That just makes it an arms race. Before long, you get a set of cameras that are mutually pointing at each other, transmitting to a remote recorder. A better solution is to just get the things taken down. A town near here just did that. It's possible, and if everybody hates the things, it shouldn't be too hard to do. I'm really in favor of people running lights getting tickets, not so much of cameras that just snap a picture and send you a ticket.
I think you're completely missing the point. TFA is saying that they're putting up cameras to watch the cameras. You know, for when people try to do things like burn them.
Maybe if you assume all high schools offer intro classes to every subject taught in colleges, which they don't, and also if you assume that everyone who chooses to pursue a subject in college knows they intend to do so in high school, which they don't.
I dunno, is your argument really that because they did a stellar job raising money, they probably won't do a stellar job of raising money in the future? I don't buy it.
The bottom line is that the price of something doesn't have nearly as much to do with the value of something as people would like to believe. It has a tremendous bit to do with the demand for it. Take Coke or Pepsi for example. It's sugary water with close to zero intrinsic value, but people like it, so they pay vastly more than they would for water + some sugar and flavor. Similarly, there was a tremendous demand for Facebook stock absolutely without regard for that stock's intrinsic value! Call it the greater fool theory or whatever else you want, but yes, the bottom line is when something is very strongly desired, however irrationally, the seller is going to reap a ton of cash.
So, do I think next time this happens, it'll play out the same way? Yes, I do. Do I think this may cause an irrational public to think about whether the next IPO is worth the asking price? Maybe some of them, but that's a GOOD thing.
First off, if they charge, some percentage will stay. I don't know if it's 50% or not. It's not 100%. For those who DO stay, which? In my experience, there are creators and consumers on facebook. A small subset say interesting things. A large subset consume them. If the interesting people leave, the consumers will also leave. A fair amount of the producers don't necessarily say interesting things, they just repost things. If facebook charges money, Tumblr will get a massive influx of users. Either way, when the interesting people leave, the people who are only there to read what others post will also leave. I doubt FB will ever even take the risk of trying. Offering premium services? Perhaps.
IPOs tend to be designed to have a bounce because it helps maintain public interest in the IPO market. If people observe that underwriters set IPO prices fairly or somewhat low, they'll be more likely to buy in on later IPOs.
Which is really fairly naive. If you're Facebook and your IPO is set to rake in ridiculous sums of money, why should you care about the post Facebook IPO IPO market? You won't need the money from those later IPOs. Facebook priced this one perfectly. They weren't selling shares to make you money. They were selling shares to make THEM money. And they did.
This gets trotted out fairly often. The counter argument is this:
You (John Q. Public) create something actually innovative and legitimately patentable, and do so. So does Apple, or Google, or any other huge company. You realize they're using your invention, so ask them to pay you for it. They say no. Litigation ensues. You spend a few thousand on your brother Vinny's legal services. They trot out a crack stable of lawyers at $300/hour/lawyer. They do a tremendous amount of analysis and preparation before their slam dunk victory. You get stuck with a $500,000 bill because they bought better lawyers than you did.
In short, a system like this is massively disadvantageous to the little guy. Loser pays for frivolous lawsuits? Perhaps. Merely for losing? No.
Fark apparently got one to back down by threatening to pierce the corporate veil and go after the executives directly as individuals.
This is a nice idea, but it's not as simple as just choosing to do it. Those execs have to do something that makes this possible, such as commingling their and the company's finances, that will persuade a judge that the corporation is a sham.
-- the same one everyone has to "sign" every time the iTunes software is even updated.
Is this the same one where they give you a 57 page EULA and let you skip the last 56 pages before "signing" that you've read the whole thing and agree to it, when obviously you haven't?
If you're not a rock star manager, you vastly overrate your ability to identify, attract, hire, and retain rockstar developers. You're far more likely to hire people who have massive egos who don't realize their own faults, and who can succeed in pulling the wool over your eyes because you don't know any better.
Despite what many say, there is some security through obscurity. It's a case of only having to outrun your neighbour and not the bear.
No, it's not at all alike because the bear is going to eat one of you: whichever one it catches first. The script isn't going to compromise one box, it's going to compromise every single one that's vulnerable to whatever exploit(s) it's using in the IP ranges it's scanning.
To put it another way, it's not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about. It's the 20,000 or so odd rounds labelled "Occupant".
