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Consumer Reports Creates Viruses to Test Software
Maximum Prophet writes to mention an MSNBC article about a Consumer Reports plan to test anti-virus software by creating viruses. Security companies are objecting, on the grounds that it's a generally accepted practice not to create viruses for any reason. From the article: "Consumer Reports didn't create thousands of new viruses from scratch. Rather, it took a handful of existing viruses and created hundreds of slight variants, changing the malicious programs just enough to evade detection by an antivirus program with a list of known threats. That's a common trick in the virus writing world; it's standard for a successful virus to inspire dozens of variants. "
1.) Subscribers don't get to see exactly when an article will be posted, just that one is coming in "the mysterious future." Getting FP is no harder as a non-subscriber than it is as a subscriber.
The RSS feed available to a subscriber includes the time that a "mysterious future" article will be posted. Replying is possible one minute after that. It is much easier to get FP as a subscriber.
I wish I still had mod points, that is the funniest thing I've read today!
It's basically the same thing I read last month. And the month before that. Etc. Seriously, it's pretty much redundant, but okay, mod it up to say +2 or 3 Funny and move on. But +5 Insightful? Where was the insight? It was one line of sarcastic humor. Why does pretty much every on-topic first post immediately get modded up to +5?!?
And your post at +3 Informative? Is it really of notable informativeness to all of us that one Slashdotter found something he thought was the funniest thing he'd read so far today? Slashdot may as well cancel the moderation system -- it's virtually useless. Hardly anybody can be troubled to actually realize there are words (ooh!) in the mod categories (wa?). This isn't Digg ("bury this" vs. "digg this"), and I don't want it to become one.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
They exist, sure. There's generally not as many holes in other OSes as in Windows, and the holes in other OSes tend to open the system up to less abuse. The number of systems in the installed base makes no difference in either of these metrics, no matter what MS FUD you've heard.
MS is doing better, and certain Linux distros have a long way to go. Rather than hating people over their choice of OS, maybe we should all hope for the day when even the worst OS is difficult to umo umopap!sdn and rightside up. Then maybe people will focus more on Rails or wireless drivers or something as an attack vector instead.