For the most part, SSL is a PR issue more than it is a security issue. I hate to break the bubble, but it's true. As long as you use a credit card (as opposed to a debit card) you are protected against fraud according to the Fair Credit Billing Act of 1976.
What are the chances that someone is packet-sniffing the connection between the networks looking for credit card numbers, and what could they realistically do with it? Most peoples' passwords between the client and the server are in cleartext and that represents an even more substantive security/privacy issue.
Obviously SSL encryption is important, but even more important is not using debit cards and making sure the company you're doing business with it legitimate.
Let's not propagate the ignorant generalization that simply because a site uses SSL, that guarantees the transaction will be secure. Most security compromises are on the client and server level and not in between.
If you consider purchasing used tennis shoes off of ebay exemplary of business acumen, I suspect we have different ideas of that concept.
More importantly, this guy was bragging about acquiring his wardrope from an auction web site. That wouldn't be high on my list as a means to demonstrate what a good businessman I am. Who is that supposed to impress? Wait a minute. He lives in a trailer park.
This guy's statements have less to do with him revealing how fiscally resourceful he is, and more to do with his immaturity, which seems to be a defining characteristic of most spammers. If he wants to save electricity by only washing his underwear once a month, that's fine, but if I were him I wouldn't brag about it.
This freak has a NOC in a mobile home. He buys his clothes off of ebay. Yea, more evidence of how lucrative spamming really is. That's another myth that needs to be busted: that spamming is profitable. It is not. Spammers can't build a successful business when the business is built around violating the law and stealing computer resources. The people that spam today are the same losers who would be running around slapping illegal signs up on telephone poles promoting Ponzi schemes.
adv. - 1. The act of claiming something is secretive in order to garner attention. 2. Exaggerating the value of a product, person or service in order to sell something to another person. Did you hear about Bill's term paper on the nutritional value of beer nuts? It got an A. He totally segway'd the teacher!
n. - 1. Over-pricing and misrepresenting a product beyond its normal value. Have you seen the ads for the $153 Leptoprin weight loss pills? That's nothing but cheap vitamins they're marketing only for people who are "serious" about weight loss. What a Segway!
Kamen (Kay'man)
n. - 1. A person who pays too much for something, and is obligated to defend its value due to pride, as opposed to admitting it was a mistake. I told Bill not to buy that Cadillac Escalade. Now he can't ever find a parking space and the lemon is in the shop half the time, yet he still insists on being a Kamen.
You pick the RBL based on their policy. RBLs are incredibly valuable, and some work exceptionally well without any loss of legitimate mail. If you use one of the more restrictive, "rebel" RBLs then you will have problems, but in general, RBLs are THE most consistent, effective way to address the spam issue. If you stop spammers from CONNECTING to your server, you save bandwidth and resources. Client and server-based content filtering does exactly the opposite -- it consumes MORE resources so it costs you more money to fight spam. This is exactly the thing we need to avoid. RBLs are the best solution we have at the moment, and the only true deterrent... Because of RBLs spammers have a much tougher time doing their spamming, and this is evidenced by the fact that they now feel compelled to DDOS the RBLs... that's a sure sign that for the first time, there is at least one effort that is making an impact.
My friend filed a case with the FBI. They gathered all the info and it was a solid case with clear damages. The local and national attorney generals REFUSED TO PROSECUTE so the spammer, even though he clearly broke federal law, got off. I suspect this is very common. The attorney generals refuse to prosecute these computer cases because either they're ignorant of tech law, or don't give a damn.
I hesitate to blame the FBI because according to my friend, they were very cooperative, but when they presented the case for prosecution, it was blown off. This is an outrage!!
I do not believe this industry is profitable. This is a farce. If spamming were so profitable, the vast majority of spamvertised products wouldn't be based on affiliate/commission programs.
Spamming is yet another get-rich-quick scheme that doesn't work. The fact that the players don't operate legitimately, and remain covert is testimonial to the fact that it is NOT profitable, otherwise some rich spammer would be trying to pull off another Sanford Wallace ego trip.
Everyone here has a responsibility, if you want to stop spam, to educate their associates and make them aware of the critical issue here:
LAWS WILL NOT STOP SPAMMING. PEOPLE NEED TO URGE THE LOCAL AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO PROSECUTE SPAMMERS INSTEAD OF TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK.
