You know Slashdot is american based when you read all the negative comments about KDE.
Over here in Germany it's enormously popular.
I didn't realize there was such enormous group think in the US and Germany.
Must be some kind of clash of civilizations...
Or various people who speak up about things they don't like.
I'm using it, too, as I like the integration of apps and window manager.
I did, for a while. But it so happens that I like icewm better--there's various stuff that both KDE and IceWM do "wrong" (ie, not how I want), and it's simpler to fix IceWM than KDE (a lot less compiling is involved). Both Gnome and KDE apps irk me, though, as even their simple apps (gedit/kedit) take a while to load thanks to a gaggle of libraries. *sigh*
On the negative side, the high level of integration can be security problem as Windows shows.
Yes, and it's one of the places I'd said it's actually valid in *nix land to compare against Windows. It's one reason I rather worry about KDE, even though it's pretty amazing in all other regards.
What is science? Fundamental it's the body of knowledge that comes about by using the scientific method. Neo-Darwinism (which is what most people mean when they talk about Darwinism) is a result of this process. So, if one is to reject Neo-Darwinism, one fundamentally denies that the process itself used to validation Neo-Darwinism is flawed in some way--actual new discoveries that fall within the bounds of the scientific method that contradict Neo-Drawinism excepted. In other words, one denies the validity of science and hence science in general. It's really that simply.
Suggesting that the hospitals are at fault for failing to secure their networks adequately is assinine.
Actually, it's not. This is primarily because all those in the ICU are effectively wards of the hospital. This means that the hospital is responsible for their care and accountable if they're threatened/injured, just as much as a parent is when their child is threatened/injured. There is no responsibility to provided "due diligence" for yourself. But the second you're taking on the responsibility of caring for another, you must protect them. This is, btw, the same logic that should be applied when the government attempts to make you a ward of itself. Clearly it doesn't make much sense for both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime to suffer while the link between the two suffers none because although they made a promise of care they did not carry out sufficiently to fill that regard.
Btw, I'm not suggesting this in any way mitigates the punishment for the perpetrators.
Stallman is repeating his behaviour with Ulrich Drepper and Glibc, here. Ergo, if the leader of a project refuses to go the way he wants them to, he will attempt to turn other people associated with the project against said project leader.
Yea, imagine that. Stallman is trying to convince people that the GPL3 is desirable. My, that's some sort of insanity. Why, it almost sounds like free speech.
I have found myself wondering what it is going to take before people will acknowledge the type of man that Richard Stallman truly is. He is seeking division here, and he is doing so purely for the sake of his own ego; because he cannot stand to be in any position other than one of complete control.
Ego? Maybe. More than that, it's an attempt to gain credit, duly or not, for GNU to further its recognition. To what end? Almost certainly to the end of attracting users and contributors. Just look at ESR for an example of wild, media-grabbing antics.
I keep reading of example after example of this...it's his way or no way. Is that honestly what freedom means?
Last I checked, it wasn't "his way or no way". People have freely associated with Linus and Linux of their own free will. Stallman has every right, just as Microsoft does, to try to forge new relations. If it gets to the point of harrasment of people, it would be best if people stood up to him and told him to fuck off. That's freedom of speech as well.
People try and claim that the real threat to the future of F/OSS is on the other side of the ideological/economic divide...that Stallman is a hero.
Well, grouping Free with Open software really rather ignores that each side has different threats. The Open side has the threat of complacency resulting in licensing that causes the "quid pro quo" system to break down, as the license is seen more as a side-effect. The Free software side has to fear new laws (requiring DRMed machines, for example) that fundamentally anull the license used. Of course, this would have as much dangerous effect on the Open group, though they may feel perfectly okay with it if it meant simply having Linus or Red Hat as signers to use ones own code. So long as you're coding for your own machine and don't rely on anyone else nor are any laws created to ban your machine, it doesn't matter at all because you're isolated.
To people who would continue to maintain such a view of the man, I ask you to look at what he is doing here.
Trying to fork a project because he doesn't agree with the leader. Surprise, surprise, the leader has the "political capital" to keep the majority of people with him, regardless of how tempting the GPL3 might sound.
Take a long, hard look.
I have. I would hope most people have. You make it sound like either people are stupid and gullible (which sort of ruins the whole idea of "quid pro quo") or that Stallman has some actual means to force people to go along with what he wants (which is of course silly). The only thing to really consider is that Stallman is passionate, just like many other leaders are passionate, and it's unwise to blindly follow leaders. Considering how people, like you, so clearly reject the authoritarianism that Stallman projects, I think we're pretty safe. I just hope this doesn't blind you completely to what Stallman says.
Well, I'd say it's pretty much a bit of common sense that if you want to create a system where users don't have freedom to not use code specifically designed to give users freedom. Really, such environments are the marginal case, and it makes little sense for Linux to not go along with the GPL3 for that reason. Now, the tediousness involved in trying to get all the GPL2-only parts to be GPL3 is a much more sane reason.
Of course, it really all comes down to the GPL3 being a sane license--it probably will be, but the GPL2-only part was to prevent any major snafus because of the FSF somehow being taken over and a future revision somehow stripping the original coder of their intentions. I'd perfectly understand waiting for the GPL3 to be finalized and possibly going through a "stablizing" revision (if necessary) before even considering switching to GPL3-only, in any case. That's literally a year away, at least. It is a pretty big step to be making to switch licensing, so I can understand why it would take so long. And I understand why Linus is voicing some concerns on the language because it has to be very precise to prevent having unintentional consequences.
Copyright isn't a constitutional right or a right at all. It is in the listing of the powers of Congress. This means it's merely a power that was granted to Congress, not a mandate of Congress--ie, it's optional. To that end, it makes as much sense to call for a reduction (or elimintation) of copyright as any other power granted to Congress.
The GPL grants you the further rights to take that modified code and change it any way you like. But it does not grant you the right to install that modified software back on that same machine.
Well, no. You clearly don't understand the GPL. The GPL is wholly a distribution license. This is because copyright is fundamentally a distribution regulation law (excluding performances, which are hard to extrapolate to software); the GPL never included a provision for use because of this and this fact is even clearly spelled out in the GPL; it's also the reason that the GPL almost certain is legally binding but EULAs probably are not. The fact is, once you gain any software, you have a fundamental right to use, modify, etc your copy. This was tested by book publishers by in the early 20th century and set the foundation of "First Sale Doctrine". While many only remember how such stated a right to resale of a copy of a work, what was also established was a right to use the software.
