Easy solution: Wipe the system and restore it from a backup if you suspect your machine has been physically compromised.
Sorry. Wiping the system will do nothing if the malware is installed in the BIOS. And it will do nothing to protect you from hardware keyloggers. Also, recall the story earlier today about tampering with the flash memory in keyboards.
Hacking laws on the books make it illegal to add, modify, or delete data on another person's computer without their consent. I believe it carries a pretty stiff sentence too, because it is a federal statute.
I don't own a Kindle, so I can't say for sure, but I imagine there's something in the terms of service which grant them the right to do things like this.
You are a bit confused. Liberal mean the ideology of freedom and is opposed to dictatorial regimes like that in "1984", so the book is extremely pro-liberal. The word you should have used for the spectrum is socialist, which in the US sometimes is confused with liberalism because you have no party confessing to socialism and the so-called liberal party is the closest (major) party you have in that direction.
Actually, your terminology is a bit out of date. Indeed, "liberal" used to mean what you say, but it now means leaning toward a socialist agenda. The word you are looking for is "libertarian", which isn't the same thing as "liberal"!
Go into the BIOS setup, you can choose to activate the feature if you paid for the license, or deactivate a previously activated agent. Choosing disable removes the feature completely. it can NEVER come back. TFA is hype. If it is never enabled in the bios NOTHING is installed on windows.
So, if I want to steal a laptop and I'm afraid of this Lojack thing, all I have to do is simply disable it in the BIOS and the laptop will never phone home? Doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of Lojack in the first place?
Why was the parent modded a troll for pointing out those items which the U.S. Constitution says belong in the hands of the Federal government? You may disagree, but I think this is a real abuse of the moderation system. I, for one, would like to hear how the federal government's involvement in, say, setting public education standards has benefited the country. Have we really come to a point where someone is a troll simply for taking the Constitution at face value?
You won't break any copyright laws in America by downloading, only by distributing.
Actually I think American copyright law covers importing, as well. If you download it from a site in Australian to a computer in America you are importing.
Just do like I do, write slowly focusing on getting the characters properly formated and even. Sure it takes some time, but there's really no reason to blame pens for that problem. A decent ball point pen is going to do a better job than a fountain pen ever did. Try getting a consistent 0.7mm line with a ballpoint pen. I don't think I could write anything in the size I prefer with the older technology.
Just like ballpoint pens, fountain pen nibs come it a variety of widths and styles, for finer or wider lines.
With a given nib, the line width might not be as constant as for a ballpoint, but that doesn't mean the penmanship isn't as good. In fact, the most beautiful script writing (and virtually all calligraphy) has lines of varying width, depending on the angle between the stroke and the nib. That's why many of the printed typefaces that are considered the most beautiful in the classical sense (Garamond, etc.), have varying stroke widths with the stress (the line upon which the stroke is thickest) at a slight angle to the vertical. (Contrast this with a more modern serif typeface, like Bodoni, with a vertical stress). It really grew out of emulating beautiful handwriting.
For us users who have never used a fountain pen without it scraping horribly along the page, could someone explain what's so great about them?
The problem is you're writing with a fountain pen as if you're using a ball point. You don't need as much pressure with a fountain pen, or more precisely, you apply the pressure a bit differently, and hold the pen at a slightly different angle. Try writing more as you would with a pencil. It takes a bit of practice, but once you get it right it really is less fatiguing.
Meryl Streep's character in Doubt had it absolutely right. Ball-point pens are to blame. People in my parent's generation who learned to write with fountain pens always seemed to have better handwriting than me. I always struggled with cursive in school: my writing was very slow and messy.
A few years ago I bought my first fountain pen, and now, writing is a pleasure. I still don't write terribly neatly; it seems whatever pen you learn to write with determines your handwriting for life. But I can write in cursive much faster and my penmanship has improved a bit. If you have never tried a fountain pen, I urge you to. I never thought writing cursive could be a pleasure.
