"1) criticize the United States for using it's intelligence resources to protect itself from a corporation operating out of Communist China."
Except that China is not communist. It is MORE capitalist than the USA. It is also not a democracy.
"2) criticize the US for not using intelligence resources "_enough_" to protect its ports/borders/etc."
Actually, every sane government would and does protect it's borders. You don't generally see the security service outsourced to a foreign country for the same reason borders either shouldn't exist or they should be effective at what they are doing. A port is part of the border system.
"3) criticize the US for using intelligence resource "_too_much_" by wire-tapping potential terrorists."
Except, that now a "potential terrorist" description fits 90%+ of the total population of the USA.
I have nothing further to add, because that word sums it all up. While there are valid threats against the USA and in the intelligence community there are measures to tap into restricted data, they are NOT going to mess with PCs for fuck's sake! If someone has high security requirements that entity is not going to buy from a consumer level shop ANYWAY.
"On the other hand, it's always good to start from a secure base and then add more security."
Hell no. Security makes sense up to a certain level. A system's security can be increased into unusability. What could be more secure than a server which you need to dive into the Mariana trench, disarm the motion sensor embedded hydrogen bomb linked to the server, break through concrete and provide connectivity to that server? It's secure but unusable. A healthy balance is required.
All I can say is that one of the 'self-important' geek says, you're full of shit.
Programmers/geeks ARE SUPPOSED TO BE lazy, by definition. Otherwise why would we write programs at all to do things for us?
Dressing is not about 'look formal' rather than 'comfort' and 'practicality'. I'd never employ a programmer who prefers to wear a suit, because it gives one sign: "this guy prefers to do things the less practical and efficient way".
How much does it cost to kill someone? If someone wants to do it it costs nothing.
Still, those people who do murder someone should be jailed and it costs a lot of money.
Thus, cost can't be a factor in prison sentences. If not cost, then what?
Justice. It is why this law in Germany is so bad - because it is not just.
No wonder that America boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities if your base of comparison is papers published in english. The case is same with the citation. English language articles are much more likely to be cited than for example a german equivalent. Most of Europe doesn't speak english as the national language, so I'd disagree with the assessment. Oh, and about Nobel prize winners - a scientist naturally get's bigger praise in a bigger scientific community - the english one than in a smaller one - like in the german for example, and since the engineering/scientific community is not about ground-breaking discoveries any more - like the transistor - the Nobel selection process is much more influenced by peer acceptance.
"if you don't consider the population differences then it would seem that the average EU citizen is better educated, or that funding for science is more readily available."
I would consider the average EU citizen better educated for two reasons:
1. sub-university education is of higher quality than in the USA.
2. university education is more accessible than in the USA (it is state sponsored in many european countries).
3. published papers mean research, research needs academic contribution AND money, so I'd say published papers are in no strong correlation with the education level of an average citizen.
"It seems like you made up your mind that scientific research is on the decline in the US, and only then went looking for info to back that claim."
First of all, I REMEMBERED about the trend in that matter and quite frankly I was right. I didn't remember the exact numbers so I went searching for them. And they backed me up. Now WHY DO YOU mix per capita numbers into the discussion when we were talking about absolute numbers?! Of course the US increased since 1981, well, so did Europe and Asia!
Please note, I have no problem of you emphasysing that the US is increasing it's number of published scientific papers, but that is NOT what I was talking about so I don't know why do you try to conclude that my statement was false when I was talking about absolute numbers all the way.
I've never said scientific research is in decline in the USA, I only said it is in decline RELATIVE to the rest of the world!
Oh btw, I have to correct this: "The reason for the unequal increase in papers published by the US and EU respectively should be clear to anyone who's lived in Europe; the US has always had a fairly effective, and reasonably accessible education system, whereas in many parts of the EU, education was limited, and economic difficulties meant a much higher dropout rate due to the need to begin working at an early age."
