By default sequester all downloaded content to a sandboxed environment with very limited access rights to anything (such as no access to other files, and no access to the network without being given explicit permission for every action). Making functionality to make that trivial to do would be a killer app for virtualization technology. My point is you are going from a useful technology i.e. 1) get email, it has a power point attachment, Open the power point attachment, modify it save it send it back... 2) get an email, have it quarantined, now you cannot do anything with it. After all accessing it with a suitable reader application would threaten that application, if you are suggesting running the application that opens the attachment in a sandboxed environment then you need to realise that things like external media sources embedded in files wont work, you cannot save it nor send it anywhere until it is moved from the sandbox back to your environment.
Of course this would be the procedure for every mail with an attachment, every html mail with an embedded logo.... It becomes a nightmare to manage and less convenient. What I mean is that you can work around this but not without significantly degrading the usefulness of the technology, oh and not without relying on the user to realise what is OK for a powerpoint document or word document to do (winword.exe wants to contact http://191.2.3.45/whatever.mov is that OK?) and what is not.
Sandboxing individual applications that have opened a suspect file only works in a disconnected environment, one where one application doesn't want access to other resources. All you would end up with is something akin to the Vista yes/no prompts, and then you are back to relying on the user not to allow an application to do something stupid, even if that stupid action is not obviously stupid.
As a bonus, we can just use the huge underground alien terraforming equipment that is already installed!!
Whilst terraforming a nearby planet seems interesting, I would like to see more investment of both research and cash into either orbital habitats or preferably mobile space habitats. The idea of living on a large space station seems to me to be more interesting than settling a different planet... Oh whilst Im on the subject,- a FTL drive, I'd like one of those, plus a teleportation device, oh and a replicator, a light saber, a rocket pack, some sort of time machine....
Re:Not quite the same as today's ATMs.
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ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 2, Funny
I posted it above - but:
Plastic cards had not been invented, so Mr Shepherd-Barron's machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.... "I later worked out you would have to eat 136,000 such cheques for it to have any effect on you." Although why you'd want to eat your cheques is beyond me, I just tried eating one and it didn't taste so good, maybe its the lack of Carbon 14 in them these days....
Differences in the rendering engine not withstanding and looking at Firefox and Konqueror on Linux I often see very little if any discernible difference on pages that are written with valid mark-up. Javascript sometimes seems to cause aesthetic issues between the two - but I tend to find that if it works and looks good in konqueror you are safe everywhere else (Although I still tend to check everywhere else...).
The most striking differences still seem to be between IE5/IE6 and everything else, hell I can get Safari, Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, Epiphany and even IE7 to display a page exactly how I want it, but I then I need to add hacks for IE5/IE6. To be honest I am now simply making sure that the results in IE5/IE6 are good enough, i.e. they look different but still nice (obviously all code needs to be standards compliant), rather than trying to get an identical page, it is much easier and reduces the amount of time spent messing with the CSS templates, not to mention the fact that most people will look at the site in one browser or another and are unlikely to determine or be bothered by the differences between browsers.
I should point out though that those people who simply decide that IE support or now Safari support can be ignored or that a link to get Firefox is sufficient (Egged on by the goggle referral program) are mistaken. Anyone who tries to bar access to their site to certain browsers, either by user agent or by using more in depth checks, should not be responsible for maintaining websites.
Real Innovation
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ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Plastic cards had not been invented, so Mr Shepherd-Barron's machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.... "I later worked out you would have to eat 136,000 such cheques for it to have any effect on you." Interestingly, this was arguably one of those inventions that is, in retrospect unbelievably obvious, it really has changed the world. It leads me to wonder what Mr Shepherd-Barron was paid for his idea, and if any attempts were made to limit the implementation of this innovative machine to a single company...
So are companies currently running a single windows flavour on everything? No they may run XP on their desktops (Probably a few 2K, NT or 98 boxes left for some application that doesn't like XP), Vista on some of the laptops (Sales need the latest gizmo's). Windows 2k or 2k3 server (Or more likely a mixture) on their internal servers (if they are a windows shop). A *nix on their web servers, whatever OS is in their managed routers (with its own management applications), PalmOS on their PDA's, Symbian on their Phones, Mac OS on their Graphic designers Powebooks.. Its hardly a monoculture.
With Linux you could get closer though, you could be running Dabian on all your desktops, Laptops and servers, And then Debian derivatives on your routers (well maybe...), PDA's and Phones... I haven't seen Linux specifically for switches but it may get there... - you could really get to the point where our entire IT infrastructure is based on the same code base, but still role specific (i.e. you are not going tobe running KDE on your servers or your PDA's - the kernel or each type of device is going to be different).
So as an enterprise you could have a license free (and therefore license cost free - no extra software costs associated with growth...) environment, total compatibility between everything (Your PDA works seamlessly with your desktop scheduling and mail software and happily mounts NFS shares to sync documents.. (I do that at home - never done it in a corporate environment)) All updates and patches come from a single source, or can be aggregated into a single source using the same methods (you can run your own internal repositories and manage all your application maintenance - not just the OS and some applications (ala Windows) No more having a SUS server, a Anti-Virus Update Server and a million small updating systems and scripts..)
I guess what I mean is that Linux is as diverse as you need it to be, but that diversity can be harnesed and standardised standardised... Its easy to create policies and procedures to manage and maintain Linux environments, (and to automate that management) in a way that isn't possible with windows.
The obvious caveat with all this is that you obviously (as a large company) cannot just install the latest release of Ubuntu on your desktops, the latest version of PCLinuxOS on your laptops, Red Hat on your servers, some OE Linux flavour on your PDA's, Phones, switches, and Routers and just expect stuff to work. You need to think about it first, design a good system and then implement it well.
So does that sound like the ramblings of a gear head? I would assume I would use about 4 different distributions (All derived from Debian), plus probably different versions of those distributions (stable / unstable) across the enterprise. Every Specific role would have a base image (including as much software as possible that as common to sub roles (i,e, Common Drivers, X, a DM, NFS Client, Office and productivity software on the Desktops, Common Divers, Tripwire, SSH maybe NFS on the servers ). Fro these you derive your environment... All very neat, simple and safe.
