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http://www.wired.com/new s/news/technology/story/22223.html

this is a link to an article at wired about jam echelon day.

There's an article in Wired about how comdex just decided to let him in, after all.

http://www.wired.com/wired/ar chive/6.02/wallstreet.html

numb
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Right?...

----
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you....

I find it so bizarre that whomever is running this Echelon program would waste time, money, hard drive space (I started to try to calculate the amount of disk space required but got distracted by a beer and it got too complex), etc... tracking email because of key words, especially when words can vary so much based on context, location, etc... And how likely is it that these "bad guys with guns" would do all of their master planning over email? Personally I think these guys would be too busy using what little money they have buying up guns and explosives and stuff rather than buying computers so they could ICQ their ideas back and forth.

Instead, I think the wasted time and resources would be better spent employing a national gun/rifle/rocket launcher registration system. Then build an expert-system which monitors these registrations looking for "pecularities," much like the system that Visa uses to check for abnormal purchases.

No I'm not trying to start a gun control flame war, I'm simply expressing my complete and utter disbelief that an Echelon system could exist. You Americans are funny that way; but we still like ya. :)

You mentioned IRC Botnets - another example (and to my knowledge, one of the most common) of DOS attacks is a simple "smurf" attack. It's an easy enough attack: put together a ping request with a forged FROM header, and send it to a network's broadcast address. If the admin has been lazy (and you're on a full class C), you'll wind up with up to 255 computers all pinging the same device.

I've seen this used to blow out a University's web server at the same time as it stresses two Universities' Internet connections. It's not pretty. Or new: Wired News ran an article about escalating numbers of smurf attacks way back in January of 1998.

Well, of course, 3Com has announced that they're spinning off Palm as a separate subsidiary, complete with its own IPO next year sometime. So that may affect the dynamic a bit.

But to get at the meat of this post: Palm seems to be starting to move more in the direction of the business market (see also this article), while Handspring definitely seems to be targetting the home/personal user market with the possibility of MP3/GPS/other interesting Springboard modules.

I think there's plenty of room for different sorts of palmtop devices running PalmOS, and in the future probably some version(s) of Linux, perhaps even PalmOS running on the Linux kernel, as this interview seems to indicate is possible (it says that the PalmOS is designed to run on top of different kernels, specifically in this case the Symbian EPOC32 kernel in the context of the new agreement with Nokia).

Well, of course, 3Com has announced that they're spinning off Palm as a separate subsidiary, complete with its own IPO next year sometime. So that may affect the dynamic a bit.

But to get at the meat of this post: Palm seems to be starting to move more in the direction of the business market (see also this article), while Handspring definitely seems to be targetting the home/personal user market with the possibility of MP3/GPS/other interesting Springboard modules.

I think there's plenty of room for different sorts of palmtop devices running PalmOS, and in the future probably some version(s) of Linux, perhaps even PalmOS running on the Linux kernel, as this interview seems to indicate is possible (it says that the PalmOS is designed to run on top of different kernels, specifically in this case the Symbian EPOC32 kernel in the context of the new agreement with Nokia).

But that probably isn't the question you're asking. What you have to keep in mind is that the Palm was really designed as a desktop adjunct, _not_ as a self-sustaining portable computer. The reason is that most people who use Palms have desktop PCs, and don't need a self-sustaining palmtop.

This is distinct from the story of the Newton, which was designed to be a self-contained, self-sustaining "palmtop" computer. This meant that the Newton developers had to worry about natively supporting different printer drivers, network protocols, etc. from day one, which dramatically increased the complexity of the system. With Palm, you originally had nothing but a serial interface (although they've since added TCP/IP over serial), and you didn't have to worry about printing or other data transfer because that all takes place on the PC. This makes for a very simple OS and UI.

In addition to that, as a number of /. readers may know, In The Beginning There Was the Command Line, an essay of his that had an article on /. a while back, will be published in a book form November 9 according to amazon.

All in all, great review. I was very happy to see someone else associating Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman in some way.

-Ari

"I need a .sig quote that's better than this!"

sounds like an interesting read.. (if rather daunting.) "The Alphabet versus the Goddess" by Leonard Schlain is another good read.. (maybe more of a historical romp and riff on duality masculine/feminine, yin/yang, left/right, text/image, etc/etc.)..

anyway, the idea of claiming ideas as property is IMO a symptom of a dangerously recalcitrant (stick-in-the-mud) partriarchy, and largely unconscious form of rape, fueled by male fear and greed.. unnecessary delusions, yet so culturally entrenched and *so* costly . There are much smarter alternatives.. the way to implement 'em is evolve money.

