That just depends on who you ask, doesn't it? I'm sure many fundamental Christians would agree with you but I think think some radical Islamist might twist that as "One of the many lies upon which most of the infadels belief system is based".
I mean, a sensationalist headline is a sensationalist headline, but I don't think they were -entirely- in the wrong for using it in the headline. It was the easiest way to convey the idea (Asexual reproduction) without confusing it with what everyone would think of if they had simply said Asexual reproduction (Growing 2 of everything and then splitting).
No, No... And well sort of, the submission was done using a series of LightBrights using the colours as different values in Hexadecimal, taken from a picture with an Android Phone - and then ran through an image processor to turn those light values into Hex. Then some open source Hex to String converter for the submission - so while the duplicate sentences might have been one of the other 271 bugs they found in the Android phone, there's a lot of other places this bug might have taken place.
Street crime is a loose term for criminal offences taking place in public places. It has commonly been used for the term mugging around here.
There is a great distinction in Cyber Crime - like they mention phishing. If I had gone door to door pretending to be with your bank and requested any of your credit cards, you'd either be considered an idiot and/or I could be charged with some form of fraud. Fraud is it's own kind of Crime - it has it's own laws regarding it, why can't Cyber stuff be the same?
I get what you're trying to say, people don't seem to take "Cyber Crime" as serious as regular crime, but they are very different, in many ways, and segregation already exists in other forms of Law.
No - shared folders and services do not necessarily mean intra-client communications - often times your router is still the mid point in between those kinds of transactions and if you are wired in - you won't be able to sniff out the traffic specifically going between the computer and the router.
This doesn't affect wired situations - unless you preform some kind of Man in the Middle attack on the router/end user - probably by some method of ARP poisoning. Otherwise, there's no way for you to listen in and grab the cookie, the traffic between facebook and the user does not go through your nic card at any point - which is needed for this tool to work.
So it really only works for Wireless - and you need that winpcap set up and installed for it to work. It basically frees your nic to capture any traffic that comes across the antenna - and so people have set up tools to log this in a silent mode. Cain, Wireshark, there's a whole bunch of tools that have had the ability to log this info before, all that Firesheep really does is strip the info from the useless info - and paste it in the browser for you.
Now, if you can show me Firesheep working on a wired network - I'll take back everything I said, but from my understanding of networking and how Firesheep works, it theoretically shouldn't be possible without creating a MITM situation.
In order to get things fixed, we need asshats like Butler pointing at the wide open door and shouting to the plebes, "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!".
I admire that kind of Ass-hat. Often times people don't get the message until it affects them negatively.
I've been that asshat myself - doing some questionable maneuvers to warn regular users of their insecure habits. For me, it's not to show off what I can do and it's not about being a self righteous do-good-er either.
It's a "I am ticked off at the way people carelessly handle this crap" - If I act too kind it will go ignored, as if it were charity. If I do something malicious I could end up in jail. How about that nice happy medium where I can piss someone off enough to get them to change their habits, but not so much where I could be arrested.
Well now I think you both aren't putting analogies to good use. In Pojut's case, it's not a matter of life or death so it seems drastically exagerated. In your case Zeek, you have understated that the tools Primary focus is to preform an act which without permission is considered illegal.
It's easiest NOT to analogize it - everyone here can understand what the tool does, and what its focus is. The tool is designed to give access to another person's web account via insecure wireless transmissions.
Using that to test your own security is like a lot like a white hat exposing vulnerabilities. The problem is that this vulnerability is public and made incredibly easy. Google accidentally (or so they claim) exploited this vulnerability, and are under a lot of flak for it.
So - to wrap this up with a good car analogy, since your guys' analogies have failed,
It's like giving someone a fueled up Google car capable of sniffing Wifi for usernames and passwords.
What country is this? I've spent about 5 minutes furiously googling odd terms and I haven't come up with anything, though Wikipedia mentions a lot of parties that support this kind of notion.
And I don't see how can you have meaningful data if you removed all the information that would enable you to recreate the individual sample.
