> The argument that some knowledge is too dangerous to know is specious and flawed.
That's not the reasoning given. The knowledge IS known. Some knowledge is dangerous to disseminate. This is a sad fact of humanity, but a fact. Given opportunity and knowledge of vulnerability, you will get attempts to use and abuse knowledge with similar results. People are eager to exercise their imagination and reluctant to exercise restraint or critical thought. I can understand their position.
Thank you for replying instead of simply down-modding an argument you don't agree with. Others seem to prefer retaliation to debate.
Let's look at this from another perspective. Everyone knows there are problems with Siemens' PLCs. That's been known since Stuxnet got reverse engineered. While there's no problem whatsoever with sharing the information about specific vulnerabilities with Siemens - indeed, making sure they're the among the first to know - what additional danger would be presented by sharing that knowledge with the people tasked with protecting entire systems of which Siemens PLCs are a small but crucial part? (Bear in mind, this isn't in the scope of script kiddy/phishing activity. In other words, we're not talking about a generalised threat.)
This sort of openness doesn't do Siemens any favours; I'll grant you that. (Unless you count the added pressure to fix their equipment as being cruel to be kind.) But it does render a service to the community, who can now refactor their overall systems to compensate for the weakness of this component. I mean seriously, Even if it's just putting a guard at the door to the controller room for the time being, there are measures that site security staff could be taking if they were properly informed of the scope and nature of the threat.
Conversely, if people are not made aware of the nature of the threat, how can they know whether their short-term mitigation strategies are correct and sufficient?
So my point stands: The system is flawed (i.e. based on fundamentally invalid premises) if we're not considering what's best for the overall system. Rather than focusing on limiting the liability of a single actor, we should in this case be willing to accept that sharing the details will help the community of affected organisations protect itself better.
The argument that some knowledge is too dangerous to know is specious and flawed. But I can't tell you how or why for fear of undermining our existing regime of ignorance and ineptitude.
And who will decide which app to include? Microsoft? What if they decide that any free alternative to MS products should not be there?
Then people will simply download and install it the old-fashioned way, just as they do in Linux.
I strongly suspect a Microsoft App Store would be a seller's market - in other words, that Microsoft would be under significant pressure to get the numbers of downloadable apps up. This would mean no guarantee about the quality of the application you're downloading, but you would be assured it wasn't outright malicious.
And - more joy - corporate clients could fairly easily manage their own internal app stores, much as heavy users of Linux manage their own custom repos. That would be a huge win for IT departments everywhere.
All in all, I think it's about time MS learned this lesson from Mac and Linux. It's a proven concept whose time is well past due.
I would expect as Apple becomes more popular it will become more of a target for malware. This is not very surprising. I just hope Linux never becomes popular!
Well, if we do a quick calculation, perhaps we can get a ballpark idea of just how big this threat is:
Number of distinct threats: 1
Number of distinct reports: 42
Now, let's be generous and assume that for each of those 42 threads, there were about 1000 other people who experienced the same problem. That makes about 42,000 people who inadvertently installed and ran a Mac trojan. I'm not certain about the size of the Mac desktop/laptop installed base, but I suspect that a reasonable estimate is in the tens of millions.
Now, compare this with Microsoft's admission that 1 in 14 downloads on Windows is malicious, and I think it's safe to say we have two problems of distinctly different scope.
The article's author, Ed Bott, asks whether we should be crying wolf about this latest surge in Mac malware. Near as I can tell, there is a threat, but it's more akin to an excited chihuahua trying to hump your ankle than a ravening wolf.
Once again, those who claim to see direct parallels between Windows security and Mac/Linux security are guilty of false equivalence.
I don't run Ubuntu. I don't quite like it. I do however recommend it to my friends/family who want to experience Linux and have only used Windows so far. It's by far the easiest and most complete distro available to newbies.
If you do recommend it to others, recommend nothing later than 10.04, the last LTS release.
10.10 saw a number of minor but irritating bugs creep in that show a significant shortage of testing and forethought. There were countless small things like context menus no longer working after returning from a suspended state or new window positioning that's completely counter-intuitive. Some of them, like changing sides for window buttons or listing indecipherable package descriptions above package names in Update Manager, were deliberate (and conceivably, in some universe, necessary), but most of the changes were clearly mistakes. When these are combined with long-standing bugs (like Network Manager arbitrarily deciding to disable the Save button) and inconsistencies, they begin to weigh against Ubuntu's many virtues.
