13 ms·

South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

154 points by nichol4s 13y ago

PakG1 13y ago
It is strange that I think of this after reading this, but this seems to be the dystopian future scenario that freaked out the DOJ due to Microsoft bundling the IE browser with Windows. It is strange that this situation actually came about, but due to reasons of law, not due to Microsoft's own market clout.
- patrickaljord 13y ago
  It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    > It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market. Citation needed. There are government mandated monopolies but you can also achieve a monopoly using purely free market tools and simply lock up all supply and/or distribution via aggressive investments. You seem to imply government-induced monopolies > free market monopolies, but provide no evidence or even an argument that this is indeed true. You just state it as a universally recognized fact, when that is obviously not the case.
    - talmand 13y ago
      I would have to agree with the most monopolies are government created because, at least in the US, there are laws that actively try to prevent a free market monopoly. Plus, it's much more difficult to create a market-based monopoly because in a somewhat free market it creates an opportunity for a competitor to take advantage of factors that only monopolies tend to have if they are not government created. But I don't see the claim of government monopolies > free market monopolies you reference.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      > Citation needed. Any real economist. Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. Government regulation (often through corruption) is the only mechanism which ensures a lack of competition. This can be observed in any industry throughout the last 100 years. You're right that companies can lock up the vast majority of a market by out-competing others, but this generally doesn't last very long (typically a decade or less).
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. An industry can be profitable for the existing market participants and still have a high enough cost of entry as to have a negative expected profit over any meaningful timeframe for a prospective new entrant. In practice, this is likely to change due to changing external conditions (e.g., technological progress that lowers the cost of entry or creates previously-impossible substitutes) but there is no theoretical reason why this must be the case.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        > but there is no theoretical reason why this must be the case. Yet it has always turned out to be the case anyway... Even in the world of offshore drilling (which probably has a higher cost of entry than any other business you could possibly enter) there are tons of start-ups, joint ventures, etc... Of course, the oil business is also very susceptible to corruption, but wherever land rights are auctioned fairly, you see good competition.
      - revscat 13y ago
        This is flatly incorrect. 1) Property. If you have a monopoly on the property in a given area you can charge whatever you want for rent, and no competition will be around to add competition. 2) Vertical monopolies. If your company buys out not just the competition, but the entire supply chain, and there is a high cost of entry to being able to enter the market -- say automobiles -- then you can quash competition as it arises. 3) Coal mines. If the only job you can get is in a coal mine, and the operator of said mine owns all the mines in your geographic region, you don't have much of a choice. This is especially true if you are working 12+ hours a day 7 days a week for a pittance, or are a minor child. 4) This is libertarian fantasy and rightfully deserves the scorn and ridicule it has so far received in this thread. There are many, many ways to abuse the market to the detriment of the workers, both with and without regulation.
    - kcorbitt 13y ago
      Consider the fact that if you refuse to do business with a private-sector monopoly the worst that'll happen is that you'll get a slightly less-effective alternative or in the worst case go without the good. If you refuse to participate in a government-mandated monopoly you can face civil and criminal charges. Also, a private-sector monopoly, no matter how seemingly entrenched, is always vulnerable to disruption (when was the last time you used a PC manufactured by IBM? Or were forced to use IE against your will, for that matter? And yet those were both at one time monopolies that came very close to being broken up by the justice department because people claimed the free market could never topple them). That's why that "distopian future scenario" the OP referenced didn't come about in most of the world. Other browsers came about that users liked better and despite the big advantage IE gets from being bundled with most PCs others have had success in the market. Contrast that with the difficulty in breaking a government-enforced monopoly like the one referenced in the article.
      - revscat 13y ago
        > Consider the fact that if you refuse to do business with a private-sector monopoly the worst that'll happen is that you'll get a slightly less-effective alternative or in the worst case go without the good. That can be pretty bad if the "good" you are going without is food, shelter, a necessary medical procedure, or some other fundamental requirement.
        kcorbitt 13y ago
        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 that's a breed of "capitalism" in quotes that's effectively government-enforced anyway.
        jessaustin 13y ago
        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.
  - revscat 13y ago
