"1) start spammer freindly chat room 2) wait for membership to build trust 3) "Accidentally" post membership on slashdot. 4) submit private e-mail addresses to other spammers. 5) repeat. no rest for the wicked."
1) Write closed-source spamming software with backdoors 2) Publish on download.com 3) Mail some tagged personal documents out to the FBI as part of each spam run. 4) Repeat
"You can't bolster an already misinformed argument by simply making up statistics on the spot like that."
If you mean by "misinformed" something other than "having read much of the technical literature available", you're wrong. I have.
As to the "making up statistics", it was admittedly hasty to post from memory rather than looking it up. Actual tests show 0.3% false positive in "controlled" (i.e. setup) situations, and 10% false positive in real situations. So, twice as bad as in the post you responded to.
Do you want to continue haggling statistics all night? Even if some hypothetical system were 99.999% accurate, you'd still have a queue of terrorists at each airport terminal.
Do you have a well-lit, correctly exposed photograph of Osama Bin-Laden, taken from less than 2 meters away in controlled conditions? How about his aides?
"I think you have quite a misunderstanding of the difference between "false negative" (which is what the 61% was referring to) and "false positive" (which was not mentioned)."
Not misunderstanding at all, just assuming them the same, which is a different crime altogether.
It's probably more like 5% false positive, if it's like any of the other "give us money for antiterrorism" gravy-train projects, which means you only have 500 people per day to strip-search and delay their flight.
61% accuracy. So, use it at an airport with 10,000 people per day passing through, you now have 3900 people falsely accused of terrorism (or other such heinous crime).
"An important feature is the VB scripting in Excel, at least for me, and being able to issue commands to other applications from within these scripts."
Who would contemplate a spreadsheet whose [autoexecutable] macro language doesn't include a function to restart the computer without saving data?
"However, I do question the ability of RSS to scale. Think of a scenario where millions of users need to poll hundreds of thousands of sources to check for updates on the feeds."
"Microsoft already limits access to msn.com and Hotmail to a handful of browsers. And they have every right to do so, as they own the servers and bandwidth. What's your point?"
"So the crazy idea is: why not create a special Linux distro as a gift for the journalist community?"
Problem: Not enough journalists appreciate GNU Solution: Create a new distribution
Isn't that perhaps a rather "tecchie" approach to the problem, maybe even demonstrating why the journalists don't get it? There's a distinction between direct involvement (handing out TheOpenCD.org, installing dual-boot Mandrake on journalist friends' computers, writing articles in your own magazines) and indirect involvement (going away to write code that probably nobody will ever see)
Wouldn't that be a good PR move? Not if the journalist hasn't tried it, and certainly not if they have to install it themselves, and write an article bitching about how hard it is to partition disks.
Preinstalled [by somebody else] is definitely the way to go for demonstrations. Bootable CDs won't be as much use, because they don't get used for long enough for people to become familiar with, they're slow, and you can't use them like your own machine (saving files, etc). But if it were the way to go, Knoppix, BootableBusinessCard, and DemoLinux already exist, and as they say in Free Software, help an existing project rather than start a new one.
Re:How about this Idea.
on
MIT Roofnet
·
· Score: 1
Could a wireless mesh network such as this, then allow voice communication?
"Let private enterprise underwrite it, and all you need is commercial interest. That's a MUCH easier beast to summon."
After all, we all know how safe the trains are now that commercial interests are running it. Why not apply the same safety and reliability standards to space travel?
For those without experience of UK trains, imagine your "First Power" company running space travel. Of Microsoft, another example of how commerical interests always put safety before profit.
"I took my site down, but I thought it was only supposed to be a one day protest, so I brought it back up."
That was the idea. Some people are leaving the sites closed until 1st september, when the EU parliament debate will be held; some people took sites down early to inform people, but the main idea of the protest was to have just that wednesday off.
"Anytime there's an article that whines about deep linking, a few dozen people post replies saying that the company could use the referer header to block all such requests. Now that a company is actually doing it, it's suddenly a bad idea."
