I agree with your points, but if anybody ever manages to prove they blew up the levees at that point to spare the wealthier districts (which is entirely believable), even that technicality will be called into question.
Actually, given that you had a Cat 3-4 hurricane, it's reasonable to have expected them to break this time as well, especially given that it was predicted long ago, and funds have been slashed for rebuilding for years despite that.
I tend not to waste my time with such technicalities since it's obvious who stands to gain. It's true, though, that the tactic works time and again when it shouldn't.
It works because people who depend on the person who's lying (Symantec in this case) are afraid to believe that the person they depend on is a liar since it exposes their judgement as worthless and makes them vulnerable - the old "fear of death" mantra I bring up all the time to explain all human behavior.
"no one could have known the levees would break". "It's factually true"
Actually, it isn't. Bad example. It was known for years that the levees would break given an adequately severe storm. The Feds just didn't give a shit.
You're correct about the reason why this lie is being spread, however.
Statistically, there is nothing backing the claim that Firefox has more security flaws than IE based only on the last six months.
This is like saying, "I opened up three burger shops this week. I'm the fastest growing chain in the US - McDonalds must be worried."
Microsoft shills don't mind dragging out the fact that Firefox STILL has only X percent of the market vs IE's X times 10 market share.
So it doesn't surprise me that they try the same stunt in reverse by claiming that more Firefox vulnerabilities in a short period of time is more important than the tons more vulnerabilities IE has had over its lifetime (or even recent lifetime since IIRC the total is over 80 for the last three years alone for IE).
Bullshit. Wait three years, then compare Firefox's three year total with IE's total as of now.
Symantec's report is not statistically valid UNLESS you ACCEPT that the ratio of Firefox vulnerabilities to time is a CONSTANT - which is the point they're trying to prove, which makes the whole thing circular reasoning.
We KNOW IE keeps getting new flaws - albeit possibly more slowly now - over time. We know Firefox is new, so more vulnerabilities now would make sense. The only way to determine the relative rate of vulnerabilities is to wait and see. A straight-line projection based on the last six months is not valid if in fact there IS a leveling off effect as the software gets more mature.
At this point, we do not KNOW whether there will be a leveling off as Firefox gets more mature. OSS theory predicts there will be (IF you can factor out the other issue that Firefox is under heavy development vs IE which hasn't been up until IE 7.)
Ahem, Mozilla believes in RESPONSIBLE disclosure, i.e., shut up while we look into this and figure out how bad it is, then produce a patch before anyone gets wind of it, so we avoid an actual exploit.
Microsoft and Cisco say: shut up while we look into this and figure out how bad it is, then decide when, if ever, we produce a patch - because it costs us money to distribute these fucking patches, and Bill gets upset when things cost us money without bringing IN money...and if we decide to take six to twelve months to produce the patch, and you go public in that time, we sue you - because we've got the money to do it, and you'll end up giving us money, which will make Bill happy again.
Not at all. They would be doing that IF they were rational, and IF people listening were rational. Neither is the case.
They either can't reason like you do, or they assume (and hope) no one else will.
Their belief is quite obvious - if people use Firefox, those people won't need them. So they need to prevent DEFECTION from IE, because they KNOW people who use IE DO need them.
The obvious logic flaw - that if IE WERE secure, people using it wouldn't need them - obviously either didn't occur to them (unlikely, but possible since their marketing people are probably morons) or (more likely) they ignore it (and hope everybody listening to them will) in favor of spreading FUD to deal with their actual fear - that people actually WILL need them less by switching to Firefox.
The bias is obvious.
Also the deliberate attempt to ignore past IE flaws by comparing only vulnerabilities in the last six months, and then proclaiming that, since Firefox has vastly more uptake in the last six months, that the comparison is valid.
Plus ignoring unpatched vulnerabilities that Microsoft has been sitting on for months, according to other articles on the subject.
Makes it pretty obvious. Also makes it obvious that they're relying on the ignorance of the average user about the issues involved.
