We're not all like that, no matter what you may think in your bigoted, prejudiced little heart. Some of us are even human.
Stereotyping is bad, except when you stereotype all of those Archie Bunker wannabe's out there. They're all old, fat, cigar-chomping New Yorkers with wives as dumb as rocks and meathead sons.
Reread your original post while looking in a mirror. 'Nuff said?
Google moves its corporate headquarters to the Cayman Islands.
Circumvents the US Government prying into Google's databases, and permits Google to continue working in the American Way, by taking advantage of business opportunities without the US Government trying to legislate morality.
Really . . . does our government think China will repent and come to the UN hat in hand seeking forgiveness of the world so that Google can provide them with a search engine? Or have I misunderstood what the government is ostensibly trying to say here, that Google has a moral obligation not to respect the sovereignity of the People's Republic of China because that conflicts with (US of) American ethics?
Good grief, where were these ethical considerations when we were trying to put the whack on F. Castro and J. Stalin? Or more recently during the Iran/Contra debacle? (finding further examples is left as an exercise for the reader)
Apologies to all present - I'll get off my soapbox now, closing with a quote:
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - H. Mallow
Ordinarily, when we create a military technology, we either: 1) classify it and keep it to ourselves as much/long as we can, or 2) ensure that we have another technology capable of disabling/defeating it before we allow our allies to share in the (probably still classified) technology.
1) Create a new inter networking protocol to allow our many disparate computer systems to seamlessly share data across a unified "internetwork". Check.
2) Ensure that the networking protocol is robust enough to withstand forseeable battlefield attacks while still providing seamless data access. Check.
3) Share the technology with the world, knowing that we can disable that technology when we need --
NO! DON'T SHARE THE TECHNOLOGY UNTIL AFTER WE KNOW HOW TO DISABLE IT!!Damn! I knew we missed something!
Witness the fact that when we invaded Iraq, our first target (as always) was the Command and Control infrastructure. Sure, we were able to knock their radio, television and telephonic communications down, but we were never able to fully disable their internet, which was used against us in that instance.
Now we have to deal with excessive blowback from Psyops. I'd be happy to help - d'you suppose they'd give me one of those fancy Psi-badges and let me wear gloves like the other Psi-cops? Oh, wait . . . wrong reality.
Or would you rather that Google had simply decided not to operate a chinese language version of their service for the.cn domain? "It's your bat and your ball, but we don't like your rules so we aren't playing!"
Okay, so it's a small victory, not a big victory. Take 'em where you can get 'em.
After all, the ISP's have successfully lobbied in many localities to prevent the establishment of just such "WiFi clouds", citing their inability to compete against such a service.
We're not talking about a few kooks here, we're talking about a LARGE, ENTRENCHED and POWERFUL lobby (think: telcos and cable providers). If the geeks out west can pull this off, it'll establish a precedent which will have ramifications for the entire country and how we are able to use this marvellous new invention, the internet. Will data access become a pervasive utility, or will it remain a (mostly) "nailed to the desktop" commodity? Which way this tips could well redefine what we use the internet for.
Consider: if I can only have access to the internet via my ISP, for the most part I'm limited to the data and applications which will benefit me there (at my desk). If I can have unfettered access to the internet regardless of my physical location, the types of application and data I will want will be affected, possibly creating whole new industries to cater to the needs of a people accustomed to having their computing resources available anyplace and anytime I choose. GPS/data integration is only a tiny sliver of the potential uses this kind of technology could have.
The question is: will our government cave once again to the economically powerful telco/cable lobbies, or will our government gamble, forsaking immediately available revenues from the special interests in favor of a potential torrent of highly profitable and economically stimulating (vapor) technologies?
The research described in TFA could have repercussions for immunization and vaccination programs worldwide. That the researchers are concentrating on the H5N1 avian flu virus is predictable given the recent concerns about the potential for a lethal pandemic, but the research is applicable to a broad variety of virii such as the multiple influenza strains, which annually result in literally thousands of deaths worldwide, in part due to the lengthy and complex process involved in isolating, identifying, characterizing and controlling the virus particles involved.
