Actually, I believe some Canadian TV production company did that book quite some years ago. They modified it considerably, since it was IIRC only an hour show. I remember seeing it on TV. They had the male protagonist as a high school kid, tho, IIRC, instead of a college student who then goes into IT.
That was a great book. The first one that read similar to real IT - as opposed to the "Colossus" stuff that was completely unrelated to real computing.
Yeah, my attorney tried this approach at my trial for armed bank robbery in 1993...(Computer nerd whacks out, becomes terrorist...)
Didn't work... Did eight years on a nine-year sentence....
Good movie, though. Robert Duvall is probably the best male actor in Hollywood. And did you see Tuesday Weld (played Duvall's wife)? Man, did she get chubby! She used to be a Drew Barrymore babe thirty years ago...
The kid that broke into MSN, hacked Gates' credit card number and ordered a shipment of Viagra sent to Gates paid for with his own credit card?
Much more amusing than this...
Rutger Hauer playing a sort of Carlos the Jackal terrorist in the movie "Nighthawks" used to call people over the phone before he blew something up and say, "Remember - there is no security!"
Microsoft does $28 billion. That is NOWHERE NEAR GM, GE, IBM, HP, and quite a few other companies. They do $50-100 billion....some do more than $100 billion...
Don't confuse stock value in the go-go '90's with actual revenue...
Irrelevant. Dr. Fred Cohen wrote the original viruses on UNIX boxes back in the early '80's. Read his paper.
And careless admins are legion as industry surveys of unpatched systems demonstrate regularly.
Viruses are entirely possible on Linux. They just aren't very significant NOW because few virus writers are concentrating on Linux. But some HAVE looked into it, at least superficially. I downloaded several papers from a virus writer site just a few days ago. While they glossed over the problem of getting root permissions in order to spread, the papers do demonstrate an interest in writing viruses for UNIX/Linux.
And keep in mind "blended" attacks that share characteristics of worms, trojans, and viruses. These will become more common as tougher targets like Linux are aimed at.
In the linux security newsgroup, there is a post right now where someone got hit with an apache vulnerability and the cracker dumped a virus on him in addition. The virus is apparently rather simple which uses a race condition that occurs in the kernal to infect files with setuid priviledges (if I'm phrasing that right - I'm not code or kernel literate enough to read the exploit's details).
We had this argument over in alt.os.linux.mandrake.
Viruses are POSSIBLE. Eventually they will be PROBABLE. Right NOW, they are insignificant. Unless you get hit with one, as a fellow in the linux security newsgroup has reported in the last day or so.
Google on Dr. Fred Cohen - he wrote the original viruses in 1984 on UNIX boxes. Read his paper.
And BTW, read the alert again. That's 3500 boxes, not 350...
I agree. We just had a huge argument (still going on in fact due to someone posting he got hit with an Apache exploit that dumped a virus on his Linux system) in alt.os.linux.mandrake. People asked whether virus checkers were reasonable to have. So-called experts told them viruses were IMPOSSIBLE (not just hard, IMPOSSIBLE) on Linux.
This is just wrong. Telling people who are not Linux gurus or pro sys admins to forget viruses because they are "impossible" or because there are only 5 or so in existence (as opposed to worms and trojans) NOW is just stupid.
It doesn't matter how hard it is to spread a virus on Linux. The point is that it is possible and a Linux newbie needs the tools to help him deal with that, if not now, then eventually.
If they price it right (and eventually they will HAVE TO if Moore's Law continues) everybody will have one in their machine, desktop, laptop, PDA, whatever...
I just sent a message using the HP "Email Carly" Web page quoting your statement (which was quite good) and following it up with the suggestion that in five or ten years, there won't be an HP/UX - only Linux. And that she would save money, expand her market and contribute to the general welfare and come up smelling like a rose if she were to contribute the enterprise capabilities of HP/UX to the Linux project.
I suggest everyone else send her an email about Perens, too. It seemed to work back when they were threatening people with the DMCP. Not that we can get him his job back, but we need to let HP management know that we don't like this sort of thing.
No. Why? Because Phillips is a $60 billion (last time I looked which was years ago) giant bigger than the entire lame entertainment industry.
They can manufacture dual-tray CD players with CD recorders built in, obviously for the purpose of copying a CD (albeit they would claim it's for creating "best of" CD's - yeah, right...) - and nobody dares sue them. Because if they stopped making CD players, the music labels would have no way to sell their product. And if DVDs and VCRs don't get made, movie studios won't get 40-60% of a movie's revenue coming from video rentals.
The movie studios and music labels need to be told to shut up and sit down by the people making their profits possible - the artists and the tech companies.
Without tech, there is no art - and that goes back to whoever mixed the first paints on the cave floor...
Excuse me, but this "Chinese" that Bill wants to pay for his stuff, does that include the Taiwanese who manufacture half the hardware used to run his stuff?
And what happens when America locks down its computers? Does Taiwan sit back and say, "Yeah, okay" - or do they start building boxes without the Palladium hardware and maybe even their own CPUs and start selling them worldwide (and smuggling them into America will be the next big "Drug War" issue!) and take over the computer industry from Intel? While Linux is taking over the software market from Windows by ignoring the issue?
