This guy gave a conditional guilty plea even though "evidence" linked the yahoo account to his roommate. You don't accept a deal for 4 years in prison if you're not guilty. Clearly, someone is lying here.
He plead guilty because they found stacks of DVDs with child pornography on them in his room. His only hope was to have that evidence nullified by claiming the search was illegal, under the reasoning that just because child porn was transmitted through his access point did not mean the cops has reason to suspect him in particular or search his residence. He has a slight point and warrants in these cases should be issued for the entire residence and all people therein. Still, it is pretty likely he and his roommate were both guilty.
Just to clarify before a hundred people comment without understanding this distinction. The court in this case ruled that child pornography tracked to a given open access point was probable cause to search that residence and specifically the rooms belonging to the person who ran the open access point. They did not rule that running the open access point proved that the owner was guilty of transmitting the child pornography, but ruled him guilty because of the stacks of DVDs found in his room.
Safari's rendering engine is based on KHTML. So is Konqueror affected by this flaw as well?
That is a possibility, but it is a lot less likely than most people would assume. The reason for this is that what most people think of as a Web browser (like Firefox) can be broken up into multiple parts, only one of which is shared between Konquerer and Safari. Both browsers separate the HTML rendering from the application, file handling, and GUI, so that the former can be used by other applications as well. Writing a Web browser that runs on OS X, using the included development tools can be done without writing a single line of code by making a GUI and plugging it in to WebKit. So if the flaw is in the shared code between Konquerer and Safari, there is a good chance it will be mitigated by the file handling routines, which are different in each.
Troll? Why is this modded Troll? I mean, it speaks ill of an Apple product, but it seems to have some factual merit. You can disagree, but Troll?
I believe it is being modded as a troll because people believe it is a fabrication designed to elicit responses. From just scanning it, I'd tend to agree. Claiming that Quicktime has any control over SCSI controllers and would behave differently than any other application speaks to either extreme ignorance, or trolling.
As far as I'm aware, most of the "video cameras placed in urban areas" are privately owned and in no way linked to the government.
That is incorrect. Like the instance in Venezuela, many US cities like Chicago and New York have set up surveillance cameras run by the police of that city.
And the "automated telecom snooping" is used only for calls to or from other countries, right?
Again no. The feds have implemented widespread, automated, warrant-less snooping of domestic communications targeting both US citizens suspected by them of some unnamed offense. They also monitor every call that enters or leaves the US using an automated system, which might be what you're thinking of.
I just find it interesting that people are so eager to blow out of proportion any surveillance program in a free, progressive nation like the US, while downplaying much worse measures in Venezuela - a country which shows every sign of descending into a Cuba-like dictatorship.
I don't have enough information to judge the government of Venezuela's actions, but this particular one was by the city officials, not the federal government. As for them being a county that threatens to descend into a dictatorship, the same can be said of the US. We've had two presidents now, in a row from the same family and while Venezuela's voting is monitored by multiple international agencies, including the Carter foundation, the US refused to allow the same for its own very questionable elections of late. The majority of the people voted for Chavez, the same is not true for Bush, due to our antiquated and intentionally broken electoral process.
Ofcourse, this is, ironically enough, probably a product of the advanced nature of US surveillance. When people aren't able to clearly see the governments attempts to control and observe them, they retreat into their own little fantasy world of conspiracy theories and black helicopters.
There is no need for conspiracy theories. When the government oversteps its power and one branch ignores the constitution it always results in abuses and US surveillance already has several times in the last few years that we know about. Lack of transparency is a problem for more than PR.
...to allow common people to live their lives without fear to be shot by a pair of Nike shoes (happens a lot in some Brazilian cities, just so you know).
I have a hard time believing it is common for people anywhere to be shot by shoes... shot for their shoes, maybe, but not by their shoes.
Aside from that, good post providing both facts and some much needed perspective. It is clear that Chavez is no angel, but he's certainly done a lot of good in South America and for US politicians to point the finger at anyone is absurd.
Did you actually READ that article? The blimp was in the air for 24 hours as part of a military experiment.
Yeah, I think that qualifies as "we already did it" though, don't you? Actually if anyone wants to take the time to collate info from Google there were quite a few hits to a quick search, including articles on the first page about them being used during the Republican National Convention as well as some permanently stationed near the pentagon.
You're not seriously equating that to what the Venezuelan government is doing, are you?
I guess it depends upon which part of what they are doing. If you're talking constant surveillance of the people, well I'm sure the US is beating them by a mile between our automated telecom snooping and video cameras placed in urban areas. What I found really interesting about what the Venezuelans are doing is the combination of a pseudo-effective surveillance combined with some rather clumsy propaganda. It is reminiscent of fiction that portrays some dystopian future. In the US I'm sure both our government spying techniques and our propaganda techniques are not so crude or obvious.
The summary asks, "how long do you think until we see similar measures in high-crime American cities?" Didn't I read about surveillance blimps already in the air over Washington DC, several years ago? Google says, YES!
One problem I have with Apple is that their change logs and what's new on releases and patches are poorly documented if ever.
It is funny to make such a comment in an article about Apple's security fixes. Apple's security fixes are poorly documented, unless you compare them to anyone else on the planet's, then they're pretty darn good. They provide a nice, English description of each item patched along with enough info for a normal human to know if the affects them, credit for finding the vulnerabilities, and links to external references when available. They provide the CVE numbers. What more do you want?
quote>Because the vast majority of Firefox users use Windows, and the vast majority of Firefox users on Windows probably want ActiveX controls so they never have to use Internet Explorer (or IETabs) ever again.
