I've had nothing but clear calls and good reception from my 2-months-old Sony Ericsson z520a. Pretty cheap, too, plus it's a quad-band world phone. By far the best phone I've ever had in terms of reception, voice quality, battery life, and general, all-around easy-to-use-ness in a small, palm-friendly clamshell.
It would be interesting to re-phrase the question and replace "iTunes" with "Windows Media Player" and see what kinds of responses are generated by the Slashdot crowd.
Sample headline: "It seems the most recent update to Microsoft's bundled media application Windows Media Player is mining the music tracks that a user plays and sending that data back to Microsoft in order to present the user with similar tracks from the MSN Music Store. What Microsoft does with this data after Music Store recommendations are made is unknown."
Will the apologists for Apple and their data mining stand up in this case as well?
Now that this has turned into something completely different, and also ridiculous, let's see where we stand.
The parent of my original post stated flatly, in a broad generalization, that Sony "MP3" players do not play MP3s. The entire purpose of my response to this post was to point out that this is untrue and unfair. I did this by posting that I in fact *have* a Sony MP3 player which *does* play MP3 format natively. In no way did I ever say anything such as "because my player plays MP3, all Sony players play MP3". To derive such an idea is moronic. This is the discrimination.
Parent: "Sony 'MP3' players do not even play MP3" Me: "The Network Walkman HD-5 that I have does"
That is a distinction, the only point of which was to point out the flaw in the parent's generalization. It's inferred, but it's there -- if you can't see it, well, too damn bad.
The entire rest of my post, and consequently most of the rest of this shit-fest, was unrelated to this first comment. Nitpicking everything in the post, telling me to "justify" this and that and comparing what I said to "people with half a brain" is not only an attack, but missing the only point I made in my original post.
I don't care what you think about Sony. I have my own opinion of them, and I act on that opinion. As my opinion and my resultant actions have nothing to do with the original point of my post, nothing about the point of my comment *or* my opinion of Sony necessitates me justifying my reasons for buying or not buying their products. I was not even defending Sony -- only pointing out an error in the original generalization.
I bid you good day -- onto other, hopefully better, things.
Dude, the first thing you need to do is calm down.
And neither did you! That's why I pointed out you "happened" to name the sole player of theirs that supports non-ATRAC audio.
I most certainly *did* discriminate between players: I stated flatly which player I use along with the fact that it *does* play MP3. I never equated that with "because mine does, they all do". I pointed out to the parent that his generalization is inaccurate and unfair.
Well, unless you're astroturfing, you don't know any more than the rest of us. Looking at their current selections, they're still selling a crapload of ATRAC-only players. As far as I know, they see their main strength as the ATRAC format, and that's true enough from a proprietary-lock-the-fool-consumer-in standpoint.
My point about future Sony MP3 players is deduced from the fact that, having added support for the format, it would not make much sense to remove it again in the next couple generations. You bring in a userbase and play, without altering mind you, files in MP3 format and then turn around and decide to suddenly *not* play them? Sony deserves a lot of heat, sure, but even they are not *that* stupid. Regardless of how they feel about ATRAC, they have recognized that the userbase uses mainly MP3. They've already locked in users of WMA by automatically converting WMA to ATRAC3plus during the transfer but they have kept straight MP3-playing functionality. To remove that functionality now would be suicide.
You should. Everyone with half a brain has a justification for a purchase.
Lame.
Then you should have mentioned why! That's the only way anyone out here can know if your justifications are rational or irrational.
More lame. You seem to really enjoy telling others what they should and shouldn't do. How about you consider the context of what I post instead.
I didn't attack you. I attacked Sony, which is the general subject for this article. You do support them in buying things other than their rootkit CDs. That's not good, but mentioning that is hardly an attack on my part.
Pure bullshit. Watered down, all you've said is, "Sony sucks. You use Sony. Therefore, you suck." Oh, and by the way, I bought the player long before this rootkit issue became known.
Oh, I most certainly am a dick. That doesn't make me wrong, though. As much of a prick as I may be, I've never tried to root your system or otherwise lock up your music.
Neither the Walkman nor SonicStage does nothing with my music library, as I already said. The only change that is made to anything is during the transfer to the player, and I don't really care what happens to the music on the player as long as my library remains untouched. I don't buy Sony CDs, and never will again after this rootkit shit. And really, why be a dick? Other than the obvious fun, I mean. It really is a drag.
