Unfortunately, you have just created a way to DoS yourself. I just repeatedly hit ports 76-79 and your web server stops. Others I'm sure will cover scanning in non-numeric order as a way around this.
This is probably a stupid/naive question, but why not just (in above example) block port 80 temporarily ONLY FOR the source IP address of the scan? So everyone else gets in fine except the port scanner doesn't see the listening port. (And IP spoofing is not relevant over the Internet anyway, i.e. no point in faking source IP or you won't know the results of your scan anyway.)
Something similar: An online banking user at a large South African bank was recently a victim of theft after his pin number was keylogged and sent to the thieves by spyware that he unwittingly installed on his computer by running a binary attachment in a strange untrusted e-mail. The media jumped on this, and made a big stink about how the bank's Internet banking system "was hacked", which of course it was not, as this person effectively was just careless with his pin. In any case, the bank spent a LOT on creating various improvements to the logon system, and one of the features they added was an additional logon password, which, when you log on, you must only enter a random subset of characters in the password, so that spyware keyloggers never capture the full password, making it much much harder for malicious spyware to get the pin.
Other interesting features they added include a Javascript-based "virtual keypad" to enter your account number and pin (so once again, no keystroke capturing, and much much harder to use mouse capturing unless combined with intelligent screen image analysis), and an option for SMS notification of all transactions on your account, so you get notified on your cellphone when suspicious activity occurs on your account. They also even had a promotion for a while where they fully subsidized (i.e. gave away free) anti-virus software to clients, I think it was to new sign-ups.
AFAIK tag readers can be used to "instantly" scan and ring up everything in a full trolley (= shopping cart), this already works (years ago in fact), so I don't see why they couldn't read hundreds of tags in one go.
The real story is that these worms and viruses have become big business and the only people who profit from them are software vendors selling anti-virus
Indeed; note where most of the press-releases seem to come from every time a new 'major' virus hits: anti-virus firms.
FBI reports have in the past tended to sometimes be ridiculously loaded with over-exaggerations for purposes of lobbying the US government to increase (a) their funding and (b) their powers. Recall, even some years before the US invaded Iraq, reports of the Iraqi government (and there were reports of the Cuban government too) having a vast network of computers and computer hackers dedicated to creating major hacking threats to the US's 'IT infrastructure'. Dubious links to "national security risks". E.g. see http://www.landfield.com/isn/mail-archive/2003/Jan/0094.html. More similar propaganda about China: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.co m/msg21238.html.
Although there is often some mild hacking activity from countries like this, the FBI sometimes WILDLY distorts the facts, and obviously it is in their interest to do so, since the result is the Senate assigning them ever greater funding and greater powers.
That isn't the point, the incredible hypocrisy is the point. (The apparent belief of that group that the US has the right to do unto others what those others should definitely not have the right to do to them).
Terror alert system is just people-control propaganda; by raising the level arbitrarily, the US government convinces 90% of the populace that there is a legitimate, dangerous, scary threat "out there". So in response to the fictitious threat, people then support the government in it's aggressive military actions for occupation of foreign countries (such as Iraq), under the belief that their government is protecting them from a genuine threat.
It also implies "don't trust computer hardware and software products from the US". And they say countries like China are paranoid for starting to develop their own. If this story could be proved, it would pretty much conclusively 'prove' that no other government of ANY country should ever use American hardware or software for anything serious.
Throw in the fact that Lindows looks SUSPICIOUSLY like Windows XP, and I think Lindows doesn't really have a leg to stand on.
There is nothing 'suspicious' about that. Lindows.com makes no secret of the fact that they are trying to produce an alternative to Windows that is as equivalent as possible to Windows. And this by itself isn't necessarily illegal either. The problem with Lindows is not the fact that they are trying to eventually produce a Windows replacement, the problem is that the name they chose is so similar to "Windows", making this a possible trademark violation.
