The sophistication of the code, plus the fraudulent certificates, and now Iran at the center of the fallout made it look like Stuxnet could be the work of a government cyberarmy -- maybe even a United States cyberarmy.
This made Symantec's sinkhole an audacious move. In intercepting data the attackers were expecting to receive, the researchers risked tampering with a covert U.S. government operation. Asked recently if they were concerned about this, Chien replied, "For us there's no good guys or bad guys." Then he paused to reconsider. "Well, bad guys are people who are writing malicious code that infects systems that can cause unintended consequences or intended consequences."
Whether the "bad guy" was the United States or one of its allies, the attack was causing collateral damage to thousands of systems, and Symantec felt no patriotic duty to preserve its activity. "We're not beholden to a nation," Chien said. "We're a multinational, private company protecting customers."
It earned a fair bit of respect for Symantec from me...
His postings are, while plentiful, also informative and documented with links to sites other than his own (I don't visit them all to see if they're primary links).
I just wonder how he finds the time to post so often, but I've never minded the quality of his posts.
Guys like him make/. worth coming to frequently: he digs out content, digests it, puts it up for us to read and comment on.
Finally, Roland was a prolific poster, but the biggest complaint was that he linked to his own blog, which then linked to primary sources (if I remember correctly).
He did modify his behaviour though, so even he redeemed himself.
First, the Bad Astronomy blog is a great resource, and the comments are often witty, informative, and/or insightful.
BUT, what's with all the god-damned emoticons in the comments there?
I have to read the blog with image loading turned off, because each one is like a laser pointer shining in my eyes. Sometimes an otherwise intelligent & thoughtful commenter will put 2 or more in a single comment. Today's posting had a comment with 2 in a row.
Damnit, that's annoying. If they were only textual emoticons, it wouldn't be half as bad./rant
Interesting. My first though was that the dog was desperate to get through gate.
But then I remembered seeing a TV story this week about a stray dog in Athens who attends all the protests / riots, barks at police, and didn't seem to mind tear gas or getting pepper-sprayed in the face... at all.
One would expect that canines would be extra hyper sensitive to such irritants, but I think you might well be right: no effect.
Interesting biology / physiology experiments there for someone. But how to do it ethically?
I wonder if the induction system implanted into the road for detecting vehicles is interfering with your speakers at stop lights?
As for train tracks, they use electric current to turn on the crossing signals. Short the tracks with a wire and set the crossing warning system off (games we played as kids, a long, long time ago).
Not a problem if we avoid shopping as a recreational activity.
When I go shopping for anything other than groceries, I take a list, buy what's on it, get the hell out. The GF hates taking me shopping.
I take pride in being a merchant's / marketer's worst nightmare (haven't wandered about in a retail shopping complex in *years* except Costco, where I buy... groceries).
Main thrust of this & my original message:
Avoid shopping as a recreational activity.
Or at least set phone to Airplane Mode and maybe wear a face-obscuring hat. And park away from the parking lot to avoid license plate photos.
If that's too much hassle, avoid shopping as a recreational activity, or choose smaller, independent retailers.
It seems to track IMEI numbers being broadcast by mobile phones.
Not PII (personally identifying info) unless they merge the data with mobile carrier's data, which I find unlikely (yes, that's my naÃvite making a rare showing).
I'm not sure this is worse than the cameras that they already use to track shoppers' movements, which coupled with facial recognition software could be more invasive.
However, I don't care for it and now have yet one more excuse to *not* go shopping at major retailers. Hopefully more people will adopt my non-consumer lifestyle, but I highly doubt that (whew, that naÃvite didn't last long).
Maybe the telco's could put some of the spicy curry around their cables -- the same recipe that put 10 Scots in the hospital in a recent "hottest curry eating contest".
By 'same for me', I mean the app appears unavailable here. Sorry, you made a few statements there and I thought I'd should qualify which one.:)
No worries, eh?
Do you have a similar phone, or a more-capable one?
I believe it's a feature of the market to hide apps that just won't work on some models, such as barcode readers on models without cameras (or without auto-focus).
However some after-market ROMs are supposed to defeat that "feature".
It's rooted, runs Fresh Zodiak Fruit (cool, thanks to author!) so I thought it should be available.
Also, Slashdot, the link on the main page to this story doesn't seem to work: click: nothing. Click: nothing. Reload/., click: *nothing*. Using Firefox 6. Without JS.
