What happened to the Magna Carta? I was taught that that was a set of principles that acts a little like a consitution. If fact, some american law is based on it, even though it's not specifically spelled out in our constitution. (Trial by jury of peers?)
The Magna Carta was superceeded by the Petition of Right Act, 1628 and the Bill Of Rights Act, 1689. Both
are still constitutionally significant today.
"Certainly, someone who saw those documents could have reasonably believed that thousands of voters were
going to be potentially disenfranchised in upcoming elections."
So let me get this straight. His "crime" was the fact he alert people to the fact that the local elections were flawed
due to the use of uncertified equipment? Is it their argument that because of this people might have disengaged from local
politics and that hurts society and thus requires punishment? That's not just absurd, it's scarey.
He's accused of breaking the law... If we feel that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt in our minds that a
crime has been committed, it's our job as a criminal prosecutor to file a case.
No it is not. It is your job to prosecute if the following criteria are met:
There is sufficient evidence against the person in question.
It is in the public interest to prosecute.
While the first criteria may well be true, the second one is not. As an aside, pne of the assignments that my brother was
asked when he was studying for his law degree was to answer the following question: "Given the fact that Parliament
can make any law it pleases, without being constrained by the decisions of previous Parliaments, would the courts uphold
a law that sactioned the execution of every blue-eyed baby in the country."
The answer is no. Technically, the court would be obliged to rule in favour of Parliament. This is because we do not
have a written constitution that safeguards our rights [1]. However, the view is that the courts would never uphold this because
of it's incredible abhorence.
The point of the excercise is to demonstrate one thing to woodbie lawyers: "Just because it's the law does not make it right."
Morality and law are seperate beasts. Lying to your wife is immoral but it not a crime. In this case he may
have broken the law, but frankly I think that is price worth paying for the value of the information he gave us. What he did
was a crime but it was not immoral and did not seek to undermine society.
Simon
[1] - This is becoming less and less true. While in terms of legal theory it is certain that Parliament is not constrained
by the decisions of previous Parliaments, in practice this isn't true. There are some acts that would be pretty much impossible
to repeal. The European Communities Act (ECA) is a prime example of this kind of legislation. While it's legally possible to repeal the
act doing so would require leaving the European Union which will never happen.
Thanks to the ECA, we are slowly acquiring a constitution. The Human Rights Act of 1998 was derived from the European Convention on Human Rights
and was the first act of Parliament to acknowledge our fundamental rights in the positive. (i.e. Paraliment stating we have these rights explictly rather
than simply failing to prohibit these actions).
"We don't want customers to be forced into buying something that isn't going to meet all their needs," said Barry Goffe, Microsoft's director of Windows client product management.
Translation: We understand from psychology that people can only make effective, informed decisions when the number of choices is low, typically around six.
We understand that one of the principles of building is a successful company is to segment your market according to their willingness to pay. Hence, I propose we offer
six versions of Vista, each priced differently, each with a clear difference in feature set so that we can effectively capture our consumer surplus without
our customers being constrained by the tyranny of choice.
Why vacinate just the chickens? While it would have to mutate in order to pass between humans it seems plausible
(to a laymen in this field) that a vacine that protects against bird-flu might also offer some protection against
the mutent.
This break-through is just what we've needed: A fast way to make a lot of flu vaccines. The question now is, do we now have enough
time to take a side swipe at bird-flu before it makes the transition to a human form? At any rate, even if it does make
the transition, I do believe this would be the last major flu pandemic.
The next time people will not be so complacent. The billions the first-world nations have just pledged to fight Avian Flu
will be pledged much more quickly. In fact, I think the UN will have a fund to tackle these kinds of nightmares and the
money will be released immediately on discovery of a virus that is deadly to humans. Couple this with the fact we'll
have better ways to sythentise vaccines. These new methods will hopefully deliver a suitable product on the order
of days rather than months.
It makes sense for us to set-up such a fund. For a start, the economic loss caused by bird flu will run in to trillions.
So let's do it! Whether you're black or white, Palestinian or Israeli, Christian or Muslim this virus effects us all equally.
Surely, even the most hardened tax-cutting Republican in the universe will agree that it's sensible to stump up money for this fund.
I'd like to see the demonstration. Until such time, I call bollocks and I refuse to believe an "impossible to reverse-engineer" piece of code ever exists.
I second your bullshit and raise! The problem with proofs such as this is that they assume broad axioms that in reality might not be true in the hardware. For example, they may well have proved the theorem if they assume all operations of a certain set take the same length but in reality they might not. The processor might take a ten billionth of a second longer to do one operation than it does another, or it might release more heat when it does one operation than it does when it performs another, or it might release a certain magnetic field when it does one operation and not another.