A few months ago in Wired reported that "Neuromancer" was being made into a feature length film:

Screenager

As a teen, Chris Cunningham read Neuromancer - three times. Soon he could imagine every scene of a Neuromancer movie and started working on storyboards. Years later, the twentysomething prodigy (he worked with Stanley Kubrick as a youth) will bring William Gibson's classic to the screen, when Seven Arts releases the pic next year. The British director - known for his f/x work in music videos and films like Alien 3 - shies away from hyping the movie while it's in development. But Gibson isn't so demure: "The guy's a genius," says the author. "He's the man for the job - Neuromancer was his Wind in the Willows."

I presume that Gibson would have heavy influence on the project, including technical and artistic input in the truest sense. Now I know Neuromancer is visionary and it can be technologically off-the-wall at some points - but at least Gibson touches base with reality.

Oh hey, totally tangential but Gibson is also in Wired 7.10, the digital video issue. Interesting... he's got a PowerMa c in a 5x00-style case sitting on his desk! (Doh! That's write - he's one of those damned artsy-litsy people, not a Linux hacker. Seriosuly though if I'm not mistaken, in the article he mentions that he's trying to learn Linux... not sure - the full text isn't on the Wired site yet and I'm too damned lazy to reread the article.)

A few months ago in Wired reported that "Neuromancer" was being made into a feature length film:

Screenager

As a teen, Chris Cunningham read Neuromancer - three times. Soon he could imagine every scene of a Neuromancer movie and started working on storyboards. Years later, the twentysomething prodigy (he worked with Stanley Kubrick as a youth) will bring William Gibson's classic to the screen, when Seven Arts releases the pic next year. The British director - known for his f/x work in music videos and films like Alien 3 - shies away from hyping the movie while it's in development. But Gibson isn't so demure: "The guy's a genius," says the author. "He's the man for the job - Neuromancer was his Wind in the Willows."

I presume that Gibson would have heavy influence on the project, including technical and artistic input in the truest sense. Now I know Neuromancer is visionary and it can be technologically off-the-wall at some points - but at least Gibson touches base with reality.

Oh hey, totally tangential but Gibson is also in Wired 7.10, the digital video issue. Interesting... he's got a PowerMa c in a 5x00-style case sitting on his desk! (Doh! That's write - he's one of those damned artsy-litsy people, not a Linux hacker. Seriosuly though if I'm not mistaken, in the article he mentions that he's trying to learn Linux... not sure - the full text isn't on the Wired site yet and I'm too damned lazy to reread the article.)

Domain names are not different. Current trademark law already protects companies from domain name squatters. If you don't believe this, look at case law on the subject from the last 4 years.

There's no need for this extra legislation.

Again, there is NO NEED FOR THIS EXTRA LEGISLATION!!!!

It only makes it easier for a large corporation (such as Microsoft) to fuck a little guy for having a good idea first, but not having the legal manpower (read: $) to back it up.

See Microsoft and Windows2000.com. Registered in 1996, this domain (well in advance) preceded M$ decision to let its OS assembly line slip in production once again so that it had to rename its OS to Windows2000. Does microsoft own the trademark windows? Maybe. Actually, not really since it is f*cking generic. I'm sitting next to three (3) windows right now, and M$ didn't have thing to do with them. I look outside and I see people.

Windows were a concept first introduced to the computer world at large by Apple computers (and they were called just that, windows), first with Lisa & then with the Macintosh Operating System (now called MacOS). Apple borrowed this idea from previous work, but the previous work was non-commercial. M$ stole the work from Apple for the simple reason that Apple made a product with this work, licensed use of this work to M$ for use in writing programs for Macintoshes, and then M$ turned around and bit Apple in the *ss by coming out with its own OS based on the concepts that it had learned within the legally-binding relationship of a non-disclosure (and thus non-use except as specified) by Apple.

Well, I'm way the f*ck off topic, but the current trademark laws are sufficient, and there is no need to give police power to corporate America. They're got enough power as it is.

Microsof t pays congress to cut the Department of Justice's budget

"Where do you want to go tomorrow?" How about to court?

MSoft Throws Up Hands over 'Palm' -- Sort of

Micro$oft f*cks GoldTouch Technologies

As far as customer goodwill, does Microsoft have any?