Facebook is an amazing place to work for many reasons but I think my favorite part of the job is that engineers like me are encouraged to come up with our own ideas and implement them. Management here is very technical and there is very little bureaucracy, so when someone builds something that works, it gets adopted quickly. Even though Facebook is one of the biggest websites in the world it still feels like a start-up work environment because there's so much room for individual employees to have a huge impact.
Like building infrastructure? Facebook is hiring infrastructure engineers. Apply here.
Damn, if I weren't so adverse to soul crushing rejection, I'd apply.
This guy was insightful and informative, so I believe what is quoted above.
And I'm surprised: I figured Facebook would be either more bureaucratic (like MS) or kinda dickishly autocratic (like Zuckerberg is rumoured to be).
It is a start, not something complete -- we all need to start somewhere. You don't need a lot of imagination to see that once they attract more developers then they may get something that can provide true competition to Android & iOS.
RIM would give 100 left testicles to attract enough developers to provide competition for Android & iOS, and it doesn't appear to be happening. MS is arguably in the same boat.
So I'd suggest that it would take a lot of imagination to see enough developers jump on board to make this competitive.
Not that it cannot happen, I sincerely hope it does happen, but... I'm skeptical.
Sorry, but it was just not impressive. Seems to me Android has more interesting visuals in its robotic fingernail than Inferno on mobile has.
Seems barely better than operating a phone from a terminal session.
So I clicked the link about what Inferno is (Bell Labs' distributed computing effort), which DID sound interesting, but was hard to jive with what I'd seen on the phone.
I think it's great that new stuff is being ported to mobile devices, and like the idea of dumping Java completely from a phone, but... I don't think Inferno is ready for actual usage yet, not even for hackers.
Kudos on the effort, and I do hope it leads to more mobile options in the future, but for now, meh.
What happened to him? Long time no submissions or other news with him mentioned. This is his field.
His input was superb and most welcome... until he started accusing people of trollery for simply disagreeing with some of his points.
I was shocked & dismayed to see that. I don't value his contributions nearly as much, but you're right, his input probably would be insightful right about now...
Liberals had already learned... round the time the War On Drugs began... i.e. a long fucking time ago, that War On Drugs wasn't good.
What kinda retarded shit is it to blame Libruls for Mexico's problems?
While, even as a liberal, I find your solution somewhat appealing, being a liberal I can think it through more than one step, and therefore realize that a ruthless right-wing (why RIGHT wing, fascist sympathiser, are you?) death squad might JUST lead to other problems.
I wouldn't even reply to this except it has a +3 already.
As for REAL solutions to Mexico's problems, it's beyond me. You too, apparently.
Maybe LEFT-wing death squads killing anyone looking... wrong. Or rich. Yeah, that'll fix everything./sarcasm
Banks are one of the most highly regulated parts of the economy. There's very little vestige of the free market in any of the large banking institutions.
Nothing compared to what they're regulated like here in Canada.
Big kerfuffle a decade ago because they all wanted to merge and aquire each other and other banks. "For the consumer benefit, of course." Centre-left Liberal party said, "No way."
As it stands, Canada's banks are the strongest and most stable in the world, bar none. Due to regulations, which our current right-wing Prime Minister holds up as examples at G8 & G20.
It's no coincidence that areas of the economy that are tightly controlled by the government (banking, medicine, insurance, finance) are the areas that tend to be the most screwed up.
I'm assuming you are American? Because you're 100% and 180Â (degrees) wrong from a Canadian perspective.
Again, in Canada, the government ensures we have access to "generic" drugs: perfectly safe, chemically same, fraction of price. You may have heard of the busloads of Americans (maybe your own grandparents) coming up here for medicine.
We have government single-payer health care: I went for 4 doctors visits in past couple months: 2 with specialist. Total cost to me: $0.00 Cdn. Waiting time to see specialist: saw him tuesday after thursday referral. Cost of half dozen generic prescriptions: about $150 Cdn/US. (Note: I have to pay $192 / month BC medical insurance for 2 adults. That's > doubled what it was before right-wing provincial government took over 10 years ago.)
