The excerpt which you are quoting is clearly wrong. Any combustion generates CO2 and that's why this is never brought into picture when assessing how clean a fuel is. Analysing different combustion techniques or operating conditions is another story.
Different fuels have different properties and that's why they are burned according to different methodologies and operating conditions (e.g., fuel/air ratio, pressure, etc.). Most of the toxic pollutants are the result of incomplete combustions and their variability (types and amounts) is quite big. There are many approaches to maximise the trade-off performance/emissions for a big number of fuels, conditions and pollutants; but the situation is too complex and not fully controllable. CO2 is much easier than all this: do you want lower CO2 in virtually any scenario? Burn less fuel or do it more efficiently.
I meant "or related" rather than "orrelated". Error provoked by the pressure of trying to write my first first post (and convert this is my day best ever in Slashdot. Read this to get some context:)).
A better version would have been: "Scientists Develop Technology That Allows To Easily Separate CO2 Emissions When Burning Natural Gas", by paying special attention at words like almost in their "the water vapor can be separated quite easily, leaving almost pure CO2" description.
They aren't even removing the CO2, but storing it somewhere else. So, this approach delivers something similar to what the existing CO2-capture techniques already do.
Clarification: I am not particularly interested in participating in discussions about this orrelated issues. The main motivation for this post is to somehow complement my previous ones in another article.
I am very happy to announce that the second down-vote which my original post got was also because of being overrated! Down-modders might not like me or what I say, but at least they think that I behave consistently!!! This can easily be the happiest day of my life: random people non-constructively censoring what I write in internet think that I have a consistent(ly overrated) behaviour! Hurray!
Those changes would kill most of the human race anyway, so less major changes to slow down global warming are likely to save many more lives
These generic ideas might be applicable in certain situations on account of the conditions; the problem is that the conditions here aren't precisely favourable. Let's forget for one second about all the CO2 which we have been accumulating during the last quite a few years and assume that we only need to worry about what we generate from now on. Imagine now that we divide all the global CO2 emissions among each single person and that we get 100 for each of us. Out of this 100, the contribution of your car might be 0.000[...].1 and the one from all the industrial processes required to design, manufacture, transport, run, repair, etc. your car might be 5; same story with your air conditioning/heating, your computer, what you eat or wear, etc.
As said, I am completely pro bit-by-bit improvements and am sure that having environmental-concerned behaviours is positive. But don't lie to yourself by thinking that your contribution is more relevant than what it truly is. Or even better: don't think that people and organisations actually taking care of all this should be really concerned about CO2; this is an eminently commercial/trendy concern, mostly used by people with not much technical knowledge (and/or not too honest) to convince other people with not much technical knowledge (and/or naive and/or gullible and/or looking-for-easy-solutions and/or wanting-to-feel-better-without-actually-renouncing-to-anything, etc.). It might also be good to not forget that the whole climate change is just a theory dealing with an extreme complex reality about which we don't know too much. Reducing the amount of human-made dirt is certainly good, let's do it! But let's also not invent apocalyptic scenarios or unnmotivatedly favour a specific emission type which, objectively speaking, isn't the best candidate to be worried about (e.g., CO2 isn't directly harmful for plants/animals and there is no way to avoid it to happen as far as it is a natural output of combustion).
Your point is worth discussion but markets don't exist independent of customers
"Let's do the right thing" has always been a best-seller, but not always too realistic on account of the short-sighted and conformist nature of humankind. Everyone wants to save the earth and to do it easily without renouncing to all what they have. My point wasn't arguing against the attractiveness of the premises, but about their actual applicability and the honesty of certain claims. Everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to renounce to our combustion(= CO2-generating)-based industrialised society.
It sounds like fear to me. I prefer to not post in articles about certain issues because of not feeling like getting involved in sad situations. If I thought that there is a real problem as the one you are describing, I would certainly fight it (and/or eventually stop using the site). I like Slashdot and am not willing to let a bunch of virtual mobsters to convert a sensible community into a fear-based crap.
I am not sure if I fully understand your post. Are you implying that you (or your other accounts) are the author of the last down-vote I got? Just in case that there is even the slightest doubt, note that this is the only account which I have ever used (+ have always modded fairly and by exclusively focusing on the post content, never on the author; I think that I have down-modded just once or twice) and all the up/down mods I have ever got have been voluntarily given by people who I don't know (or at least didn't tell me about that). I have never "trolled" (still not even sure about the exact meaning of this expression; I mostly hear it from very aggressive people trying to attack others who don't agree with them), I am just trying to enjoy the site, show my ideas, meet people like me, share knowledge/learn, etc. You know? Be part of a community which I like, where I am not sure that you, your fears and expectations belong.
