Is OS X's attack surface smaller than Windows? Sure it is. Is it impervious to user stupidity? Absolutely not.
Again... Not my problem. Social engineering tricks are only the fault of the user and never the OS.
The point being is that it is very hard to hit you with invisible or automatic attacks with OS X.
Sure I might put in an admin password or run a fungame.app which clears out my user directory, but you know... That was my fault and I should hold the blame.
Other user's stupidity isn't my problem and if it becomes my problem (as in a relative keeps installing spyware by visiting porn sites) I would lock down everything on their machine, blacklist all their porn sites in the OS firewall, and say "here! can't get infected now!" (they might not like that answer, but again... not my problem if they can't educate themselves)
My problem and my responsiblity is to be educated about my boxes... Whether they are OS, WinXp, or Linux. If I do something stupid then I'm to blame, but if I plug up a fresh install of my box to the internet and it gets infected in 90 seconds then there is something horribly wrong with the OS that really needs to be fixed. Secondly, the OS needs to minimize damage of unintended and commonly don't activities.
To invisibly and automatically install spyware, rootkits, or viruses without any yes/no/put in your admin password is what made Windows so insecure. Heck, hit up the wrong site in a google search and you can get screwed. But with OS X at least I know if I type in my password or click "yes, run this program for the first time" it is completley my fault that I allowed the program to run.
That is why OS X is more secure than Windows.
Again... Social engineering of other people isn't my fault...
Why is this sad? "Thru" is more economical than "through", sounds the same, is in common use, and is unambiguous in meaning. Language should be allowed to evolve.
If language did not evolve and we did not allow for changes in the English language we'd be making posts that sounded like a Elizabethan era play:
"Thou art privy to mine code licenseth henceforth as GPL! Thou art forbodden to present ye argument that henceforth BSD is superior to our tavern keeper!"
But seriously, trying to make English a permanent static monolithic thing will limit us when we come across new ideas that we cannot express with our current language.
Forget that, how will they enforce it? Violate the DMCA and try decrypting the songs? Hack Apple's servers for information?
Why not a file size hash key? You know... The one you verify the file size with when you download something so you know someone hasn't poisoned the download mirror (you do do that right?) Every file has them in pretty much every OS. All you have to do is match that with the file on their server... Verify the file isn't a text file you attempted to make the same exact size as the iTunes file (maybe probe it to see if it is indeed encrypted with fairplay) and then download the matching song.
This means of course MS will have to have someone download all of Apple's songs, but MS has deep pockets.
So what stops someone from forging the ID3 tags to get free songs from microsoft?
Well... First of all, no one wants to download WMV formatted songs from even if they are free.;)
Secondly... (and more seriously) If you already have spent more than $100 on an iTunes account, there is a 99% chance you already own an iPod which means there is a snowball's chance in hell that you are going to buy MS's device for the heck of it.
Which means I think they are offering something they already know no one in their right mind would take them up on and therefore no loss on their part.
I tried Raid5 once with 5 hard drives but one drive had a failure while I was swapping out one and the whole thing went kaput so I had to do the image all over again.
For saftey's sake, I just used 6 hard drives with 2 pairs striped and then had those drives mirror each other with 2 extra that would go to a drive when one failed. So in theory I could loose 3 drives instead of two and still keep my data.
And yes... This was on my personal setup for no good reason other than a big ego, but in reality Raid5 isn't that useful ore efficient unless you are using enteprise applications that requires 100% uptime and you have way more than 3 hard drives (just in case two of them fail on you at once for no particular reason) and then you should have that server mirrored by another one so if one server fails because of a bad motherboard/powersupply etc, you'll have another server ready to go.
Well, it happens here in the US too. There are plenty of stories regading people being put on the 'do not fly' list due to circumstances like this as well.
I got pulled aside at an airport once because my name matched a guy who had the first and last name as mine who was on the "do not fly list". However, once they realized I had a different middle initial and was 20 years younger than the suspect, they put me back on the flight.
I don't really feel violated and I kind of expected the TSA to do these kind of things, but it was kind of a hassle.
