Secunia specifically states "The statistics provided should NOT be used to compare the overall security of products against one another. It is IMPORTANT to understand what the below comments mean when using the statistics, especially when using the statistics to compare the vulnerability aspects of different products."
Some companies, especially those with closed-source browsers, may not disclose all vulnerabilities they fix. The number of vulnerabilities fixed also doesn't take into account how severe the vulnerabilities are, or how long it took the vendor to patch them. Which would you rather use, a browser that has ten small vulnerabilities, all patched within days of being discovered, or a browser that has one severe vulnerability that has not been patched in months?
Yes, a browser could do that. But then the browser would not be protecting against a real man-in-the-middle attack. I suppose a computer could also accept any password you type, but then it also would not protect against intruders.
SSL is not about determining the reliability of a site. It's about verifying that you're talking to the site you think you're talking to so you don't send your password to an attacker.
What good is encrypted communication if you can't verify who you're communicating with? Would you feel comfortable sending me your banking credentials over an encrypted link?
At least SSL tries to prevent MITM attacks. The proposed scheme doesn't even attempt it or consider that they could be a possibility. I'm sure SSL could be improved, but just throwing your hands up and giving up trying to prevent MITM attacks isn't an improvement.
For encryption to do its job, you need to verify that you're encrypting your communication such that only you and the party you intend to communicate securely with can decrypt the message. How do you know you're using the right key? Someone may have slipped you the wrong one. It's called a man-in-the-middle attack.
It's hard to directly change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, because it just precipitates out. We call it rain. On the other hand, if you pump billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year, we increase the temperature of the ocean and atmosphere, which causes more evaporation. This leads to higher humidity and more precipitation, and of course, the extra water vapor causes yet more warming. This is why we say water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing. So, yes, water vapor is more of a direct cause of warming than carbon dioxide, but it doesn't contradict that it's greenhouse emissions that are causing the warming because it's those emissions that are causing increased humidity which is causing most of the warming.
No, we don't have just correlation. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Burning fossil fuels causes the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase, which in turn causes warmer temperatures. There's the causation right there. All this was predicted long before it ever occurred. Since then, we've observed the increase in carbon dioxide, and we've observed the predicted warming. I guess it's just an amazing coincidence!
Carbon dioxide comes out the atmosphere naturally, and even Hansen agrees that we can exceed 350 ppm for a "brief" time. Look at how Hansen himself says we can still reach the 350 ppm target!
No, we won't run out of fossil fuels in a few decades. We have enough fossil fuels to increase atmospheric carbon dioxide to ten times what it's been for the past million years, which would in turn cause warming of over ten degrees Celsius, which in turn would cause global catastrophe. Civilization would probably survive, but life would be difficult for hundreds of years. Certainly the Earth wouldn't support ten billion humans at today's standard of living. So, no, it's not going to "fix itself".
It doesn't matter what you think about politicians. They're going to act no matter what you think. We're not all waiting around for khallow's agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which seems to be how you're acting. It's not up to anyone to convince you. You need to convince the people in charge that we shouldn't be reducing emissions if you think that's what we should do. So far, you don't seem to be doing a good job of it. You seem to be preaching to the choir of deniers.
You act as if we have a choice about whether to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. We have no choice at all, because fossil fuels will not last forever. The only choice we have is when we will reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Nations have agreed that they want to prevent warming of more than two degrees Celsius. Maybe you don't see the need to mitigate global warming, but the people running the show sure do see the need. They also don't need your agreement in the matter before they act.
We have more than a mere correlation between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and temperature rise. We have a mechanism of causation: carbon dioxide is conclusively known to be a greenhouse gas. So, yes, burning fossil fuels absolutely does increase global temperature. Of that, there's no doubt at all. The only question is how much. A few climatologists argue that it's not enough to worry about, but the vast majority conclude that the climate sensitivity is above 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is enough that it makes economic sense to reduce carbon dioxide emissions now.
I think you're pretty confused. The 2007 report failed to include the effect of ice sheet loss on sea level rise. The 2007 IPCC report did include sea ice loss, which has other effects, such as decreasing the albedo of Earth which speeds up warming. One thing in particular sea ice loss doesn't do is raise sea level, because the ice is floating.
So it's just an amazing coincidence that we'll have ice-free summers in the Arctic 200 years after we started burning fossil fuels en masse?
We have excellent "undeniable" evidence of global warming. We have over 100 years of climatology that tell us that the carbon sensitivity is probably between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, starting with Arrhenius and continuing to the latest estimations. We have agreed that we want to keep the global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius. The only way we can achieve this goal is to begin reducing carbon dioxide emissions immediately, given the information we presently have. To me, that says "Act now!"
