I have a better idea. Don't store your company's proprietary information on gmail. And if you own such a company, promptly fire any employee who does so.
Seriously, I hope none of you who are actually doing this work at my company, or any company that handles my private information.
From what I can tell (this article isn't very good, the fact that they think that only in an ideal world would employers prohibit employees from putting confidential information on facebook worries me greatly), this is a type 1 XSS vulnerability, meaning it is not caused by javascript in the email itself being executed. Rather it would probably involve a request parameter which could include html being written directly to the page. This can cause problems if a user is tricked into clicking a link that embeds javascript in that parameter. In other words, even if the email itself were to be sandboxed, problems like this could still occur.
So the guy has different tastes than you in video games and that means he is trolling? Christ, just accept the fact that not everyone loves Halo the way you do.
"The point is, make the consumer, a.k.a. Joe Notageek feel comfortable that it is easy to use, that he can buy applications for it at Best Buy, Walmart, Target, or Amazon."
Why?
Seriously, why? What benefit do we get having more non-techies install Linux as their desktop operating system? For most Linux users, Linux is good enough as it is. And for most Windows/Mac users, their operating system is good enough as it is. And no, I am not trying to be condescending. What is wrong with computer geeks using a different operating system than the rest of the world? I'll be the first to admit, what I want in my computer is different from what my mom wants.
Microsoft has been making this mistake for years, and its finally starting to get to them. They have been trying to be one operating system for everyone. It hasn't hurt them so far since they have been the de-facto OS for most of the world. But recently they have been losing those who want an easy to use OS to Apple and those who want a powerful OS to Linux. However, Windows remains very powerful, and as such Linux can only succeed as a niche OS, it cannot compete directly with MS as a generalist.
"Convenient that you bring up that point again as so many have. Her intelligence comes into play here because as the definition of what you wrote: "...she was charged with perpetrating a hoax" her state of mind and intent are the central issue in this charge being valid or not. What else do you think that the jury will be debating if this goes to trial?"
She is a MIT engineering student. If her defense was that she was too dumb to figure that a circuit-board attached to a shirt and handful of play-dough might look suspicious in an airport, she had better either have a damn good lawyer, or an incredibly gullible jury. Any reasonable person will find the idea that this was a publicity stunt much, much more credible. The girl's own mother says she should have been more careful.
"Again, with only one side of the event being known you are assuming a pretty biased viewpoint that you know everything that happened. All I am pointing out here is that unless a person is no longer being given the opportunity to be "innocent until proven guilty" you are correct and she gets no say in what happened and what her punishment will be for doing what others said she did. God bless this great nation and the freedoms we fight to protect. Now you can have your opinion that the police are infallible and should never be accused of being as human and emotional as the rest of us lower creatures, that's a right that you have. The right to disregard her due process in the interest of ego. Snap judgements based on half informed opinions are so much more certain and forceful than thought out weighed and factually based decisions."
Oh drop the "I'm an objective arbiter and you are just making a biased knee jerk reaction" crap. Your opinions are just as biased as anyone else's, the fact that you are making a knee jerk reaction against authority instead of in support of it does not make you objective. You assume that anything the government is doing is automatically an assault on the rights of the people without stopping to think about the facts first. If anything, your position is much more close minded because you refuse to understand this. Give it up, you are not Perry Mason, you are just a wannabe wasting all his time with long winded responses on/. I mean seriously, an 1,100 rant with no substance at all in response to an article 3 days old? Christ, you need to get a life.
Yes, she was charged with perpetrating a hoax, as she should have (and no, they do not have to prove intent to charge someone it). She wore a device on her shirt which if she had any brains she would have known looked at the very least suspicious. When asked about it, she just walked away without explaining what it was she was wearing. There is no circular logic, she was lucky neither she nor anyone else was hurt. The security personal acted exactly as they should have; had they not we would not be talking about an arrest here, we would be talking about a fatal shooting. And despite the fact that you think you are lawyer because you hang out on/. arguing what you read off someone's blog, I can assure you they have a legal basis for the charges.
"So unless your space tourism program is designed merely to harvest a huge stream of revenue from public sources, there will be no point to consider these programs (especially their cost!) aside from some of the technologies used and knowledge picked up."
<sarcasm>Right, NASA could launch the shuttle for a couple grand, they just don't want to because they have this huge unlimited budget.</sarcasm>
Could NASA's programs be done more efficiently? Probably. Does that mean lunar missions could be done for as little as a few grand? No, thats just silly.
