Unespected?

Their news embargo basically equaled a goddamn GAG ORDER and they really want to convince us that this wasn't because they knew all along what a train wreck they were about to sell and to prevent he media prom warning the customers??? It was fraud, plain and simple and they now want to get people to accept some of their other crap as compensation so they won't be able to join a class-action lawsuit.

Do you mind if I mock your attempt to suggest that a phone which is is probably several million lines of code developed by a company which has a relatively small user base on the new code base and just hasn't been a real hacking target yet is secure?

The old Blackberry might have been secure if for no other reason than it was a glorified PDA without the ability to do much of anything dynamic. The new version is based on QNX makes heavy use of message passing APIs (which I personally have evaluated the code for and will agree that part is secure. At least in transit) but will be coded for by developers who will focus on usability and functionality which will require their apps to become subscribers to many message pipes and eventually will become sources for information which they didn't originate and therefore will become backdoors in the phone allowing pretty much any other program to hack the data when the user really only permitted access to that data to the one app.

QNX IS NOT a UNIX, it is mostly POSIX. It is an embedded real-time operating system. It has a pretty interesting scheduler and I'd love to poke around to see how they managed to get a real time OS to pretend to be a suitable end user OS (a hell of a task if it worked).

Please also understand that sand boxing is only interesting so long as we don't want information to cross between apps. In truth we do. And we want apps to communicate. Therefore it doesn't matter if the OS is the most secure OS on the planet, as soon as you add third party apps and users that use them, security is shot to hell.

As for basic security of the OS, like "Can someone hack it from the internet" or "Can someone hack into from physical access?". The answers are simple. Yes and yes. We may not know how, but if anyone gave a shit about Blackberry, it wouldn't be that hard. I would of course just abuse social engineering instead as it's far simpler, but I have actually hacked a Samsung using a black light on the screen just moments after the user hung up a phone call. It left a lovely smudge in the shape of the password from the fingers tracing it.

Quit talking security as if it's even possible. Especially with the "my system is so secure and yours isn't", paranoia is good and believing that your phone can and will be hacked keeps your nudie pictures off the web.

No, you do not have to write large amounts of data to break the drive - you can break it by causing one block to fail - an important block. On a file system one of those heavy write blocks will be: the super block, the index to the free list, the transaction log; in a database it is going to be parts of the index. All these blocks will have writes many more times than most of the file/file-system. These blocks are also the really important ones. Damage one of these and you don't lose data, but you lose the ability to access it.

Chickens and eggs; no_demand/not_viable to build hydrogen filling stations until there are enough cars -- people will not buy cars that might leave then stranded far from a hydrogen filling station. The (interim) solution has got to be dual fuel - a car that can run on either hydrogen or petrol. I don't see this as impossible, both burn a fluid to generate heat. If there are tax incentives on hydrogen (ie no/little fuel tax) then the number of these things will grow.

Petrol: note to those in the USA: I mean whatyou call 'gas'.

this is really really important: anyone wishing to make a difference in the world really REALLY needs to read the book written by Professor Yunus, the joint winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Price, "Creating a World Without Poverty".

in his book, Professor Yunus describes how he naively studied Economics because he believed that he would be able to change his country's financial situation through studying first world economies. after graduation he set out just after one of the worst natural disasters his country had experienced and realised how completely pointless his studies had been. however he did not give up, and set out to work out what the problem actually was.

he learned that the poor are first and foremost incredibly resourceful... mostly because they have to. he also learned that many of them are, because there are no enforceable usury laws, permanently kept in debt to money-lenders. this shocked him so badly that once he freed an entire village from debt just from the small change in his wallet: something like $USD 15 was all it took to pay off a decade of usury.

what he discovered is that the gratitude of these people when freed from their former situation is immeasurable. the Grameen Bank doesn't have lawyers or debt collectors. the people that they lend money to are so GRATEFUL that they work non-stop to turn their lives around and pay off their loan. in fact, the repayment success rate is around NINETY EIGHT percent. it's so high that the *GRAMEEN BANK* considers it to be THEIR FAULT if one of their customers is ever in default. by contrast in the western world the default rate is 88%. i'll repeat that again in case it's not clear: only TWELVE PERCENT of creditors in the western world pay their debts on time, every time, and in full.

but the main reason why anyone wishing to help the emerging markets and the third world should read his book is because he patiently, with all the knowledge from his economics background, outlines why NGOs, Charity and the "Corporate Social Responsibility" clauses of standard profit-maximising Capitalist Corporations are all worse than doomed but are guaranteed to be ineffective at best and invariably seriously damaging and counter-productive.

