I think that the problem with this article is the idea of "not as bad as we thought." For years, "they" (media, government, scientists, etc.) have painted radiation as the worst possible thing in the world. We have seen images (both real and fictional) of people and animals that were horribly mutated by radiation. There were movies about communities built over old army bases that had high cancer rates, and insects from nuclear test sites that were monsterized into giant killers. Now, there's a study suggesting that it might not be "so bad." Unfortunately, compared to how it was painted before "not so bad" still has room to be pretty awful.
To put another way, I could tell you "Oops! That dinner I just served you will make your eyes melt, your teeth and fingernails fall out, cripple all your muscles, then slowly, and in the most painful possible way, kill you over a period of 2-6 months." Then, after a couple hours, if I said "Oh wait, I was mistaken, looks like it'll just make your dick fall off," you'd probably be overjoyed.
If the applications tab, if you choose "End Task" then it does, in fact, send an exit signal to the application. However, if you go to the process tab and "End Process," it kills it dead immediately. There are pretty rare occasions (such as a badly written low-level networking app that has connected threads) where "End Task" doesn't kill the process, and may even hang the process completely, but I've only seen that with a few specific applications.
Process Explorer and pskill are both applications written by Mark Russinovich. He (very literally) knows more about Windows than the people who wrote it, so Microsoft hired him. I think they were embarrassed that an outsider knew their OS better than they did. Anyhow, his applications became Microsoft applications. If you're a Windows user and not familiar with his tools, I highly recommend checking them out. They will make your Windows world much more enjoyable. They can be had here for free, as in beer.
But since windows (at least, XP) doesn't have kill -9 You information isn't quite correct. Right click on taskbar -> Task Manager -> Processes. Right-click on offending process -> End Task. BAM! Dead as a doornail. No waiting. (under normal circumstances) If you don't know the process name, you can head on over to the applications tab, right-click on the application and choose "Go To Process." Alternatively, if you're a "power user" (and I use that term lightly) there are the most excellent and free Process Explorer (for those who like clicking and pictures) and pskill. (for down & dirty CLI geeks who know what they want and aren't afraid to type it out.)
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but it's not quite so bleak as you point out in your post. I am anxiously awaiting the day when I can use Ubuntu or MacOS at the office and run all the necessary applications for my job, but until that day comes, it's helpful to know how to kill offensive apps in Windows, too.
You trust a site.. on the internet. You are an idiot. ::Sigh:: So I suppose you never do anything useful on the Internet? Why not just unplug your modem/Ethernet cable? It would save you from having your PC compromised, and it would save the rest of us from your logic.
Experts-Exchange went to hell in a handbasket. My company actually paid for a subscription. About a year and a half ago, you could post a question, and very knowledgeable people were climbing all over themselves to answer it. Now, you post something, and a bunch of people with less IT experience than me answer it with things I've already tried. (and stated that I tried in the question.) At one time it was a great resource, but now, not so much.
I'll give you that it's not really Edison's company, given that it's been broken up, sold off, re-purchased, reassembled again half a dozen times, but it's still a true statement that Edison was the founder of GE. Much like Bill Gates isn't the owner of Microsoft, but if it's still around in 100 years, it'll be in large part because of his vision early on. (along with a bit of good fortune and great timing.)
He sure did, and Edison's company clearly lost and has faded into historical obscurity. What was that company called again? Electric... General... General... something...
Connecting to an open wi-fi network is not a crime in New York State. Bypassing someones WEP key in order to use his wi-fi however, is. I'd say that pretty much nails it right on the head. I feel very strongly that if my neighbor sets up an open access point called "netgear" and broadcasting it into my house, they're telling me that they don't care if I use it. In fact, maybe I don't want every person in my household to have unrestricted Internet access. If they're not securing their access point, my children could browse unsavory websites, and aside from taking their computers away from them, I couldn't do a thing about it. (legally) Now, I am a good neighbor, and I've made more than one household in my neighborhood aware that they were offering up free bandwidth to anyone who happened by, and I've even offered up my expertise free of charge to help them secure said access point.
Now, on the other hand, if I crack a WEP key, I am clearly crossing a black and white line. Cracking WEP, although trivial, requires effort on my part. If my neighbor puts up a sign on his front door reading "GOLD INSIDE." and buys a really flimsy lock, it's still clearly crossing a line for me to help myself to said booty.
