You have no idea how bad you have it with Windows.
Yeah, it's terrible. Having to worry about whether the latest game will run on the operating system I'm running... or buying hardware at OEM pricing online and incrementally upgrading my system instead of just buying a new one every year... and then there's that pesky problem of having to lug it into an official microsoft store whenever something breaks on it instead of the nearest 14 year old kid. It's rough.
Registry entries, malware, every free app including malware to slow down yoursystem including sourceforge using i3, eyecandy, ask, or whatever michevious crap!
Yes. Because malware authors target the OS with the biggest marketshare. Should Apple one day rule the world, and the Fanboys walk tall... they too shall feel the pain of worms, malware, and things being installed without your consent--oh wait, what was this article about again?
No fancy installers, no bizaare registry entries, simple folders, nothing hidden.
Yeah... that's really hard stuff there. Having to double click on an icon and click next a few times... or opening regedit and going through a tree-structure until you find the right entry, laid out just like any other filesystem.
So if the Mac turns into windows why spend 2x for the switch.
You're spending 2x now... you'll spend a lot more if Macintosh becomes the dominant OS... since you can only buy a Mac from Apple, and you can only buy the OS from Apple, and you can only get the apps from Apple, and all the peripherals are sold by... Apple. All that competition in the PC world sure does keep prices, er... really high, I guess.
While Apple still has bugs like in its store it is known as a superior platform...
To fanboys yes. To the rest of us, it's just another walled garden...
In the east it is more 50/50 windows vs mac.
Citation needed. Go ahead, I'll wait. While you're busy looking for that magical unicorn, articles like this continue to crop up suggesting that China doesn't want to pay the Apple tax.
This is not an hypothetical case. In my last job we were in direct competition with IBM and were exchanging crucial pricing information through email. There has been precedents of ECHELON being used to gain economic intelligence (google "echelon airbus boeing" to learn about that)
Oh please. Every government engages in industrial espionage. The French are so well known for it that CEOs for pharmaceuticals that check-in to local hotels are told not to use the fax machine or internet there, and to keep their laptops in their room, and to bring their own locks to secure it and not use the hotel safe or in-room safe as the cleaning crew often isn't the usual maid service. I mean, this is SOP. Not that I'm picking on the French -- they're only guilty of being particularly bad at doing it covertly, but everyone does it.
One does not need ECHELON to spy on a company. Hell, showing up to replace a printer in slacks and an official-looking work order is usually enough to get into a building... and having a rigged printer that records all the jobs sent to it is a nice opener. Following up with a power strip with its own wifi, mini computer, and cat5 pass-thru is a good follow-on. Why do people assume you need satellites and taps on hundreds of internet routers all over the world to do this?
And don't underestimate blackmail, human stupidity, or the CEO's penchant for keeping a post-it note with his password on his computer, trusting that his secretary and security staff would neeeeever let anyone in who wasn't supposed to be there.... and of course, nobody ever takes bathroom breaks while watching the CEO's office over lunch time.... -_-
And as a bonus... most corporations record all e-mails to monitor their employees. Amusingly... these systems are usually less secure than the ones they're tapped into. So if you don't have the money to bring your own equipment... they're usually nice enough to provide it for you.
Air Force, Navy... point is, it was developed by the military. And it is used by the Air Force... I just noted that the first military link in the google search came up with this... and as the Air Force is the one spearheading the 'cyberwarfare' initiative in our military, it made sense that the Air Force would be the maintainer of military assets within the Tor network...
"A cell phone left on in a soldier's pocket during an operation led to the death of a half dozen marines when enemy combatants used the signal to figure out when they were leaving base... and they planned an ambush."
Citation?
You won't find one. Another example; Stealth bombers are really great at being stealthy until they're over the target and open the bomb bay doors. Then they're as visible to radar as flying barns. Which is why usually, ahead of the actual strike, a HARM missile is deployed. It's not actually a missile though, but rather a high altitude bomb that, when released, deploys a parachute and sits over the target looking for active radar signatures. When it finds one, off goes the parachute and on comes GPS-guided death. Well, as it turns out, the frequencies used for radar are the same ones used by microwaves. A fork jammed into the security interlock, door removed, and microwave pointed upwards... looked exactly like a radar site. $10 microwave meets $50,000 bomb. And once the bomb has blown up your $10 microwave, you can flip on your actual radar sites, lock on to the stealth bombers, and shoot them down with relative ease. You won't be getting a citation for that either... partly because that er... problem... has been fixed with newer electronics, but mostly because stuff like that being on the internet really is a matter of national security.
So no, no citation for you. But you can feel free to google for 'operational security' and 'cell phone', and note that every branch of the military has rules about this sort of thing. Those rules weren't created because of an abstract hypothetical... like most rules in the military, they were purchased with blood.
According to consolidated financial statements and reports of the Tor Project for the year ending December 2012, US Federal agencies are responsible for nearly sixty percent of funds received by the project. Tor has taken a defensive stand against this, but who knows?
Tor was created by the US Air Force. Surprise, surprise, they still want to fund it. Sooo, why did they create Tor? Well, as it turns out, we've got this massive high speed satellite and ground network we use for military purposes, which basically amounts to a compartmentalized version of the internet. And within that, because soldiers are away from home for months or years at a time, they decided to offer internet access to them. Often they're on board carriers, or deployed in places where a direct hookup isn't really feasible. And they want to make sure that all that traffic isn't pouring out at locations that can be easily monitored... because as much as operational security is drilled into soldiers, loose lips sink ships and all, they're still human. They can screw up.
So they needed some way of giving them internet access without making it pathetically easy for foreign powers to simply tap a couple key routers and see everything any soldier browses (Facebook anyone?)... Enter Tor.
Tor has over 13,000 exit nodes all over the world. And it's expensive to monitor every node. Not only that, but you have no idea where in the Tor network the traffic originated from -- is this J. Random Soldier, or Closet Gay Guy Looking At Porn? Noooobody knows. It wasn't meant to be high security. It's not meant to be totally anonymous; It's meant to make it difficult for small-time players like, say, Iran, to spy on our soldier's personal communications. Because this has happened, and it has killed people; A cell phone left on in a soldier's pocket during an operation led to the death of a half dozen marines when enemy combatants used the signal to figure out when they were leaving base... and they planned an ambush.
So Tor will be funded by our government for the conceivable future, and they have a vested interest in maintaining the security of the network to the point that it would cost an adversary more to 'break' the network than the intelligence value of the soldiers' personal internet browsing.
Does this worry me? Nope. Tin foil hat time? Not a chance. Don't use Tor for high value communications. But then... that goes for the public internet as well. If you want to secure high value communications, you build your own VPN, and then add code to have it transmit/receive at a constant rate to deter traffic analysis. Which, coincidentally, is what most financial institutions these days do.
Your first link is not the app store, though. That would be the online Apple Store, you know like Amazon.com?
That's nice. What about the second link, the one that shows that the app store can and does have malware in it, approved by Apple? The only reason Parallels Desktop isn't available in the app store isn't because Apple is concerned about security but because of an arbitrary restriction that everything purchased online be in a self-contained.app file. Whoopie.
Both you and the other guy abjectly refused to notice that link, instead focusing on the first one -- as if Apple's requirement that online purchases be self-contained somehow is a bar against security breaches or behavior like that under discussion.
