With the exception of a little computer help from time to time, my wife is a business of one and works inside our home. She frequently gets jobs from major international companies that demand encryption and privacy. The program she uses for her work is also based only on Windows. I think I'm in for a world of hurt trying to figure out how to defend against this. I suspect it will involve some new Window O.S. version that MS will rollout and it will cost us more money.
To not make the difference in the world in the way that I envisioned. It's everything at once and nothing specific. My betterment of the world doesn't even have to be in programming, although programming is where my best talents are. I've always wanted to leave the world a better place than when I came into it. Unfortunately, I can't say that I feel that way so my biggest fear is coming true and I'm having to learn to cope with the idea that I cannot fix the injustices of the world.
You can certainly run a marathon on an artificial knee
My Dad can't. He has two of them. He was specifically told by the doctor he can't run or he will wear out the artificial knees very quickly. I don't remember how long the knees will last since he's not running, but I expect him to go through knee replacement at least once more before he dies. He's in his late sixties. Although he can't run, he does take daily long walks to keep in condition.
The change in Technet doesn't affect me personally (as I'm a developer), but I'm at a life change right now and I need to change and update my programming skills. The question is, what should I be looking to do with my life?
When Microsoft pulls stunts like this, I take notice and I know I'm not the only one. Why would I want to invest my time and money into a sinking ship? I have 20 to 25 more years of development before I retire and right now I'm a.NET developer. C# is a pretty good language, but Microsoft is screwing up so much else, I don't really see how businesses are going to continue to support Microsoft. When those businesses drop Microsoft, it's going to go fast and my ability to get and keep a good paying job will go with it.
Microsoft, are you listening? Technet doesn't affect me directly, but I see this. You know that whole thing with Windows 8.0 and 8.1 and the no-start menu? That affected me and I started changing he advice I gave to people. Then there are the things that do affect me greatly. I called you a few months ago when I was investigating possibilities for my future and you gave me shitty advice because your own people couldn't figure out your own licensing. A word of warning: You have really big problems. You think you hide your issues from us? Tell us things are ok? Lie to us? Tell us that "Metro" which can only hog the whole screen is really a good thing? Think again. We can see your failures and piece together what is really going on behind your closed doors. We can smell how sick your company is and its really repugnant. People like me determine in the workforce which languages and operating systems to use. We play around with this stuff at work and at home. You really think you're going to squeeze us with UEFI and Technet? Your company is dying and we the tech people know it and we're going to start whispering that to our bosses and quietly switching away from you. You are not safe. The momentum is shifting and when it really gets going in the other direction you won't be able to stop it. You still have time to fix this, but you're being brain-dead stupid. Start listening to us because we sure as hell are listening and watching you.
Now consider the reverse. Suppose there was an intelligent species on Earth before us. Where could we look for evidence? If they left a message for us; assuming that they want it found, where would it be?
Okian Warrior has received a lot of amusing and somewhat cheeky comments, but from what I can tell, no one addressed the great question. How do we know there was no other intelligent species on Earth before us that lived 5 to 10 million years ago that matched our technology? What about further back than that?
I'm about as far on the opposite end of the spectrum as you can get when it comes to my qualifications to answer this question. Still, I'm going to take a guess that no one can completely rule out the possibility. I suppose piles of nuclear material would decay slow enough so we'd have a few "hot spots" hanging around. A tremendous loss of life (of which there have been several) where a number of species go extinct for mysterious reasons. I dunno... beyond that? Is there a geologist or a archeologist who can address this question? Sure, it's all speculation, but I don't recall science ever trying to address this question before. The best I can remember is the beating of chests saying that the people alive today are top dog and there has never been another technologically advanced civilization on earth like us. At the risk of sounding inflammatory, that sounds more like a "have faith" point of view rather than a scientific one. What kind of science do we have to back up such a claim? What kind of certainty is there?
look at NO after Katrina to see what will be more likely to happen, it was total "welcome to the jungle" and in a survival situation where its survival of the fittest? they ain't looking very fit from where I'm sitting.
I'll make one minor observation. Having seen my friends and family go through Katrina and the aftermath afterward, I can honestly say it was brutal. It still is brutal for some of them. (My friend's parents in my old neighborhood have small arms fire shutters on their windows and they bar the door at night. That wasn't there when I was living there.) Consider this: New Orleans had tremendous national support after the disaster -- money, military, etc. What will happen when the nation cannot afford to do that? What looked like ugly in New Orleans with Katrina will like a walk in the park compared to the future of our cities.
Gads. I'm just a load of cheer this morning, aren't I? Sorry for being so pessimistic.