"allowing customers to buy Internet access without traditional phone service would be costly to telecom providers."
The same assholes provide cellular as provide land lines - and the only threat to landlines is cellular right now - VoIP is not yet a threat (but will be.)
They're gonna charge you up the yin-yang either for cellular or landline, so who cares which it is? DSL is not relevant to that. Anybody who has DSL probably has cellular anyway - albeit perhaps in addition to landline. If they dumped landline, said customer would stop paying $15-20/month for his few landline calls, and make up the difference on his cellular anyway. It would probably be a wash.
The only reason landline is a cash cow is because they've paid for the infrastructure long ago. In a few years the cellular towers and systems will be paid for as well - or be replaced by wireless nodes anyway, probably hanging on the same towers.
The only thing not paid for is wireless (which is cheaper anyway) or fiber to the home (which isn't cheap at all, but critical to delivery of media content - unless wireless can hit 100MB to the home soon, in which fiber to the home might as well be dropkicked.)
You gotta wonder, though, when people are tossing their PCs due to spyware, if the issue isn't either one of those, but simple knowledge of WHY they NEED it.
Which reduces to ignorance, basically.
I think that might change if the geeks writing Linux software would learn to leapfrog Windows in usability - which wouldn't be that hard. The problem is, even though Linux isn't harder to use than Windows, it isn't vastly EASIER to use than Windows, either. And geeks by definition have no clue about making anything easy to use.
The "average user" can't (according to the Windows shills) figure out how to run Linux - but they can figure out how to duplicate a DVD and then share it over a P2P network (according to said "average users" writing for the RIAA and MPAA).
Anybody who thinks vi is easier to use than pico is obviously a geek who probably uses a hammer to tie his shoelaces.
Don't waste my time with this nonsense.
Re:And It Is ALSO The Reason
on
The Slurpee at 40
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
And WHY THE FUCK am I getting this response after every post submission I do?
"No discussion or comments found for this request. To create your own discussion, please use journals."/., FIX YOUR FUCKING SOFTWARE OR SHUT THE FUCK UP!
It is appropriate that this surfaces a day after some moron tried to make that argument stick.
Microsoft: Give...it...up!
You've lied so often that nobody but your shills believe your FUD anymore -and I'm not even sure THEY do - they just support it for their own moronic reasons.
Well, my point on the timetable is that he presumably would like to do this short of the two years some other people suggested he take to learn system administration under Linux.
Also keep in mind he DOES (supposedly) have a real job administering the Windows system, and presumably even with one server he's busy much of the time. So I don't think he needs to be loaded down with more training than he immediately needs.
If he could handle it, I've no problem with it - I just don't think it's necessary for being able to learn enough to pull off the conversion.
I'd say that precompiled binaries are not a serious security issue IN GENERAL (obviously they CAN be in specific cases.) Especially for Linux where if the binary is not a system binary requiring SETUID, there's not a lot of damage it can do system wide - although of course it can do damage to the user and in a single-user system that's almost as bad as wrecking the system. But I think that could be handled by various measures such as repositories, digital signing, whatever. It doesn't seem to be an issue at the moment, although I suppose if Linux had a hundred million users and more hackers and malicious Web sites, it could be.
I understand why developers use source much of the time, namely, cross-architecture/platform compatibility. Compile for the existing platform rather than worry about separate binaries for each.
The real issue with compiled binaries is - people want 'em. Personally I have no problem doing the old "triple" (configure/make/make install) as long as I don't need to hassle with a zillion modifications to the config file to get it to do something I consider rational, but the Windows users (supposedly, according to some people anyway) can't handle it. I'm not sure that's true, but the general consensus is people want stuff they can click on and install.
Personally I don't see the difference in using something like kconfigure and Checkinstall and automating that to make installing from source a one or two click operation - seems to be that would be just as good as downloading a self-installing binary. But there it is.