Unity, combined with an increase in the number of stupid bugs (that spiffy state-of-the-machine motd message is FUBAR'ed now on console login) clearly indicates that Ubuntu is more interested in new and shiny than they are in quality. A quick scan of Launchpad (itself a new product designed to simplify bug maintenance and supplant the competition, but which has done neither) shows that there are, on average, 100 open bugs per project.
Ubuntu is slipping out of control. They've stopped listening and - more importantly - working with the community. The number of defects are growing, but Canonical's response is to make it harder for mere mortals to submit bugs. They seem to think that strong guidance is needed for their product to grow in new and interesting ways. Fair enough, but they're confusing leadership with control. They're simply imposing their views because they don't value the discussion. They're treating criticisms as opposition and shutting themselves off from valid feedback.
Worse, they simply don't have the number of skilled developers they need to achieve their goals. When I look at the bug queues on some packages, I shudder in sympathy with the poor souls who are expected to wrangle them. Ubuntu is clearly embarked on an impossible task, but nobody's either got the guts or the vision to spell this out to Shuttleworth and co.
Getting buy-in and active participation from the community is a pain in the arse at the best of times, but the alternative is far worse. Heaven knows that the GNOME dev camp are... special, to be nice. But it's clear that, given the choice between getting a partial but workable success through compromise or taking their ball and going home, Canonical has consistently chosen the latter.
This cannot end well. It will, however, end sooner than later.
Just like competent gun makers will monitor for gun abuses? Is this the "Colt should pay for murderings produced using its weapons" argument?
If Colt were renting out the firearms by the hour and selling ammunition by the crate, then yes, you could reasonably expect them to monitor who is using them and for what stated purpose.
How much work is it to avoid installing fake antivirus?
That is not a problem inherent to Microsoft operating systems.
Just because you haven't seen those popups on your Macbook yet, doesn't mean they aren't right around the corner.
Nor does it mean that these pop-ups are right around the corner. Your argument is a perfect example of false equivalence:If no software application can be 100% secured, all software is therefore equally insecure.
To tar other OSes with the same brush as Windows is to suggest that one should not move to another bank because, once enough people move to it, it too will become the target of bank robbers. That’s wrong because:
Nobody is suggesting that everyone has to move all their money to one single bank;
The new bank might not be perfectly secure, but at least it doesn’t leave all the money in a pile in the middle of the floor.
There is nothing that compares with US based, on-site developers who speak the language, understand the culture, and know the ins-and-outs of the business.
Tragically, most of the rest of the world agrees, and as a result, the vast majority of the globe's population has to deal with software designed for use in the US.
OBAnecdote: The birthday on my Ontario driver's license was wrong for years because the database system they used stored dates in mm/dd/yyyy format, but all the forms were in (Canadian-style) dd/mm/yyyy format. In my case, it worked out fine, because I got another couple of months grace before I had to renew my tags.
So, allow me to extend your argument a little further and suggest that if more countries (and organisations) actually invested a little in developing talent locally, they'd be far further along, technologically speaking, than they are now.
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
No, that's a false dilemma. "Is not perfect" != "Nothing works"
I know, I was just playin'.
In point of fact, the issue is much subtler and appears almost paradoxical: There is a very large contingent on Slashdot that remains convinced that they are operating in a fundamentally unjust system in which valid opinions are discounted due only to their unpopularity. It's amusing to see that there are enough people operating with this misapprehension that accusations of unjust moderation[*] and 'group-think' are consistently moderated upward.
In my fairly substantial experience (stretching back into the mists FidoNet and UseNet), however, the Slashdot mod/metamod system is probably the healthiest discussion system I've seen. The problem is that it works because it's being used by a community of people for whom complex rules are not an obstacle. If we can manage a round of D&D or build a character on WoW, then surely a little moderation now and then isn't going to be a problem.
But not everybody has the time, patience and commitment for something like this. For someone needing to blow off a little steam on a news site, Slashmod is entirely inappropriate.
Slashdot's discussion system is excellent and unfairness is the exception rather than the rule. I wish it could be applied more widely, but I doubt that this will ever happen.
---------------
[*] Admittedly, there is a degree of deliberate moderation abuse, and it does include down-modding people with whom one disagrees. It also extends to quietly down-modding old posts in order to keep certain individuals from getting mod points as frequently as they might. It's happened to me on a fairly consistent basis. One one particular occasion, I resorted to sending in a formal complaint. By and large, though, the system works for me. My karma is excellent, I have a boatload of fans and for the most part the posts of mine that don't get modded up don't really deserve it.
the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.
Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
Using generic parts of a kind you can find in the local hardware store is a Good Thing.