There's a tendency to ascribe every dumb thing done in business to an MBA somewhere. The truth, though, is that there's no MBA requirement to get in a position of authority. I'd ask that next time you see some dumb thing done, you try to ascertain who did it and see if the person actually has an MBA. You might be surprised.
There are times I wish more people got them, partly because you'd then understand that there's a great emphasis on NOT doing all the idiotic things the general public is so quick to assume we do, partly because we'd then have a lot more people who are somewhat more inoculated against the stupid decisions we see and the cognitive biases we all have.
There are a lot of Managers and Upper Managers without MBA's those are the ones who tend to be the biggest offenders. They will hear MBA's use the terms in correct context then reuse them out of context.
Dingdingding! Yes. Exactly this. Or they'll hear other people who don't know what they're talking about and just perpetuate the trend.
You're missing the point a bit. "The Cloud" is talked about like it's some magic, infalliable bit of technology, or from the contract side, like you simply sign a piece of paper and all the downside is now someone else's problem. There *can* be some almost magic, incredibly resilient thing called "The Cloud", but there's also it's toothless kid brother, which is simply your data or app running on someone else's server. Sometimes it's important to know the difference. Calling them both "the cloud" is deceptive.
I'm opposed to circumcision. Very much in favor of vaccination. But yes, I think the wisdom teeth thing is sometimes a crock. I had a dentist tell me 20 years ago mine needed to come out. They weren't causing any problems, they just never grew in and one of them is sideways, but under the gums where you'd never know it but for an X-ray. I said I'd get them out if they ever actually cause me a problem. If not, someday I'll leave a skeleton with funny looking teeth. I've had zero problems, but I understand having them out is expensive and really painful. Thanks...but no.
I find that incredibly hard to believe. At $LOCALHOSPITAL, a bag of 73 cent saline is $50+. A routine visit with a pediatrician is something like $120-$180. No way are you getting an actual surgical procedure for $150.
Lobby your congressmen to establish laws requiring the Social Security Administration to monitor and report fraudulent use of credit card numbers.
How about establishing laws such that if some idiot bank gives credit to some random in my name, the default legal position is that the debt is invalid and does not attach to me merely by my denying I opened it. Require the issuer to have actual PROOF that the debt is mine before they can say word one to me (or my credit report) about it.
The credit industry has spun this thing to be "identity theft", but it isn't. My identity is still attached to me, right where I left it. YOU nitwits were defrauded. I was not involved until some creditor attempted to attach a debt to me that was not mine.
Simply put, it's used like one. It shouldn't be, but it is. Having someone's Name, address, DoB, and SSN is often enough to get credit in someone's name. Name and address are often very easy to get. Date of birth is sometimes very easy to get. SSNs are often hard. Comparatively, anyway. Many companies are happy to assume that if you know Joe Schmoe's SSN, you must be Joe Schmoe and give you credit in his name. When the real Mr. Schmoe stands up and tries to disclaim the debt, the issuer will try very hard to claim it's valid.
OP asked for measures he *should* take, not instruction in forensics. If he wants to analyze and try to remove malware with the intent of returning *that system image* to service, I think that's a really bad idea. Wipe and reinstall. Safer and faster. If he wants to mess around and try to learn a bit of forensics and how malware works, that's fine, but an entirely separate thing to returning dad's PC to service. Stick a new, blank drive in the PC and do the reinstall on that, then analyze the original (really, a copy of the original so the original is never modified). You (and OP) can find useful stuff at sleuthkit.org. There are also forensics bits you can (and arguably should) do to the running system before you shut it down, but tbh there are entire books written about this, and it'd be crazy to try to explain it in a slashdot post.
I'm not talking about it standing up in court. I'm talking about being sure you really found everything. If you aren't SURE you found everything, you should reinstall. Hell, I'm trained to do this sort of thing and I'd just reinstall. Sure, I might examine the system out of curiosity, but NOT to "get around a complete wipe."
I disagree that you don't need hard evidence if you want to prosecute. It doesn't matter that police know about these scams. You don't prosecute a general class of crime, you prosecute a particular instance. You need to show that particular scammer did the deed. To your second point, I agree. This is not going to be prosecuted.