But you know... whatever. You can't argue with fanboys; No matter what you say, they'll take the most insignificant thing and say "See! See! This tiny little bit right here is wrong! You spelled the product name wrong! That means everything you said must also be wrong!"
You do realize that's not the App store, but Apple's store where they ship you a box with the software?
I notice you ignored the second link: Which shows that malware can and has been uploaded to the app store, which was my original point; The OP said that nothing like Parallels Desktop could be in the app store because it was too "low level".
I'd consider something that steals my credit card info and takes over my browser pretty "low level". The reason why Parallels Desktop isn't in the app store is because it loads kernel modules, not because the app store is somehow 'more secure'.
But hey... I already got a -1 everywhere else for pointing out that it's not all sunshine and kittens in AppleLand and got furious anger and rage from the fanboys... so what's a missed point between slashdotters?
If that speculation is right, that a billion dollars will buy hardware that takes a few hours to break one key, great. That would mean nobody is going to break MY key, and that al Qaeda's keys were broken soon after they started using them. Works for me.
I think you're looking at this backwards; They won't spend any money to break your key because you're worth zero dollars. What could you possibly be doing that would warrant the NSA's interest? You need to understand the organization; They primarily do signals intelligence, and they operate in a support role to other agencies, principally the CIA, FBI, and DHS.
The NSA simply logs the data and holds on to it until and unless something happens that makes analyzing that data a priority. They may record all cell phone calls, but they don't listen to them all. They may record all internet traffic, but they don't review all of it. In order for them to expend resources, there needs to be a reason. You could be using '1 bit' encryption and it would be as interesting to them as '1 million bit' encryption.
In security, your defenses need to be harder to break than the value of the thing being protected. Although Tor's encryption may be insufficient against a government, it is plenty strong for most everyday uses -- getting around corporate proxies, location-locked services (like shows the BBC offers, Netflix, etc.), and for proxying to Facebook. Yes, I use Tor to connect to Facebook... because I don't want them knowing where I am, and my IP address provides a wealth of marketing information to them. I also don't use my real name, but really, the main reason is just to piss in their data collection cheerios, not because I'm doing it to be 'anonymous' or 'super secure'. And this is what most people use Tor for; along with browsing bittorrent sites (though downloading is still direct...), and other things that they may feel uncomfortable with having a readily-accessible record of at their ISP's office (gay porn anyone?).
The NSA cares not for these activities. It's logged all the same, but until they say that, say, "the alias raymorris on slashdot indicated he may be in possession of classified materials" all that data just sits on a harddrive somewhere, waiting to expire. The NSA just waits for the phone call.
That said, a few hours to break one key is pretty petty for accessing your internet traffic or mine, but if Al Quaeda has a hidden service inside Tor they're using to communicate with, a secret website if you will... now those few hours' worth of electricity seem very, very worth it.
You've gotta understand that security is not an absolute; There is no "secure" versus "insecure". There is only no security, and then varying degrees of more security; And good security is when it costs more to break it than the value of the thing being protected. Great security is when that's true and the computer functions the way you expect.
Funny enough, a software like Parallels Desktop needs such low-level access to the system that it would most certainly be prohibited from being approved into the Mac App Store.
Let me guess? Approved in the app store. And that ease of use that's touted by Apple means that it's helluva hard for the average person to get under the hood. Imagine grandma looking at this:
~#: _
Now, you want to tell her what commands to run to uninstall this? This is the problem with the walled garden approach, and Apple loves walls. And money. And you, the user... well, you're just buying the experience of owning an Apple. But good luck getting it to do what you want if Apple or an app developer decides to make it "easy" for you.
Even so, regardless of how likely it is, when you're downloading pirated software you are basically executing unknown code from an unknown source.
The same can be said of any compiled, closed-source code. And corporations in the past have intentionally placed malware onto their official distributions; Such as the sony rootkit fiasco. Trusting someone just because they wear a suit and say they're your friend isn't much of a guarantee.
...been modified with unknown code by someone with no accountability who is demonstrably willing to break the law.
There's very little accountability to corporations anymore these days. Class action lawsuits were thrown away. The average person doesn't have any real access to the courts -- it's a David v. Goliath situation. And new laws are passed limiting liability all the time. Massive oil spill? We'll fine you a day's wages. Banks too big to fail? Too big to jail too. And saying that someone's untrustworthy because they break the law is a questionable stance to take at best;
You ever speed in your car? Ever j-walk? The laws are so terribly complex that you can rest assured you're a criminal. The only person who didn't commit a felony this week is the guy in a coma in the hospital. There are laws on the book that say that eating a salmon that's too long is a felony. There's laws saying you can't violate the laws "of any other country". Even the crazy ones. Even the ones we're currently bombing. And just in IT, there's the computer fraud and abuse act, that is so vaguely worded that basically touching a computer could constitute 'unauthorized access'. People have gone to jail... for providing a URL to a website under that. So if you want to say "willing to break the law" means anything... okay then, but it doesn't count for anything to me or for most people. We're all criminals... it's just not all of us have been caught yet. And if that's not enough evidence for you... consider that we have the highest rate of incarceration of any country on Earth, we lead by almost double per capita, and that margin is growing. And it disproportionately affects the poor and non-whites.
here are plenty of shady actors who see warez as a legitimate infection vector and wouldn't think twice about wrapping a popular application up with a nice payload and distributing it across their botnet to make it look like it has 100 different seeders.
Perhaps. But many bittorrent sites have reputation services; And people talk to each other. Read the comments. Watch the forums. Yes, it requires a little more work -- and that doesn't mean someone can't still pull one over on you. But I've never downloaded a piece of software from a torrent site that ever turned a positive; and I scan everything. I go back and scan it months later... and I have a variety of IDS systems, firewalls, etc., to monitor for rogue traffic. If they ever did put a bot dropper into a package I downloaded... it's never talked to anything on the internet. Or tried.
I can't say the same for a default install of Windows XP or Windows 7.
Yeah, because the *reputation* of the software companies doesn't matter at all. (roll eyes)
Not when you can just buy it with a marketing campaign it doesn't. Or do you think they spend tens of millions because they like hearing the sound of their voice?
What a load of crap. A fat handout? Do you have any clue at all what you're talking about?
Living under a rock and missed the Too big to fail fiasco that landed our economy in the longest recession in US history?
rove it by showing some instances of the government giving money to companies because of claimed losses due to piracy.
I can't think of any companies that have made a bunch of money by "beating people in their homes until money falls out".
You need to think harder. But snark aside... There was that raid in Guatemala, and this one in George Town, and oh hey look... here's an article in Business Week offering advice because it happens so often CEOs need to be aware of it. But if you don't believe them, ask Kim Dotcom how things are working out for him.
You're seriously in fantasy land with this one. But, hey, whatever fantasy makes you feel good about pirating other people's hard work without paying a dime. You're a real hero. The world owes you everything for free.
I'm no hero. I'm just the girl with all the facts on her side.
Oh, so if a malware infested piece of software is uploaded, Bittorrent will make sure you're downloading the same malware-infested software that someone uploaded? That's reassuring.
As opposed to a malware infested piece of software downloaded from the company's official website? Because if you think that's never happened, Google for 'Sony' and 'root kit'.
