I gemerally don't reply to ACs... but as the saying goes, money talks, bullshit walks, and that is most true of the political scene. GeekPAC tried bullshit and got nowhere.
It takes real money to get a real PAC together and there is NO workaround.
If one had been put together, the money that would actually have been spent on politicians and on opposing them would have come out of our wallets in $5s and $10s and $50s.
NOBODY with the startup funds required ($1M or so) wants to pay the cost of freedom, so none of us are going to get it.
The all amateur volunteer route has been tried. GeekPAC was an abject failure. Enthusiam and a "desire to represent the community" means jack shit when one is talking real world politics.
It would have cost about $1M to start up if it had been done last year, this kind of organization needs a full-time high-profile lobbyist to front for it in Congress and top-bracket political pro to run the mass activism side. The actual raising to buy political candidates would have cost far more and would come out of our pockets.
Plus full-time staff to answer phones and e-mail, open envelopes, mobilize volunteers, analyze new legislation, etc. etc. etc.
It's too late to do this at the $1M level in time to affect the 2004 elections, and after that, it's going to be too late, all the laws the RIAA/MPAA and Ashcroft can think of will get enacted, after all, who's going to oppose it.
The Election Commission deadlines for too many states have come and gone. Perhaps several million dollars properly used might make it possible to do IMMEDIATE filings where the deadlines haven't quite happened yet and in other cases, be used to persuade the right people to get deadlines extended, but if nobody or no small group (there are lots of high-tech millionaires, some of which read slashdot) was willing to raise $1M, several million ain't happening.
So. . . the kind of civli liberties long-term growth of the high-tech economy and for that matter, to keep our machines secure will become part of history, and the future of high-tech is going to be made outside the USA.
If your net worth is over $5M and you're reading this, if you want to know who is to blame for the end of online freedom, don't blame the RIAA/MPAA/Ashcroft, go look in a mirror.
The good news is that the kind of freedom of thought required to allow the kind of creativity that leads to new technology is exactly what this kind of police state inteferes with. Remember the old Soviet Union?
Population growth alone tells us that we are going to need new technology even to preserve our current lifestyles, let alone improve them.
Basically, as I see it, it isn't a matter of thousands of years, societies that misallocate their resources to provide the level of surveillance and social control implied in PATRIOT Act and TIA will probably go down the tubes in a generation.
Remember how the Soviet Union got bankrupted? Misallocation of resources trying to keep up with US military technology.
The societies that buy into Bush-style social control will go bankrupt trying to pay for the perfect Orwellian police state. The winners in this future will be the countries that declined to participate.
Not that this means all that much since none of the people who managed to cash out successfully after an IPO and therefore have the cash to start a PAC to represent our interests can be bothered to do so, and it's too late to do the Federal and state filings for this election cycle needed to allow such a group to legally raise and spend money in any case.
Remember that no amount of money spent on non-profit geek activist groups like EFF, etc. can be used to buy a politician because tax-deductible non-profits are forbidden to make contributions to political candidates.
For what it's worth, this will tell you who to vote against.
Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO Group, a move that could impact the battle between Windows and Linux in the market for computer operating systems.
According to a statement from Microsoft, the company will license SCO's Unix patents and the source code. That code is at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit between SCO and IBM, which is aggressively pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows in corporate back shops.
I think a list of the South Korean IP blocks would be a hell of a lot less work to either type or cut/paste, and there are a lot of us who would like to block those IP ranges.
Until South Korea does something about their spam to message ratio, and their open relays, I can't think of any good reason why they should be allowed to connect to the rest of the world.
I think the basic idea of making broadband universally available is a great one, but if the software that comes with the broadband packages doesn't have security built into it, what the South Koreans have built is a gigantic public nuisance.
Is anybody using the Xbox as a low-cost server?
on
Hacking the XBox
·
· Score: 1
Is it "worth doing"?
Another Linux use for an X-box... render farms.
I could imagine easily a room full of XBoxes, each of which MS took a loss on, offering low cost and OK performance in either server or render farm or parallel supercomputing.