This, then, isn't a privilege and no act of gov't can revoke it. Disregarding that, the US Government has set up the DMCA which clearly allows a person to violate this right by making it illegal to circumvent a protection to use a product. So, the GPL v3 has clearly spelled out further protections to compensate for this because relying on the current law to non-circumvent rights is apparently too much to ask of modern governments. The only real problem, then, is that people will still be sued under the DMCA for "finding out" that someone stole code, since one has to first establish they've violated copyright to prove that the original author's license prevented the DRM from being legal in the first place. Overall, DRM complicated the situation when it comes to pointing out when people steal code. Perhaps the real reason for TCPA, then, is to allow for proprietary companies to fraudulently copy from each other (and open source) without anyone being able to tell.
Yea, it's just like how when you pay with a bad check, the company has no way to know that it really won't get them any money, so even after they know this, they can't do anything to stop taking more checks from you. I mean, it's not like there's anyone they could call or even make a blacklist with your picture. Now excuse me while I rack up an outrageous phone bill and print out some fake money.
*checks through Constitution* Nope, no drug screening laws. Really, I don't think there's a real basis for the TSA in general. Most of the FAA should probably be removed (really, the FAA would be more of a messageboard on people choosing to say where they're flying). The real problem is that the federal government, as you put it, so tendriled to states. The federal government really has business in such dealings. Really, the federal government should have simply dissolved affiliation with states that discriminated based on the fact that such a state lacks a republic form of government. And no, I'm not saying they just threaten such. At the same time, federal government really shouldn't have been involved in the massive growth that was involved in welfare or even military spending (the former is something that's up to the states to enact and the latter is something that was just plain wasteful and clearly against the intent (if not the exact letter) of the 2 year standing army provision).
So, a lot of things could be blamed for what's going on. And the simple fact is, people should be working harder to stop the federal government with fiddling with stuff it has no business working with. Oh, and they should stop whining to the federal government for help instead of working to fix their own state. If you keep going to the federal government for help, of course after a while you become dependent on them. So, be very sure you have very, very good reason to be dependent on the federal government for the things involved.
True. The problem is, there's also no requirement that you a) speak or b) gain ID. As another poster pointed out, one's rights aren't predicated on identifying oneself. To that end, it'd be just as ludicrous to deny a person from flying who wouldn't put on a tophat (and if it were muslim women who were the main known terrorists, that'd possibly be a great screening mechanism). So long as airlines are using the TSA to perform searches, then they're bound by the Constitution. If one were to believe that private organizations that get specific help/funding/whatever from the federal government aren't bound by the Constitution, then there would be nothing to stop the government from merely declaring all of its components as private businesses and hence would abdicate any ability for one to contest the Constitutionality of their actions. So, the real irony is that the TSA, who were deployed to help check/screen passengers at airports, is at least one specific reason upon which the airlines no longer have a foundation to check people. The well has been poisoned.
That requirement is *supposed* to insure that everyone driving on public streets *knows* the rules, but it does nothing to force them to follow the rules. That's what the cops are for.
That's something I don't understand. Why exactly is it necessary to get a license to drive but it's not necessary to get a license to, say, own a knife. You might claim that cars are much more dangerous, yet all those people who are stabbed because of misuse of a knife would probably not care. Guns are the same, and there's a lot less people dying of misuse of a gun than an automobile. Hell, more people die of eating too many fatty foods, yet there isn't a license to eat deserts.
If people are to be accountable to the rules/laws whether they know them or not, I don't see the point of "licensing" people to do an activity for which they should only be punished for violating said rules/laws. I guess licensing is just an outcrop of public schools, which are also constantly pushed to provide a standard means of turning children into citizens because of the uneven acts of parents. It's almost surprising that there hasn't been more push to have all children handed over to the government at birth, to even further guarantee the production of useful citizens. Yes, I'm speaking of the extreme of this idea, but there doesn't seem to be fundamentally any difference.
I personally wish I lived in a country that did less to preemptively punish people and more to simply properly punish those who do hurt others. Government isn't there to stop crimes. It's to punish those after the fact. If you want heroes, look around you at other citizens. If people relied a little less on the police and a little more on the people around them, perhaps there'd be less reliance on the government in general. And as far as faceless entities go (elected officials hardly count given how little effect any one individual tends to have--that's by design, btw), government is probably one you'd do better to avoid.
The logic of "He has alot so it's no big deal for him to donate alot." is dumb as fuck.
<sarcasm>The logic of "He's not especially good because he hasn't killed anyone yet." is dumb as fuck.</sarcasm> Ie, it's pretty much a societal expectation not to kill or to give a large percentage of your wealth away if you're easily capable.
I'm extremely disappointed to see the slashdot crowd almost entirely bashing Gates becuase they don't care for microsofts software.
Are you disappointed when people complain about Firestone or its CEO/President/founder when they make defective tires? Should we just spontaneously stop complaining now because after the fact they've stepped down as out-in-out leader?
This assumption that somehow Jobs is a better person because you like his software more is stupid,
Who made this assumption? You? I know I didn't. The grandparent compared himself to Gates.
the companies are run with the same goals, Apple just has a different marketing strategy and alot less brute force to throw behind their decisions.
Wow, and earlier you were decrying the inability of the/. crowd from separating man and business.
I'm quite confident that if Apple had 96% of the OS market, and Microsoft had 4%, then peoples opinions would be exactly the opposite as they are now.
Well, no. With your percentages, there'd be 0% Linux users. Obviously those people couldn't have the same opinions as those Linux users now. Of course, if I were to take what the spirit of argument is, I'd have to know how Apple managed to get 96% of the OS market. If one assumes the only way to gain such a monopoly is through MS-like tactics, then I'm sure you're right; I doubt Apple would even remotely attempt to make superior software if it used business to stay in control, and any defects would have the same kind of catastrophic effects as in the Windows world. If one assumes that there are other ways to gain such a monopoly, which Apple commited, then at least some of those who reject MS now because of its business practices wouldn't be rejecting Apple.
It's the same old "Hate the big guy!" attitude, and its not exactly novel or interesting anymore.
Yes, everyone hates Goliath because he was big. It had nothing to do with all that terrorizing he did because he was big. Of course, that doesn't mean one should be prejudice against all big people. But it's not prejudice to hate/dislike a person after interacting with a person in the areas effected.
Gates has helped millions of people by donating more money than most large countries. This is a wonderful thing and I applaud him for it.
Right, that's your opinion.
Jobs may or may not be donating money, as the article says that no documentation of this could be verified, but It really doesn't matter to me, it is completely up to him what he does with his money.
Well, that's rather odd. You cared what Gates did with his money. Oh well, still an opinion.
And now that my rant is over, I'll throw my opinion out there.... I was more than a little disappointed when Apple ran their marketing campaign a few years ago using pictures of many famous civil rights people and other people like Einstien.
I'd be disinclined to compare famous civil rights people to Einstein. Einstein wasn't exactly shy about being in the public's eye for more than just his science work.
The exploitation of good people for making money seemed awfully sickening to me.
It sickens me when people are exploited, period. Such relationships are unhealthy and amoral.
But this is likely a result of a powerful marketing team and not really the fault of Jobs.