What you're saying is simply doesn't match up to the real situation. Most of Continental Europe has state sponsored university level education for the majority and had for the past 50 years at least. Those countries who had to limit education because of economic difficulties are still not churning out a lot of papers - Albania, Belarus, Ukraine, Yugoslavia come to the mind in the soviet period. The situation of those countries in terms of published papers don't significantly matter to the European total and never did. As for the rest of the countries who practically publish the vast majority of papers - education is mostly better starting from primary school and finishing at universities compared to the USA (If you need to back this up I'm happy to discuss detailed data). So the question arises, why did the EU have a quite lower number of papers for years and why the sudden increase?
The situation is two fold. Effects of the cold war on the USA and effects of the cold war on Europe. In the USA the 50s had the sputnik-shock education reform which effects lasted for 2-3 decades, but Western Europe had no such thing and was after ww2, partly in ruins and economy problems at least until the 60s. Countries like Poland, Hungary and East-Germany were behind the Iron Curtain and while the situation started to relax starting from the 80s, it certainly wasn't allowing optimal collaboration of scientists Europe-wide.
Since you've allowed yourself to guess my motivation, allow me to guess yours: When you've been confronted by information rocking your beliefs in regards of scientific leadership of the world, you've been trying to poke holes in that information. The original statement that the USA still retains the world lead in scientific advancement, is not true anymore, which is shown clearly in absolute numbers. Now, you can tell me about per capita numbers and I'll happily argue about them, but they have no relation to the subject.
"It will be a great and sad loss if America decides to abdicate its position as scientific and technological leader of the world-- which seems to be exactly what is happening,"
I need to respectfully disagree. This process already happened. in the 1970s published research paper figures were around 30% USA, 19% Europe. This has more or less reversed afaik.
As soon as you install something not serving your interests or it installs itself through a hole - your whole system is compromised if it gets to elevated priviledges because that program then can do everything it wants, it is only limited by imagination and creativity. Sooner or later windows catches up with linux-style rootkits which will be next to impossible to detect and eradicate from windows - you never know what you've missed.
So technically an admin level malware infected windows is a DEAD windows. The point is that you CANT safely remove malware. THAT is a design goal of malware writers because if it can't be removed easily and it is not intrusive enough so that the computer stops working - most joe sixpack people don't know or CARE even if it is used to ddos the heck out of some bank.
The only way to fight this crap is to make it easy for people to compartmentize things:
1. administrator level access only for system related tasks. Ideally never logged into, used with a sudo like system.
2. normal user level - without any important user writeable data present.
3. user data - no login, accessed only by allowed programs closely specified to allowed parts of the data. I'm thinking at the admin level you could specify to hash the binary file, and assign permissions to that hash - memory,data that can be accessed - then and only then can the normal user level use for example thunderbird to save anything.
This setup with a smart interface could be quite easy to setup and not necessarily bothersome for users. This setup would protect against most kinds of total system compromise and data loss, but of course user stupidity is never to be underestimated.
Of course this setup I described will never be used in Vista or any other Microsoft made operating system because they just don't care about security.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me a story about an elderly lady wanting to buy a computer for his grandson.
She went to a computer shop and asked for the brand "Hajdú"* because she said she trusts real quality.
*Hajdú was a washing machine brand in the 70s in the communist era, in Hungary.
"1) criticize the United States for using it's intelligence resources to protect itself from a corporation operating out of Communist China."
Except that China is not communist. It is MORE capitalist than the USA. It is also not a democracy.
"2) criticize the US for not using intelligence resources "_enough_" to protect its ports/borders/etc."
Actually, every sane government would and does protect it's borders. You don't generally see the security service outsourced to a foreign country for the same reason borders either shouldn't exist or they should be effective at what they are doing. A port is part of the border system.
"3) criticize the US for using intelligence resource "_too_much_" by wire-tapping potential terrorists."
Except, that now a "potential terrorist" description fits 90%+ of the total population of the USA.
Xenophobia.
