Bruce, have you guys done any testing of performance in the presence of background noise? I know that in the PMR area, there are a lot of firemen who are very unhappy with what happens to AMBE when their is background noise (e.g. saws, Personal Alert Safety System, fire) gets into the mike - while AMBE does ok at encoding just speech, throw the noise of a saw in the background and all you get is garbage.
While the initial application of CODEC2 is hams in their shacks with their noise-canceling mikes, It Would Be Nice If the vocoder didn't curl up its toes and die in an noisy environment.
If you've ever heard AMBE in the presence of bit errors, it doesn't do so well either. It isn't the vocoder's job to deal with bit errors, it is the protocol's job. Over half the bits in a APCO-25 voice frame are forward error correction for the voice payload: Golay encoding, Reed-Solomon, bit order scrambling (interleaving), you name it.
Putting resistance to bit errors in the codec is the wrong place to do it.
Now, making the codec use less bits, so the protocol layer has more bits for FEC makes sense.
Am I the only one who'd like to see somebody like Jeff Dunham do a Pierson's Puppeteer at a con? Actually, it would be better with two puppeteers - one for each head.
And mods - yes, I am off topic, that's why I didn't add my Karma bonus. Bite me.
Hey man, we need that first quantum hyperdrive, preferably BEFORE the Kzinti get here, OK? The Puppeteers send a representative to chastise you, you thank them and open trade relations, m'kay?
Don't make me open this can of Tree Of Life on you!
AP Newswire, Wichita, KS: In response to Airbus's announcement that they are working on transparent aircraft, Boeing announced they would be working on a new aircraft themselves.
"Our aircraft will have seats wide enough for an adult of average build to sit in them without touching their neighbors. They will have armrests that are not shared with the adjacent seats. They will have ample legroom for an adult one standard deviation above average height. The seats will recline without robbing the passenger behind them of space. They will have enough overhead storage for each passenger to have two carry on items without needing to place them in their foot space. They will have enough air conditioning to remain cool when parked on the tarmac in Dallas in the summer. They will have one bathroom for every 30 passengers. They will have multiple soundproofed areas, so a screaming child in one area won't bother the whole aircraft. There will be enough aisle space that passengers will be able to get on or off the aircraft even when other passengers are stowing their baggage. They will have these things not just in first class, but throughout the plane."
Engineers for the Wichita office of Airbus are quoted as saying "Transparent planes are possible, but that?! PHFFT! Pure FICTION!"
(and the reason I put this in Wichita is that we actually do have an office of Airbus here as well as Boeing).
Dear Airbus: Look at all the grief we've had with something simple, like composites. This is stuff that has been around for decades, and we are still having problems making an aircraft out of it.
You are talking about things that haven't even been invented yet, let alone approved by the various aviation agencies of the world, or even built into a prototype.
So, in closing: you go! You spend all your money on that, and let us know how that works out for you.
Scene: a couple of years from now: Sony: We've decide that we are limiting your Move to only work within a 2 meter range of your TV. Gamers: But what if my TV is bigger, and I need or want to be more than 2 meters from my TV? Sony: Tough. We've decided that it makes sense for us to limit this. You WILL apply the update. You WILL be limited. Gamers: But WHY? Sony: The reason we are giving is that some players are abusing the ability to be more than 2 meters from the TV to cheat at games, or something.
Scene: Today. Me: Sorry Sony, but you've screwed me once on my PS3. From here on out, I am NOT buying hardware from you. I will avoid buying new games. In fact, the only real money you are getting is what you get from my Blu-Ray purchases, which isn't much. You want me to buy this? Then stop taking features away from me that I bought and paid for, that you advertised, and that were a part of why I bought from you - indeed, give me those features BACK. Until then, I am not interested.
This sort of crap - companies locking you out of your stuff - will continue.
Do you want to know who's to blame?
It's that creepy person who is following you around - you know, the one who's always in the mirror looking at you?
