By the same standard, extracting AT&T's iPad data was also perfectly fine - it was all publicly available from the Internet...
The problem is - if I leave my home unlocked and you enter it, it's still an illegal trespass, making off with some of my belongings, even copying documents I might store at home, would still be considered illegal... The same applies for WiFi hotspots - the hotspot IS someone's property - sure you might be somewhere where you can SEE that there is a hotspot, much like you may see a house on the premises - but actually picking off data from it is still illegal.
There might be some mildly extenuating circumstances, if the hotspot wasn't locked - but copying data from it would still be an illegal act.
WiFi discovery by definition needs to look at data to find SSIDs, and since it's being necessary to do it that way, it's legal. But the SSID discovery does not need to look at the actual IP packet payload - and normal discovery discards it.
For most people, I would agree, refilling ink is probably good enough...
But you should also consider that there are people with higher requirements than you - people for whom colourfastness and print longevity also come into play.
I do have some photo prints from cheap ink, and some from original ink cartridges (Epson, in this case). The ink on the cheap prints is already fading - while the original photo ink images still look fine - and they were a few months OLDER (i.e. from the original cartridge fill; before I bought some 'refilled' inks).
For printing listings, texts that are going to be thrown away again 'soon-ish', the refill-inks will do me nicely. If it's for keeps - the original inks turned out a lot better...
YMMV
It really does seem like another one of those debates where some random gimp user (and I quite like gimp for what it does), simply doesn't see ANY use for photoshop, just because HE doesn't have one...
"The creepy guy across the rad is probably logging it all anyway, right?"
That may be - but if he got caught, he wouldn't be able to hide behind 'by mistake' or any other excuse.
Google got caught, that's what's the difference.
Also, do not forget, that you and me may know enough about hardware/software and how to configure our WiFis to be encrypted, password-protected,... But do not assume that most people out on the street would KNOW this, or even be aware of the problems connected with it - the law needs to protect those people, too.
If you enter someone elses house uninvited, but hey - the door was open - and then leave, while taking some fairly private details (copies of receipts,... other information that might be relevant for ID theft). Do you really think, if you got caught, a court would let you get away with "well, the door had been left open...", or do you think, you would still get convicted (it wasn't your premises, you had no right of being there) - you might get some small relief out of the owner of the property not protecting it (by locking the door), but it would still be illegal to enter uninvited.
The same holds true for both the creepy guy across the road, and a multi-national like google.
The thing I don't get about google, is how they can claim that it was by accident. Sure, it was by accident, we started some software that would take dumps of data-packets and store them, when all they wanted to do was just take photos.
I would believe google just about that they didn't want to use the data to break into the systems of the people involved, but maybe to make up some nice stats of how many unsecured/unencrypted connections they found. But that wouldn't have required storing the data.
Sorry, but I'm going to disagree with you on your assessment:
Yes, you are right that most job posts now demand the skills you mention.
Yes, you are right that there is probably no Pascal/Delphi job post.
Like you, I don't agree with their offered choices.
But - you are forgetting a few things here:
a) There are no Delphi job posts in part because there is no real supply of delphi developers - C/C++, C#, Java, SQL developers are a dime a dozen by comparison. Companies won't start large scale Delphi developments, if they feel it will be difficult to scale up teams for it due to the lack of candidates.
b) It doesn't matter whether they're offering Java, C, OR Pascal, because they are teaching programming, not development. And that's my main problem with it - teaching some kid programming (as in the syntax of a language and very basic development skills) is no real help for them in the long term. A good developer can pick up new languages reasonably quickly - as long as the concepts behind the languages are well understood - after that, picking up a new language is primarily about the syntax and the libraries - still a potentially steep learning curve, but less so, than some kid who can program a very simple app in Pascal but has no clue about what else is involved - has no understanding of development patterns, of typing concepts, the differences between functional, OO, plain old structured programming languages, stack based systems (like machine code),... Also, without an idea of those concepts, you may very quickly end up with a virtually unmaintainable piece of code - not there isn't enough of that out there already.
c) Starting them off on a 'teaching' language like Pascal has the big advantage that it's something they can get the hang of programming on first - and if they feel that's their thing and then go on to start on a development career, they will learn a language actually used out there at the same time when they get taught about other aspects of development that would be way too much for an A-level course.
Personally, the first languages I learnt were Basic (on a ZX Spectrum at home), and Logo (yes, the turtle graphics thing) at school (in ~85/86). I don't really want to picture the kind of code I would have written had I learnt C BEFORE learning about some more development constructs.
