Don't call me "Generation X," call me a child of the eighties
by Bryant Adkins published in The Reflector January 20, 1995 (here too)
I am a child of the eighties. That is what I prefer to be called. The nineties can do without me. Grunge isn't here to stay, fashion is fickle and "Generation X" is a myth created by some over-40 writer trying to figure out why people wear flannel in the summer. When I got home from school, I played with my Atari 2600. I spent hours playing Pitfall or Combat or Breakout or Dodge'em Cars or Frogger. I never did beat Asteroids. Then I watched "Scooby Doo." Daphne was a Goddess, and I thought Shaggy was smoking something synthetic in the back of their psychedelic van. I hated Scrappy.
I would sleep over at friends' houses on the weekends. We played army with G.I. Joe figures, and I set up galactic wars between Autobots and Decepticons. We stayed up half the night throwing marshmallows and Velveeta at one another. We never beat the Rubik's Cube.
I got up on Saturday mornings at 6 a.m. to watch bad Hanna-Barbera cartoons like "The Snorks," "Jabberjaw," "Captain Caveman," and "Space Ghost." In between I would watch "School House Rock." ("Conjunction junction, what's your function?")
On weeknights Daisy Duke was my future wife. I was going to own the General Lee and shoot dynamite arrows out the back. Why did they weld the doors shut? At the movies the Nerds got Revenge on the Alpha Betas by teaming up with the Omega Mus. I watched Indiana Jones save the Ark of the Covenant, and wondered what Yoda meant when he said, "No, there is another."
Ronald Reagan was cool. Gorbachev was the guy who built a McDonalds in Moscow. My family took summer vacations to the Gulf of Mexico and collected "Muppet Movie" glasses along the way. (We had the whole set.) My brother and I fought in the back seat. At the hotel we found creative uses for Connect Four pieces like throwing them in that big air conditioning unit.
I listened to John COUGAR Mellencamp sing about Little Pink Houses for Jack and Diane. I was bewildered by Boy George and the colors of his dreams, red, gold, and green. MTV played videos. Nickelodeon played "You Can't Do That on Television" and "Dangermouse." Cor! HBO showed Mike Tyson pummel everybody except Robin Givens, the bad actress from "Head of the Class" who took all Mike's cashflow.
I drank Dr. Pepper. "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" Shasta was for losers. TAB was a laboratory accident. Capri Sun was a social statement. Orange juice wasn't just for breakfast anymore, and bacon had to move over for something meatier.
My mom put a thousand Little Debbie Snack Cakes in my Charlie Brown lunch box, and filled my Snoopy Thermos with grape Kool-Aid. I would never eat the snack cakes, though. Did anyone? I got two thousand cheese and cracker snack packs, and I ate those.
I went to school and had recess. I went to the same classes everyday. Some weird guy from the eighth grade always won the science fair with the working hydro-electric plant that leaked on my project about music and plants. They just loved Beethoven.
Field day was bigger than Christmas, but it always managed to rain just enough to make everybody miserable before they fell over in the three-legged race. Where did all those panty hose come from? "Deck the Halls with Gasoline, fa la la la la la la la la," was just a song. Burping was cool. Rubber band fights were cooler. A substitute teacher was a baby sitter/marked woman. Nobody deserved that.
I went to Cub Scouts. I got my arrow-of-light, but never managed to win the Pinewood Derby. I got almost every skill award but don't remember ever doing anything.
The world stopped when the Challenger exploded.
Did a teacher come in and tell your class?
Half of your friends' parents got divorced.
People did not just say no to drugs.
AIDS started, but you knew more people who had a grandparent die from cancer.
Somebody in your school died before they graduated.
When you put all this stuff together, you have my childhood. If this stuff sounds familiar, then I bet you are one, too.
We are children of the eighties. That is what I prefer "they" call it.
Can we draw and comparisons to the real world in comparing software ownership to the data it operates on (with?)
If I do not pay my car loan, and Emilo Estevez comes and reposses it, can I recover my backpack which I left in the trunk?
If I do not may my home loan and the Bank comes to take it back, can I remove my "Precious Moments" figurine collection before being kicked out?
I'm not sure about either, but based purely on TV knowledge and with the working presumption of if it is on a TV drama series, it HAS to be true; I think you get at least a nominal amount of time to get stuff out of your house, before the sherrif throws your sorry butt out.
