This can be daunting. First, how would they store stuff in a way resistant to bit rot? For example, data stored on 5.25" floppies needs to be imaged and stored on other media. It also would need to be stored with plenty of error correction so that in the future, archivists can put in the relatively ancient hard disk and check to see if there is any irreparable damage. What comes to mind would be a CAS system that automatically copies and checks for errors data on older drives when newer drives are put in.
It would be nice to develop a format whose sole purpose in life is long term archiving with decent byte capacities. Perhaps a cube where three lasers heat up epoxy, forming a microscopic bubble at x,y,z coordinates for "1"s?
Second, emulation. Back then, it was essentially HTML with some basic LiveScript, then JavaScript and animated GIFs. Will we have a way to translate those add-ons in the future if everyone's Web browser consists of Flash and JavaScript is the code of the land, not HTML?
I remember those days. Before the Internet took off, the talk was how TV set top boxes would be the main way people would communicate with each other, with IR keyboards and sending E-mail for a dollar per send, perhaps more if it has to leave Compuserve to go to an AOL user.
Cable had their plans for making their own "internet", which was offering features at a snail's pace for large fees. However, the Internet put those plans on hold until recently, when with the monopolies for ISPs, they can start tiering and charging more for the same services.
What the big companies want is another CompuServe. Before anyone gets on, they have to put in a userID (easily hackable), and with numerous fees applied, such as time spent online, amount of data transferred, type of data (extra charges for going to a non "sponsored" website), etc.
Agreed. At the lowest level, "Laptop ore", or ground up e-waste would take a lot of energy to recycle:
First, thermal depolymerization. This takes a lot of electricity to turn the long chain plastics back into short chain crude. It also takes a lot of water. However, one does get usable oil for this method.
Second, after the organics are dealt with, filtering that out, so you have a pile of minerals and metals. Separating that will be annoying because there will be so many items to filter out, be it copper, rare earths, lead, and other stuff.
Sager used to use Clevo as the OEM, and those were quite customizable. Want three HDDs? Go for it. A slot with a generic MP3 player? Yep. The laptop could even use desktop chips (say b-bye to your battery life, but for LAN parties, it was essentially desktop performance.)
I also miss standardized docking stations. IBM, HP, and Dell used to have nice docking stations which could not just allow for USB connections to be done, but additional PCI cards, better video, and would provide decent security against a smash and grab.
Clevo is still around, but I'm not sure if their stuff is as modular as in the early part of the 2000s though. I think people rather have a smaller size than customizability... as the race is to go thinner/lighter above all else, it seems.
I like reusing older tower cases, especially ones with Windows 95 and 98 stickers on them. Usually with a decent PSU, they will do a good job. To boot, a thief breaking in won't bother with what he thinks is an ancient machine, and will go for something else in the house.
I miss the old case I used to have which had Medeco locks not just on the front to lock out PS/2 keyboard access, but separate ones to lock the case closed. A would be thief would have to yank out a crowbar and do some heavy prying to get to the goodies in that one. Most keylocks on modern cases are a joke and a bad one at that. Whatever happened to putting something pick resistant? This way, if someone does crowbar the case open, it would definitely leave a signature [1] which makes it easier to file an insurance claim.
[1]: Some picking might leave a signature, but in reality (ceteris paribus), picked lock == claim denied, smashed open lock == obvious burglary, claim more likely approved.
To boot, if I were at a multi-site organization, one of the disaster plans would be getting the word out to CHQ if one of the data centers was being attacked. The DR plan would be getting in communication with the other site via another link such as a secure telephony app. This way the message would get out about being slammed from an unknown source, either as part of a drill, or as a reaction to a vicious attack. Smaller businesses that don't have the VoIP structure or the need to be on the Net 24/7/365 can just unplug the network core from the edge routers until things blow over.
Getting the word out could be as simple as calling HQ or other branches on a cell phone and using a code word or two that a third party eavesdropper wouldn't know about, or it might be using a private physical link just for this purpose that is not connected to any other network, not even the corporate LAN.
How is a mock cyberwar different from a DDoS simulation from the outside and other points, combined with a thorough penetration test?