"As I see it, using LEO as a staging point, brings several advantages. First, it is a tourist destination in iteself. So the Earth to LEO and the orbital space station will pay for itself."
It will pay for itself? How is that? The space station will hand out free money to your company? Or do you mean you plan on doubling the cost of the trip (150 million for the trip to the space station, another 150 million for the trip to the moon) and thus guarantee that even the super rich would be unable to afford such a trip? Or do you mean you will only actually build the space station part and leave the lunar landing part of tour for the distant future (by which time you will be able to hitch a ride along the He-3 mining ships).
One other thing you have neglected to mention, how are you planning to fund the initial capital investment. Most banks won't give loans with 12 digits, especially since your business plan (appeal to the super duper rich) is very high risk and low reward.
Lunar space tourism is a long, long way away. You won't be visiting Lunar Park anytime soon.
Ok, so you are going to build (and I'm assuming maintain) your own private fleet of moon shuttles and space station (for it to dock with)? Well now your initial capital has grown to way more that a couple billion. The international space station is estimated to cost well over $100 billion (that around the combined total net worth of the world's three richest people). The US space shuttle program has a total cost of a bit more. Maybe in the upcoming centuries you will see something like that, but not in the near future (and not before He-3 becomes useful).
I think you are missing the point. Affordable (even for the world's very rich people) space tourism to the moon is much more hypothetical than fusion power.
Trust isn't the Wikipedia's biggest problem at all. Its biggest problem is that it is an encyclopedia that is treated by many as a primary or secondary source. When someone argues that the Wikipedia is not appropriate for citations in something like a research paper, they get flamed by people claiming its more accurate or has more information than traditional encyclopedias. But thats completely missing the point; no encyclopedia (or any other tertiary source) is an appropriate source for citations.
"The $100 million figure is for the first flight, that will come down once development is absorbed. You only need a handful of people to go at those kinds of figures before you can start reducing the price. I expect it can be done for cheaper than that anyway, just not as soon."
The development costs will easily be in the billions, so it will take much more than a handful. And the marginal costs involved in sending a rocket to the moon is still not chump change either. For the shuttle that ends up being around $60 million, and a moon trip is going to need something much more expensive. Also remember that this estimate was for a moon flyby, an actual landing is going to be much, much more.
"I expect to send 10 a week by using reusable craft - if you have to build a new craft every time it's never going to be affordable."
Like what, the space shuttle? You do realize that it is only able to get in to low Earth orbit, right? Its missions are usually at most only around 1000 - 2000 km above the Earth's surface. Technically it is still in the Earth's atmosphere, as you encounter some drag from gas in the exosphere. At perigee, the moon is 360 times that distance, at apogee 400 times. To get to the moon you need something very light, and that big fat shuttle just won't cut it, let alone the even larger craft you would need to take 10 people (plus the pilot(s)) on a trip.
"Once you have a permanent base on the moon, there is no reason not to send people there on a regular basis."
oh, I can think of a few reasons. First, getting your rocket off the planet isn't something you can do every week. Your craft will need servicing, weather conditions need to be perfect for the launch, hell NASA is lucky to get a launch every few months. And outside of terrestrial weather, you have to mind space weather. If a solar flare were to go off while your rocket was on its way (it just missed one of the Apollo missions), your pilot and your super-rich passengers would be cooked. And speaking of radiation, that Van Allen Belt is still out there lurking between the Earth and the Moon. It won't damage an occasional astronaut, but if your pilots are flying people through it every week, they are going to get sick.
Point is, space travel is much more difficult than Hollywood makes you think it is.
Yes, a lot of the price is in the initial capital, not in the marginal cost, and thus will fade out if (not when) they send enough people up to cover it. But it still will not be cheap enough for a mere millionaire.
A million bucks is not what it used to be, and the vast majority (much more than 99.9%) of those 9.5 million millionaires still would be unable to afford such a trip. Simply flying up to the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is well beyond the vacation budget of most people whose net worth just grazes the 1 million line (which accounts for most of the people officially classified as millionaires). One company (Space Adventures) that has been trying to develop space tourism to the moon (just a flyby, no landing) estimates that the cost will be around $100 million a seat, which isn't pocket change for the vast majority of millionaires (or even billionaires). I guess some of those with net worths with 11 digits might be able to afford such a trip, but at last count there were only 67 of them. And most of them are far too old to be able to go on such a trip. Assuming 10% of them can and want to make the trip and you send up 2 a year (one annual trip with a capsule that fits two plus a pilot, I have no idea how you are expecting to send up 10 every week), your company will run out of customers after only 3 years. Great way to make headlines, but not a very solid business plan.
