Finally after reading through screen after screen of "give the kid the plane" someone concisely states the facts. Do we as American really wish to live in a society where the government makes it impossible for you to hurt yourself or be hurt by anybody? Sounds good on the outside, but the reality is it makes "1984" look like "Lord of the Flies"! Total protection is only possible under total tyranny. That doesn't even matter here, because it is obvious to any reasonable person that it was a joke, a humorous aside intended to provoke entertainment value. I guess they should have offered a Space Shuttle instead to ensure that the truly gullible among us didn't feel slighted.
The guy thought he saw a way to make a quick buck and now he's losing. He even admits, "it was too good to be true." Just somebody trying to beat the system.
By the way anyone who has been around high-performance, modern, military aircraft knows how ludicrous it is to even imagine owning such a plane. Especially one as complicated as a Harrier.
Active, maintained ground support equipment (GSE) to keep the sucker up and running; spare parts, fuel (JP-7?). All of these are items that would range from annoying (fuel) to nearly impossible (spares) to obtain. Hell, I'd like to see you come up with a complete set of Technical Orders (T.O.s) for this plane. When Thornton built his T-38 out of three scrap hulks it took him two years to get all the T.O.'s for it - and that's a common trainer!
Let's all admit together that it was a joke. False advertising? I seriously doubt it. What would a reasonable person think? Sure the guy wants to make his 3286% profit, who wouldn't? But it's not going to happen.
Not sure what the "hell no" applied to or I'd answer you!
You are the exception to the rule. I read the other day that they had already sold 100,000 Rio players.
Your arguments are 100% valid. The analogy would be cable descramblers and other broadcast theft devices and plans. Is it a huge problem? No! It is annoying to the manufactures and media distributors? Absolutly!
They haven't gone out of business yet. Sure they'd like to crush everyone, but there are acceptable losses. The same will happen with music.
Someone will alwasy exist who can "get" the goods for free. If they make it hard enough for Joe consumer to do it then they've won the $$$ war and that's all they care about.
Remeber that multiple formats for video and audio have been killed because anti-pirating devices couldn't or wouldn't be built in by the manufactures. This applies to the USA only, but you will never be able to market (above ground) a MP3 player that subverts the RIAA copy protection. It will not be a legal device to sell, just as selling cable descramblers is not legal (yeah, yeah, except for "test" purposes.)
I think you pretty much hit it on the head here. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but my take was this:
You will not be able to rip ANY song from a CD that is encoded with their special watermark and play it back on ANY MP3 player that includes the watermark detection stuff. They want you to buy a different copy for every use. Sort of the whole DIVX thing applied to music. Yuck.
You want a CD? You buy a CD. You want to music on your Rio? You buy their "special" MP3 or whatever.
Even if you could legally rip a song to MP3 format I don't think there is any law to actually force a music distributor to ALLOW you to do it. Even if it's legal they don't want you buying it once and using it at home, on your Rio, and in your car. If they can stop you, they will. It's just that they couldn't stop you before.
It's not just new audio formats you will not be able to play it will be any new music at all that is ripped using an encoder "enabled" with watermark detection. I don't see how they can stop you from using an old decoder other than through attrition.
I think that's the basis of them backing off a bit. In a few years the CD will be "dead" and the DVD will take over for music also. Once that happens and your computer is upgraded to a Sexium 2200 and your old software just wont run anymore they figure that there will be very few people out there keeping a legacy system just to rip MP3s and their losses will be minimal by then.
I may have been reading between the lines on this one, but you usually have to guess a little when it comes to quick news stories.
I'll plead guilty to not actually reading the rules - just the news article. I jumped to the conclusion I made when I read that they require "Proof of date-of-purchase." I assumed that to mean you needed the sales slip from way-back-when. I didn't notice, but did they say "continuous" use? If so then I feel pretty safe in my assumptions.
Why else would they need proof of date-of-purchase? Is there some kind of minimum time your business must have been using the computer?
Must have proof of date-of-purchase of the computer.
I think this is going to be a tough one to pull a sting on. Just having to show proof of owning a business license for the same business since the late 1970's is going to eliminate most.
