Maybe that is the problem. The damages from breaking into a corporate computer system is FAR greater than breaking into someone's bedroom. And again, God forbid you exploit a system that actually does have a life or death purpose. Advocating not using computers for anything in the medical field instead of punishing criminal behavior rather than glorifying and rewarding it is just dumb.
And that information is no different than saying things like don't run unneeded services, use a firewall, don't click on unknown programs, and so on. We already have plenty of general security advice that covers most of the bases without needing to hire criminals.
None of those things disprove the existence of God in any way shape or form. Nor have any of them proven that God doesn't do any of that. The difference is that anti-science and anti-religion people both take that shit so literally it is frighting.
"God makes the plants move"
"No he doesn't, wind does"
"God makes the plants move by making the wind blow"
"No he doesn't, rotational forces make the wind blow"
"God makes the plants move by making the wind blow by making the earth spin"
"No he doesn't gravitational forces make the earth move"
and so on and so forth
Personally my view of God as a superior force also includes being able to manage infinitely complex systems. My version of God is more than capable of using evolution, gravity, and all the other things we have observed about reality. The fundamentalist and atheist version of God demands a playdoh wielding child at the helm of creation. I forgive the fundies for this because they make no claim to logic, but the atheists actually claim to be the logical ones and should really see "if God is supposed to be an infinitely powerful and omnipotent force (personification or nonpersonification varies by religion) then he should be capable of doing infinitely complex things". But, nope, fundie and atheist alike demand that God is a simpleton incapable of anything that us humans can't understand at a given moment in time, they just disagree about his existence.
That being said I think it is almost disturbing that you would relate procreation to recursion. Incidentally you left out all the life forms that actually fork to procreate.
So. Where should I send the bill when I break into your house and take pictures of you sleeping? I mean there is work there testing your security (physical security), observing your sleep patterns (doctors get big bucks for this work), and I didn't take anything myself. Oh, and just so you know, I am going to show everyone else how to do the same, so if they do anything nasty to you in your sleep I can't be held liable for that.
I swear to God people need to get over this moronic idea that hiring hackers is a good thing. You are aware that computers run important things now right? Medical devices, manufacturing devices, and all manner of other things. People act like all of these worms and virii and whatnot are just little annoyances to office workers and nothing more. Boy I sure hope you aren't getting a MRI when some jackoff runs an exploit that causes it to do unpredictable things while you are in there. If you get lucky it will only fudge the data causing you to get improper treatment and maybe you will be ok, if you get unlucky it could do damage to you while you are in. I mean after all, the payload was just an annoyance so its ok right?
The skills required for catching or preventing rapists is in high demand. The argument goes that you should hire people who can commit the crime to protect against it. Only a serial rapist would know the details of the how and why of target selection and other important factors involved it commiting the crime. Now when you start hiring serial rapists for high paying jobs to try and catch other rapists, do you think maybe the number of rapes would go up as people try and land a high paying job? It is a dumb freaking idea and is not the way to go about business.
Right... So by that logic it makes sense to hire a rapist to protect your daughter from other rapists right? Hire a criminal to protect against the criminal. I think I would rather pay someone who isn't a rapist for that job.
Devs write something, black hats find holes do lots of damage and make some profit, white hats have to find the black hats using the holes and then fix it. Seems to make more sense to fix the problem at the Devs rather than hiring known criminals. This whole white hat black hat crap is just a convenient way to downplay "you are a fucking criminal, I don't care that you only wanted to see if you could break the hinges on my door and you didn't steal anything".
As for your question...easy...the blame belongs to the guy who walked through those holes. How would you like it when you come home to find your entire family murdered and the cop says "Sorry, you didn't keep your doors locked, your fault." Just because your lock is broken, the door doesn't close, the windows won't latch, whatever, does not make it legal for me to waltz into your home and do as I please. At a bare minimum its trespassing.
Not really. Look at most movie ratings. They aren't just R. There is the sub part that says WHY they got R. (Violence, Language, Nudity, etc). Ratings certainly are not a panacea, but it is a useful tool to give parents a quick gauge of content. It is still a parents responsibility to screen the content, but why make them waste $60 on Super Mega Happy Fun with the Happy Fun Animal Team game at the store only to bring it home and find that it is actually a japanese furry fetish game. It would be nice to see a "Rated OMFG: You just don't want to see this shit" somewhere on the package. (a bit over the top, but it makes the point more amusing)
You are assuming that "God(s)" are an external force that must interact with the universe to have an effect*. Science is about determining the rules, regulations, and operations of all existance. Science does not invent anything, it discovers things that were previously unobserved. You are assuming that "God(s)" interactions will run counter to previously observed phenomenon. I find a (as best as we can tell) infinite existance adhering to an almost immesurably complex set of rules is FAR more impressive and evidence of "God" than things simply not following those rules.
