Many people see no virtue beyond expedience. Argue with them for a lifetime and they'll never understand your point.
Agreed, though I would add something: that is only true because such people are not capable of imagining a world where virtue is the norm. Otherwise they'd work towards it and advocate for it knowing that they could never change the world on their own or anything like that, but satisfied that they as an individual are at least not part of the problem and appreciative that others must make the same decision.
Now when they try to push the same legislation thru here in the USA all it will take is a quick comparison to COMMUNIST CHINA to get the politicians to vehemently oppose it....
Until it's attached as a rider to some bill that otherwise has overwhelming support. Hey, it worked for the Internet Kill Switch and so many other pieces of bad legislation...
It's not like the elected politicians actually read the bills they vote on anyway. They're far too important for such trivial and mundane tasks. They have people for that!
False, they'll just define something else as terrorism.
No offense, but "definition of 'any form' fail". Not that I don't appreciate your general point. Just that I carefully worded my post to account for it. You're absolutely right thought that this is the mentality with which you are dealing.
Or they've been indoctrinated through years of Chinese public education.
If so, then they learned it from the USA which learned it from Prussia which learned it from India's training for the underclasses of the Hindu caste system. The original founders of the USA system used to be quite open about this soon after the Industrial Revolution. Their biggest fears were that overproduction caused by too many independent American entrepreneurers might make them take heavy losses on their massive investments in industrial equipment and centralized production and that the poor might become dangerously discontent.
The solution they embraced was a system of schooling designed to teach the masses just enough to be useful workers but not so much that they can think critically and understand things like Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis or bread-and-circus. Other nations saw how useful this was for the ruling class (who, by the way, overwhelmingly go to elite private schools where they are taught to be leaders) and adopted similar policies.
The fact that people in Western nations tend to recognize China's use of public schooling for these purposes (because China is teh evil!) but fail to recognize the less-extreme version employed by their own countries (because we are patriotic!) is a masterful triumph of this system.
India has been doing this for years. It's not possible to get a sim card without a valid 'proof' of your identity. It's another matter that if the terrorists really want to get a sim card, this requirement wont stop them - as it's very easy to get forged documents.
If all terrorism disappeared tomorrow never to reappear in any form whatsoever, governments everywhere would mourn its passing.
So let's see. Microsoft will do anything that it thinks will boost sales.
You accurately summarized my paragraph...
Those bastards! Next thing you know they will have the audacity to start fixing bugs that people complain about, or implement features that are requested, or even make products that they think people will buy! Oh Noes! The horror. The horror!
...yet managed to completely miss the point. Maybe you don't want to see the point, but I'll try.
Speaking about missing the point, he might be in your company, then.
Because you missed a point in her/his reply as well: Microsoft will not do quite anything to boost the sales, and here are some examples:start fixing bugs, implement features that are requested.
Not saying that she/he intended the above as a point, but I'm still seeing it as a point even if not intended.
Actually that's perfectly consistent with what I said. By not fixing bugs Microsoft can always promise that the next version will solve all of the users' problems. That boosts sales. So in this case, the right thing to do would be to fix the bugs, but not fixing them leads to more sales. Therefore Microsoft doesn't do such a good job of fixing them.
Nice try. Maybe you don't like I said, but clutching at straws like this to discredit it is rather unbecoming.
This guy is not a teabagger despite the fact that he hates immigrants. He isn't a liberal despite the fact that he likes the environment. He is a dead crazy guy because he took hostages. He didn't need any help from political partisans to achieve his stunning degree of lunacy, I'm pretty sure he got there all on his own.
The mantra of fanboys everywhere goes something like "never miss an opportunity to associate a nut with any group you don't like. It furthers the whole 'us against them' bullshit that is so easy to exploit. This is so important that a false association is better than none."
A lot of people really hate free choice because then somebody else might use something in a way they don't approve of. The fact that it doesn't deprive anyone else of making the same choice isn't good enough for them.
Exactly how does revealing the killer not affect my ability to enjoy the surprise of finding the killer for the first time in the play? Your high-horse "freedom from the writer" rings hollow when the writer only REQUESTED that you don't spoil the plot. Add to that your stance that your freedom to reveal the plot is a perfect example of arguing that you are both free to swing your fists and hit my nose, and it only makes the stance you are taking look like a big pile of double-standard talk.
Many of your sentiments have the ring of truth to them; but you're missing the point. There's really no way you can argue that because the writer asked you to be considerate of others, it is proper to walk over others' enjoyment of the play as you can't be bound to the writer's wishes.
