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http://www.computerworld.com/comments/node/9179224#comment-588733

That comment there is insightful. This has nothing to do with passwords, it has to do with SSO keys. I was confused originally because OpenID says nothing about how systems store or verify passwords, so it wouldn't make sense to check in that manner.

Why, in this day and age, are SCADA units still accessible from the public InterTUBES ?

Slammer worm crashed Ohio nuke plant net

Software failure cited in August blackout investigation

Did Blaster worm play a role in August 14 blackout?

"Corporations will claim they set up security in order to save on taxes" - by Monkeedude1212 (1560403) on Monday July 12, @05:45PM (#32879486)

That's when jobs for AUDITORS come into play: In order to get the tax break bennies, they'll have to pass an audit, & that means job creation (hopefully) for all of your basic "techie-security" types that have been put out of jobs by this recession... & the ONLY WAY OUT OF THIS RECESSION IS TO CREATE DECENT PAYING LONG-TERM JOBS "for the masses" (because once you get folks spending? They're helping Peter pay Paul, who pays (insert name here)" & eventually, this comes back to YOU also).

Tools that make THIS part of the job easier?

There's automated good tools for it, like CIS Tool -> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9018362/CIS_tool_aims_to_help_federal_agencies_check_Windows_security_settings or Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1 -> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=f32921af-9dbe-4dce-889e-ecf997eb18e9&displaylang=en (for starters, @ least, for analyzing SERVERS & WORKSTATIONS - for coding practices? You need solid DBA's & coders!).

APK

P.S.=> Some companies are REAL PRICKS about this though... How do I know this? Ok:

Back in 2006, I worked for a pretty major self-insurer. I pointed out they had security issues, because I was hired to secure their code (VB.NET/ASP.NET done via Visual Studio 2005, talking to SQLServer 2005), which was all "fine & good", except their end-node points like printers & PC Workstations weren't fully secured (to the point where I found out the THEN network administrator/CIO had setup Trend Micro AntiVirus SO WRONG, it was 7++ months OUT OF DATE & not updating on workstations etc.), & more in their network itself that needed shoring up as well!

So, what happened?

Heh, they FIRED me (after I delivered 7 working programs over a 10 month period no less)... I could not believe it. Heh, they even tried to accuse me of "hacking their network" & I did NO SUCH DAMN THING (this really, REALLY pissed me off in fact). However, I pointed out, verbally to the CIO in fact, just how/where/when/why how it MIGHT happen though, but, that's NOT 'hacking/cracking' their network... far from it!

This is "how it goes" when you try to do "the right thing" & it's just pointing out that the personnel in place are either 1.) NOT DOING THEIR JOB or 2.) INCOMPETENT (take your pick)... you get "smoked" for it!

I was told "pick your battles more wisely" & I just said "this is NOT a 'battle', it's pointing out the other 1/2 of what you hired me on for, which goes BEYOND just coding & ensuring app use Stored Procedures + managed code etc.". In the end it was their loss, and the 2 guys that fired me?

They MUST have gotten "busted" for this, because they were "GONE WITH THE DAWN" shortly after I was unjustly terminated... serves those 2 bastards right, imo! apk

we all know that setting arbitrary and somewhat lower limits turns you into the most quoted man in history (640k should be enough for everyone....)

You do realize the 640K limit was not "arbitrary", right? It was a limitation of addressable space of the pre-386 Intel processors. And in fact, I'll just take this opportunity to again point out the dubious nature of this quote.

Yeah, market share, Android sales are up 24% over what they were last year. In the last 3 years, Acer sale increased almost 40% pushing Apple down to 5th.

We can through out statistics all day long, bottom line, Apples current rate of growth in the last 5 years in the PC market is about close to 1% a year and even SHRUNK last year while Acer growth was 50%. OMG 50%! Of course YOU assume that since Dell went down, those people went to Apple, sorry, statistically, they went to Acer.
Statistics are like bikinis, what they reveal is suggestive, what they hide is critical.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135603/Analysts_pull_Mac_sales_numbers_out_of_a_hat.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/07/15/idc.prelim.q2.2009/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/acer-eclipsed-dell-and-apple/

We have been hearing for 10 years how awesome Apple is and how much inroads they are making into the home computing market but they only have 8% total after 10 years. 10 years is a LOOOONG time in the computer industry and going from 2-8 in 10 years is not a fast paced sprintto the finish by any stretch of the imagination and as glorified as you seem to think.

