Most amusing to me was that the early versions had the chip serial numbers on the area covered with the heatsink. Removing the heatsink voided your warranty. You needed that serial number to get warranty work done on the processor.
Sheesh, all that's missing a sticker saying "Beware of the Leopard"
When you're right for pretty much an entire 25 years, its easy to get smug.
Yeah, but in a political comic that's a failing more than anything else. Smag ain't entertaining. I can get all the smug urban liberalism I want from everywhere else. Self-satisfied in-jokes make for poor entertainment.
Nah, we also used to have that godawfulpiece of tripe "Doonesbury", though. At least Dilbert is funny. Trudeau descended into inanity after he used up his couple years worth of originality, then we had to put up with 25 years of trite, sumg liberalism. When I was a child I thought I just didn't get the jokes. Later I found out that it just wasn't funny. HAHAHA! THE PRESIDENT IS A FEATHER! LOL! Gimme a break....
Flamebait? Maybe, but it's true. Look, I'm not some Republican drone drubbing Doonesbury because I'm some "god fearin', commie fightin' 'merkin". I'm married to a union organizer and former communist, fer cripes sake! My critique of Doonesbury is based on having read the early stuff. Go back and actually read his truly funny stuff from the Nixon era, the really sharp stuff that won him a pulitzer in '75. Up until the 1980 election he was still pretty incisive. It looks like the election of Reagan really soured him, though. After that he turned into just another venue for tiresome liberal tub-thumping-- a sort of Garfield-meets-the-DNC hybrid. I realize some people have special place in their heart for the strip, but the last 20 years of it were really a shadow of its former glory.
My sunday newspaper has Dilbert in the frontpage. I remember the days when a kid could wake up sunday morning and have only Garfield and other innocent comics.
Nah, we also used to have that godawfulpiece of tripe "Doonesbury", though. At least Dilbert is funny. Trudeau descended into inanity after he used up his couple years worth of originality, then we had to put up with 25 years of trite, sumg liberalism. When I was a child I thought I just didn't get the jokes. Later I found out that it just wasn't funny. HAHAHA! THE PRESIDENT IS A FEATHER! LOL! Gimme a break....
This is of course why the folks at Boeing are using Java as the "pilot" on the next generation of autonomous Real Time spyplanes.
Maybe in fact Java isn't actually that slow?
One could write a pilot AI in interpretted basic that would still be faster than a human. We allow humans to fly planes. Therefore solving the problem does not require high execution speed. Java may, in fact, be as fast as you say, but your example is proof of nothing.
Of course, the fact that djb writes secure software using exactly that technique means *you* probably need to rethink your assumptions.
Get a clue, you anonymous turd. DJ Bernstein isn't working under the whip of a corporate master demanding working apps in murderous short timeframes. Furthermore, the existence of one brilliant man who can manage to keep enormous amounts of state in his head and turn out perfect code is not prima facie evidence that all who cannot are somehow lacking.
Personally, my goal is always perfection. I know it's difficult and I don't always achieve it, but I gotta wonder about people like you who "aim low".
Who the fuck said anything about "aiming low"? My point is that errors happen and that you can't just browbeat people into not making mistakes. You say it yourself: "I don't always achieve [perfection]".
Unfortunately, giving people lectures doesn't teach them how to do this.
THAT WAS EXACTLY MY POINT, JACKASS!
In an industry with about zero barrier to entry, most software is going to be crap. Most programmers simply don't know what they are doing. But don't let that cloud your thinking. It *is* possible to write secure software exactly like you describe.
It is possible, but the chaotic way most programming shops are run make it highly unlikely. Overwork, lack of sleep, poor communication, and shifting goals make errors inevitable. One brilliant man sitting down and writing qmail on his own time and at his own pace does not scale to ten overworked regular code grinders trying to crank out two months work in two weeks.
If you think "writing secure software is impossible", you've already lost
If you think that's what I said, go back and read it the fuck again. Your reading comprehension is as bad as your superiority complex.
please get out of the industry, or at least don't write software that deals with network data.
Oh please. When are we going to get past, "I know! Let's just write perfect software all the time!"
