About time people faced some real consequences for these sort of actions. It's a shame (but not unexpected) that they picked on a hospice to make the example, rather than say a large corporation, but the principle stands. If you dont encrypt private, confidential data you should be held accountable. No more plain text passwords in database tables, no more unencrypted personally identifiable information on removable/portable devices (or in database files for that matter) . No excuses.
Reminds me of the old fable. Sometimes all it takes is someone who isn't deeply immersed in a subject to come along and point out what has been under your nose all along (see also "wood for the trees") Of course when someone does it to you and you're supposed to the "expert" a lot of people get all huffy and defensive as if it's a personal insult. Which it isn't.
This is why it's also sometimes best to have a troublesome problem looked at by "a second pair of eyes" as they might spot the "elephant inf the room" that you've actually been sitting on all along.
Right that's quite enough clichés for one morning.... Let's face it. At the end of the day you've sometimes got to do your blue sky thinking inside the box:)
I don't even set up a Google account. I can live without all that crap thankyouverymuch - The only two "apps" I wanted I wrote and compiled myself, temporarily allowed my phone to load unsigned apks so I could install them and er.. that's it:)
If you're alluding to ripping the disc then if it takes 90 minutes I'd be taking my DVD drive back. Should take no more than 5 to 10 minutes on a half decent machine.
Well all I can say is that in 2011 I watched 0 items of Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA produced entertainment. In 2012 it was again 0 items. I'm not expecting to watch/listen to any of their crap in 2013 either.
However the MegaUpload shutdown was annoying as a friend and I used to swap audio tracks for some projects we've been working on using the service (he lives on a different continent to me and had a MegaUpload account which just seemed convenient to use) Not a massive problem as we got round this by me setting up an FTP server and allowing it through my firewall etc. but slightly annoying none the less.
But the root question is why would anyone even want to share the forumlaic, cliched, unimaginative crap produced by members of the MPAA ? I'd consider being given a DVD/CD/memory stick of their crap the same way I would consider someone giving me herpes.
There is a whole world of wonderful films/music/art available world wide. The jaded, tired old crap produced by these people is absolutely not worth giving the time of day to. Seen one, seen 'em all. Quite frankly I'd rather watch some ants foraging... or even a cat washing it's bottom.
I like my bread freshly baked either from my local baker (first choice) or from my trusty bread machine. I have no interest in old, crappy preservative riddled, chemical crap in my food thank you very much. Maybe useful for astronauts or arctic explorers etc. but this is exactly the sort of thing that is simply not needed.
Not to mention the fact that a bit of bread mould is good for you !
Replying simply to undo inadvertent mod (didn't mean to click the drop down whilst scrolling the page;)
But whilst I'm at it Gnome 3 is absolutely not worth a try. The gnome project should be buried as of this point. Their attitude towards their users was so disgracefully arrogant that every developer associated with gnome should be permanently sent to pariah land.
There is no way in hell anything from that bunch of self righteous pricks is geting anywhere near a system of mine again.
Need me to use a special device whilst I'm employed by you ? Easy just provide me with the device. Then you can do what you like with it. Lock it down, encrypt it, remote manage it etc. etc.
Need me to access IT infrastructure from home ? No problem, give me a physically separate network to use (via a mobile phone should be fine these days)
My devices will never be connected to any employers network - nor will I use employers devices on my own network. The two things are seperate and should be physically separate.
There should be complete separation between home/work life including all use of devices/networks etc. etc.
Indeed. Make up your own belief system and follow it for as long as convenient. When it no longer fits make up a new one. There's plenty of gods/rituals to choose from so find something that works for you. It's an infinite omniverse out there and it does not fit in the human mind.
Religion should make you grateful for your existence, appreciative of other existences (from the low to the high) and should help you get your way through life. The minute you find yourself telling others how to live or what to believe in you should realise that you're wrong.
"We place no reliance on virgin or pigeon. Our method is science. Our object religion".
> "It monitors all outbound connection attempts by applications and the operating system, and asks users to permit or block any URLs and port numbers that are accessed."
Excellent. + 100 this is the way things should be !!!
I've been yammering on about this for ages now without being able to get any Linux devs interested. As far as I'm concerned without such a feature Linux is a dead duck as far as being an operating system suitable for the home user. I've stopped putting Ubuntu on peoples machines due to the complete lack of such a firewall. And no. IP tables and Firestarter etc. are not the same thing *at all*.