Domain names are not different. Current trademark law already protects companies from domain name squatters. If you don't believe this, look at case law on the subject from the last 4 years.

There's no need for this extra legislation.

Again, there is NO NEED FOR THIS EXTRA LEGISLATION!!!!

It only makes it easier for a large corporation (such as Microsoft) to fuck a little guy for having a good idea first, but not having the legal manpower (read: $) to back it up.

See Microsoft and Windows2000.com. Registered in 1996, this domain (well in advance) preceded M$ decision to let its OS assembly line slip in production once again so that it had to rename its OS to Windows2000. Does microsoft own the trademark windows? Maybe. Actually, not really since it is f*cking generic. I'm sitting next to three (3) windows right now, and M$ didn't have thing to do with them. I look outside and I see people.

Windows were a concept first introduced to the computer world at large by Apple computers (and they were called just that, windows), first with Lisa & then with the Macintosh Operating System (now called MacOS). Apple borrowed this idea from previous work, but the previous work was non-commercial. M$ stole the work from Apple for the simple reason that Apple made a product with this work, licensed use of this work to M$ for use in writing programs for Macintoshes, and then M$ turned around and bit Apple in the *ss by coming out with its own OS based on the concepts that it had learned within the legally-binding relationship of a non-disclosure (and thus non-use except as specified) by Apple.

Well, I'm way the f*ck off topic, but the current trademark laws are sufficient, and there is no need to give police power to corporate America. They're got enough power as it is.

Microsof t pays congress to cut the Department of Justice's budget

"Where do you want to go tomorrow?" How about to court?

MSoft Throws Up Hands over 'Palm' -- Sort of

Micro$oft f*cks GoldTouch Technologies

As far as customer goodwill, does Microsoft have any?

Domain names are not different. Current trademark law already protects companies from domain name squatters. If you don't believe this, look at case law on the subject from the last 4 years.

There's no need for this extra legislation.

Again, there is NO NEED FOR THIS EXTRA LEGISLATION!!!!

It only makes it easier for a large corporation (such as Microsoft) to fuck a little guy for having a good idea first, but not having the legal manpower (read: $) to back it up.

See Microsoft and Windows2000.com. Registered in 1996, this domain (well in advance) preceded M$ decision to let its OS assembly line slip in production once again so that it had to rename its OS to Windows2000. Does microsoft own the trademark windows? Maybe. Actually, not really since it is f*cking generic. I'm sitting next to three (3) windows right now, and M$ didn't have thing to do with them. I look outside and I see people.

Windows were a concept first introduced to the computer world at large by Apple computers (and they were called just that, windows), first with Lisa & then with the Macintosh Operating System (now called MacOS). Apple borrowed this idea from previous work, but the previous work was non-commercial. M$ stole the work from Apple for the simple reason that Apple made a product with this work, licensed use of this work to M$ for use in writing programs for Macintoshes, and then M$ turned around and bit Apple in the *ss by coming out with its own OS based on the concepts that it had learned within the legally-binding relationship of a non-disclosure (and thus non-use except as specified) by Apple.

Well, I'm way the f*ck off topic, but the current trademark laws are sufficient, and there is no need to give police power to corporate America. They're got enough power as it is.

Microsof t pays congress to cut the Department of Justice's budget

"Where do you want to go tomorrow?" How about to court?

MSoft Throws Up Hands over 'Palm' -- Sort of

Micro$oft f*cks GoldTouch Technologies

As far as customer goodwill, does Microsoft have any?

http://www.wired.com/news/p olitics/0,1283,31853,00.html

What was your reasoning for using the backslash ("\") as the directory delimiter in MS-DOS instead of the industry standard slash ("/")? I find the slash easier to type (at least on an American keyboard).

Paul Allen accepted resposnsibility for that in a Wired article some years ago.

According to an article on this subject in Wired (which, btw, I submitted last week to /. pout pout) the guys running Jam Echelon may have identified it as a threat to our freedom, but that doesn't prevent them from also being kind of kooky. Read the linked article.

..and they won't have to cut their ear off and die before getting noticed or paid.

"As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place new value on the one human ability that can't be automated: emotion. Imagination, myth, ritual -- the language of emotion -- will affect everything from our purchasing decisions to how well we work with others.. Ideas like quality, efficiency, and reliability will no longer sell products. In the end, I'll buy a phone because of its color, if that's what moves me."

"Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated. The wonderful news about the Network Economy is that it plays right into human strengths. Repetition, sequels, copies, and automation all tend toward the free, while the innovative, original, and imaginative all soar in value"

No offense, folks, but i41 can't wait until this communications revolution can more easily tap the creative potential of non-technical people (like yours flamebaitly true:*).

Interesting cooincidence... Hotwired just carried an article Storage System Glows Brightly which describes a company which has developed a multilayered CD which can hold 140G and has the potential for unlimited capacity. Although this isn't holographic it is three dimensional.

This is he original press release of Mosiac 0.9 in 1994, just 5 short years ago. Mosiac featured , among other things, "Native support for the JPEG image format"(which was a big deal at the time!)

One of the more interesting quotes in a Wired article is one of the First Review of Mosiac 0.9 (a fantastic,sometimes funny, look back in time) features some quotes from then VP of technology Marc Anreesen. "If the company does well, I do pretty well," says Andreessen. "If the company doesn't do well" - his voice takes on a note of mock despair - "I work at Microsoft."

In just 5 years, Netscape has helped redefine the IT landscape, and has forced a lot of people to look again at the multi-platform delevopment model. As they rewrite the code base for the 21st centrury, Lets not be so hard on the team that has given so much.

http://www.wired.com/wired/a rchive/7.04/crypto_pr.html

Public Key was proposed in abstract by James Ellis in 1969; 'RSA' was invented by Clifford Cocks in 1973; 'Diffie-Hellman' later the same year by Malcolm Williamson.

Compare mutual information ("decibannage"), invented by Turing in 1941. Who knows what else GCHQ still has up their sleeves ?

Imagine a camera and a display on each cereal box: the cartoon mascot could interact with the image of the shopper. Would work great on kids.

How about disposable dataspecs: wearable display terminals, stereo-optic of course, so cheap that you wouldn't have to worry about sitting on them... and you know you will.

My question for Bruce is:

Beyond the obvious overworked subjects like global warming and nuclear winter, what social, political and/or technological hurdles must we overcome in order to avoid the "dark and scary" future? Or, alternately, which hurdles are unavoidable, and how will they darken our future?

Here's a lovely little traveling exhibit called Ecce Homo, which according to Wired, manages to "provoke both the pope and the European parliament at the same time...The photos depict Christ at various stages in his life, death and resurrection...in the company of homosexuals." The exhibit will open in New York sometime next year; the artist has received death threats and now travels with bodyguards. Check it out and decide for yourself if it's art.

Why does this exist ? :) http://www.wired.com/news/news/slashdot/

• http://www.wired.com/news/news/slashdot/technology /story/22015.html

• http://www.wired.com/news/technology/story/22015.h tml

Of course if enough people follow the stripped link I give, we will end up slashdotting their data to hell; lol

• http://www.wired.com/news/news/slashdot/technology /story/22015.html

• http://www.wired.com/news/technology/story/22015.h tml

Of course if enough people follow the stripped link I give, we will end up slashdotting their data to hell; lol

Wired News just had an article describing DPI, a non-profit Silicon Valley agency that helps match afflicted programmers with hundreds of technology products that can let you work without destroying your wrists. They range from different keyboards to full Stephen Hawking-type setups.

For your reference:

There was an article a couple of issues back in
wired about the amish and their use of technology. Good stuff --

My first thought when I read the line about Galileo as a zillionaire today was Pons and Fleichman. Pons and Fleichman presented the concept of cold fusion to the scientific community and it was so revolutionary, so difficult to believe in the context of accepted scientific rules that they are pariahs, kicked out of the community and laughed at as frauds. There's some compelling evidence that Pons-Fleichman cells DO produce energy from some sort of fusion. (Check Wired's Article Their experiment was so exciting that they released it too soon... I think perhaps Galileo would have an equal chance of sharing thier fate..

