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Virus Scares and False Authority Syndrome
Fifth of Five writes: "Ran across this article on the IS-IT-TRUE.org site regarding False Authority Syndrome and the spread of virus misinformation by the media, users and Folks Who Probably Ought To Know Better. If you've ever watched the TV news and gritted your teeth over what is being presented as 'fact' this may shine some light on just how it got to be like this."
The link is slashdoted, but I believe it is the old ("old" as in been around for a while, from before the Michaelangelo scare) virus myth site which used to be at http://kumite.com. It is/was run by Rob Rosenberger, and it is a really good resource of finding out which is the latest fake scare, and what stupidities are being distributed via chain-mail...
The "False Authority Syndrome" article itself is at least 5 years old...
but if the media voluntarily (or involuntarily) f's up the news, whats to say they dont do it on a regular basis to more 'mainstream' news items, either to push a certain agenda, or to appease their friends in the gov't.
Not tryint to flamebait, but it was a pretty well known fact that in the clinton WH press corp, if you asked the pres a tough or 'offtopic' question, guess what, unless you were from one of the big 6, your pass got pulled and good luck getting a interview again.... basically what it boils down to is you can never tell when the press is full of it. hell, they cant even get traffic reports right (accident at main and elm with injuries....right after i just drove by and all i saw was some homeless dude...).... sorry, im ranting now
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/weinberg. html
:)
An interesting article on the Sokal host, in cleartext for the goatse wary
You couldn't. Then Microsoft decided it would be cool if your email client did whatever your incoming email told it to.
People keep on forgetting that public media is in the attention business ... it is in their economic interest to sensationalise news in order to flog those accompanying ads (a bit of a problem for CNN when there's no major wars going on). As such, manufactured fluff (ie press-releases) is easier to regurgitate than any in-depth research or second-hand opinions (syndicated columns). Historically public media was part and parcel of the lecture circuit (aka rubber chicken show) where you would invite real authorities and experts to come in and air their thoughts in a proper interview. However, two general trends mitigate against this ... the increasing complexity of real-world issues (anyone who thinks Middle-East is a simple case of good-guys/bad-guys is in deep trouble) which limits the potential audiences interested in understanding the issues, and the move to tabloid style audience capture which tends to confuse celebrity with fame. Why should sports-heros and actresses (apart from the convenience of recycling pre-existing studio contracts) be ask to comment on areas way outside their domain? Why should TV shows get people from the entertainment field to present business news (and you wonder why the stock market is irrational). Unfortunately those with real knowhow gained from the school of hard knocks tend to be people who charge for their services ... would you want a surgeon who has never practised on patients before so why are we willing to listen to highly filtered news passed along by talking heads? It's becoming nothing more than a massive Chinese whisper in a global cocktail party.
... the /. ask XYZ is a particularly good way for the plebs to touch some of the people involved in the thick of things.
... ultimately people have to realise there is a cost in misleading/diluted information (e.g. did anyone notice that the bard-wire concentration camp story that helped sparked the Balkans intervention and sundry bombings was filmed on the inside looking out?).
Fortunately we have some countervailing examples
LL
The economic models which are the equivalent of yelling "fire" as loudly as possible to rush people to newsfeeds are creating some really bad incentives
However, some may not particularly believe in the validity of the experiment, but would feel, probably subconciously, that the experimenter has some kind of authority because of his status, title or knowledge, when really, why should a scientist have authority?
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
BTW: Code Red, Melissa and SirCam all run on computers therefore they are computer viruses
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
If you want to kill a voice-coil speaker, give it DC. Full rail from the power amp. Whoops, that'll fry the amp first ;-) Next best practice is to use a low frequency square wave with a duty cycle of 90 percent. Watch as the woofer tries to jump out of its surround.
Big fun...
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Yeah I do.
(chough...bible..chough).
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Die evil scumbag.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Real authorities (like CERT) PGP-sign their messages. The problem then is getting the general public to be aware of this.
And we should beleive your advice on this, you're obviously an authority! ;)
... virus free and has the latest patches doesn't eliminate your chance of getting hacked either. IMHO, the need for a firewall is independent of whether or not your system software is current, your system software should be kept current anyway, but then again, I'm not a security expert, so what the hell do I know? :)
Honestly, presence of a firewall does not eliminate the chance of getting hacked, just reduces them, but having a windows 98 box which is
Code or be coded.
...but don't you hate it when all sorts of Theories are tought as fact (chough...darwin..chough).
;)
Tell me about it. I spent years thinking it was spelt 'cough'.
Whoops there goes my karma!
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
I must get warnings for "Wobbler" and "All Seeing Eye" sent to me by my [L]users all the time, but you know what? It's a fair cop.
.vbs files, I warn. And most of all, I know that many here will cringe when they read this, I actively encourage my [L]users to forward me all the warnings they get sent to them.
/dev/null.
I set up filters, I block the sending and receiving of all
Know why? After the 4th one I send back to them with an URL and a "Thanks, but that one was a hoax", they start to catch on (well... many of them do). Some also start to forward any and all messages with attached files to me if they weren't expecting them. Again, many here may cringe, my email box is huge and I spend hours each day weeding through false alarms sometimes. But IMHO it's worth it.
Do you know how many actual FULL outbreaks this company has seen in the last year? One. Back in November of last year. It was Navidad and it was sent to a Hispanic employee (the CFO actually... hehehehe) from a relative, and since it was near Xmas, well, I forgave him. AFTER I made HIM clean out his own machine and then lambasted him in front of the entire company. But when people first saw the SIRCAM virus come in, even users who had not read my warnings yet spotted it instantly and sent it to me. This was before I'd set our mail server to send all messages with "I hope you like the file that I sendo you" in the body to
All things considered, though, seeing as this office is almost entirely Windows, I think my methods work. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it can be annoying. BUT, I rarely have to restore from backup, and we haven't had any major outbreaks.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
The link shows this to be a Cold Fusion page.
If it gets more than 5 hits in a day, the chip melts and the CF server mails itself to Bogota so it can forget its problems in mountains of happy dust.
For better performance than Cold Fusion, hack Apache into a gameboy and connect to local provider via a very tight string.
The fact that you can hide behind your screen and type insults to me without worrying about the person on the other end of the line means that you are not taking responsiblities for your own actions, because you don't have to.
Thank you for so succinctly proving my point.
hehe thanks to all those who corrected my mistake
:) and didn't look too closely.
being as I don't use office or outlook et. al. I fell for the FUD elsewhere
I put my faith in virus scanners on my Windows boxes.
they must catch 1 a week from incoming email attachements from people we know!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Heck, there's probably stuff in the Old Testament about not believing false prophets of doom and naysayers.
Lemme look...
Deuteronomy 18:20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
Deuteronomy 18:21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
Deuteronomy 18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
Of course the following verse:
Isiah 19:9 Moreover they that work in fine flax, and they that weave networks, shall be confounded.
Clearly indicates that sysadmins will always be frustrated.
dave "all hail project gutenberg!"
I remember running across that article several years ago. He had that posted when he was on a different server called the virus myths home page.
Circa. 1996?
Makes sense, there was an article on slashdot today about the Next cubes...
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
As an aside, I'm a little perplexed by the claim that there are few qualified high-tech experts: the field of computers and networks seems to enjoy a huge population, vis-a-vis just about any other (i.e., chemistry, the environment, biology, public health, economics etc.)
but virus is a latin word
---
...has been defined as the art of thrusting oneself into one unintelligible situation after another and subsequently passing oneself off as an expert.
Just last night I saw a preview for a special on CNN, about how the Movie industry was going to STAMP out Movie "Hackers", as If they have any pull on a nameless all-encompassing entity.