Here's what needs to happen to make this stuff NOT happen: 1) Customers need to DEMAND sales contracts that PROHIBIT companies from unilaterally changing the contract after the fact. 2) Customers need to DEMAND sales contracts that PROHIBIT removal of features from devices after sale without forcing an immediate renegotiation of the sale contract, including the right of the customer to DEMAND immediate refunding of the FULL sale price. 3) Customers need to REFUSE to do business with anybody who will not abide by #1 and #2 above. 4) Voters need to DEMAND legislation to enforce #1 and #2 above, with real teeth that will really bite the companies in the wallet should they violate them. 5) Voters need to REFUSE to vote for anybody who will not enact #4.
Since the probability that a significant number of people will actually go for #3 ("Bu-Bu-But I wants my shineee!"), and the probability that voters will actually do #5 ("Bu-Bu-But if I don't vote for a lizard then the wrong lizard might get in office! Besides, he may be a lizard, but he's MY lizard!"), the probability of this actually happening is zero squared - still zero.
All you can do is to live by those rules yourself, and accept there are things you won't have.
Small, reasonably quiet (more so if you do a bit of work on the fan), HDMI or composite out, does 1080i, does S/PDIF, does just about every form of media I've tried, does SMB/CIFS, uPnP (not just DLNA, but also plain old uPnP), runs Linux internally, can accept an internal 2.5" hard disk, can use an external USB WiFi stick, supports external media via USB (including EXT2/3 file systems).
Everybody has been creaming themselves over how well the "science" holds up - as if this were really a hard science movie.
I don't understand this, as there was a plot hole so glaring to me that even as I marveled over the storytelling and the effects it continued to eat away at my Circle of Suspension of Disbelief.
OK, so Pandora is supposed to be in another star system - as I understand Proxima Centari. Let's take a distance of 4.3 lightyears for discussion. Now, at a minimum there had to be 2 trips from Earth to Pandora, and possibly as many as 4: 1) We had to identify that there was unobtanium there: if that required a probe to be sent that is 1 trip there, plus one communication back. If there is some way to detect it by observation then no trip is needed, so let's assume that to be nice. 2) We had to send a probe there to get the Na'vi DNA, and somehow communicate that back to Earth. That is at least one trip there + one communication back (the reason for the distinction will become clear shortly). 3) We had to send people + Avatars from Earth to Pandora.
There are three possible assumptions: 1) Humans have faster than light travel. Thus a "trip" and a "communication" are the same, and take some time less than 4.3 years as viewed from Earth. However, I would assert if we know enough to do FTL, we aren't going to be using chemical projectile weapons in a fight. (it also seems likely we would be able to synthesize a room-temp superconductor, but I digress). 2) Humans have relativistic flight (.5c to.9c) - trips take about 8 years, communications 4 years. Minimum time is thus 8+8+4 = 20 years, plus another 8 years before unobtanium would be flowing back to Earth. That's a long time to wait. Moreover, if you can do.5c ships, you are able to manipulate energies much higher than we can now, so again, no chemical projectile weapons. 3) Humans have non-relativistic flight (.1c or less) - trips take 400 years, communications 4 years. Again, that's just too long to wait.
"What if you cannot use energy weapons on Pandora because of energy fields?" OK, but that still doesn't prevent a ship in orbit from slamming a large mass into the One Tree at great speed, with a much more efficient and devastating effect on Na'vi morale. Again, tell me why they used massed rockets rather than a small rock?
What? You missed 12) KITT 13) Dukes of Hazzard Rebel Yell with "Dixie" on the horn
and then some more fun ones. 14) Airwolf (hovering) 15) Any decent SFX of a 'Mech. 16) Intermittent sound of squalling brakes & crashing. 17) Six Million Dollar Man "running" SFX 18) 1950's era Superman flying "whoosh" 19) Clydesdales 20) Downtown Sturgis during Bike week 21) Space Shuttle Main Engines
Being able to do something and being able to teach somebody else to do it are two different things. "Testing a teacher on what they teach" is testing the first, what we want is the second.
