I don't think creating a hack to block stuff like this will have any more effect than the actual software itself. I think any trojan will still be semi-effective, just not against anyone who is actually dangerous.
This kind of thing just isn't that hard to avoid. Trojans do work, but generally only against people who are sloppy, or do not have the skills or interest to correctly handle their computer. I have wiped viruses repeatedly off my 70 year old step mother's computer for instance. She repetitively turns off her antivirus software because she thinks the startup logo is ugly. Some people just can't be saved.
There will be people caught who do things, but they will get the crazies who paint stuff on walls, not the nuclear armed agents they are professing to be on the lookout for.
agreed. The number is suspiciously low. It is small enough for private funding, however, which puts it deep into possible scam territory. If this has been around for a while and the guy is publicly looking for money it implies he has already been refused for a bunch of grants. If there are no refused grant applications, then it gets more creepy. The patent may be another sign.
IMHO anyone interested in investing in this guy who is not a university or reserch institute should be extremely careful. Like put a radio ankle bracelet on him careful.
"stronger than kevlar in some instances should not be necessarily be taken as a great leap forward.
For a while now there have been products that significantly out perform kevlar strength wise. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7038702.stm
In fact this is not even the first time that such stuf has been discused on slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/23/1817216
There are also many common materials that outperform kevlar in some applications, including technora, which is commonly used in fan belts http://www.ullmansails.com/fiberpath.html
Back in the 80's there was a brief fad to replace the warning sounds of a car with spoken words. you'd get a car that would repetitively repeat "a door is ajar" when you had the car door open with the keys in the dash.
I agree. It got my mod. It almost got an interesting actually. The collection of bromides by itself points out the long running record of the department's blunders.
The same argument can be made for having any security at all. If there is nothing worth keeping on or off your computer then there is no reason to take any security measures.
If your computer is not fast enough to serve as a spambot, and you never buy things over the intrnet or do online banking you are probably ok.
If you do on the other hand then leaving a back door open is unwise.
This is why I said "default settings". There are several more things like this. It's stuff that can be fixed by folks who know what they are doing. The whole point behind macs though is they should not require that level of system knowledge to make them work.
This is or has been a known problem on a few Linux distros as well. Still IMHO it should be fixed. There's a big difference between surreptitiously slipping a flash drive into a slot for a minute or two and taking the lid off a machine. Especially a laptop.
There appears to be at least one company who disagree with you on the password thing. http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/30/subrosasofts-maclockpick-extracts-personal-info-from-os-x/ Whether they are correct is another question of course.
I am wondering if some even more basic holes have been filled here.
I have been given to understand that one of the problems with OSX is that in order to make some legacy software work such as applescript, apple had to make a few file settings more open than they should be.
The big example is the one which allows a USB drive with a correc tly set up copy of OSX on it to automatically become the boot drive with full root access to all drives on a restart. IIRC there's even a company that sells these things pre-configured for unnecessarily large sums money.
True, but there's truth and then there is marketing. Remember there are well funded organizations who want to end file sharing. It doesn't have to actually be true it merely has to be a truthy excuse.
Off hand I would ignorantly guess that it at least needs to be made clear that anyone who manages to get their stuff shared unintentionally is a giant idiot. Traditional liability requires a gate lock equivelant, which in this case would be a default setting that did not allow main directory sharing, with a warning labeled confirm window to change it.
This will possibly damage a lot of the sharing depth of lime/frost wire and eDonkey, but I'm not sure there's any help for it. I'm not a lawyer, a programmer, or a political analyst however. Your milage may vary.
P2P is always to blame because there is a group with money ready to blame it. The finger prints are all over this.
How could a legislative committee discover, discuss and decide to take action on a problem like this before the leading edge of the community, which is to say here, has even heard about it? Remember these guys don't even type themselves, they have people to do that. That intertube guy genuinely thought he was being insightful at the time.
There may be other evidence. Where an when did these guys hear about the problem? That one could say a whole lot
Groups like the senate oversight commitee are cherry appointments. They go to senators that have been in office more or less forever. That means these guys are OLD. OLD legislators don't go online that often but the do generally make a point to read their district's local paper. Is there a suspicious cluster of spontaneous articles that have appeared there more than other equivalent publications that are not home town news for pertinent legislators?
There may also be a few various motivating factors for making an argument over this.
Is there unequal use of P2P for political purposes? I have not been following the Obama campaign but I understand he is leveraging the internet pretty heavily. If P2P is being heavily used by on party more than another, it behooves the other party to kill the medium. The solution for this one is for supporters of both P2P and the legislator in question need to start making use of it to prove the personal need.
Espionage has recently become a hot issue. The beauty of this particular subject is it's at least superficially non-partisan, it appears, truthfully or not, to address a major news subject making them look like heroes, and of course there's the money from the RIAA to make it all tastier.