The point isn't the engineer telling you they're having problems, it's the engineer telling (say) Jesse Berst they're having problems, and then reading a long, uninformed, blatantly wrong screed about how incompetent the company people are and how linux is inferior.
Change is inevitable.
Progress is not.
And, that's something of a problem. Yes accountablity will cut down on the volume of assholness and sociopathic activties on the net, but it would also stifle a lot of worthwhile expression. There needs to be an opt-out for this kind of system. Someway for someone to blow a whislte without losing their job, ask for advice on senstive issues without facing public shame, and a chance for someone to simply speak their mind freely. Besides what would such a system actually do? Would it give you the information necessary to travel across the country and beat the shit out of the jerk teaching your six year old to swear in Swahili? Would it necessarily give law enforcement the tools to track down pedophiles and their ilk? And even if they had the info could they magically cross jurisdictional boundaries or would they even have the will or manpower to jump right on it? Would it prevent con artists from plying their trade? The answer for each is different depending on on the situation and having this information does not necassarily empower you, the individual. It would certainly empower the corporations we all know and love to litigate against anyone speaking their mind on the net.
Nicely done.
What about when you are forced to be the false authority. Because I am a developper, my family seems to think I know everything about computers, so when they have a problem they ask me. My aunt is always me why her printer doesnt work. I'll tell her I dont know, but she keeps asking. After a while, I give in and tell her some BS and to reload the print drivers. Of course reloading the print drivers usually works, so she thinks I knew what I was was talking about. A month later she calls again, and the cycle conitnues.
On another note, it seems like the original article completely ignores the fact that the media is in the business of making money and telling people that a virus wont completely destroy their lives just doesnt make money.
the Hun
I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
For the first time, I'm replying without reading the article. I can't get through to the server. I'm really responding to the general tenor of comments.
Everyone is blaming the media for not understanding computers. Are you making any effort to help them understand? I know it's popular to be cynical and claim that reporters are idiots/biased/bought, but in reality they are very busy and provide shallow coverage of many domains. Those who take the time to talk to reporters eventually get their ideas and viewpoint represented. Those who just sit there and chuck rotten vegetables will always be excluded.
We seem to be the only group that has not figured out how to communicate with reporters. Retired people, cops, farmers, insurance salesmen, teachers - all of these have taken the effort to establish communications with the press and make sure that their side of the story gets told.
So, if you give a damn, find out who the technology reporter is for your local paper and contact him. But first read some of his stuff so you understand what is and isn't interesting to him. See if you've got material for a story. If not, at least he might contact you for a quote on the next virus scare/whatever.
Is anyone else getting spam with the body "hey. i got the file thanx."? The message doesn't seem to have an attachment, which makes it even more disconcerting.
The shareholder is always right.
This reminds me of the vinyl record in Hofstaedter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach", which played the correct frequency to vibrate the record player to pieces.
sircam is not an Outlook virus. You can for instance download the attachment in Netscape's mail, and open it. Sircam doesn't rely on Outlook, since if it cannot find the outlook address book, it just uses the IE browser cache. Sircam is a trojan which is different, and usually prays upon less knowledgeable computer users --> most of whom use M$ outlook & and outlook making it much easier to spread the virus. I guess if you were using netscape only and there wasn't anything in the IE cache, then it wouldn't spread, it would simply sit around doing nothing.
Okay, I just felt like pointing that out...
I certainly hate SUV's. It's the ultimate self-absorbed, take-whats-mine, do-it-cuz-I-can attitude. I think most other people who DON'T drive SUV's are also annoyed with:
not being able to see the road due to the oversized 'offroad' station-wagons
the fact that what should be a fender-bender usually ends up getting the non-SUV driver injured or killed
How they guzzle gas and have higher emissions, yet get around the gas-guzzler tax by using the truck/van loophole.
Of course, I'm replying to the ever-assinine Anonymous Coward, so I've probably just be trolled.
m00.
Being knowledgable of technical stuff like "what viruses can really do" is the specific domain of knowledge we slashdot readers have. This makes me wonder, not being an expert on many other things, just how much mis-information is propagated through the news. I never watch the news anymore. All you see are disaster reports and attempts to make 40-year-old, middle-class americans paranoid of something.
Possible TV News Headlines:"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
True - the trick is figuring out how to make the media cover the really important stories of our time (DCMA, censorship, etc) in a way that'll benefit us instead of hinder us. If they make $$ covering the really important stuff, cool. Yeah - its a dream , but hey you gotta dream! :)
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
You idiots need to learn something. You can not be forced to give up a Constitutional right.
I learned this a long time ago. My boss told me I would be fired if I discussed salaries with other employees. I told him what I did on my own free time was none of his business. I also told him I would continue to discuss the salaries with other employees and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Want to know what the company did to me for violating the policy? Absolutely nothing, because they knew they would be open to a lawsuit.
As for a nondisclosure. I already mentioned you could be fired for revealing trade secrets. That's what a nondisclosure covers.
Next time, read what I posted before flaming me.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Secondly, the fact that they thought they were taking a part in a different experiment is the perfect veil to administer this experiment without their knowledge or suspicion, or without them trying to think around the experiment, thereby skewing their reaction.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
sort of like the gun theory in the US eh? "I have a gun because I want to protect myself from every other idiot who has a gun"
> Tell me, if this discussion had taken place in, say, a business
> board room, and I had suggested that the lack of accountability online
> could be olved by identification trackers, would you have stood up and called me a moron?
Why do you assume that all communications on the Internet needs to conform to business standards of etiquette? If you made such a claim on a street corner, and I resonded by calling you a rude name, would you ask me my name or other personal information? Would you ask me to prove myself if I told you my name? Would you have the right to force me to do so? The simple answer is that accountability in real life is not nearly as complete as you suspect, and identification online is subject to the same limitations as real life. If I want to lie about my identity online, I need only make sure I am careful about how my avatar presents itself, just as I could carry a fake ID in meatspace. Your solution of forcing proof of identity online smacks of the police stopping people on the street with "papers, please" requests, just to be sure everyone is polite enough to suit you.
Asshole.
Virg
...that [insert certification here] doesn't qualify you to deal with every computer problem ever imaginable? *sarcasm off*
m puter-science.
Little wonder the suits are cashing in on such naivte in order to move product.
Seriously, it's little wonder that this is being codified into a syndrome since it seems that Joe Q. Public has it into his head that just because someone knows how to stick a card into a PCI slot, they must be a certifiable computer genius. I know as the most up-to-speed user in my small company, I get a daily barrage of questions about every computer related topic imaginable. While I have no hesitation in letting my coworkers know that I haven't a clue as to what it is they are talking about (which they read off reuters this morning and can never keep the details of straight), they still persist in thinking that the most computer saavy person in the room must be a network-sysadmin-31337-haxor-d00d-MCSE-Ph.d-in-co
I'd believe you. Why would anyone fake a Harvard degree? That's like faking MSCE credentials.
One piece of information the article doesn't specifically reference is that many IT people, especially those who do consulting, are expected to know "everything" about computers. As a small business consultant, one of the hardest lessons I had to learn was when to say "I don't know, I'll have to find out that information".
On the other hand, I have noticed that doing so gives greater credibility with ones clients both by showing them your willingness to admit imperfection and willingness to research and explain the "real deal" to them.
The author begs the question, in his article, how can we know he is a true authority on False Authority Syndrome
Think about it, in the article, he comments primarily on the following:
- The degree of authoritative knowledge that the average quoted virus authority has.
