It just seems to follow very neatly on the recent IE/hacked websites business. I wonder if there was some extra pressure to get this out the door at a time when it would be able to cash in and if so, if it's likely to have been tested as well as previous releases.
Pretty much what I was thinking. The 'London Wireless State of Play' story which was on Slashdot a few weeks back had some interesting geek density calculations which help explain why the Consume mesh project hasn't really taken off here yet. Kits like this need to be cheap to buy and easy to use so that they can become ubiquitous. This doesn't look to be either.
i'm not from the USA. i am not bound their laws. as others have already pointed out, linux is not US owned. ... we're all looking at SCO - looking at it getting NOWHERE. and even if it does get somewhere, that's one company that is trying to save itself from bankruptcy by arguing over a few lines of code it alleges is stolen. it's nothing to do with "linux" as a whole. ... US can do whatever they want. i'll be running linux.
Brave words!
A few questions:
- Do you think a foreign hacker isn't targeted by US law enforcement if he is operating outside the USA? - Who do you think is drafting Iraqi copyright law at the moment? - Do you think that SCO will have caused Linux no problems whatsoever if they lose? What about FUD? - Do you think MS have the will and resources to lobby effectively and to enter into pointless litigation to add to the FUD? - Do you honestly believe what happens in the USA doesn't effect you and that US antiterrorism restrictions cannot apply if you are not American? - Are you prepared to appear in court on suspected terrorist charges just because you were running Linux?
Unfortunately problems are rarely solved when they are simply ignored.
I wonder if the Chinese software pirates and the growing adoption of Linux in China are symptoms of the same underlying factor. Could it be that Linux appeals because of its Marxist flavour and that piracy is rife because there is a psychological leaning away from privately owned/controlled intellectual property? Afterall, if property is theft then you're simply stealing back from thieves when you pirate their code.
What input to Linux has there been from the former Soviet East Europe?
Seems to me that OSS requires a few basics to flourish (although it can probably do without the full list if there's a particularly high weighting elsewhere):
- Availability of a communications/organisational network (i.e. the Internet) - Affordability of basic computer hardware - A recognised need for open, reliable, cheap software - Availability of open code to use as the basis for development - Skilled coders with time on their hands or who are able to make the time they need - A culture which leads to a willingness to share the results of work
If you don't have all of these, I think development is liable to get stunted.
dude, to be quite honest, one of the many reasons many of us use linux is because we quite simply don't give a FUCK what you are saying here
Sure, I recognise that attitude. Try it from the dock if you like. It won't get you far.
Like it or not, USA is a country of trials and lawyers. It looks to me like Linux is starting to get sucked into an era of court orders and shady dealing - that's what happens when money is at stake. If you want proof, look to SCO.
MS will use the law to shut Linux out of new markets if it can.
Does US-developed code really become 'free' after 'escaping' USA?
Is there liability for letting the code 'escape' the country and if so on whom would the liability fall?
If you are a US Linux server provider, can you be held liable if you provide the means of 'escape' of the code to a mirror site?
What if you are "actively conspiring" to circumvent the restrictions by doing this?
What is the current legal structure operating within Iraq (which is essentially under US occupation)?
Could it effect imports into Iraq regardless of exporting country?
I used import in the title but export on the thought that lay behind it - this was not a typo. I don't know the answers to the above questions but if you are in the USA and involved in coding or distributing Linux out of the country you should probably give them some thought. If you are outside the USA, you should still probably give them some thought.
Linux is the Free/Open Source UNIX-like operating system kernel that runs on many modern computer systems. Linux is available under the GNU General Public License, which means that users may freely copy, change, and distribute it, but must make source code available to recipients and may not impose any restrictions on further distribution. Linux does contain some security features that use encryption. As such, it is classified under ECCN 5D002. Because Linux is open source, it is eligible for export under License Exception TSU in accordance with 15 CFR 740.13(e).
