I chalk this up to an even more basic concept. You don't need to compare music to movies... it's even more simple than that:
The market changes. You either embrace these changes or you die.
The problem is our global economy (due mainly to legislation like the 1996 Telcom Act) has ended up with less competition and larger players, and when they can't quickly adapt to meet the needs of the new marketplace, they try to scare (RIAA), Mislead (AT&T) or coerce (Network Solutions) consumers into continuing to do business with them.
We saw Microsoft try to do the same thing when they initially ignored the Internet, but eventually MS had to embrace this new medium. History is full of new market dynamics that the established entities claim is unfair and will put them out of business (mail, telephone, radio, television, VCR, CDR, fax, modems, cellular, satellite, cable, digital photography, etc.) It's a never ending cycle.
Some companies try to legislate the maintaining of the status quo, like the RIAA is doing now, but it will never work, just like SCO can't stop the open source community by suing IBM. These are the companies that don't want to adapt and lose their spot at the feeding trough and have to start over. Unfortunately that's the nature of things. You adapt or you die. Organizations like the RIAA and SCO are either unable, or unwilling to fairly compete using the new market dynamics, so they resort to feeble bullying tactics that don't work.
I was at SIGGRAPH and I came upon this rack of computing equipment, along with a miniature rope bridge. Users were stapped on a VR helmet and they were standing on this minature rope-suspension bridge that was about six inches off the ground.
I approached the booth, noting the obvious millions of dollars in grant money that probably went towards this project and the computing equipment and power.
I asked, "What is this for?"
The guy replies that it's a VR simulator for people who have a fear of heights. They put the helmet on and step on this fake bridge and the VR simulates them standing on a bridge over a deep chasm.
So I tried the device and the graphics and response were so lame all it did was make me queasy. The developers proudly announced they had another version for people who have a fear of elevators and pointed to a small step-type platform. I told the guy, "I have a fear of being gang-raped by a bus full of gorgeous female college cheerleaders. Do you have anything for me?" He shrugged.
I inquired how they actually thought this would make money given the huge disparity between the cost of the project and the market it addressed.
Sometimes research is just public-funded masturbation.
The point I'm making is that the amount of actual "identity theft" perpetrated does not warrant the amount of publicity this issue has generated.
I would suspect the figures published do not distinguish between the various types of "unauthorized use" which don't really involve what we consider "identity theft", and the issue IS OVERHYPED. If a child takes his mother's credit card and charges something, is that "Identity Theft?" How about the guy who pays for the phone sex service and then tries to charge it back when his wife finds out? I would bet that all the "fraud" figures incorporate these types of transactions and are used to inflate the impression that the credit companies are losing much more revenue to third-party criminals taking peoples' identity.
I'm sure many people can cite experiences where they have been victims of unauthorized charges, but I'd bet most of these were either accounting mistakes or members of their family or friends using their cards. In contrast to the impression Cringely's article states that there seems to be a big market for people going through peoples' trash and premeditating identity theft. I don't believe the statistics when scrutinized, would substantiate this.
To succeed at identity theft generally requires more of a skill in social engineering than a lot of hardcore personal information on the mark. I'd argue that a good SE doesn't need to go through a person's trash - he can coerce the information he wants from the mark himself. Most people are terminally stupid. Whose fault is that? How do you protect yourself against stupid people who pay $153 for a bottle of Leptoprin and are so easily manipulated?
The historical status quo for consumer protection has been satisfactory, but not for the banks - and they bear the burden of making sure the transactions are legitimate.
Do you know what the #1 scenario for fraudulent credit card transactions is? "Identity theft" by a family member using another family member's credit card!
The issue IS overhyped, and what's really interesting is that the banks are hyping this issue in order to push new payment methods, like debit cards that shift the burden from them to the consumer. If someone steals your debit card and gets your PIN, you are screwed. You are out of your money. This isn't the case with credit card fraud where the burden is shifted to the merchant to prove the transaction was legitimate or else you don't have to pay. The banks are pushing for ATM and debit-type transactions, fooling the consumer into thinking that it's a superior payment scheme when it isn't.
As for everyone paying for fraud, that's just the way it is, but the responsibility to fight fraud lies first and foremost with the credit institutions.