Perhaps a Sahir Mohammed has some links to 'bad guys'?
To be fair 'bad guys' is the politically correct euphamism for 'untermensch' these days.
The problem with a biometric system is that when someone manages to fool it and impersonate someone, you can't change their access token. At least if my password is compromised I can change it; not so with my thumbprint.
If someone infiltrates the FBI and has managed to get their thumb prints, retinas, facial structure, and blood type to match an FBI director... And they have secretly replaced the directory with this doppleganger.... Well you are pretty much hosed anyways so worrying about about the issue you mentioned is quite moot.
It would make a good movie though.
But seriously, the point of really "good" bio-metrics is that they can't be duplicated without some major invasive measure such as cutting off their hands eyes or head to place before a camera. I mean if you saw a guy go up to a console at the FBI building with a severed hand, I think that would raise a few red flags. Secondly, passwords are not always secure as biometrics because you can always torture someone into giving you their passwords.
Where as holding them hostage while you work your way through biometric security is a bit more difficult.
It says right in the article "In a statement, the Pitkin County Sheriff's office said a coroner's autopsy is pending and autopsy results will be available later this week."
Not to be a conspiracist, but how do we know the either:
1.) Doctors and sheriff aren't on the payroll 2.) They are just looking at a body that happens to look a whole lot like Lay
Look--piracy is stealing no matter what kind of spit shine you put on it
For crying out loud... Even the US Supreme court has stated that copyright violations are not theft and are civil cases to be dealt with civil suits.
I'm not pro-piracy but I know enough about the law (IANAL tho) to know this is a big difference between theft and piracy. One involves your local district attorney and law enforcement and the other involves law enforcement and a corporate lawyer.
One of these requires a jury to find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and the other does not.
On the same note there is a difference between murder and manslaughter. You still killed someone but being convicted of one over the other entails quite a bit of difference in the punishment. Keep that in mind.
Ick. Trip Master Monkey modded as troll? Listen guys... Like it or not this is what an intelligent person would do and if he had enough resources.
But perhaps its the opposite.
Chances are if he wasn't faking his death, he was commiting suicide.
If you've been to the top and you are loosing everything you might want to find a way to end it all. Maybe he stopped taking his meds, ate a great deal of unhealthy foods, or did activities that weren't recommended by his doctor.
He knew he would spend the rest of his life in jail and yet he didn't want his family to feel bad for him if he hanged himself. He maybe found the most natural way to go.
However, most of us will never know what really happened.
because they're deluded by their own success into believing that they can pull off just about anything, and even in their darkest hour, they've got a plan for wriggling out and turning things around
You mean like faking your own death? And enjoying the rest of your life on an island in Fiji with over 100 million in secret bank accounts?
He didn't destroy the livelihood of scores of people; they did that to themselves.
What? Have you not paid attention to anything going on? The employees lost everything because they were not allowed to divest their interests from Enron into other areas to spread out their risk. Basically their employer would not allow them any leeway in such measures and not to mention loosing all your retirment and benefits that you worked so long and hard to get.
What is worse is when you take a screen shot of their desktop and then move all their icons into a folder on that desktop and then make the screen shot the wallpaper.
Speaking of rural... (Bellsouth country) We had an interesting DSL tech story.
One of customers bought our DSL package, but for some strange reason it would stop working as soon it got dark out. We troubleshooted to see if anything happened at that time such as him turning on 900mhz phones, tvs, halogen lamps, lived near AM radio station etc, but none appeared to be the case.
So one day my supervisor was helping him out since the guy wanted to keep the service because it worked fine during the day and had blazing speeds. So my supervisor is sitting there and asks him to kind of watch what is going on around sundown and not just in the house... The guy looks out his window and sees one of those street lamps turning on near his road and says he noticed lights going on and it turns out his phone line ran directly under that line.
My sup advised him to call the powercompany if they could do something about it
The guy sad... "Hold on...." And about 5 minutes of silence my supervisor hears a loud bang and the guy comes back and says his DSL is working fine now.;)
I worked for a major 3rd party DSL provider a few years ago and I heard this one from a VP in the smoking area (in the parking garage next to peachtree...)