Is subpackaging a requirement or an encouragement of RPM systems? Sounds to me like that would be a developer decision. Either they have a reason or they don't. Either way it doesn't sound like the fault of the packaging method per se.
I'll accept your criticism of the spec file format, as I'm not familiar with it or its effects.
As usual the count of security flaws is meaningless.
As long as Firefox doesn't run Active X, whatever flaws it may have are so unlikely to be exploited as to be meaningless - even with eighty million users at last count.
IE on the other hand has been and will continue to be a security hole - not to mention a pathetic piece of dog shit as a browser...
Take your Microsoft shill FUD-shitting face out of my face...
Not even worth my time to read the article.
The only complaint I have about Firefox is it still screws up every other day or so at something, due to memory leaks or whatever. I can't wait for 1.5 which will hopefully eliminate these bugs.
I probably should go ahead and download the 1.5 beta, but I tend to avoid betas unless I read somewhere that the beta is already adequately solid.
And you forgot...Bill Gates - who comes up with the idea to change the lightbulb in the first place...after his father suggests it would increase his holdings...
You also forgot fifty/. Windows shills who proclaim that lightbulb changing is just more proof that Linux can't compete on the desktop...
Okay, your post is much more reasonable. I apologize for any excessive responses in my earlier post.
My point, which I think you underestimate, is that he really doesn't NEED to be an EXPERT Linux sys admin to make the conversion. It wouldn't hurt, of course, but it isn't an absolute requirement. And he DOES need to know a certain minimum to be a Linux sys admin at all.
He can do all the things you suggest EVENTUALLY. I have no problem at all with that - I'd like to do all that myself if I had the time. All he needs right now to make a successful conversion is, first and foremost, a PLAN, and secondly, ENOUGH knowledge to make that plan and DO the conversion.
He'll have plenty of time to become an expert later - especially if he makes sure that he has contact with someone who IS an expert to help him when he gets stuck (which he certainly will at one point or another.)
As for what knowledge he needs, see my further post listing some textbooks he could use for study. As I told him, that list will keep him busy for six months anyway, especially if he has actual work to do on a daily basis with the current setup now besides.
I'm not familiar enough with RPM vs non-RPM systems to comment on any issues you have with RPM. Package management needs some improvement on Linux, I don't think anyone denies that. I just didn't think it was relevant to this guys requirements AT THIS POINT. By the time he gets everything learned and converted, the package management scene will have changed again anyway, probably.
You should read other posts I've made - herd mentality is not a factor with me, trust me!
I agree in general, but my point is that money men need legal protection for their risk - which is then not exactly risk, is it?
And the effect you mention in the last sentence is exactly the problem of patents - if somebody can claim a legal monopoly, others won't bother investing in the market - which reduces innovation.
That's the reason legally protected monopolies are bad for the species - in the pure free market case, monopolies which arise (by natural means) are quickly (relative to the existing case anyway) torn down by investment in alternative means of accomplishing the same function. If the monopoly is legally protected - and patents overly broad - there is no incentive to invest in alternative and probably better means of accomplishing the same function; you won't make any money anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your points, but if anybody ever manages to prove they blew up the levees at that point to spare the wealthier districts (which is entirely believable), even that technicality will be called into question.
Actually, given that you had a Cat 3-4 hurricane, it's reasonable to have expected them to break this time as well, especially given that it was predicted long ago, and funds have been slashed for rebuilding for years despite that.
I tend not to waste my time with such technicalities since it's obvious who stands to gain. It's true, though, that the tactic works time and again when it shouldn't.
It works because people who depend on the person who's lying (Symantec in this case) are afraid to believe that the person they depend on is a liar since it exposes their judgement as worthless and makes them vulnerable - the old "fear of death" mantra I bring up all the time to explain all human behavior.
"no one could have known the levees would break". "It's factually true"
Actually, it isn't. Bad example. It was known for years that the levees would break given an adequately severe storm. The Feds just didn't give a shit.
