As a former member of the Slashdot troll community I'd like to make some clarifications and comments here.
I'm sure they spend about half their time in front of the computer either reading, posting, or thinking of new offensive, off-topic things to say on slashdot.
I wouldn't say the number is that high. I would venture that most trolls only recycle content from other trolls. This eliminates the time dedicated to this phase significantly. Consider the sources.
You mean like hitting "refresh" on the slashdot home page every 1-2 minutes so they can get first post?
That may be so, but there are frequently breaks between these 1-2 minute refreshes to pee, get something to drink, and maybe even do some work.
The entire day of these creatures is wildly altered by something as simple as a fellow slashdotter replying to their message, not realizing it wasn't serious.
Mod-bombing a troll also has a similar effect on the troll's psychology. The event of a mod-bombing causes a serious chemical imbalance in the troll which prompts it to spew even more trolls across the message boards.
The article makes a statement that I think is untrue:
While an attacker would need administrator rights to a system to grab the file that contains the password hashes, the file is still valuable, said David Dittrich, a senior security researcher at University of Washington.
Using a tool like Cain & Able, it is possible to get access to this information without having administrative rights.
You can also dump the hashes using Cain & Able's password cracking tool. It is really quite trivial to do.
By the way, you can easily acquire the passwords of the last five users who logged into an NT system. They are stored in LSA "secrets", an area of memory which is easy to dump. Cain & Able does this for you.
...stop drinking beer. Empty calories. Very bad for you in the long run with large quantities.
Next, try to stay away from processed foods (especially soft drinks). I am very stagnate myself during the work day, but I try to eat only natural foods that my body can easily digest. Avoid saturated fats. Avoid hydroginated anything. Avoid trans fatty acids. They go in, but they don't come back out. Turn down those cookies or cupcakes the secretary brings in every now and then.
Also, does your employeer allow for frequent breaks? Stay you have CTS issues and you need to stop typing for a bit. Go take a walk. Do Yoga. Do some quick exercise before you hop in the shower in the morning.
These are very simple things I do, but I do not exercise regularly and I spend a lot of time in front of a computer. Nevertheless, I am not getting fat and my energy is still pretty good.
Very little amounts to a lot when it comes to nutrition. You don't have to have a six-pack to be considered healthy, just try avoid things that are a bad. Adequate health can come out of apathy.
Unfortunately, most of MSN's readers are very unlikely to understand why this article is nonsense. They will never read the reasoned counterpoints expressed in this article thread. Nor will they ever question it.
This article is exactly what the layperson craves. It's controversial and it makes some sense if you fail to do any deep thinking. The masses are going to gobble it all up (even when MSN is a demonstration of what this article complains: example) and look to other sources to save them from the newly created Google menance. To them, Google is now not only a bad search engine, it is also damaging the future of our species by negatively impacting research (*gasp!*).
Of course, this is how all Microsoft FUD plays out. It doesn't fool any of us, but it certainly fools most of them.
I think they seriously forgot something... I didn't see any mention of handwriting recognition.
Without that, it defeats the whole point of a tablet PC. That silly onscreen keyboard makes it slower to enter data at the expense of wearing out the touchscreen and taking up screen realestate.
This is a silly flop. I cannot believe a company would release something like this without even offering something so basic that has been on tablet machines since the Qbe. Aren't there any open source handwriting recognition libraries they could have used?
Now you have the potential to vote for a particular candidate because your vote for the opposition could become known. This technology will help turn voting into a means of convincing an oppressed public that they are free.
Your argument is specious. You are not being prevented from voting. Don't have a computer running Windows? How hard is it for you to access one long enough to vote? Harder than lining up for your turn at the voting booth?
The stated purpose of this system is to increase the accessibility to the election process. Are there people who have no other option? I cannot say. Imagine someone who does not have access to the polls because they are out of range or do not have the capasity to transport themselves to one (no legs, no car, et cetera). Perhaps any such example is entirely contrived.
However, what concerns me the most is the trend. This voting mechanism, by its nature, benefits a special interest group and not necessarily the interests of the American people who paid for it. It is at the very least a form of favoritism and considering technological progress, online voting could replace existing mechansims the same as the booth replaced the ballot box. Imagine if the only way to vote was on a system owned by Microsoft (a very politically active organization). You decide.
