The article indicates that warrants were requested and issued each time they used this. It would be rather useless for the trojan to inject other malware onto a system that the FBI was likely to seize said equipment shortly after the trojan was planted.
This doesn't concern me in the slightest as long as they continue to follow the law and request a warrant to plant this trojan. If your a law abiding citizen, then you should never show up on their radar and I see this as no different than a blackmail case where they bugged someone's phone with a warrant or put them under 24/7 observation. I would imagine they injected the trojan via the web site that the guy demanded Verizon set up for him via some known (or unknown) exploit.
The two known instances of the FBI using this were both done via warrant (this one in 2005 and the latest in 2007).
That's not to say they don't use this elsewhere, but any person on the internet should consider their activities traceable no matter what hoops they go through. Especially when the telecoms willingly rolled over when requested by the government and most folks get their internet access via said telcoms.
PowerShell is actually kinda nice. It's well integrated with the OS and easy to learn which is surprising. You have to get a decent third party debugger though. Typical that they don't include any decent tools with it. It's a bit like C, Perl, and Java. I see aspects of each in there.
That said, they lost me with Vista. I've gone with a Mac for my last two purchases;)
Google would willingly remove any copyrighted item from it's cache if requested. Would TPB remove any requested item from it's website?
Saying the two are the same is at best a very far stretch. At it's worst, it's no better than the legalese that someone like the RIAA would try to use to tie someone who downloads a single song to 1000's of lost sales.
TPB's only purpose is to facilitate finding copyrighted material on the web. Google's purpose is to facilitate finding any content on the web by crawling every website that allows it, BUT with the proviso that they will remove any contested content that may be picked up by a crawler.
Google indexes the content on TPB. TPB is the actual website with that content. They are not the same thing. Such a stretch could be applied to the very wires you get your internet service over, your internet provider, etc. It's patently ridiculous to say the two are the same.
The same principal applies to internet providers. Their service just provides the pipe to the content, not the content itself.
Holy crap where have you guys beenand why did you let them take over your party so completely. I actually like a lot of the ideals in the republican party but I haven't seen any of them in years. It's become a total lip service to their ideals while they are jerking everyone off with the other hand.
Hopefully they'll get back to making sense and leave this other nonsense behind them.
As a matter of fact, I do. I'm frankly sick of the right wing and what they've done to this country the last 8 years. It's about time the left started getting vocal again so we aren't drowned out by the 'righteous'.
This guy isn't a spammer in the typical sense. He's a hack 'lawyer' that's been permanently disbarred in Florida for false statements, disparaging remarks, and humiliating litigants.
He's tried to get music banned due to explicit content, violent video games banned because they incite violence, video games declared as pornography, etc., etc., etc. You know they type. More concerned about everyone else's business rather than minding his own.
He's essentially wants to ensure that everyone else lives to his own moral standards regardless of their beliefs or how they want to raise their children.
He's just a big born-again right wing religious wack job for lack of a better term. This latest spam suit is just his latest 'label' among many.
The fact that police could take all of his computer equipment if he broke the law using said equipment isn't news at all.
The only news here is that they took all of his computer equipment, cell phone, etc., with no probably cause other than the fact that he is skilled with computers, hardware, and various operating systems.
This sounds like something Barney Fife would do to get Aunt Bea into bed...
I think it would have been better to show someone putting stacks of money into the CD tray and watching the PC shred it and spit it out the exhaust fan.
Cut scene to someone throwing a PC into a sink full of money:
Yes but when you see a car commercial you can typically figure out that it's a car ad. The winner doesn't even indicate that it's even remotely computer related. It's hard to picture someone like my parents even being curious enough to go Google something so abstract unless it had HUGE saturation to the point where they coudln't resist (unlikely given there is no funding for such.
Way to abstract and rather boring. If anything it's even more boring than the Jerry era MS commercials. It reminds me of those old perfume commercials where they all stand around posing and looking sexy, and then at the end they flash the product name without even telling you what "X" product is.
Yes, but the potential for litigation and insurance premiums would far outweigh the benefit. Especially when they can just go a few more miles and find any club or bar off campus. I can actually understand their decision in that case, although I am baffled as to why they would wait until the place was ready to open in 3 days before pulling the plug. That just seems totally cruel and irresponsible to the business owner.
