Really? What law has been passed? What civil suit have they lost? MySpace are simply catering to general hysteria by pretending to do something. If they told people there was nothing they could do, I'd have no problem with them. If they took measures that would be effective, like requiring ID to register, I'd have no problem with them. Instead they chose to pretend to do something in order to try to deceive people. That irks me and leads me to distrust them.
I can easily see Slashdot and other forum sites having to follow along after the MySpace Example.
Really? How is that? What would force Slashdot to try to mislead people?
It maybe not be legally required, but it easily could be.
When it is I won't fault sites for complying, I'll fault the lawmakers and those who vote for them. The point is, it is not a law. It is MySpace's choice and they made the unethical one.
Does slashdot go through all its useres and call use up or physically ID us to make sure we aren't sex offenders?
No they don't, but neither do they claim to be preventing sex offenders from posting on Slashdot.
Why should MySpace?
But MySpace is claiming they are acting to stop sex offenders from posting, and as such they are responsible for making sure those actions are at least slightly accurate and effective, otherwise they are deceiving people.
Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them.
Are you telling me you don't see a difference between claiming to post information without vetting the sources and claiming to post information that has been filtered to stop sex offenders while knowing that the measures to do so are both inaccurate and ineffective?
Does that mean that Google is in the wrong as well? Should they pre-emptively strike content that may prove damaging to someone down the road?
Google acts impartially, not claiming to be censoring or classifying sex offender information. As such, they bear no responsibility for that content. The responsibility belongs to the people writing and publishing it.
Ahh, now we know the angle you're taking on this. Not that News Corp. (let alone their subsidiary Fox News) has anything to do with this, but I suppose nothing fetches karma like bashing Slashdot's favorite pariahs.
I bash Fox news and news corp at every opportunity because they deserve it. They went to court and argued that they have no responsibility to not intentionally lie to viewers, which is true, but it also makes them deserving of that fact being pointed out every time they claim to be news or for every situation where the question of whether or not they should be trusted is raised. Most people are not aware that Fox does not publish news, but simply whatever they want people to think (propaganda). Any enterprise they run is deserving of intense scrutiny.
Aside from that, however, I was just pointing out their unethical behavior in this instance, as documented by the article. If they act unethically, why should any of us trust them or invest our time in their enterprise instead of elsewhere?
It's amusing to me that the summary tosses around words like "wrongly brand", when MySpace hasn't "branded" - which implies a public, overt identification - anyone as anything. And even if the woman's friends ask why her profile is gone, it's not as if they're going to accidentally and arbitrarily believe she really is a sex offender.
Actually, this is not quite as innocuous as you seem to imply. If a myspace profile is suddenly gone and people know MySpace is removing known sex offenders, it is entirely possible they will assume she is a sex offender, especially if they search for her name and find info that seems to imply that. Worse, they may well make comments to that affect on their own pages, seeding Google with further slander. People tend to believe authorities and in this case, they may well assume MySpace has better resources to identify sex offenders than they do.
Just this morning I was talking to someone whose co-worker has a hard time getting jobs because if you do a Google search for his name, the first things that come up are articles about him being accused of being a rapist. Even though he was exonerated and some of the articles do mention that at the bottom in small text, it has still had significant negative impacts on his life.
No one has a right to a MySpace profile, MySpace isn't the government, and hasn't identified, much less "branded", the woman in any public fashion as a sex offender.
True, but the fact that they are falsely identifying people is very good information to know. The fact that they don't have a good policy for fixing their mistakes is good to know. It gives users one more reason to move on to a more responsible site before they've invested more effort into that social network.
MySpace is clearly acting to deceive the public. They're intentionally taking actions they know will be ineffective at solving the problem in an attempt to trick users into thinking they have made real progress. At the same time they're misidentifying innocent people and not properly dealing with that problem. Basically they are being a big evil business. If being purchased by Fox news was not enough reason, this is just one more reason to distrust and avoid MySpace and that is news everyone should be hearing so they can decide for themselves.
And if there is a GPL version fork, which side will those big companies choose?