Bill Gates prefers you pirate his software over someone elses because it helps block other people out of the market.
The one thing you actually got right. Here's a cookie.
All cracked software is suspect. But then, so's the unmodified software.
But here's the thing... it's usually less risky than the DRM, phone home, internet activation required, now with extra advertisements hardcoded to a server... using internet explorer in a window with 'trusted' site permissions able to handout javascript-laden malware. Please. I'll take the pirate stuff any day of the week, because the groups that do it are small enough that reputation matters; It's their only currency.
A large corporation can just claim "oh noes! piracy destroyed my business!" and get a fat handout and a pile of FBI agents with orders to beat people in their homes until money falls out. Reputation is not a concern for them. Ergo, neither is quality. Pirates on the other hand... release a single malware-infested item and the forums fill up with complaints, and that group never gets any respect again.
Bittorrent also ensures, at the protocol level, that everything downloaded matches what was uploaded. http downloads are less secure. And digital signatures on executables, like what Microsoft does? It's been proven, many times over, that the only thing that means is you paid them a stipend to get a key. They don't check to see if what you made and signed is legit or not... and many antivirus/antimalware solutions, including Microsoft's own... will skip heuristic matching if the executable is signed.
So really... you're less likely to get malware from a piece of pirated software off some torrent site than you are just browsing for porn. It's a grossly exaggerated threat. Just like what this guy is saying; "Here, hack my software!"
Okay. Nice publicity stunt. Even Bill Gates said if you're gonna pirate, he hopes you'll pirate Microsoft... it's a sign of a software's usefulness.
What's important is that this was inevitable. From the very dawn of the public gaining access to the internet, there were already viruses and worms.
A fair assessment. However, global warming was also inevitable, but that doesn't mean we should just throw the helve after the hatchet. Bot nets were, until the government stepped in, largely being organized by small groups of people who stuck to the same pattern of programming and with similar goals: Either blackmail, identity theft, or similar methods of leveraging computational resources for profit (like bitcoin mining).
While they were and continue to increase in complexity, it was still an iterative process and innovation was staggered. However, what happens when the government started pouring billions into this little corner of the dark net, all hell broke loose. You've got strong cryptography, true decentralized p2p emerging, new protocols, and diversification of exploit architecture -- and a lot more people and resources being devoted to this. As a result, it's become an arms race.
Look at it this historically; Whenever we've advanced technology, whether it's nuclear weapons, stealth technology, drones, etc., other governments rush to copy it to maintain an edge. The leader sets the pace for all the others. You're not going to run as fast as you possibly can if everyone else is at a trot -- you're going to save your strength for that final push. Unless, of course, someone else has a faster pace... in which case you need to step it up too.
The problem is, the US government, by creating its own cyberwarfare army and massive botnets, have opted for a policy of trying to go at a dead run and hope they get far enough ahead that by the time they get across the finish line, they can fortify the position and keep anyone else from doing it again -- not unlike the nuclear arms race. Which might work if cyberwarfare required the same outlay of resources and visibility to others. But neither is true --
Surveillance of the entire internet isn't enough to stop cyberwarfare, or accurately identify participants in the theatre. Not if they're smart. And because there's so many players, it's unlikely any of them will get enough of an edge over any other to make it anything but an unending series of mexican standoffs.
And then there's the unstable elements -- these aren't just nation states playing high stakes poker with nuclear weapons. We've got drug dealers, gangs, and all manner of scum running at similar capacity. They don't have the same rules of engagement... and they'd only be too happy to let two of the big players blow themselves to hell so they can step in and profit.
Our entire strategy is fucked. Totally and completely. We shouldn't have set the tempo of cyberwarfare so fast -- not when the stakes are so high and our defenses so unreasonably low. If the internet crashes, the world economy crashes. And our government doesn't seem to give a damn, as long as they have the biggest red button.
I believe you are making an incorrect assumption that these botnet nodes are actually relaying on behalf of the network. I've not seen any reason to believe this is correct.
And no reason to believe it's incorrect either. If the bot operator was smart, he'd setup at least part of his botnet to do relays as this would allow the bot's own traffic to mingle with the network's, and keep the network from crashing as more bots are added. If the operator manages to bring down Tor, he's shot himself in the foot as well. A client-only configuration is a mistake that someone unfamiliar with distributed computing might make in this scenario; Not dissimilar to a similar mistake made by the first worm created on the internet... the designer did not anticipate exponential growth. Exponential growth is a typical quality of bot nets; They start out slow, then grow exponentially, then plateau until an effective countermeasure is created to clean the machines and/or the attack vector becomes immune.
Many botnets offer their own exit-node like capabilities -- this is one of the services many of them sell; Proxying and DDoS attacks. I find it difficult to believe an experienced engineer would make this mistake... but I'll grant you that this may be an inexperienced one who knows just enough to shoot himself in the foot.
It will be very interesting to see what the Tor developers do next - they don't have any effective way to fight off this botnet because almost by design they can't detect or centrally control the network.
The Tor developers will do nothing. This is all on the exit node operators; And likely, they will do what has been done in the past; Traffic analysis and watching for patterns, then blocking traffic that appears to be from the bot.
Here's the thing; The bots can communicate with one another and the C&C through Tor -- this is likely all they wanted. But to do that, they're going to need to establish a hidden service. Hidden services only broadcast to a few relays, which as the botnet grows, will move to higher and higher bandwidth relays. There are only a few such relays on the Tor network capable of acting as a directory service for the command and control; And those relays will know the true IP address of the hidden service provider.
It's just a matter of time -- you need to infiltrate the relays with the highest available bandwidth and then just wait. The bot herder will come to you. It's by network design. And then he's fucked.
If the NSA or someone else is actually doing those.
If? You don't "If" in security. You assume you're already compromised, that the attacker is well-financed and has total knowledge of the network, etc. And yes, the NSA "or someone" is most definately doing it. Just not to you. We know you browse for porn using Tor... and that you've visited the Silk Road just to see what the hubabub was about. Aaaaand... nobody cares.
Besides, the hidden service protocol has a massive glitch; namely that it's a limited keyspace and the database is decentralized and distributed. They know what all the hidden services are... and you can too if you're sufficiently motivated.
Well, I have good news and bad news... the bad news is that this has been a long time coming, and now it's here. The good news is that although the botnet itself is bad, the number of connections and extra clients improves Tor security overall for all the other users. The thing is, the more relays, the more connections, the larger the network... the faster and more secure it is. If all the botnet does is setup relays, it's a win for the Tor network. Of course, it isn't going to just do that, and these aren't authorized relays so it's not exactly occupying the moral high ground here. The machines hosting the bot need scrubbed.
But this also introduces a wrinkle -- the US government, and likely others, also maintain their own botnets. And they actively seek to shut down other people's botnets, through domain seizure, etc. This would seem to be a reaction to those efforts -- that is, by decentralizing and hiding the command and control, they're effectively adapting to the tactics our military is using on the internet.
I said a long time ago that the militarization of the internet would cause a lot of problems... and that we had no business developing an offensive cyber-military because it would just encourage others to begin an arms race that would lead to major economic and communications instabilities worldwide. It hasn't gotten that far yet, but it's building to that. Our own aggressive stance has created yet another fucking cold war.
