Topical: I can see why someone that's spent a lot of time learning Perl might want to use it. Can't see why anyone who hasn't should spend any time on it at all. Ergo when starting a new project, if you decide yes lets use Perl, you've made a horrible mistake.
and yet Perl is what is used here. Anyone complaining about Python hasn't tried to write or debug Perl for half-way complex applications. Gah!
(Just for anyone who is a Perl lover reading this: I learned Perl first and am decent coding in it. But then I was forced to use Python for a project. http://xkcd.com/353/)
with respect to cold fusion, a friend of mine's father is (was? haven't kept in touch) a top-level nuclear scientist. He left academia for corporate research many years ago, but came back to give a talk about cold fusion a while back. What you say matches up fairly well with what he said, with two points:
- there/were/ efforts to reproduce, he had worked on one such
- reliability is only one problem, the other is avoiding patents
I noticed when reviewing wikipedia's entry that as of 2004 the patent office refuses to accept applications for cold fusion patents -- and that definitely guarantees that no corporate research will occur.
You lack an understanding of the actual entropy of english words. It is much lower than you think. But don't take my word for it, people have studied the topic seriously and even wikipedia has an entry level article. The short of it is that is 11 bits of entropy per word is hopelessly optimistic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)
You seem to be saying that linux will just never be on the desktop. When I was still getting numbers on operating systems on the network, we had ~10% linux, ~12% OSX, a lot of windows and an insignificant amount of others represented. Consider that on the university systems we were something like 95% windows and 5% OSX -- the ~10% linux represented a larger percentage of student systems. (Similarly, OS X got a boost on student systems, but not to the same extent).
Its fun to say that linux doesn't have desktop penetration (whatever that means), but I'm not so sure any more. Yeah, student systems are not the same as the general population, and yeah, we do have a -- on the whole -- tech savvy student body. And that is per-device so perhaps a linux user is more likely to have multiple linux devices than someone satisfied with just Windows or OS X. But with percent of devices on the same footing as OS X? Really? That did surprise me.
Its really hard to get meaningful stats (and I don't have anything current -- that was from a year or two ago), but my point is that there may be more linux desktops out there than you think.
well, I don't have a citation to hand, but Microsoft filed for patents on the iPod. Under the old system Apple was able to obtain the patents anyway by immediately counterfiling as the actual inventor. Just on principle it would appear that a "first to file wins" system would favor any troll that analyzed your product and managed to come up with someone patentable about it before you did.
In light of Microsoft's attempt to own patents on an Apple product I don't find their relative positions on this to be surprising at all. Apple preferred the actual inventor being given priority over the first to figure out a detail to file a patent on. Microsoft prefers to file patents on anything they can come up with -- whether it is based on their own invention or someone else's matters not.
This also illustrates nicely why Apple maintains so much secrecy about their up-coming products: they don't want to give anyone else hints as to what to think about to patent. If the product is already in the market place before anyone else can analyze it for potential patent filing it strengthens their position when they fight to claim ownership.
For anyone who thinks the current trend to scattershot patent filings on things not even remotely novel is bad this is a definite change in the status quo as it actively encourages filing more and more patents on anything and everything about *potential* products just to have a chance of strong arming your way through the inevitable patent infringement filings.
This submission and/or the story is a troll. The referenced act only applies to a restricted set of systems. Roughly speaking it applies to non-public government systems and financial/bank computers. It does not apply to typical websites, nor does it apply to typical workplaces. But don't take my word for it, read the law http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html
I good post, but I really thought in paragraph 3 you were going to mention how CRLs are fundamentally broken (essentially advisory in nature due to implementation) -- or do you disagree with that?
yeah. apparently the developer has already stated plans to release it for android. They aren't contesting violations of apple's guidelines and, as those are public, i really doubt that Apple's decision surprised them. But it has generated publicity, they got mentioned on slashdot, and they'll sell their app elsewhere. More power to them, Apple sets themselves up for abuse by attention seekers by having the walled garden. But news this is not.
