I've often heard what you call a 'hacker' called a 'white hat hacker' and what you call a 'cracker' called a 'black hat hacker'.
When I was just starting learning security stuff circa '95-'97 the term 'cracker' referred (in most stuff I read and by people I talked to at the time) to people who modified binaries on their own system to do things they weren't supposed to (such as a no cd crack or adding new features to a binary - it didn't have to be illegal), while hacking usually referred to gaining unauthorized access to anything, be it local or over network.
It all depends on what crowd you gained your definitions of hacking and cracking from. I prefer these definitions because they seem to have more precision. You can hack for multiple reasons (good or bad, white or black hat), you can crack for multiple reasons (good or bad, white or black hat).
A company I worked for had a lot of cracked copies of their software circulating the Internet and I spent some of my time for them reverse engineering and preventing one of their more mysterious and unsolved cracks - I'd call that white hat cracking.
The first victim of a twitter post (not counting grammar and spelling) is the truth. After that, it's all downhill no matter what you say.
Ok that is a hilarious statement. I'll remember it for next time I want to bash someone. Yes, I'm not that creative on my own.
Anyway, I'll keep your opinion in mind - I'm not around/. all that much, so I can't speak for the credibility of various members, but I'll make sure to research Twitter's stuff a bit extra given your warning. Thanks.
"You are an admitted accomplice to an illegal monopoly. You could have chosen to NOT pay the M$ tax and yet you have sided with a known illegal monopoly, numerous times."
You, sir, are a troll. Are you a citizen of a country? Does your country use MS products? Do you pay taxes there? Hrmm... Let's try another example. Have you ever attended a school? Did that school have a computer lab or a student union building? What OS was running on the computers in that lab? Whose tuition was funding that school? Hrm...
Do not blame "the system" for giving your money away.
They did exactly that, Dr. Presumptuous.
You could have spent more and bought an apple or taken the time to build your own system. There were plenty of good choices for an OS, like BeOS (still have a copy at home), NeXT, OS/2*.
Apple is no better than Microsoft, thanks for doing your research. As for BeOS, NeXT, and OS/2, those are not realistic alternatives these days thanks to archaic 3rd party applications and no support for modern hardware. Try recommending Linux or BSD next time.
It's people with your kind of attitude that enabled Adolf Hitler to rise to power.
That's in no way true, but thanks for the trolling. You gave me a good laugh. Ignorance and arrogant judgment are the way to solve any problem! Yay!
When you get used to the choices you have in *nix, it's really hard to go back. I switched almost entirely to Linux and FreeBSD. I bought a Mac Mini hoping it would prove to be even more friendly than the Beryl + (KDE or Gnome) desktops I used at the time.
OSX's lack of flexibility (wanna show hidden files in the gui file browser? Have fun with that!!) drove me nuts. I ended up dual booting it with Linux... and haven't booted into OSX for almost a year now.
Microsoft had nothing to do with making that layer common - that credit should be given to IBM's PC. Microsoft just happened to be the company that landed the contract to have their OS (or rather the os they just purchased and put their name on) shipping on the IBM PC.
Not only did Microsoft's DOS and Windows not in any way provide the "common layer" of which you speak between proprietary software and any hardware except for the IBM PC, it didn't even have to do it well: it was shipping by default. IBM figured PCs were just a fad and expected them to fade away, so they didn't really shop around very much for an OS.
I'm surprised a "graybeard" doesn't remember that Microsoft made no effort to give you that common platform - IBM did that. Microsoft was just lucky enough to get the OS they just bought and renamed shipping as your common platform.
Much of Twitter's posts are strongly worded, and to people that haven't spent the time researching they can see really off base. Now I'm not nearly as strongly-outspoken as Twitter is, but I have to say I really can verify the fact behind almost all the stuff he/she posts. Honestly the people that get called crazy are half geniuses that people are too ignorant to listen to and half crazy people... Twitter is one of the former.
If you want to talk about mental, take a look at a few MS fanboys that defend Microsoft without getting paid a cent, even though Microsoft would RAPE them (figuratively) if it would earn them a few more dollars... and (figuratively) already has.
I get a free product from Canonical or Fedora that they paid millions to develop. The least I can do is contribute bandwidth.
I have no feelings on Blizzard because I don't use their stuff.
As far as Demonoid or eDonkey or ThePirateBay - Once again I'm paying nothing for a product that's worth something, the least I can do is help others get it.
