..... It's a set of procedures that have a great success rate for developing working models of how the world works........
These procedures are based in experiments and observations, not arcane, complicated math. Physics is NOT equal to math, but math is only a useful tool to describe discoveries and experimental results.
Much of cosmology and astrophysics is pure mathematical fiction, having no basis in the increasing flood of data coming from sophisticated space probes which severely contradicts so much of the current mathematical conjecture in vogue today. In making these newer observations fit this mathematical fictional framework, it is necessary to invent the existence of dark matter/energy, strings, multiple dimensions and other unobserved and unmeasured constructs.
Example: Science has long ago experimentally determined that heat moves from the hotter area to the colder. Yet that relationship seems to be reversed in the sun, at least if the currently accepted thermonuclear fusion theory is what makes the sun produce its energy. Since the corona of the sun has been MEASURED to be thousands of times hotter than the surface, either the experimentally verified principle of heat flowing from hotter to cooler doesn't apply to the sun for some reason or the energy source of the sun is outside of the sun itself. The number and kinds of neutrinos we measure, coming from the sun, don't come close to how many there should be, if the fusion theory of the sun were correct. The upshot of such measurements are that we simply don't know what makes the Universe run.
All we know for sure, is that the sun does shine, like a giant light bulb, of which we cannot see the wires nor the power station that makes it light.
Scrapping long held foundational theories is just as hard for science, as revising religious dogma is for religions.
..... at no point did they ever bother trying to figure out what was wrong; the solution would invariably be to reformat and reinstall......
That's because a malware infested or registry crocked Windows box is almost impossible to cleanse of that crap and be absolutely sure the system is totally rid of it. Reformatting and re-installing is the only SURE way to make Windows clean and working properly. This almost never needed in the case of a Mac.
Most programs on OSX don't need some special uninstaller program in order to cleanse it entirely from the computer. Just drag it to the trash -- it's gone for good. Apple "geniuses" don't need to be on top of nearly as many pieces of diverse hardware and can therefore be trained in a much greater depth in the relatively few Apple products they have brought to them. Apple's superior hardware and software design reflects on these people behind the counter and makes them seem a lot more like real geniuses.
Don't be too hard on those poor "squad geeks", they have it a lot harder because they are dealing with Windows systems that did not really get designed, but just sort of evolved over time.
......Apple followers I'm sure they like it, but for normal people.......
Maybe you'd be well advised to look up the definition of "normal" before you consider all the folks who crowd Apple stores, even at 2 in the morning, as not being normal. Is it possible, could it be, just maybe, that YOU are the one who falls outside of what is considered "normal"?
........The problem there is that you're using electricity for heat.......
Electricity is the cheapest energy source here, unless natural gas is available, which is not where we live, here in the Pacific Northwest. Natural gas is only a very small amount cheaper now, since it's cost has been increasing much faster than electricity. Soon it may actually cost more. We get a larger portion of our power from hydro and wind than in other places.
CFLs that work with dimmers cost four to five times as much, are hard to find and those that are available don't work worth shit. We have a lot of dimmers as part of an extensive x-10 automation system which is programmed also to save energy. When CFLs are used in cold out door places where they don't run continuously, they don't last as long as an ordinary bulb. The spectrum of CFL is crappy and any photographer will tell you that. The light from these makes people look like the walking dead. Of all artificial light sources invented by man so far, only halogen incandescent lamps come even remotely close to natural sunlight. Smooth spectrum sunlight is what humans experienced for millennia and are built for, not some wild, peaked spectrum from those fluorescents.
.......People need to be protected from their own stupidity sometimes.....
Yes, and the ones doing the protecting are a million times stupider, since they appointed themselves to protect the unwashed masses from themselves. It's that big brother mentality carried to the nth degree of stupidity and is a major reason why so many are refusing to take responsibility for themselves.
These CFL bulbs make people look like death warmed over, contain mercury, one of the most toxic heavy metals known and other poisonous chemicals. They don't work with dimmer switches, which allow lights to use less power when they are not needed at full power. They also don't work in refrigerators and ovens. Those outdoors in cold places die soon and don't give much light until warmed up. Those who use electricity for heat, will be running their heater more, to make up for the heat the lights don't give off.