We're dealing with a family of virii which mutates with frightening rapidity; speeding up the ability to respond to these mutations strikes me as an incredible advance which will ultimately save thousands of lives per year (assuming, of course, that this research is verifiable).
Okay, so the results on google.cn are limited, but . ..
It's generally agreed that free information flow and communication are two of the best tools a population can have to use against a totalitarian or dictatorial government. Okay, so google.cn is limiting the flow of information, but that flow is still greater than it would be if google.cn didn't exist.
Think of it this way - the first couple of cracks in a dam don't look too threatening when they are small and just forming. Think of google's presence in China as the harbinger of greater information flow to come. Intelligent and quick-witted people will use this limited tool to find ways to ultimately have a tool which is less limited, less restricted.
I'm not saying that (GOOGLE.CN)==(FREEDOM FOR CHINA), only that IMHO this is a step in the right direction. If that step is hobbled, it is nonetheless progress toward a desirable end. Also, let's not upbraid Google too harshly for functioning to the best of their abilities despite obstacles imposed by a sovereign state in which they wish to do business; rather we should applaud their effort to expand their business model and all that goes with it into an undeniably hostile environment. That their motives are not so lofty as the furtherance of human rights and personal freedom is irrelevant: that their actions might lead to the furtherance of human rights and personal freedom seems more important to me here.
Personal bias aside (and IMC its a pretty big personal bias), IE7 will fill the bill for business use - it's got a fast rendering engine, it's compatible with the vast bulk of business internet/intranet sites (IE compatibility specifically, especially that downward-compatible part), and has just enough end-user features to keep the office geeks from blowing a gasket.
I won't speak to the matter of security - as long as ActiveX is on (see: IE compatibility above), IE will suffer from security problems. ActiveX is getting a lot better, but I know of damned few admins who'll trust it yet. Of course, a good virus/malware scanner can mitigate the risks there, and that's how business has been handling the situation up until now, so the matter of security is sort of moot.
Poor analogy. A computer OS is not like a pane of glass; it's understood that the glass windows on your house are subject to breaking easily, it's inherent in their nature. You can't say the same thing about Microsoft Wind. ..
Never ran into the BarCode font issue, so I don't know how prevalent it is in businesses.
What I have run into is companies with websites (especially intranet websites) that rely completely on "the big blue 'e'". Companies may spend extra to make sure that Joe Websurfer sees their internet webpage correctly regardless of browser, but (with one or two exceptions) everywhere I've worked has intranet pages which require IE.
Trust me, that much entrenched technology ain't goin' away soon. As a result, Microsoft hasn't had much reason to improve IE, until recently with the onset of the second Browser War (BW II). Google is slowly morphing into a similar situation - I suspect that they'll become complacent in their own greatness and fall. I put the estimate of that fall at two to five years.
But even a quick look will show you that Google is aware of their preeminence in the search engine arena. While they are still innovating, I'm just waiting for them to become so caught up in their own greatness that they kick back and rest on their laurels.
Because that's when somebody'll come up with "a better mousetrap" and unseat the reigning kings of search. Anybody here remember Browser War I (BW I)? Microsoft won that one and suddenly Insecure Exploder didn't need to be improved any more.
Sorta like the way Wal-Mart grew up (hellfire, I can remember driving out of the city to a rural area just to shop at Wal-mart. Now that they're a retailing juggernaut I avoid Wal-mart whenever possible - their customer service sucks almost as bad as their mostly-imported product lines).
He was accused of taking advantages of flaws in Microsoft's Windows operating system . ..
Exactly what portion of liability is Microsoft's? If I were to manufacture and sell any tangible product with so many demonstrable flaws, I would be spending my days making out judgement checks and issuing product recalls.
