I actually had some weird experiences in WOW, where I'd mention being excited about just buying Mass Effect, and the entire guild would go, "uh, what's that?"
Gee, you guys play a video game 12+ hours a day, I figured you were interested in video games. Nope, not video games, just MMOs.
Ok, so now I'm excited about trying Age of Conan... "uh, what's that?" Ah, so they're not interested in just MMOs, they're literally ONLY INTERESTED IN WOW.
WTF?!
And I'm not talking about just a couple of people, in a guild with about 40 people online, something like 35 of them were completely disinterested in any other video games. The only "gaming" community I've been in where that's true.
I have a good friend who is a licensed Chiropractor, and also licensed as a family-practice M.D. He fully understands the limitations of Chiropractic techniques and won't hesitate to advise patients go to a medical specialist for any condition he might detect. Additionally, he would never make any claims he knows to be false, for example, that chiropractic adjustments can help conditions like ulcers, or whatever other ridiculous things fraud Chiropractors claim. He advises companies on ergonomics, and frequently attends health fairs.
Are there fraud Chiropractors? Yes. Are all Chiropractors frauds? Of course not.
Guess what? There are also fraud M.D.s. And fraud lawyers, and fraud plumbers and...
What did Microsoft perfect? "A security technology."
Does this imply Microsoft invented it? No. Does this imply Microsoft was the first to implement it? No. Does this imply that Microsoft was the first to perfect it? No.
So why did the first reply read as if the sentence had said: "Microsoft perfected and invented and first-used and basically is GOD of this technology that in no way appeared in BSD first!"
By the way, you're right: nowhere does it say "their version." Of course I don't see how that's EVEN REMOTELY FUCKING RELEVANT you illiterate hack.
They're not claiming Microsoft invented (or first-used) (or only uses) it, only that Microsoft "perfected" their version in time for the Vista release. Reading comprehension is a good thing, you should try it.
That flaw was a result of IE8 turning off ASLR, something they did for the beta (for debugging purposes), and they just forgot to turn it back on before release. It doesn't say anything about ASLR's effectiveness.
The simple fact is that now people *expect* netbooks to run Windows. Selling one that doesn't, even if it's cheaper, is going to be a challenge.
(Also your second question depends on the meaning of "PC." If you mean "PC-compatible" then, of course, IBM once had a 100% share. If you mean "personal computer", then IBM's share was high, but not dominating.)
He probably has confidential information on it that the IT guys aren't privy to. When I worked IT, it was a very small company so this wasn't as big a concern, but I frequently worked on computers that had, for example, full payroll data on them.
Two years ago, I'd be all behind this. Now, Intel and Microsoft have such a lead in the market, it's going to be a much harder market for ARM to enter.
Unless I'm very mistaken, this exploit uses the Windows file-sharing ports, not the ports used for Remote Desktop. If you have evidence otherwise, please present it. Until then, I think you're just pulling stuff out of your ass.
Enabling Remote Desktop doesn't turn off the Windows Firewall, and it doesn't open ports used for file-sharing.
Seriously, you're talking about some magical "rewrite all your software, changing it from a compiled language into Javascript, making sure it functions identically even though it's technically impossible for Javascript to do many things ActiveX applets can do."
You can't rag on Microsoft for not making a product that's IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE.
Hm. My older Zune doesn't require a Zune Pass. What is the footnote attached to? I'd find it extremely odd if they made the hardware require a Zune Pass to function, especially since it goes against what current Zunes do.
The very fact that Zune even has a headline on Slashdot considering its 1% market share and fourth-place finish behind iPod, Sandisk, and "Other" comes close to astroturfing in my book.
Can you back that number up, or are you pulling it directly from your ass?
I've been looking for music player market share numbers for an hour now, and I can't find anything that suggests Zune is at 1%. The last (extremely out-of-date!) figures had it closer to 10% of the HD-based market.
What they're saying is that, using the default settings in the latest service pack, those OSes are immune to those exploits. It's still possible to change the default settings in such a way as to make the exploit work.
Considering that, I don't think Microsoft's action here is unfair. Windows XP and 2000 *are* resistant to this exploit, as long as the user doesn't go out of their way to do something stupid (like disabling security features.)
