It's a case of a lesser of two evils. The problem is, there are thousands of exploitable boxes and if nothing is done about it, in the long term, this is going to cause some serious problems. Many of the owners of these systems will never fix or patch them themselves.
It's really a toss-up between a worm that temporarily slows down networks by spreading and patching the systems it infects, then automatically deleting itself after a set date, or a script kiddie scanning the entire internet, picking up these boxes and adding them to his DDoS network, which can slow down all or any network(s) (root DNS servers, anyone?) he or she chooses at a later date.
It is for this reason, IMHO, that these exploitable boxes are a threat to the integrity of the internet, and while writing a worm to automatically patch the systems might be rather militant, something has to be done about it.
Interesting site, but I'm afraid the "experiments" really aren't enough. Ideally one would need to disassemble the code in the fruit machine's ROM for undisputable proof of foul play going on. Until that happens, I would take this site with a pinch of salt since the manner of wording gives me the impression that the author is a bit of a crackpot.
When you mean "they", I suppose you mean the Chinese government? The article never said anywhere that the government was ever going to do any developing itself - it has merely decided to only use software made by Chinese companies (and thus providing Chinese jobs). Whether these companies products are based on GPL'ed code, use GPL'ed code, or whether they choose to abide by the spirit of the GPL will be entirely up to the individual companies themselves. It is, of course, entirely possible that many of these companies will elect to write closed-source software by themselves, completely from scratch.
The real truth is, you could find a colocation facility in China or other far-eastern country that would host you a hell of a lot cheaper. They are simply not competitive.
Furthermore, if I was hosting seriously illegal content on a huge scale, I would question the militarial resiliance of Sealand too. They are just a small fort, probably with no real defences to speak of anymore. Would a certain country or two we know go as far as invading it because the rampant piracy was hurting their economy? These countries have already ignored the UN's opinion on a certain military campaign very recently. At least only a very stupid country would dare invade China!
Actually, Estonia has rather excellent connections to Finland, Sweden, and the UK, as well as its baltic neighbours. It is very technically developed and has an ultra modern telephone network. I think it would take some to bring the country offline (or, at least, if you can bring down Estonia, you could bring down virtually any country in the EU!)
Seriously, usenet is supposed to be distributed and resiliant to poor communications and have no choke points that would slow operation.
Yeah, right. I can't begin to relate how many posts many poor ISP newsgroup servers I have used in the past lose (even text-only newsgroups!). Binaries are by far the worst - anyone who's ever tried to download a 150-part file with, say, parts 38, 39, 41 and 110 all missing will tell you that the protocol is NOT resiliant in the slightest - the only real way to ensure reliable operation is to poll as many other servers as possible, which is a bit of a cop-out to be honest.
Indeed. But it can go the other way too. Last Sunday my father bought a second hand Yaesu FRG-7000 reciever, and was able to tune in on the 1.7MHz band used (illegally) by some old cordless telephones. It so happened at that time that one of my neighbours had such a phone, and was using it to make a call (some man and a woman talking). We ended up being able to listen in to their entire conversation in full. The people obviously did not realise that not only is it illegal, it is also horrendously insecure!
Can't you see??? If they don't tell anyone about these vulnerabilities, "terrorists" will take advantage of them and kill hundreds of thousands of people! What if "terrorists" hacked into the Win98 computer controlling one of the many Nuclear Reactors based in the United States? Can you imagine the havoc that could cause?!?!
Why do they beat around the bush with a purely hypothetical statement such as "It could happen to you". If you are running an unpatched Windows (as most people are) and somebody releases a worm that exploits it, it WILL happen to you!!
It may be obvious, but have you put your name down on BT[uk incumbant telco]'s Demand Tracking Scheme? It is almost certainly worth it - because they won't upgrade your area until people do (it does work!). They have also been working on extending the reach of ADSL so you may be able to get it if and when your area is finally activated.
If that fails, get yourself an ISP with their head screwed on (i.e. not a big one) and have a chat with them about it. They can ask BT to supply it on an if-it-works-it-works basis (I know a few people who have "passed" this way).
But for now, find yourself an ISP and register your interest!
Yes, such devices should not be connected to the public internet! Can you the imagine havoc that would be wreaked if a major security vulnerability is found in one of these phones? The internet would end up being infested with millions of hacked cellphones!
