Since iOS and Android seem about diametrically opposed on this front, you can compare that there are a total of 4 models of iPhone -- iPhone, iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs, iPhone 4.
And a few generations of iPod touch as well... and the iPads. Ok... so more like a total of 8 or 9 models... of ios device...
When Apple releases an update to iOS (eg the new 4.2.1), it applies to all phones except the original iPhone.
And the original ipod touch.
(which is now just shy of 4 years old)
It was launched almost 4 years ago, it wasn't DISCONTINUED almost 4 years ago.)
Given most people had to sign a 3 year contract to get one there are lots of original models still in use. There are lots of original models STILL UNDER CONTRACT.
But the really silly thing is comparing Androids fragmentation to apple's going it alone with ios and concluding that the fragmentation is somehow a disadvantage. If each of 20 vendors write their own operating system from the ground up the way apple did, would that be somehow better??
If 20 manufacturers did what apple did, we'd have 20 distinct operating systems. 20 incompatible app stores. 20 different development framekworks. Seriously. The fact that 19 out of 20 vendors chose to build on common foundations is a godsend, even if there is some variation between implementations.
Thank god we don't have 20 apples. One is quite enough.
If there was more brutal honesty there would be fewer conflicts. If the brutal honest truth about various situations were known we wouldn't be involved in them in the first place.
The only reason this is 'damaging' is being people/countries are behaving like complete assholes because they think they can get away with it. Shine the light on them, and they'll shape up.
If country X is playing dirty and country Y is playing clean, then country Y has nothing to fear from this sort of exposure. The problem is EVERYONE is playing dirty ALL THE TIME. We need a hell of a lot more light being shone into this crap.
Perhaps governments should behave lawfully, if they did, they'd have nothing to hide.... hmmm... why does that sound eerily familiar...
On the PC front, you also seem to have forgotten DVI, which I'd warrant is a lot more common than HDMI.
I didn't forget it but I don't think I've ever seen a DVI laptop that didn't either come with the vga adapter in the box or in many cases had the vga connector in addition to the dvi connector right on the laptop.
I wouldn't complain about mac's forays into obscure high performance connectors if they had provided a VGA to fall back on. But they didn't.
There was also the short-lived ADC...
ADC right. That's the proprietary apple crap I referred to.
Umm, Apple have used VGA and then DVI and then Mini DisplayPort for video interfaces in the past 10 years. They had mini versions of these connectors, for which you were also given the necessary dongle to upsize it to the standard version of the interface.
mini-vga and mini-dvi and mini-displayport... when was the last time you went anywhere and were able to use any of those connections without an adapter that you brought yourself?
Every conference room projector and big screen tv I've ever hooked my laptop to provides: VGA, sometimes DVI, and sometimes HDMI.
Not once has there ever been a mini-displayport or mini-vga or mini-dvi or adc ready to go.
To make things worse, by current macbook pro has mini-displayport. My wifes which is a year older is mini-dvi... we have a stupid number of adaptors.
for which you were also given the necessary dongle to upsize it to the standard version of the interface.
Neither of my previous two macs came with the necessary dongle to upsize it to anything. My previous was mini-dvi. My current is mini-displayport.
The biggest fail there is that my main monitor, an HP has displayport capability.. you couldn't actually buy a mini-displayport to full-size displayport adapter from anybody... including apple, for the first 6 months or so that I had my mini-displayport equipped laptop. And the mini-displayport to hdmi adaptor? Apple didn't include it in the box. They were charging $75 for it. And that's just video... no audio support.
I have to disagree with you on the OSX claim. Most of the Mac users I know are far more clueless that their Windows-using counterparts regarding security,...
Fair comment, I agree there is absolutely a camp of clueless mac users out there who are grossly overconfident of their immunity. But I still think the mac userbase is skewed away from a few particularly malware vulnerable demographics.
Warez in particular is still primarily a windows demographic, and that's one of the EASIEST vectors to get malware into systems. You have people literally actively downloading and running the stuff as fast as they can click on keygenz, crackz, etc.
Will lightpeak be able to power my external hard drive? Will it charge my HD video camera while I pull video off it? Is it easily adaptable to HDMI? My new TV doesn't have a lightpeak port, and I'm not interested in buying another tv to get one.
I can hdmi cables for under $10. How long before lightpeak cables are that cheap?
