Why do I see a lukewarm future among kiddies of "number squatting", getting personal phone lines that're similar to national ISP dialins except for the area code?
I also wonder about the legality of such a practice. The users are placing the call, right? I guess it depends on how different AOL's login procedure is from something standard. "No, Your Honor, that was my personal login so I could access my computer from my friend's house." Compare to the tone-detector that lets you use a redbox to turn appliances on and off.
Ascension Technologies makes the Flock of Birds and related products, motion trackers based on a pulsed magnetic field. They're very accurate and quick to respond. I have no idea what they cost, I've just been on the user end of a Flock and loved it.:)
Yeah, but most geeks didn't think that such a network would be useful. See the last few days' message traffifc on the RicochetUsers group.
For those who don't know, Ricochet modems can operate in three modes. The first is similar to 802.11b's "infrastructure" mode, where the modems all report to the Metricom network. The second mode is "hayes emulation", where one Ricochet modem can directly dial another, independent of Metricom's repeaters (as long as they're within range, which is quite long!). The third mode is "Starmode", similar to 802.11b's "ad-hoc" mode. The IP-over-Starmode drivers have been part of the Linux kernel since 1.x, the package is called STRIP and it's worth looking into.
802.11b has pathetic range. Better antennae are directional, which isn't suitable in this situation. For this reason, I'm going to suggest keeping the Ricochet modems in service, just flipping them into Starmode so they can operate on a geek network, rather than Metricom's network.
It's been said many times that legislators don't read their email, and when they do, they largely ignore it. This isn't always the case...
A few weeks ago (probably closer to a month, I don't remember) I dashed off a note to US Rep. Sander M. Levin, 12th District, Michigan. My note concerned Dmitry Sklyarov, and his imprisonment for presenting some research which should've been protected speech. I ranted as intelligently as I could about the DMCA and how it hurt all of us. I clicked the Submit button and promptly forgot all about it.
A few days ago, I went through my snailmail inbox. I don't do this very often, so I have no idea how long Rep. Levin's letter had been sitting there. In any case, the letter indicates a clear understanding of the Sklyarov case and at least a few of the issues surrounding it. The letter ends "I will continue to follow this case closely. Thank you again for contacting me on this matter. Sincerely, [signature and closing] SML:ch"
Neat. My understanding of the SML:ch part would seem to suggest that while someone else typed it, this letter was at least personally dictated or composed in part by Rep. Levin himself. Form letter? Possibly. But the existence of such a form letter would indicate the demand for one, which means he must be hearing about this issue a lot.
WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES! They DO listen. They even understand sometimes, and it's your job to help them. My task this evening, after the daylight fades and cleaning my car becomes moot, is to fill Rep. Levin in on some of the subtler details of Sklyarov's case, and point out exactly why we all need to oppose Carnivore. Making it clear why such opposition is justified, even in times of crisis, will be the tough part. Wish me luck, then try your own hand at it. Please?
Plenty of demand in Michigan..
on
Data Mining?
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· Score: 2
There's a big NAP in Chicago, and Grand Rapids isn't far from there. Plenty of fat pipes run right past GR or Kalamazoo on their way from Chicago to Lansing.
There's another mine in Detroit that closed down a few years ago due to unfavorable economic conditions. We went on a tour just before they shut it down, thinking we'd be some of the last humans in that mine. (They were considering turning it into a nuclear waste storage facility, because the salt vein is so geologically stable.) They modernized and reopened the mine in 1998 though. Once the salt's removed from an area, it becomes useless. Data co-lo is an ideal way for the mine companies to get income from space that otherwise sits idle.
A big secure co-lo in Detroit would be great. We already have a few large above-ground facilities, and Detroit's a great place to locate NOCs because it doesn't have hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. We get the occasional tornado but those usually just rip up awnings. A subterranean co-lo, just a few miles from the NOC, seems like an ideal scenario.
Underground hackers of a different sort..
on
Data Mining?
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· Score: 2
This submission got rejected, but you might enjoy the RealAudio of Friday's Diane Rehm show (on NPR) about the exploration of Mammoth Cave. The politics between the explorers is amazingly similar to most hackers I know! Give a listen.
And then you could refuse to back up your accusations, saying you didn't want to reveal your "proprietary" methods.
