This is just some enterprising politician finding a lame excuse (notice I didn't say reason) to stick their hand out wherever money is passed from one person to another. I swear, whenever you get our your wallet, there's a politician with his hand out. They think it'so natural they take it for granted.
I liked the objecting judge's statement, loosely paraphrased "They're asking for more of your money not because they have a good reason to, but simply because they can."
That's a trojan horse program. A piece of mal-ware that relies on tricking the user into actively running the software, and can only spread (a single step) by deceiving a user.
Another point of view is that a trojan horse tricks a user into giving the program the user's privleges. With this, the program can connect to another user, and again has to attempt to trick that user into giving away their privs. A virus on the other hand, takes privleges from remote systems by force, without user interaction. This not only allows the virus to spread extremely fast, (see Code Red) but also allows infection of a much larger percentage of computers, both of which is because no human interaction is required for the virus to spread.
No system (computer or otherwise) is proof against social engineering. It's pointless to compare susceptibility to social engineering between any two things because every system is vulnerable to it.
This contest isn't about social engineering or id10t's, it's about security of a machine just sitting there with its network ports open. Windows machines get owned in minutes by simply booting them up and plugging into a cable modem. Symantec is trolling for paranoid and uneducated people to buy their product to protect from a threat that essentially does not exist. (I like to call it "puncture-proof tires for a boat") This group is just saying "put up or shut up."
I could see it being possible to write a virus for the mac that would go through email, and rely on noobs to doubleclick the attachment and then click through the OS's "new application first launch" warning. That or a plain trojan horse "rm -Rf ~/*" just the same. The only way to stop something like that on any platform is to prevent users from receiving executable attachments, which places an unnecessary limit on some users.
Anybody can break their computer. Only a poorly secured system can be broken by someone else with no interaction from the owner.
They are probably just bocking the default range of ports for bittorrent, and that's probably how they identified you, by looking at the ports the traffic was on. If you move these ports to a different range, that will get around the block and the detection issues. To my knowledge, ALL bittorrent clients have the option to change the port range, and a few of them come with specific instructions to change the port range to "something creative" before you start using it.
The moral of the story is, if you're going to break the law, you'd better be prepared to face the consequences. Just because some random 22 yr old is unable to "cope" with a $500,000 judgement doesn't mean it should be reduced. He was aware of the risks and chose to proceed. He lost the gamble.
Apple most likely gave him a significant break, doing something similar to what you suggest, cutting down the judgement in exchange for something that Apple valued more than the $490,000 that they would likely never see anyway. Most people would publicly apologize for anything for $490,000, and would say they got quite a generous deal.
This allows Apple to maintain the "deterrant" factor of a large judgement in case of breaking an NDA, but without crucifying the guy that happened to volunteer to be "the example".
Apple did not place this guy in violation of NDA, that situation, and the resulting judgement were caused entirely by himself. Apple offering to wipe out most of the judgement for something as simple as a public apology is both a sensible and appropriate thing to do.
Would you consider Apple guilty of coercion if this guy had say... distributed Windows XP instead, been caught and busted by MS for $500k, and then Apple stepped in and agreed to pay $490k of the fine if the guy apologized? What makes this situation different? Separating the judgement from the settlement is an effective way to put things in perspective.
seems to be to get their people involved in standards committees, and when they smell something that might become a standard, they use this "insider knowledge" and patent it.
Definitely unethical, tho unfortunately probably legal. (good time to say "there ought to be a law...") And ethics seldom play a role in the decisions made by big business. (heh, and then sometimes legality doesn't even work its way in either!)
That'd be a bit like driving your car to the bad end of town, and leaving it there with the engine running and door open. Technically the car isn't free for the taking, (it's still your car) though it'd be easy to argue for entrapment.
One way hashes are good because a very small change in the input produces a drastic change in the digest. A "good" hash function will toggle, on the average, 50% of the bits in the digest when ONE bit in the input is toggled.
