Well spoken. It's a fact of life in the UK that if something isn't welded down to the ground it will be stolen.
It's the way it has always been, and it is getting worse. People vandalise just for the sheer thuggery of it, and unless the connectors in this thing are as bullet-proof as a BT phone box, they won't last a week.
CCTV or no CCTV, it will be destroyed.
Compare and contrast: I'm in Tokyo working this week, and in the big popular Car showrooms, the cars all have their Gearnobs, Indicators, and Cig Lighters in place, because the people here have more basic respect for other people's property.
This piece of legislation gave the British government the wholesale right to monitor all electronic communications in Britain and the EU.
Someone please tell me to not feed the trolls.
It does NOT mean they can "monitor" Internet connections in the UK, and the certainly can NOT monitor Internet connections outside their soverign ownership in the EU.
It DOES mean the Police can request information about IP addresses from ISPs so the b*stards peddling Kiddie Porn and terrorist material can be hunted and caught.
Why don't you do some research before you type? Us British are not so concerned about government control, because we have a relatively open government and a strong democracy. Arguably we have a much more open & private society than the USA, and thus your opinion pretty much sUx
The last people that should be given media-access-control over a public access internet point are Microsoft.
If you'd open your mind to the fact other countries & environments exist outside of the USA, you might learn that here in the UK we have something called
day-tah proh-te-ct-shon
This stops evil companies like Microsoft flogging your personal details, and is one of the main differentiators between the EU and the USA.
I'm convinced their 'l33t screen is displaying a quality WinAMP plug-in, adn the guy on the right is saying
"If you look closely you can see the little people, dude!"
... and the one on the left is just awe-struck at the realisation his head is floating in space.
Microsoft has always touted the user interface of Windows NT as a selling feature, implying even a rank idiot could operate a Windows NT server (and many do). I think it's fair game to call out user interface errors when they are found.
But by this logic Unix has an inherent failure in letting any idiot do rm -r when they've just backed up one level from a symlink, and trashed a vital directory structure! My point was that blaming a standard human-computer interface allowing you to delete a database hardly constitutes MS evil.
I don't even dare apply Windows NT or MSSQL7 service packs to it
Try it, with SQL server it usually works. If it doesn't then revert to your backup.
That said, I do use it myself at work for the website and the online ordering for non-critical data such as pricing, and minimal customer data. If information is lost, it's not important, because it will not affect operations at the company one bit
I think you may find "online ordering" is fairly mission critical for those websites who rely on the Internet as a shop-front, and thousands of those rely on MS SQL Server. I rarely recommend MS products, and even rarer when they are used as components of web servers (I'm a security consultant after all), but I think the product is being flamed far more than it deserves here.
I'd deploy Oracle on Solaris 8 days a week if I could, but it's expensive, full of magic (none of which is in manuals, it's smoke & mirrors DBAing), and is only cost-effective for real cash-generating business entities. If you want a reasonably straightforward system with cheap support costs (in terms of manpower), then there are far worse things than deploying SQL server.
. I know I'm not the only one who's hand has slipped from time to time, and dragged a desktop icon to the "Recycle Bin" or folder by accident
How the hell can you blame Microsoft for your stupidity on not being able to handle the most common input device?
It's a sad day on slashdot when people are sinking to this level.
I've installed several instances of multiple SQL Server 7 databases, usually as a temp-store in a DMZ with automagic replication to a main server, and I've never seen so much as a bit of data disappear.
Admitedly the code was written by professional coders and not hacked together in 20 minutes, but the data was & is still there.
Please people. I remember when MS started pushing SQL server, and people were pleased it was based on the (rather good) Sybase codebase, so at least keep your flames subjective rather than whining.
Let those who manages real, large systems make intelligent comment on this. I don't, but I know people who do, and I really am curious to hear about real world problems.
What I don't want to hear about is some'l33t MySQL server with 10 records in it doing a better job from someone barely out of school.
If you are the security person for your organization - think about this: it's an opportunity to have a level field with the kind of people who might know more about your systems' security than you.
