So nobody can think about this until they pay me. The really sad part is even if I got the patent through the USPO I still couldn't collect off of a sizable portion of humanity...
From the article it seems as though it's installed on a new system or you have to install it yourself. Not having seen an OEM install of Ubuntu lately as long as they let the end user know what they're doing and tracking with an easy opt out path who cares? It'll be interesting to see if it's part of the base install from the OEM and if they let you know it's there and calling home. If it's just a metric it would seem like it's not that big of a deal. Although, it does have an greasy kind of feel to it. Does anyone know if this is slipped in with the update stream?
Actually Microsoft bought Sysinternals hired the developers and made the whole thing better and is still giving it away for free. Those utilities are good enough that I would pay for them and I believe I did donate back before MS acquired them. Oracle on the other hand was saying:
Most people over 40 realize that in the end it's just a job. Families are important and when you reach a certain age you start to understand what's important in life. Most corporations will drop you short of fully vetted and with not so much as a "thank you very much" to save the money.
20 somethings are great because they'll work long hours and think nothing of it. The problem is quantity does not equate to quality. Google might not be in so many new court cases if they had a little wisdom present when some 20 something said "Hey, lets put WiFi sniffers on our camera cars!".
Actually it's the NSA at Menwith Hill sitting on phone lines
http://www.fas.org/irp/facility/menwith.htm
that should have us up in arms, or maybe Pine Gap (another NSA listening post in Australia). The Brits spy on US citizens, the US on British citizens and then trade the data...
It's the next best thing to legal compared to the other crap they've been pulling lately. BT lawyers gave paperwork to opposing counsel in a trespassing case in 1997 that admitted they put three high capacity cables from their network into the NSA facility! http://duncan.gn.apc.org/menwith.htm
Facebook's published on the web and meant for sharing. Did you think they weren't gonna data mine it?
since ~70% of the hits on a quick google are how to turn on and configure WebDAV. But this also means that there seems to be a good bit of interest in using it...
Exactly, you highlight the point perfectly. If they can afford to pay an "access fee" just how much of a margin are they charging?
In this day and age communications are closer to being a utility than a luxury. The need for unfettered communication access in our society is something required so we can, as informed citizens, make intelligent, informed choices. Access to media/communications should be considered a utility and regulated like other services (power, transportation, municipal).
The handful of companies that control the communications/media in the U.S. have proven again and again to be greedy, controlling, selfish and manipulative bastards. This is just one more example.
...I'll make a point of playing poor quality MP3s of popular chart music over your graves and laugh at the irony of the damage you've wrought to the internet in order to protect the artistic integrity of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
That would be funny...
Jesus. I made a joke on here a few days ago using a line from an Alanis Morrisette song. I'll probably be next up for a stint in the big house.
To me this started in the 80's when Apple had a very small but very entrenched segment of the market. Apple users had several things to contend with in corporate culture.
First, being there to begin with. In a time when companies were spending tons of money on big iron with names like IBM, DEC and NCR no one was buying small stand alone computers for corporate, they were home computers. Commodore PETs and TRS-80s were Apples main competition and didn't have a real presence corporate either.
Second, when they did make it into the business market it was, at least in my experience, usually either in the graphics/printing dept. or word processing. Lets face it at the time Apple's GUI and software handled the characters and the printing way better than PC's. They also had people developing good software for those areas, everybody wanted WYSIWYG and apple had it and the GUI worked well with the artists/users.
These things created the last part, which is that corp. IT dept.s looked upon these stand alone, non-connected and not very compatible non-tech friendly things with little love or enthusiasm. Combine that with Apples refusal to play well with others on the play ground until the advent of OS X and it tended to separate computer people into two camps, Apple and the rest of the world. With that kind of stage you tend to be one of two things, very fierce or very eaten.
At least that's my take on the whole thing. But since I now own a MacBook Pro I'm not to sure how long I'm can be dispassionate on the subject.
Maybe we aren't reading the same article. The one I read said this:
Last month, researchers at Finjan stumbled onto a cache of stolen FTP server administrative credentials...