Maybe LED lights will become bright and inexpensive enough, but for most applications, CFLs are crap. But then when have the elites that run much of our government and those from some environmental groups ever considered what is practical?
There are other, much more significant ways of saving larger amounts of energy. For example, turning down the thermostat on a 5000 watt water heater will save a lot more power than a few lights using some hundreds of watts.
In most of life, there are trade offs, and CFLs is one of the worst to come along in a long time.
... Maybe we'll just have to wait for the first occasion where someone actually cares to mass-exploit one of these vulnerabilities......
Do you REALLY think that nobody out there, somewhere, has NOT tried to do just that and failed for Mac OSX? Until that actually happens, Macs ARE more secure, at least in practice, maybe not in theory. A zillion theoretical vulnerabilities demonstrated by those who want to sell their buggy, in itself insecure software are empty, if there are no real systems out there getting infected. How many botnets are out there running on OSX?
Maybe someday we will read headlines about millions of Macs zombied with a storm type virus. Until that day, it cannot be denied: Macs are MUCH more secure than Windows in the past and right now still.
.....If the military starts using them, it's only a matter of time until attackers hone their Mac skills........
It's just that for every skilled hacker willing and able to learn the Mac, there are ten script kiddies using the tools developed by hackers. There are many more hacking tools available for Windows than Macs. It is hard work to build such tools and work is what criminals try to avoid.
The bottom line is that even though there are millions of Macs, the number of actual outbreaks of malware on Macs is is still practically zero. It's not how many theoretical vulnerabilities a system has, but how many of such systems out there are actually hacked successfully. That number for Macs is still very tiny. AFAIK, there has never been an OSX Mac, as supplied by Apple, that was infected with malware, just for being connected to the Internet and left alone. That is certainly NOT the case for Windows, except possibly the new VISTA.
Predicting the future is hard. Saying that as Macs become more popular they will get hacked is meaningless drivel. Out of the box, Macs have fewer services running and don't have a single point of failure, such as the registry. Also, daily use of a Mac doesn't require a user to run as an admin. This means that the system is more secure, especially if the user is admonished not to willy nilly supply the admin password whenever asked. Even for Windows, more and more break-ins occur because of the user failing to heed that.
Presumably, in the army most users get training in the use of weapons and other gear. Maybe they also train users in the operation of a computer system. A Mac, together with a properly trained user should be quite secure.
....If I want some more money, to buy a house or something, the interest rate represents how much money that money will cost me........
If I want some more money, to buy a house or something, the interest rate represents how much money that money will cost me to RENT it.
When you borrow money for say a house, you are actually renting the money, instead of renting the house itself. The difference is then that after you have finished paying the principal and interest (rent) you own that house. So in the long run, especially for houses, buying one, even with rented money is better than simply renting one. This is especially true since in the USA at least, you can still deduct the rent for the money from your tax, whereas you cannot deduct the rent as rent for the house.
For some goods and for some businesses it may be better to rent (lease) the good directly, rather than the money to buy it.
..... in that it relies on failings of the user, rather than the system itself..........
Most users, will give the password if prompted. We mitigate these user failings here by not letting them know the administrator password. Then if they want to install something that asks for this, they are stuck. This works poorly for Windows because there are still many legit programs that will not work unless the user has admin rights over the whole system.
Mac users have no real reason to know the system password for everyday use. Of course malware can still run in user space and possibly get around such protections. It does make it a lot harder for the virus writers if they cannot simply social engineer their way into the heart of the OS. Most of the malware authors assume that they can trick users into installing anything at all on the system.
This is a bit more work for us, if users do have install something that requires the admin password, but cleaning crap software out of computers is even more work.
....but in the age of dwindling coporate research budgets,.......
Does anyone know how much smaller their research budget is than their legal budget? That legal budget of course would include the cost of the army of lawyers that write up those patents and oversee the process of enforcing them once they are granted.
......I want to be innocent 'till proven guilty.......
That's fine unless YOU know that you are guilty. Have you EVER lied to someone or taken something that was not yours? If so, then you ARE guilty, at least for violating God's laws. That's what people in former days feared and therefore tended to behave right out of fear. Fear works, but love is a better motivation to do what is right. If you love your neighbor, and yes even the government, you will not behave in a manner damaging to either. You don't necessarily have to like what either of them are doing, but you can still love them and by that love hope to change their behavior. Even if there is no change in others, you can have the knowledge of having done right and sleep better at night, whether someone is watching you or not.