It is a shame that Sony forces you to use SonicStage to interact with the Walkman, because the Walkman (at least the model I have) is really an excellent player. But yes, you do have to have SonicStage, and yes, it is absolutely horrid.
The grandparent was wondering if the device shows up as removable hardware, and the answer is "yes". You can use it as an external HDD, but just copying music files to it does not allow you to play them. That can only be done through SS. But for anything else, if you need a really expensive external HDD, the player works fine for that.:P
Sony is getting a lot of shit right now, and rightfully so. It really is too bad, because I've been very happy with the player itself. Here's hoping the company will be able to turn this around. I'm doubtful, but anyway.
Didn't see your reply until right now, but let's make a couple things clear:
1) The parent didn't discriminate between Sony products that do and don't play MP3s. This generalization is demonstrably false. Sony may indeed have "had their asses handed to them" for not playing MP3s before now, but as of now, they have an excellent player that handles MP3 with no problems. And as far as I know, all of their newer players will handle MP3, so this is a problem that belongs in the past.
2) I am not trying to justify buying or owning anything made by Sony. I bought the Walkman because after all of the research I did on MP3 HDD players, it came out on top *for me*. And I have been very happy with it, except, as I said, its reliance on SonicStage. I don't consider this device garbage at all. I don't feel that I was swindled, or swindled myself or any of that crap. So it's hard to understand why you'd attack me personally.
Unless you're just a dick. But I'll withhold judgment on that.
I own a Sony Network Walkman HD-5 and it plays MP3 just fine, thank you. It *plays* MP3, ATRAC3 and ATRAC3-plus. It *reads* and *converts* WMA into ATRAC3 as part of the transfer from the HDD to the player as well. This does not affect my actual music database, only the database that SonicStage constructs out of it. My library remains unchanged, consisting almost solely of MP3 and WMA.
I've been very happy with this player, as the sound quality, HDD size, battery life, and style are all excellent. Contary to your post, the only thing upsetting about my situation is that I can only use SonicStage to interface with the player, and SonicStage is quite possibly the worst media suite ever... but even that was a known quantity before I bought the Walkman.
Get your facts straight -- Sony deserves a lot of criticism, but you aren't doing any good throwing around false charges like this.
Well, this discussion has gone on long enough now so that it, in the larger context of things, doesn't matter anymore anyway, but I'll respond.
First off, I agree with your points: no argument there. You are correct, as far as I know, about flaws in IE being patched, in many instances, before exploits are discovered in the wild. I don't know if I'd agree that "nearly all" of them are, but a good many, yes, and it is up to the users to make sure they are properly patched and protected.
However, you can't deny that there are serious problems where Microsoft is concerned with patching/updating mechanism in as much as it applies to security threats. Microsoft has done much recently (e.g. SP2) to seemingly change these practices, but as things stand now, it seems to me that the patching/updating of the Mozilla foundation, along with many other OSS vendors, is far more efficient. Patches come much more frequently and address in much more timely a fashion the newest security concerns. I'm sure you've looked at Secunia's site for evidence of the amount and degree of vulnerabilities on both sides of the fence.
That said, OSS has a long way to go, and I'm not just another shrill fanboy touting the everlasting wonder if GNU and OSS, to which my other comments on/. will attest. We are a long way from perfection.
But the article in question is clearly slanted to give people the impression that there is little, if any, difference between the two philosophies we are dealing with: that they both lead to the same end - insecurity. I disagree with that slant. That is not to say that there aren't extant problems.
In the end, I think we agree much more than we disagree. It is, as I've said repeatedly, a valid point to say that problems exist even when a patch is released if the population using the browser in question is not a) automatically patched and b) not savvy enough to patch themselves from mozilla.org. Those are both problems that apply equally well to IE as Firefox. The difference lies in the fact that, for Firefox, a patch *does* exist in this specific case, and the patch *was* released prior to the announcement of the exploit (and yes, I do realize that the exploit might've been reverse-engineered from the patch -- but that is always going to be a problem and it doesn't denegrate the patching efforts of the people at Mozilla).