BC has no-fault "government" auto insurance company, ICBC. We have the lowest rates in the country, and get this: profits are put back in to high-crash intersection redesign or world class child safety seat research. Everyone loves to hate insurance companies, but we wouldn't trade it for the world! Ask former premier who promised to change it to private insurance, appointed an executive buddy to "investigate", result was, Do. Not. Touch.
For better or worse, if you want an example of a free-market bank, look at something like PayPal. It has so far avoided being regulated as a bank. It has some severe problems, but at least it's nowhere close to collapsing like the 'official' banks did.
For better or worse? Worse, I think. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't trust PayPal with change for a phone call.
Government being the source of the problem is the result of voting for incompetents that want to ruin government, and make no secret of that. Of course they're failures at providing good government.
First, congratulations on an excellent, simple site and many, many years of entertaining & informative reading.
The previous posters have been poignant and funny.
But this timing really sucks. Canadians lost a beloved political leader, Jack Layton (yeah, you read that right: it is a once-per-generation thing, I think), yesterday I found out the crows I "befriended" after my beloved dog died had destroyed the nest of a large family of small birds I fed for a long time, who've now disappeared.
Steve Jobs left (personally I don't care a whit about Apple, but the man is too sick to work, that's sad), and now/. is... different...
I'm going back to bed, wake me up next year.
PS Good luck Rob, and thanks to you and ALL the people who make this site so delightful to read.
a: This helps my case even more. The whole thing software installation should be automated, and in the future it certainly will be. Hence making the terminal/shell/cli/console/command line prompt (or whatever it's called next Tuesday) redundant.
I think you rather missed the point.
If you want automated installation, Linux or BSD are the way to go, both use GUIs or CLIs (your choice) for the same thing.
But the user must be involved to some point, like choosing whether to install MySQL server or client, etc.
As for your second point, that comes more under the realm of documentation/preferences. Instead of a terminal to display this information, we should be using a real-time filtered info window, where any text typed (into a single line's textbox, no more) filters out information on the fly into the main display area.
I don't think you've thought that through its implementation very well, but I suggest you might actually learn to like apt-get as a package management tool.
Remember, in Linux / BSD, all software is updated through package manager, no separate updates for Firefox, Thunderbird, Apache, etc.
Certainly a GUI is best for some things, but if you think doing away with CLIs is a step forward, you're simply wrong. Sorry, no offense.
It works for almost any questions about the OS: with Windows, the answers are "Click Start, click this, click that, click X tab, click something, select something, clickety-clickety-click, click OK, reboot."
In *nix, it's always something like: "copy the following 3 lines and paste them in a terminal running as root. Change XYZ to what your needs are. Done."
Truly, many things are faster in the terminal window - as long as your fingers are on the keyboard anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a court order trumps FB's TOS, so I doubt he cares.
And would we want it any other way, such as a corporate TOS overriding a court? I think not.
I did RTFA, but with my limited knowledge I didn't see what's unique with their use of phased array antennae.
Anyone able to elaborate? Is it unique because it's in the GSM band? Because it blacks out a very narrow area?
Wired had a great write up about Stuxnet (soon to be a book), in which this was written:
It earned a fair bit of respect for Symantec from me...
Why complain?
His postings are, while plentiful, also informative and documented with links to sites other than his own (I don't visit them all to see if they're primary links).
I just wonder how he finds the time to post so often, but I've never minded the quality of his posts.
Guys like him make /. worth coming to frequently: he digs out content, digests it, puts it up for us to read and comment on.
Finally, Roland was a prolific poster, but the biggest complaint was that he linked to his own blog, which then linked to primary sources (if I remember correctly).
He did modify his behaviour though, so even he redeemed himself.
I just don't get the problem here.
First, the Bad Astronomy blog is a great resource, and the comments are often witty, informative, and/or insightful.
BUT, what's with all the god-damned emoticons in the comments there?
I have to read the blog with image loading turned off, because each one is like a laser pointer shining in my eyes. Sometimes an otherwise intelligent & thoughtful commenter will put 2 or more in a single comment. Today's posting had a comment with 2 in a row.
Damnit, that's annoying. If they were only textual emoticons, it wouldn't be half as bad. /rant
Thanks Phil, I truly do like your blog.
If I just collected it and ran a generator,...
World domination! Or a tidy lawn at least.
Interesting. My first though was that the dog was desperate to get through gate.