I can see it now:
Los Angeles, CA -- Today, an online psychic ordered 1,387,529,000 web sites shut down, in accordance with DMCA, claiming they all infringe on his private thoughts. George "Moonglow" Taylor alleges that web sites express private thoughts, and that he makes his income from private thoughts, therefore all the sites in question infringe his private rights. He refused to say how he determined which sites were in violation, citing "proprietary" methods.
Yeah, I own one. Makes that Mac looks like a toy.
on
A Few Baaaaaad Apples
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· Score: 2
Toughbooks rock, although the lack of a fan means that the magnesium-alloy case is USED for heat dissipation.. it can get uncomfortably warm sometimes.
What if you buy an extra IP or two from your cable company, saying "it's for my girlfriend's computer" or something, without mentioning that your girlfriend lives on the next block?
Further, I see big benefits for heavy duty proxy servers in applications like this. With intelligent management and semi-responsible use, it's doubtful whether this would present much of an increase from the provider's point of view.
I've been considering setting up something like this with my dialup connection. The bandwidth is silly, but people could still check their mail or chat over it, and dialup ISPs could care less what you do with the connection. A local proxy would make an even bigger difference in this case.
Legal the same way as ShareSniffer, perhaps?
on
Code Red III
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· Score: 2
Essentially, they say that since people enable drive sharing manually, an open share holds the same legality as a clickthrough license: You wouldn't have clicked it if you didn't want to do that, so you're responsible for what happens.
People don't install Windows by mistake. (well, that's another joke entirely) If they have services running that any reasonably competent admin would know about, they're responsible for those.
The point of a server is to let people use it. The point of an internet connection is to make your computer part of a global network. If you're running a server on the internet, you INTEND to have it accessed by anyone who wants to.
The worm's problem is that it's malicious, sucking up unreasonable amounts of bandwidth and denying service to others. If someone wrote a fixit worm that worked as advertised, I don't see how it could run afoul of the law. Just be careful with the bandwidth usage. Someone might call it unauthorized access, which is bullshit, access is implicitly authorized by the machine's very presence on the internet.
IANAL!
So doesn't that mean Microsoft was lying?
on
Code Red III
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· Score: 2
When Microsoft said that customer data wasn't exposed during the Hotmail infection, wouldn't that seem to contradict what we know about the worm?
The more I think about this, the more I like it. My musical tastes are pretty broad already, but they could be a lot broader. I could set up an email address just for this, then I'd post my address on some list of "victims", and we'd all put each other in our Outlook address books.
This topic came up at our local 2600 meeting last month. How about a handy little program that says, buried in the EULA somewhere, that the user is solely responsible for traffic generated by his machine. Then the program turns out the be the zombie for a massive DDoS, and once everyone's installed it, it turns around and nukes someone.
Better yet, mail checks to universities that say "by depositing this check, you agree that it constitutes total payment for any information technology and computing resources that the issuer(s) may use, and you grant license to the issuer(s) to use said resources for whatever purpose they see fit". Cut a few thousand checks for $1 each, then go root whoever cashes them. AT&T, eat your heart out.
Ensign Crusher did that aboard the NCC-1701-D years ago. He had a synthesizer that'd reproduce Picard's voice, and he'd send himself all kinds of orders.
I, for one, am always pissed off when I spend hours on my dialup leeching pr0n from some newsgroup, only to discover that I already had it on my drive under a different name. Somewhere along the line, somebody renamed the series.
A database of image characteristics (like those used by D'peg! would make this less likely. People would be discouraged from changing the file's originally agreed-upon universal name.
Publishers could upload their image characteristics into the database, along with a tag like "Originally from somepornsite.com". So if I someday come across an image I really like, I could check the database and see where to get the rest of the series. This would supercede obnoxious watermarking to indicate the source of an image.
This could of course be used for mp3's too, which are all-too-often renamed incorrectly. Checksums would be enough for a particular song encoded by a particular encoder with particular parameters, but audio fingerprinting would be necessary to accomodate different encoders. I don't think that's a deal-killer.
By the way, D'peg! is really neat, but it's amazingly slow the first time if you have a lot of images. (As in: My win98 uptime record is 11 days. Dpeg's projected completion time was 34. Good thing it can resume after a crash.)
Data and music people use 19" racks with a channel design and uneven hole spacing. Data and music people usually put mounting flanges on the front of the equipment, so that the face of the device is flush with the face of the rack, more or less, when all is said and done. This creates a lot of force on the screws due to leverage, particularly for thin (1U or 2U) units.
