You're correct in stating that a job gained elsewhere is not a job lost here. It is much more complicated than that. However, money is a representation of wealth in terms of labor, rights, and goods. For those most part, that is a zero-sum game, but there is an interrelation between the elements. The number of people may grow, as might the amount of food produced, but that reduces the amount of materials and land available (until we get off the earth in a meaningful way that is).
Even if you don't "like" capitalism, it's vital to come to understand what capital is and why capital produces more capital. Communism, and to a lesser extent socialism, can be seen as starting with the assumption the economy is a zero-sum game, and they end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on that front as in their zeal to make sure capital/wealth is evenly distributed, they destroy the mechanisms of capital/wealth creation.
Actually, socialism and communism are not built upon that assumption at all. Communism is built upon the assumption that resource allocation can be better managed collectively, much the same way modern corporations manage wealth, but without the incentives. The basic concept is that by sharing resources and avoiding unnecessary duplication we can more efficiently use our resources. When applied on a small scale, this works very well. When applied on a large scale it runs into several problems. First people don't associate with or empathize with people they don't know, so lacking a motivation that benefits them directly, they find such a motivation even if it bypasses the system. Second, the more power that is gathered in one place, the easier it is for that power to be abused and to turn into a totalitarian regime.
I'm not defending any particular instantiation of capitalism at this time, I'm just saying you damn well need to understand why it does what it does if you want to understand how economies work.
I'm going to let you in on a very poorly kept secret. The country you live in has a blend of capitalism, communism, and socialism. I know this because it is true for every country. In the US, for example, we have fairly free trade, exchange of goods and services, etc. making up the capitalist component. We have sliding scale taxes to fund public schools, police, military, medicare, unemployment benefits, and many other government run plans as socialism. We have atomic family units, extended families, and a few co-ops and monasteries forming the communist cells. It works out fairly well, but does not result in the highest standard of living in the world. Over all it is above average but still sub-optimal.
Your claim that socialism and communism do not work is a little misguided. Extremism does not work, whether it is extreme socialism, communism, or capitalism. Try to take any one of these elements to its extreme and your economy will go to hell. Extreme capitalism, for example, eventually results in complete wealth consolidation and with the wealth comes power. You end up with a totalitarian regime again, and often a bloody revolution where the wealth is redistributed. The US is a little closer to this end of things than is healthy, IMHO. Wealth disparity and violent crime statistically show a very close correlation, and the US has higher violent crime levels than most industrialized nations.
The ideal balance, however, is elusive. How much socialism mitigates the worst pains of disparity, but does not remove motivation for people to work hard? Very few people would argue for no police, no fire department, and no military whatsoever. How large of communist cells are ideal and to what resources should they apply? Very few people would argue each family member should provide their own food and shelter. How much capitalism provides motivation for innovation, but does not lead to the wealth condensation principal gather in wealth without any work being motivated? Very few people would argue that one perso
This issue is a very emotional one and as a result, often ends up in a jumble of confusion, with people arguing different things. Some key items to remember are:
What is good for a company's bottom line in the short term and long term can be very different things
What is good for a company can still be bad for the US.
What is good for a company can be bad for almost all of the current employees of that company
What is good for the US in the short term can be very different from what is good for the US in the long term.
The truth of the matter is, people in the US are not inherently smarter or better or harder workers than people in other countries. Despite this, people in the US in general enjoy a much more comfortable standard of living and own more of the wealth than most of the rest of the world. This is due to numerous factors. The difficulty of communication and travel has concentrated wealth in certain places, and prevented it from accumulating in others. A dumb, lazy person in New York is more likely to live comfortably and with relative wealth than a relatively brilliant and hard working man in Ethiopia. This is mostly because people in New York looking to hire someone to do something have difficulty hiring the Ethiopian for many of the tasks they want done. This is slowly changing and changing rapidly in some fields.
Education and experience provide significant momentum. The US has a lot of both, but programs that resulted in people coming to the US and getting both and then leaving (or being forced to leave) have started to move more of both to other locations. As more and more jobs move overseas, those people gain experience and are more likely to pass that on locally. As such, once education and experience leave the US to foreign jobs, it will snowball to some degree, or at least resist concentrating again.
In addition to outsourcing jobs to other countries, outsourcing includes outsourcing jobs to other companies. For businesses in rapidly changing environments or who need work done just once, this makes a lot of sense. Hiring your own construction people to build offices, when you're an IT firm is a bit nuts. The problem is, because of the standard of living in the US, any jobs which can be done well by foreign employees, are almost always cheaper. This is mitigated by the small size of the trained foreign work force and by the unwillingness of management to outsource themselves or move to another country.
The result of this last circumstance means that often decision makers outsource core competency parts of their work, which is basically subsidizing the training and experience of people outside their company (and often their country). Pretty soon someone realizes that the company doesn't have any real employee assets anymore and is just a shell.
Phone with music with browsing features is nothing new. It might have cuter iterface[sic] but all of the features are already available for a much lower price.
Portable devices that play digital music is nothing new. It might have a cuter interface but all the features (of the iPod) are already available for a much lower price.
Do you see why your argument does not convince me that the iPhone won't sell like mad? I don't like any cell phone I've ever owned. They are crap. My current one takes 10 key presses to select and call a person in my pre-programmed numbers list. All the handhelds I've tried have been clunky and hard to use. I don't own an iPod because I don't think I'd carry it with me. I had no expectation I'd want one of Apple's new phones especially since I guessed the price would be about $600. When I saw this in action I checked how long I have left on my cell phone contract. Hopefully they will put out a gen2 version about the time I'm ready to buy. I don't mind spending $600 for a phone that actually does what I want, easily. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Compared to Windows, it's good. It may be comparable to Red Hat, I don't know... but Red Hat's local security isn't "good enough" either.
Good enough for what? What is the purpose of having security measures at all? The purpose is to stop people from hacking your machine and if people aren't successfully hacking your machine, they're good enough. Security can always be stronger, it just takes more work which costs money and time. I'd like to see Apple hit about 5 key technologies and integrate them and I'd like to see a more active internal security auditing crew. I'd like to see Apple post a bounty on bugs depending upon severity, with a public Website that announces the bug immediately, although perhaps not details. That said, I don't think most Apple customers have any problem today, and so Apple doing any of the above is strategic. They need to balance that with other development to give customers in general what they want.
They don't cover them up, they just ignore them.
For the most part, this doesn't seem to be true in my experience. All the bugs we've sent them have been acknowledged and fixed in a timely manner.
I sent them a report on the way aliases bypass traverse checking and can be used to 'tunnel' through top level directory permissions between accounts, and I've had no response.
That is one thing I'll fault them for, they're slow to answer. Still a local escalation between accounts, using aliases sounds pretty minor. It could be a pain in an education setting. How long has it been?
They still haven't changed the default "Open 'Safe' Files After Downloading" behaviour in Safari
This is a design choice. They favor ease of use over security in this instance. It is a hole and I certainly change it on all my machines, but thinking of it from a business perspective, I understand their choice. They have to balance making an OS people want with one that is secure and sometimes the tradeoffs are in favor of less security. If it ever begins to be widely exploited, I'm sure they'll change it.
ALL schools, or in fact anyone who signs an über-licensing agreement with MS are at risk for "lock in", especially if you define "lock in" as being "we spent all our money on products from company X, so we have none left to buy products from company Y".
That's not "lock-in." That is "limited resources to allocate," something entirely different. Anyone spending money pretty much assumes they have limited resources and are not surprised by that fact. What does surprise people is that when a purchasing decision they make today results in purchasing decisions they make in 5 years being made for them because the product they bought is intentionally designed to not work with open standards or components from anyone else.
How is this even news?
This is news because people are still making decisions on behalf of constituents and children that result in long term risks for short term gains.
These people continue to piss me off. They keep coming out with releases that support more and more games, and completely ignore the small business market that's clamoring to run QuickBooks.
I think the problem is their pledge system which they use to decide which applications to support makes a lot of sense for home users that would like to run some application, but if not will use something else, but it makes no sense in a business environment. Any business that signs off on promising money to another company when and if that company ever get a solution working, is unlikely to still be in business by the time that software works. What is the business pledging money supposed to do in the meantime, not solve the problem they were buying software for?
Somehow I suspect you're just trolling. If you knew anything about Codeweavers, or had even tried the software, you should know that they determine which applications to support based on customer demand. Granted, some apps are probably too difficult to be worth the effort, which would be a judgment call, but by and large their 'direction' comes from the bottom up rather than dictated by a pointy-hair type.
I commented elsewhere about this, but their pledge system makes no sense for business users. Since that is the market they claim to be targeting, I fear for them. Think of it this way, in business you evaluate potential solutions, submit a purchase order, and deploy. If the software doesn't do what you need or well enough are you going to take time to submit bugs to them? A few people might. Are you going to pledge money to be paid if they get something working? Hell no. You don't submit a purchase order that says, "At some unspecified point in the future this company might work for us so can we promise them X dollars if they ever do?" You simply submit a purchase order for whatever solution will work right now. In my case, that was Parallels and Crossover lost the sales and those lost sales did not make it into their pledge system to direct their development. If they really want to be directed properly, they need a really easy feedback form so that evaluators can tell them how many sales they just lost for not supporting an application.
