Slashdot Mirror
Jane's Intelligence Review Lauds Slashdot Readers as Cyberterrorism Experts
Open source meets open source
What happens when you throw together open source intelligence (intelligence from non-classified sources) and the online open source movement? Jane's Intelligence Review (JIR), a leading specialist security analysis did just this, and the results were an eye-opener for all parties concerned. Writes Johan J Ingles-le Nobel, JIR Deputy Editor:
When you're confronted with a prospective article about cyberterrorism, as a journalist you know this is a massive emerging topic and that it will make a great story. After all, you've got to be both blind and deaf to have missed the unprecedented emergence of this thing known as the Internet, and that the day will come when, like anything else, it comes to be seen as a tool in the armoury of those that seek to harm and terrorise. Yet the very nature and vocabulary of the subject precludes a thorough understanding unless you're a programmer in the first place. Buffer overflows, denial of service, CGI, 128 bit encryption - such words are all anathma to the layman, yet crucial to a good article on the issue.
"JIR's choice at this point, upon receiving the article, was tough. It's great to get copy from someone you know to be very good on terrorism on this subject, but upon reading the article left me with more questions than answers - and questions that only qualified people could answer properly. I'm not referring to shallow 'such and so defaced a website' type of answers, but thoughtful responses metered with specialist knowledge. So what better way to find answers than to go online, to seek out expertise on the subject?
Unfortunately, finding good information online is not nearly as easy as it should be. Thankfully, months earlier I'd noticed a link to Slashdot posted on a web-hosting service owned by a friend of mine, and having followed the link, bookmarked it a long time ago. Thus, upon receiving the article and personally researching cyberterrorism to find out a bit more on the subject and having been alerted to the fact that a) Linux is the best 'programmer's' o/s environment, b) many webservers use Linux and c) you're looking at expertise in both these areas for sensible answers, there was really no choice but to ask the guys that actually do this stuff for advice.
In retrospect, I'm delighted that I did. 250+ comments and 35 emails from psychologists to network analysts, and from Sun engineers to Cambridge Dons later, The responses have been insightful and knowledgable, with many excellent points made. I've even had a lot of 'thank-you' type letters from computer security professionals for trying this approach. Of course, when you ask for feedback you get feedback - and since roughly 99% of the posters slammed the article, even saying things like 'we'd expect better from Jane's', I've informed the author that we're not going to run with it. Instead I'm going to cull your comments together and make a better, sharper feature out of it - I'll be getting in touch with several of you for more specific details or for more clarification. The article will thus go into December issue (published middle of November), I'll arrange to have it put onto the free section of the Jane's Intelligence Review website (yes, you do all get to see it, of course), and if you find your comments included, contact me at johan.ingles@janes.co.uk for payment at our usual lineage rates (yes, of course you get paid - after all, we are gentlemen).
In summary: wherever you may be and whatever you may do, a big 'thanks, guys' comes your way from just south of London, England.
Johan J Ingles-le Nobel,
Johan.ingles@janes.co.uk,
Jane's Intelligence Review.
For those of you who don't know me, I also work under the name "Anonymous Coward". For all those constructive posts I submitted for the Jane's article, I'm willing to accept the money (that's rightfully mine, of course). :)
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
A classy response from what seems like a rather classy guy. Plaudits to Jane's.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Jane's has just gained LOTS of respect from me. This is the responsible thing to do. Instead of allowing some "Journalist" write about what he *thinks* about computer security they are going with people who KNOW what they're talking about.
How many of us have taken part in "Crack this Machine" contests? Granted most of us didn't win, but we all had good ideas about security that needed to be tested.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It was bad, I hope you didn't have to pay him a Kill Fee (a percentage of what the aurthor would normally have been paid, if the article is 'killed', usually very hard to get.)
It's kind of odd that you're looking to slashdot for this sort of thing about cyber terrorism, I mean theres really not that much of a story behind it and quite frankly I don't see how theres a story here at all, it's like the "cyberwar" between Pakistan and India, it has an effect but it's negligable if one side does anything.
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
Oh, that should definitely be cited in the article. "The difficulty with intrusion detection is the prospect of compromise to those components of the system necessary to detect the intrusion to begin with," said I.L. Milne, an expert at Purdue University's research center. Added one Slashdot reader on the topic, "First post."
Well, this is an interesting use of the Slashdot Community. We've taken a small step from a 'Feedback' community to actually generating stories. This could actually lead to something interesting..
Perhaps a section of slashdot for proposed stories to be discussed, with actual stories being a summary of comments, etc..
"From the Community, FOR the community"
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I would propose that any fees owed to the AC's of slashdot be donated to the FSF
That people OTHER than script kiddies hang out on Slashdot?
AC Script Kiddie Wannabe (just kidding)
I am interested to see how they will actually get this article written. Will it be a survey-style article organised by topic (eg. section of the availabe technologies, subsection crypotography discussing the balance of powers between white hats and black hats)?
It might not be a bad idea to put together a web resource of of the quality information available on electronic terrorism and countermeasures.
I didn't post on the cyberterrorism thread because by the time I got there all my points had already been made. Several times. B-> But congratulations to those who will be quoted in Jane's.
It will be interesting to see if this starts a trend. But on the other hand, they used to say "Go not to the USENET for counsel, for they will say both no, and yes, and `That's already answered in the FAQ, and..." (Or something like that.) And that was pre-AOL, pre-spam, pre-The-September-That-Never-Ended.
But, on the gripping hand (wow, Tolkein and Niven/Pournelle refs in the same post!), /.'s moderation would seem to help the best, most informative posts bubble to the top in such a discussion.