- How various new agencies in general go about finding authorities to quote
- How and why people act as false authorities on viruses
In general, this article is all about issues of sociology and psychology. The author does not, however, give us any credentials to let us know he is a True Authority in these matters. All we get to know about him is he is a virus software programmer and online journalist. For that matter, nearly all of his evidence is anecdotal.So I really have to wonder, should we expect an expert and computer viruses to know more about psychology than a computer security expert knows about viruses.
Here is an actual television news station's report of the Code Red II Worm. Apparently nobody told them that the Internet has no borders.
I respectfully disagree.
These sources of information do not accurately represent the world as I understand it. I prefer a more complex analysis that I am unable to find at these sites.... And yes, I have looked.
To put it country simple, Earth has a lot of things other people might want... like the whole planet.
You need to take out the "ahVwga1Oq1o" stuff; whenever you do anything on Google involving a URL, they prepend it with a hash string to (I presume) speed up lookups in their database. If you change just the URL, Google will still bring up the original page if you leave that hash in.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
This is why we need CNN, ABC, NBC, WSJ. These sources of news may not be the quickest or even the most technically accurate, but they do know how to get an accurate second source, so they don't as often get a rumor going.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Generally, it doesn't bother me if someone claims to be someone that they aren't. I generally don't believe them anyway. Frequently I don't even look. I pay much more attention to the message.
If I get a message that says "Make Millions in your spare time" signed Commander Taco, will I believe this? Not likely. The message is self invalidating.
But more to the point, many quite well identified actual persons on the internet are just as reckless with the truth as any anonymous spammer.
I don't see any virtue in your proposal. I don't see any desireable features. And I see a lot of the others. Telling me that it will protect me from the bogeyman doesn't impress me favorably, either.
(FWIW, my suspicion is that child molesters prefer to live somewhere near their targets. So the internet is pretty much irrelevant, except that it tends to keep kids indoors, where they are a bit less exposed.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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I admit it. I should have checked first. Couldn't edit my post afterwards. *sniff* I'm sorry! =)
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
False Authority Syndrome is hardly limited to computer technology and the Air Force. How many times have we seen some celebrity interviewed in the media or give testimony to congress on some topic that has nothing to do with their area of expertise. Why would anyone think that some actress knows anything about agribusiness because they played a farmer in a movie? Yet, the media eats such "celebrity experts" up. I know most of the sensible congressmen surely know that the celebrity "expert" congressional testimony is just a way to get free publicity for their committee, but why do so many people play along with that?
Scientists giving "expert opinions" outside their field of speciality is anouther common occurance (Carl Sagan comes to mind) in the media; perhaps because it is easier to know a handful of photogenic and cooperative scientists than to make a large number of contacts in different fields of research.
It seems to happen alot on slashdot, too.
Perhaps we should put useful biographical information in our sigs instead of cute sayings so that when someone with a degree in cognitive sciences is arguing with an aerospace engineer over spacecraft problems or adaptive behavior, we know which one to listen to at the time. I guess, perhaps that is what the User Info is for; but it doesn't seem to be used for that very often. Of course, if we get overly focused on "meatspace" identities, that might dampen otherwise productive discussions. Maybe different karma for different topics? Anyone have any ideas on how to minimize False Authority Syndrome on slashdot w/o introducing unneeded complexity or dampening useful dialog? Does it need worrying about?
journalist but that story was a little long winded. It could have been cut in half if it was condensed a little more.
No sig for you!!
There's a new moderation option:
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You know what scares me the most. If the TV news crews can't get the fact straight concerning a simple Virus how can we trust them with other information?
Remember that the subjects of the experiment weren't lead to any actual wrong act. I've always heard this referred to as if it indicated exactly the same thing as it would when someone was really being tortured to death.
Whatever criteria the subjects actually used, the compliant ones came to the correct conclusion that it was okay to keep pressing the buttons. The disobedient ones either came to the incorrect conclusion that they would commit some crime, or the correct conclusion that this is what was truly expected of them from the experimenters. Too little is known to draw any valid conclusions from this, especially since it was obviously a psychological experiment to the subjects themselves (it just wasn't clear which experiment it was).
At any rate, this experiment was torture of its subjects as much as it would be if they were really giving the shocks. "Psychological experiments" like these are crimes, pure and simple, not to mention scientifically invalid smartass cracks about human nature.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Well, both are claims. The 'apology' referenced in the Register story was one that was made under duress, i.e... under threat of being sued.
Redbook standard allows for massive dynamic range: CD's can represent sounds digitally up to about 300dB.
People who mix their own CD's will recognize this fact in that they have to 'normalize' their tracks if they want everything on the CD to play at the same approximate volume.
If a loud-enough, sharp-enough sound is pumped through your speakers, however, they will blow. While I'm certain that it's not common, no it's *not* impossible for 'Cactus' scheme to damage your audio equipment.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
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I try to plant that suggestion as often as I can. I feel it's my role as a soldier in the meme war; if I can't correct people's erroneous facts or logic, at least I can cast some self-doubt. Which I sincerely hope leads to critical examination . . .
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
If you password protect your disk and printer shares you should be okay using the file and printer sharing directly on the net.
YES! Because today's SUV pollutes less than an economy car from the 70s. I guess speaking the truth does require "balls".
Yes, I'm sure they pollute less than coal trains and volcanoes too. Irrelevant. 70's econo-boxes were designed to save gas, and probably spit out greenhouse gases like crazy. Back then nobody knew any better. Now we do. Where did you get this tidbit anyway?
I didn't say anything about the Kyoto treaty one way or another. Does it actually have any effect on SUV's?
My main point is that it's not just FUD that people hate SUV's. They're unsafe (well for everybody ELSE anyway), are actually REVERSING the trend in US fuel efficiency, and they're too big for drivers to park correctly or drive within the lanes (this just coming from my observation and dings in my doors).
As far as your popularity "argument", I KNOW they're popular. So is crack. That's the whole problem. I'm tempted to buy one myself so when a soccer mom yelling at her kids in the back seat slams into me, I'm not killed.
m00.
How many times has this happened to you...
Your mom (or anyone else you know) forwards you the email they just got about $virusthatdoesntexist that will supposedly do such bad things to your computer that you will have to buy a new one and the email is signed by $nameofresearcher at $nameofinstitution.
I fixed this problem by telling my mom that any email from me that warns her of a virus is real and the rest are very much made up.
-Jeff
Jesus, the trolls are cranky today! Did someone forget to feed you his dick?
"I can't print" != virus
"This brand new computer is running slow when I open Photoshop, IE, and Excel at the same time" != virus
However
"This .doc file won't open because we need to spend thousands for software we don't need" = virus
See the difference?
CD's can represent sounds digitally up to about 300dB.
Uhh... no. You essentially get about 6dB of resolution per bit. 16-bit audio (CDs) has about 96dB of dynamic range. 24-bit audio has a range of 144dB.
Now, because of modern dithering techniques, and probably the weirdness of psychoacoustics, you can hear more of a dynamic range than the signal actually carries. Jay Frigoletto's excellent Tech Talk section (http://www.promastering.com/) says that people can hear a sound at -110dBFS on a good 16-bit system.
But 300 dB? No. Besides, 300 dB above the softest sound you can hear would probably kill you. 120 dB(SPL) is the threshold of pain. A jet engine at 50 feet has an SPL of about 140 dB.
300 dB is 160 dB more than 140 dB. Every 3 dB doubles power (though not perceived loudness); 160 is about 3*53. 2^53 is 9,007,199,254,740,992. 300 dB is 9 *QUADRILLION* times as powerful as a jet engine at 50 fet. Yeah, I think it'd kill you.