    I don't know where to start. 1) Monopolies can and do happen in the absence of regulation. Indeed, it is frequently only through regulation or direct governmental action that competition can be encouraged. (The breakup of the AT&T monopoly comes to mind.) 2) The simple fact of the matter is that government and economic policy go hand-in-hand. Governments create the currency and enforce contracts. They also set the rules for the market. Without those rules -- laws -- markets descend quickly into chaos similar to what you see today in Somalia or Afghanistan: societies driven by tribal loyalties, inefficient, brutal, cruel, and repressive. There are no monopolies in Somalia because there is no system in place for establishing corporate charters or enforcing contracts. This requires a strong government to serve as arbiter between disputing economic interests.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      I don't know where to start. Eh, you might reserve that tone for posts in which you're mostly correct. Ma Bell was not in any real sense broken up at any point in time. Presumably you're referring to the consent decree that took effect in 1984, but it's also possible you've been fooled by the fig-leaf Comm Act of '96. The result of all that mummery is that right now we have 2.5 phone companies in the USA (which organizations operate the exact same way they did it before the "breakup"), and various tiny morsels the two big daughters haven't yet consumed and excreted. The main outcome has been that telecom executives have extracted vast fortunes from investors, which was probably the point in the first place. That's not even to mention the fact that it was the original Comm Act of '34 that gave Bell its ironclad, FCC-enforced monopoly initially. There is hope, however, because eventually the consumer will only need an ISP, rather than the Frankenstein's monster that is "the phone company". ISPs connect, directly or indirectly, with backbone providers, and there is a functioning market of those. As long as the FCC doesn't outlaw ISPs, sanity will prevail in communications, someday. It's funny that you mention Somalia, because it's a direct refutation of the point you're attempting to make (i.e., no government -> monopoly). It's as if Somalia is such a favorite hobbyhorse of the corporatists that they can't actually talk about how great corporatism is without mentioning it.
      - criley2 13y ago
  - wahsd 13y ago
    Correction: Monopolies require corrupt government policies to establish them, perpetuate them, and protect them.
  - jaigouk 13y ago
    Bill Gates visited S.K several years ago. And after that, everything changed.
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    Citation, please.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > due to reasons of law, not due to Microsoft's own market clout. I'm quite sure Microsoft had something to do with the experts that consulted for the South Korean government when they arrived to this brilliant solution.
ebbv 13y ago
Well that's a stupid law. Requiring people to use a specific product. That's never a good idea. Now if you don't mind I need to go renew my car insurance and sign up for health care.
- coin 13y ago
  You are free to us any browser. Only for purchases is IE needed because of ActiveX.
- timdorr 13y ago
  But you can choose your insurance companies and plans. This would be like the government mandating that you have to use Aetna for health insurance.
  - gwright 13y ago
    You can choose plans that adhere to the government standards. That is a lot different than you can choose your plan, period. I'm still confused about why the government needed to create any sort of web site since they are just marketing private insurance plans (which meet the ACA standards) and these companies have been and continue to market their insurance plans on their own web sites. And hasn't anyone in the federal government heard about 'independent insurance agents'? I guess not since they had to dream up a new job title of 'navigator'. I do support some of the policy goals of ACA, but it seems like almost any other implementation would have been better than the convoluted-rube-goldbergish mechanisms created by the ACA.
bane 13y ago
An example of a premature optimization and what not following standards can do. Some more background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED and http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s There was some hope last presidential election cycle that this would become a topic for the new administration to tackle [1], but that candidate (Ahn Cheol-soo) lost the election and it seems to have fallen off the table for now. 1 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/14/ahn_lab_internet_explorer_seed_replace_korea/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/14/ahn_lab_internet_exp...
onion2k 13y ago
This is why governments shouldn't be passing laws to 'protect' citizens online - they'd manifestly bad at understanding change and worse at designing legal systems that can cope with it.
- acdha 13y ago
  You're half right: governments should prefer to dictate outcomes rather than mechanisms. Telling banks how to code their databases is a losing game but making them liable for losses due to weak security works quite effectively.
- kalleboo 13y ago
  In Sweden we added legislation to allow the Swedish FCC to evaluate and approve digital signature systems (by evaluating the security level of the technical system and the of the certificate authority). The law doesn't mandate any specific technical system. Approved systems are legally just as valid as a pen-and-paper signature. It's worked extremely well. There are a couple competing systems. Some use smartchip ID cards, some use smartphone two factor auth, and others use a certificate file on the computer. The most popular system is run by a consortium of banks and uses a certificate file, and supports Windows, Mac and Ubuntu Linux through a browser plugin. Most government services like filing taxes, address change, student loans, etc support 3-4 different systems.
grownseed 13y ago
I lived in South Korea for a while and this "security plugin" you have to install for IE is an absolute nightmare. Some sites even ask you to install a separate application to be able to perform transactions, only through IE of course... Truth be told, I never actually managed to buy anything online when I was there. It's like everything was designed to keep me from buying. What didn't help was that I was on Visitor status, meaning you don't get your national ID, which is required on a vast number of SK sites. Without ID, you just become some kind of virtual hobo. It's a shame considering the amazing infrastructure there is over there. Anyone who's ever visited SK websites will tell you how poorly put together they are, both technically and visually. I've rarely seen such disparity between the underlying infrastructure and its use anywhere else.
talmand 13y ago
Boot Camp is a secret weapon? It costs $70? I'm confused. Could they not get a free VM and then download an image from modern.ie?
- LarrySDonald 13y ago
  You'd imagine so. It wouldn't be legal though since modern.ie is for testing purposes only. Though I highly doubt anyone much would care if someone ran vitualbox and a copy of XP/Vista or something. I suppose in a sense it becomes a bit of a worry if you run too lightweight on the VM which after all will have to contain your banking credentials (sort of the opposite of firing up a VM when you're doing something that feels too sketchy to run on the main system).
- rsfinn 13y ago
