I agree. Having multiple "standards" is stupid. There are times when it doesn't cause TOO much of a problem (DVD -R vs DVD +R). But usually it is more beneficial TO SOCIETY to have ONE standard that everyone can vote on to expand/extend.
Two standards in document formats is beyond STUPID.
Which is what Microsoft wants. Since Microsoft already owns 90%+ of the desktop market, whatever they sell becomes the "de facto" standard.
Even if it's broken and won't work with anything else.
He's ready to retire and take up photography again. And he LOVES the digital options. He's already setup his own website and uses Photoshop. He knows more about digital cameras than I do.
It's not age. It's interest.
He's found that his old interest has taken a new turn with computerization and he has spent his spare time learning all about it.
No matter how careful you are, it is the other people that will compromise your address.
Even if you only sent ONE message to Aunt Sally, your address is now on her machine. When she gets infected, ALL of the addresses on her machine are sent to the spammers.
We can do both already. It's just a matter of keeping the airspace clean enough for the radio waves to travel.
And THAT is why it will be a while before businesses get rid of their lines. You want the cleanest voice connections you can get. Yo don nt c st m rs o ha e t dea ith al s re ki g p.
In the grand scheme of things, chasing down KIDS who share mp3's just doesn't seem as important as establishing Federal guidelines for voting machines.
No matter how good the QA testing is on a piece of software before it's released, it invariably has bugs and security risks.
No one is arguing that.
The discussion is about whether the attempt should be made to address ALL of those... or not.
Why do you have a problem with assigning priorities to issues that need fixing?
Where did I say that?
They SHOULD be prioritized. No sense in trying to patch a local user, non-exploitable crash bug when you have a remote root vulnerability (with exploit).
But the system is only as secure as all of its components. While you may not believe that your vulnerability is important enough to patch, if enough people take that same approach, the vulnerabilities can be linked and your box will be cracked just as if you had left a remote root vulnerability unpatched.
That approach means that YOU are relying upon EVERYONE ELSE to cover your code by ensuring that THEIR code does not have any exploits. While you don't bother to patch your's.
Then running that software is not "practical". Any vulnerability is a vulnerability.
In any sufficiently complex piece of software, there will be bugs and security holes.
And "sufficiently complex" is defined as having "bugs and security holes". No. That just means that there is no such thing as "security". And we've been over that before.
Obviously, you need to close the nasty ones, but many of these exploits are not particularly high risk.
Right. And enough of those "not particularly high risk" vulnerabilities can be linked together to crack your machine as surely as 1 remote root exploit could be.
In these cases, especially if the fix would involve a major redesign or other highly disruptive solution, it may be best to just leave them alone.
"Best" in this case is being defined as "best for the company selling the software" and NOT "best for the people using that software".
What would be best for the users is the knowledge that there are fundamental security issues and that they might want to use a competitor's product.
If, for example, the underlying design of your product allows for a minor, difficult to exploit security hole, it is probably not worth it to spend the time and money to redesign the product.
Again, "not worth it" from the point of view of the vendor. Let's be clear on that.
The decision to close a security hole should be dependent on the potential impact of the hole, the urgency of the issue (are there already exploits in the wild, for example), and how many resources (time and money) it will take to fix it.
How would you KNOW if there were already exploits in the wild? Unless someone was advertising them.
That approach means that an exploit can sit for years at the "unimportant" level... until one day it hits the "EMERGENCY!!! FIX IT NOW!!!" level.
Yeah, that's the kind of support I want from my vendors.
So when the Open Standard copy becomes authoritative, how long do you believe someone will spend the time and effort keeping those "redundant copies" in sync?
Not very long. This is the old "path of least resistance". And it works.
The opposition parties will release evidence that an outside company BOUGHT those politicians and that their decision was made purely because of Microsoft's money.
They'll then run on a platform of hiring their programmers to work on their software for their country.
Eventually, Open Standards will win. If for no other reason than it is CHEAPER in the long run and the money goes back into their economy instead of to Redmond, WA, USA.
