Policies don't solve problems. people solve them.
on
Remote Access Policies
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Before putting too much effort into this policy thing... Can I ask you one question: What's management going to do if someone breaks it? The majority of security policies only exist for two reasons -- to fire anyone who questions them and make management feel safe in having "done something to solve the problem". It's rather like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces... If this is management's only goal, just write some boiler-plate, broadly generalized piece that sounds really great but doesn't give any technical guidance. As a bonus, it'll never have to be updated after that, saving countless hours that would otherwise be spent securing the network.
Thanks for that. It's important to have a citation when making claim about reliability -- it's one of those things that you never find in the specs, and if you do it's likely based on a formula or model and not from rigorous testing.
I agree with you completely. An extra point to make? Although such information is now considered "national security" and thus not readily available to the public, in a metropolitan area, just dropping a WiMax at each substation would likely cover about 80-90% of the customer area with a usable signal. The only reason I can think of for not going for WiMax over this solution would be legal in nature. From a technical standpoint, it's a no-brainer.
Okay, there's two problems with this, there always have been, and they still aren't practical to solve. The first is transformers. The second is interference.
Transformers: They have a resonant coupling frequency. Try to pass high frequency RF through a power conversion transformer and you get scrambled eggs on the other side. So at every point along the line where you meet a transformer, you'll need an RF pass-thru. These aren't cheap; They need to be lightning resistant, fail safe no matter what (otherwise people die -- no joke here), and in general very well designed. A typical loop is going to see maybe 2-4 step-downs from the plant to your house. At least one RF bypass will need to be installed for each customer, along with whatever CPE is required to get the signal.
Interference: High frequency RF tends to degrade quickly. And above 800 MHz (someone who's an EE, correct me if I'm wrong on the threshold for skin effect) it won't even "stick" to the lines. Because these lines are unshielded aerial lines running in one direction for miles, they make awesome antennas. Which would be great, except... FCC regulations dictate no harmful interference. So any signal being sent down those lines is going to have to be very low power to avoid becoming an omelette with another signal... like say, emergency services. Shannon's law people -- you've got 800 MHz to deal with, a low power signal, and it needs to travel along an antenna some tens of miles along, sucking up every stray RF in the neighborhood. Can you say signal degregation? Any signal you push over that line had better have a helluva lot of error correction. Given it tops out at 3 megabits per second, on a shared link... with 800 MHz of bandwidth to work with... That should give you an idea of just how much the Suck factor is (Low Q for you techies)
So, great article, I applaud IBM for making the effort, but unless you've got some really nifty new electronics, like a DSP from hell, I don't see this being anything but a money sinkhole. Comcast may suck, but they've got a few gigahertz to work with and no FCC restrictions... Just really bad management, which is the only thing making this even remotely practical.
It's always been easy to take control of a machine without the password. Sit down in front of the computer. Now the only thing stopping you is yourself. Oddly enough, that's what keeps most systems up... The fact that the vast majority of people are honest, decent folk. That, and they don't know what a null pointer is.
Secureworks... Announcing the fact that you're trying to covertly gain access to these tools rather defeats the point don't you think? It's like going into the ghetto with a sign on your back that says "Undercover Drug Officer". Secureworks, I see two possibilities for this level of stupidity; Management, and your researchers. If by some statistical fluke it was your researchers that had the idea of publicizing this... please have your researchers develop some street smarts and common sense. I don't mean this as a dig at you; This is professional advice... Get them out of the labs and back into the real world and do it now before you really embarass yourself. Now, the more likely answer is someone in management thought this would be a great opportunity for publicity. Shoot them... and use silver bullets. PHBs are notoriously hard to kill.
It all depends on the circumstance. If I argue the chapter point by point, paragraph by paragraph, it would make perfect sense to. On the other hand, if I just pasted the entire chapter and added at the end "... and it sucked." Then no, that would not be appropriate.