Thanks for the tip, other AC, but I am not planning to join your group. I have never posted anonymously and will not start now, much less out of fear to anyone or anything. Also bear in mind that the moderators are (at least, theoretically) randomly-selected logged-in users with a good track record. Until some weeks ago, I used to get mod points quite regularly, but not so much lately (more logged-in users?).
Apparently, my statement was overrated. I am sure that the unnatural CO2 emissions of the person modding this post down (fun fact: being overrated is the most common reason why my posts get modded down since a while ago) are virtually zero. This down-vote was most likely delivered through a magical device powered by unicorn smiles and connected to internet via good intentions. I have so much to learn from the brave, coherent and understanding behaviour of this downvoter!
Are you "ready to make changes to your standard of living if it would prevent future climate catastrophe"? OK, here we go.
We believe that the most likely reason for what seems an unnatural climate change is the huge amount of CO2 emissions provoked by humankind ('s industrialisation) during over the last 200 years. As far as you are willing to do all what is in your hand to minimise the impact of this likely-to-be-so-dangerous output of our modern society, I understand that you are ready to stop using: - Any machine requiring combustion to run. Examples: all your vehicles (electrical or similar ones can run without generating CO2, although they have certainly generated some at different points like when being built, transported, repaired, etc.; they also generate CO2 indirectly via power plants as explained below), including the ones you use sporadically and/or transport gods which you use in any way (planes or ships) and even the ones used for your amusement (motor sports). - All the industrial processes requiring some combustion and outputting goods/services which you consume at any point (directly, a big proportion of the current power plants; indirectly, all the remaining ones by relying on combustion-based processes at any point to complement their usual activity or as part of required manufacturing, transportation, etc. processes; note that the aforementioned electric vehicles are also generating CO2 indirectly via the way in which the electricity they need is generated). Forget about your clothes, your supermarkets, your computers, etc. - Any scientific, research facility or study involving the consumption of relevant amounts of energy. You have to get rid of all the universities, research centres, big research facilities, etc. -etc.
Let's assume that you do all this, that you also convince the whole humankind to join you and that we can reach a stage where the worldwide CO2 generation gets down to about the natural levels (= plants + animals + us generating just a bit more). In that case and by assuming that our theories are right (the climate variation isn't provoked by natural causes) how are you planning to remove all the additional CO2 generated so far? Perhaps this is already enough to provoke an inevitable catastrophe within the next years, who knows for sure?
I am a firm believer in each-single-bit-counts kind of approaches and also think that environment-concerned ideas are rarely a bad thing. A completely different story is building up a world of lies and misinformation where you can save the world just by buying a brand new car! Step by step, always in the right direction, but never falling for magical, crazily stupid or manipulating nonsense. Out of all the problems of our planet, CO2 generation is one of the less important ones simply because we cannot perform relevant changes on this front (or perhaps we could but don't really want). Sadly, most of CO2-concerned policies are promoted by commercial, egoist, short-sighted interests whose main goals are helping themselves rather than the planet.
Where has "talk[ing] bad about you" actually mattered?
?! Always! Reputation is a very relevant asset for any company and being proud of having your customers unhappy is plainly stupid. With internet and how easily information is spread nowadays, this aspect has reached a new level. To not mention the fact that the opinions of the members of this small tech-savvy group are likely to be much more influential than the ones of the remaining 85.
These publications have been able to get away
Bear in mind that your links refer to something with more impact on direct ad revenue than feeds (as said, enabling them doesn't imply an immediate income lost, just proves your professionalism and proper understanding of your audience needs), but even though my ideas also apply there.
Why do you think that they did get away with it? Do you know the real impact of these critics or even what they might have indirectly provoked? You can find lots of references to managers making really stupid decisions and provoking huge loses to their companies; and each of these times, the given company didn't get away with it but plainly lost, precisely the most probable outcome of the situations which you are referring. These publications didn't comply with the (sensible) requests of part of their audience and, as a result, they didn't get the direct benefits from that minority, got bad press (whose exact impact is unpredictable, but certainly negative) and might have even suffered further losses (e.g., members of that minority stopped using/recommending that publication).
A company seriously thinking that can impose whatever to its customers and get away with it is in complete denial. Even under the most monopolistic and stupid-customer conditions, they will certainly lose sooner or later. Customers were, are and will always be the supreme rulers of companies; any business not accepting that reality or trying to somehow trick clients into believing otherwise is doomed to fail.
Nothing to do with charity, but with doing what is best for your business in the long term. If you are already posting the information publicly, everyone could get it automatically without you adding feeds (they could directly parse your web pages). The feeds aren't giving away anything, but showing a caring, adaptable and even professional attitude which you customers will always prefer over restrictions.