Since genes don't reproduce perfectly, and mutation is relatively common, you'd probably be somewhat hard-pressed to find two exactly identical genomes in an adult by random sample of two cells. This means there is no single hash we could store to represent a person - DNA comparison is not an exact match, but rather it's a statistical comparison, and you only have to get so many 9's after the 99.99 to say "it's him". You can't do a statistical analysis once you've hashed your data.
For many wafers, one or two spots on the wafer are reserved not for CPUs, but for testing. That way the entire wafer is tested and bad dies can be identified before packaging. If you look at a CPU wafer, you'll usually see two squares that look different. Those are the testing units on the wafer. They don't do a complete diagnostic, but they are able to weed out the blatantly bad dies early. They'll get tested again after packaging of course.
They're expensive just due to the current manufacturing cost. Imagine the jump in price if every customer was promised no stuck/dead pixels?
Another important consideration is failure after manufacture. With the exception of improper installation by the user, CPUs are rarely damaged in shipment or with "normal use". LCD displays are very vulnerable to physical damage. Temperature changes, physical shock, air pressure changes, they can all cause minor defects in manufacturing or assembly to produce dead pixels at a later date. This is not something that will be discovered until the consumer turns on their laptop for the first time. Now imagine the increase in per-unit cost if the companies have to accept completely assembled laptops back for replacement of their displays?
I could easily see a "no dead pixels" policy adding $100-$200 to the price of a laptop. I'll deal with a dead pixel for that kind of coin. I suppose as a compromise, companies could offer a guarantee of no dead pixels in some enhanced "cosmetic warranty", but almost no one would be willing to pay another $100-200 for it.
Everyone wants cheap, and everyone wants quality. It may be a common wish, but that doesn't make it realistic.
One consumer will complain about the stuck pixel on their new laptop, immediately after complaining about the price of the laptop. You can't have both. As quality approaches "perfect", cost increases exponentially, for any product.
Chips can be tested while still on their wafer, along with the other 70 or so dies. Bad died do not need to continue through the manufacturing process. LCD displays have to be mostly assembled before they can be tested. There's a much larger cost associated per unit for LCDs than for chips, and to reject all LCDs with a single bad pixel would noticeably increase per-unit cost. A CPU with a bad gate will more than likely produce a buggy (if even operational) computer. One stuck pixel doesn't severely impair the use of the computer. Poor comparison.
One has to wonder, such a building in a bag must be fairly large, and if the fabric is impregnated with concrete, that must weigh quite a lot. (1000's of lbs?)
Add water to that and it just gets all that much heavier. This is not your inflatable lake raft, you'd need some serious air power to inflate it, since you'd be lifting a good portion of the (heavy) structure many feet into the air to inflate the building. The illustration I saw showed a guy with a foot pump. You could go at it all day and all night with that kind of pump, and not even be half-way done with a building of any size. Also, by then the building would have started to set.
Companies exist only to enrichen their owners and shareholders. All decisions are based on this one fundamental truth.
If they have the authority to do something, and it becomes in the company's best interest to do it, they will do it, without hesitation.
Translating what they are saying now, it just means "it's not currently in AOL's overall best interest to monitor instant messaging traffic, so right now we're (probably) not doing it. But we can change our minds at any time, without notice."
The basic purpose of trademark is preventing consumer confusion. When one company markets a product, they advertise unique features of their product that allows the consumer to choose their widge machine over the next guy's. They attach claims to their advertisements too, describing things like guarantees and warranty, plus associating the company's good name (reputation) with the product.
Another company selling widget machines might decide that instead of spending money on marketing, they can just make their widget machine look identical to (or very close to) the well-known widget machine. This creates "brand confusion", and pisses off customers when they buy what they thought was brand X but in fact was a visual knock-off of brand X by brand Y. They thought they were getting the promises from brand X, but brand Y is usually a lower quality unit with none of the promises, and the customer also finds they were not in fact buying from the well known and trusted brand, but rather some unheard of company. This is a case of fraud, where you are trying to trick the consumer into buying your product under the pretense that it's a different product.
To illustrate... If you went to the grocery store and bought a bag of Cheetos and got home and started munching on them and they tasted like crap, (or, really, tasted like anything besides Cheetos) then you look closely at the bag (which at a glance looks IDENTICAL to a bag of Cheetos) and see the name is "Cheatos", you too would be pissed. Trademark laws are not only to help companies - they also protect the consumer against fraud.