Pardon me, but an autoclave is not a generic part that can be picked up at the local hardware store. Besides, remote areas of underdeveloped countries do not have hardware stores. So claiming anything that requires parts from YOUR local hardware store is suitable for people who have never seen a hardware store shows a complete lack of empathy for the problems of the people who make up a large part of the world's population.
Dude, chill. The problems we're discussing affect about 85% of the population of the country I live in right now.
To your points: First, that 'people who have never seen a hardware store' line is a little disingenuous. We're obviously using shorthand for generic consumer-grade materials that are readily available via standard distribution channels. Yes, there is no hardware store in the village to which these parts are destined, but it's a damn sight easier to get generic parts shipped from the nearest city (no matter how far away that might be) than it is to get a medical supply company to ship to the same place.
Second, the whole point about making an autoclave (or any other needful thing) out of generic, readily-available materials is that they are otherwise extremely difficult to source, operate, maintain and replace.
Sometimes, holding out for optimal conditions or equipment is just plain wrong. In many cases, just having something -anything at all- is often better than nothing. A friend of mine has had to perform emergency surgical procedures by the light of a Coleman lamp, so I suspect that having a quick and dirty (sorry) way of sterilising surgical materials when there's no diesel for the generator would be seen as a Good Thing, provided it worked.
The problem I have with a solar-powered version is that, in my part of the world at least, the sun is not around much at precisely the time of year when disaster is most likely to happen (i.e hurricane season). Also, it's night about half the time. If someone could find a way, for example, to heat an autoclave with a truck battery, I'd be a lot more sanguine about the prospect.
I may be mistaken or just plain wrong about how an autoclave should function, but please don't make assumptions about my experience with this kind of thing. The repercussions of a non-functioning health system is something I and my family deal with all the time.
Society under-utilizes gifted people because otherwise gifted people would become some kind of "elite";-)
Elite has everything to do with privilege and nothing whatsoever to do with being gifted (in the sense of higher intelligence, anyway).
I went to high school in a neighbourhood that had one of my city's most elite neighbourhoods on one side and a working class ghetto (home to a number of mafia families and one motorcycle gang) on the other. The 'elite' students were better fed, better dressed, better spoken and better behaved, for the most part, but if they were smarter, they hid it well.
Education and opportunity may give you a head start in life, but don't for a second try to pretend that these advantages somehow make you smarter or better than anyone else. Harvard may demand you work at a higher level, but its cachet is that you can make friends with rich people, and with luck some of that rich will rub off on you.
The highly intelligent are usually the opposite of elite: They are so caught up with ideas, and so desperate for the company of people who actually understand them, that they are willing to overlook most of the social markers (accent, clothing, income, residence) that most people use to grade each other.
Whenever I hear the term 'intellectual elite', I wonder if such a thing is even possible, because anyone stupid enough to hang that term on a group has to be lying.
If these things are such no-brainers, then why haven't they been developed previously? The 'obviousness' AFTER THE FACT of these solutions has no bearing on either the creativity, ingenuity, and skill that went into them, nor on their value.
Without taking away from your argument - it's perfectly valid - I'd suggest to you that the main reason for lack of development in what's often called Appropriate Technology is that, for the most part, most of the people involved are against new technological approaches, especially those that challenge their own ability to draw a salary.
I've experienced first-hand situations where donors would rather spend a half million dollars on a project that's fraught with predictable, inevitable problems than spend twenty thousand on something new. In every case, it's because there's no Advisor salary attached to the latter. Rhetoric aside, most development agencies have a neo-colonial bias that simply assumes that aid workers are better suited to solving problems than the people who are living them. The real answer is usually somewhere in the middle, but the structures of development aid are such that it's nigh on impossible to actually do good.
Every single piece of this "revolutionary" "invention" can be bought off the shelf and is in current use.
Sure, but that's actually one of the few positive aspects to this story. Using generic parts of a kind you can find in the local hardware store is a Good Thing.
I just wish they'd thought about it long enough to realise that in the Caribbean (and the South Pacific, where I live) the most likely disaster scenario is hurricane- or volcano-related. There's not usually a lot of sunlight during such times.
And, for plastic items, fire can be used to boil water to sterilize those.
That's probably a better starting point than this idea.
My complaint about this (and a number of other 'developing world' technologies) is that they try to solve the entire puzzle all at once. And that usually requires a degree of cleverness. That cleverness usually requires either custom components or a particular environment in which to work. Which makes it effectively useless.
The problem here is that people seems to be conflating 'hot' with 'sunny'. It's a common misconception that, because the poorest nations in the world tend to cluster around the equator, they mus all be sunny. They're not.
