Most companies look at things from the perspective of "Will it make us money?" I'm sure AOL is not different. I'd say that someone came up with an idea, researched it and presented it to the managment team and was able to convince them that somehow, someway there was enough potential there for them to make money so they decided to do it.
Frankly, I kind of like the idea of an AOL email account. I can give people an address I'll never check!
I too hate the lack of security and the number of exploits that the typical Windows machine is exposed to. I feel that Microsoft has a responsibility to do something more than they are doing to fix the problem and sadly, I don't see them doing enough in the near future at least.
But I disagree that this is what it should take for people to migrate from Windows to Linux. People should make their choice for the right reasons and only one of those reasons is security. They also have to weigh things like user-friendlyness, support, cost, effort required to learn, availability of the applications that they require and probably a dozen other user variables.
Open Source in general and Linux in particular, has been making great progress in virtually every aspect that I can imagine. In many ways it is ready for "prime time." Yet to claim everyone should move to it, I can't quite accept that yet. In my business, you can't find particular applications (relating to "industrial formulation calculators" for instance) that are necessary for the operation of the business in open source (I've researched this).
While I am able to work my way around a Linux Desktop with KDE and be fairly comfortable with it, members of my family don't seem quite as capable and frankly, I don't want to spend the time teaching them.
Still, I spend close to fifty percent of my workday dealing with spyware (and another 1 or 2 percent dealing with viruses, worms, and trojans) and I hate it. I haven't found a single product out there that does an acceptable job of preventing it or cleaning it although on my home Windows machine the McAffee suite + AdAware + Yahoo Anti-Spy seems to mount a pretty good defense. The McAfee is always on and auto-updated, I run automated anti-virus scans every night. I run AdAware every couple of days, and right now, since it is new, I am running Yahoo Anti-spy every day. My ISP also filters my email with an anti-virus program and I practice all the common preventitive measures and am quite liberal at assigning "spam" tags on incoming emails.
Still, all of this amounts to a lot of work. I do think Microsoft shares the blame with the malware authors in the same way that car manufacturers used to carry part of the blame for car thefts (since cars were so easy to steal). Microsoft it would seem to me has the same kind of responsibility that car makers had, to develop a safer product. I am willing to share part of this expense (developing products costs money and that cost is passed on to customers - it is what for-profit companies have to do). I also hope we get help from legislators and from ISP's, and even hardware companies who each in their own way can develop things that would make malware harder to propogate.
I'd also like to challenge computer makers to provide us with additional choices, like packaged Linux boxes, better secured Windows boxes, and software that actually works that comes bundled with machines so that so many people don't download "free" spyware-laden products to do something they expected their computer to do out of the box (Dell, Sonic - do you hear me?).
Before I moved to Minneapolis, I lived in out-state Minnesota where I was aware of several pockets of people living "off-grid." They did not have phone service or electric service. In some cases this was by choice, the residents didn't even work at getting these services. I personally did without wired phone for many years (and didn't have a cel phone either).
These things are not necessities, they are options. In some cases, people don't want them. In other cases, companies don't want to go to the expense of delivering the service.
Living off grid or without a phone, does not mean you are a luddite. Today, you can power your home with generators or solar power and you can have a cellular phone (if there is service in the area). In some remote places there is a rural radio telephone service. This is used when the expense of delivering phone service via wire is too costly. It is like high powered analog service.
My favorite fishing lake has no cellular service, even my work-required "nation-wide" pager won't beep when I am out there! This is part of what attracts me to this particular lake. On one end of the lake, there is a small community of cabins that do not have electricity. They seem to like it that way. They all have nice boats and those terrible jet-ski's and all sorts of other toy so it is not like they can't afford it.
Like most people in this world, I don't always have the choice of what I get, even though I am the customer and the consumer. I'd much rather have a Humvee than an Explorer but guess which one I drive? But not all of these things that are forced on me are because of some economic force.
My use of Windows is one of those. I work in a Windows shop, I support Windows and have a wealth of knowlege and experience to draw on when it comes to Windows. The shop I work in runs Win2K and at home, I run XP. Why? Because someday we will move to XP and I need to know it and be comfortable with it before my customers are.
But I run Open Office and Firefox and other open source applications. Why? Because I can. Because they fill a need and yes, because they are cheap or free depending on how you feel about them.
I need XP and I need open source products for XP. Yes, I could "dual-boot" and run a win/lin environment but I'll tell you right now, I wouldn't. When I mess with Linux, it is Knoppix or something similar. And I do that often enough so that I was actually excited to learn that KDE is considering a Windows project. I hope they do it.
Linux and Open-Source garners it's fans from somewhere. Just by virtue of the numbers of Windows users, most of them come from the world of Microsoft. Windows open source software is a "good will ambasador" of sorts for the people living in the world of Microsoft and Windows. Not many come from Apple/Mac and even fewer are exposed to Linux first! So, obviously, Linux and open source in general need some representation in that world to garner new recruits. The best of the best is what will "sell" people on the rest of the stuff that Open Source has to offer and I think that this especially includes Linux!
Besides this: Free is meant to be free as in freedom. Projects should not be forced to operate under some artificial restriction from above. Let each project make it's own decision. If there is enough dissent, fork it with one team developing for Windows and the other not.
For your own safety, if you get pulled over DO NOT GET OUT OF THE CAR. If you aren't hit by a car, you may be shot by the officer! Exiting the car is considered an agressive move and a threat by the cop.
If stopped, place your hands where they can be seen by the cop (on top of the sterring wheel is fine, out the window is okay, above your head silly but fine.
If a cop asks you for an ID you are asking for trouble if you do not cooperate. Even if it is only "asks" and not "demands." They are in charge, and they have a gun. Most states have laws that require adults to have identification on them at all times (at least I think most states do, I am not a lawyer and am only sure of Minnesota where I live).
