"most Windows users run with administrator privileges"
Sure, but technically they don't have to and it doesn't really matter in the big picture. Most Linux users would happily do "perl Makefile.pl; make; make test. switch to root, make install" without caring. Most users are ignorant (they can't know everything) and the popular OSes (OSX included) do not make it easy for them to do "the right thing".
It is unreasonable to require a normal person to _correctly_ figure out what an arbitrary program would _actually_ do before deciding to run it or not. Even when aided by an AV program, how would the AV program decide what the perl script would do if the script googled for code using keywords and ran eval on it;).
Whereas it should be much more reasonable to require a normal person to figure out what a program _should_ be _allowed_ to do.
"the biggest problem is that a stranger has complete and lasting control over a user's computer. "
My points are: 0) In the case of "Aunt May"'s PC, it doesn't really matter if the stranger has complete control or not. With current primitive OSes (OSX or not) - the stranger will have _enough_ control (full access to user data, and user privileges), AND lasting control (user ignorance is widespread ). 1) from the tech perspective, OSX is not more secure than windows XP SP2. In fact I claim (and arguably show) it is less secure. 2) OSX is safer from the practical perspective - best defense is nobody wants to attack you. 3) They all suck from a security standpoint - haven't improved much in 40+ years?
RTFA: "Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them) "
Actually I prefer "east asian"-looking women.
>=1.5 billion of the World's population (China + Japan + Korea + Taiwan etc) proves that not being blond+blue-eyed sure didn't stop all that mating going on;).
Yes, you can try to express everything in math, but it's not necessarily _helpful_.
Music is math too. But you can be a great composer without knowing very much math. And even if you did know math, I daresay it's not the main source of the "good stuff".
Sure I think Computer Scientists should know all that math stuff - monads, NP completeness etc.
But there's room for a lot of other areas. I mean how about protocol design and syntax? Knowing stuff in Linguistics and maybe Data Compression theory might come in handy. And sometimes knowing existing practice is good enough (protocol = line based, command-response), since someone else new can easily understand what you're doing and _why_. How about breaking stuff into the "right sizes and places"?
You could also say doing certain things in a program is "Bad Hygiene" and some code is "bad taste", but where does that belong in Computer Science? Does it even belong there? What's "Good/Bad hygiene" and "Good/bad taste" may be obvious to some, but how would you teach it to others rapidly? Figure a way to define it in mathematical terms? Would that be so useful?
I don't generally code in Python, but I think using tabs for indentation is definitely better than using spaces.
Why? Because it's easier for someone else reading your code to set the viewed indentation to whatever they like, without changing your code. They prefer 1 tab = 8 chars, or 3 chars, no prob - they'll automatically see it the way they want without any changes.
It's not a big deal, but I really don't see how "X spaces" can be better than "1 tab". Maybe if you copied and pasted code from a terminal/browser/IM client or something? But I think nobody expects that sort of thing to work automatically correctly with Python - you'd have to go check/fix the whitespace first.
Using OSX is safer (for now), but to say OSX is more secure than Windows is foolishness.
Most of the windows malware _running_ out there don't even care about root/admin privileges. Most are zombie machines to spam or DDoS and spread. Don't need root/admin for that.
By default OSX and Linux run stuff unsandboxed with the same privileges as the logged on user and the logged on user has lots of network privileges, can set up cron jobs, and all other nice stuff (perl + There's More Than One Million Ways To Do Malware;) ). So if OSX or Linux ever get >50% of market share, I'm sure they'd have the same amount of malware if not even _more.
All you need is one prob in Firefox/Safari, or a silly user to run something and you're in. There are many bugs in Mozilla - it's written by the Netscape programmers so go figure.
In contrast many off-the-shelf Windows firewalls (including Windows XP SP2) sandbox/control the execution of arbitrary programs - require user to approve network access etc. Sure it may not be that secure but it's a lot easier for "Aunt May" than SELinux.
Given the lack of "Desktop User friendly" sandboxing for OSX, I'd say that OSX is actually harder to keep secure for "Joe Public".
BUT, in practice, since OSX is not really a target, "Joe Public OSX users" don't need all that stuff yet. It's like OSX users are living in some small village where it's safe even if you leave your front door open. Hardly anyone is going to break in yet.
