The corporation which mails 74 metric tons of promotional disks to innocent victims everywhere just recieved nearly a million dollars from spammers? Why can't the real victims get some of this cash? Is AOL going to dump the money they made from this lawsuit into producing more "30 minutes free" CD's? Will our civilization dissapear underneath the combined weight of Publisher's Clearing House and America Online?
You're forgetting the worst product name of all time... Yes, that fateful day when Chevy decided to sell the Chevy Nova in Mexico... ...without changing the name... If you plug "no va" into babelfish, you get:
...wait for it...
it does not go
Oh, let us bow before Chevrolet's inability to hire a Spanish speaking person before marketing millions of cars... sigh.
whatever. everyone knows dr. doom invented the robotic remote-controlled snake. it sucks though because spiderman figured out how to modify his webslinger to stick to the veno-bot's poisonous scales well before veno-bot could send the city into chaos.
the next odd day is 1-1-00 that's what all the computers are going to say, right before they erase the financial record and send us back to the stone age.
>Glad to know that there's one source I won't be obtaining crypto software...
The above sentence is grammatically incorrect.
>Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use 2048-BIT RSA to exchange your 3DES or 128-bit IDEA key? I mean, who's heard of a 2048-byte triple DES key?
You are deliberately misinterpreting me?
I didn't say a 2048 byte 3DES key, I said your favorite symmetric algorithm, IDEA, DES, whatever. And yes, 2048 bytes is an absurd key size. I was merely pointing out that you could choose one that large if you wanted to, i.e. it could be as secure as you wanted it to be, and you only need one initial public key exchange.
WHY do want public key based stream encryption? If, during the initiation of your stream, you use public key encryption to exchange a shared secret (let's call this a "stream key") which is generated from random noise, then you can use shared secret stream encryption from that point forward. All the trust advantages of public key encryption, with all the speed advantages of shared secret encryption.
So, for example, during a TCP handshake you use RSA to exchange a 2048 byte key. Then use your favorite symmetric cypher (3DES, IDEA, whatever) with this shared key to encrypt the stream!
I write stream encryption software for www.v-one.com. The method I've just described is roughly what we do, and what all of our competitors do. While public key stream encryption is certainly feasible, if you understood the preceding paragraph you'll understand why it hasn't been written.
while the "diamond sutra" is free for distribution, the author goes to no lengths to say that you have to distribute it unmodified, or include the source code. which is pretty obvious, seeing as how that derivative and highly popular "kama sutra" book seems to have diverted all the attention.
The Chinese government contributed heavily to Clinton & Gore's campaign... Linux is the official operating system of China... so Gore will be... The Linux President!
After all, Gore invented the Internet, and he probably invented Linux too! If I were Microsoft I'd watch out I think Gore is one of those longhairs in it with the commies.
I am a developer for V-ONE corporation (http://www.v-one.com). We develop secure internet proxy products which support web based key deployment, a variety of two factor authentication mechanisms, and when used within the United States, 3DES shared secret encryption. Our SmartGate product can provide public key based key deployment, mutual authentication, and the best data security in the industry, without ever having to deal with physical tokens (and using a freely available client). In short, we solve this problem. Without the weak security of SSL, and with the easiest authentication and key deployment process available. Check out our demo on our web page.
...and yes, both the client and the server run on Linux.
Santa Clara, CA - Sparked by the success of 3COM's new "gamer modem", modem manufacturers are racing to provide specialized modems to target audiences. Some recent offerings hitting the market this week:
AOLmodem - Internet giant AOL is offering a new modem this week that requires no phone line and boasts connection speeds of up to 1.7Mbps/sec. The modem is based on AOL's revolutionary "digitized FM noise" technology and will stream random bits into the users' computer at near LAN speeds. Andrew Taylor of AOL product management had this to say: "Like they'll be able to tell the difference. Ya right."
l33t-m0d3m: - Designed for the experienced script kiddie, this offering from L33t Designs Ltd. is a standard 56k V2 modem with the addition of quote "a whole bunch of blinking LED's that look cool". The modem also features a black metallic paint job and a leather hip holster, and comes bundled with "S.A.T.A.N".