Yes, I'm saying "imagine a Beowulf cluster of h4xx0rd Xboxes".
Is the optical setup I/O or simply output, and if it's true I/O, can this be used for a cheap optical high-speed LAN?
Why is this a good or bad idea? Are any of these ideas cost-effective? Has anyone tried any of this?
There's a telco that's using VHDSL to push the kind of phone/TV service bundle they're discussing to end users.
There's a cable company that's doing the same.
I'm sure either could bundle gaming and/or a 801.11g wireless access point if they felt like it.
However, they didn't ask the most important question, why do people pick DSL over cablemodem when both are available in the same area, and the more technically knowledgable they are, the more likely they are to pick DSL?
The cable company is too interested in telling people what we can and can't do with our bandwidth, and even that restricted-use bandwidth is shared between all the cablemodem users in a neighborhood, putting users at the mercy of their neighbors when trying to get the download speed one is paying for.
The business model discussed here is one I'd be even less likely to buy as an end user than the current one.
The other obvious point is. . . while I can imagine using broadband for VoIP local toll and LD calling and probably will when I am in an area where DSL is available, I can't imagine it as my only telephone access, if the cable breaks down and takes my phone out with it, just how am I going to report the problem to the cable company?
Cable is less reliable than phones are and putting all my electronic communication ability in one basket doesn't really appeal to me.
Not bad for a bunch of college students, I guess, but while I could imagine this getting funded and those kids becoming the new suits at a new startup, one would hope that VCs have more sense now.
The FTC wound up with some jurisdiction in this area specifically because consumer fraud is one of their regular areas. Many of the offers made by spam, perhaps practically all of the non-porn offers are fradulent.
An entity providing open relay access can be enabling fraud-by-wire. An entity warned of this who doesn't stop providing this access can be considered an accessory to fraud, even if the entity has no ostensible connection to the spammer. All it takes to prove it is a header with an unforged IP pointing at the open relay operator, perhaps backed by ISP records at both ends coupled to proof that the entity was warned.
This is a hell of a lot more just than, for instance drug forfeiture is.
You were saying something about "no leg to stand on"?
This surprises me a bit, but it appears that existing law can be used to clean up the problem. And there is no "slippery slope" here, committing fraud is illegal. Helping someone, even if only knowingly providing the facilities for this commit fraud is illegal. Why should the law on this be different in meatspace v the Net?
Usual disclaimer: IANAL. Look up legal definitions for "accessory" if you disagree.
I'm running Windows/Linux dual-boot and trying to get the Linux desktop to function because I'm not interested in buying another MS OS for reasons everyone here knows.
If a OS/X port became available for Wintel, I'd switch immediately after seeing some positive reviews. I wouldn't nuke the Linux drive, just the GUI, Linux would still make sense as a server or render farm solution and I'd keep working on learning Linux. Besides, the CLI interface is a lot easier to use (well, if you ditch vi for pico) and works consistently.
I write occasionally for online tech news sites like TechWeb, I'm also a member of the Internet Press Guild. If it worked properly, I'd submit a query to TechWeb immediately and post to the IPG mailing list.
If Apple does the same stellar job of hardware support for OS/X that they've managed for QuickTime, i.e. managed to turn running a Wintel PC into a "It Just Works" experience. . . be assured that you wouldn't be able to surf onto a general-interest computer site without reading glowing reviews of OS/X-x86, and that this would rapidly spread to computer columnists in newspapers/TV.
There are a lot of people who are sick of Microsoft and Windows, but are NOT happy with the Linux Desktop experience. . . I've been looking for a decent replacement for Corel Draw/Windows or in general, a decent vector draw graphics app for months. If you propose GIMP as a substitute, you don't know enough about graphics to help, it's a raster bit-mapped PAINT app, not a draw app.
