We should line the designers up and shoot them, right next to the invetors of the Automatic Transmission, Speed Dial, and Milking machines.
I couldn’t agree more on the automatic transmission thing. People driving a stick tend to pay more attention to what’s going on around them and use less fuel to boot. In addition to that, I doubt this nation would be overrun with six ton jacked up station wagons if those ignorant monkeyjugglers had to juggle a cell phone and a gear shift while drifting across three lanes of traffic. (Speed dial I have no feelings on, and milking machines I’m not gonna comment on unless posting anonymously.)
While you’re right that you can’t get software to install silently under OS X, it would be trivial to trojan a download, and even to this day, a great many (most?) Mac users will gleefully enter their root password when prompted by any random installer.
As to the phoning home part, IPFW doesn’t, as configured in OS X, do egress. I run a $25 app to have real time veto power over outgoing packets. So while the malware situation on OS X is currently infinitely better than that of Winders, I wouldn’t be using that ‘c’ word if I were you.
LAME, as in the MP3 encoder that sounds so much better than Xing? How and/or why would one use that as the basis for any sort of rootkit and/or trojan?
Or am I, as is so often the case, missing something?
Pedantic he may be, but he’s right. Read up on the history of the RIAA for a great lesson on Mission Creep. As I recall, they were essentially a standards body formed to ensure that audio signals and such were all compatible. But that put them in a position of slight power, and you know what a taste of power does to people...
This is ingenious their paying outsourced labor wages to native English speaking Americans.
I see nothing to indicate that only us wealthy gringos can participate. I haven’t yet checked out the payment end of it, but I would assume that it will eventually be a worldwide thing, making it a nice, level, globalized playing field.
Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercise to the reader.
Now, let me pedanticly correct you. I.e. does indeed stand for 'id est,' but 'id est' does not mean 'that is.' 'id est' is latin for 'it is.' I know this, because I speak the bloody language. Thank you.
Umm, was that intended to be ironic?
Because the adverb form of the word is pedantically
Opera lets users set the user agent string to spoof various browsers, and at least for the past few years, if not forever, it’s defaulted to MSIE. So the percentage of Opera users shown is merely the subset of Opera users who hit the BBC website with their UA string set to Opera instead of the default.
Hmm. I thought the password to WOPR’s back door was the name of the developer’s late son. Wasn’t pencil the password to the grade/attendance system in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
I grow weary of this attitude saying that it's ok to break into systems as long as you tell the operator about the flaw.
For certain values of “break in.”
The traditional meaning of “breaking in” is to move your body into the space in question. In this context, “breaking in” means to command a system to send data into your space. I suppose you could argue that it’s just semantics, but I really don’t think so.
In the past I’ve explained things like Code Red and Nimda with the analogy of auto manufaturers building a convenience feature into the cars that allow you to press a button on your keychain remote that commands the car to come meet you at the curb. The exploit would be akin to someone scanning frequencies with the result that a thousand cars are bumping into each other in a parking lot because the manufacturers didn’t think to build strong security into the system. In that tortured analogy, could anybody be accused of breaking into those cars?
I know there's the mac mini, but from what I've read, I don't consider it to be fully representative of what apple and OSX can offer.
It is. I’ve used one. It’s just like a larger Mac, only not as large. And with a slower hard drive. In fact, it’s essentially an iBook with no LCD or battery.
Yes, G5/Quad would be much faster, can take more RAM, has a better video card, etc. But it works just the same.
I had a guy in Colorado put together some stuff for the school I work for (back when I had even less of a clue than I do now) and it worked pretty well for both of us. But as other posters have mentioned, the pricing seems quite low by American standards.
My career (such as it is) began on a Mac SE with a 20mb internal hard drive in July of ’88. I don’t know when that machine was purchased, but I do know that it was a factory drive, not aftermarket.
Slashdot Mirror
We should line the designers up and shoot them, right next to the invetors of the Automatic Transmission, Speed Dial, and Milking machines.
I couldn’t agree more on the automatic transmission thing. People driving a stick tend to pay more attention to what’s going on around them and use less fuel to boot. In addition to that, I doubt this nation would be overrun with six ton jacked up station wagons if those ignorant monkeyjugglers had to juggle a cell phone and a gear shift while drifting across three lanes of traffic. (Speed dial I have no feelings on, and milking machines I’m not gonna comment on unless posting anonymously.)