At least region coded players are gone (Even if the media is still player-coded), because there is no more PAL/NTSC with HDTV.
I get what you're saying, but it's still a pain for me to watch TV. After living and collecting DVDs in America for over a decade, my wife and I moved to Germany. Needless to say, we didn't throw out our DVD collection. We asked about buying region-free players, but no one could guarantee us any kind of warranty for a reasonable price. I would cheaper to throw away a broken DVD player and get a new one. Obviously, my answer was "Screw that".
We now plug in an HDMI cable into one of laptops and play it on a TV. Not too bad. I still need to get a remote to work, though. I have a remote that worked with a program that worked for a few years in Windows XP, but we picked up new laptops when we got here and it won't work in Windows 8 and I don't feel like hunting down drivers that may or may not exists for a downgraded laptop. Anyway, it's still a pain in the neck because even though we use VLC, it either can take a long time to load up a DVD (sometimes over a minute) or it won't play at all. (Avengers is the guilty culprit.) I've had to resort to getting external DVD players and running Region 2 on the internal player and Region 1 on the external. (Avengers won't play the other way around.)
I hate DRM. I hate region encoding. I just want to watch TV when I want without ripping something, without downloading something, and without it costing an arm and leg. It would be nice if I didn't have to connect and disconnect my computer all the time too.
Besides, if I really wanted to get a thorough analysis of my gmail account, I'd just post my username and password to Ask Slashdot. At least then, I know my personal information would be abused by professionals.
Say what you want about the Star Wars Prequels (and I'll probably agree with you), but there are a few choice quotes. This is one of them. Another is this one:
"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."
In the U.S., go south and you'll find plenty of racism if you know where to look. I lived in New Orleans before Katrina. I'm white, but my close circle of friends there included a few blacks. We only cared about science fiction and role playing -- not about the color of our skin. Unfortunately, real life intruded sometimes. One time, when I was driving, one of my black friends told me not to go into a particular neighborhood because he was black. It would be dangerous for him. (I didn't realize that about this particular neighborhood, but I obviously respected his wishes.) Another time, I was driving a black friend to another place and he told me to drop him off a few blocks from where he wanted to go. There was some festival going on and this group wouldn't look favorably upon a white person -- i.e., my life would be in danger..
I understand New Orleans has changed significantly since Katrina, but the racism (even if it is different) is very much still there.
Also fuck you, for bringing up attention to the moderation of roman_mir, your comment draws attention to his comment.
Every time he makes a comment a troll war starts, his comments draw attention of hundreds of users here and overwhelm the important discussions, that is why his comments must be downvoted so he can't make them and so will your comments if you reply to him, that's your warning.
This is an interesting comment that shows me an insight into the darker side of Slashdot. I don't usually pay attention to names -- too much effort. (Not to mention it's easy to just create a new account if you're out to troll.) Now I wonder how many such people -- how many accounts -- have been black listed by groups within the Slashdot community and why. Gads. I hate politics.
So, now I'm being threatened to pick sides. I'm either with the in-crowd or against them. (I'm just not sure which in-crowd group this Anonymous Coward belongs to.) There are days when I feel like I'm back in grade school even when I'm interacting with so called adults. Slashdot was a bit of a refuge from the world which has quite a bit of this mentality. Because I don't speak a lot, it's the first time I've bumped into this. As usual, I'll probably pick my own way and get stomped on by all sides. That's how life usually treats me.
I think I understand what you are trying to say: OSs don't have a good way to run from an administrative standpoint (where everything is accessible) and a hardened standpoint (where one application run under one user has access only to that data). I agree. I'd actually love to see something like that. I'd like to sandbox my programs more than they are.
That still doesn't change my point. Javascript is moving more towards an open environment that crosses between users... becoming more like what we have with.NET, Java, and C today even if it isn't there yet. From a 10000 foot view, it looks like Javascript is better because it is better sandboxed, but when you get down to how many technologies are involved to make a web browser work, it seems like there are going to be holes that are always open because no one can be an expert in all of those technologies. Off the top of my head and as an example: I'd have to know HTML, Javascript, AJAX, any frame works I happen to be running on, and multi-browser habits and flaws that change on a regular basis. That's a lot of technology to make sure I'm an expert in and to make sure I'm getting right. At least in.NET or Java, things seem to be much more stable in that regard and there is only one main environment that I have to deal with. I'm not saying that I'm happy with either.NET or Java because I have a lot of grief to give them too, but it seems like I can be more focused on the complaints I have.
