His Writing Efficient Programs is out of print, but in my opinion it's at least as good as Programming Pearls. Here's an edited version of Bentley's rules from the appendix of the book.
The problem with your approach is that users get so many warning dialogs they get used to clicking through quickly, and therefore miss the important warnings for when a cert changes. You need to save warning messages for truly important events, so the user does not become desensitized to them.
Well, there's CAcert, but they are not listed as a trusted CA in any browser. StartSSL, which is a commercial company, issues certificates for free and they are trusted by Mozilla browsers currently. But as far as I know, if you want a cert that's trusted by default in all modern browsers, you'll need to pay a few bucks.
Microsoft maintains the list for IE. Mozilla maintains the list for Firefox. And so on. Use a browser from a company you can trust, or you may just regret it one day.
Telling them to do a better job now does no good if they've been issuing valid certificates to bad guys already. If they were not doing the proper validation of individuals who were requesting certificates, we need to consider all certificates issued by that CA to be untrusted.
A few months ago, I got a certificate signed by a CA that is trusted by essentially all browsers. The cost was $15 per year. They even bothered to check that I had access to the admin's account on the server I was requesting the cert for. How is $15 per year too expensive for a small site or special project?
I suppose it would be possible to get the username and password of someone who has write access to the source code repository. On the other hand, it's open source, so many would notice the backdoors being put into the source code. If any builds were created that had the backdoors, they would be quickly deleted.
In the perfect attack, the certificate is issued by a trusted certificate authority, so no warning is shown. It truly is a perfect MITM attack. We do know exactly who is issuing certificates without verifying the identify of the individuals requesting them. It's time for browser makers to remove some trusted CAs from their lists so users can be secure.
The reason for the "RESOLVED INVALID" is that the bug reporter thought they were reporting a bug in Firefox causing all those annoying SSL popups. What was actually happening was that the user was being attacked with a man-in-the-middle attack. Therefore, this shows how Firefox protects you from the attack. As annoying as those dialogs may be, they are necessary to warn the user of a potential attack.
I'm not sure what additional evidence you want. The only way we could possibly provide more evidence is to have a duplicate Earth in orbit and put a different amount of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, thereby running a controlled experiment. The data that the Earth is warming is very clear. Let's say that you're skeptical about the accuracy of the temperature measurements. I can understand that. But if temperatures are not rising, why would the Arctic ice be melting? It doesn't make any sense, does it?
No, the public will not be poorer at the end. The whole point of doing something about global warming now is to prevent and economic disaster in the future. If combating global warming were going to make people poorer, there wouldn't be so much effort behind reducing carbon dioxide emissions. There is debate about how much money we should spend on reducing emissions because there is disagreement about the discount rate to apply to the suffering of future generations. But as far as I know, all economists agree that it makes sense to spend some amount of money now to prevent global warming. The only disagreement is how much we should spend now to alleviate the problems of future generations. Saying we're going to be poorer at the end is ridiculous.
Because on ten-year scales El Nino and La Nina can make it look like temperatures are steady or dropping. There's also an eleven-year cycle of solar output. Over a period of twenty years or more, it would be very unlikely to see a cooling trend if there's a long-term warming trend of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, which is what we've seen over the last 25 years.
You're confused because 1998 was an unusually warm year. The globe is still warming. You can read this article that explains in more detail. Of course, it would have been the news century of the story if global warming was over. Wouldn't we have all heard it already?
Yes, of course, there will always be hurricanes, storms, and droughts. Yes, they will get worse with global warming. Do you have evidence that they are not getting worse? It's pretty hard to tell so far, because we have just recently been able to see the first of these effects. Let's wait thirty years or so before we can conclusively say that the predictions are wrong. I guess people were expecting some kind of Hollywood disaster right around the corner, and when it didn't happen immediately, people thought the predictions didn't come true. It's going to be fifty years or more before things get really bad. That's the point about global warming. We need to reduce emissions now to avoid a disaster in the future.
Again, you're somehow confusing what the scientists are saying with what the politicians are doing. The science is in -- global warming is happening due to human activities. You may be right to argue that what is being proposed to combat global warming may have short-term economic consequences, but that doesn't mean that global warming is all made up for the purpose of destroying capitalism. That doesn't make any sense.
But the temperatures are warming. You can read the other posts that show the warming. But because some people somehow doubt the accuracy of the instruments, I point to the Arctic ice. How could it continue to melt at an increasing rate if it isn't getting warming?
But will not have less of something. We will use less of something, which is called efficiency.
