You could always set up a proxy server and put in rules to block these exploits. Just scan each page for the malicious active-x controls, and drop them in the bitbucket.
Expensive reactive measures taken by the customer to mitigate gaping security holes in a company's products, be they virus scanners or malicious active-x blockers (you have got to be kidding me), are neither appropriate nor +1 insightful.
If you don't like the product, you don't have to sue, just stop using the damn product.
I have stopped using the product (in as much as my company's policies will allow). The problem is that my ISP is talking about blocking ports and my congressman is talking about passing laws that will restrict my free speech because of the deliberate negligence of said megacorp. They didn't just make a bad product. They created a worldwide culture of failure with regard to security (affecting those who don't use their products) and should be held accountable.
This sounds like a party game. You get a used computer bought at some sort of closeout, a Windows95 OSR2 installation disc, and a wide-ass open internet connection.
When you get a virus, you yell "Gates Rape", and someone hits a stopwatch to time your run. Whoever can get raped the fastest wins!
Despite what most on the left would like to believe, the difference between being right or wrong about something is not a matter of enthusiasm, a reality demonstrated quite well by your post.
Slate's legendary objectivity strikes again
on
Japanese Balloon Battle
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Though this article was intended to demonstrate the dangers of wartime censorship, the actual history demonstrates a quite different viewpoint.
The ballon attack plan was never to cut power lines and blow up family picnics. The Japanese had been working for many years on the effective use of biological weapons, and had every intention of using them with the balloons once they had some idea of whether they were reaching the US. Blowing up picnics should have provided them immediate, specific targeting feedback through the US media - much better targeting intelligence than would have been provided by a bizarre outbreak of bubonic plague in the Pacific Northwest.
Slate's having compared this to burying memos and hiding prisoner abuse scandals, secrets that are kept solely to protect political interests rather than military ones, demonstrates not only a catastrophic failure to understand history, but further weakens the credibility of anyone speaking out against that very same modern politically driven censorship.
Okay, if you've been there/done that, I give that somewhat more credit (one becomes accustomed to allowing for too-tight tinfoil hats around here).
I completely understand.
Next question.... why is this completely under everyone's radar? you'd think some civil liberties outfit would get involved, kiddie-porn stigma or no.
You're not going to like the answer to this one. I asked the very same question of the defense attorneys I have been working with. Before anyone is going to understand the issue (ACLU, et. al.), criminal defense teams must understand it. Because they can't begin to handle the technical aspects of the cases, they turn to the IT community for expert witness testimony. This is where the problem lies. We (the IT community) are almost never willing to testify against the FBI about anything. Indeed, a good many of my peers advised me against doing it. Without a meaningful way to combat the charges, defense teams plead the cases, which is how 90% of them wind up.
In summary, the problem is that the only people who can call attention to this problem are us, and we lack the courage and social conviction to do so.
There are a few rogue agents and a few overzealots, but in the past 12 years or so, I only know of one *documentable* FBI vs porn raid, and that was the infamous case of Downtown BBS and the underage Traci Lord stuff someone had uploaded (I don't recall offhand if it was done as entrapment or not).
I have performed expert witness testimony in several cases. You want documents? I got a couple of hundred pages right here in my office, to say nothing of first hand personal direct experience.
Who said anything about extreme cases? This is bread and butter stuff for the FBI. An ex-girlfriend files a porn complaint, which turns into a search warrant (as the PATRIOT act is implemented, this step is less and less important). Then they come take ALL of your gear. If any of it has ever been used to view pornography (deliberately or otherwise), and unless extraordinary precautions are taken, you are going to prison. At prison, try to get segregated as quickly as possible. You will have been convicted of child pornography, which every other inmate will interpret as "you diddled with my children while I was helpless in this hell hole." If you survive prison, you will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life. Enjoy!
IOW, tho the security issue exists, it's not exactly something to lose sleep over -- because if someone wants to compromise your security, why not get current data right from today's data input, instead of possibly-obsolete data of unknown relevance!
Because that Asian rape spam that popped up into your preview pane 2 years ago may not be a daily occurence. The FBI loves pulling up ancient JPG fragments from swap in their ongoing efforts to protect children.
Despite what you may have heard, the legality of pornography is of no relevance to prosecutors and judges; the first time the question of age comes up with regard to the subject of any particular photograph is when the jury is looking at poster size blowups of whatever they scraped off your hard drive.
To prevent fascism (or at least thwart it), do the following. Set the not-commonly-known "clear swapfile at shutdown" windows registry key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 1
Wipe your empty space and slack space regularly with something like eraser. (Interestingly, I don't know of a way to accomplish these things when using Linux as a desktop OS. If anyone knows of a way to clear the swap partition on shutdown or to clear not only free space on the hard drive, but also cluster tips (file slack), please let me know.) When finished using a hard drive, or any time you have cause to format it, boot up to rescue mode from any Linux distro's boot CD and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (or whatever device your hard drive happens to be).