Although it seems like a clear-cut trademark violation, I don't actually think it necessarily is. You cannot possibly argue that anyone who lives on this planet might actually ever confuse the names "Windows" and "Lindows", and accidentally buy Lindows when they meant to buy Windows (which is what trademark law mainly intends to prevent). This seems more similar to me to the mikerowesoft.com issue - there is NO room for confusion amongst normal, non-retarded humans - the name is merely a "clever funny gimmick", and the advantage of it is that people remember it more easily (and yes, true, remember that your product is something similar to Windows - but then, if your entire product's purpose IS to be similar to Windows (which isn't illegal by itself), then why is it wrong to let people know and remember this purpose?)
And probably even more relevant: what percentage of Westerners/Americans come anywhere near to being capable of critical thinking, let alone "having a culture of" critical thinking? I'd wager fewer than half of one percent. Science, the scientific method, critical thinking, these things form part of a minority subculture in Western societies, and to boot, it is not even one respected by the rest of "mainstream" society, in fact it is often derided. Enjoying the fruits of science is not the same as embracing science. Most people in Western societies are more into junk science like 'crystal healing', 'balancing their chakras', consulting horoscopes and psychics, etc.
Wish I worked where you work. Management at my company don't understand the various methods viruses use to propagate these days, but they THINK THEY DO, and give smart-alecy "I know I know I know" retorts the moment you start trying to explain what just happened when a virus gets onto the LAN. So basically every damn time a virus hits, they get hyped up and 'ban e-mail attachments outright', even if it's a worm like Blaster that spreads by exploiting a Windows RPC vulnerability.. *sigh*.
Let him have his XBox fun, and some college life to go with it. If he should focus on being all business now at that age, he might grow to regret it later in his life.
What, like Bill Gates, or Michael Dell? I doubt they regret their early moves into business... let him decide for himself what gives him kicks.. one's only regret should be not pursuing what one wanted in life.
It is saddening that after so many years, Microsoft's 'embrace and extend' pattern is still not obvious to so many naive, gullible, people, who rather amazingly actually think that MS would use open standards for something as valuable as the Word format.
*Sigh*... I suppose when SP2 comes out, I'll have to endure all my colleagues at work ignorantly raving about how wonderful it is that IE can block popups, while I've been blocking popups with Mozilla for... hmm.. probably years now.
Like back when Windows 'got skins' (in XP). And remote desktop access capability. And 'personal web server'. And IP masquerading. Always five years or so behind the curve. *Sigh*.
Well, even if the supposed infraction was 'merely phonetic', I don't see how anyone could actually take advantage of the domain name. Clearly no-one will mistake the two in print, and phonetically, well, imagine the following conversation:
"Hey Mike, your products sound interesting. What's your web address?"
"It's 'www.mikerowsoft.com', Bob".
<scratching head>... "Uh.. OK, Mike, I'll be sure to visit www.microsoft.com".
So how is Mike abusing the 'microsoft.com' name? Clearly there is no business advantage (apart from the slew of free advertising on/....)
I find it interesting that some people appear to be 'wired' for high-risk behaviour (most exploration and most development and pioneering of new technologies), while others seem naturally more risk-averse. If it weren't for the risk-takers, we most likely wouldn't have progressed as far as we have now, yet it seems a bit strange that high-risk behaviour (and it's naturally higher death rates) would have, over a long period, selected for more risk-averse humans. Perhaps the relatively large tribes, and the traditional teamwork within a tribe, allowed for a combination with the best of both worlds, with both 'paths' evolving and developing in parallel, and humans reaping the benefits of having both. That is, most humans are risk-averse, but some percentage have remained in society, with everyone reaping the benefits of having risk-takers (i.e. new technologies, discoveries, inventions, new places etc). Many people find risk-taking behaviour sexy (i.e. attractive to mates), while many other people seem to prefer risk-averse individuals. It seems there will always be people in society pushing the limits, often risking their lives, and yet we all learn from the results.
First, the blurred boundary between public and private spaces in only in the perception of the public itself, not by law.
Not entirely true; for example, it is legal to smoke anywhere and anyhow you like on your own private property (such as a home), but this is not the case in commercial buildings (retail stores, offices etc). The law does treat them differently, even though both cases are private property, the latter are still "public places".
