So do Sony MP3 players play MP3s now, or are they still using incompatible formats, incomatible memory, and selling for 3x the price of generic units that do the same thing?
"How can Linux users claim better security than Windows, then write books about how to make sure the OS really is secure?"
One theory would be that *NIX has better security because the people who use it and develop it have spent the last 40 years having their systems attacked by an incredible variety of threats, so they've had no choice but to create systems which can be effectively secured.
But that means that a lot is down to the operators as well as the software, which is why books are useful. A book on securing Linux is effectively passing-on information learned over the years, to people who are just starting. Kind'a like apprenticeships, but can teach more people at once.
As to the Windows question, I don't think Windows has had the same kind of exposure to threats. For example, are there any Windows sytems which thousands of hackers have user-accounts on, like the old MIT CTS systems, or Sourceforge shell servers?
Have there been any Windows installations where the same machine serves thousands of websites, yet still needs to run CAD software for 30 people and simulation software for 30 more people (typical university department) without anyone exceeding their CPU, memory, disk, network limits, or inconveniencing other users, or accidentally making the whole system crash?
Without that level of testing, it would seem unlikely that Windows just happened to be capable of securing itself against those kinds of threats, regardless of how good the people using it are.
Perhaps it's irrelevant because Windows isn't used in that way, but even looking at networked PCs, where was Windows when the *NIX admins were dealing with the first viruses, learning how to harden their systems against them, and improving the OS software? It was still DOS, and still assumed that there would be only one person using a computer, the owner and admin of that computer, who was physically sitting in front of it and completely trusted. Not all of those assumptions were valid, as the resulting viruses showed.
It gets installed on the computer for the express purpose of monitoring another user's activities, such as a boss monitoring their employees or a parent monitoring what their children are doing.
So how is that not spyware?
Or to put it another way, if someone has enough access rights on a computer to run anti-spyware tools, then they're administering that computer, and have a need to know what's running on it. If the boss, parent, FBI, or whoever installed the spyware was the legitimate admin of the computer, then they could have chosen not to allow the user to run anti-spyware and it wouldn't be an issue.
But that's not up to the spyware/anti-spyware companies to decide, it's a security privileges thing. The anti-spyware should give correct information regardless, to whoever is running it.
Using a timezone suffix (3pm PST) provides the necessary and sufficient information
Technically, you'd also need a calendar, and a regularly-updated lookup table of all the daylight savings time systems around the world (both for PST, and for wherever you happen to be, in this example)
Except that if a clause like this were upheld, all the spyware makers would start adding similar clauses in short order, and anti-spyware makers would be out of business.
And operating system EULAs would have clauses forbidding spyware research, so all spyware companies go out of business.
Yes, it's all madness. Life is so much simpler when your software doesn't have EULAs.
"If Engineers built buildings the way computer programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
If engineers built buildings the way computer programmers wrote programs, an average engineer would be able to build an array of radio telescopes by himself in one evening. A team of 30 engineers would be able to build a ringworld in 3 months.
i.e. it would be nice if software were like designing an office, where there were 3 architects, 5 engineers, a building inspector, and 50 professional workmen to examine a system containing just a few hundred variables, and almost identical to the last 20 buildings they'd constructed.
And in case that didn't start a flamewar, how about...
"Just one unexpected input (of an aeroplane) caused the failure of two of New York's biggest civil engineering projects -- imagine how they'd cope with being attacked every 3 seconds like some internet software"
This was the crash where the Flight Data Recorder mysterously went missing after someone gave it to the manufacturers (who stood to make huge losses if anyone thought there was a problem with their aircraft) and when the (Swiss?) judge finally demanded that the Flight Data Recorders be handed over to the court (and independant evaluation), they turned out to have been tampered with.
"Pilot error".
Yes, pilot error. Of course. Just like that Chinook was pilot error.
The worrying thing was that it wasn't even a convincing coverup. Take the FDR, open it up, remove 3 seconds of incriminating footage (so the voice and data are 3 seconds out-of-sync), and give it back to the judge still unsealed and with different stickers on to when it was removed from the aircraft. They even left in the data showing that the altimeter was lying to the pilot.
"The entire device looks like a solid structure to passing birds, hence they fly around it. Birds don't fly into solid walls."
A town local to me has just had to paint their bridge a different colour to stop birds flying into it. So yes, they do fly into solid walls.
If only people applied the "bird-killing = completely unacceptable" argument to other areas in life. We could go around killing all the kittens for a start, or (ironically) the birds of prey.