I have had access to the tools the bad guys (FBI, et. al.) use to extract evidence from your hard drive, and have seen that these procedures work brilliantly. Of course, I've also seen prosecutors derive character witness testimony from the very fact of using a program like eraser (only bad guys know this much about how to hide computer evidence!), so YMMV.
If you don't happen to live in the United States, treasure your freedom and fight to protect it.
I am a little confused. My research indicates that computers really don't generate very much dust at all. When they are new, they are very clean and generally devoid of fibrous substances that could be liberated as dust.
I have found, however, that computers make excellent dust accumulators. PBDEs are not only used in computers, but also in children's pajamas, mattresses, etc. - all of which generate large quantities of dust. If there are harmful flame retardant chemicals in the dust, wouldn't that have more to do with the mattress, furniture, and clothing than it would with the computer?
Ok, then why do you use Office? Either it's the best thing available for what you are doing or you're a fucking idiot for putting up with it. Which is it?
I guess it's fucking idiot, since I work for people who require me to use Office for document exchange. Does that mean capitalism has incented me to become stupid?
I've used Office pretty heavily, at the limits of its capability (judging by the increasing likelihood of crashing) to create 100+ page documents filled with dynamic and complext content.
I have not, in my experience seen any geekness or skill that can prevent a stylesheet from becoming fucked, or even to effectively unfuck it when it happens. All you can hope for is to notice when it does become fucked and restore from an earlier version of the document.
There is NOTHING unreasonable about the prices of movies and music where they currently are.
In the case of CD music, there is case law to the contrary. But that is ultimately beside the point, and the history of the modern content industry is a good example of that.
There was a time when it was technically impossible to distribute something like a movie by means other than commercial film distribution. As such, the movie enjoyed a monopoly on that distribution. This is no longer the case. Supporting a multi-billion dollar industry on the revenues created by distributing content is no longer technically tenable. Information is ubiquitous and transporting it is cheap. The business model of the movie and music industries, as we have known it, is no more. It is not a question of morality or of whether anyone is stealing anything. It is simple, cold, technical fact, and the opinions of content distributors has no bearing on the issue. (at least in the long term)
As reasonable as Edison, for example, might have thought it to force movie makers to pay royalties on the use of his projection technology, the technical reality of his invention- the ability to create and store entertainment content for later performance, exceeded the formidible legal boundaries he sought to place around his own invention, and forced a divorce of the use of his technology from its implications.
In this way, despite Edison's own all-caps bold typeface rants, the movie industry took hold in the only place they could be safe from his patent enforcement goons - a city on the other side of the continent, just north of the Mexican border. A place we now call Hollywood.
The question is not whether it is right or wrong that you can't make money distributing media content anymore. How we feel about the death of that industry is completely unimportant. The only interesting question at this point is - where is the next Hollywood?
I worked on an E-rate project years ago and saw this scam take place first hand. We were putting carrier class switches and high end file servers in schools connecting perhaps 20 computers.
When I mentioned something about it at the time, it was decided by/. moderators that I was trolling.
The line you quoted says that it's the site that you visit that makes you biased, not the fact that you use an alternative browser.
Bias has to do with preferences. The point of the discussion seems to be factors which might affect validity as a statistically representative sample. That the latter is inclusive of the former does not mean that the converse is true. It is possible for a given datum not to be a representative sample for reasons other than bias.
I think the stats posted elsewhere in this discussion are from larger sites with a less biased user base.
Interesting.
Those aware of and using other choices are biased, but those who tend toward one particular browser are not.
I don't disagree with the point you were trying to make, but the semantics are fascinating. Microsoft is so pervasive that it has even turned rational thought upside down.
My site's primary audience is users of Orbiter space flight simulator, which only runs on Windows. IE accounts for only about 87% of the browsers being used to reach the site. I've also noticed that IE's "market share" has been steadily declining over the past year or so. Whatever the absolute numbers, that trend is of considerable interest.
But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works?
Well, for one thing, people generally don't hijack your home page in Firebird. Though the same could be said of the Windows operating as a whole, IE in particular is a malware portal.
Slashdot Mirror
I can save some text in OpenOffice as .DOC and be certain it'll show up in Word as good as I made it.
I call FUD. I have created 100+ page documents in word/OO with complex dynamic content and styles and opened them flawlessly in OO/word.
Besides, one way you can always make sure the recipient can read your OO documents is to save them to PDF. Can your Word do that?
This advertisement for Linux was brought to you today by...
A raging troll that would be moderated as such if it were not perceived as stylish groupthink backlash.
You could always set up a proxy server and put in rules to block these exploits. Just scan each page for the malicious active-x controls, and drop them in the bitbucket.
