If you leave the router unsecured then it's your fault since you haven't taken any measures to protect yourself from the usage.
The more interesting fact here is that some computers may select the first available access point and be happy with that. All in the name of user-friendliness.
Leaving the router open is like leaving your door open and not caring about rats, raccoons or other illiterate beings. Most computer software is 'illiterate' in the way that if you don't explicitly forbid access it just goes on and lists your computers etc.
A better way would be to sell the access points "pre-secured" with an unique password for each one, but that will increase the cost of the devices.
In my opinion Banks is actually writing really good Science Fiction. You get several levels of thoughts involved, subplots that makes it life-like and a great variation of personalities. Just the personalities involved in the stories makes them really worth to read. It's not necessarily black and white. And there are some heroes, but they have their flaws as there are villains that also have some good sides.
I actually think that Banks is able to become an influential writer in his own right. When you read you don't get the feeling of passages in the writing that are there just because a certain amount of writing has to be done. Instead it is a story that's consistent. And when I see his books in the bookstore (Science Fiction Bokhandeln, that also has Matter as the SF book of the month of February.) I can see that some books are thick and some are thin. Compared to many other of the later SF authors who produces many books by the same thickness I think that there has to be a hidden message in that - or maybe that the story only was that long.
In a way I would like to rank Iain M Banks as being a possible equal to Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Anvil among others.
And as with many authors - If you what you write isn't disliked by someone then there are also fewer that will like what you write. But writing something must not necessarily have a direct meaning or message. Sometimes it's just a story waiting to get written.
And as I have figured out after a few books from David Weber is that Weber has went into a "template-writing" style. Each book follows a template that unfortunately breaks down a good idea of a plot into a stereotype. This doesn't seem to be the case with Banks. It's a new path in each book, even if it's the same forest.
There are a few interesting factors/questions here:
1. What does the flag actually do? Will it cause kernel panics, segmentation faults or is it that you leave access to kernel memory open for a non-privileged process to access?
2. Are there any performance benefits with this change? OK, one instruction less makes a tiny bit.
3. Why just remove a feature that were used, why not add a flag that allowed the programmers to keep that feature?
Not really necessary to build a complete one then - remote control a bird instead. Pigeons have great stamina and they are often resilient to stress.
Disadvantage is that they may be captured and eaten.
Another catch is the animal rights activists that will have their say in it too when you implant your electrodes into the pigeon's brain.
For greater payload you may want to use a falcon or an albatross.
There is an advantage with flexible wings, but it's also a lot more complex which means that a fixed-wing device would often be better. If you can't make it stealthy you may use the power of confusion instead. Make a large range of different styles - this means that those that you want to watch can't decide who is watching them.
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place. - RAH So it's really nothing new.
The hard thing is actually not to make it go off, but to make it go off as effective as possible. This involves precision manufactured components and use of standard explosives to fuse the non-critical masses together into a critical mass.
If you do it too slowly or incorrectly it will be a bang, but just a small one and some radiation. If you do it halfway you may get a lot of local radiation and finally a meltdown. If you get it right you will get a real bang.
But mind that most of the matter will still remain matter and only a minute fraction of it will be converted to energy as defined by the E=mc2 formula. All matter that isn't converted into energy will be the radioactive fallout that later settles on the ground, some of it far away from the explosion. Some of that matter has a relatively long half-life while other is relatively shortlived.
The direct radiation of a nuclear explosion affects the cellular functions of living organisms which in turn can lead to death within a few days, decreased health or cancer in long term.
One factor in making an effective nuclear bomb is to enrich the fissionable material enough to make it useful. Every component shall have the same grade of enrichment, deviations will cause ineffective blasts too. As with a bread with an improperly mixed dough. The catch is that you can't mix the whole dough at once - you have to do it in pieces and each piece has to be identical to the previous.
It's true that you may not need a spoon in space, but it may sure come in handy to have one sometimes anyway. Murphy's law always exists, and there are things that may be edible in space using a spoon like chocolate pudding.
Never mind that - the largest problem is to cut down on the amount of items that you may bring with you. I think that the best way to figure out what you REALLY need is to during several years going for extended hikes and holidays on bicycle. Note every item that you use and next year only pack those items. After a few years you know what you really can't do without.
From what I can understand most problems arises around hygiene handling in space. It can be a smelly situation...
This problem of the movie industry trying to stop the evolution of new technology has been occurring not only during the internet age. The advent of home-recordings was one, the television another. They seem to forget that they can't succeed by rejecting new technology - they must embrace it and not try to inject peculiar provisions.
