There are several independents in the middle of the Supreme Court who can swing either way.
They cannot properly be very well aligned with either party in my oppinion. That is, their oppinions do not necessarily align with those of whichever political party they might belong to, if any.
They don't all always let their political leanings affect their judgement, anyhow. There's an ideal (which is certainly not always adhered to) which says that they are not supposed to consider their own personal feelings or political beliefs, but only that which is considered to be proper jurisprudence....
Expanding on the above (and noting that IANAL, I just took a class on the Supreme Court here at the university)
The Supreme Court is a court of limited appelate jurisdiction* so cases rarely start there and thus they generally hear appeals from other courts. The "limited" part means that they decide if they want to hear any case. They are only obligated to hear cases over which they have original jurisdiction (which is defined in the Constitution, and which is narrow enough that it almost never happens).
To be considered by the court, four of the nine justices must decide that they want to hear the case. There are several reasons why a judge may want to hear (or why they may NOT want to hear) any given case. I forget the exact statistics, but they only hear something like one in one hundred cases. I remember some figure of less than 10,000 cases being appealed to them and a figure of something on the order of 100 actually being heard by them. They can rule either by just reading all the material supplied by both sides and then ruling on it, or they may do the rulings after having oral arguements from both sides. In oral arguements, they ask lots of hard questions and can interject or go on a rant at any time whatsoever. The Chief Justice (currently Rhenquest) is charged with keeping them on task (some of them have a habit of just talking to each other during the arguements, others are more engaged...) The judges aren't very constrained, but the lawyers for both sides are very much on their toes. God help you if you don't have a ready answer; they're not there just to have you restate what you said in all your briefs...
Sometimes, the justices want to hear a case to affirm some precident. This isn't all that common--there just usually isn't any reason to hear something just to affirm it (though this does happen for various reasons). Statistically (and this is part of what my university course was on!), they intend to reverse or vacate any case they hear. When they reverse it, they decide in favor of the person who lost the last round in the court system. When they vacate a ruling, they send it back to the previous judge with instructions about what that judge should not have done. Usually, it doesn't direct the judge to come to any particular conclusion, but it tells the judge how they may or may not arrive at their conclusions (e.g. directing them to ignore/take into account certain evidence, etc.).
There are also reasons why they may not want to hear any given case. Perhaps some justice is afraid that "their side" will "lose" and set a bad precident.
When I say "their side" I should qualify that. If you do the statistics (as my prof did both in class and in the book he wrote, which was a class text), some justices tend to agree with each other more often than the others, whereas others are nearly polar opposites (agreeing in only something like 20% of the cases). Dividing the Supreme Court into "liberal" and "conservative" will get you a fair correlation, but it doesn't really represent a sharp distinction concerning their judgements. The justices certainly have their own political views, but they're not slaves to them and everything depends on the respective merits of the case--you can't just sit back and figure that the five of nine "conservative" justices will win you your case. There are several "swing" justices, in any event, who will muck up any predictions you try to make about any particular case. The statistics just aren't the whole story.
So this is a wild tangent, I know, but if you're wondering, this should have given you a better insight into how the Supreme Court makes decisions. I know that it comprises much of what I learned in that class...
* The Supreme Court has very limited original jurisdiction--usually only over things like treaties the US has signed. Original jurisdiction means that they get to hear a case before and instead of any other court, by the way. Generally, they get cases ap
This is not an exploit, unless having the EIP register contain 0x44332211 does something more than just cause a crash. Now yes, that bitmap could be modified so that it's all NOPs followed by an actual exploit, but the one posted does no such thing.
True--I'm not going anywhere near that code, however interesting it might be to read.
Once upon a time, one line of one answer of mine was worded oddly and someone else said almost the same thing. I couldn't prove I was innocent. I suffered.
There's no way in hell I would so much as allude to the possibility that I might peek at that code. I never want to touch that damn code.
Besides, my ISP disconnects me regularly, and I couldn't download fast enough to ever get the whole thing.
