Imagine someone switching on your toaster and turning the valves to your gas oven ON and the ignition OFF.
While that can't be done with this device which is a retrofit to existing hardware, the devices where this will be built in at the factory are on the way, complete with diagnostic modes to allow remote troubleshooting.
Say, look for more than XX connections attempts per second coming from any workstation on the LAN, and if it detects > XX, send an e-mail alert to the admin and shut down that workstations's access?
Can this be done with SNORT, and is it a reasonable idea?
Speaking as a journalist, I've got no problem with his integrity. He kept his promise. His address is NOT in the article.
It also appears that his editor and the newspaper legal staff don't have any problem with it, either.
Nothing inflammatory was said in the article about what should be done by anyone who discovers the address.
The owner obviously doesn't care all that much, since the address is listed under his own name instead of that of an anonymous holding company created for that specific purpose.
The "criminals" violated the terms of what they thought was a normal TOS.
A normal TOS is a civil contract.
If you get caught breaking the terms of a regular ISP TOS, say, by sending out 1,000,000 spams for Herbal Viagra, you get your account jerked, and you might get a big bill if your TOS that you clicked through says you've agreed to pay financial penalties for certain specific kinds of misuse.
If you refuse to pay your bill, the ISP can sue you for damages and the court can order you to pay, and confiscate your assets or send you to jail if you refuse.
My ISP can NOT send anybody to my place to kick down my door and rip off my equipment to penalize me for violating the TOS.
The cable company bought from the legislature the ability to add criminal penalties to the TOS. to redefine violations as "criminal theft of service". Were the users informed of this? Only in the fine print if they were even told there. Ever seen a cable broadband ad that says "break your user agreement, go to jail?"
Presumably, the "criminals" thought they were breaching a civil contract and would have to pay a few bucks for the actual excess bandwidth consumed.
The lesson? For everyone else, it's don't buy broadband from providers who can send the police to kick down your door. Amazing things can be done with an 802.11(whatever) link and a high-gain directional antenna if a cooperating ISP is at the other end.
You should sign up for cable broadband immediately.
As for me, it would be a pain in the ass to reload the OS, reinstall the shrinkwrap apps, and remember and download all the utilities I use. I'm doing journalism these days, and the research, notes, and project ideas I've collected over the last 13 years on my HD are simply irreplaceable. What price on a large chunk of my life's work?
Near-line storage on a HD in a mobile rack. (I paid less than $10 for mine) UNPLUG THE TRAY and put it somewhere else when not actively backing up or restoring. If that $9 power supply suddenly decides to feed your motherboard AC line voltage or your motherboard announces it's got the low-quality electrolytic cap problem by exploding, having your backup HD plugged in at the time is A BAD IDEA.
Burn a pile of CD-Rs every month (replace with DVD-Rwhatever when the format war ends) and mail them to a friend across the country. If a simultaneous disaster wipes out both locations out, there probably won't be any survivors to care. If security is a concern, PGP-encrypt the disks before sending. (for this, I suggest one-way encryption and try REAL hard to remember the passphrase.)
I prefer tape, but I've had problems getting backups back from tape. I used to have a Sony Superstation. Data verified perfectly during backups for a year and a half. Worked fine until my HD crashed. After some work with Customer Service, I managed to get about 95% of my files back, but the point behind getting a tape drive is... reload and you're running. While Ecrix or LVO drives are probably sufficiently stable/reliable to trust in, the price tag on either is... rather high.
The fireproof safe isn't *that* bad an idea, even if humidity is a concern, just plop your CDs or HD rack in a plastic bag or a sealable metal strongbox with a silica gel packet inside. If the bag or box melts, chances are, your CDs will be melting shortly anyway. But having copies of the data somewhere else is more cost-effective. CD-Rs are cheap. Safes aren't.
The people who have their backups stored only a few miles away are gambling. Most areas have their own characteristic set of major disasters. I live in an earthquake zone. Others live in areas where hurricanes are popular. No coastal area is immune to tsunamis, even if this is a once-in-a-lifetime or longer scenario, "this only happens once in a long while" doesn't help if that's NOW. Areas that are considered seismically stable can become otherwise. Most people go through their lifetimes without having their homes or businesses burn down. Is this a reason to neglect fire insurance?
Online backup via commercial storage facility is only a reasonable solution for broadband users. Imagine retrieving even a 20G zipfile via dialup. I get 4667 cps on a *good* connection. You're also betting that the network connect between wherever you are and wherever your backup is will stay intact in the event of a major disaster. I'll assume anyone reading this is encrypting before sending the data out using your own crypto software, not theirs to remove the issue of trust. If you're figuring on retreiving the data via Fed Ex, why not simply send the disks? Note that if the problem is enterprise class, then making backups at 2 or more of the major facilities (out of courtesy, I'll assume redundant backbone connections at each site) on the network becomes reasonable.
Incomplete... (Score:1)
by Distan on Thursday November 21, @04:15PM (#4726118) (User #122159 Info)
Your data backup isn't complete unless you could be up and running after having all of your computer equipment seized, your safety deposit boxes frozen, and search warrants served on all of your known friends and family members.
Maybe there is some sort of "off-shore" backup service in business?
