One popular chipset is still far better than all chipsets. Besides, as several other have mentioned, needing to be root to plant a rootkit is a pretty circular security risk.
It's probably a good thing Intel got bit by this publicly. Maybe they'll be more careful in the future.
I'd like to clarify that by "strain" one means physical strain. A properly routed and supported cable has much less physical strain on it than one that dangles, droops, or bends at odd angles.
Actually, I used to live in Springfield -- that's actually on the line from Chicago to St. Louis. I'm now in Quincy, which is about 115 miles north of downtown St. Louis and 110 west of Springfield. But to St. Louis by rail from here doesn't mean a taking a straight trip. It doesn't even mean going to Springfield then southwest. It means going northeast to Chicago then south by southwest through Springfield to St. Louis. There's a bus Amtrak will use to ferry passengers from Galesburg (or Peoria maybe, I forget) to Bloomington, but if I wanted the bus I could get a private van shuttle for one to 14 people straight to Lambert Field cheaper than the train.
I've used it because I could hop on Chicago Transit Authority's Metra system and get within a quarter mile of my employer's (at the time) office, working on a laptop or reading newspapers and magazines the whole way, or even napping. The whole time was dedicated to the drive if I went by car. Most places don't have a station within such easy walking distance, though.
You must have been riding it with much more luck than I did. The 3 hour and 15-minute schedule for the Chicago to Springfield leg of the trip rarely took less than 5-6 hours.
There are many parts of the US that don't have local buses, and in some the taxis even shut down at night. My town has daytime buses and 24 hour taxi service, but most other towns within 100 miles of us don't.
That would be good enough for most people if it carries their luggage and doesn't get plowed by an impatient SUV driver. Special lanes or something might be called for similar to the carpool lanes some cities have, because we all know that a car going only 35 mph in a 30 mph is waiting to get rear ended. Just imagine going 35 in a 45.
Regardless of the quoted times on the web sites, I used to be a semi-regular rider from Springfield IL to Chicago and back, and can tell you that from Chicago's central station downtown to Springfield seldom takes less than 5 hours by itself. Sure, it's scheduled to. That schedule doesn't mean a damn thing to the train. The 3 hours and 15 minutes quoted on the schedule is utter bullshit, or was about 5 years ago.
Private ownership of the rails themselves might work if access is open to all train operating companies. In the US, it ends to be that if someone owns something they like to pick and choose who else can use it and at what cost. So we could either have a national (or approved monopoly) rail owner that is neutral, or we'd have to spends billions (in the thousands of millions sense) in enforcing regulations about fair access.
Do you realize that your demographics are utter bullshit? "Most" people in the US live in Boston/Baltimore/DC, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco?
303 million people live in the US.
LA county has less than 10 million out of California's 37 million. It's less than 11 million for LA and San Francisco counties together. Orange County is another 3 million. Marin, San Mateo, and Ventura only add about a million and a quarter. So LA, SF, and the immediatly surrounding urban counties add up to less than half of California.
Baltimore has about 300k, and DC has 600k. The whole Baltimore/DC/Northern Virginia census area is 8.2m. Boston has nearly 600k, with the Boston/Worcester/Manchester area having 7.5m. Philly has 4.7 million, or with suburbs about 6.4m. he NYC area (including Newark and Bridgeport) has 22m. The whole corridor is only 44m people.
Chicago as a city is about 2.8m, with an urban metro population of 8.7m and a total metro population of about 10 million. Illinois has 13 million people, so a little over half are "urban metro Chicago". I doubt the "rural metro" areas are getting high-speed rail to their farms and factories.
Let's add that up. 14 million in LA/SF plus 44m in BosWashNY plus 9 million in Chicago comes to 67 million. 303m minus 67m is 236m. 236 million of the US population in fact live in other major cities (Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle, St. Louis, Kansas City, Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinatti, Atlana, Miami, Portland, Memphis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Phoenix, etc.) or in smaller cities and towns. I'd call that number "most".