I would compare it a bit to learning 10-finger typing - if you have been using a computer before, you probably learnt to type reasonably quickly using your index fingers and the thumbs for the space bar. If you then start being taught proper 10-finger typing, you start of being at the top of the class in terms of speed in the beginning - but are more likely nearer the bottom of the course at the end of the training because you're still mainly falling back to your index fingers most of the time. Personally, it took me several years after a typing course at school before I could type 'blindly' using 10 fingers. It took me that long to 'unlearn' the 2-finger typing methods. By choosing a 'throw-away' language you're not really going to use in your later career, you provide the opportunity for a clean break into a new language once you begin understanding things like time complexity, memory management/requirements, algorithms, etc.
So, when it comes to teaching a programming language at school - I will gladly support teaching a 'teaching language' as opposed to a 'real world' language.
"which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network."
So, the people who chose to keep the Other OS functionality, can no longer buy any new games - so if people needed that functionality, but also play games, then Sony will make them choose:
a) buy another new console so you have one for your other OS; and one for games. This adds revenue for Sony, but causes them a loss as they subsidize the basic console (i.e. the will lose the subsidy twice on such a customer).
b) stay with one console with Other OS, but stop playing games on the PS3 - thereby ensuring the user will no longer add to Sony's revenue.
c) remove the Other OS, update and only use it for playing. Revenue stream continues for Sony (on new games) - but at the cost of goodwill to the company.
I don't see any decent outcome for Sony on either of the three options...
Personally, I couldn't give a damn about Adobe on this one...
While Photoshop on the Mac has been what they started off on, they did hold off going 64bit on the Mac in CS4. Some panoramic shots I've done at the time went up to 22GB.psb files, and CS3 was having major trouble handling some of them - but Adobe couldn't be arsed to support 64 bit - on their 'original' platform.
If Apple does something to hurt Adobe on Apple's platforms, I couldn't really care about it from Adobe's perspective.
Besides, in this case, if Apple would rather want to move to html5 video, which is more of an open standard than Flash, then again - f*ck Adobe.
Afterwards Microsoft would ready its rival - trying to copy all the best things from the ipad.
Do you think MS would get the same positive (or even lukewarm) reception here? Nope - it would be 'Redmond's "innovating" (i.e. copying/stealing/plagiarising) again!!'...
But because this time it's google doing it: Hey! It's all fine! I hope it will have a bigger screen, better xyz, more foo-bar, additional...
Note: I love linux - I have used it since early slackware days - but with the ipad, apple has done something, noone has succeeded at yet, and immediately we applaud if someone else tries to build a clone.
Note 2: The same, btw. is true between open and closed source. If closed-source comes up with something open source has done first - oohh - bad guys! But when plex86 (first attempt at a vmware clone) was 'announced': "Yay! Go, open source!".
I will side with Hatta that there are reckless driving charges - and these should be made to stick.
ThunderDan's point shows that something is wrong with the law in general, though, and that is people think more and more laws need to be added to ensure that courts can't re-interpret things in a different way. On the other hand - the rising number of laws increases the complexity of the law in such a way that it might well require courts to make bigger or even more ridiculous judgement calls, based on different individual laws that maybe might make sense on their own, but show discrepancies when seen together.
Secondly, the constant addition of more and more laws - to clarify what is legal and what isn't - basically fucks our own 'moral compass'. How should you even begin to form a feeling what's legal and what isn't when law books become ever more complex to clarify more and more things that SHOULD be obvious to be seen as 'wrong' by even a casual observer.
Take an example - right now, it may be forbidden to specify age or gender (or physical attributes) of potential applicants in job ads. That's all fair enough. On the other hand, I think we are approaching the situation where a company could actually place a job ad specifically to hire, say, a developer, female, age 30, at least 5'8" tall, slim, very attractive simply based on a companies attempt to support 'diversity' in its workforce (because right now, we don't have any good looking young women working for us - so we may actually be required to try and hire one, JUST so that to the outside it doesn't look like we're descriminating against good looking candidates).
Surely, this example IS exaggerated, but what has been around have been cases, where laws were created (in the name of equal opportunity), which specify a women's quota in specific jobs; and this resulted in a man being turned down for a promotion because the local administration still had too few women at the next level up. The guy had to go up all the way through the courts to get his way, after he could show that in the years before, his performance had always ranked better - but the law to 'clarify' that we need more women effectively barred him from getting ahead in his job. Is this still equal opportunity? No. The law 'requiring' the promotion of women, because there are too many men in higher positions right now, basically was a bad thing for women as well - as the promotion of a 'lower performing' women just to satisfy the quota can't be a good thing for women either - it will damage companies (which don't get to pick the best possible candidates; and it hurts women, if women in leading positions are seen as 'only having been promoted because of a law, not because of skill' - therefore enforcing the view that many women may be worse employees.
Don't get me wrong here, I am against sexual discrimination in the work place; women should not be barred from higher positions based on their gender. But they shouldn't be hired/promoted because of a law forcing it, as that would discriminate against men that might be better suited to the specific role at hand.