J-pegger Plus: - Playboy's first venture into the consumer electronics market is this sleek velvet-covered modem. Optimized for what Playboy calls "maximum Internet suction", this modem includes software for automated binary attachment reassembly and hardware-optimized UUdecoding. A nozzle on the side of the modem acts as a plentiful "personal lubricant" dispenser, and the product comes bundled with a product Playboy calls the "Monitor Splashguard(tm)".
Ok I got a response back from Henderson Labs, here it is: (my comments follow)
[my name removed], Thanks for your inquiry. To answer your specific question: Test details are available from 3COM. We wrote a collateral brochure for them that they've asked exclusive distribution rights on. If you have an interest in any of our testing or certification services we'd be glad to supply more descriptive information and/or fee schedules.
Sincerely,
Warren L. Henderson, Jr. President
eml: [his email removed for his protection] smt: [his info removed for his protection] tel: [his tel removed for his protection] ************************************************ ********************
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized.
If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. When addressed to our clients any opinions or advice contained in this email are subject to the terms and conditions expressed in the governing HCL client engagement letter.
So this thing says that the test results are available from 3com. Only I've searched their web site as thoroughly as I know how (read: perl-bot | grep ["game"&&"modem"]) and I can't find this brochure that 3com has exclusive rights to.
Someone claiming to be from 3com engineering has already posted once. How about hosting that brochure for us, huh guys?
Also notice the legal-bloat at the end of the message that seems to indicate they've been through the legal wringer once or twice. Interesting. Also notice I'm violating the hell out of their "email license" by posting this here. Too bad for them it's unenforceable.
This got moderated to redundant, yet it contains the only reference in the entire story to the actual web site of the "independent testing laboratory" mentioned in the article, and the only link to their testing methodology.
How can unique information be redundant? Inquiring minds want to know!
So the 3com article says that an independent testing laboratory found that the game modem was 43% faster than other modems when connected to a 3com Total Control server. Here is the independent testing lab, and it's documents describing their test setup/testing methodology:
I have submitted a request to henderson labs to make the 3com test results publicly available. Please don't spam these people, I will post the results if/when I get them.
Can a modem be made better for gamers? You bet. Same way a protocol can be made better for gamers. It's all about LATENCY... Why do we use UDP instead of TCP for gaming connections? Because we don't care about checksumming (checking for correct data) or compression (more data faster on average, but higher LATENCY), or RETRANSMISSION. That's the big one folks, retransmission. In a game, if you've lost a packet, you don't want it retransmitted anyway, because it probably is carrying the co-ordinates of a guy who's already killed you 10 seconds ago anyway. If you're tranferring a file, you definitely want that packet. (:
Real-time applications (read: games) need low-latency connections above all else, even an unreliable connection. Normal I/O needs reliable SAR (segmentation and reassembly). Those are very different goals.
Here's the REAL question: Does this modem do anything you can't reconfigure a normal modem to do using the hayes command set? Does it turn off some retransmission features that we can't normally turn off ourselves?
Or is it just a different set of default flags bundled with some lame games for l33t hax0rs in time for christmas?
3com, here is your chance to speak up. Engineering btw, not "product management".
Here I copied the article for ya guys so you don't have to follow the link, sorry if I made a few mistakes...
Microsoft Targets Antitrust Office
Microsoft Corp. lobbyists and allies are aggressively pressing Congress to reduce the Justice Department's antitrust division to a pile of rubble. The giant software company's accuser has been winning in a storied court battle up to this point, but experts predict that the upcoming intensive bombing campaign funded by Microsoft may slow the DoJ's progress.
"I haven't had this much freedom to innovate in a long time!" said General Jon "Adolf" Strangelove in a press conference earlier today. "I've chosen some very innovative flight paths over Justice Department headquarters for the lead bombers, and the 200lbs. HE's should really open it up for the incendiardaries. Expect quite a show!"
Microsoft representatives have urged House and Senate members to pass a comprehensive air/land attack plan against the the Department of Justice for some time.