You opposed it, but you did nothing to sell your POV. Therefor your also to blame, just like I am to blame for exactly the same reason.
I was out protesting with MILLIONS of other people.
I wrote letters to my representatives.
Senator Patty Murray voted AGAINST the war.
Fuck your sophomoric "we're all to blame" bullshit. Many of us stood up and opposed this war. We are not to blame. We are still trying to get our troops back before any more of them die.
I would say it is safe to say that the number of soldiers handing out candy and flowers vastly outnumbers the numbers that are stacking up naked Iraqi's in pyramids.
Probably. But that doesn't matter.
The IMPACT of a single innocent child being killed by our troops outweighs a literal TON of candy and flowers being handed out.
The point of the shift in strategy was basically to put Americans more in the line of fire and restrain the force they can use so that fewer civilians die. They are focusing on civilian protection instead of force protection.
We KNOW that more soldiers will die as we expose them in an effort to defend the civilian population. I am sympathetic that the army is a tad irritated at being called baby killers while everyone ignores the fact that they are paying in American blood to reduce civilian casualties inflicted by both collateral damage and intentional terrorist/sectarian attacks.
Again, read the above link.
The problem is that this is now an occupation. We are occupying Iraq. But we are still treating it as an invasion.
We need to switch our strategy to law enforcement now. No more bombings. No more tanks.
The war is over. We won. But we're still going to lose Iraq because we cannot understand that police work is not the same as calling in another bombing run.
That said, give the army some credit. They are being told to pay in their own blood to achieve some political objective.
And the fault of that is our government AND the military leadership.
Our troops WILL crack under pressure. We KNOW that. Yet we keep putting more pressure on them because we still believe that Iraq is a "war" when we are really an occupation force.
The military leadership refuses to tell the politicians "NO".
God forbid anything other then tragedy be reported from Iraq.
Iraq IS a tragedy.
We paint schools and then shoot the parents of the children because they're traveling too fast when they approach our road block. How is that anything other than tragic?
Our troops are PEOPLE, not machines. They cannot take the continued stress.
The only people who we have to blame for this whole war disaster is the entire population of the United States. The republican supporters for being idiotic sheep, and the loony ass democratic supporters for doing a shit job and showing the idiotic sheep exactly what they are and coming up with a solution instead of just saying "the republicans screwed up."
And what about those of us who opposed this war BEFORE we invaded?
Right now you can run some P2P app on your computer, listen to music and balance your checkbook in between check for new stories on/.
That's because your computer has a LOT more internal bandwidth than external.
Now imagine that you're trying all of that online. All of a sudden your multi-tasking box becomes a single-task box as each of those apps tries to share your limited bandwidth. For most of us, it's easier to buy a faster CPU or hard drive than it is to get a faster Internet connection.
And that's just ONE computer with its own Internet connection. It only gets worse when you start adding more people to your connection.
And the goal is to do what? Get more people to use Free software?
The reason more people don't use Free software is that their workstation already has similar apps installed. Why download AbiWord when 90% of the workstations out there already have Notepad and Wordpad installed?
Although there are several mature, high quality distributions available, Linux has had a very hard time breaking through in certain markets, such as the desktop.
Yes, that is because Microsoft has a MONOPOLY on the desktop.
So don't use Microsoft's desktop monopoly as justification for changing the current approach. Linux has been gaining marketshare. There is nothing indicating that this will change.
In addition, the internet, which has already dramatically transformed the environment for other content-creating industries, may now alter the established methods for software packaging and installation.
Yes, it MAY. But it also has it's own, unique, issues. Such as having to rely upon: #1. Your machine. #2. Your network. #3. Your ISP connection. #4. The ISP connection of the service provider. #5. The service providers hardware.
When running the same app locally means you have to rely upon: #1. Your machine.
The activities around Web 2.0 are giving rise to Software as a Service (SaaS).
Yep, he's citing "Web 2.0". Usually, when someone cites "Web 2.0" it means that they're pushing more fantasy than Reality. And that holds true in this instance as well.