On May 7, the President exercised his authority under the Wartime Supplemental Authorization Act of 2003 to suspend most of the provisions of the Iraq Sanctions Act of 1990. On June 27, 2003, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published an interim final rule (68 Fed. Reg. 38188) amending the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 575, to include a general license authorizing certain new transactions. The export of items controlled by the Department of Commerce was addressed in 31 CFR 575.533(b)(2):
The exportation from the United States or, if subject to U.S. jurisdiction, the exportation or rexportation from a third country to Iraq of any goods or technology (including technical data or other information) controlled by the Department of Commerce under the Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR chapter VII, subchapter C) for exportation to Iraq must be separately authorized by or pursuant to this part.
The term "controlled by the Department of Commerce" means subject to a license requirement under the Department of Commerce's Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Items subject to a license requirement under the EAR include items on the Commerce Control List that are listed in 15 CFR 746.3 as requiring a license for exportation or reexportation to Iraq.
Under Section 746.3 of the EAR, an export license is required to export or reexport to Iraq any item on the CCL containing a NS Column 1 in the Country Chart Column of the License Requirements section of an ECCN. Software classified under ECCN 5D002 is controlled for NS Column 1.
It is important to note that proprietary operating system software such as Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris have been classified as mass-market encryption products and are eligible for export under ECCN 5D992. These products may be exported to Iraq without a license under the interim final rule (68 Fed. Reg. 38188) amending the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations.
Under the provisions of License Exception TSU, open source and the corresponding object code may be exported to all destinations except Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Thus, open source and the corresponding object code are treated as if subject only to AT (anti-terrorism) controls. Items subject to AT controls may be exported to Iraq under the interim final rule (68 Fed. Reg. 38188) amending the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations.
Much of the development effort behind Linux now comes from USA and code is stored on servers in USA. Last time I looked, USA was still in the world atlas and saying "it's purely global" (if that even means something in real terms - what do you mean by 'purely' there?) or even "it was started by a Finnish student" doesn't really make any difference if the people moving Linux into Iraq are moving it from USA. Whether or not it's the product of a US corporation, US restrictions may apply when you are taking something from the US to Iraq. It has been in the news recently although I couldn't find the link earlier.
I suspect you are not dumb, just bored and trolling?
It's pretty common for people to have all their numbers stored to be accessed through menus and a jog dial. On the rare occasions you do actually need to put a number in, I don't see major difficulties with doing it using a jog dial (my old Sony Minidisc had this system for naming tracks).
The difficulty would be with writing text but as the number keypad is itself a pretty poor input device and text messages are not really central to how I use a mobile, I don't see a big deal with a compromise in that area. Increasingly, you're likely to be importing numbers from different devices whether that's desktop, PDA, laptop or another phone. If your phone is Bluetooth-enabled you may well have a PDA or similar to use as an input device anyway.
Mobiles have become take-everywhere devices in the same way as wristwatches were before them (and in fact I no longer wear a watch as the mobile does that job already). It makes sense from a functional/convenience point of view to strap a mobile to your wrist - just please don't make me have to hold it to my ear N Gage style or stick my finger in my ear to make calls.
Pete Bitar, Vice President, has owned three companies, which he started, successfully operated, and sold or licensed off two of them for a profit. His education includes a Bachelor of Science in Business through the University Honors Program at Portland State University. Currently, Mr. Bitar is the President of Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), a defense contractor, currently doing work with the Marine Corps on two SBIR Phase II research and development projects in the field of electronics and non-lethal weapon systems. Mr. Bitar brings defense contract acquisition and management experience to the team. He has a number of connections in a variety of fields, including aviation, aerospace, publishing, plastics, real estate, economic development, electronics, weapons research, and finance. Mr. Bitar has over 12 years of management experience, and has been successfully self-employed for more than half of his career. He also has over 18 years of pilot experience in a wide variety of aircraft.
Source: http://www.americanaviationcompany.com/staff.htm Still sounds dubious to me. The picture of the stun gun is hilarious.
I think PDAs are a bigger potential problem. Seems to me that these are prime Typhoid Marys. They are designed to be carried from location to location with the owner and so are likely to be harder to spot and track. I suspect that there's a good population of wireless-enabled PDAs with enough space and power for a worm to hide away in and without much or anything in the way of antivirus software to protect them. They are commonly used for communications applications, especially email and are regularly hooked up to PCs and the Internet.
