Actually, I think you have it backwards according to news stores I have read about casinos getting back incorrect payouts. The "slot machines" (really "video lottery terminals") are completely deterministic over some period. Breakdowns in the pre-determined payout rate are considered to be a malfunction in the machine, which voids the payout. The government monitors of the casinos enforce this rule. The lack of determinism is only over a very small number of play actions...
To the best of my knowledge, the casino does not refund all bets back to all players on the machine prior to the "payout malfunction." If there is an error that can produce in "incorrect payout" isn't it equally possible that there are errors producing "incorrect losses?" If the casinos can cancel "incorrect" payouts (the concept boggles my mind) but don't correspondingly cancel "incorrect" losses, aren't the casinos taking advantage of software errors?
The only way to have a fair playing field is for the gambling device to be played as it stands, while at the same time taking as many precautions as possible to ensure that it is operating correctly. However, a malfunction that penalizes the casino (big payout) should not be canceled when malfunctions that penalize the gambler (small incremental losses) are not.
If the machine must be "played as is" for both parties, there is some incentive on the part of the casino to produce a more fair machine in addition to the oversight of the gambling commission. I don't think casinos would lose their shirts with this rule in effect, but it would certainly make them more "on the ball."
The casino will "keep the bet" if they are winning, but will cancel a payout if they can show it exceeded the pre-programmed win-loss ratio for the machine or was due in any way to a machine "malfunction." (They may refund the single bet that preceded the payout, but that doesn't count for much.)
The reasons for the payout cancelations vary, but no where is there any mention of the casino giving money back to all of the people who were betting and losing money on the malfunctioning machines prior to the "incorrect payout".... if the machine was broken the entire time, all bets should be canceled and the money returned, or else the payout should be allowed to stand.
If I were king, my rule would be that if the player is allowed to bet, the casino must pay out if the player wins, no matter what the cause of the win (except for fraud). Casinos might take a little more care in the acceptance of machines, promoting better development processes, etc. As long as they can simply cancel wins due to what they claim is a malfunction, while keeping all losses, there is no incentive to improve the state of function in the code that drives the machines.
I believe that gambling is fundamentally stupid, but if the state is going to allow it, the state should allow it on terms that are equally favorable to the plebes and the casinos.
Don't forget the clawback clause: If you win a big payout, but the casino can show that the payout exceeded the designed-in payout percentage for the machine, the casino gets to cancel your winnings.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no such action taken for all of the losers who were betting money on the "malfunctioning" machine and not winning.
I have a KIM-1; haven't fired it up in a while... When I was a freshman in college, my KIM-1 wasn't working. I sent it in to MOSTEK for repair, but received it back as undeliverable. Luckily, a very smart high school student who lived in the college town was able to troubleshoot the hardware and replace a discrete component for me. Good times...
My kid is interested in learning how to build and program robots. He *needs* to understand how to perform low-level tasks on a computer-driven machine. I don't think he will be "scared away" by the complexity. I see him being fascinated that he knows what is going on at the lowest level. Oh - he also has an electronics set so that he knows what AND, OR, NAND, and NOR circuits look like. I also plan on showing him exactly *how* a machine-language instruction set is implemented in silicon. He can always think at an abstract higher level even though he knows the lowest levels. However, I suspect that solving a problem at a high-level caused by a low-level aberration without understanding the fundamental low-level representation of the higher-level processes would be quite difficult.
I have recently chosen to use BASIC to introduce my kids to computer programming. I think it is a relatively decent choice for many reasons. It only requires a simple interpreter that runs in a terminal window. It can be used to teach programming that relates the program to what is actually being done on the processor (a series of numbered step-by-step instructions). It uses very simple data typing (numeric variables and string variables). It has very simple control-flow structures (that ultimately are what all high-level languages are broken down into).
Is it the be-all end-all of programming? No. But it gets the ball rolling as a good, uncomplicated, first approximation of what programming is that relates directly to the fundamental actions of instructions on the CPU. There is lots of time, later, to add all of the complexities of more detailed data representations and control-flow structures, including OOP.