Interesting that as someone who bought a Mac, I would be labelled as a "convert from Windows to Mac", when (a) it's a second PC not a conversion, and (b) the other computer runs Linux...
"Their ad is: "if you find this thing cheaper anywhere, we will return to you the price difference". I've never tried if this actually works."
A similar price promise at Sainsburys Homebase (a DIY store in the UK having its ass kicked by Wilkinsons) turned out to be false -- they would only refund 9/10 of the difference between the two prices.
For example, I bought something for £4 in homebase that cost £3 in wilko. In return for going back to the homebase store, taking them up on their price promise, and waiting for it all to be processed, I got a £0.90 refund that made their product still more expensive than the competition. And they didn't change their prices, so anyone who didn't complain paid loads more than necessary.
Naturally, none of this was mentioned on their large signs "get a refund of the difference if you see it cheaper anywhere", so I wouldn't trust a scheme like this until I'd tested it with a low-value item.
Most stores have dropped the price promises, since it became so obvious that they couldn't compete with online stores (e.g. USB key in Argos reduced to £49.99 from £79.99, available online for £12.00)
"Just seeing 6 menu items in a row in Konq that say "Configure" just makes me shudder."
Perhaps in a later version of KDE, the option windows could be tabbed, to show options for each of the components something uses, rather than have it on the menu.
It does seem quite logical, when you have an app that's just comprised of KParts, to have options to configure each. Presumably if you select a particular option in your Konqueror window, you get that option in every other KHTML component (email, newsreader, etc.) so you are configuring a component of the application, rather than the application itself.
And there's all the menu/icon/keyboard mappings, get their own configuration menu -- but then they do in most programs. Microsoft Word has a separate menu for configuring menus, another menu for configuring toolbars, a button in a dialog box for configuring keyboard shortcuts, etc. Does GNOME have a better configuration for that sort of thing, that KDE could look at copying?
I thought KDE allowed you to configure things either in the control centre, or within the application, and both of those configuration routes display the same settings dialog, since it's all modular. That seems quite logical to me from a programming viewpoint, although such modularity can seem confusing to people who are expecting everything to be optimised for one particular way of using it.
Late at night, I come in to work - notice that you are not at your desk, and attach a hardware keyboard sniffer to your keyboard. A few days later, I mosy over and disconnect it.
Which is why it's such a crappy idea to have PCs with all the cables at the back. Not only do you have to crawl around with a flashlight when you just want to swap a network or monitor cable, but you can't check the cables for keyloggers etc.
I think the best solution is probably smaller PCs -- things like my Mac Mini, which sits on the desk. If you plugged a key-logger into that, it would be visible to anyone who walks past.
"The idea is that they try and build the system out of as many interchangeable off-the-shelf components as possible so that they can benefit from competition and economies of scale"
So a bit like having a truly open document format that you can edit with any interchangeable off-the-shelf software solution from multiple suppliers.
"they try to own the IP/means of production..so that they aren't beholden to any one supplier."
So a bit like using Free Software, where you have the IP and own the means of production, so you aren't beholden to any one supplier
To me, it sounds like Massachusetts are learning from Microsoft how to get the best value in what they buy...
"I see alot of procedural abuses by the FBI, but what did they have to do with the patriot act?"
Well the Patriot Act was basically "just trust the police, because we're going to let them do whatever they want", so if the FBI had procedural abuses before, then that trust starts to look rather misplaced...
"Do they have any real experience and credentials that would suggest they are worthy of critiquing the work of people from MIT?"
Surely anyone can critique the work of MIT -- you just need to analyse the critics' work on its own merits, rather than on the writers' qualifications?
"The only phone service in my house is Vonage. If my ISP were to try to block or restrict that, you'd better believe I wouldn't be switching over to their phone service. I'd be getting a new ISP."
If they blocked your VoIP, couldn't you just report them for preventing your access to 911 on that connection?
Slashdot Mirror
So do Sony MP3 players play MP3s now, or are they still using incompatible formats, incomatible memory, and selling for 3x the price of generic units that do the same thing?
"How can Linux users claim better security than Windows, then write books about how to make sure the OS really is secure?"
One theory would be that *NIX has better security because the people who use it and develop it have spent the last 40 years having their systems attacked by an incredible variety of threats, so they've had no choice but to create systems which can be effectively secured.
