as all problems are user generated, then is coherent that users must pay for solutions. After all, who click on attachments? (well, when the mail reader dont load the attachments by itself) Who not install firewalls when connecting to internet? who chooses to use a faulty browser?
See? is end-user fault all those security problems, they must pay!
That is the conclusion of The Science of Discworld, during earth history species evolved, grow sophisticated, succeded as species, just to be wiped for an extintion level event, and that happened a lot of times. With the complexities of our actual civilization, maybe just an ice age could be enough to destroy civilization as we know it, or even end with the human race (just the cold alone maybe will not do it, but other factors could join there too).
A lot of years ago i read
Asimov's A Choice of Catastrophes that have a list of events that could end with humanity or at least actual civilization. Maybe some things there could be a bit dated now, but was a good reading back then.
Not sure about how soon some of this could happen, but is sure that eventually will happen something that make the life here as it is now will not be possible (at the very least, the death of the sun, even very far in time, is something sure that will happen). Having "backups" of the human race/civilization/etc out there looks right.
If i am looking for an admin for my systems, that could work from anywhere, or a designer for my web pages, or even a programmer for a certain task that don't matter if is phisically here, then don't matter from where in the world is the person i'm hiring.
The "competitive advantage" of open source is being open source with all that comes behind. If people tries open source software, and see that most of the good it is, is because is open source, probably they will consider another open source programs, and linux is between them.
The funnies part is that if when they realize that they are using mostly open source programs, the step for migrating to a full open source solution (now, including the OS) will be a lot easier.
Also, one of the benefits of having open source programs is the multiplataform part, going against that part is not taking advantage of one of the main features of open source.
About international jobs, there are 2 clear variants:
Working remotely: from anywhere with internet connection i could administer internet connected servers, or edit web pages, translate books and so on. Is not needed my phisical presence for working so it counts as international job.
Traveling: I could live here, be contracted by someone in other country and i move there for working. Is not so clear as the previous 2, but could count..
also, i could open the foreign office/representation/etc of a certain company
From some years now is normal that virus scans outlook's directory and browsers cache to i.e. find new email addresses.
Whats next? A reccomendation to avoid having a cache in your browser? to not put mail addresses in address books? That will not solve the problem, but also will give me a lot of troubles.
Of course, if i store money in my home and leave the door open people can stole my money, but the bigger problem there is that i leave the door open. Of course, if i have something valuable i could use a safe box (or encrypt it with a pass phrase or things like that), but if the door is always wide open soon or later any protection i could put will not matter.
At what speed a disgusted user can throw it because it don't "operate"? In fact, wonder what kind of action/device can generate 500G or what would be the size of the biggest piece of the owner of the disk if suffer that.
The harder part is when you make a nice algorithm for generating complex and random passwords and gets as result one that coincides with your born date plus your nephew name, or take a easy to remember by you but no for anyone else phrase, i,e, "promise an aniversary so we own real dollars", take the initials of the words and realize that that was a very bad example. A safe way for generating passwords don't mean that it could be trivial to brute force attack it for that particular generated password.
... is the first time i saw the "Discuss" link at the bottom, linked to a google group about suggestions to google labs, and that alone (that signal of deepening the integration between different google features) seemed almost as interesting to me as the main feature.
Another interesting thing is that you can check how many results are for partial words (google tries to search for full words) and that even when you have a lot of results, you could end having no suggestion (probably the db it uses for suggestions are the most issued queries)
back in '96, buyed OS/2 4 that come with with a headset and ViaVoice. It could be used for dictating or for just commands. But don't liked the training part, and realized that i write faster than talk, and more important, much faster than i can talk correctly.
Looking backward, depending on my mood my voice should be like mmm remember those distorted graphics where people can say what text is in there but not OCR used for confirmations in web sites? well, the same:)
In a world when you risk being sued by putting in your name even part of silly/generic/etc trademarked names, there is nothing that impedes to call itself "university" and even giving PhD to such things?