While this is an interesting point, I think it would be much more useful for said Security Person to start reading the right newsgroups, and visiting the right web sites.
It's a much better jump-point for someone trying to remain up-to-date on their network & server configs.
Besides, I don't think this event will be filled with the types of people who can actually construct their own Checkpoint exploits (a rare breed of individual), and is more likely to be a lot of Linux guys having fun.
Unfortunitly most companies don't take computer security seriously enough to understand the value of conferences like this one.
Again, I take your point, but in my opinion it's of virtually zero value compared to sending your "Security Person" to a decent Security course ran by a half-way respected organisation.
When people now talk about privacy on the net, they aren't referring to the traffic on the network, they are referring to corporates (usually American) selling your private details, which may have been required for a transaction, to all and sundry.
Here in the UK we have strong privacy laws, but our data still manages to flow from marketing company to marketing company.
I agree we should be very careful with the data we release to others (and not just via the Internet), but it's a fact of life to give out your phone & card details to someone you want to buy something for. The issue is that you should be protected from this company then using your details for something further than the actual sale!
ps: Wasn't Roscoe the Sheriff in the Dukes of Hazzard? git git git!!
But you don't actually clarify why the Common Public needs space.
I'm as keen as the next man, but I think most people have enough earth-bound problems to contend with at the moment before they feel like starting a new life on Mars.
... the 1,200 Christamas Island inhabitants who will now need to put up with the noise and pollution generated by throwing large amounts of metal skywards.
This is a similar situation to a launch pad based in (Venezuala? Forgot link...) where the introduction of the Space Industry was meant to make life so much better for the locals, but in reality they all want rid of it because it brought none of the expected benefits.
To the residents of Christmas Island: RIP your way of life.
It sounds to me like you wouldn't want the NY Times reporting on, say, a drug problem in Central Park because that facilitates people finding places to buy drugs.
Yeah, but it would be if the article told you which dealer to approach, how much the drugs cost, and then how to administer the dose.
While I tend to agree with you, it's not that black & white where technology is concerned.
I'm waiting until I can use my miles to upgrade to a first class cement mixer.
The only problem with this is that in the event of most commercial airlines, it's the first and business class passengers at the front who stand the most chance of being toasted.
This worries me, as I nearly always fly upstairs in business class in 747's!
It seems the back of the plane is the safest part, and less likely either to break up or be consumed in flames.
Unfortunately this also means you usually have to spend the whole flight listening to the stewards talking about haircuts, and putting up with the stench of crap food from the galley. For these reasons I'm still taking my risks upstairs!
In conclusion, you will be better off strapped into the cement-mixer part than sitting atop a golden throne in the pointy-bit;-)
It's well known that using a Game Boy during a commerical flight can cause severe instrumentation malfunction because of stray radion interference.
If it's so well known why haven't we all heard about it? Provide the evidence whilst making such a far-off opinion.
Probably 90% of planes in the skies have mobile phones in the ON position in the luggage bins, and as far as Accident Investigators have discovered, non has caused an accident.
Accidents in the Air are caused by cost-saving maintenance procedures and tired aircrew, not by some kids gameboy.
I may well have been trolled severely here, in which case well done *grin*
Wasn't "Connexion" one of the sites you could download Netscape (or was it Internet Explorer?) from?
Connexion is one of those rare companies offering BFOB (Big Fsck-Off Bandwidth) Services to anyone willing to pay through the nose to get their data on Connexions servers.
Sort of place you load your latest browser version to (like Netscape and IE).
Chances of slashdotting it: about same as The BBC i.e. nill *grin*
I don't think the juvenile attitude prerequisite to such activity is all that common among frequent fliers with laptops.
Then you've probably never been a frequent flier with a laptop.
I am. In fact I'm in Beijing just now, and I'm off down to Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo within the next 3 weeks on business, using my laptop on the plane.
Fact1: most people in business class (like me) are frequent fliers.
Fact2: to make up for the fact this lifestyle is so soul-destroying we're usually half-drunk by the time we get on the flight, and fully drunk by the time they turn the "Fasten Seatbelts" sign off.