Seems to me that a small change to the code would have made this a lot more successful. Basically, this worm overstresses its host and kills it by draining the battery.
The battery drain apparently results from constant Bluetooth scanning, which means the worm is more likely to be noticed (poor phone performance) and less likely to spread (shorter phone uptime and more likely to be removed by the owner).
I can't see the benefit of constant scanning. Where the host is constantly on the move, two scans back to back are less likely to find an new host to infect than two scans say half an hour apart.
Putting the Bluetooth scans on an intermittent cycle would have been more likely to infect other phones by camouflaguing the worm's presence and increasing the likelihood that each individual scan would find an uninfected host. The battery drain looks to me like a side-effect of careless design rather than a malicious payload.
Look to infectious agents in nature - the successful ones are those that don't kill the host.
Consume is a collaborative strategy for the self provision of a broadband telecommunications infrastructure.
Like the Internet? Its certainly a similar structure with mail, web and multimedia content, but a supplement free from commercial limitations and guarded interests. The Internet is a communications infrastructure built up in layers of provision and service. Your access to it is generally governed by commercial interests. Internet Service Providers and giant Telecoms Companies have grown wealthy on the growth in our Internet use. Building fresh structures presents us with the oppertunity to supersede the greed, lets take IT.
Why do this? If, as many are, you feel disenchanted by corporate telecoms and seek an alternative or are unable to connect to or meet the costs of always on connectivity, then you will be excited, as many of us are at the prospect of an open and autonomous approach to networking. We can realise some of the promise of modern communications on a local level at a fraction of the commercial cost by building our own supplements to the Internet. There is no single set of reasons why we should want to do this: one of Consume's strengths is that it is many different things to many different people.
How are you doing it? By working together to build clusters of interconnecting 'nodes' using widely available networking products and optimising existing local services where possible to re-distribute network access and free the exchange of information further. Traditional wired and wireless techniques are being used to make links and a fresh and open attitude has been adopted toward sharing of information and resources.
I've been thinking about this one for a while now too. Here's the potted summary:
- PDAs and smartphones are becoming more sophisticated. - Smartphones in particular (but also PDAs) are becoming everyday devices. - 802.11 is becoming more of a PDA standard feature to compete with the squeeze from smartphones. - Users do not tend to think of these devices as vulnerable to viruses. They do not tend to install antiviral software. - 802.11 is generally used in an insecure way and even when secured by WEP, the security is not great. It can be broken given enough time spent listening in. - It's very difficult to control who can listen in or broadcast near your wireless network. - Mobile wireless devices are small and designed to be carried with you. They are hard to track down and likely to connect wirelessly to several networks in the course of a few days normal use. - As insecure wireless networks become more widespread, causing a device to randomly scan for open networks is increasingly likely to be successful.
Mix the above together and it doesn't look good.
There doesn't seem to be much stopping a virus writer releasing code at the nearest Starbucks or whilst driving past your house or office. Once that has happened, infected devices disperse and spread the infection within the city to create a growing infection 'blackspot'. Given that users routinely take their PDAs and/or smartphones when they travel, there's not much (short of quarantine) that you can do to stop infected devices moving to new locations with their owners and seeding new blackspots. As each blackspot spreads, more devices are infected in that area and the likelihood of further spread of the infection beyond the area increases.
I suspect it's only a matter of time before we see these sorts of nasties arrive.
"The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code."
Who is really going to be interested in this? As I understand it, most open source work is geared towards Linux and BSD and most of the developers are likely to be using systems other than Windows. What personal itch can developers scratch as a result of this move by MS? If they laid the operating system code open, there might be more incentive to look at the code and work on it but I can't see the attraction of laying open code for an installer on an expensive, buggy, closed operating system. MS must have a reason for doing this so what are they playing at?