Are companies obligated to let you recover your data from the software of whose license you have violated? If not, isn't this extortion?
Now let me get this straight. If I fail to live up to the license, they can remotely disable software on my computer. And to disable that software they will have to minimally use CPU cycles on my computer, without my permission. That sounds an awful lot like one definition of theft used to prosecute hackers (crackers, sorry).
Now if they fail to live up to their end of the deal, by say not providing a new standard of reliability, what can I do? If the bill is really promoting even handed treatment of both the purchaser and the seller of the software, then shouldn't I should get some free cycles on their machines.
I'm sure you can think of something good to do with them.
We are going to start seeing more and more legislation ostensibly attempting to protect the innocent from the bad people (on the Internet). Unfortunately, the reality of it is, that it is catering to protection of the (in this case technologically) ignorant, not the innocent.
I think one of the issues that this is trying to work toward solving, is the general failure of the user to understand the technology, and how to use it. Unfortunately, the general user does not understand now, and will never understand, how cookies or most of technology works; nor do they care. While the educated consumer is a pipe dream, I do not think legislation catering to the uneducated user is the right way to go. This protection will only encourage ignorance.
In violations of law, ignorance is not an excuse. If I get a parking ticket because I didn't know that I was not allowed to park on the street overnight, I still have to pay it. No one from the IRS came to me after I got my first job and explained that I had to pay taxes, or how to do them. So why is ignorance an excuse with the use of technology? Personally, I think the process of paying taxes is far more complicated than surfing the web and understanding cookies.
Users, and people in general, have got to start assuming responsibility for their actions. It's much easier to plead ignorant, even if one is not, but it is detrimental to us all.
(IANAL) If it can be shown that your site has been used as a source for an attack, and that you have taken inadequate precautions to prevent such an attack, then yes, you can be sued for negligence. It is, in the eyes of the law, your responsibility to ensure that your site will not be used to launch an attack. This is network security equivalent to due diligence.
I believe that this is same (thought|legal) process that allows burglars to sue the owners of the building they break into, should they hurt themselves during the B&E.
As Woodward and Bernstein learned, "Follow the money." If you have deep pockets, and you want others to stay out of them, then protect your site.
If copywrite law says that we are allowed to make backup copies, and they (MPAA, DMCA) are saying that we are not allowed to make copies at all. Seems contradictory to me.
That's an ugly^H^H^H^H^H^H very good question. The solution that I have seen work best are a combination of policy and technology, you need both. You need to determine what the current network usage policy is, how well it is enforced, and whether or not you can get it changed.
You need to sit down with the rest of the folks in charge of administering the networks (and at 20,000 users I hope you aren't the only one). Determine what services you want to support, what services you will allow but not support, and what services you will not allow. You also need to determine what happens if a user should use those services that are not allowed, and it must be enforced consistently.
For example: All users with machines on the university network must have their OS and root/administrator contact information registered with the NOC. Users are responsible for maintaining the security of their machines. *nix machines may only run services x and y, as well as z if they register it with NOC or will cut off from network access. Win95 users can go suck eggs, etc.
Users may not attempt to gain unauthorized access to any machines on the university networks or otherwise, or they'll be referred to the Dean for a spanking.
Then implement as many technological constraints as you can. Have your routers block naughty traffic. Look for other nastiness[1], scan your networks[2], and make sure the policy in enforced regularly, or it isn't worth the work.
Most importantly: good luck.
See SHADOW for network monitoring (non realtime) on the cheap.
Make sure you get permission to do this in writting from all of the right people. You may need permission from just the IT director or maybe the President of the university
MIT has a PGP key server written by Marc Horowitz that has a fairly large collection of keys. (The server seems to be under the weather right now which just goes to show the problem with single point of failure).
It does no certification, just distribution, but you can add your key and check others quite easily.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't call me "Generation X,"
call me a child of the eighties
by Bryant Adkins
published in The Reflector
January 20, 1995
(here too)
I am a child of the eighties. That is what I prefer to be called. The nineties can do without me. Grunge isn't here to stay, fashion is fickle and "Generation X" is a myth created by some over-40 writer trying to figure out why people wear flannel in the summer. When I got home from school, I played with my Atari 2600. I spent hours playing Pitfall or Combat or Breakout or Dodge'em Cars or Frogger. I never did beat Asteroids. Then I watched "Scooby Doo." Daphne was a Goddess, and I thought Shaggy was smoking something synthetic in the back of their psychedelic van. I hated Scrappy.