If a non-MS Windows substitute that runs on Wintel boxes appears that Just Works, the people who other people go to for help when their Windows boxes break, i.e. power Windows users and above, will switch to OS/X-86 so quickly that the sucking sound will be heard clear to Redmond, and when people come to us for help with their boxes, we'll all be telling them "shitcan XP, you can now get the MacIntosh OS running on your computer".
The idea of having apps with multiple methods for installation, NONE of which work on Red Hat 8.0 doesn't exactly make me think that Linux is ready for prime-time desktop use for uses other than very limited ones, i.e. corporate situations with in-house support and desktops that can and should be locked down or apps like POS terminals. For those situations, there is NO better answer.
I've been impressed with Apple support for Wintel hardware ever since I found I could run Quicktime on my 486 box with Cirrus cheapo video card, which neither Cirrus nor Microsoft supported Video for Windows on.
You want to see Microsoft go into the toilet? (or iLoo if you prefer) Either encourage Apple to release the OS-X/86 port or figure out a way to get the Open Source community to work up a standard API and desktop and installations that Just Work.
I find the idea of OS-X/86 a hell of a lot easier to believe in.
While I don't think it is impossible for the Open Source community to fix what's wrong with the Linux desktop, I think it's going to take something like a MS publicity campaign telling the truth about printers that can't be accessed, multiple program installation methods that simply do not work on any given collection of hardware, clipboards that don't necessarily work on all the apps on a given desktop, etc.
I think that we'd have a set of Linux distros that Just Work within months if that happened as thousands of programmers sat down and started coding and started knocking heads to get consistent API guidelines for the purpose of proving once and for all that Gates and Ballmer are full of shit. Unfortunately, MS knows this, too, so that's not going to happen.
Yes, there are threats that can be used by the FTC against foriegn open relay operators.
"We are researching law and regulations to see if we have authority to seize bank accounts of foriegn entities with bank accounts in the USA who are voluntary accessories to fraud-by-wire via maintaining open relays"
"We are considering publication of block lists directed against people who maintain open relays outside the USA and encouraging backbone providers to implement them. If you or your users have any interest in sending mail to the USA, we suggest you fix your open relay problem. NOW."
While a South Korean individual broadband user doesn't have a US bank account and probably isn't interested in sending mail to the US unless he has relatives there, I'm sure Korean Telecom does have US bank accounts and does want to be able have its users send mail to the US.
There are plenty of outright scams that are spamvertised, that's probably why the FTC got involved to begin with.
Thinking about this, perhaps the FTC can prosecute open relay operators on the grounds of "being an accessory to fraud" after sending them ONE warning that they are running open relays used for that purpose.
I just sent the FTC comment address in the letter a copy of the above paragraph.
You didn't actually read the letter, did you. Go up to the original post and follow the.PDF link this time.
This is what I sent the FTC about this to the comment e-mail in the PDF:
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 20:30:46 -0700
To: relay@ftc.gov
From: "A.Lizard"
Subject: re: open relay letter
The letter lacks teeth and it's far too polite.
This is *really* too bad because decent threats in a letter with the number of undersigned law enforcement authorities *would* intimidate the people who need to be intimidated most. People who enable spam must be held accountable with the spammers.
Perhaps a new offence called "Accessory to Spam" should be created in conjunction with anti-spam legislation under debate in Congress.
You might see if you can get the Director of the FBI to sign onto the *next* version of the letter as well.
If your server is an open relay, and you are interested in closing it, Yes, that's an actual quote from the e-mail.
What the idiots who run open relays need to hear is:
"shut down your open relay or we'll think of a way to shut you down permanently and get you massively fined and/or sent to jail. We are researching Federal law to see if we already have the authority to do this, and we will be requesting legislation for this purpose if we don't.
Clean up your act or the next communication you may be getting from us is a summons, a warrant, or a notice from your bank that your bank accounts have been forfeited to the government."
There may be methods of enforcing threats of this sort within the existing body of law.
Even to a foriegn Internet provider, suggestions about "forfeiture of bank accounts within the USA" might get a certain amount of attention.