That's a nice bit of text there but it misses a simple fact. Anyone looking for plot information is likely to encounter spoilers. Further, anyone familiar at all with how Wikipedia covers works like books and video games and movies would know that it's quite comprehensive. Their problem if they don't take this into consideration. The writer's grandchildren are enjoying the revenues of a dead person's works and bitching about how those are enjoyed. It's that simple and I won't defend them.
Gesh so now we can't even talk about stuff cause we "might spoil" it for another. Get over it. Grandma and you have made your money so hush.
A lot of people really hate free choice because then somebody else might use something in a way they don't approve of. The fact that it doesn't deprive anyone else of making the same choice isn't good enough for them. This is a microcosm. The macrocosm is all of the bad laws we have attempting to regulate what consenting adults may or may not do. It's busybody Puritanism at its finest.
So let's see. Microsoft will do anything that it thinks will boost sales.
You accurately summarized my paragraph...
Those bastards! Next thing you know they will have the audacity to start fixing bugs that people complain about, or implement features that are requested, or even make products that they think people will buy! Oh Noes! The horror. The horror!
...yet managed to completely miss the point. Maybe you don't want to see the point, but I'll try.
The point, my eager-to-resort-to-mockery friend, is that appearing to appreciate Open Source is what Microsoft believes is in its interests today. It was not in Microsoft's interests yesterday (not literally 24 hours ago but figuratively speaking) and may not be in their interests tomorrow. Microsoft is doing this because they hope it will appeal to people who care about Open Source. The people who believe it are likely to find that Microsoft will continue this act for just long enough to lock them into using its software. At that point Microsoft will feel that the ruse has served its purpose and will revert to openly regarding Open Source as an enemy.
Now that you know what my point was, or now that it's more difficult for you to deny knowing what my point was (whichever may be the case), you can see plainly that it has absolutely nothing to do with fixing bugs, adding features, or introducing new products. If you weren't deliberately trolling, you provided a good example of what emotional knee-jerk reactions lead to.
That's a fair point - but really - while that might work, my point is that we've got an editorial that doesn't really make the point you are trying to make. Microsoft is saying good things about open source in ALL OF ITS markets. For now. Changing what they've done in the past.
It seemed apparent to me that the point he was trying to make is not what you are responding to there. In fact I was about to make this point my own way until I saw that he had already raised it.
The point is that the general public seems to have an awfully short memory. Otherwise they'd be rightly skeptical of this move. They'd understand that a model of 100% open source software from operating systems to applications is antithetical to Microsoft's business model (for one, that sure would make it hard to implement vendorlock). That alone renders this move suspect. Then there's the long history of viewing Open Source as an enemy, both in the form of action and in the form of things like the Halloween documents.
If Microsoft is saying good things about Open Source in "all of its markets" it's only because of the ease with which the Internet would expose any attempt to say good things in Location A and bad things in Location B. That would just make them look stupid and would be counterproductive to their goal of pandering to the BRIC nations. They're ruthless bastards in my opinion but no one who takes a hard look at their use of long-term strategy would conclude that they are stupid.
GP was not denying that Microsoft is currently acting warm and fuzzy towards Open Source. I have no idea why you reiterate the editorial and must conclude you didn't correctly comprehend the GP. The grandparent is saying that Microsoft's new stance is not genuine and that a cursory understanding of the way this company does business would strongly affirm that position. If documentation of their history in Portuguese can promote such an understanding it could remedy the public's short memory.
The public sees that now Microsoft is being kinder to Open Source. Many seem to forget what the last 10-15 years of the Microsoft monopoly was like. And all it took was a change of PR strategy. They definitely got their dollar's worth from the marketing department this time.
You see this kind of short memory in politics all of the time. Why would it be a surprise when the same tendency is shown regarding business? In either case it doesn't survive contact with the facts so that's where a constructive remedy can be applied.
The article didn't say or even imply that Microsoft hasn't slammed open source, the whole point was that they're not doing it any more.
Yeah, that's usually called "pandering".
Like the summary explains, they're doing this out of a concern that anything else might alienate potential customers in various markets. That is not a change of heart. It's the same old self-serving Microsoft we've always known. They'd say that Jeffrey Dahmer was a really great guy if they thought it would boost sales. Microsoft hasn't changed. What will and won't alienate potential customers is the only thing that has changed here.
I'll put it very bluntly: anyone who believes otherwise is a naive fool who doesn't understand the first thing about this company or its history.
So, that means vulnerable ports were open to "the world" on the systems, and the "network" was supposed to be doing the firewalling? Network firewalls and system firewalls should use identical policies.
That's a bit general. Say you want to run a Samba fileserver to share files among Windows clients. You'd want the fileserver on your internal network to accept connections from the relevant ports. You would not want the firewall standing between your network and the Internet to also have that port open to the world.
