It's fun to think about what could theorhetically happen, but the truth is, no malware writer is going to think of everything. The interesting thing about these VM rootkits is that they allow the attacker to think about less, since most of the ways to detect that the system has been compromised (but not necessarily/how/) will be useless.
Nevertheless, most of the "but what if" scenarios presented in these comments are never, ever going to happen. No one is ever going to make a rootkit that installs a new bios and monitors for bios changes. The reason is that they don't have to--they don't need to get 100% of the people, they just need to get most of them. Pushing forward with all that extra effort in order to get the techies is not going to be worth it.
If the article is to be believed: What: International Airport Centers sues former employee, claiming use of a secure file deletion utility violated federal hacking laws.
Then isn't this a civil suit without a "prosecution"?
What you're basically asking for is a law stating that every piece of info on any machine owned by a corporation must be archived indefinitely. We're approaching a time where this will be technically feasible, but would you really want to place that burden on every mom&pop shop operating in the US?
That's largely how it is. Laptop is company property, you don't do anything to it without permission. If a mom&pop shop doesn't want to archive data--they don't have to.
Ultimately, what an employee can do with company property should be spelled out from the beginning. If the company doesn't want you overwriting ANYTHING, they better be prepared for the archival costs. If, instead, they want to allow for the possibility that incriminating data is lost, they need to be prepared to lose that court case.
Because it can still be recovered. With electron microscopes and a whole lot of time and effort, you can examine the state of the electrons on the hard drive and come very close to recovering all of the data that has been overwritten once. Overwriting multiple times reduces the possibility that this sort of recovery will work.
Presumably, there was somewhat confidential data on that notebook anyway. The use of a secure deletion program should be required to keep that data out of the hands of competitors.
But there are things in the case that we don't know.. for example, what evidence does the company have that these files were even there in the first place? Maybe he was secure-deleting personal information that the company had no right to in the first place (where I work, we have an incidental use clause regarding technology--that is, we can use it for our own personal purposes as long as it doesn't degrade the system as a whole). Simply put, we don't know most of the facts of this case.
One way would be to offer extras for the film in the theater that/aren't/ available on the DVD. That would even give them Yet Another DVD Version 5 years later, if the film were particularly successful. Otherwise, short DVD turnaround times coupled with home theater systems and an overall bad experience at movie theaters will continue to be factors in the decreasing ticket sales.
I do agree with most of what you've said, but I wonder if you intended the corelation between movie theaters/patrons being asshats and Hollywood being asshats... all you talked about were your bad theater experiences, and then you slipped in a little jab at Hollywood at the end with no explanation. Hollywood didn't bring their screaming kid in or eat the movie reel....
I don't understand your argument. Hollywood already remakes films which are not in the public domain--if these films had fallen into PD, what difference would it make?
The only thing I can think of is that people could reuse ideas without permission from the (ex)copyright holder, meaning that you wouldn't have the same mindset, groupthinking people remaking the same things over and over. Instead, you could have some people not affiliated with Hollywood using their ideas in something new and innovative--and given the movie theater's relationship with Hollywood, you'd never see these films on screen. You'd see them on the Internet, and that wouldn't help increase box office revenue.
No, ultimately there are a large number of factors which are (probably) contributing to this decline. They've all been said over and over, but here they are again:
* Bad movie theater experience (screaming kids, cellphones, etc.) * Increasing ticket prices * Lower quality movies, in general * Shorter DVD release times and quite likely the biggest factor: * The Internet.
Not only is there a lot of legal, free video entertainment available on the Internet, there is also music, gaming, etc. That's not counting piracy (which is certainly rampant and might cut into Box Office revenue, but it's impossible to prove).
There was a time when I could look at a 16-screen theater listing and pretty much tick off every one of them as a movie I'd seen/in/the/theater/. These days, between the crap they put in the theaters and the other legal entertainment options, it's not uncommon for me to look at a theater listing and have seen maybe one movie that's there.
The reports are there for a reason, and they are at a threshold that MOST people will never hit. Trying to avoid generating a report is, in and of itself, suspicious from the government's point of view (remember, the government best operates under the "You shouldn't care if you have nothing to hide" idea). Therefore, if a person obfuscates a transaction which would otherwise get flagged, then they clearly have something to hide and should be investigated even more.
What could he be sued under? Anything. All they have to do is file the suit and he'll probably have to settle due to the overwheming legal fees associated with defending oneself, even if he did absolutely nothing wrong.