If you are on the Internet, you should be held responsible for what your workstation / server / network, with the only defense being a demonstration that you followed "best practices".
Expecting someone to defend successfully against a zero-day exploit is not reasonab.le.
If you own a car and don't have any experience behind the wheel and decide to go out and get some and plow into a bus stop full of children, are you saying that you should not be penalized?
A few high-profile prosecutions of admins and/or end users of cablemodems or DSLs running open relays and the rest of the population will either get a clue or get the hell off the Net. Either would suit me.
Suggestion. If you get a copy-fubared CD, DON'T make any special effort to play it. Just play CDs from any competing label that cooperates in your effort to get it on the air in any timeslot an EMI track was going to go into.
And if you're from a USA radio station and had an "independent promoter" collect money to get the thing added, complain to him that EMI is shipping crap to your station that can't be played back on the air... and that he should keep the money EMI paid him, since it was their fault that they sent crap CDs.
Alternately, give them the "add" they paid for, at 3 AM... in the form of a voice track with the name of the track and artist and an announcement that you can't play back the music and if any listener gives a fuck, he should call:name and phone number at the label.
I wonder how long the owners of the major labels are going to accept "PIRACY!!!" as an excuse for bad sales with incompetent promotion of the sort you're describing going on.
If you'd rather live in a technology backwater than have positive government intervention in broadband, you got your wish.
Did you see the comments above about the guy who took a US state-of-the-art mobile phone to South Korea and gave the South Koreans a chance to laugh at those primitive Americans by doing so?
The article speaks of Silicon Valley executives envying South Korea. They need look no further than the mirror for the reason why they or their employees can't plug into the same kind of CitiLEC fiber-to-the-curb service available in most of South Korea.
They could have pressured Silicon Valley Power and PG&E to open their utility fiber optic networks to provide Silicon Valley with cheap bandwidth. Presumably, they were too busy figuring out what parts of their companies to outsource to bother.
The new broadband services will be coming.
From someplace else with smarter business and governmental leaders. Maybe South Korea. Silicon Valley will rust away at the sidelines.
However, we've probably seen our last megacorporation based on software alone. There won't be any more multi-gigabuck Goliaths able to impose their own "standards" and interfere with the innovation of others.
This is a bad time to be running a MS or Oracle, and an impossible time to start another one.
However, there IS a market for smaller companies capable of delivering solutions for business problems that actually work.
Businesses want their costs cut and their hassles to go away. What they do NOT want are... software packages that are in themselves a new pain in the ass for them to deal with, and that's what the software industry has delivered.
Haven't you seen the rest of /. yet?
on
SCO DOS'ed
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· Score: 1
Some of us here probably know them. I would assume them to be among the fringes of the security community. Yes, some of them are among the faces some of us have seen at Defcon, complete with l335 handles. . .
And of course, two company names were mentioned in the NY Times article.
The only secret about this that someone with the right skills or is willing to acquire them needs to know is that it can be done.
As the $5K budget shows, this is within the range of an individual or small organization.
I've been expecting something like this for the last several years, but I expected to find out about it on the news, i.e. somebody used it on somebody, not on the Web.
Slashdot Mirror
It takes real money to get a real PAC together and there is NO workaround.
If one had been put together, the money that would actually have been spent on politicians and on opposing them would have come out of our wallets in $5s and $10s and $50s.
NOBODY with the startup funds required ($1M or so) wants to pay the cost of freedom, so none of us are going to get it.
The all amateur volunteer route has been tried. GeekPAC was an abject failure. Enthusiam and a "desire to represent the community" means jack shit when one is talking real world politics.
It would have cost about $1M to start up if it had been done last year, this kind of organization needs a full-time high-profile lobbyist to front for it in Congress and top-bracket political pro to run the mass activism side. The actual raising to buy political candidates would have cost far more and would come out of our pockets.
Plus full-time staff to answer phones and e-mail, open envelopes, mobilize volunteers, analyze new legislation, etc. etc. etc.