Except while all their scientists were going through college over here, many of them probably got used to using miles and pounds. See, thats why we have the H1-B Visa program, it helps us sabotage other country's space programs.
"At this point, the only feasible industry is space tourism - there are no fusion reactors for the He-3, after all - but that might be enough."
I'm tempted to make a joke about whaling being a potential industry...
But in seriousness, considering the costs involved, moon tourism is probably further out than He-3 mining. Today the richest people in the world can occasionally cough up the dough to be sent up in orbit, how many would be able to afford a trip to the moon? Prospecting for potential He-3 mines could start much sooner, after all they could start investigating the possibilities well before the technology behind the fusion reactors gets perfected.
Well the world is a very different place than it was in the mid-1800s. Alaska is now much easier to access (hell back then it belonged to Russia), while the deep sea is in many ways still a mystery. I would be surprised if the costs were the same.
Foxit is also vulnerable to this, if you RTFA (including the comments made down in the blog). Its apparently not as bad there since you have to interact some with the document (it won't automatically just run), but I wouldn't advertise it as an alternative to prevent this vulnerability.
"If this exploit goes wild, it could cause some serious problems, as PDFs are usually automatically opened from web browsers and widely used and trusted by corporate users."
If you are using firefox, there is a simple way around this. Just install the PDF download add-on, its also helps avoid the problems involving the embedded PDF plugin crashing your browser.
No, you would want someone to stop her without anyone getting hurt so she could be detained until the figured out what exactly was going on. Which is exactly what happened.
"That's why the average joe shouldn't be assigned to airport security, they have all this expensive equipment to scan you and your stuff for fingernail clippers and shampoo but the training should be there as well to be able to distinguish between actual threats and innocuous tech."
Ok, lets assume we have replaced all the 'average joe' security guards with trained professionals who can instantly identify whether or not something is really a bomb by eye without closely examining the device or getting an explanation from the person carrying it (remember, when she was asked about the device, she just walked away). Now that our airport security is packed with clairvoyants, this type of thing wouldn't happen, right?
Wrong. There would still be plenty of 'average joe' type people in the airport, unless you require similar skills for passengers on an airplane. Even if the security guards can somehow tell that its a fake, what about everyone else in the terminal. This type of thing could cause a panic, in which someone really could be killed. The fact is, the only reason why this girl or someone else wasn't killed was because the trained security guards did not shoot her and were able to subdue the situation without incident.
"In this case the first person she talked to should have looked at the device and seen that it was A: in their opinion a threat, or B: in their opinion a possible min understanding waiting to happen."
Again, how? She walked away from them when asked about it, which in my mind qualifies as suspicious behavior.
"Any person able to make a bomb that looks like the one they think they were seeing could have rigged up a dead mans switch to go off if they were shot so what sense does it make to shoot a person that could have been carrying a bomb?"
Ok, I think you have officially seen too many action movies and 24 episodes. There are several things wrong with that statement.
First, I don't know why you are assuming they would have thought this carefully through, most violent people are not highly trained religious zealots. Most people (at least in this country) who make bomb threats or commit violent acts are actually just random crazy and/or violent people. I don't care how many terrorists Jack Bower (thats probably not how you spell his name, but I'm too lazy to look it up) has killed, they actually make up a minority of all criminals in our country and really are not the primary concern for law enforcement personnel.
Second, there are severe logistical issues with walking around all day carrying a dead man's switch. In fact, I doubt its even physically possible to keep it armed for a long length of time; assuming you use the standard Hollywood switch in which you hold down a lever which activates the bomb when it is let go, thats going to take some strength to keep it down for an extended period of time.
And third, a bomber detonating the bomb when shot by the security guard is probably a better option than her detonating it once she got in the crowded space that was their target.
And finally, your point is irrelevant to begin with because she was not shot. There was no knee jerk reaction. She was arrested without anyone getting hurt, which is a credit to the security guards at Logan International.
