I LOVE this quote! it just shows the level of intelligence of the 'expert' they quote in the article. Ya, theres nothing like good ol' emperical evidence...
In the meantime, Schneier said he was thinking of switching from Windows to the Macintosh platform because of all the security issues. "My wife has a Mac and she doesn't worry about viruses, trojans, leaks..., " he said.
I guess if you dont worry about it, it doesnt exist!
But the philosophy of patching is fundamentally flawed and leaves people vulnerable, Cooper said. For example, Microsoft didn't follow its own advice as executives confirmed that an internal network was hit by the worm.
Since when is patching fundamentally flawed? I dont want anyone forcing a patch on my production servers. If there is a patch, it needs to be tested. Maybe forcing a patch is fine for little Billy's PC, but for a server that is used for email for over a thousand people, or an SQL server with vital information, I'll do the patching myself, thank you very much.
But, most people installing the fix would not necessarily have known how to install it in a safe way, Cooper countered.
Then those people should get the fuck out of the IT field; the last thing any company needs is non-technical technical staff. Wow, installing the SQL service pack was so hard... click on the.exe! installing the SQL hotfixes were also hard... click on the.exe! Unless you are an idiot and install them out of order, I dont see how you can go wrong.
Microsoft released a service pack that would have fixed the problems the week before Slammer hit.
I just LOVE the anti-MS FUD! The SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 2 was posted October 03, 2002. Look on http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/2000/sp2.as p. I just love to see reporters who really get their facts right. Unfortunately, these ones dont. Shame on you, CNN!
Thats surprising. You must have some really crappy boxes running over there. I have never had a single problem with a service pack, hotfix, etc, but we use really good servers. If you have some junky Packard Bell PC with Best Buy memory running NT Server, that is basically your own fault. Go Dell!
Also, this article, written by somebody who barely knows computers and probably lives on slashdot, is just bullshit MS bashing, and pretty untrue at that.
When there were DoS attacks caused by Cisco routers being out-of-date, they blamed the admins. When there were Linux boxes being taken over and used for DoS attacks, they blamed the admins. But when MS SQL servers are used for DoS via an vulnerability fixed over 6 months ago, they blame MS. Well, the article and the so-called expert they quote do anyway. Any reputable organization blames the admins for not patching their equipment.
So instead of being lazy and not keeping up on updates, sign up for MS's security alerts, test them out as soon as they are made available, and apply them after they test out. Its called being PROACTIVE, not reactive.
No, this isnt astroturf. I honestly dont care what anyone else thinks. I just work with MS products, work in computer security, and have been doing this for a long time.
Lets all get one thing straight- the only secure computer is one that is turned off in a locked room. ALL the OS's out there basically suck. Some may just suck a bit less.
If you think about it, MS is in a difficult position- they cant have non-technical (or the hordes of fake technical) people complain that things wont work, they have to provide a platform that is easy for other companies to write programs for, and they have to make everything secure.
ANY security decision requires a restriction on ease-of-use. This is true of door locks, automobiles, computers, telephones, etc. I will admit, and even complain, that a lot of things that MS has implimented were cludgy, based on old crappy politically contrarian past decisions, but MS has done more to innovate computer usage in the last eight years than ANYONE else.
Can someone get some stats on computer sales before and after the release of Win95? This was truly the first OS to tie it all together. Was it perfect? No. But its easy to sit here in 2003 and knock the decisions made in 1995; we learned the lessons from things that they pioneered.
Is MS perfect? No. But two friends of mine went an got jobs there, and they were basically two of the best computer people I have ever met. And also, the MS people that I occasionally meet in my job are likewise very hardworking, knowledgable people.
So sit in your chair with your attitude of inflated superiority. Its probably the only thing you have. I personally think its rude to knock people who have a tough job, and are doing very well at it.
nice hometown refs. I get modded down and labeled a troll because I state the bias and double standard around here.
I should make my sig "Slashdot: News for Linux, complaints about Microsoft, Stuff that is irrelevant (unless you use Linux, Mac, BSD, etc)", because that is what this place basically is.