Of course, smoking is a pretty serious 'special case', because it kills people.
your hypothetical scenario of a world in which it happens everywhere would, if it were to ever happen, occur over a long time, not overnight
True, but his/her example was perhaps a lousy one, since I doubt anyone would want to do that. But a more realistic one would be, what if stores started including face-recognition software behind all those CCTV cameras? And to take it a step further, what if the FBI were given access to all that data too? These types of changes are more realistic, and could in fact be commonplace VERY SOON, e.g. within only ten or twenty years.
(BTW, you seem to imply that gradual changes, of even bad things, are acceptable? I don't get it. Something bad is bad whether it takes 1 year or 100 years to occur.)
You really just don't understand it, do you? If there were "no codepages" on a Mac, i.e. basically either only one codepage, or straight Unicode, then WTF would you need multiple Mac conversion tables on Windows?
Windows supports a number of "encodings", which is a table mapping code points (integer values) to characters (glyphs). These integer values are what are stored for a particular character when you type that character, and differ depending on the "encoding" (or "code page"). For example, when you type an "e" on Windows, it may correspond to value 130 on Windows-1252 codepage, but to a different value on a Mac, depending on the codepage. When you load a Mac document on Windows, or vice versa, each OS has to be able to translate all the integer values depending on the codepage of the OTHER OS so that the end-user sees "e".
Typical Windows codepages include the common "1252", which is an extension of ISO-8859-1. Mac ALSO has a number of "encodings", mapping integer values to glyphs. These are the "codepages", and including support for the Mac codepages on Windows allows Windows to convert the various integer values that correspond to specific glyphs to the integer values within the Windows codepages that correspond to those glyphs. That is when you get "exactly the same document", or rather, see the same document.
If those were, as you say, "descriptions for Windows", then it would be only the other way round: Mac would have support for a list of Windows codepages, but Windows would not have support for a list of Mac codepages.
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Unfortunately, you have just created a way to DoS yourself. I just repeatedly hit ports 76-79 and your web server stops. Others I'm sure will cover scanning in non-numeric order as a way around this.
This is probably a stupid/naive question, but why not just (in above example) block port 80 temporarily ONLY FOR the source IP address of the scan? So everyone else gets in fine except the port scanner doesn't see the listening port. (And IP spoofing is not relevant over the Internet anyway, i.e. no point in faking source IP or you won't know the results of your scan anyway.)
Something similar: An online banking user at a large South African bank was recently a victim of theft after his pin number was keylogged and sent to the thieves by spyware that he unwittingly installed on his computer by running a binary attachment in a strange untrusted e-mail. The media jumped on this, and made a big stink about how the bank's Internet banking system "was hacked", which of course it was not, as this person effectively was just careless with his pin. In any case, the bank spent a LOT on creating various improvements to the logon system, and one of the features they added was an additional logon password, which, when you log on, you must only enter a random subset of characters in the password, so that spyware keyloggers never capture the full password, making it much much harder for malicious spyware to get the pin.
Other interesting features they added include a Javascript-based "virtual keypad" to enter your account number and pin (so once again, no keystroke capturing, and much much harder to use mouse capturing unless combined with intelligent screen image analysis), and an option for SMS notification of all transactions on your account, so you get notified on your cellphone when suspicious activity occurs on your account. They also even had a promotion for a while where they fully subsidized (i.e. gave away free) anti-virus software to clients, I think it was to new sign-ups.
AFAIK tag readers can be used to "instantly" scan and ring up everything in a full trolley (= shopping cart), this already works (years ago in fact), so I don't see why they couldn't read hundreds of tags in one go.
not illegal to have monopoly, illegal to abuse monopoly to unfairly keep competition out of the market
Yes, they should instead be thanking Google for the times when it is sending them lots of business.
The real story is that these worms and viruses have become big business and the only people who profit from them are software vendors selling anti-virus
Indeed; note where most of the press-releases seem to come from every time a new 'major' virus hits: anti-virus firms.
FBI reports have in the past tended to sometimes be ridiculously loaded with over-exaggerations for purposes of lobbying the US government to increase (a) their funding and (b) their powers. Recall, even some years before the US invaded Iraq, reports of the Iraqi government (and there were reports of the Cuban government too) having a vast network of computers and computer hackers dedicated to creating major hacking threats to the US's 'IT infrastructure'. Dubious links to "national security risks". E.g. see http://www.landfield.com/isn/mail-archive/2003/Jan /0094.html. More similar propaganda about China: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.co m/msg21238.html.