You're probably right. I recall hearing somewhere a bit of classic advice for that sort... "Do it once, do it big, and never tell anybody." Not that I'm headed down that path, but if I were, that would seem like very sage advice.
FYI, the day a new OS is released, (or iLife actually) Apple sends little bundle kits (in "promotional" packaging, in other words, clear envelope no box) to the authorized apple retailers, to stuff into the new mac boxes. So the day tiger ships, (or a few days later at least) all macs should ship with it. It may not be on the hard drive or on the install DVD, but it WILL be in the box. Apple has done this most recently with iLife 2005, so I would expect them to do it for Tiger as well.
It's been a couple years. I have since changed banks to one that offers a lot more services such as online banking, and doesn't have a list of silly things they charge for. I don't know if the ATMs still have that bug in them, I haven't tried lately. Knocked out two ATMs with it though - first one was a "what just happened?" and second one (after I did the transfer) was just to confirm the bug. I would hope it has since been fixed - there's gotta be some auditing done to an ATM when it gets crashed, to find and fix the problem.
I suspect it wasn't a division by zero, but rather a case where a transaction was done and then a sanity check was made to see that money had moved in the transaction, (like making sure savings was less after a transfer savings to checking) a check which failed.
That method is completely ineffective if you are using a PC that's fallen to a hole in IE that lets in malware (there are many) that tweaks your HOSTS file to point www.paypal.com to some ip address in austria.
This technique is currently used more by adware companies, to redirect google.com and soforth to their banner pages, but the phishers are using it too.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just some enterprising politician finding a lame excuse (notice I didn't say reason) to stick their hand out wherever money is passed from one person to another. I swear, whenever you get our your wallet, there's a politician with his hand out. They think it'so natural they take it for granted.
I liked the objecting judge's statement, loosely paraphrased "They're asking for more of your money not because they have a good reason to, but simply because they can."
It's been done with the computers anyway...
http://ether.asu.edu/video/TiGutz/TiGutz.jpg
Brahm's web page only lists a link for "Old OS X Client" - any idea where the "New" (4.0.1) for OS X is at? Recalled? Not released?
That's a trojan horse program. A piece of mal-ware that relies on tricking the user into actively running the software, and can only spread (a single step) by deceiving a user.
Another point of view is that a trojan horse tricks a user into giving the program the user's privleges. With this, the program can connect to another user, and again has to attempt to trick that user into giving away their privs. A virus on the other hand, takes privleges from remote systems by force, without user interaction. This not only allows the virus to spread extremely fast, (see Code Red) but also allows infection of a much larger percentage of computers, both of which is because no human interaction is required for the virus to spread.
No system (computer or otherwise) is proof against social engineering. It's pointless to compare susceptibility to social engineering between any two things because every system is vulnerable to it.
This contest isn't about social engineering or id10t's, it's about security of a machine just sitting there with its network ports open. Windows machines get owned in minutes by simply booting them up and plugging into a cable modem. Symantec is trolling for paranoid and uneducated people to buy their product to protect from a threat that essentially does not exist. (I like to call it "puncture-proof tires for a boat") This group is just saying "put up or shut up."
I could see it being possible to write a virus for the mac that would go through email, and rely on noobs to doubleclick the attachment and then click through the OS's "new application first launch" warning. That or a plain trojan horse "rm -Rf ~/*" just the same. The only way to stop something like that on any platform is to prevent users from receiving executable attachments, which places an unnecessary limit on some users.
Anybody can break their computer. Only a poorly secured system can be broken by someone else with no interaction from the owner.
They are probably just bocking the default range of ports for bittorrent, and that's probably how they identified you, by looking at the ports the traffic was on. If you move these ports to a different range, that will get around the block and the detection issues. To my knowledge, ALL bittorrent clients have the option to change the port range, and a few of them come with specific instructions to change the port range to "something creative" before you start using it.
