Actually, there are a number of issues with desalination as it presently exists. The cost of plant construction and operations puts the cost of water supply at roughly triple that of traditional methods. They also depend on fossil fuels and thus contribute to greenhouse gasses. They produce brine and boron contaminants that can not easily be disposed of on either land or sea without potentially significant impact of the wildlife exposed to them. They're kind of a mess, really, as a solution for fresh water when compared to a simple pipeline.
My guess would be that two groups, those that express the gene and those that do not have a 6 point difference in IQ on average, in favor of those with the gene.
Software updates (including the device OS) are pretty commonly done via network connections these days, be they wifi or some other other network (LTE perhaps). Now, I'm not saying that your hackability argument has no truth to it, since over the air updates are often tightly controlled as to the source of the update, so installing a non-approved update might be trickier. In principle however, this depends far more on the specifics of the controls the device has put into place to stop unauthorized firmware installation than it does with the means of connectivity employed to make it happen. Keep the port if you have to, but I haven't connected my iPhone to a computer via USB for data transfer of any kind in something like a year now.
It could also readily be argued that re-flashing with non-standard firmware and low-level debugging aren't consumer features and thus don't represent a substantial use case to drive the inclusion of the port for the sake of the percentage of users that would actually use it. I could see a JTAG connection for repair and debug for instance, but why a full USB port?
MHL has seen relatively light adoption. There are other ways to handle A/V out than a physical connection though. AirPlay comes to mind. The bandwidth required to send compressed audio and video at with multiple digital audio channels, high definition resolutions and high frame rates is well within the capabilities of WiFi. I stream 1080p video to my Roku from my Plex server all the time over WiFi.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you can argue that a physical connection is somehow better than a wireless one on the grounds of it being faster, more secure, requiring less power, or whatever you like. The real question though is is the experience of plugging in a physical cable and getting those things more compelling to the consumer than the experience of getting "good enough" capabilities without the need for a cable? Once you pass the "good enough" barrier, the cable vs wireless argument is pretty much a done deal for most people.
I'm sure there's definitely a whiz-bang factor at work here, but I think there's more to it than that.
Power is the last reason you need to connect a cable to most wireless devices now. Have low bandwidth data needs communicated at short distances (both a limitation and a feature)? There's NFC. Have one or two-way audio, or higher speed data transmission with the range of a room or two? There's Bluetooth. Need to communicate at greater range with much higher bandwidth? There's Wifi. Need to charge your device? There's Qi.
Why do I need a USB port anymore? My phone syncs over my WiFi network. It talks to my car audio system via Bluetooth. It talks to my car speaker phone or my headset via Bluetooth too. It just might, someday very soon, pay for my purchase via NFC as I swipe it at the checkout lane. Someday soon, you may even pair your device with Bluetooth accessories or join it to a WiFi network by passing it over a NFC pad. So I have to find the right cable and power adapter to charge it? Why should I have to do that when there's Qi?
Given that Qi can be combined with NFC, its possible that there is some hardware design synergy that makes the cost of implementing both together more palatable than implementing either alone. Honestly, if Apple were a member of the Wireless Power Consortium, I'd expect the new iPhone to have both NFC and Qi. Even without that membership, it just might anyway.
OP is asking for a linux console application that can perform a backup over multiple block devices (in this case externally attached hot-plugable drives like USB), and Bacula is what you come up with as the *only* real solution? Obviously you've never heard of dump.
I pulled a similar switch. I dropped TV service while bumping up the speed of my internet service, cutting my bill from about $120/month for both down to $40/month for the net. I picked up a Roku2 XD for $99 for the TV in the living room. I already had a PlayStation3 which could have handled most of what I had in mind, but I like the Roku. Then I added Netflix and Hulu Plus for about $8 each. I already had Amazon Prime for the free 2-day shipping at $79/year, but if you wanted it just for the streaming service that'd be about $6.58/month for that. Add in Crackle for a few more movies, Pandora for music, and a smattering of special interest channels like TED Talks, because I can. Those channels are free.
Everything about it is essentially on-demand. I can even purchase pay-per-view-like timed rentals on Amazon or the like if I really want.
