I never said just "approved" applications. I just said that the default should be everything is off. If you need a port open then it's a service request with the ISP.
That would be a bad idea, but just because someone can't *by default* start running a web server on their machine accessible from the Internet does not make them into "passive consumers". If they want to they can, they just ask the ISP.
A close family member's Windows 2000 box was 0wn3d within days of getting broadband even though they never need any "server" capabilities on the net. Which would have cost the ISP more... dealing with his complaint or dealing with others' requests to open certain ports?
Of course if broadband ISPs were to implementing a simple inbound firewall for every user then they'd eliminate most of these problems overnight: trojaned machines would be unreachable, worms like CodeRed that scan for vulnerabilities would be halted.
The few users of broadband who actually need to run an Internet visible server would then have to contact their ISP for a port to be opened, but that seems like a small price to pay for cutting off 1000s of machines that have been hacked.
Naturally, this would cause file steal^H^H^H^Hharing applications to stop working.
[1800s-style Imperialist Brit Mode On] Next you'll be telling us that old Johnny Chinaman has gained mastery over the atom and created a doomsday weapon ready to threaten our very own God-fearing people.
Well never fear gentle-people, in my new steam-o-matic flying machine I'll quickly handle this yellow menace so your children can sleep soundly!
God Bless Queen Victoria [1800s-style Imperialist Brit Mode Off]
> First let me say that if I thought we could make a game that would > honestly motivate people to do things in real life, then I would > make a game about fucking, cause this world needs more sex than > killing that's for shit sure.
Hmm. Notice that little * next to my name? That indicates that I'm a subscriber. The subscription thing is nice and I've even sent mail to the "on duty editor" when there have been errors, but what's needed is a system by which subscribers can mod down a story.
This "story" seems to be nothing more than a thinly disguised ad for the products and services of a specific company. There's nothing of any technical interest or value here.
Now when are readers of/. going to get story modding rights so we can remove this stuff from the front page?
Perhaps the most interesting thing in this recall is that it provides information about the total number of Segway's out there: 6,000. Given that Amazon sells them about $5,000 that means that there are $30M of Segways out there. Of course many were probably sold below that price and Segway LLC will be sharing that with the retailer, but still not bad for scooter.
Second, interesting thing is that the problem is fixed by a *software upgrade* and not something physical.
With the Oyster Card (official web site is here: http://www.oystercard.com) you can in a sense "opt out" if you are willing to pay more. Since the cards are mandatory for people who buy season tickets, you can choose to have privacy at a fee by buying individual tickets (which will remain on paper for some time).
Here in New York the Metrocard system offers some opportunity for tracking users because the card have a unique ID and could be linked to credit card or debit card information (and hence to you) if you buy the card at a machine with card. You often see ads in the subway encouraging people to reuse their cards, for environmental reasons, of course, but that does seem to me to help anyone who wanted to get long term data on your travel habits.
Luckily, most Metrocard machines still accept cash for the anonymous purchase, and then you can throw it away after your limited set of journeys.
Similarly, you can pay extra for a little bit of privacy on road tolls, New York's EZPass system is cheaper (and quicker) than the cash toll, but less private. (Unless you count those little cameras staring at your license plate of course).
Most surprising to me is the use of 'make' to handle dependencies between services."
Really? That's an odd statement. How surprising that they choose to use an open-source software application that is designed to compactly represent dependencies for representing dependencies.
Perhaps they should have drawn Visio diagrams instead!?
No doubt the Linux faithful are going to bay and scream about this report, but there's something interesting buried in the article. The following quote:
The proliferation of Linux within the on-line server community coupled with inadequate knowledge of how to keep that environment secure when running vulnerable third-party applications is contributing to a consistently higher proportion of compromised Linux servers," mi29 chairman D.K. Matai said.
"Microsoft deserves credit for having reduced the proportion of successful on-line hacker attacks perpetrated against Windows servers."
Although I don't like Microsoft's software and it's a real pain having to get all the latest patches, they do at least tell us when they've got a patch. This is an inadequacy with Free Software that in general needs to be addressed, and it will make a nice revenue stream. At my company we subscribe to RedHat's "uptodate" service that makes sure that we are always patched. Even though the software is Free we are still willing to pay someone to tell us what we need to patch.
It's ironic that Microsoft provides that service for free, whereas Linux requires paying money. But it's good because at least here there's a clear way to make money off Free Software and keep programmers like me from going hungry.
more than $25K damage to New York Times Co.,' and performing LexisNexis searches on his own name to the tune of $300K! I always find it interesting that so little tinkering can cause so much 'damage' (if you didn't get that wink, read the article about the nature of the 'damage').
