Slashdot Mirror

Remember when you fold your hat, you want the shiny side of the foil OUT, or it won't work to protect you from Karl Rove's Mind Control Rays.

Before you start implying that someone is paranoid, you may want to do a little fact checking. Going over the grandparent post line by line:

• Would it surprise you to learn that these doctored photos were placed by someone on the far Right trying to discredit the centrist media?

  Note that he's not saying that it's true, just suggesting that it might be. And, given that this is a well known technique in spin control / psyops, it isn't an unreasonable questions.

• Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.

  Well, he's certainly not alone in this theory, and it is consistent with what Rove is known to have done to Alan Dixon, John McCain, and many others.

• The goons on the Right in this country are playing a very deep game.

  Goons is subjective, and pejorative, but the rest of this point is darned hard to argue with. When a party rises from the mat to take control of all three branches of the federal Government, is a coordinated effort lasting decades, you'd be hard pressed to call it luck.

• They're sophisticated enough to data mine,

  Widely known

• and they're morally deformed enough to try to smear the patriotism of a triple amputee war hero.

  His name was Max Clealand, and they did just what he said.

• It's just fascinating that the paste-eaters at LGF are always the ones who find these doctored photos,

  "Always" is an exaduration, and "paste-eaters" is (probably) unjustified, but other than that it is an interesting point. They certainly have found a number of them, and always leaning to the right.

• but never say a word about the ones on GOP web sites that show too much smoke on the destroyed World Trade Center.

  This did happen, and so far as I know none of them raised a stink, so he's spot on.

• With a news media that's run by press agents,

  Also well known.

• and a government run by lobbyists,

  Well, they write the laws, and

• you should just be prepared to only believe your own experience, and the media that you absolutely trust.

  If you want to, go ahead and argue that you should believe sources you don't trust.

• Other than that, expect it to be lies.

  Thing that aren't true, are...lies. Again, pretty hard to argue with.

• Then, get ready for the struggle to save our freedom that is inevitable.

  Everyone from Ben "A Republic, if you can keep it" Franklin has agreed with this.

I have mod points, but I'd rather reply to this...

The people in this country have something to say about the current state of things but have yet to act upon what the morals that govern them. They talk about how wrong the President is but yet they vote him into office again. They shout " I don't want my phone tapped," but they do it in the comfort of their home where they can't be arrested. They say "let us be moral and leaders of the free world," yet they think "a little bit of torture never hurt anyone as long as its in Cuba." And here we are - you and I paying our taxes and showing our teeth like its all okay.

Just what am I supposed to do? Go and protest at one of GWB's speeches and get arrested? How will that change anything? How will that help? Will my being in prison make other people more free?

I could perhaps donate a little money to the ACLU or EFF - I think they're great causes - but their court actions are subject to a judiciary which is increasingly neo-conservative (aka fascist).

AFAIK, the most effective thing I can do is vote for democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But everyone here at /. knows that recent elections were corrupt. I never voted for Bush in the first place, and that's true of approximately (or perhaps at least?) 50% of American voters. But the opinions of those voters are ignored by the present administration, and I suspect that some of their votes are ignored as well.

Personally, I believe that the current administration is led by criminals who should be impeached, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for a very long time. Their crimes are many and egregious. But what can I do about it? I'm not wealthy enough to buy a congresscritter.

So go ahead and mod me down or call me a troll because I don't care. Someone needs to tell America the truth and stand up for whats right. I'm moving to Maine...

Yeah, I'll bet you're going to move to another state just because of a slashdot story. Riiiiight...

The nuclear power plant at nearby Calvert Cliffs, Maryland may be getting a new reactor. This would be good news for the NSA. Maybe the NSA should fund their own reactor at the Calvert Cliffs. National security concerns might expedite the path through all the red tape.

That's a really important point.... Time/Warner used language that is quite misleading (and slashdot's editors ate it up of course)...

Time Warner is currently in the final phase of negotations to sell off its AOL European operations, which have about 3,000 employees...

What Time Warner said was they expected to have about 5,000 fewer AOL employees *worldwide* within six months. Here is the quote from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/08/03/AR2006080301401.html

"In a meeting yesterday morning at the company's Dulles headquarters, chief executive Jonathan Miller told employees that 5,000 of the company's 19,000 worldwide positions would be eliminated."

By selling off the AOL business in the .uk, France and Germany, that eliminates AOL positions... but whether the people are laid off or not will be up to the telcos that acquire AOL Europe.