Microsoft gave people the tools to make IE6 only websites and pushed hard to get people to use them
And they've spent the last 5+ years with the message: "Whoa, sorry about that whole ActiveX thing, please don't actually use that."
Microsoft's been doing nothing but DISCOURAGING IE-only technologies for ages now, it's not Microsoft's fault that huge, lumbering corporations with sub-par programmers haven't figured out the fucking message yet.
Microsoft have not given an easy upgrade path for any of these applications, and IE7/8 break them, and so it is 100% Microsoft fault....
They should be thanking their lucky stars that ActiveX works at all in IE7, considering everybody, even Microsoft, is sick of it and wants it to go away. Seriously, if Microsoft could wave a magic wand and make that code disappear, they would-- but you're deluding yourself if you think that Microsoft has any control over this.
Oh please. Yes, a shameless publicity grab (that worked, very, very well) dictated the attitude of our entire country!
Nobody was "traumatized" by it, except for a few fundamentalist Christians, who probably weren't even watching the Superbowl in the first place.
But more to the point, the press reports non-news as HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS all the fucking time. If you take the news media as any indication of the general inclination of Americans, then you're highly mis-informed.
Generally, it is a "gentleman's agreement" in the US. Retailers and theaters will require ID, but that's not a legal requirement, it's just company policy. And, like you suggested, big box stores are usually pretty casual about it, and until recent video game stores were *really* casual about it-- but they've gotten some bad press since the last GTA and, strangely, Halo 2 (which isn't very violent, IMO), so that's changing quickly.
The MPAA and ESRB ratings systems are both run by industry groups, with minimal government involvement. The RIAA's rating system was mandated by the government, but as far as I know the government doesn't interfere in day-to-day operations at all. The Comics Code was voluntary, and run by an industry group, although I believe modern comics generally don't bother getting that certification anymore, except for books clearly intended for kids.
Strangely, books have no rating system (that I'm aware of), no store policies, and there's nothing stopping a 12-year-old from walking into a bookstore and buying, say, "American Psycho." This hasn't come up, but I'd love to see an expose of this practice-- it's only fair that book publishers go through the same bullshit all other entertainment industries have.
So far, the US has done a very good job of upholding the First Amendment, and all the proposed laws to censor video games or music have been quashed. That doesn't stop the government from, say, enacting music labeling laws, or requiring "V-chips" on TVs. This could all change if Hillary Clinton's popularity rises, since censoring video games is one of her pet issues, and she probably has the contacts to make it happen.
Pop quiz: Has anybody in the US ever, in your entire life, seen a TV with the V-chip enabled? I've seen TVs with channels blocked at the cable/satellite box, but I've never seen a V-chip in action. What a waste of time and money that requirement is.
Maybe they're doing it to get lazy developers to STOP USING HARD-CODED FUCKING PATHS.
Sorry, that's one of my pet peeves. Any time you see a software product that refuses to install or work correctly because your "My Documents" folder is mapped to a network drive, or because it's in "Program Files (x86)" and not "Program Files", you should be cheering Microsoft on.
Right now, Windows' biggest weakness is shitty third-party software. Anything slap-in-the-face that gets third parties to start writing correct software, I'm fully behind.
Basically, in my experience, Windows is sort of like a giant ball of playdough rolling down a city street - it gets dirtier and heavier over time, less appealing and not so colourful, not to mention the used condoms and syringes it occasionally picks up, and so you need to break out a new batch of playdough once in a while.
Yeah, Vista fixes that, FYI.
My 2.5-year-old Vista install is as quick and responsive as the day I installed it.
Besides, most of the problem on XP is the result of cruft left-behind by poorly-written third-party software. If you're careful about what you install and un-install, you usually don't have any problems. (Well, until you need to open a file which is only viewable by crappy third-party software, then there's no choice.)
First of all, this isn't 1986. For CHRIST'S SAKE, and on behalf of all Slashdotters, please type an entire paragraph before hitting "enter."
No. Microsoft can't tolerate competitors. So they stopped trying to IGNORE the product that people wanted. This product was cheap small laptops. XP really had nothing to do with it. Once netbooks took off, it was just another market segment that Microsoft could muscle into.
