Posts by '); DROP TABLE comments; -- 34 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2011
Awww wazzamatta, did Richard Chirgwin insult your widdle iToy? Diddums.
Also, you'll find that the vast majority of the tech-aware readership here see Apple stuff for the overpriced, overhyped shit it really is, as witness the huge amount of upvotes on any comment rubbishing them, and the huge amount of downvotes on anybody singing their praises.
I'll start the usual trend here by downvoting yours for starters...
What are the benefits to the public of releasing the details of this hack?
1. Sysadmins running this software on their systems can experiment with and and test the vuln to ensure that the patch actually works and their systems are now secured;
2. Programmers and software engineers in related areas can examine their own code to see if a similar vuln exists in their systems;
3. A person with effective skills at finding vulns can put the result on his CV, enabling him to get jobs where he can find other vulns and rectify them before they cause real damage, for example in your hospital systems.
There are reasons why you make such findings public. Those reasons have much to do with a component of standard scientific method commonly known as "peer review".
It's a classic example of the old saying regarding those who would destroy that which they most despise end by becoming it. In it's fanatical efforts to deny or suppress Nazi sympathizers, the German government is becoming increasingly Nazi-like in its efforts.
Furthermore, there is the danger that by repressing Nazi expression, the German government could be creating sympathy for it by virtue of the human tendency to champion the underdog. They would be far better off simply legalizing Nazi memorabilia and expression, and then publicly mocking and ridiculing those who support it - much like people do with the BNP in the UK.
And as far as what the Nazis actually did - well, most of them are dead, and those who fought them who are still alive are now in their 90s. And memories are short.
Well, to start with looting in the aftermath of a disaster is as old as civilisation, so no surprises there. And the reaction to looters hasn't changed much either - you shoot them, as they deserve.
As to your last paragraph, I can only say that there's no lotting in Japan most likely because there isn't much left there to steal - what wasn't flattened in the earthquake got washed away in the tsunami. And yes, the rest of the world are a bunch of thieving chavvy bastards. Welcome to planet Earth and the fucking human race!
Par for the course. Here in Australia, Sections 34 - 35 of the so-called "Equal" Opportunity Act allow for discrimination where there is a "genuine occupational requirement" that a person be of a particular gender.
What that translates to in reality is that if someone advertises for "female only" nobody bats an eyelid, but if someone were to advertise for "male only", there would be a national outcry and the judges would rule that Sections 34 and 35 "don't apply in this case".
Don't you just love the monstrous double-standards perpetrated by the feminists over the last 30 years?
As a web developer, I'll address your concern.
Thanks to all the FUD put out about cookies by the media, most people are now paranoid about them. That has made our job that much harder.
There are two ways we can preserve state across pages on a site. By that I mean how we know that it's you asking for a page as distinguished from the other million visitors using the site at the same time. The two ways are: cookies, and session ids. Both do essentially the same thing. but in different ways.
A cookie stores the state id on your computer, while a session id stores the state id in the URL if using a GET method (you've probably seen these; they look like a mess of numbers and letters, like "www.mysite.com/do.php?sid=a5011C6&p=5 etc... the "a5011C6" bit is the session id) or passed as a parameter if using a POST method.
The main difference between them is that cookies preserve state even if you leave the website - the cookie can be used to remember that you logged in and to restore that logged-in state if you return before the cookie expires. Session ids, on the other hand, lose state when you leave the site (because other sites obviously won't carry your session id), so with them you have to log back in for each visit.
Finally, cookies can be turned off by the user, while session ids can't (unless you delete them from the URL in which case the site will fail anyway.) So we have to choose between preserving state when the user has gone offsite, but can turn that off and screw it up, or prevent the user turning it off and screwing it up, but losing state if they go offsite.
Either way, the site needs to know that it's you who requested a page. That's so we don't go showing your account balance to all and sundry. By disabling cookies, you make our job that much harder. In some cases, you make it impossible.
In essence, what you are doing by disabling cookies on your bank's website is like going into a bank branch without your bank card, passbook or any ID and asking to transact on your account. It isn't going to happen, for obvious reasons.
