I believe that's the basis of authoritarian socialism. Fascism is somewhat similar, depending on what level of government control "fix[ing] it" entails.
Perhaps you need to study evolutional theory before making statements about it which you are not qualified to make. Scientists do not assert that humans evolved from chimpanzees. They assert that all primates shared a common ancestor, and evolved along diverging paths into the separate primate species which exist today.
Well, most scientists don't use science to argue against the concept of God. They merely present the facts as they can see them, and let others decide how to fit (or not fit) God into them.
Anybody have any idea why Freshmeat is.net? It doesn't appear to be a network provider, and as far as I know, it never has been a network provider. I can excuse slashdot's.org, since it was a non-profit entity when the domain name was picked (and slashdot.com was already taken by the time the site whent commercial), but i see absolutely no reason why freshmeat should be.net.
American beer tends to be around 3% alcohol, while European beers tend to be around 5% or 6% alcohol. I'm not sure about the alcohol content of Guiness in particular though.
The "no computers" provision is just stupid. Computers are in everything these days. When money launderers are given probation, I don't hear about them not being allowed to use cash for 3 years. People who write bomb threats aren't barred from using pen and paper.
Also, I think some people need their heads readjusted, judging by some of the comments here. He is not a danger to society - he is not a violent criminal. Violent criminals deserve to be shut away for life, not petty thieves. If i met Mitnick in the street, I would not be afraid in the slightest, since he has not shown a tendancy to harm anyone.
Also, the court decided on $4000 restitution. I guess we can see what the court thought of Sun, et al's, $80 million+ claims.
Sure, this isn't true now, but it could have worked out that way. The Internet was entirely 100% US-only at one point, so when the first Europeans hooked up (basically, getting their bandwidth from the Americans who ran the backbones), the US could have forced them to abide by the Terms of Service in order to get that feed. Fortunately, they agreed on a peer-to-peer network hierarchy instead.
I'm not so sure about that. If I understand correctly, canada gets most of its internet connectivity through American backbone providers (mainly MCI and AT&T). Most (all?) of the North AmericaEurope backbones are also run by American companies. If these all died, the rest of the world would have some big problems. Europe could still communicate within itself, and possibly to Australia and Asia, but that's about it.
So you mean nobody, prior to this contest, had implemented a program to play Pousse? I suppose it's an obscure enough game that it would be possible, I just would've expected nearly every game to have a least some sort of program playing it by now...
However, it seems the contest ran quite well, so I'll stop complaining =) Good luck on this year's.
Possibly because some of us think that Quake* sucks (or at least prefer playing Doom2). Not counting Quake, there's Civ:CTP and MythII, and soon to be Neverwinter Nights. 3 games is not exactly a great selection. I'll stick with my Dungeon Keeper 2, Sim City 3000, and Doom2, thanks.
I have a strange feeling that there will be somebody out there that has some pre-written code for whatever the challenge will be, that will only need slight modification. For example, last year's contest was playing pousse, and I'd be surprised if no pousse implementations had ever been written before. That'd leave the rest of us at a slight disadvantage.
Sure. So I guess Solaris source code came preinstalled on his hard disk then, along with other software from Motorola, and with passwords for dozens of computers of Sun Microsystems, Novell, Motorola, Fujitsu. Sure. And he just broke into Shimomura by mistake, sure, everyone believes this one. Check his feats here
My comment was about the California charges - he did not break into the computers they had charged him with. I was not asserting that he didn't break into the computers covered by the federal charges - that's a separate matter entirely, and those charges haven't been dropped.
Yes. But he is also an associal nerd that cracked for more than 15 years, was arrested more than 5 times, spent one year in jail, and commited further offense repeatidly. The truth is that the justice doesn't know what to do with him: he can't learn his lesson, is a real threat to the society (the moment he decides to do harm, real harm will be done).
Being an "asocial nerd" is not illegal in the United States. He's not a danger to society, since none of his crimes have been violent in any way whatsoever. He broke into some computers, and caused no real damage. As you mentioned, he's been doing this on and off for 15 years, and has not maliciously caused any damage during that entire period. I think it's safe to assume he's not going to cause any damage any time soon. He's not any more of a danger to society than your average script kiddie is.