Until the goverment starts taking action against those who attack others' systems and hijack mail relays, there's nothing anybody can do. We MUST rally to get the Feds to enforce the existing laws. DDOS'ing any computer network IS ILLEGAL!! The Feds can identify the perpetrators - they need to be pressured to do so and take action.
The first step in fighting back is to not be an anoymous coward!
Yea, you made a few thousand a week breaking into other peoples' computers. That's real noble. I'm sure everyone here is totally sympathetic to your pain. Why don't you identify yourself and start a legal defense fund? Post your name and address here and we'll start a collection.
Exactly who do you sue? hotnakedbabes@hotmail.com?
You can't come close to identifying these spammers without subpeoning a crapload of records from ISPs. How much time and money do you think this will cost? If you can find a lawyer that'll pursue such a case, find out if he'll also sell you a bridge in upstate New York.
Passing yet another anti-spam law is analogous to going to the book store, purchasing a book, then sticking it on the shelf without reading it. It doesn't make you smarter; it doesn't solve any problems; it simply consumes resources and is useless.
If we're going to spend time and resources on this issue we need to form some sort of task force that has the authority to take action against spammers.
Small fines won't work. Even at $1k a pop, it would cost more money to pursue the spammers, and most of them are small time losers with very little money who would simply declare bankruptcy. You can't find a lawyer willing to take action. It's a waste of time.
The only thing that's going to work is criminalizing spamming. Actually, it's already criminal but the authorities don't enforce it. We don't need more laws. We need the feds to get in gear and go after the spammers, who break plenty of laws already in the process of propagating their junk e-mail.
If you are sick of spam, write your Federal Attorney General and demand that they take action against spammers. Any ISP can deliver enough logs and evidence to indict a spammer at will. Until the Feds decide to stop ignoring this plague, nothing else is going to work.
This is appropriately characterized.. only "geeks" would get excited about a Best Buy shopping spree to set up a home entertainment system. NERDs on the other hand, would take an existing setup and hack it and make it more functional, without any need for extra money. While the geeks would go to Circuit City, the nerds would be all over ebay picking up skeleton equipment uber-cheap to repurpose.
If you want to do a reality show properly, you have nerds go into peoples' houses and do stuff like:
* Take the kids' X-Box and show how it can be turned into a home-monitoring alarm system
* Hack the DVD player to disable macrovision and country code restrictions
* Modify a refrigerator to be used as a wine cellar
* Hack the TIVO to be more functional
* Switch the phone service to VOIP
* Modify the existing air-cooled air conditioning system to be water-cooled and more efficient
* Implement a wireless mp3 broadcasting stereo system throughout the house
* Create a black box that disables all television commercials from the tv screen automatically
* Turn a normal array of home speakers into a custom 5.1 setup
* Show mom how you can override the diagnostic codes in her new car's electronics and tweak performance parameters
* Jack into the neighbor's wireless LAN for free Internet access
The bottom line is that when Verisign proposed to manage the TLDs, this sleazy hijacking of the domain null space was not part of the proposal. This is the same sort of liberty that NSI took when they arbitrarily decided to charge for domain names after they were awarded a contract funded by taxpayer money to manage the TLDs. Since day one, Verisign/NSI has been anything but covert over the fact that they were the fox guarding the henhouse.
In this latest act of cyber rape, the Sitefinder service gives Verisign yet another unfair advantage over all other registrars, which flies in the face of the ideals upon which the system was designed.
As angry as people may be towards Verisign, their true frustration should be directed towards ICANN, whose purpose is to ensure a fair and mutually-beneficial management of the TLDs.
ICANN has failed miserably.
ICANN needs to be dissolved.
A new organization with more honorable intent, control and responsibility should be created.
The entities that manage the TLDs should ideally be prohibited from being in the registrar business. This would level the playing field.
The environment is self healing. If we cause it to get too hot (and I'm not sure we're responsible), humans and a bunch of other life forms will die off. Evolution and the geoligic processeses will reform the terrain and biosphere such that new life forms will become prevelant, and perhaps dominant.
Yes, technically the environment is "self-healing". It remains to be seen if humankind is.
I'm not exactly sure what your point is? Entropy rules and it's a waste of time to interfere? And you want to argue symantics? Where's the value of such a diatribe?
There has been extensive research into humankind's impact on the global climate. Citing the absence of criteria doesn't invalidate the innumerable amount of hardcore information which indicates that human activities are causing climate change at a radical rate.
