Is relying on one vendor even that bad of an idea? The really bad idea is relying on computers for national security.
Think of the locks that are used for locking the doors of government buildings. Are they all from one vendor? What happens when it is discovered that locks form that vendor are more vulnerable to being kicked in? I don't imagine a bunch of engineers get together to design better locks in their spare time, however there is the chance that might happen if the most popular lock company was constantly making locks that were more vulnerable than neccessary.
However there is still a key difference between locks and computer security that must be considered: location. A locked building in Washington, DC isn't going to be compromised by someone in China. Anything that is so important that obtaining it can be considered compromising national security should not be stored on a computer accessible to the internet.
The government should realise this (they probably do) because this isn't the first time this has been an issue. Long distance communications during wars before the internet used various means of encryption to keep national secrets secure. Why can't they do the same for electronic communications? Create the electronic message on a machine that isn't connected to the internet, encrypt it, and burn it to a CD. Either mail the CD or send it using a computer connected to the internet. Then destroy the CD.
The government likely knows this and almost certainly has national secrets under more heavy protection than a sneakernet. When they complain about insecurity, whether it be from terrorists flying planes or chinese youths, what they really want is money and laws. They're not actually so clueless as to leave valuable lying around, but it's useful to let citizens think they do.
Microsoft doesn't bet millions. They might as well give an idea a few hundred million in case it pans out. If they lose, oh well, it's still a fraction of the billion they have lying around.
They might blow a few million trying to take out Google, you know, why not? What else are they going to do with it, buy Madagascar?
Being a Canadian I do get a special warm fuzzy feeling when people from other countries talk about my country like its some kind of snow covered paradise. Sure, I take pride in that. And I'm definitely one to slag some of the more stupid things that happen in the US. But let's not get crazy.
I'm currently paying about 33% in income tax. Think about that. For convenience, let's say you're making 30k CAN. That's about 20k US. My American friends pay about 10% in income tax, so when a Canadian is taking home 20k CAN after tax and an american is taking home 27k CAN. If I was making an extra 7k a year I could pirate a lot less music. 7k a year should more than pay for insurance to give me medical coverage equivelent to what I get for "free" here in Canada. It should also cover the music I'm allowed to pirate here in Canada.
This is getting into dangerous high-level political idealogy debate area but I'd personally be willing to give up a bit of the benefits I get from being Canadian for a bit more control over where my money is spent.
As soon as we let the browsers implement Flash instead of plug-in makers we'll see incompatibilities and proprietary extensions. Development will slow to a useless crawl as the future of Flash is designed by committees. Want streaming audio in Flash? Wait until IE 8.
Let Macromedia handle it, because Flash doesn't need a blink tag.
Seems impressive that such a severe exploit has been in popular operating systems for many years - when was NT 4 released? 97? - yet never taken advantage of until... well, shortly. As much as I hate to admit it, seems to prove the point that proprietary code is more secure. If people don't know a flaw exists they don't exploit it.
If linux had 90+% of the desktop how long would it take for its remote exploits to be taken advantage of?
Err, rather, I mean this is the 1337th post in this article. We haven't had that many since what, the Sept 11th stories? Even if there has been some since then they're rare. I think that speaks about the amount of controversy the RIAA has stirred with their latest lawsuits.
Controversy is probably exactly what they want. It will scare people out of sharing music. If you have a 12 year old daughter that shares music I bet you're going to talk to her about it tonight:)
I dunno, think you could have fit more dahes in there. What about Pub-lic? E-Demo-cracy? a-nd? I mean Net-work isn't a real word so why con-fine your-self to the ru-les of pro-per english else-wh-ere? You haven't even be-gun to ex-plore all th-e poss-ibili-ties!
It'll be called the iBo. It won't be a dog, or a cat either, but an iguana. Or a bird. Probably be the first robotic pet that can fly, which is really impressive since it's made out of space grade aluminium.
Another thing to consider is that you're just a troll, stratjakt. Anything you say should be divided by a factor of idiocy and ignored.
Code generation is definitely something programmers of large/complex projects should look into. There's a lot of different forms of it, and I'd be surprised if people haven't used one form or another already.
Ya, I've done some code generation myself. I used a text editor and my brain. How does everyone else do it?
I thought about using my wang instead of my brain but he just types screenfulls of the V word.
Look at vehicles. Car makers have an even greater responsibility to make their product free of mistakes since every mistake could potentially cost lives. Yet cars are still recalled, tires still explode, and there are still lots of vehicles on the road that haven't had their known problems fixed. Just like computing.
