Unfortunately for him, I have just published a paper that shows that and how future worms will be much too fast for his - or anyone elses - manual defense methods.
In short, I've demonstrated that by the time he's starting to analyze the worm, it has already infected 90%+ of the vulnerable machines.
As soon as worm writers acquire some coding skills (most of the past worms were pathetic), all defenses that require manual actions will be too slow.
Unfortunately for him, I have just published a paper that shows that and how future worms will be much too fast for his - or anyone elses - manual defense methods.
In short, I've demonstrated that by the time he's starting to analyze the worm, it has already infected 90%+ of the vulnerable machines.
As soon as worm writers acquire some coding skills (most of the past worms were pathetic), all defenses that require manual actions will be too slow.
That they have to stop selling Windows to people/corps?
Yepp. IMHO that's the ironic part of it. The Eolas guy sure has a sense of humour. See, now their argument from the antitrust case that IE is part of the OS comes back to bite them. Now if Ashcroft were an attorney general instead of a religious fanatic, he'd be watching this very closely - because if MS starts selling windows without IE, a buckload of shit could come down on them for contempt of court, lying under oath, etc. pp.
Not that it'd happen with the current US government. They're too busy looking for the next country to invade.
* Firebird - are there any other browsers? * mutt (in Eterm) - mail the way it was built to be. Ok, you might want to substitute it with mozilla mail or some other GUI thingy for a family system * LyX - even my mum wrote her letters in that * Eterm - for everything commandline
you probably also need: * Logoff/Powerdown button - unless you want to give mum the root password.:)
What would be your choice for middle school classrooms with minimal sys admin?
MacOSX, of course.
It's Unix-based and is widely acknowledged to have the best user-interface.
The UI means less problems of the "how do I do...?" kind. The Unix-based means you can actually lock it down so that the user can't terminally fuck it up. At worst he loses his home directory.
Linux would be 2nd choice, as it has the Unix advantage, but not quite the slick interface.
Windows would be 3rd choice. It has neither, but is widely used, so the kids will find it again later in life.
*BSD and other less well-known OSs come later, mostly due to their obscurity and the lack of a wide selection of software. Also because even with the "minimal admin" goal you will need some admin work done, and that means you need to find people who can handle the machines. Easy to find for windos, Linux, MacOS (in that order). No so easy for NetBSD, Plan9 or LispOS.:)
Which speed problem? I've been working over ssh-tunneled remote X connections without even noticing.
All these "X sucks, we're gonna make something better" projects bore me. We've had them at a rate of about 1 per year. So far, none of them have produced anything worth a 2nd look.
None of these is such a heavy burden that I would be justified in calling for government assistence, especially given the speech issue involved.
True, if you were the only one affected. If society as a whole is (and in western countries half the people have e-mail now), then it's actually the governments responsibility.
[offensive stuff] Good points you make there. I retract my argument.
You're not seriously claiming that spam is as serious a problem as murder are you? That would indicate that you have no sense of proportion.
No, I'm not claiming it's as serious. Just the mechanics of the argument run the same. Things are not legal or illegal based on whether you can deal with them or not. That applies to the large (murder) as well as to the small (petty theft, or spam).
BUT no spammer in the whole world can force you to recieve his email. It was your choice to get email, it was your choice to download it all no matter what email it might have been... you invited the spam in the spam that had collected in your mailbox.
Bzzt, wrong. Again, this is an argument along the lines of "you deserve whatever you get". Breaking into my house is illegal. Sure, I could've never bought one, and when I bought it I could have known that houses do get broken into sometimes. And by putting valuable stuff inside I surely invited the thieves in. All of that is true, but it still doesn't change the legality of the acts involved.
We have plenty of tools available to deal with spam that I see no need to, and great danger in, broadly regulating against it.
As the current state of affairs shows, we do not have the tools to efficiently deal with spam. You and I might have, but what about your mom and my dad?
