Why are computer systems that control critical infrastructure accessible from the Internet? And even if it has access to the Internet, why is someone using it to go to web pages that are not on the company Intranet?
These systems don't have to be on the "internet" in order to be vulnerable. These activex controls are likely deployed internally, probably with adequate security. But networks are porous, and as Stuxnet proved, complex malware can be executed to effect. The issue is that security isn't treated as a process but as a response or feature. Good security takes into account all possible vectors (humans being the biggest).
I thought the main reason Google had taken to distributing flash with Chrome was so they could sandbox it better than the regular shared version of flash the other browsers use? And better keep it up to date, as well, but mainly the former.
I guess I was mistaken.
There are other reasons. Flash only exists because of the advertising business. Google wanted the keys to the advertising country-club but had to marry into it (Flash). Then they bought and fashioned WebM but decided in a bout of "purism" to ignore the existing standard H.264 in favor of WebM. Which bolstered the position of Flash since you still can't do video on all major browsers without it. Google probably also benefited in that hurting the "non-free" H.264 would also put their competitor Apple in a tough spot.
So yea, technically, if you put your blinders on, Google was "doing the users a favor" by sandboxing flash. Maybe they should do the users a much bigger favor by doing everything they can to ditch it and support open standards in it's place... until and unless they do so, they stand guilty by association for every Flash exploit that they offer up in Chrome regardless of "sandboxing". That this is one of the first is notable but I can guarantee this won't be the last.
Adobe isnt giving them the code to flash. I'm sure Google could do a better job than them if they had the code. Google, as well as all browser makers, are in the unfortunate position of dealing with this a dangerous binary blob that everyone wants as a plugin.
That's the nonsensical part, apparently *someone* wants it as a plugin... either that's the users (blame the user!) or it's Google (thanks to DoubleClick acquisition)
I contend that Google began their path to the dark side the moment they put their hands upon Doubleclick... they were corrupted by the evil that is inherent in pure advertising (advertising being basically social engineering).
At the height of hubris on the IPO of Netscape, Marc Andressen was confidently predicting that the browser could become the standard interface for all applications and the underlying operating system would be reduced to some kind of commodity like the beige boxes. We all know what happened after.
Yes, we know. Bill Gates vowed to "knife the baby" and leveraged Microsoft's monopoly in Operating Systems to "cut off their air supply" and drove Netscape out of business (well actually into the arms of AOL, but Netscape as a brand did not survive)... then they got convicted by Federal court, and suffered a 10 year "probation"
Is Microsoft in a position to do similar now? Somehow I doubt their "fucking kill Google" attitude is going to be successful while they ignore Apple, Facebook, HP and a lot of other companies that are waiting to take advantage.
and found something damning (like Assange is a paid lackey of Putin), I sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to leak it to the press. Confidentiality agreement be damned.
Why do these groups think these things hold any power? It's just words on a page.
It isn't meant to stop really damning truth. It's to stop "volunteers" from profiting immensely by pre-leaking the documents for a price.
A monetary fine is not a a deterrent for someone "doing the right thing".
It does deter people from profiting off the compromising of valuable data and the organization itself by altering the reward calculation.
And after Apple has put it's competitors out of business is can pick and choose from all the "failed" apps that are better than theirs, acquire the developers and have them write Apple software... sounds like almost free R&D for Apple. Why write good software when you can let other folks do it, then crush them and take it.
I modified it to how Apple more likely operates. Why pay for even devalued golden eggs when you can hire the goose who laid them?
Is there any chance at all that Slashdot might make a tiny amount of effort to report about Apple and Google in the same tone when they are sitting side by side talking about essentially the exact same stuff?
Apple sent a VP of software tech and Google sent a lobbyist. If I'm going to listen to a lobbyist, they better be paying me money.
You're overestimating the music industry; while I'm sure that no one wants a long, drawn out lawsuit, Google sees about twice as much revenue than the entire recording industry*.
