Apple has NEVER used desktop processors in ANY of their Intel lines. Even Mini and iMac use notebook processors, and the Mac Pros use Server-grade Xeon processors. That give them an edge up in buying quantity over Dell because they only buy higher margin parts that Intel likes to sell, not "cheap" ones.
They are considered more "eco-friendly" because they are removing parts and changing to reusable materials. I have an old Snow iBook and the thing is a complex mess of two layers of plastic with "tin foil" to try to meet EMI requirements. The new macbook has barely any parts inside.. only one PCB even. By changing to a metal frame it makes the machine mostly glass and metal... all things nearly 100% recyclable versus plastic that's "sort of" recyclable and required high priced oil to make. I'm sure it's also CHEAPER for them to do (or more marketable) or they wouldn't be doing it either. Apple is looking for ways to separate themselves from the pack, and to cut down on repairs of all those white plastic pieces.
Apple will never be in Microsoft's position because of their behavior... it automatically limits them to a low percent. Microsoft got where they are because they allowed (encouraged) rampant piracy of everybody else's stuff, Hardware, BIOS, etc. and they let any developer play for cheap with almost no strings. Of course that's why we have the huge mess of poor security, out-of-date browsers, and masses of old code that won't go away... being so big cost them the first-mover position... Forget how many copies of Vista are sold... how many REPLACED XP? Apple is pushing 30%-50% upgrade rate on Tiger boxes... Microsoft couldn't touch that if they gave the new OS away for free.. the joys of being a monopoly is that you have to cater to EVERYONE... Microsoft table scraps would create another Apple-size company overnight.
tell the truth, there's very little related to the web that can't be done with RPG III. That's been obsolete for 10 years and runs on AS400's... What's needed on the web is not "more power" but more structure to work quickly, be reusable, and manageable 3 years later. That's why RPG is still used, because you can pick up a 15 year old program and the formating and instructions are so rigid there's little room for interpretation of what the program does. Systems like AS400 became popular because they presented one way to write programs, one screen model, one data entry method, and one pool of data... Things like Ruby on Rails in my opinion are trying to create a new "default" structure in the web world... any structure.. so programmers focus on filling in the boxes/structures with what the end client wants rather than creating "clever" re-inventions for every project.
I think Java has fallen down because there's so many "great" ways to do non-trivial stuff.. and they're so big it takes years to learn one of them properly.. then they make new non-compatible replacements and developers start all over! PHP in some ways already suffers the same problem... too many middleware templates but none widespread enough to call "standard". Ruby on Rails jumps in and grabs the spotlight because it's "done" for no other reason. Somebody put all the pieces together, made the tough calls without asking "permission" and then turned it loose. People may not agree with all of it, but it's ready to start work. Django looks like the same tool set, with more focus on the end page content, for Python, but does it have the code management Rails has?
he NEVER attacked, nor have they claimed he did. They arrested him and charged him the same day they fired him and he wouldn't give up the password. Then started spewing to the press he "might have" created back doors (lines calling his on-call pager) and sabotaged equipment (not restoring the configs on power cycle to protect the network).. which is already being determined as built-in (but rarely used) features being used correctly. So far the ONLY WRONGDOING they have is refusal to give up the password.
They ARRESTED and managed to get $5M bail for not giving up a password... period.. the rest is misinformation, lack of job skill by his boss, or outright LIES. No wonder he didn't give it up sooner!
the more recent article points out he did not do ANY harm after being fired. The "backdoors" were pointed to a pager. The no recover setting would have been to protect the network settings from stolen hardware wiht physical access... because we all know equipment NEVER goes missing from city offices. Sounds like he was overly paranoid but other than not coughing up the password, did NO wrong.
In fact, the fact that there was nobody in the department that could identify what he did, and the police had to go to outside people seems to scream that he's innocent of all of the charges.
As far as the password.. they fired him! No plans made to cover his tasks, or to continue admin services... just give them the password... who knows what they'd accuse him of in 3 months because they don't know what they're doing. Waiting until he's FIRED to ask for documentation is too late... if he's a "criminal" for not giving the info up, they are even more so for not following good security practices and not having this info BEFORE they needed to let him go.