Side-channel attacks, as these are called, are often totally devastating. There was one attack where simply heating the computer up can cause a system to get owned. If the proof is correct, it's certainly interesting but practically we're a long way from getting to this gold standard.
Ahhh, now we'll really see whether they can really live up their "Don't be evil" policy!
Does Google prefer stock price over ethics? While my instinct tells me the answer is firmly "no" I think
we are all interested in the result.
I think Google did the right thing. In the western democracies we all have strict rules governing the powers of the various investigative authorities. There are very good reasons for this. The Police and Justice Department have incredible powers granted to them by the state. However, the same power that allows them to catch criminals can also be used for less noble purposes.
In any organisation of considerable size there is always a rogue element. An element that is deceitful, unethical and motivated by influences orthogonal to the goals of the institution. Sometimes these are fairly benign: David Blunket trying to get a quick visa so he and his bit on the side have a nanny to look after their child. Sometimes these can be very malicious: Robbers breaking in to the Democrat headquarters and planting bugs so Nixon could spy on their election campaign. (I'm British so they may be inaccuracies in this account)
The law is there not only to protect us from criminals but to protect us from the people who catch them too. In many ways, the protection from the people who catch criminals is vastly more important than protection from criminals. What criminal can get state sanctioned approval to search your home? Impound your possessions? Wrongfully impression you?
All over the western world, governments are granting their Police more and more powers in the name of combating terrorism. The chance of being killed by a terrorist is approximately zero. For comparison, in Britain 0.03% of us will die[1] in ALL possible mishaps this year. That takes account of murder, car crashes, being eaten by ferocious llamas and so on and so forth.
I would therefore venture that the threat posed by increasing Police power is vastly greater than the threat of terrorism. In Britain, we saw this illustrated for us nicely when an octogenarian, life-time member of the Labour party was escorted from the annual conference and arrested under anti-terrorism legislation. Here was a man saying that war in Iraq was unjust and he gets arrested under anti-terrorism legislation. This war on terror is becoming a war, conducted by ourselves, against ourselves to remove the democratic values we cherish so dearly. Shakespeare himself could not write such a dark tragedy.
Getting back to point. Just because the Justice Department says Google should jump it does not mean Google should meekly reply: "How High, Officer?". Just because the government asks you to do something does not mean that they have the proper authority to ask for it. Let them prove in a court of law that they have the proper authority to make such a claim. If they're right, they'll win and Google will have to capitulate. If they're wrong, then a precedent is set and the complicated system of checks and balances has once again protected liberty.
Simon
[1] - The Independent, Yesterday, in the Editorial section. Feel free to correct this figure if it is incorrect.
Billions of years ago, when the day was 23 hours long, there was no oxygen in the air and hence no ozone.
The surface of the earth would have killed any land based animals pretty quickly.
Over time, life transformed the atmosphere and soon after plants and animals started to come out of the sea
and started to prosper on land. Billions of years past and today we're sat here with laptop's contemplating what to do
about climate change. I personally think that a large chunk of climate change has been caused by humans. I also agree with the scientist
that we've already past the point of no return - so the question is not how we can stop climate change but how we can cope with it.
Personally, I think the climate disaster will be very bad for bio-diversity but have a negligable effect on humanity. I often
go to Florida on my holiday from the foggy and cold waste lands of the UK:). The heat in Florida is at times unbearable but it
matters not because air conditioning is in nearly every building. If I get too hot, I just go inside.
As the oceans expand and the sea level rises, people will simply move further up the shore.
When islands disappear, people will be unhappy but they quickly build new lives in new countries. When crops fail to grow
in some countries they will replace the crops with others that grow in those climates. If they've really got money to burn they'll
genetically engineer plants that are resistant to the heat. When oil prices start their long climb to unaffordability other technologies
will take up the batton. Suddenly the economy will start to allocate resources to bypass the damage that the price-hike induces. Life will go
on as normal.
I think we're heading for a mass extinction event - of that I am certain - but is highly unlikely we will feel the pinch.
These are interesting times to be alive.
Now, the slashdot community seems to be fairly educated and extremely opinionated so how about it--does dark matter exist? If so, since it is very difficult to detect, what are its defining properties?
If this is correct, then the Dark Matter riddle has been solved. Basically, it was due to the fact that scientists thought they could safely use the Newtonian limit to General Relativity with galaxies. They were wrong and Dark Matter is a result of this error.
This was reported on Slashdot not to many moons ago.
If ActiveX was off by default, how would people use Windows Update?
Simple! Change Windows Update! Why should Windows Update be a web-application anyway? Actually, It's damn scarey that it's a web-application. Doesn't it strike you as odd that a web-application can so throughly inspect your system to determine your patch-level on a whole host of products?