A thorough pen test doesn't just scan ports and call it a night, the testers call employees pretending to be IT or managers and demand/browbeat for access, either to be handed a password for "auditing" reasons, or because the main IT people are supposedly gone for the day and a remote OEM needs access. I have even seen some thorough pen tests actually drop U3 USB flash drives in the parking lot that if autorun, would note which machine got "compromised".
I just don't see anything here that is different from hiring a thorough tiger team to test every piece of an organization's security (which companies should do at random times throughout the year.)
That is all well and good... provided I have physical access or the time to guide someone through a machine reload. However, if a user is unable/unwilling to reinstall.
However, when dealing with acquaintances who think a computer is like the doomsday device out of the Planet of the Apes that will destroy the world if they touch the wrong keystroke, there isn't really much to do. The three options I have are dropping any pretext of diplomacy and telling them to get a clue, tell them to find someone who can physically deal with the box, or install something that is nowhere guaranteed to fix the problem, but *might* stave off the scareware installs until they can get someone who has a clue physical access.
It goes without saying that the best solution is to save the data off (I use a Knoppix CD just for this exact reason), try to get an image of the box for forensic reasons if possible, then DBAN and reinstall. However, you would be surprised at how few users keep recovery media (if they have Dells), or how few make recovery media (if on other platforms.)
It isn't collecting revenue for a business. It is making these million dollar verdicts against individuals irrelevant. It is also doing a Constitutional duty for facilitating trade.
If there is a better solution, by all means, say so. This isn't a perfect solution, but it is far better than these insane civil verdicts which do nothing.
We in the US have two choices: Continue to criminalize this, so we have another set of people to join the pot smokers in our prison system, or find a way to ensure artists and labels are properly compensated for their work and save the jail bed space for the real criminals.
It isn't perfect, but to toss in the usual car analogy, the government taxes me for roads I likely won't drive in in my life. If taxed for music I won't here, compared to the alternative (ACTA, tougher DRM, etc.), I much rather see a levy on media like Canada.
No solution is perfect. However, this is better than what we have now.
I wonder about just engineering a system so it isn't a crime anymore. Model it after Canada's.
Make a clearinghouse for compulsory licensing, and have peoples taxes pay for this. In return, citizens and residents of a country can hit the clearinghouse, download what they want, and the artist/label are paid per download from the funds obtained via taxes. If people share a song, who cares... it is paid for.
The tax revenue can be collected from media as they do by our gentle neighbors up north, or be part of the income tax.
Result: Artists get paid. Labels get paid. DRM becomes a moot issue.
What is ironic is when I graduated college in '08, it was stated repeatedly that the path for a computer science student to have a chance at steady employment was to go into law school. Then either specialize in IP law or work as an assistant DA for computer crime.
I appreciate the good replies to this. I have been enlightened here.
The difference between last.fm/Pandora/Grooveshark and Spotify is that Spotify allows you to play what songs you want. If someone wants to play "Oops I did it again" 400 times in a row, Spotify will queue it and allow them to do this.
I have tried many other products. On the consumer level, there is really no significant benefit the other guys have over MSE that makes it worth the cost per year. The only product I'd probably recommend would be Sunbelt Software's offerings because their products are good at delousing a machine when it can't be taken apart and fixed by someone with a clue. Suites [1] are a different story, but antivirus products alone, there isn't much anyone else has that MSE doesn't on the consumer level.
Enterprise-wide, different story. Products like Forefront or Symantec Endpoint Protection provides far more than just a "virus condom". As an IT guy, I can have it to stop "hacking tools" such as most serial number grabbing utilities, have it lock out USB flash drives, give me comprehensive reports from the Windows side of the house, hook with NAC to ensure that if a Windows box doesn't have AV, it doesn't get connected (for CYA reasons rather than technical), and loads of other stuff that matters in business.
So, on a personal level, I would just be content with MSE. If an acquaintance called up saying, "OMG, my computer is infected", I'd tell them to download Sunbelt Software's offering and let it attempt to clean the machine. If I were running a business, I'd spring for SEP or Forefront because of the enterprise level features.
