Thank you, I'm going to try that. I've been trying to download the latest Knoppix DVD since it came out and have managed to get just 6 mb. Yeah, shitty ISP.
I keep reading posts in this thread that OS X doesn't have viruses and exploits because of this or that. Wasn't there a recent spate of OS X exploits, including a virsus or trojan of some sort? Did I simply dream that?
Just about a week before that rash of exloits happened, an article was posted on Digg that there security vulnerabilities on OS X. Some of us *nix-users pointed out that no OS is totally secure and that Mac-users do tend to take security for granted, even more than Linux/ BSD-users do. Over twenty people posted to that article claiming that OS X was completely secure, entirely dismissing the idea that OS X could possibly have any vulnerabilities. The, BAM!, a bunch of exploits pop up on the net right after that. And here we are at/., where lots of people like to say Digg-users are stupid teenagers, doing the exact same thing. If you're one those, take heed: it's you guys the script-kiddies will target. That's exactly what happened before, exploits aimed at the users who will carelessly run something that contains an exploit or malware of some sort.
One thing I'll never understand is why Linux/ BSD-users take security seriously and so many Mac-users don't. I think it's because of the way these OSes are designed, in that they require you take an active hand in security, although the more user-friendly guide you in doing so. Linux and BSD teach the user more aobut Unix-type OSes and their security procedures. OS X, despite being a BSD, doesn't seem to do that. If I were a Mac-user, this is soemthing I'd be hoping they'd change -- DesktopBSD and several Linux-distros have proven that it's possible to keep the user aware of security while maintaining ease of use. And just remember, exploits can and do happen, and it can happen to even the most secure types of *nix OSes. Carelessness will eventually result in harm to your system no matter what OS you're running.
There is a great deal of truth to this, but don't underestimate the phishers; when I was with Earthlink, I got several phishing emails that looked absolutely genuine, but I was simply too paranoid to fall for them. If I hadn't been so paranoid and checked with an Earthlink representative in chat there would have been no reason to assume that it wasn't for real. In other words, be paranoid and let others know that they should be too.
I'm a Debian-user and I love Debian, but sadly enough, I have to agree. I've never even posted on the Debian forum, just went there once to read, and went into the IRC channel one time. I saw "RTFM" so much I think some of the people there must keep that acronym loaded in their clipboards at all times. In addition, I've heard complaints for years that the Debian-developers don't listen -- after all, they just recently put out an easy-to-use installer, which users have been clamoring for a long time. Many say there wouldn't be so many Debian-based distros if the Debian devs would listen and incorporate code and ideas some have given them but they refuse to use anything they didn't develop themselves; I don't know since I've never submitted anything to them or bothered to ask them for anything, but I've heard this so much I have to conclude there is some truth to it. What irks me about all that is that as great as Debian is, it could be even better if the devs would accept ideas and code from others.
You'd rather they prosecute only those who break the law and annoy corporations? Because I think it's damn well past time that they prosecute those who break the law and annoy us.
"I do normally take the view that if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear"
That's a viewpoint I hear all the time, and I must confess that I'm completely mystified by it. Do people who believe this think the government will never abuse it's power? They're abusing their power right now and have many times before -- that's true of almost every government in human hisotry. You'd have nothing to fear when doing nothing wrong only if the government was completely honest. The more power they have the more they'll abuse it, as they keep proving every day. I should think that would be obvious.
Uh... that happens all the time. Remember those (many) comparison studies of Windows vs. Linux, all of them funded by Microsoft and all of them concluding that Windows was better for this-or-that reason?
And the fact that this flamebait got modded up is another reason I like Digg's system better. Moderation is in the hands of all users there, not the select few. Diggers dont' have to put up with seeing flamebait and trolls get modded up while they helplessly watch and just hope some meta-mod will take care of it.
"Granted, one shouldn't steal software from Microsoft. Stealing, even from another thief, is still wrong."