Let's say that you expect 100 visitors, out of them, 65 will only use the easiest alternative without caring about advertisements or downloading your app. Other 20 try to get the feeds once, don't like the result and start using the easiest alternatives. But then you have a minority (15) who will not like at all your attitude and will look for a different alternative; they might even talk bad about you and make you lose much more than what you would be earning if they would view yours ad. Proper feeds would have happy that minority (= earnings, even just via positive feedback, you wouldn't get otherwise). Perhaps, you might lose the direct benefits from the second group of 20; but on exchange, you would get something much more valuable than short-term earnings: having all your potential visitors happy and getting what they want.
You might be right, but I don't think that any of this beneficial to them.
People willing to download an app or only interested in visiting the site will probably do that right away. On the other hand, those looking for feeds and not finding them might get a bad impression and even stop using it completely. If my business consisted in generating relevant amounts of public information, I would do my level best to make sure that everyone could access it as easily as possible.
Only in Slashdot! Is this something to be proud or ashamed of? LOL
I developed a small application to check some sites regularly and discovered that there are quite a few posting lots of information which don't have any (RSS) feeds. I also found the feeds in some of them either horribly formatted or with faulty/delayed data?! Most of nowadays websites are dynamically generated and adding just one tiny layer of automation seems pretty straightforward, how can be this possible?
Regarding the JSON format, I honestly don't care. Once you have the generation/retrieval algorithm, dealing with one or other format is very easy. All what I want is having something in place at all!
If I recall it right, this is the third time. There was a first article about IBM planning to stop using remote work and, a short while later, another one about IBM saying that remote-work was OK for everyone except for them.
It is kind of curious that such a CEO-ish issue (I mean: abstract decision with a huge impact on the company made by a group of individuals with no actual experience/knowledge, advised by other individuals with a bit of experience/knowledge, who will probably not be held accountable for the eventual consequences of their "decisions") gets so much attention in a site like Slashdot.
Note that today it is the first time when I have got mod points since some weeks ago. By assuming that the system works objectively and exactly as advertised (no reason to think otherwise), it seems that my relatively-high-ID and current karma allow to regularly get mod points unless I post too much; every new post which isn't modded high enough, what happens with most of my posts, seems to be associated with a slight penalisation. It seems that writing around 1 post (modded my default 2 or higher) every 1-2 days should be enough to continue getting mod points, what sounds quite fair.
Today, there were quite a few ransomware attacks everywhere, this was relevant enough to get its own Slashdot submission! These attacks spread so quickly everywhere that the typical infection (e.g., a random sucker opening the attachment of an email promising whatever) seemed improbable. That's why I read this article which explains the whole process in detail.
According to that document, these attacks happened thanks to another remote-execution bug which Windows (not the infected machines) officially patched on 14-March (just during that month they fixed 12 remote-code-execution bugs, some of them allowing to take control of the whole system!). There isn't any information in either that report or the Microsoft pages about what was exactly this remote execution expected to consist in.
"The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends specially crafted messages to a Microsoft Server Message Block 1.0 (SMBv1) server"
Does it mean that the attackers encrypted the files from a remote location or automatically-downloaded a piece of software to do so? No idea, but I guess that the aforementioned typical infection should be dismissed (otherwise, the report would mentioned it, right?)
The reason why I am writing this new post (even though I am trying to not write too much to see if my mod points come eventually back) is to give a bit more of context to my original comment. I was plainly referring to a very specific claim about a very specific problem and took advantage from it to critic unnecessary-alarmist attitudes. Nothing more and nothing else than that. Too evident/not actually required? Look at the (other) AC comments!
Firstly, apologies for the delay in replying (you know? You ACs don't trigger a warning and didn't come here again. Now I came back to comment a related issue regarding today's ransomware).
Your longwinded explanation can be basically summarized as "I don't know how to exploit this myself therefore nobody else can"
I am a programmer who builds, develops, creates, not who exploits or tries to break anything. I haven't ever been in the situation of having to break in any system, but I trust quite a lot in my skills and am reasonably sure that, in case of being ever required, I would do an excellent job. My point wasn't me not being able to do it, but anyone because of not making any sense, certainly not as advertised (via affecting a pointer from an external computer). I merely highlighted an intrinsic flaw of the reasoning: wishing to do something, putting together some words which might not sound too bad, etc. is quite different than something actually being possible.
You substitute length for quality and when someone calls your bullshit you lose it
Sorry about that. In any case, note that I consider all what I wrote evident to anyone with some programming knowledge. As far as my explanations were addressed to quite-ignorant-on-this-front people, I clarified as many issues as I thought that might be required. I do recognise my bad skills at teaching to those not knowing too much, even to anyone in general. Honestly, I thought that my first post was so clear that I wasn't expecting any kind of reply, much less one telling me that I didn't know what I was saying?!
and start looking at the posters themselves...
All what follows seems a bunch of ridiculous-premise-out-of-proportion-consequence nonsense, similar to your initial "Tavis Ormandy is legit" as an answer to my original post!?!