Those who think that the presence of the GOTO statement somehow damages people's brains don't seem to have much respect for the cognitive abilities of other individuals. Anyone who has used GOTO to program, who then doesn't immediately see the benefit of GOSUB/RETURN or a function call/RETURN, and understand that the GOTO should not be used to return the control flow outside of the code unit (as delineated by other control-flow structures), needs to be gently remonstrated by their instructor for unclear thinking. Its a teaching moment, not a cerebral hemorrhage.
Hash table-based password attacks depend on having access to the hashed password value; they are not used in a brute-force front-door attack. The article should have been clear about this, as it is essentially pointing out that passwords aren't safe from discovery if the password database itself has been taken, even though the password values are hashed.
From a belt-and-suspenders security viewpoint, it is reasonable to want the database of hashed password values to be secure against "reversing" the hash to obtain the original password values, which can then be used for an unauthorized login.
If the article had made clear the particular vulnerability it was identifying, it would be a good discussion about how to make such a database of hashes more secure (for example, using a random salt value for each password in the password database is a highly effective defense against the use of pre-computed hash tables of every possible password character combination - at least for now).
So no, the approach in the article doesn't work against the front door, when standard login failure counts, retry limits, and retry delays already blunt brute force attacks. But it does work against stolen password hash values, which in some cases might not be protected as well as one things (especially if it is thought that the hashed values aren't particularly useful for a cracker).
I think its quite useful to have people on slashdot, and in fact people everywhere, to discourse on the law. The law should be plainly and freely understandable to all people. It should not require a separate priesthood to interpret and translate. This is especially true of the most fundamental laws of the United States, those embodied in the Constitution. Since the Constitution can only be modified by significant levels of public approval, I think its quite obvious that the Constitution is mean to be understandable to that same public that would approve amendments to it.
More to the point, it is beyond logic for the United States federal government to be able to claim that choosing *not* to purchase a product or service is, in fact, engaging in interstate commerce such that that choice can be invalidated by the federal government. The power to regulate interstate commerce does not mean the power to force people to engage in commerce, interstate or not.
If such a power is permitted to the federal government, what would stand in the way of the federal government mandating the People make any purchase it so chooses? Today its "buy healthcare," tomorrow its "buy healthy fruits and vegetables" and "don't buy chips and candy and soda," and the week after its "buy prune juice and anti-oxidants" but "don't buy potatoes." Heck, if the government can make you buy healthcare, they can force you to stop buying pornography. [Note: It would still be legal to *publish* porn, so no first amendment rights would be harmed.]
"Regulating interstate commerce" means exactly that; setting up rules that control the processes and mechanisms through which commerce operates between the several states, something which obviously no individual state can do objectively. "Regulating interstate commerce" does not mean the power to force the People to buy things, regardless of whether the purchase is made between states or within a single state, and regardless of how beneficial to you the government believes the purchase would be. The commerce clause was unfortunately abused for a good cause in the past, but the use of it must now be curtailed. The framers did not intend for it to operate as a "sudo" in the Constitution of the United States.
Your premise appears to neglect the fact that the whole same-sex things applies to women as well as men... so homosexual behavior doesn't just eliminate some of the straight male competition for women, it also removes some of the female potential partners for those straight men. I don't see it as leaving any more rampant tottie than would otherwise be available...
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they aren't.
IPv4 performance for not only routing but the application of ACLs, QoS, etc. at wire speed in many products is dependent on custom ASICs and other hardware. Its not so much a poor hardware/software implementation that makes IPv6 slower, its just that the products embedded in networks now were focused on achieving the best balance of cost and performance for the market that existed at the time the products were developed and sold. As organizations increase their demand for IPv6 routing and other features at wire speed, and are willing to pay for it, vendors will deliver (and some already have had such products available for years).
