DoJ ruling is just one hurdle, the merger still needs to be reviewed by the FCC. There is a theory that the FCC is looking for more oversight on satellite radio content in response to lobbyist pressure from traditional radio. I really hope that's not up for discussion - the ability to hear unedited content is one of the draws of satellite radio for me. I'd still keep it though even if it was edited, just for commercial-free music it's worth it for me. (No I'm not a satellite radio shill, just a happy customer. I spend a couple of hours/day commuting, and I find I go a little nuts when I'm without the satellite - I swear there are more commercials than content these days. NPR is OK, but frankly boring after a while.)
Don't ask silly questions! What don't you get about, "think of the children?"
"Think of the children" is the Congressional equivalent of the Jedi Mind Trick; "these are not the droids you're looking for." Upon further consideration, he may have substituted "Identity Theft" instead of "terrorists" since he's talking about the Interweb. I applaud his restraint in not using any analogy to tubes. This is progress.
Let me know when your research grant kicks in. In the interest of the greater scientific good, I'll happily volunteer to let you give me a wad of cash and observe how I spend and/or save it.
If you're implementing an encryption solution and don't understand the potential impacts, you probably shouldn't be implementing encryption. Encryption is great and necessary, but in the case of things like file encryption introduces another layer of complexity and point of failure into your system. Now instead of worrying about just an unrestorable backup of the data - you need to have a restorable backup AND a key recovery/additional decryption key/key escrow solution.... And for what it's worth, I'm a lot more concerned about a user losing/forgetting a key than I am about evil hackerz ransoming my key. (Thanks for the additional FUD though, that'll make my job easier next time I need to argue for encryption)
Maybe I'm just being silly or showing my old-school mentality, but I think it's important to try to identify these types of potential "gotchas" before I click setup.exe.
I think the Iranian government did this to isolate themselves from the rest of the world while raising suspicion that it's the work of some Western government. They're pulling the plug to control information into/out of their country prior to some kind of crack-down. Just another crackpot tinfoil-hat theory...
You may be correct in most cases - except for the fact that we are talking about the San Francisco Zoo. Given that this is San Franciso, the only weapon that is appropriate is the.44 Magnum. The most powerful handgun on earth. "So Tiger, you have to ask yourself, 'do I feel lucky?' Well do you punk?"
I for one would like some description of how they're detecting these 6000 new sites per day. Also, what are they considering a website? Do they include bot systems that configured to listen on port 80 as part of the worm propagation and command/control? That's not really a website in my opinion, but it may be in theirs. It would be great if they published a list of the 42000 new websites they have discovered over the past 7 days, you know just to back up their claim. Wouldn't hurt to notify the owners of those sites that they've got a problem.
Absent more detail, I am calling shenanigans on this statistic, Sophos, and the Register. I am soooo sick of the FUD.
And if or when they decide they've recaptured sufficient market share they will increase their fees...either through licensing of connections or functionality. I must confess that I find this pretty amusing. I think (and hope) they're going to have a tougher time killing off this competitor...
About a year ago I picked up a Sony HD 34" 16:9 CRT(trinitron Wega) flat screen television. I paid somewhere between $800-900 for it. The picture easily beats any LCD I've seen so far. The only downside I can come up with is that it is huge, weighs about 200 lbs, and probably sucks down more electricity than an LCD. On the upside - the picture is amazing, and the television represents what I assume to be the pinnacle of manufacturing from one of the leading companies in CRT televisions. Unfortunately I believe Sony has completely stopped manufacturing tube-based TVs. Hopefully this one lasts for a decade so the LCD technology can catch up as the price continues to drop.
Another option might be to put the facility up for sale and see if any private universities or other governments want to buy or lease the facility. Granted there would be no guarantee that research data gained would remain in the public domain, but at least someone would be using the facility. Plus it would make on heck of an evil lair...
Yeah, I'll go on record and agree with the AC - there are PLENTY of people out there who have no idea what GAIM/Trillian/etc. even are. They aren't technical; they are less likely to patch or maintain AV, they are more likely to have a boatload of spyware clogging their IE browser. The unwashed masses. They include your neighbor, your doctor, and your garbageman. They are legion.
The problem is that anyone with common sense enough to be qualified for the Omniscient Overlord position would wisely not want any part of that job. I'm pretty sure that type of gig would probably draw the same ilk that seem drawn to politics and law.