.....Every new operating system seems to run a little slower than its predecessor, but that's just a byproduct of all the new functionality the OS is providing me........
Every WINDOWS operating system seems to run a little slower than its predecessor, but that's just a byproduct of all the new functionality the OS is providing me.
..... It will require a better computer to run it at the same speed as an older simpler OS.........
Someone forgot to tell Apple about that. OSX upgrades perform better on the same hardware than ht e older OS that came with it. My G5 is noticeably faster and more responsive with OSX10.5, than it was with 10.4.
Same is true of my Macbook, which came with 10.4, but is now running 10.5 also. VISTA run MUCH slower on any given hardware than Win2K or XP.
.......If I don't think it's worthy research......
For you to make such a judgment, you better know at least as much as he/she or his/her professor on that subject of research. If not your opinion on that matter is worthless.
.....I believe that most societies will ultimately introduce surveillance.....
In earlier societies, people were told that God watches everything, even the thoughts. One way such a society accessed that information which only God was supposed to know, was by the confessional. Because most people believed in God and His omniscience, they mostly obeyed the rules they were told were really God's rules.
Nowadays belief in God is no longer universal. So now the powers that be are learning to place themselves in the position of God's omniscience by using technological surveillance to inform themselves of the comings and goings of their subjects. If there is a cop car behind them, most people will obey the traffic laws. The cop doesn't have to be in bodily form any more, he/she can be virtualized by all sots of hi-tech wizardry. It is well known that surety of punishment is orders of magnitude more effective in preventing wrongdoing that severity of punishment. If a person KNOWS 100% for sure their actions are known, they will be careful to make sure these actions can stand the scrutiny of those who have the power to punish them. Most kids as well as grownups resent being forced to be good.
Of course if all this technology were ONLY used to make people behave themselves it might be OK. As it is, the powers that be misuse it for self-serving purposes and that is where the bad comes in and privacy is needed.
I suppose it depends on the definition of social engineering. If it involves any kind of threat, then certainly not. If it is a bribe, such as plea bargaining, it would be OK if the defendant accepts the bribe and has reasonable assurance the prosecution won't renege after they have the password.
....However, as its market share and mind share expands, this period of respite will soon fade........
Apple's market share has been expanding for a while now. That prediction of dire malware for the Mac infesting every Mac has been parroted again and again, with increasing frequency. I personally am quite sick of it, in view of the FACT that nothing has happened in all these years. There are MILLIONS of Macs out there, Surely someone, a super smart hacker would have come up with SOMETHING by now to infect a large number of Macs. Yawn, wake me up, when 10,000 or more Macs, or even a few hundred, fall victim to some super smart, super virulent, self-propagating malware. Stop making such a mountain out of a molehill about some obscure flaw, where someone fails to log out of a Mac that isn't even their own.
....Nobody uses this feature so it is not really a flaw..........
The.Mac service is intended for Mac users mainly on their own Macs. Probably not too many Mac users do anything critical on an alien computer, especially one that runs Windows. When I travel, I use my own Macbook, so this "flaw" isn't really a big deal. I suspect this is true for most Mac users. Even so I think Apple should and will fix this soon. Unlike Windows, there has NEVER, ever, been a flaw affecting any Mac from the time OSX was introduced, that allowed a Mac to be invaded by malware, simply for being connected to the Internet, even without a firewall.
All Mac flaws and the majority of those for Windows today need the co-operation of the user. NO OS can totally guard against an ignorant, careless user. Any user who uses an unknown computer in a strange environment for anything sensitive ought to have their head examined. They deserve to have their bank account emptied by a crook who installed a keylogger on that foreign machine.
....Umm, does War on Terror ring any bells for you?.......
Browbeating or purchasing any number of representatives and senators is one thing, but buying or cajoling 75% of the legislators of states is quite a bit harder. The ERA amendment made it easily though Congress, but its proponents failed to convince or purchase enough legislatures to make it pass. It is good that the founders made it hard to mess with the constitution. That's why the government has been doing end runs around it and ignoring it in many cases.