Which reminds me . . . has this kind of thing (cracking) ever resulted in a fatality? I would be very interested in seeing how our courts adjudicate a proceeding in which someone has been killed or injured due to a computer exploit.
They've lost some ground to Firefox et. al.; if they can keep corporate America convinced that IE is "just as good" for what businesses want their browser to do, they'll continue to hold the hammer-lock on browsers in the workplace (remember, M$ doesn't need to convince all of us, just the PHB's among us).
Y'know, IIRC fifteen years ago a high-energy experiment in Texas was halted by the courts amid fears that a high-energy interaction on the scale being anticipated might cause the formation of a universe within our universe (which, expanding at c would obliterate our planet in microseconds, our solar system in minutes . ..).
Create a universe (or a black hole) in a lab? My, how high and proud our civilization has become. I think that's called "hubris", isn't it?
Is there anybody here who thinks that we can create a cosmic singularity (infinite density, zero dimensions) by smashing subatomic particles together under magnetic acceleration? No, RTFA - the event being studied has such a high energy density that it can mimic some of the conditions present shortly after the "big bang", and the mathematics of the situation have some similarities to those found in a cosmic singularity, BUT THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS A "BLACK HOLE". I can foresee that physicists working on the Grand Unification theory may well get some data from this type of experiment, but for the doomsayers I suggest that the probability of such an experiment causing the destruction of our planet/solar system/universe is on a terribly low ord
The Universe will be shut down NOW. Please finish all your affairs and log out.
Uh, will the last guy leaving the planet please remember to shut off the lights and lock the door on his way out? Thanks!
Being a beta-tester for the boys at Redmond (let's face it - every OS product I've ever seen from them requires extensive patching from the moment it's released for sale), or
Suffering with an insecure OS because:
1) M$ doesn't believe the exploit is that serious
2) M$ hasn't fixed the exploit yet, or
Spending my time waiting for a downloaded patch to break stuff, or
Oh, wait . ..
I run SuSE x86_64 and Solaris SPARC - No wonder I don't care about Windoze XP SP3. I feel much better now. Never mind.
(And before the flaming starts - NO, my system isn't secure because it's UNIX/LINUX based. It's just far easier to secure because it's UNIX/LINUX based).
The first time I saw a wheel mouse was at work. "How ridiculous" I remember thinking - right up until I got home that afternoon and discovered that my old 2-button mouse was totally useless.
Of course, once the users become accustomed to this, they'll probably use elevators in other buildings thinking "how quaint".
but I am obliged to ask - if Mr. Gibson's assertions on this subject are correct (and there is also some question on that point), does his relative expertise matter? I.e., who cares what the source is, the possibility exists that a vulnerability is present in the WMF format by design, rather than by accident.
That said, wouldn't an organized FUD campaign (orchestrated by, say, Microsoft or the NSA) look more or less exactly like what is being seen here?
The GRC website has been up for a long time. While it's true I've seen some pretty foolish pronouncements come from that website (the funniest one I can recall was Mr. Gibson's assertion that Windows doesn't need a full TCP/IP stack and that inclusion of the full stack in W2K would lead to a drastic increase in Wincracks), in this instance his reasoning and conclusions are fairly compelling. Not necessarily true or correct, but I see no reason to discard them out of hand.
Sort of like the old saying, "A rose can grow in the mud" (or the FUD?).
Slashdot Mirror
Stereotyping is bad, except when you stereotype all of those Archie Bunker wannabe's out there. They're all old, fat, cigar-chomping New Yorkers with wives as dumb as rocks and meathead sons.
Reread your original post while looking in a mirror. 'Nuff said?
Terminus' first mayor, right?
Circumvents the US Government prying into Google's databases, and permits Google to continue working in the American Way, by taking advantage of business opportunities without the US Government trying to legislate morality.
Really . . . does our government think China will repent and come to the UN hat in hand seeking forgiveness of the world so that Google can provide them with a search engine? Or have I misunderstood what the government is ostensibly trying to say here, that Google has a moral obligation not to respect the sovereignity of the People's Republic of China because that conflicts with (US of) American ethics?
