I don't mean the server, I mean the users of the individual computers which were hijacked and then used in the DDoS without their knowledge. A few minutes going over their configuration, or buying ZoneAlarm or a similar product (which Gibson found to be effective against this particular bot) prevents any one computer from being used.
I agree that bugs in the computer itself are also a bad thing, but through some small effort by the users (less effort than, say, buying a burglar alarm system or a Club) the bug's effects can be reduced or eliminated.
When these 13 year olds are hijacking planes, blowing up buildings, and hurting people, then I'll call them "terrorists."
OK, I'll admit that "terrorist" is a bit much, but that's semantics. The problem doesn't go away.
There are no major consequences yet because nothing truly important has been hooked up to the internet yet. There were no deaths due to car accidents for a long time after the automobile was invented, but that's only because they all went 10 mph back then. [insert cliched information superhighway analogy here]
Just what I'm looking forward to, a total government clampdown on the Internet
You are completely missing the point. No intervention would be necessary if the users themselves would wake the hell up and manage their computers properly.
Well, yes. The father staying home would also be acceptable. Kids need to be taken care of. Of course parents who put saving up for that SUV above investing the time and effort a kid needs to grow up properly will end up with some fucked up kid who goes on killing sprees. And it's their own damn fault.
That was hands down the coolest article on computer security I've ever read.:)
Everyone always writes about cracking in a condescending, "when-will-they-learn" tone, as if it's all a mildly amusing game (which it is to them, because the authors are rarely the ones being cracked). Gibson, who did get attacked himself, looks at cracking as the serious and dangerous problem that it really is. This article describes a real war, with first strikes, counterattacks, espionage, and so on.
This really opened my eyes to what a huge problem the internet's technological loopholes have and will become. More mainstream articles after this form would surely help raise the awareness about security issues that was sadly lacking in all the unknowing carriers of Zombies.
(And no, I do not consider this "fearmongering". Fearmongering does not offer solutions or point out that none of this would have happened if people would just GET A CLUE.)
Why was the lawsuit filed against the telcos? From the article, it seems that the railways were more to blame, for lacking legal authority to grant permission for the telcos to dig in the first place.
I won't tell the Arizona Nuclear Power Plant that you plan to blow up their transmission lines to California. I won't tell the FBI that you are planning on moving those illegal fire arms into New York tonight.
Why not these two? They are illegal, there is no possible justifying circumstance (#2 would hopefully be covered by freedom of speech, and I'm not even going to touch number 1, this will be flamed enough as it is), and if they had been found through a traditional wiretap on a phone there would be no objection to the feds moving in.
For the last few versions, the Mac OS has been loading it's "ROMs" off disk early in the boot process. Look in the system folder for a file named Mac OS ROM.
Of course, you're probably still right but about some other bit of hardware. Macs still have NVRAM, after all.
Many people have commented that the arrival of Mac OS X will make it easier to to port Mac apps to any Unix, since "developers will be forced to port [apps] to Unix". This is totally inaccurate. Mac OS X doesn't have anything approaching a Unix API (although it is Posix-compliant, that only consists of the BSD layer. All the fun stuff that makes the computer usable, like the GUI, is Apple-prorietary). One of the main APIs, Carbon, is a slightly altered version of the traditional Mac OS APIs. The other, Cocoa, is basically NeXTStep's OOP frameworks. A program from either of them is just as hard to port to Unix as before; cocoa programs are probably harder.
This could just as easily be implemented in the level editor. There is no reason to put it in the drivers, where it is obviously intended to override places where a programmer chose that something should be opaque.
When someone rips a movie, it doesn't affect you watching that movie in any way.
When someone using these drivers beats you 20-2 in UT, especially if he's a lamer who couldn't have done that without cheating, that's a pretty big effect on you.
That's because your CDs are random-access, while DVDs are not. You typically want to shuffle your entire collection and perform operations that cross many disks (usually shuffling). Whereas, for a DVD (at least every DVD I've ever seen) you would want to watch the whole disk, and only 1 disk, per sitting.
Is ripping DVDs really necessary? I mean, is it really that much of a pain in the ass to find a DVD if you're properly organized? I'd much rather cut $300 off the price by dropping the 200-gig HD and buying a $20 DVD rack.
What about the ability to burn DVDs? Apple already has a cheap DVD burner, it can't be too long before the technology (which was developed by another company, I forget which) appears in other devices, or on the parts market.
A DVD-based box with the functionality of a VCR would sell like hotcakes.
Built-in networkable user interface. Let me access the MP3 library from any computer in the house or anywhere, or order it to tape a show I forgot about from work.
iMovie-style camcorder interface and DVD authoring. Something simple like that. This would also require a FireWire port to be added.
The device is way overfeatured for its job. We've seen this sort of thing before, it was called WebTV. The geeks you are targeting it at could build the equivalent for half the price, put it together themselves, get something better, have more fun doing it, and already have a real computer anyway. The consumers, who are, conservatively, 100 times more numerous, would have no use for most of these options and no inclination to spend huge amounts of time tinkering with it to customize it properly. If it doesn't work as well or as fast as the devices it replaces (VCR, DVD, TiVo, radio) it won't be popular.
At a guess, it refers to stories that update or follow up on other stories recently posted. So any story people would be waiting for more info on (like the GameCube yoink rumor) can be wrapped up with a nice ending (hah).
