It was the choice of words I was "worried" about.
I'm not an aeronautical engineer so could not comment on the soundness of the plane itself.
Ground Breaking.
Think about it.
Actually a I was just drawing attention to an unfortunate choice of words on the part of Boeing's marketing team when describing a plane with freshly raised safety concerns.
Figuratively 'groundbreaking' means 'something that has not been done before'.
Literally it means 'breaking the ground' (ie. by crashing a bloody huge airliner and a few hundred people into it).
This is called a 'pun' or 'play on words'.
"BTW: Everyone needs to quit dwelling on the whole "Luke this" "Luke that" thing. The entire story arc of the movie series was about Darth Vader, not Luke. The whole Luke obsession thing is almost homo-erotic:P"
I always thought of the saga as having been the story arc seen through the eyes of R2D2 and C3P0 - or is that just robo-erotic.
"Of course, as usual this vulnerability only affects Unix computers."
or when hell freezes over, whichever comes later.
For a variety of technical, social and corporate reasons the effects of Windows vulnerabilities are generally magnitudes more damaging than those found in Unix.
A simple bug-count can never give a real picture about what's what.
I tried Google image search for.wmf but Google removes the '.' in '.wmf' so you end up with hundreds of hits with 'wmf' in the non-extension part of the filename - and Google only index gif, jpeg and png for image search afaik.
1. Get some sort of funding/investment for a start-up business or a research project of some sort.
2. Generate traffic to a site to improve ad revenue or subscribers.
3. Sell a product or service of some sort.
4. ???
5. Profit.
I see hundreds of potentially dangerous violations of the traffic laws on my 20-minute-each-way commute each day but very few could be picked up automatically by this system.
If they had trained human operatives viewing the cameras, linked to vastly increased amounts of traffic police who actually stopped and prosecuted these violators I may be less skeptical of what sounds to me like a self-financing civilian surveillence system.
As has been said before on this page unless they install cameras on every urban street and country lane the most dangerous behaviour on the most dangerous roads will be completely missed by this system.
IANAL but as far as I know it's already an offense to have an obscured number plate. Expect ASBOs to get drivers like yourself to clean their plates when they hit a non-dirt road.
The CCTV cameras don't use a flash so hairspray is unlikely to work either.
The next logical step once this new system is 'accepted' is RFID tagging of cars anyway and once that is 'accepted', why not RFID tagging of citizens, oops, sorry, this is the UK subjects?
If this is aimed at first-time Linux users I think they will most likely be put off Linux for good by the unavoidable shortcomings of the device and OS.
They will not think 'Damn, you'd never get Windows running off a USB drive like this - funky!' they will think 'Damn, six minutes to boot and no support for [insert crappy never-heard-of-it-before on-board sound chip here] and no [Insert favourite windows-only game here] either!'. I suspect they will not 'get' just how hard this sort of thing is to pull off elegantly.
Don't get me wrong, it's not the idea that's particularly bad (hint: I already carry a small console-only linux on my thumb-sized mp3 player), I just think it's just aimed at the wrong target audience. Then again the only target audience I can think of (hackers, showoffs and vagrant sysadmins) would likely just build their own version to suit their needs.
A lot of the comments above assume that if an encryption key is demanded that it will be handed over by a suspect.
IANAL but I thought RIPA meant that if a 'suspect' is accused of having an key and refuses to hand it over (whether or not it exists in the first place) they could be detained indefinately and prevented from contact with anyone (including legal defense) in case they warned other 'conspiritors' who could then destry the data. In this case 7, 14, 28 or 90 days detention without charge is moot - 'they' could dissapear you for good based on no evidence whatsoever.
I may have misread (or been misled by what I have read) so can someone who can use the acronym IAAL clear that up for me until I get time to decrypt the act from legalese? Now, THAT may well take me take 90 days.
I could see the point of a lot of the legeslation passed since 9/11 if 'we' were officially countering other nations' secret services, large-scale criminal gangs or large internal radical (ie. non bush/blairite) movements where things like breaking encryption or following the yellow dots from laser printers would be useful but against small, loosely organised, low-tech cells a lot of it is all but useless compared to the potential effects of winning hearts and minds with equitable and just (ie. less profitable) foreign and home policies.
It's worth remembering throughout all these debates that the definition of a 'terrorist' is not simply a man with a bomb - a 'terrorist' is someone who uses fear to promote their political agenda.
Take the word 'Sony', slice the 'n' vertically down the middle and flip the right-hand half on it's vertical axis - you'll end up with the word 'Sorry'.