You can still segregrate them into groups even if you can't identify the individual sample - which is essentially what happens already. Data miners go and determine "People who like Penny Arcade also like Video games - so lets put an Ad for Fable 3 up on the main page" - whether that is Penny-Arcade's decision to get more click-revenue or whether they just let an adserver handle that obvious piece of info is irrelevant, you are still using relevant data with meaning to market to a large group of people instead of an individual.
Now - this article brings up the idea of whether I can retain my anonymity online. If it were up to me to run this experiment, I would do exactly as you said, some advanced behaviour analysis technique. First we'll start off here: I'm on Slashdot. You have an alias, and you have a few of my posts. You can tell that they tend get a little long winded sometimes, easily getting to 3 or more paragraphs if there isn't an immediate punchline in sight, or responding to a question. You also get what stories I usually respond to - I often don't have much to say about Linux releases, but I am often avid in the gaming area.
So you go a lot of the other sites that you can infer slashdotters might frequent. All the tech news sites, and then those towards my posting habits, a lot of gaming sites, yadda yadda yadda. First thing you are looking for is similar aliases, then you cross-refer the posts on different sites to see the similarities. How many Monkeedudes are there on the Gamespy forums? Do any of them make really long posts? He's mentioned on Slashdot that he is Canadian - do any of the other sites have public profile info that say he's Canadian?
And so on and so forth. This is all automated - so it's much quicker than a person trying to build this file. After it's all built, a human can quickly skim the data and knock off any outliers that might have seemed similar to the computer.
Now - have I ever mentioned my name anywhere in all the data collected? My age? My city? Can you infer my age given the relative maturity of my posts - and my registered dates and other posts online? Can you infer my city based on my jokes about the weather around here? How hard would it be to nail me to a Facebook page with various likes and dislikes - if that information were available to you (either publicly or for sale?).
It's a scary world we live in, I don't know if any such systems exist, but I see it as definately technically feasible. It also seems like a great product I could market and make lots of money off of it - but I definately don't believe in progressing that side of the internet.
Now, is there any reason why a cloned person would be any less of a person than one born and raised? I can't think of any, we're made up of the same parts essentially.
Then you should at least clarify. And you've missed mine.
For some people, it's THEIR outlet. You have lots available to you, some others don't. Some people don't have friends they can go shoot the breeze with, they don't have the money to go do all these other exciting things, and simply punching the pillow in their bedroom doesn't cut it.
For some people - Video games is their outlet - it doesn't matter if there are other ones out there, this is the one that is effective for them and they wish to use it.
I wasn't generalizing this as a case for everyone, I was just certain that on a place like Slashdot - its at least common.
All I know is that if I didn't have an outlet for my anger at home, I would have let it out at school. Does that mean I would have brought a gun in and shot someone? Likely not, but I probably would have shouted and hit a bully or two, which means I'd get detention, which means I'd become a problem kid, and a decade down the road I could have shot someone.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for many other people here. It's not that a video game would normally make me a violent person, and it's not like I'm a violent person who needs to have some kind of murder take place just to satiate me. It's that they are a regular outlet to let off some steam, whereas without video games it tends to build up, which will only blow at the wrong times at the wrong person and get you in trouble which is where all the bad influences are anyways. Seriously, taking all your "trouble" kids, having them stick around after class, in the same room... it's a silly idea. That means when they go home from school, the only other people to talk to are other trouble kids. Does someone who yells at a teacher need to be sitting around the kid who got caught smoking?
That's legal everywhere (or at least as far as I know) - there is no Law saying that your movie has to be rated, you can choose to go and have your movie unrated if you want - but certain theatrical companies may not want to air your film, or they'll give it their own rating. Basically, when someone says you can't see an R rated movie - its the company policy, not law. No body of the government is responsible for upholding that law.
This being said - its the same way video games are right now. Places like Gamestop are not legally binded to uphold the ESRB ratings system, it's just their company policy to do so.
Now other things, like cigarettes and alchohol, ARE bound by law. This court case is about making video games part of those groups - where distributors can be held accountable for selling video games to people younger than the rating system allows, like selling or giving cigarettes to under-aged smokers.