What we need is the SMTP equivalent of "no ads please". And as long as there is no government enforcement (and fines, and jail time) behind it, spammers will not give one damn.
I agree that we don't need any overly broad regulations. A very simple one would do. Like "All senders of unsolicited commercial mass-email must honour the no-ads-please banners from RFC1234. Violators are fined $500 per offense reported. The FCC receives and keeps a list of complaints."
Sure there will always be grey areas. That's why we have courts to decide those borderline cases.
So I say, instead of passing broad anti-spam regulation, why not just enforce the laws on the books against fraud? It's much easier, doesn't raise significant constitutional questions, and we can do it right now.
I'm with you there, except for a technical difference:
A new law would be useful. It doesn't have to have any new content. But it helps if there is a law that clearly says: "We consider the combination of this and that and these things to be punishable in sum. We call this spam, and let nobody say it's legal."
You know, the problem with assembling all the 20 minor offenses is that a good lawyer will wiggle out of 19 of them, and your spammer ends up paying $50 for a symbolic fine.
That's because burglary is illegal. Spam is not illegal,
Not yet.
This means you wind up having to opt out again.
One, will it be my responsibility to opt-out to each and every individual spammer? Will I have to make sure that I translate my opt-out message into a language he understands? Do I have to opt-out each of my e-mail addresses individually?
You will have to admit that opt-out is not realistically practicable. A low-level technical solution, such as on the SMTP level, would be the only thing that technically works, and I don't think you'd bet a months wage that the spammer would care this --||-- much.
I don't think you quite realize how special a place speech occupies.
Yes, if you isolate it from the rest of the world. Sadly, in that case it becomes irrelevant.
If my speech includes harrassing or maybe killing others (hey, that can be a tremendous message), it's no longer a matter of speech. I'll get jailed for harrassment or murder, not for speech.
Likewise, IMHO spammers deserve to be jailed (at least) not for speech, but for the about 20 minor felonies (fraud, harrassment, theft of service, etc.) that they commit while doing their little "speeches".
As I said: They can speak as much as they want for all they care. But as soon as they get on my lawn/mailbox, it's not a matter of only speech anymore.
Aside from the fact that unsolicited commerical email is content based discrimination (being commerical)
Well, yes it is. You got a problem with that? The government doesn't. Free speech isn't free if it involves any of a long list of "unwanted" content (child pornography, terrorism plans, etc.)
Aside from that, I've long held the belief that speech is something that humans do, not companies. "commercial speech" is a contradiction.
Your attempt to wiggle around the first amendment isn't likely to work.
Then the 1st Amendment needs a serious looking after.
I have some sympathy for the hardcore stance, but it's overly idealistic. If I were to shout porn soundtracks at your house at 200 db night and day, would you consider that an issue of free speech, or of harrassment?
For one, the volume of physical junk mail is several orders of magnitude lower than that of spam. Two, where I live you can put a "no ads, please" sticker on your mailbox. Almost everyone will respect that. I think you can take people to court if they don't.
[big lumps and other arguments]
Again, two points: One, I consider even a single "enlarge your penis!!!" mail sent to my mother as offensive. It isn't always a question of quantity alone. Two, the argument that "you can deal with it" is very misguided. It's like saying that murder shouldn't be illegal because everyone can get a gun and defend himself.
[doors and other real-world comparisons] There is a qualitative/quantitative difference here. A door-to-door salesman or telemarketer can only annoy so many people per hour. A spammer can easily annoy millions in the same timeframe. That is enough of a quantitative difference to make it of a different quality.
[1st Amendment] As I explained elsewhere, this is not a question of free speech. Hey, the spammer can speak or write all he wants as far as I care. But the 1st Amendment doesn't include a right to force your speech on others. Interpretations do include a right to be heard by willing listeners, which is why locking you away can be a suppression of free speech, even though you can still speak in your cell.
Seriously, who cares about P2P - this is a great application to take care of those damn windos machines that get infected with a virus and are never patched, cleaned up or taken down, but just continue spreading the malware happily.
