Well, most school network admins that I've encountered are rather arrogant about their security. If you explained how something *could* be done then they're just as likely to either ignore it or say the next software update will fix it. Exploiting it is a sure way of making them fix it, although ideally you probably wouldn't want to get caught.
As for businesses, what about all the exploits they don't fix or check for because their software is "good enough"?
Well, then that would mean that the evolutionary trend is to be more reliant on technology. Unfortunately, the people most likely to invent new technology are less likely to reproduce given social factors. So that would lead to a society that is incredibly dependant on something that changes very slowly. That seems like it would either lead to an eventual technological dead end, or massive deaths if something in the environment changed significantly.
Hmm... from that description it sounds like moderators of private sites got pissed because BitComet sorta merges swarms if someone is downloading from two or more. I.e. Site X and Site Y have the same torrent (just using different trackers), some clever BitComet user starts downloading it from X, adds Y to the tracker list, and now all BitComet users in either swarm are downloading from both. That'd make it very difficult to track the ratio of unoriginal content... Seems even sillier than I thought.
The reason the document hasn't been updated is because it's the archived change log, since the feature has been in BitComet for so long.
I wouldn't consider the peer list sharing far off from a trackerless system. Sometimes when I finish downloading something I'll disconnect from the swarm and start seeding to other computers on my router. If I still have an active internet connection then the peer list gets shared (even if I delete it from the seeding computer often another BitComet user from the original swarm will reconnect and restore it). Immediately after recieving the peer list the other computers will connect to people in the original swarm and start downloading the file from them as well. Even though it's undesirable in this case the download will proceed without even connecting to the original tracker, so I'm not sure how that's a "long way" from a trackerless system...
Also, out of curiousity what's the exact reason BC got banned? Everyone I talk to (and explain the stupidity/futility of the ban) says that's the peer list sharing is the reason. In fact, someone made a "patch" that cripples BitComet by removing that exact feature.
It's been a feature for as long as I've used BitComet. Looking at the [url=http://www.bitcomet.com/doc/changelog.txt]Old change log[/url] it looks like it was added in version 0.32, which came out September 8th, 2003. So I guess that would be a little over 600 days. I haven't read the article yet, but it sounds like Azureus implemented their own method instead of using BitComet's. Seems like it would be more effective if you had both clients sharing the same list instead of each client having its own...
AFAIK the client still will still report its stats to the tracker. The only way this could be exploited is if people just stopped connecting to the tracker all together. Some sites are banning BitComet for this reason (since you can connect then manually change the tracker address to something invalid). Kinda pointless though, changing a useragent is simple, and if you want to leech then there are various clients that are better at it/falsify ratios.
The thing about bigger and more powerful weapons is that they are made so that they don't have to be used. Their primary purpose is to deter other coutries from attacking, and in the event of a war, to end it quickly. The thing about medical research is that it will be used. If a rich person could have themselves cloned (and have the clone catch up in age quickly) and then kill the clone for body parts then I'd say a lot of people would do so. I personally don't care about the animals (within reason) unless they have a fair amount of intellegence. I mean, it's not like you should kill retarded people for medical research, so there are definately some boundries. What's the point in prolonging a person's life if they need to lose their "humanity" to do so?
Last time I checked the military didn't send people on suicide missions. I'd venture to guess that there's a much smaller risk of being killed in Iraq than being killed on a shuttle mission.
I don't see how 3 firewalls for a home network is unreasonable. You could have software firewalls on each computer, a router with a firewall, and a gateway with a firewall.
I'm 19 so I can see where you're coming from. Parents shouldn't/virtually can't monitor every word that gets typed, but having a computer in a public place doesn't mean they are going to stare over your shoulder all the time. But, on the other hand, some kids should have their parents pay a little more attention. Fighting with girlfriends and stuff is normal, and parents shouldn't say anything about it/care, but some kids take that a little too seriously (stalking and such). It's then that the parents should intervene. Parents should trust their children enough to give them a fair amount of privacy/independance, but the kids should also trust their parents enough to not need to hide much from them.
Miranda IM is a good alternative to Trillian. While the base install doesn't support too much there are several hundred plugins to add what you want. I know that you can get plugins for tabbed messenging, encryption (several types), and just about any messenger service you can think of.