They have this strange situation with a DSL customer.
It was your basic off the web order,install, we sent out the kit and he was running at good DSL speeds. No problems.
He calls in about 4 weeks later and reports his DSL has stopped working. We have him check the NID and he doesn't have any sync which means he's not even getting a signal from the Central Office. So we roll out a telco truck and they find that his cable was pulled from the DSLAM box and they just pop it back into his copper line.
A week later he calls in the same problem. We have him check his DSL at the NID again and no sync. We call the teclo company again and they send a truck out to the central office box and check the DSLAM, find it was disconnected again, and pop the cable back in again for the DSL.
Then it happens a again... They send out another truck... Fix it... A few days latter... It happens again... And they keep sending the trucks to fix it...
Finally after several weeks of this... The VP gets a call from the teclo... Who has the FBI on the phone asking us to stop fixing the DSL because its disconnecting their wiretap!
So the VP has a CS rep call the guy and politley explain that DSL isn't possible at his location and refunds his money.
Computers are expensive purchases and no-one will take a risk with something totally unknown, unless they know what they're doing.
$499 isn't that exspensive compared to other products (car stereo, console gaming, tvs and so on) and chances are the average Joe just buys a computer based off what his kids, family members, or the store clerk tells him to.
From my experience, people who buy macs as their first computer did it because of family members that already had macs or they use macs at their college or work. But I've seen plenty of switchers of people who were fed up with spyware and other issues.
The consumers want one thing -- competition. Competition happens when government stays away from the market.
What?! What?! What?!
If government stayed out out of business monopolies we'd still be buying all our gas from Standard Oil Co. and renting our phones from AT&T.
Regulation != monopoloy busting
Sometimes businesses will not compete on their own and create massive barriers to market entry. This is when regulation helps to get competition going again and why people like Teddy Rosevelt knew that government had to step into fight these types of cartels.
Best thing Mythic could do to UO is to return to pre-UO:R days and scrap years of misguided efforts to clone EQ.
Bravo sir. Bravo!
Ultima Online was a great game unto itself between 1997-1999 and I always said it would be perfect if they just fixed the lag, bugs, cheating, and then program crashes.
However, EA saw the success of EQ and thought they would just change their game into EQ and cash in on its success. It basically ruined the game for many of us old timers. I played until 2001 or so but after Reinnassance I just gave up trying to play a game that was no longer the game I used to know.
The classic example of this is Gauntlet, where even if you aren't hit, you are running outta health.
To be fair, my Game Boy Advance version of Gauntlet does the same thing and I remember the same behavior in the arcades in the 80's. Although I get unlimited continues on my GBA.
Well to be fair... The end of the world almost happened because a single bullet shot a man who started a war which lead to an even bigger war 20 years later and then which lead to atomic bombs which almost caused the end of the world a few times. (the last being in 1984.
Slippery slopes do exist, but they aren't as common as the conspirators would like you to believe, but they have happened.
What are you leftist/.'ers actually doing, apart from complaining and bitching, to make things better?
I'm not a leftist or a righty (maybe you could call me a moral leftist and a righty economist... oh I guess that is a Libertarian), but I donate regularly to The Singularity Institute because if friendly StrongAI can't solve all the worlds problems, I don't know what will.
Here is a good quote on the matter.
"Because if you want to end poverty around the world, and you send $10,000 to the Singularity Institute, this will have an enormously greater impact on the quest to end poverty than sending the same money to CARE. Not that CARE is a bad organization, just that the current distribution of efforts is not the rational one. CARE is day-to-day operations, SIAI is R&D. Spending 0.0001% of your resources on R&D is called "eating your seed corn". Achieving the Singularity is the most efficient means to achieving all the ends stated in your question. It is not a competing end; it is a more efficient, more highly leveraged method, one which also achieves other important goals such as removing the current upper bound on intelligence. Besides, I know of no realistic way to end involuntary pain and death, which was among the goals you listed, except a Singularity, You can either tackle these goals one at a time, in a way which is already being tried by thousands or millions of people, and multi-billion-dollar foundations, or you can try something which is new, more effective, more leveraged, and currently underfunded."