Oh and you have all the code so the vendor cannot harm you by going bust. Oh and you have your own update servers so they cannot be denied to you. Oh and you can change where you get your updates from, as other distributions will use the same code. Oh and you can make your own changes to your applications if you need to and have the resources.
I cannot think of anything that offers these kind of possibilities except Linux/BSD. but correct me if I am wrong.
Look at the handling of Northern Ireland in the UK Just out of interest (And I agree that there have been some major issues regarding N. Ireland) what element of the way the situation in N. Ireland has been/is being handled do you take issue with? How does that issue relate to the way legislation is drafted?
In the meantime, the customers who aren't impacted by the lack of 3G can still purchase it; others certainly don't need to.
That sentence starts with a capital letter. Impacted is just as valid as affected, neither is exclusively language used by marketing.
If the GP had said something along the lines of; "For the immediate future, the demographic who do not require the enabling benefits of third generation technologies will benefit from this product, those outside of this demographic will have their expectations met further down the feature road map...; you may have had a point. Sadly your contribution appears to have been less than accurate and rather unhelpful.
This spam includes a valid email address for the recipient, and correct recipient name and business details. The message and attachment could be anything. In this case its an invoice, but it could just as easily be an order (sent to sales) or a request for info (sent to PR or Marketing). This would make it extremely difficult to identify.
Its not as if you could use heuristic scanning of the text content (any malicious payload excepted) to determine that messages of this sort are spam, it would prevent you from recieving any business related email that follows a similar formula and they are all pretty similar.
The attachment in this case was a doc.exe which is fairly obviously dodgy, but as the article states it could be a.doc (or presumably a file for any application that is exploitable by opening a file) to take advantage of a zero day vulnerability.
With this type of spam and the zero day vulnerability as the scenario it would be entirely possible for a message like this to get through to a real person, for that person to open the attachment and execute whatever malicious code is embedded in the attachment without realising that they have even done anything strange.
There is no way of preventing it that still allows your employees to function, with a 0 day you are (probably) not going to detect the payload before it is executed (what happens then depends on what precautions your company is taking). You cannot brief your user base not to open emails addressed to them with content that looks valid and may be part of their job to look at, the argument of only opening mail from people you know only really works in a social context where you can afford to ignore mail.
So, up until now most common scams and viral mail have had some tell-tale characteristics (although by no means all, custom attacks against specific targets have followed this model before), and now they may not have. (I never understood why spam was so poorly produced in any case). Given that even badly written and almost blindingly obvious spam and scams manage to trick a small number of people, this type of spam or scam is likely to be more effective. This leads me to think that from a business point of view (lets be honest, especially a Microsoft shop) the usefulness of email is seriously deteriorating, it is approaching the point where the existing system contains too much risk and is too overburdened to be useful and that is saying a lot because email really was/is a revolutionary technology. Not that I can think of an alternative nor am I suggesting that we will see business dropping email, but I can see business looking at some of those fatally flawed but great sounding add-ons that aim to secure mail from unknown recipients (micro payments and white listing etc..).
Interestingly, since *everything* is moving, isn't it be possible to demonstrate that any given body is stationary and everything else is moving relative to it? I would assume that it would even be possible to cancel the earth's rotation in such a model. Of course the various other planetary orbits (ant the Sun's orbit) would look a little strange and spirally and I am sure quire a few scientific theories would have to be jettisoned or rewritten, I assume it has been modelled but I can't seem to find one....
Oh and just one more point, the Earth does not orbit the sun, (well it does, almost) it orbits the solar systems centre of gravity, which is actually a little bit outside the radius of the Sun, so you should replace your geo-centric model not with a solar centric one but with a gravitational centric model.
My point from the beginning of this whole exchange has been simple, if obviously not clear enough.
1) Al-Jazeera is possibly the only middle eastern news organisation that presents the news as it finds it, (as opposed to the news as X countries information ministry dictates it) it should be applauded for its efforts. It should be supported in its attempt to bring news from the region to the world whilst supplying information to the populace of a region where accurate information is often unavailable and misinformation the norm.
2) Attacks on journalists are reprehensible, there is no excuse for deliberately attacking and killing journalists (that isn't to say that only journalists should be looked after, civilians should also not be deliberately killed, however journalists often find themselves in dangerous positions and usually managed to upset both sides in any given conflict). Attacking state propaganda machines and/or terrorist organisations is a different scenario, but attacking journalists because they report facts you do not like is wrong.
Firstly, With regard to Tayssir Alouni, as I said in my previous post, I don't think that the Spanish court was wrong, what I am concerned about is how much impact his journalistic contacts within groups hostile to the west had on the case, most significantly, I am concerned that it appeared (from media coverage here in europe at least) his interview with Bin-Laden's was used against him.
He was apparently under investigation by the Spanish police as early as 1994 for having contacts with people who, like him are exiles from Syria. At that point he was not employed by Al-Jazeera, but a different media organisation. The facts of the case are that he was convicted of "collaboration", not funding, sponsorship or direct involvement, there are many many stories around insinuating that he was Bin-Laden primary contact to the outside world, and that he couriered money to Bin-Laden, helping the latter remain concealed, none of these are from official or primary sources though.
The only official documentation that says anything other than "conspiracy" is a statement by Tayssir Alouni, prior to his arrest stating that he carried messages between Al-Jazeera and the Taliban, and cash to help some of his friends, there is no explanation as to what amounts of cash or its purpose. According to information that came out during the trial he was supposed to have taken about $4,500 US to Mohamed Bahaiah, who is, apparently "considered at the international level as a supposed courier for the Al Qaeda organization between Afghanistan and Europe". So, it is certainly not clear cut that Tayssir Alouni == Al Qa'ida, making the statement that therefore Al-Jazeera == Al Qa'ida, is simply ludicrous (it would be like suggesting that ABC + CNN + FOX are all just fronts for the US Government and that the BBC is a Front for the UK Government). When Tayssir Alouni did his bin laden interview, he was working for both A-Jazeera and CNN, so does that mean that CNN are also in some way implicated?
