Tell me, why is it still possible for private parties to change things like this on a whim?
Uh, this isn't a 'private party', it's the Chinese government. DNS generally worked fine when it was controlled by 'private parties' and governments weren't meddling with it.
I know most plug-ins, including Flash, suffer from requiring mandatory browser restarts and yellow bar popups, no I don't know why (other than they suck at writing installers).
Really? On Linux I just kill the Flash process and Firefox restarts it with the new plugin when required.
But, why don't browsers automatically detect when an addon has been installed from a non-approved way (i.e. through the browser's own plugin install system), disable it at app start, and prompt the user on what to do with it?
And how do you do that?
Somehow you have to store information about which addons were previously being used. That means putting it in a file somewhere on the system. That means that the plugin installer will just add itself to that file so that it won't trigger the message.
You could try to do clever tricks with signing the file, but then the signing key has to be on the computer somewhere so the installer can find it and use it to sign the file again.
If you run as root to allow some random software to install then it has complete control over your system. That's the real problem.
Some US government employee copied these files. Wikileaks didn't pay him to do so. Why did he do it and why was he able to get away with it?
Why do you think it was a 'he'? This 'leak' could potentially be very valuable to, say, some high-level State Department official who wanted to run against Obama for the Democrat nomination in 2012.
"Aside from the Arabs pressing for the attack of Iran, nothing there was of any news to me."
Ditto. And even that wasn't terribly surprising.
The real surprise is that any of these things are marked as 'SECRET, NO FOREIGNERS' when most of the foreigners already know them because, duh, they live in these countries. I'm sure that no Russian thinks that their government is linked to organised crime and every Briton believes their military is doing a great job in Afghanistan... oh, hang on.
"whoever in his right mind would want to listen to binary files loudly?"
I think you've finally solved the mystery of the 'numbers stations': it's not Russian spies sending secret messages, it's the oldest method of P2P file sharing!
We could win a war against Afghanistan without putting one person on the group. We could bomb a country like that until not a structure stayed standing and the few who lived would be reduced to living in caves and living off of grass
And they would still be trying to kill you whenever they could.
We somehow today equate winning a war with winning over the people and making them love us.
I thought you invaded Afghanistan to capture bin Laden, and bring democracy and human rights to the people there? Or is this one of those 'we had to kill the people in order to save them' things?
Maybe when Ballmer is inevitably canned within the next FY or two, MS will get smart and put a CEO in his place that is much more focused on developing MS's core business model of enterprise software systems, and will stop wasting money on retarded consumer electronics ventures that in the end turn into nothing but money black holes.
If they wait two years, they risk losing most of their 'core market' to the competition. The desktop market is saturated, you have to be crazy to put Windows on a server, and the mobile market is too entrenched for Windows to become the biggest player and probably not even a major one.
Yes, of course, the Ambassador to Russia should just say "You know what, Putin, you're a nasty fucking bastard."
That will really make things so much better for everyone.
Putin would probably drink to that.
Personally I can't think of any occasion where America has benefited from cosying up to 'nasty fucking bastards'. Doing that with Stalin, for example, handed half of Europe to him and led to decades of Cold War.
What good would it do the citizens of either nation to have these observations broadcast for the world to see? Will it help American interests abroad? What exactly will American citizens be able to decide based on it? That the British Prime Minister is an ass?
I hate to disappoint you, but that's no secret to the British people. In fact I think most of them would put it rather more strongly than that.
"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense, but in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them."
And if they thought your can of Coke was really a threat, then why don't they treat you like a threat when they find it? Instead they just demand that you throw the POTENTIAL LIQUID EXPLOSIVE into a garbage can next to them.
Well, duh. If the garbage can explodes when they throw your Coke into it then they know it was a bomb, otherwise you're free to go.
The limitation is the lack of creativity on the part of most developers.
But that's largely because most games these days are developed for consoles, which means lowest common denominator design and limited in scope to be able to run on antiquated hardware.
Besides nebulous empty rhetoric like Windows having a broken design, what's wrong with it that a rewrite would fix?
Staggering amounts of backwards compatibility crud full of security holes?
One obvious example is Windows' default behaviour of loading.DLL files from the current directory, which allows you to infect arbitrary executables by starting a program from a directory wihch contains a malware DLL. 'But we can't change that because it will break WhizzbangSoft 2003!'
The only way for Windows to become secure is to throw out backwards compatibility, and then no-one would use it.
The IE exploit mention is meaningless (other than for flamebaiting). You can quite easily catch a virus using a fully patched version of Firefox with up to date plugins through regular browsing (noscript is not regular browsing).
So an unknown vulnerability in Firefox is just as likely to infect your machine as a known vulnerability in IE?
If your answers and behavior while answering fit the profile of a person who is nervous or agitated, then you are pulled aside for a more thorough analysis and search.