Most people have had fraudulent transactions on their credit card.. double billing or just plain mistakes... identity theft would actually be a sometimes more easy scenario to prove is illegitimate (what? that's not you purchasing a dozen watches in Paris 12 hours after renting a video froma store in Cleveland?)
If you have a debit card and it's nailed fraudulently, then you have more to worry about. You pay until you can prove that the transaction was illegitimate. Big difference.
The smart thing to do is use credit cards for most transactions, and avoid debit and ATM cards. Then identity theft is nowhere near as much a concern, as if it ever really was.
What I produced in that hour was all the information required to steal the identities of 300,000 people, most of whom would be considered to have high financial (if not emotional or artistic) net worth. If I was a real criminal I could use this data over a period of 4-6 weeks to apply for online credit cards and bank accounts, to order credit reports that list where the victims do their banking so I could loot those accounts, too. Before anyone would notice I could grab that Secret Service equivalent of $217,000 per victim for a total take of $65 billion, which certainly beats my day job.
In your freakin dreams Cringely! He's like the FOX NEWS of the Nerd community, coming up with the most ludicrous scenarios: Hide a computer in your attic to thwart P2P copyright issues; have users pay per e-mail in order to stop spam; jeeez, and now he thinks he could easily deploy identity theft techniques to make a fortune...
Doing what you claim is a lot more difficult than you want people to believe. Just knowing someone's personal information isn't often enough. You have to have access to their property, mail, telephone and other services in order to do things like acquire and activate a forged credit card. I'm not saying it's not possible, but nowhere near as 1-2-3 as Cringely claims.
Also, when you use these bogus cards (or try to impersonate someone) you leave a trail of incriminating evidence. The only way to exploit these resources is in subtle, barely-profitable ways, and even then you have to find gullable merchants who won't check out the transaction. You can't merely get cash; you have to buy stuff and the larger the transaction, the more the merchant will scrutinize the order.
And let's say you have Joe Blows credit card now. If he's like most consumers, he's got a $3000-$4000 limit. To siphon your claim of $217k you'd need to max out more than SIXTY bogus credit cards -- all in a 4-6 week period.
Everyday consumers should not be afraid of having their identity stolen. This is an issue that is overblown by the media and other entities that have an interest in scaring people to sell their own often-unneeded "solutions".
A good example are the credit card companies that promote their cards as being superior because they offer "online fraud protection." In most cases, this is mandated by law and not some special feature they've exclusively come up with.
The Fair Credit Billing Act of 1976 basically protects consumers from a variety of unauthorized charges. It doesn't matter if your identity was stolen, if your credit card was charged by an unauthorized party, you're usually not liable.
The real danger in identity theft is for people who actually try to use stolen credit cards and the merchants who allow them to process those transactions erroneously - they might be exposed to liability, but by Federal Law, the consumer is generally well-protected.
It should be pointed out however, that the new era of debit cards and direct-deposit transcations are not covered under the Fair Credit Billing Act. The smart consumer does NOT use a debit card; and only uses a credit card, which offers protection against fraud not found in other methods of payment.
I am under the impression that the TLD servers are public services, at least they originally were. It seems inappropriate to co-opt unregistered domains by any party.
I've heard reports from friends that some of the domain registration services are analyzing the whois requests by people and in some cases, preemptively registering domains that people seem to be searching for.
However, Microsoft seems to be already capitalizing on hostname mistakes by customizing the browser error pages and redirecting them to their proprietary search engine.
Aside from that, I applaud NSI/Verisign! I continue to think that this company has reached the pinnacle of sleaziness but nooo, they've only just begun.
No. The problem is the "research" for this report is ambiguous. The story has no references. The source of the report is biased and there's an inherent conflict of interest when a computer security consulting company sends out a press release over some "report" nobody has really seen which just coincedentally seems to increase the value of their services.
If slashdotters are biased against anything, it's bullshit. It just appears that Slashdotters are biased against Microsoft, but that's really because MS is the uberking perveyor of propaganda.
These anti-worm filters are only good if they're routinely updated with the worm signatures. Once the worm is identified, its behavior is also identified. It's irresponsible and negligent for a company to recognize a worm like Sobig, and filter it, while also knowing that the worm forges the e-mail headers and bouncing mail is totally counterproductive.