I don't have anything else to say, except that I hope to not be considered one of the ignorant, suffocating masses you speak of. I like them as little as you do.
I read your comment the first time, but after a second reading, your point is still invalid. The patch was released by Mozilla before this particular hole was announced. Read *my* first comment again, and see that this is the point that I was making. Mozilla had already fixed this particular issue before the hole was known.
It is not up to Mozilla, any more than it is up to Microsoft, to ensure that every person using their browser has a fully upgraded/patched version in front of them. The users must take some responsibility. If you have an issue with the update process, then fine, that point is valid, and to some extent I share your view. However, that point does not relate to the fact that Mozilla's efforts vis-a-vis the patching cycle are directly responsible for the fact that a patched version of the browser was released prior to the discovery of this security problem.
It is no different for a user of Firefox than it is for a user of IE as far as responsibility for keeping updated is concerned -- the difference is that when people are using IE, they often do not even have a newer, patched version of the browser that they can, in any way and by any means, install to correct a known issue.
You can keep arguing about the problems with the automatic update mechanism employed by Firefox, and that's fine, but it isn't the issue that I was dealing with.
Dude, the point still stands that the patch has been released. Whether or not the updates have been applied automatically to all who receive them is beside that point. Mozilla had this patch out the door, for anyone and everyone to install it, before this hole was announced.
If people are worried about the length of time between release and auto-updating (which is normally only a couple of days), then they can move over to manual updating.
Your point, however valid it may be when dealing with the auto-update process, is not valid when dealing with the question of this hole. The patch was already released, which was the only point I was trying to make.
And I don't pretend to think that Mozilla's, or any other person or company's, process or security is "perfect". Far from it. Don't put words into my mouth.
Ummm, so basically Mozilla was ahead of the game as far as this hole is concerned, having already released a patched version of the browser before the exploit became known?
Pardon, but rather than using this exploit as some kind of evidence that Firefox is on-par, security-wise, with IE, shouldn't we be viewing this as a victory for the patch/version-release cycle of the Mozilla foundation?
There will always be new security holes found. The difference is that patched versions of the browser, fixing the security hole in question, are not always released before the hole is announced.
Dude, it says, right there in the release annoucement linked to from the/. article, "an equivalent update to the Mozilla Application Suite, Mozilla 1.7.12, is expected shortly."
The way you sound, you seem to think you'd have to wait ages for any kind of update to Mozilla. As it stands right now, most people who use automatic updates for Firefox will have to wait a couple days for the update to appear for them.
I'm sure Bush would be very proud of you for using the term "Enemy Combatant"... considering it was Alberto Gonzales who came up with it so the US didn't have to deal with international POW laws.
It's also interesting that you support the outright killing of civilians if 1) as a one-time option, it will lead to the quicker resolution of the war 2) if said civilians had any part to play in the military-industrial infrastructure of the enemy country (to which I'd point out that even the most strident pacifist's tax dollars go to Halliburton and Lockheed - there isn't anything you can do about it) 3) if it's just plain easier than mounting an invasion.
Are you in the "let's just nuke the Middle East and get it over with!" camp? With arguments like the ones you are making, it seems the slaughter of a few more million people as a means to an end wouldn't terribly bother you. And hey! Then we'd have the oil!
When you say that Japan wasn't provoked in the slightest by the US, you do realize that the US had imposed a scrap metal boycott, followed by an oil boycott, a freeze of assets and the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping due to Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1937.
You might not consider than justification for attack, but it's patently obvious that someone in the higher echelons of the Japanese government did.
You also seem to not realize just how close the Japanese came to decimating our entire Pacific fleet. If the carriers hadn't been out on maneuvers, they would've been seriously damaged. And the jury remains out on whether or not the US had some foreknowledge of the attack, so there's at least the suspicicion of US governmental involvement.
Things are, as you say, not as black and white as they may first seem.
The article merely stated that all of the critical security issues fixed with this update were java-related. It by no means says that this update fixes all java vulnerabilities.
I know it's a little late and so this will probably not get much attention, but having read through the list of comments I'm surprised not to have seen more about how easily accessible home addresses and phone numbers already are.
You've got the phone book, sure, but remember you've also got Google out there. Type in someone's full name and city (sometimes city isn't even needed) and pop! there is their address, and, unless it's unlisted, their phone number.