  The original article is confusing. Boot Camp is of course free, but only permits rebooting a Mac into Windows. For $70 one could purchase VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop, and run Windows side by side with OS X. The author of the Washington Post piece does not make this clear. Calling Boot Camp a "secret weapon" suggests that most people aren't aware that Apple computers can run Windows. This may be true in the wider world, although any Apple employee in a retail store could inform customers otherwise. Expecting a writer not focused on technology to discuss gratis tools like VirtualBox and modern.ie is probably asking too much (although these would be well within the reach of Hacker News readers).
- lifthrasiir 13y ago
  Many native "security" solutions required by websites, e.g. anti-keyloggers and antiviruses, would block the VM. They also tend to trigger weird problems in the VM, e.g. some of them makes the entire desktop fail to respond to any events. (What?)
  - talmand 13y ago
    Out of curiosity, how would the security applications know that it was being run on a VM? Why would they care? That suggests they believe no one has a legitimate reason to run Windows in a VM.
crisnoble 13y ago
Non-paginated version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-security-law-south-korea-is-stuck-with-internet-explorer-for-online-shopping/2013/11/03/ffd2528a-3eff-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_print.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-secu...
gkanai 13y ago
I covered this on my blog in 2007: http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s My blog post was heavily covered in Boing Boing, Slashdot, Salon, etc. at the time.
- kippetlong 13y ago
  So nobody else is allowed to write about it ever again?
  - gkanai 13y ago
    Where did I say that? My point is that in the 7 years since 2007, effectively nothing has changed.
    - kippetlong 13y ago
      "My blog post was heavily covered in Boing Boing, Slashdot, Salon, etc. at the time." Ugly boasting.
      - talmand 13y ago
        Or effective means of making a point.
mje__ 13y ago
Isn't this because the US wouldn't export crypto software that supported keys > 40 bits to Korea in the 90s, forcing them to develop their own stronger algorithms? Anyway, it's so bad that my (technophobe) wife refuses to shop online anymore because she is forced to use IE (and vastly prefers to use Chrome)
ksk 13y ago
Typical of most MS bashing articles - this article is troll-bait at best and false at worst. Internet Explorer is not mandated by law. What happened was, the US had banned export of 128bit encryption software. The Korean government said screw that and created browser plugins - for BOTH Netscape and IE - to use 128bit encryption for online transactions. Netscape died and IE remained. I guess their implementation is proprietary enough that nobody else has managed to implement it on other browsers.
- thenerdfiles 13y ago
  You think there's an open market for bar code encryption?
  - ksk 13y ago
    What have bar codes got to do with anything? Sorry, I don't understand your comment.
- edwintorok 13y ago
  Why can't they just use TLS encryption that is available in all browsers and supports more than 128-bit?
  - ksk 13y ago
    I think there are some government regulations around selling stuff online over there. You need to register as a seller and they issue you a digital certificate - probably another thing that keeps people locked into their own encryption standard.
- huxley 13y ago
  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-Firefox 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.
thenerdfiles 13y ago
This is exactly what I was saying about [made-for-prison] software being unleashed on the public writ large: > But those with Apple computers — for which IE isn’t available — have it harder. Some go to Internet cafes. Some rely on their office desktops. Some dash into hotel business centers. Some hold on to their old computers and boot them up when it’s time to make purchases. Still others depend on a secret weapon called Boot Camp, a software program that allows a Mac to run Windows. Your bar code is your laptop.
viraptor 13y ago
I'm really surprised that in the last 14 years noone wrote a compatibility layer. It's definitely possible (see the comment about tablets) and embedding crazy stuff from windows is nothing new in linux world (wine, ndiswrapper). So what's the actual barrier to doing that? (also, why doesn't FF solve the issue since https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478839 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478839 was fixed? - it looks like guys from KISA are actually cooperating to implement the needed ciphers)
- gkanai 13y ago
  Mozilla added SEED support to Gecko many years ago. Nothing has been done since then (on the Korean side) to implement support beyond that.
  - viraptor 13y ago
    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?
    - itsameta4 13y ago
      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.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        You don't need to replicate all of the functionality that activex has. You just need to emulate the behaviour from the banks point of view of whatever their particular activex does. Maybe the ActiveX rewrites a bunch of files with admin privileges "for security", and then negotiates some sort of key exchange... in that case just write JS that says it did the shit that requires admin privileges, then negotiates the key exchange). So the question is, if you are willing to ignore their activex and run your own custom JS instead, could these websites be made to work?
tenderLoins 13y ago
I like to think of South Korea as a nation state, gripped by such fear-of-the-other, that they'll agree to any irrational suggestions their military advisors might make. So then, 10 or 20 years ago, when the NSA needed a secret laboratory to experiment in, where they could blunder away at trial and error, perhaps a huge wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of this bird, well South Korea sounds pretty good. Let's see if the pentagon can get them to agree to a few absurd pre-requisites and static global variables, while we bootstrap this absolutely enourmous program we're shoe-horning into place.
xrjn 13y ago
$70 for bootcamp? For a company as technologically advanced as South Korea, can't they just use refit or refind? Heck even a VM would do fine.
- selectodude 13y ago
  I think the article author confused Boot Camp for Parallels Desktop.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  Boot Camp isn’t a separate product, it’s part of OS X (which is free). The salesman was probably talking about Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. of course, one can just as easily use Virtualbox. Or if you only need IE, you can use a WINE layer like CrossOver.