What we need is not more laws to 'clarify' the situation, what we need is more investment in education to fix and strengthen people's moral compasses in a way that the same kind of discrimination will not happen in the future. Or - in this case - that people KNOW any kind of distraction while driving is a bad thing, and should be considered reckless.
The only people who can really benefit from the law getting bigger, to me, seems to be lawyers, professional crooks, and rich people who might have pockets deep enough to figure out what loopholes have been created in the law, due to the addition of more laws.
I'm in favour of saving the environment - if only (egoistically) for my own health...
On the other hand, I think it's not democracy which is putting the brakes on environmental campaigns by governments, but rather big company lobbying groups scaring 'democratically elected' governments over jobs.
So, what it might need is actually a strengthening of democracies, to prevent the lobby groups of the few to subvert the will of the many...
Lords Of Midnight (ZX Spectrum, C64): strategy game with some RPG traits in the characters. Also the first game I remember to have multiple ways for the player to win (find and destroy the 'Ice Crown', OR take the opponent's home citadel ('Ushgarak') - and similar your opponent can win by killing Morkin (one of the player characters), subdue the players armies, or take the southern citadel (xajorkith). Also, what made the game 'special' was that it used first-person perspective of the entire map, not a 'map view' where you can see everything, but rather forcing the player to find out about the landscape by exploring it. (there was a drawn basic map of what the country would look like on the back of the box to give you some rough bearings, but not enough to know or see everything).
Tau Ceti (ZX Spectrum, C64): just the complexity of the game, in a game that loads completely in 48k memory. I could have screamed when I finally won the game and all the game does it say 'mission accomplished, thank you' - but I did get the authors argument that he would have had to scrap part of the gameplay in order to put in some special effects to end the game...
Atic Atac (ZX Spectrum): Labyrinth game; made cool by introducing difficulty levels purely through the characters, by giving each character a set of secret passages - with the easiest just having more secret passages than the more difficult ones. Also, at the end of the game, it would present you with a score, but also the time taken to finish and the percentage of rooms seen in the game - so you can always replay it trying to maximise on something different (just straight highest possible score; try and get out as quickly as possible; visit as many rooms as possible before finishing). To me, this makes the game replayable even today...
Yeah, thought about that, too - even if they can provide vast amounts of CPUs and stuff, and even have the knowledge of how to get to results, what would make a customer believe, that people who break into PCs might not also steal the customers data/results, too - and sell them on for even more profit...?
28.000.000 megabit/s / 6.400.000 systems would average out to 4.375 megabit/s AVERAGE bit rate over those 6 1/2 million systems in 230 countries... (oh - and to fully utilize that, it would also require the UPLOAD rate to be in the same ballpark figure; to have more than 4 megabit/s upload speed on average over that many systems in that many countries...?)
18.000.000 cpus in 6.400.000 systems is on AVERAGE 2.812 CPUs per system - so, most of the systems would already have been dual or even quad cores......oh - and in order to qualify such numbers, that would have to be the average number of systems online at any given moment; if half of them are switched off (while someone is asleep, away,...) - the numbers go down.
I would believe, that conficker and similar botnets are huge, but the numbers depend strongly on 'estimates'. Also, if conficker really managed to 'rent out' the computing power, the botnet would likely quickly decrease in size, as more and more people would take their systems to repairs, because they are so slow all of a sudden...)
So, how do they get to those numbers? Apart from, obviously, pulling them out of thin air?...and apart from the desire, to get the name of the company coming up with the number out on slashdot?
In terms of security, might this be a reason to also allow for automatic downgrades through the software 'update' manager?
if version 3.6 has a big security issue, and no newer version is available, wouldn't it be good if mozilla could similar to how they show an upgrade, also present users with a warning, 'there is a problem in your current 3.6, we would like to temporarily downgrade your browser back to 3.5.x' and with the users agreement automatically downgrade the software again.
Obviously, this would also mean that the update checks would need to have an idea what the latest 'safe' version is, as opposed to the absolute latest version.
Such automation might help to buy authors some time to properly fix an issue.
(Yes, prior version may have security issues of their own - so it's not that I would say always fall back further and further; but if there is a big problem in one version, and prior releases do not have any know major problems, then fall back. Also, for anyone still on 3.5, it would be good if the update check would not even show 3.6 as available, once the authors flag that version is problematic).
Have you looked at the BSI page and linked mozilla blog page?
The mozilla blog entry was dated March 18th (giving March 30th as the release date for 3.6.2). The BSI advisory was dated March 19th (4 days before the story broke on slashdot; and 4 days before the actual release of 3.6.2).
So, you're saying, it was retaliation by BSI against Firefox, for publishing a release date the firefox crew themselves published the day before?