The end user should always be given the final decision before *ANYTHING* on the computer is allowed internet access. This single feature of the Zone Alarm firewall on Windows has allowed numerous "non computer savvy" friends and relatives to realise they have a problem well before malware has been able to phone home. Not to mention blocking all the crappy "auto updaters" and other such crap that idiots have started putting in their Windows apps.
1 The people who write Zone Alarm for Windows get it.
2 Moxie Marlinspike gets it.
3 The Linux devs simply do not get it. They seem to believe we live in Magic Fairyland where no program would ever do anything malicious and anything should be able to connect out without the user knowing about it. "But we're only fetching cover art/some other stuff". No you're reporting information to a third party that I do not wish sent thank you very much.
Without this simple feature your computer is simply a digital spy silently allowing any program to send any information it wants anywhere in the world.
Totally unacceptable in 2011. All machines should have firewalls that allow the user full control of what applications are allowed to talk to the local network and/or the internet.
What we need is for the human race to wake up and understand that we all do stupid stuff at some point. Being drunk and having your picture taken wearing womens underwear/naked/passed out in front of a bong/canoodling with a stripper (of the same sex !) etc. etc. etc. does not make you the equivalent of Hitler (unless of course you are Hitler) It does not demonstrate your ability to perform a particular task efficiently.
The sum total of your life and being cannot be summarised by one image frozen in time. You are a conscious entity that feels it's way through life, makes it up as you go along and often gets it worng. That's the fun of being alive !
Anyone who hasn't done something daft or embarassing at some point in their life is probably a socially inadequate loser who daren't lose their self control because that's when they're start killing people.
Simply put it should be illegal for companies to discrimante against someone for something "offensive" or "tasteless" they were pictured doing years ago which has now surfaced "online" (probably from something taken when they were a drunken teenager)
The "moral minority" are puritanical, small minded prudes who can't get a hard on between 'em (that's why the world needs shrinks and Viagra). Quite how society decided theirs was the voice that should be listened to is beyond me.
Weirdfolk arise ! Stand erect for your abnormality because you're better than them !
We should, nay have, a right to be ourselves with all our faults , all our weaknesses and all our strengths. That's what makes the show work !
Personally I only hire "weirdos" as I find they're usually more independent, more creative, and do a better job than the "straights". When a problem arises they creatively solve it (or work round it) whilst the "normals" just sit on their hands waiting to be told what to do.
Praise "Bob" ! And fuck' em if they can't take a joke.
As all us 'puter folk know any arbitary sequence of bytes can be viewed as expressing a number. e.g. using 4 bytes we can represent a signed integer between -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. From this we can see that any sequence of bytes (no matter it's length) can be viewed as expressing a number.
As items of "digital media" are simply a sequence of bytes then, in common with all other sequences of bytes, they can be viewed as simply a number (albeit a very large number)
And let's face it the idea of trying to control the exchange of numbers is totally absurd ! Can you imagine somebody claiming that I couldn't give my friend the number 93 ?
Oh how the future will look back and laugh at this age:)
If you look into what actually occurred it would appear that Mr McKinnon simply took advantage of the fact that many of the computers on NASAs network were installed with default settings. Which at the time included having an admnistrative account created with a blank password (If I remember correctly this may have been a version of Windows NT ? Sorry I can't remember at present nor can I locate the article I read about it).
So his "hacking" consisted of running a script/scripts against known NASA IP blocks which simply looked for machines with blank passwords or open shares. And if you're running a machine with an open share on the internet then surely you're running a public share and are inviting public access ?
If that's hacking then inserting a CD you've been given in a CD Rom drive or plugging in a USB drive you've been given into a USB port and accessing their contents is hacking too.
It's a total disgrace that Britain would even consider an individual to be extradited with evidence as flimsy, and frankly pathetic, as this. The only possible reasons are that the NASA/The US Government are totally embarrassed at the ineptitude of their network security or he found (or potentially could have found) something *really* interesting.
On another note there's a very interesting account of him accessing images stored on one of the machines he found that were in a proprietary format and which he had to view by opening them with an application on the machine he was connected to by remote desktop.
