Invest millons in a just nice desktop background generator? Nahh.
Unless Hubble detects something that really worries politicians (i.a. a meteorit coming really soon, big enough to make trouble and that could be avoidable) it will be around last in their agendas.
Whats the merit of a paper speaking over defeating some windows technology "protection"? You just need to sneeze over a windows machine and it become infected by some virus, come on.
I suppose that the real merit is not how to defeat it, but how fix it, maybe the article should have been titled "Fixing the XP SP2 Heap Protection",
I'll bet that the worm takes advantage of default installation of MySQL made by PHPTriad or another "easy" way to install under windows mysql along with i.e. php and apache for this case
In linux by default in a lot of distributions being able to connect from network is disabled in mysql, or sets root password as php password, so the risk of that kind of worm (well, for systems that don't have even a basic firewall configured) is pretty low.
But let have an example. Suppose a rock fell over your head. It will kill you, too bad. Now, if that rock fell by natural causes, is called accident, if fell because you pushed it, is suicide, and if someone else fault/intention, can be assesination.
Accidents are mostly out of control, and could happen or not, and who knows when, but what about what you or someone else provokes?
in the article they say its in 10 years or less... but that is only considering phisical variables. But for economic/political variables, the point of not return was reached long enough. When major governments dont follow (fully effective or not) environmentally-aware treaties because "it will harm our economy" (and worse, those governments got reelected) you know that all is lost already. They will start to think about it when 1 billon people die for some climatic problem (the millons that died in africa by famine some years ago didn't count enough, after all) and then will be far too late.
If we can be sure that this will happen and nobody that can really do something about it will do nothing, the point is starting to worry with what will happen next, at least for some countries will be nice to have an end-of-the-world party, switch to a sea-based way of life or do more investigation over hybernation and things like that.
See the list of bundled applications in the average Linux distribution as someone that just installed Windows (and/or don't want to spend a penny more) and that phrase will have a lot of sense.
By the time our universe is close to an end, probably will not be mankind or at least nothing that is similar to what is know, and Slashdot, Prospect magazine, and all ideas discussed around this will be long lost, forgotten and dumped. And worse, science by then could have been advanced a bit to make totally ridiculous what was discussed here.
But before our universe ends, a lot before, maybe this galaxy or the stars nears here will end. But again, this is more than 7.5 billon years in the future, too long to preserve a trace of all involved in this discussion
Maybe earlier, what will end is life in earth or earth itself, be by a giant rock, war, disease, climate change, falling of the moon, whatever. And this, yes, could happen from tomorrow to billons of years in the future.
So, why instead of worrying about "escaping to another universe" try to escape from earth or at least making possible to live outside, be in other planets or even in space stations to avoid risks related to living in planets?
I remember like even dreaming with Arkanoid II bounces a lot of time ago. But not all were negative with gaming influence. Was easy for me to lost direction in the streets (i.e. not remembering to which side is north walking in the street if i turned direction several times) until i had a heavy Wolfenstein training, and more than 10 years after I still finding my way.
I suppose that depending on the game, it could have a beneficial influence in real-life needed abilities. One just need to find the right game or even take that in account when designing one.
Giant Icebug to Collide with Slashdot. Orthographical pieces probably will fall in the comment ocean, causing changes in its pH, leaving users with a cold feeling the day after tomorrow.
so if you go with this kind of clothes to i.e. the beach, you will have another way to be shocked?
I don't know much about electricity (yes, nor about english:). How the electricity is pulled from that er... painting if its over clothes? And how much electricity could generate the area i'm exposed to sun? Some things could need few charge to do its job, but a car with that kind of paintings will not need batteries in dayligth? a notebook?
Or give a webmin like access to the infected machine, something that enables the receiver of the virus to browse the infected machine thru any web browse, upload/download/look/modify/delete what he wants, or even administrative tasks on windows (i.e. registry editing, process management, program installation, etc). And the most important (as some worms/trojans already do something similar) give the IP/port/password/etc in the mail so the one that receives the worm could do whatever it considers bad or good regarding to this.
There is an old saying like "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer", well, this kind of worm will make that a reality.
The concept of local security is usually ignored in the MS side, that someone already using the machine could access/modify things that he should not.
Most Microsoft related advisories/reports are centered in remote vulnerabilities, things that only have a meaning for a network connected machine accessing services or being accessed from outside.
Of course, a local vulnerability could be exploited if some piece of software (i.e. a web app) have an entry point, and what should be running with the low apache priviledges or in a chroot jail becomes a systemwide security problem.