It's a difference because computers and the Internet are not well understood. That doesn't excuse this default behavior, but it does explain it.
As the Internet becomes more essential for day-to-day life, access to it should be considered as much a priviledge as driving a car. Computers should require maintenance and inspection, and use of the Internet should require a license.
Are you not responsible for the maintanence and upkeep of your car? If your brakes go out and you kill someone, are you completely without fault if you have never had your brakes looked at before, they were squealing for months, and possibly even a little sluggish?
I may be mistaken, but you aren't forced to have a jury trial, are you? In the case of a seriously emotionally driven case (child abuse, porn, etc.) I'd think that asking 12 lay persons to decide guilt or innocence might be worse than 1 person whose job it is to be impartial.
Of course, you have no chance of a hung jury in situation....
What it really seems to do is create a greater disparity in the value of low-end versus high-end items. People who horde mobs that drop high end items certainly do increase the auctionable value of said items (there is a reduced supply to the general populace as compared to the bot who is farming) generating more gold and feeding the gold-farming machine.
However, as there are a limited number of places from which to acquire these high-end items, it also makes sense to farm lower-end stuff--after all, it's still just a bot that's doing it. They sell these lower-end hides at the markets for a much lower value in order to guarantee that their items will be bought, thus the price for the item in general is greatly reduced and low-level characters who are just trying to make a buck get screwed.
Not at all. If you take away my freedom then I'm perfectly fine to let you take responsibility for that and put you in jail. I'm the one to judge if my freedom is taken away, not you. If I feel I have been wronged then I'm within my rights to complain and try to make sure you think twice before doing it to someone else. If everyone thought that way, prisons would not be an issue (utopia indeed but one has to believe in the better part of humanity). Same with feelings, if I feel that I have to make sure you know how I feel then I will do so unless I feel that the end result will only make everyone feel worse.
You didn't make that exception in your original statement. You stated merely that you should be able to do anything you want as long as it doesn't make others unhappy. You gave no indication that retaliation or a reaction which might cause that person unhappiness would be acceptable. By your initial wording, you shouldn't tell the authorities if someone does something bad to you because your action might cause them unhappiness.
Of course, we're talking about a hypothetical reality, because the government places restrictions on what we can do, even when the actions we take may not adversely affect anyone. Furthermore, the government allows us to do things which reduce the happiness of others, and without recompense to the person we have "injured".
Quite right, however by using the BSD license I can take some accountability for the software (i.e. correct bugs that are pointed ut to me) because they know who wrote it. And ofc the "fame (shame?) makes e happier also =)
Definitely a good reason to keep your name on it:)
That means that I'm free to pursue happiness and freedom in any way as long as I make sure that your freedom and happiness is not changed for the worse (and I'm not the one to judge if that is so, you are). That puts upon me the responsibility to think through what I do and how that may affect you.
Without a qualifier, that's one of the most absurd statements I've ever heard. Taken as written, we could never put people in prison for crimes. Worse, we could never really express our own opinions--they might make someone else sad.
In that same line GPL makes no sense to me. You say, "this code is free BUT not completely because if you use it your code will have to carry the SAME restrictions". "Freedom" for code but not for the user -> which probably makes me less happy but no less free as long as I decide NOT to use your code.
Lots of people spout the "This code is free under the GPL" line or something similar. They probably don't know what they're talking about.
You are mostly correct here. The software is "free" in that, barring government exceptions, anyone in the world is allowed to download and use the software. Further, they can distribute the source code 100% for free and without restriction (again, barring certain government exceptions). Even modifying the code is free and acceptable, and you don't have get anyone's permission to do so. The only thing you can't do is redistribute your modified version under a non-GPL'd license.
So there are a lot of things you can do with GPL software that are free. A whole lot. But no, not everything is.
I prefer freedom for the user and that is why I use a BSD like license.
Most people distinguish between "user" and "developer". The GPL has freedom for the user.