To make it all even better, I installed Plex Media Server on a Mac that I use as a server. On that, I can load any video, audio, or photo files that I want. The Roku has a Plex channel that can see the media server and play its content, including any channels that are available on Plex but not on Roku. Further, I've got the Plex app on my iPhone, which can display any of Plex's content over the net from home so I can watch it anywhere. This means that if I want, I can download content via iTunes or some similar service. Now, if I were the sort to be into downloading less than legal content, I could also set up Sickbeard and Couchpotato on the Mac so that Plex would have all sorts of content.
Total price, if you ignore the value of Amazon Prime outside of its streaming service and discount the up front investment in the Roku, is roughly $62.58/month, or a touch over half of what I used to pay. What I'm missing is sports and pay channels like HBO. Although there are some sports channels on Roku and Plex, I suspect that sports fans may find the selection lacking. HBO and the like I can live without, but if I couldn't I've read right here on Slashdot that most of those shows have become the internet download darlings on bit torrent and the like.
Next project? Installing Asterisk and converting the house to VIOP.
Blocking 30% of visible light doesn't mean obfuscating what's on the other side. It means simply letting less light through. Think lightly (30% is lightly) tinted windows, not soap scum on the shower door.
OK, so here's the process as it is supposed to work:
Step 1: Decide what it costs to create the product.
Step 2: Project sales.
Step 3: Price the product based on costs vs. sales required to profit to the required margin within the time required by your business plan.
Step 4: Adjust prices and/or improve infrastructure to maintain target margin after the profitability goals are reached.
This normally means that prices have downward pressure as your infrastructure gets paid for. In opposition to this is the upward pressure of the cost of investing profit into improved infrastructure. Generally, people do a good enough job at forecasting adoption rates, infrastructure costs, and other product costs to have prices drop over time. Failure to do so basically means you've screwed up pricing your product.
What they're claiming is that they have to limit the bandwidth because they don't have the infrastructure to support the level of average utilization they're seeing because they have the "problem" of too fast an adoption of their product (bandwidth). But the reality is this falls under the heading, "nice problems to have." They *should* be able to simply scale up the infrastructure to handle it, but they have not invested the required money and man-hours to do so fast enough to meet demand.
The difficulty is that what they sold people was "unlimited" data usage. Data usage is just bandwidth over time. You can't call it unlimited if your response to too much demand is to throttle what's supposedly unlimited. Hint: throttling is also called limiting bandwidth. Unlimited data usage != limited bandwidth.
Failure to plan and invest properly on their part does not free them from the obligations they've made to their customers.
Even more correctly, an equation "describes". The accuracy of the description provided by the equation relative to measure, may merely be an estimate, or may be perfect. They may describe the limits within which values must fall, or the values themselves. Measurements themselves are after all, only estimates withing a certain degree of precision. Playing semantics isn't really the point though. What you have here is a theory that accurately predicts and explains the behavior with an accompanying equation that describes how the variables contribute said same behavior.
I would have to second this recommendation and extend it. Roger Penrose , is an incredible mathematical physicist and yet managed to pen a highly readable and even entertaining book that asks more deep questions than a teenager can shake a stick at. Reading this book as a teen made me want to be a physicist, a computer scientist, a philosopher and a mathematician all at the same time. He also wrote two follow on works, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, and The Large, the Small and the Human Mind.
Again, this is not only about math. Instead it can be seen as a book about many things to which math is a gateway that just happens to talk about the math involved along the way.
The very idea that a tool is bad because it allows you to do sloppy work without knowing what you are doing at the in-depth level of a professional expert in the field is not an anti-feature. You might just as well say that table saws are horrible at cutting wood because they allow you to, with a little effort, remove the saftey guard and thus potentially slice off your hand. Or worse, that screwdrivers are horrble tools because of the alarming number of people that attempt to use them as pry bars or makeshift hammers.
The fact that the barrier to entry is lower and that a language offers the flexibility that allows you to write badly designed code does not make the language fundamentally deficient. There are times, rare though they may be, where that flexibilty to bend the rules of good code provide simple and yes, even elegant, solutions to problems that would require convoluted solutions otherwise. It is a good programer that can look at the situation and make and _informed_ decision to take the easy solution that involves 'bad coding proctice'.