While Technician makes a very valid point, I suspect a major impetus for this is going to turn out to be RIAA lobbying. After all it's OK to be a bastard as long as it's a matter of national security.
IMHO the P2P developer groups are going to have to get off their butts right fast and do some kind of patch to fix this hole, Such as an auto folder creation, or major pop warnings or something, or they are going to find themselves legislated out of existence.
And I do mean really really fast. There is a major attitude about foreign military and industrial espionage. This is the kind of legislation that has legs. It's got both fear and money on it.
New things are not as good as the old stuff back when they weren't as degenerate.
"reasonably priced meals"
Old fashioned entertainment
Isn't this all a little stereotypical Old Fart? i'm waiting for him to start talking about how good 70's cars were compared to today and what great artists "the Captain and tennille" were.
Just because it is an inefficient and poor method does not mean it will not be used.
Criminals are know for their poor work ethic. Why do a bunch of skull drudgery and research, when they can just grab the first thing that comes along.
Another reason it might be attractive is it's over complication itself. One of the main reasons frequently given for people to become real spies is pure excitement. They want to do "spy stuff". Someone like that is going to go not for the best method, but for the most high tech, convoluted, spy movie type stuff they can get ahold of. There was a famous American double agent years ago with just this issue. He began demanding weird and unnecessary communication equipment from them just so he could have it. the adrenaline rush of dangerous behavior frequently leads to even more. Grander crimes, more complicated plans. Increased risk.
Could someone else here who also knows nothing about stellar physics read this thread and tell me it does not all sound like some weird double entendre fart joke?
I do really wish this story had been told to me when I was older or there was someone to better corroborate it with. The woman died when I was a toddler and I have the story from my father, who is also dead. Assuming what I remember is correct, however, the record attempt started at the mouth of the Detroit river, and traveled south along pieces of the the partially completed Dixie Highway, transferring to rail frontage roads in between them where necessary.
IIRC the pickup made it because it is exceptionally hard to sleep in a Ferarri. The other contestants in the race were sleeping at motels for the night. The pickup had a bed in back and a chemical toilet.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think creating a hack to block stuff like this will have any more effect than the actual software itself. I think any trojan will still be semi-effective, just not against anyone who is actually dangerous.
This kind of thing just isn't that hard to avoid. Trojans do work, but generally only against people who are sloppy, or do not have the skills or interest to correctly handle their computer. I have wiped viruses repeatedly off my 70 year old step mother's computer for instance. She repetitively turns off her antivirus software because she thinks the startup logo is ugly. Some people just can't be saved.
There will be people caught who do things, but they will get the crazies who paint stuff on walls, not the nuclear armed agents they are professing to be on the lookout for.
agreed. The number is suspiciously low. It is small enough for private funding, however, which puts it deep into possible scam territory. If this has been around for a while and the guy is publicly looking for money it implies he has already been refused for a bunch of grants. If there are no refused grant applications, then it gets more creepy. The patent may be another sign.
IMHO anyone interested in investing in this guy who is not a university or reserch institute should be extremely careful. Like put a radio ankle bracelet on him careful.
Unsanity is officially listed by the company not to worik with 10.5
http://www.wire-heads.com/istrip/index.php?strip_id=26
"stronger than kevlar in some instances should not be necessarily be taken as a great leap forward.
For a while now there have been products that significantly out perform kevlar strength wise. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7038702.stm
In fact this is not even the first time that such stuf has been discused on slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/23/1817216
There are also many common materials that outperform kevlar in some applications, including technora, which is commonly used in fan belts
http://www.ullmansails.com/fiberpath.html
Back in the 80's there was a brief fad to replace the warning sounds of a car with spoken words. you'd get a car that would repetitively repeat "a door is ajar" when you had the car door open with the keys in the dash.
It was beyond annoying.
Eddie Murphy did a pretty good bit on it iirc.
No I didn't. I think this is the second time I've ever opened up the mod page. Dude deserved some support though.
I agree. It got my mod. It almost got an interesting actually. The collection of bromides by itself points out the long running record of the department's blunders.
The same argument can be made for having any security at all. If there is nothing worth keeping on or off your computer then there is no reason to take any security measures.
If your computer is not fast enough to serve as a spambot, and you never buy things over the intrnet or do online banking you are probably ok.
If you do on the other hand then leaving a back door open is unwise.
This is why I said "default settings". There are several more things like this. It's stuff that can be fixed by folks who know what they are doing. The whole point behind macs though is they should not require that level of system knowledge to make them work.
This is or has been a known problem on a few Linux distros as well. Still IMHO it should be fixed. There's a big difference between surreptitiously slipping a flash drive into a slot for a minute or two and taking the lid off a machine. Especially a laptop.
There appears to be at least one company who disagree with you on the password thing. http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/30/subrosasofts-maclockpick-extracts-personal-info-from-os-x/
Whether they are correct is another question of course.