I doubt you could make the argument that some chunk of source code or a research paper, shared and used by a very small minority of people, should be subject to the same rules as a cultural icon shared by over a hundred million people. At what point do corporations stand aside so that the PUBLIC can own their own culture? By the law as you (and many others) interpret it -- never. In my opinion, corporations can suck a big one on this -- they don't own culture, and that's what harry potter has become, whether JK Rowling and the Publishers of Doom want it that way or not.
Shall I give up telling my friends to "google the question"? Shall I avoid asking for a Kleenex? When my coworker does some hack job on a server, do I no longer get to call it a mickey mouse job? Seriously -- The book was designed by fans to serve as a companion to the books, quite ostensibly because after over ten thousand pages of text some people might be confused... That they quoted "large sections" of the text... how much material could they possibly have quoted compared to the original? 5%? 10%?
yes we do, we just don't make a damn production out of it by telling everyone, then doing it and acting like setting off the smoke alarm gives us extra credit.
Yeah, a writer's style is not supported by copyright to my knowledge -- only the actual words. And the "length of quotes" in the book... Have you ever read a research paper? Sometimes over half of each of the previous works are cited and included! That said, lack of proper attribution... That IS just sloppy, and they have every right to call them out on it. Though, being the Harry Potter lexicon, it's hard to imagine any other source than JK Rowling's works.... -_-
Yes, but not without violating the privacy of the users of google. We don't ask for their personal information from the clinic because it's a privacy violation, but we apparently have no moral objections to using their browser histories to get pretty much the same data.
You have to break your query down by language and how old it is. See, looking for "massive zombie outbreak" won't get any results if, say, Russia gets overrun by the undead. I mean, what's Russian for "Oh sh*t we're all gonna die!" anyway? And given how often this happens, you really need to sort by date too. I mean, two weeks ago there was a major zombie outbreak. It happened all over the country, like some kind of national holiday. And then the next day everyone was all like "nuhhh--what happened? Where's the aspirin? BrrrrAAAAaaaaIIIiinNNNnnsss" Damn zombie boys... get your own damn brains. *sigh*
For starters, most people's first reaction to getting sick isn't to google their symptoms. It's to hit the medicine cabinet or go to the drug store and get some cold meds, and then call into work sick. And right after that, he spends his afternoon staring at the "Whoa cowboy, slow down!" screen on slashdot, wishing he had friends to call. On a slow news day, he might watch 'Oh, My Goddess!' or slave away on stumbleupon for hours, occasionally laughing and then dribbling snot onto the keyboard. Then they ask for another Dew.
If you want to track a flu outbreak, talk to the employers or the drug store clerks, not google. But don't ask the annoyed girlfriend, she's too busy figuring out if that story about putting a keyboard in a dishwasher is true...
Just wait until the conservatives read this. It'll reignite the debate about whether there's a gay gene or not. Now we have to go looking for gay proteins, gay RNA, and gay molecules. GATTAGAAAGACATAGGA... Clearly gay. See here, under the scanning electron microscope we can clearly see the protein sporting a fabulous haircut, a white dress shirt with the top button undone, and not wearing socks. Watson, bring me my doughnut!
$400k to convince one government contractor seems like a lot to fork out. Most bribes, especially in third world countries, are had for less. Not that I'd put it past Microsoft to pull something underhanded like this, it's just that poor economic decisions aren't one of their hallmarks. Sorry, but I have to side with Bill on this -- it just doesn't pass the sniff test. $400k is enough money to live like a king or queen in those economic situations, and probably better than most government officials; the average per-year income in that country is just over $2k.