Can you imagine the ruthless Chinese betting syndicates with this:
Smallpox attack on Israel.......................100:1
"We'll bet a couple of hundred million dollars on that and then send a vial of smallpox and a small monetary contribution to our friends in Palestine..."
Probably the best places to try are the Far East - China, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and so on. I really don't think you'll find anywhere civilised (read: with a decent telecoms infrastructure) that don't have some sort of basic copyright laws. I think your best hope is to find somewhere has only bothered to implement copyright under to International Pressure (read: US and EU pressure), but really doesn't go out of its way to enforce them.
I would not advise Eastern Europe anymore. All of them want EU membership so you can expect enforcement to get quite a bit stronger in that area.
It would probably be better to buy things from either European or Hungarian resellers. Instead of Amazon.com, use Amazon.co.uk. Instead of Dell.com, use Dell.hu IBM, again, use IBM.hu instead of IBM.com. Simple really.
The last HTML version to be an RFC standard was HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866), so by that way of thinking, practially every site on the internet is violating RFC standards.
Fortunately SpamAssassin is very good at nuking the worst spams (loading a huge penalty on HTML mails with loads of inline images, etc., as well as detecting "porny" words and phrases).
The only spams I get through SpamAssassin seem to be are reasonably intelligently written ones, mainly offering webhosting and search engine submission and the like. Highly recommended!
Hertz (Hz) is a unit that in all practicalities measures "times per second".
The number 44.1kHz used to signify sample rate means that the sound is sampled 44,100 times per second. It has nothing to do with frequency of the sound - which is how many sound waves per second.
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It's a case of a lesser of two evils. The problem is, there are thousands of exploitable boxes and if nothing is done about it, in the long term, this is going to cause some serious problems. Many of the owners of these systems will never fix or patch them themselves.
It's really a toss-up between a worm that temporarily slows down networks by spreading and patching the systems it infects, then automatically deleting itself after a set date, or a script kiddie scanning the entire internet, picking up these boxes and adding them to his DDoS network, which can slow down all or any network(s) (root DNS servers, anyone?) he or she chooses at a later date.
It is for this reason, IMHO, that these exploitable boxes are a threat to the integrity of the internet, and while writing a worm to automatically patch the systems might be rather militant, something has to be done about it.
After a little bit of googling...
What is Blackjack?
What is card counting?
Interesting site, but I'm afraid the "experiments" really aren't enough. Ideally one would need to disassemble the code in the fruit machine's ROM for undisputable proof of foul play going on. Until that happens, I would take this site with a pinch of salt since the manner of wording gives me the impression that the author is a bit of a crackpot.
When you mean "they", I suppose you mean the Chinese government? The article never said anywhere that the government was ever going to do any developing itself - it has merely decided to only use software made by Chinese companies (and thus providing Chinese jobs). Whether these companies products are based on GPL'ed code, use GPL'ed code, or whether they choose to abide by the spirit of the GPL will be entirely up to the individual companies themselves. It is, of course, entirely possible that many of these companies will elect to write closed-source software by themselves, completely from scratch.
The real truth is, you could find a colocation facility in China or other far-eastern country that would host you a hell of a lot cheaper. They are simply not competitive.
Furthermore, if I was hosting seriously illegal content on a huge scale, I would question the militarial resiliance of Sealand too. They are just a small fort, probably with no real defences to speak of anymore. Would a certain country or two we know go as far as invading it because the rampant piracy was hurting their economy? These countries have already ignored the UN's opinion on a certain military campaign very recently. At least only a very stupid country would dare invade China!
Actually, Estonia has rather excellent connections to Finland, Sweden, and the UK, as well as its baltic neighbours. It is very technically developed and has an ultra modern telephone network. I think it would take some to bring the country offline (or, at least, if you can bring down Estonia, you could bring down virtually any country in the EU!)
It's not as poor and underdeveloped as your average ignorant fool might think. It's done a hell of a lot in the last 10 years (Estonia: Where the Internet is a Human Right).
Yeah, right. I can't begin to relate how many posts many poor ISP newsgroup servers I have used in the past lose (even text-only newsgroups!). Binaries are by far the worst - anyone who's ever tried to download a 150-part file with, say, parts 38, 39, 41 and 110 all missing will tell you that the protocol is NOT resiliant in the slightest - the only real way to ensure reliable operation is to poll as many other servers as possible, which is a bit of a cop-out to be honest.