I would really love to see the telecoms pipe separated from the cable television. Force them to rent from the telecom companies while ensuring that the Telecom companies themselves couldn't get a monopoly on entire regions.
Better yet, have each city pay and build out the fiber network and treat it like a utility to the content providers. That would open up the industry to competition as they wouldn't have to own and/or build the pipes to deliver their content, it would regulate the cost of the pipe itself, and the taxpayer would eventually earn back the cost of building the network via the rental to the cable/internet providers. It would also remove a huge barrier to new competition entering the area as they won't have to build out their own fiber lines to compete.
Because cable companies have increased their rates at about twice that of inflation for years. My bill has gone from $40 dollars for a platinum package (all channels) 10 years ago to $150 for silver package and far less service than I had then. My internet speed has been increased by 2.5 Mb/sec in 10 years as technology advanced (when they switched to fiber a few years back).
In addition, these companies took millions of dollars in funding from the government to improve their infrastructure for just this very reason. To plan for future capacity. They did nothing with it other than spam additional channels in tiered packaged that no one wants and are now overselling internet bandwidth (according to them) even though I never see a slowdown and haven't for years, even before fiber.
On top of that, they have a monopoly in most areas where people who want broadband have no choice but to pay if they want to retain anything other than dial-up. They expect me to pay what I pay now for an unlimited plan, with cable and premium channels, just for the internet access I have now.
It's obvious they are doing this to prevent competition from sites like Hulu. With the internet, you really don't need cable tv. Given a good pipe and content providers offering up content directly, it severely compromises their business model. This technology should be dirt cheap these days as usually happens with wide adoption, yet the price for broadband keeps skyrocketing. There is no where near enough competition.
Cable companies have been gouging consumers for years with anti-competitive agreements with local municipalities that prevent other telecoms from entering the scene. If I had another option, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Perhaps this will put some regulation back on them until there is competition or at least an environment that fosters competition.
The only fool here is the bar owner for trusting Microsoft and for not getting a better contract with a pull-out clause to get compensation should MS pull the plug.
Why didn't they just go for a coffee house in the first place as it's a standard business friendly place, it comes with wireless and kiosk's for the Net Set, and it doesn't open up MS to lawsuits for drunken brawls which is what I'm sure they were afraid of. That or bringing out the alcoholic tendencies of those that happen to work there (and again the lawsuits that fallow as a result).
Shame on MS for waiting 3 days before it opened before pulling the plug. Stupidity at it's finest.
The RIAA is essentially prosecuting the initial downloader for crimes that others commit by then downloading from him or her. Why isn't this being used as a defense? When you stop and think about it, it doesn't matter how many people (how many 'counts') download from this person. They are in affect prosecuting the initial downloader for the crimes of others.
This person should be responsible only for the content he downloaded, and punished for making it 'available' to others, but he or she did not force it down others throats. They elected to download it in turn.
How have the laws become so twisted that a person could be prosecuted based on the actions of others?
Because if you leave it up to the voter, it would open up the machine to easy manipulation. One could easily change the calibration to purposely shift votes from the left of the screen to the right by an inch or two.
Definitely not a good idea.
A better idea would be for them to purchase voting machines that are open source and that actually work as designed.
It's a beta. There are no promises. This is true for ANY software, not just Microsoft. Just because someone takes the time to allow folks to upgrade software from beta doesn't mean it should be expected. I'm far from an MS fan, but this seems redundant. Why should MS waste cycles on troubleshooting beta upgrade bugs when Joe User will never experience them? It's a waste of time, money, and resources.
Agreed. It started at the top and rolled down hill. There was even a clip of someone who was invested by the feds for making a not so kind comment about Bush at his local gym. He was visited by the nice men in blue suites. Totally out of control and scary as hell to think it could have gotten that far.
I remember the story like it was yesterday. It sent chills down my spine. To say it wasn't the (then) presidents administration pushing the buttons is ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
lol. If they haven't copyrighted 'meatspace' yet, you should hop on that. I LOVE it ;)
The article indicates that warrants were requested and issued each time they used this. It would be rather useless for the trojan to inject other malware onto a system that the FBI was likely to seize said equipment shortly after the trojan was planted.
