The quote I was addressing was "...all scientific breakthroughs/DEVELOPMENTS...", so this clearly would include significant milestone products that were developed using whatever scientific knowledge that was developed.
In addition, the recent development of things like CCD's CMOS imaging devices that allow 15 megapixel (and much greater) imaging devices are clearly NOT being done for government use. That's the field I work in and nobody here has been thinking "lets do this for a spy satellite", they're thinking about making money in selling to people like us. That is what has driven the market from a 640x480 crappy ass slow as hell CCD to the drool worthy digital cameras that we have today that easily rival film cameras.
Semiconductor development hasn't been led by the military since the microprocessor was developed.
The sad fact is that so far the societies as a whole have never pursued the scientific frontier unless threatened by [an] outside force...
This is a ludicrous statement. Think about the scientific field today. Do you really think that's being done for military purposes? Super colliders? Searching for a quark or whatever other physics particle is next on the list to understanding the "theory of everything"? Buckyballs? Fuel cells? 32nm silicon etching? These are NOT being done because we feel threatened by anybody, they're being done because people either want to get rich or they want respect from their scientific peers. Your view of scientific advancement is stuck back in the 1940's and 1950's when WWII and nuclear weapons drove a lot of research but now a days this just isn't true.
So lets try a thought experiment; What scientific advancements are being driven by the military today? How many can you list? The only one i can think of myself is research into lasers. They are doing some cutting edge stuff there in order to get lasers capable of shooting down missiles and that type of thing. Ok... what else? Maybe robotics with the UAV's driving a lot of military spending. Can you list anything else?
Lets start listing breakthroughs and developments that aren't militarized first:
heart surgery, anigioplasty, television, cellular phones, CAT scans, chemotherapy, vaccinations, dental implants, hearing aids, digital photography, digital video recording, dark matter, DNA, plate techtonics, AIDS medicine, gene therapy, mapping the human genome, HIV testing, the remote control, insulin, kidney dialysis, plasma television, flat panel television, MRIâ(TM)s, pacemakers, photovoltaic cells, antidepressants, robots in production lines, scanning electron microscopes, smoke detectors, the birth control pill, performing organ transplants, UPC codes, and Viagra
In addition practically all modern electronics were not built with the military in mind nor were they initially used for military. This includes things like multi-million transistor processors, gigabit memory chips, high resolution flat panel displays, gigabit eithernet, etc. The military has a different set of requirements before it uses technology than corporations. They demand a higher level of stability and reliability than a commercial enterprise requires. As such a corporation is going to use the highest performance CPUâ(TM)s on their workstations and desktops while inside a nuclear sub theyâ(TM)re going to still be using Pentium IIâ(TM)s that have been thoroughly evaluated and proven to work.
Commerce drives way more R&D development in this day and age than does the military. There are lots of exceptions because the military has a different set of requirements and therefore they research different things, but the time when the military drives "almost all scientific break-throughs" is long dead. The military still drives some scientific development, but itâ(TM)s a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the scientific community.
Wow... you actually like itunes? I can't stand the thing. The only thing I do actually like is that I can subscribe to podcasts and it auto-updates them... but i'm sure lots of other music player's software do that as well, I just have never used them.
Itunes is slow as a dog (on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram no less) I despise it's music ordering structure or lack there of (this is probably more of a gribe with the IPOD UI) Using it with audiobooks has been a frustrating and hair pulling experience. (I have to rename the files to change the order they are played on my IPOD? seriously, wtf?)
But honestly I could probably ok with it if it wasn't SO GOD DAMNED SLOW.
I'm sorry, this post is totally off topic, but i'm just floored that someone actually likes itunes on the PC that I just had to chime in and vent a bit.
When i first started learning Japanese just a little before i moved here I took a class that taught in the method you described. Now different people learn differently, but I found that method of teaching, teaching only in the foreign language and not using any English, to be a waste of time.