Nothing sensitive at all to be had. No names, SSN, credit cards. Just survey information for a cleaning company. If someone took the time and effort to hack the server, they'd have full access to see how clean the bathrooms were for various companies around town. And just to clarify another point; the server IS behind a (pretty good) firewall. Any brute force attempts to crack passwords will result in an IP ban, especially if they try to use the sa account. (Since our app doesn't use that) I just have the MSSQL port (and only the MSSQL port) forwarded to the virtual server, segregated on its own network. (not even going through the same switch as my production network) The only real worry, as pointed out by a previous post, is the unlikely event that someone roots the machine, then figures out a way to use that to attack the host machine before I discover it's been rooted. I'd say pretty damn unlikely. It doesn't keep me up at night. Even if they got that far, it's not like we have anything on the host network worth stealing. HR information is segregated on a different network. I suppose they could see spaghetti source code for various projects my company is working on, but that's so damn convoluted even our programmers can't understand it.
Case in point: (Note, I am a sysadmin, not a programmer. Any solution that starts with "just change the application to..." is not an option for me. Plus, the application developer has long since quit, and I seriously doubt that we even have the source code for this application. But I digress...)
I have a legacy application (>7 years old, pre blaster worm) that requires an open MSSQL port. It's a mobile application, designed to use WAN connections from mobile phones, so an IP access list is not possible.)
I created a virtual machine running SQL 2000 (fully patched, of course) that resides in a DMZ. Actually completely separate (internal) network space from my office network. Additionally, I have restricted the SQL login used to be able to only update tables specifically used in the app. I have a pretty good linux based firewall running SNORT rules that I have specifically customized to block brute force attacks. In the case that someone sniffs a password, the only thing they could do is update tables with bogus data. (No delete, read, drop, alter, etc. permissions) The customer is aware, and they know that because they are unwilling to spend any money updating the app, they are taking on this risk.
So my server probably shows up if someone is doing SQL port scans, but I don't see what an attacker has to gain. They can't get any data, they can't compromise the server. If there were some zero-day exploit, I could just patch it and restore last night's backup. It's on a VM, so even if they were able to completely root the server, they can't use it as a vector to attack anything meaningful in my network. I suppose they could DoS my network, but what have they gained for all their effort? They've only accomplished making me drag my ass into the office and shut off the offending VM.
I've known MANY good, conscientious, honest, hard-working cops. Unfortunately, it only takes a few jack-booted thugs to ruin the image of 98% of the good ones. And in our society where peace officers have near-absolute power (on a small scale) those rare occurrences make a very strong impression. You know what they say about a few bad apples...
Peter, great post. You honor all thinking people in the world. As a US citizen, but someone who doesn't agree with many US policies, it's nice to see a critical post that can so succinctly point out some deep flaws in democracy, and indeed in human nature, without resorting to brainless America-bashing. As much as I really don't like Bush and his radical pro-greed, anti-freedom policies, it also infuriates me to see people jumping on the we-hate-america bandwagon. There are a LOT of good people here. Remember, 60% - 65% of Americans disagree with Bush's policies, too. (Depending on which poll you trust) Unfortunately, our political system is set up so we can do very little about it until the next election, and even then, it's very difficult to effect any real change.
So thank you. If you ever want to start a country somewhere, let me know!
I just did a Google News search on the story. I picked 10 links to follow at (pseudo) random. Of those 10 links, 9 mentioned YouTube by name in the first paragraph. 3 in the first sentence. The word "blame" is very strong right now, but if I didn't know better, it would be easy for me to assume a real connection. Mark my words, within a few weeks, people will be blaming YouTube, just like people openly blame bands like Rammstein, Marilyn Manson and KMFDM for the Columbine massacre.
Clearly YouTube is at fault here. I mean, people aren't responsible for their own actions, so we need to blame someone. I hope the people at YouTube can sleep at night...
I have a very tight grasp on the English language. Just to humor you, I reread your original post. For the benefit of people reading, I have it quoted here in its entirety:
No I'm not saying its okay. I'm just saying lets not celebrate this person getting off. Its like if a rapist was arrested. I would want him to be found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt or otherwise set free. I wouldn't be happy if he was set free and was the rapist, I certainly wouldn't celebrate it. As people here at slashdot do anytime someone gets away with copyright infringement because the RIAA couldn't prove they did it with a preponderance of evidence.
Spin it how you wish. You are comparing filesharing to rape. You said "...let's not celebrate this person getting off. Its like if a rapist was arrested..." That is literally substituting a rapist for a filesharer in your argument. The two are different. When a rapist gets off on a technicality, it is MUCH different than when a filesharer gets off on a technicality.