Cops who encounter people who think they are lay-lawyers" who assert their "rights" tend to be pretty by-the-book with these people and will take absolutly no BS from them. They hope that this will teach them a lesson (and it is probably a lessone they need to learn).
I am sure that there are rules that a cop has to follow when he asks for ID. I don't think you always have to be a suspect in something for him to ask you to produce an ID. I've been asked for ID when I was a passenger in a car that was stopped for a minor traffic violation. To be fair, the driver was arguing with the cop and I suspect the cop was a bit agitated by that.
I've also had to produce identification because I was a witness to a traffic accident. I had no part in it other than seeing it happen.
I am quite sure it is not a "good thing" if the cop asks you for ID and you can not produce it. If you were close to the line before, that alone could put you over the line in the cop's eye.
It is almost always best to cooperate with the cops and get them off your back. In Minneapolis (where I live) I have absolutly no doubt that if a cop asks me for ID and I can not produce it, my chances of going to jail just got a whole lot better. That is the bad side of the cops here, they take no BS. But the good side, is they usually only tangle with people who need tangling with.
IANAL - but I believe you are quite incorrect. Most states have laws requiring you to carry your driver's license when you are driving and these laws can assess a fine. If the cop lets you off he is doing you a favor.
In many states, all adults are required to carry proof of identity at all times when they are in public. This is more important than you think, and it is just as much for your safety as it is to protect the public interest. Joggers who have suffered heart attacks have been "John Does" for significant periods of time because they did not have their IDs on them.
If a cop asks you for identity, you better be able to prove it. If you can't they will take you to jail and make someone come down and identify you!
Would you feel that way if you were "virtually" located near the spammer and your network resonsiveness was affected? I doubt it.
Legitamate use of the net is fine, that is what it is there for. Remember what using the net was like on September 11, 2001? While almost all of that traffic was legit, it kind of shows what it would be like if you were virtually near one of the spammers Lycos was targeting. You could have multiple T1 lines and still get nowhere!
The only people worse than spammers are spyware/malware publishers. I do not wish the spammer success. It just needs to be done right. I'd be all for wiping these guys off the map! They cost business and people money and time and this alone makes them criminal (just in a sense that is sometimes hard to prosicute with current laws).
Lycos made a major blunder with this campaign. I think it actually gave the entire computing community a black eye and am thankfull they pulled it as quickly as they did.
It worked along the same theory that "It takes a criminal to catch a criminal" does. That sometimes, you have to get down and dirty to fight back.
If the only people that got hurt by that kind of plan were the bad guys, I'd buy it. But it doesn't work that way. There is colatteral damage and often times the innocent victims outnumber the bad guys. All that traffic was sent through the internet, across innocent's routers and delayed legitimate traffic. Especially near the end where the bad guys got on the net. I would have hated to be a legit user going through the same service provider as the bad guy!
You could argue that the bad guy's ISP is partly to blame and I'd agree but things aren't that simple. There are several upstream providers and thousands of legit users that were hurt. The colatteral damage was too much.
On top of that, this action gave bad guys ammunition. They are now pretty much able to make a case that other legitamate users are using similar tactics as they are. The screensaver turned end user's computers into bots!
Two wrongs don't make a right. Thank you Lycos for recognizing this a little late but still you did figure it out.
Is it just me or do their numbers seem terribly low? I'd put the spyware infected Windows machines at nearly 95% (only those recently cleaned are clean) and the $305 million number seems about 1000%
Am I looking at a series of awful jobs if I don't transfer?
When you come out of school you are likely to land in a pretty poor job that doesn't make full use of what you learned. Your chances of going to work for a better company may be a bit better though if you go to a more prestigious school.
What you learn in these first jobs is every bit as important as what you learned to get your degree! You learn to deal with "office politics," bosses, co-workers, and eventually (perhaps) underlings. Make no mistake about it, your education doesn't stop when you graduate. All college did was prepare you to enter the workplace, there are probably more differences than similarities between academia and TRW (the real world).
Colleges prepare you with a very broad brush. This is both a good thing and a bad thing but really, it is the only thing they can do or your opportunities after graduation would be very limited. Within a few months of graduation you will marvel at how little of what you learned you use and how much you have had to learn on the job. To some degree at least you will question the value of your education. Yet, you'll also realize that without it you would never be where you are.
Perhaps, rather than going to a better school you may want to consider a second major (business?) to supplement your CS degree.
With the world the way it is today, I'll be honest as say I am glad not to be in your shoes. If I were, I may even consider enlisting - in many places the job market is that bad.
Say I created a program that served as a directory to locate files on other machines connected to the internet BUT used Microsoft's built in FTP program to both serve and retrieve the files, and I stored the directory on many small servers that I had no ownership stake in scattered around the internet (to participate in the file exchange program people would have to host pieces of the directory too).
Now let's say that to piece all of this together, everything I used was Microsoft tools. In essence, what I've coded is all Microsoft. All I did was "string the beads" with a little creative coding.
Now let's imagine the RIAA or MPAA or some other organization suing because of this program. What would their chances be against Microsoft. IANAL but I'd bet it would be pretty close to zip. Their chance would be much greater against me. Even if I have a license agreement clause that stipulated that the user should not use this software to copy copyrighted programs. Still if they came after me, I would defend myself by saying that my license prohibited such use and Microsoft's product facilitated the process.
I'd probably also argue that I was no more a facilitator than the ISP! I'd try to claim that once the product leaves my hand, I am no more responsible for it's use than Ford is responsible for the way a driver uses a car. Can you really expect Ford to be sued because their car was used in a bank robbery? Or than it was raced at well above the speed limit?
I really don't think that it is an open and shut case. I'm not even convinced that Kazaa is playing a shell game with it's corporate structure (although the press coverage makes that seem likely).