For the way I learn I needed to be able to bound the meanings of words. If I left the word meaning open ended (maybe that's car?... maybe that's vehicle?... maybe that's wheel?... maybe that's "to ride"?), I found that I couldn't just say "ah, that's a car" and memorize it and move on. When I gave up on that approach I did much better... but again, different people learn differently and no place is that more apparent than in language.
And the interesting thing here in Japan is that a number of people know english but not very well, so when I first got here I could typically communicate better using their crappy english over using my even more crappy japanese. I found that the best way to communicate to someone in a language that they're not good at is to slow down, pronounce everything clearly, and to use simplified words/language. Speaking clearer can sometimes lead to more volume so that each syllable is heard.... or maybe the English speakers were just being stupid...
I have no emperical data but I totally agree with you. Children are immersed much more than adults and adults talk differently to children who are learning the language than to other adults.
I'm American currently living in Japan with two small kids. How other people treat me learning Japanese vs how they treat my 2.5 yr old is totally different. they'll correct him, use simpler words, speak slowly, teach him, and praise him when right. If you're an adult, other adults will try to speak to you on their level. It is incredibility hard to pick up a language with other people speaking at full speed using more advanced language.
IMHO this and the level of Immersion kids face are the two huge advantages kids have when learning a new language IMHO. I no longer believe all that BS about "kids being intrinsically better at picking up languages" and crap. (Although the accent comment may be spot on...)
Unfortunately in real life that's not how it works.
Um... actually it is dude.
Have you ever hear the phrase "locks are not to keep the crooks out (locks won't stop the crooks), they're to keep the honest people out"? Have you never heard of putting up fake surveillance cameras or putting a little flashing led on your car dash board? How about the old man security guard at the bank? All of these things are for show only. All of these things show that there is a cost trade off curve for following the laws.
Piracy is low on the risk scale and low on the "how much am i hurting someone else" scale so it's a pretty reasonable option for a lot of people. We can then weigh that against the cost of the product and weather we WANT to pay the company responsible for producing it or author. It's simply becomes a choice.
You may bitch and whine about how it's against the law... but so is speeding, do you do that? In some places it's now illegal to talk on your cell while driving... how about that? Nobody has every died from IP infringement, but they have from my other examples, so morally which is worse? It really means we each have to have to weight our own moral code and decide what we're going to do.
Once you come to terms with the fact that buying something is a choice vs pirating, then the producers must market themselves and their product differently. They must treat their consumers better.
There are companies out there that i want to give my money to and I do buy stuff from them whenever i get the chance. This is just a fact of life the internet age. This is the way things are. Produce good stuff, be good to your customers, and you'll get more business. In my eyes, that's the way it should be.
are you kidding? This is slashdot and an RIAA topic!
Anything against the RIAA will be pushed for, against for the RIAA will be argued against. For an RIAA topic, "fair and balanced" means the same thing here as it does on Fox "news".
If we're so good at doing wireless power, wireless RF power, why isn't my laptop powered through a wireless connection? My MP3 player? My cell phone?! (Tiny power, antenna already attached)
They aren't because this is bullshit.
This stinks of a take the money and run scam. Energy is cheap, even with gas at $4 a gallon energy is too cheap for this. Whoever is stupid enough to invest in this company doesn't deserve pity when they find out its all a scam. The engineering isn't there. The logic isn't there. The ROI isn't there. This is just dumb.
Sorry, i believe in democracy, where elections are decided by the quantity of people who voted for one person vs the other. ANY system which gets in the way of that is bullshit... weather it's a group of religious leaders who pick the canidates, a single political party that picks who gets to run, or an American Gladiator style obstacle course (although that would be cool).... ANY thing which gets between "most votes" -> "candidate wins" robs us citizens the freedom of choosing our own government.
I fail to see any redeeming value in the electoral college system. I prefer my vote counts,...and yet it never does in a presidential election. How stupid is that?
"My vote doesn't count if I don't live in a select state, so I can make token votes instead of actually participating in an election. This is something I like."
I'd much rather my vote than be a bitch of some farmer in Iowa or some old fart in Florida. Fuck the electoral college system.