Now we get to Microsoft. They have raped the market for decades, and I've been forced to contribute to their profit on many accounts despite the fact I don't use any of their stuff, ever.
I see a marked distinction. On a few counts, I get something I didn't pay for. On Microsoft's, I pay for something I don't use at all.
Nice FUD. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they ever have or ever will do that with windows updates.
Just like 640k of ram should be enough for anybody... Now I know that's a flamebait remark that is unrelated at first glance, but it's meant to remind us that the future holds many surprises.
The GP doesn't strike me as FUD because he mentions specifically that it's "quite possible" -- which it is, remember what the word "possible" means -- that Microsoft could do that. I am willing to upgrade possible to plausible, and watch the FUD accusations fly. Just look at it this way - Microsoft has thrown some pretty crazy stuff into their EULA in the past and people have, without reading it, just hit "I agree" because they (think that they) need Windows so "yeah, whatever, I agree, next, next..."
You are just making wild speculation. I suggest you read the article to see where this is actually being used.
Where it is being used now has nothing to do with where it will be used in the future. That's what makes moves like this strategic. If Microsoft were to do what the GP said (and I'm not saying they will... calm down), they could site this move and say "see? See how acceptable it was then?". When you do something drastic like forcing customers to use their bandwidth to distribute updates (which once again I'm not saying will happen, but defending that the GP is NOT FUD), you ease into it step by step. You use technologies and practices that have already been accepted so it doesn't seem like a big step.
I'm not trying to validate the GP's claim, but I'm very much invalidating your claim that it's FUD. Microsoft has never acted in the best interests of its customers and because of that any move it makes should be met with speculation about what comes next. Failure to do so will result in losing yet more money and freedom. At this point far too many people have erred on the side of trusting Microsoft, and the results have been very bad for the technology economy world-wide. I say we lend credibility to voices critiquing and suspecting Microsoft's motives. They were right in the past, and we failed to listen.
Microsoft has proven time and time again not to care at all about my needs or my well-being. Honestly they've cost me a lot of money not just by their lack of interest in my needs but the way they've crushed the products that actually did serve my needs, and they did so illegally.
So while the anti-competitive practices may seem unrelated, they really are. I have personally suffered on multiple accounts directly because of Microsoft, be it their neglect or their business practices. Since they don't care about my best interest, I have no interest in theirs.
If Microsoft takes my money but blatantly ignores my needs, I don't want to help them in any way at all, and that includes bandwidth. I'll give them the same attitude they've given me: you want to distribute your software? You muscle up and pay to get it distributed. Don't ask me for help unless you're paying me for it.
I forgot there's no autoformat on/. comments. I meant to say:
I didn't read the grand parent, so I could be speaking in some ignorance here, but here's why I would gladly donate some bandwidth to Blizzard but not Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I don't use any blizzard products, so I'm really not a fanboy. Promise.
Blizzard hasn't been very nice about open standards, true. But I've no knowledge of them destroying existing standards by "embrace, extend, extinguish". I have not researched this, so I speak in some ignorance here, but there's only so much time in a day and I can only do the best I can with the knowledge I have.
If I decided I wanted to play WoW or (insert blizzard game here) I'd probably research a bit on their credibility before I made a call of that nature. Since I'm sure far more people on/. have had to use Microsoft stuff than Blizzard stuff, I have no doubt more people have been exposed to their selfish and destructive tactics, so it's no surprise to me at all that people on/. would be hesitant to help Microsoft by donating bandwidth.
Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that.
An additional distinction - Microsoft made their own version of bit torrent in this case. Bit torrent already exists - why not just contribute any improvements they have, instead of trying to push their own product to compete? If it's inferior or equal, they may as well have just used Bit Torrent. If it's better, they could have helped the rest of the world out by contributing their changes. If that's the case, we're all missing out because they have once again shown no interest in the benefit of John Q. Public. That kind of thing always happens with Microsoft, and it's a great reason to laugh every time they claim to have contributed to the quality and progress of technology and seem like a philanthropist.
In short Blizzard may be no different from Microsoft - I couldn't tell you, but maybe they aren't. Most of the people on/. know a lot of Microsoft's dirt and have every right to bash Microsoft because of that. Crying for poor Microsoft because everyone here is less informed of a less important company is an exercise of the obvious and melodramatic.
I didn't read the grand parent, so I could be speaking in some ignorance here, but here's why I would gladly donate some bandwidth to Blizzard but not Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I don't use any blizzard products, so I'm really not a fanboy. Promise.
