The estimates range from 13 million to 113 million people downloading music. Some portion of those people must like listening to music on their computers.
If they make self-destructing DVDs, then I will be *certain* to rip it first thing. I listen to my music almost exclusively on my computer. I've got any number of CDs that I've never "played", I just ran it through CDex, and listen to the mp3s. I will consider any attempts to make "rip-proof" formats as special challenge.
I suspect that anyone who lacks the skills to do the above themselves would then be that much more likely to download a copy that someone else ripped.
I believe your analysis of BitTorrent is incorrect, in the sections with the timesteps.
You have:
timestep alice bob 1 downloads chunk 1 from server waits 2 downloads chunk 2 from server downloads chunk 1 from alice 3 downloads chunk 3 from server downloads chunk 2 from alice 4 (kindly) waits online downloads chunk 3 from alice 5 disconnects disconnects
It's more like:
timestep: alice: bob: 1 dls chunk 1 from server dls chunk 3 from server 2 dls chunk 2 from server dls chunk 1 from server/alice 3 dls chunk 3 from server/bob dls chunk 2 from server/alice
And they can wait or not. Hopefully they wait, because yes BitTorrent needs the seeds to hang around. The above model also discounts the usual parallel downloads of multiple chunks simultaneously.
Naturally in my chart, each timestep takes roughly twice as long (or more, depending on who has the upload bandwidth) but it's not the growth tree that you show.
(Sorry for the bad spacing.... lameness filter won't allow otherwise. That's.... lame.)
You're misunderstanding the definition of "swarm", as he's using it. Swarming is peers downloading pieces of the file from other peers who have not yet completeled the download. This means that yes, you can lose one server, as long as there are other with complete copies of the file. Works like Kazaa for that one, particular aspect. BitTorrent does the swarming used here; If I have piece A, and you have piece B, we can get them from each-other, even though neither of us has piece C yet.
Heh, it could have been even closer... the original working title was "Steal This Network". Publisher says that "Steal This..." isn't trademarked. I guess Abbey Hoffman wasn't big on that?:)
Re:Looks like Mr. Russell has been hacked himself
on
Stealing the Network
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· Score: 1
Yes, in fact, it does. This is something that has obviously eluded you. You claim to be a security "expert", but you can't even keep hackers out of your own box. Very simple, you claim to be something that you are not.
AFAIK, there have never been hackers in my own boxes, just those belonging to other people, like the hosting box in question. There is a reason that nothing important was on that box when it was compromised. Frankly, I expected it to be compromised long before. It wasn't even defaced, I was disappointed.
Not that it would have any bearing on what I do or don't know if I box I administer gets compromised. It will happen one of these days. If having a box compromised means that person isn't an expert, then there are no experts. Heck, the guys who broke into the hosting site have been compromised a whole lot more than I have.
And, gee, don't you send all your emails from @thievco.com? Isn't your own email worth protecting? Hardly some "crap" stored on some canadian ISP. Wouldn't mr. security expert take care to secure his own private emails?
No, I send them through my ISP's SMTP relay, as you're probably well aware. The incoming mail comes through a mail server at the colo. As you're also likely aware, I use GPG for most of the important stuff.
Also, why do you write this book?
Because I enjoy writing. Read the rest of the article posts. Good troll, tho.
All it does is create more FUD about hacking and hackers in general. You didn't even use real stories, likely because any real hacker would not be associated with an imposter such as you.
By your definition, no the "real hackers" (the guys currently illegally breaking into stuff) wouldn't want to be associated with me. Which I'm thankful for.
BlueBoar Fan Club
I was beginning to worry that you guys forgot about me.
Re:Looks like Mr. Russell has been hacked himself
on
Stealing the Network
·
· Score: 1
Hmm... phrack.ru has been down for some time, but you've got the link to my home dir contents handy. Who might Mr. AC be?
Yep, the company that hosts the website that hasn't been updated in 3 years for $20/month was compromised. Is that supposed to reflect on me in some way?
I saw him speak at the Computer History museum. He did seem a bit out there... but I can't recall any destruction of property. Maybe he only does that if he's the closer?:)
Re:I read the first chapter at Barnes & Noble.
on
Stealing the Network
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· Score: 1
He didn't say where he ordered it. He might have ordered it from the same bookstore's website.
I asked a B&N employee about in-store vs. on-line pricing once. They're fully aware that the on-line pricing is cheaper (often much less if the book falls into the "text book" category), and they don't seem to have a problem with you browsing in the store and then ordering on-line.
Or maybe that was just the employee's personal opinion, you know, less work for her.
Re:WTF? $50 for a paperback fiction?
on
Stealing the Network
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· Score: 2, Informative
A common (and probably fair) complaint. If you shop around a bit you may find it for slightly less.