GPLv3. None of these companies are selling GCC. They use it as a tool. They don't want submarine patents in it any more than individual users do. It takes effort to switch to a non-standard fork and download from a new place. It takes effort to approve a new license within a company. Approving a new license, however, is a one time stamp from legal, while switching versions to non-standard ones has to be done for every project and has to be done by engineers within the company, who probably would prefer to stick with the RMS version. I'm betting if it comes down to a fork it will be Novell left out in the cold by themselves while almost everyone else goes GPLv3.
I'm as guilty as the next person for not always RTFA, but his is the first time I couldn't even make it through the posting
Years of television with shorter and shorter times between cut scenes has destroyed your attention span. Why don't you go watch some TV now? Maybe there will be a 30 second blurb on the subject ala "Ameritrade implicated in SPAM delivery... incompetent or criminal... you decide!!!"
Most of that is pretty mature stuff. Forking at GPL v2 and maintaining the fork really wouldn't be that big of a deal.
Are you joking? There is probably more ongoing effort put into improvements to GCC than almost any other project I can think of. There are a lot of people (at various big companies) whose sole job is to improve GCC. The main advantage of GPL OSS over BSD is that you get continuing improvements from other players. Having to maintain all of that yourself in a fork means you might as well go with BSD licensed software in the first place. At least them you're not specifically generating ill will while losing the main benefit.
What is the exact loophole that Novel is using that GPL3 is supposed to fix?
Patent abuse and using patents to threaten and intimidate.
There seems to be several stories over the whole Novel/MS deal, but I have yet to actually read what about the GPL that was wrong that someone (assuming they did) abused it.
MS made public statements to the affect that they have patents on unnamed technology used in Linux. In doing so, they may very well have caused some potential adopters of Linux to change their minds and go with Windows for their project. Further, MS agreed to some deal with Novell whereby they are selling coupons that are promises not to sue, if people use Novell technologies instead of more serious competitors to MS on the desktop.
The idea behind the GPL is that you cannot include code you know is covered by a patent in GPL3 software, unless you agree to license that patent to everyone who uses the copyrighted code. It prevents submarine patents being hidden in GPL3 code and it prevents Novell from gaining customers through veiled threats of patent litigation from MS.
Not all the functionality. I presume you're using Parallels on a Mac for your VM. And in my experience the video acceleration is pretty poor. Not suitable for games.
It is rue enough that neither of the major players (Parallels and VMWare) have the video acceleration working in their current releases, although both claim it as "coming soon."
How about "don't run Windows as your primary OS" then? It is definitely a lot easier to keep a system clean if it isn't your primary desktop even without maintaining a "clean" VM. I mean if you're only running Windows/Parallels for IE to access your Bank and some obscure, but irreplacable Win32 app, then there really isn't much room for infection no matter what you do. Especially since Parallels puts your VM behind NAT by default.
Being behind a NAT does not protect you from Web-based exploits, nor from all of the current crop of automated worms that attack services you may be running. If you're using a VM already, I consider restarting from a clean image to be pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to security.
There is absolutely no reason why ISPs can't step up and at the very least make this much less of an issue.
What do you think this article was about? ISPs in several nations helped out by using their capacity to help filter the DDoS attacks against Estonia, whose major telecom apparently has no such capability. If, however, you want this to happen on a regular basis for all DDoS attacks ongoing, you have to expect the ISPs to charge their customers for that service. It costs money to deploy sensors and mitigations systems and to man and maintain those systems. At the same time, doing so reduces the amount of traffic peers and customers are consuming, thus reducing their revenue. If people want DDoS to go away all they have to do is pay the piper, which many customers with critical online resources are now starting to do.
So basically your situation is relatively unique and has very little relevance to regular Windows users. But thanks for sharing.
Anyone looking to run Windows securely is a huge exception. People with a clue as to how to go about it are even rarer. Running the entire OS in a VM is one way, probably one of the very few ways a normal or slightly above average user could do it and still have all the functionality they expect. It is quite a bit better than simply "don't run Windows" as that is not a viable option for a great many of us.
The real problem is coming up with a non-Cisco proprietary solution. Something not encumbered with copyright and patents which I believe is what is holding up a lot of development in anti-DDoS techniques.
The road to ubiquitous DDoS protection is called "no monopolies." Several large ISPs have shelled out for the hardware to do this kind of DDoS filtering effectively, and almost every tier one can partially mitigate it with a combination of Arbor detection, and clever routing. The ISPs are paying for this because they can sell it and make money. Do you want a provider who does or does not offer a "cleaned pipes" option that lets you mitigate DDoS attacks directed at your network via a Web interface? Making sure that is the best way to make money by supporting net neutrality and other provisions that prevent monopoly abuse is the surest way to provide incentive to the market.