Now, one can play the game, saying that posting information like that on a blog somewhere is a lot more like pointing a finger directly at the person in question, highlighting their information, but to me the difference is slight, if tenable at all. All you need is someone's name to get an address out of Google, and it is still legal for bloggers to post a name.
Besides (and I have seen this posted above), personal addresses and phone numbers (unless specifically requested) are not private information at all. So we're talking about intent here. The intent to misuse this information.
The focus is supposedly on people's ideas of censorship, in whatever form you want to take it, but what we're really talking about here is discrimination.
I don't really want my information highlighted on the internet, public or private as it might be. But I want even less to discriminate against those who are exercising a perfectly legal right to publish public information. *That* is where the slippery slope begins, and we don't want to go down that road.
When I visited http://www.lyricspy.com/ (this site listed as being the origin in the VitalSecurity story) I immediately receive a pop-up warning from McAfee 8.0 that the file "javainstaller.jar" is a Trojan, and an "exploit". The installer window never appears at all.
Additionally, Firefox automatically blocks the installation with its pop-up blocker, so it appears that, with my settings (which are not terribly restrictive), I have a double layer of security preventing me from even getting to the point of clicking "yes" to the installer.
Not too big a deal, this, but it is good to know that following basic security procedures like keeping virus definitions up to date and using the pop-up blocker correctly can make it a lot easier to avoid the kind of crap this story deals with. I do realize, however, that a great many people do not follow these guidelines, and that that is the point of the story.
But I would like to point out that it seems that I am not quite as vulnerable as this story makes it appear that I will be (when running Windows). And, of course, if I flip over to my Fedora Core 3 partition, this problem goes away entirely.
Um, dude, you do know it's a comedy show right? As far as I understand it, it doesn't matter what kind of bias a comedy show has. He doesn't care about presenting an objective viewpoint. And he doesn't have to.
Think your argument and your problem through again, except this time replace all instances of "The Daily Show" with "The Man Show" and see how it comes out.
...sigh...
B
PS - as an aside, I'd say that The Daily Show was just about as biased towards the Left during the election as FOX News was towards the Right. Of course, FOX News *does* present itself as an objective, credible source of information. Which was a hefty portion of Stewart's point when he was on Crossfire on CNN.
One wonders at the direction of causality. To me it is a self-justifying cycle. If we think we can be no different, we are inclined to act no differently.
Its funny how apologists for power-seeking always fall back to this argument. They don't understand that in an argument pre-structred around the idea that might-makes-right cannot contain in a meaningful way ideas that seek to redefine the antecedents.
But it's easier, like I said, that way.
PS - It *is* his idea of history. Just because you agree with him doesn't define the entire experience of history.
And as long as there are people like you summing up what humanity *is* in a paragraph, as if a decision had been made, we will never have the option of trying out a different mode of being.
Thanks for cementing the rest of us into your idea of "destiny".
Don't think for a minute that the PATRIOT act is about actually catching criminals. Of course, in order to catch a criminal, an actual law has to be broken first, and this act sorta just steps to the side of that little point...
But that's not the issue. The PATRIOT act is simply a control-through-fear technique. Keep the masses in fear of 1) an outside power - the terrorists 2) the structure designed to remove 1) - the law... mix together and you have a cycle of fear-relief-fear-relief ad infinitum. Oh, and it helps to have such a compliant media, and it REALLY helps to have such a heavily sedated public. And as a bonus, the government can basically collect any information it wants about any member of the public. Just for future... consideration. It really is Orwell-worthy... if only he could see it actually come to fruition.
Oh, and about the numbers of criminals that have been caught under this law? I dunno, but the number of convictions as far as terrorism goes is exactly ZERO. Nice job there, Ashcroft!
Slashdot Mirror
Let me just be the first to say...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Okay, now I feel better.
B
I've had nothing but clear calls and good reception from my 2-months-old Sony Ericsson z520a. Pretty cheap, too, plus it's a quad-band world phone. By far the best phone I've ever had in terms of reception, voice quality, battery life, and general, all-around easy-to-use-ness in a small, palm-friendly clamshell.
B
Just want to say thank you for your post.
:)
If only people would take what you say into consideration instead of maintaining their arrogant cluelessness.