You gotta love an anti-virus company that TRUSTS the "from" address of worm-embedded message.
Talk about stupidity. During the Sobig mess, I must have received hundreds of erroneous warnings from stupid anti-virus programs telling me my computer was infected when it was not. What idiots.
formally announce the findings of our organization's latest report, which states that, based on our research, 67 percent of those who do not deposit at least US$100 into my Paypal account will develop a nasty case of head lice over the next six month period. 17% of those surveyed in this report noticed an observed improvement in my attitude when confronted with third parties who deposited in excess of US$200 into my Paypal account. Approximately 3.4% of those who negatively mod this post are also known to spontaneously combust, leaving an olive green globule.
Complete figures are available from the Advanced Cootie Research Online Consortium (ACROC) for a small fee.
You gotta love the responsible journalistic media who base a story on an unreferenced "report" from a commercial operation who is in the business of providing server security consultation.
Needless to say the "report" is nowhere to be found. Like it really matters anyway. Yea, this is objective.
Comcast/AT&T are harboring huge amounts of spammers, and abuse seems to go largely unregulated. Based on my logs, the largest source of open proxies is on AT&T/Comcast and no amount of reports seems to do any good - they continue to harbor spammers and don't seem to care. I strongly urge people to avoid Comcast for being a haven to spammers and open proxies. We're blacklisting huge chunks of IP addresses in their space because they simply won't take action. Just today, a large bank got caught in our net and after a discussion, I convinced their IT director to switch to Bellsouth so as to not be associated with this unethical ISP. I'm sick and tired of AT&T/Comcast spammers.
To me, perhaps one of the biggest threats to privacy is something quite simple: an elaborate IP database cross-referenced with personal information found on the Internet. This is like getting someone's telephone transcripts. This information is available all over the Internet, but are there any known companies that are compiling IP Databases?
I downloaded The Google Toolbar plugin for IE and I don't have any more problems with popups. Those morons can sue each other into oblivion. I don't care. I'm not paying any attention to their crap, and if you get Google's popup-blocking toolbar, you won't either. I guess Microsoft is saving this incredibly useful feature for the next release of their OS to give it at least one useful enhancement. Too late. Google's toolbar rocks!
In the late 80s or early 90s there was a software company that ran a promotion that they would give you a VW bug if you found a bug in their product. I can't remember what company or software package this was but I thought that was a bold statement about the quality of their software. Too bad very few companies could get away with that now.
What is it now with this "Rage"-mania? Why do we have to give even the most trivial behavior some pathological nomenclature?
There was a story in the local paper here about a guy who woke up and fired his shotgun at a bunch of bass fishermen who zoomed by his camp in their speedboats. He was labeled the guy with "wake rage". I guess in a few months Pfizer will have some pill for this, accompanied by the "It's not your fault - it's a disease and it's treatable" drivel.
Excuse me, I think I may be getting Rage-Rage. Is there a pill for that?
50+ years ago we had real wars. Where we actually defended our homeland against real enemies; where Congress actually declared real war as properly mandated in the Consitution.
If you haven't seen it already, please pick up a copy of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine where he addresses issues like these. He does tend to target the NRA more than other, potentially more responsible entities, but the movie calls to the light the bigger issue of the media turning everyone into fearful consumers who are way too impressionable.
There are a number of intitutions which propagate the idea of violence not only as a means to solve every problem, but now as entertainment. While I agree, these kids had shitty parents, you cannot ignore the fact that children these days are bombarded by violence. If you've been raised decently you obviously can distinguish between fantasy and reality, but that's still no excuse to promote dangerous and destructive themes for the sole purpose of perverse entertainment.
Yes, games like GTO have a right to exist, just like musicans should be able to sing about whatever un-PC topic might be on their mind.
If you want to blame this on crappy parenting, that's probably more responsible than anything else, but also call attention to the obvious crappy parents of the developers of GTO whose children thought this type of trash should be considered "entertainment" to "children" of any age.
Re:64-benchmarks wont be good
on
AMD64 Preview
·
· Score: 1
Has anyone ever been fired for buying AMD? Inquiring minds want to know.
I have run Intel and AMD servers for years and AMD has never let me down, ever.