It's printed on the paper. Only the special ink makes it work.
Try a photocopier?
Unless they all get programed to do what they do for currency to prevent us from copying such documents. (E.G. time to stock up on good copying machines?)
We found the last one put into an open source codebase in what? Less than one day?
Assumptions are meaningless. I can only attest to what I've seen in practice. Unless our coders, working for free, are better than the ones Microsoft can hire with all that cash, what exactly would you attribute the difference to?
If you ever plan to write anything open source, I suggest you never look at it. I never will. Why? If your code bears any similarity to theirs, it might be construed as though you'd copied something from them.
It's probably illegal anyhow, in any country that has signed the Berne convention (e.g. almost everywhere), to even possess a copy. Yes, yes. I know. Win32 API stuff doesn't look much like Linux code, etc. etc. But what if Microsoft pulled a SCO? That may sound paranoid, and it probably is, but all you have to do to avoid that risk is nothing. That's a rather small price to avoid a large risk.
I know that I once had one sentence, out of a rather long assignment that, for whatever reason, was worded a bit oddly. Someone else managed to say almost (not quite) the same thing. I couldn't prove that I hadn't copied anything. I suffered for it.
You don't have to suffer. Don't do it. Don't look.
Well, they purport to have contractual rights to the derivative works. According to some of the posters on Groklaw, anyone who relied on the statements made in AT&T's $echo publication could say that SCO is barred as AT&T's successor in interest from asserting rights over the derivative works.
Moreover, according to the case law I've seen presented on Groklaw, it looks like SCO's theory of derivative works is unreasonable, to say the least.
Mind you, I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, etc. but this new evidence from Novell is pretty well nailing down any last avenues of escape SCO might have hoped to have.
Honestly, SCO is totally screwed with respect to the lawsuits right now... I'm just wondering if they still have anything else up their sleeves? It's been rather apparent that they were screwed or going to be screwed for some time now, so they might have made contingency plans which may or may not need to be delt with... (e.g. what happens if they suddenly assign all their rights to another company or something?)
Don't get me wrong, linking them to that term so that they show up on certain Google searches is rather immature.
However, it represents only a 1st Ammendment protected oppinion, and poses no harm nor threat to SCO in any way.
In short, yes, it looks bad and should probably be avoided simply because of the impression certain people in the media try to give of us [1], but it is still a valid form of protest.
We can't all picket SCO's offices [2].
[1] Especially Daniel Lyons of Forbes, who I have recently chastized here for quoting random trolls and jokes as sources for his "story"... see my posting history. I strongly suggest you not turn to Forbes for financial advice if this is the extent of their "research"...
[2] Incidentally, as you can read from some rather old Groklaw.com stories, SCO made false signs to mingle with those of the protesters and to malign them, saying something to the effect of 'we support communism'. So any further actions by them would not be the first time they had used an agent provacateur to malign their opponents...
1) This is old. I remember searching for things like '"index +of" vti' and other such things (try it and modify that search if you like, but it was interesting to find out just what sort of interesting tidbits one might find in such a folder).
2) This is an article from MSN. This information was available long before Google, but it is, at the very least, curious to see this sort of article from Microsoft when they have been going to the press lately about how Microsoft intends to develop their own search technology...
Well, the thing about Mozilla jestures (from Optimoz) is that they don't care about the shape per se, but that you've gone far enough in a certain direction. E.G. to close a window, it's right-left-right. Provided I go more than a certain number of pixels in the direction (which you can set), you only have to do the RLR thing. I don't remember any of the default gestures, at least, using anything diagonal. So you have to think in those terms rather than in terms of "shapes." Also, it shows you the current gesture in the status bar, so you can see what you've got so far while practicing.
As for tabbed windows, hold down control when you click the link, or middle-click on the links. I have a 3rd/scroll button & I always use that. All of these options are fairly configurable, too.
I thought that the Google toolbar was IE only (?) but I only use it when I have to (e.g. at work). Mozilla does allow you to do Google searches from the address bar, however, if that's what you mean (I love that feature!)