I evaluated crossover last month and then moved on. I think it might be important for some people to understand why other projects are more popular right now. I wanted to run a specific Windows only program on OS X. My initial search yielded Crossover and Parallels as potential solutions. If I did the same evaluation today, I would add VMWare to that list. Since I only wanted to run one program, Crossover's lower resource consumption was attractive. Likewise, since it did not require a Windows license it seemed more cost effective. So I downloaded a copy of each and tested it. Under Parallels the program ran fine without any real hitches. The resource use was high and so was the cost. Under Crossover, the program was on their supported list, but they did not support the most recent version 7.1 was supported but 7.2 was not, or some such. The version I needed was released well over a year ago. I tried installing it under the bottle for the old version and under a standard bottle with no success. At this point, apparently, the guys at Crossover think I'm going to go to their pledge page and pledge to buy 5 copies to support my 5 installations should they ever get around to doing so. In a business environment, that is insane. I can get an approved PO for buying the more expensive solution, but how do you get a PO to pledge money for installs that may or may not ever happen? I'm sure not spending my own money.
Needless to say, my company shelled out for copies of Parallels and some more Windows licenses. The added flexibility is handy and it works just fine. If the crossover guys are really targeting the business market, I hope that they are aware their pledge system is useless and probably misleading in terms of how many sales they will get for making a given application work.
I'm not going to address your points one by one, because I don't have the time and they don't deserve it. Some of the items you reply to were not even in my post. But I thought I'd address your conclusions.
Apple? I see complacency and rhetoric and outright deception . Then I see ignorant - yes, I think you are ignorant - pundits such as yourself who would attack the messenger rather than admit there's a problem.
Ahh, a problem eh? How many Macs have been compromised this year by worms? Oh yeah that would be zero. Well how many were compromised by viruses, umm zero. How many were know to be compromised by directed attacks from hackers? A handful. This is the problem? Mac security is just fine for a consumer desktop system where security is a lower priority than other parts of the OS, because they align with the priorities of the people using them. Sure I could switch my laptop to OpenBSD or SELinux. Of course it would take me twice as long to get my work done and every day would be an exercise in pain.
When macs are compromised in an automated fashion, regularly, the platform will have a problem. Ideally Apple will be proactive and introduce features to keep it from ever getting to that state, which they have so far. You complain that they haven't introduced MAC and it is not on the feature list. Sure it would be nice, but it sure as hell isn't needed to deal with the large number of trojans I have to deal with every day, which is to say none. There is no such thing as a "secure OS" only OS's that have low enough risk of compromise for some use. If that risk is not low enough for your use, use something else that is appropriate. Don't try to blow trivial vulnerabilities out of proportion in order to scare the general public into incorrectly believing their risk on OS X is high. Don't implement a project that is irresponsible by all security industry standards and which maximizes the risk to users in the hopes that can manufacture a problem that does not currently exist. You claim I'm attacking the messenger, but this particular messenger was trampling on people in order to try to gain publicity. They can rot and you need to take a course on ethics.
Apple, Inc. did suggest that they can't get viruses... Since I consider Apple an authority on Apple computers, I think that backs it up.
No, Apple states that they don't get viruses, which is true, to date they have not had any in the wild viruses, with possible exceptions being so obscure and useless as to not really count. If you bought a Mac 5 years ago, the chances that you caught a virus on it are infinitesimal, unlike Windows, to which they are directly comparing OS X. Their commercial may not tell the whole story, but what it does tell is accurate.
They are scared to tell people that any computer could be compromised just as you are.
They're interested in making money. I'm speaking from the perspective of improving overall security. Do you really think overall security is served by addressing that.00001% chance that someone is likely to get a virus while running a Mac, keeping in mind most people would interpret that comment as "there is no reason to switch away from Windows since all OS's are the same."???
Windows users don't care about security anyway. If they did, they wouldn't be using Windows.
Bullshit. The average person doesn't know Windows is less secure than other offerings. They don't know what other offerings are. The only computers in the store (Walmart, Kmart, Meijer) run Windows. People are accustomed to free markets, not monopolized markets. Thus they assume if there was something better that would keep them from getting worms, it would be in the store.
Lets face it, at least once a year there is a big worm scare in the media like the iloveyou worm, etc. My grandmother won't even get a computer at all because the media has scared her from them. Most of my family doesn't see a reason to upgrade from Windows ME or Windows 2000 because security isn't a concern, only price and functionality.
Most people don't know that upgrading will help the situation and most people are incapable of performing said upgrade.
I prefer vendors be notified prior to releasing information about an exploit. Time to fix it is even better. You act as if I like 0 day exploits against systems.
You're arguing in favor of people who don't release info to the vendor or the public right away, but sit on vulnerabilities until it gets them more press. Worse, they intentionally space those announcements in such a way that a regular development/QA cycle has to wait an entire month before it can start in order to get all the vulnerabilities in, maximizing the exposure window. It is worse in multiple ways than even immediate public disclosure.
You act as if I like 0 day exploits against systems. I administer a Mac based network at work. I have good reason to want patches.
I don't care about your motivations, as they are not what I'm arguing against. I disagree with your statements supporting this unethical project and against your beliefs that it is helping somehow.
Apple's default permissions on that directory are plain wrong. APE is just an example application that proves the point.
This is just wrong. The framework file is installed by a third party application, which sets the permissions. Giving administrators the right to set permissions is a design choice, and arguably a bad one, but it is not a bug in and of itself.
I think the real problem here is that the MOAB deniers are woefully ignorant of the problems.
Deniers? What the project isn't happening? I'm pissed because the MOAB is being conducted in an unethical way that decreases the security of the general populace in order to benefit the people running it. Your claim that I am ignorant, is, in itself ignorant. Take a look at my posting history.
I think it's great. I also work in the security field and I have done so for the past 5 years. I've been aware for the past 2 years that OS X is a horrendously insecure OS.
Gee, what a coincidence. I too am a long time worker in the security industry. OS X is horrendously insecure, if compared to a locked down server or ultra secure workstation solution. Compared to the average Linux desktop, it is very similar. It has different problems, mostly from Apple's new features and integration with existing code bases, but it benefits from active, motivated updates, and some of the best handling of the HCI portion of the security problems.
It's a consumer workstation. As a consumer workstation, its security is "good enough" for the average user. Sure an expert directly attacking it can probably break in, just like the average linux desktop. But it is "good enough" because the current level of security does not cause any problems for the average user, who are rarely if ever compromised.
If the Mac pundits just admitted the problem exists and took steps to secure their OS they'd get the two thumbs up.
Please. Apple does a very good job of working with the security community and fixing issues. My coworker submitted a bug a short time ago, they fixed it in a little more than a week and gave him credit. They're also proactive doing security audits and introducing new features like workable encryption for user accounts, mandatory access controls, dtrace, and application signing. They fix any real bug that is reported to them.
They blame the MOAB guys, or they start from an ignorant understanding of the issues and claim that the faults aren't faults.
I blame the MOAB guys because their disclosure is about as irresponsible as you can get. Intentionally providing a vendor who acts in good faith with no advance notice and intentionally spacing public disclosure to make development/qa cycles have the longest possible time between disclosure and patch. Imagine you're working on a product and security researchers announce one bug they already know about every few days. You can start a cycle and it won't get the next several bugs or you can wait a whole month. Either way your users are swinging in the wind. It's like they're intentionally trying to open big enough window for a worm to work. If you really are a person in the "security field" then you must be pretty clueless.
Part of fixing the problem is admitting that the problem exists.
Apple admits to and thanks those who submit bugs to them. I've never heard of them trying to cover one up. Who are they trying to convince to fix things?
I'm extremely surprised that nobody has released a security manager or lockdown tool for OS X.
Have you ever looked?
Sorry, but I wouldn't trust a security person with your attitude or ignorance anywhere near my boxes. Good luck with your career.
Perhaps a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but you fellows could certainly use large quantities of it.
Starting a post by firing an empty insult is not a good way to convince any rational person of anything. Do you think this is going to persuade anyone that you are more intelligent or some sort of an authority?
Try reading a bit of history, including the history of technology.
A plea to believe your supposed vast expertise about technology and the state of the earth is just that. It is not a fact or logical progression that supports your opinion.
Population growth and sustainability is directly related and correlated to energy development and usage
What an interesting assertion. Given that no one with any real grasp of the facts would claim that our current, or even recent stage of development has been sustainable, how would one come to such a conclusion? Have you been studying alien civilizations again?
...it is highly improbable that the present population can be even remotely sustainable given oil depletion and positing no "miracle" energy sources will soon be readily adopted...
