HP's LaserJet printers encode the printer serial number and registration information (at a minimum) in a pattern of little yellow dots so that every sheet of paper can be tracked back to the printer that printed it. They aren't unique in this, however. Many other printer companies do the exact same thing.
Why should you having a piece of paper saying you voted some way mean anything? Last election the exit polls indicated a result significantly different than what was declared official.
Just imaging a huge P2P network of Microsoft software - and if someone figures out how to pervert it with trojans, viruses, keyloggers...
With Microsoft's lousy security track record, can you imagine the gold mine this will be for anyone that wants to mass distribute malwear? Nothing like lots of machines in the wild hosting "official" Microsoft software, patches, etc.
It's ignorant bullshit? Am I wrong about Microsoft stealing code verbatim from Stacker to use as their on-the-fly disk compression routine? Am I wrong about Microsoft actually scanning to see if a user was running Word Perfect and having the system slow it to a crawl or have it fault out? Am I wrong about how when Microsoft was being investigated for anti-competitive behaviors with their bundling of IE that they quickly - and crudely - swapped out pieces of code from Windows into IE and from IE into Windows? To the point that anyone that uninstalled IE completely hosed their operating system and had to reinstall?
But I did leave out a few things - like when Microsoft on numerous occasions threatened computer vendors - as they are now. How they refused to honor their own shrinkwrap about how if people don't agree to the EULA, they can have their money refunded (see the Australian case where one user had to fight them in court to get them to honor their own EULA). You know, stuff like that.
I stand by my assertion - Microsoft plays dirty. Please provide any rebuttal you wish. I'd love to see it. I will stick with OSX and Linux.
Doing their best to eliminate all competition with their monopolistic practices.
It's no different than their blood deals with SuSe and such. Tie everyone up with obligations to not use other products or make them pay royalties with Microsoft's threats of lawsuits for crap patents.
I bought my last Microsoft product years ago. No way in hell will I support a company like them.
And for those that talk about Microsoft's "innovation", I'd like to counter with their outright thefts of code (Stacker), their sabotaging other company's products when they detect them running in Windows (Word Perfect), their screwing customers so they could pretend that IE was a critical component of the OS (Win98), and all the other dirty tricks they constantly pull.
Doesn't Bill Gates have enough money? When will they actually produce a quality product instead of pushing junk on people? When will they let the market actually support innovation?
Yeah, yeah - I know I am no Microsoft fan boy and this may get labelled as flame bait or a troll, but seriously - this is just another example of Microsoft's dirty tricks and using their weight to screw everyone else - including their very own fan boys.
Lots of articles on this. Seems that the cut budgets ebing realigned for Mars manned flight is causing big cutbacks in other areas. Not like this led to astronauts in diapers, drinking before launch, or sabotage, but it does just hurt the whole NASA organization and probably does make the sensational crap more possible.
Those people are under a lot of stress and now, with more public and government attention, they will be even more so. The attention won't make NASA safer either. With more scrutiny frequently come more screw-ups. I don't envy the people at NASA one bit. I do feel sorry for them though.
Too bad we don't have an administration with honest priorities.
It's the same thing as all the Patriot Act crap wasn't really for fighting terror, it was a wholesale monitoring of the US public by a paranoid administration. It's like calling wrecking the educational system "no child left behind". It's like a whole lot of what is going on these days -- call a violation of our civil liberties or Constitutional rights something that sounds patriotic or like it is protecting kids, or protecting 'Merca.
Maybe they should just go ahead and call this what it really is - just another step towards a totalitarian police state.
And switched to Ask. I dropped Verizon when the news broke about their data habits. People need to start voting with their feet. It's the only regulation we'll ever see of what these companies do.
But that is definitely changing. Corporations don't value research now. Some do - biotech is probably now the best example - but by and large, US companies are obsessed with acquisitions, splits, layoffs and wage cuts in order to provide the fastest, greatest profits to shareholders.
It is a short-sighted approach that is leading to the situation we are now finding ourselves in - Americans unable to do the work required in this technological society. As a culture we have made fun of scientists, valued the steroid-pumped athlete and the slash and burn executive. But innovators, researchers, teachers, etc - all of the professions that would have been able to prepare this country for the future - have been basically discarded.
No child left behind? How about a whole country. We are quickly becoming a third-world entity with nothing but poor and uneducated immigrants flocking here for the vision of what used to be. The people who were/are here are now unable to think critically, innovate, etc.
There are exceptions of course but this is the overall situation. Check any tech rag for an editorial - the critical shortage of US workers capable to do the jobs necessary to keep this country afloat. This is not a time to be like this. We are now dependent on foreign countries for manufacturing, energy, and a lot of raw materials. What do we bring to the table?
