I just wanted to completely agree with this post. I lost friends and aquiantances yesterday, and am having trouble getting on with things. Everywhere I turn, I am reminded of how horrible what happened was, and I am susepted to "theories" about what happened and why. Getting a little other news is quite nice. Helpful even.
I was shocked by the amount of attention Slashdot gave the horror yesterday, and it leads me to say something some Slashdotters might gasp at -- I am very pleased with how the Slashdot editors handled this event.
Cmdr: Thank you for your support. I tend to disagree with Jon Katz, but everything he spoke of in his account yesterday struck home. The effort Hemos and Timothy put into gatherring information and posting all the relevent material was quite helpful, especially when I couldn't get through to anyone in the City and had to occupy myself some way.
It's time for other news. Yesterday's news was overshadowed completely (and for good reason). It's time to take a few steps, albeit possibly tiny ones, forward. I'm shook up, but saturated. Other things to consider only help.
A lot of people have posted that this prophecy is a fabrication, but someone previously posted (I don't remember who) a link to the alt.prophecies.nostradamus with a very interesting message (here).
At around 9am this morning, I got a frantic phone call from my boss. He said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, and had taken out fifteen stories. I listened in disbelief. Our office is a mere five blocks north of the trade center, and I am there almost every day. Today, I am in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Then I heard an explosion over the phone, as my boss excalimed "Oh my God! There was just a second explosion, this has to be a terrorist attack!" He had to run -- for hopefully obvious reasons -- and I have not been able to contact him since.
This isn't informative in any way, but I simply wanted to put it in writing. If you read this, thanks for hearing me out. Sometimes just writing out what you feel is quite helpful. Most of my family is in New York, and so are most of my business aquiantances. I have no idea how they are all doing, nor how soon I will be able to return. To everyone else going through this uncertainty right now, I wish you the best of luck.
This process has been around for years, and is still being refined. It is referred to as "text-mining" and there is some spectacular software out there to accomplish these tasks.
The leader in the industry is a Company called Megaputer, and their clients included the US government, Boeing, the CDC, and many large companies.
Civil Disobedience is done in the name of change, and therefore *requires* accountability. Doing this like an anonymous coward, distributing it and not letting yourself be known is lame, and will be seen rightly as an act of cowardice. Granted, the cowardice is justified as a certain russian programmer can tell you.
You are mistaking cowardice with discretion. One must be very careful under today's laws with what one releases. Not wanting to fight is not cowardice, it is picking your battles. If source is released, or a name is released, there are serious legal reprocussions - which cost millions of dollars to fend off - while, on the other hand, just letting people know it is possible creates the same community sentiment without ending up in jail for the rest of your life.
Well, I also cracked the MS e-book but this margin isn't wide enough to show proof.
There wasn't enough room in your margin to write printf("%s\n",rot13(MS_ebook->Text));? Maybe you should try rotating that margin by 90 degrees and trying again.
Disclaimer: I feel like I may be way off base here, but I'll go out on a limb anyway. If I'm wrong, please correct me, don't flame me. Also, I'm generalizing a bunch of stuff here, if you're a physist (or a cynic), read this with a grain of salt.
Current theoretical physicists (and some hefty dead ones too) believe(d) that at the time of the big bang, and for a relative time afterwards, there was a single super-force.
Constants, as we know them, are directly related to more particular forces (i.e. Nuclear/Weak/Electromagnetic/Gravitational). For instance, take the gravitational constant G. This constant only makes sense when looking at the gravitational force as it stands now. When the forces are unified, there are different physical behaviors, and hence, even though G *should* be a constant, it is outside its frame of reference.
Think of it this way: when you move at a velocity close to the speed of light, your rulers change size and your clocks tick at a different rate. This is general relativity [I'm dyslexic, what's the chance it's special relativity?]. Go back far enough in time, to when there is a single super-force along with massive amount of dense matter and heat: your tools have changed now too. How can you measure a "constant" when your instruments are changing?
That example is a little weak, so I'll try another one as well. When you look into a glass of water, objects inside will seem different than when you remove them. This is due to different densities in the three mediums you view the object through (water -> glass -> air). Say all pennies are constant. Why is the penny in the glass a different size? Quick answer: it isn't.