Windows XP SP2 is actually more secure, unfortunately it's "located in a dangerous part of town", so using it is NOT safer than OSX (for now).
Note: I'm not referring to the security abomination that's called Vista - Vista's UAC just trains already click-thru happy users to click-thru even more. If Microsoft cared about security they should have implemented sandbox _templates_ or something similar.
Sandbox templates can go a long way in making things secure - since if a program claims to be a screensaver but requests the user give it "Full User Privileges" (or even Full System Privileges) it's likely to be up to no good.
If it requests the user give it "screensaver" privileges, if you do things right, it's not going to be able to do much - no access to network, filesystem, keyboard, mouse, microphone (yeah no eavesdropping), no nothing, except drawing pretty pictures. So it'll need to exploit the graphics driver (which is probably not impossible given the buggy drivers out there, but takes a lot more work).
I hope you can now see that the popular OSes are all very primitive and inadequate when it comes to desktop user class security. SELinux is not for "Aunt May". AppArmor is not that bad, but still not quite there yet. SELinux/AppArmor need lots more stuff on top to make things seamless and easy for users to not screw up.
Well what if there's no universe where the gun jams? All those universes were ruled out by other events?
Sure most of the other Yous who decided not to do such a stupid thing live merrily on in their Many Worlds, but the Yous who decided to Quantum Suicide might find out the hard way that "the wrong turn ends here".
Why should MWI mean that ALL chosen paths will avoid 100% Darkness? To me that's like saying the two slit experiment doesn't have destructive interference.
But there be a total of ZERO universes out of the infinite ones where you'd remain alive long after the setting up of the button system.
Could be you'd be alive in the Many Worlds where you/others didn't do/start something stupid, but you = dead when you/others did - no way out even in the infinite MWI possibilities from there.
Heh, I'm waiting for an OSS XP+DirectX9 compatible, or maybe Vista SP2/SP3 whichever gets decent first.
I use a Linux desktop at work (suse 10.0), and the Linux sound system stuff on suse sucks. I'm not switching to suse 10.2 because the software management on 10.2 is EXTREMELY SLOW, suse screwed that up. Maybe 10.3 will be better, but I'm not betting anything on it.
And I got my one and only windows BSOD for this _YEAR_ so far from Vista. And that's after just a few minutes of testing Vista on some box another dept lent me. OK probably crappy drivers/hardware, but still I can't see why I should waste time on Vista for now.
If the usual theft laws don't apply and the Courts etc would need to use a Copyright/Patent/"Anti-Hacking" Law to make it illegal, then it isn't theft (by legal definition). Similarly for plagiarism and fraud.
Of course if people keep having a muddled thinking about stuff then the definition of words could change and then the lawyers and judges could then interpret the laws differently.
The *AA naturally would be happy if their preferred meaning of theft is spread.
In fact, retroactive extensions of copyright terms is far closer to theft than illegal copying, because with the former, people involuntarily lose their rightful access to something (they can no longer freely use the stuff). In contrast the *AA do not automatically have access to your money (yet?), so even if copying may deprive them of your money, it's still your money in the first place.
Neurons definitely talk to each other and at least some are more sophisticated than you seem to think, even though they may be very specialized.
Some people even have a "Halle Berry" neuron - if they see the name "Halle Berry" or her picture or even a caricature, that neuron will fire.
See: http://www.physorg.com/news4703.html
Maybe that part is a bit like Bingo. Patterns are passed through a huge bunch of neurons, and one of them shouts out and says "Bingo: Halle Berry!", another says "Bingo: Catwoman", and the results are fed back through the neurons.
Whether QC comes into this is debatable. But given the lack of knowledge we have on how it all works, I'm not going to be so certain it doesn't play a role. As I said if QC is possible, it is likely to be advantageous.
"until you realize that he had been in jail during the murder. OOPS! The Prosecutor neglected to actually look that up, I suppose."
In theory it's not the Prosecutor's job to look that up. It's the Defense's job.
It's all part of that style of court system. Other countries have a magistrate/judge who investigates stuff - but they tend to get blown up, corrupted, blackmailed etc more than in the "judge sits there and lets both sides fight it out" system:).