There will always be some subset of people who refuse to accept the impossibility of absolute perfection. I believe their thinking goes like this:
"Anyone can easily write a single line of bug-free code. If you can write twenty of those lines, you can write a bug free function. Write a dozen such bug-free functions and you've got a bug-free class. Write a half dozen or so bug-free classes and you have a bug free library. Using a collection of such bug free libraries you can write a few more bug-free classes held together by some bug-free lines of code and you've got a bug-free application. You're not so stupid that you can't write a single line of bug-free code, are you? There's no excuse for bugs. Just don't make mistakes. It's a choice, really."
(I never had to work for anyone who said the above, but my brother in law, a coder for a large trucking company, had to put up with a "quality consultant" whose entire theory was essentially the above, punctuated with shouts of "attention to detail, people!" in between such lectures. A similar consultant is documented in an email in "The Dilbert Principle". Sadly, it's probably not the same guy.)
"Why can't they hire competent computer staff that keep the computers secure?"
To quote the director of the department where my girlfriend works, when notified that their competent and intelligent, one-and-only IT guy was leaving:
"Why do we even need to hire another IT guy? We don't have any computer problems."
Really good IT staff look like a bunch of slackers to middle management boneheads.
Ever hear of professional negligence? I'm an engineer; we have a professional standard for competance, something which I would have hoped would be understood by the IEEE of all people. If I give bad advice to a client, I'm liable for that advice!
Random readers of articles are not clients. Professional negligence doesn't apply unless you are being in specifically engaged in the capacity of an engineer. The article's presence in the IEEE mag is irrelevant. Just like a doctor recommending arsenic as a treatment for liver disease in the JAMA isn't guilty of malpractice. Do you really not understand how all this works?
The "if you don't own it, you shouldn't use it without permission" idea was what I had in mind.
Ever walk in a supermarket with an automatic door? Get on an elevator? Watch a movie being played as a demo on the big screen TVs at Best Buy? There are all sorts of accepted variations of "permission". There are even businesses and private individuals who set up open WAPs for people to use. You cannot make a hard-and-fast rule beyond the lowest common denominator regarding what constitutes "permission". NutCase whacking off in his car to porn leeched over an unsecured WAP is one extreme. Joe Schmoe sitting down in Starbucks and his laptop connecting to an unsecure network in the apartment above instead of the Starbucks WAP is the other. Making Joe a criminal just to have something to nail NutCase with is a bad solution.
Like I said earlier, 802.11 really needs something so that people can explicitly, unambigiously, mark their networks as public or private.
You mean in addition to SSID broadcasting and WEP encryption? What good is a public/private flag when the same dopes will ignore that the same way they ignore SSID and WEP now? Seems to me all it would do is add a level of confusion, where those plebes will check the "private" box thinking it will secure their network. Really, this isn't a technological problem, it's a people problem.
The fact is, people are ticketed for loitering outside the drive-in. This guy was loitering outside someone's house. Getting free wifi has nothing to do with the legality of camping in your car in front of a strangers house. It is illegal. You will get ticketed. You will be asked to move. You have no business there.
The problem is that laws against "loitering", "mopery*", and "having no means of support" (i.e. you're a bum) all exist on very shaky constitutional ground. The punishments for these infractions are either so low, and/or the targets of them are so unpopular, that the fact that they violate the basic right of peaceable assembly is generally overlooked. Whacking off to porn downloaded over a mooched connection in your car outside someone's house indeed ought to be illegal, but it's hard to say on what grounds, exactly. The combination of all the other minor, excusable offenses adds up into something a bit more serious. Sort of like how a ski mask, black sweatshirt, crowbar, and big screwdriver are all perfectly legal things, but get caught skulking around at night with those things in a gym bag, and you'll be nailed for posession of burglary tools.
* mopery: wandering around with no particular destination
The reason to hack is to hack. For crying out loud, What Kind of Man Reads Slashdot?
The reason to hack is to achieve a goal. Two IDE controllers on one drive simultaneously is akin to trying to get water to come out of your electrical wiring. It can't be done without fundamentally altering some aspect of the original goal. The more general goal of accessing the contents of tivo-attached drive is certainly possible, but clearly suggests a different approach.