Why trade the reliability of apps installed on your local machine for the complexity of apps hosted somewhere else? Because it's Web 2.0 and it's cool!
Depending upon how it is implemented and how they evolve it.
1: We all know how quickly the law works... Talk about a bottleneck.
But it seems to be the only way to actually get the spammers. Filtering doesn't affect them. Their bandwidth is essentially free.
2: Most spammers operate outwith the control of any single government.
Not really. Each individual spammer lives in a country and is governed by the laws of that country. No single set of laws govern ALL spammers, but you can target some of them.
3: Many spammers operate through compromised proxy systems.
The technology should just be one aspect of this.
The spammers usually don't send out crap on their own (unless it is to advertise their services). This is one of the classic "follow the money" issues.
The Register ran an article that I cannot find right now. It was about how Company A hired Company B to send out ads to certain addresses. Company B hired Company C to send the ads. Company C needed more names so it bought a list of email addresses off of eBay from Person D.
It's easy for a government to handle research like that. Companies respond a LOT quicker when the request for information comes from their government.
And companies don't like having the government digging through their paperwork.
Sure, you risk "Joe Jobs", but overall, it should get the legitimate companies to be a LOT more careful before they outsource their next "email advertising campaign".
And that means that some of the money in spamming will dry up.
CONGRATULATIONS (and I mean that). You have identified the PROBLEM with such stories. They are TRAGEDIES in the old sense. One side will lose. One side is doomed. You are watching the failure because of the past decisions of one side.
Knowing that, the writers need to understand their material. What is their final statement?
#1. Man will always win over machines because machines lack (love, souls, emotions, whatever).
#2. Man's technology will eventually destroy man.
If they haven't made that choice, their material will eventually suck as they have to contradict past continuity or pull bullshit plot devices out of their asses. No matter how good the initial material, it needs that fundamental story arc.
I know it's popular to say that it was "illegal" wiretapping, but from what I understand, the wiretapping was between calls from the US to out of the country for the purpose of national security
You don't know that.
And the reason you don't know that is that the court providing oversight that would ensure such was specifically avoided.
All you have is their claims about the specifics of the wiretaps.
Force is the only means to guarantee your so-called rights. Period, the end. Right to live? Not if I fucking kill you.
Yes, I feel so threatened. You cannot even afford a gun. Not to mention the transportation to my island where my family and I live in our fortress surrounded by my paid body guards.
Your entire premise is based upon your belief that no other sources of power exist. That we are all equal and that you'd have some chance to stand toe-to-toe with me.
Excuse me. I'm writing a check to have someone beat you up.
It's called conditioning.
It's called "family" and human beings usually form bonds to it. It's part of the herd mentality. Family members will work to protect other family members.
Just because it contradicts your position does not mean that it does not exist.
Religion uses the carrot and the stick, it is a threat of violence in some religions - going to hell to burn in eternal flame.
While in others there is not. And in neither case is the force ever applied. No one has ever been sent to Hell for a week because they didn't obey the priest. No one gets Heaven for a week when they do really good.
Without more force than the "bad guys", someone just comes and steals your money, or the results of spending it.
Did you miss the point? It seems that you did.
Economic power means that I can reach beyond my physical reach. I can PAY someone to beat you up. All you can do is try to reach me yourself. I can pay 10 people to beat up 10 other people AT THE SAME TIME.
But my 10 victims would have no problem beating you up with 10 to 1 odds.
I have more POWER than you do. Because ECONOMICAL POWER does exist (despite your claims otherwise).
It all comes back to force - and, it is to be hoped, judiciously applied force.
No. It does not. Go ahead and show me how you (an outsider) can beat the family loyalty out of someone in my family.
A quick example, you show up at my door with 4 people who don't like you. You start hitting someone in my family (5 people total).
5 people from my family will start beating on you.
None of the 4 people who don't like you will start beating on us.
Family is a source of power. Whether you want to accept it or not.
But the simple fact is that you DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO LIFE. You could experience cardiac arrest and keel over any time.
