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Missing Open Source Security Tools?
Kinetic writes "There are many great open source security tools out there, Nmap, Nessus, and DSniff, just to name a few. However, with the world of security constantly changing, this begs the question, what open source security tools are missing? What commercial security tools have no viable open source alternatives? When securing/testing/exploring networks (home or enterprise), what security tools/applications/functionality are lacking (or non-existent) in the open source world?"
does anyone remember the name of that utility that will show you what a user is browsing in a new netscape browser window? i thought it was part of dsniff but I think I'm wrong. anyone know what I'm talking about?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
The original post makes use of the phrase "begs the question". This does not mean "to wonder" or "leads me to think" or to "rhetorically enquire" or anything like that. It's plain and simple - it means to take something as given (similar to the concept of conditional probability). For example, you could say something like:
"Begging the question that it's raining tomorrow, would you like to go the cinema?".
In this example, you are asking the person to whom you are speaking to consider the question as if it will be raining tomorrow. You are asking them to ignore the question of whether it will rain, and consider their response assuming it WILL rain. You could ask this too:
"If it rains tomorrow, would you like to go to the cinema?".
You might consider me as a pedant - but you would be wrong (look up pedant). I would argue I am not being pedantic. I am not correcting a trivial mistake or trying to get one-up on the original poster - I am trying to correct an obvious and serious mistake. This is not pedantry, it is sharing knowledge in the hope of improving the use of such language for the benefit of everyone.
Real students of linguistics and languages do not take issues with things like this, only elitists and grammar Nazis do.
The statement "Languages evolve, but that fact is too often used as a cop-out for being too lazy to learn correct use of a language." is utterly nonsensical, because there *is* no correct use of a language. A language is a construct to serve the people, and as people change, so must the language. Languages evolve over time, and should be treated more like a living organism than a rulebook. The only "correct use of a language", by definition, is the way the majority of the populace is using it. In this case, the majority of the populace uses "begs the question" in this sense, so it is perfectly valid, and is not any less so than any other commonly used phrase.