Microsoft wasn't *trying* to ignore netbooks, that's a ridiculous statement. Microsoft was caught-by-surprise by that market, and therefore had no products that catered to it. Quite the contrary: Microsoft was developing with the exact opposite assumption, which is why Vista has such high hardware requirements, in comparison to their other OSes.
What made netbooks viable was two things: 1) Linux OSes, which could easily be adapted to run well on the limited hardware. Or, depending on the distro, already ran well on it because of comparative feature-bareness. 2) Windows XP, which ran well on the limited hardware simply because it was so freakin' old. (Netbook hardware is pretty much exactly what XP designers had in-mind when they originally released it.)
Option 1 was free, and originally option 2 was expensive, which is why early netbooks mostly ran Linux. When Microsoft saw that his market segment was going to be popular and, more importantly, that they wouldn't have any products to address it for at least 2 more years (remember: they were taken by surprise), they lowered the cost of the XP license to be more competitive with Linux. And it worked: now most netbooks are sold with Windows XP.
Now that Microsoft is aware of this market, and is developing Windows 7 to work well on netbook hardware, it'll be much more difficult for Linux or Chrome OS (or whoever else) to get a foothold in the market, just like the normal notebook or desktop markets. Microsoft has the software support, so Microsoft gets put on the hardware.
Incidentally, Google would have a much, much greater chance of success with Chrome OS if it were shipping now, before Windows 7 comes out. They could be competing with Microsoft circa 2001. Now they have to compete with Windows 7, which is going to be much, much tougher.
Linux alters the power dynamic of the OEM+Microsoft relationship a bit.
A tiny bit. It basically served as a temporary placeholder until Windows was feasible for netbooks.
I watch Netflix streaming movies on mine full-screen all the time, and I've never seen any hiccups or problems. (At least, not problems caused by the Atom chip as opposed to my ISP.) Running Windows 7, if that's relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually had some weird experiences in WOW, where I'd mention being excited about just buying Mass Effect, and the entire guild would go, "uh, what's that?"
Gee, you guys play a video game 12+ hours a day, I figured you were interested in video games. Nope, not video games, just MMOs.
Ok, so now I'm excited about trying Age of Conan... "uh, what's that?" Ah, so they're not interested in just MMOs, they're literally ONLY INTERESTED IN WOW.
WTF?!
And I'm not talking about just a couple of people, in a guild with about 40 people online, something like 35 of them were completely disinterested in any other video games. The only "gaming" community I've been in where that's true.
That thing's nicer than my house.
I have a good friend who is a licensed Chiropractor, and also licensed as a family-practice M.D. He fully understands the limitations of Chiropractic techniques and won't hesitate to advise patients go to a medical specialist for any condition he might detect. Additionally, he would never make any claims he knows to be false, for example, that chiropractic adjustments can help conditions like ulcers, or whatever other ridiculous things fraud Chiropractors claim. He advises companies on ergonomics, and frequently attends health fairs.
Are there fraud Chiropractors? Yes. Are all Chiropractors frauds? Of course not.
Guess what? There are also fraud M.D.s. And fraud lawyers, and fraud plumbers and...
Christ.
What did Microsoft perfect? "A security technology."
Does this imply Microsoft invented it? No. Does this imply Microsoft was the first to implement it? No. Does this imply that Microsoft was the first to perfect it? No.
So why did the first reply read as if the sentence had said: "Microsoft perfected and invented and first-used and basically is GOD of this technology that in no way appeared in BSD first!"
By the way, you're right: nowhere does it say "their version." Of course I don't see how that's EVEN REMOTELY FUCKING RELEVANT you illiterate hack.
Translation:
"Microsoft's implementation of this security technology is better than all of its competitors, therefore the security technology is useless!!"
They're not claiming Microsoft invented (or first-used) (or only uses) it, only that Microsoft "perfected" their version in time for the Vista release. Reading comprehension is a good thing, you should try it.
That flaw was a result of IE8 turning off ASLR, something they did for the beta (for debugging purposes), and they just forgot to turn it back on before release. It doesn't say anything about ASLR's effectiveness.
I said it would be hard, not impossible.
The simple fact is that now people *expect* netbooks to run Windows. Selling one that doesn't, even if it's cheaper, is going to be a challenge.