Oh well, I guess there is nothing more annoying to a hypocrit than having someone say "Youre a stinkin Hypocrit".
The exploit you talk about is very old, and has been posted here. And what is more is, its not even a MS problem; its a problem of third-party programmers leaving vulnerabilities in their applications. It was already discussed here http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/06/182825 6&mode=thread
Anyone with a brain can see there is nothing MS can do about bad programming that third party apps do.
so go scoff at something you know something about. BSD also doesnt have the ability to run 99% of the software that Windows can. Makes it much simpler to maintain, doesnt it?
Re:Economics of Shit, part 2
on
Infinite Games?
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· Score: 1
Oh ya, I forgot to mention. If you want to DIY, you can fix a Palm/Handspring by getting parts from www.gethightech.com.
Instead of having to buy a new Handspring, I purchased a $40 replacement screen.
It was somewhat difficult (not hard, but difficult) to do, because you can tell they dont want you repairing it; they use a lot of small, breakable parts inside, have difficult to reinsert ribbon connectors, etc.
But hey, I can once again read Avantgo on the train to work! Thats what its all about...
well, in a way this goes back to another post I made regarding the music industy. However, it can be applied to any industry that sells a product.
If your product is popular, never breaks, and is the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc, you will eventaully sell yourself out of business once your market is saturated.
Look to Palm. Everyone wanted a simple, well designed organizer that you could back up, had a standardized database, etc. So Palm came out, and even made it a platform for making custom apps. Unfortunately, their product was so good, that there was little incentive for people to give them more money after the initial purchase. Hell, I still have my old Palm Pro w/ 2mb!
So, we then get into the Economics of Shit. Enter Handspring. They create a Palm product, it is cheap enough to undercut Palm Inc. sales. It has a snazy expansion slot you will never use, but is otherwise unupgradable. And best of all, its screen breaks if you sneeze in its general direction. You can only get them official fixed via Handspring, who charges $100 to fix anything. Which is basically as much as or what you paid for your organizer. Thus, in most cases, it is cheaper to replace it. Thus, Handspring is a successful company, and Palm Inc isnt.
There are only two compelling reasons to replace a Palm-
1. Breakage
2. New, innovative feature
So, for years people have been practically DREAMING of a Palm cell phone. And exactly HOW many years did this take? And not surprising, the first one to have a mass-market version is Handspring (I believe Kyocera was the US first, but that was only via PCS). Always let your competitors make better products than you, right Palm? Hell, I think even Sony came out with one.
Recently, Palm updated its OS to allow it to be more easily used with cell phones. Wow, good idea. Its only several years past when you should have done it. Too late to save your company, but thanks for the new technology!
So all Captain Kirk needs to do is snake down a fiberoptic cable from the Enterprise to the surface of Rigel 7.
On another note, if you can send the signal over fiberoptic, instead of an "analog" transmission they will eventaully be able to encode it to a real digital signal; at that point, its just data and can be copied ad infinitum (or ad nauseum, depending on who is being copied...)
thats smart. one barrier to theft- physical access- can be removed. All one of my 'peers' has to do is get some program that will allow them to access the backup, and they can get to all my data (or at least a chunk of it).
Fortunately, I dont keep anything critical on a computer connected to the internet, but there is definitely stuff on it I wouldnt want someone poking around to get.
OMG. Can anyone see my point? All these guys are the same, but as a group they tend to work differently.
Does this mean that every R is a corporate shill? No. Does this mean that ever D is for protecting the individual and the poor? No. But AS A GROUP that is the direction they work toward.
This is not a factor so much of the people that join them as it is of pleasing their disseparate voter bases. The R's are based in rural areas, where people are easily manipulated due to a lack of contact with new ideas and 24/7 broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh and Fox 'Conservative' broadcasting. Somebody who works on a plow 12 hrs a day is hardly going to care about some black kid who is trying to go to college on an Endowment for the Arts scholarship, and kind of understandably so.
D's, however, tend to have more of a power base rooted in minorities and progressive, liberal people (as the true meaning of liberal, not the Bush/Rush Limbaugh meaning).