Distan is right, but I haven't come up with a good answer for how to handle his problem. It isn't possible to rent a storage space from a regular storage space provider on a cash only - no ID basis anymore, at least not around here, and if a manager of such a facility is corruptible enough to do business against the rules, can he be trusted with your data? I don't mean not to read it, I mean to have the disks when you call for them. If the guy's a friend of yours, that's the "known associate" problem.
If the government (yours, wherever you are) comes up with a sufficiently plausible excuse, they can get the government local to wherever your backup records are to seize them from whoever they're stored with if one, so international isn't a really adequate solution.
The Fox News CEO is being perfectly reasonable in making this speech. They paid the price in dollars to buy Congress, and as a result, they OwN it. They are going to get the laws they want.
Nobody in either high-tech industry or the high-tech community is going to do anything about this in the only way possible, via PAC with a credible budget. Otherwise, we'd already be seeing action about this, in order to get the legal paperwork required to start a national level PAC raising money in the individual states, a PAC needs to be started NOW to have impact in the 2004 election cycle where our next President gets chosen as well as Congress.
Nobody's interested in putting up the megabuck or two money up front to get the PAC started. It's the price of freedom, and nobody is willing to pay it while the price only needs to be paid in dollars.
All this speech means is that the Hollywood cartel has declared victory and that high-tech innovation is simply moving out of America. It's the deer in the headlights thing, as was shown at a literal and physical level at the presentation described in the article at Comdex.
That speech should have resulted in a near riot, followed by top-level industry suits passing the hat to get an high-tech vendor PAC together to buy Congress out from under the Hollywood cartel, not people sitting quietly hypnotized into believing that what they are hearing is good news.
That speech isn't about working with us, it's telling us that they demand our OBEDIENCE.
Obedient people don't make cool new technology, and the only people who will be legally allowed to make new technology in the US will be those willing to be obedient to Federal laws, regulations, and committee decisions Made In Hollywood by quasi-govermental committees whose appointees will represent the content industry. These people will be willing to wait for Hollywood to give permission to work on any new concepts they come up with.
That's what the package of laws and regulations the Hollywood cartel has created translates to in plain English.
Anybody willing to try being an "obedient" technology maker is going to get hammered by foriegn competition from places that don't have the RIAA/MPAA anchor chained to their collective necks. The price of disobedience will be jail, fines, or being willing to emigrate both as indivduals and as companies.
The sheep will stick around for it and someday, will forget that there was a day when the USA was a technology leader. The cool new stuff from Apple and IBM will be coming from their facilities in Canada and the EU and Asia. I can imagine Apple HQ moving to Amsterdam quite easily for some reason. Those of us making cool new stuff will also be out of the country. Brain drain will be out of the US, not into it as it always has been. That's what being a technology client state means, and that's what Fox News is telling the high-tech leaders of America that the USA is going to become.
George Lucas seems to have forgotten that he's a suit, not an entertainer now, and he's confusing his personal interests in the current business model with those of creative artists. The entertainer has least to lose from any new business models that leverage the Internet and broadband technology instead of suppresssing them in favor of the RIAA model.
The CEO of Fox has redefined "work together" as "let Us inform you of the terms under which your industry will work under Our control".
I've stated in earlier posts that despite the knowledge that the Hollywood content package basically means that all new electronic or software technology will require the approval of a bureaucracy controlled by Hollywood to make sure "proper" DRM is implemented, that technology companies would grab desperately at any hope that Hollywood is "being reasonable" and "willing to do business".
This speech has one message. The CEO of Fox News is telling us that they bought, paid for, and 0wN Congress, and we will do what his cartel does or else.
High technology of a sort that Hollywood disapproves of will happen whether or not USA high tech companies or individual software developers, engineers, h4xx0rs, or individual electronics experimenters get to play or not.
If we want technological innovation to happen in the US instead of everywhere but the USA, somebody is going to have to organize to fight the Hollywood RIAA/MPAA cartel. Political Action Committees are the only way to do this. Neither the vendors nor anybody in the user community have stepped forward with the cash to get a mass action + lobbying organization capable of fighting this.
I no longer expect any meaningful political action about this.
Our alleged high-tech leadership is hypnotized by smoke and mirrors, believing the vague promises of the entertainment industry that if they build DRM-disabled technology, we will buy it.
If anybody's going to fight this in time to affect the next election cycle, they have to start NOW. This isn't happening. High-tech industry doesn't have the will or the vision to fight. They are hypnotized by the kind of fantasies Hollywood is supposed to spin us for entertainment purposes, and making business decisions that affect us all based on them.
Perhaps they'll understand they made a mistake when they discover that the new hot consumer gadgets are either being smuggled into the US or being built in dumbed down form for the US market by competitors working in high-tech friendly business environments and that they will either have to move their companies, close shop, or become distributors for foriegn products.
Seriously, if these stats hold true it could streamline the whole process of scanning for exploitable hosts to a degree that if you're service is exploitable it will be exploited. Kinda scary to me..
Isn't that the assumption anyone who has to secure a server or network is supposed to work under?
The only way Microsoft(C) can get a secure OS is to throw ton of money at Theo de Raadt or somebody with his mind set to run a team to continually check Windows code for security problems.
