And exactly what do you think the comments in here and elsewhere would be if Microsoft did in fact simply REFUSE TO DETECT the spyware? Do you think EVERYBODY at Microsoft is THAT dumb? It's called "doing what you can get away with".
An ad-supported product like Eudora or Opera should be easy to detect and ignore. More importantly, IIRC, back when I was using Eudora, Ad-Aware would remove the adware, and Eudora would put it right back again on the next boot. So if you want the stuff, it's easy to get it.
Just because it is "well-behaved" is no excuse for not removing spyware and adware. A keylogger is "well-behaved" by that definition.
And the fact that someone who knows can set it to remove anything doesn't change the fact that the average user of Microsoft's antispyware product is simply going to take the default action of ignore.
The fact of the matter remains: Microsoft is treating its users as idiots again and making it easy for them to allow spyware to remain on their computers - "coincidentally" the exact same spyware whose company Microsoft is buying.
No amount of excuses from Microsoft shills is going to change this fact.
Basically this is true, only Bill wants to do it LEGALLY by owning the spyware, attaching a EULA to it that nobody reads, and then telling the federal court everybody agreed to this so it isn't a monopoly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htheft.
Sound familiar?
Let's be clear about this: Bill DOES want ALL your money. That is his purpose in life, from the poker days at Harvard to now. This is a guy who - AFTER he was rich - held up a supermarket line trying to find a 50-cent coupon for an ice cream until someone gave him 50 cents - and he took it.
This is the most pathetic fuck on the planet. Saddam Hussein should get more respect wandering around a US military prison in his shorts.
I'll continue to fix my clients computers running Windows, BUT...
I will also make sure I tell them Windows is CRAP and they really should look into Linux and Mac as alternatives because they're much easier to use, much more reliable and MUCH MORE secure.
And I'll make sure to tell them Linux is FREE and the Mac Mini is VERY inexpensive.
The only knee-jerk reaction here is that of the Microsoft shills who instantly react that "there's nothing to see here. Move along. Pay no attention to the greedy fuck behind the curtain."
Most end users running this tool will see "Ignore" and that's the end of it. Claiming that since it still allows removal it isn't a significant change is simply a lame excuse.
This is a DELIBERATE attempt by Microsoft to allow spyware to be installed and remain on user machines.
What is it going to take to get you Windows shills to wake up and smell the shit? Bill stops paying you?
Some new bitch has been hired as Microsoft's "Chief Security Officer".
The interviewer asked her if she had the power to stop shipment if a security showstopper problem was detected by her group before Microsoft software ships.
Point 1 may be valid, but it's the same as saying why didn't someone lock their door if someone entered without permission. Won't wash in court. The management has the right to manage their Wi-Fi as they see fit. If it's insecure, their complaint is weak, but if the building contract says you can only access with payment, then you signed it, you have to abide by it.
Point 2 - Same as point 1.
Point 3 - He can determine where it's coming from by using NetStumbler on a laptop. He can establish using a signal strength analysis which apartment it's coming from (if he's lucky anyway - when the cops went after Mitnick, they couldn't trace his cell phone directly to his apartment, so they had to finesse determing which apartment he was in - without a proper warrant, I might add.)
Once he's determined where it's coming from, he is entirely within his rights to demand you stop accessing the paid access point or he can evict you according to the rental contract you signed.
There are places such as residential hotels where you are not allowed to run a hot plate. If you do, you get evicted. What's the difference between that situation and this one? As long as you're paying rent, you do what the management contract says or you find another place to live. It's that simple.
Too many/.'ers seem to be living with their parents to realize how the rental business works.
I specifically stated that this would be the building manager in a building where Wi-Fi access is charged for to each tenant using it.
In such a case, the building manager is entirely within his rights under your contract to demand that you not access the building access point without paying.
While he cannot search your room, he can have your ass evicted if you fail to comply with the terms of the building contract. It's exactly the same as if you were deliberately flooding your apartment regularly.