You are free to use my code in any way you damn well please and if you decide to use that code in something that is not "free" (gratis) then that does not change the fact that my code still is free for me and others to use as we choose
But the BSD license has restrictions, too. Specifically:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
"Not buying it" worked to "kill off DIVX" but I don't think it was a consumer boycott. DIVX was marketed terribly, iirc. Also, DIVX had a competitor that was higher quality, restrictionless, and had more studios willing to support it over DIVX (although a few major studios did exclusively release content on DIVX at first). And Divx had a very small number of stores (Circuit City was one, I remember) that carried the players/discs. No way you're going to get significant market penetration these days with only 2-3 chains of stores carrying your product, unless one of them is Wal Mart. And the movies themselves didn't offer what consumers wanted (particularly compared to DVD). Features were slimmer than DVD, and most of the movies were Pan&Scan.
Perhaps the most damning evidence that DIVX failed for reasons other than consumers intentionally boycotting the devices is that Divx players also played DVDs. Why would you ever choose a more restrictive DVD player when you could get something that played DVDs plus other discs?
No, I posit that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will be a much different story. The market is already primed to purchase movies rather than renting them after almost 10 years of DVD, so that's one less hurdle. Neither of the two competing formats is inherently better, and although one is less restrictive, it is not significantly so. The discs are of higher quality and will be marketed as such to overcome the market penetration of DVD, but above all, people (in the US at least) will be driven to get the next big thing. Your average consumer doesn't give two shits about what's right or wrong, as long as they get what they want. We're an extremely self-centric and materialistic society, but as long as the average joe isn't getting screwed (and let's face it, the average joe doesn't break encryption to copy movies, and probably can't tell the difference between upsampled HD-DVD vs full resolution) no one is going to care that HD-DVD infringes on some rights they never knew they had and don't particularly care to exercise.
I wonder if you could disrupt the test results by imagining a lie while telling the truth, and recalling childhood memories while telling a lie. It seems like this would light up both sections of the brain on the MRI, making any test results inconclusive.
Of course, for torture, this is easily overcome. Just torture the person until they're nearly incapable of performing both mental tasks simultaneously. Luckily, I live in a country (the US) where torture never happens.
Slashdot Mirror
It might not be that easy, since OTHER PEOPLE (a friend) could post that about him without posting it under some other handle.
There is no good federal reason to legislte it... But when has that stopped the US?
Lovely interstate commerce clause, there.
It's fun to think about what could theorhetically happen, but the truth is, no malware writer is going to think of everything. The interesting thing about these VM rootkits is that they allow the attacker to think about less, since most of the ways to detect that the system has been compromised (but not necessarily /how/) will be useless.
Nevertheless, most of the "but what if" scenarios presented in these comments are never, ever going to happen. No one is ever going to make a rootkit that installs a new bios and monitors for bios changes. The reason is that they don't have to--they don't need to get 100% of the people, they just need to get most of them. Pushing forward with all that extra effort in order to get the techies is not going to be worth it.
If the article is to be believed:
What: International Airport Centers sues former employee, claiming use of a secure file deletion utility violated federal hacking laws.
Then isn't this a civil suit without a "prosecution"?
What you're basically asking for is a law stating that every piece of info on any machine owned by a corporation must be archived indefinitely. We're approaching a time where this will be technically feasible, but would you really want to place that burden on every mom&pop shop operating in the US?
That's largely how it is. Laptop is company property, you don't do anything to it without permission. If a mom&pop shop doesn't want to archive data--they don't have to.
Ultimately, what an employee can do with company property should be spelled out from the beginning. If the company doesn't want you overwriting ANYTHING, they better be prepared for the archival costs. If, instead, they want to allow for the possibility that incriminating data is lost, they need to be prepared to lose that court case.
Because it can still be recovered. With electron microscopes and a whole lot of time and effort, you can examine the state of the electrons on the hard drive and come very close to recovering all of the data that has been overwritten once. Overwriting multiple times reduces the possibility that this sort of recovery will work.
http://rixstep.com/2/20030314,00.html has a bit of information on the subject.
Adolf Hitler
you lose.
This isn't USENet, and that's not what Godwin's Law states.
Presumably, there was somewhat confidential data on that notebook anyway. The use of a secure deletion program should be required to keep that data out of the hands of competitors.
But there are things in the case that we don't know.. for example, what evidence does the company have that these files were even there in the first place? Maybe he was secure-deleting personal information that the company had no right to in the first place (where I work, we have an incidental use clause regarding technology--that is, we can use it for our own personal purposes as long as it doesn't degrade the system as a whole). Simply put, we don't know most of the facts of this case.