You mean have MS pay Theo and everyone connected with the OpenBSD project enouh to persuade them that taking it proprietary and rebranding it Windows XX is A GOOD IDEA, right? Continuously checking Windows OS and applications for security fuckups is too big a job for one person, and probably too big a job for 1,000 persons.
Would the OpenBSD team sell out for $10 billion and the right to oversee future development?
Note that this would actually be an intelligent and cost-effective thing for MS to do, even if various code libraries have to be rewritten to avoid the use of GNU code of any sort, so we can take for granted that they'll never think of it for themselves.
While this is a lot more than MS paid for the rights to what later became MSDOS ($30K, IIRC), times have changed.
While this breaks compatibility with all MS applications, does anyone actually think anything less has the remotest chance of doing the job? Assuming the job is building a reasonably secure OS that can be made to work with a wide range of applications.
First, the music industry's deliberate confusion between "product" (CD audio track) and "promotional item" (MP3) seems to have worked here as well.
Why are people in general unwilling to pay for MP3 quality music?
People are used to getting access FREE OF CHARGE to any of dozens of available unrestricted mid-fi audio streams which are completely unrestricted, can be recorded with anything, can be uploaded to MP3 players or anything else. People have been using this to make compilation tapes, make tapes for friends, and "try before buying" since long before many of you were born.
Yes, this is for real, and is everyday reality not only for propellor-heads, but for the average American.
It's called FM radio. Is the quality really all that different from 128Kbps MP3 quality?
MP3 distribution is no more a threat to industry profits than FM radio is. Is there any reason why FM radio is so important a promotional tool for music that the industry will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a single song played on the radio where EVIL pirates could record it and try to get people who put the same song at a similar quality level on Internet Radio shut down or jailed?
The difference is that the record industry can control FM radio via payola and no obvious way to do the same thing via the Internet except through sites controlled by the industry. Joe Average can submit a song to an Internet Radio station for free, and if the owner likes it, he'll play it. Universal can do the same thing for the same price. The record labels are unhappy about the Joe Average part. They would have no problems with it if the Internet Radio stations played only the content they were told to play.
What the industry likes least is a mix of familiar label tunes with Joe Average's music, because the familiar label tunes tell the listener what genre of music can really be expected at a particular station... and what kinds of unfamiliar songs might be found.
The only new music the RIAA labels want us to hear is their own.
So through their legal sockpuppets in Congress and the CARP panel, they did their best to shut down the potential competition.
Why should there be legal harassment just because people choose to listen to it via Internet instead of via Clear Channel or companies choose to deliver it?
Does anybody actually believe that a 128K MP3 is the "perfect digital copy" that Hilary Rosen and her apologists have been whining about for years? If you do, don't waste our time by responding. First, get your hearing checked by an audiologist. If there's no problem, go to your wall, take that precious MCSE you just got after a month of hard work, burn it, go back to school for a few years and don't post about technology and public policy until you've learned something about both.
I don't find the idea of buying the real product, uncompressed CD audio tracks a-la carte or as albums for 50 cents to $1 per track online intrinsically objectionable in the least. The ability to get the single or two decent songs on a typical album without the filler would be worth it to me. Too bad they can't deliver it, and the fact that they can't really isn't their fault.
50 megabytes of download per track are a bit much for a dialup to handle, and the average Internet user is going to be using dialup for quite some time into the future as I do.
So why do I think they're hoping for failure? Because the spectacular failure of Yet Another Venue For Selling Music Industry Promotional Items in place of music to the public gives them another excuse to whine to Congress about how EVIL INTERNET USERS are determined to STEAL music from them WITHOUT PAYING.
The RIAA labels just want to get a legal strangehold on the development of any technology which has the remotest possibility of opening up avenues of competition to outsiders.
NO, it's how this one works. Also note that while EU governments generally have government campaign financing to prevent politicians publically selling their asses to the highest bidder, the results appear to be every bit as stupid as the best the US has been able to produce.
The reason I said LOCAL office is because they're still running paper mail for DC through anthrax, etc. scans and it can take months for mail to get to Congressional offices.
The law was intended to prevent system administrators, including the ones working for Congress and for the RIAA and MPAA and their member organizations from finding out that exploits exist targeting the web servers and operating systems their own sites run on so they can get the exploits before Congress or the MPAA or the RIAA get their systems r00ted and 0wn3d?
While I'd be the first to admit that our elected leadership aren't exactly the brightest lights in the harbor and that the RIAA/MPAA leadership aren't really rocket scientists (it doesn't take a genius to buy Congress, nor to pay people to create media campaigns), I have a certain amount of trouble believing that when Hilary Roseh was shown that one could download copyrighted content from labels belonging to one of her member organizations off the RIAA Web site, she immediately took everyone in the office out for drinks to celebrate.
few people have the need to edit and resave e-mail
Thanks for the warning. I'm about to install Linux on my workstation for the first time, you saved me the trouble of downloading the new version of Evolution and seeing if the how-to instructions given elsewhere on the thread work just barely in time.
Everybody has a different style of working. I use one of my e-mail folders as a notebook and add discrete entries by sending myself e-mail. I frequently have to update those entries.
If they're never going to support something I use, why bother with Ximian?
If the AU citizens are stupid enough to trust their government enough to let a group of their bureaucrats make this decision for them, that is their right. If they're embarrassed in a few years when they describe themselves as living in a "free country", that's their problem.