Oh please... It's a free market. If you don't like it, leave. Or, umm...that's what I'd say, you know... If I was a heartless corporate executive. But more seriously, how many investors care about anything other than positive revenue flow? As long as that's happening, there's no moral questions anyone's going to raise. I mean, that's what the government is for, riiiiight? O_o
I gotta hand it to you, Mr. Gates... Tell everyone you retired from Microsoft so you could free up time to monopolize biotech and a dozen other infrastructure-critical industries in this country... That's pretty clever. Seriously, are you mad because nobody invited you to prom? Is this some kind of Stepford Wives remix? I'm not saying this because I'm trying to be funny or sarcastic (well, mostly not sarcastic)... I really want to know why some people feel a compulsive need to consume or control every resource in the world. These people are like viruses... An ideological cancer, and it's disgusting to watch people who scream "But... MY INNOVATION!!! NOoooooooo!" Whenever someone asks why they're holding all the cards, but once they've got 'em, boy, outsource everything to a bunch of people who still use their hand to wipe their asses with, reduce the research budget to zilch, and then call yourselves innovators. Innovators of what... Slavery? Mass exploitation? Please. Have some originality... Try doing good for a change. If nothing else, it'll confuse the hell out of your detractors.
This, from an authority whose Constitution is 349 pages long... Maybe they're afraid that if they release the terms to the public half the amazonian rain forest will disappear. Either that, or they followed the US strategy for government contracts; $500 for a hammer, $38 for an LED... God only knows what Microsoft bilked 'em for. Well in either case, it's a good thing our european friends learned how to manage their government from us... If they'd decided on transparency and openness in government, the terrorists would have won./sarcasm
Quickly now children, download them all before they make satire illegal. Wait... my phone's ringing. Hello? What? Oh. Hey guys, I have an announcement to make... Satire is now illegal. The lawyers are calling it a "collection of derivative works" and that it "damages the brand identity". Just kidding. For now. O_o
computational super -- It's not faith that makes me say this. It's the knowledge of human nature and statistics. No, I don't underestimate what people are willing to give up; The everyday person will sacrifice almost anything except themselves to have a little temporary safety (however illusory it is), to believe in the promise that the government, or the church, or some institution can somehow build some framework to hold back the chaos. But there will always be people either too smart, too stupid, or too "insane" to subscribe to whatever theory. Every institution, every law, advantages one group by disadvantaging another. Sometimes it's fair, sometimes it's horribly inhumane, but by the very act of disenfranchising one group to advantage another they have therein created the impetus to find the holes in the framework.
There is no such thing as a perfect institution, law, or way of living. There will always be holes. And there will always be free radicals, and so there will always be a way. It might be dangerous, illegal, and ill-advised but somebody's going to do it, and because of the social nature of people, they will eventually organize into groups and build on this, making it less dangerous, less visible, and easier. It's the eternal struggle between building better mice, and better mouse traps. And even supposing the system is morally perfect, advantaging everything, giving no reason to question it... There will still be people who will test it, by nature.
And technology is blind to morality. It is an extension of us all... And so... There will always be a way. Technology cannot solve social problems... People will always be evolving, trying to find some other way of doing things... And this fact alone guarantees that there will always be a way to live outside the system. There will always be a way for me to find others like me, and ways to find others like you. It's part of the human condition.
As long as YOU want it, there will be a way. And with over six billion other people on the planet, the odds are very good there are others who also want it, and they will find a way to find you, even if you don't believe they are there.
I know it's popular on slashdot to look at things based on its technical proficiency, but this isn't about whether or not it works. It's based on satisfying certain luddites that think that free access to information is evil because free access to information means free access to things that they disagree with. Things like abortion, religion, sexuality, human rights, protest, recipes for unhealthy food, and government/corporate oversight. And it doesn't matter whether it can be bypassed or not, what matters is whether the majority of the population cares enough to.
It's like peer to peer filesharing. Geeks like us will always be able to make it work because we know enough about the network to make a connection from any one point to another point. It's a decentralized communications network and by design and very nature it cannot be fully compromised. You can't stop the signal. But very few of us that use the internet are geeks and they use common tools like Google and Shareaza and if they don't work then they just give up. They don't have the proficiency to make it work. And so the luddites win, because the literacy is so low.
