If there was a critical threat to the UK today, surely there was a critical threat for the last few days.
Maybe. But do you want to tip off the people you're about to arrest that they should really, really think about getting on that small boat they've got hidden on the coast right about now? If you're watching them and they vanish - then you whack up the alert level. As long as you know where they are, there's no need to warn them that you're in a van near to their house with all your cameras and listening gear.
So how come the PM flew out on holiday two days ago? And how come he's still not back?
I think that the PM's plane will be subject to tighter security checks and a normal flight. And the same logic applies - if he cancels his holiday because he knows there will be an anti-terror swoop, then you just tipped off the baddies quite well. The whole press corps would want to know what the emergency is going to be, and he won't be able to provide an answer. Which the press will assume means that there's a classified reason, which probably means an imminent terror attack. About which the PM can do absolutely nothing, as he's not involved in the operational aspect.
And I don't see a reason why he should be back already. This only happened in the last few hours, after all. Does he need to return at all? The country is being run by his deputy; the guy ought to be able to run the country (even in a time of a minor emergency) in the absense of Mr Blair.. if he can't, then he's got not business being deputy PM.
Last time, of course, he was "caught" playing golf, and there was a screaming session. But IIRC, there wasn't anything he could have actually done in that case, other than.. not be playing golf. The whole thing was silly.. what was he meant to do? Sit at home, wringing his hands?
In this case, it's in the hands of the relevant authorities. A clear picture won't emerge for quite a few hours yet. Even if the PM was here, all he could say was that he doesn't know much about the operational details yet, and as soon as he's fully briefed, the press will be too.
There isn't a great deal any politician can do right now.
I mean, what are we supposed to do on high alert levels, question our neighbors?
Don't be ridiculous! As long as your neighbour doesn't have a beard, you're quite safe.
If he does have a beard, then the CIA will already know about him, and will probably be preparing him for transport to Holiday Camp Cuba as we type.
Turn our parents into the authorities for anti-party thoughts??? I wouldn't broadcast that unpatriotic attitude too much, Mr Liberal-pants. That's an anti-party thought, right there, Mister.
And for those people living in japan the dates passed in 2003, 2004 and 2005
My mother, having been born as a PoW of the Japanese in Singapore in 1942 has a birth certificate which is fairly rare. Written in English, on an official British Government-issued Birth Certificiate, by a British doctor, her year of birth is recorded as "31st July 2602", as it was the year according to the Japanese Imperial calendar, whose use was manditory on all official documents under the occupation.
This led to many a merry jape when renewing her passport, as her obviously geniune birth certificate was equally obviously faked. And badly. Some public officials took a fair bit of convincing that she was old enough to even apply for a passport, since she wasn't due to be born for a little over six centuries yet. In the end, they gave her a new one, but I believe that she still has the original filed away somewhere.
Why would a porn site "trick little kids into visiting pornographic sites by using meta keywords" in the first place? Little kids don't have credit cards
I don't think it's the sign-up fees they are after. It'll be click-through links for which the site gets paid per click, or some such thing. It's the old trick of trying to appear in as many search results as possible. OK, so they were looking for Barbie, but this looks wierd! What's that woman doing with that? Groooosss! Click it! Ewwwwww!
If someone else can find the flaws, why didn't Microsoft?
Given the sheer number of people looking for flaws who don't work for Microsoft, the answer is simply: Microsoft could, if they employed as many people to look for bugs. But since other people are doing it, and for free, why should they?
So, why, year after year, has Microsoft been at the top of the vulnerabilities list? Because their products are used in more places than any other. Therefore, if you want to write an exploit which will spread the furthest, or cause the most damage, then you target the most widespread software. It really is that simple. If another product came to market, and wiped out Microsoft's lead, then I'm willing to bet that we'd suddenly see slews of flaws in the new Product X being reported.
If the company wanted to have software that was relatively free of vulnerabilities, it could. Given the complexity of the software, I think that's up for debate. But Microsoft, being a profit-orientated organisation, face different pressures than a non-profit, open-source project. At the end of the day, managers have targets that the sales people have promised other people. If you get slippage on a project, then (in my experience) the attitude of the managers (at any profit-based company) is usually "let's ship something that LOOKS like it works; we can always patch it later, and we'll hit our deadline."