No I don't get the 'wink'.
These damage figures really don't seem very unreasonable, especially given what Kevin Mitnick was accused of. It's pretty easy to rack up $25,000 in damage (i.e. in the cost of the people of had to evaluate and repair his intrusion into the network). As for the LexisNexis searches that cost is probably easy to calculate because they charge for use of the service and he probably used $300,000 worth of the service without paying for it.
If he'd been accussed of millions of dollars of damage for these intrusions then I might be concerned that the prosecutor was going overboard, but this seems pretty sane to me.
The story seems to have almost no merit at all. it's YASAAP: yet another story about a patent. OK, so the patent office issued a patent that lots of people are going to think was either (a) obvious or (b) invalid because of prior art. Is/. going to start mainlining the output of the patent office to come up with stories?
We already know that the patent office is issuing what seem like silly patents, and we already know we'd like them to stop.
Does this particular story add anything to the debate or is it just a troll?
That language implies that this was not the first computer bug found, but more the first physical bug found. And hence it implies that the term "bug" was in use long before that time.
The The Jargon File covers this and includes a picture of the bug in the entry on "bug" and states:
Indeed, the use of bug to mean an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific and rather modern use can be found in an electrical handbook from 1896 (Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity, Theo. Audel & Co.) which says: "The term 'bug' is used to a limited extent to designate any fault or trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus." It further notes that the term is "said to have originated in quadruplex telegraphy and have been transferred to all electric apparatus."
POPFile is open-source donationware, if you like it you can send me money, and lots of people do.
It's the best of the shareware and open-source models combined. POPFile is released under the GPL so it's free as in speech software and free as in beer. But people who appreciate POPFile can send in donations.
They said 10 of the 19 hijackers went through Logan - so this system theorhetically would have caught 6 of them? Better than none
The 9/11 hijackers used their real names and real ID. If they'd been placed on a simple watch list of names then strcmp would have found them, not some highfalutin' face recognition system. It's not the technology here, but coordination between the three letter agencies that's needed.
You should be _happy_ that MSNBC is running this story, thankfully, they are being at least a little bit independent of the people that have invested in them.
John.
Truly P2P if SOBIG.G contains the spam message
on
P2P Spam?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the superheroes involved in the SOBIG fight miss the entire point. The authors are probably testing the feasibility of sending out a virus (which given the number of copies I receive) will happily be opened by people and then simultaneously sending out spam messages to the same group of people.
There's no need for the SOBIG authors to control the machines after SOBIG has been executed. They just need to include the spam message in the virus itself.
That would make it truly P2P spam. Unsuspecting user X who opens SOBIG would transmit the mechansim for sending more spam and his portion of the spam deluge. Of course there could be a downside to all this, once the blacklist people start cutting off EVERY ISP in the world because of spam messages SOBIG would defeat itself because no one would be getting mail.
I've often wondered whether we couldn't attach a Stirling engine directly to the surface of the processor and recover some of the energy being lost as heat and turn it into electricity. If we could do that then I could have a cooler laptop that has a longer lasting battery since processor heat is being used to power the processor.
Anything that stops my laptop burning my private parts and makes the battery last longer would be very nice. If at the same time it makes no noise (especially compared to the lawnmower like noise my Dell laptop's two fans make) it would be even better.
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs
OK. So how much time are you spending changing light bulbs per year? And was the total time spent submitting this news story longer?
To be honest I don't think that changing light bulbs is a major household time sink. (Different story of course for people who deal with traffic lights, and hence the move to LEDs). I must spend minutes per year changing light bulbs, I waste far more time replying to/. articles complaining about people worrying about optimizing the wrong sort of time wasting activities. Oh wait...
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is to to put it's entire radio and television archive online, free for everyone, as the BBC Creative Archive." The article is a little thin on how far back these archives go, but regardless, this in a giantic amount of data, and to see it go online, and open to the public is very cool.
There are four mistakes I can see:
1. "to" is duplicated ("to to put") 2. "it's" should be "its" ("it's entire") 3. "in" should be "is" ("this in a") 4. "giantic" should be "gigantic"
The final sentence is weirdly constructed also and reads far better if written
"The article is a little thin on how far back these archives go, but regardless this is a gigantic amount of data and to see it go online and be open to the public is very cool."
But imagine if we could do the same thing with digital media on the Internet. We might invent a system for sharing, for example, music and video files and call it "file sharing" or even "peer to peer".
