"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."——1 Corinthians 15:10
So you used to prosecute Christians, like apostle Paul?
You are Alexander Peter Kowalski. You wrote a couple of niche Windows freeware using Delphi, but you have a tendency to optimize code that doesn't benefit from optimization. You also like to post the same stuff over and over again to different people you run into online. You're an interesting character, but unfortunately I can't seem to find many positive things to say about you. Sorry.
Two points to be made, one towards the original article, and one towards you and open source in general.
First point, the bad guys know more about Windows vulnerabilities than you and Secunia, possibly even more than Microsoft if they already found a way into their corporate repository and stole the source code. After all, Google is fairly security conscious, and even they suffered a breach. You don't know if Microsoft is similarly breached because they wouldn't admit it. You and everyone else lose if you use Windows, both short run and long run. If anyone gains, it is either Microsoft in the short run, or the bad guys in the long run.
Second point, in the case of open sources (e.g. Linux, *BSD, parts of Mac OS X, which you unkindly call open sores for no conceivable reason except to provoke nuisance), everyone has an equal opportunity to audit the code to find bugs and discover vulnerabilities. If you have the skill and the will of charity, your effort can benefit everyone. Linux users may appear to suffer more bugs right now, but as bugs get fixed, everyone wins in the long run—even you if at some point you decide that Linux suits your needs—all but except the bad guys. It looks like there is enough people to improve Linux right now, so that when the rainy day comes, you'll get an umbrella despite your antagonist attitude all along.
If I were the bad guys, I'd steal Windows source code and build up a list of exploitable vulnerabilities in secret. Then on the day I want to cause cyber warfare, I would unleash one exploit every month since I know Microsoft can't release patch faster than a monthly cycle. If I were to continue devastating the economy for 2 years, which is a long time for an economy to suffer permanent damage, I only need 24 exploits, which is not that many.
I would normally defend the merits of Linux and free software, but I have to disagree with you on the importance of local DoS. A local DoS can become a remote DoS when combined with a network interfacing program that has exploitable buffer overflow.
Your assumption is that publicly acknowledged vulnerability count is an accurate indication of software quality, but this assumption is flawed. First, the software could have bug, but nobody knows about it because nobody looked for it nor observed it. You always have bugs that are unobserved. Even when the vendor has perfect knowledge of how many bugs they have in the software, their willingness to disclose it for public acknowledgement determines how many vulnerabilities are counted on Secunia.
Secunia shows bugs that are reported to the public, and by definition, all bugs in open source software are public information. The vulnerability count for Linux enjoys the most accurate disclosure. Mac OS X is partly closed source and partly open source. Even so, Apple voluntarily acknowledges the presence of vulnerabilities whenever it publishes software update. The unfixed vulnerabilities reported to the public all belong to the open sourced part of Mac OS X, which is public knowledge. If Apple decides to stop acknowledging vulnerabilities, at least the vulnerabilities in the open sourced part of Mac OS X is still public information, and they can be found through careful code review.
Last, we have Microsoft Windows, which is a closed source software, so nobody can see how the software is written except by reverse engineering the machine instructions, which violates the EULA. Any end user who purchased a version of Windows are automatically disqualified to find bugs, except when they stumble upon it by accident (software crash). Even so, the information you gain from a crash report is extremely limited. It doesn't even tell you how severe the bug is.
How then, do Windows vulnerabilities get published on Secunia? They're mostly found by independent third-party who stumbled upon a bug and decided to break the EULA to investigate the crash. Studying how the software works by reverse engineering is excruciating and time consuming. Unless you have an ulterior motive, you will not be doing that. If you are in the business to create 0-day exploit, you won't want to disclose the bug either.
So I argue that the reason Windows has lowest vulnerability count on Secunia is because of the near zero disclosure from Microsoft as well as third-parties, not because the software is well-written.
The good news is that, the new court ruling says the very minimum you have to do is to secure your WiFi with a password. And if you do that, you will not be liable for the illegal access made by a third-party, so you don't have to call the telco to suspend the DSL connection before you go on vacation.