You don't really think anything other than an Altair or the like is going to win, right?
According to the article all existing players will always play all of the presently existing "illegal" MP3s.
Once they are upgraded to the latest, greatest player software they will then not be able to play illegal rips from new CDs because they will look for information encoded along with the ripped song to determine if it is o.k. to use or not.
Pretty simple actually. You will not be able to strip out the information included in the songs when they are encoded hoping to make your player think they are old songs.
This only applies to the MP3 players being marketed as dumb hardware devices. You'll always be able to use old software to encode and playback songs on your computer. Anyone doubt that?
Linux didn't make it into the company I work for through traditional means (salespeople, marketing presentations, free golf vacations.) It is not supported through traditional means (certified individuals, classes, etc.) There was a need and Linux filled it. The management of the company was desperate for solutions that would keep their web servers up and available for a high-percentage of the day. Just to test various strategies of server configuration was more expensive and time consuming with Microsoft products (and we have Premier support!) We are lucky enough to have several people on staff who are literate with writing and compiling code. The plugins and patches we had to search and wait for with NT are written by enthusiastic computer professionals who don't feel strangled and frustrated by having to wait for someone else to provide the necessary software. We still use NT for our Exchange servers, but we also use NetWare and Solaris. Each has its place. Fortunately there are alternatives to using Microsoft software for everything.
"X-files" paranoia aside I see the point of this article differently.
A competitive advantage is just that - an advantage. It's not "Chariot's of the Gods" or technology from the Greys!
Stealing your competitors secrets is a long established way of getting a business (or military) advantage.
No one is saying that every advantage enjoyed by a U.S. business is because of trade secrets dropped on their desks by the NSA.
It does happen and it probably happens much more than we ever thought.
We (U.S.A.) get pissed when the Chinese and the Isralies steal our nuclear secrets, but it's just "what goes around, comes around."
I know I felt a little uneasy when OJ was tracked down by the cell phone calls he was making. All in just a few minutes. Reading our faxes and our email seems like an easy next step.
Just do and think everything your local government, king, dictator, chairman, tells you do and you won't have any problems in the future.
I agree with you that the transfer rate/seek time is much better than the Zip drive, but the cost of the disks has really come down in the last year or so. If you wanted a quantity of 20 it should be less than USD 10 for each one.
I'd rather have this drive than a Zip drive, if I had Firewire on all my computers.
What should we use as a launching point then? There's nothing unreasonable about learning from a tragedy. While I haven't seen anybody here pouring out sentiment for the killers, I believe a reality check is called for.
Why the hell did these kids kill all of those people?
Some few hundred posters think that the reasons given in the boy's diaries and verbal explanations had something to do with it. They hated because they were persecuted. Should that give them a license to kill - of course not! Did Nazi rhetoric play a part? How much of a part? It's really too early to be focusing on the minutia of what lyric in what song made whom do what.
Whatever the reason(s) we must dissect this action and learn from it. I'm not sure what you think our "cause" to be. Basic human rights shouldn't have to be a "cause" in a public school in middle America.
I'm concerned that you don't seem to want "us" (hopefully you mean society as a whole) to profit from this tragedy. That it would be somehow wrong for good to come out of publicizing all of the wrongs involved - by all parties. I believe exactly the opposite. I want to thrust the grizzly details of everything that led up to the shootings into the media and let them have a feeding frenzy. At some point there will be voices of reason - the ones that always after the initial media feeding frenzy People will understand. Not everyone, but more than understood before.
Not being one to expect to see CNN promoting gun ownership I was surprised by a report several months (a year?) ago about Florida enacting a law which basically gave any citizen in good standing the right to a concealed-carry permit. Even though some groups said it would end up being the wild west in Florida, over the years, the violent crime rate went down enough that nobody could find any other reason than that more citizens were carrying guns. Then other states began to enact the same kind of laws with the same effect.
It all seemed kind of odd to me until I thought about it for awhile. If I were a criminal and I could be assured that people didn't have a way to defend themselves it would make me much happier. If I couldn't be sure if they had guns on them I might turn to burglary or some other form of theft.