The problem the writer talks about stems from programmers that don't have the knowledge of the field to make such _informed_ decisions and instead make the decision to use 'bad coding practice' over and over again without knowing even that it is 'bad'. Surprisingly, this can happen in ANY language. Bad code is universal. The fact that you might see more examples of bad code in one language or another is almost entirely due to two factors:
1) The popularity of the language. 2) The ease with which the uninitiated can write code that actually does something.
Since 1 is oftent a function of 2, you end up with a preponderance of inexperienced/uneducated coders in any language that is easy to learn and therefore popluar. It is often precisely _because_ you don't need to understand 'computer science' to code in these languages that you find so many new coders using in them. As a corollary to this I would propose that if you want to write a a very popular programming language, make it very easy to learn by removing as much enforced structure from the language as possible. That may make the language very 'bad' in the sense that it allows truly horrific code that 'works', but it _will_ be popular.
All that said, the true test of the 'quality' of a language then is ist it both possible and easy tow write 'good' code in it. If it is, then the tool is not the problem, but the craftsman.
I'm sorry if this comes across as hostile, but I find this sort of nonesense the very worts sort of programming snobbery. "If the language is easy, then prety soon they'll let just _anyone_ be a programmer. Can you _imagine_?!?!"
There's an old saying that goes something like this:
There are only three types of lies in the world: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
It's important not to summarize the meaning of statistics too sharply, or they will tend to obscure the truth rather than highlight it. Here we have a comparison between NT and Linux based on a simple statistic of number of security vulnerabilities reported for each. Hmm... so what's been compared then?
If I take an NT 4.0 CD and install it on a PC, then take a CD (or more likely a set of CDs) from a Linux distribution and install that on the same type of machine, how much software is on each? How many security holes are there? Even forgetting that there are dozens of choices as to which Linux distribution I install, you have the problem of determining in each case, where do OSes end and Applications and Services begin?
NT, when installed has the kernel, some core services and some libraries, a few minimal applications and that's about it. If you want the thing to run various enterprise services, go install the whole Back Office suite. Want a database server? Go add MS SQL Server, or Oracle or whatnot. Need Desktop apps? Add Office in any of its varieties to get the combination of apps you want. What about graphics apps? Any number of other tools, utilities, services, development environments, drivers, libraries, etc... install them.
Are we measuring security holes introduced by these additional software products installed?
With a standard Linux distribution (take your pick which one) you'll get all of these things, in dizzying array, straight out of the box. Measure the security holes now.
My point, of course, is that you're comparing apples to oranges if you don't split the apps from the OS. Or at a minimum make the same types of apps, services and libraries available on both machines regardless of what came on the CD from the OS vendor. If you do that, I'd doubt you'd come to the same conclusion.
Of course, the site is slashdotted at the moment, so I can't read the actuall comparison, so if the methodology used took all this in to account, then by all means throw my comments out the window. Yet somehow I feel it a safe wager that this wasn't factored into the comparison.
WARNING: Comments in this thread may lead to aother arguments about absolute vs. relative with family, friends and co-workers. You have been warned.;-)
In all seriousness...
For one of the better, if not so scholarly, looks at morality I'd suggest reading Robert M. Pirsig's Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. Pirsig is better known for his first work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.
This new density makes for a nice change. The problem with IBMs present Microdrives is that they are too low a capacity to make a big dent in the portable device market. With the new density you get a slightly larger than 2 GB drive with CompactFlash form factor. With that ity-bity drive you can actually start to store a reasonable number of MP3s, a few dozen truly hi-res photos from a digital camera, or for that matter, a full install of RedHat.
Ok, lets step back for a moment and think about this. 90% of this article is bunk because it fails to slip into the mind of the cyber-terrorist. Let's try to take a little trip into that mindset:
Let's imagine that you are an intelligent, well educated sympathizer with a cause in direct opposition to the aims of your intended CT victim. Note first how general I'm trying to be here. I'm not assuming that you are even attacking a government agency. Perhaps you are a religous zealot that wants to attack the Hollywood entertainment machine because of all the (as you see it) amoral filth it produces each year. It makes no difference to the mode of attack, or the general feel of what your mindest is.
You want to hurt them; show them your right; show themy they're wrong; make them change. So what do you do? Go on a shooting spree? Blow up a movie lot? Poison all the drinking water in southern California? No. You're too squeamish for all that. You don't want to get too close to death and destruction. You want to live to fight another day yourself too. No good getting caught, is it?