After their response to my e-mail complaint when this issue first arose it's the only apology anyone can expect from them. Oh well, I use Linux anyway and all the CDs on the blacklist are either utter pish or by people I've never heard of but, still, the whole thing stinks like 3-week old Sushi.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
shortcut
<file system>
Microsoft Corporation's term for a symbolic
link, stored as a file with extension ".lnk". Shortcuts
first appeared in 1996 in the Windows 95 operating system.
Windows shortcuts can link to any file or directory
("folder"), including those on remote computers, using UNC
paths. Each shortcut can also have its own icon. A
shortcut that links to an executable file can pass arguments
and specify the directory in which the command should run. Unlike a Unix symbolic link, a shortcut does not always
behave exactly like the target file or directory.
Yup, I use a ramdisk for cache files and so on mainly for performance reasons but also because I worry about the level of technical clue among law-makers and law-enforcers.
I have nothing to hide but due to the lack of understanding illustrated in the title article I want to avoid the following scenario..
1) Asshole posts a mass of illegal images with a 0x0 size or other obfustication to a respectable forum .
2) You innocently browse forum and don't see the hidden images, your browser does, though, and adds them to your cache.
3) Law enforcement finds said images in your cache.
4) You go to jail, directly to jail, not passing go or collecting $200.
5) Your balls are removed with plastic cutlery.
With UK gov already threatening to add innocent (legally if not actually) people to sex offenders registers based only on accusation you have to cover yourself against becoming a victim of any lack of understanding of law enforcement agencies.
It is for me, if a site cannot implement a basic open standard correctly (ie. supporting as many browsers as possible) then I'm certainly not going to trust them to do anything else properly such as securing my card details or whatever else.
Slashdot Mirror
It was the choice of words I was "worried" about. I'm not an aeronautical engineer so could not comment on the soundness of the plane itself. Ground Breaking. Think about it.
Actually a I was just drawing attention to an unfortunate choice of words on the part of Boeing's marketing team when describing a plane with freshly raised safety concerns. Figuratively 'groundbreaking' means 'something that has not been done before'. Literally it means 'breaking the ground' (ie. by crashing a bloody huge airliner and a few hundred people into it). This is called a 'pun' or 'play on words'.
Am I the only one worried that Boeing describes the technology used to build the 787 as "groundbreaking"?
Something can be illegal in terms of international law while being legal in domestic law.
"There should be a special place for trolls, preferably without computer access."
There is - it's called parliament (or congress for those on the other side of the pond).
"BTW: Everyone needs to quit dwelling on the whole "Luke this" "Luke that" thing. The entire story arc of the movie series was about Darth Vader, not Luke. The whole Luke obsession thing is almost homo-erotic :P"
I always thought of the saga as having been the story arc seen through the eyes of R2D2 and C3P0 - or is that just robo-erotic.
Redmond WA.
"Of course, as usual this vulnerability only affects Unix computers."
or when hell freezes over, whichever comes later.
For a variety of technical, social and corporate reasons the effects of Windows vulnerabilities are generally magnitudes more damaging than those found in Unix.
A simple bug-count can never give a real picture about what's what.
I tried Google image search for .wmf but Google removes the '.' in '.wmf' so you end up with hundreds of hits with 'wmf' in the non-extension part of the filename - and Google only index gif, jpeg and png for image search afaik.
..to add a new mime-type definition to the Windows defaults..
Identifier: X-Application/WinTrojan
Name: Windows Trojan File
File Extension Pattern: *.wtf
errr.. not that obvious..
Place a golf-ball on glass table.
Looking down on it from above spin it clockwise.
Now look at it from under the table..
Well, yes, a bug-fix in a web application can be rolled out to a billion users - but so can the original vulnerability. Double-edged sword.
1. Get some sort of funding/investment for a start-up business or a research project of some sort.
2. Generate traffic to a site to improve ad revenue or subscribers.
3. Sell a product or service of some sort.
4. ???
5. Profit.
That's what they WANT you to do..
Fine for damaging speed camera - £1000.
(unless they can claim you were interfering with the UK's ability to secure itself against terrorism in which case the sky's the limit).
I see hundreds of potentially dangerous violations of the traffic laws on my 20-minute-each-way commute each day but very few could be picked up automatically by this system.
If they had trained human operatives viewing the cameras, linked to vastly increased amounts of traffic police who actually stopped and prosecuted these violators I may be less skeptical of what sounds to me like a self-financing civilian surveillence system.
As has been said before on this page unless they install cameras on every urban street and country lane the most dangerous behaviour on the most dangerous roads will be completely missed by this system.
IANAL but as far as I know it's already an offense to have an obscured number plate. Expect ASBOs to get drivers like yourself to clean their plates when they hit a non-dirt road.
