When you have certain goals that you cannot or will not compromise, lots of "choices" aren't really choices at all but should be regarded as expedient measures instead.
Sure Microsoft released the code by choice. They had plenty of other options availible like completely rewriting the code in question, keeping it close, and taking the hit for the code already distributed. It wouldn't have been very expensive because they would have argued a mistake was made in distributing the code in the first place, it was corrected once realize, and assert their willingness to pay monetary damages for the erroneous use of the code in question.
The problem with that is that they would lose face. It would look too much like they were submitting not to copyright law, but to the GPL. If a silly game were made of it, then that scenario could be summarized as "GPL 1, Microsoft 0." That's about the level of discourse found in mass marketing. A marketing company that allows this is not a very good marketing company. Microsoft is a mediocre software company whose products can be described as "just good enough to sell to an undiscerning public." However, Microsoft is an excellent marketing company by any standard.
That's why they go ahead, bite the bullet, and release the relevant code as GPL software. Then they can play the PR game and talk about how cooperative and trustworthy they are, how they "did the right thing," etc. This way even a mistake turns into a win for them.
Of course you will be modded +5 Insightful, Interesting, and most importantly +5 Loved by the blind zealots. You post of bunch of "I knew it all along" tripe to support your hate and everyone loves you for it.
When someone takes a position and backs it up with solid reasoning, which is what I have tried to do, I have a hard time describing this as "blind zealotry." If you believe that is zealotry, be glad that you have not experienced the real thing. It's rather ugly.
Also, if you were familiar with my posting history you'd know that I have been saying things like this for quite some time (i.e. years). I am not suggesting that you should be familiar with my posting history, only that you should be aware of when you don't who you're dealing with or what he believes before you make assumptions about his motives.
I really did know this all along, not because I have special insight but because it's rather predictable. If I said that driving drunk increases your chances of having a car accident, is that "'I knew it all along' tripe" or common sense rooted in a simple understanding of cause-and-effect? If I say that drunk driving is a very, very bad idea, am I now an anti-alcohol zealot?
You can't stand the fact that Microsoft is doing the right thing so you will spin your "facts" any way you can to start the FUD wheel moving.
You are making an accusation. Specifically, you are accusing me of deceit. What evidence do you have to back that up, other than "I don't like what he said?" If I accused you of being a paid Microsoft shill or an astroturfer because you are supporting their actions, is that fair? Is it helpful, does it contribute anything to the discussion? No, it doesn't. Note, I am absolutely not accusing you of being a shill of any sort, I am just making a point.
If you think the motives for IBM, Oracle, Sun, or even RedHat for honoring and promoting the GPL are anything other than financial or self-interested you are seriously deluding yourself. This isn't a religion to those companies. It is a tool that they leverage to try and increase their dominance and profits in the technology sector. The fact that all those companies have closed, restrictive, or proprietary solutions should testify to the fact that they are concerned about their position and profits only. Microsoft is doing the same thing.
That one's easy to address. When IBM, Oracle, Sun, and RedHat do this, I don't see members of the community heralding a new era of openness and cooperation. When Microsoft does this, too many people want to believe that. Additionally, IBM, Oracle, Sun, and RedHat do not have monopolies to protect. That means they are more likely (though certainly not guaranteed) to view a degree of cooperation as a good thing that benefits everyone, including themselves.
If anything this should be good news for FOSS zealots everywhere because it shows that Microsoft now considers the GPL a viable route to see product success. It is a fairly huge paradigm shift. Unfortunately there will be people who are more concerned with Microsoft failing than they are with corporate giants moving in the right direction.
I'll believe that Microsoft considers GPL a viable route to successful products when the entirety of Windows, or Office, or Exchange is released as source code under the GPL. That's called "putting your money where your mouth is." As it stands now, Microsoft obviously believes that keeping those three cash cows closed-source is the best business decision they can make. That's their prerogative; the software is theirs to do with as they please. I have no problems with that, but I'm not going to call it a huge paradigm shift either. It could be the beginning of one, but that is nothing more than speculation and remains to be seen.
Additionally, I never expressed a concern with whether or not Microsoft f
I have to agree with much of what you've said, corporations aren't nessisarily opponents or evil.
I view them as amoral Machiavellian entities. If a car salesman is nice to you, it's only because he makes more sales that way.
It's evil but in a subtle way. It requires people to be other than genuine, to play a role and pretend that it is real. Nowhere in this do you find nobility or virtue or loving-kindness. It's evil not because it necessarily has to do harm, but because it regards many expressions of honesty or of good intentions as hinderances to its goals.
You have answered your own question. You just didn't know it.
Who cares *why* they adhered to the rules in this case? Who cares *what* their PR department says?
There's more spin here in a day than any other single point on the net I've ever encountered. The hypocrisy and double-standards are appalling.
The question of "why" is much more important than you seem to recognize. I'll make up a facetious example to illustrate.
Hypothetically, if somebody goes out and kills a random person, who was no threat to him, in cold blood, then that person is a murderer and quite rightly deserves to be punished. Hypothetically, if somebody is sleeping in his bed and is awakened by an armed intruder who breaks into his home and tries to kill him, and he finds a gun and shoots the intruder to death, this is not murder but self-defense and that person does not deserve to be punished.
A person was killed in both scenarios. The only thing different is the motive for the killing. Yet one is universally condemned as wrong, while the other is generally recognized as justifiable and necessary. So is this a hypocritical double-standard?
Only by deciding "who cares why?" have you made this into an illusory double-standard.
"Granted, they've been very creative with things like the MsPL but people see through those ruses pretty quickly."
Yes, total ruse. Except that the MSPL is an OSI-approved open source license. There's plenty to bash MS on, the MSPL isn't one of those things.
What I'm about to say is equally true, whether the MSPL is better or worse (according to any metric) than the GPL.
If Microsoft wanted an OSI-approved open source license, the shortest distance between point A and point B would be to go ahead and use the GPL. That's easier and less expensive than paying your legal team to draft an entirely new license.
What they wanted was to establish an incompatibility with the GPL. Since they are different licenses, it's quite unlikely that you can legally release software that includes both GPL code and MSPL code. So FOSS developers have to pick a license. If the MSPL becomes adopted, then what will inevitably happen next is easy enough to foresee: a fractured, divided FOSS community. This is an age-old strategy known as divide-and-conquer. It will be heralded by misguided people who welcome this new era of "openness."
Just to quickly describe a scenario: MSPL need not take over and fully replace the GPL for this strategy to be effective. It only needs to be a significant enough minority that the mixing of licenses interferes with one well-known project, or for two prominent members of the community to butt heads over it. Then Microsoft can portray the community as incoherent, marked by infighting, and otherwise "not professional" and not something businesses should take seriously.