We might even register a domain name for the service and call it something like "Napster". Dammit someone already registered napster.com, I guess my dream will never become a reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said just "approved" applications. I just said that the default should be everything is off. If you need a port open then it's a service request with the ISP.
That would be a bad idea, but just because someone can't *by default* start running a web server on their machine accessible from the Internet does not make them into "passive consumers". If they want to they can, they just ask the ISP.
A close family member's Windows 2000 box was 0wn3d within days of getting broadband even though they never need any "server" capabilities on the net. Which would have cost the ISP more... dealing with his complaint or dealing with others' requests to open certain ports?
John.
Of course if broadband ISPs were to implementing a simple inbound firewall
for every user then they'd eliminate most of these problems overnight:
trojaned machines would be unreachable, worms like CodeRed that scan for
vulnerabilities would be halted.
The few users of broadband who actually need to run an Internet visible
server would then have to contact their ISP for a port to be opened, but
that seems like a small price to pay for cutting off 1000s of machines that
have been hacked.
Naturally, this would cause file steal^H^H^H^Hharing applications to stop
working.
John.
[1800s-style Imperialist Brit Mode On]
Next you'll be telling us that old Johnny Chinaman has gained mastery
over the atom and created a doomsday weapon ready to threaten our
very own God-fearing people.
Well never fear gentle-people, in my new steam-o-matic flying machine
I'll quickly handle this yellow menace so your children can sleep
soundly!
God Bless Queen Victoria
[1800s-style Imperialist Brit Mode Off]
> First let me say that if I thought we could make a game that would
> honestly motivate people to do things in real life, then I would
> make a game about fucking, cause this world needs more sex than
> killing that's for shit sure.
I have no motivation problems in this area.
John.
> When you pay for it, of course.
Hmm. Notice that little * next to my name? That indicates that I'm a subscriber. The subscription thing is nice and I've even sent mail to the "on duty editor" when there have been errors, but what's needed is a system by which subscribers can mod down a story.
John.
This "story" seems to be nothing more than a thinly disguised ad for the products and services of a specific company. There's nothing of any technical interest or value here.
/. going to get story modding rights so we can remove this stuff from the front page?
Now when are readers of
John.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in this recall is that it provides information
about the total number of Segway's out there: 6,000. Given that Amazon
sells them about $5,000 that means that there are $30M of Segways out there.
Of course many were probably sold below that price and Segway LLC will be sharing
that with the retailer, but still not bad for scooter.
Second, interesting thing is that the problem is fixed by a *software upgrade*
and not something physical.
John.
With the Oyster Card (official web site is here: http://www.oystercard.com) you can
in a sense "opt out" if you are willing to pay more. Since the cards are mandatory
for people who buy season tickets, you can choose to have privacy at a fee by buying
individual tickets (which will remain on paper for some time).
Here in New York the Metrocard system offers some opportunity for tracking users
because the card have a unique ID and could be linked to credit card or debit card
information (and hence to you) if you buy the card at a machine with card. You often
see ads in the subway encouraging people to reuse their cards, for environmental
reasons, of course, but that does seem to me to help anyone who wanted to get long
term data on your travel habits.
Luckily, most Metrocard machines still accept cash for the anonymous purchase, and
then you can throw it away after your limited set of journeys.
Similarly, you can pay extra for a little bit of privacy on road tolls, New York's
EZPass system is cheaper (and quicker) than the cash toll, but less private. (Unless
you count those little cameras staring at your license plate of course).
John.
You're right, I was being an ass. Funny how the moderators thought that my comment was (5, Insightful).
Must remember to take my Ritalin...
John.
Most surprising to me is the use of 'make' to handle dependencies between services."
Really? That's an odd statement. How surprising that they choose to use an open-source software application that is designed to compactly represent dependencies for representing dependencies.
Perhaps they should have drawn Visio diagrams instead!?
John.
It's ironic that Microsoft provides that service for free, whereas Linux requires paying money. But it's good because at least here there's a clear way to make money off Free Software and keep programmers like me from going hungry.
John.
more than $25K damage to New York Times Co.,' and performing LexisNexis searches on
his own name to the tune of $300K! I always find it interesting that so little tinkering
can cause so much 'damage' (if you didn't get that wink, read the article about the
nature of the 'damage').
No I don't get the 'wink'.
