Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment "Open-source" ?? (Score 3, Insightful) 86

I understand what an open-source computer program is. You can have an open-source compiler or interpreter, for example. But what would an open source language be?

The specification of a programming language was always thought to be in the public domain: a kind of fact. So gcc is open-source but the C programming language itself isn't. Nice for MS to release the specification for their language, but they shouldn't attach the moniker "open-source".

Comment Developer certificates vs app certificates (Score 3, Insightful) 74

One linked commentary claims the privacy concerns are overblown because the system phones home with a plaintext certificated unique to the developer rather than unique to the application. Now if you primarily run a few applications all created by the same developer, then this is not a big deal. But the typical user runs many applications from a large variety of developers. Yes, Eve the eavesdropeer won't be able to tell if I'm running Firefox or Thunderbird, but she will sure be able to distinguish either from Notability and Minecraft.

Comment As system that doesn't trust the users is ... (Score 2, Interesting) 81

untrustworthy

The point of this "T2" chip, like Intel's TPM, is that the computer manufacturer wants the computer to distrust its owner on behalf of "content creators". And this has the obvious failure mode: if the system has a layer that is more powerful than the putative owner, then that layer owns the system to the detriment of the owner.

Comment Why is consent required? (Score 1) 175

It's certainly legal for me to hire someone to order food for me, pick it up, and deliver it. If I choose to do that it's between me and the courier and not the restaurant's business. Now if the intermediary poses as representing the restaurant then that's wrong (and a trademark violation). But if the intermediary correctly describes their business then they should be free to continue.

Comment What about DoT?? (Score 3, Interesting) 67

It is very notable that Mozilla is choosing to avoid going for DNS-over-TLS, an approach which is more consistent with the layered approach to networking and security.

The fact that internet users make DNS queries is not secret, and does not need to be hidden among other HTTP traffic. It is the content of the DNS queries that needs protection.

Comment Complying with local governments is cowardice?? (Score 2) 96

Netflix can unilaterally pull out of Saudi Arabia. But if it wants to do business there it must subject itself to the local government. In an authoritarian kingdom this mean subjective itself to government whim.

Is Netflix really supposed to become the Voice of America, trying to broadcast US notions of freedom and democracy into unwilling places, or is it simply supposed to be in the business of entertaining paying customers to the extent possible in each locality?

Comment Mozilla has corporate interests too (Score 3, Interesting) 50

Not every decision made by Mozilla had been about user rights and privacy. For example, they agreed to support web DRM. And they are now pushing DNS-over-HTTPS (and the browser having its own resolver making direct DNS queries to servers of its choice), where the standard-conforming (and UNIX-philosophy conforming) approach is DNS-over-TLS using the system resolver.

Comment Anti-open-source bias (Score 4, Insightful) 121

The last sentence in the paper reads:

Ultimately, this example serves as a reminder of the principle Caveat emptor and that users should validate noncommercial software on their system prior to use on new applications.

In other words, even authors who benefit from freely released source code seem to have unflagging faith in "commercial software". In fact, the only reasons these authors were able to diagonse and fix the bug was that the code was freely available.

Instead, scientists should verify all software that they use, commercial or not.

Slashdot Top Deals

What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.

Working...