Online voting is being incouraged in the US because of its susceptibility to fraud, not its resistance.
Imagine how much easier it will be to rig elections. At the risk of getting into a partisan flamewar, what happened to Florida is suspect for election tampering. I suppose if my brother was the governor of a state, I could get a lot done in my favor. Now with no security, things can be heavily corrupted with even less of a paper trail (it doesn't exist).
These are tools for oppression. These are tools for defeating democracy.
There is the matter that in order to use this system, I must pay money to a corporation.
Presently, the only requirement for me to vote in a United States election is that I must be registered to vote within a specific scope. In order to be registered, I must be a United States citizen.
Using this system means that I must not only meet that requirement, but also post a ~$200 fee to Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) in Redmond, WA. I think it's highly unethical to require voters to pay a very politically active organization that may not agree with their views in order to utilize a mechanism to participate in a democratic election. Voting mechanisms must all be equally available to anyone who has the right to vote.
(The terms I am speaking in make the assumption that online voting is the only option. This is not yet the case, but taking technological trends into consideration, traditional voting means may eventually fade into obscurity. If we continue on this road of platfor dependence, we may create problems in the big picture.)
Using Linux is a something you chose to do. Using Linux was not something you were born to do
What if I cannot afford Windows? Microsoft WindowsXP comes with a price-tag of a couple hundred dollars or more, plus exceedingly high hardware requirements. Indeed the cost of Windows plus some software to make it useful can even exceed the cost of the hardware it runs on. Linux costs me nothing and can scale down to just about any hardware. Open source solutions are excellent options for those who are not well-endowed financially (like myself), especially in our current economic environment.
It's an option to those who are not affluent. Consider people who may purchase very cheap computers from Walmart running Lindows (cheaper because there is no Microsoft tax associated with the computer). Is being poor a matter of choice?
You make a very good point, but it seems to me that this Windows-only nonsense may also extend to segregating the rich and poor. What if the software had requirements with even heftier price-tags?
Of course, cost is not the only factor here. What if I require a secure system? What if I require a stable system? We are all aware of the Windows track-record, and it is beyond pathetic. What if I have no choice to not use Windows? What if the matter is an ethical decision? Microsoft are a criminal organization, as proven by the United State's own judicial system. What if my ethics and principles require me to not fund a criminal operation? (Of course, this rides on choice fundamentally, but for those with strong ethics, the choice may not exist.)
The reason just windows is because that as much as we hate it, we are in the minority of computer uses, they are not going to Bata test a new technology on a system that only a maximum of 5% of computer users will have (and yes I am being overly optimistic here) if this works for them the next platform will be Mac. Linux may never get it, unless more people use Linux,
Because it's a form of segregation. They're basically saying that if you're a part of a minority, you are not allowed to vote. What if you were black or female and the government said: "you are not allowed to vote because you are not [white/male]." Well, I am a Linux user. The government is dispersing more voting rights to people who run Windows but not me becuase I don't. Of course, with most people who are part of the majority, they won't give a shit about how the minorities feel because they will never be a part of the minority. Welcome to the root of most major problems with the world today.
and I doubt that they would want to open up the code to the voting system that could create a large number of people trying to skew the results so that the results are not accurate.
Open source code tends to be stronger security-wise than closed source code because of the many eyes principle (among others). Perhaps you should try to understand why open source is good for security before making any assumptions.
I don't know what the answer is, but at lest they are looking at moving the process forward.
Quite frankly, I think this a big step backwards for democracy. Not only are we reintroducing voter segregation in the US, we're soon to have even more votes which we cannot trust.
It used to be that women were not allowed not vote. It used to be that black people were not allowed to vote. For women, it was because they were not men and thus did not necessarily share the viewpoints of those in power who benefited from male voters. For blacks, it was because they were not white and thus did not necessarily share the viewpoints of those in power who benefitted from white voters.
