Science is supposed to be a tool for discovery. It is not supposed to supply the meaning of life or delve into things which are best left to philosophers and theologians given our current state of technology.
"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.
"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"
"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"
"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel,
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
In retaliation, Sergey Brin has just announced plans to buy the L.A. Clippers.
Next, Brin and Cuban agree that all copyright issues will be settled by best-of-7 tournaments between their respective teams. This proves to be too time consuming, so they expedite the process by substituting one-on-one NBA Live 07 matches using virtual versions of their respective teams.
The first match goes poorly, with Cuban accusing Brin of redirecting 90% of Google's computers to run a "hoop-bot" to improve his team's shooting accuracy. To ensure fairness, future matches are broadcast live on G4 TV. This proves to be an instant hit, capturing 100% attention from both of G4's viewers. A year later, Electronic Arts introduces "Madden Meta-NBA 08", where players control either a virtual Brin or virtual Cuban playing simulated NBA Live matches, available exclusively on the new SonySoft XStation720.
The game becomes an instant hit, and six months later Hollywood commissions a movie of the game of the company owners playing sports games of teams fighting for...errr... for something or other, frankly we've forgotten by now. Probably a woman. Or a cat. Maybe an orphanage. Screw it, we'll go with an orphan cat-woman. Uwe Bolle will direct.
You are supposed to ask the woman next to you if she wants to joint the mile high club. Do that while pointing at your laptop screen. It is sure to impress her.
I suspect this depends on how impressive your pointer is...
Appreciate the thought and effort, kaan, but folks are still in the position of accepting one stranger's (your) word to confirm another stranger's (Gottesser's) claim that a site we can't directly verify (blackbox1.org) is truly being run by BBV.
If someone from BBV happens to be monitoring/. - a stronger confirmation might be if there were an announcement on the blackboxvoting.org homepage by Bev stating that the/. story is accurate, and containing links to the files on blackbox1.org (to further confirm that the files are known to BBV). Bonus points if the confirmation notice on BBV contains checksums for the files on blackbox1.org, so that people can feel more confident that whatever they've downloaded matches the files that BBV uploaded to blackbox1.org. (Basic idea being that a blackhat trying to alter the downloads would have to take over both the main BBV website and blackbox1.org, otherwise the downloads and checksums wouldn't match.)
There are some things that handicapped people just cannot do - that's the very definition of a handicap. Should we require rock-climbing equipment stores to accomodate double amputees?
An excellent question. Perhaps we should ask Mark Inglis for an opinion? (He's the double amputee who climbed Everest earlier this year - some may remember his name from the controversy surrounding the death of another Everest climber - David Sharp.)
After that, maybe we could check with Erik Weihenmayer for his thoughts on handicapped access to climbing stores? (First blind person to summit Everest back in 2001.)
Not trying to bust your chops or anything - your question is valid and very apropos for a topic involving handicapped accessability. (Perhaps even more apropos than you expected.;-)
PC is wearing a "boy in the plastic bubble" suit, wandering around with a bottle of Formula 409, obsessively wiping down everything he sees. Mac casually strolls up from behind and taps PC on the shoulder of his bubble suit. PC shrieks and starts spraying and wiping the suit. Mac asks what's up, PC starts babbling "Viruses...viruses are everywhere. Anything I touch might kill me. Never clean enough...never...clean...enough". Mac sadly shakes his head and wanders off.
Next PC vs Mac commercial, the Microsoft version:
Mac walks over to PC and offers to let PC listen to Mac's iPod. PC puts on the headset, starts tapping his feet and snapping his fingers, then suddenly flops onto his back, goes into convulsions, and dies. Mac slinks off the stage, looking embarassed and guilty. James Earl Jones voiceover grimly intones "iPods kill - buy a Zune".
Hmm...In that case, I'm offering $1000 USD to the person or group that can find me the perfect girlfriend!
Just join our new subscription service, NetFux. Our online site allows you to chose from a vast array of first- and second-run girlfriends, and we have a growing selection of indy and foreign options as well. Prioritize your choices in our easy-to-use queueing system, and as each selection becomes available we'll ship her to you overnight. Date your choice as long as you like and as often as you like. When you're finished, send her back in the prepaid shipping container, and we'll promptly ship you the next selection in your queue. When you return a choice, you'll also be given the option to rate her on a Tivo®-inspired "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" basis. Over time, our patented algorithms will work out your preferences, and will start making recommendations for future selections.