For example, I am very good at math (I slept through CalcIII and still got an A). Would I be able to teach it well? No - especially to some kid who didn't want to learn, as I have little patience with such things. So while I would ace the tests, I would suck at teaching.
Moreover, you have to factor in the students. I had an excellent physics and chemistry teacher in high school, but part of that was the fact that his classes, being electives, ONLY had honors students in them. Had he been force to teach "duh joks" I doubt he would have done as well. There are teachers who can teach "duh joks" but couldn't teach honors students.
However, a big part of measuring teacher performance SHOULD be evaluating the whole picture: a) Can the teacher maintain order in the classroom (and part of THAT is empowering the teacher to do so - as in "OK smartass, get down to the principal's office. Won't go? SECURITY, remove this asshole.") b) Does the teacher know how to teach what they are teaching? c) Can the teacher engage students who aren't "getting it"?
Part of that is going to be moving the teachers around: if class A suddenly drops and class B suddenly rises when you swap teachers, then you can suspect the teacher.
Part of that has to be investigating further when you see problems: don't just go on the test, but when you think some teacher isn't doing a good job, start observing what is going on in the classroom.
And part of it WILL be removing bad teachers, and the union WILL oppose that. I had my share of really bad teachers - to the extent that I only learned because I ignored them and read the book. Any decent system would detect and remove those coaches^W"teachers", and believe me, they are usually the most active in the union, for some strange reason.
All of the specified types of radio signaling systems are used exclusively in 2 way radio systems (what is often known as Professional Mobile Radio, or PMR, or Land Mobile Radio or LMR). In all of those systems, the radio is a transmitter, and will usually perform what is known as "registration" when turned on - sending a broadcast message back to the system controller to say "Hi, I'm $IDNUMBER, can I work on your system, and if so, would you tell everybody I'm here?" To which the system can say "DIE. NOW." and the radio will brick itself.
The parent poster obviously works in the PMR market in some fashion, as do I, and probably forgot most people aren't familiar with it.
I fear the high speed rails will be deployed on the east and west, and those of us in "fly over" country will be left out in the cold.
Which is a shame, because in many ways the middle of the country is where high speed rail could really shine: the trains could get up to speed and stay there for a significant length of time.
However, a few random points:
1) France has a total of 1000 miles of high speed track. The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to LA - about 2000 miles. That's just ONE of Amtrak's routes. 2) In Europe, they have auto-trains: put your car on, go, take your car off, drive. The only place this happens in the US is on the east coast, on one run. Again: were it possible to put your car on in New York, pull your car off in Flagstaff, and drive up to the Grand Canyon, I think it would be much more attractive to many people. 3) Were autotrain runs more common in the US, then driving an electric car with limited range wouldn't be the deal-breaker for long trips it is now: again, put the car in in NY, off in Flagstaff, with a fully charged battery courtesy of the train's power. 4) There is a great push on just to restore old-style rail service in the middle of the country: see the Heartland Flyerextension effort.
I routinely travel long distances: Wichita to Los Angeles for example. I'd love to be able to put my car on the train, roll overnight, and be able to make the trip in a day rather than two. I'd love to be able to hop on the train for my business trips to Kansas City and Austin. The idea that Americans won't take the train doesn't square with how many ride it now, when Amtrak seems to go out of their way to make it unattractive. Over 4000 people used the Amtrak station in Hutchison KS last year, and that is a little station in a town of about 40,000 people - the station isn't even manned, and the train gets there at 4 in the morning.
No, rail COULD work in the US - it's just that no big company will make $$$$ from it, so no CongressCritters are motivated to do anything about it.
In fairness, the title is misleading: Blue Screen of Death implies Microsoft Windows, and there is no Microsoft Windows involved in this story (at least, not in the car). Indeed, the only OS mentioned in the story is Linux.
I despise Microsoft and Windows, but I do so for REAL reasons, which this story IS NOT. The summary should be fixed to note this wasn't a BSOD, that Windows was not at fault, etc., just to be fair and consistent.
As it stands, the summary is just prejudiced and misleading.
Normally I don't even bother to read ACs, let alone respond to them, but in your case I'll make an exception since you are actually trying to make a cogent point.