- kijin 13y ago
  Last time I tried to access a South Korean government agency's website using a Windows guest in VirtualBox, it recognized that I was using a VM and refused to allow me to proceed. Same thing happened when I bought a bus ticket online and tried to print the e-ticket. Apparently everyone thinks VMs are only good for malicious activity.
ddoolin 13y ago
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 online in Korea, you would need a plethora of software (often one from each party you would deal with) that revolved around security certificates that were issued by the banks that would store a hard copy of the certificate locally on your computer. Often it didn't work at all, not even getting into the security implications of the system. Bank hacking is so common in Korea, it's really disturbing. There is absolutely no accountability where the attempts at security do exist. Also, you need to use your Citizen Number (basically a Social Security Number) to register for ANY service in Korea, even common websites. So everything you do can be traced via that single number. For foreigners, registering for common sites is usually impossible because our alien numbers are stored wherever normal citizen numbers are, so unless the site has a separate process for foreigners, you'd be out of luck. It's quite a mess. I can't say enough bad things. On the bright side, start ups like Vingle in Seoul are doing a lot of tip the scales for the younger generation by only supporting modern browser versions (IE8+, not the most modern, but definitely a step up from IE6, which has a huge market share still, too), but it's a slow change.
- wahsd 13y ago
  Does changing/spoofing the user agent not work?
  - kijin 13y ago
    Nope, because non-IE browsers won't run ActiveX controls no matter what the user-agent string is.
- lifthrasiir 13y ago
  > 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/her RRN hacked at least twice due to frequent incidents. The Korean government endorses i-PIN nowadays, which is basically... uh... redundant aliases to the unique RRN. This is obviously stupid, you can hack i-PIN instead of RRN and you have the same credential. Well, at least i-PIN is random. (RRN had very low entropy, and even shallow information about the target may limit possible RRNs to only hundreds.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_number#Online_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_number#O... for the 2011 incident.
derekp7 13y ago
Is it easier to buy something out of a catalog over the phone? If that is still an option, then one way around this law is to use a web site to set up an order (fill your shopping cart, shipping details, etc). Then call the vendor to finalize the order. Of course, this would add to the cost of online purchases, since you'd have to pay for the person taking the call, but still it might be a work around.
melling 13y ago
Who cares. Developers need to pull legacy browser support sooner. It's pretty clear that certain people and organizations will wait until they absolutely have to change before they will make the effort. Once it becomes inconvenient enough they'll do whatever needs to get done. The effort can be justified in business terms. IE8, for example, is going to be around for a while. However, if enough developers stop supporting it now, the conversation will begin. Otherwise, it's gonna be 2020 and ie8 will still have significant market share.
- gkanai 13y ago
  If you lived in S. Korea and had to be limited to using IE on Windows with ActiveX controls for each site you wanted to transact with, you'd care. Did you read the piece? The current system is the law.
  - melling 13y ago
    This is not a new story. It has been discussed for the last several years. Like I said, certain organizations will change when they absolutely have to. In South Korea's case, it's going to be costly so they are probably going to be the last.
    - gkanai 13y ago
      Indeed. I was the first person to report this situation in English in 2007, so I know this topic well.
johng 13y ago
Sounds like someone needs to educate Koreans on using VirtualBox and Modern.ie images... both are free. http://www.modern.ie/en-us http://www.modern.ie/en-us
Segmentation 13y ago
An enormous amount of South Koreans play Starcraft and MOBAs (e.g. League of Legends). Those are Windows games. However, as I've learned from doing tech support, I find hardcore gamers are more computer illiterate. They know enough about computers to turn them on and play their game, but because they play for so many hours they don't do anything else on the computer. Basically you get a nation of computer illiterate users, who use Windows because they don't know any better. Most probably don't even know what Firefox or Chrome are.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  I play (the old) Starcraft quite well on Linux.
eric5544 13y ago
"But the back-and-forth was technologically complicated, and it came with a catch: It required a piece of additional software, or “plugin,” known as ActiveX — which is also made by Microsoft and worked in tandem only with Internet Explorer." That phrasing made me cringe and shows the lack of technical understanding of the author of this article. ActiveX is a technology, not a piece of software or a plugin in itself.
arunc 13y ago
So are most of the Indian IT services companies. A friend of mine is still using windows vista with IE7 cus some moron decides the outdated company policies.
arunc 13y ago
So are most of the Indian IT services companies. A friend of mine is still using windows vista with IE7 cus some moron decides the outdated company policies.
arunc 13y ago
So are most of the Indian IT services companies. A friend of mine is still using windows vista with IE7 cus some moron decides the outdated company policies.
arunc 13y ago
So are most of the Indian IT services companies. A friend of mine is still using windows vista with IE7 cus some moron decides the outdated company policies.
bifrost 13y ago
You'd think someone would sort out a way to setup the certs via some other method. I think this is a great example of why legislators shouldn't be allowed to make laws about things they don't understand, like the internet.
arunc 13y ago
So are most of the Indian IT services companies. A friend of mine is still using windows vista with IE7 cus some moron decides the outdated company policies.
arunc 13y ago
So are most of the Indian IT services companies. A friend of mine is still using windows vista with IE7 cus some moron decides the outdated company policies.
aric 13y ago
This is state-controlled economics (corporatism) at its usual finest.
kijin 13y ago