My point was only to remind/inform folks that last year's affordable 48-port switch/router with a 96+ Gbps backplane that can do full duplex switching and routing at wirespeed including the application of ACLs and QoS isn't necessarily going to perform any where near that level with IPv6. Once the box drops out of its highly optimized custom hardware-based packet handling into software-based packet handling, the throughput goes through the floor. Converting to IPv6 is more than just checking off the boxes for IPv6 support on workstations, and may have significant hidden costs that should be identified prior to commencing the conversion.
Before you make the upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6 across your network, you will want to make sure that your network equipment can maintain its advertised speeds handling IP v6 traffic. For example, routing equipment and security devices may have had hardware optimizations that work with IPv4 protocol traffic but not IPv6. If your network equipment doesn't support IPv6 traffic at those devices rated performance levels, you will need to analyze your performance needs and equipment upgrade options prior to upgrading your network protocol from IPv4 to IPv6.
Sorry - I should have mentioned that any useful application of logging to the maintenance of separation of duties requires that logging always be done in realtime to a separate logging sink or a physically isolated physical medium (i.e., paper output, write-once device, etc.).
When required, it is possible to provide for separation of duties in IT infrastructure. One method is to have a separate function responsible for reviewing logs, configuration changes, etc. A past project of mine used commercial software (Tripwire) to ascertain all router configuration changes, for example. It was also required that access to routers be done under personally-identifiable usernames. The logs included all admin activity on the routers, logged with the personally-identifable user names. The daily comparison of configuration files to the baseline configuration backed up the log files. Therefore all configuration changes could be tracked, unless someone boggered the tracking, which would itself be a security incident. "root" passwords for the routers were configured, and were kept in encrypted files in the hands of security staff. Perfect? no.... Could someone still hack things up? Yes, but they would be likely to leave a trail and be spotted before hacking things up too far.
It wasn't necessary to give PHBs the passwords, but the PHBs knew that the passwords were available in the event that the normal admins were unavailable to perform their duties (for any reason). If someone unauthorized used the stored "root" passwords, it would show up on the logs as well.
I wonder if there are any restrictions on the content provided through the Kindle by Amazon? How about other single-channel provider publishing devices?
Any company providing a device specifically designed to publish material their own material exercises control over the material published there. I'm pretty sure Apple specifically designed the iPhone/iPod Touch to only publish the material that they offer through the App store, in addition to each devices other uses (such as telephony, music playback, web browsing, etc.). The iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad devices have clearly been designed to specifically *not* be general purpose computing devices, but special purpose devices that happen to include the ability to publish their vendor's content (i.e., App Store material).
Other vendors are free to produce their own devices with a similar technology/format, and these devices may be special purpose publishing platforms (such as the Kindle) or general purpose devices (such as the Android-based phones). Apple's monopoly in the App store seems to me to be the same monopoly any publisher exercises in their own publications. Could these arguments be tailored to that reality - I would like to see if debated whether publishers have the right to control the content provided in their publications or not.
So, you are arguing that the "European government" should restrict the products available to European customers, even if those European customers don't see the harm in those products?
I think you are confused, sir. The Internet is the network. No one corporation censors the use of the Internet. Your ISP doesn't cut you off because of the web sites that you chose to view on your home computer.
Apple is not acting as a network. They are acting as a publisher. Some of the material they publish is their own, other material is offered by them on behalf of others. Please carry on with your argument with this understanding, and show how publishers in the United States/Europe should be required to publish whatever material is submitted to them. Then think about which is the worser tyranny - a publishing company choosing what material to publish or not publish, or a government forcing a private company to publish the material that the government wants them to publish. If you advocate government being able to control publishers, then you advocate *for* government censorship, not against it.
Interesting. Lots of females. A distinct lack of males. Why doesn't ekstrabladet publish partially/fully naked males in the same quantity as females? Could they possibly be exercising their editorial rights towards the content that they provide? Maybe we need a court action to get equal time for the lads?
Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner .
Perhaps the success of the Apple App store is in part due to the content filtering that Apple applies to the material that many people would at least partially attribute to Apple. If so, it would be contradictory to say that because the Apple service is so popular, the Apple service must change the rules that made it so popular. Apple has the right to offer or not offer whatever they want; consumers have the right to buy or not buy whatever they want, including Apple's products and services. Even the Apple service was the sole provider of all mass media, I believe that Apple would have both a right and a responsibility to have rules and restrictions around the type of content that was served. I suspect that there would be lots of disagreements about those rules and restrictions, but I would find it beyond belief that most people would not expect at least some rules and restrictions.
Should newspapers should be taken to court because they have an advertisements policy? Should TV networks be taken to court for the same thing? Many services with "significant market power" have rules and restrictions on the type of content that provide through that service, whether directly attributable to them (i.e., their programming) or indirectly (the material from their advertisers).
Jobs isn't enforcing his puritanical beliefs on anyone. Apple is choosing what to publish and what not to publish, as is their right. Perhaps we need to see a European company produce products that successfully compete with Apple's - say Nokia, for example. And then the Nokia App store can offer the material that it sees fit. The argument that Apple should have to offer whatever others want Apple to offer simply because Apple produces a product that many people want to buy and use doesn't wash.
Yes, I do give a damn about what some guys who were born 300 years ago thought. I admire Galileo, Newton, Liebniz, and others. The scientific principles and tools that they developed and passed on to others are the foundation of the incredible body of scientific knowledge that we enjoy today. In a like fashion, the political principles and tools that were developed in Greece and Rome are the foundation of our political systems in use today. The work done by the "founding fathers" of the United States was itself based on lines of thought developed by European political philosophers based on those ideas from Greece and Rome as well as their own experiences and observations regarding what "works" and what doesn't work as a system to enable the construction and operation of a modern society. What I find especially useful in the "founding ideals" of the United States of America is that the Constitution sets down what they believed to be the fundamental essence, and that essence only. The details were left to be placed into lesser, more easily modified documents. Deviating from the ideals espoused in the Constitution, as understood by those who wrote the Constitution should be considered as carefully as determining that you don't believe that Newton's "Laws of Motion" are applicable in a particular physics experiment. You had better have an exceptionally good explanation backed up with lots of valid evidence for your deviation.
I have been involved in government IT security for many years now as an employee of a government contractor often hired to perform various parts of the government security process. One of the biggest problems with the government security "standards" and "processes" in place now is that there is practically no cost feedback to the controls. The policies all say that the cost of the controls should be commensurate with the value of the system being protected, but many of the security "approvers" demand gold-plated security, and are often opposed to signing off on anything less. (Hey - you can't be held responsible for a security problem in a system you approved if you simply never approve any systems.) There are numerous government systems operating either "unauthorized" or under "temporary waivers" (for years and years) because the security folks wouldn't sign off the controls.
These problems are with the government policing the government. I can't imagine it would be any different when they are enforcing the standards on commercial companies. Although private enterprises can and do go underboard with security, government monitors are almost certain to go overboard. I have some (but limited) experience reviewing IT security for commercial entities (financial services firms, oil and gas firms, pharmaceuticals) and they often "get" most of what needs to be done... with a few lapses (like connecting SCADA networks to the regular corporate network, which is also connected to the Internet).
If the approach is to have a few *simple* rules (like networks over which critical infrastructure communicates must be isolated from corporate networks that are attached to the Internet), then I think some government oversight wouldn't be bad. But if the approach is to require private enterprise to demonstrate compliance with full-blown government IT security C&A with the government doing the certification, I would predict drastic increases in costs, without necessarily dramatically increasing actual security.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think you have it backwards according to news stores I have read about casinos getting back incorrect payouts. The "slot machines" (really "video lottery terminals") are completely deterministic over some period. Breakdowns in the pre-determined payout rate are considered to be a malfunction in the machine, which voids the payout. The government monitors of the casinos enforce this rule. The lack of determinism is only over a very small number of play actions...