Blizzard hasn't been very nice about open standards, true. But I've no knowledge of them destroying existing standards by "embrace, extend, extinguish". I have not researched this, so I speak in some ignorance here, but there's only so much time in a day and I can only do the best I can with the knowledge I have.
If I decided I wanted to play WoW or (insert blizzard game here) I'd probably research a bit on their credibility before I made a call of that nature. Since I'm sure far more people on/. have had to use Microsoft stuff than Blizzard stuff, I have no doubt more people have been exposed to their selfish and destructive tactics, so it's no surprise to me at all that people on/. would be hesitant to help Microsoft by donating bandwidth.
Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that.
An additional distinction - Microsoft made their own version of bit torrent in this case. Bit torrent already exists - why not just contribute any improvements they have, instead of trying to push their own product to compete? If it's inferior or equal, they may as well have just used Bit Torrent. If it's better, they could have helped the rest of the world out by contributing their changes. If that's the case, we're all missing out because they have once again shown no interest in the benefit of John Q. Public. That kind of thing always happens with Microsoft, and it's a great reason to laugh every time they claim to have contributed to the quality and progress of technology and seem like a philanthropist.
In short Blizzard may be no different from Microsoft - I couldn't tell you, but maybe they aren't. Most of the people on/. know a lot of Microsoft's dirt and have every right to bash Microsoft because of that. Crying for poor Microsoft because everyone here is less informed of a less important company is an exercise of the obvious and melodramatic.
I would buy AMD/ATI/whatever it's called now exclusively if they got open source drivers out for their gpus.
I already buy their cpus exclusively because I like their ethos better.
I also don't buy Microsoft products - nor use them illegally, and I only buy meat from companies that actually treat the animals humanely in real life. This may seem like a small deal but it's much more expensive.
The truth is there are people out there that will only use their (limited) dollars to support companies that are morally upright or at least less evil.
I did buy an Intel mac once, and I don't believe Apple is any less evil than MS: just smaller right now. I'm willing to feed the smaller evil until it's big enough to take the larger evil down a few pegs.
You seem as oblivious to the obvious sarcasm of the original poster (who was claiming that Linux's driver support is bad enough to make Vista look good) as you are to the fact that many people are supporting open source software fanatically for the very real reason that it defends them from monopolies. You intend to poke fun at Linux fanboys, which is funny I guess. What you may not realize is that Microsoft spends billions of dollars to tell you their software works - Linux has only fans. That's it. If a few go overboard trying to make up for the less vocal, it can hardly be blamed.
In short, I find your post an ill-informed attempt at humor about a topic more serious than you can apparently realize, likely because you lack the necessary intelligence to recognize things like sarcastic posts that already support your point of view. Congratulations: you just attacked a post that you agree with.
Come on, it'll be called "Windows Red" or "Windows Doorknob" or the like. I mean, think about it:
Windows 3.1 (a version number. Logical)
Windows 95, 98, 2000 (a year. Switched gears, but that works)
Windows ME (Let's just not talk about that)
Windows XP (Ok, what the... where are we?)
Windows Vista (Wait, I thought we were... ok I have no idea what's going on)
Windows 7 (... I give up...)
I think calling the next version Windows 8 would be giving them too much credit for consistency. Not to troll, aw hell this is trolling but I think it's funny: an example would be Vista's interface compared to XP's. So very, very consistent.
If all you see is "security flaw... something something... Linux", you've missed an important chunk of the story. The problem is that Samsung's drivers were poorly coded and completely ignored the built in security mechanisms of a Linux system.
You still have to be root to install their drivers, so no this is not a problem with Linux's security.
Another important lesson we can draw from this is that the drivers in question are not open source. Sure, people get tired of open source users constantly griping "xxxx isn't open source! Crucify! Crucify!" but then something like this comes along and proves them right: if we had access to the source, we would have seen the security problem, fixed it, and shipped the changes back to Samsung free of charge. Samsung gets free development time, Samsung product users get better security. The only down is that Slashdot doesn't get to print a story about "security flaw... something something... Linux"
If you want to be listened to rather than just offend a bunch of people, try not to have a subject like "Note to Open Source OS pushers..." for your comment
Saying someone is "pushing" something makes them appear aggressive and opinionated, or at least says you think they are. This colors everything you say after it in a very negative light. As someone that never works with marketting, I'm amazed this didn't occur to you, unless it did and you were just seeking attention.
