There's no way to tell. So you have to do a little critical thinking. If someone is defending Sony's XCP rootkit, for example, you may be wrong but you can be pretty darned sure he's working for Sony. If someone is defending Microsoft's security record in a thread about yet another Windows hole (or like the one today, an old hole they never bothered fixing) you can be pretty sure that person has a stake in the company.
You might be wrong, sure. All you have to go in is logic. Occam's razor usually works.
But then the price of those commodities would rise, and more would get imported since it would be competitive to do so.
As a worker I'd far rather have imported goods than imported poor people that want my job. Now, when I say "my" job I don't actually mean mine; I retire in a few years. But you get the gist.
The illegal immigrant can legally get food stamps, the Earned Income Credit and Child Care credit, tax credits where you can get a bigger tax refund than you actually paid. These food stamps and tax credits aren't benefitting the poor, they're benefitting the rich corporations that then don't have to pay these workers enough to live on.
And then the Americans would lose their jobs
If a Mexican citizen is going to pick the tomatos, how is an American losing his job if the tomatos are picked in Mexico? At least then he's not getting American food stamps and american tax credits. What about crops that won't grow that far south? What about the cost of shipping?
You could prevent that by imposing high tariffs on imported foodstuffs
They already do; little or nothing changes.
you would like to keep the money inside our economy, right?
Even more than that, I'd like to see us sell more than we buy. But there are no more "american corporations"; today's corporations are multinational, with stockholders all over the world. In that light, being anti-labor is the same as being anti-American.
Have a cup of coffee and read the damned comment again. There are no viruses for Linux or mac. You have to be ignorant to get infected with Linux or Mac, you don't have to be ignorant to have your Windows box pwned.
Secure OSes like Linux and Mac are just as useable as Windows. In fact I'd argue that my distro is MORE useable than Windows. But Mac and Linux are far more secure (see today's FA
And most people DON'T buy Windows today. You and I aren't normal; we're nerds. Nerds install OSes, normal people just buy computers.
How many boxed sets of Vista have been sold compared to downloads of all the various distros of Linux? I wouln't be surprised if there were more sales and downloads of Linux than boxed sets of Vista sold since Vista came out. Does anybody have any numbers?
It is not an essential part of DRM that code be included in data. It's quite possible for the data to be wrapped in more data (encrypted with a key), and decoded with a separate program.
"Possible" and "actually existing in the real world" are two different things. DRM doesn't work. DRM can't work. All DRM does is inconvinience honest, paying customers (including making their gear less secure) while doing absolutely nothing whatever to slow piracy at all.
Anyone with that little regard for their customers is stupid enough to mix code and data when it's not necessary.
For Microsoft to have failed to patch an issue such as this must be indicative of either breathtaking arrogance or utter stupidity... or perhaps both
How about apathy? They'll wake up when and if they ever lose market share because of their shoddy product. I mean come on, if I can sell a Yugo at Escalade prices, why should I produce a quality product? That would be stupid. And if I could sell Yugos at Escalade prices I think my arrogance would be understandable and forgivable.
They've been selling an insecure OS for as long as PCs have been networked, why should they secure it now?
Why, I benefit from DST and you probably do, too. Its real purpose is so that those of us who can't afford an airplane ticket can experience the joys of jet lag twice a year!
I'd say Folger's and Maxwell House sell a lot more coffee twice a year than other times.
An astroturfer is someone who pretends to be a customer of a particular company (any company) but who is in fact a shareholder, owner, or employee paid to post nice things on the internet about his company. I do not feel charitable to astroturfers. If someone from a company defends his company and identifies himself as being with that company then he has my respect. Those who masquerade don't.
I am bitter because I have been called an astroturfer. Repeatedly. For a variety of organisations.
I understand your bitterness then. You do realise that your nickname doesn't garner much trust, don't you?
Security by obscurity has never been a wise choice as a single line of defense.
Very true, and it's one of the reasons Linus is more secure than Windows. If the source code is available to millions there's a far better chance of finding bugs and fixing them.
I hope you get modded up. Your comment was both interesting and insightful.
Part of Microsoft's problem is their refusal to separate data from code. The only way pure data can infect a computer is if a program has a buffer overflow or other exploitable programming error.
There are, of course, some things that do require a data/code mix, like a spreadsheet, but most don't. DRM (Digital Restrictions on Media) must have code in the data. A WiMP file has built in DRM and you can imbed a virus there. And MP3 or Ogg is pure data, and the only way an Ogg or MP3 file can infect your system is a programming error in the player.