(Also your second question depends on the meaning of "PC." If you mean "PC-compatible" then, of course, IBM once had a 100% share. If you mean "personal computer", then IBM's share was high, but not dominating.)
beef (texas only has so many cows)
I hear cows can make more cows. Amazing how that works.
He probably has confidential information on it that the IT guys aren't privy to. When I worked IT, it was a very small company so this wasn't as big a concern, but I frequently worked on computers that had, for example, full payroll data on them.
So when you got your humor-extraction surgery, was that an out-patient operation?
Far too little, far too late, I'm afraid.
Two years ago, I'd be all behind this. Now, Intel and Microsoft have such a lead in the market, it's going to be a much harder market for ARM to enter.
Unless I'm very mistaken, this exploit uses the Windows file-sharing ports, not the ports used for Remote Desktop. If you have evidence otherwise, please present it. Until then, I think you're just pulling stuff out of your ass.
Enabling Remote Desktop doesn't turn off the Windows Firewall, and it doesn't open ports used for file-sharing.
How could they?
Seriously, you're talking about some magical "rewrite all your software, changing it from a compiled language into Javascript, making sure it functions identically even though it's technically impossible for Javascript to do many things ActiveX applets can do."
You can't rag on Microsoft for not making a product that's IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE.
Hm. My older Zune doesn't require a Zune Pass. What is the footnote attached to? I'd find it extremely odd if they made the hardware require a Zune Pass to function, especially since it goes against what current Zunes do.
The very fact that Zune even has a headline on Slashdot considering its 1% market share and fourth-place finish behind iPod, Sandisk, and "Other" comes close to astroturfing in my book.
Can you back that number up, or are you pulling it directly from your ass?
I've been looking for music player market share numbers for an hour now, and I can't find anything that suggests Zune is at 1%. The last (extremely out-of-date!) figures had it closer to 10% of the HD-based market.
What they're saying is that, using the default settings in the latest service pack, those OSes are immune to those exploits. It's still possible to change the default settings in such a way as to make the exploit work.
Considering that, I don't think Microsoft's action here is unfair. Windows XP and 2000 *are* resistant to this exploit, as long as the user doesn't go out of their way to do something stupid (like disabling security features.)
Microsoft gave people the tools to make IE6 only websites and pushed hard to get people to use them
And they've spent the last 5+ years with the message: "Whoa, sorry about that whole ActiveX thing, please don't actually use that."
Microsoft's been doing nothing but DISCOURAGING IE-only technologies for ages now, it's not Microsoft's fault that huge, lumbering corporations with sub-par programmers haven't figured out the fucking message yet.
Microsoft have not given an easy upgrade path for any of these applications, and IE7/8 break them, and so it is 100% Microsoft fault ....
They should be thanking their lucky stars that ActiveX works at all in IE7, considering everybody, even Microsoft, is sick of it and wants it to go away. Seriously, if Microsoft could wave a magic wand and make that code disappear, they would-- but you're deluding yourself if you think that Microsoft has any control over this.
Oh please. Yes, a shameless publicity grab (that worked, very, very well) dictated the attitude of our entire country!
Nobody was "traumatized" by it, except for a few fundamentalist Christians, who probably weren't even watching the Superbowl in the first place.
But more to the point, the press reports non-news as HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS all the fucking time. If you take the news media as any indication of the general inclination of Americans, then you're highly mis-informed.
Generally, it is a "gentleman's agreement" in the US. Retailers and theaters will require ID, but that's not a legal requirement, it's just company policy. And, like you suggested, big box stores are usually pretty casual about it, and until recent video game stores were *really* casual about it-- but they've gotten some bad press since the last GTA and, strangely, Halo 2 (which isn't very violent, IMO), so that's changing quickly.
The MPAA and ESRB ratings systems are both run by industry groups, with minimal government involvement. The RIAA's rating system was mandated by the government, but as far as I know the government doesn't interfere in day-to-day operations at all. The Comics Code was voluntary, and run by an industry group, although I believe modern comics generally don't bother getting that certification anymore, except for books clearly intended for kids.
Strangely, books have no rating system (that I'm aware of), no store policies, and there's nothing stopping a 12-year-old from walking into a bookstore and buying, say, "American Psycho." This hasn't come up, but I'd love to see an expose of this practice-- it's only fair that book publishers go through the same bullshit all other entertainment industries have.