I work for an ISP. We would love to have an easy way to identify and shut down those customers who are this negliegent.
(and before you yell we as ISP shouldn't bla bla - if you can't drive without endangering everyone else, then get off the road, no matter if it's the highway or the information superhighway)
Door to door religious missionaries surely know the same thing. Yet their actions are entirely legal in the absence of actual or constructive knowledge as pertaining to particular individuals.
It is legal because it is a nuisance, not a major obstacle.
If door bells everywhere would ring on average 10 times an hour because of door to door missionaries, I'm sure the legality of their activities would be under scrutiny.
And how, pray tell, are spammers supposed to know that you don't want them unless you tell them so, or put up some sort of notice that they are reasonably likely to be aware of?
Good point. However, society doesn't work that way. I do not have to put a "burglars not wanted" sign on my door because otherwise the poor burglars can't tell whether I want them or not.
Hold it, that example is not that far-fetched. Because I can contract a security expert to break into my house in order to, say, test the alarm system. That is perfectly legal for both him and me.
It's what they call an "opt-in" system.
Since we can safely assume that 99% of the receipients of spam don't want any, opt-in is the only solution that makes any sense.
So I think you should prove that spam is not free speech if you want to say that it's not. You might be right, but I think it's best if people work their way through the analysis.
That one is easy. Spam is not the speech, but the method of delivering (i.e. unsolicited mass e-mailing). Much like a newspaper or a radio, or a flyer or a billboard is not speech, but a means of delivery.
Therefore, spam itself is not speech. The message contained within is. But that is irrelevant as I'm not trying to outlaw that message.
Pass me the popcorn, as we see ICANN tumble to its much deserved end.
I mean, you don't really think verisign will do much more than tell them to shove it, do you? What will ICANN do then? Come down on verisign with all its awesome power and might? Uh, yes, all of it. Oh, so scared.
It's thinking like this that helped Hitler round up his innocent victims.
And Hitler build the Autobahn, so we should immediately stop any and all roadbuilding.
If you make laws against spammers, you obviously need to define what exactly a spammer is.
If your grandma is sending 10 mio. e-mails a day then by all means turn her in an lock her away.
Final point: Spam is not free speech. Fighting spam is not suppressing speech. For all I care, people can write as many "make $$$ now" mails as they like. They just have no right whatsoever to send them to me if I don't want them.
who is more technologically savvy, your average spammer or your average politician?
That is the totally wrong question.
Politicians know that they don't know everything. That is why they have staff and expert advisors.
Politicians, however, have something that we the tech-community do not: Police, jails and option to use them. Spam won't go away 100%, ever. But if the spam rate were on par with the murder or robbery rates (i.e. I have a single-digit percentage chance of getting one spam during my life), then I'd be satisfied.
What we, the tech-community, can do is help them find the culprits. All we need are bounties high enough to make it worth our time.
Raise your hands, you unemployed geeks who would jump at the chance of becoming paid-for spammer hunters.
How do you propose that blackouts increase power company profits?
Loss of profit due to blackout: X Costs of work that would have been necessary to prevent blackout (maintainance, crew, monitoring, replacement parts, etc.): Y
If X Y then blackout = more profitable then preventing blackout.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a nice attempt at active worm defense.
Unfortunately for him, I have just published a paper that shows that and how future worms will be much too fast for his - or anyone elses - manual defense methods.
In short, I've demonstrated that by the time he's starting to analyze the worm, it has already infected 90%+ of the vulnerable machines.
As soon as worm writers acquire some coding skills (most of the past worms were pathetic), all defenses that require manual actions will be too slow.
Sorry.
It is a nice attempt at active worm defense.
Unfortunately for him, I have just published a paper that shows that and how future worms will be much too fast for his - or anyone elses - manual defense methods.
In short, I've demonstrated that by the time he's starting to analyze the worm, it has already infected 90%+ of the vulnerable machines.