If you want a government without compromise, then run for office yourself. A democracy by its vary nature is a bunch of different people with different ideas trying to run a country that's best for everyone. Not everyone will like the same person and unless you have a cookie cutter personality, no politician will exactly match your beliefs. Unless you're running for political office yourself, you always compromise when picking a candidate.
Wow dude, you need to chill a bit and come down off your roid-rage. If you think police should be breaking down his door and hauling him off in handcuffs becuase of this, you're pretty nuts.
I also don't know what you're talking about with the whole "not even admitting to DLing it publicly for fear of the Hammer." I bet if you went to mininova right now you'd it'd be on their top 10 most DLing/Seeded movies right now because of all this publicity. (I'd check myself but i'm at work)
As for the employee, I doubt he's in real trouble. He's in the publicity business, and right now he's getting more publicity that I bet he ever thought possible from this review. Unless he does something really stupid to screw this up, I bet he'll land on his feet somewhere.
Look, NK already has the capability to do massive damage to SK and drop missiles on Japan but they haven't. This missile wouldn't have changed anything.
Success or failure... it's simply not that big a deal.
It's really much more scary that they would sell one to Iran. That's the more scary scenario for international relations... but even that isn't that big a deal.
On slashdot you can prove a negative. It simply requires you to point out reputable sources that back you up. Why don't you try that instead of your lame-ass "believe what you want to believe" post. At this point Brett comes off as MUCH more credible than you to any unbiased observer.
But hey, take all your toys and go home if that's where you're at.
ok... I live in the Japanese countryside, or at least this is what they consider the Japanese countryside, but is NOTHING like the barren nothingness that you picture when someone from the US says "countryside". Population density in the Japanese countryside is still pretty dense.
Anyway, when I moved here nearly 3 years ago, I got 100Mb fiber to my house installed for something like $300 bucks full installation costs. Modems, first month payment, etc. I think it was actually more like $220 after discounts, but that was the price range. I now pay 50 bucks a month for this service and I've kept it and been very happy with it since it was installed.
Now keep in mind, this included two guys coming to my house and running fiber onto the property (stand alone house), and installing the cable modem plus router.
To compare, when I moved from the US, I was paying cable modem costs that were over $60 per month (with no cable service bundled, no extras) and maybe I'd top out at around 5Mb? I dunno, but no comparison in any case. When I was in the US I lived in Los Angeles.
You can't give me any of these bullshit population density arguments when i paid MORE for for LESS bandwidth in an area with a HIGHER population density. Something doesn't smell right here and its not a population density argument. i think it starts with an "M" and ends with "onopoly", and has everything to do with government and telcos/cable companies getting in bed together.
It seems that every other day we get another Orwellian story about England and their newest ability to watch their citizens with cameras or step on their rights by database miss uses, and THIS is what they take a stand over? Google streetview?
I'm not in favor of what they did, but I disagree with your #2 on the list. As technology improves thieves will use google maps / streetview / MS aerial photography, etc to scout possible locations for criminal activity assuming they don't already. This is a fact of life.
That being said, it still don't give them the right to make the decision for everyone in their neighborhood to not have their houses on google streetview and it doesn't give them the right to stop google from doing what they are legally allowed to do on public streets.
Additionally the thieves would probably get more from google satellite view than street view because from those they can see into someone's backyard instead of just what they can normally see from the street.
Thank you for your reply. Yeah, i kept reading after i posted this and someone else posted that there was an RC4 encrypeted and RSA signed. However the way RSA encription works requires a private key to be hidden from the people who are trying to break the encrypted message. If you have the private key, then you can decript the message as well. AND if you can pull apart conflicker code, then it must contain the private key within.
That same other (very informative) person also wrote that the program would pick 500 out of a bank of 50000 IP address and try them. So this goes to the poison pill idea of hacking the hacker. Surely people could take over say 100 of those IP address and they stand a better chance of sending a pill than the original programmer has of his IP address correctly feeding the right information.