On March 19th - with the projected release date 11 days away, it seems it was perfectly in order for BSI to recommend use of an alternative for those 11 days:
"empfiehlt das Bürger-CERT die Nutzung alternativer Browser, bis die Mozilla Firefox Version 3.6.2
veröffentlicht ist."
This has nothing to do with fear-mongering - but simply that during a potential danger period, people might want to watch out. Their article clearly stated it only affected 3.6, and their article stated that their advisory is temporary 'until 3.6.2 is released'.
That they warn you about vulnerabilities in IE6, but ignore vulnerabilities in open source browsers?
I think they've done the right thing - there was a security hole (in the 'current' 3.6), and they warned about it. Their warning DID include that it affected the 'current' 3.6 version and that it should be fixed in 3.6.2.
That's fair comment, and it's their job to report it and not lull people into a false sense of security that the (then current 3.6) version of firefox was safe.
If they had NOT warned, it might have damaged their reputation for NOT covering it, and it might also have helped MS lobbying efforts if they could have been shown to be biased by reporting on IE issues, but not Firefox ones...
Sure - but you can just as well secure Windows networks further; the question is how much work you're going to go for, and for how much extra security.
Personally, yes - I think linux boxes on the whole are probably safer, with the important caveat: IF YOU KEEP THEM SECURED AND UPDATED. Without it, they'll fall prey to botnets just as well - and they might even be more lucrative targets for botnet owners, as (in relative terms) linux boxes will likely have longer uptimes (all the linux servers running 24x7, even by people that do not worry too much about security); whereas many normal Windows users turn their machines off before going to sleep or before heading out.
Given that - linux boxes probably make better hubs for people running botnets, and might therefore be attacked more (in relative terms) than windows boxes. I just need to look at the number of brute-force ssh attempts at my servers to know how much of a lure a linux box is. (Yes, I say linux box here, as I assume linux boxes are the primary taget - most Sun/AIX/... machines you might find are more likely to have active security admins monitoring them all the time, as businesses rely on those machines -- many linux boxes are run by small companies and individuals that cannot afford some security (semi-)professional to look at them.
Yep, most people will say that - even though I had one of my machines broken into years ago - even though it was a linux machine... Even though it *should* have been secure, but I had been somewhat lax in keeping it updated, and hence might have left a potential door open for an attacker due to that, simply by believing linux would have been secure enough.
But, yes, that would never stand in the way of most people saying 'linux would solve this'. I think more proactive monitoring and regular application of security fixes, etc. would help. Another thing that might help, is IF you need to leave users with a web-browser, try and install them in a way that the browsers are properly sandboxed. (yeah, yeah, yeah - I know 'firefox'/'chrome'/'my-other-non-IE-browsers' are safe... Sorry, I've gone past believing that...)
I don't think there is an inherently secure OS / OS distro - at least, not beyond the moment it gets any kind of software that goes beyond its default installation...
My girlfriends first comment: Yeah right, that helped...
Almost 5 years together, and she still hardly speaks a word of German because I almost automatically switch over to English when talking to her......which may be good for my English, but certainly isn't for her German...:-/
I don't know about non-German speaking countries - we just have this expression (usually uttered by teachers in the face of completely unmotivated kids):
You're learning for your life, not for the school!
(Nicht für die Schule - für das Leben lernen wir.)
Teaching kids Pascal is teaching them something they won't really use outside of school. Ever.
Furthermore, you're not teaching them functional or OO development, both of which are probably closer to 'life' outside of school.
So, if you want to show kids relatively easy development, stick with Logo (doesn't get much simpler, and you can teach kids enough in a day for them to program some relatively simple graphics excercises - like drawing polygons,...
I don't think anyone ever coded commercially in logo, but for that it's simple, it's functional,...
Otherwise, if you have more time, I guess C or Java are likely to have some more relevance to what's happening in the outside world, and if you stay with simpler, pure command line style programs, there won't be much bloat to learn either.
Still, without a proper grounding in development (i.e. not language specifics, but rather going into algorithms, being able to estimate on whether an algorithm is good or not), I'd rather people leave it, instead of making kids believe that this is kind of 'all it takes'.
Slashdot Mirror
By the same standard, extracting AT&T's iPad data was also perfectly fine - it was all publicly available from the Internet...
The problem is - if I leave my home unlocked and you enter it, it's still an illegal trespass, making off with some of my belongings, even copying documents I might store at home, would still be considered illegal... The same applies for WiFi hotspots - the hotspot IS someone's property - sure you might be somewhere where you can SEE that there is a hotspot, much like you may see a house on the premises - but actually picking off data from it is still illegal.
There might be some mildly extenuating circumstances, if the hotspot wasn't locked - but copying data from it would still be an illegal act.
