The Department of Homeland Security is already doing this in the US, except they send all the alerts to ISP's instead of users. Each week I get several e-mails alerting me of IP addresses on our cable networks that have been spreading viruses or worms. It's helpful to keep viruses off of my networks, but it gets to be a pain after a while.
For what it's worth, I think the UK e-mailing individual users about it won't do much to stop the problem. Chances are, if the user knows enough to remove the virus after they read the e-mail, they probably already knew enough to keep the virus off in the first place. Your casual home user that doesn't know much about computers is just going to delete the e-mail without thinking twice about it.
It's going to suck when slashdot.org ends up on the US's "known terrorist" list for sending all this traffic to whitehouse.gov to take it down.
Ownz0red!
True, but if we help him pay the $12k that he owes, that leaves him money to keep fighting the RIAA. I donated $15 and included a fairly lengthy note encouraging him to take action against the RIAA with the support of his fellow geeks. There were 1300+ slashdot users on his site earlier, so that means that there are a lot of people out there who care and who will be willing to do something about this.
Right before the site got/.'d he added a paypal donation thing to the top. For anyone that can't see the page anymore, the paypal address is jordaj@rpi.edu. The last time I saw the page there were 1200+ users online. If we all donate $10 that covers what he owes and he can use anything leftover to fight back against the RIAA. We all need to take some action against the RIAA before this gets even worse. Where this guy has already been in court with the RIAA and his lawyers are familiar with them, we could get him to take some kind of action against them with all of us supporting. I dunno, I'm not familiar with the legal process or how our laws work, but I know taking $12,000 from a poor college student for downloading a few mp3s is not justified.
This is exactly what I mean by misunderstanding the project. It's not used to JUST play Warcraft 3. It was created a long (back in warcraft days) time ago to let people run their own private servers. With the release of the War3 beta, a few naughty people shared it on the internet and viola, people started playing it on bnetd servers.
This doesn't make the bnetd project illegal, it makes what the War3 players are doing illegal. Bnetd doesn't advocate the use of illegal software, they just supply a great open source server for people to play Blizzard games on.
I think its really funny when people try to defend their immoral actions. Face it, War3 is being pirated, illegally. All of us are guilty; trying to brush off the guilt with pathetic responses like: "Buying it is too expensive" and "If I can do it, its ok" are crap. The only thing you do is just admit your own guiltiness, quit, an/or buy the game
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the purpose of the bnetd project. It is used to run a bnet server on your own box so that you and your friends can play on a private server. The project doesn't advocate the use of pirating software, that's just what some of the users do. A lot of people that actually bought the game use bnetd on their networks to play their friends.
Hope this clears up some confusion about the project.
The only way the people of the bnetd project will make any money down the road is when a large gaming company hires them to write multiplayer server software. Corporate types are always looking at the money side of things and never stop to think that, hey, maybe these guys really DO just want to do something for -free-!
The proposal, he argued, could lead to the fragmentation of Windows and "would set the computer industry back almost 20 years."
Why doesn't AMD realize that they have a huge following in the linux world and that a microsoft breakup wouldn't hurt them that much? Even Intel, which is used on more Microsoft systems than AMD, is not going to get hit -that- hard by anything that could possibly happen to Microsoft.
I'm already getting hit with a barrage of april fool's jokes from my favorite sites. I'm scared to go home and find out what my brother and sister have been planning to do to me all day...
We've been using a combination between GPG (on the linux server side) and PGP Freeware in a couple sites we've designed lately. Example: A form is submitted via PHP. We pipe the form through gpg to generate a PGP-encrypted message and then e-mail it to the user. The user is running PGP Freeware on their windows system and uses it to decrypt the e-mails.
A few limitations I've noted is that the default keys that are used are different. To get around this, when generating keys for gpg, use the "DSA and ElGamel (default)" key, and in PGP Freeware use the "RSA" key.
Another difference is that gpg recommends a bit size of 1024, with a "maximum suggested" of 2048, while the version of PGP Freeware that we're using begins at 1024 and goes up to 4096, with 4096 being the default.
Overall, I'm very impressed with gpg so far. I'm glad someone decided to take over this project, and putting it under the GPL will encourage development.
Imagine at the end of this project a huge database containing usernames, passwords, etc. posted on the web. If it were used like that, one user running the client on a corporate net with access to sensitive material could inadvertently take down the entire network.