But then you see the way... You're good with computers and communications systems, you know electronics, you know networking, and you know how to find out all the particulars of any infrastructural technical system that they could possibly use.
You take your time learning everything you can. You are methodical and keep to yourself most of the time. You don't need an organization, you just need yourself. You can pull it all off yourself and you don't have to get caught.
A little social engineering and you have access to information about what computer systems they use, what communications systems are in place, what trash they throw in the dumpsters. Soon you develop a plan to strike, and you do it with no fanfare. Next thing you know it's Friday night and the latest Tom Cruise/Nicole Kiddman flick pops on three thousand screens accross America and the opening credits have been replaced with an offer to have the Book of Mormon shipped direct, at no cost, to all the viewers. Guess the film's distributor should have secured the email server better... maybe then you wouldn't have been able to forge the request from the CEO that the footage be replaced at the last minute and that the celluloid be shipped to the theaters immediately, without the need for internal review.
Seriously though... My point is that it takes only one person for CT. Anyone with a bone to pick and the time and determination can do it. Most of the time they'll be smart enough to not get caught. All that will be found to track them is the 'AOL coaster' account they used and the number of the pay phone in Salt Lake City they dialed from.
* Note: Please forgive me if you are Mormon, a religious zealot, work for a film distributor, or are a really sexy hollywood bombshell. I like movies, really and some of my best friends are religious zealots. No disrespect intended.
I have to tell you. I have been both a contractor and a permenant employee alternately now for the past seven years or so. In each case, I have done my best to treat the company for whom I am doing the work (be it employer or client as the case may be) as though I were working for myself. In the end, I want to do the best work I can, regardless of the employment situation it is attached to.
If you have to have a less altruistic motive attached to this behaviour, then I have it for you. My career is a string of jobs, each building on the last. It makes no difference if I was perm or contractor at my last job to the next person hiring me. What matters to them is that when they call for a reference they hear glowing reports of my previous work. How could I ever expect to advance my career if I were willing to do crappy work for someone just because I was a contractor instead of a 'permie'?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there are a number of issues with desalination as it presently exists. The cost of plant construction and operations puts the cost of water supply at roughly triple that of traditional methods. They also depend on fossil fuels and thus contribute to greenhouse gasses. They produce brine and boron contaminants that can not easily be disposed of on either land or sea without potentially significant impact of the wildlife exposed to them. They're kind of a mess, really, as a solution for fresh water when compared to a simple pipeline.
My guess would be that two groups, those that express the gene and those that do not have a 6 point difference in IQ on average, in favor of those with the gene.
Software updates (including the device OS) are pretty commonly done via network connections these days, be they wifi or some other other network (LTE perhaps). Now, I'm not saying that your hackability argument has no truth to it, since over the air updates are often tightly controlled as to the source of the update, so installing a non-approved update might be trickier. In principle however, this depends far more on the specifics of the controls the device has put into place to stop unauthorized firmware installation than it does with the means of connectivity employed to make it happen. Keep the port if you have to, but I haven't connected my iPhone to a computer via USB for data transfer of any kind in something like a year now.
It could also readily be argued that re-flashing with non-standard firmware and low-level debugging aren't consumer features and thus don't represent a substantial use case to drive the inclusion of the port for the sake of the percentage of users that would actually use it. I could see a JTAG connection for repair and debug for instance, but why a full USB port?
MHL has seen relatively light adoption. There are other ways to handle A/V out than a physical connection though. AirPlay comes to mind. The bandwidth required to send compressed audio and video at with multiple digital audio channels, high definition resolutions and high frame rates is well within the capabilities of WiFi. I stream 1080p video to my Roku from my Plex server all the time over WiFi.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you can argue that a physical connection is somehow better than a wireless one on the grounds of it being faster, more secure, requiring less power, or whatever you like. The real question though is is the experience of plugging in a physical cable and getting those things more compelling to the consumer than the experience of getting "good enough" capabilities without the need for a cable? Once you pass the "good enough" barrier, the cable vs wireless argument is pretty much a done deal for most people.
I'm sure there's definitely a whiz-bang factor at work here, but I think there's more to it than that.