The really funny thing about all this is that Google is portraying these ads as new and innovative, when in reality they have been around for the past decade. I guess thats just part of the "Web 2.0" world, new labels are attached to old, dead technology and suddenly they are the best thing since sliced bread.
I remember 7 years ago there was this HP flash ad that was basically nothing but a banner and stars moving around in the background. Very simple concept, but there must have been an endless loop or something in it because it ran up the CPU usage on my brand new computer. And it was virtually everywhere, especially on Yahoo. That was around when I declared war on Flash and began investigating tools for removing them.
You think they fact that Google went with the de facto standard for RIAs instead of a new (so new its unlikely it would have been in existence when they started work on this), unproven, and still relatively uncommon MS technology is a slap in the face to Microsoft? What, did you just read an article about a technology most of us heard about months ago and think you could impress us by mentioning it in a post? Why isn't the fact that they aren't in JavaFX a slap to Sun? Or the fact that they aren't in GWT a slap to Google. Oh wait...
And something tells me that Google isn't exactly a.NET shop in the first place, so using Silverlight would have been a retarded move.
Oh well, I guess the fact that you like that Flash ads bring "colours" to pages and makes them "cooler" destroyed your credibility in the first place. Either that or you are really bad at selling sarcasm.
"I think that murdering a human being is evil. I don't think that an easily blockable flash ad is evil. If you do, you must be living a pretty nice life."
Well, by those standards, all the traditional bad companies like MS or SCO are not evil (at least as far as I know, Gates has never been accused of actually killing someone, though I'm sure there are those on/. who believe differently). Google gained a lot of publicity with their "Do no evil" slogan which implied a standard of evil that included companies like Microsoft. Now that they have apparently sold out, they can't go back and change that.
And whats easily blockable for a die-hard Firefox user with ad block and noscript installed isn't easily blockable for the rest of the population who think that "E" on their desktop is a link to the Internet.
"Do you think Google is a SEARCH ENGINE company?"
Yes. Well, search engine and advertising. Those are their two proven areas in their company. And it appears they are going completely against the spirit of what made the later successful, specifically having ads unobtrusive and relevant.
"You're simply insane."
Actually, there is a growing tide of advertising based sites that have been protesting adblock. They have yet to push for the government to prop up their failed business plan, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out as a possibility. And Google's entire business model is based on advertising, so they will be killed if adblockers start blocking their ads (which will be the case if these flash ads become common).
Slashdot Mirror
I have a better idea. Don't store your company's proprietary information on gmail. And if you own such a company, promptly fire any employee who does so.
Seriously, I hope none of you who are actually doing this work at my company, or any company that handles my private information.
From what I can tell (this article isn't very good, the fact that they think that only in an ideal world would employers prohibit employees from putting confidential information on facebook worries me greatly), this is a type 1 XSS vulnerability, meaning it is not caused by javascript in the email itself being executed. Rather it would probably involve a request parameter which could include html being written directly to the page. This can cause problems if a user is tricked into clicking a link that embeds javascript in that parameter. In other words, even if the email itself were to be sandboxed, problems like this could still occur.
So the guy has different tastes than you in video games and that means he is trolling? Christ, just accept the fact that not everyone loves Halo the way you do.
"The point is, make the consumer, a.k.a. Joe Notageek feel comfortable that it is easy to use, that he can buy applications for it at Best Buy, Walmart, Target, or Amazon."
Why?
Seriously, why? What benefit do we get having more non-techies install Linux as their desktop operating system? For most Linux users, Linux is good enough as it is. And for most Windows/Mac users, their operating system is good enough as it is. And no, I am not trying to be condescending. What is wrong with computer geeks using a different operating system than the rest of the world? I'll be the first to admit, what I want in my computer is different from what my mom wants.
Microsoft has been making this mistake for years, and its finally starting to get to them. They have been trying to be one operating system for everyone. It hasn't hurt them so far since they have been the de-facto OS for most of the world. But recently they have been losing those who want an easy to use OS to Apple and those who want a powerful OS to Linux. However, Windows remains very powerful, and as such Linux can only succeed as a niche OS, it cannot compete directly with MS as a generalist.
"Convenient that you bring up that point again as so many have. Her intelligence comes into play here because as the definition of what you wrote: "...she was charged with perpetrating a hoax" her state of mind and intent are the central issue in this charge being valid or not. What else do you think that the jury will be debating if this goes to trial?"
