America's biggest threat is not terrorism. It's complacency. For such an arrogant industry, IT "solutions" sure do have a LOT of holes.
That's what you get when you demand quantity over quality.
I only wish it was complacency. As long as we want it faster, cheaper, it's going to suck in the security department. And as long as security is something that's the responsibility of "clever" coders and architects and not people who are trained specifically for security, it's never going to be as good as everyone thinks it is.
I've dealt with a lot of homegrown security frameworks over the years, and most of them could be broken in under 15 minutes by people with minor technical expertise because the so-called geniuses who invented them expected people to try breaking in through the front door and didn't secure the windows.
If you've got a choice, use a standard security framework built to professional specs. Don't design, implement and maintain your own. No matter how clever you are.
Err, can't you get an $11k fine out of him for doing that?
Can't find the original story, but it got referenced here (though whoever put that website up likely needs to have his diaper changed.:/ )
Actually, I meant a local company. I should have spoken better. They're more flagrant on MY line. Seven days a week. And I'm on both state and Federal Do-Not-Call and have been for years.
I have always heard of these packages referred to as "blister-packs"
Only if it was shrink-moulded around the product, and that's no longer that common. Shrink-moulding usually uses softer plastics and is therefore safer to open.
Personally, I call them "laceration packs". And that's being too kind, considering that opening many of them have come close to slashing major arteries and/or tendon damage. That hard plastic is the next best thing to a knife. Often the shape of the package will send a knife or scissors skittering out of control, injuring both purchaser and product.
Reducing theft is one thing, but maiming your customers is a bit much.
It's really incredible what consumers will tolerate.
Sounds to me like this will end up like the internet version of the "Do Not Call" list.
Ask my family on how that one worked out.
It seems to be working pretty well to me. I still get some unsolicited calls, but probably about 10% of what I got before NDNC. Most of the remaining calls are from charities and political polling organizations which are exempted from NDNC.
What irks me is that one of the most flagrant violators - 2-3 times every day - is a local alarm company. Run by a former cop.
Totally agree... if they want to sue Google for fragmenting Java, perhaps they should drag them to court for that... and not for patent and copyright infringement.
If Oracle had any sense at all, they'd strike a deal with Google to unfragment Java, it would get them more money in the long run then trying to sue everyone instead, creating uncertainty in Java's future.
I was uncomfortably reminded of the "J++" debacle and it took me a while to realize what the critical difference was.
J++ was a deliberate attempt by Microsoft to subvert the entire Java language platform for the sole benefit of locking it to Microsoft Windows - a proprietary closed-source product.
Google, on the other hand, didn't claim a monopoly on Android. Sure, they "own" it, just as Sun/Oracle owns Java. But Android is ostensibly an open-source platform that anyone can adopt.
Furthermore, Google didn't attempt to displace anything in Java that they thought was better left as-is. It's true that the UI services are massively different, but Java now has at least 3 different GUIs itself: AWT, Swing, JME lcdui. Plus the independent SWT UI favored by Eclipse and others. Android added their own, but it was based on the fact that Android itself has a distinctively different way of managing work.
So J++ was an attempt to fork Java for selfish and narrow ends. Android forks Java for the greater public good - and ultimately perhaps for the good of Java itself. It's encouraging that (so far) this critical difference has been honored.
That's why the Nook Tablet came with a locked bootloader, whereas the original Nook Color spawned a large ROM'mer community. Netflix required it in order to let them use their app. I think I'd rather deal with DRM for paid downloads than have my whole device locked down.
Is that what prompted that idiotic move?
We like Netflix in this house. Every week a new disc arrives in the mail and we're good for the weekend.
But we've never used the streaming service on any device. Not Windows, not the Wii, not the Nook. We're not interested.
I was interested in an easy-rooting Nook, however. It was a major selling point for me. And the first time they updated the dang thing, that's what they took away.
I hate B&N software updates. They never say what they're really doing to you. It's always simply listed as "minor updates".
How is one culture supposed to judge another culture? Everything is relative...
Until you actually get told otherwise by your conscience.
The Fahrenheit, Celsius, Rankine and Kelvin temperature scales are all relative. Relative to Absolute Zero.