Syngress books tend to be priced a bit higher than some of the competition. They seem to be happy doing a little less volume at a little more margin. They're also a small publisher, so they don't neccessarily have the same economics of scale or influence that a big publisher does.
The whole book industry is interesting, from what relatively little I know about it.
Clearly, from the amount of whoring I've already done in this thread which is only tangentially about me, I'd love to do an interview.
There are any number of details about how I perceive writing, what it's like to work with Syngress, etc... that I'd love to talk about.
I can see where writing procedures, where there is little or no opportunity to include any personality, would drive one insane. I have no formal training on writing, other than the classes they have you take in college. And I read a lot. I was a little concerned about that when writing fiction... but that's what editors are for (to tell you you suck.)
Syngress specifically wanted to try teaching through fiction. (If you haven't heard of them before, the vast majority of their books are intended to teach IT techniques.) I personally was just interested in trying to write some fiction. I've written parts of a number of other books for them, but those are all closer to textbooks.
The obvious setting for my first fiction attempt is the information security field that I'm involved in. Well, that and hacker stuff is probably one of the few things you could make stories out of in the IT field. I mean, I've got some good router stories too... they just don't appeal as broadly.
So, we both got what we wanted, and I think it turned out pretty good.
It's hard to imagine taking myself so seriously that I'd be afraid to have fun for fear that someone might think less of me.
Re:Are you taking this chance to whore your balls
on
Stealing the Network
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· Score: 2, Funny
Sort of. I have no need for any more karma (in fact, I'll probably lose a good chunk on this thread:) ) but I always figured if I was ever interviewed on Slashdot, or had a book review or something, that I'd answer as many questions as I could. That's the point of an interactiv website, yes?
They're similar, but with hax0ring, you yell "3y3 0wn j00!!!!11!!!1!" a lot, and the actual hacking part looks a lot like flying through a wireframe cityscape.
Seriously, yes my website is pathetic. At the time, I had planned to spend some free time doing some research, and post the results there. Instead, I started the vuln-dev mailing list, and my time went there. One of these days, I'll pull thievco.com onto my home network (it's on a $20/mo hosting service) and make a blog thing out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
The amount of consumers with the same attitude as you is statisticaly insignificant in the reality of the media world.
F -8&q=million+americans+download+music&btnG=Google+ Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UT
The estimates range from 13 million to 113 million people downloading music. Some portion of those people must like listening to music on their computers.
Why would they be cheap? Why would it protect the rights of the creator of art?
Adding (ultimately futile) attempts at copy protection ADDS to costs. Who pays for that? The consumers and artists.
If they make self-destructing DVDs, then I will be *certain* to rip it first thing. I listen to my music almost exclusively on my computer. I've got any number of CDs that I've never "played", I just ran it through CDex, and listen to the mp3s. I will consider any attempts to make "rip-proof" formats as special challenge.
I suspect that anyone who lacks the skills to do the above themselves would then be that much more likely to download a copy that someone else ripped.
Why not? Seems to me a blog would want multiple files...
I think it is, too. Here's a note I sent him:
I believe your analysis of BitTorrent is incorrect, in the sections with the timesteps.
You have:
timestep alice bob
1 downloads chunk 1 from server waits
2 downloads chunk 2 from server downloads chunk 1 from alice
3 downloads chunk 3 from server downloads chunk 2 from alice
4 (kindly) waits online downloads chunk 3 from alice
5 disconnects disconnects
It's more like:
timestep: alice: bob:
1 dls chunk 1 from server dls chunk 3 from server
2 dls chunk 2 from server dls chunk 1 from server/alice
3 dls chunk 3 from server/bob dls chunk 2 from server/alice
And they can wait or not. Hopefully they wait, because yes BitTorrent needs the seeds to hang around. The above model also discounts the usual parallel downloads of multiple chunks simultaneously.
Naturally in my chart, each timestep takes roughly twice as long (or more, depending on who has the upload bandwidth) but it's not the growth tree that you show.
(Sorry for the bad spacing.... lameness filter won't allow otherwise. That's.... lame.)
You're misunderstanding the definition of "swarm", as he's using it. Swarming is peers downloading pieces of the file from other peers who have not yet completeled the download. This means that yes, you can lose one server, as long as there are other with complete copies of the file. Works like Kazaa for that one, particular aspect. BitTorrent does the swarming used here; If I have piece A, and you have piece B, we can get them from each-other, even though neither of us has piece C yet.
You can have a .torrent file refer to a whole directory of files, if you like. It will download all of them.
Heh, it could have been even closer... the original working title was "Steal This Network". Publisher says that "Steal This..." isn't trademarked. I guess Abbey Hoffman wasn't big on that? :)
BTW, sample chapter if anyone wants to see.