To me blogs are like the old time soap box in the park. Any yahoo can "take his turn" and everyone knows that what is said is one person's opinion. It is a valid and perhaps important method of communication but it lacks impartiality and fact-checking. It isn't hard hitting journalisim backed up with facts and the reputation of a corporation.
I'm not discounting blogs - they are an important part of my day. I just know that if I read something on 'em, I have to do my own checking.
Still, I think they fall short of being journalisim. Hell, people even sometimes read what I write! Me, mister nobody. And people read me.
I'm no expert on Stem cell research or medical ethics, I probably know a lot less about it than most people on Slashdot. What I do know is that my daughter's mother is laying in a nursing home where she will soon die from ALS. I don't think that this kind of thing is too unusual, many people know someone who has some terrible disease. We also have hundreds, perhaps thousands of nerve and brain injured soldiers laying in VA hospitals around the country and many more people with various injuries and diseases in hospitals and nurshing homes all around the country.
All of these people wish to have their health back. Scientists and doctors everywhere are saying that stem cell research holds a great deal of promise and that it deserves a great deal of study. These same experts seem to agree that fetal stem cells have some special properties.
We have a conservitive government who for decades have said "deregulation is the key to success" who have regulated research in this area. I guess they meant "deregulation is the key to success unless we don't agree with it."
I was just out at Skype's website (no, I didn't DL their software). They talk a lot about being able to make phone calls but there isn't hardly any mention about being able to get phone calls from a POTS style phone. Is it possible?
When you subscribe to Skype do you get a telephone number?
Can you call Skype from a POTS connected phone and make a call?
Does Skype have a call forwarding service?
Does anybody know of a IP service that allows all of these services?
Think of the internet as a road system the routers being intersections and the data being the traffic.
All traffic that uses the highway has to pass through the intersections. Since so much of the traffic is going to one destination, the intersections closer to the destination will also become ensnarled. These intersections have nothing to do with the criminal behavior of the originating source.
It is like the excess traffic around a crackhouse. The traffic annoys the neighbors and may interfere with the commerce of the corner store as well.
Lycos is perhaps well intentioned but the are going to annoy the neighbors. This makes Lyco's idea just about as bad for the community as the spammer himself.
Here is one: http://antivirus.about.com/cs/tutorials/a/bsvirus. htm and another: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docum entation/W indows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resour ces/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkd _tro_vail.asp
And yes, many of the early *nix's did come on floppy. The first couple of Linux installations I did were from floppy. But with a BOOT SECTOR virus, you can be infected simply by leaving an infected floppy in the disk drive (it does not even need to be a bootable floppy).
Some very early viruses were cross--platform, infecting DOS, Windows, and *nix machines. They "infected" before the boot process was completed and made no use whatsoever of the O/S. They were simply dependant on the PC standard and the Intel processor (so Apple machines were immune).
Again, early on in the "macro virus" game, some of the macro viruses were written to be cross-platform. At this point, Apple became suseptible but most *nix machines were unaffected (because they weren't running Word).
Don't feel exactly smug because you are running Linux. There are vunerabilities everywhere.
Slimeware er, spyware is the bane of my existance. I work for a large company and do not have final say about how the desktops are configured (I would do it differently), I support a special group and nearly all of my people have "admin rights" on their computers. I agree that these people need admin rights for some of the functions that they have to do but figure about 95% of the time they could run as a "super user" without any problems at all.
Very nearly 100% of the computers I touch are infested with slimeware. Running several commercial apps will clear most of the crap that is found but one or two apps seem to come back within a day or two (even if the user claims that they have not been on the internet). It has gotten to the point where I actually believe some of them!
I've found that what seems to be happening is that the slimeware distributors are playing a little versioning game. As soon as the major spyware removal tools are able to kill a specific version of slimeware, the slimeware authors make a new version that they then distribute.
It takes time between the release and the time that the spyware removers catch up and in the meantime, it is up to people like me to figure out how to clean up the mess. I am pretty hard-nosed and will spend a couple of hours searching the registry, booting from CD and deleting files and that kind of stuff to kill off the slimeware. Others who do similar jobs just re-image the machines. Soves the problem faster but I don't think the users are quite as happy. They have to reconfigure the machine to how they like it and there is always the risk of lost data.
I'd love to see these purveyors of filth in prison. Many of them serve up porn and put it on kids machines! They are guilty of a crime every time this happens. Why can't we do something?
Anyway, I don't blame the spyware removal people for these setbacks. They work hard to keep up but just can't.
Im my dreams, I dream of a single tool that sits on the desktop and checks for viruses, slimeware, spam, and other threats and inconveniences. I'd like the tool to be able to be programmed to block access to various applications and websites too. I'd like the same tool to have some sort of "safe recovery" feature that allows me to move back in time to a stable configuration that would not delete data.
These are just dreams but will someone somewhere please make my dream come true? Corporate IS departments everywhere would thank you with money from their budget!
In so many ways, the government is watching you. They say it is to protect you and they really believe that. The truth is that they have limited resources and probably never will actually use these methods unless they have developed other evidence the old fashioned way first. In some ways, this is just an extenstion of forensics. But the thinking person has to wonder just where will it stop?
I'm not about to live in fear of this stuff, I have enough other things to fear already, this will never make it far enough up my list to make me parinoid.
Still, when companies cooperate with the federal government, I think that they should disclose this kind of thing so an individual can make an informed decision. That would be fair and proper.
There are many alternitive fuels being looked at. To some people "synthetic gasoiline" means any fuel that can be substituted for gasoiline. To other people it means gasoiline manufactured from sources other than crude oil. In either case, the idea is to manufacture a fuel that will reduce dependance on crude oil.
In WWII the Germans had no choice but to manufacture synthetic gasoiline. They made it ftom coal. It was not as cheap or as good as gasoiline made from crude oil but it met their needs until we bombed the hell out of their production plants.