I think your chances of catching the actual thief are probably pretty slim. Someone who is stealing laptops is probably selling them/pawning them for cash. The person you catch will more than likely be the person who bought your stolen device. This is purely my own speculation, I have no statistics to back this up whatsoever. I also have to wonder what kind of priority is going to be given to recovering a stolen laptop with a value of under $2000, especially if they are in a high-crime area. You might get better support if you have customer or employee confidential information stored on it, because then you might be able to get support from the FBI or something. However by having it stolen, you've probably already cost yourself a job and your company a world of trouble so probably best to avoid that scenario.
"Password protecting" your data is a ridiculous statement. If you have data you don't want disclosed, it should be encrypted. Period. End of discussion. No excuses. BIOS passwords can be reset, file access passwords are trivial to get around. Use the encryption built-in to your OS, something like TrueCrypt, or a commercial encryption program. If you don't *need* to have the data on a portable computer, it doesn't belong there. Once the hardware is not in your possession, you have no guarantee that the data was not accessed, copied, and/or manipulated unless it was stored with some kind of strong encryption. If you're concerned about disclosure of that data, recovering the hardware is already too late.
WWW is available on an increasing array of devices. My in-laws were recently shocked when they discovered their teenage son was browsing pr0n on his PSP over a WLAN connection (he figured out how to piggyback on their neighbor's WiFi). Phones/blackberries/etc have browsers. How many non-PC devices have some kind of built-in browsing capability these days? It is an exercise in futility to try to stop/block access unless you are going to move to an area that is "off-the-grid" and home-school.
I have to say I agree with those posters who suggest *talking* with your kids and keeping an eye on what they're up to. It's called parenting folks - it's not supposed to be easy. In my opinion you need to set expectations and limits until the kiddos demonstrate some maturity. Curiosity is good. Explaining that euro fetish defecation video isn't an accurate depiction of what goes on in a *normal* committed adult relationship might seem redundant to an adult, might not be so apparent to a 12 yo though. So maybe the 12 yo shouldn't be getting their first sex-ed discussion from some xxx.com. Maybe the 12 yo should not be wandering the Interweb recklessly. And certainly your kids should be talking to you and you should be talking to them (whether they hate it or not) about what they see out there.
My 2 cents.
Maybe we can get a deal on content-filtering technology from the Chinese or Saudis. Not for stuff that's objectionable to the Gov't per se, just the stuff that's objectionable to RIAA. Well not objectionable, so much as those who don't pay whatever the going monthly rate is.
A couple weeks seems like a reasonable precaution if you're concerned, more so for servers.
I only wish that I didn't have a system administrator here who has successfully used this as a dodge against *any* routine patch maintenance. "We can't turn on autoupdate because Microsoft patches might break functionality." Yes we've been hit with worms. Yes it's scary and keeps me up nights. No I'm not making this up.
How exactly are you going to find out your privacy has been abused? It's a national security issue - your file is going into a deep cellar. If you're found to be guilty, they'll read the highlights of their investigation into the record at the secret tribunal. This stuff won't be subject to FOIA.
I actually don't have anything to hide, and to be honest I don't care if they investigate the bejeebers out of me. My concern is more about having some kind of false-positive on me come out of their "Terrist-Finder-2007 SP1" software. What happens when I accidentally trip the rule that alerts on purchase of fertilizer and diesel within a 48 hour period because there's a few zeros missing in the rule definition (I buy 20lbs of fertilizer and 20 gallons of diesel). OK bad example, but do you see what I'm saying? All of a sudden I'm a person of interest and subject to all kinds of additional scrutiny and harrassment - probably from the time of the false positive til they get around to actually investigating me. Could take years. In the mean time I'm screwed every time I want to get on a plane, change a bank account, get a loan, etc.
What about other uses of the investigations beyond revenge? I bet there's commercial value to insurance companies, banks, others who want to assess risk or track down someone who is defaulting on a loan. If you're a federal employee with immunity from prosecution, and you have an offer for $10k from some company for deep background info on a few citizens....nah that could never happen.
But *they* (FBI/NSA/CIA/TLA) are the *government* and they are here to help! Nothing to worry about, they only have all of our collective best interests at heart.
However think about this: They don't have the manpower to manually investigate all of us, so they will no doubt turn to automation to handle the volume of raw info they're searching through. This means that they'll come up with design specs and get the lowest bidder (probably including outsourced programming) to implement the data collection and mining algorithms. This auto-magical-terrist/criminal-detector will spew out names and suspected offenses. This will probably (due to volume) be triaged by an outsourced vendor, or maybe interns or something. Chances are that if you show up on a suspect list you will be flagged until/if they get around to investigating you. Enjoy the extra attention you receive when you travel, open a bank account, or try to get a loan in the meantime.