I have nothing further to add, because that word sums it all up. While there are valid threats against the USA and in the intelligence community there are measures to tap into restricted data, they are NOT going to mess with PCs for fuck's sake! If someone has high security requirements that entity is not going to buy from a consumer level shop ANYWAY.
Geez.
"On the other hand, it's always good to start from a secure base and then add more security."
Hell no. Security makes sense up to a certain level. A system's security can be increased into unusability. What could be more secure than a server which you need to dive into the Mariana trench, disarm the motion sensor embedded hydrogen bomb linked to the server, break through concrete and provide connectivity to that server? It's secure but unusable. A healthy balance is required.
All I can say is that one of the 'self-important' geek says, you're full of shit.
Programmers/geeks ARE SUPPOSED TO BE lazy, by definition. Otherwise why would we write programs at all to do things for us?
Dressing is not about 'look formal' rather than 'comfort' and 'practicality'. I'd never employ a programmer who prefers to wear a suit, because it gives one sign: "this guy prefers to do things the less practical and efficient way".
How much does it cost to kill someone? If someone wants to do it it costs nothing.
Still, those people who do murder someone should be jailed and it costs a lot of money. Thus, cost can't be a factor in prison sentences. If not cost, then what?
Justice. It is why this law in Germany is so bad - because it is not just.
Most of them say that. "Within a year". "Within two years". "Within four years".
But never "now", or "in the stores next week", or "come, see this working!"
So, all they doing is pushing this abstraction layer to the hardware, thus getting rid of an unnecessary layer, if I understand it correctly?
Why would he be working on this? He works with RTS, not with filesystems.
Ask Hans Reiser maybe.
I just dumped GoDaddy for my local linux based small-shop registrar.
Bug? Naaah. Feature!
These numbers are skewed by the language.
No wonder that America boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities if your base of comparison is papers published in english. The case is same with the citation. English language articles are much more likely to be cited than for example a german equivalent. Most of Europe doesn't speak english as the national language, so I'd disagree with the assessment. Oh, and about Nobel prize winners - a scientist naturally get's bigger praise in a bigger scientific community - the english one than in a smaller one - like in the german for example, and since the engineering/scientific community is not about ground-breaking discoveries any more - like the transistor - the Nobel selection process is much more influenced by peer acceptance.
"if you don't consider the population differences then it would seem that the average EU citizen is better educated, or that funding for science is more readily available."
I would consider the average EU citizen better educated for two reasons:
1. sub-university education is of higher quality than in the USA.
2. university education is more accessible than in the USA (it is state sponsored in many european countries).
3. published papers mean research, research needs academic contribution AND money, so I'd say published papers are in no strong correlation with the education level of an average citizen.
What the fsck are you talking about?
"It seems like you made up your mind that scientific research is on the decline in the US, and only then went looking for info to back that claim."
First of all, I REMEMBERED about the trend in that matter and quite frankly I was right. I didn't remember the exact numbers so I went searching for them. And they backed me up. Now WHY DO YOU mix per capita numbers into the discussion when we were talking about absolute numbers?! Of course the US increased since 1981, well, so did Europe and Asia!
Please note, I have no problem of you emphasysing that the US is increasing it's number of published scientific papers, but that is NOT what I was talking about so I don't know why do you try to conclude that my statement was false when I was talking about absolute numbers all the way.
I've never said scientific research is in decline in the USA, I only said it is in decline RELATIVE to the rest of the world!
Oh btw, I have to correct this: "The reason for the unequal increase in papers published by the US and EU respectively should be clear to anyone who's lived in Europe; the US has always had a fairly effective, and reasonably accessible education system, whereas in many parts of the EU, education was limited, and economic difficulties meant a much higher dropout rate due to the need to begin working at an early age."