Anyway, thanks for your effot. We need more of it, more often.
B
God damn I hope you're being sarcastic.
But I don't really think you are.
War? Was this war declared by Congress, the only Constitutionally-enabled body allowed to do so?
This is not my war. This is not the war of oh, I dunno, around 55-60% of the American public if you read the latest polls.
Fuck off, run back to your masters, and give me my fucking country back you fascist wank.
B
It would be interesting to re-phrase the question and replace "iTunes" with "Windows Media Player" and see what kinds of responses are generated by the Slashdot crowd.
Sample headline: "It seems the most recent update to Microsoft's bundled media application Windows Media Player is mining the music tracks that a user plays and sending that data back to Microsoft in order to present the user with similar tracks from the MSN Music Store. What Microsoft does with this data after Music Store recommendations are made is unknown."
Will the apologists for Apple and their data mining stand up in this case as well?
Interesting question, anyway.
B
Now that this has turned into something completely different, and also ridiculous, let's see where we stand.
The parent of my original post stated flatly, in a broad generalization, that Sony "MP3" players do not play MP3s. The entire purpose of my response to this post was to point out that this is untrue and unfair. I did this by posting that I in fact *have* a Sony MP3 player which *does* play MP3 format natively. In no way did I ever say anything such as "because my player plays MP3, all Sony players play MP3". To derive such an idea is moronic. This is the discrimination.
Parent: "Sony 'MP3' players do not even play MP3"
Me: "The Network Walkman HD-5 that I have does"
That is a distinction, the only point of which was to point out the flaw in the parent's generalization. It's inferred, but it's there -- if you can't see it, well, too damn bad.
The entire rest of my post, and consequently most of the rest of this shit-fest, was unrelated to this first comment. Nitpicking everything in the post, telling me to "justify" this and that and comparing what I said to "people with half a brain" is not only an attack, but missing the only point I made in my original post.
I don't care what you think about Sony. I have my own opinion of them, and I act on that opinion. As my opinion and my resultant actions have nothing to do with the original point of my post, nothing about the point of my comment *or* my opinion of Sony necessitates me justifying my reasons for buying or not buying their products. I was not even defending Sony -- only pointing out an error in the original generalization.
I bid you good day -- onto other, hopefully better, things.
B
And neither did you! That's why I pointed out you "happened" to name the sole player of theirs that supports non-ATRAC audio.
I most certainly *did* discriminate between players: I stated flatly which player I use along with the fact that it *does* play MP3. I never equated that with "because mine does, they all do". I pointed out to the parent that his generalization is inaccurate and unfair.
Well, unless you're astroturfing, you don't know any more than the rest of us. Looking at their current selections, they're still selling a crapload of ATRAC-only players. As far as I know, they see their main strength as the ATRAC format, and that's true enough from a proprietary-lock-the-fool-consumer-in standpoint.
My point about future Sony MP3 players is deduced from the fact that, having added support for the format, it would not make much sense to remove it again in the next couple generations. You bring in a userbase and play, without altering mind you, files in MP3 format and then turn around and decide to suddenly *not* play them? Sony deserves a lot of heat, sure, but even they are not *that* stupid. Regardless of how they feel about ATRAC, they have recognized that the userbase uses mainly MP3. They've already locked in users of WMA by automatically converting WMA to ATRAC3plus during the transfer but they have kept straight MP3-playing functionality. To remove that functionality now would be suicide.
You should. Everyone with half a brain has a justification for a purchase.
Lame.
Then you should have mentioned why! That's the only way anyone out here can know if your justifications are rational or irrational.
More lame. You seem to really enjoy telling others what they should and shouldn't do. How about you consider the context of what I post instead.
I didn't attack you. I attacked Sony, which is the general subject for this article. You do support them in buying things other than their rootkit CDs. That's not good, but mentioning that is hardly an attack on my part.
Pure bullshit. Watered down, all you've said is, "Sony sucks. You use Sony. Therefore, you suck." Oh, and by the way, I bought the player long before this rootkit issue became known.
Oh, I most certainly am a dick. That doesn't make me wrong, though. As much of a prick as I may be, I've never tried to root your system or otherwise lock up your music.