Or maybe those other 50000 address are another botnet. That would get interesting to peel that onion.... But either way, that's a much more interesting discussion than what I've seen on this discussion thread so far.
Security experts are well aware of this botnet client and are keeping a close eye on it. They've picked the client bot apart line by line. They know exactly how it is supposed to behave on the client side, but they of course don't have a clue about the server side. So why can't they hijack the hijacker?
For example, say this client bot is programmed to go to IP address on April 1st and DL some update. Ok..., block that IP address on the internet or trace the IP address back to the owners and stop it there. Those don't seem hard. (ok... and before someone calls me an idiot for saying "block the ip address on the internet", what i mean is that you can get the major service providers, certainly here in the US, and potentially abroad to "lose" anything sent to a specific address.)
Ok... so let's say that the client bot is programmed to go to IP address to and ping each one to ask for an appropriate update, verifying each update against a specific hash key. Ok... then grab IP address and put in something that DLs a file that neutralizes the bot. There can be no hash key that the researchers can't figure out because they can pick through the entire client bot's code bit by bit.
I'm clearly not getting something crucial here, but it just seems that in all the moaning about how bad this is that it wouldn't be that hard for someone person to write some kill code for it as long as enough time and effort had already gone into understanding the client side code.
Someone please help out a clueless non-security, non-software engineer understand why this is so hard.
It's not about what you post, it's about what you read. How about youtube? You think they care about what funny cat video you watch? They're a lot more interested in what political videos you go and click on. That's how they "judge intent".
Watch out, the thought police are coming.
Once the government can monitor everything that goes into your head and comes out of your head, democracy is doesn't stand a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
We can't operate based on fear rather than knowledge
A true nugget of wisdom, which if followed would mean the removal of at least 75% of the slashdot posts on this subject.
d
The quote I was addressing was "...all scientific breakthroughs/DEVELOPMENTS...", so this clearly would include significant milestone products that were developed using whatever scientific knowledge that was developed.
In addition, the recent development of things like CCD's CMOS imaging devices that allow 15 megapixel (and much greater) imaging devices are clearly NOT being done for government use. That's the field I work in and nobody here has been thinking "lets do this for a spy satellite", they're thinking about making money in selling to people like us. That is what has driven the market from a 640x480 crappy ass slow as hell CCD to the drool worthy digital cameras that we have today that easily rival film cameras.
Semiconductor development hasn't been led by the military since the microprocessor was developed.
The sad fact is that so far the societies as a whole have never pursued the scientific frontier unless threatened by [an] outside force...
This is a ludicrous statement. Think about the scientific field today. Do you really think that's being done for military purposes? Super colliders? Searching for a quark or whatever other physics particle is next on the list to understanding the "theory of everything"? Buckyballs? Fuel cells? 32nm silicon etching? These are NOT being done because we feel threatened by anybody, they're being done because people either want to get rich or they want respect from their scientific peers. Your view of scientific advancement is stuck back in the 1940's and 1950's when WWII and nuclear weapons drove a lot of research but now a days this just isn't true.
So lets try a thought experiment; What scientific advancements are being driven by the military today? How many can you list? The only one i can think of myself is research into lasers. They are doing some cutting edge stuff there in order to get lasers capable of shooting down missiles and that type of thing. Ok... what else? Maybe robotics with the UAV's driving a lot of military spending. Can you list anything else?
d
"Almost all"??? Bullshit.
Lets start listing breakthroughs and developments that aren't militarized first:
heart surgery, anigioplasty, television, cellular phones, CAT scans, chemotherapy, vaccinations, dental implants, hearing aids, digital photography, digital video recording, dark matter, DNA, plate techtonics, AIDS medicine, gene therapy, mapping the human genome, HIV testing, the remote control, insulin, kidney dialysis, plasma television, flat panel television, MRIâ(TM)s, pacemakers, photovoltaic cells, antidepressants, robots in production lines, scanning electron microscopes, smoke detectors, the birth control pill, performing organ transplants, UPC codes, and Viagra
In addition practically all modern electronics were not built with the military in mind nor were they initially used for military. This includes things like multi-million transistor processors, gigabit memory chips, high resolution flat panel displays, gigabit eithernet, etc. The military has a different set of requirements before it uses technology than corporations. They demand a higher level of stability and reliability than a commercial enterprise requires. As such a corporation is going to use the highest performance CPUâ(TM)s on their workstations and desktops while inside a nuclear sub theyâ(TM)re going to still be using Pentium IIâ(TM)s that have been thoroughly evaluated and proven to work.