...Sued by who? You see, the main problem with open source and people suing over the GPL is because a lot of the things that are GPL'd come from people like you and me. I know for a fact that if my code was taken by MS or any other large company the most I could probably do is write them a stern letter. Now granted, this was Novell in this case who could easily have sued MS, but for a simple programmer the fees and delays of a lawsuit against a huge company without assistance is nearly impossible.
I'm not a lawyer, nor do I know much about them. Having said that...
If I were in such a position, I would petition someone like the EFF for help. I don't think real help for something like that would be very hard to find.
What's hilarious is how many times I've been called a "tin-foil hatter" because I openly expected ulterior motives and other treachery from this company. There is nothing paranoid or cynical about actually having a working knowledge of the history of the entity in question. It's so simple, too:
Microsoft has interests which can be described as "selfish", in the sense that realizing those interests serves them and not you. Not unless you are employed by them or own stock in the company, anyway. Most successful corporations can be described this way; they are not your pal or your buddy. Microsoft is just notable because they are so dominant in their industry.
Microsoft is in this for the long haul. They use long-term strategy extensively, which is part of how they got to where they are today. I'll bold this one because it's important: the best long-term strategy is indistinguishable from "random" events that happen to "go your way." I think the failure to understand this about Microsoft is similar to the failure to understand this about government. Neither takes any deliberate action, however benign or however evil, unless it fits into this strategy of gaining money, control, PR, or all of the above. Ever. If Microsoft donates a million dollars to save the whales, you can bet it's because they ran the numbers and expect that the good PR will make them at least a million and one dollars back. They make mistakes, like this near-violation of the GPL, but as you see they try to turn those into good PR.
Some of the FOSS community needs to get over the fantasy that Microsoft is ever going to be an ally. Yes, it would be nice. Yes, it would probably improve both Windows and Open Source platforms. However, for that to happen Microsoft would have to be fully open and transparent, maybe not on the business side but definitely for technological matters. They would have to use nothing but fully open standards, with fully open reference implementations in widely available source code. They'd have to give up "embrace-and-extend" and a whole host of other strategies that got them where they are today. They are not voluntarily going to do that, for the same reason that politicians don't like to reduce the size and power of government.
Microsoft's decision to embrace the GPL was welcomed by many in the open source community, but their failure to honestly explain the reason behind the release will have squandered this opportunity to build trust, something which is sadly lacking in most people's dealings with Microsoft."
How many times does this have to happen before we can save everyone some time and just skip the fantasy that there was ever an opportunity to build trust? Or, do people have some inability to know who and what they are dealing with? To have a corporation act like it wants to be your friend in order to further its own interests is merely a nuisance. When people start to really believe that it's their friend though, that is something much worse. That is actually how an "opponent" which cannot be bought out could eventually (long-term) be taken down or rendered irrelevant. To Microsoft, FOSS is such an opponent.
Really I didn't intend for my response to be this lenghty. It just turned out that way.
I don't think you wasted your time as I quite agree that each party (server & content reader) has a right to only provide/accept according to their wishes. That is the defining characteristic of the Internet, not just the web. A great example is NNTP which is currently under fire as well since the puditocracy and politickians just don't get it.
True. The whole emotional outrage that anyone would block ads is easy to summarize. Webmaster goes out of his way to knowingly place content onto a public network where it is freely accessible by anyone. Said Webmaster does not use a paywall, nor does he deny content to users who don't load the ads. When said content is freely accessed, Webmaster then says, in effect, "now you owe me something, so view my ads!" and feels cheated if they aren't viewed. He wants compensation for a thing at the same time that he is giving it away freely. He also wants me to honor an agreement in which I did not participate. This is the Webmaster's fault.
And that's alright; while I think it's silly, I also believe that website owners should be free to do this if they want to. I just refuse to be shamed or otherwise pressured into going along with someone else's faulty expectation. The need to try that on me is the red-flag indicator of the entitlement mentality I mentioned. It's the reason why I responded as I did, as most people who do this don't seem to realize that it's manipulative.
This is especially true when said pressure comes from people who have invested in similarly faulty expectations of their own. Most people don't seem to use ad blockers and they are not standard features of most browsers. In other words, most users have chosen, not actively but by default, to give up their potential control, allowing the remote site full control of page layout. For that reason, many ad-supported public sites have been successful. They should be thankful that mitigating factors can help flawed premises to produce desirable conclusions instead of concerning themselves with how I configure my browser. Besides, they can put that effort towards reconfiguring their servers.
More to the point, as you've noticed, there is a definite lack of capability in the realm of critical thinking in the US, and it seems to be spreading. It wasn't even a requirement in our state's education system here unless you went to college and even then, judging from the papers turned in, the students still didn't get it. Not good. The ability to think critically is fundamental to being more than just another industrial society wage-slave.
I'm glad whenever I see that someone understands the severity and long-term outcome of this problem. That understanding is one of the single most effective things you can personally do about it. I imagine that if you didn't see the problem, the tone of my previous post wouldn't make sense and either that post or this one would seem like too much of a rant (eh, too late).
I think "wage-slave" is a somewhat mild term. I'd go so far as to say "automaton forever deprived of the ability to live his own life." I've heard more cynical folks say that you can't miss something if you have never known what it was like, yet I've never met a person who could be described that way who was also happy. In a sense, the problem is hidden in plain sight. It's so widespread and so common that it is often accepted as normal.
Furthermore, the Constitution was predicated on the notion that the voters would have that capability as well. I can hear a collective "whoops!" from the founding fathers, although I wouldn't be surprised that the political class likes the current status-quo.
There's a bit more to it than that. If "political class" includes "19th century industrial tycoons" and their descendants, and there's no reason why it shoul
If an invention cannot easily be reverse-engineered, then it does not need the protection of a patent. QED.
I'm not nearly so quick to pronounce quod erat demonstrandum on this one.
"Cannot easily be reverse-engineered" is not the same thing as "utterly hopelessly impossible to reverse-engineer." You can have many devices or inventions where the reverse-engineering, however difficult, is a single one-time event. One person may go to great lengths to perform this reverse-engineering, after which many other people can cheaply mass-produce the invention without ever paying a dime to the original inventor. Is not this a situation that the patent system was also intended to address?
It seems to me that the ease or difficulty of reverse-engineering has nothing to do with the purpose of a patent and should not be confused with the "non-obvious" requirement for patentability. To me the "non-obvious" part just means "if you are going to patent this invention it has to actually be inventive." As evidence, note that a patent application is supposed to provide/publish enough information to build or replicate the device or invention in question.
Whereas entitlement mentality regarding access to other people's content is fair game, right?