These damage figures really don't seem very unreasonable, especially given what Kevin
Mitnick was accused of. It's pretty easy to rack up $25,000 in damage (i.e. in the
cost of the people of had to evaluate and repair his intrusion into the network). As for
the LexisNexis searches that cost is probably easy to calculate because they charge for
use of the service and he probably used $300,000 worth of the service without paying for it.
If he'd been accussed of millions of dollars of damage for these intrusions then I might be concerned
that the prosecutor was going overboard, but this seems pretty sane to me.
John.
The story seems to have almost no merit at all. it's YASAAP: yet another story about a patent. OK, so the patent office issued a patent that lots of people are going to think was either (a) obvious or (b) invalid because of prior art. Is /. going to start mainlining the output of the patent office to come up with stories?
We already know that the patent office is issuing what seem like silly patents, and we already know we'd like them to stop.
Does this particular story add anything to the debate or is it just a troll?
John.
The The Jargon File covers this and includes a picture of the bug in the entry on "bug" and states:
John.POPFile is open-source donationware, if you like it you can send me money, and lots of people do.
It's the best of the shareware and open-source models combined. POPFile is released under the GPL so it's free as in speech software and free as in beer. But people who appreciate POPFile can send in donations.
John.
They said 10 of the 19 hijackers went through Logan - so this system theorhetically would have caught 6 of them? Better than none
The 9/11 hijackers used their real names and real ID. If they'd been placed on a simple watch list of names then strcmp would have found them, not some highfalutin' face recognition system. It's not the technology here, but coordination between the three letter agencies that's needed.
John.
.right to left read normally is English that sworn have could I
1. Horizontal scrolling required
2. Tiny
3. Virtually no links to anything
4. Very small amount of information
John.
I think not. \
You should be _happy_ that MSNBC is running this story, thankfully, they are being at least a little bit independent of the people that have invested in them.
John.
I think the superheroes involved in the SOBIG fight miss the entire point.
The authors are probably testing the feasibility of sending out a virus (which
given the number of copies I receive) will happily be opened by people and
then simultaneously sending out spam messages to the same group of people.
There's no need for the SOBIG authors to control the machines after SOBIG has
been executed. They just need to include the spam message in the virus
itself.
That would make it truly P2P spam. Unsuspecting user X who opens SOBIG would
transmit the mechansim for sending more spam and his portion of the spam
deluge. Of course there could be a downside to all this, once the blacklist
people start cutting off EVERY ISP in the world because of spam messages SOBIG
would defeat itself because no one would be getting mail.
John.
That's really cool.
I've often wondered whether we couldn't attach a Stirling engine directly
to the surface of the processor and recover some of the energy being lost
as heat and turn it into electricity. If we could do that then I could have
a cooler laptop that has a longer lasting battery since processor heat is
being used to power the processor.
Anything that stops my laptop burning my private parts and makes the
battery last longer would be very nice. If at the same time it makes
no noise (especially compared to the lawnmower like noise my Dell laptop's
two fans make) it would be even better.
John.
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs
/. articles complaining about people worrying about optimizing the wrong sort of time wasting activities. Oh wait...
OK. So how much time are you spending changing light bulbs per year? And was the total time spent submitting this news story longer?
To be honest I don't think that changing light bulbs is a major household time sink. (Different story of course for people who deal with traffic lights, and hence the move to LEDs). I must spend minutes per year changing light bulbs, I waste far more time replying to
John.
Since we know that the answer was "42" and the question was "What is 6 times 9?" it's worth realizing that this all works out in base 13.
6 * 9 = 54 (base 10)
But 42 (base 13) is 4 * 13 + 2 = 54. So clearly Deep Thought and successor machines were simply base 13 processors.
John.
Agreed. It's very poor form.
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is to to put it's entire radio and television archive online, free for everyone, as the BBC Creative Archive." The article is a little thin on how far back these archives go, but regardless, this in a giantic amount of data, and to see it go online, and open to the public is very cool.
There are four mistakes I can see:
1. "to" is duplicated ("to to put")
2. "it's" should be "its" ("it's entire")
3. "in" should be "is" ("this in a")
4. "giantic" should be "gigantic"
The final sentence is weirdly constructed also and reads far better if written
"The article is a little thin on how far back these archives go, but regardless this is a gigantic amount of data and to see it go online and be open to the public is very cool."
John.
This is actually a really cool idea.
But imagine if we could do the same thing with digital media on the
Internet. We might invent a system for sharing, for example, music
and video files and call it "file sharing" or even "peer to peer".
We might even register a domain name for the service and call it
something like "Napster". Dammit someone already registered
napster.com, I guess my dream will never become a reality.
John.