First of all, I am a Hong Kong permanent resident. And still live there.
And yet you've never seen one of these devices.... and you have only considered a receiver (if there's only one) being on the mainland?
Secondly: what is really in that blue shrink wrap? May be batteries indeed. I can't see: it's shrink wrapped.
So because you can't see it (but everyone else can) it doesn't exist. And the video is fake too is it? Because the guy in the video looks just like the guy he's supposed to be. Is that Western propaganda?
Now let's look at the numbers that I "can not add up" and you don't even bother to look at. So let's say that blue thing is a battery. My half-year old phone can pack 5.6 Wh in it's battery,
I don't doubt you about your phone battery, though you clearly have no grasp as to what consumes power in your phone. Your phone receives a signal. Your phone has a screen. You insist on giving this device a 20km range. And you assume the device is continuously transmitting audio.
Then who was talking about listening on transistor radios? Not me. I said scanners - you know those devices that can, amongst others, pick up emergency radio bands, aircraft radio, mobile phone signals, etc. Those receivers are available in basically any range you want.
Again, you are talking bullshit. Scanners scan - but they don't go "hey it's a hidden Chinese transmitter". Derrrr. It's sitting in the same frequency range as mobile phones in a sea of mobile phone signals, probably using an audio compression codec, and almost certainly encrypted. Unless the signal from these devices is very distinctive and the scanner is programmed to recognise the device's signal it's never going to get noticed.
Your energy consumption figures are crap - no screen, no receiver, and you've picked the longest, and most unlikely range. Even without VOX there's a fucking huge difference between your estimates and the likely actual usage. I'm hoping you aren't getting paid big bucks to design electrical devices.
I reckon that's 4 x AA batteries, but lets give you the benefit of th e doubt and say its 4 x AAA Li batteries - that's almost 5Ahs.
I'd bet there are receivers at the checkpoints and both sides of the border. And please don't hand me that - the Chinese authorities don't operate in Hong Kong crap. Adjust for reality and you have a device that does not need to transmit continuously, nor does it need to transmit 20km - or even run for months at a time (though there's no reason why not). Now what it the device just checks every five minutes for the presence of a signal transmitted at the border crossing? Then it only uses power to record conversation when there is noise - and only transmits audio when triggered - perhaps burst. Nothing hi-tech there - and more than capable of doing that with the stated power supply.
You see two pictures in an article that only has one picture. You can't see batteries in a picture of batteries accompanied by an article that says batteries. You can't see batteries in a video that shows and mentions them several times. But you'd like to be taken seriously.
I don't doubt they are batteries shown in the picture I linked or the video. I don't doubt that Chinese authorities would try and sneak a surveillance capability into the device. I do doubt a centralised receiver - most likely the Chinese would do this sort of surveillance the same way other governments do. I find it unlikely, though not impossible that all dual licensed vehicles are bugged. Certainly mobile phones and laptops belonging to Australian business people and government employees have been bugged. What does surprise me it that has taken so long to take a look inside one - another thing that makes me suspect these devices are not put in every vehicle. Could the whole story be a setup? Yes - though I doubt Zheng Liming is in on it.
And that's where I get stuck - trying to figure out what is profitable to smuggle into China. Milk products made from milk?
Religious texts and other restricted or forbidden items or material, drugs.
That's the problem - pot's kind of hard to get hold of down south, but up north it's not hard to find. Methamphetamines are everywhere Cocaine I wouldn't know about - but I'd be surprised if it wasn't available - there's certainly plenty of heroin moving around. Firearms are dirt cheap. China makes most of the things that are illegal in the West. And there's no money in Bibles - they're not even restricted anymore - it's only fruitcake Americans that bang on about raising money to ship Bibles to China - there's a hell of a lot more Bibles in China than there are people who want to read them. Trust me - after you've spent a couple of days in the industrial and commercial boom-towns you begin to realise that if there's a demand it'll be satisfied in just a couple of days, well maybe not satisfactory, and probably toxic. Whiskey is cheaper in China than Hong Kong. As for western tech - it's all made there in the first place. I agree there's got to be a market for smuggling something into China (apart from smuggling workers without passes back). On the other hand a shitload of stuff gets smuggled into Hong Kong.
Active broadcasting a signal takes a lot of power. A typical mobile phone can last maybe 10-12 hours on a charge, when talking. Up to two weeks standby. For these devices well let's be generous, make it double the time, that's 24 hours of broadcasting signals. The rest of the year: no battery. And I didn't see a battery on the photos.
The device will not fit in your shirt pocket - it's a little larger than an iPhone (I and other posters have seen these devices). As for your proof - again, what the fuck have you been smoking? A phone and this device have little in common when it comes to power consumption (see if you can work out why). Hint - I can buy devices on the open market that will transmit an audio signal for more 12 months - and they will fit in my pocket. No nuclear power pack involved. Don't go basing you idea of surveillance technology on what the FBI leaves attached to the bottom of Arab students cars - you can bet the Chinese have access to far more sophisticated devices than I can buy.
The rest of your screed is pure castles in the air - try getting off the sofa and visiting the world. China == Hong Kong - lip-service is the only difference between one side of the border and the other. The speculated range of the devices is just that. Speculated. As for signal interception - really, are you fucking serious? Do you hear mobile telephone calls on your transistor? (and that's a GHz crystal in the photo you can't see - just under the battery pack that doesn't exist).
Consider it - every insightful argument you've come up with is wrong - you can't see the obvious, and you can't even count up to two properly. And no, advertisements don't count as pictures. But hey - don't let your ignorance to stop from being an expert in Chinese spying devices, it never stopped you from making laughably clueless statements about the nature of emails or programming.
A dollar gets me ten you've got some weasely denial.
I was just in Hong Kong for three days. I noticed at least one or two clearly electronic devices on the dashboard. One was a thing that the driver would "pat down" and that would presumably start the fare. I can easily imagine a listening device being contained in this. Another didn't seem to have a purpose and was just there.
Thank you - it was commonly believed when I was there (3 years back) that they were tracking devices - I just never considered they recorded or transmitted conversation.