It would be interesting to set up a consulting organization along these lines. Or maybe even use the existing /. infrastructure.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I think that this is great. Having been a long time reader of /. I have begun to realize the depth and insight of the other readers/posters.
We are journalists, in a strange twisted way. We report what we know to educate others. Doing it in this sort of fashion, I beleive, is an amazing idea and concept.
I am begining to think that having this be open sourced is even more important than having open source software. Software completes tasks, but it does not shape and form our views on a subject. I t is about time that a place takes recognition of the importance of the community effort. People can not pull the wool over the eyes of many, not without a fight.
May the open source movement migrate into and improve all things.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Of course, every piece produced would have to have the obligatory yea linux, down with microsoft, anything but open source sucks comments somewhere.
Just inflate the egos here even more!
I think this is a great commentary on how influencial Slashdot is becoming in mainstream media. It has evolved from nerd hang out to the place to see what is on the cutting edge. Something that created the dreaded Slashdot effect produced an article that was written by hundreds of people. The ultimate in bringing ideas together.
The future will only bring more of this type of group editing to the forefront of the media. I look forward to being part of it.
Kudos to Jane's for having the balls to do this and congrats to the REAL experts gettting some recognition.
jas
http://packetnexus.com
This is an OUTSTANDING feat! Not only did Slashdot get recognition in a (fairly) respected mag, the freely-given replies were judged *better* than those of a professional, paid writer.
If you contributed (I regret I did not) then slap yourself on the back and treat yourself to a beer. Hell of a good job, humans.
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
Dear Janes,
Now that Slashdot has helped you out, do you suppose you could talk to Electronic Arts and get them to release Janes' Fighter's Anthology and Janes' Israeli Air Force for Linux?
Sincerely,
Patrick Draper - a big fan
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Well, who knows... worth a shot to give my own $.02 about it. However, I seriously do commend the Jane's editor for deciding to do this- using replies from a whole community and putting it into a magazine. Good idea; I personally was thinking of doing the same with the article yesterday about ethical/moral repercussions of euthanizing disabled infants. There was plenty of good discussion and if I was the editor of any magazine (HINT HINT) I would place all of the 2-level comments (or 3, if you're pressed for space) in an article of my mag. Just personal taste though. There was a lot of good discussion yesterday...
About CT, though- the main problem is that the general public at large uses Windows, and by it's nature Windows is insecure. For example, (and I konw that this was cited in the original, after reading the comments) Back Orifice. Yes, most of us here wouldn't touch it (at least, I doubt that most of you would) but the idea behind BO (and BO2K) is that it was written using STANDARD API's in Windows. Under UNIX, without any kind of user access, it is (AFAIK) exremely difficult to have a program installed in user-space (the BOserver) and through that program, remotely control the system without having any user access. If you can dupe the user into running any kind of trojan or the server itself (come on, imagination- if an email came from "techsupport@microsoft.com" with a heading "Security update for " and an attachment (the BOserver), how many clueless windows users would download and run it without thinking?
The idea that it was implemented with standard API's and from user space (giving the remote user even more control than the local user has) scares me. Good thing I don't run Windows... lots of lamers at school use BO for fun. But imagine MS's plan in full execution- WinNT or Win2000 (whatever they're calling it now) on EVERY DESKTOP IN EVERY ORGANIZATION. There are ways of remotely executing code, you know. And this tool (BO2K) is one of the reasons that governments worldwide don't use Windows. Period.
Kudos to Jane's. It's not only good that they asked for comments, and are taking note of what they received, but also that they're offering to reward those whose contributions are being published. Has anyone published an article in this way before? It's the first of its kind that I've encountered. I wonder what threshold Johan J Ingles-le Nobel had his preferences set to, or whether the comments were summarised for him.
Several points about the method come to mind. Firstly, how are they intending to honour payment to people who made particular points or comments, when their points may be rephrased (and hence made unrecognisable, even if the point is still understandable) for editorial reasons, or when several people may have made the same point?
Hmm, I remember articles a while back about how to properly distribute books, essays and monologues electronically, and still receive payment for them. It's a shame this method can't be used more frequently - it relies too much on simple honesty.
Can an article still have coherency, and a clear point, when the person collating all the points may not have as much expertise in the subject area as those that submitted the information? It's not easy to create a coherent article if the subject isn't your own, even if you have a series of excellent references. I'm not knocking the people at Jane's, I just see it as a difficult task to form the mass of /. comments into a single article that would fit in magazine format.
Good effort.
S.Too bad I was out of town when that article appeared, otherwise, I'd have thrown my $1.95 in (inflation is a bitch)..
/. , and the majority of them have a lot of errors, misinformation, FUD, etc.. While we can easily tear them apart here in comments, those comments are not read by the majority of the mass public who read these articles and do not read /. Therefore, they don't have the whole truth of the story, and their thinking is biased based on the crap the news media puts out.
/. IMO, is the simple fact that you get one of the largest collection of intelligent people on the planet coming together to give you the truth behind the headlines. Sure, you get some crap thrown in there because of the open nature of it, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it? If I want to know the truth behind the latest news, I simply check /. and turn on the moderation. Even if it's not the whole truth, it sure is a bunch of interesting informed opinions.
:-)
Still, after having read the original article now, and all the comments, I'm glad someone is at least doing it right.
We read all these articles (usually by big name news sources) that get posted to
The best thing about
Truly the future of journalism.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If I'm not wrong the magazine intends to pay those whos comment have been included in the final article. I'd be intrested to know how this kind of a task can be done without risking privacy of the users.
