Looking at a couple maps of North Korea, there are no regions 300 km away from water or foreign territory.
The North Korean SAM network includes S-200 which have an operational range of 300km. Plus, the U.S. Airforce can't fly over China, so that border is safe from this defense. Put the ICBM launch sites there, and to get within 300km you would have to fly a 747 less than 100km off the North Korean coast, where it would be extremely vulnerable. Also remember that the accuracy of the weapon decreases with distance: even if it can hit a target at 300km, the question is, what proportion of launches could it hit from a far distance in a real world war scenario? How are you going to launch them and get them in to position in time to hit a missile launch? Are you going to fly these 747s 24/7 around the North Korean coastline?
600 km would allow intercept for most of the country from South Korea.
The Wikipedia article says the 600km range is for liquid fueled missiles, the recent NK missiles appear to be solid fueled.
Yes, exactly. MS service terms allow them to update the service with new features like video streaming, content sharing. If you mark a file as public they can do what they want with it.
If Google decided to come out with a new service where they allowed you to search anyones documents on their site, you've already agreed to it.
I don't think so - this would be a violation of their privacy policy, which forms part of the terms of service: "We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply: With your consent..." In your example, a court would almost certainly rule that sharing your private documents without your consent is a violation of the contract.
With Microsoft, you have not.
Actually, the Microsoft terms explicitly state that they can disclose your personal information, including private emails etc.: "As part of the service, we may also automatically upload information about your computer, your use of the service, and service performance... In particular, we may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications"
Except for material we may license to you, Apple does not claim ownership of the materials and/or Content you submit or make available on the Service. However, by submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service that are accessible by the public or other users with whom you consent to share such Content, you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you.
We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).
Skydrive:
If you share content in public areas of the service or in shared areas available to others you've chosen, then you agree that anyone you've shared content with may use that content. When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don't want others to have those rights, don't use the service to share your content.
You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.
Google Drive
You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
I have bolded the relevant bit that the biased summary failed to include. It is exactly the same as the Microsoft term above.
I meant elements as in the types of atoms, not as in the actual atoms. Model vs instances. There are a fixed number of types of elements, there can be many atoms of each element. Even when we "create a new element", it isn't actually new; new to Earth and to us perhaps, but new to the universe?
You're totally wrong there. There's loads of facts, but they're little facts. "I saw *this* reading on *that* instrument at *this* time in *that* location."
That isn't a fact - it is just what you think happened. It is a hypothesis that you have that explains your current memory of past events. Another hypothesis would be that the world was created as is 5 seconds ago, and all of your memories of a time before then were fabricated. Unlikely, perhaps, but possible. Another hypothesis is that you are mentally ill, and had a visual hallucination. Unlikely, but not so unlikely, it does happen to thousands of people every day. Another hypothesis is that you were kidnapped by the CIA and had memories implanted, or that you are living in a Matrix-style virtual world where agents can manipulate not only your memories, but also the physical world around you.
In common usage the word "fact" means something that doesn't exist in science. "Fact: A thing that is indisputably the case" - but in science you can dispute anything, although people may not take you seriously.
You're missing the key property of gold: stability.
True, gold does not rust, or fade away, but, barring a complete collapse of modern society, neither should Bitcoin.
in it's natural form it's not pretty
But it has value because humans have considered gold to be beautiful and have used it to make pretty things for a long time.
How can there by any equivalency between these two as a vehicle of exchange?
How can there be any equivalency between US dollars and gold as a vehicle of exchange? And yet there is - US dollars are openly traded in every major economy.
Gold is an element. New elements can't be created. New currencies can. The number one problem with Bitcoin being used as a currency is that it is very easy for someone to create a similar competing currency that basically does the same thing. That devalues the currency in a way that gold can never be. Real currencies have value because they are issued by nation states, and used for trade within that state. It is difficult to create a new nation state, and therefore difficult to create a new national currency. But non-state currencies do have value if people agree to use them for trade, or if they represent some future return - corporate bonds have value, they can be bought and sold and exchanged for other goods, because they represent future value. In the same way, Bitcoin can represent future value, because you can sell it or trade it.