So please, just enable the cookies, at least for sites you need to log in and preserve state on. It'll save you a lot of headfuck in the long run, and save many a poor web developer from tearing their hair out having to track state with people who insist on refusing to be tracked!
"Google argues that it can divulge only so much about the inner-workings of its search engine because if blackhats learn too much, they'll game the system."
That statement plainly describes what is known in the trade as "security through obscurity", which is a flaw pretty much everyone here knows all too well. And GOOGLE of all companies are falling for it? $DEITY help us! What happens when (not if) one of these "blackhats" gets a job at Google and gets into their system then?
Or is it just an excuse and the real reason is the quite understandable preservation of trade secrets? If so, why didn't Google just cite that as a reason instead of claiming security through obscurity, and in the process; a) making themselves look like amateur asshats to anyone that knows even the ABCs of computer security, and b) inviting every blackhat in the world to come and try for a job with them because they've just admitted their system is susceptible to gaming if you can just get at the information?
Something doesn't sit right here.
If you answer the door after a weekend of rabbit shooting, while in the act of skinning and gutting 155 rabbits, wearing a butcher's apron covered in blood and rabbit guts, carrying a dripping skinning knife, and inform them that this is the House of Satan, would they please mind not interrupting your Sabbath sacrifices, your address gets blacklisted *immediately* and you are never bothered by them again!
The subsequent visit from the police may necessitate some explaining, however...
The High Court is the last court of appeal in this country, since the Australia Act in 1986 which removed the Privy Council from the chain (that was one of the things Bob Hawke did right in his career!)
So if (fingers crossed) the High Court judges display the same common sense that the Supreme and Federal Court judges have so far, the AFACT pigs won't have a leg left to stand on, and they'll just have to put up and shut up. Unlike America, where seemingly you can win by endless appeal after appeal until your victim runs out of money, here at least there is a limit to it, and that limit has now been reached.
I like Bolivians. Unlike most of us in the West, they actually have the guts to get up and fight for their freedom when greedy corporations and tax-crazed governments try to rip them off. Google "Cochabamba Water War" to see what happens when greedy multinationals and politicians try to bill Bolivians for collecting rainwater.
Which is in stark contrast to the spineless sheep of Australia, who are just sitting on their fat backsides taking it up the sphincter while the SA government tables a bill to introduce rainwater metering here. That's right, a greedy government measure, which in Bolivia roused an ENTIRE FUCKING CITY to tear down a water company's offices and drive its governor from the country, in Australia doesn't produce even a "fuck that!"
Maybe I'll go and live in Bolivia. Seems like it's fast becoming a better place to live than Ausfailia right about now. At least the rainwater's still free there.
So if and when a law gets passed requiring you to hand over your home and all your possessions to police on request for any reason they like, without justification and without a warrant, you'd be fine with that, would you? Merely because "you have to obey the law"?
Please, do the human race a favour and at least try to grow a couple of brain cells of your own. You can do wonderful things with them you know.
it's called "Impeding police in the lawful execution of duty" or something along those lines, rather than aiding and abetting. The end result is the same - flash your headlights to warn other motorists of police presence and you risk getting a whopping fine. And thanks to police politicking, the oft-used defence of "I was just testing to make sure my lights worked" doesn't hold any water any more with the local judges, even if it's true.
"widespread public and community consultation" means standing outside the Baptist and Pentecostal churches on Sunday asking people as they come out if they like child porn. When they say no, their answer is recorded as saying yes to censorship. That's just how this shithole of country rolls.
because by the time they get around to the EVEN MORE EXTENDED EXTENDED EDITION it'll be about time to reboot the franchise (aka Yet Another Remake(tm))
Only the next time it'll be in full-sensory immersive jack-cyberspace in all 5 senses, so not only will you see the wonderful scenery in all directions in teravoxel resolutions, and hear the crashing soundtrack faithful to a gigahertz, you'll also be able to taste the sweetness of the lembas and smell the odouriferous foulness of Gollum's farts...
But hardly anybody seems bothered about this very disturbing trend int he OS industry. Apple do it, Amazon do it, Google does it with Android, even Microsoft with Windows Phone 7 have now adopted the ability to STEAL data from your device (and this IS stealing in the true sense of the word).