I've never worked for Microsoft, so I don't know what their processes are; but I can certainly understand how a software company ends up shipping products with security flaws, and how they are discovered so quickly.
And, of course, there's a certain breed of script kiddy who targets Microsoft products because they are Microsoft, and regarded as the Evil Empire (tm).
Much of the Post Dre rap you've heard celebrates the 'Gangsta' lifestyle
Alas, this is true. There is lots of other stuff out there, but it won't get much radio or club play, because Gangsta sells better.
In the words of KRS-One: "Hip hop is where it always was - underground." (sorry, quoted from memory, almost certainly without accuracy).
For some recent (well, OK, not that recent, but I don't keep up to date) non-Gangsta hip hop, check out Bomfunk MCs for some serious breaks and BBoy-centric music, "The Return Of The DJ" LPs and various other artists.. they aren't too hard to find if you know where to look (google for the above and surf - you'll find lots of stuff). And nowadays you can even buy some underground stuff in HMV and Virgin (ahhh, I remember the day when I asked for Public Enemy in Virgin juuust to see the puzzled looks)..
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
on
When Wikipedia Fails
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Did you really just cite Fox News and the White House as authorities on whether or not the NYT is fair minded?!?
Did you even bother to read the FOX link about the New York Times? It wasn't biased or right wing in anyway! Let me illustrate with a quote taken directly from TFA:
Nyah nyah nyah! They got caught doing something wrong! Ner-ner-ner-nerrrr-ner! Ha ha, in your FACE, libbie scum! WE haven't had to retract front-page stories, therefore WE are GREAT! And get a bloody haircut for God's sake.
Seriously, that's not funny. Maybe if their practices weren't so predatory then we wouldn't have to donate so much to charity because the original companies would still be around...
Sorry, but I don't follow this logic. You're saying that if those companies were still around, then the issued that Bill Gates is giving money to wouldn't be isues?
How could software companies still being in business help (say) AIDS research?
If those companies were still around, they would have given so much money in the last few years that it would no longer be an issue?
I doubt it; I reckon that if they could have done what Bill Gates did, they'd have done it.
The way I look at it, the world just lucked out that this guy who was pretty damned ruthless in business turned out to actually have a humanist side too.
There was a time when it was illegal to hide a runaway slave in the United States, for example.
And, in more recent times, some countries are trying to oppress minorities even today. While other countries are allowing all their citizens to be equal, not "equal-if-you're-not-gay".
Just pointing out that what seems evil to some people is something that other people will actively try to bring into legislation even in supposedly free countries like the USA and the UK.
You misrepresent the views of Republicans terribly. I must set the record straight.
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your government's right to listen in, copy it down, hide it away and then kidnap you in a black van and take you to a holiday camp in Cuba.
Especially if you wear robes and have a beard.
These are the basic freedoms that we seek to protect - the basic freedom to do whatever we want to whoever we want as long as they aren't American (unless they have long beards, of course).
The rest of the world are jealous of these basic freedoms and our superior standard of living. We must stomp them into the ground relentlessly until they are no longer jealous, and come to love us instead.
The only "penalty" for using VB6 when it comes to speed is really the memory footprint of the VB6 runtime DLLs.
Try this:
- Write a very simply object in VB with just a few properties that can be set.
- Write the same object interface in C++.
- Write a test harness which instantiates and then releases 1 million of each type
- Compare the results.
C++ allocates and deallocates COM objects an order of magnitude faster. If you're working with lots of instances of tiny objects, then using C++ will increase your performance dramaticlly.
But doing a GUI in C++ is like pulling your teeth one by one without pain killers while a large dog mauls your left knee.
Mix and match the most appropriate tools for the job in hand.
Re:Not so funny when/if the seller commits suicide
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Online Revenge
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I'm not aware of anyone who has blown himself up who has either been sued or transported to Guantanamo.