Way to entirely miss the fact that I addressed this point. Really now, reading comprehension is important. You may laugh at me for saying that, but really it seems to be on the decline. I often feel on online forums, including those which are far less trollish than this one, that there are two versions of my posts: the one I actually wrote that says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say, and the fictitious one to which someone else is responding. Considering the quality of most public education, you were probably shortchanged in this department unless you enjoy reading on your own and can see it as a skill to be honed like any other. Unfortunately, few people are so actively and deliberately involved in their own advancement. If reading comprehension does not come easily for you, be assured that any reasonable effort necessary to achieve it is worthwhile.
So, I did address the point. If you think I addressed this point in a faulty manner, feel free to explain where I erred and how my reasoning may be corrected. This is a concept known as constructive criticism, and its effects are twofold. First, it demonstrates that you really do have a superior point of view on which your objection is founded and that you are not just bitching, which is frankly what this looks like. Second, it shows why my view is inferior and needs to be abandoned and replaced by a better one, possibly yours.
Pretending like I have not addressed this point, as you have done, only reveals a glaring weakness on your part. Such weaknesses are not found in people who have a solid foundation for their position. It's a shame to see such weakness from a person who could choose something better (that's you!).
Should you decide that you have the decency and the fortitude to engage me on this subject, I'll help you out by revealing a premise behind my reasoning: I would never put content on the WWW, with no passwords or other restrictions, unless I wanted that content to be publically accessible by anyone who wants to download and view all or part of it in any way they please. To think otherwise is a total failure to understand the nature of the Internet. If the nature of the Internet doesn't suit me, including the freedom of users to control which content they download and how it is displayed, then it's my responsibility to find a medium which does suit me and publish my content there. It's quite simple.
The mentality you just displayed is trivially deconstructed, as I have partially done here. It does concern me that individuals don't seem to put any effort into similarly evaluating their own ideas. You're probably just a troll, and don't think for a moment that this hasn't crossed my mind. I probably just wasted my time with you, and that's alright. I like the chance, however slim, that maybe you aren't and maybe I haven't. My bet is that I'll never see your response to this, but occasionally people do surprise me.
I've disabled it today and some sites are now really much faster than usually.
I guess I really need to invest into configuring noscript.
NoScript + Adblock Plus + Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper + the Easylist and EasyElement subscriptions for ABP = the Web as it was meant to be.
Advertising business models and entitlement mentalities (regarding ad revenue) be damned. If a Webmaster somewhere does not like that my computer is my property and will load only what I want it to load up, I recognize that their site is their property and I celebrate their right to deny me access to their site so I can find another.
Well, at this stage, no evidence Firefox is defective by design, or that this bug is a result of a design defect.
And thus the problem of slashdot tagging. The tags show up on articles as if they were part of its text or an officially sanctioned categorization of the article.
And yet the tags require no justification, and users who don't understand what some of the tags are normally used for often apply them liberally to articles that have nothing to do with the marking.
Take a look at some of the articles that get tagged DRM: "Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents", "Massive VMware Bug Shuts Systems Down"
Last I checked, DRM wasn't a general word for all restrictive computer systems. Only computer systems that manage rights to digital content (music and video) by encrypting, preventing copying, and (sometimes) phoning home.
The result? The tags end up being regarded as "just someone's opinion" like all other content (both online and in major media) should be regarded until demonstrated to have a basis in fact. So I would call this a self-correcting system.
Offtopic: I wonder if it's unusual that I have never, ever, not once, added a tag and then reloaded the Slashdot page and seen my tag in place. This has been the case for both commonly-occurring tags and unusual "more creative" tags.
The bug is in the Just-in-Time compiler inside of SpiderMonkey (TraceMonkey). This is brand new code as of 3.5.x. Of course there will be a ton of bugs found in it (just like the ton of bugs that have cropped up in SquirrelFish and have been subsequently patched).
I have to wonder why it's taken so long for anybody's security team to look at this code though. You'd think they'd look at this code before release and not after.
I think the point is that there are auditing tools which can automatically detect this kind of buffer overflow in source code. There are also libraries which offer versions of various functions that automatically include bounds checking that can help to prevent this kind of buffer overflow. You'd think that basic fuzz testing might find it as well. So far as I know, no such tools were used. New code or old code should not meaningfully change this scenario because new code need not be released and version numbers incremented until such tools have been used.
I'm more ignorant about software development than I would like to be, so I am hoping anyone can explain why the Mozilla team did not use such tools. I acknowledge there may be some reason unknown to me that explains why doing so would be impractical or unrealistic. However, I think something like this is what the GP had in mind with his "fix once, fix forever" comment.
Apparently some people missed the Defective by Design campaign and are completely unaware that it relates to DRM, not to arbitrary bugs.
The primary difference being that bugs like this Firefox flaw are accidental and unintentional, whereas DRM is quite deliberate hence the "defective by design" nomenclature. That's such a sharp contrast, it's reasonable to assume that someone who fails to notice it is either speaking of what they know nothing about or purposely trolling. In other words, "highly advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
There were two ideas mentioned by GP, which were the "defective by design" label and the security reputation of IE. It's useful to know where those perceptions come from whether or not you actually agree with them. I'll make a very simplified (and therefore imperfect) summary of what I perceive as their bases.
The only reason why I see such a concept as "defective by design" applied to IE is a vague one. IE (and Microsoft in general) has something of a history of implementing ideas that were predictably unsound, the most notorious of which is probably ActiveX. That's mostly because ideas which are computationally sound are often orthogonal to ideas which are most easily marketed. True to the nature of a corporation, whenever these two are in conflict, the marketing concerns will win. This is where that perception of closed-source (that is, commercial) software that the GP mentioned comes from.
ActiveX is running untrusted code from a hostile network with no sandboxing and with the full privileges of the user running the browser. Before a single line of code is ever written to implement this, you can predict in advance that this is an unsound idea which invites trouble. Microsoft wrote the code and implemented the idea anyway. IMO that was a deliberate business decision because they felt the marketing and promotion of $SHINY_FEATURE would gain them more than they would lose from the PR problems of security issues. Because of how ignorant the general public tends to be about computer security, such decision-making has been largely successful. In other words, the people at Microsoft are not a bunch of idiots who didn't know what they were dealing with. They knew and they made their decision. Still, it's better to call that "faulty design" and "poor priorities" than to hijack a very specific term like "defective by design."
Whores only exist to lure married men from their wives, right? Kill 'em all, right? Just like ActiveX controls, whores have a purpose... not necessarily in line with their intended nature. What should we do with them?
I think I see the part you're missing that would explain to you why some (including me) think ActiveX is fundamentally flawed.
In terms of security, I think we can agree that the Internet including the Web is rightly regarded as a hostile network. We can also probably agree that good security is done in overlapping layers in order to minimize single points of failure. That's important for many reasons, not the least of which is that a glaring, single point of failure increases both the severity of exploits and the ease with which they may be carried out.