In the Xbox, MS has subsidised a standard architecture which has sold well and has been opened up to run Debian by the Xbox-Linux team. Elsewhere, Sourceforge is hosting the Open XDK Project, which aims to provide an Open Source, Free, Legal Xbox Development Kit to facilitate hobbyist and homebrew coding.
It is now fairly common practice to illegally chip an Xbox to run pirated games. Given the previous experiences with the Sega Dreamcast (the commercial value of game development falling off once the hardware was opened up and piracy protection broken) and Doom (leveraging the long term commercial value of an existing game by laying the source open and relying on the resulting rise of homebrew game coding), it seems that Xbox hardware together with open sourced games and a free development kit could provide Linux with an opportunity to make a more significant impact in the gaming market. As the Xbox moves into the realm of old technology, the price is dropping. In addition, there are rumours of the release of the Xbox 2, which will surely push down the price of second hand hardware. Console manufacturers will move on but the boxes will remain in the wild and all they require is the software to run on them.
The Xbox offers a means to acquire reasonably priced hardware of a standardised type and in an attractive wrapper, which can be relatively easily converted to run as a vanilla Linux box. Whereas the Dreamcast went out of production fairly quickly and has therefore remained more niche, the Xbox has sold well and will remain ubiquitous for some long time. Moreover, in a cooked Xbox you are getting a multi function box that will browse the Internet, handle emails and media applications, perform office functions, allow development and still work as a games machine (which is a significant step up from the Dreamcast).
Games is an area in which Linux has been traditionally weak. Could this now be set to change?
"You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless because it is (i) closed source, (ii) people need to pay for it and (iii) that companies charging for software are evil anyways - especially Microsoft." (My numbering to separate out the threads of the argument).
So we are talking about both senses of "free" here, together with a more generalised argument about the ethics of charging for software. Seems to me that the rest of the letter obsesses on (ii)and doesn't really address the other two issues. The basic argument held up is "What's in it for me?" with the only real measure of value being money.
There are a number of rhetorical questions and assumptive questions which don't necessarily hold water. Their aim is to guide the reader towards a particular conclusion rather than to approach the initial arguments objectively. The general thrust is "You are going to be like me someday - don't piss in the pool".
Let's take some statements in turn:
1. "I start to wonder what your benefit is... Fame? To found a career? Come on." It seems to me that there are other (better) ways to benefit. I have just recently been reading 'Cathedral/Bazaar' and it's interesting that it's stated twice in the 'rules' that good software comes from "scratching a personal itch". If the software is an end in itself, putting your time and energy into it doen't necessarily need any other reward. If this doesn't convince, maybe there are other ways in which you'll benefit which aren't considered in the letter. Experience? Fun? It is possible to do something for selfish reasons without being paid. Add to that that there are many who see their work as giving something back to the community which has provided them with something for free. And add to that again that there are those prepared to give their time over and above what they may 'owe' so that free software moves forward, this being an end to them in itself.
2. "The whole fame thing you are telling me about only works amongst geeks. The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar... doesn't care." I don't agree. Increasingly, 'geeks' are getting noticed. Free software is getting noticed. You guys are at the leading edge of what the rest of the world is waking up to. The use of the word 'geek' here holds its perjorative sense high and the implication is that the worlds of geeks and "good looking, intelligent girls" can't overlap. That's just not true anymore (if ever it really was).
3. "You need to get a job that pays" True. But not exactly counter to work in free software is it? In fact, experience in free software projects might even be an asset in this.
Damn. Lunchbreak and running out of time. More to follow....
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone know if this was a planned release?
It just seems to follow very neatly on the recent IE/hacked websites business. I wonder if there was some extra pressure to get this out the door at a time when it would be able to cash in and if so, if it's likely to have been tested as well as previous releases.
Pretty much what I was thinking. The 'London Wireless State of Play' story which was on Slashdot a few weeks back had some interesting geek density calculations which help explain why the Consume mesh project hasn't really taken off here yet. Kits like this need to be cheap to buy and easy to use so that they can become ubiquitous. This doesn't look to be either.
Ironing my Armani? I'd never stoop so low...