I think you're missing the forest for the (tallest) trees... Sure, Google is larger than the music labels, but according to wikipedia the Music/Recording Industry is comprised of the following:
By the middle of the century records had supplanted sheet music as the largest player in the music business: in the commercial world people began speaking of "the recording industry" as a loose synonym of "the music industry". Since 2000, sales of recorded music have dropped off substantially,[1] while live music has increased in importance.[2] Four "major corporate labels" dominate recorded music — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment,[3] Warner Music Group and EMI — each of which consists of many smaller companies and labels serving different regions and markets. The live music industry is dominated by Live Nation, the largest promoter and music venue owner. Live Nation is a former subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, which is the largest owner of radio stations in the United States. Other important music industry companies include Creative Artists Agency (a management and booking company) and Apple Inc. (which runs the world's largest music store, the iTunes Store).[4]
Now let's leave Apple aside (although Apple actually has a strong interest in blocking Google here, and they make pull over 2x more money than Google). You still have to add ClearChannel and Live Nation to the list, as well as all the radio stations... I'm sure I'm leaving off some other interested players.
Furthermore, any precedent set here will highly impact the movie industry as well as television industries... which is a bigger juggernaut than music... which is why they're often called the "content companies". The content companies combined are far greater than Google or even Google + Amazon, and have consolidated their political power over the more than the past century.
And yes, I feel sorry for the Skype staff today -- I don't think this move bodes well for them at all. Their competence may not be what Microsoft is looking for here.
For $8.5B I don't think Microsoft is going to jettison their newly acquired talent. On the contrary they will likely (as Oracle did when it acquired Peoplesoft) deprecate their own live messenger (read: layoffs/transfers) instead.
This isn't 2000. Microsoft can't just buy up and throw away strong competition. In order to compete they will need to transform their own technology divisions to play the game other companies are doing better at.
Pick one or two features to work on. For the original iPhone it was a real web browser.
Your comment belies the entire premise of Apple and the iPhone. Apple could have released something years before the iPhone debuted but because of Steve Jobs' monomaniacal push for quality and refinement, what you saw in 2007 was the result of years of work. The iPhone in 2007 had plenty more than a usable web browser, it had an impressive display, multi-touch, a working onscreen keyboard and amazingly good battery life despite all this.
Your analogy was half-baked and non-sensical... but that's what you get when you confuse business models (coding web widgets vs. designing smartphones).
i dont know where you come from, but where i live 30v x 1.5A = 45 watts.
Bad math day. You're correct. My point still stands, FireWire was ahead of it's time and "failed" because Intel didn't support it, and Apple decided to charge very high ($1.25/unit) royalty rates, despite it being technically superior. At least TB is superior to the other external drive connectors, but I wonder why they didn't go the FW spec route.
Since we got iPhones, and eventually an iPad, the real loser in my household has been the Nintendo DS, which went from being the usual way to wind down before sleep or to kill a little time on a lazy saturday afternoon, to being basically a paper weight.
I'll offer a similar anecdotal experience, although I do pine for some higher-quality Advance-Wars or Zelda type games, the DS offers nothing similar to titles like Sword&Poker, Battleheart or Carcasonne which are unique in their mechanics, playability, controls and graphics (Carcasonne is amazingly beautiful and the push notification turn-based-over-network is quite workable).
Gaming boxes are poorly equipped to be a general solution for loads of reasons. Also, the margins on a machine that is just used for games can't be as high as apple likes to sell its hardware.
The real question is whether people will care about high-performance gaming or not, if so, apple is an equal competitor with an already functioning market.
So, no, a console has too many requirements to behave in the same fashion for a long while to suit apples needs.
The key to disruption is to provide key functionality the incumbents don't or can't provide, while ignoring many "hard requirements" that incumbents feel they must cater to. mp3s disrupted the music market because though they were much lower quality than CDs (seriously lower in the early days), they were a) free and b) considerably more portable. A y2k mp3 player could tote the equivalent of 100 discs in a smaller form factor or maybe 1-2 discs in an extremely small, solid state, form factor.
Apple is busy disrupting their own technology and products with new ones (see ipod nano vs. ipod mini - Apple cannibalized their own product to push flash memory where they could dominate the supply) and wouldn't mind neatly folding in your profitable business into their new product. Companies like Nintendo are right to fear Apple.
So the Apple TV becomes your console and the iPad becomes your controller. You wouldn't play your typical games on it but with a bit of creativity I could see some rather interesting games coming out of it. Board games could work really well under this scenario. Especially quite complex ones.
Problems: 1) TV output 2) Response Latency 3) Wired controllers (esp detachable connector) suck for moving around.
Solution: How chopper2 (and probably other games) have resolved it... iPad (or iPhone) is the console/connector, iPhone/iPodTouch is the controller via bluetooth (or wifi, unsure). It works on the iPad2 with 1080p.