The problem with ActiveX is the lack of sandboxing. A control has the full privileges of the user running the browser. With XP machines that user tends to be an Administrator, compounding the problem. Trusting this environment to reliably and securely handle remote code on a hostile network is just begging for trouble. The idea is fundamentally flawed and tinkering with it may mitigate the problem but will not fix it. It needs to be abandoned and replaced.
Java is more suitable for this kind of task. That is, the needed sandboxing capabilities are an integral part of its design, which is not the case with the Windows DLL-type ActiveX controls. If you really want a Microsoft solution, Silverlight can run applications (both remotely and downloaded for local off-line use) and has its own sandbox. Even Flash apps are a better idea than ActiveX, which is saying something considering Flash's security history.
A solution with a good sandbox combined with running as an unprivileged user is a hell of an improvement. This means that an attacker who wants to own the machine has multiple hurdles. The more this is the case, the more difficult it is for an automated script to pull off a successful exploit. The fact that the malware is fully automated and can rapidly spread is part of why there are so many botnets and other problems. Think of it as something like a captcha: the more a successful exploit requires a determined human being, the fewer massive botnets there are. Fewer botnets mean less spam and fewer DDoS attacks and the like. Nowhere does the low-hanging fruit of ActiveX (and similarly flawed ideas) fit into that picture.
Why dont web hosts scan for hosted vulnerabilities? I imagine a nightly clamav scan by web hosts would make all the difference in cases like these where there is no patch yet but there is an web-based exploit. Heck, some users dont even patch, as was shown by Conficker, which was patched in October and spread like wildfire in January.
Perhaps they realize that doing so would be damage control, not security? That's if you're using a malware scanner like clamav.
If they were to scan with something, there are more useful ways. They could scan their hosted systems with something like nessus. That would stand a chance of finding vulnerabilities and identifying what is exploitable so that they may be fixed. That actually would improve security, which is mostly prevention. Then there would be fewer opportunities for malware to infect the machines in the first place.
I make way more than that and yet I use just as much road, public libraries, etc as anyone else. It's fucked up that just because I got a break that I have to give away a third of my income. I paid $140,000 in taxes. That's money I just gave away and I will never see again. I still don't have health insurance either. Just because I'm successful now doesn't mean my problems have all gone away. At any moment I could be on my ass with no income. Yet the government taxes me like it's a sure thing. That's fucked up and something you will never understand until you get where I'm at.
Here's what I hear : "I'm rich whaaaa whaaa I could become poor again at any time so don't take more money in proportion to what I earn I need every last cent of what I earn cause what do you know maybe one day I won't earn anything whaaaa you shouldn't have to pay more than just what you use in taxes if you're a whiny ass egoistical cocksucker like me"
If you paid $140,000 in taxes that means that you earn enough to get yourself a nice 1960s Cadillac and fill it with first choice hookers. Quit whining, do that and shut the fuck up. Fagget.
That kind of overt jealousy and overall childishness that you just displayed is actually one of the stronger arguments against your position.
Don't pretend to know what I believe because I say that, either. That would be the easy way, the low-hanging fruit, the coward's way out. What I just told you is true whether or not I think progressive taxation is a good idea. What I think about that matter and the reasoning with which I would support my view is unfortunately wasted on this sort of vitriol.
How is this modded Troll? It's a correct statement of U.K. law and relevant to the article.
What, does using the word "dipshit" automatically make something a troll post? Honestly, come on Slashdot..
That depends on whether the moderator agrees with you. If they do, then it's alright. If they don't, they are highly offended by your use of foul language. That level of maturity, dispassionate review, and strong character is amazing is it not?
Fuck it, I get tired of seeing that too and I have karma to burn. The difference between a good mod and a bad mod is that the good ones focus on promoting desirable posts. If they want to mod me down for saying this then they waste their points which is fine by me.
The paintings may be in the public domain, but the photographs are copyright to the photographer.
So good luck to the dipshit user who uploaded them.
I don't know if this is viable in London as I don't live there. But if it's remotely an option, then there are times when jury nullification is called for.
A good explanation of the concept can be found here.
The only issue I have with that view is the fact that most IT types aren't trying to educate people about link security, or even telling them what a browser is. That vast ocean of ignorance reflects poorly upon US not them!
I will tell you why I reject that viewpoint.
I did not wait around, passively, until someone decided that they were going to educate me. I educated myself, actively, knowing that I am better able to accommodate how I learn and how I understand things better than some stranger. The information was out there, it was freely available, there was no secrecy and no hidden nature to it, so I looked things up, I read a lot, I used trial and error, and otherwise I did what I had to do. This was not some single one-time event, but more of a gradual process that has helped to strenghten my skills over time. This is not just computing. I feel that way about anything I do on any sort of regular basis. Each time, I want to be just a little more proficient with it than the last time I did it. If I don't meet that standard, that's no big deal, I see what mistake(s) I made and I learn from them, but that's the goal and it is that towards which I strive.
So, logically there are two possible answers to what you are saying. Only one of them can be true. Either I am something special and have made some supreme accomplishment that is completely inaccessible to most of the rest of the population, or, I haven't done anything that any other literate adult could not also do. Lest there be any doubt, I will say up-front that I don't believe I am something special. I really believe that if half the effort that is spent towards making excuses and justifications for ignorance were instead put towards remedying that ignorance, that the general level of competency would absolutely skyrocket. Every last thing I see only confirms that this is true.
So, to me it's apparent that saying "well WE should have educated THEM" is nothing more than a quaint way of agreeing with those "average" users. In what fashion does it agree with them? It shares their denial, their belief that they are just helpless victims who have no hope of taking things into their own hands and deciding for themselves what their experience is going to be. It's the leaf-in-the-wind again, and that leaf-in-the-wind status is always voluntary. There's a huge, staggering difference between "blaming the victim" and realizing that the victim is not really a victim but has actively chosen the experience that he or she is having.
This article contains a lot of FUD. If you're banking or anything important money-wise you're probably using SSL with a signed certificate, even if you're a Joe Sixpack. If I'm doing anything work related I'm on a VPN. You should never, ever, trust that your connection through the "internets" is secure anyway. Wireless access doesn't change anything about that.
This article is just trying to gain attention by using fear.
There really is a tremendous amount of ignorance concerning the most basic knowledge of computers and networks. Of course, you can decide that if you are going to use a complex tool for important tasks, that it is wise to learn what you can about that tool so that you use it effectively. That you bear some responsibility is welcome news, for it means you have some control over whether you have a good experience. In fact you can be curious about how it works and enjoy discovering and learning new things. The mark of such people is that over time, they gradually get better and better as they gain experience and their knowledge expands.