Yes, in fact, it does. This is something that has obviously eluded you. You claim to be a security "expert", but you can't even keep hackers out of your own box. Very simple, you claim to be something that you are not.
AFAIK, there have never been hackers in my own boxes, just those belonging to other people, like the hosting box in question. There is a reason that nothing important was on that box when it was compromised. Frankly, I expected it to be compromised long before. It wasn't even defaced, I was disappointed.
Not that it would have any bearing on what I do or don't know if I box I administer gets compromised. It will happen one of these days. If having a box compromised means that person isn't an expert, then there are no experts. Heck, the guys who broke into the hosting site have been compromised a whole lot more than I have.
And, gee, don't you send all your emails from @thievco.com? Isn't your own email worth protecting? Hardly some "crap" stored on some canadian ISP. Wouldn't mr. security expert take care to secure his own private emails?
No, I send them through my ISP's SMTP relay, as you're probably well aware. The incoming mail comes through a mail server at the colo. As you're also likely aware, I use GPG for most of the important stuff.
Also, why do you write this book?
Because I enjoy writing. Read the rest of the article posts. Good troll, tho.
All it does is create more FUD about hacking and hackers in general. You didn't even use real stories, likely because any real hacker would not be associated with an imposter such as you.
By your definition, no the "real hackers" (the guys currently illegally breaking into stuff) wouldn't want to be associated with me. Which I'm thankful for.
BlueBoar Fan Club
I was beginning to worry that you guys forgot about me.
Hmm... phrack.ru has been down for some time, but you've got the link to my home dir contents handy. Who might Mr. AC be?
Yep, the company that hosts the website that hasn't been updated in 3 years for $20/month was compromised. Is that supposed to reflect on me in some way?
In a way, the attention is flattering.
I saw him speak at the Computer History museum. He did seem a bit out there... but I can't recall any destruction of property. Maybe he only does that if he's the closer? :)
He didn't say where he ordered it. He might have ordered it from the same bookstore's website.
I asked a B&N employee about in-store vs. on-line pricing once. They're fully aware that the on-line pricing is cheaper (often much less if the book falls into the "text book" category), and they don't seem to have a problem with you browsing in the store and then ordering on-line.
Or maybe that was just the employee's personal opinion, you know, less work for her.
A common (and probably fair) complaint. If you shop around a bit you may find it for slightly less.
Syngress books tend to be priced a bit higher than some of the competition. They seem to be happy doing a little less volume at a little more margin. They're also a small publisher, so they don't neccessarily have the same economics of scale or influence that a big publisher does.
The whole book industry is interesting, from what relatively little I know about it.
Clearly, from the amount of whoring I've already done in this thread which is only tangentially about me, I'd love to do an interview.
There are any number of details about how I perceive writing, what it's like to work with Syngress, etc... that I'd love to talk about.
I can see where writing procedures, where there is little or no opportunity to include any personality, would drive one insane. I have no formal training on writing, other than the classes they have you take in college. And I read a lot. I was a little concerned about that when writing fiction... but that's what editors are for (to tell you you suck.)
"15 minutes into the future" was taken.
Syngress specifically wanted to try teaching through fiction. (If you haven't heard of them before, the vast majority of their books are intended to teach IT techniques.) I personally was just interested in trying to write some fiction. I've written parts of a number of other books for them, but those are all closer to textbooks.
The obvious setting for my first fiction attempt is the information security field that I'm involved in. Well, that and hacker stuff is probably one of the few things you could make stories out of in the IT field. I mean, I've got some good router stories too... they just don't appeal as broadly.
So, we both got what we wanted, and I think it turned out pretty good.
Great book, one of my favorites. The difference is that his is a true story. Well, that and he's a much better writer than I am.
If this one does well, then it's pretty much guaranteed that Syngress will do a sequel.
It's hard to imagine taking myself so seriously that I'd be afraid to have fun for fear that someone might think less of me.
Sort of. I have no need for any more karma (in fact, I'll probably lose a good chunk on this thread :) ) but I always figured if I was ever interviewed on Slashdot, or had a book review or something, that I'd answer as many questions as I could. That's the point of an interactiv website, yes?
They're similar, but with hax0ring, you yell "3y3 0wn j00!!!!11!!!1!" a lot, and the actual hacking part looks a lot like flying through a wireframe cityscape.
If I couldn't have fun with the trolls, then Slashdot would be less enjoyable.
Yes, well.... Look over there! A shiny thing!
Seriously, yes my website is pathetic. At the time, I had planned to spend some free time doing some research, and post the results there. Instead, I started the vuln-dev mailing list, and my time went there. One of these days, I'll pull thievco.com onto my home network (it's on a $20/mo hosting service) and make a blog thing out of it.
I absolutely prefer it when she swallows. My wife isn't generally willing, but your mom...