Security IS complex - that is why it is better to get it right in ONE place than getting it WRONG many places. Had the researchers put the effort into defining a meaningful set of security contexts within SELinux - contexts that could be used for the WHOLE SYSTEM - they could have not only secured the browser, but everything else. Instead, they took a Barbie-Doll "Security is HARD" approach, and only secured ONE application.
The faults raised in the paper were not with SELinux itself, but rather with a specific implementation of a security policy, created by one vendor, which USES the SELinux framework.
Personally, I'd rather see a set of security contexts and attributes: internet_tainted_file: this object (file) was created by a program which has accessed the Internet (more precisely, any network address not marked as trusted). sensitive-file: an object (file) that may NEVER be accessed by an internet-tainted-program (see below)
non-internet-program - a program has no need to open ports outside the local network or access internet_tainted files. internet-program: a program which MAY access the internet, but has not yet done so. sensitive-tainted-program: a program which has accessed a sensitive-file, and thus may NEVER access the Internet. An internet-program may transition to the sensitive-tainted-program state by accessing a sensitive-file object. internet-tainted-program: a program which has accessed the Internet, or accessed an internet_tainted_file.
That way, programs that have no need of frobbing the Internet (e.g. gedit) CANNOT access it. Programs that have touched sensitive files (e.g./etc/shadow) likewise can NEVER touch the 'Net. Programs that have touched the 'Net can NEVER access sensitive files.
That's just the tip of the iceberg - but getting a proper set of security contexts can not only protect the browser, but EVERY program on the system.
And that is why I raised this point: all Google is securing is their own stuff (and only to the extent a malicious exploit cannot work around their solution, which is code in the application), rather than contributing to the greater security of the whole system.
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce, have you guys done any testing of performance in the presence of background noise? I know that in the PMR area, there are a lot of firemen who are very unhappy with what happens to AMBE when their is background noise (e.g. saws, Personal Alert Safety System, fire) gets into the mike - while AMBE does ok at encoding just speech, throw the noise of a saw in the background and all you get is garbage.
While the initial application of CODEC2 is hams in their shacks with their noise-canceling mikes, It Would Be Nice If the vocoder didn't curl up its toes and die in an noisy environment.
See "Urgent Communications", September 10th edition, page 10, "Round 2 of digital radio fireground tests held", and the test plan.
If you've ever heard AMBE in the presence of bit errors, it doesn't do so well either. It isn't the vocoder's job to deal with bit errors, it is the protocol's job. Over half the bits in a APCO-25 voice frame are forward error correction for the voice payload: Golay encoding, Reed-Solomon, bit order scrambling (interleaving), you name it.
Putting resistance to bit errors in the codec is the wrong place to do it.
Now, making the codec use less bits, so the protocol layer has more bits for FEC makes sense.
Am I the only one who'd like to see somebody like Jeff Dunham do a Pierson's Puppeteer at a con? Actually, it would be better with two puppeteers - one for each head.
And mods - yes, I am off topic, that's why I didn't add my Karma bonus. Bite me.
Hey man, we need that first quantum hyperdrive, preferably BEFORE the Kzinti get here, OK? The Puppeteers send a representative to chastise you, you thank them and open trade relations, m'kay?
Don't make me open this can of Tree Of Life on you!
Puppeteer should be capitalized, as it is a proper noun in this context- it's not some puppeteers, it's the Peirson's Puppeteers that are complaining.
(And usig an a Android tablet to post with sucks.)
(and the reason I put this in Wichita is that we actually do have an office of Airbus here as well as Boeing).
Dear Airbus:
Look at all the grief we've had with something simple, like composites. This is stuff that has been around for decades, and we are still having problems making an aircraft out of it.
You are talking about things that haven't even been invented yet, let alone approved by the various aviation agencies of the world, or even built into a prototype.
So, in closing: you go! You spend all your money on that, and let us know how that works out for you.
Love,
Boeing.
Scene: a couple of years from now:
Sony: We've decide that we are limiting your Move to only work within a 2 meter range of your TV.