I disagree. The majority of Firefox users don't want to have to use IE or IE tabs. Most of them probably don't care the mechanism by which that is accomplished.
While a lot of organisations may do better out of providing XPConnect alternatives, we are looking at the here and now, and "why are websites still forcing people to use IE?" - well, they are because they have significant resources invested over the past 8 or 9 years in supporting Internet Explorer as a browser with ActiveX controls for banking security and suchlike...
So businesses made a mistake in supporting a nonstandard technology. And your solution to that is to facilitate the continued use of that technology to mitigate some of the drawbacks, instead of motivating people to actually fix the problem correctly? You are proposing the Mozilla team devote significant time and effort into a band-aid that will still not solve the root problem. And when other OS's become more popular platforms for browsing, such as the Wii, and Mac computers, and various phones... what then? Those same companies will still have to abandon ActiveX, but now they have spent even more time and resources supporting it.
What, code signing isn't security now?
By itself, no, you need a proper implementation and reference as well for it to be useful to the general populace.
They rolled out these patches all at once. But the patches were almost certainly not done all at the same time. That's right, Apple has deliberately left you (and me! although I only have one mac to deal with and it's not my primary machine) vulnerable so that they could roll out a bunch of patches at the same time instead of one at a time.
Sigh. Have you ever worked in the software development industry. There is this thing called "testing" that some people find important. If you work on Kereberos and find a bug and patch it, you then test just it before distributing. If you work at Apple or Redhat where you are shipping an entire OS with a bunch of packages, it is impossible to patch and test those patches in conjunction with all other hardware in the same timeframe because you have multiple things to patch at once. Thus, the only real solution s to do it in bundles, where you stick a group of patches together then QA them all at once. This results in longer delays for some fixes, but it also means the patch is actually tested in conjunction with the other patches so one does not break another. Any responsible vendor uses this method for dealing with bugs.
Once again, the methodology commonly used by Linux distributions in which patches are rolled out as soon as they are ready provides greater security than Microsoft or Apple (who do the very same thing.)
Individual developers roll out patches and you could have patched your OS X box from them if you felt it was an emergency for you. As for what Linux vendors do, I don't know of any who roll one-off fixes into the stable branch intended for real use, instead of testing patches in bundles. You don't seem to know what you're talking about.
While i prefer and primarily use Koffice and OpenOffice, MS Office wins in terms of user interface, usability, and functionality across the board. It is a superb office suite that wins hands down. Even the biggest linux and FOSS fanboy has to admit it's absolute awesomeness.
Actually, the relative merits of MSOffice and OpenOffice depend a lot upon what you do with it. MSOffice loses on the following points:
Initial cost - OpenOffice wins on initial price by being free.
Upgrade cycles - in order to be up to date with MSOffice and be able to open all the latest Word files, you need to pay for new versions every few years. MS Office loses here too.
Cross-platform - MSOffice does not run on Linux or OpenBSD and thus can't be deployed across our entire company's workstations. (This is arguable due to OO mac support.)
Archival ability - MSOffice relies upon proprietary formats which means we cannot be assured anything easily available will open them in 10 years, or even if it will be possible to hire someone to build a converter. This has already been a problem at a company I worked where no currently available version of Word would open old files and we had no legal recourse other than trying to hunt down someone with an old copy of Word that would open and convert the files on our behalf.
Format support - Word can't open the OO files I am sent by co-workers and colleagues. OO can open the.doc files I'm sent as well as the OO files.
long document support - Word falls down on large documents (>200 pages with a graphic every other page). The current version and all versions since 2000 I have tested since have all silently corrupted these files on save making them unopenable the next time one tried about one time in 50. I submitted this bug many, many years ago, and several times since and had to build a cumbersome workflow for one company as a way to work around this failure.
source licensing - MS Office is licensed as closed source, thus resulting in less assurance for the future of the code, less ability to customize, increased likelihood of unfixable security problems, increased likelihood of very poor coding practices, and increased likelihood of an included trojan.
software licensing risks - with MS Office we need to pay for a professional license tracking package to mitigate the risk of the BSA suing us because we forgot to remove a copy from some old machine or we did not count our licenses properly. This is a significant expense/legal liability that is not an issue with OO.
Because of the above list, I take issue with your assertion that MS Office wins across the board. I simply is not so. MS Office does win in a lot of ways, although I almost completely avoid it these days despite having a licensed copy installed. Mostly that is because it is not as functional or fast as other applications I use to perform the same tasks. Claiming that the buggy and bloated MS Office is "awesome" however, makes my head hurt. It crashes, it messes up, it's expensive, it's intentionally limited in some ways. For many people it is the best option, but a lot of that has more to do with the current install base than to do with concrete qualities of the programs themselves. That is why I'm such a strong supporter of ODF. I think if everyone can access the same data with any application, we'll actually see competition again and that will mean both MS Office and OpenOffice and all the other alternatives will get a lot better as they try to win customers. And let me tell you, they all need to get a lot better.
Does it hurt Microsoft financially... whether we buy VIsta or XP?
In the short term, they don't care where the money comes from. In the long term, buying XP gives them more potential for incremental Windows upgrade sales, but at the same time is one less user that is subjected to their all new lock-ins and leverages into new markets. If you don't buy Vista, how can they take over the portable document space from Adobe? Strategically, they'd probably prefer everyone switch to Vista as soon as possible so they can start leveraging control into the new markets it is illegally tied to.
ActiveX as a plugin system is not patent encumbered insofar as you can't be sued for implementing ActiveX controls in an application that runs on Windows.