DisplayPort is fine and all, but the adaptor to connect my macbook to my tv cost a small fortune, and it uses the headphone jack for optical audio, the displayport for video, and the usb port to power the adapter that converts it all to hdmi. A good PC laptop comes with an HDMI port... which just works with external equipment.
Hey apple, I'm onboard with modernizing connectors and letting the legacy fall away. Your switch to USB was welcome (although your awfully stingy with ports.)
But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection. PCs are going from VGA to HDMI. That makes sense. Macs... started with some apple proprietary garbage, to mini dvi, to mini displayport, and now on to light peak... 4 separate connectors in the same period of time, while managing to bypass anything that anyone actually uses for anything else.
They aren't choosing the scanners because its less objectionable. They are choosing the scanners because its the path of least resistance.
They have to actively select the pat down, and in a lot of peoples minds they are (rightly!) self selecting themselves as 'troublemaker' / 'protestor' / 'suspicious'... and basically painting a red flag saying "single me out for some harrassment please".
People are just going along with whatever the TSA directs them at because, above everything else, they don't want to be noticed.
For example, if the enhanced pat downs were the default, and you could ask for the x-ray scanner. Nearly everyone would take the enhanced pat downs... asking for the scanner would be 'single me out for special attention' method... and nobody wants that.
Why the fuck do I need a firewall at all? Seriously.
Layered defense. No software is perfect. In theory a computer doesn't need a firewall.
However in a world without NAT and firewalls, you plug your computer in an share folder with your lan, its available in korea too, assuming your lan is routed.
This is this the primary purpose of a firewall. To enforce connection policy. So that you can have connectivity with specific computers without exposing the service to entire world.
The secondary purpose is layered defense. If it turns out your file sharing service has an unpatched defect, its a lot better if the service can only be reached from your lan than the entire world.
That is a much smaller attack surface. Users of the lan can attack that service directly, everyone else have to beat the firewall first.
All software has unpatched defects. So a layered defense to mitigate risk just makes sense. And its a LOT easier to validate a firewall than to validate every network service you might ever install/use. Once the bugs have been shaken out of the firewall software, it will provide good protection even if the software behind it is defective.
How much money can you make by compromising the computer of millions of home users, so you can send billions of spam mail hoping a few thousand idiots will give you some credit card information...
Quite a bit of money by all accounts. And the fruit is low hanging, you cast your net wide, and just take what comes.
Now how much money can you make by compromising a big company's server (a market segment dominated by linux) to steal some industrial secrets and sell that to competitors?
Maybe a lot. Maybe not much. Lets say I gave you the blueprints to an upcoming Boeing product. You have a buyer for that? You think airbus is really going to deposit some money into a swiss bank account... ??
And if you actually steal anything REALLY valuable; you'll attract real attention.
I doubt any serious companies would use a windows machine as a router / firewall to protect it's network. what we can see is that about 99% of all the firewalls installed in the internet to protect windows machines from the outside world are running linux...
I also doubt any major coporations store their industrial secrets on the linux router. So even if you compromise it undetected, you are just one step towards your goal. Then you penetrate another layer and all you've got for your time is access to the department that overseeing developing a commercial, and coordinating some marketing material. Then you crack the department that is handling channell distribution... and you maybe get a few random supplier pricelists, maybe a few clients that are being courted, the fact that one of the resllers is complaining about the returns/restock policies.
You might eventually hit paydirt. You might not. All the while you'll be wondering why you aren't harvesting credit card numbers from idiots. Sure you only make a few bucks a head... but you'd have sweet thousand bucks already, instead of sweet fuck all.
---------------
As a second independant response...
The reason we know about malware is that it gets in our face, slows us to a crawl, and hits millions of people. The rootkits are widely deployed, and rapidly are deconstructed by security researchers.
Whose to say people aren't successfully conducting industrial espionage?
If I were in that game I'd take a contract to steal X, rather than randomly steal something and hope to find a buyer. No point in going to the trouble to get the goods without a buyer lined up.
It would be a silent penentration; a silent exit, and I'd wipe out a many traces that I'd been there.
The odds symantec/mcafee will ever get a copy of the exploits I use are pretty much zilch. Assuming the intrusion is even detected the odds the companies will talk about it publicly is pretty much zilch.
Its not a case of malware targeting windows and people targeting industrial secrets... both can co-exist. But the fact remains that you would hear a lot about the former and nothing about the latter.