"We needed Microsoft to really show us the money..er the motivation for this attack" said Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.). "It's important for Americans to have the freedom to innovate after they buy their copies of Windows. But how can they do that if the Department of 'Justice' keeps Microsoft from making the Windows that keep everyone so happy? This raid is just common sense."
Bill Gates was unavailable for comment, but the following press release was handed out by his personal spokesperson early this morning:
"Prepare to witness the power of this fully operational battle station"
Hey, at least the French are leading the way in calling linux "GNU/Linux" now. Mr. Emacs finally getting his props.
Here's the babelfish translation, so we don't/. the poor server to death.
France Telecom Paris: Intranet under Linux. Alcove could obtain this market as much by the quality of its technical response that by a very professional offer of services. Through this service, France Telecom Paris becomes the 500ème customer of Alcove.
Project PHENIX (Platform of Standardized HEbergement of the Intranet under linuX) of France Telecom Paris: Each unit and the state major of France Telecom Paris (6300 people on the whole) develops their own sites Intranet, and of the possible interfaces with data bases. These sites are lodged today on heterogeneous servers (Windows NT and Linux) and mainly developed with the FrontPage software. The dynamic pages or those with access to the data bases are created using ASP/VBSript or Perl.
France Telecom Paris wishes to make migrate the whole of these sites Intranet towards a Linux platform, supporting all the existing functionalities or to come. The objective is to improve comfort of the users, to allow a better evolutionarity, and to ensure a simplified exploitation and an administration induced by the recognized stability of the system.
The technical proposal of Alcove: For the Linux platform, the distribution Debian GNU/Linux was retained. The Web server turns under Apache with support of Perl, PHP (more flexible and more powerful than its functional equivalent ASP/VBScript), and of the FrontPage extensions. The DBMS selected is PostgreSQL (software free in conformity with standard SQL 92), whose driver ODBC allows a transparent use of the DBMS from stations customers under Windows. For the updates of documents, Alcôve chose to implement software ftp ProFTPD, at the same time powerful and made safe.
An offer of services complete and very professional: The contract signed by France Telecom Paris and Alcôve is an annual engagement. **time-out** it integrate the follow-up of whole of project by a officer de project, consult in Data processing Free, of day of consulting, of intervention on site for the installation en place and the configuration of server, of day of formation and a contract of technical aid technique.
For Small Lucien, chairman of Alcove: " This very beautiful project at France Telecom as well as the strategic partnership tied lately with SGI confirm our place of leader of the services in Free Data processing. Our positioning, with the interface of the community of the free developers of software and the world of the company, enables us to fully satisfy waitings of our customers large accounts and our partners. It is besides to meet more precisely still their needs than we currently work with the proposal for contracts of assistance 24/7. "
Woop! I just got "slashdot@nsimail.com"! Also, hats off to whoever got "root@nsimail.com", you beat me to it.
I must be the "damn" in dot com.
Whoever got root@nsimail could have some real fun...
to: webmaster@www.microsoft.com from: root@nsimail.com Subject: Domain termination ------- Your domain name, registered with us on August 15, 1985, "microsoft.com", is being terminated immediately by NSI. Please call our technical support line with any questions you may have.
-Bob Johnson, NSI tech support.
----- seriously, don't do anything like this. at least, unless you're sure no one can trace you. (;
The lack of detail in my original post was intentional, as the less details I provided, the safer it was for everyone involved.
Some clarifications:
-The guy was not "tortured" by the police. It's probably trollbait, but I'll clarify that just so it's ironed out.
-He wasn't using my box for NAT or anything, everyone in the apartment had their own jack. Because I had TWO computers, I used a spare jack that happened to be on his side of the four person apartment. Too cheap to buy a hub I guess. I was in no way going to be held legally responsible for his actions.
So why did I turn someone in for child pornography distribution if it was no skin off my nose? Why not live and let live? I don't feel that the comparison to drug law enforcement is accurate, since the U.S.'s drug laws are retarded and everyone knows it. If'd he'd instead been growing a metric ton of weed in his closet I'd have given him a medal.
