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Physical vulnerabilites (location, etc...) aren't the biggest worry.

Not too long ago, Wired ran an article about the apparent h4x0ring of phone lines in and around Las Vegas. It seems that a certain escort service (prostitution is legal there) would stop receiving phone calls, especially on busy nights. The employees would call their number from another line, but the phone wouldn't ring. When the authorities came to investigate, the phones miraculously started working again. So the mobsters are in it with the telco employees or the cops or the h4x0rz. Anybody with a copy of phrack or 2600 can probably hijack a switch. This has been known for years. Perhaps there is a large-scale secret phone net that dries up when the telcos or feds try to dial in?

Regardless, the telco infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate.

It's lovely to see that we don't actually own the things we pay for (boy, do we ever) anymore, isn't it?
Would the legislation that the RIAA failed to get pushed through be viable for Microsoft if they decided they wanted to go blanking peoples' disks in the future?

More here on CNN (Scroll down to "Reno case has Malaysia link"), BBC (Scroll down to Cheney's photo), and Msnbc.

Experts are poring over posters shown at pro-Bin-Laden protests, but so far no hidden tux has been spotted in any of them...

More here on CNN (Scroll down to "Reno case has Malaysia link"), BBC (Scroll down to Cheney's photo), and Msnbc.

Experts are poring over posters shown at pro-Bin-Laden protests, but so far no hidden tux has been spotted in any of them...

More here on CNN (Scroll down to "Reno case has Malaysia link"), BBC (Scroll down to Cheney's photo), and Msnbc.

Experts are poring over posters shown at pro-Bin-Laden protests, but so far no hidden tux has been spotted in any of them...

More here on CNN (Scroll down to "Reno case has Malaysia link"), BBC (Scroll down to Cheney's photo), and Msnbc.

Experts are poring over posters shown at pro-Bin-Laden protests, but so far no hidden tux has been spotted in any of them...

In less than 24 hours, a bill moved at lightning speed through all of congress. Thursday night just before midnight, the Senate okayed your rights to be minimized, and then on Friday The House of Representatives agreed -- just in time to knock of for lunch. technews.com, has the story about that, then follows up here about the revisions they had to all agree on. and just like that, you are now being watched by Big Brother. "In the climate today we're more concerned about security than personal privacy," says Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla), like a ridiculous line fFrom The Onion. Meanwhile, here's an interesting article about Russ Feingold (D-Wis), who is out there fighting for you and me. (btw, I reference technews a lot because no-one else seems to care about all this, yet. to argue with Congress now would probably be Un-American.)

More here on CNN (Scroll down to "Reno case has Malaysia link"), BBC (Scroll down to Cheney's photo), and Msnbc.

Experts are poring over posters shown at pro-Bin-Laden protests, but so far no hidden tux has been spotted in any of them...

and a bunch of other things that Feingold is against such as:

"Computer Tresspaser" is too broadly defined for comfort.

"Secret Searches"?

Viewing private records without a warrant?

There is more to this bill than the press releases are letting on.

and a bunch of other things that Feingold is against such as:

"Computer Tresspaser" is too broadly defined for comfort.

"Secret Searches"?

Viewing private records without a warrant?

There is more to this bill than the press releases are letting on.

Maybe their own senator (Judd Gregg, R-NH) should follow their approach.

For those who don't know, Gregg wants to mandate crypto backdoors again.

I think we should just pass a law making it illegal to crash a plane into a building. It'll be just as effective as some of this crap.

Is Your Elected Official Really Listening?

No, but the Feds are.

If you want to read an interesting example of a working DRM system check the article on DoCoMo in Wired.

4. Geek factor. It is oh, so cool to be able to 'sign' an email, and advertise your public key.

I maintain at least 1 active keypair. I put it out on distributed key server groups. I post it on web servers. I use it to encrypt private communications.

But I use it very sparingly when it comes to signing email. I have to see a really good reason to verify who I am before I sign anything. If paranoia causes one to take up using PGP, its an even more selective paranoia that causes one to not use all its potential.

So why am I so paranoid? After watching the subpoenas fly a couple of years ago, I've decided that I'd prefer to make it a little more difficult to prove any bad attitude really is mine. Granted, there's other ways to try and link email to an individual. But why make it a habit to provide that trail for every mail list post, friendly banter, and interoffice discussion message you fire off?

And that's a really important point - a majority of our (or at least mine) email is of a fire-and-forget, trivial nature. Its less a written letter and more a verbal conversation encapsulated in text. Without the bandwidth hit of wav file attachments. In this informal environment, things are often said... or ideas expressed... that one would not set to a permanent record. Yet email, and other forms of electronic communication, have an odd way of sticking around far beyond its intended life.

