Talk to any lawyer (if you're American). The way to go is to create a corporation, not be a non-profit or just a bunch of individuals. That way you and your staff are protected by 'the Corporate Shell'; otherwise it's just your person on the line to face any lawsuits. When you incorporate, you actually 'create' another entity with rights and privaleges called the 'corporation'. Email me if you have more questions.
Oh, and another great group to be a part of is the fabulously de-centralized FreeNet.
CETUS provides some excellent examples of Fair Use and specifically, as it applies to Internet documents. See here. A quote from the above link: Downloading or Printing a Document from the Internet A professor is conducting research by finding materials on the Internet and locates a report that is directly relevant to his current study. The document was made available on the Internet with the copyright owner's permission, and the professor had lawful access to it. For research purposes only, the professor wants to download a copy of the document to a computer disk or print a copy on the attached printer.
Analysis The Internet provides access to a wealth of original material and, although it is freely and easily accessible, we must assume that original materials on the Internet are protected by copyright until we learn explicitly that the copyright owner has dedicated the materials to the public domain, or the copyrights have expired. Therefore, the fair-use limits for materials found on the Internet are essentially the same as the fair use of materials disseminated by any other means.
Single copies of short items for a person's own study may fall within fair use. If a work is freely available on the Internet, making a copy will have little or no effect on its market simply because no commercial market for the work has been established or claimed. Nevertheless, some publishers have argued that the potential market for charging Internet users for each copy means that any copying hinders the market. In the meantime, copying of works that are freely accessible to the public for personal uses only will likely satisfy the "purpose" and the "effect" factors of fair use.
As with photocopying, one might reasonably conclude that the "nature" factor would favor uses of non-fiction rather than fiction, and that the "amount" factor might reasonably favor copying excerpts of longer works or copying short essays or articles rather than copying an entire book or other longer piece.
/. posters were discussing the specs and posted them as a means to aid the discussion. Links to the specs were also provided as illustrative examples. Information on extracting the specs was also used as part of the discussion.
Here is the Fair Use Law: Fair Use Law 17 U.S.C. 107 (1988 & Supp. IV 1993). Section 107 provides in part: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
It seems clear to me that in this case/. posters were using Microsoft's specs information for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and research which are all protected by the Fair Use Law.
Therefore,/. posters have done nothing illegal and their comments should under no circumstances be removed.
Here's one for you lawyers out there: Is Slashdot/Andover violating the privacy of underage posters by publishing their comments in a book, even if they are stripped of user names? Could the parents of one of those posters take legal action against Slashdot/Andover? I don't know the answer, which is why I am asking...
Now here is what went wrong:
Many people didn't first hear about this from reading Rob's comments here. They found out about it through Andover's press release. If you read the original press release there is no mention that proceeds of the book are going to a charity. Also the release calls the book 'Jon Katz's'. Anyone practiced at the art of trolling through PR can easily see the release as an incredibly unsubtle attempt to firstly get attention on the year memorial of the massacre and secondly to sell the book by attaching Katz's name to it rather than the more-true-but-not-as-market-sexy 'written by slashdot posters'.
I think Rob's intentions were good, BUT someone on the Slashdot team MUST start reading Andover's PR firm's announcements before they go out on the wire. Because they are destroying Slashdot's reputation. In this case the offending PR was released by: CONTACT: Andover.Net Janet Holian, 978/635-5300 janet@andover.net or Schwartz Communications, Inc. Manya Rossignoli/Chris Stamm, 781/684-0770 cstamm@schwartz-pr.com
Yep. It's not just your bank. I have seen many new snafus (Wall Street firms- New York)in the past two days, and like you mentioned, nothing has been released into production. The production freeze began at some places on October 1 so changes have been made in modl, but there are bound to be mistakes as they are put into production throughout January... which is why other Wall Street people are saying we won't really feel the financial and market snafus until mid-January.
Yes, Get Off Your Ass!...There's a huge, global job that needs to be undertaken.
Every person should be PAID for access to their personal details. It's unjust that companies can collate individuals' details and sell them for millions of dollars to other companies. Your free info = money in their pockets.
This isn't new either. Insurance companies have been paying banks for a long time for access to their customers' details in order to market products to them and give them leads for business insurance markets. And mail-order catalogs constant;y buy or swap each others' lists of customer details.
The only difference now is that entire online companies' stock is valued by the sophistication of customer detail they can deliver to the highest bidder.
Do you really think Amazon and AOL valuations are about their "product"? Hell, no...it's because they can spit up detailed demographic lists of who is buying what, when, how, and by what form of payment.
Just about every company out there is killing themselves to get more and more user info so they can increase what they charge advertisers.
Which is EXACTLY what Andover has done with the purchase of Slashdot and Freshmeat and Animation Factory, whether they admit it or not.