If you don't believe that, you've never lived in an apartment building.
I agree, the simplest thing is to turn on the encryption (preferably WPA since WEP is nearly worthless - I've seen a demo of it being cracked in literally ten or fifteen minutes), but my point is that you CAN get in trouble for hijacking wireless. Why bother?
Art Is Imagination Followed By Engineering
on
Is Programming Art?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The only thing "artistic" about art is the decision what to be "artistic" about. Everything else is engineering - putting together known quantities of known materials to generate a desired effect.
HOW you put together those materials - say, for least cost to greatest effect - might be imaginative, but it's still engineering in my view.
Any programmer who think he's doing "art" is probably a piss-poor programmer - and probably has never documented a single program in his life.
Which is just about every programmer I've ever known, seen, heard about or read about.
Unless a terrorist can hijack a bunch of these for free, why use them when a stolen car and some C-4 or Semtex is a hell of a lot more effective and cheaper?
Oh, sure, I can think of scenarios where they would be useful, depending on how small they can get and still carry a lethal payload of something (explosives, gas, anthrax, whatever). But in general, it's unlikely anybody other than intelligence or military agencies of industrialized nations would use them.
The US military has a long way to go to get drones and unmanned robotic vehicles to actually be tactically useful, let alone strategically useful, for anything other than surveillance. So it's unlikely their opponents (again, other than other industrialized nations) will bother developing equivalent tech when lower tech can be used to render the US devices ineffective cheaply without any R&D expenditure (other than a few dead members while the new technigues are being worked out, of course.)
As for OSS, I could see licensing the software to prohibit military uses as a check against its use by countries adhering to the laws governing those licenses (are there any such countries?), but it would be useless against anyone else by definition.
What are you going to do with ONE $800 "swarmbot"?
If you have more than one, what's it going to cost again?
I mean, yeah, it's better to cost $800 than ten grand, but I thought the point of a "swarmbot" is that you need LOTS of them to get anything done. If ONE costs $800 - or even $400 - I don't think anybody other than Bill Gates is going to be buying them any time soon - certainly not for "gripping cans".
Gripping hand grenades or guns, maybe...Anybody remember "Runaway" with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons? I loved that movie - mostly because Gene was totally cool in it.
That is, piggybacking off someone else's wireless in the building. I told them it was not a good idea due to security and legal concerns, among other things, exactly like the article says.
How do you know what's coming over that Internet line you're piggybacking on? Okay, so it's not going to your MAC address based on your initiated connections, but how do you know what kind of worm or virus is running on that guy's machine - and what it's scanning for in terms of local connections? It's just dumb to piggyback unless you have a really secure setup, and if you know that much, why don't you have your own wireless?
It's also possible to find out who is piggybacking once it is noticed because all you need is a laptop with NetStumbler and walk around until you get a signal from a laptop and capture the MAC address. Then just knock on the door (if you're the building manager) and demand to see the computer - if the MAC matches, it's over. This is bad news for people who are in buildings that charge for wireless access. Fortunately for them, most of the management and other tenants probably aren't that knowledgeable.
As for this guy in the article, he was obviously stupid to hang out right in front of the victim's house, and then CONTINUE to hang around even once the victim had spotted him. Guy must have been desperate for that connection for some reason, which probably means it was something illegal he couldn't afford to be seen doing at the local Starbucks.
On the other side, I can't understand what the victim meant by not having security because other residents "were older". Was he sharing with the other residents in his neighborhood? If so, then wasn't HE screwing the service provider? Did I miss something here? If it's stealing to share an open wireless access point without someone's knowledge, then it's stealing to share one WITH someone's knowledge. I don't think the terms of use of most commercial providers allow for sharing access to anyone except perhaps ones immediate family at one location (unless of course it is a building-wide access point that is paid for by the building - which doesn't apply in this case because Dinon's is a residential home.)