You can also insist that you have a God-given right to perform complex tasks with little or no understanding. You can then resent anyone who tells you that you bear at least some responsibility for this decision and for any undesirable events that result from it. You can decide that while lesser men may have to read up on a thing or learn about it, you are too special for that and will magically do everything that they do while investing no such effort. You can memorize a monotonous and robotic list of steps instead of developing any real understanding of what you are doing and why, causing interface changes to lead to "retraining costs." The mark of such people is that they are "permanent noobs" who can somehow manage to use a device for years and know nothing more about it than when they first started.
The folks in that second category seem proud of it. They seem to view understanding the tools they use the same way the aristocracy of old felt about "fraternizing with the help." I am not glad when they encounter misfortune, but I don't consider them to be victims either.
What about if the hotspot doesn't actually give the user the real page, but instead phishing page? I doubt many normal users notice that HTTPS isn't on. Or like in the above The Real Hustle video, "for $1 you can get one hour of surfing time, just enter your credit card details" and you probably can guess what happens from there.
I don't doubt that the people who run such scams are doing something evil but this irrational insistence people have of using what they do not understand and then acting shocked if something goes wrong is in need of some serious "Darwinism" or "artificial selection" or whatever you like to call it. The basics of how to protect yourself are not that difficult to understand, the information is out there, and any literate adult can educate himself as easily as searching via Google. If putting a price on that kind of rampant ignorance is the only way to give it an incentive to be remedied, then so be it.
It shouldn't be that way. People should care enough to guard the things that are important to them, like the kinds of personal information phishing pages could harvest. The reasons why they don't seem to be rooted in apathy combined with a strong feeling that basic competency (which is a far cry from expertise) is some kind of horrible undue burden that is completely unreasonable to expect of them. There is a great deal of arrogance in the belief that safeguarding things that matter to you should always the responsibility of someone else, be it Microsoft or the airport or whomever. When that kind of hubris leads to problems, what legitimate complaint do they have? Why are they so often portrayed as helpless victims instead of held up as examples of negligence, of what not to do?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that is that they would lose face. It would look too much like they were submitting not to copyright law, but to the GPL. If a silly game were made of it, then that scenario could be summarized as "GPL 1, Microsoft 0." That's about the level of discourse found in mass marketing. A marketing company that allows this is not a very good marketing company. Microsoft is a mediocre software company whose products can be described as "just good enough to sell to an undiscerning public." However, Microsoft is an excellent marketing company by any standard.
That's why they go ahead, bite the bullet, and release the relevant code as GPL software. Then they can play the PR game and talk about how cooperative and trustworthy they are, how they "did the right thing," etc. This way even a mistake turns into a win for them.
When someone takes a position and backs it up with solid reasoning, which is what I have tried to do, I have a hard time describing this as "blind zealotry." If you believe that is zealotry, be glad that you have not experienced the real thing. It's rather ugly.
Also, if you were familiar with my posting history you'd know that I have been saying things like this for quite some time (i.e. years). I am not suggesting that you should be familiar with my posting history, only that you should be aware of when you don't who you're dealing with or what he believes before you make assumptions about his motives.
I really did know this all along, not because I have special insight but because it's rather predictable. If I said that driving drunk increases your chances of having a car accident, is that "'I knew it all along' tripe" or common sense rooted in a simple understanding of cause-and-effect? If I say that drunk driving is a very, very bad idea, am I now an anti-alcohol zealot?
You are making an accusation. Specifically, you are accusing me of deceit. What evidence do you have to back that up, other than "I don't like what he said?" If I accused you of being a paid Microsoft shill or an astroturfer because you are supporting their actions, is that fair? Is it helpful, does it contribute anything to the discussion? No, it doesn't. Note, I am absolutely not accusing you of being a shill of any sort, I am just making a point.
That one's easy to address. When IBM, Oracle, Sun, and RedHat do this, I don't see members of the community heralding a new era of openness and cooperation. When Microsoft does this, too many people want to believe that. Additionally, IBM, Oracle, Sun, and RedHat do not have monopolies to protect. That means they are more likely (though certainly not guaranteed) to view a degree of cooperation as a good thing that benefits everyone, including themselves.
I'll believe that Microsoft considers GPL a viable route to successful products when the entirety of Windows, or Office, or Exchange is released as source code under the GPL. That's called "putting your money where your mouth is." As it stands now, Microsoft obviously believes that keeping those three cash cows closed-source is the best business decision they can make. That's their prerogative; the software is theirs to do with as they please. I have no problems with that, but I'm not going to call it a huge paradigm shift either. It could be the beginning of one, but that is nothing more than speculation and remains to be seen.
Additionally, I never expressed a concern with whether or not Microsoft f
I view them as amoral Machiavellian entities. If a car salesman is nice to you, it's only because he makes more sales that way.
It's evil but in a subtle way. It requires people to be other than genuine, to play a role and pretend that it is real. Nowhere in this do you find nobility or virtue or loving-kindness. It's evil not because it necessarily has to do harm, but because it regards many expressions of honesty or of good intentions as hinderances to its goals.
The question of "why" is much more important than you seem to recognize. I'll make up a facetious example to illustrate.
Hypothetically, if somebody goes out and kills a random person, who was no threat to him, in cold blood, then that person is a murderer and quite rightly deserves to be punished. Hypothetically, if somebody is sleeping in his bed and is awakened by an armed intruder who breaks into his home and tries to kill him, and he finds a gun and shoots the intruder to death, this is not murder but self-defense and that person does not deserve to be punished.
A person was killed in both scenarios. The only thing different is the motive for the killing. Yet one is universally condemned as wrong, while the other is generally recognized as justifiable and necessary. So is this a hypocritical double-standard?
Only by deciding "who cares why?" have you made this into an illusory double-standard.
"Granted, they've been very creative with things like the MsPL but people see through those ruses pretty quickly." Yes, total ruse. Except that the MSPL is an OSI-approved open source license. There's plenty to bash MS on, the MSPL isn't one of those things.
What I'm about to say is equally true, whether the MSPL is better or worse (according to any metric) than the GPL.
If Microsoft wanted an OSI-approved open source license, the shortest distance between point A and point B would be to go ahead and use the GPL. That's easier and less expensive than paying your legal team to draft an entirely new license.
What they wanted was to establish an incompatibility with the GPL. Since they are different licenses, it's quite unlikely that you can legally release software that includes both GPL code and MSPL code. So FOSS developers have to pick a license. If the MSPL becomes adopted, then what will inevitably happen next is easy enough to foresee: a fractured, divided FOSS community. This is an age-old strategy known as divide-and-conquer. It will be heralded by misguided people who welcome this new era of "openness."