True. But in the end, it is Jobs who's running the show. He might not be able to stop everything bad that is done under Apple's name, but things like advertisement or knowingly retaining a employee who wronged you would certainly be things that he'd be at some point be responsible for. That's what heiarchy is all about. Thankfully, most people are pretty generous when it's shown that the heiarchy is functioning to correct bad behavior.
You know why this comment is fundamentally flawed? Because that NAT you're using is almost certainly a computer. So, you need to throw a NAT in front of it to protect it. Repeat, ad nauseum. Even if you're using a system that's been audited (OpenBSD), you still have to rely on the physical hardware not having defects that allow expoitation. Really, the best approach then is to simply not connect to the internet.
Of course, the real answer is to keep as aware as possible of threats, choose difficult to guess passwords, remove all remote logins you don't need, and general keep as many ports closed as you can. Once you stop running a lot of unneeded services/daemons, your risk greatly decreases. You might still be vulnerable to core TCP/IP stack attacks, but really, NATs might not protect against you against that either. Keep up to date, keep vigilante. That's the real long term answer.
Oh, and the second you hear of a vulnerability, use something that's not vulnerable. But saying one *needs* a firewall is silly.
Is this one of those four path ways and which one you go to (cause the other three don't exist)? I'd have to say that "secure software", "hack-proof database", and "software protects from hackers" are all pretty mythical--well, unless you throw all of those in cement, and even then it's really a matter of just how much time they're willing to throw into cutting away at it. But, a system can be fast, even if it's subjective. The other three really aren't subjective (and aren't even really relative, as written, though throw in the implied security guards to have that). So, which road do you take?
The moment one decides to put something on the Internet, he loses a large chunk of control over that content.
Only if you ignore copyright.
Caching is an inherent, and necessary, component of Internet technology.
No, it's a side-feature. Note, storing an image and the rendered website in memory at the same time (and displaying part of it on screen) is fundamentally no different than arranging a collection of mirrors to collage a few pictures. That's rather different than someone photocopying said images and passing them out.
Searching as a whole does not work without it.
Wrong, searching can work by storing a count of certain words/phrases, or it can work by keeping a count of the number of websites with a word that link to a website. But nothing about knowing there's 5 "the"s and 10 "I"s means being able to trivially reconstruct a website.
Your original post was that the original site owner was entitled to relief because of lost financial gain (due to users viewing Google's ads rather than his own).
Sure. Or a loss of revenue because people can't see your nifty design. Or your nifty server-side page generation.
You now present a new argument: content control. However, posting any content on the Internet is entails a conscious surrender of control, and in the bargain that control is surrendered for convenience: distribution, access, attention, what have you.
Ah, I didn't realize that they were different. In server-side generation, financial benefit and content control can be the same thing. Think of, for example, a website that updated with new images. But now you're further claiming that the internet absolves all copyright. It's rather stupid to claim that, given that a signficiant percentage of people (and especially, google) fall under treaties that protect copyright.
As to your coffee shop analogy, there is a significant difference. Google is not making any money from its action.
And I'm not making any money when I give all my friends photocopies of books from the library.
No Google ads appear on the cached sites, unless they were there already. In your coffee shop, you are selling coffee to those photocopy readers. Google is not, as you condeded above.
The better analogy is the coffeshop allowing vs not allowing free access to the photocopy readers. If they don't have to buy coffee (or view those nice ads just beyond the photocopier room), then surely they're not gaining.
For a copyright violation to take place, the violator has to be receiving a material gain.
Re-read the law again. The NET Act in the US makes it so that "personal gain" can be a basis for prosecution. This basically translates into a way to fix the loophole of the coffee-selling analogy. You can't commit copyright infringement and then merrily claim that you didn't directly benefit so you're in the clear. Btw, the NET Act is about criminal prosecution.
It is not at all clear that Google is receiving any financial gain.
Yea, not at all clear. Google just puts up the cache thing even though they've not even the smallest inkling that it's drawing in more users to their regular, ad-supported, site. Nope, Google is a charity.
As for metatagging, no standard exists. You are arguing for a standard (be it an opt-in or opt-out).
No, he/she was arguing that copyright predicates opt-in. Even without a copyright notice, one has to assume they're not allowed to copy. This is why violating the GPL is copyright infringement; without the GPL's blessing, it defaults to a no-distribute copyright policy.
I agree that a standard should exist. However, in the specific case of Google, Google is clear in describing the steps that a site administrator can take to exclude its content from Google's cache.
I'll be sure to tell that to the RIAA the next time they find my "cache" of CDs. They should have just followed my clear tagging pol
And, if you'd like to convince me that God doesn't exist, you're going have to have to use the Bible.
That's part of Socratic logic, and it's very effective a lot of the times at disproving a logic system.
Libertarianism is just like any other political philosophy, there are people who adhere to it mindlessly.
Very true. Unless one is part of a movement composed of only one, odds are very low that other follows even begin to attemp to fully comprehend the consequences of the movement (note, I'm not saying that that one member has, only that it's a prerequisite).
Most libertarians I've talked to support the philosophy without actually considering all the consequences or applying much rational thought beyond, "I gots mine!"
Yes, this is sad. There's certainly a lot more to political philosophy than that.
And they defend it by giving circular bullshit reasons like you've spewed right here.
I'd take issue with saying it's circular bullshit reasons. The simple fact is that libertarianism, like most (all?) political systems, is based on a set of axioms, rules, and a set of desired goals. It's not unreasonable to desire that a person who is against the system to use the rules of the system to show that some of the desired goals cannot be fulfilled. Now, obviously if the axioms, rules, or goals are chosen poorly, the goals can be met, yet the system as a whole could be meaningless.
Libertarians, at least those who do try to think about it, will point at past examples of places where other systems have failed. Real libertarians should also recognize that their system will produce people who are entirely dependent on others for survival (the free market, assuming such could ever be created (it couldn't, though that's another subject), would produce a surplus of workers; that means some simply would never be able to find work).
I recognize this, and I'm more inclined to push for a libertarian federal government and a somewhat socialist state government. The federal government is, after all, primarily responsible in maintaining relations between states and between the union and other countries, not with the personal safety of individuals. On the other hand, states are primarily responsible for the well-being of its citizens (and all people who live there are citizens). I know that I don't have a complete system that can meet all goals that I and others desire within the mentality of live and let live, but I just wanted to let you know that there are those of us who could claim to be libertarian (or at least quasi-libertarian) who do try their best to think of such issues.
The clear link is that the subpoena is to provide ammunition to attempt to prop-up the COPA. The COPA is primarily geared towards making it more costly and difficult for commercial porn sites to run. This, in turn, means a reduction in porn sites. If you didn't know, Ashcroft shifted resources of the DoJ to battling pornography as part of the Bush agenda towards combating "moral decay". Gonzales has continued this, as is clearly evident in said subpoena. Bush, having appointed these men with the knowledge that they'd focus resources on such, is hence responsible for the DoJ targetting Google.
