Hi, I'm a third-party observer on slashdot with only a 3-sentence block of summary text to guide me since I obviously didn't have time to RTFA before posting my comment, but I can easily out-think all of the great minds in NASA to explain the phenomenon on slashdot from the comfort of my home in my pajamas.
I mean, jeeze, don't you think they thought of that? Even if you're not going to RTFA, your explanation was so freaking obvious that I'm sure someone in NASA, if not every single one of them, has thought of this. If it were that simple, do you think they'd have continued referring to it as a mystery?
I think it was graphing calculator that I crashed once when playing with one of my school's macintoshes. It closed out and displayed a dialog, something to the order of, "Fatal error -11 has ocurred," with not an OK button, but a "Darn!" button. That programmer became my hero, and made me want to program:)
Not so fast. First of all, how bad off would you be if you lost everything in your homedir? For me, it'd be tantamount to a windows virus infection: I'd lose everything that was important. Everything irreplaceable.
Aside from that, the first rule of linux/unix computer security is that, once the malicious user has a foothold into the system (say, a non-root shell) it's essentially equivalent to having root. In this case, all a blackhat needs to do is use this exploit to open up a shell on some port and report back, and then they can poke around and exploit at their will. That, or a virus could have a common local root exploit payload. Either way, you just can't blindly trust the root/normal user distinction.
Aha, what good timing. I just found my very own kitten mewing outside my window, couldn't have been more than a month old. Unfortunately, my lease doesn't let me keep animals, so I gave it up to the animal rescue league. I think it's still available. If you're in the Worcester MA area, email me at kitten AT waymouth DOT org to adopt it (free).
Reimage the drive? Excuse me? Isn't the whole point of a honeypot to study how they got in? For that matter, the first thing you do after any breach of security is shut everything down and don't change ANYTHING on the drive so you can pick up the pieces.
I was with you to here:
Additionally, knowing that the file was uncompressed from lossy AAC compression, it should be possible to recompress it in such a way as exactly to recover the original compressed file, just sans DRM encumbrance.
No. You can't take the uncompressed data from an AAC file, AAC compress it, and hope to get back the initial file. You're going to lose quality.
Looking at their results for a whois on my domain, I found something rather stupid. I clicked on the DMOZ results (hey! I didn't know someone put me in there...) and discovered that they convert DMOZ urls to all capitals. Wonderful. This is highly unlikely to work on a majority of websites... case matters in URLs!
Hmm. It didn't succeed at finding my key from the keyring in linux (with my windows drive mounted on/mnt/windows), but I didn't dig around to try to figure out how to make it behave. I just went in to VLC and extracted my new key from the "free single of the week". It seems that with the change to itunes v4.5, they gave me a new user key... but I'm all set now.
Yeah, I had the same question with Playfair 0.5.0. I assume hymm works the same way. All you need to do is download VLC, a media player, install it in windows alongside your iTunes installation, and play a single protected (.m4p) file. VLC will place your key in $MYDOCUMENTS/Application Data/drm or something similar (just dig around in there). Make a ".drms" directory in your homedir (assuming you're running linux), and copy the file you found there, and you should be good to go.
Yes, you read that right. I expect my friends to hack into my computer should I reach an untimely demise, and I would do the same for them.
Allow me to explain. I know a lot of people online, some of whom none of my RL friends/family are aware of. I expect my friends to be aware of this, and to break into my computer (I dunno, rewrite the root password hash or something) to get at my AIM buddy list and email address book to make sure everyone hears about what happened to me. I also expect them to do appropriate things with my various (mostly useless) data. There are a very tiny few things I wish to die with me, and those are encrypted.
I hope my friends realize I'd want them to do this for me, and I'd definitely do it for them. It's not like I'd go in there snooping and spying and stuff, I'd be very sensitive to their privacy... but some things need to be done.
Hi. I was that empathic geek that you're suggesting. For reasons I'm not sure about (my upbringing? my genes? not sure...) I have always, and will always, care about what people are thinking. I always look to see things from another person's side, always hear someone out, always assume the best of people in any situation. I'm able to tell what people are feeling, and this helps my social interactions tremendously.