This guy put a Webcam, laptop, and cellular modem in his taxi. Since it runs 24/7, I'm sure that his cell phone bill is through the roof.


echelon: FBI CIA NSA IRS ATF BATF Malcolm X
Militia Gun Handgun MILGOV Assault Rifle Terrorism Bomb

This guy put a Webcam, laptop, and cellular modem in his taxi. Since it runs 24/7, I'm sure that his cell phone bill is through the roof.


echelon: FBI CIA NSA IRS ATF BATF Malcolm X
Militia Gun Handgun MILGOV Assault Rifle Terrorism Bomb

"I guess we are about 15-20 years (maybe sooner) away from having a few problems with machines making unauthorized (by any human) decisions that could go against humans in general. At the rate things are changing, I would feel that in 30-40 years time things will be out of our hands."

kinda scary if, in fact, "war is quickly becoming a game only machines can play". Then again, if "artificial" intelligence is a belittling name for it, and we find ourselves blocking its progress, then maybe it'll subjugate us and serve its real host with a favor in kind. Here we haggle over our "intellect" as "property", while we actually manage our "property" (as in coastal real estate) with so little intelligence*. Or maybe trading more ideas we'll dump less industrial filth, and we'll get smart enough to leapfrog over the *pending antarctic melt down. Who the hell knows?

It is very difficulty to classify the intelligence of Deep Blue. Its main advantage appeared to be that it could process information at a much faster rate than Kasparov. Also, unlike Kasparov, it did not whine and grumble when it lost.

My beef with the in-awed worship of "machine intelligence" (as in the age of"spiritual machines") is that the two bits gurus rarely refer to "emotional intelligence", (which may represent a healthy portion of the 90% of our "brain" we don't use. Other human cultural traditions, such as the Tibetan Buddhist, have copious libraries full of recorded learning about states of feeling, compassion, awareness and consciousness which the analytic Western tradition seems to ignore if not repress. Will "intelligence" outsmart us in a few short years with simple yes or no answers? Maybe or maybe not:)

On that note, apparently Deep Dark Blue is still kinda dumb when playing more binary and ancient human bored games like Korean shogi or Chinese go. "Deep Blue beat Kasparov by plotting 14 moves ahead, but a good shogi program would require a computer to read at least 20 moves ahead - professional shogi players can think 30 - 40 moves ahead.. Another lure for programmers is the ancient Chinese game of go, which is even harder for computers than shogi.." - latimes 990819A ..

Sure, just a couple more exponential steps up mount moore's law, but until we let eugenetic engineers hardwire quantum wetware into our loved ones, how will digital decisionmakers get *meaningful* information from human feelings, intuitions, subtle verbal and subtler non-verbal communications, etc.?

Ok, he didn't say he "invented" the internet, he said he "created" it. Here's the clip from wired.com.

WASHINGTON -- It's a time-honored tradition for presidential hopefuls to claim credit for other people's successes.

But Al Gore as the father of the Internet?

That's what the campaigner in chief told CNN's Wolf Blitzer during an interview Tuesday evening. Blitzer asked Gore how he was different than other presumptive Democratic challengers, such as Bill Bradley. "What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?"

Replied Gore: "I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins, and it'll be comprehensive and sweeping, and I hope that it'll be compelling enough to draw people toward it.... I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years."

Then came the kicker: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

(My bold)

Reference it for yourself at http://www.wired.com/news/ news/politics/story/18390.html

I guess now you'll say Wired is a tool for the conservitive right wing ... shyeah right. Before you say someone else "sounds stupid", you may want to get your facts straight.

Guys like Alvin Toffler will continue to publish wave after wave of best-selling bogus prophecy while NCAR continues to spend our money running the same old models on bigger and bigger machines. Consequently, I'm sure they are highly appreciative when folks insult systems that "put your credibility where your mouth is" like weather futures or Idea Futures.

And don't even get me started on The Digerati.

IPO's can be used by *people with a surplus of stored value (ca$h or credit) to multiply said surplus as much and as fast as possible and preferably with the least possible effort. If successful, such users earn themselves even more "freedom". (from what: fear? envy? lack of sex appeal? who knows?;) anyways..

Companies which conduct these IPO's exploit such human virtues to raise money (needed to finance international legal and customer aquisition costs.. (remember, you are now an Internet company dotcom(tm), or you are roadkill, and this web grows global fast)). Founders and early investors of Internet companies can also use these IPO's to amass fabulous fortunes for themselves to diversify and secure by investing in new IPO's, politicians , etc.

Now, partially owned by the "public" (see above*), stock prices reflect "our" confidence in the company's potential to profit. Company managers, typically holding stakes of their own, spur the company to attract the highest possible share price. Bottom line. Period.

Whether our grandchildren or theirs will regard this behavior as blatently criminal is another question.