The only thing keeping this from flourishing (and disrupting consoles) is that the "controller" is rather expensive (at least $200). If there were a "controller" from Apple which games could standardize on, this model could completely upend/disrupt the console market. Also, no reason that the AppleTV (or an iMac for those without a TV) couldn't be your conduit to the screen (lacks bluetooth).
And here I thoguht I was the only one complaining that changing channels gets slower and slower with every new receiver box. On analog it was basically instant, less than 100ms. First digital box took half a second. Full HD box sometimes takes a whole second or more (and it's not even deterministic anymore)
That SUCKS big time!
Or a more positive spin,maybe this will result in less TV watched. I've noticed that since we have gone Dish (wife must have TV5Monde), we hardly watch TV at all (the little tot watches the most, probably 30m-1hr a day avg, but this is all netflix streaming/DVR/appletv content).
If some startup or established company is keen on solving this, they could be highly disruptive in the TV space.
Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the US authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections.
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading...
You'll note that the judge isn't blaming the police, but rather the plaintiffs here as they are seeking a "fishing expedition" which has already resulted in innocent folks getting violated. Raising the bar on the MAFIAA as to when they can seek a no-knock warrant is the best way to resolve these issues.
If he didn't encrypt his HDD and it burns terrorists everywhere
Why use something which can be defeated with a $5 wrench?
Your pithy comment aside (from US sources, he was offered a chance to surrender, but did not comply), if you are someone like bin Laden, you probably can safely assume the $5 wrench trick (aka harsh interrogation) can by sidestepped by suicide.
This makes encryption a very useful tool, as the password will literally die with you.
So it's a new laptop with some pretty unremarkable new features.
You clearly didn't read the article or even know what an iMac is (hint: desktop). You can choose to ignore Apple stories by using Slashdot's account preferences, but instead choose to spam us with your ignorance.
To add to all the above, thunderbolt allows bus power at 10W. Compared to USB2 (2.5W maximum), and USB3, (4.5W max), this is a big improvement (eSata doesn't even supply power without the eSATAp connector, which isn't fully adopted). Thunderbolt will natively fast-charge an iPad (when Apple releases a tbolt connector or hub) and many other such devices.
Of course, the bus power situation on firewire was much better (30V x 1.5A = 15W), but alas, we'll have to do with 10W, as Apple migrates everyone over from their "failed" standard FW to TB (which won't make the same royalty mistake that FW did).
VMware's explanation of events is troubling to me. The company as a whole is responsible for any of its failures. Internally the company could blame an individual but to shareholders and other vested entities an individual employee's failure is not something they care about. A better PR response would be to say that "we" made an unscheduled change or simply an unscheduled change was made to our infrastructure that caused X.
"Transparency is bad" +4 Insightful
What the... ?
You know, I'd prefer my vendor/partner (ie, VMWare) doesn't throw their employees under the bus when bad stuff happens. If this happened at Apple or Google the group (leadership taking responsibility) would announce they messed up... not "one of the peons pushed a magic button".
Transparency is only useful as a way to diagnose and improve. This "explanation" from VMWare hides all explaination (...touched the keyboard. This resulted in a full outage of the network infrastructure...) while torching a single employee.
Amazingly the Cloudfoundry blog itself had a much more dramatic telling:
"... At 8am this effort was kicked off with explicit instructions to develop the playbook with a formal review by our operations and engineering team scheduled for noon. This was to be a paper only, hands off the keyboards exercise until the playbook was reviewed.
Unfortunately, at 10:15am PDT, one of the operations engineers developing the playbook touched the keyboard. This resulted in a full outage of the network infrastructure sitting in front of Cloud Foundry. This took out all load balancers, routers, and firewalls; caused a partial outage of portions of our internal DNS infrastructure; and resulted in a complete external loss of connectivity to Cloud Foundry."
"Charlie Miller, a principal analyst at consultancy Independent Security Evaluators: "Technologically speaking, PCs are a little more secure than Macs. Macs have a larger attack surface out of the box (Flash, Java, support for a million file formats, etc.) and lack some anti-exploitation technologies found in PCs like full ASLR [Address Space Layout Randomization]...."
Your quote from Mr. Miller is way out of date. Apple now doesn't include Flash or Java by default, and does implement (although weakly) ASLR.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are computer systems that control critical infrastructure accessible from the Internet? And even if it has access to the Internet, why is someone using it to go to web pages that are not on the company Intranet?
