This malware code has been detected on the embedded server management firmware.
Firmware != Hardware
It would have been impressive if it was a real hardware virus though e.g. some malicious chip that opens a backdoor on the network cards and allows remote code execution.
What? Both photos are clearly more photoshopped than that, with cut in faces and background to manipulate the viewers into thinking BP has control and is concerned.
I have to disagree. If an OS had good security, just running an executable should not give it permission to disable system configuration and mess with system files. In XP if you had an administrator account (everyone did), even screensavers had full permissions. Yes, I surfed on possibly-malicious sites and opened possibly-malicious executables. After that, trying to open task manager gave me "Permission Denied".
Also, If an OS has a PERFECT security model (which Linux hasn't), everything should be run sandboxed. In such an OS, you shouldn't be afraid of installing potentially malicious software, just like you're not afraid of visiting web pages with a secure web browser.
Seriously, I once attempted to see how long it would take to get a fresh install of XP hijacked on a virtual box. After about one hour of bad IE6 surfing on suspicious sites (would you like to download and run this? yes please) I had one or two pieces of malware installed that had taken over the computer completely, filling the screen with popups and disabling all kinds of system configuration tools.
Use SI-units for crying out loud. This is a scientific context. Not a grocery list. Also so the rest of the 90% of the world population can understand it..
Nope, compression is not part of the contest as the rules state "arbitary binary data" which could be ANY data. Therefore a compression algoritm cannot be used. A compression function basically maps input that are more likely to smaller output at the expense of mapping input that are less likely to larger output. So if your function performs worse than 100% for SOME arbitary binary data, that data breaks the size limit. So the contest is really lame and not related to information technology at all. It's all about finding additional windows to throw data trough. Some "cool suggestions" so far is using your friends list, or creating lots of accounts to transmit data through your username....
How does this support this fact? Do you have a quote from the winner where he states that he only learned this just becouse he was intrested and it was his hobby?
Becouse I can bet my ass that it's the complete oposite. Just becouse you learned all programming by yourself and your school sucked doesn't mean this guys programming education did. First of all, when you're young programmer you're probably a lot more intrested in WHAT you can make the programs do rather than HOW to do it efficiently/quickly. Becouse the later part is what algorhims is all about and what gives you a medal in this contest. A web developer or a functional programmer wouldn't stand a chance here as normal programming only in rare cases involves advanced algoritms like maximum bipartite matchings, maximul flow or other graph related algorithms.
The people who win this competition, usually get special training and/or go to programming camps. They get programming education that are actually challenging which focus on algorithms and not how you compile a working calculator. Programming education that works. I had programming classes here in Sweden and all of them was a huge failure, but that wasn't becouse education programming are bad by itself but becouse it's usually horrible implemented.
Actually he got a bronze with that strategy, but then again he was able to write a better than bruteforce on one or two problems. Possibly thanks to understanding the problem better brute forcing it.
Yeah, tbh I don't understand the deal is with memorization either. You still need to understand the algorithm and how it can be applied to the problem so I wouldn't call it cheating or using irrelevant skills to have a reference material to the common algorithms.
As a contestent in the IOI in Egypt last year I can tell you that the problems you're solving are really, really hard. I estimate that more than 50% of all professional (working) programmers wouldn't be able to solve even one of them. This is becouse this is algoritmic performance programming and not generic functional one.
To make up the problems they usually take one or more generic problems (like maximum flow), then they add an additional twist that makes the implementation non-trivial. So first of all you have to had solved similar problems and know the algorithm. If you don't you might go for the brute force solution that usually gives you 10-30/100 points. However, the brute force solution usually takes a long time to construct, therefore it's all about planning.
You have 6 hours and 3 problems. If you think you can do a problem the "real" way, you better be damn sure, unless you want to waste time on thinking and writing useless code. Usually the problems are constructed so that you are tricked to belive they are much more trivial than they actually are when you analyze them. That got me several times. Spending ~3 hours to construct an algorithm that completed the "testing" test case but failed most/all test cases that gave points.
One guy in our team had a great strategy. He ignored in depth analyzation and started writing a brute forcer as soon as he understood the problem. This way he was guaranteed 10-30 points per problem, and usually when writing a brute forcer, you get to understand the problem so well that you can make improvements or even write the correct solution for it.
