The article says that they'll be charging an "unspecified fee." I'm curious how much that will be. Also, I wonder whether they'll have trouble with liability/insurance issues.
I noticed that the original post, which hadn't been moderated at all before, got marked down as "overrated." How does this work? I'd be less confused if it was off-topic or obvious flamebait, but it seemed to be pretty innocuous.
Fair enough. I'm guessing that if Syllable takes off, there might be some development tools that make it even easier. Overall, it looks like an interesting project, and I'll be eager to see what happens with it.
That looks promising. Will there be an easy way to see a citation index - for example, listing all the publications that cite a given article? (Citeseer does this, and this can be important to academic types.)
The article claimed that there were abundant Linux applications available on Freshmeat, but if you wrote an IRC client for Syllable, your version might have a chance of becoming the official one. Excuse me, but doesn't this make Linux look more appealing? I would have also liked to see information about what would be involved in developing applications for Syllable. Is there a well-documented API? What about support for multiple languages? (I tried to check the official site, but it seemed to be having trouble handling the traffic.)
Do you think he wanted to get credit for the viruses and was a little overeager to "confess?" What are the odds of other people coming forward and saying, "No, I did it!"
Well, she's apparently shown a lot of interest in a decryption program called SUQ.DIQ . (No, I'm not making this up.) She does have a web page, with lots of pictures of horses. http://users.pandora.be/kim.vanvaeck/ (Why am I thinking of Catherine the Great?)
Since state transportation departments usually get a substantial amount of federal funding, his employer is indeed us, or at least those of us who live in the US.
Yeah, I remember hearing one of the anti-smoking ads on the radio that Big Tobacco had been forced to sponsor. It was interesting how lame it was, almost like it was supposed to be easy to ignore. Not that I'm saying that Big Tobacco is ethically challenged or anything....
He has two examples of jokes posted around the place about the boss's game playing by employees in fact
I'd be really curious to know who came up with
the cartoons. They appear to be Photoshop-type images that might have been done by someone with limited artistic ability but decent computer skills. Maybe someone a lot like the fired admin....
The part about Blake spying on the other people too is creepy. I'm curious about this Australian hacker, though. There was one document on the site saying that maybe the department should get someone trained in basic security. This suggests that ALDOT might not have the most knowledgeable folks. This makes me wonder whether they were really capable of determining that an incident was definitely the result of spy software.
OK, I'm from a state where we just had our third former governor indicted. Let me explain how this works. It sounds like the guy's boss was a fairly high-level employee, since the account used the term "bureau chief." Especially in Alabama, this probably means that there's some political patronage involved. It's quite likely that using a computer wasn't the most important part of the boss's job - making the appropriate campaign contributions would have been far more crucial to his survival. So it may have been just fine with the ALDOT administration that the Right-of-Way Bureau chief was a political hack that spent a good bit of time playing solitaire. Hey, he's at least showing up, as opposed to spending most of his working hours out on the golf course.
Some other posters were right on target - generally using spyware to make your boss look bad is a pretty risky proposition. But here there was another issue - the future election. An admin that gets embarrassing screenshots is very dangerous, because they could be useful to the governor's opponent and could generally embarrass the current administration. The ALDOT administration are most likely all political appointees. That means that if the current governor loses, they'll be out of jobs. (Heck, if the guy's spyware habit created a scandal, they could still be asked to step down.)
Why would virus writers bother to go to Michigan when there are coffee shops, etc, with free, anonymous access? (Of course, I'm sure that nobody on Slashdot would ever think of wardriving so we won't even consider that.)
Illinois also gets snow, though not as much as Michigan, so our community wireless project makes a point of waterproofing nodes. The card is enclosed in a really tough container, and they're using a combination of electrical tape and plumbers goo to waterproof the connections.
Champaign-Urbana also has a community wireless project http://www.cuwireless.net/. We're thinking hard about some of the issues brought up in other posts, e.g. security and other ISPs. Providing access to our community is important to us, but we're not oblivious to the risk of abuse. We're currently discussing some possible approaches to addressing this, though I don't think that there will be any silver bullets.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh man, I guess my Lego Mindstorm kit won't be quite enough....
The article says that they'll be charging an "unspecified fee." I'm curious how much that will be. Also, I wonder whether they'll have trouble with liability/insurance issues.
I noticed that the original post, which hadn't been moderated at all before, got marked down as "overrated." How does this work? I'd be less confused if it was off-topic or obvious flamebait, but it seemed to be pretty innocuous.
Fair enough. I'm guessing that if Syllable takes off, there might be some development tools that make it even easier. Overall, it looks like an interesting project, and I'll be eager to see what happens with it.