While not as definitively prohibitive, this is the same as voter segregation. Unless you are willing to spend the money to use Windows, you are not permitted to vote in this fashion. What if you use a Macintosh? What if you run an open source operating system? If you are not in a particular class of citizens, your ability to vote is limited. Certainly if traditional voting is available to you there is really no problem, but that's not an option, you are being prohibited.
So the serious issue here not that Windows is secure or any other nonsense. The problem is that people who are influenced by Microsoft have thus dictated that those who do not use Microsoft products are not permitted to vote in this fashion. That's a serious problem because whoever directed these development efforts (and of course, whoever directed her) therefore has strong influence on how candidates will be elected.
I would wager that this could be very popular (though I personally prefer pulling the lever with the satisfying kerchunk to cast my vote). As a result, certain parties will have unfair advantages for reasons which should be obvious to most people who read Slashdot. (Of course, I am willing to outline a scenario or two for the uninitiated.)
Maybe someone should write a HOW-TO in the future outlining how this software may be used with Wine on OSS machines. Of course, options on the Macintosh are limited even further.
It'd be kind of interesting (particularly at conventions like H2Kx or Defcon) to pull up a person's chosen public information or web site.
"I can't remember that info right now. Click on me to see my blog." You could also figure out who in the room has an interesting role or get public encryption keys, etc.
I have asked this question a number of times, but I am still confused.
The Internet was designed to be durable. It is built with many points of failure and it is supposed to function even with many of those points disabled.
Why is it then that a backhoe operator in California can knock out Internet access or at least cripple traffic for the entire country?
Is it simply that there is not enough redundancy to make this possible? If that is the case, forget about supressing research like Gorman's and increase the infrastructure.
Regrettably, I must agree that spilling this information out into the public domain is not the best. Computer security concerns should be publicized, but physical security issues should not. They differ insofar as the means of resolving security issues. If some operating system has a vulnerability, it is repaired once and the patch gets disseminated to all affected systems. You cannot simply build a stronger door and pass that door around to all affected sites.
Nevertheless, we should make efforts to nullify the vulnerability so that when this information becomes public, the point is moot and a few bombs destroying some fiber will do nothing.
Perhaps part of the reason NASA tried that experiment, despite the invalidity of it as you pointed out, is because the government and the public demand an answer for the trajedy. This wasn't just any accidental death, this was the destruction of a shuttle and its astronauts (which the American population has placed an unusual amount of emotional value on).
However, no other particularly sound theories have really be publicized. Nevertheless, NASA must make an answer and that answer must satisfy politicians and their budget committees. A piece of foam fired at the wing at 850km/hour is probably very convincing (and emotionally satisfying) to most people who do not understand the science of space travel.
I have asked this question a number of times, but I am still confused.
The Internet was designed to be durable. It is built with many points of failure and it is supposed to function even with many of those points disabled.
Why is it then that a backhoe operator in California can knock out Internet access or at least cripple traffic for the entire country?
Is it simply that there is not enough redundancy to make this possible? If that is the case, forget about supressing research like Gorman's and increase the infrastructure.
Regrettably, I must agree that spilling this information out into the public domain is not the best. Computer security concerns should be publicized, but physical security issues should not. They differ insofar as the means of resolving security issues. If some operating system has a vulnerability, it is repaired once and the patch gets disseminated to all affected systems. You cannot simply build a stronger door and pass that door around to all affected sites.
Nevertheless, we should make efforts to nullify the vulnerability so that when this information becomes public, the point is moot and a few bombs destroying some fiber will do nothing.
That is truly a skillfully done karma whoring post. I am really quite impressed. Not only are you trying to tie two completely unrelated things (confusing tech jargon with a monopoly abuser), you actually make a valid point (mostly). Nevertheless, computers would have come to laypeople just like the television and it was really Apple and IBM that have been working to make computers as ubiquitous as the toaster.
Studies conducted by some large corporation found that the sky is blue, shit is brown (and sometimes green), and that the average accelleration due to gravity on earth is approximately 9.81m/sec/sec.
Slashdot Mirror
As a former member of the Slashdot troll community I'd like to make some clarifications and comments here.
I'm sure they spend about half their time in front of the computer either reading, posting, or thinking of new offensive, off-topic things to say on slashdot.