So your position is that I don't have a Right to life.... because I'm not immortal.
Yeah, you might want to work on that a bit.
If you consider that simple truth (if I have a right to life, I demand that the government resurrect me when I die!) then you will see how ridiculous claims of innate rights are, aside from one - the right to attempt anything you like. But there are consequences...
Ummmm, Rights are NOT provided by the government.
Your Right to life means that no one has the Right to take your life. Not that the government makes you immortal.
Imagine a world where your senator voted for what your STATE really wanted, and not for what their party line said they should. Imagine a president who made decisions for what was really best for the county, and not for how to get his party's line promoted.
That's not going to happen because this is POLITICS.
Human beings are not wired that way. They form groups. The group can be based upon ANYTHING.
And once you start a group, by definition, everyone else is part of "them".
You do what you can to help your group and hamper "them".
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. Having multiple "standards" is stupid. There are times when it doesn't cause TOO much of a problem (DVD -R vs DVD +R). But usually it is more beneficial TO SOCIETY to have ONE standard that everyone can vote on to expand/extend.
Two standards in document formats is beyond STUPID.
Which is what Microsoft wants. Since Microsoft already owns 90%+ of the desktop market, whatever they sell becomes the "de facto" standard.
Even if it's broken and won't work with anything else.
He's ready to retire and take up photography again. And he LOVES the digital options. He's already setup his own website and uses Photoshop. He knows more about digital cameras than I do.
It's not age. It's interest.
He's found that his old interest has taken a new turn with computerization and he has spent his spare time learning all about it.
No matter how careful you are, it is the other people that will compromise your address.
Even if you only sent ONE message to Aunt Sally, your address is now on her machine. When she gets infected, ALL of the addresses on her machine are sent to the spammers.
Then you start getting spam.
We can do both already. It's just a matter of keeping the airspace clean enough for the radio waves to travel.
And THAT is why it will be a while before businesses get rid of their lines. You want the cleanest voice connections you can get. Yo don nt c st m rs o ha e t dea ith al s re ki g p.
Didn't they claim (after they signed the agreement) that Linux did not have any patent issues with Microsoft?
Where is their press release regarding this?
In exchange for governmental protection of your monopoly for a period of time, you will release the material to society as a whole.
That way people can FREELY build upon your work and society, as a whole, can further benefit.
In the grand scheme of things, chasing down KIDS who share mp3's just doesn't seem as important as establishing Federal guidelines for voting machines.
And that explains the massive growth of Linux and other Open Source apps.
It's "bullshit" to you, but it's very real to the customer. And the customers are moving because of it.
I'll go with your reading. Thanks!
No one is arguing that.
The discussion is about whether the attempt should be made to address ALL of those
Where did I say that?
They SHOULD be prioritized. No sense in trying to patch a local user, non-exploitable crash bug when you have a remote root vulnerability (with exploit).
But the system is only as secure as all of its components. While you may not believe that your vulnerability is important enough to patch, if enough people take that same approach, the vulnerabilities can be linked and your box will be cracked just as if you had left a remote root vulnerability unpatched.
That approach means that YOU are relying upon EVERYONE ELSE to cover your code by ensuring that THEIR code does not have any exploits. While you don't bother to patch your's.
Then running that software is not "practical". Any vulnerability is a vulnerability.
And "sufficiently complex" is defined as having "bugs and security holes". No. That just means that there is no such thing as "security". And we've been over that before.
Right. And enough of those "not particularly high risk" vulnerabilities can be linked together to crack your machine as surely as 1 remote root exploit could be.
"Best" in this case is being defined as "best for the company selling the software" and NOT "best for the people using that software".
What would be best for the users is the knowledge that there are fundamental security issues and that they might want to use a competitor's product.
Again, "not worth it" from the point of view of the vendor. Let's be clear on that.
How would you KNOW if there were already exploits in the wild? Unless someone was advertising them.
That approach means that an exploit can sit for years at the "unimportant" level
Yeah, that's the kind of support I want from my vendors.
