Yes I do believe that the exposure in the PDF problem was Apple's fault due to a flaw in iOS. You might also recall (or maybe not given your response) that Apple closed that exposure (not Adobe).
The owner of the exposure was clear, just as it is clear in this case. If ASLR and DEP fails to protect against such an exposure, they are flawed.
Arguably, given the article you posted, it doesn't appear to be effective in the way it was presented, but I found a few points interesting.
This person gives no references for the statement claiming 'it doesn't work', nor does he compare it to the current incarceration method statistics and he doesn't present any statistics from typical prison based incarceration. He of course only speaks to and ask about the worst case scenarios (those that managed to get out of their collars, those that these private companies failed to monitor, or those that didn't get them in the first place), which of course gives him worse statistics than expected.
Last point that I noticed, the article said the companies could not supply him with any studies indicating that tagging was effective. The point being that they simply don't know if it's effective as no studies have been done to date, or they aren't aware of any. You interpreted that as "it doesn't work".
But the bad news is that it has no basic impact on crime, on re-offending [bbc.co.uk], with many criminals comitting crimes while tagged.
Yes and no. The MS OS is actually written with a lot of safeguards in place to make the OS more secure. Years of being attacked tends to make one a bit defensive and certainly more technically adept.
I think their problems are on multiple fronts:
Overly complex code Lax permission requirements, Too many admins (still default on workstation installs) Poorly written apps that in turn requires them to bend the rules or to provide workarounds.
MS could take a hard line, and force apps to comply with OS guidelines, but they'd be shooting their compatibility in the foot. although I see them nudging folks in that direction, with more functions locked out by default, they have a long way to go. Instead, they bend over backwards to try to work around compatibility issues and legacy support, and as a result, leave tons of loopholes. I had great hopes for their VirtualPC bit and was hoping they would take a more Apple-centric approach, allowing them to just start with a fresh slate while virtualizing old OS compatibility. It appears that was a wasted hope however...
The current USPS problems are closely related to the economy in general and advances in technology that make 'snail mail' obsolete, but not all blame lies there. In 2006, congress passed legislation that basically prevents the USPS from being competitive:
"The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (the Postal Act of 2006) split postal products into Competitive and Market Dominant. At the same time, the Act put the bulk of revenuegenerating products under a stringent price cap and gave the Postal Service limited ability to control its costs or increase revenue. The viability of the Postal Service under the Postal Act of 2006 relied on the underlying presumption that mail volume would continue to grow. It hasn’t."
They can undo some of the damage done, and recover themselves. Prior to 2007, they were indeed competitive, and not funded by taxpayers. They simply need to adapt to the electronic age. Offer new products and services that people in this day and time need. Snail mail is dying a slow death.
And prior to 3 years ago when the economy collapsed? If anything, its beneficial that you still have basic mail service, even in situations that would drive a normal business out of business.
Although I agree with what your saying in principal, the post office delivers a message thousands of miles for a few cents. It's also one of the few self-sufficient government organizations. There are times when the end does seem to justify the means.
Were the government found to be gouging the taxpayer with unfair costs, then I would have an issue with this. Were the post office horribly inefficient, I would have issue with this.
I don't think either of those describes the post office.
I found this quote by the FCC particularly humorous:
"The three-judge panel's decision in July raised serious concerns about the Commission's ability to protect children and families from indecent broadcast programming," FCC general counsel Austin Schlick said. "The Commission remains committed to empowering parents and protecting children, and looks forward to the court of appeals' further consideration of our arguments."
The piece about empowering parents. Surely they do realize that they empower parents by taking away their power to choose?
And that is exactly the point. You are an adult. Just change the channel if you find it offensive. The other point being you have the choice to change the channel or just turn it off.
I can only hope for the day when the church's clutches on mainstream America's balls loosens enough to let people make their own choices.
It has always been my companies philosophical belief that those who implement (operations) should not know what they are doing. The idea is that those who do know what they are doing have no access, and those that have access have no knowledge. It makes for an interesting environment. You have to document everything to the finest detail, and not only get your package QA'd, you must also get your implementation documentation QA'd. The minor problem with this is that eventually, someone doing this long enough will develop skill with the system they work on.