Secondly, If you're a Muslim, you don't believe in gay or women's rights
That is not true for all Muslims, but a minority, in the same way that that statement is true for some Christians but not a majority, (I'm not sure that the woman's rights element is true for Jews, but homosexuality is certainly frowned upon by some, in fact for all three major religions homosexuality is generally seen as a problem, whilst women rights have more recently been accepted)
Last point
You said that "reporting on a bunch of gay rights protesters getting beaten up by people who claim 'Moscow is not Sodom' doesn't tell you which side the reporter or the readers sympathize with.
Isn't that how its supposed to be? Report the news not some slanted version of it. If Al-Jazeera were a fundamentalist Muslim extremist news source don't you think that gay rights protectors being beaten up would be a good place to show some of the bias you are crediting them with?
Look, The point is really simple, just because you don't like what is reported by Al-Jazeera doesn't mean what they report is wrong, just because it goes against the US position, does not make Al-Jazeera a terrorist organisation. Moreover just because someone is a Muslim doesn't make them intolerant, violent or anti-western/anti-American, just as being Christian doesn't make someone intolerant, violent or anti-evolution, and neither position excludes the possibility of being any or all of those things.
Don't let nationality, ethnicity or religion detract from the validity of a viewpoint, or allow it to cloud what is factual and what is not. Religion, ethnicity and nationality and are factors that influence people, but they don't define them. Islam, like Christianity or Judaism is open to interpretation, and there are a great many interpretations that are followed, add in the fact that we are al human and you will find that issues that seem black and white are actually made up of many shades of grey.
Oh and one more question - Alluni was able to capture images of civilian victims in the destitute villages of Afghanistan and the miserable streets of Kabul. - How do you take bias pictures? Should civilian victims in Afghanistan not be shown?
...staffed by people who left the BBC because it wasn't sufficiently pro fundamentalist and anti American.... I've heard that Al Jazeera crews.... Actually, the more you read about them, the more it looks like they are fellow travellers of al Qaeda.....given their rabidly anti liberal politics...
Well looks like you have made your mind up already that Al-Jazeera == Al-Qa'ida. What I find strange is that the US administration and the UK government haven't actually claimed that Al-Jazeera are involved in terrorism in some way, given that both governments have previously been quite happy to identify groups that they see as threatening as terrorists, what is stopping them in this case?
More importantly would be defining the terms "support of terrorism", "collaboration" or even "terrorism". At present terms like these are used interchangeably to deamonise any group or entity that is either opposed or not sufficiently in support of US policy, in that environment an organisation that reports news in an area where people are quite legitimately annoyed at the US is going to be a target of US anger and probably portrayed as "evil terrorist collaborators".
What I would say is simple. If Al-Jazeera staff are involved in terrorism, then charge them and put them on trial, simply murdering people as they work, and whilst they pose no physical threat is not justifiable, it is criminal.
Now to move on to your comments about Tayssir Alouni, I have one question to ask, what was he convicted of? The answer is collaborating with terrorists. In short he was accused and found guilty of having contact with suspected terrorists and links to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Wouldn't you expect a journalist who was working in Afghanistan, covering a war between the Taliban and the US/UK to have contacts with people like the Taliban? Or would you prefer the more common media approach of simply restating press releases and official information? I would also expect a journalist to have contacts throughout the communities he covered, including with unsavoury individuals.
I am not saying that the Spanish authorities are wrong, but I am sceptical about the circumstances surrounding this conviction and the nature of it and I doubt I am alone. Oh and does the arrest of one man in an organisation of thousands convict the entire organisation of the same crime?I don't think so.
As for Al-Jazeera having "rabidly anti liberal politics", I would suggest you look at their website and find an example of this, they seem happy to report on gay rights issues in Russia and highlight the plight of Afghan women, none of which would seem to fit into the anti-liberal view you are crediting them with.
So once again in summary, I disagree with you, and you appear to be regurgitating propaganda. There is no danger in having a news agency reporting the news with a viewpoint different to that of the US, it is healthy. Every reporter, program and news agency will display a bias of some sort, it is a product of being human, our job is not kill people whose views differ from our own, it is to look at what they are saying and then decide what to do with that information.
First off, here is the correct link Volkischer Beobachter. It should be noted that that particular paper was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, i.e. the Nazi party, whilst Al-Jazeera isn't and has never been related to either the Baath Party in Iraq, or Al-Qa'ida.
Al-Jazeera is a Doha based organisation, Doha being the capital of Qatar, and Qatar being an apparently key US ally in the middle east, along with Saudi Arabia. It tends to carry news aimed at middle eastern readers/viewers.
Al-Jazeera isn't significantly anti-western, or pro Al-Qa'ida. The stories it carries and even the opinions offered are often similar to what you might see on the BBC, ITN and CNN.
The only thing that makes Al-Jazeera different from the mainly western news agencies out there is that it has the capability of being on the ground in the midst of things and then reports what it sees, often including the views and opinions of people in the region. Unfortunately this sometimes doesn't fit with the general media picture coming out of the middle east, well it mostly does if you watch Euro-centric news, but not if you compare it to news for US consumption.
As for Al-Jazeera encouraging attacks on US troops, I'd like to see where that reference comes from, as I certainly haven't seen anything of the sort.
I would go so far as to suggest that the US Governments actions (I wouldn't blame the US military, they have enough problems at the moment and at least have the excuse of following orders that seem legitimate) in carrying out attacks (accidental or otherwise) against journalists of all types in the middle east is despicable, I would go so far as to say that it is criminal, but sadly understandable. If I were a commander on the ground I would prefer that the country I was occupying did not get information about what was going on, or find out about the mistakes that have been made. I would prefer that all media in country were controlled by friendly organisations so that the battle for "hearts and minds" would be easier to win, this would be doubly the case if I didn't understand what Al-Jazeera was. Sadly in a 24/7 news cycle and global coverage, those days are long gone.