I was amazed that a 13 year old earned a gold medal the last year. That means he's probably better on algoritmic programming than 99% of the readers of slashdot.
I wish all contestants this year the best of luck.
Thanks, that looks intresting. I don't read many books on this subject but I could recommend the swedish pirate partys reference list that has many good articles on patents since they want to reform and/or possible abolish patents. About 50% is in english and they provide a original source link at the bottom.
I agree that it's important that the summary is accurate. But even if what you say is correct, the claim that a method of "including additional information for 3rd party programs" could be entitled "invention", is laughable to the least.
Arranging and data in a certain way is better labeled as a standard than an invention, imo. Personally I don't see how this patent or any patent, software or not, overcomes their own disadvantages, in respect of contribution to society. Would microsoft have used this XML format without software patents? Certainly. Would companies keep inventing things without patents? Surely. Industry secrecy is enough to get a competive advantage by investing in R&D. But patents wont get discarded anytime soon, both becouse of the "little inventor that want's to protect his awesome invention" myth, and becouse of industry lobbyists. I wonder why there are so few electric cars on the market. Well the fact that, one of the worlds largest oil companies is sitting on important battery technology patents, is enough to give me some ideas. If you combined the cost of all patent lawsuits and patent trolls that do nothing but trade and license patents, I wonder how much you would end up with.
Software patents, great in theory, but this is what happens in practice.
On the summary itself: Even though I agree, can't the slashdot article writers at least TRY to be objective? Save the sarcastic ranting for the comments section please... Let people make up their own opinion by reporting neutrally on a subject. The actual facts are enough. People don't need flashing signs to tell us this is bad.
The press representative of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, announces that he is filing criminal charges and lodging a lawsuit for defamation in Swedish court against Mr. Tim Kuik of Stichting BREIN in the Netherlands.
This is a response to the blatant and outrageous claims publically made by Mr. Tim Kuik.
Recently, he has claimed in international press that The Pirate Bay operators and Peter Sunde are engaging in criminal so-called DDoS attacks against the web site of Stichting BREIN.
...
- "Today we got information about the hearing after a journalist contacted us. We have sent an angry letter to the district court of Amsterdam about this and we're very certain the court will have to throw the case out the window", says Gottfrid Svartholm.
"None of us live in The Netherlands, operate from there or do even own the site they are suing over. There are so many errors in this lawsuit that it's almost a crime to spend the courts time this way!", says Fredrik Neij.
They were storing and distributing the.torrent files, which was found to be a case of knowingly aiding and abetting copyright infringement...
A torrent file is technically equivalent to a link. Since linking is not distribution it's technically not forbidden. In my opinion, restricting linking is censorship, and I find laws that restrict linking crazy.
They havn't commited any crimes or "illigal behaviour". Unless you're talking about the extemly vague "participation", according to a judge with none to small insight in how the their technology worked, that was biased (according to common sense, he was a member of a copyright organization), in a trial that spawned from an investigation by a cop that quit and got a job at Warner Bros.
TPB is hashmapping files and tracking what hashes diffrent IP addresses downloads. Since they where not publishing, nor distributing, any material, they had no obligation to filter it. Linking is not a crime.
By selling the company they where actually doing the industry a favour, trying to make it more compliant. Two things could happen, it could either transform into something better, or it would be the death of TPB (most likely). Both scenarios are favourable by the industry. But since the distributors rather kill themselves than ever regonizing anything that could spawn out of the pirate community, they choose to sue them some more, kick them while they're laying down.
Not really a smart move by the movie industry. TPB is currently trying to transform into something more cooperative. Probably something that even the movie industry could strike a deal from. Suing would only make this process more difficult, halt it or even prevent it. But that's hardly a suprise as they are arrogant and doesn't hesitate one bit to play the legal card rather then making the slightest effort to adopt to the new digital era.
Thanks to the last trial, Sweden now have a Pirate Party politican in the europeean parlament. I wonder whats next.
Botnet building malware actually use common exploits, that are known and patched. And the reason they are found so quickly is becouse they are used on souch a large scale, to build botnets. Your example has nothing to do with security trough obscurity. The reason botnets exist is becouse people leave their computers turned on and unpatched.