Well, even though crack.linuxppc.org hasn't actually been cracked, it would appear to the casual observer that it has been. That, to me, seems to say that LinuxPPC can be great and secure, but it doesn't do you any good if you're going to run crappy CGI guestbooks on it. Maybe the LinuxPPC guys need to hire an admin...
You can use Back Orifice as a telnet tool - set it up to bind a port to command.com, and then telnet to that port. Not so hot as far as security goes, of course, but you could write your own BO2K plugin that does authentication if you wanted.
As for bash, Cygnus has a whole UNIX environment for Windows - bash, DJGPP (gcc port), grep, ls, cat, and everything else.
It's interesting that slashdotters manage to work Microsoft into every article, no matter how unrelated it is. it seems the "community" is somewhat obsessed with that particular company.
It's obvious that it was a vendetta. They charged him with breaking into the DMV database, something which he had clearly not done. They had no evidence of him breaking into the database beyond the fact that he had some of the information it contained. All he did was call up the DMV and ask for the information ("social engineering"), not break into anything.
The "vendetta theory" is backed up by the fact that the charges were dropped by the new prosecutor almost as soon as the previous one was removed from the case.
Well, as several others have pointed out already, these were the California state charges that were dropped. He was charged with breaking into the DMV computers, and it took them five years to realize that he didn't break into the computers after all (which is why they have no evidence to use in a trial and have to drop the charges). He just called up the front desk, pretended to be somebody else, and obtained the information over the phone.
As for the federal charges, he was scheduled to be sentenced last week. However, the sentencing hearing was delayed again, despite the fact that neither Mitnick's lawyers nor the prosecution had asked for a delay, and the fact that the judge had previously promised that there would be no more delays in the hearing (it has already been delayed several times). It's now scheduled for August 9th.
As for the speedy trial, Mitnick did indeed waive his right to a speedy trial, but only because the court refused to let him spend more than a few hours a week in the legal library, refused to allow him to use a computer to review analyze computer disks that were to be used as evidence, and refused to pay his court-appointed lawyer for more than the standard number of hours, despite the fact that there were millions of pages of evidence to go through. Since the court purposely made his defence's evidence review so slow, he had no choice but to waive his right to a speedy trial, in the hopes that he could at least get a fair one. The trial was delayed even more by various unexplained administrative snafus such as the sentencing hearing delay mentioned above.
Throughout the case, the FBI, Secret Service, and corporations have been unreasonable and just plain stupid. The Secret Service initially argued against bail, saying that he could possibly interfere with the 1996 presidential election. They refused to let him have a walkman in the cell, fearing that his super-hacker skills could lead him to make a tape recorder out of it (despite the fact that it had no recording head). Sun Microsystems claimed that by viewing some of their proprietary source code, Mitnick caused them $80 million in damage. Now they give that source code away for free, so obviously their damage claims are frivolous. Sun isn't the only guilty corporation either. When the letters discussing these ludicrous damages were made public, the corporations and government became upset at being exposed.
All in all, Kevin Mitnick is a petty thief who has been set up as an example by an incompetent group of corporations and beaurocracies as some sort of super-hacker-terrorist who must be shut away.
That's the funny part - he didn't break into the database. He called up the desk clerk and pretended to be somebody else, and they just gave him the information. Of course the charges were dropped, since they were completely false charges.
It's pretty pathetic that it took the California prosecutors nearly five years to realize that he didn't break into their computers.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that's the basis of authoritarian socialism. Fascism is somewhat similar, depending on what level of government control "fix[ing] it" entails.
Single-share stock price is meaningless. MSFT would be trading at over $1000/share now if they hadn't split the stock numerous times.
More meaningful figures:
Microsoft Market Capitalization: $475 billion
Red Hat Market Capitalization: $5 billion
Perhaps you need to study evolutional theory before making statements about it which you are not qualified to make. Scientists do not assert that humans evolved from chimpanzees. They assert that all primates shared a common ancestor, and evolved along diverging paths into the separate primate species which exist today.