Also, I think the R's have their fair share of Hollywood phonies and Laywers on their side, too.
Also, why would you be embarassed to be seen with Al Gore? The man won the popular vote, is very smart and educated, and I would say is more of a moral person than our current reformed alcoholic/drug user, failed businessman, sense of entitlement, silver-spoon fed president. The only thing I find admirable about GWB is that he can get things done; but what he is getting done is very bad, just like I felt it would be; his dad was quite an evil person as well. Dont believe me? Read up on ol' man Bush. Noriega, Hussein, Bin Laden- I call these men 'the Sons of Bush', because his actions in the CIA pretty directly led to all of them. He has single-handedly caused the US more harm than any other outside influence could have, and all through being a shill for special interests.
was this legal? He basically received funds from a university and installed a pirated, illegally modified BIOS onto a grey-market modchip made to circumvent hardware protection by the manufacturer.
LOL, oh ya, and he voided the warranty, besides. But anyway, my point is he violated the DMCA with his grant...
1. when you have a technical user base, they can work with the OS w/o breaking it. Then you dont need to make an idiot-proof product
2. when your OS is made as a platform for just about any application, there is a ton more code to work with (and add to, and fix, and improve, etc)
3. when you have 90% of the malicious programmers in the world trying to exploit your OS, there is probably always a problem to work on.
So, its easy to complain and criticize someone. Show me a simple problem, and I will show you somebody who hasnt put a lot of thought into how to solve a problem. Because I have yet to encounter any 'simple' technical problems.
So funny. It becomes a joke and is disbelieved when some large for-profit company claims to tighten up their code (like, hmm, Microsoft?).
But when someone who had just as many (if not more) vulnerabilities says they are doing it, its to hoopla and kudos that you guys read it.
Lets ignore the fact that MS basically put ALL their products on hold to do this, and released a swarm of patches to fix problems they found.
What I would like to know is why these guys waited so long, and started doing this several months AFTER Microsoft? Arent they supposed to be the king among kings of secure computing? Maybe they didnt want to take the 'Initiative' =)
Lee P. Brown is a liberal -- he was Clinton's freakin' drug czar for crying out loud!!
Know your facts before you go on a rant next time.
what does working for Clinton have to do with being a liberal?
Oh wait, are you using Limbaugh-speak for Democrat? lets see what www.dictionary.com has to say...
liberal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lbr-l, lbrl)
adj.
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.
Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes.
Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation.
Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education.
Archaic. Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman.
Obsolete. Morally unrestrained; licentious.
n.
A person with liberal ideas or opinions.
Liberal A member of a Liberal political party.
I dont know. I dont see anything wrong with being a liberal. Maybe you object to people who are "Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry". The GOP is the KKK's prefered party, after all. I am not saying that all Republicans are racists, but I'll bet all racists are Republicans.
Or maybe you were just saying that Lee P Brown is a member of the "Liberal political party". Never hear of them, but its nice to see a major city have a third party candidate, especially in the south.
I don't want to JUST preview music, I want to buy it, albeit, one track at a time, if they sold me an mp3 in 320kbps for $1, I'd buy it--even before napster, they were lucky to get one CD out of me per year. It's all about selling a product with a value people will pay for.
thats the problem the music industry now faces- how will they continue to make gobs of money off very bad 'artists' who put out a bland product, and often only have one good song per album?
I will admit that the downside to being able to buy per-track will be that, in many cases, certain artist's songs needed to grow on me (which generally happened because I was too lazy to turn off the CD player and replace it with something else).
Back to the point, however, is that MOST of the music that comes out now is very bad and/or very derivative. How many from-the-grave best sellers did Biggie Smalls and Tupac have? I think they do more work dead than they did alive.
But when you are selling to a discriminating customer, who actually wants to hear something good, it makes the whole process a lot more difficult; you have to actually hire people with talent! Gone will be the days when Billy Idol or Puff Daddy can make money, because instead of paying ~$15 for the album, you will pay $1 for the digital single, which is the only good song ON that album. Net loss to the record industy= $14.
The State seeks more power (Dems swim in this pool).
again, I would really like to stop seeing the Rush Limbaugh/pro-Republican spin stopped, and see people observe what is actually going on.