Although I usually am an advocate of privacy, I have to admit that there is very little that a kid should have the right to keep secret from their parents. That's not to say they should tell them everything that they do, but it's a parent's job to ensure their kids behave in an acceptable manner. Basically, if a parent asks there shouldn't be a reason for the kid to lie. There are plenty of things a kid probably shouldn't tell people about, but it's not like they should have to keep that secret from their parents. If a kid gets bad grades then the parents should know so they can do something about it. If the kid starts playing games excessively, then the parents should know. It's not like every kid has the right to have a TV in their room and keep their door locked all the time, so why should the computer be any different?
No kidding. There were all of three reasons that I learned how to use BeOS back when R5 PE came out.
It let me use FTP to work on my website..
It let me use Napster.
It let me view porn sites.
As a 15 year old these three things were critically important to me, and I was awe-inspired at how the boarding school firewall wasn't compatible with BeOS. Now, after getting fed-up with Windows, and irritated with Linux's unnecessary complexity (I like to tinker, but I don't like to be forced to) BeOS has become my OS of choice.
And I think you're grossly underestimating them. I'll admit most of my classmates are, on the whole, rather unskilled with computers. They aren't the ones who like to play computer games though. Most gamers that I know are at least resourceful enough to fix most of their own computer problems. It may not always be the most elegant solution, but they'll use whatever works. At my old school everyone was issued a laptop. For some reason there was a policy setup through Novell that prevented anyone from booting their laptop after 10:00 at night (didn't do anything to computers already on). One of the first things I did was play around with my laptop's network settings until I found the option to enable logging in without authenticating to the network. Others figured out that if the laptop didn't have a network connection then it'd let you log in anytime. So they would take their laptop out of range of the access points, boot it, and take it back to their room. These simple solutions also tended to spread quite quickly through word-of-mouth. If there's a desire to get around something then someone will find a way and spread the word.
My guess is that Joe Average can't remember if he saved Important.doc to C:\, C:\My Documents, C:\Documents and Settings\JAverage\My Documents, N:\, or to the Start Menu/whereever else inexperienced users tend to save things.
Which is better, disabling the power plant or destroying it? Killing a country's computers or the people operating those computers? I'd say any kind of war has economic disadvantages, especially for the loosing side, but at least this way there's less loss of life.
True, I'm sure there are vunrablilities, but since Firefox is fairly secure, and I would think the BONE network layer is more secure than netserver was I figure it's a reasonably secure OS from a network standpoint. Nobody's really tested it, but I doubt that there's much of a chance of the system being exploited at this point in time. My point is, mostly in jest, that it's mostly just Microsoft, Linux, and (I assume) Apple that regularly release security updates.
Yeah, just like they can ask for a list of usernames and passwords for all internet services just because they might be doing something bad. To see what you're sharing they have to be on Internet2, since they aren't a university or research institution then they shouldn't be on it to check in the first place. I.e. they know file sharing takes place on Internet2, but they have no legal authority (AFAIK, and hope) to do anything about it unless they have proof that their stuff is being shared. What I, and probably everyone else, wants to know is how they got that initial proof.
At my university you can only test out of the first intro course. Unfortunately, the testing software sucks and demands that you do things the exact way taught in the class (which you haven't taken). AFAIK, nobody's been able to pass it. From what I've seen, it's really annoying and Microsoft-centric. For instance, in Word, pressing Alt, T, W would be an incorrect way to spell check a document (something I'm sure it asks).
The purity of the water should also be taken into account. Distilled water doesn't conduct electricity. However, I'm sure it would collect stuff from contact with the internal circuit boards and such, but perhaps not enough to conduct electricity well enough to short anything out.
We definately should explore the oceans more, but not at the expense of the space program. Why? Because if we completely screw up our planet, then we can live in either space or the ocean. But there's a potentially infinate amount of resources in space on which to expand/migrate/fix Earth, whereas retreating to the sea would be more like delaying the inevitable or "merely" a massive technological setback.
Great, now all someone has to do is get one of those clay pigeon launchers and keep launching until the thing runs out of ammo. You could even take bets on how often it hits the pigeon. Of course, any civilian that wanted to walk upto the shoot-anything-that-moves killing machine, well... I think I'd chalk that up to natural selection.