It's the other way around. First you get transported to Guantanamo, then you get blown up. Or is it beaten up? I forget. And it's not like Habeas Corpus applies so that anyone can check..
You don't get arrested first, though - that would imply a crimminal action, and you'd have rights to a lawyer and a trial. So you have to be detained by troops. But not in a way that invokes the international laws regarding people captured by troops. No, you get detained in a magic way.
The difference between a mechanical engineer and a software engineer is so fundamental that your comment just looks silly. A mechanical engineer creates something tangible: engines, parts, whatever. It can be built, it can be visually inspected by quality assurance, etc. Software is intangible. You can't inspect pressed CD's of software visually and find bugs
In addition to which, I suspect that the average bridge has many fewer parts than the average non-trivial computer app. If you think of code as parts used to build something, then how many comparable parts does (say) a bridge have? 100,000? Half a million? Well, that's a half-meg bridge, you've got there, mate. That should be testable in a pretty thorough way. When your bridge starts to have 10 million individual parts, then things will go wrong more easily, and there are bound to be flaws. Large software apps have many more instructions than that, all wrapped up in logic paths which may have multiple different entry points.
Also, flaws in buildings tend to be fixed without most people being aware of them. Got some damp in your office? The builders will come in at the weekend and drill down in the basement. Got a buggy GUI? Everybody will notice that. Bridge cable has come loose? A guy goes up and fixes it. It doesn't tend to affect the people driving over the bridge to work much.
OTOH, it is true that in my experience, some software developers could take a great deal of benfit from engineering practices. The cowboy "fly-by-night" approach had me reading code today that made my eyes hurt. I had to scroll the page to see all of the variable declarations on a few of the methods. I'll leave the twisted, tangled, uncommented mess that was the actual code to your imaginations.
I agree it seems innocuous, but she's using company equipment to do it.
If the company has a rule in place to prevent staff from using their CD players to play music, then she's done wrong. If that policy is in place specificaly to prevent rootkit and viral infections, and the staff are aware of this, then she can be blamed for the infection.
If it's just a "you can't listen to music" then she's not to blame for the rootkit, but would be subject to disciplinary action for breaking the "no music" rule. Which I doubt would be a major violation of policy.
If the company (as many, many do - mine included) allow their staff to listen to music (not thinking that listening to legally purchased music was likely to lead to having to reformat PCs), then the secretary is in no way to blame, not having done anything wrong to her (or her company's) knowledge at the time of the infection.
My only gripe is that the small alert notice that lets you know Avast has been updated does not play well with fullscreen 3D apps. Everything stops for about five seconds, then the framerate drops to about 3 FPS while the box moves on and off the screen.
I have the exact same gripe about the Firefox Download Manager notification.
If anyone knows how to prevent this, please feel free to reply here:)
What this shows is that there was likely interbreeding between the ancestor line of humans and the ancestor line of chimpanzees
Given that there is some thought that our ancestors and Neandertals interbred, I think that this at least proves that humans are the most successful species on the planet. The most successful at shagging anything that moves and has two legs, anyway.
It also proves how little has changed in four million years. When the bars close, anyway.
I'm sure you'd ask the court to release someone who wandered into your house, read your personal information but didn't take any of it, right?
Perhaps not, but I wouldn't expect to be able to extradite him from overseas, and I wouldn't expect him to face many years in prison.
Not even if the normal punishment for that crime in your country was many years in prison, which was considered reasonable? And if he'd accessed your house not in person but by using a futuristic remote-controlled droid? And if the information he accessed was so important to you that you kept it locked in a safe within a safe (albeit with faulty locks)? And if he repeatedly came back to see if you'd got any new information? And if he was planning to use that information against you?
That's the problem with analogy. We go from National Security Classificaliion Level YouReadYouDie7652Times to living room rug-wine-spillage incidents and it no longer makes any sense.
The BBC article doesn't say "ALL UK Hackers support McKinnon". They just say "UK Hackers", as in "SOME UK Hackers".
Actually, the article says: "The UK's hacking community has strongly criticised.."