Go ahead, Bill! Feel free! Don't let the door hit your butt on the way to the poor house!
>If the network is staffed with experience professionals (like the infamous Red Army Cell and Baider- Meinhoff were), attempts to rattle the network will fail.
Have you ever read any of the details of the Baader-Meinhoff group? These people were FAR from being professionals. They were mostly screwed-up college kids with VERY little competence in covert operations. Certainly nothing like you get today with most of the current crop of terrorists being sponsored by Iran, Irag, Syria and other reasonably well-funded government intelligence agencies.
$29 for 200Kbps? That doesn't sound like a deal when you get 1.5Mbps from Pac Bell for $50/month - and if you install yourself, no installation charge, and if you agree to a one year contract, you get the modem free.
Now I suspect the service you get from a local data center is a LOT better than you get from Pac Bell, and of course your house is wired already, but still, speed-wise, that ain't good enough. The 8Mbps sounds good, but what does that cost? $1,500 a month?
Standard approach in the Shadowrun RPG - have a runner hit the systems and shut down the security while the shooters are moving in through the sewer system...heh, heh, heh.
Like any Arabs are ever going to be that coordinated...
Seriously, the main problem with terrorists is their terrifying incompetence - 9/11 was a major suprise to me because VERY few terrorist acts have ever been particularly well-executed...
The second problem with terrorists is: they never follow up. They try to blow up the World Trade Center incompetently first - then it takes them several YEARS to finally get around to doing the job right. You can't run a terrorist campaign like that - you have to be able to deliver chronic, repetitive blows to the enemy, or it's no more significant than getting hit by lightning...
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Yeah, right, Jackie Chan as Shimomura...
Actually, I believe some Canadian TV production company did that book quite some years ago. They modified it considerably, since it was IIRC only an hour show. I remember seeing it on TV. They had the male protagonist as a high school kid, tho, IIRC, instead of a college student who then goes into IT.
That was a great book. The first one that read similar to real IT - as opposed to the "Colossus" stuff that was completely unrelated to real computing.
You mean:
"Springtime for Hitler and Germany,
Winter for Poland and Prague"
Like that?
Yeah, my attorney tried this approach at my trial for armed bank robbery in 1993...(Computer nerd whacks out, becomes terrorist...)
Didn't work... Did eight years on a nine-year sentence....
Good movie, though. Robert Duvall is probably the best male actor in Hollywood. And did you see Tuesday Weld (played Duvall's wife)? Man, did she get chubby! She used to be a Drew Barrymore babe thirty years ago...
That was funny... Really...
Including mine?
The kid that broke into MSN, hacked Gates' credit card number and ordered a shipment of Viagra sent to Gates paid for with his own credit card?
Much more amusing than this...
Rutger Hauer playing a sort of Carlos the Jackal terrorist in the movie "Nighthawks" used to call people over the phone before he blew something up and say, "Remember - there is no security!"
What is this, a joke?
Microsoft does $28 billion. That is NOWHERE NEAR GM, GE, IBM, HP, and quite a few other companies. They do $50-100 billion....some do more than $100 billion...
Don't confuse stock value in the go-go '90's with actual revenue...
Irrelevant. Dr. Fred Cohen wrote the original viruses on UNIX boxes back in the early '80's. Read his paper.
And careless admins are legion as industry surveys of unpatched systems demonstrate regularly.
Viruses are entirely possible on Linux. They just aren't very significant NOW because few virus writers are concentrating on Linux. But some HAVE looked into it, at least superficially.
I downloaded several papers from a virus writer site just a few days ago. While they glossed over the problem of getting root permissions in order to spread, the papers do demonstrate an interest in writing viruses for UNIX/Linux.
And keep in mind "blended" attacks that share characteristics of worms, trojans, and viruses. These will become more common as tougher targets like Linux are aimed at.
In the linux security newsgroup, there is a post right now where someone got hit with an apache vulnerability and the cracker dumped a virus on him in addition. The virus is apparently rather simple which uses a race condition that occurs in the kernal to infect files with setuid priviledges (if I'm phrasing that right - I'm not code or kernel literate enough to read the exploit's details).
We had this argument over in alt.os.linux.mandrake.
Viruses are POSSIBLE. Eventually they will be PROBABLE. Right NOW, they are insignificant. Unless you get hit with one, as a fellow in the linux security newsgroup has reported in the last day or so.
Google on Dr. Fred Cohen - he wrote the original viruses in 1984 on UNIX boxes. Read his paper.
And BTW, read the alert again. That's 3500 boxes, not 350...
I agree. We just had a huge argument (still going on in fact due to someone posting he got hit with an Apache exploit that dumped a virus on his Linux system) in alt.os.linux.mandrake. People asked whether virus checkers were reasonable to have. So-called experts told them viruses were IMPOSSIBLE (not just hard, IMPOSSIBLE) on Linux.