Since the SCOTUS is not entirely in the administrations or the Congress's pocket, some of the provisions of the patriot end runs have been thrown out as unconstitutional. Unfortunately, bringing constitutional issues into the courts costs a lot of money. Therefore, only if those with lots of it believe that an issue is unconstitutional, will it ever come before a court.
..... exponential gains in computing power the ability to decrypt is doing something like 100 fold increase every 3 years......
Doesn't the increase in computing power work also for the encryption part? It allows the use of longer and therefore more secure keys and possibly also other encryption methods that were impractical when computers were much less capable. So in the end it seems if an encryption from say 10 years ago took a hundred years to crack on then available computers, so now the best encryption done today will still take a 100 years to brute force on the best computers we have today. It seems to me that any attack on a cipher that is based on raw computing power IS a brute force attack.
On a physical level, a safe can be blown open with nitro, or a skilled safecracker might pick the lock or listen to the tumblers in the combination. All of these are still brute force attacks, just some seem less brutish than others. I could imagine that similar approaches exist for the cracking of a cipher.
....the latter's turnover requires the suspect to devolve information contained within his mind, which would be tantamount to testifying......
Exactly how is the information for the combination itself different from the information as to the hiding place of the key? Is it not the information the government is seeking? Does it matter whether they get it directly or indirectly? In either case, they cannot compel a defendant to give in formation that could convict him, ie tantamount to forcing a confession under torture or other punishment. At least not yet.
....The only difference I see is one may incriminate someone else and the other may incriminate you......
That is a BIG difference. The Constitution only protects you from incriminating YOURSELF, not others. A reporter may not protect others who may have broken the law.
......The only thing they can't potentially force you to hand over is information inside your head,.......
So then if the information as to the location of a physical key is only inside your head, they cannot force that information out the head either. The ONLY difference is that if you don't give the information to the whereabouts of the key, they'll just break the safe open. The problem is that they can't do that with a properly encrypted computer.
Slashdot Mirror
..... It's a set of procedures that have a great success rate for developing working models of how the world works........
These procedures are based in experiments and observations, not arcane, complicated math. Physics is NOT equal to math, but math is only a useful tool to describe discoveries and experimental results.
Much of cosmology and astrophysics is pure mathematical fiction, having no basis in the increasing flood of data coming from sophisticated space probes which severely contradicts so much of the current mathematical conjecture in vogue today. In making these newer observations fit this mathematical fictional framework, it is necessary to invent the existence of dark matter/energy, strings, multiple dimensions and other unobserved and unmeasured constructs.
Example: Science has long ago experimentally determined that heat moves from the hotter area to the colder. Yet that relationship seems to be reversed in the sun, at least if the currently accepted thermonuclear fusion theory is what makes the sun produce its energy. Since the corona of the sun has been MEASURED to be thousands of times hotter than the surface, either the experimentally verified principle of heat flowing from hotter to cooler doesn't apply to the sun for some reason or the energy source of the sun is outside of the sun itself. The number and kinds of neutrinos we measure, coming from the sun, don't come close to how many there should be, if the fusion theory of the sun were correct. The upshot of such measurements are that we simply don't know what makes the Universe run.
All we know for sure, is that the sun does shine, like a giant light bulb, of which we cannot see the wires nor the power station that makes it light.
Scrapping long held foundational theories is just as hard for science, as revising religious dogma is for religions.
Is the Universe expanding?
There I fixed it!
..... at no point did they ever bother trying to figure out what was wrong; the solution would invariably be to reformat and reinstall......
That's because a malware infested or registry crocked Windows box is almost impossible to cleanse of that crap and be absolutely sure the system is totally rid of it. Reformatting and re-installing is the only SURE way to make Windows clean and working properly. This almost never needed in the case of a Mac.
Most programs on OSX don't need some special uninstaller program in order to cleanse it entirely from the computer. Just drag it to the trash -- it's gone for good. Apple "geniuses" don't need to be on top of nearly as many pieces of diverse hardware and can therefore be trained in a much greater depth in the relatively few Apple products they have brought to them. Apple's superior hardware and software design reflects on these people behind the counter and makes them seem a lot more like real geniuses.