It always did seem to me that more restrictive gun laws didn't seem to be working, but I also wasn't sure if the changing face of our (American) society might be what the problem really was.
Anyway, it's food for thought. No matter how much someone may hate guns I think it's pretty much a fact of life for people in the U.S.A. Even if all guns were banned how long would it take for it all to trickle out of the system? 20 years? 100 years? I certainly wouldn't want to pay the cost of housing every person caught with a gun in prison. Can you imagine what that would be like?
I don't know the answer, but it almost looks as absurd at "guns for everyone" or "guns for no one"
Well even the links state it's not a virus, but it is a good soundbite for the news.
I'm not sure which link you followed, but the one I followed explained quite clearly that just the simple matter of placing a bid on an auction (which requires your Ebay user name and password) would e-mail that same information to the person who had placed the script in the auction - with no warning to you. No special screens you wouldn't normall see on Ebay, no social engineering work required and no extra time taken.
Nothing to warn you that something other than an ordinary auction bid has just taken place.
If you are familiar with the way Ebay works this is easy to follow.
Mitnick is not a Hero, he's a Criminal - so what?
on
Kevin Mitnick Speaks
·
· Score: 1
Cool. Not only are you a software engineer you are a Judge, Jury and executioner! Until we read the plea agreement we won't really know what Kevin has been convicted of, will we? What you state as facts are the opinions of one person - yourself, and have no basis in reality. You don't even know what he is/was charged with, do you?
Educate yourself.
Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder last month. So your "case in point" is, well, pointless. That was in the news, check it out. He did commit a crime and he was convicted of it.
Bill Clinton, I could explain to you, but you don't want to hear it. After all, you've made up your mind about all of this and it doesn't appear that you're open to the discussion of facts.
It must suck to be 20-something and stuck in New Hampshire with a closed mind.
I used to think that "knowledge = power" was just a cute quote someone picked up and put in their signature file.
More times than not, nowadays, it really rings true.
Some say the death of the Internet was when AOL got newsgroup access and every post from there was repeated in duplicate (at least) for the first week. The homogenization of "our" Internet still causes quite a bit of pain among the intelligentsia.
I'm sorry John, I couldn't bear to stay with you for this whole article, but I think you got your point across about half-way into it.
My company doesn't understand the Internet, what a virus is, or a macro for that matter. Our IT management did their fieldwork when ATs and VT100 terminals were the rage. They wax eloquent about punch cards and green monitors. They stopped learning a long time ago.
They are scared, because they don't know.
Knowledge = power
In my case knowledge also let's me form a basis for an opinion on a subject. An opinion that usually doesn't involve "hammer them to death" tactics and thusly is not the preferred response the things like the Melissa macro.
Scared companies and governments do dangerous over-the-top things. That's what's happening here.
When an IT manager can't guarantee to the upper management that this won't happen again, maybe tomorrow, the fear sets in.
Punishment, swift and aggressive is called for. Someone must be found to blame. Set an example. Show the world that you are not powerless. Try and convict the "author" or his roommate. Vilify his parents in the press. Trash his lifestyle. Whatever is necessary to apportion the blame. Because it can't be MY fault. I was only following orders. From Microsoft, my anti-virus company, the manufacturer of my computer, etc.
That's the way it works around here: Plausible deniability.
Really sick stuff. Shift the blame to someone who cannot possibly defend himself.
Sorry, I didn't explain this enough. I have an "in" to get the tickets through work (we're the parent company of a theater chain) and the three hours was just to walk over, watch the movie and walk back.
I already proposed to my boss the reasons why we should all take a "long lunch" that day and he couldn't find fault with my proposal.
Everyone will either call in sick (thereby losing a whole day of work) or be pissed that they couldn't go. So losing the three hours for 10 people in the office to go see it (and paying for the movie too) is actually less damaging on the business and a great moral boost. The biggest winner is that it makes him points with the tech. guys and he's not just a "suit" anymore - he's one of the "guys".
By breaking up along product lines Microsoft is preparing a case for the eventual breakup of the company. This reorganization sets the stage for the argument that the business should be broken up along the new divisional boundaries to minimize impact to the daily operations of the business.
