Koreans Advised to "Avoid Vista" for Now 333
An anonymous reader writes "The Chosonilbo reports that several government ministries in South Korea are advising users not to install Windows Vista, at least until popular online services can be made compatible. The problem is that ActiveX is pervasive in the Korean webspace, employed by everyone from web games to online banking. Upgrading to Vista is expected to render many of these services unusable. Portions of the popular "Hangul" word processor, a major competitor to Office in that country, are also not functioning under Vista. The Ministry of Information is planning to publish compatibility information for popular websites, and urging users to carefully research the implications of upgrading."
Oh noes! (Score:5, Funny)
Server side FTW! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Server side FTW! (Score:5, Informative)
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Do Not Trust the Client.
Do Not Trust the Client.
Anything sent to the client then returned is suspect.
Anything provided by the client is doubly suspect.
Regexps and validation are your friend.
Do Not Trust the Client.
Oh, and it's also always useful to remember:
There is no such thing as a "hidden" HTML field.
CSS and Javascript are not security layers, they are presentation layers. Using presentation for security is like hanging a sign on a door saying "please don't open this door" instea
why even use ActiveX? (Score:3, Insightful)
They should move to something that work in linux, mac os, and windows.
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They should move to something that work in linux, mac os, and windows
Of course they should, but reality is not there. Some sites even insist on using VB, in place of Javascript - ugh! IMHO, the problem lies with uninformed web developers and managers who have never used anything other than MS-Windows and therefore the fact there are others OSs and web browsers is news to them.
Re:why even use ActiveX? (Score:5, Funny)
They must be undergoing some sort of existential crisis.
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World's biggest Microsoft fans/world's worst birth rate? I'm just sayin
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That'll be the copy protection
Client-Side VBScript. (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't I know it!!! I assume you mean client-side VBScript, which only works in IE. Server-side VBScript (in ASP, or VB.NET in ASP.NET) works just fine, since plain HTML is sent to the browser.
Recently, while troubleshooting an error in one of our customer's server-side code, I came across a web-form with a client-side VBScript validator. Underscoring the fact that the "developer" didn't understand what was going on, there was a disclaimer on the page that the form only works on "Internet Explorer and other browsers that support ASP". Of course, ASP had nothing to do with the incompatibility, it was the client-side VBScript.
It almost goes without saying, but the code had FrontPage written all over it!!
Re:why even use ActiveX? (Score:5, Informative)
Long version: Before Clinton allowed export of strong encryption, web browsers outside US only supported 40-bit encryption. So instead of using ssl with 40-bit keys, the Korean government adopted something called SEED, a homegrown algorithm with support for longer keys. So all the online banking stuff was done with it. This was around when IE was taking over the browser market, so banks used Active X to implement SEED. People liked it because it allowed them very nice and frequently updated widgets, and most people were running windows anyway.
Fast forward 10 years, the whole country is dependent on Active-X and therefore MS, with *zero* support for alternatives. As everyone is using IE, most web sites (including Korean Government sites) are designed only for IE+Acitve-X. All banking, shopping, stock trading, is done through Active-X, with no alternatives. This discourages people from using anything but Windows, perpetuating the monopoly. Korea is the only country where the stock market and most financial system shutdown because of the MS-SQL slammer worm (back in Jan '05). With help from rampant software piracy, MS is *the* dominant player in *all* software markets, and Korea's culture of homogeneity has simply perpetuated the monopoly.
I'm hoping people learned their lesson and will shift to more standards compliance and alternative implementations, but somehow I don't think so. In fact, the Korean Government will demand MS "fix" "their" problem, as obviously it is MS's fault for breaking "the Internet".
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I'm hoping people learned their lesson and will shift to more standards compliance and alternative implementations, but somehow I don't think so. In fact, the Korean Government will demand MS "fix" "their" problem, as obviously it is MS's fault for breaking "the Internet".
This is a small point compared to the real point you were making, but couldn't someone claim that they have every right to pressure MS to fix ActiveX in this case? All they did was adopt a technology that MS pushed on everyone. Granted, it didn't take hold very well for most of MS's market, but you can't blame them for being a bit angry at being left out in the cold.
Interesting stuff about the strong encryption export policy, thanks.
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Short version: they use Active-X because of US export policy.
If that were all it was, the rest of the world would be using ActiveX as well.
I suspect the real reason that South Korea has invented its own encryption algorithms rather than trust a third party's lies to the north of their border. But even so, they could still use SSL/TLS with those algorithms (RFC 4162) instead of resorting to the snake oil they are using today.