Besides, I'm not even an expert on the topic, and I would make an ass out of myself.
I am surprised with this last sentence! In fact, I did kind of regret some of the things I wrote above and deleted them. This is an honest and respectful attitude. Why not applying it since the start? Why did you think that you should get involved into something without even understanding what you were talking about? Why not trying to understand my original post properly (+ asking as many questions as required) and/or plainly not minding it rather than arbitrarily feeling attacked (?!) and attacking me?! Although my tone might sound a bit too aggressive, my intention was good (censoring a bad-to-everyone attitude, not even a person or a company) and I was completely open to any reasonable critic. You are in the worst possible position and you decide to attack! What can I say? Hopefully, you will eventually learn or not. I don't really care.
As said before, I am trying to not write too much to see if my mod points come eventually back, so I will not reply any other comment you might write.
In that case, the question would be answered and the person following a link provided by someone else with not too honest intentions would be deemed innocent (a small detail about which some people don't seem to be fully aware: all what you do online, mainly on others' servers like all what happens in 4chan, is always stored somewhere). As said from the first moment, I would only accept these actions, even under so exceptional conditions, by taking any conclusion as a preliminary assumption which has to be further validated.
On the other hand, one question would still remain in this situation: how did anyone in 4chan know about so illegal and restricted-access content? I only see two options: being one of the bad guys and stupid enough to give away so dangerous information for the lulz; or having had some kind of relationship with the criminal organisation. Either way, it still seems a good source of information to help get more bad guys and that's why I consider that the FBI proceeding is also justified in this specific case.
The brilliant comment of this other AC above, basically consisting in "you just don't really know what you are talking about" + "Tavis Ormandy is legit" has got +1 informative. Pfff, pfff... All this reminds me that I haven't got any mod points in a while (in fact, the longest while since over 1 year ago! Is this normal?) and have been writing too much lately. I will better stop writing posts for some time to see if that makes my mod points come back (they should!).
By your logic, stack-smashing to trigger arbitrary code execution is impossible. I think you just don't really know what you are talking about.
Thanks for providing a practical sample of the kind of throwing-random-guesses-without-knowing-well-what-they-are-doing behaviours which I was criticising in my previous comment.
Although I am quite sure that you will not understand it in this way either (you seem to be very ignorant regarding anything related to programming and to have a poor-understanding-prone attitude), I will try an even clearer approach: imagine that you have the method EverythingStartsHere where the referred error is triggered (do you understand that there has to be method wrongly analysing all this and provoking the error, right?). This method expects strings but the attacker sends a different-type variable (you know that string is one of different variable types which many programming languages accept, right?) because they claim that that methods deals (or they can somehow provoke that behaviour) with pointers (= specific locations in the memory of the corresponding computer associated with each single object/variable, which can be defined by any value with a huge range of possible alternatives). When you have a pointer, the type of the variable or any other abstraction aren't relevant any more, the code is now dealing with specific memory addresses where everything is fine. They claim that by sending the pointer they want they might provoke EverythingStartsHere to perform virtually any action, because this method is the start point for many other ones. As said, the pointers take specific values (= random ones within a huge range of possible alternatives + might conflict with other pointers and provoke a crash) in each specific moment in each specific computer. Forget about this tiny issue and imagine that you can accurately determine the signature of a pointer for any object in an external computer; still you have the question: how could you accomplish the specific actions you want from that starting point? Bear in mind that each variable is associated with a memory location/pointer! Even the simplest action might involve thousands of variables!!
Thinking that you can provoke a complex (even the simplest) piece of software to do what you want by providing a specific input pointer is the closest thing I have ever heard to the most absolute ignorance. Pointers are one of the most variable and problematic aspects of programming; addressing them (= allowing programmers, who are writing the given code by presumably knowing quite well what they are doing, to not use pointers at all) has been precisely one of the common features in all the programming languages created since quite a few years ago. Trying to control a pointer from outside (the code itself and the computer!!) is so far from making any sense that I don't even know why I have to write it here! Or do you think that controlling is not required? That you have millions of potential possible values (+ thousands of them being already in use, which have to be avoided) and you can just try a random input to see if you are lucky? Even the luckiest person of the world would only be able to get one positive result: emulating one the expected arguments of EverythingStartsHere (valid/invalid analysis?) and then allow that method to perform all the actions which it is designed to perform (do what is necessary when the input is deemed valid/invalid). This is all what your 1 in millions lottery ticket (by bearing in mind that many of them would provoke the program to crash) can get: provoking Windows Defender to do what it is expected to do.
What worries (perhaps this isn't the best word; my exact feelings are more a mixture of sadness, pity and kind of not believing what I am seeing) me about people like you is not your insulting ignorance (which you use to arbitrarily attack any person around you like the "you just don't really know what you are talking about" you said to me, which is clearly a perfec
Slashdot Mirror
The excerpt which you are quoting is clearly wrong. Any combustion generates CO2 and that's why this is never brought into picture when assessing how clean a fuel is. Analysing different combustion techniques or operating conditions is another story.
