This would help those posting A+B. You may be right that Metalica could not sue over random bits. But the people storing or downloading B+C would not be helped as much. Remember that the Chinese sytem, like most totalitarian systems, is not overly concerned about jurisprudence. If the Chinese government has reason to suspect a chinese citizen of storing antigovernment information... even if that information cannot be accessed or even proved to exist by said government... they will arrest and prosecute. Evidence will be ignored or created as needed.
I beleive the poster is joking about the typo in the story. Boises is listed as both prosectuing and defending Napster. Obviously this is inaccurate and the poster is pointing out the mistake. Boise is prosectuting MS and defending Napster. Sarcasm is veiwed as funny in some circles...
I think Napster would be hard pressed to find a better man to defend them. Boise's record is incredible, and he has beat the odds on several occations. Regaurdless of your opinon of Napster, you cannot argue with their ability to attract good people.
All Information classified secret or above requires "need to know" in order to access it. It is the second componet of clssification. Generally speaking however If you able to get into an area that contains x information, you are both cleared for that info, and considered to have a "need to know". The real bitch isn't unauthorised people getting access to information, it is the fact that sometimes the authorized people people become dishonest.
OK, I'll bite. Maybe there is no other explaination other than a supreme being. What makes you think she is anything like the one described in your Bible? Even if you prove the existance of God you hardly prove the existance of YOUR God.
I worry that this one is going to be knocked down by a higher court. A lot of legally knowledgable people I know say that Jackson migh have been a little to quick on the draw for this to stand. Any lawyer out there care to comment?
One thing that does amaze me is the number of people who believe that Microsoft broke the law, but think they should not be punished becaus "It will hurt the industry", or it "Stifle innovation", or "Make my life more complicated". If they broke the law, they broke the law. It should not matter whether punishing them will cause some IT shops to gasp have to diversify. It should not matter that they are a dominant industry player (In fact they got to that position by breaking the law.. how much \farther are they willing to go to stay there?)
That wasn't IBM's figure, that was someone else. Sending out enough relay mail to bog down IBM.net's servers would be something immpressive (SDOS-Spam Denial Of Service). This guy's servers were crashed by the weight of being a relay for a few million messages. This is why mail servers should be setup to deny relays from untrusted hosts. IBM just had their name stolen.
Good thing too, or else the pseudonym above would make me guilty of forgery as well.
Would it? IANAL, but my understanding of forgery is that you are caliming to be someone or something you are not. Hence it is argueably a forgery to claim to be CmdrTaco, but not to claim to be Anonymous Coward, because there is no "one" Anonymous Coward to say "Hey, he's claiming to be me.". I can sign a letter "Anonymous" and send it to the paper, no one will say anything. If I sign a letter "William Clinton, President, United States of America" and put it on nice custom White House letterhead, someone is going to want to see me.
According to a Yahoo! article someone posted above (Sorry, I'm to lasy to find it), one of the requirements is that to be a virus (legally) it has to do something without your knowledge. If I e-mail you a file and say "Here's a virus... don't run it, it'll screw your day up.", you know what you what you are getting. By the definition of this law (as I read it), no crime was committed.
It's a very fine line. The "Zombie Zapper" they mention looks cool. It just tells the zombie to stop sending packets... that is defense. Slamming the attacker with a counter DOS would not be purely defense, you are attacking the zombie as surely as the original hacker did. Since most zombies are in educational institutions, you are basically attacking a university to defend yourself (from what I know of the laws of war, you might have a hard time justifiying that in war time, much less under ordinary circumstances).
How do you know the script kiddie is on his own machine? There is no way to know what is going on in "Target" machine's CPU. Maybe it's a script kiddie, maybe it's a zombie setup to look like a script kiddie. The risk of a lawsuit from the counter attacked machine's owner (actually even if he IS the script kiddie since there is no "self defense" clause in computer security laws) is to high to risk it.
How did they manage to kill Cnet? Based on some of the other articles I have read on this, I don't quite get it. How can you have privacy without anonmitity? I mean if companies were honest, it might be possible, but from what I have seen, if you are not anonymous you can forget about privacy. Companies will say they are respecting your privacy while tracking everything you do. Then act shocked when confronted witht he fact that tracking everything you do is inconstistant with privacy. "What do you mean... We totally respect your privacy.. we just want to make money off of targeted ads... how is that not private?"
I hardly ever have trouble with ISP tech support. They usually have no idea how to even check to see if there is a problem with my computer, so they are forced to check the line.
Me: My service is down....
TS: Well lets check you out here, click on the start button and...
Me: I don't have a start button, This box is a Linux server, I don't even have the GUI installed. I can fax you copies of the networking files...