As soon as worm writers acquire some coding skills (most of the past worms were pathetic), all defenses that require manual actions will be too slow.
Sorry.
'building apps that are as smart as Outlook.' ...
Nah, I'll pass taking shots at that one. Too easy.
Real life is a satire on itself.
I can't quite decide whether this is for real or a very elaborate prank. In case it is the later: Kudos. Very convincing.
No, it's a sign that the CIA has sold too many of the old original plates to "friendly" countries. Last I checked at least one ended up in Iran. Oops.
MS could quickly ship a patch to IE/Windows
No, they couldn't. They would still be selling an infringing version in the shops.
What Eolas is getting at is a full recall. Any and all windows versions currently in shops or at OEMs would have to be replaced with new versions.
Which would certainly mean 2+ weeks of no windows sales whatsoever, world-wide. Funny idea.
That they have to stop selling Windows to people/corps?
Yepp. IMHO that's the ironic part of it. The Eolas guy sure has a sense of humour. See, now their argument from the antitrust case that IE is part of the OS comes back to bite them. Now if Ashcroft were an attorney general instead of a religious fanatic, he'd be watching this very closely - because if MS starts selling windows without IE, a buckload of shit could come down on them for contempt of court, lying under oath, etc. pp.
Not that it'd happen with the current US government. They're too busy looking for the next country to invade.
Ah, the beauty of the US "point system" penalties.
He's probably accused of mail fraud. A minor offense, maximum penalty: One night in prison.
Per case.
Here's my wharf from top to bottom:
:)
* Firebird - are there any other browsers?
* mutt (in Eterm) - mail the way it was built to be. Ok, you might want to substitute it with mozilla mail or some other GUI thingy for a family system
* LyX - even my mum wrote her letters in that
* Eterm - for everything commandline
you probably also need:
* Logoff/Powerdown button - unless you want to give mum the root password.
What's more, one thing I strongly believe is that computers destroy what makes kids kids
A good point, but stopping computers at school won't do anything in this regard - most kids will have a comp at home anyways.
When I was in 5th grade, I was one of 4 guys who owned a computer in my class of 28. Today, the ratio is likely reversed.
What would be your choice for middle school classrooms with minimal sys admin?
:)
MacOSX, of course.
It's Unix-based and is widely acknowledged to have the best user-interface.
The UI means less problems of the "how do I do...?" kind.
The Unix-based means you can actually lock it down so that the user can't terminally fuck it up. At worst he loses his home directory.
Linux would be 2nd choice, as it has the Unix advantage, but not quite the slick interface.
Windows would be 3rd choice. It has neither, but is widely used, so the kids will find it again later in life.
*BSD and other less well-known OSs come later, mostly due to their obscurity and the lack of a wide selection of software. Also because even with the "minimal admin" goal you will need some admin work done, and that means you need to find people who can handle the machines. Easy to find for windos, Linux, MacOS (in that order). No so easy for NetBSD, Plan9 or LispOS.
Which speed problem? I've been working over ssh-tunneled remote X connections without even noticing.
All these "X sucks, we're gonna make something better" projects bore me. We've had them at a rate of about 1 per year. So far, none of them have produced anything worth a 2nd look.
Call back when you have a tech demo.
None of these is such a heavy burden that I would be justified in calling for government assistence, especially given the speech issue involved.
True, if you were the only one affected. If society as a whole is (and in western countries half the people have e-mail now), then it's actually the governments responsibility.
[offensive stuff]
Good points you make there. I retract my argument.
You're not seriously claiming that spam is as serious a problem as murder are you? That would indicate that you have no sense of proportion.
No, I'm not claiming it's as serious. Just the mechanics of the argument run the same. Things are not legal or illegal based on whether you can deal with them or not. That applies to the large (murder) as well as to the small (petty theft, or spam).
BUT no spammer in the whole world can force you to recieve his email. It was your choice to get email, it was your choice to download it all no matter what email it might have been... you invited the spam in the spam that had collected in your mailbox.