Mozilla/Firefox is a cross platform application by design. If there is no ability to implement these same functions on non-Windows machines and if there is no guarantee that they will be able to freely do so in the future depending upon Windows licensing, why should the Mozilla team support it? More importantly, when there is an open standard alternative available why shouldn't Mozilla intentionally ignore the inferior solution in the hopes that they will discourage its use and benefit everyone?
Certainly supporting ActiveX controls inside Firefox to get banking authentication, online virus checkers and suchlike working in other browsers than IE would be a noble goal and improve the acceptance of Firefox itself.
I would not consider that a noble goal, certainly not compared to discouraging the use of ActiveX for banking and virus checkers in the first place and helping to move the industry to a solution not tied to a single platform. Windows is not the Web. Web applications should work on Windows and Linux and MacOS and PalmOS and Blackberries, etc. Coding them to a single platform is a step backwards, not a "noble goal." A noble goal would be moving the Web itself forwards by convincing everyone to stop using ActiveX controls.
It would not reduce the ties to Microsoft Windows but I hardly think that should be the goal of a web browser any more than IE should have been used to tie people *to* Microsoft Windows.
Theoretically a huge benefit of the Web is supposed to be standardization and multiple, parallel implementations. Why should they implement a technology that intentionally tries to break that fundamental value, especially when that technology itself is not in any way needed and there are better replacements?
Before it runs ActiveX controls or installs an XPI, ask the user. Check the code signing. Do you trust this source? Did you want to run the virus checker in this browser window? Did you click on a link that said "install PornBrowse Deluxe"??
Wow. I'm not sure quite what to say to someone who considers that security. Sure, I suppose it is for about 5% of the populace, but to most people it is just gibberish and not at all a security benefit. Asking if code can run is not helpful when users have been operant conditioned to one response and are not given the information they need to make a good decision, nor the ability to get accurate information linked to that action.
A business, by virtue of being a business, always charges whatever will (they think) be most profitable... So in a very real sense no cost is passed on to consumers; the market decides the optimal price for the product.
What you're neglecting to consider is the cost of patent licensing upon the market in question. For example, if it costs MS $20 to license the patents they use, what does it cost Apple to license some of those same patents? What does it cost Sun and Redhat? What does it cost to, alternatively, work around those patents? Once you've determined the above, what the does the cost of patents to the market, in general, do to the price of software and the perceived relative value?
For example, suppose I'm in a more classic market, like televisions. Now suppose I have a patent on the best/cheapest technology needed to lower power requirements to comply with new FCC rules. Everyone licenses this from me for their TV sets. Does that cost get passed on to the consumer? To some degree, yes because all the TV makers are competing partly on price and since the relative prices did not change, it is unlikely that public perception of value will not keep up with current prices.
Now that applies to some degree to the OS market, but exactly how much is hard to determine. I suspect, the OS market being monopolized and thus largely non-competative means it applies a negligible amount compared to the prices MS charges but I'm not privy to their margins/costs.
There are really two big open source licenses, along with many that are similar or slight modifications thereof:
BSD - if you want to let people do anything they want with your code (so long as they credit you in the copyright). With this license people can use it pretty much without restriction, including closing the source, making changes and selling it without paying you or even letting you see what they did. Use this if you view this as a charitable donation to the companies and projects of the world.
GPL - if you want the project to be kept open source and want to be repaid for your work with improvements and changes from others who might modify or improve your project, this is the license to use. Basically it lets people use your code all they want, provided any time they redistribute something that uses your code, they have to give a copy of the source as well. This is sort of like a public trust, where you give the code to the world, not to be resold to them or you in the future and not to be closed to them. This license is (IMHO) most likely to foster a community to form around it and result in improvements being submitted and the project evolving.
Otherwise, keep the license closed and license it specifically to other individuals and groups for $20 a head and provide it like a traditional, commercial product.
And yes, a truly unbiased person would consider the motivations of MS. But why would this truly unbiased individual only see that they wanted to slow down the OLPC (which is the only thing the sentence brings up)?
Surely you don't expect them to list every idea an "unbiased" person might consider? They list one they though of interest or which was of interest to the summary author. I don't know why anyone would make a fuss about that.
Why wouldn't they see it as Microsoft wanting to help the children out?
They might consider it that way as well and as I read the summary that was sort of implied as the first impression an unbiased person might think of, that is to say taking MS's actions at face value as if they were a person instead of a for profit corporation.
Yet the sentence, and I repeat, only brings up the "conspiracy" aspect of this.
I've seen a dozen people now parroting the word "conspiracy." Who is MS conspiring with? I don't understand why people would claim this is a conspiracy theory. It requires no conspiring at all to make sense. The idea that someone high up at MS thought this would make them money in the long run by strategically blocking potential competitors before they could get a foothold is not a conspiracy, it is just a theory of their motivation, and a fairly sensible one. The theory that someone high up thought they could get a few bucks from places that currently don't pay them anything is yet another sensible theory. The theory that they considered both of these aspects of the new program seems like even more likely of a theory.
The term "conspiracy" has connotations of unreliability or even insanity in our culture, in particular because such theories require different groups to secretly conspire to achieve some goal. The idea that the US government is conspiring with foreign governments and the newspapers to cover up some secret is considered insane or at the very least unreliable because it would be so unlikely and so hard for so many people to secretly communicate and agree upon things. That is not the case here. People misusing it in this thread because of that connotation in an attempt to discredit a perfectly plausible theory (a business is trying to make money) seems odd and a little unintelligent to me.
I don't understand how this "observer" would be unbiased. If he sees a grand conspiracy, he's not unbiased.