I wouldn't say the number is that high. I would venture that most trolls only recycle content from other trolls. This eliminates the time dedicated to this phase significantly. Consider the sources.
You mean like hitting "refresh" on the slashdot home page every 1-2 minutes so they can get first post?
That may be so, but there are frequently breaks between these 1-2 minute refreshes to pee, get something to drink, and maybe even do some work.
The entire day of these creatures is wildly altered by something as simple as a fellow slashdotter replying to their message, not realizing it wasn't serious.
Mod-bombing a troll also has a similar effect on the troll's psychology. The event of a mod-bombing causes a serious chemical imbalance in the troll which prompts it to spew even more trolls across the message boards.
The article makes a statement that I think is untrue:
Using a tool like Cain & Able, it is possible to get access to this information without having administrative rights.
You can also dump the hashes using Cain & Able's password cracking tool. It is really quite trivial to do.
By the way, you can easily acquire the passwords of the last five users who logged into an NT system. They are stored in LSA "secrets", an area of memory which is easy to dump. Cain & Able does this for you.
Have fun.
IN SOVJET RUSSIA: Microsoft pays to sue themselves!
+1, True
We've got questions about fitness!? You've got to be kidding! Before long we're going to have a complete guide to being on shape on this site.
What's next, fashion!?
What kind of geeks are we anyway?
...stop drinking beer. Empty calories. Very bad for you in the long run with large quantities.
Next, try to stay away from processed foods (especially soft drinks). I am very stagnate myself during the work day, but I try to eat only natural foods that my body can easily digest. Avoid saturated fats. Avoid hydroginated anything. Avoid trans fatty acids. They go in, but they don't come back out. Turn down those cookies or cupcakes the secretary brings in every now and then.
Also, does your employeer allow for frequent breaks? Stay you have CTS issues and you need to stop typing for a bit. Go take a walk. Do Yoga. Do some quick exercise before you hop in the shower in the morning.
These are very simple things I do, but I do not exercise regularly and I spend a lot of time in front of a computer. Nevertheless, I am not getting fat and my energy is still pretty good.
Very little amounts to a lot when it comes to nutrition. You don't have to have a six-pack to be considered healthy, just try avoid things that are a bad. Adequate health can come out of apathy.
Unfortunately, most of MSN's readers are very unlikely to understand why this article is nonsense. They will never read the reasoned counterpoints expressed in this article thread. Nor will they ever question it.
This article is exactly what the layperson craves. It's controversial and it makes some sense if you fail to do any deep thinking. The masses are going to gobble it all up (even when MSN is a demonstration of what this article complains: example) and look to other sources to save them from the newly created Google menance. To them, Google is now not only a bad search engine, it is also damaging the future of our species by negatively impacting research (*gasp!*).
Of course, this is how all Microsoft FUD plays out. It doesn't fool any of us, but it certainly fools most of them.
For those of us who actually have sex with a living, breathing, *biped* (of the OPPOSITE sex)
Biped does not imply human. Care to qualify that?
I think they seriously forgot something... I didn't see any mention of handwriting recognition.
Without that, it defeats the whole point of a tablet PC. That silly onscreen keyboard makes it slower to enter data at the expense of wearing out the touchscreen and taking up screen realestate.
This is a silly flop. I cannot believe a company would release something like this without even offering something so basic that has been on tablet machines since the Qbe. Aren't there any open source handwriting recognition libraries they could have used?
It's really quite useless like this.
Now you have the potential to vote for a particular candidate because your vote for the opposition could become known. This technology will help turn voting into a means of convincing an oppressed public that they are free.
Your argument is specious. You are not being prevented from voting. Don't have a computer running Windows? How hard is it for you to access one long enough to vote? Harder than lining up for your turn at the voting booth?
The stated purpose of this system is to increase the accessibility to the election process. Are there people who have no other option? I cannot say. Imagine someone who does not have access to the polls because they are out of range or do not have the capasity to transport themselves to one (no legs, no car, et cetera). Perhaps any such example is entirely contrived.