I would sleep over at friends' houses on the weekends. We played army with G.I. Joe figures, and I set up galactic wars between Autobots and Decepticons. We stayed up half the night throwing marshmallows and Velveeta at one another. We never beat the Rubik's Cube.
I got up on Saturday mornings at 6 a.m. to watch bad Hanna-Barbera cartoons like "The Snorks," "Jabberjaw," "Captain Caveman," and "Space Ghost." In between I would watch "School House Rock." ("Conjunction junction, what's your function?")
On weeknights Daisy Duke was my future wife. I was going to own the General Lee and shoot dynamite arrows out the back. Why did they weld the doors shut? At the movies the Nerds got Revenge on the Alpha Betas by teaming up with the Omega Mus. I watched Indiana Jones save the Ark of the Covenant, and wondered what Yoda meant when he said, "No, there is another."
Ronald Reagan was cool. Gorbachev was the guy who built a McDonalds in Moscow. My family took summer vacations to the Gulf of Mexico and collected "Muppet Movie" glasses along the way. (We had the whole set.) My brother and I fought in the back seat. At the hotel we found creative uses for Connect Four pieces like throwing them in that big air conditioning unit.
I listened to John COUGAR Mellencamp sing about Little Pink Houses for Jack and Diane. I was bewildered by Boy George and the colors of his dreams, red, gold, and green. MTV played videos. Nickelodeon played "You Can't Do That on Television" and "Dangermouse." Cor! HBO showed Mike Tyson pummel everybody except Robin Givens, the bad actress from "Head of the Class" who took all Mike's cashflow.
I drank Dr. Pepper. "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" Shasta was for losers. TAB was a laboratory accident. Capri Sun was a social statement. Orange juice wasn't just for breakfast anymore, and bacon had to move over for something meatier.
My mom put a thousand Little Debbie Snack Cakes in my Charlie Brown lunch box, and filled my Snoopy Thermos with grape Kool-Aid. I would never eat the snack cakes, though. Did anyone? I got two thousand cheese and cracker snack packs, and I ate those.
I went to school and had recess. I went to the same classes everyday. Some weird guy from the eighth grade always won the science fair with the working hydro-electric plant that leaked on my project about music and plants. They just loved Beethoven.
Field day was bigger than Christmas, but it always managed to rain just enough to make everybody miserable before they fell over in the three-legged race. Where did all those panty hose come from? "Deck the Halls with Gasoline, fa la la la la la la la la," was just a song. Burping was cool. Rubber band fights were cooler. A substitute teacher was a baby sitter/marked woman. Nobody deserved that.
I went to Cub Scouts. I got my arrow-of-light, but never managed to win the Pinewood Derby. I got almost every skill award but don't remember ever doing anything.
The world stopped when the Challenger exploded.
Did a teacher come in and tell your class?
Half of your friends' parents got divorced.
People did not just say no to drugs.
AIDS started, but you knew more people who had a grandparent die from cancer.
Somebody in your school died before they graduated.
When you put all this stuff together, you have my childhood. If this stuff sounds familiar, then I bet you are one, too.
We are children of the eighties. That is what I prefer "they" call it.
Can we draw and comparisons to the real world in comparing software ownership to the data it operates on (with?)
If I do not pay my car loan, and Emilo Estevez comes and reposses it, can I recover my backpack which I left in the trunk?
If I do not may my home loan and the Bank comes to take it back, can I remove my "Precious Moments" figurine collection before being kicked out?
I'm not sure about either, but based purely on TV knowledge and with the working presumption of if it is on a TV drama series, it HAS to be true; I think you get at least a nominal amount of time to get stuff out of your house, before the sherrif throws your sorry butt out.
Are companies obligated to let you recover your data from the software of whose license you have violated? If not, isn't this extortion?
Now let me get this straight. If I fail to live up to the license, they can remotely disable software on my computer. And to disable that software they will have to minimally use CPU cycles on my computer, without my permission. That sounds an awful lot like one definition of theft used to prosecute hackers (crackers, sorry).