As I persist in telling one of my bartenders from New Zealand... they're both exactly the same place, identical in all respects and I'm pretty sure New Zealand will be turned into a penal colony for Australia any day now.
So what does it take to install applications and have them around when you "revert?" Sounds like a huge, unnecessary pain the ass to me.
If I want a new application I install it and save a new VM image, then make that my default. It only takes a minute or so more than it normally would. There could be an issue if I was compromised by malware after I started the session but before I installed the new app, but I generally will restart the session from a know good copy before I install anything.
Sounds like a huge, unnecessary pain the ass to me.
Security is not my primary motivation. I'm running Windows on top of OS X. I only use Windows for a handful of applications, mostly for compatibility testing and for one old, irreplaceable specialty app.
They wouldn't notice that all their documents the apps and they installed are gone? Do you think the "average WIndows user" is an Alzheimer's sufferer or something?
I do run Windows in a VM and do revert to a clean version once a day. Windows has read/write access to a version controlled directory for storing data, but it cannot delete the history thereof.
When will we see a REAL solution to these problems, and stop implementing obscure security work-arounds that eat more resources than the applications themselves? Anyone?
When will we elect politicians who are not so easily bribed and who will break up MS's abusive monopoly and restore competition to the desktop OS market? When will people educate themselves and vote the bums out? When will there be a level playing field for desktop OS's so vendors have to rely upon competing for our dollars by giving us the features we want and need instead of relying upon the fact that users are locked in?
Maybe the EU will solve the problem for the US. I'll consider it payback for the help we gave them in WWII.
In effect, having multiple gateways changes the game from a many-on-one attack to a many-on-many attack, which makes it more likely that you will succeed at least in a limited way, which is the goal.
In the case mentioned here, it is government servers/services under attack. Regardless of how many different gateways lead to those servers and services, if the attackers use the same way of getting there as users, then either the attacks will get through or legitimate users won't. I do see where multiple gateways can be useful in two ways. One, if you have some vital service white-listed and of higher priority than anything else, you can blackhole all other traffic to keep it up and using a dedicated gateway can hide it from an attack targeting other resources. The other way I can see it helping is if a specialized attack, takes down a server not through just bandwidth from the attacker, but through manipulation. For example, if an attack was making http requests then dropping the session and doing it over again, some Web servers will DoS themselves and clog the router in the process. Using a separate gateway could prevent that from DoSing other services at the same time (more so than simply increasing overall bandwidth).
Frankly, because of stuff like this, we need to be prepared to use a variation of the old Internet Death Sentence. Hostile nations could be removed from the routing tables (i.e. we don't route traffic to or from them). With international cooperation attacks like this *could* be stopped dead in their tracks, with the side benefit that the offending nation would have a high priority desire to clean up the attacks.
I don't think that stopping routing from a country would make much practical difference. There are millions of vulnerable and already compromised Windows boxes scattered across the world. You can rent time on them from a Web interface. A big part of the usefulness of DDoS attacks is it is easy to make it impossible to attach them to an individual or country since the actual traffic comes from all countries. Most of the compromised machines known to be attacking as part of a botnet are within the US.
According to the site mentioned in the article, Russia comes in at #17 in the attacks by country breakdown at the bottom of the page. It covers scanning, fingerprinted attacks, and DDoS attacks (no spam). The number 1 country is the good 'ole USA. We're #1! We're #1!
That a whole country could be DOS'd is evidence of someone doing a bad network install. The network should never be down.
This is a DDoS attack. The first "D" stands for "Distributed." When you have thousands of remote machines located in different places sending traffic to your network, preventing an outage relies upon being able to figure out which traffic is legitimate and which is illegitimate, and then filter the illegitimate. Having more diverse pipes does not really make a huge difference. Either legitimate and illegitimate traffic can come in over a pipe or they can't. If it can, the attack is blocking things. If it can't you just DoS'd yourself.
