"The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media's right not to reveal its sources"
There is no such right, even though journalists love to pretend it is etched in the First Ammendment or something. And even if there were such a right, any responsible journalist wouldn't rely on anonymous sources anyways. They are notoriously unreliable (at least with a named source you can go back and verify what they said, and investigate how they know what they said they know). If I wrote "an anonymous official deep within the WhiteHouse said the other day that the Bush Administration only went to war in Iraq to get oil", that statement has no credibility. Yes, my "anonymous official" may have been Karl Rove himself, but it is just as likely (if not much more likely) that it was a janitor. I have essentially told you nothing while still making an attention grabbing headline.
Many like to point to Watergate as an example where anonymous sources (Deepthroat) broke open a case, but that is just not true. Neither Woodward nor Bernstein wrote about something simply because Deepthroat told it to them, instead they used his information as a guide as they sought independent confirmation. Had they written about some anonymous source named after a porno flick who told them the president had broken the law, they would have been laughed out of Washington. Though I'm not sure if that would have happened today now that the public's expectations in terms of evidence seems to have been lowered to the point where any scandal becomes instant credible news.
For the hundredth time, the patent title does not specify what is protected. The patent title is merely a very broad description of the invention which is protected. The actual invention that is protected is specified in the patent's claims. Meaning you have to get off your ass and RTFP to see what is protected.
So yes, you absolutely can write a patent titled "Interacting in an interactive environment", though you will have to come up with a novel way in which the interaction takes place. And people would only violate your patent if their product used that particular novel way of "interacting in an interactive environment".
"By their IP address (what if they used tor, a public library computer, or an open access point)? "
I doubt thats very common from most YouTube users. We are not exactly talking about master criminals here. I'm failry positive the vast majority will be kids using a computer in their parent's basement.
"Shouldn't the copyright holders be going after youtube since they are a clearly identifiable hoster of material that they do not have the rights to archive and/or distribute?"
They could, which is why YouTube is doing this. As long as they cooperate fully, they are protected from such lawsuits by the DMCA.
"I suspect that the corporate media companies are just spreading FUD to scare people away from using youtube."
You say that as its some sort of revelation. Of course it is their goal to scare people away from violating their copyrights, and I'm sure if you asked them they would say the same thing.
Putting aside for a moment your pointless nitpicking and your gross misinterpretation of Aesop's Boy Who Cried Wolf fable, I have one question for you. Do you honestly believe that security companies (or producers of security products if that makes you happy) should keep their mouths shut about the security problems of an operating system until after a dangerous exploit is released that does serious damage to computers around the world? That any attempt to forewarn people about problems they could face if they do not take action to protect themselves is unethical?
"However, some degree of foolishness can be excused in this case because AV vendors have cried wolf too many times over what they knew were actually innocuous proof-of-concept examples that infected nobody outside the research community (who deliberately infected themselves for test purposes)."
Its not "crying wolf" when there really are exploits out there that could do damage. "Crying wolf" refers to giving out a warning when there is no danger, here this is a danger that just has yet to manifest itself into actual damage. You want people to pay attention to these kinds of things before they become problems, not after.
"I find this claim rather interesting, because ClamAV is neither a company or the product of a company, and AFAIK never has been."
Please don't bicker about semantics like those other guys who are claiming these exploits don't count because they worms, not "true viruses". It is obvious what I meant. It was the first AV product I mentioned, and actually can be classified as a company very easily (there is no requirement that a company be run by a CEO or sell anything).
"So you are asserting that Finisterre would release a malicious variant of his code _after_ Apple already had produced a patch based on non-malicious examples he'd sent them some time previously?"
Sure, if he thought people still were not taking Mac security seriously (like the guys higher up in this thread who think it is impossible to write a virus for a Mac). Or maybe he felt this would make him famous (especially since he could only be directly tied to the safe version). I don't know the man personally so I have no idea what his psychiatric makeup looks like, but I wouldn't be willing to rule him out as a suspect merely because he came up with the first version.
"Methinks you are grasping at straws to support your own contention that AV companies don't deliberately release malicious items."
That wasn't my contention. I was merely arguing that your conspiracy theory is deeply flawed. And prior to that, I was contending that Macs are vulnerable to security exploits. It really doesn't matter who distributes them.
"Why would a rogue developer at Apple bother propagating such an ineffectual and lame piece of malware _after_ they know the system has already been patched to render it useless?"