Bzzt, wrong. Again, this is an argument along the lines of "you deserve whatever you get". Breaking into my house is illegal. Sure, I could've never bought one, and when I bought it I could have known that houses do get broken into sometimes. And by putting valuable stuff inside I surely invited the thieves in.
All of that is true, but it still doesn't change the legality of the acts involved.
We have plenty of tools available to deal with spam that I see no need to, and great danger in, broadly regulating against it.
As the current state of affairs shows, we do not have the tools to efficiently deal with spam. You and I might have, but what about your mom and my dad?
What we need is the SMTP equivalent of "no ads please". And as long as there is no government enforcement (and fines, and jail time) behind it, spammers will not give one damn.
I agree that we don't need any overly broad regulations. A very simple one would do. Like "All senders of unsolicited commercial mass-email must honour the no-ads-please banners from RFC1234. Violators are fined $500 per offense reported. The FCC receives and keeps a list of complaints."
Sure there will always be grey areas. That's why we have courts to decide those borderline cases.
So I say, instead of passing broad anti-spam regulation, why not just enforce the laws on the books against fraud? It's much easier, doesn't raise significant constitutional questions, and we can do it right now.
:)
I'm with you there, except for a technical difference:
A new law would be useful. It doesn't have to have any new content. But it helps if there is a law that clearly says: "We consider the combination of this and that and these things to be punishable in sum. We call this spam, and let nobody say it's legal."
You know, the problem with assembling all the 20 minor offenses is that a good lawyer will wiggle out of 19 of them, and your spammer ends up paying $50 for a symbolic fine.
Ah, the beauty of the legal system.
That's because burglary is illegal. Spam is not illegal,
Not yet.
This means you wind up having to opt out again.
One, will it be my responsibility to opt-out to each and every individual spammer? Will I have to make sure that I translate my opt-out message into a language he understands? Do I have to opt-out each of my e-mail addresses individually?
You will have to admit that opt-out is not realistically practicable. A low-level technical solution, such as on the SMTP level, would be the only thing that technically works, and I don't think you'd bet a months wage that the spammer would care this --||-- much.
I don't think you quite realize how special a place speech occupies.
Yes, if you isolate it from the rest of the world. Sadly, in that case it becomes irrelevant.
If my speech includes harrassing or maybe killing others (hey, that can be a tremendous message), it's no longer a matter of speech. I'll get jailed for harrassment or murder, not for speech.
Likewise, IMHO spammers deserve to be jailed (at least) not for speech, but for the about 20 minor felonies (fraud, harrassment, theft of service, etc.) that they commit while doing their little "speeches".
As I said: They can speak as much as they want for all they care. But as soon as they get on my lawn/mailbox, it's not a matter of only speech anymore.
Aside from the fact that unsolicited commerical email is content based discrimination (being commerical)
Well, yes it is. You got a problem with that? The government doesn't. Free speech isn't free if it involves any of a long list of "unwanted" content (child pornography, terrorism plans, etc.)
Aside from that, I've long held the belief that speech is something that humans do, not companies. "commercial speech" is a contradiction.
Your attempt to wiggle around the first amendment isn't likely to work.
Then the 1st Amendment needs a serious looking after.
I have some sympathy for the hardcore stance, but it's overly idealistic. If I were to shout porn soundtracks at your house at 200 db night and day, would you consider that an issue of free speech, or of harrassment?
[junk mail]
For one, the volume of physical junk mail is several orders of magnitude lower than that of spam.
Two, where I live you can put a "no ads, please" sticker on your mailbox. Almost everyone will respect that. I think you can take people to court if they don't.
[big lumps and other arguments]
Again, two points:
One, I consider even a single "enlarge your penis!!!" mail sent to my mother as offensive. It isn't always a question of quantity alone.
Two, the argument that "you can deal with it" is very misguided. It's like saying that murder shouldn't be illegal because everyone can get a gun and defend himself.