Don't be too hard on those poor "squad geeks", they have it a lot harder because they are dealing with Windows systems that did not really get designed, but just sort of evolved over time.
......Apple followers I'm sure they like it, but for normal people.......
Maybe you'd be well advised to look up the definition of "normal" before you consider all the folks who crowd Apple stores, even at 2 in the morning, as not being normal. Is it possible, could it be, just maybe, that YOU are the one who falls outside of what is considered "normal"?
........The problem there is that you're using electricity for heat.......
Electricity is the cheapest energy source here, unless natural gas is available, which is not where we live, here in the Pacific Northwest. Natural gas is only a very small amount cheaper now, since it's cost has been increasing much faster than electricity. Soon it may actually cost more. We get a larger portion of our power from hydro and wind than in other places.
CFLs that work with dimmers cost four to five times as much, are hard to find and those that are available don't work worth shit. We have a lot of dimmers as part of an extensive x-10 automation system which is programmed also to save energy. When CFLs are used in cold out door places where they don't run continuously, they don't last as long as an ordinary bulb. The spectrum of CFL is crappy and any photographer will tell you that. The light from these makes people look like the walking dead. Of all artificial light sources invented by man so far, only halogen incandescent lamps come even remotely close to natural sunlight. Smooth spectrum sunlight is what humans experienced for millennia and are built for, not some wild, peaked spectrum from those fluorescents.
.......People need to be protected from their own stupidity sometimes.....
Yes, and the ones doing the protecting are a million times stupider, since they appointed themselves to protect the unwashed masses from themselves. It's that big brother mentality carried to the nth degree of stupidity and is a major reason why so many are refusing to take responsibility for themselves.
These CFL bulbs make people look like death warmed over, contain mercury, one of the most toxic heavy metals known and other poisonous chemicals. They don't work with dimmer switches, which allow lights to use less power when they are not needed at full power. They also don't work in refrigerators and ovens. Those outdoors in cold places die soon and don't give much light until warmed up. Those who use electricity for heat, will be running their heater more, to make up for the heat the lights don't give off.
Maybe LED lights will become bright and inexpensive enough, but for most applications, CFLs are crap. But then when have the elites that run much of our government and those from some environmental groups ever considered what is practical?
There are other, much more significant ways of saving larger amounts of energy. For example, turning down the thermostat on a 5000 watt water heater will save a lot more power than a few lights using some hundreds of watts.
In most of life, there are trade offs, and CFLs is one of the worst to come along in a long time.
... Maybe we'll just have to wait for the first occasion where someone actually cares to mass-exploit one of these vulnerabilities......
Do you REALLY think that nobody out there, somewhere, has NOT tried to do just that and failed for Mac OSX? Until that actually happens, Macs ARE more secure, at least in practice, maybe not in theory. A zillion theoretical vulnerabilities demonstrated by those who want to sell their buggy, in itself insecure software are empty, if there are no real systems out there getting infected. How many botnets are out there running on OSX?
Maybe someday we will read headlines about millions of Macs zombied with a storm type virus. Until that day, it cannot be denied: Macs are MUCH more secure than Windows in the past and right now still.
.....If the military starts using them, it's only a matter of time until attackers hone their Mac skills........
It's just that for every skilled hacker willing and able to learn the Mac, there are ten script kiddies using the tools developed by hackers. There are many more hacking tools available for Windows than Macs. It is hard work to build such tools and work is what criminals try to avoid.
The bottom line is that even though there are millions of Macs, the number of actual outbreaks of malware on Macs is is still practically zero. It's not how many theoretical vulnerabilities a system has, but how many of such systems out there are actually hacked successfully. That number for Macs is still very tiny. AFAIK, there has never been an OSX Mac, as supplied by Apple, that was infected with malware, just for being connected to the Internet and left alone. That is certainly NOT the case for Windows, except possibly the new VISTA.
Predicting the future is hard. Saying that as Macs become more popular they will get hacked is meaningless drivel. Out of the box, Macs have fewer services running and don't have a single point of failure, such as the registry. Also, daily use of a Mac doesn't require a user to run as an admin. This means that the system is more secure, especially if the user is admonished not to willy nilly supply the admin password whenever asked. Even for Windows, more and more break-ins occur because of the user failing to heed that.