You might try mozdev.org for more add-on features. I seem to remember several related to multi-tab bookmarks & saving state or somesuch. They may not be working 100% just yet, however, I do not know.
I didn't claim Disney was a monopoly - or Microsoft, for that matter. -----
Only the remedy in the Microsoft anti-trust trial was vacated. They're still a monopoly.
Anyhow, I still wonder with the story refers to conspiracy theories? What conspiracy? Don't we all realize that Disney intends to use the DRM they're buying? No, I don't particularly like that, but I don't exactly watch a lot of things produced by Disney, either...
They intend to go after some easy prey first, I'd imagine. Mind you, I use "easy" in the sense of "more likely to settle than risk fighting it out."
Personally, I wish there were more defenses against "IP vampires" like this (feel free to use that term I just coined). Companies used to use huge patent portfolios to cover themselves, because they could always settle by filing counter-claims and then settle with cross-licensing agreements. These vampires, being essentially dead (no actual products, thus leaving no way for them to have infringed), leave nothing to attack. Even people like us have nothing to boycott--these places produce nothing but lawsuits.
It would make a good study for a game theorist. Usually the way to defeat such strategies is somehow to announce that you intend to fight anyone who tries this. That doesn't stop them from "swarming" all over a company which has been weakened by market forces, however. The vampires, being predators, go after the weak and injured first...
I fear that the grandparent of this is suffering from being called a troll when it is a bit more apt than that... I do seem to remember some outsourcing articles from Forbes, though I could understand those better than the Linux ones.
But yes, Forbes does target those doing the layoffs and I dare say the ought to take their own advice--I can name at least one "reporter" they could do without...
They site a bit of case law that claims that, according to those (bad) cases, they could actually enforce those terms. Maybe.
Of course, IANAL, and judges only decide "cases and controversies" (they can't just up & declare something to be thus unless it's part of deciding a case under litigation), so I don't know just what I personally could do.
This entire suit might make more sense if you realize that it is based on revenge. Yes, money is a factor (they have to cover their respective behinds!) but they have long been mad at IBM over that Monteray project...
Looking at it that way, some of their actions make a bit more sense. Well, as much sense as can be expected from a company like SCO, at least...
Sorry--one minor correction. When I say "IBM has donated to them" I am referring to iBiblio, not Groklaw. IBM, to the best of my knowledge, has never directly funded Groklaw.
Unlike certain other companies, IBM respects judicial ethics about discussing a case pending litigation...
Indeed, another person mentioned that Groklaw was citied in IBM's legal filings. You might also be interested in this:
OSRM has simultaneously retained me, part-time, to work on their indemnification project as their Director of Litigation Risk Research. Not only that but they are donating a certain portion of my time to Groklaw, which will free me from having to do so much nonrelated paralegal work and be free to really focus for the next year on this project. I am very excited about the project and I hope we'll have fun too. Groklaw will continue, meanwhile, as it is, and it remains noncommercial and my personal baby. Well, more accurately, ours, because Groklaw wouldn't be much without you.
I should also mention that Groklaw, which was originally a completely separate site, has long been hosted by iBiblio. IBM has donated to them.
That fact, of which no one who knows anything is particularly surprised, is what Daniel Lyons of Forbes added to some random blog posts and turned into a conspiracy article. Barring them firing Mr. Lyons for it, this has sealed my oppinion that their "research" consists primarily of press releases with little or no actual independent research and minimal, if any, editorial oversight.
In other words, I wouldn't trust their advice for managing a child's lemonade stand, much less my finances.
You say that in jest, but Daniel Lyons of Forbes has been known to quote random people from blogs as sources for his stories.
Honestly, were I his editor, I would have fired him after that. Investigative journalism it was not. This gives me very serious misgivings about trusting anything Forbes says, because I cannot imagine how that story could have slipped past even the most minimal editorial review...