1. Why iron your own clothes when there are people to do it for you?
2. Why dress off the peg when you could buy bespoke?
Surely it has got to be:
"FireBillGates"
i'm not from the USA. i am not bound their laws. as others have already pointed out, linux is not US owned.
...
we're all looking at SCO - looking at it getting NOWHERE. and even if it does get somewhere, that's one company that is trying to save itself from bankruptcy by arguing over a few lines of code it alleges is stolen. it's nothing to do with "linux" as a whole.
...
US can do whatever they want. i'll be running linux.
Brave words!
A few questions:
- Do you think a foreign hacker isn't targeted by US law enforcement if he is operating outside the USA?
- Who do you think is drafting Iraqi copyright law at the moment?
- Do you think that SCO will have caused Linux no problems whatsoever if they lose? What about FUD?
- Do you think MS have the will and resources to lobby effectively and to enter into pointless litigation to add to the FUD?
- Do you honestly believe what happens in the USA doesn't effect you and that US antiterrorism restrictions cannot apply if you are not American?
- Are you prepared to appear in court on suspected terrorist charges just because you were running Linux?
Unfortunately problems are rarely solved when they are simply ignored.
I wonder if the Chinese software pirates and the growing adoption of Linux in China are symptoms of the same underlying factor. Could it be that Linux appeals because of its Marxist flavour and that piracy is rife because there is a psychological leaning away from privately owned/controlled intellectual property? Afterall, if property is theft then you're simply stealing back from thieves when you pirate their code.
What input to Linux has there been from the former Soviet East Europe?
Seems to me that OSS requires a few basics to flourish (although it can probably do without the full list if there's a particularly high weighting elsewhere):
- Availability of a communications/organisational network (i.e. the Internet)
- Affordability of basic computer hardware
- A recognised need for open, reliable, cheap software
- Availability of open code to use as the basis for development
- Skilled coders with time on their hands or who are able to make the time they need
- A culture which leads to a willingness to share the results of work
If you don't have all of these, I think development is liable to get stunted.
dude, to be quite honest, one of the many reasons many of us use linux is because we quite simply don't give a FUCK what you are saying here
Sure, I recognise that attitude. Try it from the dock if you like. It won't get you far.
Like it or not, USA is a country of trials and lawyers. It looks to me like Linux is starting to get sucked into an era of court orders and shady dealing - that's what happens when money is at stake. If you want proof, look to SCO.
MS will use the law to shut Linux out of new markets if it can.
Does US-developed code really become 'free' after 'escaping' USA?
Is there liability for letting the code 'escape' the country and if so on whom would the liability fall?
If you are a US Linux server provider, can you be held liable if you provide the means of 'escape' of the code to a mirror site?
What if you are "actively conspiring" to circumvent the restrictions by doing this?
What is the current legal structure operating within Iraq (which is essentially under US occupation)?
Could it effect imports into Iraq regardless of exporting country?
I used import in the title but export on the thought that lay behind it - this was not a typo. I don't know the answers to the above questions but if you are in the USA and involved in coding or distributing Linux out of the country you should probably give them some thought. If you are outside the USA, you should still probably give them some thought.
Linux is the Free/Open Source UNIX-like operating system kernel that runs on many modern computer systems. Linux is available under the GNU General Public License, which means that users may freely copy, change, and distribute it, but must make source code available to recipients and may not impose any restrictions on further distribution. Linux does contain some security features that use encryption. As such, it is classified under ECCN 5D002. Because Linux is open source, it is eligible for export under License Exception TSU in accordance with 15 CFR 740.13(e).
On May 7, the President exercised his authority under the Wartime Supplemental Authorization Act of 2003 to suspend most of the provisions of the Iraq Sanctions Act of 1990. On June 27, 2003, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published an interim final rule (68 Fed. Reg. 38188) amending the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 575, to include a general license authorizing certain new transactions. The export of items controlled by the Department of Commerce was addressed in 31 CFR 575.533(b)(2):
The exportation from the United States or, if subject to U.S. jurisdiction, the exportation or rexportation from a third country to Iraq of any goods or technology (including technical data or other information) controlled by the Department of Commerce under the Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR chapter VII, subchapter C) for exportation to Iraq must be separately authorized by or pursuant to this part.
