The same holier-than-thou attitude that exists in Police and Intelligence services towards the public exists in the so-called security professional community.
Let's say my next-door neighbor and I live in a old neighborhood with big trees. If my neighbors tree has a disease that is affecting my tree, I do not have the right to trespass on my neighbors property and chop down or treat his tree.
The interests of security do not give someone the right to trespass on my property without due process. If Mr. Mullen wants to get some sort of court order, fine, but he does not have the right to screw with other people's computers for some perceived security problem.
If Tim Mullen can be identified hacking into any computer I am responsible for, he will be arrested and sued for computer crimes. Whether he is wearing a "white" hat or a "black" hat is irrelevant.
Obviously the knowledge required to become an FCC certified installer ends with sticking a pole in the ground.
Windows 98SE is the first version of Windows to fully support USB. If you are running Windows 95, you probaly don't have USB-equipped hardware, and 95 is now a legacy product anyway.
As for your other issues, that's pure bunk. The Direcway service is basically using a proxy server to conserve enough limited (and very, very expensive) bandwidth between the satellite and ground station. If you want low-latency service, get DSL, not a service using a geosynchronous satellites.
Direcway does nothing to reduce LAN performance. Your poor performance is a result of using Windows ICS instead of a better solution. I just set the system up for my parents who live in the hilltowns near my city. All you need to do is setup a proxy server (like Webwasher) on the box for web access and use ICS for email and other services.
The result is excellent service over a 802.11b wireless network in the middle of nowhere. Web pages, streaming audio/video and other high latency tolerable applications work great.
Re:Human element being manipulated
on
The Art of Deception
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Not really, there are plenty of people are not willing to take bribes.
The easiest way to manipulate people is to pretend to be their friend. We tend to let our friends do things that don't jive with bueracratic and annoying rules, because they are friends.
Nazi-like policies and a lack of user education from arrogant and obnoxious IT people results in social engineering exploits.
I was once a retail salesman at a large computer chain.
I'd notice that the well do to clustered around laptops and high end sony desktops. The less-well to do clustered around the $399 special.
Based on my mood, I would hock extened service plans to rich people trying to keep up with the joneses or poor people who are vulnerable to a sales pitch.
If you don't want to be tracked, don't wear distinctive clothes.
Please put tinfoil hat back on bucko... you're starting to drool.
The mylar strips in US currency are not RFID tags or anything similar. They are an anti-counterfeiting measure.
As inexpensive printers got cheaper, many counterfeiters were bleaching $1 and $5 bills and printing phoney $20 and $100 bills on the paper. Most counterfeit money is detected by bank clerks who can feel the difference in paper quality.
The mylar strip (which is not present in $1 and $5 bills) makes it easy to spot bleached counterfeits.
The European Union addressed this problem by making each demonination of currency a different size.
If you maintain the code for any complex software, you cannot simply start making changes willy-nilly to fix things that may or may not be broken. Buffer overflows are not always obvious and fixing them may involve signifigant debugging across the app.
Human or "soft" issues factor in as well. Checking out a huge swath of code to hunt for bugs that may or may not be there will hold up everyone else's work for days. The cost of automated tools to find bugs may be out of the reach of some shops.
Security goes alot deeper than running servers as root. The heart of computing is not code, but procedure and standards. The only way to improve the quality of code in general, and security in particular is to simplify, standardize, and avoid jumping on the next bandwagon.
I suppose you are the world's most perfect programmer who faces no deadlines and makes no mistakes. WTF does "learning about security" mean, anyway?
I guess you are also a perfect syadmin who is omnipresent and capable of keeping up with the mailing lists or news pages of Windows, Linux-Kernel, PHP, Apache, IIS, Perl, FreeBSD, Bind, Solaris, AIX, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, GNU Utilities, ColdFusion and LDAP.
I suppose while keeping track of those products, your omnipresence also allows you to be aware of undocumented security holes. And once you are aware of those holes, you never run into patch conflicts that break your apps.
Maybe you should get a clue or STFU. "Security" goes beyond reading READMEs.
If your job is so fucked up that you actually need to be paged at all hours of the day and night, you'll never have peace.
Fix the problems or fix your problem and get a new job. If you are getting paged more than 3 times a week off hours, hire an overnight operator or technician.
Because while Qmail works great, it's just plain weird. It uses a bizarre directory structure, requires several local users and is quite simply an obnoxious program to deal with.
Change the shortcut that users launch Access & Excel with to point a CMD, shell or Perl script that launches Access or Excel, then sets drops the priority. It's pretty easy to use Perl to launch and control office applications.
Another route may be to move the access database to an RDBMS, which may use less CPU horsepower than using Access as a client/server.
The AC just gave you a quote written thousands of years ago the says the same thing as you did. He wasn't pushing religion at you.
The point is that the condition or conflict that you describe and despise exists now, existed then and probaly will continue to exist forever.
Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?
on
Cryptome Log Subpoenaed
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
The issued a subpeona for records relevant to a specific investigation, asswipe. This isn't some X-Files conspiracy to send all logs to the gov't. It doesn't matter whether the investigation is for a murder, terrorism or smuggling -- it's still a proper and legal subpeona for records.