If I had a single piece of advice to offer well-intended people trying to develop tech for the developing world, I'd say this: Focus on reducing power consumption. Don't get clever, just make it run on 12V DC. Don't worry about where the power is going to come from. If we have to, we'll buy batteries. And please, above all, try to avoid making life-saving equipment that doesn't work during hurricane season!
You should try reading the conversation before you get all indignant like I insulted your mom.
Classy start.
The assertion made was that "open platforms" attract more developers because developers want to work on platforms they can tinker with. Axiomatic to this is the notion that, where an "open platform" exists, it will attract developers away because those devs will eschew closed platforms where they cannot tinker.
You need to understand the difference between an axiom and a corollary.
In either case, the only way that FOSS development could draw resources away from other places is if developers were not capable of working on multiple platforms, which is demonstrably not the case, especially with FOSS, whose open source makes porting to other platforms easier.
Which was my fucking point, as you'll recall.
Do you really mean to suggest that all the developers in the FOSS world are so tied up with Expose (^H^H sorry, Compiz), "The Web," and NoSQL db's that there has literally been no manpower available to produce games, desktop software, mobile apps, and a host of other things which Linux lacks?
No, that's your own straw man. I prefer my straw men to look more like this:
"Your inability to make a logically coherent argument renders any attempt at disputation and persuasion ineffective and pointless. May I instead suggest you eat donkey poo?"
See, mine also refuses to engage honestly with the interlocutor, but at least it has some style.
In any case, my suggestion was that revolutionary progress in three major areas of technological development kind of negates your claim that 'Linux software' is derivative and, by implication, second-rate.
Have some donkey poo.
And if so, and if the "openness" argument put forth by the GGP is correct, how come all of those things exist on closed platforms in far greater numbers than they do on open platforms?
Because of -gasp- horses for courses. Some things are easier to build and maintain using FOSS approaches, some just haven't seized anyone's attention yet, and some are genuinely easier to build and maintain in a proprietary setting.
If history is any guide, these last are in the minority. Commodification is a powerful force in software, and commodification usually implies FOSS - or at least an open environment.
Give me 3 examples of software that is only available on Linux...
The whole fucking point of the argument is that Open Software is... wait for it... Open.
Almost by definition, there is effectively no such thing as software that is only available for Linux, because typically software written for Linux can be easily ported to other platforms.
So, with that out of the way, let's address the real question: What truly new and original software has FOSS given us?
The Web - Yeah, enough of it that it makes more sense to just lump it all together. You can nitpick out small subsets and individual apps, but the general point is not weakened.
CouchDB/NoSQL - novel storage implementations that can legitimately be said to have originated in the FOSS space.
Compiz/Emerald et alia - Say what you like about the level of refinement, you cannot argue that Compiz (and related projects) was not ahead of both Mac OS and Windows in terms of technical capabilities and their application in redefining how people interact with the desktop. Sure there's a good deal of cross-pollination between Mac/Windows/Linux, but in terms of technical development, Compiz has been a leader, not a follower.
Mimicry, yes; catching the next wave by being a first-mover in a space where no other platform is going? Not so much.
Bullshit.
But you know what? Even if that were true, FOSS would still be giving us better quality software for less money. So the full response to your argument is that it's not only false, it's specious, too.
At some point, someone will have to determine what's costlier: a little extra money up front to recruit knowledgeable and capable people to safeguard the company's and customers' valuable information... or a public relations disaster such as Sony is experiencing.
You're assuming that massive data theft is a disaster to the company. If experience is any guide, that's not true:
It seems that in the esoteric world of noughts and ones, belief matters far more than empirical truth, making a true Data Disaster literally inconceivable.
There can’t be a Data Disaster today, because we can’t imagine what one would look like. Likewise, there won’t be a Data Disaster until we become capable of realising that they’re all around us, happening every day.
I don't mean technically - it isn't just an IT managers role to tick the right boxes in a menu, I mean if THEIR managers are unwilling to spend the time, money and effort on their own, then it falls to the person to convince them of the need to do so.
You know, there used to be these things called ethics (mostly honesty, trust and integrity) that all the good workers brought to the office every day. But that was way back in a time when companies actually invested in their staff, looked after them for the better part of their career and in return expected them to protect the company's interests.
This good conduct was policed with a degree of strictness and care by managers, who were held responsible for the materials under their control.
Now, however, we have Data Protection Software. Oh Brave New World, that has such applications in it!
Reading a EULA is like reading a paperback novel. Only it's written in Sanskrit and there's no character development, plot, or even anything interesting happening.
So... just like a Dan Brown novel, basically?