The real trick here is the availability of clean or protected access from ISPs with the capability of detecting illegitimate traffic and filtering it, without stopping legitimate traffic. Many ISPs have this capability to one degree or another and a few have formally brought it to market as a differentiator for their service. I'm guessing the big ISPs in Estonia might be a bit behind in that regard, and are thus working with more capable peers to try and filter the attack further away in the cloud.
Here's a hint as to why this won't happen: it's not the Minister of Education's job to spend my (yep, I'm a kiwi) tax money on helping "the product or the community". But do you know what is his job? To ensure that children in my country get the best education they can.
Actually I think the problem is the fact that most IT purchasers (and people in general) do not understand the open source model. The minister of education should probably be spending some money to plan and properly deploy NeoOffice and possibly spend some money hiring or encouraging some bug fixes and customizations as they make sense for Australia. He should not be donating 5% of what he would spend on MSOffice, or any other amount that does not help him achieve his goals.
Unlike closed source software, NeoOffice will not get bug fixes and improvements funded by license fees. If educational institutes in Australia need or want those things, they should pay developers to do them (or encourage them to be done by in house talent or students). Unlike closed source software, contributions to the project do directly benefit the schools by resulting in improved software (rather than just more profit for some development company).
Apple's usual litigation-trigger-happy attitude has netted an incalculable amount of free publicity to Anne Summers.
I have a more accurate one yet: "Anne Summers nets free publicity by abusing trademarks."
Your headline is flawed in that, it implies Apple was the one initiating things and in that Apple is "trigger-happy" instead of simply responding as the law requires them to do so for due diligence.
I can't really see how Apple can claim some sort of copyright over silhouettes.
They can claim copyright over their silhouettes, but not silhouettes in general. This case, however, is about trademarks. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that because of the combination of the name being similar to many Apple products and the advertising being a clone of Apple's and because an Apple product is used in conjunction with this device, that this product is made by the same company as the iPod, i.e. Apple. This is intentionally misleading the consumer and this case is not even a close one in the eyes of the law (or wouldn't be in the US, not sure about UK).
So here's what will happen. Apple sent the letter. Ann eSummers will maybe delay a bit and then they will comply having garnered free publicity. Here is why Apple did this. It is defending their trademarks so they don't lose it. If Apple did not respond to this, then in a few weeks some other company could release an iPod competitor, perhaps called the iMusic or iPlayer. They could then use advertisements very similar to Apple's and if Apple tried to take them to court, despite the fact that consumers were being misled into buying knock-offs, Apple would lose when the knock-off maker pointed out this product/campaign that Apple did not respond to.
Confusion? If you can't tell the difference between a sex toy & a portable music player, then.... well, let's just say I don't want to borrow your iPod.
You're mistaking the nature of the confusion. No one would think this device is an iPod, but because of the naming scheme (which clones Apple's) and the advertising campaign (which again clones Apple's) it is not unreasonable to assume that some people would think the iPod and this device are made by the same company. That is the confusion. Trademarks are about keeping someone from capitalizing on your good reputation/visibility in the industry.
Now this particular instance is pretty borderline in my view of how trademark law should be applied, but it is not even close to borderline compared to industry standards. The iGasm manufacturers will almost certainly lose if they go to court and they probably know it. This is a way to get free publicity before they capitulate.
On a a side note. Am I the only one that sees a difference between sending a letter and suing a person? The headline of this article is factually incorrect. Apple has not sued. They sent a notice that says they might sue if the IGasm maker does not capitulate. Apple will sue, if they have to... not because they care if someone is selling an iGasm, but because they pretty much have to defend their trademarks. If they let this pass and next week Microsoft renamed the Zune the "iPlayer" and advertised it with similar posters, then Apple would SOL in court because MS could point to this and claim Apple had already let people use a name just as similar and an ad campaign just as similar and the courts would rule for MS, despite the fact that most purchasers would be being deceived.
The term "radical" means that you and your group are in the practice of killing people who don't follow your beliefs.
A man is upset by something a powerful government is doing. Eventually he feels so strongly about the politics and international ramifications of it, that he straps a bomb to himself and walks into a crowd of the people he feels is responsible.
Now, would you call that man a "radical christian?" Would you call him a "radical muslim?" Does the person's religion have a lot bearing on the matter if the politics are not directly related to religion, only to ethical/moral beliefs and political opinions?