Presumably, in the army most users get training in the use of weapons and other gear. Maybe they also train users in the operation of a computer system. A Mac, together with a properly trained user should be quite secure.
....If I want some more money, to buy a house or something, the interest rate represents how much money that money will cost me........
If I want some more money, to buy a house or something, the interest rate represents how much money that money will cost me to RENT it.
When you borrow money for say a house, you are actually renting the money, instead of renting the house itself. The difference is then that after you have finished paying the principal and interest (rent) you own that house. So in the long run, especially for houses, buying one, even with rented money is better than simply renting one. This is especially true since in the USA at least, you can still deduct the rent for the money from your tax, whereas you cannot deduct the rent as rent for the house.
For some goods and for some businesses it may be better to rent (lease) the good directly, rather than the money to buy it.
..... in that it relies on failings of the user, rather than the system itself..........
Most users, will give the password if prompted. We mitigate these user failings here by not letting them know the administrator password. Then if they want to install something that asks for this, they are stuck. This works poorly for Windows because there are still many legit programs that will not work unless the user has admin rights over the whole system.
Mac users have no real reason to know the system password for everyday use. Of course malware can still run in user space and possibly get around such protections. It does make it a lot harder for the virus writers if they cannot simply social engineer their way into the heart of the OS. Most of the malware authors assume that they can trick users into installing anything at all on the system.
This is a bit more work for us, if users do have install something that requires the admin password, but cleaning crap software out of computers is even more work.
....but in the age of dwindling coporate research budgets,.......
Does anyone know how much smaller their research budget is than their legal budget? That legal budget of course would include the cost of the army of lawyers that write up those patents and oversee the process of enforcing them once they are granted.
......I want to be innocent 'till proven guilty.......
That's fine unless YOU know that you are guilty. Have you EVER lied to someone or taken something that was not yours? If so, then you ARE guilty, at least for violating God's laws. That's what people in former days feared and therefore tended to behave right out of fear. Fear works, but love is a better motivation to do what is right. If you love your neighbor, and yes even the government, you will not behave in a manner damaging to either. You don't necessarily have to like what either of them are doing, but you can still love them and by that love hope to change their behavior. Even if there is no change in others, you can have the knowledge of having done right and sleep better at night, whether someone is watching you or not.
.....Every new operating system seems to run a little slower than its predecessor, but that's just a byproduct of all the new functionality the OS is providing me........
Every WINDOWS operating system seems to run a little slower than its predecessor, but that's just a byproduct of all the new functionality the OS is providing me.
There, fixed that for you!
..... It will require a better computer to run it at the same speed as an older simpler OS.........
Someone forgot to tell Apple about that. OSX upgrades perform better on the same hardware than ht e older OS that came with it. My G5 is noticeably faster and more responsive with OSX10.5, than it was with 10.4.
Same is true of my Macbook, which came with 10.4, but is now running 10.5 also. VISTA run MUCH slower on any given hardware than Win2K or XP.
.......If I don't think it's worthy research......
For you to make such a judgment, you better know at least as much as he/she or his/her professor on that subject of research. If not your opinion on that matter is worthless.
.....I believe that most societies will ultimately introduce surveillance.....
In earlier societies, people were told that God watches everything, even the thoughts. One way such a society accessed that information which only God was supposed to know, was by the confessional. Because most people believed in God and His omniscience, they mostly obeyed the rules they were told were really God's rules.
Nowadays belief in God is no longer universal. So now the powers that be are learning to place themselves in the position of God's omniscience by using technological surveillance to inform themselves of the comings and goings of their subjects. If there is a cop car behind them, most people will obey the traffic laws. The cop doesn't have to be in bodily form any more, he/she can be virtualized by all sots of hi-tech wizardry. It is well known that surety of punishment is orders of magnitude more effective in preventing wrongdoing that severity of punishment. If a person KNOWS 100% for sure their actions are known, they will be careful to make sure these actions can stand the scrutiny of those who have the power to punish them. Most kids as well as grownups resent being forced to be good.
Of course if all this technology were ONLY used to make people behave themselves it might be OK. As it is, the powers that be misuse it for self-serving purposes and that is where the bad comes in and privacy is needed.
