Slashdot should surely know the difference between getting "hacked" and unintentionally downloading and executing a trojan horse.
I'm not sure the difference is significant, outside of playing post-disaster blame games... in one case, the software in your computer got tricked; in the other case, the software in your skull got tricked, but either way you're equally screwed.
You should also question if giving these criminals money doesn't also indirectly make YOU a criminal
That's actually a good question -- what does the law say about this situation?
Another (not so) fun scenario: if Al Quaeda has kidnapped your children, and you pay a $100,000 ransom to get your children back, can you now be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a terrorist organization?
I feel bad for the victims of these vile bastards, but at the same time I think that if that doesn't get them into the habit of regularly backing up their files, then NOTHING will.
I was thinking this was an ingenious technique for educating the public on how to use BitCoin to pay for things. I think BitCoin has finally found its "killer app"...:^/
Posting in the damn NYT that the hackers are true to their word assures that they have credibility, and just torpedoes the strategy above.
Journalism is about reporting what actually happened. Deliberately misrepresenting what happened, in order to game your readers, OTOH, is not journalism, it's propaganda.
(Obligatory snarky comments about the New York Times' behavior during the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq can now be posted below)
The Mac in theory is not that much less hackable, but an attacker (a) will generally not be able to encrypt all the files in the system, only ones for that user and (b) the user will simply be able to go back through the TM backup and recover un-encrypted files.
I agree that Time Machine is great, but what is going to stop the Mac port of CryptoWall (or whatever it will be called) from encrypting your Time Machine volume as well as everything else?
Surely that will be the first thing they think of (or if they aren't so bright, the second thing they think of, after the first round of Mac victims just laugh at them and restore from backup).
Apparently listening to the world's scientists and acknowledging reality is now a "radical position".
Pretending that all is well with the climate, and that our only problem is that our entire scientific community is delusional, OTOH -- that's the reasonable and moderate position.
This right here though is kind of hard to ignore, since we know the CIA has never told the truth to the American people about anything unless congress speciifcally drags it out of them or there is a leak....so....I think its safe to assume that none of these incidents were them, and in fact, they can't rule any out....and even the fact that they are commenting on this strongly implies a coverup.
You realize, of course, that for anyone following your logic, the CIA can get them to believe whatever the CIA wants them to believe, simply by stating the opposite.
If you really don't trust the CIA to tell the truth (and I don't blame you for that), the rational response is to ignore anything the CIA says, since there is no way to tell whether it's true or not. Always believing the opposite of what they say is just as bad as always believing what they say.
. That said, I don't understand how Sony is so brazen as to assume that they can just call up the White House, ask for help, and suddenly Apple is going to capitulate to their demands. Their line of thinking goes in this direction for a reason.
Indeed. In this case, the reason is that Obama has said publicly several times that he wished Sony had come to him for help before canceling the release of the movie. This is just Sony taking Obama up on his offer.
Companies should be free to hire cyber mercenaries to decimate their attackers. Maybe that's what's going on here? Or maybe they're getting a little US Mil support.
I have this sinking suspicion that this could be the common state of affairs for the Internet's forseeable future -- various unknown parties constantly breaking various things on the Internet, with the rest of us never really figuring out who is doing what to whom, or why.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a global game of Core War, being played on everyone's servers, forever.:P
Is this ape going to get a job? Or will it still remain effectively a sub-human in a different type of cage?
It looks like not much really changed here...
It looks like what will change is that the orangutan will live in a wildlife sanctuary rather than in a zoo.
Whether that is significant or not depends on the difference in quality-of-life (for an orangutan) between living in a cage (or small zoo enclosure) vs living in a larger outdoor environment. I'd imagine that the orangutan's quality of life will improve significantly, but that's only a layman's guess since I don't claim any expertise on orangutans. I suppose the test would be to give the orangutan the option of either lifestyle, and see which one she seems to prefer.
I'm not sure about how that was decided, but I will note that an older definition of the word was "A temporary bed made from [straw] bedding arranged on the floor, especially for a child". Perhaps they envisioned the wooden frames as temporary beds for products to rest on?