The issue of global warming will continue to be debated, but what is the more enlightened premise: assuming our activities have an averse impact and trying to do something about it, or ignoring or discounting the possibility? It seems to me to be a no-brainer.. where is the liability in assuming that this is a serious issue that warrants more attention?
Microsoft doesn't do research and development, they assimilate and copy other technologies.
Google became number one because they created the best product, not because they leveraged their dominance to force their system upon the masses. As long as users are free to choose which search engine they want to use, Microsoft will be at a disadvantage because the company has NEVER been able to produce a superior product in any category, and has never been able to gain market share on the strength of its products alone. Even the very first victory for MS was due to signging an agreement with IBM to bundle their products.
Just tonight I got an e-mail that was not caught by the antivirus programs. An e-mail that said, "Newest Network Update" and masqueraded as coming from Microsoft and urged users to apply a patch. A quick update of my AV identified the virus as "automat.AHB" but other virus programs are not catching this yet.
First off, the idea that Verisign can appropriate unregistered domains represents a huge conflict of interest with its management of the TLDs. Nobody should be able to reassign IPs for non-registered domains. This undermines the whole system, which has facilities to address this situation.
The fact that ICANN didn't block this move is further evidence than this organization is totally useless and political.
Along the same vein, I disagree with MS's misleading implementation of the IP-not-found error page to redirect users to their proprietary search engine.
The Internet community should rally against any entity that seeks to appropriate undefined address space for their own gain.
If Verisign is allowed to do this, what we're likely to see is each major ISP and browser manufacturer follow suit and hijack undefined space to promote their own systems.
Imagine if you dialed a wrong number on the telephone and you got an advertisement for the phone company. What if local broadcasters bombarded all the unused frequency spectrum with their own promotions.
This has less to do with Verisign than it does to protect the sanctity of null space.
It makes me wonder if someone has a patent on silence yet?
While this is undoubtedly another angle for sleazy lawyers, maybe it will at least result in more strict adherance to truth-in-advertising laws, which have gotten completely out of hand lately. When is the last time you saw a commercial that wasn't misleading or downright inaccurate? For car and home-mortgage ads they slap up a 200-word paragraph in micro font on the screen that stays there for one second. How is that supposed to be readable? If you have to attach so much fine print to your advertisements, you should not be allowed to make such claims...
I'd like to see a lot of changes, including:
* abolishment of the "non-profit" credit-helping companies... that's obviously some shell entity to feed leads to banks
* strict enforcement of various weight gain advertisements, especially things like if you make reference to a "clinical study", the references to the study need to be listed
* the abolishment of the term "free" in any advertisement unless it truly is free, without any added charges
* very clear language about product sales which create "subscriptions" where you are automatically billed and sent product in perpetuity until you "cancel at any time"
* getting rid of the rebate scam, misleading people into thinking products are cheaper than they really are
* abolishment of advertisements for doctor-prescribed medication... this is really disturbing to me when you see an ad which coerces you to "ask your doctor" about a particular drug, and promotions that are designed to convince people that they have conditions that require prescription treatment when it is arguable
* abolishing the third-party reference to the testimony of professionals. i.e. "My doctor says...blah blah.." This is a very sleazy way that advertisers imply that professionals recommend products. It should be illegal.
* regulation of the news media and some method by which information can be distinguished between news and editorial; a mandatory requirement that news media devote time in their broadcast to address any inaccuracies in previous testimony. Specifically, the news media should not be allowed to paraphrase what other people are thinking without some kind of "this is an editorial" crawl on the screen, and the limit of news stories to be based around ambiguous sources such as, "a government source says..." that's bogus. If you cannot cite specific references, then there should be a big graphic slapped on the screen which says "this is editorial/speculation"
The solution to this is simple. Publish the web address of this loser monitoring company and we'll let Slashdotters "check the integrity of their system."
You're obviously misguided. Everything Bush has done has been in favor of the "little guy."
His administration just defines the "little guy" as a middle-aged, multi-millionaire caucasion christian baby-boomer working in the lumber industry with a penchant for Viagra and Prozak, who has four mansions, with family members who are employed by defense contractors, owns an H2, and has a portfolio with a half-mil in stocks that crank out l33t dividends.
I don't know about you, but that describes me to a T. What's your problem? Don't hate the playa.. hate the game.
Slashdot Mirror
For the most part, SSL is a PR issue more than it is a security issue. I hate to break the bubble, but it's true. As long as you use a credit card (as opposed to a debit card) you are protected against fraud according to the Fair Credit Billing Act of 1976.