Your idea has great merit, and I hope it catches on.
And I never said that we SHOULD incarcerate people for growing a harmless plant. Nice strawman
You misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm saying that if we can afford to incarcerate people for growing a harmless plant (and last I saw something like 70% of our prisoners were there for drugs; a friend of mine just got out or Dwight for her drug use) we can afford to incarcerate people who are here ILLEGALLY. I never said you condoned incarcerating pot farmers. My point was if you release the nonviolent drug offenders you then have more than enough resources to incarcerate illegal aliens.
It may seem like a non-choice to you (a person's life vs your pride)
My pride has nothing to do with it. Illegal aliens are doing jobs that US citizens should be doing, and those jobs should pay more than they do. If you have to pay more for Tyson chicken, sobeit.
BTW, I refuse to buy that brand of chicken since they burned a hundred or so Mexicans alive in one of their processing plants. They had the doors chained shut to keep the minimum wage workers from stealing chicken parts. The plant manager got two years in prison for killing all those people in the name of profit.
The people who own and run Tyson's are the kind of people who don't want the border closed. They're making money hand over fist exploiting the Mexicans. I'd like to see Mexico do something to raise their citizens' standard of living; you don't see many Canadians crossing illegally. Unfortunately since Mexico has been a defacto one party rule for most of the last century, it's about as likely to raise its standard of living as the old USSR. The US government didn't cause Mexico's problems, the Mexican government did.
We have plenty of poor people in our own country; I know a lot of them. Poverty is something we as a nation don't need to import, even though its rich people think we do, in fact, not have enough poor people here to exploit. It's supply and demand.
Whether Mac or Linux is intrinsically more secure than Windows is a subject for another (lengthy and heated) discussion
Which has repeatedly taken place here and you apparently never bothered following. Mac and Linux ARE intrinsically more secure than Windows.
A Trojan can hit any computer. That's why Linux folks are always cautioning to never run untested binaries.
There are no viruses in the wild for Mac or Linux. Your method of securing your PC works fine for Mac and Linux but will not for Windows.
One: since Linux accounts for such an infinitesimally small percentage of market share, malware coders don't waste their time coding for Linux
"Market share" is a meaningless term when it comes to FOSS. There is no way to count the six computers I installed Linux on last year from the same CD, all of which report to web sites that they're running IE on Windows rather than Firefox on Linux.
You can, however, measure Macs. Apple shipped 1,610,000 Macintosh® computers in a single quarter last year! That's one hell of a big potential botnet. If it was as easy to pwn an Apple as it was to pwn a Windows machine, it would have already been done. There are more than enough Apple computers to make it worth a malware writers's time.
Unless you're a Microsoft employee tasked with defending your company's products, please stop defending thair pathetically insecure OS. If you are such an employee, please let us know so we can take what you say with a grain of salt; however, we all know about Microsoft astroturf.
Me? I've never owned an Apple, and run dual-boot Mandriva/XP on my PC. I've disabled networking on the Windows side.
Has any non-signed agreement ever held up in court? Rather, the true answer is that Microsoft has such a big team of lawyers they can defeat the DoJ. What can any lawyer do against such weaponry?
In Microsoft's defense a trojan is kind of hard for an OS to fight. That's why we Linux folks are always nagging you MS folks about untrusted binaries.
As to viruses, there's no excuse for a virus to be able to infect your computer. That's a sign of a buggy os and/or application.
I cannot fathom why people don't switch to systems that do not require this ridiculous kludge.
Because a quarter century ago nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. These days nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. In a culture that worships money, the man who has the most of it is God.
Why in the name of everything vile and evil would you want your computer on crack? I mean come on, even your mom wouldn't let her computer do crack!
"Why you be lookin' up crack in da uncyclopedia when you can have yo PC on crack? I gots da best crack dey is, I have you computer in a two hunnat dolla a day habit, my crack so good! Sheeit!"
I hope you're at least using a firewall... or a Mac.
Really... is there a need to separate spyware (which AV programs are horrible at detecting) from virus scanning as well?
Of course! The difference between a trojan and spyware is that trojans come from e-vile hacker bad guys that want to use your computer for nefarious purposes, and spyware comes from benign, nice, everybody loves them corporations like Sony that want to use your computer for nefarious purposes.