According to Hansen et al (from the link you gave) "An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects." We do have decades to act.
A pandemic doesn't mean corpses rotting in the streets. You can have a pandemic without a single fatality, if the disease is not fatal. Pandemic just means the disease is spread over a wide area, and does not give any indication of how deadly a disease it. I think the scientifically illiterate public are more to blame for the misunderstanding than scientists or the press. Scientists actually saved thousands of lives by determining that the young were most at risk and quickly developing an effective vaccine which was administered first to those most at risk.
Cutting carbon emissions doesn't mean we can't have cars. It means that cars need to be more energy efficient in the near future and run on energy not derived from fossil fuels in several decades. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions doesn't mean doing without. It seems that most people who don't want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions really just don't want to lower their standard of living. Fortunately, we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly and keep our standard of living.
We do know that it's melting, and the only explanation that has any evidence to support it is that it's due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I think it makes sense to reduce carbon dioxide emissions now.
To make an analogy, a business may go bankrupt in one year or four years. Do they not have any clue what to do, or is it clear that they need to cut costs or increase revenues to stay in business? In life, we can't wait until we have perfect information before we act, otherwise we'd never act.
The main point: major Firefox releases that include important bugfixes were taking more than a year to come out. This was very bad for many groups of people.
Can you provide any specific examples?
In any case, Firefox point releases were taking only a month or two to come out, and Mozilla could have easily fixed memory bugs in point releases. There would be no reason to wait two years for bug fixes.
I've seen studies that show that the placebo effect seems to be getting stronger. I didn't understand why until my wife (who works in the pharmaceutical industry) explained that homeless people, criminals, and drug abusers like to volunteer for drug trials for the extra money. They report that the drugs (or placebo) work because they think it's the answer that the doctors and nurses want to hear. As a result, it's getting harder and harder to show that a drug works significantly better than placebo. Imagine a trial with people who are desperate for money who are being asked if they're happier than before. They're getting paid, so of course they're happier than before, whether they're taking placebo or Prozac!
Slashdot Mirror
But SSL has absolutely nothing to do with the reliability of a site. Even as a joke it doesn't work.
Secunia specifically states "The statistics provided should NOT be used to compare the overall security of products against one another. It is IMPORTANT to understand what the below comments mean when using the statistics, especially when using the statistics to compare the vulnerability aspects of different products."
Some companies, especially those with closed-source browsers, may not disclose all vulnerabilities they fix. The number of vulnerabilities fixed also doesn't take into account how severe the vulnerabilities are, or how long it took the vendor to patch them. Which would you rather use, a browser that has ten small vulnerabilities, all patched within days of being discovered, or a browser that has one severe vulnerability that has not been patched in months?
Yes, a browser could do that. But then the browser would not be protecting against a real man-in-the-middle attack. I suppose a computer could also accept any password you type, but then it also would not protect against intruders.
SSL is not about determining the reliability of a site. It's about verifying that you're talking to the site you think you're talking to so you don't send your password to an attacker.
What good is encrypted communication if you can't verify who you're communicating with? Would you feel comfortable sending me your banking credentials over an encrypted link?
At least SSL tries to prevent MITM attacks. The proposed scheme doesn't even attempt it or consider that they could be a possibility. I'm sure SSL could be improved, but just throwing your hands up and giving up trying to prevent MITM attacks isn't an improvement.
For encryption to do its job, you need to verify that you're encrypting your communication such that only you and the party you intend to communicate securely with can decrypt the message. How do you know you're using the right key? Someone may have slipped you the wrong one. It's called a man-in-the-middle attack.
It's hard to directly change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, because it just precipitates out. We call it rain. On the other hand, if you pump billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year, we increase the temperature of the ocean and atmosphere, which causes more evaporation. This leads to higher humidity and more precipitation, and of course, the extra water vapor causes yet more warming. This is why we say water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing. So, yes, water vapor is more of a direct cause of warming than carbon dioxide, but it doesn't contradict that it's greenhouse emissions that are causing the warming because it's those emissions that are causing increased humidity which is causing most of the warming.
No, we don't have just correlation. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Burning fossil fuels causes the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase, which in turn causes warmer temperatures. There's the causation right there. All this was predicted long before it ever occurred. Since then, we've observed the increase in carbon dioxide, and we've observed the predicted warming. I guess it's just an amazing coincidence!
Carbon dioxide comes out the atmosphere naturally, and even Hansen agrees that we can exceed 350 ppm for a "brief" time. Look at how Hansen himself says we can still reach the 350 ppm target!