What are the chances that someone is packet-sniffing the connection between the networks looking for credit card numbers, and what could they realistically do with it? Most peoples' passwords between the client and the server are in cleartext and that represents an even more substantive security/privacy issue.
Obviously SSL encryption is important, but even more important is not using debit cards and making sure the company you're doing business with it legitimate.
Let's not propagate the ignorant generalization that simply because a site uses SSL, that guarantees the transaction will be secure. Most security compromises are on the client and server level and not in between.
If you consider purchasing used tennis shoes off of ebay exemplary of business acumen, I suspect we have different ideas of that concept.
More importantly, this guy was bragging about acquiring his wardrope from an auction web site. That wouldn't be high on my list as a means to demonstrate what a good businessman I am. Who is that supposed to impress? Wait a minute. He lives in a trailer park.
This guy's statements have less to do with him revealing how fiscally resourceful he is, and more to do with his immaturity, which seems to be a defining characteristic of most spammers. If he wants to save electricity by only washing his underwear once a month, that's fine, but if I were him I wouldn't brag about it.
This freak has a NOC in a mobile home. He buys his clothes off of ebay. Yea, more evidence of how lucrative spamming really is. That's another myth that needs to be busted: that spamming is profitable. It is not. Spammers can't build a successful business when the business is built around violating the law and stealing computer resources. The people that spam today are the same losers who would be running around slapping illegal signs up on telephone poles promoting Ponzi schemes.
adv. - 1. The act of claiming something is secretive in order to garner attention. 2. Exaggerating the value of a product, person or service in order to sell something to another person. Did you hear about Bill's term paper on the nutritional value of beer nuts? It got an A. He totally segway'd the teacher!
n. - 1. Over-pricing and misrepresenting a product beyond its normal value. Have you seen the ads for the $153 Leptoprin weight loss pills? That's nothing but cheap vitamins they're marketing only for people who are "serious" about weight loss. What a Segway!
Kamen (Kay'man)
n. - 1. A person who pays too much for something, and is obligated to defend its value due to pride, as opposed to admitting it was a mistake. I told Bill not to buy that Cadillac Escalade. Now he can't ever find a parking space and the lemon is in the shop half the time, yet he still insists on being a Kamen.
Travelling in the direction you're leaning? I can do the same thing after a few six packs and will save $4990!
You pick the RBL based on their policy. RBLs are incredibly valuable, and some work exceptionally well without any loss of legitimate mail. If you use one of the more restrictive, "rebel" RBLs then you will have problems, but in general, RBLs are THE most consistent, effective way to address the spam issue. If you stop spammers from CONNECTING to your server, you save bandwidth and resources. Client and server-based content filtering does exactly the opposite -- it consumes MORE resources so it costs you more money to fight spam. This is exactly the thing we need to avoid. RBLs are the best solution we have at the moment, and the only true deterrent... Because of RBLs spammers have a much tougher time doing their spamming, and this is evidenced by the fact that they now feel compelled to DDOS the RBLs... that's a sure sign that for the first time, there is at least one effort that is making an impact.
My friend filed a case with the FBI. They gathered all the info and it was a solid case with clear damages. The local and national attorney generals REFUSED TO PROSECUTE so the spammer, even though he clearly broke federal law, got off. I suspect this is very common. The attorney generals refuse to prosecute these computer cases because either they're ignorant of tech law, or don't give a damn.
I hesitate to blame the FBI because according to my friend, they were very cooperative, but when they presented the case for prosecution, it was blown off. This is an outrage!!
I do not believe this industry is profitable. This is a farce. If spamming were so profitable, the vast majority of spamvertised products wouldn't be based on affiliate/commission programs.
Spamming is yet another get-rich-quick scheme that doesn't work. The fact that the players don't operate legitimately, and remain covert is testimonial to the fact that it is NOT profitable, otherwise some rich spammer would be trying to pull off another Sanford Wallace ego trip.
Everyone here has a responsibility, if you want to stop spam, to educate their associates and make them aware of the critical issue here:
LAWS WILL NOT STOP SPAMMING. PEOPLE NEED TO URGE THE LOCAL AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO PROSECUTE SPAMMERS INSTEAD OF TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK.