However, what concerns me the most is the trend. This voting mechanism, by its nature, benefits a special interest group and not necessarily the interests of the American people who paid for it. It is at the very least a form of favoritism and considering technological progress, online voting could replace existing mechansims the same as the booth replaced the ballot box. Imagine if the only way to vote was on a system owned by Microsoft (a very politically active organization). You decide.
Online voting is being incouraged in the US because of its susceptibility to fraud, not its resistance.
Imagine how much easier it will be to rig elections. At the risk of getting into a partisan flamewar, what happened to Florida is suspect for election tampering. I suppose if my brother was the governor of a state, I could get a lot done in my favor. Now with no security, things can be heavily corrupted with even less of a paper trail (it doesn't exist).
These are tools for oppression. These are tools for defeating democracy.
There is the matter that in order to use this system, I must pay money to a corporation.
Presently, the only requirement for me to vote in a United States election is that I must be registered to vote within a specific scope. In order to be registered, I must be a United States citizen.
Using this system means that I must not only meet that requirement, but also post a ~$200 fee to Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) in Redmond, WA. I think it's highly unethical to require voters to pay a very politically active organization that may not agree with their views in order to utilize a mechanism to participate in a democratic election. Voting mechanisms must all be equally available to anyone who has the right to vote.
(The terms I am speaking in make the assumption that online voting is the only option. This is not yet the case, but taking technological trends into consideration, traditional voting means may eventually fade into obscurity. If we continue on this road of platfor dependence, we may create problems in the big picture.)
Using Linux is a something you chose to do. Using Linux was not something you were born to do
What if I cannot afford Windows? Microsoft WindowsXP comes with a price-tag of a couple hundred dollars or more, plus exceedingly high hardware requirements. Indeed the cost of Windows plus some software to make it useful can even exceed the cost of the hardware it runs on. Linux costs me nothing and can scale down to just about any hardware. Open source solutions are excellent options for those who are not well-endowed financially (like myself), especially in our current economic environment.
It's an option to those who are not affluent. Consider people who may purchase very cheap computers from Walmart running Lindows (cheaper because there is no Microsoft tax associated with the computer). Is being poor a matter of choice?
You make a very good point, but it seems to me that this Windows-only nonsense may also extend to segregating the rich and poor. What if the software had requirements with even heftier price-tags?
Of course, cost is not the only factor here. What if I require a secure system? What if I require a stable system? We are all aware of the Windows track-record, and it is beyond pathetic. What if I have no choice to not use Windows? What if the matter is an ethical decision? Microsoft are a criminal organization, as proven by the United State's own judicial system. What if my ethics and principles require me to not fund a criminal operation? (Of course, this rides on choice fundamentally, but for those with strong ethics, the choice may not exist.)
The reason just windows is because that as much as we hate it, we are in the minority of computer uses, they are not going to Bata test a new technology on a system that only a maximum of 5% of computer users will have (and yes I am being overly optimistic here) if this works for them the next platform will be Mac. Linux may never get it, unless more people use Linux,
Because it's a form of segregation. They're basically saying that if you're a part of a minority, you are not allowed to vote. What if you were black or female and the government said: "you are not allowed to vote because you are not [white/male]." Well, I am a Linux user. The government is dispersing more voting rights to people who run Windows but not me becuase I don't. Of course, with most people who are part of the majority, they won't give a shit about how the minorities feel because they will never be a part of the minority. Welcome to the root of most major problems with the world today.
and I doubt that they would want to open up the code to the voting system that could create a large number of people trying to skew the results so that the results are not accurate.
Open source code tends to be stronger security-wise than closed source code because of the many eyes principle (among others). Perhaps you should try to understand why open source is good for security before making any assumptions.
I don't know what the answer is, but at lest they are looking at moving the process forward.
Quite frankly, I think this a big step backwards for democracy. Not only are we reintroducing voter segregation in the US, we're soon to have even more votes which we cannot trust.
It used to be that women were not allowed not vote. It used to be that black people were not allowed to vote. For women, it was because they were not men and thus did not necessarily share the viewpoints of those in power who benefited from male voters. For blacks, it was because they were not white and thus did not necessarily share the viewpoints of those in power who benefitted from white voters.