Fact3: In this sort of condition we'll probably all be having in-plane Quake deathmatches between each floor of the Jumbo.
Potential Fact4 appears on plane "glass cockpit" Nebtor has just been fragged! ... followed by the inevitable All your control surfaces belong to us!Make your time hahahaha
Pilot drops a brick and screams "aaaaargggh!!!!"
god knows it's expensive to make this wreck fly nowadays
Because one Concorde had a fatal accident (because a part fell of a crappy old DC-10 onto the runway), does not make it a wreck!
We Brits are proud to have a hand in the only Supersonic passenger airline, and the day they stop Concorde we may as well shut up the Commonwealth and elect a president!
Anyway: what was the Pilot wearing when Concorde crashed?
CyberDawg, to clarify the point (and provide some amusement to everyone else), I've just launched my l337 army of zombie machines based in Thailand against your robson.org website.
You should see a variety of D-DOS attacks, NMAP syn scans, spam-probes on 25, and a look for any recent DNS vulnerabilities.
Once you have cooled your LAN cable down and paid your 10Gb ISP bill you can analyse your logs and decide how to start categorising it *grin*
If he tries a Syn flood attack on my site, setting up 1,000 sessions, is that one incident, or 1,000? It sounds like AOL's goofy customer count: "Here, set up seven screen names so that we can claim you're seven different customers."
It's one attack. If you don't understand how these things are reported, then you are certainly not up to date or involved in ongoing network security. This is not a criticism, I am pointing out that you seek to knock Security Focus without realising what a valuable community they provide to anyone involved in network security.
How do we know SecurityFocus can be trusted?
See above comments. While I would hesitate to give them the password to my numbered Swiss bank accounts (I wish!), I have been using their services FOR FREE for the last 15 months, and I think they deserve a massive THANK YOU from everyone trying to stop people cracking their systems, or trying to evaluate best of breed security products.
I don't work for Security Focus. I am a completely unbiased consultant who recommends their site to anyone wishing to get into the field of security.
GMac, your plan is (adopts Sean Connory accent) "Sherioushly Flawed".
If you automatically shut down a system which looked like it was being hacked, you risk turning off the front door on your 24/7 international business!
It's very difficult to detect a real alert from a false alarm. Case in point: Last client I was working in had a pair (!) of Sun E10Ks in a failover cluster forming the engine of their website. The Cisco Netranger IDS in the network segment occassionally thought one E10K was launching "ping smurf" attacks on the other E10K, and no amount of IDS tuning would get round it. It turned out it was part of normal Sun cluster network chatter, and it's extremely difficult to harden a clusterised E10K: that's why you deploy an extremely tight firewall in front of it.
Hilarious I grant you, but not at 3am when your mobile goes off and someone is screaming "Help!!" down it;-)
Even when you are using "good ol' rabbit ears" it is still possible to capture "your" viewing demographics.
In the UK (and I'm sure everywhere else) a large number of people (20,000?) have a box in their lounge which captures their veiwing habits. This data is then scaled up so they can tell us Coronation St beat East Enders (!) by 1,200,00 viewers for Monday's nail-biting showdown between Deirdre's glasses and Ashley's Sausages (ask someone from the uk:-)
Again, this info is used mainly by the advertisers to target peak viewing times and/or specific viewing groups. I have no problem with this.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they should worry more about vandalism.
:-(
Well spoken. It's a fact of life in the UK that if something isn't welded down to the ground it will be stolen.
It's the way it has always been, and it is getting worse. People vandalise just for the sheer thuggery of it, and unless the connectors in this thing are as bullet-proof as a BT phone box, they won't last a week.
CCTV or no CCTV, it will be destroyed.
Compare and contrast: I'm in Tokyo working this week, and in the big popular Car showrooms, the cars all have their Gearnobs, Indicators, and Cig Lighters in place, because the people here have more basic respect for other people's property.
If only we could learn some of this in the UK
This piece of legislation gave the British government the wholesale right to monitor all electronic communications in Britain and the EU.