Telco people use 23" racks, with a different flange design and regular 1" hole spacing. Telco equipment has the mounting flanges in the middle of the equipment, so the only force on the screws is shear. There's very little twisting, because the weight of the equipment is centered in the rack. Almost all carrier-class equipment is designed for 23" racks and mid-mounting.
They make adapter plates to mount 19" equipment with EIA-spaced holes into a 23" rack with WECO-spaced holes. There are also adapter brackets to move flush-mount equipment forward so it's even with mid-mount equipment.
As the large telcos know, it's easier to put adapters in a 23" rack than it is to stretch a 19" rack.
Chances are good you draw lots of blank stares at parties from packet geeks who don't grok circuit switching. If you've ever replied "SNVS" to someone who bothered you while you were sleeping, or "PICC" to a telemarketer, you need to get out more, but I sympathize.
They wouldn't have to add any routing ability, they're feeding you a line of crap. They'd need to convert it from a regen to an add/drop node, which is trivial. Depending on the manufacturer, it involves adding a few cards (Nortel) or another chassis to support the tributary interfaces (Fujitsu). All of this can be done without taking the ring out of service.
The cost is negligible compared to the initial cost of the regenerator. All the high-speed interfaces already exist, and the mid/low-speed cards are mucho cheap.
This would allow you to get a channel within their OC-n pipe. Since Dexter sits between two universities, and you can bet Sprint provides bandwidth to both of them, you simply drop the same channel at the next node and tie into umich's routers.
You asked Sprint "Can we get onto your backbone here?" and they gave you a price for it, which rightly scared you. Ask them this: "Can you drop an OC3 trib for us here, and then drop it again in Ann Arbor?" You'll find that the cost of blind transport is a lot cheaper than intelligent routing. Backhaul the signal to Umich's network center and let it do the packet tango down there, where the facilities already exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I see a lukewarm future among kiddies of "number squatting", getting personal phone lines that're similar to national ISP dialins except for the area code?
I also wonder about the legality of such a practice. The users are placing the call, right? I guess it depends on how different AOL's login procedure is from something standard. "No, Your Honor, that was my personal login so I could access my computer from my friend's house." Compare to the tone-detector that lets you use a redbox to turn appliances on and off.
Ascension Technologies makes the Flock of Birds and related products, motion trackers based on a pulsed magnetic field. They're very accurate and quick to respond. I have no idea what they cost, I've just been on the user end of a Flock and loved it. :)
Yeah, but most geeks didn't think that such a network would be useful. See the last few days' message traffifc on the RicochetUsers group.
For those who don't know, Ricochet modems can operate in three modes. The first is similar to 802.11b's "infrastructure" mode, where the modems all report to the Metricom network. The second mode is "hayes emulation", where one Ricochet modem can directly dial another, independent of Metricom's repeaters (as long as they're within range, which is quite long!). The third mode is "Starmode", similar to 802.11b's "ad-hoc" mode. The IP-over-Starmode drivers have been part of the Linux kernel since 1.x, the package is called STRIP and it's worth looking into.
802.11b has pathetic range. Better antennae are directional, which isn't suitable in this situation. For this reason, I'm going to suggest keeping the Ricochet modems in service, just flipping them into Starmode so they can operate on a geek network, rather than Metricom's network.
It's been said many times that legislators don't read their email, and when they do, they largely ignore it. This isn't always the case...
A few weeks ago (probably closer to a month, I don't remember) I dashed off a note to US Rep. Sander M. Levin, 12th District, Michigan. My note concerned Dmitry Sklyarov, and his imprisonment for presenting some research which should've been protected speech. I ranted as intelligently as I could about the DMCA and how it hurt all of us. I clicked the Submit button and promptly forgot all about it.
A few days ago, I went through my snailmail inbox. I don't do this very often, so I have no idea how long Rep. Levin's letter had been sitting there. In any case, the letter indicates a clear understanding of the Sklyarov case and at least a few of the issues surrounding it. The letter ends "I will continue to follow this case closely. Thank you again for contacting me on this matter. Sincerely, [signature and closing] SML:ch"
Neat. My understanding of the SML:ch part would seem to suggest that while someone else typed it, this letter was at least personally dictated or composed in part by Rep. Levin himself. Form letter? Possibly. But the existence of such a form letter would indicate the demand for one, which means he must be hearing about this issue a lot.
WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES! They DO listen. They even understand sometimes, and it's your job to help them. My task this evening, after the daylight fades and cleaning my car becomes moot, is to fill Rep. Levin in on some of the subtler details of Sklyarov's case, and point out exactly why we all need to oppose Carnivore. Making it clear why such opposition is justified, even in times of crisis, will be the tough part. Wish me luck, then try your own hand at it. Please?
-Myself-
Voter, Concerned Citizen
12th District, Michigan.
SeattleWireless and PersonalTelco are already doing it. Go read. :)
There's a big NAP in Chicago, and Grand Rapids isn't far from there. Plenty of fat pipes run right past GR or Kalamazoo on their way from Chicago to Lansing.
There's another mine in Detroit that closed down a few years ago due to unfavorable economic conditions. We went on a tour just before they shut it down, thinking we'd be some of the last humans in that mine. (They were considering turning it into a nuclear waste storage facility, because the salt vein is so geologically stable.) They modernized and reopened the mine in 1998 though. Once the salt's removed from an area, it becomes useless. Data co-lo is an ideal way for the mine companies to get income from space that otherwise sits idle.
A big secure co-lo in Detroit would be great. We already have a few large above-ground facilities, and Detroit's a great place to locate NOCs because it doesn't have hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. We get the occasional tornado but those usually just rip up awnings. A subterranean co-lo, just a few miles from the NOC, seems like an ideal scenario.
This submission got rejected, but you might enjoy the RealAudio of Friday's Diane Rehm show (on NPR) about the exploration of Mammoth Cave. The politics between the explorers is amazingly similar to most hackers I know! Give a listen.
You can still use the ricochet devices peer to peer, over short range (up to a mile?) in Hayes emulation mode, or Starmode.
And then you could refuse to back up your accusations, saying you didn't want to reveal your "proprietary" methods.
I can see it now:
Los Angeles, CA -- Today, an online psychic ordered 1,387,529,000 web sites shut down, in accordance with DMCA, claiming they all infringe on his private thoughts. George "Moonglow" Taylor alleges that web sites express private thoughts, and that he makes his income from private thoughts, therefore all the sites in question infringe his private rights. He refused to say how he determined which sites were in violation, citing "proprietary" methods.
Toughbooks rock, although the lack of a fan means that the magnesium-alloy case is USED for heat dissipation.. it can get uncomfortably warm sometimes.
What if you buy an extra IP or two from your cable company, saying "it's for my girlfriend's computer" or something, without mentioning that your girlfriend lives on the next block?
Further, I see big benefits for heavy duty proxy servers in applications like this. With intelligent management and semi-responsible use, it's doubtful whether this would present much of an increase from the provider's point of view.
I've been considering setting up something like this with my dialup connection. The bandwidth is silly, but people could still check their mail or chat over it, and dialup ISPs could care less what you do with the connection. A local proxy would make an even bigger difference in this case.
Read this if you're not familiar with ShareSniffer
Essentially, they say that since people enable drive sharing manually, an open share holds the same legality as a clickthrough license: You wouldn't have clicked it if you didn't want to do that, so you're responsible for what happens.
People don't install Windows by mistake. (well, that's another joke entirely) If they have services running that any reasonably competent admin would know about, they're responsible for those.
The point of a server is to let people use it. The point of an internet connection is to make your computer part of a global network. If you're running a server on the internet, you INTEND to have it accessed by anyone who wants to.
The worm's problem is that it's malicious, sucking up unreasonable amounts of bandwidth and denying service to others. If someone wrote a fixit worm that worked as advertised, I don't see how it could run afoul of the law. Just be careful with the bandwidth usage. Someone might call it unauthorized access, which is bullshit, access is implicitly authorized by the machine's very presence on the internet.
IANAL!
When Microsoft said that customer data wasn't exposed during the Hotmail infection, wouldn't that seem to contradict what we know about the worm?
IBM has a story about this, the second cluster "to be installed this summer" already exists.
Also read The story at NCSA if that's not enough for you.
The more I think about this, the more I like it. My musical tastes are pretty broad already, but they could be a lot broader. I could set up an email address just for this, then I'd post my address on some list of "victims", and we'd all put each other in our Outlook address books.