Well, most scientists don't use science to argue against the concept of God. They merely present the facts as they can see them, and let others decide how to fit (or not fit) God into them.
Ahh, so God did all the stuff the Bible describes, but then planted evidence to try to trick us into thinking otherwise?
It seems Occam's Razor would apply here.
pøh, we americans aren't that dumb :P
well some of us aren't anyway.
somewhat offtopic,
...some lame nuke attack that'll never work (because you don't use faulty software like Windows)
Is that why thousands of boxes running faulty software like Linux were crashed by teardrop.c?
CSoft networks has packages starting at US$5. They've been slashdot advertisers for a while too.
Anybody have any idea why Freshmeat is .net? It doesn't appear to be a network provider, and as far as I know, it never has been a network provider. I can excuse slashdot's .org, since it was a non-profit entity when the domain name was picked (and slashdot.com was already taken by the time the site whent commercial), but i see absolutely no reason why freshmeat should be .net.
American beer tends to be around 3% alcohol, while European beers tend to be around 5% or 6% alcohol. I'm not sure about the alcohol content of Guiness in particular though.
The "no computers" provision is just stupid. Computers are in everything these days. When money launderers are given probation, I don't hear about them not being allowed to use cash for 3 years. People who write bomb threats aren't barred from using pen and paper.
Also, I think some people need their heads readjusted, judging by some of the comments here. He is not a danger to society - he is not a violent criminal. Violent criminals deserve to be shut away for life, not petty thieves. If i met Mitnick in the street, I would not be afraid in the slightest, since he has not shown a tendancy to harm anyone.
Also, the court decided on $4000 restitution. I guess we can see what the court thought of Sun, et al's, $80 million+ claims.
Sure, this isn't true now, but it could have worked out that way. The Internet was entirely 100% US-only at one point, so when the first Europeans hooked up (basically, getting their bandwidth from the Americans who ran the backbones), the US could have forced them to abide by the Terms of Service in order to get that feed. Fortunately, they agreed on a peer-to-peer network hierarchy instead.
I'm not so sure about that. If I understand correctly, canada gets most of its internet connectivity through American backbone providers (mainly MCI and AT&T). Most (all?) of the North AmericaEurope backbones are also run by American companies. If these all died, the rest of the world would have some big problems. Europe could still communicate within itself, and possibly to Australia and Asia, but that's about it.
Right now Bill Bradley winning the Democratic nomination is the only hope I can see of getting an at least somewhat sane/competent candidate elected.
So you mean nobody, prior to this contest, had implemented a program to play Pousse? I suppose it's an obscure enough game that it would be possible, I just would've expected nearly every game to have a least some sort of program playing it by now...
However, it seems the contest ran quite well, so I'll stop complaining =) Good luck on this year's.
Possibly because some of us think that Quake* sucks (or at least prefer playing Doom2). Not counting Quake, there's Civ:CTP and MythII, and soon to be Neverwinter Nights. 3 games is not exactly a great selection. I'll stick with my Dungeon Keeper 2, Sim City 3000, and Doom2, thanks.
I have a strange feeling that there will be somebody out there that has some pre-written code for whatever the challenge will be, that will only need slight modification. For example, last year's contest was playing pousse, and I'd be surprised if no pousse implementations had ever been written before. That'd leave the rest of us at a slight disadvantage.
Sure. So I guess Solaris source code came preinstalled on his hard disk then, along with other software from Motorola, and with passwords for dozens of computers of Sun Microsystems, Novell, Motorola, Fujitsu. Sure. And he just broke into Shimomura by mistake, sure, everyone believes this one. Check his feats here
My comment was about the California charges - he did not break into the computers they had charged him with. I was not asserting that he didn't break into the computers covered by the federal charges - that's a separate matter entirely, and those charges haven't been dropped.