Your country or state's firearm regulation law may make it illegal if you simply show a non-concealed firearm in the public. If your premise is not reasonably secured, it could be considered a public place. You may also be more directly charged with irresponsible handling of firearms. It's about the firearm, not the door. It's not about what you do with your doors. You are not even required to have a door. You may drop your firearms in a very deep well, sealed with a grill instead of a door, or surrounded by a fence. You may put your firearm in a block of solid concrete so nobody may use it ever again.
In this case, I think the ruling is reasonable. It only requires you to password protect your WiFi, but it doesn't require you to keep applying security updates. If the password protection requirement is met, it waives the subscriber's liability for the illegal content that a third-party transfers. This means if you can show your WiFi is password protected and the illegal access is done by a third-party, then you are not liable.
Back to firearm analogy, it's like saying if you keep your firearm inside four walls with a locked door, then you are not liable for criminals who steal your guns. However, if the law stops being more specific here, then it means your walls could be made with cardboard if you want. Since WEP has about the same security as cardboard, the law may want to specify at least WPA2 protection. It is reasonable to assume that if you want to secure firearms in a premise, then your walls and the door should be made of a certain kind of material that is relatively durable. If you practice due diligence, and your premise is still broken into and firearms stolen, then I think it's great that the law protects you from criminal liability.
Why don't we consider this plot instead, since it goes beyond year 2000, and it is unsmoothed? You can see that the temperature was going up drastically as we approach year 2000, and it lowered again. Now, the reason why I find global warming inconclusive is because the anomaly still lies well within the sample variance. You shouldn't apply temporal smoothing (i.e. five year average) because that would be cheating; it certainly reduces the sample variance significantly, making the anomaly seem more statistically significant than it is.
Even if I find the instrumental temperature record to be inconclusive, I have to say the disappearing polar ice cap is a more conclusive evidence to global warming. That's because state change of water (from solid to liquid and vice versa) causes heat exchange while the temperature stays the same. This is basic high school science. That's why you can't really find evidence of global warming from measuring temperature. Disappearing ice cap suggests that ocean water now stores much more heat. These ice caps serve as temperature buffer, and without them, the ocean temperature will start rising rapidly. Last year we've come close. If we go past the point where ice caps melt completely, we'll start seeing much more evident temperature increase, perhaps starting this year.
Now, we don't want to go to that point. It might already be too late.
If you are given a video stream from a security camera and the subject is moving slowly relative to the frame (e.g. license plate of a car taxiing towards a gate), you may have a chance to recover more spatial resolution using temporal information. The idea is that each pixel in the camera will "scan" slightly different parts of the subject in different frames, like how a flatbed scanner works. If you can accurately track the subject in different frames, then you can stitch together a scan of the interesting pixels to uncover subtle detail. Here is a commercial product that implements this feature.
MP4 and QuickTime MOV are the same container format, actually. You could have renamed the.MOV extension to.MP4 and the world will not notice a tree falling in the middle of a forest.
I don't think the original issue is about distraction. The air traffic controllers at Denver and later at Minneapolis tried to establish radio contact with the pilots, and other pilots around that area also tried to radio them. All sorts of speakers would have gone off. For all that the ground is concerned, the aircraft might have been hijacked, except it has not changed its cruising velocity. It's not about distraction. It's not about dozing off. Both pilots would need to fall in a very deep coma for that to happen, or they were simply missing from the cockpit.
If you look at the HTML code, the form fields that contain your credit card information was excluded from the form the web browser actually submits. The HTML code is essentially structured like this: [credit card issuer] [credit card number] [name on credit card] [expiration month] [expiration year] [start form] [submit button] [end form]. The form itself really only contains the submit button and nothing else. Hence, unless your browser is broken, none of the credit card information should be submitted anywhere.
However, the bit about Google Analytics javascript on the bottom of the HTML page could contain code to collect and transmit these form fields to somewhere else. The site could be hacked, and the hacker could alter the HTML code to submit the credit card information somewhere.
