"It's because there aren't many OS X machines.
Bogus. 4% might be a small percentage, but there are tens of millions of Macs out there. Not only that, Apple users tend to be smug and Apple itself puts out a constant vibe of superiority, plus a very visible chain of elitist boutique retail stores. Is there not a hacker on Earth motivated to take down those arrogant Mac users?
On top of that, with millions of OS X machines out there, the number of self-propagating viruses in the wild should be greater than zero. But the number is actually zero.
Surely something more than "security through obscurity" is at work here.
I keep seeing the same back-and-forth here on Slashdot about whether the numbers of users make a target more enticing to malicious hackers. What I'd like to know is whether anyone has analyzed the situation using the same approach that an epidemiologist would apply to a biological epidemic. Isn't it true that one can, to a certain extent, abstract away from the virulence of the attacker and the vulnerability of the target and instead talk about the impact of population size and density on the rate and extent of spread?
Maybe Mac users are too sparsely distributed for hackers to make a big bang. I'm not suggesting that the quality of the OS has nothing to do with it, but I think if I wanted to spread a real virus, I would target densely-populated cities and not the countryside.
I guess you could sum up my question this way: does the density and not just the numbers of users matter to malicious hackers?
From TFA (emphasis added):
"We propose a new test statistic based on a score process for determining the statistical significance of a putative signal that may be a small perturbation to a noisy experimental background.... We illustrate the technique in the context of a model problem from high-energy particle physics. Monte Carlo experimental results confirm that the score test results in a significantly improved rate of signal detection."
Monte Carlo experimental results? So much for the betterment of mankind! These guys are just out to make a killing at the roulette table!
I have to add that I was a spectator at one of these jousting events last year in NYC. One match-up left the two participants flat on the ground, both unconscious.
A few minutes later I overheard the following conversation between one of the event organizers and an ambulance medic:
To my mind, this move speaks volumes about Microsoft's contempt for its customers. What about all the Windows users who get their email from a Unix/Linux server? Microsoft would rather try to force more sales of their server software than help protect its existing customers.
This may be a stupid question (I'm not familiar with software licenses), but what is meant by a "file-based" license? Does that mean that a developer can incorporate CDDL code into his software, but only if he incorporates it in file-sized chunks? Or can he use snippets of code and put them into his files?
If you use a macro called extendedPDF (IIRC), you can convert hyperlinks to pdf bookmarks, tinker with the way the document is displayed, control the degree of compression and so forth. I'm not familiar with PDFCreator, but that degree of customization is generally not available with "print to ghostscript" pdf drivers.
I think the extendedpdf macro is supposed to be built into OO 2.0.
I agree. I tried Knoppix and a couple of other live CD's when I first got my laptop. The computer usually seized up while booting. If I started with just the right command-line options, I could get it to boot into X, but then I couldn't get any programs other than konqueror and x-term to work.
I gave up a couple of times. Luckily, I am obstinate and like to tinker and eventually installed Gentoo.
Yet another mediocre, middle-of-the-road, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand journalist trying to tell us how we should think. Heaven forbid people should get passionate about something. Heaven forbid he should ever have to come down on one side or the other. No, that would risk pissing off either the Mac-related or Windows-related advertisers. Presumably he's leaving Linux and BSD out of this equation because they don't place many ads.
Criticizing Microsoft for its market dominance is off the table! We should just focus on the gadgets and forget political issues like Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly status. Nope, can't criticize Microsoft for putting insecure machines in thousands of homes, diminishing the internet for everyone. Gotta get our thoughts in line with our overlords.
We're not supposed to comment on something until we've tried it. I guess I'll just have to stop advising friends until I've tried every last piece of equipment. Gotta keep those newspaper advertisers happy -- tell the masses to buy, buy, buy or shut up. (I am confused about one thing though -- if I'm not supposed to draw conclusions without trying something, why should I bother reading tech reviews?)
Schools shouldn't buy Windows becuase its what their students will encounter in the workplace. Seems like a pretty good reason to me, especially since not all students are in kindergarten -- some of them are on the verge of graduating into the job market. But I guess I must be wrong.
How do idiots like this presume to tell people how to think?