There is no excuse for ActiveX being on by default and the proof of Microsoft's commitment to security will come with the launch of Internet Explorer 7. If it's still on by default in their latest version then we know their grand security initiative was nothing but hot air.
This is a common security problem: useless or rarely used functionality. As I've said before, functionality sells whereas security doesn't. Spend a million dollars on functionality and you (hopefully) get a product that can sell for more money. Spend a million dollars on security and you have almost nothing tangiable to show for it.
Before this article, I didn't even know that "link local" thing existed. I guessing that this is probably quite representive of the Slashdot crew. The question is, then, is why on earth is it on by default and why is it even there in the first place?
This is not just a Microsoft issue, this is an issue that applies to nearly every computing project. I was recently playing with Knoppix and two things struck me:
Holy shit, out of the box you can actually do real work with this software.
Holy shit, I have three different products that do exactly the same thing. That's a lot of surface area for attack.
My parents got a new HP computer a month or so ago and I've just gotten round to doing a proper security shake-down on the XP box. I was surprised to find the Python runtime on the computer. Most of you would say, so what? Or perhaps, even applaud HP for doing this. From a security perspective, I think it's downright silly. What possible use could my parents have for the Python runtime? Absoutely none. They'll be running Open Office, Gmail and Itunes to the cows come home so all this does is opens another vector for attack. Don't install stuff on computers that your customers will likely never need.
Of all the pieces of software out there at the moment, Windows XP is the most frustrating. In terms of security, XP should completly out-class Linux/Unix in every metric of measurement. Instead, it's the most disease ridden piece of shit ever concieved by humanity. It's a shame because it could have set a really high standard for everybody in the industry but through a choice of poor defaults they condemed their own product to be a liability to CTOs everywhere. If they'd had some sense, they would have choosen defaults like this:
This is an obvious one: Users should not run as administrator by default.
Software Restriction Policies should be on by default - in both XP Pro and XP Home
Everywhere should be marked "No-Execute" except for C:\Program Files and C:\Windows.
The user should only be able to write to their user directory structure by default. Everywhere else should be read-only.
The Windows Scripting Host should not be install by default.
ActiveX should be off by default in IE.
I haven't got any figures on how many viruses/malware this configuration would stop but I imagine it's somewhere in the region of 99%. If Microsoft had taken the time to consider the platform in a more paranoid sense they could have produced a product of barn-storming quality. Instead, they listened to the marketing people and we all know what result that lead to.
Computer security will get worse before it gets better. It's the second hardest problem in computing, coming second only
to DRM; which is provely impossible to do properly.
The problem comes from many quaters: some theortical, some practical, some managerial. For example:
We know that it is possible to write
secure code in any language and we also know it is possible to write insecure code in any language.
We know that people are
generally more prepared to pay for features than security but features are the enemy of security.
The more features you have, the more code-paths you have and the more chance that you have a defect in
any one of those paths.
We know that schedule pressure leads to crappy code and crappy code breeds insecurity.
We know that the attacker only needs to find one attack that works. We have to defend against all attacks..
I could go on for quite sometime.. the point to appreciate here is that it isn't all Microsoft's fault but they could do a whole lot more. If we could just get rid of the overflows that would be a good start!
Why is Taco linking to Microsoft Office's home page? Is there a backhanded deal between Slashdot and Microsoft to covertly promote their software?
The problem with having ads on your site is that it's much easier to get bought. Microsoft advertise heavily on this site and taco's team must depend, in no small measure, on that income to support the site. Could this be affecting the editors impartiality? I think so..
There's two ways to look at this. I would say
that it is quite unlikely that the quality of software with respect to security
went down in 2005. Computer Security now has such high profile that software houses across
the world are spending many dollars trying to provide better security.
If you accept that security quality has not gone down, then you must conclude our ability
to detect vulnerabilites is getting better. This is universally a good thing. Every
vulnerability the "good guys" find before the "bad guys" is one we can have fix for
before the bad guys take over our system.
Then there's the other side of these figures. That's alot of vulnerabilities. Now,
fair enough not all vulnerabilities are created equally but I'd bet at least 10% are serious enough
to get your system taken over if you're not careful. That's a lot of ways to break in to my system
and it's a lot of work to make sure you're not vulnerable.
We have such a long way to go. For example, in PHP if they'd just follow Microsoft's example and put a
SQL injection and XSS attack filter on information passed to web-pages we could close a serious hole
in many web-applications. I've not looked at Ruby on Rails but I bet it fails this test too.
For gods sake, if you're not writing an operating system you have no business using C. Read me lips:
YOU CAN'T WRITE SECURE C. Not now, not after 20 thousand hours of training, not ever. Sure, it's possible
to write secure C in theory but the difference between theory and practice is that in theory they're the same and in
practice they are not. In practice, you have deadlines, in practice you have people on the team who have less security training
than others, in practice you have developers who have just had children and don't get a lot of sleep. In practice, people make mistakes.
