Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment The Emperor agrees with almost everything you say. (Score 4, Informative) 301

But this is blatantly counterfactual and indefensible:

Of course, it could be worse. The amount spent on US elections this season has eclipsed the total spending on ALL science, research and development by the US government.

At most a few hundred million dollars have been spent this campaign seasons. This is an absurd amount of money, but it's not even a fraction of NASA's $18.5 billion 2011 budget. NASA spending represents only a fraction of US science investment.

Comment Refreshingly, he does NOT call for new laws (Score 5, Informative) 134

He places the blame right where it belongs, on those corporations and government agencies that are too incompetent to design secure computer systems or hire those who can:

Mr. Henry, who is leaving government to take a cybersecurity job with an undisclosed firm in Washington, said companies need to make major changes in the way they use computer networks to avoid further damage to national security and the economy. Too many companies, from major multinationals to small start-ups, fail to recognize the financial and legal risks they are taking—or the costs they may have already suffered unknowingly—by operating vulnerable networks, he said.

Comment Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score 1) 369

You're right: Obama has maintained way too many Bush-era policies, he has expanded others, and the remainder he has not challenged vigorously enough.

But bigotry, incompetence, criminality and right-wing authoritarianism bordering on fascism are nothing new at the FBI. It was a problem before Obama, and it will probably continue to be a problem after Obama.

Comment Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score 1) 369

The article makes no mention of when the training manuals were in effect. The comment in question, that the FBI could "bend or suspend the law," came from Robert Mueller, who was appointed by President Bush on September 4, 2001. The most recently-reported race-related scandal at the FBI (prior to this one) also took place during the Bush administration. Both scandals were revealed by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who has been investigating misconduct at the FBI for the past few years.

How on Earth did you connect this to Obama?

Comment Your ignorance is patently offensive. (Score 1) 201

They don't carry flags saying "Baptist" or "Methodist", they simply converse.

No, but they work for organizations with names like "Lutheran World Relief" or "Baptist Global Response," and their logos invariably feature crosses or other religious insignia. And not only that, but they network together, so that all the Lutheran and Methodist and Baptist relief efforts are communicating and working together, but they don't extend nearly the same effort when interacting with secular groups, which leads to a lot of obviously Christian evangelical groups spending most of their time together. They don't make comparable efforts when working with secular groups, and will often work completely autonomously from them, sometimes with disastrous results.

The Emperor knows this firsthand, as an atheist who has helped coordinate fundraising and other efforts for Lutheran World Relief.

And from what I've seen, athiests (and especially antitheists) continually shout "there is no god!" from the rooftops.

Of course, the only atheists you "know" are the vocal ones - that's because you'd never, ever recognize a "stealth" atheist. Get off the Internet, try to meet some real atheists (you will probably fail, due to the nature of atheism), and stop spreading derogatory lies about entire groups of people. The vast majority of atheists and agnostics will not openly bring up their beliefs, perhaps not even if pressed on the subject, because non-believers are the most persecuted and unpopular group in America, largely because of the intentional ignorance spread by people like yourself and your pastor. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE IN HIGHLY RELIGIOUS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, WHERE ATHEISM IS EVEN LESS TOLERATED THAN IT IS HERE. Openly identifying as an atheist is not only extremely improbable behavior for an atheist in any situation, but in a country that does not have a strong tradition of liberalism, it is actually dangerous.

(We have not decided to correct you because you have offended our fellow atheists; The Emperor defends the truth and integrity of all cultural groups, including religious groups whose faith we do not share. But we will not abide libels.)

He's no idiot, not by a long shot.

That is slimly possible, but "idiot" was the polite term for someone who spreads ignorance and libel about an entire group of people. "Bigot," "monster," and "evil" may have been more appropriate, although just "ignorant" probably suffices.

Comment FFS (Score 1) 201

And BTW, Mr Dawkinsfollower, last Sunday MY preacher spoke of the work our church is doing in Kenya. "I saw a lot of Catholics, and Methodists, and Baptists, and even Muslims, but I didn't see s single athiest, agnostic, or secular humanist."

You'll find plenty of atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists doing aid work in Doctors Without Borders, the Peace Corps, Amnesty International and the like. Your preacher got confused because secular charity organizations don't operate in the "name of atheism," and also apparently because he is an idiot.

Comment The question was, "What should I be reading?" (Score 4, Insightful) 333

Not, "How can I write flawless code?," but, "What should I be reading?" The submitter showed no prior knowledge of exploits, so it seemed reasonable to provide him with a simple introduction to the kinds of exploits he may encounter and how they can be prevented.

Interestingly, the 2010 "OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities" have all existed for a decades - a competent developer flash-frozen in 1998 and thawed out today would be able to guard against all of those flaws. That's not good evidence for your position that the question "continually needs to be asked."

Comment That wasn't the real reason to avoid using Perl. (Score 2) 333

Another reason that compiled code may be safer than interpreted code is the size and complexity issue. Big software programs, such as shell and Perl interpreters, are likely to contain bugs. Some of these bugs may be security holes. They're there, but we just don't know about them.

Major Perl vulnerabilities still crop up on a regular basis - on average, one or two a year. When was the last time you heard of a major vulnerability in the C programming language? And what "experienced developer" can't be bothered to guard against buffer overflow exploits?

The simpler the runtime environment, the more easily it can be controlled and problems can be avoided. Simple C has one of the simplest runtime environments of any programming language, making it perfect for use in high-reliability situations.

Comment Correction (Score 1) 240

The reference occurs on a different page.

However, the Google cache of that page has been cleared within the last few hours, although most other pages on "CrossMediaGlobal.com" have snapshots from 11 days ago. As of first posting, the Emperor believes that there was no reference to the original drupal sources. Furthermore, a single linkback is insufficient to fully comply with the GPL.

Comment The link was added just recently; check Google. (Score 1) 240

This is a Google webcache link that, as of this writing, contains no link back to the original drupal module.

This is a screencapture of the cache.

This might indicate that the redistributor is making good faith efforts to comply with the GPL, now that they are aware of the violation.

Comment According to the summary, you missed one point. (Score 4, Interesting) 240

If your software were a compiled language (eg c/c++/java etc.) then if they didn't provide the original source OR didn't provide it on request by you AS A CUSTOMER (the license is granting rights to the people they distribute to - ie customer), then they violate. If they have put the php through some code obfuscator and don't provide the original source before obfuscation, then this would come under the "compiled" category i'd say. What they are doing is perfectly legal under the GPL.

The code was stripped of its existing GPL and redistributed under a new license. Even though the source code is available (because PHP is distributed in source form), it's no longer clear that the code is still covered by the GPL - someone purchasing this package wouldn't know that they were entitled to redistribute or modify the code. That's the crux of the violation:

I'm no lawyer, but my perspective is this violates both the spirit and law of GPLv2, most specifically clause 2-b: 'You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.'

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android

Working...