Cracking a voting machine is hard, but social engineering is relatively easy. I mean, George W. Bush is no programmer, but he successfully hacked the 2000 federal elections quite well with just a bit of social engineering. He proved all you need is access to 5 Supreme Court justices to change any election result you want. Ain't no key length in the world long enough to fix that hole.
China. Anonymous internet access is vital for people struggling against the Chinese government.
or corporation
I'll pick a slashdot favorite. The MPAA. Without anonymity, DeCSS would not have been able to spread to being ubiquitous so quickly. It would have been stopped because you wouldn't have been able to pass it along without being caught.
Keep in mind that anonymity was essential to the intellectual process that led to the founding of the United States. The British would have rounded up people like Thomas Paine, John Jay, James Madison, etc., if they had been debating their ideas under their own names in print.
No spam law that doesn't help investigators find the real sender of the message would be effective he said.
Anonymity is something that I think is one of the things that makes the internet so valuable as a tool to help people fight oppressive governments and corporations. When it is impossible for a spammer to cover his tracks, it will also be equally impossible for a political or corporate dissident to do so as well.
The implication here is that spam can be solved by a technical solution, i.e., one that makes forging identity very very difficult. IPv6 or something like that, perhaps, with additional anti-terrorism/anti-spam identity measures, forcibly implemented (Carnivore anyone?) on ISPs and backbone providers. We'll be so happy to be rid of spam we won't realize what we gave up.
and if they could synthesize what chickens do, you could eat things out of my ass
I believe this very thing was tried here on slashdot with the writings of one Jon Katz. It might have worked, but it was too easy to tell where he was pulling that stuff from.
The quicken web site lists that he has only 172,612,893 shares as of 8/5/03. However, on 2/5/03, he had 609,749,300 shares, and on 2/18/03, he had 217,498,600 with no transaction in the meantime. Note the share price also went from $48 to $24. Answer: the stock split on 2/14/03. The quicken web site should be showing that he had 1,217,498,600 shares, and he is currently holding 1,172,612,893 shares.
Bill may be selling, but he hasn't sold 75% of his stock.
Don't get me wrong, the coaster is impressive, but the fact that he yet hasn't been slashdotted into 404 land, well, that's the most amazing accomplishment of all.
This just goes to show you that this has nothing to do with "intellectual property" and everything to do with money
I would disagree with what seems to be your argument that the RIAA is looking to make money directly off this type of thing. What they are trying to do is shut down file sharing, which keeps them firmly in control of all music distribution. Now, 16 year-old Tommy is not really a good target for this sort of thing, due to 1) being a minor and making legalities more complicated, 2) only further advancing the image that the RIAA is bullying defenseless people, and 3) Tommy doesn't care.
But Tommy doesn't own the computer, nor pay for the cable/DSL service. If Tommy's mommy freaks out due to the worry over a lawsuit, she'll either pull the plug completely on the internet service or at least shut down the file sharing (or try to).
That's like the line, "most people don't know it, but I'm a really famous guy." Please. Everybody claims their school is in the top 5, 10, whatever. There's a poll that says UT is #9, but, of course, they allow schools to "share" spots on the list, so you can have 15 schools in the top 10. Everybody's a winner!
If you have to wave your school like a badge, then perhaps you can't stand on your own merit. In reality, what school you went to means only so much. A student who worked hard and went beyond the curriculum to learn things in a middle-tier engineering school will quite likely be a better engineer than a guy who just followed the coursework in a top-flight school. No one ever asks what college Thomas Edison went to.
It gives Linux a legitimacy, essentially certified by Microsoft, that is desperately needed. Walk into a CIO's office now, and show him this, and he will think, hey, if Microsoft is scared of it, it must be pretty good.
Essentially, Microsoft has had to make the concession in order to rally their own troops to fighting Linux aggressively. To continue saying, Linux is worthless and not a real credible answer, is to look like you have your head in the sand. The Munich deal made them realize that Linux is no longer being used to just squeeze a better deal out of MS, but people will actually implement it if MS doesn't come up with a good deal up front. I think that is what surprised them: they probably never believed that Munich was serious about putting in Linux.
They've simply been hoping that this point would never come, when they had to actually acknowledge Linux as a serious competitor (and not just for anti-trust reasons; they would call a Vic-20 viable competition in order to get DOJ to leave them alone).