The PGP issue gets little discussion (probably because it was so obvious, to anyone with legal training, what was the right decision). This is the fullest discussion:
"Finally, Schaub testified that, in a file entitled "research," he found the text of Minn. Stat. 617.246, which included "the definition of minor sexual performance, sexual conduct, things of that nature." He also testified that he found an encryption program, PGP, on appellant's computer; PGP "can basically encrypt any file;" and, "other than the National Security Agency," he was not aware of anyone who could break such an encryption. But Schaub also admitted that the PGP program may be included on every Macintosh computer that comes out today, and appellant may have had the text of Minn. Stat. 617.246 in his computer because of prior allegations against him."
In other words, the jury was told both that he had PGP encryption on his system, but that lots of other people do too. PGP was just a small piece of the mass of evidence against this guy and I see no reason to suppose that the jury (or the judge, if this was a bench trial) was unduly swayed by that fact.
As many others have pointed out, this decision in no way makes possession of pgp software into slam-dunk evidence of criminality. There are lots of legitimate reasons to rent a boat, for instance, but if I rent a boat just before an enemy's body is found at the bottom of a lake, then that otherwise innocent act might be good evidence.
This is not a prison (where most, if not all, detainees are convicts). It's a county jail. True, some of the inmates will be doing time for relatively minor offenses (making it questionnable whether they should be subjected to this level of scrutiny). But many detainees in county jails are awaiting trial (that is, presumed innocent). Here in NYC the city government locked people up for protesting the Republican convention last year and for meeting in a local park to go on a bike ride. How many basically decent people have spent a night in jail because of a barroom fight, a drunken driving arrest or college shenanigans?
I think a lot of the discussion about whether companies are good or evil is just misplaced. Even businesspeople with good intentions are subject to market pressures that might send them to the dark side. What matters is whether a single company or group of companies gets so much control that it calls the shots. Playing Stalin off against Hitler is one way to ensure that neither gets a dominent position.
"Odd that when this argument is used to justify police searches, we have people screaming rights violations."
Oh brother. The Diebold machines are being used for public elections that are held, supposedly, for the benefit of the public, not of Diebold. All that's needed here is for the governments involved to insist that Diebold release its source code as a condition of the purchase of its machines. Diebold could then protect its "rights" by withdrawing its machines from the market. (I put rights in quotation marks because you seem to think Diebold has some constitutional right at issue here and I'd like to know what you think it is.) This has nothing to do with the police battering down your door because no one compelled Diebold to get into the voting machine market. If they can't do what it takes to ensure the public trust (a key component of elections) then maybe they should stick to some area where they have competence.
Maybe you're being misled by the title of Stallman's piece, The Java Trap. I don't think he's arguing that people should stop using Java altogether. (If that were the case, why would the GNU Classpath and GCC Java compiler projects exist?)
He's arguing that those who use Java should try to stick with functionality that's available in the free (in Stallman's sense of the word) implementations of Java.
It seems like a perfectly reasonable point of view to me.
I wouldn't be so certain that the difficulties of enforcement have anything to do with the fact that the software is open source. It's always difficult to prosecute fly-by-night scumbags.
Having ready access to sources may make it easier for the scumbags to rip people off, but it also makes it easier to track what's happened (as demonstrated in TFA).
It's true that a large company whose proprietary software is being ripped off might be able to deliver a world of pain to the perpretrators. But litigation is expensive, even for big companies and I doubt they would press for further penalties if they could shut down the perpetrator with exposure and the threat of a lawsuit.
I think it depends on how the interview was conducted. If this took place in person or over-the-phone or (more likely) through an online chat, then I think it's better journalism to have an exact transcript.
So there is quality control being done, but it's being done by the distributions. I'm not familiar with commercial software companies, but wouldn't you see the same sort of division of labor there? (That is, some people good at coding and others at putting the code through its paces?) The same thing (I would argue) is going on, but in a more distributed and arbuably more transparent manner.
"They're becoming a business competing with other businesses, and that doesn't grant much moral high ground."
Are they really becoming "a business," i.e., a single monolithic entity? I thought many of the people involved in open source software were competing with each other.
Besides, this is about more than the motivations of the individual players. You have to look at the broader framework to decide which model is better. After all, people are selfish in both capitalist and communist systems, in both free-speech regimes and closed-speech systems. The question is which system leads to the better result given the basic human clay.