But, if you don't know the glass is there, or don't know the correct densities, etc., you have no way of answerring this question other than by saying "the constant isn't so constant." The number of layers (and relative densities) of glass and the other mediums is also important. If each "separation" of the fundamental force to sub-forces (and subsequent breakdowns) are thought of as layers of glass, or the dark to light age transition is thought of as a layer of glass, then the analogy becomes clear. How can you compare one set of measurements with one set of related constants to another set with its own properties, but without knowing the relationships between the two? I say you cannot.
So, doesn't current theoretical physics imply that "constants" specifically cannot remain constant as the laws and makeup of physics changes? Seems that way to me.
That's an interesting thought. Someone else posted that this could be a case of "hacker ethic", of the writer simply trying to awaken people to the gaping hole in IIS and the wonders patching can do.
But I find this hard to believe. The worm attacked whitehouse.gov, and although I truly dislike Bush and his administration, I can see how this could be construed as an attack against the United States itself. I understand that sentiment is very far-fetched, but remember, when it comes to things like this, there are hot-shot lawyers involved who will do, and say, whatever it takes to win their case. And yes, that too is a generality, but if the US catches this guy, I can see them using that as a viable argument.
Really bad analogy: Firing an unarmed nuclear warhead with anti-antimissle technology at the whitehouse lawn. "But I was just showing you that your systems were severly lacking...", "But it wasn't armed...", "But I meant..." are all irrelevant. Leniency is not a concideration. The missle was fired at the whitehouse, all else is irrelevent.
Again, 359,104 hosts were compromised in approximately 13 hours. Although the growth was slowing, had the worm not been programmed to stop spreading at midnight, additional hosts would have been compromised. The infection rate would have continued to decrease once the vast majority of vulnerable machines were infected. We speculate that the memory resident status of this worm would have allowed reinfection of many hosts.
All it takes is another version which doesn't limit itself, and the problem explodes. As it is, there was a nice easy way to stop the worm (once it stopped itself). If the worm had not stopped itself, I'm skeptical that it would have been nearly as easy to deal with the infection.
Yup, he has seen the light, he has to protect home businesses. What do you think the probability that these companies lobbied this senator and convinced him to take action?
Very low, actually. I personally know Senator Schumer (he is a member of my Synagogue in Brooklyn), and have known him for quite some time. His daughter goes to my former high school. With this in mind, I can tell you that he is a very principled and intelligent man, and doesn't pursue actions unless he truly believes in them. He is passionate about his work.
I also have a friend who was an intern for Schumer while he was still in the House. New York is full of businesses which constantly lobby their Representatives and Senators. Schumer is not known for taking action simply on the whims of lobbyists.
You do have a point, one of these companies may have opened his eyes to the issue, but I assure you that he did not follow through because of the lobbying, but instead because of the results of his research.
I personally like the idea of trolls being able to buy-back their karma. They pay good money, and then possibly get to moderate. What more would a troll (or you, for that matter) want?
Some scientists are speculating on 'Nemesis', a dwarf star on a very wide orbit (period 30 million years) around the Sun. They claim Nemesis is responsible for the mass extinctions, dropping comets to inner Solar System as it passed through the Oort cloud.
It was not "some scientists" speculating. Nemesis is a wonderful book by Isaac Asimov. The theory is his, and although scientifically possible, is thought [by most] to be highly improbable.
As everyone knows, New York City is the center of the world. Therefore, it should also be the center of mass of the world (assuming the world and all people are spherical and everything is distributed evenly, mass-density is a constant, etc.). How could this guy claim differently?
I think the conference should just be held in New York.
Yes, this post was half-humorous and half serious. Seeing as how I live in New York, it would just make it a hell of a lot easier for me to attend, say if the conference were held in, oh, say, midtown. It's not a personal bias, it's clarity of thought. I swear.
Microsoft's Tony Goodhew, project manager for Share Source CLI, said Microsoft is moving in the same direction as open source code advocates, but wishes to continue to protect its intellectual property from commercial exploitation by others.