Now if they fail to live up to their end of the deal, by say not providing a new standard of reliability, what can I do? If the bill is really promoting even handed treatment of both the purchaser and the seller of the software, then shouldn't I should get some free cycles on their machines.
I'm sure you can think of something good to do with them.
We are going to start seeing more and more legislation ostensibly
attempting to protect the innocent from the bad people (on the
Internet). Unfortunately, the reality of it is, that it is catering to
protection of the (in this case technologically) ignorant, not the
innocent.
I think one of the issues that this is trying to work toward solving,
is the general failure of the user to understand the technology, and
how to use it. Unfortunately, the general user does not understand now,
and will never understand, how cookies or most of technology works;
nor do they care. While the educated consumer is a pipe dream, I do
not think legislation catering to the uneducated user is the right way
to go. This protection will only encourage ignorance.
In violations of law, ignorance is not an excuse. If I get a parking
ticket because I didn't know that I was not allowed to park on the
street overnight, I still have to pay it. No one from the IRS came to
me after I got my first job and explained that I had to pay taxes, or
how to do them. So why is ignorance an excuse with the use of
technology? Personally, I think the process of paying taxes is far
more complicated than surfing the web and understanding cookies.
Users, and people in general, have got to start assuming responsibility
for their actions. It's much easier to plead ignorant, even if one is not,
but it is detrimental to us all.
A brief sampling...
blowfish_decipher
k00lip
shameless_self_promotion
show_shit
commence_smurf
des_encrypt
aes_encrypt
security_through_obscurity
1 - Change IP antispoof-level (evade rfc2267 filtering)
9 - TARGA3 flood (IP stack penetration), usage: -i victim%s..
sitf: executing %s instead of %s
sitf: hiding content of file (%s)
sitf: hiding directory (%s)
sitf: hiding file/process (%s)
sitf: hiding promisc flag on interface
sitf: setting uid(%d) to uid(0)
(IANAL) If it can be shown that your site has been used as a source for an attack, and that you have taken inadequate precautions to prevent such an attack, then yes, you can be sued for negligence. It is, in the eyes of the law, your responsibility to ensure that your site will not be used to launch an attack. This is network security equivalent to due diligence.
I believe that this is same (thought|legal) process that allows burglars to sue the owners of the building they break into, should they hurt themselves during the B&E.
As Woodward and Bernstein learned, "Follow the money." If you have deep pockets, and you want others to stay out of them, then protect your site.
If copywrite law says that we are allowed to make backup copies, and they (MPAA, DMCA) are saying that we are not allowed to make copies at all. Seems contradictory to me.
The URL should have read http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet /fax-faq/mgetty+sendfax+vgetty/faq.html
Ohio-state has a FAQ on using [mv]getty for voice mail.
have seen work best are a combination of policy and technology, you
need both. You need to determine what the current network usage policy
is, how well it is enforced, and whether or not you can get it
changed.
You need to sit down with the rest of the folks in charge
of administering the networks (and at 20,000 users I hope you aren't
the only one). Determine what services you want to support, what
services you will allow but not support, and what services you will not
allow. You also need to determine what happens if a user should use
those services that are not allowed, and it must be enforced
consistently.
For example: All users with machines on the university network
must have their OS and root/administrator contact information
registered with the NOC. Users are responsible for maintaining the
security of their machines. *nix machines may only run services x and
y, as well as z if they register it with NOC or will cut off from
network access. Win95 users can go suck eggs, etc.
Users may not attempt to gain unauthorized access to any machines
on the university networks or otherwise, or they'll be referred to the
Dean for a spanking.
Then implement as many technological constraints as you can. Have
your routers block naughty traffic. Look for other nastiness[1], scan
your networks[2], and make sure the policy in enforced regularly, or it
isn't worth the work.
Most importantly: good luck.
right people. You may need permission from just the IT director or maybe the
President of the university
Personally, I like Amazon. Where else can you submit a review as the author of BG's books?
;)
I doubt it'd be accepted, but...
MIT has a PGP key server written by Marc Horowitz that has a fairly large collection of keys. (The server seems to be under the weather right now which just goes to show the problem with single point of failure).
It does no certification, just distribution, but you can add your key and check others quite easily.