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So there is no way possible for Mac user without proper tools (which he dont have and dont want to use) to identify and report any intrusion.
Huh? What's wrong with typing "netstat -a" and "ps -aux" in the console?
Thats all the tools I need to detect unathorized connections and programs.
Is OS X's attack surface smaller than Windows? Sure it is. Is it impervious to user stupidity? Absolutely not.
Again... Not my problem. Social engineering tricks are only the fault of the user and never the OS.
The point being is that it is very hard to hit you with invisible or automatic attacks with OS X.
Sure I might put in an admin password or run a fungame.app which clears out my user directory, but you know... That was my fault and I should hold the blame.
Other user's stupidity isn't my problem and if it becomes my problem (as in a relative keeps installing spyware by visiting porn sites) I would lock down everything on their machine, blacklist all their porn sites in the OS firewall, and say "here! can't get infected now!" (they might not like that answer, but again... not my problem if they can't educate themselves)
My problem and my responsiblity is to be educated about my boxes... Whether they are OS, WinXp, or Linux. If I do something stupid then I'm to blame, but if I plug up a fresh install of my box to the internet and it gets infected in 90 seconds then there is something horribly wrong with the OS that really needs to be fixed. Secondly, the OS needs to minimize damage of unintended and commonly don't activities.
To invisibly and automatically install spyware, rootkits, or viruses without any yes/no/put in your admin password is what made Windows so insecure. Heck, hit up the wrong site in a google search and you can get screwed. But with OS X at least I know if I type in my password or click "yes, run this program for the first time" it is completley my fault that I allowed the program to run.
That is why OS X is more secure than Windows.
Again... Social engineering of other people isn't my fault...
Why is this sad? "Thru" is more economical than "through", sounds the same, is in common use, and is unambiguous in meaning. Language should be allowed to evolve.
If language did not evolve and we did not allow for changes in the English language we'd be making posts that sounded like a Elizabethan era play:
"Thou art privy to mine code licenseth henceforth as GPL! Thou art forbodden to present ye argument that henceforth BSD is superior to our tavern keeper!"
But seriously, trying to make English a permanent static monolithic thing will limit us when we come across new ideas that we cannot express with our current language.
Forget that, how will they enforce it?
Violate the DMCA and try decrypting the songs?
Hack Apple's servers for information?
Why not a file size hash key? You know... The one you verify the file size with when you download something so you know someone hasn't poisoned the download mirror (you do do that right?) Every file has them in pretty much every OS. All you have to do is match that with the file on their server... Verify the file isn't a text file you attempted to make the same exact size as the iTunes file (maybe probe it to see if it is indeed encrypted with fairplay) and then download the matching song.
This means of course MS will have to have someone download all of Apple's songs, but MS has deep pockets.
So what stops someone from forging the ID3 tags to get free songs from microsoft?
;)
Well... First of all, no one wants to download WMV formatted songs from even if they are free.
Secondly... (and more seriously) If you already have spent more than $100 on an iTunes account, there is a 99% chance you already own an iPod which means there is a snowball's chance in hell that you are going to buy MS's device for the heck of it.
Which means I think they are offering something they already know no one in their right mind would take them up on and therefore no loss on their part.
But do they come in that shade of blue to match my computer screen?
I tried Raid5 once with 5 hard drives but one drive had a failure while I was swapping out one and the whole thing went kaput so I had to do the image all over again.
For saftey's sake, I just used 6 hard drives with 2 pairs striped and then had those drives mirror each other with 2 extra that would go to a drive when one failed. So in theory I could loose 3 drives instead of two and still keep my data.
And yes... This was on my personal setup for no good reason other than a big ego, but in reality Raid5 isn't that useful ore efficient unless you are using enteprise applications that requires 100% uptime and you have way more than 3 hard drives (just in case two of them fail on you at once for no particular reason) and then you should have that server mirrored by another one so if one server fails because of a bad motherboard/powersupply etc, you'll have another server ready to go.