Do you really need to give a lawyer the means to prove them came from you? And sure, there are other ways to link an email to an individual. But I'd prefer to make anyone giving me a hard time jump through those extra hoops.

As a side note, memo and file retention policies existed well before email became an indispensable tool to business. Email only compounds the problem these policies were really designed to address (and no, storage of files isn't the real issue here). With the lines slowly fading between personal and professional data, it might be worthwhile to think about your own home shredder and review your own document retention policy.

Of course - this all doesn't cover the real reason all this signing happens. Geek appeal. That's easy to handle. Include your PGP Key ID and fingerprint in your .sig and business cards. Stylish and practical, with a bit of geek attitude.

Wired Issue 9.10 (on newstands now) has a very in-depth article on DRM, including the methods that content developers are looking at, who the major players in the field are right now, etc. In a nutshell, prepare to pay more than once for everything.

The full article (along with the rest of the issue) will be available online on Oct 16: http://wired.com/wired/archive/9.10/.

On the morn of Sept. 12, people went straight to the newstand to pick up the paper where we found far more in-depth coverage than we could get off the web.

The problem with print media is that you are limited to what they put out. They don't have links to additional information. While a newspaper can devote pages and pages of text, pictures, and tables to a story, they are still limited to those physical pages. Whereas, a media site such as Wired can provide links to the actual documents being discussed, links to the homepages of the people/groups involved, and links to video and audio. Certainly not all web media do this. But the ones that do, I think, provide a better information source than the newspapers.

Solid State Storage is coming in about 4 years. It's called MRAM (magnetic RAM) and is a form of RAM that does not need constant charge to hold information. It has the added benefit that it is faster than current electric charge based RAM. Most people do not want to have to deal with power loss destroying data, so current RAM willl never make a popular storage medium. MRAM is the answer.

A wired article on it is here.

Motorola and IBM are both working very hard on this.

Personally, I found this article pretty funny. It's been asked for before, now you can get it!

From the Wired article:

One of the first sightings of the Osama-Bert poster...

Osama-bert? Sounds like a new Dilbert character. Think "Dogbert," but nicer.

Given that from what it seems the US + coalition did not have any eyes and ears on the ground in the -stans on the 11th, I guess a lot of the (at least, initial) intelligence must have come from satellites...

Does anyone know what resolution you could get from a spy satellite? Does anyone know what sets the resolution limit - the optics or image processing? I bet a combination of RF/IR/visible photos of the region could give you shitloads of info about what's Out There.

I read somewhere that bin Laden does not use any electrical devices in fear of detection. Personally, I am not sure about that - he'd need to coordinate activities and keep some intelligence channels to keep up to date. Unless he's doing things the Pony Express way, he must maintain some sort of telecoms. That's perhaps where an EP-3E would be handy...

Let's hope the US can infiltrate bin Laden's network, compromise his crypto and communications, and screw with his and his friends' heads until they mess up their operations big time, Cryptonomicon way. That would be the best way to catch bin Laden and put an end the entire Catch-22 situation of having to drop both Cruise missiles and aid on the poor Afghans' heads. And, hey, the boys and girls at Langley have probably been working hard on it the last few weeks, but that's the war we don't and won't hear about.

We have the technology to destroy every single terrorist base (including the fortified underground caves) without risking the life of a single American soldier (WIRED Story). The question is whether we will chose to employ this technology in the eradication of Al-Qeida or if Bush et al. won't have the courage to do so.

On an encouraging note, DebkaFILE reports that the Americans and Russians agreed that they would be willing to employ this technology in Afghanistan and Chechnya--we can only hope that our leaders will not needlessly put the lives of our armed forces at risk.

You are a dipshit.

"There is an article at wirednews titled "Nuke 'Em From On High"
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,47319,00 .h tml"

Turn that shit into a link, you ignorant piece of crap...

Nuke 'Em From On High

...and use a little bold to spice it up!

Nuke 'Em From On High

You are a dipshit.

"There is an article at wirednews titled "Nuke 'Em From On High"
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,47319,00 .h tml"

Turn that shit into a link, you ignorant piece of crap...

Nuke 'Em From On High

...and use a little bold to spice it up!

Nuke 'Em From On High

This is all OLD NEWS. This wired magazine article covered this, and then some, over 5 years ago!

Not only can this happen, it WILL, everywhere. The only real question is: "Who watches the cameraman?".

-Ben

For what it's worth, SETI@home recorded an average of nearly 40 teraFLOPs/sec in the last 24 hours. Makes that supercomputer look positively pokey by comparison. :-) And it appears they're gearing up to handle even more data...