Amen! It's the network. Cell phone companies seem to understand this. Now if only rail supporters did, rather than thinking that putting a single 150 mph rail from NYC to LA is going to help with congested roads in Atlanta.
It's cheaper for one person in a car to get from here to the regional Amtrak hub than to drive. It's cheaper for two in a car to drive than to buy two tickets. However, there's only one long rail from here to that hub and you have to go there to get anywhere else from here, even if you're actually going i the opposite direction. The rail network is not interconnected enough to be feasible. It needs more rail and more trains operated by more companies if it is going to be competitive with cars.
How about federally-operated rails with privately-operated, competing railroad companies? You know, like the trucking companies and airlines operate as independent entities unlike Amtrak, but actually have a huge network of infrastructure that can get you places more directly than Amtrak's limited rail system? Build enough rail to enough places, and license more than one company to operate trains on them.
Who cares about world-class speed? How about something that actually gets me from where I live to the cities I want to get to without going through Chicago, which is six hours away even by car? I live within minutes of an Interstate that can get me onto a vast 70-mph network. I live on a spur of rail that only goes one direction from here. The number of connections on a network makes as much or more difference than the speed of any individual link.
A few blocks? For high-speed rail? High-speed rail is for between cities. Local light and medium duty rail won't get any faster.
Right now, Amtrak has a station in my city, but to get to St. Louis (two hours by car) I have two options by rail. I can go to Chicago (six hours by car, probably 10 by rail) then to St. Louis (nine hours by rail). Alternatively, I can get off the train and onto a bus for over an hour, then back onto a train to continue the trip.
If Amtrak had a rail line from where I live to St. Louis, I could usually live with three or four hours of regular-speed rail to get there cheaply and efficiently. I doubt I'll have high-speed or even regular-speed rail from here, though. They'll put in high-speed rail to some subset of the places already served, and people outside those markets will be stuck with what they have now.
I proposed on the web site the administration set up for proposals a sweeping growth of rail. I think that in order to convince people not to drive, we're going to need the traisn to at least go everywhere the Interstate highways do. Even better would be to ferry the cars along those rails so you can drive as needed once you reach your destination. Paying for the train then having to rent a car because your final destination is too far from the stations is silly, and that's one reason many people just drive the whole way.
The method of outing -- the alleged fake account in the roommate's name, the ToS violations for using GMail and Yahoo Mail, probably some campus computer network ToS violations, and continuing to use the systems after knowingly violating those terms -- may be interpreted as crimes in some jurisdictions. The roommate may also be claiming harassment, and has claimed the guy remotely crashes the alleged victim's computer.
Personally, I think it's all BS from a pissed-off roommate from my reading, but the cop trusts the kid. The kid has given him good info in the past on other investigations, apparently. So the officer considers him a good witness. A good witness claiming a crime has been committed is usually enough to investigate whether one has.
What really scares me more than anything in the whole affidavit is that the detective makes it clear to the judge that he thinks it's relevant that the suspect has been a suspect in some other case but was never found guilty of that. This "known bad actor" mentality for people never convicted of anything is a very scary phenomenon.
Someone would have to know his hostname and deliberately use his to implicate him rather than themselves. I'd say there's probable cause to see whether the computers were involved. Remember, a search warrant isn't evidence of guilt. It's just a piece of paper that says a judge approved a search for evidence of guilt because there's a reasonable chance something will be found.
The people who consider using an "uncommon" OS, whatever standard they are using for "uncommon", since iPhoneOS and Leopard aren't as "common" as XP, either, an issue of any kind other than user preference are idiots. We're agreed there, I think.
You assume printing is a rote task that anyone can do. I assure you your inkjet printer does not qualify you as a printing agency. There's skill involved in marking up data and styling it. Those are related to designing the graphics and the layout, but it isn't graphic design or layout. Some people do both, but that's because they have skills in both sets.
In this case, I'd call your HTML/CSS/JavaScript guy a "web site integrator", "web content specialist", "web site administrator", or something similar.
Calling it programming (except developing something one's self of some complexity in the JavaScript portion) is giving them credit for the wrong part. Calling them designers (unless they actually do a big part of the design) is the same.