Honestly, I can't think of a worse programming environment with more pitfalls and more hidden danger than web development as we do it today. You're guaranteed to screw up really badly at some point in your career just because of the environment vs human nature.
Everyone agrees that browsers need to be hardened.
I don't think everyone agrees or the article that the summary addresses wouldn't have said "JavaScript to request resources from different domains". There are people who seem to think browser security needs to be relaxed. I'm not in that camp.
While I'm on my soap box: I think it would be nice if we could have a programming environment that is completely sandboxed from every other program and every other user. In those cases where information must pass from one user to another on the same computer or from one computer to another, socket technologies with easy-to-use encryption seem like a good answer. And the runtime environment for that should be controlled by the installing user. It should be installed where I say with the sandboxed files going where I say. None of this hidden behind several curtains and modify-the-registry crap. No technology that I see today fulfills these needs. Not PHP, not ASP, not C#, not Java, not C. I can't imagine it being that hard for a major vendor to implement.
What threats do you think encryption will actually protect you from?
Multi-user environment and (to a certain degree) laptop theft. Addressing multi-user environment first: I understand that it won't stop trojans or keystroke captures. It should stop my smarter-than-me 13 year old from getting information I don't want them to have. Or if I loan my computer to a friend of mine. Or a work colleague. Just trying to keep honest people honest. Will stop them if they really want to get to it? No. Once the computer leaves my physical possession, I know it can be cracked.
As for laptop theft, I know it's better to encrypt a whole hard drive via truecrypt or bitlocker, but is the common Joe (not me, I'm referring to people like my mother-in-law else) going to do this? We should be doing as much as we can from a security stand point that makes it transparent for power users and compartmentalized so data isn't being thrown into multiple places all over.
But that's why browsers randomize their storage paths to begin with so that's already covered.
I've seen the randomized storage paths. I can't say I'm overly impressed since cookies are not stored here and neither will this other kind of information they are talking about.
So basically encryption is basically false security.
No. Encryption key in this case should be based on hardware and should be unique. The user shouldn't even need to put it in. If one website can access another website's information because of browser or O.S. flaws, it's another layer to crack.
Why the hell is parent modded to -1? roman_mir is spot on. If I'm surfing a website and it wants to store information locally, the web browser should encrypt it for security reasons. As a user, I don't want to have to worry about what information is being written out to my hard drive. Clear text for personal information? Banking information? I've RTFA and it says "[There is] a bank that used example HTML5 code for training developers that put data in permanent storage on the client system as opposed to temporary storage." There are people who say that banking institutions still use java applets. Think long and hard about this. Another question: do modern day browsers encrypt cookies? I don't know for sure, but I suspect they don't.
And since I've RTFA, I'm going to take this conversation one level further. This ideology sure sounds like a very fat client to me. If we're going to use "sessionStorage, localStorage, and client-side databases" (as per TFA), why not just use an executable? Write the thing in.NET or Java or C? It would be faster for the client and easier to secure from a programming perspective. There's nothing stopping you from using APIs on the web using these languages. Are you saying it's because we can't trust websites? Then why is HTML5 giving access to "system services, such as camera, microphone, and GPS" and allowing "JavaScript to request resources from different domains"? (Again, this is straight from TFA.) About the only thing it doesn't have is unfettered access to the whole hard drive under the user's permissions. Or does it? I don't know. I'm beginning to wonder about how far HTML5 will allow access and under what conditions. Even if HTML 5 asks for permissions on everything it needs to, what do you think the standard user will say to all the "allow access?" questions?
I'm a programmer, but not a web developer. Maybe this article is full of it and maybe it ain't, but in either case, roman_mir should not be modded down for what he is saying. There are legitimate concerns here that he is trying to raise and he hasn't said anything inflammatory in his post.
Yes, I know we've heard this argument before, but consider this: what are we producing? Just the larger stuff? What about the smaller stuff? Go to any local store (like Wal-Mart) and see how many things are made in the U.S.A. If all we are producing are the larger things, our expertise is waning. It is hard for small businesses to start production and grow when you need tens or hundreds or millions of dollars to start production. China has the ability to start small. We are losing it. When the big businesses die in the U.S., there will be no small businesses to replace them. Where do you think the large businesses will come from?
That is what we mean when we say the U.S. is not manufacturing anything. Numbers can lie.