Code reviews may help but they wont remove everything. If you write your software in C you're doomed to having silly security bugs.
If you want to remove most of the worry about overflows, use a language that rules them out.
Another thing, why should code we execute on our computers run at the maxmium privellege set of the user who's running it?
Suppose my program checks a HTTP page against an MD5 hash periodically and sends an SMS through an internet based SMS gateway.
Why should that program, if it wants to, be allowed to access the disk? I don't know about Java but C# has got a set of attributes
that can control this type of behaviour. Really, we should be forcing declarations at the language level about what permissions
each method of the program needs - the default being none of course.
Really? I thought the Intelligent Designer (who we wont name because that would show us up for who we are; fundie idiots)
blinked the world in to existance in a single instant. I mean life is too complicated to arise by chance, right? I just don't
want to believe I'm related to an animal renound for picking shit out of it's ass. Man was created by God and that's that, these scientist
don't know anything.
As a race we need to grow up. The search for truth can lead to only one place and that place is a place without God. In 400 years
science has brought us further than the thousands of years of religious dogma before it. My message is simple: Embrace science, reject religion
and it's false promises. The afterlife is a lie. When you die that is it, you're dead. Rather than living your life through your own
self-interest trying to get in to a heavenly place that does not exist I just ask that you embrace those around you, talk to other people, help
each other out and in that spirit we can all make the world a little nicer.
On the first day, man created God and he was pleased with what he'd achieved. On the second day, man worshiped God and life was good. On the third day,
different men had different ideas about God and their cultures diverged. On the fourth day, men spilt blood over these differences
and it has been this way ever since.
What is with this Slashdot-Economist lovefest? Is this a fad or the definitive "hey, I'm an intellectual" mark on Slashdot? Will I get downmodded because I question this?
Normally, I'd agree with you, however, on this topic you're off the mark. The Economist is written for Economists, and you'd expect Economists to be able to comment on the damage that patents cause to society with some degree of authority.
The fact that the Economist said this in 1851 tells says a lot in my opinion. It tells me that there has never been a consensus on patents. In fact, it tells me that there was a large body of opposition to patents since inception.
It also tells us that Slashdot is hopelessly ill-equiped to turn the tide against patents. If the Economist (and by extension it's readership) was unable to hold enough sway to overturn patents then slashdot has a snow-flake's in hell chance of achieving the same goal.
The granting [of] patents 'inflames cupidity', excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes
that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors,
provokes endless lawsuits...The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just."
She gave such a poor account of herself that Charlie Rose was visibly embarrassed.
There's this view in the tech world that in order to be head of a great software development house you have to be a geek. This is rubbish.
Developing what it takes to be a great software company is just the same as being great in any other industry. It take three things from a leader to mak this happen:
Instill good displine.
Be aware of knowing what's going on an all aspects of the enterprise.
And above all else, have people you can trust to handle decisions you're not qualified to make
From the sounds of it, she has all three. Hats off to her, I say
"You can use the leviathan forces of attention and enthusiasm that are swirling around Web 2.0 these days as a powerful enabler to make something important and exciting happen in your organization."
So in otherwords, you can use new ideas to make your business applications better. Well no shit sherlock!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we need to take our language back from the marketing people. We keep cramming more and more words in to a sentence while the real information content is falling. People, please, start using English rather than this marketing horse-shit. Language is about communciation and not obfuscation!
Embrace and extend will not work as well as Microsoft think. Why? Because it's not the user that decides what feeds are available - it's the webmaster.
Webmaster's want to maximise the number of people who can productively use their site. Given the choice of Microsoft's custom format or a format submitted to the IETF for an RFC number I know which one I'd rather use.
Savvy corporations can also effectively leverage open standards such as the W3C's HTML, SVG, CSS and interaction workflows such as those enabled by WHATWG and.or X-Forms to achieve stellar ROI across the publishing lifecycle.
*stands up* (bullshit) BINGO!
On a serious note, you're right to point this out. We need to take our language back from these baffoons who seems to speak alot but don't really say anything.
A clause of "NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" might be a better idea. This way, you CAN switch to new versions of the GPL even though you have thousands of contributors each with individual copyright on bits of the code, but you can also refuse to license the software under a future version of the GPL if it is not in your interest.
This doesn't work. Suppose I fork your project. Now I am the project leader for my fork. Should I be allowed to relicense everyone elses under any GPL version because I forked?
This is actually worse than the existing clause because that means I can relicense your code to any GPL version instead of just later versions.
