"A group of guys whose budgets revolve around coming up with new cybersecurity defenses testified today that they should be given a LOT more money to play with."
Meh...they want to pass a law like that in their own state, I say let them.
I mean, it's not like every state can have people that go off to college and become highly educated members of society. Someone has to build the cars, right?:)
Anyone who works from home. Do you really think that traveling between 1-10km to pick up a print job from a copy shop is anywhere near as efficient as just pressing a button and having it come out at your own desk? And in the US, there are not half a dozen copy-shops within 10km, trust me...and the cost per page is much higher. So owning the printer is cheaper AND more time efficient by far.
Anyone with a small business. See above.
Anyone whose children need to submit homework on paper. See above.
Anyone who finds it useful to print out things (like boarding passes, driving directions, movie tickets, etc.) in advance. Yes, it's a convenience factor. So is an iPad.
In my line of work, I never let my phone die on me suddenly. I've carried a smartphone for (does math...) about 8 years, I think? And I've never been caught like that with it suddenly dead with no hope of bringing it back up in the next 5 minutes. I think that's enough of a statistical model.
But assuming my phone is dead...what makes you think I won't carry just one card in my wallet, just in case?
You mean why don't I put my wallet in a front pocket? Because one, it's too thick, and two, my phone is in one front pocket, and my keys/penknife/2-factor auth token are in the other. No room.
My wallet has so many cards in it that it's thick. Add 1.5 mm up again and again, and it's not hard to get something with some thickness. Now, place that under only one side of your butt, and sit on it for a while. Also, I would add, be fit and have very little body fat for cushioning. In no time at all, you'll be uncomfortable.
I've cut back as much as I can, but I travel for business (so that's two cards), have a joint account for household expenses (one card) a credit card for personal use (another card) and a debit card which I use the most (another card). Other things, like a driver's license and health insurance cards...those need to stay. But how I have longed for a solution to move some of those cards out and have them in some other format, so that instead of these rectangles of plastic to represent what is essentially a very short piece of data, I could have it piggyback on a device I already own.
And that's an NFC-endabled smartphone. I get it. I want one.
No, I think he's onto something. The trick is that once you get partway there, you'll be dead from some random solar flare's radiation. So, you won't need NEARLY as many amenities...and since you'll miss your flight back, that saves costs too! I can see the marketing now...
"Our customers love Mars so much, not a single one has decided to come back!"
The current bestseller from Scholastic, The Hunger Games, is about an annual practice where 24 children between the ages of 12 and 18 are forced to fight to the death in publicly-televised hand-to-hand combat with weapons no more advanced than spears or bows and arrows, that is shown to the families and communities where these children come from. And this is fine, apparently. But reading Ender's Game where the worst hand-to-hand violence involves a broken nose, is unacceptable?
Was the teacher reading it to the students because it was above their reading level, or is it just above the reading level of the principal and superintendent?
I'm no fan of Fox News...in fact, I think that if Fox Sports covered sports the way Fox News covers politics, they'd have Michael Jordan winning the Stanley Cup in straight sets against Lindsay Lohan. But I frankly have no tolerance for any news organization that chases sensationalism without checking their facts, and it looks like that's exactly what "This American Life" has done here. There are tried and true ways to validate journalism by freelancers; this is not rocket science, nor is this a new problem. I hope Apple absolutely rapes them in court, because if you've noticed the protests today, Apple has been harmed by their carelessness.
"If you don't fall down, you're not really trying."
I once sat with a colleague who was dissing Apple because "Steve Jobs has made so many mistakes." He was partially right...Apple had tried lots of things that didn't quite work. But wow, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees...this was less than 6 months ago, and Apple computer is absolutely rocking. So what if they made mistakes? That's how they had successes as well. I would find it hard to imagine that nothing was learned from the Newton that didn't go into the iPhone and iPad...and nothing needs to be said about what incredible successes THOSE two devices are.
