One solution is a service that filters domains at the DNS level, such as OpenDNS.
But does anyone know of a similar service on the IP level? Malware attackers may not cooperate by using domain names; IP addresses are less hassle for them, less attention-getting from the average end-user (who knows somewebsite.ru is wrong, but not 134.14.215.12), and they bypass DNS-level security. The IP-level filter would have to be either,
* Something like an RBL, but for all attacks not just for spam.
* A proxy to a service that scans Internet content for attacks, again like their email equivalent (MessageLabs, Postini, etc.). This would be like the malware scanning on some firewalls, but I find those slow down connections too much (especially for fiber-level bandwidth). A datacenter would have much greater bandwidth capacity and much greater scanning capability than the local firewall.
I just want a simple, fast RSS reader. I'm not looking for many features.
I tried a few dedicated products, but Thunderbird 2.x works best for me (I didn't try a later version). It's got a 3-pane interface, it's lightening fast (essential for browsing hundreds or thousands of headlines), you can turn off remote images for more speed and privacy (use View > Message Body As > Simple HTML), and you can navigate (mostly) by keyboard (the amazing Nostalgy extension may help here; I've used it for so long that I'm not sure how TBird works without it).
For people looking for more alternatives, here is what I found when I looked around a couple of years ago:
* Awasu (local client)
* NewsGator (local)
* Brief (Firefox addon)
Hosted:
* MyYahoo
* MyAOL
* NetVibes
* Bloglines
Also, discontinued but still available at the time:
* Newzcrawler
* FeedReader
* Sharp
* Omnea
* AmphetaDesk (FOSS)
Disclaimer: This is a very speculative long shot....
But it used to be that differences between platforms in terms of end user control were a matter of degree. Now with commercial operating systems moving rapidly away from that, with more closed systems, restricted app stores, secure boot, locked devices, disregard for privacy, etc., Linux has a much larger opportunity to distinguish itself on that feature (as well as the security that goes with it).
Don't wait for users to tell you they need it; that will be too late. Though privacy and control aren't so 'cool' now, I find it hard to believe that suddenly human beings will have permanently stopped caring about them. The pendulum could swing back, and if that happens you want Linux firmly associated with end user control and privacy in people's minds.
Plus, Linux could educate them simply by presenting an alternative. Few end users understand the value of end user control and openness.
The situation that is playing out was anticipated by many: The politically powerful have their proprietary information protected, because they can make government do it for them. Everyone else has no privacy.
Individual end-users don't have the ability to protect themselves. Most have no idea of encryption, much less what data is accessible to someone scanning Wifi frequencies (most people couldn't even tell you what a "frequency" is!). Even if they had the knowledge, they have limited time and resources. That doesn't make them fair game or mean they surrender their privacy rights.
Google exploited a loophole in Wifi; Schwartz exploited a loophole in a server. Both took proprietary data. What's the difference? The law, made by the politically powerful, says that the data Schwartz took was valuable and protected, while my personal data is not. I wonder what would happen if I went to Google offices and homes and collected unencrypted data; would I be arrested? Fined 20% of 1 day's net income?
(It's hard to believe that Google didn't know what they would end up with by collecting unencrypted Wifi data -- they certainly know about frequencies, encryption, and wifi. They could have saved a lot of storage if they just took SSIDs and ignored the rest. Plus they are experts; they are responsible for knowing what they are doing.)
The statement you quote "no evidence of diversion of material and nuclear activities towards military purposes," just means that Iran currently isn't diverting that material to military purposes.
It means that the IAEA has no information it can publicly reveal on the subject. "No evidence" is much different than "it's not happening".
On slashdot, if there's a confrontation between someone from the government and a rich guy, who do you think people will believe?
I know your question is rhetorical, but I think there's a serious point here: Tech hero (Arrington, Elon Musk) vs. anyone else (customs agent, NY Times), and people here seem to take the tech hero's at face value.
Words of someone who's obviously never had to deal with a petty bureaucrat's Napoleon complex.
Obviously you have no idea about me. Bureaucrats and the people they deal with are all human; some are petty, some are earnest and hard working, some care, some don't. I just don't buy the story of the person who posts their blog first, or has a bigger platform from which to complain. Your sig says it best:
Capitalism is really Feudalism, but with a much better PR department
Yes, it is the universal, eternal nature of humanity. That is why the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution tried very hard to limit the powers of the government. The more powerful the government gets the more likely this sort of thing is to happen and the harder it is to get this type of abuse corrected.