MS is *the* dominant player in *all* software markets
IBM big-iron is st
That's the problem with Vista's (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't you mean "where the vista is pretty much the same".
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Oh, and also that cliffs are all steep by definition.
Other than that, good analogy.
Only prudent. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we're going to see Vista be the most slowly adopted OS Microsoft has ever released.
Re:Only prudent. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have a rabid irrational hatred of Microsoft either, just a rational one.
Re:Only prudent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither do we. We have a perfectly rational rabid hatred of them.
Seriously though, that preamble was unnecessary: it's perfectly okay to be a happy MS user and not be so hot about installing a new product from them. But hot or not, one of these days you'll have to bite the bullet anyway.
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You must be new here. :P
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I used to be like that. Now, I just use MS products because I'm used to them, they tend to work OK, and I'm too lazy to try alternatives. However, I understand the problems with the MSopoly and mildly resent the company for exacerbating them on a r
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-his OS is the most vulnerable to malware attack
-his OS is forcing closed standards on the rest of the world, and he's contributing by using it (debatable)
-the company that makes his OS is leveraging its monopoly position to bully other potentially more valuable contributors to our culture
Forcing isn't difficult. All you have to do is buy into an ideology, and we all do that on a daily basis. Looking at it from a balanced perspective, it seems obvious enough to me that MS is
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I've seen the threaten to destroy people out of spite, watched there reps storm out of a meeting because they were called a vendor, etc . . . I could go on and on.
Re:Only prudent. (Score:5, Funny)
Hatred Not Irrational. (Score:3, Interesting)
Au contraire, mon ami. Many, if not most, of us are M$ users and we have developed a thoroughly rational hatred of the company, based on our experiences of bloated, bug ridden, excessively expensive software, their constant undermining of standards, and their elevation of their opportunities to make money above user convenience. (My favorite was the Win98SE installer that asked if you wanted on-line services, a
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I don't see why this is such a major gripe of people.
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Good boy. MS thanks you for being a good boy and jumping though their hoops.
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Nice try, but Microsoft's activation hotline is 24/7.
Firmware... (Score:2, Funny)
Windows or Linux... (Score:2, Insightful)
I used to think... (Score:4, Interesting)
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On the other hand, it's a lot better than a Java applet. The internet "video revolution" that we're supposed to be in right now (for better or worse) is made possible by Flash, which would have been impossible to achieve with something like Java.
If you know what you're doing, ActiveX is
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I think we disagree on the definition of "safe".
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You seem a bit indignant here, but you're merely reinforcing what I said. "Safe" in quotes means exactly that, and yes, there are millions of Windows users who will happily click on a dialog just to get that REALLY COOL web page to load so they can look at some pr0n or a joke. So I must be missing your point.
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mkay, but that's just another aspect of the issue of trust transition. And I'm having trouble imagining how useful the Shockwave or Acrobat plugins would be if I could only use them on the website that installed them.
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The term "native executable" comes to mind.
Either way, this doesn't help your case for ActiveX at all
I'm sorry you thought I was making a case for ActiveX, because I wasn't.
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but are they using system's installed codecs or something to render the video?
No, that's the point. You can use RealMedia, WM, OGG, MPG, AVI, DivX or whatever and it all ends up being streamed in a Flash window. All you need is Flash.
If that is the case I can see your point, otherwise why couldn't the exact same player be implemented as a Java applet?
Yes, that is the case. And yes, that is my point. And no, I'm guessing it would be a hell of a lot slower in Java than it is in Flash/ActiveX.
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That is a good point, yes. Back in the day though, Java just didn't cut it. But nowadays it's probably good enough. I certainly think some Java applets in Firefox specifically are a lot faster than the ones that came from an ActiveX background, like Flash.
Re:I used to think... (Score:5, Insightful)
Compatibility = working for all users... (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has made significant efforts to make Windows/Office/etc responsive to the needs of Korean developers and users, just like they do everywhere else. I don't know many of the specifics about the Korean effort, but the Office Japan team did some serious surgery because typical Japanese documents are structured differently than typical American documents (to make a long story short, think tables. LOTS
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Why not just make it a Windows app then? I'm sure any company that has a Intranet also has VPN, so offsite computing isn't a problem. Also, a Windows app would work even if Apache/IIS went down, but the DB backend stayed up.
It's disengenuous to ignore that ActiveX is a technology that is meant to use MS's dominant presence on computing to balkanize the web.
