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South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

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Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#141

Post by jessaustin »

yongjik wrote: post #110
viraptor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a solution from the provider's side though. I would have thought that it's much easier to handle it from the client side really... just pretend you did whatever verification was necessary and return the expected result. Noone should be able to shut it down, because it's on the client side, rather than the service provider, so the retailer shouldn't be blamed.

No no no, it doesn't work that way. These banking websites don't expose a well-defined API that you can emulate. Instead they force you to install a bunch of ActiveX plugins (usually with administrative privilege) and you have to just trust that they won't, say, read the whole content of your hard disk and stream it to a third-party site. A few years ago (when I was still in Korea), it was usually impossible to open…

Thanks for the great explanations. It actually makes some sense that Koreans are getting hacked all the time, since the binary rootkits they're required to install have probably not seen the scrutiny that more open solutions have. Secure systems used in the rest of the world get hacked because of weak entropy or through timing attacks: fairly esoteric stuff. It wouldn't surprise me if these ActiveX blobs have basic algorithmic errors. Do they crash quite a bit?

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#142

Post by sp332 »

criley2 wrote: post #136
sp332 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the opposite of what I got from the context, sorry. In fact criley2 defined capitalism as a system of capital ownership. Anyway, criley2 seems to be calling all greedy people "capitalists", and using this definition to argue that other economic systems produce less corruption. That argument gets even less coherent, if you're claiming that guarding your capital is somehow more selfish than guarding your labor.

He was correct, Capitalist refers to a very small number of people who own and manage capital. My definition (the textbook definition), was describing a system of capital ownership. Unless you labor under the delusion that capital is not owned by a very small number of people, I do not know how that definition caused you to think the exact opposite of the definition. Also, I am not wielding "greedy" as an insult, as…

Sure :) I'm just wondering how a different system would deal with greedy people. If the system discourages greed, doesn't that increase the incentive for greedy people to corrupt the system?

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#143

Post by guard-of-terra »

ksk wrote: post #99
huxley wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 128-bit export restriction ended 13 years ago, so the use of the home-grown encryption standard has been a choice made by the Korean government and corporations. Yes, the export restrictions were stupid, but there has been plenty of time to switch over. NPAPI is supported in most browsers, so the SEED implementation had to have been pretty tied to Netscape Navigator/Communicator implementation as it existed pre-F…

>If the government implementations are the de facto standards and the Korean government has only maintained an ActiveX version for the last 10 years, I can't see how you can interpret it as anything other than an IE mandate. Because the government is not mandating IE? The public overwhelmingly used IE over Netscape which caused the government to go "okay since nobody is using netscape we're going to only maintain one…

Having to choose between dead Netscape and alive IE is a fake choice. May I have my third choice please?

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#144

Post by criley2 »

jessaustin wrote: post #137
criley2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You attempted to discredit his post by attacking the arguments he used. So I called your attempt silly, insinuated your understanding of Capitalism was flawed and provided many more examples of Capitalism without regulation running amok, which was his original argument.

You attempted to discredit his post by attacking the arguments he used. Holy crap that's some egg on my face. There must be some Latin name for that particular brand of rhetorical gaffe, "attacking the arguments".

It's not a gaffe. I didn't call it a fallacy because it's not a fallacy. I pointed out that you engaged him in debate and crowned yourself winner, and that I attempted to restart the debate by providing better arguments.

It's interesting, however, that you invented a new context for my words that has no basis in the words themselves, and then used that as your reply instead of engaging on merits.

In fact, I believe there is some Latin name for that particular brand of rhetorical gaffe.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#145

Post by criley2 »

criley2 wrote: post #136
sp332 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the opposite of what I got from the context, sorry. In fact criley2 defined capitalism as a system of capital ownership. Anyway, criley2 seems to be calling all greedy people "capitalists", and using this definition to argue that other economic systems produce less corruption. That argument gets even less coherent, if you're claiming that guarding your capital is somehow more selfish than guarding your labor.

He was correct, Capitalist refers to a very small number of people who own and manage capital. My definition (the textbook definition), was describing a system of capital ownership. Unless you labor under the delusion that capital is not owned by a very small number of people, I do not know how that definition caused you to think the exact opposite of the definition. Also, I am not wielding "greedy" as an insult, as…

>I'm just wondering how a different system would deal with greedy people. If the system discourages greed, doesn't that increase the incentive for greedy people to corrupt the system?

Of course it does. In fact, if you want an even better line: if it's a greed motivated system and we work against greed, we're directly disincentivizing economic activity.

It's absolutely a fine line to draw. History has examples of the economic noose of overregulation just as surely as it does the industrial dystopia of underregulation.

It's a lot like medicinal drugs (medicine). The difference between a poison and a cure is dosage. Too much or too little and you can hurt someone instead of helping them. Or the interaction of multiple different treatments create new and possibly terrible outcomes.

Regulation (greed control) to me is very similar. The difference between good regulation and bad regulation is very minor, it's dosage. A good policy applied the wrong way is just as bad as a bad policy. Multiple policies of regulation may interact in new and crazy ways.