So for the anti-American haters on SlashDot, most of the layoffs are on you! Enjoy!

(German unemployment rate: 10.6% US Unemployment rate: 4.8%)

However, Israel has resisted UN peacekeepers with all their power, because parts of their government doesn't fucking want peace.

Yeah, or maybe they just don't want their children raped.

But if you read the follow-up, it doesn't have to be with a third-party wireless card. It's also a fault with the default wireless capabilities. See here.

I mean, I don't mind Mac users thinking they're invulnerable, it's no skin off my nose at all, because I know that I am vulnerable and I take those precautions. But not having a defense plan just because you don't think there's anything to defend against is naive, and the moment that something does happen that can exploit all these unprotected boxes then that's when the trouble will begin.

Apple aren't helping themselves via their own personal mantra of "Mac's don't get viruses", because when a Mac virus does arrive (it's inevitable for the reasons I stated) they'll be liable for all the data that people will lose.

yeah, not a big deal right?

Just like the MAC is secured... http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /hijacking_a_macbook_in_60_seco_1.html

Stupid MACBOI...

At least 45 people whose jobs involved ordering and distributing AOL's free promotional CDs were told last month to take paid leave and look for new jobs, according to one executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.
A larger portion of the cuts are expected to come from AOL's business in Europe, where AOL has said it is negotiating to sell its dial-up-related business to European telecommunications firms.
Since the beginning of the year, AOL has shed 1,300 positions, mostly in its call centers in Florida and Arizona. The majority of jobs expected to be eliminated in this round are in the marketing and other divisions related to recruiting new subscribers. AOL and Time Warner executives said they found those efforts were no longer profitable and said they plan to end them.

During the course of our interview, it came out that Apple had leaned on Maynor and Ellch pretty hard not to make this an issue about the Mac drivers -- mainly because Apple had not fixed the problem yet. Maynor acknowledged that he used a third-party wireless card in the demo so as not to draw attention to the flaw resident in Macbook drivers. But he also admitted that the same flaws were resident in the default Macbook wireless device drivers, and that those drivers were identically exploitable. And that is what I reported.

I stand by my own reporting, as according to Maynor and Ellch it remains a fact that the default Macbook drivers are indeed exploitable.

Better think about how your precious Apple might just be trying to cover their ass before getting too smug...

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /followup_to_macbook_post.html

Sorry, this is nothing to be smug about. Your precious Apple is trying to hide the harsh reality of the situation from you.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /followup_to_macbook_post.html

It looks to me like Apple is the one guilty of FUD in this case if anyone is.

Or they used a third party card because Apple was riding them hard not to use theirs.

Mac users...

Artificial reefs? (I'm not sure how well plastic would work for that though.)

I guess there actually is a flaw in the built-in drivers, but Apple asked the guy not to do the demo with AirPort. Weird. I wouldn't think it'd make a difference, really.

Or skip all 4 of your steps because.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /followup_to_macbook_post.html

rules out the first three,

and they specifically said you don't have to connect to ANY network to get hacked. Just have the card on/enabled.

which rules out number 4.

It's real easy to accidentally do this. All you need to do is leave the built-in wireless card running. That's it.

You infer wrong.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /followup_to_macbook_post.html

First of all, this is Japan not San Francisco, so I doubt they are sending any "sailors" there.

Secondly, it's possible to create a moon base now, but it's probably not yet cost effective... JAXA doesn't have an unlimited budget, and AFAIK we don't have a definitive solution for the problem of microscopic lunar dust.

Did you read all the other posts that pointed out the followup article: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /followup_to_macbook_post.html

It *IS* a MACBOOK OSX HACK!

Here's the video

There's no way to prove whether or not the are telling the truth. It will require further disclosure. They claim that they can target by Mac address, and that your machine merely has to be scanning for open APs, not actively associated.

I smell something funny, but whatever.

check Security Fix:

During the course of our interview, it came out that Apple had leaned on Maynor and Ellch pretty hard not to make this an issue about the Mac drivers -- mainly because Apple had not fixed the problem yet. Maynor acknowledged that he used a third-party wireless card in the demo so as not to draw attention to the flaw resident in Macbook drivers. But he also admitted that the same flaws were resident in the default Macbook wireless device drivers, and that those drivers were identically exploitable. And that is what I reported.