Note: The basic service only provides for a single selection to be "checked out" at any given time. A premium "3 At A Time" service is available for high-volume customers for a modest increase in the subscription price.
Note: NetFux reserves the right to delay shipments or terminate your account if we determine that you are abusing the service. Determination of "abuse" is at our sole discretion and may include (but is not limited to) returning products in poor condition, excessive returns, or reading SlashDot.
Note: Avoid covering up the airholes on the return shipping container - the necrophylia market is much smaller than many people believe, and additions to this section of our service must be carefully controlled.
Note: No, senator, for the last time - we do not have a "children's section".
My kids are smart enough to check what's running on their PC. Can I install a logger on my WRT54G (running hyperWRT + Thibor 15c firmware)?
Yes, dad, the 54G can do logging. Actually that's probably better than the silly keylogger Judy and I have been using against you and mom for the past year. (BTW, having 'g0d' as your admin password is really lame - we didn't even need the keylogger to figure that out.:P I'll walk you through the firmware update after I get home from band practice.
Your loving son, Jack
P.S. Do not let Judy do the install - she's bound to get the interface names reversed and broadcast the log files to the universe. (If you don't believe me, ask her why that botnet attacked our computer last fall. I told her the target IP was the first param, not the second one, but did Little Miss 31337 listen to me? Of course not.)
Actually in my Honda Civic the vinyl sounds mostly like a room full of cats regardless of the source material. I haven't figured that out yet but I assume it's just that the awesome bandwidth of the vinyl sound is just overloading my system.
Hey, like I had like the same problem, but then I upgraded the factory radio to a 'Type R' radio (incredible deal from this guy - he's like into the import/upgrade business, and sneaks out a couple of Type R radios each month and sells them from the back of his car - they're like over $1000 if you could even get one, which you can't cuz you need like this special license so don't even try, but that import dude will part with his "extras" for $200 which is just so schweet cuz he can like write them off on his insurance or something). And then I got these like special audio spoilers that clip onto the speakers (the dude I got them from - no, not like the import/upgrade dude, this dude is like a different dude - hangs out with that other guy, yeah, the one with the weird hair), and he said they keep the higher-velocity notes from producing delaminated/nonlabial/nonlaminar/whatever-the-hell airflow - I guess that's like 95% of the distortion once you upgrade the radio. So like the sound now is just so freaking incredible, and like everyone I meet is like all "hey Raven dude, we can't believe you actually have a Type R radio and speaker spoilers" and like roll their eyes cuz they're so jealous ROFLMAO.
The link is to www.securemac.com. Feedback on both Versiontracker and MacUpdate suggests that the SecureMac application is at best, useless and at worst, dangerous.
Fair enough - I'm not familiar with their product, but with the first three pages of Google searches essentially just regurgitating press releases from the company I'm more than willing to accept that the only source touting this software is the company itself.
The hacked discussion board seems to be missing from their links now.:P
Alas, the dynamic nature of the web strikes again.:-) Although I suppose that's actually "A Good Thing" if the discussion board was compromised.
I still want to know why I should treat the SANS Institute as an authoritative source, given that I know nothing about them, can find out next to nothing about them, and I find some of their data questionable.
I'll add to that the number of self-proclaimed 'internet security experts' is legion, with most of them having their own agendas.
Hehe, totally agree about the legions of 'experts' out there.:-) And I think that actually makes it difficult to "prove" that the ISC writeups are worth listening to. If you google for handler Jim Clausing, you'll see that he's been in IT admin and security for over 20 years, but of course there's plenty of counterexamples of people who've spent decades in the computer industry without having a clue. George Bakos, another handler, is the senior security expert at Dartmouth College's Institute for Security, but people can hold academic posts without having practical, real-world experience. Lenny Zeltser is the Information Security Practice Leader at Gemini Systems and teaches a course on analyzing malicious software, but if you don't know anything about Gemini and haven't taken the course you still don't know if he's an expert or a poser. Marcus Sachs is Deputy Director of DHS's Cyber Security R&D Center, has co-authored several books on security, and spoken at Black Hat, but... well, again, those are just positions and words, and you probably don't want to buy/read one of those books just to decide whether you might trust a web site. (There's about 40 handlers at the ISC, but I won't run through each because it still boils down to the same thing - a bogus guru can have paper/web credentials that, on the surface, look as plausible as those of a real expert.)