By "HIPAA Constraints" I assume you mean the privacy rule. I would think that this rule would prevent you from using sneakernet to transmit files. Unless you're encrypting your portable disks, and somehow it doesn't sound like you are.

Fun reading:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141172/Health_Net_says_1.5M_medical_records_lost_in_data_breach

You would be surprised at how outdated parts of HIPAA are (from the day they were written). And what things they fail to cover. Heck, there are sections that indicate the requirement for data encryption for certain uses/storage/etc, but that's about the extent. ANY encryption will do to pass muster. A simple subsitution key would pass the required criteria. Then there are sections that are very specific in specifying methods that are useless... while others at least seem to have been thought out. There are sections that either were never written or not included in the final that should have been as well.

It really seems like they hired no one of any security knowledge to write it. Oh, btw, I deal with this stuff for various apps we write... I was appalled at some of it...

By "HIPAA Constraints" I assume you mean the privacy rule. I would think that this rule would prevent you from using sneakernet to transmit files. Unless you're encrypting your portable disks, and somehow it doesn't sound like you are.

Fun reading:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141172/Health_Net_says_1.5M_medical_records_lost_in_data_breach

Since Apple makes $208 from every $500 iPad, you wouldn't need to cut the profit margin as much as you might think.

Much to my surprise, there has been a lot of press coverage about the iOS 4 in the enterprise:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177830/iPhone_4_iOS_4_offer_deeper_enterprise_support

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/062110-five-ways-apples-ios-4.html

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/062110-iphone-ios4-apis-management.html

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/07/iphone-os-4-0-now-ios-is-here/

You can get your own Computer World site ;)

Though it is odd that they consider themselves "the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide" but only mention in a few places that this was "a random sample of their U.S.-based full- and part-time IT staffs."

You can get your own Computer World site ;)

Though it is odd that they consider themselves "the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide" but only mention in a few places that this was "a random sample of their U.S.-based full- and part-time IT staffs."

they are computers with massively reduced user freedom

I think it's an appliance in the same way that my PS3 is an appliance. There is a computer under the covers and the device is quite general purpose, but in the end its an appliance because I don't have the freedom to tinker.

I think "computer with massively reduced user freedom" could be part of a decent definition of appliance.

I am getting sick of the game console comparisons. People are NOT replacing real computers with gaming consoles, but there's an increasing push(especially by Apple fanboys) that the iDevices are the future of computing.

Read about how a 'network security expert' replaced this laptop with an iPad --> http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1693064&cid=32641740

Read these articles about how the iPad is supposed to take over computing and make desktops and laptop obsolete:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175600/The_iPad_is_the_future_for_home_computing
http://gizmodo.com/5506692/ipad-is-the-future
http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/ipad-future/
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad/

Gaming consoles were never considered the future of computing, that's why they don't represent a threat to freedom. This is the reason that people are justifiably upset about Apple's restrictions.

Really? Again with the "desktop dead" speech? Haven't I heard this in 2006, 2007 and 2009? Does this guy really need to redo the same article we've been hearing for 4 years?

Author claims 2009 was the first year laptop sales surpassed desktop, but they were saying the same thing in 2008 and 2009.

The "desktop dead" story is dead, stop beating a dead horse.

Where have the devs denied there are memory leaks?

Prime example - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9046561/Fix_Firefox_s_memory_problems_says_Mozilla_director.
Basically they said its not a leak, it just uses memory intensively after a while.