This sounds like the exact same thing. Google has been so successful that people are fearful of the privacy implications...and, right on cue, Google not only kicks off a benevolent, altruistic redesign of their privacy policy but does everything they can to get people to READ it for once. By doing that, they are working to shift the culture from a world where people expect privacy but do nothing to secure it for themselves to setting a standard for everyone else and trying to get people to start measuring others by it. It's a subtle but incredibly important thing to do for a company whose business model revolves around the collection, analsysis and presentation of information to and from others, and if they succeed it will have a major impact on competitors like Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft (yes, Microsoft, who are throwing money at Bing like the second coming was around the corner) and others, to Google's advantage.
And if the investors think for a second, they will realize that nearly all of Google's revenue now comes from things which could have failed, which were just ideas that an engineer came up with in their alloted 20% time for innovation.
Seems to me that I remember a slashdot article last week complaining about how Intuitive Surgical had patents on their DaVinci robots, and that said patents were a block to developing an open source competitor. That article didn't exactly get ignored, nor did people say "so what?"
Hey, all, I know that you'd love to see an open-source robotics device that's every bit as fantastic as the DaVinci, but let's have some perspective here. Intuitive Surgical is not a patent troll. They didn't patent "robots doing stuff in a hospital" or something just as insanely broad. They aren't a company that just sits there patenting things, and waiting for the right time to file lawsuits. They're a real company that genuinely innovated; the DaVinci has revolutionized many surgical procedures, and is unparalleled in the marketplace.
I mean, this is a robot that does joint replacement procedures better than any surgeon an average person is likely to ever have look at them, and in such a way that the recovery time is dramatically lessened as well. Think about that last part, too...in an environment where the debate on health care revolves around how expensive medical procedures are in the United States, here's a revolutionary system that dramatically lowers the cost of some very common and extremely expensive procedures while actually improving the level of health care the patient receives.
Intuitive Surgical is like the Apple Computer of surgical automation, and the DaVinci is the iPod/iTunes system. Other products had existed before, but none had taken the approach that the DaVinci did, and they have been rewarded for their innovation and success. This is exactly, EXACTLY what patents are supposed to do: allow a company that innovates to reap the economic rewards of that innovation for a time. The fact that a commercial company has patented something they invented is not inherently bad.
I have to say that I have my doubts about this description, especially the comparison to the commercially-available versions. The device that was found by one guy under his car...apparently, an earlier model with its own power source...bears no resemblance at all to what you or I could easily acquire without going to a defense contractor-like organization. So it tends to follow that any device that would improve upon that design would only divert further from what could be bought for a few hundred dollars at Amazon. (Hmmm...I wonder...does the FBI have a Prime account?) And I'm absolutely sure that they couldn't just get by on a tiny battery to work for years; the battery pack on the early model was ENORMOUS.
(Okay, I originally typed this in all caps...because it's funnier that way...but Slashdot's code doesn't permit it.)
I am the widow of A.Q. Khan from Pakistan. I am contacting you in good faith because I know you are a good person and will help me. I need your help in moving $6 trillion worth of plutonium out of the country. In exchange, you will receive a ten percent commission...
Actually, no. A lot of filings are, yes. But these kinds of filings are not public at all until later. The point is, to use a crude metaphor, like playing pool. In order to keep things above board, you have to call your shot before you make it. But on the flip side, calling your shot can also harm your business, because you also have the chance to back up and change your mind about when you make your shot and how (unlike pool). So the information is privileged...incredibly so...and as such, any disclsosure violates NDAs that are always in place. Furthermore, engaging in any trading based on such information (if it leaks or you have access to it) is considered insider trading and is illicit.
A team of four at $250/hr/consultant and you are burning $40,000/week just in consultant fees.
Actually, you came in way low on that. I've been one of those consultants, and you end up doing WAY more than a 40 hour week when cleaning up a major incident. The first engagement I did, we billed 100 hours each in the first 5 days, and indeed we were billed at $250/hr...for a grand total of an even $100,000 for just the first week. That was a decade ago; costs are higher now. This also didn't include travel or expenses, or any opportunity costs of delayed projects (there were many). We ended up having to go over the entire environment with a fine-toothed comb, discerning what may or may not have been owned. Anything in doubt got nuked and totally rebuilt (not recovered from backup) just like you said. Fortunately, they had good backups of their databases, so recovery of that data went just fine...but databases are the one thing that is least likely to be properly recovered from backup media, owing to the MUCH greater complexity of doing those backups right. I don't even know where to begin on determining the cost, if it turns out you lose a database instance as a result.