Human behaviour might not be quite that precisely quantifiable, but we try. The American Founding Fathers believed in "Inalienable Rights". Most civilizations have certain general principles that they consider fundamental. Genocide is frowned on. Unsanctioned murder is a major offence. A stable society can only exist where there is a stable system of justice.
There are also modifiers such as religion or patriotism, which often makes murder sanctioned so long as the victim is a foreigner or infidel, but the existence of a double standard doesn't mean that for at least some core group there aren't things that are considered "absolute" and those principles are generally pretty much the same for every core group no matter how different - or even opposed - they may be to each other.
On a separate note, does no one else consider it ironic that schoolgirls are being murdered by people whose name for themselves is "students"?
as one attorney who's involved in the market says he represents a woman who came into possession of a block of IPv4 address in the early '90s and now, 'She's in her 70s, and she's going to have a windfall
How, in any tangible way is she anything more than a cybersquatter? Also: 'came into possession'? What, they 'fell off the back of a truck'? Sounds as sketchy as the legal profession.
I represent the state of the late Honorable Mr. Finklestein Marklar, who while Deputy Minister of Information of Nigeria came into possession of 6 million IP addresses and I need your help to transfer them out of the country...
There have already been reports of potential reduced-water toilets based on this.
The ketchup demo was impressive, although I would have liked to have seen how a full bottle behaved, too, since it's the ketchup itself that participates in the obstruction of getting the stuff out of a bottleneck.
In the USA it is the obligation of the offerers to do most of the "due diligence". Our damned interfering Socialist government meddles with the Free Market's divine principle of caveat emptor. The weaselling excuse that they give for this is that people wouldn't invest as freely if they had to constantly do detailed detective work before each purchase.
Investing isn't supposed to be a gamble. Sure, uncertainties are inevitable in life, but that's life. The idea is that when you invest you should only be subjected to the normal slings and arrows of fortune, not a target for "gotchas" or completely random circumstances.
Unfortunately, today's hyperbole may be tomorrow's "Omygod incoming drone!" Once upon a time, American citizens didn't cease to be American citizens the second they set foot on foreign soil. Or even before, in the case of Jose Padilla. Then again, once upon a time, we were assumed innocent until proven guilty and could apply for employment without having to demonstrate we weren't drug-abusers or illegal aliens. Sometimes the "slippery slope" is real.
Winnie the Pooh lived under the sign of E.R. Sanders. Cross-hairs on him next.
The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age, and for much of that time much faster than now.
True, on the surface - but we can account for that. With an attitude like yours we would still be saying things like "stones fly through the air, they have always done so and it is no use explaining why", or "the harvest has always fluctuated, sometimes it fails, sometimes it is abundant, it is no use speculating about why" etc
This is about scientific discovery; whether it is good or bad is another discussion. Personally I think it is bloody amazing that anybody can measure changes in the order of 1mm of the level of the oceans, especially since the surface isn't exactly calm. And it is even more impressive that it is possible to model our plant to that precision.
Yes, I know, you have probably been going "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" with your fingers in your ears since the start of this post, so it is probably wasted trying to communicate with you. That sort of thing disgusts me, frankly.
Ironic, isn't it? The same people who are all strong macho talk when it comes to invading smaller nations are feeble helpless creatures when it comes to cleaning up their messes.
So driving interstate now makes me a suspected drug smuggler?
Why not? Applying for a job makes you a suspected junkie.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty died when Ronald ("Get the Government off the backs of the People") Reagan instituted the Federal mandate for drug testing.
No. Everyone seems to miss the "protect his family from scammers" part. Not everyone who worries about what's travelling over the network is doing so for purely Orwellian purposes. Sometimes it's merely Good Intentions. Same ultimate destination, perhaps, but that's another story.
Still, whether it's Big Brother or Mother Hen, probably the quickest way to disabuse someone is to jack in a network trace and display all the different, undecipherable, and often downright alarming places that even the most respectable websites tap into. About 15 minutes worth of that should result in enough gibberish to make him scream and take a fire axe to the router, the computers, and everything from the phones to the Wii console.
Oh it's realy easy. You just need about 800 offshore programmers, 200 solid state drives, hadoop, ruby on rails, cheese, bacon. Clearly your client has the funds.
