Why should a System Admin who keep proper logs be afraid of portscans? If you have a nicely set up system, with all unnecessary and redundant ports closed, and tripwire software all installed, what are you afraid of?
It is true tha people running portscans probably have evil intentions. But the reverse does not apply - being portscanned does not therefore imply that you are probably being set up for evil. These are two distinct probabilities, related only by Bayes Theorem - ever heard of that?
Please learn some elementary logic and probability and stop embarrasing yourself. Impunging dishonesty when that is none is simply irrational.
You CAN call the police if you have a reasonable suspicion of being cracked. The point that people are making is that PORTSCANS alone, do not constitute good evidence.
If you are not allowed to make portscans, then YOUR COMPUTER WOULD BE BLIND. "PORTSCANING" is employed in many technologies to allow computers to detect whose in their neighborhood. Things like DHCP, Windows Networking, etc all use known methods of portscanning.
Please for goodness sake, LEARN that CRIMINALITY is ALL in the INTENT.
That's a good idea. Often, these packets are not a result anything malicious. Just miscounfigured routers or bad network code. Perhaps if we reported these problems often enough, these things would get fixed.
Please give some statistics. This kind of generalization "that all cracks start from a portscan" is totall off-base.
It is a very well known fact that most security breaches are not those that result from of the remote exploit. In fact, most breaches are due to user cluelessness or employee abuse of previliges.
All these whining and shouting about portscannning does not address the most important of security flaws - the people. After all, it is just the security aspects about portscanning which bother you, right ?
If my fiiend moves into an apartment, and I do not know what apartment it is, can I not look around at the mailroom for his name?
THERE. I've proven my point by inventing another analogy. Arguments by analogy do not work. Forget it!
RANT: None of you geeks here have any clue about how to make logical arguments. I see nobody attempting to see what port-scanning consists of, and how you can distinguish it from normal traffic on the net.
The facts of the matter is this: port scans don't look very different from normal connect attempts, except by their sheer volume. Even that volume can be controlled by the perpetrator. I can portscan you one port a day, one packet per day if I was patient and want to be undetected. It would no sense to make laws you can't enforce, and without port-scanning, a lot of the early internet would never have been discovered.
Cracking into computers is already illegal. All I see is people attempting to increase the scope of the law without any knowledge of what is happening.
No, a truly misguided view of innovation would be try to twist the definition of the very word to fit whatever it is that MS is doing.
A true defender of MS would actually learn to choose the arguments that they can win. They can do this many ways, but the area of "innovation" is not one of them.
That which some claim is, in fact, true. Microsoft is wholly wiiling use and admit to using the BSD stack. This shows that they certainly will reuse code that they can legally reuse. But BSD code is free, just like the GPL is free. Then observe that they object to "open-source" pretending that it is GPL and hence "viral". In other words, they have no objection to re-using code that they can reuse, but object when they must share it back.
Ah! Now I understand your argument, to which I must then point out that RMS has been invited on numerous occasions to speak publicly about free software, whereas Bill Gates hasn't. He has a record of publicly being able to defend his ideas simply becuase the Free Software movement has always been perceived as "fringe", whereas Bill Gate's performance in the courtroom in defending himself has been terribly lackluster.
As for being an academic or not, that quality correlates with the ability to form coherent arguments, although that correlation may be weak.
Sorry, but I am patenting your idea. The bionic resonator. The resonating membranes are implanted in your ear at birth, and the pickup receiver decodes the digital broadcast into frequencies athat are picked up by the resonator, when it is placed near your ears.
Remember, IT IS MY PATENT. RIAA - you can't touch this. Nyah nyah!
You _can_ make water not wet. Just freeze it! I mean - look at the snow in Antartica. Is it running around like a liquid? It's so cold, you'd be a fool to touch it with your bare hands,...
I don't think the orginal poster was wrong. It is true that we should make this distinction between zero-priced software and free software. But what is less obvious is to the reading of Bill Gate's intentions. I think the poster was right - Bill Gates does indeed believe in the negation of the "free software" ideal. Microsofts actions as a company has always been like this.
No they are not. Again, you are confusing your values with someone else's. You value money. The guys who wrote Apache may or may not, but they choose to make money from other efforts, and not in the coding itself.
Your values are distinct from others. And even if they were the same as some other people, they may choose alternative actions.
I agree with you. The original poster is simply pretending that a standard of success outside of academia exists.
Nobody denies that one has the freedom to choose one criteria of success over the other. Someone will be impressed with Bill Gate's money and influence, with others with Stallman's vision and influence. We are all free to choose which qualities deserve our admiration.
Given that simple fact, you can see that the above poster made to move to justify his own choice for us. You might ask why he needs to justify it -- becuase that is what the damn argument is about: persuading us to believe Gates is more successful that Stallman. It does no good to simply aseert your values and expect people to agree.
How do you think accountants, lawyers or architetcts get paid? They are paid for their advice, their professionalism and their knowledge. Do you think you visit your lawyer to "buy" a contract?