Gamers: But what if my TV is bigger, and I need or want to be more than 2 meters from my TV?
Sony: Tough. We've decided that it makes sense for us to limit this. You WILL apply the update. You WILL be limited.
Gamers: But WHY?
Sony: The reason we are giving is that some players are abusing the ability to be more than 2 meters from the TV to cheat at games, or something.
Scene: Today.
Me: Sorry Sony, but you've screwed me once on my PS3. From here on out, I am NOT buying hardware from you. I will avoid buying new games. In fact, the only real money you are getting is what you get from my Blu-Ray purchases, which isn't much. You want me to buy this? Then stop taking features away from me that I bought and paid for, that you advertised, and that were a part of why I bought from you - indeed, give me those features BACK. Until then, I am not interested.
This sort of crap - companies locking you out of your stuff - will continue.
Do you want to know who's to blame?
It's that creepy person who is following you around - you know, the one who's always in the mirror looking at you?
Here's what needs to happen to make this stuff NOT happen:
1) Customers need to DEMAND sales contracts that PROHIBIT companies from unilaterally changing the contract after the fact.
2) Customers need to DEMAND sales contracts that PROHIBIT removal of features from devices after sale without forcing an immediate renegotiation of the sale contract, including the right of the customer to DEMAND immediate refunding of the FULL sale price.
3) Customers need to REFUSE to do business with anybody who will not abide by #1 and #2 above.
4) Voters need to DEMAND legislation to enforce #1 and #2 above, with real teeth that will really bite the companies in the wallet should they violate them.
5) Voters need to REFUSE to vote for anybody who will not enact #4.
Since the probability that a significant number of people will actually go for #3 ("Bu-Bu-But I wants my shineee!"), and the probability that voters will actually do #5 ("Bu-Bu-But if I don't vote for a lizard then the wrong lizard might get in office! Besides, he may be a lizard, but he's MY lizard!"), the probability of this actually happening is zero squared - still zero.
All you can do is to live by those rules yourself, and accept there are things you won't have.
Too many people here miss the fact that you want the PLAYER side of the equation, not the server.
I'd suggest something like the Patriot Box Office:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=patriot%20box%20office
http://patriotmem.com/products/detailp.jsp?prodline=6&catid=69&prodgroupid=159&id=895&type=20
Small, reasonably quiet (more so if you do a bit of work on the fan), HDMI or composite out, does 1080i, does S/PDIF, does just about every form of media I've tried, does SMB/CIFS, uPnP (not just DLNA, but also plain old uPnP), runs Linux internally, can accept an internal 2.5" hard disk, can use an external USB WiFi stick, supports external media via USB (including EXT2/3 file systems).
-Retargeted Ads Stalk You For Weeks After You Shop.
+Retarded Ads Stalk You For Weeks After You Shop.
Corrected error in headline.
"etymological, not entymological"
Don't worry about it, it's just a bug.
"Too bad you don't realize that both Falcons and Eagles are raptors, as are every other bird of pray ... considering raptor means 'bird of pray'.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, bless this crow to its intended purpose, amen.
PREY, not PRAY.
Everybody has been creaming themselves over how well the "science" holds up - as if this were really a hard science movie.
I don't understand this, as there was a plot hole so glaring to me that even as I marveled over the storytelling and the effects it continued to eat away at my Circle of Suspension of Disbelief.
OK, so Pandora is supposed to be in another star system - as I understand Proxima Centari. Let's take a distance of 4.3 lightyears for discussion. Now, at a minimum there had to be 2 trips from Earth to Pandora, and possibly as many as 4:
1) We had to identify that there was unobtanium there: if that required a probe to be sent that is 1 trip there, plus one communication back. If there is some way to detect it by observation then no trip is needed, so let's assume that to be nice.
2) We had to send a probe there to get the Na'vi DNA, and somehow communicate that back to Earth. That is at least one trip there + one communication back (the reason for the distinction will become clear shortly).
3) We had to send people + Avatars from Earth to Pandora.