At the moment the MPAA, RIAA and similar organizations are alienating themselves from their customer base, which just means that the potential customers will continue to select different sources just to keep away from them.
This seems to be a clear case of privacy invasion and unauthorized access to private data. And I think that this should have been brought to the attention of the police for further investigation.
In this case the guilty will have time to cover his tracks and hide.
Try this approach the next time you see something as grave as this. The worst thing that can happen if you report it is that the case gets dismissed.
I wouldn't consider the Legacy systems archaeologist a really dirty job in IT.
And I actually think that a really dirty IT job is when management enforces the implementation of a hack that may not only be insecure but also possibly illegal.
The price model for a hotspot is different from the mobile broadband model (OK, this can change)
The reliability of mobile proadband is not very good. At least the GPRS net (OK, not really broadband, but anyway) is prone to drop UDP packets too often, especially when there are some interference like when you are riding a train.
As I see it - the difference is that a cat has a much more relaxed style and helps people calm down mentally while a dog requires more attention and can be the cause for some stress.
But both have their place. A dog will give you exercise and a cat will balance your mind after a stressful day.
Having contact with an animal - cat or dog while you are recovering may actually help you mentally and if that's the case it's good for your health - even if it may not be a wondersolution to broken bones it can ease the stress and passiveness required while healing.
Of course - this doesn't work everywhere - people are allergic to cats/dogs or don't like them. But most people will be content having them around.
It's not the idiots designing them that you shall worry about - it's the idiots checking the ID:s that you shall worry about.
Put the responsibility of a fraud onto the person that checks the ID:s. And never forget that an ID card is just the key to unlock more verification data of an individual - it's no proof of validity itself.
And you will still have a different linkage to your bank account etc. It's no real difference between a national and a state issued ID card. The state issued cards may actually be worse since it's harder to spot forgeries.
There is actually a reason why all dollar bills of today look identical. Earlier there were several different printers for the dollar bills and that was heaven for forgers since a dollar bill produced in California could be easily passed in New York regardless of if it was a forgery or not.
We have the same thing here in Sweden, birthdate in yymmdd format followed by four digits. The last digit is a check number and the next to last digit is odd for male persons and even for female.
This "personnummer" has been in use since 1947 and is visible on all ID cards and driving licenses.
The calculation of the check number is actually relatively simple and is public knowledge. The check number was introduced in 1967.
Sum each figure in the product. Notice that "12" is summed as "1+2": 1+2+4+0+8+4+3+6+2+6=36
The last digit in the sum, "6" is subtracted from "10": 10-6=4
In this case the number 4 is the check number, resulting in the following person number: 640823-3234
Of course there are some catches that has originated from this use, one is that it is recognized that sometimes the three digits aren't going to be sufficient to identify persons within the same birth date, but that's still a minor problem.
One may also argue that a system like this can be easily abused, and it happens, but since everyone recognizes that the number is just a key to a unique identification it still has to be matched to the person with additional identification parameters, which normally is a photo. All driving licenses and ID cards has to have a photo.
It is also important to recognize that a number can't be kept secret "forever", identity thefts are possible regardless of if the number identifying the person is secret or not, the problem with keeping secret numbers is that in such cases the awareness of identity theft isn't as high.
So... I have 100/10Mbps Down/Up in my apartment, and the 10 is since the ISP is doing some kind of bandwidth throttling.
Over DSL around here you may get up to 24Mbps.
A relevant statement would otherwise be that an operating system is always needed regardless of what services you run. (OK, the ancient '80:s computers running a PROM Basic weren't having an operating system in general terms)
There are several layers to consider here. End-user applications may be different in the future compared to what we are used to, but there are many other aspects to consider too.
Sometimes articles like these haven't considered the full scope.
It really doesn't matter - regardless of the size of the computer you can still hide enough of plastic explosives in it to cause a mess.
What REALLY is necessary is to get a way of detecting the explosive materials and skip everything else. Unfortunately a laptop and it's accessories is a very complex component and it's not easy to distinguish the bad parts from the good.
And mind - cheese can appear suspicious on the X-ray scanners. I have been asked once about a strange scan that was caused by cheese I had in my handluggage. But this was in the late 80's and I suspect that the scanning technology may be better now.
Some identity papers are better than other. It's very easy to mix up people from areas of the world where those matters are of lesser concern or where the identity papers aren't easily convertible to western standards.
And just because A and B has a great similarity to their identities and papers doesn't necessarily mean that B is using forged identity papers of A. There may have been a mixup somewhere else.