TS: Umm... no... That's OK... We have a Unix guy here.. hold on... [ten minutes pass]... Uhh.. the Unix guy is is... uhh.. Busy.. I think the problem is at our end... I'll get back to you...
I started in BASIC too, then PASCAL, but I wonder about the usefulness now. What about starting them on JAVA. The syntax is relativley simple, and they can do "web stuff" that they can easilly show off to friends. BASIC doesn't do anything "multimedia", and I could see kids that grew up on GUI's, the World Wide Web, and 3-d games getting quickly frustrated with a language limited to text. After they have the hang of cool little web applets and stuff, you could start introducing them to more "serious" programming.
Based on what we have seen in binary computers, I would say that to write low level assembler (or the quantum equivlant of writing in binary) stuff you would have to understand the physics (just like you do to write low level assembler and binary language stuff on binary systems, why do you think so many early programers started life as EE's). It would also probably help to understand it in OS and compiler programing, but just like many programmers don't REALLY understand how their binary systems work (Let us count the number of programming manuals that start off with a primer on how computers "think" using '0's and '1's.), I am sure many high level programmers of quantum computers won't REALLY understand the physics.
From a communications security standpoint this is an intersting theory, but I see a hole (if I understand the concept correctly). Although Eve can never read Alice's message to Bob, she can apparently prevent its reception (just capture every photon Alice sends). Am I missing something or is this a serious problem... In many instances a message prevented can be just as dangerous as a message intercepted.
It is good to see that the current court continues to favor free speech, though it is disturbing that the descion was so close. All it takes is for one fo these guys (or gals)to die or retire and the balence could shift. I don't know if I want to live here when that happens. Congress has gotten entirely to interested in "protecting" me and my (currently notional) children. If the court slides any farther to the "moral majority" (Whose morals... why are their morals more important than everyone elses?) we could be looking at a situation where cenorship becomes the norm.
I often wonder, when I hear theories of this sort (and even though you are probably joking, many people seem to take similar theories very seriously), where do you think Microsoft gets te time to analyse every keystroke on every computer in the world? They would have to have an immense labor force, not even Microsoft is that rich. Maybe they don't analyse evey keystroke... maybe they just store them for later analysis (if something comes up), but we are talking about exabytes of information here. Where would they put it all? Where would they find a search algorithm that could make any use of it? I just don't see it.
I read something a while back about a security team working for the Dept. of Defence (US) that designed and impleneted a set of scripts to "shoot back". The details are fuzzy, but basically this thing traced packets back to their source and "disabled" the attacking computer. The article I read did not contain many technical details, and I have since forgotten any it did have, but it was more concerned with legal issues.
In this case there was a legal problem because the thing had been implemented by the DOD (The US military is forbidden by law to take hostile action against US citizens except under specific circumstances), but here were plenty of other issues besides. It is way to easy to shoot "innocent" zombie computers for one thing. Just because a computer is attacking you doesn't mean the owner is, and counter attacking the computer is largely the same as attacking the owner (yes he SHOULD have secured his network, but when he sues you, will the courts accept that as a defence?). Even if you hit the right computer, you basically come out as guily as the attacker (there is no "self defence" clause in Information Security laws, and a "counter attack" is still an "attack"). He can insist that you be arrested at the same time he is, since you attacked him. There were some other things too, but like I said, it has been a while and the details are fuzzy.
The question of course is where should Mr. Joe user look it up? The HOW-TO (no vendor doc I've ever seen has this info)? Sure, which one? Ohh good it's only 25 pages of unformat ascii. How do you search ascii? Well dhuu, you use grep. How do you use grep, well read the man page. What, it's 5 pages of unformated ascii... Well that's alot less to read isn't it? What was that? A book.. sure, try O'Rielys... Course the info you want probably isn't in there, but hey, it will tel you how to use grep, then you can grep the HOW-TO and maybe what you want is in there! If not come back and ask me again.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and would use it exclusively if I could convince my boss to let me install it on my workstation, but finding out how to do stuff is HARD. Once you figure out the tools it gets a bit easier, but additional EASY to USE doc's are essential to bringing in new (non-geek) users.
Actually/opt is a pretty standard Unix directory. Solaris and SCO both have it anyway. They problem is that there is no Unix directory stanadard, so Linux makes some of it up as it goes (eg./etc/rc.d/init.d... Why do we need rc.d?). I know some Unixes have/opt (the ones I am familiar with) I am sure some don't, so Linux decides on a distro basis whether to use it.
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I was particularly impressed that a password reminder was a required field.