Well for one thing, because a patch has already rendered it useless. There are many in the hacker community who believe if you fail to apply security updates you deserve any damages that may come about.
"Who would risk the sack plus both criminal prosecution and being sued for an insane amount by one of the most litigious companies out there to propagate something that their own colleagues have already completely castrated"
The exact same argument could be made against your claim that it was the anti-virus companies that came up with it. Why would they risk criminal prosecution or even damage to their reputation (which would actually be a much greater risk since it would be easier to tie the virus to the one they recieved), not to mention the conspiracy theories from people like yourself, to put out a security exploit that has already been fixed by Apple? At least with the rogue employee, they could just be sadistic or a thrillseeker in nature.
"when they could have done far more mischief at less risk by inserting mischievous code that randomly corrupts stuff into one of Apple's product updates, and then claiming it was a programming error?"
Maybe they just couldn't do that due to a lack of skills or access to such applications. Maybe they felt there was too much risk involved. Or maybe they did put in some such code and it hasn't been found yet. Or maybe for some other reason. Who knows. Its still much more likely that an AV company.
"1) The code was only supplied to major AV companies, so we can rule out clamAV and those associated with it."
Well then since clamAV was the very first AV company I met, that sort of renders your entire point moot. Again. For something like the third time.
"2) An employee of any major AV company would have great difficulty altering and propagating the code for a piece of malware without managerial complicity. Such companies are accustomed to dealing with massive collections of very dangerous software that could do severe damage to their own IT infrastructure if one or more of them accidentally got onto a dev. machine or a piece of writable media (not to mention their reputations if company web-servers started spreading one or more infections to customers), so malware is kept in sealed systems that aren't connected to company networks, and which are located in locked rooms that have very strict access policies. They are aware of the fact that disgruntled or simply mischievous employees or ex-employees would welcome the opportunity to damage them by releasing some of the stuff sitting on their test machines into their many local networks and Internet servers, and therefore do everything in their power to ensure that this is as near to impossible as
And again, There is a world of a difference between a security researcher coming out with a proof of concept exploit (which is what they are paid to do, we want these guys to find the exploits before criminals do), and an anti-virus company making up a fake virus (a real one would not be possible if Macs were immune to viruses) in order to scare gullible customers into buying their product when they were really safe all along. And I don't buy your logic ruling out Finisterre and you left out a number of other suspects including any rougue employee/developer at Apple or an anti-virus company/community (clamAV is an open source product) and anyone any of the mentioned parties may have passed this information on to.
One of the biggest reasons Linux has had trouble taking off on the desktop market is that Word and friends are the de facto standard of the office world. And probably the biggest reason Mac OS has suddenly jumped in popularity is the fact that it now supports Office. Yes, MS would lose some customers, but Mac's reputation for being virus free would die off. Apple's strategy there wouldn't work much better than MS using this story as a reason to by Zunes instead of iPods.
There is a world of a difference between a security researcher coming out with a proof of concept exploit (which is what they are paid to do, we want these guys to find the exploits before criminals do), and an anti-virus company making up a fake virus in order to scare gullible customers into buying their product when they were really safe all along.
And for something like the fifth time, I am aware these were proof of concepts. As I stated in my very first post, yes, no serious attack has been made against Mac OS X. But that is not because it is impossible to find an exploit in the operating system.
I don't really care enough about this to get in a long discussion on the semantics of the terms 'virus', 'worm', and 'trojan horse', especially since in the end it really doesn't matter. I am fully aware these are merely proofs of concepts, but all of these exploits could easily have been used by something that would do serious damage. Remember, most early PC viruses (as well as many of the new ones) were proofs of concepts as well. As I said before, Mac usage is still too small for it to be a big target of serious malware, but that is a far cry from it being virus-free (or malware-free if it will avoid a lengthy semantics debate) as the previous poster claimed.
So you are saying OSX/Leap-A, Inqtana, etc., are all inventions of the evil antivirus companies who are trying to convince poor Mac lovers that their OS is vulernable? Thats a strange thing to do, especially for ClamAV since it is open source...
You don't need direct access to the Kernel to do damage. You really don't think a browser can launch a malicious program? Why don't you look up Exploit.OSX.Safari? Want to guess why it has the word "Safari" in its name? Its not because it shows you pictures of wild animals.
