1) The various advocates of run FOO over SSL are missing a point. Sure you can encrypt the traffic to make it hard to read, but the messages are still in cleartext in the IM server. So, your boss might not be able to read it... but the person running the server certainly can.
SSL only provides "on the wire" encryption. It doesn't prevent the server operator from snooping on you. We assume that the server operators are not logging our traffic, but do we really know ?
And, even if the server operators are on the level (I have no data to suggest otherwise), you are only really protected if everyone you IM is also doing SSL. If you send something awful using your SSL-amped client to a non-SSL's coworker, your boss doesn't have to decode your transmission, he can just look at your co-worker's transmission.
2) Having said that, users of a TOC (not OSCAR) based AIM client can do SSL quite easily. Get a copy of OpenSSL and stunnel on your system. Configure stunnel to accept a cleartext connection and forward it SSL'd to toc.oscar.aol.com. Then connect your TOC based client to the stunnel program. That works just fine because the AOL TOC/WWW server supports SSL.
3) The only potentially "safe" solution, assuming your keybord/screen/mouse aren't being spyed on is to use end-to-end based encryption. Currently the only major public product out there that does this is Trillian... and I don't think the Trillian encryption code has been objectively reviewed to determine that their stuff really prevents snooping on the wire and at the AOL server.
The trailer is downloadable at http://starwars.apple.com/ep2/clone_war/index.html . QuickTime 5 required. Quicktime 5 Pro ($$$) needed to watch the "Large" version. Seems silly to pay money to watch an ad, IMHO.
When I first read Chapter 1, I found myself reliving the past. I felt not only deja vu about the events, but of the emotions and the energy of those insane days in 1989. It freaked me out to replay those days nine years previous so clearly and completely. By the end of the chapter it was clear Suelette had captured the essence of what had happened at NASA and that she could tell it to others through the written word.
Download this book, you WILL NOT be disappointed.
If you like it, buy a hardcopy to support a really spiffy and clueful author.
Caught this on http://dailynews.netscape.com/. Basically Sony hasn't admitted there is a bug (yet?), but admitted that the complaints were real and they are investigating.
The stats are staggering, they have sold 900K units in a few days. A recall/repair would be quite a mess, even if it was limited to Japan.
I seem to recall some short story Star Trek fiction from the 1970's that had a similar theme to GalaxyQuest. In a nutshell, Kirk/Spock/McCoy/Etc step onto the transporter pads on a real Enterprise, and beam into the Television set. Humor ensues. A followup story (in another story anthology) has Shatner/Nimoy/Kelly/Etc appearing on the real Enterprise during a crisis situation. I enjoyed both stories, but since I can't find the books in my voluminous bookshelves, the titles escape me...
The films which have been done by United Artists (now MGM/UA) are considered the "Real" Bond series. There have been 19 of those films, starting with Doctor No in 1962.
The two James Bond films which aren't part of that series are Casino Royale (1967, Quite a number of people playing 007) and Never Say Never Again (1983, Sean Connery as 007).
Q appeared in all of the "real" series movies, except Doctor No (1962, Sean Connery as 007) and Live and Let Die (1973, Roger Moore as 007). He first appeared in From Russia with Love (1963, Sean Connery as 007).
Probably my favorite Q device was "Little Nellie", the tiny killer gyrocopter 007 flies in You Only Live Twice.
I mourn his passing greatly, and I extend sympathy to his family, friends and fans everywhere.
The TCL/TK client for AIM isn't dead, you can still get information/downloads from places like http://www.oaks.yoyodyne.com/tik. Before AOL "dropped" support for it, it was released under the GPL.
In answer to some of Suraks's comments and some details...
The TOC servers support the QuickBuddy Java AIM client, which despite the "changes" early on in the MS-AOL war, is still a supported AOL product.
Unofficial history: The TiK client grew out of a need to test the TOC servers. It was a spare time project out of AOL's server development group.
AOL made a brief announcement a few weeks ago that we would see TiK 1.0 before the end of the year after not hearing much from them for about 6 months. Unfortunately, said announcement is no longer posted on the AOL servers.