By creating yet another language, they are just adding to the problem (of incompatible C/C++ derivatives). It would be better to pick one of the existing next-generation C languages and declare that the standard, or at least make the standard source-compatible with said language to ease transition.
...a game called Galapagos? It was made by a company named Anark, which seems to have fallen off the face of the earth (anark.com is now a provider of web tools).
Basically, you had a pet insect-sort-of-thing that you had to help escape from a 3D puzzle world. The trick was that you didn't control the creature, you only manipulated the environment and let the creature react to it. The creature was driven by Anark's AI technology with a buzzwordy name, but you could see it working. After it fell off a certain place a few times it would be reluctant to go back there, and would try to ignore your commands (you could poke it with the mouse) and get back to a safe place.
Anyway, my point is that B&W might not have the most advanced AI in gaming history after all.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mean the server, I mean the users of the individual computers which were hijacked and then used in the DDoS without their knowledge. A few minutes going over their configuration, or buying ZoneAlarm or a similar product (which Gibson found to be effective against this particular bot) prevents any one computer from being used.
I agree that bugs in the computer itself are also a bad thing, but through some small effort by the users (less effort than, say, buying a burglar alarm system or a Club) the bug's effects can be reduced or eliminated.
There are no major consequences yet because nothing truly important has been hooked up to the internet yet. There were no deaths due to car accidents for a long time after the automobile was invented, but that's only because they all went 10 mph back then. [insert cliched information superhighway analogy here]
You are completely missing the point. No intervention would be necessary if the users themselves would wake the hell up and manage their computers properly.
Well, yes. The father staying home would also be acceptable. Kids need to be taken care of. Of course parents who put saving up for that SUV above investing the time and effort a kid needs to grow up properly will end up with some fucked up kid who goes on killing sprees. And it's their own damn fault.
That was hands down the coolest article on computer security I've ever read. :)
Everyone always writes about cracking in a condescending, "when-will-they-learn" tone, as if it's all a mildly amusing game (which it is to them, because the authors are rarely the ones being cracked). Gibson, who did get attacked himself, looks at cracking as the serious and dangerous problem that it really is. This article describes a real war, with first strikes, counterattacks, espionage, and so on.
This really opened my eyes to what a huge problem the internet's technological loopholes have and will become. More mainstream articles after this form would surely help raise the awareness about security issues that was sadly lacking in all the unknowing carriers of Zombies.
(And no, I do not consider this "fearmongering". Fearmongering does not offer solutions or point out that none of this would have happened if people would just GET A CLUE.)
If they had SDL they could run this Marathon... :P
Why was the lawsuit filed against the telcos? From the article, it seems that the railways were more to blame, for lacking legal authority to grant permission for the telcos to dig in the first place.
Now why can't someone do this study on framerate and settle THAT argument? :P
For the last few versions, the Mac OS has been loading it's "ROMs" off disk early in the boot process. Look in the system folder for a file named Mac OS ROM.
Of course, you're probably still right but about some other bit of hardware. Macs still have NVRAM, after all.
Many people have commented that the arrival of Mac OS X will make it easier to to port Mac apps to any Unix, since "developers will be forced to port [apps] to Unix". This is totally inaccurate. Mac OS X doesn't have anything approaching a Unix API (although it is Posix-compliant, that only consists of the BSD layer. All the fun stuff that makes the computer usable, like the GUI, is Apple-prorietary). One of the main APIs, Carbon, is a slightly altered version of the traditional Mac OS APIs. The other, Cocoa, is basically NeXTStep's OOP frameworks. A program from either of them is just as hard to port to Unix as before; cocoa programs are probably harder.
This could just as easily be implemented in the level editor. There is no reason to put it in the drivers, where it is obviously intended to override places where a programmer chose that something should be opaque.
When someone rips a movie, it doesn't affect you watching that movie in any way.
When someone using these drivers beats you 20-2 in UT, especially if he's a lamer who couldn't have done that without cheating, that's a pretty big effect on you.
A much simpler solution: www.amipornornot.com
Do you call your workstation a desk?
That's because your CDs are random-access, while DVDs are not. You typically want to shuffle your entire collection and perform operations that cross many disks (usually shuffling). Whereas, for a DVD (at least every DVD I've ever seen) you would want to watch the whole disk, and only 1 disk, per sitting.
At a guess, it refers to stories that update or follow up on other stories recently posted. So any story people would be waiting for more info on (like the GameCube yoink rumor) can be wrapped up with a nice ending (hah).
By creating yet another language, they are just adding to the problem (of incompatible C/C++ derivatives). It would be better to pick one of the existing next-generation C languages and declare that the standard, or at least make the standard source-compatible with said language to ease transition.
...a game called Galapagos? It was made by a company named Anark, which seems to have fallen off the face of the earth (anark.com is now a provider of web tools).
Basically, you had a pet insect-sort-of-thing that you had to help escape from a 3D puzzle world. The trick was that you didn't control the creature, you only manipulated the environment and let the creature react to it. The creature was driven by Anark's AI technology with a buzzwordy name, but you could see it working. After it fell off a certain place a few times it would be reluctant to go back there, and would try to ignore your commands (you could poke it with the mouse) and get back to a safe place.
Anyway, my point is that B&W might not have the most advanced AI in gaming history after all.
Isn't this what we've always asked for? Target the specific lawbreakers, not the network as a whole?
It is based on a story by someone who is not Asimov called "Supertoys last all summer long". It was published in Wired once, try their site.