You're confusing the science of global warming with the policies used to prevent it. If the politicians are against nuclear power, that's their fault. Don't turn to the scientists and say their research is bad because you don't agree with policies to prevent global warming.
Global hunger is not caused by not enough food. It's caused by the food not getting to people who are starving.
But, yes, there are some benefits to global warming. We are safe from an ice age for hundreds of years, unless there's an event that throws huge amounts of aerosols into the upper atmosphere, such as huge volcanic eruptions or a large asteroid or comet impact.
You're underestimating the costs of moving people. Even one strong hurricane that temporarily floods an urban area can cost billions of dollars. Now multiply that by all the coastal urban areas around the world. That's enough money to make the current financial bailout look like a drop in the bucket. It's not the amount we spend on a weekend stimulus package. If it were, it wouldn't worth all the effort to reduce emissions.
If the Earth hasn't warmed, why is the Arctic ice continuing to melt? Remember that ice sheets in Greenland are also melting, and the water pouring into the ocean will cause sea levels to rise. In addition, as sea water warms, it expands. This will cause sea level to rise by about a meter in this century. One meter sea level rise could flood many urban coastal areas. Other effects of climate change include droughts, which will lead to shortages of fresh water and food, particularly in developing countries.
Yes, the sun is making it hotter. But the increased carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is having a larger increase. There is a consensus among scientists that there's a 90% probability most of the global warming over the past fifty years has been due to excess carbon dioxide due to humans burning fossil fuels and forests. Increase in solar output is thought to account for about 30% of the warming.
So explain exactly how this hoax will destroy capitalism. From what I can see, reducing carbon dioxide emissions will help us stretch out our diminishing fossil fuels and allow us to transition easily to alternative energy sources as fossil fuels run out, thus saving world economies.
There isn't necessarily an ideal temperature. But if temperatures increase, sea levels rise. If sea levels rise, people who live on the coasts will have to move. The cost of moving those millions of people will be billions of dollars. So warming in this case is bad, but only because of the millions of people living on sea coasts.
Yes, the other variable is the ever-changing weather. Global warming is a long-term trend in addition to the continuing short-term warming and cooling trends. Winters are cold. Summers are warm. El Nino and La Nina cause temperature variations also. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the only cause of changing temperatures, and no one ever said it was.
Slashdot Mirror
His Writing Efficient Programs is out of print, but in my opinion it's at least as good as Programming Pearls. Here's an edited version of Bentley's rules from the appendix of the book.
The problem with your approach is that users get so many warning dialogs they get used to clicking through quickly, and therefore miss the important warnings for when a cert changes. You need to save warning messages for truly important events, so the user does not become desensitized to them.
Well, there's CAcert, but they are not listed as a trusted CA in any browser. StartSSL, which is a commercial company, issues certificates for free and they are trusted by Mozilla browsers currently. But as far as I know, if you want a cert that's trusted by default in all modern browsers, you'll need to pay a few bucks.
Because you need to add only one CA instead of many self-signed certs?
Microsoft maintains the list for IE. Mozilla maintains the list for Firefox. And so on. Use a browser from a company you can trust, or you may just regret it one day.
Telling them to do a better job now does no good if they've been issuing valid certificates to bad guys already. If they were not doing the proper validation of individuals who were requesting certificates, we need to consider all certificates issued by that CA to be untrusted.
A few months ago, I got a certificate signed by a CA that is trusted by essentially all browsers. The cost was $15 per year. They even bothered to check that I had access to the admin's account on the server I was requesting the cert for. How is $15 per year too expensive for a small site or special project?
I suppose it would be possible to get the username and password of someone who has write access to the source code repository. On the other hand, it's open source, so many would notice the backdoors being put into the source code. If any builds were created that had the backdoors, they would be quickly deleted.
In the perfect attack, the certificate is issued by a trusted certificate authority, so no warning is shown. It truly is a perfect MITM attack. We do know exactly who is issuing certificates without verifying the identify of the individuals requesting them. It's time for browser makers to remove some trusted CAs from their lists so users can be secure.
The reason for the "RESOLVED INVALID" is that the bug reporter thought they were reporting a bug in Firefox causing all those annoying SSL popups. What was actually happening was that the user was being attacked with a man-in-the-middle attack. Therefore, this shows how Firefox protects you from the attack. As annoying as those dialogs may be, they are necessary to warn the user of a potential attack.
I'm not sure what additional evidence you want. The only way we could possibly provide more evidence is to have a duplicate Earth in orbit and put a different amount of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, thereby running a controlled experiment. The data that the Earth is warming is very clear. Let's say that you're skeptical about the accuracy of the temperature measurements. I can understand that. But if temperatures are not rising, why would the Arctic ice be melting? It doesn't make any sense, does it?