[1]: Antivirus + firewall "suites" are pointless in any Windows version post 2000. Want a firewall? Get a hardware router, so blackhats don't have a small window of attack when a machine starts up or shuts down, and the software "firewall" isn't loaded and hooked into the IP stack.
From what I've read, Microsoft is planning to have a Marketplace for installing applications in the next version of Windows. This will be nice because I can either tell people to only install software from there and nowhere else. In businesses, group policies can be set to enforce this. Result: One major vector for infection gets sealed.
I'm all for application markets, provided it isn't locked down to a single vendor. The OSS market has used repositories for decades, and this has been an excellent way to ensure software downloaded is clean.
IIRC, in some ads MS ran a few years back, they touted Forefront as one of the only security solutions which offered guaranteed protection against zombies.
This alone makes their offering worth the price of admission.
That is how it is in law school. A lot of law firms put a lot of weight on GPA and what school one graduated from. A tier 1 college (as per US News and World Report) will get one hired essentially anywhere. If someone came from a lower tier, they would need to have a resume with entries to compensate for not having Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, or UT by their academic section.
This doesn't say that a lower tier is a bad thing -- there is no such thing as an unemployed attorney unless they get disbarred, but the plum positions starting from graduating are essentially about what tier you came from, all things being equal.
I will be more than happy to trade you Hulu for Spotify. Having the ability to listen and queue up any songs with a small subscription fee for no ads (even if I wanted to listen to the same song until my mind shut down), is far more useful than paying for ad-filled Flash content that I rarely have time to watch.
There is nothing like Spotify in the US, and it would be great to just stream stuff from my phone, rather than have to find the songs I want to hear and make sure they are loaded beforehand.
Careful on that. The burden of proof actually is on the person who is in the picture in reality. Try convincing a jury (where most of the jurors think Photoshop is where they go to drop off their 35mm roll film) that the picture is fake. Go into detail about where the pixels don't jive, and the jurors' eyes will glaze over until the opposite attorney stands up and says to ignore the technobabble.
Most Americans don't know, and don't care about faked pictures, so almost always if a picture shows someone with a beer in the hand, juries will assume that is true automatically.
I am guessing they didn't, although I could be absolutely wrong. From what I get, HSPA+ is being rolled out as an incremental feature to get T-Mobile competing with Sprint/Clear. Since it does not require much tower modification, nor adding of new towers, it is a good interim upgrade until Advanced LTE [1] gets deployed.
It levels the playing field. AT&T has the iPhone. Sprint has 4G/Clear. T-Mobile has Wi-Max bandwidth on GSM devices. Verizon Wireless has the top tier Android devices.
[1]: IIRC, LTE is not truly "4G", but Advanced LTE is.
I guess marketing won out. 4G is everything on data, while 3G is data/voice separated.
T-Mobile has been having some very competitive speed rates compared to Sprint/Clear's WiMax service, so anyone who offers faster wireless speeds is appreciated.
Now, if we can firmly plan the boot in the derriere of the cellular companies and get them to start getting Advanced LTE out on a large scale, we'll be set.
Unless a judge rendered willful and malicious injury in a verdict, this isn't relevant.
It would be relevant if the plaintiff took songs from an artist, burned them on a CD, and sold them for cheap in front of a music store, or if someone copied a commercial program, sold copies of it in front of Fry's and it was proven they were doing that just to cause harm intentionally to the developer.
This has never been proven in any of the trials. So, yes, she can declare bankruptcy.
I actually took the time to look for this. Yes, there have been claims by the various parties of this during court proceedings, but no judge has stated that IP infringement is a "malicious" injury in the text of a verdict.
If you know a court case where a judge rendered this into the decision regarding noncommercial IP infringement, please cite. This is not intended to be rude, but I rather know I'm wrong than not on this one.
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This can be daunting. First, how would they store stuff in a way resistant to bit rot? For example, data stored on 5.25" floppies needs to be imaged and stored on other media. It also would need to be stored with plenty of error correction so that in the future, archivists can put in the relatively ancient hard disk and check to see if there is any irreparable damage. What comes to mind would be a CAS system that automatically copies and checks for errors data on older drives when newer drives are put in.