*I personally have beef with the personification of God as some external/individualistic being. We have proven over and over and over that humans externalize and personify damned near everything, but when it comes to God everyone seems to want to scream "But that one really is a person!".
Yeah and the time difference between "I think it works like this" and "See we can prove it now" grows increasingly large the more complex the subject matter. You realize that our understanding of things is still limited by our vantage point in the universe and that we DON'T actually understand all the workings many claim to. Quantum anything is a pretty good example of one of those monkey wrenches of "AHA bitches, and you thought you understood how this works!, Gotcha" The part that is Science is the "Damnit...lets try again a different way".
I would like to offer my sympathy for you now. By having a logical and rational response to a hot button issue you have condemned yourself to ridicule from both sides. Welcome to reality my friend. Judges, lawyers, and courtrooms are more meaningful than mom's, dad's, and livingrooms. God forbid we expect parents to do their job and give them the tools to do so (Rating systems, age limits). Last I checked every gaming console and TV ever produced had a power button, or in the worst case scenario a damned plug. "But waaaa, we can't control what our kids do elsewhere, we want the government to do it" boo freaking hoo...it has been that way since Adam fucked Eve...kids escape the parents eye and kill their brother to make God happy...should we ban the Bible too (ok lets not get too far on that one). The whole damned point is you teach your kids acceptable and unacceptable behavior so that when they ARE outside of your eye you can (reasonably) trust them to (mostly) make the right decision. Its like all these people have totally forgot what it was like growing up.
Science never have and never will prove or disprove God. Science and Religion are entirely separate concepts and the "pro science/anti-religion" crowd is just as arrogant and ignorant as the "pro religion/anti-science crowd". Quite frankly it stuns me that these two groups don't get along better since they share so many traits. Both of these groups rely on an overly simplistic "angry 4yr old with a bucket of playdoh and crayons he used for creation" interpretation of God to prove their point.
I'm just gunna throw this out there...but...do you think...that maybe...just MAYBE...that anything that us humans are capable of figuring out (you know DNA, dark matter, gravity, etc) that "God" probably has a pretty intimate working knowledge of? Quite frankly I think the Anti-religion group are just weak minded anti-scientists trying to blend in with the crowd. To think...once upon a time someone said "I'm still waiting on the slightest shred of evidence that suggest that DNA/Atoms/Cells/etc actually exist".
That having been said maybe you can learn something from Francis S. Collins talking about God and DNA.
Moore/Sheehan are the greatest assets we have in our fight to keep Americans from removing us from our positions.
The primary spokespersons of the anti-Bush movement is clearly a psychopath. Completly batshit crazy. If they were not crazy, and used logical (sounding) conclusions and appealed to reasonable or religious sensibilities they would be MUCH more dangerous to our control than they are.
So we MUST give them lipservice, we must work to keep their illegal, crazy shenanagins in the news, because as long is they are their front-men, we will always win.
There is nothing better than not having to win the debate on merit when you have no merit, you just let your opponent come off as a crazed psychopath while you respond calmly...doesn't matter what is said...the psycho loses.
It amuses me that the slashdot crowd understands this tactics when its about fucking video games, but when its about the real world they march out with the irrational psychos as their heroes and wonder why everyone watching hands everything to their opponents.
First: We aren't talking about competent IT professionals. If everyone was a competent IT professional there wouldn't be such a huge problem with any OS shipping with stupid settings. We are talking about the reality that the vast majority of infections and security issues happen to NON IT professionals and that is why its such a huge issue. Thses are the people that those OSs are obscure. FYI Obscure is relatively unknown, Arcane is known to the initiated...so in this case they mean the same freaking thing.
