If I ever had to 'go rouge' I feel that I could last for years just off of common sense alone by using different public computers in a place with no cameras.
I took a behind-doors tour of a major drive manufacturer a few years ago. During our visit, we were able to visit with engineers - one of whom was head of the firmware engineering team. He told us lots of stories about the firmware requests they've fulfilled. One example was a customer who supported lots of old PBX systems. These PBX systems ran software from a hard drive, but due to the age the system only supported drives up to (around) 200MB. Nobody made drives that small anymore, so this drive manufacturer re-wrote the firmware for them ($$) so a 120GB drive (the smallest they made at the time) would only recognize & address the first 200MB.
That kind of shit happens all the time. For a while back in the early 2000s, some drive manufacturers were shipping drives with jumpers that would tell the firmware to report the disk as being 32GB, because there was a relatively common PC BIOS that crashed with any larger disk.
I have a camry. Sometimes when I tap the accelerator after coasting or while stopped it unexpectedly accelerates harder than I expected despite pressing the pedal just a little bit, forcing me to take my foot off the pedal to avoid rear-ending the car in front of me.
Interesting. Apparently most people get the opposite effect:
All modern ecm's have a rev limiter built into the software so that an engine can not destroy itself. It will rev to redline then cut the fuel and spark.
Unless of course the cause of the unintended acceleration is that the ecu software has crashed in some fashion...
I've seen numbers in the tens of millions of lines of computer code being bandied around as indicators of their size and complexity - WTF does a *car* need all that computing power for?
Having spoken to a friend who writes embedded automotive code for a living, it seems almost all of that is for diagnostic purposes. It's so that any idiot at a garage can plug in a machine that'll tell him precisely what's wrong with your car.
I also think that's a severe overestimate. AIUI, most modern cars have either 2 or 3 processors onboard, and each processor typically has around 20-100K of flash. You don't get tens of millions of lines of code into that little memory.
So why not keep that single chip in your watch band, clothing or a ring on your finger? What is so attractive about embedding it in your body?
It's a security issue. You're using the chip to identify yourself, and authorising anybody in posession of it to take money out of your bank account. You therefore don't want to put it in an item that can be easily stolen. An implanted chip is very hard to steal.
After all, if I asked you to carry around a device that would let the government track where you are at all times with little more than a warrant, would you accept? [...] It's called a cell phone.
You can turn a cell phone off, or decide to leave it at home if you're going somewhere you'd rather people didn't know about. You can't turn off an RFID tag, nor can you leave it at home if it's implanted.
Similarly with your credit card: if you're buying something you'd rather not be traced back to you, you can just pay cash.
And believe me, it isn't only criminals who have to worry about these things: if the police can get access to them, a determined private investigator can do so as well.
Scratch that... 3.6 has been out for a month now. I rarely restart this computer, so it hadn't told me to update yet.
I'd update _now_ if I were you. I didn't notice the problem either, but then I visited an old bookmark to a bittorrent site that's now defunct and got rooted and I got myself an annoying piece of adware installed (ironically entitled "Windows XP Antivirus").
Versions of FF only a few weeks out of date are now being actively exploited by the bad guys. Keep up-to-date.
like an operating system that keeps ALL settings, from kernel level security stuff to the users font setting in a game program in the SAME FILE
Err... kernel level security stuff is generally in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which is stored in %windir%\system.dat. User fonts settings in a game should be in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, which is stored in %userprofiledir%\ntuser.dat. Totally different files.
That's extrapolating a bit much, isn't it? And scanning through the article, they don't even name the sample size, just percentages.
I was wondering about selection bias, and, yes, investigating the company that did the research they appear to specialise in analysing native code (e.g. C or C++ applications) running under Windows. My guess is that a lot of the more security-conscious developers have moved to other environments (interpreted or JIT-compiled code and/or Linux), so they're left analysing the dregs...
Despite this, the UK takes a line that typically follows the US one. Our govt sees no problem in disconnecting users without anything like a 'trial'.
Another point where Europe might just help -- it's worth remembering that the French courts struck down a "three strikes" provision recently as unconstitional, and that the language in their constitution it violated is *very* similar to language that's in the European Convention on Human Rights.
So when the summary says "'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries" it might just be wrong... we have the following right:
In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.
The right to an internet connection is a civil right, so we're entitled to a fair and public independent and impartial hearing before the law can require disconnection.
If you remove 'p2p' from this, it almost makes sense. Not allowing software to stealth-install or block uninstallation? Why isn't that already a law?
Here in the UK, it _almost_ is. The Computer Misuse Act 1990 states:
(a) he does any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer; and
(b) at the time when he does the act he has the requisite intent and the requisite knowledge.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) above the requisite intent is an intent to cause a modification of the contents of any computer and by so doing--
(a) to impair the operation of any computer;
(b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; or
(c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data.
(3) The intent need not be directed at--
(a) any particular computer;
(b) any particular program or data or a program or data of any particular kind; or
(c) any particular modification or a modification of any particular kind.