Ever heard of graph coloring? All you need to do is to ensure that no two related accounts have the same password. Usually, that means you use one password for e-mail, and another password for everything else. You can always use more unique passwords for an account that has sensitive information.
Apparently this happened to someone I know. She created a third-party web account (in her case, I think it's LinkedIn), entered her Gmail address, and used the same Gmail password for that account. I had to remind everyone I know that some websites *always* check to see if they can log into your e-mail with the password you supplied. Or it could be that the third-party account database was compromised. Either way, always use a different password. A lot of websites apparently store password in clear text, or in non-salted SHA1 or MD5 form so you can easily perform an inverse lookup.
After she changed her password, her account is clean again.
However, for unauthorized transfers involving only your debit card number (not the loss of the card), you are liable only for transfers that occur after 60 days following the mailing of your bank statement containing the unauthorized use and before you report the loss.
You don't need to check your balance every day, only that you still physically possess your plastics. If you make sure everyday before you go to bed (or do it first thing in the morning) that you still have your credit cards, you can just check your balance once a month.
That people used "mud-slinging and discrediting" in the past isn't an argument against the scientific method, nor is it an argument in favour of religion
My point is simple. You are confusing what people did in the past with what people are doing now (with regard to science and law), and even for the current standard, people aren't following your ideals consistently. Therefore, why should you be expecting religious people to do any better?
Furthermore, it is not the faith itself at fault. When people of faith disagree with each other, that's because people have confusion about their faith from time to time. It is perfectly normal. Similarly, I do not find flaw with scientific method, but I do find flaw with people who claim to apply scientific method but did so incompetently, or maliciously in a misleading way.
Person A makes the claim that Jesus resulted from a virgin birth, person B disagrees. How do they resolve the difference? I know how I'd advocate resolving it - through science, evidence, and reason
I will gladly leave you alone if you only want to believe in things that are scientifically proven. You just have to understand science has limitation. But given the way you hail science to be the complete truth, I'm not confident you understand that.
Throughout human history, there was a time when scientific disputes were not resolved by experiments but by mud-slinging and discrediting. There was a time when legal disputes were resolved by violence, brutality, and war. Civilization has advanced as people become more literate, as a result of religion-backed education. Don't forget that prominent universities all started as theology schools and have religious roots (University of Paris, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Boston University, etc.)
Certainly, still not all scientific disputes are resolved by experiments, and not all legal disputes are resolved by reason and evidence. Since you are talking about ideals here, I'll tell you that, religious disagreement, ideally, is resolved by a shared common love of God, and to love one another as brothers and sisters.
That minister at the funeral just said what he had to say because it was a trendy thing to say in order to appease you secular people. Who doesn't like euphemisms? He probably depends on giving euphemism for a living, that poor guy. You, on the other hand, are just waiting to see Christians fight each other and pull each other's teeth off. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's not going to happen.
I don't see why people having disagreement is going to put you off from learning about a subject. Scientists sometimes have disagreement about major theories (e.g. string theory), and this is just the way science can make progress. Does that prevent you from learning about science? Lawyers and even judges sometimes interpret legal code differently, but does that mean you should tear down the legal system? Not a chance.
If disagreement is your excuse, I don't think I want to waste my time with you.
Why don't you ask him personally what the Book of Revelation says about judgment day? You're putting word into his mouth and use this to contrast our difference. I don't think this is fair.
You take the blue pill, you go back to your normal life and live as you always believed. If you take the red pill, a Christian will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Contrary to what popular media would have you believe, you don't go to heaven right away after you die. Everyone is suspended when they die, and called back to life in the judgment day to be judged if they qualify to spend the eternity in the new world. The new world is a replacement of the imperfect world we live in now, and the old world would no longer exist. Disqualified people will be thrown into a lake of fire and sulfur.
To find out how to qualify, find a local Christian church near you and attend an Easter service today.
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So you used to prosecute Christians, like apostle Paul?