It seemed rather apropos, yet disturbing, that that article was meant to be an attack on the credibility of Groklaw, after PJ of Groklaw chided him for accepting SCO's statements without any apparent research, as he had not done even the most minimal fact-checking.
I would be willing to bet that he is glad that I am not his boss... To anyone from Forbes reading this: I value research more than oppinion. And yes, I do mention your failures to anyone I know who might even think of subscribing.
Worst reporter ever. (Maybe seeing his face on Google image search for that would make his day?)
This has been done before (many times, many ways...). Some of this has been said already, but basically, it boils down to a few points:
1) It is not a thorough test of security. People miss things, they take the easiest routes, ignoring more difficult but viable attacks, etc.
2) This is the part that most security people hate: it is often used as a replacement for a real security audit. The script kiddies don't really hold a candle to some of the folks whose time is too valuable to waste on someone's PR stunt. Such folks should be hired directly.
Now then, I checked the article, but I didn't see any mention of real audits of the system. I hope they're not just banking on the NSA name in building it. Yes, the NSA puts out good code, but it doesn't take that much to screw things up... sure it allows fine-grained policies, but you also have to configure and customize those policies to something sensible. If you do it wrong, you either end up with vulnerabilities, or things that don't work right. Neither alternative is good.
So, ummm, wake me up when RedHat talks about who they hired to do a security audits before making their first release version? This is marketing fluff; not something I'd base purchasing decisions on...
Slashdot Mirror
There are several independents in the middle of the Supreme Court who can swing either way.
They cannot properly be very well aligned with either party in my oppinion. That is, their oppinions do not necessarily align with those of whichever political party they might belong to, if any.
They don't all always let their political leanings affect their judgement, anyhow. There's an ideal (which is certainly not always adhered to) which says that they are not supposed to consider their own personal feelings or political beliefs, but only that which is considered to be proper jurisprudence....
Expanding on the above (and noting that IANAL, I just took a class on the Supreme Court here at the university)
The Supreme Court is a court of limited appelate jurisdiction* so cases rarely start there and thus they generally hear appeals from other courts. The "limited" part means that they decide if they want to hear any case. They are only obligated to hear cases over which they have original jurisdiction (which is defined in the Constitution, and which is narrow enough that it almost never happens).
To be considered by the court, four of the nine justices must decide that they want to hear the case. There are several reasons why a judge may want to hear (or why they may NOT want to hear) any given case. I forget the exact statistics, but they only hear something like one in one hundred cases. I remember some figure of less than 10,000 cases being appealed to them and a figure of something on the order of 100 actually being heard by them. They can rule either by just reading all the material supplied by both sides and then ruling on it, or they may do the rulings after having oral arguements from both sides. In oral arguements, they ask lots of hard questions and can interject or go on a rant at any time whatsoever. The Chief Justice (currently Rhenquest) is charged with keeping them on task (some of them have a habit of just talking to each other during the arguements, others are more engaged...) The judges aren't very constrained, but the lawyers for both sides are very much on their toes. God help you if you don't have a ready answer; they're not there just to have you restate what you said in all your briefs...
Sometimes, the justices want to hear a case to affirm some precident. This isn't all that common--there just usually isn't any reason to hear something just to affirm it (though this does happen for various reasons). Statistically (and this is part of what my university course was on!), they intend to reverse or vacate any case they hear. When they reverse it, they decide in favor of the person who lost the last round in the court system. When they vacate a ruling, they send it back to the previous judge with instructions about what that judge should not have done. Usually, it doesn't direct the judge to come to any particular conclusion, but it tells the judge how they may or may not arrive at their conclusions (e.g. directing them to ignore/take into account certain evidence, etc.).
There are also reasons why they may not want to hear any given case. Perhaps some justice is afraid that "their side" will "lose" and set a bad precident.
