Unless you know fully what he has done, you should not continue using it and assume that everything is working properly and will continue to work properly.
That's theory. In practice, you're talking power grid or water or mass transit or traffic lights or other very very essential things for a big city.
If YOU were on the spot to take such a decision, would you REALLY want to shut those down?
If so, can you give an estimate for how much time? You can't, 'cause you don't know what he's done to the thing. So, if it at least appears to be working well and you have no proof to say otherwise, would you really go ahead and pull the plug just for the sake of the theory, or wait some more, see how it goes? Maybe he'll cave in, actually he's quite likely to cave at some point and make a deal if he's not gone completely nuts.
Y'all need to try harder. Just one -1 Troll ain't gonna cut it. I need at least two more -1 Overrated and a +1 Funny. I have a birthday coming up, get busy please.
I mean any competent techie with physical access can got root in about ten minutes.
Can we stop with stupidity such as this? A well designed system will NOT be as easy to break in such as this. Ideally (and 99.9% achievable) it would be impossible to do it.
Otherwise it would deny the point in the first place, and the government agency that used such a system would be idiots and criminally negligent themselves.
How do you "get in" such a system if all the persistent storage and even the volatile one is encrypted, if all the applications and the OS are free of vulnerabilities, if all outside connections are also encrypted and monitored and restricted to what's needed for it to work, if it has redundancy in place that will detect any attempt of tampering and revert it and, most importantly, if you cannot afford to bring the system down for any reason because it performs a vital service?
The only points of entry should be authorized ones and I congratulate San Francisco if this is the case. Their only mistake was not preparing for exactly such a thing happening. But on the other hand, the moment you add any kind of backdoor or administrative override to the system you make it LESS secure, so it's give and take.
If i have PHYSICAL access to a system i can get in. Some way, some how.
ORLY? Even if it's an essential system that cannot be stopped or rebooted at all? And has multiple redundancies that make modifying just parts of it useless?
You'll have to forget the laymen screenwriters for assuming that a guy with enough brains to figure out complicated hacking could also figure out how to get a sexy girlfriend.:)
How about they charge him with terrorism? Doesn't seem so far fetched, given we're talking about an entire city's systems. Who wants to bet this is at least being considered? If anything, they may dangle the possibility in front of his face to make him cave.
[..]you can rely on your users having a high speed connection and a computer powerful enough to run JavaScript applications[..]
...And being online in troves helps too.
Which brings me to the point: you want a strategy guide for web 2.0? I got it right here. It's not even mine, I read it on some website a while ago:
How do I get in? Answer: build the right tool.
You no longer have to drag people kicking and screaming to the Internet. They're already here. The net is teeming with people. We've reached critical mass, we're already way past critical mass.
You just need to give them something to do. Something simple and interesting, that does one thing and does it well. All those big sites can be summarized in one or two words: photos; videos; search; my page; my blog; geeks.
Find a word or two that nobody's built a site for yet and you got it made.
90's, please. I used to do it by sending old Yeller up the hill to let me know when our cow Betsy would get home from the pasture. It worked really well most of the time except sometimes when he'd get lost on the way back and he'd get a race condition. As time passed it got worse, he was doing core dumps in the livingroom daily. That's when we knew we had to put him down.
Don't even get me started on the Carrier Pidgeon Protocol.
Are you kidding me? Porn the ultimate mark of success. The fact that Lively has it before it has even taken off properly makes it like an uber stamp of approval. Yes yes.
We don't put up with this shit in other marketplaces, why should we put up with it in regards to the internet?
For several reasons: 1) It is a vital resource you can't live without. 2) The user doesn't have an alternative ISP or he does but all of them play the game the same way. 3) It's vital, but not recognized as such officially (so no Gov protection for the citizen to get his Internet fix, unlike basic necessities like water/electricity/circulation etc.)
So, you can't live without it, meaning the ISP has lots more power over you than you have over them. It's not acknowledged as vital, so the Gov won't step in to force their hand. So you're at their mercy. What now?
Lawsuits, class actions and so on, probably. We'll see how that goes.
For some places, notably the US, I can see why you'd think I was being sarcastic. But the European ISP market is much more dynamic. I was being serious when I called competition over there fierce.
Their own damn fault for selling something they don't have!
They always have. ISP's, especially those on the last mile, have historically sold 10 to 20 times the actual bandwidth to their customers. Except a while back the last mile was not a hot zone. There weren't so many things you can use huge amounts of bandwidth on.