While it's true that a conscientious admin would tighten up the Samba server's firewall by specifying both ports and IP addresses/ranges (or other credentials) that are acceptable, you still wouldn't have identical policies between the internal systems and the firewall controlling what can connect from outside.
There's nothing wrong with that. It means that 90% of the IT tasks are half mental, whereas the other 10% of the tasks could be completely mindless or 90% mental.
"a survey from attendees of the DEFCON 18 conference revealed that 73% came across a misconfigured network more than three quarters of the time – which, according to 76% of the sample, was the easiest IT resource to exploit."
Seriously, that throws my head into a god damn wall.
This is how I slowly try and rephrase the sentence. Anyone else reading it this way? "73% of respondents to the survey found the network misconfigured more than 75% of the time and 76% of those 73% of respondents said that was the easiest IT resource to exploit."
Terrible writing when you have to try and decode a simple sentence. Feels like I'm trying to figure out some legal doc.
Yeah, sounds like just the sort of thing that professional editors are supposed to clean up. Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
Another gem from the summary caught my eye:
11% felt that threat vectors that change faster than they can be addressed play a key role.
That item is not a (mis)configuration issue. Besides, the best way to maintain the advantage in this arms race is to make sure that your systems do exactly what they are intended to do and nothing else. Default-deny is a good policy and not just for firewalls.
Results revealed that 18% of professionals believe misconfigured networks are the result of insufficient time or money for audits.
Actually they're the result of incompetence and/or apathy. The purpose of an audit is to reveal that incompetence and/or apathy has taken place so that it may be corrected in the future. Good auditing may mitigate this issue just like a band-aid can protect a cut on your hand, but the band-aid or lack thereof was not what caused your hand to get cut. Cause-and-effect fail.
Responses to a survey from attendees of the DEFCON 18 conference revealed that 73% came across a misconfigured network more than three quarters of the time – which, according to 76% of the sample, was the easiest IT resource to exploit.
Low-hanging fruit like that is the great enabler of botnets and other black-hat criminals everywhere. I wonder how much this problem is caused by "I manage people not machines!" managers who have no idea how to accurately assess the competence of a sysadmin.
Or it could be that you implied everybody who isn't a fan of open source is less-enlightened and your general bullshit attitude like mac fans. Bitches love to bitch, haters love to hate, and bitches and haters aren't just open or closed source.
I actually don't think you're trolling so I'll answer this.
There are reasonable people who can decide that something doesn't suit them. They don't also feel a need to make negative posts all about how something is terrible for everyone else merely because it does not meet their personal needs.
As a contrast, there are the less-enlightened. It's not good enough for them that they don't have to use whatever it is that doesn't suit their needs (be that Open Source or anything else). No, they also have to hate the fact that anyone else would use something that doesn't suit their needs. That's what a fanboy is.
I very much enjoy and appreciate Open Source. If asked, I can help someone to better understand both the philosophy and the software to the best of my ability. If it's relevant to a discussion, I might weigh in with my opinions about it. However, I acknowledge that for various reasons, it is not for everyone. The freedom of others to do what they wish with their own property (computers/hardware they own, in this case) is more important to me than any personal admiration of Open Source I may have.
That's why I am not a "fan" in the sense of viewing everything in terms of "my team vs. everyone else". That's a mindless and in my opinion, childish way to look at the world.
So no, I did not imply that everyone who doesn't like Open Source is less enlightened. You may have a strong desire to read that into my message but it is not actually there. You are supplying that all on your own. What I described as less-enlightened are those people who are not content to do what works for them; they have to also convert the other guy. Try reading my post next time. If you did read it, try addressing your issues with reading comprehension.
I never understood all the hate towards open source by trolls here on Slashdot. Like anything, the way the open source community operates has flaws just like any other community....but what about it butthurts people so badly that they have to troll about it?
The fact that they don't have to participate in it if they don't want to has never stopped the less-enlightened from railing against something and hoping it fails and ceases to exist. It's not good enough for them that they don't have to participate; they cannot rest until no one else may participate either. This is by no means limited to Open Source, software, or computing. It was in fact a huge driving force behind movements like Prohibition.
And MPEG-LA would lose in court. You cannot enforce a license like that. Its like Ford saying i cant use my vehicle for commercial purposes or I would have to pay Ford special commercial use tax.
Never underestimate the insanity of modern intellectual property law.
I had to re-read your last sentence to make sure you weren't saying that Glenn Beck is embraced by the mainstream. Because if you were (and if, somehow, that were true) I would weep for my countrymen.
And then I'd slap the shit outta 'em.
