Too bad most people believe Internet is just the WWW
Even funnier than that view, a good percentage of my users think the corporate Intranet portal, which is the mandated default homepage, is the Internet! I was kind of floored when I realized this.
The problem with your argument is that it doesn't apply in this environment. The general public will use one OS, windows. The general public won't give a damn about securing their system. The general public will have unsecured systems. The general public is therefore a large scale problem that will make possible to exploit a large number of systems with common vulnerabilities and once they start doing damage, they can have a large scale detremential effect on the net as a whole, even to those who have protected their machines against the vulnerabilities.
Case in point: I was not affected at all by Sobig.F directly, however I did see my mail gateways come under incredible load, my IDS's fill DB's with Sobig warnings, my users encounter endless confusion at bouncebacks from dumb virus scanners that claim we are infected since Sobig is a SMTP forger. Sobig wasted a lot of my resources and time even though it didn't infect a single one of my 1700+ users. It was rather benign though, I'm afraid of what comes next.
Microsoft says a lot of things that don't make sense. They don't own port 135 or 445 anymore than you do.
ISP's should allow all traffic on all ports through as a carrier.
That being said, I think they should add firewalling service as default configuration with a working opt out option. I want ALL my ports open and it is my responsibility to block what I want. Many don't want the responsibility of protecting their machines or can't handle it and the community as a whole would benefit largely from protecting the users who don't take on the responsibility of protecting themselves.
Right... I didn't want to hurt anyone, I just wanted to shoot guns at people, that's all officer.
Frankly I believe them that they didn't want to hurt anyone. Articles say that were trying to hit sides of trucks. I think they had seriously impared judgement, but I think they were probably doing something, that was in their mind, no more harmful than shooting a BB gun at road signs. Once they realized the grave seriousness of the unintended consequences of their actions they were probably floored with remorse.
They probably didn't have any good teachers and role models and I feel hugely sorry for them as well as feeling hugely sorry for those who were hurt by their actions.
It isn't about encouraging code to be blatant rip-off's of existing ideas. Did you RTFA? I linkitagain for emphasis.
It's about me or you or anyone having the natural right to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants. Imagine if you didn't have the benefit of standard libraries because all the concepts and processes in them had been patented.
The ariticle lays out all sorts of other seemingly reasonable analogies that I'm too tired to type at 4 am.
FYI, I think this post does quite a good job of laying out the systemic issues.
Which is it -- good technical solution or bad censorship?
It is *both* a good technical solution and bad censorship.
A "technical solution" does not carry any moral or wider value judgements with it. It's essentally binary logic and a problem being addressed can be approached with the cold hard pragmatism of doing a math problem. It is objective.
The moral status of censorship is subjective. AOL's perfectly happy with the solution, or at least they are for the time being. Those being censored will usually be perfectly unhappy with it on the other hand.
You've related two concepts that aren't related at all, it's really apples and oranges.
THere are exceptions made to reverse engineering. One of them is that it is specifically legal to reverse engineer for the purpose of interoperability. If this wasn't the case, MS would have already steamrolled Samba right out of existance.
OS advocates on Slashdot lose touch with reality once again and make a statement that assumes enough Windows users can figure out how to install/use GPG and then use it to sign mail that it would make writing a Windows virus to mess with GPG worthwhile when barely a handful of Windows users can figure out even PGP or understand what a digital signature is.
Nobody notices this absurd statement. News at 11.
Seriously folks, I've had to convince more than a few Windows users that a digital sig was not a scanned graphic of their signature attached to an email.
UDP is connectionless. There's no concept of the three way handshake. The sending system sends with no regard for if the receiving system actually gets it.
That's a great story. I was a New Englander also, right about your age, so I'm sure we were watching the same broadcasts on WGBH Boston. Me on a crappy old black and white TV. I remember the hypothermia episode. Yeah, that Mimi show was fairly cheesy and overly whale oriented, but I was a educational public tv geek with the 321 Contact type shows and what not although my favorite was the 'adult' Nova. I'd always pull myself away from my Commodore 64 to watch that one.
Read his last three books, VALIS, Divine Invasion and the Transmigration of Timothy Acher. These were in no way pulp fantasy, they were incredibly deep and meaningful and beautiful and ugly all in one. They were truth.
I'd love to see someone turn the VALIS trilogy into a movie and actually make it work and stay true to the book. The only names I can think of are combinations of people such as the Warchoski bros crossed with David Lynch.
I don't blame him for taking the plea. I bet it was the only choice that made sense for him. Isn't anyone noticing that they can try you inside the system and get you to cop a guilty plea UNDER THE THREAT THAT THEY CAN TAKE YOU OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM and make things much worse? Outside the system you CAN'T fight. You don't have rights.
How does the system work if the system itself can remove you from it, label you 'enemy combatant' and strip you of all your rights?
Things that we held as guarantees and were told all our lives were guarantees are no longer in some cases.
I am having fond memories of my 48sx & gx from almost 12 years ago. Oh look, there it is right on the shelf next to me still in perfect condition w/ the extended manuals, cables etc.
Did anyone else wait eagerly for the new EduCalc catalog? Did anyone else actuall use the included metal plate that came with the GX and get it engraved and put on the back of the calculator? Was anyone else as absolutely dorky as me and name your HP48 and have that name engraved on the Calc?
This thing was loads of fun, it made calculus 10x more fun than it already was, it was the first thing I started hacking on, and I'm a bit sad that I don't have a job today that requires me to use the HP anymore.
You are exactly right, but you missed one point. MS recently announced that they dropped liability limits for their products.
So now the threat to Linux becomes even greater. Companies think that Linux *might* be a risk, and now MS license that they can sign will give them confidence that if someone sues them as a result of MS software, they are financially in the clear.