Free transportation fuel is going to make the line of customers less steady?
The line of customers to the $50 battery-swap option will definitely become less steady, yes. Unless you think that there aren't any people who, given the option, would choose to keep the $50 rather than spend it? Granted, these are Tesla drivers we're talking about here, but still;^)
NK GDP: (2011) 12.4Bn USD. That's *less* than the annual CAFCASS budget. That's right, a non-departmental Government agency in England has a larger budget than the total output of an entire fucking country.
Okay... next question is: how much would it cost to hire the necessary people to do what was done to Sony? I'm guessing that would be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly up to a million?
Given the amount of money North Korea spends on nuclear weapons development, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't or couldn't spend a relatively small amount on this.
I can't quite see why this is being made out to be such a scandal. So she asked a colleague if a black guy might be interested in films starring black characters. Okay, it's a bit naive, but scandalous? Really?
It's not like she said anything insensitive to Obama; she merely asked a colleague for advice about how to act appropriately. I'd think that recognizing your ignorance in advance and correcting it would be preferable to ignoring it and then blurting out something stupid/embarrassing to the POTUS.
I'm probably missing some critical detail, but to me it seems like the only thing she's guilty of is not having enough experience interacting with black people in a social context. That's a weakness, to be sure, but if it's a sin then it's a sin that a lot of other people are also guilty of. I think this is a pretty good example of why people are so reluctant to enter any discussion about race -- anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
Because... that doesn't happen at some real gas stations?
Of course, real gas stations don't give away free gas to customers who are willing to wait half an hour. If they did, that might cut down considerably on the number of people who were willing to pay $50 to fill up their tank in 3 minutes, and make the "steady line of customers" scenario less likely.
I ask the same question again, why put this stuff online at all? Why are critical systems for infrastructure online? Why is anything of any importance for our government and nation available to the general Internet?
Because that's how the information gets from (wherever it is stored) to (the people who need to access it). The Internet is popular for a reason, and that reason is that it helps people get things done quickly and cheaply.
The alternative, of course, is to have the information and the people physically co-located, so that they can access the information only via an isolated network (or by physically sitting at the computer the information is stored on).
However, the benefits of remote access are so great that in many cases it's seen as being worth the risk of allowing it. Whether or not that assessment is correct or not depends on an estimate of how secure the networks are, but also on an estimate of how aggressive, competent, and numerous any hostile intruders will be. Clearly it's possible to get both of those estimates wrong, but I'm not sure that a knee-jerk response of "pull all the Ethernet cables and return to the 1950s" is going to be a practical solution either, as doing so would likely cause as much disruption as an actual attack.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but probably one good practice would be a lot more red-teaming -- i.e. if your network is vulnerable to intrusion, it's much better to learn how a friendly intruder got in (by asking him) and fix the hole than to pick up the pieces after a hostile intruder nuked your network.
Are you a paid shill for Uber, or just a disgusting human being?
Ad hominem attacks are tedious, so for the sake of argument let's take it as given that I'm both. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll ask again: how are Uber's high prices ripping anyone off? Does anyone actually pay those prices? If so, why? Is Uber pointing a gun to their heads?
I've always kind of wanted a bank account with built-in credit-card functionality. No overdraft fees possible, rather you pay credit-card style interest when your balance is negative, and earn bank-style interest when your balance is positive.
Of course, this is unlikely to be offered for just that reason... to the banks, overdraft fees are a profit center:(
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot should surely know the difference between getting "hacked" and unintentionally downloading and executing a trojan horse.
I'm not sure the difference is significant, outside of playing post-disaster blame games... in one case, the software in your computer got tricked; in the other case, the software in your skull got tricked, but either way you're equally screwed.
You should also question if giving these criminals money doesn't also indirectly make YOU a criminal
That's actually a good question -- what does the law say about this situation?
Another (not so) fun scenario: if Al Quaeda has kidnapped your children, and you pay a $100,000 ransom to get your children back, can you now be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a terrorist organization?