So I think the best I can give you is the "proof is in the pudding" approach. Read a month or two of the Handler's Diary entries. See if you believe that the articles are relevant and accurate. See if there's any major incidents that are not mentioned. (After all, if we really wanted a blog that missed major bugs while misreporting/overhyping other bugs, well, we're both already reading Slashdot.;-) Ask yourself if this is the work of a bunch of punters, or if this is a credible source of security info. Obviously I have my opinion regarding the site, but hey, that's just me - what I find interesting and informative might well be boring and/or irrelevant to another person. (For instance, someone who deals exclusively with OS/X systems might find all the entries on Windows, Unix, Cisco, etc to effectively be "noise". Doesn't mean the articles are wrong or badly-written, just that 99% of them are going to be irrelevant.)
What really started me wondering was the story they had a while ago about "Mac OS security reputation in tatters" or words to that effect. They had absolutely no supporting evidence, and a grand total of two links to outside sources. One of them was a site known for trying to hawk bogus spyware scanners for OS X, and the other was a Mac security discussion board that had been hacked!
Rapid growth in critical vulnerabilities being discovered in Mac OS/X including a zero-day vulnerability (OS/X still remains safer than Windows, but its reputation for offering a bullet-proof alternative to Windows is in tatters.)
For context, this press release came out around the time of Apple's Security Update 2006-001, which included fixes for multiple remote execution exploits in multiple applications. Between Apple's own info and the Handler's Diary regarding the patches, I wouldn't exactly say that the writeup had "no supporting evidence".
Keep in mind that SANS wasn't impugning Apple's overall security, just the fan-boy attitude that Macs are somehow bullet-proof. If you read the Handler's Diary regularly you'd see similar slapdowns for fan-boys of all stripes - Linux, Firefox, whatever. Nothing is magically secure, and it's hubris to believe otherwise. In late Feb/early March, it just happened to be Apple's turn to face up to some serious security bugs. (Me, I've been running various flavors of Linux since the SLS days - I've long accepted the fact that my favorite OS and its applications are far from perfect.;-)
I might also note that the same SANS press release devoted space to multiple slams against Microsoft products, ongoing vulnerabilities in Firefox and Mozilla, and critical bugs in database and backup tools. These just happened to be some of the top bugs for that particular time period - it's not like Apple or OS/X makes a regular appearance in the SANS Top 20 lists or in the ISC Handler's Diary.
I couldn't identify any links in the SANS or ISC writeups that pointed to bogus spyware scanners or hacked Mac discussion boards - maybe you can point those out to me. (I might've missed something, but all I could see were links to Apple, iDefense, and SecureSec.)
I have to ask this, just who is SANS, anyway? We get tons of alarmist reports from them, but nobody ever checks the source. [...] Does anyone have any more information?
The story comes from a SANS ISC Handler's Diary entry from a few days ago. The Handler's Diary is basically a security blog maintained by the volunteers manning the ISC (Internet Storm Center), and the content varies from day to day. It may contain information about new exploits, workarounds, upcoming patches, requests for data on unusual/suspicious network activity, detailed analysis of malware distribution techniques, etc. Or on slower days it might contain random tidbits on something that a handler found curious/interesting, reminders about good security practice, a compendium of links to various tools that a handler has found useful, etc.
The Handler's Diary is part of my "morning coffee reading" sites. I've been reading it for years, and wouldn't say it's alarmist. I'll note, however, that/. submissions occasionally overinflate or misinterpret articles. Purely hypothetical example might be a simple article that basically says "hmmmm, curious how there's a flurry of new hurricane-relief-related domain registrations, especially given the large number of fraud sites that popped up within 24 hours of Katrina...btw, have you talked with your (l)users lately about fraudulent sites and being careful with their donations?", which somehow on/. becomes "article shows how to predict what forms future malware will take".