But which hacking community is this? Ahhh.. "...hackers, gathered at the regular London meetings of the UK's hacking community.."
I would imagine that's the monthly 2600 meet in the Trocodero off Picaddilly Circus.
And which hackers (plural) were they?
According to the article, they are "Mark", "Rat" and "Dr K".
So out of the many people gathered at a 2600 (I assume) meeting, three people are representitive of the "Biritsh Hacking Community", eh?
Sorry, but I think that's appallingly misrepresentitive journalism. I too agree with some of the points that those guys, but saying that some blokes picked at random at a meeting are the UK Hacking Community is ridiculous, frankly.
And only three people? Was it a very small meeting, or were other people asked about this issue too? What did they say? If they'd agreed, then why didn't the article say "the others at the meeting were almost all in agreement"? Could it be that Mark, Rat and Mr K represented a minority viewpoint which has been quoted and extended to "The Hacker Community" by an irresponsible journalist?
I guess we'll never know. Unless we go to the next 2600 meet in London..:)
The journalist, in shourt (and if (s)he cared about accuracy) should have written: "Three UK hackers from London we randomly selected.."
Moving on..
Where I disagree.. "he's been treated appallingly." Sorry, but he broke the law in two countries. He's admitted doing it. The USA want to extradite him? Good luck to them. If a cracker in (say) Russia broke into the MoD computers, I reckon the British Government would want some words with him too, even if the Russians had already initiated their own legal process.
Most crimes are comitted in one country; being able to commit a crime in more than one country at the same time is something quite new, and the law hasn't caught up yet. I don't see any reason why a crime committed in two countries at the same time shouldn't be treated as a crime in both those countries; or crimminals will simply move to countries where the punishment is less harsh, safe in the knowledge that they'll get off easy if they get caught, and then be exempt from extradition.
An analogy - if I take AK-47s from the USA and bring them in a boat to the UK, I would be guilty of exporting arms in the US and of importing arms in the UK. I fail to see why using computer equipment in the UK to crack a system should be treated as the same crime as accessing unauthorised information in that other country.
As to the actual cracking itself - two laws in two countries. The crime was committed in both. He knowingly broke two laws in two countries at the same time. Why should he NOT stand trial on both counts in both places? If you can't do the times, don't do the crimes... so to speak:)
he's judged because he exposed that the most powerful nation in the world has the weakest information security in the world - and the US wants to punish him for that.
IMHO, the USA is entirely within its rights to punish him; and it has nothing to do with scapegoating or showing off or revenge. The guy broke into systems and accessed classified information. That's a crime. The US authorities have no choice but to prepare a case and try to bring it to trial - if they are doing their job correctly. Nothing to do with being angry about having their lax security exposed. When somebody breaks the law quite deliberately, prosecutors don't say "oops, that was embarrassing. Let's just forget about it and take it as a well learned lesson that we should increase our security, and buy linux!"
Rather, they say "The law has been broken; our job is to prosecute lawbreakers. There's a connection here, I'm sure.. hey, Jerry - what do we do when we discover a law-breaker again?"
Or something like that.
Just my twopennth. And at that many words, that's a bargain price!
[humans causing global warming] can reasonably be disputed based on our current evidence. We have established correlation, but not causation.
Most scientists, on the evidence, think there's a very good chance humans are the major cause. It is safer to cut the emissions than not to, and find out we were wrong when it's too late. That's the point.
And people would do well to remember that "correlation, but not causation" was the rallying cry of the tobacco industry for decades, with their well-funded scientists saying one thing and virtually everybody else saying something else.
Slashdot Mirror
If there was a critical threat to the UK today, surely there was a critical threat for the last few days.
Maybe. But do you want to tip off the people you're about to arrest that they should really, really think about getting on that small boat they've got hidden on the coast right about now? If you're watching them and they vanish - then you whack up the alert level. As long as you know where they are, there's no need to warn them that you're in a van near to their house with all your cameras and listening gear.
So how come the PM flew out on holiday two days ago?
And how come he's still not back?