Also, before you go insulting other people's English skills, you should make sure your own grammar is correct. I'm not typically a grammar Nazi, but since you've broached the subject of English comprehension, and that is taught in the same class as grammar, I'll go ahead and correct you. In your first sentence alone, I see a missing comma and a missing apostrophe. Another missing apostrophe in the second sentence. And the third. I'll stop there. I think it was in second grade that I learned the difference between "its" and "it's"
in the Tungsten they put Graffiti 2 IIRC, that wasn't Palm's decision. It was the result of a lawsuit (Xerox maybe?) and they were forced to change Graffiti "just enough" so that it wasn't interfering on IP rights. About 30 seconds of Googling could clear this up more definitely, but my I am out of brain for the day...
You nailed my thoughts exactly. I wouldn't deny that such a device could exist, but if it did, it would represent pretty huge (and presumably secret) advances in technology. The risk that one of these would be captured, or malfunction, has to be substantial. If these fell into the wrong hands, then the people who invented and deployed them would lose their advantage. All that being said, why would they be "wasted" on a group of protesters? There are MUCH more low-tech ways of surveillance, if that's their goal. It's only logical that the spooks would save these for places where traditional surveillance wasn't possible, or was impractical.
My guess is that some unfortunate people got some of the brown acid...
The reason they don't publish a number, is that it would develop into an expensive arms race between competitors. Let's say you have two fictional companies. We'll call them Comm Warner and Timecast. Right now, neither publish a number, so either can start cutting people off at "around" 100GB/mo. They have a gentlemen's agreement not to publish any numbers, so both companies benefit from the ambiguity, and the only customers that they piss off are the top 0.01% of users. Keep in mind that only 0.01% (just a made up number, but let's agree that it's a very small number.) of customers even see this monthly limit. Now, for marketing reasons, let's say that Comm Warner decides to break the informal agreement and publish that their d/l limit is 100GB a month. Until now, both companies have just tacitly kicked people when they neared this limit, but now one of them is actually publishing a number. Users of Comm Warner are now entitled to 100GB a month. Timecast sees this as an opportunity to pick up new customers, so they start advertising a 150GB/mo service. By and large, American consumers are stupid. (Not trying to knock Americans, because I am one, but US consumers will swallow 99% of the BS that marketing departments shove down their throats.) They see 100 and 150, and obviously 150 is better than 100, so they switch. So Comm Warner starts offering a 200GB/mo. service. Never mind that most users never hit this ceiling. Now repeat this process until both companies are publishing that their service is unlimited. Now, they are obligated under truth in advertising laws to have a truly unlimited service. Neither company has gained any significant number of users, but both have lost the ability to kick "annoying" users that download a lot of stuff.
Aaaaahhh... Marty! It's nice to hear from you again!
alienmole, you're wasting your energy arguing with this guy. Let's just say he's not the brightest bulb in the pack. I wasted several precious minutes of my life a few weeks back trying to have an intelligent discussion with him, but (as you can see in your very reasonable discourse here) he isn't really capable.
You could come up with all sorts of good points illustrating why the instant death of 8 million people, along with the inevitable collapse of the US economy IS IN FACT SIGNIFICANT for most Americans, (and indeed the whole world) but I think this guy just likes to take contrary points so that he can hear himself talk.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the problem with this article is the idea of "not as bad as we thought." For years, "they" (media, government, scientists, etc.) have painted radiation as the worst possible thing in the world. We have seen images (both real and fictional) of people and animals that were horribly mutated by radiation. There were movies about communities built over old army bases that had high cancer rates, and insects from nuclear test sites that were monsterized into giant killers. Now, there's a study suggesting that it might not be "so bad." Unfortunately, compared to how it was painted before "not so bad" still has room to be pretty awful.
To put another way, I could tell you "Oops! That dinner I just served you will make your eyes melt, your teeth and fingernails fall out, cripple all your muscles, then slowly, and in the most painful possible way, kill you over a period of 2-6 months." Then, after a couple hours, if I said "Oh wait, I was mistaken, looks like it'll just make your dick fall off," you'd probably be overjoyed.
If the applications tab, if you choose "End Task" then it does, in fact, send an exit signal to the application. However, if you go to the process tab and "End Process," it kills it dead immediately. There are pretty rare occasions (such as a badly written low-level networking app that has connected threads) where "End Task" doesn't kill the process, and may even hang the process completely, but I've only seen that with a few specific applications.
Process Explorer and pskill are both applications written by Mark Russinovich. He (very literally) knows more about Windows than the people who wrote it, so Microsoft hired him. I think they were embarrassed that an outsider knew their OS better than they did. Anyhow, his applications became Microsoft applications. If you're a Windows user and not familiar with his tools, I highly recommend checking them out. They will make your Windows world much more enjoyable. They can be had here for free, as in beer.