She is a MIT engineering student. If her defense was that she was too dumb to figure that a circuit-board attached to a shirt and handful of play-dough might look suspicious in an airport, she had better either have a damn good lawyer, or an incredibly gullible jury. Any reasonable person will find the idea that this was a publicity stunt much, much more credible. The girl's own mother says she should have been more careful.
"Again, with only one side of the event being known you are assuming a pretty biased viewpoint that you know everything that happened. All I am pointing out here is that unless a person is no longer being given the opportunity to be "innocent until proven guilty" you are correct and she gets no say in what happened and what her punishment will be for doing what others said she did. God bless this great nation and the freedoms we fight to protect. Now you can have your opinion that the police are infallible and should never be accused of being as human and emotional as the rest of us lower creatures, that's a right that you have. The right to disregard her due process in the interest of ego. Snap judgements based on half informed opinions are so much more certain and forceful than thought out weighed and factually based decisions."
Oh drop the "I'm an objective arbiter and you are just making a biased knee jerk reaction" crap. Your opinions are just as biased as anyone else's, the fact that you are making a knee jerk reaction against authority instead of in support of it does not make you objective. You assume that anything the government is doing is automatically an assault on the rights of the people without stopping to think about the facts first. If anything, your position is much more close minded because you refuse to understand this. Give it up, you are not Perry Mason, you are just a wannabe wasting all his time with long winded responses on /. I mean seriously, an 1,100 rant with no substance at all in response to an article 3 days old? Christ, you need to get a life.
"As we all know, either a space vehicle costs a couple grand or it costs a couple billion per year, even if you don't use it."
"Space tourism. If you're bring space tourists to the Moon, then you can bring them to LEO."
Great, your business plan is based around cliches...
"Now why are we going to be mining He3 again? Someone needs to make a viable fusion power plant first and nobody is close. "
Once again, we are much closer there than we are to making lunar landing tourism economically viable.
Yes, she was charged with perpetrating a hoax, as she should have (and no, they do not have to prove intent to charge someone it). She wore a device on her shirt which if she had any brains she would have known looked at the very least suspicious. When asked about it, she just walked away without explaining what it was she was wearing. There is no circular logic, she was lucky neither she nor anyone else was hurt. The security personal acted exactly as they should have; had they not we would not be talking about an arrest here, we would be talking about a fatal shooting. And despite the fact that you think you are lawyer because you hang out on /. arguing what you read off someone's blog, I can assure you they have a legal basis for the charges.
"So unless your space tourism program is designed merely to harvest a huge stream of revenue from public sources, there will be no point to consider these programs (especially their cost!) aside from some of the technologies used and knowledge picked up."
<sarcasm>Right, NASA could launch the shuttle for a couple grand, they just don't want to because they have this huge unlimited budget.</sarcasm>
Could NASA's programs be done more efficiently? Probably. Does that mean lunar missions could be done for as little as a few grand? No, thats just silly.
"As I see it, using LEO as a staging point, brings several advantages. First, it is a tourist destination in iteself. So the Earth to LEO and the orbital space station will pay for itself."
It will pay for itself? How is that? The space station will hand out free money to your company? Or do you mean you plan on doubling the cost of the trip (150 million for the trip to the space station, another 150 million for the trip to the moon) and thus guarantee that even the super rich would be unable to afford such a trip? Or do you mean you will only actually build the space station part and leave the lunar landing part of tour for the distant future (by which time you will be able to hitch a ride along the He-3 mining ships).
One other thing you have neglected to mention, how are you planning to fund the initial capital investment. Most banks won't give loans with 12 digits, especially since your business plan (appeal to the super duper rich) is very high risk and low reward.
Lunar space tourism is a long, long way away. You won't be visiting Lunar Park anytime soon.
Ok, so you are going to build (and I'm assuming maintain) your own private fleet of moon shuttles and space station (for it to dock with)? Well now your initial capital has grown to way more that a couple billion. The international space station is estimated to cost well over $100 billion (that around the combined total net worth of the world's three richest people). The US space shuttle program has a total cost of a bit more. Maybe in the upcoming centuries you will see something like that, but not in the near future (and not before He-3 becomes useful).
I think you are missing the point. Affordable (even for the world's very rich people) space tourism to the moon is much more hypothetical than fusion power.