It must be great to live in a reality with so few variables. My world is a little more complex. Mankind can live a sustainable existence with double our current population and significant changes in other areas. For example, if we're willing to switch entirely to the most rapidly growing, nutritious foods, if we're willing to euthanize unproductive parts of the population ike the elderly and handicapped and ill. Basically, if we're willing to put up with hugely decreased quality of life and cooperate. I'm not suggesting this is likely or desirable, which is why I used it as a counterpoint to the first poster's completely correct assertion. It is possible.
Both posts are living in a libertarian's (or neocon's) fantasy world...
Gee my post has a life of its own? They attain sentience and grow up so fast don't they?
Catch a clue, chums...
Pull that stick out of your butt already. You condescension is sickening, especially for someone with limited reading comprehension. Or maybe, in your eagerness to insult people you did not bother to actually read my post. Either way, if you want someone to blame for our present political situation, look no further than the end of your nose. Smarmy elitist twats like yourself have alienated enough people to prevent any normal person from self associating with scientific views.
The fact is that no one knows what is causing Global Warming on Mars but we know for sure that it is not caused by Martians driving around their SUVs.
Have you ever heard the term "negative proof?" The above statement is 100% true, but implies nothing about the causes of global warming on the earth. A building in the middle of the desert burned down and constant satellite surveillance shows no human agent caused the fire. Does this in any way imply that the buildings that burn down during devil's night in Detroit are not arson? There is no way from observing building that catch fire in the desert that what doesn't happen there can be evidence for what may or may not happen somewhere else.
There are several theories and some speculate that recent solar activity (the high levels of sun-spot and solar-flares) are having an impact on Mars even though there has been no increase in irradiance; being that Mars is further away from the Sun than Earh is it would be foolish not to assume that any impact from Solar activity on Mars would impact Earth.
Umm, last I heard the earth has a magnetic field that shields it from most solar radiation. Mars does not. Thus, it is entirely possible changes in solar activity that would affect mars are not significantly dissipated by the added distance, but are dissipated by the magnetic shield... or maybe not. But to claim that it is foolish not to assume otherwise for that reason or some other, or to assume solar activity was not included as a factor in studies (which it is in some) is more than a little wrongheaded, IMHO.
After all, there seem to be a lot of people on/. who have jumped on MS for not making people run as non-admin before Vista; and what's that besides just choosing a poor set of default permissions?
There is a difference between a design not being as secure as possible and a vulnerability. I blame Microsoft for both poor security design for the current climate, and for lots of bugs, but I don't confuse the two and claim that because a local program was compromised, that is a bug in MS's OS. MS should provide a way to safely run untrusted binaries (which is a commonly performed task), but that particular bug is not an MS bug.
In this same way, it would be great if Apple ran all applications in a sandbox. That doesn't mean a bug in a third party program on OS X is an Apple bug either.
What they write on their Web page is pretty irrelevant when they create a project called "Month of Apple Bugs." To blatantly rip off The Simpsons, "...for every dollar of Krusty merchandise you buy I will be nice to a sick kid. For legal purposes sick kids may include hookers with a cold."
It's the zealots own fault for attracting attention in the bad manner for claiming such lofty security, of course someone is going to look at it.
This such such a tired and sad implicit assumption. Who on Slashdot has ever claimed that OS X was some super secure solution, or immune to malware? Lots of people tout it as secure, but that is because the most common OS that sets the measure is Windows. Compared to Windows, OS X is very secure and that message should be repeated as much as possible until the average person on the street knows it, in order to motivate people to switch and Microsoft to solve the problem.
The moab is a over the top in it's presentation, but that's about it.
Who cares about the presentation. I'm concerned about security. The guys running this obviously aren't worried about the security of users because they are compromising that security in order to make money. If I wanted to make most users less secure what would be a good way? First, I'd spread misleading press that convinces them OS X and other OS's (like that umm, Linkus OS, my cousin mentioned) are no more secure that Windows. Next, I'd search out vulnerabilities in the most common OS that is not regularly compromised, and try to encourage malware authors to write malware for them. A good way to do that would be to not inform the vendor before I released the vulnerabilities, so they don't have a chance to fix them. Then, I'd release them spread out over a long period of time, so that they can't do a development/QA cycle until all of them are released, unless they want to commit to not fixing some of them, thus maximizing the amount of time between publication and patch.
These guys are not responsible security researchers and they're maximizing their press coverage at the expense of everyone else. Nothing was stopping these guys from quietly finding a bug a day for a month, and immediately informing the relevant vendor, and then announcing afterwards what they had done after the vendors had a short time to fix the bugs. The only problem would be they would not get as much press coverage and the chances of a worm being created and spread would be less, thus making it less likely they can ride that short bus to more press coverage.
The fact that you see nothing wrong with this means either you haven't thought it through, you don't have any idea what responsible handling of vulnerabilities is, or you don't care about security at all and are just reacting emotionally because you don't like people talking about OS X being secure and ignoring whatever your favorite OS is. P.S. your favorite OS sucks.
IMHO the core of the issue is with file permissions that Apple has defined for various directories under/Library that Apple recommends 3rd parties install software into.
The security hole is in APE. The fact that you disagree with Apple's permission choices is pretty irrelevant. OS X does not stop Adobe Acrobat from being installed either, does that mean any hole in that reader is also partially Apple's fault?
No, the price of using a computer is to patch it and not run untrusted software.
Bullshit. That's like saying the purpose of forks is to eat vegetables, and if some forks happen to create a toxic substance when they touch other substances, it is not a concern. People want to run untrusted binaries, because the majority of binaries people run are untrusted to some degree or another. When malware is common, it makes sense to make sure that untrusted binaries are restricted by default.
It does not matter what OS you are using. If you tell people they are invincible because they have a Mac or use linux, you are doing them a disservice. You are also lying to them.
Yeah, now show me one example of a person with any authority seriously saying macs are invincible... just one. Apple doesn't say that. I've never seen a security researcher, or even sensationalist papers say that. If you do a Google search for "mac invincible" you find one blogger asking if Macs are invincible and one article explaining that your statement is a classic strawman argument.
I tell people that Macs or anything but windows are safer because less people care to attack them.
That is a fine message to spread, but if the paper is reporting, "30 bugs in Macintosh computers in a month demonstrate they are not secure," what do you think the average Windows user will take away from that headline? Do you think they will correctly derive from that headline that if they get a mac the chances of them getting malware are almost zero, or do you think they will take from that that it does not matter if they have a mac or a Windows machine, they are still going to get malware? Do you think it makes people more or less likely to be infected with malware, considering it may well dissuade people from moving to both Mac and Linux machines?
The poorly named MOAB is dropping vulnerabilities one after another intentionally spread out, with no prior notification in such a way that Apple either has to wait for all of them, or commit to not fixing some of them right away simply because of the time necessary for development and QA cycles. Can you think of a better way to encourage malware without actually creating exploit code yourself? Further, they're intentionally delaying releasing vulnerabilities they have found to the public, increasing the window for exploitation. Why? It gets them more press that way and a truly cynical person might say because it is the best way to encourage malware based upon their bugs so that they can get more press as they talk about how they discovered the hole first and were right about how Apple would get hacked. It is utterly irresponsible.
I guess it depends if the purpose of publishing the bugs is to fix OS X, or whether it's to educate Apple users that just because you use OS X, you are not immune; it's possible (probable?) that somewhere on your system there will be vulnerabilities.
If you think that is the purpose of the MOAB then you're very, very optimistic, perhaps naive. The purpose is to gain publicity for a few, unscrupulous researchers. They've done this before with other vendors and even agreed to cancel one such project after being paid off. Apple users who know anything about security know there is the potential for security flaws, but they also know the potential is much less than if they are running Windows. Apple users and potential Apple who don't know anything, may be confused by this into thinking that OS X is no more secure than Windows and hence stay with Windows. The simple message "use a mac and you're unlikely to suffer from worms and viruses" is true and simple enough for most people. Complicating the message with, "but if you're using some third party utility, or even some included utilities there is the possibility someone could write a worm, but tso far no one has and they are unlikely to do so in the near future" is way too complex.
At minimum, it's a reminder that whilst OS X is more secure than Windows XP natively, it is not immune from vulnerabilities.
Finding vulnerabilities and not reporting them to the vendor or making them public until it will get you the most press, is detrimental to security and does more to help black hats than it does to help users. Trying to obscure and complicate the simple message that mac==more secure than windows, likewise is detrimental to overall security. The only thing this project is really accomplishing is publicity for themselves at the expense of everyone else. These guys are anti-security researchers. If they aren't willing to behave ethically, they can rot.
First of all the planet can easily sustain a populous double our current size, if people would just use the grey matter known as our brains that we have been greatly blessed with.
Of course we can, we just have to be more efficient and cooperative and/orreduce our quality of living. But, since that isn't happening because people like you revile the concept of cooperation claiming it is opposed to natural selection, expect to be naturally selected and removed from the populace or have your quality of living greatly reduced.