Its funny how we see the US demanding democratic reform, and press freedom in many areas of the world, and then carrying out attacks and propaganda campaigns against one of the few organisations that makes use of that press freedom,after all the freedom to publish the facts as you see them is curtailed if you are likely to be killed in the process.
So in short, your apparent comparison is flawed and moreover does not give the credit to the Al-Jazeera and other (non embedded) journalists in trouble spots, doing an important, difficult and dangerous job, nor does it show any compassion for those innocent reporters killed without good cause.
What about if someone creates a website to distribute pictures to their friends, but doesn't protect it in any way. Should it be an offence for someone to access that site as explicit permission has not been granted?
What about if someone creates a site about a polarising political viewpoint and places a banner stating that anyone opposed to that viewpoint is not permitted to view the site. Should accessing that if you have a differing view be an offence?
Lets take it one step further and assume that the individual who owns the first site pays for data transfer on a per Mb rate, if an undesirable person views the site could they be deemed as having stolen whatever the monetary value is of the data transfer they used?
If the above is deemed as true then, even if no fee is calculated on the transfer of data, surely simply making that bandwidth unavailable to other legitimate users would be sufficient for a prosecution?
If an individual accesses these sites without consent (other than that implied by the existence of the sites) should they be held liable?. I don't think so.
Wi-fi and web sites are comparable simply because they are both technological in nature, both require one person or organisation to acquire a service, and then provide information using that service in an indiscriminate manner analogous to broadcast. Both require a concious effort to access (either typing an address / clicking a link or selecting a network to use), and yet often neither explicitly grants nor denies permission to do so. Lastly, and most importantly both can be configured so that casual access is not easily possible.
In short, whilst it is not possible to secure light and prevent others from accessing it without making it totally unavailable, it is possible to secure an access point or a web site so that it is still available but not usable without further action.
The onus to protect against unauthorised access should be on the providers of services that are broadcast indiscriminately. Where protection is in place and is then broken, the responsibility lies with the person having broken it. However deciding what is adequate protection is another matter and outside of the scope of this comment.:)
So... For an application to support your grandunifieddocumentformat it would have to understand al three... OK.
Does this mean that a document can be composed of multiple elements from the different formats?
I would suggest that wat you would achieve with this is a format a file that does not work with any application that only supports any one format, which would be most of them.
Oh and if you are suggesting a format whereby the file is stored in a manner that is acceptable under all three standards, then you will end up with files 3x+ as big, and still as inconsistent between applications. At that rate you are better off with a converter.
Saying that, we could add a few other mark-up types (definitely html, some tex in there too maybe? or hell embed a php compiler add php support and go the whole hog, if we include gd like capabilities we could do all sorts!!) and we would probably get a research grant from anyone who sells storage media. This suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Fancy going halves on the implementation?
Name? -> Fine,
Protection from environmental issues? - nil,
Protection against terrorism? - May stop Greek Historian Fundamentalists.
Self Regulating? -> Fine
Protection from environmental issues? - moderate, will route around local issues.
Protection against terrorism? -> See above
Large number of interconnects -> Fine
Protection from environmental issues? - moderate, its redundant (see Self Regulating).
Protection against terrorism? -> See above
Superconductor requires extreme cooling -> Hmm
Protection from environmental issues? - Nil, (may help fight global warming?)
Protection against terrorism? -> Hope they don't damage the cooling infrastructure, or the
containment, or the management systems. I guess that would
break it
Cost @ $40 million -> Good
Protection from environmental issues? -> Nil
Protection against terrorism? -> Nil
(Doesn't seem to high for something unique, just think of the tourists (not terrorists,
*tourists*))
Funded in part by the US DHS -> Hmm
Protection from environmental issues? -> Nil
Protection against terrorism? -> Nil, but propaganda coup for DHS!!
Its amazing how many things appear to have a secondary benefit in preventing terrorist attacks. I would hate to see what kind of projects we'd get if there were a spate of shark attacks... (A new inland housing development, it provides cheap, affordable housing... and protection from sharks..)
According to BBC Radio 4 these things are helicopter type devices with 7 cameras on board, their key benefit is the fact that they are rapidly deployable. However they have a range of... 500 meters, oh and they are categorised as "toys". (they are apparently lighter than a bag of sugar too, although the size of the bag in question was not mentioned)
So its not a Predator type UAV sitting for hours 500 miles from the launch site, with a tangle of sensors and weapons attached, more of an instant CCTV camera, maybe useful for crowd control or events... (or just for propaganda value).
Saying that I a not terribly comfortable with the direction this is taking, I close to a city centre (with a really low crime rate - except with regard to burglaries...), and it bothers me that in 5-10 years there may be stealthy drones airborne over my house or garden without my knowledge, taking pictures.
I wish we could get back to having a few more Police officers knocking about, on foot, talking to people.
I suppose next they'll be petitioning the ISPs for surveillance to see who's been viewing their page source, claiming it as violation of 'trade secrets'. FBI -> ISP: We need information on any individual who has had access to the html or js source of these websites ISP -> FBI: Well, ahem, everybody who views the site has access to the html or js source FBI -> ISP: Everyone? ISP -> FBI: Well yeah, you see when the user visits a site the browser requests the page, and the server hosting the page will send the html source, then the browser will render the source to look nice for the viewer... you can hide some of the logic with php, jsp or asp and other server side... FBI -> ISP: But if they can see the source then could they make copies...? ISP -> FBI: Well yes but... FBI -> ISP: They would know all the secret techniques used to make the site? ISP -> FBI: Well yes, but as I was going to say... FBI -> ISP: Well that makes it easier thanks. Bye
1 week later:
'The BBC has learned that a large number of extradition requests from the US government relating to British subjects and other non US-nationals breaching Trade Secret, Copyright and Terrorism laws, this is after it was alleged that people are illegally viewing web pages.