No, we won't run out of fossil fuels in a few decades. We have enough fossil fuels to increase atmospheric carbon dioxide to ten times what it's been for the past million years, which would in turn cause warming of over ten degrees Celsius, which in turn would cause global catastrophe. Civilization would probably survive, but life would be difficult for hundreds of years. Certainly the Earth wouldn't support ten billion humans at today's standard of living. So, no, it's not going to "fix itself".
It doesn't matter what you think about politicians. They're going to act no matter what you think. We're not all waiting around for khallow's agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which seems to be how you're acting. It's not up to anyone to convince you. You need to convince the people in charge that we shouldn't be reducing emissions if you think that's what we should do. So far, you don't seem to be doing a good job of it. You seem to be preaching to the choir of deniers.
You act as if we have a choice about whether to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. We have no choice at all, because fossil fuels will not last forever. The only choice we have is when we will reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Nations have agreed that they want to prevent warming of more than two degrees Celsius. Maybe you don't see the need to mitigate global warming, but the people running the show sure do see the need. They also don't need your agreement in the matter before they act.
We have more than a mere correlation between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and temperature rise. We have a mechanism of causation: carbon dioxide is conclusively known to be a greenhouse gas. So, yes, burning fossil fuels absolutely does increase global temperature. Of that, there's no doubt at all. The only question is how much. A few climatologists argue that it's not enough to worry about, but the vast majority conclude that the climate sensitivity is above 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is enough that it makes economic sense to reduce carbon dioxide emissions now.
I think you're pretty confused. The 2007 report failed to include the effect of ice sheet loss on sea level rise. The 2007 IPCC report did include sea ice loss, which has other effects, such as decreasing the albedo of Earth which speeds up warming. One thing in particular sea ice loss doesn't do is raise sea level, because the ice is floating.
So it's just an amazing coincidence that we'll have ice-free summers in the Arctic 200 years after we started burning fossil fuels en masse?
We have excellent "undeniable" evidence of global warming. We have over 100 years of climatology that tell us that the carbon sensitivity is probably between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, starting with Arrhenius and continuing to the latest estimations. We have agreed that we want to keep the global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius. The only way we can achieve this goal is to begin reducing carbon dioxide emissions immediately, given the information we presently have. To me, that says "Act now!"
According to Hansen et al (from the link you gave) "An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects." We do have decades to act.
A pandemic doesn't mean corpses rotting in the streets. You can have a pandemic without a single fatality, if the disease is not fatal. Pandemic just means the disease is spread over a wide area, and does not give any indication of how deadly a disease it. I think the scientifically illiterate public are more to blame for the misunderstanding than scientists or the press. Scientists actually saved thousands of lives by determining that the young were most at risk and quickly developing an effective vaccine which was administered first to those most at risk.
Cutting carbon emissions doesn't mean we can't have cars. It means that cars need to be more energy efficient in the near future and run on energy not derived from fossil fuels in several decades. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions doesn't mean doing without. It seems that most people who don't want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions really just don't want to lower their standard of living. Fortunately, we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly and keep our standard of living.
Melting Arctic sea ice will not raise sea level. Melting ice sheets on land (mostly Greenland and Antarctica) will make sea level rise.
We do know that it's melting, and the only explanation that has any evidence to support it is that it's due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I think it makes sense to reduce carbon dioxide emissions now.
To make an analogy, a business may go bankrupt in one year or four years. Do they not have any clue what to do, or is it clear that they need to cut costs or increase revenues to stay in business? In life, we can't wait until we have perfect information before we act, otherwise we'd never act.
I submit my punch cards to the operator and pick up the printout the next day.
Can you provide any specific examples?
In any case, Firefox point releases were taking only a month or two to come out, and Mozilla could have easily fixed memory bugs in point releases. There would be no reason to wait two years for bug fixes.
FF6 won't be out in ten weeks. Don't be silly. Major Firefox releases are now six weeks apart. FF6 will be out in four weeks.
The US does too.
I've seen studies that show that the placebo effect seems to be getting stronger. I didn't understand why until my wife (who works in the pharmaceutical industry) explained that homeless people, criminals, and drug abusers like to volunteer for drug trials for the extra money. They report that the drugs (or placebo) work because they think it's the answer that the doctors and nurses want to hear. As a result, it's getting harder and harder to show that a drug works significantly better than placebo. Imagine a trial with people who are desperate for money who are being asked if they're happier than before. They're getting paid, so of course they're happier than before, whether they're taking placebo or Prozac!