The important point I think is that in the US if the person happened to be muslim, would be branded a "radical muslim" whereas if they happened to be a christian they would not be branded a "radical christian" in the media. I'm sure the opposite holds true, to some degree, in areas where christians are a minority and muslims or jews a majority. It isn't that a person is more likely to be violent in expressing their beliefs because they are of a given religion. Just look at the numbers.
The only "radical Christians" that I can think of are abortion-doctor murders.
The KKK calls themselves a Christian organization. The fundamentalists running the US government who ordered the bombing of Iraq and who have killed a lot more innocent women and children than Iraqi retaliation, also call themselves christians. Why are you not apply the "radical christian" label to them? Most of the people in Iraq who blow themselves up aren't doing it because they hate christianity. They're doing it because they hate the fact that their country has been occupied by a foreign army who has killed a great many of their friends and family and looted their country for resources, selling all the local industry to foreign investors and emptying the national treasury, while building dozens of permanent military bases. If roles were reversed, they'd probably be watching news about how some radical christians were murdering their troops stationed in the northern US, because I'd be shooting the invaders. And ignorant people would assume, based upon that reporting, it is because I'm one of those radical christians (even though I'm more of an agnostic/zen buddhist in reality).
Slashdot Mirror
Really? What law has been passed? What civil suit have they lost? MySpace are simply catering to general hysteria by pretending to do something. If they told people there was nothing they could do, I'd have no problem with them. If they took measures that would be effective, like requiring ID to register, I'd have no problem with them. Instead they chose to pretend to do something in order to try to deceive people. That irks me and leads me to distrust them.
I can easily see Slashdot and other forum sites having to follow along after the MySpace Example.Really? How is that? What would force Slashdot to try to mislead people?
It maybe not be legally required, but it easily could be.When it is I won't fault sites for complying, I'll fault the lawmakers and those who vote for them. The point is, it is not a law. It is MySpace's choice and they made the unethical one.
No they don't, but neither do they claim to be preventing sex offenders from posting on Slashdot.
Why should MySpace?But MySpace is claiming they are acting to stop sex offenders from posting, and as such they are responsible for making sure those actions are at least slightly accurate and effective, otherwise they are deceiving people.
Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them.Are you telling me you don't see a difference between claiming to post information without vetting the sources and claiming to post information that has been filtered to stop sex offenders while knowing that the measures to do so are both inaccurate and ineffective?
Google acts impartially, not claiming to be censoring or classifying sex offender information. As such, they bear no responsibility for that content. The responsibility belongs to the people writing and publishing it.
Ahh, now we know the angle you're taking on this. Not that News Corp. (let alone their subsidiary Fox News) has anything to do with this, but I suppose nothing fetches karma like bashing Slashdot's favorite pariahs.I bash Fox news and news corp at every opportunity because they deserve it. They went to court and argued that they have no responsibility to not intentionally lie to viewers, which is true, but it also makes them deserving of that fact being pointed out every time they claim to be news or for every situation where the question of whether or not they should be trusted is raised. Most people are not aware that Fox does not publish news, but simply whatever they want people to think (propaganda). Any enterprise they run is deserving of intense scrutiny.
Aside from that, however, I was just pointing out their unethical behavior in this instance, as documented by the article. If they act unethically, why should any of us trust them or invest our time in their enterprise instead of elsewhere?
Good point. Always get those backwards.
Also, a key component of libel is that it is published, not merely privately disclosed.I was referring to items added to MySpace pages of other users. That is definitely published.
At the same time, however (and if memory serves correctly), libel cases have been rare in recent years and have not had great success at trial.Libel is usually covered by civil suits, as I understand, but I don't know that they are rare or unsuccessful.
Actually, this is not quite as innocuous as you seem to imply. If a myspace profile is suddenly gone and people know MySpace is removing known sex offenders, it is entirely possible they will assume she is a sex offender, especially if they search for her name and find info that seems to imply that. Worse, they may well make comments to that affect on their own pages, seeding Google with further slander. People tend to believe authorities and in this case, they may well assume MySpace has better resources to identify sex offenders than they do.
Just this morning I was talking to someone whose co-worker has a hard time getting jobs because if you do a Google search for his name, the first things that come up are articles about him being accused of being a rapist. Even though he was exonerated and some of the articles do mention that at the bottom in small text, it has still had significant negative impacts on his life.