To the best of my knowledge, the casino does not refund all bets back to all players on the machine prior to the "payout malfunction." If there is an error that can produce in "incorrect payout" isn't it equally possible that there are errors producing "incorrect losses?" If the casinos can cancel "incorrect" payouts (the concept boggles my mind) but don't correspondingly cancel "incorrect" losses, aren't the casinos taking advantage of software errors?
The only way to have a fair playing field is for the gambling device to be played as it stands, while at the same time taking as many precautions as possible to ensure that it is operating correctly. However, a malfunction that penalizes the casino (big payout) should not be canceled when malfunctions that penalize the gambler (small incremental losses) are not.
If the machine must be "played as is" for both parties, there is some incentive on the part of the casino to produce a more fair machine in addition to the oversight of the gambling commission. I don't think casinos would lose their shirts with this rule in effect, but it would certainly make them more "on the ball."
The casino will "keep the bet" if they are winning, but will cancel a payout if they can show it exceeded the pre-programmed win-loss ratio for the machine or was due in any way to a machine "malfunction." (They may refund the single bet that preceded the payout, but that doesn't count for much.)
This one: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/31/fortune-valley-casino-say_n_520182.html
This one: http://www.freeslotmachinescasino.com/news/jan07/pennyslots.html
and this one: http://www.inquisitr.com/46188/casino-denies-man-166m-jackpot-after-slot-malfunction/
The reasons for the payout cancelations vary, but no where is there any mention of the casino giving money back to all of the people who were betting and losing money on the malfunctioning machines prior to the "incorrect payout".... if the machine was broken the entire time, all bets should be canceled and the money returned, or else the payout should be allowed to stand.
If I were king, my rule would be that if the player is allowed to bet, the casino must pay out if the player wins, no matter what the cause of the win (except for fraud). Casinos might take a little more care in the acceptance of machines, promoting better development processes, etc. As long as they can simply cancel wins due to what they claim is a malfunction, while keeping all losses, there is no incentive to improve the state of function in the code that drives the machines.
I believe that gambling is fundamentally stupid, but if the state is going to allow it, the state should allow it on terms that are equally favorable to the plebes and the casinos.
Don't forget the clawback clause: If you win a big payout, but the casino can show that the payout exceeded the designed-in payout percentage for the machine, the casino gets to cancel your winnings.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no such action taken for all of the losers who were betting money on the "malfunctioning" machine and not winning.
I have a KIM-1; haven't fired it up in a while... When I was a freshman in college, my KIM-1 wasn't working. I sent it in to MOSTEK for repair, but received it back as undeliverable. Luckily, a very smart high school student who lived in the college town was able to troubleshoot the hardware and replace a discrete component for me. Good times...
My kid is interested in learning how to build and program robots. He *needs* to understand how to perform low-level tasks on a computer-driven machine. I don't think he will be "scared away" by the complexity. I see him being fascinated that he knows what is going on at the lowest level. Oh - he also has an electronics set so that he knows what AND, OR, NAND, and NOR circuits look like. I also plan on showing him exactly *how* a machine-language instruction set is implemented in silicon. He can always think at an abstract higher level even though he knows the lowest levels. However, I suspect that solving a problem at a high-level caused by a low-level aberration without understanding the fundamental low-level representation of the higher-level processes would be quite difficult.
I have recently chosen to use BASIC to introduce my kids to computer programming. I think it is a relatively decent choice for many reasons. It only requires a simple interpreter that runs in a terminal window. It can be used to teach programming that relates the program to what is actually being done on the processor (a series of numbered step-by-step instructions). It uses very simple data typing (numeric variables and string variables). It has very simple control-flow structures (that ultimately are what all high-level languages are broken down into).