We have been using SQL Server replication for several years (since SQL 6.5) and I know it quite well. Regardless of what that DBA told you, it works. Even under 6.5, it worked, but had its problems that required workarounds. Under SQL Server 2000, transactional replication is solid. Our mission-critical application depends upon replication working 24/7. I would not recommend merge replication if you can get away without it because it produces a high network load, followed by a high processor load.
As far as scalability of the application goes, we put all business logic in T-SQL stored procedures. This is both for our public web site and our interal client-server app. The front end code (asp.net or client-server application) is primarily just presentation logic. We can and do regularly support in the area of 200+ connections on dual-proc servers with no problems (note that web server and sql server are different machines). However, the database schema and stored procs are well-engineered, there are strict standards for coding procedures, and the system is tuned to support this. You start throwing application-embedded sql in there and letting developers run wild and you will certainly crush the server. Any poorly-written code has the potential to really cause trouble on our system, and we are rigorous about making sure that doesn't happen.
You can do what you are asking (big app on fairly modest hardware), but you will have to pay more in developer time because you have to create a good design and enforce standards strictly in order to keep the hardware happy.
I think it is poor form to have a video game depict the killing of law enforcement officers. I think it is bad taste to have a video game depict the killing of innocent bystanders. Or even criminals. Generally speaking, I don't think it's healthy for one's soul to engage in killing, fantasy or otherwise.
But neither do I say that people do not have the right to depict such things, or make them into video games. And everyone has the right to buy such things, if they want them, and to sell them, if they desire. We cannot legislate morality, because it loses the virtue of being voluntary, and ceases to be morality.
I intend to teach my children that violence is always a terrible thing, even when it is necessary (I am not saying that it is not necessary). I hope that they will choose not to partake of such things, but I do not wish for a law to make that so.
OK, so you need to get something up and running now. Fine, it happens. But the reality is that any enterprise level system that is built from a bunch of slapped together projects will soon start to strain under its own weight and become unmaintainable. So it eventually gets scrapped, and management contracts out to outside consultants to build the entireliy new, fully-integrated system because they think their own staff is incompetent. Then you have to maintain the black box when the consultants leave!
So present and get approval (i.e., budget) for both the initial slapdash work and to build/rebuild it right over a longer period. Make sure you make it clear that you must be allowed to build it correctly, and give a realistic estimate of the resources needed, and don't let your boss(es) forget that they committed to it (they will if you let them).
This also brings into play construction techniques. If you are going to do this, try to design and construct the quick and dirty solution in such a way that you can replace modules one at a time, while retaining functionality. This will prevent the problem of having to replace the whole thing in one fell swoop. Instead, you can phase in the better version and spread the stress of migrating to the new version over a longer period of time, and have better testing. This does mean that your overall "architecture" of modules in the system should be well thought-out, even for the quick solution.
Also, they've argued, it comes down to consumers owning their own desktops, which are inherently built to support many applications with multiple windows.
While it may be that Gator now 0wnz the desktop, the person nevertheless gave control over to the program -- a sort of "power of attorney" was granted to the adware by the user. They may have been fooled, but that's a far cry from the nonsense being alleged by uhaul or anyone else. They aren't trying to protect users from being suckered, they just want their monopoly on suckering^H^H^H, I mean, advertising to people.
I think that maybe adware (all software, really) should be properly labeled so that users know what they are clicking yes to. Perhaps we should have mandatory labeling for software similar to nutritional labeling required for food. I want to know what's in it and what it does. I want specifics on files, registry settings, TCP ports, drivers, services/daemons, and so on. Now, some may say that they can't disclose some info because of fears of IP protection or trade secrets. However, that isn't a valid defense to not disclosing the ingredients to a twinkie, and it shouldn't be on hiding the actions of an application.
That's great for e-mail, but what about general browsing? Or telnet? Or any other communication that I might use with a public WiFi? And I'm pretty sure the POP3 providers I use have the option of SSL. So what do I do? Either say, "well, it's not safe to check my e-mail," or "screw it, I'll take the chance that someone sees my penis-enlargement spam." The point is that it isn't very efficient, realistic, or even possible to expect users to be securing every internet-capable application on their PC. So why not encrypt at the common gate -- i.e., the point at which all data goes in or out of the PC?