I don't have any problem with dispensing with moralizing, but I do think it's perinent to ask which leads to the greater dissemination of knowledge -- closed or open software?
This reminds of when I was office temping 5 or 6 years ago. The temp agency had a job for me, but warned that the client insisted on good excel skills. Not only did the client (a major newspaper publisher) need someone skilled in excel, they needed someone who knew the latest version of excel. (It was my experience that temp agencies do ask what version of a product you've used, for reasons that escape me.)
So I get to the job worried that my minimal excel skills might not be up to snuff. My new supervisor showed me how she entered figures into a column of cells. Then she said, "And now we add up the figures and put the total at the bottom." With that, she opened the drawer of her desk, pulled out a calculator, and added up the figures by hand.
Since then, I haven't had much respect for so-called job-requirements or interviews. But I was able to wow my temp employer by explaining some of the "advanced" features of the "latest" excel.
You speak as if "Open Source" (or "OSS") is the type of monolithic entity that is capable of having a monopoly. I think you're being beguiled by words (or an acronym, in this case).
By analogy, if it turned out that small-businesses were taking market share from mega-corporations, would you say that "small businesses are starting to form a monopoly"?
I haven't used XP or itunes in months, but I remember thinking that itunes was the best mp3player/organizer I could find. I thought Microsoft's WMP was just horrible from a usability standpoint, with menu options splattered all over the place, hiding behind inconsistent buttons, some at the top, some at the bottom, etc. I suppose I just got used to the clicking behavior you're talking about, because I don't even remember it.
I think something like this is already happening in the literary world, where it seems there have been several outings of plagiarists lately. Software that was originally designed to allow teachers to check their students' work for plagiarism will probably be pressed into service to analyze written works. Meanwhile, people like Google are busy digitizing the world's written works, making the effort all the easier. I expect to see some reputations topple in the coming years.
Acer sells its laptops in Taiwan with a version of Linux called Linpus. But Acer laptops in America (and Europe too, I believe) are strictly windows. I wrote to Acer North America asking if I could get a copy of Linpus, but never got a reply.
In any event, your main point is still probably correct -- Lenova may offer linux machines in China (thus adding to the linux juggernaut), even if we don't see the benefit in North America.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's because there aren't many OS X machines. Bogus. 4% might be a small percentage, but there are tens of millions of Macs out there. Not only that, Apple users tend to be smug and Apple itself puts out a constant vibe of superiority, plus a very visible chain of elitist boutique retail stores. Is there not a hacker on Earth motivated to take down those arrogant Mac users?
On top of that, with millions of OS X machines out there, the number of self-propagating viruses in the wild should be greater than zero. But the number is actually zero. Surely something more than "security through obscurity" is at work here.
I keep seeing the same back-and-forth here on Slashdot about whether the numbers of users make a target more enticing to malicious hackers. What I'd like to know is whether anyone has analyzed the situation using the same approach that an epidemiologist would apply to a biological epidemic. Isn't it true that one can, to a certain extent, abstract away from the virulence of the attacker and the vulnerability of the target and instead talk about the impact of population size and density on the rate and extent of spread?
Maybe Mac users are too sparsely distributed for hackers to make a big bang. I'm not suggesting that the quality of the OS has nothing to do with it, but I think if I wanted to spread a real virus, I would target densely-populated cities and not the countryside.
I guess you could sum up my question this way: does the density and not just the numbers of users matter to malicious hackers?
From TFA (emphasis added): "We propose a new test statistic based on a score process for determining the statistical significance of a putative signal that may be a small perturbation to a noisy experimental background.... We illustrate the technique in the context of a model problem from high-energy particle physics. Monte Carlo experimental results confirm that the score test results in a significantly improved rate of signal detection." Monte Carlo experimental results? So much for the betterment of mankind! These guys are just out to make a killing at the roulette table!
A few minutes later I overheard the following conversation between one of the event organizers and an ambulance medic:
Medic: OK, what happened here?
Organizer: Well, they were jousting and....
Medic: Jousting? Did you say jousting?