On the flip side, it would be cool to see how many keys are pressed by x number of users in x number of days. They should release the source so people can make sure it's not sending the actual -key- that is being pressed rather than the number of keys that are being pressed.
Slashdot Mirror
The Department of Homeland Security is already doing this in the US, except they send all the alerts to ISP's instead of users. Each week I get several e-mails alerting me of IP addresses on our cable networks that have been spreading viruses or worms. It's helpful to keep viruses off of my networks, but it gets to be a pain after a while. For what it's worth, I think the UK e-mailing individual users about it won't do much to stop the problem. Chances are, if the user knows enough to remove the virus after they read the e-mail, they probably already knew enough to keep the virus off in the first place. Your casual home user that doesn't know much about computers is just going to delete the e-mail without thinking twice about it.
It's going to suck when slashdot.org ends up on the US's "known terrorist" list for sending all this traffic to whitehouse.gov to take it down. Ownz0red!
Proof of concept? >:)
True, but if we help him pay the $12k that he owes, that leaves him money to keep fighting the RIAA. I donated $15 and included a fairly lengthy note encouraging him to take action against the RIAA with the support of his fellow geeks. There were 1300+ slashdot users on his site earlier, so that means that there are a lot of people out there who care and who will be willing to do something about this.
Right before the site got /.'d he added a paypal donation thing to the top. For anyone that can't see the page anymore, the paypal address is jordaj@rpi.edu. The last time I saw the page there were 1200+ users online. If we all donate $10 that covers what he owes and he can use anything leftover to fight back against the RIAA. We all need to take some action against the RIAA before this gets even worse. Where this guy has already been in court with the RIAA and his lawyers are familiar with them, we could get him to take some kind of action against them with all of us supporting. I dunno, I'm not familiar with the legal process or how our laws work, but I know taking $12,000 from a poor college student for downloading a few mp3s is not justified.
This doesn't make the bnetd project illegal, it makes what the War3 players are doing illegal. Bnetd doesn't advocate the use of illegal software, they just supply a great open source server for people to play Blizzard games on.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the purpose of the bnetd project. It is used to run a bnet server on your own box so that you and your friends can play on a private server. The project doesn't advocate the use of pirating software, that's just what some of the users do. A lot of people that actually bought the game use bnetd on their networks to play their friends.
Hope this clears up some confusion about the project.
The only way the people of the bnetd project will make any money down the road is when a large gaming company hires them to write multiplayer server software. Corporate types are always looking at the money side of things and never stop to think that, hey, maybe these guys really DO just want to do something for -free-!
Why doesn't AMD realize that they have a huge following in the linux world and that a microsoft breakup wouldn't hurt them that much? Even Intel, which is used on more Microsoft systems than AMD, is not going to get hit -that- hard by anything that could possibly happen to Microsoft.
I'm already getting hit with a barrage of april fool's jokes from my favorite sites. I'm scared to go home and find out what my brother and sister have been planning to do to me all day...
"Egads, Jeff, look at this!" "Tom, wake up all our developers. We're going pigeon catching."
We've been using a combination between GPG (on the linux server side) and PGP Freeware in a couple sites we've designed lately. Example: A form is submitted via PHP. We pipe the form through gpg to generate a PGP-encrypted message and then e-mail it to the user. The user is running PGP Freeware on their windows system and uses it to decrypt the e-mails.
A few limitations I've noted is that the default keys that are used are different. To get around this, when generating keys for gpg, use the "DSA and ElGamel (default)" key, and in PGP Freeware use the "RSA" key.
Another difference is that gpg recommends a bit size of 1024, with a "maximum suggested" of 2048, while the version of PGP Freeware that we're using begins at 1024 and goes up to 4096, with 4096 being the default.
Overall, I'm very impressed with gpg so far. I'm glad someone decided to take over this project, and putting it under the GPL will encourage development.
Imagine at the end of this project a huge database containing usernames, passwords, etc. posted on the web. If it were used like that, one user running the client on a corporate net with access to sensitive material could inadvertently take down the entire network.
On the flip side, it would be cool to see how many keys are pressed by x number of users in x number of days. They should release the source so people can make sure it's not sending the actual -key- that is being pressed rather than the number of keys that are being pressed.
Finally be able to go into combat armed with BFG 5000's! WOOT!