Although the system is cumbersome, I can see the reasons for it, and understand the risks implied by giving too much access in production. At some point, the ability to fix something will be too tempting to go through change control to get it done.
For instances where a developer needs access to production, that is allowed, but their actions are logged.
We don't give our fixes to a trained monkey we give them to System Administers
You do realize that they are already creating antimatter today right?
They started creating almost two decades ago, although it's prohibitively expensive as all new technology is in it's infancy. It's only a matter of time before they can create it in bulk at a reasonable cost.
The technology to create antimatter, although new, is already advancing.
It's funny that you should mention that. They are already developing new propulsion systems that no longer require solid rocket fuel. This one for instance can shorten the trip to mars to just about 3 months:
The Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory is developing a new type of rocket technology, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket. This plasma rocket drive is not powered by conventional chemical reactions as todays rockets are, but by electrical energy that heats the propellant. The propellant is a plasma that reaches extreme temperatures 50,000 and above. Some scientists call this the fourth state of matter.
This new type of technology could dramatically shorten human transit times between planets (about 3 months to Mars). Not only will planetary missions be fast, but the plasma drive will propel robotic cargo missions with very large payloads (more than 100 tons to Mars). Trip times and payloads are major concerns when using conventional rockets.
Not likely given this 1.4 mass planet is one of the two 'missing' planets, and the other is a gas giant with 65 Earth masses. Still an exciting discovery:
From TFA:
“We also have good reasons to believe that two other planets are present,” says Lovis. One would be a Saturn-like planet (with a minimum mass of 65 Earth masses) orbiting in 2200 days. The other would be the least massive exoplanet ever discovered, with a mass of about 1.4 times that of the Earth. It is very close to its host star, at just 2 percent of the Earth–Sun distance. One “year” on this planet would last only 1.18 Earth-days.
The only games that I would classify as troublesome are old DOS games, and even those are easily played in DosBox.
The benefit to older games is that they are easily virtualized with advances in computing power.
I actually play my old MOO2 game, on my MAC, in a dos box game bundled into an.APP. If anything, advances have made these games even more portable than ever before.
What we're talking about here is a missing piece of the puzzle, not due to age or newer systems because the older components can easily be recreated virtually, but actual missing pieces of the puzzle that prevents a game from being played at all.
Helium has many uses even though it is inert. There are three major uses for helium.It is used in low-temperature cooling systems and pressure, lighter-than-air objects and purge systems.
Helium can be very useful in low-temperature cooling because at -270*, or liquid temperature, is able to cool anything because it is so cold. A good example of this as useful is in superconducting devices, because superconducting (electricity can pass from one place to another without wasting any energy) can occur only at very low temperatures. In pressure systems a gas is used to pressurize the system but the gas is not acceptable if it is able to react with any of the surroundings. Helium is an inert gas that is ideal for these situations. As well, in a purge system an inert gas is used to sweep all gas in a container without reacting with the contents, being inert it is ideal for these situations as well. Helium is ideal for blimps, balloons and other lighter-than-air crafts because it is neither flammable nor have the lifting effects of hydrogen, this makes it much safer. Although only used for advertising and other limited purposes, it is an ideal element to make these possible.....
Some other common uses for helium include::leak detection systems:welding:growing silicon and germanium crystals; protective shield:titanium and zirconium production; protective shield:nuclear reactors; cooling medium:diving and others working under pressure; artificial atmosphere with 20% oxygen:supersonic wind tunnels:cryogenic applications:liquid fuel rockets; pressurizing:effecting voice if breathed
I was then curious as to how quickly we lose helium to space and ran across this:
No planet can hold any gas. Everything escapes, the only question is how fast.
Atmosphere is lost faster, when: gas is lighter temperature is higher, gravity is lower, planet has smaller size.
Potential energy of helium atom near the surface is P = -mgRe = -/Na gRe
Exponential factor in Boltzmann distribution is exp(-P/kT) = exp(/Na gRe / kT) = exp(/(RT) gRe)
Assuming T= 300 K we have/RT gRe = 0.004/(8.3 300) 9.8 6,370,000 = 100
So once per exp(-100) ~ 10^-43 attempts at escaping helium atom manages to do so. Probabilty 10^-34 is very small, but it sharply depends on temperature. Throw in 1000K and you have p ~ 10^-13, which means rather quick escape.
