de doo?
Surface Pro is actually selling well. Surface RT not that well, but better than (for example) Chromebooks or most Android tablets. Nobody seems to be calling out Google for releasing "flops" though...
Windows Mobile was actually a reasonably popular smartphone OS in its heyday, although the smartphone market was tiny compared to today back then. Windows Phone is solidly in third place right now, and its share is growing (not explosively, but steadily).
Leaving aside the tens of thousands of Windows programs that it *is* compatible with (Windows Store apps are still "Windows programs"), it's actually quite easy to run re-compiled native apps or recent .NET apps on RT, and for closed-source native apps, there's a dynamic recompilation layer which does a decent job with older or low-demand software.
It's not (yet) possible to run anywhere near the full breadth of Windows software, no... but it'll run a reasonable portion of it, with more being added all the time (either through recompiling apps, or through the x86 layer adding support for required capabilities of more apps).
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2130
The silly thing is, aside from literally a single flag in the kernel*, it *is* just a simple recompile of Win8. Dig into that "jailbreak" on XDA-Devs, and you'll see it really is just a single value that needs to be changed. Microsoft really should have made a way for users to do that themselves. I can understand the value to some people of having a very locked-down system where all third-party code runs in a sandbox, but sometimes I want to run third-party code that *isn't* going to run in a sandbox, dammit!