What makes it especially infuriating is that the COPA and the ilk before it are forms of censorship, and have already been partially or fully voided. Congress and the Supreme Court seem determined to eventually allow some form of censorship, regardless of the Bill of Rights or such similar wordings in most every states' constitution. I can't begin to understand why anyone involved actually believes that the government has any right or privilege to block speech. It is contradictory to believe there is less harm in forcing people to not possess speech than to allow people to possess or distribute speech without force.
Just as people have a right to rot their body or end their life, so too should they have the right to rot their mind. It is, afterall, only when they attack others that there is a legitimate reason to punish them. Force in a system where no force original existed but for which people continue to wish to market produces a black market; in essence, no one in government is interested in really stopping the thoughts anyways, only to hide them from public viewing. Forcing others to be prudes under threat of harm does nothing to change what people are. A prude is, after all, merely one who creates the appearance of propriety. No amount of paint will turn a rusty bicycle into a Ferrari.
Until the late nineties, Microsoft was routinely making such errors, the most infamous being the support for embeddable, automatically run, Visual Basic scripts in Word documents. Why this is being treated as any different to every security error Microsoft has made in the past is beyond me.
One, it took a lot longer to find. Two, it comes with every install of Windows. Three, generally Word document macro vulnerabilities were sent by email, not by simply visiting a website. Four, you're likely to notice a Word document openning, but you can easily hide a.wmf file in a webpage.
Having said all this, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion it's a conspiracy. Nor is it radically different from the tons of other remote execution IE exploits, for most purposes at least, even though it's the wmf renderer that's responsible. I'd guess the main reasons for the hype is especially point one I mentioned, coupled with the fact that a 3rd party released a patch first.
The truth is, I'd imagine 99.9% of people don't need WMFs--your analogy to Word auto-executed macro viruses is pretty spot on, since their usefulness is about the same, I'd say. So, even without a conspiracy, it's just another sign of MS including junk from the past without the proper security checks--obscurity of the problem doesn't make people who had their machines infected sleep better at night. There's simply a vocal minority who wishes MS would start from scratch with a sound design. If the obscurity of this problem isn't a sign that MS is pretty well lost to protect users while maintaining their quest for backwards compatibility, I don't know what will.
>>I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself.
>If you believe it's good to let people continue to believe falsehoods, then sure.
The only other comments I could have made that wouldn't have gone off-topic are "me too" and "I agree". Were you really looking for a hi-five?
>>Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?
>How about giving me real reason why my point was "partially false"?
Because in your original statement you used the word flaw, and flaw can mean bug or exploit. Obviously when you use the word exploit it's an unambiguous tautology.
>The fact is, people have this unfounded belief that Microsoft applications have some sort of magic access to the operating system that other application don't.
Well, "I agee". Of course they don't.
>If you want to say some MS apps have more vulnerabilities discovered than third party alternatives, and more of it's vulnerabilities are serious, fine - that certainly seems to be true at least with IE - but it doesn't in any way negate what I said.
Well, I can't negate a tautology. I wasn't even trying.
>>Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect
>By equivalent flaws, I meant a flaws that have the same consequences when explioted. I thought that would be obvious, but I guess not.
Some of us when they hear the word "flaw" think "bug". My comment wasn't an attempt to disprove the spirit of your point; it was merely to clarify the real world situation of bugs. I'm sorry if you think that was changing the subject, but there wasn't really anything else to say about your intended point. And I'm sorry that it wasn't clear which use of the word flaw was being used.
Why do people keep missing the point I was making, or changing the subject?
I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself. The only thing left to comment on is things like the how of remote exploits. Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?
Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect. That's because the word flaw is used to describe the cause, the effect, or a combination of causes and effect. Not all buffer overflows allow buffer execution, for example. The whole point of DEP was to still allow flaws (buffer overflows) without allowing some kinds of flaws (buffer buffer). I was just nitpicking over it.
>>That's the big problem with many of the Microsoft glitches. They're not limited to the vulnerable Microsoft application. The vulnerable app provides a gateway for compromising the whole PC.
>I would like to know where everyone heard this crap, and why they keep repeating it vebatim., because it's a bunch of bullshit. Flaws in Microsoft products have no greater danger than equivalent flaws in any other Windows application.
That's partially true and partially false. I'll explain more below.
>A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too.
>A remote code execution flaw in Firefox executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too
Exactly true. The issue is, instead, the number of remote code execution flaws.
>There is no special conduit that Microsoft apps have to the windows kernel or any other windows system object.
Except that such is not needed. In general, Microsoft seems more focused on trying to build a strong perimeter than to make sure that components are robust. The result is that anyone who can manage to obtain any sort of local access to effect objects is bound to find a means to use said objects to execute code (look at WMF for example). And because a local user effecting an object to execute code isn't a security risk (as a general rule, at least), little focus is set on making sure components are robust against such attacks. So it's not surprising that little consideration is given when such components are used in internet applications (think of the security implications of printf(user_provided_string); for example).
>If you browse the web using firefox while running as administrator and you get hit with an exploit that exploit will have full access to your system.
"Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made."
Excuse me? No Progress? Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?(emphasis mine)
There's this thing called reading comprehension. There was never the claim that there was no progress made, only that there was not much, ie little, progress made. Considering how many and how deeply worms have been able to attack in spite of said firewall, I'd have to concur. Feel free to try to disprove his "not much process" claim, btw, because if you argue against the actual point you might be able to point at things with put at least some weight behind your counter argument.
you can look up at those mysterious lights in the sky and get that sense of wonder, and of how small and yet how important we really are. (emphasis mine)
This is what sets us apart from the animals. Animals don't have that sort of ego. But I guess animals don't have the need to try to justify their existance.
The man maybe ruined some competing software companies. Very few people actually got hurt.
What are two major scourages of mankind today? Cancer and HIV would be obvious choices. What is one major contributing element to research and development for curses to such diseases? Why, computers of course. Heck, a step further than that, and it's often the software that runs on those computers that make the world of difference.
Now, what if some of those competing software companies would have spawned into something like Google, but 5 years earlier, if Microsoft hadn't used it's very questionable business practices to maintain Windows and ilk as a monopoly? Why, today we might be 5 years ahead in our search for a cure for cancer and HIV. Or it might have had zero effect. One thing that's for certain is that one can't simply assume that the practices of Microsoft have caused few people to actually get hurt. The behavior of a monopoly can have profound effects, no matter how much one tries to see its effect on only "some software companies".
Slashdot Mirror
You know Slashdot is american based when you read all the negative comments about KDE.
Over here in Germany it's enormously popular.
I didn't realize there was such enormous group think in the US and Germany.
Must be some kind of clash of civilizations...
Or various people who speak up about things they don't like.