So here is what pushed me over the edge, and made me call the police rather than talk to the guy:
-Define young? ages appx 8-12 years old. Not traci lords. Pippi longstocking. Sesame street.
6 gigs. Carefully sorted. Documented. Separated into hundreds of subdirectories by race and gender combination. description files. Creation dates over a span of four years.
-Was he hurting anyone? He spent a lot of time in chat rooms in AOL. He spent a lot of time trying to meet people.
-Why not just ask him to stop? That would have, in my opinion, created an opportunity for him to destroy evidence. That introduced the possiblity of him remaining in my apartment. Or he could have stopped, moved, and started again. I felt that I had a responsibility to the public to do something. I felt that reducing the menace this person posed was not within my ability to create change. I considered the prospect of him luring someone into my apartment... and freaked out.
I stand by my decision, and that's all I have to say about that.
On the topic of allowing cash reimbursement for seized computing equipment - it's a nice idea, but it's far from being a solution. What if you reimburse a computer criminal who turns out to be guilty? If the state computer facility has a backlog of two years worth of computers, and that demand is constant, then increase capacity. If computer expertise costs too much money, spend more money. Computers aren't going to go away, and as much as corporate america would like to make computer programmers a cheap commodity by importing what they consider the "smart" races on indentured servant visas, the IT labor shortage isn't going to end anytime soon. Bite the bullet, modernize, make computer inspection turnaround time two weeks. Competent government is achievable, though you wouldn't believe it from the current state of affairs. /RANT
I thought that maybe a real-world testimonial from a slashdot'er might be of use here.
I went to college at the University of College Park, MD. I lived on campus, which meant that everyone in my on-campus apartment had a 10baseT jack fed to a T3 line on the Internet backbone. Good deal.
I had two computers, a Pentium-60 running FreeBSD with no monitor (fixed-ip permanent uptime server) and a dual-boot redhat/windows box in my bedroom. My on campus-apartment housed four people.
One semester a new guy moved into our apartment. I don't want to make this post run on forever with details, so to make a long story short: we discovered that he was hosting approx. 6gig of pictures of very young children having sex on his computer through a password protected ftp server. We freaked. We called the police.
I think it was the right thing to do.
The police came. Lots of them. They had a search warrant. They took everything electronic in this kid's room. They took his alarm clock....they took the computer which was attached to a cable run 25 feet out of his room. A quiet computer with no monitor sitting in a closet.
My computer.
When they were taking it I told the officers: "you'll need the passwords, it's running an IDEA encrypted filesystem" and wrote the root pwd and filesystem key on a 3m note. I didn't care, the crypto was for fun, my box was legal. I remember what the officer said: "I'm pretty sure they can figure it out".
As if.
I got my computer back 32 months later. I kept in touch with the college park police department. They just said it was at the state computer crime facility awaiting testing.
I don't have to tell you what a P60 is worth today. I still use it as a server, but I lost upwards of two years of use on that box.
I don't mind law enforcement taking computers in some cases. I think my case was a good example of better-safe-than-sorry. But they DO have a responsibility to get their f**ing act together when it comes to data inspection and returning property to innocent people.
From first hand knowledge, I can say that this is a VERY real problem, and that it needs attention at a national level now. If the mere suspicion of misdeeds is enough to confiscate a computer until it is entirely worthless, then law enforcement has effectively bypassed our trial-by-jury system. The punishment comes swiftly and BEFORE guilt or innocence is determined, because the punishment consists of denying a civilian access to his property. It consititutes the same kind of loophole that RICO does. (see Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act - search altavista)
The problem with punishment before judgement is that sometimes you punish the innocent. It happened to me. It could happen to you.
Slashdot Mirror
The corporation which mails 74 metric tons of promotional disks to innocent victims everywhere just recieved nearly a million dollars from spammers?
...stay tuned for next year's exciting episode.
Why can't the real victims get some of this cash? Is AOL going to dump the money they made from this lawsuit into producing more "30 minutes free" CD's? Will our civilization dissapear underneath the combined weight of Publisher's Clearing House and America Online?
You're forgetting the worst product name of all time...
...without changing the name...
...wait for it...