Like all scientific observation and understanding, the effect isn't of the immediate gratification variety we're so keen on in modern society; So it can be hard to see the good. But this is good; It will give us a much better basis for figuring out just how 'normal' our own solar system is, how common earth-like planets are, and perhaps with additional technological advances, where to send probes to search for life on other planets, or even someday to colonize with life. And not necessarily even human life -- we may just load up a probe with bacteria, amoeba, and other simple life and fire it at another planet... hoping that in a few million years, a viable ecosystem will have developed. Our legacy may not be us going to the stars, but rather the bacteria on our forks.
And besides learning more about how the universe is formed, these more detailed observations may open up avenues in physics -- dark matter is still not very well understood. The gravitational effects and whatnot may be too small to be noticable by observing stars... but if we get a few hundred thousand more data points out there that are much more sensitive to gravity waves... we may discover new physics, or confirm hypothesis, based on how these planets move, or gravitational lensing effects, etc.
It is indeed quite good -- and given how little investment is going into science these days... reducing the entry cost and operating costs of any area of scientific inquiry is much-needed.
The program opens up exoplanet-observing to amateur astronomers and undergraduate students across the globe."
This makes it sound like you previously had to buy a license to look up. -_- Astronomy is one of the few things that can't be "opened up" by corporate interests... you can't patent the sky. Yet. You were already able to do this, so let's phrase it correctly; "The program reduces the entry cost of exoplanet-observing for interested members of the public."
Slashdot... please, take a grammar course. Or if that's too hard, an introduction to editing in journalism. Your (decreasing) active membership here thanks you.
Better pay, free food, "20% time" to work on individual plots to destroy Israel, and of course, 72 geeky virgins.
Ya gotta understand... engineers are HIGHLY sought after by terrorist organizations. Many specifically pony up for college just to get them skilled up enough to fight for the cause. The problem is... with an education comes this funny idea that maybe blowing up infidels isn't the best long-term strategy. If you knew how many people come here on student visas and just before graduating show up at the local FBI office or something to say "Yeah, hey guys... I actually came here on the 'death to america' ticket, but it turns out I like jeans, scantily clad girls, beer, and decent-paying jobs and, you know, I'd be grateful if you could, I don't know, keep me?"... you'd probably be both surprised and a little bit heartened. I'm not saying it's a frequent occurrance, but it happens often enough to be worth writing home about as it were.
That said... the terrorists may be working on ways to neutralize drones, but so too is every major military, including our own. Early generation drones didn't have a lot of failsafes, and several were successfully jammed. If it lost the signal, it just fell out of the sky. Some advancements have since occurred and they now have the same basic logic as a cruise missile, which is 'complete last command' on the event of a communications loss. Which is to say, if it's on a kill mission, it will complete the job if jammed... so by the time you see it, you're already fucked.
Advancements now mean that they can rely on a variety of sensors beyond GPS for navigation and have a 'return to base' command in the event of a loss of communications -- they can often fly entirely autonomously and record everything for later (manual) retrieval. Communications after take-off is not necessary for many operational profiles.
In fact, it is also very hard to jam surveillance drones as they employ rapid frequency shifting and super wide spread spectrum -- you have to basically jam tens of Ghz of spectrum to have a shot at impairing a drone's operation -- or the encryption keys, from which the PRNG used to syncronize the transmitter and receiver during these frequency hops, which occur at over 30,000 times per second. Basically, good luck even finding the signal, let alone jamming it, or getting a lock on it. This is the same technology used for stealth technology to prevent radio comms from giving away the position of our bombers, etc.
And since it's all implimented using highly specialized FPGAs that are wiped on a power loss event or if the aircraft suffers any number of failure modes that prevent successful retrieval of the aircraft, it auto-erases and goes to a failsafe mode, transmitting it's location just prior to impact and then powering off. Which must have really pissed Iran off when they captured one of our Predator drones, popped it open, and found nothing but a melted fuck you scorch mark where the control logic was.
Now, that doesn't mean all drones in all flight profiles use this technology. I'm just saying, it's available, so drones can be used even in an emissions-hostile environment. Sometimes it isn't used, but these are for reasons of practicality and ease of use. If you want a drone with an electronics package that says "Fuck you" in fifty foot tall neon lettering to anyone trying to jam you... there's an app for that.
No, it can't. The recipient could be using a tampered application that ignores the timeout directive.
Now is probably a bad time to point out that all phones have the ability to have their firmware rewritten and software updated silently, and this functionality is enabled by, er... turning it on. Any data stored on a mobile phone is inherently, by design, enforced by hardware mandate... insecure.
You cannot secure a mobile phone anymore than you can build a bull pen using construction paper and string and expect it to hold an angry bull. Stop trying people. Fix the fucking hardware, then maybe all your "There's an app for that" nonsense might mean half a shit. And while we're at it... rapid frequency shifting spread spectrum technologies and mesh networking. Look it up. Put THAT in the phones. Then we'll see about telling the NSA how many different ways they can go fuck themselves.
So basically they re-invented having different accounts having access to different apps. Only its on a mobile device, and it deserves a patent?!
Well, yeah. Maybe you haven't noticed the furious nerd rage over the past, I don't know... FIFTEEN YEARS about stupid patent law? Anyway... a patent was recently awarded because someone figured out how to use the speaker/mic combo on a mobile phone to transmit data acoustically. You know, like... through the air and stuff. For credit card transactions. You might well guess... they got a patent.
Nevermind that this technology debuted in the 1960s, pretty much right after the second computer was built and someone got the idea that they should be able to exchange data... and look, here's this phone thingie...
The semifinals are averaging 50-80,000 viewers. The races just off San Francisco with the most effete/trendy/hipster crowd imaginable, averaged 800-900,000.
This is a marginal sport irrelevant to 99.9999% of the population, and in which
The US population is presently about 314 million. That means.2% of the population watched the sport by your own statistics. 99.98% is nowhere near 99.9999%. I know you were just pulling numbers out of your ass, but you could at least... fucking try, man.
I don't know where you are getting your information from, but I'd love to see your source.
How about the Japanese government? "The murasoi fish â" similar to a rockfish â" was contaminated with 254,000 becquerels (Bq) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of radioactive cesium, according to a study released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the Daily Mail reports. "
Do you have a citation for a single dangerous fish being caught outside of that part of Japan?
Oh, and you know, the disaster was awhile ago, so I'm sure radioactivity has dropped since then. Unless, you know, it increased 8 fold instead...
Well... 300 tons of radioactive death water a day probably isn't anything to be too concerned about... we can always remain skeptical and demand more citations, more proof, etc. Kinda like if I back into your car, we can sit and haggle about how badly your car was hit ("it's only a scratch!"), or that you have a really nice car and I don't, so you shouldn't be so upset... or you know, logic like that. Instead of, I don't know, say... taking responsibility.
Slashdot Mirror
You have no idea how bad you have it with Windows.
Yeah, it's terrible. Having to worry about whether the latest game will run on the operating system I'm running... or buying hardware at OEM pricing online and incrementally upgrading my system instead of just buying a new one every year... and then there's that pesky problem of having to lug it into an official microsoft store whenever something breaks on it instead of the nearest 14 year old kid. It's rough.
Registry entries, malware, every free app including malware to slow down yoursystem including sourceforge using i3, eyecandy, ask, or whatever michevious crap!