And even if B is used A:s forged papers, who is the terrorist? A may still be the terrorist and B may just be an illegal immigrant that tries to stay afloat. The rest is collateral damage...
Illegal immigrants in general are just trying to get a better life, get out from daily bashing or even survive to live the next day. Sometimes it's necessary to get forged papers to get where you want.
And from a realistic perspective - being an illegal immigrant is unpractical if you are going to perform a terrorist action. It introduces a greater risk getting the plans messed up. Coming in as a student, tourist or a businessman is certainly a much easier way to slip through the net.
But of course - when you are on your final leg of your action it may be useful to use fake identities just to make things harder to wrap up for the authorities. The catch is that using such identities can cause problems if they are detected.
Slashdot Mirror
Just make sure that you inoculate yourself first, but on the other hand - then we don't have to compete with you.
The more interesting fact here is that some computers may select the first available access point and be happy with that. All in the name of user-friendliness.
Leaving the router open is like leaving your door open and not caring about rats, raccoons or other illiterate beings. Most computer software is 'illiterate' in the way that if you don't explicitly forbid access it just goes on and lists your computers etc.
A better way would be to sell the access points "pre-secured" with an unique password for each one, but that will increase the cost of the devices.
I actually think that Banks is able to become an influential writer in his own right. When you read you don't get the feeling of passages in the writing that are there just because a certain amount of writing has to be done. Instead it is a story that's consistent. And when I see his books in the bookstore (Science Fiction Bokhandeln, that also has Matter as the SF book of the month of February.) I can see that some books are thick and some are thin. Compared to many other of the later SF authors who produces many books by the same thickness I think that there has to be a hidden message in that - or maybe that the story only was that long.
In a way I would like to rank Iain M Banks as being a possible equal to Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Anvil among others.
And as with many authors - If you what you write isn't disliked by someone then there are also fewer that will like what you write. But writing something must not necessarily have a direct meaning or message. Sometimes it's just a story waiting to get written.
And as I have figured out after a few books from David Weber is that Weber has went into a "template-writing" style. Each book follows a template that unfortunately breaks down a good idea of a plot into a stereotype. This doesn't seem to be the case with Banks. It's a new path in each book, even if it's the same forest.
1. What does the flag actually do? Will it cause kernel panics, segmentation faults or is it that you leave access to kernel memory open for a non-privileged process to access?
2. Are there any performance benefits with this change? OK, one instruction less makes a tiny bit.
3. Why just remove a feature that were used, why not add a flag that allowed the programmers to keep that feature?
Disadvantage is that they may be captured and eaten.
Another catch is the animal rights activists that will have their say in it too when you implant your electrodes into the pigeon's brain.
For greater payload you may want to use a falcon or an albatross.
There is an advantage with flexible wings, but it's also a lot more complex which means that a fixed-wing device would often be better. If you can't make it stealthy you may use the power of confusion instead. Make a large range of different styles - this means that those that you want to watch can't decide who is watching them.
And why not add some strain of Rabies to it while you are at it then?
Maybe it's time for some Good Earmuffs
If you do it too slowly or incorrectly it will be a bang, but just a small one and some radiation. If you do it halfway you may get a lot of local radiation and finally a meltdown. If you get it right you will get a real bang.
But mind that most of the matter will still remain matter and only a minute fraction of it will be converted to energy as defined by the E=mc2 formula. All matter that isn't converted into energy will be the radioactive fallout that later settles on the ground, some of it far away from the explosion. Some of that matter has a relatively long half-life while other is relatively shortlived.
The direct radiation of a nuclear explosion affects the cellular functions of living organisms which in turn can lead to death within a few days, decreased health or cancer in long term.
One factor in making an effective nuclear bomb is to enrich the fissionable material enough to make it useful. Every component shall have the same grade of enrichment, deviations will cause ineffective blasts too. As with a bread with an improperly mixed dough. The catch is that you can't mix the whole dough at once - you have to do it in pieces and each piece has to be identical to the previous.
Never mind that - the largest problem is to cut down on the amount of items that you may bring with you. I think that the best way to figure out what you REALLY need is to during several years going for extended hikes and holidays on bicycle. Note every item that you use and next year only pack those items. After a few years you know what you really can't do without.
From what I can understand most problems arises around hygiene handling in space. It can be a smelly situation...
Maybe it's time to counter-file that the claims they have fall under the RICO act since it may be considered either Extortion, Larceny or Fraud?