Someone please tell me to not feed the trolls.
It does NOT mean they can "monitor" Internet connections in the UK, and the certainly can NOT monitor Internet connections outside their soverign ownership in the EU.
It DOES mean the Police can request information about IP addresses from ISPs so the b*stards peddling Kiddie Porn and terrorist material can be hunted and caught.
Why don't you do some research before you type? Us British are not so concerned about government control, because we have a relatively open government and a strong democracy. Arguably we have a much more open & private society than the USA, and thus your opinion pretty much sUx
The last people that should be given media-access-control over a public access internet point are Microsoft.
If you'd open your mind to the fact other countries & environments exist outside of the USA, you might learn that here in the UK we have something called
day-tah proh-te-ct-shon
This stops evil companies like Microsoft flogging your personal details, and is one of the main differentiators between the EU and the USA.
Its probably a tax writeoff, too. They can classify it as a charitable contribution
If you had bothered reading the article you would see this is being installed in the UK.
This means costs are met by Microsoft UK, and not the US-based operation.
Open your eyes next time, or click on the link. Then comment.
Look at the picture half-way down the article.
I'm convinced their 'l33t screen is displaying a quality WinAMP plug-in, adn the guy on the right is saying
"If you look closely you can see the little people, dude!"
... and the one on the left is just awe-struck at the realisation his head is floating in space.
Microsoft has always touted the user interface of Windows NT as a selling feature, implying even a rank idiot could operate a Windows NT server (and many do). I think it's fair game to call out user interface errors when they are found.
But by this logic Unix has an inherent failure in letting any idiot do rm -r when they've just backed up one level from a symlink, and trashed a vital directory structure! My point was that blaming a standard human-computer interface allowing you to delete a database hardly constitutes MS evil.
I don't even dare apply Windows NT or MSSQL7 service packs to it
Try it, with SQL server it usually works. If it doesn't then revert to your backup.
That said, I do use it myself at work for the website and the online ordering for non-critical data such as pricing, and minimal customer data. If information is lost, it's not important, because it will not affect operations at the company one bit
I think you may find "online ordering" is fairly mission critical for those websites who rely on the Internet as a shop-front, and thousands of those rely on MS SQL Server. I rarely recommend MS products, and even rarer when they are used as components of web servers (I'm a security consultant after all), but I think the product is being flamed far more than it deserves here.
I'd deploy Oracle on Solaris 8 days a week if I could, but it's expensive, full of magic (none of which is in manuals, it's smoke & mirrors DBAing), and is only cost-effective for real cash-generating business entities. If you want a reasonably straightforward system with cheap support costs (in terms of manpower), then there are far worse things than deploying SQL server.
. I know I'm not the only one who's hand has slipped from time to time, and dragged a desktop icon to the "Recycle Bin" or folder by accident
How the hell can you blame Microsoft for your stupidity on not being able to handle the most common input device?
It's a sad day on slashdot when people are sinking to this level.
I've installed several instances of multiple SQL Server 7 databases, usually as a temp-store in a DMZ with automagic replication to a main server, and I've never seen so much as a bit of data disappear.
Admitedly the code was written by professional coders and not hacked together in 20 minutes, but the data was & is still there.
Please people. I remember when MS started pushing SQL server, and people were pleased it was based on the (rather good) Sybase codebase, so at least keep your flames subjective rather than whining.
Let those who manages real, large systems make intelligent comment on this. I don't, but I know people who do, and I really am curious to hear about real world problems.
What I don't want to hear about is some'l33t MySQL server with 10 records in it doing a better job from someone barely out of school.
If you are the security person for your organization - think about this: it's an opportunity to have a level field with the kind of people who might know more about your systems' security than you.
While this is an interesting point, I think it would be much more useful for said Security Person to start reading the right newsgroups, and visiting the right web sites.
It's a much better jump-point for someone trying to remain up-to-date on their network & server configs.