I'm a libertarian at heart but I just can't stand the Democrats anymore - especially the new bunch whose main objective is to restrict every right of everybody on this planet.
What do you mean 'anymore'? You make it sound like you used to love them. If you're a Libertarian who used to love "lunatic Democrats who are doing everything to restrict everybody's rights," you're doing it wrong:)
...is that the writer of the article doesn't have the slightest goddamned clue what he's talking about.
The attacks were serious because data stolen from Verisign's DNS could allow attackers to intercept unencrypted communications and redirect traffic to malicious web sites.
No, boy wonder. The DNS servers are not really the issue here. The issue is the PKI infrastructure which Verisign issues, and in particular the fact that Verisign is one of the few CAs that can issue Extended Verification (EV) certs. That a writer from a security-centric publication would not realize that Verisign is a major CA...or, in light of the events of the past 6 months what can happen when a CA gets hacked...is really fucking scary to me. He's supposed to be informing other people.
I don't think for a minute that using encryption and VPNs and the like are in any way indicative of terrorism. Banks, financial institutions, engineering firms, etc...they all use such things widely, and this is clear evidence that there's no clear link. But some methods are only worth the effort if you're dealing with a very different risk model than what normal people face. Do I care of my credit card gets compromised? Yeah. But not so much that I would use something like steganography. Nothing that I wish to keep private is THAT dangerous to me that I'm willing to go through all the trouble of something like StegFS, or of hiding the bits of data inside pictures or MP3s. And if I tried to use stego to communicate with others, they would think me crazy...because it's not worth it to them, either. So while this pamphlet that's going around is ridiculous for its scope and breadth of accusation, there is a nugget of truth to it.
Slashdot Mirror
"A group of guys whose budgets revolve around coming up with new cybersecurity defenses testified today that they should be given a LOT more money to play with."
Meh...they want to pass a law like that in their own state, I say let them.
I mean, it's not like every state can have people that go off to college and become highly educated members of society. Someone has to build the cars, right? :)
Read what I posted above; I explain the reasons for each card.
Anyone who works from home. Do you really think that traveling between 1-10km to pick up a print job from a copy shop is anywhere near as efficient as just pressing a button and having it come out at your own desk? And in the US, there are not half a dozen copy-shops within 10km, trust me...and the cost per page is much higher. So owning the printer is cheaper AND more time efficient by far.
Anyone with a small business. See above.
Anyone whose children need to submit homework on paper. See above.
Anyone who finds it useful to print out things (like boarding passes, driving directions, movie tickets, etc.) in advance. Yes, it's a convenience factor. So is an iPad.
In my line of work, I never let my phone die on me suddenly. I've carried a smartphone for (does math...) about 8 years, I think? And I've never been caught like that with it suddenly dead with no hope of bringing it back up in the next 5 minutes. I think that's enough of a statistical model.
But assuming my phone is dead...what makes you think I won't carry just one card in my wallet, just in case?
You mean why don't I put my wallet in a front pocket? Because one, it's too thick, and two, my phone is in one front pocket, and my keys/penknife/2-factor auth token are in the other. No room.
My wallet has so many cards in it that it's thick. Add 1.5 mm up again and again, and it's not hard to get something with some thickness. Now, place that under only one side of your butt, and sit on it for a while. Also, I would add, be fit and have very little body fat for cushioning. In no time at all, you'll be uncomfortable.
I've cut back as much as I can, but I travel for business (so that's two cards), have a joint account for household expenses (one card) a credit card for personal use (another card) and a debit card which I use the most (another card). Other things, like a driver's license and health insurance cards...those need to stay. But how I have longed for a solution to move some of those cards out and have them in some other format, so that instead of these rectangles of plastic to represent what is essentially a very short piece of data, I could have it piggyback on a device I already own.
And that's an NFC-endabled smartphone. I get it. I want one.