Yet nobody's complaining about this gross violation of consumer rights. Where are the columns of rage-filled comments, where are the angry bloggers, where are the mass consumer boycotts? It's like the sheep are willingly walking to the slaughter, a future in which they retain zero control over their own private data.
People - if you are at all serious about your freedom and the integrity of your data you will jump up en masse and start screaming about this. That you all are willingly sleepwalking into this fills me with no emotion for humanity other than the utterest contempt.
I couldn't believe that it took until your comment for someone to point out the REAL reason behind the .xxx TLD.
This is exactly it, folks - one the .xxx TLD approval goes through, you watch governments around the world start legislating that anything smutty or even remotely erotic cannot be published under a .com TLD. (or .info, or .anythingotherthanxxx for that matter)
This is exactly why the adult industry is opposed to the idea. Once governments have forced all the porn onto .xxx, they'll be corralled into an easily censorable block that any government interested in sublimating sex for nationalistic fervour a la George Orwell will certainly do so.
Meanwhile, the government's chosen lapdog gets rich off all the porn sites pushed into his TLD by their legislation, effectively enabling him to create a monopoly as well as the ability to censor whatever porn he doesn't like. Marvellous.
This is a sad day for the internet.
there's a plan on Virgin that emphasises access to YouTube and other video sites. Of course that's only a little extra, but the image link below explains why net neutrality is of vital importance if we don't want greedy ISPs charging us extra for access to certain websites...
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/5566/netneutrality.jpg
that the Apollo moon landings were actually filmed in a studio in Area 51, that wrapping a sheet of tinfoil over your head protects your brain from secret government mind-control rays, and that I saw Elvis in a retirement home in my town the other day. He's really getting on now you know.
...to overhaul the patent system.
Just ban Apple, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sony and their affiliated/subsidiary companies from filing patent applications. There goes 9/10 of your patent trolling right there. The remaining patents should then be easy to validate and process.
The model shows serious global cooling occurring as a result of 100 Hiroshima bombs, states that 30 x this would be needed to equal the Tsar Bomba, and yet - the Tsar Bomba was atmosphere-detonated in 1961 and there was no climate change as a result. Now, if the Tsar Bomba's THIRTY TIMES the power of the explosions in the model failed to produce any noticeable effect, how are we supposed to believe the model's 100 baby nukes that amount to 1/30th of the Tsar Bomba will do anything?
If ever you needed clear and evident proof that climate-change models are complete and utter bullshit, you have it right there.
Actually I think your high vote count is not so much to do with you being perceived to hold pro- or anti- views on climate change, but more to do with your adroit and comical depiction of a true rarity - a comment-enabled Andrew Orlowski article!
You have my upvote for that at least, regardless of your views on climate change.
For those archaeologists looking for a really rare and epic find, try locating a comment-enabled Andrew Orlowski article about *copyright*!
For far too long, corporations that wield far too much unelected and unaccountable power have hidden behind this 'corporations have the same rights as people' bullshit. It's about time somebody put this to rights. These organisations have disproportionate control of society and its laws and need to be reined in and made more accountable. Bravo that judge!
If we're not going to string these fuckers up, locking them up and throwing away the key is the next best thing. He'll be 63 by the time he gets out, so the best years of his life are lost to him. Good. Suck it up and rot in prison where you belong you useless little scab on the arse of humanity.
"Women hiding from abusive partners" - one of my friends had to change *his* name and move to my city to get away from his abusive ex-wife, who has threatened on several occasions to stab him if she sees him again. It's not only women who have to hide from abusive exes. Please don't perpetuate feminist stereotypes by wording such statements gender-specifically.
why anyone would want to "sponsor" something like AdBlock is so they can organise for their own ads not to be blocked, or for them to be inserted elsewhere in the browser. There's simply no other way you could monetise AdBlock's audience. For any sponsor to make money, AdBlock's universality has to be compromised.
Cue the entrance of a plethora of commercially sponsored AdBlocks, each one of which blocks everybody else's adverts except their own.
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