You can run a program like macmakeup to change your mac to whatever the hell you want, which makes tracking by mac pointless if the target has any clue. You could do this every single time you log on to the internet (or random intervals, etc) to throw off tracking of your usage, along with changing what browser you "seem" to be using, responses to your OS type, and the way your system responds to pings, port scans, etc to appear to be just about anything.
Also, given that this new technique listed in the article seems to deal with response times, you just modify your response times with something else - an extra clock cycle here, 13 clock cycles there... And this technique is pretty useless. It's kinda a rehash of the idea of "fingerprinting" by the unique timing involved in how a user types, and anyone dealing with computer forensics will spot it right away. But hey, it's good enough to get him a reasearch grant, probably. How about giving me one to foil it now?
And lastly (and more importantly) once you acquire the data needed to indentify a system by this new method (basicly by conversing with it over the net, etc) what's to say I don't get a machine that can respond much faster, and spoof who I am because now I'm responding JUST like said system.... "Your bank account transfer has been accepted, Mr Gates...":P
Seriously, what kinda ending is it to stop in what seems, as far as the story is concerned, to be the MIDDLE! AARRRGHHH! Anyone else dissapointed in the story? The multiplayer is a blast, as expected.
Ok, now I know I'm not alone - I thought I was the only geek that used memory sticks for keychains:P And yeah, when the chips fall/pop off due to abuse, flexing, I grab another stick too. Of course, it's my calling card as well - people see my keychain and say "oh, you know computers, huh? I have this problem..." On second thought, maybe I should take the memory off...
Did you just say "let go of some unused hardware"?? That's it, hand in your slashdot number! No self respecting geek actually gets rid of old hardware, it's suppose to just get burried underneath all the other junk - Like, For example, the Timex Sinclair 1000 I found recently while moving a small stack of books and papers:P
Someone suitably creative could create a website that tracks how much time commercials and crap take out of a movie, and POST it for all to view. The idea being that people know how many minutes they can skip before the feature starts, and avoid all the commercials. I think the very existence of a site like this, and a good amount of traffic to it, could send a powerful message: "We are NOT a captive audience!". The caveats being A) someone has to initially watch the commercials to time it, and B) you could lose a good seat:P
Perhaps I wasn't making myself clean - I wasn't talking about cellular bandwidth, I was talking about regular internet bandwidth - where do you think all those little movies and such will be shuffled across? yes, directly to the phone, it'll be sent from a TV transmitter, but after the technology is in place on the phones to play MPG, AVI, or what have you, what do you think the majority of the viewed video will be? it'll be things e-mailed to other people, and it WONT be done on their cellular networks skipping across the country. It'll be on the regular internet, excpet for the "last mile" basicly transmitting to the target phone, and as such, this technology will end up affecting millions of others who don't even use cell phones.
Ok, besides the fact that this will be probably be the most abused excuse for why someone got in a car wreck "but your honor, I was watching CNN!" it will also be another horible waste of bandwidth. as if we didn't chew up enough with people sending inane photos of themselves and their dog Poochie, now we're going to eventually have a ton of highschool and college age ass-hats sending vids of themselves doing dangerous/stupid/illegal things, because basicly it's funny, right? Great. Because logically, the conclusion of being able to receive TV programs as downloadable video is being able to send on-the-spot vid caps, uploads, the latest Jenna Jameson porno - who knows? I get enough stupid crap from people already thinking I want to read / see something they think is humorous. You think spam is a bandwidth waster? Wait until this goes full bore.
A) seeing the word "spam" and thinking both Monty Python and useless e-mail B) seeing the word "python" and thinking both Monty and the language of the same name or C) Thinking of all of these at the same time, seeing how it would all work out in one big musical, and thinking "now THAT would be cool!"
My god, yes! I saw that episode when I was a bit younger (I'm the same age as Wil, it turns out) and wow, I ended up sketching her while the show was on. Anyway, I had kinda forgotten about that episode, but I have no doubts that that one show added to my collective unconscious "ideal" woman. Hmmm... wonder if she's single nowadays... Think she reads slashdot?:P
Yeah, this is OT and I hate to steal Wils spotlight but I had to say it... You know, Jay, we saw the pics of your costume, sure we had a good laugh, but inside, I personally was thinking "The dude has a friggin TRON costume!" and inside, yes, I was jealous. You rock man.
My son and I were watching that (or a) episode where Wil did the voice for aquaboy or whomever it was, and I said "Dude, that's Wil Wheaton!" and my son, who is 9, said "Who the heck is Wil Wheaton?" and I started saying "you know, that kid from..." Then it occured to me, I'd gotten older too. Crap.