I hear so many of the far leftists say "stop breeding" and such mantra to that effect...
"Leftists? Left and right are artificial political assignations used to oversimplify politics so it can be superficially reported to people with below average IQs. Trying to imply that those assigned to the left end of the spectrum think others should stop breeding is a big stretch. It sounds a lot more like you're looking to vilify a group, out of mental laziness.
...but you are unquestionably the most promiscuous people there are.
Umm, I don't think you are properly using the word "unquestionably." Promiscuity has a strong positive relationship with poverty, low education rates, and adherence to particular religions including catholicism and some protestant sects. Those traits have a negative correlation with members of political groups generally assigned to the "left." I'd say it is more than questionable. Just as a side note, calling groups "hypocritical is meaningful only if you can demonstrate that contradictory actions are those of an individual, or large number of individuals. If half of the people in a town publicly claim guns are evil and half are gun owners the town is not hypocritical.
It will be a very long time before we have discovered all of the species of the ocean, let alone consumed said species.
Perhaps you're misunderstanding the meaning of "sustainable." It means live in such a way that our supplies will not run out in the foreseeable future. If we're gradually reducing the number of species by consuming them, we're not behaving in a sustainable manner.
Again, there are laws of selection that nature lives by, and if left alone all will balance out.
This is a weak cop out. It is simply a denial of responsibility. "Nature" will take care of things. It is true, but the way it takes care of things might be to eliminate our species or kill off large portion in a slow and painful way, like starvation. One of the defining traits of humanity is intelligence. Thus we define goals and then logically address how best to achieve those goals. Depending upon your definitions that may or may not be "natural."
This 'make everyone equal (financially) so they can all have the same lobster dinner' and such mentality...
Wow, way to cram a lot of logical fallacies into a small amount of words. Argument by association is where you assume people that hold one view must hold another (worried about global warming means you must favor extreme socialism) and then you argue against the second point without ever addressing the first point. This is wrong because people don't all hold the same sets of opinions and because even if the second opinion is wrong, it does not mean the first one is.
...even I (who convenes regularly with friends who are marine biologists and assure me otherwise) am starting to wonder the validity of the leftist "we are killing the ocean" propaganda.
The "left" is a nebulous assignation. By definition it cannot crete propaganda. More importantly, propaganda requires a deceitful motivation. What is the motivation of marine biologists and fishing organizations around the world to misstate the facts about fishing harvest sizes. How come most of the fish I can now buy in the supermarket was considered to be "junk" 50 years ago and not suitable for people to eat since other types were plentiful and better? Is i
As such, why couldn't you just use a preexisting solution (i.e. print up a schematic and use a UV light to burn it to a copper clad board)?
Because copper clad boards are only copper clad on one or two sides. The board machine I used to play with could handle 13 layer boards. I don't even want to think about how expensive it was though.
The "problems" Alex St. John identifies are essentially that his business model doesn't work so great when people have to click a couple extra buttons and type a password, and that he would really prefer it if children could install his products without parental involvement.
This isn't a matter of bypassing parental controls (from what I read) it is a matter of the OS making it harder for the user to do what they want to do in the name of security. his is, in my opinion, completely wrong. If there is truly no easy way to write a game with the same functions that doesn't need to go through these steps (this is an assumption not an assertion) then this is MS's fault. Vista should allow users, including children who have not been restricted by parental controls, to run any bloody thing they want, just prevent it from doing things that malware would do. Give it limited internet access in the form of an official service for game registration and online gaming, rather than unfettered access. Let it read and write it's own files in a sandbox, but don't let it overwrite any others or read my address book, or run a mail server.
That said, if the developer in question is writing a game that wants to run a mail server, or read my e-mail address book, or send random data to the internet rather than using the official (mythical) service, then they have no case.
I'm 100% in favor of more restricted user accounts and default restrictions on new executables. At the same time, I feel these restrictions will be worse than useless for the average user unless the channel for distributing and running credible software from both MS and third parties is not made simple and easy. For a reputable commercial game, signed and certified by the vendor, it should probably even have relatively unfettered internet access, by default, without the user having to click through warnings. Vista implements 1/3 of what is needed for such a security policy to work. You need to be able to restrict software, but you also need to inform the user only for credible exceptions, and you need a mechanism to determine trust of a given application so that those exceptions can be the right ones. In order to do this, the technology that must be put in place is tragically easy to abuse from the position of a monopoly, which is why MS needs to bend over backwards to make this a fair and open system that works with major players in the industry from day one. This develop should have their choice of a number of different companies and organizations that have permission to certify proper access controls for their games.
But the answer to this problem isn't to reduce security, it's to make a better and more compelling game!
This is very wrongheaded. You shouldn't have to make a game that is significantly better than the ones MS makes so that users will click through scary warnings not given for those MS games. Security and usability are not polar opposites. Often making something more secure also makes it more usable. In this case, making games more usable by not throwing up spurious warnings increases security because people are more likely to pay attention when such warnings are rare. False positives are security problem, not a feature. It's not like developers are deciding not to make games compelling. They do what they can with the resources they have and anything MS does to make that harder, means they have less resources to make the game compelling.
But blaming Microsoft for everything is just a tired old excuse that invariably comes trotting out when someone is too damn lazy to read the direction of the wind and rig his sails accordingly.
Umm, Microsoft took action that interfered with simple and legitimate uses of software aimed at less expert users. Claiming he should redesign his business model to work around MS's horribly conceived security features that are broken, is not constructive. MS deserves blame in this case.
I'm pretty sure I could already get a PDA with cell phone functionality for an outrageous price like that.
Yeah, and you can already buy an MP3 player for less than an iPod. That doesn't mean it is as nice or is going to be popular.
But Apple rebundles lots of current ideas in a shinier box, and they'll get credit for reinventing the industry.
Apple gets credit because they make good products that people like. They didn't make the first portable digital music player. They made the one with a really, really nice interface that was so much easier to use that everyone who compared it to others was blown away.
If you're a Mac fan already, maybe this was a massive presentation. If you already didn't "get it" (or like me, think it's ridiculous), this presentation is utterly uninsteresting.
No presentation will interest everyone, but this one has a lot wider appeal than is normal. Most of them talk about Macs, and OS X which most people don't care about at all. More people are interested in iPods and a lot of them will be very interested in this. I figured Apple was shipping a new phone/PDA. I also assumed it would be of no interest to me. I have thought about buying an iPod or a PDA phone several times, but I just wouldn't use an iPod that much and thus I doubt I'd have it when I wanted it. For PDA/phones, hate them. I love the idea, but the interfaces are junk. I mean, I just want to call people and a both a basic phone and a PDA require me to either memorize numbers or laboriously select menu after menu. I've often wondered why no one could do it right. Now, maybe Apple has. This is the first such device I've seriously considered buying in a long time. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If nothing else those concerned with "looking cool" will be buying these as fast as they can make them.
I suspect that the defense for that would be thus: Since Apple itself never announced an iPhone product, Cisco (and any other company in a similar situation) shouldn't be locked out of their trademark by consumer rumors. Unless I'm mistaken, you can't trademark words unless you actually do "trade" in a particular name.
Trading in a product does not guarantee you won't lose your trademark. Trademarks are tried in the court of public opinion. Bayer still sold Aspirin and Heroin under those names when they lost those trademarks. Kleenex is in danger of losing their trademark on the term, simply because people use it as a generic term for facial tissues, more than as a reference to their brand. So even if you have a product by that name, you can lose that trademark if the public does not understand that it is yours only, or if it confuses customers. Try opening a retail store called ElectronicsHack or Radio Hack, or ElectroShack, and you may well lose in court to RadioShack, who's pre-exisiting and popular brand is similar. "iPhone" is very similar to iMac and iPod and iTunes and many other Apple products. If you said "iPhone" to the average person last week before Apple had released their product and while Cisco was selling a product by that name, most people would have thought you were talking about something from Apple. As such, Cisco is likely to lose their trademark in any case and the courts could hand it over to Apple, who holds it in other countries. The legal system is confusing and complex and I would not say that that is the case, but I would not be surprised either. Likely, Apple and Cisco will come to a settlement.
CISCO has owned the iPhone trademark since 2000. Exactly what claim do you think Apple would have been able to make in court? "Hey, they refuse to sell us their intellectual property that they legally own, which is of course their right, but we don't like it! That's why were suing!"
Trademarks are different from patents and copyrights. If most people associate your copyright with something other than your product, you lose it. Aspirin and Heroin were revoked the same day because they were not associated only with Bayer. Trademark laws are designed to keep a company from tricking users into thinking a product is from someone else. If you did a Google search right after Cisco announced the iPhone product they are selling (and I did) you would have seen 8 of the top ten results referred to a rumored, unnamed product from Apple, 1 was Cisco's marketing site, and one was an article claiming Cisco was trying to confuse customers into thinking their product was made by Apple. To me that sounds like a lot of evidence that it was Cisco that was trying to mislead customers, possible grounds for the trademark being transferred or revoked.