So far, the US has done a very good job of upholding the First Amendment, and all the proposed laws to censor video games or music have been quashed. That doesn't stop the government from, say, enacting music labeling laws, or requiring "V-chips" on TVs. This could all change if Hillary Clinton's popularity rises, since censoring video games is one of her pet issues, and she probably has the contacts to make it happen.
Pop quiz: Has anybody in the US ever, in your entire life, seen a TV with the V-chip enabled? I've seen TVs with channels blocked at the cable/satellite box, but I've never seen a V-chip in action. What a waste of time and money that requirement is.
Maybe they're doing it to get lazy developers to STOP USING HARD-CODED FUCKING PATHS.
Sorry, that's one of my pet peeves. Any time you see a software product that refuses to install or work correctly because your "My Documents" folder is mapped to a network drive, or because it's in "Program Files (x86)" and not "Program Files", you should be cheering Microsoft on.
Right now, Windows' biggest weakness is shitty third-party software. Anything slap-in-the-face that gets third parties to start writing correct software, I'm fully behind.
Basically, in my experience, Windows is sort of like a giant ball of playdough rolling down a city street - it gets dirtier and heavier over time, less appealing and not so colourful, not to mention the used condoms and syringes it occasionally picks up, and so you need to break out a new batch of playdough once in a while.
Yeah, Vista fixes that, FYI.
My 2.5-year-old Vista install is as quick and responsive as the day I installed it.
Besides, most of the problem on XP is the result of cruft left-behind by poorly-written third-party software. If you're careful about what you install and un-install, you usually don't have any problems. (Well, until you need to open a file which is only viewable by crappy third-party software, then there's no choice.)
First of all, this isn't 1986. For CHRIST'S SAKE, and on behalf of all Slashdotters, please type an entire paragraph before hitting "enter."
No. Microsoft can't tolerate competitors. So they stopped
trying to IGNORE the product that people wanted. This
product was cheap small laptops. XP really had nothing to
do with it. Once netbooks took off, it was just another
market segment that Microsoft could muscle into.
Microsoft wasn't *trying* to ignore netbooks, that's a ridiculous statement. Microsoft was caught-by-surprise by that market, and therefore had no products that catered to it. Quite the contrary: Microsoft was developing with the exact opposite assumption, which is why Vista has such high hardware requirements, in comparison to their other OSes.
What made netbooks viable was two things:
1) Linux OSes, which could easily be adapted to run well on the limited hardware. Or, depending on the distro, already ran well on it because of comparative feature-bareness.
2) Windows XP, which ran well on the limited hardware simply because it was so freakin' old. (Netbook hardware is pretty much exactly what XP designers had in-mind when they originally released it.)
Option 1 was free, and originally option 2 was expensive, which is why early netbooks mostly ran Linux. When Microsoft saw that his market segment was going to be popular and, more importantly, that they wouldn't have any products to address it for at least 2 more years (remember: they were taken by surprise), they lowered the cost of the XP license to be more competitive with Linux. And it worked: now most netbooks are sold with Windows XP.
Now that Microsoft is aware of this market, and is developing Windows 7 to work well on netbook hardware, it'll be much more difficult for Linux or Chrome OS (or whoever else) to get a foothold in the market, just like the normal notebook or desktop markets. Microsoft has the software support, so Microsoft gets put on the hardware.
Incidentally, Google would have a much, much greater chance of success with Chrome OS if it were shipping now, before Windows 7 comes out. They could be competing with Microsoft circa 2001. Now they have to compete with Windows 7, which is going to be much, much tougher.
Linux alters the power dynamic of the OEM+Microsoft relationship a bit.
A tiny bit. It basically served as a temporary placeholder until Windows was feasible for netbooks.
It... does?
I watch Netflix streaming movies on mine full-screen all the time, and I've never seen any hiccups or problems. (At least, not problems caused by the Atom chip as opposed to my ISP.) Running Windows 7, if that's relevant.
Unless they adapt by supporting cavemen and women riding dinosaurs or hitching a ride on some other demagogue, Science remains irrelevant.
The Flintstones... I think...