IF a company can't be constantly selling you NEW products (as opposed to just updates for the old) and using new fear tactics to do it, how can they grow?
This is the problem with many industries today. They have the need to grow, like a cancer has a need to grow. Why must people be so greedy that they have to use every unethical and immoral tactic there is to sustain their greedy growth? What's wrong with settling for an honest living without stealing your way to cancerous growth like Norton does with is product? Why isn't Norton seen as evil as the RIAA (I mean, besides the fact that they don't sue their customers; selling you vinyl then tape then CD then download of the same song is akin to Norton, except npbody MAKES you "upgrade" to CD from vinyl)
Why does Norton need to get your money every six months, while the company who sold you the computer it's protecting only has to sell you a new one when YOU feel the need for a new one? Why can't Norton settle for the sale they make when you buy a PC?
Why should an OS have to come with a media player when there are tons of free ones, but an OS that's prone to malware can't come with AV? Microsoft should buy Norton or McAffee or someone and give you free virus defs.
Apple or Linux. My box is dual boot with networking in Windows disabled, as I pointed out in a comment modded "flamebait" this morning (who's going to flame me for giving my honest opinion about Microsoft, Ballmer?)
So as to not garner another "flamebait mod" from the astroturfers by pointing out how insecure Windows is out of the box, I won't. Rather, I'll point out that Linux and Mac aren't being targeted by the botnet operators. Regardless of the reasons, you're safe with Mac or Linux unless a cracker targets you personally (no OS is completely secure).
Poor Microsoft, if they ever marketed a secure OC Norton and McAffee would sue for anticompetetive monopoly practices and the EU wouldn't let them sell Windows in Europe any more.
-mcgrew (I don't do Mondays very well and I'm on a losing streak lately so please be kind to an old nerd)
Slashdot Mirror
There's no way to tell. So you have to do a little critical thinking. If someone is defending Sony's XCP rootkit, for example, you may be wrong but you can be pretty darned sure he's working for Sony. If someone is defending Microsoft's security record in a thread about yet another Windows hole (or like the one today, an old hole they never bothered fixing) you can be pretty sure that person has a stake in the company.
You might be wrong, sure. All you have to go in is logic. Occam's razor usually works.
But then the price of those commodities would rise, and more would get imported since it would be competitive to do so.
As a worker I'd far rather have imported goods than imported poor people that want my job. Now, when I say "my" job I don't actually mean mine; I retire in a few years. But you get the gist.
The illegal immigrant can legally get food stamps, the Earned Income Credit and Child Care credit, tax credits where you can get a bigger tax refund than you actually paid. These food stamps and tax credits aren't benefitting the poor, they're benefitting the rich corporations that then don't have to pay these workers enough to live on.
And then the Americans would lose their jobs
If a Mexican citizen is going to pick the tomatos, how is an American losing his job if the tomatos are picked in Mexico? At least then he's not getting American food stamps and american tax credits. What about crops that won't grow that far south? What about the cost of shipping?
You could prevent that by imposing high tariffs on imported foodstuffs
They already do; little or nothing changes.
you would like to keep the money inside our economy, right?
Even more than that, I'd like to see us sell more than we buy. But there are no more "american corporations"; today's corporations are multinational, with stockholders all over the world. In that light, being anti-labor is the same as being anti-American.
Have a cup of coffee and read the damned comment again. There are no viruses for Linux or mac. You have to be ignorant to get infected with Linux or Mac, you don't have to be ignorant to have your Windows box pwned.
Have you seen slashdot lately?
1. You were connecting the computer directly to the internet, with no router/firewall between you and it.
How many home PCs have a router/firewall between them and the internet? I will say, I applaud Microsoft for finally having the firewall on by default.
Secure OSes like Linux and Mac are just as useable as Windows. In fact I'd argue that my distro is MORE useable than Windows. But Mac and Linux are far more secure (see today's FA
And most people DON'T buy Windows today. You and I aren't normal; we're nerds. Nerds install OSes, normal people just buy computers.
How many boxed sets of Vista have been sold compared to downloads of all the various distros of Linux? I wouln't be surprised if there were more sales and downloads of Linux than boxed sets of Vista sold since Vista came out. Does anybody have any numbers?
It is not an essential part of DRM that code be included in data. It's quite possible for the data to be wrapped in more data (encrypted with a key), and decoded with a separate program.