This would help those posting A+B. You may be right that Metalica could not sue over random bits. But the people storing or downloading B+C would not be helped as much. Remember that the Chinese sytem, like most totalitarian systems, is not overly concerned about jurisprudence. If the Chinese government has reason to suspect a chinese citizen of storing antigovernment information... even if that information cannot be accessed or even proved to exist by said government... they will arrest and prosecute. Evidence will be ignored or created as needed.
I beleive the poster is joking about the typo in the story. Boises is listed as both prosectuing and defending Napster. Obviously this is inaccurate and the poster is pointing out the mistake. Boise is prosectuting MS and defending Napster. Sarcasm is veiwed as funny in some circles...
I think Napster would be hard pressed to find a better man to defend them. Boise's record is incredible, and he has beat the odds on several occations. Regaurdless of your opinon of Napster, you cannot argue with their ability to attract good people.
All Information classified secret or above requires "need to know" in order to access it. It is the second componet of clssification. Generally speaking however If you able to get into an area that contains x information, you are both cleared for that info, and considered to have a "need to know". The real bitch isn't unauthorised people getting access to information, it is the fact that sometimes the authorized people people become dishonest.
OK, I'll bite. Maybe there is no other explaination other than a supreme being. What makes you think she is anything like the one described in your Bible? Even if you prove the existance of God you hardly prove the existance of YOUR God.
I worry that this one is going to be knocked down by a higher court. A lot of legally knowledgable people I know say that Jackson migh have been a little to quick on the draw for this to stand. Any lawyer out there care to comment?
One thing that does amaze me is the number of people who believe that Microsoft broke the law, but think they should not be punished becaus "It will hurt the industry", or it "Stifle innovation", or "Make my life more complicated". If they broke the law, they broke the law. It should not matter whether punishing them will cause some IT shops to gasp have to diversify. It should not matter that they are a dominant industry player (In fact they got to that position by breaking the law.. how much \farther are they willing to go to stay there?)That wasn't IBM's figure, that was someone else. Sending out enough relay mail to bog down IBM.net's servers would be something immpressive (SDOS-Spam Denial Of Service). This guy's servers were crashed by the weight of being a relay for a few million messages. This is why mail servers should be setup to deny relays from untrusted hosts. IBM just had their name stolen.
Wow, we posted almost the exact same reply (even down to using the same example) within seconds of each other. Boy, don't I look redundent.
Good thing too, or else the pseudonym above would make me guilty of forgery as well.
Would it? IANAL, but my understanding of forgery is that you are caliming to be someone or something you are not. Hence it is argueably a forgery to claim to be CmdrTaco, but not to claim to be Anonymous Coward, because there is no "one" Anonymous Coward to say "Hey, he's claiming to be me.". I can sign a letter "Anonymous" and send it to the paper, no one will say anything. If I sign a letter "William Clinton, President, United States of America" and put it on nice custom White House letterhead, someone is going to want to see me.
According to a Yahoo! article someone posted above (Sorry, I'm to lasy to find it), one of the requirements is that to be a virus (legally) it has to do something without your knowledge. If I e-mail you a file and say "Here's a virus... don't run it, it'll screw your day up.", you know what you what you are getting. By the definition of this law (as I read it), no crime was committed.
Acck! I screwed up the HTML on the Hiaku. Damn, I almost thought I was being clever. ::Slap! "Use the Preveiw button!" Slap!::
I can't believe I just did that. Seriously thouhg, reverse engineering is a protected form of fair use. That is part of the point of this case.
It's a very fine line. The "Zombie Zapper" they mention looks cool. It just tells the zombie to stop sending packets... that is defense. Slamming the attacker with a counter DOS would not be purely defense, you are attacking the zombie as surely as the original hacker did. Since most zombies are in educational institutions, you are basically attacking a university to defend yourself (from what I know of the laws of war, you might have a hard time justifiying that in war time, much less under ordinary circumstances).
How do you know the script kiddie is on his own machine? There is no way to know what is going on in "Target" machine's CPU. Maybe it's a script kiddie, maybe it's a zombie setup to look like a script kiddie. The risk of a lawsuit from the counter attacked machine's owner (actually even if he IS the script kiddie since there is no "self defense" clause in computer security laws) is to high to risk it.
How did they manage to kill Cnet? Based on some of the other articles I have read on this, I don't quite get it. How can you have privacy without anonmitity? I mean if companies were honest, it might be possible, but from what I have seen, if you are not anonymous you can forget about privacy. Companies will say they are respecting your privacy while tracking everything you do. Then act shocked when confronted witht he fact that tracking everything you do is inconstistant with privacy. "What do you mean... We totally respect your privacy.. we just want to make money off of targeted ads... how is that not private?"
I hardly ever have trouble with ISP tech support. They usually have no idea how to even check to see if there is a problem with my computer, so they are forced to check the line.