Second: Macintosh as shorthand for OS/X doesn't make sense on the OS level, or the fact that OS/X is about 5 characters less than Macintosh. Macintosh is ambigious because a Mac (shorthand) generally refers to the physical not the software. I have never heard anyone say "I am running Macintosh", but I have heard "I am running OS/X on a Mac"
Third: Security != Vulnerability. Security is mitigating the effects of the overlap of Vulnerability, Threat, and Capability. The security of a particular system is greatly related to how widespread use it recieves as well as other factors such as technical vulnerabilities and so on. I never said Windows had more technical vulnerabilities because of their large deployment, that would be stupid. But saying that its widespread deployment isn't a huge part of its security problem is just arrogance and ignorance. I suppose next you will tell me because security through obscurity is something that you shouldn't rely on that you should never use security through obscurity in conjunction with other methods. You shouldn't rely on your seatbelt to save you, but you should still wear it because it does add protection on top of airbag, working brakes, paying attention, not being drunk, etc, etc. Security is going to be the sum of things you do, not the absolute value of one thing.
Your response is a prime example that you have no concept of what security is.
1. Linux and FreeBSD are absolutely obscure. They just aren't obscure to the people you know who know about them. The average owner of a zombied machine has no idea what any of those words are. Also Macintosh is not an OS.
2. You are at least marginally right here. Windows being a big target does have nothing to do with its Vulnerability. Linking technical deficiency to popularity IS a logical fallacy. Unfortunately if you have a clue and work in security you would know that Vulnerability is only one part of the equation. Threat (the number of people wanting to exploit) and Capability (their ability to successfully exploit) are the other parts.
The overlap between Threat, Vulnerability, and Capability is what determines Security Risk.
Windows has a high vulnerability, a high number of threats (everyone wants a piece), and the threats have the capabilities to inflict damage (every skript kidde out there can do it)...huge security risk. Linux/BSD/OSX have lower vulnerabilties (better design), lower number of threats (not a high value target), and lower capabilities (takes more expertise than your average WinSkriptKid to haxor this gibson). My InsecureOS has a high vulnerability, virtual 0 threat (noone knows about it or cares), and virtually 0 capability (even if you did care you have no idea where to begin exploiting). My InsecureOS is a lower risk factor than even Linux/BSD/OSX.
3. Any denial of the "Big Target" argument falls directly into the hands of people who don't understand security and should never work in the security field. They are just $OS_of_choice zealots that can't see past their own upturned nose to understand the reality of things.
So I suppose you are telling me that the market penetration has nothing to do with them being a juicy target? Ok...sure... Lets you and I go wrangle up some botnets, you only get to target BSD and I only get to target Windows and then we will DDoS eachother until someone loses all their bots. To make it fair lets go ahead and assume you have root logins on all the BSD boxes so you don't even have to exploit them, so now you can't make argument that its hard for you because BSD is more secure.
Windows is indeed defective by design, but a massive botnet of linux/solaris/bsd whatevers would be pretty damned worthless in comparison. In the meantime the monstrosity that Storm has become could DDoS most of them out of existance while still sending millions of make my penis bigger spams a day, and still have enough left over to extort money from pay sites and small countries by threatening attacks.
The argument that the only reason Windows suffers more because of their domination is flawed. But fools like you saying the market penetration has nothing to do with it just make that argument look stupid. By the way, I have my own InsecureOS that I'm writing, would you care to tell me why there are no exploits in the wild for it?
Aaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaaaahahaha.. Ok...So...Google is this vast happy protect the people group. Certainly explains the censorship issues in China right? As far as requires users' trust... "You wouldn't use Google Mail if you knew Google would sell you up the river for nothing." = "Google needs you to trust them and use Google Mail so they are the most profitable information salesmen to the powers that be, in order to acheive this they must convince their users that they actually aren't using their vast computing power on their secret campus to archives, sort, search, and categorize all your emails and sell the reports to the highest bidding 3 letter organization". Look I don't think (at least I hope) they aren't doing this, but uhm...its horribly profitable so long as they don't get caught and convince users they are potecting their privacy (after searching all their emails for keywords). They are a public company now, stock prices and all, shareholders interests...
I might add that while data storage has gotten cheap...why would they give you 1GB of free email storage unless they wanted you to store 1GB of email so they could sift through it with their search functions to gather valuable data, be it market data, personal data, or whatever. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Oh come off it. Look, I think its a little jacked up that so many things get tied up like this, however, if the original author wants it to be handled differently that is what a will is for. So when a parent dies who owns a business all the people off the street should be able to walk in and take whatever they want instead of the ownership of that business transfering? Please...this extremist view is just getting tired and only encourages the people with the power to fix things to not listen to such lunacy.