Yes. Because malware authors target the OS with the biggest marketshare. Should Apple one day rule the world, and the Fanboys walk tall... they too shall feel the pain of worms, malware, and things being installed without your consent--oh wait, what was this article about again?
No fancy installers, no bizaare registry entries, simple folders, nothing hidden.
Yeah... that's really hard stuff there. Having to double click on an icon and click next a few times... or opening regedit and going through a tree-structure until you find the right entry, laid out just like any other filesystem.
So if the Mac turns into windows why spend 2x for the switch.
You're spending 2x now... you'll spend a lot more if Macintosh becomes the dominant OS... since you can only buy a Mac from Apple, and you can only buy the OS from Apple, and you can only get the apps from Apple, and all the peripherals are sold by... Apple. All that competition in the PC world sure does keep prices, er... really high, I guess.
While Apple still has bugs like in its store it is known as a superior platform...
To fanboys yes. To the rest of us, it's just another walled garden...
In the east it is more 50/50 windows vs mac.
Citation needed. Go ahead, I'll wait. While you're busy looking for that magical unicorn, articles like this continue to crop up suggesting that China doesn't want to pay the Apple tax.
This is not an hypothetical case. In my last job we were in direct competition with IBM and were exchanging crucial pricing information through email. There has been precedents of ECHELON being used to gain economic intelligence (google "echelon airbus boeing" to learn about that)
Oh please. Every government engages in industrial espionage. The French are so well known for it that CEOs for pharmaceuticals that check-in to local hotels are told not to use the fax machine or internet there, and to keep their laptops in their room, and to bring their own locks to secure it and not use the hotel safe or in-room safe as the cleaning crew often isn't the usual maid service. I mean, this is SOP. Not that I'm picking on the French -- they're only guilty of being particularly bad at doing it covertly, but everyone does it.
One does not need ECHELON to spy on a company. Hell, showing up to replace a printer in slacks and an official-looking work order is usually enough to get into a building... and having a rigged printer that records all the jobs sent to it is a nice opener. Following up with a power strip with its own wifi, mini computer, and cat5 pass-thru is a good follow-on. Why do people assume you need satellites and taps on hundreds of internet routers all over the world to do this?
And don't underestimate blackmail, human stupidity, or the CEO's penchant for keeping a post-it note with his password on his computer, trusting that his secretary and security staff would neeeeever let anyone in who wasn't supposed to be there.... and of course, nobody ever takes bathroom breaks while watching the CEO's office over lunch time.... -_-
And as a bonus... most corporations record all e-mails to monitor their employees. Amusingly... these systems are usually less secure than the ones they're tapped into. So if you don't have the money to bring your own equipment... they're usually nice enough to provide it for you.
Tor was not created by the Air Force. Initial work was funded by the Office of Naval Research via the Naval Research Laboratory. See: http://www.onion-router.net/History.html. You can also see a list of funders here: https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en.
Air Force, Navy... point is, it was developed by the military. And it is used by the Air Force... I just noted that the first military link in the google search came up with this... and as the Air Force is the one spearheading the 'cyberwarfare' initiative in our military, it made sense that the Air Force would be the maintainer of military assets within the Tor network...
"A cell phone left on in a soldier's pocket during an operation led to the death of a half dozen marines when enemy combatants used the signal to figure out when they were leaving base... and they planned an ambush."
Citation?
You won't find one. Another example; Stealth bombers are really great at being stealthy until they're over the target and open the bomb bay doors. Then they're as visible to radar as flying barns. Which is why usually, ahead of the actual strike, a HARM missile is deployed. It's not actually a missile though, but rather a high altitude bomb that, when released, deploys a parachute and sits over the target looking for active radar signatures. When it finds one, off goes the parachute and on comes GPS-guided death. Well, as it turns out, the frequencies used for radar are the same ones used by microwaves. A fork jammed into the security interlock, door removed, and microwave pointed upwards... looked exactly like a radar site. $10 microwave meets $50,000 bomb. And once the bomb has blown up your $10 microwave, you can flip on your actual radar sites, lock on to the stealth bombers, and shoot them down with relative ease. You won't be getting a citation for that either... partly because that er... problem... has been fixed with newer electronics, but mostly because stuff like that being on the internet really is a matter of national security.
So no, no citation for you. But you can feel free to google for 'operational security' and 'cell phone', and note that every branch of the military has rules about this sort of thing. Those rules weren't created because of an abstract hypothetical... like most rules in the military, they were purchased with blood.
According to consolidated financial statements and reports of the Tor Project for the year ending December 2012, US Federal agencies are responsible for nearly sixty percent of funds received by the project. Tor has taken a defensive stand against this, but who knows?
Tor was created by the US Air Force. Surprise, surprise, they still want to fund it. Sooo, why did they create Tor? Well, as it turns out, we've got this massive high speed satellite and ground network we use for military purposes, which basically amounts to a compartmentalized version of the internet. And within that, because soldiers are away from home for months or years at a time, they decided to offer internet access to them. Often they're on board carriers, or deployed in places where a direct hookup isn't really feasible. And they want to make sure that all that traffic isn't pouring out at locations that can be easily monitored... because as much as operational security is drilled into soldiers, loose lips sink ships and all, they're still human. They can screw up.
So they needed some way of giving them internet access without making it pathetically easy for foreign powers to simply tap a couple key routers and see everything any soldier browses (Facebook anyone?)... Enter Tor.
Tor has over 13,000 exit nodes all over the world. And it's expensive to monitor every node. Not only that, but you have no idea where in the Tor network the traffic originated from -- is this J. Random Soldier, or Closet Gay Guy Looking At Porn? Noooobody knows. It wasn't meant to be high security. It's not meant to be totally anonymous; It's meant to make it difficult for small-time players like, say, Iran, to spy on our soldier's personal communications. Because this has happened, and it has killed people; A cell phone left on in a soldier's pocket during an operation led to the death of a half dozen marines when enemy combatants used the signal to figure out when they were leaving base... and they planned an ambush.
So Tor will be funded by our government for the conceivable future, and they have a vested interest in maintaining the security of the network to the point that it would cost an adversary more to 'break' the network than the intelligence value of the soldiers' personal internet browsing.
Does this worry me? Nope. Tin foil hat time? Not a chance. Don't use Tor for high value communications. But then... that goes for the public internet as well. If you want to secure high value communications, you build your own VPN, and then add code to have it transmit/receive at a constant rate to deter traffic analysis. Which, coincidentally, is what most financial institutions these days do.
Your first link is not the app store, though. That would be the online Apple Store, you know like Amazon.com?
That's nice. What about the second link, the one that shows that the app store can and does have malware in it, approved by Apple? The only reason Parallels Desktop isn't available in the app store isn't because Apple is concerned about security but because of an arbitrary restriction that everything purchased online be in a self-contained .app file. Whoopie.
Both you and the other guy abjectly refused to notice that link, instead focusing on the first one -- as if Apple's requirement that online purchases be self-contained somehow is a bar against security breaches or behavior like that under discussion.
But you know... whatever. You can't argue with fanboys; No matter what you say, they'll take the most insignificant thing and say "See! See! This tiny little bit right here is wrong! You spelled the product name wrong! That means everything you said must also be wrong!"
And yet... I'm the troll...