Or maybe go and buy an internet security hardware appliance like Sonicwall or Watchguard and bill out 700 hours labor. It will take you less time to install one than writing that horrific maligned essay you chose to sully our pages with.
But, but, my boss had a project just like that and he said "All you have to do is..."
Manufacturing has headed to China. And engineering has been moving with it. Somehow the software won't?
The whole "outsourcing to cheaper labor countries" is only temporary, it will sort itself out eventually. Either salaries rise in China, or they drop at our end. At that point, producing near consumption starts to make sense again.
Sure, it might get nasty in between...
This is true. It has already happened in the IT profession in India, where instead of of working for one-eighth of what US equivalents make, they've demanded and gotten their pay boosted to about one quarter of what US equivalent workers make over the last decade. In another 20-30 years, they will probably have bettered things enough to make roughly equal what their US counterparts make. Allowing for the normal fluctuations of the markets.
Of course, in the mean time, the USA will no have dropped from being a self-sufficient, exporting country to a dependent, importing country. And a lot of US citizens would have to endure poorer lives and continual under-employment.
In the United States, if the government accuses you of a crime (treason is a crime) you get a jury trial.
You're thinking of USA Version 1.0, back before the new millenium. It doesn't exist anymore. We discovered that terrorists hate our freedoms, so we took them all away and locked them up someplace where they'd stay safe. Due process was a luxury that we could only afford back when the worst possible fate was that an atheistic Satan-inspired Evil Empire could invade us, enslave us, and brainwash us.
The whole idea of using "copyright" to protect secrets is laughable. Both copyrights and patents were specifically designed to make things public while protecting their ownership.
So, if Manning had only passed on the good parts, would that be considered "Fair Use"?
Re:The 21st century formula for a successful compa
on
HP To Cut 30,000 Jobs
·
· Score: 0
Who was in back in the 1980s that famously said "No company ever downsized its way to greatness"?
A great company would 'retool" itself by shifting all those human resources into emerging technologies. You know, people who are already familiar with the HP corporate culture and way of doing things? A loser company simply jettisons everyone and hopes to acquire the new skills somewhere at a discount, competing for that labor pool with every competitor. Bonus points for management shuffling and desperate sales campaigns while doing so.
Then again, HP has had about the same level of culture as a case of off-code yoghurt ever since Fiona got hold of it.
We also give up control of the industry in question. We displace people who could advance the technology. We may, in fact, lose the technology altogether.
Should we declare War on the People's Republic of (Communist) China? Communism is Bad, m'kay? It's practically Socialism! We hate commies in the US of A, right? Hell, we won't even let US Citizens visit Cuba because it's full of commies. Forget that nonsense about how the PRC isn't really "Communist" anymore. The PRC is only as Capitalist as its Communist Party leadership wants it to be at the moment.
So let there be war! Bring Freedom to the Chinese!
Oh wait. All the LED computer displays for our military computers are made in China. There aren't any US video display manufacturers. About as good as you can get is a Japanese company with Chinese factories.
You go ahead and compete in the "free market" with people willing to work for a fraction of your salary and just see what happens to your beloved first-world living standard.
"Willing"? It doesn't matter whether you're "willing" or not in First World nations. See how long you can go without literally starving to death even in Lesser Podunk Arkansas on what Chinese workers get paid. And that's before clothing, shelter or such luxuries as heat and plumbing.
You couldn't live in a cardboard box on over a sewer grate in the US for what it costs to live fairly comfortably in some Third-World nations.
Somehow I think that an organized defense system against Soviet invasion in the 1950s - or Axis invasion in the 1940s - was considered to be something of "value".
Somehow I think that Wal-Mart considers the paychecks received by government workers and spent on their Everyday Low Priced goods from China to be "wealth". Insofar as any ordinary person can possess wealth these days.
Or is it less "wealth" because the US government billed for their services in the form of taxes instead of something like the monthly statement from your one and only local cable service provider?
Slashdot Mirror
America's biggest threat is not terrorism. It's complacency. For such an arrogant industry, IT "solutions" sure do have a LOT of holes.
That's what you get when you demand quantity over quality.