When I say "their side" I should qualify that. If you do the statistics (as my prof did both in class and in the book he wrote, which was a class text), some justices tend to agree with each other more often than the others, whereas others are nearly polar opposites (agreeing in only something like 20% of the cases). Dividing the Supreme Court into "liberal" and "conservative" will get you a fair correlation, but it doesn't really represent a sharp distinction concerning their judgements. The justices certainly have their own political views, but they're not slaves to them and everything depends on the respective merits of the case--you can't just sit back and figure that the five of nine "conservative" justices will win you your case. There are several "swing" justices, in any event, who will muck up any predictions you try to make about any particular case. The statistics just aren't the whole story.
So this is a wild tangent, I know, but if you're wondering, this should have given you a better insight into how the Supreme Court makes decisions. I know that it comprises much of what I learned in that class...
* The Supreme Court has very limited original jurisdiction--usually only over things like treaties the US has signed. Original jurisdiction means that they get to hear a case before and instead of any other court, by the way. Generally, they get cases ap
This is not an exploit, unless having the EIP register contain 0x44332211 does something more than just cause a crash. Now yes, that bitmap could be modified so that it's all NOPs followed by an actual exploit, but the one posted does no such thing.
Did you RTFA?
True--I'm not going anywhere near that code, however interesting it might be to read.
Once upon a time, one line of one answer of mine was worded oddly and someone else said almost the same thing. I couldn't prove I was innocent. I suffered.
There's no way in hell I would so much as allude to the possibility that I might peek at that code. I never want to touch that damn code.
Besides, my ISP disconnects me regularly, and I couldn't download fast enough to ever get the whole thing.
Hate to reply to myself, but here's a funny little site I found on it:
:] I still remember that...
http://www.flyingomelette.com/oddities.html
The "END DAY" screenshot is at the end, plus it has two other classic plots for you to laugh at
I remember playing it on "THE END DAY" just because of that. (Oct 1, 1997, of course) :]
:]
But yeah, it had one of the best plots ever. Almost as fun as Earthbound...
It's printed on the paper. Only the special ink makes it work.
Try a photocopier?
Unless they all get programed to do what they do for currency to prevent us from copying such documents. (E.G. time to stock up on good copying machines?)
The real world has software bugs!?
;]
You been experiencing a few too many glitches in the Matrix lately, or something?
How would that explain the !seineewerasreenigneepacsten backdoor? I seem to remember IIS having that for about four years.
We found the last one put into an open source codebase in what? Less than one day?
Assumptions are meaningless. I can only attest to what I've seen in practice. Unless our coders, working for free, are better than the ones Microsoft can hire with all that cash, what exactly would you attribute the difference to?
If you ever plan to write anything open source, I suggest you never look at it. I never will. Why? If your code bears any similarity to theirs, it might be construed as though you'd copied something from them.
It's probably illegal anyhow, in any country that has signed the Berne convention (e.g. almost everywhere), to even possess a copy. Yes, yes. I know. Win32 API stuff doesn't look much like Linux code, etc. etc. But what if Microsoft pulled a SCO? That may sound paranoid, and it probably is, but all you have to do to avoid that risk is nothing. That's a rather small price to avoid a large risk.
I know that I once had one sentence, out of a rather long assignment that, for whatever reason, was worded a bit oddly. Someone else managed to say almost (not quite) the same thing. I couldn't prove that I hadn't copied anything. I suffered for it.
You don't have to suffer. Don't do it. Don't look.
Well, they purport to have contractual rights to the derivative works. According to some of the posters on Groklaw, anyone who relied on the statements made in AT&T's $echo publication could say that SCO is barred as AT&T's successor in interest from asserting rights over the derivative works.
Moreover, according to the case law I've seen presented on Groklaw, it looks like SCO's theory of derivative works is unreasonable, to say the least.
Mind you, I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, etc. but this new evidence from Novell is pretty well nailing down any last avenues of escape SCO might have hoped to have.
Honestly, SCO is totally screwed with respect to the lawsuits right now... I'm just wondering if they still have anything else up their sleeves? It's been rather apparent that they were screwed or going to be screwed for some time now, so they might have made contingency plans which may or may not need to be delt with... (e.g. what happens if they suddenly assign all their rights to another company or something?)