I suspect that with the tchnology we have today, we could manufacture this kind of synthetic gasoiline and it would meet our needs but it would be expensive and would have other drawbacks as well: We would still be using a non-renewable energy source and the infrasturucture required would be expensive.
A better solution is to use renewable energy sources to manufacture fuels that can replace or be used as an adjunct to gasoiline. Currently the concentration in this effort is on ethanol although there are a number of other efforts as well (many of which have been covered on Slashdot). Ethanol plants also cost a lot to build but they are far less expensive than other processes and are very proven technologies. This is probably why E-85 actually has a fighting chance.
Pehaps the biggest problem with alternitive fuels isn't technology but politics. Face it, the oil companies have a huge investment in their product and alternitives may require them to refit at significant expense. They have significant political clout and will fight any change that they think will reduce their ability to profit. Note that I didn't say they oppose new methods or technologies, their goal is to drive the bus and continue to be the boys who deliver product.
Since they have such a significant investment in what they provide today, they will drag their feet on any change to protect this investment. For many reasons, they realize they are only delaying the inevitable.
From a national security stand point, you would think that the United States would plunge headlong into developing ethanol and other gasoiline replacements but our current administration is content to get oil the old fashioned way; from overseas. This protects the interests of the major corporations that give those in power so much money.
We have a symbiotic relationship with many of the world's oil providers. They don't want to hurt us, just extract as much money from us as they can without hurting us badly. If they were to shut off the taps, our economy would crumble. If they charged too much, our economy would fail and they would lose their biggest customer.
We've learned time and time again that our country is willing to send our military in to do the dirty work for "our friends" who supply us with oil (in much the same way as an adict will commit a crime for his dealer). We live in a world of dirty politics where political leaders will kill for oil and for profit.
Before electric cars or alternitive fuels get a real chance to thrive, we need to make a few polictical changes in our "energy policy" and our "national security policy." To do this, we will need a very strong and committed leader. We will need leadership which will mandate that all cars and trucks produced and sold in the US can run on renewable fuels. A leader who will find a way to make agriculture and industry come together to make this happen. A leader who will find funding to help to build the plants required to manufacture the fuels. This will not happen for many years. Neither major political party has the guts or the desire (because of their affiliation with the petrol industry).
At a smaller level, some states are already heading in the right direction. Midwestern states without oil are on the ethanol bandwagon because it is the only way their farmers can get a piece of the energy pie. E85, Bio-Deisil, and other renewable fules hold a great deal of promise for the economies of these states. Minnesota already mandates 10% ethanol in all gasoiline sold in the state.
Like many people, I use RFID every day. When I go to work, to get in to the building, I wave my RFID impregnaed badge in front of a reader. The door unlocks and lets me in the building. When I enter the storage room where our new computers are kept, I use the RFID tag to open that door too, it has controlled access so only a few of us can go in there. I also have data center access.
I wish I had to "clock out" using the tags too, that way the company would know if everyone had left the building in the event of an evacuation.
On weekends, when I go to my place "up North" I use an RFID tag to open the gate, it is a key-fob kind of thing. This means only authorized people can access the facility.
I had a Mobile Pass for buying gas and automatically charged my card but got rid if it when my teenager got her driver's license (she may have abused it). It made my life a bit easier.
I can see the day where RFID tags will be impregnated in things like charge cards. When that day comes, I hope that the RFID card will be an extra, additional step in security, used to verify that the card is not counterfit. I don't think it should be used to pass ALL the information. But it can be used as a security feature.
I can see RFID tags being used to even improve national security. Currently about 95% of all cargo coming in through our ports is uninspected. We all know that is a major hole in our defense. We could work out an arrangment with major trusted corporations outside of our country to package sealed cartons and containers with high-power RFID tags so that the manifest can be read, the sealed container scanned and allowed to pass where other containers have to be searched. This isn't perfect but would be a damned sight better than what we have today.
My gut recation has on these kinds of things is "Oh, that sucks! It's an invasion of my privacy!" and people will tell you that your gut reaction is right about eighty percent of the time.
While it is true that these black boxes can tell the manufacurer, the insurance company, and the cops more about you than you want them to know, think about the other side of the coin for a moment.
They can call an emergency service if your airbag deploys. They can provide data to manufacturers to make engineering and safety improvments or even trigger a recall if necessary. They can be used to shore up your version of an insurance claim. In short, they can save lives and money.
I agree that there should probably be some regulations on the data privacy side of the issue, including notifying the owner of any data access or recovery effort where the data may be tied to him/her.
In a broad sense, much of the data recovered from these boxes is already available to the police and insurance companies after a significant crash. Over the years accident scene reconstruction has become amazingly detaied and accurate. From the evidence at a crash scene they can tell how fast you were going, what exact driection you were heading, and if you were wearing your seatbelt. DNA evidence can tell them where you were sitting even.
I say the boxes themselves are good, and the data they collect can be beneficial. I can understand the potential for abusing the data but still think that it can be regulated to the point where these boxes can be a good thing.
This is a honest question. I really am this dumb when it comes to chemistry.
If I used whiskey or brandy and ran it through a Brita filter, what would I end up with? Would I get a clear colorless liquid or would I get filtered whiskey or brandy?
My brother worked in a bottling company for a short time where they "made" different flavored alcohols. Everything they made was really distilled grain alcohol mixted with various flavorings and water. They made things like peppermint schnapps, blackberry brandy, cheap vodka and so on. The lesson he passed along was that vodka or at least the cheap stuff, is really just grain alcohol and water - it is no longer made from potatoes. The cheap whiskey's aren't aged, just flavored and if you look closely, you will see that it doesn't say aged anywhere on the bottle!
