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86 Comments
- kettlechips, on 10/12/2007, -2/+45This is exactly why governments have to use open standards.
- flightvector, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35@ gawtmilk
Your last comment really undermines what you say since it implies an extremely warped understanding of contemporary Korea. It baffles me how you classify North and South Korea together at all in this context; South Korea is a fully-developed democratic country (whose consumptive habits are much more refined than you may be ready to predict) with no significant international opposition to its governmental policies, the country practically lives off the internet and outstrips most western countries in the establishment and development of its internet protocol standards (there is a significant constituent in Korea who finds Microsoft reprehensible and is lobbying for a strong gov't push towards open source and Linux); Japan does not invite a Korean committee to help advise the development of their networks because they have no idea about the internet.
In contrast, North Korea has no internet to speak of, let alone even the most fundamental right to human life. Its looming danger to South Koreans is taken in stride, so this activeX issue is national front-page news and truly far from the least concern. - GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -21/+46RTFA, it is the government's fault. Plus, 99.9% of the country uses Windows. So how is it that a lack of Linux transactions is holding the country back? 0.1% of the country cannot make business transactions? So? I agree completely that ActiveX sucks, and I agree even more that PROPRIETARY ActiveX sucks, but believe me, out of all the things that Korea (North and South) have going against it, ActiveX encryptions are at the near-bottom of the list.
- ROFISH, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16What if, by some magical force, Microsoft goes out of business. Korea's screwed because of proprietary technology. Even today, they're feeling it with Vista's non-support of ActiveX.
- richstyles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14yeah, they're paying a big price all because they couldn't wait for RFC 2246
- richstyles, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14for gaming and GETTING gamed
- Geckomind, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Wow! Sounds like a real-life version of Blue Sun. Gripping read!
- lowbot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"windows makes sense because of direct x and its SDK"
Yeah, umm, theres this thing called OpenGL thats multiplatform. Not to mention the OS you are using is a server OS. NT was written and sold as a server initially. Then its kernel was then updated and put into 2000 then XP. Not to mention NT workstation.
Lastly, a modern OS architecture doesnt need to be a 'server os' and a 'client os.' You enable/install services as you need them. No need for different kernels. A 'server os' is more a marketing term than anything else. - mlw4428, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11What if Windows and Linux switched sides in terms of software/hardware support. In 2 years people would be saying "Why switch to Windows? Everyone can agree Linux is the best gaming platform."
I'm only saying because largely for the most part Linux is ignored by game companies, expect for the few who spit at the Linux community's faces by releasing the dedicated servers but not the clients. - chess007, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13This, my friends, is what trusted computing and drm will do the u.s.a. if left unchecked.
- khedoros, on 07/31/2009, -1/+9I don't know. I find Unix-based OS's to be superior development platforms. Every OS has its uses, and Windows is fine if you're purely a games-and-internet person. Anything else, and you could just as easily be on any other modern system.
/not a fanboy of any specific os
//I just see the value in variety - JackSeoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Urusai, SEED wasn't chosen 'to give them access to people's secure transactions'. They wanted secure ecommerce and government services to operate with a unified certificate authentication system.
In Korea, you have certificate issued by your bank. When you shop online, instead of typing in your credit card number and billing address/CCV as you do in the US, you give you credit card number, certificate (protected by passphrase) and usually some kind of challence/response system like a printed security card with numbers on it.. When you pay your taxes or go online to get a government form, you use the same certificate to verify your identity. The US government have no way to verify your identity to provide government services such as to check your property taxes or social security, get the USPS to setup mail forwarding etc.
If implemented correctly, this system is way ahead of the US ecommerce implementation, where fraud prevention is based on your billing address, zero customer liability and the threat of charge-backs from credit card companies to merchants.
The problem here is that there was no standard to implement this when the government tried to roll it out. Unfortunately the implementation based on ActiveX became the only choice once MS won the browser wars round one.
I don't necessarily agree the plugin approach was flawed - look at flash video. Sure it's proprietary and breaks web standards but it's reasonably supported on all platforms and everyone relies on it.
If they had released a plugin that you downloaded and installed separately, and was available on all platforms it would be great. The problem is they made it available via ActiveX, which taught a generation of Korean internet users to click "I Agree" without thinking. - mlw4428, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Funny I see Vista is holding the entire country back from performing secure transactions. I'd say that's a real big downfall.
- Uberdork, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Kim Jong Il uses Linux because he's a supervillain.