"You can make various arguments that talking to someone who isn't in the car requires more attention, but I think this is more than offset by the visual distraction of conversing with a passenger."
It's one thing to provide a set of ratchets with sockets. It's an entirely different matter to provide your next set of ratchets with completely incompatible sockets. Especially when you're the market lead for ratchets with a large margin. That means competitors have to try to adjust their whole design and production line, with a huge head start to you. Not fair for a moment.
"I don't want google or yahoo or anyone else searching my hard drive."
But Microsoft's cool. Especially with their closed source kernel where I can't tell what they're doing with the information. It's all good.
Many - ok MOST - people don't go out of their way to use FireFox. I know lots of people that love FireFox over IE but still use IE most of the time because it's what comes pre-installed. It's just not important enough to them to switch even though they have a clear and obvious preference.
You can tell me people go out of their way to use FireFox when it gets 80%+ browser usage like IE.
"What they are obligated to do is allow 3rd parties to develop and install alternatives."
Alternatives are meaningless if they are, by nature, cripled. If MSFT won't grant the same level of application interface and OS interface to 3rd party search apps, they are stifling competition. They are using the fact that they and only they have access to features of Office and Windows to give their search features that can't be done with other apps. It's anti-competitive and crooked, hands down. If your search is so good, level the playing field and give us access to all the API calls you're using.
"all they have to do is advertise to people (easy, given their brand recognition) and create a better/faster file search engine than the one built into Vista."
... which is really really hard to do when you can't take advantage of all the internal OS knowlege that Microsoft can. Microsoft's search tool is tightly integrated with practically every aspect of Vista... replacing it with a different tool, even if it's a better tool, is pretty much impossible.
If Microsoft opened up all their APIS for all their programs that used search capability and gave the ability to replace the built-in search, you can talk about fair competition. At the moment, it's impossible for people to create a replacement search engine because they don't have access to all the internal technology Microsoft is keeping under wraps.
Slashdot Mirror
I've often heard what you call a 'hacker' called a 'white hat hacker' and what you call a 'cracker' called a 'black hat hacker'.
When I was just starting learning security stuff circa '95-'97 the term 'cracker' referred (in most stuff I read and by people I talked to at the time) to people who modified binaries on their own system to do things they weren't supposed to (such as a no cd crack or adding new features to a binary - it didn't have to be illegal), while hacking usually referred to gaining unauthorized access to anything, be it local or over network.
It all depends on what crowd you gained your definitions of hacking and cracking from. I prefer these definitions because they seem to have more precision. You can hack for multiple reasons (good or bad, white or black hat), you can crack for multiple reasons (good or bad, white or black hat).
A company I worked for had a lot of cracked copies of their software circulating the Internet and I spent some of my time for them reverse engineering and preventing one of their more mysterious and unsolved cracks - I'd call that white hat cracking.
I *did* mention that I've been using Linux and FreeBSD for a while now, right? So the girlfriend topic really doesn't come up much... :-p
The first victim of a twitter post (not counting grammar and spelling) is the truth. After that, it's all downhill no matter what you say.
/. all that much, so I can't speak for the credibility of various members, but I'll make sure to research Twitter's stuff a bit extra given your warning. Thanks.
Ok that is a hilarious statement. I'll remember it for next time I want to bash someone. Yes, I'm not that creative on my own.
Anyway, I'll keep your opinion in mind - I'm not around
"You are an admitted accomplice to an illegal monopoly. You could have chosen to NOT pay the M$ tax and yet you have sided with a known illegal monopoly, numerous times."
You, sir, are a troll. Are you a citizen of a country? Does your country use MS products? Do you pay taxes there? Hrmm... Let's try another example. Have you ever attended a school? Did that school have a computer lab or a student union building? What OS was running on the computers in that lab? Whose tuition was funding that school? Hrm...
Do not blame "the system" for giving your money away.
They did exactly that, Dr. Presumptuous.
You could have spent more and bought an apple or taken the time to build your own system. There were plenty of good choices for an OS, like BeOS (still have a copy at home), NeXT, OS/2*.
Apple is no better than Microsoft, thanks for doing your research. As for BeOS, NeXT, and OS/2, those are not realistic alternatives these days thanks to archaic 3rd party applications and no support for modern hardware. Try recommending Linux or BSD next time.
It's people with your kind of attitude that enabled Adolf Hitler to rise to power.