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Most companies look at things from the perspective of "Will it make us money?" I'm sure AOL is not different. I'd say that someone came up with an idea, researched it and presented it to the managment team and was able to convince them that somehow, someway there was enough potential there for them to make money so they decided to do it.
Frankly, I kind of like the idea of an AOL email account. I can give people an address I'll never check!
Please some producer out there read this and get 'er done!
"Based on a true story"
Kind of a Catch-22 in the office. Very Dilbertesque.
I too hate the lack of security and the number of exploits that the typical Windows machine is exposed to. I feel that Microsoft has a responsibility to do something more than they are doing to fix the problem and sadly, I don't see them doing enough in the near future at least.
But I disagree that this is what it should take for people to migrate from Windows to Linux. People should make their choice for the right reasons and only one of those reasons is security. They also have to weigh things like user-friendlyness, support, cost, effort required to learn, availability of the applications that they require and probably a dozen other user variables.
Open Source in general and Linux in particular, has been making great progress in virtually every aspect that I can imagine. In many ways it is ready for "prime time." Yet to claim everyone should move to it, I can't quite accept that yet. In my business, you can't find particular applications (relating to "industrial formulation calculators" for instance) that are necessary for the operation of the business in open source (I've researched this).
While I am able to work my way around a Linux Desktop with KDE and be fairly comfortable with it, members of my family don't seem quite as capable and frankly, I don't want to spend the time teaching them.
Still, I spend close to fifty percent of my workday dealing with spyware (and another 1 or 2 percent dealing with viruses, worms, and trojans) and I hate it. I haven't found a single product out there that does an acceptable job of preventing it or cleaning it although on my home Windows machine the McAffee suite + AdAware + Yahoo Anti-Spy seems to mount a pretty good defense. The McAfee is always on and auto-updated, I run automated anti-virus scans every night. I run AdAware every couple of days, and right now, since it is new, I am running Yahoo Anti-spy every day. My ISP also filters my email with an anti-virus program and I practice all the common preventitive measures and am quite liberal at assigning "spam" tags on incoming emails.
Still, all of this amounts to a lot of work. I do think Microsoft shares the blame with the malware authors in the same way that car manufacturers used to carry part of the blame for car thefts (since cars were so easy to steal). Microsoft it would seem to me has the same kind of responsibility that car makers had, to develop a safer product. I am willing to share part of this expense (developing products costs money and that cost is passed on to customers - it is what for-profit companies have to do). I also hope we get help from legislators and from ISP's, and even hardware companies who each in their own way can develop things that would make malware harder to propogate.
I'd also like to challenge computer makers to provide us with additional choices, like packaged Linux boxes, better secured Windows boxes, and software that actually works that comes bundled with machines so that so many people don't download "free" spyware-laden products to do something they expected their computer to do out of the box (Dell, Sonic - do you hear me?).
Before I moved to Minneapolis, I lived in out-state Minnesota where I was aware of several pockets of people living "off-grid." They did not have phone service or electric service. In some cases this was by choice, the residents didn't even work at getting these services. I personally did without wired phone for many years (and didn't have a cel phone either).
These things are not necessities, they are options. In some cases, people don't want them. In other cases, companies don't want to go to the expense of delivering the service.
Living off grid or without a phone, does not mean you are a luddite. Today, you can power your home with generators or solar power and you can have a cellular phone (if there is service in the area). In some remote places there is a rural radio telephone service. This is used when the expense of delivering phone service via wire is too costly. It is like high powered analog service.
My favorite fishing lake has no cellular service, even my work-required "nation-wide" pager won't beep when I am out there! This is part of what attracts me to this particular lake. On one end of the lake, there is a small community of cabins that do not have electricity. They seem to like it that way. They all have nice boats and those terrible jet-ski's and all sorts of other toy so it is not like they can't afford it.
Like most people in this world, I don't always have the choice of what I get, even though I am the customer and the consumer. I'd much rather have a Humvee than an Explorer but guess which one I drive? But not all of these things that are forced on me are because of some economic force.
My use of Windows is one of those. I work in a Windows shop, I support Windows and have a wealth of knowlege and experience to draw on when it comes to Windows. The shop I work in runs Win2K and at home, I run XP. Why? Because someday we will move to XP and I need to know it and be comfortable with it before my customers are.
But I run Open Office and Firefox and other open source applications. Why? Because I can. Because they fill a need and yes, because they are cheap or free depending on how you feel about them.
I need XP and I need open source products for XP. Yes, I could "dual-boot" and run a win/lin environment but I'll tell you right now, I wouldn't. When I mess with Linux, it is Knoppix or something similar. And I do that often enough so that I was actually excited to learn that KDE is considering a Windows project. I hope they do it.
Linux and Open-Source garners it's fans from somewhere. Just by virtue of the numbers of Windows users, most of them come from the world of Microsoft. Windows open source software is a "good will ambasador" of sorts for the people living in the world of Microsoft and Windows. Not many come from Apple/Mac and even fewer are exposed to Linux first! So, obviously, Linux and open source in general need some representation in that world to garner new recruits. The best of the best is what will "sell" people on the rest of the stuff that Open Source has to offer and I think that this especially includes Linux!
Besides this: Free is meant to be free as in freedom. Projects should not be forced to operate under some artificial restriction from above. Let each project make it's own decision. If there is enough dissent, fork it with one team developing for Windows and the other not.
For your own safety, if you get pulled over DO NOT GET OUT OF THE CAR. If you aren't hit by a car, you may be shot by the officer! Exiting the car is considered an agressive move and a threat by the cop.
If stopped, place your hands where they can be seen by the cop (on top of the sterring wheel is fine, out the window is okay, above your head silly but fine.
If a cop asks you for an ID you are asking for trouble if you do not cooperate. Even if it is only "asks" and not "demands." They are in charge, and they have a gun. Most states have laws that require adults to have identification on them at all times (at least I think most states do, I am not a lawyer and am only sure of Minnesota where I live).