Since this is a super-special-secret data warehouse that will be restricted for *official use only* you won't be able to get a copy of your record for review until they are reading it to you at a secret tribunal as part of the evidence against you. No filing disputes or forcing an accuracy check like you can sort of do now with a credit report. Though I'd bet some employers (government contractors and "critical industries" like finance, transportation, construction come to mind) will have no problem doing checking prospective or current employees against these automagically-generated watch lists. Where is the oversight provided? Any criticism of the application or practice is de facto proof of un-American sentiments or a desire to keep something hidden.
It is increasingly inexpensive to track and log everything. It's a logical extension to consolidate and analyze these logs. This is as effective a tool for finding a problem on a network as it is for finding a problem citizen. It's also prone to false-positives in both environments.
Slashdot Mirror
DoJ ruling is just one hurdle, the merger still needs to be reviewed by the FCC. There is a theory that the FCC is looking for more oversight on satellite radio content in response to lobbyist pressure from traditional radio. I really hope that's not up for discussion - the ability to hear unedited content is one of the draws of satellite radio for me. I'd still keep it though even if it was edited, just for commercial-free music it's worth it for me. (No I'm not a satellite radio shill, just a happy customer. I spend a couple of hours/day commuting, and I find I go a little nuts when I'm without the satellite - I swear there are more commercials than content these days. NPR is OK, but frankly boring after a while.)
Note to students: use alias, nickname, or pseudonym when attending study group online.
"Think of the children" is the Congressional equivalent of the Jedi Mind Trick; "these are not the droids you're looking for." Upon further consideration, he may have substituted "Identity Theft" instead of "terrorists" since he's talking about the Interweb. I applaud his restraint in not using any analogy to tubes. This is progress.
Let me know when your research grant kicks in. In the interest of the greater scientific good, I'll happily volunteer to let you give me a wad of cash and observe how I spend and/or save it.
Vogons have landed and are now posting to /.
Maybe I'm just being silly or showing my old-school mentality, but I think it's important to try to identify these types of potential "gotchas" before I click setup.exe.
I think the Iranian government did this to isolate themselves from the rest of the world while raising suspicion that it's the work of some Western government. They're pulling the plug to control information into/out of their country prior to some kind of crack-down. Just another crackpot tinfoil-hat theory...
Even Chuck Norris fears Dirty Harry.
Absent more detail, I am calling shenanigans on this statistic, Sophos, and the Register. I am soooo sick of the FUD.
Harumph!
"Will install Apache and MySQL for beer and nachos" -Me
And if or when they decide they've recaptured sufficient market share they will increase their fees...either through licensing of connections or functionality. I must confess that I find this pretty amusing. I think (and hope) they're going to have a tougher time killing off this competitor...
About a year ago I picked up a Sony HD 34" 16:9 CRT(trinitron Wega) flat screen television. I paid somewhere between $800-900 for it. The picture easily beats any LCD I've seen so far. The only downside I can come up with is that it is huge, weighs about 200 lbs, and probably sucks down more electricity than an LCD. On the upside - the picture is amazing, and the television represents what I assume to be the pinnacle of manufacturing from one of the leading companies in CRT televisions. Unfortunately I believe Sony has completely stopped manufacturing tube-based TVs. Hopefully this one lasts for a decade so the LCD technology can catch up as the price continues to drop.
Another option might be to put the facility up for sale and see if any private universities or other governments want to buy or lease the facility. Granted there would be no guarantee that research data gained would remain in the public domain, but at least someone would be using the facility. Plus it would make on heck of an evil lair...
Putting this in the context of the thread - I wouldn't trust this behavior whether it is phoning home on an encrypted or a plaintext channel.
Am I the only one who remembers that mice are the most intelligent life on earth?
Yeah, I'll go on record and agree with the AC - there are PLENTY of people out there who have no idea what GAIM/Trillian/etc. even are. They aren't technical; they are less likely to patch or maintain AV, they are more likely to have a boatload of spyware clogging their IE browser. The unwashed masses. They include your neighbor, your doctor, and your garbageman. They are legion.
The problem is that anyone with common sense enough to be qualified for the Omniscient Overlord position would wisely not want any part of that job. I'm pretty sure that type of gig would probably draw the same ilk that seem drawn to politics and law.