Whether there are alternatives to inequity exacerbating IPO and "street" methods of idea "ownership" is a question I hope /. will address and soon. After all, the MAN(tm), his law(tm) and by-laws(IPO Corp.) are forms of "code", right? (They instruct energetic systems to behave predictably. Or try to.)

So how do IPO's and like ownership models perpetuate "code"? Openly? How does it affect our capacity to trade our learning and creativity? Are there alternatives? Here may be a interesting one:

"Chaord" or "chaordic". [haHA! 2nd post:] It's shocking that Dotters of Slash completely ignore an archetypical business structure that seems to effectively trade creativity and borderlessly: Visa International. Growth? 20% annually, since way before any long boom, past $ 1.2trillion in '98 sales, no end in sight. Method? Better attract human ingenuity, (the most valuable AND abundant resource on the planet.) Blend competition with cooperation, seamlessly. Failure? Dee Hock, who founded Visa, says it could have been four times more powerful if ownership had been extended to merchants and cardholders.. Customers owning the business? COOL! bu..WTF!? How to hack that???

IPO? Stock? Forget it. Visa can't bought, sold, traded or raided. Ownership is shared in non-transferable rights of participation.

It's a very unusual "learning organization": commanders don't control it from the center. Instead, chaos organizes itself at the edges, adapting locally, learning and evolving. Advantages arise out of individual initiative. Ideally, "chaorganizations" are "equitable owned by all participants." Sound like a more "open source" code for biz? IMHO, /. and RHAT and MP3c may have kinda choked if they didn't consider more "open" ownership models, proven successful by Visa..

Anyway, a more positive way to look at IPO's and Public Companies is as forms of "currency". If you have some to spare, you could buy gold, but you have to pay someone to guard it, and gold's value is dropping. You could guard U.S.Gov't(tm) printed dead prezidents, but why do it when your banker will pay you interest to borrow them? Still, who wants a measly 6% when brand-name "currency" like yahoo! or rhat or idealab! may earn me 600%? In this light, it's more rewarding to invest in people and ideas rather than self-obsoleting systems or hoarding stores of value. Currency users now have more options, can better "vote with their pocketbook", perpetuate what they value, and maybe earn themselves some more "freedom". More options, more freedom? Who knows?

links, again, on dee hock, visa, and chaords:
http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic /chaos_is_good.htm
http://www.cascadepolicy.org/dee_hock.htm ">
http://www.fastcompany.com/online /05/deehock.html

Not that I'm anything but happy. See that drop at the begining of Q2? That happened right after they had made me a job offer, and I had given notice at my old job. When that happened, they withdrew my offer. Luckily, my current boss called me about an hour later and said that he had my resume and was interested in me. Their offer letter said to keep it confidential, but screw them. One year out of college, plenty of good skills, they offered me $50k/yr + 1600 stock options, for a job with MacAfee.com in Tigard, Oregon.

One aspect of these relaxed regs, highlighted by Wired News but ignored pretty much everywhere else, is that investigators will no longer need to reveal their methods for arriving at a plaintext from a cryptotext for which they had no key. There are some scary implcations to this. Specifically, if investigators cannot be compelled to reveal how they decoded encrypted info, they could take an encrypted doc which they could positively attach to the defendant, and then present in court ANY plaintext as being its source. They could make up the foulest, nastiest, most incriminating thing in the world and claim it is the plaintext. With a decent algorithm (i.e. ANY strong algo) there is NO WAY to verify that a plaintext and cryptotext match up without the key (that's the point of encryption, for godssakes.) As the investegators cannot be made to reveal HOW they got plain from cipher, the only defense the defendant could make would be to decrypt the doc in question before the court herself, and that would require her to expose to the court her cryptosystem and key. I.E., in the end, she would be giving up the one thing that protected her. Any even worse scenario: another clause in these regs permits courts to subpeona private keys (previously considered unconstitutional, as it forces a person to incriminate herself.) If the defandant refused to do so, claiming to have forgotten the key, and the prosecution later played its dummed-plaintext trump card, she would be put in the positin of either 1) going to prison for heinous crimes she never even considered commiting or 2) admitting to perjury. This is a very-much bad situation that we, as citizens, are being put into. The NSA, agains, has designed a brilliant protocol.

Special Note: The NSI dotcomnow.com e-mail system vulnerability was discovered with a PalmIII PDA via a CDPD Novatel Plus Wireless modem connection to the internet using the Proxiweb browser..