Not that that would happen, necessarily, but your implication that Apple had no case is a little off base.
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But one thing it's not is "zero-sum".
You're correct in stating that a job gained elsewhere is not a job lost here. It is much more complicated than that. However, money is a representation of wealth in terms of labor, rights, and goods. For those most part, that is a zero-sum game, but there is an interrelation between the elements. The number of people may grow, as might the amount of food produced, but that reduces the amount of materials and land available (until we get off the earth in a meaningful way that is).
Even if you don't "like" capitalism, it's vital to come to understand what capital is and why capital produces more capital. Communism, and to a lesser extent socialism, can be seen as starting with the assumption the economy is a zero-sum game, and they end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on that front as in their zeal to make sure capital/wealth is evenly distributed, they destroy the mechanisms of capital/wealth creation.
Actually, socialism and communism are not built upon that assumption at all. Communism is built upon the assumption that resource allocation can be better managed collectively, much the same way modern corporations manage wealth, but without the incentives. The basic concept is that by sharing resources and avoiding unnecessary duplication we can more efficiently use our resources. When applied on a small scale, this works very well. When applied on a large scale it runs into several problems. First people don't associate with or empathize with people they don't know, so lacking a motivation that benefits them directly, they find such a motivation even if it bypasses the system. Second, the more power that is gathered in one place, the easier it is for that power to be abused and to turn into a totalitarian regime.
I'm not defending any particular instantiation of capitalism at this time, I'm just saying you damn well need to understand why it does what it does if you want to understand how economies work.
I'm going to let you in on a very poorly kept secret. The country you live in has a blend of capitalism, communism, and socialism. I know this because it is true for every country. In the US, for example, we have fairly free trade, exchange of goods and services, etc. making up the capitalist component. We have sliding scale taxes to fund public schools, police, military, medicare, unemployment benefits, and many other government run plans as socialism. We have atomic family units, extended families, and a few co-ops and monasteries forming the communist cells. It works out fairly well, but does not result in the highest standard of living in the world. Over all it is above average but still sub-optimal.
Your claim that socialism and communism do not work is a little misguided. Extremism does not work, whether it is extreme socialism, communism, or capitalism. Try to take any one of these elements to its extreme and your economy will go to hell. Extreme capitalism, for example, eventually results in complete wealth consolidation and with the wealth comes power. You end up with a totalitarian regime again, and often a bloody revolution where the wealth is redistributed. The US is a little closer to this end of things than is healthy, IMHO. Wealth disparity and violent crime statistically show a very close correlation, and the US has higher violent crime levels than most industrialized nations.
The ideal balance, however, is elusive. How much socialism mitigates the worst pains of disparity, but does not remove motivation for people to work hard? Very few people would argue for no police, no fire department, and no military whatsoever. How large of communist cells are ideal and to what resources should they apply? Very few people would argue each family member should provide their own food and shelter. How much capitalism provides motivation for innovation, but does not lead to the wealth condensation principal gather in wealth without any work being motivated? Very few people would argue that one perso
This issue is a very emotional one and as a result, often ends up in a jumble of confusion, with people arguing different things. Some key items to remember are:
The truth of the matter is, people in the US are not inherently smarter or better or harder workers than people in other countries. Despite this, people in the US in general enjoy a much more comfortable standard of living and own more of the wealth than most of the rest of the world. This is due to numerous factors. The difficulty of communication and travel has concentrated wealth in certain places, and prevented it from accumulating in others. A dumb, lazy person in New York is more likely to live comfortably and with relative wealth than a relatively brilliant and hard working man in Ethiopia. This is mostly because people in New York looking to hire someone to do something have difficulty hiring the Ethiopian for many of the tasks they want done. This is slowly changing and changing rapidly in some fields.
Education and experience provide significant momentum. The US has a lot of both, but programs that resulted in people coming to the US and getting both and then leaving (or being forced to leave) have started to move more of both to other locations. As more and more jobs move overseas, those people gain experience and are more likely to pass that on locally. As such, once education and experience leave the US to foreign jobs, it will snowball to some degree, or at least resist concentrating again.
In addition to outsourcing jobs to other countries, outsourcing includes outsourcing jobs to other companies. For businesses in rapidly changing environments or who need work done just once, this makes a lot of sense. Hiring your own construction people to build offices, when you're an IT firm is a bit nuts. The problem is, because of the standard of living in the US, any jobs which can be done well by foreign employees, are almost always cheaper. This is mitigated by the small size of the trained foreign work force and by the unwillingness of management to outsource themselves or move to another country.
The result of this last circumstance means that often decision makers outsource core competency parts of their work, which is basically subsidizing the training and experience of people outside their company (and often their country). Pretty soon someone realizes that the company doesn't have any real employee assets anymore and is just a shell.
Phone with music with browsing features is nothing new. It might have cuter iterface[sic] but all of the features are already available for a much lower price.
Portable devices that play digital music is nothing new. It might have a cuter interface but all the features (of the iPod) are already available for a much lower price.
Do you see why your argument does not convince me that the iPhone won't sell like mad? I don't like any cell phone I've ever owned. They are crap. My current one takes 10 key presses to select and call a person in my pre-programmed numbers list. All the handhelds I've tried have been clunky and hard to use. I don't own an iPod because I don't think I'd carry it with me. I had no expectation I'd want one of Apple's new phones especially since I guessed the price would be about $600. When I saw this in action I checked how long I have left on my cell phone contract. Hopefully they will put out a gen2 version about the time I'm ready to buy. I don't mind spending $600 for a phone that actually does what I want, easily. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Compared to Windows, it's good. It may be comparable to Red Hat, I don't know... but Red Hat's local security isn't "good enough" either.
Good enough for what? What is the purpose of having security measures at all? The purpose is to stop people from hacking your machine and if people aren't successfully hacking your machine, they're good enough. Security can always be stronger, it just takes more work which costs money and time. I'd like to see Apple hit about 5 key technologies and integrate them and I'd like to see a more active internal security auditing crew. I'd like to see Apple post a bounty on bugs depending upon severity, with a public Website that announces the bug immediately, although perhaps not details. That said, I don't think most Apple customers have any problem today, and so Apple doing any of the above is strategic. They need to balance that with other development to give customers in general what they want.
They don't cover them up, they just ignore them.
For the most part, this doesn't seem to be true in my experience. All the bugs we've sent them have been acknowledged and fixed in a timely manner.
I sent them a report on the way aliases bypass traverse checking and can be used to 'tunnel' through top level directory permissions between accounts, and I've had no response.
That is one thing I'll fault them for, they're slow to answer. Still a local escalation between accounts, using aliases sounds pretty minor. It could be a pain in an education setting. How long has it been?
They still haven't changed the default "Open 'Safe' Files After Downloading" behaviour in Safari
This is a design choice. They favor ease of use over security in this instance. It is a hole and I certainly change it on all my machines, but thinking of it from a business perspective, I understand their choice. They have to balance making an OS people want with one that is secure and sometimes the tradeoffs are in favor of less security. If it ever begins to be widely exploited, I'm sure they'll change it.
ALL schools, or in fact anyone who signs an über-licensing agreement with MS are at risk for "lock in", especially if you define "lock in" as being "we spent all our money on products from company X, so we have none left to buy products from company Y".
That's not "lock-in." That is "limited resources to allocate," something entirely different. Anyone spending money pretty much assumes they have limited resources and are not surprised by that fact. What does surprise people is that when a purchasing decision they make today results in purchasing decisions they make in 5 years being made for them because the product they bought is intentionally designed to not work with open standards or components from anyone else.
How is this even news?
This is news because people are still making decisions on behalf of constituents and children that result in long term risks for short term gains.
These people continue to piss me off. They keep coming out with releases that support more and more games, and completely ignore the small business market that's clamoring to run QuickBooks.
I think the problem is their pledge system which they use to decide which applications to support makes a lot of sense for home users that would like to run some application, but if not will use something else, but it makes no sense in a business environment. Any business that signs off on promising money to another company when and if that company ever get a solution working, is unlikely to still be in business by the time that software works. What is the business pledging money supposed to do in the meantime, not solve the problem they were buying software for?
Somehow I suspect you're just trolling. If you knew anything about Codeweavers, or had even tried the software, you should know that they determine which applications to support based on customer demand. Granted, some apps are probably too difficult to be worth the effort, which would be a judgment call, but by and large their 'direction' comes from the bottom up rather than dictated by a pointy-hair type.
I commented elsewhere about this, but their pledge system makes no sense for business users. Since that is the market they claim to be targeting, I fear for them. Think of it this way, in business you evaluate potential solutions, submit a purchase order, and deploy. If the software doesn't do what you need or well enough are you going to take time to submit bugs to them? A few people might. Are you going to pledge money to be paid if they get something working? Hell no. You don't submit a purchase order that says, "At some unspecified point in the future this company might work for us so can we promise them X dollars if they ever do?" You simply submit a purchase order for whatever solution will work right now. In my case, that was Parallels and Crossover lost the sales and those lost sales did not make it into their pledge system to direct their development. If they really want to be directed properly, they need a really easy feedback form so that evaluators can tell them how many sales they just lost for not supporting an application.