It gets better. By 2003, this was a common technique in politics and straight out of the play book politicians use. They used it a lot then and they continue to do it today. If you don't like where the conversation is, change the subject. If people are paying attention to one thing, do something else totally outrageous that you don't mind as much. Once you have several outrageous things going on, be sure to contradict yourself so people have to start digging to find out the truth. Keep everyone busy arguing about this and that so that they aren't paying attention to the things you want kept secret. What do you think the Clinton fiasco with Monica Lewinski was? I mean, really. That was pretty pathetic. "Read my Lips" with Bush was another one. These were distractions. There were far more important matters for the country to be debating, but it was all over the news as these were the "major" items back in the day. Keep digging further back in history and you'll see more examples of this.
The worst part is that it works and it works well. Next step is to dig up more proof, and show bad Syria is. If that doesn't work, go to war with Syria. (Hell, we may do that just to keep the war machine going.) There's a reason why the phrase Wag the Dog exists.
Going off topic: I usually default to PEBKAC as the source of my problems, but I just can't see what I do wrong. Right now, I put my settings to see everything including the -1 comments and I don't see what you're replying to. It isn't the first time nor second nor third time I've encountered phenomenon like this. Does Slashdot filter out comments even though I want to see everything. Under what conditions?
I could probably be talked into a 7 - 14 year time range with expensive extensions as it seems that what you propose is a variation on my 10 year (no extensions) idea. You're right about 120 years being highway robbery and the theft and willful destruction of our culture.
Still too long. I'm in favor of 10 years. Does an author need to benefit from a book he wrote for 20 years? Does a company really need to benefit for 20 years after coming up with something novel?
I disagree with you, but I'm with you in spirit. I believe copyrights (and patents and most trademarks) should expire after 10 years. If you die 5 years after a copyright is granted, then those benefits can be given to your descendents or whomever you made your will to.
I understand what you are saying, but I believe that one of the things that needs to happen is that when people go to work, they need to be on a quest to better the world. That includes the people who empty trashcans so the engineering guys can make a new widget to improve the world. Sure, they don't have the direct impact, but really, who does? Is a really good movie good because only a couple of people did their job well or because everyone working on the movie did their job well? Only when everyone is on a quest to improve the world will the world get better. Lawyers could certainly benefit from that.
"Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry." -- Thomas Jefferson
That doesn't really make any sense. I don't think any reasonable... make that any sane person would claim that individual citizens should be able to own nuclear weapons, nor for that matter arrest people and hold them for questioning. I'm not going to call that tyranny.
We the people are supposed to be the government. We the people give certain special responsibilities to certain qualified individuals to carry out necessary functions of a society: police officer, judge, nuclear power plant permits, etc. When we the people are no longer able to control the government (a.k.a, what this Slashdot story is about), then that is tyranny. The quote -- whether or not made by Thomas Jefferson -- makes perfect sense.
What you say is interesting. I am interpreting what you wrote as follows: We can place all the blame for climate change on the shoulders of people who wanted to improve the world. I have updated your term "global warming" for "climate change" and added an implied word "all".
I also dispute the "misguided fear of radioactivity". Anyone who does not have some degree of fear to anything dangerous (nuke, gun, knife) is a fool. It is when you do not fear something that you become careless. Allow me an example: have you ever cut yourself with a knife? How often was it because you were careless? (Probably often.) Were there times when you cut yourself even when you were being careful? (Even if the answer is not yes from you, someone else who answers yes to that question will work in a nuke plant.) I firmly believe that there will be another nuclear accident. It's not a question of if, but when and how big. No one can honestly answer that question with "It will be just fine." Do you trust any government or big business to do something right and keep it that way? Nuke power is dangerous even when we're careful. If it weren't, every kid would be playing with with radioactive material... just like they were a few decades ago.
With that said, we should move toward solar. Ultimately, the sun is what powers our planet. It generates the wind, generates ocean currents, makes clouds and rain, feeds the plants (which then feed the animals), and keeps the planet from being near absolute zero. Except for geo-thermal energy, every source of energy renewable energy ultimately comes from that. Coal and nuke are ugly but for different reasons. Nuclear power and coal should both be a stop gap to the holy grail. I do not hear very many people saying this, though. Not by people like you and definitely not by anyone one in government. That worries me.
Time for devil's advocate: What does the rest of the world think about this? I think it is fairly clear where the majority of Americans stand on the matter. That's not going to change anytime soon, but is your country going to stand up and say "Hey! That's not right. Let's stop doing business with the U.S." Perhaps the rest of the world supports what is happening within the U.S. as well. Perhaps your country. Just something to think about.
Slashdot Mirror
With the exception of a little computer help from time to time, my wife is a business of one and works inside our home. She frequently gets jobs from major international companies that demand encryption and privacy. The program she uses for her work is also based only on Windows. I think I'm in for a world of hurt trying to figure out how to defend against this. I suspect it will involve some new Window O.S. version that MS will rollout and it will cost us more money.