It's trendy to hate on people like Glenn Beck precisely because they are a bit more genuine. Beck is more likely to tell his audience what he really believes. The fact that people like you so strongly dislike him and look down your nose at him is proof that he's not altering his message to be as agreeable as possible and please as many people as possible. That's a good thing. No one should bow down and kiss your ass like that and anyone who does that is a phony, not that you'd care because the illusion is that they are serving you by so doing.
The average news anchor is more likely to tell his audience whatever is written on the teleprompter. Whatever that is comes from an organization and is based on what is good for that organization. It might be based on polls, market research, an undisclosed agenda, or a political desire to emphasize some things and deemphasize others. It is not an individual's honest perspective.
I for one can get over my disagreements with Beck's politics and appreciate this difference. It wouldn't matter if I disagreed with every position he has ever taken. I'd still want to see more figures in media who do things this way.
RIM doesn't have the encryption keys to data traveling over individual BES servers, so they will not cave and couldn't even if they wanted too.
In the case of the Saudis they found a way to come up with them. Maybe they changed the design of their system or built a new one from the ground up. Either way, they did in fact comply with the Saudi request that the government be able to eavesdrop by decrypting the communications. There's no reason to believe they couldn't do the same for India.
That's undoubtedly part of this issue. RIM has now established for itself a history of caving in. India has some grounds to expect that they can be convinced to do it a second time. That's why you never yield to bullies of any sort -- it only invites more of the same.
That's an interesting observation, but I suspect that if anything like that did happen with something more mainstream that it wouldn't be nearly as notable and nobody would be spinning conspiracy theories about it.
Right or wrong, the reason for that is easy to sum up: since when did anyone firmly within the mainstream with a very large national audience ever advocate anything like a small-government libertarian (lower-case 'l') position?
Instead you find people like Hannity who talk a big game about freedom but have a million passionate excuses for abdicating it anytime there's talk about a terrorist threat.
Conservative bloggers smell a conspiracy since Glen Beck is holding his 'Restoring Honor' gathering at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow (August 28). Notes for the map listing on Google state 'This place has unverified edits'; so, did someone claim the listing and edit the location?
Conspiracy or no, it sure is funny the way some things in politics tend to work out. Oddly these sorts of mishaps don't seem to happen when media figures who are more embraced by the mainstream want to hold an event.
I am not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India.
Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem here. Also, the threat of terrorists here is a real one - unlike in most other countries - with many countries actually pouring money in to push terrorism to India.
Before the current home minister came in with somewhat tight security and controls, we used to have a lot of terrorist attacks in India. The current homeminister radically decreased the number of incidents by overall increasing the security - while not too much impinging on the privacy till now.
Most of the security was through surveillance, which was being hamstrung by the enemy using blackberry for communication. So by creating this hullaballoo and then RIM publicly accepting it, terrorist will stop using blackberry for communication, thus increasing the effectiveness of surveillance.
I do accept the view point of - those who gives up privacy for security deserves neither.
But terrorism is such a big actual problem here - with more than 800 sleeper cells currently, people are going to accept this - otherwise there is going to be daily bombings and deaths.
In my view of viewing things terrorism is merely a symptom of far deeper underlying problems with government and society and with international affairs. In the face of that, secure e-mail is barely a footnote. If a government can completely and totally monitor all communications by all people within its borders, it has succeeded only in addressing a means to an end. It has not and likely will not address why so many people want to become terrorists in the first place, what motivates them, why they do what they do, and how to actually prevent this phenomenon by addressing its root causes.
Nobody ever wants to really look at root causes. They're too busy making sure a good crisis "doesn't go to waste" as an Obama staffer put it (don't think for a moment that this idea is limited to USA politics). They just want to exert as much control as possible over the means to an end. They want to make terrorism as difficult as possible by those who wish to carry it out because that means more police power for them. No one seems to want to make fewer people consider becoming terrorists in the first place. Addressing the type of political and social unrest that makes once-harmless people consider such drastic measures might mean taking a hard look at foreign and domestic policy with a willingness to drastically alter the status quo towards a pro-freedom position, and no one in power really wants to do that. It would reduce their power.
I'm not saying that terrorists are something other than scum. They are. I'm saying that you are dealing with nations that, based on their actions, have the attitude of "well if we're going to have terrorism anyway, things like the USA's Patriot Act that we could have never passed without active attacks sure do sweeten the deal". That's part of the problem. Anyone who gets what they want due to terrorism, directly or indirectly, is part of the problem of terrorism. Unfortunately that includes many state actors.
One of my other principles is to let others live their lives the way they want to. If India wants to revolt against its government to change the rules, I'll support them. However, if they aren't willing to change their governments rules or if they want the rules that way for some reason, then thats their problem not mine.