Although to be fair... I expect it will usually be cheaper and simpler to just bribe/blackmail somebody who works for the company... or send someone to apply for a job with the company and be an insider.
And that, my friend, is why I find the contention that 'Linux and Mac OS will be just as bad when they get popular' to be inane, misleading and, frankly, intellectually lazy.
Just because I didn't elaborate doesn't mean I haven't thought about it.
Personally, I'm pretty confident that the majority of malware infections are PEBKAC.
Drive by / remote exploit malware certainly do exist out there, but its not THAT prevalent. You can go months, even years using a Windows PC without an infection with just windows firewall, and keeping your PC up to date. I've done it. Countless others have too.
The clusterfucks of malware ridden pcs that some people routinely turn their computers into are, in my opinion primarily at least initially installed by the end user. They fall for the social engineering, go for the shiny offer, and escalate the installer so that it can have its way with the PC and bring all its friends...
You make osx or even linux the dominant OS, where all that social engineering, and shiny crapware will start targeting OSX and linux. The same users who try to install the britney spears naked screensaver will click on the brintey_spears_naked.dmg and enter their computer password in os x.
Right now its not worth it for that class of malware writers to do it today. So britney_spears_naked_screensave.dmg malware isn't constantly thrown in your face. Its simple economics.
a) First, OSX and Linux combined is still single digit marketshare. Right out of the gate, Windows is where the ROI is.
b) Second, what little marketshare OSX and Linux have are disproportionately more sophisticated users that won't fall for the bullshit anyway.
If you are likely to be sucked in by malware bullshit then you are likely ignorant, unsophisticated when it comes to computers... and you walk into a BestBuy or Walmart... you are exactly the demographic being targeted by malware, and you'll walk out with a windows PC.
Move all --those-- people onto linux or OSX and I have no doubt the malware will follow them, and they'll happily install it.
What I'm seeing in these articles are simply lies.
A woman says "I took the scanner, because I was even more unfomfortable with the enhanced pat down" and that's spun as supporting scanners. That's a bald faced lie.
Another woman says "I took the scanner, because I thought if I opted out I would look suspicious, and I just want to get through without a hassle", and that's spun as "not being against scanners"...
For my part, I'd submit to get onto a plane too. My last flight was part of a $5000 vacation package. If my wife and I are not on the plane, its not like we get the money back. I want to enjoy my vacation, and not watch $5k go up in smoke to make a point at the airport.
Bottom line, you can't look at how much resistance you actually see at airports. Its a coercive environment, they hold your vacation or business trip, your freedom, and even your dignity over your head. For a lot of people these are "high stakes"... make a fuss and your expensive flight is missed, your relaxing vacation, or family visit, or business meeting is ruined. And instead your in some sort of legal limbo where they can confiscate your stuff, strip search you, delay you indefinitly... Its no wonder that most travellers just want to fade into the background and get to their destination without hassle.
People don't support for the TSA system. They are terrified of it.
Its a contraction of "plebeian". It comes from Roman times; where society was divided into the patricians (the elite upper class), the plebeians (the middle/lower class), and slaves. Today its its an insult, meaning that they are inferior and/or ignorant -- which is likely the intended meaning here.
As an aside plebeian is particularly suitable, because for a long while they were forbidden to know the law, but were of course still held responsible if they broke them.
Proles or proletariat is also the lower/bottom class, but they are defined more in terms as having no property. Although somewhat synonomous to plebeian. I think plebeian is really the more fitting word than prole here.
...why would you use your own resources to access company resources?
Because I already own a $1700 laptop that I'm entirely happy with. And I don't really WANT to carry around a $450 corporate issued laptop that I would find entirely unsatisfactory (although to be fair adequate for the specific tasks the company requires of it). So rather than carry around 2 laptops, I just use mine.
Ditto for phones. I already have a 3 year contract with a premium smartphone; I don't really want to carry around the corporate issue 2 year old refurbished blackberry in addition to my personal phone. So rather than carry 2 phones, I just use mine.
In my case, the company is fine with that. I'm happy. They're happy. Win-win.
Right now I am not over the activation energy of playing Witcher 2 even for free
Ok. Then don't.
If I were over that, via free demo or torrent, I'd be one step closer to thinking "Hmmm... maybe I WILL pay for it." I've grown to love and then paid for a dozen games this way.