And I'm sick and tired of hearing this myth put out. Of course there are viruses for Mac OS X out there. All it takes is a few minutes on Google to confirm this. For instance OSX/Leap-A, Inqtana, Exploit.OSX.Safari, Exploit.OSX.ScriptEx, etc.
Here is a question. If it were not possible to write viruses for Mac OS X, why is there anti-virussoftware out there for it?
Peddling this "OS X is virus-free" myth is not only wrong, it is dangerous. How many people out there fail to set up their Mac with sufficient security because they have been hearing nothing but "only Windows has viruses"? Once someone does come around with a serious virus for OS X, how many people will be unguarded because they heard this line from people like you?
"Simply because MS can't do anything like this back to Apple."
Sure they can. Ship a version of MS Word with a virus embedded that targets Macs (yes they do exist, though the small market share makes them much less common). And if they are willing to bring back the Mac Internet Explorer, they can 'accidentally' leave open a security flaw that allows even more viruses in.
I think MS wins hands down as one of Apple's main selling points is that fewer viruses are written for Macs than for Windows. But the more stories that break that include the words "Apple" and "Virus" in the headline, fewer people will believe that and just stick with Windows (yes we can hold out hope that they will move to Linux, but I wouldn't bet on it).
"The researcher paper is clearly suggesting causation, not just correlation."
Yes, they are suggesting causation. Thats what studies generally do, suggest things. No where do they state that it is definitively the cause. No where in the/. summary does it state that this is the cause. In fact, I have yet to read a single comment here on slashdot that states that it is the cause. There is a huge difference between the headlines "TV Really Might Cause Autism" and "TV Really Does Cause Autism". The media (or at least/.) was responsible this time. Save your bickering for when someone starts to claim with certainity that TV causes autism.
And here is another one I want everyone to repeat:
'MIGHT' DOES NOT EQUAL 'DOES'!
'MIGHT' DOES NOT EQUAL 'DOES'!
'MIGHT' DOES NOT EQUAL 'DOES'!
The title of this article is "TV Really Might Cause Autism". Who the hell is reporting that it is the cause? Who is claiming that this statistically significant relationship is equal to a 'randomized double-blind study'? And how exactly do you propose one do a 'randomized double-blind study' on autism anyways? The problem isn't that studies like this that present statistical relationships make the news, it is that people for some reason fail to read words like "might", "may", or "possibly" and instead read a certainity which no one claimed existed.
"
What if N Korea has some kind of weapons tech that isn't nukes, but still can make kiloton-scale explosions? It wouldn't break the nuke taboo, or any treaties. And it might not be held back from using these really powerful weapons by their baggage."
Well if it wasn't a nuke (tests do now show evidence of radiation, so it seems like it was, although a small one), it still wouldn't be too hard to produce an explosion of this magnitude. Just fill a mine with explosives. What would be hard would be to produce a weapon (which could be delivered to its target) that could produce such an explosion. The dangerous thing about nukes is not that they are the only things that can cause large explosions, it is those explosions can fit on relatively small bombs which can be delivered to enemy cities.
"As more tech is more available around the world to so many, it's ever more important not to isolate countries that can see destruction as their only way to get "status" or "power". Afghanistan, Iraq, N Korea, now Iran... the attraction of the benefits of inclusion in the global society is the only way to influence people into constructive behavior. Pretending we can shut them down by shutting them out is an arrogance now very obviously too lethal for us to afford any longer."
Um, we didn't "shut them out" from the rest of the world. North Korea didn't need any help from the rest of the world to isolate itself. Believe it or not but inclusion in the global economy is not an attractive incentive for every nation, especially not for governments with hard line Stalinist communism as their form of government, or a country that considers anything but radical Islam sinful.
BTW, Iran isn't all that isolated at all. Their leaders are a bit crazy, but their people are not that out of touch with the rest of the world.
First of all, if you were right, that would still not make me a bigot. You, on the other hand, with your mindless aversion to differing points of view on the open source vs commericial software debate, are fairly close.
Second, you getting screwed over a few times is far from proof that problems that are hard to fix are given low priorities. All it proves is that problems that are hard to fix are hard to fix (and you are not very good at negotiating software contracts). In fact, your getting a response indicates that they did prioritize it fairly high, just that after an initial investigation they determined that a full fix would cause more problems than it would solve. High priorities do not guarentee results.