I wish I had a citation, but I don't -- can't remember the source. The contention is that there is no scientific basis for allergy testing, nor for the treatments. Having had allergy testing myself, and knowing several other people who have had testing, and comparing notes as far as I can tell there is a strongly random component in the allergy test for response. Anecdotal? Yep. But I'm still looking for clinical trials following scientific method (much less following it well) that support the claims of allergists.
As long as you know how to properly secure and administrate your server, there should be no issue giving users PHP access.
If you add in that you don't care about the server's participation in botnets and facilitation of malware infrastructure, I'll agree with you. But you rather sound like the typical "I want my PHP" whiner that hasn't the foggiest clue about security. And I *do* care about not having servers participate in botnets, so no, we don't and won't allow PHP on our servers. Hosted servers are another matter and for that we rely on detection and remediation. With PHP it isn't a matter of if, but when.
analyzed? check reliable? um, no, not even remotely
I'm not a bible scholar and I can't give you pointers off the top of my head, but anyone whose been to seminary and is comfortable with his beliefs should be able to give some significant ones.
"translated from their hebrew... sources" -- sorry, don't exist. Greek, and bad greek at that, yeah.
Differing historical copies? check Additions made to English copies not found in any original? check
You also seem to be under the (very common) misapprehension that there is a codex that was treasured and preserved by the early church that is The Bible. Not so, they had a variety of writings ranging from posthumous accounts (attributed to a disciple because that would give it more weight, compare to Hermes Trimegistus) to letters written from one to another (Paul comes immediately to mind).
There is no such thing as The Bible. "Religious authorities" have held conventions to decide which writings to include and which to exclude from their religious teachings. These decisions, by humans, have determined what is The Bible. Catholics and protestants disagree on some of these. Both believe The Bible to be the Word of God. Can't both be right...
As such this article only should upset dyed in the wool literalists and super fundies.
Ah, I take it you've met my family then?
Joking aside, I think you are mistaken to think (as implied by that statement) that "dyed in the wool literalists" and "super fundies" are uncommon, perhaps even rare. If that group includes everyone who believes that Adam and Eve are the first humans and all others descended from them, that there were no humans outside of Eden until after the Fall (and of course then only those descendents of Adam and Eve) -- well, regardless of what is actually contained in the book of genesis that is a very common set of beliefs. Along with no idea of how the flood story is obviously merged accounts (two of each, versus seven; the enumeration of the animals included; etc.). Or how the story of Babel implies that man is His equal (his concern was that Man would be his equal once, not if, they completed the tower to heaven).
Most Christians are simply unaware of what is in the Bible.
I don't know where you came up with your numbers for contrast rated in dB, or what dB scale you think you are using, but the argument is entirely irrelevant. An HDR image uses 32 bits per channel, but it isn't just more accuracy than 8 bits or 16 bits per channel, it is a floating point number. Instead of being locked into a set dynamic range you have the possibility of storing something brighter than the brightest white that can be displayed.
If all you are doing is painting images for display on a computer screen without any manipulation or processing then it *is* irrelevant, but if you are going to do any processing of the image it becomes very important. As a trivial example consider a process that results in half values -- in 8 bits per channel each usage is going to lose information -- the difference between 126 and 127 is now gone. Several iterations of this and you get noticeable deterioration. This is exactly why sound engineers don't use 16 bits per channel at 44.1khz.
The GIMP's inability to use HDR is extremely limiting. Look at tutorials on how to approximate combining bracketed exposures and then realize that with Photoshop you can just do it.
Disclaimer: I have both Photoshop and the GIMP. I use the GIMP almost exclusively. Photoshop is plainly superior in pretty much every way, even to a complete amateur like me. But Adobe don't make a version for linux and my copy is for OS X (so Wine doesn't help). I do almost all work on my linux desktop and the GIMP is usually "good enough" for my hobbyist usage -- but when I need to do something serious (like a set of image processing steps on a directory of images -- batch editing is a dream in Photoshop) I have to use Photoshop.