They don't care if it works... They just want to stop enough people that they don't lose their political clout. It's not a firewall, it's a dam; And while there's always water flowing through a dam, it's not all the water and that's what makes a dam useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Before putting too much effort into this policy thing... Can I ask you one question: What's management going to do if someone breaks it? The majority of security policies only exist for two reasons -- to fire anyone who questions them and make management feel safe in having "done something to solve the problem". It's rather like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces... If this is management's only goal, just write some boiler-plate, broadly generalized piece that sounds really great but doesn't give any technical guidance. As a bonus, it'll never have to be updated after that, saving countless hours that would otherwise be spent securing the network.
Note: This post contains 30% recycled sarcasm.
You took the words right out of my mouth...
Thanks for that. It's important to have a citation when making claim about reliability -- it's one of those things that you never find in the specs, and if you do it's likely based on a formula or model and not from rigorous testing.
I agree with you completely. An extra point to make? Although such information is now considered "national security" and thus not readily available to the public, in a metropolitan area, just dropping a WiMax at each substation would likely cover about 80-90% of the customer area with a usable signal. The only reason I can think of for not going for WiMax over this solution would be legal in nature. From a technical standpoint, it's a no-brainer.
Okay, there's two problems with this, there always have been, and they still aren't practical to solve. The first is transformers. The second is interference.
Transformers: They have a resonant coupling frequency. Try to pass high frequency RF through a power conversion transformer and you get scrambled eggs on the other side. So at every point along the line where you meet a transformer, you'll need an RF pass-thru. These aren't cheap; They need to be lightning resistant, fail safe no matter what (otherwise people die -- no joke here), and in general very well designed. A typical loop is going to see maybe 2-4 step-downs from the plant to your house. At least one RF bypass will need to be installed for each customer, along with whatever CPE is required to get the signal.
Interference: High frequency RF tends to degrade quickly. And above 800 MHz (someone who's an EE, correct me if I'm wrong on the threshold for skin effect) it won't even "stick" to the lines. Because these lines are unshielded aerial lines running in one direction for miles, they make awesome antennas. Which would be great, except... FCC regulations dictate no harmful interference. So any signal being sent down those lines is going to have to be very low power to avoid becoming an omelette with another signal... like say, emergency services. Shannon's law people -- you've got 800 MHz to deal with, a low power signal, and it needs to travel along an antenna some tens of miles along, sucking up every stray RF in the neighborhood. Can you say signal degregation? Any signal you push over that line had better have a helluva lot of error correction. Given it tops out at 3 megabits per second, on a shared link... with 800 MHz of bandwidth to work with... That should give you an idea of just how much the Suck factor is (Low Q for you techies)
So, great article, I applaud IBM for making the effort, but unless you've got some really nifty new electronics, like a DSP from hell, I don't see this being anything but a money sinkhole. Comcast may suck, but they've got a few gigahertz to work with and no FCC restrictions... Just really bad management, which is the only thing making this even remotely practical.
Who's "we" ?
It's always been easy to take control of a machine without the password. Sit down in front of the computer. Now the only thing stopping you is yourself. Oddly enough, that's what keeps most systems up... The fact that the vast majority of people are honest, decent folk. That, and they don't know what a null pointer is.
Secureworks... Announcing the fact that you're trying to covertly gain access to these tools rather defeats the point don't you think? It's like going into the ghetto with a sign on your back that says "Undercover Drug Officer". Secureworks, I see two possibilities for this level of stupidity; Management, and your researchers. If by some statistical fluke it was your researchers that had the idea of publicizing this... please have your researchers develop some street smarts and common sense. I don't mean this as a dig at you; This is professional advice... Get them out of the labs and back into the real world and do it now before you really embarass yourself. Now, the more likely answer is someone in management thought this would be a great opportunity for publicity. Shoot them... and use silver bullets. PHBs are notoriously hard to kill.
It all depends on the circumstance. If I argue the chapter point by point, paragraph by paragraph, it would make perfect sense to. On the other hand, if I just pasted the entire chapter and added at the end "... and it sucked." Then no, that would not be appropriate.