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Well, most school network admins that I've encountered are rather arrogant about their security. If you explained how something *could* be done then they're just as likely to either ignore it or say the next software update will fix it. Exploiting it is a sure way of making them fix it, although ideally you probably wouldn't want to get caught.
As for businesses, what about all the exploits they don't fix or check for because their software is "good enough"?
Well, then that would mean that the evolutionary trend is to be more reliant on technology. Unfortunately, the people most likely to invent new technology are less likely to reproduce given social factors. So that would lead to a society that is incredibly dependant on something that changes very slowly. That seems like it would either lead to an eventual technological dead end, or massive deaths if something in the environment changed significantly.
Hmm... from that description it sounds like moderators of private sites got pissed because BitComet sorta merges swarms if someone is downloading from two or more. I.e. Site X and Site Y have the same torrent (just using different trackers), some clever BitComet user starts downloading it from X, adds Y to the tracker list, and now all BitComet users in either swarm are downloading from both. That'd make it very difficult to track the ratio of unoriginal content... Seems even sillier than I thought.
The reason the document hasn't been updated is because it's the archived change log, since the feature has been in BitComet for so long.
I wouldn't consider the peer list sharing far off from a trackerless system. Sometimes when I finish downloading something I'll disconnect from the swarm and start seeding to other computers on my router. If I still have an active internet connection then the peer list gets shared (even if I delete it from the seeding computer often another BitComet user from the original swarm will reconnect and restore it). Immediately after recieving the peer list the other computers will connect to people in the original swarm and start downloading the file from them as well. Even though it's undesirable in this case the download will proceed without even connecting to the original tracker, so I'm not sure how that's a "long way" from a trackerless system...
Also, out of curiousity what's the exact reason BC got banned? Everyone I talk to (and explain the stupidity/futility of the ban) says that's the peer list sharing is the reason. In fact, someone made a "patch" that cripples BitComet by removing that exact feature.
It's been a feature for as long as I've used BitComet. Looking at the [url=http://www.bitcomet.com/doc/changelog.txt]Old change log[/url] it looks like it was added in version 0.32, which came out September 8th, 2003. So I guess that would be a little over 600 days. I haven't read the article yet, but it sounds like Azureus implemented their own method instead of using BitComet's. Seems like it would be more effective if you had both clients sharing the same list instead of each client having its own...
AFAIK the client still will still report its stats to the tracker. The only way this could be exploited is if people just stopped connecting to the tracker all together. Some sites are banning BitComet for this reason (since you can connect then manually change the tracker address to something invalid). Kinda pointless though, changing a useragent is simple, and if you want to leech then there are various clients that are better at it/falsify ratios.
The thing about bigger and more powerful weapons is that they are made so that they don't have to be used. Their primary purpose is to deter other coutries from attacking, and in the event of a war, to end it quickly. The thing about medical research is that it will be used. If a rich person could have themselves cloned (and have the clone catch up in age quickly) and then kill the clone for body parts then I'd say a lot of people would do so. I personally don't care about the animals (within reason) unless they have a fair amount of intellegence. I mean, it's not like you should kill retarded people for medical research, so there are definately some boundries. What's the point in prolonging a person's life if they need to lose their "humanity" to do so?
Last time I checked the military didn't send people on suicide missions. I'd venture to guess that there's a much smaller risk of being killed in Iraq than being killed on a shuttle mission.
I don't see how 3 firewalls for a home network is unreasonable. You could have software firewalls on each computer, a router with a firewall, and a gateway with a firewall.
I'm 19 so I can see where you're coming from. Parents shouldn't/virtually can't monitor every word that gets typed, but having a computer in a public place doesn't mean they are going to stare over your shoulder all the time. But, on the other hand, some kids should have their parents pay a little more attention. Fighting with girlfriends and stuff is normal, and parents shouldn't say anything about it/care, but some kids take that a little too seriously (stalking and such). It's then that the parents should intervene. Parents should trust their children enough to give them a fair amount of privacy/independance, but the kids should also trust their parents enough to not need to hide much from them.
Miranda IM is a good alternative to Trillian. While the base install doesn't support too much there are several hundred plugins to add what you want. I know that you can get plugins for tabbed messenging, encryption (several types), and just about any messenger service you can think of.
