The exploit worked not because of some security lapse at Microsoft, but because the people maintaining the machines didn't lock them down or apply appropriate updates in a timely manner.
But why do you assume that dozens of "appropriate updates" must be applied every month "in a timely manner"? It's not as if the installed software is decaying in some mysterious way. The patches are needed to prevent exploits that should never have been possible in the first place.
Security cannot be added on as a bag on the side of a software system - although that is what Microsoft is forever trying to do. Proper security has to be built in right from the start, from the foundations up. But that does cost money and take a lot of extra time and effort.
Linux can't fix that....
Of course neither Linux nor BSD nor any other operating system can "fix" the problem 100 percent, completely and forever.
But that does not mean they can't be a huge improvement.
Sorry, but causality can NEVER be proven unless you carefully define it in a way that allows statistics to prove it.
Er, if I punch you in the nose and it then hurts like the devil and bleeds copiously, I am fairly sure you will see a causal link. If you then argue that it can't be "proven", I think there is something wrong with your idea of "proof".
Here's reality for you: no business is going to seriously invest in anything that has a longer time horizon than 50 years, because guess what? The investors are all going to be dead by then. Who cares if it makes a trillion dollars in 2100?
Hey, cool! This guy has just refuted capitalism in three short sentences.
Longer than a tweet or a haiku, but one hell of a lot shorter than any of those chunky doorstop textbooks.
"Too many sectors, such as health care or personal services, are so resistant to automation that they are holding back the entire country's standard of living."
To which I reply with this:
“When the Englishman speaks of national wealth he means the number of millionaires in the country". - Oswald Spengler
As Spengler was writing nearly 100 years ago, for "Englishman" we may conveniently substitute "American"; and for "millionaires", "billionaires".
This finding shows conclusively that all the hysterical talk of highly-organized, focussed attacks by "criminal gangs" was rubbish. Instead, the facts point to what one would expect to see if the malware had simply been launched and drifted where it would.
Had there really been an organized criminal gang behind the attacks, we could have expected many more computers to be pwned, and instead of a demand for $300 in Bitcoin or whatever on each monitor, there would have been a single demand for several million pounds - delivered to the Prime Minister.
When I used to give talks about software security 20 years ago, I always stressed that, so far, attacks had been episodic and uncoordinated, which is what you would expect from "hobbyists". "Just kids messing about," in the apt words of Crocodile Dundee. When serious actors moved in, people would know about it.
The really astonishing thing is that, now 20 years have passed, so very little has changed. We still get these amateurish, uncoordinated attacks. One day - but I won't predict when, having been so wrong in the past - things will get a great deal worse very suddenly.
When Tony Blair met Bill Gates in 2006 - after kissing Gates' feet and gushing for a few hours about his supreme wonderfulness - Blair signed up for the super huge mega deal, with all the Windows you can eat. (Small print: security is up to you, mumble mumble mumble...)
"Mr Gates, the billionaire software pioneer, had just written a book about how IT could transform economies".
Yeah. Transform them from prosperity to miserable bankruptcy - along with lots of dead and dying patients. And transfer a large slice of their revenue to Bill Gates' bulging pockets.
Maybe the NHS should call Gates now and ask him to sort out their problems.
So it's bad that NATO leaves a one country buffer zone between Europe and Russia, but not bad that Russia installs military bases right on Europe's doorstep such as Kaliningrad, Moldova, and now parts of Ukraine that it's outright annexed?
For a start, Russia is a European nation and always has been. So it's not surprising that it has bases in Europe. On the other hand, the USA is NOT a European nation, yet Europe is teeming with American bases, soldiers and weapon systems - including thermonuclear weapons. Russia did "annexe" Crimea, which had been part of Russia since before the USA existed, after the illegal regime in Kiev began determined efforts to exterminate Russian-speaking citizens.
