I wonder how many recruits we've generated by killing innocents with our bombs and drones.
Probably fewer than you think....
But the Pakistani general leading troops in the North Waziristan has for the first time publicly acknowledged the U.S drone attacks are hitting mostly militants and al-Qaida fighters.
[snip lots] That is good news. Thanks for the post.
The backdoor in XP only gives them a master algorithm for decrypting anything protected with the tools provided with the OS. Perhaps in 7 either, 1) they've developed a method of recording keys for any encryption taking place (fairly unlikely as very easily detected), 2) Windows 7 automatically records hashes for hidden volumes when data on them is accessed (more likely, noticing a hash is in use in the reading of data on a volume by a third-party process, eg, truecrypt.dll, and they don't even need to capture the crypto-keys - also less detectable - while folks know their crypto-keys, not many know their hash by heart and wouldn't notice it being copied in memory), 3) something else I haven't thought of, 4) they actually care about your security - but given the organisation and their goals this is _extremely_ unlikely.
I'd be utterly unsurprised if the NSA or other "security" agencies aren't heavily vested in backdoors for closed-source software, but I suspect what's actually going on here is that they see the end of XP support looming, they know how slow people are to upgrade, and they don't want the country filled with machines that aren't getting security updates anymore. We're easy enough a target now; anyone with the least concern for security must dread the possibility of it getting worse.
Disclaimer: I may have not used the correct terminology in places. Feel free to correct mis-used words, but try to do so without insulting my mother, my nerd-status, or my intellect - this merely isn't my field of expertise.
Too bad you didn't turn out to be an ultra-smart nerd, like your mother.
It disgusts me whenever someone says the world changed after 9-11 and we had to take the actions we took. Even If a 9-11 size event is the price of living with the civil liberties so precious to me, then I am willing to accept the risk of living in such a country.
We get ten times as many fatalities from traffic accidents every year, and look how loud people scream if they have to pay for a new mandatory safety device when they go shopping for a new car.
The Far Right will still find some way to complain about this and slam Obama.
Not sure Obama is entitled to any credit due to it happening on his watch. Was this the result of some policy he hatched, rather than the outcome of something that's been in the works for nearly a decade?
And regardless of who hatched it and when, is the policy of intervening in Pakistan going to do us more good or harm over the long term?
No, just ask GHW Bush how well that works out. Short answer: it doesn't, especially when the economy goes to shit. His best hope is for the Republicans to follow tradition and nominate a terrible candidate.
My reading of US politics is:
a) By spending two years utterly slacking on their supporters interests, the Democrats had handed the Presidency and both houses of Congress to the Republicans in 2012.
b) By letting a handful of governers and state legislatures run wild takin care of the rich and big corporations at the expense of ordinary folk, the Republicans gave all three back to the Democrats in 2012.
This event won't make any difference, because the ball is already in the Democrats' court. But they've still got a year and a half to screw the pooch again.
As far as "terrible candidate" is concerned, that's a foregone conclusion. But it doesn't seem to scare the voters off.
Mission Accomplished ---- Now let's bring 'em home.
Actually no, it isn't. Although Bin Laden's death is going to be very helpful, all that happened is that the current enemy leader was killed.
Our rationale for going into Afghanistan is that Management wouldn't turn over an accused war criminal.
Of course, we *will* stay now... Excellent illustration of how mission creep works. (Or maybe just of how tiger-by-the-tail works.)
Someone, probably far less effective, will take his place. The Coalition Forces killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq multiple times, and he was always replaced. Al Qaeda will fight on despite this. We ignore this fact at our peril.
The US & NATO need to remain in Afghanistan for at least several more years until their army are police are built up and trained, and their country is stabilized.
I hope nobody has been encouraging you to hold your breath on that.
No point - since they're a martyr, they go straight to paradise.
I seriously doubt that the leaders are religious fanatics. They're certainly willing to prey on disturbed people's religious excesses, but they didn't get on the airplanes themselves.
The Linux botfarm was created by a group of hackers about two years ago and since Linux isn't susceptible to automatic email or browser drive-by attacks it took them 6 months to manually find 770 poorly secured Linux boxes and hack into them.
But we shouldn't be complacent. There are root kits out there for Linux, and none of us *really* know what's on our machines.
I would hardly heap praise on it, but it is true that W7 only rarely shows evidence of the brain fever that was rampant in their earlier releases.
