Who cares if it's the developers' problem? It's a problem easily rectified by a minuscule amount of code which would help remove a common security hole that causes real damage when their product is used in the wild.
You act as if a minor change in code that would increase security is somehow such an onerous burden with no upside for the developers that it shouldn't even be mentioned.
Yes, of course! The government has already taken over the banking sector, the mortgage sector, the automotive sector, is about to take over the healthcare sector, so fuck it - the government may as well take over the energy sector as well. I can't wait until they take over food distribution - I've always wanted to know what it's like to stand in line for a loaf of bread all day.
We don't fundamentally disagree, though I'm seemingly less worried about Mozilla than you. I don't see Mozilla sacrificing hard-earned market share for the sake of a feature its users loathe. Granted, they were naughty for implementing it without regard for user control, but now that the issue has - fortunately? - been thrust into the spotlight, I predict a quick and satisfactory resolution.
Or a code fork.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has a long and proven track record of abusing customers' rights and trust.
Forget about the names involved and examine the situation more closely. A company took it upon itself to introduce an unknown security risk into a competitor's product by way of a stealth install. Said company further complicated the matter by making it next to impossible for average users to uninstall - provided they even became aware of the issue - and compounded it even further by having subsequent updates reinstall the software by stealth again.
I think that given this situation Mozilla did the right thing. Until Microsoft learns to work above board where Firefox plugins are concerned, Mozilla can and should disable them. It would be nice in the future if Mozilla offered users the option - and I think they will - to retain use of a plugin after being told it poses a security risk, but the only action I see in need of correction at the moment is for Microsoft to ask users explicitly for permission to install an add-on to non-Microsoft software on a system.
If you go to about:config in firefox and toggle the value of extensions.blocklist.enabled from true to false and restart firefox then the plugins will work.
What constitutes 'harm'? What constitutes 'intimidation'? Laws like this are so broad in their language that they inevitably lead to absurd abuses of individual rights.
A personal example that comes to mind are the idiotic 'zero-tolerance' policies in our public schools. My brother had to meet with the principle of my nephew's school because my nephew defended himself when three kids tried to jump him at school. My brother had to stand there and explain to the principal (who was rightly embarrassed by having to enforce this ridiculous policy) that the day he tells his son to stand there and take an ass whipping will be the day that hell freezes over.
In contrast to the aforementioned ridiculous and pathetic situation, before society lost its mind in search of a world of wall to wall safety bumpers, I offer a more personal example. One day in the 5th grade, a larger, older kid started picking on me on the way to the learning resource center. I told him to lay off. He persisted. I chased him down (he ran when I turned on him) and whipped his ass. After I explained to the principal what had happened, I got sent back to class and the little punk got three days suspension.
I learned that day that standing up for yourself in the face of unwarranted abuse is right and proper and the other kid learned that screwing with people has consequences - and that's as it should be.
My nephew was taught a very different lesson. He was taught that self-defense is a crime and that the authorities will punish you for defending yourself - even in the face of imminent bodily harm and/or death!.
Yet another useless canard tossed around by the Linux community. Businesses are obviously going to continue to pay for support - be it from Microsoft or Red Hat or whomever.
The issue is whether or not Linux offers quality applications that meet the needs of business. The answer is obviously a resounding "No". Were it otherwise, we would see the proof in an uptick in Linux adoption.
As James Carville might say, "It's the applications, stupid!"
I really have no clue what you're on about. I tested the beta and RC for free and because I did so I was able to purchase the upgrade for my two windows vista machines for around $50 per licensed copy.
Not only did Microsoft NOT sell the beta (it was a free download, though they may have charged to ship it on DVD(?)), but they also gave the public who tested it a huge discount on the upgrade.
These Microsoft death watches have become almost as cliche as the annual YOTLD penguasms. Yes, Vista sucked just like ME, but so what? In both cases users were able to stay with/fall back to the previous OS version and wait for MS to get it right. I'm betting Win7 will see a large and rapid uptake just like XP did.
Waiting around for the competition to fail is not a winning strategy. Linux had a chance with the Vista debacle and blew it - as evidenced by Linux's share of the OS pie still hovering at around 1%.
Until the Linux community realizes that it is the state of the apps holding back adoption of the OS and decides to do something about it, Linux will never gain a significant share of the pie.
Even with the Vista debacle, Microsoft's total share of the OS pie (win98, winME, winNT, win2000, winXP, and Vista) is still 92.71%. Hell, Linux barely beat out Windows 2000 for market share!
Same here. It's sitting unobtrusively in the system tray, using only 6MB of memory and I haven't seen the CPU usage move from '00' except when running an active scan and even then the System Idle Process averages about '75' which tells me, unless I am mistaken, that it's using about 25% of the CPU cycles during a scan - which to me doesn't seem overly much.
Of course the proof will be in how well it serves to protect users in the wild.
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to shoddy engineering.
The malice isn't in the shoddy engineering of the OS. The malice is in knowingly deciding to use the resultant dangers of the shoddy engineering to generate profit by way of customers being made to pay a protection fee.
Am I the only one who recalls Article 12 of the Human Rights?