What you're saying is simply doesn't match up to the real situation. Most of Continental Europe has state sponsored university level education for the majority and had for the past 50 years at least. Those countries who had to limit education because of economic difficulties are still not churning out a lot of papers - Albania, Belarus, Ukraine, Yugoslavia come to the mind in the soviet period. The situation of those countries in terms of published papers don't significantly matter to the European total and never did. As for the rest of the countries who practically publish the vast majority of papers - education is mostly better starting from primary school and finishing at universities compared to the USA (If you need to back this up I'm happy to discuss detailed data). So the question arises, why did the EU have a quite lower number of papers for years and why the sudden increase?
The situation is two fold. Effects of the cold war on the USA and effects of the cold war on Europe. In the USA the 50s had the sputnik-shock education reform which effects lasted for 2-3 decades, but Western Europe had no such thing and was after ww2, partly in ruins and economy problems at least until the 60s. Countries like Poland, Hungary and East-Germany were behind the Iron Curtain and while the situation started to relax starting from the 80s, it certainly wasn't allowing optimal collaboration of scientists Europe-wide.
Since you've allowed yourself to guess my motivation, allow me to guess yours: When you've been confronted by information rocking your beliefs in regards of scientific leadership of the world, you've been trying to poke holes in that information. The original statement that the USA still retains the world lead in scientific advancement, is not true anymore, which is shown clearly in absolute numbers. Now, you can tell me about per capita numbers and I'll happily argue about them, but they have no relation to the subject.
I was right on the trend, but not on the numbers. Please see this link for details.
"It will be a great and sad loss if America decides to abdicate its position as scientific and technological leader of the world-- which seems to be exactly what is happening,"
I need to respectfully disagree. This process already happened. in the 1970s published research paper figures were around 30% USA, 19% Europe. This has more or less reversed afaik.
"Can google taketh what they giveth?"
No. Only Chuck Norris can do that...
The Prison Break screener was great!
(and before someone asks, I enjoy downloading series legally and I consider it ethically positive!)
Of course I ment that it is technically impossible currently in the windows environment.
I reached similar level of security with debian + pam + selinux + grsec + pax.
What you're saying is technically not possible.
As soon as you install something not serving your interests or it installs itself through a hole - your whole system is compromised if it gets to elevated priviledges because that program then can do everything it wants, it is only limited by imagination and creativity. Sooner or later windows catches up with linux-style rootkits which will be next to impossible to detect and eradicate from windows - you never know what you've missed.
So technically an admin level malware infected windows is a DEAD windows. The point is that you CANT safely remove malware. THAT is a design goal of malware writers because if it can't be removed easily and it is not intrusive enough so that the computer stops working - most joe sixpack people don't know or CARE even if it is used to ddos the heck out of some bank.
The only way to fight this crap is to make it easy for people to compartmentize things:
1. administrator level access only for system related tasks. Ideally never logged into, used with a sudo like system.
2. normal user level - without any important user writeable data present.
3. user data - no login, accessed only by allowed programs closely specified to allowed parts of the data. I'm thinking at the admin level you could specify to hash the binary file, and assign permissions to that hash - memory,data that can be accessed - then and only then can the normal user level use for example thunderbird to save anything.
This setup with a smart interface could be quite easy to setup and not necessarily bothersome for users. This setup would protect against most kinds of total system compromise and data loss, but of course user stupidity is never to be underestimated.
Of course this setup I described will never be used in Vista or any other Microsoft made operating system because they just don't care about security.
I don't know about the US, but according to European statistics, Firefox usage is above 20% in average in Europe, and increasing consistently.
"Also, it has the most useful documentation of any scripting language I have ever seen, even more useful than Java's API documentation."
That's just not true. Perl has better - perldoc is a programmer's wet dream.
Ignore parent. I was incorrect about the author, Laura DiDio didn't write this article she is just mentioned in it.
The article is by Laura DiDio - the SCO supporter shill.
You get what you paid for - it's a venomous piece.
Hehehehe. Oh my.
:)
Some mods failed to catch the subtle sarcasm of the parent post, eh?