Until the goverment starts taking action against those who attack others' systems and hijack mail relays, there's nothing anybody can do. We MUST rally to get the Feds to enforce the existing laws. DDOS'ing any computer network IS ILLEGAL!! The Feds can identify the perpetrators - they need to be pressured to do so and take action.
The first step in fighting back is to not be an anoymous coward!
Yea, you made a few thousand a week breaking into other peoples' computers. That's real noble. I'm sure everyone here is totally sympathetic to your pain. Why don't you identify yourself and start a legal defense fund? Post your name and address here and we'll start a collection.
Exactly who do you sue? hotnakedbabes@hotmail.com?
You can't come close to identifying these spammers without subpeoning a crapload of records from ISPs. How much time and money do you think this will cost? If you can find a lawyer that'll pursue such a case, find out if he'll also sell you a bridge in upstate New York.
We already have a number of laws on the books that can be used to take action against spammers:
How about we get the government to enforce some of the laws listed above instead of passing more? How's that for an innovative idea?
You are totally correct.
Passing yet another anti-spam law is analogous to going to the book store, purchasing a book, then sticking it on the shelf without reading it. It doesn't make you smarter; it doesn't solve any problems; it simply consumes resources and is useless.
If we're going to spend time and resources on this issue we need to form some sort of task force that has the authority to take action against spammers.
Small fines won't work. Even at $1k a pop, it would cost more money to pursue the spammers, and most of them are small time losers with very little money who would simply declare bankruptcy. You can't find a lawyer willing to take action. It's a waste of time.
The only thing that's going to work is criminalizing spamming. Actually, it's already criminal but the authorities don't enforce it. We don't need more laws. We need the feds to get in gear and go after the spammers, who break plenty of laws already in the process of propagating their junk e-mail.
If you are sick of spam, write your Federal Attorney General and demand that they take action against spammers. Any ISP can deliver enough logs and evidence to indict a spammer at will. Until the Feds decide to stop ignoring this plague, nothing else is going to work.
This is appropriately characterized.. only "geeks" would get excited about a Best Buy shopping spree to set up a home entertainment system. NERDs on the other hand, would take an existing setup and hack it and make it more functional, without any need for extra money. While the geeks would go to Circuit City, the nerds would be all over ebay picking up skeleton equipment uber-cheap to repurpose.
If you want to do a reality show properly, you have nerds go into peoples' houses and do stuff like:
* Take the kids' X-Box and show how it can be turned into a home-monitoring alarm system
* Hack the DVD player to disable macrovision and country code restrictions
* Modify a refrigerator to be used as a wine cellar
* Hack the TIVO to be more functional
* Switch the phone service to VOIP
* Modify the existing air-cooled air conditioning system to be water-cooled and more efficient
* Implement a wireless mp3 broadcasting stereo system throughout the house
* Create a black box that disables all television commercials from the tv screen automatically
* Turn a normal array of home speakers into a custom 5.1 setup
* Show mom how you can override the diagnostic codes in her new car's electronics and tweak performance parameters
* Jack into the neighbor's wireless LAN for free Internet access
Now we're talking nerd-eye-for-geek-guys
The bottom line is that when Verisign proposed to manage the TLDs, this sleazy hijacking of the domain null space was not part of the proposal. This is the same sort of liberty that NSI took when they arbitrarily decided to charge for domain names after they were awarded a contract funded by taxpayer money to manage the TLDs. Since day one, Verisign/NSI has been anything but covert over the fact that they were the fox guarding the henhouse.
In this latest act of cyber rape, the Sitefinder service gives Verisign yet another unfair advantage over all other registrars, which flies in the face of the ideals upon which the system was designed.
As angry as people may be towards Verisign, their true frustration should be directed towards ICANN, whose purpose is to ensure a fair and mutually-beneficial management of the TLDs.
ICANN has failed miserably.
ICANN needs to be dissolved.
A new organization with more honorable intent, control and responsibility should be created.
The entities that manage the TLDs should ideally be prohibited from being in the registrar business. This would level the playing field.
Yes, technically the environment is "self-healing". It remains to be seen if humankind is.
I'm not exactly sure what your point is? Entropy rules and it's a waste of time to interfere? And you want to argue symantics? Where's the value of such a diatribe?
There has been extensive research into humankind's impact on the global climate. Citing the absence of criteria doesn't invalidate the innumerable amount of hardcore information which indicates that human activities are causing climate change at a radical rate.