I agree that limited government is one tool to minimize the harm of institutions, but I'd balance it out a little...
If not government, who will restrain humanity's instincts to kill and cheat each other? To whom would Arrington appeal to get his boat back? I think that's the primary irony and challenge of society: To protect ourselves against humanity and its institutions, we only have more humans and institutions.
Also, the Articles of Confederation had even more limited government than we have now, but our ancestors found it too ineffectual. The Framers goal was to create a more powerful central government, though still limited.
Finally, the Framers were just as human -- petty, corrupt, selfish, dumb -- as we are. The Constitution isn't scripture handed down by gods, but the flawed work of people like our current politicians and society. As someone said, 'we are the ones we've been waiting for.'
He did try to fix it, and the DHS agents acted like morons.
Says who? If the customs agent wrote a blog, would it say the same? What if she wrote her blog first and it was posted to Slashdot as "Arrington acts like and a**hole, gets yacht confiscated"? Do we just believe whichever side gets posted to Slashdot first?
itâ(TM)s to highlight how screwed up our government bureaucracy has become.
If true (we should hear the other side), it's nothing new in the history of governments or the United States. Not that it shouldn't improve, but the good old days never were.
That's the essential point to understand that if you want to improve things: The problem isn't current bad apples or lack of morality or a temporary increase in corruption; it's the universal, eternal nature of humanity and their institutions. Ignoring that fact is like designing a bridge and ignoring gravity. There are solutions, such as transparency, but it's not a matter of replacing the current 'bad' apples with a new batch -- they will be human too.
Why is an organization somehow obligated to provide access to this application? Maybe they have promised something to their users, but otherwise Google Docs is not a universal human right; it's just another application offered by another company.
Unless these logs were doctored (unlikely), then Broder lied
Both Broder and Musk are reporting their observations; why do you believe one over the other? Broder can read the numbers on the dashboard as reliably as Musk can read a log.
Another poster who looked at the logs says Musk took liberties with the facts. Also, maybe the logs aren't accurate, or use different data than the dashboard UI.
Vendors don't want to the cost of supporting your platform, so they drop you. To avoid any responsibility, they simply add an error message blaming the user: "Your platform is obsolete." (I guess it's my problem now!) Many users are uniformed or credulous enough to believe it.
Many 'cloud' vendors are going this way; they've simply ignored their commitment to support their users and make the users do the work of supporting vendors (via upgrades and installations). I suspect it's because many users are consumers, aren't aware the vendors have this obligation, and take the 'error' messages at face value.
Worse, I see it in business situations. For example, cloud vendors we pay say that the current Firefox ESR is obsolete, or that we need to deploy browser upgrades office-wide every 5 weeks -- it does nothing for our bottom line, we'd just be doing it to please them.
There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.
Java may be unpopular on Slashdot, but that's not a reason to handle it differently
Oracle really dropped the ball here, and they deserve to be kicked.
But it's end users who rely on Java (and there are still many) who are getting kicked. I know a business whose remote access uses Java; now some of their users are going to be cut off.
arrogant of Oracle
It's arrogant of Mozilla and Apple to dictate to people what they need, want, and are allowed to use on their own computers.
As I understand it, the only solution to climate change is nuclear power:
1) Demand for power will increase dramatically no matter what we do. As middle classes explode in developing nations (India, China, Brazil, etc.), they will want the same benefits of energy that people in developed nations have. People in developed nations can't insist that others live with less while we liberally burn coal, gas, and oil to fuel our lifestyles.
2) The only technology that can meet power demands soon enough without causing climate change is nuclear. Wind/solar/etc simply don't have the technology, infrastructure, etc. to come online soon enough.
Yes, some people will die from nuclear accidents, but far more will die from climate change.
Slashdot Mirror
One solution is a service that filters domains at the DNS level, such as OpenDNS.
But does anyone know of a similar service on the IP level? Malware attackers may not cooperate by using domain names; IP addresses are less hassle for them, less attention-getting from the average end-user (who knows somewebsite.ru is wrong, but not 134.14.215.12), and they bypass DNS-level security. The IP-level filter would have to be either,
* Something like an RBL, but for all attacks not just for spam.
* A proxy to a service that scans Internet content for attacks, again like their email equivalent (MessageLabs, Postini, etc.). This would be like the malware scanning on some firewalls, but I find those slow down connections too much (especially for fiber-level bandwidth). A datacenter would have much greater bandwidth capacity and much greater scanning capability than the local firewall.