These systems don't have to be on the "internet" in order to be vulnerable. These activex controls are likely deployed internally, probably with adequate security. But networks are porous, and as Stuxnet proved, complex malware can be executed to effect. The issue is that security isn't treated as a process but as a response or feature. Good security takes into account all possible vectors (humans being the biggest).
I thought the main reason Google had taken to distributing flash with Chrome was so they could sandbox it better than the regular shared version of flash the other browsers use? And better keep it up to date, as well, but mainly the former.
I guess I was mistaken.
There are other reasons. Flash only exists because of the advertising business. Google wanted the keys to the advertising country-club but had to marry into it (Flash). Then they bought and fashioned WebM but decided in a bout of "purism" to ignore the existing standard H.264 in favor of WebM. Which bolstered the position of Flash since you still can't do video on all major browsers without it. Google probably also benefited in that hurting the "non-free" H.264 would also put their competitor Apple in a tough spot.
So yea, technically, if you put your blinders on, Google was "doing the users a favor" by sandboxing flash. Maybe they should do the users a much bigger favor by doing everything they can to ditch it and support open standards in it's place... until and unless they do so, they stand guilty by association for every Flash exploit that they offer up in Chrome regardless of "sandboxing". That this is one of the first is notable but I can guarantee this won't be the last.
Adobe isnt giving them the code to flash. I'm sure Google could do a better job than them if they had the code. Google, as well as all browser makers, are in the unfortunate position of dealing with this a dangerous binary blob that everyone wants as a plugin.
That's the nonsensical part, apparently *someone* wants it as a plugin... either that's the users (blame the user!) or it's Google (thanks to DoubleClick acquisition)
I contend that Google began their path to the dark side the moment they put their hands upon Doubleclick... they were corrupted by the evil that is inherent in pure advertising (advertising being basically social engineering).
At the height of hubris on the IPO of Netscape, Marc Andressen was confidently predicting that the browser could become the standard interface for all applications and the underlying operating system would be reduced to some kind of commodity like the beige boxes. We all know what happened after.
Yes, we know. Bill Gates vowed to "knife the baby" and leveraged Microsoft's monopoly in Operating Systems to "cut off their air supply" and drove Netscape out of business (well actually into the arms of AOL, but Netscape as a brand did not survive)... then they got convicted by Federal court, and suffered a 10 year "probation"
Is Microsoft in a position to do similar now? Somehow I doubt their "fucking kill Google" attitude is going to be successful while they ignore Apple, Facebook, HP and a lot of other companies that are waiting to take advantage.
It's a "multi-polar" world out there now.
and found something damning (like Assange is a paid lackey of Putin), I sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to leak it to the press. Confidentiality agreement be damned.
Why do these groups think these things hold any power? It's just words on a page.
It isn't meant to stop really damning truth.
It's to stop "volunteers" from profiting immensely by pre-leaking the documents for a price.
A monetary fine is not a a deterrent for someone "doing the right thing".
It does deter people from profiting off the compromising of valuable data and the organization itself by altering the reward calculation.
And after Apple has put it's competitors out of business is can pick and choose from all the "failed" apps that are better than theirs, acquire the developers and have them write Apple software... sounds like almost free R&D for Apple. Why write good software when you can let other folks do it, then crush them and take it.
I modified it to how Apple more likely operates. Why pay for even devalued golden eggs when you can hire the goose who laid them?
What about a Thinkpad with the corporate management features and a 5+ year lifespan?
At $800 it works out to $160 per year
Does that include the cost of managing the software deployments, updates, security, and replacement?
Devil is in the details, but for some workers/students a 3 year old Thinkpad would be a less useful device than a rather recent Chromebook.
The Chromebook is not for "personal" use because it can't run iTunes, Word or sync your phone. It is good for standard web-based app consumption.
Imagine your average SAAS company cross-selling these with their services? Now it gets more exciting.
Is there any chance at all that Slashdot might make a tiny amount of effort to report about Apple and Google in the same tone when they are sitting side by side talking about essentially the exact same stuff?
Apple sent a VP of software tech and Google sent a lobbyist. If I'm going to listen to a lobbyist, they better be paying me money.
You're overestimating the music industry; while I'm sure that no one wants a long, drawn out lawsuit, Google sees about twice as much revenue than the entire recording industry*.