The problem is people are knee-jerking all over the place without bothering to actually read the law. If they did, they would discover that it is worded so as to criminalize having "secret" communications with students (and former students) via online means (web forums, social networking sites). Basically, it isn't permitted if the communications are not available to administration/students parents.
This is a bad law in that it is an attempt to appear to be doing something about improper teacher/student relations without actually adding anything. This is a bad law in that it is aimed at technology when its purported purpose is to prevent improper teacher/student relations. The former is just plain useless, the latter would seem better addressed by a law that targeted improper relationships without specifying the specific means for facilitating those relationships.
In the end, it will most likely never amount to anything unless it is used to prop up local LE income via not-quite-entrapment scenarios similar to how various laws ostensibly passed to "protect the children" are used.
uh, because it is clearly stated? You *do* know how to read, don't you? And they paid for the last "study" as well. Microsoft pays for lots of studies. I seem to recall RedHat purchasing a study or two. IBM does it. Just because the practice is common doesn't mean the "bought and paid for" studies shouldn't be mocked.
Ah, so you ignore the rest of their methodology because it was clearly indefensible?
If the study was really aimed at identifying browser security then a NoScript enabled browser *should* be part of the test. It would illustrate the difference between not using NoScript and using NoScript. It would illustrate the difference between IE9 and FF with NoScript. There are two problems with that:
1. Due to their mechanism for grossly exaggerating minute variations, it would sink IE9 as being the run away favorite. Except for number two.
2. Due to how the study was carefully constructed it wouldn't make any difference (FF with NoScript wouldn't tell the user they'd just been protected -- it would just silently happen -- so FF would *still* be down graded).
Since people don't tend to read the article (much less the NSS Lab's purchased findings that were mislabelled as a study)
> Success: NSS Labs defines success based upon a web browser successfully preventing > malware from being downloaded *and* correctly issuing a warning.
Apple should of course fix vulnerabilities. But according to the *article* DHX is *disabled* by *default* and it is secure using Kerberos. AD uses kerberos, I don't know why you think that OSX would use DHX for that. DHX is *legacy* for outdated Apple stuff.
Of course, when your methodology is that only the bare browser configuration is allowed (e.g., no AdBlockPlus, no NoScript) and you carefully select the malware URLs (obtained from "honey pot" email addresses and then filtered, and then "prune out non-conforming URLs" -- without fully specifying what made them non-conforming) *and* require the malware URLs to be live for at least 6 consecutive hours it gets a lot easier to massage the results. To further exaggerate results not only does a "hit" increase the score but a "miss" decreases it to magnify the difference.
This is the same song as they sang about IE8 with the same, predictable, results. Microsoft didn't pay them a wad of money for this study for nothing.
Yeah, the whole thing is kinda... stupid. Admittedly I only skimmed the "article", but: so... if you can put arbitrary code on the update server you can infect every mac that gets updates from it? Really? Color me shocked and surprised, news at 11
Some good quotes, like "With a large enterprise, you have to assume that people are going to get tricked into installing malware." which is another way of saying "if you can get someone to run arbitrary code then you can do arbitrary things on their computer". Duh. And applies equally to Windows.
Though I will note that, at least for Windows, a software key logger does *not* require special privileges (it is all in the approach). And even ignoring that there are usually multiple local privilege escalation attacks on Windows so the drive-by malware can get system privileges and then start stealing credentials. Hope desktop support/infrastructure don't do anything that causes an interactive login against the machine... I guess, with all of those problems, Windows just isn't ready for the enterprise...
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
Aren't working and having a place to live pretty important? I may have missed something, but food and shelter are basic needs and a job goes a long way providing for them. (By the way, why do you think your doctor or the hospital you visit needs your social security number. Hint, it isn't because they are paying you. And it isn't because the SSN)
And, unless you are filthy rich, it isn't likely you can afford to buy a home without debt. Debt isn't necessarily bad, but unmanaged, spend-everything-you-have kind of debt is pretty stupid.