Which is easier...running a line on dry (flat) land or over a body of water?

The Red Sea is so shallow and so heavily trafficked, by the way, that all cables running through it must be plowed into the seafloor, which is a hassle, but obviously preferable to running a terrestrial route through the likes of Sudan and Somalia, which border it.

Meanwhile, previous Long-EZ customer's will love this the Rocket-EZ. John Denver could've killed himself much quicker in one of these. And James Gleick could make another - high speed - attempt on his own life too.

Regards, Ralph.

From the memo:

The FastTrack network designates (perhaps automatically) certain peers - more powerful computers with high-bandwidth connections - as "supernodes." [because of the system's encrypted communication, we are unable to determine how supernodes are designated]. Several hundred "ordinary" peers connect to any one supernode. A supernode also connects to other supernodes. [because of the system's encrypted communication, we are unable to determine how one supernode knows how to locate other supernodes].
...
Significantly, the FastTrack system encrypts all communications (a) between a peer and the log-in server, (b) between a peer and its supernode, (c) between a supernode and the central servers, and (d) between supernodes [we do not know the nature of the encryption].
...
Our claims would likely be strengthened by learning more about the designation of supernodes and the content of communications within the system. However, the encryption of this communication precludes further learning absent cooperation from one of these companies or court ordered discovery.

Having some trouble, Ms. Rosen? Wish you could circumvent that encryption?
Does anyone think this may be a catalyst/excuse for the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists to push for a ban on backdoorless crypto software? The thought of the government and the industry inforcers going hand-in-hand...

Actually people have reproduced and improved their experiments. Ponds and Fleishman may have just announced their discovery before they really understood what they were seeing. Of course, everybody knows cold fusion can't exist, so any evidence to the contrary must be fake, right?

What If Cold Fusion Is Real?

Cold Fusionaries

Brand-New Heretics

My point is that, I don't know if cold-fusion is a real phenomenon, but there are quite a number of people that claim to have duplicated and improved on Ponds and Fleishman experiments.

Actually people have reproduced and improved their experiments. Ponds and Fleishman may have just announced their discovery before they really understood what they were seeing. Of course, everybody knows cold fusion can't exist, so any evidence to the contrary must be fake, right?

What If Cold Fusion Is Real?

Cold Fusionaries

Brand-New Heretics

My point is that, I don't know if cold-fusion is a real phenomenon, but there are quite a number of people that claim to have duplicated and improved on Ponds and Fleishman experiments.

Actually people have reproduced and improved their experiments. Ponds and Fleishman may have just announced their discovery before they really understood what they were seeing. Of course, everybody knows cold fusion can't exist, so any evidence to the contrary must be fake, right?

What If Cold Fusion Is Real?

Cold Fusionaries

Brand-New Heretics

My point is that, I don't know if cold-fusion is a real phenomenon, but there are quite a number of people that claim to have duplicated and improved on Ponds and Fleishman experiments.

-jhp

I first read about this on Wired on September 7th. It seemed really extreme at the time, but after the attack it seems a little less extreme, and that is were the danger is.

Has anyone else noticed that in this photo from the wired article there appears to be more web traffic at the north pole than in all of europe?

Maybe it's Santa's database tracking the naughty/nice data on all the children. It's a pretty serious privacy violation to collect personal information from children under 13 without a parent's consent.

"I'm sorry Tommy, Santa's not bringing you any presents this year. He's in jail."

It may just be me, but doesn't this one map set look suspiciously like the startup screens for the XBox? :) Microsoft is taking over the internet after all.

There was a case in New Haven, Connecticut, where Acme, was "asked" to refund charges for "speed violations" by the state department of consumer protection. When the GPS system tracked a speed above 90 MPH, ACME charged a cool $150. The Atty. General has asked for refunds. It should be pointed out that ACME does not inform the local police in any way. They just pocket each fine. They now have there own speeding enforcement system, and there own way of cashing in! I thought some smaller towns had a crooked traffic court. This is a private firm, their own judge and jury; where each fine equals more profit. This is just not right.

Try using this url for wired.com


Ok this - Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted - is bull shit!

Is that second screenshot taken using 3DWM?

Filler. Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted. Filler. Apple. Potato. Tomato.

Which brings up another, slightly OT point, What the Hell is the Lamness filter supposed to accomplish? I mean with the AC posting, what great harm does the Lameness Filter intend to save us from...?

PayPal provides services like a bank, and can operate offshore accounts and stuff (all you need is a credit card and a paypal account in Moscow or wherever you are) and should be regulated like a bank before it goes all IPOing on our ass.

see here.

we need to figure out what kind of business it is before we buy shares of it.