This comes after the US issued Arrest Warrants for 3.7 billion individuals globally on Monday. A Spokesman for the DHS is quoted as saying:
"Well if everyone can see how stuff works, they could copy it, and if they copy it they could use it, and if they could use it they could mislead people. Misleading people is not nice and causes angst, angst is like fear, and fear is a bit like terror. Terror is caused by terrorists, therefore viewing web pages is terrorism. Also children may be harmed in some way."'
Compared to passing a note over? I would say yes.... But still, texting someone in the same room, I wouldnt dream of it, but then I still leave a room when I use my phone out of some apparently skewed sense of being polite.
Slashdot Mirror
1) get email, it has a power point attachment, Open the power point attachment, modify it save it send it back...
2) get an email, have it quarantined, now you cannot do anything with it.
After all accessing it with a suitable reader application would threaten that application, if you are suggesting running the application that opens the attachment in a sandboxed environment then you need to realise that things like external media sources embedded in files wont work, you cannot save it nor send it anywhere until it is moved from the sandbox back to your environment.
Of course this would be the procedure for every mail with an attachment, every html mail with an embedded logo.... It becomes a nightmare to manage and less convenient. What I mean is that you can work around this but not without significantly degrading the usefulness of the technology, oh and not without relying on the user to realise what is OK for a powerpoint document or word document to do (winword.exe wants to contact http://191.2.3.45/whatever.mov is that OK?) and what is not.
Sandboxing individual applications that have opened a suspect file only works in a disconnected environment, one where one application doesn't want access to other resources. All you would end up with is something akin to the Vista yes/no prompts, and then you are back to relying on the user not to allow an application to do something stupid, even if that stupid action is not obviously stupid.
As a bonus, we can just use the huge underground alien terraforming equipment that is already installed!!
Whilst terraforming a nearby planet seems interesting, I would like to see more investment of both research and cash into either orbital habitats or preferably mobile space habitats. The idea of living on a large space station seems to me to be more interesting than settling a different planet... Oh whilst Im on the subject,- a FTL drive, I'd like one of those, plus a teleportation device, oh and a replicator, a light saber, a rocket pack, some sort of time machine....
Differences in the rendering engine not withstanding and looking at Firefox and Konqueror on Linux I often see very little if any discernible difference on pages that are written with valid mark-up. Javascript sometimes seems to cause aesthetic issues between the two - but I tend to find that if it works and looks good in konqueror you are safe everywhere else (Although I still tend to check everywhere else...).
The most striking differences still seem to be between IE5/IE6 and everything else, hell I can get Safari, Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, Epiphany and even IE7 to display a page exactly how I want it, but I then I need to add hacks for IE5/IE6. To be honest I am now simply making sure that the results in IE5/IE6 are good enough, i.e. they look different but still nice (obviously all code needs to be standards compliant), rather than trying to get an identical page, it is much easier and reduces the amount of time spent messing with the CSS templates, not to mention the fact that most people will look at the site in one browser or another and are unlikely to determine or be bothered by the differences between browsers.
I should point out though that those people who simply decide that IE support or now Safari support can be ignored or that a link to get Firefox is sufficient (Egged on by the goggle referral program) are mistaken. Anyone who tries to bar access to their site to certain browsers, either by user agent or by using more in depth checks, should not be responsible for maintaining websites.
*Nice website entry page, subtly menacing.
So are companies currently running a single windows flavour on everything? No they may run XP on their desktops (Probably a few 2K, NT or 98 boxes left for some application that doesn't like XP), Vista on some of the laptops (Sales need the latest gizmo's). Windows 2k or 2k3 server (Or more likely a mixture) on their internal servers (if they are a windows shop). A *nix on their web servers, whatever OS is in their managed routers (with its own management applications), PalmOS on their PDA's, Symbian on their Phones, Mac OS on their Graphic designers Powebooks.. Its hardly a monoculture.
With Linux you could get closer though, you could be running Dabian on all your desktops, Laptops and servers, And then Debian derivatives on your routers (well maybe...), PDA's and Phones... I haven't seen Linux specifically for switches but it may get there... - you could really get to the point where our entire IT infrastructure is based on the same code base, but still role specific (i.e. you are not going tobe running KDE on your servers or your PDA's - the kernel or each type of device is going to be different).
So as an enterprise you could have a license free (and therefore license cost free - no extra software costs associated with growth...) environment, total compatibility between everything (Your PDA works seamlessly with your desktop scheduling and mail software and happily mounts NFS shares to sync documents.. (I do that at home - never done it in a corporate environment))
All updates and patches come from a single source, or can be aggregated into a single source using the same methods (you can run your own internal repositories and manage all your application maintenance - not just the OS and some applications (ala Windows) No more having a SUS server, a Anti-Virus Update Server and a million small updating systems and scripts..)
I guess what I mean is that Linux is as diverse as you need it to be, but that diversity can be harnesed and standardised standardised... Its easy to create policies and procedures to manage and maintain Linux environments, (and to automate that management) in a way that isn't possible with windows.
The obvious caveat with all this is that you obviously (as a large company) cannot just install the latest release of Ubuntu on your desktops, the latest version of PCLinuxOS on your laptops, Red Hat on your servers, some OE Linux flavour on your PDA's, Phones, switches, and Routers and just expect stuff to work. You need to think about it first, design a good system and then implement it well.
So does that sound like the ramblings of a gear head? I would assume I would use about 4 different distributions (All derived from Debian), plus probably different versions of those distributions (stable / unstable) across the enterprise. Every Specific role would have a base image (including as much software as possible that as common to sub roles (i,e, Common Drivers, X, a DM, NFS Client, Office and productivity software on the Desktops, Common Divers, Tripwire, SSH maybe NFS on the servers ). Fro these you derive your environment... All very neat, simple and safe.
Oh and you have all the code so the vendor cannot harm you by going bust.
Oh and you have your own update servers so they cannot be denied to you.
Oh and you can change where you get your updates from, as other distributions will use the same code.
Oh and you can make your own changes to your applications if you need to and have the resources.
I cannot think of anything that offers these kind of possibilities except Linux/BSD. but correct me if I am wrong.