When I was young and naive I used to believe that paying off a credit card balance in full each month pleased the masters. It does not. What pleases them is a minimum payment on a maxed out credit line. And, no, that isn't a guess -- it simply is the maximum return for their money. In other words, greatest profit.
trolls and all that, but... that's nice "a literal majority of the iphone 4 owners" you know: how many is that, one? I drop my phones all the time. Repeatedly. Often from about two meters. I have *never* had glass shatter on either a 3G or a 4. My work provided iPhone 3G is carried in a front pocket with keys. The back is scratched and pitted from damage, the glass is just fine.
My wife's 3G *did* have the glass spider spectacularly from a short fall. I should probably mention that was after two years of carrying it in a hip pocket which resulted in significant stress on the device every time she sat down. It seems probable that all of the accumulated stress had something to do with the glass shattering.
Notoriously fragile? To you, maybe, in your little world. Where I work everyone is provided with a smart phone, almost all of them are iPhones (even the Apple haters prefer them for some reason, only a few die-hard Microsoft lovers persist with Windows mobile, the majority of non-iPhone devices are Android). The Apple haters crowed about the supposed reception problems of the iPhone 4, but not a single one claims that the iPhone is "notoriously fragile".
Perhaps you should re-read the definition for "notorious"
I think it is important to look at *why* the violent vigilante acts occur. Something as simple as the KKK gets complex because there are a large number of different people involved for a variety of reasons. To present two very simple categories: some people want power over others (being ranked in an organization), some feel downtrodden and are looking for a culprit -- once somebody in the former realizes they can manipulate someone in the latter by playing on racist themes you have the beginnings of a movement.
Saying "violent acts not authorized by the law are bad" is not only only over simplistic, but is covered by your signature quote. As a general rule (meaning, it is a rule of thumb indicator, not a perfect yard stick) the more violent and aggressive the actions the more desperate the persons perceive their cause to be. If I've been unemployed for months on end, am being evicted, don't have money to buy food for my family -- most people would consider that to be fairly desperate. Some might resort to stealing to satisfy the food problem. Others will be more inclined to blame someone else for their troubles. If friends and relatives appear to have been hurt or killed by another group it is easy to take out anger and frustration on that group. And that road leads to terrorism.
To avoid blindness to reality it is important to take note of the underlying factors. Why do vigilantes do the things they do? It depends on the vigilante and their individual circumstance, but particularly when vigilante-ism becomes widespread in a region dealing out punishment to the transgressors does not resolve the problem. With respect to the KKK -- it is a sad truth that people from my generation who were raised in the south were presented with a very different view of the civil war, the circumstances surrounding it, and the aftermath. Public schools teaching them that blacks were aggressors against downtrodden and subjugated whites. Proper education is the long term solution, whatever actions are taken against particular vigilante acts.
In the present case there are claims that corporate citizenship has gone too far. Perhaps there is merit to that claim, but regardless *if* acts continue and *if* they are directed at corporations shielded from natural and legal consequence (immunity from legal/financial consequences is a significant component of an LLC, and "too big to fail") then the way to stop them is to address concerns about corporate immunity from the consequence of their collective actions.
what I got from reading the article was that the author had a conclusion that wasn't supported by the evidence. Taking the finding at face value, a solitary find that is significantly closer than expected to the estimated time of impact would tend to support a gradual extinction. If the extinction were sudden, due to the asteroid impact, then a wealth of fossil data would be expected all the way up to the estimated time of impact, with very little (quickly going to none) following it. Instead there is (apparently, and this is information provided and agreed on by the article) a significant gap with -- to date -- a single fossil found in the region.
As far as I can tell it is another data point of no particular significance. To "disprove" gradual extinction before the impact a number of fossils representing normal population levels and distributions needs to be found.
Slashdot Mirror
Topical: I can see why someone that's spent a lot of time learning Perl might want to use it. Can't see why anyone who hasn't should spend any time on it at all. Ergo when starting a new project, if you decide yes lets use Perl, you've made a horrible mistake.
and yet Perl is what is used here. Anyone complaining about Python hasn't tried to write or debug Perl for half-way complex applications. Gah!