There are three possible assumptions: .9c) - trips take about 8 years, communications 4 years. Minimum time is thus 8+8+4 = 20 years, plus another 8 years before unobtanium would be flowing back to Earth. That's a long time to wait. Moreover, if you can do .5c ships, you are able to manipulate energies much higher than we can now, so again, no chemical projectile weapons.
1) Humans have faster than light travel. Thus a "trip" and a "communication" are the same, and take some time less than 4.3 years as viewed from Earth. However, I would assert if we know enough to do FTL, we aren't going to be using chemical projectile weapons in a fight. (it also seems likely we would be able to synthesize a room-temp superconductor, but I digress).
2) Humans have relativistic flight (.5c to
3) Humans have non-relativistic flight (.1c or less) - trips take 400 years, communications 4 years. Again, that's just too long to wait.
"What if you cannot use energy weapons on Pandora because of energy fields?" OK, but that still doesn't prevent a ship in orbit from slamming a large mass into the One Tree at great speed, with a much more efficient and devastating effect on Na'vi morale. Again, tell me why they used massed rockets rather than a small rock?
24) Fat Albert's Car.
And another:
23) Developers! Developers! Developers!
(I know I'd get the hell out of the way of THAT one!)
And I just realized I missed another obvious one:
22) Crazy Frog.
What? You missed
12) KITT
13) Dukes of Hazzard Rebel Yell with "Dixie" on the horn
and then some more fun ones.
14) Airwolf (hovering)
15) Any decent SFX of a 'Mech.
16) Intermittent sound of squalling brakes & crashing.
17) Six Million Dollar Man "running" SFX
18) 1950's era Superman flying "whoosh"
19) Clydesdales
20) Downtown Sturgis during Bike week
21) Space Shuttle Main Engines
MS Loves Open Source, which knows its place.
MS Hates that uppity Free Software.
Being able to do something and being able to teach somebody else to do it are two different things. "Testing a teacher on what they teach" is testing the first, what we want is the second.
For example, I am very good at math (I slept through CalcIII and still got an A). Would I be able to teach it well? No - especially to some kid who didn't want to learn, as I have little patience with such things. So while I would ace the tests, I would suck at teaching.
Moreover, you have to factor in the students. I had an excellent physics and chemistry teacher in high school, but part of that was the fact that his classes, being electives, ONLY had honors students in them. Had he been force to teach "duh joks" I doubt he would have done as well. There are teachers who can teach "duh joks" but couldn't teach honors students.
However, a big part of measuring teacher performance SHOULD be evaluating the whole picture:
a) Can the teacher maintain order in the classroom (and part of THAT is empowering the teacher to do so - as in "OK smartass, get down to the principal's office. Won't go? SECURITY, remove this asshole.")
b) Does the teacher know how to teach what they are teaching?
c) Can the teacher engage students who aren't "getting it"?
Part of that is going to be moving the teachers around: if class A suddenly drops and class B suddenly rises when you swap teachers, then you can suspect the teacher.
Part of that has to be investigating further when you see problems: don't just go on the test, but when you think some teacher isn't doing a good job, start observing what is going on in the classroom.
And part of it WILL be removing bad teachers, and the union WILL oppose that. I had my share of really bad teachers - to the extent that I only learned because I ignored them and read the book. Any decent system would detect and remove those coaches^W"teachers", and believe me, they are usually the most active in the union, for some strange reason.
All of the specified types of radio signaling systems are used exclusively in 2 way radio systems (what is often known as Professional Mobile Radio, or PMR, or Land Mobile Radio or LMR). In all of those systems, the radio is a transmitter, and will usually perform what is known as "registration" when turned on - sending a broadcast message back to the system controller to say "Hi, I'm $IDNUMBER, can I work on your system, and if so, would you tell everybody I'm here?" To which the system can say "DIE. NOW." and the radio will brick itself.
The parent poster obviously works in the PMR market in some fashion, as do I, and probably forgot most people aren't familiar with it.