Today there are lots. Desktop apps move to the web, there's streaming, online gaming, all kinds of legal, semi-legal and illegal things to download, malware and the list goes on and on.
The ISP's are caught in the middle of all this. They've entered this time period with pricing policies that belong in gentler times, and their infrastructure is also outdated and getting more so every day.
On top of everything, everybody seems to think it's their job to carry the Internet on its back and figure it out somehow. The end customer likes to have huge amounts of bandwidth for pennies. The websites and online apps have bulk deals for bandwidth with providers that have efficient distribution infrastructures all over the world. And the last mile ISP is left to fight a dog eat dog fight with other similar local ISP or with a bigger area ISP, both of which will drive it out of business eventually.
Not to mention the crazy politics involved, where they are required to act as copyright cops and other idiocies.
So they're desperate. They're trying anything to "fix things". There are a couple of sane solutions but not without problems. The obvious move would be to rethink their pricing and start selling capped amounts of bandwidth. Filtering will always be passed somehow but a hard cap upstream is a hard cap. And nobody will be able to protest they're not getting what they're paying for.
But this isn't easy either, because of the fierce competition. You do hard caps, you piss of customers. If they have a choice, they'll run to that new ISP that popped up in the neighborhood a week ago. Sure, that ISP will experience the same problems a while from now, but in the meantime you're short some income.
Another solution is a world-wide effort to update infrastructure (better throughput, either hardware or software). But who's gonna pay for that? The last mile ISP's can't and won't and granted, it's not fair they should pay all of it. But the other interested parties like the status quo and won't pay either, but will bitch just as readily about filtering and caps and whatnot. In the end, the ISP's will probably turn to insightful investors like Google's dark fiber and become their prisoners and people won't like that either, but will conveniently forget they're the ones that pushed the ISP's into that corner.
It's not just the ISP's fault, it's everybody's. The Internet has become an ecosystem, you gotta work together on all parts of it to see proper overall change.
True, but in defense of Windows (wow.. did I just say that?), I've never had to compile anything from source
I found the ability to compile from source to be something empowering, not limiting. It's not like on Linux you have to compile from source, as all the software you need is most likely already available in binary form. But the extra option of compiling is there, should you wish to try the latest version released minutes ago by a project, or try beta versions or young projects that are still emerging, or customize software to your liking etc.
Or, to put it the other way around, the lack of source for most Windows applications I find limiting, not particularly user-friendly.
The actual file transfers are peer-to-peer, so they won't be effected (also, they're usually encrypted already, to avoid bandwidth throttling). This is for accessing the website and/or for contacting the tracker.
Won't SSL trackers also help curb the throttling? I know that's the main reasons I use Tor for my tracker connections: encryption. One classic throttling technique is peeking at tracker connection, reading peer IP's and messing with connections to them. If all torrent trackers used SSL this technique would become obsolete.
Microsoft got their start by buying some crap inhouse developed OS called DOS, and convinced IBM to put it on their PCs (before they even bought the software).
If that's not "poorly run" I dunno what is. And we know what mistakes Apple made around that time.
So I think Gates's remark pretty much stands. They got their break because of mistakes other did.
Then they'll just have to use death penalty for breaching copyright now won't they. That will stop that kind of tactics cold. Umm pun not intended.
What I don't understand if how exactly do they figure that they can equivalate "pirates" with downloaders. (Nevermind that "pirate" is a term that means something completely differet -- people who sell illegal duplicates, for money).
If a "pirate" is somebody who downloads things that breach copyright, then I can make any one of you a pirate by giving you a link to a webpage that shows a picture the owner doesn't have the right to distribute. Or to YouTube, for that matter.
What exactly is the difference between a person who browses YouTube and a person who downloads from a torrent tracker? They both download stuff that's been made freely available on the net.
What, no difference? OK, then we're all pirates. Let's just admit it and take it from here. And suddenly, things like the Pirate Party don't seem so silly anymore.
I find it very interesting, as well as sad, to see this kind of solution. You're basically saying "you can't protect against malware, let's give up and use backup as the only defense".
Is this really what it's like? Is having malware violating your personal computer the norm? Is it really impossible to design secure OS's and applications from the ground up instead of making them full of holes and relying on "solutions" that pick up the pieces? Is it really better to do damage control than prevention?
I find that very hard to believe. I think it's more likely that the current state of the software industry is based on complacency and no respect for the customer and his or her personal data.