No, I think he's onto something. The trick is that once you get partway there, you'll be dead from some random solar flare's radiation. So, you won't need NEARLY as many amenities...and since you'll miss your flight back, that saves costs too! I can see the marketing now...
"Our customers love Mars so much, not a single one has decided to come back!"
So, let me see if I have this right...
The current bestseller from Scholastic, The Hunger Games, is about an annual practice where 24 children between the ages of 12 and 18 are forced to fight to the death in publicly-televised hand-to-hand combat with weapons no more advanced than spears or bows and arrows, that is shown to the families and communities where these children come from. And this is fine, apparently. But reading Ender's Game where the worst hand-to-hand violence involves a broken nose, is unacceptable?
Was the teacher reading it to the students because it was above their reading level, or is it just above the reading level of the principal and superintendent?
I'm no fan of Fox News...in fact, I think that if Fox Sports covered sports the way Fox News covers politics, they'd have Michael Jordan winning the Stanley Cup in straight sets against Lindsay Lohan. But I frankly have no tolerance for any news organization that chases sensationalism without checking their facts, and it looks like that's exactly what "This American Life" has done here. There are tried and true ways to validate journalism by freelancers; this is not rocket science, nor is this a new problem. I hope Apple absolutely rapes them in court, because if you've noticed the protests today, Apple has been harmed by their carelessness.
"If you don't fall down, you're not really trying."
I once sat with a colleague who was dissing Apple because "Steve Jobs has made so many mistakes." He was partially right...Apple had tried lots of things that didn't quite work. But wow, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees...this was less than 6 months ago, and Apple computer is absolutely rocking. So what if they made mistakes? That's how they had successes as well. I would find it hard to imagine that nothing was learned from the Newton that didn't go into the iPhone and iPad...and nothing needs to be said about what incredible successes THOSE two devices are.
This sounds like the exact same thing. Google has been so successful that people are fearful of the privacy implications...and, right on cue, Google not only kicks off a benevolent, altruistic redesign of their privacy policy but does everything they can to get people to READ it for once. By doing that, they are working to shift the culture from a world where people expect privacy but do nothing to secure it for themselves to setting a standard for everyone else and trying to get people to start measuring others by it. It's a subtle but incredibly important thing to do for a company whose business model revolves around the collection, analsysis and presentation of information to and from others, and if they succeed it will have a major impact on competitors like Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft (yes, Microsoft, who are throwing money at Bing like the second coming was around the corner) and others, to Google's advantage.
And if the investors think for a second, they will realize that nearly all of Google's revenue now comes from things which could have failed, which were just ideas that an engineer came up with in their alloted 20% time for innovation.
Seems to me that I remember a slashdot article last week complaining about how Intuitive Surgical had patents on their DaVinci robots, and that said patents were a block to developing an open source competitor. That article didn't exactly get ignored, nor did people say "so what?"
Hey, all, I know that you'd love to see an open-source robotics device that's every bit as fantastic as the DaVinci, but let's have some perspective here. Intuitive Surgical is not a patent troll. They didn't patent "robots doing stuff in a hospital" or something just as insanely broad. They aren't a company that just sits there patenting things, and waiting for the right time to file lawsuits. They're a real company that genuinely innovated; the DaVinci has revolutionized many surgical procedures, and is unparalleled in the marketplace.
I mean, this is a robot that does joint replacement procedures better than any surgeon an average person is likely to ever have look at them, and in such a way that the recovery time is dramatically lessened as well. Think about that last part, too...in an environment where the debate on health care revolves around how expensive medical procedures are in the United States, here's a revolutionary system that dramatically lowers the cost of some very common and extremely expensive procedures while actually improving the level of health care the patient receives.
Intuitive Surgical is like the Apple Computer of surgical automation, and the DaVinci is the iPod/iTunes system. Other products had existed before, but none had taken the approach that the DaVinci did, and they have been rewarded for their innovation and success. This is exactly, EXACTLY what patents are supposed to do: allow a company that innovates to reap the economic rewards of that innovation for a time. The fact that a commercial company has patented something they invented is not inherently bad.
1, read their acceptable use policy.
2, follow it.