An interesting idea, actually - how to you make sure that a URL published (or one that is going to be published) on FOX, CNN, or MSNBC is denied to the general TV public who might actually check it out? Submit it as a story to a site such as Slashdot, with some urgent, immediate, or "impending doom" headline... Not that this particular story had any immediacy, or that the effect would last very long, but it's an interesting tactic nonetheless...
The need for a group of humans to establish life away from a place they are ideologicly unhappy with?
Or maybe the need for more resources for continued human expansion?
Does anyone remember that Canadian company that was making US DOD software... and outsourcing some or most of the programming to China. I beleive that the DOD wasn't fully aware of where the work was being done until later in the game. Not that either of the parties involved had malicious intent, BUT, that in itself seemed far more vulnerable than code that EVERYone can see, and audit, and comment on.
I have to kinda agree with parent - I wouldn't be surprised if this is being used in some way to the effect of "sure, you can have access to this information, but we're going to screw with you and make a fuss every time you ask for it." The end goal being that your average citizen won't use it for fear of the hassle. Imagine these guys came to your job and started asking your boss questions about your possible terrorists links, because you requsted info on a local clock-tower structure or something (maybe for a private graphics project, etc). This would probably affect how your boss, or the employer as a whole, would look at you, whether you were "Guilty" or not. Soon, the only people who would make such requests would be the "damn-it's-my-right-you-HAVE-to-give-me-that-info" people, who would then probably be considered "activists" (and therefor, risky) by the government, so that the FOIA and the like could presumably be dropped with the explaination of "well, look, the ONLY people who really want this information are troublemakers - we should really lock this stuff down to protect the country from terrorists...".
Anyway, the main point I was trying to make is that there are SO many ways that the kid could have gotten this info, besides doing it the proper way. He could have explored some/most of those areas himself, MIT style, learning how to "access" locks and the like in the process, and no one would have been the wiser. This blanket "we've got to protect people from terrorists" crap is getting to be an excessive excuse for anything the current administration doesn't like. Yes, there are bad people in the world who don't like us, and some are already inside the US, but come ON. And I'm saying this as a member of the US Armed Forces, protecting their right to use this excuse. Go figure.
I have to agree with parent on this - I've gotten some pretty damn usefull information from his articles, but crap, throwing french phrases in the article willy-nilly is just annoying. You don't know how many times I wish I could do a search-and-replace on paper just so I could place all the french sillyness with " "!
I'm SO hoping that wasn't a freudian slip when he typed Hard COP, maybe he meant this site (and no, I didn't know that offhand, Booble is your friend:P
actually, I think rule 90 would be a better representation, for a few reasons: The design is a fractal triangle, which represents both order and mystery the closer you examine it. It is also associated with the logical XOR operation, which is a subtle reference to encryption/decryption fun:) And finally, the design is both visually pleasing and mathematicly beautiful.
(Warning: the following information eventually devolves into a rant!)
If anything, this only validates what many Mandrake and Suse users already knew - these two products are getting incredibly easy to use, even for the "newbies". Yes, Redhat may have a larger commercial share, but that seems to be more in the corporate world, at least from what I have seen.
Personally, I like Mandrake, which makes it very easy to show Linux to someone who is Windows-trained without scaring them too much (grin). Sure, they're not REAL Linux users, according to some, but frankly, thats not the point. I usually get non-geek friends to at least TRY Linux, and the more people that retain a good impression of it, the better! Imagine when NON geeks have a conversation like this:
Non-geek 1: Wow, I just got ANOTHER Outlook/IE/VB Script virus! I hate this crap! Non-geek 2: Hey, that sucks for you! I'm using KMail on Mandrake Linux that a friend installed for me, that stuff doesn't even hit me! Non-geek 1: Yeah, but you can't use your windows stuff anymore! Non-geek 2: Sure I can - I can do something called "dual-boot" so I can use Windows or Linux - I don't have to give up Windows just to try it!
Etc, etc. If Mandrake, Redhat, and Suse users care about getting more people into Linux, I think we should concentrate on pushing the dual boot issue, and "interoperability", the main reason being that the more "user-friendly" (and yes, I hate that term too) we can make a Linux Desktop, the longer they will stay in the Linux Desktop (besides, sooner or later, they'll need the space Windows is taking up for MP3s, Files, etc:)
The Red Hat rebate is a nice feather in the cap of Mandrake and Suse, but I think they should have been giving it for WINDOWS users, not as an upgrade, but as a "Use us too!" kind of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Haven't you seen the skittles commercial? Old news, sheesh :P
Oh, and yes, I know, it's spelled "speech" but I was half asleep :P
Ballmer: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."
:P
Ballmer: "Linux is communist..."
Ballmer: "Um... Ok, Linux, I was really just kidding about that communist cancer bit... really! Guys? Hello??"
I think the first thing MS should do, if they want a sit-down, is mandate that Ballmer gets a new name - "asshat".
