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The flaw used by panpipes has existed unnoticed for over a decade. If attackers were indeed actively looking for flaws all along, did they miss this one? If nobody was ever looking for any flaws, could there be more exploitable flaws lurking?

The rest of the article is good fun, but this passage is a brain fart. There are millions of lines of source code in any modern operating system. Exploits don't sprout overnight like mana from heaven. The most useful skill for divining exploits is to notice the existence of edge cases in how various subsystems interact with one another. There is also the important case where "chance favors the prepared mind". This is where something funny happens as a result of an honest mistake, then the "prepared mind" notices (and pursues) the chance event's darker implications.

Serious bugs that lurk for decades are hardly unknown. The ASN.1 bug springs to mind. It's hard to image a bug more widely deployed that escaped detection for such a long time. The question here is why, for such a long time, this simple flaw evaded interactions with dark energy. It's for precisely the same reason that experts rarely make the best testers. There are certain kinds of elementary programming mistakes that the "prepared mind" will habitually avoid. This distribution has a slim tail. If the minions of evil fail to stumble into any telltale clues after five years, chances are good it will remain hidden for a long time yet.

This is in fact the same mistake that Kurweil makes in predicting the imminent singularity: that intellectual power is a fully ordered function, based on the premise that a really smart person can achieve any interesting result that any person much less smart can achieve. To put this in perspective, consider the recently discovered AKS primality test. This is what AKS achieved by some clever tricks using concepts of undergraduate algebra and a 15-year old theorem.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1917/19171290.htm

Undergraduate concepts in algebra exploited to achieve mathematical immortality. That ought to frame a tiny, unnoticed flaw in OS/X.

I was harsh I know, because quite honestly, your comment was far one-sided, and did not seem to be based upon any facts or research.

And I find it rather difficult to understand the generally held belief that a poor country should focus only on basic necessities, healthcare, et al.

I am not trying to convince you of the benefits of the programme, but I can certainly point out few things:
Space program has always been at the heart of India's belief of a progressive nation. My earliest memories of any pride are related to, now famously covered, cryogenic technology (and the pains that India went through) to acquire it, after USA strong-armed Russia into NOT selling it to India. Read here and here for the contextual info on this.

We are a large country, both in size and population, and we have learnt the hard way that there has to be an all-round balance to achieve any growth. India invested heavily in education (you would be astonished how subsidized fees are), yet faced the biggest challenge during 80s - brain drain, losing a large majority of the workers that it invested in. Again, you can either google for "India brain drain" or read this for some info

Mission to moon, as I see it, will be a step towards self-dependence, and then revenue benefits by providing services. The current Indian president, is a rocket scientist himself, with an eye for acquiring core technologies and services (including launch vehicles) to the rest of the world (as far as I remember, one such satellite launch vehicle has already been used by Israel).

Finally, I believe you are confusing health-care with poverty. Sure we have a large pool of people living below the poverty line - people who barely feed themselves, however, public healthcare is free-for-all? Including a large number of medicines (or are subsidized when not free). However crass it sounds, there are larger figures of people dying from hunger (say during famine), than diseases

Taken from a comment further down:

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1809/18090140.htm

..rather interesting to see the most highly-rated comments on /. are those who deride the Indian space programme and yelp about the poverty and the living conditions, and expound the wealth of their knowledge about how this 88 mil could be used towards creating more hospitals and so on.

How many of you know about India's space programmes though?

Did you know that India has been working on space programmes since the 60's?

Or that it had a comprehensive space progamme, that included a satellite system, a remote sensing satellite system, polar satellite launch vehicle and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle ?

Or that when United States arm-twisted Russia in April 1992 and July 1993 not to sell the cryogenic technology know-how to India.

Or that India's cryogenic engine came of age on April 18, 2001 when India bustled into the exclusive GSL club?

Lucky bastard. This guy only got 1/10th of that.

(25000 rupees = 540 bucks)

Agree 100% with him there. For some reason US corporations take it for granted that all countries/entities everywhere exist merely to pander to their interests. To this end, they are fucking not only with the citizens of the US, but with people everywhere.