MTV advertises in a completely different way than Google. A product that is sold via an MTV advertisement is intended to be sold in a store where a teenager can spend cash. Products sold via Google ads are generally sold over the net, which is almost always sold via credit card (which kids in high school and earlier usually don't have access to). Even if that advertisement convinces the kid to buy it later in a brick and mortar store, Google (with their new anti-click fraud changes) won't get paid.
I'm not saying that there is no potential for revenue with this demographic, just that it is hardly worth the high price Google is apperantly willing to spend on it.
If you are selling advertising, you need to be selling to a group that buys more than one product. Yes, there are a few things that are very popular with teenagers, but that is not the same as them being a great market for advertising.
Didn't I just see an article the other day arguing that teenagers steal music because they don't have credit cards which they can use to buy music online. Now I think that is a bit of an over-simplification, but teenagers really aren't the best market to court, especially if you are selling products online (which generally requires access to a credit card).
Just a clarification, does that Geek-A-Cycle really "power" the computer? Based on what I read, it sounds more like all it does is lock your computer if you start peddling, otherwise you would really be screwed if you had to get off for a minute and you lost all your data because the computer shut down.
I'm still not sure this would be very appropriate for an office environment, though. For starters, if your office was essentially turned into a gym, you might not be able to stand working there for a typical 8+ hour day with your overweight co-workers working up a sweat in the cubicle next door. Plus it can be difficult to concentrate on doing some work while working out. Try reading a book while working out at a gym. Its unlikely you will be able to get as far as you would if you were reading on a couch.
So I'm a bigot I don't drink the OSS Kool-Aid? Do you even know what a bigot is?
Commericial software developers are paid to work on the problems customers complain about the most. Thus they get prioritized higher than easy bugs that no one really cares about. Trust me, I work for a major software company (no, not Microsoft, one that is much more open source friendly). When a major customer starts escalating some issue, we are expected to drop everything else we are doing and work on that issue 24/7. Get a job yourself and maybe you'd learn that.
There are "middle class caucasian girls" who die tragic deaths or who go missing or who are raped, etc., all the time, only a small few make the national news circuit. Furthermore that is not at all limited to "middle class caucasian girls", there are numerous examples of crimes against minorities, boys/men, and poor people who make the news all the time (the Duke rape case is a prime example, yes she was a chick, but still meets two of the three).
Slashdot Mirror
"The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media's right not to reveal its sources"
There is no such right, even though journalists love to pretend it is etched in the First Ammendment or something. And even if there were such a right, any responsible journalist wouldn't rely on anonymous sources anyways. They are notoriously unreliable (at least with a named source you can go back and verify what they said, and investigate how they know what they said they know). If I wrote "an anonymous official deep within the WhiteHouse said the other day that the Bush Administration only went to war in Iraq to get oil", that statement has no credibility. Yes, my "anonymous official" may have been Karl Rove himself, but it is just as likely (if not much more likely) that it was a janitor. I have essentially told you nothing while still making an attention grabbing headline.
Many like to point to Watergate as an example where anonymous sources (Deepthroat) broke open a case, but that is just not true. Neither Woodward nor Bernstein wrote about something simply because Deepthroat told it to them, instead they used his information as a guide as they sought independent confirmation. Had they written about some anonymous source named after a porno flick who told them the president had broken the law, they would have been laughed out of Washington. Though I'm not sure if that would have happened today now that the public's expectations in terms of evidence seems to have been lowered to the point where any scandal becomes instant credible news.
For the hundredth time, the patent title does not specify what is protected. The patent title is merely a very broad description of the invention which is protected. The actual invention that is protected is specified in the patent's claims. Meaning you have to get off your ass and RTFP to see what is protected.
So yes, you absolutely can write a patent titled "Interacting in an interactive environment", though you will have to come up with a novel way in which the interaction takes place. And people would only violate your patent if their product used that particular novel way of "interacting in an interactive environment".
"By their IP address (what if they used tor, a public library computer, or an open access point)? "
I doubt thats very common from most YouTube users. We are not exactly talking about master criminals here. I'm failry positive the vast majority will be kids using a computer in their parent's basement.
"Shouldn't the copyright holders be going after youtube since they are a clearly identifiable hoster of material that they do not have the rights to archive and/or distribute?"
They could, which is why YouTube is doing this. As long as they cooperate fully, they are protected from such lawsuits by the DMCA.
"I suspect that the corporate media companies are just spreading FUD to scare people away from using youtube."
You say that as its some sort of revelation. Of course it is their goal to scare people away from violating their copyrights, and I'm sure if you asked them they would say the same thing.