I mean, really - it would creep me out to have Ballmer do a 180 and give the "developers" speach about open source...
Ballmer: "Open source. Open source. open source! OPEN SOURCE! OPEN SOURCE! OPEN SOURCE..."
Besides, we already have Stallman for THAT
You can run a program like macmakeup to change your mac to whatever the hell you want, which makes tracking by mac pointless if the target has any clue. You could do this every single time you log on to the internet (or random intervals, etc) to throw off tracking of your usage, along with changing what browser you "seem" to be using, responses to your OS type, and the way your system responds to pings, port scans, etc to appear to be just about anything.
:P
Also, given that this new technique listed in the article seems to deal with response times, you just modify your response times with something else - an extra clock cycle here, 13 clock cycles there... And this technique is pretty useless. It's kinda a rehash of the idea of "fingerprinting" by the unique timing involved in how a user types, and anyone dealing with computer forensics will spot it right away. But hey, it's good enough to get him a reasearch grant, probably. How about giving me one to foil it now?
And lastly (and more importantly) once you acquire the data needed to indentify a system by this new method (basicly by conversing with it over the net, etc) what's to say I don't get a machine that can respond much faster, and spoof who I am because now I'm responding JUST like said system.... "Your bank account transfer has been accepted, Mr Gates..."
"Halo 2: The rest of the friggin game"
Seriously, what kinda ending is it to stop in what seems, as far as the story is concerned, to be the MIDDLE! AARRRGHHH! Anyone else dissapointed in the story? The multiplayer is a blast, as expected.
Ok, now I know I'm not alone - I thought I was the only geek that used memory sticks for keychains :P And yeah, when the chips fall/pop off due to abuse, flexing, I grab another stick too. Of course, it's my calling card as well - people see my keychain and say "oh, you know computers, huh? I have this problem..."
On second thought, maybe I should take the memory off...
Now where is clever nickname when you need him? :P
Did you just say "let go of some unused hardware"?? That's it, hand in your slashdot number! No self respecting geek actually gets rid of old hardware, it's suppose to just get burried underneath all the other junk - :P
Like, For example, the Timex Sinclair 1000 I found recently while moving a small stack of books and papers
Someone suitably creative could create a website that tracks how much time commercials and crap take out of a movie, and POST it for all to view. The idea being that people know how many minutes they can skip before the feature starts, and avoid all the commercials. I think the very existence of a site like this, and a good amount of traffic to it, could send a powerful message: "We are NOT a captive audience!". The caveats being A) someone has to initially watch the commercials to time it, and B) you could lose a good seat :P
and yes, I am bitter :P
Perhaps I wasn't making myself clean - I wasn't talking about cellular bandwidth, I was talking about regular internet bandwidth - where do you think all those little movies and such will be shuffled across? yes, directly to the phone, it'll be sent from a TV transmitter, but after the technology is in place on the phones to play MPG, AVI, or what have you, what do you think the majority of the viewed video will be? it'll be things e-mailed to other people, and it WONT be done on their cellular networks skipping across the country. It'll be on the regular internet, excpet for the "last mile" basicly transmitting to the target phone, and as such, this technology will end up affecting millions of others who don't even use cell phones.
Ok, besides the fact that this will be probably be the most abused excuse for why someone got in a car wreck "but your honor, I was watching CNN!" it will also be another horible waste of bandwidth. as if we didn't chew up enough with people sending inane photos of themselves and their dog Poochie, now we're going to eventually have a ton of highschool and college age ass-hats sending vids of themselves doing dangerous/stupid/illegal things, because basicly it's funny, right? Great. Because logically, the conclusion of being able to receive TV programs as downloadable video is being able to send on-the-spot vid caps, uploads, the latest Jenna Jameson porno - who knows? I get enough stupid crap from people already thinking I want to read / see something they think is humorous. You think spam is a bandwidth waster? Wait until this goes full bore.
um... not that I watch musicals...yeah...
So which makes me a bigger geek:
A) seeing the word "spam" and thinking both Monty Python and useless e-mail
B) seeing the word "python" and thinking both Monty and the language of the same name
or
C) Thinking of all of these at the same time, seeing how it would all work out in one big musical, and thinking "now THAT would be cool!"
My god, yes! I saw that episode when I was a bit younger (I'm the same age as Wil, it turns out) and wow, I ended up sketching her while the show was on. Anyway, I had kinda forgotten about that episode, but I have no doubts that that one show added to my collective unconscious "ideal" woman. Hmmm... wonder if she's single nowadays... Think she reads slashdot? :P
Yeah, this is OT and I hate to steal Wils spotlight but I had to say it...
You know, Jay, we saw the pics of your costume, sure we had a good laugh, but inside, I personally was thinking "The dude has a friggin TRON costume!" and inside, yes, I was jealous. You rock man.