You are Alexander Peter Kowalski. You wrote a couple of niche Windows freeware using Delphi, but you have a tendency to optimize code that doesn't benefit from optimization. You also like to post the same stuff over and over again to different people you run into online. You're an interesting character, but unfortunately I can't seem to find many positive things to say about you. Sorry.
Two points to be made, one towards the original article, and one towards you and open source in general.
First point, the bad guys know more about Windows vulnerabilities than you and Secunia, possibly even more than Microsoft if they already found a way into their corporate repository and stole the source code. After all, Google is fairly security conscious, and even they suffered a breach. You don't know if Microsoft is similarly breached because they wouldn't admit it. You and everyone else lose if you use Windows, both short run and long run. If anyone gains, it is either Microsoft in the short run, or the bad guys in the long run.
Second point, in the case of open sources (e.g. Linux, *BSD, parts of Mac OS X, which you unkindly call open sores for no conceivable reason except to provoke nuisance), everyone has an equal opportunity to audit the code to find bugs and discover vulnerabilities. If you have the skill and the will of charity, your effort can benefit everyone. Linux users may appear to suffer more bugs right now, but as bugs get fixed, everyone wins in the long run—even you if at some point you decide that Linux suits your needs—all but except the bad guys. It looks like there is enough people to improve Linux right now, so that when the rainy day comes, you'll get an umbrella despite your antagonist attitude all along.
If I were the bad guys, I'd steal Windows source code and build up a list of exploitable vulnerabilities in secret. Then on the day I want to cause cyber warfare, I would unleash one exploit every month since I know Microsoft can't release patch faster than a monthly cycle. If I were to continue devastating the economy for 2 years, which is a long time for an economy to suffer permanent damage, I only need 24 exploits, which is not that many.
I would normally defend the merits of Linux and free software, but I have to disagree with you on the importance of local DoS. A local DoS can become a remote DoS when combined with a network interfacing program that has exploitable buffer overflow.
Your assumption is that publicly acknowledged vulnerability count is an accurate indication of software quality, but this assumption is flawed. First, the software could have bug, but nobody knows about it because nobody looked for it nor observed it. You always have bugs that are unobserved. Even when the vendor has perfect knowledge of how many bugs they have in the software, their willingness to disclose it for public acknowledgement determines how many vulnerabilities are counted on Secunia.
Secunia shows bugs that are reported to the public, and by definition, all bugs in open source software are public information. The vulnerability count for Linux enjoys the most accurate disclosure. Mac OS X is partly closed source and partly open source. Even so, Apple voluntarily acknowledges the presence of vulnerabilities whenever it publishes software update. The unfixed vulnerabilities reported to the public all belong to the open sourced part of Mac OS X, which is public knowledge. If Apple decides to stop acknowledging vulnerabilities, at least the vulnerabilities in the open sourced part of Mac OS X is still public information, and they can be found through careful code review.
Last, we have Microsoft Windows, which is a closed source software, so nobody can see how the software is written except by reverse engineering the machine instructions, which violates the EULA. Any end user who purchased a version of Windows are automatically disqualified to find bugs, except when they stumble upon it by accident (software crash). Even so, the information you gain from a crash report is extremely limited. It doesn't even tell you how severe the bug is.
How then, do Windows vulnerabilities get published on Secunia? They're mostly found by independent third-party who stumbled upon a bug and decided to break the EULA to investigate the crash. Studying how the software works by reverse engineering is excruciating and time consuming. Unless you have an ulterior motive, you will not be doing that. If you are in the business to create 0-day exploit, you won't want to disclose the bug either.
So I argue that the reason Windows has lowest vulnerability count on Secunia is because of the near zero disclosure from Microsoft as well as third-parties, not because the software is well-written.
The good news is that, the new court ruling says the very minimum you have to do is to secure your WiFi with a password. And if you do that, you will not be liable for the illegal access made by a third-party, so you don't have to call the telco to suspend the DSL connection before you go on vacation.