Maybe in theory, but in the real world security trough obscurity works, even if you like it or not. It works in the sense that it makes potential exploits harder to find. Have you ever tried reverse engineering? Digging trough ASM code looking for potential exploits IS a lot harder when you don't have the source code. This is a fact.
Software with more potential explotits is not automatically less secure. You got to take the probability that they will be found into account. And other factors.
I can imagine a newspaper pulling in money online by having free readers that can only read the body of news articles that are more than 30m-1hr old or possibly only short summaries of articles newer. And then having "premium subscribers" that pay a small fee to be able to read the news articles instantly with full coverage and analysis.
Possibly also having other premium features like ad free pages etc. Kinda like slashdot but more restricted.
As I said to the other person and was modded troll for some reason (newb mods that use - modifiers as a method of disagreeing):
Zero gravity means no mass acceleration. And using that term in any other situation is simply incorrect. It's like calling your computer a hard drive just becouse you can't grasp the technical diffrence.
Saying that this is really zero g when looking in certain reference frames that involves anything in free fall without free fall is bullshit. It's the same as saying "When you're running, it's still completly valid to call it standing still, becouse you are in the same reference frame as everyone else running the same speed as you." There must be implicit conditions that apply when talking about things, or talking would take forever or be extremly confusing. When talking about someone running, you expect him to be moving with a velocity in a reference frame that also involves the big fkn planet he's standing on. The same thing applies to "Zero-g" or "Microgravity". When someone tells you that an apple accelerates with close to 0g, you expect it to be far out in space. When someone tells you that a person is running, you expect him to be moving with a velocity compared to the surface he is standing on. It's implicit. When he suddenly tells you "Ha-ha, I didn't tell you that the apples reference frame only involved itself." would you really say "Oh, why didn't I think of that. Damn you're so smart."
Slashdot Mirror
ROFL I got -1 Disagree moderated. I guess this is an official "welcome to slashdot".
This malware code has been detected on the embedded server management firmware.
Firmware != Hardware It would have been impressive if it was a real hardware virus though e.g. some malicious chip that opens a backdoor on the network cards and allows remote code execution.
What? Both photos are clearly more photoshopped than that, with cut in faces and background to manipulate the viewers into thinking BP has control and is concerned.
I have to disagree. If an OS had good security, just running an executable should not give it permission to disable system configuration and mess with system files. In XP if you had an administrator account (everyone did), even screensavers had full permissions. Yes, I surfed on possibly-malicious sites and opened possibly-malicious executables. After that, trying to open task manager gave me "Permission Denied". Also, If an OS has a PERFECT security model (which Linux hasn't), everything should be run sandboxed. In such an OS, you shouldn't be afraid of installing potentially malicious software, just like you're not afraid of visiting web pages with a secure web browser.
Seriously, I once attempted to see how long it would take to get a fresh install of XP hijacked on a virtual box. After about one hour of bad IE6 surfing on suspicious sites (would you like to download and run this? yes please) I had one or two pieces of malware installed that had taken over the computer completely, filling the screen with popups and disabling all kinds of system configuration tools.
Use SI-units for crying out loud. This is a scientific context. Not a grocery list. Also so the rest of the 90% of the world population can understand it..
Nope, compression is not part of the contest as the rules state "arbitary binary data" which could be ANY data. Therefore a compression algoritm cannot be used. A compression function basically maps input that are more likely to smaller output at the expense of mapping input that are less likely to larger output. So if your function performs worse than 100% for SOME arbitary binary data, that data breaks the size limit. So the contest is really lame and not related to information technology at all. It's all about finding additional windows to throw data trough. Some "cool suggestions" so far is using your friends list, or creating lots of accounts to transmit data through your username....
How does this support this fact? Do you have a quote from the winner where he states that he only learned this just becouse he was intrested and it was his hobby?
Becouse I can bet my ass that it's the complete oposite. Just becouse you learned all programming by yourself and your school sucked doesn't mean this guys programming education did. First of all, when you're young programmer you're probably a lot more intrested in WHAT you can make the programs do rather than HOW to do it efficiently/quickly. Becouse the later part is what algorhims is all about and what gives you a medal in this contest. A web developer or a functional programmer wouldn't stand a chance here as normal programming only in rare cases involves advanced algoritms like maximum bipartite matchings, maximul flow or other graph related algorithms.