Commerce drives way more R&D development in this day and age than does the military. There are lots of exceptions because the military has a different set of requirements and therefore they research different things, but the time when the military drives "almost all scientific break-throughs" is long dead. The military still drives some scientific development, but itâ(TM)s a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the scientific community.
d
Oh, i would LOVE to support the people creating the content... but i thought this was brought to us by the RIAA?
d
Wow... you actually like itunes? I can't stand the thing. The only thing I do actually like is that I can subscribe to podcasts and it auto-updates them... but i'm sure lots of other music player's software do that as well, I just have never used them.
Itunes is slow as a dog (on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram no less)
I despise it's music ordering structure or lack there of (this is probably more of a gribe with the IPOD UI)
Using it with audiobooks has been a frustrating and hair pulling experience. (I have to rename the files to change the order they are played on my IPOD? seriously, wtf?)
But honestly I could probably ok with it if it wasn't SO GOD DAMNED SLOW.
I'm sorry, this post is totally off topic, but i'm just floored that someone actually likes itunes on the PC that I just had to chime in and vent a bit.
d
When i first started learning Japanese just a little before i moved here I took a class that taught in the method you described. Now different people learn differently, but I found that method of teaching, teaching only in the foreign language and not using any English, to be a waste of time.
For the way I learn I needed to be able to bound the meanings of words. If I left the word meaning open ended (maybe that's car?... maybe that's vehicle?... maybe that's wheel?... maybe that's "to ride"?), I found that I couldn't just say "ah, that's a car" and memorize it and move on. When I gave up on that approach I did much better... but again, different people learn differently and no place is that more apparent than in language.
And the interesting thing here in Japan is that a number of people know english but not very well, so when I first got here I could typically communicate better using their crappy english over using my even more crappy japanese. I found that the best way to communicate to someone in a language that they're not good at is to slow down, pronounce everything clearly, and to use simplified words/language. Speaking clearer can sometimes lead to more volume so that each syllable is heard. ... or maybe the English speakers were just being stupid...
d
I have no emperical data but I totally agree with you. Children are immersed much more than adults and adults talk differently to children who are learning the language than to other adults.
I'm American currently living in Japan with two small kids. How other people treat me learning Japanese vs how they treat my 2.5 yr old is totally different. they'll correct him, use simpler words, speak slowly, teach him, and praise him when right. If you're an adult, other adults will try to speak to you on their level. It is incredibility hard to pick up a language with other people speaking at full speed using more advanced language.
IMHO this and the level of Immersion kids face are the two huge advantages kids have when learning a new language IMHO. I no longer believe all that BS about "kids being intrinsically better at picking up languages" and crap. (Although the accent comment may be spot on...)
d
Shhhhh... let a man bitch in peace without ruining his righteous-anger buzz.
Unfortunately in real life that's not how it works.
Um... actually it is dude.
Have you ever hear the phrase "locks are not to keep the crooks out (locks won't stop the crooks), they're to keep the honest people out"? Have you never heard of putting up fake surveillance cameras or putting a little flashing led on your car dash board? How about the old man security guard at the bank? All of these things are for show only. All of these things show that there is a cost trade off curve for following the laws.
Piracy is low on the risk scale and low on the "how much am i hurting someone else" scale so it's a pretty reasonable option for a lot of people. We can then weigh that against the cost of the product and weather we WANT to pay the company responsible for producing it or author. It's simply becomes a choice.
