It wouldn't have saved them, because as far as I understood what I read, stuxnet used usb keys to replicate and target the systems. Air gap was already a well known practice, but it is based on the assumption no one will leak anything inside the protected part. But the (short) history of social engineering shows plentifully that's seldom the case. There are many ways to entice an accredited human being into breaking that kind of security. You can plant an operative, corrupt an operator, deceit a worker into plugging a "found" key, etc.

It may very well be that the lack of proper cloaking was intentional, for at least two reasons : on the one hand, as long as the aim was reached, there was no need to reveal the full scope of expertise put behind it. Better keep still unknown cloaking techniques in case they may come handy in the future. On the second hand, stuxnet is certainly as much a psychological weapon as it is a technological one. What would be the interest to disrupt Iran's nuclear program if nobody knew what happened ? As such, it's a very good deterrent : any would be rogue third world country willing to go nuclear knows "someone" will take offense and knows that this "someone" has the abilities to bring their program down. But at this point, nobody can pinpoint who this "someone" may be with plausible certainty.

It makes sense because google owns youtube, admittedly the largest video provider on the web today.

Once they turn distribution to WebM only content, if you want to watch videos, it ensures every browser can access it.

But google knows users are also producers, and logically bets they will want to use WebM for making their own videos available. They certainly expect to increase WebM dominance through their users that way.

Fugly.
'nuff said.

I miss a "Most useful comment ever" button to click on. But this is /. so consider yourself happy if you achieve "+4 funny".

Pick a good look at something modern like Gambas. All Basic goodies, in a GUI-friendly package.

It's absolutely spot on. (living in Paris, I totally confirm this).

It's the other way round on linux. Chrome font rendering is hopelessly riddled with bugs, and breaks at every minor upgrade.

Absolutely. This bug is a real show stopper until it gets really fixed. I was tempted to try ff4ß8, but if that fix is due for ß9, I'm going to wait for a while.

I had the most weird IT experience arising from almost the same situation

One night, circa 3am, I get a frantic phone call from a friend who claim she had just lost all of her thesis (no backups, of course). She was basically using a glorified typewriter : pentium 120, windows 3.1, word 6.0 - no internet, not even a CD drive. From what I'm told between sobs and hysterical outburst, I understand the thing boots to DOS (the screen is "all black with a C:>"), so I guess it's just a matter of minutes, and tell her to type "win" and then return. Fails, because the keyboard outputs "zin" - there, I begin to understand the night is going to be a bit longer than expected. I live in France, so we use "azerty" keyboards and obviously her computer had reverted to a "qwerty" layout.

So next step, I tell her the DOS command to display autoexec.bat (figure it, on the phone, without the computer in front of me... "type qutoexec/bqt") and... it fails ! autoexec.bat had simply totally, completely, vanished from her system ! So, letter by letter, with my win95 laptop as a guide, I dictated over the phone a working autoexec translated in qwerty she entered after the famed "copy con autoexec.bat...". It seemed to last hours (and maybe it did).

But in the end, it worked, and the machine booted right into win, so I instructed her to make a backup now and then, and I guided her in the process. Once it was done, I told her to shut it off and that I would come the next day to check if it was safe to carry on on that same machine.

Next day, I drop by, and soon realize something's still off with the machine ; not much, but caps lock doesn't work for instance.

So I open and check literally everything until I open the keyboard casing and find 1/2 inch of liquid trapped inside. I burst in laughter, accuse her of spilling her tea over it. She takes it sternly, things start to get bitter (we hadn't slept much, both of us), until she has an "eureka" moment and realize she's been washing her contact lenses over that same desk for years !

Problem solved, but I still can't figure out how a flooded keyboard can delete the autoexec on its own will...

I see we have the same footrest / foot warmer. Mine's a lousy PWS 433, but it used to run loops around any PPro in its days. Still keep it for that little Quake game now and then... incredibly smooth gameplay...

When I commute every morning, I'm always surprised at how much men have iPhones and ladies have Blackberries. This may very well be a local thing (I live in Paris, France), but from my own casual observations, this is a firm trend here.

In my humble opinion, it's because iPhones are very expensive even tied to an operator contract, while BBs have been marketed aggressively at quite low prices. It seems men are more likely to shell out money on nice toys, women are more responsible with the family budget.

Now, I shouldn't make any generality out of it, but I think this study isn't to be taken as absolute truth either.

He's a disgrace to all what we french believe in.

This said, he has no power to prevent OVH (the ISP) from hosting the site. And OVH has already fought back the pressure by filing a summary motion to have a judge decide wether they can legally host wikileaks. (I'm not really sure of my law speech translation here - basically, they went straight to a judge to have the case decided by justice instead of the administration).

Fingers crossed...

You should have been modded insightful instead of funny. I had exactly the same reaction.

Like a toll road operator, ISPs would have a security duty, based on visible facts (without actively searching computers, just analysing statistical output traffic patterns). It wouldn't be akin to a penalty, but act like a quarantine for the benefit of the majority.

Don't forget the Russian federation, which have a huge interest in selling enriched uranium they produce already.