You're correct about the reason why this lie is being spread, however.
Statistically, there is nothing backing the claim that Firefox has more security flaws than IE based only on the last six months.
This is like saying, "I opened up three burger shops this week. I'm the fastest growing chain in the US - McDonalds must be worried."
Microsoft shills don't mind dragging out the fact that Firefox STILL has only X percent of the market vs IE's X times 10 market share.
So it doesn't surprise me that they try the same stunt in reverse by claiming that more Firefox vulnerabilities in a short period of time is more important than the tons more vulnerabilities IE has had over its lifetime (or even recent lifetime since IIRC the total is over 80 for the last three years alone for IE).
Bullshit. Wait three years, then compare Firefox's three year total with IE's total as of now.
Symantec's report is not statistically valid UNLESS you ACCEPT that the ratio of Firefox vulnerabilities to time is a CONSTANT - which is the point they're trying to prove, which makes the whole thing circular reasoning.
We KNOW IE keeps getting new flaws - albeit possibly more slowly now - over time. We know Firefox is new, so more vulnerabilities now would make sense. The only way to determine the relative rate of vulnerabilities is to wait and see. A straight-line projection based on the last six months is not valid if in fact there IS a leveling off effect as the software gets more mature.
At this point, we do not KNOW whether there will be a leveling off as Firefox gets more mature. OSS theory predicts there will be (IF you can factor out the other issue that Firefox is under heavy development vs IE which hasn't been up until IE 7.)
Ahem, Mozilla believes in RESPONSIBLE disclosure, i.e., shut up while we look into this and figure out how bad it is, then produce a patch before anyone gets wind of it, so we avoid an actual exploit.
Microsoft and Cisco say: shut up while we look into this and figure out how bad it is, then decide when, if ever, we produce a patch - because it costs us money to distribute these fucking patches, and Bill gets upset when things cost us money without bringing IN money...and if we decide to take six to twelve months to produce the patch, and you go public in that time, we sue you - because we've got the money to do it, and you'll end up giving us money, which will make Bill happy again.
Not at all. They would be doing that IF they were rational, and IF people listening were rational. Neither is the case.
They either can't reason like you do, or they assume (and hope) no one else will.
Their belief is quite obvious - if people use Firefox, those people won't need them. So they need to prevent DEFECTION from IE, because they KNOW people who use IE DO need them.
The obvious logic flaw - that if IE WERE secure, people using it wouldn't need them - obviously either didn't occur to them (unlikely, but possible since their marketing people are probably morons) or (more likely) they ignore it (and hope everybody listening to them will) in favor of spreading FUD to deal with their actual fear - that people actually WILL need them less by switching to Firefox.
The bias is obvious.
Also the deliberate attempt to ignore past IE flaws by comparing only vulnerabilities in the last six months, and then proclaiming that, since Firefox has vastly more uptake in the last six months, that the comparison is valid.
Plus ignoring unpatched vulnerabilities that Microsoft has been sitting on for months, according to other articles on the subject.
Makes it pretty obvious. Also makes it obvious that they're relying on the ignorance of the average user about the issues involved.
"allowing customers to buy Internet access without traditional phone service would be costly to telecom providers."
The same assholes provide cellular as provide land lines - and the only threat to landlines is cellular right now - VoIP is not yet a threat (but will be.)
They're gonna charge you up the yin-yang either for cellular or landline, so who cares which it is? DSL is not relevant to that. Anybody who has DSL probably has cellular anyway - albeit perhaps in addition to landline. If they dumped landline, said customer would stop paying $15-20/month for his few landline calls, and make up the difference on his cellular anyway. It would probably be a wash.
The only reason landline is a cash cow is because they've paid for the infrastructure long ago. In a few years the cellular towers and systems will be paid for as well - or be replaced by wireless nodes anyway, probably hanging on the same towers.