The Bush administration's most incredible feat is making the executive branch more powerful than it has EVER been, ever before. To just state, without any basis in fact, that Dems are trying to take away your individual rights, when the Republican led Federal gvt is currently holding both American citizens and non-citizens, without disclosure or representation, and without any kind of checks or balances on their power, is quite obsurd. We, as US citizens, currently have less rights now than at any other time in our history.
I have no problems with security, making the country safe, etc, but I really have to object to being able to take a person away, without saying why, without giving the person any rights, and for an indefinite amount of time. This power is just BEGGING to be abused; how long will it be before anyone who speaks against the Bush dynasty will be hauled off without a trace? Can martial law really be farther behind? The implications of what they have done, no matter how they are 'justified', are truly scary, and set dangerous precidents for future abuses (the 'slippery slope').
Individual consumers seek more value/choice/whatever (the pool is full of junk by now).
The problem with consummerism is that you get the Henry Ford/Model T choice- "any color you want, as long as it's black"; meaning that you can only choose what is offered. The pool is indeed full of junk, and we are really just chosing the best of the junk. The only solution is to do what I am doing- accepting less pay and more job difficulties to work in government and try to make a difference.
I wont say it isnt frustrating, having to deal with people who are more worried about inter-office politics and covering their asses instead of the technology and creating solutions (and for less money than I made working in corporations). But, since I always feel compelled to work on the root of the problem, and see government as fundamentally broken, I am trying to do my part to do what I can.
As my father used to say, dont complain unless you can suggest a better way.
blah... blah... can you actually do what you want with the box you paid for.
technically you CAN do whatever you want, but if you want to use XBox Live they (reasonably) place restrictions on it. And why? They NEED to stop cheating in the games.
There is nothing that makes an online game less fun than playing against someone who cheats. How many games has cheating killed? Most people stopped playing Diablo, CounterStrike, etc. because of rampant cheating. So, especially for a console, it is tanamount to stop cheating.
How can they possibly allow someone the freedom to 'do what you want with the box you paid for', and also prevent people from making modifications that will allow them to do things that the game didnt intend?
You cant. People are going to cheat, always, no matter what. Everybody wont cheat, but enough will to ruin the integrity of the game for the non-cheaters; and that is actually the point of most game hackers- to make the game less enjoyable for everyone else.
And when you have a console, like the XBox, that allows the developers to essentially put multi-play into a game with a minimum of effort, w/o having to build the player match service, the most important thing is to protect those games and that service from exploitation.
So go ahead and figure out how to get your XBox to use MAME, or play MP3s, or even Apache. But placing that hacked machine on the netork is another matter entirely.
I applaud Microsoft for their efforts in protecting their network, and preventing cheaters from 0wnZ'ing XBox Live.
but it sits badly with me that they are made with MS libraries, spreading MS proprietary APIs, and prepping the programmers really only for continuing the dominance of MS OSes.
I had thought the POINT of the XBox was that you could use MS propietary (and mature) tools to develop XBox games in a short time; in fact, MS relied heavily on console programmers in designing the XBox, pretty much asking them for a 'wish list' of things they would like to see in a console, and using a mature, standardized platform (x86) as the hardware base. This way, the game developers wouldnt have to essentially learn a whole new language just to use the latest 'flava' of Playstation, Nintendo, etc.
Since VHS and audio tapes (and records and 8-tracks) were still analog, rather than digital, I think you may be talking about something that was way in the future still; there can be no DRM without the Digital =)
What I was refering to was the fair use rules that were passed in response to taping songs off the radio (which record companies tried to prevent), taping programs off the televion (and cable, even though it was not widespread or even used very much) [movie and television industies tried to stop this]. The courts basically said get used to it, this new technology is just something you will have to live with.
So in a few short years after that, the movie industry 'found' that they could make millions extra from selling movies after they were in theatres (and I think currently VHS/DVD sales generate more income than the actualy theatre runs) [interestingly enough, the pr0n industy was the first to embrace the VHS, as seems to be the case with most new tech]. The music industy was still generating tons of money, and it got even better since tape players became standard items in cars, Sony introduced the WalkMan, and market penetration of audio tapes went way beyond that of records and 8-tracks.