Kaliningrad - Koenigsberg as was - "became part of the Soviet Union pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement (as part of the Russian SFSR) as agreed upon by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Kaliningrad is now part of Russia, just as Hawaii and Alaska are part of the USA. Does the USA have military bases in Alaska and Hawaii? According to Time magazine, the USA has about 800 military, naval and air force bases in 70 countries outside the USA. http://time.com/4511744/americ... See also https://www.thenation.com/arti...
That map is a fine example of telling half the story - Kazakhstan has a NATO base that was used only for onwards staging and transport to Afghanistan purely for anti-Taliban operations for example, yet Russia has a full blown permanent offensive military presence there.
Kazakhstan used to be part of the USSR, and before that part of the Russian Empire. It has a large Russian-speaking population and is a close ally of Russia. However, it also presents a tempting avenue of attack against Russia's "soft underbelly". Given the presence of Islamist terrorists and NATO in Afghanistan, it's hardly surprising the Russians are on guard and keeping a wary eye open.
More to the point, what on earth is the USA doing in Afghanistan where it has no business to be, and no legal right? Indeed, the USA has no business to be interfering anywhere in Asia, Europe or Africa.
That's cute, but have you heard about Russian propaganda about the US?
No, I haven't. What I have seen is a good deal of truthful facts and opinion about the US government and its policies. Some of it comes from Russia, some from Europe, some from the UK, Australia and Canada - and quite a lot of it comes from the USA itself.
Read the following (or as much of it as you can absorb) and see if what you learn is a little different from what the mainstream media are telling their audiences day after day.
Uttering or posting "hate speech" - whatever that may be - is illegal; but calmly, unemotionally dropping bombs on civilians or launching missiles to kill them is just fine.
Why would a police officer think that presenting a "re-enactment" would be acceptable legal procedure in court? Courts hear evidence - not "re-enactments".
British governments have been able to *call* the nation a democracy for at least a century or so. But it never has been. Just a good enough facsimile to fool most of the people, most of the time.
Odd that this comment, and my reply to it, have been moderated "Flamebait" and "Troll" respectively.
Apparently anyone who questions the official number can expect to be ruled out of order. And this isn't even Congress or the White House - it's Slashdot, where I thought people were capable of independent thought and (where warranted) scepticism.
Maybe the US government is scrupulously truthful, after all. Who knew?
'As new discouraged workers move regularly from U.3 into U.6 unemployment accounting, those who have been “discouraged” for one year also are dropped from the U.6 measure'. http://www.shadowstats.com/art...
So there are many people out there who are not counted, even in U.6.
If the assertion is that one language can be used for everyday purposes and also for specifying programs, it is hopelessly wrong. The merit of a programming language, like any other scientific specification, is that it is exact, precise, correct, and unambiguous. If it is easy to understand, that is a nice bonus - but it cannot be a high priority.
Natural language, on the other hand, revels in deliberate ambiguity, multiple shades of meaning, and even saying slightly different things to different listeners. That's why synthetic languages like Esperanto never succeed beyond a small circles of fans: you can't write poetry in them, or even any stirring emotional prose.
The purpose of programming languages is to eliminate doubt and ambiguity - to perfect communication. The purpose of natural languages, inasmuch as they have a single purpose, is to sell, seduce, persuade and - yes - confuse.
Slashdot Mirror
Except you're missing the point.
Actually I think you are missing the point.
The exploit worked not because of some security lapse at Microsoft, but because the people maintaining the machines didn't lock them down or apply appropriate updates in a timely manner.
But why do you assume that dozens of "appropriate updates" must be applied every month "in a timely manner"? It's not as if the installed software is decaying in some mysterious way. The patches are needed to prevent exploits that should never have been possible in the first place.
Security cannot be added on as a bag on the side of a software system - although that is what Microsoft is forever trying to do. Proper security has to be built in right from the start, from the foundations up. But that does cost money and take a lot of extra time and effort.
Linux can't fix that....
Of course neither Linux nor BSD nor any other operating system can "fix" the problem 100 percent, completely and forever.
But that does not mean they can't be a huge improvement.
I really shouldn't feed the troll. But...
1. AC
2. Potty mouth
3. No actual content.
Just saying.