So it seems like this guy got arrested for accessing an individual's network while the individual involved was sharing it with his neighbors probably in violation of his Terms of Use contract.
WinXP boots to the desktop quickly, allowing the luser to screw himself more quickly.
Oh, wait, I forgot - XP SHOWS the desktop quickly, but you still have to wait up to a minute for anything else to happen as Windows fumbles around in the background trying to find the rest of the system - including the DSL connection.
God knows what the security state is as XP stumbles around back there dragging in useless services and pumping out thousands of log entries that no customer actually ever asked for. Fortunately, since nothing can be done until it finishes, it probably means nothing can be done TO it as well.
Fedora, like practically every other Linux, installs a firewall by default. While not perfect at its default setting, it's probably as good or better than the XP firewall. And 4 has presumably been patched against pretty much all current threats.
Also, we don't know what kind of cable modem he's using. If it's one of the better ones, it comes with a built-in firewall. Even the el cheapo hardware devices these days usually includes a firewall that protects against tons of standard attacks.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me.
What does the word IGNORE mean to you?
What do you think it means to most users?
And exactly what do you think the comments in here and elsewhere would be if Microsoft did in fact simply REFUSE TO DETECT the spyware? Do you think EVERYBODY at Microsoft is THAT dumb? It's called "doing what you can get away with".
Get a fucking clue.
An ad-supported product like Eudora or Opera should be easy to detect and ignore. More importantly, IIRC, back when I was using Eudora, Ad-Aware would remove the adware, and Eudora would put it right back again on the next boot. So if you want the stuff, it's easy to get it.
Just because it is "well-behaved" is no excuse for not removing spyware and adware. A keylogger is "well-behaved" by that definition.
And the fact that someone who knows can set it to remove anything doesn't change the fact that the average user of Microsoft's antispyware product is simply going to take the default action of ignore.
The fact of the matter remains: Microsoft is treating its users as idiots again and making it easy for them to allow spyware to remain on their computers - "coincidentally" the exact same spyware whose company Microsoft is buying.
No amount of excuses from Microsoft shills is going to change this fact.
Basically this is true, only Bill wants to do it LEGALLY by owning the spyware, attaching a EULA to it that nobody reads, and then telling the federal court everybody agreed to this so it isn't a monopoly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htheft.
Sound familiar?
Let's be clear about this: Bill DOES want ALL your money. That is his purpose in life, from the poker days at Harvard to now. This is a guy who - AFTER he was rich - held up a supermarket line trying to find a 50-cent coupon for an ice cream until someone gave him 50 cents - and he took it.
This is the most pathetic fuck on the planet. Saddam Hussein should get more respect wandering around a US military prison in his shorts.
Why hasn't the US government been overthrown? Or, for that matter, pretty much any other government you can name.
Same answer.
The average human is a moron primate.
Any other major questions about life you'd like me to answer for you, just email me.
I'll continue to fix my clients computers running Windows, BUT...
I will also make sure I tell them Windows is CRAP and they really should look into Linux and Mac as alternatives because they're much easier to use, much more reliable and MUCH MORE secure.
And I'll make sure to tell them Linux is FREE and the Mac Mini is VERY inexpensive.
The only knee-jerk reaction here is that of the Microsoft shills who instantly react that "there's nothing to see here. Move along. Pay no attention to the greedy fuck behind the curtain."
Most end users running this tool will see "Ignore" and that's the end of it. Claiming that since it still allows removal it isn't a significant change is simply a lame excuse.
This is a DELIBERATE attempt by Microsoft to allow spyware to be installed and remain on user machines.
What is it going to take to get you Windows shills to wake up and smell the shit? Bill stops paying you?
Was floating around somewhere the other day.
Some new bitch has been hired as Microsoft's "Chief Security Officer".
The interviewer asked her if she had the power to stop shipment if a security showstopper problem was detected by her group before Microsoft software ships.
She evaded the question.
That tells you everything you need to know.