(Just for anyone who is a Perl lover reading this: I learned Perl first and am decent coding in it. But then I was forced to use Python for a project. http://xkcd.com/353/)
with respect to cold fusion, a friend of mine's father is (was? haven't kept in touch) a top-level nuclear scientist. He left academia for corporate research many years ago, but came back to give a talk about cold fusion a while back. What you say matches up fairly well with what he said, with two points:
- there /were/ efforts to reproduce, he had worked on one such
- reliability is only one problem, the other is avoiding patents
I noticed when reviewing wikipedia's entry that as of 2004 the patent office refuses to accept applications for cold fusion patents -- and that definitely guarantees that no corporate research will occur.
You lack an understanding of the actual entropy of english words. It is much lower than you think. But don't take my word for it, people have studied the topic seriously and even wikipedia has an entry level article. The short of it is that is 11 bits of entropy per word is hopelessly optimistic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)
uhm. selling computers to the nazis? Right... IBM America made what computers prior to the conclusion of WWII?
You seem to be saying that linux will just never be on the desktop. When I was still getting numbers on operating systems on the network, we had ~10% linux, ~12% OSX, a lot of windows and an insignificant amount of others represented. Consider that on the university systems we were something like 95% windows and 5% OSX -- the ~10% linux represented a larger percentage of student systems. (Similarly, OS X got a boost on student systems, but not to the same extent).
Its fun to say that linux doesn't have desktop penetration (whatever that means), but I'm not so sure any more. Yeah, student systems are not the same as the general population, and yeah, we do have a -- on the whole -- tech savvy student body. And that is per-device so perhaps a linux user is more likely to have multiple linux devices than someone satisfied with just Windows or OS X. But with percent of devices on the same footing as OS X? Really? That did surprise me.
Its really hard to get meaningful stats (and I don't have anything current -- that was from a year or two ago), but my point is that there may be more linux desktops out there than you think.
well, I don't have a citation to hand, but Microsoft filed for patents on the iPod. Under the old system Apple was able to obtain the patents anyway by immediately counterfiling as the actual inventor. Just on principle it would appear that a "first to file wins" system would favor any troll that analyzed your product and managed to come up with someone patentable about it before you did.
In light of Microsoft's attempt to own patents on an Apple product I don't find their relative positions on this to be surprising at all. Apple preferred the actual inventor being given priority over the first to figure out a detail to file a patent on. Microsoft prefers to file patents on anything they can come up with -- whether it is based on their own invention or someone else's matters not.
This also illustrates nicely why Apple maintains so much secrecy about their up-coming products: they don't want to give anyone else hints as to what to think about to patent. If the product is already in the market place before anyone else can analyze it for potential patent filing it strengthens their position when they fight to claim ownership.
For anyone who thinks the current trend to scattershot patent filings on things not even remotely novel is bad this is a definite change in the status quo as it actively encourages filing more and more patents on anything and everything about *potential* products just to have a chance of strong arming your way through the inevitable patent infringement filings.
thoromyr
This submission and/or the story is a troll. The referenced act only applies to a restricted set of systems. Roughly speaking it applies to non-public government systems and financial/bank computers. It does not apply to typical websites, nor does it apply to typical workplaces. But don't take my word for it, read the law http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html
I good post, but I really thought in paragraph 3 you were going to mention how CRLs are fundamentally broken (essentially advisory in nature due to implementation) -- or do you disagree with that?
yeah. apparently the developer has already stated plans to release it for android. They aren't contesting violations of apple's guidelines and, as those are public, i really doubt that Apple's decision surprised them. But it has generated publicity, they got mentioned on slashdot, and they'll sell their app elsewhere. More power to them, Apple sets themselves up for abuse by attention seekers by having the walled garden. But news this is not.