It would be nice to develop a format whose sole purpose in life is long term archiving with decent byte capacities. Perhaps a cube where three lasers heat up epoxy, forming a microscopic bubble at x,y,z coordinates for "1"s?
Second, emulation. Back then, it was essentially HTML with some basic LiveScript, then JavaScript and animated GIFs. Will we have a way to translate those add-ons in the future if everyone's Web browser consists of Flash and JavaScript is the code of the land, not HTML?
I remember those days. Before the Internet took off, the talk was how TV set top boxes would be the main way people would communicate with each other, with IR keyboards and sending E-mail for a dollar per send, perhaps more if it has to leave Compuserve to go to an AOL user.
Cable had their plans for making their own "internet", which was offering features at a snail's pace for large fees. However, the Internet put those plans on hold until recently, when with the monopolies for ISPs, they can start tiering and charging more for the same services.
What the big companies want is another CompuServe. Before anyone gets on, they have to put in a userID (easily hackable), and with numerous fees applied, such as time spent online, amount of data transferred, type of data (extra charges for going to a non "sponsored" website), etc.
One city I lived in, they had buttons that had insta-red lights, so pedestrians could walk across a busy highway to a church.
Problem was, it became a perfect spot for carjackers to set up shop. Stop traffic, show off your heat, zoom off with new wheels.
The solution by the city was to put a wrap-around lock over the button so it would not be usable to anyone, except on Sundays.
Agreed. At the lowest level, "Laptop ore", or ground up e-waste would take a lot of energy to recycle:
First, thermal depolymerization. This takes a lot of electricity to turn the long chain plastics back into short chain crude. It also takes a lot of water. However, one does get usable oil for this method.
Second, after the organics are dealt with, filtering that out, so you have a pile of minerals and metals. Separating that will be annoying because there will be so many items to filter out, be it copper, rare earths, lead, and other stuff.
Sager used to use Clevo as the OEM, and those were quite customizable. Want three HDDs? Go for it. A slot with a generic MP3 player? Yep. The laptop could even use desktop chips (say b-bye to your battery life, but for LAN parties, it was essentially desktop performance.)
I also miss standardized docking stations. IBM, HP, and Dell used to have nice docking stations which could not just allow for USB connections to be done, but additional PCI cards, better video, and would provide decent security against a smash and grab.
Clevo is still around, but I'm not sure if their stuff is as modular as in the early part of the 2000s though. I think people rather have a smaller size than customizability... as the race is to go thinner/lighter above all else, it seems.
I like reusing older tower cases, especially ones with Windows 95 and 98 stickers on them. Usually with a decent PSU, they will do a good job. To boot, a thief breaking in won't bother with what he thinks is an ancient machine, and will go for something else in the house.
I miss the old case I used to have which had Medeco locks not just on the front to lock out PS/2 keyboard access, but separate ones to lock the case closed. A would be thief would have to yank out a crowbar and do some heavy prying to get to the goodies in that one. Most keylocks on modern cases are a joke and a bad one at that. Whatever happened to putting something pick resistant? This way, if someone does crowbar the case open, it would definitely leave a signature [1] which makes it easier to file an insurance claim.
[1]: Some picking might leave a signature, but in reality (ceteris paribus), picked lock == claim denied, smashed open lock == obvious burglary, claim more likely approved.
Sometimes walk buttons do something. I do know some traffic lights around Austin which will have reds all four ways if the buttons are pressed.
Other lights don't do much, if anything.
To boot, if I were at a multi-site organization, one of the disaster plans would be getting the word out to CHQ if one of the data centers was being attacked. The DR plan would be getting in communication with the other site via another link such as a secure telephony app. This way the message would get out about being slammed from an unknown source, either as part of a drill, or as a reaction to a vicious attack. Smaller businesses that don't have the VoIP structure or the need to be on the Net 24/7/365 can just unplug the network core from the edge routers until things blow over.