In that case, Google should wrap their EULAs in gimmicky paperback covers and sell them on Amazon. They'd make millions and everybody would pretend they'd read them.
Slashdot Mirror
> The argument that some knowledge is too dangerous to know is specious and flawed.
That's not the reasoning given. The knowledge IS known. Some knowledge is dangerous to disseminate. This is a sad fact of humanity, but a fact. Given opportunity and knowledge of vulnerability, you will get attempts to use and abuse knowledge with similar results. People are eager to exercise their imagination and reluctant to exercise restraint or critical thought. I can understand their position.
Thank you for replying instead of simply down-modding an argument you don't agree with. Others seem to prefer retaliation to debate.
Let's look at this from another perspective. Everyone knows there are problems with Siemens' PLCs. That's been known since Stuxnet got reverse engineered. While there's no problem whatsoever with sharing the information about specific vulnerabilities with Siemens - indeed, making sure they're the among the first to know - what additional danger would be presented by sharing that knowledge with the people tasked with protecting entire systems of which Siemens PLCs are a small but crucial part? (Bear in mind, this isn't in the scope of script kiddy/phishing activity. In other words, we're not talking about a generalised threat.)
This sort of openness doesn't do Siemens any favours; I'll grant you that. (Unless you count the added pressure to fix their equipment as being cruel to be kind.) But it does render a service to the community, who can now refactor their overall systems to compensate for the weakness of this component. I mean seriously, Even if it's just putting a guard at the door to the controller room for the time being, there are measures that site security staff could be taking if they were properly informed of the scope and nature of the threat.
Conversely, if people are not made aware of the nature of the threat, how can they know whether their short-term mitigation strategies are correct and sufficient?
So my point stands: The system is flawed (i.e. based on fundamentally invalid premises) if we're not considering what's best for the overall system. Rather than focusing on limiting the liability of a single actor, we should in this case be willing to accept that sharing the details will help the community of affected organisations protect itself better.
The argument that some knowledge is too dangerous to know is specious and flawed. But I can't tell you how or why for fear of undermining our existing regime of ignorance and ineptitude.
And who will decide which app to include? Microsoft? What if they decide that any free alternative to MS products should not be there?
Then people will simply download and install it the old-fashioned way, just as they do in Linux.
I strongly suspect a Microsoft App Store would be a seller's market - in other words, that Microsoft would be under significant pressure to get the numbers of downloadable apps up. This would mean no guarantee about the quality of the application you're downloading, but you would be assured it wasn't outright malicious.
And - more joy - corporate clients could fairly easily manage their own internal app stores, much as heavy users of Linux manage their own custom repos. That would be a huge win for IT departments everywhere.
All in all, I think it's about time MS learned this lesson from Mac and Linux. It's a proven concept whose time is well past due.
I would expect as Apple becomes more popular it will become more of a target for malware. This is not very surprising. I just hope Linux never becomes popular!
Well, if we do a quick calculation, perhaps we can get a ballpark idea of just how big this threat is:
Number of distinct threats: 1
Number of distinct reports: 42
Now, let's be generous and assume that for each of those 42 threads, there were about 1000 other people who experienced the same problem. That makes about 42,000 people who inadvertently installed and ran a Mac trojan. I'm not certain about the size of the Mac desktop/laptop installed base, but I suspect that a reasonable estimate is in the tens of millions.
Now, compare this with Microsoft's admission that 1 in 14 downloads on Windows is malicious, and I think it's safe to say we have two problems of distinctly different scope.
The article's author, Ed Bott, asks whether we should be crying wolf about this latest surge in Mac malware. Near as I can tell, there is a threat, but it's more akin to an excited chihuahua trying to hump your ankle than a ravening wolf.
Once again, those who claim to see direct parallels between Windows security and Mac/Linux security are guilty of false equivalence.
Well coffee has the distinct advantage in that if you drink 100 cups, you can move at nearly the speed of light. Or so I saw on a show once.
Woohoo!!!! I'm nnneeevvveeerrr gggggeeeeeetttttiiiiinnnnngggg ccccccaaaaaannnnnnnnccccccceeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AndI'mgoingtotheMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
I don't run Ubuntu. I don't quite like it. I do however recommend it to my friends/family who want to experience Linux and have only used Windows so far. It's by far the easiest and most complete distro available to newbies.
If you do recommend it to others, recommend nothing later than 10.04, the last LTS release.