Power is the last reason you need to connect a cable to most wireless devices now. Have low bandwidth data needs communicated at short distances (both a limitation and a feature)? There's NFC. Have one or two-way audio, or higher speed data transmission with the range of a room or two? There's Bluetooth. Need to communicate at greater range with much higher bandwidth? There's Wifi. Need to charge your device? There's Qi.
Why do I need a USB port anymore? My phone syncs over my WiFi network. It talks to my car audio system via Bluetooth. It talks to my car speaker phone or my headset via Bluetooth too. It just might, someday very soon, pay for my purchase via NFC as I swipe it at the checkout lane. Someday soon, you may even pair your device with Bluetooth accessories or join it to a WiFi network by passing it over a NFC pad. So I have to find the right cable and power adapter to charge it? Why should I have to do that when there's Qi?
Given that Qi can be combined with NFC, its possible that there is some hardware design synergy that makes the cost of implementing both together more palatable than implementing either alone. Honestly, if Apple were a member of the Wireless Power Consortium, I'd expect the new iPhone to have both NFC and Qi. Even without that membership, it just might anyway.
> Yes, Bacula is the only real solution
What a minute. Really?
OP is asking for a linux console application that can perform a backup over multiple block devices (in this case externally attached hot-plugable drives like USB), and Bacula is what you come up with as the *only* real solution? Obviously you've never heard of dump.
http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl8_dump.htm
I pulled a similar switch. I dropped TV service while bumping up the speed of my internet service, cutting my bill from about $120/month for both down to $40/month for the net. I picked up a Roku2 XD for $99 for the TV in the living room. I already had a PlayStation3 which could have handled most of what I had in mind, but I like the Roku. Then I added Netflix and Hulu Plus for about $8 each. I already had Amazon Prime for the free 2-day shipping at $79/year, but if you wanted it just for the streaming service that'd be about $6.58/month for that. Add in Crackle for a few more movies, Pandora for music, and a smattering of special interest channels like TED Talks, because I can. Those channels are free.
Everything about it is essentially on-demand. I can even purchase pay-per-view-like timed rentals on Amazon or the like if I really want.
To make it all even better, I installed Plex Media Server on a Mac that I use as a server. On that, I can load any video, audio, or photo files that I want. The Roku has a Plex channel that can see the media server and play its content, including any channels that are available on Plex but not on Roku. Further, I've got the Plex app on my iPhone, which can display any of Plex's content over the net from home so I can watch it anywhere. This means that if I want, I can download content via iTunes or some similar service. Now, if I were the sort to be into downloading less than legal content, I could also set up Sickbeard and Couchpotato on the Mac so that Plex would have all sorts of content.
Total price, if you ignore the value of Amazon Prime outside of its streaming service and discount the up front investment in the Roku, is roughly $62.58/month, or a touch over half of what I used to pay. What I'm missing is sports and pay channels like HBO. Although there are some sports channels on Roku and Plex, I suspect that sports fans may find the selection lacking. HBO and the like I can live without, but if I couldn't I've read right here on Slashdot that most of those shows have become the internet download darlings on bit torrent and the like.
Next project? Installing Asterisk and converting the house to VIOP.
Blocking 30% of visible light doesn't mean obfuscating what's on the other side. It means simply letting less light through. Think lightly (30% is lightly) tinted windows, not soap scum on the shower door.
OK, so here's the process as it is supposed to work:
This normally means that prices have downward pressure as your infrastructure gets paid for. In opposition to this is the upward pressure of the cost of investing profit into improved infrastructure. Generally, people do a good enough job at forecasting adoption rates, infrastructure costs, and other product costs to have prices drop over time. Failure to do so basically means you've screwed up pricing your product.
What they're claiming is that they have to limit the bandwidth because they don't have the infrastructure to support the level of average utilization they're seeing because they have the "problem" of too fast an adoption of their product (bandwidth). But the reality is this falls under the heading, "nice problems to have." They *should* be able to simply scale up the infrastructure to handle it, but they have not invested the required money and man-hours to do so fast enough to meet demand.
The difficulty is that what they sold people was "unlimited" data usage. Data usage is just bandwidth over time. You can't call it unlimited if your response to too much demand is to throttle what's supposedly unlimited. Hint: throttling is also called limiting bandwidth. Unlimited data usage != limited bandwidth.
Failure to plan and invest properly on their part does not free them from the obligations they've made to their customers.