There's nothing magical about square waves. Lots of synthpop used a square-wave lead instrument in the 80s. All you're really saying is that if the CD has no dynamic range and is normalized to fill the number space, the player will output a relatively loud signal. And if the downstream electronics are adjusted on the expectation of a quieter signal, you could blow up speakers. If you want to maximize the power level in a digital recording, record white noise rather than square waves.
Before anyone posts some rant along the lines of ["They should have been smarter"|"They should have known better"|"Why are people so stupid as to fall for this all the time"], they should read this essay on Milgram's studies of authority. It's frightening.
Bleh, stupid noise just ruins /.
Thanks! I was looking for a new /. ID.
Unfortunately, many lusers have tried to make the world a better place by forwarding the "hot warning" they had just received to me (as well as to many other accounts in a CC: list, possibly including mailing lists where the hoax was OT [not "operating thetan" ;o) ]).
Though often claiming to have originated from within IBM etc. (typical lusers wouldn't know what/who McAfee was, anyway) they didn't even remotely appear to.
Lusers don't care. They'll believe everything. Just tell them. Preferably, tell them in a message apparently not directed to them originally.
It takes some educating (by you!) before they start doubting such things.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
BTW, I'm an expert on Slashdotters.
If you buy US goods, you participate in US pollution, make no mistake.
If I make my own nation and import all manufactured goods and power and emit zero pollutants, does that make me "clean"? No. I just traded smog for imports. But that smog still comes out somewhere.
It's picked up pretty quickly, indeed. I'd say the bullshit articles are much more quickly posted to the front page than legitimate ones.
interesting. I got mine from the man himself: http://www.headheritage.co.uk/
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The number was at Los Alamos national laboratory, and I decided that with my shiny new cell-phone with free long distance I would call the number.
Haha, much to my surprise, the woman picked up the phone, and I asked her if the email was true. She said it was and asked me to take the number off the mail if I sent it to anyone, because ever since that mail had gone out her phone had been ringing off the hook.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Whenever you have a medium that is so completely anonymous, you're going to have problems proving credibility. After all, IPs can be spoofed, so if I trace a Virus e-mail back to the alledged sender and it comes up at an address at McAffee, I'm likely to believe that the virus is true, when it was just spoofed.
What we need is some kind of identification verification procedure online. Not only would this destroy the virus scares, but it would also limit spam and help to track down child molestors. I'm all for tying real-life identities to online personas because it would mean accountability for actions, and if you've been in an IRC chat room recently, you know how stupid people can be when there are no repercussions for their actions.
There's no lack of experts for news makers to use as resources, but there is certainly a lack of *unbiased* experts.
This is why the evening news always starts with the stuff that scares the kids.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
ultracrepidarian: (n., adj.) a person who gives opinions beyond his scope of knowledge.
I'll have to add this to my top ten words to use when talking over somebody's head.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
Maybe not such a bad idea though.
Based on what I heard from reliable sources, it seems that it's possible to install and run Microsoft's IIS without even knowing it. Too many applications go ahead and start it up for you without (much) notice.
how do you tell the truth out of a basket full of lies?
don't I need to become an expert in order to do this?
doesn't this defeat the purpose of news?
the problem is too much news that doesn't matter, and fewer 'issues' which require concentration longer than a music video.
mumblemumblemumble
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
>>the goal is getting it out before the other guy
/.
Gee, that sounds like
As long as it's fir$t po$t it almost doesn't matter what you say, some little karma pellets end up in your trough. Same ditto for reporters.
Sub7 is a popular Trojan horse these days. You send somebody a file and trick them into running it, and it installs itself on their system. The first thing it does is bind to an incoming TCP port and listen for connections. The second thing it does is log onto an IRC server and broadcast itself to whoever set it up. This allows that person to gain remote control of your system.
A firewall will help in this situation by A) blocking incoming connections to the server, and B) blocking the outgoing IRC connections that the server makes - if it's set up correctly. Of course, if your firewall isn't configured correctly, it's all a waste of time, and how many people who are dumb enough to get Sub7 installed are smart enough to configure a firewall?
Of course you're right, no firewall is needed (although blocking port 139 might not be a bad idea, just to be on the safe side) - what's needed is not doing stupid things (or falling for devious tricks) that get things you don't want installed on your system. Similarly, contrary to popular opinion, having a firewall will do NOTHING about Sircam or Code Red.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Springfield's Action News
"... and there was an EXPLOSION in the price of gas..."
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"
Well, ya know, Brian Kerninghan (who made the C programming language), has received an award for demonstrating that an infected C compiler can transmit a trojan while rebuilding itself!
Thus whats' all this BS.
Your system could be ``malfunctioning'' without knowning it. Because part of your computer's brain's ``malfunction'' would be its inability to realise the fact that its ``malfunctioning'' and ether commit suicide or inform the administrator about it.
So there. Independent to the lies and false authorities in this forum, I will keep letting the world know the truth. I have already sent various e-mails to my closest friends and relatives, promting them to do the same. In the meantime I've been updating my list of "Important people, press & organizations" and I will send them more notifications soon. I prompt YOU to do the same. Its the only way (believe it or not). [BTW, you can use the Cc: field of your mail composition agent to achieve sending the same message to multiple people at once]
Thanks
it's an IIS virus
No you doofus, Code Red is an IIS _worm_, not a virus. Propagates itself, get it?
Why does it say "Ran across this article on the IS-IT-TRUE.org site" then the link doesn't point to is-it-true.org, but instead to some server that is not even accepting connections on port 80?
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Actually firewalls did protect some machines from the attack. There are actually firewalls that will enforce the HTTP protocol specification and hinder buffer overflows. Thereby actually doing their duty as bastion hosts, instead of naively sending packets through.
Sadly glorified routers pass off as firewalls these days.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
1) I agree the U.S. makes the most pollution. The U.S. is also responsible for the most manufacture with the highest worker efficiency.
If you think this is bad, then make that argument. I might be willing to go along with you in that the technological advances are not helping/ not good / too fast.
2. Everyone I know would agree that Waterworld was a bad movie, and having to live in it would be worse. However, why is it that we have very little conclusive data that says that we're warmer today than it was in say, 1050 AD, and so many people are willing to destroy an economy for it?
If you want to see people care about the environment, make sure they have money and can feed their kids. People without means care a lot less about the tree they are about to cut down so they won't be cold.
Now, if you don't like the way things are going, well, the it sucks for you. Until it's illegal to spend money on things that I want, I'll do it, much like people can do most immoral acts they want as well.
(And let me qualify this before I'm labeled some type of zealot: I really like doing "immoral" acts. I'm just pointing out that often the same groups that say people should not be able to buy SUVs also support very radical sexual/religious/drug points of view, and this inconsistency bothers me).
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Neither he nor any of his colleagues had any freaking idea people would go so far. They were placing bets that people would stop on the first or second level, but almost everyone went all the way.
The 'exploding water' thing predates the e-mail by a few years. When we got our first microwave (a Toshiba, IIRC) the manual contained a warning that you should make sure that if you were boiling the water, you should vigorously fill the container with water or it may "erupt". In fact, I've seen this happen - boil the water in the microwave, then drop a teabag in and it will erupt (anything from just fizzing like a can of Coke to water being splashed out of the container).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
A long time ago I heard a statement to the effect of "Don't believe everything that you read." I apply that to every bit of television, radio and print media I consume. It bothers me that we, as a society, seem to think we are the most educated people ever to live on this planet, yet we allow ourselves to be suckered by rumor, speculation and guessing.
Be a skeptic. Demand proof and accountability from your information sources.
My sigs always suck.