( Looks like Apple was wielding a big stick ... )

Of course... just after I post this becomes available (new to me anyways). So it looks like it only being a third-party driver exploit was a red herring: the built-in chipset is venerable, and Apple is aware of it and already working with the vendor for a solution.

check Security Fix:

During the course of our interview, it came out that Apple had leaned on Maynor and Ellch pretty hard not to make this an issue about the Mac drivers -- mainly because Apple had not fixed the problem yet. Maynor acknowledged that he used a third-party wireless card in the demo so as not to draw attention to the flaw resident in Macbook drivers. But he also admitted that the same flaws were resident in the default Macbook wireless device drivers, and that those drivers were identically exploitable. And that is what I reported.

Read Brian Krebs' follow up

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08 /followup_to_macbook_post.html

Apple 'leaned heavily' on the presenters to make them use a different card. The built in card *is* vulnerable.

The actual video is here.

Collecting DNA just because you were arrested isn't insane, it's law (here in America). here is an article written before the bill passed:
Bill Would Permit DNA Collection From All Those Arrested
Suspects arrested or detained by federal authorities could be forced to provide samples of their DNA that would be recorded in a central database under a provision of a Senate bill to expand government collection of personal data.
...
The provision, co-sponsored by Kyl and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), does not require the government to automatically remove the DNA data of people who are never convicted. Instead, those arrested or detained would have to petition to have their information removed from the database after their cases were resolved.

And that bill was passed. Just take the bill number (H.R.3402) and plug it into the Library of Congress' bill finder thingy. It was originally passed in the Senate as S.1197, but the House bill is the final version. In the House bill, the portion is Title X, sections 1001-1005

It may have been Rep. Don Young who got the funding for the bridge in the first place, but according to the Washington Post Stevens blocked the proposal to cancel the bridge and use the money for reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina. And why exactly is this bridge needed? There is already a ferry service that takes only 15 minutes for a crossing.

Here's a depressing comparison, showing the rules surrounding slot machines in Vegas vs. voting machines:

Vegas vs. Electronic Voting Machines

The operative word here is HIS - that is he wouldn't do anything that HIS lawyers or advisors deem unconstitutional. Have you even listened to the tortured logic that the Attorney General uses when defending TORTURE?? Or Donald Rumsfelds musings about the issue? What about John Yoo or David Addington?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/docume nts/dojinterrogationmemo20020801.pdf
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek
(RANT)
Yeah, and I know what you are going to say..they are terrorists and deserve it. First of all, torture is WRONG. We are the good guys, remember? Second, we have no way of knowing that they are guilty. They have no evidence presented, and no chance at a trial. What if someone just wants the reward, and turns you in as a Qaeda operative? There have been many allegations of this happening.
(/RANT)
The wiretaps are the same thing. The fact is that we have judicial oversight to prevent this kind of overreaching. The fact is that FISA gives you 72 hours to tap and then ask questions later, so judicial oversight wouldn'd hold up the tapping of a phone in an emergency. The fact is that they didn't want to bother with it! And BTW, this is not a liberal rant, this is a _libertarian_ rant. I remember when the GOP used to be the friend of the libertarians....

I see you don't understand China's role in technological development.
They are not technology deveopers, merely technology copiers. In fact, they wouldn't have half their navigation tech if Clinton hadn't circumvented security recommendations for campaign contributions.

Police are fighting terrorism and crime, so therefore are above any kind of accountability?

No way!

Next, we could see the US military operating secret overseas prisons!

I wish the Cruz family the best of success with their legal actions against the police. This will be an interesting test of the US Constitution and judiciary.

Oh but we have a good example right now, the Bush admin. They feel as though they can spy on anyone and everyone, and they hold people in indefinite custidy without charging them with anything. While some speak out not many do, some even call those who do speak out traiters.

Yes it is a perfect example, because people generally agree that we should be tracking these phone calls and taking extra security measures. Thus, these initiatives are accepted. You act like he is not accountable to anybody, but he is. You don't put a president in office and let him do whatever he wants. Congress tried to impeach Clinton over a damn BJ.

This is exactly what Bush and the neocons in his admin has done. I'm still waiting to see all of those WMDs Saddam had.

That silly quote has nothing to do with what we're talking about, an all volunteer army. Everyone I know who was in the military before the war started joined because they wanted to see something like this. Everyone I know who joined after did it because they solemnly supported the cause. You can't argue on behalf of the veterans, since you aren't one. I've heard reports of more than 500 chemical munitions. Isn't that enough? Terrorists in Iraq have been using them, not quite as effective as the big explosions. Saddam is gone and now Iraq is turning into a democracy. You're so quick to jump on the liar bandwagon, but so hesitant to believe for a second that anything we're doing is actually working.