Your country or state's firearm regulation law may make it illegal if you simply show a non-concealed firearm in the public. If your premise is not reasonably secured, it could be considered a public place. You may also be more directly charged with irresponsible handling of firearms. It's about the firearm, not the door. It's not about what you do with your doors. You are not even required to have a door. You may drop your firearms in a very deep well, sealed with a grill instead of a door, or surrounded by a fence. You may put your firearm in a block of solid concrete so nobody may use it ever again.
In this case, I think the ruling is reasonable. It only requires you to password protect your WiFi, but it doesn't require you to keep applying security updates. If the password protection requirement is met, it waives the subscriber's liability for the illegal content that a third-party transfers. This means if you can show your WiFi is password protected and the illegal access is done by a third-party, then you are not liable.
Back to firearm analogy, it's like saying if you keep your firearm inside four walls with a locked door, then you are not liable for criminals who steal your guns. However, if the law stops being more specific here, then it means your walls could be made with cardboard if you want. Since WEP has about the same security as cardboard, the law may want to specify at least WPA2 protection. It is reasonable to assume that if you want to secure firearms in a premise, then your walls and the door should be made of a certain kind of material that is relatively durable. If you practice due diligence, and your premise is still broken into and firearms stolen, then I think it's great that the law protects you from criminal liability.
Why don't we consider this plot instead, since it goes beyond year 2000, and it is unsmoothed? You can see that the temperature was going up drastically as we approach year 2000, and it lowered again. Now, the reason why I find global warming inconclusive is because the anomaly still lies well within the sample variance. You shouldn't apply temporal smoothing (i.e. five year average) because that would be cheating; it certainly reduces the sample variance significantly, making the anomaly seem more statistically significant than it is.
Even if I find the instrumental temperature record to be inconclusive, I have to say the disappearing polar ice cap is a more conclusive evidence to global warming. That's because state change of water (from solid to liquid and vice versa) causes heat exchange while the temperature stays the same. This is basic high school science. That's why you can't really find evidence of global warming from measuring temperature. Disappearing ice cap suggests that ocean water now stores much more heat. These ice caps serve as temperature buffer, and without them, the ocean temperature will start rising rapidly. Last year we've come close. If we go past the point where ice caps melt completely, we'll start seeing much more evident temperature increase, perhaps starting this year.
Now, we don't want to go to that point. It might already be too late.
If you are given a video stream from a security camera and the subject is moving slowly relative to the frame (e.g. license plate of a car taxiing towards a gate), you may have a chance to recover more spatial resolution using temporal information. The idea is that each pixel in the camera will "scan" slightly different parts of the subject in different frames, like how a flatbed scanner works. If you can accurately track the subject in different frames, then you can stitch together a scan of the interesting pixels to uncover subtle detail. Here is a commercial product that implements this feature.
It's a slashumiliation, or humiliation by slashdotting.
MP4 and QuickTime MOV are the same container format, actually. You could have renamed the .MOV extension to .MP4 and the world will not notice a tree falling in the middle of a forest.
I don't think the original issue is about distraction. The air traffic controllers at Denver and later at Minneapolis tried to establish radio contact with the pilots, and other pilots around that area also tried to radio them. All sorts of speakers would have gone off. For all that the ground is concerned, the aircraft might have been hijacked, except it has not changed its cruising velocity. It's not about distraction. It's not about dozing off. Both pilots would need to fall in a very deep coma for that to happen, or they were simply missing from the cockpit.
If you look at the HTML code, the form fields that contain your credit card information was excluded from the form the web browser actually submits. The HTML code is essentially structured like this: [credit card issuer] [credit card number] [name on credit card] [expiration month] [expiration year] [start form] [submit button] [end form]. The form itself really only contains the submit button and nothing else. Hence, unless your browser is broken, none of the credit card information should be submitted anywhere.
However, the bit about Google Analytics javascript on the bottom of the HTML page could contain code to collect and transmit these form fields to somewhere else. The site could be hacked, and the hacker could alter the HTML code to submit the credit card information somewhere.