Even more correctly, an equation "describes". The accuracy of the description provided by the equation relative to measure, may merely be an estimate, or may be perfect. They may describe the limits within which values must fall, or the values themselves. Measurements themselves are after all, only estimates withing a certain degree of precision. Playing semantics isn't really the point though. What you have here is a theory that accurately predicts and explains the behavior with an accompanying equation that describes how the variables contribute said same behavior.
Everyone knows that's why the Mayan calendar stops there. Windows 8 comes out. The world ends. Apocalypse explained.
I would have to second this recommendation and extend it. Roger Penrose , is an incredible mathematical physicist and yet managed to pen a highly readable and even entertaining book that asks more deep questions than a teenager can shake a stick at. Reading this book as a teen made me want to be a physicist, a computer scientist, a philosopher and a mathematician all at the same time. He also wrote two follow on works, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, and The Large, the Small and the Human Mind. Again, this is not only about math. Instead it can be seen as a book about many things to which math is a gateway that just happens to talk about the math involved along the way.
The very idea that a tool is bad because it allows you to do sloppy work without knowing what you are doing at the in-depth level of a professional expert in the field is not an anti-feature. You might just as well say that table saws are horrible at cutting wood because they allow you to, with a little effort, remove the saftey guard and thus potentially slice off your hand. Or worse, that screwdrivers are horrble tools because of the alarming number of people that attempt to use them as pry bars or makeshift hammers.
The fact that the barrier to entry is lower and that a language offers the flexibility that allows you to write badly designed code does not make the language fundamentally deficient. There are times, rare though they may be, where that flexibilty to bend the rules of good code provide simple and yes, even elegant, solutions to problems that would require convoluted solutions otherwise. It is a good programer that can look at the situation and make and _informed_ decision to take the easy solution that involves 'bad coding proctice'.
The problem the writer talks about stems from programmers that don't have the knowledge of the field to make such _informed_ decisions and instead make the decision to use 'bad coding practice' over and over again without knowing even that it is 'bad'. Surprisingly, this can happen in ANY language. Bad code is universal. The fact that you might see more examples of bad code in one language or another is almost entirely due to two factors:
1) The popularity of the language.
2) The ease with which the uninitiated can write code that actually does something.
Since 1 is oftent a function of 2, you end up with a preponderance of inexperienced/uneducated coders in any language that is easy to learn and therefore popluar. It is often precisely _because_ you don't need to understand 'computer science' to code in these languages that you find so many new coders using in them. As a corollary to this I would propose that if you want to write a a very popular programming language, make it very easy to learn by removing as much enforced structure from the language as possible. That may make the language very 'bad' in the sense that it allows truly horrific code that 'works', but it _will_ be popular.
All that said, the true test of the 'quality' of a language then is ist it both possible and easy tow write 'good' code in it. If it is, then the tool is not the problem, but the craftsman.
I'm sorry if this comes across as hostile, but I find this sort of nonesense the very worts sort of programming snobbery. "If the language is easy, then prety soon they'll let just _anyone_ be a programmer. Can you _imagine_?!?!"
There's an old saying that goes something like this:
There are only three types of lies in the world: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
It's important not to summarize the meaning of statistics too sharply, or they will tend to obscure the truth rather than highlight it. Here we have a comparison between NT and Linux based on a simple statistic of number of security vulnerabilities reported for each. Hmm... so what's been compared then?
If I take an NT 4.0 CD and install it on a PC, then take a CD (or more likely a set of CDs) from a Linux distribution and install that on the same type of machine, how much software is on each? How many security holes are there? Even forgetting that there are dozens of choices as to which Linux distribution I install, you have the problem of determining in each case, where do OSes end and Applications and Services begin?
NT, when installed has the kernel, some core services and some libraries, a few minimal applications and that's about it. If you want the thing to run various enterprise services, go install the whole Back Office suite. Want a database server? Go add MS SQL Server, or Oracle or whatnot. Need Desktop apps? Add Office in any of its varieties to get the combination of apps you want. What about graphics apps? Any number of other tools, utilities, services, development environments, drivers, libraries, etc... install them.
Are we measuring security holes introduced by these additional software products installed?
With a standard Linux distribution (take your pick which one) you'll get all of these things, in dizzying array, straight out of the box. Measure the security holes now.