[doors and other real-world comparisons]
There is a qualitative/quantitative difference here. A door-to-door salesman or telemarketer can only annoy so many people per hour. A spammer can easily annoy millions in the same timeframe. That is enough of a quantitative difference to make it of a different quality.
[1st Amendment]
As I explained elsewhere, this is not a question of free speech. Hey, the spammer can speak or write all he wants as far as I care. But the 1st Amendment doesn't include a right to force your speech on others.
Interpretations do include a right to be heard by willing listeners, which is why locking you away can be a suppression of free speech, even though you can still speak in your cell.
Seriously, who cares about P2P - this is a great application to take care of those damn windos machines that get infected with a virus and are never patched, cleaned up or taken down, but just continue spreading the malware happily.
I work for an ISP. We would love to have an easy way to identify and shut down those customers who are this negliegent.
(and before you yell we as ISP shouldn't bla bla - if you can't drive without endangering everyone else, then get off the road, no matter if it's the highway or the information superhighway)
Door to door religious missionaries surely know the same thing. Yet their actions are entirely legal in the absence of actual or constructive knowledge as pertaining to particular individuals.
It is legal because it is a nuisance, not a major obstacle.
If door bells everywhere would ring on average 10 times an hour because of door to door missionaries, I'm sure the legality of their activities would be under scrutiny.
And how, pray tell, are spammers supposed to know that you don't want them unless you tell them so, or put up some sort of notice that they are reasonably likely to be aware of?
Good point. However, society doesn't work that way. I do not have to put a "burglars not wanted" sign on my door because otherwise the poor burglars can't tell whether I want them or not.
Hold it, that example is not that far-fetched. Because I can contract a security expert to break into my house in order to, say, test the alarm system. That is perfectly legal for both him and me.
It's what they call an "opt-in" system.
Since we can safely assume that 99% of the receipients of spam don't want any, opt-in is the only solution that makes any sense.
So I think you should prove that spam is not free speech if you want to say that it's not. You might be right, but I think it's best if people work their way through the analysis.
That one is easy. Spam is not the speech, but the method of delivering (i.e. unsolicited mass e-mailing).
Much like a newspaper or a radio, or a flyer or a billboard is not speech, but a means of delivery.
Therefore, spam itself is not speech. The message contained within is. But that is irrelevant as I'm not trying to outlaw that message.
QED
Pass me the popcorn, as we see ICANN tumble to its much deserved end.
I mean, you don't really think verisign will do much more than tell them to shove it, do you? What will ICANN do then? Come down on verisign with all its awesome power and might? Uh, yes, all of it. Oh, so scared.
It's thinking like this that helped Hitler round up his innocent victims.
And Hitler build the Autobahn, so we should immediately stop any and all roadbuilding.
If you make laws against spammers, you obviously need to define what exactly a spammer is.
If your grandma is sending 10 mio. e-mails a day then by all means turn her in an lock her away.
Final point: Spam is not free speech. Fighting spam is not suppressing speech. For all I care, people can write as many "make $$$ now" mails as they like. They just have no right whatsoever to send them to me if I don't want them.
who is more technologically savvy, your average spammer or your average politician?
That is the totally wrong question.
Politicians know that they don't know everything. That is why they have staff and expert advisors.
Politicians, however, have something that we the tech-community do not: Police, jails and option to use them.
Spam won't go away 100%, ever. But if the spam rate were on par with the murder or robbery rates (i.e. I have a single-digit percentage chance of getting one spam during my life), then I'd be satisfied.
What we, the tech-community, can do is help them find the culprits. All we need are bounties high enough to make it worth our time.
Raise your hands, you unemployed geeks who would jump at the chance of becoming paid-for spammer hunters.
How do you propose that blackouts increase power company profits?
Loss of profit due to blackout: X
Costs of work that would have been necessary to prevent blackout (maintainance, crew, monitoring, replacement parts, etc.): Y
If X Y then blackout = more profitable then preventing blackout.