In a subtle way Microsoft can prepare for the Government mandated breakup of the company and prepare a breakup strategy that does the least damage to the business if the divisions end up as separate companies.
These distinctions that they have made are logical and would probably be the ones mandated by the Government anyway, but now they are hoping to gain a little say in how it will happen.
Make no mistake, this is Microsoft getting ready for the breakup of the company.
University usually = no money (for network maintenance and support.)
Assuming that there is little enthusiasm among the overworked network people that do exist, all that is available to you are simple solutions.
If there isn't already a firewall in place at your university then anyone on the Internet can attack any machine on the LAN. If this is true you've already lost the battle. Stopping users on your LAN from attacking each other is another problem.
Firewall the incoming traffic (assumed to be present.)
Set up ftp and WWW services outside the firewall to allow publishing of data.
Install smart switches (Cisco Catalyst 5000 series, etc.) with port security. (If there's no money then there's no money, but this is just about mandatory today to keep from actually having to visit hubs and yank patch cables for offending parties.)
Lock each port to a MAC address on the NIC. Changing NICs locks down the port and requires a help desk call and explanation as to why you are changing computers/NICs on that port.
Log incidences of NICs being turned on in "promiscuous mode" and lock out those ports for at least a week to prove you mean business.
Publish simple rules about what is not allowed on the network (IP spoofing, MAC spoofing, etc.)
Don't worry about people's out-of-date OS software. Who cares anyway? They're not hurting anyone but themselves. They may need an old OS for some reason. Don't even try to track that sort of thing, it's meaningless for the good of the network - which is all you really should care about. Individuals must learn to take care of themselves. Obviously you can suggest how they can secure their computers, but enforcement is impossible and unnecessary.
In summary:
Firewall incoming traffic Implement remote port management tools WWW and ftp services available outside of the firewall Publish rules Lock out violators Let the users manage their own systems any way they choose.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally after reading through screen after screen of "give the kid the plane" someone concisely states the facts. Do we as American really wish to live in a society where the government makes it impossible for you to hurt yourself or be hurt by anybody? Sounds good on the outside, but the reality is it makes "1984" look like "Lord of the Flies"! Total protection is only possible under total tyranny. That doesn't even matter here, because it is obvious to any reasonable person that it was a joke, a humorous aside intended to provoke entertainment value. I guess they should have offered a Space Shuttle instead to ensure that the truly gullible among us didn't feel slighted.
The guy thought he saw a way to make a quick buck and now he's losing. He even admits, "it was too good to be true." Just somebody trying to beat the system.
By the way anyone who has been around high-performance, modern, military aircraft knows how ludicrous it is to even imagine owning such a plane. Especially one as complicated as a Harrier.
Active, maintained ground support equipment (GSE) to keep the sucker up and running; spare parts, fuel (JP-7?). All of these are items that would range from annoying (fuel) to nearly impossible (spares) to obtain. Hell, I'd like to see you come up with a complete set of Technical Orders (T.O.s) for this plane. When Thornton built his T-38 out of three scrap hulks it took him two years to get all the T.O.'s for it - and that's a common trainer!
Let's all admit together that it was a joke. False advertising? I seriously doubt it. What would a reasonable person think? Sure the guy wants to make his 3286% profit, who wouldn't? But it's not going to happen.
Not sure what the "hell no" applied to or I'd answer you!
You are the exception to the rule. I read the other day that they had already sold 100,000 Rio players.
Your arguments are 100% valid. The analogy would be cable descramblers and other broadcast theft devices and plans. Is it a huge problem? No! It is annoying to the manufactures and media distributors? Absolutly!
They haven't gone out of business yet. Sure they'd like to crush everyone, but there are acceptable losses. The same will happen with music.
Someone will alwasy exist who can "get" the goods for free. If they make it hard enough for Joe consumer to do it then they've won the $$$ war and that's all they care about.
Remeber that multiple formats for video and audio have been killed because anti-pirating devices couldn't or wouldn't be built in by the manufactures. This applies to the USA only, but you will never be able to market (above ground) a MP3 player that subverts the RIAA copy protection. It will not be a legal device to sell, just as selling cable descramblers is not legal (yeah, yeah, except for "test" purposes.)