If you use WEP, but everyone knows the key (e.g., at a trade show so you need to make the key public to let people on the WiFi network), I assume that's the same as unencrypted. However, why couldn't there be a RSA or symmetric encryption for 802.11[x]? So you make the public key for the access point, available, anyone with that can connect, but your PC/WiFi card encrypts every packet going out the door, so the traffic going from the client to the access point is now secure. Similarly, the client gives the access point its public key, so all the traffic coming back to the client is also secure. This probably requires a lot more overhead in the access point and client, but I don't think that it would be unreasonably so.
Additionally, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this is the best idea that the government ever had for creating a database of names and numbers and email addresses. Peole are entering their data for the FTC as fast as they possibly can. And with nothing to show for it in the end.
What? The the do not call register page asks for phone number and email address, which can be a once-used hotmail account if you really are paranoid. How does this help the spooks in the least? I'm pretty sure the Total Information Awareness project is more interested in the database the phone company keeps, which keeps a record of every phone call made (not the actual conversation, but that this number called that number at such and such a time for so long).
Slashdot Mirror
Cracking a voting machine is hard, but social engineering is relatively easy. I mean, George W. Bush is no programmer, but he successfully hacked the 2000 federal elections quite well with just a bit of social engineering. He proved all you need is access to 5 Supreme Court justices to change any election result you want. Ain't no key length in the world long enough to fix that hole.
I think women and Siemens don't mix
China. Anonymous internet access is vital for people struggling against the Chinese government.
or corporation
I'll pick a slashdot favorite. The MPAA. Without anonymity, DeCSS would not have been able to spread to being ubiquitous so quickly. It would have been stopped because you wouldn't have been able to pass it along without being caught.
Keep in mind that anonymity was essential to the intellectual process that led to the founding of the United States. The British would have rounded up people like Thomas Paine, John Jay, James Madison, etc., if they had been debating their ideas under their own names in print.
Anonymity is something that I think is one of the things that makes the internet so valuable as a tool to help people fight oppressive governments and corporations. When it is impossible for a spammer to cover his tracks, it will also be equally impossible for a political or corporate dissident to do so as well.
The implication here is that spam can be solved by a technical solution, i.e., one that makes forging identity very very difficult. IPv6 or something like that, perhaps, with additional anti-terrorism/anti-spam identity measures, forcibly implemented (Carnivore anyone?) on ISPs and backbone providers. We'll be so happy to be rid of spam we won't realize what we gave up.
I believe this very thing was tried here on slashdot with the writings of one Jon Katz. It might have worked, but it was too easy to tell where he was pulling that stuff from.
Bill may be selling, but he hasn't sold 75% of his stock.
"Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to 'Evil.'"
Man, all I can say is that Beren and Luthien, fairest of all the children of Iluvata, have really let themselves go!
If I disagree, will you kill me just to prove me wrong?
Don't get me wrong, the coaster is impressive, but the fact that he yet hasn't been slashdotted into 404 land, well, that's the most amazing accomplishment of all.
Dating yourself is a tradition among slashdot readers, and...oh, you meant...I thought that you were talking about...never mind
You'll see all your favorite soccer stars. Like Ariaga! Ariaga II! Bariaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!
This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth: Mexico or Portugal!
I would disagree with what seems to be your argument that the RIAA is looking to make money directly off this type of thing. What they are trying to do is shut down file sharing, which keeps them firmly in control of all music distribution. Now, 16 year-old Tommy is not really a good target for this sort of thing, due to 1) being a minor and making legalities more complicated, 2) only further advancing the image that the RIAA is bullying defenseless people, and 3) Tommy doesn't care.
But Tommy doesn't own the computer, nor pay for the cable/DSL service. If Tommy's mommy freaks out due to the worry over a lawsuit, she'll either pull the plug completely on the internet service or at least shut down the file sharing (or try to).
If you have to wave your school like a badge, then perhaps you can't stand on your own merit. In reality, what school you went to means only so much. A student who worked hard and went beyond the curriculum to learn things in a middle-tier engineering school will quite likely be a better engineer than a guy who just followed the coursework in a top-flight school. No one ever asks what college Thomas Edison went to.