Don't get me wrong, linking them to that term so that they show up on certain Google searches is rather immature.
... see my posting history. I strongly suggest you not turn to Forbes for financial advice if this is the extent of their "research" ...
However, it represents only a 1st Ammendment protected oppinion, and poses no harm nor threat to SCO in any way.
In short, yes, it looks bad and should probably be avoided simply because of the impression certain people in the media try to give of us [1], but it is still a valid form of protest.
We can't all picket SCO's offices [2].
[1] Especially Daniel Lyons of Forbes, who I have recently chastized here for quoting random trolls and jokes as sources for his "story"
[2] Incidentally, as you can read from some rather old Groklaw.com stories, SCO made false signs to mingle with those of the protesters and to malign them, saying something to the effect of 'we support communism'. So any further actions by them would not be the first time they had used an agent provacateur to malign their opponents...
1) This is old. I remember searching for things like '"index +of" vti' and other such things (try it and modify that search if you like, but it was interesting to find out just what sort of interesting tidbits one might find in such a folder).
2) This is an article from MSN. This information was available long before Google, but it is, at the very least, curious to see this sort of article from Microsoft when they have been going to the press lately about how Microsoft intends to develop their own search technology...
Well, the thing about Mozilla jestures (from Optimoz) is that they don't care about the shape per se, but that you've gone far enough in a certain direction. E.G. to close a window, it's right-left-right. Provided I go more than a certain number of pixels in the direction (which you can set), you only have to do the RLR thing. I don't remember any of the default gestures, at least, using anything diagonal. So you have to think in those terms rather than in terms of "shapes." Also, it shows you the current gesture in the status bar, so you can see what you've got so far while practicing.
As for tabbed windows, hold down control when you click the link, or middle-click on the links. I have a 3rd/scroll button & I always use that. All of these options are fairly configurable, too.
I thought that the Google toolbar was IE only (?) but I only use it when I have to (e.g. at work). Mozilla does allow you to do Google searches from the address bar, however, if that's what you mean (I love that feature!)
You might try mozdev.org for more add-on features. I seem to remember several related to multi-tab bookmarks & saving state or somesuch. They may not be working 100% just yet, however, I do not know.
Hope that helped.
I didn't claim Disney was a monopoly - or Microsoft, for that matter.
-----
Only the remedy in the Microsoft anti-trust trial was vacated. They're still a monopoly.
Anyhow, I still wonder with the story refers to conspiracy theories? What conspiracy? Don't we all realize that Disney intends to use the DRM they're buying? No, I don't particularly like that, but I don't exactly watch a lot of things produced by Disney, either...
The last worm that tried to fix a hole was buggy and caused more damage than the original.
Apparently, these folks don't realize that the traffic from spreading the worm is a large portion of the damage caused.
Perhaps they should read some of the literature that's rather widely available?
Sort of.
They intend to go after some easy prey first, I'd imagine. Mind you, I use "easy" in the sense of "more likely to settle than risk fighting it out."
Personally, I wish there were more defenses against "IP vampires" like this (feel free to use that term I just coined). Companies used to use huge patent portfolios to cover themselves, because they could always settle by filing counter-claims and then settle with cross-licensing agreements. These vampires, being essentially dead (no actual products, thus leaving no way for them to have infringed), leave nothing to attack. Even people like us have nothing to boycott--these places produce nothing but lawsuits.
It would make a good study for a game theorist. Usually the way to defeat such strategies is somehow to announce that you intend to fight anyone who tries this. That doesn't stop them from "swarming" all over a company which has been weakened by market forces, however. The vampires, being predators, go after the weak and injured first...
Entirely too true.
I fear that the grandparent of this is suffering from being called a troll when it is a bit more apt than that... I do seem to remember some outsourcing articles from Forbes, though I could understand those better than the Linux ones.
But yes, Forbes does target those doing the layoffs and I dare say the ought to take their own advice--I can name at least one "reporter" they could do without...