Bitcoin is obviously not as good as gold in many ways, but this does not mean it can't be as useful as a form of exchange. The major disadvantage in comparison to gold are that it isn't an element that is used to make pretty jewellery. Really, it should be compared to other currencies. There is an argument that currencies only have value because people are forced to use them, and therefore they represent the value of the people and all of the things that they have. This may not apply to Bitcoin, because nobody is forced to use it. But if people choose to use it, then what is the difference?
The patent system is against freedom of choice for consumers. It is the patent system that gives government the power to block products and remove consumer choice.
If it were truly a clean room implementation, they couldn't have possibly ended up with parts of Sun's Java in their code, even a single line.
Not true. There is at least one possible path, even with separate reverse-engineering and implementation teams: if the team writing the specification includes code as part of the specification, then the team doing the implementation from the spec can use that code. Code can form part of the specification, as long as it isn't "proprietary".
You keep talking about "facts" as if they exist. In science, there are no facts - there are hypotheses - models of the way the world works. All of these models are wrong to some degree, but the accepted model is the one with the lowest error when properly tested against the data. We have observed an increase in atmospheric co2. Our current models predict that this will cause an increase in the global mean temperature. To contradict this, it isn't enough to claim that "co2 does not cause global warming", you have to actually produce a better model, one that explains the observed data with a lower error. In particular, you need to account for the measured increase in atmospheric co2 - saying "humans didn't do it" is not enough - you have to come up with a better hypothesis, one that explains where the co2 is coming from. If you are going to claim that co2 isn't causing warming, then you need to explain what is causing the warming, and why co2 - a known greenhouse gas - isn't doing what it is supposed to do. You can't just say "I don't believe it" - you need to actually come up with a better hypothesis.
That is how science works.
Remember: "All models are wrong... some are useful" and "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Somehow linking that to humans, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a several-million-year-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, fossil records, ice-cores, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts).
We have heard a similar argument:
"Somehow linking that to lung cancer, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a hundreds-of-years-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, biopsies, lab experiments, tests, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts)."
This line of reasoning has been debunked over and over.
Can we study the same things in other departments without having a dedicated Computer Science niche to go with Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, etc.?
Engineering - where the semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream. Hello Oompa-Loompas of science.
At it's height it was never as bad as some of the windows viruses have been
Mac Malware Outbreak Is Bigger than 'Conficker'. Remember that OS X only has about 5% of global desktop market, 0.6 million desktops may not sound like much in comparison to Windows, but as a share of the Mac total it is significant: "Mac OS X is the number two desktop OS with 6.54 percent market share. Windows, on the other hand, accounts for 92.48 percent of the market. Based on market share, the Flashback Trojan botnet is equivalent to a Windows botnet of nearly 8.5 million PCs. That makes it an even larger threat than Conficker--just on a much smaller platform."
It's not true. It climbed to 600.000 infections, according to Kaspersky (anti-virus developper) and dropped to 30.000.
"We've been talking with them about the discrepancies in our numbers and theirs," said O Murchu in an interview Friday. "We now believe that their analysis is accurate, and that it explains the discrepancies."
"This server communicates with bots but doesn't close a TCP connection," wrote Dr. Web. "As [a] result, bots switch to the stand-by mode and wait for the server's reply and no longer respond to further commands. As a consequence, they do not communicate with other command centers, many of which have been registered by information security specialists [including Kaspersky and Symantec]. "This is the cause of controversial statistics," said Dr. Web.
Good point. The security researchers who identified some of the Android malware visited third party Android app stores and downloaded all of the apps so that they could build up a huge app corpus, which they could then scan (static analysis) for malware suggestive signatures. They stated that they couldn't do the same with the iPhone because Apple prohibits mass downloading of iPhone apps in order to build an iPhone app corpus. So the only people who can look for malware across the whole range of iPhone apps is Apple, and it seems unlikely that they would announce if they found any malware, when they can instead just silently remove it from the app store.