Ok, Ok. In english, plural is viruses. In Latin, plural is viri. Got a problem with that, look it up, declensions be damned. :-)
SUVs are unsafe for the drivers as well. The reason for this is that some of the safety features modern cars have are impractical for offroaders which are therefore exempt.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
The truth never stands in the way of a news story!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's probably already been said (and maybe in the article too, I cant connect to the server for whatever reason), but Symantec and McAfee (and other anti-virus companies) publish a hoax page and a high-alert page. They can usually be found via their home pages, and tell all about what the high alert virus does, or why the hoax is such.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
What I always wonder about:
Almost every one of the major news outlets has a staff of sysadmins and programmers on staff (I KNOW we do). The question - How come they never ask us to vet a story?
Disclaimer - I work in the news division of a TV network
A friend of mine in High School loved to ride BMX bicycles and worked in the local shop. Lots of young kids used to come in and ask him stupid questions and bug him to try to be cool like they though he was. One day a particular kid was really obnoxious asking all sorts of questions about how he wanted his bike to work just so, to which my friend, getting sick of this kid, finally said, "I know the problem, but we can't fix it. Go to XXX bike shop and tell them there's a nut loose behind the handlebars". Shop XXX was about 3 miles away down very busy roads. The next day he gets a realy nasty call from Shop XXX because apparently the kid didn't catch the joke and went up there to bug those guys.
Indeed. But that was not "an university". That was "an URL".
Run it through a grammer check.
Is that vmyths.com WON'T be slashdotted today!! ;)
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
Please, learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'
There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly.
Get serious. All of us here know that getting hacked involves exploiting holes in software that were unknown at the time of release.
A firewall simply helps by limiting the number of services that are exposed to the net at large, by trying to ensure that nobody can pretend to be one of your local, trusted machines, and perhaps by watching for known attacks. No firewall could have kept code red out of a IIS server that was intentionally exposed to the net, at least not unless it was upgraded after the attack was known.
Similarly, having a virus-free, up-to-date Win 98 installation does nothing to protect you from attacks not currently known.
A firewall may protect you from such an attack, if the attack requires, e.g., using a port you haven't opened up to the internet at large. But there is by no means a guarantee.
"I agree the U.S. makes the most pollution. The U.S. is also responsible for the most manufacture with the highest worker efficiency"
/GDP 'expert' was arguing on 'Today' (the top UK news programme) and was all like "no, if you'd just agree that this is the correct way to measure, then I wouldn't have to talk to your country like you're a three year old". Surreality to your breakfast table, really.
Well, you see thats the basis of the argument, when you get down to it. The Europeans want to argue from a basis of pollution per head of population, and the Americans (well, Dubya at least) argue that we should measure pollution per unit of GDP. Never the twain shall meet it would appear, to occasionally hilarious results, e.g. the time one
It really boils down to if the argument 'we build more stuff than you, so of course we deserve to generate more pollution' makes sense. Personally, I think its another demonstration of how Bush thinks in terms of companies rather than people, but I'm an outsider so your disagreement is understandable.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Yeah great the first page.. what about the other 4+ pages?
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
It seems that journalists simply don't know who to ask. They'll ask the first person that seems to have credentials. As we all know, credentials don't really mean much, and can give the journalist a false sense of truth. They may be thinking that they are getting a good insight about computer virii, when in fact it is a confused loudmouth with some personal goal that he/she is interviewing.
In Living Color did a skit about this. It involved a journalist who was covering a shooting and as she was looking for someone to interview, she happened to pick out a street punk who went on to describe a ludicrous sequence of events.
"And there you have it..."
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
"I'm Kent Brockman, on the eleven o'clock news tonight... a certain kind of soft drink has been found to be lethal, we won't tell you which one until after sports and the weather with funny Sonny Storm."
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
He is correct. One should use "an" as opposed to "a" when it comes before a vowel such as "U". So saying "an yoo-are-ell" is as correct as saying "an earl".
So, continue laughing, but it's you who's the sorry ass, Webster.
Please, learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'
There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly...
Copy the 'next' link location, paste it into the google search box, view cached copy. Boring, fiddly, but effective.
The fortune cookie I got with this article sort of fit in:
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
The Cluetrain manifesto was talking about individual to individual communication. Talking to the press is centralized to begin with, since the press itself is centralized. The great thing about communication with peers is that it goes both ways and it's always possible to straighten things out if there's misscomunication (which there will be).
With the press that's not possible -- not in any meaningful way, anyway. So sure, have your engineers talk to their engineers, but don't go blabbing to the press because then it's too likely to get out of control.
Absolutely. The sentiment you mention is something I've used quite effectively in opening up people's mind to the garbage that passes for reporting. I explain it like this...
Just about everyone has at least one subject that they know a lot about. I ask them what subject they would say this would be for them, then ask them to think back about any time they may have heard a news report about that subject. Ask some questions about how accurate it was, and if it sounded like it was written by someone with no concept of the issues at hand...
The clincher is this: Given the fact that they got so much wrong about xxxxx, which is a subject you are knowledgeable about, what in the world makes them think reporters are being accurate about those many things you aren't so knowledgeable about?
Vmyths.com has been informative since before the days of the first email^h^h^h^h outlook virus.
Although I suppose viruses are of much less significance amoung thoses here for some reason. I did manage to destroy my windows installation with a Funlove virus recently (thanks Gnutella.....), my Linux partition worked flawlessly until I tried swapping the drive to another computer to try to recover some junk and seem to have physically damaged my 60 gig drive. Ouch! It is under warantee, and I've learned a few more lessons on the importance of keeping good backups.
The trick is to customize your user preferences to filter out the posters you find the least interesting ;)
To put it country simple, Earth has a lot of things other people might want... like the whole planet.
"Viruses' is correct. "Virii" is just a bunch of people thinking they sound smart by ending with a Latin plural ending.
8 comments, and I was on the third page when it stopped responding. A new /. record?
"Don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."
I am of the opinion that the "general public" already knows reporters are full of shit. Their credibility has spiraled down as they've raced to compete with Jerry Springer and the National Enquirer for ratings.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Funny, that's also the definition of "management"
-nd
Hell, for years we were all telling them that you couldn't get a virus from email.
virus.
Second-declension nouns do conjugate thusly:
Modus - modi
Puteus - putei
Malus - mali
Virus does not.
I never reply until I've researched the hoax and/or truth and proven to myself, at least two different ways.
The best way to ruin my credibility is to send out ONE wrong email.
I sign everything I send, including my phone number. If I'm not willing to have my full contact information forwarded to someone else along with my conclusions, it needs more research.
When I don't know the answer, I tell them so. And I recommend they just ignore it.
When I find it's a hoax, I ask them NOT to forward this conclusion until they've done the same research, and are willing to append their own conclusions. The propagation method of all hoaxes is thoughtless, research-free forwarded email.
If it turns out to be true, I make a point of including links to whatever authority I can find.
If it turns out to be false, I include links to at least two web sites that debunk the hoax/myth.
Finally, I almost always recommend that they take a minute to browse the Kumite Virus Hoaxes and Myths web site (seems to be down at the moment but it's a good review of quite a few common hoaxes).
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Dude, you need to take your theory and your Win98 box over to www.grc.com, so you can see just how 'unnecessary' firewalls are.
Well said my friend. :)
Does the False Authority Syndrome include accepting Slashdot stories as fact too?
I know exactly what you mean. I was once involved in making some stock footage of doing chemistry for news clips. It was pretty pathetic. The camera people wanted me to do some things involving interesting colored liquids (colored things look better on TV) but they didn't have to have any relationship to what we actually do in the lab every day. It was done purely to look interesting, not to have any relationship to reality.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
ultracrapidarian: [n, adj] one who gives out more crap beyond his knowledge.