WiFi discovery by definition needs to look at data to find SSIDs, and since it's being necessary to do it that way, it's legal. But the SSID discovery does not need to look at the actual IP packet payload - and normal discovery discards it.
For most people, I would agree, refilling ink is probably good enough...
But you should also consider that there are people with higher requirements than you - people for whom colourfastness and print longevity also come into play.
I do have some photo prints from cheap ink, and some from original ink cartridges (Epson, in this case). The ink on the cheap prints is already fading - while the original photo ink images still look fine - and they were a few months OLDER (i.e. from the original cartridge fill; before I bought some 'refilled' inks).
For printing listings, texts that are going to be thrown away again 'soon-ish', the refill-inks will do me nicely. If it's for keeps - the original inks turned out a lot better...
YMMV
It really does seem like another one of those debates where some random gimp user (and I quite like gimp for what it does), simply doesn't see ANY use for photoshop, just because HE doesn't have one...
It's the same kind of common sense, that told many non-smokers that being around smoker's can't be a good thing...
Proving it to the smoker - or the guy actually chatting away on his mobile - will show you how much common sense you can expect from that end.
"The creepy guy across the rad is probably logging it all anyway, right?"
That may be - but if he got caught, he wouldn't be able to hide behind 'by mistake' or any other excuse.
Google got caught, that's what's the difference.
Also, do not forget, that you and me may know enough about hardware/software and how to configure our WiFis to be encrypted, password-protected, ...
But do not assume that most people out on the street would KNOW this, or even be aware of the problems connected with it - the law needs to protect those people, too.
If you enter someone elses house uninvited, but hey - the door was open - and then leave, while taking some fairly private details (copies of receipts, ... other information that might be relevant for ID theft). Do you really think, if you got caught, a court would let you get away with "well, the door had been left open...", or do you think, you would still get convicted (it wasn't your premises, you had no right of being there) - you might get some small relief out of the owner of the property not protecting it (by locking the door), but it would still be illegal to enter uninvited.
The same holds true for both the creepy guy across the road, and a multi-national like google.
The thing I don't get about google, is how they can claim that it was by accident. Sure, it was by accident, we started some software that would take dumps of data-packets and store them, when all they wanted to do was just take photos.
I would believe google just about that they didn't want to use the data to break into the systems of the people involved, but maybe to make up some nice stats of how many unsecured/unencrypted connections they found. But that wouldn't have required storing the data.
Sorry, but I'm going to disagree with you on your assessment:
Yes, you are right that most job posts now demand the skills you mention.
Yes, you are right that there is probably no Pascal/Delphi job post.
Like you, I don't agree with their offered choices.
But - you are forgetting a few things here:
a) There are no Delphi job posts in part because there is no real supply of delphi developers - C/C++, C#, Java, SQL developers are a dime a dozen by comparison. Companies won't start large scale Delphi developments, if they feel it will be difficult to scale up teams for it due to the lack of candidates.
b) It doesn't matter whether they're offering Java, C, OR Pascal, because they are teaching programming, not development. And that's my main problem with it - teaching some kid programming (as in the syntax of a language and very basic development skills) is no real help for them in the long term. A good developer can pick up new languages reasonably quickly - as long as the concepts behind the languages are well understood - after that, picking up a new language is primarily about the syntax and the libraries - still a potentially steep learning curve, but less so, than some kid who can program a very simple app in Pascal but has no clue about what else is involved - has no understanding of development patterns, of typing concepts, the differences between functional, OO, plain old structured programming languages, stack based systems (like machine code), ... Also, without an idea of those concepts, you may very quickly end up with a virtually unmaintainable piece of code - not there isn't enough of that out there already.
c) Starting them off on a 'teaching' language like Pascal has the big advantage that it's something they can get the hang of programming on first - and if they feel that's their thing and then go on to start on a development career, they will learn a language actually used out there at the same time when they get taught about other aspects of development that would be way too much for an A-level course.
Personally, the first languages I learnt were Basic (on a ZX Spectrum at home), and Logo (yes, the turtle graphics thing) at school (in ~85/86). I don't really want to picture the kind of code I would have written had I learnt C BEFORE learning about some more development constructs.
I would compare it a bit to learning 10-finger typing - if you have been using a computer before, you probably learnt to type reasonably quickly using your index fingers and the thumbs for the space bar. If you then start being taught proper 10-finger typing, you start of being at the top of the class in terms of speed in the beginning - but are more likely nearer the bottom of the course at the end of the training because you're still mainly falling back to your index fingers most of the time. Personally, it took me several years after a typing course at school before I could type 'blindly' using 10 fingers. It took me that long to 'unlearn' the 2-finger typing methods. By choosing a 'throw-away' language you're not really going to use in your later career, you provide the opportunity for a clean break into a new language once you begin understanding things like time complexity, memory management/requirements, algorithms, etc.