Now my Windows-to-Linux migration business will increase!
God, it's wonderful to have a stupid, greedy fuck like you running Microsoft!
Can I interest you in robbing a bank while you're at it? Obviously you're up for anything that makes you money, no matter how sleazy.
Just dump ALL the stories submitted on the front page and let the
Dump the editors, dump the moderators.
We'll just spider the whole goddamn site - or let Google do it for us.
Obviously the editing and moderating just is not working worth a shit.
Like the guy in Hackers said: "Give...it...up!"
Point 1 may be valid, but it's the same as saying why didn't someone lock their door if someone entered without permission. Won't wash in court. The management has the right to manage their Wi-Fi as they see fit. If it's insecure, their complaint is weak, but if the building contract says you can only access with payment, then you signed it, you have to abide by it.
/.'ers seem to be living with their parents to realize how the rental business works.
Point 2 - Same as point 1.
Point 3 - He can determine where it's coming from by using NetStumbler on a laptop. He can establish using a signal strength analysis which apartment it's coming from (if he's lucky anyway - when the cops went after Mitnick, they couldn't trace his cell phone directly to his apartment, so they had to finesse determing which apartment he was in - without a proper warrant, I might add.)
Once he's determined where it's coming from, he is entirely within his rights to demand you stop accessing the paid access point or he can evict you according to the rental contract you signed.
There are places such as residential hotels where you are not allowed to run a hot plate. If you do, you get evicted. What's the difference between that situation and this one? As long as you're paying rent, you do what the management contract says or you find another place to live. It's that simple.
Too many
They don't have to search you. They can demand you comply with the rules of the rental contract you signed and if you don't, you get evicted.
Trust me, that they CAN do.
I specifically stated that this would be the building manager in a building where Wi-Fi access is charged for to each tenant using it.
In such a case, the building manager is entirely within his rights under your contract to demand that you not access the building access point without paying.
While he cannot search your room, he can have your ass evicted if you fail to comply with the terms of the building contract. It's exactly the same as if you were deliberately flooding your apartment regularly.
If you don't believe that, you've never lived in an apartment building.
I agree, the simplest thing is to turn on the encryption (preferably WPA since WEP is nearly worthless - I've seen a demo of it being cracked in literally ten or fifteen minutes), but my point is that you CAN get in trouble for hijacking wireless. Why bother?
The only thing "artistic" about art is the decision what to be "artistic" about. Everything else is engineering - putting together known quantities of known materials to generate a desired effect.
HOW you put together those materials - say, for least cost to greatest effect - might be imaginative, but it's still engineering in my view.
Any programmer who think he's doing "art" is probably a piss-poor programmer - and probably has never documented a single program in his life.
Which is just about every programmer I've ever known, seen, heard about or read about.
Unless a terrorist can hijack a bunch of these for free, why use them when a stolen car and some C-4 or Semtex is a hell of a lot more effective and cheaper?
Oh, sure, I can think of scenarios where they would be useful, depending on how small they can get and still carry a lethal payload of something (explosives, gas, anthrax, whatever). But in general, it's unlikely anybody other than intelligence or military agencies of industrialized nations would use them.
The US military has a long way to go to get drones and unmanned robotic vehicles to actually be tactically useful, let alone strategically useful, for anything other than surveillance. So it's unlikely their opponents (again, other than other industrialized nations) will bother developing equivalent tech when lower tech can be used to render the US devices ineffective cheaply without any R&D expenditure (other than a few dead members while the new technigues are being worked out, of course.)
As for OSS, I could see licensing the software to prohibit military uses as a check against its use by countries adhering to the laws governing those licenses (are there any such countries?), but it would be useless against anyone else by definition.
What are you going to do with ONE $800 "swarmbot"?
If you have more than one, what's it going to cost again?
I mean, yeah, it's better to cost $800 than ten grand, but I thought the point of a "swarmbot" is that you need LOTS of them to get anything done. If ONE costs $800 - or even $400 - I don't think anybody other than Bill Gates is going to be buying them any time soon - certainly not for "gripping cans".