You do realize that's not the App store, but Apple's store where they ship you a box with the software?
I notice you ignored the second link: Which shows that malware can and has been uploaded to the app store, which was my original point; The OP said that nothing like Parallels Desktop could be in the app store because it was too "low level".
I'd consider something that steals my credit card info and takes over my browser pretty "low level". The reason why Parallels Desktop isn't in the app store is because it loads kernel modules, not because the app store is somehow 'more secure'.
But hey... I already got a -1 everywhere else for pointing out that it's not all sunshine and kittens in AppleLand and got furious anger and rage from the fanboys... so what's a missed point between slashdotters?
If that speculation is right, that a billion dollars will buy hardware that takes a few hours to break one key, great. That would mean nobody is going to break MY key, and that al Qaeda's keys were broken soon after they started using them. Works for me.
I think you're looking at this backwards; They won't spend any money to break your key because you're worth zero dollars. What could you possibly be doing that would warrant the NSA's interest? You need to understand the organization; They primarily do signals intelligence, and they operate in a support role to other agencies, principally the CIA, FBI, and DHS.
The NSA simply logs the data and holds on to it until and unless something happens that makes analyzing that data a priority. They may record all cell phone calls, but they don't listen to them all. They may record all internet traffic, but they don't review all of it. In order for them to expend resources, there needs to be a reason. You could be using '1 bit' encryption and it would be as interesting to them as '1 million bit' encryption.
In security, your defenses need to be harder to break than the value of the thing being protected. Although Tor's encryption may be insufficient against a government, it is plenty strong for most everyday uses -- getting around corporate proxies, location-locked services (like shows the BBC offers, Netflix, etc.), and for proxying to Facebook. Yes, I use Tor to connect to Facebook... because I don't want them knowing where I am, and my IP address provides a wealth of marketing information to them. I also don't use my real name, but really, the main reason is just to piss in their data collection cheerios, not because I'm doing it to be 'anonymous' or 'super secure'. And this is what most people use Tor for; along with browsing bittorrent sites (though downloading is still direct...), and other things that they may feel uncomfortable with having a readily-accessible record of at their ISP's office (gay porn anyone?).
The NSA cares not for these activities. It's logged all the same, but until they say that, say, "the alias raymorris on slashdot indicated he may be in possession of classified materials" all that data just sits on a harddrive somewhere, waiting to expire. The NSA just waits for the phone call.
That said, a few hours to break one key is pretty petty for accessing your internet traffic or mine, but if Al Quaeda has a hidden service inside Tor they're using to communicate with, a secret website if you will... now those few hours' worth of electricity seem very, very worth it.
You've gotta understand that security is not an absolute; There is no "secure" versus "insecure". There is only no security, and then varying degrees of more security; And good security is when it costs more to break it than the value of the thing being protected. Great security is when that's true and the computer functions the way you expect.
Funny enough, a software like Parallels Desktop needs such low-level access to the system that it would most certainly be prohibited from being approved into the Mac App Store.
You're absolutely right. This link doesn't go to the approved and ready for download link of the software in the app store.
Apple is pretty strict about what kind of low-level access its App Store apps are allowed and where they can install their stuff.
So they wouldn't, say, approve malware then...
do not want to say that the walled garden is flawless or does not have some significant problems, but your guess is really simply wrong in this case.
Yes, those citations are powerless against the power of denial.
Parallels is NOT sold in the AppStore. It's installed via a custom stand-alone installer.
Of course it is...
You have NO idea what you are trolling about.
Yeah... you're right, the app store is totally safe.
Let me guess? Approved in the app store. And that ease of use that's touted by Apple means that it's helluva hard for the average person to get under the hood. Imagine grandma looking at this:
~#: _
Now, you want to tell her what commands to run to uninstall this? This is the problem with the walled garden approach, and Apple loves walls. And money. And you, the user... well, you're just buying the experience of owning an Apple. But good luck getting it to do what you want if Apple or an app developer decides to make it "easy" for you.
Even so, regardless of how likely it is, when you're downloading pirated software you are basically executing unknown code from an unknown source.
The same can be said of any compiled, closed-source code. And corporations in the past have intentionally placed malware onto their official distributions; Such as the sony rootkit fiasco. Trusting someone just because they wear a suit and say they're your friend isn't much of a guarantee.
...been modified with unknown code by someone with no accountability who is demonstrably willing to break the law.
There's very little accountability to corporations anymore these days. Class action lawsuits were thrown away. The average person doesn't have any real access to the courts -- it's a David v. Goliath situation. And new laws are passed limiting liability all the time. Massive oil spill? We'll fine you a day's wages. Banks too big to fail? Too big to jail too. And saying that someone's untrustworthy because they break the law is a questionable stance to take at best;
You ever speed in your car? Ever j-walk? The laws are so terribly complex that you can rest assured you're a criminal. The only person who didn't commit a felony this week is the guy in a coma in the hospital. There are laws on the book that say that eating a salmon that's too long is a felony. There's laws saying you can't violate the laws "of any other country". Even the crazy ones. Even the ones we're currently bombing. And just in IT, there's the computer fraud and abuse act, that is so vaguely worded that basically touching a computer could constitute 'unauthorized access'. People have gone to jail... for providing a URL to a website under that. So if you want to say "willing to break the law" means anything... okay then, but it doesn't count for anything to me or for most people. We're all criminals... it's just not all of us have been caught yet. And if that's not enough evidence for you... consider that we have the highest rate of incarceration of any country on Earth, we lead by almost double per capita, and that margin is growing. And it disproportionately affects the poor and non-whites.
here are plenty of shady actors who see warez as a legitimate infection vector and wouldn't think twice about wrapping a popular application up with a nice payload and distributing it across their botnet to make it look like it has 100 different seeders.
Perhaps. But many bittorrent sites have reputation services; And people talk to each other. Read the comments. Watch the forums. Yes, it requires a little more work -- and that doesn't mean someone can't still pull one over on you. But I've never downloaded a piece of software from a torrent site that ever turned a positive; and I scan everything. I go back and scan it months later... and I have a variety of IDS systems, firewalls, etc., to monitor for rogue traffic. If they ever did put a bot dropper into a package I downloaded... it's never talked to anything on the internet. Or tried.
I can't say the same for a default install of Windows XP or Windows 7.
Yeah, because the *reputation* of the software companies doesn't matter at all. (roll eyes)
Not when you can just buy it with a marketing campaign it doesn't. Or do you think they spend tens of millions because they like hearing the sound of their voice?
What a load of crap. A fat handout? Do you have any clue at all what you're talking about?
Living under a rock and missed the Too big to fail fiasco that landed our economy in the longest recession in US history?
rove it by showing some instances of the government giving money to companies because of claimed losses due to piracy.
Check.
I can't think of any companies that have made a bunch of money by "beating people in their homes until money falls out".
You need to think harder. But snark aside... There was that raid in Guatemala, and this one in George Town, and oh hey look... here's an article in Business Week offering advice because it happens so often CEOs need to be aware of it. But if you don't believe them, ask Kim Dotcom how things are working out for him.
You're seriously in fantasy land with this one. But, hey, whatever fantasy makes you feel good about pirating other people's hard work without paying a dime. You're a real hero. The world owes you everything for free.
I'm no hero. I'm just the girl with all the facts on her side.