If it turned out that the maker of your main door lock made a shoddy product that allowed anybody to unlock it and have their way with your house... you'd be mad, right? You'd hold them responsible, want your money back, never buy from them again, maybe even sue them and ask for reparations if they acted like assholes.
But when your personal computer gets broken into you don't make a peep, you just sigh and use a backup, if they have one. Then it's back to the torture of finding and paying for antimalware, knowing full well that one day you'll get shafted again.
Someone please explain this self-abuse to me. The only explanation I've come up with is that people are ignorant and/or brainwashed into thinking there's no alternative so they'll put up with anything and think that's how it's supposed to work.
Software industry needs to grow a spine, take responsability and stop all the "no guarantees" crap. Than maybe, just maybe we'll see some improvement on the malware front.
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That's theory. In practice, you're talking power grid or water or mass transit or traffic lights or other very very essential things for a big city.
If YOU were on the spot to take such a decision, would you REALLY want to shut those down?
If so, can you give an estimate for how much time? You can't, 'cause you don't know what he's done to the thing. So, if it at least appears to be working well and you have no proof to say otherwise, would you really go ahead and pull the plug just for the sake of the theory, or wait some more, see how it goes? Maybe he'll cave in, actually he's quite likely to cave at some point and make a deal if he's not gone completely nuts.
Y'all need to try harder. Just one -1 Troll ain't gonna cut it. I need at least two more -1 Overrated and a +1 Funny. I have a birthday coming up, get busy please.
Can we stop with stupidity such as this? A well designed system will NOT be as easy to break in such as this. Ideally (and 99.9% achievable) it would be impossible to do it.
Otherwise it would deny the point in the first place, and the government agency that used such a system would be idiots and criminally negligent themselves.
How do you "get in" such a system if all the persistent storage and even the volatile one is encrypted, if all the applications and the OS are free of vulnerabilities, if all outside connections are also encrypted and monitored and restricted to what's needed for it to work, if it has redundancy in place that will detect any attempt of tampering and revert it and, most importantly, if you cannot afford to bring the system down for any reason because it performs a vital service?
The only points of entry should be authorized ones and I congratulate San Francisco if this is the case. Their only mistake was not preparing for exactly such a thing happening. But on the other hand, the moment you add any kind of backdoor or administrative override to the system you make it LESS secure, so it's give and take.
ORLY? Even if it's an essential system that cannot be stopped or rebooted at all? And has multiple redundancies that make modifying just parts of it useless?
You'll have to forget the laymen screenwriters for assuming that a guy with enough brains to figure out complicated hacking could also figure out how to get a sexy girlfriend. :)
What if you can't afford to turn it down or reboot it?
How about they charge him with terrorism? Doesn't seem so far fetched, given we're talking about an entire city's systems. Who wants to bet this is at least being considered? If anything, they may dangle the possibility in front of his face to make him cave.
Which brings me to the point: you want a strategy guide for web 2.0? I got it right here. It's not even mine, I read it on some website a while ago:
90's, please. I used to do it by sending old Yeller up the hill to let me know when our cow Betsy would get home from the pasture. It worked really well most of the time except sometimes when he'd get lost on the way back and he'd get a race condition. As time passed it got worse, he was doing core dumps in the livingroom daily. That's when we knew we had to put him down.
Don't even get me started on the Carrier Pidgeon Protocol.
OMG dude that's so cool I want a -1 funny too.
Oh come on, he said what's in a name, not in calling somebody a name.
Yeah, in 2014.
Chump.
Are you kidding me? Porn the ultimate mark of success. The fact that Lively has it before it has even taken off properly makes it like an uber stamp of approval. Yes yes.
Louis, this could be the beginning of a beautiful ternary expression.
For several reasons:
1) It is a vital resource you can't live without.
2) The user doesn't have an alternative ISP or he does but all of them play the game the same way.
3) It's vital, but not recognized as such officially (so no Gov protection for the citizen to get his Internet fix, unlike basic necessities like water/electricity/circulation etc.)
So, you can't live without it, meaning the ISP has lots more power over you than you have over them. It's not acknowledged as vital, so the Gov won't step in to force their hand. So you're at their mercy. What now?
Lawsuits, class actions and so on, probably. We'll see how that goes.
For some places, notably the US, I can see why you'd think I was being sarcastic. But the European ISP market is much more dynamic. I was being serious when I called competition over there fierce.