I think your chances of catching the actual thief are probably pretty slim. Someone who is stealing laptops is probably selling them/pawning them for cash. The person you catch will more than likely be the person who bought your stolen device. This is purely my own speculation, I have no statistics to back this up whatsoever. I also have to wonder what kind of priority is going to be given to recovering a stolen laptop with a value of under $2000, especially if they are in a high-crime area. You might get better support if you have customer or employee confidential information stored on it, because then you might be able to get support from the FBI or something. However by having it stolen, you've probably already cost yourself a job and your company a world of trouble so probably best to avoid that scenario. "Password protecting" your data is a ridiculous statement. If you have data you don't want disclosed, it should be encrypted. Period. End of discussion. No excuses. BIOS passwords can be reset, file access passwords are trivial to get around. Use the encryption built-in to your OS, something like TrueCrypt, or a commercial encryption program. If you don't *need* to have the data on a portable computer, it doesn't belong there. Once the hardware is not in your possession, you have no guarantee that the data was not accessed, copied, and/or manipulated unless it was stored with some kind of strong encryption. If you're concerned about disclosure of that data, recovering the hardware is already too late.
I have to say I agree with those posters who suggest *talking* with your kids and keeping an eye on what they're up to. It's called parenting folks - it's not supposed to be easy. In my opinion you need to set expectations and limits until the kiddos demonstrate some maturity. Curiosity is good. Explaining that euro fetish defecation video isn't an accurate depiction of what goes on in a *normal* committed adult relationship might seem redundant to an adult, might not be so apparent to a 12 yo though. So maybe the 12 yo shouldn't be getting their first sex-ed discussion from some xxx.com. Maybe the 12 yo should not be wandering the Interweb recklessly. And certainly your kids should be talking to you and you should be talking to them (whether they hate it or not) about what they see out there. My 2 cents.
So when they have "beam loss" or a "quench" - is that when the portal to Xen opens up? Now where did I leave that crowbar...
Can this be defeated if the RAM has a shiny mirror-like finish?
Maybe we can get a deal on content-filtering technology from the Chinese or Saudis. Not for stuff that's objectionable to the Gov't per se, just the stuff that's objectionable to RIAA. Well not objectionable, so much as those who don't pay whatever the going monthly rate is.
SERENITY NOW
How exactly are you going to find out your privacy has been abused? It's a national security issue - your file is going into a deep cellar. If you're found to be guilty, they'll read the highlights of their investigation into the record at the secret tribunal. This stuff won't be subject to FOIA.
I actually don't have anything to hide, and to be honest I don't care if they investigate the bejeebers out of me. My concern is more about having some kind of false-positive on me come out of their "Terrist-Finder-2007 SP1" software. What happens when I accidentally trip the rule that alerts on purchase of fertilizer and diesel within a 48 hour period because there's a few zeros missing in the rule definition (I buy 20lbs of fertilizer and 20 gallons of diesel). OK bad example, but do you see what I'm saying? All of a sudden I'm a person of interest and subject to all kinds of additional scrutiny and harrassment - probably from the time of the false positive til they get around to actually investigating me. Could take years. In the mean time I'm screwed every time I want to get on a plane, change a bank account, get a loan, etc.
What about other uses of the investigations beyond revenge? I bet there's commercial value to insurance companies, banks, others who want to assess risk or track down someone who is defaulting on a loan. If you're a federal employee with immunity from prosecution, and you have an offer for $10k from some company for deep background info on a few citizens....nah that could never happen.
But *they* (FBI/NSA/CIA/TLA) are the *government* and they are here to help! Nothing to worry about, they only have all of our collective best interests at heart.
However think about this: They don't have the manpower to manually investigate all of us, so they will no doubt turn to automation to handle the volume of raw info they're searching through. This means that they'll come up with design specs and get the lowest bidder (probably including outsourced programming) to implement the data collection and mining algorithms. This auto-magical-terrist/criminal-detector will spew out names and suspected offenses. This will probably (due to volume) be triaged by an outsourced vendor, or maybe interns or something. Chances are that if you show up on a suspect list you will be flagged until/if they get around to investigating you. Enjoy the extra attention you receive when you travel, open a bank account, or try to get a loan in the meantime.
Since this is a super-special-secret data warehouse that will be restricted for *official use only* you won't be able to get a copy of your record for review until they are reading it to you at a secret tribunal as part of the evidence against you. No filing disputes or forcing an accuracy check like you can sort of do now with a credit report. Though I'd bet some employers (government contractors and "critical industries" like finance, transportation, construction come to mind) will have no problem doing checking prospective or current employees against these automagically-generated watch lists. Where is the oversight provided? Any criticism of the application or practice is de facto proof of un-American sentiments or a desire to keep something hidden.
It is increasingly inexpensive to track and log everything. It's a logical extension to consolidate and analyze these logs. This is as effective a tool for finding a problem on a network as it is for finding a problem citizen. It's also prone to false-positives in both environments.
Is it paranoia or are they out to get me?