Basically ...
.... what the fuck?
#1. If we spend time fixing those bugs, we won't have as much time to fix the important bugs.
Translation: we put in so many bugs that we don't have time to fix them all.
#2. We give priority to any bugs that someone's leaked to the press.
Translation: we only fix it if you force us to.
#3. "Third, the additional bugs that external hackers find are commonly found by examining the patches we apply to our software."
I had to post that verbatim. They're releasing new bugs in their patches.
#4. "Fourth, every disclosed bug increases the pace of battle against the hackers."
Yeah, that one too. The more bugs they fix, the faster the
#5. If we don't announce it, they won't know about it.
Great. So your customers are at risk, but don't know it.
So when the Open Standard copy becomes authoritative, how long do you believe someone will spend the time and effort keeping those "redundant copies" in sync?
Not very long. This is the old "path of least resistance". And it works.
The opposition parties will release evidence that an outside company BOUGHT those politicians and that their decision was made purely because of Microsoft's money.
They'll then run on a platform of hiring their programmers to work on their software for their country.
Eventually, Open Standards will win. If for no other reason than it is CHEAPER in the long run and the money goes back into their economy instead of to Redmond, WA, USA.
I was out protesting with MILLIONS of other people.
I wrote letters to my representatives.
Senator Patty Murray voted AGAINST the war.
Fuck your sophomoric "we're all to blame" bullshit. Many of us stood up and opposed this war. We are not to blame. We are still trying to get our troops back before any more of them die.
Probably. But that doesn't matter.
The IMPACT of a single innocent child being killed by our troops outweighs a literal TON of candy and flowers being handed out.
Meanwhile, comments from REAL military leaders
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/12/ap/nati
So dead women and children don't matter to the officers in charge.
Again, read the above link.
The problem is that this is now an occupation. We are occupying Iraq. But we are still treating it as an invasion.
We need to switch our strategy to law enforcement now. No more bombings. No more tanks.
The war is over. We won. But we're still going to lose Iraq because we cannot understand that police work is not the same as calling in another bombing run.
And the fault of that is our government AND the military leadership.
Our troops WILL crack under pressure. We KNOW that. Yet we keep putting more pressure on them because we still believe that Iraq is a "war" when we are really an occupation force.
The military leadership refuses to tell the politicians "NO".
Iraq IS a tragedy.
We paint schools and then shoot the parents of the children because they're traveling too fast when they approach our road block. How is that anything other than tragic?
Our troops are PEOPLE, not machines. They cannot take the continued stress.
And now we're extending their tours.
And what about those of us who opposed this war BEFORE we invaded?
Right now you can run some P2P app on your computer, listen to music and balance your checkbook in between check for new stories on /.
That's because your computer has a LOT more internal bandwidth than external.
Now imagine that you're trying all of that online. All of a sudden your multi-tasking box becomes a single-task box as each of those apps tries to share your limited bandwidth. For most of us, it's easier to buy a faster CPU or hard drive than it is to get a faster Internet connection.
And that's just ONE computer with its own Internet connection. It only gets worse when you start adding more people to your connection.
And the goal is to do what? Get more people to use Free software?
The reason more people don't use Free software is that their workstation already has similar apps installed. Why download AbiWord when 90% of the workstations out there already have Notepad and Wordpad installed?
Yes, that is because Microsoft has a MONOPOLY on the desktop.
So don't use Microsoft's desktop monopoly as justification for changing the current approach. Linux has been gaining marketshare. There is nothing indicating that this will change.
Yes, it MAY. But it also has it's own, unique, issues. Such as having to rely upon:
#1. Your machine.
#2. Your network.
#3. Your ISP connection.
#4. The ISP connection of the service provider.
#5. The service providers hardware.
When running the same app locally means you have to rely upon:
#1. Your machine.
Yep, he's citing "Web 2.0". Usually, when someone cites "Web 2.0" it means that they're pushing more fantasy than Reality. And that holds true in this instance as well.