I only wish it was complacency. As long as we want it faster, cheaper, it's going to suck in the security department. And as long as security is something that's the responsibility of "clever" coders and architects and not people who are trained specifically for security, it's never going to be as good as everyone thinks it is.
I've dealt with a lot of homegrown security frameworks over the years, and most of them could be broken in under 15 minutes by people with minor technical expertise because the so-called geniuses who invented them expected people to try breaking in through the front door and didn't secure the windows.
If you've got a choice, use a standard security framework built to professional specs. Don't design, implement and maintain your own. No matter how clever you are.
Err, can't you get an $11k fine out of him for doing that?
Can't find the original story, but it got referenced here (though whoever put that website up likely needs to have his diaper changed. :/ )
Actually, I meant a local company. I should have spoken better. They're more flagrant on MY line. Seven days a week. And I'm on both state and Federal Do-Not-Call and have been for years.
I have always heard of these packages referred to as "blister-packs"
Only if it was shrink-moulded around the product, and that's no longer that common. Shrink-moulding usually uses softer plastics and is therefore safer to open.
Personally, I call them "laceration packs". And that's being too kind, considering that opening many of them have come close to slashing major arteries and/or tendon damage. That hard plastic is the next best thing to a knife. Often the shape of the package will send a knife or scissors skittering out of control, injuring both purchaser and product.
Reducing theft is one thing, but maiming your customers is a bit much.
It's really incredible what consumers will tolerate.
Sounds to me like this will end up like the internet version of the "Do Not Call" list.
Ask my family on how that one worked out.
It seems to be working pretty well to me. I still get some unsolicited calls, but probably about 10% of what I got before NDNC. Most of the remaining calls are from charities and political polling organizations which are exempted from NDNC.
What irks me is that one of the most flagrant violators - 2-3 times every day - is a local alarm company. Run by a former cop.
My God! It's full of stars!
Totally agree... if they want to sue Google for fragmenting Java, perhaps they should drag them to court for that... and not for patent and copyright infringement.
If Oracle had any sense at all, they'd strike a deal with Google to unfragment Java, it would get them more money in the long run then trying to sue everyone instead, creating uncertainty in Java's future.
I was uncomfortably reminded of the "J++" debacle and it took me a while to realize what the critical difference was.
J++ was a deliberate attempt by Microsoft to subvert the entire Java language platform for the sole benefit of locking it to Microsoft Windows - a proprietary closed-source product.
Google, on the other hand, didn't claim a monopoly on Android. Sure, they "own" it, just as Sun/Oracle owns Java. But Android is ostensibly an open-source platform that anyone can adopt.
Furthermore, Google didn't attempt to displace anything in Java that they thought was better left as-is. It's true that the UI services are massively different, but Java now has at least 3 different GUIs itself: AWT, Swing, JME lcdui. Plus the independent SWT UI favored by Eclipse and others. Android added their own, but it was based on the fact that Android itself has a distinctively different way of managing work.
So J++ was an attempt to fork Java for selfish and narrow ends. Android forks Java for the greater public good - and ultimately perhaps for the good of Java itself. It's encouraging that (so far) this critical difference has been honored.
That's why the Nook Tablet came with a locked bootloader, whereas the original Nook Color spawned a large ROM'mer community. Netflix required it in order to let them use their app. I think I'd rather deal with DRM for paid downloads than have my whole device locked down.
Is that what prompted that idiotic move?
We like Netflix in this house. Every week a new disc arrives in the mail and we're good for the weekend.
But we've never used the streaming service on any device. Not Windows, not the Wii, not the Nook. We're not interested.
I was interested in an easy-rooting Nook, however. It was a major selling point for me. And the first time they updated the dang thing, that's what they took away.
I hate B&N software updates. They never say what they're really doing to you. It's always simply listed as "minor updates".
Never underestimate the stubbornness of sheer ignorance.
I am quite sure that everyone will believe in evolution... ... About 3 weeks after no one believes in a flat Earth.
How is one culture supposed to judge another culture? Everything is relative...
Until you actually get told otherwise by your conscience.
The Fahrenheit, Celsius, Rankine and Kelvin temperature scales are all relative. Relative to Absolute Zero.