Personally, I dont see a problem with me giving my friend a copy of a CD. What I DO see a problem with is people in other countries selling thousands of copied CDs in a mall or store (which is pretty common outside the US). So I do see piracy to be a problem, but not such a bad one that we need to revoke fair use.
Does that still mean that the Tollway system in Chicago proves that all southerners are uneducated homosexual Republican KKK members?
No, I dont think they are all homosexuals =)
seriously, though, political affiliation really has very little to do with how inclined you are to steal, regardless of what one party or the other will try and have people believe. My problem with Republicans, and their proponents, is that there is still this naive belief that big business and the wealthy are looking out for everybodies best interest.
But the generally typical Democratic naivety that people will act responsibly and intelligently; which is not necessarily in contrast with the Republican naivety.
My own beliefs, as a realist, are that
1. big business and the wealthy are only interested in accumulating more wealth, and preferably with the least amount of effort, and
2. people will tend to act irresponsibly, lie to cover their mistakes and insecurities, and try to do as little thinking (or reflection) as possible.
Anything otherwise, while being a good thing, is an exception to the rule.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when is patching fundamentally flawed? I dont want anyone forcing a patch on my production servers. If there is a patch, it needs to be tested. Maybe forcing a patch is fine for little Billy's PC, but for a server that is used for email for over a thousand people, or an SQL server with vital information, I'll do the patching myself, thank you very much.
Then those people should get the fuck out of the IT field; the last thing any company needs is non-technical technical staff. Wow, installing the SQL service pack was so hard... click on the .exe! installing the SQL hotfixes were also hard... click on the .exe! Unless you are an idiot and install them out of order, I dont see how you can go wrong.
I just LOVE the anti-MS FUD! The SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 2 was posted October 03, 2002. Look on http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/2000/sp2.as p. I just love to see reporters who really get their facts right. Unfortunately, these ones dont. Shame on you, CNN!
Also, this article, written by somebody who barely knows computers and probably lives on slashdot, is just bullshit MS bashing, and pretty untrue at that.
When there were DoS attacks caused by Cisco routers being out-of-date, they blamed the admins. When there were Linux boxes being taken over and used for DoS attacks, they blamed the admins. But when MS SQL servers are used for DoS via an vulnerability fixed over 6 months ago, they blame MS. Well, the article and the so-called expert they quote do anyway. Any reputable organization blames the admins for not patching their equipment.
So instead of being lazy and not keeping up on updates, sign up for MS's security alerts, test them out as soon as they are made available, and apply them after they test out. Its called being PROACTIVE, not reactive.
Lets all get one thing straight- the only secure computer is one that is turned off in a locked room. ALL the OS's out there basically suck. Some may just suck a bit less.
If you think about it, MS is in a difficult position- they cant have non-technical (or the hordes of fake technical) people complain that things wont work, they have to provide a platform that is easy for other companies to write programs for, and they have to make everything secure.
ANY security decision requires a restriction on ease-of-use. This is true of door locks, automobiles, computers, telephones, etc. I will admit, and even complain, that a lot of things that MS has implimented were cludgy, based on old crappy politically contrarian past decisions, but MS has done more to innovate computer usage in the last eight years than ANYONE else.
Can someone get some stats on computer sales before and after the release of Win95? This was truly the first OS to tie it all together. Was it perfect? No. But its easy to sit here in 2003 and knock the decisions made in 1995; we learned the lessons from things that they pioneered.
Is MS perfect? No. But two friends of mine went an got jobs there, and they were basically two of the best computer people I have ever met. And also, the MS people that I occasionally meet in my job are likewise very hardworking, knowledgable people.
So sit in your chair with your attitude of inflated superiority. Its probably the only thing you have. I personally think its rude to knock people who have a tough job, and are doing very well at it.
I should make my sig "Slashdot: News for Linux, complaints about Microsoft, Stuff that is irrelevant (unless you use Linux, Mac, BSD, etc)", because that is what this place basically is.