Yeah, I wasn't all that interested in a recent movie myself. If only theatres were more open to the public and I could walk in watch it for free and make a personal cam-rip. That would get me maybe one step closer to buying it. But no they call it sneaking in and threaten lawsuits for making the copy. These heavy handed threats might prevent an unknown number of piracies, but it also prevents an unknown number of legitimate sales... including mine.
Boo fucking hoo.
If your threshold for buying content can only be reached after sampling the product without restriction for an indefinite period of time. And even then that only gets you one step closer to saying "Hmmm maybe I will pay for it"... get over yourself.
Ah but "Asus's" is a proper name itself. I named my dog that, and I'm always losing poor Asus's' leash.
How can using "Asus'" be consistent when it implies a plural posessive of the proper name Asu?
Kind of like "as" implies a plural of the article "a"? Or "his" implies plural "hi"? And on that note I guess atlas is just the plural of atla? Context can usually see you through, and I'm not overly worried about all those poor Asus being mistaken for Asus.
English has bigger ambiguity problems than where the apostrophe goes:
I still use OS/2 whenever I need to format 2 floppy disks at once while compiling C-Kermit and browsing the web.
That "need" come up often?
Re:Really-- I think they have a sense of humor...
on
Apple iOS 4.2 Hands-On
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· Score: 2, Informative
meh, that silly "weapons" clause has been floating around EULA's forever in one form or another.
From Windows 2000 Professional for example:
http://proprietary.clendons.co.nz/licenses/eula/windows2000professional-eula.htm...You specifically agree not to export or re-export the SOFTWARE PRODUCT (or portions thereof) [...] (ii) to any person or entity who you know or have reason to know will utilize the SOFTWARE PRODUCT (or portions thereof) in the design, development or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons;...
Its appearance in iTunes is likely just some copy-pasta.
So to summarize: Cosmic radiation on flights is below occupational exposure limits. One hour of flight is significantly more of a health risk due to cosmic radiation than backscatter machines. Backscatter machines are such a low risk, we shouldn't be concerned with them. Terrorism is even lower risk than than backscatter machines.
So, how can anyone justify being concerned about -terrorists- ?
I'd like to lift just one example, where your post is dead wrong:
stock prices
pop a symbol into google and it takes you to google finance as the first link. Now you can make the argument that the current share price factoid is all that was queried, and it is just a 'factoid'.
But finance sites (including googles) contain MUCH more than that, and siphoning visitors to googles finance portal vs yahoo's vs marketwatch vs stockhouse vs etc etc goes far beyond simple factoids. There is news, charts, forums, etc... and googles site very much competes with the alternatives.
And it's worth noting that if I go to Google.com, type in "cancer" and click "I'm Feeling Lucky," the page that comes up is... the American Cancer Society. Not Google Health. If I do the same for "sore throat" I get MedicineNet.com. If I do it for "AAPL" I get Yahoo Finance (no joke, try it).
And if you actually do the search:
you do get google health for cancer, google health for sore throat, and google finance for aapl.
Most people don't use the im feeling lucky button. In fact, most people don't know that it exists nor what it does. So pointing at it is really something of a misdirection. Its not how the vast majority use the search engine.
They can say they use unbiased algorithms to generate search results.
However, there are special specific searches that will produce a page where Google-related sites and services will appear at the top of the page, in front of the search results generated by the unbiased algorithms.
So... start with an unbiased list. And then move a preselected item to the front.
Stories like these are written by people who either don't understand business or do understand business and are butt-hurt because they can't compete against their competitor on their competitor's website.
They understand better than you do apparently.
Google is welcome to bias its results if it wants to. However, if it biases its results than it loses any claim to neutrality. Given that google is actively using its claim of neutrality elsewhere to its benefit then somehthing's got to give.
It can't take the benefits of biasing its results and the beneifts of claiming its results are unbiased.
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And those WP7 ads are fantastic - the phone you don't need to use much. What the hell?
Really? ;)
It appeals to me. I'm getting close to braining my wife with a 2x4 for pissing around on her phone like some sort of OCD crack addict.
Since iOS and Android seem about diametrically opposed on this front, you can compare that there are a total of 4 models of iPhone -- iPhone, iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs, iPhone 4.
And a few generations of iPod touch as well... and the iPads. Ok... so more like a total of 8 or 9 models... of ios device...
When Apple releases an update to iOS (eg the new 4.2.1), it applies to all phones except the original iPhone.
And the original ipod touch.