Re:I used to think... (Score:4, Interesting)
It may just be a word, but it's a word that has negative connotations for a lot of informed people. Just recently Acer admitted to there being a glaring security hole in an ActiveX control installed on their computers that could have allowed malicious websites to download and execute rootkits, trojans etc.
Let us not forget that you are also locking out anyone not on Windows and not running Internet Explorer. Gone are the days when we can put "This site works best in Internet Explorer" on a site and expect people to think that's O.K.
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Try web developer, former Microsoft Certified Professional (I might still be one; I know my NT4 stuff has expired but I don't know about the 2k and SQL stuff - I don't do MS-specific these days) and former developer at a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer. I didn't do much ActiveX, mostly web stuff so cross-platform was the order of the day, but I saw what the guys building intranets did, worked with a good range of MS technology and read a whole load of MSDN jun
Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
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In Korea... (Score:4, Funny)
In Korea only old people use ActiveX.
Ministry of Information? (Score:2, Funny)
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Heaven Forbid (Score:2)
Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:2)
Anyone know what this is all about - they must still be aiming to support old ActiveX stuff, right?
The real reason: a security problem (Score:2)
The real reason is that Windows Vista does not yet offer in-built protection against attacks by giant North Korean rabbits [slashdot.org].
Korea is stuck using Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Korea is stuck using Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
I spent a month at a S. Korean University, and there was a lot of junk installed on the public computers on campus. Every evening they rebooted, and and started with a clean image each morning - so IE was clogged after a day's worth of surfing. Needless to say, I rebooted before using one.
The right way to enable Active-X (Score:3, Insightful)
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Where Did You Want to Go Today? (Score:2)
It's easy to blame MS for being bad. It's harder to blame Linux distros for being bad a
MS just can't win can they? (Score:4, Insightful)
People criticize MS for ActiveX, so...
They remove ActiveX; now there's less of a push for it but existing ActiveX systems are screwed.
People criticize MS for removing ActiveX, so...
PROFIT?
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They create ActiveX; it's has its uses but the security flaws are far too large to ignore.
...
People criticize MS for ActiveX, so...
They remove ActiveX; now there's less of a push for it but existing ActiveX systems are screwed.
People criticize MS for removing ActiveX, so...
PROFIT?
I believe the technical term for this situation is 'Hoist by their own petard.' (Reference here [wikipedia.org] for the literarily challenged.)
Wow, MS blew off a whole country (Score:2)
why mention korea? (Score:2, Insightful)
Vista isn't done..... (Score:5, Funny)
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I only know what Hangul text is because I had to trouble shoot an Outlook issue once with a client receiving email from Korea. I had to look it up to find ways to test the foreign language packs.
I don't speak Korean though.
Not Vista's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the problem is that incompetently created websites use delicate nonportable nonstandard proprietary software that is only interoperative with one single obsolete platform.
Don't blame Vista; blame people who aren't responsible, experienced, or forward-looking enough to see why complying with standards is so necessary.
Now let's see how people will fix their glaring mistake. Will they "fix" it by repeating it (i.e. rewriting ActiveX controls to be compatible with Vista, so that they can get paid to screw their customers again in 5 years when the next version of Windows comes out) or will they fix it by removing the irresponsible dependencies?
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It's not because they're "backwards", it's because the US export policy on encryption was SO onerous they refused to use the "standard" at that time (40 bit SSL)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=218612&cid=17
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Brett
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Isn't that what a lot of third party MS Windows software developement is about? I have new systems runing Win98 for this reason - to run stuff from back when VB was Pascal instead of resembling Java like it does today. Obviously this stuff is getting replaced by a cross platform application.
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ActiveX controls and IE-isms are pervasive across the Korean web. Almost every major Korean web site relies either on custom ActiveX controls or some feature of IE that is non-standard. My wife is Korean, and we keep a copy of Virtual PC on our Mac just so that she can access her bank.
There are some indicators that this is changing, but progress is very slow. One example of this is a shift in displaying video clips - 18 months ago these were universally d
For now? (Score:2)
This assumes that one of two things will eventually happen:
As for the first, it's possible that MS can decide later that it "degraded the user experience" with Vista with regard to ActiveX and loosen the restrictions on it with SP1 (thus, degrading the user experience when the next generation of ActiveX exploits get into the wild).
For the second, it
Users != businesses (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps they are. While businesses are computer users, not all users are businesses.
Re:Users != businesses (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, I always forget about the users. If it weren't for the pesky users, the computers would run fine!