I wish I had a citation, but I don't -- can't remember the source. The contention is that there is no scientific basis for allergy testing, nor for the treatments. Having had allergy testing myself, and knowing several other people who have had testing, and comparing notes as far as I can tell there is a strongly random component in the allergy test for response. Anecdotal? Yep. But I'm still looking for clinical trials following scientific method (much less following it well) that support the claims of allergists.
As long as you know how to properly secure and administrate your server, there should be no issue giving users PHP access.
If you add in that you don't care about the server's participation in botnets and facilitation of malware infrastructure, I'll agree with you. But you rather sound like the typical "I want my PHP" whiner that hasn't the foggiest clue about security. And I *do* care about not having servers participate in botnets, so no, we don't and won't allow PHP on our servers. Hosted servers are another matter and for that we rely on detection and remediation. With PHP it isn't a matter of if, but when.
analyzed? check
reliable? um, no, not even remotely
I'm not a bible scholar and I can't give you pointers off the top of my head, but anyone whose been to seminary and is comfortable with his beliefs should be able to give some significant ones.
"translated from their hebrew ... sources" -- sorry, don't exist. Greek, and bad greek at that, yeah.
Differing historical copies? check
Additions made to English copies not found in any original? check
You also seem to be under the (very common) misapprehension that there is a codex that was treasured and preserved by the early church that is The Bible. Not so, they had a variety of writings ranging from posthumous accounts (attributed to a disciple because that would give it more weight, compare to Hermes Trimegistus) to letters written from one to another (Paul comes immediately to mind).
There is no such thing as The Bible. "Religious authorities" have held conventions to decide which writings to include and which to exclude from their religious teachings. These decisions, by humans, have determined what is The Bible. Catholics and protestants disagree on some of these. Both believe The Bible to be the Word of God. Can't both be right...
As such this article only should upset dyed in the wool literalists and super fundies.
Ah, I take it you've met my family then?
Joking aside, I think you are mistaken to think (as implied by that statement) that "dyed in the wool literalists" and "super fundies" are uncommon, perhaps even rare. If that group includes everyone who believes that Adam and Eve are the first humans and all others descended from them, that there were no humans outside of Eden until after the Fall (and of course then only those descendents of Adam and Eve) -- well, regardless of what is actually contained in the book of genesis that is a very common set of beliefs. Along with no idea of how the flood story is obviously merged accounts (two of each, versus seven; the enumeration of the animals included; etc.). Or how the story of Babel implies that man is His equal (his concern was that Man would be his equal once, not if, they completed the tower to heaven).
Most Christians are simply unaware of what is in the Bible.
I don't know where you came up with your numbers for contrast rated in dB, or what dB scale you think you are using, but the argument is entirely irrelevant. An HDR image uses 32 bits per channel, but it isn't just more accuracy than 8 bits or 16 bits per channel, it is a floating point number. Instead of being locked into a set dynamic range you have the possibility of storing something brighter than the brightest white that can be displayed.
If all you are doing is painting images for display on a computer screen without any manipulation or processing then it *is* irrelevant, but if you are going to do any processing of the image it becomes very important. As a trivial example consider a process that results in half values -- in 8 bits per channel each usage is going to lose information -- the difference between 126 and 127 is now gone. Several iterations of this and you get noticeable deterioration. This is exactly why sound engineers don't use 16 bits per channel at 44.1khz.
The GIMP's inability to use HDR is extremely limiting. Look at tutorials on how to approximate combining bracketed exposures and then realize that with Photoshop you can just do it.
Disclaimer: I have both Photoshop and the GIMP. I use the GIMP almost exclusively. Photoshop is plainly superior in pretty much every way, even to a complete amateur like me. But Adobe don't make a version for linux and my copy is for OS X (so Wine doesn't help). I do almost all work on my linux desktop and the GIMP is usually "good enough" for my hobbyist usage -- but when I need to do something serious (like a set of image processing steps on a directory of images -- batch editing is a dream in Photoshop) I have to use Photoshop.