Some additional details that the article doesn't mention: 1. Technically, the law doesn't require that you use Internet Explorer. The law merely requires that you use a bunch of technologies, ranging from 128-bit encryption to government-issued client certificates to government-mandated antivirus to (craziest of all) an anti-keylogger utility. Conveniently, the spec was written with Windows & IE in mind, so it's very difficult to write alternative implementations for other platforms. 2. This is not a matter of being stuck with older versions of IE like many corporate intranets in the West. In fact, most banks in Korea work perfectly well in IE11 as long as you don't try to use the Modern UI (Metro) version. Because this is not so much about IE as it is about the WIN32 environment. 3. The proliferation of phones and tablets has motivated banks and payment gateways to write iOS and Android implementations of the spec. This was the first time anybody tried to implement the spec outside of Windows & IE. But once you have one alternative implementation, it's much easier to port it to other platforms like Mac, Linux, and FF/Chrome on Windows. This is happening slowly. 4. Despite the appearance of these alternative implementations, the spec itself is still very problematic. For example, the antivirus and anti-keylogger requirements cannot be met unless the programs in question have root privileges on your device. It feels insane when you browse to a bank's home page in Linux and it tells you to download a bunch of apps and execute them as root. And of course those apps are only designed for specific versions of specific Linux distributions, so they break as soon as a new Ubuntu release comes out. No thanks! Even in Windows, the Firefox & Chrome plugins are not packaged as proper extensions, but as standalone programs that integrate loosely with the browser like Flash and Java, Because you can't meet the spec within the confines of a browser's sandbox. 5. Okay so why not just run Windows in a VM? Actually that's exactly what I do. But it's not a perfect solution. Some of the Korean "security" apps have begun to detect when the user is in a VM, and refuse to work in a VM. There is no technical reason for this policy, they just don't like people getting around the rules. My bank refuses to whitelist my VM as a trusted device. I've encountered at least one government agency that won't offer online services to a VM. The last time I bought a bus ticket online, the e-ticket wouldn't print because the printer port was virtualized and therefore could be used to produce duplicates or whatever. 6. Even mobile apps, which the article mentions, are very pesky about their environment. The app for my bank won't run on my phone because it's rooted and therefore can't be trusted. Fuck that shit. This affects everyone who uses CyanogenMod. (What's even more ridiculous is that the same bank requires root on my PC.) 7. Therefore, porting the spec to non-IE platforms and/or writing compatibility layers is not the answer. The spec needs to be fixed, period. No website should have the right to demand the use of any software other than a standards-compliant web browser. No website should require root, or even want to know anything about the environment (virtualized or not, rooted or not) in which it is being visited, except what the browser exposes to it by default. 8. Of course this isn't going to happen any time soon, because removing even one of the requirements on the current spec will be seen as a decrease of security, and nobody wants to take the blame the next time 10 million people get their account information stolen. Wait a second, every Korean citizen has had his or her personal information stolen multiple times in the last several years anyway. All the banks and merchants have desensitized users to the point that anytime any website ask them to install some app and run it as Administrator, they do. All the security theater of the last 14 years has done is to decrease the security of the entire country. It has also hurt the rest of the Web. Because it's so much more convenient to write a Windows Forms app than to write a website that works in both IE6 and IE11, lots of interactive and media-heavy websites in Korea (especially gaming and file-sharing websites) have become mere landing pages where you download the actual app. After all, the banks are doing it, so why shouldn't everyone else do the same? 9. One move in the right direction is that since this September, every large (over ~$3000) online transaction requires two-factor authentication. They've been handing out one-time password generators like candy lately. The ubiquity of mobile phones also means that you can even choose to use three-factor authentication (login + one-time password + SMS token) for certain types of transactions. Hopefully this will eliminate the justification for the anti-keylogger utility, since the passwords and SMS tokens can't be reused anyway. [Edit] 10. Another positive development is that the Korean government has finally begun to pay attention to accessibility on the Internet. At the moment, among Korean web developers, accessibility is an even hotter topic than standards compliance, because lack of accessibility can get you into nasty lawsuits and hefty fines. Everyone's busy adding "alt" attributes to <img> tags. But hopefully, in the long term, focusing on accessibility will also bring people to care about standards compliance.
peteretep 13y ago
Surely this impacts Apple's sales in Korea. Amazed they haven't invested more in making a Mac technical solution for this.
- lifthrasiir 13y ago
  Mac users did have successfully made one major bank to support Mac in 2004, by pledging about 16 billion KRW (~15 million USD at that time). The situation hasn't improved since then though.
- jaigouk 13y ago
  yup. we got our first iphone in 2009. I guess Samsung had been blocking apple.
eonil 13y ago
Whole the source of problem is Korean majority is conservative. They don't want to change anything. And want to force their belief of right. And that belief in financial industry is current Korean online banking system. Korean financial industry practically has no freedom to choose some security solution, so even foreign banks - such as CitiBank - use that stupid system. And the conservativeness of the Korean majority elected conservative major party, and the party - of course - has no will to change it at all. And actually they enforces old rules to keep their existing benefits. So Korea has no hope to change this before replace major party. In last president election, there was a candidate promised fixing this issue, but finally defeated to candidate from conservative party. And they need to wait all the old McCarthyists - who are main supporters of conservative party - disappears.