Yes. But he is also an associal nerd that cracked for more than 15 years, was arrested more than 5 times, spent one year in jail, and commited further offense repeatidly. The truth is that the justice doesn't know what to do with him: he can't learn his lesson, is a real threat to the society (the moment he decides to do harm, real harm will be done).
Being an "asocial nerd" is not illegal in the United States. He's not a danger to society, since none of his crimes have been violent in any way whatsoever. He broke into some computers, and caused no real damage. As you mentioned, he's been doing this on and off for 15 years, and has not maliciously caused any damage during that entire period. I think it's safe to assume he's not going to cause any damage any time soon. He's not any more of a danger to society than your average script kiddie is.
Well, even though crack.linuxppc.org hasn't actually been cracked, it would appear to the casual observer that it has been. That, to me, seems to say that LinuxPPC can be great and secure, but it doesn't do you any good if you're going to run crappy CGI guestbooks on it. Maybe the LinuxPPC guys need to hire an admin...
You can use Back Orifice as a telnet tool - set it up to bind a port to command.com, and then telnet to that port. Not so hot as far as security goes, of course, but you could write your own BO2K plugin that does authentication if you wanted.
As for bash, Cygnus has a whole UNIX environment for Windows - bash, DJGPP (gcc port), grep, ls, cat, and everything else.
Well, the United States government comes to mind...
It's interesting that slashdotters manage to work Microsoft into every article, no matter how unrelated it is. it seems the "community" is somewhat obsessed with that particular company.
It's obvious that it was a vendetta. They charged him with breaking into the DMV database, something which he had clearly not done. They had no evidence of him breaking into the database beyond the fact that he had some of the information it contained. All he did was call up the DMV and ask for the information ("social engineering"), not break into anything.
The "vendetta theory" is backed up by the fact that the charges were dropped by the new prosecutor almost as soon as the previous one was removed from the case.
Well, as several others have pointed out already, these were the California state charges that were dropped. He was charged with breaking into the DMV computers, and it took them five years to realize that he didn't break into the computers after all (which is why they have no evidence to use in a trial and have to drop the charges). He just called up the front desk, pretended to be somebody else, and obtained the information over the phone.
As for the federal charges, he was scheduled to be sentenced last week. However, the sentencing hearing was delayed again, despite the fact that neither Mitnick's lawyers nor the prosecution had asked for a delay, and the fact that the judge had previously promised that there would be no more delays in the hearing (it has already been delayed several times). It's now scheduled for August 9th.
As for the speedy trial, Mitnick did indeed waive his right to a speedy trial, but only because the court refused to let him spend more than a few hours a week in the legal library, refused to allow him to use a computer to review analyze computer disks that were to be used as evidence, and refused to pay his court-appointed lawyer for more than the standard number of hours, despite the fact that there were millions of pages of evidence to go through. Since the court purposely made his defence's evidence review so slow, he had no choice but to waive his right to a speedy trial, in the hopes that he could at least get a fair one. The trial was delayed even more by various unexplained administrative snafus such as the sentencing hearing delay mentioned above.
Throughout the case, the FBI, Secret Service, and corporations have been unreasonable and just plain stupid. The Secret Service initially argued against bail, saying that he could possibly interfere with the 1996 presidential election. They refused to let him have a walkman in the cell, fearing that his super-hacker skills could lead him to make a tape recorder out of it (despite the fact that it had no recording head). Sun Microsystems claimed that by viewing some of their proprietary source code, Mitnick caused them $80 million in damage. Now they give that source code away for free, so obviously their damage claims are frivolous. Sun isn't the only guilty corporation either. When the letters discussing these ludicrous damages were made public, the corporations and government became upset at being exposed.
All in all, Kevin Mitnick is a petty thief who has been set up as an example by an incompetent group of corporations and beaurocracies as some sort of super-hacker-terrorist who must be shut away.
That's the funny part - he didn't break into the database. He called up the desk clerk and pretended to be somebody else, and they just gave him the information. Of course the charges were dropped, since they were completely false charges.
It's pretty pathetic that it took the California prosecutors nearly five years to realize that he didn't break into their computers.