Putting aside for a moment your pointless nitpicking and your gross misinterpretation of Aesop's Boy Who Cried Wolf fable, I have one question for you. Do you honestly believe that security companies (or producers of security products if that makes you happy) should keep their mouths shut about the security problems of an operating system until after a dangerous exploit is released that does serious damage to computers around the world? That any attempt to forewarn people about problems they could face if they do not take action to protect themselves is unethical?
"However, some degree of foolishness can be excused in this case because AV vendors have cried wolf too many times over what they knew were actually innocuous proof-of-concept examples that infected nobody outside the research community (who deliberately infected themselves for test purposes)."
Its not "crying wolf" when there really are exploits out there that could do damage. "Crying wolf" refers to giving out a warning when there is no danger, here this is a danger that just has yet to manifest itself into actual damage. You want people to pay attention to these kinds of things before they become problems, not after.
"I find this claim rather interesting, because ClamAV is neither a company or the product of a company, and AFAIK never has been."
Please don't bicker about semantics like those other guys who are claiming these exploits don't count because they worms, not "true viruses". It is obvious what I meant. It was the first AV product I mentioned, and actually can be classified as a company very easily (there is no requirement that a company be run by a CEO or sell anything).
"I can tell you why, but it's not worth my time, since you've already made up your mind."
Silly me, paying attention to all those annoying facts...
"So you are asserting that Finisterre would release a malicious variant of his code _after_ Apple already had produced a patch based on non-malicious examples he'd sent them some time previously?"
Sure, if he thought people still were not taking Mac security seriously (like the guys higher up in this thread who think it is impossible to write a virus for a Mac). Or maybe he felt this would make him famous (especially since he could only be directly tied to the safe version). I don't know the man personally so I have no idea what his psychiatric makeup looks like, but I wouldn't be willing to rule him out as a suspect merely because he came up with the first version.
"Methinks you are grasping at straws to support your own contention that AV companies don't deliberately release malicious items."
That wasn't my contention. I was merely arguing that your conspiracy theory is deeply flawed. And prior to that, I was contending that Macs are vulnerable to security exploits. It really doesn't matter who distributes them.
"Why would a rogue developer at Apple bother propagating such an ineffectual and lame piece of malware _after_ they know the system has already been patched to render it useless?"
Well for one thing, because a patch has already rendered it useless. There are many in the hacker community who believe if you fail to apply security updates you deserve any damages that may come about.
"Who would risk the sack plus both criminal prosecution and being sued for an insane amount by one of the most litigious companies out there to propagate something that their own colleagues have already completely castrated"
The exact same argument could be made against your claim that it was the anti-virus companies that came up with it. Why would they risk criminal prosecution or even damage to their reputation (which would actually be a much greater risk since it would be easier to tie the virus to the one they recieved), not to mention the conspiracy theories from people like yourself, to put out a security exploit that has already been fixed by Apple? At least with the rogue employee, they could just be sadistic or a thrillseeker in nature.
"when they could have done far more mischief at less risk by inserting mischievous code that randomly corrupts stuff into one of Apple's product updates, and then claiming it was a programming error?"
Maybe they just couldn't do that due to a lack of skills or access to such applications. Maybe they felt there was too much risk involved. Or maybe they did put in some such code and it hasn't been found yet. Or maybe for some other reason. Who knows. Its still much more likely that an AV company.
"1) The code was only supplied to major AV companies, so we can rule out clamAV and those associated with it."
Well then since clamAV was the very first AV company I met, that sort of renders your entire point moot. Again. For something like the third time.
"2) An employee of any major AV company would have great difficulty altering and propagating the code for a piece of malware without managerial complicity. Such companies are accustomed to dealing with massive collections of very dangerous software that could do severe damage to their own IT infrastructure if one or more of them accidentally got onto a dev. machine or a piece of writable media (not to mention their reputations if company web-servers started spreading one or more infections to customers), so malware is kept in sealed systems that aren't connected to company networks, and which are located in locked rooms that have very strict access policies. They are aware of the fact that disgruntled or simply mischievous employees or ex-employees would welcome the opportunity to damage them by releasing some of the stuff sitting on their test machines into their many local networks and Internet servers, and therefore do everything in their power to ensure that this is as near to impossible as
And again, There is a world of a difference between a security researcher coming out with a proof of concept exploit (which is what they are paid to do, we want these guys to find the exploits before criminals do), and an anti-virus company making up a fake virus (a real one would not be possible if Macs were immune to viruses) in order to scare gullible customers into buying their product when they were really safe all along. And I don't buy your logic ruling out Finisterre and you left out a number of other suspects including any rougue employee/developer at Apple or an anti-virus company/community (clamAV is an open source product) and anyone any of the mentioned parties may have passed this information on to.