The problem is that once anything becomes sufficiently complex it is impossible for human beings to find all the problems in a reasonable amount of time. It's worse for things such as operating systems, and arguably vehicles, that are under constant development. The testing/problem finding becomes slower than the rate of development so that the problems begin to outpace the problem solving. This is exactly what has happened to Windows.
There are many solutions that haven't really been used in software development but that will, I predict, become more important in the future. They are all basically a greater reliance on computers to find and stop problems. I'm not talking about a debugger, but more letting computers design more of the system itself. With unlimited patience and vast amounts of memory a computer can consider more uncommon possibilities and thus find more problems with unintended or obscure causes.
A specific solution to security problems on computers is simple: stop using development tools that can allow low-level access to the system. This means C. C is a big security problem and these bugs aren't going to go away until higher level languages become much more common. This is Java,.Net, Python, etc. When was the last time a Java application had a bug that let you delete critical system files? When was the last time a Python program had a buffer overflow exploit available?
Open source developers may be critical of the stuff Microsoft produces but that hasn't stopped them from developing their software with the exact same programming languages. Shouldn't it? Of course C won't be put to rest for a long time. And so major system flaws won't become uncommon for a long time either.
I don't mind paying a reasonable fee for some country to (part) belong to me, but I will defend with force if necessary against any claims that I belong to them.
Is that what you'll say next time there's a draft?
There is a significant difference between belonging to a country and belonging to another person.
You need to understand taxes better. You can't expect everything the government spends collected taxes on to benefit you. Your taxes are NOT some volume discount program for purchasing roads, schools, etc. They are your membership fees for belonging to the USA (or your country of residence).
If you don't like what your membership fees are being used for then get the hell out, go join some hippie commune in Iraq or something.
There isn't really such a thing as a Objective-C compiler. Objective C is parsed into regular C via macros and such. Just give this compiler the right macros and it'll do Objective-C just fine.
"User interface within Windows has been at acceptable to good levels since Windows 95. They aren't going to win any more of the desktop market by making it look fancier. Microsoft should instead be focusing completely on security, performance, interoperability, stability, and flexibility"
Microsoft has a lot of money, you understand that? They can afford to employ designers to work on UI while programmers work on security and such at the same time. It's not like they can tell the icon artist to start writing secure C++ so why not improve the UI? Until it's perfect they might as well improve it.
Also when you say, "They aren't going to win any more of the desktop," then later, "When the big kids talk about "stability", they mean that a server" you're talking about two different things: the desktop and the server. What's the problem?
Ya, I bet you use a lot of POS terminals to sell porn on the net. If you can't figure out how to install Linux then WTF are you doing reading slashdot?
Why don't you have time? Because time is money. If windows costs you $200 a machine and you have five machines that's $1000 you might save. If you make $50 an hour that's 20 hours to figure linux out without losing money, not too bad really.
When doing your own calculations be sure to add however much "time" you lost to this week's viruses.
The design - as in graphic design - community isn't going to switch to Linux anytime soon. The Mac still reigns supreme here. We can't siwtch to Linux because our tens of thousands of dollars worth of Mac fonts don't work in X. Our years of old Quark files won't open in Quark for PC under WINE.
The one subsection of graphic design that has a chance of gaining some Linux support is web design. Those kids are PC-dominated already so the switch isn't quite as bad for them.
But either way you won't find any serious designer using the gimp until the pallettes take up less screen real estate, the menus aren't where context-sensitive menus should be and the keyboard shortcuts are the same as Photoshop's.
You want me to scroll down? Bah! Next you'll tell me that I can use your fancy scrolling to access old Slashdot articles. As if. I'll use the scrollbar when I can use it without a mouse. Just like those freaking arrows on my keyboard! Where are they pointing?? I think they're supposed to indicate north, south, and whatnot but I don't remember which way it was pointing when I bought it!
Damn computers. Why don't they just give up already, like those damn communist Nazis?
Slashdot Mirror
Is relying on one vendor even that bad of an idea? The really bad idea is relying on computers for national security.
Think of the locks that are used for locking the doors of government buildings. Are they all from one vendor? What happens when it is discovered that locks form that vendor are more vulnerable to being kicked in? I don't imagine a bunch of engineers get together to design better locks in their spare time, however there is the chance that might happen if the most popular lock company was constantly making locks that were more vulnerable than neccessary.