The moral of the story is, if you're going to break the law, you'd better be prepared to face the consequences. Just because some random 22 yr old is unable to "cope" with a $500,000 judgement doesn't mean it should be reduced. He was aware of the risks and chose to proceed. He lost the gamble.
Apple most likely gave him a significant break, doing something similar to what you suggest, cutting down the judgement in exchange for something that Apple valued more than the $490,000 that they would likely never see anyway. Most people would publicly apologize for anything for $490,000, and would say they got quite a generous deal.
This allows Apple to maintain the "deterrant" factor of a large judgement in case of breaking an NDA, but without crucifying the guy that happened to volunteer to be "the example".
Apple did not place this guy in violation of NDA, that situation, and the resulting judgement were caused entirely by himself. Apple offering to wipe out most of the judgement for something as simple as a public apology is both a sensible and appropriate thing to do.
Would you consider Apple guilty of coercion if this guy had say... distributed Windows XP instead, been caught and busted by MS for $500k, and then Apple stepped in and agreed to pay $490k of the fine if the guy apologized? What makes this situation different? Separating the judgement from the settlement is an effective way to put things in perspective.
seems to be to get their people involved in standards committees, and when they smell something that might become a standard, they use this "insider knowledge" and patent it.
Definitely unethical, tho unfortunately probably legal. (good time to say "there ought to be a law...") And ethics seldom play a role in the decisions made by big business. (heh, and then sometimes legality doesn't even work its way in either!)
That'd be a bit like driving your car to the bad end of town, and leaving it there with the engine running and door open. Technically the car isn't free for the taking, (it's still your car) though it'd be easy to argue for entrapment.
One way hashes are good because a very small change in the input produces a drastic change in the digest. A "good" hash function will toggle, on the average, 50% of the bits in the digest when ONE bit in the input is toggled.
Since genes don't reproduce perfectly, and mutation is relatively common, you'd probably be somewhat hard-pressed to find two exactly identical genomes in an adult by random sample of two cells. This means there is no single hash we could store to represent a person - DNA comparison is not an exact match, but rather it's a statistical comparison, and you only have to get so many 9's after the 99.99 to say "it's him". You can't do a statistical analysis once you've hashed your data.
For many wafers, one or two spots on the wafer are reserved not for CPUs, but for testing. That way the entire wafer is tested and bad dies can be identified before packaging. If you look at a CPU wafer, you'll usually see two squares that look different. Those are the testing units on the wafer. They don't do a complete diagnostic, but they are able to weed out the blatantly bad dies early. They'll get tested again after packaging of course.
They're expensive just due to the current manufacturing cost. Imagine the jump in price if every customer was promised no stuck/dead pixels?
Another important consideration is failure after manufacture. With the exception of improper installation by the user, CPUs are rarely damaged in shipment or with "normal use". LCD displays are very vulnerable to physical damage. Temperature changes, physical shock, air pressure changes, they can all cause minor defects in manufacturing or assembly to produce dead pixels at a later date. This is not something that will be discovered until the consumer turns on their laptop for the first time. Now imagine the increase in per-unit cost if the companies have to accept completely assembled laptops back for replacement of their displays?
I could easily see a "no dead pixels" policy adding $100-$200 to the price of a laptop. I'll deal with a dead pixel for that kind of coin. I suppose as a compromise, companies could offer a guarantee of no dead pixels in some enhanced "cosmetic warranty", but almost no one would be willing to pay another $100-200 for it.
Everyone wants cheap, and everyone wants quality. It may be a common wish, but that doesn't make it realistic.
One consumer will complain about the stuck pixel on their new laptop, immediately after complaining about the price of the laptop. You can't have both. As quality approaches "perfect", cost increases exponentially, for any product.
Chips can be tested while still on their wafer, along with the other 70 or so dies. Bad died do not need to continue through the manufacturing process. LCD displays have to be mostly assembled before they can be tested. There's a much larger cost associated per unit for LCDs than for chips, and to reject all LCDs with a single bad pixel would noticeably increase per-unit cost. A CPU with a bad gate will more than likely produce a buggy (if even operational) computer. One stuck pixel doesn't severely impair the use of the computer. Poor comparison.
