Google around a bit, you'll see this mentioned. I have not yet found any information about what that attack vector is or how to defend against it, although I suspect that locking your system down with SELinux/AppArmor and using sandboxes to open attachments (even from people you trust -- what if their computer is infected?) will mitigate the threat somewhat.
The moral of the story is this: dissidents should airgap any system they use for sensitive/secret material.
Stop extending HTML! HTML does not need more tags. HTML was not designed to be a presentation language for applications and certainly not to be an environment for running applications; it was designed to be a hypertext document language (yes, "hypertext" is a word with meaning beyond HTML). The worst thing we did was to allow HTML documents with embedded programs -- applets, Javascript, etc.
The real answer is a new standard that is designed for application presentation and deliver, that does not have so much in-band signaling. We need to get it right the first time by building security into the system, not extend an already bloated monstrosity to make up for the inevitable security problems that result from turning a language for describing documents into a platform for running distributed software with malicious users.
Secondly, Linux on the desktop is far from dead. Linux is thriving. Nobody killed it.
You think so? Where are you located, and where are you seeing GNU/Linux thriving on the desktop? Where I am now, I am one of a tiny minority of people who uses GNU/Linux for day-to-day tasks, and we receive no support whatsoever from the IT guys (in fact, they direct people to use for support). It's Mac OS X or Windows here, or else you are on your own.
Mac OS X is the reason for this situation. We used to have lots of GNU/Linux and even BSD users, then the university started pushing Mac OS X like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now hardly anyone uses GNU/Linux, and the university is making our lives even harder because they are operating under the assumption that we have Windows or Mac OS X on our computers.
I just installed ScientificLinux 6.3 on a desktop today, and after about a minute of telling it what it to install and where, I walked away to have some lunch. When I came back it was done installing, and things worked just fine.
You know, the same sort of bizarre inconsistency in whether or not people have problems can be found in Windows and Mac OS X. In fact, the Mac OS X users in my group are currently struggling with subversion inexplicably hanging when they try to commit changes to their repository, while the GNU/Linux users have been unable to reproduce the problem.
The moral of the story is this: none of the operating systems people commonly use on their laptops or desktops work reliably; things are just better than they were 10 years ago.
My university actually hosts mirrors for Fedora, FreeBSD, and a few other free OSes. Yet students here are told that if they are not using Windows or Mac OS X, they will receive no support from the school, and some degree programs require Windows.
You see, the school does not want to maintain public computer labs that have all the software that is required for classes, and would rather offload that expense on the students. They also fired all the competent IT staff who used to work at the help desk, and now have students rely on fellow students for tech support; there is basically one admin who directs the student tech support, and he is not even going to try to support anything other than Windows and Mac OS X.
If GNU/Linux were used by 10% of the students here, things would be different.
You are free to believe whatever fantasies you want, but the real question is whether or not you are capable of setting aside those beliefs when it is time to do science or engineering work. If someone is just not capable of establishing such a separation, what are they going to do when other beliefs are challenged, a common occurrence in science?
Whether or not you believe in one god, thousands of gods, three gods "in one," or whatever else should have absolutely no bearing on science, and should not even be mentioned while teaching a lesson about science. You can teach your kids whatever you want; but when my kids are in science class, they had better be taught science, and not anyone's religion. If you want your kids to learn that the theory of evolution is falsehood, home school them, send them to a private school, or whatever else -- and the rest of us will just continue to be astounded by their ignorance of science.
Scientific conclusion: heavy marijuana use amongst teenagers is correlated with decreasing IQ.
Propaganda: MARIJUANA LOWERS IQ
The difference is in how this is presented. A scientific presentation cannot possibly say that marijuana is a causal factor until at least all of the following are addressed:
What can cause IQ to change over time? As someone else pointed out, it is entirely possible that sitting around doing nothing all day will lower IQ, and so marijuana's role may just be in discouraging teenagers from participating in activities that maintain or increase their IQ. Marijuana can increase appetite -- it is possible that eating too much junk food lowers IQ.
There may be a particular trait that attracts some teenagers to smoke pot heavily, which also causes them to have lower IQs later in life.
Teenagers who smoke marijuana may be participants in a subculture that involves other activities that cause lower IQ.
Marijuana may be produced using fertilizers or pesticides that are also absorbed when the drug is used, and those might cause lower IQ.
Marijuana smoke may contain chemicals that cause lower IQ; maybe other methods of taking the drug will not have such an effect (or maybe other methods are even worse).
There are a lot of things that can cause the results the scientists saw -- which is good news for them, since it means they have plenty of questions to answer. Unfortunately, the media will see this, ignore the part about heavy users, spend no time discussing confounding factors, and jump right on the "marijuana is bad" bandwagon. Typical, unsurprising, propaganda-driven approach.