The issue of global warming will continue to be debated, but what is the more enlightened premise: assuming our activities have an averse impact and trying to do something about it, or ignoring or discounting the possibility? It seems to me to be a no-brainer.. where is the liability in assuming that this is a serious issue that warrants more attention?
Hey, I just tried their new system, typing in "terrorist" and got this link.
It works!
I think you mis-typed "R&D" when you meant "M&A".
Microsoft doesn't do research and development, they assimilate and copy other technologies.
Google became number one because they created the best product, not because they leveraged their dominance to force their system upon the masses. As long as users are free to choose which search engine they want to use, Microsoft will be at a disadvantage because the company has NEVER been able to produce a superior product in any category, and has never been able to gain market share on the strength of its products alone. Even the very first victory for MS was due to signging an agreement with IBM to bundle their products.
And your point is? Like the same can't be said for any other participating nation, least of all the United States?
Just tonight I got an e-mail that was not caught by the antivirus programs. An e-mail that said, "Newest Network Update" and masqueraded as coming from Microsoft and urged users to apply a patch. A quick update of my AV identified the virus as "automat.AHB" but other virus programs are not catching this yet.
First off, the idea that Verisign can appropriate unregistered domains represents a huge conflict of interest with its management of the TLDs. Nobody should be able to reassign IPs for non-registered domains. This undermines the whole system, which has facilities to address this situation.
The fact that ICANN didn't block this move is further evidence than this organization is totally useless and political.
Along the same vein, I disagree with MS's misleading implementation of the IP-not-found error page to redirect users to their proprietary search engine.
The Internet community should rally against any entity that seeks to appropriate undefined address space for their own gain.
If Verisign is allowed to do this, what we're likely to see is each major ISP and browser manufacturer follow suit and hijack undefined space to promote their own systems.
Imagine if you dialed a wrong number on the telephone and you got an advertisement for the phone company. What if local broadcasters bombarded all the unused frequency spectrum with their own promotions.
This has less to do with Verisign than it does to protect the sanctity of null space.
It makes me wonder if someone has a patent on silence yet?
While this is undoubtedly another angle for sleazy lawyers, maybe it will at least result in more strict adherance to truth-in-advertising laws, which have gotten completely out of hand lately. When is the last time you saw a commercial that wasn't misleading or downright inaccurate? For car and home-mortgage ads they slap up a 200-word paragraph in micro font on the screen that stays there for one second. How is that supposed to be readable? If you have to attach so much fine print to your advertisements, you should not be allowed to make such claims...
...blah blah.." This is a very sleazy way that advertisers imply that professionals recommend products. It should be illegal.
I'd like to see a lot of changes, including:
* abolishment of the "non-profit" credit-helping companies... that's obviously some shell entity to feed leads to banks
* strict enforcement of various weight gain advertisements, especially things like if you make reference to a "clinical study", the references to the study need to be listed
* the abolishment of the term "free" in any advertisement unless it truly is free, without any added charges
* very clear language about product sales which create "subscriptions" where you are automatically billed and sent product in perpetuity until you "cancel at any time"
* getting rid of the rebate scam, misleading people into thinking products are cheaper than they really are
* abolishment of advertisements for doctor-prescribed medication... this is really disturbing to me when you see an ad which coerces you to "ask your doctor" about a particular drug, and promotions that are designed to convince people that they have conditions that require prescription treatment when it is arguable
* abolishing the third-party reference to the testimony of professionals. i.e. "My doctor says
* regulation of the news media and some method by which information can be distinguished between news and editorial; a mandatory requirement that news media devote time in their broadcast to address any inaccuracies in previous testimony. Specifically, the news media should not be allowed to paraphrase what other people are thinking without some kind of "this is an editorial" crawl on the screen, and the limit of news stories to be based around ambiguous sources such as, "a government source says..." that's bogus. If you cannot cite specific references, then there should be a big graphic slapped on the screen which says "this is editorial/speculation"
The solution to this is simple. Publish the web address of this loser monitoring company and we'll let Slashdotters "check the integrity of their system."
You're obviously misguided. Everything Bush has done has been in favor of the "little guy."
His administration just defines the "little guy" as a middle-aged, multi-millionaire caucasion christian baby-boomer working in the lumber industry with a penchant for Viagra and Prozak, who has four mansions, with family members who are employed by defense contractors, owns an H2, and has a portfolio with a half-mil in stocks that crank out l33t dividends.
I don't know about you, but that describes me to a T. What's your problem? Don't hate the playa.. hate the game.