They always have. ISP's, especially those on the last mile, have historically sold 10 to 20 times the actual bandwidth to their customers. Except a while back the last mile was not a hot zone. There weren't so many things you can use huge amounts of bandwidth on.
Today there are lots. Desktop apps move to the web, there's streaming, online gaming, all kinds of legal, semi-legal and illegal things to download, malware and the list goes on and on.
The ISP's are caught in the middle of all this. They've entered this time period with pricing policies that belong in gentler times, and their infrastructure is also outdated and getting more so every day.
On top of everything, everybody seems to think it's their job to carry the Internet on its back and figure it out somehow. The end customer likes to have huge amounts of bandwidth for pennies. The websites and online apps have bulk deals for bandwidth with providers that have efficient distribution infrastructures all over the world. And the last mile ISP is left to fight a dog eat dog fight with other similar local ISP or with a bigger area ISP, both of which will drive it out of business eventually.
Not to mention the crazy politics involved, where they are required to act as copyright cops and other idiocies.
So they're desperate. They're trying anything to "fix things". There are a couple of sane solutions but not without problems. The obvious move would be to rethink their pricing and start selling capped amounts of bandwidth. Filtering will always be passed somehow but a hard cap upstream is a hard cap. And nobody will be able to protest they're not getting what they're paying for.
But this isn't easy either, because of the fierce competition. You do hard caps, you piss of customers. If they have a choice, they'll run to that new ISP that popped up in the neighborhood a week ago. Sure, that ISP will experience the same problems a while from now, but in the meantime you're short some income.
Another solution is a world-wide effort to update infrastructure (better throughput, either hardware or software). But who's gonna pay for that? The last mile ISP's can't and won't and granted, it's not fair they should pay all of it. But the other interested parties like the status quo and won't pay either, but will bitch just as readily about filtering and caps and whatnot. In the end, the ISP's will probably turn to insightful investors like Google's dark fiber and become their prisoners and people won't like that either, but will conveniently forget they're the ones that pushed the ISP's into that corner.
It's not just the ISP's fault, it's everybody's. The Internet has become an ecosystem, you gotta work together on all parts of it to see proper overall change.
Or, to put it the other way around, the lack of source for most Windows applications I find limiting, not particularly user-friendly.
Ohhh, I see the problem now...
So I think Gates's remark pretty much stands. They got their break because of mistakes other did.
Then they'll just have to use death penalty for breaching copyright now won't they. That will stop that kind of tactics cold. Umm pun not intended.
What I don't understand if how exactly do they figure that they can equivalate "pirates" with downloaders. (Nevermind that "pirate" is a term that means something completely differet -- people who sell illegal duplicates, for money).
If a "pirate" is somebody who downloads things that breach copyright, then I can make any one of you a pirate by giving you a link to a webpage that shows a picture the owner doesn't have the right to distribute. Or to YouTube, for that matter.
What exactly is the difference between a person who browses YouTube and a person who downloads from a torrent tracker? They both download stuff that's been made freely available on the net.
What, no difference? OK, then we're all pirates. Let's just admit it and take it from here. And suddenly, things like the Pirate Party don't seem so silly anymore.
"Bugs Bunny maroon". +1 informative. Only on Slashdot.
I find it very interesting, as well as sad, to see this kind of solution. You're basically saying "you can't protect against malware, let's give up and use backup as the only defense".
Is this really what it's like? Is having malware violating your personal computer the norm? Is it really impossible to design secure OS's and applications from the ground up instead of making them full of holes and relying on "solutions" that pick up the pieces? Is it really better to do damage control than prevention?
I find that very hard to believe. I think it's more likely that the current state of the software industry is based on complacency and no respect for the customer and his or her personal data.
If it turned out that the maker of your main door lock made a shoddy product that allowed anybody to unlock it and have their way with your house... you'd be mad, right? You'd hold them responsible, want your money back, never buy from them again, maybe even sue them and ask for reparations if they acted like assholes.
But when your personal computer gets broken into you don't make a peep, you just sigh and use a backup, if they have one. Then it's back to the torture of finding and paying for antimalware, knowing full well that one day you'll get shafted again.
Someone please explain this self-abuse to me. The only explanation I've come up with is that people are ignorant and/or brainwashed into thinking there's no alternative so they'll put up with anything and think that's how it's supposed to work.
Software industry needs to grow a spine, take responsability and stop all the "no guarantees" crap. Than maybe, just maybe we'll see some improvement on the malware front.