I actually question why we need a GPL V3 in the first place. The current GPL works perfectly well and I don't see any reason to bother using the new license at all.
"Nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
P2P is here. It's not going away and you can't even legislate it out of existance. For right or wrong, there is nothing the various copyright industries can do except adapt to the change. Everything else is just hot air.
Slashdot Mirror
What happened to the Magna Carta? I was taught that that was a set of principles that acts a little like a consitution. If fact, some american law is based on it, even though it's not specifically spelled out in our constitution. (Trial by jury of peers?)
The Magna Carta was superceeded by the Petition of Right Act, 1628 and the Bill Of Rights Act, 1689. Both are still constitutionally significant today.
Simon.
"Certainly, someone who saw those documents could have reasonably believed that thousands of voters were going to be potentially disenfranchised in upcoming elections."
So let me get this straight. His "crime" was the fact he alert people to the fact that the local elections were flawed due to the use of uncertified equipment? Is it their argument that because of this people might have disengaged from local politics and that hurts society and thus requires punishment? That's not just absurd, it's scarey.
He's accused of breaking the law... If we feel that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt in our minds that a crime has been committed, it's our job as a criminal prosecutor to file a case.
No it is not. It is your job to prosecute if the following criteria are met:
While the first criteria may well be true, the second one is not. As an aside, pne of the assignments that my brother was asked when he was studying for his law degree was to answer the following question: "Given the fact that Parliament can make any law it pleases, without being constrained by the decisions of previous Parliaments, would the courts uphold a law that sactioned the execution of every blue-eyed baby in the country."
The answer is no. Technically, the court would be obliged to rule in favour of Parliament. This is because we do not have a written constitution that safeguards our rights [1]. However, the view is that the courts would never uphold this because of it's incredible abhorence.
The point of the excercise is to demonstrate one thing to woodbie lawyers: "Just because it's the law does not make it right." Morality and law are seperate beasts. Lying to your wife is immoral but it not a crime. In this case he may have broken the law, but frankly I think that is price worth paying for the value of the information he gave us. What he did was a crime but it was not immoral and did not seek to undermine society.
Simon
[1] - This is becoming less and less true. While in terms of legal theory it is certain that Parliament is not constrained by the decisions of previous Parliaments, in practice this isn't true. There are some acts that would be pretty much impossible to repeal. The European Communities Act (ECA) is a prime example of this kind of legislation. While it's legally possible to repeal the act doing so would require leaving the European Union which will never happen.
Thanks to the ECA, we are slowly acquiring a constitution. The Human Rights Act of 1998 was derived from the European Convention on Human Rights and was the first act of Parliament to acknowledge our fundamental rights in the positive. (i.e. Paraliment stating we have these rights explictly rather than simply failing to prohibit these actions).
"We don't want customers to be forced into buying something that isn't going to meet all their needs," said Barry Goffe, Microsoft's director of Windows client product management.
Translation: We understand from psychology that people can only make effective, informed decisions when the number of choices is low, typically around six. We understand that one of the principles of building is a successful company is to segment your market according to their willingness to pay. Hence, I propose we offer six versions of Vista, each priced differently, each with a clear difference in feature set so that we can effectively capture our consumer surplus without our customers being constrained by the tyranny of choice.
Simon.
Why vacinate just the chickens? While it would have to mutate in order to pass between humans it seems plausible (to a laymen in this field) that a vacine that protects against bird-flu might also offer some protection against the mutent.
This break-through is just what we've needed: A fast way to make a lot of flu vaccines. The question now is, do we now have enough time to take a side swipe at bird-flu before it makes the transition to a human form? At any rate, even if it does make the transition, I do believe this would be the last major flu pandemic.
The next time people will not be so complacent. The billions the first-world nations have just pledged to fight Avian Flu will be pledged much more quickly. In fact, I think the UN will have a fund to tackle these kinds of nightmares and the money will be released immediately on discovery of a virus that is deadly to humans. Couple this with the fact we'll have better ways to sythentise vaccines. These new methods will hopefully deliver a suitable product on the order of days rather than months.
It makes sense for us to set-up such a fund. For a start, the economic loss caused by bird flu will run in to trillions. So let's do it! Whether you're black or white, Palestinian or Israeli, Christian or Muslim this virus effects us all equally. Surely, even the most hardened tax-cutting Republican in the universe will agree that it's sensible to stump up money for this fund.
Simon
I'd like to see the demonstration. Until such time, I call bollocks and I refuse to believe an "impossible to reverse-engineer" piece of code ever exists.
I second your bullshit and raise! The problem with proofs such as this is that they assume broad axioms that in reality might not be true in the hardware. For example, they may well have proved the theorem if they assume all operations of a certain set take the same length but in reality they might not. The processor might take a ten billionth of a second longer to do one operation than it does another, or it might release more heat when it does one operation than it does when it performs another, or it might release a certain magnetic field when it does one operation and not another.