Just to quickly describe a scenario: MSPL need not take over and fully replace the GPL for this strategy to be effective. It only needs to be a significant enough minority that the mixing of licenses interferes with one well-known project, or for two prominent members of the community to butt heads over it. Then Microsoft can portray the community as incoherent, marked by infighting, and otherwise "not professional" and not something businesses should take seriously.
...Sued by who? You see, the main problem with open source and people suing over the GPL is because a lot of the things that are GPL'd come from people like you and me. I know for a fact that if my code was taken by MS or any other large company the most I could probably do is write them a stern letter. Now granted, this was Novell in this case who could easily have sued MS, but for a simple programmer the fees and delays of a lawsuit against a huge company without assistance is nearly impossible.
I'm not a lawyer, nor do I know much about them. Having said that ...
If I were in such a position, I would petition someone like the EFF for help. I don't think real help for something like that would be very hard to find.
It's hilarious.
What's hilarious is how many times I've been called a "tin-foil hatter" because I openly expected ulterior motives and other treachery from this company. There is nothing paranoid or cynical about actually having a working knowledge of the history of the entity in question. It's so simple, too:
How many times does this have to happen before we can save everyone some time and just skip the fantasy that there was ever an opportunity to build trust? Or, do people have some inability to know who and what they are dealing with? To have a corporation act like it wants to be your friend in order to further its own interests is merely a nuisance. When people start to really believe that it's their friend though, that is something much worse. That is actually how an "opponent" which cannot be bought out could eventually (long-term) be taken down or rendered irrelevant. To Microsoft, FOSS is such an opponent.
Ok.... but what does the mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap" have to do with using velcro to fasten cables?
True. The whole emotional outrage that anyone would block ads is easy to summarize. Webmaster goes out of his way to knowingly place content onto a public network where it is freely accessible by anyone. Said Webmaster does not use a paywall, nor does he deny content to users who don't load the ads. When said content is freely accessed, Webmaster then says, in effect, "now you owe me something, so view my ads!" and feels cheated if they aren't viewed. He wants compensation for a thing at the same time that he is giving it away freely. He also wants me to honor an agreement in which I did not participate. This is the Webmaster's fault.
And that's alright; while I think it's silly, I also believe that website owners should be free to do this if they want to. I just refuse to be shamed or otherwise pressured into going along with someone else's faulty expectation. The need to try that on me is the red-flag indicator of the entitlement mentality I mentioned. It's the reason why I responded as I did, as most people who do this don't seem to realize that it's manipulative.
This is especially true when said pressure comes from people who have invested in similarly faulty expectations of their own. Most people don't seem to use ad blockers and they are not standard features of most browsers. In other words, most users have chosen, not actively but by default, to give up their potential control, allowing the remote site full control of page layout. For that reason, many ad-supported public sites have been successful. They should be thankful that mitigating factors can help flawed premises to produce desirable conclusions instead of concerning themselves with how I configure my browser. Besides, they can put that effort towards reconfiguring their servers.
I'm glad whenever I see that someone understands the severity and long-term outcome of this problem. That understanding is one of the single most effective things you can personally do about it. I imagine that if you didn't see the problem, the tone of my previous post wouldn't make sense and either that post or this one would seem like too much of a rant (eh, too late).
I think "wage-slave" is a somewhat mild term. I'd go so far as to say "automaton forever deprived of the ability to live his own life." I've heard more cynical folks say that you can't miss something if you have never known what it was like, yet I've never met a person who could be described that way who was also happy. In a sense, the problem is hidden in plain sight. It's so widespread and so common that it is often accepted as normal.
There's a bit more to it than that. If "political class" includes "19th century industrial tycoons" and their descendants, and there's no reason why it shoul
I'm not nearly so quick to pronounce quod erat demonstrandum on this one.
"Cannot easily be reverse-engineered" is not the same thing as "utterly hopelessly impossible to reverse-engineer." You can have many devices or inventions where the reverse-engineering, however difficult, is a single one-time event. One person may go to great lengths to perform this reverse-engineering, after which many other people can cheaply mass-produce the invention without ever paying a dime to the original inventor. Is not this a situation that the patent system was also intended to address?
It seems to me that the ease or difficulty of reverse-engineering has nothing to do with the purpose of a patent and should not be confused with the "non-obvious" requirement for patentability. To me the "non-obvious" part just means "if you are going to patent this invention it has to actually be inventive." As evidence, note that a patent application is supposed to provide/publish enough information to build or replicate the device or invention in question.
Whereas entitlement mentality regarding access to other people's content is fair game, right?
Way to entirely miss the fact that I addressed this point. Really now, reading comprehension is important. You may laugh at me for saying that, but really it seems to be on the decline. I often feel on online forums, including those which are far less trollish than this one, that there are two versions of my posts: the one I actually wrote that says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say, and the fictitious one to which someone else is responding. Considering the quality of most public education, you were probably shortchanged in this department unless you enjoy reading on your own and can see it as a skill to be honed like any other. Unfortunately, few people are so actively and deliberately involved in their own advancement. If reading comprehension does not come easily for you, be assured that any reasonable effort necessary to achieve it is worthwhile.
So, I did address the point. If you think I addressed this point in a faulty manner, feel free to explain where I erred and how my reasoning may be corrected. This is a concept known as constructive criticism, and its effects are twofold. First, it demonstrates that you really do have a superior point of view on which your objection is founded and that you are not just bitching, which is frankly what this looks like. Second, it shows why my view is inferior and needs to be abandoned and replaced by a better one, possibly yours.
Pretending like I have not addressed this point, as you have done, only reveals a glaring weakness on your part. Such weaknesses are not found in people who have a solid foundation for their position. It's a shame to see such weakness from a person who could choose something better (that's you!).
Should you decide that you have the decency and the fortitude to engage me on this subject, I'll help you out by revealing a premise behind my reasoning: I would never put content on the WWW, with no passwords or other restrictions, unless I wanted that content to be publically accessible by anyone who wants to download and view all or part of it in any way they please. To think otherwise is a total failure to understand the nature of the Internet. If the nature of the Internet doesn't suit me, including the freedom of users to control which content they download and how it is displayed, then it's my responsibility to find a medium which does suit me and publish my content there. It's quite simple.
The mentality you just displayed is trivially deconstructed, as I have partially done here. It does concern me that individuals don't seem to put any effort into similarly evaluating their own ideas. You're probably just a troll, and don't think for a moment that this hasn't crossed my mind. I probably just wasted my time with you, and that's alright. I like the chance, however slim, that maybe you aren't and maybe I haven't. My bet is that I'll never see your response to this, but occasionally people do surprise me.
I've disabled it today and some sites are now really much faster than usually.
I guess I really need to invest into configuring noscript.