This year they should give that award to Microsoft. 3DRealms are there just because Duke Nukem Forever, a single vaporware product, but Microsoft still making big merits since more than a decade ago (the WinFS in particular have a history that goes back to '94 and maybe earlier) and with most of the "big" announced features.
Also could be fit in the "vaporware" realm some of their claims, i.e. the "safe" feature is strongly attached to any of their products, be windows 95, internet explorer from the firsts versions, office, servers, etc).
Why carry 8 half bricks when with 1 you can do all? Not sure about size limitations, but the ideal gadget would be one that have by itself, can be accessed all the features, AND is not a brick... probably the size could be the same as your PDA or smaller even. Check this example (i made already a comment on it here, im not related with the company, but is a good example) of something that is not a brick and have all those features.
Also, maybe separate gadgets do their own task better, but somewhat i would hate to have a Batman's like belt full of gadgets:)
The Nokia 7710 is a good example of convergence for me, a cell phone with included wide screen PDA, good web browser (with even flash movies support) plus pop/imap mail reader, radio/mp3/video player, webcam, voice recorder, java and even gps, most of the kinds of portable gadgets in one piece.
Maybe in this year the example is taken by more vendors, and that kind of device grow in features and get lower prices.
The Get the Facts campaign from Microsoft. Maybe is not an advance that help humanity, but is a clear demostration to how far into the insanity realm could be reached just playing with numbers.
1) Make the movie 2) Clone for real a cat 3) Clone Schwartzenegger 4) Make Washington to approve the "6th day law" 5) In press release, say "see? even sci-fi movies we produce becomes real" 6)... 7) Profit! 8) "The day after tomorrow" becomes real
Not exactly IT, but even if it happens I will not see the headline this year:
"Asteroid wipes life from Earth"
Of course, headlines about climate change (I can't say that even a "New Ice Age started" headline wont happen) will happen, and probably a lot of them. And i'm pretty sure that even with all of this, the "USA approves Kyoto Protocol" (or something like that) headline will not see the light.
On the IT side, don't think a headline like "Half of Windows users switched to Linux this month" will happen, even if a "New windows widespread worm erased thousands of computers" headline do. Or some related to the end of software patents worldwide,
Seems to be pretty low probabilities (unless you are a lotto player, and then i suggest that you give all your money to me, because, well, in 30 years you will be dead anyway:)
But hitting earth is not the same of hitting anyone, what kind of effect will have if hits i.e. the pacific ocean, or the middle of sahara, or just exactly over the white house? Maybe we just get lucky.
I suppose that someone called Arianne could be sexier than a Mammoth (not checked pictures, but with that name she deserves a calendar at least), and about Satan, well, maybe some women can have a better clue if is sexy or not.
In brief, is what the article proposes, so spammers will not reach you at least thru brute force approachs, that seem to be are very inefficient (and dumb, trying to guess all specifically gmail users when gmail will detect all their messages as spam shows that the sender is not only a spammer, is an idiot too).
But your email worths nothing if noone knows it, and if enough people knows it in a way or another, at the very least some will be infected by worms or be part of botnets that will share your hard-to-guess email address with spammers, and will not matter how complex or simple is your mail address.
Of course, measures can be taken to lower the probability to have spam, i.e. not have your email address in a clear way in web pages or participating in very public mailing lists with your mail without some obfuscation, and things like that, but the way proposed by the article only would work for, well, alternate mails for special uses, i.e. the backing up of data named in the article.
The solution is not have a hard, meaningless email address, that can be forgotten. mispelled, etc by the people that makes sense to have an email address, is to have a good spam filter, at least as good as the gmail one.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless Hubble detects something that really worries politicians (i.a. a meteorit coming really soon, big enough to make trouble and that could be avoidable) it will be around last in their agendas.
He was the head of Microsoft, and now seems to be the hand too. Maybe the analysis showed that he is unsafe too.
I suppose that the real merit is not how to defeat it, but how fix it, maybe the article should have been titled "Fixing the XP SP2 Heap Protection",
In linux by default in a lot of distributions being able to connect from network is disabled in mysql, or sets root password as php password, so the risk of that kind of worm (well, for systems that don't have even a basic firewall configured) is pretty low.
Global climate change can have natural causes.
But let have an example. Suppose a rock fell over your head. It will kill you, too bad. Now, if that rock fell by natural causes, is called accident, if fell because you pushed it, is suicide, and if someone else fault/intention, can be assesination.
Accidents are mostly out of control, and could happen or not, and who knows when, but what about what you or someone else provokes?