Side-channel attacks, as these are called, are often totally devastating. There was one attack where simply heating the computer up can cause a system to get owned. If the proof is correct, it's certainly interesting but practically we're a long way from getting to this gold standard.
Simon
It depends if the forum is Alt.Suicide.Holiday or not?
Simon
Ahhh, now we'll really see whether they can really live up their "Don't be evil" policy! Does Google prefer stock price over ethics? While my instinct tells me the answer is firmly "no" I think we are all interested in the result.
I think Google did the right thing. In the western democracies we all have strict rules governing the powers of the various investigative authorities. There are very good reasons for this. The Police and Justice Department have incredible powers granted to them by the state. However, the same power that allows them to catch criminals can also be used for less noble purposes.
In any organisation of considerable size there is always a rogue element. An element that is deceitful, unethical and motivated by influences orthogonal to the goals of the institution. Sometimes these are fairly benign: David Blunket trying to get a quick visa so he and his bit on the side have a nanny to look after their child. Sometimes these can be very malicious: Robbers breaking in to the Democrat headquarters and planting bugs so Nixon could spy on their election campaign. (I'm British so they may be inaccuracies in this account)
The law is there not only to protect us from criminals but to protect us from the people who catch them too. In many ways, the protection from the people who catch criminals is vastly more important than protection from criminals. What criminal can get state sanctioned approval to search your home? Impound your possessions? Wrongfully impression you?
All over the western world, governments are granting their Police more and more powers in the name of combating terrorism. The chance of being killed by a terrorist is approximately zero. For comparison, in Britain 0.03% of us will die[1] in ALL possible mishaps this year. That takes account of murder, car crashes, being eaten by ferocious llamas and so on and so forth.
I would therefore venture that the threat posed by increasing Police power is vastly greater than the threat of terrorism. In Britain, we saw this illustrated for us nicely when an octogenarian, life-time member of the Labour party was escorted from the annual conference and arrested under anti-terrorism legislation. Here was a man saying that war in Iraq was unjust and he gets arrested under anti-terrorism legislation. This war on terror is becoming a war, conducted by ourselves, against ourselves to remove the democratic values we cherish so dearly. Shakespeare himself could not write such a dark tragedy.
Getting back to point. Just because the Justice Department says Google should jump it does not mean Google should meekly reply: "How High, Officer?". Just because the government asks you to do something does not mean that they have the proper authority to ask for it. Let them prove in a court of law that they have the proper authority to make such a claim. If they're right, they'll win and Google will have to capitulate. If they're wrong, then a precedent is set and the complicated system of checks and balances has once again protected liberty.
Simon
[1] - The Independent, Yesterday, in the Editorial section. Feel free to correct this figure if it is incorrect.Billions of years ago, when the day was 23 hours long, there was no oxygen in the air and hence no ozone. The surface of the earth would have killed any land based animals pretty quickly.
Over time, life transformed the atmosphere and soon after plants and animals started to come out of the sea and started to prosper on land. Billions of years past and today we're sat here with laptop's contemplating what to do about climate change. I personally think that a large chunk of climate change has been caused by humans. I also agree with the scientist that we've already past the point of no return - so the question is not how we can stop climate change but how we can cope with it.
Personally, I think the climate disaster will be very bad for bio-diversity but have a negligable effect on humanity. I often go to Florida on my holiday from the foggy and cold waste lands of the UK :). The heat in Florida is at times unbearable but it
matters not because air conditioning is in nearly every building. If I get too hot, I just go inside.
As the oceans expand and the sea level rises, people will simply move further up the shore. When islands disappear, people will be unhappy but they quickly build new lives in new countries. When crops fail to grow in some countries they will replace the crops with others that grow in those climates. If they've really got money to burn they'll genetically engineer plants that are resistant to the heat. When oil prices start their long climb to unaffordability other technologies will take up the batton. Suddenly the economy will start to allocate resources to bypass the damage that the price-hike induces. Life will go on as normal.
I think we're heading for a mass extinction event - of that I am certain - but is highly unlikely we will feel the pinch. These are interesting times to be alive.
Simon
Now, the slashdot community seems to be fairly educated and extremely opinionated so how about it--does dark matter exist? If so, since it is very difficult to detect, what are its defining properties?
If this is correct, then the Dark Matter riddle has been solved. Basically, it was due to the fact that scientists thought they could safely use the Newtonian limit to General Relativity with galaxies. They were wrong and Dark Matter is a result of this error.
This was reported on Slashdot not to many moons ago.
Simon
If ActiveX was off by default, how would people use Windows Update?