So... that link grandma just clicked didn't go to hallmark.com.rm, it went to hallmark.com and just downloaded malware.
I agree can really lock down FTP to be resistant to hacks. Until someone gets your credentials. Then it's Duck Season! Hmmm, you would be correct. I looked only at the second link!?! *chagrin*
I remember that story and now understand the disconnect. Of course your right, once you have admin access it's game over, I can only imagine what went on in the CIO offices of the affected companies.
I remember thinking "Whoa, how do you let admin passwords like that get out in the wild?" that's gotta increase the pucker factor around the office by a couple orders of magnitude.
I understand how it can happen especially in larger shops but that's why vigilant system administration and frequent audits are so crucial (and a complete pain in the butt).
So my apologies Mr. Callaway next time I'll be sure and read (all of) TLA's
...is nothing. It says "takes you to an owned computer that has a(n) FTP site setup on it" and if you look at the URL at the bottom of the client window you can see that it's obscured, so unless you know that ip address you shouldn't be clicking anything (I have to agree with Digital Sorceress). I hardly think that Hallmark is going to be serving up cards out of Romania, so anyone who clicks on a link from an email similar to the one listed should promptly be taken out to the parking lot and stoned with 1.44MB 3.5 inch floppies.
FTP (tunneled, chrooted, whatever) is still a useful tool it's stable, resilient and does it's job. Blaming FTP for this is like blaming the hammer when your three year old uses it to smash your china...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to patent thinking...
So nobody can think about this until they pay me. The really sad part is even if I got the patent through the USPO I still couldn't collect off of a sizable portion of humanity...
From the article it seems as though it's installed on a new system or you have to install it yourself. Not having seen an OEM install of Ubuntu lately as long as they let the end user know what they're doing and tracking with an easy opt out path who cares? It'll be interesting to see if it's part of the base install from the OEM and if they let you know it's there and calling home. If it's just a metric it would seem like it's not that big of a deal. Although, it does have an greasy kind of feel to it. Does anyone know if this is slipped in with the update stream?
Gee...sounds a lot like the Slashdot Mod system.
How many "insightful" moderation's does it take to overcome 50 "Troll" Moderation's?
The same number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop...
Every time I look at that headline I swear it says
"Cow Licker Boils Down Facebook Games"
and all I think is "ew yuck"!
Actually Microsoft bought Sysinternals hired the developers and made the whole thing better and is still giving it away for free. Those utilities are good enough that I would pay for them and I believe I did donate back before MS acquired them. Oracle on the other hand was saying:
"We've been in the open source business a very long time. We've been a distributor of Apache and we have our own version of Linux," Ellison said. "We have no problems having both Linux and Solaris and we want to make them both better." -- Larry Elison Interview on http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3861376/Whats-the-Future-of-Linux-and-Solaris-at-Oracle.htm
While the reality is that they're letting OpenSolaris die on the vine...
Most people over 40 realize that in the end it's just a job. Families are important and when you reach a certain age you start to understand what's important in life. Most corporations will drop you short of fully vetted and with not so much as a "thank you very much" to save the money.
20 somethings are great because they'll work long hours and think nothing of it. The problem is quantity does not equate to quality. Google might not be in so many new court cases if they had a little wisdom present when some 20 something said "Hey, lets put WiFi sniffers on our camera cars!".
they can just have the FBI spy on us
Actually it's the NSA at Menwith Hill sitting on phone lines http://www.fas.org/irp/facility/menwith.htm that should have us up in arms, or maybe Pine Gap (another NSA listening post in Australia). The Brits spy on US citizens, the US on British citizens and then trade the data... It's the next best thing to legal compared to the other crap they've been pulling lately. BT lawyers gave paperwork to opposing counsel in a trespassing case in 1997 that admitted they put three high capacity cables from their network into the NSA facility! http://duncan.gn.apc.org/menwith.htm Facebook's published on the web and meant for sharing. Did you think they weren't gonna data mine it?
Me too, I switched to Ixquick a couple of months ago... I had no idea what everyone was going on about.
So do you think he looks so good just because he came after GW? Since when do we give out Nobel prizes for intentions?