Methamphetamine is already legal by prescription and it is prescribed to both children and adults. Most of the harm caused by recreational methamphetamine is caused by toxic byproducts that are left over from poorly controlled and completely unregulated production processes, which is a direct result of prohibition; such things are not present the pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine that doctors prescribe.
Bath Salts.
You will have to be more specific, since that is a generic name for a number of stimulants that are also produced under poorly controlled and unregulated conditions. Yes, the media has been playing up the risk, but the stimulant psychosis is not news, and incidents involving caffeine seem to go unnoticed (or do you really think coffee should be illegal?):
The difference, of course, is that caffeine pills come with dosage information, their production is regulated, and you know that they contain caffeine. "Bath salts" come with no such information, and you have no idea what they contain -- it might be MDPV, but it could just as easily be caffeine, some unknown byproduct of MDPV synthesis, or something that is only known among drug researchers. Do you see the pattern yet?
PCP.
PCP is legal by prescription (same schedule as methamphetamine), for use as a painkiller. Recreational users have the same problems as recreational methamphetamine users: poor production, unknown dosage, etc. There is not much more to be said -- the problem here is not the drug, it is the law.
No, I meant "don't be pedantic," because only a pedantic reading of the word "drugs" includes chemical weapons, and there is no reading that includes biological weapons. Skunk spray is considered to be a chemical weapon; do you really consider that to be a drug?
Now, if you were to have been more specific -- say, if you were to include weaponized LSD, nerve gases, and so forth -- then maybe we could have a reasonable discussion.
Since the home-made mix is routinely injected immediately with little or no further purification, "krokodil" has become notorious for producing severe tissue damage
Notice how the very fact that it is being produced underground, rather than by legal, regulated sources is causing the problems here. The drug itself, in the absence of toxic byproducts and adulterants, is no more dangerous than other opiates (and it is safer than some).
So what useful purpose is served in making that drug illegal?
People with have laptops and desktops for many more years, to create "content" (whatever that is supposed to mean). People will not have PCs; their desktops and laptops will not be their own personal computers, they will be controlled, monitored, and remotely deactivated by whatever company sells them. It is a matter of freedom. PCs are about freedom, and freedom is being attacked -- which by extension means PCs are being attacked.
Slashdot Mirror
All sorts of things that are speech are not legal, and if you...have a youtube channel that promotes terrorism,
As opposed to a Youtube channel that supports military actions by the right government, in which case you are fine.
This is what happens when we compromise on fundamental rights...
it is similar to shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre
Where have I heard that expression before...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
Speech has consequences. If you threaten to unseat those in power, you will probably be prosecuted.
ftfy
Google around a bit, you'll see this mentioned. I have not yet found any information about what that attack vector is or how to defend against it, although I suspect that locking your system down with SELinux/AppArmor and using sandboxes to open attachments (even from people you trust -- what if their computer is infected?) will mitigate the threat somewhat.
The moral of the story is this: dissidents should airgap any system they use for sensitive/secret material.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/technology/finspy-software-is-tracking-political-dissidents.html?_r=1&ref=technology
Disable Javascript and you should have no trouble accessing this article.
"Insightful?" Not "Funny?"
Stop extending HTML! HTML does not need more tags. HTML was not designed to be a presentation language for applications and certainly not to be an environment for running applications; it was designed to be a hypertext document language (yes, "hypertext" is a word with meaning beyond HTML). The worst thing we did was to allow HTML documents with embedded programs -- applets, Javascript, etc.
The real answer is a new standard that is designed for application presentation and deliver, that does not have so much in-band signaling. We need to get it right the first time by building security into the system, not extend an already bloated monstrosity to make up for the inevitable security problems that result from turning a language for describing documents into a platform for running distributed software with malicious users.
Secondly, Linux on the desktop is far from dead. Linux is thriving. Nobody killed it.
You think so? Where are you located, and where are you seeing GNU/Linux thriving on the desktop? Where I am now, I am one of a tiny minority of people who uses GNU/Linux for day-to-day tasks, and we receive no support whatsoever from the IT guys (in fact, they direct people to use for support). It's Mac OS X or Windows here, or else you are on your own.
Mac OS X is the reason for this situation. We used to have lots of GNU/Linux and even BSD users, then the university started pushing Mac OS X like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now hardly anyone uses GNU/Linux, and the university is making our lives even harder because they are operating under the assumption that we have Windows or Mac OS X on our computers.
I just installed ScientificLinux 6.3 on a desktop today, and after about a minute of telling it what it to install and where, I walked away to have some lunch. When I came back it was done installing, and things worked just fine.
You know, the same sort of bizarre inconsistency in whether or not people have problems can be found in Windows and Mac OS X. In fact, the Mac OS X users in my group are currently struggling with subversion inexplicably hanging when they try to commit changes to their repository, while the GNU/Linux users have been unable to reproduce the problem.