Well, it happens here in the US too. There are plenty of stories regading people being put on the 'do not fly' list due to circumstances like this as well.
I got pulled aside at an airport once because my name matched a guy who had the first and last name as mine who was on the "do not fly list". However, once they realized I had a different middle initial and was 20 years younger than the suspect, they put me back on the flight.
I don't really feel violated and I kind of expected the TSA to do these kind of things, but it was kind of a hassle.
Perhaps a Sahir Mohammed has some links to 'bad guys'?
To be fair 'bad guys' is the politically correct euphamism for 'untermensch' these days.
The problem with a biometric system is that when someone manages to fool it and impersonate someone, you can't change their access token. At least if my password is compromised I can change it; not so with my thumbprint.
If someone infiltrates the FBI and has managed to get their thumb prints, retinas, facial structure, and blood type to match an FBI director... And they have secretly replaced the directory with this doppleganger.... Well you are pretty much hosed anyways so worrying about about the issue you mentioned is quite moot.
It would make a good movie though.
But seriously, the point of really "good" bio-metrics is that they can't be duplicated without some major invasive measure such as cutting off their hands eyes or head to place before a camera. I mean if you saw a guy go up to a console at the FBI building with a severed hand, I think that would raise a few red flags. Secondly, passwords are not always secure as biometrics because you can always torture someone into giving you their passwords.
Where as holding them hostage while you work your way through biometric security is a bit more difficult.
These are the people protecting me from terrorists?
;)
Well to be fair, you are more likley to die from a drunk driver so I'd be more concerned how your local State Troopers are behaving.
It says right in the article "In a statement, the Pitkin County Sheriff's office said a coroner's autopsy is pending and autopsy results will be available later this week."
Not to be a conspiracist, but how do we know the either:
1.) Doctors and sheriff aren't on the payroll
2.) They are just looking at a body that happens to look a whole lot like Lay
Look--piracy is stealing no matter what kind of spit shine you put on it
For crying out loud... Even the US Supreme court has stated that copyright violations are not theft and are civil cases to be dealt with civil suits.
I'm not pro-piracy but I know enough about the law (IANAL tho) to know this is a big difference between theft and piracy. One involves your local district attorney and law enforcement and the other involves law enforcement and a corporate lawyer.
One of these requires a jury to find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and the other does not.
On the same note there is a difference between murder and manslaughter. You still killed someone but being convicted of one over the other entails quite a bit of difference in the punishment. Keep that in mind.
Ick. Trip Master Monkey modded as troll? Listen guys... Like it or not this is what an intelligent person would do and if he had enough resources.
But perhaps its the opposite.
Chances are if he wasn't faking his death, he was commiting suicide.
If you've been to the top and you are loosing everything you might want to find a way to end it all. Maybe he stopped taking his meds, ate a great deal of unhealthy foods, or did activities that weren't recommended by his doctor.
He knew he would spend the rest of his life in jail and yet he didn't want his family to feel bad for him if he hanged himself. He maybe found the most natural way to go.
However, most of us will never know what really happened.
because they're deluded by their own success into believing that they can pull off just about anything, and even in their darkest hour, they've got a plan for wriggling out and turning things around
You mean like faking your own death? And enjoying the rest of your life on an island in Fiji with over 100 million in secret bank accounts?
Seriously, its what I'd do if I was him.
He didn't destroy the livelihood of scores of people; they did that to themselves.
What? Have you not paid attention to anything going on? The employees lost everything because they were not allowed to divest their interests from Enron into other areas to spread out their risk. Basically their employer would not allow them any leeway in such measures and not to mention loosing all your retirment and benefits that you worked so long and hard to get.
What is worse is when you take a screen shot of their desktop and then move all their icons into a folder on that desktop and then make the screen shot the wallpaper.
;)
Clicking on your icons gets you nowhere
Living in a rural area,
;)
Speaking of rural... (Bellsouth country) We had an interesting DSL tech story.
One of customers bought our DSL package, but for some strange reason it would stop working as soon it got dark out. We troubleshooted to see if anything happened at that time such as him turning on 900mhz phones, tvs, halogen lamps, lived near AM radio station etc, but none appeared to be the case.