I laughed out loud when I read this. Anyone else see the irony?
So, looking at his logic, Goodhew is saying that open source advocates wish to have their intellectual property commercially exploited by others. I, for one, never realized that was what being an open source advocate was all about. My bad.
And, even if you don't read it that way, there's always the fact that MS doesn't want people to exploit its code, but has no problem exploiting someone elses! [i.e. no GPL'd software, only software where they don't need to tell anyone that the code was even used]
Wouldn't the RIAA have a problem with this? If there are any binaries on the DVD, and you accidentally determine where the source files are, wouldn't that be decrypting an encoded document and therefore violate the DMCA?
In high school, someone managed to get a copy of/etc/passwd when it was accidentally unshadowed for a day [NIS went down and it was a quick fix and no one realized it broke shadow until too late].
So we ran john (I think that's what it was called) on the password file to see what it could decrypt. All the important accounts had secure passwords, but lots of users had really stupid passwords. The most common ones were "password" and "hello123".
So what we did was hash each of those, and then hash the hashes. We then ran the program to brute-force the double hash, and lo and behold, it said the password was "password" or "hello123". But neither password nor hello123 would be valid.
I just really liked that method, because it's a sneaky way of creating a pseudo-random password, and if you use it correctly, you can screw with people's minds. Of course, as soon as someone realizes that this is what you've done, it's very easy to get around. But that's not the point =]
P.S. if you can't figre out what I'm talking about, I'm sorry for the incoherent babbling, I barely got any sleep.
Slashdot Mirror
I was shocked by the amount of attention Slashdot gave the horror yesterday, and it leads me to say something some Slashdotters might gasp at -- I am very pleased with how the Slashdot editors handled this event.
Cmdr: Thank you for your support. I tend to disagree with Jon Katz, but everything he spoke of in his account yesterday struck home. The effort Hemos and Timothy put into gatherring information and posting all the relevent material was quite helpful, especially when I couldn't get through to anyone in the City and had to occupy myself some way.
It's time for other news. Yesterday's news was overshadowed completely (and for good reason). It's time to take a few steps, albeit possibly tiny ones, forward. I'm shook up, but saturated. Other things to consider only help.
Just another weird coincidence? I hope so.
Then I heard an explosion over the phone, as my boss excalimed "Oh my God! There was just a second explosion, this has to be a terrorist attack!" He had to run -- for hopefully obvious reasons -- and I have not been able to contact him since.
This isn't informative in any way, but I simply wanted to put it in writing. If you read this, thanks for hearing me out. Sometimes just writing out what you feel is quite helpful. Most of my family is in New York, and so are most of my business aquiantances. I have no idea how they are all doing, nor how soon I will be able to return. To everyone else going through this uncertainty right now, I wish you the best of luck.
The leader in the industry is a Company called Megaputer, and their clients included the US government, Boeing, the CDC, and many large companies.
"Don Cox, Don Perens requires your presense at..."
Should Read: Stupid Typo in last paragraph
Bah, I'm bad at this.
Should read:
Disclaimer: I feel like I may be way off base here, but I'll go out on a limb anyway. If I'm wrong, please correct me, don't flame me. Also, I'm generalizing a bunch of stuff here, if you're a physist (or a cynic), read this with a grain of salt.
Current theoretical physicists (and some hefty dead ones too) believe(d) that at the time of the big bang, and for a relative time afterwards, there was a single super-force.
Constants, as we know them, are directly related to more particular forces (i.e. Nuclear/Weak/Electromagnetic/Gravitational). For instance, take the gravitational constant G. This constant only makes sense when looking at the gravitational force as it stands now. When the forces are unified, there are different physical behaviors, and hence, even though G *should* be a constant, it is outside its frame of reference.
Think of it this way: when you move at a velocity close to the speed of light, your rulers change size and your clocks tick at a different rate. This is general relativity [I'm dyslexic, what's the chance it's special relativity?]. Go back far enough in time, to when there is a single super-force along with massive amount of dense matter and heat: your tools have changed now too. How can you measure a "constant" when your instruments are changing?