I think you're missing the forest for the (tallest) trees... Sure, Google is larger than the music labels, but according to wikipedia the Music/Recording Industry is comprised of the following:
Now let's leave Apple aside (although Apple actually has a strong interest in blocking Google here, and they make pull over 2x more money than Google). You still have to add ClearChannel and Live Nation to the list, as well as all the radio stations... I'm sure I'm leaving off some other interested players.
Furthermore, any precedent set here will highly impact the movie industry as well as television industries... which is a bigger juggernaut than music... which is why they're often called the "content companies". The content companies combined are far greater than Google or even Google + Amazon, and have consolidated their political power over the more than the past century.
And yes, I feel sorry for the Skype staff today -- I don't think this move bodes well for them at all. Their competence may not be what Microsoft is looking for here.
For $8.5B I don't think Microsoft is going to jettison their newly acquired talent. On the contrary they will likely (as Oracle did when it acquired Peoplesoft) deprecate their own live messenger (read: layoffs/transfers) instead.
This isn't 2000. Microsoft can't just buy up and throw away strong competition. In order to compete they will need to transform their own technology divisions to play the game other companies are doing better at.
Pick one or two features to work on. For the original iPhone it was a real web browser.
Your comment belies the entire premise of Apple and the iPhone. Apple could have released something years before the iPhone debuted but because of Steve Jobs' monomaniacal push for quality and refinement, what you saw in 2007 was the result of years of work. The iPhone in 2007 had plenty more than a usable web browser, it had an impressive display, multi-touch, a working onscreen keyboard and amazingly good battery life despite all this.
Your analogy was half-baked and non-sensical... but that's what you get when you confuse business models (coding web widgets vs. designing smartphones).
i dont know where you come from, but where i live 30v x 1.5A = 45 watts.
Bad math day. You're correct. My point still stands, FireWire was ahead of it's time and "failed" because Intel didn't support it, and Apple decided to charge very high ($1.25/unit) royalty rates, despite it being technically superior. At least TB is superior to the other external drive connectors, but I wonder why they didn't go the FW spec route.
Since we got iPhones, and eventually an iPad, the real loser in my household has been the Nintendo DS, which went from being the usual way to wind down before sleep or to kill a little time on a lazy saturday afternoon, to being basically a paper weight.
I'll offer a similar anecdotal experience, although I do pine for some higher-quality Advance-Wars or Zelda type games, the DS offers nothing similar to titles like Sword&Poker, Battleheart or Carcasonne which are unique in their mechanics, playability, controls and graphics (Carcasonne is amazingly beautiful and the push notification turn-based-over-network is quite workable).
Gaming boxes are poorly equipped to be a general solution for loads of reasons.
Also, the margins on a machine that is just used for games can't be as high as apple likes to sell its hardware.
The real question is whether people will care about high-performance gaming or not, if so, apple is an equal competitor with an already functioning market.
So, no, a console has too many requirements to behave in the same fashion for a long while to suit apples needs.
The key to disruption is to provide key functionality the incumbents don't or can't provide, while ignoring many "hard requirements" that incumbents feel they must cater to. mp3s disrupted the music market because though they were much lower quality than CDs (seriously lower in the early days), they were a) free and b) considerably more portable. A y2k mp3 player could tote the equivalent of 100 discs in a smaller form factor or maybe 1-2 discs in an extremely small, solid state, form factor.
Apple is busy disrupting their own technology and products with new ones (see ipod nano vs. ipod mini - Apple cannibalized their own product to push flash memory where they could dominate the supply) and wouldn't mind neatly folding in your profitable business into their new product. Companies like Nintendo are right to fear Apple.
So the Apple TV becomes your console and the iPad becomes your controller. You wouldn't play your typical games on it but with a bit of creativity I could see some rather interesting games coming out of it. Board games could work really well under this scenario. Especially quite complex ones.
Problems: 1) TV output 2) Response Latency 3) Wired controllers (esp detachable connector) suck for moving around.
Solution: How chopper2 (and probably other games) have resolved it... iPad (or iPhone) is the console/connector, iPhone/iPodTouch is the controller via bluetooth (or wifi, unsure). It works on the iPad2 with 1080p.
The only thing keeping this from flourishing (and disrupting consoles) is that the "controller" is rather expensive (at least $200). If there were a "controller" from Apple which games could standardize on, this model could completely upend/disrupt the console market. Also, no reason that the AppleTV (or an iMac for those without a TV) couldn't be your conduit to the screen (lacks bluetooth).