I doubt you could make the argument that some chunk of source code or a research paper, shared and used by a very small minority of people, should be subject to the same rules as a cultural icon shared by over a hundred million people. At what point do corporations stand aside so that the PUBLIC can own their own culture? By the law as you (and many others) interpret it -- never. In my opinion, corporations can suck a big one on this -- they don't own culture, and that's what harry potter has become, whether JK Rowling and the Publishers of Doom want it that way or not.
Shall I give up telling my friends to "google the question"? Shall I avoid asking for a Kleenex? When my coworker does some hack job on a server, do I no longer get to call it a mickey mouse job? Seriously -- The book was designed by fans to serve as a companion to the books, quite ostensibly because after over ten thousand pages of text some people might be confused... That they quoted "large sections" of the text... how much material could they possibly have quoted compared to the original? 5%? 10%?
Please.
Men compete over the stupidest shit. Literally.
yes we do, we just don't make a damn production out of it by telling everyone, then doing it and acting like setting off the smoke alarm gives us extra credit.
Yeah, a writer's style is not supported by copyright to my knowledge -- only the actual words. And the "length of quotes" in the book... Have you ever read a research paper? Sometimes over half of each of the previous works are cited and included! That said, lack of proper attribution... That IS just sloppy, and they have every right to call them out on it. Though, being the Harry Potter lexicon, it's hard to imagine any other source than JK Rowling's works.... -_-
Yes, but not without violating the privacy of the users of google. We don't ask for their personal information from the clinic because it's a privacy violation, but we apparently have no moral objections to using their browser histories to get pretty much the same data.
You have to break your query down by language and how old it is. See, looking for "massive zombie outbreak" won't get any results if, say, Russia gets overrun by the undead. I mean, what's Russian for "Oh sh*t we're all gonna die!" anyway? And given how often this happens, you really need to sort by date too. I mean, two weeks ago there was a major zombie outbreak. It happened all over the country, like some kind of national holiday. And then the next day everyone was all like "nuhhh--what happened? Where's the aspirin? BrrrrAAAAaaaaIIIiinNNNnnsss" Damn zombie boys... get your own damn brains. *sigh*
For starters, most people's first reaction to getting sick isn't to google their symptoms. It's to hit the medicine cabinet or go to the drug store and get some cold meds, and then call into work sick. And right after that, he spends his afternoon staring at the "Whoa cowboy, slow down!" screen on slashdot, wishing he had friends to call. On a slow news day, he might watch 'Oh, My Goddess!' or slave away on stumbleupon for hours, occasionally laughing and then dribbling snot onto the keyboard. Then they ask for another Dew.
If you want to track a flu outbreak, talk to the employers or the drug store clerks, not google. But don't ask the annoyed girlfriend, she's too busy figuring out if that story about putting a keyboard in a dishwasher is true...
Just wait until the conservatives read this. It'll reignite the debate about whether there's a gay gene or not. Now we have to go looking for gay proteins, gay RNA, and gay molecules. GATTAGAAAGACATAGGA... Clearly gay. See here, under the scanning electron microscope we can clearly see the protein sporting a fabulous haircut, a white dress shirt with the top button undone, and not wearing socks. Watson, bring me my doughnut!
$400k to convince one government contractor seems like a lot to fork out. Most bribes, especially in third world countries, are had for less. Not that I'd put it past Microsoft to pull something underhanded like this, it's just that poor economic decisions aren't one of their hallmarks. Sorry, but I have to side with Bill on this -- it just doesn't pass the sniff test. $400k is enough money to live like a king or queen in those economic situations, and probably better than most government officials; the average per-year income in that country is just over $2k.