Now, maybe right this minute it's not SO ominous as all it takes for advertisers to throw money at you is by simply saying you have millions of page views BUT the time is already upon us where advertisers will pay sites MORE whose info on their users is not just the number of them but other details as well. This will then cause sites to fall all over each other trying to build the most sophisticated back-ends in order to cough up more of YOUR info so that they can continue to increase their "value" in the eyes of institutional investors and advertisers.
I am not making this up. NewsTrolls has been approached by several parties who have been boldly upfront about what they want. More info on your site's users = more money for you.
It's disgusting and I'm fighting it in my own small way but it's going to take all of us around the world fighting against it, demanding payment for our details.
The question is: Do people really give a damn or are they more interested in Quake and Buffy?
Now as I've publicly said before, I will always back jericho on the facts about AntiOnline, but one thing JP said was interesting...
The fact that nearly every malicious hacker (or cracker if you prefer the term) dislikes AntiOnline is actually good for us, and is the exact position I want to be in. Some people even "joke" that I intentionally try to "piss off large groups of people at a time". Well, it's not just a joke, it's the truth. I think I'm pretty good at doing it too. We average between 200-500 intrusion attempts against one of our systems AN HOUR, and every time I piss another segment of the cyber-population off, that number skyrockets. We probably have one of the most targeted networks on the internet today, and we take full advantage of that. Do you think that we let the type of data that we're able to collect and log just go to waste? I don't;-)
It's pretty simple to see through JP's claims here as to what is really making him money. He has purposely set up AntiOnline to be a target for hackers. It's a smart move, albeit probably not one he actually thought up but received, ironically, as a gift from the hacking community.
Say you've got a security product and you want to know how secure it really is. You want to test it in the wild. Well, you can't really do it thoroughly by yourself. You have to attack it in as many ways as you can think of, but you're just one person or group of people so you're not going to think of everything. So, what better than contacting JP and having him run your product as his site's protection and then seeing if it can hold up. That way you get many random attacks from anti-JP people and if you're really lucky some of those attacks will be very sophisticated and you will learn, before you go to market, how secure your security really is...
It is important to realize that by attempting to attack JP's site, you do, in effect allow him and whomever has paid him for his attack details, to better his reputation as THE place to go if you really want to test the security of your product.
So the best thing the hacker communtiy could do is NOT to attack his site. Because that's how he's making his money off of you.
This really is not a new idea. Government and military sites of a certain nature have spent countless hours attacking their own boxes. The only difference is that you, the hacker, are allowing JP's site to be even more successful off of the labor of the creative hacks that you have designed. Your work makes him money, not you.
From the article: Tracking Nauru banks is difficult, the State Department report said, because all "have the same post office box." The only visible presence offshore firms have on Nauru may be a wall display in a hallway of the Nauru Agency Corp., where their names are engraved in plastic.
So the trick is to open your own BANK, not just an account with one of the banks...
Check this out: In 1998, $70 billion was transferred from Russian banks to accounts of banks chartered in Nauru, primarily to evade taxes, Victor Melnikov, deputy chairman of the Russian central bank, said in an interview yesterday...The estimated volume of Nauru's Russian capital flow is so staggering as to strain credulity, some analysts said. In comparison, Russia's total exports amounted to only $74 billion last year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
How about a Bank of Andover/Slashdot incorporated in Nauru?
Says HERE BlackICE was designed for multiple platforms, but currently does not run on Linux. However, it detects many attacks directed against Linux machines, such as the rpc.mountd overflow. DETAILS We plan to support UNIX platforms, especially Linux, in the future. This page will be updated in the future as we get more information.
I installed it on a Windoze and found it useful. I watched it detect a NetBus probe-- the icon flashes and you are given the date, time, info, and IP address. When you select the attack for more info it brings up a web page telling you what the attack is, how common it is, not to panic, what you can do about it, including a submit-the-IP address option that tells you to what ISP the attacker's IP (theoretically) belongs to. The info was easy-to-understand and direct so that non-techies won't panic if they read it-- and that's obviously who the product is geared towards.
Overall, it has an intuitive GUI, logical tracking methodology, and is a thorough product.
Good for them (although I concurr that they REALLY should remove an enorsement from JP)...
Well, NewsTrolls is headed up by me and we run Linux/Apache and at home I've got a dual-boot Win98/OpenLinux2.2 and a G4...(and a Globablys 130 that I haven't figured out what to do with...yet)
Seriously, women in Linux is a real issue b/c the entire tech industry except PR and marketing is almost void of woman (and please don't bring up the what-about-Kim-Polese-example;P)...
I brought the issue up in my review-- On Bill, his Mini-Me's and the Linux Alternative of Gary Rivlin's book the Plot to Get Bill Gates and it got a lot of reaction. I got tons of emails from women and some men thanking me for pointing out some of the bullshit in tech in general but also got some seriously disturbed and angry guys telling me to shut the hell up...