For a more interesting/useful example of what the Handler's Diary can sometimes offer up, there's gems like Tom Liston's "Follow the Bouncing Malware" articles:
Back to your main question, SANS has a for-profit side offering security training and certification, and a free side which provides articles, papers, and assorted trend-tracking information that might be of interest if you're into network security. Since Wiki is a bit light on info, consider reading About SANS and About the Internet Storm Center. As to whether it's sensationalistic/alarmist/whatever, all I can suggest is to read back through the last month or two of Handler's Diary articles and see if they sound like fud/fear-mongering or potentially useful info.
The "youtube" of Pr0n would be your penis, sir. Try googling first, and if you still don't see it just start browsing around sites near your inner thighs.
40-ton, computer controlled stage with 17 elevators and the cast of 55
My second thought was, "Hmmm. I wonder if they use MSWindows, on a wireless network?" It might be worth going to see after all.
A mysterious person haunts a theater, wreaking havoc on a musical production, causing mysterious equipment malfunctions that threaten to derail the performance. Thus was the storyline for "The Phantom of the Internet Explorer" born...
(An earlier draft based around exploits in a 3rd-party browser called Opera was tossed out because marketing didn't think the show's title was catchy enough.)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see why these would be particularly opposed - aren't they they're both about getting screwed in as many different ways as possible...? :-P
"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.
"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"
"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"
"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
If you check the bottom of the MSN article, you'll see that it was hacked out by none other than our favorite random-babble-generator, John Dvorak.
Next, Brin and Cuban agree that all copyright issues will be settled by best-of-7 tournaments between their respective teams. This proves to be too time consuming, so they expedite the process by substituting one-on-one NBA Live 07 matches using virtual versions of their respective teams.
The first match goes poorly, with Cuban accusing Brin of redirecting 90% of Google's computers to run a "hoop-bot" to improve his team's shooting accuracy. To ensure fairness, future matches are broadcast live on G4 TV. This proves to be an instant hit, capturing 100% attention from both of G4's viewers. A year later, Electronic Arts introduces "Madden Meta-NBA 08", where players control either a virtual Brin or virtual Cuban playing simulated NBA Live matches, available exclusively on the new SonySoft XStation720.
The game becomes an instant hit, and six months later Hollywood commissions a movie of the game of the company owners playing sports games of teams fighting for ...errr... for something or other, frankly we've forgotten by now. Probably a woman. Or a cat. Maybe an orphanage. Screw it, we'll go with an orphan cat-woman. Uwe Bolle will direct.
I suspect this depends on how impressive your pointer is...
Cheers, kaan - yep, I see the note Bev added to BBV. Hopefully someone with mod points can bump your reply up. :-)
Appreciate the thought and effort, kaan, but folks are still in the position of accepting one stranger's (your) word to confirm another stranger's (Gottesser's) claim that a site we can't directly verify (blackbox1.org) is truly being run by BBV.
If someone from BBV happens to be monitoring /. - a stronger confirmation might be if there were an announcement on the blackboxvoting.org homepage by Bev stating that the /. story is accurate, and containing links to the files on blackbox1.org (to further confirm that the files are known to BBV). Bonus points if the confirmation notice on BBV contains checksums for the files on blackbox1.org, so that people can feel more confident that whatever they've downloaded matches the files that BBV uploaded to blackbox1.org. (Basic idea being that a blackhat trying to alter the downloads would have to take over both the main BBV website and blackbox1.org, otherwise the downloads and checksums wouldn't match.)
NTP just thought the time seemed right.
An excellent question. Perhaps we should ask Mark Inglis for an opinion? (He's the double amputee who climbed Everest earlier this year - some may remember his name from the controversy surrounding the death of another Everest climber - David Sharp.)
After that, maybe we could check with Erik Weihenmayer for his thoughts on handicapped access to climbing stores? (First blind person to summit Everest back in 2001.)
Not trying to bust your chops or anything - your question is valid and very apropos for a topic involving handicapped accessability. (Perhaps even more apropos than you expected. ;-)
I take it you've never driven in Boston during rush hour? :-)
So basically we get to choose between logical consistency and /. editors?
Next PC vs Mac commercial, the Apple version:
PC is wearing a "boy in the plastic bubble" suit, wandering around with a bottle of Formula 409, obsessively wiping down everything he sees. Mac casually strolls up from behind and taps PC on the shoulder of his bubble suit. PC shrieks and starts spraying and wiping the suit. Mac asks what's up, PC starts babbling "Viruses...viruses are everywhere. Anything I touch might kill me. Never clean enough...never...clean...enough". Mac sadly shakes his head and wanders off.