This doesn't concern me in the slightest as long as they continue to follow the law and request a warrant to plant this trojan. If your a law abiding citizen, then you should never show up on their radar and I see this as no different than a blackmail case where they bugged someone's phone with a warrant or put them under 24/7 observation. I would imagine they injected the trojan via the web site that the guy demanded Verizon set up for him via some known (or unknown) exploit.
The two known instances of the FBI using this were both done via warrant (this one in 2005 and the latest in 2007).
That's not to say they don't use this elsewhere, but any person on the internet should consider their activities traceable no matter what hoops they go through. Especially when the telecoms willingly rolled over when requested by the government and most folks get their internet access via said telcoms.
PowerShell is actually kinda nice. It's well integrated with the OS and easy to learn which is surprising. You have to get a decent third party debugger though. Typical that they don't include any decent tools with it. It's a bit like C, Perl, and Java. I see aspects of each in there.
;)
That said, they lost me with Vista. I've gone with a Mac for my last two purchases
Google would willingly remove any copyrighted item from it's cache if requested. Would TPB remove any requested item from it's website?
Saying the two are the same is at best a very far stretch. At it's worst, it's no better than the legalese that someone like the RIAA would try to use to tie someone who downloads a single song to 1000's of lost sales.
TPB's only purpose is to facilitate finding copyrighted material on the web. Google's purpose is to facilitate finding any content on the web by crawling every website that allows it, BUT with the proviso that they will remove any contested content that may be picked up by a crawler.
They are NOT the same.
Google indexes the content on TPB. TPB is the actual website with that content. They are not the same thing. Such a stretch could be applied to the very wires you get your internet service over, your internet provider, etc. It's patently ridiculous to say the two are the same.
The same principal applies to internet providers. Their service just provides the pipe to the content, not the content itself.
lol..actually I'm over 40, and yes I'm a grandpa.
Holy crap where have you guys beenand why did you let them take over your party so completely. I actually like a lot of the ideals in the republican party but I haven't seen any of them in years. It's become a total lip service to their ideals while they are jerking everyone off with the other hand.
Hopefully they'll get back to making sense and leave this other nonsense behind them.
As a matter of fact, I do. I'm frankly sick of the right wing and what they've done to this country the last 8 years. It's about time the left started getting vocal again so we aren't drowned out by the 'righteous'.
Guessing from the info online about him, I'd say he's about out of friends, or even anyone that will tolerate him.
This guy isn't a spammer in the typical sense. He's a hack 'lawyer' that's been permanently disbarred in Florida for false statements, disparaging remarks, and humiliating litigants.
He's tried to get music banned due to explicit content, violent video games banned because they incite violence, video games declared as pornography, etc., etc., etc. You know they type. More concerned about everyone else's business rather than minding his own.
He's essentially wants to ensure that everyone else lives to his own moral standards regardless of their beliefs or how they want to raise their children.
He's just a big born-again right wing religious wack job for lack of a better term. This latest spam suit is just his latest 'label' among many.
Mod Up. Why doesn't the DOJ hire some common sense?
Yes, but with Google, you willingly submit that information. With Deep Packet Inspection, you have no choice and no opt-out option.
The two scenarios are totally different cases of rape...
The fact that police could take all of his computer equipment if he broke the law using said equipment isn't news at all.
The only news here is that they took all of his computer equipment, cell phone, etc., with no probably cause other than the fact that he is skilled with computers, hardware, and various operating systems.
This sounds like something Barney Fife would do to get Aunt Bea into bed...
I think it would have been better to show someone putting stacks of money into the CD tray and watching the PC shred it and spit it out the exhaust fan.
Cut scene to someone throwing a PC into a sink full of money:
"Linux...your soaking in it..."
Yes but when you see a car commercial you can typically figure out that it's a car ad. The winner doesn't even indicate that it's even remotely computer related. It's hard to picture someone like my parents even being curious enough to go Google something so abstract unless it had HUGE saturation to the point where they coudln't resist (unlikely given there is no funding for such.
Way to abstract and rather boring. If anything it's even more boring than the Jerry era MS commercials. It reminds me of those old perfume commercials where they all stand around posing and looking sexy, and then at the end they flash the product name without even telling you what "X" product is.
It's a little too 90's for me...