You mean like those free speach cages that they put people in at presidential campaign appearances, 100's of yards away and out of site of attendees, or the Republicans only Campaing events?

Try writing a screen play or directing or producing a movie about The U.S. starting a nuclear war today and see what happens.

I bet I can find you a link like this most days of the week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/07/20/AR2006072001816.html?nav=rss_email/c omponents?nav=slate

Most changes in a society happen one small increment at a time.

If I remember my constitutional law from 8th grade correctly, prior to the constitution we had freedom of speech according to the British goverment.

But the constitution protected one from any retroactive action by the governement on the grounds that the publication was damaging to sommeone or, by coincidence, the government. Maybe half the population at the time found that perfectly acceptable, what right does someone have to say something without being held legally responsible any repercussions?

Of courese the patriots (rebels) said that the contemplation future arrest did remove the freedom to speak by making it risky. Therefore it was censorship.

What is scary is that such a cornerstone of our society is still debated 230 year later.

In fact, they should have called up a volunteer from the audience... preferably a member of the press so you'd know it wasn't a confederate

I think the grandparent is fallacious in assuming that letting children consume violent entertainment is tantamount to encouraging them to fight, steal, etc

Assertion???

There's a strong correlation with aggressive behaviour and violent media. It's in all the psych journals.

A child exposed to violent media has a higher propensity to exhibit aggressive behaviour.

Actually loosing a tile or two doesn't matter. Actually when they switched, tile damage went up dramatically. Read about it here - http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4448 .

Environmentalists have lied to us for years. Here is a link to the founder of Greenpeace exposing what he has put us through - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html . I admire his courage for coming clean in such a public manner. Unfortunately there are still a lot of anti-nuke nuts out there. Looking at my electric bill, I wish they would go away.

Envoronmentalists have also helped us a great deal. For example eliminating Tetra-ethyl-lead ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra-ethyl_lead )- a catalyst used to slow down the raction of gasoline burning (a catalyst either speeds up or slows down a reaction by definition). They have also done a lot of other good like taking CO (carbon monoxide) out of the atmosphere from gasoline engines. They said convert it into harmless CO2, a gas that plants need, a gas that promotes life. A "greenhouse" gas and that is a good thing. Plant trees too. Now they are telling us that CO2 causes global warming and it must be eliminated or we all die!

So the real trick is knowing if they are lying to us or they have something to what they are saying. Take a stand, ban di-hydrogen monoxide! See http://www.snopes.com/science/dhmo.asp

Yeah, the US military forces are pretty bad. Almost as bad as UN peacekeepers.

While I'm hardly a fan of the UN (outside of WHO, who are tremendous), let's not start blaming everyone for the sins of a few. It might not work out well for your arguments in the long run.

(And before the arguments over "librahal traitor" start, I'm ex-military.)

Giving the complexity of many situations, it has done an admirable job in difficult circumstances. The people serving in UN-peacekeeping missions have nothing but good to say about them.

when they aren't Raping the locals

But maybe you're saying people are only entitled to what they earn? But that's not true either. It's perfectly legal to get rich by marriage, or inheritance, or natural resources, or dumb luck, or off the work of others. For instance, the coastal states just negotiated themselves $69,000,000,000 in oil revenues, for oil extracted outside their borders (in the Gulf of Mexico). Are they entitled to this found money? They will be, legally, if the bill passes.

Boardman countered that presidents since James Monroe have issued statements of interpretation to accompany laws, and that every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has issued statements reserving the right not to execute sections of laws that may contradict the Constitution. By her accounting, Bush has issued such statements on 110 laws, compared with 80 from Bill Clinton, as many as 105 from Ronald Reagan and 147 from George H.W. Bush in a single term. But President Bush issued multiple statements on many of those laws for a total of 750, and it is unclear how many statements the other presidents issued.

But the session also concerns countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., a former state judge.

"There's less here than meets the eye," Cornyn said. "The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is."

But Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is doing an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto that could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.

"The president is not required to (veto)," Boardman said.

"Of course he's not if he signs the bill," Specter snapped back.

The real issue is the method in which the numbers were obtained. They were gathered without warrents or court orders, i.e. they were illegally obtained.

This bad is because 1) the President/gov't is *not* suppose to be above the law, 2) any evidence obtained from this ill gotten booty would not be usable in court, this in turn makes convicting the terrorist that much more difficult and 3) the harm done out weighs the benefits.

