It is still being done (in a bit of a different way) by RJRT with their near-smokeless cigarettes. From the site http://www.eclipse.rjrt.com , it appears that they are still actively looking at less smokey alternatives. From the eclipse site:
" Eclipse is for smokers who have decided not to quit, but who are interested in a cigarette that responds to concerns about certain smoking-related illnesses, including cancer. For many smokers, it may well be a better way to smoke".
I am sure it will take less than a week, err make that hour, to figure out how to spoof it. Another 2 days for some GUI guid spoofer tool to be published. Probably 5 days to figure out the guid of some famous person who uses this stuff. 10 days before everyone is just hacking the guid flag to make it look like it came from said famous person. 3 weeks for slashdot to pic up the story:P
The problems of making everyone post their real info greatly outweigh the benefits. Beyond just spam and stalking, it is a matter of freedom of expression. What if the person was in China and did not want their true ID being made public? Or if they were a single young female who ran a blog? For sites that have a commercial nature, yes, they should be encouraged to post their real info. If I run a site with a controversial topic, I really would not want to be threatened by religious nuts who more often than not, get really excited over the stupidest issue.
Bugs do come up in almost every software and OS, with some of these being critical. Waiting 6 months to announce a problem that was identified by some 3rd party (or anyone) is unacceptable. They now have adopted the script-kiddie standard. They will not anounce a flaw until either they know for sure the patch will fix it, or it will come out before every script kiddie can get their little hands on a prebuilt exploit. During the last 6 months, or longer, many compainies and goverments with priceless data could have been exploited. IMO, it is ignorant to think that only security companies and casual hackers are out to find exploits. It really is the unpublished ones that are the most dangerous. I am assuming that this exploit has effected XP since day 1. That is a long time for say a real pirate group or a hostile government to discover it and launch very selective attacks on specific target entities. The media tends to forget about just unplugging the machine with the sensitive data as a viable (even if temporary) security solution. For the last 6 months, MS has knowingly put many in danger by not revealing to them that their systems had a serious exploit. It will probably never be known if this exploit has been used yet. Just because I cannot google and get info on it or dl a prebuilt binary does not mean that it has not been used.
What bothers me about this is that it could make the internet open to being much much more restricted. Would video games that have built in VOIP now have to be able to dial a net 911? "That Fsking haxor is using a bot!!! arrest that 1337ass biatch!!" Would open source VOIP projects be canceled because they would have to register and pay a fee (though in net terms, that generally means it gets packed up and distributed from another part of the world so has minimized effect)? Same with free for private use ones like ventrilo. Having non-technically minded partisan people attempt to dictate technology is at best commical, and at worst scary. Of course the arguments about terrorism, drug dealing, and protecting children are going to be pushed. VOIP is way too general of a term to be considered as one technology. I doubt it will come to the point where someone who runs an encrypted voice server to talk to others across the world will have their doors knocked in by the fbi, but it could be forseable that they will get a huge bill from the FCC in their mail. Powell has so far been on of the most unconsumer friendly FCC leaders ever. His views on media consolodation and hdtv broadcasts were at a minimum shortsighted for the former and premature for the latter issue. The threat of consumers talking on the phone for way less than he thinks they should be paying is great. On the other hand, big businesses stand a ton to gain by unrestricted VOIP too. I do think there are some issues that should be addressed such as standards and spam calls. I do not think the FCC is the right body to be dealing with these issues. Probably the biggst threat to widespread adaptation of VOIP as a viable land line replacement is going to be the spam. It costs a lot of money to call someone on the phone say in the UK or USA from Nigeria and tell them to buy viagra or vicodin, not so the case with email and thus VOIP. Even if there was a fee for service model adopted, unlike land lines where if one wants to hack them they have to usually climb up a poll or do something involving wire cutters, with VOIP, the infrastructure is parked right on your computer. Hacking and spoofing will be issues too.