It is taped to the windshield. It does not seem to have any (external) power supply. How could such a device be able to transmit a serious quantity of data, over a distance of 20 km, with mountains in between? Hong Kong may be small but it's hilly, with peaks of almost 1000m tall. From most parts of this 20km radius there is no line of sight to Shenzhen - all mountains in the way, except for the north-western part of Hong Kong which is mostly protected wetland. Such transmission if at all possible takes a significant amount of power, a battery that fit in there would run out in hours or less. On these points alone I'd call this story total nonsense.
Last time I checked the Chinese had no problems setting up receivers in Hong Kong, well, less than before it became Chinese territory anyway! So I'll have to call nonsense to your nonsense.
They have been installed since 1997 - that means most are in place for some four years now. The only way to keep it working is if it's a passive device, using external radio sources as their power source, as is typical for devices used for automatic toll payment and similar purposes.
Please link to the source of your information? And why would a device the size of a mobile phone have to be passive? It's not like they haven't always been an obvious electronic device.
I was in Hong Kong three years ago and what you are saying was bullshit then. The licenses are good for ten years - but the displayed permits are updated every year. It's possible that these weren't installed in all cars, tricycles (yes), motorcycles, buses, and trucks. There's two main types of cars with a dual license - wealthy people - and not wealthy people. Most foreigners hire drivers - the drivers are not wealthy and the license allows up to three drivers (they tend to run 24/7 back and forth across the border) - they're also the type of vehicles (trucks also) used for smuggling and both instances would be attractive spying targets. As stated earlier I reckon they'd hear the incriminating stuff as the vehicle approaches the checkpoint.
A cavity microphone would make sense for these devices as it would allow cheap noise cancelling - similar setup to mobile phones.
In addition to the dual license a two-way permit is required for every occupant - and they only last from a week to a year (depending on circumstance) - so I wouldn't be surprised if the vehicle licences have similar terms. Oh, and the one time we were asked to leave the vehicle to get our papers checked in the office - they took the permit with us. I'm wondering now if they might of replaced the battery at the same time.
Next time you're in the Guangdong Public Service Bureau applying for your 2-way pass (it's where the vehicle passes come from too) maybe fire up your scanner.
I do wonder how they work technically. I mean, there can't be much space for a battery in such a licence plate. You can't use RFID like technology at a distance of more than 10-50 meters, which would make actual eavesdropping a challenge even for a government. If it is to have any semblance of being secret obviously you can't use the car's battery or electrical systems.
Very weak radio transmitters still need about a watt for reasonable communications (ie. cell phones). So if you wish to use something like this for, say a year (they're valid for a year), you'd need a tiny, tiny 31 MJ (that's megajoule) battery, or 3 KWh, but it can't be much larger than a watch battery.
So how the hell do you keep that thing powered ?
For that matter, which radio do you use ? Cell network ? It would require a hell of a lot of people in the loop.
Perhaps they are very low power transmitters and there is a network of receivers... perhaps the bugs have data storage which they dump when in range of a receiver. Who knows maybe its a mesh or p2p system. But enough clueless speculation - from actual article, their is more than one type of device. One type is about the size of a PDA (so no need to speculate about nano batteries and friggin lasers) with a range of around 20km. Don't forget the penisula is not that big. The ones in the article are fitted to the front window inside the car - not on the bumper catching carbon-based bugs. It also sounds like they were being used to detect smugglers - so maybe they only had to transmit the conversation in the vehicle as it approached the checkpoint.
[simulated translation]OK - border guard coming up be absolutely calm - these Chinese are too stupid to know we are smuggling vast amounts of...
And that's where I get stuck - trying to figure out what is profitable to smuggle into China. Milk products made from milk?
We took Japan as the big role model for society when it was still market leader 'til their bubble burst, now China is the new role model. Soon we'll see something similar here, of course only to find your car easier if it gets stolen or something like that. And how conveniently easy it is to implement, stick the bug into the license plate! You have to have one to operate your vehicle, it's government issued and it's illegal to tamper with it already. Beauty!
Until some arsehole steals your license plates. Oh, wait....
No shit Sherlock. But do you understand how they work? And here's the the original quote I was replying to (again). Clearly, you don't need drugs to alter reality.
I often look at 'free web based proxy' sites and wonder if they're just set up by some law enforcement agency to fuel their party-van. Same goes for pr0n sites.
Would there be a way for media organisations to do this legitimately? I doubt it could be done here in Australia.
Don't be so damn cynical. There are lots of multimillionaire philanthropists out there funding anonymous proxies. Right?
But seriously, it costs money to host those services so you are right to be wary. Let's not forget that Greenpeace was originally organised by the CIA (part of the English anti nuclear campaign).
Consider that any connection through the NBN will be traceable back to the origin regardless of how many proxies you go through - proxie protection alone is the electronic equivalent of doubling back to confuse sniffer dogs - looks good in the movies, but craps out in real life. Don't believe me - ask the ex-head of AFPs Computer Crime unit... hey Alistair - how'd you nab Julian way back when?
P.S. It's illegal to host an Oz pr0n site.
PPS. Bigpond already do this - they use a product from McAfee (Hello NOA, love your work, lose any more USB keys around Russell lately?)[slips tin foil hat back on]
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It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious.
I hope these guys are as good as they claim to be, otherwise we will be seeing their faces with the caption "Further arrests from anonymous hacking group"
They are not. Competent black hats do not brag publicly. These are attention whores with some mediocre IT security skills. Most break-ins are not that hard to do.
If it was me, the access is something I'd want to cover in mud, so I'd find some McKinnon type to take the rap. There's no shortage of hormonated young fools not only willing to claim credit for the actions of others - but willing to keep lying even after they've been arrested, bagged, been made to "stand around" for a bit, give a little "snorkel", a bit of a "jump", the "nuts"... and by the "potty training" time the interrogators won't believe them if they decide all the attention isn't worth it and they'd like to change their mind.
Strangely that uber-haxor and master hairdresser Gary McKinnon's ability didn't extend as far as screen shots. Go back through his stories. He actually says "I could see the UFO pictures on his desktop" but "the software they had running stopped me taking a picture". Go figure.
It's not as much a requirement as it's a natural distribution, just like in a big war you'd have 1% special forces, 10% regular soldiers and the rest drafted civilians. Would it be great if everyone was seasoned marines? Yes. But you use what you have so some are effectively cannon fodder. You don't encourage them to be fools, they're just not ready to be anything more than what they are.