Neither the Walkman nor SonicStage does nothing with my music library, as I already said. The only change that is made to anything is during the transfer to the player, and I don't really care what happens to the music on the player as long as my library remains untouched. I don't buy Sony CDs, and never will again after this rootkit shit. And really, why be a dick? Other than the obvious fun, I mean. It really is a drag.
B
Wish I'd seen these replies yesterday... anyway.
:P
It is a shame that Sony forces you to use SonicStage to interact with the Walkman, because the Walkman (at least the model I have) is really an excellent player. But yes, you do have to have SonicStage, and yes, it is absolutely horrid.
The grandparent was wondering if the device shows up as removable hardware, and the answer is "yes". You can use it as an external HDD, but just copying music files to it does not allow you to play them. That can only be done through SS. But for anything else, if you need a really expensive external HDD, the player works fine for that.
Sony is getting a lot of shit right now, and rightfully so. It really is too bad, because I've been very happy with the player itself. Here's hoping the company will be able to turn this around. I'm doubtful, but anyway.
B
Didn't see your reply until right now, but let's make a couple things clear:
1) The parent didn't discriminate between Sony products that do and don't play MP3s. This generalization is demonstrably false. Sony may indeed have "had their asses handed to them" for not playing MP3s before now, but as of now, they have an excellent player that handles MP3 with no problems. And as far as I know, all of their newer players will handle MP3, so this is a problem that belongs in the past.
2) I am not trying to justify buying or owning anything made by Sony. I bought the Walkman because after all of the research I did on MP3 HDD players, it came out on top *for me*. And I have been very happy with it, except, as I said, its reliance on SonicStage. I don't consider this device garbage at all. I don't feel that I was swindled, or swindled myself or any of that crap. So it's hard to understand why you'd attack me personally.
Unless you're just a dick. But I'll withhold judgment on that.
B
Ummm...
I own a Sony Network Walkman HD-5 and it plays MP3 just fine, thank you. It *plays* MP3, ATRAC3 and ATRAC3-plus. It *reads* and *converts* WMA into ATRAC3 as part of the transfer from the HDD to the player as well. This does not affect my actual music database, only the database that SonicStage constructs out of it. My library remains unchanged, consisting almost solely of MP3 and WMA.
I've been very happy with this player, as the sound quality, HDD size, battery life, and style are all excellent. Contary to your post, the only thing upsetting about my situation is that I can only use SonicStage to interface with the player, and SonicStage is quite possibly the worst media suite ever... but even that was a known quantity before I bought the Walkman.
Get your facts straight -- Sony deserves a lot of criticism, but you aren't doing any good throwing around false charges like this.
B
By the time you finish compiling, it probably won't. I wouldn't worry.
B
Well, this discussion has gone on long enough now so that it, in the larger context of things, doesn't matter anymore anyway, but I'll respond.
/. will attest. We are a long way from perfection.
First off, I agree with your points: no argument there. You are correct, as far as I know, about flaws in IE being patched, in many instances, before exploits are discovered in the wild. I don't know if I'd agree that "nearly all" of them are, but a good many, yes, and it is up to the users to make sure they are properly patched and protected.
However, you can't deny that there are serious problems where Microsoft is concerned with patching/updating mechanism in as much as it applies to security threats. Microsoft has done much recently (e.g. SP2) to seemingly change these practices, but as things stand now, it seems to me that the patching/updating of the Mozilla foundation, along with many other OSS vendors, is far more efficient. Patches come much more frequently and address in much more timely a fashion the newest security concerns. I'm sure you've looked at Secunia's site for evidence of the amount and degree of vulnerabilities on both sides of the fence.
That said, OSS has a long way to go, and I'm not just another shrill fanboy touting the everlasting wonder if GNU and OSS, to which my other comments on
But the article in question is clearly slanted to give people the impression that there is little, if any, difference between the two philosophies we are dealing with: that they both lead to the same end - insecurity. I disagree with that slant. That is not to say that there aren't extant problems.
In the end, I think we agree much more than we disagree. It is, as I've said repeatedly, a valid point to say that problems exist even when a patch is released if the population using the browser in question is not a) automatically patched and b) not savvy enough to patch themselves from mozilla.org. Those are both problems that apply equally well to IE as Firefox. The difference lies in the fact that, for Firefox, a patch *does* exist in this specific case, and the patch *was* released prior to the announcement of the exploit (and yes, I do realize that the exploit might've been reverse-engineered from the patch -- but that is always going to be a problem and it doesn't denegrate the patching efforts of the people at Mozilla).