It's not that they are particularly secure, it's more likely that a s'kiddie would have no idea what to do with it ;)
Indeed. But it can go the other way too. Last Sunday my father bought a second hand Yaesu FRG-7000 reciever, and was able to tune in on the 1.7MHz band used (illegally) by some old cordless telephones. It so happened at that time that one of my neighbours had such a phone, and was using it to make a call (some man and a woman talking). We ended up being able to listen in to their entire conversation in full. The people obviously did not realise that not only is it illegal, it is also horrendously insecure!
Can't you see??? If they don't tell anyone about these vulnerabilities, "terrorists" will take advantage of them and kill hundreds of thousands of people! What if "terrorists" hacked into the Win98 computer controlling one of the many Nuclear Reactors based in the United States? Can you imagine the havoc that could cause?!?!
Why do they beat around the bush with a purely hypothetical statement such as "It could happen to you". If you are running an unpatched Windows (as most people are) and somebody releases a worm that exploits it, it WILL happen to you!!
It may be obvious, but have you put your name down on BT[uk incumbant telco]'s Demand Tracking Scheme? It is almost certainly worth it - because they won't upgrade your area until people do (it does work!). They have also been working on extending the reach of ADSL so you may be able to get it if and when your area is finally activated.
If that fails, get yourself an ISP with their head screwed on (i.e. not a big one) and have a chat with them about it. They can ask BT to supply it on an if-it-works-it-works basis (I know a few people who have "passed" this way).
But for now, find yourself an ISP and register your interest!
Hope this helps.
Yes, such devices should not be connected to the public internet! Can you the imagine havoc that would be wreaked if a major security vulnerability is found in one of these phones? The internet would end up being infested with millions of hacked cellphones!
...they want to stretch the copyright duration out a bit...
Can you imagine the ruthless Chinese betting syndicates with this:
Smallpox attack on Israel.......................100:1
"We'll bet a couple of hundred million dollars on that and then send a vial of smallpox and a small monetary contribution to our friends in Palestine..."
And they wouldn't think twice about it either.
What are they thinking?
Probably the best places to try are the Far East - China, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and so on. I really don't think you'll find anywhere civilised (read: with a decent telecoms infrastructure) that don't have some sort of basic copyright laws. I think your best hope is to find somewhere has only bothered to implement copyright under to International Pressure (read: US and EU pressure), but really doesn't go out of its way to enforce them.
I would not advise Eastern Europe anymore. All of them want EU membership so you can expect enforcement to get quite a bit stronger in that area.
Like the article says, HavenCo on Sealand!
Excellent connections, no copyright laws.
It would probably be better to buy things from either European or Hungarian resellers. Instead of Amazon.com, use Amazon.co.uk. Instead of Dell.com, use Dell.hu IBM, again, use IBM.hu instead of IBM.com. Simple really.
Which will ironically put it in violation of the DMCA...
Wrong, ARM is the best selling architecture by a clear margin. Used in cellphones, PDAs, gaming consoles, DVB/DAB devices, and well, just about everything you can think of, the x86 isn't found much outside of the desktop and low-end server markets.
W3C recommendations are not RFCs.
The last HTML version to be an RFC standard was HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866), so by that way of thinking, practially every site on the internet is violating RFC standards.
Linux has nothing to do with FSF, so they will be offering moral (and maybe some legal/financial, if necessary) support only.
Fortunately SpamAssassin is very good at nuking the worst spams (loading a huge penalty on HTML mails with loads of inline images, etc., as well as detecting "porny" words and phrases).
The only spams I get through SpamAssassin seem to be are reasonably intelligently written ones, mainly offering webhosting and search engine submission and the like. Highly recommended!
http://spamassassin.org/
...my mother has taken an interest in Slashdot!
With all due respect, you are completely wrong.
Hertz (Hz) is a unit that in all practicalities measures "times per second".
The number 44.1kHz used to signify sample rate means that the sound is sampled 44,100 times per second. It has nothing to do with frequency of the sound - which is how many sound waves per second.
You should read the HowStuffWorks question, Is the sound on vinyl records better than on CDs or DVDs?.