Yes, that fateful day when Chevy decided to sell the Chevy Nova in Mexico...
If you plug "no va" into babelfish, you get:
it does not go
Oh, let us bow before Chevrolet's inability to hire a Spanish speaking person before marketing millions of cars...
sigh.
whatever. everyone knows dr. doom invented the robotic remote-controlled snake. it sucks though because spiderman figured out how to modify his webslinger to stick to the veno-bot's poisonous scales well before veno-bot could send the city into chaos.
please do your research people.
the next odd day is 1-1-00
that's what all the computers are going to say, right before they erase the financial record and send us back to the stone age.
(:
>v-one.com you say???
yes.
>Glad to know that there's one source I won't be obtaining crypto software...
The above sentence is grammatically incorrect.
>Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use 2048-BIT RSA to exchange your 3DES or 128-bit IDEA key? I mean, who's heard of a 2048-byte triple DES key?
You are deliberately misinterpreting me?
I didn't say a 2048 byte 3DES key, I said your favorite symmetric algorithm, IDEA, DES, whatever. And yes, 2048 bytes is an absurd key size. I was merely pointing out that you could choose one that large if you wanted to, i.e. it could be as secure as you wanted it to be, and you only need one initial public key exchange.
>DES (and it's derivatives) all support various kinds of "streaming" - cipherblocks to be exact. I'm no crypto expert, but I
Offtopic...!
The question was whether you could do public-key stream encryption. DES is not a public-key (asymmetric) cipher.
oopsie...
WHY do want public key based stream encryption? If, during the initiation of your stream, you use public key encryption to exchange a shared secret (let's call this a "stream key") which is generated from random noise, then you can use shared secret stream encryption from that point forward. All the trust advantages of public key encryption, with all the speed advantages of shared secret encryption.
So, for example, during a TCP handshake you use RSA to exchange a 2048 byte key. Then use your favorite symmetric cypher (3DES, IDEA, whatever) with this shared key to encrypt the stream!
I write stream encryption software for www.v-one.com. The method I've just described is roughly what we do, and what all of our competitors do. While public key stream encryption is certainly feasible, if you understood the preceding paragraph you'll understand why it hasn't been written.
More details available upon request,
-mwalker.
while the "diamond sutra" is free for distribution, the author goes to no lengths to say that you have to distribute it unmodified, or include the source code. which is pretty obvious, seeing as how that derivative and highly popular "kama sutra" book seems to have diverted all the attention.
The Chinese government contributed heavily to Clinton & Gore's campaign...
Linux is the official operating system of China... so Gore will be...
The Linux President!
After all, Gore invented the Internet, and he probably invented Linux too!
If I were Microsoft I'd watch out I think Gore is one of those longhairs in it with the commies.
warning, this is a plug!
I am a developer for V-ONE corporation
(http://www.v-one.com). We develop secure internet proxy products which support web based key deployment, a variety of two factor authentication mechanisms, and when used within the United States, 3DES shared secret encryption. Our SmartGate product can provide public key based key deployment, mutual authentication, and the best data security in the industry, without ever having to deal with physical tokens (and using a freely available client). In short, we solve this problem. Without the weak security of SSL, and with the easiest authentication and key deployment process available. Check out our demo on our web page.
...and yes, both the client and the server run on Linux.
CORRECTION
JP didn't call stanford, he called harvard.
harvard.edu provided the hosting until the false legal threats were issued.
fightin jp and keepin da facts straight,
-mwalker
Santa Clara, CA -
Sparked by the success of 3COM's new "gamer modem", modem manufacturers are racing to provide specialized modems to target audiences. Some recent offerings hitting the market this week:
AOLmodem - Internet giant AOL is offering a new modem this week that requires no phone line and boasts connection speeds of up to 1.7Mbps/sec. The modem is based on AOL's revolutionary "digitized FM noise" technology and will stream random bits into the users' computer at near LAN speeds. Andrew Taylor of AOL product management had this to say: "Like they'll be able to tell the difference. Ya right."
l33t-m0d3m: - Designed for the experienced script kiddie, this offering from L33t Designs Ltd. is a standard 56k V2 modem with the addition of quote "a whole bunch of blinking LED's that look cool". The modem also features a black metallic paint job and a leather hip holster, and comes bundled with "S.A.T.A.N".