If you're stupid enough to hope that the US government will someday make that decision for you, that's your right as well. Though if you really want this, there are various censorware products which will prevent you from seeing most of what offends you on the Internet. Go to Peacefire and select whichever one they like least. An adult doesn't need that kind of protection, of course.
However, if you advocate that the US government makes us taxpayers pay to have a kindly Federal government put the blankets over our heads to keep the evil spirits out, I'm going to call you a fool publically again. However, I'm sure that being called a fool, a retard, and far less complimentary things is hardly new to you.
I never said that the AU government didn't have the right to block IPs in a similar manner and for reasons similar to that which China and various Islamic countries do. If the AU government wants to order their citizens to rub themselves with blue mud, that is perfectly all right with me.
However, it's still a stupid thing to do.
But much more rational than the actions you support. And probably much more rational the actions you recommend in any statement about public policy you will ever make.
The only limits that one can really put on a government one doesn't live under is... no initiating attacks against other countries with weapons of mass destruction.
While their government appears to be run by idiots, this is the kind of idiocy one can hope that even they are incapable of. Of course, if they actually are planning anything like that, their citizens won't find out until the retribution hits their cities.
I've put as much time as conveniently can be spared today in whacking tards. However, this has been worthwhile, I like to take time once in a while to explore the depths of human arrogance, stupidity, and superstition. I suppose finding you was inevitable sooner or later.
I'll probably whack some Libertarian religious cultists tomorrow. Any chance you'll convert to Libertarianism before then?
And they'll be using the Web and e-mail to do their political organization and they won't notice when every political website they set up hits the "banned" list.
I've been watching the news come out of AU for the last few years from Australia. You've banned guns and let the government decide what you're allowed to see on the Internet. When your nation becomes part of some Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere in a few years, I doubt anyone will notice, the freedom of debate that still exists in your newspapers, etc. will be a thing of the past.
Just have another six-pack of Foster's and it'll all seem like a dream.
You, my friend, are deliverately reducing the argument to absurdity because you can't think of anything else
Well, I bow to your expertise in the area of absurdity.
You obviously didn't notice the biggest logical hole in the political position you advocate.
How is an AU citizen to know if a site banned by government advocates riot and revolution, or just a political position that the government doesn't want its citizens discussing?
Just because you can't tell the difference doesn't mean a reasonable person can't. Perhaps the next area where you should develop expertise, now that you've got absurdity covered, is learning how to become a reasonable person.
Is your love life really on topic for this discussion? Though. . . thanks for being willing to. . . share. Though as eloquently as you're advocating your. . . lifestyle, I really prefer human women. Though perhaps in your pursuit of ubergeekhood, you never learned how, I've found that one can actually talk to women and some will even say "yes" when propositioned. You may find the barking of your German Shepherd or Rottweiler equally eloquent, I just think you really out to get away from your computer a hell of a lot more. There are even "geek" women these days.
Enjoy your freedom to do advocate. . . unusual lifestyles while you can.
Outlawing guns may not stop crime, but if it shuts up people like you it would be worth it.
I think you're just the kind of guy the Chinese need to help them implement the Great Firewall of China. Isn't there a Cisco boot camp somewhere around you that'll get you a CCNA in 14 days? I've even heard of places that hire people to take the tests for you so you needn't be bothered to learn how a router works to pass the tests. Anyone who hasn't quite figured out that taking my right of free speech away means that you'll be losing yours the first time you decide to disagree with the government probably shouldn't aspire to any of the more serious technical certifications. While the MCSE is probably more your speed, the future for Microsoft in China seems as dim as you are.
The reason why the Founding Fathers made gun ownership the 2nd Amendment, coming right after the right to speak freely that you apparently want to give up as well is that they knew that the country would breed people like you sooner or later, and some of you would actually manage to ooze into political office sooner or later.
No, weak-minded tards are the problem. You're obviously one of them. Your getting "insightful" for your post simply means that some of the moderators are as stupid as you are. I started this post with a direct insult because a person functioning on your level doesn't deserve a substantive response when you choose to barf what passes for your opinion all over slashdot. While you have every right to post here, you have no right to be taken seriously.
If you had a functioning brain, you'd know that banning sites simply makes it more difficult for people to find out what's really going on. You think evil will simply go away because you want to stay in bed and pull the covers over your head when you hear about it and you want the taxpayers to help you do this? While you obviously prefer to live in your own delusional world, the rest of us are adults who need to know what reality is like so we can do something about it.
For instance, if one knows a violent protest will be happening soon, a smart person will be somewhere else if several thousand people are planning to throwing rocks and bottles at the police. Of course, if the police respond with gunfire, if you get caught by a stray bullet because you didn't know, it's just chlorinating the human genetic pool.
Personally, I like to know what the "bad guys" are up to and why and the best way to do this is to find out in person what they've got to say, not what the mass media where you get your ideas says they have to say. If you think that violent protests or terrorism can be stopped by blocking IPs, you're as ignorant as the rest of your post says you are.
If you need a government to protect YOU from being exposed to BAD IDEAS because you might follow through on them, you don't need a law and a bunch of armed thugs to enforce it, what you need is to unplug your connection to the Internet. Smashing your monitor over your head afterwards isn't required, though it would probably be a good thing.