The term "controlled by the Department of Commerce" means subject to a license requirement under the Department of Commerce's Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Items subject to a license requirement under the EAR include items on the Commerce Control List that are listed in 15 CFR 746.3 as requiring a license for exportation or reexportation to Iraq.
Under Section 746.3 of the EAR, an export license is required to export or reexport to Iraq any item on the CCL containing a NS Column 1 in the Country Chart Column of the License Requirements section of an ECCN. Software classified under ECCN 5D002 is controlled for NS Column 1.
It is important to note that proprietary operating system software such as Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris have been classified as mass-market encryption products and are eligible for export under ECCN 5D992. These products may be exported to Iraq without a license under the interim final rule (68 Fed. Reg. 38188) amending the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations.
Under the provisions of License Exception TSU, open source and the corresponding object code may be exported to all destinations except Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Thus, open source and the corresponding object code are treated as if subject only to AT (anti-terrorism) controls. Items subject to AT controls may be exported to Iraq under the interim final rule (68 Fed. Reg. 38188) amending the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations.
Source: http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7318
I don't know.... how dumb *can* you be?
Much of the development effort behind Linux now comes from USA and code is stored on servers in USA. Last time I looked, USA was still in the world atlas and saying "it's purely global" (if that even means something in real terms - what do you mean by 'purely' there?) or even "it was started by a Finnish student" doesn't really make any difference if the people moving Linux into Iraq are moving it from USA. Whether or not it's the product of a US corporation, US restrictions may apply when you are taking something from the US to Iraq. It has been in the news recently although I couldn't find the link earlier.
I suspect you are not dumb, just bored and trolling?
I thought there were restrictions on exporting Linux from the US to Iraq (which somehow mysteriously don't apply to MS)?
How do you usually 'dial' a number on a mobile?
It's pretty common for people to have all their numbers stored to be accessed through menus and a jog dial. On the rare occasions you do actually need to put a number in, I don't see major difficulties with doing it using a jog dial (my old Sony Minidisc had this system for naming tracks).
The difficulty would be with writing text but as the number keypad is itself a pretty poor input device and text messages are not really central to how I use a mobile, I don't see a big deal with a compromise in that area. Increasingly, you're likely to be importing numbers from different devices whether that's desktop, PDA, laptop or another phone. If your phone is Bluetooth-enabled you may well have a PDA or similar to use as an input device anyway.
Mobiles have become take-everywhere devices in the same way as wristwatches were before them (and in fact I no longer wear a watch as the mobile does that job already). It makes sense from a functional/convenience point of view to strap a mobile to your wrist - just please don't make me have to hold it to my ear N Gage style or stick my finger in my ear to make calls.
Two references - one for paraglider canopy artwork, one for stun guns. Same phone number. Hmmmmmm....
0 22 .htm
y ou _should_know_about_custo.htm
http://www.dodsbir.net/awardlist/abs022/navyabs
http://www.ultraflight.com/issues/jan2002/what_
http://www.dodsbir.net/awardlist/abs022/navyabs022 .htm
Search the page for "Bitar"
Pete Bitar, Vice President, has owned three companies, which he started, successfully operated, and sold or licensed off two of them for a profit. His education includes a Bachelor of Science in Business through the University Honors Program at Portland State University. Currently, Mr. Bitar is the President of Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), a defense contractor, currently doing work with the Marine Corps on two SBIR Phase II research and development projects in the field of electronics and non-lethal weapon systems. Mr. Bitar brings defense contract acquisition and management experience to the team. He has a number of connections in a variety of fields, including aviation, aerospace, publishing, plastics, real estate, economic development, electronics, weapons research, and finance. Mr. Bitar has over 12 years of management experience, and has been successfully self-employed for more than half of his career. He also has over 18 years of pilot experience in a wide variety of aircraft.
Source: http://www.americanaviationcompany.com/staff.htm
Still sounds dubious to me. The picture of the stun gun is hilarious.