One of the biggest reasons Linux has had trouble taking off on the desktop market is that Word and friends are the de facto standard of the office world. And probably the biggest reason Mac OS has suddenly jumped in popularity is the fact that it now supports Office. Yes, MS would lose some customers, but Mac's reputation for being virus free would die off. Apple's strategy there wouldn't work much better than MS using this story as a reason to by Zunes instead of iPods.
There is a world of a difference between a security researcher coming out with a proof of concept exploit (which is what they are paid to do, we want these guys to find the exploits before criminals do), and an anti-virus company making up a fake virus in order to scare gullible customers into buying their product when they were really safe all along.
And for something like the fifth time, I am aware these were proof of concepts. As I stated in my very first post, yes, no serious attack has been made against Mac OS X. But that is not because it is impossible to find an exploit in the operating system.
I don't really care enough about this to get in a long discussion on the semantics of the terms 'virus', 'worm', and 'trojan horse', especially since in the end it really doesn't matter. I am fully aware these are merely proofs of concepts, but all of these exploits could easily have been used by something that would do serious damage. Remember, most early PC viruses (as well as many of the new ones) were proofs of concepts as well. As I said before, Mac usage is still too small for it to be a big target of serious malware, but that is a far cry from it being virus-free (or malware-free if it will avoid a lengthy semantics debate) as the previous poster claimed.
So you are saying OSX/Leap-A, Inqtana, etc., are all inventions of the evil antivirus companies who are trying to convince poor Mac lovers that their OS is vulernable? Thats a strange thing to do, especially for ClamAV since it is open source...
You don't need direct access to the Kernel to do damage. You really don't think a browser can launch a malicious program? Why don't you look up Exploit.OSX.Safari? Want to guess why it has the word "Safari" in its name? Its not because it shows you pictures of wild animals.
And I'm sick and tired of hearing this myth put out. Of course there are viruses for Mac OS X out there. All it takes is a few minutes on Google to confirm this. For instance OSX/Leap-A, Inqtana, Exploit.OSX.Safari, Exploit.OSX.ScriptEx, etc.
Here is a question. If it were not possible to write viruses for Mac OS X, why is there anti-virus software out there for it?
Peddling this "OS X is virus-free" myth is not only wrong, it is dangerous. How many people out there fail to set up their Mac with sufficient security because they have been hearing nothing but "only Windows has viruses"? Once someone does come around with a serious virus for OS X, how many people will be unguarded because they heard this line from people like you?
"Simply because MS can't do anything like this back to Apple."
Sure they can. Ship a version of MS Word with a virus embedded that targets Macs (yes they do exist, though the small market share makes them much less common). And if they are willing to bring back the Mac Internet Explorer, they can 'accidentally' leave open a security flaw that allows even more viruses in.
I think MS wins hands down as one of Apple's main selling points is that fewer viruses are written for Macs than for Windows. But the more stories that break that include the words "Apple" and "Virus" in the headline, fewer people will believe that and just stick with Windows (yes we can hold out hope that they will move to Linux, but I wouldn't bet on it).
"The researcher paper is clearly suggesting causation, not just correlation."
Yes, they are suggesting causation. Thats what studies generally do, suggest things. No where do they state that it is definitively the cause. No where in the /. summary does it state that this is the cause. In fact, I have yet to read a single comment here on slashdot that states that it is the cause. There is a huge difference between the headlines "TV Really Might Cause Autism" and "TV Really Does Cause Autism". The media (or at least /.) was responsible this time. Save your bickering for when someone starts to claim with certainity that TV causes autism.
And here is another one I want everyone to repeat:
'MIGHT' DOES NOT EQUAL 'DOES'!
'MIGHT' DOES NOT EQUAL 'DOES'!
'MIGHT' DOES NOT EQUAL 'DOES'!
The title of this article is "TV Really Might Cause Autism". Who the hell is reporting that it is the cause? Who is claiming that this statistically significant relationship is equal to a 'randomized double-blind study'? And how exactly do you propose one do a 'randomized double-blind study' on autism anyways? The problem isn't that studies like this that present statistical relationships make the news, it is that people for some reason fail to read words like "might", "may", or "possibly" and instead read a certainity which no one claimed existed.