"Possible" and "actually existing in the real world" are two different things. DRM doesn't work. DRM can't work. All DRM does is inconvinience honest, paying customers (including making their gear less secure) while doing absolutely nothing whatever to slow piracy at all.
Anyone with that little regard for their customers is stupid enough to mix code and data when it's not necessary.
At my age I'd rather have rabies.
For Microsoft to have failed to patch an issue such as this must be indicative of either breathtaking arrogance or utter stupidity... or perhaps both
How about apathy? They'll wake up when and if they ever lose market share because of their shoddy product. I mean come on, if I can sell a Yugo at Escalade prices, why should I produce a quality product? That would be stupid. And if I could sell Yugos at Escalade prices I think my arrogance would be understandable and forgivable.
They've been selling an insecure OS for as long as PCs have been networked, why should they secure it now?
Why, I benefit from DST and you probably do, too. Its real purpose is so that those of us who can't afford an airplane ticket can experience the joys of jet lag twice a year!
I'd say Folger's and Maxwell House sell a lot more coffee twice a year than other times.
-mcgrew
An astroturfer is someone who pretends to be a customer of a particular company (any company) but who is in fact a shareholder, owner, or employee paid to post nice things on the internet about his company. I do not feel charitable to astroturfers. If someone from a company defends his company and identifies himself as being with that company then he has my respect. Those who masquerade don't.
I am bitter because I have been called an astroturfer. Repeatedly. For a variety of organisations.
I understand your bitterness then. You do realise that your nickname doesn't garner much trust, don't you?
The shareholders are the ones I'm referring to. They are ultimately responsible for the actions of the companies they invest in.
When money is your god, the only evil is lack of profit.
Security by obscurity has never been a wise choice as a single line of defense.
Very true, and it's one of the reasons Linus is more secure than Windows. If the source code is available to millions there's a far better chance of finding bugs and fixing them.
Fixing beats hiding any day.
I hope you get modded up. Your comment was both interesting and insightful.
Part of Microsoft's problem is their refusal to separate data from code. The only way pure data can infect a computer is if a program has a buffer overflow or other exploitable programming error.
There are, of course, some things that do require a data/code mix, like a spreadsheet, but most don't. DRM (Digital Restrictions on Media) must have code in the data. A WiMP file has built in DRM and you can imbed a virus there. And MP3 or Ogg is pure data, and the only way an Ogg or MP3 file can infect your system is a programming error in the player.
Your idea has great merit, and I hope it catches on.
Doctor: I have good news and bad news. The good news is, your cancer is under remission.
Patient: And the bad news?
Doctor: We gave you rabies.
And I never said that we SHOULD incarcerate people for growing a harmless plant. Nice strawman
You misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm saying that if we can afford to incarcerate people for growing a harmless plant (and last I saw something like 70% of our prisoners were there for drugs; a friend of mine just got out or Dwight for her drug use) we can afford to incarcerate people who are here ILLEGALLY. I never said you condoned incarcerating pot farmers. My point was if you release the nonviolent drug offenders you then have more than enough resources to incarcerate illegal aliens.
It may seem like a non-choice to you (a person's life vs your pride)
My pride has nothing to do with it. Illegal aliens are doing jobs that US citizens should be doing, and those jobs should pay more than they do. If you have to pay more for Tyson chicken, sobeit.
BTW, I refuse to buy that brand of chicken since they burned a hundred or so Mexicans alive in one of their processing plants. They had the doors chained shut to keep the minimum wage workers from stealing chicken parts. The plant manager got two years in prison for killing all those people in the name of profit.
The people who own and run Tyson's are the kind of people who don't want the border closed. They're making money hand over fist exploiting the Mexicans. I'd like to see Mexico do something to raise their citizens' standard of living; you don't see many Canadians crossing illegally. Unfortunately since Mexico has been a defacto one party rule for most of the last century, it's about as likely to raise its standard of living as the old USSR. The US government didn't cause Mexico's problems, the Mexican government did.
We have plenty of poor people in our own country; I know a lot of them. Poverty is something we as a nation don't need to import, even though its rich people think we do, in fact, not have enough poor people here to exploit. It's supply and demand.
That OEM would go out of business, because his competetitors would not have such easily compromised PCs and the word would get out.
Whether Mac or Linux is intrinsically more secure than Windows is a subject for another (lengthy and heated) discussion
Which has repeatedly taken place here and you apparently never bothered following. Mac and Linux ARE intrinsically more secure than Windows.