Because many, many, many organizations treat it exactly like it's a password. You are very right that it should NEVER be treated as an authenticator. You are very wrong that it ISN'T treated as exactly that.
Slashdot Mirror
That just makes it an arms race. Before long, you get a set of cameras that are mutually pointing at each other, transmitting to a remote recorder. A better solution is to just get the things taken down. A town near here just did that. It's possible, and if everybody hates the things, it shouldn't be too hard to do. I'm really in favor of people running lights getting tickets, not so much of cameras that just snap a picture and send you a ticket.
I think you're completely missing the point. TFA is saying that they're putting up cameras to watch the cameras. You know, for when people try to do things like burn them.
Maybe if you assume all high schools offer intro classes to every subject taught in colleges, which they don't, and also if you assume that everyone who chooses to pursue a subject in college knows they intend to do so in high school, which they don't.
I dunno, is your argument really that because they did a stellar job raising money, they probably won't do a stellar job of raising money in the future? I don't buy it.
The bottom line is that the price of something doesn't have nearly as much to do with the value of something as people would like to believe. It has a tremendous bit to do with the demand for it. Take Coke or Pepsi for example. It's sugary water with close to zero intrinsic value, but people like it, so they pay vastly more than they would for water + some sugar and flavor. Similarly, there was a tremendous demand for Facebook stock absolutely without regard for that stock's intrinsic value! Call it the greater fool theory or whatever else you want, but yes, the bottom line is when something is very strongly desired, however irrationally, the seller is going to reap a ton of cash.
So, do I think next time this happens, it'll play out the same way? Yes, I do. Do I think this may cause an irrational public to think about whether the next IPO is worth the asking price? Maybe some of them, but that's a GOOD thing.
Lots of unsubstantiated claims in there.
First off, if they charge, some percentage will stay. I don't know if it's 50% or not. It's not 100%. For those who DO stay, which? In my experience, there are creators and consumers on facebook. A small subset say interesting things. A large subset consume them. If the interesting people leave, the consumers will also leave. A fair amount of the producers don't necessarily say interesting things, they just repost things. If facebook charges money, Tumblr will get a massive influx of users. Either way, when the interesting people leave, the people who are only there to read what others post will also leave. I doubt FB will ever even take the risk of trying. Offering premium services? Perhaps.
Which is really fairly naive. If you're Facebook and your IPO is set to rake in ridiculous sums of money, why should you care about the post Facebook IPO IPO market? You won't need the money from those later IPOs. Facebook priced this one perfectly. They weren't selling shares to make you money. They were selling shares to make THEM money. And they did.
This gets trotted out fairly often. The counter argument is this:
You (John Q. Public) create something actually innovative and legitimately patentable, and do so.
So does Apple, or Google, or any other huge company.
You realize they're using your invention, so ask them to pay you for it. They say no. Litigation ensues.
You spend a few thousand on your brother Vinny's legal services. They trot out a crack stable of lawyers at $300/hour/lawyer. They do a tremendous amount of analysis and preparation before their slam dunk victory.
You get stuck with a $500,000 bill because they bought better lawyers than you did.
In short, a system like this is massively disadvantageous to the little guy. Loser pays for frivolous lawsuits? Perhaps. Merely for losing? No.
This is a nice idea, but it's not as simple as just choosing to do it. Those execs have to do something that makes this possible, such as commingling their and the company's finances, that will persuade a judge that the corporation is a sham.
Is this the same one where they give you a 57 page EULA and let you skip the last 56 pages before "signing" that you've read the whole thing and agree to it, when obviously you haven't?
If you're not a rock star manager, you vastly overrate your ability to identify, attract, hire, and retain rockstar developers. You're far more likely to hire people who have massive egos who don't realize their own faults, and who can succeed in pulling the wool over your eyes because you don't know any better.
No, it's not at all alike because the bear is going to eat one of you: whichever one it catches first. The script isn't going to compromise one box, it's going to compromise every single one that's vulnerable to whatever exploit(s) it's using in the IP ranges it's scanning.
To put it another way, it's not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about. It's the 20,000 or so odd rounds labelled "Occupant".
There's a tendency to ascribe every dumb thing done in business to an MBA somewhere. The truth, though, is that there's no MBA requirement to get in a position of authority. I'd ask that next time you see some dumb thing done, you try to ascertain who did it and see if the person actually has an MBA. You might be surprised.