Cops who encounter people who think they are lay-lawyers" who assert their "rights" tend to be pretty by-the-book with these people and will take absolutly no BS from them. They hope that this will teach them a lesson (and it is probably a lessone they need to learn).
I am sure that there are rules that a cop has to follow when he asks for ID. I don't think you always have to be a suspect in something for him to ask you to produce an ID. I've been asked for ID when I was a passenger in a car that was stopped for a minor traffic violation. To be fair, the driver was arguing with the cop and I suspect the cop was a bit agitated by that.
I've also had to produce identification because I was a witness to a traffic accident. I had no part in it other than seeing it happen.
I am quite sure it is not a "good thing" if the cop asks you for ID and you can not produce it. If you were close to the line before, that alone could put you over the line in the cop's eye.
It is almost always best to cooperate with the cops and get them off your back. In Minneapolis (where I live) I have absolutly no doubt that if a cop asks me for ID and I can not produce it, my chances of going to jail just got a whole lot better. That is the bad side of the cops here, they take no BS. But the good side, is they usually only tangle with people who need tangling with.
IANAL - but I believe you are quite incorrect. Most states have laws requiring you to carry your driver's license when you are driving and these laws can assess a fine. If the cop lets you off he is doing you a favor.
In many states, all adults are required to carry proof of identity at all times when they are in public. This is more important than you think, and it is just as much for your safety as it is to protect the public interest. Joggers who have suffered heart attacks have been "John Does" for significant periods of time because they did not have their IDs on them.
If a cop asks you for identity, you better be able to prove it. If you can't they will take you to jail and make someone come down and identify you!
Would you feel that way if you were "virtually" located near the spammer and your network resonsiveness was affected? I doubt it.
Legitamate use of the net is fine, that is what it is there for. Remember what using the net was like on September 11, 2001? While almost all of that traffic was legit, it kind of shows what it would be like if you were virtually near one of the spammers Lycos was targeting. You could have multiple T1 lines and still get nowhere!
The only people worse than spammers are spyware/malware publishers. I do not wish the spammer success. It just needs to be done right. I'd be all for wiping these guys off the map! They cost business and people money and time and this alone makes them criminal (just in a sense that is sometimes hard to prosicute with current laws).
Lycos made a major blunder with this campaign. I think it actually gave the entire computing community a black eye and am thankfull they pulled it as quickly as they did.
It worked along the same theory that "It takes a criminal to catch a criminal" does. That sometimes, you have to get down and dirty to fight back.
If the only people that got hurt by that kind of plan were the bad guys, I'd buy it. But it doesn't work that way. There is colatteral damage and often times the innocent victims outnumber the bad guys. All that traffic was sent through the internet, across innocent's routers and delayed legitimate traffic. Especially near the end where the bad guys got on the net. I would have hated to be a legit user going through the same service provider as the bad guy!
You could argue that the bad guy's ISP is partly to blame and I'd agree but things aren't that simple. There are several upstream providers and thousands of legit users that were hurt. The colatteral damage was too much.
On top of that, this action gave bad guys ammunition. They are now pretty much able to make a case that other legitamate users are using similar tactics as they are. The screensaver turned end user's computers into bots!
Two wrongs don't make a right. Thank you Lycos for recognizing this a little late but still you did figure it out.
Is it just me or do their numbers seem terribly low? I'd put the spyware infected Windows machines at nearly 95% (only those recently cleaned are clean) and the $305 million number seems about 1000%
When you come out of school you are likely to land in a pretty poor job that doesn't make full use of what you learned. Your chances of going to work for a better company may be a bit better though if you go to a more prestigious school.
What you learn in these first jobs is every bit as important as what you learned to get your degree! You learn to deal with "office politics," bosses, co-workers, and eventually (perhaps) underlings. Make no mistake about it, your education doesn't stop when you graduate. All college did was prepare you to enter the workplace, there are probably more differences than similarities between academia and TRW (the real world).
Colleges prepare you with a very broad brush. This is both a good thing and a bad thing but really, it is the only thing they can do or your opportunities after graduation would be very limited. Within a few months of graduation you will marvel at how little of what you learned you use and how much you have had to learn on the job. To some degree at least you will question the value of your education. Yet, you'll also realize that without it you would never be where you are.
Perhaps, rather than going to a better school you may want to consider a second major (business?) to supplement your CS degree.
With the world the way it is today, I'll be honest as say I am glad not to be in your shoes. If I were, I may even consider enlisting - in many places the job market is that bad.
Say I created a program that served as a directory to locate files on other machines connected to the internet BUT used Microsoft's built in FTP program to both serve and retrieve the files, and I stored the directory on many small servers that I had no ownership stake in scattered around the internet (to participate in the file exchange program people would have to host pieces of the directory too).
Now let's say that to piece all of this together, everything I used was Microsoft tools. In essence, what I've coded is all Microsoft. All I did was "string the beads" with a little creative coding.
Now let's imagine the RIAA or MPAA or some other organization suing because of this program. What would their chances be against Microsoft. IANAL but I'd bet it would be pretty close to zip. Their chance would be much greater against me. Even if I have a license agreement clause that stipulated that the user should not use this software to copy copyrighted programs. Still if they came after me, I would defend myself by saying that my license prohibited such use and Microsoft's product facilitated the process.
I'd probably also argue that I was no more a facilitator than the ISP! I'd try to claim that once the product leaves my hand, I am no more responsible for it's use than Ford is responsible for the way a driver uses a car. Can you really expect Ford to be sued because their car was used in a bank robbery? Or than it was raced at well above the speed limit?
I really don't think that it is an open and shut case. I'm not even convinced that Kazaa is playing a shell game with it's corporate structure (although the press coverage makes that seem likely).