Mozilla corporation seems to be pretty badly run. They solicited donations for the NYT ad(some of my poor college friends scraped together money for it) while overpaying the CEO($500K per year)! The management was supposed to find different ways of getting funding but Mozilla is still dependent totally on Google(which competes with it's own rival browser). Mozilla made $66 million in revenue just in 2006 while development was largely done by unpaid volunteers.

In the meantime, Firefox was quite bloated, crash prone and lost the speed race to Chrome, Thunderbird stagnated and nothing really innovative or useful came out of Mozilla labs. Ubuntu will probably switch to Chromium and Firefox will start losing search revenue. . Probably the only thing going for Firefox are extensions(Chrome supports extensions now) and proper Adblock. Things are so bad that the CEO is planning to step down

Sad to see one of the epitomes of FOSS go down in flames like this.

Maybe something like this?

Slashdot already disscused this awhile back.

All I know is that storage experts almost always praise tape, disk drives, then optical media in that order and quote the lifetime of organic dye based optical media being 2 to 5 years.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/107607/Storage_expert_warns_of_short_life_span_for_burned_CDs

I have used disks that are still good 10 years later, and some that lasted maybe a year (cheap, get what you pay for stuff) and but manufacturers usually don't use longevity as a price point, so it can be hard to tell what you're getting unless you just shell out money for it.

And the price of something is not a good metric for something else if that is the only metric you can effectively use.

Either way if all magnetic storage is gone tomorrow, we're pretty screwed anyway.

You got that right! And what really pisses me off to no end is when CEO's, many who are also PhDs, say that they have to go offshore because they can't get "qualified" Americans. Andy Groves said that when he moved a bunch of R&D jobs to India (I'm trying to find a cite but F'n A, it's amazing how fast things get buried on the internet!).

Actually, 74% of Linux was written by people with a profit motive. It's not a volunteer effort, it's the realization that there are reasons for writing software that do not involve directly making money from it.

"Google can't have its cake and eat it, too," said Robert Hansen, the CEO of SecTheory .. Hansen, who acknowledged that he has worked for Microsoft as a security consultant on several projects, weighed in again. "The whole thing rubbed me the wrong way," he said.

"Ormandy admitted that he reported the vulnerability to Microsoft only five days ago -- on Saturday, June 5" in
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177948/Google_researcher_gives_Microsoft_5_days_to_fix_XP_zero_day_bug

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

Strange a small small number?
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9117159/Teradata_creates_elite_club_for_petabyte_plus_data_warehouse_customers
"eBay, with 5 petabytes of data; Wal-Mart Stores, which has 2.5 petabytes; Bank of America, which is storing 1.5 petabytes; Dell, which has a 1 petabyte data warehouse; and a final bank, with a 1.4 petabyte data"
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20100322.aspx
talks of 20 petabytes for one small system?
Anyone have any insights into why/how the net would be sorted for Google over x databases over a short time?

For what it's worth Google claims that patent is totally unrelated and they're also trying to find someone they can pin this on so their multinational company doesn't take any of the heat. Remember, it's just one engineer behind this and once we find Scapegoaty McSeverancePackage this can all be put behind us and you can rest assured that Google is back to Do No Evil status. Ha.

They were using both SSID and MAC addresses collected from street view to enhance their location services.

So, when I gave my old WiFi router to a friend on the other side of town, it messed with their accuracy a bit then? I think they've driven by my house about once in the past 4 years as far as I can tell from the StreetView photos.

They were using both SSID and MAC addresses collected from street view to enhance their location services.

It seems that the OS will be based on ubuntu:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/15127/ubuntus_canonical_and_google_partner_to_create_chrome

Tell me... what IDE runs on ChromeOS? Where's the Emacs for Android? When I see that, we'll talk. Until then, I don't think that Google's going to be able to migrate it's most vital employees (engineers) to "eat their own dogfood." Might be interesting to migrate support staff, but that's not where the heart of Google is.

Well.... since ChromeOS is built on Ubuntu I'll bet that anything that runs on Ubuntu should run on ChromeOS.

No, it won't, at least not if it has a GUI or relies on X.org. ChromeOS does not use X but rather a custom windowing system that Google has developed in-house. I don't think it's even based on DirectFB or anything remotely familiar.