Reply to Buddy on 01:17 PM September 20th, 1999 EDT

Well, you haven't seen it in the media because they are ignoring it. I've been paying way too much attention to this topic and I haven't heard a peep except what the hacker community already knows. This is not because I didn't try..Read On..

I messaged all the news media starting late Thursday night, Sept 16, 1999 and then into Friday. Tips@wired.com was the first place to be e-mailed: no response. Then I mailed local news and got the same. CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Microsoft (for the H of it), and NSI to name a few, were all mailed: again no response. Slashdot was also messaged sometime on Saturday, but there were 100+ submission pending, so I understand. http://slashdot.org/faq.shtml#Q42

The following message was sent:
You may already know this. I know at least one other person has figured it out.
The new Network Solutions E-mail systems are wide open. There are two ways to break in.
The first is to know the name of someone with an account with NSI, type
User: name
Pass: namensi
The second is this...
Here is the entry to the support account.
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/support?dlan g=default
Replace the word support with any valid account and bang, you're in.

The only response I received was sometime on Monday from http://netsecurity.about.com but well after it became public knowledge. .

As an ethical person, I wanted to give NSI fair warning. They were officially notified on Saturday, September 18, 1999. Since they were changing their production billing system on Saturday I figured that someone would react by verifying the hole and then taking down the system. This did not happen. I also tried calling. Don't try calling them; it's waste of time. 48 hours after notifying NSI, I released the information to various and nefarious sources detailing a 6-step process for guaranteed access. www.2600.com responded within minutes. In fact, they were so fast that they edited and posted the info about 5 minutes after it was sent. Now that's action.

Here's a copy of the original instructions:
Here is how to do it..
Instructions:
1. Click on Access Free Web Mail from Http://www.networksolutions.com
2. Click on one of the e-mail address near the bottom of the screen.
3. Click Click Here
4. Enter first and last name
5. Create a valid e-mail account
6. Wait until the screen says "Your Mailbox has been Created".
From here you can change the account name in this line
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/nametochange >?dlang=defaut
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/support?dlan g=default Actual Support Account

Here's a copy of the original mail I sent to my friends at 12:52 AM Sep. 18, 1999
Get this!
I just created an account on the Network Solutions new e-mail server and guess what...
I discovered a back door! NO SH***ING.....
Someone didn't do a good programming job here at all.
Simply type any name where you see the word "support"..
The link here will take you to their support e-mail
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/support?dlan g=default
If the account exists you will get in
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/oracle?dlang =default
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/microsoft?dl ang=default
http://mail.dotcomnow.com/signup/poll/whitehouse?d lang=default

Needless to say, We had a lot of fun collecting accounts over the weekend. Slightly on the dark side of ethical? Maybe, but isn't it more unethical to offer a service that you know is flawed and yet do nothing to fix it. More importantly, we collected these accounts to demonstrate that Hole #2 is still open. Yet, where is the news coverage, where is the outrage, and where does NSI get off ignoring this personal privacy breach. If you want to try out Hole #2 for yourself, you can e-mail me for a small list of inconsequential accounts. Hey M$, This method is also being used on Hotmail.

Message to the people who use Network Solutions freemail:
You should be scared. I'm nice and I'm trying to save you. I won't do anything, but I will make this information available to anyone (members of congress, the media, NSI, your neighbors) via request.
What does this mean?
IT MEANS WE CAN STILL READ YOUR E-MAIL
Solution: Forward and then delete all of your mail. Don't have any passwords mailed to the account. Don't register any Domain Names using the account. Stop using the NSI mail system until it's really fixed.

Message to NSI:
Shut down the server, fix the problem, and be nice. What you are doing is just wrong, very wrong. Get your third-party e-mail vendor to shape up. Or is that third-party thing just your way of shifting the blame? Tell us, who is this vendor and why do they suck so badly?

Message to the Mainstream News Media ( /. Excluded)
You Suck! Maybe NSI has some commercial hold on you or maybe you're just stupid. Why so much coverage on the Hotmail gaffs? NSI provided the world with a code free hack; a front door into their system. This was an idiot door far worse (my opinion) than the Hotmail blunder(s). I stumbled upon it with no thinking required. Is this not news? I guess that a mail system that is used by mostly "nerds" (taken from someone's previous post) isn't worth the attention. I understand that an earthquake in Taiwan, Raisa Gorbachev dying, and of course, Hurricane Floyd, are all big issues, but why so little comment in the tech and headline news media. Personally, I wanted to hear Sarah Baskin report it to the world. Oh well, poor me. Maybe some reporter will summarize what I've said here and get the word out that FREE MAIL IS NOT SAFE. Let me say it again...FREE MAIL IS NOT SAFE. I'm just a regular guy, I'm no "hacker". Look how easy it was to open up their system. This should be a wakeup call.