Slashdot Mirror
I chalk this up to an even more basic concept. You don't need to compare music to movies... it's even more simple than that:
The market changes. You either embrace these changes or you die.
The problem is our global economy (due mainly to legislation like the 1996 Telcom Act) has ended up with less competition and larger players, and when they can't quickly adapt to meet the needs of the new marketplace, they try to scare (RIAA), Mislead (AT&T) or coerce (Network Solutions) consumers into continuing to do business with them.
We saw Microsoft try to do the same thing when they initially ignored the Internet, but eventually MS had to embrace this new medium. History is full of new market dynamics that the established entities claim is unfair and will put them out of business (mail, telephone, radio, television, VCR, CDR, fax, modems, cellular, satellite, cable, digital photography, etc.) It's a never ending cycle.
Some companies try to legislate the maintaining of the status quo, like the RIAA is doing now, but it will never work, just like SCO can't stop the open source community by suing IBM. These are the companies that don't want to adapt and lose their spot at the feeding trough and have to start over. Unfortunately that's the nature of things. You adapt or you die. Organizations like the RIAA and SCO are either unable, or unwilling to fairly compete using the new market dynamics, so they resort to feeble bullying tactics that don't work.
This reminds me of a story a few years back.
I was at SIGGRAPH and I came upon this rack of computing equipment, along with a miniature rope bridge. Users were stapped on a VR helmet and they were standing on this minature rope-suspension bridge that was about six inches off the ground.
I approached the booth, noting the obvious millions of dollars in grant money that probably went towards this project and the computing equipment and power.
I asked, "What is this for?"
The guy replies that it's a VR simulator for people who have a fear of heights. They put the helmet on and step on this fake bridge and the VR simulates them standing on a bridge over a deep chasm.
So I tried the device and the graphics and response were so lame all it did was make me queasy. The developers proudly announced they had another version for people who have a fear of elevators and pointed to a small step-type platform. I told the guy, "I have a fear of being gang-raped by a bus full of gorgeous female college cheerleaders. Do you have anything for me?" He shrugged.
I inquired how they actually thought this would make money given the huge disparity between the cost of the project and the market it addressed.
Sometimes research is just public-funded masturbation.
The point I'm making is that the amount of actual "identity theft" perpetrated does not warrant the amount of publicity this issue has generated.
I would suspect the figures published do not distinguish between the various types of "unauthorized use" which don't really involve what we consider "identity theft", and the issue IS OVERHYPED. If a child takes his mother's credit card and charges something, is that "Identity Theft?" How about the guy who pays for the phone sex service and then tries to charge it back when his wife finds out? I would bet that all the "fraud" figures incorporate these types of transactions and are used to inflate the impression that the credit companies are losing much more revenue to third-party criminals taking peoples' identity.
I'm sure many people can cite experiences where they have been victims of unauthorized charges, but I'd bet most of these were either accounting mistakes or members of their family or friends using their cards. In contrast to the impression Cringely's article states that there seems to be a big market for people going through peoples' trash and premeditating identity theft. I don't believe the statistics when scrutinized, would substantiate this.
To succeed at identity theft generally requires more of a skill in social engineering than a lot of hardcore personal information on the mark. I'd argue that a good SE doesn't need to go through a person's trash - he can coerce the information he wants from the mark himself. Most people are terminally stupid. Whose fault is that? How do you protect yourself against stupid people who pay $153 for a bottle of Leptoprin and are so easily manipulated?
The historical status quo for consumer protection has been satisfactory, but not for the banks - and they bear the burden of making sure the transactions are legitimate.
Do you know what the #1 scenario for fraudulent credit card transactions is? "Identity theft" by a family member using another family member's credit card!
The issue IS overhyped, and what's really interesting is that the banks are hyping this issue in order to push new payment methods, like debit cards that shift the burden from them to the consumer. If someone steals your debit card and gets your PIN, you are screwed. You are out of your money. This isn't the case with credit card fraud where the burden is shifted to the merchant to prove the transaction was legitimate or else you don't have to pay. The banks are pushing for ATM and debit-type transactions, fooling the consumer into thinking that it's a superior payment scheme when it isn't.
As for everyone paying for fraud, that's just the way it is, but the responsibility to fight fraud lies first and foremost with the credit institutions.