To me blogs are like the old time soap box in the park. Any yahoo can "take his turn" and everyone knows that what is said is one person's opinion. It is a valid and perhaps important method of communication but it lacks impartiality and fact-checking. It isn't hard hitting journalisim backed up with facts and the reputation of a corporation.
I'm not discounting blogs - they are an important part of my day. I just know that if I read something on 'em, I have to do my own checking.
Still, I think they fall short of being journalisim. Hell, people even sometimes read what I write! Me, mister nobody. And people read me.
I'm no expert on Stem cell research or medical ethics, I probably know a lot less about it than most people on Slashdot. What I do know is that my daughter's mother is laying in a nursing home where she will soon die from ALS. I don't think that this kind of thing is too unusual, many people know someone who has some terrible disease. We also have hundreds, perhaps thousands of nerve and brain injured soldiers laying in VA hospitals around the country and many more people with various injuries and diseases in hospitals and nurshing homes all around the country.
All of these people wish to have their health back. Scientists and doctors everywhere are saying that stem cell research holds a great deal of promise and that it deserves a great deal of study. These same experts seem to agree that fetal stem cells have some special properties.
We have a conservitive government who for decades have said "deregulation is the key to success" who have regulated research in this area. I guess they meant "deregulation is the key to success unless we don't agree with it."
I was just out at Skype's website (no, I didn't DL their software). They talk a lot about being able to make phone calls but there isn't hardly any mention about being able to get phone calls from a POTS style phone. Is it possible?
When you subscribe to Skype do you get a telephone number?
Can you call Skype from a POTS connected phone and make a call?
Does Skype have a call forwarding service?
Does anybody know of a IP service that allows all of these services?
Think of the internet as a road system the routers being intersections and the data being the traffic.
All traffic that uses the highway has to pass through the intersections. Since so much of the traffic is going to one destination, the intersections closer to the destination will also become ensnarled. These intersections have nothing to do with the criminal behavior of the originating source.
It is like the excess traffic around a crackhouse. The traffic annoys the neighbors and may interfere with the commerce of the corner store as well.
Lycos is perhaps well intentioned but the are going to annoy the neighbors. This makes Lyco's idea just about as bad for the community as the spammer himself.
Far better idea to burn the spammer's house down.
Here is one: http://antivirus.about.com/cs/tutorials/a/bsvirus. htmm entation/W indows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resour ces/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkd _tro_vail.asp
and another:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu
And yes, many of the early *nix's did come on floppy. The first couple of Linux installations I did were from floppy. But with a BOOT SECTOR virus, you can be infected simply by leaving an infected floppy in the disk drive (it does not even need to be a bootable floppy).
Some very early viruses were cross--platform, infecting DOS, Windows, and *nix machines. They "infected" before the boot process was completed and made no use whatsoever of the O/S. They were simply dependant on the PC standard and the Intel processor (so Apple machines were immune).
Again, early on in the "macro virus" game, some of the macro viruses were written to be cross-platform. At this point, Apple became suseptible but most *nix machines were unaffected (because they weren't running Word).
Don't feel exactly smug because you are running Linux. There are vunerabilities everywhere.
Slimeware er, spyware is the bane of my existance. I work for a large company and do not have final say about how the desktops are configured (I would do it differently), I support a special group and nearly all of my people have "admin rights" on their computers. I agree that these people need admin rights for some of the functions that they have to do but figure about 95% of the time they could run as a "super user" without any problems at all.
Very nearly 100% of the computers I touch are infested with slimeware. Running several commercial apps will clear most of the crap that is found but one or two apps seem to come back within a day or two (even if the user claims that they have not been on the internet). It has gotten to the point where I actually believe some of them!
I've found that what seems to be happening is that the slimeware distributors are playing a little versioning game. As soon as the major spyware removal tools are able to kill a specific version of slimeware, the slimeware authors make a new version that they then distribute.
It takes time between the release and the time that the spyware removers catch up and in the meantime, it is up to people like me to figure out how to clean up the mess. I am pretty hard-nosed and will spend a couple of hours searching the registry, booting from CD and deleting files and that kind of stuff to kill off the slimeware. Others who do similar jobs just re-image the machines. Soves the problem faster but I don't think the users are quite as happy. They have to reconfigure the machine to how they like it and there is always the risk of lost data.
I'd love to see these purveyors of filth in prison. Many of them serve up porn and put it on kids machines! They are guilty of a crime every time this happens. Why can't we do something?
Anyway, I don't blame the spyware removal people for these setbacks. They work hard to keep up but just can't.
Im my dreams, I dream of a single tool that sits on the desktop and checks for viruses, slimeware, spam, and other threats and inconveniences. I'd like the tool to be able to be programmed to block access to various applications and websites too. I'd like the same tool to have some sort of "safe recovery" feature that allows me to move back in time to a stable configuration that would not delete data.
These are just dreams but will someone somewhere please make my dream come true? Corporate IS departments everywhere would thank you with money from their budget!
In so many ways, the government is watching you. They say it is to protect you and they really believe that. The truth is that they have limited resources and probably never will actually use these methods unless they have developed other evidence the old fashioned way first. In some ways, this is just an extenstion of forensics. But the thinking person has to wonder just where will it stop?
I'm not about to live in fear of this stuff, I have enough other things to fear already, this will never make it far enough up my list to make me parinoid.
Still, when companies cooperate with the federal government, I think that they should disclose this kind of thing so an individual can make an informed decision. That would be fair and proper.
There are many alternitive fuels being looked at. To some people "synthetic gasoiline" means any fuel that can be substituted for gasoiline. To other people it means gasoiline manufactured from sources other than crude oil. In either case, the idea is to manufacture a fuel that will reduce dependance on crude oil.