One way would be to offer extras for the film in the theater that /aren't/ available on the DVD. That would even give them Yet Another DVD Version 5 years later, if the film were particularly successful. Otherwise, short DVD turnaround times coupled with home theater systems and an overall bad experience at movie theaters will continue to be factors in the decreasing ticket sales.
I do agree with most of what you've said, but I wonder if you intended the corelation between movie theaters/patrons being asshats and Hollywood being asshats... all you talked about were your bad theater experiences, and then you slipped in a little jab at Hollywood at the end with no explanation. Hollywood didn't bring their screaming kid in or eat the movie reel....
I don't understand your argument. Hollywood already remakes films which are not in the public domain--if these films had fallen into PD, what difference would it make?
/in/the/theater/. These days, between the crap they put in the theaters and the other legal entertainment options, it's not uncommon for me to look at a theater listing and have seen maybe one movie that's there.
The only thing I can think of is that people could reuse ideas without permission from the (ex)copyright holder, meaning that you wouldn't have the same mindset, groupthinking people remaking the same things over and over. Instead, you could have some people not affiliated with Hollywood using their ideas in something new and innovative--and given the movie theater's relationship with Hollywood, you'd never see these films on screen. You'd see them on the Internet, and that wouldn't help increase box office revenue.
No, ultimately there are a large number of factors which are (probably) contributing to this decline. They've all been said over and over, but here they are again:
* Bad movie theater experience (screaming kids, cellphones, etc.)
* Increasing ticket prices
* Lower quality movies, in general
* Shorter DVD release times
and quite likely the biggest factor:
* The Internet.
Not only is there a lot of legal, free video entertainment available on the Internet, there is also music, gaming, etc. That's not counting piracy (which is certainly rampant and might cut into Box Office revenue, but it's impossible to prove).
There was a time when I could look at a 16-screen theater listing and pretty much tick off every one of them as a movie I'd seen
Devil's Advocate, here....
The reports are there for a reason, and they are at a threshold that MOST people will never hit. Trying to avoid generating a report is, in and of itself, suspicious from the government's point of view (remember, the government best operates under the "You shouldn't care if you have nothing to hide" idea). Therefore, if a person obfuscates a transaction which would otherwise get flagged, then they clearly have something to hide and should be investigated even more.
Everyone unfamiliar with a language does it :) Doesn't help that "per se" has the same phonetics and is spelled differently...
but se la vi,
Just FYI, the phrase is "c'est la vie".
It was a pun. I guess I should have capitalized it.
What could he be sued under? Anything. All they have to do is file the suit and he'll probably have to settle due to the overwheming legal fees associated with defending oneself, even if he did absolutely nothing wrong.
It's a difference because computers and the Internet are not well understood. That doesn't excuse this default behavior, but it does explain it.
As the Internet becomes more essential for day-to-day life, access to it should be considered as much a priviledge as driving a car. Computers should require maintenance and inspection, and use of the Internet should require a license.
Are you not responsible for the maintanence and upkeep of your car? If your brakes go out and you kill someone, are you completely without fault if you have never had your brakes looked at before, they were squealing for months, and possibly even a little sluggish?
I may be mistaken, but you aren't forced to have a jury trial, are you? In the case of a seriously emotionally driven case (child abuse, porn, etc.) I'd think that asking 12 lay persons to decide guilt or innocence might be worse than 1 person whose job it is to be impartial.
Of course, you have no chance of a hung jury in situation....
What it really seems to do is create a greater disparity in the value of low-end versus high-end items. People who horde mobs that drop high end items certainly do increase the auctionable value of said items (there is a reduced supply to the general populace as compared to the bot who is farming) generating more gold and feeding the gold-farming machine.
However, as there are a limited number of places from which to acquire these high-end items, it also makes sense to farm lower-end stuff--after all, it's still just a bot that's doing it. They sell these lower-end hides at the markets for a much lower value in order to guarantee that their items will be bought, thus the price for the item in general is greatly reduced and low-level characters who are just trying to make a buck get screwed.
You seem to be confusing the XBox with the XBox 360.
Not at all. If you take away my freedom then I'm perfectly fine to let you take responsibility for that and put you in jail. I'm the one to judge if my freedom is taken away, not you. If I feel I have been wronged then I'm within my rights to complain and try to make sure you think twice before doing it to someone else. If everyone thought that way, prisons would not be an issue (utopia indeed but one has to believe in the better part of humanity). Same with feelings, if I feel that I have to make sure you know how I feel then I will do so unless I feel that the end result will only make everyone feel worse.