Ah. A fanboy.
I am wondering if some even more basic holes have been filled here.
I have been given to understand that one of the problems with OSX is that in order to make some legacy software work such as applescript, apple had to make a few file settings more open than they should be.
The big example is the one which allows a USB drive with a correc tly set up copy of OSX on it to automatically become the boot drive with full root access to all drives on a restart. IIRC there's even a company that sells these things pre-configured for unnecessarily large sums money.
This is the stuff I most want to see fixed
Here's a fanboy test: which is better, Vista or XP?
True, but there's truth and then there is marketing. Remember there are well funded organizations who want to end file sharing. It doesn't have to actually be true it merely has to be a truthy excuse.
Off hand I would ignorantly guess that it at least needs to be made clear that anyone who manages to get their stuff shared unintentionally is a giant idiot. Traditional liability requires a gate lock equivelant, which in this case would be a default setting that did not allow main directory sharing, with a warning labeled confirm window to change it.
This will possibly damage a lot of the sharing depth of lime/frost wire and eDonkey, but I'm not sure there's any help for it. I'm not a lawyer, a programmer, or a political analyst however. Your milage may vary.
P2P is always to blame because there is a group with money ready to blame it. The finger prints are all over this.
How could a legislative committee discover, discuss and decide to take action on a problem like this before the leading edge of the community, which is to say here, has even heard about it? Remember these guys don't even type themselves, they have people to do that. That intertube guy genuinely thought he was being insightful at the time.
There may be other evidence. Where an when did these guys hear about the problem? That one could say a whole lot
Groups like the senate oversight commitee are cherry appointments. They go to senators that have been in office more or less forever. That means these guys are OLD.
OLD legislators don't go online that often but the do generally make a point to read their district's local paper. Is there a suspicious cluster of spontaneous articles that have appeared there more than other equivalent publications that are not home town news for pertinent legislators?
There may also be a few various motivating factors for making an argument over this.
Is there unequal use of P2P for political purposes? I have not been following the Obama campaign but I understand he is leveraging the internet pretty heavily. If P2P is being heavily used by on party more than another, it behooves the other party to kill the medium.
The solution for this one is for supporters of both P2P and the legislator in question need to start making use of it to prove the personal need.
Espionage has recently become a hot issue. The beauty of this particular subject is it's at least superficially non-partisan, it appears, truthfully or not, to address a major news subject making them look like heroes, and of course there's the money from the RIAA to make it all tastier.
While Technician makes a very valid point, I suspect a major impetus for this is going to turn out to be RIAA lobbying. After all it's OK to be a bastard as long as it's a matter of national security.
IMHO the P2P developer groups are going to have to get off their butts right fast and do some kind of patch to fix this hole, Such as an auto folder creation, or major pop warnings or something, or they are going to find themselves legislated out of existence.
And I do mean really really fast. There is a major attitude about foreign military and industrial espionage. This is the kind of legislation that has legs. It's got both fear and money on it.
Lets review.
New things are not as good as the old stuff back when they weren't as degenerate.
"reasonably priced meals"
Old fashioned entertainment
Isn't this all a little stereotypical Old Fart? i'm waiting for him to start talking about how good 70's cars were compared to today and what great artists "the Captain and tennille" were.
Just because it is an inefficient and poor method does not mean it will not be used.
Criminals are know for their poor work ethic. Why do a bunch of skull drudgery and research, when they can just grab the first thing that comes along.
Another reason it might be attractive is it's over complication itself. One of the main reasons frequently given for people to become real spies is pure excitement. They want to do "spy stuff". Someone like that is going to go not for the best method, but for the most high tech, convoluted, spy movie type stuff they can get ahold of. There was a famous American double agent years ago with just this issue. He began demanding weird and unnecessary communication equipment from them just so he could have it. the adrenaline rush of dangerous behavior frequently leads to even more. Grander crimes, more complicated plans. Increased risk.
By the way, how are you set up for a home life equity policy? We've got some great new products...
You're from Iowa aren't you.
I thought undular bores are those guys at parties who tell loud political jokes then try to sell you insurance or something.
Thank you. It's good that someone understands.
Could someone else here who also knows nothing about stellar physics read this thread and tell me it does not all sound like some weird double entendre fart joke?
Nah. It's a reasonable question. "stellar" is not necessarily generally thought of as a term of finite measurement outside of Academia.
I do really wish this story had been told to me when I was older or there was someone to better corroborate it with. The woman died when I was a toddler and I have the story from my father, who is also dead. Assuming what I remember is correct, however, the record attempt started at the mouth of the Detroit river, and traveled south along pieces of the the partially completed Dixie Highway, transferring to rail frontage roads in between them where necessary.
IIRC the pickup made it because it is exceptionally hard to sleep in a Ferarri. The other contestants in the race were sleeping at motels for the night. The pickup had a bed in back and a chemical toilet.