I'm using it, too, as I like the integration of apps and window manager.
I did, for a while. But it so happens that I like icewm better--there's various stuff that both KDE and IceWM do "wrong" (ie, not how I want), and it's simpler to fix IceWM than KDE (a lot less compiling is involved). Both Gnome and KDE apps irk me, though, as even their simple apps (gedit/kedit) take a while to load thanks to a gaggle of libraries. *sigh*
On the negative side, the high level of integration can be security problem as Windows shows.
Yes, and it's one of the places I'd said it's actually valid in *nix land to compare against Windows. It's one reason I rather worry about KDE, even though it's pretty amazing in all other regards.
What is science? Fundamental it's the body of knowledge that comes about by using the scientific method. Neo-Darwinism (which is what most people mean when they talk about Darwinism) is a result of this process. So, if one is to reject Neo-Darwinism, one fundamentally denies that the process itself used to validation Neo-Darwinism is flawed in some way--actual new discoveries that fall within the bounds of the scientific method that contradict Neo-Drawinism excepted. In other words, one denies the validity of science and hence science in general. It's really that simply.
Suggesting that the hospitals are at fault for failing to secure their networks adequately is assinine.
Actually, it's not. This is primarily because all those in the ICU are effectively wards of the hospital. This means that the hospital is responsible for their care and accountable if they're threatened/injured, just as much as a parent is when their child is threatened/injured. There is no responsibility to provided "due diligence" for yourself. But the second you're taking on the responsibility of caring for another, you must protect them. This is, btw, the same logic that should be applied when the government attempts to make you a ward of itself. Clearly it doesn't make much sense for both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime to suffer while the link between the two suffers none because although they made a promise of care they did not carry out sufficiently to fill that regard.
Btw, I'm not suggesting this in any way mitigates the punishment for the perpetrators.
In one case they are fixing a bug which has yet to be discovered
I'd love to be using whatever magic powers that allow them to do that.
Stallman is repeating his behaviour with Ulrich Drepper and Glibc, here. Ergo, if the leader of a project refuses to go the way he wants them to, he will attempt to turn other people associated with the project against said project leader.
Yea, imagine that. Stallman is trying to convince people that the GPL3 is desirable. My, that's some sort of insanity. Why, it almost sounds like free speech.
I have found myself wondering what it is going to take before people will acknowledge the type of man that Richard Stallman truly is. He is seeking division here, and he is doing so purely for the sake of his own ego; because he cannot stand to be in any position other than one of complete control.
Ego? Maybe. More than that, it's an attempt to gain credit, duly or not, for GNU to further its recognition. To what end? Almost certainly to the end of attracting users and contributors. Just look at ESR for an example of wild, media-grabbing antics.
I keep reading of example after example of this...it's his way or no way. Is that honestly what freedom means?
Last I checked, it wasn't "his way or no way". People have freely associated with Linus and Linux of their own free will. Stallman has every right, just as Microsoft does, to try to forge new relations. If it gets to the point of harrasment of people, it would be best if people stood up to him and told him to fuck off. That's freedom of speech as well.
People try and claim that the real threat to the future of F/OSS is on the other side of the ideological/economic divide...that Stallman is a hero.
Well, grouping Free with Open software really rather ignores that each side has different threats. The Open side has the threat of complacency resulting in licensing that causes the "quid pro quo" system to break down, as the license is seen more as a side-effect. The Free software side has to fear new laws (requiring DRMed machines, for example) that fundamentally anull the license used. Of course, this would have as much dangerous effect on the Open group, though they may feel perfectly okay with it if it meant simply having Linus or Red Hat as signers to use ones own code. So long as you're coding for your own machine and don't rely on anyone else nor are any laws created to ban your machine, it doesn't matter at all because you're isolated.
To people who would continue to maintain such a view of the man, I ask you to look at what he is doing here.
Trying to fork a project because he doesn't agree with the leader. Surprise, surprise, the leader has the "political capital" to keep the majority of people with him, regardless of how tempting the GPL3 might sound.
Take a long, hard look.
I have. I would hope most people have. You make it sound like either people are stupid and gullible (which sort of ruins the whole idea of "quid pro quo") or that Stallman has some actual means to force people to go along with what he wants (which is of course silly). The only thing to really consider is that Stallman is passionate, just like many other leaders are passionate, and it's unwise to blindly follow leaders. Considering how people, like you, so clearly reject the authoritarianism that Stallman projects, I think we're pretty safe. I just hope this doesn't blind you completely to what Stallman says.
Well, I'd say it's pretty much a bit of common sense that if you want to create a system where users don't have freedom to not use code specifically designed to give users freedom. Really, such environments are the marginal case, and it makes little sense for Linux to not go along with the GPL3 for that reason. Now, the tediousness involved in trying to get all the GPL2-only parts to be GPL3 is a much more sane reason.
Of course, it really all comes down to the GPL3 being a sane license--it probably will be, but the GPL2-only part was to prevent any major snafus because of the FSF somehow being taken over and a future revision somehow stripping the original coder of their intentions. I'd perfectly understand waiting for the GPL3 to be finalized and possibly going through a "stablizing" revision (if necessary) before even considering switching to GPL3-only, in any case. That's literally a year away, at least. It is a pretty big step to be making to switch licensing, so I can understand why it would take so long. And I understand why Linus is voicing some concerns on the language because it has to be very precise to prevent having unintentional consequences.
Copyright isn't a constitutional right or a right at all. It is in the listing of the powers of Congress. This means it's merely a power that was granted to Congress, not a mandate of Congress--ie, it's optional. To that end, it makes as much sense to call for a reduction (or elimintation) of copyright as any other power granted to Congress.
The GPL grants you the further rights to take that modified code and change it any way you like. But it does not grant you the right to install that modified software back on that same machine.
Well, no. You clearly don't understand the GPL. The GPL is wholly a distribution license. This is because copyright is fundamentally a distribution regulation law (excluding performances, which are hard to extrapolate to software); the GPL never included a provision for use because of this and this fact is even clearly spelled out in the GPL; it's also the reason that the GPL almost certain is legally binding but EULAs probably are not. The fact is, once you gain any software, you have a fundamental right to use, modify, etc your copy. This was tested by book publishers by in the early 20th century and set the foundation of "First Sale Doctrine". While many only remember how such stated a right to resale of a copy of a work, what was also established was a right to use the software.
This, then, isn't a privilege and no act of gov't can revoke it. Disregarding that, the US Government has set up the DMCA which clearly allows a person to violate this right by making it illegal to circumvent a protection to use a product. So, the GPL v3 has clearly spelled out further protections to compensate for this because relying on the current law to non-circumvent rights is apparently too much to ask of modern governments. The only real problem, then, is that people will still be sued under the DMCA for "finding out" that someone stole code, since one has to first establish they've violated copyright to prove that the original author's license prevented the DRM from being legal in the first place. Overall, DRM complicated the situation when it comes to pointing out when people steal code. Perhaps the real reason for TCPA, then, is to allow for proprietary companies to fraudulently copy from each other (and open source) without anyone being able to tell.