I gather from the above that although helium can escape earths atmosphere, it does so very slowly.
In the end, it seems foolish to me to release a known finite resource (finite as to what our technology can easily harvest today) to the hands of whim.
I think that is my only concern, but in a longer term sense. What if steam should ever go away? I'm not overly worried about transient failures with my internet connection, but what about over the longer term if they go out of business. I'm getting to the point where I have a decent amount invested in Steam.
Will they provide patches to allow me to play without Steam should should Steam happen to go out of business? I already have a few games that required connections to corporate servers to play, and they are now 'dead'.
As to the larger DRM question and Steam's success, ALL DRM is restrictive, but not all DRM is overly burdensome. I suppose for that, everyone has their 'limit' as to what they deem to be too much of a hassle. I think the primary reason that Steam see's so much success is that they allow much more freedom than conventional DRM schemes these days. I can download any game on any machine at any time. I could also give them a pass. There are no limits on the number of times that I can install a game, or where I install it.
These publishers need to realize that no one will buy their product if it is cumbersome to get it working or if their DRM schemes impose too many limits on what people view as 'my game'. I would imagine they all saw dollar signs when they saw that they could easily put in certainly limits on a game to ensure a revenue stream, only to find it either killed sales, or caused even more pirating of their game.
I have to wonder if many of these companies don't have some sort of usability team that just uses the game (with DRM) to see if it's cumbersome or frustrating. It seems like a simple idea, but some of these DRM schemes are so bad, I can't believe they actually tried to use their own product in any sort of evaluation with all the DRM in place.
Yes, but you have to remember that Americans have a lot fatter asses than they have in Europe.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump on that bandwagon. Although this is an older site, I can't imagine things have changed drastically in 5 years. The page was also updated in Dec of 2009:
Two out of three US men — 67% - are overweight or obese. Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta have now all exceeded this figure. England and Wales are not far behind.
The EU is so worried about it that it has launched its own campaign against obesity. 'The time when obesity was thought to be a problem on the other side of the Atlantic has gone by,' said Mars Di Bartolomeo, Luxembourg's Minister of Health.
The tubby top ten:
Greece (78.6% of blokes are overweight or obese) Germany (75.4%) Czech Republic (73.2%) Cyprus (72.6%) Slovakia (69%) Malta (68%) Finland (67.8%) Slovenia (66.5%) Ireland (66.4%) England and Wales (65.4%).
Frankly, I don't think urban sprawl has anything to do with obesity in a significant way. I think it has to do with fat/calorie content of restaurant food (especially so in the US), and the fact that 'eating out', which used to be the odd occurrence here, has become more the norm for a high percentage of homes. Way too much fast food, or even regular restaurants that don't have healthy menu's. We also spend far more time isolated in our homes, on the internet, and watching TV.
On a side note, I eat out a couple of times a week but I adapt my intake to compensate for shitty food that I might eat on occasion. I also spend 6-10 hours a week in the gym doing heavy lifting and I bicycle for 8-16 miles on the weekends. I live in the the deep south where obesity is even higher than the 'norm' for the U.S.
I sometimes feel like a stranger in my own land given the looks I get in public at times.
This whole argument is ridiculous. Does he think the entire industry will just give up and stop making anything similar to a netbook post-iPad? I have zero doubt there will be android tablet devices, and probably some tablets that run an OS with a more desktop oriented flavor.
These devices don't happen in a vacuum. If there is a need, there is a market.
Far more likely the summary is Apple baiting. This seems more specific to disabling stolen phones or preventing unauthorized users.
SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING UNAUTHORIZED USERS OF AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE
Given the patent summary is obvious this is meant for identifying unauthorized users.