So, when it comes to teaching a programming language at school - I will gladly support teaching a 'teaching language' as opposed to a 'real world' language.
"Falls To Historic Low"
[...]
"which is about the range that IE had in early 1999"
?
So, it's historic, because it's the second time it's around that range?
From the article:
"which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network."
So, the people who chose to keep the Other OS functionality, can no longer buy any new games - so if people needed that functionality, but also play games, then Sony will make them choose:
a) buy another new console so you have one for your other OS; and one for games. This adds revenue for Sony, but causes them a loss as they subsidize the basic console (i.e. the will lose the subsidy twice on such a customer).
b) stay with one console with Other OS, but stop playing games on the PS3 - thereby ensuring the user will no longer add to Sony's revenue.
c) remove the Other OS, update and only use it for playing. Revenue stream continues for Sony (on new games) - but at the cost of goodwill to the company.
I don't see any decent outcome for Sony on either of the three options...
Personally, I couldn't give a damn about Adobe on this one...
While Photoshop on the Mac has been what they started off on, they did hold off going 64bit on the Mac in CS4. Some panoramic shots I've done at the time went up to 22GB .psb files, and CS3 was having major trouble handling some of them - but Adobe couldn't be arsed to support 64 bit - on their 'original' platform.
If Apple does something to hurt Adobe on Apple's platforms, I couldn't really care about it from Adobe's perspective.
Besides, in this case, if Apple would rather want to move to html5 video, which is more of an open standard than Flash, then again - f*ck Adobe.
Imagine the situation like this:
Google would have brought out the ipad.
Afterwards Microsoft would ready its rival - trying to copy all the best things from the ipad.
Do you think MS would get the same positive (or even lukewarm) reception here? Nope - it would be 'Redmond's "innovating" (i.e. copying/stealing/plagiarising) again!!'...
But because this time it's google doing it: Hey! It's all fine! I hope it will have a bigger screen, better xyz, more foo-bar, additional ...
Note: I love linux - I have used it since early slackware days - but with the ipad, apple has done something, noone has succeeded at yet, and immediately we applaud if someone else tries to build a clone.
Note 2: The same, btw. is true between open and closed source. If closed-source comes up with something open source has done first - oohh - bad guys!
But when plex86 (first attempt at a vmware clone) was 'announced': "Yay! Go, open source!".
Yes, you are a kid, too... Kiddo...
You're right, oh old and wise one! The kids these days.
I guess, we're so unfortunate, that both of our UIDs added together still don't make it into the 5 digits...
Still, it's fun to see the 5-digit younglings get into a UID pissing contest.
That said, it's easy to criticize someone like this. But hey, we all have our hobbies and talents right?
As my sister puts it about me (though - luckily (for me), not about old arcade games; and not meant in a creepy fashion (I hope)):
And somehow I feel, here on slashdot, I am not the only one for whom this statement is true...
I will side with Hatta that there are reckless driving charges - and these should be made to stick.
ThunderDan's point shows that something is wrong with the law in general, though, and that is people think more and more laws need to be added to ensure that courts can't re-interpret things in a different way.
On the other hand - the rising number of laws increases the complexity of the law in such a way that it might well require courts to make bigger or even more ridiculous judgement calls, based on different individual laws that maybe might make sense on their own, but show discrepancies when seen together.
Secondly, the constant addition of more and more laws - to clarify what is legal and what isn't - basically fucks our own 'moral compass'. How should you even begin to form a feeling what's legal and what isn't when law books become ever more complex to clarify more and more things that SHOULD be obvious to be seen as 'wrong' by even a casual observer.
Take an example - right now, it may be forbidden to specify age or gender (or physical attributes) of potential applicants in job ads.
That's all fair enough. On the other hand, I think we are approaching the situation where a company could actually place a job ad specifically to hire, say, a developer, female, age 30, at least 5'8" tall, slim, very attractive simply based on a companies attempt to support 'diversity' in its workforce (because right now, we don't have any good looking young women working for us - so we may actually be required to try and hire one, JUST so that to the outside it doesn't look like we're descriminating against good looking candidates).
Surely, this example IS exaggerated, but what has been around have been cases, where laws were created (in the name of equal opportunity), which specify a women's quota in specific jobs; and this resulted in a man being turned down for a promotion because the local administration still had too few women at the next level up. The guy had to go up all the way through the courts to get his way, after he could show that in the years before, his performance had always ranked better - but the law to 'clarify' that we need more women effectively barred him from getting ahead in his job. Is this still equal opportunity? No. The law 'requiring' the promotion of women, because there are too many men in higher positions right now, basically was a bad thing for women as well - as the promotion of a 'lower performing' women just to satisfy the quota can't be a good thing for women either - it will damage companies (which don't get to pick the best possible candidates; and it hurts women, if women in leading positions are seen as 'only having been promoted because of a law, not because of skill' - therefore enforcing the view that many women may be worse employees.