Right now - if a kid wanted a video game and he did not meet the requirements he could ask his parents to buy it for him, that way they know what he's purchasing and they can check the ESRB rating and look at the box and all that nice stuff. Basically the law being proposed would take that out of the equation - as in the reseller or parent can be liable for letting them acquire that game, just like if your parents were to buy you smokes or if the 711 let you buy smokes underaged.
Now - thats the way it is where I am - in other places of the states, perhaps no company is imposing any restrictions based on the ESRB ratings. If thats the case, I can see where the people are coming from - but they should be lobbying their distributors to impose the restrictions, not the Government.
It seems like they were talking to Google and Microsoft before even putting out the request, which seems weird to me (Discussing the details of a product before the request is even out).
And then Google is upset that they weren't picked, and THEN the request was put out.
This boggles my mind, I don't get it. Is this like Momento where everything is actually going backwards?
Exactly, but we've been setting up these double standards where nearly every country in the world has slammed Google for collecting private data for themselves (which of course they claim is an accident), and then Facebook essentially lets any app developer do the same thing (again unintentional).
Now the developers have actually gone and made money off that data, and now less than a dozen of the smallest targets are getting picked off.How on Earth is that fair?
IF we're going to get mad at Google for roaming around in a car picking up SSID's than WHY can't we get mad at Zynga for taking whatever information they have about me and making money by selling it? If the argument is that "it's public anyways, anyone can just look it up" for your facebook info, why is listening to unsecured wifi considered illegal?
I don't really care if the law went one way or the other, (Well I have my preferences), but its far more annoying when its inconsistant rather than my way.
This impacts fewer than a dozen, mostly small developers, none of which are in the top 10 applications on Facebook Platform.
Why not? Are you trying to suggest that they don't have these practices, or they simply haven't been caught doing it, or they've got the money to grease palms or hire lawyers?
Well, with the "I can't" attitude, you're right. But if you stopped thinking individually, instead more along the lines of "We can't" - then you'd be lying, because there is a lot that we can do together.
The reason why people make these videos and images isn't so that 1 person on the other side of the border can feel sympathy and try to revolutionize everythings - its for massive appeal to as many people as possible, so that a large group of people might undertake humanitarian efforts.
But - I mean, go ahead with that attitude. Does anyone really care about you? I mean, I've hardly interacted with you, but there isn't anything I can do to change your mind, you aren't a priority. In fact - I can't do anything about anything my own country - my one vote is drowned by millions of others, my recycling efforts are negated by others negligance, and even my job is so replacable by someone else that my contributions to society are really nothing.
If you don't feel particularily humanitarian about something - like you don't want to help the North Koreans, that's absolutely fine. Freedom of opinion. But don't parade it under the guise that "I would if I could".
Instead of the Screen for the input and output they turned it to a piece of paper - which takes longer so it's not entirely practical.
That being said, if this were around when Typewriters were still used widespread - this might have helped some people transition to computers.
However, the more I think about games like that I used to play, and how frustrating it was trying to convey what it is you wanted to do while sticking to the constraints of their input language... I mean coupled with how long it takes for the Typewriter to reply "I didn't understnad that. Try typing HELP if you need help" This might just be a massive waste of paper.
In my day though - I didn't play too many text only games, mine were usually coupled with some form of graphics and arrow keys movement, like Adventures of Hugo and Kings Quest. I remember ONE text only game I played when I was 5 or 6 - and I kept getting hit by a Bus or a car or something when I tried to cross the street. I mean when you're 5 or 6 you think "Maybe if I walk east and west back and forth a few times, the bus will have passed by then... No... Well maybe I'll try doing something else... Okay - maybe NOW I can cross that street". I wish I could remember the name of the game... Or even anything else to do with it. Man memory is so weird sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
If that were true - there wouldn't be any suspicions about asexual reproduction, would there.
That just depends on who you ask, doesn't it? I'm sure many fundamental Christians would agree with you but I think think some radical Islamist might twist that as "One of the many lies upon which most of the infadels belief system is based".