I don't think a phone at $400+ is "easy to replace" for a good portion of people. What you are paying for is the fact that for $7 they will simply grab another if yours breaks and copy over all your info the same day if the same/similar model is available. My workplace has many phones and doesn't do insurance... took them 3 weeks waiting on repairs when I requested an upgrade to another used (broken) phone they had in the pool. Had it been broken rather than an upgrade that would have been totally unacceptable as it's used for on-call. For personal use being out a phone for 2 weeks is definitely worth the little bit of money up front, generally they throw in one free battery replacement too, if you manage to keep the phone for the whole contract.
Phone replacement is something most people would want... we're interested in TOTAL bills here, with all the hidden costs, so it's relevant.
Of course insurance is an easy way to lock you in. Most plans I've seen make you re-up for a new 2 year contract if they fully replace your phone. They're gambling that your phone will last just long enough to be fully replaced instead of repaired.. and you'll be signed up again... and you'll pay them for this benefit!
When you get into WANS like this you are dealing directly with multiple phone companies' equipment that guard their stuff even MORE JEALOUSLY (and don't go to jail for it!) and buildings across several dozen miles. A city like San Francisco has hundreds of locations... all networked over phone lines. You don't trust stuff like this to the internet and your flimsy Linksys DSL router won't cut it. This guy was doing all the hard stuff so YOU can just plug it into the wall in your school and access your email in city hall.
I'd agree, the city already played their card arresting him rather than negotiating. I agree he is probably a pissed off dick and needed to be let go for his own good.. he snapped. But they put him in jail over a personnel issue... nobody is locked out yet, so he has done no "damage". Like others have said, the network works now, if he gives out the password and the new people break it (and consultants always break stuff to raise the bill) he will still be blamed because he didn't follow the setup correctly or used obscure features the consultant doesn't understand.
I don't see any reason to give up the passwords unless they are going to make a binding legal promise to take away the criminal charges. And they bring in a Cisco employee to verify he didn't tamper AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE! It's their fault they have no other qualified engineers, and that they didn't maintain logs of his work for 5 YEARS. He should not be held with any liability for that problem of their making. They are using the law to get him to "consult" with them after he's been all but fired.
it sounds easy to recover except they're recovering "damage" so they'll bring in Cisco employees that charge $100's of dollars an hour.. first to map it out, then debate upgrades and new stuff you don't need, then in 6 months start doing the work. It will cost several times this guys salary even if he did give them the passwords. The companies will rape the city blind and the managers will blame it all on him for being a "negligent" admin.
They fired him and even if he did have perfect documentation any new consultants would rape them blind... they just want it to be his fault because they didn't have a person in place before they started picking on him.
what this article says is that other people NEVER had the access he supposedly took away... and everybody knew that. Managers were simply sloppy, he was an ass and they are trying to use the law instead of negotiation. The other articles from MSM already stated he gave up HIS passwords.. but of course people are too stupid to use them, or didn't use them correctly. Sounds like he cooperated, but they want to spread bad press that he "hacked" them rather than they never really asked him to document anything until AFTER they discussed firing him and he knew about it!! Sounds like he didn't "hack" anything, he was just the single point of failure and now that they threw him in jail, it's doubtful he'll cooperate beyond the letter of the law.. and of course now THEY're worried about him hacking or sending some secret code... because it's "secret" they don't even have to have proof. They're ramping things up legally so SOMEBODY has to take the fall... over politics, so they can cover their asses as bad managers.
First off Emails are just packets across his network. He basically "owns" the network as his is the appointed administrator... he has rights to read anything he wants by default... employees have no privacy on company/city networks... remember.. and HE's the guy who gets to see it ALL!!!
In a corporate email situation you should always be aware that others read your mail. At my company we have somebody that double checks part of the spam so they don't delete important messages. If they find out something they'll sure as hell report you.
FTA it seems like even the admin pointed out to his managers that they should be doing just what you said, even wrote up such policies.. but they never put them in place.
Sounds like the management didn't do their parts and are trying to use the Law against him to cover their asses.
he never made them accounts.. managers KNEW this.. but didn't put measures in place to even backup HIS password if as the article said "he was hit by a bus". Understanding a little bit about this, he controlled the backbone between "everything". It won't shut down offices because he didn't control any servers. but to get around his passwords they'd have to rebuild the network configurations one router at a time because the only way to get in now is re-flash the routers.... ouch. As long as everything stays working, nobody will be shut down.