Yea, it's just like how when you pay with a bad check, the company has no way to know that it really won't get them any money, so even after they know this, they can't do anything to stop taking more checks from you. I mean, it's not like there's anyone they could call or even make a blacklist with your picture. Now excuse me while I rack up an outrageous phone bill and print out some fake money.
*checks through Constitution* Nope, no drug screening laws. Really, I don't think there's a real basis for the TSA in general. Most of the FAA should probably be removed (really, the FAA would be more of a messageboard on people choosing to say where they're flying). The real problem is that the federal government, as you put it, so tendriled to states. The federal government really has business in such dealings. Really, the federal government should have simply dissolved affiliation with states that discriminated based on the fact that such a state lacks a republic form of government. And no, I'm not saying they just threaten such. At the same time, federal government really shouldn't have been involved in the massive growth that was involved in welfare or even military spending (the former is something that's up to the states to enact and the latter is something that was just plain wasteful and clearly against the intent (if not the exact letter) of the 2 year standing army provision).
So, a lot of things could be blamed for what's going on. And the simple fact is, people should be working harder to stop the federal government with fiddling with stuff it has no business working with. Oh, and they should stop whining to the federal government for help instead of working to fix their own state. If you keep going to the federal government for help, of course after a while you become dependent on them. So, be very sure you have very, very good reason to be dependent on the federal government for the things involved.
True. The problem is, there's also no requirement that you a) speak or b) gain ID. As another poster pointed out, one's rights aren't predicated on identifying oneself. To that end, it'd be just as ludicrous to deny a person from flying who wouldn't put on a tophat (and if it were muslim women who were the main known terrorists, that'd possibly be a great screening mechanism). So long as airlines are using the TSA to perform searches, then they're bound by the Constitution. If one were to believe that private organizations that get specific help/funding/whatever from the federal government aren't bound by the Constitution, then there would be nothing to stop the government from merely declaring all of its components as private businesses and hence would abdicate any ability for one to contest the Constitutionality of their actions. So, the real irony is that the TSA, who were deployed to help check/screen passengers at airports, is at least one specific reason upon which the airlines no longer have a foundation to check people. The well has been poisoned.
That requirement is *supposed* to insure that everyone driving on public streets *knows* the rules, but it does nothing to force them to follow the rules. That's what the cops are for.
That's something I don't understand. Why exactly is it necessary to get a license to drive but it's not necessary to get a license to, say, own a knife. You might claim that cars are much more dangerous, yet all those people who are stabbed because of misuse of a knife would probably not care. Guns are the same, and there's a lot less people dying of misuse of a gun than an automobile. Hell, more people die of eating too many fatty foods, yet there isn't a license to eat deserts.
If people are to be accountable to the rules/laws whether they know them or not, I don't see the point of "licensing" people to do an activity for which they should only be punished for violating said rules/laws. I guess licensing is just an outcrop of public schools, which are also constantly pushed to provide a standard means of turning children into citizens because of the uneven acts of parents. It's almost surprising that there hasn't been more push to have all children handed over to the government at birth, to even further guarantee the production of useful citizens. Yes, I'm speaking of the extreme of this idea, but there doesn't seem to be fundamentally any difference.
I personally wish I lived in a country that did less to preemptively punish people and more to simply properly punish those who do hurt others. Government isn't there to stop crimes. It's to punish those after the fact. If you want heroes, look around you at other citizens. If people relied a little less on the police and a little more on the people around them, perhaps there'd be less reliance on the government in general. And as far as faceless entities go (elected officials hardly count given how little effect any one individual tends to have--that's by design, btw), government is probably one you'd do better to avoid.
The logic of "He has alot so it's no big deal for him to donate alot." is dumb as fuck.
/. crowd from separating man and business.
<sarcasm>The logic of "He's not especially good because he hasn't killed anyone yet." is dumb as fuck.</sarcasm> Ie, it's pretty much a societal expectation not to kill or to give a large percentage of your wealth away if you're easily capable.
I'm extremely disappointed to see the slashdot crowd almost entirely bashing Gates becuase they don't care for microsofts software.
Are you disappointed when people complain about Firestone or its CEO/President/founder when they make defective tires? Should we just spontaneously stop complaining now because after the fact they've stepped down as out-in-out leader?
This assumption that somehow Jobs is a better person because you like his software more is stupid,
Who made this assumption? You? I know I didn't. The grandparent compared himself to Gates.
the companies are run with the same goals, Apple just has a different marketing strategy and alot less brute force to throw behind their decisions.
Wow, and earlier you were decrying the inability of the
I'm quite confident that if Apple had 96% of the OS market, and Microsoft had 4%, then peoples opinions would be exactly the opposite as they are now.
Well, no. With your percentages, there'd be 0% Linux users. Obviously those people couldn't have the same opinions as those Linux users now. Of course, if I were to take what the spirit of argument is, I'd have to know how Apple managed to get 96% of the OS market. If one assumes the only way to gain such a monopoly is through MS-like tactics, then I'm sure you're right; I doubt Apple would even remotely attempt to make superior software if it used business to stay in control, and any defects would have the same kind of catastrophic effects as in the Windows world. If one assumes that there are other ways to gain such a monopoly, which Apple commited, then at least some of those who reject MS now because of its business practices wouldn't be rejecting Apple.
It's the same old "Hate the big guy!" attitude, and its not exactly novel or interesting anymore.
Yes, everyone hates Goliath because he was big. It had nothing to do with all that terrorizing he did because he was big. Of course, that doesn't mean one should be prejudice against all big people. But it's not prejudice to hate/dislike a person after interacting with a person in the areas effected.
Gates has helped millions of people by donating more money than most large countries. This is a wonderful thing and I applaud him for it.
Right, that's your opinion.
Jobs may or may not be donating money, as the article says that no documentation of this could be verified, but It really doesn't matter to me, it is completely up to him what he does with his money.
Well, that's rather odd. You cared what Gates did with his money. Oh well, still an opinion.
And now that my rant is over, I'll throw my opinion out there.... I was more than a little disappointed when Apple ran their marketing campaign a few years ago using pictures of many famous civil rights people and other people like Einstien.
I'd be disinclined to compare famous civil rights people to Einstein. Einstein wasn't exactly shy about being in the public's eye for more than just his science work.
The exploitation of good people for making money seemed awfully sickening to me.
It sickens me when people are exploited, period. Such relationships are unhealthy and amoral.
But this is likely a result of a powerful marketing team and not really the fault of Jobs.