No one has a right to a MySpace profile, MySpace isn't the government, and hasn't identified, much less "branded", the woman in any public fashion as a sex offender.True, but the fact that they are falsely identifying people is very good information to know. The fact that they don't have a good policy for fixing their mistakes is good to know. It gives users one more reason to move on to a more responsible site before they've invested more effort into that social network.
MySpace is clearly acting to deceive the public. They're intentionally taking actions they know will be ineffective at solving the problem in an attempt to trick users into thinking they have made real progress. At the same time they're misidentifying innocent people and not properly dealing with that problem. Basically they are being a big evil business. If being purchased by Fox news was not enough reason, this is just one more reason to distrust and avoid MySpace and that is news everyone should be hearing so they can decide for themselves.
GPLv3. None of these companies are selling GCC. They use it as a tool. They don't want submarine patents in it any more than individual users do. It takes effort to switch to a non-standard fork and download from a new place. It takes effort to approve a new license within a company. Approving a new license, however, is a one time stamp from legal, while switching versions to non-standard ones has to be done for every project and has to be done by engineers within the company, who probably would prefer to stick with the RMS version. I'm betting if it comes down to a fork it will be Novell left out in the cold by themselves while almost everyone else goes GPLv3.
Years of television with shorter and shorter times between cut scenes has destroyed your attention span. Why don't you go watch some TV now? Maybe there will be a 30 second blurb on the subject ala "Ameritrade implicated in SPAM delivery... incompetent or criminal... you decide!!!"
Are you joking? There is probably more ongoing effort put into improvements to GCC than almost any other project I can think of. There are a lot of people (at various big companies) whose sole job is to improve GCC. The main advantage of GPL OSS over BSD is that you get continuing improvements from other players. Having to maintain all of that yourself in a fork means you might as well go with BSD licensed software in the first place. At least them you're not specifically generating ill will while losing the main benefit.
Patent abuse and using patents to threaten and intimidate.
There seems to be several stories over the whole Novel/MS deal, but I have yet to actually read what about the GPL that was wrong that someone (assuming they did) abused it.MS made public statements to the affect that they have patents on unnamed technology used in Linux. In doing so, they may very well have caused some potential adopters of Linux to change their minds and go with Windows for their project. Further, MS agreed to some deal with Novell whereby they are selling coupons that are promises not to sue, if people use Novell technologies instead of more serious competitors to MS on the desktop.
The idea behind the GPL is that you cannot include code you know is covered by a patent in GPL3 software, unless you agree to license that patent to everyone who uses the copyrighted code. It prevents submarine patents being hidden in GPL3 code and it prevents Novell from gaining customers through veiled threats of patent litigation from MS.
It is rue enough that neither of the major players (Parallels and VMWare) have the video acceleration working in their current releases, although both claim it as "coming soon."
How about "don't run Windows as your primary OS" then? It is definitely a lot easier to keep a system clean if it isn't your primary desktop even without maintaining a "clean" VM. I mean if you're only running Windows/Parallels for IE to access your Bank and some obscure, but irreplacable Win32 app, then there really isn't much room for infection no matter what you do. Especially since Parallels puts your VM behind NAT by default.Being behind a NAT does not protect you from Web-based exploits, nor from all of the current crop of automated worms that attack services you may be running. If you're using a VM already, I consider restarting from a clean image to be pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to security.
What do you think this article was about? ISPs in several nations helped out by using their capacity to help filter the DDoS attacks against Estonia, whose major telecom apparently has no such capability. If, however, you want this to happen on a regular basis for all DDoS attacks ongoing, you have to expect the ISPs to charge their customers for that service. It costs money to deploy sensors and mitigations systems and to man and maintain those systems. At the same time, doing so reduces the amount of traffic peers and customers are consuming, thus reducing their revenue. If people want DDoS to go away all they have to do is pay the piper, which many customers with critical online resources are now starting to do.
Anyone looking to run Windows securely is a huge exception. People with a clue as to how to go about it are even rarer. Running the entire OS in a VM is one way, probably one of the very few ways a normal or slightly above average user could do it and still have all the functionality they expect. It is quite a bit better than simply "don't run Windows" as that is not a viable option for a great many of us.