Essentially, Microsoft has had to make the concession in order to rally their own troops to fighting Linux aggressively. To continue saying, Linux is worthless and not a real credible answer, is to look like you have your head in the sand. The Munich deal made them realize that Linux is no longer being used to just squeeze a better deal out of MS, but people will actually implement it if MS doesn't come up with a good deal up front. I think that is what surprised them: they probably never believed that Munich was serious about putting in Linux.
They've simply been hoping that this point would never come, when they had to actually acknowledge Linux as a serious competitor (and not just for anti-trust reasons; they would call a Vic-20 viable competition in order to get DOJ to leave them alone).
As far as scalability of the application goes, we put all business logic in T-SQL stored procedures. This is both for our public web site and our interal client-server app. The front end code (asp.net or client-server application) is primarily just presentation logic. We can and do regularly support in the area of 200+ connections on dual-proc servers with no problems (note that web server and sql server are different machines). However, the database schema and stored procs are well-engineered, there are strict standards for coding procedures, and the system is tuned to support this. You start throwing application-embedded sql in there and letting developers run wild and you will certainly crush the server. Any poorly-written code has the potential to really cause trouble on our system, and we are rigorous about making sure that doesn't happen.
You can do what you are asking (big app on fairly modest hardware), but you will have to pay more in developer time because you have to create a good design and enforce standards strictly in order to keep the hardware happy.
Yes, but what about rich Corinthian leather?
That article made me think -- why doesn't AOL use Opera? I think most people would very much like Opera. They just don't know about it.
But neither do I say that people do not have the right to depict such things, or make them into video games. And everyone has the right to buy such things, if they want them, and to sell them, if they desire. We cannot legislate morality, because it loses the virtue of being voluntary, and ceases to be morality.
I intend to teach my children that violence is always a terrible thing, even when it is necessary (I am not saying that it is not necessary). I hope that they will choose not to partake of such things, but I do not wish for a law to make that so.
So present and get approval (i.e., budget) for both the initial slapdash work and to build/rebuild it right over a longer period. Make sure you make it clear that you must be allowed to build it correctly, and give a realistic estimate of the resources needed, and don't let your boss(es) forget that they committed to it (they will if you let them).
This also brings into play construction techniques. If you are going to do this, try to design and construct the quick and dirty solution in such a way that you can replace modules one at a time, while retaining functionality. This will prevent the problem of having to replace the whole thing in one fell swoop. Instead, you can phase in the better version and spread the stress of migrating to the new version over a longer period of time, and have better testing. This does mean that your overall "architecture" of modules in the system should be well thought-out, even for the quick solution.
While it may be that Gator now 0wnz the desktop, the person nevertheless gave control over to the program -- a sort of "power of attorney" was granted to the adware by the user. They may have been fooled, but that's a far cry from the nonsense being alleged by uhaul or anyone else. They aren't trying to protect users from being suckered, they just want their monopoly on suckering^H^H^H, I mean, advertising to people.
I think that maybe adware (all software, really) should be properly labeled so that users know what they are clicking yes to. Perhaps we should have mandatory labeling for software similar to nutritional labeling required for food. I want to know what's in it and what it does. I want specifics on files, registry settings, TCP ports, drivers, services/daemons, and so on. Now, some may say that they can't disclose some info because of fears of IP protection or trade secrets. However, that isn't a valid defense to not disclosing the ingredients to a twinkie, and it shouldn't be on hiding the actions of an application.
If you use WEP, but everyone knows the key (e.g., at a trade show so you need to make the key public to let people on the WiFi network), I assume that's the same as unencrypted. However, why couldn't there be a RSA or symmetric encryption for 802.11[x]? So you make the public key for the access point, available, anyone with that can connect, but your PC/WiFi card encrypts every packet going out the door, so the traffic going from the client to the access point is now secure. Similarly, the client gives the access point its public key, so all the traffic coming back to the client is also secure. This probably requires a lot more overhead in the access point and client, but I don't think that it would be unreasonably so.
What? The the do not call register page asks for phone number and email address, which can be a once-used hotmail account if you really are paranoid. How does this help the spooks in the least? I'm pretty sure the Total Information Awareness project is more interested in the database the phone company keeps, which keeps a record of every phone call made (not the actual conversation, but that this number called that number at such and such a time for so long).
Lugor, your post regarding the TV Brick in the Intel court case article consitutes electronic trespass.
I think you're Freudian slip says it all. Citizenship is dying. Consumership is the new role of man.