- hotsake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9@flight,
Good points all around. I find many people unknowingly assume North and South Korea are similar countries when they are worlds apart. One can study road maps and satellite data of the two countries to see the differences.
Satellite Imagery
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/images/dprk-dmsp-dark.jpg
http://www.flyover-wisdom.com/images/korea_at_night.jpg
Transportation System
http://www.johomaps.com/as/korea/korea1a.html - mooninite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"because linux is a server o/s and up until recently and still to an extent still can't handle 3D process intensive games because of the nature of the O/S itself"
LOL - that's all I have to say.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Sorry to blow up your little lie, but I play "3D process intensive games" all the time on Linux. WoW, Savage, UT200x... With *gasp* HIGHER FRAME RATES than what I'm getting on Windows! - mlw4428, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Of course not in WoW...it's going through WINE. If they made a Linux Native version then I'd be willing to bank some money (assuming the drivers were NVidia). And as for the 3D not being powerful enough on Linux....
@MeatBiProduct
OpenGL, heard of it? Many games use it. R-e-s-e-a-r-c-h before posting. - JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Even if given the choice I doubt many would switch, just like it is over here, maybe even moreso over there. In South Korea, PC gaming is huge beyond imagination. PC gaming over there is exponentially bigger than console gaming (which is huge to begin with), and honestly, what kind of person would deny that Windows isn't the best platform for gaming?
- zabouth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5wow that was very interesting and it kind of shows that not sticking to the standards will cost you in the long run :D
- eUnSung, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Actually, the Korean Internet sucks worse than stated, since all sites require you to register with a citizen's ID number (like your SSN), even games sites for little kids (Kartrider). There is even a law being discussed that would make anonymous internet registrations illegal.
Yeah, the internet sucks here. I mostly browse American websites and stuff. - schroduggity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5flightvector,
please correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought that most Japanese had fiber to the node.
/10mbps in RURAL ALASKA - coldradio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6FTA: (in reference to opening standards) "This is a herculean task and thus Korea stays hostage to Redmond."
Stays hostage to Redmond? Living in the area so hostily mentioned, I have to say, our Korean slaves are sooooooooo great at building that pyramid in the shape of Gates' nose. /sarcasm
Ok, the whole article was great in showing the flaws of mandating such strict and authoritarian controls on technology, but there is one crucial and simple correction to the last sentence in the article:
"This is a herculean task and thus Korea stays hostage to itself." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My FF detector is going off :D
- rbanffy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@salinemist,
You can't leave government entirely out of the loop. While government shouldn't mandate the adoption of free software, it should never require a citizen to adopt a proprietary product. It's giving a company an undue privilege.
Microsoft is living proof the software market cannot regulate itself. - dreamlayers, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Yes, that was probably meant as humour but it's not very funny. I hear North Korea can't even feed its citizens. Plus do they even have Internet access in North Korea? BTW look at their website http://www.korea-dpr.com/ (hosted in Europe).
- grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"In IE 7 and in Vista, Microsoft has re-architected Active X controls in such a way to make them "more safe" by requiring a user action for the control to run"
Err no.
In their amazing wisdom, the patent office declared that "Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document" should be granted, and ActiveX works this way.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5What's next, Tyrell Corporation?
- GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@vector
I understand the differences between N&S Korea. I also understand the differences in N&S Korea's economic and political position. I was, however, under the assumption that this encryption standard was in Korea in it's entirety (N. Korea has internet, believe it or not, although I understand there isn't much ecommerce there). The edit timer ran out before I could change it to "South Korea".
Now, I'm not that sure whether this is just bias or not, but I live in Hong Kong so the media is obviously different then yours. There are frequent stories in the newpaper about a corrupt government -- I'm saying that as far as Government-related happenings, there are bigger issues to tackle then ActiveX controls. Yes, I think that they should upgrade to a better 128 bit SSL, but I just don't think it is the main priority right now.
I completely understand the difference between a more corrupt North Korea and a much more prosperous, republic of South Korea. I know that if North Korea has this SEED architecture employed, it is at the VERY bottom of the list of things they need to fix, but even in South Korea I think that it isn't that important yet (considering the news of corruption is true).