One thing that totally clarifies this point for me is the fact that any sequence of bytes can be thought of as a number. If the byte stream is large (long ?) then admittedly we're talking about a huge number but it's still effectively just a number. The fact that this number can be interpreted by software and hardware to represent music, film, images, words etc. is very nice but doesn't change the fact that it's just a number.
So would it make sense to have a business model that tried to charge people money for telling each other a number ? Obviously not. Imagine trying to stop Jim from telling Tim that by writing the byte representation of 4,932,345 into a file he could load this file in "SoftwareX" which would then play Beethovens Vth or load the same file into "SoftwareY" which would show him a picture of a naked lady.
Selling numbers (in the form of collections of bits) is an anachronism which will go the way of the Dodo. You can't stop numbers being copied, used, added to, factored, divided, multiplied etc. etc. (well not without killing off maths !)
The only business model that will survive is one in which people pay for access to collections of well catalogued, well maintained works which they can add to themselves. And we all know somewhere this is already happening. A lot of us probably already subscribe to such a service.
Large music/film companies seem to be run by complete idiots who simply can't adapt from their old business model of selling physical copies in the form of vinyl, cassettes, film reels etc. and are going to die off. Sadly they have the financial muscle to temporarily hinder progress by buying laws etc. but this is only temporary. They are in their death throes and will not last long.
In the meantime it simply means a lot of people are going to made into criminals for making use of maths. What a fine society we live in !
Once a work can be represented by a number (held as a sequence of bytes) it's duplication and delivery costs are so close to zero they might as well be zero. This is a fact made possible by the internet, electricity and maths. Numbers do not recognise the concept of artifical scarcity.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're an American just call a lawyer. They'll sue anything in the US of A !
About time people faced some real consequences for these sort of actions. It's a shame (but not unexpected) that they picked on a hospice to make the example, rather than say a large corporation, but the principle stands. If you dont encrypt private, confidential data you should be held accountable. No more plain text passwords in database tables, no more unencrypted personally identifiable information on removable/portable devices (or in database files for that matter) . No excuses.
Reminds me of the old fable. Sometimes all it takes is someone who isn't deeply immersed in a subject to come along and point out what has been under your nose all along (see also "wood for the trees") Of course when someone does it to you and you're supposed to the "expert" a lot of people get all huffy and defensive as if it's a personal insult. Which it isn't.
This is why it's also sometimes best to have a troublesome problem looked at by "a second pair of eyes" as they might spot the "elephant inf the room" that you've actually been sitting on all along.
Right that's quite enough clichés for one morning.... Let's face it. At the end of the day you've sometimes got to do your blue sky thinking inside the box :)
It's Sony. It's stupid. Why does anybody still buy their crap ? Why does anybody buy any sort of crap like this ?
Firm with vested interest in selling you "stuff" is *very* concerned that "stuff" might happen. Buy now whilst stocks last !
-> Ubuntu
-> Shark
I don't even set up a Google account. I can live without all that crap thankyouverymuch - The only two "apps" I wanted I wrote and compiled myself, temporarily allowed my phone to load unsigned apks so I could install them and er.. that's it :)
And praise "Bob" ! Eternal salvation or *TRIPLE* your money back :)
If you're alluding to ripping the disc then if it takes 90 minutes I'd be taking my DVD drive back. Should take no more than 5 to 10 minutes on a half decent machine.
Wish I had mod points today. +10 insightful !
Well all I can say is that in 2011 I watched 0 items of Hollywood/MPAA/RIAA produced entertainment. In 2012 it was again 0 items. I'm not expecting to watch/listen to any of their crap in 2013 either.
However the MegaUpload shutdown was annoying as a friend and I used to swap audio tracks for some projects we've been working on using the service (he lives on a different continent to me and had a MegaUpload account which just seemed convenient to use) Not a massive problem as we got round this by me setting up an FTP server and allowing it through my firewall etc. but slightly annoying none the less.
But the root question is why would anyone even want to share the forumlaic, cliched, unimaginative crap produced by members of the MPAA ? I'd consider being given a DVD/CD/memory stick of their crap the same way I would consider someone giving me herpes.
There is a whole world of wonderful films/music/art available world wide. The jaded, tired old crap produced by these people is absolutely not worth giving the time of day to. Seen one, seen 'em all. Quite frankly I'd rather watch some ants foraging... or even a cat washing it's bottom.