You may bitch and whine about how it's against the law... but so is speeding, do you do that? In some places it's now illegal to talk on your cell while driving... how about that? Nobody has every died from IP infringement, but they have from my other examples, so morally which is worse? It really means we each have to have to weight our own moral code and decide what we're going to do.
Once you come to terms with the fact that buying something is a choice vs pirating, then the producers must market themselves and their product differently. They must treat their consumers better.
There are companies out there that i want to give my money to and I do buy stuff from them whenever i get the chance. This is just a fact of life the internet age. This is the way things are. Produce good stuff, be good to your customers, and you'll get more business. In my eyes, that's the way it should be.
d
are you kidding? This is slashdot and an RIAA topic!
Anything against the RIAA will be pushed for, against for the RIAA will be argued against. For an RIAA topic, "fair and balanced" means the same thing here as it does on Fox "news".
d
Let me ask a simple question...
If we're so good at doing wireless power, wireless RF power, why isn't my laptop powered through a wireless connection? My MP3 player? My cell phone?! (Tiny power, antenna already attached)
They aren't because this is bullshit.
This stinks of a take the money and run scam. Energy is cheap, even with gas at $4 a gallon energy is too cheap for this. Whoever is stupid enough to invest in this company doesn't deserve pity when they find out its all a scam. The engineering isn't there. The logic isn't there. The ROI isn't there. This is just dumb.
d
Check my math... but 40% of $0.00 isn't really very much.... or were you talking about taxing my internet connection?
d
Sorry, i believe in democracy, where elections are decided by the quantity of people who voted for one person vs the other. ANY system which gets in the way of that is bullshit... weather it's a group of religious leaders who pick the canidates, a single political party that picks who gets to run, or an American Gladiator style obstacle course (although that would be cool).... ANY thing which gets between "most votes" -> "candidate wins" robs us citizens the freedom of choosing our own government.
I fail to see any redeeming value in the electoral college system. I prefer my vote counts, ...and yet it never does in a presidential election. How stupid is that?
Translation:
"My vote doesn't count if I don't live in a select state, so I can make token votes instead of actually participating in an election. This is something I like."
I'd much rather my vote than be a bitch of some farmer in Iowa or some old fart in Florida. Fuck the electoral college system.
Don't be an idiot.
If you want a government without compromise, then run for office yourself. A democracy by its vary nature is a bunch of different people with different ideas trying to run a country that's best for everyone. Not everyone will like the same person and unless you have a cookie cutter personality, no politician will exactly match your beliefs. Unless you're running for political office yourself, you always compromise when picking a candidate.
d
Wow dude, you need to chill a bit and come down off your roid-rage. If you think police should be breaking down his door and hauling him off in handcuffs becuase of this, you're pretty nuts.
I also don't know what you're talking about with the whole "not even admitting to DLing it publicly for fear of the Hammer." I bet if you went to mininova right now you'd it'd be on their top 10 most DLing/Seeded movies right now because of all this publicity. (I'd check myself but i'm at work)
As for the employee, I doubt he's in real trouble. He's in the publicity business, and right now he's getting more publicity that I bet he ever thought possible from this review. Unless he does something really stupid to screw this up, I bet he'll land on his feet somewhere.
d
Look, NK already has the capability to do massive damage to SK and drop missiles on Japan but they haven't. This missile wouldn't have changed anything.
Success or failure... it's simply not that big a deal.
It's really much more scary that they would sell one to Iran. That's the more scary scenario for international relations... but even that isn't that big a deal.
d
On slashdot you can prove a negative. It simply requires you to point out reputable sources that back you up. Why don't you try that instead of your lame-ass "believe what you want to believe" post. At this point Brett comes off as MUCH more credible than you to any unbiased observer.
But hey, take all your toys and go home if that's where you're at.
d
ok... I live in the Japanese countryside, or at least this is what they consider the Japanese countryside, but is NOTHING like the barren nothingness that you picture when someone from the US says "countryside". Population density in the Japanese countryside is still pretty dense.