The CCTV cameras don't use a flash so hairspray is unlikely to work either.
The next logical step once this new system is 'accepted' is RFID tagging of cars anyway and once that is 'accepted', why not RFID tagging of citizens, oops, sorry, this is the UK subjects?
If this is aimed at first-time Linux users I think they will most likely be put off Linux for good by the unavoidable shortcomings of the device and OS.
They will not think 'Damn, you'd never get Windows running off a USB drive like this - funky!' they will think 'Damn, six minutes to boot and no support for [insert crappy never-heard-of-it-before on-board sound chip here] and no [Insert favourite windows-only game here] either!'. I suspect they will not 'get' just how hard this sort of thing is to pull off elegantly.
Don't get me wrong, it's not the idea that's particularly bad (hint: I already carry a small console-only linux on my thumb-sized mp3 player), I just think it's just aimed at the wrong target audience. Then again the only target audience I can think of (hackers, showoffs and vagrant sysadmins) would likely just build their own version to suit their needs.
A lot of the comments above assume that if an encryption key is demanded that it will be handed over by a suspect.
IANAL but I thought RIPA meant that if a 'suspect' is accused of having an key and refuses to hand it over (whether or not it exists in the first place) they could be detained indefinately and prevented from contact with anyone (including legal defense) in case they warned other 'conspiritors' who could then destry the data. In this case 7, 14, 28 or 90 days detention without charge is moot - 'they' could dissapear you for good based on no evidence whatsoever.
I may have misread (or been misled by what I have read) so can someone who can use the acronym IAAL clear that up for me until I get time to decrypt the act from legalese? Now, THAT may well take me take 90 days.
I could see the point of a lot of the legeslation passed since 9/11 if 'we' were officially countering other nations' secret services, large-scale criminal gangs or large internal radical (ie. non bush/blairite) movements where things like breaking encryption or following the yellow dots from laser printers would be useful but against small, loosely organised, low-tech cells a lot of it is all but useless compared to the potential effects of winning hearts and minds with equitable and just (ie. less profitable) foreign and home policies.
It's worth remembering throughout all these debates that the definition of a 'terrorist' is not simply a man with a bomb - a 'terrorist' is someone who uses fear to promote their political agenda.
Take the word 'Sony', slice the 'n' vertically down the middle and flip the right-hand half on it's vertical axis - you'll end up with the word 'Sorry'.
After their response to my e-mail complaint when this issue first arose it's the only apology anyone can expect from them. Oh well, I use Linux anyway and all the CDs on the blacklist are either utter pish or by people I've never heard of but, still, the whole thing stinks like 3-week old Sushi.
Not quite but almost, nearly, kinda..
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
shortcut
<file system>
Microsoft Corporation's term for a symbolic link, stored as a file with extension ".lnk". Shortcuts first appeared in 1996 in the Windows 95 operating system. Windows shortcuts can link to any file or directory ("folder"), including those on remote computers, using UNC paths. Each shortcut can also have its own icon. A shortcut that links to an executable file can pass arguments and specify the directory in which the command should run.
Unlike a Unix symbolic link, a shortcut does not always behave exactly like the target file or directory.
(my bold)
Yup, good point, upload the (encrypted) contents of the USB drive somewhere secure.
Obviously if civilisation collapses you're stuffed anyway but at least it's there if you accidentally tread on your USB drive.
This does not need to be preperation for an 'end-of-the-world' scenario.
A simple house fire could require the occupants to evacuate and could leave the entire contents of their house destroyed.
In which case the next-door neighbour's PC will still be running.
Your house and contents are more likely to be destroyed by a sleepy smoker or a careless cook than by a nuclear disaster.
Yup, I use a ramdisk for cache files and so on mainly for performance reasons but also because I worry about the level of technical clue among law-makers and law-enforcers.
I have nothing to hide but due to the lack of understanding illustrated in the title article I want to avoid the following scenario..
1) Asshole posts a mass of illegal images with a 0x0 size or other obfustication to a respectable forum .
2) You innocently browse forum and don't see the hidden images, your browser does, though, and adds them to your cache.
3) Law enforcement finds said images in your cache.
4) You go to jail, directly to jail, not passing go or collecting $200.
5) Your balls are removed with plastic cutlery.
With UK gov already threatening to add innocent (legally if not actually) people to sex offenders registers based only on accusation you have to cover yourself against becoming a victim of any lack of understanding of law enforcement agencies.
It is for me, if a site cannot implement a basic open standard correctly (ie. supporting as many browsers as possible) then I'm certainly not going to trust them to do anything else properly such as securing my card details or whatever else.