The moral of the story is this: none of the operating systems people commonly use on their laptops or desktops work reliably; things are just better than they were 10 years ago.
My university actually hosts mirrors for Fedora, FreeBSD, and a few other free OSes. Yet students here are told that if they are not using Windows or Mac OS X, they will receive no support from the school, and some degree programs require Windows.
You see, the school does not want to maintain public computer labs that have all the software that is required for classes, and would rather offload that expense on the students. They also fired all the competent IT staff who used to work at the help desk, and now have students rely on fellow students for tech support; there is basically one admin who directs the student tech support, and he is not even going to try to support anything other than Windows and Mac OS X.
If GNU/Linux were used by 10% of the students here, things would be different.
KDE 4. (I think KDE is the least offensive).
Calling your alpha release stable to encourage people to alpha testers is the least offensive?
You are free to believe whatever fantasies you want, but the real question is whether or not you are capable of setting aside those beliefs when it is time to do science or engineering work. If someone is just not capable of establishing such a separation, what are they going to do when other beliefs are challenged, a common occurrence in science?
It's called separating fantasy from reality -- congratulations on being capable of doing so.
Whether or not you believe in one god, thousands of gods, three gods "in one," or whatever else should have absolutely no bearing on science, and should not even be mentioned while teaching a lesson about science. You can teach your kids whatever you want; but when my kids are in science class, they had better be taught science, and not anyone's religion. If you want your kids to learn that the theory of evolution is falsehood, home school them, send them to a private school, or whatever else -- and the rest of us will just continue to be astounded by their ignorance of science.
Meanwhile, the third parties are trying to fix this. Yet intelligent people keep voting for the major parties...
Yes; "the media will see this..."
Perhaps I do not give the media enough credit though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z196_(microprocessor)
Propaganda: MARIJUANA LOWERS IQ
The difference is in how this is presented. A scientific presentation cannot possibly say that marijuana is a causal factor until at least all of the following are addressed:
There are a lot of things that can cause the results the scientists saw -- which is good news for them, since it means they have plenty of questions to answer. Unfortunately, the media will see this, ignore the part about heavy users, spend no time discussing confounding factors, and jump right on the "marijuana is bad" bandwagon. Typical, unsurprising, propaganda-driven approach.
Crystal Meth.
Methamphetamine is already legal by prescription and it is prescribed to both children and adults. Most of the harm caused by recreational methamphetamine is caused by toxic byproducts that are left over from poorly controlled and completely unregulated production processes, which is a direct result of prohibition; such things are not present the pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine that doctors prescribe.
Bath Salts.
You will have to be more specific, since that is a generic name for a number of stimulants that are also produced under poorly controlled and unregulated conditions. Yes, the media has been playing up the risk, but the stimulant psychosis is not news, and incidents involving caffeine seem to go unnoticed (or do you really think coffee should be illegal?):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407709
The difference, of course, is that caffeine pills come with dosage information, their production is regulated, and you know that they contain caffeine. "Bath salts" come with no such information, and you have no idea what they contain -- it might be MDPV, but it could just as easily be caffeine, some unknown byproduct of MDPV synthesis, or something that is only known among drug researchers. Do you see the pattern yet?
PCP.
PCP is legal by prescription (same schedule as methamphetamine), for use as a painkiller. Recreational users have the same problems as recreational methamphetamine users: poor production, unknown dosage, etc. There is not much more to be said -- the problem here is not the drug, it is the law.
No, I meant "don't be pedantic," because only a pedantic reading of the word "drugs" includes chemical weapons, and there is no reading that includes biological weapons. Skunk spray is considered to be a chemical weapon; do you really consider that to be a drug?
Now, if you were to have been more specific -- say, if you were to include weaponized LSD, nerve gases, and so forth -- then maybe we could have a reasonable discussion.
Since the home-made mix is routinely injected immediately with little or no further purification, "krokodil" has become notorious for producing severe tissue damage
Notice how the very fact that it is being produced underground, rather than by legal, regulated sources is causing the problems here. The drug itself, in the absence of toxic byproducts and adulterants, is no more dangerous than other opiates (and it is safer than some).
So what useful purpose is served in making that drug illegal?
Don't be pedantic. Also, a surprisingly large number of chemical weapons are used in civilian industries or as pesticides.
Yes, jail for marijuana use is too much. No, not all drugs should be legalized.
Name the drug that you think should be kept illegal, and I will explain to you why it should be legalized.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/ipad_accessories/keyboards
People with have laptops and desktops for many more years, to create "content" (whatever that is supposed to mean). People will not have PCs; their desktops and laptops will not be their own personal computers, they will be controlled, monitored, and remotely deactivated by whatever company sells them. It is a matter of freedom. PCs are about freedom, and freedom is being attacked -- which by extension means PCs are being attacked.