Still, you'd hope that people have a conscience and decency to do the right thing. But looks like such people are even rarer nowadays.
We call them cooperatives here. I personally think cooperatives tend to be better for _everyone_ (customers, society) as a whole. Pity bosses are more likely to prefer the for-profit route - since they have a higher chance of making a lot more money (but I feel that sort of thing tends to degenerate to feudalism if not regularly reined in).
As for insurance, I pay a lot less, but I don't live in the USA;). Comes to about the same I guess if you go on a "PPP" basis. But you don't get mega payouts here. In fact, the stingy bunch don't even give you full resale value of your car (they do something like go through classifieds and look for the cheaper prices for that model - not exactly I guess but seems that way to me ).
Slashdot Mirror
"so we're stuck with using spaces if we want our code to be consistently presentable."
;).
Why not write a "Python Tidy" to handle the usual cases? Or make an IDE that figures it out.
If the program just looks misaligned on your screen but otherwise works correctly then it's not misaligned
"most Windows users run with administrator privileges"
;).
Sure, but technically they don't have to and it doesn't really matter in the big picture. Most Linux users would happily do "perl Makefile.pl; make; make test. switch to root, make install" without caring. Most users are ignorant (they can't know everything) and the popular OSes (OSX included) do not make it easy for them to do "the right thing".
It is unreasonable to require a normal person to _correctly_ figure out what an arbitrary program would _actually_ do before deciding to run it or not. Even when aided by an AV program, how would the AV program decide what the perl script would do if the script googled for code using keywords and ran eval on it
Whereas it should be much more reasonable to require a normal person to figure out what a program _should_ be _allowed_ to do.
"the biggest problem is that a stranger has complete and lasting control over a user's computer. "
My points are:
0) In the case of "Aunt May"'s PC, it doesn't really matter if the stranger has complete control or not. With current primitive OSes (OSX or not) - the stranger will have _enough_ control (full access to user data, and user privileges), AND lasting control (user ignorance is widespread ).
1) from the tech perspective, OSX is not more secure than windows XP SP2. In fact I claim (and arguably show) it is less secure.
2) OSX is safer from the practical perspective - best defense is nobody wants to attack you.
3) They all suck from a security standpoint - haven't improved much in 40+ years?
Uh. Bonobos have a lot of sex - even same-sex. Apparently it's for strengthening relationship bonds, soothing disputes etc.
Once you start getting a "Culture" I don't think it's quite as simple as "because it's to reproduce" anymore.
It starts being the survival of the fittest "Culture".
RTFA: "Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them) "
;).
Actually I prefer "east asian"-looking women.
>=1.5 billion of the World's population (China + Japan + Korea + Taiwan etc) proves that not being blond+blue-eyed sure didn't stop all that mating going on
Yes, you can try to express everything in math, but it's not necessarily _helpful_.
Music is math too. But you can be a great composer without knowing very much math. And even if you did know math, I daresay it's not the main source of the "good stuff".
Sure I think Computer Scientists should know all that math stuff - monads, NP completeness etc.
But there's room for a lot of other areas. I mean how about protocol design and syntax? Knowing stuff in Linguistics and maybe Data Compression theory might come in handy. And sometimes knowing existing practice is good enough (protocol = line based, command-response), since someone else new can easily understand what you're doing and _why_. How about breaking stuff into the "right sizes and places"?
You could also say doing certain things in a program is "Bad Hygiene" and some code is "bad taste", but where does that belong in Computer Science? Does it even belong there? What's "Good/Bad hygiene" and "Good/bad taste" may be obvious to some, but how would you teach it to others rapidly? Figure a way to define it in mathematical terms? Would that be so useful?
I don't generally code in Python, but I think using tabs for indentation is definitely better than using spaces.
Why? Because it's easier for someone else reading your code to set the viewed indentation to whatever they like, without changing your code. They prefer 1 tab = 8 chars, or 3 chars, no prob - they'll automatically see it the way they want without any changes.