This is not an equal situation. It's "asymmetric" to use the scrubbed "lite" term. The difference is that the government is authorized to use force to achieve its goals, like all governments. The people who use force to resist it (the only way to launch a revolt) are, by definition, criminals. This is the problem of the people of India, to be sure. My comment was intended to apply only to the extent to which corporations based in North America interact with the Indian government.
If you *really* support the right of all human beings to live their lives the way they wish (so long as they do not seek to impose their way of life on others by force or by fraud, I would add) then you would naturally oppose any government that stands in their way. In this case, that's the Indian government. Your position of complete and total indifference is untenable if you wish to remain consistent with your stated principles.
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Many people see no virtue beyond expedience. Argue with them for a lifetime and they'll never understand your point.
Agreed, though I would add something: that is only true because such people are not capable of imagining a world where virtue is the norm. Otherwise they'd work towards it and advocate for it knowing that they could never change the world on their own or anything like that, but satisfied that they as an individual are at least not part of the problem and appreciative that others must make the same decision.
Now when they try to push the same legislation thru here in the USA all it will take is a quick comparison to COMMUNIST CHINA to get the politicians to vehemently oppose it....
Until it's attached as a rider to some bill that otherwise has overwhelming support. Hey, it worked for the Internet Kill Switch and so many other pieces of bad legislation...
It's not like the elected politicians actually read the bills they vote on anyway. They're far too important for such trivial and mundane tasks. They have people for that!
False, they'll just define something else as terrorism.
No offense, but "definition of 'any form' fail". Not that I don't appreciate your general point. Just that I carefully worded my post to account for it. You're absolutely right thought that this is the mentality with which you are dealing.
If so, then they learned it from the USA which learned it from Prussia which learned it from India's training for the underclasses of the Hindu caste system. The original founders of the USA system used to be quite open about this soon after the Industrial Revolution. Their biggest fears were that overproduction caused by too many independent American entrepreneurers might make them take heavy losses on their massive investments in industrial equipment and centralized production and that the poor might become dangerously discontent.
The solution they embraced was a system of schooling designed to teach the masses just enough to be useful workers but not so much that they can think critically and understand things like Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis or bread-and-circus. Other nations saw how useful this was for the ruling class (who, by the way, overwhelmingly go to elite private schools where they are taught to be leaders) and adopted similar policies.
The fact that people in Western nations tend to recognize China's use of public schooling for these purposes (because China is teh evil!) but fail to recognize the less-extreme version employed by their own countries (because we are patriotic!) is a masterful triumph of this system.
India has been doing this for years. It's not possible to get a sim card without a valid 'proof' of your identity. It's another matter that if the terrorists really want to get a sim card, this requirement wont stop them - as it's very easy to get forged documents.
If all terrorism disappeared tomorrow never to reappear in any form whatsoever, governments everywhere would mourn its passing.
You accurately summarized my paragraph...
Speaking about missing the point, he might be in your company, then. Because you missed a point in her/his reply as well: Microsoft will not do quite anything to boost the sales, and here are some examples:start fixing bugs, implement features that are requested. Not saying that she/he intended the above as a point, but I'm still seeing it as a point even if not intended.
Actually that's perfectly consistent with what I said. By not fixing bugs Microsoft can always promise that the next version will solve all of the users' problems. That boosts sales. So in this case, the right thing to do would be to fix the bugs, but not fixing them leads to more sales. Therefore Microsoft doesn't do such a good job of fixing them.
Nice try. Maybe you don't like I said, but clutching at straws like this to discredit it is rather unbecoming.
This guy is not a teabagger despite the fact that he hates immigrants. He isn't a liberal despite the fact that he likes the environment. He is a dead crazy guy because he took hostages. He didn't need any help from political partisans to achieve his stunning degree of lunacy, I'm pretty sure he got there all on his own.
The mantra of fanboys everywhere goes something like "never miss an opportunity to associate a nut with any group you don't like. It furthers the whole 'us against them' bullshit that is so easy to exploit. This is so important that a false association is better than none."
A lot of people really hate free choice because then somebody else might use something in a way they don't approve of. The fact that it doesn't deprive anyone else of making the same choice isn't good enough for them.
Exactly how does revealing the killer not affect my ability to enjoy the surprise of finding the killer for the first time in the play? Your high-horse "freedom from the writer" rings hollow when the writer only REQUESTED that you don't spoil the plot. Add to that your stance that your freedom to reveal the plot is a perfect example of arguing that you are both free to swing your fists and hit my nose, and it only makes the stance you are taking look like a big pile of double-standard talk.