Getting the word out could be as simple as calling HQ or other branches on a cell phone and using a code word or two that a third party eavesdropper wouldn't know about, or it might be using a private physical link just for this purpose that is not connected to any other network, not even the corporate LAN.
How is a mock cyberwar different from a DDoS simulation from the outside and other points, combined with a thorough penetration test?
A thorough pen test doesn't just scan ports and call it a night, the testers call employees pretending to be IT or managers and demand/browbeat for access, either to be handed a password for "auditing" reasons, or because the main IT people are supposedly gone for the day and a remote OEM needs access. I have even seen some thorough pen tests actually drop U3 USB flash drives in the parking lot that if autorun, would note which machine got "compromised".
I just don't see anything here that is different from hiring a thorough tiger team to test every piece of an organization's security (which companies should do at random times throughout the year.)
That is all well and good... provided I have physical access or the time to guide someone through a machine reload. However, if a user is unable/unwilling to reinstall.
However, when dealing with acquaintances who think a computer is like the doomsday device out of the Planet of the Apes that will destroy the world if they touch the wrong keystroke, there isn't really much to do. The three options I have are dropping any pretext of diplomacy and telling them to get a clue, tell them to find someone who can physically deal with the box, or install something that is nowhere guaranteed to fix the problem, but *might* stave off the scareware installs until they can get someone who has a clue physical access.
It goes without saying that the best solution is to save the data off (I use a Knoppix CD just for this exact reason), try to get an image of the box for forensic reasons if possible, then DBAN and reinstall. However, you would be surprised at how few users keep recovery media (if they have Dells), or how few make recovery media (if on other platforms.)
It isn't collecting revenue for a business. It is making these million dollar verdicts against individuals irrelevant. It is also doing a Constitutional duty for facilitating trade.
If there is a better solution, by all means, say so. This isn't a perfect solution, but it is far better than these insane civil verdicts which do nothing.
We in the US have two choices: Continue to criminalize this, so we have another set of people to join the pot smokers in our prison system, or find a way to ensure artists and labels are properly compensated for their work and save the jail bed space for the real criminals.
It isn't perfect, but to toss in the usual car analogy, the government taxes me for roads I likely won't drive in in my life. If taxed for music I won't here, compared to the alternative (ACTA, tougher DRM, etc.), I much rather see a levy on media like Canada.
No solution is perfect. However, this is better than what we have now.
I wonder about just engineering a system so it isn't a crime anymore. Model it after Canada's.
Make a clearinghouse for compulsory licensing, and have peoples taxes pay for this. In return, citizens and residents of a country can hit the clearinghouse, download what they want, and the artist/label are paid per download from the funds obtained via taxes. If people share a song, who cares... it is paid for.
The tax revenue can be collected from media as they do by our gentle neighbors up north, or be part of the income tax.
Result: Artists get paid. Labels get paid. DRM becomes a moot issue.
What is ironic is when I graduated college in '08, it was stated repeatedly that the path for a computer science student to have a chance at steady employment was to go into law school. Then either specialize in IP law or work as an assistant DA for computer crime.
I appreciate the good replies to this. I have been enlightened here.
The difference between last.fm/Pandora/Grooveshark and Spotify is that Spotify allows you to play what songs you want. If someone wants to play "Oops I did it again" 400 times in a row, Spotify will queue it and allow them to do this.
I have tried many other products. On the consumer level, there is really no significant benefit the other guys have over MSE that makes it worth the cost per year. The only product I'd probably recommend would be Sunbelt Software's offerings because their products are good at delousing a machine when it can't be taken apart and fixed by someone with a clue. Suites [1] are a different story, but antivirus products alone, there isn't much anyone else has that MSE doesn't on the consumer level.
Enterprise-wide, different story. Products like Forefront or Symantec Endpoint Protection provides far more than just a "virus condom". As an IT guy, I can have it to stop "hacking tools" such as most serial number grabbing utilities, have it lock out USB flash drives, give me comprehensive reports from the Windows side of the house, hook with NAC to ensure that if a Windows box doesn't have AV, it doesn't get connected (for CYA reasons rather than technical), and loads of other stuff that matters in business.