On a related point... it's way easier to demonstrate good graphics in a magazine than good sound.
(btw... Has anyone tried to market audioporn for girls?)
I think PDAs are a bigger potential problem. Seems to me that these are prime Typhoid Marys. They are designed to be carried from location to location with the owner and so are likely to be harder to spot and track. I suspect that there's a good population of wireless-enabled PDAs with enough space and power for a worm to hide away in and without much or anything in the way of antivirus software to protect them. They are commonly used for communications applications, especially email and are regularly hooked up to PCs and the Internet.
Seems to me that a small change to the code would have made this a lot more successful. Basically, this worm overstresses its host and kills it by draining the battery.
The battery drain apparently results from constant Bluetooth scanning, which means the worm is more likely to be noticed (poor phone performance) and less likely to spread (shorter phone uptime and more likely to be removed by the owner).
I can't see the benefit of constant scanning. Where the host is constantly on the move, two scans back to back are less likely to find an new host to infect than two scans say half an hour apart.
Putting the Bluetooth scans on an intermittent cycle would have been more likely to infect other phones by camouflaguing the worm's presence and increasing the likelihood that each individual scan would find an uninfected host. The battery drain looks to me like a side-effect of careless design rather than a malicious payload.
Look to infectious agents in nature - the successful ones are those that don't kill the host.
Consume is a collaborative strategy for the self provision of a broadband telecommunications infrastructure.
Like the Internet?
Its certainly a similar structure with mail, web and multimedia content, but a supplement free from commercial limitations and guarded interests. The Internet is a communications infrastructure built up in layers of provision and service. Your access to it is generally governed by commercial interests. Internet Service Providers and giant Telecoms Companies have grown wealthy on the growth in our Internet use. Building fresh structures presents us with the oppertunity to supersede the greed, lets take IT.
Why do this?
If, as many are, you feel disenchanted by corporate telecoms and seek an alternative or are unable to connect to or meet the costs of always on connectivity, then you will be excited, as many of us are at the prospect of an open and autonomous approach to networking. We can realise some of the promise of modern communications on a local level at a fraction of the commercial cost by building our own supplements to the Internet. There is no single set of reasons why we should want to do this: one of Consume's strengths is that it is many different things to many different people.
How are you doing it?
By working together to build clusters of interconnecting 'nodes' using widely available networking products and optimising existing local services where possible to re-distribute network access and free the exchange of information further. Traditional wired and wireless techniques are being used to make links and a fresh and open attitude has been adopted toward sharing of information and resources.
URL: http://www.consume.net
I've been thinking about this one for a while now too. Here's the potted summary:
- PDAs and smartphones are becoming more sophisticated.
- Smartphones in particular (but also PDAs) are becoming everyday devices.
- 802.11 is becoming more of a PDA standard feature to compete with the squeeze from smartphones.
- Users do not tend to think of these devices as vulnerable to viruses. They do not tend to install antiviral software.
- 802.11 is generally used in an insecure way and even when secured by WEP, the security is not great. It can be broken given enough time spent listening in.
- It's very difficult to control who can listen in or broadcast near your wireless network.
- Mobile wireless devices are small and designed to be carried with you. They are hard to track down and likely to connect wirelessly to several networks in the course of a few days normal use.
- As insecure wireless networks become more widespread, causing a device to randomly scan for open networks is increasingly likely to be successful.
Mix the above together and it doesn't look good.
There doesn't seem to be much stopping a virus writer releasing code at the nearest Starbucks or whilst driving past your house or office. Once that has happened, infected devices disperse and spread the infection within the city to create a growing infection 'blackspot'. Given that users routinely take their PDAs and/or smartphones when they travel, there's not much (short of quarantine) that you can do to stop infected devices moving to new locations with their owners and seeding new blackspots. As each blackspot spreads, more devices are infected in that area and the likelihood of further spread of the infection beyond the area increases.
I suspect it's only a matter of time before we see these sorts of nasties arrive.
From the Source Forge page:
"The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code."