right at the start of his book he outlines a surprising offer by Danone to work with him (follow his advice) to actually be effective. it was Professor Yunus's first experience of having been "under the microscope" of people with both big resources and heart. in other words the team at Danone were huge fans of what Yunus was trying to achieve: when he explained to them the financial structure that was needed, they listened, and they did it. they did not go in with a charity, or with donations: they set up a "non-loss, non-dividend" business, selling *locally-produced* yoghurt that happened to have the nutritients that the local population happened (by a not-coincidence) to be chronically deficient in.

the yohurt was sold not at a loss but at an affordable financially sustainable price because the focus was on remaining *stable*, not on exploitation through maximisation of profits: the focus was on allowing people to feel proud of what they achieved, and to take responsibility for their own wealth. they were EMPOWERED through the enormous generous resources of Danone's, but it was a successful venture because they LISTENED to what Professor Yunus had to say.

That is why they need the moat - somewhere for the sharks to live in!

Mod parent up.

between them not responding to touch & them not being aware. Imagine what it would be like, sloshing about in a travelling container of water and not being able to use your suckers to anchor yourself to a surface!

this is a completely wrong analysis. if (2) was true those people would have been dead centuries or millenia ago. the fact that they are still alive tells you that they get by, and that, honestly, is good enough.

there was an attempt a few decades ago to do exactly what DuPont is doing [again]. i do not understand why 1st world countries do not leave the 3rd world alone to grow their own food. 1st world conditions are NOT THE SAME as 3rd world conditions.

the study that i heard about was exactly the same situation. a 3rd world country which had extremely poor yields was interfered with by a 1st world country providing donations of high-yield maize. for three to four years the success of the trials resulted in bumper crops and the surrounding farmers clambered onto the 1st world genetic variety maize.

then there was a drought.

the high-yield 1st world maize died, and the entire area went into famine. next year, because nothing had grown, nobody had any food the year after, either.

basically it turned out that the low-yield maize had a MASSIVE genetic diversity. some variants thrived in good conditions, some grew successfully *EVEN IN DROUGHT CONDITIONS*. no matter what happened, those people always got some food. not necessarily a lot, but enough so that they didn't die.

now the problem was with this stupid, stupid interference by a 1st world country was that because everyone in the area had converted over to this wonderful high-yield maize, NOBODY HAD ANY OF THE OLD GENETIC VARIETY LEFT.

it was a decade before the country properly recovered, and that was just from one drought.

so the conclusion is, unescapably, that DuPont is intent on killing people just to make a profit, as this isn't the first time that providing 1st world maize to 3rd world countries has gone very very wrong.

just leave them alone. we *DON'T* know better.

Look at other parts of life, where do we require that someone cannot be anonymous (warning I am a Brit, things may differ where you are)

If you publish something, eg a newspaper, a handbill, a poster (on a wall), these should all have the name of the publisher on them. This seems reasonable, you are saying things that many people will hear/read. If it is libelous then the person being defamed should be able to seek correction or sue you.

If you sell something: the name of the seller should be known, so that if it is not as advertised the purchaser can seek redress.

If you read a newspaper, handbill, wall poster then it is reasonable that you do so anonymously.

If you buy your lunch or a new shirt, you do not need to say who you are. (Large purchases, maybe)

If you talk to a friend in the street or on the train then you do not need to tell those around you or fellow passengers who you are.

So: does this mean the loss of a/c on slashdot ? If you are libeled by an a/c what redress should you have (if any) ? These are the sorts of questions that should be debated. But the loss of privacy in everything - 'No', the loss of privacy in some situations 'Yes'.

Note that you not liking something that someone says is not the same thing as being libelous - if you really smell, get a bath don't sue me for saying so!

Damn you... beat me to it<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

Who needs a virus when you have new channels run by idiots, staffed by idiots and feeding their opinions to masses of idiots?

when presented with the lack of evidence of religious assertions or evidence that contradicts a belief: they will deny what is going on or branch out on some tangent.

Few people are really objective and will cling to all sorts of positions rather than change their minds.

Where petrol costs ~£4.60 per US gallon =~ $7.30. About 60% of that price is tax, take away that tax you get about $3.

I do not like expensive petrol, but I do realise that we need to cut the amount of carbon based energy that we use - climate change might not affect me, but it will my kids.

The product manual probably does tell the owner to set a password, but most people do not read the manual as most people do not read an EULA before clicking to say that they agree to it. The vendor might be able to make setting a password one of the set-up steps, but if they did they would greatly increase the number of support calls that they get when people forget them. Even if users set passwords: most of them would be trivial or the same one that they use for this on-line banking.