Next PC vs Mac commercial, the Microsoft version:
Mac walks over to PC and offers to let PC listen to Mac's iPod. PC puts on the headset, starts tapping his feet and snapping his fingers, then suddenly flops onto his back, goes into convulsions, and dies. Mac slinks off the stage, looking embarassed and guilty. James Earl Jones voiceover grimly intones "iPods kill - buy a Zune".
Just join our new subscription service, NetFux. Our online site allows you to chose from a vast array of first- and second-run girlfriends, and we have a growing selection of indy and foreign options as well. Prioritize your choices in our easy-to-use queueing system, and as each selection becomes available we'll ship her to you overnight. Date your choice as long as you like and as often as you like. When you're finished, send her back in the prepaid shipping container, and we'll promptly ship you the next selection in your queue. When you return a choice, you'll also be given the option to rate her on a Tivo®-inspired "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" basis. Over time, our patented algorithms will work out your preferences, and will start making recommendations for future selections.
Note: The basic service only provides for a single selection to be "checked out" at any given time. A premium "3 At A Time" service is available for high-volume customers for a modest increase in the subscription price.
Note: NetFux reserves the right to delay shipments or terminate your account if we determine that you are abusing the service. Determination of "abuse" is at our sole discretion and may include (but is not limited to) returning products in poor condition, excessive returns, or reading SlashDot.
Note: Avoid covering up the airholes on the return shipping container - the necrophylia market is much smaller than many people believe, and additions to this section of our service must be carefully controlled.
Note: No, senator, for the last time - we do not have a "children's section".
Yes, dad, the 54G can do logging. Actually that's probably better than the silly keylogger Judy and I have been using against you and mom for the past year. (BTW, having 'g0d' as your admin password is really lame - we didn't even need the keylogger to figure that out. :P I'll walk you through the firmware update after I get home from band practice.
Your loving son, Jack
P.S. Do not let Judy do the install - she's bound to get the interface names reversed and broadcast the log files to the universe. (If you don't believe me, ask her why that botnet attacked our computer last fall. I told her the target IP was the first param, not the second one, but did Little Miss 31337 listen to me? Of course not.)
I dare say that whacking just the wife would be sufficient to put a stop to her cheating. Not to mention cheaper.
(Unless you have a 2-for-1 coupon from the local mob - no sense letting a freebie go to waste.)
Fair enough - I'm not familiar with their product, but with the first three pages of Google searches essentially just regurgitating press releases from the company I'm more than willing to accept that the only source touting this software is the company itself.
Alas, the dynamic nature of the web strikes again. :-) Although I suppose that's actually "A Good Thing" if the discussion board was compromised.
Hehe, totally agree about the legions of 'experts' out there. :-) And I think that actually makes it difficult to "prove" that the ISC writeups are worth listening to. If you google for handler Jim Clausing, you'll see that he's been in IT admin and security for over 20 years, but of course there's plenty of counterexamples of people who've spent decades in the computer industry without having a clue. George Bakos, another handler, is the senior security expert at Dartmouth College's Institute for Security, but people can hold academic posts without having practical, real-world experience. Lenny Zeltser is the Information Security Practice Leader at Gemini Systems and teaches a course on analyzing malicious software, but if you don't know anything about Gemini and haven't taken the course you still don't know if he's an expert or a poser. Marcus Sachs is Deputy Director of DHS's Cyber Security R&D Center, has co-authored several books on security, and spoken at Black Hat, but ... well, again, those are just positions and words, and you probably don't want to buy/read one of those books just to decide whether you might trust a web site. (There's about 40 handlers at the ISC, but I won't run through each because it still boils down to the same thing - a bogus guru can have paper/web credentials that, on the surface, look as plausible as those of a real expert.)
So I think the best I can give you is the "proof is in the pudding" approach. Read a month or two of the Handler's Diary entries. See if you believe that the articles are relevant and accurate. See if there's any major incidents that are not mentioned. (After all, if we really wanted a blog that missed major bugs while misreporting/overhyping other bugs, well, we're both already reading Slashdot. ;-) Ask yourself if this is the work of a bunch of punters, or if this is a credible source of security info. Obviously I have my opinion regarding the site, but hey, that's just me - what I find interesting and informative might well be boring and/or irrelevant to another person. (For instance, someone who deals exclusively with OS/X systems might find all the entries on Windows, Unix, Cisco, etc to effectively be "noise". Doesn't mean the articles are wrong or badly-written, just that 99% of them are going to be irrelevant.)