10.10 saw a number of minor but irritating bugs creep in that show a significant shortage of testing and forethought. There were countless small things like context menus no longer working after returning from a suspended state or new window positioning that's completely counter-intuitive. Some of them, like changing sides for window buttons or listing indecipherable package descriptions above package names in Update Manager, were deliberate (and conceivably, in some universe, necessary), but most of the changes were clearly mistakes. When these are combined with long-standing bugs (like Network Manager arbitrarily deciding to disable the Save button) and inconsistencies, they begin to weigh against Ubuntu's many virtues.
Unity, combined with an increase in the number of stupid bugs (that spiffy state-of-the-machine motd message is FUBAR'ed now on console login) clearly indicates that Ubuntu is more interested in new and shiny than they are in quality. A quick scan of Launchpad (itself a new product designed to simplify bug maintenance and supplant the competition, but which has done neither) shows that there are, on average, 100 open bugs per project.
Ubuntu is slipping out of control. They've stopped listening and - more importantly - working with the community. The number of defects are growing, but Canonical's response is to make it harder for mere mortals to submit bugs. They seem to think that strong guidance is needed for their product to grow in new and interesting ways. Fair enough, but they're confusing leadership with control. They're simply imposing their views because they don't value the discussion. They're treating criticisms as opposition and shutting themselves off from valid feedback.
Worse, they simply don't have the number of skilled developers they need to achieve their goals. When I look at the bug queues on some packages, I shudder in sympathy with the poor souls who are expected to wrangle them. Ubuntu is clearly embarked on an impossible task, but nobody's either got the guts or the vision to spell this out to Shuttleworth and co.
Getting buy-in and active participation from the community is a pain in the arse at the best of times, but the alternative is far worse. Heaven knows that the GNOME dev camp are... special, to be nice. But it's clear that, given the choice between getting a partial but workable success through compromise or taking their ball and going home, Canonical has consistently chosen the latter.
This cannot end well. It will, however, end sooner than later.
Yo dawg, we hear you liked Linux...
Yeah, but does it run Lin - hang on....
... Oh My God. It's penguins all the way down!
Hmm.
I designed a gun.
No, no, no! You're supposed to point it away from you.
Correction: You're supposed to point it away from me.
Just like competent gun makers will monitor for gun abuses? Is this the "Colt should pay for murderings produced using its weapons" argument?
If Colt were renting out the firearms by the hour and selling ammunition by the crate, then yes, you could reasonably expect them to monitor who is using them and for what stated purpose.
That is not a problem inherent to Microsoft operating systems. Just because you haven't seen those popups on your Macbook yet, doesn't mean they aren't right around the corner.
Nor does it mean that these pop-ups are right around the corner. Your argument is a perfect example of false equivalence: If no software application can be 100% secured, all software is therefore equally insecure.
To tar other OSes with the same brush as Windows is to suggest that one should not move to another bank because, once enough people move to it, it too will become the target of bank robbers. That’s wrong because:
It works for you since you agree with 99% of the people here.
That prima facie false, because there's a large contingent of people who believe it to be true, and I don't agree with them. 8^)
Real colleges don't give a class on SVN unless it's about building a batter source control widget.
I generally store mine in the fridge, though I'll admit that freeze/thaw is occasionally a problem.
There is nothing that compares with US based, on-site developers who speak the language, understand the culture, and know the ins-and-outs of the business.
Tragically, most of the rest of the world agrees, and as a result, the vast majority of the globe's population has to deal with software designed for use in the US.
OBAnecdote: The birthday on my Ontario driver's license was wrong for years because the database system they used stored dates in mm/dd/yyyy format, but all the forms were in (Canadian-style) dd/mm/yyyy format. In my case, it worked out fine, because I got another couple of months grace before I had to renew my tags.
So, allow me to extend your argument a little further and suggest that if more countries (and organisations) actually invested a little in developing talent locally, they'd be far further along, technologically speaking, than they are now.
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
No, that's a false dilemma. "Is not perfect" != "Nothing works"
I know, I was just playin'.
In point of fact, the issue is much subtler and appears almost paradoxical: There is a very large contingent on Slashdot that remains convinced that they are operating in a fundamentally unjust system in which valid opinions are discounted due only to their unpopularity. It's amusing to see that there are enough people operating with this misapprehension that accusations of unjust moderation[*] and 'group-think' are consistently moderated upward.
In my fairly substantial experience (stretching back into the mists FidoNet and UseNet), however, the Slashdot mod/metamod system is probably the healthiest discussion system I've seen. The problem is that it works because it's being used by a community of people for whom complex rules are not an obstacle. If we can manage a round of D&D or build a character on WoW, then surely a little moderation now and then isn't going to be a problem.
But not everybody has the time, patience and commitment for something like this. For someone needing to blow off a little steam on a news site, Slashmod is entirely inappropriate.