;-)
I don't mind malda giving out the actual email addresses, however I hope malda knows what comes next.
However, yes, I am very delighted to know something like this happened, and hope that the magazine also sends some contribution to malda for the website
rkt
>Thankfully, months earlier I'd noticed a link to Slashdot
....
>having been alerted to the fact that a) Linux is the best 'programmer's' o/s environment, b) many webservers use Linux and c) you're looking at expertise in both these areas for sensible answers, there was really no choice but to ask the guys that actually do this stuff for advice.
Really? I like slashdot not because of Linux and webservers but because of;
1. Low noise to signal
2. Get my Karma up to boost my ego.
3. To vote for "Hemos/JarJar Sux".
Oh, and thank you for asking for my/our opinion.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
(which is unlikely),
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
then "Cited as computer security expert by Jane's Intelligence Review" is going right on my resume. That has got to impress some perspective employers...
-
Although it's right of her to offer money for compensation, my (personal) opinion is that we shouldn't accept it. We contribute to slashdot cause that's what we do, not because we get paid. I think we should apply this to this situation and happily thank jane for the offer, but smile and say no thanks.
If this becomes a regular thing, which I'm all for, and as some are suggestiong, this does bring up a different issue. That can be addressed later though.
Kudos to Jane's. But what about other slashdot articles? I think that in order to get a complete veiw for their article Jane's should check out the slashdot archives as well. There are a number of interesting points brought up in archived posts that were not mentioned in the "Jane's needs you help" posts from two days ago. They may have been outside Jane's questions, but they are still valid.
A quick slashdot search for cyberterrorism yields:
FIDNET, Cyberwarfare, and Reality
CIA Considering Cyberwarfare
Pentagon Cyber Wars
Hackers Against LoU Cyberwarfare
They need a nice big picture. For example, interesting information on what is going on in the hacker community could come from the "Hackers Against LoU" article.
And wasn't there an article somewhere about the US Military running a massive test crack against themselves last summer? If I remember correctly, one of their teams managed to get into the systems of a Navy Destroyer?
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
New poll, who makes the most money from Slashdot.
/. is now profitable. I would hate to think I waste my time on /.. Now, if I could only earn money from reading /.. Maybe some some day, /.'ed will mean "get windfall of cash". Nah.
/. can distribute/share.
I'm glad
Seriously, I would like to echo everyone elses support for Jane's approach. I think this article will be very informative and demonstrate the type of knowledge
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Now THAT is the funniest thing I've read all morning. :)
For all we know, this is just a plot to get the names/addresses of people the military would consider cyber-terrorist threats so they know whose phone to tap, etc.
In the early days of the web, there were fewer sites and finding information on the web was straightforward. Your favourite bookmarks covered what you wanted, and search engines covered the rest quickly. Now, there are a lot more sites, and a lower signal/noise ratio with a lot of irrelevent content. There are vast lists of sites covering similar topics, and search engines can't keep up. Result? People are switching to portals, or using more particular search engines.
Journalism it seems has to go down a smiliar path. Speed matters for a story, but accuracy and research count highly. Previously, you had journalists who were experts in their own field, and you had a breathing space to do research before the story went to the printing press. In this day and age, with news sites on line, stories break at "internet speed". Hence, reasearch needs to be as quick. Also, with the amount of new developments it's impossible to keep up to date with everything. Result? do an "Ask slashdot" for info, and you'll get a very quick response from several people that know what they are talking about, several revelent links to the subject matter, and a general view of how the topic is viewed on the ground.
It's an excellent method and a lot better than reissuing the same myths that seem to propagate. I think Janes should be commended on a big step in the right direction.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
in which perhaps the most salient point was made by an individual styling himself The Glorious MEEPT, who said simply, "MEEPT!"
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
This might sound like a nitpick, but when it's a public collaboration producing an article or report, let's call it something other than "open source".
"Open source" grates on me when it is used like that - it implies a "source" that is more accessible than the final product. This makes perfect sense in software, where there is human-readable source and then there are machine-readable instructions. Opening the source lets people see the inner workings and change them around.
What we have here is a great new way of putting minds together to make an accurate, insightful document. In this case though, it is more about the new ease with which outside opinions can be solicited and incorporated than with the "open" nature of it. After all, anyone that sees the final product also sees the "source" - they are one and the same.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Mr Ingles,
I think doing the article this way is asking for excessive digression -- at this stage. Take a look at the comments posted already. The best way (in my opinion--feel free to disregard this) to approach this is to **first** provide an editorial structure, or scaffolding, if you will, of topics in this area you want to consider. Then ask Slashdotters their opinions on the subject areas. If you don't provide at least **some** editorial guidance your job will be made a hell of a lot harder.
Just my devalued two cents' Canadian
twilight
(yah, I know my sig's screwed up!)
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
They often quote us Anonymous Cowards in their articles, usually picking the most offensive ones and making it seem like Anonymous Cowards are representative of everyone here. As if what WE say means anything!
What an ironic post. Anyways, one of the reasons I love slashdot is that there is (fairly) good signal to noise... There are a lot of very intelligent people (experts, even) reading /. and weighing in with their opinions. Why do you read it?
Well, this is an interesting use of the Slashdot Community. We've taken a small step from a 'Feedback' community to actually generating stories. This could actually lead to something interesting..
/. community as source. Next thing you know (and this was actually my first thought, upon seeing the JIR article post), "someone" (person, corporation, organization, etc.) will come in and do a psychological study of how the /. community works.... :-)
/. to become so influential that they decided to analyze and model us, and to encourage more groups to share as we do (except for some of the crankier posts, which I'll admit I've made some of myself... sorry!)