Does anyone provide these services?
I just want a simple, fast RSS reader. I'm not looking for many features.
I tried a few dedicated products, but Thunderbird 2.x works best for me (I didn't try a later version). It's got a 3-pane interface, it's lightening fast (essential for browsing hundreds or thousands of headlines), you can turn off remote images for more speed and privacy (use View > Message Body As > Simple HTML), and you can navigate (mostly) by keyboard (the amazing Nostalgy extension may help here; I've used it for so long that I'm not sure how TBird works without it).
For people looking for more alternatives, here is what I found when I looked around a couple of years ago:
* Awasu (local client)
* NewsGator (local)
* Brief (Firefox addon)
Hosted:
* MyYahoo
* MyAOL
* NetVibes
* Bloglines
Also, discontinued but still available at the time:
* Newzcrawler
* FeedReader
* Sharp
* Omnea
* AmphetaDesk (FOSS)
Disclaimer: This is a very speculative long shot ....
But it used to be that differences between platforms in terms of end user control were a matter of degree. Now with commercial operating systems moving rapidly away from that, with more closed systems, restricted app stores, secure boot, locked devices, disregard for privacy, etc., Linux has a much larger opportunity to distinguish itself on that feature (as well as the security that goes with it).
Don't wait for users to tell you they need it; that will be too late. Though privacy and control aren't so 'cool' now, I find it hard to believe that suddenly human beings will have permanently stopped caring about them. The pendulum could swing back, and if that happens you want Linux firmly associated with end user control and privacy in people's minds.
Plus, Linux could educate them simply by presenting an alternative. Few end users understand the value of end user control and openness.
If it's so easy, why do so few do it?
The situation that is playing out was anticipated by many: The politically powerful have their proprietary information protected, because they can make government do it for them. Everyone else has no privacy.
Individual end-users don't have the ability to protect themselves. Most have no idea of encryption, much less what data is accessible to someone scanning Wifi frequencies (most people couldn't even tell you what a "frequency" is!). Even if they had the knowledge, they have limited time and resources. That doesn't make them fair game or mean they surrender their privacy rights.
Google exploited a loophole in Wifi; Schwartz exploited a loophole in a server. Both took proprietary data. What's the difference? The law, made by the politically powerful, says that the data Schwartz took was valuable and protected, while my personal data is not. I wonder what would happen if I went to Google offices and homes and collected unencrypted data; would I be arrested? Fined 20% of 1 day's net income?
(It's hard to believe that Google didn't know what they would end up with by collecting unencrypted Wifi data -- they certainly know about frequencies, encryption, and wifi. They could have saved a lot of storage if they just took SSIDs and ignored the rest. Plus they are experts; they are responsible for knowing what they are doing.)
only the US Govt thinks you can cut one foot off the top of a blanket and sew it on to the bottom of a blanket will make the blanket longer
You mean, only your fellow citizens. It's comforting to blame the government, because that seems fixable. But that's not really what's happening ...
Should Slashdot include a disclaimer when linking to a corporate sister?
In case you don't know, Slashdot is owned by Dice Holdings (see the bottom left of the page you are reading), which also owns this link from the front page story:
http://news.dice.com/2013/03/05/yahoos-telecommuting-policy-could-find-fanboy-ceos/
I see a pattern here. Poor Tesla; such bad luck that journalists always pick on them.
The statement you quote "no evidence of diversion of material and nuclear activities towards military purposes," just means that Iran currently isn't diverting that material to military purposes.
It means that the IAEA has no information it can publicly reveal on the subject. "No evidence" is much different than "it's not happening".
On slashdot, if there's a confrontation between someone from the government and a rich guy, who do you think people will believe?
I know your question is rhetorical, but I think there's a serious point here: Tech hero (Arrington, Elon Musk) vs. anyone else (customs agent, NY Times), and people here seem to take the tech hero's at face value.
Words of someone who's obviously never had to deal with a petty bureaucrat's Napoleon complex.
Obviously you have no idea about me. Bureaucrats and the people they deal with are all human; some are petty, some are earnest and hard working, some care, some don't. I just don't buy the story of the person who posts their blog first, or has a bigger platform from which to complain. Your sig says it best:
Capitalism is really Feudalism, but with a much better PR department
Arrington is the one with the PR department.
Yes, it is the universal, eternal nature of humanity. That is why the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution tried very hard to limit the powers of the government. The more powerful the government gets the more likely this sort of thing is to happen and the harder it is to get this type of abuse corrected.