To not make the difference in the world in the way that I envisioned. It's everything at once and nothing specific. My betterment of the world doesn't even have to be in programming, although programming is where my best talents are. I've always wanted to leave the world a better place than when I came into it. Unfortunately, I can't say that I feel that way so my biggest fear is coming true and I'm having to learn to cope with the idea that I cannot fix the injustices of the world.
You can certainly run a marathon on an artificial knee
My Dad can't. He has two of them. He was specifically told by the doctor he can't run or he will wear out the artificial knees very quickly. I don't remember how long the knees will last since he's not running, but I expect him to go through knee replacement at least once more before he dies. He's in his late sixties. Although he can't run, he does take daily long walks to keep in condition.
The change in Technet doesn't affect me personally (as I'm a developer), but I'm at a life change right now and I need to change and update my programming skills. The question is, what should I be looking to do with my life?
When Microsoft pulls stunts like this, I take notice and I know I'm not the only one. Why would I want to invest my time and money into a sinking ship? I have 20 to 25 more years of development before I retire and right now I'm a .NET developer. C# is a pretty good language, but Microsoft is screwing up so much else, I don't really see how businesses are going to continue to support Microsoft. When those businesses drop Microsoft, it's going to go fast and my ability to get and keep a good paying job will go with it.
Microsoft, are you listening? Technet doesn't affect me directly, but I see this. You know that whole thing with Windows 8.0 and 8.1 and the no-start menu? That affected me and I started changing he advice I gave to people. Then there are the things that do affect me greatly. I called you a few months ago when I was investigating possibilities for my future and you gave me shitty advice because your own people couldn't figure out your own licensing. A word of warning: You have really big problems. You think you hide your issues from us? Tell us things are ok? Lie to us? Tell us that "Metro" which can only hog the whole screen is really a good thing? Think again. We can see your failures and piece together what is really going on behind your closed doors. We can smell how sick your company is and its really repugnant. People like me determine in the workforce which languages and operating systems to use. We play around with this stuff at work and at home. You really think you're going to squeeze us with UEFI and Technet? Your company is dying and we the tech people know it and we're going to start whispering that to our bosses and quietly switching away from you. You are not safe. The momentum is shifting and when it really gets going in the other direction you won't be able to stop it. You still have time to fix this, but you're being brain-dead stupid. Start listening to us because we sure as hell are listening and watching you.
Now consider the reverse. Suppose there was an intelligent species on Earth before us. Where could we look for evidence? If they left a message for us; assuming that they want it found, where would it be?
Okian Warrior has received a lot of amusing and somewhat cheeky comments, but from what I can tell, no one addressed the great question. How do we know there was no other intelligent species on Earth before us that lived 5 to 10 million years ago that matched our technology? What about further back than that?
I'm about as far on the opposite end of the spectrum as you can get when it comes to my qualifications to answer this question. Still, I'm going to take a guess that no one can completely rule out the possibility. I suppose piles of nuclear material would decay slow enough so we'd have a few "hot spots" hanging around. A tremendous loss of life (of which there have been several) where a number of species go extinct for mysterious reasons. I dunno... beyond that? Is there a geologist or a archeologist who can address this question? Sure, it's all speculation, but I don't recall science ever trying to address this question before. The best I can remember is the beating of chests saying that the people alive today are top dog and there has never been another technologically advanced civilization on earth like us. At the risk of sounding inflammatory, that sounds more like a "have faith" point of view rather than a scientific one. What kind of science do we have to back up such a claim? What kind of certainty is there?
look at NO after Katrina to see what will be more likely to happen, it was total "welcome to the jungle" and in a survival situation where its survival of the fittest? they ain't looking very fit from where I'm sitting.
I'll make one minor observation. Having seen my friends and family go through Katrina and the aftermath afterward, I can honestly say it was brutal. It still is brutal for some of them. (My friend's parents in my old neighborhood have small arms fire shutters on their windows and they bar the door at night. That wasn't there when I was living there.) Consider this: New Orleans had tremendous national support after the disaster -- money, military, etc. What will happen when the nation cannot afford to do that? What looked like ugly in New Orleans with Katrina will like a walk in the park compared to the future of our cities.
Gads. I'm just a load of cheer this morning, aren't I? Sorry for being so pessimistic.
At least region coded players are gone (Even if the media is still player-coded), because there is no more PAL/NTSC with HDTV.