The road to ubiquitous DDoS protection is called "no monopolies." Several large ISPs have shelled out for the hardware to do this kind of DDoS filtering effectively, and almost every tier one can partially mitigate it with a combination of Arbor detection, and clever routing. The ISPs are paying for this because they can sell it and make money. Do you want a provider who does or does not offer a "cleaned pipes" option that lets you mitigate DDoS attacks directed at your network via a Web interface? Making sure that is the best way to make money by supporting net neutrality and other provisions that prevent monopoly abuse is the surest way to provide incentive to the market.
As I persist in telling one of my bartenders from New Zealand... they're both exactly the same place, identical in all respects and I'm pretty sure New Zealand will be turned into a penal colony for Australia any day now.
If I want a new application I install it and save a new VM image, then make that my default. It only takes a minute or so more than it normally would. There could be an issue if I was compromised by malware after I started the session but before I installed the new app, but I generally will restart the session from a know good copy before I install anything.
Sounds like a huge, unnecessary pain the ass to me.Security is not my primary motivation. I'm running Windows on top of OS X. I only use Windows for a handful of applications, mostly for compatibility testing and for one old, irreplaceable specialty app.
I do run Windows in a VM and do revert to a clean version once a day. Windows has read/write access to a version controlled directory for storing data, but it cannot delete the history thereof.
When will we elect politicians who are not so easily bribed and who will break up MS's abusive monopoly and restore competition to the desktop OS market? When will people educate themselves and vote the bums out? When will there be a level playing field for desktop OS's so vendors have to rely upon competing for our dollars by giving us the features we want and need instead of relying upon the fact that users are locked in?
Maybe the EU will solve the problem for the US. I'll consider it payback for the help we gave them in WWII.
In the case mentioned here, it is government servers/services under attack. Regardless of how many different gateways lead to those servers and services, if the attackers use the same way of getting there as users, then either the attacks will get through or legitimate users won't. I do see where multiple gateways can be useful in two ways. One, if you have some vital service white-listed and of higher priority than anything else, you can blackhole all other traffic to keep it up and using a dedicated gateway can hide it from an attack targeting other resources. The other way I can see it helping is if a specialized attack, takes down a server not through just bandwidth from the attacker, but through manipulation. For example, if an attack was making http requests then dropping the session and doing it over again, some Web servers will DoS themselves and clog the router in the process. Using a separate gateway could prevent that from DoSing other services at the same time (more so than simply increasing overall bandwidth).
I don't think that stopping routing from a country would make much practical difference. There are millions of vulnerable and already compromised Windows boxes scattered across the world. You can rent time on them from a Web interface. A big part of the usefulness of DDoS attacks is it is easy to make it impossible to attach them to an individual or country since the actual traffic comes from all countries. Most of the compromised machines known to be attacking as part of a botnet are within the US.
According to the site mentioned in the article, Russia comes in at #17 in the attacks by country breakdown at the bottom of the page. It covers scanning, fingerprinted attacks, and DDoS attacks (no spam). The number 1 country is the good 'ole USA. We're #1! We're #1!
This is a DDoS attack. The first "D" stands for "Distributed." When you have thousands of remote machines located in different places sending traffic to your network, preventing an outage relies upon being able to figure out which traffic is legitimate and which is illegitimate, and then filter the illegitimate. Having more diverse pipes does not really make a huge difference. Either legitimate and illegitimate traffic can come in over a pipe or they can't. If it can, the attack is blocking things. If it can't you just DoS'd yourself.
The real trick here is the availability of clean or protected access from ISPs with the capability of detecting illegitimate traffic and filtering it, without stopping legitimate traffic. Many ISPs have this capability to one degree or another and a few have formally brought it to market as a differentiator for their service. I'm guessing the big ISPs in Estonia might be a bit behind in that regard, and are thus working with more capable peers to try and filter the attack further away in the cloud.
Actually I think the problem is the fact that most IT purchasers (and people in general) do not understand the open source model. The minister of education should probably be spending some money to plan and properly deploy NeoOffice and possibly spend some money hiring or encouraging some bug fixes and customizations as they make sense for Australia. He should not be donating 5% of what he would spend on MSOffice, or any other amount that does not help him achieve his goals.