This is just wrong. Telling people who are not Linux gurus or pro sys admins to forget viruses because they are "impossible" or because there are only 5 or so in existence (as opposed to worms and trojans) NOW is just stupid.
It doesn't matter how hard it is to spread a virus on Linux. The point is that it is possible and a Linux newbie needs the tools to help him deal with that, if not now, then eventually.
Read it again - that's 3500, not 350...
>Also Intel publicly has no plans to release a 64 bit desktop CPU
Right - we haven't heard that one before?
"No one needs a [insert MHz here] CPU on the desktop, so they'll only be used in servers."
Bulldookey. Bovine excrement. Ruminant evacuation.
If they price it right (and eventually they will HAVE TO if Moore's Law continues) everybody will have one in their machine, desktop, laptop, PDA, whatever...
Dunno, I was always rooting for Skynet in those movies...
The idea that this broad, her asshole kid, and a reject robot could defeat a true AI - it's laughable...
Equally laughable was the old Star Trek stories where Kirk always outwitted the superhuman AI or robot by making it play emotional games...
No one has ever pointed out Roddenberry's Luddite attitude toward technology...
You mean like Windows?
(I mean Windows destroying itself, not Windows the virus...)
Or do I mean that?
Maybe I mean Windows the virus...
Or is Windows the carrier and Gates is the virus?
You mean the ex-NSA spook who probably was the REAL author of the Worm? THAT Robert Morris?
Oh, boy, he's running IBM's Research Center?
Send her an email like everyone did during the DMCP furor. Just go to the page below, and fill out the form:
/ in dex.htm
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/fiorina
(Careful, there is no space in the index.htm - Slashdot's editor is screwing up!)
I just sent a message using the HP "Email Carly" Web page quoting your statement (which was quite good) and following it up with the suggestion that in five or ten years, there won't be an HP/UX - only Linux. And that she would save money, expand her market and contribute to the general welfare and come up smelling like a rose if she were to contribute the enterprise capabilities of HP/UX to the Linux project.
I suggest everyone else send her an email about Perens, too. It seemed to work back when they were threatening people with the DMCP. Not that we can get him his job back, but we need to let HP management know that we don't like this sort of thing.
No. Why? Because Phillips is a $60 billion (last time I looked which was years ago) giant bigger than the entire lame entertainment industry.
They can manufacture dual-tray CD players with CD recorders built in, obviously for the purpose of copying a CD (albeit they would claim it's for creating "best of" CD's - yeah, right...) - and nobody dares sue them. Because if they stopped making CD players, the music labels would have no way to sell their product. And if DVDs and VCRs don't get made, movie studios won't get 40-60% of a movie's revenue coming from video rentals.
The movie studios and music labels need to be told to shut up and sit down by the people making their profits possible - the artists and the tech companies.
Without tech, there is no art - and that goes back to whoever mixed the first paints on the cave floor...
Excuse me, but this "Chinese" that Bill wants to pay for his stuff, does that include the Taiwanese who manufacture half the hardware used to run his stuff?
And what happens when America locks down its computers? Does Taiwan sit back and say, "Yeah, okay" - or do they start building boxes without the Palladium hardware and maybe even their own CPUs and start selling them worldwide (and smuggling them into America will be the next big "Drug War" issue!) and take over the computer industry from Intel? While Linux is taking over the software market from Windows by ignoring the issue?
Go ahead, Bill! Feel free! Don't let the door hit your butt on the way to the poor house!
>If the network is staffed with experience professionals (like the infamous Red Army Cell and Baider- Meinhoff were), attempts to rattle the network will fail.
Have you ever read any of the details of the Baader-Meinhoff group? These people were FAR from being professionals. They were mostly screwed-up college kids with VERY little competence in covert operations. Certainly nothing like you get today with most of the current crop of terrorists being sponsored by Iran, Irag, Syria and other reasonably well-funded government intelligence agencies.
No - you'd have to be doing it in a DOS SHELL!
$29 for 200Kbps? That doesn't sound like a deal when you get 1.5Mbps from Pac Bell for $50/month - and if you install yourself, no installation charge, and if you agree to a one year contract, you get the modem free.
Now I suspect the service you get from a local data center is a LOT better than you get from Pac Bell, and of course your house is wired already, but still, speed-wise, that ain't good enough. The 8Mbps sounds good, but what does that cost? $1,500 a month?
They're signing up for MCSE courses?
Then we have nothing to worry about....
Never mind...
Standard approach in the Shadowrun RPG - have a runner hit the systems and shut down the security while the shooters are moving in through the sewer system...heh, heh, heh.
Like any Arabs are ever going to be that coordinated...
Seriously, the main problem with terrorists is their terrifying incompetence - 9/11 was a major suprise to me because VERY few terrorist acts have ever been particularly well-executed...
The second problem with terrorists is: they never follow up. They try to blow up the World Trade Center incompetently first - then it takes them several YEARS to finally get around to doing the job right. You can't run a terrorist campaign like that - you have to be able to deliver chronic, repetitive blows to the enemy, or it's no more significant than getting hit by lightning...