It's too late to do this at the $1M level in time to affect the 2004 elections, and after that, it's going to be too late, all the laws the RIAA/MPAA and Ashcroft can think of will get enacted, after all, who's going to oppose it.
The Election Commission deadlines for too many states have come and gone. Perhaps several million dollars properly used might make it possible to do IMMEDIATE filings where the deadlines haven't quite happened yet and in other cases, be used to persuade the right people to get deadlines extended, but if nobody or no small group (there are lots of high-tech millionaires, some of which read slashdot) was willing to raise $1M, several million ain't happening.
So. . . the kind of civli liberties long-term growth of the high-tech economy and for that matter, to keep our machines secure will become part of history, and the future of high-tech is going to be made outside the USA.
If your net worth is over $5M and you're reading this, if you want to know who is to blame for the end of online freedom, don't blame the RIAA/MPAA/Ashcroft, go look in a mirror.
Population growth alone tells us that we are going to need new technology even to preserve our current lifestyles, let alone improve them.
Basically, as I see it, it isn't a matter of thousands of years, societies that misallocate their resources to provide the level of surveillance and social control implied in PATRIOT Act and TIA will probably go down the tubes in a generation.
Remember how the Soviet Union got bankrupted? Misallocation of resources trying to keep up with US military technology.
The societies that buy into Bush-style social control will go bankrupt trying to pay for the perfect Orwellian police state. The winners in this future will be the countries that declined to participate.
Not that this means all that much since none of the people who managed to cash out successfully after an IPO and therefore have the cash to start a PAC to represent our interests can be bothered to do so, and it's too late to do the Federal and state filings for this election cycle needed to allow such a group to legally raise and spend money in any case.
Remember that no amount of money spent on non-profit geek activist groups like EFF, etc. can be used to buy a politician because tax-deductible non-profits are forbidden to make contributions to political candidates.
For what it's worth, this will tell you who to vote against.
By Scott Ard
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
May 18, 2003, 10:45 PM PT
Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO Group, a move that could impact the battle between Windows and Linux in the market for computer operating systems.
According to a statement from Microsoft, the company will license SCO's Unix patents and the source code. That code is at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit between SCO and IBM, which is aggressively pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows in corporate back shops.
rest at the URL. . .
Until South Korea does something about their spam to message ratio, and their open relays, I can't think of any good reason why they should be allowed to connect to the rest of the world.
I think the basic idea of making broadband universally available is a great one, but if the software that comes with the broadband packages doesn't have security built into it, what the South Koreans have built is a gigantic public nuisance.
Another Linux use for an X-box... render farms.
I could imagine easily a room full of XBoxes, each of which MS took a loss on, offering low cost and OK performance in either server or render farm or parallel supercomputing.
Yes, I'm saying "imagine a Beowulf cluster of h4xx0rd Xboxes".
Is the optical setup I/O or simply output, and if it's true I/O, can this be used for a cheap optical high-speed LAN?
Why is this a good or bad idea? Are any of these ideas cost-effective? Has anyone tried any of this?
There's a cable company that's doing the same.
I'm sure either could bundle gaming and/or a 801.11g wireless access point if they felt like it.
However, they didn't ask the most important question, why do people pick DSL over cablemodem when both are available in the same area, and the more technically knowledgable they are, the more likely they are to pick DSL?
The cable company is too interested in telling people what we can and can't do with our bandwidth, and even that restricted-use bandwidth is shared between all the cablemodem users in a neighborhood, putting users at the mercy of their neighbors when trying to get the download speed one is paying for.
The business model discussed here is one I'd be even less likely to buy as an end user than the current one.
The other obvious point is. . . while I can imagine using broadband for VoIP local toll and LD calling and probably will when I am in an area where DSL is available, I can't imagine it as my only telephone access, if the cable breaks down and takes my phone out with it, just how am I going to report the problem to the cable company?
Cable is less reliable than phones are and putting all my electronic communication ability in one basket doesn't really appeal to me.
Not bad for a bunch of college students, I guess, but while I could imagine this getting funded and those kids becoming the new suits at a new startup, one would hope that VCs have more sense now.