Trust isn't the Wikipedia's biggest problem at all. Its biggest problem is that it is an encyclopedia that is treated by many as a primary or secondary source. When someone argues that the Wikipedia is not appropriate for citations in something like a research paper, they get flamed by people claiming its more accurate or has more information than traditional encyclopedias. But thats completely missing the point; no encyclopedia (or any other tertiary source) is an appropriate source for citations.
"The $100 million figure is for the first flight, that will come down once development is absorbed. You only need a handful of people to go at those kinds of figures before you can start reducing the price. I expect it can be done for cheaper than that anyway, just not as soon."
The development costs will easily be in the billions, so it will take much more than a handful. And the marginal costs involved in sending a rocket to the moon is still not chump change either. For the shuttle that ends up being around $60 million, and a moon trip is going to need something much more expensive. Also remember that this estimate was for a moon flyby, an actual landing is going to be much, much more.
"I expect to send 10 a week by using reusable craft - if you have to build a new craft every time it's never going to be affordable."
Like what, the space shuttle? You do realize that it is only able to get in to low Earth orbit, right? Its missions are usually at most only around 1000 - 2000 km above the Earth's surface. Technically it is still in the Earth's atmosphere, as you encounter some drag from gas in the exosphere. At perigee, the moon is 360 times that distance, at apogee 400 times. To get to the moon you need something very light, and that big fat shuttle just won't cut it, let alone the even larger craft you would need to take 10 people (plus the pilot(s)) on a trip.
"Once you have a permanent base on the moon, there is no reason not to send people there on a regular basis."
oh, I can think of a few reasons. First, getting your rocket off the planet isn't something you can do every week. Your craft will need servicing, weather conditions need to be perfect for the launch, hell NASA is lucky to get a launch every few months. And outside of terrestrial weather, you have to mind space weather. If a solar flare were to go off while your rocket was on its way (it just missed one of the Apollo missions), your pilot and your super-rich passengers would be cooked. And speaking of radiation, that Van Allen Belt is still out there lurking between the Earth and the Moon. It won't damage an occasional astronaut, but if your pilots are flying people through it every week, they are going to get sick.
Point is, space travel is much more difficult than Hollywood makes you think it is.
Yes, a lot of the price is in the initial capital, not in the marginal cost, and thus will fade out if (not when) they send enough people up to cover it. But it still will not be cheap enough for a mere millionaire.
A million bucks is not what it used to be, and the vast majority (much more than 99.9%) of those 9.5 million millionaires still would be unable to afford such a trip. Simply flying up to the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is well beyond the vacation budget of most people whose net worth just grazes the 1 million line (which accounts for most of the people officially classified as millionaires). One company (Space Adventures) that has been trying to develop space tourism to the moon (just a flyby, no landing) estimates that the cost will be around $100 million a seat, which isn't pocket change for the vast majority of millionaires (or even billionaires). I guess some of those with net worths with 11 digits might be able to afford such a trip, but at last count there were only 67 of them. And most of them are far too old to be able to go on such a trip. Assuming 10% of them can and want to make the trip and you send up 2 a year (one annual trip with a capsule that fits two plus a pilot, I have no idea how you are expecting to send up 10 every week), your company will run out of customers after only 3 years. Great way to make headlines, but not a very solid business plan.
Except while all their scientists were going through college over here, many of them probably got used to using miles and pounds. See, thats why we have the H1-B Visa program, it helps us sabotage other country's space programs.
"At this point, the only feasible industry is space tourism - there are no fusion reactors for the He-3, after all - but that might be enough."
I'm tempted to make a joke about whaling being a potential industry...
But in seriousness, considering the costs involved, moon tourism is probably further out than He-3 mining. Today the richest people in the world can occasionally cough up the dough to be sent up in orbit, how many would be able to afford a trip to the moon? Prospecting for potential He-3 mines could start much sooner, after all they could start investigating the possibilities well before the technology behind the fusion reactors gets perfected.
Well the world is a very different place than it was in the mid-1800s. Alaska is now much easier to access (hell back then it belonged to Russia), while the deep sea is in many ways still a mystery. I would be surprised if the costs were the same.
Foxit is also vulnerable to this, if you RTFA (including the comments made down in the blog). Its apparently not as bad there since you have to interact some with the document (it won't automatically just run), but I wouldn't advertise it as an alternative to prevent this vulnerability.
