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I think the need for an Internet kill switch is now clear.

You have to be at least a tiny bit careful about how you use your power. How is it that Spider-Man figured this out in his first comic, and Google's not figured it out after several years?

"Don't be evil" is more complicated than just not being actively malicious.

See, for instance, section 2 (Productivity) of the Hacker FAQ.

My girlfriend...

You don't exist, go away!

Company X is Belkin -- Belkin had a router which would redirect an occasional page view to an ad -- and which could be reconfigured from the OUTSIDE. They tried to make this sound less bad with Usenet postings, then deleted the postings later.

http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000195.html

They sent me a nasty note because a mirror of the Interactive Fiction archive contained a file named "doom3.zip". (It was a many-year old text adventure hosted with the permission of the author.) They felt it was most likely a "retail copy of Doom 3".

According to them:

1. They review every message they send carefully.
2. They send hundreds of thousands of messages a month.

That latter estimate is from 2004 -- I can't imagine it's gone down.

I have no idea what they'd do in the unlikely event that their complaint wasn't stupid on its face; in my case, they backed down while telling me how important the work they do is. I consider them subhuman scum who are working actively to completely destroy the PC gaming industry as best they can. Given a choice between their crazy harassment and unauthorized use of my network, and Brad Wardell's high-quality software with no copy protection and good attitude, I think I can safely say I speak for anyone who has ever worked with, for, or on a video game, or who has ever played a video game and might want to again some day, when I say that I sincerely hope the ESA completely ceases to exist and is not replaced. I think they do a great deal of harm and waste a lot of money that could have been put into something with some kind of benefit.

The herd.plethora.net link has moved here:

http://www.seebs.net/c/c_tcr.html

http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000237.html

Hundreds of comments on that one. Gives you a pretty good picture of the nature and scope of the operation.

• Web Hacking Incidents Database
• Attrition.org Data Loss Archive and Database
• Internet Storm Center

Mind you I've been persuaded by this (and other) DMCA notices (see the /. story) that ID software are probably a bunch of morons anyway.

As noted by the Economist's endorsement, and also as commented in my blog entries about the election, there's serious issues here, which are ignored by many Republicans.

As noted by the Economist's endorsement, and also as commented in my blog entries about the election, there's serious issues here, which are ignored by many Republicans.

The Verisign Corollary already exists.

Or Doom 3, for that matter. (It's actually a text adventure from 1980.) The ESA has not returned calls. I'm talking to my lawyer to ask whether I can sue them.

My blog has occasional updates on my personal collection of lawsuits against junk faxers.

To make a long story short, these people are just like any other spammer; they're in it to make a quick buck.

Nothing we know of can stop DDoS attacks - except law enforcement getting off their asses and ACTUALLY PROSECUTING CRIMES. Remember, every DDoS attack is rooted in zombie machines. Unauthorized hijacking of someone's machine is a CRIME. The problem is, the law enforcement people don't care about this particular crime, so nothing we do can fix iit. http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000071.html

Be careful when browsing; if you're accepting cookies, they're tracking you! That's why they get called VeriSlime. I got my wife to do a cool slimy logo for them. http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000065.html

VeriSgni: The Abuse of Trust It's late for the t-shirt competition, but they're still cool.

He's an interesting guy. Not only does he collect quackery and old typesetting machines, he's also an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. When a geeky friend of mine was getting married several years ago, he was quite concerned about finding a minister with a theology and temperment he could relate to. I suggested Bob, the wedding was a success, and they're still happily married.