So, they're writing an article about cyberterrorism using the
(and of how close I get to being kicked out at times, I'll imagine.
But seriously, that would be interesting; for
just my penny for the day
Insert mind here.
Clearly, Jane is top of their field for a good reason. They know how to innovate and pick up their source from new, yet very pertinent origins.
I sincerely hope that other companies follow this trend. Slashdot is a watering hole for many experts on various subjects, and that, and not prestige or visibility is what determines the validity of an opinion!
How many can claim to pay for good information, even if it comes from someone posting as "Anonymous Coward" on a public bulletin board?
I applaud this, and hope we see more of it in the future.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Note the line: if you find your comments included, contact me at ...
No one is going to be giving out anyone's email address. It is up to you to claim responsiblity for your comments, should you find them in use.
I hope no one abuses Jane's generocity; they are acting in a very responsible and classy manner, as far as I'm concerned.
--Xar
Jane's has always been the definitve source of military intelligence for the layman. Now that CyberTerrorism is approaching reality, Jane's will have to maintain their stanards in a new field.
I am personally delighted that Jane's refused to contribute to the general FUD campaign that the mainstream media. It is refreshing to be able to find a publication that is willing to go to the source (pun intended) tp get it's information.
I can only hope the Znet, Dvorak, CNN and [insert FUD factory here] take notice and try to make a new trend.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
someone should notify the major news services about this, it sounds like something they would pick up. Not that Slashdot needs the publicity, but it's a cool story that demonstrates the value of open discussion about these kind of things.
.^
^.
It tool all of one visit to get me hooked. Great content, funny crackpots, expert opinion, hey look Ma, it's "New Media"!
+&x
Slashdotters should not except any money from Jane's. If Jane's wants to be generous and express their gratitude, the money should go to the Free Software Foundation. Why? Because what you have witnessed by your contributions, is the model that FSF has developed for OpenBooks. We'll never see free open books if people are gonna worry about getting paid or not for their contributions. And, don't Jane's readers have to pay to read Jane's. Jane's should be free, too! for everyone!
And to get paid for that! Is there an acronym for lauging-so-hard-it-hurts?
Slashdot consists mainly of references to news stories and commentary upon those stories. If people start writing news stories based on the commentary found on Slashdot, the whole world of journalism could implode.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
I think this could be a very cool way to get points accross and to explore new subjects. Although I think it is pretty commendable that many of the users answered so well. Usually, there are so many flames (ala M$ vs Linux debates) that the readers tend to just turn it all off.
/. guys could learn something from all this.
Perhaps the
-- Moondog
I hope the denizens of Slashdot don't take this as a signal that whenever they're quoted in the mainstream press they deserve compensation.
--B
..the reason they gave up on the old article is that some CyberTerrorists cracked their box and deleted it!
hehe.. Seriously though, a VERY classy move by Jane's.
01101100 01101001 01101110 01110101 01111000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011
I'm sorry that I wasn't any clearer; what I had meant was (and you are correct; the original BO only *did* work on Win9x) WindowsNT. NT implements a different "security" model than Win9x; it supposedly grants each user their own user space similar to the way that users are limited on a *nix system. BUT, if a regular user under NT (read: non-Administrator/root) executes the BOserver (which makes the machine vulnerable), then the system is totally vulnerable over the Net or the local network. Under Linux, at least, I believe it would be extremely difficult to create a program which manipulated the user permissions so easily. And true- it will be that way in the future with linux, but it is generally regarded bad security practice to stay logged in as 'root'.... I don't.
So the point I was trying to make is that by standard API's a remote user can have administrator status while the local one can't, under NT (which is rated C2 network secure! Remember? Oh, wait- that was NT3.51, and it was disconnected from a network.......) And you are absolutely right, that under Win9x the user is given admin access. More bad security. Tsk tsk tsk on M$... but ah well, not my problem. The thing is, normal Joe Linux User (if using the system, not administering it; i.e., logged in as 'joe' and not 'root') would not be able to cripple the entire system or open it up to remote vulnerability by simply downloading/executing the security update.
nsa to janes: we need to track these astute people, but they all use pseudonyms!
janes: lets offer them money and find out where they live...
Too me offering to pay contributers seems almost too nice. Has anyone considered the possibility that this has been a ploy to identify potential
cyberterrorist.
1) Appeal to there need to "set the record straight."
2) Offer some money to expert contributers, but require personal info to "deliver" it.
3) Compile list and submit to CIA, FBI, and cyberterrorism headhunters. (There has got to be some out there, and who better to know them than Jane's)
salsa_43 n0spam-at yahoo.com
i dislike and i resent your expression here which is basically an insensitive hate crime ... just when /. was looking so good too ...
When I was in the USAF Security Command (way back, only one 4 year hitch) we had shelves full of books to help familiarize us with foreign aircraft. Nobody ever opened any of the "official" government pulp. We always reached for Jane's All The World's Aricraft. This is a class act on their part and has consistently been thier style through the years. Hats off. RonMon
(offtopic) :-)
somebody prove the usefullness of Perl to me, and write a script to translate this shit
Now that slashdot is going to be a publicly-traded stock and the commercial side of the community is being managed, slashdot may really benefit from a real publicist. In the corporate world, there are these PR hacks that run around trying to get their clients to be used as sources for articles so it promotes the client as a significant figure in that industry. Since slashdot is an amalgamation of specialists throughout all branches of the IT world, a PR specialist could easily replicate this JANE article phenomena on a regular basis. Heck, it would be a much more credible source to see in articles than always seeing Jupiter Communications quoted on everything under the sun! sjohnson||AT||smart.net (remove the ||AT|| for electronic correspondence)
If they're going to pay lineage, then why not help fund /. with the Anonymous Coward rates?