For the record...
Iceweasel 2.0.0.4
From the 43 selectors 26 have passed, 10 are buggy and 7 are unsupported (Passed 357 out of 578 tests)
Konqueror 3.5.7
From the 43 selectors 43 have passed, 0 are buggy and 0 are unsupported (Passed 578 out of 578 tests)
So konqueror (which I thought shared source with safari?) is 100% compliant at least as of version 3.5.7 (I don't have an earlier version to test.).
In the meantime, the customers who aren't impacted by the lack of 3G can still purchase it; others certainly don't need to.
That sentence starts with a capital letter.
Impacted is just as valid as affected, neither is exclusively language used by marketing.
If the GP had said something along the lines of;
"For the immediate future, the demographic who do not require the enabling benefits of third generation technologies will benefit from this product, those outside of this demographic will have their expectations met further down the feature road map...;
you may have had a point. Sadly your contribution appears to have been less than accurate and rather unhelpful.
This spam includes a valid email address for the recipient, and correct recipient name and business details. The message and attachment could be anything. In this case its an invoice, but it could just as easily be an order (sent to sales) or a request for info (sent to PR or Marketing). This would make it extremely difficult to identify.
.doc (or presumably a file for any application that is exploitable by opening a file) to take advantage of a zero day vulnerability.
Its not as if you could use heuristic scanning of the text content (any malicious payload excepted) to determine that messages of this sort are spam, it would prevent you from recieving any business related email that follows a similar formula and they are all pretty similar.
The attachment in this case was a doc.exe which is fairly obviously dodgy, but as the article states it could be a
With this type of spam and the zero day vulnerability as the scenario it would be entirely possible for a message like this to get through to a real person, for that person to open the attachment and execute whatever malicious code is embedded in the attachment without realising that they have even done anything strange.
There is no way of preventing it that still allows your employees to function, with a 0 day you are (probably) not going to detect the payload before it is executed (what happens then depends on what precautions your company is taking). You cannot brief your user base not to open emails addressed to them with content that looks valid and may be part of their job to look at, the argument of only opening mail from people you know only really works in a social context where you can afford to ignore mail.
So, up until now most common scams and viral mail have had some tell-tale characteristics (although by no means all, custom attacks against specific targets have followed this model before), and now they may not have. (I never understood why spam was so poorly produced in any case). Given that even badly written and almost blindingly obvious spam and scams manage to trick a small number of people, this type of spam or scam is likely to be more effective. This leads me to think that from a business point of view (lets be honest, especially a Microsoft shop) the usefulness of email is seriously deteriorating, it is approaching the point where the existing system contains too much risk and is too overburdened to be useful and that is saying a lot because email really was/is a revolutionary technology. Not that I can think of an alternative nor am I suggesting that we will see business dropping email, but I can see business looking at some of those fatally flawed but great sounding add-ons that aim to secure mail from unknown recipients (micro payments and white listing etc..).
Interestingly, since *everything* is moving, isn't it be possible to demonstrate that any given body is stationary and everything else is moving relative to it? I would assume that it would even be possible to cancel the earth's rotation in such a model. Of course the various other planetary orbits (ant the Sun's orbit) would look a little strange and spirally and I am sure quire a few scientific theories would have to be jettisoned or rewritten, I assume it has been modelled but I can't seem to find one....
Oh and just one more point, the Earth does not orbit the sun, (well it does, almost) it orbits the solar systems centre of gravity, which is actually a little bit outside the radius of the Sun, so you should replace your geo-centric model not with a solar centric one but with a gravitational centric model.
You lose too, and maybe they have less to lose.
My point from the beginning of this whole exchange has been simple, if obviously not clear enough.
1) Al-Jazeera is possibly the only middle eastern news organisation that presents the news as it finds it, (as opposed to the news as X countries information ministry dictates it) it should be applauded for its efforts. It should be supported in its attempt to bring news from the region to the world whilst supplying information to the populace of a region where accurate information is often unavailable and misinformation the norm.
2) Attacks on journalists are reprehensible, there is no excuse for deliberately attacking and killing journalists (that isn't to say that only journalists should be looked after, civilians should also not be deliberately killed, however journalists often find themselves in dangerous positions and usually managed to upset both sides in any given conflict). Attacking state propaganda machines and/or terrorist organisations is a different scenario, but attacking journalists because they report facts you do not like is wrong.
Hope that clears it up.
Firstly, With regard to Tayssir Alouni, as I said in my previous post, I don't think that the Spanish court was wrong, what I am concerned about is how much impact his journalistic contacts within groups hostile to the west had on the case, most significantly, I am concerned that it appeared (from media coverage here in europe at least) his interview with Bin-Laden's was used against him.
He was apparently under investigation by the Spanish police as early as 1994 for having contacts with people who, like him are exiles from Syria. At that point he was not employed by Al-Jazeera, but a different media organisation. The facts of the case are that he was convicted of "collaboration", not funding, sponsorship or direct involvement, there are many many stories around insinuating that he was Bin-Laden primary contact to the outside world, and that he couriered money to Bin-Laden, helping the latter remain concealed, none of these are from official or primary sources though.
The only official documentation that says anything other than "conspiracy" is a statement by Tayssir Alouni, prior to his arrest stating that he carried messages between Al-Jazeera and the Taliban, and cash to help some of his friends, there is no explanation as to what amounts of cash or its purpose. According to information that came out during the trial he was supposed to have taken about $4,500 US to Mohamed Bahaiah, who is, apparently "considered at the international level as a supposed courier for the Al Qaeda organization between Afghanistan and Europe". So, it is certainly not clear cut that Tayssir Alouni == Al Qa'ida, making the statement that therefore Al-Jazeera == Al Qa'ida, is simply ludicrous (it would be like suggesting that ABC + CNN + FOX are all just fronts for the US Government and that the BBC is a Front for the UK Government). When Tayssir Alouni did his bin laden interview, he was working for both A-Jazeera and CNN, so does that mean that CNN are also in some way implicated?