Perhaps "markup specialist" is accurate, although lay people wouldn't have any idea what that is. They often don't really know what a DBA or programmer is, either, though.
So you read the affidavit and think that the hostnames recorded by the DHCP (or other IP-assigning method) server when assigning the IP to the computers used to commit acts being the same hostnames as the ones this guy uses on his laptops isn't probably cause to think his two laptops were involved in those acts? Is that not enough to ask that the evidence be kept unchanged for the expert to look at it?
Sure, this started as a slander/harassment issue. Then the roommate also accused the suspect of changing people's grades, committing massive copyright violations, theft of computers, and damage to the alleged victim's computer. The only way to investigate all of that is to identify the computers that may have been involved, then take them in for forensics. I'd say probable cause was reached if you can really trust the witness.
The sworn affidavit given by the detective seeking the warrant gives as evidence the MAC addresses of the computers connected to the network ports through which the acts in question were committed.
If the acts are criminal, then matching the MAC addresses used to commit them to the ones in the suspect's computer are pretty good evidence (although not flawless, due to MAC cloning and the possibility that someone else used his system) that the owner of the computer may have been involved.
I think the weak part of the warrant application is the assertion that crimes were committed by the roommate with whom the suspect was quarreling. The identification of the property to search and seize for evidence is pretty specific within the actual affidavit. The detective trusts the person informing him of the acts of the suspect, so in the officer's mind there is probable cause.
I'm not real sure what the issue here is. The EFF should put out an official letter of position on this, because from what I can tell they're arguing that circumstantial evidence supporting eyewitness accounts of crimes being committed are not grounds for a warrant.
This is perhaps because several criminal allegations were made against the guy by the guy he outed.
It's also perhaps because they think that by continuing to access the computers and networks after violating the terms of service but without being told he was not allowed, that he was accessing them without permission. I'm dubious about this, but it has been argued before (unsuccessfully, IIRC) elsewhere.
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One popular chipset is still far better than all chipsets. Besides, as several other have mentioned, needing to be root to plant a rootkit is a pretty circular security risk.
It's probably a good thing Intel got bit by this publicly. Maybe they'll be more careful in the future.
I'd like to clarify that by "strain" one means physical strain. A properly routed and supported cable has much less physical strain on it than one that dangles, droops, or bends at odd angles.
That's the heart of the problem. They've used a star topology where the potential riders really need a mesh.
Actually, I used to live in Springfield -- that's actually on the line from Chicago to St. Louis. I'm now in Quincy, which is about 115 miles north of downtown St. Louis and 110 west of Springfield. But to St. Louis by rail from here doesn't mean a taking a straight trip. It doesn't even mean going to Springfield then southwest. It means going northeast to Chicago then south by southwest through Springfield to St. Louis. There's a bus Amtrak will use to ferry passengers from Galesburg (or Peoria maybe, I forget) to Bloomington, but if I wanted the bus I could get a private van shuttle for one to 14 people straight to Lambert Field cheaper than the train.
I've used it because I could hop on Chicago Transit Authority's Metra system and get within a quarter mile of my employer's (at the time) office, working on a laptop or reading newspapers and magazines the whole way, or even napping. The whole time was dedicated to the drive if I went by car. Most places don't have a station within such easy walking distance, though.
You must have been riding it with much more luck than I did. The 3 hour and 15-minute schedule for the Chicago to Springfield leg of the trip rarely took less than 5-6 hours.
There are many parts of the US that don't have local buses, and in some the taxis even shut down at night. My town has daytime buses and 24 hour taxi service, but most other towns within 100 miles of us don't.
That would be good enough for most people if it carries their luggage and doesn't get plowed by an impatient SUV driver. Special lanes or something might be called for similar to the carpool lanes some cities have, because we all know that a car going only 35 mph in a 30 mph is waiting to get rear ended. Just imagine going 35 in a 45.