I get what you're saying, but it's still a pain for me to watch TV. After living and collecting DVDs in America for over a decade, my wife and I moved to Germany. Needless to say, we didn't throw out our DVD collection. We asked about buying region-free players, but no one could guarantee us any kind of warranty for a reasonable price. I would cheaper to throw away a broken DVD player and get a new one. Obviously, my answer was "Screw that".
We now plug in an HDMI cable into one of laptops and play it on a TV. Not too bad. I still need to get a remote to work, though. I have a remote that worked with a program that worked for a few years in Windows XP, but we picked up new laptops when we got here and it won't work in Windows 8 and I don't feel like hunting down drivers that may or may not exists for a downgraded laptop. Anyway, it's still a pain in the neck because even though we use VLC, it either can take a long time to load up a DVD (sometimes over a minute) or it won't play at all. (Avengers is the guilty culprit.) I've had to resort to getting external DVD players and running Region 2 on the internal player and Region 1 on the external. (Avengers won't play the other way around.)
I hate DRM. I hate region encoding. I just want to watch TV when I want without ripping something, without downloading something, and without it costing an arm and leg. It would be nice if I didn't have to connect and disconnect my computer all the time too.
Pfff... Yeah, I know. Like I'd fall for that.
Besides, if I really wanted to get a thorough analysis of my gmail account, I'd just post my username and password to Ask Slashdot. At least then, I know my personal information would be abused by professionals.
"Is it legal" - Trade Federation
"I will make it legal" - Darth Sidious
Say what you want about the Star Wars Prequels (and I'll probably agree with you), but there are a few choice quotes. This is one of them. Another is this one:
"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."
In the U.S., go south and you'll find plenty of racism if you know where to look. I lived in New Orleans before Katrina. I'm white, but my close circle of friends there included a few blacks. We only cared about science fiction and role playing -- not about the color of our skin. Unfortunately, real life intruded sometimes. One time, when I was driving, one of my black friends told me not to go into a particular neighborhood because he was black. It would be dangerous for him. (I didn't realize that about this particular neighborhood, but I obviously respected his wishes.) Another time, I was driving a black friend to another place and he told me to drop him off a few blocks from where he wanted to go. There was some festival going on and this group wouldn't look favorably upon a white person -- i.e., my life would be in danger..
I understand New Orleans has changed significantly since Katrina, but the racism (even if it is different) is very much still there.
Also fuck you, for bringing up attention to the moderation of roman_mir, your comment draws attention to his comment. Every time he makes a comment a troll war starts, his comments draw attention of hundreds of users here and overwhelm the important discussions, that is why his comments must be downvoted so he can't make them and so will your comments if you reply to him, that's your warning.
This is an interesting comment that shows me an insight into the darker side of Slashdot. I don't usually pay attention to names -- too much effort. (Not to mention it's easy to just create a new account if you're out to troll.) Now I wonder how many such people -- how many accounts -- have been black listed by groups within the Slashdot community and why. Gads. I hate politics.
So, now I'm being threatened to pick sides. I'm either with the in-crowd or against them. (I'm just not sure which in-crowd group this Anonymous Coward belongs to.) There are days when I feel like I'm back in grade school even when I'm interacting with so called adults. Slashdot was a bit of a refuge from the world which has quite a bit of this mentality. Because I don't speak a lot, it's the first time I've bumped into this. As usual, I'll probably pick my own way and get stomped on by all sides. That's how life usually treats me.
I think I understand what you are trying to say: OSs don't have a good way to run from an administrative standpoint (where everything is accessible) and a hardened standpoint (where one application run under one user has access only to that data). I agree. I'd actually love to see something like that. I'd like to sandbox my programs more than they are.
That still doesn't change my point. Javascript is moving more towards an open environment that crosses between users... becoming more like what we have with .NET, Java, and C today even if it isn't there yet. From a 10000 foot view, it looks like Javascript is better because it is better sandboxed, but when you get down to how many technologies are involved to make a web browser work, it seems like there are going to be holes that are always open because no one can be an expert in all of those technologies. Off the top of my head and as an example: I'd have to know HTML, Javascript, AJAX, any frame works I happen to be running on, and multi-browser habits and flaws that change on a regular basis. That's a lot of technology to make sure I'm an expert in and to make sure I'm getting right. At least in .NET or Java, things seem to be much more stable in that regard and there is only one main environment that I have to deal with. I'm not saying that I'm happy with either .NET or Java because I have a lot of grief to give them too, but it seems like I can be more focused on the complaints I have.
Honestly, I can't think of a worse programming environment with more pitfalls and more hidden danger than web development as we do it today. You're guaranteed to screw up really badly at some point in your career just because of the environment vs human nature.