I think that the PM's plane will be subject to tighter security checks and a normal flight.
And the same logic applies - if he cancels his holiday because he knows there will be an anti-terror swoop, then you just tipped off the baddies quite well. The whole press corps would want to know what the emergency is going to be, and he won't be able to provide an answer. Which the press will assume means that there's a classified reason, which probably means an imminent terror attack. About which the PM can do absolutely nothing, as he's not involved in the operational aspect.
And I don't see a reason why he should be back already. This only happened in the last few hours, after all. Does he need to return at all? The country is being run by his deputy; the guy ought to be able to run the country (even in a time of a minor emergency) in the absense of Mr Blair.. if he can't, then he's got not business being deputy PM.
Last time, of course, he was "caught" playing golf, and there was a screaming session. But IIRC, there wasn't anything he could have actually done in that case, other than.. not be playing golf. The whole thing was silly.. what was he meant to do? Sit at home, wringing his hands?
In this case, it's in the hands of the relevant authorities. A clear picture won't emerge for quite a few hours yet. Even if the PM was here, all he could say was that he doesn't know much about the operational details yet, and as soon as he's fully briefed, the press will be too.
There isn't a great deal any politician can do right now.
I mean, what are we supposed to do on high alert levels, question our neighbors?
Don't be ridiculous! As long as your neighbour doesn't have a beard, you're quite safe.
If he does have a beard, then the CIA will already know about him, and will probably be preparing him for transport to Holiday Camp Cuba as we type.
Turn our parents into the authorities for anti-party thoughts???
I wouldn't broadcast that unpatriotic attitude too much, Mr Liberal-pants. That's an anti-party thought, right there, Mister.
Watch it.
I wouldn't be too sure that even any of that news is being reported at the moment.
And for those people living in japan the dates passed in 2003, 2004 and 2005
My mother, having been born as a PoW of the Japanese in Singapore in 1942 has a birth certificate which is fairly rare. Written in English, on an official British Government-issued Birth Certificiate, by a British doctor, her year of birth is recorded as "31st July 2602", as it was the year according to the Japanese Imperial calendar, whose use was manditory on all official documents under the occupation.
This led to many a merry jape when renewing her passport, as her obviously geniune birth certificate was equally obviously faked. And badly. Some public officials took a fair bit of convincing that she was old enough to even apply for a passport, since she wasn't due to be born for a little over six centuries yet. In the end, they gave her a new one, but I believe that she still has the original filed away somewhere.
Here's a list of used date formats in various countries. Looks like Canada has them all. ;)
And it looks like those blaming the USA for the nefarious spread of m/d/y have been shown to be wrong.
Quite obviously, it's the blasted Federated States of Micronesia again, exerting their subtle yet vast power.
Why would a porn site "trick little kids into visiting pornographic sites by using meta keywords" in the first place? Little kids don't have credit cards
I don't think it's the sign-up fees they are after. It'll be click-through links for which the site gets paid per click, or some such thing. It's the old trick of trying to appear in as many search results as possible. OK, so they were looking for Barbie, but this looks wierd! What's that woman doing with that? Groooosss! Click it! Ewwwwww!
If someone else can find the flaws, why didn't Microsoft?
Given the sheer number of people looking for flaws who don't work for Microsoft, the answer is simply: Microsoft could, if they employed as many people to look for bugs. But since other people are doing it, and for free, why should they?
So, why, year after year, has Microsoft been at the top of the vulnerabilities list?
Because their products are used in more places than any other. Therefore, if you want to write an exploit which will spread the furthest, or cause the most damage, then you target the most widespread software. It really is that simple. If another product came to market, and wiped out Microsoft's lead, then I'm willing to bet that we'd suddenly see slews of flaws in the new Product X being reported.
If the company wanted to have software that was relatively free of vulnerabilities, it could.
Given the complexity of the software, I think that's up for debate. But Microsoft, being a profit-orientated organisation, face different pressures than a non-profit, open-source project. At the end of the day, managers have targets that the sales people have promised other people. If you get slippage on a project, then (in my experience) the attitude of the managers (at any profit-based company) is usually "let's ship something that LOOKS like it works; we can always patch it later, and we'll hit our deadline."