Regardless of the quoted times on the web sites, I used to be a semi-regular rider from Springfield IL to Chicago and back, and can tell you that from Chicago's central station downtown to Springfield seldom takes less than 5 hours by itself. Sure, it's scheduled to. That schedule doesn't mean a damn thing to the train. The 3 hours and 15 minutes quoted on the schedule is utter bullshit, or was about 5 years ago.
Private ownership of the rails themselves might work if access is open to all train operating companies. In the US, it ends to be that if someone owns something they like to pick and choose who else can use it and at what cost. So we could either have a national (or approved monopoly) rail owner that is neutral, or we'd have to spends billions (in the thousands of millions sense) in enforcing regulations about fair access.
Do you realize that your demographics are utter bullshit? "Most" people in the US live in Boston/Baltimore/DC, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco?
303 million people live in the US.
LA county has less than 10 million out of California's 37 million. It's less than 11 million for LA and San Francisco counties together. Orange County is another 3 million. Marin, San Mateo, and Ventura only add about a million and a quarter. So LA, SF, and the immediatly surrounding urban counties add up to less than half of California.
Baltimore has about 300k, and DC has 600k. The whole Baltimore/DC/Northern Virginia census area is 8.2m. Boston has nearly 600k, with the Boston/Worcester/Manchester area having 7.5m. Philly has 4.7 million, or with suburbs about 6.4m. he NYC area (including Newark and Bridgeport) has 22m. The whole corridor is only 44m people.
Chicago as a city is about 2.8m, with an urban metro population of 8.7m and a total metro population of about 10 million. Illinois has 13 million people, so a little over half are "urban metro Chicago". I doubt the "rural metro" areas are getting high-speed rail to their farms and factories.
Let's add that up. 14 million in LA/SF plus 44m in BosWashNY plus 9 million in Chicago comes to 67 million. 303m minus 67m is 236m. 236 million of the US population in fact live in other major cities (Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle, St. Louis, Kansas City, Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinatti, Atlana, Miami, Portland, Memphis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Phoenix, etc.) or in smaller cities and towns. I'd call that number "most".
Amen! It's the network. Cell phone companies seem to understand this. Now if only rail supporters did, rather than thinking that putting a single 150 mph rail from NYC to LA is going to help with congested roads in Atlanta.
It's cheaper for one person in a car to get from here to the regional Amtrak hub than to drive. It's cheaper for two in a car to drive than to buy two tickets. However, there's only one long rail from here to that hub and you have to go there to get anywhere else from here, even if you're actually going i the opposite direction. The rail network is not interconnected enough to be feasible. It needs more rail and more trains operated by more companies if it is going to be competitive with cars.
How about federally-operated rails with privately-operated, competing railroad companies? You know, like the trucking companies and airlines operate as independent entities unlike Amtrak, but actually have a huge network of infrastructure that can get you places more directly than Amtrak's limited rail system? Build enough rail to enough places, and license more than one company to operate trains on them.
Who cares about world-class speed? How about something that actually gets me from where I live to the cities I want to get to without going through Chicago, which is six hours away even by car? I live within minutes of an Interstate that can get me onto a vast 70-mph network. I live on a spur of rail that only goes one direction from here. The number of connections on a network makes as much or more difference than the speed of any individual link.
A few blocks? For high-speed rail? High-speed rail is for between cities. Local light and medium duty rail won't get any faster.
Right now, Amtrak has a station in my city, but to get to St. Louis (two hours by car) I have two options by rail. I can go to Chicago (six hours by car, probably 10 by rail) then to St. Louis (nine hours by rail). Alternatively, I can get off the train and onto a bus for over an hour, then back onto a train to continue the trip.
If Amtrak had a rail line from where I live to St. Louis, I could usually live with three or four hours of regular-speed rail to get there cheaply and efficiently. I doubt I'll have high-speed or even regular-speed rail from here, though. They'll put in high-speed rail to some subset of the places already served, and people outside those markets will be stuck with what they have now.
I proposed on the web site the administration set up for proposals a sweeping growth of rail. I think that in order to convince people not to drive, we're going to need the traisn to at least go everywhere the Interstate highways do. Even better would be to ferry the cars along those rails so you can drive as needed once you reach your destination. Paying for the train then having to rent a car because your final destination is too far from the stations is silly, and that's one reason many people just drive the whole way.