In WWII the Germans had no choice but to manufacture synthetic gasoiline. They made it ftom coal. It was not as cheap or as good as gasoiline made from crude oil but it met their needs until we bombed the hell out of their production plants.
I suspect that with the tchnology we have today, we could manufacture this kind of synthetic gasoiline and it would meet our needs but it would be expensive and would have other drawbacks as well: We would still be using a non-renewable energy source and the infrasturucture required would be expensive.
A better solution is to use renewable energy sources to manufacture fuels that can replace or be used as an adjunct to gasoiline. Currently the concentration in this effort is on ethanol although there are a number of other efforts as well (many of which have been covered on Slashdot). Ethanol plants also cost a lot to build but they are far less expensive than other processes and are very proven technologies. This is probably why E-85 actually has a fighting chance.
Pehaps the biggest problem with alternitive fuels isn't technology but politics. Face it, the oil companies have a huge investment in their product and alternitives may require them to refit at significant expense. They have significant political clout and will fight any change that they think will reduce their ability to profit. Note that I didn't say they oppose new methods or technologies, their goal is to drive the bus and continue to be the boys who deliver product.
Since they have such a significant investment in what they provide today, they will drag their feet on any change to protect this investment. For many reasons, they realize they are only delaying the inevitable.
From a national security stand point, you would think that the United States would plunge headlong into developing ethanol and other gasoiline replacements but our current administration is content to get oil the old fashioned way; from overseas. This protects the interests of the major corporations that give those in power so much money.
We have a symbiotic relationship with many of the world's oil providers. They don't want to hurt us, just extract as much money from us as they can without hurting us badly. If they were to shut off the taps, our economy would crumble. If they charged too much, our economy would fail and they would lose their biggest customer.
We've learned time and time again that our country is willing to send our military in to do the dirty work for "our friends" who supply us with oil (in much the same way as an adict will commit a crime for his dealer). We live in a world of dirty politics where political leaders will kill for oil and for profit.
Before electric cars or alternitive fuels get a real chance to thrive, we need to make a few polictical changes in our "energy policy" and our "national security policy." To do this, we will need a very strong and committed leader. We will need leadership which will mandate that all cars and trucks produced and sold in the US can run on renewable fuels. A leader who will find a way to make agriculture and industry come together to make this happen. A leader who will find funding to help to build the plants required to manufacture the fuels. This will not happen for many years. Neither major political party has the guts or the desire (because of their affiliation with the petrol industry).
At a smaller level, some states are already heading in the right direction. Midwestern states without oil are on the ethanol bandwagon because it is the only way their farmers can get a piece of the energy pie. E85, Bio-Deisil, and other renewable fules hold a great deal of promise for the economies of these states. Minnesota already mandates 10% ethanol in all gasoiline sold in the state.
Like many people, I use RFID every day. When I go to work, to get in to the building, I wave my RFID impregnaed badge in front of a reader. The door unlocks and lets me in the building. When I enter the storage room where our new computers are kept, I use the RFID tag to open that door too, it has controlled access so only a few of us can go in there. I also have data center access.
I wish I had to "clock out" using the tags too, that way the company would know if everyone had left the building in the event of an evacuation.
On weekends, when I go to my place "up North" I use an RFID tag to open the gate, it is a key-fob kind of thing. This means only authorized people can access the facility.
I had a Mobile Pass for buying gas and automatically charged my card but got rid if it when my teenager got her driver's license (she may have abused it). It made my life a bit easier.
I can see the day where RFID tags will be impregnated in things like charge cards. When that day comes, I hope that the RFID card will be an extra, additional step in security, used to verify that the card is not counterfit. I don't think it should be used to pass ALL the information. But it can be used as a security feature.
I can see RFID tags being used to even improve national security. Currently about 95% of all cargo coming in through our ports is uninspected. We all know that is a major hole in our defense. We could work out an arrangment with major trusted corporations outside of our country to package sealed cartons and containers with high-power RFID tags so that the manifest can be read, the sealed container scanned and allowed to pass where other containers have to be searched. This isn't perfect but would be a damned sight better than what we have today.
My gut recation has on these kinds of things is "Oh, that sucks! It's an invasion of my privacy!" and people will tell you that your gut reaction is right about eighty percent of the time.
While it is true that these black boxes can tell the manufacurer, the insurance company, and the cops more about you than you want them to know, think about the other side of the coin for a moment.
They can call an emergency service if your airbag deploys. They can provide data to manufacturers to make engineering and safety improvments or even trigger a recall if necessary. They can be used to shore up your version of an insurance claim. In short, they can save lives and money.
I agree that there should probably be some regulations on the data privacy side of the issue, including notifying the owner of any data access or recovery effort where the data may be tied to him/her.
In a broad sense, much of the data recovered from these boxes is already available to the police and insurance companies after a significant crash. Over the years accident scene reconstruction has become amazingly detaied and accurate. From the evidence at a crash scene they can tell how fast you were going, what exact driection you were heading, and if you were wearing your seatbelt. DNA evidence can tell them where you were sitting even.
I say the boxes themselves are good, and the data they collect can be beneficial. I can understand the potential for abusing the data but still think that it can be regulated to the point where these boxes can be a good thing.
This is a honest question. I really am this dumb when it comes to chemistry.
If I used whiskey or brandy and ran it through a Brita filter, what would I end up with? Would I get a clear colorless liquid or would I get filtered whiskey or brandy?
My brother worked in a bottling company for a short time where they "made" different flavored alcohols. Everything they made was really distilled grain alcohol mixted with various flavorings and water. They made things like peppermint schnapps, blackberry brandy, cheap vodka and so on. The lesson he passed along was that vodka or at least the cheap stuff, is really just grain alcohol and water - it is no longer made from potatoes. The cheap whiskey's aren't aged, just flavored and if you look closely, you will see that it doesn't say aged anywhere on the bottle!