If we can be sure that this will happen and nobody that can really do something about it will do nothing, the point is starting to worry with what will happen next, at least for some countries will be nice to have an end-of-the-world party, switch to a sea-based way of life or do more investigation over hybernation and things like that.
See the list of bundled applications in the average Linux distribution as someone that just installed Windows (and/or don't want to spend a penny more) and that phrase will have a lot of sense.
But before our universe ends, a lot before, maybe this galaxy or the stars nears here will end. But again, this is more than 7.5 billon years in the future, too long to preserve a trace of all involved in this discussion
Maybe earlier, what will end is life in earth or earth itself, be by a giant rock, war, disease, climate change, falling of the moon, whatever. And this, yes, could happen from tomorrow to billons of years in the future.
So, why instead of worrying about "escaping to another universe" try to escape from earth or at least making possible to live outside, be in other planets or even in space stations to avoid risks related to living in planets?
News for Nerds. Evilness that matters
I suppose that depending on the game, it could have a beneficial influence in real-life needed abilities. One just need to find the right game or even take that in account when designing one.
Giant Icebug to Collide with Slashdot. Orthographical pieces probably will fall in the comment ocean, causing changes in its pH, leaving users with a cold feeling the day after tomorrow.
I don't know much about electricity (yes, nor about english :). How the electricity is pulled from that er... painting if its over clothes? And how much electricity could generate the area i'm exposed to sun? Some things could need few charge to do its job, but a car with that kind of paintings will not need batteries in dayligth? a notebook?
There is an old saying like "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer", well, this kind of worm will make that a reality.
The concept of local security is usually ignored in the MS side, that someone already using the machine could access/modify things that he should not.
Most Microsoft related advisories/reports are centered in remote vulnerabilities, things that only have a meaning for a network connected machine accessing services or being accessed from outside.
Of course, a local vulnerability could be exploited if some piece of software (i.e. a web app) have an entry point, and what should be running with the low apache priviledges or in a chroot jail becomes a systemwide security problem.
Also could be fit in the "vaporware" realm some of their claims, i.e. the "safe" feature is strongly attached to any of their products, be windows 95, internet explorer from the firsts versions, office, servers, etc).
Or over 10.000. When i saw no price, my though was "better dont ask"... maybe when they produce it by thousands things will be more clear.
Also, maybe separate gadgets do their own task better, but somewhat i would hate to have a Batman's like belt full of gadgets :)
Maybe in this year the example is taken by more vendors, and that kind of device grow in features and get lower prices.
The Get the Facts campaign from Microsoft. Maybe is not an advance that help humanity, but is a clear demostration to how far into the insanity realm could be reached just playing with numbers.
1) Make the movie ...
2) Clone for real a cat
3) Clone Schwartzenegger
4) Make Washington to approve the "6th day law"
5) In press release, say "see? even sci-fi movies we produce becomes real"
6)
7) Profit!
8) "The day after tomorrow" becomes real
"Asteroid wipes life from Earth"
Of course, headlines about climate change (I can't say that even a "New Ice Age started" headline wont happen) will happen, and probably a lot of them. And i'm pretty sure that even with all of this, the "USA approves Kyoto Protocol" (or something like that) headline will not see the light.
On the IT side, don't think a headline like "Half of Windows users switched to Linux this month" will happen, even if a "New windows widespread worm erased thousands of computers" headline do. Or some related to the end of software patents worldwide,
But hitting earth is not the same of hitting anyone, what kind of effect will have if hits i.e. the pacific ocean, or the middle of sahara, or just exactly over the white house? Maybe we just get lucky.
I suppose that someone called Arianne could be sexier than a Mammoth (not checked pictures, but with that name she deserves a calendar at least), and about Satan, well, maybe some women can have a better clue if is sexy or not.
cops will be assigned to watch carefully all table knives because they eventually can be used to kill.
But your email worths nothing if noone knows it, and if enough people knows it in a way or another, at the very least some will be infected by worms or be part of botnets that will share your hard-to-guess email address with spammers, and will not matter how complex or simple is your mail address.
Of course, measures can be taken to lower the probability to have spam, i.e. not have your email address in a clear way in web pages or participating in very public mailing lists with your mail without some obfuscation, and things like that, but the way proposed by the article only would work for, well, alternate mails for special uses, i.e. the backing up of data named in the article.
The solution is not have a hard, meaningless email address, that can be forgotten. mispelled, etc by the people that makes sense to have an email address, is to have a good spam filter, at least as good as the gmail one.