I evaluated crossover last month and then moved on. I think it might be important for some people to understand why other projects are more popular right now. I wanted to run a specific Windows only program on OS X. My initial search yielded Crossover and Parallels as potential solutions. If I did the same evaluation today, I would add VMWare to that list. Since I only wanted to run one program, Crossover's lower resource consumption was attractive. Likewise, since it did not require a Windows license it seemed more cost effective. So I downloaded a copy of each and tested it. Under Parallels the program ran fine without any real hitches. The resource use was high and so was the cost. Under Crossover, the program was on their supported list, but they did not support the most recent version 7.1 was supported but 7.2 was not, or some such. The version I needed was released well over a year ago. I tried installing it under the bottle for the old version and under a standard bottle with no success. At this point, apparently, the guys at Crossover think I'm going to go to their pledge page and pledge to buy 5 copies to support my 5 installations should they ever get around to doing so. In a business environment, that is insane. I can get an approved PO for buying the more expensive solution, but how do you get a PO to pledge money for installs that may or may not ever happen? I'm sure not spending my own money.
Needless to say, my company shelled out for copies of Parallels and some more Windows licenses. The added flexibility is handy and it works just fine. If the crossover guys are really targeting the business market, I hope that they are aware their pledge system is useless and probably misleading in terms of how many sales they will get for making a given application work.
I'm not going to address your points one by one, because I don't have the time and they don't deserve it. Some of the items you reply to were not even in my post. But I thought I'd address your conclusions.
Apple? I see complacency and rhetoric and outright deception . Then I see ignorant - yes, I think you are ignorant - pundits such as yourself who would attack the messenger rather than admit there's a problem.
Ahh, a problem eh? How many Macs have been compromised this year by worms? Oh yeah that would be zero. Well how many were compromised by viruses, umm zero. How many were know to be compromised by directed attacks from hackers? A handful. This is the problem? Mac security is just fine for a consumer desktop system where security is a lower priority than other parts of the OS, because they align with the priorities of the people using them. Sure I could switch my laptop to OpenBSD or SELinux. Of course it would take me twice as long to get my work done and every day would be an exercise in pain.
When macs are compromised in an automated fashion, regularly, the platform will have a problem. Ideally Apple will be proactive and introduce features to keep it from ever getting to that state, which they have so far. You complain that they haven't introduced MAC and it is not on the feature list. Sure it would be nice, but it sure as hell isn't needed to deal with the large number of trojans I have to deal with every day, which is to say none. There is no such thing as a "secure OS" only OS's that have low enough risk of compromise for some use. If that risk is not low enough for your use, use something else that is appropriate. Don't try to blow trivial vulnerabilities out of proportion in order to scare the general public into incorrectly believing their risk on OS X is high. Don't implement a project that is irresponsible by all security industry standards and which maximizes the risk to users in the hopes that can manufacture a problem that does not currently exist. You claim I'm attacking the messenger, but this particular messenger was trampling on people in order to try to gain publicity. They can rot and you need to take a course on ethics.
Apple, Inc. did suggest that they can't get viruses... Since I consider Apple an authority on Apple computers, I think that backs it up.
No, Apple states that they don't get viruses, which is true, to date they have not had any in the wild viruses, with possible exceptions being so obscure and useless as to not really count. If you bought a Mac 5 years ago, the chances that you caught a virus on it are infinitesimal, unlike Windows, to which they are directly comparing OS X. Their commercial may not tell the whole story, but what it does tell is accurate.
They are scared to tell people that any computer could be compromised just as you are.
They're interested in making money. I'm speaking from the perspective of improving overall security. Do you really think overall security is served by addressing that .00001% chance that someone is likely to get a virus while running a Mac, keeping in mind most people would interpret that comment as "there is no reason to switch away from Windows since all OS's are the same."???
Windows users don't care about security anyway. If they did, they wouldn't be using Windows.
Bullshit. The average person doesn't know Windows is less secure than other offerings. They don't know what other offerings are. The only computers in the store (Walmart, Kmart, Meijer) run Windows. People are accustomed to free markets, not monopolized markets. Thus they assume if there was something better that would keep them from getting worms, it would be in the store.
Lets face it, at least once a year there is a big worm scare in the media like the iloveyou worm, etc. My grandmother won't even get a computer at all because the media has scared her from them. Most of my family doesn't see a reason to upgrade from Windows ME or Windows 2000 because security isn't a concern, only price and functionality.
Most people don't know that upgrading will help the situation and most people are incapable of performing said upgrade.
I prefer vendors be notified prior to releasing information about an exploit. Time to fix it is even better. You act as if I like 0 day exploits against systems.
You're arguing in favor of people who don't release info to the vendor or the public right away, but sit on vulnerabilities until it gets them more press. Worse, they intentionally space those announcements in such a way that a regular development/QA cycle has to wait an entire month before it can start in order to get all the vulnerabilities in, maximizing the exposure window. It is worse in multiple ways than even immediate public disclosure.
You act as if I like 0 day exploits against systems. I administer a Mac based network at work. I have good reason to want patches.
I don't care about your motivations, as they are not what I'm arguing against. I disagree with your statements supporting this unethical project and against your beliefs that it is helping somehow.
Apple's default permissions on that directory are plain wrong. APE is just an example application that proves the point.
This is just wrong. The framework file is installed by a third party application, which sets the permissions. Giving administrators the right to set permissions is a design choice, and arguably a bad one, but it is not a bug in and of itself.
I think the real problem here is that the MOAB deniers are woefully ignorant of the problems.
Deniers? What the project isn't happening? I'm pissed because the MOAB is being conducted in an unethical way that decreases the security of the general populace in order to benefit the people running it. Your claim that I am ignorant, is, in itself ignorant. Take a look at my posting history.
I think it's great. I also work in the security field and I have done so for the past 5 years. I've been aware for the past 2 years that OS X is a horrendously insecure OS.
Gee, what a coincidence. I too am a long time worker in the security industry. OS X is horrendously insecure, if compared to a locked down server or ultra secure workstation solution. Compared to the average Linux desktop, it is very similar. It has different problems, mostly from Apple's new features and integration with existing code bases, but it benefits from active, motivated updates, and some of the best handling of the HCI portion of the security problems.
It's a consumer workstation. As a consumer workstation, its security is "good enough" for the average user. Sure an expert directly attacking it can probably break in, just like the average linux desktop. But it is "good enough" because the current level of security does not cause any problems for the average user, who are rarely if ever compromised.
If the Mac pundits just admitted the problem exists and took steps to secure their OS they'd get the two thumbs up.
Please. Apple does a very good job of working with the security community and fixing issues. My coworker submitted a bug a short time ago, they fixed it in a little more than a week and gave him credit. They're also proactive doing security audits and introducing new features like workable encryption for user accounts, mandatory access controls, dtrace, and application signing. They fix any real bug that is reported to them.
They blame the MOAB guys, or they start from an ignorant understanding of the issues and claim that the faults aren't faults.
I blame the MOAB guys because their disclosure is about as irresponsible as you can get. Intentionally providing a vendor who acts in good faith with no advance notice and intentionally spacing public disclosure to make development/qa cycles have the longest possible time between disclosure and patch. Imagine you're working on a product and security researchers announce one bug they already know about every few days. You can start a cycle and it won't get the next several bugs or you can wait a whole month. Either way your users are swinging in the wind. It's like they're intentionally trying to open big enough window for a worm to work. If you really are a person in the "security field" then you must be pretty clueless.
Part of fixing the problem is admitting that the problem exists.
Apple admits to and thanks those who submit bugs to them. I've never heard of them trying to cover one up. Who are they trying to convince to fix things?
I'm extremely surprised that nobody has released a security manager or lockdown tool for OS X.
Have you ever looked?
Sorry, but I wouldn't trust a security person with your attitude or ignorance anywhere near my boxes. Good luck with your career.
Perhaps a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but you fellows could certainly use large quantities of it.
Starting a post by firing an empty insult is not a good way to convince any rational person of anything. Do you think this is going to persuade anyone that you are more intelligent or some sort of an authority?
Try reading a bit of history, including the history of technology.
A plea to believe your supposed vast expertise about technology and the state of the earth is just that. It is not a fact or logical progression that supports your opinion.
Population growth and sustainability is directly related and correlated to energy development and usage
What an interesting assertion. Given that no one with any real grasp of the facts would claim that our current, or even recent stage of development has been sustainable, how would one come to such a conclusion? Have you been studying alien civilizations again?