There is a huge difference between the two cases. The Facebook case was about a website allowing others to view information voluntarily posted by its members. You aren't required to post any personal information to have a Facebook page. You can even use a fake name.
In this situation, you are required to hand over your driver's license and have a lot of personal information scanned as a requirement for purchasing a drink.
I can't speak for the entire "Slashdot community", but I'm actually more opposed to the laws that push bars into this kind of intrusive behavior in the first place. In many states and provinces, bars owners and managers can be charged criminally (never mind just losing their liquor license) for serving anyone under age even if they present a valid-looking fake id. Absent such laws, the marketplace would probably discourage bars from scanning licenses, as people probably would prefer not to give up such personal information. But because of these laws, it's hard to find bars that don't engage in that practice, and once scanned, they can sell your information in secret and you'd never know which bar did so. So I'd be all in favor of letting the bars put whatever silly requirements they want as a condition of entry, but let's get rid of the draconian laws which encourage bars to collectively implement such measures.
The really sad part is why they will never bust the shops for it here in the USA. Child porn.
Yet another of the many reasons why laws against possession of child pornography do more harm than good.
Note: my emphasis on the word "possession" was deliberate. Creating, or paying for child porn in which real children are abused is reprehensible, and ought to be illegal.
for a hacker to have that information on their computer. So how is it legal for a company to keep all of that information.
No. It is a crime to steal that information in the first place. And in some cases, having that information on your computer might be evidence that you've committed that crime. But that's not what happened here. He's collected information that's already been stolen, and is selling a potentially valuable service in letting people know they've been a victim of a crime so they can take steps to mitigate the damage.
"He plans to offset the cost by charging members of the public for access to his database to check whether their data security has been breached."
How, exactly, does this differ from extortion?
Because he wasn't the one who stole the information in the first place. He's merely offering a service to let you know if you've been the victim of a crime. This is very valuable information, as it could prompt you to cancel credit cards, or change PIN numbers. He had to incur some expenses to acquire this information so why should he give it away for free? The criminals are the ones that stole the information in the first place.
"Hydro" means water. This article is about electricity.
You're quite correct. Unfortunately, in Ontario, it has become the norm to use the term "hydro" to refer to hydroelectricity, since most of our electricity is generated at Niagara Falls. I find this terminology confusing, and I don't use it myself, but it is so deeply ingrained here that people use the term even when speaking to non-Ontarians, and assume they know what it means.
who puts something on Facebook that they _want_ to keep _private_?
People who don't know any better, who are (incidentally) the same people the privacy laws were written to protect.
Laws designed to protect the ignorant can be dangerous things.
If you set up your own personal blog site, do you really want to risk running afoul of various countries' laws because your users' postings are visible to the world. Yes, Facebook is larger and more commercial than your typical blog site, but think carefully about the implications of these types of laws when applied to typical blog sites.
I believe the probability being halved has something to do with the birthday paradox.
Actually, that just applies to secure hash functions (like MD5 and SHA, and the like) and not to block ciphers. If AES-256 can be cracked with only 2^119 calculations, that is a HUGE drop in security.
The reason that hash functions really only give you half as many bits of security as you have bits in the digest is that a hash is considered broken if you can find two messages which have the same hash. Since you can vary both messages, you only have to try 2^(n/2) as many, just like the birthday "paradox".
The article mentions that both IE and Firefox are vulnerable, but doesn't talk about other browsers. It also doesn't say if it affects current versions, or unpatched browsers only. Will security patches for IE and Firefox be coming soon?
I don't understand why cable networks think that we need to pay for their content twice. I mean, I'm already paying for their content via the cable subscription fee so why should I even have ads?
You're not paying twice for the same thing; you're paying for two different things. Cable companies do not pay networks to rebroadcast their signals, so your cable bill does not cover the cost of producing TV shows. What your cable bill pays for is the service they provide: installation and maintenance of the cables that go to your home, etc.
The exception to this rule is premium channels, where a portion of your fee does go to the network, which is why you don't see commercials on the movie channels, for instance, and why they're more expensive than basic cable.