Tell me... what IDE runs on ChromeOS? Where's the Emacs for Android? When I see that, we'll talk. Until then, I don't think that Google's going to be able to migrate it's most vital employees (engineers) to "eat their own dogfood." Might be interesting to migrate support staff, but that's not where the heart of Google is.

Well.... since ChromeOS is built on Ubuntu I'll bet that anything that runs on Ubuntu should run on ChromeOS.

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

"I don't think that they have any idea how this oil is predicted to move through the marshes and the nearshore zone," said Luettich.

I understand that "nearshore" zones may be hard to predict: I wonder if that map (see white line) shows how close to shore they can predict...

Also this may be used as a forecast model, but to me it seems like measuring and predicting a hurricane while ignoring storm surge...but I am not going to be critical with little knowledge on what data was available to the programmers.

Pst... iPhone's are the worst for security.

Am I? Are you going based on experience?

Because if you are, you're wrong. I'm not talking about current-generation Atoms; I'm talking about this: New Intel Atom smashes ARM - Moorestown SoC unvieled.

"Paying attention" is important; it helps you participate in the conversation at hand, not one entirely different.

They should worry about international market.

Google is now facing criminal investigation in Germany. Collecting that kind of data is against the law there, as is

Germany's privacy laws generally restrict photographs of people and property without a person's consent, except in very public situations, such as a sporting event.

There has also been investigations in Sweden, Finland and UK about this and they will decide later if it requires criminal charges. It's good that Germany is doing that already, as it's clearly violating privacy and European laws.

Of course development has slowed - it has achieved the goal most users/developers have wanted for it: To be a stable, fairly secure platform that allows a decent plugin model, and works consistently between platforms.

What? Where did you get that from?

From Wikipedia:

The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite.

Intended to combat feature creep. It was designed to be a lightweight standalone browser. See any mention in there about a decent extension model (plugins aren't the same as extensions BTW; Flash is a plugin, Adblock is an extension)?

From Computer World in Sept. 2002, the week Phoenix 0.1 was released:

The Mozilla development project, Mozilla.org, this week released Phoenix 0.1, a speedier version of its open-source Web browser.
The Phoenix browser is designed to improve upon Mozilla 1.1, released in August, with additional features such as a new design, customizable tool bar and improved bookmark manager...

The Phoenix browser, which uses a large amount of the Mozilla code, is "a lean and fast browser" that loads in about half the time of Mozilla 1.1, Mozilla.org said.

Again, emphasis is on performance. The line in that article talking about the plugin management for version 0.2 is referring to classical plugins, not Firefox extensions. Extensions were not added to Firefox until version 2.0. Extensions were never an original design goal. I don't have a source for this, but I actually remember downloading Phoenix 0.1. It was distributed as a single zip file without an installer, you just unzipped it and ran the executable. What people were impressed with for that release were the disk size of the files, the startup speed, and the memory footprint. All performance metrics.

It's fine if you want to defend Firefox, but there's no reason to try to rewrite history by saying the design goals for Firefox were different than what they actually were. It's a fact that the current version of Firefox does not live up to many of the ideals that the designers of Phoenix started with. It's also a fact that the current version includes several useful things that were not part of the original goals. Again, there's no reason to rewrite history. People like to defend Firefox because of its extensions, but the fact is that extensions were never part of the plan, speed and performance were the goals. The extension model was added because the core browser lacked many features that could not be included and still meet the performance goals. So, now we have an extension model and worse performance. That's the way it goes.

And yes, I remember this happening. I remember downloading and using Phoenix, I remember the name change to Firebird and then to Firefox, and the initial release in 2004, 2 years after Phoenix started. The release of Firefox 1.0 was a major event in the tech world, they even ran full-page ads for it in the New York Times funded by donations (you got your name listed in the ad, I was there). I remember using the 1.x line, I remember when the extension system was announced for 2.0 and how much it excited everyone, 2 years after the release of 1.0. I remember continually seeing the performance of the browser decline. That hasn't really stopped, even the IE9 preview is now faster at Javascript than Firefox 3.7. So the conclusion holds, the original design goals of Firefox have been neglected or ignored in part, and some of them have

You say that like Apple's still working on the Macintosh.