First, they did not say the unbiased observer would see/think the agenda would be to slow down OLPC, they said they might wonder about that possibility. Second, the term "unbiased" has multiple connotations and meanings. You could argue no one with any opinion was unbiased (no one) but then the term has no real meaning when applied to people. You might, on the other hand, apply a meaning that unbiased is someone with no preference one way or another for or against MS, and then an objective person certainly would consider the motivations of MS and what effects such an action might be designed to create.
Regardless of the technical definition of an assault weapon, the guns most often labeled as such were clearly designed for attacking groups of human targets. It isn't always cut and dry, since as you say the round makes a considerable difference in the performance of a weapons. That doesn't mean there is no distinction.
It is interesting. My father used to hold this same opinion and was in favor of assault weapon laws and restrictions in general. He changed his mind when he discovered that there were restrictions on transporting the antiquated pump shotgun he inherited from my great grandfather because it was classified as an "assault weapon" by federal laws. At that point he came to the realization that the term "assault weapon" was simply a blind used to trick people into thinking you could determine the intent of a person based upon arbitrary characteristics of a tool. As a term it was/is being used to restrict and ban as much as possible without any regard for specific characteristics or common uses. Legally, the term is nonspecific and useless, except as a way to misinform people.
Whether or how to regulate weapons of all types is a much more complicated question, but to argue that there is no distinction between handguns, hunting rifles, and assault weapons is simply ignoring the truth.
There is no unambiguous definition for "assault weapon." It is currently a political term and means about as much as "killing blade" as a way to classify knives into undefined categories. Further, what really needs to be determined is the intent of the user. If a person is intent on assaulting and killing a lot of humans, banning specific types of guns is not going to do a lot to change the situation. I categorically oppose any such foolishness.
The problem is that in order to have good security your product has to make a user or system do less, or have more of a management overhead. People don't like that, they'd rather have less trouble.
Not all security is a usability or functionality loss. For example, antivirus running in the background stops blacklisted binaries from running, but users don't want those binaries running in the first place so the functionality that is stopped is in line with what the user wants. I don't want a remote attacker to be able to log into my box and start up a spam server. Most users might not even know if this happened to them. Security that silently stops this from happening increases usability and users are happier with it.
Successful products MAKE you think they are providing security while bothering you as little as possible.
Agreed, but good products make you think they are providing security while actually doing so and bothering you as little as possible. There is a perception that security and usability are opposites, but it is not so. Many security products and schemes do decrease usability and many of them do not increase security, but there is also a lot of good security out there that does not decrease usability.
Good lord, I didn't know just how unemotional and twisted you are, until your last post.
You mistake me entirely. I have a great deal of emotion, I just don't let it influence my decision making. This is called being "rational."
I have nothing else to say, as it's just pointless to talk to someone with such a different belief system than mine (and most others).
I usually find it is pointless to debate with someone who does have the same belief system that I do, since you don't learn any new perspectives or ways of looking at things, but only reinforce your own beliefs, both the correct and incorrect ones. In any case, I'd just like to mention one more time that this is not about belief. It is about ethics, which are not a system of belief, but a rational set of rules for determining responsibility. Perhaps you should look into the concept as it is one of the vital tools for correct decision making, something you seem to be lacking.
Because for the government, much more is at stake than for a simple home user. They should have followed trainings instructing them about proper security precautions.
What training? Are you implying their security training tells them not to open documents that appear to be from co-workers and which are in the same format they normally use? If so, that explains why so little seems to get done in the government. The fault here is quite clearly standardizing on a fairly insecure and really common piece of software without disabling the most insecure aspects of that software (VB) for all the installs.
I don't see why it would be a big problem to implement; Mozilla staff may consider ActiveX a security risk but it is NOT up to Mozilla staff to dictate to users what add-on plugins they run.
It is the mozilla developers jobs to decide what is and is not mature and secure enough of technology for them to implement. If enough people disagree they can implement their own plug-in or try to get it added to the core code, or fork. So far, not enough people have disagreed with them who are also competent. As for ActiveX as a technology, it suffers from more than security issues. It is unsupportable in the long term, being a proprietary technology with encumbering patents, instead of an open standard like the alternatives. Plug-ins may not even be legal to distribute. I can certainly see why the Mozilla team would rather not devote any energy to it instead of concentrating on support for open alternatives they can support in the long-term.
Any web developer who does not know about Firefox is stupid or lazy.
There are some Web development shops out there that are not stupid or necessarily lazy, but they are very greedy. I've seen two situations:
First, a company is bidding on a new Web service, customized for the company and they are using old code that is entirely dependent upon IE. They know this, but they are selling to high level executives and they do everything possible to dissuade those executives from consulting their own technical experts on the merits of the project including suggesting such services need to be kept a closely guarded secret until launch and promising to manage 100% of the support at a very low price (even if that support is just saying "sorry we only support IE" over and over and over again). Basically these are people sitting on out of date technology and trying to profit from it.
The second instance I've seen is similar, but they word their contract in such a way that they are well paid for ongoing customization and they deliver an IE only solution then charge through the nose to replace that system, very slowly, with one that supports more and more Web browsers.
Both of these methods exploit the ignorance of buyers, but once you've dumped half a million into a Web service it is really hard to go to the CEO or the board and say, "yeah, I didn't actually run this by anyone competent and despite my title being 'CTO' I don't really know anything about computers. Sorry I pissed all this money away, but what I bought is a pile of crap and we need to start over." That doesn't happen, so sometimes these things persist until someone with a clue can get through to someone with the power to fix things. In the mean time, the Web service suffers greatly and it is a clear sign to me both as an individual consumer and as a potential business partner to stay away from that train wreck of incompetence.
