Spoken like a true Software Architect!?

How about using a technology that doesn't need children crawl inside big machines, in the first place? But you're right. How dare I propose such a thing?

Seriously, "not killing children unless there's a bug" isn't that great a software feature. My guess is you've been working with C++ for far too long. Maybe you should take a look around you and outside the C++ world. Modern software development is more like procreation :)

And your paraphrase is wrong. God isn't responsible for letting the kid die. It was the guy who's specified the child go into the machine.

*Beavis voice* He said "denigrating", heh heh.

I'm not from the USA, mind you. And maybe I'm too sensitive to your customary vocabulary. Just seemed funny to me. In an ironic way. Speaking about cultures and racism and all. You could have used "belittle" or "defame" but you used "denigrate" ;-)

I still don't agree. Many great articles and documentaries have been produced in the last decades just to tackle these theories. Even people who had no doubt there was a moon landing could get insight into subjects they would never have touched by themselves. And I'm sure some of the loonies also learned that their doubts were just silly.

If everybody had just taken the fact for what it is, all of that would have been lost. Worst of all the moon landing itself, after all this time, would have become just another chapter in a history book. It all would have vanished if people hadn't kept on nagging us about it.

And yeah I know that was not really your point. I agree that there are crazy people who will never learn. The problem is sometimes you can't tell the crazy and uneducated apart. And when you dismiss them all, you're making a mistake.

Did you move to a suburb because inner city housing is too depressing? Have you stopped watching world news because it depresses you, too? Did your children's education become better when you stopped caring about it and pushed all responsibility onto the teachers?

Just because people stop caring, the problem won't suddenly disappear. If you don't educate the stupid, their ideas will become the foundation of their culture.

The problem is, every single American could start a "social program" on their own or, even more effectively, with the help of their peers - if they really desired... The advancement of humanity on the other hand can never be done by a single person. No matter how much he or she desired.

The next time you see those people from that age group, tell them they're all selfish pricks. The only reason they favour "social programs" is because that's what the cool kids do now.

After reading this comment I felt the need to point out the practices of the Secunia sponsored "Full Disclosure" mailing list whose supporters I called the Full Disclosure movement.

This is the message that credits a guy called SBerry for "discovering" the vulnerability. All that guy did was take the testcase from the Mozilla bug tracker attach a payload to it and publish it as his exploit, ready to be consumed by every skript kiddie with a subscription to that list or the milw0rm exploit RSS feed.

And Secunia even have the nerve calling the exploit the original advisory.

I'm not suggesting we hide all bugs and actually I don't like Mozilla's practice of doing so, for the same reasons that you suggest.

What I'm suggesting is that people like SBerry, milw0rm and Secunia get punished for what they do. An exploit is no security advisory! As the name suggests its only purpose is to exploit a known vulnerability which in almost all cases happens with criminal intend. Secunia is promoting this practice by giving credit to the exploit writers (and who knows what else). milw0rm is one of their henchmen hosting all the exploits. SBerry is one of the many misguided hackers, yearning for approval, who partake in this "security practice" called Full Disclosure.

But you know, I'm just a developer who was raised a hacker. I would never call me a security expert but I really have an uneasy feeling knowing that the Security industry is promoting ready-made exploits, which I think is actually quite insecure.

No, the point is, since Firefox is an open-source project, a security minded person is already able to fetch the patch from Mozilla's open code repository. There is no such thing for Microsoft products.

In my opinion this makes a big difference. But nowadays, I seem to be in the minority.

Yeah, you and me and the other 3 guys.

That about sums it up. But thanks for trying to cheer me up, anyway.

That's true of course. And I don't want to split hairs but point out the open source nature of the Firefox browser:

The patch is already available.

If you had read the bugzilla thread (I know, I know) you'd know it's already fixed ;)

Go on and mod me troll but, IMNSHO, this is just a display of the expertise of the full disclosure movement: Just post a test-case from an open bugtracker as your own exploit and enjoy your 15 minutes of fame amongst all the other skript-kiddies.

Well done, hacker!

Have you just woken up from cryostasis*, too?

And you know the craziest thing I've heard about Firebug? Allegedly, people also use it to debug web applications written in JavaScript! Applications... On the web... In JavaScript...

What's next? Apple running on Intel? Bill Gates becoming a humanitarian?

----

*) I was frozen just before GWB started WWIII and thawed after the Blacks won :D

**) Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night.

Why is Secunia (http://secunia.com/advisories/35798/2/) only featuring a link to the exploit of the ff3.5 0day but no link the Mozilla bugtracker?

Don't want to sound trollish but I don't really know how this whole security business works. So can anyone please explain why there is no bug report for the open source browser?

Maybe you can find something in the manual?

I know I will be modded troll or something but I was just amazed that you can find an actual manual by googling! It's probably useless but anyway, kudos to EPSON.

Sorry for coming so late to the discussion but I found it too awkward how everyone who's answered you has only commented on the walking distance.

You said 'wherever you happen to live'. Well I live in Germany and I won't say we don't have bar fights over here but I can assure you that you can't just walk into any bar and start a fight. People in general are less and less tolerant towards violent behaviour and more often than not they will stop the bar fight before it really begins. The 'bad places', where people just don't care what's happening around them, have bouncers who will kick you out at the first sign of violent behaviour.

Commenting on the original topic, I like to think, the more people are exposed to virtual violence (or human suffering in general) - and it's not just video games today but also news espacially war / disaster coverage, documentaries and of course movies - the more people grow sensitive towards any of that happening 'for real'. We don't need to see what a broken beer bottle can do to a person's face to learn that it's a Bad Thing because we have already seen an artistic depiction or maybe even actual footage of it in a video game or on the Internet or TV.