Besides, I don't think this event will be filled with the types of people who can actually construct their own Checkpoint exploits (a rare breed of individual), and is more likely to be a lot of Linux guys having fun.
Unfortunitly most companies don't take computer security seriously enough to understand the value of conferences like this one.
Again, I take your point, but in my opinion it's of virtually zero value compared to sending your "Security Person" to a decent Security course ran by a half-way respected organisation.
When people now talk about privacy on the net, they aren't referring to the traffic on the network, they are referring to corporates (usually American) selling your private details, which may have been required for a transaction, to all and sundry.
Here in the UK we have strong privacy laws, but our data still manages to flow from marketing company to marketing company.
I agree we should be very careful with the data we release to others (and not just via the Internet), but it's a fact of life to give out your phone & card details to someone you want to buy something for. The issue is that you should be protected from this company then using your details for something further than the actual sale!
ps: Wasn't Roscoe the Sheriff in the Dukes of Hazzard? git git git!!
Space can be had by the common public
But you don't actually clarify why the Common Public needs space.
I'm as keen as the next man, but I think most people have enough earth-bound problems to contend with at the moment before they feel like starting a new life on Mars.
... the 1,200 Christamas Island inhabitants who will now need to put up with the noise and pollution generated by throwing large amounts of metal skywards.
This is a similar situation to a launch pad based in (Venezuala? Forgot link...) where the introduction of the Space Industry was meant to make life so much better for the locals, but in reality they all want rid of it because it brought none of the expected benefits.
To the residents of Christmas Island: RIP your way of life.
*sigh*
It sounds to me like you wouldn't want the NY Times reporting on, say, a drug problem in Central Park because that facilitates people finding places to buy drugs.
Yeah, but it would be if the article told you which dealer to approach, how much the drugs cost, and then how to administer the dose.
While I tend to agree with you, it's not that black & white where technology is concerned.
I'm waiting until I can use my miles to upgrade to a first class cement mixer.
;-)
The only problem with this is that in the event of most commercial airlines, it's the first and business class passengers at the front who stand the most chance of being toasted.
This worries me, as I nearly always fly upstairs in business class in 747's!
It seems the back of the plane is the safest part, and less likely either to break up or be consumed in flames.
Unfortunately this also means you usually have to spend the whole flight listening to the stewards talking about haircuts, and putting up with the stench of crap food from the galley. For these reasons I'm still taking my risks upstairs!
In conclusion, you will be better off strapped into the cement-mixer part than sitting atop a golden throne in the pointy-bit
To go into space without testing is the very height of foolishness
Yes, but you miss the point.
To the rest of us it is the height of entertainment and he should be applauded for adding some sparkle to our dull lives!
It's well known that using a Game Boy during a commerical flight can cause severe instrumentation malfunction because of stray radion interference.
If it's so well known why haven't we all heard about it? Provide the evidence whilst making such a far-off opinion.
Probably 90% of planes in the skies have mobile phones in the ON position in the luggage bins, and as far as Accident Investigators have discovered, non has caused an accident.
Accidents in the Air are caused by cost-saving maintenance procedures and tired aircrew, not by some kids gameboy.
I may well have been trolled severely here, in which case well done *grin*
Wasn't "Connexion" one of the sites you could download Netscape (or was it Internet Explorer?) from?
Connexion is one of those rare companies offering BFOB (Big Fsck-Off Bandwidth) Services to anyone willing to pay through the nose to get their data on Connexions servers.
Sort of place you load your latest browser version to (like Netscape and IE).
Chances of slashdotting it: about same as The BBC i.e. nill *grin*
I don't think the juvenile attitude prerequisite to such activity is all that common among frequent fliers with laptops.
... followed by the inevitable
Then you've probably never been a frequent flier with a laptop.
I am. In fact I'm in Beijing just now, and I'm off down to Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo within the next 3 weeks on business, using my laptop on the plane.
Fact1: most people in business class (like me) are frequent fliers.
Fact2: to make up for the fact this lifestyle is so soul-destroying we're usually half-drunk by the time we get on the flight, and fully drunk by the time they turn the "Fasten Seatbelts" sign off.