I don't think that is the reason that we hear more about Android malware, although it may be a factor. The barrier to entry of becoming an iOS developer is: buy a Mac (Intel Mac Mini will do), pay $99, sign up on web site. The barrier to entry of becoming an Android developer is: buy a PC (any will do), pay $25, sign up on web site. You could argue that the cost of a Mac Mini is prohibitive, or that hackers are less likely to own a Mac and begin hacking around on iOS in the first place, but for serious malware authors these are not significant barriers.
The real reasons that we hear more about Android malware:
1. Android users can enable installs of apps from non-official markets and random web sites. Many of the reported malware apps come from these kind of sites. But users have to explicitly do this, no phone ships with random web sites enabled as app stores. These same users, having enabled random app sources, then presumably don't bother to check the permissions that the app they install requests.
2. Android allows apps to send premium rate SMS messages and calls without an explicit popup. I personally think Google should probably kill this ability, but then I never call premium rate numbers. Blocking premium rate texts would kill the profit incentive for most malware. If this were an explicit, in your face, permission or setting (like the big warning for data roaming in settings!), then we wouldn't have seen any premium SMS fraud malware.
3. Apple marketing is happy for the media to push the "no iOS malware" angle in the same way that they did successfully with "no OS X viruses". It isn't strictly true, but people believe it anyway, and there is a huge class of users who are willing to pay more for the belief that there will be fewer problems in future. Malware that affects a few thousand people really isn't important in the big scheme of things, but it is something that marketing can use to try and differentiate iPhones in the eye of the consumer from very similar and equally capable Android phones.
4. Apple fans are pushing the "Android is full of malware" meme extensively, even though very few Android users have actually been affected. Is malware an issue that should be dealt with? Yes, but these same Apple fans who argue that Android is "straining under the weight of malware" after a few thousand users have been infected, are also the ones who claim that half a million infected Apple desktops is no big deal.
History has shown that a monoculture is actually more vulnerable to attack. There were some very skilled virus writers back in the 80s who innovated with polymorphic, anti-virus proof code, hidden boot sector infections etc. For whatever reasons, these kinds of hackers moved on to other projects, and what we see now in the virus/malware sector is mainly an industry driven by financial profit motive. iOS has had root exploits, and getting an app on the iPhone app store isn't that hard. Maybe they scan code and do some static analysis to try and spot dodgy functions, but at least one person has gotten malware into the iPhone app store, so it is certainly possible. I really do think that the only reason this hasn't been done is due to the explicit permission that the iPhone requires to send a premium rate SMS. If people ever start doing widespread banking on the Android/iPhone, or Android/iPhone malware ever becomes a populist hobby again (like viruses of the 80s), then I'm sure there will be more. An X-Prize, designed to stimulate malware production on either platform, would almost certainly produce results.
The BBC have various feedback mechanisms in place to complain about the reporting of stories. If enough people complain about "Oracle consultant Florian Mueller being quoted as an independent analyst" then they might stop quoting him...
then again you only need to understand the context of those situations too.
It's odd that we need to understand the context when it comes to Western support for "terrorists", but when it comes to non-Western governments supporting "terrorism", then the context isn't important...
Well, of course the Arabs rejected the Partition Plan! It was an unfair plan that deprives the Palestinian People of their rightful lands and...
"Arabs have always reiterated that it was rejected because it was unfair: it gave the majority of the land (56 percent) to the Jews, who at that stage legally owned only 7 percent of it,[41] and remained a minority of the population."
From the very Wikipedia article you link to. Would you agree to a plan that gives 56% of your country's land to an ethnic minority that currently owns only 7%? Why?
Wait, what? The Partition Plan would have created a Palastinian State that's larger than the current Palastinian claims for statehood?
You are criticising Palestinians in 2012 for accepting that they already lost the majority of the land, and negotiating based on what they have left now?
Because the US government is the only global entity that tries to control a party line? Lol
Other governments do the same, but the genius of the US system of "controlling the message" is that people living in the free world will openly defend it.
The lesson that politicians learned of Vietnam wasn't "war is bad", it was "never let a reporter tell the truth about war". Embedded journalists FTW.