Don't get me wrong here, I am against sexual discrimination in the work place; women should not be barred from higher positions based on their gender. But they shouldn't be hired/promoted because of a law forcing it, as that would discriminate against men that might be better suited to the specific role at hand.
What we need is not more laws to 'clarify' the situation, what we need is more investment in education to fix and strengthen people's moral compasses in a way that the same kind of discrimination will not happen in the future. Or - in this case - that people KNOW any kind of distraction while driving is a bad thing, and should be considered reckless.
The only people who can really benefit from the law getting bigger, to me, seems to be lawyers, professional crooks, and rich people who might have pockets deep enough to figure out what loopholes have been created in the law, due to the addition of more laws.
I'm in favour of saving the environment - if only (egoistically) for my own health...
On the other hand, I think it's not democracy which is putting the brakes on environmental campaigns by governments, but rather big company lobbying groups scaring 'democratically elected' governments over jobs.
So, what it might need is actually a strengthening of democracies, to prevent the lobby groups of the few to subvert the will of the many...
I'd still prefer Ultima IV out of that list...
More unsung heroes:
Lords Of Midnight (ZX Spectrum, C64): strategy game with some RPG traits in the characters. Also the first game I remember to have multiple ways for the player to win (find and destroy the 'Ice Crown', OR take the opponent's home citadel ('Ushgarak') - and similar your opponent can win by killing Morkin (one of the player characters), subdue the players armies, or take the southern citadel (xajorkith). Also, what made the game 'special' was that it used first-person perspective of the entire map, not a 'map view' where you can see everything, but rather forcing the player to find out about the landscape by exploring it. (there was a drawn basic map of what the country would look like on the back of the box to give you some rough bearings, but not enough to know or see everything).
Tau Ceti (ZX Spectrum, C64): just the complexity of the game, in a game that loads completely in 48k memory. I could have screamed when I finally won the game and all the game does it say 'mission accomplished, thank you' - but I did get the authors argument that he would have had to scrap part of the gameplay in order to put in some special effects to end the game...
Atic Atac (ZX Spectrum): Labyrinth game; made cool by introducing difficulty levels purely through the characters, by giving each character a set of secret passages - with the easiest just having more secret passages than the more difficult ones. Also, at the end of the game, it would present you with a score, but also the time taken to finish and the percentage of rooms seen in the game - so you can always replay it trying to maximise on something different (just straight highest possible score; try and get out as quickly as possible; visit as many rooms as possible before finishing). To me, this makes the game replayable even today...
sorry - my mistake with the thousands separator. For that I apologize...
Yeah, thought about that, too - even if they can provide vast amounts of CPUs and stuff, and even have the knowledge of how to get to results, what would make a customer believe, that people who break into PCs might not also steal the customers data/results, too - and sell them on for even more profit...?
And they came up with that number how?
28 terabit/s == 28.000 gigabit/s == 28.000.000 megabit/s
28.000.000 megabit/s / 6.400.000 systems would average out to 4.375 megabit/s AVERAGE bit rate over those 6 1/2 million systems in 230 countries... (oh - and to fully utilize that, it would also require the UPLOAD rate to be in the same ballpark figure; to have more than 4 megabit/s upload speed on average over that many systems in that many countries...?)
18.000.000 cpus in 6.400.000 systems is on AVERAGE 2.812 CPUs per system - so, most of the systems would already have been dual or even quad cores... ...oh - and in order to qualify such numbers, that would have to be the average number of systems online at any given moment; if half of them are switched off (while someone is asleep, away, ...) - the numbers go down.
I would believe, that conficker and similar botnets are huge, but the numbers depend strongly on 'estimates'. Also, if conficker really managed to 'rent out' the computing power, the botnet would likely quickly decrease in size, as more and more people would take their systems to repairs, because they are so slow all of a sudden...)
So, how do they get to those numbers? Apart from, obviously, pulling them out of thin air? ...and apart from the desire, to get the name of the company coming up with the number out on slashdot?
In terms of security, might this be a reason to also allow for automatic downgrades through the software 'update' manager?
if version 3.6 has a big security issue, and no newer version is available, wouldn't it be good if mozilla could similar to how they show an upgrade, also present users with a warning, 'there is a problem in your current 3.6, we would like to temporarily downgrade your browser back to 3.5.x' and with the users agreement automatically downgrade the software again.
Obviously, this would also mean that the update checks would need to have an idea what the latest 'safe' version is, as opposed to the absolute latest version.
Such automation might help to buy authors some time to properly fix an issue.