Okay, that was from their Spring 2006 Top 20 Vulnerabilities press release. The actual quote regarding Mac OS/X was:
For context, this press release came out around the time of Apple's Security Update 2006-001, which included fixes for multiple remote execution exploits in multiple applications. Between Apple's own info and the Handler's Diary regarding the patches, I wouldn't exactly say that the writeup had "no supporting evidence".
Keep in mind that SANS wasn't impugning Apple's overall security, just the fan-boy attitude that Macs are somehow bullet-proof. If you read the Handler's Diary regularly you'd see similar slapdowns for fan-boys of all stripes - Linux, Firefox, whatever. Nothing is magically secure, and it's hubris to believe otherwise. In late Feb/early March, it just happened to be Apple's turn to face up to some serious security bugs. (Me, I've been running various flavors of Linux since the SLS days - I've long accepted the fact that my favorite OS and its applications are far from perfect. ;-)
I might also note that the same SANS press release devoted space to multiple slams against Microsoft products, ongoing vulnerabilities in Firefox and Mozilla, and critical bugs in database and backup tools. These just happened to be some of the top bugs for that particular time period - it's not like Apple or OS/X makes a regular appearance in the SANS Top 20 lists or in the ISC Handler's Diary.
I couldn't identify any links in the SANS or ISC writeups that pointed to bogus spyware scanners or hacked Mac discussion boards - maybe you can point those out to me. (I might've missed something, but all I could see were links to Apple, iDefense, and SecureSec.)
The story comes from a SANS ISC Handler's Diary entry from a few days ago. The Handler's Diary is basically a security blog maintained by the volunteers manning the ISC (Internet Storm Center), and the content varies from day to day. It may contain information about new exploits, workarounds, upcoming patches, requests for data on unusual/suspicious network activity, detailed analysis of malware distribution techniques, etc. Or on slower days it might contain random tidbits on something that a handler found curious/interesting, reminders about good security practice, a compendium of links to various tools that a handler has found useful, etc.
The Handler's Diary is part of my "morning coffee reading" sites. I've been reading it for years, and wouldn't say it's alarmist. I'll note, however, that /. submissions occasionally overinflate or misinterpret articles. Purely hypothetical example might be a simple article that basically says "hmmmm, curious how there's a flurry of new hurricane-relief-related domain registrations, especially given the large number of fraud sites that popped up within 24 hours of Katrina...btw, have you talked with your (l)users lately about fraudulent sites and being careful with their donations?", which somehow on /. becomes "article shows how to predict what forms future malware will take".
For a more interesting/useful example of what the Handler's Diary can sometimes offer up, there's gems like Tom Liston's "Follow the Bouncing Malware" articles:
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- ...
- Part IX
Back to your main question, SANS has a for-profit side offering security training and certification, and a free side which provides articles, papers, and assorted trend-tracking information that might be of interest if you're into network security. Since Wiki is a bit light on info, consider reading About SANS and About the Internet Storm Center. As to whether it's sensationalistic/alarmist/whatever, all I can suggest is to read back through the last month or two of Handler's Diary articles and see if they sound like fud/fear-mongering or potentially useful info.According to Nintendo's Company History, the games produced in 1889 apparently looked a whole lot like Japanese playing cards.
(I freely admit that I initially scoffed at the '116+ years' history for exactly the same reason that you did.)
Personally, I find coffee is more effective when applied to the other end of the gastrointestinal tract, but to each their own. ;-)
The "youtube" of Pr0n would be your penis, sir. Try googling first, and if you still don't see it just start browsing around sites near your inner thighs.
Without GNU/GPL/FSF/etc would there even be a credible OSS solution for the business world to consider?
A mysterious person haunts a theater, wreaking havoc on a musical production, causing mysterious equipment malfunctions that threaten to derail the performance. Thus was the storyline for "The Phantom of the Internet Explorer" born...
(An earlier draft based around exploits in a 3rd-party browser called Opera was tossed out because marketing didn't think the show's title was catchy enough.)
They're what our Boy Scoutses sleepses in.