Most people have had fraudulent transactions on their credit card.. double billing or just plain mistakes... identity theft would actually be a sometimes more easy scenario to prove is illegitimate (what? that's not you purchasing a dozen watches in Paris 12 hours after renting a video froma store in Cleveland?)
If you have a debit card and it's nailed fraudulently, then you have more to worry about. You pay until you can prove that the transaction was illegitimate. Big difference.
The smart thing to do is use credit cards for most transactions, and avoid debit and ATM cards. Then identity theft is nowhere near as much a concern, as if it ever really was.
In your freakin dreams Cringely! He's like the FOX NEWS of the Nerd community, coming up with the most ludicrous scenarios: Hide a computer in your attic to thwart P2P copyright issues; have users pay per e-mail in order to stop spam; jeeez, and now he thinks he could easily deploy identity theft techniques to make a fortune...
Doing what you claim is a lot more difficult than you want people to believe. Just knowing someone's personal information isn't often enough. You have to have access to their property, mail, telephone and other services in order to do things like acquire and activate a forged credit card. I'm not saying it's not possible, but nowhere near as 1-2-3 as Cringely claims.
Also, when you use these bogus cards (or try to impersonate someone) you leave a trail of incriminating evidence. The only way to exploit these resources is in subtle, barely-profitable ways, and even then you have to find gullable merchants who won't check out the transaction. You can't merely get cash; you have to buy stuff and the larger the transaction, the more the merchant will scrutinize the order.
And let's say you have Joe Blows credit card now. If he's like most consumers, he's got a $3000-$4000 limit. To siphon your claim of $217k you'd need to max out more than SIXTY bogus credit cards -- all in a 4-6 week period.
The whole idea is ridiculous.
Everyday consumers should not be afraid of having their identity stolen. This is an issue that is overblown by the media and other entities that have an interest in scaring people to sell their own often-unneeded "solutions".
A good example are the credit card companies that promote their cards as being superior because they offer "online fraud protection." In most cases, this is mandated by law and not some special feature they've exclusively come up with.
The Fair Credit Billing Act of 1976 basically protects consumers from a variety of unauthorized charges. It doesn't matter if your identity was stolen, if your credit card was charged by an unauthorized party, you're usually not liable.
The real danger in identity theft is for people who actually try to use stolen credit cards and the merchants who allow them to process those transactions erroneously - they might be exposed to liability, but by Federal Law, the consumer is generally well-protected.
It should be pointed out however, that the new era of debit cards and direct-deposit transcations are not covered under the Fair Credit Billing Act. The smart consumer does NOT use a debit card; and only uses a credit card, which offers protection against fraud not found in other methods of payment.
Imagine if Sir George Martin produced a computer. It would probably have 4K and be able to run Office!
I am under the impression that the TLD servers are public services, at least they originally were. It seems inappropriate to co-opt unregistered domains by any party.
I've heard reports from friends that some of the domain registration services are analyzing the whois requests by people and in some cases, preemptively registering domains that people seem to be searching for.
However, Microsoft seems to be already capitalizing on hostname mistakes by customizing the browser error pages and redirecting them to their proprietary search engine.
Aside from that, I applaud NSI/Verisign! I continue to think that this company has reached the pinnacle of sleaziness but nooo, they've only just begun.
No. The problem is the "research" for this report is ambiguous. The story has no references. The source of the report is biased and there's an inherent conflict of interest when a computer security consulting company sends out a press release over some "report" nobody has really seen which just coincedentally seems to increase the value of their services.
If slashdotters are biased against anything, it's bullshit. It just appears that Slashdotters are biased against Microsoft, but that's really because MS is the uberking perveyor of propaganda.
These anti-worm filters are only good if they're routinely updated with the worm signatures. Once the worm is identified, its behavior is also identified. It's irresponsible and negligent for a company to recognize a worm like Sobig, and filter it, while also knowing that the worm forges the e-mail headers and bouncing mail is totally counterproductive.
You gotta love an anti-virus company that TRUSTS the "from" address of worm-embedded message.