_______________________________
"...if you find your comments included, contact me {snip} for payment at our usual lineage rates..."
/. 'ed a new way: 50 people who posted X idea, looking to get paid. :) They should directly attribute quotes/info to specific posters. (AC's get paid to /. :)
This probably means they'll get
____________________
Hey, I wonder if we could get Rob to get Jane's to donate all the AC and unclaimed post to a charity.
As well as encourage any claimers who don't need to money to throw it into the pot. Would be a great thing to do. Definate opportunity for a slashdot poll!!!
Jane's is about as authoritative as it comes.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Linux is my O/S, and the O/S I'm pushing to become dominant in homes and businesses.
However, for military hardware (e.g. battleships), I suggest that a microkernel imbedded O/S, such as QNX or VxWorks, would be the proper solution.
The beauty of a microkernel O/S is that it is made up of small modules, each of which can be independently verified to work perfectly.
Now, Linux offers similarly high levels of security, and reliability, through Open Source, and the intense review of thousands of developers. The military, on the other hand, will most certainly want to keep their source to themselves (wisely or not), and will want to do their own reviews.
The other advantage of a microkernel imbedded O/S, for military applications, is that it's better suited to real-time guaranteed-response systems, whereas a more monolithic O/S such as Linux may offer better peak performance, as is generally required by a PC user.
Good ol Bob Cringely has a few thoughts about the whole Jane's event:
/. posts when he wrote this article, and I'm just dying to hear what he has to say about it.
:)
0 7.html
"Maybe this was in the minds of the folks at Jane's, the British publisher of defense information, who this week threw their cyber terrorism research at the nerds who read Slashdot, hoping for some inexpensive proofreading to keep Jane's from making their own big mistakes. This is an interesting idea but ultimately flawed, I think. The only way to write the news is to write the news. You have to do it the best that you can then take the heat, because the censorship of the nerderati is still censorship. That's why newspapers make corrections."
Obviously he wasn't aware that Jane decided to publish the
Censorship? Nobody told Jane's they *couldn't* post that crap, we simply informed them of it being such a bad idea
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit199910
This could be good for /. as a whole. Perhaps people will think a bit more and make a bit less noise if they know that there is an opportunity for their thoughts/posts to be bought!
You want the Ziff-heads to read it? Just shove a copy of it up Bill G's butt.
"Hi Jim? This is Tom, over at Janes. That article you wrote on cyberterrorism? ... Yeah, that one. Listen, we decided that it sucked so we're not going to run it after all. ...Well, in its place we're going to compile some articles from Slashdot. ... Slashdot, you know, the website? ... well the comments were much better than the article... Jim?"
Maybe this is a sign that Slashdot is what journalism will be like in the future.
rooooar
And now we know where they get all the "facts" they publish for the various paranoid sociopaths that read them : any anonymous "source" on the internet is entitled to be taken more seriously than their own "research"
Intelligence my *ss.
Please excuse the contents of this article and don't mistake it for pure flamebait (although it is a bit of one).
/. readers are always pushing for the ideas of freedom in software and in the press. (Look at how many people use and appreciate Babelfish and NYT Online). And these same people gripe when they have to pay for either software or news.
/. admins have given us a great forum to express our ideas and knowledge concerning Linux/OpenSource/Anti-Microsoft, and they have given it to us for free.
/.ers that have money coming to them..... please don't ask for it. Or, ask for it to go to (as another poster said) FSF or some other foundation. Let's show the Jane's people what Open Source is really about.
*begin rant *
The attitude expressed by the Slashdot community is now at an all time high hypocrisy level.
Usually
Now with this Jane's article, these same readers are all about "GIMME THE MONEY!!!" It seems to me that they have totally forgotten about their roots in the open source community, and especially about the roots of Slashdot in Open Source. CmdrTaco and the rest of the
Now when Jane's is offering to pay, everybody forgets about the altruism of this community and are only looking out for themselves..
If the readers of Slashdot were more concerned about the OpenSource Community than their own pocketbooks, they would either refuse to be paid for their contributions or ask that it be donated to a OpenSource/FreeSoftware committee/foundation/company/group.
I am not a true hacker by any means, and I probably don't get paid anywhere near what a good programmer gets paid (I am a lowly word processor), but I would ask that my share of money go to some group that needs it more than I.
*end rant*
I implore all
It seems that some of you are surprised by Jane's reaction. The only thing this proves is the lack of knowledge of most on what Jane's represents. Let's face the facts : Jane's publishes other magazines than Intelligence review and their customers are, by definition, decision makers. (Jane's actually does more than publishing). Jane's can't allow themselves to publish anything that doesn't hold up because they would loose their reputation on it. Jane's could have run the story as is, but they would have lost of their prestige since: 1) Some readers, of jir, are versed in the matter. 2) A reader who would use this information as is only to find out that it was "wrong" wouldn't be happy about it (as indeed in those circles comptetion is ferocious). In any case, Jane's doesn't have a choice when it comes to tarnishing it's reputation, they make a living out of conveying the "right" information. Anything else isn't on the menu. Therefore there's no surprise here. Furthermore, as someone has already noted on the previous discussion, this very much looks like a sales pitch to get funding ... echelon anyone?