Although there is often some mild hacking activity from countries like this, the FBI sometimes WILDLY distorts the facts, and obviously it is in their interest to do so, since the result is the Senate assigning them ever greater funding and greater powers.
That isn't the point, the incredible hypocrisy is the point. (The apparent belief of that group that the US has the right to do unto others what those others should definitely not have the right to do to them).
Yes, they had probably one of the world's most successful empires that lasted about 1000 years.
Terror alert system is just people-control propaganda; by raising the level arbitrarily, the US government convinces 90% of the populace that there is a legitimate, dangerous, scary threat "out there". So in response to the fictitious threat, people then support the government in it's aggressive military actions for occupation of foreign countries (such as Iraq), under the belief that their government is protecting them from a genuine threat.
It also implies "don't trust computer hardware and software products from the US". And they say countries like China are paranoid for starting to develop their own. If this story could be proved, it would pretty much conclusively 'prove' that no other government of ANY country should ever use American hardware or software for anything serious.
Throw in the fact that Lindows looks SUSPICIOUSLY like Windows XP, and I think Lindows doesn't really have a leg to stand on.
There is nothing 'suspicious' about that. Lindows.com makes no secret of the fact that they are trying to produce an alternative to Windows that is as equivalent as possible to Windows. And this by itself isn't necessarily illegal either. The problem with Lindows is not the fact that they are trying to eventually produce a Windows replacement, the problem is that the name they chose is so similar to "Windows", making this a possible trademark violation.
Although it seems like a clear-cut trademark violation, I don't actually think it necessarily is. You cannot possibly argue that anyone who lives on this planet might actually ever confuse the names "Windows" and "Lindows", and accidentally buy Lindows when they meant to buy Windows (which is what trademark law mainly intends to prevent). This seems more similar to me to the mikerowesoft.com issue - there is NO room for confusion amongst normal, non-retarded humans - the name is merely a "clever funny gimmick", and the advantage of it is that people remember it more easily (and yes, true, remember that your product is something similar to Windows - but then, if your entire product's purpose IS to be similar to Windows (which isn't illegal by itself), then why is it wrong to let people know and remember this purpose?)
And probably even more relevant: what percentage of Westerners/Americans come anywhere near to being capable of critical thinking, let alone "having a culture of" critical thinking? I'd wager fewer than half of one percent. Science, the scientific method, critical thinking, these things form part of a minority subculture in Western societies, and to boot, it is not even one respected by the rest of "mainstream" society, in fact it is often derided. Enjoying the fruits of science is not the same as embracing science. Most people in Western societies are more into junk science like 'crystal healing', 'balancing their chakras', consulting horoscopes and psychics, etc.
Herge?
Wish I worked where you work. Management at my company don't understand the various methods viruses use to propagate these days, but they THINK THEY DO, and give smart-alecy "I know I know I know" retorts the moment you start trying to explain what just happened when a virus gets onto the LAN. So basically every damn time a virus hits, they get hyped up and 'ban e-mail attachments outright', even if it's a worm like Blaster that spreads by exploiting a Windows RPC vulnerability .. *sigh*.
Let him have his XBox fun, and some college life to go with it. If he should focus on being all business now at that age, he might grow to regret it later in his life.
What, like Bill Gates, or Michael Dell? I doubt they regret their early moves into business ... let him decide for himself what gives him kicks .. one's only regret should be not pursuing what one wanted in life.
It is saddening that after so many years, Microsoft's 'embrace and extend' pattern is still not obvious to so many naive, gullible, people, who rather amazingly actually think that MS would use open standards for something as valuable as the Word format.
*Sigh* ... I suppose when SP2 comes out, I'll have to endure all my colleagues at work ignorantly raving about how wonderful it is that IE can block popups, while I've been blocking popups with Mozilla for ... hmm .. probably years now.
Like back when Windows 'got skins' (in XP). And remote desktop access capability. And 'personal web server'. And IP masquerading. Always five years or so behind the curve. *Sigh*.