"If this exploit goes wild, it could cause some serious problems, as PDFs are usually automatically opened from web browsers and widely used and trusted by corporate users."
If you are using firefox, there is a simple way around this. Just install the PDF download add-on, its also helps avoid the problems involving the embedded PDF plugin crashing your browser.
Well yeah, it can't affect an operating system if no one is running it.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
No, you would want someone to stop her without anyone getting hurt so she could be detained until the figured out what exactly was going on. Which is exactly what happened.
"That's why the average joe shouldn't be assigned to airport security, they have all this expensive equipment to scan you and your stuff for fingernail clippers and shampoo but the training should be there as well to be able to distinguish between actual threats and innocuous tech."
Ok, lets assume we have replaced all the 'average joe' security guards with trained professionals who can instantly identify whether or not something is really a bomb by eye without closely examining the device or getting an explanation from the person carrying it (remember, when she was asked about the device, she just walked away). Now that our airport security is packed with clairvoyants, this type of thing wouldn't happen, right?
Wrong. There would still be plenty of 'average joe' type people in the airport, unless you require similar skills for passengers on an airplane. Even if the security guards can somehow tell that its a fake, what about everyone else in the terminal. This type of thing could cause a panic, in which someone really could be killed. The fact is, the only reason why this girl or someone else wasn't killed was because the trained security guards did not shoot her and were able to subdue the situation without incident.
"In this case the first person she talked to should have looked at the device and seen that it was A: in their opinion a threat, or B: in their opinion a possible min understanding waiting to happen."
Again, how? She walked away from them when asked about it, which in my mind qualifies as suspicious behavior.
"Any person able to make a bomb that looks like the one they think they were seeing could have rigged up a dead mans switch to go off if they were shot so what sense does it make to shoot a person that could have been carrying a bomb?"
Ok, I think you have officially seen too many action movies and 24 episodes. There are several things wrong with that statement.
"Sez who?"
People in the real world. Its a nice place, you should come sometime.
The really funny thing about all this is that Google is portraying these ads as new and innovative, when in reality they have been around for the past decade. I guess thats just part of the "Web 2.0" world, new labels are attached to old, dead technology and suddenly they are the best thing since sliced bread.
I remember 7 years ago there was this HP flash ad that was basically nothing but a banner and stars moving around in the background. Very simple concept, but there must have been an endless loop or something in it because it ran up the CPU usage on my brand new computer. And it was virtually everywhere, especially on Yahoo. That was around when I declared war on Flash and began investigating tools for removing them.
You think they fact that Google went with the de facto standard for RIAs instead of a new (so new its unlikely it would have been in existence when they started work on this), unproven, and still relatively uncommon MS technology is a slap in the face to Microsoft? What, did you just read an article about a technology most of us heard about months ago and think you could impress us by mentioning it in a post? Why isn't the fact that they aren't in JavaFX a slap to Sun? Or the fact that they aren't in GWT a slap to Google. Oh wait...
And something tells me that Google isn't exactly a .NET shop in the first place, so using Silverlight would have been a retarded move.
Oh well, I guess the fact that you like that Flash ads bring "colours" to pages and makes them "cooler" destroyed your credibility in the first place. Either that or you are really bad at selling sarcasm.
"I think that murdering a human being is evil. I don't think that an easily blockable flash ad is evil. If you do, you must be living a pretty nice life."
Well, by those standards, all the traditional bad companies like MS or SCO are not evil (at least as far as I know, Gates has never been accused of actually killing someone, though I'm sure there are those on /. who believe differently). Google gained a lot of publicity with their "Do no evil" slogan which implied a standard of evil that included companies like Microsoft. Now that they have apparently sold out, they can't go back and change that.
And whats easily blockable for a die-hard Firefox user with ad block and noscript installed isn't easily blockable for the rest of the population who think that "E" on their desktop is a link to the Internet.
"Do you think Google is a SEARCH ENGINE company?"
Yes. Well, search engine and advertising. Those are their two proven areas in their company. And it appears they are going completely against the spirit of what made the later successful, specifically having ads unobtrusive and relevant.
"You're simply insane."
Actually, there is a growing tide of advertising based sites that have been protesting adblock. They have yet to push for the government to prop up their failed business plan, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out as a possibility. And Google's entire business model is based on advertising, so they will be killed if adblockers start blocking their ads (which will be the case if these flash ads become common).