Am I the only one who is tired of hearing the absurd term "cyberterrorism" bandied about? Doesn't it seem a bit preposterous to call a completely non-violent act "terrorism"? Let's get our terms straight, people: terrorism involves killing or causing great bodily harm to other people for political purposes. Getting unauthorized access to somebodies computer, or messing up their data, doesn't come close to that description or degree of harm. The term is "cyberterrorism" is sheer propaganda intended to stampede people into giving up ever more of their privacy and rights.
So you're suggesting some sort of Security through meta-obscurity?
> "Instead I'm going to cull your comments together and make a better, sharper feature out of it "
/. were good at pointing out the flaws in the presented article, they are NOT enough to write a complete article with.
If you don't understand the subject, don't write about it.
While the posts on
Better would be to get someone else (who is better qualified) to write the article. Have them read the original and the comments to get some ideas, and then post the new article for further review.
Rather than getting paid it would be a helluva lot better if slashdot readers had a private username/password to the janes site to read the articles there. Some nice stuff goes on in Janes...and its a lot better than getting 10 bucks off them.
Offtopic, but I *have* to ...
/usr/bin, mail and file directories!
Why spend your valuable time rebuilding machines that idiot keeps trashing. When this kind of thing happens more than once to me (call me paranoid) I start to think it is intentional.
I don't see why any user has root access to even his own machine. Lock that badboy down with access to only his own
*sigh*
I guess all we'll have left after the X-files is Art Bell...
Exactly comrade! What they call cyber-terrorism is in fact our glorious battle for freedom!
Let us embrace information warfare as our greatest tool to overthrow the crypto-fascist power structures that even now are throttling the planet with their software patents and mass-media mind control.
And at the end of our heroic revolution may we awake to a world governed by true democracy:
OPEN GOVERNMENT
All world policy shall be openly decided in a global peer-review process. The ultimate open source project shall be humanity itself!
Let there be no leaders but those who stand out by the wisdom of their arguments. Let there be freedom of speech, information and take-away pizza. Let no person claim software as their own, only that they may be recognised as a true guru and showered with admiration, gifts and exotic lifestyles in proportion to the soundness of their code.
The war has begun, brothers and sisters, log in and conquer!
I think it's great that they are doing this, and they should be commended for it. But I couldn't help but notices that the artilce that was determined 'lame' here is still linked from the front page of their site....
- AMW
LSHIH.
No problem.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
This seems like the first time something like this has happened to the crowd here. We've always read the articles that have been pointed to which were written with the intent of making a profit for the publisher, not necessarily with makeing sure that the facts were right. Jane's is a different kind of publisher. Its in their best interest and actually their intent to get things right the first time and not post FUD.
A Problem though, even though this first encounter was a good one, how long will it be before certain members become experts and become inevitably become distant from the online community while still maintaining their expert status with the outside world. How can we make sure that this doesn't happen?
-?-
-- Ender, Duke of URL
I see your point but I think the original poster was talking about finding failures in the news stories that are discussed, not about topics like licenses where there is no 'right' and 'wrong', just opinions. If a linked news story contains flaws, they're usually found fast and get named by the slashdot community, that's the positive thing. Reading both the news stories and the comments, one can learn a lot.
Damn, I posted a very long piece anonymously, because I was too lazy to log in.
I fear ZdNet is overcome with envy and resentment of /. 's success that it has turned to espionage by means of juvenile displays in order to break up the integrity. Of course, their first choice was to hack into the system with the assistance of AntiOnline; however, they failed miserably, and was instructed by JP to utilize his most successful tactic yet.
Sorry, couldn't help taking a jab at them for obvious reasons...
Ok, let me add up what I've learned on Slashdot in recent weeks and see if I can get this straight:
So anybody that makes it into the article is a presidential advisor.
=-)
"What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" was written by Elvis Costello. Nick Lowe was the producer.
Simple.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
How many people took part in a "Crack This Machine" contest and didn't use it as an excuse to DoS the machine into death throes, which is what 99% of script kiddies did - thinking somehow it'll help them get r00t. a la irc, where splitting off a server can be quite advatnageous
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
* TV ad mode ON *
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Want to get ahead of your compeitors?
Looking to improve your corporate image?
Look no further. Call on:
* Insert slashing sound *
-- THE SLASHDOT GROUP --
We can help make your next decision a snap. We are free source finanical group ready to help you make those hard decisions. Our expert team of anaylsts are online 24 hours a day, and are up to date on all the lastest technologies and trends.
Your business in trouble? Don't wait! Call the
* Insert slashing sound *
-- THE SLASHDOT GROUP --
(OSF/FSF equal opportunity member. Some restrictions apply, Batteries not included. Price does not include plates title or tax. Some restrictions apply, see your local geek for details)
* TV ad mode OFF *
So much for 'freedom'.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I worked (as a contractor) for DARPA for a while... That's the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, yes, those guys who invented the internet. Guess what they standardized on? M$. We were constantly fighting with them because their (idiotic) MIS guy was a total borg. Nothing but NT, IIS, and ASP shall grace DARPA's network. And these are the guys who are supposed to know what they're doing.
So I don't know about worldwide governments, but here in the good ol' U S of A, we're still a pack of idiots.
There have been encouraging signs from certain US Gov't agencies recently however. Maybe the times are changing. But it's still, currently, rare to see a government office with anything but wintel boxen, as far as the eye can see.
----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Janes is a very well respected publisher, and their decision to use Slashdot as an "open source" on this topic is a great endorsement of the benefits of the Slashdot model. I think a little self back slapping on the
Anyone who reads
I my self have been often moderated up and Im no OSS-zealot by any means! Im certainly not against it but I use a proprietary OS as my main OS (BeOS) and I don't beleive that OSS, despite its important contributions, will take over the world and have said so more than once in this forum. Ive even got a permanent score 2 rating, which I suppose is in part due to realtively frequent
+ve moderation.