Take the war on drugs for example, your average pothead isn't hard to catch. There's just so many of them that it'll never end as long as the dealers and distribution continues, it's just a few random example to say "yes, we can take you too so don't feel safe" than even trying for 100%. Is that according to some big plan? Nah. It's just the way it is, it's Sturgeon's Law for people. 90% of everything is crap and 90% of everyone are idiots.
The only places that isn't true are the places where you've went through a lot of trouble to weed out the idiots. But when you're going for a broad public movement, you haven't got an choice. There will be plenty idiots, people you can't trust to do much of anything. Cheer in a rally? Throw some rocks. Yeah, we can have you do that and that's all we'd trust you to do, too.
Yes - though you'll probably find the amount of people committed to any side is much lower - people tend to be so damned fickle.
I guess so, but I think there are all these things call "advertisements" in mags and on billboards that feature semi-naked chicks selling perfume, watches, cars and beer. So it may not be technical advertisement, but that's the word we're stuck with to describe those things. The ads are certainly not there to let us know of the existence of those watches and beer, they are to a) get noticed; b) generate interest/arousal; c) cause us to change our buying pattern/decisions as a result. In that sense it's marketing - so I think you're making a good point, but I think the words you're using to distinguish between the two concepts don't work.
Now if you just replace "advertising" with "marketing", and then correlate that with the sale of "wants" over "needs" - you'll have something.... when you "want" something you don't need because you feel you're missing out - that's marketing (creating the desire).
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See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
Marketing and advertising go hand in hand. When you advertise a room for rent, you highlight the positive features of that room to get more potential renters. That's marketing. You would not advertise a room for rent without listing all of the positive features. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of calls asking about features that could easily be listed in the advertisement.
If people are so weak as to buy things they don't need because of marketing, they deserve to go into debt. It's the "keeping up with the Jones'" attitude that drives many people into debt. Stop worrying about what your neighbor has and enjoy the things that you have. They may have a boat, big fancy car, and a big house, but they also probably have a lot of debt.
I suspect that Jared Diamond doesn't post to Slashdot... but if he did, he'd probably point out the unlikeness of that ever occurring. Aside from the evolutionary drives that make it more rewarding to carry debt than not to (it's about what the credit can purchase, the consequences of debt are separate) - there's the drive to gain an advantage over other gene pools (more return for less effort, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics etc). eg, The fellow with the yard full of leaves..... who then sells the leaves as mulch, but only after selling the "advantage" to the buyer. Which is all good until he sells the leaves that fell from the tree he poisoned... but it's not going to bother the fellow selling the poisonous mulch, because the buyer "is not his kin".
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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are.
~ Bill Hicks
Maybe, if we made 2011 the year of Bill Hicks, 2012 won't be worse. It's just a thought you know? You do what you can;-p
... all revolutions required sacrifices (red herrings, expendables).
Yeesh, that's cruel.:-P
On the bright side, all the potentially innocent victims of this incident have to do is show they've at least one virus/malware infection, and the jury can put it down to "pwned by a botnet; not guilty." Aka, the civilian form of "Plausible Deniability."
...and if they're script kiddies, they *will* have malware on their system (though they might think they're "crakz" and keygens). I'm guessing Adobe (Photoshop) has more legitimate complaints about loss of (potential) revenue through file sharing than the Hollywood media distribution Mafia.
The people who have been doing the real hacks for anonymous like the HBGary hack are probably much less likely to be caught.
Indeed. They are people that actually know what they are doing. And if it's indeed users of some simple DDOS tool, then that also explains the fairly high number of people rounded up.
And if I recall my history correctly - all revolutions required sacrifices (red herrings, expendables). That's why rallies are mass exercises - helps the long-term (committed) activists survive - so a certain amount of fools will always be tolerated and encouraged. Take a look around the world at where rebellions are daily affairs - see those kids throwing rocks and being arrested? They're part of a larger movement, they're expendable, and because they are, the authorities are tied up which makes it a lot harder to track down the real activists. Historically rebellions have deliberately sacrificed their own just to force the general population to pick a side - it's hard for Mum and Dad not to think about the issues when number one son is hooked up to the generator. Play the game long enough and sooner or later the operator of the generator will find their own family strapped to the chair.
We do seem to be the new villains. And easy to villainize, I suppose. We have no one voice to decry actions of others, no standard that can be recognized, no motive that can be twisted for someone's benefit. Although some have tried. Once this kind of crackdown comes to our shores (yes I am wearing a tin-foil hat), it will we more along the lines of "Suspected pedophile and member of Anonymous..." Posted Anonymously.
I love how at the _same time_ people think "information should be free", "once something is online it will be there forever", and "the Internet routes around censorship like damage", they believe anonymity exists as if all the above doesn't apply to digital access logs, billing records, CCTV, etc.
Your anonymity is on borrowed time, and I hope you've enjoyed squandering it on stupid shit for laughs.
I *don't* love how fools generalise with sweeping statements like yours - it makes you sound dumb, scared, ignorant, and completely uninformed. I'm presuming you plucked all those facts out of your arse - did you? Or are you saying that extensive first-hand research that you've done shows this to be a fact. How many real life people do you know?
Change is a bitch. Denial of change makes people like you scared and angry. Pull your head out of Reagan's bum and recognise this is 2011 - the world is not how you'd wish it to be, it never was, and it never will be. You change nothing and your contributions are worthless. Deal with it.
Well, it's not like there isn't rhyme or reason to what comes out of a 4chan mob. The members generally lash out at things -- especially things that are arbitrary and belonging to conventional power structures. Also, there's a strong bias towards things that are in that demographic's field of vision. Just like here, a holy shitstorm gets raised about Sony's transgressions because they actually play their games and use their products -- in absolute terms and with more holistic foresight, it would be something like Goldman Sachs instead.
To piss off Anonymous the most, come in with hypocritical, fit-for-a-fifth-grader morality and attempt to define things like social norms. To please Anonymous, be an attractive young woman who periodically takes pictures of herself, has some degree of confidence and rehashes and without overt intention redefines -chan culture.
...Oh, you mean just anonymous like the two of us... not quite as easy to define, but very easy to disingenuously call dangerous and "linked to others."