You are one of those morons who wants to trade freedom not for security, but the illusion of security. You're obviously comfortable with the idea of living in a society where only those willing to break the law and the government have monopolies on both guns and uncensored information. Why don't you move to China or Australia where the government agrees with you? Of course, if the government grabs you by mistake and ignores your bleating "I'm innocent", you may suddenly realize you've been wrong all these years. But the government doesn't ever make mistakes, right? If they tell you you're a terrorist, you'll probably believe them and decide that your belief of never having associated with terrorist organizations must be a delusion.
If I happen to find myself in the middle of a violent protest the government-approved mass media didn't tell me about in advance, the only way I'm going to find out why this happened should I have the misfortune to live in AU is to break the law using an anon proxy or other tools which you probably aren't capable of understanding and don't need to know about.
jackals in the NRA, and it is just as false now as when those murderers invented it.
So the NRA is composed of a group of tens of millions of murderers?
Why, the government must do something about them before some AWFUL NRA person kills me in my bed with a BIG, NASTY GUN!
Presumably, you intended "jackal" as a compliment, believing (correctly) that an average jackal has 20-30 IQ points on you.
Slashdot Mirror
While that can't be done with this device which is a retrofit to existing hardware, the devices where this will be built in at the factory are on the way, complete with diagnostic modes to allow remote troubleshooting.
Can this be done with SNORT, and is it a reasonable idea?
It also appears that his editor and the newspaper legal staff don't have any problem with it, either.
Nothing inflammatory was said in the article about what should be done by anyone who discovers the address.
The owner obviously doesn't care all that much, since the address is listed under his own name instead of that of an anonymous holding company created for that specific purpose.
So what's the problem?
The "criminals" violated the terms of what they thought was a normal TOS.
A normal TOS is a civil contract.
If you get caught breaking the terms of a regular ISP TOS, say, by sending out 1,000,000 spams for Herbal Viagra, you get your account jerked, and you might get a big bill if your TOS that you clicked through says you've agreed to pay financial penalties for certain specific kinds of misuse.
If you refuse to pay your bill, the ISP can sue you for damages and the court can order you to pay, and confiscate your assets or send you to jail if you refuse.
My ISP can NOT send anybody to my place to kick down my door and rip off my equipment to penalize me for violating the TOS.
The cable company bought from the legislature the ability to add criminal penalties to the TOS. to redefine violations as "criminal theft of service". Were the users informed of this? Only in the fine print if they were even told there. Ever seen a cable broadband ad that says "break your user agreement, go to jail?"
Presumably, the "criminals" thought they were breaching a civil contract and would have to pay a few bucks for the actual excess bandwidth consumed.
The lesson? For everyone else, it's don't buy broadband from providers who can send the police to kick down your door. Amazing things can be done with an 802.11(whatever) link and a high-gain directional antenna if a cooperating ISP is at the other end.
You should sign up for cable broadband immediately.
Near-line storage on a HD in a mobile rack. (I paid less than $10 for mine) UNPLUG THE TRAY and put it somewhere else when not actively backing up or restoring. If that $9 power supply suddenly decides to feed your motherboard AC line voltage or your motherboard announces it's got the low-quality electrolytic cap problem by exploding, having your backup HD plugged in at the time is A BAD IDEA.
Burn a pile of CD-Rs every month (replace with DVD-Rwhatever when the format war ends) and mail them to a friend across the country. If a simultaneous disaster wipes out both locations out, there probably won't be any survivors to care. If security is a concern, PGP-encrypt the disks before sending. (for this, I suggest one-way encryption and try REAL hard to remember the passphrase.)
I prefer tape, but I've had problems getting backups back from tape. I used to have a Sony Superstation. Data verified perfectly during backups for a year and a half. Worked fine until my HD crashed. After some work with Customer Service, I managed to get about 95% of my files back, but the point behind getting a tape drive is... reload and you're running. While Ecrix or LVO drives are probably sufficiently stable/reliable to trust in, the price tag on either is ... rather high.
The fireproof safe isn't *that* bad an idea, even if humidity is a concern, just plop your CDs or HD rack in a plastic bag or a sealable metal strongbox with a silica gel packet inside. If the bag or box melts, chances are, your CDs will be melting shortly anyway. But having copies of the data somewhere else is more cost-effective. CD-Rs are cheap. Safes aren't.
The people who have their backups stored only a few miles away are gambling. Most areas have their own characteristic set of major disasters. I live in an earthquake zone. Others live in areas where hurricanes are popular. No coastal area is immune to tsunamis, even if this is a once-in-a-lifetime or longer scenario, "this only happens once in a long while" doesn't help if that's NOW. Areas that are considered seismically stable can become otherwise. Most people go through their lifetimes without having their homes or businesses burn down. Is this a reason to neglect fire insurance?
Online backup via commercial storage facility is only a reasonable solution for broadband users. Imagine retrieving even a 20G zipfile via dialup. I get 4667 cps on a *good* connection. You're also betting that the network connect between wherever you are and wherever your backup is will stay intact in the event of a major disaster. I'll assume anyone reading this is encrypting before sending the data out using your own crypto software, not theirs to remove the issue of trust. If you're figuring on retreiving the data via Fed Ex, why not simply send the disks? Note that if the problem is enterprise class, then making backups at 2 or more of the major facilities (out of courtesy, I'll assume redundant backbone connections at each site) on the network becomes reasonable.