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but it's not quite so bleak as you point out in your post. I am anxiously awaiting the day when I can use Ubuntu or MacOS at the office and run all the necessary applications for my job, but until that day comes, it's helpful to know how to kill offensive apps in Windows, too.
OK, this is Slashdot. Nobody here here has a wife let alone a mistress
You are right about the backups, though...
Experts-Exchange went to hell in a handbasket. My company actually paid for a subscription. About a year and a half ago, you could post a question, and very knowledgeable people were climbing all over themselves to answer it. Now, you post something, and a bunch of people with less IT experience than me answer it with things I've already tried. (and stated that I tried in the question.) At one time it was a great resource, but now, not so much.
I'll give you that it's not really Edison's company, given that it's been broken up, sold off, re-purchased, reassembled again half a dozen times, but it's still a true statement that Edison was the founder of GE. Much like Bill Gates isn't the owner of Microsoft, but if it's still around in 100 years, it'll be in large part because of his vision early on. (along with a bit of good fortune and great timing.)
He sure did, and Edison's company clearly lost and has faded into historical obscurity. What was that company called again? Electric... General... General... something...
In regards to parenting, I agree completely. My children are under 2, so the statement was hypothetical. My 2 year old's laptop doesn't have Wi-Fi. ;)
Now, on the other hand, if I crack a WEP key, I am clearly crossing a black and white line. Cracking WEP, although trivial, requires effort on my part. If my neighbor puts up a sign on his front door reading "GOLD INSIDE." and buys a really flimsy lock, it's still clearly crossing a line for me to help myself to said booty.
Nothing sensitive at all to be had. No names, SSN, credit cards. Just survey information for a cleaning company. If someone took the time and effort to hack the server, they'd have full access to see how clean the bathrooms were for various companies around town. And just to clarify another point; the server IS behind a (pretty good) firewall. Any brute force attempts to crack passwords will result in an IP ban, especially if they try to use the sa account. (Since our app doesn't use that) I just have the MSSQL port (and only the MSSQL port) forwarded to the virtual server, segregated on its own network. (not even going through the same switch as my production network) The only real worry, as pointed out by a previous post, is the unlikely event that someone roots the machine, then figures out a way to use that to attack the host machine before I discover it's been rooted. I'd say pretty damn unlikely. It doesn't keep me up at night. Even if they got that far, it's not like we have anything on the host network worth stealing. HR information is segregated on a different network. I suppose they could see spaghetti source code for various projects my company is working on, but that's so damn convoluted even our programmers can't understand it.
Case in point: (Note, I am a sysadmin, not a programmer. Any solution that starts with "just change the application to..." is not an option for me. Plus, the application developer has long since quit, and I seriously doubt that we even have the source code for this application. But I digress...)
I have a legacy application (>7 years old, pre blaster worm) that requires an open MSSQL port. It's a mobile application, designed to use WAN connections from mobile phones, so an IP access list is not possible.)
I created a virtual machine running SQL 2000 (fully patched, of course) that resides in a DMZ. Actually completely separate (internal) network space from my office network. Additionally, I have restricted the SQL login used to be able to only update tables specifically used in the app. I have a pretty good linux based firewall running SNORT rules that I have specifically customized to block brute force attacks. In the case that someone sniffs a password, the only thing they could do is update tables with bogus data. (No delete, read, drop, alter, etc. permissions) The customer is aware, and they know that because they are unwilling to spend any money updating the app, they are taking on this risk.
So my server probably shows up if someone is doing SQL port scans, but I don't see what an attacker has to gain. They can't get any data, they can't compromise the server. If there were some zero-day exploit, I could just patch it and restore last night's backup. It's on a VM, so even if they were able to completely root the server, they can't use it as a vector to attack anything meaningful in my network. I suppose they could DoS my network, but what have they gained for all their effort? They've only accomplished making me drag my ass into the office and shut off the offending VM.
Am I missing something here?
I've known MANY good, conscientious, honest, hard-working cops. Unfortunately, it only takes a few jack-booted thugs to ruin the image of 98% of the good ones. And in our society where peace officers have near-absolute power (on a small scale) those rare occurrences make a very strong impression. You know what they say about a few bad apples...