Different fuels have different properties and that's why they are burned according to different methodologies and operating conditions (e.g., fuel/air ratio, pressure, etc.). Most of the toxic pollutants are the result of incomplete combustions and their variability (types and amounts) is quite big. There are many approaches to maximise the trade-off performance/emissions for a big number of fuels, conditions and pollutants; but the situation is too complex and not fully controllable. CO2 is much easier than all this: do you want lower CO2 in virtually any scenario? Burn less fuel or do it more efficiently.
I was expecting to put here a video of Archer's Cheryl "best day ever" to correct my "day best ever" and couldn't find any! Can you believe it?
I meant "or related" rather than "orrelated". Error provoked by the pressure of trying to write my first first post (and convert this is my day best ever in Slashdot. Read this to get some context :)).
A better version would have been: "Scientists Develop Technology That Allows To Easily Separate CO2 Emissions When Burning Natural Gas", by paying special attention at words like almost in their "the water vapor can be separated quite easily, leaving almost pure CO2" description.
They aren't even removing the CO2, but storing it somewhere else. So, this approach delivers something similar to what the existing CO2-capture techniques already do.
Clarification: I am not particularly interested in participating in discussions about this orrelated issues. The main motivation for this post is to somehow complement my previous ones in another article.
I am very happy to announce that the second down-vote which my original post got was also because of being overrated! Down-modders might not like me or what I say, but at least they think that I behave consistently!!! This can easily be the happiest day of my life: random people non-constructively censoring what I write in internet think that I have a consistent(ly overrated) behaviour! Hurray!
Those changes would kill most of the human race anyway, so less major changes to slow down global warming are likely to save many more lives
These generic ideas might be applicable in certain situations on account of the conditions; the problem is that the conditions here aren't precisely favourable. Let's forget for one second about all the CO2 which we have been accumulating during the last quite a few years and assume that we only need to worry about what we generate from now on. Imagine now that we divide all the global CO2 emissions among each single person and that we get 100 for each of us. Out of this 100, the contribution of your car might be 0.000[...].1 and the one from all the industrial processes required to design, manufacture, transport, run, repair, etc. your car might be 5; same story with your air conditioning/heating, your computer, what you eat or wear, etc.
As said, I am completely pro bit-by-bit improvements and am sure that having environmental-concerned behaviours is positive. But don't lie to yourself by thinking that your contribution is more relevant than what it truly is. Or even better: don't think that people and organisations actually taking care of all this should be really concerned about CO2; this is an eminently commercial/trendy concern, mostly used by people with not much technical knowledge (and/or not too honest) to convince other people with not much technical knowledge (and/or naive and/or gullible and/or looking-for-easy-solutions and/or wanting-to-feel-better-without-actually-renouncing-to-anything, etc.). It might also be good to not forget that the whole climate change is just a theory dealing with an extreme complex reality about which we don't know too much. Reducing the amount of human-made dirt is certainly good, let's do it! But let's also not invent apocalyptic scenarios or unnmotivatedly favour a specific emission type which, objectively speaking, isn't the best candidate to be worried about (e.g., CO2 isn't directly harmful for plants/animals and there is no way to avoid it to happen as far as it is a natural output of combustion).
Your point is worth discussion but markets don't exist independent of customers
"Let's do the right thing" has always been a best-seller, but not always too realistic on account of the short-sighted and conformist nature of humankind. Everyone wants to save the earth and to do it easily without renouncing to all what they have. My point wasn't arguing against the attractiveness of the premises, but about their actual applicability and the honesty of certain claims. Everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to renounce to our combustion(= CO2-generating)-based industrialised society.
It sounds like fear to me. I prefer to not post in articles about certain issues because of not feeling like getting involved in sad situations. If I thought that there is a real problem as the one you are describing, I would certainly fight it (and/or eventually stop using the site). I like Slashdot and am not willing to let a bunch of virtual mobsters to convert a sensible community into a fear-based crap.
I am not sure if I fully understand your post. Are you implying that you (or your other accounts) are the author of the last down-vote I got? Just in case that there is even the slightest doubt, note that this is the only account which I have ever used (+ have always modded fairly and by exclusively focusing on the post content, never on the author; I think that I have down-modded just once or twice) and all the up/down mods I have ever got have been voluntarily given by people who I don't know (or at least didn't tell me about that). I have never "trolled" (still not even sure about the exact meaning of this expression; I mostly hear it from very aggressive people trying to attack others who don't agree with them), I am just trying to enjoy the site, show my ideas, meet people like me, share knowledge/learn, etc. You know? Be part of a community which I like, where I am not sure that you, your fears and expectations belong.