That's in no way true, but thanks for the trolling. You gave me a good laugh. Ignorance and arrogant judgment are the way to solve any problem! Yay!
... f***inh monkey.
When you get used to the choices you have in *nix, it's really hard to go back. I switched almost entirely to Linux and FreeBSD. I bought a Mac Mini hoping it would prove to be even more friendly than the Beryl + (KDE or Gnome) desktops I used at the time.
OSX's lack of flexibility (wanna show hidden files in the gui file browser? Have fun with that!!) drove me nuts. I ended up dual booting it with Linux... and haven't booted into OSX for almost a year now.
Microsoft had nothing to do with making that layer common - that credit should be given to IBM's PC. Microsoft just happened to be the company that landed the contract to have their OS (or rather the os they just purchased and put their name on) shipping on the IBM PC.
Not only did Microsoft's DOS and Windows not in any way provide the "common layer" of which you speak between proprietary software and any hardware except for the IBM PC, it didn't even have to do it well: it was shipping by default. IBM figured PCs were just a fad and expected them to fade away, so they didn't really shop around very much for an OS.
I'm surprised a "graybeard" doesn't remember that Microsoft made no effort to give you that common platform - IBM did that. Microsoft was just lucky enough to get the OS they just bought and renamed shipping as your common platform.
Much of Twitter's posts are strongly worded, and to people that haven't spent the time researching they can see really off base. Now I'm not nearly as strongly-outspoken as Twitter is, but I have to say I really can verify the fact behind almost all the stuff he/she posts. Honestly the people that get called crazy are half geniuses that people are too ignorant to listen to and half crazy people... Twitter is one of the former. If you want to talk about mental, take a look at a few MS fanboys that defend Microsoft without getting paid a cent, even though Microsoft would RAPE them (figuratively) if it would earn them a few more dollars... and (figuratively) already has.
I get a free product from Canonical or Fedora that they paid millions to develop. The least I can do is contribute bandwidth.
I have no feelings on Blizzard because I don't use their stuff.
As far as Demonoid or eDonkey or ThePirateBay - Once again I'm paying nothing for a product that's worth something, the least I can do is help others get it.
Now we get to Microsoft. They have raped the market for decades, and I've been forced to contribute to their profit on many accounts despite the fact I don't use any of their stuff, ever.
I see a marked distinction. On a few counts, I get something I didn't pay for. On Microsoft's, I pay for something I don't use at all.
Nice FUD. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they ever have or ever will do that with windows updates.
Just like 640k of ram should be enough for anybody... Now I know that's a flamebait remark that is unrelated at first glance, but it's meant to remind us that the future holds many surprises.
The GP doesn't strike me as FUD because he mentions specifically that it's "quite possible" -- which it is, remember what the word "possible" means -- that Microsoft could do that. I am willing to upgrade possible to plausible, and watch the FUD accusations fly. Just look at it this way - Microsoft has thrown some pretty crazy stuff into their EULA in the past and people have, without reading it, just hit "I agree" because they (think that they) need Windows so "yeah, whatever, I agree, next, next..."
You are just making wild speculation. I suggest you read the article to see where this is actually being used.
Where it is being used now has nothing to do with where it will be used in the future. That's what makes moves like this strategic. If Microsoft were to do what the GP said (and I'm not saying they will... calm down), they could site this move and say "see? See how acceptable it was then?". When you do something drastic like forcing customers to use their bandwidth to distribute updates (which once again I'm not saying will happen, but defending that the GP is NOT FUD), you ease into it step by step. You use technologies and practices that have already been accepted so it doesn't seem like a big step.
I'm not trying to validate the GP's claim, but I'm very much invalidating your claim that it's FUD. Microsoft has never acted in the best interests of its customers and because of that any move it makes should be met with speculation about what comes next. Failure to do so will result in losing yet more money and freedom. At this point far too many people have erred on the side of trusting Microsoft, and the results have been very bad for the technology economy world-wide. I say we lend credibility to voices critiquing and suspecting Microsoft's motives. They were right in the past, and we failed to listen.
I'll simplify it the way I see it.
Microsoft has proven time and time again not to care at all about my needs or my well-being. Honestly they've cost me a lot of money not just by their lack of interest in my needs but the way they've crushed the products that actually did serve my needs, and they did so illegally.
So while the anti-competitive practices may seem unrelated, they really are. I have personally suffered on multiple accounts directly because of Microsoft, be it their neglect or their business practices. Since they don't care about my best interest, I have no interest in theirs.