The method of outing -- the alleged fake account in the roommate's name, the ToS violations for using GMail and Yahoo Mail, probably some campus computer network ToS violations, and continuing to use the systems after knowingly violating those terms -- may be interpreted as crimes in some jurisdictions. The roommate may also be claiming harassment, and has claimed the guy remotely crashes the alleged victim's computer.
Personally, I think it's all BS from a pissed-off roommate from my reading, but the cop trusts the kid. The kid has given him good info in the past on other investigations, apparently. So the officer considers him a good witness. A good witness claiming a crime has been committed is usually enough to investigate whether one has.
What really scares me more than anything in the whole affidavit is that the detective makes it clear to the judge that he thinks it's relevant that the suspect has been a suspect in some other case but was never found guilty of that. This "known bad actor" mentality for people never convicted of anything is a very scary phenomenon.
Someone would have to know his hostname and deliberately use his to implicate him rather than themselves. I'd say there's probable cause to see whether the computers were involved. Remember, a search warrant isn't evidence of guilt. It's just a piece of paper that says a judge approved a search for evidence of guilt because there's a reasonable chance something will be found.
The people who consider using an "uncommon" OS, whatever standard they are using for "uncommon", since iPhoneOS and Leopard aren't as "common" as XP, either, an issue of any kind other than user preference are idiots. We're agreed there, I think.
You assume printing is a rote task that anyone can do. I assure you your inkjet printer does not qualify you as a printing agency. There's skill involved in marking up data and styling it. Those are related to designing the graphics and the layout, but it isn't graphic design or layout. Some people do both, but that's because they have skills in both sets.
In this case, I'd call your HTML/CSS/JavaScript guy a "web site integrator", "web content specialist", "web site administrator", or something similar.
Calling it programming (except developing something one's self of some complexity in the JavaScript portion) is giving them credit for the wrong part. Calling them designers (unless they actually do a big part of the design) is the same.
Perhaps "markup specialist" is accurate, although lay people wouldn't have any idea what that is. They often don't really know what a DBA or programmer is, either, though.
So you read the affidavit and think that the hostnames recorded by the DHCP (or other IP-assigning method) server when assigning the IP to the computers used to commit acts being the same hostnames as the ones this guy uses on his laptops isn't probably cause to think his two laptops were involved in those acts? Is that not enough to ask that the evidence be kept unchanged for the expert to look at it?
Sure, this started as a slander/harassment issue. Then the roommate also accused the suspect of changing people's grades, committing massive copyright violations, theft of computers, and damage to the alleged victim's computer. The only way to investigate all of that is to identify the computers that may have been involved, then take them in for forensics. I'd say probable cause was reached if you can really trust the witness.
The sworn affidavit given by the detective seeking the warrant gives as evidence the MAC addresses of the computers connected to the network ports through which the acts in question were committed.
If the acts are criminal, then matching the MAC addresses used to commit them to the ones in the suspect's computer are pretty good evidence (although not flawless, due to MAC cloning and the possibility that someone else used his system) that the owner of the computer may have been involved.
I think the weak part of the warrant application is the assertion that crimes were committed by the roommate with whom the suspect was quarreling. The identification of the property to search and seize for evidence is pretty specific within the actual affidavit. The detective trusts the person informing him of the acts of the suspect, so in the officer's mind there is probable cause.
I'm not real sure what the issue here is. The EFF should put out an official letter of position on this, because from what I can tell they're arguing that circumstantial evidence supporting eyewitness accounts of crimes being committed are not grounds for a warrant.
This is perhaps because several criminal allegations were made against the guy by the guy he outed.
It's also perhaps because they think that by continuing to access the computers and networks after violating the terms of service but without being told he was not allowed, that he was accessing them without permission. I'm dubious about this, but it has been argued before (unsuccessfully, IIRC) elsewhere.
The warrant application specifically asked for the assistance of a qualified expert. Read.
Security is the title of this one.