I've never worked for Microsoft, so I don't know what their processes are; but I can certainly understand how a software company ends up shipping products with security flaws, and how they are discovered so quickly.
And, of course, there's a certain breed of script kiddy who targets Microsoft products because they are Microsoft, and regarded as the Evil Empire (tm).
Much of the Post Dre rap you've heard celebrates the 'Gangsta' lifestyle
Alas, this is true. There is lots of other stuff out there, but it won't get much radio or club play, because Gangsta sells better.
In the words of KRS-One: "Hip hop is where it always was - underground." (sorry, quoted from memory, almost certainly without accuracy).
For some recent (well, OK, not that recent, but I don't keep up to date) non-Gangsta hip hop, check out Bomfunk MCs for some serious breaks and BBoy-centric music, "The Return Of The DJ" LPs and various other artists.. they aren't too hard to find if you know where to look (google for the above and surf - you'll find lots of stuff). And nowadays you can even buy some underground stuff in HMV and Virgin (ahhh, I remember the day when I asked for Public Enemy in Virgin juuust to see the puzzled looks)..
Did you really just cite Fox News and the White House as authorities on whether or not the NYT is fair minded?!?
Did you even bother to read the FOX link about the New York Times? It wasn't biased or right wing in anyway! Let me illustrate with a quote taken directly from TFA:
Nyah nyah nyah! They got caught doing something wrong! Ner-ner-ner-nerrrr-ner! Ha ha, in your FACE, libbie scum! WE haven't had to retract front-page stories, therefore WE are GREAT! And get a bloody haircut for God's sake.
Seriously, that's not funny. Maybe if their practices weren't so predatory then we wouldn't have to donate so much to charity because the original companies would still be around...
Sorry, but I don't follow this logic. You're saying that if those companies were still around, then the issued that Bill Gates is giving money to wouldn't be isues?
How could software companies still being in business help (say) AIDS research?
If those companies were still around, they would have given so much money in the last few years that it would no longer be an issue?
I doubt it; I reckon that if they could have done what Bill Gates did, they'd have done it.
The way I look at it, the world just lucked out that this guy who was pretty damned ruthless in business turned out to actually have a humanist side too.
If anyone mentions the island of Lesbos, I shall simply scream and then run for my video camera.
Bugger; now I have to stop using that. Thanks for the heads-up.
It's more "World" than the "World Series".
Which is, as everyone knows, called "The World Series" because it was originally sponsored by a (now defunct) newspaper called "The World".
There was a time when it was illegal to hide a runaway slave in the United States, for example.
And, in more recent times, some countries are trying to oppress minorities even today. While other countries are allowing all their citizens to be equal, not "equal-if-you're-not-gay".
Just pointing out that what seems evil to some people is something that other people will actively try to bring into legislation even in supposedly free countries like the USA and the UK.
Sir,
You misrepresent the views of Republicans terribly. I must set the record straight.
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your government's right to listen in, copy it down, hide it away and then kidnap you in a black van and take you to a holiday camp in Cuba.
Especially if you wear robes and have a beard.
These are the basic freedoms that we seek to protect - the basic freedom to do whatever we want to whoever we want as long as they aren't American (unless they have long beards, of course).
The rest of the world are jealous of these basic freedoms and our superior standard of living. We must stomp them into the ground relentlessly until they are no longer jealous, and come to love us instead.
It's the only way.
The only "penalty" for using VB6 when it comes to speed is really the memory footprint of the VB6 runtime DLLs.
Try this:
- Write a very simply object in VB with just a few properties that can be set.
- Write the same object interface in C++.
- Write a test harness which instantiates and then releases 1 million of each type
- Compare the results.
C++ allocates and deallocates COM objects an order of magnitude faster. If you're working with lots of instances of tiny objects, then using C++ will increase your performance dramaticlly.
But doing a GUI in C++ is like pulling your teeth one by one without pain killers while a large dog mauls your left knee.