The problem is people are knee-jerking all over the place without bothering to actually read the law. If they did, they would discover that it is worded so as to criminalize having "secret" communications with students (and former students) via online means (web forums, social networking sites). Basically, it isn't permitted if the communications are not available to administration/students parents.
This is a bad law in that it is an attempt to appear to be doing something about improper teacher/student relations without actually adding anything. This is a bad law in that it is aimed at technology when its purported purpose is to prevent improper teacher/student relations. The former is just plain useless, the latter would seem better addressed by a law that targeted improper relationships without specifying the specific means for facilitating those relationships.
In the end, it will most likely never amount to anything unless it is used to prop up local LE income via not-quite-entrapment scenarios similar to how various laws ostensibly passed to "protect the children" are used.
But don't take my word for it: http://www.senate.mo.gov/11info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?BillID=4066479&SessionType=R (meh, since last week the PDF of the full bill seems to have gone missing -- try google cache)
uh, because it is clearly stated? You *do* know how to read, don't you? And they paid for the last "study" as well. Microsoft pays for lots of studies. I seem to recall RedHat purchasing a study or two. IBM does it. Just because the practice is common doesn't mean the "bought and paid for" studies shouldn't be mocked.
Ah, so you ignore the rest of their methodology because it was clearly indefensible?
If the study was really aimed at identifying browser security then a NoScript enabled browser *should* be part of the test. It would illustrate the difference between not using NoScript and using NoScript. It would illustrate the difference between IE9 and FF with NoScript. There are two problems with that:
1. Due to their mechanism for grossly exaggerating minute variations, it would sink IE9 as being the run away favorite. Except for number two.
2. Due to how the study was carefully constructed it wouldn't make any difference (FF with NoScript wouldn't tell the user they'd just been protected -- it would just silently happen -- so FF would *still* be down graded).
Since people don't tend to read the article (much less the NSS Lab's purchased findings that were mislabelled as a study)
> Success: NSS Labs defines success based upon a web browser successfully preventing
> malware from being downloaded *and* correctly issuing a warning.
Apple should of course fix vulnerabilities. But according to the *article* DHX is *disabled* by *default* and it is secure using Kerberos. AD uses kerberos, I don't know why you think that OSX would use DHX for that. DHX is *legacy* for outdated Apple stuff.
Of course, when your methodology is that only the bare browser configuration is allowed (e.g., no AdBlockPlus, no NoScript) and you carefully select the malware URLs (obtained from "honey pot" email addresses and then filtered, and then "prune out non-conforming URLs" -- without fully specifying what made them non-conforming) *and* require the malware URLs to be live for at least 6 consecutive hours it gets a lot easier to massage the results. To further exaggerate results not only does a "hit" increase the score but a "miss" decreases it to magnify the difference.
This is the same song as they sang about IE8 with the same, predictable, results. Microsoft didn't pay them a wad of money for this study for nothing.
Yeah, the whole thing is kinda... stupid. Admittedly I only skimmed the "article", but: so... if you can put arbitrary code on the update server you can infect every mac that gets updates from it? Really? Color me shocked and surprised, news at 11
Some good quotes, like "With a large enterprise, you have to assume that people are going to get tricked into installing malware." which is another way of saying "if you can get someone to run arbitrary code then you can do arbitrary things on their computer". Duh. And applies equally to Windows.
Though I will note that, at least for Windows, a software key logger does *not* require special privileges (it is all in the approach). And even ignoring that there are usually multiple local privilege escalation attacks on Windows so the drive-by malware can get system privileges and then start stealing credentials. Hope desktop support/infrastructure don't do anything that causes an interactive login against the machine... I guess, with all of those problems, Windows just isn't ready for the enterprise...
Aren't working and having a place to live pretty important? I may have missed something, but food and shelter are basic needs and a job goes a long way providing for them. (By the way, why do you think your doctor or the hospital you visit needs your social security number. Hint, it isn't because they are paying you. And it isn't because the SSN)
And, unless you are filthy rich, it isn't likely you can afford to buy a home without debt. Debt isn't necessarily bad, but unmanaged, spend-everything-you-have kind of debt is pretty stupid.