I feel bad for the victims of these vile bastards, but at the same time I think that if that doesn't get them into the habit of regularly backing up their files, then NOTHING will.
I was thinking this was an ingenious technique for educating the public on how to use BitCoin to pay for things. I think BitCoin has finally found its "killer app"... :^/
Posting in the damn NYT that the hackers are true to their word assures that they have credibility, and just torpedoes the strategy above.
Journalism is about reporting what actually happened. Deliberately misrepresenting what happened, in order to game your readers, OTOH, is not journalism, it's propaganda.
(Obligatory snarky comments about the New York Times' behavior during the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq can now be posted below)
The Mac in theory is not that much less hackable, but an attacker (a) will generally not be able to encrypt all the files in the system, only ones for that user and (b) the user will simply be able to go back through the TM backup and recover un-encrypted files.
I agree that Time Machine is great, but what is going to stop the Mac port of CryptoWall (or whatever it will be called) from encrypting your Time Machine volume as well as everything else?
Surely that will be the first thing they think of (or if they aren't so bright, the second thing they think of, after the first round of Mac victims just laugh at them and restore from backup).
You use *an* SSD.
He uses an solid state disks?
Apparently listening to the world's scientists and acknowledging reality is now a "radical position".
Pretending that all is well with the climate, and that our only problem is that our entire scientific community is delusional, OTOH -- that's the reasonable and moderate position.
This right here though is kind of hard to ignore, since we know the CIA has never told the truth to the American people about anything unless congress speciifcally drags it out of them or there is a leak....so....I think its safe to assume that none of these incidents were them, and in fact, they can't rule any out....and even the fact that they are commenting on this strongly implies a coverup.
You realize, of course, that for anyone following your logic, the CIA can get them to believe whatever the CIA wants them to believe, simply by stating the opposite.
If you really don't trust the CIA to tell the truth (and I don't blame you for that), the rational response is to ignore anything the CIA says, since there is no way to tell whether it's true or not. Always believing the opposite of what they say is just as bad as always believing what they say.
clearly somebody must think some aspect of it is legit, or there wouldn't be so many shows about it.
TV shows are selected based on legitimacy. They're selected based on whether or not they are likely to get people to watch advertisements.
Leave it to Sony to make money from having crappy IT security...
Sony is a long, long, long way from breaking even on this thing.
. That said, I don't understand how Sony is so brazen as to assume that they can just call up the White House, ask for help, and suddenly Apple is going to capitulate to their demands. Their line of thinking goes in this direction for a reason.
Indeed. In this case, the reason is that Obama has said publicly several times that he wished Sony had come to him for help before canceling the release of the movie. This is just Sony taking Obama up on his offer.
Companies should be free to hire cyber mercenaries to decimate their attackers. Maybe that's what's going on here? Or maybe they're getting a little US Mil support.
I have this sinking suspicion that this could be the common state of affairs for the Internet's forseeable future -- various unknown parties constantly breaking various things on the Internet, with the rest of us never really figuring out who is doing what to whom, or why.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a global game of Core War, being played on everyone's servers, forever. :P
Is this ape going to get a job? Or will it still remain effectively a sub-human in a different type of cage?
It looks like not much really changed here...
It looks like what will change is that the orangutan will live in a wildlife sanctuary rather than in a zoo.
Whether that is significant or not depends on the difference in quality-of-life (for an orangutan) between living in a cage (or small zoo enclosure) vs living in a larger outdoor environment. I'd imagine that the orangutan's quality of life will improve significantly, but that's only a layman's guess since I don't claim any expertise on orangutans. I suppose the test would be to give the orangutan the option of either lifestyle, and see which one she seems to prefer.
. But how did they decide to call it a pallet?
I'm not sure about how that was decided, but I will note that an older definition of the word was "A temporary bed made from [straw] bedding arranged on the floor, especially for a child". Perhaps they envisioned the wooden frames as temporary beds for products to rest on?
Free transportation fuel is going to make the line of customers less steady?