Yeah, nobody would want to visit the AOL website except through the front page. It's not as if there are lots of different sections of AOL that people might want to visit independantly, right?
41 million people hate telemarketing calls enough to put themselves on a list, out of only 300 million people in the U.S. (apparently 94% of those have telephones, but presumably that counts telephones shared between a family?)
It would be interesting to see how many people signed up for a please do call list... I suspect less than this 1.4%!
(*) Close Slashdot ( ) Close Wired news ( ) Close the BBC ( ) Close Microsoft.com / MSDN (using a worm?) ( ) Close gnu.org ( ) Send CowboyNeal to the Brussels demonstration
b) Non-technical users don't have to make the choice of window manager. KDE is selected by default, and they'd have to look hard to even realise they could change it.
c) Non-technical users shouldn't have to install an operating system anyway, it's just as crappily annoying and difficult whether it's Windows or Suse. That's why home computers come pre-installed with your choice of OS, and corporate computers have it installed by the tech support department. Need to change it? Find somebody who's done it before to sit with you.
Slashdot Mirror
"1) start spammer freindly chat room
2) wait for membership to build trust
3) "Accidentally" post membership on slashdot.
4) submit private e-mail addresses to other spammers.
5) repeat. no rest for the wicked."
1) Write closed-source spamming software with backdoors
2) Publish on download.com
3) Mail some tagged personal documents out to the
FBI as part of each spam run.
4) Repeat
"I wonder if they are receiving "unsolicited" email."
I think it counts as single opt-in.
Who's going to admit they've not got Bash, and post the "Control Panel -> Scheduled tasks -> Every 1 minute -> wget --recursive..." recipe?
"You can't bolster an already misinformed argument by simply making up statistics on the spot like that."
If you mean by "misinformed" something other than "having read much of the technical literature available", you're wrong. I have.
As to the "making up statistics", it was admittedly hasty to post from memory rather than looking it up. Actual tests show 0.3% false positive in "controlled" (i.e. setup) situations, and 10% false positive in real situations. So, twice as bad as in the post you responded to.
Do you want to continue haggling statistics all night? Even if some hypothetical system were 99.999% accurate, you'd still have a queue of terrorists at each airport terminal.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21916.html
Do you have a well-lit, correctly exposed photograph of Osama Bin-Laden, taken from less than 2 meters away in controlled conditions? How about his aides?
"I think you have quite a misunderstanding of the difference between "false negative" (which is what the 61% was referring to) and "false positive" (which was not mentioned)."
Not misunderstanding at all, just assuming them the same, which is a different crime altogether.
It's probably more like 5% false positive, if it's like any of the other "give us money for antiterrorism" gravy-train projects, which means you only have 500 people per day to strip-search and delay their flight.
61% accuracy. So, use it at an airport with 10,000 people per day passing through, you now have 3900 people falsely accused of terrorism (or other such heinous crime).
Fancy being the one to interview them all?
"This feature is off by default. This is a 100% complete non-issue."
CSS encryption on DVDs is off by default. Was arresting Johanson a non-issue too?
"An important feature is the VB scripting in Excel, at least for me, and being able to issue commands to other applications from within these scripts."
Who would contemplate a spreadsheet whose [autoexecutable] macro language doesn't include a function to restart the computer without saving data?
"You'd have to cripple the entire operating system while the document is open."
l ladium.html
Did you not read that part of the plan?
http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/pa
"It's perfectly reasonable for corporate customers to want to control access to their documents in the workplace"
Howabout they just use a filesystem with access-control features, as they've been doing for decades anyway [novell netware etc.]
And if they want to send documents outside their own organisation, they can belguim off if they expect to do so in a Microsoft file format.
The ZDNet article on the protest says that "More than 600 Web sites are to take part" in the website blackout.
Another of their articles mentions "hundreds of websites"
Is it just my imagination, or is "more than 600" a slightly crap phrase to describe 2953 websites?