Many of your sentiments have the ring of truth to them; but you're missing the point. There's really no way you can argue that because the writer asked you to be considerate of others, it is proper to walk over others' enjoyment of the play as you can't be bound to the writer's wishes.
That's a nice bit of text there but it misses a simple fact. Anyone looking for plot information is likely to encounter spoilers. Further, anyone familiar at all with how Wikipedia covers works like books and video games and movies would know that it's quite comprehensive. Their problem if they don't take this into consideration. The writer's grandchildren are enjoying the revenues of a dead person's works and bitching about how those are enjoyed. It's that simple and I won't defend them.
Gesh so now we can't even talk about stuff cause we "might spoil" it for another. Get over it. Grandma and you have made your money so hush.
A lot of people really hate free choice because then somebody else might use something in a way they don't approve of. The fact that it doesn't deprive anyone else of making the same choice isn't good enough for them. This is a microcosm. The macrocosm is all of the bad laws we have attempting to regulate what consenting adults may or may not do. It's busybody Puritanism at its finest.
You accurately summarized my paragraph...
The point, my eager-to-resort-to-mockery friend, is that appearing to appreciate Open Source is what Microsoft believes is in its interests today. It was not in Microsoft's interests yesterday (not literally 24 hours ago but figuratively speaking) and may not be in their interests tomorrow. Microsoft is doing this because they hope it will appeal to people who care about Open Source. The people who believe it are likely to find that Microsoft will continue this act for just long enough to lock them into using its software. At that point Microsoft will feel that the ruse has served its purpose and will revert to openly regarding Open Source as an enemy.
Now that you know what my point was, or now that it's more difficult for you to deny knowing what my point was (whichever may be the case), you can see plainly that it has absolutely nothing to do with fixing bugs, adding features, or introducing new products. If you weren't deliberately trolling, you provided a good example of what emotional knee-jerk reactions lead to.
That's a fair point - but really - while that might work, my point is that we've got an editorial that doesn't really make the point you are trying to make. Microsoft is saying good things about open source in ALL OF ITS markets. For now. Changing what they've done in the past.
It seemed apparent to me that the point he was trying to make is not what you are responding to there. In fact I was about to make this point my own way until I saw that he had already raised it.
The point is that the general public seems to have an awfully short memory. Otherwise they'd be rightly skeptical of this move. They'd understand that a model of 100% open source software from operating systems to applications is antithetical to Microsoft's business model (for one, that sure would make it hard to implement vendorlock). That alone renders this move suspect. Then there's the long history of viewing Open Source as an enemy, both in the form of action and in the form of things like the Halloween documents.
If Microsoft is saying good things about Open Source in "all of its markets" it's only because of the ease with which the Internet would expose any attempt to say good things in Location A and bad things in Location B. That would just make them look stupid and would be counterproductive to their goal of pandering to the BRIC nations. They're ruthless bastards in my opinion but no one who takes a hard look at their use of long-term strategy would conclude that they are stupid.
GP was not denying that Microsoft is currently acting warm and fuzzy towards Open Source. I have no idea why you reiterate the editorial and must conclude you didn't correctly comprehend the GP. The grandparent is saying that Microsoft's new stance is not genuine and that a cursory understanding of the way this company does business would strongly affirm that position. If documentation of their history in Portuguese can promote such an understanding it could remedy the public's short memory.
The public sees that now Microsoft is being kinder to Open Source. Many seem to forget what the last 10-15 years of the Microsoft monopoly was like. And all it took was a change of PR strategy. They definitely got their dollar's worth from the marketing department this time.
You see this kind of short memory in politics all of the time. Why would it be a surprise when the same tendency is shown regarding business? In either case it doesn't survive contact with the facts so that's where a constructive remedy can be applied.
The article didn't say or even imply that Microsoft hasn't slammed open source, the whole point was that they're not doing it any more.
Yeah, that's usually called "pandering".
Like the summary explains, they're doing this out of a concern that anything else might alienate potential customers in various markets. That is not a change of heart. It's the same old self-serving Microsoft we've always known. They'd say that Jeffrey Dahmer was a really great guy if they thought it would boost sales. Microsoft hasn't changed. What will and won't alienate potential customers is the only thing that has changed here.
I'll put it very bluntly: anyone who believes otherwise is a naive fool who doesn't understand the first thing about this company or its history.
So, that means vulnerable ports were open to "the world" on the systems, and the "network" was supposed to be doing the firewalling? Network firewalls and system firewalls should use identical policies.
That's a bit general. Say you want to run a Samba fileserver to share files among Windows clients. You'd want the fileserver on your internal network to accept connections from the relevant ports. You would not want the firewall standing between your network and the Internet to also have that port open to the world.