No, but you are perhaps among the many who never read as far as Article 29, Section 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Your "rights" under the UDHR end where they conflict with the "purposes and principles of the United Nations" and you don't get to have a say in what those purposes and principles are.
This is just one more piece of the scientific tyranny being built all around us on a global scale.
Verichip, PLDs, RFID enabled passports, wholesale monitoring of all electronic communications, corporate media propagandists shaping public opinion using advances in sociology and psychology, government takeover of education in order to indoctrinate unsuspecting youth, big pharma and the plethora of psychoactive drugs being pushed on everyone from cradle to grave, replacement of human soldiers with soulless machinery, et cetera, ad infinitum
If only the corporate media and big ISPs could find a way to lock down the internet and control access to and dissemination of information and content... Yeah, that's the ticket!
Am I the only one who sees this as yet another argument by corporate media and big ISPs as to why they need to become the gatekeepers of the internet?
I may be wrong, but I see this as just another salvo in the war against net neutrality.
On Star and cell phones have been used by law enforcement to listen in on people.
On Star and cell phones are purposely designed to allow the the government to track and spy on you. I'm not sure that's the case with Skype, though it wouldn't surprise me.
do you really expect rational arguments in favor of the public good to be of any help against entrenched interests in this matter?
Rational arguments that are logically sound and easily understood actually are of help in this matter.
No matter how powerful entrenched interests appear to be, their power is dependent upon a majority of the people tolerating or being ignorant of their bad behavior and its consequences.
Convince enough of the people, with sound argument, that they are being negatively impacted and they will raise hell until the situation is remedied.
Politicians may be bought and sold by the special interests but ultimately, if the people become angered enough to speak up and act, the pols do what their constituents demand. Why? Because they can't enrich themselves if they get kicked out of office.
There's a reason that the entrenched powers seek to control the flow of information and, subsequently, to control public perception by way of opinion makers, so-called "experts" and commentators, who dictate the terms and content of both sides of the argument.
Think about it and you will quickly see why "rational arguments in favor of the public good" are important.
Hint:"It's simple - free your mind and your ass will follow." -- Junior, Platoon
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I can always use a free doorstop.
Oh, wait... you mean to do my actual day-to-day computing? Not likely.
This isn't OpenSSH developers' problem.
Who cares if it's the developers' problem? It's a problem easily rectified by a minuscule amount of code which would help remove a common security hole that causes real damage when their product is used in the wild.
You act as if a minor change in code that would increase security is somehow such an onerous burden with no upside for the developers that it shouldn't even be mentioned.
I find that absurd.
Yes, of course! The government has already taken over the banking sector, the mortgage sector, the automotive sector, is about to take over the healthcare sector, so fuck it - the government may as well take over the energy sector as well. I can't wait until they take over food distribution - I've always wanted to know what it's like to stand in line for a loaf of bread all day.
The problem is people installing OpenSSH but not changing the password (which it does ask you to)
Perhaps the makers of OpenSSH should change the first-run behavior to require the user enter a new password in order to prevent this issue?
We don't fundamentally disagree, though I'm seemingly less worried about Mozilla than you. I don't see Mozilla sacrificing hard-earned market share for the sake of a feature its users loathe. Granted, they were naughty for implementing it without regard for user control, but now that the issue has - fortunately? - been thrust into the spotlight, I predict a quick and satisfactory resolution.
Or a code fork.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has a long and proven track record of abusing customers' rights and trust.
Forget about the names involved and examine the situation more closely. A company took it upon itself to introduce an unknown security risk into a competitor's product by way of a stealth install. Said company further complicated the matter by making it next to impossible for average users to uninstall - provided they even became aware of the issue - and compounded it even further by having subsequent updates reinstall the software by stealth again.
I think that given this situation Mozilla did the right thing. Until Microsoft learns to work above board where Firefox plugins are concerned, Mozilla can and should disable them. It would be nice in the future if Mozilla offered users the option - and I think they will - to retain use of a plugin after being told it poses a security risk, but the only action I see in need of correction at the moment is for Microsoft to ask users explicitly for permission to install an add-on to non-Microsoft software on a system.
If you go to about:config in firefox and toggle the value of extensions.blocklist.enabled from true to false and restart firefox then the plugins will work.
What constitutes 'harm'? What constitutes 'intimidation'? Laws like this are so broad in their language that they inevitably lead to absurd abuses of individual rights.
A personal example that comes to mind are the idiotic 'zero-tolerance' policies in our public schools. My brother had to meet with the principle of my nephew's school because my nephew defended himself when three kids tried to jump him at school. My brother had to stand there and explain to the principal (who was rightly embarrassed by having to enforce this ridiculous policy) that the day he tells his son to stand there and take an ass whipping will be the day that hell freezes over.
In contrast to the aforementioned ridiculous and pathetic situation, before society lost its mind in search of a world of wall to wall safety bumpers, I offer a more personal example. One day in the 5th grade, a larger, older kid started picking on me on the way to the learning resource center. I told him to lay off. He persisted. I chased him down (he ran when I turned on him) and whipped his ass. After I explained to the principal what had happened, I got sent back to class and the little punk got three days suspension.