Of course, anyone who is in a study on authority has already accepted the authority of the researcher. Thus, it's hard to study how much people will actually accept authority since the one who don't accept research authority aren't going to stick around to be measured. A paradox, sort-of.
Saying sircam is an Outlook virus is FUD. It is a Windows virus and does not require Outlook
The same exact thing happened to me when the "love bug" cam out. I was at a client's site when he got an email warning about it. I told him it was probably another hoax, but as soon as I got back to my office and fired up the 'net, there it was. I had to call my client back and tell him that I was wrong. The moral? Don't assume that every virus warning is a hoax; do your research first.
vmyths was mentioned in a wired story about 1 week ago, quite informative.
Virus' need hosts
Saying "Code Red" was a computer virus is FUD
it's an IIS virus
saying sircam is a computer virus is FUD it's an Outlook virus
saying Melissa is a computer virus is FUD it's an Outlook virus
(notice a vendor commonality?)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
But that "server software" includes nice little things such as file and print sharing. If you are directly on the net with that turned on, yes, you can be hacked. There was a worm that took advantage of that fact.
> If a loud-enough, sharp-enough sound is pumped through your speakers,
> however, they will blow. While I'm certain that it's not common, no it's
> *not* impossible for 'Cactus' scheme to damage your audio equipment.
While you're technically correct, the big complaint stems from the spreading of the idea that the Cactus CP scheme can do damage to your set the the data stream itself can't. There are many non-technical people that come to me with concerns that Cactus will use some secret juju to destroy the system, not just by producing a noise level capable of damaging the system, and that's why the story annoyed me. If they had said something like, "Cactus causes interference noise on copied CDs, and if your volume level is set high enough, this noise can overload the speakers" I would have found the story informative. As it was, it seemed calculated to misinform.
Virg
Yet one more reason to use the BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and yes, that'll get you UK-focussed news but they're not just aiming for eyeballs for advertisers. I'm delighted that we have something like this and they're probably my primary news source.
Having said that, they still got some home users worried about Code Red...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
did you divide by population? We're not a very populated country...
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Hah! And some people think that slashdotters don't read the stories before they post. Boy, are they wrong or what?
A few days ago, I was involved in a conversation with a computer neophyte after I had been off the net for a few days.
She told me she had heard of a new CD format that was supposed to copy-protect CD's by making them damage your stereo speakers.
Knowing quite a bit about the Red-book standard, I told her that such a format was impossible and that it was almost certainly a hoax.
Once I got back on the net and read about the Macro-vision scheme now in use in thousands of CD's, I had to call her and tell her that I was mistaken.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
That actually happened to me several times last when our normally great ISP was have problems with the telco CO overheating - "Maybe they got that CR virus??" people would say. "No, it's a heat prob in the phone CO, besides our ISP uses Linux which isn't affected by CR".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
"The media is always accurate, except when they're talking about things I know."
It's always a source of amazement to me how many people are capable of maintaining this perspective towards the media. I always try to think back to every single teeth-grinding, knee-gripping instance of media inaccuracy in a tech story whenever I'm exposed to a story on a subject on a topic which is unfamiliar to me.
Kinda reminds me of all the stuff I read here when someone asks a question that should really be asked to a lawyer. However IANAL, but here's my advice anyway...
I'm surprised the contributor didn't mention Rob Rosenberger who more or less coined the phrase and whose site has been devoted to fighting it for ten years now. Or maybe someone farther down the line has already mentioned this? Whatever. Check out http://vmyths.com for a look at FAS at the source.
radsoft.net
One word of advice. _Always_ research the problem for yourself before jumping headfirst into an ocean of hysteria. I've had to correct the sysadmin at my former college because of hoaxes that were sent out by them. This didn't happen just once, either. A little common sense and understanding about how computers do (and don't!) work will help you see through almost all of the hysteria and hype.
At 3 pm (Eastern) today, we have confirmed the existance of a new virus.
This virus is known as the User-Stupidity virus, and is very dangerous, especially to tech support installations.
The virus is propagated by various media outlets, most notably, CNN. The virus propagates by infecting users with fear and terror at imaginary threats (Such as the Internet 'shutting down').
Infected users will then carry out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack upon a tech support installation's phone system, causing all lines to be tied up, and annoying tech support personnel with questions such as, "Did you guys back up the Internet? CNN says it's going to be shutdown by this Code Red thing!"
CNN was unavailible for comment when we attempted to inquire as to the facts of their spreading of this horrible virus.
(And what's with this BlackIce crap? This ain't no Black Ice. Real Black Ice *KILLS* the hoser trying to do bad stuff. I tell ya, that's what we need, countermeasures that fry hardware and kill threats dead. Viva cyberpunk.)
Tell me, do those traits fit you? I bet so.
Idiot.
Why do I say this? I work in a tech center. We do a lot of nifty complicated work usually involving a lot of computers and/or math. It's neat stuff, but not that hard to understand what it is even if you don't understand the details of it. (part prototyping, databases, 3d computer graphics, etc) Because of the kind of work we do, we are something of a showpiece for the company. We get reporters and TV crews coming through all the time. The visits usually go something like this:
Us: Here's this nifty complicated new piece of equipment that is going to help us make widgets faster, better and cheaper.
Then: Uh-huh. Can you turn the lights in the room down and stand over by the blinking lights? We need a picture.
Us: But those lights are the air conditioning system.
Them: Yeah but it looks cool and I didn't understand a word you said anyway.
They also have this peculiar fascination with taking pictures in low light conditions with glowing things. My wife worked in a lab where they used radioactive chemical markers for testing. They wanted to turn the lights down to get a picture of the spectrometer (which wasn't even in use) while showing someone handling radioactive chemicals in the dark. Very safe...
Needless to say, I don't watch the evening news anymore...
from Google
I know this is a little off topic, but not really. It's dealing with the same issue of average old joe, or one who 'knows computers', giving out advice on a matter which they have done not research on or heard from someone else (who also is non-authoritative in the field).
One I hear a lot today is, you need to have a firewall on your computer or you will get HACKED!!! If you have a windows 98 box (i'm not talking about servers here), which is virus free and has the latest patches... You don't need to have a firewall. If you are running no server software or anything that would allow any connections into your computer, you don't have to worry about blocking port 80 and such.
The False authroity syndrome is not just to virii, but it's all over. What I have not found though is a good way to combat it...
And you have failed to explais SUV popularity and how they are becoming the new majority of new vehicles on the road.
See Windows' popularity, and how Microsoft is becoming the new majority of all workstations on the network.
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
You implicitly assume that Salinger was actually wrong - on whose potentially false authority do you believe this? The FBI's? I take it you haven't been paying much attention to their shenanigans lately, or you'd have recognized that believing anything said by any FBI source on any topic whatsoever should be immediately discounted as deliberate disinformation. I don't say Salinger was right, I say only that having the Feebs contradict him publicly does vastly increase the odds that he was on the right track - those morons couldn't find their own Johnsons with both hands.
Ph'nglui mgwlanafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgahnagl fhtagn. Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
I love you google cache!
o :www.vmyths.com/fas/fas1.cfm+&hl=en (remove the space that /. so helpfully adds. ;)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:ahVwga1Oq1
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
that was disturbing. I wonder if Milgram expected the best or the worst while conducting his study?
[o]_O
The first example given (can't read the rest since the site seems to be /.'ed) does seem to be a situation where the person transmitting the information appears authoritative. But the ways in which the computer store staff person got his information was not far from the traditional rumor mill; it's a long-standing fact of history that truth rarely catches up to rumors!
Energy: time to change the picture.