(4) For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) above the requisite knowledge is knowledge that any modification he intends to cause is unauthorised.
The only problem is the requirement that you have to know the modification is unauthorised before you can be prosecuted. In practice, this means that people who intentionally install malware on systems can be prosecuted, but malware authors generally can't (unless, of course, they're the same person).
Please show me a single port of console game to pc, which didn't show these problems.... in over 20 years i believe its less than half a dozen
Even quite successful series like gta suffer from these mistakes
I've played original GTA on PC (both DOS and Windows versions) quite extensively, and can't say I've seen such problems. Maybe the more recent titles in the series had them, but the original really didn't.
If you really want to see poor translations, see the free-to-play MMO "fiesta". The mission text and the monster names were translated independently, I think, with the results that in many cases they just don't tie up in the slightest...
"Xerox...asked the court to halt the companies from further using the technology." So they are asking the courts to have google shutdown the search engine, youtube and google maps until the verdict is in? Fat chance! Same with yahoo. There is no way youtube, google maps or Google search would get shutdown while this court case carries on. It could take months or even years to finish this case
A fairly obvious gambit --- they request an order that cannot be granted because it would be disastrous for the victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdefendants, so that if they win the case the court will look more favourably at them when it comes time to setting the award. Court thinks: "if we'd granted that injunction, they'd have lost less, so let's give them more".
And just to swim in anecdotal waters, when I copied big piles of files to my GRiDPad 1910 via null modem cable using Microsoft's classic INTERLNK and INTERSVR for file sharing, SMARTDRV sped up the copy operations by about an order of magnitude. Life without disk caching isn't worth living.
A few years back, I had to install XP on a machine whose BIOS refused to boot from CD. The only route I could work with was install DOS, then run the XP setup program from DOS. But I forgot to install smartdrv; when I came back the next morning it was still in the initial "copying files to the hard disk" phase (i.e. before the first reboot). Stop it and install smartdrv, the process finished in less than a minute. Don't know why it was so slow, probably writing the files 1 byte at a time or something...
Slashdot Mirror
Linear B is Ancient Greek. /end random pedantry
Linear B is Mycenean Greek, an older language than Ancient Greek. The differences are small, but they are usually considered separate languages.
You appear to have missed punctuation in your close tag.
\end{random pedantry}
If I ever had to 'go rouge' I feel that I could last for years just off of common sense alone by using different public computers in a place with no cameras.
I think I might do the same if I ever go "rouge".
Of course, we are talking about botnet script-kiddies after all, so whose to say these upstanding individuals aren't actually minors as well?
The Cnet article provides their ages, which range from 25 to 31.
The Apple IIe was a wretched computer with awful software [...]
Which just goes to show people shouldn't be so surprised by the iPad...
I took a behind-doors tour of a major drive manufacturer a few years ago. During our visit, we were able to visit with engineers - one of whom was head of the firmware engineering team. He told us lots of stories about the firmware requests they've fulfilled. One example was a customer who supported lots of old PBX systems. These PBX systems ran software from a hard drive, but due to the age the system only supported drives up to (around) 200MB. Nobody made drives that small anymore, so this drive manufacturer re-wrote the firmware for them ($$) so a 120GB drive (the smallest they made at the time) would only recognize & address the first 200MB.
That kind of shit happens all the time. For a while back in the early 2000s, some drive manufacturers were shipping drives with jumpers that would tell the firmware to report the disk as being 32GB, because there was a relatively common PC BIOS that crashed with any larger disk.
Your sentence is wrong, sorry.
Your grammar naziism is wrong. Sorry.
I have a camry. Sometimes when I tap the accelerator after coasting or while stopped it unexpectedly accelerates harder than I expected despite pressing the pedal just a little bit, forcing me to take my foot off the pedal to avoid rear-ending the car in front of me.
Interesting. Apparently most people get the opposite effect:
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/10/17/camry-ecu-wont-let-drivers-give-it-the-boot/?CFID=8341797&CFTOKEN=25439153
All modern ecm's have a rev limiter built into the software so that an engine can not destroy itself. It will rev to redline then cut the fuel and spark.
Unless of course the cause of the unintended acceleration is that the ecu software has crashed in some fashion...
I've seen numbers in the tens of millions of lines of computer code being bandied around as indicators of their size and complexity - WTF does a *car* need all that computing power for?
Having spoken to a friend who writes embedded automotive code for a living, it seems almost all of that is for diagnostic purposes. It's so that any idiot at a garage can plug in a machine that'll tell him precisely what's wrong with your car.
I also think that's a severe overestimate. AIUI, most modern cars have either 2 or 3 processors onboard, and each processor typically has around 20-100K of flash. You don't get tens of millions of lines of code into that little memory.
When you are on the road you should not be trying to get that extra speed [...]
Many of us drive the same car both on road and on track. Are you saying we should be required to have two separate cars?
So why not keep that single chip in your watch band, clothing or a ring on your finger? What is so attractive about embedding it in your body?
