"If I understood correctly, we could have a nationwide vote, everyone leaves with a piece of paper with a number printed on it, and can take that number home and verify that their vote was correctly counted on the internet (where public lists of votes are posted), while the whole system remained anonymous."
If your vote is linked to a piece of paper that is given to you, how is the vote anonymous? Maybe its not completely open, but it would still be bad because superiors can still demand to get your number to verify the vote - therefore undermining the anonymity of the vote. Or how about pay for vote scams?
"And to all the DVD ripping/sharing individuals, thanks for making it hard on the rest of us. Abuse of the system is what caused such strict policies and laws in the first place."
That is the nature of digital bits, they get copied. Deal with it. Copyright will go away, because instantly accessible information (~ Internet) is stronger.
Good luck trying to make bits not being able to be copied. The time will come when people pay for the _creation_ of information, and not for the ability to _copy_ that information. Until such time, fight that 18th century antique piece of legislation called copyright with tooth and nail.
Re:This browser is important
on
IE7 Leaked
·
· Score: 1
"In a year or so, this browser will have > 70% of the online browser market share."
I would think not. Those who bothered switching use Firefox/Mozilla/Safari/Konqueror/etc. Those who don't - well some of them still use IE5 for god's sake! 70% is ludicrous. It'll have probably 30-40% tops.
"Web developers should care about this browser - how your pages look on it, what CSS version (or subset) it supports."
Web developers should only care about w3c specs in implementing their website. Oh you mean this isn't an ideal world? Then you should have used a more precise wording of what you mean. I'll say that web developers will probably have to care how IE7 renders stuff, but that doesn't mean they should. Personally I can allow myself to code XHTML 1.1 and not care about IE - the best would be if everyone could do that.
"I'm sorry, and you may not like, but this browser will be the standard."
That's a pretty bold statement. Probably not going to be true.
"Do me a favour! You are suggesting that Bill Gates, the guy who built a technology company that changed the entire planet and based on the success attained a personal fortune that is larger than the GDP of many countries is someone who is "fascinated by technology but doesnt know what to do with it!". I think not!"
I think yes. What he did/does is marketing, nothing to do with technology.
I've taken a course last semester about computer security. There were pretty interesting lectures, very professionally handled in my opinion. Bank security, mathematical basis of cryptography, biometrics, security in hardware, mainframes, etc., and yes, virology.
The interesting stuff is, that when we're talking about windows viruses, we don't make a difference between different windows versions, but we should. A "platform" for a virus is a specific version of an operating system which it can infect. No more than 50-60% of the total percentage of computers are vulnerable to a windows virus, given the incompatibilites between various windows versions.
Why is this important? Because according to notable experts, if the platform of a virus would rise above 75-85% of the total computers available for infection, then it would render 15% of the computers of the world unoperative, shortly after it was released into the wild. This would be the computer equivalent of 1918's spanish flu. Basically, it could topple governments, crash stock markets and drive the global economy into a nasty recession. I'm not kidding.
This is something very dangerous to allow, so that is why I'm so glad that Open Source is making its ways into mainstream and that MS fails to unify it's platform either with Vista or a future subscription based model. That'd be very dangerous for computer security because of the homogenity.
What can we do? Use linux, bsd. Seriously. Not for the reason you'd expect though, I'm not a linux zealot although I do use it as my desktop. No, the reason is diversity. There are hundreds of linux distros out there, which don't make one unified platform for viruses to spread. That is the only way to totally prevent viruses: with heterogenity.
Hypothetically, if we were to have 10 only so slightly different linux operating systems making up the 100% of operating systems used on all computers, viruses wouldn't exist, because no virus could achieve a platform larger than 10%, thus practically would be unable to spread!
In real life, this would never happen, but probably we'll end up with dozens of linux, bsd, OSX, windows versions all taking up <10% of the market. And that is even better.
Yes, even windows won't have viruses if it's market share dwindles. Not because of the lack of motivation or the "super" security making it impossible to write them, but the lack of platform for the viruses to spread effectively (although windows would still be a piece of adware filled crap, but no viruses).
"Sure, bugs are caught, but I assure you, 10000 times the effort is put into finding holes in Microsoft's code."
I'm not too convinced. Have you ever seen how much effort is to find a hole in the Linux kernel?
It's pretty damn hard even with the source code there.
Compare a linux exploit to a windows one. Most likely the linux one will be one where you have to jump through twenty hoops to exploit the system. On the other hand with windows the difficulty is discovering the flaws, but the flaws themselves aren't that sophisticated (most of the time).
Exploitable bugs are rarer in the linux kernel, than in windows, and because of a good reason: the source code is good, literally.
Slashdot Mirror
"If I understood correctly, we could have a nationwide vote, everyone leaves with a piece of paper with a number printed on it, and can take that number home and verify that their vote was correctly counted on the internet (where public lists of votes are posted), while the whole system remained anonymous."
If your vote is linked to a piece of paper that is given to you, how is the vote anonymous? Maybe its not completely open, but it would still be bad because superiors can still demand to get your number to verify the vote - therefore undermining the anonymity of the vote. Or how about pay for vote scams?
"And to all the DVD ripping/sharing individuals, thanks for making it hard on the rest of us. Abuse of the system is what caused such strict policies and laws in the first place."
That is the nature of digital bits, they get copied. Deal with it. Copyright will go away, because instantly accessible information (~ Internet) is stronger.
Good luck trying to make bits not being able to be copied. The time will come when people pay for the _creation_ of information, and not for the ability to _copy_ that information. Until such time, fight that 18th century antique piece of legislation called copyright with tooth and nail.