J-pegger Plus: - Playboy's first venture into the consumer electronics market is this sleek velvet-covered modem. Optimized for what Playboy calls "maximum Internet suction", this modem includes software for automated binary attachment reassembly and hardware-optimized UUdecoding. A nozzle on the side of the modem acts as a plentiful "personal lubricant" dispenser, and the product comes bundled with a product Playboy calls the "Monitor Splashguard(tm)".
-mmm 0:flamebait.
(I'sa plead guilty, yo honor)
Ok I got a response back from Henderson Labs, here it is: (my comments follow)
* ********************
* *******************
[my name removed],
Thanks for your inquiry. To answer your specific question: Test details are available from 3COM. We wrote a collateral brochure for them that they've asked exclusive distribution rights on.
If you have an interest in any of our testing or certification services we'd be glad to supply more descriptive information and/or fee schedules.
Sincerely,
Warren L. Henderson, Jr.
President
eml: [his email removed for his protection]
smt: [his info removed for his protection]
tel: [his tel removed for his protection]
***********************************************
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized.
If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. When addressed to our clients any opinions or advice contained in this email are subject to the terms and conditions expressed in the governing HCL client engagement letter.
***********************************************
-=end letter=-
So this thing says that the test results are available from 3com. Only I've searched their web site as thoroughly as I know how (read: perl-bot | grep ["game"&&"modem"]) and I can't find this brochure that 3com has exclusive rights to.
Someone claiming to be from 3com engineering has already posted once. How about hosting that brochure for us, huh guys?
Also notice the legal-bloat at the end of the message that seems to indicate they've been through the legal wringer once or twice. Interesting. Also notice I'm violating the hell out of their "email license" by posting this here. Too bad for them it's unenforceable.
This got moderated to redundant, yet it contains the only reference in the entire story to the actual web site of the "independent testing laboratory" mentioned in the article, and the only link to their testing methodology.
How can unique information be redundant?
Inquiring minds want to know!
I am Jack's grievous need for meta-moderation.
So the 3com article says that an independent testing laboratory found that the game modem was 43% faster than other modems when connected to a 3com Total Control server. Here is the independent testing lab, and it's documents describing their test setup/testing methodology:
Henderson Labs
I have submitted a request to henderson labs to make the 3com test results publicly available. Please don't spam these people, I will post the results if/when I get them.
Can a modem be made better for gamers? You bet. Same way a protocol can be made better for gamers. It's all about LATENCY...
Why do we use UDP instead of TCP for gaming connections? Because we don't care about checksumming (checking for correct data) or compression (more data faster on average, but higher LATENCY), or RETRANSMISSION. That's the big one folks, retransmission. In a game, if you've lost a packet, you don't want it retransmitted anyway, because it probably is carrying the co-ordinates of a guy who's already killed you 10 seconds ago anyway. If you're tranferring a file, you definitely want that packet. (:
Real-time applications (read: games) need low-latency connections above all else, even an unreliable connection. Normal I/O needs reliable SAR (segmentation and reassembly). Those are very different goals.
Here's the REAL question: Does this modem do anything you can't reconfigure a normal modem to do using the hayes command set? Does it turn off some retransmission features that we can't normally turn off ourselves?
Or is it just a different set of default flags bundled with some lame games for l33t hax0rs in time for christmas?
3com, here is your chance to speak up. Engineering btw, not "product management".
-I am Jack's identity crisis, in full gear.
Here I copied the article for ya guys so you don't have to follow the link, sorry if I made a few mistakes...
Microsoft Targets Antitrust Office
Microsoft Corp. lobbyists and allies are aggressively pressing Congress to reduce the Justice Department's antitrust division to a pile of rubble. The giant software company's accuser has been winning in a storied court battle up to this point, but experts predict that the upcoming intensive bombing campaign funded by Microsoft may slow the DoJ's progress.