Yes, APs with identical SSIDs and security configurations look like the same AP.
This adds another dimension to the situation, and another analogy, imperfect as all in this discussion are:
Imagine someone coming upon a house that has the exact same design, coloration, address, and open door as that person's friend's house, one block over. Is it deliberate trespassing if they unknowingly enter the identical-looking house when they had explicitly been granted access to their friends house?
These house analogies don't work. Entry to a house is not automated. Also, I cannot enter a strangers house while sitting on my friend's couch. If I was in the wrong house, the absebce of my friend or the presence of the stranger would clue me in that I was in the wrong place. I frequently ran into this problem at Friend A's house. A has a Linksys, SSID "linksys". Friend B has a Netgear, SSID "netgear". Both were open, default config'd. Unfortunately, A's neighbor has a Netgear, SSID "netgear". Open laptop upon arriving at A from B, computer thinks I'm still at B's house and connects to A's neighbor's WAP. Didn't notice until I went to print something and found I was on network "MSHOME". Fixed problem by changing the SSID's for my friends, but if I hadn't tried to print, I would never have even noticed.
I do not consider the automated actions of hardware to constitute a grant of permission.
Hogwash. That's a patently false statement to bolster a specious argument. You do it every time an automated door at the drug store or supermarket opens to let you in. You do it every time you pull up to a gate with a green light at a toll booth. You do it every time you enter an elevator that has lit up a light, dinged a bell, and opened its door for you. There's no reason this specific instance of automated authorization should be treated any different than the others.
Comparing an unsecured AP to an unlocked door is not a good analogy; rather, it's more like a locked door that you knock on, the owner answers, and lets you into the house.
Or better yet, like a robot that answers the door when you knock and says "come on in; tv and sofa are over there". The owner may have bought the robot to do this for him only, but whose fault is it if he doesn't set the robot to ask for a password?
If a satellite company beams an unencrypted signal onto my property, I believe that I'm within my rights to watch it. If they encrypt said signal, on the other hand, I do not believe that I have the right to break it.
That's not the same thing. The satellit company is essentially (for analogy) throwing an encrypted copy of a book into everyone's yard, and then offering to sell the decryption key. Is it really immoral if you figure out it's (say) only reverse printed and read the book in a mirror for free? How hard does it have to be to decrypt before it magically transforms from "bad business model" to some sort of property right? The law is already very clear on the right to passively receive RF radiation on your own property (though it arbitrarily* disallows decryption of satellite TV). This doesn't really belong in a discussion about a two-way communication system.
* arbitrary only in the sense that the satellite industry lobbied to have it prohibited
What a charmer you are. I'm sure your online buddies just admire the heck out of you. It's always fun responding to a humorous response with a snarly "Fuck off" statement of your own. It was all in fun. So glad you understood that and responded in kind.
I think perhaps the problem was that the joke was not particularly humorous. Subtle absurdity is vary difficult to pull off.
Windows XP will detect the networks automatically, but it won't connect without an action by the user. Granted, once you've connected to a particular AP the first time, it assumes you want to connect to it later on.
You only need to connect to SSID "Netgear" the first time at your n00b friend's house. After that, your laptop will automatically connect to every other n00b's default configured WAP. Most people who don't turn on encryption also don't know how to change their SSID.
Now, if you had some authority in IDE, you might be persuasive in claiming "it can't be done", especially if you could back that up with examples of experts who have failed.
Experts only haven't failed because they have no rational reason to even try. Certainly one could create a 40-pole, double-throw switch to do it, but that's obvious. You cannot, however, run three bi-directional TTL systems on the same bus, as any high bit would be monkey wrenched by the inactive controller resting at ground pulling it low. You'd need a way to synchronize the two controllers, and at that point you no longer have two controllers, you have one. Doubtless it could be done with a dedicated piece of IDE emulation hardware, but that's hardly a "hack"...
I don't understand this. You thought you had a possibly compromised system, and then you used that system to install and run a scanner -- and you expected any result other than negative?