The problem with that logic is that it is based on the assumption that Anonymous == 4-chan and it doesn't allow for the sabotage factor. Bear in mind that even if only one member of 4-chan is involved they'd find it hard not to tell the world about it - and if they're not from 4-chan (cough) they'd deliberately muddy the waters to hide their identity. Anyone wanting to discredit any anonymous action (and the lower-case a is deliberate) only has to add a 4-chan element to it. Feeding stupid people fake proof of their own fears is the easiest way to manipulate them - it's not like they're ever going to check the facts - and even when presented with evidence to negate their beliefs - the massive emotional investment they've made in their (stupid) opinions is one they will never challenge.
Sound a little tin foil hat? Then maybe a little study of history is in order.
The world is a complex place full of people incapable of grasping even limited complexity - with a shortage of facts they jump to conclusions that compliment their own fears and failings. Teenage hackers with paedophile ascendancies and a hatred of the established order - "Yeah I can picture that"
Be careful what you believe. What happens to you could be happening to others. eg. someone accuses you of something you. did. not. do. - then they are saying nothing of you and speaking volumes of themselves.
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Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what we'll tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!
In the days of MS/PC/4/IMB-DOS malware (like "del. > nul" in a setup.bat) on floppy drives required the user to actually execute the.exe/.com/.bat file.
And what does that have to do with autoplay? If you use a USB drive, you usually use it because you want to access the data on it. In that aspect, I don't see any difference between a floppy and a USB drive. If an infection was possible using a floppy disk, why wouldn't it work using a USB drive? Whether it is an infected executable, modified data that triggers a buffer overflow in a program that reads it, or a boot sector type virus.
Other thing I was trying to point out is the fact that you actually don't need to wait for the device to be mounted. With USB, the computer communicates with the device for quite a while in order to determine what kind of device it is, what kind of filesystem it has, etc. Theoretically there is a possibility for infection at any time during this process. Thinking that just because you don't have autoplay you are save is, IMHO, stupid.
No dispute there. I expressed myself poorly. (please accept my unreserved apologies) I meant (and I've explained it better earlier, further down in this thread) that malware requires users to propagate. Disclaimer I run *nix. Relying on the OS to keep data safe is a user failing.
And yes - you are perfectly correct. Boot sector infections were common. It used to be amusing to replace the DOS boot sector error message with "Hello McAfee" just to see mcafee's crap signature identification call it a virus.
Thinking that just because you don't have autoplay you are safe is, IMHO, stupid.
Yes (again, and I've covered the "stupid" bit in another post). The exact name escapes me (USB switchblade?) but one of the projects developed as a result of the COFEE leak does just that - and it doesn't use the same mechanism as Stuxnet.
@DrBoumBoum *nix is quite capable of autoplay. Many of the current main distros prompt the user to associate actions with device detection events - and only last week I came across another setuid stupidity. Combine the two and it's a disaster. Just because our beloved OS separates the toilet from the kitchen there's always some 'tard that knock down the intervening wall. Spend a little time on the forums and see how many people run a desktop as root. (sigh). Sometimes I suspect the helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves mentality makes people complacent (a risky OS might make people more cautious.
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
When my mailbox is stuffed full of unsolicited mail - whether it's scams, advertising, free samples, or marketing - it matters not. It's littering. It used my space. Try it in the physical world and it'll threaten the health of those that litter Right or wrong - it's a simple fact.
Marketing is the rattle of a stick in a swill bucket ~ George Orwell (any inaccuracies are due to my recall)
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
So it was all the elites who were dancing in the streets last month when the US executed Osama Bin Laden? You guys just don't get it. Pulling that kind of crap is exactly why everyone else in the world detests US foreign policy.
If you still can't see it, consider the arrest of Ratko Mladic the other day. Almost identical situation, except Mladic personally helped to execute at least twice as many people as died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, so you could say he is more evil than OBL. And he was arrested and taken to the ICC. He wasn't shot in the head and dumped in the ocean, because that is not how civilised societies deal with criminals.
The way the US public cheers the fact that their government can and does execute anyone in the world with no due process, and is perfectly entitled to invade any country they don't like makes me feel physically ill.
"I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.
"Pick it up."
"I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me."
"Pick up the gun."
"Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, Mister."
Propagation through Interrupt 13. When BIOS routines managed all disk access for the OS.
01h 02h and 03h were the handler subs which gave you a vector for the MBR-type of virus.
McAfee used to update signatures quarterly...
No dispute there. But.... it still requires user intervention. I know some of the GNU folk'll hate me - but an OS - from Windows to Oberon can be compromised by the user. If the user is stupid. If one does something detrimental to oneself it. is. stupid. Even rocket scientists can be stupid. A rocket scientist who lights a cigarette beside a leaking oxygen cylinder is stupid. Our choice of OS and how we treat that choice is like choosing how many leaking oxygen cylinders we keep close by. Because we're human, and sooner or later, we will do something stupid. All we can do is concentrate, and try and keep our environment as forgiving of stupidity as possible.
It's a subtlety lost on many - like the idea that rarely do things have only two states. Further prove of evolution at work.;-p
Any Hicks reference needs to be modded up. +1 insightful
Here have some more - there's at least one for *every* situation. And why not "We pay for life with death - so everything in between should be free" A man who *lived* life and never backed down despite having a leg broken and a gun pointed at his head.
We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution. ~ Bill Hicks
It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.
Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government — however, such attacks are very difficult to trace."
Not as difficult to trace as "unnamed security experts".
I'm going to get flack from a hopper load of "Certifeyed" "Ethical Hackers" (with links to their business touting security blogs in their homepage link but...
an "unnamed security expert" is an oxymoron (they tend to be attention whores). Seriously - it's like reading "an unnamed actor today said he/she had been asked to take over
Charlie Sheen's job". Bullshit. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't stop 'em from letting the media know who they were - even if it meant crawling through a million letter boxes to correct the article by hand. (sigh) Slashdot is increasingly becoming a venue for binspam and a posting ground for the ponderously autistic.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I am a Hong Kong permanent resident. And still live there.
And yet you've never seen one of these devices.... and you have only considered a receiver (if there's only one) being on the mainland?
Secondly: what is really in that blue shrink wrap? May be batteries indeed. I can't see: it's shrink wrapped.
So because you can't see it (but everyone else can) it doesn't exist. And the video is fake too is it? Because the guy in the video looks just like the guy he's supposed to be. Is that Western propaganda?