That example is a little weak, so I'll try another one as well. When you look into a glass of water, objects inside will seem different than when you remove them. This is due to different densities in the three mediums you view the object through (water -> glass -> air). Say all pennies are constant. Why is the penny in the glass a different size? Quick answer: it isn't.
But, if you don't know the glass is there, or don't know the correct densities, etc., you have no way of answerring this question other than by saying "the constant isn't so constant." The number of layers (and relative densities) of glass and the other mediums is also important. If each "separation" of the fundamental force to sub-forces (and subsequent breakdowns) are thought of as layers of glass, or the dark to light age transition is thought of as a layer of glass, then the analogy becomes clear. How can you compare one set of measurements with one set of related constants to another set with its own properties, but without knowing the relationships between the two? I say you cannot.
So, doesn't current theoretical physics imply that "constants" specifically cannot remain constant as the laws and makeup of physics changes? Seems that way to me.
Check out comment 28, it's his point.
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But I find this hard to believe. The worm attacked whitehouse.gov, and although I truly dislike Bush and his administration, I can see how this could be construed as an attack against the United States itself. I understand that sentiment is very far-fetched, but remember, when it comes to things like this, there are hot-shot lawyers involved who will do, and say, whatever it takes to win their case. And yes, that too is a generality, but if the US catches this guy, I can see them using that as a viable argument.
Really bad analogy: Firing an unarmed nuclear warhead with anti-antimissle technology at the whitehouse lawn. "But I was just showing you that your systems were severly lacking ...", "But it wasn't armed ...", "But I meant ..." are all irrelevant. Leniency is not a concideration. The missle was fired at the whitehouse, all else is irrelevent.
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I also have a friend who was an intern for Schumer while he was still in the House. New York is full of businesses which constantly lobby their Representatives and Senators. Schumer is not known for taking action simply on the whims of lobbyists.
You do have a point, one of these companies may have opened his eyes to the issue, but I assure you that he did not follow through because of the lobbying, but instead because of the results of his research.
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I personally like the idea of trolls being able to buy-back their karma. They pay good money, and then possibly get to moderate. What more would a troll (or you, for that matter) want?
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I think the conference should just be held in New York.
Yes, this post was half-humorous and half serious. Seeing as how I live in New York, it would just make it a hell of a lot easier for me to attend, say if the conference were held in, oh, say, midtown. It's not a personal bias, it's clarity of thought. I swear.
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One thing's for sure, there IS no bad way to off a lawyer ;)
I disagree, concider offing one quickly.
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Either that or it's an ambulance coming for Cheney . . .
[Sorry, had to, please completely ignore this post. I refuse to post as an AC, stupid conscience]
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I laughed out loud when I read this. Anyone else see the irony?
So, looking at his logic, Goodhew is saying that open source advocates wish to have their intellectual property commercially exploited by others. I, for one, never realized that was what being an open source advocate was all about. My bad.
And, even if you don't read it that way, there's always the fact that MS doesn't want people to exploit its code, but has no problem exploiting someone elses! [i.e. no GPL'd software, only software where they don't need to tell anyone that the code was even used]
I'd go on, but I won't.
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Wouldn't the RIAA have a problem with this? If there are any binaries on the DVD, and you accidentally determine where the source files are, wouldn't that be decrypting an encoded document and therefore violate the DMCA?
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In high school, someone managed to get a copy of /etc/passwd when it was accidentally unshadowed for a day [NIS went down and it was a quick fix and no one realized it broke shadow until too late].
So we ran john (I think that's what it was called) on the password file to see what it could decrypt. All the important accounts had secure passwords, but lots of users had really stupid passwords. The most common ones were "password" and "hello123".
So what we did was hash each of those, and then hash the hashes. We then ran the program to brute-force the double hash, and lo and behold, it said the password was "password" or "hello123". But neither password nor hello123 would be valid.
I just really liked that method, because it's a sneaky way of creating a pseudo-random password, and if you use it correctly, you can screw with people's minds. Of course, as soon as someone realizes that this is what you've done, it's very easy to get around. But that's not the point =]
P.S. if you can't figre out what I'm talking about, I'm sorry for the incoherent babbling, I barely got any sleep.
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