Anyway, when I moved here nearly 3 years ago, I got 100Mb fiber to my house installed for something like $300 bucks full installation costs. Modems, first month payment, etc. I think it was actually more like $220 after discounts, but that was the price range. I now pay 50 bucks a month for this service and I've kept it and been very happy with it since it was installed.
Now keep in mind, this included two guys coming to my house and running fiber onto the property (stand alone house), and installing the cable modem plus router.
To compare, when I moved from the US, I was paying cable modem costs that were over $60 per month (with no cable service bundled, no extras) and maybe I'd top out at around 5Mb? I dunno, but no comparison in any case. When I was in the US I lived in Los Angeles.
You can't give me any of these bullshit population density arguments when i paid MORE for for LESS bandwidth in an area with a HIGHER population density. Something doesn't smell right here and its not a population density argument. i think it starts with an "M" and ends with "onopoly", and has everything to do with government and telcos/cable companies getting in bed together.
d
Stupidity gets ridiculed.
It seems that every other day we get another Orwellian story about England and their newest ability to watch their citizens with cameras or step on their rights by database miss uses, and THIS is what they take a stand over? Google streetview?
yeah. ridicule deserved.
d
I'm not in favor of what they did, but I disagree with your #2 on the list. As technology improves thieves will use google maps / streetview / MS aerial photography, etc to scout possible locations for criminal activity assuming they don't already. This is a fact of life.
That being said, it still don't give them the right to make the decision for everyone in their neighborhood to not have their houses on google streetview and it doesn't give them the right to stop google from doing what they are legally allowed to do on public streets.
Additionally the thieves would probably get more from google satellite view than street view because from those they can see into someone's backyard instead of just what they can normally see from the street.
d
Mod: -1 Asshole
Thank you for your reply. Yeah, i kept reading after i posted this and someone else posted that there was an RC4 encrypeted and RSA signed. However the way RSA encription works requires a private key to be hidden from the people who are trying to break the encrypted message. If you have the private key, then you can decript the message as well. AND if you can pull apart conflicker code, then it must contain the private key within.
That same other (very informative) person also wrote that the program would pick 500 out of a bank of 50000 IP address and try them. So this goes to the poison pill idea of hacking the hacker. Surely people could take over say 100 of those IP address and they stand a better chance of sending a pill than the original programmer has of his IP address correctly feeding the right information.
Or maybe those other 50000 address are another botnet. That would get interesting to peel that onion.... But either way, that's a much more interesting discussion than what I've seen on this discussion thread so far.
Again, thanks for your reply.
d
Ok... so here's what I don't get:
Security experts are well aware of this botnet client and are keeping a close eye on it. They've picked the client bot apart line by line. They know exactly how it is supposed to behave on the client side, but they of course don't have a clue about the server side. So why can't they hijack the hijacker?
For example, say this client bot is programmed to go to IP address on April 1st and DL some update. Ok..., block that IP address on the internet or trace the IP address back to the owners and stop it there. Those don't seem hard. (ok... and before someone calls me an idiot for saying "block the ip address on the internet", what i mean is that you can get the major service providers, certainly here in the US, and potentially abroad to "lose" anything sent to a specific address.)
Ok... so let's say that the client bot is programmed to go to IP address to and ping each one to ask for an appropriate update, verifying each update against a specific hash key. Ok... then grab IP address and put in something that DLs a file that neutralizes the bot. There can be no hash key that the researchers can't figure out because they can pick through the entire client bot's code bit by bit.
I'm clearly not getting something crucial here, but it just seems that in all the moaning about how bad this is that it wouldn't be that hard for someone person to write some kill code for it as long as enough time and effort had already gone into understanding the client side code.
Someone please help out a clueless non-security, non-software engineer understand why this is so hard.
d
It's not about what you post, it's about what you read. How about youtube? You think they care about what funny cat video you watch? They're a lot more interested in what political videos you go and click on. That's how they "judge intent".
Watch out, the thought police are coming.
Once the government can monitor everything that goes into your head and comes out of your head, democracy is doesn't stand a chance.
d