When I was young and naive I used to believe that paying off a credit card balance in full each month pleased the masters. It does not. What pleases them is a minimum payment on a maxed out credit line. And, no, that isn't a guess -- it simply is the maximum return for their money. In other words, greatest profit.
for those who are too young to remember: there was something referred to as the halloween document.
http://notagoth.com/microsucks/halloween.html
trolls and all that, but... that's nice "a literal majority of the iphone 4 owners" you know: how many is that, one? I drop my phones all the time. Repeatedly. Often from about two meters. I have *never* had glass shatter on either a 3G or a 4. My work provided iPhone 3G is carried in a front pocket with keys. The back is scratched and pitted from damage, the glass is just fine.
My wife's 3G *did* have the glass spider spectacularly from a short fall. I should probably mention that was after two years of carrying it in a hip pocket which resulted in significant stress on the device every time she sat down. It seems probable that all of the accumulated stress had something to do with the glass shattering.
Notoriously fragile? To you, maybe, in your little world. Where I work everyone is provided with a smart phone, almost all of them are iPhones (even the Apple haters prefer them for some reason, only a few die-hard Microsoft lovers persist with Windows mobile, the majority of non-iPhone devices are Android). The Apple haters crowed about the supposed reception problems of the iPhone 4, but not a single one claims that the iPhone is "notoriously fragile".
Perhaps you should re-read the definition for "notorious"
I think it is important to look at *why* the violent vigilante acts occur. Something as simple as the KKK gets complex because there are a large number of different people involved for a variety of reasons. To present two very simple categories: some people want power over others (being ranked in an organization), some feel downtrodden and are looking for a culprit -- once somebody in the former realizes they can manipulate someone in the latter by playing on racist themes you have the beginnings of a movement.
Saying "violent acts not authorized by the law are bad" is not only only over simplistic, but is covered by your signature quote. As a general rule (meaning, it is a rule of thumb indicator, not a perfect yard stick) the more violent and aggressive the actions the more desperate the persons perceive their cause to be. If I've been unemployed for months on end, am being evicted, don't have money to buy food for my family -- most people would consider that to be fairly desperate. Some might resort to stealing to satisfy the food problem. Others will be more inclined to blame someone else for their troubles. If friends and relatives appear to have been hurt or killed by another group it is easy to take out anger and frustration on that group. And that road leads to terrorism.
To avoid blindness to reality it is important to take note of the underlying factors. Why do vigilantes do the things they do? It depends on the vigilante and their individual circumstance, but particularly when vigilante-ism becomes widespread in a region dealing out punishment to the transgressors does not resolve the problem. With respect to the KKK -- it is a sad truth that people from my generation who were raised in the south were presented with a very different view of the civil war, the circumstances surrounding it, and the aftermath. Public schools teaching them that blacks were aggressors against downtrodden and subjugated whites. Proper education is the long term solution, whatever actions are taken against particular vigilante acts.
In the present case there are claims that corporate citizenship has gone too far. Perhaps there is merit to that claim, but regardless *if* acts continue and *if* they are directed at corporations shielded from natural and legal consequence (immunity from legal/financial consequences is a significant component of an LLC, and "too big to fail") then the way to stop them is to address concerns about corporate immunity from the consequence of their collective actions.
what I got from reading the article was that the author had a conclusion that wasn't supported by the evidence. Taking the finding at face value, a solitary find that is significantly closer than expected to the estimated time of impact would tend to support a gradual extinction. If the extinction were sudden, due to the asteroid impact, then a wealth of fossil data would be expected all the way up to the estimated time of impact, with very little (quickly going to none) following it. Instead there is (apparently, and this is information provided and agreed on by the article) a significant gap with -- to date -- a single fossil found in the region.
As far as I can tell it is another data point of no particular significance. To "disprove" gradual extinction before the impact a number of fossils representing normal population levels and distributions needs to be found.