Everyone agrees that browsers need to be hardened.
I don't think everyone agrees or the article that the summary addresses wouldn't have said "JavaScript to request resources from different domains". There are people who seem to think browser security needs to be relaxed. I'm not in that camp.
While I'm on my soap box: I think it would be nice if we could have a programming environment that is completely sandboxed from every other program and every other user. In those cases where information must pass from one user to another on the same computer or from one computer to another, socket technologies with easy-to-use encryption seem like a good answer. And the runtime environment for that should be controlled by the installing user. It should be installed where I say with the sandboxed files going where I say. None of this hidden behind several curtains and modify-the-registry crap. No technology that I see today fulfills these needs. Not PHP, not ASP, not C#, not Java, not C. I can't imagine it being that hard for a major vendor to implement.
Sorry for any typos. I'm in a rush.
What threats do you think encryption will actually protect you from?
Multi-user environment and (to a certain degree) laptop theft. Addressing multi-user environment first: I understand that it won't stop trojans or keystroke captures. It should stop my smarter-than-me 13 year old from getting information I don't want them to have. Or if I loan my computer to a friend of mine. Or a work colleague. Just trying to keep honest people honest. Will stop them if they really want to get to it? No. Once the computer leaves my physical possession, I know it can be cracked.
As for laptop theft, I know it's better to encrypt a whole hard drive via truecrypt or bitlocker, but is the common Joe (not me, I'm referring to people like my mother-in-law else) going to do this? We should be doing as much as we can from a security stand point that makes it transparent for power users and compartmentalized so data isn't being thrown into multiple places all over.
But that's why browsers randomize their storage paths to begin with so that's already covered.
I've seen the randomized storage paths. I can't say I'm overly impressed since cookies are not stored here and neither will this other kind of information they are talking about.
So basically encryption is basically false security.
No. Encryption key in this case should be based on hardware and should be unique. The user shouldn't even need to put it in. If one website can access another website's information because of browser or O.S. flaws, it's another layer to crack.
Why the hell is parent modded to -1? roman_mir is spot on. If I'm surfing a website and it wants to store information locally, the web browser should encrypt it for security reasons. As a user, I don't want to have to worry about what information is being written out to my hard drive. Clear text for personal information? Banking information? I've RTFA and it says "[There is] a bank that used example HTML5 code for training developers that put data in permanent storage on the client system as opposed to temporary storage." There are people who say that banking institutions still use java applets. Think long and hard about this. Another question: do modern day browsers encrypt cookies? I don't know for sure, but I suspect they don't.
And since I've RTFA, I'm going to take this conversation one level further. This ideology sure sounds like a very fat client to me. If we're going to use "sessionStorage, localStorage, and client-side databases" (as per TFA), why not just use an executable? Write the thing in .NET or Java or C? It would be faster for the client and easier to secure from a programming perspective. There's nothing stopping you from using APIs on the web using these languages. Are you saying it's because we can't trust websites? Then why is HTML5 giving access to "system services, such as camera, microphone, and GPS" and allowing "JavaScript to request resources from different domains"? (Again, this is straight from TFA.) About the only thing it doesn't have is unfettered access to the whole hard drive under the user's permissions. Or does it? I don't know. I'm beginning to wonder about how far HTML5 will allow access and under what conditions. Even if HTML 5 asks for permissions on everything it needs to, what do you think the standard user will say to all the "allow access?" questions?
I'm a programmer, but not a web developer. Maybe this article is full of it and maybe it ain't, but in either case, roman_mir should not be modded down for what he is saying. There are legitimate concerns here that he is trying to raise and he hasn't said anything inflammatory in his post.
Yes, I know we've heard this argument before, but consider this: what are we producing? Just the larger stuff? What about the smaller stuff? Go to any local store (like Wal-Mart) and see how many things are made in the U.S.A. If all we are producing are the larger things, our expertise is waning. It is hard for small businesses to start production and grow when you need tens or hundreds or millions of dollars to start production. China has the ability to start small. We are losing it. When the big businesses die in the U.S., there will be no small businesses to replace them. Where do you think the large businesses will come from?
That is what we mean when we say the U.S. is not manufacturing anything. Numbers can lie.
Why "kill" a device when you stand a good chance of getting it back? Killing it does nobody any good, and has lots of quite horrible abuse potential.
So does the camera and microphone on your phone and laptops.
Personally, I think kill switches controlled by the user are a good idea. LordLimecat is correct.