I like my bread freshly baked either from my local baker (first choice) or from my trusty bread machine. I have no interest in old, crappy preservative riddled, chemical crap in my food thank you very much. Maybe useful for astronauts or arctic explorers etc. but this is exactly the sort of thing that is simply not needed.
Not to mention the fact that a bit of bread mould is good for you !
Replying simply to undo inadvertent mod (didn't mean to click the drop down whilst scrolling the page ;)
But whilst I'm at it Gnome 3 is absolutely not worth a try. The gnome project should be buried as of this point. Their attitude towards their users was so disgracefully arrogant that every developer associated with gnome should be permanently sent to pariah land.
There is no way in hell anything from that bunch of self righteous pricks is geting anywhere near a system of mine again.
Need me to use a special device whilst I'm employed by you ? Easy just provide me with the device. Then you can do what you like with it. Lock it down, encrypt it, remote manage it etc. etc.
Need me to access IT infrastructure from home ? No problem, give me a physically separate network to use (via a mobile phone should be fine these days)
My devices will never be connected to any employers network - nor will I use employers devices on my own network. The two things are seperate and should be physically separate.
There should be complete separation between home/work life including all use of devices/networks etc. etc.
Indeed. Make up your own belief system and follow it for as long as convenient. When it no longer fits make up a new one. There's plenty of gods/rituals to choose from so find something that works for you. It's an infinite omniverse out there and it does not fit in the human mind.
Religion should make you grateful for your existence, appreciative of other existences (from the low to the high) and should help you get your way through life. The minute you find yourself telling others how to live or what to believe in you should realise that you're wrong.
"We place no reliance on virgin or pigeon. Our method is science. Our object religion".
And 23 praises to Eris & "Bob" !
> "It monitors all outbound connection attempts by applications and the operating system, and asks users to permit or block any URLs and port numbers that are accessed."
Excellent. + 100 this is the way things should be !!!
I've been yammering on about this for ages now without being able to get any Linux devs interested. As far as I'm concerned without such a feature Linux is a dead duck as far as being an operating system suitable for the home user. I've stopped putting Ubuntu on peoples machines due to the complete lack of such a firewall. And no. IP tables and Firestarter etc. are not the same thing *at all*.
The end user should always be given the final decision before *ANYTHING* on the computer is allowed internet access. This single feature of the Zone Alarm firewall on Windows has allowed numerous "non computer savvy" friends and relatives to realise they have a problem well before malware has been able to phone home. Not to mention blocking all the crappy "auto updaters" and other such crap that idiots have started putting in their Windows apps.
1 The people who write Zone Alarm for Windows get it.
2 Moxie Marlinspike gets it.
3 The Linux devs simply do not get it. They seem to believe we live in Magic Fairyland where no program would ever do anything malicious and anything should be able to connect out without the user knowing about it. "But we're only fetching cover art/some other stuff". No you're reporting information to a third party that I do not wish sent thank you very much.
Without this simple feature your computer is simply a digital spy silently allowing any program to send any information it wants anywhere in the world.
Totally unacceptable in 2011. All machines should have firewalls that allow the user full control of what applications are allowed to talk to the local network and/or the internet.
What we need is for the human race to wake up and understand that we all do stupid stuff at some point. Being drunk and having your picture taken wearing womens underwear/naked/passed out in front of a bong/canoodling with a stripper (of the same sex !) etc. etc. etc. does not make you the equivalent of Hitler (unless of course you are Hitler) It does not demonstrate your ability to perform a particular task efficiently.
The sum total of your life and being cannot be summarised by one image frozen in time. You are a conscious entity that feels it's way through life, makes it up as you go along and often gets it worng. That's the fun of being alive !
Anyone who hasn't done something daft or embarassing at some point in their life is probably a socially inadequate loser who daren't lose their self control because that's when they're start killing people.
Simply put it should be illegal for companies to discrimante against someone for something "offensive" or "tasteless" they were pictured doing years ago which has now surfaced "online" (probably from something taken when they were a drunken teenager)
The "moral minority" are puritanical, small minded prudes who can't get a hard on between 'em (that's why the world needs shrinks and Viagra). Quite how society decided theirs was the voice that should be listened to is beyond me.
Weirdfolk arise ! Stand erect for your abnormality because you're better than them !
We should, nay have, a right to be ourselves with all our faults , all our weaknesses and all our strengths. That's what makes the show work !