Thanks for the tip, other AC, but I am not planning to join your group. I have never posted anonymously and will not start now, much less out of fear to anyone or anything. Also bear in mind that the moderators are (at least, theoretically) randomly-selected logged-in users with a good track record. Until some weeks ago, I used to get mod points quite regularly, but not so much lately (more logged-in users?).
Apparently, my statement was overrated. I am sure that the unnatural CO2 emissions of the person modding this post down (fun fact: being overrated is the most common reason why my posts get modded down since a while ago) are virtually zero. This down-vote was most likely delivered through a magical device powered by unicorn smiles and connected to internet via good intentions. I have so much to learn from the brave, coherent and understanding behaviour of this downvoter!
Are you "ready to make changes to your standard of living if it would prevent future climate catastrophe"? OK, here we go.
We believe that the most likely reason for what seems an unnatural climate change is the huge amount of CO2 emissions provoked by humankind ('s industrialisation) during over the last 200 years. As far as you are willing to do all what is in your hand to minimise the impact of this likely-to-be-so-dangerous output of our modern society, I understand that you are ready to stop using:
- Any machine requiring combustion to run. Examples: all your vehicles (electrical or similar ones can run without generating CO2, although they have certainly generated some at different points like when being built, transported, repaired, etc.; they also generate CO2 indirectly via power plants as explained below), including the ones you use sporadically and/or transport gods which you use in any way (planes or ships) and even the ones used for your amusement (motor sports).
- All the industrial processes requiring some combustion and outputting goods/services which you consume at any point (directly, a big proportion of the current power plants; indirectly, all the remaining ones by relying on combustion-based processes at any point to complement their usual activity or as part of required manufacturing, transportation, etc. processes; note that the aforementioned electric vehicles are also generating CO2 indirectly via the way in which the electricity they need is generated). Forget about your clothes, your supermarkets, your computers, etc.
- Any scientific, research facility or study involving the consumption of relevant amounts of energy. You have to get rid of all the universities, research centres, big research facilities, etc.
-etc.
Let's assume that you do all this, that you also convince the whole humankind to join you and that we can reach a stage where the worldwide CO2 generation gets down to about the natural levels (= plants + animals + us generating just a bit more). In that case and by assuming that our theories are right (the climate variation isn't provoked by natural causes) how are you planning to remove all the additional CO2 generated so far? Perhaps this is already enough to provoke an inevitable catastrophe within the next years, who knows for sure?
I am a firm believer in each-single-bit-counts kind of approaches and also think that environment-concerned ideas are rarely a bad thing. A completely different story is building up a world of lies and misinformation where you can save the world just by buying a brand new car! Step by step, always in the right direction, but never falling for magical, crazily stupid or manipulating nonsense. Out of all the problems of our planet, CO2 generation is one of the less important ones simply because we cannot perform relevant changes on this front (or perhaps we could but don't really want). Sadly, most of CO2-concerned policies are promoted by commercial, egoist, short-sighted interests whose main goals are helping themselves rather than the planet.
Correction: my starting "?! Always!..." should have been "?! Everywhere!...".
Where has "talk[ing] bad about you" actually mattered?
?! Always! Reputation is a very relevant asset for any company and being proud of having your customers unhappy is plainly stupid. With internet and how easily information is spread nowadays, this aspect has reached a new level. To not mention the fact that the opinions of the members of this small tech-savvy group are likely to be much more influential than the ones of the remaining 85.
These publications have been able to get away
Bear in mind that your links refer to something with more impact on direct ad revenue than feeds (as said, enabling them doesn't imply an immediate income lost, just proves your professionalism and proper understanding of your audience needs), but even though my ideas also apply there.
Why do you think that they did get away with it? Do you know the real impact of these critics or even what they might have indirectly provoked? You can find lots of references to managers making really stupid decisions and provoking huge loses to their companies; and each of these times, the given company didn't get away with it but plainly lost, precisely the most probable outcome of the situations which you are referring. These publications didn't comply with the (sensible) requests of part of their audience and, as a result, they didn't get the direct benefits from that minority, got bad press (whose exact impact is unpredictable, but certainly negative) and might have even suffered further losses (e.g., members of that minority stopped using/recommending that publication).
A company seriously thinking that can impose whatever to its customers and get away with it is in complete denial. Even under the most monopolistic and stupid-customer conditions, they will certainly lose sooner or later. Customers were, are and will always be the supreme rulers of companies; any business not accepting that reality or trying to somehow trick clients into believing otherwise is doomed to fail.
So is this a business or a charity?
Nothing to do with charity, but with doing what is best for your business in the long term. If you are already posting the information publicly, everyone could get it automatically without you adding feeds (they could directly parse your web pages). The feeds aren't giving away anything, but showing a caring, adaptable and even professional attitude which you customers will always prefer over restrictions.