Yeah, they should socialize more. After all, the study we're discussing is about scientists who thought they heard a pair of Great Tits talking...
since ~70% of the hits on a quick google are how to turn on and configure WebDAV. But this also means that there seems to be a good bit of interest in using it...
it is Air Traffic Control. They need those big gaping holes so they can fit the planes into the tubes...
I knew I should've taken the blue pill...
Exactly, you highlight the point perfectly. If they can afford to pay an "access fee" just how much of a margin are they charging? In this day and age communications are closer to being a utility than a luxury. The need for unfettered communication access in our society is something required so we can, as informed citizens, make intelligent, informed choices. Access to media/communications should be considered a utility and regulated like other services (power, transportation, municipal). The handful of companies that control the communications/media in the U.S. have proven again and again to be greedy, controlling, selfish and manipulative bastards. This is just one more example.
That would be funny...
Jesus. I made a joke on here a few days ago using a line from an Alanis Morrisette song. I'll probably be next up for a stint in the big house.
That would be ironic...
Oh wait! Don't click that butt
I know, REALLY! Think of the kittens!!! Has anybody considered their rights!
OK, I need a faster connection... ...that doesn't run through that locked room right next to AT&Tevil's main switch room... :(
Nice, first post! Ask the NSA, they can verify it...
Hmmm, lets ask Lizzy Borden.
Sheess,
And to think I moved BACK to the U.S.
get my body back into a power plant, re-insert me into the Matrix...
To me this started in the 80's when Apple had a very small but very entrenched segment of the market. Apple users had several things to contend with in corporate culture.
First, being there to begin with. In a time when companies were spending tons of money on big iron with names like IBM, DEC and NCR no one was buying small stand alone computers for corporate, they were home computers. Commodore PETs and TRS-80s were Apples main competition and didn't have a real presence corporate either.
Second, when they did make it into the business market it was, at least in my experience, usually either in the graphics/printing dept. or word processing. Lets face it at the time Apple's GUI and software handled the characters and the printing way better than PC's. They also had people developing good software for those areas, everybody wanted WYSIWYG and apple had it and the GUI worked well with the artists/users.
These things created the last part, which is that corp. IT dept.s looked upon these stand alone, non-connected and not very compatible non-tech friendly things with little love or enthusiasm. Combine that with Apples refusal to play well with others on the play ground until the advent of OS X and it tended to separate computer people into two camps, Apple and the rest of the world. With that kind of stage you tend to be one of two things, very fierce or very eaten.
At least that's my take on the whole thing. But since I now own a MacBook Pro I'm not to sure how long I'm can be dispassionate on the subject.
I can feel myself...
changing...
I agree can really lock down FTP to be resistant to hacks. Until someone gets your credentials. Then it's Duck Season! Hmmm, you would be correct. I looked only at the second link!?! *chagrin*
I remember that story and now understand the disconnect. Of course your right, once you have admin access it's game over, I can only imagine what went on in the CIO offices of the affected companies.
I remember thinking "Whoa, how do you let admin passwords like that get out in the wild?" that's gotta increase the pucker factor around the office by a couple orders of magnitude.
I understand how it can happen especially in larger shops but that's why vigilant system administration and frequent audits are so crucial (and a complete pain in the butt).
So my apologies Mr. Callaway next time I'll be sure and read (all of) TLA's
...is nothing. It says "takes you to an owned computer that has a(n) FTP site setup on it" and if you look at the URL at the bottom of the client window you can see that it's obscured, so unless you know that ip address you shouldn't be clicking anything (I have to agree with Digital Sorceress). I hardly think that Hallmark is going to be serving up cards out of Romania, so anyone who clicks on a link from an email similar to the one listed should promptly be taken out to the parking lot and stoned with 1.44MB 3.5 inch floppies.
FTP (tunneled, chrooted, whatever) is still a useful tool it's stable, resilient and does it's job. Blaming FTP for this is like blaming the hammer when your three year old uses it to smash your china...
exactly, and I'll be pinning my hopes to the monkeys... (both sets)