Apple quietly boosts MacBook speed, battery life.

If the iPad had been more like the Modbook Pro I may of been in line to get one. Apple should have partnered with, or bought, Axiotron and offered the Modbook itself.

Falcon

If devices like iPad are the future of computing, then I guess we can kiss a lot of languages goodbye unless they come from Cupertino and are blessed by Jobs, since even developers don't like jailbreaking(it's illegal according to Apple).

Ah, a slippery slope argument. The fact is that Apple does NOT have a monopoly of the market, and people who want to develop in some other language has got plenty of choices to do so. And there's not even the merest hint of a suggestion that Apple is going to be the monopoly vendor of computing devices.

What about this scary scenario, Both Apple and MS hold ~50% of the market(mobile or otherwise), and hence are not a monopoly and can trample on developer's rights. Don't tell me that's unlikely, just look at Windows Phone 7 Series.

The iPhone is (one of?) the first general computing devices to ban other languages, and others are learning from their success.

Also, you don't need Apple to be a monopoly, just a big player is enough to affect software development.

What about articles such as:

http://gizmodo.com/5506692/ipad-is-the-future

http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad/

http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175600/The_iPad_is_the_future_for_home_computing

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/02/ipad-the-destroyer-19-things-it-will-kill/

Surely they are more than a merest hint of a suggestion?

You can write shitty apps in ObjC and people do it all the time. The App store is chock full of shitty apps like Fart apps.

There are a lot of shitty apps, and a lot of excellent apps. As I said, if Flash and their ilk were allowed there would be MORE shitty apps. It's a favour to consumers to keep the signal to noise ratio on the App Store as high as possible, and not allowing Flash apps helps that ratio.

So, lets kill a ton of good Flash Apps and content on the Web just because there will be some more shitty apps to sift and search through? And here I thought storage, bandwidth and power of servers on the internet was dirt cheap for a company wallowing in cash like Apple.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9176439/Social_networking_boosts_legal_regulatory_compliance_headaches?taxonomyName=Financial+Services&taxonomyId=130

^that looks to me more like wondering about a "what if?" hypothetical scenario, not something which actually takes the blame from Windows just yet...

The article states "These are all reasonable assumptions based on real-world attacks that have been going on for some time now. Attackers have been targeting home networking equipment for a couple of years, using a combination of vulnerabilities in the firmware and hardware to get control of home users' outbound Internet traffic". Links within the original blog post discuss botnets that are already attacking Linux-based routers

There's nothing "hypothetical" about this threat.

If an open source program looks exactly like what a fortune 500 company provides, like OpenOffice.org, then it's patent infringement. If it looks substantially different, as seen with GIMP/Photoshop then it's unprofessional. Common sense, people!

In all seriousness though, GIMP really is professional for people who take the time to learn a different program, it's more than good enough for most people's needs, and it's well worth the price. Instead, everyone just runs off to buy the $700 brand-name product they just have to have for work.

Google quietly released a new beta version of its Chrome browser, which not only blows its rivals out of the water as far as performance is concerned

Yeah, if you leave out Opera. However, if you do include Opera in the test it beats even Chrome 5.

First benchmarks show that the new beta is about 10% faster than the previous beta in the SunSpider and V8 benchmark, and about 30% faster than Chrome 4, which remains the fastest Javascript browser available today.

No, again, that is Opera.

Google has a history of fighting to protect your private data.

What the hell? No, they don't. They have a history of fighting to index all of your private data for their advertising platform, and CEO Eric Schmidt said people who want privacy have something to hide.

Here's hoping they've also fixed some of the inconsistencies in the ribbon as well - it's incredibly frustrating that you can adjust some formatting in one application but not in another - you'd think they share the same codebase. Are they just trying to protect us from having too much control over our documents?!