Secondly, If you're a Muslim, you don't believe in gay or women's rights
That is not true for all Muslims, but a minority, in the same way that that statement is true for some Christians but not a majority, (I'm not sure that the woman's rights element is true for Jews, but homosexuality is certainly frowned upon by some, in fact for all three major religions homosexuality is generally seen as a problem, whilst women rights have more recently been accepted)
Last point
You said that "reporting on a bunch of gay rights protesters getting beaten up by people who claim 'Moscow is not Sodom' doesn't tell you which side the reporter or the readers sympathize with.
Isn't that how its supposed to be? Report the news not some slanted version of it. If Al-Jazeera were a fundamentalist Muslim extremist news source don't you think that gay rights protectors being beaten up would be a good place to show some of the bias you are crediting them with?
Look, The point is really simple, just because you don't like what is reported by Al-Jazeera doesn't mean what they report is wrong, just because it goes against the US position, does not make Al-Jazeera a terrorist organisation. Moreover just because someone is a Muslim doesn't make them intolerant, violent or anti-western/anti-American, just as being Christian doesn't make someone intolerant, violent or anti-evolution, and neither position excludes the possibility of being any or all of those things.
Don't let nationality, ethnicity or religion detract from the validity of a viewpoint, or allow it to cloud what is factual and what is not. Religion, ethnicity and nationality and are factors that influence people, but they don't define them. Islam, like Christianity or Judaism is open to interpretation, and there are a great many interpretations that are followed, add in the fact that we are al human and you will find that issues that seem black and white are actually made up of many shades of grey.
Oh and one more question - Alluni was able to capture images of civilian victims in the destitute villages of Afghanistan and the miserable streets of Kabul. - How do you take bias pictures? Should civilian victims in Afghanistan not be shown?
Well looks like you have made your mind up already that Al-Jazeera == Al-Qa'ida. What I find strange is that the US administration and the UK government haven't actually claimed that Al-Jazeera are involved in terrorism in some way, given that both governments have previously been quite happy to identify groups that they see as threatening as terrorists, what is stopping them in this case?
More importantly would be defining the terms "support of terrorism", "collaboration" or even "terrorism". At present terms like these are used interchangeably to deamonise any group or entity that is either opposed or not sufficiently in support of US policy, in that environment an organisation that reports news in an area where people are quite legitimately annoyed at the US is going to be a target of US anger and probably portrayed as "evil terrorist collaborators".
What I would say is simple. If Al-Jazeera staff are involved in terrorism, then charge them and put them on trial, simply murdering people as they work, and whilst they pose no physical threat is not justifiable, it is criminal.
Now to move on to your comments about Tayssir Alouni, I have one question to ask, what was he convicted of? The answer is collaborating with terrorists. In short he was accused and found guilty of having contact with suspected terrorists and links to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Wouldn't you expect a journalist who was working in Afghanistan, covering a war between the Taliban and the US/UK to have contacts with people like the Taliban? Or would you prefer the more common media approach of simply restating press releases and official information? I would also expect a journalist to have contacts throughout the communities he covered, including with unsavoury individuals.
I am not saying that the Spanish authorities are wrong, but I am sceptical about the circumstances surrounding this conviction and the nature of it and I doubt I am alone. Oh and does the arrest of one man in an organisation of thousands convict the entire organisation of the same crime?I don't think so.
As for Al-Jazeera having "rabidly anti liberal politics", I would suggest you look at their website and find an example of this, they seem happy to report on gay rights issues in Russia and highlight the plight of Afghan women, none of which would seem to fit into the anti-liberal view you are crediting them with.
So once again in summary, I disagree with you, and you appear to be regurgitating propaganda. There is no danger in having a news agency reporting the news with a viewpoint different to that of the US, it is healthy. Every reporter, program and news agency will display a bias of some sort, it is a product of being human, our job is not kill people whose views differ from our own, it is to look at what they are saying and then decide what to do with that information.
First off, here is the correct link Volkischer Beobachter. It should be noted that that particular paper was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, i.e. the Nazi party, whilst Al-Jazeera isn't and has never been related to either the Baath Party in Iraq, or Al-Qa'ida.
Al-Jazeera is a Doha based organisation, Doha being the capital of Qatar, and Qatar being an apparently key US ally in the middle east, along with Saudi Arabia. It tends to carry news aimed at middle eastern readers/viewers.
Al-Jazeera isn't significantly anti-western, or pro Al-Qa'ida. The stories it carries and even the opinions offered are often similar to what you might see on the BBC, ITN and CNN.
The only thing that makes Al-Jazeera different from the mainly western news agencies out there is that it has the capability of being on the ground in the midst of things and then reports what it sees, often including the views and opinions of people in the region. Unfortunately this sometimes doesn't fit with the general media picture coming out of the middle east, well it mostly does if you watch Euro-centric news, but not if you compare it to news for US consumption.
As for Al-Jazeera encouraging attacks on US troops, I'd like to see where that reference comes from, as I certainly haven't seen anything of the sort.
I would go so far as to suggest that the US Governments actions (I wouldn't blame the US military, they have enough problems at the moment and at least have the excuse of following orders that seem legitimate) in carrying out attacks (accidental or otherwise) against journalists of all types in the middle east is despicable, I would go so far as to say that it is criminal, but sadly understandable. If I were a commander on the ground I would prefer that the country I was occupying did not get information about what was going on, or find out about the mistakes that have been made. I would prefer that all media in country were controlled by friendly organisations so that the battle for "hearts and minds" would be easier to win, this would be doubly the case if I didn't understand what Al-Jazeera was. Sadly in a 24/7 news cycle and global coverage, those days are long gone.
Its funny how we see the US demanding democratic reform, and press freedom in many areas of the world, and then carrying out attacks and propaganda campaigns against one of the few organisations that makes use of that press freedom,after all the freedom to publish the facts as you see them is curtailed if you are likely to be killed in the process.