Mix and match the most appropriate tools for the job in hand.
I'm not aware of anyone who has blown himself up who has either been sued or transported to Guantanamo.
It's the other way around. First you get transported to Guantanamo, then you get blown up. Or is it beaten up? I forget. And it's not like Habeas Corpus applies so that anyone can check..
You don't get arrested first, though - that would imply a crimminal action, and you'd have rights to a lawyer and a trial. So you have to be detained by troops. But not in a way that invokes the international laws regarding people captured by troops. No, you get detained in a magic way.
The difference between a mechanical engineer and a software engineer is so fundamental that your comment just looks silly. A mechanical engineer creates something tangible: engines, parts, whatever. It can be built, it can be visually inspected by quality assurance, etc. Software is intangible. You can't inspect pressed CD's of software visually and find bugs
In addition to which, I suspect that the average bridge has many fewer parts than the average non-trivial computer app. If you think of code as parts used to build something, then how many comparable parts does (say) a bridge have? 100,000? Half a million? Well, that's a half-meg bridge, you've got there, mate. That should be testable in a pretty thorough way. When your bridge starts to have 10 million individual parts, then things will go wrong more easily, and there are bound to be flaws. Large software apps have many more instructions than that, all wrapped up in logic paths which may have multiple different entry points.
Also, flaws in buildings tend to be fixed without most people being aware of them. Got some damp in your office? The builders will come in at the weekend and drill down in the basement. Got a buggy GUI? Everybody will notice that. Bridge cable has come loose? A guy goes up and fixes it. It doesn't tend to affect the people driving over the bridge to work much.
OTOH, it is true that in my experience, some software developers could take a great deal of benfit from engineering practices. The cowboy "fly-by-night" approach had me reading code today that made my eyes hurt. I had to scroll the page to see all of the variable declarations on a few of the methods. I'll leave the twisted, tangled, uncommented mess that was the actual code to your imaginations.
I agree it seems innocuous, but she's using company equipment to do it.
If the company has a rule in place to prevent staff from using their CD players to play music, then she's done wrong. If that policy is in place specificaly to prevent rootkit and viral infections, and the staff are aware of this, then she can be blamed for the infection.
If it's just a "you can't listen to music" then she's not to blame for the rootkit, but would be subject to disciplinary action for breaking the "no music" rule. Which I doubt would be a major violation of policy.
If the company (as many, many do - mine included) allow their staff to listen to music (not thinking that listening to legally purchased music was likely to lead to having to reformat PCs), then the secretary is in no way to blame, not having done anything wrong to her (or her company's) knowledge at the time of the infection.
Also remember not to lick the envelope or the stamp (if you're from a place where those aren't self-adhesive).
Also, remember to burn the clothes you were wearing - but only in a forest at least 10 miles from any residence, so the smoke is not seen.
You should also wear gloves and sunglasses while typing the actual note and wear a false moustache for at least a week afterwards,
My only gripe is that the small alert notice that lets you know Avast has been updated does not play well with fullscreen 3D apps. Everything stops for about five seconds, then the framerate drops to about 3 FPS while the box moves on and off the screen.
:)
I have the exact same gripe about the Firefox Download Manager notification.
If anyone knows how to prevent this, please feel free to reply here
What this shows is that there was likely interbreeding between the ancestor line of humans and the ancestor line of chimpanzees
Given that there is some thought that our ancestors and Neandertals interbred, I think that this at least proves that humans are the most successful species on the planet. The most successful at shagging anything that moves and has two legs, anyway.
It also proves how little has changed in four million years. When the bars close, anyway.
I'm sure you'd ask the court to release someone who wandered into your house, read your personal information but didn't take any of it, right?
Perhaps not, but I wouldn't expect to be able to extradite him from overseas, and I wouldn't expect him to face many years in prison.
Not even if the normal punishment for that crime in your country was many years in prison, which was considered reasonable? And if he'd accessed your house not in person but by using a futuristic remote-controlled droid? And if the information he accessed was so important to you that you kept it locked in a safe within a safe (albeit with faulty locks)? And if he repeatedly came back to see if you'd got any new information? And if he was planning to use that information against you?