I think you pretty much hit it on the head here. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but my take was this:
You will not be able to rip ANY song from a CD that is encoded with their special watermark and play it back on ANY MP3 player that includes the watermark detection stuff. They want you to buy a different copy for every use. Sort of the whole DIVX thing applied to music. Yuck.
You want a CD? You buy a CD.
You want to music on your Rio? You buy their "special" MP3 or whatever.
Even if you could legally rip a song to MP3 format I don't think there is any law to actually force a music distributor to ALLOW you to do it. Even if it's legal they don't want you buying it once and using it at home, on your Rio, and in your car. If they can stop you, they will. It's just that they couldn't stop you before.
It's not just new audio formats you will not be able to play it will be any new music at all that is ripped using an encoder "enabled" with watermark detection. I don't see how they can stop you from using an old decoder other than through attrition.
I think that's the basis of them backing off a bit. In a few years the CD will be "dead" and the DVD will take over for music also. Once that happens and your computer is upgraded to a Sexium 2200 and your old software just wont run anymore they figure that there will be very few people out there keeping a legacy system just to rip MP3s and their losses will be minimal by then.
I may have been reading between the lines on this one, but you usually have to guess a little when it comes to quick news stories.
I'll plead guilty to not actually reading the rules - just the news article. I jumped to the conclusion I made when I read that they require "Proof of date-of-purchase." I assumed that to mean you needed the sales slip from way-back-when. I didn't notice, but did they say "continuous" use? If so then I feel pretty safe in my assumptions.
Why else would they need proof of date-of-purchase? Is there some kind of minimum time your business must have been using the computer?
Must be a small business (400 employees.)
Must have proof of date-of-purchase of the computer.
I think this is going to be a tough one to pull a sting on. Just having to show proof of owning a business license for the same business since the late 1970's is going to eliminate most.
You don't really think anything other than an Altair or the like is going to win, right?
Jack
According to the article all existing players will always play all of the presently existing "illegal" MP3s.
Once they are upgraded to the latest, greatest player software they will then not be able to play illegal rips from new CDs because they will look for information encoded along with the ripped song to determine if it is o.k. to use or not.
Pretty simple actually. You will not be able to strip out the information included in the songs when they are encoded hoping to make your player think they are old songs.
This only applies to the MP3 players being marketed as dumb hardware devices. You'll always be able to use old software to encode and playback songs on your computer. Anyone doubt that?
Jack
Here are the high points of the article:
New CD's will be encoded so that the MP3s ripped from them will be "tagged" somehow.
Upgraded software for MP3 players will not play the "tagged" MP3s.
If you don't upgrade your MP3 player software you won't be able to play legal songs in any format.
If you still have questions read the article, it's pretty straight forward.
Linux didn't make it into the company I work for through traditional means (salespeople, marketing presentations, free golf vacations.) It is not supported through traditional means (certified individuals, classes, etc.) There was a need and Linux filled it. The management of the company was desperate for solutions that would keep their web servers up and available for a high-percentage of the day. Just to test various strategies of server configuration was more expensive and time consuming with Microsoft products (and we have Premier support!) We are lucky enough to have several people on staff who are literate with writing and compiling code. The plugins and patches we had to search and wait for with NT are written by enthusiastic computer professionals who don't feel strangled and frustrated by having to wait for someone else to provide the necessary software. We still use NT for our Exchange servers, but we also use NetWare and Solaris. Each has its place. Fortunately there are alternatives to using Microsoft software for everything.
"X-files" paranoia aside I see the point of this article differently.
A competitive advantage is just that - an advantage. It's not "Chariot's of the Gods" or technology from the Greys!
Stealing your competitors secrets is a long established way of getting a business (or military) advantage.
No one is saying that every advantage enjoyed by a U.S. business is because of trade secrets dropped on their desks by the NSA.
It does happen and it probably happens much more than we ever thought.
We (U.S.A.) get pissed when the Chinese and the Isralies steal our nuclear secrets, but it's just "what goes around, comes around."