*Nicely* *put* *!*
Stupidity never felt so good.
When you define a system, you imply a work-around. The only completely secure computer system is the one that stays powered down.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Does this ever happen where you work or go to school? I can count on one hand the number of times I have gathered around co-workers (only on one side, wouldn't want to block the camera) while they pointed at a screen. Yet this image has become almost universal in the media's coverage of computers and science!
The Boston Globe did a feature on a place I used to work. They tore the place up, taking pictures and disrupting everything.. and then people read the story thinking they just took candid pictures while everyone was working!
Good way to reply to the clueless troll.
Especially when racing to be the first one with the story. Being the first means higher ratings. Viruses represent a "panic starter" for a fairly large segment of the population. This type of stoy also boosts ratings.
Most unfortunately, ratings is a better guide for the media than the truth.
I think bs is picked up pretty quickly on Slashdot.
To put it country simple, Earth has a lot of things other people might want... like the whole planet.
Maybe. But what about newspapers? If you or I suggested to Joe Sixpack that the regular newspapers (not the national enquirer) have factually wrong information, would he believe us? He'd probably think you and I were full of shit!
their server is toast.
This is Bob Abooey posting as anonymous coward to maintain by karma. Thank you.
I'll bet any money that you hate yourself as much as we hate you. Smooches, darling.
Hmm, being a physicist i even know how that superheated water thing works, you can heat water a little above the boiling point without it becoming steam. Only when you disturb it it will boil. Until then it's in an instable equilibrium state. The effect is even used in Bubble chambers: the disturbance by a charged particle is enough to result in a track of bubbles, thus making the particle visible (but be sure to get the timing of that photo right, or you could as well take a photo of your teapot). In chemistry we even learned to put something with an irregular surface in a testing tube before heating it, because it doesn't need a microwave for the effect, nor water. Any liquid being heated 'carefully' enough (and in a container with smooth enough surfaces e.g. glass) will do.
So i wouldn't have discounted that superheated water story anyway. But that also means, before accepting or discounting such a story one should think if one has expertise on the subject. By dismissing it all as a hoax you became the false authority. It's rather better to say "Well i don't know about that, i have to know more before making a statement", maybe followed by "but i don't believe in it". It's ok to have an opinion about the credibility of a statement, but it should be marked thus.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
But you know you're going to get a reply to that from some USAian about our socialist, goverment controlled, anti-freedom, blah, blah, blah media!!
I fully agree with you though, you can't go wrong with the beeb for news.
Check out this article from Newsweek which is typical of this kind of stuff. My favorite part is the paragraph about "Steve Gibson, a respected info-security guru". Respected? Yeah, right! The rest of the article is good for a laugh, especially when the writer sits down to test BlackIce Defender.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
After a short vacation from work, my cubical was decorated with 23 post-it notes. How Fun!!! Each one had a different "Virus" name on it.
Well, I simply went to Cert and Norton's Virus Site to find out what was spoof, and what was true. And the next day, my Supervisor got a treat in his cube, all 23 post-it notes with the url from the respective place declaring it as a hoax. That was fun. And you know what, I have yet to see another post-it note in my cube again.
On another note, I used to work for Office Max. And yes, I did tell people when I thought what they were discribing sounded like a virus. What did I tell them? Pick up a copy of a virus scanner, buy or download off the net, I didn't care. But I told them to do me one favor. Tell me what came of it. If they told me it didn't have a virus, then I told them to send it in. If they did have a virus, I kept a log of what virii were in town. And you know what, people still didn't believe me when I told them I don't have a virus scanner. And I use Win98, Win2k.
(I know it sounds like I'm patting my self on the back, but trust me, there are good salespeople out there who are not just looking to make sales. So listen to what they say, and don't be an idiot. Some know what they are doing. Now that I'm done ranting, and raving, and this is moded down, I might be able to view the story)
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
The Fortune 100 corporation I work for (and I'm sure others like it) don't help either. I notice frequent virus warnings on our intranet that are often completely wrong. Someone in our IT department is spreading this stuff, so everyone in the company believes it (damn MCSE's).
If they weren't able to figure out how to get to the main google.com page, they're not going to read the whole article anyway. Thanks for the hash key tip though, I ended up doing the 9 searches (the fired guy too) to see it all.
In that respect, we are fighting the same battle. Best of luck to ya!
Maybe I should have been more clear... I have run into users in my shop that clear their temp files every time they exit their browser... And in one case, every half hour or so while working in Word!
False authority, eh? Now I know why I'm constantly hearing "Joe told me that I could speed things up by cleaning out my temporary Internet files... He an expert. He works in the computer/electronics department at Office Depot." from the owners of GHz machines with 80% of their disk space free.
*The News* is not necessarily about informing you of anything important. *The News* is about selling your eyeballs to advertisers. *The News* has therefore got to grab your attention and get your eyeballs in front of the advertising. You can always print a 'correction' on page 3, or just nevermind that 'facts' got 'distorted' in the 'reporting'.
It seems to me that this could be used to focus attention on the DMCA and other important, but non-sexy issues. We just have to come up with new wording that grabs attention.. Hm .. I dunno, can you relate the DMCA's limits on reproduction to sex?
air and light and time and space
Or maybe this is that even more insidious virus/worm I've been hearing about, the /. effect...
I got the email about superheated water from your microwave, and how it could explode. Wrote back explaining, "No, mom. It's just another one of those hoaxes I keep telling you about." Sheesh, when will she learn.
Fast forward two weeks, I'm watching TV and see this interesting video ...
Well damn, how about that. [dial dial dial ... ring ... ring ]
Umm yeah, Mom? Sorry. You were right ...
Nope, no sig
The author does seem to have a valid rant, as far as I can tell. But I don't see the problem ending any time soon because it makes big money for the media.
The only way, in my eyes, of fixing the situation is to educate the general public so that they know when they are hearing BS from reporters. This way, news agencies would be forced to turn to people with the proper qualifications for information. But will this happen? Unlikely, there has never been much money in general public education.
I have a feeling i've read this srtical before - before /. was on the net even. If not, I know I've read most of the anicdotes.
It's "Viruses" not "Virii." Yes, i know it sounds cool to end with an -i, and plenty of other people use virii, but let's try to nip this goofy spelling in the bud. In the interest of the facts, of course.
The celebrity bit isn't terribly surprising. Aren't there a vast number of widely-distributed rags dealing solely with celebrity gossip? Celebs generally seem to crave publicity... and so do many Congressmen, and various talking heads. Put the two together, and except for the really serious-minded -- there may be Congressmen who are serious enough that, say, being lectured by Gere on Chinese diplomatic relations or Streisand on firearms would offend them or J. Random Celebrity on the need to concentrate research funding on HIV -- it's a win-win for them. Voters apparently don't care sufficiently, or if they do, it's treated as a positive, not negative; perhaps they appreciate seeing their favorites.
Remember, it's a world in which romance novels outsell every other genre, if memory serves. Readers know it's often trash, but they'll eat it up anyway.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Site unreachable..
and only half a dozen comments on here..
is that a record?
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Flamebait me if you want, Offtopic as it be, but don't you hate it when all sorts of Theories are tought as fact (chough...darwin..chough).
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
How about "Congressional Law Limits Reproductive Rights"? The headline alone would get a huge chunk of the US population up in arms.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
And seeing CBC (the national broadcaster and far-and-away the most popular television news here)coverage of Code Red was particularly painful.
In the entire lead story on Code Red all that was mentioned was that there was a computer virus about to take down the internet. No mention of IIS, of course, or Win2K, or Macintosh or linux....
EXCEPT TO SAY that "for users running Microsoft Windows there is a patch available."