The only thing not paid for is wireless (which is cheaper anyway) or fiber to the home (which isn't cheap at all, but critical to delivery of media content - unless wireless can hit 100MB to the home soon, in which fiber to the home might as well be dropkicked.)
Motivation and awareness are on point.
You gotta wonder, though, when people are tossing their PCs due to spyware, if the issue isn't either one of those, but simple knowledge of WHY they NEED it.
Which reduces to ignorance, basically.
I think that might change if the geeks writing Linux software would learn to leapfrog Windows in usability - which wouldn't be that hard. The problem is, even though Linux isn't harder to use than Windows, it isn't vastly EASIER to use than Windows, either. And geeks by definition have no clue about making anything easy to use.
Bovine excrement. The "average user" has never heard of Linux - therefore they can't refuse to use it.
Pure and simple.
Nobody (including Steve) makes a move - still - without clearing it with Bill.
And they're ALL still lying every time they open their mouth.
So who cares what their job titles are?
Or perhaps I should ask: who's been appointed "Minister of Propaganda"?
The "average user" can't (according to the Windows shills) figure out how to run Linux - but they can figure out how to duplicate a DVD and then share it over a P2P network (according to said "average users" writing for the RIAA and MPAA).
What's wrong with this picture?
Given that humans are 98.5% chimp anyway, there's not much of a choice.
As the anarchists says, "No matter who gets elected, the government gets into office."
We Transhumans modify that to: "No matter who gets elected, an alpha chimp gets into office."
Anybody who thinks vi is easier to use than pico is obviously a geek who probably uses a hammer to tie his shoelaces.
Don't waste my time with this nonsense.
And WHY THE FUCK am I getting this response after every post submission I do?
/., FIX YOUR FUCKING SOFTWARE OR SHUT THE FUCK UP!
"No discussion or comments found for this request. To create your own discussion, please use journals."
that Zonk can't recognize a dupe when he sees it.
Obviously Slurpees have frozen HIS brain as well.
"News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters" - yeah, tell me again...
In other news, Arby's roast beef sandwiches ROCK!
how Firefox has more security problems than IE...
It is appropriate that this surfaces a day after some moron tried to make that argument stick.
Microsoft: Give...it...up!
You've lied so often that nobody but your shills believe your FUD anymore -and I'm not even sure THEY do - they just support it for their own moronic reasons.
"If $100 Million dollars won't make you want to switch to Vista, what will?"
Or pay the money to Angelina Jolie (or one of her charities) to date me.
On second thought, just pay me the money. I'll deal with Angie. (Brad is not a factor - with $100 million, I can deal with him, too.)
Well, my point on the timetable is that he presumably would like to do this short of the two years some other people suggested he take to learn system administration under Linux.
Also keep in mind he DOES (supposedly) have a real job administering the Windows system, and presumably even with one server he's busy much of the time. So I don't think he needs to be loaded down with more training than he immediately needs.
If he could handle it, I've no problem with it - I just don't think it's necessary for being able to learn enough to pull off the conversion.
I'd say that precompiled binaries are not a serious security issue IN GENERAL (obviously they CAN be in specific cases.) Especially for Linux where if the binary is not a system binary requiring SETUID, there's not a lot of damage it can do system wide - although of course it can do damage to the user and in a single-user system that's almost as bad as wrecking the system. But I think that could be handled by various measures such as repositories, digital signing, whatever. It doesn't seem to be an issue at the moment, although I suppose if Linux had a hundred million users and more hackers and malicious Web sites, it could be.
I understand why developers use source much of the time, namely, cross-architecture/platform compatibility. Compile for the existing platform rather than worry about separate binaries for each.
The real issue with compiled binaries is - people want 'em. Personally I have no problem doing the old "triple" (configure/make/make install) as long as I don't need to hassle with a zillion modifications to the config file to get it to do something I consider rational, but the Windows users (supposedly, according to some people anyway) can't handle it. I'm not sure that's true, but the general consensus is people want stuff they can click on and install.