But this in turn shows that the patent system is flawed. And possibly also the legal system that even accepts cases like these in the first case.
At the moment the MPAA, RIAA and similar organizations are alienating themselves from their customer base, which just means that the potential customers will continue to select different sources just to keep away from them.
- FBI NATIONAL COMPUTER CRIME SQUAD (May be outdated)
- FBI Tampa Cyber Crime squad (you may have your own local version of this)
- Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
- CERT
- Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams
- Swedish IT incident Center (sitic at pts dot se)
Of course you may have your own national version of IT incident reporting.So if we really want to avoid having the police hunt us for petty crimes of downloading files - give them something real. :-)
This seems to be a clear case of privacy invasion and unauthorized access to private data. And I think that this should have been brought to the attention of the police for further investigation.
In this case the guilty will have time to cover his tracks and hide.
Try this approach the next time you see something as grave as this. The worst thing that can happen if you report it is that the case gets dismissed.
And I actually think that a really dirty IT job is when management enforces the implementation of a hack that may not only be insecure but also possibly illegal.
But both have their place. A dog will give you exercise and a cat will balance your mind after a stressful day.
Having contact with an animal - cat or dog while you are recovering may actually help you mentally and if that's the case it's good for your health - even if it may not be a wondersolution to broken bones it can ease the stress and passiveness required while healing.
Of course - this doesn't work everywhere - people are allergic to cats/dogs or don't like them. But most people will be content having them around.
Put the responsibility of a fraud onto the person that checks the ID:s. And never forget that an ID card is just the key to unlock more verification data of an individual - it's no proof of validity itself.
And you will still have a different linkage to your bank account etc. It's no real difference between a national and a state issued ID card. The state issued cards may actually be worse since it's harder to spot forgeries.
There is actually a reason why all dollar bills of today look identical. Earlier there were several different printers for the dollar bills and that was heaven for forgers since a dollar bill produced in California could be easily passed in New York regardless of if it was a forgery or not.
Of course that's my $2 thoughts about it.
Only difference as I have seen is that it isn't on your ID card or driving license.
This "personnummer" has been in use since 1947 and is visible on all ID cards and driving licenses.
The calculation of the check number is actually relatively simple and is public knowledge. The check number was introduced in 1967.
The calculation method is as follows:
Of course there are some catches that has originated from this use, one is that it is recognized that sometimes the three digits aren't going to be sufficient to identify persons within the same birth date, but that's still a minor problem.One may also argue that a system like this can be easily abused, and it happens, but since everyone recognizes that the number is just a key to a unique identification it still has to be matched to the person with additional identification parameters, which normally is a photo. All driving licenses and ID cards has to have a photo.
It is also important to recognize that a number can't be kept secret "forever", identity thefts are possible regardless of if the number identifying the person is secret or not, the problem with keeping secret numbers is that in such cases the awareness of identity theft isn't as high.
So... I have 100/10Mbps Down/Up in my apartment, and the 10 is since the ISP is doing some kind of bandwidth throttling. Over DSL around here you may get up to 24Mbps.
Since the introduction in the Hitchhikers Guide it has become the least randomly selected number between 0 and 100.
There are several layers to consider here. End-user applications may be different in the future compared to what we are used to, but there are many other aspects to consider too.
Sometimes articles like these haven't considered the full scope.
What REALLY is necessary is to get a way of detecting the explosive materials and skip everything else. Unfortunately a laptop and it's accessories is a very complex component and it's not easy to distinguish the bad parts from the good.
And mind - cheese can appear suspicious on the X-ray scanners. I have been asked once about a strange scan that was caused by cheese I had in my handluggage. But this was in the late 80's and I suspect that the scanning technology may be better now.
And just because A and B has a great similarity to their identities and papers doesn't necessarily mean that B is using forged identity papers of A. There may have been a mixup somewhere else.
And even if B is used A:s forged papers, who is the terrorist? A may still be the terrorist and B may just be an illegal immigrant that tries to stay afloat. The rest is collateral damage...
Illegal immigrants in general are just trying to get a better life, get out from daily bashing or even survive to live the next day. Sometimes it's necessary to get forged papers to get where you want.
And from a realistic perspective - being an illegal immigrant is unpractical if you are going to perform a terrorist action. It introduces a greater risk getting the plans messed up. Coming in as a student, tourist or a businessman is certainly a much easier way to slip through the net.
But of course - when you are on your final leg of your action it may be useful to use fake identities just to make things harder to wrap up for the authorities. The catch is that using such identities can cause problems if they are detected.