Incomplete... (Score:1)
by Distan on Thursday November 21, @04:15PM (#4726118)
(User #122159 Info)
Your data backup isn't complete unless you could be up and running after having all of your computer equipment seized, your safety deposit boxes frozen, and search warrants served on all of your known friends and family members.
Maybe there is some sort of "off-shore" backup service in business?
Distan is right, but I haven't come up with a good answer for how to handle his problem. It isn't possible to rent a storage space from a regular storage space provider on a cash only - no ID basis anymore, at least not around here, and if a manager of such a facility is corruptible enough to do business against the rules, can he be trusted with your data? I don't mean not to read it, I mean to have the disks when you call for them. If the guy's a friend of yours, that's the "known associate" problem.
If the government (yours, wherever you are) comes up with a sufficiently plausible excuse, they can get the government local to wherever your backup records are to seize them from whoever they're stored with if one, so international isn't a really adequate solution.
Who's got some better ideas?
Those of us who want to stay in high tech will simply have to get out of Dodge and leave the sheeple to their fun
The Fox News CEO is being perfectly reasonable in making this speech. They paid the price in dollars to buy Congress, and as a result, they OwN it. They are going to get the laws they want.
Nobody in either high-tech industry or the high-tech community is going to do anything about this in the only way possible, via PAC with a credible budget. Otherwise, we'd already be seeing action about this, in order to get the legal paperwork required to start a national level PAC raising money in the individual states, a PAC needs to be started NOW to have impact in the 2004 election cycle where our next President gets chosen as well as Congress.
Nobody's interested in putting up the megabuck or two money up front to get the PAC started. It's the price of freedom, and nobody is willing to pay it while the price only needs to be paid in dollars.
All this speech means is that the Hollywood cartel has declared victory and that high-tech innovation is simply moving out of America. It's the deer in the headlights thing, as was shown at a literal and physical level at the presentation described in the article at Comdex.
That speech should have resulted in a near riot, followed by top-level industry suits passing the hat to get an high-tech vendor PAC together to buy Congress out from under the Hollywood cartel, not people sitting quietly hypnotized into believing that what they are hearing is good news.
That speech isn't about working with us, it's telling us that they demand our OBEDIENCE.
Obedient people don't make cool new technology, and the only people who will be legally allowed to make new technology in the US will be those willing to be obedient to Federal laws, regulations, and committee decisions Made In Hollywood by quasi-govermental committees whose appointees will represent the content industry. These people will be willing to wait for Hollywood to give permission to work on any new concepts they come up with.
That's what the package of laws and regulations the Hollywood cartel has created translates to in plain English.
Anybody willing to try being an "obedient" technology maker is going to get hammered by foriegn competition from places that don't have the RIAA/MPAA anchor chained to their collective necks. The price of disobedience will be jail, fines, or being willing to emigrate both as indivduals and as companies.
The sheep will stick around for it and someday, will forget that there was a day when the USA was a technology leader. The cool new stuff from Apple and IBM will be coming from their facilities in Canada and the EU and Asia. I can imagine Apple HQ moving to Amsterdam quite easily for some reason. Those of us making cool new stuff will also be out of the country. Brain drain will be out of the US, not into it as it always has been. That's what being a technology client state means, and that's what Fox News is telling the high-tech leaders of America that the USA is going to become.
George Lucas seems to have forgotten that he's a suit, not an entertainer now, and he's confusing his personal interests in the current business model with those of creative artists. The entertainer has least to lose from any new business models that leverage the Internet and broadband technology instead of suppresssing them in favor of the RIAA model.
I've stated in earlier posts that despite the knowledge that the Hollywood content package basically means that all new electronic or software technology will require the approval of a bureaucracy controlled by Hollywood to make sure "proper" DRM is implemented, that technology companies would grab desperately at any hope that Hollywood is "being reasonable" and "willing to do business".
This speech has one message. The CEO of Fox News is telling us that they bought, paid for, and 0wN Congress, and we will do what his cartel does or else.
High technology of a sort that Hollywood disapproves of will happen whether or not USA high tech companies or individual software developers, engineers, h4xx0rs, or individual electronics experimenters get to play or not.
If we want technological innovation to happen in the US instead of everywhere but the USA, somebody is going to have to organize to fight the Hollywood RIAA/MPAA cartel. Political Action Committees are the only way to do this. Neither the vendors nor anybody in the user community have stepped forward with the cash to get a mass action + lobbying organization capable of fighting this.
I no longer expect any meaningful political action about this.
Our alleged high-tech leadership is hypnotized by smoke and mirrors, believing the vague promises of the entertainment industry that if they build DRM-disabled technology, we will buy it.
If anybody's going to fight this in time to affect the next election cycle, they have to start NOW. This isn't happening. High-tech industry doesn't have the will or the vision to fight. They are hypnotized by the kind of fantasies Hollywood is supposed to spin us for entertainment purposes, and making business decisions that affect us all based on them.
Perhaps they'll understand they made a mistake when they discover that the new hot consumer gadgets are either being smuggled into the US or being built in dumbed down form for the US market by competitors working in high-tech friendly business environments and that they will either have to move their companies, close shop, or become distributors for foriegn products.