So in short, your apparent comparison is flawed and moreover does not give the credit to the Al-Jazeera and other (non embedded) journalists in trouble spots, doing an important, difficult and dangerous job, nor does it show any compassion for those innocent reporters killed without good cause.
OK,
:)
What about if someone creates a website to distribute pictures to their friends, but doesn't protect it in any way. Should it be an offence for someone to access that site as explicit permission has not been granted?
What about if someone creates a site about a polarising political viewpoint and places a banner stating that anyone opposed to that viewpoint is not permitted to view the site. Should accessing that if you have a differing view be an offence?
Lets take it one step further and assume that the individual who owns the first site pays for data transfer on a per Mb rate, if an undesirable person views the site could they be deemed as having stolen whatever the monetary value is of the data transfer they used?
If the above is deemed as true then, even if no fee is calculated on the transfer of data, surely simply making that bandwidth unavailable to other legitimate users would be sufficient for a prosecution?
If an individual accesses these sites without consent (other than that implied by the existence of the sites) should they be held liable?. I don't think so.
Wi-fi and web sites are comparable simply because they are both technological in nature, both require one person or organisation to acquire a service, and then provide information using that service in an indiscriminate manner analogous to broadcast. Both require a concious effort to access (either typing an address / clicking a link or selecting a network to use), and yet often neither explicitly grants nor denies permission to do so. Lastly, and most importantly both can be configured so that casual access is not easily possible.
In short, whilst it is not possible to secure light and prevent others from accessing it without making it totally unavailable, it is possible to secure an access point or a web site so that it is still available but not usable without further action.
The onus to protect against unauthorised access should be on the providers of services that are broadcast indiscriminately. Where protection is in place and is then broken, the responsibility lies with the person having broken it. However deciding what is adequate protection is another matter and outside of the scope of this comment.
Erm, wouldnt an application that support all three standards need to have support for that binary format too?
So... For an application to support your grandunifieddocumentformat it would have to understand al three... OK.
Does this mean that a document can be composed of multiple elements from the different formats?
I would suggest that wat you would achieve with this is a format a file that does not work with any application that only supports any one format, which would be most of them.
Oh and if you are suggesting a format whereby the file is stored in a manner that is acceptable under all three standards, then you will end up with files 3x+ as big, and still as inconsistent between applications. At that rate you are better off with a converter.
Saying that, we could add a few other mark-up types (definitely html, some tex in there too maybe? or hell embed a php compiler add php support and go the whole hog, if we include gd like capabilities we could do all sorts!!) and we would probably get a research grant from anyone who sells storage media. This suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Fancy going halves on the implementation?
So a check-list:
Name? -> Fine,
Protection from environmental issues? - nil,
Protection against terrorism? - May stop Greek Historian Fundamentalists.
Self Regulating? -> Fine
Protection from environmental issues? - moderate, will route around local issues.
Protection against terrorism? -> See above
Large number of interconnects -> Fine
Protection from environmental issues? - moderate, its redundant (see Self Regulating).
Protection against terrorism? -> See above
Superconductor requires extreme cooling -> Hmm
Protection from environmental issues? - Nil, (may help fight global warming?)
Protection against terrorism? -> Hope they don't damage the cooling infrastructure, or the
containment, or the management systems. I guess that would
break it
Cost @ $40 million -> Good
Protection from environmental issues? -> Nil
Protection against terrorism? -> Nil
(Doesn't seem to high for something unique, just think of the tourists (not terrorists,
*tourists*))
Funded in part by the US DHS -> Hmm
Protection from environmental issues? -> Nil
Protection against terrorism? -> Nil, but propaganda coup for DHS!!
Its amazing how many things appear to have a secondary benefit in preventing terrorist attacks. I would hate to see what kind of projects we'd get if there were a spate of shark attacks... (A new inland housing development, it provides cheap, affordable housing... and protection from sharks..)
According to BBC Radio 4 these things are helicopter type devices with 7 cameras on board, their key benefit is the fact that they are rapidly deployable. However they have a range of... 500 meters, oh and they are categorised as "toys". (they are apparently lighter than a bag of sugar too, although the size of the bag in question was not mentioned)
So its not a Predator type UAV sitting for hours 500 miles from the launch site, with a tangle of sensors and weapons attached, more of an instant CCTV camera, maybe useful for crowd control or events... (or just for propaganda value).
Saying that I a not terribly comfortable with the direction this is taking, I close to a city centre (with a really low crime rate - except with regard to burglaries...), and it bothers me that in 5-10 years there may be stealthy drones airborne over my house or garden without my knowledge, taking pictures.
I wish we could get back to having a few more Police officers knocking about, on foot, talking to people.
ISP -> FBI: Well, ahem, everybody who views the site has access to the html or js source
FBI -> ISP: Everyone?
ISP -> FBI: Well yeah, you see when the user visits a site the browser requests the page, and the server hosting the page will send the html source, then the browser will render the source to look nice for the viewer... you can hide some of the logic with php, jsp or asp and other server side...
FBI -> ISP: But if they can see the source then could they make copies...?
ISP -> FBI: Well yes but...
FBI -> ISP: They would know all the secret techniques used to make the site?
ISP -> FBI: Well yes, but as I was going to say...
FBI -> ISP: Well that makes it easier thanks. Bye
1 week later:
'The BBC has learned that a large number of extradition requests from the US government relating to British subjects and other non US-nationals breaching Trade Secret, Copyright and Terrorism laws, this is after it was alleged that people are illegally viewing web pages.
This comes after the US issued Arrest Warrants for 3.7 billion individuals globally on Monday. A Spokesman for the DHS is quoted as saying:
"Well if everyone can see how stuff works, they could copy it, and if they copy it they could use it, and if they could use it they could mislead people. Misleading people is not nice and causes angst, angst is like fear, and fear is a bit like terror. Terror is caused by terrorists, therefore viewing web pages is terrorism. Also children may be harmed in some way."'
Compared to passing a note over? I would say yes.... But still, texting someone in the same room, I wouldnt dream of it, but then I still leave a room when I use my phone out of some apparently skewed sense of being polite.