Human behaviour might not be quite that precisely quantifiable, but we try. The American Founding Fathers believed in "Inalienable Rights". Most civilizations have certain general principles that they consider fundamental. Genocide is frowned on. Unsanctioned murder is a major offence. A stable society can only exist where there is a stable system of justice.
There are also modifiers such as religion or patriotism, which often makes murder sanctioned so long as the victim is a foreigner or infidel, but the existence of a double standard doesn't mean that for at least some core group there aren't things that are considered "absolute" and those principles are generally pretty much the same for every core group no matter how different - or even opposed - they may be to each other.
On a separate note, does no one else consider it ironic that schoolgirls are being murdered by people whose name for themselves is "students"?
Mr. Attorney:
How, in any tangible way is she anything more than a cybersquatter? Also: 'came into possession'? What, they 'fell off the back of a truck'? Sounds as sketchy as the legal profession.
I represent the state of the late Honorable Mr. Finklestein Marklar, who while Deputy Minister of Information of Nigeria came into possession of 6 million IP addresses and I need your help to transfer them out of the country...
There have already been reports of potential reduced-water toilets based on this.
The ketchup demo was impressive, although I would have liked to have seen how a full bottle behaved, too, since it's the ketchup itself that participates in the obstruction of getting the stuff out of a bottleneck.
That means you could literally make a politician out of a horses ass!
That's just a circular exercise. You end up with the same thing you started with.
In the USA it is the obligation of the offerers to do most of the "due diligence". Our damned interfering Socialist government meddles with the Free Market's divine principle of caveat emptor. The weaselling excuse that they give for this is that people wouldn't invest as freely if they had to constantly do detailed detective work before each purchase.
Investing isn't supposed to be a gamble. Sure, uncertainties are inevitable in life, but that's life. The idea is that when you invest you should only be subjected to the normal slings and arrows of fortune, not a target for "gotchas" or completely random circumstances.
Unfortunately, today's hyperbole may be tomorrow's "Omygod incoming drone!" Once upon a time, American citizens didn't cease to be American citizens the second they set foot on foreign soil. Or even before, in the case of Jose Padilla. Then again, once upon a time, we were assumed innocent until proven guilty and could apply for employment without having to demonstrate we weren't drug-abusers or illegal aliens. Sometimes the "slippery slope" is real.
Winnie the Pooh lived under the sign of E.R. Sanders. Cross-hairs on him next.
Also, you really need to give your privacy away with shit like that?
What privacy? Unless you live under a rock, you are already being monitored - from surveillance cameras to cable channel preferences.
True, but why make it even easier?
The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age, and for much of that time much faster than now.
True, on the surface - but we can account for that. With an attitude like yours we would still be saying things like "stones fly through the air, they have always done so and it is no use explaining why", or "the harvest has always fluctuated, sometimes it fails, sometimes it is abundant, it is no use speculating about why" etc
This is about scientific discovery; whether it is good or bad is another discussion. Personally I think it is bloody amazing that anybody can measure changes in the order of 1mm of the level of the oceans, especially since the surface isn't exactly calm. And it is even more impressive that it is possible to model our plant to that precision.
Yes, I know, you have probably been going "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" with your fingers in your ears since the start of this post, so it is probably wasted trying to communicate with you. That sort of thing disgusts me, frankly.
Ironic, isn't it? The same people who are all strong macho talk when it comes to invading smaller nations are feeble helpless creatures when it comes to cleaning up their messes.
So driving interstate now makes me a suspected drug smuggler?
Why not? Applying for a job makes you a suspected junkie.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty died when Ronald ("Get the Government off the backs of the People") Reagan instituted the Federal mandate for drug testing.
Is that You?
No. Everyone seems to miss the "protect his family from scammers" part. Not everyone who worries about what's travelling over the network is doing so for purely Orwellian purposes. Sometimes it's merely Good Intentions. Same ultimate destination, perhaps, but that's another story.
Still, whether it's Big Brother or Mother Hen, probably the quickest way to disabuse someone is to jack in a network trace and display all the different, undecipherable, and often downright alarming places that even the most respectable websites tap into. About 15 minutes worth of that should result in enough gibberish to make him scream and take a fire axe to the router, the computers, and everything from the phones to the Wii console.