Oh come on? Really? "Trick a parent into extending their credit"?
Relax. It was clearly a hypothetical extreme scenario meant to illustrate a relevant legal point. Obviously Apple wasn't intending to steal the family home, but at the same time, the parents were probably not aware that their kids could run up hundreds or thousands of $ debts on their credit.
if you hand off the device to your kid in this window then that's your problem.
As I already explained, the law is not black and white like that. Words like "reasonable" and "informed consent" come into play. I already gave an example of this, you may personally not agree with consumer protection laws, etc., but they do exist.
How is this different to some guy suing Mastercard because his kid ran up a giant bill during a spending spree if you have authorised him to make purchases on your account with no limit?
Because, in this case, it appears he didn't authorize his kid to make such purchases with no limit. As such use was not authorized, it may constitute fraud, and the plaintiff could argue that there are local laws which apply in dealing with the fraud. The fact that Apple has already changed the way authorization is done indicates the plaintiffs may have a case for historical purchases. Also, there are consumer protection laws in many places that expressly prohibit marketing premium rate phone services to children. If California has such laws, and if the plantiffs can convince the court that said laws apply to in-app purchases and that the in-app product was marketed to children, then they have a case.
Many people are going to think that this is black and white, and say that this is solely the parents responsibility, but that is not what the law says. If you trick a parent into extending their credit liability to a child, and then convince the child to transfer ownership of, say, the value of the family house, clearly this is not going to be legal. It is not black and white, you can not use the actions of a minor to unreasonably deprive an adult of their property, even if you have a contract that says you can.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at a couple maps of North Korea, there are no regions 300 km away from water or foreign territory.
The North Korean SAM network includes S-200 which have an operational range of 300km. Plus, the U.S. Airforce can't fly over China, so that border is safe from this defense. Put the ICBM launch sites there, and to get within 300km you would have to fly a 747 less than 100km off the North Korean coast, where it would be extremely vulnerable. Also remember that the accuracy of the weapon decreases with distance: even if it can hit a target at 300km, the question is, what proportion of launches could it hit from a far distance in a real world war scenario? How are you going to launch them and get them in to position in time to hit a missile launch? Are you going to fly these 747s 24/7 around the North Korean coastline?
600 km would allow intercept for most of the country from South Korea.
The Wikipedia article says the 600km range is for liquid fueled missiles, the recent NK missiles appear to be solid fueled.
Yes, I know you have a choice, but not something built into the Ubuntu distribution that allows you to easily and freely choose.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Software_Center
Yes, exactly. MS service terms allow them to update the service with new features like video streaming, content sharing. If you mark a file as public they can do what they want with it.
If Google decided to come out with a new service where they allowed you to search anyones documents on their site, you've already agreed to it.
I don't think so - this would be a violation of their privacy policy, which forms part of the terms of service: "We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply: With your consent..." In your example, a court would almost certainly rule that sharing your private documents without your consent is a violation of the contract.
With Microsoft, you have not.
Actually, the Microsoft terms explicitly state that they can disclose your personal information, including private emails etc.: "As part of the service, we may also automatically upload information about your computer, your use of the service, and service performance... In particular, we may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications"
Except for material we may license to you, Apple does not claim ownership of the materials and/or Content you submit or make available on the Service. However, by submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service that are accessible by the public or other users with whom you consent to share such Content, you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you.
Doesn't explain why they need rights to distribute and create derivative works.
Content sharing is distribution. Content preview is a derivative work. Skydrive and Dropbox both require exactly the same rights.
Dropbox:
We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).
Skydrive:
If you share content in public areas of the service or in shared areas available to others you've chosen, then you agree that anyone you've shared content with may use that content. When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don't want others to have those rights, don't use the service to share your content. You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.
Google Drive
You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
I have bolded the relevant bit that the biased summary failed to include. It is exactly the same as the Microsoft term above.
I meant elements as in the types of atoms, not as in the actual atoms. Model vs instances. There are a fixed number of types of elements, there can be many atoms of each element. Even when we "create a new element", it isn't actually new; new to Earth and to us perhaps, but new to the universe?