I mean, a sensationalist headline is a sensationalist headline, but I don't think they were -entirely- in the wrong for using it in the headline. It was the easiest way to convey the idea (Asexual reproduction) without confusing it with what everyone would think of if they had simply said Asexual reproduction (Growing 2 of everything and then splitting).
No, No... And well sort of, the submission was done using a series of LightBrights using the colours as different values in Hexadecimal, taken from a picture with an Android Phone - and then ran through an image processor to turn those light values into Hex. Then some open source Hex to String converter for the submission - so while the duplicate sentences might have been one of the other 271 bugs they found in the Android phone, there's a lot of other places this bug might have taken place.
Many people who own trucks might argue with your statement.
What are you guys on about?
Street crime is a loose term for criminal offences taking place in public places. It has commonly been used for the term mugging around here.
There is a great distinction in Cyber Crime - like they mention phishing. If I had gone door to door pretending to be with your bank and requested any of your credit cards, you'd either be considered an idiot and/or I could be charged with some form of fraud. Fraud is it's own kind of Crime - it has it's own laws regarding it, why can't Cyber stuff be the same?
I get what you're trying to say, people don't seem to take "Cyber Crime" as serious as regular crime, but they are very different, in many ways, and segregation already exists in other forms of Law.
No - shared folders and services do not necessarily mean intra-client communications - often times your router is still the mid point in between those kinds of transactions and if you are wired in - you won't be able to sniff out the traffic specifically going between the computer and the router.
This doesn't affect wired situations - unless you preform some kind of Man in the Middle attack on the router/end user - probably by some method of ARP poisoning. Otherwise, there's no way for you to listen in and grab the cookie, the traffic between facebook and the user does not go through your nic card at any point - which is needed for this tool to work.
So it really only works for Wireless - and you need that winpcap set up and installed for it to work. It basically frees your nic to capture any traffic that comes across the antenna - and so people have set up tools to log this in a silent mode. Cain, Wireshark, there's a whole bunch of tools that have had the ability to log this info before, all that Firesheep really does is strip the info from the useless info - and paste it in the browser for you.
Now, if you can show me Firesheep working on a wired network - I'll take back everything I said, but from my understanding of networking and how Firesheep works, it theoretically shouldn't be possible without creating a MITM situation.
In order to get things fixed, we need asshats like Butler pointing at the wide open door and shouting to the plebes, "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!".
I admire that kind of Ass-hat. Often times people don't get the message until it affects them negatively.
I've been that asshat myself - doing some questionable maneuvers to warn regular users of their insecure habits. For me, it's not to show off what I can do and it's not about being a self righteous do-good-er either.
It's a "I am ticked off at the way people carelessly handle this crap" - If I act too kind it will go ignored, as if it were charity. If I do something malicious I could end up in jail. How about that nice happy medium where I can piss someone off enough to get them to change their habits, but not so much where I could be arrested.
Well now I think you both aren't putting analogies to good use. In Pojut's case, it's not a matter of life or death so it seems drastically exagerated. In your case Zeek, you have understated that the tools Primary focus is to preform an act which without permission is considered illegal.
It's easiest NOT to analogize it - everyone here can understand what the tool does, and what its focus is. The tool is designed to give access to another person's web account via insecure wireless transmissions.
Using that to test your own security is like a lot like a white hat exposing vulnerabilities. The problem is that this vulnerability is public and made incredibly easy. Google accidentally (or so they claim) exploited this vulnerability, and are under a lot of flak for it.
So - to wrap this up with a good car analogy, since your guys' analogies have failed,
It's like giving someone a fueled up Google car capable of sniffing Wifi for usernames and passwords.
What country is this? I've spent about 5 minutes furiously googling odd terms and I haven't come up with anything, though Wikipedia mentions a lot of parties that support this kind of notion.
And I don't see how can you have meaningful data if you removed all the information that would enable you to recreate the individual sample.
You can still segregrate them into groups even if you can't identify the individual sample - which is essentially what happens already. Data miners go and determine "People who like Penny Arcade also like Video games - so lets put an Ad for Fable 3 up on the main page" - whether that is Penny-Arcade's decision to get more click-revenue or whether they just let an adserver handle that obvious piece of info is irrelevant, you are still using relevant data with meaning to market to a large group of people instead of an individual.