If Microsoft takes my money but blatantly ignores my needs, I don't want to help them in any way at all, and that includes bandwidth. I'll give them the same attitude they've given me: you want to distribute your software? You muscle up and pay to get it distributed. Don't ask me for help unless you're paying me for it.
I forgot there's no autoformat on /. comments. I meant to say:
/. have had to use Microsoft stuff than Blizzard stuff, I have no doubt more people have been exposed to their selfish and destructive tactics, so it's no surprise to me at all that people on /. would be hesitant to help Microsoft by donating bandwidth.
/. know a lot of Microsoft's dirt and have every right to bash Microsoft because of that. Crying for poor Microsoft because everyone here is less informed of a less important company is an exercise of the obvious and melodramatic.
I didn't read the grand parent, so I could be speaking in some ignorance here, but here's why I would gladly donate some bandwidth to Blizzard but not Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I don't use any blizzard products, so I'm really not a fanboy. Promise.
Blizzard hasn't been very nice about open standards, true. But I've no knowledge of them destroying existing standards by "embrace, extend, extinguish". I have not researched this, so I speak in some ignorance here, but there's only so much time in a day and I can only do the best I can with the knowledge I have.
If I decided I wanted to play WoW or (insert blizzard game here) I'd probably research a bit on their credibility before I made a call of that nature. Since I'm sure far more people on
Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that.
An additional distinction - Microsoft made their own version of bit torrent in this case. Bit torrent already exists - why not just contribute any improvements they have, instead of trying to push their own product to compete? If it's inferior or equal, they may as well have just used Bit Torrent. If it's better, they could have helped the rest of the world out by contributing their changes. If that's the case, we're all missing out because they have once again shown no interest in the benefit of John Q. Public. That kind of thing always happens with Microsoft, and it's a great reason to laugh every time they claim to have contributed to the quality and progress of technology and seem like a philanthropist.
In short Blizzard may be no different from Microsoft - I couldn't tell you, but maybe they aren't. Most of the people on
I didn't read the grand parent, so I could be speaking in some ignorance here, but here's why I would gladly donate some bandwidth to Blizzard but not Microsoft. Disclaimer: I don't use any blizzard products, so I'm really not a fanboy. Promise. Blizzard hasn't been very nice about open standards, true. But I've no knowledge of them destroying existing standards by "embrace, extend, extinguish". I have not researched this, so I speak in some ignorance here, but there's only so much time in a day and I can only do the best I can with the knowledge I have. If I decided I wanted to play WoW or (insert blizzard game here) I'd probably research a bit on their credibility before I made a call of that nature. Since I'm sure far more people on /. have had to use Microsoft stuff than Blizzard stuff, I have no doubt more people have been exposed to their selfish and destructive tactics, so it's no surprise to me at all that people on /. would be hesitant to help Microsoft by donating bandwidth.
Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that.
An additional distinction - Microsoft made their own version of bit torrent in this case. Bit torrent already exists - why not just contribute any improvements they have, instead of trying to push their own product to compete? If it's inferior or equal, they may as well have just used Bit Torrent. If it's better, they could have helped the rest of the world out by contributing their changes. If that's the case, we're all missing out because they have once again shown no interest in the benefit of John Q. Public. That kind of thing always happens with Microsoft, and it's a great reason to laugh every time they claim to have contributed to the quality and progress of technology and seem like a philanthropist.
In short Blizzard may be no different from Microsoft - I couldn't tell you, but maybe they aren't. Most of the people on /. know a lot of Microsoft's dirt and have every right to bash Microsoft because of that. Crying for poor Microsoft because everyone here is less informed of a less important company is an exercise of the obvious and melodramatic.
I would buy AMD/ATI/whatever it's called now exclusively if they got open source drivers out for their gpus.
I already buy their cpus exclusively because I like their ethos better.
I also don't buy Microsoft products - nor use them illegally, and I only buy meat from companies that actually treat the animals humanely in real life. This may seem like a small deal but it's much more expensive.
The truth is there are people out there that will only use their (limited) dollars to support companies that are morally upright or at least less evil.
I did buy an Intel mac once, and I don't believe Apple is any less evil than MS: just smaller right now. I'm willing to feed the smaller evil until it's big enough to take the larger evil down a few pegs.