154 points by nichol4s 13y ago

PakG1 13y ago

It is strange that I think of this after reading this, but this seems to be the dystopian future scenario that freaked out the DOJ due to Microsoft bundling the IE browser with Windows. It is strange that this situation actually came about, but due to reasons of law, not due to Microsoft's own market clout.

patrickaljord 13y ago
It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  > It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market. Citation needed. There are government mandated monopolies but you can also achieve a monopoly using purely free market tools and simply lock up all supply and/or distribution via aggressive investments. You seem to imply government-induced monopolies > free market monopolies, but provide no evidence or even an argument that this is indeed true. You just state it as a universally recognized fact, when that is obviously not the case.
  - talmand 13y ago
    I would have to agree with the most monopolies are government created because, at least in the US, there are laws that actively try to prevent a free market monopoly. Plus, it's much more difficult to create a market-based monopoly because in a somewhat free market it creates an opportunity for a competitor to take advantage of factors that only monopolies tend to have if they are not government created. But I don't see the claim of government monopolies > free market monopolies you reference.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    > Citation needed. Any real economist. Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. Government regulation (often through corruption) is the only mechanism which ensures a lack of competition. This can be observed in any industry throughout the last 100 years. You're right that companies can lock up the vast majority of a market by out-competing others, but this generally doesn't last very long (typically a decade or less).
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. An industry can be profitable for the existing market participants and still have a high enough cost of entry as to have a negative expected profit over any meaningful timeframe for a prospective new entrant. In practice, this is likely to change due to changing external conditions (e.g., technological progress that lowers the cost of entry or creates previously-impossible substitutes) but there is no theoretical reason why this must be the case.
      - Mikeb85 13y ago
        > but there is no theoretical reason why this must be the case. Yet it has always turned out to be the case anyway... Even in the world of offshore drilling (which probably has a higher cost of entry than any other business you could possibly enter) there are tons of start-ups, joint ventures, etc... Of course, the oil business is also very susceptible to corruption, but wherever land rights are auctioned fairly, you see good competition.
    - revscat 13y ago
      This is flatly incorrect. 1) Property. If you have a monopoly on the property in a given area you can charge whatever you want for rent, and no competition will be around to add competition. 2) Vertical monopolies. If your company buys out not just the competition, but the entire supply chain, and there is a high cost of entry to being able to enter the market -- say automobiles -- then you can quash competition as it arises. 3) Coal mines. If the only job you can get is in a coal mine, and the operator of said mine owns all the mines in your geographic region, you don't have much of a choice. This is especially true if you are working 12+ hours a day 7 days a week for a pittance, or are a minor child. 4) This is libertarian fantasy and rightfully deserves the scorn and ridicule it has so far received in this thread. There are many, many ways to abuse the market to the detriment of the workers, both with and without regulation.
  - kcorbitt 13y ago
    Consider the fact that if you refuse to do business with a private-sector monopoly the worst that'll happen is that you'll get a slightly less-effective alternative or in the worst case go without the good. If you refuse to participate in a government-mandated monopoly you can face civil and criminal charges. Also, a private-sector monopoly, no matter how seemingly entrenched, is always vulnerable to disruption (when was the last time you used a PC manufactured by IBM? Or were forced to use IE against your will, for that matter? And yet those were both at one time monopolies that came very close to being broken up by the justice department because people claimed the free market could never topple them). That's why that "distopian future scenario" the OP referenced didn't come about in most of the world. Other browsers came about that users liked better and despite the big advantage IE gets from being bundled with most PCs others have had success in the market. Contrast that with the difficulty in breaking a government-enforced monopoly like the one referenced in the article.
    - revscat 13y ago
      > Consider the fact that if you refuse to do business with a private-sector monopoly the worst that'll happen is that you'll get a slightly less-effective alternative or in the worst case go without the good. That can be pretty bad if the "good" you are going without is food, shelter, a necessary medical procedure, or some other fundamental requirement.
      - kcorbitt 13y ago
        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 that's a breed of "capitalism" in quotes that's effectively government-enforced anyway.
        jessaustin 13y ago
        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.
- revscat 13y ago
  I don't know where to start. 1) Monopolies can and do happen in the absence of regulation. Indeed, it is frequently only through regulation or direct governmental action that competition can be encouraged. (The breakup of the AT&T monopoly comes to mind.) 2) The simple fact of the matter is that government and economic policy go hand-in-hand. Governments create the currency and enforce contracts. They also set the rules for the market. Without those rules -- laws -- markets descend quickly into chaos similar to what you see today in Somalia or Afghanistan: societies driven by tribal loyalties, inefficient, brutal, cruel, and repressive. There are no monopolies in Somalia because there is no system in place for establishing corporate charters or enforcing contracts. This requires a strong government to serve as arbiter between disputing economic interests.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    I don't know where to start. Eh, you might reserve that tone for posts in which you're mostly correct. Ma Bell was not in any real sense broken up at any point in time. Presumably you're referring to the consent decree that took effect in 1984, but it's also possible you've been fooled by the fig-leaf Comm Act of '96. The result of all that mummery is that right now we have 2.5 phone companies in the USA (which organizations operate the exact same way they did it before the "breakup"), and various tiny morsels the two big daughters haven't yet consumed and excreted. The main outcome has been that telecom executives have extracted vast fortunes from investors, which was probably the point in the first place. That's not even to mention the fact that it was the original Comm Act of '34 that gave Bell its ironclad, FCC-enforced monopoly initially. There is hope, however, because eventually the consumer will only need an ISP, rather than the Frankenstein's monster that is "the phone company". ISPs connect, directly or indirectly, with backbone providers, and there is a functioning market of those. As long as the FCC doesn't outlaw ISPs, sanity will prevail in communications, someday. It's funny that you mention Somalia, because it's a direct refutation of the point you're attempting to make (i.e., no government -> monopoly). It's as if Somalia is such a favorite hobbyhorse of the corporatists that they can't actually talk about how great corporatism is without mentioning it.
    - criley2 13y ago
- wahsd 13y ago
  Correction: Monopolies require corrupt government policies to establish them, perpetuate them, and protect them.
- jaigouk 13y ago
  Bill Gates visited S.K several years ago. And after that, everything changed.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  Citation, please.
rbanffy 13y ago
> due to reasons of law, not due to Microsoft's own market clout. I'm quite sure Microsoft had something to do with the experts that consulted for the South Korean government when they arrived to this brilliant solution.

ebbv 13y ago

Well that's a stupid law. Requiring people to use a specific product. That's never a good idea. Now if you don't mind I need to go renew my car insurance and sign up for health care.

coin 13y ago
You are free to us any browser. Only for purchases is IE needed because of ActiveX.
timdorr 13y ago
But you can choose your insurance companies and plans. This would be like the government mandating that you have to use Aetna for health insurance.
- gwright 13y ago
  You can choose plans that adhere to the government standards. That is a lot different than you can choose your plan, period. I'm still confused about why the government needed to create any sort of web site since they are just marketing private insurance plans (which meet the ACA standards) and these companies have been and continue to market their insurance plans on their own web sites. And hasn't anyone in the federal government heard about 'independent insurance agents'? I guess not since they had to dream up a new job title of 'navigator'. I do support some of the policy goals of ACA, but it seems like almost any other implementation would have been better than the convoluted-rube-goldbergish mechanisms created by the ACA.

bane 13y ago

An example of a premature optimization and what not following standards can do. Some more background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED and http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s There was some hope last presidential election cycle that this would become a topic for the new administration to tackle [1], but that candidate (Ahn Cheol-soo) lost the election and it seems to have fallen off the table for now. 1 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/14/ahn_lab_internet_explorer_seed_replace_korea/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/14/ahn_lab_internet_exp...

onion2k 13y ago

This is why governments shouldn't be passing laws to 'protect' citizens online - they'd manifestly bad at understanding change and worse at designing legal systems that can cope with it.