My son and I were watching that (or a) episode where Wil did the voice for aquaboy or whomever it was, and I said "Dude, that's Wil Wheaton!" and my son, who is 9, said "Who the heck is Wil Wheaton?" and I started saying "you know, that kid from..." Then it occured to me, I'd gotten older too. Crap.
An interesting idea, actually - how to you make sure that a URL published (or one that is going to be published) on FOX, CNN, or MSNBC is denied to the general TV public who might actually check it out? Submit it as a story to a site such as Slashdot, with some urgent, immediate, or "impending doom" headline... Not that this particular story had any immediacy, or that the effect would last very long, but it's an interesting tactic nonetheless...
The need for a group of humans to establish life away from a place they are ideologicly unhappy with?
Or maybe the need for more resources for continued human expansion?
Does anyone remember that Canadian company that was making US DOD software... and outsourcing some or most of the programming to China. I beleive that the DOD wasn't fully aware of where the work was being done until later in the game. Not that either of the parties involved had malicious intent, BUT, that in itself seemed far more vulnerable than code that EVERYone can see, and audit, and comment on.
I have to kinda agree with parent - I wouldn't be surprised if this is being used in some way to the effect of "sure, you can have access to this information, but we're going to screw with you and make a fuss every time you ask for it." The end goal being that your average citizen won't use it for fear of the hassle. Imagine these guys came to your job and started asking your boss questions about your possible terrorists links, because you requsted info on a local clock-tower structure or something (maybe for a private graphics project, etc). This would probably affect how your boss, or the employer as a whole, would look at you, whether you were "Guilty" or not. Soon, the only people who would make such requests would be the "damn-it's-my-right-you-HAVE-to-give-me-that-info" people, who would then probably be considered "activists" (and therefor, risky) by the government, so that the FOIA and the like could presumably be dropped with the explaination of "well, look, the ONLY people who really want this information are troublemakers - we should really lock this stuff down to protect the country from terrorists...".
Anyway, the main point I was trying to make is that there are SO many ways that the kid could have gotten this info, besides doing it the proper way. He could have explored some/most of those areas himself, MIT style, learning how to "access" locks and the like in the process, and no one would have been the wiser. This blanket "we've got to protect people from terrorists" crap is getting to be an excessive excuse for anything the current administration doesn't like. Yes, there are bad people in the world who don't like us, and some are already inside the US, but come ON. And I'm saying this as a member of the US Armed Forces, protecting their right to use this excuse. Go figure.
I have to agree with parent on this - I've gotten some pretty damn usefull information from his articles, but crap, throwing french phrases in the article willy-nilly is just annoying. You don't know how many times I wish I could do a search-and-replace on paper just so I could place all the french sillyness with " "!
I'm SO hoping that wasn't a freudian slip when he typed Hard COP, maybe he meant this site :P
(and no, I didn't know that offhand, Booble is your friend
actually, I think rule 90 would be a better representation, for a few reasons: The design is a fractal triangle, which represents both order and mystery the closer you examine it. It is also associated with the logical XOR operation, which is a subtle reference to encryption/decryption fun :) And finally, the design is both visually pleasing and mathematicly beautiful.
(Warning: the following information eventually devolves into a rant!)
:)
If anything, this only validates what many Mandrake and Suse users already knew - these two products are getting incredibly easy to use, even for the "newbies". Yes, Redhat may have a larger commercial share, but that seems to be more in the corporate world, at least from what I have seen.
Personally, I like Mandrake, which makes it very easy to show Linux to someone who is Windows-trained without scaring them too much (grin). Sure, they're not REAL Linux users, according to some, but frankly, thats not the point. I usually get non-geek friends to at least TRY Linux, and the more people that retain a good impression of it, the better! Imagine when NON geeks have a conversation like this:
Non-geek 1: Wow, I just got ANOTHER Outlook/IE/VB Script virus! I hate this crap!
Non-geek 2: Hey, that sucks for you! I'm using KMail on Mandrake Linux that a friend installed for me, that stuff doesn't even hit me!
Non-geek 1: Yeah, but you can't use your windows stuff anymore!
Non-geek 2: Sure I can - I can do something called "dual-boot" so I can use Windows or Linux -
I don't have to give up Windows just to try it!
Etc, etc. If Mandrake, Redhat, and Suse users care about getting more people into Linux, I think we should concentrate on pushing the dual boot issue, and "interoperability", the main reason being that the more "user-friendly" (and yes, I hate that term too) we can make a Linux Desktop, the longer they will stay in the Linux Desktop (besides, sooner or later, they'll need the space Windows is taking up for MP3s, Files, etc
The Red Hat rebate is a nice feather in the cap of Mandrake and Suse, but I think they should have been giving it for WINDOWS users, not as an upgrade, but as a "Use us too!" kind of thing.