'Nervous or agitated'? You mean like someone who wants to catch their connecting flight before it takes off in five minutes, and is being hassled by a security monkey who's going to make them miss it?
Israeli style profiling is demonstrably effective
How many actual terrorists have they actually caught that way?
I'm not asking that as a rhetorical question, but because I can't remember a single news story in the last decade saying that Israeli airport security caught a terrorist. Maybe I've just missed them.
Meny train station don't even have full time ticket agents and you have to buy them on the train and what the point when any dumb ass can just drive around the gates and maybe crash a train by having it hit his car?
That's OK, they'll stick up a big screen at the station so the other passengers can check that you're not carrying anything you shouldn't be. Of course you might have to go through the scanner a few times until they can all be sure.
I was rebooting ubuntu a couple of years ago more than I ever reboot Windows now. Is that still the case? Seems like I was getting kernel updates weekly or bi-weekly.
Unlike Windows, you don't need to reboot for a kernel update unless it's an essential security fix: unless it's changed in Windows 7, Microsoft won't let you install any other updates until you've rebooted to finish installing the previous one, whereas Ubuntu couldn't give a damn.
I seem to get a new kernel from Ubuntu every couple of weeks, but I only reboot my MythTV server every month or two unless there's a serious hole I really want fixed there and then.
What is this fascination with change for change sake? What could possibly be so important that it has to come out each and every day?
The problem is that if you wait six months between upgrades then that means you spend 12 hours downloading and installing hundreds of megabytes of changes and then it crashes part-way through and your system is hosed. I've reached the point where I'm reluctant to upgrade any of my Ubuntu machines to a new release because of all the problems I've had in the past.
If they can release the updates in smaller batches which make less changes then that would reduce the odds of a system not working and taking six hours to fix. But, as people have said, that introduces its own problems if you change sometihng like glibc or the kernel version and suddenly have to recompile half the packages to be compatible.
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Tell me, why is it still possible for private parties to change things like this on a whim?
Uh, this isn't a 'private party', it's the Chinese government. DNS generally worked fine when it was controlled by 'private parties' and governments weren't meddling with it.
And the US is just trying to suppress illegal content, while China is actually trying to censor criticism. The latter is IMO much worse.
But, uh, criticisim _is_ 'illegal content' in China.
I know most plug-ins, including Flash, suffer from requiring mandatory browser restarts and yellow bar popups, no I don't know why (other than they suck at writing installers).
Really? On Linux I just kill the Flash process and Firefox restarts it with the new plugin when required.
But, why don't browsers automatically detect when an addon has been installed from a non-approved way (i.e. through the browser's own plugin install system), disable it at app start, and prompt the user on what to do with it?
And how do you do that?
Somehow you have to store information about which addons were previously being used. That means putting it in a file somewhere on the system. That means that the plugin installer will just add itself to that file so that it won't trigger the message.
You could try to do clever tricks with signing the file, but then the signing key has to be on the computer somewhere so the installer can find it and use it to sign the file again.
If you run as root to allow some random software to install then it has complete control over your system. That's the real problem.
Some US government employee copied these files. Wikileaks didn't pay him to do so. Why did he do it and why was he able to get away with it?
Why do you think it was a 'he'? This 'leak' could potentially be very valuable to, say, some high-level State Department official who wanted to run against Obama for the Democrat nomination in 2012.
"Aside from the Arabs pressing for the attack of Iran, nothing there was of any news to me."
Ditto. And even that wasn't terribly surprising.
The real surprise is that any of these things are marked as 'SECRET, NO FOREIGNERS' when most of the foreigners already know them because, duh, they live in these countries. I'm sure that no Russian thinks that their government is linked to organised crime and every Briton believes their military is doing a great job in Afghanistan... oh, hang on.
"whoever in his right mind would want to listen to binary files loudly?"
I think you've finally solved the mystery of the 'numbers stations': it's not Russian spies sending secret messages, it's the oldest method of P2P file sharing!
everyone in the UN already agreed to not weaponize space. america would have hell to pay to the rest of the world if they ever found out.
I'm sure the American government would be just _SO_ scared that the UN might get a bit upset with them.
We could win a war against Afghanistan without putting one person on the group. We could bomb a country like that until not a structure stayed standing and the few who lived would be reduced to living in caves and living off of grass
And they would still be trying to kill you whenever they could.
We somehow today equate winning a war with winning over the people and making them love us.
I thought you invaded Afghanistan to capture bin Laden, and bring democracy and human rights to the people there? Or is this one of those 'we had to kill the people in order to save them' things?
There never will be commercial space ships. Get over it.
As trolls go, I'm afraid I can only give you 2/10 for that one.