I don't have anything else to say, except that I hope to not be considered one of the ignorant, suffocating masses you speak of. I like them as little as you do.
B
I read your comment the first time, but after a second reading, your point is still invalid. The patch was released by Mozilla before this particular hole was announced. Read *my* first comment again, and see that this is the point that I was making. Mozilla had already fixed this particular issue before the hole was known.
It is not up to Mozilla, any more than it is up to Microsoft, to ensure that every person using their browser has a fully upgraded/patched version in front of them. The users must take some responsibility. If you have an issue with the update process, then fine, that point is valid, and to some extent I share your view. However, that point does not relate to the fact that Mozilla's efforts vis-a-vis the patching cycle are directly responsible for the fact that a patched version of the browser was released prior to the discovery of this security problem.
It is no different for a user of Firefox than it is for a user of IE as far as responsibility for keeping updated is concerned -- the difference is that when people are using IE, they often do not even have a newer, patched version of the browser that they can, in any way and by any means, install to correct a known issue.
You can keep arguing about the problems with the automatic update mechanism employed by Firefox, and that's fine, but it isn't the issue that I was dealing with.
B
Dude, the point still stands that the patch has been released. Whether or not the updates have been applied automatically to all who receive them is beside that point. Mozilla had this patch out the door, for anyone and everyone to install it, before this hole was announced.
If people are worried about the length of time between release and auto-updating (which is normally only a couple of days), then they can move over to manual updating.
Your point, however valid it may be when dealing with the auto-update process, is not valid when dealing with the question of this hole. The patch was already released, which was the only point I was trying to make.
And I don't pretend to think that Mozilla's, or any other person or company's, process or security is "perfect". Far from it. Don't put words into my mouth.
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Ummm, so basically Mozilla was ahead of the game as far as this hole is concerned, having already released a patched version of the browser before the exploit became known?
Pardon, but rather than using this exploit as some kind of evidence that Firefox is on-par, security-wise, with IE, shouldn't we be viewing this as a victory for the patch/version-release cycle of the Mozilla foundation?
There will always be new security holes found. The difference is that patched versions of the browser, fixing the security hole in question, are not always released before the hole is announced.
Two cents.
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Dude, it says, right there in the release annoucement linked to from the /. article, "an equivalent update to the Mozilla Application Suite, Mozilla 1.7.12, is expected shortly."
The way you sound, you seem to think you'd have to wait ages for any kind of update to Mozilla. As it stands right now, most people who use automatic updates for Firefox will have to wait a couple days for the update to appear for them.
Get a grip.
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Rather, free registration codes as long as their server lasts. :)
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I'm sure Bush would be very proud of you for using the term "Enemy Combatant"... considering it was Alberto Gonzales who came up with it so the US didn't have to deal with international POW laws.
It's also interesting that you support the outright killing of civilians if 1) as a one-time option, it will lead to the quicker resolution of the war 2) if said civilians had any part to play in the military-industrial infrastructure of the enemy country (to which I'd point out that even the most strident pacifist's tax dollars go to Halliburton and Lockheed - there isn't anything you can do about it) 3) if it's just plain easier than mounting an invasion.
Are you in the "let's just nuke the Middle East and get it over with!" camp? With arguments like the ones you are making, it seems the slaughter of a few more million people as a means to an end wouldn't terribly bother you. And hey! Then we'd have the oil!
When you say that Japan wasn't provoked in the slightest by the US, you do realize that the US had imposed a scrap metal boycott, followed by an oil boycott, a freeze of assets and the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping due to Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1937.
Have a read here.
You might not consider than justification for attack, but it's patently obvious that someone in the higher echelons of the Japanese government did.
You also seem to not realize just how close the Japanese came to decimating our entire Pacific fleet. If the carriers hadn't been out on maneuvers, they would've been seriously damaged. And the jury remains out on whether or not the US had some foreknowledge of the attack, so there's at least the suspicicion of US governmental involvement.
Things are, as you say, not as black and white as they may first seem.
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Why did this get modded "insightful"?