I learned that day that standing up for yourself in the face of unwarranted abuse is right and proper and the other kid learned that screwing with people has consequences - and that's as it should be.
My nephew was taught a very different lesson. He was taught that self-defense is a crime and that the authorities will punish you for defending yourself - even in the face of imminent bodily harm and/or death!.
"Evidently Mr. Ringo's an educated man. Now I really hate him." -- Doc Holiday
Yet another useless canard tossed around by the Linux community. Businesses are obviously going to continue to pay for support - be it from Microsoft or Red Hat or whomever.
The issue is whether or not Linux offers quality applications that meet the needs of business. The answer is obviously a resounding "No". Were it otherwise, we would see the proof in an uptick in Linux adoption.
As James Carville might say, "It's the applications, stupid!"
I really have no clue what you're on about. I tested the beta and RC for free and because I did so I was able to purchase the upgrade for my two windows vista machines for around $50 per licensed copy.
Not only did Microsoft NOT sell the beta (it was a free download, though they may have charged to ship it on DVD(?)), but they also gave the public who tested it a huge discount on the upgrade.
Get your facts straight.
These Microsoft death watches have become almost as cliche as the annual YOTLD penguasms. Yes, Vista sucked just like ME, but so what? In both cases users were able to stay with/fall back to the previous OS version and wait for MS to get it right. I'm betting Win7 will see a large and rapid uptake just like XP did.
Waiting around for the competition to fail is not a winning strategy. Linux had a chance with the Vista debacle and blew it - as evidenced by Linux's share of the OS pie still hovering at around 1%.
Until the Linux community realizes that it is the state of the apps holding back adoption of the OS and decides to do something about it, Linux will never gain a significant share of the pie.
Even with the Vista debacle, Microsoft's total share of the OS pie (win98, winME, winNT, win2000, winXP, and Vista) is still 92.71%. Hell, Linux barely beat out Windows 2000 for market share!
Same here. It's sitting unobtrusively in the system tray, using only 6MB of memory and I haven't seen the CPU usage move from '00' except when running an active scan and even then the System Idle Process averages about '75' which tells me, unless I am mistaken, that it's using about 25% of the CPU cycles during a scan - which to me doesn't seem overly much.
Of course the proof will be in how well it serves to protect users in the wild.
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to shoddy engineering.
The malice isn't in the shoddy engineering of the OS. The malice is in knowingly deciding to use the resultant dangers of the shoddy engineering to generate profit by way of customers being made to pay a protection fee.
Any proposal that relies on any group of people to not be idiots is doomed to failure.
So much for Congress.
How long before these 'ants' are set loose to sniff out people the State finds undesirable?
What else would the come up next? Tax on taxes?
Don't think it hasn't been seriously considered.
Am I the only one who recalls Article 12 of the Human Rights?
No, but you are perhaps among the many who never read as far as Article 29, Section 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Your "rights" under the UDHR end where they conflict with the "purposes and principles of the United Nations" and you don't get to have a say in what those purposes and principles are.
This is just one more piece of the scientific tyranny being built all around us on a global scale.
Verichip, PLDs, RFID enabled passports, wholesale monitoring of all electronic communications, corporate media propagandists shaping public opinion using advances in sociology and psychology, government takeover of education in order to indoctrinate unsuspecting youth, big pharma and the plethora of psychoactive drugs being pushed on everyone from cradle to grave, replacement of human soldiers with soulless machinery, et cetera, ad infinitum
Welcome to the brave new world.
If only the corporate media and big ISPs could find a way to lock down the internet and control access to and dissemination of information and content... Yeah, that's the ticket!
Am I the only one who sees this as yet another argument by corporate media and big ISPs as to why they need to become the gatekeepers of the internet?
I may be wrong, but I see this as just another salvo in the war against net neutrality.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- Juvenal
On Star and cell phones have been used by law enforcement to listen in on people.
On Star and cell phones are purposely designed to allow the the government to track and spy on you. I'm not sure that's the case with Skype, though it wouldn't surprise me.
do you really expect rational arguments in favor of the public good to be of any help against entrenched interests in this matter?
Rational arguments that are logically sound and easily understood actually are of help in this matter.
No matter how powerful entrenched interests appear to be, their power is dependent upon a majority of the people tolerating or being ignorant of their bad behavior and its consequences.
Convince enough of the people, with sound argument, that they are being negatively impacted and they will raise hell until the situation is remedied.
Politicians may be bought and sold by the special interests but ultimately, if the people become angered enough to speak up and act, the pols do what their constituents demand. Why? Because they can't enrich themselves if they get kicked out of office.
There's a reason that the entrenched powers seek to control the flow of information and, subsequently, to control public perception by way of opinion makers, so-called "experts" and commentators, who dictate the terms and content of both sides of the argument.
Think about it and you will quickly see why "rational arguments in favor of the public good" are important.
Hint: "It's simple - free your mind and your ass will follow." -- Junior, Platoon
Offtopic? Really?
Each day I find it harder to see the line between 'business' and 'racketeering'
It's easy to remember - 'business' is government approved.