The people who win this competition, usually get special training and/or go to programming camps. They get programming education that are actually challenging which focus on algorithms and not how you compile a working calculator. Programming education that works. I had programming classes here in Sweden and all of them was a huge failure, but that wasn't becouse education programming are bad by itself but becouse it's usually horrible implemented.
Actually he got a bronze with that strategy, but then again he was able to write a better than bruteforce on one or two problems. Possibly thanks to understanding the problem better brute forcing it.
Yeah, tbh I don't understand the deal is with memorization either. You still need to understand the algorithm and how it can be applied to the problem so I wouldn't call it cheating or using irrelevant skills to have a reference material to the common algorithms.
As a contestent in the IOI in Egypt last year I can tell you that the problems you're solving are really, really hard. I estimate that more than 50% of all professional (working) programmers wouldn't be able to solve even one of them. This is becouse this is algoritmic performance programming and not generic functional one.
To make up the problems they usually take one or more generic problems (like maximum flow), then they add an additional twist that makes the implementation non-trivial. So first of all you have to had solved similar problems and know the algorithm. If you don't you might go for the brute force solution that usually gives you 10-30/100 points. However, the brute force solution usually takes a long time to construct, therefore it's all about planning.
You have 6 hours and 3 problems. If you think you can do a problem the "real" way, you better be damn sure, unless you want to waste time on thinking and writing useless code. Usually the problems are constructed so that you are tricked to belive they are much more trivial than they actually are when you analyze them. That got me several times. Spending ~3 hours to construct an algorithm that completed the "testing" test case but failed most/all test cases that gave points.
One guy in our team had a great strategy. He ignored in depth analyzation and started writing a brute forcer as soon as he understood the problem. This way he was guaranteed 10-30 points per problem, and usually when writing a brute forcer, you get to understand the problem so well that you can make improvements or even write the correct solution for it.
I was amazed that a 13 year old earned a gold medal the last year. That means he's probably better on algoritmic programming than 99% of the readers of slashdot.
I wish all contestants this year the best of luck.
I think the parent was joking... but I agree completley.
Thanks, that looks intresting. I don't read many books on this subject but I could recommend the swedish pirate partys reference list that has many good articles on patents since they want to reform and/or possible abolish patents. About 50% is in english and they provide a original source link at the bottom.
I agree that it's important that the summary is accurate. But even if what you say is correct, the claim that a method of "including additional information for 3rd party programs" could be entitled "invention", is laughable to the least.
Arranging and data in a certain way is better labeled as a standard than an invention, imo. Personally I don't see how this patent or any patent, software or not, overcomes their own disadvantages, in respect of contribution to society. Would microsoft have used this XML format without software patents? Certainly. Would companies keep inventing things without patents? Surely. Industry secrecy is enough to get a competive advantage by investing in R&D. But patents wont get discarded anytime soon, both becouse of the "little inventor that want's to protect his awesome invention" myth, and becouse of industry lobbyists. I wonder why there are so few electric cars on the market. Well the fact that, one of the worlds largest oil companies is sitting on important battery technology patents, is enough to give me some ideas. If you combined the cost of all patent lawsuits and patent trolls that do nothing but trade and license patents, I wonder how much you would end up with.
to get the idea that this is bad. I'm tired.
Software patents, great in theory, but this is what happens in practice.
On the summary itself: Even though I agree, can't the slashdot article writers at least TRY to be objective? Save the sarcastic ranting for the comments section please... Let people make up their own opinion by reporting neutrally on a subject. The actual facts are enough. People don't need flashing signs to tell us this is bad.
The press representative of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, announces that he is filing criminal charges and lodging a lawsuit for defamation in Swedish court against Mr. Tim Kuik of Stichting BREIN in the Netherlands. This is a response to the blatant and outrageous claims publically made by Mr. Tim Kuik. Recently, he has claimed in international press that The Pirate Bay operators and Peter Sunde are engaging in criminal so-called DDoS attacks against the web site of Stichting BREIN.
...