Oh it's realy easy. You just need about 800 offshore programmers, 200 solid state drives, hadoop, ruby on rails, cheese, bacon. Clearly your client has the funds.
Or maybe go and buy an internet security hardware appliance like Sonicwall or Watchguard and bill out 700 hours labor. It will take you less time to install one than writing that horrific maligned essay you chose to sully our pages with.
But, but, my boss had a project just like that and he said "All you have to do is..."
Manufacturing has headed to China. And engineering has been moving with it. Somehow the software won't?
The whole "outsourcing to cheaper labor countries" is only temporary, it will sort itself out eventually. Either salaries rise in China, or they drop at our end. At that point, producing near consumption starts to make sense again.
Sure, it might get nasty in between...
This is true. It has already happened in the IT profession in India, where instead of of working for one-eighth of what US equivalents make, they've demanded and gotten their pay boosted to about one quarter of what US equivalent workers make over the last decade. In another 20-30 years, they will probably have bettered things enough to make roughly equal what their US counterparts make. Allowing for the normal fluctuations of the markets.
Of course, in the mean time, the USA will no have dropped from being a self-sufficient, exporting country to a dependent, importing country. And a lot of US citizens would have to endure poorer lives and continual under-employment.
In the United States, if the government accuses you of a crime (treason is a crime) you get a jury trial.
You're thinking of USA Version 1.0, back before the new millenium. It doesn't exist anymore. We discovered that terrorists hate our freedoms, so we took them all away and locked them up someplace where they'd stay safe. Due process was a luxury that we could only afford back when the worst possible fate was that an atheistic Satan-inspired Evil Empire could invade us, enslave us, and brainwash us.
The whole idea of using "copyright" to protect secrets is laughable. Both copyrights and patents were specifically designed to make things public while protecting their ownership.
So, if Manning had only passed on the good parts, would that be considered "Fair Use"?
Who was in back in the 1980s that famously said "No company ever downsized its way to greatness"?
A great company would 'retool" itself by shifting all those human resources into emerging technologies. You know, people who are already familiar with the HP corporate culture and way of doing things? A loser company simply jettisons everyone and hopes to acquire the new skills somewhere at a discount, competing for that labor pool with every competitor. Bonus points for management shuffling and desperate sales campaigns while doing so.
Then again, HP has had about the same level of culture as a case of off-code yoghurt ever since Fiona got hold of it.
... is PUTTING PEOPLE OUT OF WORK.
Unfortunately, no.
We also give up control of the industry in question. We displace people who could advance the technology. We may, in fact, lose the technology altogether.
Should we declare War on the People's Republic of (Communist) China? Communism is Bad, m'kay? It's practically Socialism! We hate commies in the US of A, right? Hell, we won't even let US Citizens visit Cuba because it's full of commies. Forget that nonsense about how the PRC isn't really "Communist" anymore. The PRC is only as Capitalist as its Communist Party leadership wants it to be at the moment.
So let there be war! Bring Freedom to the Chinese!
Oh wait. All the LED computer displays for our military computers are made in China. There aren't any US video display manufacturers. About as good as you can get is a Japanese company with Chinese factories.
You go ahead and compete in the "free market" with people willing to work for a fraction of your salary and just see what happens to your beloved first-world living standard.
"Willing"? It doesn't matter whether you're "willing" or not in First World nations. See how long you can go without literally starving to death even in Lesser Podunk Arkansas on what Chinese workers get paid. And that's before clothing, shelter or such luxuries as heat and plumbing.
You couldn't live in a cardboard box on over a sewer grate in the US for what it costs to live fairly comfortably in some Third-World nations.
The government does not produce wealth or value.
QUACK! duckspeak! brainoff. nothink = doubleplus goodthink.
Somehow I think that an organized defense system against Soviet invasion in the 1950s - or Axis invasion in the 1940s - was considered to be something of "value".
Somehow I think that Wal-Mart considers the paychecks received by government workers and spent on their Everyday Low Priced goods from China to be "wealth". Insofar as any ordinary person can possess wealth these days.
Or is it less "wealth" because the US government billed for their services in the form of taxes instead of something like the monthly statement from your one and only local cable service provider?