(which is now just shy of 4 years old)
It was launched almost 4 years ago, it wasn't DISCONTINUED almost 4 years ago.)
Given most people had to sign a 3 year contract to get one there are lots of original models still in use. There are lots of original models STILL UNDER CONTRACT.
But the really silly thing is comparing Androids fragmentation to apple's going it alone with ios and concluding that the fragmentation is somehow a disadvantage. If each of 20 vendors write their own operating system from the ground up the way apple did, would that be somehow better??
If 20 manufacturers did what apple did, we'd have 20 distinct operating systems. 20 incompatible app stores. 20 different development framekworks. Seriously. The fact that 19 out of 20 vendors chose to build on common foundations is a godsend, even if there is some variation between implementations.
Thank god we don't have 20 apples. One is quite enough.
Or you could just get a dvi to hdmi connector for 10 bucks at Fry's
And that would pass audio and video from a mini-displayport equipped macbook pro to an hdmi tv how exactly?
If there was more brutal honesty there would be fewer conflicts. If the brutal honest truth about various situations were known we wouldn't be involved in them in the first place.
The only reason this is 'damaging' is being people/countries are behaving like complete assholes because they think they can get away with it. Shine the light on them, and they'll shape up.
If country X is playing dirty and country Y is playing clean, then country Y has nothing to fear from this sort of exposure. The problem is EVERYONE is playing dirty ALL THE TIME. We need a hell of a lot more light being shone into this crap.
Perhaps governments should behave lawfully, if they did, they'd have nothing to hide. ... hmmm... why does that sound eerily familiar...
On the PC front, you also seem to have forgotten DVI, which I'd warrant is a lot more common than HDMI.
I didn't forget it but I don't think I've ever seen a DVI laptop that didn't either come with the vga adapter in the box or in many cases had the vga connector in addition to the dvi connector right on the laptop.
I wouldn't complain about mac's forays into obscure high performance connectors if they had provided a VGA to fall back on. But they didn't.
There was also the short-lived ADC...
ADC right. That's the proprietary apple crap I referred to.
Umm, Apple have used VGA and then DVI and then Mini DisplayPort for video interfaces in the past 10 years. They had mini versions of these connectors, for which you were also given the necessary dongle to upsize it to the standard version of the interface.
mini-vga and mini-dvi and mini-displayport... when was the last time you went anywhere and were able to use any of those connections without an adapter that you brought yourself?
Every conference room projector and big screen tv I've ever hooked my laptop to provides: VGA, sometimes DVI, and sometimes HDMI.
Not once has there ever been a mini-displayport or mini-vga or mini-dvi or adc ready to go.
To make things worse, by current macbook pro has mini-displayport. My wifes which is a year older is mini-dvi... we have a stupid number of adaptors.
for which you were also given the necessary dongle to upsize it to the standard version of the interface.
Neither of my previous two macs came with the necessary dongle to upsize it to anything. My previous was mini-dvi. My current is mini-displayport.
The biggest fail there is that my main monitor, an HP has displayport capability.. you couldn't actually buy a mini-displayport to full-size displayport adapter from anybody... including apple, for the first 6 months or so that I had my mini-displayport equipped laptop. And the mini-displayport to hdmi adaptor? Apple didn't include it in the box. They were charging $75 for it. And that's just video... no audio support.
I have to disagree with you on the OSX claim. Most of the Mac users I know are far more clueless that their Windows-using counterparts regarding security,...
Fair comment, I agree there is absolutely a camp of clueless mac users out there who are grossly overconfident of their immunity. But I still think the mac userbase is skewed away from a few particularly malware vulnerable demographics.
Warez in particular is still primarily a windows demographic, and that's one of the EASIEST vectors to get malware into systems. You have people literally actively downloading and running the stuff as fast as they can click on keygenz, crackz, etc.
and LightPeak for everything else.
Will lightpeak be able to power my external hard drive? Will it charge my HD video camera while I pull video off it? Is it easily adaptable to HDMI? My new TV doesn't have a lightpeak port, and I'm not interested in buying another tv to get one.
I can hdmi cables for under $10. How long before lightpeak cables are that cheap?
DisplayPort is fine and all, but the adaptor to connect my macbook to my tv cost a small fortune, and it uses the headphone jack for optical audio, the displayport for video, and the usb port to power the adapter that converts it all to hdmi. A good PC laptop comes with an HDMI port... which just works with external equipment.