I agree that limited government is one tool to minimize the harm of institutions, but I'd balance it out a little ...
If not government, who will restrain humanity's instincts to kill and cheat each other? To whom would Arrington appeal to get his boat back? I think that's the primary irony and challenge of society: To protect ourselves against humanity and its institutions, we only have more humans and institutions.
Also, the Articles of Confederation had even more limited government than we have now, but our ancestors found it too ineffectual. The Framers goal was to create a more powerful central government, though still limited.
Finally, the Framers were just as human -- petty, corrupt, selfish, dumb -- as we are. The Constitution isn't scripture handed down by gods, but the flawed work of people like our current politicians and society. As someone said, 'we are the ones we've been waiting for.'
He did try to fix it, and the DHS agents acted like morons.
Says who? If the customs agent wrote a blog, would it say the same? What if she wrote her blog first and it was posted to Slashdot as "Arrington acts like and a**hole, gets yacht confiscated"? Do we just believe whichever side gets posted to Slashdot first?
He writes:
itâ(TM)s to highlight how screwed up our government bureaucracy has become.
If true (we should hear the other side), it's nothing new in the history of governments or the United States. Not that it shouldn't improve, but the good old days never were.
That's the essential point to understand that if you want to improve things: The problem isn't current bad apples or lack of morality or a temporary increase in corruption; it's the universal, eternal nature of humanity and their institutions. Ignoring that fact is like designing a bridge and ignoring gravity. There are solutions, such as transparency, but it's not a matter of replacing the current 'bad' apples with a new batch -- they will be human too.
Why is an organization somehow obligated to provide access to this application? Maybe they have promised something to their users, but otherwise Google Docs is not a universal human right; it's just another application offered by another company.
Traffic? Did he stop overnight?
Unless these logs were doctored (unlikely), then Broder lied
Both Broder and Musk are reporting their observations; why do you believe one over the other? Broder can read the numbers on the dashboard as reliably as Musk can read a log.
Another poster who looked at the logs says Musk took liberties with the facts. Also, maybe the logs aren't accurate, or use different data than the dashboard UI.
That is indeed what the logs do say ...
Have you seen them?
Vendors don't want to the cost of supporting your platform, so they drop you. To avoid any responsibility, they simply add an error message blaming the user: "Your platform is obsolete." (I guess it's my problem now!) Many users are uniformed or credulous enough to believe it.
Many 'cloud' vendors are going this way; they've simply ignored their commitment to support their users and make the users do the work of supporting vendors (via upgrades and installations). I suspect it's because many users are consumers, aren't aware the vendors have this obligation, and take the 'error' messages at face value.
Worse, I see it in business situations. For example, cloud vendors we pay say that the current Firefox ESR is obsolete, or that we need to deploy browser upgrades office-wide every 5 weeks -- it does nothing for our bottom line, we'd just be doing it to please them.
There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.
If you ask it this way: "Does US Owe the World an Education At Its Expense?"
No.
Perhaps there are other ways of looking at it ...
nearly nobody needs Java anyway
Java may be unpopular on Slashdot, but that's not a reason to handle it differently
Oracle really dropped the ball here, and they deserve to be kicked.
But it's end users who rely on Java (and there are still many) who are getting kicked. I know a business whose remote access uses Java; now some of their users are going to be cut off.
arrogant of Oracle
It's arrogant of Mozilla and Apple to dictate to people what they need, want, and are allowed to use on their own computers.
There are many zero-day exploits out there for many applications (and operating systems, etc.). Why does this one deserve special treatment?
It's the second time that I remember Mozilla doing it with Java.
As I understand it, the only solution to climate change is nuclear power:
1) Demand for power will increase dramatically no matter what we do. As middle classes explode in developing nations (India, China, Brazil, etc.), they will want the same benefits of energy that people in developed nations have. People in developed nations can't insist that others live with less while we liberally burn coal, gas, and oil to fuel our lifestyles.
2) The only technology that can meet power demands soon enough without causing climate change is nuclear. Wind/solar/etc simply don't have the technology, infrastructure, etc. to come online soon enough.
Yes, some people will die from nuclear accidents, but far more will die from climate change.
Being a native speaker of English, I understand the subtext of your statement to be: RTFA :)
My apologies. Someone should mod down my above statement.
Humor can be hard to translate. Maybe instead of the Chinese speakers missing the Aussie's sarcasm, it's visa-versa.