acdha 13y ago
You're half right: governments should prefer to dictate outcomes rather than mechanisms. Telling banks how to code their databases is a losing game but making them liable for losses due to weak security works quite effectively.
kalleboo 13y ago
In Sweden we added legislation to allow the Swedish FCC to evaluate and approve digital signature systems (by evaluating the security level of the technical system and the of the certificate authority). The law doesn't mandate any specific technical system. Approved systems are legally just as valid as a pen-and-paper signature. It's worked extremely well. There are a couple competing systems. Some use smartchip ID cards, some use smartphone two factor auth, and others use a certificate file on the computer. The most popular system is run by a consortium of banks and uses a certificate file, and supports Windows, Mac and Ubuntu Linux through a browser plugin. Most government services like filing taxes, address change, student loans, etc support 3-4 different systems.

grownseed 13y ago

I lived in South Korea for a while and this "security plugin" you have to install for IE is an absolute nightmare. Some sites even ask you to install a separate application to be able to perform transactions, only through IE of course... Truth be told, I never actually managed to buy anything online when I was there. It's like everything was designed to keep me from buying. What didn't help was that I was on Visitor status, meaning you don't get your national ID, which is required on a vast number of SK sites. Without ID, you just become some kind of virtual hobo. It's a shame considering the amazing infrastructure there is over there. Anyone who's ever visited SK websites will tell you how poorly put together they are, both technically and visually. I've rarely seen such disparity between the underlying infrastructure and its use anywhere else.

talmand 13y ago

Boot Camp is a secret weapon? It costs $70? I'm confused. Could they not get a free VM and then download an image from modern.ie?

LarrySDonald 13y ago
You'd imagine so. It wouldn't be legal though since modern.ie is for testing purposes only. Though I highly doubt anyone much would care if someone ran vitualbox and a copy of XP/Vista or something. I suppose in a sense it becomes a bit of a worry if you run too lightweight on the VM which after all will have to contain your banking credentials (sort of the opposite of firing up a VM when you're doing something that feels too sketchy to run on the main system).
rsfinn 13y ago
The original article is confusing. Boot Camp is of course free, but only permits rebooting a Mac into Windows. For $70 one could purchase VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop, and run Windows side by side with OS X. The author of the Washington Post piece does not make this clear. Calling Boot Camp a "secret weapon" suggests that most people aren't aware that Apple computers can run Windows. This may be true in the wider world, although any Apple employee in a retail store could inform customers otherwise. Expecting a writer not focused on technology to discuss gratis tools like VirtualBox and modern.ie is probably asking too much (although these would be well within the reach of Hacker News readers).
lifthrasiir 13y ago
Many native "security" solutions required by websites, e.g. anti-keyloggers and antiviruses, would block the VM. They also tend to trigger weird problems in the VM, e.g. some of them makes the entire desktop fail to respond to any events. (What?)
- talmand 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, how would the security applications know that it was being run on a VM? Why would they care? That suggests they believe no one has a legitimate reason to run Windows in a VM.

crisnoble 13y ago

Non-paginated version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-security-law-south-korea-is-stuck-with-internet-explorer-for-online-shopping/2013/11/03/ffd2528a-3eff-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_print.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-secu...

gkanai 13y ago

I covered this on my blog in 2007: http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s My blog post was heavily covered in Boing Boing, Slashdot, Salon, etc. at the time.

kippetlong 13y ago
So nobody else is allowed to write about it ever again?
- gkanai 13y ago
  Where did I say that? My point is that in the 7 years since 2007, effectively nothing has changed.
  - kippetlong 13y ago
    "My blog post was heavily covered in Boing Boing, Slashdot, Salon, etc. at the time." Ugly boasting.
    - talmand 13y ago
      Or effective means of making a point.

mje__ 13y ago

Isn't this because the US wouldn't export crypto software that supported keys > 40 bits to Korea in the 90s, forcing them to develop their own stronger algorithms? Anyway, it's so bad that my (technophobe) wife refuses to shop online anymore because she is forced to use IE (and vastly prefers to use Chrome)

ksk 13y ago

Typical of most MS bashing articles - this article is troll-bait at best and false at worst. Internet Explorer is not mandated by law. What happened was, the US had banned export of 128bit encryption software. The Korean government said screw that and created browser plugins - for BOTH Netscape and IE - to use 128bit encryption for online transactions. Netscape died and IE remained. I guess their implementation is proprietary enough that nobody else has managed to implement it on other browsers.

thenerdfiles 13y ago
You think there's an open market for bar code encryption?
- ksk 13y ago
  What have bar codes got to do with anything? Sorry, I don't understand your comment.
edwintorok 13y ago
Why can't they just use TLS encryption that is available in all browsers and supports more than 128-bit?
- ksk 13y ago
  I think there are some government regulations around selling stuff online over there. You need to register as a seller and they issue you a digital certificate - probably another thing that keeps people locked into their own encryption standard.
huxley 13y ago
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-Firefox 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.

thenerdfiles 13y ago

This is exactly what I was saying about [made-for-prison] software being unleashed on the public writ large: > But those with Apple computers — for which IE isn’t available — have it harder. Some go to Internet cafes. Some rely on their office desktops. Some dash into hotel business centers. Some hold on to their old computers and boot them up when it’s time to make purchases. Still others depend on a secret weapon called Boot Camp, a software program that allows a Mac to run Windows. Your bar code is your laptop.