Of course, just for sending spam they should be closed, burn in hell, pay millons to each spammed victim and so on, but i see a better irony in my previous concern.
EVEN if Beta Eridani is/have a planet very similar to Earth. If you have somewhere else a star with the same age as sun, with a orbiting planet very similar to the earth, there is little probability that life evolves in the exact same way as here.
Is long far more probable than we got infected by a mushroom/squid/worm/elephant specific disease, that have at least a similar biochemistry and even very similar ADN, than getting infected by an alien disease, be from Mars, Titan or Beta Eridani.
I solve my weather needs in another way. Pick a webpage with the N-day forecast for my city (not living in USA, so must support international weather), with a script download it once a hour or so, trim the downloaded page to have just the weather report (with very simple regex) and include the resulting html snippet in my browser homepage (where also have the most current visited sites, interfaces with search engines and so on).
Is very browser/os independant, works even if im not at home/my computer and shortens a bit my web navigation.
But if that is not enough, as i still have space in the KDE kicker, i have there the kweather applet that at least show the current weather.
I remember that when i first read the books (like 10 years ago) I read each one in a "single session", but it was more like 12 (or more) hours each one of them.
#1-Removing power from a device that maintains his information on devices run by power (i.e. RAM) #2-Thinking that computers do "magic", or at least should do to not have design flaws #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10- Making top ten list without having 10 things to list
Hey, great site. Just when i was worrying if in Uruguay in particular would be affected by this particular satellite problems (well, writing this on slashdot so probably my internet connection is still running:), when i entered there detected my country and listed all the satellites that have something to do with it.
Most of the reports linked here seems to talk about "part of south america", but till read that site, wasnt completelly sure what countries were involved there.
... you have problems in your work/boss, your suspects your wife having an adventure, someone stole your car, and you are so much tired of all and want a drink, but your shiny new cellphone complains about you drinking too much. That attitude of the cell phone can be called anything, but not "smart" ("suicidal tendencies" could be a better description)
There are 2 points about monoculture and linux that could be interesting:
There are differences between closed source/microsoft approach and open source/linux one. And if firefox is the by far more used browser (well, i bet will be more gecko-based browsers than just firefox), means that more eyesballs will be there there. When Linux becames a major player, a lot of big companies and a lot of individuals got involved to make it between other things, safer.
Microsoft approach is a complete package with by default components. You can choose linux, can choose distro, window manager/desktop, browser, mail client, office suite and so on. Is not just "i have firefox" but under what OS, cpu, environment, etc is running if i want to exploit a possible future vulnerability properly (think in a lot of mail worms that are for running under x86 architecture, windows, outlook rendering with IE engine, and maybe installing system-level software). Too much alternatives is both a problem for some people for open source, but also is something that makes it stronger. And dont forget versioning in all this mix.
They are not "immune", but at the very least is a lot harder to install spyware/virus/etc, and the no-monoculture effect helps too.
The main defense is their structural strenght, i.e. being thinked from the basis as multiuser, where you have very separated the system admin (the one that have some permission over i.e. what programs are installed) over the user that browses internet.
And dont forget that here the blame goes both for the operating system author (Microsoft) and the browser author (Microsoft again), both good examples of what happens when security is the least priority.
Slashdot Mirror
If individuals can't sue big spamming companies, something like a class action lawsuit could give us (well, you, im not us citizen) another $1b?
See? is end-user fault all those security problems, they must pay!
A lot of years ago i read Asimov's A Choice of Catastrophes that have a list of events that could end with humanity or at least actual civilization. Maybe some things there could be a bit dated now, but was a good reading back then.
Not sure about how soon some of this could happen, but is sure that eventually will happen something that make the life here as it is now will not be possible (at the very least, the death of the sun, even very far in time, is something sure that will happen). Having "backups" of the human race/civilization/etc out there looks right.