Expensive reactive measures taken by the customer to mitigate gaping security holes in a company's products, be they virus scanners or malicious active-x blockers (you have got to be kidding me), are neither appropriate nor +1 insightful.
If you don't like the product, you don't have to sue, just stop using the damn product.
I have stopped using the product (in as much as my company's policies will allow). The problem is that my ISP is talking about blocking ports and my congressman is talking about passing laws that will restrict my free speech because of the deliberate negligence of said megacorp. They didn't just make a bad product. They created a worldwide culture of failure with regard to security (affecting those who don't use their products) and should be held accountable.
This sounds like a party game. You get a used computer bought at some sort of closeout, a Windows95 OSR2 installation disc, and a wide-ass open internet connection.
When you get a virus, you yell "Gates Rape", and someone hits a stopwatch to time your run. Whoever can get raped the fastest wins!
Despite what most on the left would like to believe, the difference between being right or wrong about something is not a matter of enthusiasm, a reality demonstrated quite well by your post.
Though this article was intended to demonstrate the dangers of wartime censorship, the actual history demonstrates a quite different viewpoint.
The ballon attack plan was never to cut power lines and blow up family picnics. The Japanese had been working for many years on the effective use of biological weapons, and had every intention of using them with the balloons once they had some idea of whether they were reaching the US. Blowing up picnics should have provided them immediate, specific targeting feedback through the US media - much better targeting intelligence than would have been provided by a bizarre outbreak of bubonic plague in the Pacific Northwest.
Slate's having compared this to burying memos and hiding prisoner abuse scandals, secrets that are kept solely to protect political interests rather than military ones, demonstrates not only a catastrophic failure to understand history, but further weakens the credibility of anyone speaking out against that very same modern politically driven censorship.
Nice going, Slate.
While I'm not certain that I completely trust Microsoft on this, it might make sense to have the antivirus scanner as a part of the OS.
Three words: conflict of interest.
Here is a perfect example of the difference between the Open Source way and a proprietary way.
Well, that and the fact that a local DoS is a big deal to us.
Brilliant response.
Okay, if you've been there/done that, I give that somewhat more credit (one becomes accustomed to allowing for too-tight tinfoil hats around here).
.... why is this completely under everyone's radar? you'd think some civil liberties outfit would get involved, kiddie-porn stigma or no.
I completely understand.
Next question
You're not going to like the answer to this one. I asked the very same question of the defense attorneys I have been working with. Before anyone is going to understand the issue (ACLU, et. al.), criminal defense teams must understand it. Because they can't begin to handle the technical aspects of the cases, they turn to the IT community for expert witness testimony. This is where the problem lies. We (the IT community) are almost never willing to testify against the FBI about anything. Indeed, a good many of my peers advised me against doing it. Without a meaningful way to combat the charges, defense teams plead the cases, which is how 90% of them wind up.
In summary, the problem is that the only people who can call attention to this problem are us, and we lack the courage and social conviction to do so.
There are a few rogue agents and a few overzealots, but in the past 12 years or so, I only know of one *documentable* FBI vs porn raid, and that was the infamous case of Downtown BBS and the underage Traci Lord stuff someone had uploaded (I don't recall offhand if it was done as entrapment or not).
I have performed expert witness testimony in several cases. You want documents? I got a couple of hundred pages right here in my office, to say nothing of first hand personal direct experience.
Yes, you're right about those extreme cases
Who said anything about extreme cases? This is bread and butter stuff for the FBI. An ex-girlfriend files a porn complaint, which turns into a search warrant (as the PATRIOT act is implemented, this step is less and less important). Then they come take ALL of your gear. If any of it has ever been used to view pornography (deliberately or otherwise), and unless extraordinary precautions are taken, you are going to prison. At prison, try to get segregated as quickly as possible. You will have been convicted of child pornography, which every other inmate will interpret as "you diddled with my children while I was helpless in this hell hole." If you survive prison, you will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life. Enjoy!
IOW, tho the security issue exists, it's not exactly something to lose sleep over -- because if someone wants to compromise your security, why not get current data right from today's data input, instead of possibly-obsolete data of unknown relevance!
Because that Asian rape spam that popped up into your preview pane 2 years ago may not be a daily occurence. The FBI loves pulling up ancient JPG fragments from swap in their ongoing efforts to protect children.
Despite what you may have heard, the legality of pornography is of no relevance to prosecutors and judges; the first time the question of age comes up with regard to the subject of any particular photograph is when the jury is looking at poster size blowups of whatever they scraped off your hard drive.