Oh well, I guess there is nothing more annoying to a hypocrit than having someone say "Youre a stinkin Hypocrit".
Have a nice day.
Anyone with a brain can see there is nothing MS can do about bad programming that third party apps do.
so go scoff at something you know something about. BSD also doesnt have the ability to run 99% of the software that Windows can. Makes it much simpler to maintain, doesnt it?
Instead of having to buy a new Handspring, I purchased a $40 replacement screen.
It was somewhat difficult (not hard, but difficult) to do, because you can tell they dont want you repairing it; they use a lot of small, breakable parts inside, have difficult to reinsert ribbon connectors, etc.
But hey, I can once again read Avantgo on the train to work! Thats what its all about...
If your product is popular, never breaks, and is the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc, you will eventaully sell yourself out of business once your market is saturated.
Look to Palm. Everyone wanted a simple, well designed organizer that you could back up, had a standardized database, etc. So Palm came out, and even made it a platform for making custom apps. Unfortunately, their product was so good, that there was little incentive for people to give them more money after the initial purchase. Hell, I still have my old Palm Pro w/ 2mb!
So, we then get into the Economics of Shit. Enter Handspring. They create a Palm product, it is cheap enough to undercut Palm Inc. sales. It has a snazy expansion slot you will never use, but is otherwise unupgradable. And best of all, its screen breaks if you sneeze in its general direction. You can only get them official fixed via Handspring, who charges $100 to fix anything. Which is basically as much as or what you paid for your organizer. Thus, in most cases, it is cheaper to replace it. Thus, Handspring is a successful company, and Palm Inc isnt.
There are only two compelling reasons to replace a Palm-
1. Breakage
2. New, innovative feature
So, for years people have been practically DREAMING of a Palm cell phone. And exactly HOW many years did this take? And not surprising, the first one to have a mass-market version is Handspring (I believe Kyocera was the US first, but that was only via PCS). Always let your competitors make better products than you, right Palm? Hell, I think even Sony came out with one.
Recently, Palm updated its OS to allow it to be more easily used with cell phones. Wow, good idea. Its only several years past when you should have done it. Too late to save your company, but thanks for the new technology!
I want to know how long it will be before they teach Rocket/Grenade Jumping in bootcamp!
So all Captain Kirk needs to do is snake down a fiberoptic cable from the Enterprise to the surface of Rigel 7.
On another note, if you can send the signal over fiberoptic, instead of an "analog" transmission they will eventaully be able to encode it to a real digital signal; at that point, its just data and can be copied ad infinitum (or ad nauseum, depending on who is being copied...)
Fortunately, I dont keep anything critical on a computer connected to the internet, but there is definitely stuff on it I wouldnt want someone poking around to get.
Heaven forbid they steal all my pr0n!
Does this mean that every R is a corporate shill? No. Does this mean that ever D is for protecting the individual and the poor? No. But AS A GROUP that is the direction they work toward.
This is not a factor so much of the people that join them as it is of pleasing their disseparate voter bases. The R's are based in rural areas, where people are easily manipulated due to a lack of contact with new ideas and 24/7 broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh and Fox 'Conservative' broadcasting. Somebody who works on a plow 12 hrs a day is hardly going to care about some black kid who is trying to go to college on an Endowment for the Arts scholarship, and kind of understandably so.
D's, however, tend to have more of a power base rooted in minorities and progressive, liberal people (as the true meaning of liberal, not the Bush/Rush Limbaugh meaning).
Also, I think the R's have their fair share of Hollywood phonies and Laywers on their side, too.
Also, why would you be embarassed to be seen with Al Gore? The man won the popular vote, is very smart and educated, and I would say is more of a moral person than our current reformed alcoholic/drug user, failed businessman, sense of entitlement, silver-spoon fed president. The only thing I find admirable about GWB is that he can get things done; but what he is getting done is very bad, just like I felt it would be; his dad was quite an evil person as well. Dont believe me? Read up on ol' man Bush. Noriega, Hussein, Bin Laden- I call these men 'the Sons of Bush', because his actions in the CIA pretty directly led to all of them. He has single-handedly caused the US more harm than any other outside influence could have, and all through being a shill for special interests.