Now in this case...and in many others...the estate funds various prizes and educational funds and whatnot. So "waaa I want a free book instead of paying a dead author" is even less impressive when those funds are going to maintain worthwhile charitable causes. This is not the same as the Disney empire by a LONG stretch. And as has been otherwise noted, quit bitching and go support your local library, because once again, "waa I want a free book isntead of paying ad ead author" also hurts your local tax funded library when they can't show that people actually come to read the books.
No. Go look at the vote record. All of the Nays...Republican (Except for Leiberman but I swear to God anyone who thinks that assclown is anything but a Republican lapdog needs their head examined). Yays are predominately Democrat with a few Republicans. What that should tell you is that the Republicans in congress are going to do everything they can to continue their PNAC agenda. Remember these clowns worship Machiavelli and "the ends justify the means".
Love or hate the left, you can't look away from the fact that this psychotic administration has been making unprecedented power grabs from day one. If you hate the left then maybe you should pause to consdier what is about to happen. Hillary is likely to get these powers, unless of course Bush refuses to leave office (which has been attempted in American history mind you).
I guess I probably should have been more specific. I don't want some 3rd party company maintaining a huge whitelist. Nevermind that there is a huge conflict of interests there, it is going to have many of the problems you mentioned. I was thinking more in terms of maintaining the whitelist yourself much the same way all the firewalls pop up "application XYZ wants to access the interent, do you allow it?"
I think I got a different impression from the original post than what you did. To me it sounded like he was saying even application virtualization wasn't enough and the whole system should be virtualized.
I think our entire immigration process is totally fucked. It absolutely should not take so long and so many backflips through flaming hoops to become a citizen. The real problem with illegals isn't that they are here, its that they are here and not paying taxes. I personally believe rather than building a fence, or arming guards, or any silly shit like that...we should just line up IRS workers along the border so they can hand out SSNs. "Welcome to America, here is your SSN, enjoy the services we have to offer, oh...and thank you in advance for paying your taxes."
Remember kids. Illegally entering our country gets you little more than media attention and some rednecks yelling at you. Tax evasion and you are going to jail for a long long time. Enjoy your stay.:)
I honestly haven't decided. I mean the bottom of the ocean sounds nice. Or maybe send them to whatever country of origin the new owner of their SSN came from. I mean its only fair if people are sneaking out of a country that we send SOMEONE back to replace them right? Hell maybe we should send them out on the C Ark Douglas Adams style.
There is still going to be a disturbing amount of overhead involved and things will be considerably more complicated on a number of places as far as transfering information. If it was so simple and so workable it would be much more widespread.
As far as the VM thing yes I am aware that VMware doesnt "freeze". I just chose that word for description of concept. Each vendor has different terms for that behavior. Beyond that I think you made my point PERFECTLY. Reread your paragraph explaining in detail how it works. Now you and I can read it and decypher exactly what is being said and how it works. Now explain that to the average user that is the group that is likely to be affected by these security issues. Users that can read that paragraph and understand it are probably pretty low on the risk factor of getting hit with those kind of problems in the first place.
So, I would be interested to see your comments on the lawfirms that give seminars on how to cheat the system to hire on H1B instead of hiring available local talent. You brush this off like its not a problem because a few Canadian friends of yours weren't part of the masses of cheap labor imported by companies doing illegal things to avoid hiring Americans.
Here is a question for you. What motivation does an American have to become a "highly skilled individual" when the tech sector has become so notorious for importing replacements and using the highly skilled individuals to train them on their way out the door.
Our shining beacon going out has precious little to do with being xenophobic. It has more to do with profit mongering whores doing sheisty things to make an extra buck. Incidentally, you even missed some big ones. Not to destroy your point but I would like to mention the guys like Einstein and Oppenheimer and such weren't here on H1B visas... You want to move here, join society, great, welcome to America, we are glad to have your contributions, you want to come here on a visa and ship your paycheck home, we have plenty of leeches that we can't deal with that are natives, we don't need more.
Personally I would rather take all the illegal immegrants that snuck across our borders and got jobs and are trying to integrate and be productive and give them all of the SSNs of the worthless welfare leeches that aren't immegrants. Then take those leeches and deport their asses instead.