An entity providing open relay access can be enabling fraud-by-wire. An entity warned of this who doesn't stop providing this access can be considered an accessory to fraud, even if the entity has no ostensible connection to the spammer. All it takes to prove it is a header with an unforged IP pointing at the open relay operator, perhaps backed by ISP records at both ends coupled to proof that the entity was warned.
This is a hell of a lot more just than, for instance drug forfeiture is.
You were saying something about "no leg to stand on"?
This surprises me a bit, but it appears that existing law can be used to clean up the problem. And there is no "slippery slope" here, committing fraud is illegal. Helping someone, even if only knowingly providing the facilities for this commit fraud is illegal. Why should the law on this be different in meatspace v the Net?
Usual disclaimer: IANAL. Look up legal definitions for "accessory" if you disagree.
If a OS/X port became available for Wintel, I'd switch immediately after seeing some positive reviews. I wouldn't nuke the Linux drive, just the GUI, Linux would still make sense as a server or render farm solution and I'd keep working on learning Linux. Besides, the CLI interface is a lot easier to use (well, if you ditch vi for pico) and works consistently.
I write occasionally for online tech news sites like TechWeb, I'm also a member of the Internet Press Guild. If it worked properly, I'd submit a query to TechWeb immediately and post to the IPG mailing list.
If Apple does the same stellar job of hardware support for OS/X that they've managed for QuickTime, i.e. managed to turn running a Wintel PC into a "It Just Works" experience. . . be assured that you wouldn't be able to surf onto a general-interest computer site without reading glowing reviews of OS/X-x86, and that this would rapidly spread to computer columnists in newspapers/TV.
There are a lot of people who are sick of Microsoft and Windows, but are NOT happy with the Linux Desktop experience. . . I've been looking for a decent replacement for Corel Draw/Windows or in general, a decent vector draw graphics app for months. If you propose GIMP as a substitute, you don't know enough about graphics to help, it's a raster bit-mapped PAINT app, not a draw app.
If a non-MS Windows substitute that runs on Wintel boxes appears that Just Works, the people who other people go to for help when their Windows boxes break, i.e. power Windows users and above, will switch to OS/X-86 so quickly that the sucking sound will be heard clear to Redmond, and when people come to us for help with their boxes, we'll all be telling them "shitcan XP, you can now get the MacIntosh OS running on your computer".
The idea of having apps with multiple methods for installation, NONE of which work on Red Hat 8.0 doesn't exactly make me think that Linux is ready for prime-time desktop use for uses other than very limited ones, i.e. corporate situations with in-house support and desktops that can and should be locked down or apps like POS terminals. For those situations, there is NO better answer.
I've been impressed with Apple support for Wintel hardware ever since I found I could run Quicktime on my 486 box with Cirrus cheapo video card, which neither Cirrus nor Microsoft supported Video for Windows on.
You want to see Microsoft go into the toilet? (or iLoo if you prefer) Either encourage Apple to release the OS-X/86 port or figure out a way to get the Open Source community to work up a standard API and desktop and installations that Just Work.
I find the idea of OS-X/86 a hell of a lot easier to believe in.
While I don't think it is impossible for the Open Source community to fix what's wrong with the Linux desktop, I think it's going to take something like a MS publicity campaign telling the truth about printers that can't be accessed, multiple program installation methods that simply do not work on any given collection of hardware, clipboards that don't necessarily work on all the apps on a given desktop, etc.
I think that we'd have a set of Linux distros that Just Work within months if that happened as thousands of programmers sat down and started coding and started knocking heads to get consistent API guidelines for the purpose of proving once and for all that Gates and Ballmer are full of shit. Unfortunately, MS knows this, too, so that's not going to happen.
While a South Korean individual broadband user doesn't have a US bank account and probably isn't interested in sending mail to the US unless he has relatives there, I'm sure Korean Telecom does have US bank accounts and does want to be able have its users send mail to the US.
on doing something about it yourself (Ralsky's address can be found by searching slashdot) don't whine.