Trust small parts to other people. In my company we keep our key passwords in a safe in the computer room. Not that anybody would know what to do with them, but the HR director has that combination should all the IT people be wiped out. I don't mind keeping those passwords up-to-date for exactly this reason... no matter if I walk out tomorrow, those passwords, emails, etc are completely available... they can't ever accuse me of "locking them out".
from this article, the bosses didn't take any measures to make sure they had backup configurations and passwords as they said if he was "hit by a bus". I suspect this is partly his antagonistic character biting him in the ass and partly a misunderstanding.
The beauty of city government is that when you have employment issues they can sic the law on you like this. They tried to fire him once, but didn't fill out the right paperwork, then finally did it right and now find out he had the only "keys to the car" locked in his head... Sounds like they may have tried to use his password but can't, or tried to reboot, and wiped some configurations out.. and want it to be his fault.
beds, couch, tables, even mirrors are all pretty cheap... Even a 37" flat TV is justified because these are pretty cheap and you need news/data in the air for 12+ hours. The idea of a box they can stuff in a cargo plane to add just 1 office rather than chartering a separate passenger plane is also a good thing.
But the whole point is that they won't buy "hotel" grade stuff like all these business hotels buy up for $100/nite business-class rooms, they'll have each unit with custom, high-end everything inflating the price to executive office levels... and the pod will be assigned by ranks, jobs, so they won't be "common use" they'll be flown around EMPTY most of the time to get the Pods to the "appropriate" people.
you do have a point that a convertible cargo container office would be just the thing... make each seat 3-4 people and make them "stackable" so you could put more than one on a plane.
Thing is they wanted luxury seats and custom ones for "special" guests. That seems to be the sticking point. These guys play the "accustom" card.. they have offices with $5000 desks and couches, so they need those in a plane to be "refreshed". They wouldn't want "Hampton Inn" quality, they want "4 Seasons"... all the time.
so what happens when the "second rate" hacker finds a way to exploit a bug you didn't rate "security"? Now you've identified bugs, but developers don't check all bugs they catch for security problems, they just fix them. My point is that a bug is a bug, you should patch all of them and run good tests before putting it into production to prove the whole patch works rather than trying to pick and choose parts of the regularly supported patches.
Along the same line, Linus doesn't want to support "security" and "bug fix" patch sets all over the place... the whole point is to move forward... push forward and sometimes take lumps rather than supporting "half patches". Linux developers don't work that way, they patch what's in front of them when they find it. They may have found other dependent bugs when fixing security issues. To just get "security" issues is a whole different kind of work and different cycle.
Linus doesn't want "security only" fixes.. because then EVERY SINGLE OLD VERSION becomes a target...immediately!
Which is better to say:
"fixed bug #23456 overflow at line #1234 causing dumaflopper() to return incorrect result"
or
"fixed security hole #23456 -- firefox calling line #1234 with variable name = "wiggle" caused dumaflopper() to skip password check"
It's better to quietly fix the bugs, identify where they are and what you fixed.. we fixed 25 overflow errors today -- but don't tell which ones tie to a known security error.. don't make cracker's work too easy.
Many bugs are not "security" problems because nobody has figured out how to break it yet. Just because a bug does not match a security notice does not mean it couldn't be a problem after the patch is released!
but Apple doesn't ADVERTISE their OS to anybody else... we'd like them to open up but it's 100% their choice.
To make ABCA (another bad car analogy) the Phystar situation is like putting a BMW engine in a Ford Focus. If you went to the BMW dealer and managed to even get one outside buying a whole car, you'd get in trouble if you bought up 50 of them and ADVERTISING the "BMW" engines. Car Manufactures deal with this by pricing separate engines far above the cost put into the car to discourage this, much like Microsoft charges OEMS $50 for windows and Retailers $300. Car manufacturers have also started putting DRM into the engine computers so even if you bought the parts, you couldn't calibrate the engine without the dealer. Of Course when CAR manufacturers do this Congress changes the law.. they've already exempted auto electronics from the DMCA once but the manufactures keep trying to twist it. If we could get congress to understand computer software is just like auto parts, we might have a chance.