Perhaps because it's been done already:
http://dclxvi.org/chunk/operations/chunk/image/hir es/joust150.jpg
To my mind, this move speaks volumes about Microsoft's contempt for its customers. What about all the Windows users who get their email from a Unix/Linux server? Microsoft would rather try to force more sales of their server software than help protect its existing customers.
This may be a stupid question (I'm not familiar with software licenses), but what is meant by a "file-based" license? Does that mean that a developer can incorporate CDDL code into his software, but only if he incorporates it in file-sized chunks? Or can he use snippets of code and put them into his files?
If you use a macro called extendedPDF (IIRC), you can convert hyperlinks to pdf bookmarks, tinker with the way the document is displayed, control the degree of compression and so forth. I'm not familiar with PDFCreator, but that degree of customization is generally not available with "print to ghostscript" pdf drivers. I think the extendedpdf macro is supposed to be built into OO 2.0.
I agree. I tried Knoppix and a couple of other live CD's when I first got my laptop. The computer usually seized up while booting. If I started with just the right command-line options, I could get it to boot into X, but then I couldn't get any programs other than konqueror and x-term to work. I gave up a couple of times. Luckily, I am obstinate and like to tinker and eventually installed Gentoo.
http://ichikawa.blogspot.com/2005/05/texas-bans-ma rriage.html
Criticizing Microsoft for its market dominance is off the table! We should just focus on the gadgets and forget political issues like Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly status. Nope, can't criticize Microsoft for putting insecure machines in thousands of homes, diminishing the internet for everyone. Gotta get our thoughts in line with our overlords.
We're not supposed to comment on something until we've tried it. I guess I'll just have to stop advising friends until I've tried every last piece of equipment. Gotta keep those newspaper advertisers happy -- tell the masses to buy, buy, buy or shut up. (I am confused about one thing though -- if I'm not supposed to draw conclusions without trying something, why should I bother reading tech reviews?)
Schools shouldn't buy Windows becuase its what their students will encounter in the workplace. Seems like a pretty good reason to me, especially since not all students are in kindergarten -- some of them are on the verge of graduating into the job market. But I guess I must be wrong.
How do idiots like this presume to tell people how to think?
http://www.minnlawyer.com/opinions/050509/a04381.h tm
The PGP issue gets little discussion (probably because it was so obvious, to anyone with legal training, what was the right decision). This is the fullest discussion:
"Finally, Schaub testified that, in a file entitled "research," he found the text of Minn. Stat. 617.246, which included "the definition of minor sexual performance, sexual conduct, things of that nature." He also testified that he found an encryption program, PGP, on appellant's computer; PGP "can basically encrypt any file;" and, "other than the National Security Agency," he was not aware of anyone who could break such an encryption. But Schaub also admitted that the PGP program may be included on every Macintosh computer that comes out today, and appellant may have had the text of Minn. Stat. 617.246 in his computer because of prior allegations against him."
In other words, the jury was told both that he had PGP encryption on his system, but that lots of other people do too. PGP was just a small piece of the mass of evidence against this guy and I see no reason to suppose that the jury (or the judge, if this was a bench trial) was unduly swayed by that fact.
As many others have pointed out, this decision in no way makes possession of pgp software into slam-dunk evidence of criminality. There are lots of legitimate reasons to rent a boat, for instance, but if I rent a boat just before an enemy's body is found at the bottom of a lake, then that otherwise innocent act might be good evidence.
This is not a prison (where most, if not all, detainees are convicts). It's a county jail. True, some of the inmates will be doing time for relatively minor offenses (making it questionnable whether they should be subjected to this level of scrutiny). But many detainees in county jails are awaiting trial (that is, presumed innocent). Here in NYC the city government locked people up for protesting the Republican convention last year and for meeting in a local park to go on a bike ride. How many basically decent people have spent a night in jail because of a barroom fight, a drunken driving arrest or college shenanigans?
I think a lot of the discussion about whether companies are good or evil is just misplaced. Even businesspeople with good intentions are subject to market pressures that might send them to the dark side. What matters is whether a single company or group of companies gets so much control that it calls the shots. Playing Stalin off against Hitler is one way to ensure that neither gets a dominent position.