It gets better. By 2003, this was a common technique in politics and straight out of the play book politicians use. They used it a lot then and they continue to do it today. If you don't like where the conversation is, change the subject. If people are paying attention to one thing, do something else totally outrageous that you don't mind as much. Once you have several outrageous things going on, be sure to contradict yourself so people have to start digging to find out the truth. Keep everyone busy arguing about this and that so that they aren't paying attention to the things you want kept secret. What do you think the Clinton fiasco with Monica Lewinski was? I mean, really. That was pretty pathetic. "Read my Lips" with Bush was another one. These were distractions. There were far more important matters for the country to be debating, but it was all over the news as these were the "major" items back in the day. Keep digging further back in history and you'll see more examples of this.
The worst part is that it works and it works well. Next step is to dig up more proof, and show bad Syria is. If that doesn't work, go to war with Syria. (Hell, we may do that just to keep the war machine going.) There's a reason why the phrase Wag the Dog exists.
Going off topic: I usually default to PEBKAC as the source of my problems, but I just can't see what I do wrong. Right now, I put my settings to see everything including the -1 comments and I don't see what you're replying to. It isn't the first time nor second nor third time I've encountered phenomenon like this. Does Slashdot filter out comments even though I want to see everything. Under what conditions?
I could probably be talked into a 7 - 14 year time range with expensive extensions as it seems that what you propose is a variation on my 10 year (no extensions) idea. You're right about 120 years being highway robbery and the theft and willful destruction of our culture.
Still too long. I'm in favor of 10 years. Does an author need to benefit from a book he wrote for 20 years? Does a company really need to benefit for 20 years after coming up with something novel?
I disagree with you, but I'm with you in spirit. I believe copyrights (and patents and most trademarks) should expire after 10 years. If you die 5 years after a copyright is granted, then those benefits can be given to your descendents or whomever you made your will to.
I understand what you are saying, but I believe that one of the things that needs to happen is that when people go to work, they need to be on a quest to better the world. That includes the people who empty trashcans so the engineering guys can make a new widget to improve the world. Sure, they don't have the direct impact, but really, who does? Is a really good movie good because only a couple of people did their job well or because everyone working on the movie did their job well? Only when everyone is on a quest to improve the world will the world get better. Lawyers could certainly benefit from that.
"Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry." -- Thomas Jefferson
That doesn't really make any sense. I don't think any reasonable... make that any sane person would claim that individual citizens should be able to own nuclear weapons, nor for that matter arrest people and hold them for questioning. I'm not going to call that tyranny.
We the people are supposed to be the government. We the people give certain special responsibilities to certain qualified individuals to carry out necessary functions of a society: police officer, judge, nuclear power plant permits, etc. When we the people are no longer able to control the government (a.k.a, what this Slashdot story is about), then that is tyranny. The quote -- whether or not made by Thomas Jefferson -- makes perfect sense.
What you say is interesting. I am interpreting what you wrote as follows: We can place all the blame for climate change on the shoulders of people who wanted to improve the world. I have updated your term "global warming" for "climate change" and added an implied word "all".
I also dispute the "misguided fear of radioactivity". Anyone who does not have some degree of fear to anything dangerous (nuke, gun, knife) is a fool. It is when you do not fear something that you become careless. Allow me an example: have you ever cut yourself with a knife? How often was it because you were careless? (Probably often.) Were there times when you cut yourself even when you were being careful? (Even if the answer is not yes from you, someone else who answers yes to that question will work in a nuke plant.) I firmly believe that there will be another nuclear accident. It's not a question of if, but when and how big. No one can honestly answer that question with "It will be just fine." Do you trust any government or big business to do something right and keep it that way? Nuke power is dangerous even when we're careful. If it weren't, every kid would be playing with with radioactive material... just like they were a few decades ago.
With that said, we should move toward solar. Ultimately, the sun is what powers our planet. It generates the wind, generates ocean currents, makes clouds and rain, feeds the plants (which then feed the animals), and keeps the planet from being near absolute zero. Except for geo-thermal energy, every source of energy renewable energy ultimately comes from that. Coal and nuke are ugly but for different reasons. Nuclear power and coal should both be a stop gap to the holy grail. I do not hear very many people saying this, though. Not by people like you and definitely not by anyone one in government. That worries me.
Some of us Americans do. Most of us don't.
Time for devil's advocate: What does the rest of the world think about this? I think it is fairly clear where the majority of Americans stand on the matter. That's not going to change anytime soon, but is your country going to stand up and say "Hey! That's not right. Let's stop doing business with the U.S." Perhaps the rest of the world supports what is happening within the U.S. as well. Perhaps your country. Just something to think about.