Who is really going to be interested in this? As I understand it, most open source work is geared towards Linux and BSD and most of the developers are likely to be using systems other than Windows. What personal itch can developers scratch as a result of this move by MS? If they laid the operating system code open, there might be more incentive to look at the code and work on it but I can't see the attraction of laying open code for an installer on an expensive, buggy, closed operating system. MS must have a reason for doing this so what are they playing at?
Check the bottom link on the Gmail front page (linked to by your piece even). "Happy Birthday April"?
In the Xbox, MS has subsidised a standard architecture which has sold well and has been opened up to run Debian by the Xbox-Linux team. Elsewhere, Sourceforge is hosting the Open XDK Project, which aims to provide an Open Source, Free, Legal Xbox Development Kit to facilitate hobbyist and homebrew coding.
It is now fairly common practice to illegally chip an Xbox to run pirated games. Given the previous experiences with the Sega Dreamcast (the commercial value of game development falling off once the hardware was opened up and piracy protection broken) and Doom (leveraging the long term commercial value of an existing game by laying the source open and relying on the resulting rise of homebrew game coding), it seems that Xbox hardware together with open sourced games and a free development kit could provide Linux with an opportunity to make a more significant impact in the gaming market. As the Xbox moves into the realm of old technology, the price is dropping. In addition, there are rumours of the release of the Xbox 2, which will surely push down the price of second hand hardware. Console manufacturers will move on but the boxes will remain in the wild and all they require is the software to run on them.
The Xbox offers a means to acquire reasonably priced hardware of a standardised type and in an attractive wrapper, which can be relatively easily converted to run as a vanilla Linux box. Whereas the Dreamcast went out of production fairly quickly and has therefore remained more niche, the Xbox has sold well and will remain ubiquitous for some long time. Moreover, in a cooked Xbox you are getting a multi function box that will browse the Internet, handle emails and media applications, perform office functions, allow development and still work as a games machine (which is a significant step up from the Dreamcast).
Games is an area in which Linux has been traditionally weak. Could this now be set to change?
"You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless because it is (i) closed source, (ii) people need to pay for it and (iii) that companies charging for software are evil anyways - especially Microsoft." (My numbering to separate out the threads of the argument).
So we are talking about both senses of "free" here, together with a more generalised argument about the ethics of charging for software. Seems to me that the rest of the letter obsesses on (ii)and doesn't really address the other two issues. The basic argument held up is "What's in it for me?" with the only real measure of value being money.
There are a number of rhetorical questions and assumptive questions which don't necessarily hold water. Their aim is to guide the reader towards a particular conclusion rather than to approach the initial arguments objectively. The general thrust is "You are going to be like me someday - don't piss in the pool".
Let's take some statements in turn:
1. "I start to wonder what your benefit is... Fame? To found a career? Come on."
It seems to me that there are other (better) ways to benefit. I have just recently been reading 'Cathedral/Bazaar' and it's interesting that it's stated twice in the 'rules' that good software comes from "scratching a personal itch". If the software is an end in itself, putting your time and energy into it doen't necessarily need any other reward. If this doesn't convince, maybe there are other ways in which you'll benefit which aren't considered in the letter. Experience? Fun? It is possible to do something for selfish reasons without being paid. Add to that that there are many who see their work as giving something back to the community which has provided them with something for free. And add to that again that there are those prepared to give their time over and above what they may 'owe' so that free software moves forward, this being an end to them in itself.
2. "The whole fame thing you are telling me about only works amongst geeks. The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar... doesn't care."
I don't agree. Increasingly, 'geeks' are getting noticed. Free software is getting noticed. You guys are at the leading edge of what the rest of the world is waking up to. The use of the word 'geek' here holds its perjorative sense high and the implication is that the worlds of geeks and "good looking, intelligent girls" can't overlap. That's just not true anymore (if ever it really was).
3. "You need to get a job that pays"
True. But not exactly counter to work in free software is it? In fact, experience in free software projects might even be an asset in this.
Damn. Lunchbreak and running out of time. More to follow....
http://www.graphicsinterface.org/proceedings/2002/ 221/paper221.pdf