This topic came up at our local 2600 meeting last month. How about a handy little program that says, buried in the EULA somewhere, that the user is solely responsible for traffic generated by his machine. Then the program turns out the be the zombie for a massive DDoS, and once everyone's installed it, it turns around and nukes someone.
Better yet, mail checks to universities that say "by depositing this check, you agree that it constitutes total payment for any information technology and computing resources that the issuer(s) may use, and you grant license to the issuer(s) to use said resources for whatever purpose they see fit". Cut a few thousand checks for $1 each, then go root whoever cashes them. AT&T, eat your heart out.
I'd love to hear what the lawyers say to this one.
It searches your drive for files with "metallica" and "mp3" in the name, then emails them everywhere :)
Can you imagine a beow*LART* okay, I guess not.
Ensign Crusher did that aboard the NCC-1701-D years ago. He had a synthesizer that'd reproduce Picard's voice, and he'd send himself all kinds of orders.
News, earl gray, lukewarm.
I, for one, am always pissed off when I spend hours on my dialup leeching pr0n from some newsgroup, only to discover that I already had it on my drive under a different name. Somewhere along the line, somebody renamed the series.
A database of image characteristics (like those used by D'peg! would make this less likely. People would be discouraged from changing the file's originally agreed-upon universal name.
Publishers could upload their image characteristics into the database, along with a tag like "Originally from somepornsite.com". So if I someday come across an image I really like, I could check the database and see where to get the rest of the series. This would supercede obnoxious watermarking to indicate the source of an image.
This could of course be used for mp3's too, which are all-too-often renamed incorrectly. Checksums would be enough for a particular song encoded by a particular encoder with particular parameters, but audio fingerprinting would be necessary to accomodate different encoders. I don't think that's a deal-killer.
By the way, D'peg! is really neat, but it's amazingly slow the first time if you have a lot of images. (As in: My win98 uptime record is 11 days. Dpeg's projected completion time was 34. Good thing it can resume after a crash.)
Data and music people use 19" racks with a channel design and uneven hole spacing. Data and music people usually put mounting flanges on the front of the equipment, so that the face of the device is flush with the face of the rack, more or less, when all is said and done. This creates a lot of force on the screws due to leverage, particularly for thin (1U or 2U) units.
Telco people use 23" racks, with a different flange design and regular 1" hole spacing. Telco equipment has the mounting flanges in the middle of the equipment, so the only force on the screws is shear. There's very little twisting, because the weight of the equipment is centered in the rack. Almost all carrier-class equipment is designed for 23" racks and mid-mounting.
They make adapter plates to mount 19" equipment with EIA-spaced holes into a 23" rack with WECO-spaced holes. There are also adapter brackets to move flush-mount equipment forward so it's even with mid-mount equipment.
As the large telcos know, it's easier to put adapters in a 23" rack than it is to stretch a 19" rack.
As a matter of fact, I'm using a PS/2 keyboard right now!
Oh, wait...
READY.
heh... favorite routine to jump to:
SYS 64738
7. If your prompt is
;
RYLOMIMNK02 01-07-06 13:08:40
M 0169 COMPLD
;
Chances are good you draw lots of blank stares at parties from packet geeks who don't grok circuit switching. If you've ever replied "SNVS" to someone who bothered you while you were sleeping, or "PICC" to a telemarketer, you need to get out more, but I sympathize.
They wouldn't have to add any routing ability, they're feeding you a line of crap. They'd need to convert it from a regen to an add/drop node, which is trivial. Depending on the manufacturer, it involves adding a few cards (Nortel) or another chassis to support the tributary interfaces (Fujitsu). All of this can be done without taking the ring out of service.
The cost is negligible compared to the initial cost of the regenerator. All the high-speed interfaces already exist, and the mid/low-speed cards are mucho cheap.
This would allow you to get a channel within their OC-n pipe. Since Dexter sits between two universities, and you can bet Sprint provides bandwidth to both of them, you simply drop the same channel at the next node and tie into umich's routers.
You asked Sprint "Can we get onto your backbone here?" and they gave you a price for it, which rightly scared you. Ask them this: "Can you drop an OC3 trib for us here, and then drop it again in Ann Arbor?" You'll find that the cost of blind transport is a lot cheaper than intelligent routing. Backhaul the signal to Umich's network center and let it do the packet tango down there, where the facilities already exist.