NoScript + Adblock Plus + Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper + the Easylist and EasyElement subscriptions for ABP = the Web as it was meant to be.
Advertising business models and entitlement mentalities (regarding ad revenue) be damned. If a Webmaster somewhere does not like that my computer is my property and will load only what I want it to load up, I recognize that their site is their property and I celebrate their right to deny me access to their site so I can find another.
Well, at this stage, no evidence Firefox is defective by design, or that this bug is a result of a design defect.
And thus the problem of slashdot tagging. The tags show up on articles as if they were part of its text or an officially sanctioned categorization of the article.
And yet the tags require no justification, and users who don't understand what some of the tags are normally used for often apply them liberally to articles that have nothing to do with the marking.
Take a look at some of the articles that get tagged DRM: "Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents", "Massive VMware Bug Shuts Systems Down"
Last I checked, DRM wasn't a general word for all restrictive computer systems. Only computer systems that manage rights to digital content (music and video) by encrypting, preventing copying, and (sometimes) phoning home.
The result? The tags end up being regarded as "just someone's opinion" like all other content (both online and in major media) should be regarded until demonstrated to have a basis in fact. So I would call this a self-correcting system.
Offtopic: I wonder if it's unusual that I have never, ever, not once, added a tag and then reloaded the Slashdot page and seen my tag in place. This has been the case for both commonly-occurring tags and unusual "more creative" tags.
Fix once, fix forever
The bug is in the Just-in-Time compiler inside of SpiderMonkey (TraceMonkey). This is brand new code as of 3.5.x. Of course there will be a ton of bugs found in it (just like the ton of bugs that have cropped up in SquirrelFish and have been subsequently patched). I have to wonder why it's taken so long for anybody's security team to look at this code though. You'd think they'd look at this code before release and not after.
I think the point is that there are auditing tools which can automatically detect this kind of buffer overflow in source code. There are also libraries which offer versions of various functions that automatically include bounds checking that can help to prevent this kind of buffer overflow. You'd think that basic fuzz testing might find it as well. So far as I know, no such tools were used. New code or old code should not meaningfully change this scenario because new code need not be released and version numbers incremented until such tools have been used.
I'm more ignorant about software development than I would like to be, so I am hoping anyone can explain why the Mozilla team did not use such tools. I acknowledge there may be some reason unknown to me that explains why doing so would be impractical or unrealistic. However, I think something like this is what the GP had in mind with his "fix once, fix forever" comment.
A simple heuristic: if you can submit a well-written bug report and at least an attempt is made to fix the issue, it's probably not a design flaw.
The primary difference being that bugs like this Firefox flaw are accidental and unintentional, whereas DRM is quite deliberate hence the "defective by design" nomenclature. That's such a sharp contrast, it's reasonable to assume that someone who fails to notice it is either speaking of what they know nothing about or purposely trolling. In other words, "highly advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
There were two ideas mentioned by GP, which were the "defective by design" label and the security reputation of IE. It's useful to know where those perceptions come from whether or not you actually agree with them. I'll make a very simplified (and therefore imperfect) summary of what I perceive as their bases.
The only reason why I see such a concept as "defective by design" applied to IE is a vague one. IE (and Microsoft in general) has something of a history of implementing ideas that were predictably unsound, the most notorious of which is probably ActiveX. That's mostly because ideas which are computationally sound are often orthogonal to ideas which are most easily marketed. True to the nature of a corporation, whenever these two are in conflict, the marketing concerns will win. This is where that perception of closed-source (that is, commercial) software that the GP mentioned comes from.
ActiveX is running untrusted code from a hostile network with no sandboxing and with the full privileges of the user running the browser. Before a single line of code is ever written to implement this, you can predict in advance that this is an unsound idea which invites trouble. Microsoft wrote the code and implemented the idea anyway. IMO that was a deliberate business decision because they felt the marketing and promotion of $SHINY_FEATURE would gain them more than they would lose from the PR problems of security issues. Because of how ignorant the general public tends to be about computer security, such decision-making has been largely successful. In other words, the people at Microsoft are not a bunch of idiots who didn't know what they were dealing with. They knew and they made their decision. Still, it's better to call that "faulty design" and "poor priorities" than to hijack a very specific term like "defective by design."
Whores only exist to lure married men from their wives, right? Kill 'em all, right? Just like ActiveX controls, whores have a purpose... not necessarily in line with their intended nature. What should we do with them?
I think I see the part you're missing that would explain to you why some (including me) think ActiveX is fundamentally flawed.
In terms of security, I think we can agree that the Internet including the Web is rightly regarded as a hostile network. We can also probably agree that good security is done in overlapping layers in order to minimize single points of failure. That's important for many reasons, not the least of which is that a glaring, single point of failure increases both the severity of exploits and the ease with which they may be carried out.
The problem with ActiveX is the lack of sandboxing. A control has the full privileges of the user running the browser. With XP machines that user tends to be an Administrator, compounding the problem. Trusting this environment to reliably and securely handle remote code on a hostile network is just begging for trouble. The idea is fundamentally flawed and tinkering with it may mitigate the problem but will not fix it. It needs to be abandoned and replaced.
Java is more suitable for this kind of task. That is, the needed sandboxing capabilities are an integral part of its design, which is not the case with the Windows DLL-type ActiveX controls. If you really want a Microsoft solution, Silverlight can run applications (both remotely and downloaded for local off-line use) and has its own sandbox. Even Flash apps are a better idea than ActiveX, which is saying something considering Flash's security history.
A solution with a good sandbox combined with running as an unprivileged user is a hell of an improvement. This means that an attacker who wants to own the machine has multiple hurdles. The more this is the case, the more difficult it is for an automated script to pull off a successful exploit. The fact that the malware is fully automated and can rapidly spread is part of why there are so many botnets and other problems. Think of it as something like a captcha: the more a successful exploit requires a determined human being, the fewer massive botnets there are. Fewer botnets mean less spam and fewer DDoS attacks and the like. Nowhere does the low-hanging fruit of ActiveX (and similarly flawed ideas) fit into that picture.
Why dont web hosts scan for hosted vulnerabilities? I imagine a nightly clamav scan by web hosts would make all the difference in cases like these where there is no patch yet but there is an web-based exploit. Heck, some users dont even patch, as was shown by Conficker, which was patched in October and spread like wildfire in January.
Perhaps they realize that doing so would be damage control, not security? That's if you're using a malware scanner like clamav.
If they were to scan with something, there are more useful ways. They could scan their hosted systems with something like nessus. That would stand a chance of finding vulnerabilities and identifying what is exploitable so that they may be fixed. That actually would improve security, which is mostly prevention. Then there would be fewer opportunities for malware to infect the machines in the first place.