Gripping hand grenades or guns, maybe...Anybody remember "Runaway" with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons? I loved that movie - mostly because Gene was totally cool in it.
That is, piggybacking off someone else's wireless in the building. I told them it was not a good idea due to security and legal concerns, among other things, exactly like the article says.
How do you know what's coming over that Internet line you're piggybacking on? Okay, so it's not going to your MAC address based on your initiated connections, but how do you know what kind of worm or virus is running on that guy's machine - and what it's scanning for in terms of local connections? It's just dumb to piggyback unless you have a really secure setup, and if you know that much, why don't you have your own wireless?
It's also possible to find out who is piggybacking once it is noticed because all you need is a laptop with NetStumbler and walk around until you get a signal from a laptop and capture the MAC address. Then just knock on the door (if you're the building manager) and demand to see the computer - if the MAC matches, it's over. This is bad news for people who are in buildings that charge for wireless access. Fortunately for them, most of the management and other tenants probably aren't that knowledgeable.
As for this guy in the article, he was obviously stupid to hang out right in front of the victim's house, and then CONTINUE to hang around even once the victim had spotted him. Guy must have been desperate for that connection for some reason, which probably means it was something illegal he couldn't afford to be seen doing at the local Starbucks.
On the other side, I can't understand what the victim meant by not having security because other residents "were older". Was he sharing with the other residents in his neighborhood? If so, then wasn't HE screwing the service provider? Did I miss something here? If it's stealing to share an open wireless access point without someone's knowledge, then it's stealing to share one WITH someone's knowledge. I don't think the terms of use of most commercial providers allow for sharing access to anyone except perhaps ones immediate family at one location (unless of course it is a building-wide access point that is paid for by the building - which doesn't apply in this case because Dinon's is a residential home.)
So it seems like this guy got arrested for accessing an individual's network while the individual involved was sharing it with his neighbors probably in violation of his Terms of Use contract.
Fucking morons. Who wrote this research? The Food and Drug Administration?
Most aging appearance is caused by sun exposure. Stay out of the goddamn sun or look like Don Rumsfeld when you're thirty, morons.
'There are no operating systems that "just work"'
Right on!
As I've said many times before:
1) Windows is CRAP!
2) Linux is ALSO CRAP!
3) Linux is FREE CRAP!
4) And for the benefit of the first poster:
Apple is EXPENSIVE CRAP!
"More, when I plug something into it - be it an iPod, 23" or 30" cinedisplay or anything else, it just works"
Edited correctly: "More, when I plug something into it - be it an iPod, 23" or 30" cinedisplay or anything else MADE BY APPLE, it just works."
He doesn't have to. The editors ARE accidents. Certainly their editing is.
Yeah, but what does it run?
Oh, well, if there's no software for it, I suppose it can't get owned due to flaws in that software.
1) Start
2) Post dupe.
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
Right.
WinXP boots to the desktop quickly, allowing the luser to screw himself more quickly.
Oh, wait, I forgot - XP SHOWS the desktop quickly, but you still have to wait up to a minute for anything else to happen as Windows fumbles around in the background trying to find the rest of the system - including the DSL connection.
God knows what the security state is as XP stumbles around back there dragging in useless services and pumping out thousands of log entries that no customer actually ever asked for. Fortunately, since nothing can be done until it finishes, it probably means nothing can be done TO it as well.
Consider your advice trashed.
Fedora, like practically every other Linux, installs a firewall by default. While not perfect at its default setting, it's probably as good or better than the XP firewall. And 4 has presumably been patched against pretty much all current threats.
Also, we don't know what kind of cable modem he's using. If it's one of the better ones, it comes with a built-in firewall. Even the el cheapo hardware devices these days usually includes a firewall that protects against tons of standard attacks.
How long before Minix gets owned?