It's a security issue. You're using the chip to identify yourself, and authorising anybody in posession of it to take money out of your bank account. You therefore don't want to put it in an item that can be easily stolen. An implanted chip is very hard to steal.
My card has PayPass -- I just wave my card in front of the reader to pay, and a signature isn't required.
So what happens if your card is stolen? The thief gets to empty your account without any checks to prevent it?
After all, if I asked you to carry around a device that would let the government track where you are at all times with little more than a warrant, would you accept? [...] It's called a cell phone.
You can turn a cell phone off, or decide to leave it at home if you're going somewhere you'd rather people didn't know about. You can't turn off an RFID tag, nor can you leave it at home if it's implanted.
Similarly with your credit card: if you're buying something you'd rather not be traced back to you, you can just pay cash.
And believe me, it isn't only criminals who have to worry about these things: if the police can get access to them, a determined private investigator can do so as well.
Scratch that... 3.6 has been out for a month now. I rarely restart this computer, so it hadn't told me to update yet.
I'd update _now_ if I were you. I didn't notice the problem either, but then I visited an old bookmark to a bittorrent site that's now defunct and got rooted and I got myself an annoying piece of adware installed (ironically entitled "Windows XP Antivirus").
Versions of FF only a few weeks out of date are now being actively exploited by the bad guys. Keep up-to-date.
like an operating system that keeps ALL settings, from kernel level security stuff to the users font setting in a game program in the SAME FILE
Err... kernel level security stuff is generally in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which is stored in %windir%\system.dat. User fonts settings in a game should be in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, which is stored in %userprofiledir%\ntuser.dat. Totally different files.
That's extrapolating a bit much, isn't it? And scanning through the article, they don't even name the sample size, just percentages.
I was wondering about selection bias, and, yes, investigating the company that did the research they appear to specialise in analysing native code (e.g. C or C++ applications) running under Windows. My guess is that a lot of the more security-conscious developers have moved to other environments (interpreted or JIT-compiled code and/or Linux), so they're left analysing the dregs...
Section 64 PACE 1984.
Note particularly paras 3, 3AA and 3AB. The net effect is that they can retain the DNA, but can't use it in any new investigations.
Despite this, the UK takes a line that typically follows the US one. Our govt sees no problem in disconnecting users without anything like a 'trial'.
Another point where Europe might just help -- it's worth remembering that the French courts struck down a "three strikes" provision recently as unconstitional, and that the language in their constitution it violated is *very* similar to language that's in the European Convention on Human Rights.
So when the summary says "'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries" it might just be wrong... we have the following right:
The right to an internet connection is a civil right, so we're entitled to a fair and public independent and impartial hearing before the law can require disconnection.
I wrote:
The missing text between these lines is "(1) A person is guilty of an offence if---"
If you remove 'p2p' from this, it almost makes sense. Not allowing software to stealth-install or block uninstallation? Why isn't that already a law?
Here in the UK, it _almost_ is. The Computer Misuse Act 1990 states:
The only problem is the requirement that you have to know the modification is unauthorised before you can be prosecuted. In practice, this means that people who intentionally install malware on systems can be prosecuted, but malware authors generally can't (unless, of course, they're the same person).
Please show me a single port of console game to pc, which didn't show these problems.... in over 20 years i believe its less than half a dozen
Even quite successful series like gta suffer from these mistakes
I've played original GTA on PC (both DOS and Windows versions) quite extensively, and can't say I've seen such problems. Maybe the more recent titles in the series had them, but the original really didn't.
If you really want to see poor translations, see the free-to-play MMO "fiesta". The mission text and the monster names were translated independently, I think, with the results that in many cases they just don't tie up in the slightest...
"Xerox...asked the court to halt the companies from further using the technology." So they are asking the courts to have google shutdown the search engine, youtube and google maps until the verdict is in? Fat chance! Same with yahoo. There is no way youtube, google maps or Google search would get shutdown while this court case carries on. It could take months or even years to finish this case
A fairly obvious gambit --- they request an order that cannot be granted because it would be disastrous for the victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdefendants, so that if they win the case the court will look more favourably at them when it comes time to setting the award. Court thinks: "if we'd granted that injunction, they'd have lost less, so let's give them more".
let them be monitored by machines while you sit in your throne of an office eating donuts and browsing bmw.com
You really should have labelled that NSFW. That's like... middle-management porn. ;)
And just to swim in anecdotal waters, when I copied big piles of files to my GRiDPad 1910 via null modem cable using Microsoft's classic INTERLNK and INTERSVR for file sharing, SMARTDRV sped up the copy operations by about an order of magnitude. Life without disk caching isn't worth living.
A few years back, I had to install XP on a machine whose BIOS refused to boot from CD. The only route I could work with was install DOS, then run the XP setup program from DOS. But I forgot to install smartdrv; when I came back the next morning it was still in the initial "copying files to the hard disk" phase (i.e. before the first reboot). Stop it and install smartdrv, the process finished in less than a minute. Don't know why it was so slow, probably writing the files 1 byte at a time or something...