Some Counties in Washington State use All Mail voting.
Ballots mailed out.
Sent back in un-numbered un-signed inner envelope which is inside of a bar coded and signed outer envelope.
You mail it back in, or take it to ballot drop off places.
Its still a secret ballot. As secret as you want it to be. No one knows what you voted unless you let them stand there and watch.
Secrecy is always by choice.
An enforced secret ballot (in the voting booth) hasn't exactly forestalled vote buying, or tomb-stoning.
One of the chief reasons for secret ballot is to prevent voter intimidation, so your boss or union leader doesn't coerce you to vote for their candidate or risk losing your job. If ballot secrecy is optional, what's to stop your boss from insisting that you opt out of secrecy and vote his/her way?
They should make it where the price of a domain doubles for each domain you have registered.
Who are they? There are many companies which provide domain name registration service. If one of them implemented the scheme you describe, business would simply go elsewhere. Why would any registrar want to do this? It would only cost them business.
Does this mean if I have a radio with speakers in a public place I need to pay some kind of fee? I know that businesses which have radios that their customers can hear pay a license fee, but what about people, say, on the beach listening to a boom box? If they don't have to pay a fee, why should people with cell phones or their providers pay a public performance fee?
This should be easy to accomplish in the UK where citizens are required by law to turn over all their encryption keys or face jail time. It would be harder to make it work in the US, where people can use encryption. I suppose the Brits could employ TrueCrypt hidden volumes to keep their stuff private.
What about treating news like a public service? Have it publicly funded and held accountable with a model similar to how the BBC news operates in the UK?
Are you kidding me? The BBC has the authority to collect a license fee from anyone who owns a television, whether or not they even watch the BBC. Are you suggesting the American news services can go around collecting license fees from anyone who owns a computer?
Slashdot Mirror
Easy solution: Wipe the system and restore it from a backup if you suspect your machine has been physically compromised.
Sorry. Wiping the system will do nothing if the malware is installed in the BIOS. And it will do nothing to protect you from hardware keyloggers. Also, recall the story earlier today about tampering with the flash memory in keyboards.
Hacking laws on the books make it illegal to add, modify, or delete data on another person's computer without their consent. I believe it carries a pretty stiff sentence too, because it is a federal statute.
I don't own a Kindle, so I can't say for sure, but I imagine there's something in the terms of service which grant them the right to do things like this.
You are a bit confused. Liberal mean the ideology of freedom and is opposed to dictatorial regimes like that in "1984", so the book is extremely pro-liberal. The word you should have used for the spectrum is socialist, which in the US sometimes is confused with liberalism because you have no party confessing to socialism and the so-called liberal party is the closest (major) party you have in that direction.
Actually, your terminology is a bit out of date. Indeed, "liberal" used to mean what you say, but it now means leaning toward a socialist agenda. The word you are looking for is "libertarian", which isn't the same thing as "liberal"!
Go into the BIOS setup, you can choose to activate the feature if you paid for the license, or deactivate a previously activated agent. Choosing disable removes the feature completely. it can NEVER come back. TFA is hype. If it is never enabled in the bios NOTHING is installed on windows.
So, if I want to steal a laptop and I'm afraid of this Lojack thing, all I have to do is simply disable it in the BIOS and the laptop will never phone home? Doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of Lojack in the first place?
Why was the parent modded a troll for pointing out those items which the U.S. Constitution says belong in the hands of the Federal government? You may disagree, but I think this is a real abuse of the moderation system. I, for one, would like to hear how the federal government's involvement in, say, setting public education standards has benefited the country. Have we really come to a point where someone is a troll simply for taking the Constitution at face value?
You won't break any copyright laws in America by downloading, only by distributing.
Actually I think American copyright law covers importing, as well. If you download it from a site in Australian to a computer in America you are importing.