- "Today we got information about the hearing after a journalist contacted us. We have sent an angry letter to the district court of Amsterdam about this and we're very certain the court will have to throw the case out the window", says Gottfrid Svartholm. "None of us live in The Netherlands, operate from there or do even own the site they are suing over. There are so many errors in this lawsuit that it's almost a crime to spend the courts time this way!", says Fredrik Neij.
The Source...
TPB should have no problem filing an appeal that overturns it. But they haven't.
Actually they have. They will be able to appeal it twice, and we're currently waiting for the second trial.
so far nobody has made an argument as to why the reasoning behind the verdict is wrong
There has been a lot of arguments against the verdict. One example is that they are just as guilty to "accessory to crime against copyright law" as google is.
They were storing and distributing the .torrent files, which was found to be a case of knowingly aiding and abetting copyright infringement...
A torrent file is technically equivalent to a link. Since linking is not distribution it's technically not forbidden. In my opinion, restricting linking is censorship, and I find laws that restrict linking crazy.
They havn't commited any crimes or "illigal behaviour". Unless you're talking about the extemly vague "participation", according to a judge with none to small insight in how the their technology worked, that was biased (according to common sense, he was a member of a copyright organization), in a trial that spawned from an investigation by a cop that quit and got a job at Warner Bros.
TPB is hashmapping files and tracking what hashes diffrent IP addresses downloads. Since they where not publishing, nor distributing, any material, they had no obligation to filter it. Linking is not a crime.
By selling the company they where actually doing the industry a favour, trying to make it more compliant. Two things could happen, it could either transform into something better, or it would be the death of TPB (most likely). Both scenarios are favourable by the industry. But since the distributors rather kill themselves than ever regonizing anything that could spawn out of the pirate community, they choose to sue them some more, kick them while they're laying down.
Not really a smart move by the movie industry. TPB is currently trying to transform into something more cooperative. Probably something that even the movie industry could strike a deal from. Suing would only make this process more difficult, halt it or even prevent it. But that's hardly a suprise as they are arrogant and doesn't hesitate one bit to play the legal card rather then making the slightest effort to adopt to the new digital era. Thanks to the last trial, Sweden now have a Pirate Party politican in the europeean parlament. I wonder whats next.
Botnet building malware actually use common exploits, that are known and patched. And the reason they are found so quickly is becouse they are used on souch a large scale, to build botnets. Your example has nothing to do with security trough obscurity. The reason botnets exist is becouse people leave their computers turned on and unpatched.
Maybe in theory, but in the real world security trough obscurity works, even if you like it or not. It works in the sense that it makes potential exploits harder to find. Have you ever tried reverse engineering? Digging trough ASM code looking for potential exploits IS a lot harder when you don't have the source code. This is a fact.
Software with more potential explotits is not automatically less secure. You got to take the probability that they will be found into account. And other factors.
Wrong. It could also be UTF8 which is a Unicode encoding.
I can imagine a newspaper pulling in money online by having free readers that can only read the body of news articles that are more than 30m-1hr old or possibly only short summaries of articles newer. And then having "premium subscribers" that pay a small fee to be able to read the news articles instantly with full coverage and analysis.
Possibly also having other premium features like ad free pages etc. Kinda like slashdot but more restricted.
Where are the weakness in this business model?
As I said to the other person and was modded troll for some reason (newb mods that use - modifiers as a method of disagreeing):
Zero gravity means no mass acceleration. And using that term in any other situation is simply incorrect. It's like calling your computer a hard drive just becouse you can't grasp the technical diffrence.
Saying that this is really zero g when looking in certain reference frames that involves anything in free fall without free fall is bullshit. It's the same as saying "When you're running, it's still completly valid to call it standing still, becouse you are in the same reference frame as everyone else running the same speed as you." There must be implicit conditions that apply when talking about things, or talking would take forever or be extremly confusing. When talking about someone running, you expect him to be moving with a velocity in a reference frame that also involves the big fkn planet he's standing on. The same thing applies to "Zero-g" or "Microgravity". When someone tells you that an apple accelerates with close to 0g, you expect it to be far out in space. When someone tells you that a person is running, you expect him to be moving with a velocity compared to the surface he is standing on. It's implicit. When he suddenly tells you "Ha-ha, I didn't tell you that the apples reference frame only involved itself." would you really say "Oh, why didn't I think of that. Damn you're so smart."