Fact3: In this sort of condition we'll probably all be having in-plane Quake deathmatches between each floor of the Jumbo.
Potential Fact4
appears on plane "glass cockpit"
Nebtor has just been fragged!
All your control surfaces belong to us! Make your time hahahaha
Pilot drops a brick and screams "aaaaargggh!!!!"
It many countries it is called "innocent's day"
The definition of "innocent's day" on slashdot should be updated to read:
Innocent's Day: the first time a newcomer clicks on the g0atse link from behind his corporate websweeper proxy"
Doh!!
god knows it's expensive to make this wreck fly nowadays
Because one Concorde had a fatal accident (because a part fell of a crappy old DC-10 onto the runway), does not make it a wreck!
We Brits are proud to have a hand in the only Supersonic passenger airline, and the day they stop Concorde we may as well shut up the Commonwealth and elect a president!
Anyway: what was the Pilot wearing when Concorde crashed?
Blazer and flares
.... will be needed to write a CSS Decoder?
CyberDawg, to clarify the point (and provide some amusement to everyone else), I've just launched my l337 army of zombie machines based in Thailand against your robson.org website.
You should see a variety of D-DOS attacks, NMAP syn scans, spam-probes on 25, and a look for any recent DNS vulnerabilities.
Once you have cooled your LAN cable down and paid your 10Gb ISP bill you can analyse your logs and decide how to start categorising it *grin*
If he tries a Syn flood attack on my site, setting up 1,000 sessions, is that one incident, or 1,000? It sounds like AOL's goofy customer count: "Here, set up seven screen names so that we can claim you're seven different customers."
It's one attack. If you don't understand how these things are reported, then you are certainly not up to date or involved in ongoing network security. This is not a criticism, I am pointing out that you seek to knock Security Focus without realising what a valuable community they provide to anyone involved in network security.
How do we know SecurityFocus can be trusted?
See above comments. While I would hesitate to give them the password to my numbered Swiss bank accounts (I wish!), I have been using their services FOR FREE for the last 15 months, and I think they deserve a massive THANK YOU from everyone trying to stop people cracking their systems, or trying to evaluate best of breed security products.
I don't work for Security Focus. I am a completely unbiased consultant who recommends their site to anyone wishing to get into the field of security.
GMac, your plan is (adopts Sean Connory accent) "Sherioushly Flawed".
;-)
If you automatically shut down a system which looked like it was being hacked, you risk turning off the front door on your 24/7 international business!
It's very difficult to detect a real alert from a false alarm. Case in point:
Last client I was working in had a pair (!) of Sun E10Ks in a failover cluster forming the engine of their website. The Cisco Netranger IDS in the network segment occassionally thought one E10K was launching "ping smurf" attacks on the other E10K, and no amount of IDS tuning would get round it. It turned out it was part of normal Sun cluster network chatter, and it's extremely difficult to harden a clusterised E10K: that's why you deploy an extremely tight firewall in front of it.
Hilarious I grant you, but not at 3am when your mobile goes off and someone is screaming "Help!!" down it
Most of the time the average lamer is trying techniques that were reported on Bugtraq years before and were patched and CERT advised months ago.
NO! The main problem in this sad landscape of crappy administration is that no one bothers patching any of their systems because they:
a) Don't know what CERT is never mind read it
b) Don't know what BUGTRAQ is never mind read it
Most of the systems being hacked are NT or Linux servers which are deployed in the heat of the moment and then forgotten about forevermore.
Even when you are using "good ol' rabbit ears" it is still possible to capture "your" viewing demographics.
:-)
In the UK (and I'm sure everywhere else) a large number of people (20,000?) have a box in their lounge which captures their veiwing habits. This data is then scaled up so they can tell us Coronation St beat East Enders (!) by 1,200,00 viewers for Monday's nail-biting showdown between Deirdre's glasses and Ashley's Sausages (ask someone from the uk
Again, this info is used mainly by the advertisers to target peak viewing times and/or specific viewing groups. I have no problem with this.