I fear the high speed rails will be deployed on the east and west, and those of us in "fly over" country will be left out in the cold.
Which is a shame, because in many ways the middle of the country is where high speed rail could really shine: the trains could get up to speed and stay there for a significant length of time.
However, a few random points:
1) France has a total of 1000 miles of high speed track. The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to LA - about 2000 miles. That's just ONE of Amtrak's routes.
2) In Europe, they have auto-trains: put your car on, go, take your car off, drive. The only place this happens in the US is on the east coast, on one run. Again: were it possible to put your car on in New York, pull your car off in Flagstaff, and drive up to the Grand Canyon, I think it would be much more attractive to many people.
3) Were autotrain runs more common in the US, then driving an electric car with limited range wouldn't be the deal-breaker for long trips it is now: again, put the car in in NY, off in Flagstaff, with a fully charged battery courtesy of the train's power.
4) There is a great push on just to restore old-style rail service in the middle of the country: see the Heartland Flyer extension effort.
I routinely travel long distances: Wichita to Los Angeles for example. I'd love to be able to put my car on the train, roll overnight, and be able to make the trip in a day rather than two. I'd love to be able to hop on the train for my business trips to Kansas City and Austin. The idea that Americans won't take the train doesn't square with how many ride it now, when Amtrak seems to go out of their way to make it unattractive. Over 4000 people used the Amtrak station in Hutchison KS last year, and that is a little station in a town of about 40,000 people - the station isn't even manned, and the train gets there at 4 in the morning.
No, rail COULD work in the US - it's just that no big company will make $$$$ from it, so no CongressCritters are motivated to do anything about it.
What? No mention of Slashspeak? No "If you loose at poker, your a bad player, and you will run out of chip's"?
In fairness, the title is misleading: Blue Screen of Death implies Microsoft Windows, and there is no Microsoft Windows involved in this story (at least, not in the car). Indeed, the only OS mentioned in the story is Linux.
I despise Microsoft and Windows, but I do so for REAL reasons, which this story IS NOT. The summary should be fixed to note this wasn't a BSOD, that Windows was not at fault, etc., just to be fair and consistent.
As it stands, the summary is just prejudiced and misleading.
(oh, sorry. forgot where I was for a moment.)
Normally I don't even bother to read ACs, let alone respond to them, but in your case I'll make an exception since you are actually trying to make a cogent point.
Security IS complex - that is why it is better to get it right in ONE place than getting it WRONG many places. Had the researchers put the effort into defining a meaningful set of security contexts within SELinux - contexts that could be used for the WHOLE SYSTEM - they could have not only secured the browser, but everything else. Instead, they took a Barbie-Doll "Security is HARD" approach, and only secured ONE application.
The faults raised in the paper were not with SELinux itself, but rather with a specific implementation of a security policy, created by one vendor, which USES the SELinux framework.
Personally, I'd rather see a set of security contexts and attributes:
internet_tainted_file: this object (file) was created by a program which has accessed the Internet (more precisely, any network address not marked as trusted).
sensitive-file: an object (file) that may NEVER be accessed by an internet-tainted-program (see below)
non-internet-program - a program has no need to open ports outside the local network or access internet_tainted files.
internet-program: a program which MAY access the internet, but has not yet done so.
sensitive-tainted-program: a program which has accessed a sensitive-file, and thus may NEVER access the Internet. An internet-program may transition to the sensitive-tainted-program state by accessing a sensitive-file object.
internet-tainted-program: a program which has accessed the Internet, or accessed an internet_tainted_file.
That way, programs that have no need of frobbing the Internet (e.g. gedit) CANNOT access it. Programs that have touched sensitive files (e.g. /etc/shadow) likewise can NEVER touch the 'Net. Programs that have touched the 'Net can NEVER access sensitive files.
That's just the tip of the iceberg - but getting a proper set of security contexts can not only protect the browser, but EVERY program on the system.
And that is why I raised this point: all Google is securing is their own stuff (and only to the extent a malicious exploit cannot work around their solution, which is code in the application), rather than contributing to the greater security of the whole system.