So to me the proper regulation of Capitalism is like trying to dose a new drug. It's extremely difficult and nuanced to do well. And even if done well, as you pointed out, there is always the incentive to cheat, and always the fallout of the disincentivization our actions cause.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#146

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

jessaustin wrote: post #57
kcorbitt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, of course. But while I'm no history buff the main examples I can think of regarding monopolies of these commodities have always been government-induced (war-time rations, communist food lines, etc.). Am I missing examples of when a private company in a functional capitalist system forced the population at large to buy their food from them? There might be examples with crony capitalism, but in the end tha…

I think I agree with the main thrust of your arguments, but can you point at an existing capitalist system that is not in many respects "crony" capitalism? (Switzerland, maybe? I've heard good things about them.) I suspect we need a new term for what we want. "Capitalism" is too sullied by use.

The Scandinavian nations are pretty solid non crony cap states, as are the old standbys of Singapore and Hong Kong.

No nation is pure, of course. But we can look at examples of crony policies within otherwise capitalist-ish nations and compare to less crony-ish policies within those same nations.

It all gets a bit muddy real quick, but I guess we have to do the best with what we've got.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#147

Post by eevee »

itsameta4 wrote: post #66
viraptor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what exactly is needed? What is stopping someone from writing a FF extension that will capture all activex object tags and replace them with something doing the same operations in FF's chrome? Is the auth protocol completely unknown? Is the activex control obfuscated more than is possible to reverse-engineer?

ActiveX is designed to hook directly into the Windows OS. That's what makes it so dangerous, but useful in this case, since you can add a cert to the trusted store. Firefox is designed to be secure and sand-boxed, especially its plugin architecture.

This is completely false. Firefox extensions have access to everything the browser does and can contain arbitrary native code.

There's a reason Mozilla's addon repository has a review process.

What makes addons better than ActiveX controls is that they're understood to extend the browser for the user's benefit, not merely make a crappy website work. Fewer people would buy that a bank website needs to install a Firefox extension before you can log in.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#148

Post by seanmcdirmid »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #146
jessaustin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with the main thrust of your arguments, but can you point at an existing capitalist system that is not in many respects "crony" capitalism? (Switzerland, maybe? I've heard good things about them.) I suspect we need a new term for what we want. "Capitalism" is too sullied by use.

The Scandinavian nations are pretty solid non crony cap states, as are the old standbys of Singapore and Hong Kong. No nation is pure, of course. But we can look at examples of crony policies within otherwise capitalist-ish nations and compare to less crony-ish policies within those same nations. It all gets a bit muddy real quick, but I guess we have to do the best with what we've got.

> as are the old standbys of Singapore and Hong Kong.

You don't know Singapore or HK very well. They are very good at being a transparent government, but guanxi is still needed to get things done.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#149

Post by jessaustin »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #146
jessaustin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with the main thrust of your arguments, but can you point at an existing capitalist system that is not in many respects "crony" capitalism? (Switzerland, maybe? I've heard good things about them.) I suspect we need a new term for what we want. "Capitalism" is too sullied by use.

The Scandinavian nations are pretty solid non crony cap states, as are the old standbys of Singapore and Hong Kong. No nation is pure, of course. But we can look at examples of crony policies within otherwise capitalist-ish nations and compare to less crony-ish policies within those same nations. It all gets a bit muddy real quick, but I guess we have to do the best with what we've got.

I can't speak to practices in Scandinavia or Hong Kong, but I've lived in Singapore, and while it has plenty of good points, and lots of things just work, it also exhibits much of what I consider to be crony capitalism.

First, there is a great deal of overlap among the leadership of government, the military, education, and business. As in, the same dude is CEO of a large company and a Colonel in the army and last year he was minister for something-or-another. When he gets tired of this company he'll teach at NUS for a bit. If you're on track to slide into that top echelon when you're still in your twenties, you're golden, otherwise your prospects are more limited.

To a seemingly greater extent than is true even in USA, the government is involved in everything. Fortunately, the bureaucrats seem to make generally good decisions, but they're still making decisions. The genuinely competitive industries are export-focused, which I guess is OK for a small nation for which exports are so important.

Everyone has heard about the fairly severe punishments Singapore has for various crimes, but perhaps not how much enforcement varies based on the identity of the criminal. Even before you get to the punishment stage, law enforcement and related surveillance pervades society, and affects different classes of people in wildly different ways. This isn't an economic effect per se, but the choices people make as a reaction to this have economic consequences. Also, I can't get over the fact that for 34 of its 48 years, Singapore's PM has been LKY or his son.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#150

Post by beagle3 »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #113
ddoolin wrote: post #26

I've lived in Korea for quite a length of time and my wife is Korean...and I concur that it's a nightmare. No Korean financial institution will let you log into their interfaces on anything other than IE. Often the homepage would be completely broken in anything other than IE anyway. This is true for most sites, though those were easily avoidable. Banks and the like, not so much. To perform financial transactions onl…

> Also, you need to use your Citizen Number (basically a Social Security Number) to register for ANY service in Korea, even common websites. Since 2011, websites cannot ask or store resident registration numbers (that's the official name) for non-financial purposes. Sadly, it happened after a major incident which exposed RRNs of more than 70% of Koreans. [1] It is a common estimate that every Korean person have his/h…

That's really f'd up.

Israel has an "ID number" system, which you use when interfacing with e.g. health providers, or when applying to an academic institute. However, it is not assumed to be secret, and any action that would require positive identification will have it done with a physical government issued ID (national ID card, national driver's license, or passport) - knowing the number is not enough.

The system is far from perfect - there is a lot of information leakage, but identity theft requires forgery of physical artifacts, and more often than not - appearance in person - so it is not as common as e.g. in the US.

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