The article merely stated that all of the critical security issues fixed with this update were java-related. It by no means says that this update fixes all java vulnerabilities.
Sheesh.
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I know it's a little late and so this will probably not get much attention, but having read through the list of comments I'm surprised not to have seen more about how easily accessible home addresses and phone numbers already are.
You've got the phone book, sure, but remember you've also got Google out there. Type in someone's full name and city (sometimes city isn't even needed) and pop! there is their address, and, unless it's unlisted, their phone number.
Now, one can play the game, saying that posting information like that on a blog somewhere is a lot more like pointing a finger directly at the person in question, highlighting their information, but to me the difference is slight, if tenable at all. All you need is someone's name to get an address out of Google, and it is still legal for bloggers to post a name.
Besides (and I have seen this posted above), personal addresses and phone numbers (unless specifically requested) are not private information at all. So we're talking about intent here. The intent to misuse this information.
The focus is supposedly on people's ideas of censorship, in whatever form you want to take it, but what we're really talking about here is discrimination.
I don't really want my information highlighted on the internet, public or private as it might be. But I want even less to discriminate against those who are exercising a perfectly legal right to publish public information. *That* is where the slippery slope begins, and we don't want to go down that road.
Oh wait... we already are.
When I visited http://www.lyricspy.com/ (this site listed as being the origin in the VitalSecurity story) I immediately receive a pop-up warning from McAfee 8.0 that the file "javainstaller.jar" is a Trojan, and an "exploit". The installer window never appears at all.
Additionally, Firefox automatically blocks the installation with its pop-up blocker, so it appears that, with my settings (which are not terribly restrictive), I have a double layer of security preventing me from even getting to the point of clicking "yes" to the installer.
Not too big a deal, this, but it is good to know that following basic security procedures like keeping virus definitions up to date and using the pop-up blocker correctly can make it a lot easier to avoid the kind of crap this story deals with. I do realize, however, that a great many people do not follow these guidelines, and that that is the point of the story.
But I would like to point out that it seems that I am not quite as vulnerable as this story makes it appear that I will be (when running Windows). And, of course, if I flip over to my Fedora Core 3 partition, this problem goes away entirely.
And yes, I am using the Sun Java Runtime.
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Um, dude, you do know it's a comedy show right? As far as I understand it, it doesn't matter what kind of bias a comedy show has. He doesn't care about presenting an objective viewpoint. And he doesn't have to.
Think your argument and your problem through again, except this time replace all instances of "The Daily Show" with "The Man Show" and see how it comes out.
...sigh...
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PS - as an aside, I'd say that The Daily Show was just about as biased towards the Left during the election as FOX News was towards the Right. Of course, FOX News *does* present itself as an objective, credible source of information. Which was a hefty portion of Stewart's point when he was on Crossfire on CNN.
One wonders at the direction of causality. To me it is a self-justifying cycle. If we think we can be no different, we are inclined to act no differently.
Its funny how apologists for power-seeking always fall back to this argument. They don't understand that in an argument pre-structred around the idea that might-makes-right cannot contain in a meaningful way ideas that seek to redefine the antecedents.
But it's easier, like I said, that way.
PS - It *is* his idea of history. Just because you agree with him doesn't define the entire experience of history.
And as long as there are people like you summing up what humanity *is* in a paragraph, as if a decision had been made, we will never have the option of trying out a different mode of being.
Thanks for cementing the rest of us into your idea of "destiny".
Everything feels so much easier now.
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Don't think for a minute that the PATRIOT act is about actually catching criminals. Of course, in order to catch a criminal, an actual law has to be broken first, and this act sorta just steps to the side of that little point...
... mix together and you have a cycle of fear-relief-fear-relief ad infinitum. Oh, and it helps to have such a compliant media, and it REALLY helps to have such a heavily sedated public. And as a bonus, the government can basically collect any information it wants about any member of the public. Just for future... consideration. It really is Orwell-worthy... if only he could see it actually come to fruition.
But that's not the issue. The PATRIOT act is simply a control-through-fear technique. Keep the masses in fear of 1) an outside power - the terrorists 2) the structure designed to remove 1) - the law
Oh, and about the numbers of criminals that have been caught under this law? I dunno, but the number of convictions as far as terrorism goes is exactly ZERO. Nice job there, Ashcroft!
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