Wouldn't the right of free assembly(1st amendment) and the right against unreasonable searches(4th amendment) come into play when tracking calls? It's ok for the gov't to disregard those rights in the pursuit of ______?

The Constitution was written as an attempt to prevent tyranny, by chipping away at the Bill of Rights and increasing the Executive branch's power(back-boor vetos) US citizens continue to lose legal means of protecting themselves from a tyrannical government.

Here is some reading material for you:
Bruce Schenier on NSA & Bush's illegal wiretaps
Bush blocks internal probe into illegal wiretaps
An Imminent Threat (to the Constitution)

There is more involved than just tracking who you are calling. That's just the cover story to distract you while the power grab is going on.

You're missing the point. We all know that the bubble bomb will never work. But if we play our cards right, we can get a fat pentagon contract for "exploratory research"!

First off, that article is rife with ads and I suggest the printer friendly version of it so you don't have to click "Skip this ad" or skip across memory intensive flash advertisements that cause your browser to crap out.

Secondly, this will most likely be a peer-to-peer application because it would be bandwidth expensive and problematic to centrally host these shows. A thing that concerns me with this is something I saw happen with Kazaa and the Windows media formats. Virus writers were figuring out ways to embed viruses into the files so that when your machine read them, the codec would unintentionally execute or behave like a virus or malware. Several of my friends suffered computer troubles due to downloading WMA files and trying to listen to them only to have their machine lock up with a worm. Later on, Kazaa included a BullGuard P2P Virus Protection Option in their product but in my opinion, it was too late. Everyone should be familiar with the potential JPEG exploit in Microsoft Windows, if it can be done for one two dimensional image, surely it can be embedded in a single frame of a video file.

I hope that the original Kazaa inventors realized this problem and are working to implement a secure system where I don't have to worry about receiving a file that might have malicious code embedded in it. A simple solution would be to compute a checksum on each file received by The Venice Project application. They would then require computers to ping a centralized server they set up to verify that the byte sum counted is indeed the correct sum and that the entire video is legit and unadulterated. There's probably easier schemes and forms of encryption to protect this but I sincerely hope this is a very real and concentrated point of this software for The Venice Project.

I think that Virus writers love applications built on names and not security. They love "industry standard" applications. Because that means a larger target base if they tailor a virus to that application. I fear that if people mindlessly buy The Venice Project only because of the inventor's fame but ignore security problems that may cause problems down the line. Kazaa was a virus writers dream, what are Zennstrom and Friis doing to prevent the same thing from happening again?

A copy of the complaint against Rambam (named as "Rombom" in the document) says he is being charged with witness tampering and obstruction of justice in an ongoing government case against a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney who was indicted for money-laundering. The complaint against Rombom and more information about the charges are available at the latest Security Fix post - http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/07 /fbi_charges_hope_speaker_with_1.html

They also know those fans aren't that large of a market.

. With some analysts estimating the Japanese geek market to be worth as much as $19 billion a year, companies are jostling to cash in.

Probably not: "Hacked MySpace Server Infects a Million Computers with Malware"

Despite the fact that you meant that they should have distributed off-site backups, potentially with failsafe switches, this is MySpace we're talking about here. I would be mildly surprised if they even still have the installation medium for the operating system the site is running on.

Besides, I didn't know anything was wrong. I try to avoid MySpace like it has the plague (oh wait, it does), but even when I let my defenses down and click through to a link, it's always down anyway.

Given such low journalistic integrity, we should view the typical blog as merely an opinion piece.

Still, a blog is useful in offering a unique perspective on a political issue; this perspective can spur actual journalists to re-think the issues on which they report. For example, conservative blogs gave a convincing analysis questioning the veracity of documents presented by Dan Rather in his report aired on "60 Minutes". Soon afterwards, actual journalists examined the suspect documents in detail and concluded that their are likely fake. Rather eventually apologized for using unverified documents to slander a political candidate.

In short, blogs (like other forms of expression) play an important role in a democracy, but we should never use blogs as a final, reputable source on par with a story by actual journalists at "The Economist", the "Wall Street Journal", or the "New York Times". Conferring the status of journalist on the typical blogger is equivalent to saying that 4 years of undergraduate study leading to a journalism degree from Harvard University is a waste of time.

It depends if your using a private database to do it.
Running a google check on someone is not a crime.

Getting someone to "do a background check", or doing it yourself on private databases however is (this article gives an example).

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/236360_appl epatent12.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/11/AR2005081102048.html like i said i'm not sure on the dollar amount but i think it was 5