That's the problem with analogy. We go from National Security Classificaliion Level YouReadYouDie7652Times to living room rug-wine-spillage incidents and it no longer makes any sense.
The BBC article doesn't say "ALL UK Hackers support McKinnon". They just say "UK Hackers", as in "SOME UK Hackers".
:)
:)
Actually, the article says:
"The UK's hacking community has strongly criticised.."
But which hacking community is this? Ahhh..
"...hackers, gathered at the regular London meetings of the UK's hacking community.."
I would imagine that's the monthly 2600 meet in the Trocodero off Picaddilly Circus.
And which hackers (plural) were they?
According to the article, they are "Mark", "Rat" and "Dr K".
So out of the many people gathered at a 2600 (I assume) meeting, three people are representitive of the "Biritsh Hacking Community", eh?
Sorry, but I think that's appallingly misrepresentitive journalism. I too agree with some of the points that those guys, but saying that some blokes picked at random at a meeting are the UK Hacking Community is ridiculous, frankly.
And only three people? Was it a very small meeting, or were other people asked about this issue too? What did they say? If they'd agreed, then why didn't the article say "the others at the meeting were almost all in agreement"? Could it be that Mark, Rat and Mr K represented a minority viewpoint which has been quoted and extended to "The Hacker Community" by an irresponsible journalist?
I guess we'll never know. Unless we go to the next 2600 meet in London..
The journalist, in shourt (and if (s)he cared about accuracy) should have written: "Three UK hackers from London we randomly selected.."
Moving on..
Where I disagree.. "he's been treated appallingly." Sorry, but he broke the law in two countries. He's admitted doing it. The USA want to extradite him? Good luck to them. If a cracker in (say) Russia broke into the MoD computers, I reckon the British Government would want some words with him too, even if the Russians had already initiated their own legal process.
Most crimes are comitted in one country; being able to commit a crime in more than one country at the same time is something quite new, and the law hasn't caught up yet. I don't see any reason why a crime committed in two countries at the same time shouldn't be treated as a crime in both those countries; or crimminals will simply move to countries where the punishment is less harsh, safe in the knowledge that they'll get off easy if they get caught, and then be exempt from extradition.
An analogy - if I take AK-47s from the USA and bring them in a boat to the UK, I would be guilty of exporting arms in the US and of importing arms in the UK. I fail to see why using computer equipment in the UK to crack a system should be treated as the same crime as accessing unauthorised information in that other country.
As to the actual cracking itself - two laws in two countries. The crime was committed in both. He knowingly broke two laws in two countries at the same time. Why should he NOT stand trial on both counts in both places? If you can't do the times, don't do the crimes... so to speak
he's judged because he exposed that the most powerful nation in the world has the weakest information security in the world - and the US wants to punish him for that.
IMHO, the USA is entirely within its rights to punish him; and it has nothing to do with scapegoating or showing off or revenge. The guy broke into systems and accessed classified information. That's a crime. The US authorities have no choice but to prepare a case and try to bring it to trial - if they are doing their job correctly. Nothing to do with being angry about having their lax security exposed. When somebody breaks the law quite deliberately, prosecutors don't say "oops, that was embarrassing. Let's just forget about it and take it as a well learned lesson that we should increase our security, and buy linux!"
Rather, they say "The law has been broken; our job is to prosecute lawbreakers. There's a connection here, I'm sure.. hey, Jerry - what do we do when we discover a law-breaker again?"
Or something like that.
Just my twopennth. And at that many words, that's a bargain price!
[humans causing global warming] can reasonably be disputed based on our current evidence. We have established correlation, but not causation.
Most scientists, on the evidence, think there's a very good chance humans are the major cause. It is safer to cut the emissions than not to, and find out we were wrong when it's too late. That's the point.
And people would do well to remember that "correlation, but not causation" was the rallying cry of the tobacco industry for decades, with their well-funded scientists saying one thing and virtually everybody else saying something else.
I think this is pretty much the exact same thing.