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Re:isn't everyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:isn't everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you shouldn't use Slashdot as your source of news? Just a thought.
A company in the midwest I do some consulting for just did a 1,200 desktop test rollout to one of their divisions. They didn't have any legacy problems and were upgrading to Office 2007 anyway, plus they had fairly new machines.
Like XP vs W2K before, Vista uptake will necessarily be slow, but eventually it will be installed everywhere. In fact, I'm guessing it will be even a bit more successful than XP because all those Windows 2000 holdouts are probably overdue for a machine upgrade as well.
Re:isn't everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm and the cheap shot.
I think perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Vista will not be a complete flop, but it will sell well under what Microsoft expects.
Re:isn't everyone? (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, I will bookmark this comment and see when that statment will come true.
Best Windoze Evar! (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista will be Microsoft's best seller ever. You wait and see.
I don't have to wait - the Vista upsell has already generated record interest in my desktop Linux class. As the bad reviews continue to pour out, Vista is going to sell the competition like no Windoze before.
Re:isn't everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You mean it doesn't?
Re:isn't everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Legal copies of Vista will be bundled with most new computers, and this alone will make it a best seller. Also, many corporations will upgrade just for the sake of upgrading.
I believe Microsoft has a very good idea of what's going to happen. They understand the business and marketing aspects of selling software better than anyone else.
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I am not a "windows consultant", whatever that might mean. And even asuming that your ("your" as in people like you) prophecies of doom and gloom about this "kludgy piece of crap" become true, simple and sheer inertia will make sure that Vista is installed eventually everywhere.
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And, no, I am not a 'software luddite.' The people who are clinging to the same old/new buggy crap from Microsoft are the luddites, who are scared to move on. Microsoft is over, man. It still runs on Business machines, but bus
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You are certainly entitled to not install "crap from Redmond". Thankfully you have options, like Linux and OS X.
Having said that, you and the other N hundred thousand people who suffer from that "I hate Microsoft" syndrome will never make a significant dent on the sales of Windows. That's just how it is. This techno-religious disdain for Microsoft does not usually percolate up to normal consumers.
But again, you'r
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You mean... Slashdot doesn't always tell the truth?
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No. Slashdot is always truthful.
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Corporations don't buy used computers. And Joe Windows doesn't normally hop on eBay to buy used computers.
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A lot of the buyers of the used PC gear at auction now are people of color, who recycle/rebuild for their local communities.
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Yes, assuming they want to pay for it. Which brings us to:
That's great if your company has the cash, but for many companies, upgrading computers that already work is seen as an unnecessary expense.
So they won't be upgrading. Your original post [slashdot.org] claimed for some reason that *everyone* was avoiding Vista, which I can assure you is clearly not the case. Nowhere did I claim that *everyone* would be upgrading in the next three weeks, either.
Heh. Yeah. Aside
Re:Korea.. what a strange place (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but CRTs are superior to LCDs for gaming in every way but the usual reasons to buy LCD, size and weight. LCDs have one resolution, CRTs can do many resolutions (and true multisync CRTs, which are admittedly a rarity these days, can do all KINDS of things.) The best LCD has a refresh rate and is chunky compared to a CRT, which has persistence due to phosphors.
SED is supposed to address the issue of persistence, but won't solve any of the other issues.
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Cathode= Very high voltage at the back of your computer
Ray= Stream of electrons hitting the phosphor, producing visible light and also ultraviolet and higher light that is shielded from french frying your face by the three or so kilos of lead inside your monitor
Tube= Vacuum Tube that is just itching to implode
Not that these are things to absolutely alarmist about, but if CRTs were being developed as a new technology, with our health, saf
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Cathode = Very high voltage at the back of your computer
Computer = Box with a transformer at the back of it High voltage = Van der Graaf generator = not necessarily dangerous Monitor = at least a foot from your face Cell phone = one inch from your brain, recent development = health & safety concerns we have now = no-one would ever go for it CRT = a frikken TV with laser beams! Seriously, the electro-magnetic spectrum needs to be treated with respect, but CRTs (invented in 1897) are just one application. Cell phones are another, and there are the odd cr
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And LCDs do not have a "refresh" rate like CRTs. 60Hz on an LCD does not cause eyestrain in any applications I've used. This is because the light producing element in an LCD is a fluorescent backlight that refreshes at the equivalent of several thousand times per second. True, the LCD crystal orientations may only change at 60Hz or lower (depending on their *response* time), bu