"I haven't had this much freedom to innovate in a long time!" said General Jon "Adolf" Strangelove in a press conference earlier today. "I've chosen some very innovative flight paths over Justice Department headquarters for the lead bombers, and the 200lbs. HE's should really open it up for the incendiardaries. Expect quite a show!"
Microsoft representatives have urged House and Senate members to pass a comprehensive air/land attack plan against the the Department of Justice for some time.
"We needed Microsoft to really show us the money..er the motivation for this attack" said Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.). "It's important for Americans to have the freedom to innovate after they buy their copies of Windows. But how can they do that if the Department of 'Justice' keeps Microsoft from making the Windows that keep everyone so happy? This raid is just common sense."
Bill Gates was unavailable for comment, but the following press release was handed out by his personal spokesperson early this morning:
"Prepare to witness the power of this fully operational battle station"
Hey, at least the French are leading the way in calling linux "GNU/Linux" now. Mr. Emacs finally getting his props.
/. the poor server to death.
Here's the babelfish translation, so we don't
France Telecom Paris: Intranet under Linux.
Alcove could obtain this market as much by the quality of its technical response that by a very professional offer of services. Through this service, France Telecom Paris becomes the 500ème customer of Alcove.
Project PHENIX (Platform of Standardized HEbergement of the Intranet under linuX) of France Telecom Paris: Each unit and the state major of France Telecom Paris (6300 people on the whole) develops their own sites Intranet, and of the possible interfaces with data bases. These sites are lodged today on heterogeneous servers (Windows NT and Linux) and mainly developed with the FrontPage software. The dynamic pages or those with access to the data bases are created using ASP/VBSript or Perl.
France Telecom Paris wishes to make migrate the whole of these sites Intranet towards a Linux platform, supporting all the existing functionalities or to come. The objective is to improve comfort of the users, to allow a better evolutionarity, and to ensure a simplified exploitation and an administration induced by the recognized stability of the system.
The technical proposal of Alcove: For the Linux platform, the distribution Debian GNU/Linux was retained. The Web server turns under Apache with support of Perl, PHP (more flexible and more powerful than its functional equivalent ASP/VBScript), and of the FrontPage extensions. The DBMS selected is PostgreSQL (software free in conformity with standard SQL 92), whose driver ODBC allows a transparent use of the DBMS from stations customers under Windows. For the updates of documents, Alcôve chose to implement software ftp ProFTPD, at the same time powerful and made safe.
An offer of services complete and very professional: The contract signed by France Telecom Paris and Alcôve is an annual engagement. **time-out** it integrate the follow-up of whole of project by a officer de project, consult in Data processing Free, of day of consulting, of intervention on site for the installation en place and the configuration of server, of day of formation and a contract of technical aid technique.
For Small Lucien, chairman of Alcove: " This very beautiful project at France Telecom as well as the strategic partnership tied lately with SGI confirm our place of leader of the services in Free Data processing. Our positioning, with the interface of the community of the free developers of software and the world of the company, enables us to fully satisfy waitings of our customers large accounts and our partners. It is besides to meet more precisely still their needs than we currently work with the proposal for contracts of assistance 24/7. "
firstpost!
Woop! I just got "slashdot@nsimail.com"!
Also, hats off to whoever got "root@nsimail.com",
you beat me to it.
I must be the "damn" in dot com.
Whoever got root@nsimail could have some real fun...
to: webmaster@www.microsoft.com
from: root@nsimail.com
Subject: Domain termination
-------
Your domain name, registered with us on August 15,
1985, "microsoft.com", is being terminated
immediately by NSI. Please call our technical
support line with any questions you may have.
-Bob Johnson, NSI tech support.
-----
seriously, don't do anything like this.
at least, unless you're sure no one can trace you.
(;
The lack of detail in my original post was intentional, as the less details I provided, the safer it was for everyone involved.
Some clarifications:
-The guy was not "tortured" by the police. It's probably trollbait, but I'll clarify that just so it's ironed out.
-He wasn't using my box for NAT or anything, everyone in the apartment had their own jack. Because I had TWO computers, I used a spare jack that happened to be on his side of the four person apartment. Too cheap to buy a hub I guess. I was in no way going to be held legally responsible for his actions.