(Yes, prior version may have security issues of their own - so it's not that I would say always fall back further and further; but if there is a big problem in one version, and prior releases do not have any know major problems, then fall back. Also, for anyone still on 3.5, it would be good if the update check would not even show 3.6 as available, once the authors flag that version is problematic).
mod parent TROLL...
Have you looked at the BSI page and linked mozilla blog page?
The mozilla blog entry was dated March 18th (giving March 30th as the release date for 3.6.2). The BSI advisory was dated March 19th (4 days before the story broke on slashdot; and 4 days before the actual release of 3.6.2).
So, you're saying, it was retaliation by BSI against Firefox, for publishing a release date the firefox crew themselves published the day before?
On March 19th - with the projected release date 11 days away, it seems it was perfectly in order for BSI to recommend use of an alternative for those 11 days:
"empfiehlt das Bürger-CERT die Nutzung alternativer Browser, bis die Mozilla Firefox Version 3.6.2
veröffentlicht ist."
This has nothing to do with fear-mongering - but simply that during a potential danger period, people might want to watch out. Their article clearly stated it only affected 3.6, and their article stated that their advisory is temporary 'until 3.6.2 is released'.
How is that retaliation?
So, what would you rather have?
That they warn you about vulnerabilities in IE6, but ignore vulnerabilities in open source browsers?
I think they've done the right thing - there was a security hole (in the 'current' 3.6), and they warned about it. Their warning DID include that it affected the 'current' 3.6 version and that it should be fixed in 3.6.2.
That's fair comment, and it's their job to report it and not lull people into a false sense of security that the (then current 3.6) version of firefox was safe.
If they had NOT warned, it might have damaged their reputation for NOT covering it, and it might also have helped MS lobbying efforts if they could have been shown to be biased by reporting on IE issues, but not Firefox ones...
Sure - but you can just as well secure Windows networks further; the question is how much work you're going to go for, and for how much extra security.
Personally, yes - I think linux boxes on the whole are probably safer, with the important caveat: IF YOU KEEP THEM SECURED AND UPDATED. Without it, they'll fall prey to botnets just as well - and they might even be more lucrative targets for botnet owners, as (in relative terms) linux boxes will likely have longer uptimes (all the linux servers running 24x7, even by people that do not worry too much about security); whereas many normal Windows users turn their machines off before going to sleep or before heading out.
Given that - linux boxes probably make better hubs for people running botnets, and might therefore be attacked more (in relative terms) than windows boxes. I just need to look at the number of brute-force ssh attempts at my servers to know how much of a lure a linux box is. (Yes, I say linux box here, as I assume linux boxes are the primary taget - most Sun/AIX/... machines you might find are more likely to have active security admins monitoring them all the time, as businesses rely on those machines -- many linux boxes are run by small companies and individuals that cannot afford some security (semi-)professional to look at them.
Yep, most people will say that - even though I had one of my machines broken into years ago - even though it was a linux machine... Even though it *should* have been secure, but I had been somewhat lax in keeping it updated, and hence might have left a potential door open for an attacker due to that, simply by believing linux would have been secure enough.
But, yes, that would never stand in the way of most people saying 'linux would solve this'. I think more proactive monitoring and regular application of security fixes, etc. would help.
Another thing that might help, is IF you need to leave users with a web-browser, try and install them in a way that the browsers are properly sandboxed. (yeah, yeah, yeah - I know 'firefox'/'chrome'/'my-other-non-IE-browsers' are safe... Sorry, I've gone past believing that...)
I don't think there is an inherently secure OS / OS distro - at least, not beyond the moment it gets any kind of software that goes beyond its default installation...
My girlfriends first comment: Yeah right, that helped...
Almost 5 years together, and she still hardly speaks a word of German because I almost automatically switch over to English when talking to her... ...which may be good for my English, but certainly isn't for her German... :-/
I don't know about non-German speaking countries - we just have this expression (usually uttered by teachers in the face of completely unmotivated kids):
You're learning for your life, not for the school!
(Nicht für die Schule - für das Leben lernen wir.)
Teaching kids Pascal is teaching them something they won't really use outside of school. Ever.
Furthermore, you're not teaching them functional or OO development, both of which are probably closer to 'life' outside of school.
So, if you want to show kids relatively easy development, stick with Logo (doesn't get much simpler, and you can teach kids enough in a day for them to program some relatively simple graphics excercises - like drawing polygons, ...
I don't think anyone ever coded commercially in logo, but for that it's simple, it's functional, ...
Otherwise, if you have more time, I guess C or Java are likely to have some more relevance to what's happening in the outside world, and if you stay with simpler, pure command line style programs, there won't be much bloat to learn either.
Still, without a proper grounding in development (i.e. not language specifics, but rather going into algorithms, being able to estimate on whether an algorithm is good or not), I'd rather people leave it, instead of making kids believe that this is kind of 'all it takes'.