Sorry, but causality can NEVER be proven unless you carefully define it in a way that allows statistics to prove it.
Er, if I punch you in the nose and it then hurts like the devil and bleeds copiously, I am fairly sure you will see a causal link. If you then argue that it can't be "proven", I think there is something wrong with your idea of "proof".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Best sig this year!
if you want success in the long term, you need to endure hardships in the short term.
Good luck winning an election with that slogan.
Hey, cool! This guy has just refuted democracy in two short sentences.
Slashdot sure is the place to get an education quickly.
Here's reality for you: no business is going to seriously invest in anything that has a longer time horizon than 50 years, because guess what? The investors are all going to be dead by then. Who cares if it makes a trillion dollars in 2100?
Hey, cool! This guy has just refuted capitalism in three short sentences.
Longer than a tweet or a haiku, but one hell of a lot shorter than any of those chunky doorstop textbooks.
"Too many sectors, such as health care or personal services, are so resistant to automation that they are holding back the entire country's standard of living."
To which I reply with this:
“When the Englishman speaks of national wealth he means the number of millionaires in the country". - Oswald Spengler
As Spengler was writing nearly 100 years ago, for "Englishman" we may conveniently substitute "American"; and for "millionaires", "billionaires".
This finding shows conclusively that all the hysterical talk of highly-organized, focussed attacks by "criminal gangs" was rubbish. Instead, the facts point to what one would expect to see if the malware had simply been launched and drifted where it would.
Had there really been an organized criminal gang behind the attacks, we could have expected many more computers to be pwned, and instead of a demand for $300 in Bitcoin or whatever on each monitor, there would have been a single demand for several million pounds - delivered to the Prime Minister.
When I used to give talks about software security 20 years ago, I always stressed that, so far, attacks had been episodic and uncoordinated, which is what you would expect from "hobbyists". "Just kids messing about," in the apt words of Crocodile Dundee. When serious actors moved in, people would know about it.
The really astonishing thing is that, now 20 years have passed, so very little has changed. We still get these amateurish, uncoordinated attacks. One day - but I won't predict when, having been so wrong in the past - things will get a great deal worse very suddenly.
When Tony Blair met Bill Gates in 2006 - after kissing Gates' feet and gushing for a few hours about his supreme wonderfulness - Blair signed up for the super huge mega deal, with all the Windows you can eat. (Small print: security is up to you, mumble mumble mumble...)
"Mr Gates, the billionaire software pioneer, had just written a book about how IT could transform economies".
Yeah. Transform them from prosperity to miserable bankruptcy - along with lots of dead and dying patients. And transfer a large slice of their revenue to Bill Gates' bulging pockets.
Maybe the NHS should call Gates now and ask him to sort out their problems.
https://www.theguardian.com/bu...
And this:
http://www.strategic-culture.o...
Oh I forgot this:
https://cluborlov.blogspot.co....
and this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So it's bad that NATO leaves a one country buffer zone between Europe and Russia, but not bad that Russia installs military bases right on Europe's doorstep such as Kaliningrad, Moldova, and now parts of Ukraine that it's outright annexed?
For a start, Russia is a European nation and always has been. So it's not surprising that it has bases in Europe. On the other hand, the USA is NOT a European nation, yet Europe is teeming with American bases, soldiers and weapon systems - including thermonuclear weapons. Russia did "annexe" Crimea, which had been part of Russia since before the USA existed, after the illegal regime in Kiev began determined efforts to exterminate Russian-speaking citizens.
Kaliningrad - Koenigsberg as was - "became part of the Soviet Union pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement (as part of the Russian SFSR) as agreed upon by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Kaliningrad is now part of Russia, just as Hawaii and Alaska are part of the USA. Does the USA have military bases in Alaska and Hawaii? According to Time magazine, the USA has about 800 military, naval and air force bases in 70 countries outside the USA. http://time.com/4511744/americ... See also https://www.thenation.com/arti...