:)
You didn't make that exception in your original statement. You stated merely that you should be able to do anything you want as long as it doesn't make others unhappy. You gave no indication that retaliation or a reaction which might cause that person unhappiness would be acceptable. By your initial wording, you shouldn't tell the authorities if someone does something bad to you because your action might cause them unhappiness.
Of course, we're talking about a hypothetical reality, because the government places restrictions on what we can do, even when the actions we take may not adversely affect anyone. Furthermore, the government allows us to do things which reduce the happiness of others, and without recompense to the person we have "injured".
Quite right, however by using the BSD license I can take some accountability for the software (i.e. correct bugs that are pointed ut to me) because they know who wrote it. And ofc the "fame (shame?) makes e happier also =)
Definitely a good reason to keep your name on it
That means that I'm free to pursue happiness and freedom in any way as long as I make sure that your freedom and happiness is not changed for the worse (and I'm not the one to judge if that is so, you are). That puts upon me the responsibility to think through what I do and how that may affect you.
p
Without a qualifier, that's one of the most absurd statements I've ever heard. Taken as written, we could never put people in prison for crimes. Worse, we could never really express our own opinions--they might make someone else sad.
In that same line GPL makes no sense to me. You say, "this code is free BUT not completely because if you use it your code will have to carry the SAME restrictions". "Freedom" for code but not for the user -> which probably makes me less happy but no less free as long as I decide NOT to use your code.
Lots of people spout the "This code is free under the GPL" line or something similar. They probably don't know what they're talking about.
You are mostly correct here. The software is "free" in that, barring government exceptions, anyone in the world is allowed to download and use the software. Further, they can distribute the source code 100% for free and without restriction (again, barring certain government exceptions). Even modifying the code is free and acceptable, and you don't have get anyone's permission to do so. The only thing you can't do is redistribute your modified version under a non-GPL'd license.
So there are a lot of things you can do with GPL software that are free. A whole lot. But no, not everything is.
I prefer freedom for the user and that is why I use a BSD like license.
Most people distinguish between "user" and "developer". The GPL has freedom for the user.
You are free to use my code in any way you damn well please and if you decide to use that code in something that is not "free" (gratis) then that does not change the fact that my code still is free for me and others to use as we choose
But the BSD license has restrictions, too. Specifically:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
As found on http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.ph
The only totally free way to give out your code is to put it in the public domain.
"Not buying it" worked to "kill off DIVX" but I don't think it was a consumer boycott. DIVX was marketed terribly, iirc. Also, DIVX had a competitor that was higher quality, restrictionless, and had more studios willing to support it over DIVX (although a few major studios did exclusively release content on DIVX at first). And Divx had a very small number of stores (Circuit City was one, I remember) that carried the players/discs. No way you're going to get significant market penetration these days with only 2-3 chains of stores carrying your product, unless one of them is Wal Mart. And the movies themselves didn't offer what consumers wanted (particularly compared to DVD). Features were slimmer than DVD, and most of the movies were Pan&Scan.
Perhaps the most damning evidence that DIVX failed for reasons other than consumers intentionally boycotting the devices is that Divx players also played DVDs. Why would you ever choose a more restrictive DVD player when you could get something that played DVDs plus other discs?
No, I posit that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will be a much different story. The market is already primed to purchase movies rather than renting them after almost 10 years of DVD, so that's one less hurdle. Neither of the two competing formats is inherently better, and although one is less restrictive, it is not significantly so. The discs are of higher quality and will be marketed as such to overcome the market penetration of DVD, but above all, people (in the US at least) will be driven to get the next big thing. Your average consumer doesn't give two shits about what's right or wrong, as long as they get what they want. We're an extremely self-centric and materialistic society, but as long as the average joe isn't getting screwed (and let's face it, the average joe doesn't break encryption to copy movies, and probably can't tell the difference between upsampled HD-DVD vs full resolution) no one is going to care that HD-DVD infringes on some rights they never knew they had and don't particularly care to exercise.
Possibly.
I wonder if you could disrupt the test results by imagining a lie while telling the truth, and recalling childhood memories while telling a lie. It seems like this would light up both sections of the brain on the MRI, making any test results inconclusive.
Of course, for torture, this is easily overcome. Just torture the person until they're nearly incapable of performing both mental tasks simultaneously. Luckily, I live in a country (the US) where torture never happens.