True. But in the end, it is Jobs who's running the show. He might not be able to stop everything bad that is done under Apple's name, but things like advertisement or knowingly retaining a employee who wronged you would certainly be things that he'd be at some point be responsible for. That's what heiarchy is all about. Thankfully, most people are pretty generous when it's shown that the heiarchy is functioning to correct bad behavior.
You know why this comment is fundamentally flawed? Because that NAT you're using is almost certainly a computer. So, you need to throw a NAT in front of it to protect it. Repeat, ad nauseum. Even if you're using a system that's been audited (OpenBSD), you still have to rely on the physical hardware not having defects that allow expoitation. Really, the best approach then is to simply not connect to the internet.
Of course, the real answer is to keep as aware as possible of threats, choose difficult to guess passwords, remove all remote logins you don't need, and general keep as many ports closed as you can. Once you stop running a lot of unneeded services/daemons, your risk greatly decreases. You might still be vulnerable to core TCP/IP stack attacks, but really, NATs might not protect against you against that either. Keep up to date, keep vigilante. That's the real long term answer.
Oh, and the second you hear of a vulnerability, use something that's not vulnerable. But saying one *needs* a firewall is silly.
Is this one of those four path ways and which one you go to (cause the other three don't exist)? I'd have to say that "secure software", "hack-proof database", and "software protects from hackers" are all pretty mythical--well, unless you throw all of those in cement, and even then it's really a matter of just how much time they're willing to throw into cutting away at it. But, a system can be fast, even if it's subjective. The other three really aren't subjective (and aren't even really relative, as written, though throw in the implied security guards to have that). So, which road do you take?
The moment one decides to put something on the Internet, he loses a large chunk of control over that content.
Only if you ignore copyright.
Caching is an inherent, and necessary, component of Internet technology.
No, it's a side-feature. Note, storing an image and the rendered website in memory at the same time (and displaying part of it on screen) is fundamentally no different than arranging a collection of mirrors to collage a few pictures. That's rather different than someone photocopying said images and passing them out.
Searching as a whole does not work without it.
Wrong, searching can work by storing a count of certain words/phrases, or it can work by keeping a count of the number of websites with a word that link to a website. But nothing about knowing there's 5 "the"s and 10 "I"s means being able to trivially reconstruct a website.
Your original post was that the original site owner was entitled to relief because of lost financial gain (due to users viewing Google's ads rather than his own).
Sure. Or a loss of revenue because people can't see your nifty design. Or your nifty server-side page generation.
You now present a new argument: content control. However, posting any content on the Internet is entails a conscious surrender of control, and in the bargain that control is surrendered for convenience: distribution, access, attention, what have you.
Ah, I didn't realize that they were different. In server-side generation, financial benefit and content control can be the same thing. Think of, for example, a website that updated with new images. But now you're further claiming that the internet absolves all copyright. It's rather stupid to claim that, given that a signficiant percentage of people (and especially, google) fall under treaties that protect copyright.
As to your coffee shop analogy, there is a significant difference. Google is not making any money from its action.
And I'm not making any money when I give all my friends photocopies of books from the library.
No Google ads appear on the cached sites, unless they were there already. In your coffee shop, you are selling coffee to those photocopy readers. Google is not, as you condeded above.
The better analogy is the coffeshop allowing vs not allowing free access to the photocopy readers. If they don't have to buy coffee (or view those nice ads just beyond the photocopier room), then surely they're not gaining.
For a copyright violation to take place, the violator has to be receiving a material gain.
Re-read the law again. The NET Act in the US makes it so that "personal gain" can be a basis for prosecution. This basically translates into a way to fix the loophole of the coffee-selling analogy. You can't commit copyright infringement and then merrily claim that you didn't directly benefit so you're in the clear. Btw, the NET Act is about criminal prosecution.
It is not at all clear that Google is receiving any financial gain.
Yea, not at all clear. Google just puts up the cache thing even though they've not even the smallest inkling that it's drawing in more users to their regular, ad-supported, site. Nope, Google is a charity.
As for metatagging, no standard exists. You are arguing for a standard (be it an opt-in or opt-out).
No, he/she was arguing that copyright predicates opt-in. Even without a copyright notice, one has to assume they're not allowed to copy. This is why violating the GPL is copyright infringement; without the GPL's blessing, it defaults to a no-distribute copyright policy.
I agree that a standard should exist. However, in the specific case of Google, Google is clear in describing the steps that a site administrator can take to exclude its content from Google's cache.
I'll be sure to tell that to the RIAA the next time they find my "cache" of CDs. They should have just followed my clear tagging pol
And, if you'd like to convince me that God doesn't exist, you're going have to have to use the Bible.
That's part of Socratic logic, and it's very effective a lot of the times at disproving a logic system.
Libertarianism is just like any other political philosophy, there are people who adhere to it mindlessly.
Very true. Unless one is part of a movement composed of only one, odds are very low that other follows even begin to attemp to fully comprehend the consequences of the movement (note, I'm not saying that that one member has, only that it's a prerequisite).
Most libertarians I've talked to support the philosophy without actually considering all the consequences or applying much rational thought beyond, "I gots mine!"
Yes, this is sad. There's certainly a lot more to political philosophy than that.
And they defend it by giving circular bullshit reasons like you've spewed right here.
I'd take issue with saying it's circular bullshit reasons. The simple fact is that libertarianism, like most (all?) political systems, is based on a set of axioms, rules, and a set of desired goals. It's not unreasonable to desire that a person who is against the system to use the rules of the system to show that some of the desired goals cannot be fulfilled. Now, obviously if the axioms, rules, or goals are chosen poorly, the goals can be met, yet the system as a whole could be meaningless.
Libertarians, at least those who do try to think about it, will point at past examples of places where other systems have failed. Real libertarians should also recognize that their system will produce people who are entirely dependent on others for survival (the free market, assuming such could ever be created (it couldn't, though that's another subject), would produce a surplus of workers; that means some simply would never be able to find work).
I recognize this, and I'm more inclined to push for a libertarian federal government and a somewhat socialist state government. The federal government is, after all, primarily responsible in maintaining relations between states and between the union and other countries, not with the personal safety of individuals. On the other hand, states are primarily responsible for the well-being of its citizens (and all people who live there are citizens). I know that I don't have a complete system that can meet all goals that I and others desire within the mentality of live and let live, but I just wanted to let you know that there are those of us who could claim to be libertarian (or at least quasi-libertarian) who do try their best to think of such issues.
The clear link is that the subpoena is to provide ammunition to attempt to prop-up the COPA. The COPA is primarily geared towards making it more costly and difficult for commercial porn sites to run. This, in turn, means a reduction in porn sites. If you didn't know, Ashcroft shifted resources of the DoJ to battling pornography as part of the Bush agenda towards combating "moral decay". Gonzales has continued this, as is clearly evident in said subpoena. Bush, having appointed these men with the knowledge that they'd focus resources on such, is hence responsible for the DoJ targetting Google.