Does it? http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9127978/Apple_iPhone_Jailbreak_hack_violates_the_law

Insightful? Regardless of how you actually meant that and what you were attacking, I'll take the bait as though you were attacking Linux and/or Linux on iPads specifically.

I doubt Apple really wanted the iPad to be jailbroken in less than a day after release, nor do I think Apple expects the average computer user to jailbreak it even if certain individuals do figure out how to.

If you want Linux pre-installed on an iPad-like, or really simply a touch-screen computer, then you shouldn't be paying for some hardware and software combination and trying to jailbreak and unlock it and whatnot, you should be instead buying one with Linux pre-installed or a truly open computer which allows you to install whatever you want i.e. barebones.

If you foolishly actually expected to be able to easily install Linux or whatever you wanted to on an iPad, then you need to understand the difference between a "normal computer" i.e. "PC", and an "appliance". The difference is non-standardization at some point, locking you out on purpose. The iPad could function like a normal computer, the BIOS could look for and allow booting from a different device in order to install a new operating system like normal computers, but it has been artificially barred from doing so. The solution is to buy and support open devices which do give you this freedom, because having to install custom-tailored images to devices once, and if, you can get them unlocked is B.S.. Now, if part of the reason was due to having small embedded memory chips in the past, there's no excuse now days for that when you have tiny microSD cards with 16GBs on them, and there never was much of an excuse with Linux any way since you can have functional Linux environments (kernel and shell) as small as a few MBs, and fully graphical X environments for only what, 100 MBs? 50?

So your basically saying, that because they don't publish how can they be found for their crimes? I can see the validity there but what if the information is the harm?

The proposed filter of course had no baring on this, but just like we can't smuggle drugs into the country being able to transfer illegally obtained data should be stopped.

I go back to the argument that this filter had very little to do with porn, i think that was the easy "sell" but i believe it had more to do with things like the following

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/22/germany-china-industrial-espionage
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9144221/Google_attack_part_of_widespread_spying_effort

and my favorite

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8579276.stm

What I'm really afraid of is say the Chinese govt found to be involved with these efforts, Imagine irrefutable proof that the Chinese Govt was found funding hacking groups to aid in stealing corporate data for their own gain? We are literally talking about WW3 perhaps the end of the world as we know it.

I know that you can label it as a mad max like 2012 plant-x notion, but a govt being caught with their hand in the cookie jar is an act of War.

Pretty interesting interview with one of the jury members, who appears to understand the issues. Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict

The juror lays out the legal issues pretty effectively, and makes a compelling case for conviction on those issues, while also discussing the incompetence of the city's IT department. Apparently he does not believe in jury nullification.

Personaly I disagree with the outcome on the basis that I think the City of San Francisco illegitimately used its combined capabilities as employer, and owner of a court system and police force to escalate a civil employment matter into a criminal case, and then jailed a man for 2 years pre-trial on a laughable pretext. But I appreciate this juror's willingness to discuss the issues.

The only reason PCs became commodity items is because Phoenix did a clean-room rewrite of the IBM PC BIOS. If someone wants to do the same for MacOS, Apple can't stop them (but it's probably not being done because it's not economically feasible).

Perhaps it would be economically feasible if it wasn't for the lawyers' fees.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9110179/Apple_sues_Mac_clone_maker_Psystar

Computerworld reports that McAfee has reacted to user complaints by shutting down their support forum. The forum seems to be back up now. That was an extremely dumb move to pull after the story was already in the New York Times, Business Week, and on TV.

Many frantic users in the forum. The big losers are the enterprise users who bought into McAfee's premium services, with automatic corporate-wide updating. There's no fully automatic, reliable fix yet for systems already damaged. In some cases, it's apparently necessary to bring in a new copy of "svchost.exe"; the one in quarantine is bad.

This points up a major risk to US computer infrastructure. Any program with remote update is potentially capable of taking down vast numbers of systems. Ones like McAfee or Windows Update, which deploy updates to all targets simultaneously, can cause widespread damage quickly. Remote updating by vendors may need to be regulated, as a public policy issue.