Everything today is "a feature". Real tired to hear these "problems" - not really problems but laziness, ignorance, whatever by developers / designers! Yes, the base, the standards, the tools, and so on are flawed but nothing says the systems have to be coded that way, allowing all the security and other problems. I have tried a long time to defend the developers - it wasn't their problem that that their tools, toys, systems, etc were bad but after so long - anyone anymore creating systems with these flaws is to blame!

This is really getting out of hand - why would anyone build systems which allow these problems, cross-site without checking, whatever - on purpose? Sorry, after 30+ years designing / creating safe systems for global mission critical operations, public safety, etc - I just can't understand!! Yes - sometimes it means fighting the management and even customer but why would anyone do it - every time it comes back haunting you, badly! What has happened to separation of presentation, processing, authentication, authorization, etc?? The basic rules in safe computing! Or did your vendor licensing book forget to tell you about the bad and ugly world outside the door? If so - why not start thinking yourself?

Correct - my mistake, sorry!

Yes, it is! ("Copyright is the set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.") All creative work is by default copyrighted, even if not marked so. Does the owner care, let others use the work, force copyright, release the copyright to a third party, whatever is up to the copyright owner or owners legal representative but even these lines are owned by me (not very creative but I digress) - not by Slashdot! We don't want Slashdot to be responsible what I write - or do we? And of course, writing the lines here I will allow everyone to use them but they still are copyrighted to me, I just gave a permission to use them by my (kind of) agreement with Slashdot.

Yes, he's qualified! Now - typical government (not just military) "US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare"" and ".. Pentagon has been more explicit, stating on Friday that Cyber Command will "direct the operations and defence of specified Department of Defense information networks [involving some 90,000 military personnel] and .."". Wow - maybe double the manpower, then the baby will be born in half the time!

Anyhow, assuming that General Alexander get's enough authority, doubtful!, network security, etc could / might get better. The question is not just "Cyber Warfare", that's a nice sounding term but doesn't really mean much. Often military research has benefitted everyone - we can only hope that it's same in this case!

Correct! But seeing the /. people start thinking instead of just repeating what they read in Internet, in their own party / religious / "technical advisory" / vendor / manufacturer / etc sites or in TV, would be a great day! Ambulance chaser culture, "root cause" ideology, and so on - but not even one(?) idea why these happen, how to fix the real root causes, how to prepare to disasters which eventually always happen, etc! Sometimes wonder where the corporations and governments even could find good people if the /. is any example of better than average (assumed) educated? Bias, emotions, politics, greed, whatever has no place in these issues. As you said, ethnics and morals at its finest!

Hmm - I was scripting in a 1MIPS / 16MB / IBM 158-3 / MVS in mid-70's running 2000+ online users with no problems? Maybe not all systems were equal? And automatic code generation, straight from definitions and from/to source control system? Done all the time by 100+ developers, some online, some in batch? Something else is new? Less than 2Gb RAM, definitely, slower than 1GHz, most definitely but I digress and keep using my 3GB / 2.2Ghz dual laptop alone, probably wouldn't support more users today?

Really have to answer to this, if for nothing else but for the entertainment value! Spying - at least in business and IT has bee around forever - well, for IT only as long as IT has been around! Living, working (in IT/IS), partying with "spies" (they had the money / budget, even bigger that IT people?), dealing maybe most IT using countries (at that time - 70's, etc), and so on - it was fun, nothing new, be careful, etc! My operators alerted "the secret service" about spies, real spies - caught in airport with a lot of documents, pictures, etc - laughing russian "spies" photographing us going to "secret" entrances in military computer installations, giving "a little too many drinks" to an western spy and listen all the stories he / she had to tell - it was fun! Yeah - it was Helsinki, Finland - long, long time ago - middle of everything what happened at that time - still is?

"Accidents happen, BOP's should not fail! I think there should be a billion dollar (or 10) fine for every failed BOP, so high costs can be justified."

Yeah, just one problem, the company responsible of BOP was Halliburton - never heard of them? This is USA - Halliburton has never and can never do anything wrong so how would / could you fine them?

If you work in a country which has signed the international copyright agreement - the copyright belongs to creator and can only transferred by an explicit contract, implicit doesn't work. Especially photographers have won many cases in court - why anyone even tries anymore is beyond me!

One common mistake here is mixing copyright, license, ownership, etc. Think about a painting made by order - it's almost impossible to move the copyright but, of course, whoever ordered it owns the painting. Totally different issue. But don't try to copy it - the artist will come after you very fast! Yes, we have built a complicated world.

Now - QuantumG is right, read the replies. GPL is a distribution license, period! Very nice, very easy to understand license - except if brainwashed by marketing or "free software" sides! As a copyright owner you can select whatever license, change it whenever you want but (in most cases) can't take back old except if there is a contract agreed by both sides (!!) which includes the clause of license revocation.

Exactly - !!! 10x or 100x or 1000x or .... doesn't mean anything for big companies, they can afford anything (really, but that's another story!) - the question is about control. It's more and more like bullies in kindergarten or school or work or whatever - they really don't care because even the caretakers, teachers, managers, etc are afraid of them. The patent system works a lot the same way - politicians are "supposed" to make it good (for everyone?), not a private moneymaking machine - are they afarid about something, losing something personally? I wonder why they are against that - no, not really, I'm not a little pit amazed why they want to make it nice and easy for anyone who already has lots and lots of money, impossible otherwise. I'm a little amazed why the public allows / votes for that?

fixed : Generally, we just don't WANT TO understand all the externalities involved.