However there is still a key difference between locks and computer security that must be considered: location. A locked building in Washington, DC isn't going to be compromised by someone in China. Anything that is so important that obtaining it can be considered compromising national security should not be stored on a computer accessible to the internet.
The government should realise this (they probably do) because this isn't the first time this has been an issue. Long distance communications during wars before the internet used various means of encryption to keep national secrets secure. Why can't they do the same for electronic communications? Create the electronic message on a machine that isn't connected to the internet, encrypt it, and burn it to a CD. Either mail the CD or send it using a computer connected to the internet. Then destroy the CD.
The government likely knows this and almost certainly has national secrets under more heavy protection than a sneakernet. When they complain about insecurity, whether it be from terrorists flying planes or chinese youths, what they really want is money and laws. They're not actually so clueless as to leave valuable lying around, but it's useful to let citizens think they do.
Microsoft doesn't bet millions. They might as well give an idea a few hundred million in case it pans out. If they lose, oh well, it's still a fraction of the billion they have lying around.
They might blow a few million trying to take out Google, you know, why not? What else are they going to do with it, buy Madagascar?
Ya, Slashdot has a preview button, but it doesn't work.
At least, I only assume it doesn't work.
Being a Canadian I do get a special warm fuzzy feeling when people from other countries talk about my country like its some kind of snow covered paradise. Sure, I take pride in that. And I'm definitely one to slag some of the more stupid things that happen in the US. But let's not get crazy.
I'm currently paying about 33% in income tax. Think about that. For convenience, let's say you're making 30k CAN. That's about 20k US. My American friends pay about 10% in income tax, so when a Canadian is taking home 20k CAN after tax and an american is taking home 27k CAN. If I was making an extra 7k a year I could pirate a lot less music. 7k a year should more than pay for insurance to give me medical coverage equivelent to what I get for "free" here in Canada. It should also cover the music I'm allowed to pirate here in Canada.
This is getting into dangerous high-level political idealogy debate area but I'd personally be willing to give up a bit of the benefits I get from being Canadian for a bit more control over where my money is spent.
As soon as we let the browsers implement Flash instead of plug-in makers we'll see incompatibilities and proprietary extensions. Development will slow to a useless crawl as the future of Flash is designed by committees. Want streaming audio in Flash? Wait until IE 8.
Let Macromedia handle it, because Flash doesn't need a blink tag.
SCO isn't Nazi Germany, people!
Actually, I'm pretty sure they are. Damn fascists.
Seems impressive that such a severe exploit has been in popular operating systems for many years - when was NT 4 released? 97? - yet never taken advantage of until... well, shortly. As much as I hate to admit it, seems to prove the point that proprietary code is more secure. If people don't know a flaw exists they don't exploit it.
If linux had 90+% of the desktop how long would it take for its remote exploits to be taken advantage of?
Err, rather, I mean this is the 1337th post in this article. We haven't had that many since what, the Sept 11th stories? Even if there has been some since then they're rare. I think that speaks about the amount of controversy the RIAA has stirred with their latest lawsuits.
:)
Controversy is probably exactly what they want. It will scare people out of sharing music. If you have a 12 year old daughter that shares music I bet you're going to talk to her about it tonight
I don't know how they did it, but be sure Microsoft was watching. Expect MS to follow suit and also become a wise old company everyone trusts.
Sounds like we found the computer used to write the blaster worm...
But seriously folks...
Hey, how do you spell "vocal minority"?
M-a-c-g-e-e-k-s.
Why would we not want a language to be stagnant?
Ya, that's what I think too.
- Cobol
E-Democracy, E-Governance, and Public Net-work
I dunno, think you could have fit more dahes in there. What about Pub-lic? E-Demo-cracy? a-nd? I mean Net-work isn't a real word so why con-fine your-self to the ru-les of pro-per english else-wh-ere? You haven't even be-gun to ex-plore all th-e poss-ibili-ties!
It'll be called the iBo. It won't be a dog, or a cat either, but an iguana. Or a bird. Probably be the first robotic pet that can fly, which is really impressive since it's made out of space grade aluminium.
Another thing to consider is that you're just a troll, stratjakt. Anything you say should be divided by a factor of idiocy and ignored.
Code generation is definitely something programmers of large/complex projects should look into. There's a lot of different forms of it, and I'd be surprised if people haven't used one form or another already.
Ya, I've done some code generation myself. I used a text editor and my brain. How does everyone else do it?
I thought about using my wang instead of my brain but he just types screenfulls of the V word.