Although I usually am an advocate of privacy, I have to admit that there is very little that a kid should have the right to keep secret from their parents. That's not to say they should tell them everything that they do, but it's a parent's job to ensure their kids behave in an acceptable manner. Basically, if a parent asks there shouldn't be a reason for the kid to lie. There are plenty of things a kid probably shouldn't tell people about, but it's not like they should have to keep that secret from their parents. If a kid gets bad grades then the parents should know so they can do something about it. If the kid starts playing games excessively, then the parents should know. It's not like every kid has the right to have a TV in their room and keep their door locked all the time, so why should the computer be any different?
It let me use FTP to work on my website..
It let me use Napster.
It let me view porn sites.
As a 15 year old these three things were critically important to me, and I was awe-inspired at how the boarding school firewall wasn't compatible with BeOS. Now, after getting fed-up with Windows, and irritated with Linux's unnecessary complexity (I like to tinker, but I don't like to be forced to) BeOS has become my OS of choice.
And I think you're grossly underestimating them. I'll admit most of my classmates are, on the whole, rather unskilled with computers. They aren't the ones who like to play computer games though. Most gamers that I know are at least resourceful enough to fix most of their own computer problems. It may not always be the most elegant solution, but they'll use whatever works. At my old school everyone was issued a laptop. For some reason there was a policy setup through Novell that prevented anyone from booting their laptop after 10:00 at night (didn't do anything to computers already on). One of the first things I did was play around with my laptop's network settings until I found the option to enable logging in without authenticating to the network. Others figured out that if the laptop didn't have a network connection then it'd let you log in anytime. So they would take their laptop out of range of the access points, boot it, and take it back to their room. These simple solutions also tended to spread quite quickly through word-of-mouth. If there's a desire to get around something then someone will find a way and spread the word.
My guess is that Joe Average can't remember if he saved Important.doc to C:\, C:\My Documents, C:\Documents and Settings\JAverage\My Documents, N:\, or to the Start Menu/whereever else inexperienced users tend to save things.
Which is better, disabling the power plant or destroying it? Killing a country's computers or the people operating those computers? I'd say any kind of war has economic disadvantages, especially for the loosing side, but at least this way there's less loss of life.
True, I'm sure there are vunrablilities, but since Firefox is fairly secure, and I would think the BONE network layer is more secure than netserver was I figure it's a reasonably secure OS from a network standpoint. Nobody's really tested it, but I doubt that there's much of a chance of the system being exploited at this point in time. My point is, mostly in jest, that it's mostly just Microsoft, Linux, and (I assume) Apple that regularly release security updates.
I'm running BeOS, and I can't remember the last time I needed a security update for it.
For some reason I think that if they really cared about their customers then they wouldn't sue them, but that's just me...
Yeah, just like they can ask for a list of usernames and passwords for all internet services just because they might be doing something bad. To see what you're sharing they have to be on Internet2, since they aren't a university or research institution then they shouldn't be on it to check in the first place. I.e. they know file sharing takes place on Internet2, but they have no legal authority (AFAIK, and hope) to do anything about it unless they have proof that their stuff is being shared. What I, and probably everyone else, wants to know is how they got that initial proof.
Doh! That's what I meant, spell check happens automatically, doesn't it...
At my university you can only test out of the first intro course. Unfortunately, the testing software sucks and demands that you do things the exact way taught in the class (which you haven't taken). AFAIK, nobody's been able to pass it. From what I've seen, it's really annoying and Microsoft-centric. For instance, in Word, pressing Alt, T, W would be an incorrect way to spell check a document (something I'm sure it asks).
The purity of the water should also be taken into account. Distilled water doesn't conduct electricity. However, I'm sure it would collect stuff from contact with the internal circuit boards and such, but perhaps not enough to conduct electricity well enough to short anything out.
We definately should explore the oceans more, but not at the expense of the space program. Why? Because if we completely screw up our planet, then we can live in either space or the ocean. But there's a potentially infinate amount of resources in space on which to expand/migrate/fix Earth, whereas retreating to the sea would be more like delaying the inevitable or "merely" a massive technological setback.
Great, now all someone has to do is get one of those clay pigeon launchers and keep launching until the thing runs out of ammo. You could even take bets on how often it hits the pigeon. Of course, any civilian that wanted to walk upto the shoot-anything-that-moves killing machine, well... I think I'd chalk that up to natural selection.