The fact that the bias here is an open one, and that it does not completely drown out dissenting opinion (at least in many topics) shows that Janes was right in very carefully using this forum as a source for a topic that maybe
Two nights ago (or maybe it was last night, all that caffeine blurs lines between distinct time periods) I was reading the responses to Microsoft's "Linux Myths" publication. I read the top scoring comments and found that almost all of them were based on undeniably cold, hard information. Where backing information became ambiguous, such as our "anecdotal stories" about NT's uptime, slashdot writers comprimised, even when they knew they were right, in order to keep the overall validity of their arguments strong and impenetrable. I thought to myself, "Nearly everything Microsoft claimed in their paper has been proved false or invalid by very scientific observations, and the more opinionated statements Microsoft made has been responded to intelligently. I could take this statement from this comment, and this paragraph from this one and create an entire rebuttal report by compiling snippets of these comments.". Such a "compiled" (if I may use the term in a non-technical sense (; ) paper would certaintly be considered "Community Written" and would basically take one person's additional effort to construct. If a number of these compilations could be produced, we could put the "Slashdot Community Publication Repository" online.
Few issues:
Who would do the compiling? Would lots of people make them, and then moderators (possibly those with highest scores on comments?) would vote on them? Would the moderators themselves do that? Would the slashdot admins compile them? Would each comment's outline contain an identifier for each specific point he or she makes (Slashdot HTML tags?) and then would those clearly defined points be voted on?
Lack of sources. (Not to be confused with source code.) For a formal report to be compiled, saying things like "NT only gets C2 classification when not connected to a network." require specific proofs. Where did this information come from? All that stuff needs to have links to its original source whether it be AP Newswire, a Bugtraq report, or just a few steps of math to show what 99.9% annual uptime is. Even saying that 2 GB has been the swap file size limit should have a link to a man page somewhere (so it can be immediatly victimized by The Slashdot Effect).
Time. This compiling will take time. (Until AI Beowulf clusters of a thousand Linux boxes do it for us.) Will we care about this issue by the time we have a publication. Should we vote on which issues to pubish?
Rob's Ego. Should we let him bask in his own creation's glory? Should we have him keep a skull on his desk like Shakespeare did to remind him he is only mortal? Should he be required to take psychoactive medications? Should he, like the Pope (Pontifex Maximus (; ), be required to bequeeth all his worldly possessions to his orginization to keep him humble? (Dibs on server.)
Also, no doubt this change would effect our beloved Slashdot. I can see a few possible effects:
Reduction of stupid unneccassary, unintelligent comments due to motivations to have part of his comment cited in Compilation. I'm capitalizing it now... exiting!.(i.e., the writer would know that "Micr0$oft Sucks!" wouldn't be considered for publication.).
Community recognition. If we had such Compilations with citations and such, notable media would start refering to Slashdot Compilations for information and viewpoints on topics. (More often then they are now, even.) Slashdot's notoriety would grow, and so would its user base.
Slashdot Compilation Archives cds could be sold to accomodate the larger user base and traffic. We would need Rob to make his taxes public so we could make sure he isn't spending the Compilation Archives cds on his well-known crack habit.
In closing, I believe Community Writing could really enhance Slashdot as a whole. LOTS of places would have discussions forums, and Slashdot still would be. People would still debate, flame, respond, email and DoS each other based on their posted opinions. But Slashdot being the first to actually produce such valuable publications based on the knowledge base of its user would be a very first. [It is really too damn late and I have too damn much to do for school, etc. so I have not grammar/spell/content checked this. Deal with it.]
Kspett
Kevin "Cash Money" Spett
Ignore your rights and they go away.
Isn't all media biased? Really? The press trumpets itself as this impartial, outside observer of events, never having an opinion, never pushing an agenda, always standing in the middle of things, equally considering both sides of each issue.
But is that really the case? Do you accept that self-assessment? For one thing, who ever said that each issue has only two sides? Who came up with that? Seems a little simplistic to me.
I for one don't buy it. Every little thing you say and do betrays bias, even if subconsciously. You mention this and not that -- why not? You cite this source but not that one -- how come? You talk a lot about this but seldom about that -- why?
Bias-free media is a myth.
Think about where your news comes from. All of the major news & media outlets in the western world are owned by about half a dozen conglomerates. They each run advertisements for their own products, and by so doing try to mold you to their veiw of how the world should be. ("Television shows are a tool to get people to watch more ads than the would ordinarily.") It might not be an explicit plan to manipulate things -- there may not be men in black suits & skinny ties saying who can say what about whatever -- but the people that find their way on screen or into print have demonstrated a willingness to play by the rules of their superiors. And in that way, the tone of the media is molded to the interests of those controlling the top of the pyramid.
That is what I love about Slashdot. There is no central control, or not much anyhow, and anyone from ESR to AC can speak their mind about anything. Is it perfect? No. Is it biased? Yes. But it's democratic -- we control it, not Rupert Murdoch, not General Electric. You and me. We control it. And the bias is not concealed -- we love Linux, we love open source, we want it to spread far and wide. First we had open source software, and it was great. Now, what is this? Open source news media? Hey alright, sounds good to me. We don't cringe from these things.
In my mind, this is the more honest and egalitarian model for the news media to follow. I love it. My only wish is that it wasn't so confined to technical matters -- or rather that there was, say, a kindred site with an emphasis on general news, international affiars, politics, the economy, whatever. As it happens, there is only one Slashdot, and it's all about nerddom. So be it.