Now let's look at the numbers that I "can not add up" and you don't even bother to look at. So let's say that blue thing is a battery. My half-year old phone can pack 5.6 Wh in it's battery,
I don't doubt you about your phone battery, though you clearly have no grasp as to what consumes power in your phone. Your phone receives a signal. Your phone has a screen. You insist on giving this device a 20km range. And you assume the device is continuously transmitting audio.
Then who was talking about listening on transistor radios? Not me. I said scanners - you know those devices that can, amongst others, pick up emergency radio bands, aircraft radio, mobile phone signals, etc. Those receivers are available in basically any range you want.
Again, you are talking bullshit. Scanners scan - but they don't go "hey it's a hidden Chinese transmitter". Derrrr. It's sitting in the same frequency range as mobile phones in a sea of mobile phone signals, probably using an audio compression codec, and almost certainly encrypted. Unless the signal from these devices is very distinctive and the scanner is programmed to recognise the device's signal it's never going to get noticed.
Your energy consumption figures are crap - no screen, no receiver, and you've picked the longest, and most unlikely range. Even without VOX there's a fucking huge difference between your estimates and the likely actual usage. I'm hoping you aren't getting paid big bucks to design electrical devices.
I reckon that's 4 x AA batteries, but lets give you the benefit of th e doubt and say its 4 x AAA Li batteries - that's almost 5Ahs.
I'd bet there are receivers at the checkpoints and both sides of the border. And please don't hand me that - the Chinese authorities don't operate in Hong Kong crap. Adjust for reality and you have a device that does not need to transmit continuously, nor does it need to transmit 20km - or even run for months at a time (though there's no reason why not). Now what it the device just checks every five minutes for the presence of a signal transmitted at the border crossing? Then it only uses power to record conversation when there is noise - and only transmits audio when triggered - perhaps burst. Nothing hi-tech there - and more than capable of doing that with the stated power supply.
You see two pictures in an article that only has one picture. You can't see batteries in a picture of batteries accompanied by an article that says batteries. You can't see batteries in a video that shows and mentions them several times. But you'd like to be taken seriously.
I don't doubt they are batteries shown in the picture I linked or the video. I don't doubt that Chinese authorities would try and sneak a surveillance capability into the device. I do doubt a centralised receiver - most likely the Chinese would do this sort of surveillance the same way other governments do. I find it unlikely, though not impossible that all dual licensed vehicles are bugged. Certainly mobile phones and laptops belonging to Australian business people and government employees have been bugged. What does surprise me it that has taken so long to take a look inside one - another thing that makes me suspect these devices are not put in every vehicle. Could the whole story be a setup? Yes - though I doubt Zheng Liming is in on it.
Consider the (convoluted) story that wa
And that's where I get stuck - trying to figure out what is profitable to smuggle into China. Milk products made from milk?
Religious texts and other restricted or forbidden items or material, drugs.
That's the problem - pot's kind of hard to get hold of down south, but up north it's not hard to find. Methamphetamines are everywhere Cocaine I wouldn't know about - but I'd be surprised if it wasn't available - there's certainly plenty of heroin moving around. Firearms are dirt cheap. China makes most of the things that are illegal in the West. And there's no money in Bibles - they're not even restricted anymore - it's only fruitcake Americans that bang on about raising money to ship Bibles to China - there's a hell of a lot more Bibles in China than there are people who want to read them. Trust me - after you've spent a couple of days in the industrial and commercial boom-towns you begin to realise that if there's a demand it'll be satisfied in just a couple of days, well maybe not satisfactory, and probably toxic. Whiskey is cheaper in China than Hong Kong. As for western tech - it's all made there in the first place. I agree there's got to be a market for smuggling something into China (apart from smuggling workers without passes back). On the other hand a shitload of stuff gets smuggled into Hong Kong.
Active broadcasting a signal takes a lot of power. A typical mobile phone can last maybe 10-12 hours on a charge, when talking. Up to two weeks standby. For these devices well let's be generous, make it double the time, that's 24 hours of broadcasting signals. The rest of the year: no battery. And I didn't see a battery on the photos.
What have you been smoking? There is only one photo in TFA linked article. Look again - see the blue shrink wrapped batteries? Still no? How about now?
The device will not fit in your shirt pocket - it's a little larger than an iPhone (I and other posters have seen these devices). As for your proof - again, what the fuck have you been smoking? A phone and this device have little in common when it comes to power consumption (see if you can work out why). Hint - I can buy devices on the open market that will transmit an audio signal for more 12 months - and they will fit in my pocket. No nuclear power pack involved. Don't go basing you idea of surveillance technology on what the FBI leaves attached to the bottom of Arab students cars - you can bet the Chinese have access to far more sophisticated devices than I can buy.
The rest of your screed is pure castles in the air - try getting off the sofa and visiting the world. China == Hong Kong - lip-service is the only difference between one side of the border and the other. The speculated range of the devices is just that. Speculated. As for signal interception - really, are you fucking serious? Do you hear mobile telephone calls on your transistor? (and that's a GHz crystal in the photo you can't see - just under the battery pack that doesn't exist).
Consider it - every insightful argument you've come up with is wrong - you can't see the obvious, and you can't even count up to two properly. And no, advertisements don't count as pictures. But hey - don't let your ignorance to stop from being an expert in Chinese spying devices, it never stopped you from making laughably clueless statements about the nature of emails or programming.
A dollar gets me ten you've got some weasely denial.
I was just in Hong Kong for three days. I noticed at least one or two clearly electronic devices on the dashboard. One was a thing that the driver would "pat down" and that would presumably start the fare. I can easily imagine a listening device being contained in this. Another didn't seem to have a purpose and was just there.
Thank you - it was commonly believed when I was there (3 years back) that they were tracking devices - I just never considered they recorded or transmitted conversation.
It is taped to the windshield. It does not seem to have any (external) power supply. How could such a device be able to transmit a serious quantity of data, over a distance of 20 km, with mountains in between? Hong Kong may be small but it's hilly, with peaks of almost 1000m tall. From most parts of this 20km radius there is no line of sight to Shenzhen - all mountains in the way, except for the north-western part of Hong Kong which is mostly protected wetland. Such transmission if at all possible takes a significant amount of power, a battery that fit in there would run out in hours or less. On these points alone I'd call this story total nonsense.