Now, that is.
In high school, being an empathic social outcast was probably even worse than being a cocky egotistical nerd. The thing is, it didn't change the situation -- people were still mean to me, and despite how I tried to see things from their side, despite how I looked at the situation... there was nothing to find.
I tried to see how I could act that would make them think better of me, but soon I realized that not only did I not like acting in a way that wasn't myself, it didn't matter in the slightest. I tried to be kind when I could, but it was very difficult when there was a barrage of hate and negativity coming at me on a daily basis.
What'd my empathy give me? It simply meant that it was all the more clear to me just what they were thinking, and it mattered all the more. Having strong empathy means you truly care when they call you names, talk about you behind (or in front of) your back, and countless other methods of torment. "Sticks and stones" my ass, words definitely hurt me. Putting myself in their shoes made me sad as I wondered why they wouldn't try to get to know me and be my friend. It engendered hostility, and can you blame me?
About all that being the empathic geek got me was getting hurt a lot. It was like having a wide open door straight into my soul, and they could strike into my deepest self with ease. No matter how many ways I tried, there was no getting past that.
Empathy works great for me now in my friendships, but back then, it was a curse. It would only help for the nerds to be empathic if the "cool" crowd is too, and they were quite simply not. Eventually, I managed to grow some self confidence and learn to turn down my caring just a bit... but only after realizing that I had to because they didn't care how I felt.
Your idea is nice, but I don't think it was the solution you think it would have been. It doesn't matter in this case anyway, because empathy is not something you can teach someone.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, I'm a third-party observer on slashdot with only a 3-sentence block of summary text to guide me since I obviously didn't have time to RTFA before posting my comment, but I can easily out-think all of the great minds in NASA to explain the phenomenon on slashdot from the comfort of my home in my pajamas.
I mean, jeeze, don't you think they thought of that? Even if you're not going to RTFA, your explanation was so freaking obvious that I'm sure someone in NASA, if not every single one of them, has thought of this. If it were that simple, do you think they'd have continued referring to it as a mystery?
I think it was graphing calculator that I crashed once when playing with one of my school's macintoshes. It closed out and displayed a dialog, something to the order of, "Fatal error -11 has ocurred," with not an OK button, but a "Darn!" button. That programmer became my hero, and made me want to program :)
Anyone else see that? Was it Graphing Calculator?
Modafinil can wake you up, give you more energy, make you think more clearly, but not speed up your metabolism or give you a headache (usually).
Careful now. WWE didn't kick their ass in court, the PTC and WWE settled out of court. There's a difference.
from the article:
...resulting in that frustrating middle-of-the-night situation where you wait at a red light on empty streets.
Yes... I wait at that red light... yes.
Not so fast. First of all, how bad off would you be if you lost everything in your homedir? For me, it'd be tantamount to a windows virus infection: I'd lose everything that was important. Everything irreplaceable. Aside from that, the first rule of linux/unix computer security is that, once the malicious user has a foothold into the system (say, a non-root shell) it's essentially equivalent to having root. In this case, all a blackhat needs to do is use this exploit to open up a shell on some port and report back, and then they can poke around and exploit at their will. That, or a virus could have a common local root exploit payload. Either way, you just can't blindly trust the root/normal user distinction.
Aha, what good timing. I just found my very own kitten mewing outside my window, couldn't have been more than a month old. Unfortunately, my lease doesn't let me keep animals, so I gave it up to the animal rescue league. I think it's still available. If you're in the Worcester MA area, email me at kitten AT waymouth DOT org to adopt it (free).
obCutePictures
Or, you know, people can do what they damn well feel like, and not over-strain themselves to conform to what AP is doing?
Reimage the drive? Excuse me? Isn't the whole point of a honeypot to study how they got in? For that matter, the first thing you do after any breach of security is shut everything down and don't change ANYTHING on the drive so you can pick up the pieces.