Many times employees of the smaller company decide that working for a big company and dealing with the bueracratic nonsense sucks and jet. Particulary when the buying company is a big, old company like (the former) AT&T, IBM or the like.
"So, this is a bad thing? That is, do you think only foreigners should be profiled for possible links to terrorism?"
The Intelligence services are not permitted to spy on us citizens. This is why the FBI (a police organization) was tasked with counter-intelligence duties in the US. If you think intelligence services should have a free hand to spy on citizens, you have a screw loose.
US citizens have a right to due process by virtue of their citizenship.
"Oh, I see. US citizens ought to be able to commit tax evasion without fear of getting caught too. Gr00vy!"
This is why TIA is bad. Its use will expand beyond terrorism, and idiots such as yourself will thump your chest and say "Awesome!" when you see evil tax-evaders and stamp counterfeiters get arrested on the Discovery channel.
Banks charge a fixed fee plus percentage for monetary transfers, whether they are $0.05 or $50... this is why many supermarkets are charging fees or disallowing debit card transactions less than about $10.
Since transaction costs for "micro-payments" are extremely high relative to the amount of money transferred, none of these schemes are likely to ever succeed.
If transactions costs did not present a barrier, public acceptance would. Users, particularly Americans, generally prefer subscription or bundled items to ala carte -- even if the bundle or package costs the same or more than the ala carte rate.
Webmasters need to pull their heads out of the clouds and give up on micropayments. Users use free search engines like google to find free information on web sites. Nobody wants to pay for web-quality content.
NFS really sucks in general and it is hard to add new filesystem support to Windows w/o expensive developer support and licensing... which also comes with an NDA.
Slashdot Mirror
The same holier-than-thou attitude that exists in Police and Intelligence services towards the public exists in the so-called security professional community.
Let's say my next-door neighbor and I live in a old neighborhood with big trees. If my neighbors tree has a disease that is affecting my tree, I do not have the right to trespass on my neighbors property and chop down or treat his tree.
The interests of security do not give someone the right to trespass on my property without due process. If Mr. Mullen wants to get some sort of court order, fine, but he does not have the right to screw with other people's computers for some perceived security problem.
If Tim Mullen can be identified hacking into any computer I am responsible for, he will be arrested and sued for computer crimes. Whether he is wearing a "white" hat or a "black" hat is irrelevant.
Obviously the knowledge required to become an FCC certified installer ends with sticking a pole in the ground.
Windows 98SE is the first version of Windows to fully support USB. If you are running Windows 95, you probaly don't have USB-equipped hardware, and 95 is now a legacy product anyway.
As for your other issues, that's pure bunk. The Direcway service is basically using a proxy server to conserve enough limited (and very, very expensive) bandwidth between the satellite and ground station. If you want low-latency service, get DSL, not a service using a geosynchronous satellites.
Direcway does nothing to reduce LAN performance. Your poor performance is a result of using Windows ICS instead of a better solution. I just set the system up for my parents who live in the hilltowns near my city. All you need to do is setup a proxy server (like Webwasher) on the box for web access and use ICS for email and other services.
The result is excellent service over a 802.11b wireless network in the middle of nowhere. Web pages, streaming audio/video and other high latency tolerable applications work great.
Not really, there are plenty of people are not willing to take bribes.
The easiest way to manipulate people is to pretend to be their friend. We tend to let our friends do things that don't jive with bueracratic and annoying rules, because they are friends.
Nazi-like policies and a lack of user education from arrogant and obnoxious IT people results in social engineering exploits.
If Nero was going to put an end to the world, wouldn't it have happened by now?
He was the emperor of the Roman Empire over a thousand years ago. And we're still here.
They do already.
I was once a retail salesman at a large computer chain.
I'd notice that the well do to clustered around laptops and high end sony desktops. The less-well to do clustered around the $399 special.
Based on my mood, I would hock extened service plans to rich people trying to keep up with the joneses or poor people who are vulnerable to a sales pitch.
If you don't want to be tracked, don't wear distinctive clothes.
Except the US isn't sub-Saharan Africa -- we typically own more than one set of clothing.
At best, being able to identifiy clothing would tell you that alot of yuppies/rednecks/teenagers/old people are in your store.
But stores already know that, so why would they spend money to have a computer tell them so?
Who cares... tires are consumables....
Why would the tinfoil hat people need tires when cars already have license plates and VINs???
Please put tinfoil hat back on bucko... you're starting to drool.
The mylar strips in US currency are not RFID tags or anything similar. They are an anti-counterfeiting measure.
As inexpensive printers got cheaper, many counterfeiters were bleaching $1 and $5 bills and printing phoney $20 and $100 bills on the paper. Most counterfeit money is detected by bank clerks who can feel the difference in paper quality.
The mylar strip (which is not present in $1 and $5 bills) makes it easy to spot bleached counterfeits.
The European Union addressed this problem by making each demonination of currency a different size.