While it's true that a conscientious admin would tighten up the Samba server's firewall by specifying both ports and IP addresses/ranges (or other credentials) that are acceptable, you still wouldn't have identical policies between the internal systems and the firewall controlling what can connect from outside.
Does not compute.
"a survey from attendees of the DEFCON 18 conference revealed that 73% came across a misconfigured network more than three quarters of the time – which, according to 76% of the sample, was the easiest IT resource to exploit."
Seriously, that throws my head into a god damn wall.
This is how I slowly try and rephrase the sentence. Anyone else reading it this way? "73% of respondents to the survey found the network misconfigured more than 75% of the time and 76% of those 73% of respondents said that was the easiest IT resource to exploit."
Terrible writing when you have to try and decode a simple sentence. Feels like I'm trying to figure out some legal doc.
Yeah, sounds like just the sort of thing that professional editors are supposed to clean up. Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
Another gem from the summary caught my eye:
That item is not a (mis)configuration issue. Besides, the best way to maintain the advantage in this arms race is to make sure that your systems do exactly what they are intended to do and nothing else. Default-deny is a good policy and not just for firewalls.
Actually they're the result of incompetence and/or apathy. The purpose of an audit is to reveal that incompetence and/or apathy has taken place so that it may be corrected in the future. Good auditing may mitigate this issue just like a band-aid can protect a cut on your hand, but the band-aid or lack thereof was not what caused your hand to get cut. Cause-and-effect fail.
Low-hanging fruit like that is the great enabler of botnets and other black-hat criminals everywhere. I wonder how much this problem is caused by "I manage people not machines!" managers who have no idea how to accurately assess the competence of a sysadmin.
Dear Sir,
A pro-level playing fields campaign IS an anti-big business campaign. In fact it is an outrage!
Signed,
Lobbyists for Major Monopoly ISPs
Or it could be that you implied everybody who isn't a fan of open source is less-enlightened and your general bullshit attitude like mac fans. Bitches love to bitch, haters love to hate, and bitches and haters aren't just open or closed source.
I actually don't think you're trolling so I'll answer this.
There are reasonable people who can decide that something doesn't suit them. They don't also feel a need to make negative posts all about how something is terrible for everyone else merely because it does not meet their personal needs.
As a contrast, there are the less-enlightened. It's not good enough for them that they don't have to use whatever it is that doesn't suit their needs (be that Open Source or anything else). No, they also have to hate the fact that anyone else would use something that doesn't suit their needs. That's what a fanboy is.
I very much enjoy and appreciate Open Source. If asked, I can help someone to better understand both the philosophy and the software to the best of my ability. If it's relevant to a discussion, I might weigh in with my opinions about it. However, I acknowledge that for various reasons, it is not for everyone. The freedom of others to do what they wish with their own property (computers/hardware they own, in this case) is more important to me than any personal admiration of Open Source I may have.
That's why I am not a "fan" in the sense of viewing everything in terms of "my team vs. everyone else". That's a mindless and in my opinion, childish way to look at the world.
So no, I did not imply that everyone who doesn't like Open Source is less enlightened. You may have a strong desire to read that into my message but it is not actually there. You are supplying that all on your own. What I described as less-enlightened are those people who are not content to do what works for them; they have to also convert the other guy. Try reading my post next time. If you did read it, try addressing your issues with reading comprehension.
I never understood all the hate towards open source by trolls here on Slashdot. Like anything, the way the open source community operates has flaws just like any other community....but what about it butthurts people so badly that they have to troll about it?
The fact that they don't have to participate in it if they don't want to has never stopped the less-enlightened from railing against something and hoping it fails and ceases to exist. It's not good enough for them that they don't have to participate; they cannot rest until no one else may participate either. This is by no means limited to Open Source, software, or computing. It was in fact a huge driving force behind movements like Prohibition.
And MPEG-LA would lose in court. You cannot enforce a license like that. Its like Ford saying i cant use my vehicle for commercial purposes or I would have to pay Ford special commercial use tax.
Never underestimate the insanity of modern intellectual property law.
I had to re-read your last sentence to make sure you weren't saying that Glenn Beck is embraced by the mainstream. Because if you were (and if, somehow, that were true) I would weep for my countrymen. And then I'd slap the shit outta 'em.
It's trendy to hate on people like Glenn Beck precisely because they are a bit more genuine. Beck is more likely to tell his audience what he really believes. The fact that people like you so strongly dislike him and look down your nose at him is proof that he's not altering his message to be as agreeable as possible and please as many people as possible. That's a good thing. No one should bow down and kiss your ass like that and anyone who does that is a phony, not that you'd care because the illusion is that they are serving you by so doing.