The line of customers to the $50 battery-swap option will definitely become less steady, yes. Unless you think that there aren't any people who, given the option, would choose to keep the $50 rather than spend it? Granted, these are Tesla drivers we're talking about here, but still ;^)
NK GDP: (2011) 12.4Bn USD. That's *less* than the annual CAFCASS budget. That's right, a non-departmental Government agency in England has a larger budget than the total output of an entire fucking country.
Okay... next question is: how much would it cost to hire the necessary people to do what was done to Sony? I'm guessing that would be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly up to a million?
Given the amount of money North Korea spends on nuclear weapons development, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't or couldn't spend a relatively small amount on this.
"Should I ask him if he liked DJANGO?" she wrote
I can't quite see why this is being made out to be such a scandal. So she asked a colleague if a black guy might be interested in films starring black characters. Okay, it's a bit naive, but scandalous? Really?
It's not like she said anything insensitive to Obama; she merely asked a colleague for advice about how to act appropriately. I'd think that recognizing your ignorance in advance and correcting it would be preferable to ignoring it and then blurting out something stupid/embarrassing to the POTUS.
I'm probably missing some critical detail, but to me it seems like the only thing she's guilty of is not having enough experience interacting with black people in a social context. That's a weakness, to be sure, but if it's a sin then it's a sin that a lot of other people are also guilty of. I think this is a pretty good example of why people are so reluctant to enter any discussion about race -- anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
is cyber superpower? I am not buying it. They could have smart people that would make talented hackers.
How hard is it to hire a team of hackers to do the hacking for you? I imagine even North Korea is capable of throwing some money around.
Because ... that doesn't happen at some real gas stations?
Of course, real gas stations don't give away free gas to customers who are willing to wait half an hour. If they did, that might cut down considerably on the number of people who were willing to pay $50 to fill up their tank in 3 minutes, and make the "steady line of customers" scenario less likely.
Apples, oranges.
I ask the same question again, why put this stuff online at all? Why are critical systems for infrastructure online? Why is anything of any importance for our government and nation available to the general Internet?
Because that's how the information gets from (wherever it is stored) to (the people who need to access it). The Internet is popular for a reason, and that reason is that it helps people get things done quickly and cheaply.
The alternative, of course, is to have the information and the people physically co-located, so that they can access the information only via an isolated network (or by physically sitting at the computer the information is stored on).
However, the benefits of remote access are so great that in many cases it's seen as being worth the risk of allowing it. Whether or not that assessment is correct or not depends on an estimate of how secure the networks are, but also on an estimate of how aggressive, competent, and numerous any hostile intruders will be. Clearly it's possible to get both of those estimates wrong, but I'm not sure that a knee-jerk response of "pull all the Ethernet cables and return to the 1950s" is going to be a practical solution either, as doing so would likely cause as much disruption as an actual attack.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but probably one good practice would be a lot more red-teaming -- i.e. if your network is vulnerable to intrusion, it's much better to learn how a friendly intruder got in (by asking him) and fix the hole than to pick up the pieces after a hostile intruder nuked your network.
Isn't the biggest problem for these digital currencies the fact that their can be an infinite number of competing currencies?
If that's their biggest problem, they are in better shape than I thought.
And in the 50s we were going to be driving nuclear powered cars by now.
And indeed, some of us are. If you drive an electric car and live near a nuclear power plant, you might be one of them.
Are you a paid shill for Uber, or just a disgusting human being?
Ad hominem attacks are tedious, so for the sake of argument let's take it as given that I'm both. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll ask again: how are Uber's high prices ripping anyone off? Does anyone actually pay those prices? If so, why? Is Uber pointing a gun to their heads?
Congratulations you've invented the credit card!
I've always kind of wanted a bank account with built-in credit-card functionality. No overdraft fees possible, rather you pay credit-card style interest when your balance is negative, and earn bank-style interest when your balance is positive.
Of course, this is unlikely to be offered for just that reason... to the banks, overdraft fees are a profit center :(
Then whoever designed the algorithm is purposely ripping people off
Nobody is being forced to pay Uber's prices. There are still taxicabs in Sydney, are there not?