The TCL/TK client for AIM isn't dead, you can still get information/downloads from places like http://www.oaks.yoyodyne.com/tik. The current version is 0.75 and runs fine under TCL/TK 8.0.5 on UNIX, Windows and the Mac. We even have one implementation of SSL encrypted AIM based on TiK at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
1) The various advocates of run FOO over SSL are missing a point. Sure you can encrypt the traffic to make it hard to read, but the messages are still in cleartext in the IM server. So, your boss might not be able to read it... but the person running the server certainly can.
SSL only provides "on the wire" encryption. It doesn't prevent the server operator from snooping on you. We assume that the server operators are not logging our traffic, but do we really know ?
And, even if the server operators are on the level (I have no data to suggest otherwise), you are only really protected if everyone you IM is also doing SSL. If you send something awful using your SSL-amped client to a non-SSL's coworker, your boss doesn't have to decode your transmission, he can just look at your co-worker's transmission.
2) Having said that, users of a TOC (not OSCAR) based AIM client can do SSL quite easily. Get a copy of OpenSSL and stunnel on your system. Configure stunnel to accept a cleartext connection and forward it SSL'd to toc.oscar.aol.com. Then connect your TOC based client to the stunnel program. That works just fine because the AOL TOC/WWW server supports SSL.
3) The only potentially "safe" solution, assuming your keybord/screen/mouse aren't being spyed on is to use end-to-end based encryption. Currently the only major public product out there that does this is Trillian... and I don't think the Trillian encryption code has been objectively reviewed to determine that their stuff really prevents snooping on the wire and at the AOL server.
Cheers,
Fuzz
The trailer references a new Lucafilm website http://www.holonetnews.com/
--Fuzz
http://www.shado.info/slashdot/
When I first read Chapter 1, I found myself reliving the past. I felt not only deja vu about the events, but of the emotions and the energy of those insane days in 1989. It freaked me out to replay those days nine years previous so clearly and completely. By the end of the chapter it was clear Suelette had captured the essence of what had happened at NASA and that she could tell it to others through the written word.
Download this book, you WILL NOT be disappointed.
If you like it, buy a hardcopy to support a really spiffy and clueful author.
Just in case we don't have enough mirror sites yet, here is another mirror site for the text version.
Cheers,
John "FuzzFace" McMahon
Pr. Security Engineer
Cable & Wireless GNO
(Previous life: Assistant DECnet Protocol Manager, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
The stats are staggering, they have sold 900K units in a few days. A recall/repair would be quite a mess, even if it was limited to Japan.
I seem to recall some short story Star Trek fiction from the 1970's that had a similar theme to GalaxyQuest. In a nutshell, Kirk/Spock/McCoy/Etc step onto the transporter pads on a real Enterprise, and beam into the Television set. Humor ensues. A followup story (in another story anthology) has Shatner/Nimoy/Kelly/Etc appearing on the real Enterprise during a crisis situation. I enjoyed both stories, but since I can't find the books in my voluminous bookshelves, the titles escape me...
The two James Bond films which aren't part of that series are Casino Royale (1967, Quite a number of people playing 007) and Never Say Never Again (1983, Sean Connery as 007).
Q appeared in all of the "real" series movies, except Doctor No (1962, Sean Connery as 007) and Live and Let Die (1973, Roger Moore as 007). He first appeared in From Russia with Love (1963, Sean Connery as 007).
Probably my favorite Q device was "Little Nellie", the tiny killer gyrocopter 007 flies in You Only Live Twice.
I mourn his passing greatly, and I extend sympathy to his family, friends and fans everywhere.
The TCL/TK client for AIM isn't dead, you can still get information/downloads from places like http://www.oaks.yoyodyne.com/tik. Before AOL "dropped" support for it, it was released under the GPL.
The TCL/TK client for AIM isn't dead, you can still get information/downloads from places like http://www.oaks.yoyodyne.com/tik. The current version is 0.75 and runs fine under TCL/TK 8.0.5 on UNIX, Windows and the Mac. We even have one implementation of SSL encrypted AIM based on TiK at this point.