You seem as oblivious to the obvious sarcasm of the original poster (who was claiming that Linux's driver support is bad enough to make Vista look good) as you are to the fact that many people are supporting open source software fanatically for the very real reason that it defends them from monopolies. You intend to poke fun at Linux fanboys, which is funny I guess. What you may not realize is that Microsoft spends billions of dollars to tell you their software works - Linux has only fans. That's it. If a few go overboard trying to make up for the less vocal, it can hardly be blamed.
In short, I find your post an ill-informed attempt at humor about a topic more serious than you can apparently realize, likely because you lack the necessary intelligence to recognize things like sarcastic posts that already support your point of view. Congratulations: you just attacked a post that you agree with.
Come on, it'll be called "Windows Red" or "Windows Doorknob" or the like. I mean, think about it:
...)
Windows 3.1 (a version number. Logical)
Windows 95, 98, 2000 (a year. Switched gears, but that works)
Windows ME (Let's just not talk about that)
Windows XP (Ok, what the... where are we?)
Windows Vista (Wait, I thought we were... ok I have no idea what's going on)
Windows 7 (... I give up
I think calling the next version Windows 8 would be giving them too much credit for consistency. Not to troll, aw hell this is trolling but I think it's funny: an example would be Vista's interface compared to XP's. So very, very consistent.
If all you see is "security flaw ... something something ... Linux", you've missed an important chunk of the story. The problem is that Samsung's drivers were poorly coded and completely ignored the built in security mechanisms of a Linux system.
... something something ... Linux"
You still have to be root to install their drivers, so no this is not a problem with Linux's security.
Another important lesson we can draw from this is that the drivers in question are not open source. Sure, people get tired of open source users constantly griping "xxxx isn't open source! Crucify! Crucify!" but then something like this comes along and proves them right: if we had access to the source, we would have seen the security problem, fixed it, and shipped the changes back to Samsung free of charge. Samsung gets free development time, Samsung product users get better security. The only down is that Slashdot doesn't get to print a story about "security flaw
Maybe if they merged...
Then we'd have a monopoly and both bus and CPU would suck! Sweet!
Woo! I'll give that a shot. I haven't been using Beagle because .NET can eat a penis.
If you want to be listened to rather than just offend a bunch of people, try not to have a subject like "Note to Open Source OS pushers..." for your comment
Saying someone is "pushing" something makes them appear aggressive and opinionated, or at least says you think they are. This colors everything you say after it in a very negative light. As someone that never works with marketting, I'm amazed this didn't occur to you, unless it did and you were just seeking attention.
"You can make various arguments that talking to someone who isn't in the car requires more attention, but I think this is more than offset by the visual distraction of conversing with a passenger."
Especially if the passenger is hot.
It's one thing to provide a set of ratchets with sockets. It's an entirely different matter to provide your next set of ratchets with completely incompatible sockets. Especially when you're the market lead for ratchets with a large margin. That means competitors have to try to adjust their whole design and production line, with a huge head start to you. Not fair for a moment.
"I don't want google or yahoo or anyone else searching my hard drive."
But Microsoft's cool. Especially with their closed source kernel where I can't tell what they're doing with the information. It's all good.
Many - ok MOST - people don't go out of their way to use FireFox.
I know lots of people that love FireFox over IE but still use IE most of the time because it's what comes pre-installed. It's just not important enough to them to switch even though they have a clear and obvious preference.
You can tell me people go out of their way to use FireFox when it gets 80%+ browser usage like IE.
"What they are obligated to do is allow 3rd parties to develop and install alternatives."
Alternatives are meaningless if they are, by nature, cripled. If MSFT won't grant the same level of application interface and OS interface to 3rd party search apps, they are stifling competition. They are using the fact that they and only they have access to features of Office and Windows to give their search features that can't be done with other apps. It's anti-competitive and crooked, hands down. If your search is so good, level the playing field and give us access to all the API calls you're using.
"all they have to do is advertise to people (easy, given their brand recognition) and create a better/faster file search engine than the one built into Vista."
... which is really really hard to do when you can't take advantage of all the internal OS knowlege that Microsoft can. Microsoft's search tool is tightly integrated with practically every aspect of Vista... replacing it with a different tool, even if it's a better tool, is pretty much impossible.
If Microsoft opened up all their APIS for all their programs that used search capability and gave the ability to replace the built-in search, you can talk about fair competition. At the moment, it's impossible for people to create a replacement search engine because they don't have access to all the internal technology Microsoft is keeping under wraps.