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Maybe that is the problem. The damages from breaking into a corporate computer system is FAR greater than breaking into someone's bedroom. And again, God forbid you exploit a system that actually does have a life or death purpose. Advocating not using computers for anything in the medical field instead of punishing criminal behavior rather than glorifying and rewarding it is just dumb.
And that information is no different than saying things like don't run unneeded services, use a firewall, don't click on unknown programs, and so on. We already have plenty of general security advice that covers most of the bases without needing to hire criminals.
None of those things disprove the existence of God in any way shape or form. Nor have any of them proven that God doesn't do any of that. The difference is that anti-science and anti-religion people both take that shit so literally it is frighting.
"God makes the plants move"
"No he doesn't, wind does"
"God makes the plants move by making the wind blow"
"No he doesn't, rotational forces make the wind blow"
"God makes the plants move by making the wind blow by making the earth spin"
"No he doesn't gravitational forces make the earth move"
and so on and so forth
Personally my view of God as a superior force also includes being able to manage infinitely complex systems. My version of God is more than capable of using evolution, gravity, and all the other things we have observed about reality. The fundamentalist and atheist version of God demands a playdoh wielding child at the helm of creation. I forgive the fundies for this because they make no claim to logic, but the atheists actually claim to be the logical ones and should really see "if God is supposed to be an infinitely powerful and omnipotent force (personification or nonpersonification varies by religion) then he should be capable of doing infinitely complex things". But, nope, fundie and atheist alike demand that God is a simpleton incapable of anything that us humans can't understand at a given moment in time, they just disagree about his existence.
That being said I think it is almost disturbing that you would relate procreation to recursion. Incidentally you left out all the life forms that actually fork to procreate.
So. Where should I send the bill when I break into your house and take pictures of you sleeping? I mean there is work there testing your security (physical security), observing your sleep patterns (doctors get big bucks for this work), and I didn't take anything myself. Oh, and just so you know, I am going to show everyone else how to do the same, so if they do anything nasty to you in your sleep I can't be held liable for that.
I swear to God people need to get over this moronic idea that hiring hackers is a good thing. You are aware that computers run important things now right? Medical devices, manufacturing devices, and all manner of other things. People act like all of these worms and virii and whatnot are just little annoyances to office workers and nothing more. Boy I sure hope you aren't getting a MRI when some jackoff runs an exploit that causes it to do unpredictable things while you are in there. If you get lucky it will only fudge the data causing you to get improper treatment and maybe you will be ok, if you get unlucky it could do damage to you while you are in. I mean after all, the payload was just an annoyance so its ok right?
The skills required for catching or preventing rapists is in high demand. The argument goes that you should hire people who can commit the crime to protect against it. Only a serial rapist would know the details of the how and why of target selection and other important factors involved it commiting the crime. Now when you start hiring serial rapists for high paying jobs to try and catch other rapists, do you think maybe the number of rapes would go up as people try and land a high paying job? It is a dumb freaking idea and is not the way to go about business.
Right... So by that logic it makes sense to hire a rapist to protect your daughter from other rapists right? Hire a criminal to protect against the criminal. I think I would rather pay someone who isn't a rapist for that job.
Devs write something, black hats find holes do lots of damage and make some profit, white hats have to find the black hats using the holes and then fix it. Seems to make more sense to fix the problem at the Devs rather than hiring known criminals. This whole white hat black hat crap is just a convenient way to downplay "you are a fucking criminal, I don't care that you only wanted to see if you could break the hinges on my door and you didn't steal anything".
As for your question...easy...the blame belongs to the guy who walked through those holes. How would you like it when you come home to find your entire family murdered and the cop says "Sorry, you didn't keep your doors locked, your fault." Just because your lock is broken, the door doesn't close, the windows won't latch, whatever, does not make it legal for me to waltz into your home and do as I please. At a bare minimum its trespassing.
Would you care to explain what testable theories have been disproven? Or even describe what a testable theory of God is?