I've used it for a gaming platform for about three months, and the only bugs I've seen is that it sometimes forgets icons and sometimes fails to update listings in the Explorer when you delete stuff. (You know, the difficult stuff that free software will never be able to solve either.)
Also hung once, IIRC.
And there's still lots of idiotic design, but that's not a bug.
The NSA have an excellent guide for securing Linux systems (particularly Redhat, but much is applicable to all distros), so they're hardly Windows-centric.
They also have developed a staple of (a) modern Linux security architecture, namely SELinux.
Do they have one for people who live in the northwest?
The Commission primarily appears to suffer from a lack of reading comprehension, amnesia regarding what it said earlier, and not being fully aware of its competences.
No, they suffer from wanting to justify something they're not actually able to justify.
But we see politicians in the same straits every day in the news. "Nothing to see here, folks."
A lot of bluff and bluster against Microsoft for defending a patent. Barnes and Noble needs to attack the patent or the patent system. Fighting a PR battle is evidence that B&N doesn't have the facts necessary to win the patent fight.
But then MS is fighting a PR battle as well.
Maybe they're both wrong? Maybe they hope to subvert the courts via public pressure? Maybe the patents aren't what the fight is actually about?
It's good to see PJ still digging through massive court briefs to bring us the details on IP court battles.
And it's good to see Microsoft acting all the evil ways we'd come to expect. For a while the world was getting a little big crazy, and hard to understand.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how many recruits we've generated by killing innocents with our bombs and drones.
Probably fewer than you think....
[snip lots]
That is good news. Thanks for the post.
In downtown Austin, Texas, in the time since the story broke I've heard what sound like numerous celebratory gunshots.
Sounds like you've never spent a Sunday night in Austin before.
The backdoor in XP only gives them a master algorithm for decrypting anything protected with the tools provided with the OS. Perhaps in 7 either, 1) they've developed a method of recording keys for any encryption taking place (fairly unlikely as very easily detected), 2) Windows 7 automatically records hashes for hidden volumes when data on them is accessed (more likely, noticing a hash is in use in the reading of data on a volume by a third-party process, eg, truecrypt.dll, and they don't even need to capture the crypto-keys - also less detectable - while folks know their crypto-keys, not many know their hash by heart and wouldn't notice it being copied in memory), 3) something else I haven't thought of, 4) they actually care about your security - but given the organisation and their goals this is _extremely_ unlikely.
I'd be utterly unsurprised if the NSA or other "security" agencies aren't heavily vested in backdoors for closed-source software, but I suspect what's actually going on here is that they see the end of XP support looming, they know how slow people are to upgrade, and they don't want the country filled with machines that aren't getting security updates anymore. We're easy enough a target now; anyone with the least concern for security must dread the possibility of it getting worse.
Disclaimer: I may have not used the correct terminology in places. Feel free to correct mis-used words, but try to do so without insulting my mother, my nerd-status, or my intellect - this merely isn't my field of expertise.
Too bad you didn't turn out to be an ultra-smart nerd, like your mother.
Can we pick one way to spell Al Qaeda\Quaeda\Alqueda\Al Quidea? Please?
Sure... if you want to switch to a different writing system.
It disgusts me whenever someone says the world changed after 9-11 and we had to take the actions we took. Even If a 9-11 size event is the price of living with the civil liberties so precious to me, then I am willing to accept the risk of living in such a country.
We get ten times as many fatalities from traffic accidents every year , and look how loud people scream if they have to pay for a new mandatory safety device when they go shopping for a new car.
The Far Right will still find some way to complain about this and slam Obama.
Not sure Obama is entitled to any credit due to it happening on his watch. Was this the result of some policy he hatched, rather than the outcome of something that's been in the works for nearly a decade?
And regardless of who hatched it and when, is the policy of intervening in Pakistan going to do us more good or harm over the long term?
can we go back to being america ?
No. But if you're tired of the War on Terror, we'll gladly switch to War on Drugs v. 2.0.
We've got some captured aliens standing by to probe your hiney at the airport...
You sir, have won the thread.
Except that the joke is nine years old.
No, just ask GHW Bush how well that works out. Short answer: it doesn't, especially when the economy goes to shit. His best hope is for the Republicans to follow tradition and nominate a terrible candidate.