But it's okay for MS to screw over millions of people with Windows ME, right? I couldn't care less if Windows gets pirated a lot (oh, poor, poor, billionaire MS!) because I was one of the suckers who wound up with a ME-infected machine for my first computer. But maybe I wouldn't feel that way if they actually compensated all the people they totally screwed over with that. Still, as a (now) Debian-user, I don't understand why people put up with this from Microsoft. Would you shop at a store if they strip-searched you every time you entered and left the store?
And since I don't have kids, exactly how is that my problem? This is what I hate about crap like this, forcing society as a whole to be responsible for other people's children so they don't have to, and law-makers using it as an excuse to get rid of anything that happens to offend them. If you read TFA you'll see that a great deal of this has aboslutely nothing to do with violence.
"Offtopic and redundant are pretty specific mods which, from my experience, is usually used fairly accurately."
Not in mine. I meta-mod everyday and I see one of these mods misused at least three times a week. I don't know why either; why mod something off-topic when it obviously isn't? A comment pointing out another article on the same subject that was better-written is not off-topic, for example. And how is a comment redundant when it's obviously not? Posting a suggestion on what to do about the problem presented in the article isn't redundant, for another example. But then, neither is as misused as the "troll" and "flamebait" mods, which are used 98% of the time to mod someone down because the moderator disagrees with the comment, not because it's actually trolling or flaming in any way. The misuse of these mods I see nearly every day.
Wow, some MS fanboy got mod points today. Everything even a little critical of MS is being marked as troll, even questions that are quite reasonable given MS's history of violating privacy in the name of fighting piracy. But -- to answer your question, from what I've heard, IE7 does a validation check, but I haven't heard of it actually phoning home after that.
How long do you think it will take before an exploit is found that allows a malicious web site to turn on ActiveX without the user's permission? Bets, anyone?
Exactly -- it didn't inspire fear. Don't get me wrong, the film was visually very impressive and it kept true to the settings in the games and the monsters, but the movie didn't scare me in the least bit. The game did. It was creepy, with little events here and there that involved no game plot points or combat, just to scare you. The story ending in the game was hokey, but it was still a masterpiece just for pure spookiness. The movie was a horror story; lots of shocking, horrifying imagery, but the story itself wasn't scary. It will serve nicely as a comparison I always make to my Ravenloft players; if you like horror, you probably liked Candyman, but if you like to be frightened you probably liked The Grudge. Most people don't understand the difference. Horror isn't a bad thing if you're into it, but I'm not. I want to be scared or at least spooked.
The really sad part here is that Silent Hill the movie is probably the best game-based movie I've seen yet. That's enough to tell you right there that you might as well wait for any movie based on a game to appear at your local rental instead of bothering to see it in the theater.
How many people are online? How many of those are surfing for child porn? A depressingly larger number than we'd want, yes, but compared to how mnay people aren't? So they're going to keep records of everyone's activities online and sift through all of that to find the people surfing kiddie porn? Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
This is pure BS. If they really wanted to do something about child pornography, they have the power to do so without spying on every citizen in the US. Like you say, they want to satisfy their socially conservative base, but they're just outrightedly lying about what they want to do this for. They want more power to abuse.
Yes it is. Everything in the public domain is effectively copyrighted by the people, and by extending the copyright laws they are stealing your legal rights to use what you should be able to use freely. Isn't it hypocritical how they are so eager to sue to anyone who infringes their copyrights but don't mind a bit taking away your rights to use material that should already be public domain?
It has been postulated that life wouldn't exist the closer one gets to the center of the galaxy because of the ambient radiation, and, in fact, a system with life would need to be positioned the same as our solar system is to avoid the radiation. But if life on Earth can adapt to high radiation so quickly, how much that does that improve the chances of life near the rim of the galaxy where the ambient radiation is higher but not so incredibly high?