Well, like I say, there is nothing more American than a good ol' fashioned double-standard.
LOL, oh ya, and he voided the warranty, besides. But anyway, my point is he violated the DMCA with his grant...
1. when you have a technical user base, they can work with the OS w/o breaking it. Then you dont need to make an idiot-proof product 2. when your OS is made as a platform for just about any application, there is a ton more code to work with (and add to, and fix, and improve, etc) 3. when you have 90% of the malicious programmers in the world trying to exploit your OS, there is probably always a problem to work on. So, its easy to complain and criticize someone. Show me a simple problem, and I will show you somebody who hasnt put a lot of thought into how to solve a problem. Because I have yet to encounter any 'simple' technical problems.
So funny. It becomes a joke and is disbelieved when some large for-profit company claims to tighten up their code (like, hmm, Microsoft?).
But when someone who had just as many (if not more) vulnerabilities says they are doing it, its to hoopla and kudos that you guys read it.
Lets ignore the fact that MS basically put ALL their products on hold to do this, and released a swarm of patches to fix problems they found.
What I would like to know is why these guys waited so long, and started doing this several months AFTER Microsoft? Arent they supposed to be the king among kings of secure computing? Maybe they didnt want to take the 'Initiative' =)
I can practically taste the Manatee burgers now!
It should also make chum pretty well, allowing people in dingies to catch sharks better. Good thing sharks arent almost extinct or anything...
what does working for Clinton have to do with being a liberal?
Oh wait, are you using Limbaugh-speak for Democrat? lets see what www.dictionary.com has to say... liberal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lbr-l, lbrl) adj. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor. Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes. Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation. Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education. Archaic. Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman. Obsolete. Morally unrestrained; licentious. n. A person with liberal ideas or opinions. Liberal A member of a Liberal political party.
I dont know. I dont see anything wrong with being a liberal. Maybe you object to people who are "Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry". The GOP is the KKK's prefered party, after all. I am not saying that all Republicans are racists, but I'll bet all racists are Republicans.
Or maybe you were just saying that Lee P Brown is a member of the "Liberal political party". Never hear of them, but its nice to see a major city have a third party candidate, especially in the south.
thats the problem the music industry now faces- how will they continue to make gobs of money off very bad 'artists' who put out a bland product, and often only have one good song per album?
I will admit that the downside to being able to buy per-track will be that, in many cases, certain artist's songs needed to grow on me (which generally happened because I was too lazy to turn off the CD player and replace it with something else).
Back to the point, however, is that MOST of the music that comes out now is very bad and/or very derivative. How many from-the-grave best sellers did Biggie Smalls and Tupac have? I think they do more work dead than they did alive.
But when you are selling to a discriminating customer, who actually wants to hear something good, it makes the whole process a lot more difficult; you have to actually hire people with talent! Gone will be the days when Billy Idol or Puff Daddy can make money, because instead of paying ~$15 for the album, you will pay $1 for the digital single, which is the only good song ON that album. Net loss to the record industy= $14.
again, I would really like to stop seeing the Rush Limbaugh/pro-Republican spin stopped, and see people observe what is actually going on.
The Bush administration's most incredible feat is making the executive branch more powerful than it has EVER been, ever before. To just state, without any basis in fact, that Dems are trying to take away your individual rights, when the Republican led Federal gvt is currently holding both American citizens and non-citizens, without disclosure or representation, and without any kind of checks or balances on their power, is quite obsurd. We, as US citizens, currently have less rights now than at any other time in our history.
I have no problems with security, making the country safe, etc, but I really have to object to being able to take a person away, without saying why, without giving the person any rights, and for an indefinite amount of time. This power is just BEGGING to be abused; how long will it be before anyone who speaks against the Bush dynasty will be hauled off without a trace? Can martial law really be farther behind? The implications of what they have done, no matter how they are 'justified', are truly scary, and set dangerous precidents for future abuses (the 'slippery slope').
Individual consumers seek more value/choice/whatever (the pool is full of junk by now).