It must be great to live in a reality with so few variables. My world is a little more complex. Mankind can live a sustainable existence with double our current population and significant changes in other areas. For example, if we're willing to switch entirely to the most rapidly growing, nutritious foods, if we're willing to euthanize unproductive parts of the population ike the elderly and handicapped and ill. Basically, if we're willing to put up with hugely decreased quality of life and cooperate. I'm not suggesting this is likely or desirable, which is why I used it as a counterpoint to the first poster's completely correct assertion. It is possible.
Both posts are living in a libertarian's (or neocon's) fantasy world...
Gee my post has a life of its own? They attain sentience and grow up so fast don't they?
Catch a clue, chums...
Pull that stick out of your butt already. You condescension is sickening, especially for someone with limited reading comprehension. Or maybe, in your eagerness to insult people you did not bother to actually read my post. Either way, if you want someone to blame for our present political situation, look no further than the end of your nose. Smarmy elitist twats like yourself have alienated enough people to prevent any normal person from self associating with scientific views.
The fact is that no one knows what is causing Global Warming on Mars but we know for sure that it is not caused by Martians driving around their SUVs.
Have you ever heard the term "negative proof?" The above statement is 100% true, but implies nothing about the causes of global warming on the earth. A building in the middle of the desert burned down and constant satellite surveillance shows no human agent caused the fire. Does this in any way imply that the buildings that burn down during devil's night in Detroit are not arson? There is no way from observing building that catch fire in the desert that what doesn't happen there can be evidence for what may or may not happen somewhere else.
There are several theories and some speculate that recent solar activity (the high levels of sun-spot and solar-flares) are having an impact on Mars even though there has been no increase in irradiance; being that Mars is further away from the Sun than Earh is it would be foolish not to assume that any impact from Solar activity on Mars would impact Earth.
Umm, last I heard the earth has a magnetic field that shields it from most solar radiation. Mars does not. Thus, it is entirely possible changes in solar activity that would affect mars are not significantly dissipated by the added distance, but are dissipated by the magnetic shield... or maybe not. But to claim that it is foolish not to assume otherwise for that reason or some other, or to assume solar activity was not included as a factor in studies (which it is in some) is more than a little wrongheaded, IMHO.
After all, there seem to be a lot of people on /. who have jumped on MS for not making people run as non-admin before Vista; and what's that besides just choosing a poor set of default permissions?
There is a difference between a design not being as secure as possible and a vulnerability. I blame Microsoft for both poor security design for the current climate, and for lots of bugs, but I don't confuse the two and claim that because a local program was compromised, that is a bug in MS's OS. MS should provide a way to safely run untrusted binaries (which is a commonly performed task), but that particular bug is not an MS bug.
In this same way, it would be great if Apple ran all applications in a sandbox. That doesn't mean a bug in a third party program on OS X is an Apple bug either.
What they write on their Web page is pretty irrelevant when they create a project called "Month of Apple Bugs." To blatantly rip off The Simpsons, "...for every dollar of Krusty merchandise you buy I will be nice to a sick kid. For legal purposes sick kids may include hookers with a cold."
It's the zealots own fault for attracting attention in the bad manner for claiming such lofty security, of course someone is going to look at it.
This such such a tired and sad implicit assumption. Who on Slashdot has ever claimed that OS X was some super secure solution, or immune to malware? Lots of people tout it as secure, but that is because the most common OS that sets the measure is Windows. Compared to Windows, OS X is very secure and that message should be repeated as much as possible until the average person on the street knows it, in order to motivate people to switch and Microsoft to solve the problem.
The moab is a over the top in it's presentation, but that's about it.
Who cares about the presentation. I'm concerned about security. The guys running this obviously aren't worried about the security of users because they are compromising that security in order to make money. If I wanted to make most users less secure what would be a good way? First, I'd spread misleading press that convinces them OS X and other OS's (like that umm, Linkus OS, my cousin mentioned) are no more secure that Windows. Next, I'd search out vulnerabilities in the most common OS that is not regularly compromised, and try to encourage malware authors to write malware for them. A good way to do that would be to not inform the vendor before I released the vulnerabilities, so they don't have a chance to fix them. Then, I'd release them spread out over a long period of time, so that they can't do a development/QA cycle until all of them are released, unless they want to commit to not fixing some of them, thus maximizing the amount of time between publication and patch.
These guys are not responsible security researchers and they're maximizing their press coverage at the expense of everyone else. Nothing was stopping these guys from quietly finding a bug a day for a month, and immediately informing the relevant vendor, and then announcing afterwards what they had done after the vendors had a short time to fix the bugs. The only problem would be they would not get as much press coverage and the chances of a worm being created and spread would be less, thus making it less likely they can ride that short bus to more press coverage.
The fact that you see nothing wrong with this means either you haven't thought it through, you don't have any idea what responsible handling of vulnerabilities is, or you don't care about security at all and are just reacting emotionally because you don't like people talking about OS X being secure and ignoring whatever your favorite OS is. P.S. your favorite OS sucks.
IMHO the core of the issue is with file permissions that Apple has defined for various directories under /Library that Apple recommends 3rd parties install software into.
The security hole is in APE. The fact that you disagree with Apple's permission choices is pretty irrelevant. OS X does not stop Adobe Acrobat from being installed either, does that mean any hole in that reader is also partially Apple's fault?
No, the price of using a computer is to patch it and not run untrusted software.
Bullshit. That's like saying the purpose of forks is to eat vegetables, and if some forks happen to create a toxic substance when they touch other substances, it is not a concern. People want to run untrusted binaries, because the majority of binaries people run are untrusted to some degree or another. When malware is common, it makes sense to make sure that untrusted binaries are restricted by default.
It does not matter what OS you are using. If you tell people they are invincible because they have a Mac or use linux, you are doing them a disservice. You are also lying to them.
Yeah, now show me one example of a person with any authority seriously saying macs are invincible... just one. Apple doesn't say that. I've never seen a security researcher, or even sensationalist papers say that. If you do a Google search for "mac invincible" you find one blogger asking if Macs are invincible and one article explaining that your statement is a classic strawman argument.
I tell people that Macs or anything but windows are safer because less people care to attack them.
That is a fine message to spread, but if the paper is reporting, "30 bugs in Macintosh computers in a month demonstrate they are not secure," what do you think the average Windows user will take away from that headline? Do you think they will correctly derive from that headline that if they get a mac the chances of them getting malware are almost zero, or do you think they will take from that that it does not matter if they have a mac or a Windows machine, they are still going to get malware? Do you think it makes people more or less likely to be infected with malware, considering it may well dissuade people from moving to both Mac and Linux machines?
The poorly named MOAB is dropping vulnerabilities one after another intentionally spread out, with no prior notification in such a way that Apple either has to wait for all of them, or commit to not fixing some of them right away simply because of the time necessary for development and QA cycles. Can you think of a better way to encourage malware without actually creating exploit code yourself? Further, they're intentionally delaying releasing vulnerabilities they have found to the public, increasing the window for exploitation. Why? It gets them more press that way and a truly cynical person might say because it is the best way to encourage malware based upon their bugs so that they can get more press as they talk about how they discovered the hole first and were right about how Apple would get hacked. It is utterly irresponsible.
How is number 8 an Apple issue? It is an overflow in a third party application.
I guess it depends if the purpose of publishing the bugs is to fix OS X, or whether it's to educate Apple users that just because you use OS X, you are not immune; it's possible (probable?) that somewhere on your system there will be vulnerabilities.
If you think that is the purpose of the MOAB then you're very, very optimistic, perhaps naive. The purpose is to gain publicity for a few, unscrupulous researchers. They've done this before with other vendors and even agreed to cancel one such project after being paid off. Apple users who know anything about security know there is the potential for security flaws, but they also know the potential is much less than if they are running Windows. Apple users and potential Apple who don't know anything, may be confused by this into thinking that OS X is no more secure than Windows and hence stay with Windows. The simple message "use a mac and you're unlikely to suffer from worms and viruses" is true and simple enough for most people. Complicating the message with, "but if you're using some third party utility, or even some included utilities there is the possibility someone could write a worm, but tso far no one has and they are unlikely to do so in the near future" is way too complex.
At minimum, it's a reminder that whilst OS X is more secure than Windows XP natively, it is not immune from vulnerabilities.
Finding vulnerabilities and not reporting them to the vendor or making them public until it will get you the most press, is detrimental to security and does more to help black hats than it does to help users. Trying to obscure and complicate the simple message that mac==more secure than windows, likewise is detrimental to overall security. The only thing this project is really accomplishing is publicity for themselves at the expense of everyone else. These guys are anti-security researchers. If they aren't willing to behave ethically, they can rot.
First of all the planet can easily sustain a populous double our current size, if people would just use the grey matter known as our brains that we have been greatly blessed with.
Of course we can, we just have to be more efficient and cooperative and/orreduce our quality of living. But, since that isn't happening because people like you revile the concept of cooperation claiming it is opposed to natural selection, expect to be naturally selected and removed from the populace or have your quality of living greatly reduced.