I've seen plenty of such posts at Digg... but also some here. Usually these posts get modded down here and buried at Digg; despite the number of such people who digg posts like that there are more who bury it. But not too long ago I saw such a post here get modded up. Made me just sick. I hope it got modded back down by a meta-mod and that mod won't be getting points again, but I don't know what happened.
Wow... Am I really that insignificant? I've criticized/. in my posts (most especially the moderation system) before, got modded as troll and modded back up, but I've never been banned and I still get mod points regularly. Although come to think of it though, there was a time when I didn't get mod points for a month. Damn. If I were a guy I'd be suffering from "small penis" syndrome right now (I think -- men are strange and mysterious creatures, so you tell me).
Understand, I'm not saying you're BSing us; I've heard of this happening enough that I'd be foolish for simply dismissing it. I'm just wondering why it hasn't happened to me.
I've found this to be absolutely true. The *only* answer I received when I asked a question in 2003 was "RTFM", which is both rude and offensive. Well, sometimes the answers weren't in TFM and if the snob answering the question had RTFM himself he would have known that. Sometimes I had to hunt through 4 pages of results on google to find what I needed. There used to be a Linux newbies forum that was a recommended link at Distrowatch.com - they deleted posts with questions in them under the assumption that you hadn't searched And yet they advertised their site as the place to go to ask questions! I love my Linux but I don't like the Linux community much because of this attitude even now. When I get asked a question, I try to answer it if I know the answer, although I will add that you can find out more in the man pages if it sounds like the person hasn't read them.
I must agree. If this tool reports back to Microsoft, I wouldn't recommend it to my customers. On the other hand, if it didn't and only protected you from winding up at bad sites (like the goggle.com mentioned below) it would be good. Problem is, can we trust Microsoft not to make it report home and to keep the blacklist up to date? I rather doubt it.
It seems to me that perhaps someone could make an open source equivalent. It wouldn't be that difficult, since you could use some of the same blocklists that protowall and peer guardian use -- you could probably ask them to tag such sites or even make a separate list for them (the bluetack lists for protowall are already divided into several categories). Too bad I don't know jack about programming.
"the point was that I would have bought the software if they had NOT included Starforce, and that including it not only stopped me from pirating it, but from buying it. That's a lost sale."
Exactly. My husband and I are both gamers, and we typically go on a game-buyig spree once a year. This year we made a list of games wanted (long list) and found out that 10 of them had StarForce on them. We're not buying those games -- copy protection that installs itself to your computer is bad enough, let alone any that is as harmful as StarForce. So that's 10 sales they're not making and we can definitely live without those games. If the day should come that you can't buy a game withut malicious copy protection like StarForce, we'll start pirating the cleaned and cracked copies. You see the stupidity here on the part of the game companies? We'd have bought those games if it hadn't been their anti-piracy malware that would harm our computer.
Unlike the other groups you mention, gays as a whole do not advocate that others be oppressed. The groups you mention do advocate the oppression (and sometimes outright murder) of groups they disapprove of, including blacks, gays, Semetics, among others. If a gay person says he is representing gays while preaching that all black people be sent back to Africa you can bet anything that other gays will contradict him very strongly.
So if I don't like most Christians, Christian guilds should be shut down so I don't have to put up with them? Good. Too bad Blizzard doesn't agree -- last I heard they let Christians guilds exist (no word on otehr religions). I think that was the point of the article: if Blizzard approves of your guild (Chrisitan guilds for one) it's cool with Blizzard, but if they disapprove of your guild (gay/ biseaxual) they'll shut it down and cough up excuses as to why. I really don't see how this is different from, say, running a gay couple of out of your apartment building.
But a lot of what you're describing is the problem I have with virtually all online games -- people being jerks. That's why I don't play them. Plus, the idea of paying for a game and then paying again just to play it is purely a rip-off, as far as I'm concerned.