To those that say Macs are overpriced, deal with it. Sure, you can compare the cost of a $699 Dell tricked out with part to a Macbook Pro... But that's like saying you can trick out a Chevey Malibu with high end features like a BMW so BMW is "overcharging" because they don't sell a cheap crappy car priced like a Chevy with fewer cool features.
The Phystar issue will be interesting especially after the Blizzard TOS case. The judge basically rules any EULA violation is a "contract" violation. I think that would apply to the ONLINE TOS to use the WoW servers because that is a valid contract, but that is the WRONG ruling for the client software. Of course Blizzard also shut down Bnetd (independant hosting servers) over "DMCA" violations (because they couldn't detect CD codes, but of course detecting CD codes would also violate the DMCA!), maybe now that the CD check is removed from clients, that hack can be released!
Apple SELLS these CDs in stores with no strings attached. They don't verify you have an Apple account or Mac to run it on when they take your money, what you do with the disc after that shouldn't be there concern. Phystar is not "pirating" because they claim they are paying retail price for the discs and have receipts. They are just doing what a user should be able to do. Of course that didn't work for the "clean movie" folks.
I think that's why Apple waited for them to modify a downloaded patch. Those are only "licensed" to end users and nobody is even allowed to mirror them. That's enough of a case, because Phystar hosted a file they were not allowed and reversed engineered it to stop Apple from breaking their machines. That's probably enough to shut them down without having to address the EFI emulation or personal use of hacked, purchased retail discs.
You'd want to put it at the earth-moon L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Then it would be equally "uphill" from both bodies, but in a statically stable orbit. Such an orbit would be good for resupply stations and emergency facilities as it would be in space, easier to get to. At the "halfway" point, you need your momentum to continue the journey and need the same momentum to get to the point anyway so you wouldn't want to kill it all slowing down to stop.
The point would be to put something interesting at these points so we could have regular supply missions.. that means the simple repairs like ISS has had actually get done on time. If we could make fuel ON the Moon we'd greatly benefit from a space-based system and only have to do heavy lifting to get stuff from the earth to the closest space-base. Then we can work on putting bases at the Solar-earth Lagrange points to start exploration.
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Apple has NEVER used desktop processors in ANY of their Intel lines. Even Mini and iMac use notebook processors, and the Mac Pros use Server-grade Xeon processors. That give them an edge up in buying quantity over Dell because they only buy higher margin parts that Intel likes to sell, not "cheap" ones.
They are considered more "eco-friendly" because they are removing parts and changing to reusable materials. I have an old Snow iBook and the thing is a complex mess of two layers of plastic with "tin foil" to try to meet EMI requirements. The new macbook has barely any parts inside.. only one PCB even. By changing to a metal frame it makes the machine mostly glass and metal... all things nearly 100% recyclable versus plastic that's "sort of" recyclable and required high priced oil to make. I'm sure it's also CHEAPER for them to do (or more marketable) or they wouldn't be doing it either. Apple is looking for ways to separate themselves from the pack, and to cut down on repairs of all those white plastic pieces.
great, now every email administrator that gets Spam is a suspect... (except John C. Dvorak's)
Apple will never be in Microsoft's position because of their behavior... it automatically limits them to a low percent. Microsoft got where they are because they allowed (encouraged) rampant piracy of everybody else's stuff, Hardware, BIOS, etc. and they let any developer play for cheap with almost no strings. Of course that's why we have the huge mess of poor security, out-of-date browsers, and masses of old code that won't go away... being so big cost them the first-mover position... Forget how many copies of Vista are sold... how many REPLACED XP? Apple is pushing 30%-50% upgrade rate on Tiger boxes... Microsoft couldn't touch that if they gave the new OS away for free.. the joys of being a monopoly is that you have to cater to EVERYONE... Microsoft table scraps would create another Apple-size company overnight.
tell the truth, there's very little related to the web that can't be done with RPG III. That's been obsolete for 10 years and runs on AS400's... What's needed on the web is not "more power" but more structure to work quickly, be reusable, and manageable 3 years later. That's why RPG is still used, because you can pick up a 15 year old program and the formating and instructions are so rigid there's little room for interpretation of what the program does. Systems like AS400 became popular because they presented one way to write programs, one screen model, one data entry method, and one pool of data... Things like Ruby on Rails in my opinion are trying to create a new "default" structure in the web world... any structure.. so programmers focus on filling in the boxes/structures with what the end client wants rather than creating "clever" re-inventions for every project.