So one day my supervisor was helping him out since the guy wanted to keep the service because it worked fine during the day and had blazing speeds. So my supervisor is sitting there and asks him to kind of watch what is going on around sundown and not just in the house... The guy looks out his window and sees one of those street lamps turning on near his road and says he noticed lights going on and it turns out his phone line ran directly under that line.
My sup advised him to call the powercompany if they could do something about it
The guy sad... "Hold on...." And about 5 minutes of silence my supervisor hears a loud bang and the guy comes back and says his DSL is working fine now.
I worked for a major 3rd party DSL provider a few years ago and I heard this one from a VP in the smoking area (in the parking garage next to peachtree...)
,install, we sent out the kit and he was running at good DSL speeds. No problems.
They have this strange situation with a DSL customer.
It was your basic off the web order
He calls in about 4 weeks later and reports his DSL has stopped working. We have him check the NID and he doesn't have any sync which means he's not even getting a signal from the Central Office. So we roll out a telco truck and they find that his cable was pulled from the DSLAM box and they just pop it back into his copper line.
A week later he calls in the same problem. We have him check his DSL at the NID again and no sync. We call the teclo company again and they send a truck out to the central office box and check the DSLAM, find it was disconnected again, and pop the cable back in again for the DSL.
Then it happens a again... They send out another truck... Fix it... A few days latter... It happens again... And they keep sending the trucks to fix it...
Finally after several weeks of this... The VP gets a call from the teclo... Who has the FBI on the phone asking us to stop fixing the DSL because its disconnecting their wiretap!
So the VP has a CS rep call the guy and politley explain that DSL isn't possible at his location and refunds his money.
Computers are expensive purchases and no-one will take a risk with something totally unknown, unless they know what they're doing.
$499 isn't that exspensive compared to other products (car stereo, console gaming, tvs and so on) and chances are the average Joe just buys a computer based off what his kids, family members, or the store clerk tells him to.
From my experience, people who buy macs as their first computer did it because of family members that already had macs or they use macs at their college or work. But I've seen plenty of switchers of people who were fed up with spyware and other issues.
Most users are lazy, and they don't want to learn how to use new interfaces.
Well... We'd better not tell them about the Windows/Office Vista menu changes then.
The consumers want one thing -- competition. Competition happens when government stays away from the market.
What?! What?! What?!
If government stayed out out of business monopolies we'd still be buying all our gas from Standard Oil Co. and renting our phones from AT&T.
Regulation != monopoloy busting
Sometimes businesses will not compete on their own and create massive barriers to market entry. This is when regulation helps to get competition going again and why people like Teddy Rosevelt knew that government had to step into fight these types of cartels.
Best thing Mythic could do to UO is to return to pre-UO:R days and scrap years of misguided efforts to clone EQ.
Bravo sir. Bravo!
Ultima Online was a great game unto itself between 1997-1999 and I always said it would be perfect if they just fixed the lag, bugs, cheating, and then program crashes.
However, EA saw the success of EQ and thought they would just change their game into EQ and cash in on its success. It basically ruined the game for many of us old timers. I played until 2001 or so but after Reinnassance I just gave up trying to play a game that was no longer the game I used to know.
The classic example of this is Gauntlet, where even if you aren't hit, you are running outta health.
To be fair, my Game Boy Advance version of Gauntlet does the same thing and I remember the same behavior in the arcades in the 80's. Although I get unlimited continues on my GBA.
Well to be fair... The end of the world almost happened because a single bullet shot a man who started a war which lead to an even bigger war 20 years later and then which lead to atomic bombs which almost caused the end of the world a few times. (the last being in 1984.
Slippery slopes do exist, but they aren't as common as the conspirators would like you to believe, but they have happened.
I'm not a leftist or a righty (maybe you could call me a moral leftist and a righty economist... oh I guess that is a Libertarian), but I donate regularly to The Singularity Institute because if friendly StrongAI can't solve all the worlds problems, I don't know what will.
Here is a good quote on the matter.
-Eliezer