That map is a fine example of telling half the story - Kazakhstan has a NATO base that was used only for onwards staging and transport to Afghanistan purely for anti-Taliban operations for example, yet Russia has a full blown permanent offensive military presence there.
Kazakhstan used to be part of the USSR, and before that part of the Russian Empire. It has a large Russian-speaking population and is a close ally of Russia. However, it also presents a tempting avenue of attack against Russia's "soft underbelly". Given the presence of Islamist terrorists and NATO in Afghanistan, it's hardly surprising the Russians are on guard and keeping a wary eye open.
More to the point, what on earth is the USA doing in Afghanistan where it has no business to be, and no legal right? Indeed, the USA has no business to be interfering anywhere in Asia, Europe or Africa.
That's cute, but have you heard about Russian propaganda about the US?
Could you supply any specific examples? Preferably with URLs.
That's cute, but have you heard about Russian propaganda about the US?
No, I haven't. What I have seen is a good deal of truthful facts and opinion about the US government and its policies. Some of it comes from Russia, some from Europe, some from the UK, Australia and Canada - and quite a lot of it comes from the USA itself.
Read the following (or as much of it as you can absorb) and see if what you learn is a little different from what the mainstream media are telling their audiences day after day.
http://russia-insider.com/en/o...
http://russia-insider.com/en/p...
http://www.strategic-culture.o...
http://www.paulcraigroberts.or...
http://awdnews.com/top-news/ru...
https://www.rt.com/news/387798...
http://michael-hudson.com/2017...
http://russia-insider.com/en/p...
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuc...
https://thearchdruidreport.blo...
https://irrussianality.wordpre...
http://johnhelmer.net/malaysia...
https://irrussianality.wordpre...
https://socioecohistory.files....
Uttering or posting "hate speech" - whatever that may be - is illegal; but calmly, unemotionally dropping bombs on civilians or launching missiles to kill them is just fine.
Priorities just a little off-kilter, I think.
Why would a police officer think that presenting a "re-enactment" would be acceptable legal procedure in court? Courts hear evidence - not "re-enactments".
British governments have been able to *call* the nation a democracy for at least a century or so. But it never has been. Just a good enough facsimile to fool most of the people, most of the time.
Odd that this comment, and my reply to it, have been moderated "Flamebait" and "Troll" respectively.
Apparently anyone who questions the official number can expect to be ruled out of order. And this isn't even Congress or the White House - it's Slashdot, where I thought people were capable of independent thought and (where warranted) scepticism.
Maybe the US government is scrupulously truthful, after all. Who knew?
'As new discouraged workers move regularly from U.3 into U.6 unemployment accounting, those who have been “discouraged” for one year also are dropped from the U.6 measure'.
http://www.shadowstats.com/art...
So there are many people out there who are not counted, even in U.6.
That sounds like an attempt to change the subject. This thread is about the latest official unemployment figures.
Is this real numbers? Can these numbers be trusted?
Is the administration inflating the numbers?
No, no, and yes. (Except that the administration is deflating the unemployment numbers, not inflating them).
http://www.shadowstats.com/ shows, in the graph on the home page, that true unemployment in the USA is currently about 22%. Explanation and details can be found in http://www.shadowstats.com/art...
This here is exactly why you shouldn't buy CPUs from NSA-CIA-Intel.
From whom, then?
If the assertion is that one language can be used for everyday purposes and also for specifying programs, it is hopelessly wrong. The merit of a programming language, like any other scientific specification, is that it is exact, precise, correct, and unambiguous. If it is easy to understand, that is a nice bonus - but it cannot be a high priority.
Natural language, on the other hand, revels in deliberate ambiguity, multiple shades of meaning, and even saying slightly different things to different listeners. That's why synthetic languages like Esperanto never succeed beyond a small circles of fans: you can't write poetry in them, or even any stirring emotional prose.
The purpose of programming languages is to eliminate doubt and ambiguity - to perfect communication. The purpose of natural languages, inasmuch as they have a single purpose, is to sell, seduce, persuade and - yes - confuse.
Some things have quite long lifespans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...