It's not a big deal, but I really don't see how "X spaces" can be better than "1 tab". Maybe if you copied and pasted code from a terminal/browser/IM client or something? But I think nobody expects that sort of thing to work automatically correctly with Python - you'd have to go check/fix the whitespace first.
(I used to work in the IT Security line).
;) ). So if OSX or Linux ever get >50% of market share, I'm sure they'd have the same amount of malware if not even _more.
Using OSX is safer (for now), but to say OSX is more secure than Windows is foolishness.
Most of the windows malware _running_ out there don't even care about root/admin privileges. Most are zombie machines to spam or DDoS and spread. Don't need root/admin for that.
By default OSX and Linux run stuff unsandboxed with the same privileges as the logged on user and the logged on user has lots of network privileges, can set up cron jobs, and all other nice stuff (perl + There's More Than One Million Ways To Do Malware
All you need is one prob in Firefox/Safari, or a silly user to run something and you're in. There are many bugs in Mozilla - it's written by the Netscape programmers so go figure.
In contrast many off-the-shelf Windows firewalls (including Windows XP SP2) sandbox/control the execution of arbitrary programs - require user to approve network access etc. Sure it may not be that secure but it's a lot easier for "Aunt May" than SELinux.
Given the lack of "Desktop User friendly" sandboxing for OSX, I'd say that OSX is actually harder to keep secure for "Joe Public".
BUT, in practice, since OSX is not really a target, "Joe Public OSX users" don't need all that stuff yet. It's like OSX users are living in some small village where it's safe even if you leave your front door open. Hardly anyone is going to break in yet.
Windows XP SP2 is actually more secure, unfortunately it's "located in a dangerous part of town", so using it is NOT safer than OSX (for now).
Note: I'm not referring to the security abomination that's called Vista - Vista's UAC just trains already click-thru happy users to click-thru even more. If Microsoft cared about security they should have implemented sandbox _templates_ or something similar.
Sandbox templates can go a long way in making things secure - since if a program claims to be a screensaver but requests the user give it "Full User Privileges" (or even Full System Privileges) it's likely to be up to no good.
If it requests the user give it "screensaver" privileges, if you do things right, it's not going to be able to do much - no access to network, filesystem, keyboard, mouse, microphone (yeah no eavesdropping), no nothing, except drawing pretty pictures. So it'll need to exploit the graphics driver (which is probably not impossible given the buggy drivers out there, but takes a lot more work).
I hope you can now see that the popular OSes are all very primitive and inadequate when it comes to desktop user class security. SELinux is not for "Aunt May". AppArmor is not that bad, but still not quite there yet. SELinux/AppArmor need lots more stuff on top to make things seamless and easy for users to not screw up.
Well what if there's no universe where the gun jams? All those universes were ruled out by other events?
Sure most of the other Yous who decided not to do such a stupid thing live merrily on in their Many Worlds, but the Yous who decided to Quantum Suicide might find out the hard way that "the wrong turn ends here".
Why should MWI mean that ALL chosen paths will avoid 100% Darkness? To me that's like saying the two slit experiment doesn't have destructive interference.
But there be a total of ZERO universes out of the infinite ones where you'd remain alive long after the setting up of the button system.
Could be you'd be alive in the Many Worlds where you/others didn't do/start something stupid, but you = dead when you/others did - no way out even in the infinite MWI possibilities from there.
Heh, I'm waiting for an OSS XP+DirectX9 compatible, or maybe Vista SP2/SP3 whichever gets decent first.
I use a Linux desktop at work (suse 10.0), and the Linux sound system stuff on suse sucks. I'm not switching to suse 10.2 because the software management on 10.2 is EXTREMELY SLOW, suse screwed that up. Maybe 10.3 will be better, but I'm not betting anything on it.
And I got my one and only windows BSOD for this _YEAR_ so far from Vista. And that's after just a few minutes of testing Vista on some box another dept lent me. OK probably crappy drivers/hardware, but still I can't see why I should waste time on Vista for now.
I'm no fan of Linux or Windows.
Google can use your account (and other similar accounts) to figure out what is spam, they just have to do a bit of whitelisting.
If the usual theft laws don't apply and the Courts etc would need to use a Copyright/Patent/"Anti-Hacking" Law to make it illegal, then it isn't theft (by legal definition). Similarly for plagiarism and fraud.