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Thank you, I'm going to try that. I've been trying to download the latest Knoppix DVD since it came out and have managed to get just 6 mb. Yeah, shitty ISP.
Why didn't someone tell it when the masquerade ball was over?
I keep reading posts in this thread that OS X doesn't have viruses and exploits because of this or that. Wasn't there a recent spate of OS X exploits, including a virsus or trojan of some sort? Did I simply dream that?
Just about a week before that rash of exloits happened, an article was posted on Digg that there security vulnerabilities on OS X. Some of us *nix-users pointed out that no OS is totally secure and that Mac-users do tend to take security for granted, even more than Linux/ BSD-users do. Over twenty people posted to that article claiming that OS X was completely secure, entirely dismissing the idea that OS X could possibly have any vulnerabilities. The, BAM!, a bunch of exploits pop up on the net right after that. And here we are at /., where lots of people like to say Digg-users are stupid teenagers, doing the exact same thing. If you're one those, take heed: it's you guys the script-kiddies will target. That's exactly what happened before, exploits aimed at the users who will carelessly run something that contains an exploit or malware of some sort.
One thing I'll never understand is why Linux/ BSD-users take security seriously and so many Mac-users don't. I think it's because of the way these OSes are designed, in that they require you take an active hand in security, although the more user-friendly guide you in doing so. Linux and BSD teach the user more aobut Unix-type OSes and their security procedures. OS X, despite being a BSD, doesn't seem to do that. If I were a Mac-user, this is soemthing I'd be hoping they'd change -- DesktopBSD and several Linux-distros have proven that it's possible to keep the user aware of security while maintaining ease of use. And just remember, exploits can and do happen, and it can happen to even the most secure types of *nix OSes. Carelessness will eventually result in harm to your system no matter what OS you're running.
There is a great deal of truth to this, but don't underestimate the phishers; when I was with Earthlink, I got several phishing emails that looked absolutely genuine, but I was simply too paranoid to fall for them. If I hadn't been so paranoid and checked with an Earthlink representative in chat there would have been no reason to assume that it wasn't for real. In other words, be paranoid and let others know that they should be too.
I'm a Debian-user and I love Debian, but sadly enough, I have to agree. I've never even posted on the Debian forum, just went there once to read, and went into the IRC channel one time. I saw "RTFM" so much I think some of the people there must keep that acronym loaded in their clipboards at all times. In addition, I've heard complaints for years that the Debian-developers don't listen -- after all, they just recently put out an easy-to-use installer, which users have been clamoring for a long time. Many say there wouldn't be so many Debian-based distros if the Debian devs would listen and incorporate code and ideas some have given them but they refuse to use anything they didn't develop themselves; I don't know since I've never submitted anything to them or bothered to ask them for anything, but I've heard this so much I have to conclude there is some truth to it. What irks me about all that is that as great as Debian is, it could be even better if the devs would accept ideas and code from others.
You'd rather they prosecute only those who break the law and annoy corporations? Because I think it's damn well past time that they prosecute those who break the law and annoy us.
"I do normally take the view that if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear"
That's a viewpoint I hear all the time, and I must confess that I'm completely mystified by it. Do people who believe this think the government will never abuse it's power? They're abusing their power right now and have many times before -- that's true of almost every government in human hisotry. You'd have nothing to fear when doing nothing wrong only if the government was completely honest. The more power they have the more they'll abuse it, as they keep proving every day. I should think that would be obvious.
Uh... that happens all the time. Remember those (many) comparison studies of Windows vs. Linux, all of them funded by Microsoft and all of them concluding that Windows was better for this-or-that reason?
And the fact that this flamebait got modded up is another reason I like Digg's system better. Moderation is in the hands of all users there, not the select few. Diggers dont' have to put up with seeing flamebait and trolls get modded up while they helplessly watch and just hope some meta-mod will take care of it.
"Granted, one shouldn't steal software from Microsoft. Stealing, even from another thief, is still wrong."