Not really. Look at most movie ratings. They aren't just R. There is the sub part that says WHY they got R. (Violence, Language, Nudity, etc). Ratings certainly are not a panacea, but it is a useful tool to give parents a quick gauge of content. It is still a parents responsibility to screen the content, but why make them waste $60 on Super Mega Happy Fun with the Happy Fun Animal Team game at the store only to bring it home and find that it is actually a japanese furry fetish game. It would be nice to see a "Rated OMFG: You just don't want to see this shit" somewhere on the package. (a bit over the top, but it makes the point more amusing)
You are assuming that "God(s)" are an external force that must interact with the universe to have an effect*. Science is about determining the rules, regulations, and operations of all existance. Science does not invent anything, it discovers things that were previously unobserved. You are assuming that "God(s)" interactions will run counter to previously observed phenomenon. I find a (as best as we can tell) infinite existance adhering to an almost immesurably complex set of rules is FAR more impressive and evidence of "God" than things simply not following those rules. *I personally have beef with the personification of God as some external/individualistic being. We have proven over and over and over that humans externalize and personify damned near everything, but when it comes to God everyone seems to want to scream "But that one really is a person!".
Yeah and the time difference between "I think it works like this" and "See we can prove it now" grows increasingly large the more complex the subject matter. You realize that our understanding of things is still limited by our vantage point in the universe and that we DON'T actually understand all the workings many claim to. Quantum anything is a pretty good example of one of those monkey wrenches of "AHA bitches, and you thought you understood how this works!, Gotcha" The part that is Science is the "Damnit...lets try again a different way".
I would like to offer my sympathy for you now. By having a logical and rational response to a hot button issue you have condemned yourself to ridicule from both sides. Welcome to reality my friend. Judges, lawyers, and courtrooms are more meaningful than mom's, dad's, and livingrooms. God forbid we expect parents to do their job and give them the tools to do so (Rating systems, age limits). Last I checked every gaming console and TV ever produced had a power button, or in the worst case scenario a damned plug. "But waaaa, we can't control what our kids do elsewhere, we want the government to do it" boo freaking hoo...it has been that way since Adam fucked Eve...kids escape the parents eye and kill their brother to make God happy...should we ban the Bible too (ok lets not get too far on that one). The whole damned point is you teach your kids acceptable and unacceptable behavior so that when they ARE outside of your eye you can (reasonably) trust them to (mostly) make the right decision. Its like all these people have totally forgot what it was like growing up.
Science never have and never will prove or disprove God. Science and Religion are entirely separate concepts and the "pro science/anti-religion" crowd is just as arrogant and ignorant as the "pro religion/anti-science crowd". Quite frankly it stuns me that these two groups don't get along better since they share so many traits. Both of these groups rely on an overly simplistic "angry 4yr old with a bucket of playdoh and crayons he used for creation" interpretation of God to prove their point.
I'm just gunna throw this out there...but...do you think...that maybe...just MAYBE...that anything that us humans are capable of figuring out (you know DNA, dark matter, gravity, etc) that "God" probably has a pretty intimate working knowledge of? Quite frankly I think the Anti-religion group are just weak minded anti-scientists trying to blend in with the crowd. To think...once upon a time someone said "I'm still waiting on the slightest shred of evidence that suggest that DNA/Atoms/Cells/etc actually exist".
That having been said maybe you can learn something from Francis S. Collins talking about God and DNA.
Moore/Sheehan are the greatest assets we have in our fight to keep Americans from removing us from our positions.
The primary spokespersons of the anti-Bush movement is clearly a psychopath. Completly batshit crazy. If they were not crazy, and used logical (sounding) conclusions and appealed to reasonable or religious sensibilities they would be MUCH more dangerous to our control than they are.
So we MUST give them lipservice, we must work to keep their illegal, crazy shenanagins in the news, because as long is they are their front-men, we will always win.
There is nothing better than not having to win the debate on merit when you have no merit, you just let your opponent come off as a crazed psychopath while you respond calmly...doesn't matter what is said...the psycho loses.
It amuses me that the slashdot crowd understands this tactics when its about fucking video games, but when its about the real world they march out with the irrational psychos as their heroes and wonder why everyone watching hands everything to their opponents.
I suspect this was actually a case of typing faster than you can think. You minus well admit it now.
First: We aren't talking about competent IT professionals. If everyone was a competent IT professional there wouldn't be such a huge problem with any OS shipping with stupid settings. We are talking about the reality that the vast majority of infections and security issues happen to NON IT professionals and that is why its such a huge issue. Thses are the people that those OSs are obscure. FYI Obscure is relatively unknown, Arcane is known to the initiated...so in this case they mean the same freaking thing.