I think Java has fallen down because there's so many "great" ways to do non-trivial stuff.. and they're so big it takes years to learn one of them properly.. then they make new non-compatible replacements and developers start all over! PHP in some ways already suffers the same problem... too many middleware templates but none widespread enough to call "standard". Ruby on Rails jumps in and grabs the spotlight because it's "done" for no other reason. Somebody put all the pieces together, made the tough calls without asking "permission" and then turned it loose. People may not agree with all of it, but it's ready to start work. Django looks like the same tool set, with more focus on the end page content, for Python, but does it have the code management Rails has?
he NEVER attacked, nor have they claimed he did. They arrested him and charged him the same day they fired him and he wouldn't give up the password. Then started spewing to the press he "might have" created back doors (lines calling his on-call pager) and sabotaged equipment (not restoring the configs on power cycle to protect the network).. which is already being determined as built-in (but rarely used) features being used correctly. So far the ONLY WRONGDOING they have is refusal to give up the password.
They ARRESTED and managed to get $5M bail for not giving up a password... period.. the rest is misinformation, lack of job skill by his boss, or outright LIES. No wonder he didn't give it up sooner!
the more recent article points out he did not do ANY harm after being fired. The "backdoors" were pointed to a pager. The no recover setting would have been to protect the network settings from stolen hardware wiht physical access... because we all know equipment NEVER goes missing from city offices. Sounds like he was overly paranoid but other than not coughing up the password, did NO wrong.
In fact, the fact that there was nobody in the department that could identify what he did, and the police had to go to outside people seems to scream that he's innocent of all of the charges.
As far as the password.. they fired him! No plans made to cover his tasks, or to continue admin services... just give them the password... who knows what they'd accuse him of in 3 months because they don't know what they're doing. Waiting until he's FIRED to ask for documentation is too late... if he's a "criminal" for not giving the info up, they are even more so for not following good security practices and not having this info BEFORE they needed to let him go.
I don't think a phone at $400+ is "easy to replace" for a good portion of people. What you are paying for is the fact that for $7 they will simply grab another if yours breaks and copy over all your info the same day if the same/similar model is available. My workplace has many phones and doesn't do insurance... took them 3 weeks waiting on repairs when I requested an upgrade to another used (broken) phone they had in the pool. Had it been broken rather than an upgrade that would have been totally unacceptable as it's used for on-call. For personal use being out a phone for 2 weeks is definitely worth the little bit of money up front, generally they throw in one free battery replacement too, if you manage to keep the phone for the whole contract.
Phone replacement is something most people would want... we're interested in TOTAL bills here, with all the hidden costs, so it's relevant.
Of course insurance is an easy way to lock you in. Most plans I've seen make you re-up for a new 2 year contract if they fully replace your phone. They're gambling that your phone will last just long enough to be fully replaced instead of repaired.. and you'll be signed up again... and you'll pay them for this benefit!
silly slashdot rabbit...
When you get into WANS like this you are dealing directly with multiple phone companies' equipment that guard their stuff even MORE JEALOUSLY (and don't go to jail for it!) and buildings across several dozen miles. A city like San Francisco has hundreds of locations... all networked over phone lines. You don't trust stuff like this to the internet and your flimsy Linksys DSL router won't cut it. This guy was doing all the hard stuff so YOU can just plug it into the wall in your school and access your email in city hall.
I'd agree, the city already played their card arresting him rather than negotiating. I agree he is probably a pissed off dick and needed to be let go for his own good.. he snapped. But they put him in jail over a personnel issue... nobody is locked out yet, so he has done no "damage". Like others have said, the network works now, if he gives out the password and the new people break it (and consultants always break stuff to raise the bill) he will still be blamed because he didn't follow the setup correctly or used obscure features the consultant doesn't understand.
I don't see any reason to give up the passwords unless they are going to make a binding legal promise to take away the criminal charges. And they bring in a Cisco employee to verify he didn't tamper AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE! It's their fault they have no other qualified engineers, and that they didn't maintain logs of his work for 5 YEARS. He should not be held with any liability for that problem of their making. They are using the law to get him to "consult" with them after he's been all but fired.
like on Vacation for all the ones he DIDN'T take being the only guy running the network!!!
it sounds easy to recover except they're recovering "damage" so they'll bring in Cisco employees that charge $100's of dollars an hour.. first to map it out, then debate upgrades and new stuff you don't need, then in 6 months start doing the work. It will cost several times this guys salary even if he did give them the passwords. The companies will rape the city blind and the managers will blame it all on him for being a "negligent" admin.