Oh, so if a malware infested piece of software is uploaded, Bittorrent will make sure you're downloading the same malware-infested software that someone uploaded? That's reassuring.
As opposed to a malware infested piece of software downloaded from the company's official website? Because if you think that's never happened, Google for 'Sony' and 'root kit'.
Bill Gates prefers you pirate his software over someone elses because it helps block other people out of the market.
The one thing you actually got right. Here's a cookie.
All cracked software is suspect. But then, so's the unmodified software.
But here's the thing... it's usually less risky than the DRM, phone home, internet activation required, now with extra advertisements hardcoded to a server... using internet explorer in a window with 'trusted' site permissions able to handout javascript-laden malware. Please. I'll take the pirate stuff any day of the week, because the groups that do it are small enough that reputation matters; It's their only currency.
A large corporation can just claim "oh noes! piracy destroyed my business!" and get a fat handout and a pile of FBI agents with orders to beat people in their homes until money falls out. Reputation is not a concern for them. Ergo, neither is quality. Pirates on the other hand... release a single malware-infested item and the forums fill up with complaints, and that group never gets any respect again.
Bittorrent also ensures, at the protocol level, that everything downloaded matches what was uploaded. http downloads are less secure. And digital signatures on executables, like what Microsoft does? It's been proven, many times over, that the only thing that means is you paid them a stipend to get a key. They don't check to see if what you made and signed is legit or not... and many antivirus/antimalware solutions, including Microsoft's own... will skip heuristic matching if the executable is signed.
So really... you're less likely to get malware from a piece of pirated software off some torrent site than you are just browsing for porn. It's a grossly exaggerated threat. Just like what this guy is saying; "Here, hack my software!"
Okay. Nice publicity stunt. Even Bill Gates said if you're gonna pirate, he hopes you'll pirate Microsoft... it's a sign of a software's usefulness.
What's important is that this was inevitable. From the very dawn of the public gaining access to the internet, there were already viruses and worms.
A fair assessment. However, global warming was also inevitable, but that doesn't mean we should just throw the helve after the hatchet. Bot nets were, until the government stepped in, largely being organized by small groups of people who stuck to the same pattern of programming and with similar goals: Either blackmail, identity theft, or similar methods of leveraging computational resources for profit (like bitcoin mining).
While they were and continue to increase in complexity, it was still an iterative process and innovation was staggered. However, what happens when the government started pouring billions into this little corner of the dark net, all hell broke loose. You've got strong cryptography, true decentralized p2p emerging, new protocols, and diversification of exploit architecture -- and a lot more people and resources being devoted to this. As a result, it's become an arms race.
Look at it this historically;
Whenever we've advanced technology, whether it's nuclear weapons, stealth technology, drones, etc., other governments rush to copy it to maintain an edge. The leader sets the pace for all the others. You're not going to run as fast as you possibly can if everyone else is at a trot -- you're going to save your strength for that final push. Unless, of course, someone else has a faster pace... in which case you need to step it up too.
The problem is, the US government, by creating its own cyberwarfare army and massive botnets, have opted for a policy of trying to go at a dead run and hope they get far enough ahead that by the time they get across the finish line, they can fortify the position and keep anyone else from doing it again -- not unlike the nuclear arms race. Which might work if cyberwarfare required the same outlay of resources and visibility to others. But neither is true --
Surveillance of the entire internet isn't enough to stop cyberwarfare, or accurately identify participants in the theatre. Not if they're smart. And because there's so many players, it's unlikely any of them will get enough of an edge over any other to make it anything but an unending series of mexican standoffs.
And then there's the unstable elements -- these aren't just nation states playing high stakes poker with nuclear weapons. We've got drug dealers, gangs, and all manner of scum running at similar capacity. They don't have the same rules of engagement... and they'd only be too happy to let two of the big players blow themselves to hell so they can step in and profit.
Our entire strategy is fucked. Totally and completely. We shouldn't have set the tempo of cyberwarfare so fast -- not when the stakes are so high and our defenses so unreasonably low. If the internet crashes, the world economy crashes. And our government doesn't seem to give a damn, as long as they have the biggest red button.
I believe you are making an incorrect assumption that these botnet nodes are actually relaying on behalf of the network. I've not seen any reason to believe this is correct.
And no reason to believe it's incorrect either. If the bot operator was smart, he'd setup at least part of his botnet to do relays as this would allow the bot's own traffic to mingle with the network's, and keep the network from crashing as more bots are added. If the operator manages to bring down Tor, he's shot himself in the foot as well. A client-only configuration is a mistake that someone unfamiliar with distributed computing might make in this scenario; Not dissimilar to a similar mistake made by the first worm created on the internet... the designer did not anticipate exponential growth. Exponential growth is a typical quality of bot nets; They start out slow, then grow exponentially, then plateau until an effective countermeasure is created to clean the machines and/or the attack vector becomes immune.
Many botnets offer their own exit-node like capabilities -- this is one of the services many of them sell; Proxying and DDoS attacks. I find it difficult to believe an experienced engineer would make this mistake... but I'll grant you that this may be an inexperienced one who knows just enough to shoot himself in the foot.
It will be very interesting to see what the Tor developers do next - they don't have any effective way to fight off this botnet because almost by design they can't detect or centrally control the network.
The Tor developers will do nothing. This is all on the exit node operators; And likely, they will do what has been done in the past; Traffic analysis and watching for patterns, then blocking traffic that appears to be from the bot.
Here's the thing; The bots can communicate with one another and the C&C through Tor -- this is likely all they wanted. But to do that, they're going to need to establish a hidden service. Hidden services only broadcast to a few relays, which as the botnet grows, will move to higher and higher bandwidth relays. There are only a few such relays on the Tor network capable of acting as a directory service for the command and control; And those relays will know the true IP address of the hidden service provider.
It's just a matter of time -- you need to infiltrate the relays with the highest available bandwidth and then just wait. The bot herder will come to you. It's by network design. And then he's fucked.
If the NSA or someone else is actually doing those.
If? You don't "If" in security. You assume you're already compromised, that the attacker is well-financed and has total knowledge of the network, etc. And yes, the NSA "or someone" is most definately doing it. Just not to you. We know you browse for porn using Tor... and that you've visited the Silk Road just to see what the hubabub was about. Aaaaand... nobody cares.
Besides, the hidden service protocol has a massive glitch; namely that it's a limited keyspace and the database is decentralized and distributed. They know what all the hidden services are... and you can too if you're sufficiently motivated.
And most of them aren't anything of value.
Well, I have good news and bad news... the bad news is that this has been a long time coming, and now it's here. The good news is that although the botnet itself is bad, the number of connections and extra clients improves Tor security overall for all the other users. The thing is, the more relays, the more connections, the larger the network... the faster and more secure it is. If all the botnet does is setup relays, it's a win for the Tor network. Of course, it isn't going to just do that, and these aren't authorized relays so it's not exactly occupying the moral high ground here. The machines hosting the bot need scrubbed.
But this also introduces a wrinkle -- the US government, and likely others, also maintain their own botnets. And they actively seek to shut down other people's botnets, through domain seizure, etc. This would seem to be a reaction to those efforts -- that is, by decentralizing and hiding the command and control, they're effectively adapting to the tactics our military is using on the internet.