Facebook profiles contain as many lies as matchmaking website profiles.
Damn, somehow my ex-wife has become a Japanese researcher?
I have to say that I have my doubts about this description, especially the comparison to the commercially-available versions. The device that was found by one guy under his car...apparently, an earlier model with its own power source...bears no resemblance at all to what you or I could easily acquire without going to a defense contractor-like organization. So it tends to follow that any device that would improve upon that design would only divert further from what could be bought for a few hundred dollars at Amazon. (Hmmm...I wonder...does the FBI have a Prime account?) And I'm absolutely sure that they couldn't just get by on a tiny battery to work for years; the battery pack on the early model was ENORMOUS.
(Okay, I originally typed this in all caps...because it's funnier that way...but Slashdot's code doesn't permit it.)
I am the widow of A.Q. Khan from Pakistan. I am contacting you in good faith because I know you are a good person and will help me. I need your help in moving $6 trillion worth of plutonium out of the country. In exchange, you will receive a ten percent commission...
Actually, no. A lot of filings are, yes. But these kinds of filings are not public at all until later. The point is, to use a crude metaphor, like playing pool. In order to keep things above board, you have to call your shot before you make it. But on the flip side, calling your shot can also harm your business, because you also have the chance to back up and change your mind about when you make your shot and how (unlike pool). So the information is privileged...incredibly so...and as such, any disclsosure violates NDAs that are always in place. Furthermore, engaging in any trading based on such information (if it leaks or you have access to it) is considered insider trading and is illicit.
They won't be that courteous. Instead, they'll do it more like Zuckerberg would.
"Privacy is dead...bitch."
A team of four at $250/hr/consultant and you are burning $40,000/week just in consultant fees.
Actually, you came in way low on that. I've been one of those consultants, and you end up doing WAY more than a 40 hour week when cleaning up a major incident. The first engagement I did, we billed 100 hours each in the first 5 days, and indeed we were billed at $250/hr...for a grand total of an even $100,000 for just the first week. That was a decade ago; costs are higher now. This also didn't include travel or expenses, or any opportunity costs of delayed projects (there were many). We ended up having to go over the entire environment with a fine-toothed comb, discerning what may or may not have been owned. Anything in doubt got nuked and totally rebuilt (not recovered from backup) just like you said. Fortunately, they had good backups of their databases, so recovery of that data went just fine...but databases are the one thing that is least likely to be properly recovered from backup media, owing to the MUCH greater complexity of doing those backups right. I don't even know where to begin on determining the cost, if it turns out you lose a database instance as a result.
I'm a libertarian at heart but I just can't stand the Democrats anymore - especially the new bunch whose main objective is to restrict every right of everybody on this planet.
What do you mean 'anymore'? You make it sound like you used to love them. If you're a Libertarian who used to love "lunatic Democrats who are doing everything to restrict everybody's rights," you're doing it wrong :)
...but I think an old landlord of mine managed to do this, many years ago.
...is that the writer of the article doesn't have the slightest goddamned clue what he's talking about.
No, boy wonder. The DNS servers are not really the issue here. The issue is the PKI infrastructure which Verisign issues, and in particular the fact that Verisign is one of the few CAs that can issue Extended Verification (EV) certs. That a writer from a security-centric publication would not realize that Verisign is a major CA...or, in light of the events of the past 6 months what can happen when a CA gets hacked...is really fucking scary to me. He's supposed to be informing other people.
I don't think for a minute that using encryption and VPNs and the like are in any way indicative of terrorism. Banks, financial institutions, engineering firms, etc...they all use such things widely, and this is clear evidence that there's no clear link. But some methods are only worth the effort if you're dealing with a very different risk model than what normal people face. Do I care of my credit card gets compromised? Yeah. But not so much that I would use something like steganography. Nothing that I wish to keep private is THAT dangerous to me that I'm willing to go through all the trouble of something like StegFS, or of hiding the bits of data inside pictures or MP3s. And if I tried to use stego to communicate with others, they would think me crazy...because it's not worth it to them, either. So while this pamphlet that's going around is ridiculous for its scope and breadth of accusation, there is a nugget of truth to it.