Personally I only hire "weirdos" as I find they're usually more independent, more creative, and do a better job than the "straights". When a problem arises they creatively solve it (or work round it) whilst the "normals" just sit on their hands waiting to be told what to do.
Praise "Bob" ! And fuck' em if they can't take a joke.
As all us 'puter folk know any arbitary sequence of bytes can be viewed as expressing a number. e.g. using 4 bytes we can represent a signed integer between -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. From this we can see that any sequence of bytes (no matter it's length) can be viewed as expressing a number.
As items of "digital media" are simply a sequence of bytes then, in common with all other sequences of bytes, they can be viewed as simply a number (albeit a very large number)
And let's face it the idea of trying to control the exchange of numbers is totally absurd ! Can you imagine somebody claiming that I couldn't give my friend the number 93 ?
Oh how the future will look back and laugh at this age :)
The "Peace" symbol also looks conveniently like "Algiz" which is the rune of protection in the old language.
http://www.runemaker.com/futhark/algiz.shtml
I'd go further than that as I've learnt that every single thing said in an advertisement is most probably a lie.
It's more remarkable when something they say is actually true !
Well, where I come from that layer of old chewing gum is the *only* thing holding some of the roads together !
If you look into what actually occurred it would appear that Mr McKinnon simply took advantage of the fact that many of the computers on NASAs network were installed with default settings. Which at the time included having an admnistrative account created with a blank password (If I remember correctly this may have been a version of Windows NT ? Sorry I can't remember at present nor can I locate the article I read about it).
So his "hacking" consisted of running a script/scripts against known NASA IP blocks which simply looked for machines with blank passwords or open shares. And if you're running a machine with an open share on the internet then surely you're running a public share and are inviting public access ?
If that's hacking then inserting a CD you've been given in a CD Rom drive or plugging in a USB drive you've been given into a USB port and accessing their contents is hacking too.
It's a total disgrace that Britain would even consider an individual to be extradited with evidence as flimsy, and frankly pathetic, as this. The only possible reasons are that the NASA/The US Government are totally embarrassed at the ineptitude of their network security or he found (or potentially could have found) something *really* interesting.
On another note there's a very interesting account of him accessing images stored on one of the machines he found that were in a proprietary format and which he had to view by opening them with an application on the machine he was connected to by remote desktop.
This is a good little interview with Mr McKinnon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4PkNPCEnJM.
All in all it's a very interesting case.
> nothing you want to see backed up and taken home
Once again this proves the importance of making regular offsite backups ;)
One thing that totally clarifies this point for me is the fact that any sequence of bytes can be thought of as a number. If the byte stream is large (long ?) then admittedly we're talking about a huge number but it's still effectively just a number. The fact that this number can be interpreted by software and hardware to represent music, film, images, words etc. is very nice but doesn't change the fact that it's just a number.
So would it make sense to have a business model that tried to charge people money for telling each other a number ? Obviously not. Imagine trying to stop Jim from telling Tim that by writing the byte representation of 4,932,345 into a file he could load this file in "SoftwareX" which would then play Beethovens Vth or load the same file into "SoftwareY" which would show him a picture of a naked lady.
Selling numbers (in the form of collections of bits) is an anachronism which will go the way of the Dodo. You can't stop numbers being copied, used, added to, factored, divided, multiplied etc. etc. (well not without killing off maths !)
The only business model that will survive is one in which people pay for access to collections of well catalogued, well maintained works which they can add to themselves. And we all know somewhere this is already happening. A lot of us probably already subscribe to such a service.
Large music/film companies seem to be run by complete idiots who simply can't adapt from their old business model of selling physical copies in the form of vinyl, cassettes, film reels etc. and are going to die off. Sadly they have the financial muscle to temporarily hinder progress by buying laws etc. but this is only temporary. They are in their death throes and will not last long.
In the meantime it simply means a lot of people are going to made into criminals for making use of maths. What a fine society we live in !
Once a work can be represented by a number (held as a sequence of bytes) it's duplication and delivery costs are so close to zero they might as well be zero. This is a fact made possible by the internet, electricity and maths. Numbers do not recognise the concept of artifical scarcity.
Oh well on with the show...
Hmmm... Would this be the same South Carolina that gave the world this delightful young lady ?
This seems like an eminently sensible, workable idea to me :)