Sure, let's be objective. According to your reasoning it's perfectly normal to give access to guns to a delusional psychopath, because after all it's his problem and we can easily defend ourself.
This is wholly untrue. A delusional psychopath is not responsible for their own actions (under the law) and correspondingly has their rights limited and arbitrated for them by the government or a guardian. Are you trying to equate the average citizen with a delusional psychopath, implying that all american citizens are too irresponsible and insane to care for themselves and all of the should have their movements and behaviors restricted by some, more rational and responsible guardian?
Well, that is where you are VERY wrong, in my honest opinion. To get a driver license, you need to pass an exam. Why not doing the same for guns (or get mental certification at least?)
This is called a straw man argument. I made no argument against required training and licensing to operate and carry a firearm. The point of the matter is, however, there were trained and licensed experts who were students at VT and the university decided that wasn't good enough and that no student could be responsible enough to have the right to carry a gun, even if they had taken the required training course and obtained a concealed pistol permit.
Why are you insisting that you need them to defend yourself? Freedom for me is valid until it doesn't step on someone else freedom. In this specific case, I see freedom of getting such weapons with such ease to be a strong limitation in my freedom (to move, to study, to work).
As evidenced by this incident and many others, in some places and times you do need a firearm to defend yourself. The chances of that situation arising may be very small in some location and very high in another. The point is, it should be the individual's assessment to make. Personally, I never carry a pistol, although I used to when I lived in a place where there were many bears and I had to walk a significant distance through the woods to get to my vehicle. Does someone else know the risks I face better than I and should they be able to say no one needs a gun to defend themselves? What gives them the ability to judge that better than the individual who knows what risks they face in their daily life?
As for freedoms coming into conflict with others, a person carrying a firearm in no way conflicts with any basic, human right as recognized by any human rights organization I've ever heard of. A person shooting you conflicts with your rights, and that is why it is illegal.
Why should I give up my right [...freedom (to move, to study, to work)] for your right to defend yourself from an unknown enemy?
How does me or anyone else carrying a gun remove from you the right to move? You can't move if I have a gun in my pocket? What an unusual medical problem. How does it stop you from studying? Do you go blind in the presence of firearms? Perhaps you are understanding my point now? You need a real conflict of rights and a reason to remove an individual's right to make their own choices. VT removed that right out of their own hysterical fear and the result was a likely increased amount of pain and suffering and death in the world. That is what happens when bureaucrats try to take away personal rights because they think they know better than the people.
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He plead guilty because they found stacks of DVDs with child pornography on them in his room. His only hope was to have that evidence nullified by claiming the search was illegal, under the reasoning that just because child porn was transmitted through his access point did not mean the cops has reason to suspect him in particular or search his residence. He has a slight point and warrants in these cases should be issued for the entire residence and all people therein. Still, it is pretty likely he and his roommate were both guilty.
Just to clarify before a hundred people comment without understanding this distinction. The court in this case ruled that child pornography tracked to a given open access point was probable cause to search that residence and specifically the rooms belonging to the person who ran the open access point. They did not rule that running the open access point proved that the owner was guilty of transmitting the child pornography, but ruled him guilty because of the stacks of DVDs found in his room.
That is a possibility, but it is a lot less likely than most people would assume. The reason for this is that what most people think of as a Web browser (like Firefox) can be broken up into multiple parts, only one of which is shared between Konquerer and Safari. Both browsers separate the HTML rendering from the application, file handling, and GUI, so that the former can be used by other applications as well. Writing a Web browser that runs on OS X, using the included development tools can be done without writing a single line of code by making a GUI and plugging it in to WebKit. So if the flaw is in the shared code between Konquerer and Safari, there is a good chance it will be mitigated by the file handling routines, which are different in each.
I believe it is being modded as a troll because people believe it is a fabrication designed to elicit responses. From just scanning it, I'd tend to agree. Claiming that Quicktime has any control over SCSI controllers and would behave differently than any other application speaks to either extreme ignorance, or trolling.
That is incorrect. Like the instance in Venezuela, many US cities like Chicago and New York have set up surveillance cameras run by the police of that city.
And the "automated telecom snooping" is used only for calls to or from other countries, right?Again no. The feds have implemented widespread, automated, warrant-less snooping of domestic communications targeting both US citizens suspected by them of some unnamed offense. They also monitor every call that enters or leaves the US using an automated system, which might be what you're thinking of.
I just find it interesting that people are so eager to blow out of proportion any surveillance program in a free, progressive nation like the US, while downplaying much worse measures in Venezuela - a country which shows every sign of descending into a Cuba-like dictatorship.I don't have enough information to judge the government of Venezuela's actions, but this particular one was by the city officials, not the federal government. As for them being a county that threatens to descend into a dictatorship, the same can be said of the US. We've had two presidents now, in a row from the same family and while Venezuela's voting is monitored by multiple international agencies, including the Carter foundation, the US refused to allow the same for its own very questionable elections of late. The majority of the people voted for Chavez, the same is not true for Bush, due to our antiquated and intentionally broken electoral process.
Ofcourse, this is, ironically enough, probably a product of the advanced nature of US surveillance. When people aren't able to clearly see the governments attempts to control and observe them, they retreat into their own little fantasy world of conspiracy theories and black helicopters.There is no need for conspiracy theories. When the government oversteps its power and one branch ignores the constitution it always results in abuses and US surveillance already has several times in the last few years that we know about. Lack of transparency is a problem for more than PR.