So, on a personal level, I would just be content with MSE. If an acquaintance called up saying, "OMG, my computer is infected", I'd tell them to download Sunbelt Software's offering and let it attempt to clean the machine. If I were running a business, I'd spring for SEP or Forefront because of the enterprise level features.
[1]: Antivirus + firewall "suites" are pointless in any Windows version post 2000. Want a firewall? Get a hardware router, so blackhats don't have a small window of attack when a machine starts up or shuts down, and the software "firewall" isn't loaded and hooked into the IP stack.
You mean the one in Windows 8?
From what I've read, Microsoft is planning to have a Marketplace for installing applications in the next version of Windows. This will be nice because I can either tell people to only install software from there and nowhere else. In businesses, group policies can be set to enforce this. Result: One major vector for infection gets sealed.
I'm all for application markets, provided it isn't locked down to a single vendor. The OSS market has used repositories for decades, and this has been an excellent way to ensure software downloaded is clean.
IIRC, in some ads MS ran a few years back, they touted Forefront as one of the only security solutions which offered guaranteed protection against zombies.
This alone makes their offering worth the price of admission.
That is how it is in law school. A lot of law firms put a lot of weight on GPA and what school one graduated from. A tier 1 college (as per US News and World Report) will get one hired essentially anywhere. If someone came from a lower tier, they would need to have a resume with entries to compensate for not having Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, or UT by their academic section.
This doesn't say that a lower tier is a bad thing -- there is no such thing as an unemployed attorney unless they get disbarred, but the plum positions starting from graduating are essentially about what tier you came from, all things being equal.
I will be more than happy to trade you Hulu for Spotify. Having the ability to listen and queue up any songs with a small subscription fee for no ads (even if I wanted to listen to the same song until my mind shut down), is far more useful than paying for ad-filled Flash content that I rarely have time to watch.
There is nothing like Spotify in the US, and it would be great to just stream stuff from my phone, rather than have to find the songs I want to hear and make sure they are loaded beforehand.
Careful on that. The burden of proof actually is on the person who is in the picture in reality. Try convincing a jury (where most of the jurors think Photoshop is where they go to drop off their 35mm roll film) that the picture is fake. Go into detail about where the pixels don't jive, and the jurors' eyes will glaze over until the opposite attorney stands up and says to ignore the technobabble.
Most Americans don't know, and don't care about faked pictures, so almost always if a picture shows someone with a beer in the hand, juries will assume that is true automatically.
I am guessing they didn't, although I could be absolutely wrong. From what I get, HSPA+ is being rolled out as an incremental feature to get T-Mobile competing with Sprint/Clear. Since it does not require much tower modification, nor adding of new towers, it is a good interim upgrade until Advanced LTE [1] gets deployed.
It levels the playing field. AT&T has the iPhone. Sprint has 4G/Clear. T-Mobile has Wi-Max bandwidth on GSM devices. Verizon Wireless has the top tier Android devices.
[1]: IIRC, LTE is not truly "4G", but Advanced LTE is.
I guess marketing won out. 4G is everything on data, while 3G is data/voice separated.
T-Mobile has been having some very competitive speed rates compared to Sprint/Clear's WiMax service, so anyone who offers faster wireless speeds is appreciated.
Now, if we can firmly plan the boot in the derriere of the cellular companies and get them to start getting Advanced LTE out on a large scale, we'll be set.
Unless a judge rendered willful and malicious injury in a verdict, this isn't relevant.
It would be relevant if the plaintiff took songs from an artist, burned them on a CD, and sold them for cheap in front of a music store, or if someone copied a commercial program, sold copies of it in front of Fry's and it was proven they were doing that just to cause harm intentionally to the developer.
This has never been proven in any of the trials. So, yes, she can declare bankruptcy.
I actually took the time to look for this. Yes, there have been claims by the various parties of this during court proceedings, but no judge has stated that IP infringement is a "malicious" injury in the text of a verdict.
If you know a court case where a judge rendered this into the decision regarding noncommercial IP infringement, please cite. This is not intended to be rude, but I rather know I'm wrong than not on this one.