It seems all we bring are consumers of the crap we have to import. And that is bankrupting this country fast.
With the other posts here about the FBI spyware, the possibility of government back doors in the various AV products, etc, maybe they decided to fold and close the doors instead of open mandated holes? Pure guessing but if the NSA/FBI/whoever went to them and said open this up for us, aplace like Anonymizer, founded on privacy, might not be able to be as morally flexible as the AV vendors who are looking for "viruses" and "spyware".
There is one huge difference here - a locksmith is a person who essentially has some oversight into what is going on. They could evaluate how many times they were called out and they could also talk if the issues were bad enough - i.e. complete abuse of power, etc.
In the electronic age, this now requires no third parties, can be done wholesale, with no oversight, with various triggers to alert people if you are visiting someplace they don't like, whatever. Once someone has the tools, that's the last they need from anyone who might be an outsider who might not approve of their actions. Now it's just the agent and whatever they want to do and whoever they want to watch.
Say, all the people who post on/. for instance. How hard would it be to search all their homes with a locksmith? How hard would it be to audit every last bit of their internet activity?
Anyone that trusts AV vendors - especially foreign ones - not to imbed backdoors and spyware, or to whitelist their government's "tools" is a bit too trusting IMHO.
Neither of them is looking out for us. Google is no way doing this to make sure prices are low for broadband. They are doing it for profits and their shareholders. I would bet any benefit for users is temporary.
Meanwhile, AT&T sees a lapse in the way they can gouge customers and don't like the potential hit to them. Plus it's another way they can slow down what they see as a major competitor.
They are both looking out for themselves. Nobody else. Obviously if there aren't customers, they don't make money. That's the only thing that keeps either of them in line. But either of them would also squeeze you dry if they could. It's the American way.
Google recently published a study that approximately 10% of web sites have been hacked and actually do contain malicious code.
Do you run programs like tripwire from a secure, off-net host, that monitor your website box to make sure that it has not been compromised and actually does have malicious code?
I seriously doubt they are interested in my specific computer to exfiltrate data from. However, there are lots of computers owned/operated by lots of key people at key companies or in government, that they probably would like to inspect. Why bother sending an agent when you can do it from halfway around the globe?
You seem to forget the recent flap about how Estonia thinks that the crippling cyber attacks they have been having were or Russian origin? While nobody may be interested in the information on my computer, another bot with a high-speed net connection is just another bot capable of being used in whatever cyber attack du jour a country wishes to do. Bots are valuable to regular botnet operators. What makes you think they wouldn't be valuable to governments who want to shut down some other country?
And what better way to gain access than by being a part of what is apparently considered to be "good" AV software?
I never said the American ones were good. I only said that I wouldn't install the Chinese or Russian ones. The simple reason being that China and Russia both are big into network infiltration and the USA is a prime target. I don't believe in handing over a back door. I have no clue if Kaspersky or Rising Tech are fronting or providing back doors for their respective governments. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't. But there is a very real possibility that they are.
And you say your virus checkers of choice have detected "ALL" viruses? How do you know? Ask anyone who knows anything about AV software and they will tell you that the new ones are frequently missed completely because their behaviors or signatures are unknown. Until your AV company of choice puts in new definitions, you simply do not see them -- even though you may be infected and possibly infecting others. You even cite such an example yourself. If Kaspersky was to decide not to include a signature - say for a Russian government botnet back door - then you don't know it's there.
The fact is (and please go look at SANS or other websites that report such news) that China, Russia, and actually just about every country in the world have discovered that you can use the Internet for lots of military and economic gain. You can pull out sensitive data. You can set up systems so that if you ever need or want to, you can cripple infrastructure. You can wreck economic havoc. The USA especially uses the Internet for lots of things. Imagine the chaos that would come if you could shut it down with a single command. Trust me - they have.
Countries like Russia and China can go lean on companies to put in whatever hooks they want. I'm not saying they are in Kaspersky's software but I would not ever bet against it.
Re:Seriously, aliens, stay away.
on
Roswell UFO Festival
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Yep. I think my first choice would be to masquerade as a portly, tight-lipped and secretive vice president that had the strings to an idiot marionette of a president.
Slashdot Mirror
HP's LaserJet printers encode the printer serial number and registration information (at a minimum) in a pattern of little yellow dots so that every sheet of paper can be tracked back to the printer that printed it. They aren't unique in this, however. Many other printer companies do the exact same thing.
r ticle.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118664-page,1/a
Print one thing and record another.
Why should you having a piece of paper saying you voted some way mean anything? Last election the exit polls indicated a result significantly different than what was declared official.