I make way more than that and yet I use just as much road, public libraries, etc as anyone else. It's fucked up that just because I got a break that I have to give away a third of my income. I paid $140,000 in taxes. That's money I just gave away and I will never see again. I still don't have health insurance either. Just because I'm successful now doesn't mean my problems have all gone away. At any moment I could be on my ass with no income. Yet the government taxes me like it's a sure thing. That's fucked up and something you will never understand until you get where I'm at.
Here's what I hear : "I'm rich whaaaa whaaa I could become poor again at any time so don't take more money in proportion to what I earn I need every last cent of what I earn cause what do you know maybe one day I won't earn anything whaaaa you shouldn't have to pay more than just what you use in taxes if you're a whiny ass egoistical cocksucker like me"
If you paid $140,000 in taxes that means that you earn enough to get yourself a nice 1960s Cadillac and fill it with first choice hookers. Quit whining, do that and shut the fuck up. Fagget.
That kind of overt jealousy and overall childishness that you just displayed is actually one of the stronger arguments against your position.
Don't pretend to know what I believe because I say that, either. That would be the easy way, the low-hanging fruit, the coward's way out. What I just told you is true whether or not I think progressive taxation is a good idea. What I think about that matter and the reasoning with which I would support my view is unfortunately wasted on this sort of vitriol.
I'm not a lawyer or anything ... but that just sounds like a really, really bad idea.
How is this modded Troll? It's a correct statement of U.K. law and relevant to the article. What, does using the word "dipshit" automatically make something a troll post? Honestly, come on Slashdot..
That depends on whether the moderator agrees with you. If they do, then it's alright. If they don't, they are highly offended by your use of foul language. That level of maturity, dispassionate review, and strong character is amazing is it not?
Fuck it, I get tired of seeing that too and I have karma to burn. The difference between a good mod and a bad mod is that the good ones focus on promoting desirable posts. If they want to mod me down for saying this then they waste their points which is fine by me.
The paintings may be in the public domain, but the photographs are copyright to the photographer.
So good luck to the dipshit user who uploaded them.
I don't know if this is viable in London as I don't live there. But if it's remotely an option, then there are times when jury nullification is called for.
A good explanation of the concept can be found here.
The only issue I have with that view is the fact that most IT types aren't trying to educate people about link security, or even telling them what a browser is. That vast ocean of ignorance reflects poorly upon US not them!
I will tell you why I reject that viewpoint.
I did not wait around, passively, until someone decided that they were going to educate me. I educated myself, actively, knowing that I am better able to accommodate how I learn and how I understand things better than some stranger. The information was out there, it was freely available, there was no secrecy and no hidden nature to it, so I looked things up, I read a lot, I used trial and error, and otherwise I did what I had to do. This was not some single one-time event, but more of a gradual process that has helped to strenghten my skills over time. This is not just computing. I feel that way about anything I do on any sort of regular basis. Each time, I want to be just a little more proficient with it than the last time I did it. If I don't meet that standard, that's no big deal, I see what mistake(s) I made and I learn from them, but that's the goal and it is that towards which I strive.
So, logically there are two possible answers to what you are saying. Only one of them can be true. Either I am something special and have made some supreme accomplishment that is completely inaccessible to most of the rest of the population, or, I haven't done anything that any other literate adult could not also do. Lest there be any doubt, I will say up-front that I don't believe I am something special. I really believe that if half the effort that is spent towards making excuses and justifications for ignorance were instead put towards remedying that ignorance, that the general level of competency would absolutely skyrocket. Every last thing I see only confirms that this is true.
So, to me it's apparent that saying "well WE should have educated THEM" is nothing more than a quaint way of agreeing with those "average" users. In what fashion does it agree with them? It shares their denial, their belief that they are just helpless victims who have no hope of taking things into their own hands and deciding for themselves what their experience is going to be. It's the leaf-in-the-wind again, and that leaf-in-the-wind status is always voluntary. There's a huge, staggering difference between "blaming the victim" and realizing that the victim is not really a victim but has actively chosen the experience that he or she is having.
This article contains a lot of FUD. If you're banking or anything important money-wise you're probably using SSL with a signed certificate, even if you're a Joe Sixpack. If I'm doing anything work related I'm on a VPN. You should never, ever, trust that your connection through the "internets" is secure anyway. Wireless access doesn't change anything about that. This article is just trying to gain attention by using fear.
There really is a tremendous amount of ignorance concerning the most basic knowledge of computers and networks. Of course, you can decide that if you are going to use a complex tool for important tasks, that it is wise to learn what you can about that tool so that you use it effectively. That you bear some responsibility is welcome news, for it means you have some control over whether you have a good experience. In fact you can be curious about how it works and enjoy discovering and learning new things. The mark of such people is that over time, they gradually get better and better as they gain experience and their knowledge expands.
You can also insist that you have a God-given right to perform complex tasks with little or no understanding. You can then resent anyone who tells you that you bear at least some responsibility for this decision and for any undesirable events that result from it. You can decide that while lesser men may have to read up on a thing or learn about it, you are too special for that and will magically do everything that they do while investing no such effort. You can memorize a monotonous and robotic list of steps instead of developing any real understanding of what you are doing and why, causing interface changes to lead to "retraining costs." The mark of such people is that they are "permanent noobs" who can somehow manage to use a device for years and know nothing more about it than when they first started.
The folks in that second category seem proud of it. They seem to view understanding the tools they use the same way the aristocracy of old felt about "fraternizing with the help." I am not glad when they encounter misfortune, but I don't consider them to be victims either.
What about if the hotspot doesn't actually give the user the real page, but instead phishing page? I doubt many normal users notice that HTTPS isn't on. Or like in the above The Real Hustle video, "for $1 you can get one hour of surfing time, just enter your credit card details" and you probably can guess what happens from there.
I don't doubt that the people who run such scams are doing something evil but this irrational insistence people have of using what they do not understand and then acting shocked if something goes wrong is in need of some serious "Darwinism" or "artificial selection" or whatever you like to call it. The basics of how to protect yourself are not that difficult to understand, the information is out there, and any literate adult can educate himself as easily as searching via Google. If putting a price on that kind of rampant ignorance is the only way to give it an incentive to be remedied, then so be it.
It shouldn't be that way. People should care enough to guard the things that are important to them, like the kinds of personal information phishing pages could harvest. The reasons why they don't seem to be rooted in apathy combined with a strong feeling that basic competency (which is a far cry from expertise) is some kind of horrible undue burden that is completely unreasonable to expect of them. There is a great deal of arrogance in the belief that safeguarding things that matter to you should always the responsibility of someone else, be it Microsoft or the airport or whomever. When that kind of hubris leads to problems, what legitimate complaint do they have? Why are they so often portrayed as helpless victims instead of held up as examples of negligence, of what not to do?