...to allow common people to live their lives without fear to be shot by a pair of Nike shoes (happens a lot in some Brazilian cities, just so you know).I have a hard time believing it is common for people anywhere to be shot by shoes... shot for their shoes, maybe, but not by their shoes.
Aside from that, good post providing both facts and some much needed perspective. It is clear that Chavez is no angel, but he's certainly done a lot of good in South America and for US politicians to point the finger at anyone is absurd.
Yeah, I think that qualifies as "we already did it" though, don't you? Actually if anyone wants to take the time to collate info from Google there were quite a few hits to a quick search, including articles on the first page about them being used during the Republican National Convention as well as some permanently stationed near the pentagon.
You're not seriously equating that to what the Venezuelan government is doing, are you?I guess it depends upon which part of what they are doing. If you're talking constant surveillance of the people, well I'm sure the US is beating them by a mile between our automated telecom snooping and video cameras placed in urban areas. What I found really interesting about what the Venezuelans are doing is the combination of a pseudo-effective surveillance combined with some rather clumsy propaganda. It is reminiscent of fiction that portrays some dystopian future. In the US I'm sure both our government spying techniques and our propaganda techniques are not so crude or obvious.
The summary asks, "how long do you think until we see similar measures in high-crime American cities?" Didn't I read about surveillance blimps already in the air over Washington DC, several years ago? Google says, YES!
It is funny to make such a comment in an article about Apple's security fixes. Apple's security fixes are poorly documented, unless you compare them to anyone else on the planet's, then they're pretty darn good. They provide a nice, English description of each item patched along with enough info for a normal human to know if the affects them, credit for finding the vulnerabilities, and links to external references when available. They provide the CVE numbers. What more do you want?
quote>Because the vast majority of Firefox users use Windows, and the vast majority of Firefox users on Windows probably want ActiveX controls so they never have to use Internet Explorer (or IETabs) ever again.
I disagree. The majority of Firefox users don't want to have to use IE or IE tabs. Most of them probably don't care the mechanism by which that is accomplished.
While a lot of organisations may do better out of providing XPConnect alternatives, we are looking at the here and now, and "why are websites still forcing people to use IE?" - well, they are because they have significant resources invested over the past 8 or 9 years in supporting Internet Explorer as a browser with ActiveX controls for banking security and suchlike...So businesses made a mistake in supporting a nonstandard technology. And your solution to that is to facilitate the continued use of that technology to mitigate some of the drawbacks, instead of motivating people to actually fix the problem correctly? You are proposing the Mozilla team devote significant time and effort into a band-aid that will still not solve the root problem. And when other OS's become more popular platforms for browsing, such as the Wii, and Mac computers, and various phones... what then? Those same companies will still have to abandon ActiveX, but now they have spent even more time and resources supporting it.
What, code signing isn't security now?By itself, no, you need a proper implementation and reference as well for it to be useful to the general populace.
Sigh. Have you ever worked in the software development industry. There is this thing called "testing" that some people find important. If you work on Kereberos and find a bug and patch it, you then test just it before distributing. If you work at Apple or Redhat where you are shipping an entire OS with a bunch of packages, it is impossible to patch and test those patches in conjunction with all other hardware in the same timeframe because you have multiple things to patch at once. Thus, the only real solution s to do it in bundles, where you stick a group of patches together then QA them all at once. This results in longer delays for some fixes, but it also means the patch is actually tested in conjunction with the other patches so one does not break another. Any responsible vendor uses this method for dealing with bugs.
Once again, the methodology commonly used by Linux distributions in which patches are rolled out as soon as they are ready provides greater security than Microsoft or Apple (who do the very same thing.)Individual developers roll out patches and you could have patched your OS X box from them if you felt it was an emergency for you. As for what Linux vendors do, I don't know of any who roll one-off fixes into the stable branch intended for real use, instead of testing patches in bundles. You don't seem to know what you're talking about.
Actually, the relative merits of MSOffice and OpenOffice depend a lot upon what you do with it. MSOffice loses on the following points:
Because of the above list, I take issue with your assertion that MS Office wins across the board. I simply is not so. MS Office does win in a lot of ways, although I almost completely avoid it these days despite having a licensed copy installed. Mostly that is because it is not as functional or fast as other applications I use to perform the same tasks. Claiming that the buggy and bloated MS Office is "awesome" however, makes my head hurt. It crashes, it messes up, it's expensive, it's intentionally limited in some ways. For many people it is the best option, but a lot of that has more to do with the current install base than to do with concrete qualities of the programs themselves. That is why I'm such a strong supporter of ODF. I think if everyone can access the same data with any application, we'll actually see competition again and that will mean both MS Office and OpenOffice and all the other alternatives will get a lot better as they try to win customers. And let me tell you, they all need to get a lot better.
In the short term, they don't care where the money comes from. In the long term, buying XP gives them more potential for incremental Windows upgrade sales, but at the same time is one less user that is subjected to their all new lock-ins and leverages into new markets. If you don't buy Vista, how can they take over the portable document space from Adobe? Strategically, they'd probably prefer everyone switch to Vista as soon as possible so they can start leveraging control into the new markets it is illegally tied to.
Mozilla/Firefox is a cross platform application by design. If there is no ability to implement these same functions on non-Windows machines and if there is no guarantee that they will be able to freely do so in the future depending upon Windows licensing, why should the Mozilla team support it? More importantly, when there is an open standard alternative available why shouldn't Mozilla intentionally ignore the inferior solution in the hopes that they will discourage its use and benefit everyone?