Indeed.
They site a bit of case law that claims that, according to those (bad) cases, they could actually enforce those terms. Maybe.
Of course, IANAL, and judges only decide "cases and controversies" (they can't just up & declare something to be thus unless it's part of deciding a case under litigation), so I don't know just what I personally could do.
Maybe they're hoping to take this to court?
No, they're just saying that the RIAA lawyers are more likely to be slimeballs than porn site operators.
Before, I'd have expected them to be about on par, but this article does make a rather convincing arguement...
Yes, they are sore. Very sore.
This entire suit might make more sense if you realize that it is based on revenge. Yes, money is a factor (they have to cover their respective behinds!) but they have long been mad at IBM over that Monteray project...
Looking at it that way, some of their actions make a bit more sense. Well, as much sense as can be expected from a company like SCO, at least...
Sorry--one minor correction. When I say "IBM has donated to them" I am referring to iBiblio, not Groklaw. IBM, to the best of my knowledge, has never directly funded Groklaw.
Unlike certain other companies, IBM respects judicial ethics about discussing a case pending litigation...
Indeed, another person mentioned that Groklaw was citied in IBM's legal filings. You might also be interested in this:
OSRM has simultaneously retained me, part-time, to work on their indemnification project as their Director of Litigation Risk Research. Not only that but they are donating a certain portion of my time to Groklaw, which will free me from having to do so much nonrelated paralegal work and be free to really focus for the next year on this project. I am very excited about the project and I hope we'll have fun too. Groklaw will continue, meanwhile, as it is, and it remains noncommercial and my personal baby. Well, more accurately, ours, because Groklaw wouldn't be much without you.
Which is from this Groklaw article.
I should also mention that Groklaw, which was originally a completely separate site, has long been hosted by iBiblio. IBM has donated to them.
That fact, of which no one who knows anything is particularly surprised, is what Daniel Lyons of Forbes added to some random blog posts and turned into a conspiracy article. Barring them firing Mr. Lyons for it, this has sealed my oppinion that their "research" consists primarily of press releases with little or no actual independent research and minimal, if any, editorial oversight.
In other words, I wouldn't trust their advice for managing a child's lemonade stand, much less my finances.
You say that in jest, but Daniel Lyons of Forbes has been known to quote random people from blogs as sources for his stories.
Honestly, were I his editor, I would have fired him after that. Investigative journalism it was not. This gives me very serious misgivings about trusting anything Forbes says, because I cannot imagine how that story could have slipped past even the most minimal editorial review...
It seemed rather apropos, yet disturbing, that that article was meant to be an attack on the credibility of Groklaw, after PJ of Groklaw chided him for accepting SCO's statements without any apparent research, as he had not done even the most minimal fact-checking.
I would be willing to bet that he is glad that I am not his boss... To anyone from Forbes reading this: I value research more than oppinion. And yes, I do mention your failures to anyone I know who might even think of subscribing.
Worst reporter ever. (Maybe seeing his face on Google image search for that would make his day?)
This has been done before (many times, many ways...). Some of this has been said already, but basically, it boils down to a few points:
1) It is not a thorough test of security. People miss things, they take the easiest routes, ignoring more difficult but viable attacks, etc.
2) This is the part that most security people hate: it is often used as a replacement for a real security audit. The script kiddies don't really hold a candle to some of the folks whose time is too valuable to waste on someone's PR stunt. Such folks should be hired directly.
Now then, I checked the article, but I didn't see any mention of real audits of the system. I hope they're not just banking on the NSA name in building it. Yes, the NSA puts out good code, but it doesn't take that much to screw things up... sure it allows fine-grained policies, but you also have to configure and customize those policies to something sensible. If you do it wrong, you either end up with vulnerabilities, or things that don't work right. Neither alternative is good.
So, ummm, wake me up when RedHat talks about who they hired to do a security audits before making their first release version? This is marketing fluff; not something I'd base purchasing decisions on...