Our congress receives 'gifts' all the time, and they never go to jail. Am I missing the point? ;)
We'll they're already killing cigarettes (not that I mind). My last vice is alcohol. If that goes, I'm getting a shotgun ;)
Yes, but the potential for litigation and insurance premiums would far outweigh the benefit. Especially when they can just go a few more miles and find any club or bar off campus. I can actually understand their decision in that case, although I am baffled as to why they would wait until the place was ready to open in 3 days before pulling the plug. That just seems totally cruel and irresponsible to the business owner.
I would really love to see the telecoms pipe separated from the cable television. Force them to rent from the telecom companies while ensuring that the Telecom companies themselves couldn't get a monopoly on entire regions.
Better yet, have each city pay and build out the fiber network and treat it like a utility to the content providers. That would open up the industry to competition as they wouldn't have to own and/or build the pipes to deliver their content, it would regulate the cost of the pipe itself, and the taxpayer would eventually earn back the cost of building the network via the rental to the cable/internet providers. It would also remove a huge barrier to new competition entering the area as they won't have to build out their own fiber lines to compete.
Sounds like a pipe dream though...(ouch..bad pun)
Because cable companies have increased their rates at about twice that of inflation for years. My bill has gone from $40 dollars for a platinum package (all channels) 10 years ago to $150 for silver package and far less service than I had then. My internet speed has been increased by 2.5 Mb/sec in 10 years as technology advanced (when they switched to fiber a few years back).
In addition, these companies took millions of dollars in funding from the government to improve their infrastructure for just this very reason. To plan for future capacity. They did nothing with it other than spam additional channels in tiered packaged that no one wants and are now overselling internet bandwidth (according to them) even though I never see a slowdown and haven't for years, even before fiber.
On top of that, they have a monopoly in most areas where people who want broadband have no choice but to pay if they want to retain anything other than dial-up. They expect me to pay what I pay now for an unlimited plan, with cable and premium channels, just for the internet access I have now.
It's obvious they are doing this to prevent competition from sites like Hulu. With the internet, you really don't need cable tv. Given a good pipe and content providers offering up content directly, it severely compromises their business model. This technology should be dirt cheap these days as usually happens with wide adoption, yet the price for broadband keeps skyrocketing. There is no where near enough competition.
Cable companies have been gouging consumers for years with anti-competitive agreements with local municipalities that prevent other telecoms from entering the scene. If I had another option, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Perhaps this will put some regulation back on them until there is competition or at least an environment that fosters competition.
The only fool here is the bar owner for trusting Microsoft and for not getting a better contract with a pull-out clause to get compensation should MS pull the plug.
Why didn't they just go for a coffee house in the first place as it's a standard business friendly place, it comes with wireless and kiosk's for the Net Set, and it doesn't open up MS to lawsuits for drunken brawls which is what I'm sure they were afraid of. That or bringing out the alcoholic tendencies of those that happen to work there (and again the lawsuits that fallow as a result).
Shame on MS for waiting 3 days before it opened before pulling the plug. Stupidity at it's finest.
The RIAA is essentially prosecuting the initial downloader for crimes that others commit by then downloading from him or her. Why isn't this being used as a defense? When you stop and think about it, it doesn't matter how many people (how many 'counts') download from this person. They are in affect prosecuting the initial downloader for the crimes of others.
This person should be responsible only for the content he downloaded, and punished for making it 'available' to others, but he or she did not force it down others throats. They elected to download it in turn.
How have the laws become so twisted that a person could be prosecuted based on the actions of others?
Because if you leave it up to the voter, it would open up the machine to easy manipulation. One could easily change the calibration to purposely shift votes from the left of the screen to the right by an inch or two.
Definitely not a good idea.
A better idea would be for them to purchase voting machines that are open source and that actually work as designed.
It's a beta. There are no promises. This is true for ANY software, not just Microsoft. Just because someone takes the time to allow folks to upgrade software from beta doesn't mean it should be expected. I'm far from an MS fan, but this seems redundant. Why should MS waste cycles on troubleshooting beta upgrade bugs when Joe User will never experience them? It's a waste of time, money, and resources.
Agreed. It started at the top and rolled down hill. There was even a clip of someone who was invested by the feds for making a not so kind comment about Bush at his local gym. He was visited by the nice men in blue suites. Totally out of control and scary as hell to think it could have gotten that far.
I remember the story like it was yesterday. It sent chills down my spine. To say it wasn't the (then) presidents administration pushing the buttons is ridiculous.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2001/12/18/eguillermo.DTL