The Patent on Basmati rice (a US corporation obtained a patent on Basmati Rice, which's been grown in India for thousands of years), and even the war on Iraq (the Halliburton/Cheney/Iraq_Reconstruction_contract connection) are just a couple of examples of what they're up to.

More to the point, is there anyone, ANYONE at all who thinks this is a good idea besides the peeps at the top who stand to get more money?

Not even all the people at the top agree with this. In particular, Ted Turner (founder of Turner Broadcasting) and Barry Diller (the former head of Paramount and Universal) have stated publicly that media consolidation is unwise.

An interesting article on Ted Turner and media consolidation can be found here: "The media is too concentrated... Too few people control too much."

Most fatalities from coal are not from power-plant accidents but from mining. Mining accidents mostly kill miners (who cares about them?), but also can kill many people who live near the mine. The 1972 flood at the Buffalo Creek Coal Mine in West Virginia killed 125 people living nearby, injured over 1000, and completely destroyed 500 homes.

Worldwide, tens of thousands of deaths per year occur from coal-mining accidents, and that doesn't count slow deaths from black-lung and other chronic conditions that afflict miners. In India, the death rate is equivalent to one Bhopal per month. In China, around 5000 people per year are killed in coal mining accidents.

Compare all this to the estimated 2500 deaths due to Chernobyl.

Just because an astrophysics expert is not an expert on biological contamination does not mean that appropriate measures were not taken to eliminate this possibility. Here is an
article I found using a simple Google search that talks about the techniques that were going to be used. Research trying to prove our cosmic ancestry is nothing new and the experimental preparations done achieve high levels of microbial sterility.

(disclaimer: I'm an Indian)

About 10 years back while I was still in Engineering college we had a great "scandal" about Russia being arm twisted by the USA to not provide India with cryogenic rocket engine technology to launch remote sensing satellites. It was feared that India would develop missile technology and perhaps ICBMs.

So the problem is this. No engine. No rocket. No satelite aka no space program. And on top of that no Crays to model simulations etc. The man who said "screw this" was Dr. Kalam. The man that threw caution to wind and aligned the bureaucratic/lazy govt agencies to do this.

- Develop an indigenous super computer

- Develop a liquid fuel rocket

- Put a satelite in orbit

Some years later CDAC developed PARAM supercomputer followed by ANUPAM. These inexpensive machines were put to task to solve whole bunch of vibration related problems that used to send test rockets crashing into Bay of Bengal. Quote from a news item "Likewise, the PSLV too failed on its first ever launch on September 20, 1993. The then ISRO chairman, Dr U R Rao, said this was because of a software error in the pitch control loop of the on-board guidance and control processor." There were still more problems with the re-entry stage etc.

The supercomputers enabled some new materials research and first success was almost 10 years later
PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle). India then proceeded to deploy remote sensing satellites in orbit without depending on the French Ariane program at 1/7th the cost.

Out of this came the four Indian missiles long-range Agni (fire), medium range Akash (sky), surface-to-surface Prithvi (earth) and anti-tank Nag (cobra) and the now infamous nukes.

The satellite deployment capability bothers EU and Australia because it is clearly the loss of some "easy money". India has not yet offered satellite launching services, but for those prices even Jamaica can put a bird in the sky. At the moment ISRO toils at the GSLV (Geo Synchronous Launch Vehicle). So far they have not had any success.

This new announcement of moon shot is exciting and a cause of concern. While India has put enough weather satellites it still is ransomed by abnormal weather patterns drought, floods et al Nonetheless it's a matter of pride or rather amazement for me to witness any govt dept doing anything straight over there. Dr. Kalam is now the president of India. President of India is as we call a ceremonious office quite like the Queen of England. So I am sure the Hindu fanatic party leading the govt now is not any progressive but I am optimistic that a secular govt will be elected soon and our rocket man is in the right place trying to crack a tougher cookie. Maybe it's time for the land of zero, decimal and exponent to earn some Karma.

Hmmmm... what you say sounds reasonable. I have googled around quite a bit and can't verify any of it, although I do find recent articles such as this one that seem to say differently. Also, remember when the US was in an uproar not too long ago about China stealing our secrets and developing a neutron bomb? I'm sure it's obvious I'm no expert, nor even a very well informed laymen, so if you have any information to back up what you or the AC says I am interested in reading it. Thanks.