I think there is an enormous opportunity for North America to move to a distributed power system. Imagine this: natural gas feeds into your basement fuel cell, where you generate electricity for your entire house, plus you crack some of the natural gas into hydrogen during the day, to fill up your fuel cell car when you connect it overnight. Wired's article The Energy Web has similar ideas (and an opening paragraph that is now quite eerie).

The basic problem presented here is the very small chance of a hit. 1/1,000,000,000 terrorist population.

But these cameras won't just be looking for terrorists! Sooner or later, they will be looking for ANYBODY with a warrant out for their arrest in any jurisdiction.

People with unpaid parking tickets. People in arrears on child support. People who got a fixit ticket and forgot to have it signed off. People who beat their spouse and skipped bail.

The number of THESE guys in comparison to the general population would easily make "four nines" - 99.99% very well worth it.

Oh, and we might catch a terrorist or two...

The real question is - what about false identifications? (This will happen daily to people with common features) What about extradition treaties? What about differing crime types?

Putting swastikas on the outside walls of your house in Germany is a crime. In the U.S. it's "freedom of speech".

This not only can happen, it WILL. I've said it before and I'll say it again.... this is the most insightful article I've ever read on this subject.

You'd do very well to read it!

I'm still waiting for the RIAA and MPAA to go after the software and hardware makers next... I mean, they must know that their products are being used for illegal purposes, so they must be at fault too...

They already have. It is called the SSSCA

If Wired News online were to improve their coverage I could see myself paying a subscription to them as well. But Wired News seems to be spread somewhat thin for the last year or so. I get the magazine at least. I would certainly love to be able to read the online version without the frame/banner at the bottom.

, says that before phoning the paper's editor, West downloaded proprietary program and password files and used those to force his way into private areas of the Poteau Daily News and Sun's site.

West admitted he intended to modify the newspaper's Web applications -- written in the Perl language -- and modify them and market his own versions.

read that, he ADMITTED IT JACKAASS!!
how is this tripe getting moderated up??

Actually, it is:

Wired

Someplace I have never heard of

And probably some others...

Wired has an article on what Palm might be up to with Be. Interesting in light of this story.

You can also look at Wired's version here, with a few more pics than NYT.

I disagree: You need to distinguish betwen the public action of mailing or emailing a letter, and the private contents of the letter. This is well understood in business: to quote Shanti Atkins (a business connsultant) speaking in Wired "if an employee is led to expect something is private, such as e-mail communications, then that privacy cannot be violated. But, if the company informs its employees that, for example, e-mail sent over the company's network is monitored, then the employee can no longer claim an "expectation of privacy." In short, once the company stakes its claim over its cyber-dominion, its employees have no right to privacy there. I expect the fact of the mailing to be public, and the contents to be private. I do have some duties, though: sealing the message in an envelope is more secure than sending a postcard, and encrypting it is stronger still. But that's a different discussion...

• If I give copies of WinXP to my friends or share them on an ftp site, either a) nothing will happen, or b) my ISP will cut me off. If I try to sell them to strangers, I will go to jail.
• If I discover a security hole and report it to BUGTRAQ, nobody cares. If I try to use it for extortion or try to sell the information, I will go to jail (just like this guy).
• If I run a (arguably) for-profit song-swapping service that deals mostly in copyrighted songs (which I have no license to distribute), I will get sued into oblivion. If I am a Gnutella node, the worst they can do is cancel my @home account.

Crime doesn't pay (much).

-sting3r

One of my major beef's with the Linux community in general has been their fanatical anti .gov and .mil views. I've always thought of it as being unpatriotic to bring down the net, via dos attacks, defacing a .gov website. Or just generally being an asshole to anyone who is running a Redmond product on their desktop. This issue of wired does a pretty good job of summarizing all the "bad stuff" that has plagued this community. Really take the time to read the article and understand it before you start tossing flames.
With that said, I think this is a great oppertunity for the linux scene in general to get a chance to grow out of their stereotype, and actually become the hero's of the computing world, heck the world. It's all about putting your money where your mouth is. Imagine seeing a story like this in the news..

Dec, 31st 2001, San Francisco CA
Nuclear disaster was averted new years eve when a group of hackers listening in on alphanumeric pager transmission foiled a plot by the teleban to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of the cities finacial district. Working with the FBI and the CIA

I'm gonna stop because thats fantasy at this point, but IT COULD HAPPEN. If you are a patriotic american, and you care about linux, you need to step up to the plate and give the .gov a hand. Instead of making fun of their shortcomings. Remember, this could change everything.

--Toq