But that means that a lot is down to the operators as well as the software, which is why books are useful. A book on securing Linux is effectively passing-on information learned over the years, to people who are just starting. Kind'a like apprenticeships, but can teach more people at once.
As to the Windows question, I don't think Windows has had the same kind of exposure to threats. For example, are there any Windows sytems which thousands of hackers have user-accounts on, like the old MIT CTS systems, or Sourceforge shell servers?
Have there been any Windows installations where the same machine serves thousands of websites, yet still needs to run CAD software for 30 people and simulation software for 30 more people (typical university department) without anyone exceeding their CPU, memory, disk, network limits, or inconveniencing other users, or accidentally making the whole system crash?
Without that level of testing, it would seem unlikely that Windows just happened to be capable of securing itself against those kinds of threats, regardless of how good the people using it are.
Perhaps it's irrelevant because Windows isn't used in that way, but even looking at networked PCs, where was Windows when the *NIX admins were dealing with the first viruses, learning how to harden their systems against them, and improving the OS software? It was still DOS, and still assumed that there would be only one person using a computer, the owner and admin of that computer, who was physically sitting in front of it and completely trusted. Not all of those assumptions were valid, as the resulting viruses showed.
The author has cast the entire thing as a US versus UK contest
Kansas requests that midnight UTC is defined as local sunset...
It gets installed on the computer for the express purpose of monitoring another user's activities, such as a boss monitoring their employees or a parent monitoring what their children are doing.
So how is that not spyware?
Or to put it another way, if someone has enough access rights on a computer to run anti-spyware tools, then they're administering that computer, and have a need to know what's running on it. If the boss, parent, FBI, or whoever installed the spyware was the legitimate admin of the computer, then they could have chosen not to allow the user to run anti-spyware and it wouldn't be an issue.
But that's not up to the spyware/anti-spyware companies to decide, it's a security privileges thing. The anti-spyware should give correct information regardless, to whoever is running it.
Why dont we all take out our photon drives (laser pointer) point em westerly and fix the real problem?
Or stop launching rockets to the east, just because it's convenient to steal angular momentum from the earth...
Using a timezone suffix (3pm PST) provides the necessary and sufficient information
Technically, you'd also need a calendar, and a regularly-updated lookup table of all the daylight savings time systems around the world (both for PST, and for wherever you happen to be, in this example)
Except that if a clause like this were upheld, all the spyware makers would start adding similar clauses in short order, and anti-spyware makers would be out of business.
And operating system EULAs would have clauses forbidding spyware research, so all spyware companies go out of business.
Yes, it's all madness. Life is so much simpler when your software doesn't have EULAs.
"If Engineers built buildings the way computer programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
If engineers built buildings the way computer programmers wrote programs, an average engineer would be able to build an array of radio telescopes by himself in one evening. A team of 30 engineers would be able to build a ringworld in 3 months.
i.e. it would be nice if software were like designing an office, where there were 3 architects, 5 engineers, a building inspector, and 50 professional workmen to examine a system containing just a few hundred variables, and almost identical to the last 20 buildings they'd constructed.
And in case that didn't start a flamewar, how about...
"Just one unexpected input (of an aeroplane) caused the failure of two of New York's biggest civil engineering projects -- imagine how they'd cope with being attacked every 3 seconds like some internet software"
This was the crash where the Flight Data Recorder mysterously went missing after someone gave it to the manufacturers (who stood to make huge losses if anyone thought there was a problem with their aircraft) and when the (Swiss?) judge finally demanded that the Flight Data Recorders be handed over to the court (and independant evaluation), they turned out to have been tampered with.
"Pilot error".
Yes, pilot error. Of course. Just like that Chinook was pilot error.
The worrying thing was that it wasn't even a convincing coverup. Take the FDR, open it up, remove 3 seconds of incriminating footage (so the voice and data are 3 seconds out-of-sync), and give it back to the judge still unsealed and with different stickers on to when it was removed from the aircraft. They even left in the data showing that the altimeter was lying to the pilot.
"The entire device looks like a solid structure to passing birds, hence they fly around it. Birds don't fly into solid walls."
A town local to me has just had to paint their bridge a different colour to stop birds flying into it. So yes, they do fly into solid walls.
If only people applied the "bird-killing = completely unacceptable" argument to other areas in life. We could go around killing all the kittens for a start, or (ironically) the birds of prey.
Interesting that as someone who bought a Mac, I would be labelled as a "convert from Windows to Mac", when (a) it's a second PC not a conversion, and (b) the other computer runs Linux...