"The Blaster worm probably lit a fire under Microsoft to rethink their security practices. At least I hope that's the case."
Just like CodeRed did?
"However, I do question the ability of RSS to scale. Think of a scenario where millions of users need to poll hundreds of thousands of sources to check for updates on the feeds."
Technical answer? Distributed blogging
"Microsoft already limits access to msn.com and Hotmail to a handful of browsers. And they have every right to do so, as they own the servers and bandwidth. What's your point?"
Microsoft.com isn't part of the World Wide Web?
"So the crazy idea is: why not create a special Linux distro as a gift for the journalist community?"
Problem: Not enough journalists appreciate GNU
Solution: Create a new distribution
Isn't that perhaps a rather "tecchie" approach to the problem, maybe even demonstrating why the journalists don't get it? There's a distinction between direct involvement (handing out TheOpenCD.org, installing dual-boot Mandrake on journalist friends' computers, writing articles in your own magazines) and indirect involvement (going away to write code that probably nobody will ever see)
Wouldn't that be a good PR move?
Not if the journalist hasn't tried it, and certainly not if they have to install it themselves, and write an article bitching about how hard it is to partition disks.
Preinstalled [by somebody else] is definitely the way to go for demonstrations. Bootable CDs won't be as much use, because they don't get used for long enough for people to become familiar with, they're slow, and you can't use them like your own machine (saving files, etc). But if it were the way to go, Knoppix, BootableBusinessCard, and DemoLinux already exist, and as they say in Free Software, help an existing project rather than start a new one.
Could a wireless mesh network such as this, then allow voice communication?
Try it
"Let private enterprise underwrite it, and all you need is commercial interest. That's a MUCH easier beast to summon."
After all, we all know how safe the trains are now that commercial interests are running it. Why not apply the same safety and reliability standards to space travel?
For those without experience of UK trains, imagine your "First Power" company running space travel. Of Microsoft, another example of how commerical interests always put safety before profit.
"I took my site down, but I thought it was only supposed to be a one day protest, so I brought it back up."
That was the idea. Some people are leaving the sites closed until 1st september, when the EU parliament debate will be held; some people took sites down early to inform people, but the main idea of the protest was to have just that wednesday off.
"Anytime there's an article that whines about deep linking, a few dozen people post replies saying that the company could use the referer header to block all such requests. Now that a company is actually doing it, it's suddenly a bad idea."
Yeah, nobody would want to visit the AOL website except through the front page. It's not as if there are lots of different sections of AOL that people might want to visit independantly, right?
41 million people hate telemarketing calls enough to put themselves on a list, out of only
300 million people in the U.S. (apparently 94% of those have telephones, but presumably that counts telephones shared between a family?)
It would be interesting to see how many people signed up for a please do call list... I suspect less than this 1.4%!
(*) Close Slashdot
( ) Close Wired news
( ) Close the BBC
( ) Close Microsoft.com / MSDN (using a worm?)
( ) Close gnu.org
( ) Send CowboyNeal to the Brussels demonstration
"Unfortunately, there is no verification on that site! You can add anything you want."
Good point. It's a wiki, so hopefully the moderators' efforts will outnumber those of the spammers for now...
The list was at its most important on Wednesday though, when it was accurate. (it was timed to coincide with a trip to Brussels)
The list of websites that've shut down is here (two and a half thousand sites so far)
My site is shut-down.
Others include KDE, Gimp, gnu-darwin, GNU-savannah, and most of the French and German linux sites.
"rank-and-file users don't want to learn a new app; why should they?"
For Freedom?
a) we do have a standard GUI, dammit.
b) Non-technical users don't have to make the choice of window manager. KDE is selected by default, and they'd have to look hard to even realise they could change it.
c) Non-technical users shouldn't have to install an operating system anyway, it's just as crappily annoying and difficult whether it's Windows or Suse. That's why home computers come pre-installed with your choice of OS, and corporate computers have it installed by the tech support department. Need to change it? Find somebody who's done it before to sit with you.