While not as definitively prohibitive, this is the same as voter segregation. Unless you are willing to spend the money to use Windows, you are not permitted to vote in this fashion. What if you use a Macintosh? What if you run an open source operating system? If you are not in a particular class of citizens, your ability to vote is limited. Certainly if traditional voting is available to you there is really no problem, but that's not an option, you are being prohibited.
So the serious issue here not that Windows is secure or any other nonsense. The problem is that people who are influenced by Microsoft have thus dictated that those who do not use Microsoft products are not permitted to vote in this fashion. That's a serious problem because whoever directed these development efforts (and of course, whoever directed her) therefore has strong influence on how candidates will be elected.
I would wager that this could be very popular (though I personally prefer pulling the lever with the satisfying kerchunk to cast my vote). As a result, certain parties will have unfair advantages for reasons which should be obvious to most people who read Slashdot. (Of course, I am willing to outline a scenario or two for the uninitiated.)
Maybe someone should write a HOW-TO in the future outlining how this software may be used with Wine on OSS machines. Of course, options on the Macintosh are limited even further.
It'd be kind of interesting (particularly at conventions like H2Kx or Defcon) to pull up a person's chosen public information or web site.
"I can't remember that info right now. Click on me to see my blog." You could also figure out who in the room has an interesting role or get public encryption keys, etc.
You could have all kinds of fun with this.
And we're using it for critical, national infrastructure. Nice.
I have asked this question a number of times, but I am still confused.
The Internet was designed to be durable. It is built with many points of failure and it is supposed to function even with many of those points disabled.
Why is it then that a backhoe operator in California can knock out Internet access or at least cripple traffic for the entire country?
Is it simply that there is not enough redundancy to make this possible? If that is the case, forget about supressing research like Gorman's and increase the infrastructure.
Regrettably, I must agree that spilling this information out into the public domain is not the best. Computer security concerns should be publicized, but physical security issues should not. They differ insofar as the means of resolving security issues. If some operating system has a vulnerability, it is repaired once and the patch gets disseminated to all affected systems. You cannot simply build a stronger door and pass that door around to all affected sites.
Nevertheless, we should make efforts to nullify the vulnerability so that when this information becomes public, the point is moot and a few bombs destroying some fiber will do nothing.
Perhaps part of the reason NASA tried that experiment, despite the invalidity of it as you pointed out, is because the government and the public demand an answer for the trajedy. This wasn't just any accidental death, this was the destruction of a shuttle and its astronauts (which the American population has placed an unusual amount of emotional value on).
However, no other particularly sound theories have really be publicized. Nevertheless, NASA must make an answer and that answer must satisfy politicians and their budget committees. A piece of foam fired at the wing at 850km/hour is probably very convincing (and emotionally satisfying) to most people who do not understand the science of space travel.
So this is what Microsoft developers sit around and dream up all day, right?
I have asked this question a number of times, but I am still confused.
The Internet was designed to be durable. It is built with many points of failure and it is supposed to function even with many of those points disabled.
Why is it then that a backhoe operator in California can knock out Internet access or at least cripple traffic for the entire country?
Is it simply that there is not enough redundancy to make this possible? If that is the case, forget about supressing research like Gorman's and increase the infrastructure.
Regrettably, I must agree that spilling this information out into the public domain is not the best. Computer security concerns should be publicized, but physical security issues should not. They differ insofar as the means of resolving security issues. If some operating system has a vulnerability, it is repaired once and the patch gets disseminated to all affected systems. You cannot simply build a stronger door and pass that door around to all affected sites.
Nevertheless, we should make efforts to nullify the vulnerability so that when this information becomes public, the point is moot and a few bombs destroying some fiber will do nothing.
That is truly a skillfully done karma whoring post. I am really quite impressed. Not only are you trying to tie two completely unrelated things (confusing tech jargon with a monopoly abuser), you actually make a valid point (mostly). Nevertheless, computers would have come to laypeople just like the television and it was really Apple and IBM that have been working to make computers as ubiquitous as the toaster.
Studies conducted by some large corporation found that the sky is blue, shit is brown (and sometimes green), and that the average accelleration due to gravity on earth is approximately 9.81m/sec/sec.
If I had known this would get passed up to someone, I would have been a little less crass. :)