Hey apple, I'm onboard with modernizing connectors and letting the legacy fall away. Your switch to USB was welcome (although your awfully stingy with ports.)
But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection. PCs are going from VGA to HDMI. That makes sense. Macs... started with some apple proprietary garbage, to mini dvi, to mini displayport, and now on to light peak... 4 separate connectors in the same period of time, while managing to bypass anything that anyone actually uses for anything else.
Not even that.
They aren't choosing the scanners because its less objectionable. They are choosing the scanners because its the path of least resistance.
They have to actively select the pat down, and in a lot of peoples minds they are (rightly!) self selecting themselves as 'troublemaker' / 'protestor' / 'suspicious'... and basically painting a red flag saying "single me out for some harrassment please".
People are just going along with whatever the TSA directs them at because, above everything else, they don't want to be noticed.
For example, if the enhanced pat downs were the default, and you could ask for the x-ray scanner. Nearly everyone would take the enhanced pat downs... asking for the scanner would be 'single me out for special attention' method... and nobody wants that.
Why the fuck do I need a firewall at all? Seriously.
Layered defense. No software is perfect. In theory a computer doesn't need a firewall.
However in a world without NAT and firewalls, you plug your computer in an share folder with your lan, its available in korea too, assuming your lan is routed.
This is this the primary purpose of a firewall. To enforce connection policy. So that you can have connectivity with specific computers without exposing the service to entire world.
The secondary purpose is layered defense. If it turns out your file sharing service has an unpatched defect, its a lot better if the service can only be reached from your lan than the entire world.
That is a much smaller attack surface. Users of the lan can attack that service directly, everyone else have to beat the firewall first.
All software has unpatched defects. So a layered defense to mitigate risk just makes sense. And its a LOT easier to validate a firewall than to validate every network service you might ever install/use. Once the bugs have been shaken out of the firewall software, it will provide good protection even if the software behind it is defective.
How much money can you make by compromising the computer of millions of home users, so you can send billions of spam mail hoping a few thousand idiots will give you some credit card information...
Quite a bit of money by all accounts. And the fruit is low hanging, you cast your net wide, and just take what comes.
Now how much money can you make by compromising a big company's server (a market segment dominated by linux) to steal some industrial secrets and sell that to competitors?
Maybe a lot. Maybe not much. Lets say I gave you the blueprints to an upcoming Boeing product. You have a buyer for that? You think airbus is really going to deposit some money into a swiss bank account ... ??
And if you actually steal anything REALLY valuable; you'll attract real attention.
I doubt any serious companies would use a windows machine as a router / firewall to protect it's network. what we can see is that about 99% of all the firewalls installed in the internet to protect windows machines from the outside world are running linux...
I also doubt any major coporations store their industrial secrets on the linux router. So even if you compromise it undetected, you are just one step towards your goal. Then you penetrate another layer and all you've got for your time is access to the department that overseeing developing a commercial, and coordinating some marketing material. Then you crack the department that is handling channell distribution... and you maybe get a few random supplier pricelists, maybe a few clients that are being courted, the fact that one of the resllers is complaining about the returns/restock policies.
You might eventually hit paydirt. You might not. All the while you'll be wondering why you aren't harvesting credit card numbers from idiots. Sure you only make a few bucks a head... but you'd have sweet thousand bucks already, instead of sweet fuck all.
---------------
As a second independant response...
The reason we know about malware is that it gets in our face, slows us to a crawl, and hits millions of people. The rootkits are widely deployed, and rapidly are deconstructed by security researchers.
Whose to say people aren't successfully conducting
industrial espionage?
If I were in that game I'd take a contract to steal X, rather than randomly steal something and hope to find a buyer. No point in going to the trouble to get the goods without a buyer lined up.
It would be a silent penentration; a silent exit, and I'd wipe out a many traces that I'd been there.
The odds symantec/mcafee will ever get a copy of the exploits I use are pretty much zilch. Assuming the intrusion is even detected the odds the companies will talk about it publicly is pretty much zilch.
Its not a case of malware targeting windows and people targeting industrial secrets... both can co-exist. But the fact remains that you would hear a lot about the former and nothing about the latter.
Although to be fair... I expect it will usually be cheaper and simpler to just bribe/blackmail somebody who works for the company... or send someone to apply for a job with the company and be an insider.