But then I remembered seeing a TV story this week about a stray dog in Athens who attends all the protests / riots, barks at police, and didn't seem to mind tear gas or getting pepper-sprayed in the face ... at all.
One would expect that canines would be extra hyper sensitive to such irritants, but I think you might well be right: no effect.
Interesting biology / physiology experiments there for someone. But how to do it ethically?
I wonder if the induction system implanted into the road for detecting vehicles is interfering with your speakers at stop lights?
As for train tracks, they use electric current to turn on the crossing signals. Short the tracks with a wire and set the crossing warning system off (games we played as kids, a long, long time ago).
Thanks for the correction and interesting new info.
My personal policy is to "lurk" as I learn things by reading / listening, not talking / posting.
This has been a pleasant exception.
Not a problem if we avoid shopping as a recreational activity.
When I go shopping for anything other than groceries, I take a list, buy what's on it, get the hell out. The GF hates taking me shopping.
I take pride in being a merchant's / marketer's worst nightmare (haven't wandered about in a retail shopping complex in *years* except Costco, where I buy ... groceries).
Main thrust of this & my original message:
Avoid shopping as a recreational activity.
Or at least set phone to Airplane Mode and maybe wear a face-obscuring hat. And park away from the parking lot to avoid license plate photos.
If that's too much hassle, avoid shopping as a recreational activity, or choose smaller, independent retailers.
It seems to track IMEI numbers being broadcast by mobile phones.
Not PII (personally identifying info) unless they merge the data with mobile carrier's data, which I find unlikely (yes, that's my naÃvite making a rare showing).
I'm not sure this is worse than the cameras that they already use to track shoppers' movements, which coupled with facial recognition software could be more invasive.
However, I don't care for it and now have yet one more excuse to *not* go shopping at major retailers. Hopefully more people will adopt my non-consumer lifestyle, but I highly doubt that (whew, that naÃvite didn't last long).
Maybe the telco's could put some of the spicy curry around their cables -- the same recipe that put 10 Scots in the hospital in a recent "hottest curry eating contest".
No worries, eh?
Do you have a similar phone, or a more-capable one?
I believe it's a feature of the market to hide apps that just won't work on some models, such as barcode readers on models without cameras (or without auto-focus).
However some after-market ROMs are supposed to defeat that "feature".
I cannot find it when I go to the App Market.
I'm using a low-end phone, Huawei 8100.
It's rooted, runs Fresh Zodiak Fruit (cool, thanks to author!) so I thought it should be available.
Also, Slashdot, the link on the main page to this story doesn't seem to work: click: nothing. Click: nothing. Reload /., click: *nothing*. Using Firefox 6. Without JS.
What gives?
AmAZING. /. truncated it.
Although you're fucking brilliant, truncating the whole "AM" yourself.
NASA sure has its problems, but I think Congress can be blamed for most of the embarrassing things.
I'm thinking pork barrelling, micro management, underfunding of stated goals.
When I think of the Mars landers that were planned for 3 month mission and 1 may still be running *years* later, I am in awe of NASA.
Damn, if I weren't so adverse to soul crushing rejection, I'd apply.
This guy was insightful and informative, so I believe what is quoted above.
And I'm surprised: I figured Facebook would be either more bureaucratic (like MS) or kinda dickishly autocratic (like Zuckerberg is rumoured to be).
RIM would give 100 left testicles to attract enough developers to provide competition for Android & iOS, and it doesn't appear to be happening. MS is arguably in the same boat.
So I'd suggest that it would take a lot of imagination to see enough developers jump on board to make this competitive.
Not that it cannot happen, I sincerely hope it does happen, but ... I'm skeptical.
I hadn't heard of Inferno, so watched the video.
Sorry, but it was just not impressive. Seems to me Android has more interesting visuals in its robotic fingernail than Inferno on mobile has.
Seems barely better than operating a phone from a terminal session.
So I clicked the link about what Inferno is (Bell Labs' distributed computing effort), which DID sound interesting, but was hard to jive with what I'd seen on the phone.
I think it's great that new stuff is being ported to mobile devices, and like the idea of dumping Java completely from a phone, but... I don't think Inferno is ready for actual usage yet, not even for hackers.
Kudos on the effort, and I do hope it leads to more mobile options in the future, but for now, meh.
His input was superb and most welcome... until he started accusing people of trollery for simply disagreeing with some of his points.