Simple! Change Windows Update! Why should Windows Update be a web-application anyway? Actually, It's damn scarey that it's a web-application. Doesn't it strike you as odd that a web-application can so throughly inspect your system to determine your patch-level on a whole host of products?
There is no excuse for ActiveX being on by default and the proof of Microsoft's commitment to security will come with the launch of Internet Explorer 7. If it's still on by default in their latest version then we know their grand security initiative was nothing but hot air.
Simon
This is a common security problem: useless or rarely used functionality. As I've said before, functionality sells whereas security doesn't. Spend a million dollars on functionality and you (hopefully) get a product that can sell for more money. Spend a million dollars on security and you have almost nothing tangiable to show for it.
Before this article, I didn't even know that "link local" thing existed. I guessing that this is probably quite representive of the Slashdot crew. The question is, then, is why on earth is it on by default and why is it even there in the first place?
This is not just a Microsoft issue, this is an issue that applies to nearly every computing project. I was recently playing with Knoppix and two things struck me:
My parents got a new HP computer a month or so ago and I've just gotten round to doing a proper security shake-down on the XP box. I was surprised to find the Python runtime on the computer. Most of you would say, so what? Or perhaps, even applaud HP for doing this. From a security perspective, I think it's downright silly. What possible use could my parents have for the Python runtime? Absoutely none. They'll be running Open Office, Gmail and Itunes to the cows come home so all this does is opens another vector for attack. Don't install stuff on computers that your customers will likely never need.
Of all the pieces of software out there at the moment, Windows XP is the most frustrating. In terms of security, XP should completly out-class Linux/Unix in every metric of measurement. Instead, it's the most disease ridden piece of shit ever concieved by humanity. It's a shame because it could have set a really high standard for everybody in the industry but through a choice of poor defaults they condemed their own product to be a liability to CTOs everywhere. If they'd had some sense, they would have choosen defaults like this:
I haven't got any figures on how many viruses/malware this configuration would stop but I imagine it's somewhere in the region of 99%. If Microsoft had taken the time to consider the platform in a more paranoid sense they could have produced a product of barn-storming quality. Instead, they listened to the marketing people and we all know what result that lead to.
Simon
Computer security will get worse before it gets better. It's the second hardest problem in computing, coming second only to DRM; which is provely impossible to do properly.
The problem comes from many quaters: some theortical, some practical, some managerial. For example:
I could go on for quite sometime.. the point to appreciate here is that it isn't all Microsoft's fault but they could do a whole lot more. If we could just get rid of the overflows that would be a good start!
Simon
Why is Taco linking to Microsoft Office's home page? Is there a backhanded deal between Slashdot and Microsoft to covertly promote their software?
The problem with having ads on your site is that it's much easier to get bought. Microsoft advertise heavily on this site and taco's team must depend, in no small measure, on that income to support the site. Could this be affecting the editors impartiality? I think so..
Simon.
There's two ways to look at this. I would say that it is quite unlikely that the quality of software with respect to security went down in 2005. Computer Security now has such high profile that software houses across the world are spending many dollars trying to provide better security.
If you accept that security quality has not gone down, then you must conclude our ability to detect vulnerabilites is getting better. This is universally a good thing. Every vulnerability the "good guys" find before the "bad guys" is one we can have fix for before the bad guys take over our system.
Then there's the other side of these figures. That's alot of vulnerabilities. Now, fair enough not all vulnerabilities are created equally but I'd bet at least 10% are serious enough to get your system taken over if you're not careful. That's a lot of ways to break in to my system and it's a lot of work to make sure you're not vulnerable.
We have such a long way to go. For example, in PHP if they'd just follow Microsoft's example and put a SQL injection and XSS attack filter on information passed to web-pages we could close a serious hole in many web-applications. I've not looked at Ruby on Rails but I bet it fails this test too.
For gods sake, if you're not writing an operating system you have no business using C. Read me lips: YOU CAN'T WRITE SECURE C. Not now, not after 20 thousand hours of training, not ever. Sure, it's possible to write secure C in theory but the difference between theory and practice is that in theory they're the same and in practice they are not. In practice, you have deadlines, in practice you have people on the team who have less security training than others, in practice you have developers who have just had children and don't get a lot of sleep. In practice, people make mistakes. Code reviews may help but they wont remove everything. If you write your software in C you're doomed to having silly security bugs. If you want to remove most of the worry about overflows, use a language that rules them out.
Another thing, why should code we execute on our computers run at the maxmium privellege set of the user who's running it? Suppose my program checks a HTTP page against an MD5 hash periodically and sends an SMS through an internet based SMS gateway. Why should that program, if it wants to, be allowed to access the disk? I don't know about Java but C# has got a set of attributes that can control this type of behaviour. Really, we should be forcing declarations at the language level about what permissions each method of the program needs - the default being none of course.