"Hopefully, they don't lead to catastrophic circumstances." - I hope so too but, depending what you mean with "catastrophic", it seems always to happen, sooner or later, a little or a little more!

Evolution by nature has been (kind of) slow - escalating it changes the picture. Not saying that the science Monsanto does is bad, how it is used - well, everyone is entitled to an opinion, at least as long they are alive (after that, I don't know / care)!

IMHO, if the science done by Monsanto (often payed by taxpayers - another issue!) and other bio companies would be used for common good, well - the world would be in a much better shape today! But when it is used for private benefits, trying to get "money" (money is whatever wealth, power, etc) from public moved to just a few - maybe we could use a little more laws and regulations?

Wow - "As the Wiki article points out, he was sued because he harvested the seeds and then used them to plant his crop next year; not because he had plants growing their from seeds that blew across his property line.." ???

Isn't that how you plant - from seeds? At least I don't know any other way? And he only collected seeds from his own property! So, if I throw a seed with a marker (well, it was the wind), you know those(?), on your side, you take your(!) plants, seed them and grow next year from those seeds I can sue you? You know, those markers last generations in cells - no way to get rid of them!

All these views that Monsanto will save the world - weird, but well, people believe whatever today - worse than in centuries? The education level has really, really gone down! Yes, Monsanto has done very many things which can / may be good for everybody, not just for their stock holders, but I'm amazed when they really cause (bad, very bad) problems, the governments, courts, etc will support them instead of protecting (I agree, the stupid and uneducated) public? Maybe the free market (take the money where and whatever way you can independent of the consequences) has gone a little too far?

"One of the things I liked about Java was that there aren't any buffer overflows to worry about. Well, apart from ones in the JVM, ..." - one thing I like about assembler that there aren't any buffer overflows to worry about. Well, apart from ones the programmers do! See - same problems, again and again.

Who do you think creates the objects, methods, interpreters, (just in time) compilers, APIs, etc? Maybe programmers(?) - make an error or even worse, design a "bad" object, API, compiler, etc and you have problems!

A rant - one time, a long time ago, I designed an (unfortunately "proprietary" - I know, corporations suck!) "application" interface, supports all the languages we tried over 35 years (really, from Cobol, ADA, Fortran, C, AWK, REXX to Java, Erlang, Python, Delphi, C#, Unix and Windows shells, etc with Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cache, C-tree, native filesystems, and so on), is used in networked (from async, bsc, X.25 .. to SNA, IP - all TCP/UDP/SCTP/...) , distributed, clustered, whatever environments with several Unix, Linux, Windows, Tandem Guardian and NSK systems (tested with even more exotic but not in production), blah, blah, blah. Now - used in fail safe, fail over, HA, etc wireless and wired systems and so on, and so on.

The purpose about that rant - yes, there has been some "security" and other problems but not with languages used, the problems were at first with the interface design, didn't get everything right at first, later in coding of the interface but - the late versions really have zero "security" problems, no matter in what language the "application" is coded, the interface was / is protecting against any such problems. Now - logical or on purpose problems, that's another story totally but has nothing to do what language is used.

Anyhow - you can use any language to code insecure applications, whatever. None is better or worse in that sense, well you can do that easier in assembler if you know what you are doing but I digress. I don't know about anybody else but what I see today is that programming skills on that level have gone down a lot? Thinking and understanding has been replaced by certificates, strange titles or just purely "do as I say"! You think that our systems, operating or application, would be on the level they are if everyone would have used just the "real", licensed, by manager (wow!!) certified / allowed methods/ways, etc when creating the systems we have today? Maybe time to go "back to the roots" and stop this "which language, OS, whatever" is the best?

Yes and no - I agree with Joel if the goal is to benefit (money?) one person or a small group. Now - if the benefits would be for larger group or even nations, whatever - per / use, etc cost structure is totally different. An interesting question, will never be solved, LOL!

On the other hand - I think it also has something to do with laziness and ignorance? Using ready made packages, objects, APIs, etc doesn't require even near the same skills as creating something yourself. Nothing (much) wrong in that, that's the way today, but really, I wouldn't call people doing that "developers" or even worse, "architects" !! They were called at one time coders and when growing up a little, programmers - not much waited from them except following orders, as today!

It's called betterment, "sometimes, you have to make sacrifices for the betterment of the entire group" - really? Yeah, nobody has been able to show what has been gained since we had for ex. 512KB memory for 2000+ online users? Processing is much faster today, response times 10+ times slower?? Same processing - the business hasn't changed? Nice pictures(?) - actually using nice graphical (and expensive) terminals - about the same! Yes, the price of hardware has gone down and a lot but do we really have to waste it?

Agreed, it really is disgusting to look some(?) code today! On the other hand - I have won all the bets making systems (big / huge ones!) 2 times faster in response times and using half the memory and half the cpu (all three!) last 20 years, easily - LOL! SO - there are some benefits in ignorance, at least for me! Also - a side issue but the bloat has created (is creating!) a huge amount of security problems! Instead of knowing and thinking using (badly) made libraries, objects, APIs, whatever has never been a good idea but I digress!