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Comment Re:Not that good (Score 3, Interesting) 188

Several fundamental mistakes in there.

First, OpenSSL is not typical of Free Software. Cryptography is always hard, and other than, say, an Office Suite, it will often break spectacularily if a small part is wrong. While the bug is serious and all, it's not typical. The vast majority of bugs in Free Software are orders of magnitude less serious.

Second, yes it is true that the notion that anyone can review the source code doesn't mean anyone will actually do it. However, no matter how you look at it, the number of people who actually do will always be equal or higher than for closed source software.

Third, the major flagships of Free Software are sometimes, but not always picked for price. When you're a fortune-500 company, you don't need to choose Apache to save some bucks. A site-license of almost any software will be a negliegable part of your operating budget.

And, 3b or so, contrary to what you claim, quite a few companies contribute considerable amounts of money to Free Software projects, especially in the form of paid-for support or membership in things like the Apache Foundation. That's because they realize that this is much cheaper than having to maintain a comparable software on their own.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 4, Interesting) 188

The only possible way is to disclose to the responsible manufacturer (OpenSSL) and nobody else first, then, after a delay given to the manufacturer to fix the issue, disclose to everybody. Nothing else works. All disclosures to others have a high risk of leaking. (The one to the manufacturer also has a risk of leaking, but that cannot be avoided.)

It's not about leaking. The reason I'm not alone in the security community to rage against this "responsible disclosure" bullshit is not that we fear leaks, but that we know most of the exploits are already in the wild by the time someone on the whitehat side discovers it.

Every day you delay the public announcements is another day that servers are being broken into.

Comment wtf ? (Score 3, Interesting) 188

IT security industry experts are beginning to turn on Google and OpenSSL, questioning whether the Heartbleed bug was disclosed 'responsibly.

Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of so-called "experts" are these morons?

Newflash: The vast majority of 0-days are known in the underground long before they are disclosed publicly. In fact, quite a few exploits are found because - drumroll - they are actively being exploited in the wild and someone's honeypot is hit or a forensic analysis turns it up.

Unless you have really, really good reasons to assume that this bug is unknown even to people whose day-to-day business is to find these kinds of bugs, there is nothing "responsible" in delaying disclosure. So what if a few script-kiddies can now rush a script and do some shit? Every day you wait is one day less for the script kiddies, but one day more for the real criminals.

Stop living in la-la-land or in 1985. The evil people on the Internet aren't curious teenagers anymore, but large-scale organized crime. If you think they need to read advisories to find exploits, you're living under a rock.

Comment Re:Maybe that's intresting trivia to you... (Score 1) 187

Fernlicht goes further. At night in the countryside, you can often use it because you're literally the only car on the road.

Or maybe that's just me because when I drive long distances at night, I make it deep in the night so there's no traffic.

I've rarely driven through NRW, but at the northern edge to Niedersachen, around Osnabrück for example, there's definitely lights on the Autobahn. There most definitely are in Berlin, Hamburg, etc. But yes, it's mostly near and in the large cities.

Comment Re:Maybe that's intresting trivia to you... (Score 1) 187

Uh... I am german and I've driven thousands of kilometers on the Autobahn at night. While long stretches of it do in fact not have lighting, the parts in or near cities often do. And that's where even at night you get some traffic.

But since the Autobahn has a mid-divider, there's really nothing that you need to see. You see the tail lights of cars in front of you much better in the dark anyways, and at 160 or 200 kph, a deer jumping in front of you isn't a problem of visibility.

Much of it all is, however, due to the specific design of the Autobahn. When you're on an Autobahn, you know with absolute certainty that there won't be any traffic lights, crossings or intersections. You know that the street was built to handle speed, so there won't be any sudden turns and twists, and if it turns by anything that remotely resembles a curve, there will be fat signs warning you of a "sharp corner" that is probably really dangerous if you go Mach 1. So even at 240 kph, the max I've ever driven at night, you feel strangely safe coasting down a road where your lights illuminate maybe the next 3 seconds in front of you.

Comment Re:too many bad books (Score 0) 737

As a matter of fact, if civilization were to break down, starvation would be our main problem very soon, because for the first time in history, we have > 50% of the population living in cities world-wide (and > 90% in the west), and we have maybe 1% of the population involved in food production, so if something catastrophic were to bring down the logistics of moving the stuff into the population centers, our supplies would run out really, really quickly.

Comment too many bad books (Score 4, Insightful) 737

Submitter has read too many bad books.

Remember, in stories, the world works the way the author needs it to work for dramatic purposes, not necessarily the way that it most likely would in reality.

The typical Mad Max scenario is unlikely. Just like SciFi authors thought we'd have flying cars and take our vacations on the moon, but didn't forsee the Internet and mobile phones, the real scenario will very likely be quite different from the movies you've seen.

Which basically means: Who the fuck knows which skills will be useful and which ones won't? Maybe computers will be worthless and shooting is important. But maybe supply of ammunition runs out a lot faster than electricity which we increasingly generate decentralized with solar and wind farms.

Maybe something entirely unexpected turns out to be the most important skill to have.

Also: Looking at history, civilization-destroying catastrophies are incredibly rare. Most civilizations enter a phase of decline and slowly fade away.

Comment Re:Singapore (Score 0) 386

Even in European countries that have as many guns per capita as the U.S., murders rates are several times lower.

That's because our attitude to guns is different. Ownership is a secondary concern.

For example, in Switzerland pretty much every adult male owns a weapon. Locked away in a gun cabinet, intended for defense of the country in case it ever gets invaded.

Europeans, even where gun ownership is common, don't have the "gun culture" of the US. It doesn't have the same level of cool to go into the woods and shoot some rounds. There's a lot less presence of them in the public, it's not as easy to buy one (can't get them at WalMart), etc.

Basically, we're adults who handle guns, americans are kids who play with guns. The results are roughly what you'd expect from these two scenarios.

Comment Re:Snowden (Score 1) 139

Yes, that's probably the reason why around the world, governments seem to be much less interested in following those revelations than one would assume - they fear their own dirty laundry could show up if a serious investigation would be launched.

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