They fired him and even if he did have perfect documentation any new consultants would rape them blind... they just want it to be his fault because they didn't have a person in place before they started picking on him.
what this article says is that other people NEVER had the access he supposedly took away... and everybody knew that. Managers were simply sloppy, he was an ass and they are trying to use the law instead of negotiation. The other articles from MSM already stated he gave up HIS passwords.. but of course people are too stupid to use them, or didn't use them correctly. Sounds like he cooperated, but they want to spread bad press that he "hacked" them rather than they never really asked him to document anything until AFTER they discussed firing him and he knew about it!! Sounds like he didn't "hack" anything, he was just the single point of failure and now that they threw him in jail, it's doubtful he'll cooperate beyond the letter of the law.. and of course now THEY're worried about him hacking or sending some secret code... because it's "secret" they don't even have to have proof. They're ramping things up legally so SOMEBODY has to take the fall... over politics, so they can cover their asses as bad managers.
First off Emails are just packets across his network. He basically "owns" the network as his is the appointed administrator... he has rights to read anything he wants by default... employees have no privacy on company/city networks... remember.. and HE's the guy who gets to see it ALL!!!
In a corporate email situation you should always be aware that others read your mail. At my company we have somebody that double checks part of the spam so they don't delete important messages. If they find out something they'll sure as hell report you.
and to managers it's all your fault when that .01% happens because you talked about it so much so must have caused it!
FTA it seems like even the admin pointed out to his managers that they should be doing just what you said, even wrote up such policies.. but they never put them in place.
Sounds like the management didn't do their parts and are trying to use the Law against him to cover their asses.
he never made them accounts.. managers KNEW this.. but didn't put measures in place to even backup HIS password if as the article said "he was hit by a bus". Understanding a little bit about this, he controlled the backbone between "everything". It won't shut down offices because he didn't control any servers. but to get around his passwords they'd have to rebuild the network configurations one router at a time because the only way to get in now is re-flash the routers.... ouch. As long as everything stays working, nobody will be shut down.
Trust small parts to other people. In my company we keep our key passwords in a safe in the computer room. Not that anybody would know what to do with them, but the HR director has that combination should all the IT people be wiped out. I don't mind keeping those passwords up-to-date for exactly this reason... no matter if I walk out tomorrow, those passwords, emails, etc are completely available... they can't ever accuse me of "locking them out".
from this article, the bosses didn't take any measures to make sure they had backup configurations and passwords as they said if he was "hit by a bus". I suspect this is partly his antagonistic character biting him in the ass and partly a misunderstanding.
The beauty of city government is that when you have employment issues they can sic the law on you like this. They tried to fire him once, but didn't fill out the right paperwork, then finally did it right and now find out he had the only "keys to the car" locked in his head... Sounds like they may have tried to use his password but can't, or tried to reboot, and wiped some configurations out.. and want it to be his fault.
beds, couch, tables, even mirrors are all pretty cheap... Even a 37" flat TV is justified because these are pretty cheap and you need news/data in the air for 12+ hours. The idea of a box they can stuff in a cargo plane to add just 1 office rather than chartering a separate passenger plane is also a good thing.
But the whole point is that they won't buy "hotel" grade stuff like all these business hotels buy up for $100/nite business-class rooms, they'll have each unit with custom, high-end everything inflating the price to executive office levels... and the pod will be assigned by ranks, jobs, so they won't be "common use" they'll be flown around EMPTY most of the time to get the Pods to the "appropriate" people.
you do have a point that a convertible cargo container office would be just the thing... make each seat 3-4 people and make them "stackable" so you could put more than one on a plane.
Thing is they wanted luxury seats and custom ones for "special" guests. That seems to be the sticking point. These guys play the "accustom" card.. they have offices with $5000 desks and couches, so they need those in a plane to be "refreshed". They wouldn't want "Hampton Inn" quality, they want "4 Seasons"... all the time.
so what happens when the "second rate" hacker finds a way to exploit a bug you didn't rate "security"? Now you've identified bugs, but developers don't check all bugs they catch for security problems, they just fix them. My point is that a bug is a bug, you should patch all of them and run good tests before putting it into production to prove the whole patch works rather than trying to pick and choose parts of the regularly supported patches.