One has to wonder, such a building in a bag must be fairly large, and if the fabric is impregnated with concrete, that must weigh quite a lot. (1000's of lbs?)
Add water to that and it just gets all that much heavier. This is not your inflatable lake raft, you'd need some serious air power to inflate it, since you'd be lifting a good portion of the (heavy) structure many feet into the air to inflate the building. The illustration I saw showed a guy with a foot pump. You could go at it all day and all night with that kind of pump, and not even be half-way done with a building of any size. Also, by then the building would have started to set.
I think they need a reality check.
Doesn't GAIM use AOL user IDs? You have to click through agreements to get an AIM ID don't you?
Companies exist only to enrichen their owners and shareholders. All decisions are based on this one fundamental truth.
If they have the authority to do something, and it becomes in the company's best interest to do it, they will do it, without hesitation.
Translating what they are saying now, it just means "it's not currently in AOL's overall best interest to monitor instant messaging traffic, so right now we're (probably) not doing it. But we can change our minds at any time, without notice."
BitTorrent app retries every 5 minutes, and continues to timeout. (four in a row so far)
I already downloaded the mov and am trying to seed the torrent, but I'm gettinng "problem connecting to tracker - timeout exceeded".
We slashdotted the bittorrent tracker. whoops!
The basic purpose of trademark is preventing consumer confusion. When one company markets a product, they advertise unique features of their product that allows the consumer to choose their widge machine over the next guy's. They attach claims to their advertisements too, describing things like guarantees and warranty, plus associating the company's good name (reputation) with the product.
Another company selling widget machines might decide that instead of spending money on marketing, they can just make their widget machine look identical to (or very close to) the well-known widget machine. This creates "brand confusion", and pisses off customers when they buy what they thought was brand X but in fact was a visual knock-off of brand X by brand Y. They thought they were getting the promises from brand X, but brand Y is usually a lower quality unit with none of the promises, and the customer also finds they were not in fact buying from the well known and trusted brand, but rather some unheard of company. This is a case of fraud, where you are trying to trick the consumer into buying your product under the pretense that it's a different product.
To illustrate... If you went to the grocery store and bought a bag of Cheetos and got home and started munching on them and they tasted like crap, (or, really, tasted like anything besides Cheetos) then you look closely at the bag (which at a glance looks IDENTICAL to a bag of Cheetos) and see the name is "Cheatos", you too would be pissed. Trademark laws are not only to help companies - they also protect the consumer against fraud.
You're probably right. I recall hearing somewhere a bit of classic advice for that sort... "Do it once, do it big, and never tell anybody." Not that I'm headed down that path, but if I were, that would seem like very sage advice.
twits. But then again it's handy that criminals are stupid by default, it makes them easier to catch.
FYI, the day a new OS is released, (or iLife actually) Apple sends little bundle kits (in "promotional" packaging, in other words, clear envelope no box) to the authorized apple retailers, to stuff into the new mac boxes. So the day tiger ships, (or a few days later at least) all macs should ship with it. It may not be on the hard drive or on the install DVD, but it WILL be in the box. Apple has done this most recently with iLife 2005, so I would expect them to do it for Tiger as well.
Save it from your web browser and then play it with mplayer.
It's been a couple years. I have since changed banks to one that offers a lot more services such as online banking, and doesn't have a list of silly things they charge for. I don't know if the ATMs still have that bug in them, I haven't tried lately. Knocked out two ATMs with it though - first one was a "what just happened?" and second one (after I did the transfer) was just to confirm the bug. I would hope it has since been fixed - there's gotta be some auditing done to an ATM when it gets crashed, to find and fix the problem.
I suspect it wasn't a division by zero, but rather a case where a transaction was done and then a sanity check was made to see that money had moved in the transaction, (like making sure savings was less after a transfer savings to checking) a check which failed.
That method is completely ineffective if you are using a PC that's fallen to a hole in IE that lets in malware (there are many) that tweaks your HOSTS file to point www.paypal.com to some ip address in austria.
This technique is currently used more by adware companies, to redirect google.com and soforth to their banner pages, but the phishers are using it too.