Simon.
Really? I thought the Intelligent Designer (who we wont name because that would show us up for who we are; fundie idiots) blinked the world in to existance in a single instant. I mean life is too complicated to arise by chance, right? I just don't want to believe I'm related to an animal renound for picking shit out of it's ass. Man was created by God and that's that, these scientist don't know anything.
As a race we need to grow up. The search for truth can lead to only one place and that place is a place without God. In 400 years science has brought us further than the thousands of years of religious dogma before it. My message is simple: Embrace science, reject religion and it's false promises. The afterlife is a lie. When you die that is it, you're dead. Rather than living your life through your own self-interest trying to get in to a heavenly place that does not exist I just ask that you embrace those around you, talk to other people, help each other out and in that spirit we can all make the world a little nicer.
On the first day, man created God and he was pleased with what he'd achieved. On the second day, man worshiped God and life was good. On the third day, different men had different ideas about God and their cultures diverged. On the fourth day, men spilt blood over these differences and it has been this way ever since.
Simon.
What is with this Slashdot-Economist lovefest? Is this a fad or the definitive "hey, I'm an intellectual" mark on Slashdot? Will I get downmodded because I question this?
Normally, I'd agree with you, however, on this topic you're off the mark. The Economist is written for Economists, and you'd expect Economists to be able to comment on the damage that patents cause to society with some degree of authority.
The fact that the Economist said this in 1851 tells says a lot in my opinion. It tells me that there has never been a consensus on patents. In fact, it tells me that there was a large body of opposition to patents since inception.
It also tells us that Slashdot is hopelessly ill-equiped to turn the tide against patents. If the Economist (and by extension it's readership) was unable to hold enough sway to overturn patents then slashdot has a snow-flake's in hell chance of achieving the same goal.
We over estimate our self-importance.
Simon
The granting [of] patents 'inflames cupidity', excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits...The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just."
The Economist, 1851. As true then as it is today.
Simon
She gave such a poor account of herself that Charlie Rose was visibly embarrassed.
There's this view in the tech world that in order to be head of a great software development house you have to be a geek. This is rubbish.
Developing what it takes to be a great software company is just the same as being great in any other industry. It take three things from a leader to mak this happen:
From the sounds of it, she has all three. Hats off to her, I say
Simon
"You can use the leviathan forces of attention and enthusiasm that are swirling around Web 2.0 these days as a powerful enabler to make something important and exciting happen in your organization."
So in otherwords, you can use new ideas to make your business applications better. Well no shit sherlock!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we need to take our language back from the marketing people. We keep cramming more and more words in to a sentence while the real information content is falling. People, please, start using English rather than this marketing horse-shit. Language is about communciation and not obfuscation!
Simon
Embrace and extend will not work as well as Microsoft think. Why? Because it's not the user that decides what feeds are available - it's the webmaster.
Webmaster's want to maximise the number of people who can productively use their site. Given the choice of Microsoft's custom format or a format submitted to the IETF for an RFC number I know which one I'd rather use.
Simon.
Savvy corporations can also effectively leverage open standards such as the W3C's HTML, SVG, CSS and interaction workflows such as those enabled by WHATWG and.or X-Forms to achieve stellar ROI across the publishing lifecycle.
*stands up* (bullshit) BINGO!
On a serious note, you're right to point this out. We need to take our language back from these baffoons who seems to speak alot but don't really say anything.
Simon
Why? The GPL2 does everything I want it to.
Simon.
A comment should tell you why something is in place rather than what the code is doing:
// Check tarriff is null
...
// 30-11-2005 Fixes a null reference exception that occurs later on if no reference is available.
...
A trival example:
Don't do this:
public bool CheckSmsValue(Account smsAccount)
{
if (Account.Tarrif == null)
return;
}
Do do this:
public bool CheckSmsValue(Account smsAccount)
{
if (Account.Tarrif == null)
return;
}
Simon.
A clause of "NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" might be a better idea. This way, you CAN switch to new versions of the GPL even though you have thousands of contributors each with individual copyright on bits of the code, but you can also refuse to license the software under a future version of the GPL if it is not in your interest.
This doesn't work. Suppose I fork your project. Now I am the project leader for my fork. Should I be allowed to relicense everyone elses under any GPL version because I forked?
This is actually worse than the existing clause because that means I can relicense your code to any GPL version instead of just later versions.
I actually question why we need a GPL V3 in the first place. The current GPL works perfectly well and I don't see any reason to bother using the new license at all.
Simon
"Nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
P2P is here. It's not going away and you can't even legislate it out of existance. For right or wrong, there is nothing the various copyright industries can do except adapt to the change. Everything else is just hot air.
Simon