Maybe when Ballmer is inevitably canned within the next FY or two, MS will get smart and put a CEO in his place that is much more focused on developing MS's core business model of enterprise software systems, and will stop wasting money on retarded consumer electronics ventures that in the end turn into nothing but money black holes.
If they wait two years, they risk losing most of their 'core market' to the competition. The desktop market is saturated, you have to be crazy to put Windows on a server, and the mobile market is too entrenched for Windows to become the biggest player and probably not even a major one.
Yes, of course, the Ambassador to Russia should just say "You know what, Putin, you're a nasty fucking bastard."
That will really make things so much better for everyone.
Putin would probably drink to that.
Personally I can't think of any occasion where America has benefited from cosying up to 'nasty fucking bastards'. Doing that with Stalin, for example, handed half of Europe to him and led to decades of Cold War.
What good would it do the citizens of either nation to have these observations broadcast for the world to see? Will it help American interests abroad? What exactly will American citizens be able to decide based on it? That the British Prime Minister is an ass?
I hate to disappoint you, but that's no secret to the British people. In fact I think most of them would put it rather more strongly than that.
The US always acts in its own best interests. It never acts in the best interests of others.
So explain the invasion of Iraq.
Here's an idea, radical as it may be:
"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense, but in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them."
And if they thought your can of Coke was really a threat, then why don't they treat you like a threat when they find it? Instead they just demand that you throw the POTENTIAL LIQUID EXPLOSIVE into a garbage can next to them.
Well, duh. If the garbage can explodes when they throw your Coke into it then they know it was a bomb, otherwise you're free to go.
The limitation is the lack of creativity on the part of most developers.
But that's largely because most games these days are developed for consoles, which means lowest common denominator design and limited in scope to be able to run on antiquated hardware.
Besides nebulous empty rhetoric like Windows having a broken design, what's wrong with it that a rewrite would fix?
Staggering amounts of backwards compatibility crud full of security holes?
One obvious example is Windows' default behaviour of loading .DLL files from the current directory, which allows you to infect arbitrary executables by starting a program from a directory wihch contains a malware DLL. 'But we can't change that because it will break WhizzbangSoft 2003!'
The only way for Windows to become secure is to throw out backwards compatibility, and then no-one would use it.
It's safer just to never turn the computer on, though with things like wake-on-LAN and wake-on-USB these days you'd probably better unplug it too.
The IE exploit mention is meaningless (other than for flamebaiting). You can quite easily catch a virus using a fully patched version of Firefox with up to date plugins through regular browsing (noscript is not regular browsing).
So an unknown vulnerability in Firefox is just as likely to infect your machine as a known vulnerability in IE?
A much better alternative would be if EMI were actually able to market their products in a sustainable way.
Uh, EMI doesn't make the music, musicians do. Musicians won't go away just because some dinosaur music publisher does.
If your answers and behavior while answering fit the profile of a person who is nervous or agitated, then you are pulled aside for a more thorough analysis and search.
'Nervous or agitated'? You mean like someone who wants to catch their connecting flight before it takes off in five minutes, and is being hassled by a security monkey who's going to make them miss it?
Israeli style profiling is demonstrably effective
How many actual terrorists have they actually caught that way?
I'm not asking that as a rhetorical question, but because I can't remember a single news story in the last decade saying that Israeli airport security caught a terrorist. Maybe I've just missed them.
Meny train station don't even have full time ticket agents and you have to buy them on the train and what the point when any dumb ass can just drive around the gates and maybe crash a train by having it hit his car?
That's OK, they'll stick up a big screen at the station so the other passengers can check that you're not carrying anything you shouldn't be. Of course you might have to go through the scanner a few times until they can all be sure.
I was rebooting ubuntu a couple of years ago more than I ever reboot Windows now. Is that still the case? Seems like I was getting kernel updates weekly or bi-weekly.
Unlike Windows, you don't need to reboot for a kernel update unless it's an essential security fix: unless it's changed in Windows 7, Microsoft won't let you install any other updates until you've rebooted to finish installing the previous one, whereas Ubuntu couldn't give a damn.
I seem to get a new kernel from Ubuntu every couple of weeks, but I only reboot my MythTV server every month or two unless there's a serious hole I really want fixed there and then.
What is this fascination with change for change sake? What could possibly be so important that it has to come out each and every day?
The problem is that if you wait six months between upgrades then that means you spend 12 hours downloading and installing hundreds of megabytes of changes and then it crashes part-way through and your system is hosed. I've reached the point where I'm reluctant to upgrade any of my Ubuntu machines to a new release because of all the problems I've had in the past.
If they can release the updates in smaller batches which make less changes then that would reduce the odds of a system not working and taking six hours to fix. But, as people have said, that introduces its own problems if you change sometihng like glibc or the kernel version and suddenly have to recompile half the packages to be compatible.