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Comment Re:Security is about what you're securing. (Score 2) 189

Security is in place to keep out crowds of people who aren't supposed to be there, and they seemed to do well enough at that.

In my opinion this guy earned his way into the conference fair and square. If I were organizing a security conference and someone got past the security undetected then I'd assume they are part of my targeted audience. A booth with badges "If you got this far you get a free pass." would be a fine touch on an event like that.

Comment Re:Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway (Score 4, Interesting) 281

I'm in Central Europe and there has been complete 4G coverage in major cities before Apple even considered using it in the next iPhone. These days I can get 4G coverage in the outback (and I do need my tubes to be HD in there). Please don't excuse carriers in the US for not upgrading the infrastructure. They're robbing you blind.

Comment Re:Check which modules get rejected (Score 2, Insightful) 175

Let's recap what both companies contributed:
  • Novell: Compiz, XGL (unmaintaned X server with OpenGL)
  • Red Hat: PulseAudio, Clutter, DeviceKit, Cheese, gnome-user-share

Notice something about the scopes of each of those projects?

Same thing with Compiz, a compositing window manager developed by David Reeveman of Novell, also rejected despite it being an almost complete drop in replacement for Metacity which is ancient RedHat technology.

Metacity ancient? What do you make of the whole X server then? Should we replace it too? Don't get me wrong. I don't dismiss Compiz as eye-candy because it's far more than that. It came way to early. It was unusable without proprietary drivers and unstable with. To this day Compiz has problems with stability on anything but maybe Intel boards. The necessary groundwork just isn't there yet.

Comment Re:Lawyers are more expensive than SSL (Score 1) 272

Losing something and using the court system to get it back can be too expensive for individuals or home-based businesses. SSL is cheaper than a lawyer.

Most data is useless and once it's "out" you won't get it back anyway. I'm talking about using self-signed certificates for data that isn't really worth encrypting in the first place but can act as a tripping alarm or honey pot. Granted you're in deep, if you have to resort to this kind of tactic but it's there if you need it.

Comment Re:Self-signed certs are vulnerable to MITM (Score 1) 272

Security and privacy are two different things. You won't stave off criminals capable of carrying out a MITM with a self-signed certificate. You can, however demonstrate that you intend to keep this session private, just like you would a conversation. If worse comes to worst, you'll have a much easier way of proving ill intent on the part of a misbehaving eavesdropper like an ISP or a shoddy data retention scheme.

Comment Re:Self-signed certs are vulnerable to MITM (Score 1) 272

A self-signed certificate may be unsafe but it does imply an intent of privacy.

With effort, and sometimes a trivial amount, one can invade on another's privacy. But we've all made a social agreement to respect privacy; all it takes is a humble token, like a window curtain, to remind us of this. The curtain is just cloth, but it does an excellent job of affording us privacy, because it asserts our intent. That way, if we're able to detect it, we can be certain in knowing that our privacy is violated -- otherwise, any access we didn't think to deny (but would regret later) might accidentally intrude upon us -- and with no ill will from the innocent onlooker! How foolish of us, that we didn't draw the curtain when we had the chance!

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