Slashdot's discussion system is excellent and unfairness is the exception rather than the rule. I wish it could be applied more widely, but I doubt that this will ever happen.
---------------
[*] Admittedly, there is a degree of deliberate moderation abuse, and it does include down-modding people with whom one disagrees. It also extends to quietly down-modding old posts in order to keep certain individuals from getting mod points as frequently as they might. It's happened to me on a fairly consistent basis. One one particular occasion, I resorted to sending in a formal complaint. By and large, though, the system works for me. My karma is excellent, I have a boatload of fans and for the most part the posts of mine that don't get modded up don't really deserve it.
the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.
Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
Pardon me, but an autoclave is not a generic part that can be picked up at the local hardware store. Besides, remote areas of underdeveloped countries do not have hardware stores. So claiming anything that requires parts from YOUR local hardware store is suitable for people who have never seen a hardware store shows a complete lack of empathy for the problems of the people who make up a large part of the world's population.
Dude, chill. The problems we're discussing affect about 85% of the population of the country I live in right now.
To your points: First, that 'people who have never seen a hardware store' line is a little disingenuous. We're obviously using shorthand for generic consumer-grade materials that are readily available via standard distribution channels. Yes, there is no hardware store in the village to which these parts are destined, but it's a damn sight easier to get generic parts shipped from the nearest city (no matter how far away that might be) than it is to get a medical supply company to ship to the same place.
Second, the whole point about making an autoclave (or any other needful thing) out of generic, readily-available materials is that they are otherwise extremely difficult to source, operate, maintain and replace.
Sometimes, holding out for optimal conditions or equipment is just plain wrong. In many cases, just having something -anything at all- is often better than nothing. A friend of mine has had to perform emergency surgical procedures by the light of a Coleman lamp, so I suspect that having a quick and dirty (sorry) way of sterilising surgical materials when there's no diesel for the generator would be seen as a Good Thing, provided it worked.
The problem I have with a solar-powered version is that, in my part of the world at least, the sun is not around much at precisely the time of year when disaster is most likely to happen (i.e hurricane season). Also, it's night about half the time. If someone could find a way, for example, to heat an autoclave with a truck battery, I'd be a lot more sanguine about the prospect.
I may be mistaken or just plain wrong about how an autoclave should function, but please don't make assumptions about my experience with this kind of thing. The repercussions of a non-functioning health system is something I and my family deal with all the time.
Society under-utilizes gifted people because otherwise gifted people would become some kind of "elite" ;-)
Elite has everything to do with privilege and nothing whatsoever to do with being gifted (in the sense of higher intelligence, anyway).
I went to high school in a neighbourhood that had one of my city's most elite neighbourhoods on one side and a working class ghetto (home to a number of mafia families and one motorcycle gang) on the other. The 'elite' students were better fed, better dressed, better spoken and better behaved, for the most part, but if they were smarter, they hid it well.
Education and opportunity may give you a head start in life, but don't for a second try to pretend that these advantages somehow make you smarter or better than anyone else. Harvard may demand you work at a higher level, but its cachet is that you can make friends with rich people, and with luck some of that rich will rub off on you.
The highly intelligent are usually the opposite of elite: They are so caught up with ideas, and so desperate for the company of people who actually understand them, that they are willing to overlook most of the social markers (accent, clothing, income, residence) that most people use to grade each other.
Whenever I hear the term 'intellectual elite', I wonder if such a thing is even possible, because anyone stupid enough to hang that term on a group has to be lying.
If these things are such no-brainers, then why haven't they been developed previously? The 'obviousness' AFTER THE FACT of these solutions has no bearing on either the creativity, ingenuity, and skill that went into them, nor on their value.
Without taking away from your argument - it's perfectly valid - I'd suggest to you that the main reason for lack of development in what's often called Appropriate Technology is that, for the most part, most of the people involved are against new technological approaches, especially those that challenge their own ability to draw a salary.
I've experienced first-hand situations where donors would rather spend a half million dollars on a project that's fraught with predictable, inevitable problems than spend twenty thousand on something new. In every case, it's because there's no Advisor salary attached to the latter. Rhetoric aside, most development agencies have a neo-colonial bias that simply assumes that aid workers are better suited to solving problems than the people who are living them. The real answer is usually somewhere in the middle, but the structures of development aid are such that it's nigh on impossible to actually do good.
Every single piece of this "revolutionary" "invention" can be bought off the shelf and is in current use.
Sure, but that's actually one of the few positive aspects to this story. Using generic parts of a kind you can find in the local hardware store is a Good Thing.