The entire software industry needs to get off its buff and become more professional. This is about SAVING your JOBS, should you actually WANT to be regarded as a professional software expert, rather than as a code-monkey. When companies want computer expertise they should know that theere are people who can and will support them. That person is you. Or would you rather be a code-mopnkey. to be retired as soon as cheaper labor comes along.
Put it another way, why should the CEO of a company pay you to code when he could too, having also learnt programming during his college days. Simply becuase you can code better?
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I had not realized that the difference between evil-intentioned portscanning and innocuous portscanning was one of VOLUME. Thanks for the heads up!
It is true tha people running portscans probably have evil intentions. But the reverse does not apply - being portscanned does not therefore imply that you are probably being set up for evil. These are two distinct probabilities, related only by Bayes Theorem - ever heard of that?
Please learn some elementary logic and probability and stop embarrasing yourself. Impunging dishonesty when that is none is simply irrational.
If you are not allowed to make portscans, then YOUR COMPUTER WOULD BE BLIND. "PORTSCANING" is employed in many technologies to allow computers to detect whose in their neighborhood. Things like DHCP, Windows Networking, etc all use known methods of portscanning.
Please for goodness sake, LEARN that CRIMINALITY is ALL in the INTENT.
That's a good idea. Often, these packets are not a result anything malicious. Just miscounfigured routers or bad network code. Perhaps if we reported these problems often enough, these things would get fixed.
It is a very well known fact that most security breaches are not those that result from of the remote exploit. In fact, most breaches are due to user cluelessness or employee abuse of previliges.
All these whining and shouting about portscannning does not address the most important of security flaws - the people. After all, it is just the security aspects about portscanning which bother you, right ?
If my fiiend moves into an apartment, and I do not know what apartment it is, can I not look around at the mailroom for his name?
THERE. I've proven my point by inventing another analogy. Arguments by analogy do not work. Forget it!
RANT: None of you geeks here have any clue about how to make logical arguments. I see nobody attempting to see what port-scanning consists of, and how you can distinguish it from normal traffic on the net.
The facts of the matter is this: port scans don't look very different from normal connect attempts, except by their sheer volume. Even that volume can be controlled by the perpetrator. I can portscan you one port a day, one packet per day if I was patient and want to be undetected. It would no sense to make laws you can't enforce, and without port-scanning, a lot of the early internet would never have been discovered.
Cracking into computers is already illegal. All I see is people attempting to increase the scope of the law without any knowledge of what is happening.
A true defender of MS would actually learn to choose the arguments that they can win. They can do this many ways, but the area of "innovation" is not one of them.
Well, at least it is an EXPOSED target, if you understand then point of standards at all.
Are you saying that that "whining" makes it all wrong but you saying it (i.e. not whining - by your own perceptions) is thus true.
You would sound more sensible if you were not so self-contradictory.
Oh yes, they do use the BSD TCP/IP stack. Why don't you try running "strings" on the Windows kernel?
What rubbish speaketh you, Anonymous Coward.
is not dry humor apt?
As for being an academic or not, that quality correlates with the ability to form coherent arguments, although that correlation may be weak.
No. It is demostration of how impressive unwet water is.
Remember, IT IS MY PATENT. RIAA - you can't touch this. Nyah nyah!
You _can_ make water not wet. Just freeze it! I mean - look at the snow in Antartica. Is it running around like a liquid? It's so cold, you'd be a fool to touch it with your bare hands, ...
I don't think the orginal poster was wrong. It is true that we should make this distinction between zero-priced software and free software. But what is less obvious is to the reading of Bill Gate's intentions. I think the poster was right - Bill Gates does indeed believe in the negation of the "free software" ideal. Microsofts actions as a company has always been like this.
I agree. The Porn industry is not contributing back. But you see, Free Software was not made to solve this problem.
Your values are distinct from others. And even if they were the same as some other people, they may choose alternative actions.
Nobody denies that one has the freedom to choose one criteria of success over the other. Someone will be impressed with Bill Gate's money and influence, with others with Stallman's vision and influence. We are all free to choose which qualities deserve our admiration.
Given that simple fact, you can see that the above poster made to move to justify his own choice for us. You might ask why he needs to justify it -- becuase that is what the damn argument is about: persuading us to believe Gates is more successful that Stallman. It does no good to simply aseert your values and expect people to agree.
I am not arguing for or against graduates. But your reasoning makes no sense.
You are wrong. That poster Anonymous Coward never posts anything intelligent. I assure you, his stupidty is permanent!
The entire software industry needs to get off its buff and become more professional. This is about SAVING your JOBS, should you actually WANT to be regarded as a professional software expert, rather than as a code-monkey. When companies want computer expertise they should know that theere are people who can and will support them. That person is you. Or would you rather be a code-mopnkey. to be retired as soon as cheaper labor comes along.
Put it another way, why should the CEO of a company pay you to code when he could too, having also learnt programming during his college days. Simply becuase you can code better?