The impression given (to anyone who knows that there are other computers out there besides ones running Microsoft Windows) was that windows owners were the only safe ones out there. (at least MS was on-the-ball enough to have a patch out, you see. No other company was nearly as up-to-date or concerned with internet security.)
It was almost painful to watch.
read this
Everyone should keep telling themselves this: Anything you see on TV is for the purpose of entertaining you. If it happens to inform you about something, then good for it, but it wasn't intentional.
I was watching the evening news about a week ago, and they did a report on Code Red. It was actually pretty informative, as the reporter seemed to have done his homework, but when it came back to the anchors it all went downhill. The conversation between the reporter and anchor went something like this: Anchor: So, what people out there should understand is that microsoft has solved the code red problem and there is no reason to worry. Reporter: Well....Microsoft has released a fix for the problem so that computer administrators can now protect their computers from future infection, but I wouldn't say they have solved the problem. Anchor: So Code Red is still ravaging computer networks and microsoft cannot keep up, is that right? Reporter: Well, its now in the hands of the computer administrators to apply the fix. Anchor: And why is it that microsoft cannot apply the fix, seeing as it is their software? Reporter: ...
Anchor: (puzzled, concerned look) If I have Code Red on my computer, as an example, could microsoft not fix the problem for me?
Reporter: ...well...they could give you the fix, and you could apply it.
Anchor: This computer business is really over my head, I tell ya! I'm sure all the computer people out there know what you're saying...but heck I can't even find the power button on my PC. One of these days, these computers will rule the earth, and people like me will be left far behind (laughing).
Reporter: (dumbfounded look on his face) ...
At any rate, even if the US were no worse than other industrialized nations (which isn't true, but for the sake of argument, suppose it was), that still doesn't invalidate the need for a treaty. The point is that industrialized nations in general are emitting too much, and everybody has to reduce. The Kyoto treaty calls for everyone to meet certain targets, including other industrialized countries such as those in Europe. It's not as though the US is being asked to stick to a tougher target than anyone else.
The only way it's possible to argue that the US shouldn't sign up to the Kyoto treaty is if you don't buy into global warming as problem and carbon emissions as a cause of that problem. If that's the argument you want to make, then fine, make it. But don't try to pretend that the US doesn't really emit too much carbon, because on any reasonable measure it emits the most in the world.
That kind of reminds me of the X-Files episodes with the dark mood-lighting in in operating rooms. Wheras, in actual surgery, you have large floodlights, and want as much light as possible.
Code Red must have gotten to it before us...
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
You desire for control reveals your fear of freedom. You obviously need to have outside sources of security in order to feel secure about your position/life. So what if you do not control what other people can say or do? The desire for accountability you express reveals that you fear other peoples freedom. Move to China or Cuba, you will feel more at home.
I'm tempted to buy one myself so when a soccer mom yelling at her kids in the back seat slams into me, I'm not killed. ;)
Just hope it dosn't roll over
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
A good firewall helps by enforcing protocols, and refusing to pass unknown protocols without explicit configuration by the adminstrators.
The ultimate example of this are the various products which allow you to 'profile' the normal requests and system calls of a product, and will block anything outside of the profile.
By careful enforcement of 'least privledge' and protocol-specific proxies, a firewall can protect against attacks that are not yet known.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Wasn't that the Suzuki Samurai?
"27 city, 35 highway. Your number of barrelrolls may vary." - Johnny Carson
Okay, I know this is probably a troll, but I'll bite. A quick glace at the EPA website shows that the US is currently responsible for 24% of the world's carbon emissions. The US has far less than that proportion of the world population. Per head of population, the US is the world's biggest polluter.
Please, please, please learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'
There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly, alright?
The US does have one quarter of the world's population OF INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS.
Deleting the temporary internet files DOES speed up your system. Lots of little files on FAT32 bogs the system down and results in increased overhead from manageing the FAT itself. It also leads to increased virtmem fragmenetation, which is a "Real Bad Thing."
beyond just computer virii, this makes me wonder what really can be trusted comming from anyone with some knowledge on a subject that i have little or none.
/. like the think that they are a god send to the computer industry and know more then anyone else (as i do myself sometimes), but that dosent mean you know all about the weather, now i know why the forcast is always wrong! ;^)
i know that many of the people that post on
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
Indeed. But we do not conjugate all words of Latin origin as the Latins did. BTW, if we did, the plural of virus would be viri, not virii.
> What we need is some kind of identification
> verification procedure online. Not only would
> this destroy the virus scares, but it would
> also limit spam and help to track down child
> molestors.
HAILSTORM! I'm sure as soon as Microsoft has fully implemented their system, "crime" on the internet will cease to exist. can't believe noone has realized this.
The fact that the "teachers" in this experiment thought they were truly inflicting pain
That was exactly what I was calling into question. They hesitated and protested because they thought they might have been causing damage. The fact was that they weren't causing damage, and you can't say with certainty that they believed, in the balance of things, that they were causing damage.
They had many reasons to believe they weren't causing damage. First of all, it's a psychological experiment run by a reputable university. You expect all manner of wierdness, you don't expect maiming and killing; normal standards of recognizing an emergency would be suspended. Secondly, the torture scenario makes no sense at all. If the experimenter wanted to torture the subject, he could simply press the button himself, he didn't need help, and he was certainly in a better position to judge whether the subject was in danger. Evil is not sufficient to explain the situation, it would take a very bizarre, unheard-of form of insanity (have you ever heard of anything remotely like a maniac who hired someone and stood by them and tricked them into activating a device which tortures or kills their victim?); even a practical joke is a thousand times more likely. In the board-operator's mind, we're really looking at a dilemma: it sounds like the person's being hurt, but nothing else about the situation allows the possibility that the person is really being hurt (the readings on the intensity scale are subject to many interpretations; it only sounds ominous because it is presented as such).
However, the root reason to doubt that they believed they were causing damage is that there was no damage. Deception is hard. People take in hundreds of subtle indicators when evaluating the honesty of a claim, and they were taking direction from a person who knew exactly what was going on. The above reasons are just two more particularly obvious flaws of a poorly planned deception, there would unavoidably be many more, when trying to create such a ridiculous perception in the mind of the subjects.
Those who quit didn't do so because they were certain that they would cause serious damage to someone, and decided they didn't want to contribute to it. Instead, they knew something very weird was going on, knew that they were being deceived in one way or another, and didn't want to play along any more.
Note: damage. A little non-damaging pain is not a big deal. We put up with it when we get a needle or when we exercise or for a hundred other routine things. If your doctor told you to hold your child's arm while he inserted the needle, you'd do it, and not worry because it was a little pain for a good reason. If these people could be offended at the idea of causing mere pain in a consenting individual, they would have left as soon as their role was revealed, and the decision to ever press the button would be the big .
This is simply not science. It's a political statement at best, psychological torture at worst.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
> t's been my experience that people who think that online etiquette
> is not required are usually young, immature, and undereducated boys.
> Tell me, do those traits fit you? I bet so.
Over 30, college degree, father of two. You decide whether to pay up on the bet. You should also realize that "not required" and "never appropriate" are not one and the same thing by my argument.
Virg
An entire conversation started which had nothing to do with what I had posted.
/etc = "et-sea" and so on).
Therefore, "an URL" is to be pronounced "an earl" (as though URL were a pronounced acronym), and "a URL" is to be pronounced "a you-are-ell."
Considering I write the way I think and speak(slowly and with the use of the word "duhhhhhhhhhh..." frequently) I thought "an URL" was appropriate. I was writing as though in a conversation with others who would use similar pronunciation (named = "name-d",
Ceci n'est pas une sig.