I know I felt a little uneasy when OJ was tracked down by the cell phone calls he was making. All in just a few minutes. Reading our faxes and our email seems like an easy next step.
Just do and think everything your local government, king, dictator, chairman, tells you do and you won't have any problems in the future.
I agree with you that the transfer rate/seek time is much better than the Zip drive, but the cost of the disks has really come down in the last year or so. If you wanted a quantity of 20 it should be less than USD 10 for each one.
I'd rather have this drive than a Zip drive, if I had Firewire on all my computers.
Jack
What should we use as a launching point then? There's nothing unreasonable about learning from a tragedy. While I haven't seen anybody here pouring out sentiment for the killers, I believe a reality check is called for.
Why the hell did these kids kill all of those people?
Some few hundred posters think that the reasons given in the boy's diaries and verbal explanations had something to do with it. They hated because they were persecuted. Should that give them a license to kill - of course not! Did Nazi rhetoric play a part? How much of a part? It's really too early to be focusing on the minutia of what lyric in what song made whom do what.
Whatever the reason(s) we must dissect this action and learn from it. I'm not sure what you think our "cause" to be. Basic human rights shouldn't have to be a "cause" in a public school in middle America.
I'm concerned that you don't seem to want "us" (hopefully you mean society as a whole) to profit from this tragedy. That it would be somehow wrong for good to come out of publicizing all of the wrongs involved - by all parties. I believe exactly the opposite. I want to thrust the grizzly details of everything that led up to the shootings into the media and let them have a feeding frenzy. At some point there will be voices of reason - the ones that always after the initial media feeding frenzy People will understand. Not everyone, but more than understood before.
This isn't a nerd thing, it's a human thing.
Not being one to expect to see CNN promoting gun ownership I was surprised by a report several months (a year?) ago about Florida enacting a law which basically gave any citizen in good standing the right to a concealed-carry permit. Even though some groups said it would end up being the wild west in Florida, over the years, the violent crime rate went down enough that nobody could find any other reason than that more citizens were carrying guns. Then other states began to enact the same kind of laws with the same effect.
It all seemed kind of odd to me until I thought about it for awhile. If I were a criminal and I could be assured that people didn't have a way to defend themselves it would make me much happier. If I couldn't be sure if they had guns on them I might turn to burglary or some other form of theft.
It always did seem to me that more restrictive gun laws didn't seem to be working, but I also wasn't sure if the changing face of our (American) society might be what the problem really was.
Anyway, it's food for thought. No matter how much someone may hate guns I think it's pretty much a fact of life for people in the U.S.A. Even if all guns were banned how long would it take for it all to trickle out of the system? 20 years? 100 years? I certainly wouldn't want to pay the cost of housing every person caught with a gun in prison. Can you imagine what that would be like?
I don't know the answer, but it almost looks as absurd at "guns for everyone" or "guns for no one"
Jack
Well even the links state it's not a virus, but it is a good soundbite for the news.
I'm not sure which link you followed, but the one I followed explained quite clearly that just the simple matter of placing a bid on an auction (which requires your Ebay user name and password) would e-mail that same information to the person who had placed the script in the auction - with no warning to you. No special screens you wouldn't normall see on Ebay, no social engineering work required and no extra time taken.
Nothing to warn you that something other than an ordinary auction bid has just taken place.
If you are familiar with the way Ebay works this is easy to follow.
Cool. Not only are you a software engineer you are a Judge, Jury and executioner! Until we read the plea agreement we won't really know what Kevin has been convicted of, will we? What you state as facts are the opinions of one person - yourself, and have no basis in reality. You don't even know what he is/was charged with, do you?
Educate yourself.
Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder last month. So your "case in point" is, well, pointless. That was in the news, check it out. He did commit a crime and he was convicted of it.
Bill Clinton, I could explain to you, but you don't want to hear it. After all, you've made up your mind about all of this and it doesn't appear that you're open to the discussion of facts.
It must suck to be 20-something and stuck in New Hampshire with a closed mind.
Educate yourself.
I used to think that "knowledge = power" was just a cute quote someone picked up and put in their signature file.
More times than not, nowadays, it really rings true.