" What if N Korea has some kind of weapons tech that isn't nukes, but still can make kiloton-scale explosions? It wouldn't break the nuke taboo, or any treaties. And it might not be held back from using these really powerful weapons by their baggage."
Well if it wasn't a nuke (tests do now show evidence of radiation, so it seems like it was, although a small one), it still wouldn't be too hard to produce an explosion of this magnitude. Just fill a mine with explosives. What would be hard would be to produce a weapon (which could be delivered to its target) that could produce such an explosion. The dangerous thing about nukes is not that they are the only things that can cause large explosions, it is those explosions can fit on relatively small bombs which can be delivered to enemy cities.
"As more tech is more available around the world to so many, it's ever more important not to isolate countries that can see destruction as their only way to get "status" or "power". Afghanistan, Iraq, N Korea, now Iran... the attraction of the benefits of inclusion in the global society is the only way to influence people into constructive behavior. Pretending we can shut them down by shutting them out is an arrogance now very obviously too lethal for us to afford any longer."
Um, we didn't "shut them out" from the rest of the world. North Korea didn't need any help from the rest of the world to isolate itself. Believe it or not but inclusion in the global economy is not an attractive incentive for every nation, especially not for governments with hard line Stalinist communism as their form of government, or a country that considers anything but radical Islam sinful.
BTW, Iran isn't all that isolated at all. Their leaders are a bit crazy, but their people are not that out of touch with the rest of the world.
First of all, if you were right, that would still not make me a bigot. You, on the other hand, with your mindless aversion to differing points of view on the open source vs commericial software debate, are fairly close.
Second, you getting screwed over a few times is far from proof that problems that are hard to fix are given low priorities. All it proves is that problems that are hard to fix are hard to fix (and you are not very good at negotiating software contracts). In fact, your getting a response indicates that they did prioritize it fairly high, just that after an initial investigation they determined that a full fix would cause more problems than it would solve. High priorities do not guarentee results.
MTV advertises in a completely different way than Google. A product that is sold via an MTV advertisement is intended to be sold in a store where a teenager can spend cash. Products sold via Google ads are generally sold over the net, which is almost always sold via credit card (which kids in high school and earlier usually don't have access to). Even if that advertisement convinces the kid to buy it later in a brick and mortar store, Google (with their new anti-click fraud changes) won't get paid.
I'm not saying that there is no potential for revenue with this demographic, just that it is hardly worth the high price Google is apperantly willing to spend on it.
If you are selling advertising, you need to be selling to a group that buys more than one product. Yes, there are a few things that are very popular with teenagers, but that is not the same as them being a great market for advertising.
Didn't I just see an article the other day arguing that teenagers steal music because they don't have credit cards which they can use to buy music online. Now I think that is a bit of an over-simplification, but teenagers really aren't the best market to court, especially if you are selling products online (which generally requires access to a credit card).
Just a clarification, does that Geek-A-Cycle really "power" the computer? Based on what I read, it sounds more like all it does is lock your computer if you start peddling, otherwise you would really be screwed if you had to get off for a minute and you lost all your data because the computer shut down.
I'm still not sure this would be very appropriate for an office environment, though. For starters, if your office was essentially turned into a gym, you might not be able to stand working there for a typical 8+ hour day with your overweight co-workers working up a sweat in the cubicle next door. Plus it can be difficult to concentrate on doing some work while working out. Try reading a book while working out at a gym. Its unlikely you will be able to get as far as you would if you were reading on a couch.
So I'm a bigot I don't drink the OSS Kool-Aid? Do you even know what a bigot is?
Commericial software developers are paid to work on the problems customers complain about the most. Thus they get prioritized higher than easy bugs that no one really cares about. Trust me, I work for a major software company (no, not Microsoft, one that is much more open source friendly). When a major customer starts escalating some issue, we are expected to drop everything else we are doing and work on that issue 24/7. Get a job yourself and maybe you'd learn that.
There are "middle class caucasian girls" who die tragic deaths or who go missing or who are raped, etc., all the time, only a small few make the national news circuit. Furthermore that is not at all limited to "middle class caucasian girls", there are numerous examples of crimes against minorities, boys/men, and poor people who make the news all the time (the Duke rape case is a prime example, yes she was a chick, but still meets two of the three).