You're totally wrong there. There's loads of facts, but they're little facts. "I saw *this* reading on *that* instrument at *this* time in *that* location."
That isn't a fact - it is just what you think happened. It is a hypothesis that you have that explains your current memory of past events. Another hypothesis would be that the world was created as is 5 seconds ago, and all of your memories of a time before then were fabricated. Unlikely, perhaps, but possible. Another hypothesis is that you are mentally ill, and had a visual hallucination. Unlikely, but not so unlikely, it does happen to thousands of people every day. Another hypothesis is that you were kidnapped by the CIA and had memories implanted, or that you are living in a Matrix-style virtual world where agents can manipulate not only your memories, but also the physical world around you.
In common usage the word "fact" means something that doesn't exist in science. "Fact: A thing that is indisputably the case" - but in science you can dispute anything, although people may not take you seriously.
You're missing the key property of gold: stability.
True, gold does not rust, or fade away, but, barring a complete collapse of modern society, neither should Bitcoin.
in it's natural form it's not pretty
But it has value because humans have considered gold to be beautiful and have used it to make pretty things for a long time.
How can there by any equivalency between these two as a vehicle of exchange?
How can there be any equivalency between US dollars and gold as a vehicle of exchange? And yet there is - US dollars are openly traded in every major economy.
Gold is an element. New elements can't be created. New currencies can. The number one problem with Bitcoin being used as a currency is that it is very easy for someone to create a similar competing currency that basically does the same thing. That devalues the currency in a way that gold can never be. Real currencies have value because they are issued by nation states, and used for trade within that state. It is difficult to create a new nation state, and therefore difficult to create a new national currency. But non-state currencies do have value if people agree to use them for trade, or if they represent some future return - corporate bonds have value, they can be bought and sold and exchanged for other goods, because they represent future value. In the same way, Bitcoin can represent future value, because you can sell it or trade it.
Bitcoin is obviously not as good as gold in many ways, but this does not mean it can't be as useful as a form of exchange. The major disadvantage in comparison to gold are that it isn't an element that is used to make pretty jewellery. Really, it should be compared to other currencies. There is an argument that currencies only have value because people are forced to use them, and therefore they represent the value of the people and all of the things that they have. This may not apply to Bitcoin, because nobody is forced to use it. But if people choose to use it, then what is the difference?
You are against freedom of choice for consumers
The patent system is against freedom of choice for consumers. It is the patent system that gives government the power to block products and remove consumer choice.
That would be the infamous David Boies that partnered with SCO, and that went well. Maybe there's hope yet.
If it were truly a clean room implementation, they couldn't have possibly ended up with parts of Sun's Java in their code, even a single line.
Not true. There is at least one possible path, even with separate reverse-engineering and implementation teams: if the team writing the specification includes code as part of the specification, then the team doing the implementation from the spec can use that code. Code can form part of the specification, as long as it isn't "proprietary".
You keep talking about "facts" as if they exist. In science, there are no facts - there are hypotheses - models of the way the world works. All of these models are wrong to some degree, but the accepted model is the one with the lowest error when properly tested against the data. We have observed an increase in atmospheric co2. Our current models predict that this will cause an increase in the global mean temperature. To contradict this, it isn't enough to claim that "co2 does not cause global warming", you have to actually produce a better model, one that explains the observed data with a lower error. In particular, you need to account for the measured increase in atmospheric co2 - saying "humans didn't do it" is not enough - you have to come up with a better hypothesis, one that explains where the co2 is coming from. If you are going to claim that co2 isn't causing warming, then you need to explain what is causing the warming, and why co2 - a known greenhouse gas - isn't doing what it is supposed to do. You can't just say "I don't believe it" - you need to actually come up with a better hypothesis. That is how science works.
Remember: "All models are wrong... some are useful" and "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Somehow linking that to humans, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a several-million-year-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, fossil records, ice-cores, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts).
We have heard a similar argument:
"Somehow linking that to lung cancer, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a hundreds-of-years-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, biopsies, lab experiments, tests, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts)."