I was shocked & dismayed to see that. I don't value his contributions nearly as much, but you're right, his input probably would be insightful right about now...
Liberals had already learned ... round the time the War On Drugs began... i.e. a long fucking time ago, that War On Drugs wasn't good.
What kinda retarded shit is it to blame Libruls for Mexico's problems?
While, even as a liberal, I find your solution somewhat appealing, being a liberal I can think it through more than one step, and therefore realize that a ruthless right-wing (why RIGHT wing, fascist sympathiser, are you?) death squad might JUST lead to other problems.
I wouldn't even reply to this except it has a +3 already.
As for REAL solutions to Mexico's problems, it's beyond me. You too, apparently.
Maybe LEFT-wing death squads killing anyone looking ... wrong. Or rich. Yeah, that'll fix everything. /sarcasm
Nothing compared to what they're regulated like here in Canada.
Big kerfuffle a decade ago because they all wanted to merge and aquire each other and other banks. "For the consumer benefit, of course." Centre-left Liberal party said, "No way."
As it stands, Canada's banks are the strongest and most stable in the world, bar none. Due to regulations, which our current right-wing Prime Minister holds up as examples at G8 & G20.
I'm assuming you are American? Because you're 100% and 180Â (degrees) wrong from a Canadian perspective.
Again, in Canada, the government ensures we have access to "generic" drugs: perfectly safe, chemically same, fraction of price. You may have heard of the busloads of Americans (maybe your own grandparents) coming up here for medicine.
We have government single-payer health care: I went for 4 doctors visits in past couple months: 2 with specialist. Total cost to me: $0.00 Cdn. Waiting time to see specialist: saw him tuesday after thursday referral. Cost of half dozen generic prescriptions: about $150 Cdn/US. (Note: I have to pay $192 / month BC medical insurance for 2 adults. That's > doubled what it was before right-wing provincial government took over 10 years ago.)
BC has no-fault "government" auto insurance company, ICBC. We have the lowest rates in the country, and get this: profits are put back in to high-crash intersection redesign or world class child safety seat research. Everyone loves to hate insurance companies, but we wouldn't trade it for the world! Ask former premier who promised to change it to private insurance, appointed an executive buddy to "investigate", result was, Do. Not. Touch.
For better or worse? Worse, I think. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't trust PayPal with change for a phone call.
Government being the source of the problem is the result of voting for incompetents that want to ruin government, and make no secret of that. Of course they're failures at providing good government.
First, congratulations on an excellent, simple site and many, many years of entertaining & informative reading.
The previous posters have been poignant and funny.
But this timing really sucks. Canadians lost a beloved political leader, Jack Layton (yeah, you read that right: it is a once-per-generation thing, I think), yesterday I found out the crows I "befriended" after my beloved dog died had destroyed the nest of a large family of small birds I fed for a long time, who've now disappeared.
Steve Jobs left (personally I don't care a whit about Apple, but the man is too sick to work, that's sad), and now /. is ... different...
I'm going back to bed, wake me up next year.
PS Good luck Rob, and thanks to you and ALL the people who make this site so delightful to read.
--
Salon Kill File
http://salonkillfile.maow.net/
I think you rather missed the point.
If you want automated installation, Linux or BSD are the way to go, both use GUIs or CLIs (your choice) for the same thing.
But the user must be involved to some point, like choosing whether to install MySQL server or client, etc.
I don't think you've thought that through its implementation very well, but I suggest you might actually learn to like apt-get as a package management tool.
Remember, in Linux / BSD, all software is updated through package manager, no separate updates for Firefox, Thunderbird, Apache, etc.
Certainly a GUI is best for some things, but if you think doing away with CLIs is a step forward, you're simply wrong. Sorry, no offense.
Choose the best tool for each job, etc.
Easily: installing new software.
For example, "q) How do I install a web server?"
"a) sudo apt-get install apache" (tabbed-auto-completion helps here!)
It works for almost any questions about the OS: with Windows, the answers are "Click Start, click this, click that, click X tab, click something, select something, clickety-clickety-click, click OK, reboot."
In *nix, it's always something like: "copy the following 3 lines and paste them in a terminal running as root. Change XYZ to what your needs are. Done."
Truly, many things are faster in the terminal window - as long as your fingers are on the keyboard anyway.
Hope that helps.