If i am looking for an admin for my systems, that could work from anywhere, or a designer for my web pages, or even a programmer for a certain task that don't matter if is phisically here, then don't matter from where in the world is the person i'm hiring.
The funnies part is that if when they realize that they are using mostly open source programs, the step for migrating to a full open source solution (now, including the OS) will be a lot easier.
Also, one of the benefits of having open source programs is the multiplataform part, going against that part is not taking advantage of one of the main features of open source.
In spammers lingo, unsubscribe means "confirm that you email address is real". Is that us that don't understand that language.
With that argument, then the .spam domain should be created, but noone will admit that they are doing bussiness in the .spam domain.
Whats next? A reccomendation to avoid having a cache in your browser? to not put mail addresses in address books? That will not solve the problem, but also will give me a lot of troubles.
Of course, if i store money in my home and leave the door open people can stole my money, but the bigger problem there is that i leave the door open. Of course, if i have something valuable i could use a safe box (or encrypt it with a pass phrase or things like that), but if the door is always wide open soon or later any protection i could put will not matter.
At what speed a disgusted user can throw it because it don't "operate"? In fact, wonder what kind of action/device can generate 500G or what would be the size of the biggest piece of the owner of the disk if suffer that.
The harder part is when you make a nice algorithm for generating complex and random passwords and gets as result one that coincides with your born date plus your nephew name, or take a easy to remember by you but no for anyone else phrase, i,e, "promise an aniversary so we own real dollars", take the initials of the words and realize that that was a very bad example. A safe way for generating passwords don't mean that it could be trivial to brute force attack it for that particular generated password.
Another interesting thing is that you can check how many results are for partial words (google tries to search for full words) and that even when you have a lot of results, you could end having no suggestion (probably the db it uses for suggestions are the most issued queries)
Looking backward, depending on my mood my voice should be like mmm remember those distorted graphics where people can say what text is in there but not OCR used for confirmations in web sites? well, the same :)
Of course, just for sending spam they should be closed, burn in hell, pay millons to each spammed victim and so on, but i see a better irony in my previous concern.
somewhat i fear that related to climate change they will follow the sentence like "we are at the edge of the abyss, but we will take a step forward"
EVEN if Beta Eridani is/have a planet very similar to Earth. If you have somewhere else a star with the same age as sun, with a orbiting planet very similar to the earth, there is little probability that life evolves in the exact same way as here.
Is long far more probable than we got infected by a mushroom/squid/worm/elephant specific disease, that have at least a similar biochemistry and even very similar ADN, than getting infected by an alien disease, be from Mars, Titan or Beta Eridani.
Is very browser/os independant, works even if im not at home/my computer and shortens a bit my web navigation.
But if that is not enough, as i still have space in the KDE kicker, i have there the kweather applet that at least show the current weather.
I remember that when i first read the books (like 10 years ago) I read each one in a "single session", but it was more like 12 (or more) hours each one of them.
#1-Removing power from a device that maintains his information on devices run by power (i.e. RAM)
#2-Thinking that computers do "magic", or at least should do to not have design flaws
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10- Making top ten list without having 10 things to list
Most of the reports linked here seems to talk about "part of south america", but till read that site, wasnt completelly sure what countries were involved there.
... you have problems in your work/boss, your suspects your wife having an adventure, someone stole your car, and you are so much tired of all and want a drink, but your shiny new cellphone complains about you drinking too much. That attitude of the cell phone can be called anything, but not "smart" ("suicidal tendencies" could be a better description)
Video Blog = Vlog? Already saw Blikis (Blog+Wiki) and other extrange mix between words, so, there is an standard, compressed way to name them?
The main defense is their structural strenght, i.e. being thinked from the basis as multiuser, where you have very separated the system admin (the one that have some permission over i.e. what programs are installed) over the user that browses internet.
And dont forget that here the blame goes both for the operating system author (Microsoft) and the browser author (Microsoft again), both good examples of what happens when security is the least priority.