But it's okay for MS to screw over millions of people with Windows ME, right? I couldn't care less if Windows gets pirated a lot (oh, poor, poor, billionaire MS!) because I was one of the suckers who wound up with a ME-infected machine for my first computer. But maybe I wouldn't feel that way if they actually compensated all the people they totally screwed over with that. Still, as a (now) Debian-user, I don't understand why people put up with this from Microsoft. Would you shop at a store if they strip-searched you every time you entered and left the store?
And since I don't have kids, exactly how is that my problem? This is what I hate about crap like this, forcing society as a whole to be responsible for other people's children so they don't have to, and law-makers using it as an excuse to get rid of anything that happens to offend them. If you read TFA you'll see that a great deal of this has aboslutely nothing to do with violence.
"Offtopic and redundant are pretty specific mods which, from my experience, is usually used fairly accurately."
Not in mine. I meta-mod everyday and I see one of these mods misused at least three times a week. I don't know why either; why mod something off-topic when it obviously isn't? A comment pointing out another article on the same subject that was better-written is not off-topic, for example. And how is a comment redundant when it's obviously not? Posting a suggestion on what to do about the problem presented in the article isn't redundant, for another example. But then, neither is as misused as the "troll" and "flamebait" mods, which are used 98% of the time to mod someone down because the moderator disagrees with the comment, not because it's actually trolling or flaming in any way. The misuse of these mods I see nearly every day.
Wow, some MS fanboy got mod points today. Everything even a little critical of MS is being marked as troll, even questions that are quite reasonable given MS's history of violating privacy in the name of fighting piracy. But -- to answer your question, from what I've heard, IE7 does a validation check, but I haven't heard of it actually phoning home after that.
How long do you think it will take before an exploit is found that allows a malicious web site to turn on ActiveX without the user's permission? Bets, anyone?
Exactly -- it didn't inspire fear. Don't get me wrong, the film was visually very impressive and it kept true to the settings in the games and the monsters, but the movie didn't scare me in the least bit. The game did. It was creepy, with little events here and there that involved no game plot points or combat, just to scare you. The story ending in the game was hokey, but it was still a masterpiece just for pure spookiness. The movie was a horror story; lots of shocking, horrifying imagery, but the story itself wasn't scary. It will serve nicely as a comparison I always make to my Ravenloft players; if you like horror, you probably liked Candyman, but if you like to be frightened you probably liked The Grudge. Most people don't understand the difference. Horror isn't a bad thing if you're into it, but I'm not. I want to be scared or at least spooked.
The really sad part here is that Silent Hill the movie is probably the best game-based movie I've seen yet. That's enough to tell you right there that you might as well wait for any movie based on a game to appear at your local rental instead of bothering to see it in the theater.
How many people are online? How many of those are surfing for child porn? A depressingly larger number than we'd want, yes, but compared to how mnay people aren't? So they're going to keep records of everyone's activities online and sift through all of that to find the people surfing kiddie porn? Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
This is pure BS. If they really wanted to do something about child pornography, they have the power to do so without spying on every citizen in the US. Like you say, they want to satisfy their socially conservative base, but they're just outrightedly lying about what they want to do this for. They want more power to abuse.
"It isn't "theft" to extend copyright laws."
Yes it is. Everything in the public domain is effectively copyrighted by the people, and by extending the copyright laws they are stealing your legal rights to use what you should be able to use freely. Isn't it hypocritical how they are so eager to sue to anyone who infringes their copyrights but don't mind a bit taking away your rights to use material that should already be public domain?
It has been postulated that life wouldn't exist the closer one gets to the center of the galaxy because of the ambient radiation, and, in fact, a system with life would need to be positioned the same as our solar system is to avoid the radiation. But if life on Earth can adapt to high radiation so quickly, how much that does that improve the chances of life near the rim of the galaxy where the ambient radiation is higher but not so incredibly high?