Get real. I scanned it it from a bootable CD first. With more than one scanner. It's clean.
You're an irresponsible prat, and you're on an ISP that blocks the RPC ports and TCP 445. (Some do this now to protect their network from people like you)
For christs sake at least install zonealarm so you can find out whats on your PC and talking to the outside world
Relax, jackass. I don't need ZoneAlarm. My ISP blocks nothing but port 25 by default. Only incoming traffic has free and unfettered access. All outgoing traffic is through a tightly controlled proxy. All standard ports are remapped to random alternates. There ain't shit talking to the outside world other than what I specifically allow, when I allow it. Incoming traffic is also monitored and logged. It's unsecured, but closely watched. It's intentionally exposed, for the very purpose of testing this vulnerability. It started as a lark, and has developed into an amusing long-term experiment. So don't worry your empty little head, and save your sanctimonious lectures for the brats using daddy's AOL. I'm not the zombie you're looking for.
I don't think that vandalizing someone else's property is generally considered to be a Constitutionally (or morally) defended form of expression.
True, but it's generally considered rude to mock other people's religions. While not a justification for vandalism, the mockery is only slightly less rude than the vandalism, so it's pretty much a wash. I've nothing against mocking "fish-tians", but I think it'd be absurd to get indignant about "rights" in this case. It's just like rights with police: you have the right to walk up to a cop, grab your crotch and say "up yours, you faggot pig", but you shouldn't be surprised when you end up in the back of a squad car holding your teeth in your hat. Rights do protect unwise behavior, but generally only after the fact...
It's only one of your examples, but I'm sure if you looked into it further, the McDonald's coffee lawsuit got appealed. The fact that the person was awarded money at a lower court was highly publicized, while the appeal was not.
The appeal only resulted in the award being lowered to $480K. McDonalds was not absolved of responsibility on appeal, they just had the award reduced.
I'm going to assume you're from the US,... because your attention was captured for only a split second by the media coverage of how hot coffee can be
Could not the same be said about you? Or was your vague comment about the existence of an "appeal" an attempt to intentionally lead readers to believe the case was later thrown out?
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh, all that's missing a sticker saying "Beware of the Leopard"
Yeah, but in a political comic that's a failing more than anything else. Smag ain't entertaining. I can get all the smug urban liberalism I want from everywhere else. Self-satisfied in-jokes make for poor entertainment.
Flamebait? Maybe, but it's true. Look, I'm not some Republican drone drubbing Doonesbury because I'm some "god fearin', commie fightin' 'merkin". I'm married to a union organizer and former communist, fer cripes sake! My critique of Doonesbury is based on having read the early stuff. Go back and actually read his truly funny stuff from the Nixon era, the really sharp stuff that won him a pulitzer in '75. Up until the 1980 election he was still pretty incisive. It looks like the election of Reagan really soured him, though. After that he turned into just another venue for tiresome liberal tub-thumping-- a sort of Garfield-meets-the-DNC hybrid. I realize some people have special place in their heart for the strip, but the last 20 years of it were really a shadow of its former glory.
Hey dumbass, 1999 called and it wants its joke back. You do realize that Intel processors run hotter than AMD now, right?
Nah, we also used to have that godawfulpiece of tripe "Doonesbury", though. At least Dilbert is funny. Trudeau descended into inanity after he used up his couple years worth of originality, then we had to put up with 25 years of trite, sumg liberalism. When I was a child I thought I just didn't get the jokes. Later I found out that it just wasn't funny. HAHAHA! THE PRESIDENT IS A FEATHER! LOL! Gimme a break....
One could write a pilot AI in interpretted basic that would still be faster than a human. We allow humans to fly planes. Therefore solving the problem does not require high execution speed. Java may, in fact, be as fast as you say, but your example is proof of nothing.
Get a clue, you anonymous turd. DJ Bernstein isn't working under the whip of a corporate master demanding working apps in murderous short timeframes. Furthermore, the existence of one brilliant man who can manage to keep enormous amounts of state in his head and turn out perfect code is not prima facie evidence that all who cannot are somehow lacking.
Personally, my goal is always perfection. I know it's difficult and I don't always achieve it, but I gotta wonder about people like you who "aim low".