Along the same line, Linus doesn't want to support "security" and "bug fix" patch sets all over the place... the whole point is to move forward... push forward and sometimes take lumps rather than supporting "half patches". Linux developers don't work that way, they patch what's in front of them when they find it. They may have found other dependent bugs when fixing security issues. To just get "security" issues is a whole different kind of work and different cycle.
Linus doesn't want "security only" fixes.. because then EVERY SINGLE OLD VERSION becomes a target...immediately!
Which is better to say:
"fixed bug #23456 overflow at line #1234 causing dumaflopper() to return incorrect result"
or
"fixed security hole #23456 -- firefox calling line #1234 with variable name = "wiggle" caused dumaflopper() to skip password check"
It's better to quietly fix the bugs, identify where they are and what you fixed.. we fixed 25 overflow errors today -- but don't tell which ones tie to a known security error.. don't make cracker's work too easy.
Many bugs are not "security" problems because nobody has figured out how to break it yet. Just because a bug does not match a security notice does not mean it couldn't be a problem after the patch is released!
but Apple doesn't ADVERTISE their OS to anybody else... we'd like them to open up but it's 100% their choice.
To make ABCA (another bad car analogy) the Phystar situation is like putting a BMW engine in a Ford Focus. If you went to the BMW dealer and managed to even get one outside buying a whole car, you'd get in trouble if you bought up 50 of them and ADVERTISING the "BMW" engines. Car Manufactures deal with this by pricing separate engines far above the cost put into the car to discourage this, much like Microsoft charges OEMS $50 for windows and Retailers $300. Car manufacturers have also started putting DRM into the engine computers so even if you bought the parts, you couldn't calibrate the engine without the dealer. Of Course when CAR manufacturers do this Congress changes the law.. they've already exempted auto electronics from the DMCA once but the manufactures keep trying to twist it. If we could get congress to understand computer software is just like auto parts, we might have a chance.
To those that say Macs are overpriced, deal with it. Sure, you can compare the cost of a $699 Dell tricked out with part to a Macbook Pro... But that's like saying you can trick out a Chevey Malibu with high end features like a BMW so BMW is "overcharging" because they don't sell a cheap crappy car priced like a Chevy with fewer cool features.
The Phystar issue will be interesting especially after the Blizzard TOS case. The judge basically rules any EULA violation is a "contract" violation. I think that would apply to the ONLINE TOS to use the WoW servers because that is a valid contract, but that is the WRONG ruling for the client software. Of course Blizzard also shut down Bnetd (independant hosting servers) over "DMCA" violations (because they couldn't detect CD codes, but of course detecting CD codes would also violate the DMCA!), maybe now that the CD check is removed from clients, that hack can be released!
Apple SELLS these CDs in stores with no strings attached. They don't verify you have an Apple account or Mac to run it on when they take your money, what you do with the disc after that shouldn't be there concern. Phystar is not "pirating" because they claim they are paying retail price for the discs and have receipts. They are just doing what a user should be able to do. Of course that didn't work for the "clean movie" folks.
I think that's why Apple waited for them to modify a downloaded patch. Those are only "licensed" to end users and nobody is even allowed to mirror them. That's enough of a case, because Phystar hosted a file they were not allowed and reversed engineered it to stop Apple from breaking their machines. That's probably enough to shut them down without having to address the EFI emulation or personal use of hacked, purchased retail discs.
You'd want to put it at the earth-moon L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Then it would be equally "uphill" from both bodies, but in a statically stable orbit. Such an orbit would be good for resupply stations and emergency facilities as it would be in space, easier to get to. At the "halfway" point, you need your momentum to continue the journey and need the same momentum to get to the point anyway so you wouldn't want to kill it all slowing down to stop.
The point would be to put something interesting at these points so we could have regular supply missions.. that means the simple repairs like ISS has had actually get done on time. If we could make fuel ON the Moon we'd greatly benefit from a space-based system and only have to do heavy lifting to get stuff from the earth to the closest space-base. Then we can work on putting bases at the Solar-earth Lagrange points to start exploration.