Just do like I do, write slowly focusing on getting the characters properly formated and even. Sure it takes some time, but there's really no reason to blame pens for that problem. A decent ball point pen is going to do a better job than a fountain pen ever did. Try getting a consistent 0.7mm line with a ballpoint pen. I don't think I could write anything in the size I prefer with the older technology.
Just like ballpoint pens, fountain pen nibs come it a variety of widths and styles, for finer or wider lines.
With a given nib, the line width might not be as constant as for a ballpoint, but that doesn't mean the penmanship isn't as good. In fact, the most beautiful script writing (and virtually all calligraphy) has lines of varying width, depending on the angle between the stroke and the nib. That's why many of the printed typefaces that are considered the most beautiful in the classical sense (Garamond, etc.), have varying stroke widths with the stress (the line upon which the stroke is thickest) at a slight angle to the vertical. (Contrast this with a more modern serif typeface, like Bodoni, with a vertical stress). It really grew out of emulating beautiful handwriting.
For us users who have never used a fountain pen without it scraping horribly along the page, could someone explain what's so great about them?
The problem is you're writing with a fountain pen as if you're using a ball point. You don't need as much pressure with a fountain pen, or more precisely, you apply the pressure a bit differently, and hold the pen at a slightly different angle. Try writing more as you would with a pencil. It takes a bit of practice, but once you get it right it really is less fatiguing.
Meryl Streep's character in Doubt had it absolutely right. Ball-point pens are to blame. People in my parent's generation who learned to write with fountain pens always seemed to have better handwriting than me. I always struggled with cursive in school: my writing was very slow and messy.
A few years ago I bought my first fountain pen, and now, writing is a pleasure. I still don't write terribly neatly; it seems whatever pen you learn to write with determines your handwriting for life. But I can write in cursive much faster and my penmanship has improved a bit. If you have never tried a fountain pen, I urge you to. I never thought writing cursive could be a pleasure.
There is a huge difference between the two cases. The Facebook case was about a website allowing others to view information voluntarily posted by its members. You aren't required to post any personal information to have a Facebook page. You can even use a fake name.
In this situation, you are required to hand over your driver's license and have a lot of personal information scanned as a requirement for purchasing a drink.
I can't speak for the entire "Slashdot community", but I'm actually more opposed to the laws that push bars into this kind of intrusive behavior in the first place. In many states and provinces, bars owners and managers can be charged criminally (never mind just losing their liquor license) for serving anyone under age even if they present a valid-looking fake id. Absent such laws, the marketplace would probably discourage bars from scanning licenses, as people probably would prefer not to give up such personal information. But because of these laws, it's hard to find bars that don't engage in that practice, and once scanned, they can sell your information in secret and you'd never know which bar did so. So I'd be all in favor of letting the bars put whatever silly requirements they want as a condition of entry, but let's get rid of the draconian laws which encourage bars to collectively implement such measures.
The really sad part is why they will never bust the shops for it here in the USA. Child porn.
Yet another of the many reasons why laws against possession of child pornography do more harm than good.
Note: my emphasis on the word "possession" was deliberate. Creating, or paying for child porn in which real children are abused is reprehensible, and ought to be illegal.
for a hacker to have that information on their computer. So how is it legal for a company to keep all of that information.
No. It is a crime to steal that information in the first place. And in some cases, having that information on your computer might be evidence that you've committed that crime. But that's not what happened here. He's collected information that's already been stolen, and is selling a potentially valuable service in letting people know they've been a victim of a crime so they can take steps to mitigate the damage.
"He plans to offset the cost by charging members of the public for access to his database to check whether their data security has been breached."
How, exactly, does this differ from extortion?
Because he wasn't the one who stole the information in the first place. He's merely offering a service to let you know if you've been the victim of a crime. This is very valuable information, as it could prompt you to cancel credit cards, or change PIN numbers. He had to incur some expenses to acquire this information so why should he give it away for free? The criminals are the ones that stole the information in the first place.
You can't allow mule headed stubbornness to defeat the law.
Which law is that precisely? I am unaware of any law which mandates a 14 year jail sentence for failing to pay debts.