Unlike closed source software, NeoOffice will not get bug fixes and improvements funded by license fees. If educational institutes in Australia need or want those things, they should pay developers to do them (or encourage them to be done by in house talent or students). Unlike closed source software, contributions to the project do directly benefit the schools by resulting in improved software (rather than just more profit for some development company).
I have a more accurate one yet: "Anne Summers nets free publicity by abusing trademarks."
Your headline is flawed in that, it implies Apple was the one initiating things and in that Apple is "trigger-happy" instead of simply responding as the law requires them to do so for due diligence.
I can't really see how Apple can claim some sort of copyright over silhouettes.They can claim copyright over their silhouettes, but not silhouettes in general. This case, however, is about trademarks. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that because of the combination of the name being similar to many Apple products and the advertising being a clone of Apple's and because an Apple product is used in conjunction with this device, that this product is made by the same company as the iPod, i.e. Apple. This is intentionally misleading the consumer and this case is not even a close one in the eyes of the law (or wouldn't be in the US, not sure about UK).
So here's what will happen. Apple sent the letter. Ann eSummers will maybe delay a bit and then they will comply having garnered free publicity. Here is why Apple did this. It is defending their trademarks so they don't lose it. If Apple did not respond to this, then in a few weeks some other company could release an iPod competitor, perhaps called the iMusic or iPlayer. They could then use advertisements very similar to Apple's and if Apple tried to take them to court, despite the fact that consumers were being misled into buying knock-offs, Apple would lose when the knock-off maker pointed out this product/campaign that Apple did not respond to.
You're mistaking the nature of the confusion. No one would think this device is an iPod, but because of the naming scheme (which clones Apple's) and the advertising campaign (which again clones Apple's) it is not unreasonable to assume that some people would think the iPod and this device are made by the same company. That is the confusion. Trademarks are about keeping someone from capitalizing on your good reputation/visibility in the industry.
Now this particular instance is pretty borderline in my view of how trademark law should be applied, but it is not even close to borderline compared to industry standards. The iGasm manufacturers will almost certainly lose if they go to court and they probably know it. This is a way to get free publicity before they capitulate.
On a a side note. Am I the only one that sees a difference between sending a letter and suing a person? The headline of this article is factually incorrect. Apple has not sued. They sent a notice that says they might sue if the IGasm maker does not capitulate. Apple will sue, if they have to... not because they care if someone is selling an iGasm, but because they pretty much have to defend their trademarks. If they let this pass and next week Microsoft renamed the Zune the "iPlayer" and advertised it with similar posters, then Apple would SOL in court because MS could point to this and claim Apple had already let people use a name just as similar and an ad campaign just as similar and the courts would rule for MS, despite the fact that most purchasers would be being deceived.
A man is upset by something a powerful government is doing. Eventually he feels so strongly about the politics and international ramifications of it, that he straps a bomb to himself and walks into a crowd of the people he feels is responsible.
Now, would you call that man a "radical christian?" Would you call him a "radical muslim?" Does the person's religion have a lot bearing on the matter if the politics are not directly related to religion, only to ethical/moral beliefs and political opinions?
The important point I think is that in the US if the person happened to be muslim, would be branded a "radical muslim" whereas if they happened to be a christian they would not be branded a "radical christian" in the media. I'm sure the opposite holds true, to some degree, in areas where christians are a minority and muslims or jews a majority. It isn't that a person is more likely to be violent in expressing their beliefs because they are of a given religion. Just look at the numbers.
The only "radical Christians" that I can think of are abortion-doctor murders.The KKK calls themselves a Christian organization. The fundamentalists running the US government who ordered the bombing of Iraq and who have killed a lot more innocent women and children than Iraqi retaliation, also call themselves christians. Why are you not apply the "radical christian" label to them? Most of the people in Iraq who blow themselves up aren't doing it because they hate christianity. They're doing it because they hate the fact that their country has been occupied by a foreign army who has killed a great many of their friends and family and looted their country for resources, selling all the local industry to foreign investors and emptying the national treasury, while building dozens of permanent military bases. If roles were reversed, they'd probably be watching news about how some radical christians were murdering their troops stationed in the northern US, because I'd be shooting the invaders. And ignorant people would assume, based upon that reporting, it is because I'm one of those radical christians (even though I'm more of an agnostic/zen buddhist in reality).