This line of reasoning has been debunked over and over.
Can we study the same things in other departments without having a dedicated Computer Science niche to go with Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, etc.?
Engineering - where the semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream. Hello Oompa-Loompas of science.
At it's height it was never as bad as some of the windows viruses have been
Mac Malware Outbreak Is Bigger than 'Conficker'. Remember that OS X only has about 5% of global desktop market, 0.6 million desktops may not sound like much in comparison to Windows, but as a share of the Mac total it is significant: "Mac OS X is the number two desktop OS with 6.54 percent market share. Windows, on the other hand, accounts for 92.48 percent of the market. Based on market share, the Flashback Trojan botnet is equivalent to a Windows botnet of nearly 8.5 million PCs. That makes it an even larger threat than Conficker--just on a much smaller platform."
It's not true. It climbed to 600.000 infections, according to Kaspersky (anti-virus developper) and dropped to 30.000.
They got it wrong; Symantec and Kaspersky both said the number had fallen, but Symantec have admitted they were wrong, and Kaspersky are now "looking into the matter". Flashback botnet not shrinking, huge numbers of Macs still infected:
"We've been talking with them about the discrepancies in our numbers and theirs," said O Murchu in an interview Friday. "We now believe that their analysis is accurate, and that it explains the discrepancies."
"This server communicates with bots but doesn't close a TCP connection," wrote Dr. Web. "As [a] result, bots switch to the stand-by mode and wait for the server's reply and no longer respond to further commands. As a consequence, they do not communicate with other command centers, many of which have been registered by information security specialists [including Kaspersky and Symantec]. "This is the cause of controversial statistics," said Dr. Web.
Also see Antivirus Researchers Confirm: Flashback Still Infects More Than 500,000 Macs.
..and how would they detect it on the ios?
Good point. The security researchers who identified some of the Android malware visited third party Android app stores and downloaded all of the apps so that they could build up a huge app corpus, which they could then scan (static analysis) for malware suggestive signatures. They stated that they couldn't do the same with the iPhone because Apple prohibits mass downloading of iPhone apps in order to build an iPhone app corpus. So the only people who can look for malware across the whole range of iPhone apps is Apple, and it seems unlikely that they would announce if they found any malware, when they can instead just silently remove it from the app store.
I don't think that is the reason that we hear more about Android malware, although it may be a factor. The barrier to entry of becoming an iOS developer is: buy a Mac (Intel Mac Mini will do), pay $99, sign up on web site. The barrier to entry of becoming an Android developer is: buy a PC (any will do), pay $25, sign up on web site. You could argue that the cost of a Mac Mini is prohibitive, or that hackers are less likely to own a Mac and begin hacking around on iOS in the first place, but for serious malware authors these are not significant barriers.
The real reasons that we hear more about Android malware:
1. Android users can enable installs of apps from non-official markets and random web sites. Many of the reported malware apps come from these kind of sites. But users have to explicitly do this, no phone ships with random web sites enabled as app stores. These same users, having enabled random app sources, then presumably don't bother to check the permissions that the app they install requests.
2. Android allows apps to send premium rate SMS messages and calls without an explicit popup. I personally think Google should probably kill this ability, but then I never call premium rate numbers. Blocking premium rate texts would kill the profit incentive for most malware. If this were an explicit, in your face, permission or setting (like the big warning for data roaming in settings!), then we wouldn't have seen any premium SMS fraud malware.
3. Apple marketing is happy for the media to push the "no iOS malware" angle in the same way that they did successfully with "no OS X viruses". It isn't strictly true, but people believe it anyway, and there is a huge class of users who are willing to pay more for the belief that there will be fewer problems in future. Malware that affects a few thousand people really isn't important in the big scheme of things, but it is something that marketing can use to try and differentiate iPhones in the eye of the consumer from very similar and equally capable Android phones.
4. Apple fans are pushing the "Android is full of malware" meme extensively, even though very few Android users have actually been affected. Is malware an issue that should be dealt with? Yes, but these same Apple fans who argue that Android is "straining under the weight of malware" after a few thousand users have been infected, are also the ones who claim that half a million infected Apple desktops is no big deal.