Abstract This is generally directed to identifying unauthorized users of an electronic device. In some embodiments, an unauthorized user of the electronic device can be detected by identifying particular activities that may indicate suspicious behavior. In some embodiments, an unauthorized user can be detected by comparing the identity of the current user to the identity of the owner of the electronic device. When an unauthorized user is detected, various safety measures can be taken. For example, information related to the identity of the unauthorized user, the unauthorized user's operation of the electronic device, or the current location of the electronic device can be gathered. As another example, functions of the electronic device can be restricted. In some embodiments, the owner of the electronic device can be notified of the unauthorized user by sending an alert notification through any suitable medium, such as, for example, a voice mail, e-mail, or text message.
For example, a photograph of the current user can be taken, a recording of the current user's voice can be recorded, the heartbeat of the current user can be recorded, or any combination of the above. The photograph, recording, or heartbeat can be compared, respectively, to a photograph, recording, or heartbeat of authorized users of the electronic device to determine whether they match. If they do not match, the current user can be detected as an unauthorized user.
I can see why the article seed was posted anonymously with that summary. This has nothing to do with jailbreaking.
I've never ridden a train, at least in my adult life. The last time I rode a train as a child, there was no security if that gives you any perspective. I'd be curious as to how such things are handled now, and if what you describe is the norm. I wouldn't think a train would be a very attractive target, as they tend to be far away from populated areas for a large part of their trip. It would be somewhat ridiculous if the manage to 'ruin' the train experience just as they have (although necessarily so) for air travel.
Not only that, but I think they may have underestimated the value of mass transit over long distances and the general distaste for air travel these days. I dread flying now simply because it takes longer to go through the whole flight process, check-in, security, etc, than actual time spent in the air. You also have to worry about late flights, being held hostage on the runway (in the sense of delays, not actual hostage situations). It's just a big mess.
I could easily see myself taking a train, were if readily available, for long trips and simply renting a car if needed on the other end. Trains would seem to provide a lot of convenience (good speed, no need for bathroom stops, means served on the train, etc). I think part of the issue has simply been availability for most of the U.S.
Travel to any major metro area that offers a decent public transit system, and you will find that, properly managed, they are not that horrible to use.
Once they're paying as much as people in any other first-world country, "beloved" will give way to "practical". And it brings in some nice cash too.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I do believe that the exposure in the PDF problem was Apple's fault due to a flaw in iOS. You might also recall (or maybe not given your response) that Apple closed that exposure (not Adobe).
The owner of the exposure was clear, just as it is clear in this case. If ASLR and DEP fails to protect against such an exposure, they are flawed.
Why do you say that? The exposure is in the OS. Although the software may have exposed it, the vulnerability lies with MS to fix.
Arguably, given the article you posted, it doesn't appear to be effective in the way it was presented, but I found a few points interesting.
This person gives no references for the statement claiming 'it doesn't work', nor does he compare it to the current incarceration method statistics and he doesn't present any statistics from typical prison based incarceration. He of course only speaks to and ask about the worst case scenarios (those that managed to get out of their collars, those that these private companies failed to monitor, or those that didn't get them in the first place), which of course gives him worse statistics than expected.
Last point that I noticed, the article said the companies could not supply him with any studies indicating that tagging was effective. The point being that they simply don't know if it's effective as no studies have been done to date, or they aren't aware of any. You interpreted that as "it doesn't work".
Yes and no. The MS OS is actually written with a lot of safeguards in place to make the OS more secure. Years of being attacked tends to make one a bit defensive and certainly more technically adept.
I think their problems are on multiple fronts:
Overly complex code
Lax permission requirements,
Too many admins (still default on workstation installs)
Poorly written apps that in turn requires them to bend the rules or to provide workarounds.
MS could take a hard line, and force apps to comply with OS guidelines, but they'd be shooting their compatibility in the foot. although I see them nudging folks in that direction, with more functions locked out by default, they have a long way to go. Instead, they bend over backwards to try to work around compatibility issues and legacy support, and as a result, leave tons of loopholes. I had great hopes for their VirtualPC bit and was hoping they would take a more Apple-centric approach, allowing them to just start with a fresh slate while virtualizing old OS compatibility. It appears that was a wasted hope however...
Google the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement
Act of 2006". There is more than meets the eye here...
