Thunderbird is not dead at all, it's just been relegated to community maintenance mode (like SeaMonkey has always been). There was a lot of press blather about how that amounted to the "death" of Thunderbird, meanwhile its users are happily downloading security updates with the occasional new feature, and continuing to use a relatively stable program. Considering what they're doing to Firefox, I think this is a good thing.
This argument hasn't changed in twenty years, in spite of massive improvements in ease of use. Apparently, it's impossible to make it "easy enough" for the average user. I think this means ease of use actually has very little to do with the problem. The problem is with the average user's priorities. People value convenience more highly than privacy, and as long as people don't change those values, encryption will never take on.
Typically people will only change their priorities under threat of dire and immediate consequences for them personally. Everyone will lock their door so they don't get burglarised. But email privacy is too abstract and invisible still. It's going to take some huge cases of identity theft, with real monetary loss, to get people to change â" and then people will probably sooner abandon email than use email encryption.
Finally, the kind of convenience that you propose necessarily will render the whole thing insecure. Letting strangers (like Google) manage your private keys defeats the whole purpose.
Oh and don't forget which OS it was that gave us heartbleed. Was it Windows? No no no no, was it OSX? No no nooo no, was it Linux? yeah yeah yeah yeah!
How does this utter shit get modded up to +4? Heartbleed is an OpenSSL bug. It's got jack to do with Linux (or any other OS). That is just the worst in the parent message. Everything else is misleading as well.
Another good reason I found on a relevant mailing list thread is that testing on a large variety of architectures often exposes bugs that remain under the radar otherwise (but may still come to bite users as security holes). That large variety is only available by supporting legacy architectures.
Over-monitoring is problematic
on
Rigging Up Baby
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
While the breathing and sleeping alerts will calm a lot of parents,
I would argue the opposite is more likely to happen. Most parents are not qualified to properly interpret these data, and over-monitoring can cause excessive anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
What? There is no TCP/IP monoculture. There are many different TCP/IP implementations. All of them interoperate without problems because there is a well-defined standard. That is not monoculture, that is standardization. They are fundamentally different things.
This is bad news. Another step on the way to browser monoculture, with all the problems that can bring. Next thing Firefox will switch to Webkit and we'll have only Webkit browsers and IE left.
After bricking three successive broadband routers using firmware upgrades recommended by their respective manufacturers, my position on firmware upgrades is simple: NEVER do them, unless you have nothing to lose (i.e. if your device is working so badly that you would need to replace it anyway).
This is a serious, though exasperated question, born of years of frustration with the leader of ideals I subscribe to:
Why in all of the universe don't you bother to look basically presentable and behave in a basically likeable way? Do you really not realize that you are the Free Software movement's greatest liability because of your shitty appearance and behaviour? How does this basic fact of humanity manage to evade you for all these years?
Simplicity and long-term convenience. The complications caused by those "conveniences" of other distros have a way of getting in the way at unexpected moments and making life very inconvenient. Doing the configuration right the first time by learning to understand what you're actually doing may take extra effort but pays off in the long run.
The first and last real MS innovation was the Microsoft BASIC interpreter which became ubiquitous in 1980s home computers. Everything else they ever did was shamelessly stolen and/or bought and/or badly copied from others. Even MS-DOS started out as a bought-out CP/M imitation.
They disparaged GUIs and the whole idea of user-friendly computing until the Mac proved them wrong. It took them a decade to come up with a usable competitor (Windows 95). Then it took them years to recognize the importance of the Internet, so they killed the competition by illegally leveraging their monopoly on Windows desktops. With the competition dead, they stalled IE development and set back web innovation by a decade until Firefox broke the market back open.
Now you can see them screw up the same way with mobile devices. It took even Bill Gates until last week to admit that the PC-centric model may be "changing". Thankfully, with Gates gone and that dancing sweatmonkey in charge, they don't seem to be capable of their past level of predation anymore.
MS has always been a follower at best. It has frequently been a predatory abuser of its monopoly. It has usually parasitized on the innovations of others. Embrace, extend, extinguish was always how they operated. It has never been an innovation leader.
I never understood this type of argument. Linux is still similar enough between distros that switching from one distro to another is not an insurmountable hurdle if it should become necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Thunderbird is not dead at all, it's just been relegated to community maintenance mode (like SeaMonkey has always been). There was a lot of press blather about how that amounted to the "death" of Thunderbird, meanwhile its users are happily downloading security updates with the occasional new feature, and continuing to use a relatively stable program. Considering what they're doing to Firefox, I think this is a good thing.
And yet, as I point out, Apple has done it with iMessage. A lot of sites encrypt their traffic with SSL.
Both of these are surely compromised by the NSA by now. Certainly SSL is.
I think the real problem is one of standards.
That is a really good point. The move to closed systems is a disease that is killing the internet.