Of course if people keep having a muddled thinking about stuff then the definition of words could change and then the lawyers and judges could then interpret the laws differently.
The *AA naturally would be happy if their preferred meaning of theft is spread.
In fact, retroactive extensions of copyright terms is far closer to theft than illegal copying, because with the former, people involuntarily lose their rightful access to something (they can no longer freely use the stuff). In contrast the *AA do not automatically have access to your money (yet?), so even if copying may deprive them of your money, it's still your money in the first place.
Python and Ruby?
;).
But PHP seems awfully popular. Or should I say terribly popular?
I can't decide...
I'm mayed to hear that.
e t-my-wife.html
While that's an advertent remark, it's fairly promptu and something to sneeze at, after all the original inspiration is far more ept and sipid:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/how-i-m
Don't learn English from Slashdot! It's pretty bad here.
Try the following instead:
http://www.newscientist.com/news.ns
http://www.economist.com/science/tq/
Like some security expert has said: just write down your passwords onto a small piece of paper and keep them in your wallet/handbag.
If you lose your wallet/handbag, call up the banks to cancel your cards etc, call up the rest to cancel your passwords.
You're keeping it in a fairly secure place.
Sounds cheaper to domesticate humans properly in the first place.
Fetal pigs are tiny, but if a human was hit by say a 2kg pig at 50mph, that human could get significantly hurt.
Crazy alien kids joyriding again, I bet that gave the "Prime Directive" guys in charge a big headache. ;). There could be zillions of explanations.
But I want to know what sort of guy made that death bed confession - maybe it's his last joke on the world. Or maybe it's true.
Remove sulfur = more wear on your engine?
AFAIK, it's usually the other way round. Sulphur = bad for engine (and other car bits too).
Neurons definitely talk to each other and at least some are more sophisticated than you seem to think, even though they may be very specialized.
Some people even have a "Halle Berry" neuron - if they see the name "Halle Berry" or her picture or even a caricature, that neuron will fire.
See: http://www.physorg.com/news4703.html
Maybe that part is a bit like Bingo. Patterns are passed through a huge bunch of neurons, and one of them shouts out and says "Bingo: Halle Berry!", another says "Bingo: Catwoman", and the results are fed back through the neurons.
Whether QC comes into this is debatable. But given the lack of knowledge we have on how it all works, I'm not going to be so certain it doesn't play a role. As I said if QC is possible, it is likely to be advantageous.
"until you realize that he had been in jail during the murder. OOPS! The Prosecutor neglected to actually look that up, I suppose."
:).
In theory it's not the Prosecutor's job to look that up. It's the Defense's job.
It's all part of that style of court system. Other countries have a magistrate/judge who investigates stuff - but they tend to get blown up, corrupted, blackmailed etc more than in the "judge sits there and lets both sides fight it out" system
Still, you'd hope that people have a conscience and decency to do the right thing. But looks like such people are even rarer nowadays.
It's not 100%, but if your random number generator (not totally random) started with a random known seed, you might be able to recreate the event.
We call them cooperatives here. I personally think cooperatives tend to be better for _everyone_ (customers, society) as a whole. Pity bosses are more likely to prefer the for-profit route - since they have a higher chance of making a lot more money (but I feel that sort of thing tends to degenerate to feudalism if not regularly reined in).
;). Comes to about the same I guess if you go on a "PPP" basis. But you don't get mega payouts here. In fact, the stingy bunch don't even give you full resale value of your car (they do something like go through classifieds and look for the cheaper prices for that model - not exactly I guess but seems that way to me ).
As for insurance, I pay a lot less, but I don't live in the USA
Laugh, but MS won't think it's funny.
Because if everyone continued staying with XP, and eventually Wine or somebody would come up with a decent XP compatible.
Then Microsoft would be in danger of becoming like one of those BIOS vendors. They make money sure, but it ain't billions and billions.
And it could be hard for Microsoft to break free from "XP Compatible", just like Intel couldn't get people to switch from x86 to the Itanic.
Microsoft could (would?) sue of course, but I don't think they want to even go down that path in the first place.