Personally I don't see the difference in using something like kconfigure and Checkinstall and automating that to make installing from source a one or two click operation - seems to be that would be just as good as downloading a self-installing binary. But there it is.
Is subpackaging a requirement or an encouragement of RPM systems? Sounds to me like that would be a developer decision. Either they have a reason or they don't. Either way it doesn't sound like the fault of the packaging method per se.
I'll accept your criticism of the spec file format, as I'm not familiar with it or its effects.
I'm sure some FEMA employees just "borrowed" and "mislaid" them while setting up shop in New Orleans...
As usual the count of security flaws is meaningless.
As long as Firefox doesn't run Active X, whatever flaws it may have are so unlikely to be exploited as to be meaningless - even with eighty million users at last count.
IE on the other hand has been and will continue to be a security hole - not to mention a pathetic piece of dog shit as a browser...
Take your Microsoft shill FUD-shitting face out of my face...
Not even worth my time to read the article.
The only complaint I have about Firefox is it still screws up every other day or so at something, due to memory leaks or whatever. I can't wait for 1.5 which will hopefully eliminate these bugs.
I probably should go ahead and download the 1.5 beta, but I tend to avoid betas unless I read somewhere that the beta is already adequately solid.
Bill, turn on your cell. Steve wants to know exactly HOW he's supposed to "revamp the development process".
You left before telling him.
You know how it irritates him that you spend all your spare time posting on that stupid bulletin board...
Pedantic nitpick number 43: it's "Rob" Enderle...
And you forgot...Bill Gates - who comes up with the idea to change the lightbulb in the first place...after his father suggests it would increase his holdings...
You also forgot fifty
Cut out the security reviews they implemented several years ago.
Eliminate debugging cycles...
Oh, and cut out the design phase..."Gotta get that code out the door and if we don't start coding now, we'll never get done in time..."
Oh, wait, they never had a design phase...That was actually the "marketing feature list" phase.
Oh, and last but not least...postpone the "Universal Searchable Filesystem" until Windows 2010...
Okay, your post is much more reasonable. I apologize for any excessive responses in my earlier post.
My point, which I think you underestimate, is that he really doesn't NEED to be an EXPERT Linux sys admin to make the conversion. It wouldn't hurt, of course, but it isn't an absolute requirement. And he DOES need to know a certain minimum to be a Linux sys admin at all.
He can do all the things you suggest EVENTUALLY. I have no problem at all with that - I'd like to do all that myself if I had the time. All he needs right now to make a successful conversion is, first and foremost, a PLAN, and secondly, ENOUGH knowledge to make that plan and DO the conversion.
He'll have plenty of time to become an expert later - especially if he makes sure that he has contact with someone who IS an expert to help him when he gets stuck (which he certainly will at one point or another.)
As for what knowledge he needs, see my further post listing some textbooks he could use for study. As I told him, that list will keep him busy for six months anyway, especially if he has actual work to do on a daily basis with the current setup now besides.
I'm not familiar enough with RPM vs non-RPM systems to comment on any issues you have with RPM. Package management needs some improvement on Linux, I don't think anyone denies that. I just didn't think it was relevant to this guys requirements AT THIS POINT. By the time he gets everything learned and converted, the package management scene will have changed again anyway, probably.
You should read other posts I've made - herd mentality is not a factor with me, trust me!
I agree in general, but my point is that money men need legal protection for their risk - which is then not exactly risk, is it?
And the effect you mention in the last sentence is exactly the problem of patents - if somebody can claim a legal monopoly, others won't bother investing in the market - which reduces innovation.
That's the reason legally protected monopolies are bad for the species - in the pure free market case, monopolies which arise (by natural means) are quickly (relative to the existing case anyway) torn down by investment in alternative means of accomplishing the same function. If the monopoly is legally protected - and patents overly broad - there is no incentive to invest in alternative and probably better means of accomplishing the same function; you won't make any money anyway.