My reading of US politics is:
a) By spending two years utterly slacking on their supporters interests, the Democrats had handed the Presidency and both houses of Congress to the Republicans in 2012.
b) By letting a handful of governers and state legislatures run wild takin care of the rich and big corporations at the expense of ordinary folk, the Republicans gave all three back to the Democrats in 2012.
This event won't make any difference, because the ball is already in the Democrats' court. But they've still got a year and a half to screw the pooch again.
As far as "terrible candidate" is concerned, that's a foregone conclusion. But it doesn't seem to scare the voters off.
Here come the conspiracy theories.
Uh... are you posting from 9-1/2 years ago?
Mission Accomplished ---- Now let's bring 'em home.
Actually no, it isn't. Although Bin Laden's death is going to be very helpful, all that happened is that the current enemy leader was killed.
Our rationale for going into Afghanistan is that Management wouldn't turn over an accused war criminal.
Of course, we *will* stay now... Excellent illustration of how mission creep works. (Or maybe just of how tiger-by-the-tail works.)
Someone, probably far less effective, will take his place. The Coalition Forces killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq multiple times, and he was always replaced. Al Qaeda will fight on despite this. We ignore this fact at our peril.
The US & NATO need to remain in Afghanistan for at least several more years until their army are police are built up and trained, and their country is stabilized.
I hope nobody has been encouraging you to hold your breath on that.
It's a good start. When the next leader of Alqueda steps up, we just kill him too, lather rinse repeat.
And if we get one every 9-1/2 years, the war will only last... forever.
I wonder how many recruits we've generated by killing innocents with our bombs and drones.
No point - since they're a martyr, they go straight to paradise.
I seriously doubt that the leaders are religious fanatics. They're certainly willing to prey on disturbed people's religious excesses, but they didn't get on the airplanes themselves.
and you would think that fighting Iraqis and Afghanis was just a fact of life.
We've always been at war with West Asia.
The Linux botfarm was created by a group of hackers about two years ago and since Linux isn't susceptible to automatic email or browser drive-by attacks it took them 6 months to manually find 770 poorly secured Linux boxes and hack into them.
But we shouldn't be complacent. There are root kits out there for Linux, and none of us *really* know what's on our machines.
I would hardly heap praise on it, but it is true that W7 only rarely shows evidence of the brain fever that was rampant in their earlier releases.
I've used it for a gaming platform for about three months, and the only bugs I've seen is that it sometimes forgets icons and sometimes fails to update listings in the Explorer when you delete stuff. (You know, the difficult stuff that free software will never be able to solve either.)
Also hung once, IIRC.
And there's still lots of idiotic design, but that's not a bug.
The NSA have an excellent guide for securing Linux systems (particularly Redhat, but much is applicable to all distros), so they're hardly Windows-centric.
They also have developed a staple of (a) modern Linux security architecture, namely SELinux.
Do they have one for people who live in the northwest?
Oops sorry. Just read TFA. :\
Now *that* will spoil the Slashdot Experience.
The Commission primarily appears to suffer from a lack of reading comprehension, amnesia regarding what it said earlier, and not being fully aware of its competences.
No, they suffer from wanting to justify something they're not actually able to justify.
But we see politicians in the same straits every day in the news. "Nothing to see here, folks."
And Napoleon was a Corsican.
A lot of bluff and bluster against Microsoft for defending a patent. Barnes and Noble needs to attack the patent or the patent system. Fighting a PR battle is evidence that B&N doesn't have the facts necessary to win the patent fight.
But then MS is fighting a PR battle as well.
Maybe they're both wrong? Maybe they hope to subvert the courts via public pressure? Maybe the patents aren't what the fight is actually about?
Of course; that's what the 'N' stands for.
Now what do you suppose the 'B' stands for?
It's good to see PJ still digging through massive court briefs to bring us the details on IP court battles.
And it's good to see Microsoft acting all the evil ways we'd come to expect. For a while the world was getting a little big crazy, and hard to understand.
Your metaphors are like a petunia made from the D below middle C.
FYI, when you use "like" it becomes a simile rather than a metaphor.
"He was a lion." ==> metaphor
"He was like a lion." ==> simile
So for your joke to work you should have said, "Your metaphors *are* a petunia made from the D below middle C."
(This bit of pedantry is brought to you by Slashdot. Stay tuned for more!)
Are we supposed to be cheering at the knowledge that we're not the only ones that f**ked up our money management?