Second: Macintosh as shorthand for OS/X doesn't make sense on the OS level, or the fact that OS/X is about 5 characters less than Macintosh. Macintosh is ambigious because a Mac (shorthand) generally refers to the physical not the software. I have never heard anyone say "I am running Macintosh", but I have heard "I am running OS/X on a Mac"
Third: Security != Vulnerability. Security is mitigating the effects of the overlap of Vulnerability, Threat, and Capability. The security of a particular system is greatly related to how widespread use it recieves as well as other factors such as technical vulnerabilities and so on. I never said Windows had more technical vulnerabilities because of their large deployment, that would be stupid. But saying that its widespread deployment isn't a huge part of its security problem is just arrogance and ignorance. I suppose next you will tell me because security through obscurity is something that you shouldn't rely on that you should never use security through obscurity in conjunction with other methods. You shouldn't rely on your seatbelt to save you, but you should still wear it because it does add protection on top of airbag, working brakes, paying attention, not being drunk, etc, etc. Security is going to be the sum of things you do, not the absolute value of one thing.
Your response is a prime example that you have no concept of what security is. 1. Linux and FreeBSD are absolutely obscure. They just aren't obscure to the people you know who know about them. The average owner of a zombied machine has no idea what any of those words are. Also Macintosh is not an OS.
2. You are at least marginally right here. Windows being a big target does have nothing to do with its Vulnerability. Linking technical deficiency to popularity IS a logical fallacy. Unfortunately if you have a clue and work in security you would know that Vulnerability is only one part of the equation. Threat (the number of people wanting to exploit) and Capability (their ability to successfully exploit) are the other parts. The overlap between Threat, Vulnerability, and Capability is what determines Security Risk. Windows has a high vulnerability, a high number of threats (everyone wants a piece), and the threats have the capabilities to inflict damage (every skript kidde out there can do it)...huge security risk. Linux/BSD/OSX have lower vulnerabilties (better design), lower number of threats (not a high value target), and lower capabilities (takes more expertise than your average WinSkriptKid to haxor this gibson). My InsecureOS has a high vulnerability, virtual 0 threat (noone knows about it or cares), and virtually 0 capability (even if you did care you have no idea where to begin exploiting). My InsecureOS is a lower risk factor than even Linux/BSD/OSX. 3. Any denial of the "Big Target" argument falls directly into the hands of people who don't understand security and should never work in the security field. They are just $OS_of_choice zealots that can't see past their own upturned nose to understand the reality of things.
So I suppose you are telling me that the market penetration has nothing to do with them being a juicy target? Ok...sure... Lets you and I go wrangle up some botnets, you only get to target BSD and I only get to target Windows and then we will DDoS eachother until someone loses all their bots. To make it fair lets go ahead and assume you have root logins on all the BSD boxes so you don't even have to exploit them, so now you can't make argument that its hard for you because BSD is more secure.
Windows is indeed defective by design, but a massive botnet of linux/solaris/bsd whatevers would be pretty damned worthless in comparison. In the meantime the monstrosity that Storm has become could DDoS most of them out of existance while still sending millions of make my penis bigger spams a day, and still have enough left over to extort money from pay sites and small countries by threatening attacks.
The argument that the only reason Windows suffers more because of their domination is flawed. But fools like you saying the market penetration has nothing to do with it just make that argument look stupid. By the way, I have my own InsecureOS that I'm writing, would you care to tell me why there are no exploits in the wild for it?
Aaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaaaahahaha.. Ok...So...Google is this vast happy protect the people group. Certainly explains the censorship issues in China right? As far as requires users' trust... "You wouldn't use Google Mail if you knew Google would sell you up the river for nothing." = "Google needs you to trust them and use Google Mail so they are the most profitable information salesmen to the powers that be, in order to acheive this they must convince their users that they actually aren't using their vast computing power on their secret campus to archives, sort, search, and categorize all your emails and sell the reports to the highest bidding 3 letter organization". Look I don't think (at least I hope) they aren't doing this, but uhm...its horribly profitable so long as they don't get caught and convince users they are potecting their privacy (after searching all their emails for keywords). They are a public company now, stock prices and all, shareholders interests...
I might add that while data storage has gotten cheap...why would they give you 1GB of free email storage unless they wanted you to store 1GB of email so they could sift through it with their search functions to gather valuable data, be it market data, personal data, or whatever. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Oh come off it. Look, I think its a little jacked up that so many things get tied up like this, however, if the original author wants it to be handled differently that is what a will is for. So when a parent dies who owns a business all the people off the street should be able to walk in and take whatever they want instead of the ownership of that business transfering? Please...this extremist view is just getting tired and only encourages the people with the power to fix things to not listen to such lunacy.