Thinking about this, perhaps the FTC can prosecute open relay operators on the grounds of "being an accessory to fraud" after sending them ONE warning that they are running open relays used for that purpose.
I just sent the FTC comment address in the letter a copy of the above paragraph.
This is what I sent the FTC about this to the comment e-mail in the PDF:
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 20:30:46 -0700
To: relay@ftc.gov
From: "A.Lizard"
Subject: re: open relay letter
The letter lacks teeth and it's far too polite.
This is *really* too bad because decent threats in a letter with the number of undersigned law enforcement authorities *would* intimidate the people who need to be intimidated most. People who enable spam must be held accountable with the spammers.
Perhaps a new offence called "Accessory to Spam" should be created in conjunction with anti-spam legislation under debate in Congress.
You might see if you can get the Director of the FBI to sign onto the *next* version of the letter as well.
If your server is an open relay, and you are interested in closing it,
Yes, that's an actual quote from the e-mail.
What the idiots who run open relays need to hear is:
"shut down your open relay or we'll think of a way to shut you down permanently and get you massively fined and/or sent to jail. We are researching Federal law to see if we already have the authority to do this, and we will be requesting legislation for this purpose if we don't.
Clean up your act or the next communication you may be getting from us is a summons, a warrant, or a notice from your bank that your bank accounts have been forfeited to the government."
There may be methods of enforcing threats of this sort within the existing body of law.
Even to a foriegn Internet provider, suggestions about "forfeiture of bank accounts within the USA" might get a certain amount of attention.
A.Lizard
If you are on the Internet, you should be held responsible for what your workstation / server / network, with the only defense being a demonstration that you followed "best practices".
Expecting someone to defend successfully against a zero-day exploit is not reasonab.le.
If you own a car and don't have any experience behind the wheel and decide to go out and get some and plow into a bus stop full of children, are you saying that you should not be penalized?
A few high-profile prosecutions of admins and/or end users of cablemodems or DSLs running open relays and the rest of the population will either get a clue or get the hell off the Net. Either would suit me.
And if you're from a USA radio station and had an "independent promoter" collect money to get the thing added, complain to him that EMI is shipping crap to your station that can't be played back on the air... and that he should keep the money EMI paid him, since it was their fault that they sent crap CDs.
Alternately, give them the "add" they paid for, at 3 AM... in the form of a voice track with the name of the track and artist and an announcement that you can't play back the music and if any listener gives a fuck, he should call:name and phone number at the label.
I wonder how long the owners of the major labels are going to accept "PIRACY!!!" as an excuse for bad sales with incompetent promotion of the sort you're describing going on.
If it does, you should be able to figure out where his votes are coming from and more to the point, who his loyal constituents really are.
Try sheep!
Doesn't sex with kangaroos and wallabies get old after a while?
Did you see the comments above about the guy who took a US state-of-the-art mobile phone to South Korea and gave the South Koreans a chance to laugh at those primitive Americans by doing so?
As I said, you got your wish.
They could have pressured Silicon Valley Power and PG&E to open their utility fiber optic networks to provide Silicon Valley with cheap bandwidth. Presumably, they were too busy figuring out what parts of their companies to outsource to bother.
The new broadband services will be coming.
From someplace else with smarter business and governmental leaders. Maybe South Korea. Silicon Valley will rust away at the sidelines.
This is a bad time to be running a MS or Oracle, and an impossible time to start another one.
However, there IS a market for smaller companies capable of delivering solutions for business problems that actually work.
Businesses want their costs cut and their hassles to go away. What they do NOT want are... software packages that are in themselves a new pain in the ass for them to deal with, and that's what the software industry has delivered.
The attack you're asking about is in preparation.
And of course, two company names were mentioned in the NY Times article.
As the $5K budget shows, this is within the range of an individual or small organization.
I've been expecting something like this for the last several years, but I expected to find out about it on the news, i.e. somebody used it on somebody, not on the Web.