To prevent fascism (or at least thwart it), do the following. Set the not-commonly-known "clear swapfile at shutdown" windows registry key:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 1
Wipe your empty space and slack space regularly with something like eraser. (Interestingly, I don't know of a way to accomplish these things when using Linux as a desktop OS. If anyone knows of a way to clear the swap partition on shutdown or to clear not only free space on the hard drive, but also cluster tips (file slack), please let me know.) When finished using a hard drive, or any time you have cause to format it, boot up to rescue mode from any Linux distro's boot CD and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (or whatever device your hard drive happens to be).
I have had access to the tools the bad guys (FBI, et. al.) use to extract evidence from your hard drive, and have seen that these procedures work brilliantly. Of course, I've also seen prosecutors derive character witness testimony from the very fact of using a program like eraser (only bad guys know this much about how to hide computer evidence!), so YMMV.
If you don't happen to live in the United States, treasure your freedom and fight to protect it.
Knoppix doesn't touch the hard drive at all, that is the whole point of a live CD, so no it doesn't use any swap
Uh, no.
If Knoppix finds a Linux swap partition somewhere during bootup, it will use it.
They put fire retardant in computers?
If so, I've never found it to be very effective with equipment that I've owned.
I am a little confused. My research indicates that computers really don't generate very much dust at all. When they are new, they are very clean and generally devoid of fibrous substances that could be liberated as dust.
I have found, however, that computers make excellent dust accumulators. PBDEs are not only used in computers, but also in children's pajamas, mattresses, etc. - all of which generate large quantities of dust. If there are harmful flame retardant chemicals in the dust, wouldn't that have more to do with the mattress, furniture, and clothing than it would with the computer?
Ok, then why do you use Office? Either it's the best thing available for what you are doing or you're a fucking idiot for putting up with it. Which is it?
I guess it's fucking idiot, since I work for people who require me to use Office for document exchange. Does that mean capitalism has incented me to become stupid?
In other words, TAKE A COURSE IN MS OFFICE!
I've used Office pretty heavily, at the limits of its capability (judging by the increasing likelihood of crashing) to create 100+ page documents filled with dynamic and complext content.
I have not, in my experience seen any geekness or skill that can prevent a stylesheet from becoming fucked, or even to effectively unfuck it when it happens. All you can hope for is to notice when it does become fucked and restore from an earlier version of the document.
There is NOTHING unreasonable about the prices of movies and music where they currently are.
In the case of CD music, there is case law to the contrary. But that is ultimately beside the point, and the history of the modern content industry is a good example of that.
There was a time when it was technically impossible to distribute something like a movie by means other than commercial film distribution. As such, the movie enjoyed a monopoly on that distribution. This is no longer the case. Supporting a multi-billion dollar industry on the revenues created by distributing content is no longer technically tenable. Information is ubiquitous and transporting it is cheap. The business model of the movie and music industries, as we have known it, is no more. It is not a question of morality or of whether anyone is stealing anything. It is simple, cold, technical fact, and the opinions of content distributors has no bearing on the issue. (at least in the long term)
As reasonable as Edison, for example, might have thought it to force movie makers to pay royalties on the use of his projection technology, the technical reality of his invention- the ability to create and store entertainment content for later performance, exceeded the formidible legal boundaries he sought to place around his own invention, and forced a divorce of the use of his technology from its implications.
In this way, despite Edison's own all-caps bold typeface rants, the movie industry took hold in the only place they could be safe from his patent enforcement goons - a city on the other side of the continent, just north of the Mexican border. A place we now call Hollywood.
The question is not whether it is right or wrong that you can't make money distributing media content anymore. How we feel about the death of that industry is completely unimportant. The only interesting question at this point is - where is the next Hollywood?
I worked on an E-rate project years ago and saw this scam take place first hand. We were putting carrier class switches and high end file servers in schools connecting perhaps 20 computers.
/. moderators that I was trolling.
When I mentioned something about it at the time, it was decided by
The line you quoted says that it's the site that you visit that makes you biased, not the fact that you use an alternative browser.
Bias has to do with preferences. The point of the discussion seems to be factors which might affect validity as a statistically representative sample. That the latter is inclusive of the former does not mean that the converse is true. It is possible for a given datum not to be a representative sample for reasons other than bias.
I think the stats posted elsewhere in this discussion are from larger sites with a less biased user base.
Interesting.
Those aware of and using other choices are biased, but those who tend toward one particular browser are not.
I don't disagree with the point you were trying to make, but the semantics are fascinating. Microsoft is so pervasive that it has even turned rational thought upside down.
My site's primary audience is users of Orbiter space flight simulator, which only runs on Windows. IE accounts for only about 87% of the browsers being used to reach the site. I've also noticed that IE's "market share" has been steadily declining over the past year or so. Whatever the absolute numbers, that trend is of considerable interest.
But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works?
Well, for one thing, people generally don't hijack your home page in Firebird. Though the same could be said of the Windows operating as a whole, IE in particular is a malware portal.