Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit

BokLM writes "Wired has an interesting article from Bruce Schneier about what's happening with the Sony Rootkit, and criticizing the anti-virus companies for not protecting its users. From the article: 'Much worse than not detecting it before Russinovich's discovery was the deafening silence that followed. When a new piece of malware is found, security companies fall over themselves to clean our computers and inoculate our networks. Not in this case.'"

Comments

A thought experiment

[Dim Undercellar]

I remember reading an article, a long time ago, in "Psychology Today", entitled something like "The Soulmate Myth". It's about how people these days seem worried about settling down. They worry they'll miss a better opportunity if they throw in their lot with the relationship partner directly in front of them. Combine that with the oft-spoken idea that when it comes to relationships you should never "settle", and you get a recipe for a lot of trouble and angst.

It can really make you wonder. Should we ever "settle", in an ideal world, for a relationship partner who's "just good enough"? Or should we wait for our "perfect match", who may or may not exist?

The question is entirely academic, for scholars and philosophers, but it's important to consider the following:

What makes a "perfect match" for you?

To answer that question, I'd like you all to conduct a thought experiment in your head.

Build, in your mind, your PERFECT partner. From scratch. Imagine this perfect person. Imagine how an interaction with this person would go. Imagine how a first date with this person would go. Don't worry about putting in qualities your wife/husband /girlfriend/boyfriend has just to keep it politically correct; this is strictly for your own edification, not for me to judge you by.

Now open up Notepad or MS Word or grab a sheet of paper and write down what you came up with. Shred it later, if you don't want your spouse to find it. Again, it's not my thought experiment.

I'm serious, I REALLY want you to do this. I promise that it can be enlightening and fun. Forget what you believe society is telling you that you're supposed to want and just pay attention to what you actually want.

Now, I'm going to ask you a series of questions about your perfect spouse. Write down the answers for your personal notes because, again, this is about individual edification.

Did you start with a personality? A voice? A sense of humor? A political ideology? Something else non-physical? Or did you start out with a body type? Hair color? Eye color? Bicep size? Breast size? Anything else physical?

Is your initial interaction sexual? Are sex and sexuality primary components of what it takes to be "perfect" for you, or secondary, or tertiary? Do the physical sexual acts they'd be willing to perform factor into your image? Is your "perfect spouse" of a particular sexual orientation (for example, bisexual)?

For those of you who even considered physical appearance, does the person physically resemble someone you've seen in a media context? An actor/actress, a singer, a talk show host, a sports persona (Woo, I know what the ladies are thinking: John Madden! POW!), a comic book character, a news anchor, a model, a porn star? Did you take a relatively famous person and graft the "perfect" personality onto them?

Does this person physically resemble your current partner or prospective partner, if applicable?

Does this person's personality resemble that of your current partner or prospective partner, if applicable?

If you were to build, in the same manner, a "perfect friend who you would never ever be sleeping with in married to", would that person in any way resemble your "perfect spouse"? If so, how? If not, why not?

How likely is your "perfect spouse" to actually exist, in terms of personality?

How likely is your "perfect spouse" to actually exist, in terms of physical attributes?

Is one of the first thoughts you have when contemplating those last two questions: "Someone like that would never have anything to do with ME anyway..."? (Hint: If so, that means you're not really focusing on creating their personality so much as their physical appearance, since someone with a "perfect personality" for you would probably, by definition, like you.)

Hey, no need to get defensive. I can already hear a lot of people, mostly men, gearing up to justify their "perfect spouse" image and make it seem less incriminating than it might otherwise seem

Re:A thought experiment

[suzerain]

I think it's a big pseudopsychological masturbation-fest from some asshole who can't control his porn watching habits, and feels that he has a "problem", so he deals with it by concocting this big bullshit treatise on the perfect partner as a way of dealing with his problem.

Re:A thought experiment

[Fordiman]

I can't argue with most of this, mostly because most of it is untestable (in scientific terms, they refer to such things as either "bunk" or "theoretical physics").

I will point out, however, that my mom told me a story about once, when I was a baby of less than a year old, I was in a shopping cart while she was getting some items from the aisle. Another woman with large breasts came by to coo over my baby form, and I reached right up to these breasts, rubbing them and saying, "ooooh, pwetty".

I'm pretty sure I'd never seen porn that young. No, they weren't my first words (those started in full sentences at 6 months).

As for the bisexual/threesome idea. It's something that comes from logical thought without inserting the "human element". Example in C++:

If (I->LikesWomen() && She->LikesWomen())
{
try (ShareWoman()) or catch(BackPedal(LIKE_A_MANIAC));
}

In other words, if sexual exclusion is not present in one person, the logical conclusion for the other person, being a sexually driven creature, would likely be to broach the topic of bringing in a third party. Or fourth.

What this sexually driven person sometimes doesn't realize is that there is the strong possibility that their partner wants monogamy, not more sex. Nor does this person realize that their competition has in fact doubled - but that's easily driven by internal denial.

"Assuming for the moment that men are NOT just naturally sex-crazed misogynists who only want to use women as a sex class"

Clue for you: Teenaged-thru-25-year-old boys and men ARE naturally sex-crazed. Chalk that up to millions of years of evolution. Sorry, but you're a member of a race that's survived on the extreme need for reproduction. While sex doesn't necessarily lead to reproduction these days, that doesn't stop the desire for it.

Meanwhile, why you be trolling with the offtopic shit, yo? This isn't gamegirl or women's weekly. It's Slashdot. We talk about technology and related issues, not prudish sexual philosophy.

Re:A thought experiment

[Fordiman]

Oh, and for a possible reason for the attractiveness of large breasts: Click here

And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google stock breaks $400 per share. Who wants to bet that'll be the next story on the front page?