Last time I checked the Chinese had no problems setting up receivers in Hong Kong, well, less than before it became Chinese territory anyway! So I'll have to call nonsense to your nonsense.
They have been installed since 1997 - that means most are in place for some four years now. The only way to keep it working is if it's a passive device, using external radio sources as their power source, as is typical for devices used for automatic toll payment and similar purposes.
Please link to the source of your information? And why would a device the size of a mobile phone have to be passive? It's not like they haven't always been an obvious electronic device.
I was in Hong Kong three years ago and what you are saying was bullshit then. The licenses are good for ten years - but the displayed permits are updated every year. It's possible that these weren't installed in all cars, tricycles (yes), motorcycles, buses, and trucks. There's two main types of cars with a dual license - wealthy people - and not wealthy people. Most foreigners hire drivers - the drivers are not wealthy and the license allows up to three drivers (they tend to run 24/7 back and forth across the border) - they're also the type of vehicles (trucks also) used for smuggling and both instances would be attractive spying targets. As stated earlier I reckon they'd hear the incriminating stuff as the vehicle approaches the checkpoint.
A cavity microphone would make sense for these devices as it would allow cheap noise cancelling - similar setup to mobile phones.
In addition to the dual license a two-way permit is required for every occupant - and they only last from a week to a year (depending on circumstance) - so I wouldn't be surprised if the vehicle licences have similar terms. Oh, and the one time we were asked to leave the vehicle to get our papers checked in the office - they took the permit with us. I'm wondering now if they might of replaced the battery at the same time.
Next time you're in the Guangdong Public Service Bureau applying for your 2-way pass (it's where the vehicle passes come from too) maybe fire up your scanner.
The government tells you not to see, so you don't. Nothing unusual about it..
What's fnord in Mandarin?
stick the bug into the license plate!
I do wonder how they work technically. I mean, there can't be much space for a battery in such a licence plate. You can't use RFID like technology at a distance of more than 10-50 meters, which would make actual eavesdropping a challenge even for a government. If it is to have any semblance of being secret obviously you can't use the car's battery or electrical systems.
Very weak radio transmitters still need about a watt for reasonable communications (ie. cell phones). So if you wish to use something like this for, say a year (they're valid for a year), you'd need a tiny, tiny 31 MJ (that's megajoule) battery, or 3 KWh, but it can't be much larger than a watch battery.
So how the hell do you keep that thing powered ?
For that matter, which radio do you use ? Cell network ? It would require a hell of a lot of people in the loop.
Perhaps they are very low power transmitters and there is a network of receivers... perhaps the bugs have data storage which they dump when in range of a receiver. Who knows maybe its a mesh or p2p system. But enough clueless speculation - from actual article, their is more than one type of device. One type is about the size of a PDA (so no need to speculate about nano batteries and friggin lasers) with a range of around 20km. Don't forget the penisula is not that big. The ones in the article are fitted to the front window inside the car - not on the bumper catching carbon-based bugs. It also sounds like they were being used to detect smugglers - so maybe they only had to transmit the conversation in the vehicle as it approached the checkpoint.
[simulated translation]OK - border guard coming up be absolutely calm - these Chinese are too stupid to know we are smuggling vast amounts of...
And that's where I get stuck - trying to figure out what is profitable to smuggle into China. Milk products made from milk?
We took Japan as the big role model for society when it was still market leader 'til their bubble burst, now China is the new role model. Soon we'll see something similar here, of course only to find your car easier if it gets stolen or something like that. And how conveniently easy it is to implement, stick the bug into the license plate! You have to have one to operate your vehicle, it's government issued and it's illegal to tamper with it already. Beauty!
Until some arsehole steals your license plates. Oh, wait....
Oh and slashdot has quote tags for a reason.
No shit Sherlock. But do you understand how they work? And here's the the original quote I was replying to (again). Clearly, you don't need drugs to alter reality.
BTW how's that "Hope and Change" thing working out? Turned out to be nothing but Dubya dipped in chocolate huh? I'm afraid the late Bill Hicks [youtube.com] nailed it more than 20 years ago. How sad is it the man has been gone for two decades and if anything his words are even more true now?
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I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out.
~ Bill Hicks
I often look at 'free web based proxy' sites and wonder if they're just set up by some law enforcement agency to fuel their party-van. Same goes for pr0n sites. Would there be a way for media organisations to do this legitimately? I doubt it could be done here in Australia.
Don't be so damn cynical. There are lots of multimillionaire philanthropists out there funding anonymous proxies. Right?
But seriously, it costs money to host those services so you are right to be wary. Let's not forget that Greenpeace was originally organised by the CIA (part of the English anti nuclear campaign).
Consider that any connection through the NBN will be traceable back to the origin regardless of how many proxies you go through - proxie protection alone is the electronic equivalent of doubling back to confuse sniffer dogs - looks good in the movies, but craps out in real life. Don't believe me - ask the ex-head of AFPs Computer Crime unit... hey Alistair - how'd you nab Julian way back when?
P.S. It's illegal to host an Oz pr0n site.
PPS. Bigpond already do this - they use a product from McAfee (Hello NOA, love your work, lose any more USB keys around Russell lately?)[slips tin foil hat back on]
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It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious.
~ Bill Hicks
I hope these guys are as good as they claim to be, otherwise we will be seeing their faces with the caption "Further arrests from anonymous hacking group"
They are not. Competent black hats do not brag publicly. These are attention whores with some mediocre IT security skills. Most break-ins are not that hard to do.
If it was me, the access is something I'd want to cover in mud, so I'd find some McKinnon type to take the rap. There's no shortage of hormonated young fools not only willing to claim credit for the actions of others - but willing to keep lying even after they've been arrested, bagged, been made to "stand around" for a bit, give a little "snorkel", a bit of a "jump", the "nuts"... and by the "potty training" time the interrogators won't believe them if they decide all the attention isn't worth it and they'd like to change their mind.
Strangely that uber-haxor and master hairdresser Gary McKinnon's ability didn't extend as far as screen shots. Go back through his stories. He actually says "I could see the UFO pictures on his desktop" but "the software they had running stopped me taking a picture". Go figure.
Teenage hackers with paedophile ascendancies
And how is THAT supposed to work?!
Um, they're working their way *up* to paedophilia.... from anime?