I just wish they'd thought about it long enough to realise that in the Caribbean (and the South Pacific, where I live) the most likely disaster scenario is hurricane- or volcano-related. There's not usually a lot of sunlight during such times.
Doesn't fire sterilize just fine? They have fire.
And, for plastic items, fire can be used to boil water to sterilize those.
That's probably a better starting point than this idea.
My complaint about this (and a number of other 'developing world' technologies) is that they try to solve the entire puzzle all at once. And that usually requires a degree of cleverness. That cleverness usually requires either custom components or a particular environment in which to work. Which makes it effectively useless.
The problem here is that people seems to be conflating 'hot' with 'sunny'. It's a common misconception that, because the poorest nations in the world tend to cluster around the equator, they mus all be sunny. They're not.
If I had a single piece of advice to offer well-intended people trying to develop tech for the developing world, I'd say this: Focus on reducing power consumption. Don't get clever, just make it run on 12V DC. Don't worry about where the power is going to come from. If we have to, we'll buy batteries. And please, above all, try to avoid making life-saving equipment that doesn't work during hurricane season!
You should try reading the conversation before you get all indignant like I insulted your mom.
Classy start.
The assertion made was that "open platforms" attract more developers because developers want to work on platforms they can tinker with. Axiomatic to this is the notion that, where an "open platform" exists, it will attract developers away because those devs will eschew closed platforms where they cannot tinker.
You need to understand the difference between an axiom and a corollary.
In either case, the only way that FOSS development could draw resources away from other places is if developers were not capable of working on multiple platforms, which is demonstrably not the case, especially with FOSS, whose open source makes porting to other platforms easier.
Which was my fucking point, as you'll recall.
Do you really mean to suggest that all the developers in the FOSS world are so tied up with Expose (^H^H sorry, Compiz), "The Web," and NoSQL db's that there has literally been no manpower available to produce games, desktop software, mobile apps, and a host of other things which Linux lacks?
No, that's your own straw man. I prefer my straw men to look more like this:
"Your inability to make a logically coherent argument renders any attempt at disputation and persuasion ineffective and pointless. May I instead suggest you eat donkey poo?"
See, mine also refuses to engage honestly with the interlocutor, but at least it has some style.
In any case, my suggestion was that revolutionary progress in three major areas of technological development kind of negates your claim that 'Linux software' is derivative and, by implication, second-rate.
Have some donkey poo.
And if so, and if the "openness" argument put forth by the GGP is correct, how come all of those things exist on closed platforms in far greater numbers than they do on open platforms?
Because of -gasp- horses for courses. Some things are easier to build and maintain using FOSS approaches, some just haven't seized anyone's attention yet, and some are genuinely easier to build and maintain in a proprietary setting.
If history is any guide, these last are in the minority. Commodification is a powerful force in software, and commodification usually implies FOSS - or at least an open environment.
The whole fucking point of the argument is that Open Software is... wait for it... Open.
Almost by definition, there is effectively no such thing as software that is only available for Linux, because typically software written for Linux can be easily ported to other platforms.
So, with that out of the way, let's address the real question: What truly new and original software has FOSS given us?
Mimicry, yes; catching the next wave by being a first-mover in a space where no other platform is going? Not so much.
Bullshit.
But you know what? Even if that were true, FOSS would still be giving us better quality software for less money. So the full response to your argument is that it's not only false, it's specious, too.
HTH, HAND.
At some point, someone will have to determine what's costlier: a little extra money up front to recruit knowledgeable and capable people to safeguard the company's and customers' valuable information ... or a public relations disaster such as Sony is experiencing.
You're assuming that massive data theft is a disaster to the company. If experience is any guide, that's not true:
I don't mean technically - it isn't just an IT managers role to tick the right boxes in a menu, I mean if THEIR managers are unwilling to spend the time, money and effort on their own, then it falls to the person to convince them of the need to do so.
You know, there used to be these things called ethics (mostly honesty, trust and integrity) that all the good workers brought to the office every day. But that was way back in a time when companies actually invested in their staff, looked after them for the better part of their career and in return expected them to protect the company's interests.
This good conduct was policed with a degree of strictness and care by managers, who were held responsible for the materials under their control.
Now, however, we have Data Protection Software. Oh Brave New World, that has such applications in it!
Reading a EULA is like reading a paperback novel. Only it's written in Sanskrit and there's no character development, plot, or even anything interesting happening.
So... just like a Dan Brown novel, basically?
In that case, Google should wrap their EULAs in gimmicky paperback covers and sell them on Amazon. They'd make millions and everybody would pretend they'd read them.