And oddly enough, so has their $100+ price tag.

Remember Suxtnet? Not too long ago?

It spread by usb drives, which Gleefully jump the "air gap".

It's slightly more complicated than simply keeping an air gap, and probably requires the consultation of someone who's had experience securing these types of networks.

We're going O/T here --- but Facebook will send email invites to email addresses that you don't have registered on Facebook, if the user (who stupidly gives Facebook their Email account username & password) elects.

I've received real (rather than spam/phishing) Facebook 'join us' messages @ my work email address, even though my work address has gone no where near my personal Facebook account.

And you validate that the address facebook now has on record is real, legit, and interested in privacy.

If you ignore, filter, and/or delete the message, they really can't confirm.

Just follow the same procedure you use for SPAM/UCE

There's a good reason for this:

Microsoft makes the best tools for managing large groups of Windows clients. Active Directory, Group Policy, Exchange. And the ecosystem of software that relies on those technologies being present.

If linux/foss can crack that nugget, it can start making inroads on internal servers.

The other alternative, is to break Microsoft on the desktop: Exchange + Office.

It's like the Mutually-Assured-Destruction scenario in the mobile/wireless world!

When I hand my phone to someone, I watch what their doing. It's as simple as that.

This scenario doesn't propagate in the way most malware and worms do. A handfull of people in 1 city get knocked off their connection when the phone sees them sending malicious traffic (which is already against ToS). A little investigation later, and the security camera he (or she) didn't notice nails him.

Or, it targets a specific user in a specific organization. If they're high-profile enough for this kind of attack to work, their IT department will probably be competent to give out locked down phones (that shoulden't be rooted by staff) and/or have other protections in place.

It seems that there's a segment of the population that want this feature, and it would do the carriers good to give us that option. if that means physical access is necessary to root the device, then that's a reasonable requirement, most computers howadays are vulnerable if you give an untrusted user physical access.

*EVERY* manufacturer that introduces a feature like this does so to lock down the device and prevent 'unauthorized' modifications. Unauthorized == Not made by them. Don't kid yourself. If that wasn't their intent, how does one install their own signing key? How does one authorize a new ROM or OS ? If they shipped those instructions on page 599 of the manual in fine print where it'll only be noticed by tech geeks, then perfect, I want *that* device, because *I* can determine what's unauthorized. I bet though, that you won't find it.

This is a crap argument.

The only way to 'get root' on many of these devices is to attach a cable to the phone, invoke a special command to get a root shell, and only then can things be mucked with, by using a unix command shell.

How can malware get on the phone if 99% of the users will be only using it through the phone's on-screen menu system? On Android, arn't all apps sandboxed + running as non-root? If an app can break out of this process model, arn't there more serious problems @ stake here?

How can malware 'trick' the user into 'getting root' when that same 99% doesn't know wtf that is?

I want a portable data terminal. I want to run my own scripts and programs on my portable data terminal that do what I want. I want a computer I can keep in my pocket and have it's network interface linked up to the wireless tower. I want to pay a reasonable fee for this service. Why can't any of the US carriers deliver that in a straightforward package?

keep ink in glass pellets or something in the safe too, so any kind of violent movement marks all the bills?

Unicorn meat is an Excellent Source of Sparkles!

I bet you don't get that from your bacon!

This is marked troll, and we may be too far off topic here, but poster's point is valid.

Would you rather have one image editor that contains everything you need? Or 520 different filters applications, all in different applications, all of which need to pipe data between each other? (Hint: the first one is superior in every way.)

I'd rather have both. One is far easier to script with standard issue tools since it's forced into a specific programmable interface. Can you imagine the insanity if every major application used their own method of scripting to control operations? --- No, you don't have to imagine. MS Office uses VBA. Flash uses Actionscript, What does Photoshop use? it's own scripting language/system? Autocad? it's own language again.

Think of a task like this, and how many different programming systems are needed:

Write a script that for each of our 1200 technical drawings creates a pdf with the drawings, includes highlights and text about the part, requirements + specifications, include a 3d render of that part, and puts a company logo watermark. Can this be done so a human only needs to say "GO?"

That philosophy is flawed. It prioritizes eye candy instead of guarantying desktop usability

While that may be debatable, I'm alluding to (IMHO) brilliant technical achievements of kio-slaves, kparts, dcop (which worked really well before dbus was widely adopted), and so on. The component architecture of KDE, when fully embraced, is a great modern interpretation of the old unix philosophy "Each tool should one thing, and do it well"

If they've lost sight of that, then I too would be saddened.

Because for every one of you, there are 10 (or more) folks that are not techy's and appreciate the richer UI.

You can probably get by w/ e16/fvwm/fluxbox, and be extremely productive. Users who have used Win32 will appreciate a similar UI to help them ease into the power of a linux desktop.

KDE is more than just a desktop Environment, it's a whole programming library and philosophy that unifies a family of applications, so they can interoperate, exchange data, and work together as well as you do.

If you read the ToS (for VZ Fios, Even Cox Cable has a similar provision) by agreeing to service, you authorize them to access your equipment.

See here: http://www.verizon.net/policies/popups/tos_popup.asp

Search for "Monitoring of Network Performance by Verizon"

I soooo wish there was more competition for broadband in the states :(

Perl did languish for a while.

Perl6 gave the language dabblers an opportunity to experiment with new ideas and concepts. Take the best of perl5, but not be afraid to be wildly incompatible, and see where it goes.

However, while all the cool kids were doing stuff in perl6, the perl5 folks realized they could do really cool things in perl5 too, right now. Perl5 now has Moose, Plack (Stolen from Ruby's Rack), new web frameworks to match and even better those of ruby, python, and even PHP. Perl5's maintainers started to actually chase down long standing bugs, and actually kill off the things that have been giving deprecation warnings in perl5. There's even a Perl Foundation grant out for someone doing full-time perl5 bug triage + fixing. (And if you've seen Perl5's source, you'll know that's no small feat)

My company's work in perl5 pays my bills. Perl5 is not going anywhere anytime soon, so I'm confident we can continue to move forward with it. Perl6, now that it's becoming more and more usable will inspire the imagination of developers, and continue to evolve, and the perl5 folks will continue to cherry pick the nifty features they can backport into perl5.

It's a very exciting future for perl all around, and I'm happy to be on board.