Just imaging a huge P2P network of Microsoft software - and if someone figures out how to pervert it with trojans, viruses, keyloggers...
With Microsoft's lousy security track record, can you imagine the gold mine this will be for anyone that wants to mass distribute malwear? Nothing like lots of machines in the wild hosting "official" Microsoft software, patches, etc.
Think it can't happen? Think again.
It's ignorant bullshit? Am I wrong about Microsoft stealing code verbatim from Stacker to use as their on-the-fly disk compression routine? Am I wrong about Microsoft actually scanning to see if a user was running Word Perfect and having the system slow it to a crawl or have it fault out? Am I wrong about how when Microsoft was being investigated for anti-competitive behaviors with their bundling of IE that they quickly - and crudely - swapped out pieces of code from Windows into IE and from IE into Windows? To the point that anyone that uninstalled IE completely hosed their operating system and had to reinstall?
But I did leave out a few things - like when Microsoft on numerous occasions threatened computer vendors - as they are now. How they refused to honor their own shrinkwrap about how if people don't agree to the EULA, they can have their money refunded (see the Australian case where one user had to fight them in court to get them to honor their own EULA). You know, stuff like that.
I stand by my assertion - Microsoft plays dirty. Please provide any rebuttal you wish. I'd love to see it. I will stick with OSX and Linux.
At least I don't hide as an Anonymous Coward...
Doing their best to eliminate all competition with their monopolistic practices.
It's no different than their blood deals with SuSe and such. Tie everyone up with obligations to not use other products or make them pay royalties with Microsoft's threats of lawsuits for crap patents.
I bought my last Microsoft product years ago. No way in hell will I support a company like them.
And for those that talk about Microsoft's "innovation", I'd like to counter with their outright thefts of code (Stacker), their sabotaging other company's products when they detect them running in Windows (Word Perfect), their screwing customers so they could pretend that IE was a critical component of the OS (Win98), and all the other dirty tricks they constantly pull.
Doesn't Bill Gates have enough money? When will they actually produce a quality product instead of pushing junk on people? When will they let the market actually support innovation?
Yeah, yeah - I know I am no Microsoft fan boy and this may get labelled as flame bait or a troll, but seriously - this is just another example of Microsoft's dirty tricks and using their weight to screw everyone else - including their very own fan boys.
Lots of articles on this. Seems that the cut budgets ebing realigned for Mars manned flight is causing big cutbacks in other areas. Not like this led to astronauts in diapers, drinking before launch, or sabotage, but it does just hurt the whole NASA organization and probably does make the sensational crap more possible.
Those people are under a lot of stress and now, with more public and government attention, they will be even more so. The attention won't make NASA safer either. With more scrutiny frequently come more screw-ups. I don't envy the people at NASA one bit. I do feel sorry for them though.
Too bad we don't have an administration with honest priorities.
It's the same thing as all the Patriot Act crap wasn't really for fighting terror, it was a wholesale monitoring of the US public by a paranoid administration. It's like calling wrecking the educational system "no child left behind". It's like a whole lot of what is going on these days -- call a violation of our civil liberties or Constitutional rights something that sounds patriotic or like it is protecting kids, or protecting 'Merca.
Maybe they should just go ahead and call this what it really is - just another step towards a totalitarian police state.
And switched to Ask. I dropped Verizon when the news broke about their data habits. People need to start voting with their feet. It's the only regulation we'll ever see of what these companies do.
"I'm sure the kids are doing other stuff with the computers too anyway--stuff that is more generally accepted."
Like masturbation?
Turgid, erect, throbbing, tubes...
;-)
I guess old Senator what's his name was right, eh kiddies?
But that is definitely changing. Corporations don't value research now. Some do - biotech is probably now the best example - but by and large, US companies are obsessed with acquisitions, splits, layoffs and wage cuts in order to provide the fastest, greatest profits to shareholders.
It is a short-sighted approach that is leading to the situation we are now finding ourselves in - Americans unable to do the work required in this technological society. As a culture we have made fun of scientists, valued the steroid-pumped athlete and the slash and burn executive. But innovators, researchers, teachers, etc - all of the professions that would have been able to prepare this country for the future - have been basically discarded.
No child left behind? How about a whole country. We are quickly becoming a third-world entity with nothing but poor and uneducated immigrants flocking here for the vision of what used to be. The people who were/are here are now unable to think critically, innovate, etc.
There are exceptions of course but this is the overall situation. Check any tech rag for an editorial - the critical shortage of US workers capable to do the jobs necessary to keep this country afloat. This is not a time to be like this. We are now dependent on foreign countries for manufacturing, energy, and a lot of raw materials. What do we bring to the table?