Flaws are impossible to avoid.
.Net, Python, etc. When was the last time a Java application had a bug that let you delete critical system files? When was the last time a Python program had a buffer overflow exploit available?
Look at vehicles. Car makers have an even greater responsibility to make their product free of mistakes since every mistake could potentially cost lives. Yet cars are still recalled, tires still explode, and there are still lots of vehicles on the road that haven't had their known problems fixed. Just like computing.
The problem is that once anything becomes sufficiently complex it is impossible for human beings to find all the problems in a reasonable amount of time. It's worse for things such as operating systems, and arguably vehicles, that are under constant development. The testing/problem finding becomes slower than the rate of development so that the problems begin to outpace the problem solving. This is exactly what has happened to Windows.
There are many solutions that haven't really been used in software development but that will, I predict, become more important in the future. They are all basically a greater reliance on computers to find and stop problems. I'm not talking about a debugger, but more letting computers design more of the system itself. With unlimited patience and vast amounts of memory a computer can consider more uncommon possibilities and thus find more problems with unintended or obscure causes.
A specific solution to security problems on computers is simple: stop using development tools that can allow low-level access to the system. This means C. C is a big security problem and these bugs aren't going to go away until higher level languages become much more common. This is Java,
Open source developers may be critical of the stuff Microsoft produces but that hasn't stopped them from developing their software with the exact same programming languages. Shouldn't it? Of course C won't be put to rest for a long time. And so major system flaws won't become uncommon for a long time either.
I don't mind paying a reasonable fee for some country to (part) belong to me, but I will defend with force if necessary against any claims that I belong to them.
Is that what you'll say next time there's a draft?
There is a significant difference between belonging to a country and belonging to another person.
You need to understand taxes better. You can't expect everything the government spends collected taxes on to benefit you. Your taxes are NOT some volume discount program for purchasing roads, schools, etc. They are your membership fees for belonging to the USA (or your country of residence).
If you don't like what your membership fees are being used for then get the hell out, go join some hippie commune in Iraq or something.
There isn't really such a thing as a Objective-C compiler. Objective C is parsed into regular C via macros and such. Just give this compiler the right macros and it'll do Objective-C just fine.
Hopefully something like this will never happen again.
That's what we said last time. Spaceflight is a risky business and will be for a while.
"User interface within Windows has been at acceptable to good levels since Windows 95. They aren't going to win any more of the desktop market by making it look fancier. Microsoft should instead be focusing completely on security, performance, interoperability, stability, and flexibility"
Microsoft has a lot of money, you understand that? They can afford to employ designers to work on UI while programmers work on security and such at the same time. It's not like they can tell the icon artist to start writing secure C++ so why not improve the UI? Until it's perfect they might as well improve it.
Also when you say, "They aren't going to win any more of the desktop," then later, "When the big kids talk about "stability", they mean that a server" you're talking about two different things: the desktop and the server. What's the problem?
Please, mod this troll down.
Ya, I bet you use a lot of POS terminals to sell porn on the net. If you can't figure out how to install Linux then WTF are you doing reading slashdot?
Why don't you have time? Because time is money. If windows costs you $200 a machine and you have five machines that's $1000 you might save. If you make $50 an hour that's 20 hours to figure linux out without losing money, not too bad really.
When doing your own calculations be sure to add however much "time" you lost to this week's viruses.
The design - as in graphic design - community isn't going to switch to Linux anytime soon. The Mac still reigns supreme here. We can't siwtch to Linux because our tens of thousands of dollars worth of Mac fonts don't work in X. Our years of old Quark files won't open in Quark for PC under WINE.
The one subsection of graphic design that has a chance of gaining some Linux support is web design. Those kids are PC-dominated already so the switch isn't quite as bad for them.
But either way you won't find any serious designer using the gimp until the pallettes take up less screen real estate, the menus aren't where context-sensitive menus should be and the keyboard shortcuts are the same as Photoshop's.
You want me to scroll down? Bah! Next you'll tell me that I can use your fancy scrolling to access old Slashdot articles. As if. I'll use the scrollbar when I can use it without a mouse. Just like those freaking arrows on my keyboard! Where are they pointing?? I think they're supposed to indicate north, south, and whatnot but I don't remember which way it was pointing when I bought it!
Damn computers. Why don't they just give up already, like those damn communist Nazis?
So you want more specialized supercomputer, eh? I can build one right now!
It's specialty is executing x86 programs. I can also make some that specialize in PowerPC programs.