Certainly supporting ActiveX controls inside Firefox to get banking authentication, online virus checkers and suchlike working in other browsers than IE would be a noble goal and improve the acceptance of Firefox itself.I would not consider that a noble goal, certainly not compared to discouraging the use of ActiveX for banking and virus checkers in the first place and helping to move the industry to a solution not tied to a single platform. Windows is not the Web. Web applications should work on Windows and Linux and MacOS and PalmOS and Blackberries, etc. Coding them to a single platform is a step backwards, not a "noble goal." A noble goal would be moving the Web itself forwards by convincing everyone to stop using ActiveX controls.
It would not reduce the ties to Microsoft Windows but I hardly think that should be the goal of a web browser any more than IE should have been used to tie people *to* Microsoft Windows.Theoretically a huge benefit of the Web is supposed to be standardization and multiple, parallel implementations. Why should they implement a technology that intentionally tries to break that fundamental value, especially when that technology itself is not in any way needed and there are better replacements?
Before it runs ActiveX controls or installs an XPI, ask the user. Check the code signing. Do you trust this source? Did you want to run the virus checker in this browser window? Did you click on a link that said "install PornBrowse Deluxe"??Wow. I'm not sure quite what to say to someone who considers that security. Sure, I suppose it is for about 5% of the populace, but to most people it is just gibberish and not at all a security benefit. Asking if code can run is not helpful when users have been operant conditioned to one response and are not given the information they need to make a good decision, nor the ability to get accurate information linked to that action.
What you're neglecting to consider is the cost of patent licensing upon the market in question. For example, if it costs MS $20 to license the patents they use, what does it cost Apple to license some of those same patents? What does it cost Sun and Redhat? What does it cost to, alternatively, work around those patents? Once you've determined the above, what the does the cost of patents to the market, in general, do to the price of software and the perceived relative value?
For example, suppose I'm in a more classic market, like televisions. Now suppose I have a patent on the best/cheapest technology needed to lower power requirements to comply with new FCC rules. Everyone licenses this from me for their TV sets. Does that cost get passed on to the consumer? To some degree, yes because all the TV makers are competing partly on price and since the relative prices did not change, it is unlikely that public perception of value will not keep up with current prices.
Now that applies to some degree to the OS market, but exactly how much is hard to determine. I suspect, the OS market being monopolized and thus largely non-competative means it applies a negligible amount compared to the prices MS charges but I'm not privy to their margins/costs.
There are really two big open source licenses, along with many that are similar or slight modifications thereof:
Otherwise, keep the license closed and license it specifically to other individuals and groups for $20 a head and provide it like a traditional, commercial product.
Surely you don't expect them to list every idea an "unbiased" person might consider? They list one they though of interest or which was of interest to the summary author. I don't know why anyone would make a fuss about that.
Why wouldn't they see it as Microsoft wanting to help the children out?They might consider it that way as well and as I read the summary that was sort of implied as the first impression an unbiased person might think of, that is to say taking MS's actions at face value as if they were a person instead of a for profit corporation.
Yet the sentence, and I repeat, only brings up the "conspiracy" aspect of this.I've seen a dozen people now parroting the word "conspiracy." Who is MS conspiring with? I don't understand why people would claim this is a conspiracy theory. It requires no conspiring at all to make sense. The idea that someone high up at MS thought this would make them money in the long run by strategically blocking potential competitors before they could get a foothold is not a conspiracy, it is just a theory of their motivation, and a fairly sensible one. The theory that someone high up thought they could get a few bucks from places that currently don't pay them anything is yet another sensible theory. The theory that they considered both of these aspects of the new program seems like even more likely of a theory.
The term "conspiracy" has connotations of unreliability or even insanity in our culture, in particular because such theories require different groups to secretly conspire to achieve some goal. The idea that the US government is conspiring with foreign governments and the newspapers to cover up some secret is considered insane or at the very least unreliable because it would be so unlikely and so hard for so many people to secretly communicate and agree upon things. That is not the case here. People misusing it in this thread because of that connotation in an attempt to discredit a perfectly plausible theory (a business is trying to make money) seems odd and a little unintelligent to me.
First, they did not say the unbiased observer would see/think the agenda would be to slow down OLPC, they said they might wonder about that possibility. Second, the term "unbiased" has multiple connotations and meanings. You could argue no one with any opinion was unbiased (no one) but then the term has no real meaning when applied to people. You might, on the other hand, apply a meaning that unbiased is someone with no preference one way or another for or against MS, and then an objective person certainly would consider the motivations of MS and what effects such an action might be designed to create.
It is interesting. My father used to hold this same opinion and was in favor of assault weapon laws and restrictions in general. He changed his mind when he discovered that there were restrictions on transporting the antiquated pump shotgun he inherited from my great grandfather because it was classified as an "assault weapon" by federal laws. At that point he came to the realization that the term "assault weapon" was simply a blind used to trick people into thinking you could determine the intent of a person based upon arbitrary characteristics of a tool. As a term it was/is being used to restrict and ban as much as possible without any regard for specific characteristics or common uses. Legally, the term is nonspecific and useless, except as a way to misinform people.
Whether or how to regulate weapons of all types is a much more complicated question, but to argue that there is no distinction between handguns, hunting rifles, and assault weapons is simply ignoring the truth.There is no unambiguous definition for "assault weapon." It is currently a political term and means about as much as "killing blade" as a way to classify knives into undefined categories. Further, what really needs to be determined is the intent of the user. If a person is intent on assaulting and killing a lot of humans, banning specific types of guns is not going to do a lot to change the situation. I categorically oppose any such foolishness.