Oh please... It's a free market. If you don't like it, leave. Or, umm...that's what I'd say, you know... If I was a heartless corporate executive. But more seriously, how many investors care about anything other than positive revenue flow? As long as that's happening, there's no moral questions anyone's going to raise. I mean, that's what the government is for, riiiiight? O_o
I gotta hand it to you, Mr. Gates... Tell everyone you retired from Microsoft so you could free up time to monopolize biotech and a dozen other infrastructure-critical industries in this country... That's pretty clever. Seriously, are you mad because nobody invited you to prom? Is this some kind of Stepford Wives remix? I'm not saying this because I'm trying to be funny or sarcastic (well, mostly not sarcastic)... I really want to know why some people feel a compulsive need to consume or control every resource in the world. These people are like viruses... An ideological cancer, and it's disgusting to watch people who scream "But... MY INNOVATION!!! NOoooooooo!" Whenever someone asks why they're holding all the cards, but once they've got 'em, boy, outsource everything to a bunch of people who still use their hand to wipe their asses with, reduce the research budget to zilch, and then call yourselves innovators. Innovators of what... Slavery? Mass exploitation? Please. Have some originality... Try doing good for a change. If nothing else, it'll confuse the hell out of your detractors.
This, from an authority whose Constitution is 349 pages long... Maybe they're afraid that if they release the terms to the public half the amazonian rain forest will disappear. Either that, or they followed the US strategy for government contracts; $500 for a hammer, $38 for an LED... God only knows what Microsoft bilked 'em for. Well in either case, it's a good thing our european friends learned how to manage their government from us... If they'd decided on transparency and openness in government, the terrorists would have won. /sarcasm
Quickly now children, download them all before they make satire illegal. Wait... my phone's ringing. Hello? What? Oh. Hey guys, I have an announcement to make... Satire is now illegal. The lawyers are calling it a "collection of derivative works" and that it "damages the brand identity". Just kidding. For now. O_o
computational super -- It's not faith that makes me say this. It's the knowledge of human nature and statistics. No, I don't underestimate what people are willing to give up; The everyday person will sacrifice almost anything except themselves to have a little temporary safety (however illusory it is), to believe in the promise that the government, or the church, or some institution can somehow build some framework to hold back the chaos. But there will always be people either too smart, too stupid, or too "insane" to subscribe to whatever theory. Every institution, every law, advantages one group by disadvantaging another. Sometimes it's fair, sometimes it's horribly inhumane, but by the very act of disenfranchising one group to advantage another they have therein created the impetus to find the holes in the framework.
There is no such thing as a perfect institution, law, or way of living. There will always be holes. And there will always be free radicals, and so there will always be a way. It might be dangerous, illegal, and ill-advised but somebody's going to do it, and because of the social nature of people, they will eventually organize into groups and build on this, making it less dangerous, less visible, and easier. It's the eternal struggle between building better mice, and better mouse traps. And even supposing the system is morally perfect, advantaging everything, giving no reason to question it... There will still be people who will test it, by nature.
And technology is blind to morality. It is an extension of us all... And so... There will always be a way. Technology cannot solve social problems... People will always be evolving, trying to find some other way of doing things... And this fact alone guarantees that there will always be a way to live outside the system. There will always be a way for me to find others like me, and ways to find others like you. It's part of the human condition.
As long as YOU want it, there will be a way. And with over six billion other people on the planet, the odds are very good there are others who also want it, and they will find a way to find you, even if you don't believe they are there.
I know it's popular on slashdot to look at things based on its technical proficiency, but this isn't about whether or not it works. It's based on satisfying certain luddites that think that free access to information is evil because free access to information means free access to things that they disagree with. Things like abortion, religion, sexuality, human rights, protest, recipes for unhealthy food, and government/corporate oversight. And it doesn't matter whether it can be bypassed or not, what matters is whether the majority of the population cares enough to.
It's like peer to peer filesharing. Geeks like us will always be able to make it work because we know enough about the network to make a connection from any one point to another point. It's a decentralized communications network and by design and very nature it cannot be fully compromised. You can't stop the signal. But very few of us that use the internet are geeks and they use common tools like Google and Shareaza and if they don't work then they just give up. They don't have the proficiency to make it work. And so the luddites win, because the literacy is so low.
They don't care if it works... They just want to stop enough people that they don't lose their political clout. It's not a firewall, it's a dam; And while there's always water flowing through a dam, it's not all the water and that's what makes a dam useful.
This may be more of a River Phoenix event.