viraptor 13y ago

I'm really surprised that in the last 14 years noone wrote a compatibility layer. It's definitely possible (see the comment about tablets) and embedding crazy stuff from windows is nothing new in linux world (wine, ndiswrapper). So what's the actual barrier to doing that? (also, why doesn't FF solve the issue since https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478839 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478839 was fixed? - it looks like guys from KISA are actually cooperating to implement the needed ciphers)

gkanai 13y ago
Mozilla added SEED support to Gecko many years ago. Nothing has been done since then (on the Korean side) to implement support beyond that.
- viraptor 13y ago
  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?
  - itsameta4 13y ago
    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.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      You don't need to replicate all of the functionality that activex has. You just need to emulate the behaviour from the banks point of view of whatever their particular activex does. Maybe the ActiveX rewrites a bunch of files with admin privileges "for security", and then negotiates some sort of key exchange... in that case just write JS that says it did the shit that requires admin privileges, then negotiates the key exchange). So the question is, if you are willing to ignore their activex and run your own custom JS instead, could these websites be made to work?

tenderLoins 13y ago

I like to think of South Korea as a nation state, gripped by such fear-of-the-other, that they'll agree to any irrational suggestions their military advisors might make. So then, 10 or 20 years ago, when the NSA needed a secret laboratory to experiment in, where they could blunder away at trial and error, perhaps a huge wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of this bird, well South Korea sounds pretty good. Let's see if the pentagon can get them to agree to a few absurd pre-requisites and static global variables, while we bootstrap this absolutely enourmous program we're shoe-horning into place.

xrjn 13y ago

$70 for bootcamp? For a company as technologically advanced as South Korea, can't they just use refit or refind? Heck even a VM would do fine.

selectodude 13y ago
I think the article author confused Boot Camp for Parallels Desktop.
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
Boot Camp isn’t a separate product, it’s part of OS X (which is free). The salesman was probably talking about Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. of course, one can just as easily use Virtualbox. Or if you only need IE, you can use a WINE layer like CrossOver.
kijin 13y ago
Last time I tried to access a South Korean government agency's website using a Windows guest in VirtualBox, it recognized that I was using a VM and refused to allow me to proceed. Same thing happened when I bought a bus ticket online and tried to print the e-ticket. Apparently everyone thinks VMs are only good for malicious activity.

ddoolin 13y ago

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 online in Korea, you would need a plethora of software (often one from each party you would deal with) that revolved around security certificates that were issued by the banks that would store a hard copy of the certificate locally on your computer. Often it didn't work at all, not even getting into the security implications of the system. Bank hacking is so common in Korea, it's really disturbing. There is absolutely no accountability where the attempts at security do exist. Also, you need to use your Citizen Number (basically a Social Security Number) to register for ANY service in Korea, even common websites. So everything you do can be traced via that single number. For foreigners, registering for common sites is usually impossible because our alien numbers are stored wherever normal citizen numbers are, so unless the site has a separate process for foreigners, you'd be out of luck. It's quite a mess. I can't say enough bad things. On the bright side, start ups like Vingle in Seoul are doing a lot of tip the scales for the younger generation by only supporting modern browser versions (IE8+, not the most modern, but definitely a step up from IE6, which has a huge market share still, too), but it's a slow change.

wahsd 13y ago
Does changing/spoofing the user agent not work?
- kijin 13y ago
  Nope, because non-IE browsers won't run ActiveX controls no matter what the user-agent string is.
lifthrasiir 13y ago
> 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/her RRN hacked at least twice due to frequent incidents. The Korean government endorses i-PIN nowadays, which is basically... uh... redundant aliases to the unique RRN. This is obviously stupid, you can hack i-PIN instead of RRN and you have the same credential. Well, at least i-PIN is random. (RRN had very low entropy, and even shallow information about the target may limit possible RRNs to only hundreds.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_number#Online_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_number#O... for the 2011 incident.

derekp7 13y ago

Is it easier to buy something out of a catalog over the phone? If that is still an option, then one way around this law is to use a web site to set up an order (fill your shopping cart, shipping details, etc). Then call the vendor to finalize the order. Of course, this would add to the cost of online purchases, since you'd have to pay for the person taking the call, but still it might be a work around.

melling 13y ago

Who cares. Developers need to pull legacy browser support sooner. It's pretty clear that certain people and organizations will wait until they absolutely have to change before they will make the effort. Once it becomes inconvenient enough they'll do whatever needs to get done. The effort can be justified in business terms. IE8, for example, is going to be around for a while. However, if enough developers stop supporting it now, the conversation will begin. Otherwise, it's gonna be 2020 and ie8 will still have significant market share.

gkanai 13y ago
If you lived in S. Korea and had to be limited to using IE on Windows with ActiveX controls for each site you wanted to transact with, you'd care. Did you read the piece? The current system is the law.
- melling 13y ago
  This is not a new story. It has been discussed for the last several years. Like I said, certain organizations will change when they absolutely have to. In South Korea's case, it's going to be costly so they are probably going to be the last.
  - gkanai 13y ago
    Indeed. I was the first person to report this situation in English in 2007, so I know this topic well.

johng 13y ago

Sounds like someone needs to educate Koreans on using VirtualBox and Modern.ie images... both are free. http://www.modern.ie/en-us http://www.modern.ie/en-us

Segmentation 13y ago

An enormous amount of South Koreans play Starcraft and MOBAs (e.g. League of Legends). Those are Windows games. However, as I've learned from doing tech support, I find hardcore gamers are more computer illiterate. They know enough about computers to turn them on and play their game, but because they play for so many hours they don't do anything else on the computer. Basically you get a nation of computer illiterate users, who use Windows because they don't know any better. Most probably don't even know what Firefox or Chrome are.

marcosdumay 13y ago
I play (the old) Starcraft quite well on Linux.

eric5544 13y ago

"But the back-and-forth was technologically complicated, and it came with a catch: It required a piece of additional software, or “plugin,” known as ActiveX — which is also made by Microsoft and worked in tandem only with Internet Explorer." That phrasing made me cringe and shows the lack of technical understanding of the author of this article. ActiveX is a technology, not a piece of software or a plugin in itself.

arunc 13y ago