For the next part of the attack, expect Linux users to actually start getting sued RIAA style. It doesn't have to win. It just has to raise uncertainty.
They have to provide "reasonable accomodations". The ADA Myths and Facts page gives you a decent idea.
If my job is stacking lumber and I loose my arms, there aren't many reasonable accomatations that can be made for me, although they can provide another job that I would be capable of.
disclaimer (I spent too much time splitting wood and stacking lumber as a kid although chainsaws are fun)
Slashdot Mirror
Even funnier than that view, a good percentage of my users think the corporate Intranet portal, which is the mandated default homepage, is the Internet! I was kind of floored when I realized this.
Case in point: I was not affected at all by Sobig.F directly, however I did see my mail gateways come under incredible load, my IDS's fill DB's with Sobig warnings, my users encounter endless confusion at bouncebacks from dumb virus scanners that claim we are infected since Sobig is a SMTP forger. Sobig wasted a lot of my resources and time even though it didn't infect a single one of my 1700+ users. It was rather benign though, I'm afraid of what comes next.
No, you don't know that. You can often safely assume that. I can bind any service to any port, period.
ISP's should allow all traffic on all ports through as a carrier.
That being said, I think they should add firewalling service as default configuration with a working opt out option. I want ALL my ports open and it is my responsibility to block what I want. Many don't want the responsibility of protecting their machines or can't handle it and the community as a whole would benefit largely from protecting the users who don't take on the responsibility of protecting themselves.
Who is that quote attributed to?
Frankly I believe them that they didn't want to hurt anyone. Articles say that were trying to hit sides of trucks. I think they had seriously impared judgement, but I think they were probably doing something, that was in their mind, no more harmful than shooting a BB gun at road signs. Once they realized the grave seriousness of the unintended consequences of their actions they were probably floored with remorse.
They probably didn't have any good teachers and role models and I feel hugely sorry for them as well as feeling hugely sorry for those who were hurt by their actions.
It's about me or you or anyone having the natural right to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants. Imagine if you didn't have the benefit of standard libraries because all the concepts and processes in them had been patented.
The ariticle lays out all sorts of other seemingly reasonable analogies that I'm too tired to type at 4 am.
FYI, I think this post does quite a good job of laying out the systemic issues.
that image ought to be linked in Hi Res!
It is *both* a good technical solution and bad censorship.
A "technical solution" does not carry any moral or wider value judgements with it. It's essentally binary logic and a problem being addressed can be approached with the cold hard pragmatism of doing a math problem. It is objective.
The moral status of censorship is subjective. AOL's perfectly happy with the solution, or at least they are for the time being. Those being censored will usually be perfectly unhappy with it on the other hand.
You've related two concepts that aren't related at all, it's really apples and oranges.
THere are exceptions made to reverse engineering. One of them is that it is specifically legal to reverse engineer for the purpose of interoperability. If this wasn't the case, MS would have already steamrolled Samba right out of existance.
Good idea, I'd like to start doing that. Can anyone suggest a good open source ticketing and reporting system? If so, please post it.
Nobody notices this absurd statement. News at 11.
Seriously folks, I've had to convince more than a few Windows users that a digital sig was not a scanned graphic of their signature attached to an email.
UDP is connectionless. There's no concept of the three way handshake. The sending system sends with no regard for if the receiving system actually gets it.
Is it totally crazy to think that he just might *want* one?
That's a great story. I was a New Englander also, right about your age, so I'm sure we were watching the same broadcasts on WGBH Boston. Me on a crappy old black and white TV. I remember the hypothermia episode. Yeah, that Mimi show was fairly cheesy and overly whale oriented, but I was a educational public tv geek with the 321 Contact type shows and what not although my favorite was the 'adult' Nova. I'd always pull myself away from my Commodore 64 to watch that one.
I'd love to see someone turn the VALIS trilogy into a movie and actually make it work and stay true to the book. The only names I can think of are combinations of people such as the Warchoski bros crossed with David Lynch.
I used to watch little Ben in "The Voyage of the Mimi". I really liked that show as a kid. I wonder if anyone remembers what I'm talking about.
How does the system work if the system itself can remove you from it, label you 'enemy combatant' and strip you of all your rights?
Things that we held as guarantees and were told all our lives were guarantees are no longer in some cases.
Did anyone else wait eagerly for the new EduCalc catalog? Did anyone else actuall use the included metal plate that came with the GX and get it engraved and put on the back of the calculator? Was anyone else as absolutely dorky as me and name your HP48 and have that name engraved on the Calc?
This thing was loads of fun, it made calculus 10x more fun than it already was, it was the first thing I started hacking on, and I'm a bit sad that I don't have a job today that requires me to use the HP anymore.
yup, I'm a total dork. I just thought I'd share.
So now the threat to Linux becomes even greater. Companies think that Linux *might* be a risk, and now MS license that they can sign will give them confidence that if someone sues them as a result of MS software, they are financially in the clear.
For the next part of the attack, expect Linux users to actually start getting sued RIAA style. It doesn't have to win. It just has to raise uncertainty.
How to fight back is the $64K question.
I wonder how Spike Jonze feels about this...
I've rarely met anyone who didn't have an axe to grind about something. What's Snopes pray tell?
If my job is stacking lumber and I loose my arms, there aren't many reasonable accomatations that can be made for me, although they can provide another job that I would be capable of.
disclaimer (I spent too much time splitting wood and stacking lumber as a kid although chainsaws are fun)
see http://www.snopes.com/legal/privacy.htm
MS doesn't need to keep IE competitive. That's the point. They own a market of sheep and sheep do what they are told and eat what they are fed.