Who the fuck said anything about "aiming low"? My point is that errors happen and that you can't just browbeat people into not making mistakes. You say it yourself: "I don't always achieve [perfection]".
Unfortunately, giving people lectures doesn't teach them how to do this.
THAT WAS EXACTLY MY POINT, JACKASS!
In an industry with about zero barrier to entry, most software is going to be crap. Most programmers simply don't know what they are doing. But don't let that cloud your thinking. It *is* possible to write secure software exactly like you describe.
It is possible, but the chaotic way most programming shops are run make it highly unlikely. Overwork, lack of sleep, poor communication, and shifting goals make errors inevitable. One brilliant man sitting down and writing qmail on his own time and at his own pace does not scale to ten overworked regular code grinders trying to crank out two months work in two weeks.
If you think "writing secure software is impossible", you've already lost
If you think that's what I said, go back and read it the fuck again. Your reading comprehension is as bad as your superiority complex.
please get out of the industry, or at least don't write software that deals with network data.
After you, you arrogant prick.
Oh please. When are we going to get past, "I know! Let's just write perfect software all the time!"
There will always be some subset of people who refuse to accept the impossibility of absolute perfection. I believe their thinking goes like this:
(I never had to work for anyone who said the above, but my brother in law, a coder for a large trucking company, had to put up with a "quality consultant" whose entire theory was essentially the above, punctuated with shouts of "attention to detail, people!" in between such lectures. A similar consultant is documented in an email in "The Dilbert Principle". Sadly, it's probably not the same guy.)
To quote the director of the department where my girlfriend works, when notified that their competent and intelligent, one-and-only IT guy was leaving:
Really good IT staff look like a bunch of slackers to middle management boneheads.
Random readers of articles are not clients. Professional negligence doesn't apply unless you are being in specifically engaged in the capacity of an engineer. The article's presence in the IEEE mag is irrelevant. Just like a doctor recommending arsenic as a treatment for liver disease in the JAMA isn't guilty of malpractice. Do you really not understand how all this works?
Ever walk in a supermarket with an automatic door? Get on an elevator? Watch a movie being played as a demo on the big screen TVs at Best Buy? There are all sorts of accepted variations of "permission". There are even businesses and private individuals who set up open WAPs for people to use. You cannot make a hard-and-fast rule beyond the lowest common denominator regarding what constitutes "permission". NutCase whacking off in his car to porn leeched over an unsecured WAP is one extreme. Joe Schmoe sitting down in Starbucks and his laptop connecting to an unsecure network in the apartment above instead of the Starbucks WAP is the other. Making Joe a criminal just to have something to nail NutCase with is a bad solution.
You mean in addition to SSID broadcasting and WEP encryption? What good is a public/private flag when the same dopes will ignore that the same way they ignore SSID and WEP now? Seems to me all it would do is add a level of confusion, where those plebes will check the "private" box thinking it will secure their network. Really, this isn't a technological problem, it's a people problem.
The problem is that laws against "loitering", "mopery*", and "having no means of support" (i.e. you're a bum) all exist on very shaky constitutional ground. The punishments for these infractions are either so low, and/or the targets of them are so unpopular, that the fact that they violate the basic right of peaceable assembly is generally overlooked. Whacking off to porn downloaded over a mooched connection in your car outside someone's house indeed ought to be illegal, but it's hard to say on what grounds, exactly. The combination of all the other minor, excusable offenses adds up into something a bit more serious. Sort of like how a ski mask, black sweatshirt, crowbar, and big screwdriver are all perfectly legal things, but get caught skulking around at night with those things in a gym bag, and you'll be nailed for posession of burglary tools.
* mopery: wandering around with no particular destination
The reason to hack is to achieve a goal. Two IDE controllers on one drive simultaneously is akin to trying to get water to come out of your electrical wiring. It can't be done without fundamentally altering some aspect of the original goal. The more general goal of accessing the contents of tivo-attached drive is certainly possible, but clearly suggests a different approach.