I hear so many of the far leftists say "stop breeding" and such mantra to that effect...
"Leftists? Left and right are artificial political assignations used to oversimplify politics so it can be superficially reported to people with below average IQs. Trying to imply that those assigned to the left end of the spectrum think others should stop breeding is a big stretch. It sounds a lot more like you're looking to vilify a group, out of mental laziness.
Umm, I don't think you are properly using the word "unquestionably." Promiscuity has a strong positive relationship with poverty, low education rates, and adherence to particular religions including catholicism and some protestant sects. Those traits have a negative correlation with members of political groups generally assigned to the "left." I'd say it is more than questionable. Just as a side note, calling groups "hypocritical is meaningful only if you can demonstrate that contradictory actions are those of an individual, or large number of individuals. If half of the people in a town publicly claim guns are evil and half are gun owners the town is not hypocritical.
It will be a very long time before we have discovered all of the species of the ocean, let alone consumed said species.
Perhaps you're misunderstanding the meaning of "sustainable." It means live in such a way that our supplies will not run out in the foreseeable future. If we're gradually reducing the number of species by consuming them, we're not behaving in a sustainable manner.
Again, there are laws of selection that nature lives by, and if left alone all will balance out.
This is a weak cop out. It is simply a denial of responsibility. "Nature" will take care of things. It is true, but the way it takes care of things might be to eliminate our species or kill off large portion in a slow and painful way, like starvation. One of the defining traits of humanity is intelligence. Thus we define goals and then logically address how best to achieve those goals. Depending upon your definitions that may or may not be "natural."
This 'make everyone equal (financially) so they can all have the same lobster dinner' and such mentality...
Wow, way to cram a lot of logical fallacies into a small amount of words. Argument by association is where you assume people that hold one view must hold another (worried about global warming means you must favor extreme socialism) and then you argue against the second point without ever addressing the first point. This is wrong because people don't all hold the same sets of opinions and because even if the second opinion is wrong, it does not mean the first one is.
The "left" is a nebulous assignation. By definition it cannot crete propaganda. More importantly, propaganda requires a deceitful motivation. What is the motivation of marine biologists and fishing organizations around the world to misstate the facts about fishing harvest sizes. How come most of the fish I can now buy in the supermarket was considered to be "junk" 50 years ago and not suitable for people to eat since other types were plentiful and better? Is i
As such, why couldn't you just use a preexisting solution (i.e. print up a schematic and use a UV light to burn it to a copper clad board)?
Because copper clad boards are only copper clad on one or two sides. The board machine I used to play with could handle 13 layer boards. I don't even want to think about how expensive it was though.
The "problems" Alex St. John identifies are essentially that his business model doesn't work so great when people have to click a couple extra buttons and type a password, and that he would really prefer it if children could install his products without parental involvement.
This isn't a matter of bypassing parental controls (from what I read) it is a matter of the OS making it harder for the user to do what they want to do in the name of security. his is, in my opinion, completely wrong. If there is truly no easy way to write a game with the same functions that doesn't need to go through these steps (this is an assumption not an assertion) then this is MS's fault. Vista should allow users, including children who have not been restricted by parental controls, to run any bloody thing they want, just prevent it from doing things that malware would do. Give it limited internet access in the form of an official service for game registration and online gaming, rather than unfettered access. Let it read and write it's own files in a sandbox, but don't let it overwrite any others or read my address book, or run a mail server.
That said, if the developer in question is writing a game that wants to run a mail server, or read my e-mail address book, or send random data to the internet rather than using the official (mythical) service, then they have no case.
I'm 100% in favor of more restricted user accounts and default restrictions on new executables. At the same time, I feel these restrictions will be worse than useless for the average user unless the channel for distributing and running credible software from both MS and third parties is not made simple and easy. For a reputable commercial game, signed and certified by the vendor, it should probably even have relatively unfettered internet access, by default, without the user having to click through warnings. Vista implements 1/3 of what is needed for such a security policy to work. You need to be able to restrict software, but you also need to inform the user only for credible exceptions, and you need a mechanism to determine trust of a given application so that those exceptions can be the right ones. In order to do this, the technology that must be put in place is tragically easy to abuse from the position of a monopoly, which is why MS needs to bend over backwards to make this a fair and open system that works with major players in the industry from day one. This develop should have their choice of a number of different companies and organizations that have permission to certify proper access controls for their games.
But the answer to this problem isn't to reduce security, it's to make a better and more compelling game!
This is very wrongheaded. You shouldn't have to make a game that is significantly better than the ones MS makes so that users will click through scary warnings not given for those MS games. Security and usability are not polar opposites. Often making something more secure also makes it more usable. In this case, making games more usable by not throwing up spurious warnings increases security because people are more likely to pay attention when such warnings are rare. False positives are security problem, not a feature. It's not like developers are deciding not to make games compelling. They do what they can with the resources they have and anything MS does to make that harder, means they have less resources to make the game compelling.
But blaming Microsoft for everything is just a tired old excuse that invariably comes trotting out when someone is too damn lazy to read the direction of the wind and rig his sails accordingly.
Umm, Microsoft took action that interfered with simple and legitimate uses of software aimed at less expert users. Claiming he should redesign his business model to work around MS's horribly conceived security features that are broken, is not constructive. MS deserves blame in this case.
It's really an Apple-branded PDA.
True.
I'm pretty sure I could already get a PDA with cell phone functionality for an outrageous price like that.
Yeah, and you can already buy an MP3 player for less than an iPod. That doesn't mean it is as nice or is going to be popular.
But Apple rebundles lots of current ideas in a shinier box, and they'll get credit for reinventing the industry.
Apple gets credit because they make good products that people like. They didn't make the first portable digital music player. They made the one with a really, really nice interface that was so much easier to use that everyone who compared it to others was blown away.
If you're a Mac fan already, maybe this was a massive presentation. If you already didn't "get it" (or like me, think it's ridiculous), this presentation is utterly uninsteresting.
No presentation will interest everyone, but this one has a lot wider appeal than is normal. Most of them talk about Macs, and OS X which most people don't care about at all. More people are interested in iPods and a lot of them will be very interested in this. I figured Apple was shipping a new phone/PDA. I also assumed it would be of no interest to me. I have thought about buying an iPod or a PDA phone several times, but I just wouldn't use an iPod that much and thus I doubt I'd have it when I wanted it. For PDA/phones, hate them. I love the idea, but the interfaces are junk. I mean, I just want to call people and a both a basic phone and a PDA require me to either memorize numbers or laboriously select menu after menu. I've often wondered why no one could do it right. Now, maybe Apple has. This is the first such device I've seriously considered buying in a long time. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If nothing else those concerned with "looking cool" will be buying these as fast as they can make them.
I suspect that the defense for that would be thus: Since Apple itself never announced an iPhone product, Cisco (and any other company in a similar situation) shouldn't be locked out of their trademark by consumer rumors. Unless I'm mistaken, you can't trademark words unless you actually do "trade" in a particular name.
Trading in a product does not guarantee you won't lose your trademark. Trademarks are tried in the court of public opinion. Bayer still sold Aspirin and Heroin under those names when they lost those trademarks. Kleenex is in danger of losing their trademark on the term, simply because people use it as a generic term for facial tissues, more than as a reference to their brand. So even if you have a product by that name, you can lose that trademark if the public does not understand that it is yours only, or if it confuses customers. Try opening a retail store called ElectronicsHack or Radio Hack, or ElectroShack, and you may well lose in court to RadioShack, who's pre-exisiting and popular brand is similar. "iPhone" is very similar to iMac and iPod and iTunes and many other Apple products. If you said "iPhone" to the average person last week before Apple had released their product and while Cisco was selling a product by that name, most people would have thought you were talking about something from Apple. As such, Cisco is likely to lose their trademark in any case and the courts could hand it over to Apple, who holds it in other countries. The legal system is confusing and complex and I would not say that that is the case, but I would not be surprised either. Likely, Apple and Cisco will come to a settlement.
CISCO has owned the iPhone trademark since 2000. Exactly what claim do you think Apple would have been able to make in court? "Hey, they refuse to sell us their intellectual property that they legally own, which is of course their right, but we don't like it! That's why were suing!"
Trademarks are different from patents and copyrights. If most people associate your copyright with something other than your product, you lose it. Aspirin and Heroin were revoked the same day because they were not associated only with Bayer. Trademark laws are designed to keep a company from tricking users into thinking a product is from someone else. If you did a Google search right after Cisco announced the iPhone product they are selling (and I did) you would have seen 8 of the top ten results referred to a rumored, unnamed product from Apple, 1 was Cisco's marketing site, and one was an article claiming Cisco was trying to confuse customers into thinking their product was made by Apple. To me that sounds like a lot of evidence that it was Cisco that was trying to mislead customers, possible grounds for the trademark being transferred or revoked.
Not that that would happen, necessarily, but your implication that Apple had no case is a little off base.