;)
And no, Mac OS X isn't as good as KDE.
"Their ad is: "if you find this thing cheaper anywhere, we will return to you the price difference". I've never tried if this actually works."
A similar price promise at Sainsburys Homebase (a DIY store in the UK having its ass kicked by Wilkinsons) turned out to be false -- they would only refund 9/10 of the difference between the two prices.
For example, I bought something for £4 in homebase that cost £3 in wilko. In return for going back to the homebase store, taking them up on their price promise, and waiting for it all to be processed, I got a £0.90 refund that made their product still more expensive than the competition. And they didn't change their prices, so anyone who didn't complain paid loads more than necessary.
Naturally, none of this was mentioned on their large signs "get a refund of the difference if you see it cheaper anywhere", so I wouldn't trust a scheme like this until I'd tested it with a low-value item.
Most stores have dropped the price promises, since it became so obvious that they couldn't compete with online stores (e.g. USB key in Argos reduced to £49.99 from £79.99, available online for £12.00)
"Just seeing 6 menu items in a row in Konq that say "Configure" just makes me shudder."
Perhaps in a later version of KDE, the option windows could be tabbed, to show options for each of the components something uses, rather than have it on the menu.
It does seem quite logical, when you have an app that's just comprised of KParts, to have options to configure each. Presumably if you select a particular option in your Konqueror window, you get that option in every other KHTML component (email, newsreader, etc.) so you are configuring a component of the application, rather than the application itself.
And there's all the menu/icon/keyboard mappings, get their own configuration menu -- but then they do in most programs. Microsoft Word has a separate menu for configuring menus, another menu for configuring toolbars, a button in a dialog box for configuring keyboard shortcuts, etc. Does GNOME have a better configuration for that sort of thing, that KDE could look at copying?
I thought KDE allowed you to configure things either in the control centre, or within the application, and both of those configuration routes display the same settings dialog, since it's all modular. That seems quite logical to me from a programming viewpoint, although such modularity can seem confusing to people who are expecting everything to be optimised for one particular way of using it.
Late at night, I come in to work - notice that you are not at your desk, and attach a hardware keyboard sniffer to your keyboard. A few days later, I mosy over and disconnect it.
Which is why it's such a crappy idea to have PCs with all the cables at the back. Not only do you have to crawl around with a flashlight when you just want to swap a network or monitor cable, but you can't check the cables for keyloggers etc.
I think the best solution is probably smaller PCs -- things like my Mac Mini, which sits on the desk. If you plugged a key-logger into that, it would be visible to anyone who walks past.
Do any major distros standardize on KDE anymore?
;)
Yeah, KUbuntu does!
"The idea is that they try and build the system out of as many interchangeable off-the-shelf components as possible so that they can benefit from competition and economies of scale"
..so that they aren't beholden to any one supplier."
So a bit like having a truly open document format that you can edit with any interchangeable off-the-shelf software solution from multiple suppliers.
"they try to own the IP/means of production
So a bit like using Free Software, where you have the IP and own the means of production, so you aren't beholden to any one supplier
To me, it sounds like Massachusetts are learning from Microsoft how to get the best value in what they buy...
"You kick the ball when making a punt"
So why not call it Punting?
Secret bunker
Personally, I think the Department of Defense should remember why the word "defense" is in their name to begin with
Because defense is a euphamism for war?
"I see alot of procedural abuses by the FBI, but what did they have to do with the patriot act?"
Well the Patriot Act was basically "just trust the police, because we're going to let them do whatever they want", so if the FBI had procedural abuses before, then that trust starts to look rather misplaced...
"Unfortunately, you forget that many kids can use Photoshop functions while many adults struggle to use MS Paint."
We were counting managers as "kids" for the purposes of this analogy...
"Do they have any real experience and credentials that would suggest they are worthy of critiquing the work of people from MIT?"
Surely anyone can critique the work of MIT -- you just need to analyse the critics' work on its own merits, rather than on the writers' qualifications?
"The only phone service in my house is Vonage. If my ISP were to try to block or restrict that, you'd better believe I wouldn't be switching over to their phone service. I'd be getting a new ISP."
If they blocked your VoIP, couldn't you just report them for preventing your access to 911 on that connection?
Do Arab countries have...7-11s run by Indian guys
Yeah, they're called 9-11s...
"Unlike Microsoft, who now offer you a hotmail.co.uk adress if you say you're in Ireland."
Microsoft vs. Irish nationalism... should be good to watch!
gets popcorn...