The current USPS problems are closely related to the economy in general and advances in technology that make 'snail mail' obsolete, but not all blame lies there. In 2006, congress passed legislation that basically prevents the USPS from being competitive:
They can undo some of the damage done, and recover themselves. Prior to 2007, they were indeed competitive, and not funded by taxpayers. They simply need to adapt to the electronic age. Offer new products and services that people in this day and time need. Snail mail is dying a slow death.
And prior to 3 years ago when the economy collapsed? If anything, its beneficial that you still have basic mail service, even in situations that would drive a normal business out of business.
Although I agree with what your saying in principal, the post office delivers a message thousands of miles for a few cents. It's also one of the few self-sufficient government organizations. There are times when the end does seem to justify the means.
Were the government found to be gouging the taxpayer with unfair costs, then I would have an issue with this. Were the post office horribly inefficient, I would have issue with this.
I don't think either of those describes the post office.
I found this quote by the FCC particularly humorous:
The piece about empowering parents. Surely they do realize that they empower parents by taking away their power to choose?
And that is exactly the point. You are an adult. Just change the channel if you find it offensive. The other point being you have the choice to change the channel or just turn it off.
I can only hope for the day when the church's clutches on mainstream America's balls loosens enough to let people make their own choices.
It has always been my companies philosophical belief that those who implement (operations) should not know what they are doing. The idea is that those who do know what they are doing have no access, and those that have access have no knowledge. It makes for an interesting environment. You have to document everything to the finest detail, and not only get your package QA'd, you must also get your implementation documentation QA'd. The minor problem with this is that eventually, someone doing this long enough will develop skill with the system they work on.
Although the system is cumbersome, I can see the reasons for it, and understand the risks implied by giving too much access in production. At some point, the ability to fix something will be too tempting to go through change control to get it done.
For instances where a developer needs access to production, that is allowed, but their actions are logged.
You do realize that they are already creating antimatter today right?
They started creating almost two decades ago, although it's prohibitively expensive as all new technology is in it's infancy. It's only a matter of time before they can create it in bulk at a reasonable cost.
The technology to create antimatter, although new, is already advancing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Artificial_production
I missed this one. They are also looking at real designs for Antimatter Drives:
http://www.transorbital.net/Library/D001_S01.html
It's funny that you should mention that. They are already developing new propulsion systems that no longer require solid rocket fuel. This one for instance can shorten the trip to mars to just about 3 months:
Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/support/researching/aspl/index.html
Not likely given this 1.4 mass planet is one of the two 'missing' planets, and the other is a gas giant with 65 Earth masses. Still an exciting discovery:
From TFA:
I for one welcome our new RIAA Over...erp..excuse me. I just threw up a little...
The only games that I would classify as troublesome are old DOS games, and even those are easily played in DosBox.
The benefit to older games is that they are easily virtualized with advances in computing power.
I actually play my old MOO2 game, on my MAC, in a dos box game bundled into an .APP. If anything, advances have made these games even more portable than ever before.
What we're talking about here is a missing piece of the puzzle, not due to age or newer systems because the older components can easily be recreated virtually, but actual missing pieces of the puzzle that prevents a game from being played at all.
Just a few tidbits I found since I assume many will follow the same track:
REF: http://www.helium.com/items/19276-the-uses-of-helium
I was then curious as to how quickly we lose helium to space and ran across this:
REF: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_gases_such_as_helium_escape_Earth's_atmosphere
I gather from the above that although helium can escape earths atmosphere, it does so very slowly.
In the end, it seems foolish to me to release a known finite resource (finite as to what our technology can easily harvest today) to the hands of whim.
I think that is my only concern, but in a longer term sense. What if steam should ever go away? I'm not overly worried about transient failures with my internet connection, but what about over the longer term if they go out of business. I'm getting to the point where I have a decent amount invested in Steam.
Will they provide patches to allow me to play without Steam should should Steam happen to go out of business? I already have a few games that required connections to corporate servers to play, and they are now 'dead'.
As to the larger DRM question and Steam's success, ALL DRM is restrictive, but not all DRM is overly burdensome. I suppose for that, everyone has their 'limit' as to what they deem to be too much of a hassle. I think the primary reason that Steam see's so much success is that they allow much more freedom than conventional DRM schemes these days. I can download any game on any machine at any time. I could also give them a pass. There are no limits on the number of times that I can install a game, or where I install it.