Isn't that the assumption anyone who has to secure a server or network is supposed to work under?
You mean have MS pay Theo and everyone connected with the OpenBSD project enouh to persuade them that taking it proprietary and rebranding it Windows XX is A GOOD IDEA, right? Continuously checking Windows OS and applications for security fuckups is too big a job for one person, and probably too big a job for 1,000 persons.
Would the OpenBSD team sell out for $10 billion and the right to oversee future development?
Note that this would actually be an intelligent and cost-effective thing for MS to do, even if various code libraries have to be rewritten to avoid the use of GNU code of any sort, so we can take for granted that they'll never think of it for themselves.
While this is a lot more than MS paid for the rights to what later became MSDOS ($30K, IIRC), times have changed.
While this breaks compatibility with all MS applications, does anyone actually think anything less has the remotest chance of doing the job? Assuming the job is building a reasonably secure OS that can be made to work with a wide range of applications.
Why are people in general unwilling to pay for MP3 quality music?
People are used to getting access FREE OF CHARGE to any of dozens of available unrestricted mid-fi audio streams which are completely unrestricted, can be recorded with anything, can be uploaded to MP3 players or anything else. People have been using this to make compilation tapes, make tapes for friends, and "try before buying" since long before many of you were born.
Yes, this is for real, and is everyday reality not only for propellor-heads, but for the average American.
It's called FM radio. Is the quality really all that different from 128Kbps MP3 quality?
MP3 distribution is no more a threat to industry profits than FM radio is. Is there any reason why FM radio is so important a promotional tool for music that the industry will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a single song played on the radio where EVIL pirates could record it and try to get people who put the same song at a similar quality level on Internet Radio shut down or jailed?
The difference is that the record industry can control FM radio via payola and no obvious way to do the same thing via the Internet except through sites controlled by the industry. Joe Average can submit a song to an Internet Radio station for free, and if the owner likes it, he'll play it. Universal can do the same thing for the same price. The record labels are unhappy about the Joe Average part. They would have no problems with it if the Internet Radio stations played only the content they were told to play.
What the industry likes least is a mix of familiar label tunes with Joe Average's music, because the familiar label tunes tell the listener what genre of music can really be expected at a particular station... and what kinds of unfamiliar songs might be found.
The only new music the RIAA labels want us to hear is their own.
So through their legal sockpuppets in Congress and the CARP panel, they did their best to shut down the potential competition.
Why should there be legal harassment just because people choose to listen to it via Internet instead of via Clear Channel or companies choose to deliver it?
Does anybody actually believe that a 128K MP3 is the "perfect digital copy" that Hilary Rosen and her apologists have been whining about for years? If you do, don't waste our time by responding. First, get your hearing checked by an audiologist. If there's no problem, go to your wall, take that precious MCSE you just got after a month of hard work, burn it, go back to school for a few years and don't post about technology and public policy until you've learned something about both.
I don't find the idea of buying the real product, uncompressed CD audio tracks a-la carte or as albums for 50 cents to $1 per track online intrinsically objectionable in the least. The ability to get the single or two decent songs on a typical album without the filler would be worth it to me. Too bad they can't deliver it, and the fact that they can't really isn't their fault.
50 megabytes of download per track are a bit much for a dialup to handle, and the average Internet user is going to be using dialup for quite some time into the future as I do.
So why do I think they're hoping for failure? Because the spectacular failure of Yet Another Venue For Selling Music Industry Promotional Items in place of music to the public gives them another excuse to whine to Congress about how EVIL INTERNET USERS are determined to STEAL music from them WITHOUT PAYING.
The RIAA labels just want to get a legal strangehold on the development of any technology which has the remotest possibility of opening up avenues of competition to outsiders.
The reason I said LOCAL office is because they're still running paper mail for DC through anthrax, etc. scans and it can take months for mail to get to Congressional offices.
Give his office a call in a few days and let them know you'd like to discuss your concerns about the bill with your Congresscritter.
Tell him how you want him to vote and briefly, why.
If a few hundred people in your district do this, you've got yourself a new friend and a vote.
Of course, a high tech community PAC would save us all a lot of trouble in this area.
While I'd be the first to admit that our elected leadership aren't exactly the brightest lights in the harbor and that the RIAA/MPAA leadership aren't really rocket scientists (it doesn't take a genius to buy Congress, nor to pay people to create media campaigns), I have a certain amount of trouble believing that when Hilary Roseh was shown that one could download copyrighted content from labels belonging to one of her member organizations off the RIAA Web site, she immediately took everyone in the office out for drinks to celebrate.
Thanks for the warning. I'm about to install Linux on my workstation for the first time, you saved me the trouble of downloading the new version of Evolution and seeing if the how-to instructions given elsewhere on the thread work just barely in time.
Everybody has a different style of working. I use one of my e-mail folders as a notebook and add discrete entries by sending myself e-mail. I frequently have to update those entries.
If they're never going to support something I use, why bother with Ximian?
The government.
If the AU citizens are stupid enough to trust their government enough to let a group of their bureaucrats make this decision for them, that is their right. If they're embarrassed in a few years when they describe themselves as living in a "free country", that's their problem.