What makes it especially infuriating is that the COPA and the ilk before it are forms of censorship, and have already been partially or fully voided. Congress and the Supreme Court seem determined to eventually allow some form of censorship, regardless of the Bill of Rights or such similar wordings in most every states' constitution. I can't begin to understand why anyone involved actually believes that the government has any right or privilege to block speech. It is contradictory to believe there is less harm in forcing people to not possess speech than to allow people to possess or distribute speech without force.
Just as people have a right to rot their body or end their life, so too should they have the right to rot their mind. It is, afterall, only when they attack others that there is a legitimate reason to punish them. Force in a system where no force original existed but for which people continue to wish to market produces a black market; in essence, no one in government is interested in really stopping the thoughts anyways, only to hide them from public viewing. Forcing others to be prudes under threat of harm does nothing to change what people are. A prude is, after all, merely one who creates the appearance of propriety. No amount of paint will turn a rusty bicycle into a Ferrari.
Okay, I'm done with my rambling.
Until the late nineties, Microsoft was routinely making such errors, the most infamous being the support for embeddable, automatically run, Visual Basic scripts in Word documents. Why this is being treated as any different to every security error Microsoft has made in the past is beyond me.
.wmf file in a webpage.
One, it took a lot longer to find. Two, it comes with every install of Windows. Three, generally Word document macro vulnerabilities were sent by email, not by simply visiting a website. Four, you're likely to notice a Word document openning, but you can easily hide a
Having said all this, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion it's a conspiracy. Nor is it radically different from the tons of other remote execution IE exploits, for most purposes at least, even though it's the wmf renderer that's responsible. I'd guess the main reasons for the hype is especially point one I mentioned, coupled with the fact that a 3rd party released a patch first.
The truth is, I'd imagine 99.9% of people don't need WMFs--your analogy to Word auto-executed macro viruses is pretty spot on, since their usefulness is about the same, I'd say. So, even without a conspiracy, it's just another sign of MS including junk from the past without the proper security checks--obscurity of the problem doesn't make people who had their machines infected sleep better at night. There's simply a vocal minority who wishes MS would start from scratch with a sound design. If the obscurity of this problem isn't a sign that MS is pretty well lost to protect users while maintaining their quest for backwards compatibility, I don't know what will.
>>I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself.
>If you believe it's good to let people continue to believe falsehoods, then sure.
The only other comments I could have made that wouldn't have gone off-topic are "me too" and "I agree". Were you really looking for a hi-five?
>>Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?
>How about giving me real reason why my point was "partially false"?
Because in your original statement you used the word flaw, and flaw can mean bug or exploit. Obviously when you use the word exploit it's an unambiguous tautology.
>The fact is, people have this unfounded belief that Microsoft applications have some sort of magic access to the operating system that other application don't.
Well, "I agee". Of course they don't.
>If you want to say some MS apps have more vulnerabilities discovered than third party alternatives, and more of it's vulnerabilities are serious, fine - that certainly seems to be true at least with IE - but it doesn't in any way negate what I said.
Well, I can't negate a tautology. I wasn't even trying.
>>Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect
>By equivalent flaws, I meant a flaws that have the same consequences when explioted. I thought that would be obvious, but I guess not.
Some of us when they hear the word "flaw" think "bug". My comment wasn't an attempt to disprove the spirit of your point; it was merely to clarify the real world situation of bugs. I'm sorry if you think that was changing the subject, but there wasn't really anything else to say about your intended point. And I'm sorry that it wasn't clear which use of the word flaw was being used.
Why do people keep missing the point I was making, or changing the subject?
I guess because the point you were making is a tautology and above comment in itself. The only thing left to comment on is things like the how of remote exploits. Having said that, what would you have liked me to comment about and in what way?
Oh, and the point I was trying to make was that an equivalent flaw might not have equivalent effect. That's because the word flaw is used to describe the cause, the effect, or a combination of causes and effect. Not all buffer overflows allow buffer execution, for example. The whole point of DEP was to still allow flaws (buffer overflows) without allowing some kinds of flaws (buffer buffer). I was just nitpicking over it.
>>That's the big problem with many of the Microsoft glitches. They're not limited to the vulnerable Microsoft application. The vulnerable app provides a gateway for compromising the whole PC.
>I would like to know where everyone heard this crap, and why they keep repeating it vebatim., because it's a bunch of bullshit. Flaws in Microsoft products have no greater danger than equivalent flaws in any other Windows application.
That's partially true and partially false. I'll explain more below.
>A remote code execution flaw in IE executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too.
>A remote code execution flaw in Firefox executes code with the users rights, and therefore gets access to what the user has access too
Exactly true. The issue is, instead, the number of remote code execution flaws.
>There is no special conduit that Microsoft apps have to the windows kernel or any other windows system object.
Except that such is not needed. In general, Microsoft seems more focused on trying to build a strong perimeter than to make sure that components are robust. The result is that anyone who can manage to obtain any sort of local access to effect objects is bound to find a means to use said objects to execute code (look at WMF for example). And because a local user effecting an object to execute code isn't a security risk (as a general rule, at least), little focus is set on making sure components are robust against such attacks. So it's not surprising that little consideration is given when such components are used in internet applications (think of the security implications of printf(user_provided_string); for example).
>If you browse the web using firefox while running as administrator and you get hit with an exploit that exploit will have full access to your system.
Of course. Firefox isn't a panacea.
"Although Gates made security and privacy top priority four years ago, not much progress has been made."
Excuse me? No Progress? Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?(emphasis mine)
There's this thing called reading comprehension. There was never the claim that there was no progress made, only that there was not much, ie little, progress made. Considering how many and how deeply worms have been able to attack in spite of said firewall, I'd have to concur. Feel free to try to disprove his "not much process" claim, btw, because if you argue against the actual point you might be able to point at things with put at least some weight behind your counter argument.
you can look up at those mysterious lights in the sky and get that sense of wonder, and of how small and yet how important we really are. (emphasis mine)
This is what sets us apart from the animals. Animals don't have that sort of ego. But I guess animals don't have the need to try to justify their existance.
The man maybe ruined some competing software companies. Very few people actually got hurt.
What are two major scourages of mankind today? Cancer and HIV would be obvious choices. What is one major contributing element to research and development for curses to such diseases? Why, computers of course. Heck, a step further than that, and it's often the software that runs on those computers that make the world of difference.
Now, what if some of those competing software companies would have spawned into something like Google, but 5 years earlier, if Microsoft hadn't used it's very questionable business practices to maintain Windows and ilk as a monopoly? Why, today we might be 5 years ahead in our search for a cure for cancer and HIV. Or it might have had zero effect. One thing that's for certain is that one can't simply assume that the practices of Microsoft have caused few people to actually get hurt. The behavior of a monopoly can have profound effects, no matter how much one tries to see its effect on only "some software companies".