The problem with consummerism is that you get the Henry Ford/Model T choice- "any color you want, as long as it's black"; meaning that you can only choose what is offered. The pool is indeed full of junk, and we are really just chosing the best of the junk. The only solution is to do what I am doing- accepting less pay and more job difficulties to work in government and try to make a difference.
I wont say it isnt frustrating, having to deal with people who are more worried about inter-office politics and covering their asses instead of the technology and creating solutions (and for less money than I made working in corporations). But, since I always feel compelled to work on the root of the problem, and see government as fundamentally broken, I am trying to do my part to do what I can.
As my father used to say, dont complain unless you can suggest a better way.
technically you CAN do whatever you want, but if you want to use XBox Live they (reasonably) place restrictions on it. And why? They NEED to stop cheating in the games.
There is nothing that makes an online game less fun than playing against someone who cheats. How many games has cheating killed? Most people stopped playing Diablo, CounterStrike, etc. because of rampant cheating. So, especially for a console, it is tanamount to stop cheating.
How can they possibly allow someone the freedom to 'do what you want with the box you paid for', and also prevent people from making modifications that will allow them to do things that the game didnt intend?
You cant. People are going to cheat, always, no matter what. Everybody wont cheat, but enough will to ruin the integrity of the game for the non-cheaters; and that is actually the point of most game hackers- to make the game less enjoyable for everyone else.
And when you have a console, like the XBox, that allows the developers to essentially put multi-play into a game with a minimum of effort, w/o having to build the player match service, the most important thing is to protect those games and that service from exploitation.
So go ahead and figure out how to get your XBox to use MAME, or play MP3s, or even Apache. But placing that hacked machine on the netork is another matter entirely.
I applaud Microsoft for their efforts in protecting their network, and preventing cheaters from 0wnZ'ing XBox Live.
but it sits badly with me that they are made with MS libraries, spreading MS proprietary APIs, and prepping the programmers really only for continuing the dominance of MS OSes.
I had thought the POINT of the XBox was that you could use MS propietary (and mature) tools to develop XBox games in a short time; in fact, MS relied heavily on console programmers in designing the XBox, pretty much asking them for a 'wish list' of things they would like to see in a console, and using a mature, standardized platform (x86) as the hardware base. This way, the game developers wouldnt have to essentially learn a whole new language just to use the latest 'flava' of Playstation, Nintendo, etc.
What I was refering to was the fair use rules that were passed in response to taping songs off the radio (which record companies tried to prevent), taping programs off the televion (and cable, even though it was not widespread or even used very much) [movie and television industies tried to stop this]. The courts basically said get used to it, this new technology is just something you will have to live with.
So in a few short years after that, the movie industry 'found' that they could make millions extra from selling movies after they were in theatres (and I think currently VHS/DVD sales generate more income than the actualy theatre runs) [interestingly enough, the pr0n industy was the first to embrace the VHS, as seems to be the case with most new tech]. The music industy was still generating tons of money, and it got even better since tape players became standard items in cars, Sony introduced the WalkMan, and market penetration of audio tapes went way beyond that of records and 8-tracks.
Personally, I dont see a problem with me giving my friend a copy of a CD. What I DO see a problem with is people in other countries selling thousands of copied CDs in a mall or store (which is pretty common outside the US). So I do see piracy to be a problem, but not such a bad one that we need to revoke fair use.
seriously, though, political affiliation really has very little to do with how inclined you are to steal, regardless of what one party or the other will try and have people believe. My problem with Republicans, and their proponents, is that there is still this naive belief that big business and the wealthy are looking out for everybodies best interest.
But the generally typical Democratic naivety that people will act responsibly and intelligently; which is not necessarily in contrast with the Republican naivety.
My own beliefs, as a realist, are that
1. big business and the wealthy are only interested in accumulating more wealth, and preferably with the least amount of effort, and
2. people will tend to act irresponsibly, lie to cover their mistakes and insecurities, and try to do as little thinking (or reflection) as possible.
Anything otherwise, while being a good thing, is an exception to the rule.
it was on a need-to-know basis, and you didnt need to know =)