There are times I wish more people got them, partly because you'd then understand that there's a great emphasis on NOT doing all the idiotic things the general public is so quick to assume we do, partly because we'd then have a lot more people who are somewhat more inoculated against the stupid decisions we see and the cognitive biases we all have.
Dingdingding! Yes. Exactly this. Or they'll hear other people who don't know what they're talking about and just perpetuate the trend.
My kingdom for mod points!
You're missing the point a bit. "The Cloud" is talked about like it's some magic, infalliable bit of technology, or from the contract side, like you simply sign a piece of paper and all the downside is now someone else's problem. There *can* be some almost magic, incredibly resilient thing called "The Cloud", but there's also it's toothless kid brother, which is simply your data or app running on someone else's server. Sometimes it's important to know the difference. Calling them both "the cloud" is deceptive.
Because you're guessing baselessly, probably.
I'm opposed to circumcision. Very much in favor of vaccination. But yes, I think the wisdom teeth thing is sometimes a crock. I had a dentist tell me 20 years ago mine needed to come out. They weren't causing any problems, they just never grew in and one of them is sideways, but under the gums where you'd never know it but for an X-ray. I said I'd get them out if they ever actually cause me a problem. If not, someday I'll leave a skeleton with funny looking teeth. I've had zero problems, but I understand having them out is expensive and really painful. Thanks...but no.
I find that incredibly hard to believe. At $LOCALHOSPITAL, a bag of 73 cent saline is $50+. A routine visit with a pediatrician is something like $120-$180. No way are you getting an actual surgical procedure for $150.
There are alleged health benefits to bear bile, too, if you believe crackpot chinese "medicine" types.
And yes, they're incredibly dissimilar to the well documented health benefits of vaccination.
...I can keep my foreskin?
Sold.
How about establishing laws such that if some idiot bank gives credit to some random in my name, the default legal position is that the debt is invalid and does not attach to me merely by my denying I opened it. Require the issuer to have actual PROOF that the debt is mine before they can say word one to me (or my credit report) about it.
The credit industry has spun this thing to be "identity theft", but it isn't. My identity is still attached to me, right where I left it. YOU nitwits were defrauded. I was not involved until some creditor attempted to attach a debt to me that was not mine.
Simply put, it's used like one. It shouldn't be, but it is. Having someone's Name, address, DoB, and SSN is often enough to get credit in someone's name. Name and address are often very easy to get. Date of birth is sometimes very easy to get. SSNs are often hard. Comparatively, anyway. Many companies are happy to assume that if you know Joe Schmoe's SSN, you must be Joe Schmoe and give you credit in his name. When the real Mr. Schmoe stands up and tries to disclaim the debt, the issuer will try very hard to claim it's valid.
You don't want to be a Schmoe.
It's called the Social Security Death Master File. It has about 90 million records. You didn't say they had to be for living people.
Please deliver my Internets to 127.0.0.1. Thanks!
OP asked for measures he *should* take, not instruction in forensics. If he wants to analyze and try to remove malware with the intent of returning *that system image* to service, I think that's a really bad idea. Wipe and reinstall. Safer and faster. If he wants to mess around and try to learn a bit of forensics and how malware works, that's fine, but an entirely separate thing to returning dad's PC to service. Stick a new, blank drive in the PC and do the reinstall on that, then analyze the original (really, a copy of the original so the original is never modified). You (and OP) can find useful stuff at sleuthkit.org. There are also forensics bits you can (and arguably should) do to the running system before you shut it down, but tbh there are entire books written about this, and it'd be crazy to try to explain it in a slashdot post.
I'm not talking about it standing up in court. I'm talking about being sure you really found everything. If you aren't SURE you found everything, you should reinstall. Hell, I'm trained to do this sort of thing and I'd just reinstall. Sure, I might examine the system out of curiosity, but NOT to "get around a complete wipe."
I disagree that you don't need hard evidence if you want to prosecute. It doesn't matter that police know about these scams. You don't prosecute a general class of crime, you prosecute a particular instance. You need to show that particular scammer did the deed. To your second point, I agree. This is not going to be prosecuted.
Why do people think that?
Because many, many, many organizations treat it exactly like it's a password. You are very right that it should NEVER be treated as an authenticator. You are very wrong that it ISN'T treated as exactly that.