Now - this article brings up the idea of whether I can retain my anonymity online. If it were up to me to run this experiment, I would do exactly as you said, some advanced behaviour analysis technique. First we'll start off here: I'm on Slashdot. You have an alias, and you have a few of my posts. You can tell that they tend get a little long winded sometimes, easily getting to 3 or more paragraphs if there isn't an immediate punchline in sight, or responding to a question. You also get what stories I usually respond to - I often don't have much to say about Linux releases, but I am often avid in the gaming area.
So you go a lot of the other sites that you can infer slashdotters might frequent. All the tech news sites, and then those towards my posting habits, a lot of gaming sites, yadda yadda yadda. First thing you are looking for is similar aliases, then you cross-refer the posts on different sites to see the similarities. How many Monkeedudes are there on the Gamespy forums? Do any of them make really long posts? He's mentioned on Slashdot that he is Canadian - do any of the other sites have public profile info that say he's Canadian?
And so on and so forth. This is all automated - so it's much quicker than a person trying to build this file. After it's all built, a human can quickly skim the data and knock off any outliers that might have seemed similar to the computer.
Now - have I ever mentioned my name anywhere in all the data collected? My age? My city? Can you infer my age given the relative maturity of my posts - and my registered dates and other posts online? Can you infer my city based on my jokes about the weather around here? How hard would it be to nail me to a Facebook page with various likes and dislikes - if that information were available to you (either publicly or for sale?).
It's a scary world we live in, I don't know if any such systems exist, but I see it as definately technically feasible. It also seems like a great product I could market and make lots of money off of it - but I definately don't believe in progressing that side of the internet.
Man, you need to check your mail-slot more often. :-P
... We have mail slots?
Why couldn't they just send an email...
That's just asking for a obligatory.
Now, is there any reason why a cloned person would be any less of a person than one born and raised? I can't think of any, we're made up of the same parts essentially.
Then you should at least clarify. And you've missed mine.
For some people, it's THEIR outlet. You have lots available to you, some others don't. Some people don't have friends they can go shoot the breeze with, they don't have the money to go do all these other exciting things, and simply punching the pillow in their bedroom doesn't cut it.
For some people - Video games is their outlet - it doesn't matter if there are other ones out there, this is the one that is effective for them and they wish to use it.
I wasn't generalizing this as a case for everyone, I was just certain that on a place like Slashdot - its at least common.
Wooosh? Oh you think the "flavour" of neutrino and "sweet" joke went over my head?
No - EVERYONE made that joke.
Those guys in white coats all look alike to me.
Not everyone has access to all of those things.
Is it? I hardly know what that means.
Those guys at CERN have ultimate job security - no one will know what they're doing beside them and they can keep claiming breakthroughs indefinately.
You're also forgetting the amazing piece of work that is HALO: Halos in Space
You can google it and find some funny voice-overs of people trying to keep a straight face while reading it.
All I know is that if I didn't have an outlet for my anger at home, I would have let it out at school. Does that mean I would have brought a gun in and shot someone? Likely not, but I probably would have shouted and hit a bully or two, which means I'd get detention, which means I'd become a problem kid, and a decade down the road I could have shot someone.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for many other people here. It's not that a video game would normally make me a violent person, and it's not like I'm a violent person who needs to have some kind of murder take place just to satiate me. It's that they are a regular outlet to let off some steam, whereas without video games it tends to build up, which will only blow at the wrong times at the wrong person and get you in trouble which is where all the bad influences are anyways. Seriously, taking all your "trouble" kids, having them stick around after class, in the same room... it's a silly idea. That means when they go home from school, the only other people to talk to are other trouble kids. Does someone who yells at a teacher need to be sitting around the kid who got caught smoking?
That's legal everywhere (or at least as far as I know) - there is no Law saying that your movie has to be rated, you can choose to go and have your movie unrated if you want - but certain theatrical companies may not want to air your film, or they'll give it their own rating. Basically, when someone says you can't see an R rated movie - its the company policy, not law. No body of the government is responsible for upholding that law.