---
@Schroduggity
I know that Hong Kong is up there somewhere, we have 2GBps resedential connections here. - grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There is no technological reason why a FF plugin could not be developed to create a 'SEED' encrypted SSL-esk channel.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4As stated before, it's the fault of the Korean government, not Microsoft. The Korean government mandated a squirrely standard that they control that's now only supported via ActiveX. I'm sure they don't want to give it up because it gives them access to peoples' secure transactions. Just because Vista doesn't help solve a stupid situation created by the Korean government doesn't mean Microsoft is the big evil baddie here. What the hell do you want them to do, support automatic full-privilege ActiveX controls in Vista?
- av4rice, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Yeah, as much as ActiveX completely sucks, South Korea IS doing pretty well...
- MrSunshine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"browsers like FireFox are virtually outlawed"
Oh, so THAT's why the Maple Story website only works with IE. - salinemist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How about leaving the government out of the loop entirely?
- sfacets, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yes, it was humour, black humour but humour nonetheless.
- JackSeoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3taxman, you're right - South Koreans don't see any problem with this and the system is well integrated and works reasonably well. Electronic fund transfers between people are instantaneous, you can do lots of government-related activities online (eg getting access to property lien records before you rent, paying your taxes, etc).
The problem is twofold - it breaks on Vista and other platforms, and Koreans don't see ActiveX as something inherently insecure or bad, because they have to press "I Agree" 5 times a day.
When Windows XP SP2 came out, lots of sites broke for a few weeks but unfortunately they just worked around the problem with little screenshots telling people how to right-click the internet explorer yellow warning bar... - kettlechips, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2When MS cracks down on piracy, there will be a lot of people and businesses suddenly losing money.
- jasonpoon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6No matter what OS conquers the market, no competition would not be good. I'm glad that I'm a Mac user not in Korea.
- sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"There's is no way, no chance at all that you could get higher frame-rates in WoW in Linux than in Windows on the same specced PC. Maybe if your Linux drivers were fully updated and the Windows drivers 2 years old....MAYBE"
I've actually experienced the same situation. Windows games getting higher frame rates in Linux than Windows, both drivers upto to date. This was not only on similar speced machines, but the same machine! (triple booted with *BSD, Linux, and XP) - gkanai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"There is no technological reason why a FF plugin could not be developed to create a 'SEED' encrypted SSL-esk channel."
True. However that is only part of the solution.
Each Korean citizen is given a certificate by a Korean certificate authority which proves that "Jane Kim" is "Jane Kim" which is then tied to the SEED cipher in an Active X control. The whole package together enables the encrypted communication, not just the SEED cipher. The Korean-govt. assigned cert. auths. do not provide their controls in any other plugin other than Active X. - FaT32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Related info - Vista/IE7 breaks the Korean web industry: http://my.opera.com/dstorey/blog/show.dml/707059
- khedoros, on 07/31/2009, -0/+2Part of the problem is that the unnamed Microsoft distribution partner FTA is planning to distribute their new computers with Vista starting soon. People won't have a choice in their OS. Many won't have any idea what to do if some website doesn't work the way it used to...besides reverting to their old machine.
- MeatBiProduct, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3you must have spent an entire 5 seconds thinking up that lame comment.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought this was from the magazine SEED.... damnit... good magazine, confusing article
- BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6"""A country without Linux, Apple, and Firefox elitists? It sounds like heaven!"""
It would be well worth clubbing together to fly you and all your kind there to live. - NoobieDoobieDo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Morans.
- eyko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ROFISH If Microsoft went out of business, S. Korea would simply continue as they are today (without support from Redmond i guess, but not as if that was any problem solver anyway...), and wait until they adopt a substitute, so don't be such an alarmist because it's not going to happen anytime soon (the being ***** part, i mean — MS could go bankrupt for all I could care).
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Maybe mirco$haft bribed them all like mad to make it a windoze only country.
- seoul_scurry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Err "the internet sucks here"? No. Internet access is a pain in the ass, but once you get it... "the internet" works very well. Actually if you register your MAC address with KT, anywhere you can hear a NESPOT AP you're instantly connected without entering a username/password. I agree, the whole registering for everything you do on the internet is completely of the ghey... don't confuse that with "the internet".
Cheers mate! - ThreeDee912, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Was that supposed to mean Linux is evil(bad)? Or powerful(good)?
I use Ubuntui on my old laptop.
EDIT: replied to wrong post? - grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1fair enough,
but if they were previously able to do it for Netscape, why not FF? Or better yet, rewrite it in Java and have any browser or phone able to use SEED (if they still believe it superior to SSL). -
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