Oh brother. The Diebold machines are being used for public elections that are held, supposedly, for the benefit of the public, not of Diebold. All that's needed here is for the governments involved to insist that Diebold release its source code as a condition of the purchase of its machines. Diebold could then protect its "rights" by withdrawing its machines from the market. (I put rights in quotation marks because you seem to think Diebold has some constitutional right at issue here and I'd like to know what you think it is.) This has nothing to do with the police battering down your door because no one compelled Diebold to get into the voting machine market. If they can't do what it takes to ensure the public trust (a key component of elections) then maybe they should stick to some area where they have competence.
He's arguing that those who use Java should try to stick with functionality that's available in the free (in Stallman's sense of the word) implementations of Java.
It seems like a perfectly reasonable point of view to me.
I wouldn't be so certain that the difficulties of enforcement have anything to do with the fact that the software is open source. It's always difficult to prosecute fly-by-night scumbags. Having ready access to sources may make it easier for the scumbags to rip people off, but it also makes it easier to track what's happened (as demonstrated in TFA). It's true that a large company whose proprietary software is being ripped off might be able to deliver a world of pain to the perpretrators. But litigation is expensive, even for big companies and I doubt they would press for further penalties if they could shut down the perpetrator with exposure and the threat of a lawsuit.
I think it depends on how the interview was conducted. If this took place in person or over-the-phone or (more likely) through an online chat, then I think it's better journalism to have an exact transcript.
So there is quality control being done, but it's being done by the distributions. I'm not familiar with commercial software companies, but wouldn't you see the same sort of division of labor there? (That is, some people good at coding and others at putting the code through its paces?) The same thing (I would argue) is going on, but in a more distributed and arbuably more transparent manner.
Are they really becoming "a business," i.e., a single monolithic entity? I thought many of the people involved in open source software were competing with each other. Besides, this is about more than the motivations of the individual players. You have to look at the broader framework to decide which model is better. After all, people are selfish in both capitalist and communist systems, in both free-speech regimes and closed-speech systems. The question is which system leads to the better result given the basic human clay.
I don't have any problem with dispensing with moralizing, but I do think it's perinent to ask which leads to the greater dissemination of knowledge -- closed or open software?
This reminds of when I was office temping 5 or 6 years ago. The temp agency had a job for me, but warned that the client insisted on good excel skills. Not only did the client (a major newspaper publisher) need someone skilled in excel, they needed someone who knew the latest version of excel. (It was my experience that temp agencies do ask what version of a product you've used, for reasons that escape me.) So I get to the job worried that my minimal excel skills might not be up to snuff. My new supervisor showed me how she entered figures into a column of cells. Then she said, "And now we add up the figures and put the total at the bottom." With that, she opened the drawer of her desk, pulled out a calculator, and added up the figures by hand. Since then, I haven't had much respect for so-called job-requirements or interviews. But I was able to wow my temp employer by explaining some of the "advanced" features of the "latest" excel.
You speak as if "Open Source" (or "OSS") is the type of monolithic entity that is capable of having a monopoly. I think you're being beguiled by words (or an acronym, in this case). By analogy, if it turned out that small-businesses were taking market share from mega-corporations, would you say that "small businesses are starting to form a monopoly"?
I haven't used XP or itunes in months, but I remember thinking that itunes was the best mp3player/organizer I could find. I thought Microsoft's WMP was just horrible from a usability standpoint, with menu options splattered all over the place, hiding behind inconsistent buttons, some at the top, some at the bottom, etc. I suppose I just got used to the clicking behavior you're talking about, because I don't even remember it.
I think something like this is already happening in the literary world, where it seems there have been several outings of plagiarists lately. Software that was originally designed to allow teachers to check their students' work for plagiarism will probably be pressed into service to analyze written works. Meanwhile, people like Google are busy digitizing the world's written works, making the effort all the easier. I expect to see some reputations topple in the coming years.
Acer sells its laptops in Taiwan with a version of Linux called Linpus. But Acer laptops in America (and Europe too, I believe) are strictly windows. I wrote to Acer North America asking if I could get a copy of Linpus, but never got a reply. In any event, your main point is still probably correct -- Lenova may offer linux machines in China (thus adding to the linux juggernaut), even if we don't see the benefit in North America.
Yet another reason to move to Canada....