This being said - its the same way video games are right now. Places like Gamestop are not legally binded to uphold the ESRB ratings system, it's just their company policy to do so.
Now other things, like cigarettes and alchohol, ARE bound by law. This court case is about making video games part of those groups - where distributors can be held accountable for selling video games to people younger than the rating system allows, like selling or giving cigarettes to under-aged smokers.
Right now - if a kid wanted a video game and he did not meet the requirements he could ask his parents to buy it for him, that way they know what he's purchasing and they can check the ESRB rating and look at the box and all that nice stuff. Basically the law being proposed would take that out of the equation - as in the reseller or parent can be liable for letting them acquire that game, just like if your parents were to buy you smokes or if the 711 let you buy smokes underaged.
Now - thats the way it is where I am - in other places of the states, perhaps no company is imposing any restrictions based on the ESRB ratings. If thats the case, I can see where the people are coming from - but they should be lobbying their distributors to impose the restrictions, not the Government.
It seems like they were talking to Google and Microsoft before even putting out the request, which seems weird to me (Discussing the details of a product before the request is even out).
And then Google is upset that they weren't picked, and THEN the request was put out.
This boggles my mind, I don't get it. Is this like Momento where everything is actually going backwards?
Exactly, but we've been setting up these double standards where nearly every country in the world has slammed Google for collecting private data for themselves (which of course they claim is an accident), and then Facebook essentially lets any app developer do the same thing (again unintentional).
Now the developers have actually gone and made money off that data, and now less than a dozen of the smallest targets are getting picked off.How on Earth is that fair?
IF we're going to get mad at Google for roaming around in a car picking up SSID's than WHY can't we get mad at Zynga for taking whatever information they have about me and making money by selling it? If the argument is that "it's public anyways, anyone can just look it up" for your facebook info, why is listening to unsecured wifi considered illegal?
I don't really care if the law went one way or the other, (Well I have my preferences), but its far more annoying when its inconsistant rather than my way.
This impacts fewer than a dozen, mostly small developers, none of which are in the top 10 applications on Facebook Platform.
Why not? Are you trying to suggest that they don't have these practices, or they simply haven't been caught doing it, or they've got the money to grease palms or hire lawyers?
Well, with the "I can't" attitude, you're right. But if you stopped thinking individually, instead more along the lines of "We can't" - then you'd be lying, because there is a lot that we can do together.
The reason why people make these videos and images isn't so that 1 person on the other side of the border can feel sympathy and try to revolutionize everythings - its for massive appeal to as many people as possible, so that a large group of people might undertake humanitarian efforts.
But - I mean, go ahead with that attitude. Does anyone really care about you? I mean, I've hardly interacted with you, but there isn't anything I can do to change your mind, you aren't a priority. In fact - I can't do anything about anything my own country - my one vote is drowned by millions of others, my recycling efforts are negated by others negligance, and even my job is so replacable by someone else that my contributions to society are really nothing.
If you don't feel particularily humanitarian about something - like you don't want to help the North Koreans, that's absolutely fine. Freedom of opinion. But don't parade it under the guise that "I would if I could".
Instead of the Screen for the input and output they turned it to a piece of paper - which takes longer so it's not entirely practical.
That being said, if this were around when Typewriters were still used widespread - this might have helped some people transition to computers.
However, the more I think about games like that I used to play, and how frustrating it was trying to convey what it is you wanted to do while sticking to the constraints of their input language... I mean coupled with how long it takes for the Typewriter to reply "I didn't understnad that. Try typing HELP if you need help" This might just be a massive waste of paper.
In my day though - I didn't play too many text only games, mine were usually coupled with some form of graphics and arrow keys movement, like Adventures of Hugo and Kings Quest. I remember ONE text only game I played when I was 5 or 6 - and I kept getting hit by a Bus or a car or something when I tried to cross the street. I mean when you're 5 or 6 you think "Maybe if I walk east and west back and forth a few times, the bus will have passed by then... No... Well maybe I'll try doing something else... Okay - maybe NOW I can cross that street". I wish I could remember the name of the game... Or even anything else to do with it. Man memory is so weird sometimes.