Not all security is a usability or functionality loss. For example, antivirus running in the background stops blacklisted binaries from running, but users don't want those binaries running in the first place so the functionality that is stopped is in line with what the user wants. I don't want a remote attacker to be able to log into my box and start up a spam server. Most users might not even know if this happened to them. Security that silently stops this from happening increases usability and users are happier with it.
Successful products MAKE you think they are providing security while bothering you as little as possible.Agreed, but good products make you think they are providing security while actually doing so and bothering you as little as possible. There is a perception that security and usability are opposites, but it is not so. Many security products and schemes do decrease usability and many of them do not increase security, but there is also a lot of good security out there that does not decrease usability.
You mistake me entirely. I have a great deal of emotion, I just don't let it influence my decision making. This is called being "rational."
I have nothing else to say, as it's just pointless to talk to someone with such a different belief system than mine (and most others).I usually find it is pointless to debate with someone who does have the same belief system that I do, since you don't learn any new perspectives or ways of looking at things, but only reinforce your own beliefs, both the correct and incorrect ones. In any case, I'd just like to mention one more time that this is not about belief. It is about ethics, which are not a system of belief, but a rational set of rules for determining responsibility. Perhaps you should look into the concept as it is one of the vital tools for correct decision making, something you seem to be lacking.
What training? Are you implying their security training tells them not to open documents that appear to be from co-workers and which are in the same format they normally use? If so, that explains why so little seems to get done in the government. The fault here is quite clearly standardizing on a fairly insecure and really common piece of software without disabling the most insecure aspects of that software (VB) for all the installs.
It is the mozilla developers jobs to decide what is and is not mature and secure enough of technology for them to implement. If enough people disagree they can implement their own plug-in or try to get it added to the core code, or fork. So far, not enough people have disagreed with them who are also competent. As for ActiveX as a technology, it suffers from more than security issues. It is unsupportable in the long term, being a proprietary technology with encumbering patents, instead of an open standard like the alternatives. Plug-ins may not even be legal to distribute. I can certainly see why the Mozilla team would rather not devote any energy to it instead of concentrating on support for open alternatives they can support in the long-term.
There are some Web development shops out there that are not stupid or necessarily lazy, but they are very greedy. I've seen two situations:
First, a company is bidding on a new Web service, customized for the company and they are using old code that is entirely dependent upon IE. They know this, but they are selling to high level executives and they do everything possible to dissuade those executives from consulting their own technical experts on the merits of the project including suggesting such services need to be kept a closely guarded secret until launch and promising to manage 100% of the support at a very low price (even if that support is just saying "sorry we only support IE" over and over and over again). Basically these are people sitting on out of date technology and trying to profit from it.
The second instance I've seen is similar, but they word their contract in such a way that they are well paid for ongoing customization and they deliver an IE only solution then charge through the nose to replace that system, very slowly, with one that supports more and more Web browsers.
Both of these methods exploit the ignorance of buyers, but once you've dumped half a million into a Web service it is really hard to go to the CEO or the board and say, "yeah, I didn't actually run this by anyone competent and despite my title being 'CTO' I don't really know anything about computers. Sorry I pissed all this money away, but what I bought is a pile of crap and we need to start over." That doesn't happen, so sometimes these things persist until someone with a clue can get through to someone with the power to fix things. In the mean time, the Web service suffers greatly and it is a clear sign to me both as an individual consumer and as a potential business partner to stay away from that train wreck of incompetence.
This is wholly untrue. A delusional psychopath is not responsible for their own actions (under the law) and correspondingly has their rights limited and arbitrated for them by the government or a guardian. Are you trying to equate the average citizen with a delusional psychopath, implying that all american citizens are too irresponsible and insane to care for themselves and all of the should have their movements and behaviors restricted by some, more rational and responsible guardian?
Well, that is where you are VERY wrong, in my honest opinion. To get a driver license, you need to pass an exam. Why not doing the same for guns (or get mental certification at least?)This is called a straw man argument. I made no argument against required training and licensing to operate and carry a firearm. The point of the matter is, however, there were trained and licensed experts who were students at VT and the university decided that wasn't good enough and that no student could be responsible enough to have the right to carry a gun, even if they had taken the required training course and obtained a concealed pistol permit.
Why are you insisting that you need them to defend yourself? Freedom for me is valid until it doesn't step on someone else freedom. In this specific case, I see freedom of getting such weapons with such ease to be a strong limitation in my freedom (to move, to study, to work).As evidenced by this incident and many others, in some places and times you do need a firearm to defend yourself. The chances of that situation arising may be very small in some location and very high in another. The point is, it should be the individual's assessment to make. Personally, I never carry a pistol, although I used to when I lived in a place where there were many bears and I had to walk a significant distance through the woods to get to my vehicle. Does someone else know the risks I face better than I and should they be able to say no one needs a gun to defend themselves? What gives them the ability to judge that better than the individual who knows what risks they face in their daily life?
As for freedoms coming into conflict with others, a person carrying a firearm in no way conflicts with any basic, human right as recognized by any human rights organization I've ever heard of. A person shooting you conflicts with your rights, and that is why it is illegal.
Why should I give up my right [...freedom (to move, to study, to work)] for your right to defend yourself from an unknown enemy?How does me or anyone else carrying a gun remove from you the right to move? You can't move if I have a gun in my pocket? What an unusual medical problem. How does it stop you from studying? Do you go blind in the presence of firearms? Perhaps you are understanding my point now? You need a real conflict of rights and a reason to remove an individual's right to make their own choices. VT removed that right out of their own hysterical fear and the result was a likely increased amount of pain and suffering and death in the world. That is what happens when bureaucrats try to take away personal rights because they think they know better than the people.