.....(is social engineering legal?)....
I suppose it depends on the definition of social engineering. If it involves any kind of threat, then certainly not. If it is a bribe, such as plea bargaining, it would be OK if the defendant accepts the bribe and has reasonable assurance the prosecution won't renege after they have the password.
.....Good lord, what kind of a dresscode do they enforce at Apple?.....
Most anything is Ok except a black turtleneck.
....However, as its market share and mind share expands, this period of respite will soon fade........
Apple's market share has been expanding for a while now. That prediction of dire malware for the Mac infesting every Mac has been parroted again and again, with increasing frequency. I personally am quite sick of it, in view of the FACT that nothing has happened in all these years. There are MILLIONS of Macs out there, Surely someone, a super smart hacker would have come up with SOMETHING by now to infect a large number of Macs. Yawn, wake me up, when 10,000 or more Macs, or even a few hundred, fall victim to some super smart, super virulent, self-propagating malware. Stop making such a mountain out of a molehill about some obscure flaw, where someone fails to log out of a Mac that isn't even their own.
....Nobody uses this feature so it is not really a flaw..........
.Mac service is intended for Mac users mainly on their own Macs. Probably not too many Mac users do anything critical on an alien computer, especially one that runs Windows. When I travel, I use my own Macbook, so this "flaw" isn't really a big deal. I suspect this is true for most Mac users. Even so I think Apple should and will fix this soon. Unlike Windows, there has NEVER, ever, been a flaw affecting any Mac from the time OSX was introduced, that allowed a Mac to be invaded by malware, simply for being connected to the Internet, even without a firewall.
The
All Mac flaws and the majority of those for Windows today need the co-operation of the user. NO OS can totally guard against an ignorant, careless user. Any user who uses an unknown computer in a strange environment for anything sensitive ought to have their head examined. They deserve to have their bank account emptied by a crook who installed a keylogger on that foreign machine.
....Umm, does War on Terror ring any bells for you?.......
Browbeating or purchasing any number of representatives and senators is one thing, but buying or cajoling 75% of the legislators of states is quite a bit harder. The ERA amendment made it easily though Congress, but its proponents failed to convince or purchase enough legislatures to make it pass. It is good that the founders made it hard to mess with the constitution. That's why the government has been doing end runs around it and ignoring it in many cases.
Since the SCOTUS is not entirely in the administrations or the Congress's pocket, some of the provisions of the patriot end runs have been thrown out as unconstitutional. Unfortunately, bringing constitutional issues into the courts costs a lot of money. Therefore, only if those with lots of it believe that an issue is unconstitutional, will it ever come before a court.
..... exponential gains in computing power the ability to decrypt is doing something like 100 fold increase every 3 years......
Doesn't the increase in computing power work also for the encryption part? It allows the use of longer and therefore more secure keys and possibly also other encryption methods that were impractical when computers were much less capable. So in the end it seems if an encryption from say 10 years ago took a hundred years to crack on then available computers, so now the best encryption done today will still take a 100 years to brute force on the best computers we have today. It seems to me that any attack on a cipher that is based on raw computing power IS a brute force attack.
On a physical level, a safe can be blown open with nitro, or a skilled safecracker might pick the lock or listen to the tumblers in the combination. All of these are still brute force attacks, just some seem less brutish than others. I could imagine that similar approaches exist for the cracking of a cipher.
....the latter's turnover requires the suspect to devolve information contained within his mind, which would be tantamount to testifying......
Exactly how is the information for the combination itself different from the information as to the hiding place of the key? Is it not the information the government is seeking? Does it matter whether they get it directly or indirectly? In either case, they cannot compel a defendant to give in formation that could convict him, ie tantamount to forcing a confession under torture or other punishment. At least not yet.
....The only difference I see is one may incriminate someone else and the other may incriminate you......
That is a BIG difference. The Constitution only protects you from incriminating YOURSELF, not others. A reporter may not protect others who may have broken the law.
......The only thing they can't potentially force you to hand over is information inside your head,.......
So then if the information as to the location of a physical key is only inside your head, they cannot force that information out the head either. The ONLY difference is that if you don't give the information to the whereabouts of the key, they'll just break the safe open. The problem is that they can't do that with a properly encrypted computer.