"Hydro" means water. This article is about electricity.
You're quite correct. Unfortunately, in Ontario, it has become the norm to use the term "hydro" to refer to hydroelectricity, since most of our electricity is generated at Niagara Falls. I find this terminology confusing, and I don't use it myself, but it is so deeply ingrained here that people use the term even when speaking to non-Ontarians, and assume they know what it means.
who puts something on Facebook that they _want_ to keep _private_?
People who don't know any better, who are (incidentally) the same people the privacy laws were written to protect.
Laws designed to protect the ignorant can be dangerous things. If you set up your own personal blog site, do you really want to risk running afoul of various countries' laws because your users' postings are visible to the world. Yes, Facebook is larger and more commercial than your typical blog site, but think carefully about the implications of these types of laws when applied to typical blog sites.
...are the laser-lines legally binding? What will the local constabulary think of people re-writing the road lanes ad hoc? And does it run line-x?
I can't help but think of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer adopted a section of highway and decided to widen the lanes.
I believe the probability being halved has something to do with the birthday paradox.
Actually, that just applies to secure hash functions (like MD5 and SHA, and the like) and not to block ciphers. If AES-256 can be cracked with only 2^119 calculations, that is a HUGE drop in security.
The reason that hash functions really only give you half as many bits of security as you have bits in the digest is that a hash is considered broken if you can find two messages which have the same hash. Since you can vary both messages, you only have to try 2^(n/2) as many, just like the birthday "paradox".
The article mentions that both IE and Firefox are vulnerable, but doesn't talk about other browsers. It also doesn't say if it affects current versions, or unpatched browsers only. Will security patches for IE and Firefox be coming soon?
I don't understand why cable networks think that we need to pay for their content twice. I mean, I'm already paying for their content via the cable subscription fee so why should I even have ads?
You're not paying twice for the same thing; you're paying for two different things. Cable companies do not pay networks to rebroadcast their signals, so your cable bill does not cover the cost of producing TV shows. What your cable bill pays for is the service they provide: installation and maintenance of the cables that go to your home, etc.
The exception to this rule is premium channels, where a portion of your fee does go to the network, which is why you don't see commercials on the movie channels, for instance, and why they're more expensive than basic cable.
Some Counties in Washington State use All Mail voting.
Ballots mailed out. Sent back in un-numbered un-signed inner envelope which is inside of a bar coded and signed outer envelope. You mail it back in, or take it to ballot drop off places.
Its still a secret ballot. As secret as you want it to be. No one knows what you voted unless you let them stand there and watch.
Secrecy is always by choice.
An enforced secret ballot (in the voting booth) hasn't exactly forestalled vote buying, or tomb-stoning.
One of the chief reasons for secret ballot is to prevent voter intimidation, so your boss or union leader doesn't coerce you to vote for their candidate or risk losing your job. If ballot secrecy is optional, what's to stop your boss from insisting that you opt out of secrecy and vote his/her way?
They should make it where the price of a domain doubles for each domain you have registered.
Who are they? There are many companies which provide domain name registration service. If one of them implemented the scheme you describe, business would simply go elsewhere. Why would any registrar want to do this? It would only cost them business.
Does this mean if I have a radio with speakers in a public place I need to pay some kind of fee? I know that businesses which have radios that their customers can hear pay a license fee, but what about people, say, on the beach listening to a boom box? If they don't have to pay a fee, why should people with cell phones or their providers pay a public performance fee?
This should be easy to accomplish in the UK where citizens are required by law to turn over all their encryption keys or face jail time. It would be harder to make it work in the US, where people can use encryption. I suppose the Brits could employ TrueCrypt hidden volumes to keep their stuff private.
What about treating news like a public service? Have it publicly funded and held accountable with a model similar to how the BBC news operates in the UK?
Are you kidding me? The BBC has the authority to collect a license fee from anyone who owns a television, whether or not they even watch the BBC. Are you suggesting the American news services can go around collecting license fees from anyone who owns a computer?