Why trade the reliability of apps installed on your local machine for the complexity of apps hosted somewhere else? Because it's Web 2.0 and it's cool!
But it seems to be the only way to actually get the spammers. Filtering doesn't affect them. Their bandwidth is essentially free.
Not really. Each individual spammer lives in a country and is governed by the laws of that country. No single set of laws govern ALL spammers, but you can target some of them.
The technology should just be one aspect of this.
The spammers usually don't send out crap on their own (unless it is to advertise their services). This is one of the classic "follow the money" issues.
The Register ran an article that I cannot find right now. It was about how Company A hired Company B to send out ads to certain addresses. Company B hired Company C to send the ads. Company C needed more names so it bought a list of email addresses off of eBay from Person D.
It's easy for a government to handle research like that. Companies respond a LOT quicker when the request for information comes from their government.
And companies don't like having the government digging through their paperwork.
Sure, you risk "Joe Jobs", but overall, it should get the legitimate companies to be a LOT more careful before they outsource their next "email advertising campaign".
And that means that some of the money in spamming will dry up.
In Gilligan's Island, they had only two outcomes.
#1. They get off the island.
#2. They stay on the island.
CONGRATULATIONS (and I mean that). You have identified the PROBLEM with such stories. They are TRAGEDIES in the old sense. One side will lose. One side is doomed. You are watching the failure because of the past decisions of one side.
Knowing that, the writers need to understand their material. What is their final statement?
#1. Man will always win over machines because machines lack (love, souls, emotions, whatever).
#2. Man's technology will eventually destroy man.
If they haven't made that choice, their material will eventually suck as they have to contradict past continuity or pull bullshit plot devices out of their asses. No matter how good the initial material, it needs that fundamental story arc.
You don't know that.
And the reason you don't know that is that the court providing oversight that would ensure such was specifically avoided.
All you have is their claims about the specifics of the wiretaps.
At least with "Windows Update" I can, somewhat, limit the amount of crap going onto my systems.
But a far FAR better solution is Debian's approach. I get TINY patches and ONLY for what is specifically running on my system.
It is so much simpler and easier to test with that approach.
Particularly when compared to things like WinXP's sp2 (with firewall) approach.
Yes, I feel so threatened. You cannot even afford a gun. Not to mention the transportation to my island where my family and I live in our fortress surrounded by my paid body guards.
Your entire premise is based upon your belief that no other sources of power exist. That we are all equal and that you'd have some chance to stand toe-to-toe with me.
Excuse me. I'm writing a check to have someone beat you up.
It's called "family" and human beings usually form bonds to it. It's part of the herd mentality. Family members will work to protect other family members.
Just because it contradicts your position does not mean that it does not exist.
While in others there is not. And in neither case is the force ever applied. No one has ever been sent to Hell for a week because they didn't obey the priest. No one gets Heaven for a week when they do really good.
Did you miss the point? It seems that you did.
Economic power means that I can reach beyond my physical reach. I can PAY someone to beat you up. All you can do is try to reach me yourself. I can pay 10 people to beat up 10 other people AT THE SAME TIME.
But my 10 victims would have no problem beating you up with 10 to 1 odds.
I have more POWER than you do. Because ECONOMICAL POWER does exist (despite your claims otherwise).
No. It does not. Go ahead and show me how you (an outsider) can beat the family loyalty out of someone in my family.
A quick example, you show up at my door with 4 people who don't like you. You start hitting someone in my family (5 people total).
5 people from my family will start beating on you.
None of the 4 people who don't like you will start beating on us.
Family is a source of power. Whether you want to accept it or not.
So your position is that I don't have a Right to life
Yeah, you might want to work on that a bit.
Ummmm, Rights are NOT provided by the government.
Your Right to life means that no one has the Right to take your life. Not that the government makes you immortal.
That's not going to happen because this is POLITICS.
Human beings are not wired that way. They form groups. The group can be based upon ANYTHING.
And once you start a group, by definition, everyone else is part of "them".
You do what you can to help your group and hamper "them".