My point, of course, is that you're comparing apples to oranges if you don't split the apps from the OS. Or at a minimum make the same types of apps, services and libraries available on both machines regardless of what came on the CD from the OS vendor. If you do that, I'd doubt you'd come to the same conclusion.
Of course, the site is slashdotted at the moment, so I can't read the actuall comparison, so if the methodology used took all this in to account, then by all means throw my comments out the window. Yet somehow I feel it a safe wager that this wasn't factored into the comparison.
WARNING: Comments in this thread may lead to aother arguments about absolute vs. relative with family, friends and co-workers. You have been warned. ;-)
In all seriousness...
For one of the better, if not so scholarly, looks at morality I'd suggest reading Robert M. Pirsig's Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. Pirsig is better known for his first work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.
What about the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 1999? See what the ACLU has to say about it.
-- Begin thoughtfuly, end insensitively.
You are all thinking in the wrong direction...
This new density makes for a nice change. The problem with IBMs present Microdrives is that they are too low a capacity to make a big dent in the portable device market. With the new density you get a slightly larger than 2 GB drive with CompactFlash form factor. With that ity-bity drive you can actually start to store a reasonable number of MP3s, a few dozen truly hi-res photos from a digital camera, or for that matter, a full install of RedHat.
-- Begin thoughtfuly, end insensitively.
Ok, lets step back for a moment and think about this. 90% of this article is bunk because it fails to slip into the mind of the cyber-terrorist. Let's try to take a little trip into that mindset:
Let's imagine that you are an intelligent, well educated sympathizer with a cause in direct opposition to the aims of your intended CT victim. Note first how general I'm trying to be here. I'm not assuming that you are even attacking a government agency. Perhaps you are a religous zealot that wants to attack the Hollywood entertainment machine because of all the (as you see it) amoral filth it produces each year. It makes no difference to the mode of attack, or the general feel of what your mindest is.
You want to hurt them; show them your right; show themy they're wrong; make them change. So what do you do? Go on a shooting spree? Blow up a movie lot? Poison all the drinking water in southern California? No. You're too squeamish for all that. You don't want to get too close to death and destruction. You want to live to fight another day yourself too. No good getting caught, is it?
But then you see the way... You're good with computers and communications systems, you know electronics, you know networking, and you know how to find out all the particulars of any infrastructural technical system that they could possibly use.
You take your time learning everything you can. You are methodical and keep to yourself most of the time. You don't need an organization, you just need yourself. You can pull it all off yourself and you don't have to get caught.
A little social engineering and you have access to information about what computer systems they use, what communications systems are in place, what trash they throw in the dumpsters. Soon you develop a plan to strike, and you do it with no fanfare. Next thing you know it's Friday night and the latest Tom Cruise/Nicole Kiddman flick pops on three thousand screens accross America and the opening credits have been replaced with an offer to have the Book of Mormon shipped direct, at no cost, to all the viewers. Guess the film's distributor should have secured the email server better... maybe then you wouldn't have been able to forge the request from the CEO that the footage be replaced at the last minute and that the celluloid be shipped to the theaters immediately, without the need for internal review.
Seriously though... My point is that it takes only one person for CT. Anyone with a bone to pick and the time and determination can do it. Most of the time they'll be smart enough to not get caught. All that will be found to track them is the 'AOL coaster' account they used and the number of the pay phone in Salt Lake City they dialed from.
* Note: Please forgive me if you are Mormon, a religious zealot, work for a film distributor, or are a really sexy hollywood bombshell. I like movies, really and some of my best friends are religious zealots. No disrespect intended.
-- Begin thoughtfuly, end insensitively.
I have to tell you. I have been both a contractor and a permenant employee alternately now for the past seven years or so. In each case, I have done my best to treat the company for whom I am doing the work (be it employer or client as the case may be) as though I were working for myself. In the end, I want to do the best work I can, regardless of the employment situation it is attached to.
If you have to have a less altruistic motive attached to this behaviour, then I have it for you. My career is a string of jobs, each building on the last. It makes no difference if I was perm or contractor at my last job to the next person hiring me. What matters to them is that when they call for a reference they hear glowing reports of my previous work. How could I ever expect to advance my career if I were willing to do crappy work for someone just because I was a contractor instead of a 'permie'?
-- Begin thoughtfuly, end insensitively.