It seems all we bring are consumers of the crap we have to import. And that is bankrupting this country fast.
With the other posts here about the FBI spyware, the possibility of government back doors in the various AV products, etc, maybe they decided to fold and close the doors instead of open mandated holes? Pure guessing but if the NSA/FBI/whoever went to them and said open this up for us, aplace like Anonymizer, founded on privacy, might not be able to be as morally flexible as the AV vendors who are looking for "viruses" and "spyware".
There is one huge difference here - a locksmith is a person who essentially has some oversight into what is going on. They could evaluate how many times they were called out and they could also talk if the issues were bad enough - i.e. complete abuse of power, etc.
/. for instance. How hard would it be to search all their homes with a locksmith? How hard would it be to audit every last bit of their internet activity?
In the electronic age, this now requires no third parties, can be done wholesale, with no oversight, with various triggers to alert people if you are visiting someplace they don't like, whatever. Once someone has the tools, that's the last they need from anyone who might be an outsider who might not approve of their actions. Now it's just the agent and whatever they want to do and whoever they want to watch.
Say, all the people who post on
Wired is reporting on some FbI spyware used to catch people. Wonder if any of these companies would spot and report that...
i _spyware
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/07/fb
This topic came up here recently in the case of a Rising Tech (Chinese) sueing Kaspersky Labs (Russian) when their software called Rising Tech's "malware". (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/08/12 38230)
Anyone that trusts AV vendors - especially foreign ones - not to imbed backdoors and spyware, or to whitelist their government's "tools" is a bit too trusting IMHO.
But you do need to worry about looking nice for all the dates and sex you would be getting...
So that's what "compassionate conservativism" means...
Neither of them is looking out for us. Google is no way doing this to make sure prices are low for broadband. They are doing it for profits and their shareholders. I would bet any benefit for users is temporary.
Meanwhile, AT&T sees a lapse in the way they can gouge customers and don't like the potential hit to them. Plus it's another way they can slow down what they see as a major competitor.
They are both looking out for themselves. Nobody else. Obviously if there aren't customers, they don't make money. That's the only thing that keeps either of them in line. But either of them would also squeeze you dry if they could. It's the American way.
Stealth Fighter! That was great -- and that jet whistle!
How I wish I had mod points - you would get either "Funny" or "Insightful" -- not sure which.
Google recently published a study that approximately 10% of web sites have been hacked and actually do contain malicious code.
Do you run programs like tripwire from a secure, off-net host, that monitor your website box to make sure that it has not been compromised and actually does have malicious code?
I seriously doubt they are interested in my specific computer to exfiltrate data from. However, there are lots of computers owned/operated by lots of key people at key companies or in government, that they probably would like to inspect. Why bother sending an agent when you can do it from halfway around the globe?
You seem to forget the recent flap about how Estonia thinks that the crippling cyber attacks they have been having were or Russian origin? While nobody may be interested in the information on my computer, another bot with a high-speed net connection is just another bot capable of being used in whatever cyber attack du jour a country wishes to do. Bots are valuable to regular botnet operators. What makes you think they wouldn't be valuable to governments who want to shut down some other country?
And what better way to gain access than by being a part of what is apparently considered to be "good" AV software?
I never said the American ones were good. I only said that I wouldn't install the Chinese or Russian ones. The simple reason being that China and Russia both are big into network infiltration and the USA is a prime target. I don't believe in handing over a back door. I have no clue if Kaspersky or Rising Tech are fronting or providing back doors for their respective governments. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't. But there is a very real possibility that they are.
And you say your virus checkers of choice have detected "ALL" viruses? How do you know? Ask anyone who knows anything about AV software and they will tell you that the new ones are frequently missed completely because their behaviors or signatures are unknown. Until your AV company of choice puts in new definitions, you simply do not see them -- even though you may be infected and possibly infecting others. You even cite such an example yourself. If Kaspersky was to decide not to include a signature - say for a Russian government botnet back door - then you don't know it's there.
The fact is (and please go look at SANS or other websites that report such news) that China, Russia, and actually just about every country in the world have discovered that you can use the Internet for lots of military and economic gain. You can pull out sensitive data. You can set up systems so that if you ever need or want to, you can cripple infrastructure. You can wreck economic havoc. The USA especially uses the Internet for lots of things. Imagine the chaos that would come if you could shut it down with a single command. Trust me - they have.
Countries like Russia and China can go lean on companies to put in whatever hooks they want. I'm not saying they are in Kaspersky's software but I would not ever bet against it.
Yep. I think my first choice would be to masquerade as a portly, tight-lipped and secretive vice president that had the strings to an idiot marionette of a president.
Ahhhh... The power...