It's not as much a requirement as it's a natural distribution, just like in a big war you'd have 1% special forces, 10% regular soldiers and the rest drafted civilians. Would it be great if everyone was seasoned marines? Yes. But you use what you have so some are effectively cannon fodder. You don't encourage them to be fools, they're just not ready to be anything more than what they are.
Take the war on drugs for example, your average pothead isn't hard to catch. There's just so many of them that it'll never end as long as the dealers and distribution continues, it's just a few random example to say "yes, we can take you too so don't feel safe" than even trying for 100%. Is that according to some big plan? Nah. It's just the way it is, it's Sturgeon's Law for people. 90% of everything is crap and 90% of everyone are idiots.
The only places that isn't true are the places where you've went through a lot of trouble to weed out the idiots. But when you're going for a broad public movement, you haven't got an choice. There will be plenty idiots, people you can't trust to do much of anything. Cheer in a rally? Throw some rocks. Yeah, we can have you do that and that's all we'd trust you to do, too.
Yes - though you'll probably find the amount of people committed to any side is much lower - people tend to be so damned fickle.
I guess so, but I think there are all these things call "advertisements" in mags and on billboards that feature semi-naked chicks selling perfume, watches, cars and beer. So it may not be technical advertisement, but that's the word we're stuck with to describe those things. The ads are certainly not there to let us know of the existence of those watches and beer, they are to a) get noticed; b) generate interest/arousal; c) cause us to change our buying pattern/decisions as a result. In that sense it's marketing - so I think you're making a good point, but I think the words you're using to distinguish between the two concepts don't work.
Now if you just replace "advertising" with "marketing", and then correlate that with the sale of "wants" over "needs" - you'll have something.... when you "want" something you don't need because you feel you're missing out - that's marketing (creating the desire).
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See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!
~ Bill Hicks
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
Marketing and advertising go hand in hand. When you advertise a room for rent, you highlight the positive features of that room to get more potential renters. That's marketing. You would not advertise a room for rent without listing all of the positive features. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of calls asking about features that could easily be listed in the advertisement.
If people are so weak as to buy things they don't need because of marketing, they deserve to go into debt. It's the "keeping up with the Jones'" attitude that drives many people into debt. Stop worrying about what your neighbor has and enjoy the things that you have. They may have a boat, big fancy car, and a big house, but they also probably have a lot of debt.
I suspect that Jared Diamond doesn't post to Slashdot... but if he did, he'd probably point out the unlikeness of that ever occurring. Aside from the evolutionary drives that make it more rewarding to carry debt than not to (it's about what the credit can purchase, the consequences of debt are separate) - there's the drive to gain an advantage over other gene pools (more return for less effort, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics etc). eg, The fellow with the yard full of leaves..... who then sells the leaves as mulch, but only after selling the "advantage" to the buyer. Which is all good until he sells the leaves that fell from the tree he poisoned... but it's not going to bother the fellow selling the poisonous mulch, because the buyer "is not his kin".
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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are.
~ Bill Hicks
Maybe, if we made 2011 the year of Bill Hicks, 2012 won't be worse. It's just a thought you know? You do what you can ;-p
Yeesh, that's cruel. :-P
On the bright side, all the potentially innocent victims of this incident have to do is show they've at least one virus/malware infection, and the jury can put it down to "pwned by a botnet; not guilty." Aka, the civilian form of "Plausible Deniability."
...and if they're script kiddies, they *will* have malware on their system (though they might think they're "crakz" and keygens). I'm guessing Adobe (Photoshop) has more legitimate complaints about loss of (potential) revenue through file sharing than the Hollywood media distribution Mafia.
The people who have been doing the real hacks for anonymous like the HBGary hack are probably much less likely to be caught.
Indeed. They are people that actually know what they are doing. And if it's indeed users of some simple DDOS tool, then that also explains the fairly high number of people rounded up.
And if I recall my history correctly - all revolutions required sacrifices (red herrings, expendables). That's why rallies are mass exercises - helps the long-term (committed) activists survive - so a certain amount of fools will always be tolerated and encouraged. Take a look around the world at where rebellions are daily affairs - see those kids throwing rocks and being arrested? They're part of a larger movement, they're expendable, and because they are, the authorities are tied up which makes it a lot harder to track down the real activists. Historically rebellions have deliberately sacrificed their own just to force the general population to pick a side - it's hard for Mum and Dad not to think about the issues when number one son is hooked up to the generator. Play the game long enough and sooner or later the operator of the generator will find their own family strapped to the chair.
We do seem to be the new villains. And easy to villainize, I suppose. We have no one voice to decry actions of others, no standard that can be recognized, no motive that can be twisted for someone's benefit. Although some have tried. Once this kind of crackdown comes to our shores (yes I am wearing a tin-foil hat), it will we more along the lines of "Suspected pedophile and member of Anonymous..." Posted Anonymously.
I love how at the _same time_ people think "information should be free", "once something is online it will be there forever", and "the Internet routes around censorship like damage", they believe anonymity exists as if all the above doesn't apply to digital access logs, billing records, CCTV, etc.
Your anonymity is on borrowed time, and I hope you've enjoyed squandering it on stupid shit for laughs.
I *don't* love how fools generalise with sweeping statements like yours - it makes you sound dumb, scared, ignorant, and completely uninformed. I'm presuming you plucked all those facts out of your arse - did you? Or are you saying that extensive first-hand research that you've done shows this to be a fact. How many real life people do you know?
Change is a bitch. Denial of change makes people like you scared and angry. Pull your head out of Reagan's bum and recognise this is 2011 - the world is not how you'd wish it to be, it never was, and it never will be. You change nothing and your contributions are worthless. Deal with it.
Well, it's not like there isn't rhyme or reason to what comes out of a 4chan mob. The members generally lash out at things -- especially things that are arbitrary and belonging to conventional power structures. Also, there's a strong bias towards things that are in that demographic's field of vision. Just like here, a holy shitstorm gets raised about Sony's transgressions because they actually play their games and use their products -- in absolute terms and with more holistic foresight, it would be something like Goldman Sachs instead.
To piss off Anonymous the most, come in with hypocritical, fit-for-a-fifth-grader morality and attempt to define things like social norms. To please Anonymous, be an attractive young woman who periodically takes pictures of herself, has some degree of confidence and rehashes and without overt intention redefines -chan culture.