Talk about stupidity. During the Sobig mess, I must have received hundreds of erroneous warnings from stupid anti-virus programs telling me my computer was infected when it was not. What idiots.
formally announce the findings of our organization's latest report, which states that, based on our research, 67 percent of those who do not deposit at least US$100 into my Paypal account will develop a nasty case of head lice over the next six month period. 17% of those surveyed in this report noticed an observed improvement in my attitude when confronted with third parties who deposited in excess of US$200 into my Paypal account. Approximately 3.4% of those who negatively mod this post are also known to spontaneously combust, leaving an olive green globule.
Complete figures are available from the Advanced Cootie Research Online Consortium (ACROC) for a small fee.
You gotta love the responsible journalistic media who base a story on an unreferenced "report" from a commercial operation who is in the business of providing server security consultation.
Needless to say the "report" is nowhere to be found. Like it really matters anyway. Yea, this is objective.
Who cares. FreeBSD kicks its ass anyway.
Comcast/AT&T are harboring huge amounts of spammers, and abuse seems to go largely unregulated. Based on my logs, the largest source of open proxies is on AT&T/Comcast and no amount of reports seems to do any good - they continue to harbor spammers and don't seem to care. I strongly urge people to avoid Comcast for being a haven to spammers and open proxies. We're blacklisting huge chunks of IP addresses in their space because they simply won't take action. Just today, a large bank got caught in our net and after a discussion, I convinced their IT director to switch to Bellsouth so as to not be associated with this unethical ISP. I'm sick and tired of AT&T/Comcast spammers.
To me, perhaps one of the biggest threats to privacy is something quite simple: an elaborate IP database cross-referenced with personal information found on the Internet. This is like getting someone's telephone transcripts. This information is available all over the Internet, but are there any known companies that are compiling IP Databases?
I downloaded The Google Toolbar plugin for IE and I don't have any more problems with popups. Those morons can sue each other into oblivion. I don't care. I'm not paying any attention to their crap, and if you get Google's popup-blocking toolbar, you won't either. I guess Microsoft is saving this incredibly useful feature for the next release of their OS to give it at least one useful enhancement. Too late. Google's toolbar rocks!
In the late 80s or early 90s there was a software company that ran a promotion that they would give you a VW bug if you found a bug in their product. I can't remember what company or software package this was but I thought that was a bold statement about the quality of their software. Too bad very few companies could get away with that now.
What is it now with this "Rage"-mania? Why do we have to give even the most trivial behavior some pathological nomenclature?
There was a story in the local paper here about a guy who woke up and fired his shotgun at a bunch of bass fishermen who zoomed by his camp in their speedboats. He was labeled the guy with "wake rage". I guess in a few months Pfizer will have some pill for this, accompanied by the "It's not your fault - it's a disease and it's treatable" drivel.
Excuse me, I think I may be getting Rage-Rage. Is there a pill for that?
50+ years ago we had real wars. Where we actually defended our homeland against real enemies; where Congress actually declared real war as properly mandated in the Consitution.
Times have changed.
If you haven't seen it already, please pick up a copy of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine where he addresses issues like these. He does tend to target the NRA more than other, potentially more responsible entities, but the movie calls to the light the bigger issue of the media turning everyone into fearful consumers who are way too impressionable.
There are a number of intitutions which propagate the idea of violence not only as a means to solve every problem, but now as entertainment. While I agree, these kids had shitty parents, you cannot ignore the fact that children these days are bombarded by violence. If you've been raised decently you obviously can distinguish between fantasy and reality, but that's still no excuse to promote dangerous and destructive themes for the sole purpose of perverse entertainment.
Yes, games like GTO have a right to exist, just like musicans should be able to sing about whatever un-PC topic might be on their mind.
If you want to blame this on crappy parenting, that's probably more responsible than anything else, but also call attention to the obvious crappy parents of the developers of GTO whose children thought this type of trash should be considered "entertainment" to "children" of any age.
Has anyone ever been fired for buying AMD? Inquiring minds want to know.
I have run Intel and AMD servers for years and AMD has never let me down, ever.
Lamo broke into the NY Times computer and found out that all their news stories are ghost written by the CEOs of Haliburton, Bechtel and Enron.
"Chinese Army of Hackers" = 13 year old looking for Anna Kournikova pictures.
This is yet another example of the new "economy of fear". Let's scare the populace into paying us or giving us the ammunition we need to shoot them.