Well, even if the supposed infraction was 'merely phonetic', I don't see how anyone could actually take advantage of the domain name. Clearly no-one will mistake the two in print, and phonetically, well, imagine the following conversation:
"Hey Mike, your products sound interesting. What's your web address?"
"It's 'www.mikerowsoft.com', Bob".
<scratching head> ... "Uh .. OK, Mike, I'll be sure to visit www.microsoft.com".
So how is Mike abusing the 'microsoft.com' name? Clearly there is no business advantage (apart from the slew of free advertising on /. ...)
reference look up. Who needs a library?
Hmm... and of course, all that traffic gets intercepted and parsed by FBI Carnivore, too. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "thought police".
And tin-foil hats aside: it's coming, it's only a matter of time.
I find it interesting that some people appear to be 'wired' for high-risk behaviour (most exploration and most development and pioneering of new technologies), while others seem naturally more risk-averse. If it weren't for the risk-takers, we most likely wouldn't have progressed as far as we have now, yet it seems a bit strange that high-risk behaviour (and it's naturally higher death rates) would have, over a long period, selected for more risk-averse humans. Perhaps the relatively large tribes, and the traditional teamwork within a tribe, allowed for a combination with the best of both worlds, with both 'paths' evolving and developing in parallel, and humans reaping the benefits of having both. That is, most humans are risk-averse, but some percentage have remained in society, with everyone reaping the benefits of having risk-takers (i.e. new technologies, discoveries, inventions, new places etc). Many people find risk-taking behaviour sexy (i.e. attractive to mates), while many other people seem to prefer risk-averse individuals. It seems there will always be people in society pushing the limits, often risking their lives, and yet we all learn from the results.
First, the blurred boundary between public and private spaces in only in the perception of the public itself, not by law.
Not entirely true; for example, it is legal to smoke anywhere and anyhow you like on your own private property (such as a home), but this is not the case in commercial buildings (retail stores, offices etc). The law does treat them differently, even though both cases are private property, the latter are still "public places".
Of course, smoking is a pretty serious 'special case', because it kills people.
your hypothetical scenario of a world in which it happens everywhere would, if it were to ever happen, occur over a long time, not overnight
True, but his/her example was perhaps a lousy one, since I doubt anyone would want to do that. But a more realistic one would be, what if stores started including face-recognition software behind all those CCTV cameras? And to take it a step further, what if the FBI were given access to all that data too? These types of changes are more realistic, and could in fact be commonplace VERY SOON, e.g. within only ten or twenty years.
(BTW, you seem to imply that gradual changes, of even bad things, are acceptable? I don't get it. Something bad is bad whether it takes 1 year or 100 years to occur.)
I remember 16550A UARTs back on 486 boards, that must have been in '92 or '93.
You really just don't understand it, do you? If there were "no codepages" on a Mac, i.e. basically either only one codepage, or straight Unicode, then WTF would you need multiple Mac conversion tables on Windows?
Windows supports a number of "encodings", which is a table mapping code points (integer values) to characters (glyphs). These integer values are what are stored for a particular character when you type that character, and differ depending on the "encoding" (or "code page"). For example, when you type an "e" on Windows, it may correspond to value 130 on Windows-1252 codepage, but to a different value on a Mac, depending on the codepage. When you load a Mac document on Windows, or vice versa, each OS has to be able to translate all the integer values depending on the codepage of the OTHER OS so that the end-user sees "e". Typical Windows codepages include the common "1252", which is an extension of ISO-8859-1. Mac ALSO has a number of "encodings", mapping integer values to glyphs. These are the "codepages", and including support for the Mac codepages on Windows allows Windows to convert the various integer values that correspond to specific glyphs to the integer values within the Windows codepages that correspond to those glyphs. That is when you get "exactly the same document", or rather, see the same document.
If those were, as you say, "descriptions for Windows", then it would be only the other way round: Mac would have support for a list of Windows codepages, but Windows would not have support for a list of Mac codepages.
There are no codepages on the Mac
Wow, what a clueless statement. Google for "mac codepages" and figure out the rest.
Heck, even Windows has the option to install dozens of Mac codepages within Windows.