I've seen plenty of such posts at Digg... but also some here. Usually these posts get modded down here and buried at Digg; despite the number of such people who digg posts like that there are more who bury it. But not too long ago I saw such a post here get modded up. Made me just sick. I hope it got modded back down by a meta-mod and that mod won't be getting points again, but I don't know what happened.
Wow... Am I really that insignificant? I've criticized /. in my posts (most especially the moderation system) before, got modded as troll and modded back up, but I've never been banned and I still get mod points regularly. Although come to think of it though, there was a time when I didn't get mod points for a month. Damn. If I were a guy I'd be suffering from "small penis" syndrome right now (I think -- men are strange and mysterious creatures, so you tell me).
Understand, I'm not saying you're BSing us; I've heard of this happening enough that I'd be foolish for simply dismissing it. I'm just wondering why it hasn't happened to me.
I've found this to be absolutely true. The *only* answer I received when I asked a question in 2003 was "RTFM", which is both rude and offensive. Well, sometimes the answers weren't in TFM and if the snob answering the question had RTFM himself he would have known that. Sometimes I had to hunt through 4 pages of results on google to find what I needed. There used to be a Linux newbies forum that was a recommended link at Distrowatch.com - they deleted posts with questions in them under the assumption that you hadn't searched And yet they advertised their site as the place to go to ask questions! I love my Linux but I don't like the Linux community much because of this attitude even now. When I get asked a question, I try to answer it if I know the answer, although I will add that you can find out more in the man pages if it sounds like the person hasn't read them.
Oh, and I've found that this works too.
I must agree. If this tool reports back to Microsoft, I wouldn't recommend it to my customers. On the other hand, if it didn't and only protected you from winding up at bad sites (like the goggle.com mentioned below) it would be good. Problem is, can we trust Microsoft not to make it report home and to keep the blacklist up to date? I rather doubt it.
It seems to me that perhaps someone could make an open source equivalent. It wouldn't be that difficult, since you could use some of the same blocklists that protowall and peer guardian use -- you could probably ask them to tag such sites or even make a separate list for them (the bluetack lists for protowall are already divided into several categories). Too bad I don't know jack about programming.
"the point was that I would have bought the software if they had NOT included Starforce, and that including it not only stopped me from pirating it, but from buying it. That's a lost sale."
Exactly. My husband and I are both gamers, and we typically go on a game-buyig spree once a year. This year we made a list of games wanted (long list) and found out that 10 of them had StarForce on them. We're not buying those games -- copy protection that installs itself to your computer is bad enough, let alone any that is as harmful as StarForce. So that's 10 sales they're not making and we can definitely live without those games. If the day should come that you can't buy a game withut malicious copy protection like StarForce, we'll start pirating the cleaned and cracked copies. You see the stupidity here on the part of the game companies? We'd have bought those games if it hadn't been their anti-piracy malware that would harm our computer.
Unlike the other groups you mention, gays as a whole do not advocate that others be oppressed. The groups you mention do advocate the oppression (and sometimes outright murder) of groups they disapprove of, including blacks, gays, Semetics, among others. If a gay person says he is representing gays while preaching that all black people be sent back to Africa you can bet anything that other gays will contradict him very strongly.
So if I don't like most Christians, Christian guilds should be shut down so I don't have to put up with them? Good. Too bad Blizzard doesn't agree -- last I heard they let Christians guilds exist (no word on otehr religions). I think that was the point of the article: if Blizzard approves of your guild (Chrisitan guilds for one) it's cool with Blizzard, but if they disapprove of your guild (gay/ biseaxual) they'll shut it down and cough up excuses as to why. I really don't see how this is different from, say, running a gay couple of out of your apartment building.
But a lot of what you're describing is the problem I have with virtually all online games -- people being jerks. That's why I don't play them. Plus, the idea of paying for a game and then paying again just to play it is purely a rip-off, as far as I'm concerned.