So why did I turn someone in for child pornography distribution if it was no skin off my nose? Why not live and let live? I don't feel that the comparison to drug law enforcement is accurate, since the U.S.'s drug laws are retarded and everyone knows it. If'd he'd instead been growing a metric ton of weed in his closet I'd have given him a medal.
So here is what pushed me over the edge, and made me call the police rather than talk to the guy:
-Define young? ages appx 8-12 years old. Not traci lords. Pippi longstocking. Sesame street.
6 gigs. Carefully sorted. Documented. Separated into hundreds of subdirectories by race and gender combination. description files. Creation dates over a span of four years.
-Was he hurting anyone? He spent a lot of time in chat rooms in AOL. He spent a lot of time trying to meet people.
-Why not just ask him to stop? That would have, in my opinion, created an opportunity for him to destroy evidence. That introduced the possiblity of him remaining in my apartment. Or he could have stopped, moved, and started again. I felt that I had a responsibility to the public to do something. I felt that reducing the menace this person posed was not within my ability to create change. I considered the prospect of him luring someone into my apartment... and freaked out.
I stand by my decision, and that's all I have to say about that.
On the topic of allowing cash reimbursement for seized computing equipment - it's a nice idea, but it's far from being a solution. What if you reimburse a computer criminal who turns out to be guilty? If the state computer facility has a backlog of two years worth of computers, and that demand is constant, then increase capacity. If computer expertise costs too much money, spend more money. Computers aren't going to go away, and as much as corporate america would like to make computer programmers a cheap commodity by importing what they consider the "smart" races on indentured servant visas, the IT labor shortage isn't going to end anytime soon. Bite the bullet, modernize, make computer inspection turnaround time two weeks. Competent government is achievable, though you wouldn't believe it from the current state of affairs.
/RANT
-mwalker.
I thought that maybe a real-world testimonial from a slashdot'er might be of use here.
...they took the computer which was attached to a cable run 25 feet out of his room. A quiet computer with no monitor sitting in a closet.
I went to college at the University of College Park, MD. I lived on campus, which meant that everyone in my on-campus apartment had a 10baseT jack fed to a T3 line on the Internet backbone. Good deal.
I had two computers, a Pentium-60 running FreeBSD with no monitor (fixed-ip permanent uptime server) and a dual-boot redhat/windows box in my bedroom. My on campus-apartment housed four people.
One semester a new guy moved into our apartment. I don't want to make this post run on forever with details, so to make a long story short: we discovered that he was hosting approx. 6gig of pictures of very young children having sex on his computer through a password protected ftp server. We freaked. We called the police.
I think it was the right thing to do.
The police came. Lots of them. They had a search warrant. They took everything electronic in this kid's room. They took his alarm clock.
My computer.
When they were taking it I told the officers: "you'll need the passwords, it's running an IDEA encrypted filesystem" and wrote the root pwd and filesystem key on a 3m note. I didn't care, the crypto was for fun, my box was legal. I remember what the officer said:
"I'm pretty sure they can figure it out".
As if.
I got my computer back 32 months later. I kept in touch with the college park police department. They just said it was at the state computer crime facility awaiting testing.
I don't have to tell you what a P60 is worth today. I still use it as a server, but I lost upwards of two years of use on that box.
I don't mind law enforcement taking computers in some cases. I think my case was a good example of better-safe-than-sorry. But they DO have a responsibility to get their f**ing act together when it comes to data inspection and returning property to innocent people.
From first hand knowledge, I can say that this is a VERY real problem, and that it needs attention at a national level now. If the mere suspicion of misdeeds is enough to confiscate a computer until it is entirely worthless, then law enforcement has effectively bypassed our trial-by-jury system. The punishment comes swiftly and BEFORE guilt or innocence is determined, because the punishment consists of denying a civilian access to his property. It consititutes the same kind of loophole that RICO does.
(see Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act - search altavista)
The problem with punishment before judgement is that sometimes you punish the innocent.
It happened to me.
It could happen to you.
-walker
Yay.
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