The average news anchor is more likely to tell his audience whatever is written on the teleprompter. Whatever that is comes from an organization and is based on what is good for that organization. It might be based on polls, market research, an undisclosed agenda, or a political desire to emphasize some things and deemphasize others. It is not an individual's honest perspective.
I for one can get over my disagreements with Beck's politics and appreciate this difference. It wouldn't matter if I disagreed with every position he has ever taken. I'd still want to see more figures in media who do things this way.
RIM doesn't have the encryption keys to data traveling over individual BES servers, so they will not cave and couldn't even if they wanted too.
In the case of the Saudis they found a way to come up with them. Maybe they changed the design of their system or built a new one from the ground up. Either way, they did in fact comply with the Saudi request that the government be able to eavesdrop by decrypting the communications. There's no reason to believe they couldn't do the same for India.
That's undoubtedly part of this issue. RIM has now established for itself a history of caving in. India has some grounds to expect that they can be convinced to do it a second time. That's why you never yield to bullies of any sort -- it only invites more of the same.
That's an interesting observation, but I suspect that if anything like that did happen with something more mainstream that it wouldn't be nearly as notable and nobody would be spinning conspiracy theories about it.
Right or wrong, the reason for that is easy to sum up: since when did anyone firmly within the mainstream with a very large national audience ever advocate anything like a small-government libertarian (lower-case 'l') position?
Instead you find people like Hannity who talk a big game about freedom but have a million passionate excuses for abdicating it anytime there's talk about a terrorist threat.
Conspiracy or no, it sure is funny the way some things in politics tend to work out. Oddly these sorts of mishaps don't seem to happen when media figures who are more embraced by the mainstream want to hold an event.
I am not sure whether /. users appreciate the whole situation in India.
Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem here. Also, the threat of terrorists here is a real one - unlike in most other countries - with many countries actually pouring money in to push terrorism to India.
Before the current home minister came in with somewhat tight security and controls, we used to have a lot of terrorist attacks in India. The current homeminister radically decreased the number of incidents by overall increasing the security - while not too much impinging on the privacy till now.
Most of the security was through surveillance, which was being hamstrung by the enemy using blackberry for communication. So by creating this hullaballoo and then RIM publicly accepting it, terrorist will stop using blackberry for communication, thus increasing the effectiveness of surveillance.
I do accept the view point of - those who gives up privacy for security deserves neither. But terrorism is such a big actual problem here - with more than 800 sleeper cells currently, people are going to accept this - otherwise there is going to be daily bombings and deaths.
In my view of viewing things terrorism is merely a symptom of far deeper underlying problems with government and society and with international affairs. In the face of that, secure e-mail is barely a footnote. If a government can completely and totally monitor all communications by all people within its borders, it has succeeded only in addressing a means to an end. It has not and likely will not address why so many people want to become terrorists in the first place, what motivates them, why they do what they do, and how to actually prevent this phenomenon by addressing its root causes.
Nobody ever wants to really look at root causes. They're too busy making sure a good crisis "doesn't go to waste" as an Obama staffer put it (don't think for a moment that this idea is limited to USA politics). They just want to exert as much control as possible over the means to an end. They want to make terrorism as difficult as possible by those who wish to carry it out because that means more police power for them. No one seems to want to make fewer people consider becoming terrorists in the first place. Addressing the type of political and social unrest that makes once-harmless people consider such drastic measures might mean taking a hard look at foreign and domestic policy with a willingness to drastically alter the status quo towards a pro-freedom position, and no one in power really wants to do that. It would reduce their power.
I'm not saying that terrorists are something other than scum. They are. I'm saying that you are dealing with nations that, based on their actions, have the attitude of "well if we're going to have terrorism anyway, things like the USA's Patriot Act that we could have never passed without active attacks sure do sweeten the deal". That's part of the problem. Anyone who gets what they want due to terrorism, directly or indirectly, is part of the problem of terrorism. Unfortunately that includes many state actors.
This is not an equal situation. It's "asymmetric" to use the scrubbed "lite" term. The difference is that the government is authorized to use force to achieve its goals, like all governments. The people who use force to resist it (the only way to launch a revolt) are, by definition, criminals. This is the problem of the people of India, to be sure. My comment was intended to apply only to the extent to which corporations based in North America interact with the Indian government.
If you *really* support the right of all human beings to live their lives the way they wish (so long as they do not seek to impose their way of life on others by force or by fraud, I would add) then you would naturally oppose any government that stands in their way. In this case, that's the Indian government. Your position of complete and total indifference is untenable if you wish to remain consistent with your stated principles.