And here I thoguht I was the only one complaining that changing channels gets slower and slower with every new receiver box.
On analog it was basically instant, less than 100ms.
First digital box took half a second. Full HD box sometimes takes a whole second or more (and it's not even deterministic anymore)
That SUCKS big time!
Or a more positive spin,maybe this will result in less TV watched. I've noticed that since we have gone Dish (wife must have TV5Monde), we hardly watch TV at all (the little tot watches the most, probably 30m-1hr a day avg, but this is all netflix streaming/DVR/appletv content).
If some startup or established company is keen on solving this, they could be highly disruptive in the TV space.
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading...
You'll note that the judge isn't blaming the police, but rather the plaintiffs here as they are seeking a "fishing expedition" which has already resulted in innocent folks getting violated. Raising the bar on the MAFIAA as to when they can seek a no-knock warrant is the best way to resolve these issues.
If he didn't encrypt his HDD and it burns terrorists everywhere
Why use something which can be defeated with a $5 wrench?
Your pithy comment aside (from US sources, he was offered a chance to surrender, but did not comply), if you are someone like bin Laden, you probably can safely assume the $5 wrench trick (aka harsh interrogation) can by sidestepped by suicide.
This makes encryption a very useful tool, as the password will literally die with you.
Nothing in this article has anyone on record from either Intel, Apple (or anyone in between). Link bait and not deserving anyone's time.
So it's a new laptop with some pretty unremarkable new features.
You clearly didn't read the article or even know what an iMac is (hint: desktop). You can choose to ignore Apple stories by using Slashdot's account preferences, but instead choose to spam us with your ignorance.
To add to all the above, thunderbolt allows bus power at 10W. Compared to USB2 (2.5W maximum), and USB3, (4.5W max), this is a big improvement (eSata doesn't even supply power without the eSATAp connector, which isn't fully adopted). Thunderbolt will natively fast-charge an iPad (when Apple releases a tbolt connector or hub) and many other such devices.
Of course, the bus power situation on firewire was much better (30V x 1.5A = 15W), but alas, we'll have to do with 10W, as Apple migrates everyone over from their "failed" standard FW to TB (which won't make the same royalty mistake that FW did).
VMware's explanation of events is troubling to me. The company as a whole is responsible for any of its failures. Internally the company could blame an individual but to shareholders and other vested entities an individual employee's failure is not something they care about. A better PR response would be to say that "we" made an unscheduled change or simply an unscheduled change was made to our infrastructure that caused X.
"Transparency is bad" +4 Insightful
What the... ?
You know, I'd prefer my vendor/partner (ie, VMWare) doesn't throw their employees under the bus when bad stuff happens. If this happened at Apple or Google the group (leadership taking responsibility) would announce they messed up... not "one of the peons pushed a magic button".
Transparency is only useful as a way to diagnose and improve. This "explanation" from VMWare hides all explaination (...touched the keyboard. This resulted in a full outage of the network infrastructure...) while torching a single employee.
Amazingly the Cloudfoundry blog itself had a much more dramatic telling:
"... At 8am this effort was kicked off with explicit instructions to develop the playbook with a formal review by our operations and engineering team scheduled for noon. This was to be a paper only, hands off the keyboards exercise until the playbook was reviewed.
Unfortunately, at 10:15am PDT, one of the operations engineers developing the playbook touched the keyboard. This resulted in a full outage of the network infrastructure sitting in front of Cloud Foundry. This took out all load balancers, routers, and firewalls; caused a partial outage of portions of our internal DNS infrastructure; and resulted in a complete external loss of connectivity to Cloud Foundry."
(emphasis mine).
I'd hate to be that ops guy.
"Charlie Miller, a principal analyst at consultancy Independent Security Evaluators: "Technologically speaking, PCs are a little more secure than Macs. Macs have a larger attack surface out of the box (Flash, Java, support for a million file formats, etc.) and lack some anti-exploitation technologies found in PCs like full ASLR [Address Space Layout Randomization]...."
Your quote from Mr. Miller is way out of date. Apple now doesn't include Flash or Java by default, and does implement (although weakly) ASLR.
I googled the phrase and I got a lot of non-meaningful results (and links to TFA). Is this some basic keylogger-type thing?