These publishers need to realize that no one will buy their product if it is cumbersome to get it working or if their DRM schemes impose too many limits on what people view as 'my game'. I would imagine they all saw dollar signs when they saw that they could easily put in certainly limits on a game to ensure a revenue stream, only to find it either killed sales, or caused even more pirating of their game.
I have to wonder if many of these companies don't have some sort of usability team that just uses the game (with DRM) to see if it's cumbersome or frustrating. It seems like a simple idea, but some of these DRM schemes are so bad, I can't believe they actually tried to use their own product in any sort of evaluation with all the DRM in place.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump on that bandwagon. Although this is an older site, I can't imagine things have changed drastically in 5 years. The page was also updated in Dec of 2009:
http://www.malehealth.co.uk/weight/18962-now-were-fatter-americans
Two out of three US men — 67% - are overweight or obese. Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta have now all exceeded this figure. England and Wales are not far behind.
The EU is so worried about it that it has launched its own campaign against obesity. 'The time when obesity was thought to be a problem on the other side of the Atlantic has gone by,' said Mars Di Bartolomeo, Luxembourg's Minister of Health.
The tubby top ten:
Greece (78.6% of blokes are overweight or obese)
Germany (75.4%)
Czech Republic (73.2%)
Cyprus (72.6%)
Slovakia (69%)
Malta (68%)
Finland (67.8%)
Slovenia (66.5%)
Ireland (66.4%)
England and Wales (65.4%).
Frankly, I don't think urban sprawl has anything to do with obesity in a significant way. I think it has to do with fat/calorie content of restaurant food (especially so in the US), and the fact that 'eating out', which used to be the odd occurrence here, has become more the norm for a high percentage of homes. Way too much fast food, or even regular restaurants that don't have healthy menu's. We also spend far more time isolated in our homes, on the internet, and watching TV.
On a side note, I eat out a couple of times a week but I adapt my intake to compensate for shitty food that I might eat on occasion. I also spend 6-10 hours a week in the gym doing heavy lifting and I bicycle for 8-16 miles on the weekends. I live in the the deep south where obesity is even higher than the 'norm' for the U.S.
I sometimes feel like a stranger in my own land given the looks I get in public at times.
This whole argument is ridiculous. Does he think the entire industry will just give up and stop making anything similar to a netbook post-iPad? I have zero doubt there will be android tablet devices, and probably some tablets that run an OS with a more desktop oriented flavor.
These devices don't happen in a vacuum. If there is a need, there is a market.
Far more likely the summary is Apple baiting. This seems more specific to disabling stolen phones or preventing unauthorized users.
Given the patent summary is obvious this is meant for identifying unauthorized users.
I can see why the article seed was posted anonymously with that summary. This has nothing to do with jailbreaking.
I don't think that was an Apple 'fanboi' at all. it's a bit too ridiculous to be taken seriously. More likely just someone trolling...badly.
I've never ridden a train, at least in my adult life. The last time I rode a train as a child, there was no security if that gives you any perspective. I'd be curious as to how such things are handled now, and if what you describe is the norm. I wouldn't think a train would be a very attractive target, as they tend to be far away from populated areas for a large part of their trip. It would be somewhat ridiculous if the manage to 'ruin' the train experience just as they have (although necessarily so) for air travel.
Not only that, but I think they may have underestimated the value of mass transit over long distances and the general distaste for air travel these days. I dread flying now simply because it takes longer to go through the whole flight process, check-in, security, etc, than actual time spent in the air. You also have to worry about late flights, being held hostage on the runway (in the sense of delays, not actual hostage situations). It's just a big mess.
I could easily see myself taking a train, were if readily available, for long trips and simply renting a car if needed on the other end. Trains would seem to provide a lot of convenience (good speed, no need for bathroom stops, means served on the train, etc). I think part of the issue has simply been availability for most of the U.S.
Travel to any major metro area that offers a decent public transit system, and you will find that, properly managed, they are not that horrible to use.