Good grief, where were these ethical considerations when we were trying to put the whack on F. Castro and J. Stalin? Or more recently during the Iran/Contra debacle? (finding further examples is left as an exercise for the reader)
Apologies to all present - I'll get off my soapbox now, closing with a quote:
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - H. Mallow
1) Create a new inter networking protocol to allow our many disparate computer systems to seamlessly share data across a unified "internetwork". Check.
2) Ensure that the networking protocol is robust enough to withstand forseeable battlefield attacks while still providing seamless data access. Check.
3) Share the technology with the world, knowing that we can disable that technology when we need --
NO! DON'T SHARE THE TECHNOLOGY UNTIL AFTER WE KNOW HOW TO DISABLE IT!! Damn! I knew we missed something!
Witness the fact that when we invaded Iraq, our first target (as always) was the Command and Control infrastructure. Sure, we were able to knock their radio, television and telephonic communications down, but we were never able to fully disable their internet, which was used against us in that instance.
Now we have to deal with excessive blowback from Psyops. I'd be happy to help - d'you suppose they'd give me one of those fancy Psi-badges and let me wear gloves like the other Psi-cops? Oh, wait . . . wrong reality.
Okay, so it's a small victory, not a big victory. Take 'em where you can get 'em.
We're not talking about a few kooks here, we're talking about a LARGE, ENTRENCHED and POWERFUL lobby (think: telcos and cable providers). If the geeks out west can pull this off, it'll establish a precedent which will have ramifications for the entire country and how we are able to use this marvellous new invention, the internet. Will data access become a pervasive utility, or will it remain a (mostly) "nailed to the desktop" commodity? Which way this tips could well redefine what we use the internet for.
Consider: if I can only have access to the internet via my ISP, for the most part I'm limited to the data and applications which will benefit me there (at my desk). If I can have unfettered access to the internet regardless of my physical location, the types of application and data I will want will be affected, possibly creating whole new industries to cater to the needs of a people accustomed to having their computing resources available anyplace and anytime I choose. GPS/data integration is only a tiny sliver of the potential uses this kind of technology could have.
The question is: will our government cave once again to the economically powerful telco/cable lobbies, or will our government gamble, forsaking immediately available revenues from the special interests in favor of a potential torrent of highly profitable and economically stimulating (vapor) technologies?
it's just the game that the TLP was about.
We're dealing with a family of virii which mutates with frightening rapidity; speeding up the ability to respond to these mutations strikes me as an incredible advance which will ultimately save thousands of lives per year (assuming, of course, that this research is verifiable).
It's generally agreed that free information flow and communication are two of the best tools a population can have to use against a totalitarian or dictatorial government. Okay, so google.cn is limiting the flow of information, but that flow is still greater than it would be if google.cn didn't exist.
Think of it this way - the first couple of cracks in a dam don't look too threatening when they are small and just forming. Think of google's presence in China as the harbinger of greater information flow to come. Intelligent and quick-witted people will use this limited tool to find ways to ultimately have a tool which is less limited, less restricted.
I'm not saying that (GOOGLE.CN)==(FREEDOM FOR CHINA), only that IMHO this is a step in the right direction. If that step is hobbled, it is nonetheless progress toward a desirable end. Also, let's not upbraid Google too harshly for functioning to the best of their abilities despite obstacles imposed by a sovereign state in which they wish to do business; rather we should applaud their effort to expand their business model and all that goes with it into an undeniably hostile environment. That their motives are not so lofty as the furtherance of human rights and personal freedom is irrelevant: that their actions might lead to the furtherance of human rights and personal freedom seems more important to me here.
I guess I need to go back to using and tags!
or "bean counter extreme" or "Nada III".
Yes, I know this was a joke on Jib-Jab; unfortunately, it's also a joke on us.
"You can't say 'nuclear' . . . that really scares me . . ."