I said a long time ago that the militarization of the internet would cause a lot of problems... and that we had no business developing an offensive cyber-military because it would just encourage others to begin an arms race that would lead to major economic and communications instabilities worldwide. It hasn't gotten that far yet, but it's building to that. Our own aggressive stance has created yet another fucking cold war.
It's news, what's "good" about it?
Like all scientific observation and understanding, the effect isn't of the immediate gratification variety we're so keen on in modern society; So it can be hard to see the good. But this is good; It will give us a much better basis for figuring out just how 'normal' our own solar system is, how common earth-like planets are, and perhaps with additional technological advances, where to send probes to search for life on other planets, or even someday to colonize with life. And not necessarily even human life -- we may just load up a probe with bacteria, amoeba, and other simple life and fire it at another planet... hoping that in a few million years, a viable ecosystem will have developed. Our legacy may not be us going to the stars, but rather the bacteria on our forks.
And besides learning more about how the universe is formed, these more detailed observations may open up avenues in physics -- dark matter is still not very well understood. The gravitational effects and whatnot may be too small to be noticable by observing stars... but if we get a few hundred thousand more data points out there that are much more sensitive to gravity waves... we may discover new physics, or confirm hypothesis, based on how these planets move, or gravitational lensing effects, etc.
It is indeed quite good -- and given how little investment is going into science these days... reducing the entry cost and operating costs of any area of scientific inquiry is much-needed.
The program opens up exoplanet-observing to amateur astronomers and undergraduate students across the globe."
This makes it sound like you previously had to buy a license to look up. -_- Astronomy is one of the few things that can't be "opened up" by corporate interests... you can't patent the sky. Yet. You were already able to do this, so let's phrase it correctly; "The program reduces the entry cost of exoplanet-observing for interested members of the public."
Slashdot... please, take a grammar course. Or if that's too hard, an introduction to editing in journalism. Your (decreasing) active membership here thanks you.
Better pay, free food, "20% time" to work on individual plots to destroy Israel, and of course, 72 geeky virgins.
Ya gotta understand... engineers are HIGHLY sought after by terrorist organizations. Many specifically pony up for college just to get them skilled up enough to fight for the cause. The problem is... with an education comes this funny idea that maybe blowing up infidels isn't the best long-term strategy. If you knew how many people come here on student visas and just before graduating show up at the local FBI office or something to say "Yeah, hey guys... I actually came here on the 'death to america' ticket, but it turns out I like jeans, scantily clad girls, beer, and decent-paying jobs and, you know, I'd be grateful if you could, I don't know, keep me?" ... you'd probably be both surprised and a little bit heartened. I'm not saying it's a frequent occurrance, but it happens often enough to be worth writing home about as it were.
That said... the terrorists may be working on ways to neutralize drones, but so too is every major military, including our own. Early generation drones didn't have a lot of failsafes, and several were successfully jammed. If it lost the signal, it just fell out of the sky. Some advancements have since occurred and they now have the same basic logic as a cruise missile, which is 'complete last command' on the event of a communications loss. Which is to say, if it's on a kill mission, it will complete the job if jammed... so by the time you see it, you're already fucked.
Advancements now mean that they can rely on a variety of sensors beyond GPS for navigation and have a 'return to base' command in the event of a loss of communications -- they can often fly entirely autonomously and record everything for later (manual) retrieval. Communications after take-off is not necessary for many operational profiles.
In fact, it is also very hard to jam surveillance drones as they employ rapid frequency shifting and super wide spread spectrum -- you have to basically jam tens of Ghz of spectrum to have a shot at impairing a drone's operation -- or the encryption keys, from which the PRNG used to syncronize the transmitter and receiver during these frequency hops, which occur at over 30,000 times per second. Basically, good luck even finding the signal, let alone jamming it, or getting a lock on it. This is the same technology used for stealth technology to prevent radio comms from giving away the position of our bombers, etc.
And since it's all implimented using highly specialized FPGAs that are wiped on a power loss event or if the aircraft suffers any number of failure modes that prevent successful retrieval of the aircraft, it auto-erases and goes to a failsafe mode, transmitting it's location just prior to impact and then powering off. Which must have really pissed Iran off when they captured one of our Predator drones, popped it open, and found nothing but a melted fuck you scorch mark where the control logic was.
Now, that doesn't mean all drones in all flight profiles use this technology. I'm just saying, it's available, so drones can be used even in an emissions-hostile environment. Sometimes it isn't used, but these are for reasons of practicality and ease of use. If you want a drone with an electronics package that says "Fuck you" in fifty foot tall neon lettering to anyone trying to jam you... there's an app for that.
No, it can't. The recipient could be using a tampered application that ignores the timeout directive.
Now is probably a bad time to point out that all phones have the ability to have their firmware rewritten and software updated silently, and this functionality is enabled by, er... turning it on. Any data stored on a mobile phone is inherently, by design, enforced by hardware mandate... insecure.
You cannot secure a mobile phone anymore than you can build a bull pen using construction paper and string and expect it to hold an angry bull. Stop trying people. Fix the fucking hardware, then maybe all your "There's an app for that" nonsense might mean half a shit. And while we're at it... rapid frequency shifting spread spectrum technologies and mesh networking. Look it up. Put THAT in the phones. Then we'll see about telling the NSA how many different ways they can go fuck themselves.
So basically they re-invented having different accounts having access to different apps. Only its on a mobile device, and it deserves a patent?!
Well, yeah. Maybe you haven't noticed the furious nerd rage over the past, I don't know... FIFTEEN YEARS about stupid patent law? Anyway... a patent was recently awarded because someone figured out how to use the speaker/mic combo on a mobile phone to transmit data acoustically. You know, like... through the air and stuff. For credit card transactions. You might well guess... they got a patent.
Nevermind that this technology debuted in the 1960s, pretty much right after the second computer was built and someone got the idea that they should be able to exchange data... and look, here's this phone thingie...
The semifinals are averaging 50-80,000 viewers.
The races just off San Francisco with the most effete/trendy/hipster crowd imaginable, averaged 800-900,000.
This is a marginal sport irrelevant to 99.9999% of the population, and in which
The US population is presently about 314 million. That means .2% of the population watched the sport by your own statistics. 99.98% is nowhere near 99.9999%. I know you were just pulling numbers out of your ass, but you could at least... fucking try, man.
I don't know where you are getting your information from, but I'd love to see your source.
How about the Japanese government? "The murasoi fish â" similar to a rockfish â" was contaminated with 254,000 becquerels (Bq) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of radioactive cesium, according to a study released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the Daily Mail reports. "
Do you have a citation for a single dangerous fish being caught outside of that part of Japan?
a marine biologist from Stanford University found radioactive tuna chilling out in California. But I'm sure it was just an isolated case.
Oh, and you know, the disaster was awhile ago, so I'm sure radioactivity has dropped since then. Unless, you know, it increased 8 fold instead...
Well... 300 tons of radioactive death water a day probably isn't anything to be too concerned about... we can always remain skeptical and demand more citations, more proof, etc. Kinda like if I back into your car, we can sit and haggle about how badly your car was hit ("it's only a scratch!"), or that you have a really nice car and I don't, so you shouldn't be so upset... or you know, logic like that. Instead of, I don't know, say... taking responsibility.