History has shown that a monoculture is actually more vulnerable to attack. There were some very skilled virus writers back in the 80s who innovated with polymorphic, anti-virus proof code, hidden boot sector infections etc. For whatever reasons, these kinds of hackers moved on to other projects, and what we see now in the virus/malware sector is mainly an industry driven by financial profit motive. iOS has had root exploits, and getting an app on the iPhone app store isn't that hard. Maybe they scan code and do some static analysis to try and spot dodgy functions, but at least one person has gotten malware into the iPhone app store, so it is certainly possible. I really do think that the only reason this hasn't been done is due to the explicit permission that the iPhone requires to send a premium rate SMS. If people ever start doing widespread banking on the Android/iPhone, or Android/iPhone malware ever becomes a populist hobby again (like viruses of the 80s), then I'm sure there will be more. An X-Prize, designed to stimulate malware production on either platform, would almost certainly produce results.
The BBC have various feedback mechanisms in place to complain about the reporting of stories. If enough people complain about "Oracle consultant Florian Mueller being quoted as an independent analyst" then they might stop quoting him...
then again you only need to understand the context of those situations too.
It's odd that we need to understand the context when it comes to Western support for "terrorists", but when it comes to non-Western governments supporting "terrorism", then the context isn't important...
Well, of course the Arabs rejected the Partition Plan! It was an unfair plan that deprives the Palestinian People of their rightful lands and...
"Arabs have always reiterated that it was rejected because it was unfair: it gave the majority of the land (56 percent) to the Jews, who at that stage legally owned only 7 percent of it,[41] and remained a minority of the population."
From the very Wikipedia article you link to. Would you agree to a plan that gives 56% of your country's land to an ethnic minority that currently owns only 7%? Why?
Wait, what? The Partition Plan would have created a Palastinian State that's larger than the current Palastinian claims for statehood?
You are criticising Palestinians in 2012 for accepting that they already lost the majority of the land, and negotiating based on what they have left now?
Because the US government is the only global entity that tries to control a party line? Lol
Other governments do the same, but the genius of the US system of "controlling the message" is that people living in the free world will openly defend it.
The lesson that politicians learned of Vietnam wasn't "war is bad", it was "never let a reporter tell the truth about war". Embedded journalists FTW.
Oh come on? Really? "Trick a parent into extending their credit"?
Relax. It was clearly a hypothetical extreme scenario meant to illustrate a relevant legal point. Obviously Apple wasn't intending to steal the family home, but at the same time, the parents were probably not aware that their kids could run up hundreds or thousands of $ debts on their credit.
if you hand off the device to your kid in this window then that's your problem.
As I already explained, the law is not black and white like that. Words like "reasonable" and "informed consent" come into play. I already gave an example of this, you may personally not agree with consumer protection laws, etc., but they do exist.
How is this different to some guy suing Mastercard because his kid ran up a giant bill during a spending spree if you have authorised him to make purchases on your account with no limit?
Because, in this case, it appears he didn't authorize his kid to make such purchases with no limit. As such use was not authorized, it may constitute fraud, and the plaintiff could argue that there are local laws which apply in dealing with the fraud. The fact that Apple has already changed the way authorization is done indicates the plaintiffs may have a case for historical purchases. Also, there are consumer protection laws in many places that expressly prohibit marketing premium rate phone services to children. If California has such laws, and if the plantiffs can convince the court that said laws apply to in-app purchases and that the in-app product was marketed to children, then they have a case.
Many people are going to think that this is black and white, and say that this is solely the parents responsibility, but that is not what the law says. If you trick a parent into extending their credit liability to a child, and then convince the child to transfer ownership of, say, the value of the family house, clearly this is not going to be legal. It is not black and white, you can not use the actions of a minor to unreasonably deprive an adult of their property, even if you have a contract that says you can.
People will sue for anything, the question is whether they won. In other recent news, US troops sue phone company for expensive calls