Let's say that you expect 100 visitors, out of them, 65 will only use the easiest alternative without caring about advertisements or downloading your app. Other 20 try to get the feeds once, don't like the result and start using the easiest alternatives. But then you have a minority (15) who will not like at all your attitude and will look for a different alternative; they might even talk bad about you and make you lose much more than what you would be earning if they would view yours ad. Proper feeds would have happy that minority (= earnings, even just via positive feedback, you wouldn't get otherwise). Perhaps, you might lose the direct benefits from the second group of 20; but on exchange, you would get something much more valuable than short-term earnings: having all your potential visitors happy and getting what they want.
The latest .NET versions are also moving to JSON.
You might be right, but I don't think that any of this beneficial to them.
People willing to download an app or only interested in visiting the site will probably do that right away. On the other hand, those looking for feeds and not finding them might get a bad impression and even stop using it completely. If my business consisted in generating relevant amounts of public information, I would do my level best to make sure that everyone could access it as easily as possible.
Only in Slashdot! Is this something to be proud or ashamed of? LOL
I developed a small application to check some sites regularly and discovered that there are quite a few posting lots of information which don't have any (RSS) feeds. I also found the feeds in some of them either horribly formatted or with faulty/delayed data?! Most of nowadays websites are dynamically generated and adding just one tiny layer of automation seems pretty straightforward, how can be this possible?
Regarding the JSON format, I honestly don't care. Once you have the generation/retrieval algorithm, dealing with one or other format is very easy. All what I want is having something in place at all!
If I recall it right, this is the third time. There was a first article about IBM planning to stop using remote work and, a short while later, another one about IBM saying that remote-work was OK for everyone except for them.
It is kind of curious that such a CEO-ish issue (I mean: abstract decision with a huge impact on the company made by a group of individuals with no actual experience/knowledge, advised by other individuals with a bit of experience/knowledge, who will probably not be held accountable for the eventual consequences of their "decisions") gets so much attention in a site like Slashdot.
Note that today it is the first time when I have got mod points since some weeks ago. By assuming that the system works objectively and exactly as advertised (no reason to think otherwise), it seems that my relatively-high-ID and current karma allow to regularly get mod points unless I post too much; every new post which isn't modded high enough, what happens with most of my posts, seems to be associated with a slight penalisation. It seems that writing around 1 post (modded my default 2 or higher) every 1-2 days should be enough to continue getting mod points, what sounds quite fair.
According to that document, these attacks happened thanks to another remote-execution bug which Windows (not the infected machines) officially patched on 14-March (just during that month they fixed 12 remote-code-execution bugs, some of them allowing to take control of the whole system!). There isn't any information in either that report or the Microsoft pages about what was exactly this remote execution expected to consist in.
"The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends specially crafted messages to a Microsoft Server Message Block 1.0 (SMBv1) server"
Does it mean that the attackers encrypted the files from a remote location or automatically-downloaded a piece of software to do so? No idea, but I guess that the aforementioned typical infection should be dismissed (otherwise, the report would mentioned it, right?)
The reason why I am writing this new post (even though I am trying to not write too much to see if my mod points come eventually back) is to give a bit more of context to my original comment. I was plainly referring to a very specific claim about a very specific problem and took advantage from it to critic unnecessary-alarmist attitudes. Nothing more and nothing else than that. Too evident/not actually required? Look at the (other) AC comments!
Your longwinded explanation can be basically summarized as "I don't know how to exploit this myself therefore nobody else can"
I am a programmer who builds, develops, creates, not who exploits or tries to break anything. I haven't ever been in the situation of having to break in any system, but I trust quite a lot in my skills and am reasonably sure that, in case of being ever required, I would do an excellent job. My point wasn't me not being able to do it, but anyone because of not making any sense, certainly not as advertised (via affecting a pointer from an external computer). I merely highlighted an intrinsic flaw of the reasoning: wishing to do something, putting together some words which might not sound too bad, etc. is quite different than something actually being possible.
You substitute length for quality and when someone calls your bullshit you lose it
Sorry about that. In any case, note that I consider all what I wrote evident to anyone with some programming knowledge. As far as my explanations were addressed to quite-ignorant-on-this-front people, I clarified as many issues as I thought that might be required. I do recognise my bad skills at teaching to those not knowing too much, even to anyone in general. Honestly, I thought that my first post was so clear that I wasn't expecting any kind of reply, much less one telling me that I didn't know what I was saying?!
and start looking at the posters themselves...
All what follows seems a bunch of ridiculous-premise-out-of-proportion-consequence nonsense, similar to your initial "Tavis Ormandy is legit" as an answer to my original post!?!
Besides, I'm not even an expert on the topic, and I would make an ass out of myself.