No, the public will not be poorer at the end. The whole point of doing something about global warming now is to prevent and economic disaster in the future. If combating global warming were going to make people poorer, there wouldn't be so much effort behind reducing carbon dioxide emissions. There is debate about how much money we should spend on reducing emissions because there is disagreement about the discount rate to apply to the suffering of future generations. But as far as I know, all economists agree that it makes sense to spend some amount of money now to prevent global warming. The only disagreement is how much we should spend now to alleviate the problems of future generations. Saying we're going to be poorer at the end is ridiculous.
Because on ten-year scales El Nino and La Nina can make it look like temperatures are steady or dropping. There's also an eleven-year cycle of solar output. Over a period of twenty years or more, it would be very unlikely to see a cooling trend if there's a long-term warming trend of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, which is what we've seen over the last 25 years.
You're confused because 1998 was an unusually warm year. The globe is still warming. You can read this article that explains in more detail. Of course, it would have been the news century of the story if global warming was over. Wouldn't we have all heard it already?
Yes, of course, there will always be hurricanes, storms, and droughts. Yes, they will get worse with global warming. Do you have evidence that they are not getting worse? It's pretty hard to tell so far, because we have just recently been able to see the first of these effects. Let's wait thirty years or so before we can conclusively say that the predictions are wrong. I guess people were expecting some kind of Hollywood disaster right around the corner, and when it didn't happen immediately, people thought the predictions didn't come true. It's going to be fifty years or more before things get really bad. That's the point about global warming. We need to reduce emissions now to avoid a disaster in the future.
Again, you're somehow confusing what the scientists are saying with what the politicians are doing. The science is in -- global warming is happening due to human activities. You may be right to argue that what is being proposed to combat global warming may have short-term economic consequences, but that doesn't mean that global warming is all made up for the purpose of destroying capitalism. That doesn't make any sense.
But the temperatures are warming. You can read the other posts that show the warming. But because some people somehow doubt the accuracy of the instruments, I point to the Arctic ice. How could it continue to melt at an increasing rate if it isn't getting warming?
But will not have less of something. We will use less of something, which is called efficiency.
You're confusing the science of global warming with the policies used to prevent it. If the politicians are against nuclear power, that's their fault. Don't turn to the scientists and say their research is bad because you don't agree with policies to prevent global warming.
Global hunger is not caused by not enough food. It's caused by the food not getting to people who are starving.
But, yes, there are some benefits to global warming. We are safe from an ice age for hundreds of years, unless there's an event that throws huge amounts of aerosols into the upper atmosphere, such as huge volcanic eruptions or a large asteroid or comet impact.
You're underestimating the costs of moving people. Even one strong hurricane that temporarily floods an urban area can cost billions of dollars. Now multiply that by all the coastal urban areas around the world. That's enough money to make the current financial bailout look like a drop in the bucket. It's not the amount we spend on a weekend stimulus package. If it were, it wouldn't worth all the effort to reduce emissions.
I would expect to see at least twenty years of cooling before I would conclude there's a new long-term trend.
If the Earth hasn't warmed, why is the Arctic ice continuing to melt? Remember that ice sheets in Greenland are also melting, and the water pouring into the ocean will cause sea levels to rise. In addition, as sea water warms, it expands. This will cause sea level to rise by about a meter in this century. One meter sea level rise could flood many urban coastal areas. Other effects of climate change include droughts, which will lead to shortages of fresh water and food, particularly in developing countries.
Yes, the sun is making it hotter. But the increased carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is having a larger increase. There is a consensus among scientists that there's a 90% probability most of the global warming over the past fifty years has been due to excess carbon dioxide due to humans burning fossil fuels and forests. Increase in solar output is thought to account for about 30% of the warming.
So explain exactly how this hoax will destroy capitalism. From what I can see, reducing carbon dioxide emissions will help us stretch out our diminishing fossil fuels and allow us to transition easily to alternative energy sources as fossil fuels run out, thus saving world economies.
There isn't necessarily an ideal temperature. But if temperatures increase, sea levels rise. If sea levels rise, people who live on the coasts will have to move. The cost of moving those millions of people will be billions of dollars. So warming in this case is bad, but only because of the millions of people living on sea coasts.
Yes, the other variable is the ever-changing weather. Global warming is a long-term trend in addition to the continuing short-term warming and cooling trends. Winters are cold. Summers are warm. El Nino and La Nina cause temperature variations also. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the only cause of changing temperatures, and no one ever said it was.