And that, my friend, is why I find the contention that 'Linux and Mac OS will be just as bad when they get popular' to be inane, misleading and, frankly, intellectually lazy.
Just because I didn't elaborate doesn't mean I haven't thought about it.
Personally, I'm pretty confident that the majority of malware infections are PEBKAC.
Drive by / remote exploit malware certainly do exist out there, but its not THAT prevalent. You can go months, even years using a Windows PC without an infection with just windows firewall, and keeping your PC up to date. I've done it. Countless others have too.
The clusterfucks of malware ridden pcs that some people routinely turn their computers into are, in my opinion primarily at least initially installed by the end user. They fall for the social engineering, go for the shiny offer, and escalate the installer so that it can have its way with the PC and bring all its friends...
You make osx or even linux the dominant OS, where all that social engineering, and shiny crapware will start targeting OSX and linux. The same users who try to install the britney spears naked screensaver will click on the brintey_spears_naked.dmg and enter their computer password in os x.
Right now its not worth it for that class of malware writers to do it today. So britney_spears_naked_screensave.dmg malware isn't constantly thrown in your face. Its simple economics.
a) First, OSX and Linux combined is still single digit marketshare. Right out of the gate, Windows is where the ROI is.
b) Second, what little marketshare OSX and Linux have are disproportionately more sophisticated users that won't fall for the bullshit anyway.
If you are likely to be sucked in by malware bullshit then you are likely ignorant, unsophisticated when it comes to computers... and you walk into a BestBuy or Walmart... you are exactly the demographic being targeted by malware, and you'll walk out with a windows PC.
Move all --those-- people onto linux or OSX and I have no doubt the malware will follow them, and they'll happily install it.
What I'm seeing in these articles are simply lies.
A woman says "I took the scanner, because I was even more unfomfortable with the enhanced pat down" and that's spun as supporting scanners. That's a bald faced lie.
Another woman says "I took the scanner, because I thought if I opted out I would look suspicious, and I just want to get through without a hassle", and that's spun as "not being against scanners"...
For my part, I'd submit to get onto a plane too. My last flight was part of a $5000 vacation package. If my wife and I are not on the plane, its not like we get the money back. I want to enjoy my vacation, and not watch $5k go up in smoke to make a point at the airport.
Bottom line, you can't look at how much resistance you actually see at airports. Its a coercive environment, they hold your vacation or business trip, your freedom, and even your dignity over your head. For a lot of people these are "high stakes"... make a fuss and your expensive flight is missed, your relaxing vacation, or family visit, or business meeting is ruined. And instead your in some sort of legal limbo where they can confiscate your stuff, strip search you, delay you indefinitly... Its no wonder that most travellers just want to fade into the background and get to their destination without hassle.
People don't support for the TSA system. They are terrified of it.
If it were, why do I have to install a third-party firewall and run third-party anti-malware software, that is, if I want to use it on the Internet?
I run neither. You don't have to either.
And if linux or osx ever exceed microsofts marketshare you'll see the malware flood onto them too.
If you haven't read it, go read it.
I've read it. I'm not really a fan of Orwell. I didn't enjoy animal farm either. I tend to want to beat his characters to death with a stapler.
Perhaps because I feel Orwell is trying to bludgeon me to death with the complete lack of subtlety in his writing.
Yes, I'm aware of what the term plebe means. I was referring to proles in the 1984 sense, not the "short for proletariat" sense.
Orwell's "proles" are in the "short for proletariat sense", not just the roman sense, but also the Marxist sense.
I think the word you're looking for is proles
I think plebes is a perfectly suitable word.
Its a contraction of "plebeian". It comes from Roman times; where society was divided into the patricians (the elite upper class), the plebeians (the middle/lower class), and slaves. Today its its an insult, meaning that they are inferior and/or ignorant -- which is likely the intended meaning here.
As an aside plebeian is particularly suitable, because for a long while they were forbidden to know the law, but were of course still held responsible if they broke them.
Proles or proletariat is also the lower/bottom class, but they are defined more in terms as having no property. Although somewhat synonomous to plebeian. I think plebeian is really the more fitting word than prole here.
...why would you use your own resources to access company resources?
Because I already own a $1700 laptop that I'm entirely happy with. And I don't really WANT to carry around a $450 corporate issued laptop that I would find entirely unsatisfactory (although to be fair adequate for the specific tasks the company requires of it). So rather than carry around 2 laptops, I just use mine.