Well I have to go now. Unlike the folks at NSI, I need to stop playing around and get some real work done.

The company is called akamai and according to an article in wired, they serve content for ESPN, Paramount, and Apple amongst others. Sorry about not including the link before, but I could have sworn it was a slashdot post instead of being in Wired.

...compilations, otherwise known as databases, go largely unprotected by copyright laws that safeguard the interests of the authors and publishers of creative works.

The use of the word "protected" presents a bias in favor of the ownership of factual databases. Databases don't need "protection" if it is entirely legal to copy them.

[Databases] are generally gatherings of information created by someone else.

WRONG. Databases are collections of FACTS. A collection of copyrighed information is still owned by the owner of that copyrighted information.

The article also gives examples in which database compilers have been exploited, but fails to give any examples in which these companies have been the exploiters. One very good example could have been the recent case of West Pubishing trying to claim ownership all federal court opinions that it publishes.

Nonsense. From this Wired article:

Network Solutions verifies changes as legitimate by sending an automated email to the registered owner of the domain.

The unknown hacktivist managed to subvert that not-so-secure security measure and update the domain name server information to a company called VDirect.

Where have you been? Domain hijacking exploits using 'mail-from' have been in the news quite a bit lately. Recent well-publicized cases have involved godhatesfags.com and kkk.com.

Where have you been? Domain hijacking exploits using 'mail-from' have been in the news quite a bit lately. Recent well-publicized cases have involved godhatesfags.com and kkk.com.

I would say that "The Great Simoleon Caper", "Snow Crash", and "Diamond Age" form sort of a trio in Stephenson's writings: they are all bound together around very similar idea of future geopolitics (e.g. First Dustributed Republic appears first in "The Caper", then migrates into the "Snow Crash", then "Diamond Age").

"Spew" is a bit off the track there--the story is different, but still interesting for geeky folk--it actually is about the geeky folk.

First off, CONGRATS! Slashdot is IMHO by the best news forum online. (I hope it gets lots better:) You "owners" certainly deserve to be rewarded, and "thanks" obviously doesn't pay rent or cut cake. Besides, prosperity could be useful, right? But at the possible expense of some trust?

So.. ASK SLASHDOT: are there alternatives to IPOs and Stock Ownership to finance Internet Companies? Was the RHAT IPO as fair as it could have been? Are better methods of "ownership" even conceivable? Can they, in reality, be hacked?

Why does nobody here ever mention chaords? Search /. for the word "CHAORD". Nothing, right? Try "chaordic". So.. these words don't exist here, at least before this post, right?. (ha! first post!:^)

Chaord? (CHAos+ORDer) It's that which "exists in the phase between chaos and order." A chaord is a "self-organizing, self-governing complex capable of constant learning and evolution." Like Linux. Like the Internet. Like money.

Pull out your shiny VISA card. Take a good look. Quite a capitalist tool, huh? Founded in the sixties, VISA International has grown 20% annually, through boom and bust, thick and thin, past $1.2 trillion in 1998 sales (11 zeros), with no end in sight. Hmmm. Wanna buy stock? No way, Jose.

VISA International is "owned" by its members. They share "ownership" by non-transferable rights of participation. (User rights!) These rights can't be bought, sold, traded or raided. Dee Hock, who founded VISA, had hoped to extend this ownership to merchants and cardholders, but it wasn't possible at the time. (Had it been, Mr. Hock believes the VISA community would be four times more powerful! )

Think I'm a wacko AC? Read the links. VISA thrives by an alternative system of "ownership", which, at its core, better motivates and rewards innovation by members. Does this sound a bit more in tune with open source purposes and principles?

As Open Source starts to suck in lawyers and money, how might we addapt? Maybe business planners can consider evidently successful alternatives to IPO's, and the inevitable management of "responsibilities to shareholders." It may be in their interest to do so.

In the end, informed users (customers) don't appreciate being forked over by short-sighted proprietary systems bent on obscene profits. So we then seek options. If we don't find them, we then create them.

- A.C., but not for long :->

"listen to the technology.. find out what it's telling you" -G.Gilder