The problem with that logic is that it is based on the assumption that Anonymous == 4-chan and it doesn't allow for the sabotage factor. Bear in mind that even if only one member of 4-chan is involved they'd find it hard not to tell the world about it - and if they're not from 4-chan (cough) they'd deliberately muddy the waters to hide their identity. Anyone wanting to discredit any anonymous action (and the lower-case a is deliberate) only has to add a 4-chan element to it. Feeding stupid people fake proof of their own fears is the easiest way to manipulate them - it's not like they're ever going to check the facts - and even when presented with evidence to negate their beliefs - the massive emotional investment they've made in their (stupid) opinions is one they will never challenge.
Sound a little tin foil hat? Then maybe a little study of history is in order.
The world is a complex place full of people incapable of grasping even limited complexity - with a shortage of facts they jump to conclusions that compliment their own fears and failings. Teenage hackers with paedophile ascendancies and a hatred of the established order - "Yeah I can picture that"
Be careful what you believe. What happens to you could be happening to others. eg. someone accuses you of something you. did. not. do. - then they are saying nothing of you and speaking volumes of themselves.
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Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what we'll tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!
~ Bill Hicks
In the days of MS/PC/4/IMB-DOS malware (like "del. > nul" in a setup.bat) on floppy drives required the user to actually execute the .exe/.com/.bat file.
And what does that have to do with autoplay? If you use a USB drive, you usually use it because you want to access the data on it. In that aspect, I don't see any difference between a floppy and a USB drive. If an infection was possible using a floppy disk, why wouldn't it work using a USB drive? Whether it is an infected executable, modified data that triggers a buffer overflow in a program that reads it, or a boot sector type virus.
Other thing I was trying to point out is the fact that you actually don't need to wait for the device to be mounted. With USB, the computer communicates with the device for quite a while in order to determine what kind of device it is, what kind of filesystem it has, etc. Theoretically there is a possibility for infection at any time during this process. Thinking that just because you don't have autoplay you are save is, IMHO, stupid.
No dispute there. I expressed myself poorly. (please accept my unreserved apologies) I meant (and I've explained it better earlier, further down in this thread) that malware requires users to propagate. Disclaimer I run *nix. Relying on the OS to keep data safe is a user failing.
And yes - you are perfectly correct. Boot sector infections were common. It used to be amusing to replace the DOS boot sector error message with "Hello McAfee" just to see mcafee's crap signature identification call it a virus.
Thinking that just because you don't have autoplay you are safe is, IMHO, stupid.
Yes (again, and I've covered the "stupid" bit in another post). The exact name escapes me (USB switchblade?) but one of the projects developed as a result of the COFEE leak does just that - and it doesn't use the same mechanism as Stuxnet.
@DrBoumBoum *nix is quite capable of autoplay. Many of the current main distros prompt the user to associate actions with device detection events - and only last week I came across another setuid stupidity. Combine the two and it's a disaster. Just because our beloved OS separates the toilet from the kitchen there's always some 'tard that knock down the intervening wall. Spend a little time on the forums and see how many people run a desktop as root. (sigh). Sometimes I suspect the helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves mentality makes people complacent (a risky OS might make people more cautious.
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
When my mailbox is stuffed full of unsolicited mail - whether it's scams, advertising, free samples, or marketing - it matters not. It's littering. It used my space. Try it in the physical world and it'll threaten the health of those that litter Right or wrong - it's a simple fact.
Marketing is the rattle of a stick in a swill bucket ~ George Orwell (any inaccuracies are due to my recall)
You have got to be fucking kidding me. So it was all the elites who were dancing in the streets last month when the US executed Osama Bin Laden? You guys just don't get it. Pulling that kind of crap is exactly why everyone else in the world detests US foreign policy. If you still can't see it, consider the arrest of Ratko Mladic the other day. Almost identical situation, except Mladic personally helped to execute at least twice as many people as died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, so you could say he is more evil than OBL. And he was arrested and taken to the ICC. He wasn't shot in the head and dumped in the ocean, because that is not how civilised societies deal with criminals.
The way the US public cheers the fact that their government can and does execute anyone in the world with no due process, and is perfectly entitled to invade any country they don't like makes me feel physically ill.
"I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.
"Pick it up."
"I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me."
"Pick up the gun."
"Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, Mister."
"Pick up the gun."
(He picks it up. Three shots ring out.)
"You all saw him - he had a gun."
~ Bill Hicks
Propagation through Interrupt 13. When BIOS routines managed all disk access for the OS.
01h 02h and 03h were the handler subs which gave you a vector for the MBR-type of virus.
McAfee used to update signatures quarterly...
No dispute there. But.... it still requires user intervention. I know some of the GNU folk'll hate me - but an OS - from Windows to Oberon can be compromised by the user. If the user is stupid. If one does something detrimental to oneself it. is. stupid. Even rocket scientists can be stupid. A rocket scientist who lights a cigarette beside a leaking oxygen cylinder is stupid. Our choice of OS and how we treat that choice is like choosing how many leaking oxygen cylinders we keep close by. Because we're human, and sooner or later, we will do something stupid. All we can do is concentrate, and try and keep our environment as forgiving of stupidity as possible.
It's a subtlety lost on many - like the idea that rarely do things have only two states. Further prove of evolution at work. ;-p
Any Hicks reference needs to be modded up. +1 insightful
Here have some more - there's at least one for *every* situation. And why not "We pay for life with death - so everything in between should be free" A man who *lived* life and never backed down despite having a leg broken and a gun pointed at his head.
We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution. ~ Bill Hicks
Even for death:-
I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.
It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.
Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government — however, such attacks are very difficult to trace."
Not as difficult to trace as "unnamed security experts".
I'm going to get flack from a hopper load of "Certifeyed" "Ethical Hackers" (with links to their business touting security blogs in their homepage link but...
an "unnamed security expert" is an oxymoron (they tend to be attention whores). Seriously - it's like reading "an unnamed actor today said he/she had been asked to take over Charlie Sheen's job". Bullshit. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't stop 'em from letting the media know who they were - even if it meant crawling through a million letter boxes to correct the article by hand. (sigh) Slashdot is increasingly becoming a venue for binspam and a posting ground for the ponderously autistic.