Ditto for phones. I already have a 3 year contract with a premium smartphone; I don't really want to carry around the corporate issue 2 year old refurbished blackberry in addition to my personal phone. So rather than carry 2 phones, I just use mine.
In my case, the company is fine with that. I'm happy. They're happy. Win-win.
Right now I am not over the activation energy of playing Witcher 2 even for free
Ok. Then don't.
If I were over that, via free demo or torrent, I'd be one step closer to thinking "Hmmm... maybe I WILL pay for it." I've grown to love and then paid for a dozen games this way.
Yeah, I wasn't all that interested in a recent movie myself. If only theatres were more open to the public and I could walk in watch it for free and make a personal cam-rip. That would get me maybe one step closer to buying it. But no they call it sneaking in and threaten lawsuits for making the copy. These heavy handed threats might prevent an unknown number of piracies, but it also prevents an unknown number of legitimate sales... including mine.
Boo fucking hoo.
If your threshold for buying content can only be reached after sampling the product without restriction for an indefinite period of time. And even then that only gets you one step closer to saying "Hmmm maybe I will pay for it"... get over yourself.
Ah but "Asus's" is a proper name itself. I named my dog that, and I'm always losing poor Asus's' leash.
How can using "Asus'" be consistent when it implies a plural posessive of the proper name Asu?
Kind of like "as" implies a plural of the article "a"? Or "his" implies plural "hi"?
And on that note I guess atlas is just the plural of atla?
Context can usually see you through, and I'm not overly worried about all those poor Asus being mistaken for Asus.
English has bigger ambiguity problems than where the apostrophe goes:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo.
I still use OS/2 whenever I need to format 2 floppy disks at once while compiling C-Kermit and browsing the web.
That "need" come up often?
meh, that silly "weapons" clause has been floating around EULA's forever in one form or another.
From Windows 2000 Professional for example:
http://proprietary.clendons.co.nz/licenses/eula/windows2000professional-eula.htm ...You specifically agree not to export or re-export the SOFTWARE PRODUCT (or portions thereof) [...] (ii) to any person or entity who you know or have reason to know will utilize the SOFTWARE PRODUCT (or portions thereof) in the design, development or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons;...
Its appearance in iTunes is likely just some copy-pasta.
So to summarize:
Cosmic radiation on flights is below occupational exposure limits.
One hour of flight is significantly more of a health risk due to cosmic radiation than backscatter machines.
Backscatter machines are such a low risk, we shouldn't be concerned with them.
Terrorism is even lower risk than than backscatter machines.
So, how can anyone justify being concerned about -terrorists- ?
I'd like to lift just one example, where your post is dead wrong:
stock prices
pop a symbol into google and it takes you to google finance as the first link. Now you can make the argument that the current share price factoid is all that was queried, and it is just a 'factoid'.
But finance sites (including googles) contain MUCH more than that, and siphoning visitors to googles finance portal vs yahoo's vs marketwatch vs stockhouse vs etc etc goes far beyond simple factoids. There is news, charts, forums, etc... and googles site very much competes with the alternatives.
And it's worth noting that if I go to Google.com, type in "cancer" and click "I'm Feeling Lucky," the page that comes up is ... the American Cancer Society. Not Google Health. If I do the same for "sore throat" I get MedicineNet.com. If I do it for "AAPL" I get Yahoo Finance (no joke, try it).
And if you actually do the search:
you do get google health for cancer, google health for sore throat, and google finance for aapl.
Most people don't use the im feeling lucky button. In fact, most people don't know that it exists nor what it does. So pointing at it is really something of a misdirection. Its not how the vast majority use the search engine.
especially if that exception is on a "moral" basis.
legal basis. not moral.
They can say they use unbiased algorithms to generate search results.
However, there are special specific searches that will produce a page where Google-related sites and services will appear at the top of the page, in front of the search results generated by the unbiased algorithms.
So... start with an unbiased list. And then move a preselected item to the front.
That is bias.
Stories like these are written by people who either don't understand business or do understand business and are butt-hurt because they can't compete against their competitor on their competitor's website.
They understand better than you do apparently.
Google is welcome to bias its results if it wants to. However, if it biases its results than it loses any claim to neutrality. Given that google is actively using its claim of neutrality elsewhere to its benefit then somehthing's got to give.
It can't take the benefits of biasing its results and the beneifts of claiming its results are unbiased.
One or the other. Not both.