Peter, great post. You honor all thinking people in the world. As a US citizen, but someone who doesn't agree with many US policies, it's nice to see a critical post that can so succinctly point out some deep flaws in democracy, and indeed in human nature, without resorting to brainless America-bashing. As much as I really don't like Bush and his radical pro-greed, anti-freedom policies, it also infuriates me to see people jumping on the we-hate-america bandwagon. There are a LOT of good people here. Remember, 60% - 65% of Americans disagree with Bush's policies, too. (Depending on which poll you trust) Unfortunately, our political system is set up so we can do very little about it until the next election, and even then, it's very difficult to effect any real change.
So thank you. If you ever want to start a country somewhere, let me know!
Very nice post. Wish I had mod points...
I just did a Google News search on the story. I picked 10 links to follow at (pseudo) random. Of those 10 links, 9 mentioned YouTube by name in the first paragraph. 3 in the first sentence. The word "blame" is very strong right now, but if I didn't know better, it would be easy for me to assume a real connection. Mark my words, within a few weeks, people will be blaming YouTube, just like people openly blame bands like Rammstein, Marilyn Manson and KMFDM for the Columbine massacre.
Clearly YouTube is at fault here. I mean, people aren't responsible for their own actions, so we need to blame someone. I hope the people at YouTube can sleep at night...
/sarcasm
Spin it how you wish. You are comparing filesharing to rape. You said "...let's not celebrate this person getting off. Its like if a rapist was arrested..." That is literally substituting a rapist for a filesharer in your argument. The two are different. When a rapist gets off on a technicality, it is MUCH different than when a filesharer gets off on a technicality.
Also, before you go insulting other people's English skills, you should make sure your own grammar is correct. I'm not typically a grammar Nazi, but since you've broached the subject of English comprehension, and that is taught in the same class as grammar, I'll go ahead and correct you. In your first sentence alone, I see a missing comma and a missing apostrophe. Another missing apostrophe in the second sentence. And the third. I'll stop there. I think it was in second grade that I learned the difference between "its" and "it's"
No child left behind indeed...
FILESHARING = RAPE
Wait... I bet you work for the RIAA. In that case, I can understand your argument.
You nailed my thoughts exactly. I wouldn't deny that such a device could exist, but if it did, it would represent pretty huge (and presumably secret) advances in technology. The risk that one of these would be captured, or malfunction, has to be substantial. If these fell into the wrong hands, then the people who invented and deployed them would lose their advantage. All that being said, why would they be "wasted" on a group of protesters? There are MUCH more low-tech ways of surveillance, if that's their goal. It's only logical that the spooks would save these for places where traditional surveillance wasn't possible, or was impractical.
My guess is that some unfortunate people got some of the brown acid...
Should we be worried that you seem to know so much about the price of Plutonium? ;)
The reason they don't publish a number, is that it would develop into an expensive arms race between competitors. Let's say you have two fictional companies. We'll call them Comm Warner and Timecast. Right now, neither publish a number, so either can start cutting people off at "around" 100GB/mo. They have a gentlemen's agreement not to publish any numbers, so both companies benefit from the ambiguity, and the only customers that they piss off are the top 0.01% of users. Keep in mind that only 0.01% (just a made up number, but let's agree that it's a very small number.) of customers even see this monthly limit. Now, for marketing reasons, let's say that Comm Warner decides to break the informal agreement and publish that their d/l limit is 100GB a month. Until now, both companies have just tacitly kicked people when they neared this limit, but now one of them is actually publishing a number. Users of Comm Warner are now entitled to 100GB a month. Timecast sees this as an opportunity to pick up new customers, so they start advertising a 150GB/mo service. By and large, American consumers are stupid. (Not trying to knock Americans, because I am one, but US consumers will swallow 99% of the BS that marketing departments shove down their throats.) They see 100 and 150, and obviously 150 is better than 100, so they switch. So Comm Warner starts offering a 200GB/mo. service. Never mind that most users never hit this ceiling. Now repeat this process until both companies are publishing that their service is unlimited. Now, they are obligated under truth in advertising laws to have a truly unlimited service. Neither company has gained any significant number of users, but both have lost the ability to kick "annoying" users that download a lot of stuff.
Aaaaahhh... Marty! It's nice to hear from you again!
alienmole, you're wasting your energy arguing with this guy. Let's just say he's not the brightest bulb in the pack. I wasted several precious minutes of my life a few weeks back trying to have an intelligent discussion with him, but (as you can see in your very reasonable discourse here) he isn't really capable.
You could come up with all sorts of good points illustrating why the instant death of 8 million people, along with the inevitable collapse of the US economy IS IN FACT SIGNIFICANT for most Americans, (and indeed the whole world) but I think this guy just likes to take contrary points so that he can hear himself talk.