You are oversimplifying things greatly.
If you maintain the code for any complex software, you cannot simply start making changes willy-nilly to fix things that may or may not be broken. Buffer overflows are not always obvious and fixing them may involve signifigant debugging across the app.
Human or "soft" issues factor in as well. Checking out a huge swath of code to hunt for bugs that may or may not be there will hold up everyone else's work for days. The cost of automated tools to find bugs may be out of the reach of some shops.
Security goes alot deeper than running servers as root. The heart of computing is not code, but procedure and standards. The only way to improve the quality of code in general, and security in particular is to simplify, standardize, and avoid jumping on the next bandwagon.
I suppose you are the world's most perfect programmer who faces no deadlines and makes no mistakes. WTF does "learning about security" mean, anyway?
I guess you are also a perfect syadmin who is omnipresent and capable of keeping up with the mailing lists or news pages of Windows, Linux-Kernel, PHP, Apache, IIS, Perl, FreeBSD, Bind, Solaris, AIX, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, GNU Utilities, ColdFusion and LDAP.
I suppose while keeping track of those products, your omnipresence also allows you to be aware of undocumented security holes. And once you are aware of those holes, you never run into patch conflicts that break your apps.
Maybe you should get a clue or STFU. "Security" goes beyond reading READMEs.
You expect the Slashdot crew to do something thoughtful/mature?
They're just blowing all the dot-com cash. They don't give a shit anymore.
Your question, and the way you asked it implies that you have no clue.
You really need to be clueful to build a WAN/MAN, so I would suggest hiring someone who can do it.
Since GNU is based on AT&T Unix and the POSIX standard, you actually run POSIX/AT&T/GNU/Linux.
If your job is so fucked up that you actually need to be paged at all hours of the day and night, you'll never have peace.
Fix the problems or fix your problem and get a new job. If you are getting paged more than 3 times a week off hours, hire an overnight operator or technician.
Because while Qmail works great, it's just plain weird. It uses a bizarre directory structure, requires several local users and is quite simply an obnoxious program to deal with.
I've been considering installing Bugzilla and find it to be a real pain in the neck to get running.
If you are not using Debian, the installation process is complicated, cumbersome, and time consuming.
Hopefully someday Bugzilla will run on something other than Linux/MySql.
Change the shortcut that users launch Access & Excel with to point a CMD, shell or Perl script that launches Access or Excel, then sets drops the priority. It's pretty easy to use Perl to launch and control office applications.
Another route may be to move the access database to an RDBMS, which may use less CPU horsepower than using Access as a client/server.
The AC just gave you a quote written thousands of years ago the says the same thing as you did. He wasn't pushing religion at you.
The point is that the condition or conflict that you describe and despise exists now, existed then and probaly will continue to exist forever.
The issued a subpeona for records relevant to a specific investigation, asswipe. This isn't some X-Files conspiracy to send all logs to the gov't. It doesn't matter whether the investigation is for a murder, terrorism or smuggling -- it's still a proper and legal subpeona for records.
Get a clue.
Many times employees of the smaller company decide that working for a big company and dealing with the bueracratic nonsense sucks and jet. Particulary when the buying company is a big, old company like (the former) AT&T, IBM or the like.
There are plenty of examples of this out there.
"So, this is a bad thing? That is, do you think only foreigners should be profiled for possible links to terrorism?"
The Intelligence services are not permitted to spy on us citizens. This is why the FBI (a police organization) was tasked with counter-intelligence duties in the US. If you think intelligence services should have a free hand to spy on citizens, you have a screw loose.
US citizens have a right to due process by virtue of their citizenship.
"Oh, I see. US citizens ought to be able to commit tax evasion without fear of getting caught too. Gr00vy!"
This is why TIA is bad. Its use will expand beyond terrorism, and idiots such as yourself will thump your chest and say "Awesome!" when you see evil tax-evaders and stamp counterfeiters get arrested on the Discovery channel.
Banks charge a fixed fee plus percentage for monetary transfers, whether they are $0.05 or $50... this is why many supermarkets are charging fees or disallowing debit card transactions less than about $10.
Since transaction costs for "micro-payments" are extremely high relative to the amount of money transferred, none of these schemes are likely to ever succeed.
If transactions costs did not present a barrier, public acceptance would. Users, particularly Americans, generally prefer subscription or bundled items to ala carte -- even if the bundle or package costs the same or more than the ala carte rate.
Webmasters need to pull their heads out of the clouds and give up on micropayments. Users use free search engines like google to find free information on web sites. Nobody wants to pay for web-quality content.
Of course if IBM hadn't come up with a new, bizarre and prolific set of AIX-only commands, you wouldn't need SMIT.
AIX is a very well thought out OS, but can become maddenly frustrating at times...
I'll bite...
1. NFS file-locking is pitiful
2. Stale mounts.
3. Poor host-based security vs. SMB
4. Inferior performance
NFS really sucks in general and it is hard to add new filesystem support to Windows w/o expensive developer support and licensing... which also comes with an NDA.