I was with you to here: Additionally, knowing that the file was uncompressed from lossy AAC compression, it should be possible to recompress it in such a way as exactly to recover the original compressed file, just sans DRM encumbrance. No. You can't take the uncompressed data from an AAC file, AAC compress it, and hope to get back the initial file. You're going to lose quality.
Looking at their results for a whois on my domain, I found something rather stupid. I clicked on the DMOZ results (hey! I didn't know someone put me in there...) and discovered that they convert DMOZ urls to all capitals. Wonderful. This is highly unlikely to work on a majority of websites... case matters in URLs!
No, because these days you're not supposed to do the low-level formatting yourself. That's done by the manufacturer.
I'm not sure that this site is working under the same definition of "plog", but then again, I had never heard of a "project log" before this article.
Hmm. It didn't succeed at finding my key from the keyring in linux (with my windows drive mounted on /mnt/windows), but I didn't dig around to try to figure out how to make it behave. I just went in to VLC and extracted my new key from the "free single of the week". It seems that with the change to itunes v4.5, they gave me a new user key... but I'm all set now.
Yeah, I had the same question with Playfair 0.5.0. I assume hymm works the same way. All you need to do is download VLC, a media player, install it in windows alongside your iTunes installation, and play a single protected (.m4p) file. VLC will place your key in $MYDOCUMENTS/Application Data/drm or something similar (just dig around in there). Make a ".drms" directory in your homedir (assuming you're running linux), and copy the file you found there, and you should be good to go.
Yes, you read that right. I expect my friends to hack into my computer should I reach an untimely demise, and I would do the same for them.
Allow me to explain. I know a lot of people online, some of whom none of my RL friends/family are aware of. I expect my friends to be aware of this, and to break into my computer (I dunno, rewrite the root password hash or something) to get at my AIM buddy list and email address book to make sure everyone hears about what happened to me. I also expect them to do appropriate things with my various (mostly useless) data. There are a very tiny few things I wish to die with me, and those are encrypted.
I hope my friends realize I'd want them to do this for me, and I'd definitely do it for them. It's not like I'd go in there snooping and spying and stuff, I'd be very sensitive to their privacy... but some things need to be done.
I think the writer of that comment needs to get a life! Of all the things to gripe about, geez...
Oh, but there are several one-handed keyboards.
Bauxite, is that what you build that awesome baux with?
Hi. I was that empathic geek that you're suggesting. For reasons I'm not sure about (my upbringing? my genes? not sure...) I have always, and will always, care about what people are thinking. I always look to see things from another person's side, always hear someone out, always assume the best of people in any situation. I'm able to tell what people are feeling, and this helps my social interactions tremendously.
Now, that is.
In high school, being an empathic social outcast was probably even worse than being a cocky egotistical nerd. The thing is, it didn't change the situation -- people were still mean to me, and despite how I tried to see things from their side, despite how I looked at the situation... there was nothing to find.
I tried to see how I could act that would make them think better of me, but soon I realized that not only did I not like acting in a way that wasn't myself, it didn't matter in the slightest. I tried to be kind when I could, but it was very difficult when there was a barrage of hate and negativity coming at me on a daily basis.
What'd my empathy give me? It simply meant that it was all the more clear to me just what they were thinking, and it mattered all the more. Having strong empathy means you truly care when they call you names, talk about you behind (or in front of) your back, and countless other methods of torment. "Sticks and stones" my ass, words definitely hurt me. Putting myself in their shoes made me sad as I wondered why they wouldn't try to get to know me and be my friend. It engendered hostility, and can you blame me?
About all that being the empathic geek got me was getting hurt a lot. It was like having a wide open door straight into my soul, and they could strike into my deepest self with ease. No matter how many ways I tried, there was no getting past that.
Empathy works great for me now in my friendships, but back then, it was a curse. It would only help for the nerds to be empathic if the "cool" crowd is too, and they were quite simply not. Eventually, I managed to grow some self confidence and learn to turn down my caring just a bit... but only after realizing that I had to because they didn't care how I felt.
Your idea is nice, but I don't think it was the solution you think it would have been. It doesn't matter in this case anyway, because empathy is not something you can teach someone.