I am surprised with this last sentence! In fact, I did kind of regret some of the things I wrote above and deleted them. This is an honest and respectful attitude. Why not applying it since the start? Why did you think that you should get involved into something without even understanding what you were talking about? Why not trying to understand my original post properly (+ asking as many questions as required) and/or plainly not minding it rather than arbitrarily feeling attacked (?!) and attacking me?! Although my tone might sound a bit too aggressive, my intention was good (censoring a bad-to-everyone attitude, not even a person or a company) and I was completely open to any reasonable critic. You are in the worst possible position and you decide to attack! What can I say? Hopefully, you will eventually learn or not. I don't really care.
As said before, I am trying to not write too much to see if my mod points come eventually back, so I will not reply any other comment you might write.
In that case, the question would be answered and the person following a link provided by someone else with not too honest intentions would be deemed innocent (a small detail about which some people don't seem to be fully aware: all what you do online, mainly on others' servers like all what happens in 4chan, is always stored somewhere). As said from the first moment, I would only accept these actions, even under so exceptional conditions, by taking any conclusion as a preliminary assumption which has to be further validated.
On the other hand, one question would still remain in this situation: how did anyone in 4chan know about so illegal and restricted-access content? I only see two options: being one of the bad guys and stupid enough to give away so dangerous information for the lulz; or having had some kind of relationship with the criminal organisation. Either way, it still seems a good source of information to help get more bad guys and that's why I consider that the FBI proceeding is also justified in this specific case.
The brilliant comment of this other AC above, basically consisting in "you just don't really know what you are talking about" + "Tavis Ormandy is legit" has got +1 informative. Pfff, pfff... All this reminds me that I haven't got any mod points in a while (in fact, the longest while since over 1 year ago! Is this normal?) and have been writing too much lately. I will better stop writing posts for some time to see if that makes my mod points come back (they should!).
Right after writing this reply my initial post got -1 Overrated. Pfff.... Sad people with sad expectations doing sad things. So much sadness!
By your logic, stack-smashing to trigger arbitrary code execution is impossible. I think you just don't really know what you are talking about.
Thanks for providing a practical sample of the kind of throwing-random-guesses-without-knowing-well-what-they-are-doing behaviours which I was criticising in my previous comment.
Although I am quite sure that you will not understand it in this way either (you seem to be very ignorant regarding anything related to programming and to have a poor-understanding-prone attitude), I will try an even clearer approach: imagine that you have the method EverythingStartsHere where the referred error is triggered (do you understand that there has to be method wrongly analysing all this and provoking the error, right?). This method expects strings but the attacker sends a different-type variable (you know that string is one of different variable types which many programming languages accept, right?) because they claim that that methods deals (or they can somehow provoke that behaviour) with pointers (= specific locations in the memory of the corresponding computer associated with each single object/variable, which can be defined by any value with a huge range of possible alternatives). When you have a pointer, the type of the variable or any other abstraction aren't relevant any more, the code is now dealing with specific memory addresses where everything is fine. They claim that by sending the pointer they want they might provoke EverythingStartsHere to perform virtually any action, because this method is the start point for many other ones. As said, the pointers take specific values (= random ones within a huge range of possible alternatives + might conflict with other pointers and provoke a crash) in each specific moment in each specific computer. Forget about this tiny issue and imagine that you can accurately determine the signature of a pointer for any object in an external computer; still you have the question: how could you accomplish the specific actions you want from that starting point? Bear in mind that each variable is associated with a memory location/pointer! Even the simplest action might involve thousands of variables!!
Thinking that you can provoke a complex (even the simplest) piece of software to do what you want by providing a specific input pointer is the closest thing I have ever heard to the most absolute ignorance. Pointers are one of the most variable and problematic aspects of programming; addressing them (= allowing programmers, who are writing the given code by presumably knowing quite well what they are doing, to not use pointers at all) has been precisely one of the common features in all the programming languages created since quite a few years ago. Trying to control a pointer from outside (the code itself and the computer!!) is so far from making any sense that I don't even know why I have to write it here! Or do you think that controlling is not required? That you have millions of potential possible values (+ thousands of them being already in use, which have to be avoided) and you can just try a random input to see if you are lucky? Even the luckiest person of the world would only be able to get one positive result: emulating one the expected arguments of EverythingStartsHere (valid/invalid analysis?) and then allow that method to perform all the actions which it is designed to perform (do what is necessary when the input is deemed valid/invalid). This is all what your 1 in millions lottery ticket (by bearing in mind that many of them would provoke the program to crash) can get: provoking Windows Defender to do what it is expected to do.
What worries (perhaps this isn't the best word; my exact feelings are more a mixture of sadness, pity and kind of not believing what I am seeing) me about people like you is not your insulting ignorance (which you use to arbitrarily attack any person around you like the "you just don't really know what you are talking about" you said to me, which is clearly a perfec