Is it the be-all end-all of programming? No. But it gets the ball rolling as a good, uncomplicated, first approximation of what programming is that relates directly to the fundamental actions of instructions on the CPU. There is lots of time, later, to add all of the complexities of more detailed data representations and control-flow structures, including OOP.
Those who think that the presence of the GOTO statement somehow damages people's brains don't seem to have much respect for the cognitive abilities of other individuals. Anyone who has used GOTO to program, who then doesn't immediately see the benefit of GOSUB/RETURN or a function call/RETURN, and understand that the GOTO should not be used to return the control flow outside of the code unit (as delineated by other control-flow structures), needs to be gently remonstrated by their instructor for unclear thinking. Its a teaching moment, not a cerebral hemorrhage.
Hash table-based password attacks depend on having access to the hashed password value; they are not used in a brute-force front-door attack. The article should have been clear about this, as it is essentially pointing out that passwords aren't safe from discovery if the password database itself has been taken, even though the password values are hashed.
From a belt-and-suspenders security viewpoint, it is reasonable to want the database of hashed password values to be secure against "reversing" the hash to obtain the original password values, which can then be used for an unauthorized login.
If the article had made clear the particular vulnerability it was identifying, it would be a good discussion about how to make such a database of hashes more secure (for example, using a random salt value for each password in the password database is a highly effective defense against the use of pre-computed hash tables of every possible password character combination - at least for now).
So no, the approach in the article doesn't work against the front door, when standard login failure counts, retry limits, and retry delays already blunt brute force attacks. But it does work against stolen password hash values, which in some cases might not be protected as well as one things (especially if it is thought that the hashed values aren't particularly useful for a cracker).
I think its quite useful to have people on slashdot, and in fact people everywhere, to discourse on the law. The law should be plainly and freely understandable to all people. It should not require a separate priesthood to interpret and translate. This is especially true of the most fundamental laws of the United States, those embodied in the Constitution. Since the Constitution can only be modified by significant levels of public approval, I think its quite obvious that the Constitution is mean to be understandable to that same public that would approve amendments to it.
More to the point, it is beyond logic for the United States federal government to be able to claim that choosing *not* to purchase a product or service is, in fact, engaging in interstate commerce such that that choice can be invalidated by the federal government. The power to regulate interstate commerce does not mean the power to force people to engage in commerce, interstate or not.
If such a power is permitted to the federal government, what would stand in the way of the federal government mandating the People make any purchase it so chooses? Today its "buy healthcare," tomorrow its "buy healthy fruits and vegetables" and "don't buy chips and candy and soda," and the week after its "buy prune juice and anti-oxidants" but "don't buy potatoes." Heck, if the government can make you buy healthcare, they can force you to stop buying pornography. [Note: It would still be legal to *publish* porn, so no first amendment rights would be harmed.]
"Regulating interstate commerce" means exactly that; setting up rules that control the processes and mechanisms through which commerce operates between the several states, something which obviously no individual state can do objectively. "Regulating interstate commerce" does not mean the power to force the People to buy things, regardless of whether the purchase is made between states or within a single state, and regardless of how beneficial to you the government believes the purchase would be. The commerce clause was unfortunately abused for a good cause in the past, but the use of it must now be curtailed. The framers did not intend for it to operate as a "sudo" in the Constitution of the United States.
Your premise appears to neglect the fact that the whole same-sex things applies to women as well as men... so homosexual behavior doesn't just eliminate some of the straight male competition for women, it also removes some of the female potential partners for those straight men. I don't see it as leaving any more rampant tottie than would otherwise be available...
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they aren't.
IPv4 performance for not only routing but the application of ACLs, QoS, etc. at wire speed in many products is dependent on custom ASICs and other hardware. Its not so much a poor hardware/software implementation that makes IPv6 slower, its just that the products embedded in networks now were focused on achieving the best balance of cost and performance for the market that existed at the time the products were developed and sold. As organizations increase their demand for IPv6 routing and other features at wire speed, and are willing to pay for it, vendors will deliver (and some already have had such products available for years).