Slashdot Mirror
It is still being done (in a bit of a different way) by RJRT with their near-smokeless cigarettes. From the site http://www.eclipse.rjrt.com , it appears that they are still actively looking at less smokey alternatives. From the eclipse site:
" Eclipse is for smokers who have decided not to quit, but who are interested in a cigarette that responds to concerns about certain smoking-related illnesses, including cancer. For many smokers, it may well be a better way to smoke".
I am sure it will take less than a week, err make that hour, to figure out how to spoof it. Another 2 days for some GUI guid spoofer tool to be published. Probably 5 days to figure out the guid of some famous person who uses this stuff. 10 days before everyone is just hacking the guid flag to make it look like it came from said famous person. 3 weeks for slashdot to pic up the story :P
The problems of making everyone post their real info greatly outweigh the benefits. Beyond just spam and stalking, it is a matter of freedom of expression. What if the person was in China and did not want their true ID being made public? Or if they were a single young female who ran a blog? For sites that have a commercial nature, yes, they should be encouraged to post their real info. If I run a site with a controversial topic, I really would not want to be threatened by religious nuts who more often than not, get really excited over the stupidest issue.
Bugs do come up in almost every software and OS, with some of these being critical. Waiting 6 months to announce a problem that was identified by some 3rd party (or anyone) is unacceptable. They now have adopted the script-kiddie standard. They will not anounce a flaw until either they know for sure the patch will fix it, or it will come out before every script kiddie can get their little hands on a prebuilt exploit. During the last 6 months, or longer, many compainies and goverments with priceless data could have been exploited. IMO, it is ignorant to think that only security companies and casual hackers are out to find exploits. It really is the unpublished ones that are the most dangerous. I am assuming that this exploit has effected XP since day 1. That is a long time for say a real pirate group or a hostile government to discover it and launch very selective attacks on specific target entities. The media tends to forget about just unplugging the machine with the sensitive data as a viable (even if temporary) security solution. For the last 6 months, MS has knowingly put many in danger by not revealing to them that their systems had a serious exploit. It will probably never be known if this exploit has been used yet. Just because I cannot google and get info on it or dl a prebuilt binary does not mean that it has not been used.
It is refreshing to have Fox take time out from their Fair and Balanced broadcasting to bring back a show as cool as this.
What bothers me about this is that it could make the internet open to being much much more restricted. Would video games that have built in VOIP now have to be able to dial a net 911? "That Fsking haxor is using a bot!!! arrest that 1337ass biatch!!" Would open source VOIP projects be canceled because they would have to register and pay a fee (though in net terms, that generally means it gets packed up and distributed from another part of the world so has minimized effect)? Same with free for private use ones like ventrilo. Having non-technically minded partisan people attempt to dictate technology is at best commical, and at worst scary. Of course the arguments about terrorism, drug dealing, and protecting children are going to be pushed. VOIP is way too general of a term to be considered as one technology. I doubt it will come to the point where someone who runs an encrypted voice server to talk to others across the world will have their doors knocked in by the fbi, but it could be forseable that they will get a huge bill from the FCC in their mail. Powell has so far been on of the most unconsumer friendly FCC leaders ever. His views on media consolodation and hdtv broadcasts were at a minimum shortsighted for the former and premature for the latter issue. The threat of consumers talking on the phone for way less than he thinks they should be paying is great. On the other hand, big businesses stand a ton to gain by unrestricted VOIP too. I do think there are some issues that should be addressed such as standards and spam calls. I do not think the FCC is the right body to be dealing with these issues. Probably the biggst threat to widespread adaptation of VOIP as a viable land line replacement is going to be the spam. It costs a lot of money to call someone on the phone say in the UK or USA from Nigeria and tell them to buy viagra or vicodin, not so the case with email and thus VOIP. Even if there was a fee for service model adopted, unlike land lines where if one wants to hack them they have to usually climb up a poll or do something involving wire cutters, with VOIP, the infrastructure is parked right on your computer. Hacking and spoofing will be issues too.