A Trojan can hit any computer. That's why Linux folks are always cautioning to never run untested binaries.
There are no viruses in the wild for Mac or Linux. Your method of securing your PC works fine for Mac and Linux but will not for Windows.
One: since Linux accounts for such an infinitesimally small percentage of market share, malware coders don't waste their time coding for Linux
"Market share" is a meaningless term when it comes to FOSS. There is no way to count the six computers I installed Linux on last year from the same CD, all of which report to web sites that they're running IE on Windows rather than Firefox on Linux.
You can, however, measure Macs. Apple shipped 1,610,000 Macintosh® computers in a single quarter last year! That's one hell of a big potential botnet. If it was as easy to pwn an Apple as it was to pwn a Windows machine, it would have already been done. There are more than enough Apple computers to make it worth a malware writers's time.
Unless you're a Microsoft employee tasked with defending your company's products, please stop defending thair pathetically insecure OS. If you are such an employee, please let us know so we can take what you say with a grain of salt; however, we all know about Microsoft astroturf.
Me? I've never owned an Apple, and run dual-boot Mandriva/XP on my PC. I've disabled networking on the Windows side.
Read the EULA.
Has any non-signed agreement ever held up in court? Rather, the true answer is that Microsoft has such a big team of lawyers they can defeat the DoJ. What can any lawyer do against such weaponry?
In Microsoft's defense a trojan is kind of hard for an OS to fight. That's why we Linux folks are always nagging you MS folks about untrusted binaries.
As to viruses, there's no excuse for a virus to be able to infect your computer. That's a sign of a buggy os and/or application.
I cannot fathom why people don't switch to systems that do not require this ridiculous kludge.
Because a quarter century ago nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. These days nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. In a culture that worships money, the man who has the most of it is God.
Don't run crack.exe (it's a trojan).
Why in the name of everything vile and evil would you want your computer on crack? I mean come on, even your mom wouldn't let her computer do crack!
"Why you be lookin' up crack in da uncyclopedia when you can have yo PC on crack? I gots da best crack dey is, I have you computer in a two hunnat dolla a day habit, my crack so good! Sheeit!"
I hope you're at least using a firewall... or a Mac.
Would you still think that if McDonalds had an anticompetetitive monopoly? In a monopoly there is no free market.
Really... is there a need to separate spyware (which AV programs are horrible at detecting) from virus scanning as well?
Of course! The difference between a trojan and spyware is that trojans come from e-vile hacker bad guys that want to use your computer for nefarious purposes, and spyware comes from benign, nice, everybody loves them corporations like Sony that want to use your computer for nefarious purposes.
IF a company can't be constantly selling you NEW products (as opposed to just updates for the old) and using new fear tactics to do it, how can they grow?
This is the problem with many industries today. They have the need to grow, like a cancer has a need to grow. Why must people be so greedy that they have to use every unethical and immoral tactic there is to sustain their greedy growth? What's wrong with settling for an honest living without stealing your way to cancerous growth like Norton does with is product? Why isn't Norton seen as evil as the RIAA (I mean, besides the fact that they don't sue their customers; selling you vinyl then tape then CD then download of the same song is akin to Norton, except npbody MAKES you "upgrade" to CD from vinyl)
Why does Norton need to get your money every six months, while the company who sold you the computer it's protecting only has to sell you a new one when YOU feel the need for a new one? Why can't Norton settle for the sale they make when you buy a PC?
Why should an OS have to come with a media player when there are tons of free ones, but an OS that's prone to malware can't come with AV? Microsoft should buy Norton or McAffee or someone and give you free virus defs.
Apple or Linux. My box is dual boot with networking in Windows disabled, as I pointed out in a comment modded "flamebait" this morning (who's going to flame me for giving my honest opinion about Microsoft, Ballmer?)
So as to not garner another "flamebait mod" from the astroturfers by pointing out how insecure Windows is out of the box, I won't. Rather, I'll point out that Linux and Mac aren't being targeted by the botnet operators. Regardless of the reasons, you're safe with Mac or Linux unless a cracker targets you personally (no OS is completely secure).
Poor Microsoft, if they ever marketed a secure OC Norton and McAffee would sue for anticompetetive monopoly practices and the EU wouldn't let them sell Windows in Europe any more.
-mcgrew
(I don't do Mondays very well and I'm on a losing streak lately so please be kind to an old nerd)