Mysidia
Saturday, July 22, 2006
World's Oldest Plant..
"Question: How old is the world's oldest plant?
Answer: 43,600 years by carbon dating."
According to this site.
I would say that is pretty impressive; on the other hand, I think we cannot
really know for a fact that there's no older plant out there -- earth is a fairly
big place, and not every plant has been seen by people necessarily, let-alone
tested for age.
Now "oldest plant that we have record of age for" would at least have a basis...
Apparently on plant earth, finding something extremely old passes as a basis for
assuming it's the oldest, nowadays -- I for one wonder if there isn't a 50,000 year old
plant to be found out there. ¶ 3:29 AM 0 Comments
Answer: 43,600 years by carbon dating."
According to this site.
I would say that is pretty impressive; on the other hand, I think we cannot
really know for a fact that there's no older plant out there -- earth is a fairly
big place, and not every plant has been seen by people necessarily, let-alone
tested for age.
Now "oldest plant that we have record of age for" would at least have a basis...
Apparently on plant earth, finding something extremely old passes as a basis for
assuming it's the oldest, nowadays -- I for one wonder if there isn't a 50,000 year old
plant to be found out there. ¶ 3:29 AM 0 Comments
Monday, July 17, 2006
OS X Security
It seems like folks are going out of their way to try and prove OS X is insecure. lately The usual method?
Harping on a security advisory here, an advisory there, and sometimes counting advisories, even if using somewhat questionable counting methods, like breaking advisories apart by subjective criteria:
Of course, there are a great many factors involved in the security of a system other than sheer number of vulnerabilities it has!
A mere number of advisories known is misleading, particularly when there are patches and workarounds, which many users of the systems apply, especially when the OS annoys users until the patch is applied -- counts only measure how good security researches are at
discovering advisories in the system.
In a well-designed system with source exposure, the advisories that are there might be
found and fixed more quickly, yielding larger numbers.
I say OS X has got the Unix heritage going for it, and once some of the left over holes get patched it is very likely going to be more secure than ever; sure, nothing's ever perfect, but the media hype on every hole starts to get old. Here was something nicer to see.
Not that OS X will beat Linux or FreeBSD under a hardened configuration, but surely, it can do better than XP, just by design and not having excess amounts of internet-accessible baggage like DCOM RPC. :-)
(originally posted Wednesday March 1, 2006. Updated Jul 17.)
¶ 8:20 PM 0 Comments
Harping on a security advisory here, an advisory there, and sometimes counting advisories, even if using somewhat questionable counting methods, like breaking advisories apart by subjective criteria:
Vulnerability statistics for Mac and Windows by ZDNet's George Ou -- The data is clear, and Apple has a lot more vulnerabilities of every kind ranging from moderately critical to extremely critical.
Of course, there are a great many factors involved in the security of a system other than sheer number of vulnerabilities it has!
A mere number of advisories known is misleading, particularly when there are patches and workarounds, which many users of the systems apply, especially when the OS annoys users until the patch is applied -- counts only measure how good security researches are at
discovering advisories in the system.
In a well-designed system with source exposure, the advisories that are there might be
found and fixed more quickly, yielding larger numbers.
I say OS X has got the Unix heritage going for it, and once some of the left over holes get patched it is very likely going to be more secure than ever; sure, nothing's ever perfect, but the media hype on every hole starts to get old. Here was something nicer to see.
Not that OS X will beat Linux or FreeBSD under a hardened configuration, but surely, it can do better than XP, just by design and not having excess amounts of internet-accessible baggage like DCOM RPC. :-)
(originally posted Wednesday March 1, 2006. Updated Jul 17.)