Now in this case...and in many others...the estate funds various prizes and educational funds and whatnot. So "waaa I want a free book instead of paying a dead author" is even less impressive when those funds are going to maintain worthwhile charitable causes. This is not the same as the Disney empire by a LONG stretch. And as has been otherwise noted, quit bitching and go support your local library, because once again, "waa I want a free book isntead of paying ad ead author" also hurts your local tax funded library when they can't show that people actually come to read the books.
No. Go look at the vote record. All of the Nays...Republican (Except for Leiberman but I swear to God anyone who thinks that assclown is anything but a Republican lapdog needs their head examined). Yays are predominately Democrat with a few Republicans. What that should tell you is that the Republicans in congress are going to do everything they can to continue their PNAC agenda. Remember these clowns worship Machiavelli and "the ends justify the means".
Love or hate the left, you can't look away from the fact that this psychotic administration has been making unprecedented power grabs from day one. If you hate the left then maybe you should pause to consdier what is about to happen. Hillary is likely to get these powers, unless of course Bush refuses to leave office (which has been attempted in American history mind you).
I guess I probably should have been more specific. I don't want some 3rd party company maintaining a huge whitelist. Nevermind that there is a huge conflict of interests there, it is going to have many of the problems you mentioned. I was thinking more in terms of maintaining the whitelist yourself much the same way all the firewalls pop up "application XYZ wants to access the interent, do you allow it?"
I think I got a different impression from the original post than what you did. To me it sounded like he was saying even application virtualization wasn't enough and the whole system should be virtualized.
I think our entire immigration process is totally fucked. It absolutely should not take so long and so many backflips through flaming hoops to become a citizen. The real problem with illegals isn't that they are here, its that they are here and not paying taxes. I personally believe rather than building a fence, or arming guards, or any silly shit like that...we should just line up IRS workers along the border so they can hand out SSNs. "Welcome to America, here is your SSN, enjoy the services we have to offer, oh...and thank you in advance for paying your taxes."
:)
Remember kids. Illegally entering our country gets you little more than media attention and some rednecks yelling at you. Tax evasion and you are going to jail for a long long time. Enjoy your stay.
I honestly haven't decided. I mean the bottom of the ocean sounds nice. Or maybe send them to whatever country of origin the new owner of their SSN came from. I mean its only fair if people are sneaking out of a country that we send SOMEONE back to replace them right? Hell maybe we should send them out on the C Ark Douglas Adams style.
There is still going to be a disturbing amount of overhead involved and things will be considerably more complicated on a number of places as far as transfering information. If it was so simple and so workable it would be much more widespread.
As far as the VM thing yes I am aware that VMware doesnt "freeze". I just chose that word for description of concept. Each vendor has different terms for that behavior. Beyond that I think you made my point PERFECTLY. Reread your paragraph explaining in detail how it works. Now you and I can read it and decypher exactly what is being said and how it works. Now explain that to the average user that is the group that is likely to be affected by these security issues. Users that can read that paragraph and understand it are probably pretty low on the risk factor of getting hit with those kind of problems in the first place.
So, I would be interested to see your comments on the lawfirms that give seminars on how to cheat the system to hire on H1B instead of hiring available local talent. You brush this off like its not a problem because a few Canadian friends of yours weren't part of the masses of cheap labor imported by companies doing illegal things to avoid hiring Americans.
Here is a question for you. What motivation does an American have to become a "highly skilled individual" when the tech sector has become so notorious for importing replacements and using the highly skilled individuals to train them on their way out the door.
Our shining beacon going out has precious little to do with being xenophobic. It has more to do with profit mongering whores doing sheisty things to make an extra buck. Incidentally, you even missed some big ones. Not to destroy your point but I would like to mention the guys like Einstein and Oppenheimer and such weren't here on H1B visas... You want to move here, join society, great, welcome to America, we are glad to have your contributions, you want to come here on a visa and ship your paycheck home, we have plenty of leeches that we can't deal with that are natives, we don't need more.
Personally I would rather take all the illegal immegrants that snuck across our borders and got jobs and are trying to integrate and be productive and give them all of the SSNs of the worthless welfare leeches that aren't immegrants. Then take those leeches and deport their asses instead.