This argument hasn't changed in twenty years, in spite of massive improvements in ease of use. Apparently, it's impossible to make it "easy enough" for the average user. I think this means ease of use actually has very little to do with the problem. The problem is with the average user's priorities. People value convenience more highly than privacy, and as long as people don't change those values, encryption will never take on. Typically people will only change their priorities under threat of dire and immediate consequences for them personally. Everyone will lock their door so they don't get burglarised. But email privacy is too abstract and invisible still. It's going to take some huge cases of identity theft, with real monetary loss, to get people to change â" and then people will probably sooner abandon email than use email encryption. Finally, the kind of convenience that you propose necessarily will render the whole thing insecure. Letting strangers (like Google) manage your private keys defeats the whole purpose.
Oh and don't forget which OS it was that gave us heartbleed. Was it Windows? No no no no, was it OSX? No no nooo no, was it Linux? yeah yeah yeah yeah!
How does this utter shit get modded up to +4? Heartbleed is an OpenSSL bug. It's got jack to do with Linux (or any other OS). That is just the worst in the parent message. Everything else is misleading as well.
Much like Digg did. How sad.
Another good reason I found on a relevant mailing list thread is that testing on a large variety of architectures often exposes bugs that remain under the radar otherwise (but may still come to bite users as security holes). That large variety is only available by supporting legacy architectures.
prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom)
Yup, that's 2005 alright. Or even 2004 and 2003.
Hardly inspires confidence that they haven't updated the description in nearly a decade.
Adobe Reader and Flash for Linux are GTK-based.
While the breathing and sleeping alerts will calm a lot of parents,
I would argue the opposite is more likely to happen. Most parents are not qualified to properly interpret these data, and over-monitoring can cause excessive anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
How can you be sure that both other compilers don't have a parent compiler that is infected?
David A. Wheeler addresses this question in his dissertation.
Spam in email is a solved problem because spam filters have become convenient and more than good enough.
Cryptographic signing solved the header forgery problem a long time ago, and the major providers all add signatures to the headers.
What? There is no TCP/IP monoculture. There are many different TCP/IP implementations. All of them interoperate without problems because there is a well-defined standard. That is not monoculture, that is standardization. They are fundamentally different things.
How typical of Slashdot that some AC gets upvoted to +5 for blatantly lying.
This is bad news. Another step on the way to browser monoculture, with all the problems that can bring. Next thing Firefox will switch to Webkit and we'll have only Webkit browsers and IE left.
Slashdot is late to the game. Don't bother posting there. Gates is long done answering questions.
After bricking three successive broadband routers using firmware upgrades recommended by their respective manufacturers, my position on firmware upgrades is simple: NEVER do them, unless you have nothing to lose (i.e. if your device is working so badly that you would need to replace it anyway).
This is a serious, though exasperated question, born of years of frustration with the leader of ideals I subscribe to:
Why in all of the universe don't you bother to look basically presentable and behave in a basically likeable way? Do you really not realize that you are the Free Software movement's greatest liability because of your shitty appearance and behaviour? How does this basic fact of humanity manage to evade you for all these years?
You can still install via floppies...
No, you can't. The kernel hasn't even fit on a floppy for many years now.
Simplicity and long-term convenience. The complications caused by those "conveniences" of other distros have a way of getting in the way at unexpected moments and making life very inconvenient. Doing the configuration right the first time by learning to understand what you're actually doing may take extra effort but pays off in the long run.
Kill a man and you get off easy.
No you don't. Knock it off with the hyperbole, reality is more than bad enough.
DPI is what resolution is. "1680x1050" is not a resolution, it's just the number of pixels.
Firefox fixed that problem ages ago.
and the company has driven innovation for decades
Uh... geez. Where to even start?
The first and last real MS innovation was the Microsoft BASIC interpreter which became ubiquitous in 1980s home computers. Everything else they ever did was shamelessly stolen and/or bought and/or badly copied from others. Even MS-DOS started out as a bought-out CP/M imitation.
They disparaged GUIs and the whole idea of user-friendly computing until the Mac proved them wrong. It took them a decade to come up with a usable competitor (Windows 95). Then it took them years to recognize the importance of the Internet, so they killed the competition by illegally leveraging their monopoly on Windows desktops. With the competition dead, they stalled IE development and set back web innovation by a decade until Firefox broke the market back open.
Now you can see them screw up the same way with mobile devices. It took even Bill Gates until last week to admit that the PC-centric model may be "changing". Thankfully, with Gates gone and that dancing sweatmonkey in charge, they don't seem to be capable of their past level of predation anymore.
MS has always been a follower at best. It has frequently been a predatory abuser of its monopoly. It has usually parasitized on the innovations of others. Embrace, extend, extinguish was always how they operated. It has never been an innovation leader.
No. In the first few weeks, when the fake account operated, Reddit didn't even have comments (as you could have learned from watching the video).
I never understood this type of argument. Linux is still similar enough between distros that switching from one distro to another is not an insurmountable hurdle if it should become necessary.