Some say the death of the Internet was when AOL got newsgroup access and every post from there was repeated in duplicate (at least) for the first week. The homogenization of "our" Internet still causes quite a bit of pain among the intelligentsia.
I'm sorry John, I couldn't bear to stay with you for this whole article, but I think you got your point across about half-way into it.
My company doesn't understand the Internet, what a virus is, or a macro for that matter. Our IT management did their fieldwork when ATs and VT100 terminals were the rage. They wax eloquent about punch cards and green monitors. They stopped learning a long time ago.
They are scared, because they don't know.
Knowledge = power
In my case knowledge also let's me form a basis for an opinion on a subject. An opinion that usually doesn't involve "hammer them to death" tactics and thusly is not the preferred response the things like the Melissa macro.
Scared companies and governments do dangerous over-the-top things. That's what's happening here.
When an IT manager can't guarantee to the upper management that this won't happen again, maybe tomorrow, the fear sets in.
Punishment, swift and aggressive is called for. Someone must be found to blame. Set an example. Show the world that you are not powerless. Try and convict the "author" or his roommate. Vilify his parents in the press. Trash his lifestyle. Whatever is necessary to apportion the blame. Because it can't be MY fault. I was only following orders. From Microsoft, my anti-virus company, the manufacturer of my computer, etc.
That's the way it works around here: Plausible deniability.
Really sick stuff. Shift the blame to someone who cannot possibly defend himself.
That's the American way.
Jack
Sorry, I didn't explain this enough. I have an "in" to get the tickets through work (we're the parent company of a theater chain) and the three hours was just to walk over, watch the movie and walk back.
Jack
I already proposed to my boss the reasons why we should all take a "long lunch" that day and he couldn't find fault with my proposal.
Everyone will either call in sick (thereby losing a whole day of work) or be pissed that they couldn't go. So losing the three hours for 10 people in the office to go see it (and paying for the movie too) is actually less damaging on the business and a great moral boost. The biggest winner is that it makes him points with the tech. guys and he's not just a "suit" anymore - he's one of the "guys".
Jack
By breaking up along product lines Microsoft is preparing a case for the eventual breakup of the company. This reorganization sets the stage for the argument that the business should be broken up along the new divisional boundaries to minimize impact to the daily operations of the business.
In a subtle way Microsoft can prepare for the Government mandated breakup of the company and prepare a breakup strategy that does the least damage to the business if the divisions end up as separate companies.
These distinctions that they have made are logical and would probably be the ones mandated by the Government anyway, but now they are hoping to gain a little say in how it will happen.
Make no mistake, this is Microsoft getting ready for the breakup of the company.
University usually = no money (for network maintenance and support.)
Assuming that there is little enthusiasm among the overworked network people that do exist, all that is available to you are simple solutions.
If there isn't already a firewall in place at your university then anyone on the Internet can attack any machine on the LAN. If this is true you've already lost the battle. Stopping users on your LAN from attacking each other is another problem.
Firewall the incoming traffic (assumed to be present.)
Set up ftp and WWW services outside the firewall to allow publishing of data.
Install smart switches (Cisco Catalyst 5000 series, etc.) with port security. (If there's no money then there's no money, but this is just about mandatory today to keep from actually having to visit hubs and yank patch cables for offending parties.)
Lock each port to a MAC address on the NIC. Changing NICs locks down the port and requires a help desk call and explanation as to why you are changing computers/NICs on that port.
Log incidences of NICs being turned on in "promiscuous mode" and lock out those ports for at least a week to prove you mean business.
Publish simple rules about what is not allowed on the network (IP spoofing, MAC spoofing, etc.)
Don't worry about people's out-of-date OS software. Who cares anyway? They're not hurting anyone but themselves. They may need an old OS for some reason. Don't even try to track that sort of thing, it's meaningless for the good of the network - which is all you really should care about. Individuals must learn to take care of themselves. Obviously you can suggest how they can secure their computers, but enforcement is impossible and unnecessary.
In summary:
Firewall incoming traffic
Implement remote port management tools
WWW and ftp services available outside of the firewall
Publish rules
Lock out violators
Let the users manage their own systems any way they choose.