My point was only to remind/inform folks that last year's affordable 48-port switch/router with a 96+ Gbps backplane that can do full duplex switching and routing at wirespeed including the application of ACLs and QoS isn't necessarily going to perform any where near that level with IPv6. Once the box drops out of its highly optimized custom hardware-based packet handling into software-based packet handling, the throughput goes through the floor. Converting to IPv6 is more than just checking off the boxes for IPv6 support on workstations, and may have significant hidden costs that should be identified prior to commencing the conversion.
Before you make the upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6 across your network, you will want to make sure that your network equipment can maintain its advertised speeds handling IP v6 traffic. For example, routing equipment and security devices may have had hardware optimizations that work with IPv4 protocol traffic but not IPv6. If your network equipment doesn't support IPv6 traffic at those devices rated performance levels, you will need to analyze your performance needs and equipment upgrade options prior to upgrading your network protocol from IPv4 to IPv6.
Sorry - I should have mentioned that any useful application of logging to the maintenance of separation of duties requires that logging always be done in realtime to a separate logging sink or a physically isolated physical medium (i.e., paper output, write-once device, etc.).
When required, it is possible to provide for separation of duties in IT infrastructure. One method is to have a separate function responsible for reviewing logs, configuration changes, etc. A past project of mine used commercial software (Tripwire) to ascertain all router configuration changes, for example. It was also required that access to routers be done under personally-identifiable usernames. The logs included all admin activity on the routers, logged with the personally-identifable user names. The daily comparison of configuration files to the baseline configuration backed up the log files. Therefore all configuration changes could be tracked, unless someone boggered the tracking, which would itself be a security incident. "root" passwords for the routers were configured, and were kept in encrypted files in the hands of security staff. Perfect? no.... Could someone still hack things up? Yes, but they would be likely to leave a trail and be spotted before hacking things up too far.
It wasn't necessary to give PHBs the passwords, but the PHBs knew that the passwords were available in the event that the normal admins were unavailable to perform their duties (for any reason). If someone unauthorized used the stored "root" passwords, it would show up on the logs as well.
I wonder if there are any restrictions on the content provided through the Kindle by Amazon? How about other single-channel provider publishing devices?
Any company providing a device specifically designed to publish material their own material exercises control over the material published there. I'm pretty sure Apple specifically designed the iPhone/iPod Touch to only publish the material that they offer through the App store, in addition to each devices other uses (such as telephony, music playback, web browsing, etc.). The iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad devices have clearly been designed to specifically *not* be general purpose computing devices, but special purpose devices that happen to include the ability to publish their vendor's content (i.e., App Store material).
Other vendors are free to produce their own devices with a similar technology/format, and these devices may be special purpose publishing platforms (such as the Kindle) or general purpose devices (such as the Android-based phones). Apple's monopoly in the App store seems to me to be the same monopoly any publisher exercises in their own publications. Could these arguments be tailored to that reality - I would like to see if debated whether publishers have the right to control the content provided in their publications or not.
So, you are arguing that the "European government" should restrict the products available to European customers, even if those European customers don't see the harm in those products?
I think you are confused, sir. The Internet is the network. No one corporation censors the use of the Internet. Your ISP doesn't cut you off because of the web sites that you chose to view on your home computer.
Apple is not acting as a network. They are acting as a publisher. Some of the material they publish is their own, other material is offered by them on behalf of others. Please carry on with your argument with this understanding, and show how publishers in the United States/Europe should be required to publish whatever material is submitted to them. Then think about which is the worser tyranny - a publishing company choosing what material to publish or not publish, or a government forcing a private company to publish the material that the government wants them to publish. If you advocate government being able to control publishers, then you advocate *for* government censorship, not against it.
Interesting. Lots of females. A distinct lack of males. Why doesn't ekstrabladet publish partially/fully naked males in the same quantity as females? Could they possibly be exercising their editorial rights towards the content that they provide? Maybe we need a court action to get equal time for the lads?
Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner .
Perhaps the success of the Apple App store is in part due to the content filtering that Apple applies to the material that many people would at least partially attribute to Apple. If so, it would be contradictory to say that because the Apple service is so popular, the Apple service must change the rules that made it so popular. Apple has the right to offer or not offer whatever they want; consumers have the right to buy or not buy whatever they want, including Apple's products and services. Even the Apple service was the sole provider of all mass media, I believe that Apple would have both a right and a responsibility to have rules and restrictions around the type of content that was served. I suspect that there would be lots of disagreements about those rules and restrictions, but I would find it beyond belief that most people would not expect at least some rules and restrictions.
Should newspapers should be taken to court because they have an advertisements policy? Should TV networks be taken to court for the same thing? Many services with "significant market power" have rules and restrictions on the type of content that provide through that service, whether directly attributable to them (i.e., their programming) or indirectly (the material from their advertisers).
Jobs isn't enforcing his puritanical beliefs on anyone. Apple is choosing what to publish and what not to publish, as is their right. Perhaps we need to see a European company produce products that successfully compete with Apple's - say Nokia, for example. And then the Nokia App store can offer the material that it sees fit. The argument that Apple should have to offer whatever others want Apple to offer simply because Apple produces a product that many people want to buy and use doesn't wash.
Yes, I do give a damn about what some guys who were born 300 years ago thought. I admire Galileo, Newton, Liebniz, and others. The scientific principles and tools that they developed and passed on to others are the foundation of the incredible body of scientific knowledge that we enjoy today. In a like fashion, the political principles and tools that were developed in Greece and Rome are the foundation of our political systems in use today. The work done by the "founding fathers" of the United States was itself based on lines of thought developed by European political philosophers based on those ideas from Greece and Rome as well as their own experiences and observations regarding what "works" and what doesn't work as a system to enable the construction and operation of a modern society. What I find especially useful in the "founding ideals" of the United States of America is that the Constitution sets down what they believed to be the fundamental essence, and that essence only. The details were left to be placed into lesser, more easily modified documents. Deviating from the ideals espoused in the Constitution, as understood by those who wrote the Constitution should be considered as carefully as determining that you don't believe that Newton's "Laws of Motion" are applicable in a particular physics experiment. You had better have an exceptionally good explanation backed up with lots of valid evidence for your deviation.
There is no political party that has exclusive claims on the ability to seize power and wield it.
I would expect the ultimate goal is for such systems to be overwatched by the new US "Cyber Command" being set up at Fort Meade.
I have been involved in government IT security for many years now as an employee of a government contractor often hired to perform various parts of the government security process. One of the biggest problems with the government security "standards" and "processes" in place now is that there is practically no cost feedback to the controls. The policies all say that the cost of the controls should be commensurate with the value of the system being protected, but many of the security "approvers" demand gold-plated security, and are often opposed to signing off on anything less. (Hey - you can't be held responsible for a security problem in a system you approved if you simply never approve any systems.) There are numerous government systems operating either "unauthorized" or under "temporary waivers" (for years and years) because the security folks wouldn't sign off the controls.
These problems are with the government policing the government. I can't imagine it would be any different when they are enforcing the standards on commercial companies. Although private enterprises can and do go underboard with security, government monitors are almost certain to go overboard. I have some (but limited) experience reviewing IT security for commercial entities (financial services firms, oil and gas firms, pharmaceuticals) and they often "get" most of what needs to be done... with a few lapses (like connecting SCADA networks to the regular corporate network, which is also connected to the Internet).
If the approach is to have a few *simple* rules (like networks over which critical infrastructure communicates must be isolated from corporate networks that are attached to the Internet), then I think some government oversight wouldn't be bad. But if the approach is to require private enterprise to demonstrate compliance with full-blown government IT security C&A with the government doing the certification, I would predict drastic increases in costs, without necessarily dramatically increasing actual security.