These house analogies don't work. Entry to a house is not automated. Also, I cannot enter a strangers house while sitting on my friend's couch. If I was in the wrong house, the absebce of my friend or the presence of the stranger would clue me in that I was in the wrong place. I frequently ran into this problem at Friend A's house. A has a Linksys, SSID "linksys". Friend B has a Netgear, SSID "netgear". Both were open, default config'd. Unfortunately, A's neighbor has a Netgear, SSID "netgear". Open laptop upon arriving at A from B, computer thinks I'm still at B's house and connects to A's neighbor's WAP. Didn't notice until I went to print something and found I was on network "MSHOME". Fixed problem by changing the SSID's for my friends, but if I hadn't tried to print, I would never have even noticed.
Hogwash. That's a patently false statement to bolster a specious argument. You do it every time an automated door at the drug store or supermarket opens to let you in. You do it every time you pull up to a gate with a green light at a toll booth. You do it every time you enter an elevator that has lit up a light, dinged a bell, and opened its door for you. There's no reason this specific instance of automated authorization should be treated any different than the others.
Or better yet, like a robot that answers the door when you knock and says "come on in; tv and sofa are over there". The owner may have bought the robot to do this for him only, but whose fault is it if he doesn't set the robot to ask for a password?
That's not the same thing. The satellit company is essentially (for analogy) throwing an encrypted copy of a book into everyone's yard, and then offering to sell the decryption key. Is it really immoral if you figure out it's (say) only reverse printed and read the book in a mirror for free? How hard does it have to be to decrypt before it magically transforms from "bad business model" to some sort of property right? The law is already very clear on the right to passively receive RF radiation on your own property (though it arbitrarily* disallows decryption of satellite TV). This doesn't really belong in a discussion about a two-way communication system.
* arbitrary only in the sense that the satellite industry lobbied to have it prohibited
I think perhaps the problem was that the joke was not particularly humorous. Subtle absurdity is vary difficult to pull off.
You only need to connect to SSID "Netgear" the first time at your n00b friend's house. After that, your laptop will automatically connect to every other n00b's default configured WAP. Most people who don't turn on encryption also don't know how to change their SSID.
Experts only haven't failed because they have no rational reason to even try. Certainly one could create a 40-pole, double-throw switch to do it, but that's obvious. You cannot, however, run three bi-directional TTL systems on the same bus, as any high bit would be monkey wrenched by the inactive controller resting at ground pulling it low. You'd need a way to synchronize the two controllers, and at that point you no longer have two controllers, you have one. Doubtless it could be done with a dedicated piece of IDE emulation hardware, but that's hardly a "hack"...
Get real. I scanned it it from a bootable CD first. With more than one scanner. It's clean.
Relax, jackass. I don't need ZoneAlarm. My ISP blocks nothing but port 25 by default. Only incoming traffic has free and unfettered access. All outgoing traffic is through a tightly controlled proxy. All standard ports are remapped to random alternates. There ain't shit talking to the outside world other than what I specifically allow, when I allow it. Incoming traffic is also monitored and logged. It's unsecured, but closely watched. It's intentionally exposed, for the very purpose of testing this vulnerability. It started as a lark, and has developed into an amusing long-term experiment. So don't worry your empty little head, and save your sanctimonious lectures for the brats using daddy's AOL. I'm not the zombie you're looking for.
True, but it's generally considered rude to mock other people's religions. While not a justification for vandalism, the mockery is only slightly less rude than the vandalism, so it's pretty much a wash. I've nothing against mocking "fish-tians", but I think it'd be absurd to get indignant about "rights" in this case. It's just like rights with police: you have the right to walk up to a cop, grab your crotch and say "up yours, you faggot pig", but you shouldn't be surprised when you end up in the back of a squad car holding your teeth in your hat. Rights do protect unwise behavior, but generally only after the fact...
The appeal only resulted in the award being lowered to $480K. McDonalds was not absolved of responsibility on appeal, they just had the award reduced.
I'm going to assume you're from the US, ... because your attention was captured for only a split second by the media coverage of how hot coffee can be
Could not the same be said about you? Or was your vague comment about the existence of an "appeal" an attempt to intentionally lead readers to believe the case was later thrown out?