Me: My service is down....
TS: Well lets check you out here, click on the start button and...
Me: I don't have a start button, This box is a Linux server, I don't even have the GUI installed. I can fax you copies of the networking files...
TS: Umm... no... That's OK... We have a Unix guy here.. hold on... [ten minutes pass]... Uhh.. the Unix guy is is... uhh.. Busy.. I think the problem is at our end... I'll get back to you...
I started in BASIC too, then PASCAL, but I wonder about the usefulness now. What about starting them on JAVA. The syntax is relativley simple, and they can do "web stuff" that they can easilly show off to friends. BASIC doesn't do anything "multimedia", and I could see kids that grew up on GUI's, the World Wide Web, and 3-d games getting quickly frustrated with a language limited to text. After they have the hang of cool little web applets and stuff, you could start introducing them to more "serious" programming.
Based on what we have seen in binary computers, I would say that to write low level assembler (or the quantum equivlant of writing in binary) stuff you would have to understand the physics (just like you do to write low level assembler and binary language stuff on binary systems, why do you think so many early programers started life as EE's). It would also probably help to understand it in OS and compiler programing, but just like many programmers don't REALLY understand how their binary systems work (Let us count the number of programming manuals that start off with a primer on how computers "think" using '0's and '1's.), I am sure many high level programmers of quantum computers won't REALLY understand the physics.
From a communications security standpoint this is an intersting theory, but I see a hole (if I understand the concept correctly). Although Eve can never read Alice's message to Bob, she can apparently prevent its reception (just capture every photon Alice sends). Am I missing something or is this a serious problem... In many instances a message prevented can be just as dangerous as a message intercepted.
It is good to see that the current court continues to favor free speech, though it is disturbing that the descion was so close. All it takes is for one fo these guys (or gals)to die or retire and the balence could shift. I don't know if I want to live here when that happens. Congress has gotten entirely to interested in "protecting" me and my (currently notional) children. If the court slides any farther to the "moral majority" (Whose morals... why are their morals more important than everyone elses?) we could be looking at a situation where cenorship becomes the norm.
I often wonder, when I hear theories of this sort (and even though you are probably joking, many people seem to take similar theories very seriously), where do you think Microsoft gets te time to analyse every keystroke on every computer in the world? They would have to have an immense labor force, not even Microsoft is that rich. Maybe they don't analyse evey keystroke... maybe they just store them for later analysis (if something comes up), but we are talking about exabytes of information here. Where would they put it all? Where would they find a search algorithm that could make any use of it? I just don't see it.
I read something a while back about a security team working for the Dept. of Defence (US) that designed and impleneted a set of scripts to "shoot back". The details are fuzzy, but basically this thing traced packets back to their source and "disabled" the attacking computer. The article I read did not contain many technical details, and I have since forgotten any it did have, but it was more concerned with legal issues.
In this case there was a legal problem because the thing had been implemented by the DOD (The US military is forbidden by law to take hostile action against US citizens except under specific circumstances), but here were plenty of other issues besides. It is way to easy to shoot "innocent" zombie computers for one thing. Just because a computer is attacking you doesn't mean the owner is, and counter attacking the computer is largely the same as attacking the owner (yes he SHOULD have secured his network, but when he sues you, will the courts accept that as a defence?). Even if you hit the right computer, you basically come out as guily as the attacker (there is no "self defence" clause in Information Security laws, and a "counter attack" is still an "attack"). He can insist that you be arrested at the same time he is, since you attacked him. There were some other things too, but like I said, it has been a while and the details are fuzzy.
The question of course is where should Mr. Joe user look it up? The HOW-TO (no vendor doc I've ever seen has this info)? Sure, which one? Ohh good it's only 25 pages of unformat ascii. How do you search ascii? Well dhuu, you use grep. How do you use grep, well read the man page. What, it's 5 pages of unformated ascii... Well that's alot less to read isn't it? What was that? A book.. sure, try O'Rielys... Course the info you want probably isn't in there, but hey, it will tel you how to use grep, then you can grep the HOW-TO and maybe what you want is in there! If not come back and ask me again.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and would use it exclusively if I could convince my boss to let me install it on my workstation, but finding out how to do stuff is HARD. Once you figure out the tools it gets a bit easier, but additional EASY to USE doc's are essential to bringing in new (non-geek) users.
Actually /opt is a pretty standard Unix directory. Solaris and SCO both have it anyway. They problem is that there is no Unix directory stanadard, so Linux makes some of it up as it goes (eg. /etc/rc.d/init.d... Why do we need rc.d?). I know some Unixes have /opt (the ones I am familiar with) I am sure some don't, so Linux decides on a distro basis whether to use it.