If you're stupid enough to hope that the US government will someday make that decision for you, that's your right as well. Though if you really want this, there are various censorware products which will prevent you from seeing most of what offends you on the Internet. Go to Peacefire and select whichever one they like least. An adult doesn't need that kind of protection, of course.
However, if you advocate that the US government makes us taxpayers pay to have a kindly Federal government put the blankets over our heads to keep the evil spirits out, I'm going to call you a fool publically again. However, I'm sure that being called a fool, a retard, and far less complimentary things is hardly new to you.
I never said that the AU government didn't have the right to block IPs in a similar manner and for reasons similar to that which China and various Islamic countries do. If the AU government wants to order their citizens to rub themselves with blue mud, that is perfectly all right with me.
However, it's still a stupid thing to do.
But much more rational than the actions you support. And probably much more rational the actions you recommend in any statement about public policy you will ever make.
The only limits that one can really put on a government one doesn't live under is... no initiating attacks against other countries with weapons of mass destruction.
While their government appears to be run by idiots, this is the kind of idiocy one can hope that even they are incapable of. Of course, if they actually are planning anything like that, their citizens won't find out until the retribution hits their cities.
I've put as much time as conveniently can be spared today in whacking tards. However, this has been worthwhile, I like to take time once in a while to explore the depths of human arrogance, stupidity, and superstition. I suppose finding you was inevitable sooner or later.
I'll probably whack some Libertarian religious cultists tomorrow. Any chance you'll convert to Libertarianism before then?
Wrong answer. Thank you for playing.
Just have another six-pack of Foster's and it'll all seem like a dream.
Anonymous Coward descibes you accurately.
So go tell the US Armed Forces and your police to disarm.
Well, I bow to your expertise in the area of absurdity.
You obviously didn't notice the biggest logical hole in the political position you advocate.
How is an AU citizen to know if a site banned by government advocates riot and revolution, or just a political position that the government doesn't want its citizens discussing?
Just because you can't tell the difference doesn't mean a reasonable person can't. Perhaps the next area where you should develop expertise, now that you've got absurdity covered, is learning how to become a reasonable person.
Enjoy your freedom to do advocate. . . unusual lifestyles while you can.
I think you're just the kind of guy the Chinese need to help them implement the Great Firewall of China. Isn't there a Cisco boot camp somewhere around you that'll get you a CCNA in 14 days? I've even heard of places that hire people to take the tests for you so you needn't be bothered to learn how a router works to pass the tests. Anyone who hasn't quite figured out that taking my right of free speech away means that you'll be losing yours the first time you decide to disagree with the government probably shouldn't aspire to any of the more serious technical certifications. While the MCSE is probably more your speed, the future for Microsoft in China seems as dim as you are.
The reason why the Founding Fathers made gun ownership the 2nd Amendment, coming right after the right to speak freely that you apparently want to give up as well is that they knew that the country would breed people like you sooner or later, and some of you would actually manage to ooze into political office sooner or later.
"People always get the kind of local government they deserve."
E.E. "Doc" Smith
This law is a grim comment on the intelligence of the Australian people.
If you had a functioning brain, you'd know that banning sites simply makes it more difficult for people to find out what's really going on. You think evil will simply go away because you want to stay in bed and pull the covers over your head when you hear about it and you want the taxpayers to help you do this? While you obviously prefer to live in your own delusional world, the rest of us are adults who need to know what reality is like so we can do something about it.
For instance, if one knows a violent protest will be happening soon, a smart person will be somewhere else if several thousand people are planning to throwing rocks and bottles at the police. Of course, if the police respond with gunfire, if you get caught by a stray bullet because you didn't know, it's just chlorinating the human genetic pool.
Personally, I like to know what the "bad guys" are up to and why and the best way to do this is to find out in person what they've got to say, not what the mass media where you get your ideas says they have to say. If you think that violent protests or terrorism can be stopped by blocking IPs, you're as ignorant as the rest of your post says you are.
If you need a government to protect YOU from being exposed to BAD IDEAS because you might follow through on them, you don't need a law and a bunch of armed thugs to enforce it, what you need is to unplug your connection to the Internet. Smashing your monitor over your head afterwards isn't required, though it would probably be a good thing.
You are one of those morons who wants to trade freedom not for security, but the illusion of security. You're obviously comfortable with the idea of living in a society where only those willing to break the law and the government have monopolies on both guns and uncensored information. Why don't you move to China or Australia where the government agrees with you? Of course, if the government grabs you by mistake and ignores your bleating "I'm innocent", you may suddenly realize you've been wrong all these years. But the government doesn't ever make mistakes, right? If they tell you you're a terrorist, you'll probably believe them and decide that your belief of never having associated with terrorist organizations must be a delusion.
If I happen to find myself in the middle of a violent protest the government-approved mass media didn't tell me about in advance, the only way I'm going to find out why this happened should I have the misfortune to live in AU is to break the law using an anon proxy or other tools which you probably aren't capable of understanding and don't need to know about.
jackals in the NRA, and it is just as false now as when those murderers invented it.
So the NRA is composed of a group of tens of millions of murderers?
Why, the government must do something about them before some AWFUL NRA person kills me in my bed with a BIG, NASTY GUN!
Presumably, you intended "jackal" as a compliment, believing (correctly) that an average jackal has 20-30 IQ points on you.