May it blaze a shining trail for others to follow.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Slashdot's such a great place for news because the best minds in the world (programmers, of course) get together and add their two cents to not only answer a simple question, but also to provoke thought and further questions...and also answers. The world is becoming like a Beowulf cluser, where each little part can add their two cents, and when you have 500,000 people adding $0.02, you end up with around $10k (just from a few pennies from a few people). It's a great step in the world of journalism, and I think this trend should continue in all fields of news. There are people out there who know anything and everything about something as obscure as....child psychology, and these people could culminate in a Slashdot-type forum to come up with a lot better answers about Columbine than CNN can give us (Props to Salon.com for their great piece!). Just a thought.... but IMHO this is a very positive turn for us "want-to-be" journalists who stare in frustration at their monitors, reading all the FUD on major news sites.
Mike
How about that?
The Great Chunder Page - Alcohol Induced Fun!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Yeah, now we have open journalism, using the ideas of open source to cover cyber terror. That's cute. But that's nothing compared to ...
(sound of drums, marching boots)
OpenTerror.org !
Bringing the power of open source to the terrorist community! Bringing back the power to the masses!
Learn exciting things, by looking at GPL'd bomb plans. Discuss plane hi-jacking with other experts in OpenTerror forums. Bring your own ideas in and take part in one of our projects, or start your own! Join a OTUG [Open Terror Users Group] near you, or simply point your browser to:
OpenTerror.org
Who do you want to kill today?
(drums off)
How's that for an OpenSource IPO?
I don't know if anyone has looked at some of the articles on the (new) byte.com site. In recent weeks I read a few of them. Each and every one of them was based on readers comments and feedback. If they can do it, why can't we. But then again. If they do it, why don't we join them (or better yet, let them join us). As for structuring such editing. Maybe volunteers could send some kind of "Specialist in Topic X" list. When a suitable article comes along authors/editors can be chosen from these topic lists.
Hans Voss
---
When you give a man fire he's warm for a day.
Hans Voss
---
"I have no special talents, I am just passionately curious" -- Albert Einstein
This "Community Journalism" is going to be the next big thing.
Just remember that it all started here on
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
HeghmoH writes: "If anything, these people deserve more money, because they contributed altruistically."
/. is prepared to break their anonymity for this, for what else would they then be prepared to break it in the future? I'm fairly sure that if I had elected to post as an AC in stead of getting my own user ID, then I wouldn't want my anonymity to be broken so easily.
/.ers has to come out of the author's own pocket. Second, I don't think the fee as a whole is all that big -- the original piece they submitted was what, a few pages in a print magazine? What's the going rate for that; more than hundreds, but definitely less than tens of thousands of pounds; perhaps a thousand or so?
:-) much higher than having my anonymity broken, just to receive such a comparatively paltry amount.
Yeah, sure, in a way...
But if they are so altruistic, it's not *too* far-fetched to think that they might want to donate the money to charity, too, is it? IOW, to turn your argument around: Did they only do it "from the heart" as long as there were no monetary earnings in the picture -- but as soon as such a possibility emerges, they *do* want to get paid? What the heck kind of "altruism" is that?!?
The other point is that since these guys (probably very few, if any, gals) posted as Anonymous Cowards, they probably *wanted* to be exactly that -- Anonymous! Someone suggested using Web logs (and cookies, not that I'm sure how that would work) to track them down; and while that might be technically feasible, I wonder whether most ACs would think it was worth it. If
Especially since this probably isn't a fortune we're talking about, here. First of all, mr Ingles-le Nobel or somebody will have to edit all the comments into a coherent whole, and that person will then probably stand as the main auhor from Janes' point of view. You could perhaps even say that any payment to
I would guess that for each quote -- a line or two apiece, perhaps a short paragraph, out of x pages? -- an appropriate remuneration, calculated as a corresponding percentage of the compiling author's reward (minus something for him alone, for the compiling and editing!) would come down to a few quid, perhaps a tenner or two. And I know that if I had contributed an anonymous comment out of the sheer goodness of my heart, then I would CERTAINLY rank the altruistic buzz of having the money donated to charity in my name (eh... non-name?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
To summarise the way Slashdot function: /. readers comments the news, discuss. There are very knowledgeable post, insightful post and totally shitty posts.
... etc, etc.
1) someone gives a pointer on an 'interesting' facts
2)
3) thanks to the moderation system, you can have a really good S/N ratio, if you're in a hurry or not too interested by the topic you can just choose your moderation level so as to keep just a few post.
Jane's will use the comment of Slashdot readers to modify/re-create an article on the subject, an interesting move...
I remenber that one time, there was a series of post about XWindows, what's wrong with it, should it be fixed or replaced by Berlin or something else... While it was an interesting topic, the sheer number of interesting post was too much to read even with the moderation system... And I hope that someday someone will have the guts to make a compilation on the topic.
IMHO community writing or summarisation of particularly interesting topics is what could take Slashdot to a new level, being even more interesting.
I wonder what will happen: an interesting topic show up, lots of interesting posts happens, a courageous man make a summary of the good points and post it on Slashdot on a new topic, so lots of posts be posted again
A nice recursive loop, which may generate a reference FAQ on this particular topic.
Currently there are early versions of the second editions of both books online. He has a form for comments on these.
P.S. Please send my check to: .... ;)
Injured software engineer wins against Mattel!
?
Just wait for the first AFP or CNN message or congressional testimony reading "...according to /., an high-profile electronic think tank composed of leading members of the geek community"...
Stephan