Ever heard of graph coloring? All you need to do is to ensure that no two related accounts have the same password. Usually, that means you use one password for e-mail, and another password for everything else. You can always use more unique passwords for an account that has sensitive information.
Apparently this happened to someone I know. She created a third-party web account (in her case, I think it's LinkedIn), entered her Gmail address, and used the same Gmail password for that account. I had to remind everyone I know that some websites *always* check to see if they can log into your e-mail with the password you supplied. Or it could be that the third-party account database was compromised. Either way, always use a different password. A lot of websites apparently store password in clear text, or in non-salted SHA1 or MD5 form so you can easily perform an inverse lookup.
After she changed her password, her account is clean again.
You don't need to check your balance every day, only that you still physically possess your plastics. If you make sure everyday before you go to bed (or do it first thing in the morning) that you still have your credit cards, you can just check your balance once a month.
I believe a system like that is supposed to be supported by a hypervisor, which will run just one operating system per core, e.g. Barrelfish.
My point is simple. You are confusing what people did in the past with what people are doing now (with regard to science and law), and even for the current standard, people aren't following your ideals consistently. Therefore, why should you be expecting religious people to do any better?
Furthermore, it is not the faith itself at fault. When people of faith disagree with each other, that's because people have confusion about their faith from time to time. It is perfectly normal. Similarly, I do not find flaw with scientific method, but I do find flaw with people who claim to apply scientific method but did so incompetently, or maliciously in a misleading way.
Science is incomplete. I'll give you an example outside of religious context. If you restrict crime conviction to only facts proven by science, you might end up not being able to prosecute many cases. Case in point, if one of the identical twins commits a crime, both are given immunity because DNA identification of forensics science cannot prove which one of the twins did it beyond reasonable doubt.
I will gladly leave you alone if you only want to believe in things that are scientifically proven. You just have to understand science has limitation. But given the way you hail science to be the complete truth, I'm not confident you understand that.
Throughout human history, there was a time when scientific disputes were not resolved by experiments but by mud-slinging and discrediting. There was a time when legal disputes were resolved by violence, brutality, and war. Civilization has advanced as people become more literate, as a result of religion-backed education. Don't forget that prominent universities all started as theology schools and have religious roots (University of Paris, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Boston University, etc.)
Certainly, still not all scientific disputes are resolved by experiments, and not all legal disputes are resolved by reason and evidence. Since you are talking about ideals here, I'll tell you that, religious disagreement, ideally, is resolved by a shared common love of God, and to love one another as brothers and sisters.
That minister at the funeral just said what he had to say because it was a trendy thing to say in order to appease you secular people. Who doesn't like euphemisms? He probably depends on giving euphemism for a living, that poor guy. You, on the other hand, are just waiting to see Christians fight each other and pull each other's teeth off. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's not going to happen.
I don't see why people having disagreement is going to put you off from learning about a subject. Scientists sometimes have disagreement about major theories (e.g. string theory), and this is just the way science can make progress. Does that prevent you from learning about science? Lawyers and even judges sometimes interpret legal code differently, but does that mean you should tear down the legal system? Not a chance.
If disagreement is your excuse, I don't think I want to waste my time with you.
I hope you feel warm and fuzzy about your blissful feline Gaia.
Sorry, "Revelation" chapter 20. I typed too quickly.
See Relevation chapter 20.
Why don't you ask him personally what the Book of Revelation says about judgment day? You're putting word into his mouth and use this to contrast our difference. I don't think this is fair.
You take the blue pill, you go back to your normal life and live as you always believed. If you take the red pill, a Christian will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Contrary to what popular media would have you believe, you don't go to heaven right away after you die. Everyone is suspended when they die, and called back to life in the judgment day to be judged if they qualify to spend the eternity in the new world. The new world is a replacement of the imperfect world we live in now, and the old world would no longer exist. Disqualified people will be thrown into a lake of fire and sulfur.
To find out how to qualify, find a local Christian church near you and attend an Easter service today.