I won't speak to the matter of security - as long as ActiveX is on (see: IE compatibility above), IE will suffer from security problems. ActiveX is getting a lot better, but I know of damned few admins who'll trust it yet. Of course, a good virus/malware scanner can mitigate the risks there, and that's how business has been handling the situation up until now, so the matter of security is sort of moot.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
What I have run into is companies with websites (especially intranet websites) that rely completely on "the big blue 'e'". Companies may spend extra to make sure that Joe Websurfer sees their internet webpage correctly regardless of browser, but (with one or two exceptions) everywhere I've worked has intranet pages which require IE.
Trust me, that much entrenched technology ain't goin' away soon. As a result, Microsoft hasn't had much reason to improve IE, until recently with the onset of the second Browser War (BW II). Google is slowly morphing into a similar situation - I suspect that they'll become complacent in their own greatness and fall. I put the estimate of that fall at two to five years.
Because that's when somebody'll come up with "a better mousetrap" and unseat the reigning kings of search. Anybody here remember Browser War I (BW I)? Microsoft won that one and suddenly Insecure Exploder didn't need to be improved any more.
Sorta like the way Wal-Mart grew up (hellfire, I can remember driving out of the city to a rural area just to shop at Wal-mart. Now that they're a retailing juggernaut I avoid Wal-mart whenever possible - their customer service sucks almost as bad as their mostly-imported product lines).
fnord
Exactly what portion of liability is Microsoft's? If I were to manufacture and sell any tangible product with so many demonstrable flaws, I would be spending my days making out judgement checks and issuing product recalls.
Which reminds me . . . has this kind of thing (cracking) ever resulted in a fatality? I would be very interested in seeing how our courts adjudicate a proceeding in which someone has been killed or injured due to a computer exploit.
Begun the browser war has (again).
(n/t)
Create a universe (or a black hole) in a lab? My, how high and proud our civilization has become. I think that's called "hubris", isn't it?
Is there anybody here who thinks that we can create a cosmic singularity (infinite density, zero dimensions) by smashing subatomic particles together under magnetic acceleration? No, RTFA - the event being studied has such a high energy density that it can mimic some of the conditions present shortly after the "big bang", and the mathematics of the situation have some similarities to those found in a cosmic singularity, BUT THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS A "BLACK HOLE". I can foresee that physicists working on the Grand Unification theory may well get some data from this type of experiment, but for the doomsayers I suggest that the probability of such an experiment causing the destruction of our planet/solar system/universe is on a terribly low ord
Uh, will the last guy leaving the planet please remember to shut off the lights and lock the door on his way out? Thanks!Suffering with an insecure OS because:
1) M$ doesn't believe the exploit is that serious
2) M$ hasn't fixed the exploit yet, or
Spending my time waiting for a downloaded patch to break stuff, or
Oh, wait . . .
I run SuSE x86_64 and Solaris SPARC - No wonder I don't care about Windoze XP SP3. I feel much better now. Never mind.
(And before the flaming starts - NO, my system isn't secure because it's UNIX/LINUX based. It's just far easier to secure because it's UNIX/LINUX based).
*Begun, the flame war has.*
Of course, once the users become accustomed to this, they'll probably use elevators in other buildings thinking "how quaint".
That said, wouldn't an organized FUD campaign (orchestrated by, say, Microsoft or the NSA) look more or less exactly like what is being seen here?
The GRC website has been up for a long time. While it's true I've seen some pretty foolish pronouncements come from that website (the funniest one I can recall was Mr. Gibson's assertion that Windows doesn't need a full TCP/IP stack and that inclusion of the full stack in W2K would lead to a drastic increase in Wincracks), in this instance his reasoning and conclusions are fairly compelling. Not necessarily true or correct, but I see no reason to discard them out of hand.
Sort of like the old saying, "A rose can grow in the mud" (or the FUD?).
Just like the movie "Hackers". Oh, wait . . .