Always the optimist, eh? :)
"In a year or so, this browser will have > 70% of the online browser market share."
I would think not. Those who bothered switching use Firefox/Mozilla/Safari/Konqueror/etc. Those who don't - well some of them still use IE5 for god's sake! 70% is ludicrous. It'll have probably 30-40% tops.
"Web developers should care about this browser - how your pages look on it, what CSS version (or subset) it supports."
Web developers should only care about w3c specs in implementing their website. Oh you mean this isn't an ideal world? Then you should have used a more precise wording of what you mean. I'll say that web developers will probably have to care how IE7 renders stuff, but that doesn't mean they should. Personally I can allow myself to code XHTML 1.1 and not care about IE - the best would be if everyone could do that.
"I'm sorry, and you may not like, but this browser will be the standard."
That's a pretty bold statement. Probably not going to be true.
That was a quote from "The Island", you straight-up clod moderators. :)
Pssst, don't disturb him!
He was actually trying to construct a query for MySQL 6.0.
Oh excuse me miss "I'm so smart I wanna go to the island."
That sounded like a spammer.
"and soon enough there'll be yet another switch."
;)
The scientific basis and accuracy of your predictions are amazing.
If you turn out to be right, can I call you NostCyricZamus?
Capitalism works - for the Chinese.
Meanwhile in the USA - 98% of patents...what?
You mention shareholders, but as far as I know, the majority of Google stock is in the hands of the founders and the employees.
Anyone got data on this in support/against?
What the heck does this to do with WW2?
It's a bit hypocritical to talk about telling the rest of the world what to do given the current state of the USA's foreign "policy".
We've already established in the last article about Bell South that ISPs generally don't have common carrier status.
Except that there are really one sides and they are employing a huge mirror...
Your ananova story is really stupid.
Of course you lose weight if you eat much less!
It doesn't make it healthy or even meeting the dietary requirements for an average person.
that I've seen the The Corporation just today.
Everyone should see it at least once.
"Do me a favour! You are suggesting that Bill Gates, the guy who built a technology company that changed the entire planet and based on the success attained a personal fortune that is larger than the GDP of many countries is someone who is "fascinated by technology but doesnt know what to do with it!". I think not!"
I think yes. What he did/does is marketing, nothing to do with technology.
If someone reads and understands these, they are qualified to operate a computer.
Remember, it is not the size of the wallet, it is how you use it, matters!
I've taken a course last semester about computer security. There were pretty interesting lectures, very professionally handled in my opinion. Bank security, mathematical basis of cryptography, biometrics, security in hardware, mainframes, etc., and yes, virology.
The interesting stuff is, that when we're talking about windows viruses, we don't make a difference between different windows versions, but we should. A "platform" for a virus is a specific version of an operating system which it can infect. No more than 50-60% of the total percentage of computers are vulnerable to a windows virus, given the incompatibilites between various windows versions.
Why is this important? Because according to notable experts, if the platform of a virus would rise above 75-85% of the total computers available for infection, then it would render 15% of the computers of the world unoperative, shortly after it was released into the wild. This would be the computer equivalent of 1918's spanish flu. Basically, it could topple governments, crash stock markets and drive the global economy into a nasty recession. I'm not kidding.
This is something very dangerous to allow, so that is why I'm so glad that Open Source is making its ways into mainstream and that MS fails to unify it's platform either with Vista or a future subscription based model. That'd be very dangerous for computer security because of the homogenity.
What can we do? Use linux, bsd. Seriously. Not for the reason you'd expect though, I'm not a linux zealot although I do use it as my desktop. No, the reason is diversity. There are hundreds of linux distros out there, which don't make one unified platform for viruses to spread. That is the only way to totally prevent viruses: with heterogenity.
Hypothetically, if we were to have 10 only so slightly different linux operating systems making up the 100% of operating systems used on all computers, viruses wouldn't exist, because no virus could achieve a platform larger than 10%, thus practically would be unable to spread!
In real life, this would never happen, but probably we'll end up with dozens of linux, bsd, OSX, windows versions all taking up <10% of the market. And that is even better.
Yes, even windows won't have viruses if it's market share dwindles. Not because of the lack of motivation or the "super" security making it impossible to write them, but the lack of platform for the viruses to spread effectively (although windows would still be a piece of adware filled crap, but no viruses).
"How many people on Slashdot actually run anti-virus software on their Linux boxes? 5%?"
I think the percentage is much lower than that, probably less than 1% and most of those boxes are mailservers blocking viruses for the windows crowd.
"Sure, bugs are caught, but I assure you, 10000 times the effort is put into finding holes in Microsoft's code."
I'm not too convinced. Have you ever seen how much effort is to find a hole in the Linux kernel?
It's pretty damn hard even with the source code there.
Compare a linux exploit to a windows one. Most likely the linux one will be one where you have to jump through twenty hoops to exploit the system. On the other hand with windows the difficulty is discovering the flaws, but the flaws themselves aren't that sophisticated (most of the time).
Exploitable bugs are rarer in the linux kernel, than in windows, and because of a good reason: the source code is good, literally.
On the contrary. Linux is open source, therefor more people are looking to find bugs / rewrite code.
If enough eyes are looking, all bugs are shallow, that is the open source mentality. That is precisely the good thing about open source.
Microsoft offers China software for their missile guiding systems and naval fleet.
Yeah. Sorry about that. I wrote it shortly after waking up, ugh. So legally I was drunk.