OK, I was able to get through. From what I saw about GUI programming with the Syllable API, it looks like it will be sort of laborious, but doable.
That looks promising. Will there be an easy way to see a citation index - for example, listing all the publications that cite a given article? (Citeseer does this, and this can be important to academic types.)
The article claimed that there were abundant Linux applications available on Freshmeat, but if you wrote an IRC client for Syllable, your version might have a chance of becoming the official one. Excuse me, but doesn't this make Linux look more appealing? I would have also liked to see information about what would be involved in developing applications for Syllable. Is there a well-documented API? What about support for multiple languages? (I tried to check the official site, but it seemed to be having trouble handling the traffic.)
Do you think he wanted to get credit for the viruses and was a little overeager to "confess?" What are the odds of other people coming forward and saying, "No, I did it!"
Well, she's apparently shown a lot of interest in a decryption program called SUQ.DIQ . (No, I'm not making this up.) She does have a web page, with lots of pictures of horses. http://users.pandora.be/kim.vanvaeck/ (Why am I thinking of Catherine the Great?)
Since state transportation departments usually get a substantial amount of federal funding, his employer is indeed us, or at least those of us who live in the US.
Yeah, I remember hearing one of the anti-smoking ads on the radio that Big Tobacco had been forced to sponsor. It was interesting how lame it was, almost like it was supposed to be easy to ignore. Not that I'm saying that Big Tobacco is ethically challenged or anything....
He has two examples of jokes posted around the place about the boss's game playing by employees in fact
....
I'd be really curious to know who came up with the cartoons. They appear to be Photoshop-type images that might have been done by someone with limited artistic ability but decent computer skills. Maybe someone a lot like the fired admin
The part about Blake spying on the other people too is creepy. I'm curious about this Australian hacker, though. There was one document on the site saying that maybe the department should get someone trained in basic security. This suggests that ALDOT might not have the most knowledgeable folks. This makes me wonder whether they were really capable of determining that an incident was definitely the result of spy software.
Hmm, so maybe the popup ads hawking the anti-popup software is more like the Mafia selling "protection."
Let me contribute some working URLs:/ features/n_8815/ 2 01365 j html?articleID=10700824
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw
http://www.securitypipeline.com/policy_privacy/18
http://www.nyls.edu/pages/1363.asp
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
HTH.
Wow, what's next? RJ Reynolds putting stop-smoking ads in their cigarette packs?
Is this guy still the provost at SUNY Stony Brook?
OK, I'm from a state where we just had our third former governor indicted. Let me explain how this works. It sounds like the guy's boss was a fairly high-level employee, since the account used the term "bureau chief." Especially in Alabama, this probably means that there's some political patronage involved. It's quite likely that using a computer wasn't the most important part of the boss's job - making the appropriate campaign contributions would have been far more crucial to his survival. So it may have been just fine with the ALDOT administration that the Right-of-Way Bureau chief was a political hack that spent a good bit of time playing solitaire. Hey, he's at least showing up, as opposed to spending most of his working hours out on the golf course.
Some other posters were right on target - generally using spyware to make your boss look bad is a pretty risky proposition. But here there was another issue - the future election. An admin that gets embarrassing screenshots is very dangerous, because they could be useful to the governor's opponent and could generally embarrass the current administration. The ALDOT administration are most likely all political appointees. That means that if the current governor loses, they'll be out of jobs. (Heck, if the guy's spyware habit created a scandal, they could still be asked to step down.)
Why would virus writers bother to go to Michigan when there are coffee shops, etc, with free, anonymous access? (Of course, I'm sure that nobody on Slashdot would ever think of wardriving so we won't even consider that.)
Illinois also gets snow, though not as much as Michigan, so our community wireless project makes a point of waterproofing nodes. The card is enclosed in a really tough container, and they're using a combination of electrical tape and plumbers goo to waterproof the connections.
Apparently, SBC prohibits their members from sharing bandwidth, but their access points are so loud that this might happen anyhow.
Champaign-Urbana also has a community wireless project http://www.cuwireless.net/. We're thinking hard about some of the issues brought up in other posts, e.g. security and other ISPs. Providing access to our community is important to us, but we're not oblivious to the risk of abuse. We're currently discussing some possible approaches to addressing this, though I don't think that there will be any silver bullets.
Speaking of intrusiveness, I thought this was funny: http://www.aclu.org/pizza/index.html?orgid=EA07190 4&MX=1414&H=0
Yeah, and I think his singing (remember "Let the Eagle Soar" from "Fahrenheit 911?") puts Ashcroft in a special category.
Yeah, and the masterpiece known as Windows 98.