While you’re right that you can’t get software to install silently under OS X, it would be trivial to trojan a download, and even to this day, a great many (most?) Mac users will gleefully enter their root password when prompted by any random installer.
As to the phoning home part, IPFW doesn’t, as configured in OS X, do egress. I run a $25 app to have real time veto power over outgoing packets. So while the malware situation on OS X is currently infinitely better than that of Winders, I wouldn’t be using that ‘c’ word if I were you.
From the at-least-it’s-not-December-31-yet dept.
the Sony rootkit is a derived work of LAME.
LAME, as in the MP3 encoder that sounds so much better than Xing? How and/or why would one use that as the basis for any sort of rootkit and/or trojan?
Or am I, as is so often the case, missing something?
Yeah!
And really, who needs system-wide spell check anyway?
Awesome.
Does the constitution need a group of lobbyists to protect itself?
Yes.
Pedantic he may be, but he’s right. Read up on the history of the RIAA for a great lesson on Mission Creep. As I recall, they were essentially a standards body formed to ensure that audio signals and such were all compatible. But that put them in a position of slight power, and you know what a taste of power does to people...
So basically it’s Rent-A-Coder for stoners, right?
This is ingenious their paying outsourced labor wages to native English speaking Americans.
I see nothing to indicate that only us wealthy gringos can participate. I haven’t yet checked out the payment end of it, but I would assume that it will eventually be a worldwide thing, making it a nice, level, globalized playing field.
Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercise to the reader.
No. It’s not. It’s called “copyright infringement.” Theft requires you to actually, you know, take something.
Now, let me pedanticly correct you. I.e. does indeed stand for 'id est,' but 'id est' does not mean 'that is.' 'id est' is latin for 'it is.' I know this, because I speak the bloody language. Thank you.
Umm, was that intended to be ironic?
Because the adverb form of the word is pedantically
Yeah, I should have read through the rest of the thread before I threw in that response. “My bad,” as the kids say.
No, but perhaps you could assume that if someone is walking down the street whilst using Linux, they are 11 times more likely to run into you?
Opera lets users set the user agent string to spoof various browsers, and at least for the past few years, if not forever, it’s defaulted to MSIE. So the percentage of Opera users shown is merely the subset of Opera users who hit the BBC website with their UA string set to Opera instead of the default.
Microsoft: Minor Computer Flaws Imprison Free States
I would have started watching again for half a mil.
Damn feds with your wasteful no-bid contracts! Why don’t ya try haggling once in a while?
Hmm. I thought the password to WOPR’s back door was the name of the developer’s late son. Wasn’t pencil the password to the grade/attendance system in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
Wow, your company’s timesheet system uses passwords?
I grow weary of this attitude saying that it's ok to break into systems as long as you tell the operator about the flaw.
For certain values of “break in.”
The traditional meaning of “breaking in” is to move your body into the space in question. In this context, “breaking in” means to command a system to send data into your space. I suppose you could argue that it’s just semantics, but I really don’t think so.
In the past I’ve explained things like Code Red and Nimda with the analogy of auto manufaturers building a convenience feature into the cars that allow you to press a button on your keychain remote that commands the car to come meet you at the curb. The exploit would be akin to someone scanning frequencies with the result that a thousand cars are bumping into each other in a parking lot because the manufacturers didn’t think to build strong security into the system. In that tortured analogy, could anybody be accused of breaking into those cars?
Till they add an SUV to the lineup.
I know there's the mac mini, but from what I've read, I don't consider it to be fully representative of what apple and OSX can offer.
It is. I’ve used one. It’s just like a larger Mac, only not as large. And with a slower hard drive. In fact, it’s essentially an iBook with no LCD or battery.
Yes, G5/Quad would be much faster, can take more RAM, has a better video card, etc. But it works just the same.
Done a little too much LDS?
Dude, a little bit of Mormon goes a *long* way.
I had a guy in Colorado put together some stuff for the school I work for (back when I had even less of a clue than I do now) and it worked pretty well for both of us. But as other posters have mentioned, the pricing seems quite low by American standards.
My career (such as it is) began on a Mac SE with a 20mb internal hard drive in July of ’88. I don’t know when that machine was purchased, but I do know that it was a factory drive, not aftermarket.