Personally, I can count on one hand the women I feel like can relate to what I do, and I think that's sad. I wish there were more of us out there...real women who want to know more than where to shop and read friggin' horoscopes and snotty guys-are-losers advice columns...
My opine on this is ULG is doing some important work...their hacks demonstrate visibly that major commerce sites and government is unsecured and IT IS A VALUABLE SERVICE they are doing by showing to the public these flaws. Wouldn't you WANT to know if Nasdaq was unsecured? I sure as shit would!
JP is a total flak so I'm not even thinking about him, but I am disturbed by this new trend in security sites to NAME the people involved in groups or to prove the groups' existances. What the hell is that? Are people ratting on each other to earn gold stars with the Feds?
I see hacking as 1. a public service and 2. art. (Stealing is different and I don't condone that)
So whoever ULG is-- who cares? What's important is that their voices are heard.
My 2 cents...
New stuff: I'll also add that Brian and all of Attrition provide one of the most valuable services in security news in that they analyze journalists' articles and point out the mistakes and mis-information; in other words, they find the "bugs" in the reporting...this service is INCREDIBLY valuable and needed as most writers don't know anything about the underground and so sometimes rely on total flaks like JP or Clown Princess for information, which in turn makes them look bad. So Attrition is really SAVING a lot of writers' asses from looking like total fools and they should be thanked for that. And for all you admins/security/Feds reading these posts, if you've never read Attrition, start doing so now. You owe yourself and your bosses the education.
Glad to see it done in a Open IPO format...yes, it means there won't be a huge run-up in the price b/c it's not as sexy to institutional investors as traditional IPOs but it DOES mean that individuals get a shot at the IPO price instead of buying in when it's inflated only to lose money when IIs sell it while you're still holding...
It will be great to watch it all so that we can learn from it for NewsTrolls' future IPO!...
OK, as the head of NewsTrolls, I've been watching this growing phenomena with interest. It seems painfully obvious that Andover.net is planning an IPO-- they are in their third round of financing now. So how do you get an IPO off the ground? You show your investors your unique users count. What if you don't have enough unique users? Well, you better go buy you some...and that's exactly what Andover did, which all things considered is a smart buisness move to make.
But what would be interesting to know is: have Rob and Scoop been given percent of ownership in Andover? Options is fine for most employees, but if you are the guys who are actually bringing them the eyeballs that lets them tout big numbers, YOU should have partial ownership pre-IPO. If you don't, I'm saddened to say, I think you've been had.
Of course they're going to let you "do whatever you want" content-wise, they are reaping HUGE benefits when you think of the potential money to be made from an IPO...1 million?...that's chump change compared to $60 million or more raised in an IPO...
I also hope you have contracts that state you can walk from your relationship at any time.
What I would have liked to see is the sites like Slashdot, Freshmeat, HNN, HNS, Attrition.org, LinuxToday, OS Opinion, The Register.uk and yes, NewsTrolls, link up together and create a meta-company that could have been IPO'd with percentage of company ownership based on eyeballs of each site...well, who knows?...maybe we can create something like that anyway...
Best wishes to scoop and as always to Rob, but I REALLY hope you guys aren't being screwed...cause you're the ones with the gold...
Can you imagine the kind of potato-head suits you're going to get to herd around?
"...uh, yeah, so this uh Leenoox...uh, like how come those drives don't have alphabet letters?...Does it come in colors?...what's Slashdot mean anyhoo?...are you married?..."
How ghastly!
Rob, remember, the best things about PR firms is that THEY WORK FOR YOU and hence CAN BE FIRED...
You TOTALLY miss the coolest thing Amazon offers which is their excellent Advantage program for independent musicians and authors and publishers and now even for independent film and video makers
That a total unknown artist (who doesn't have a prayer of getting her product in a book, music, or video store without a serious distribution relationship) can sell their art on Amazon in my eyes makes Amazon one of the best ecommerce companies out there!
Clueville...forget Bill Gates, he doesn't exist...the Pia is one of the first examples of the Internet appliance (and who would have thought an "appliance" would have 2GB?) that runs Linux and will basically kick ass, not because it's better than MS but because it really doesn't care that MS is there...it's compact, quick and dirty and that makes good biz sense...
(aside...ebiz will become a much higher evaluated stock once it fixes its horrible customer service inadequacies...the big dogs are watching...)
Steve Yelvington, Executive Editor of Cox Interactive Media in the US, told the annual Netmedia conference in London that the rules were changing in the new medium of the Internet.
"We are not gatekeepers anymore, the city walls are down, we don't own customers, we don't control information," he said.
Slashdot threatens extinction
"But they still need us as guides. They need to know what's important, what's true and what's useful. Our new role is as a trusted guide."
Mr Yelvington said in his keynote speech that, in the new journalism, people were telling their own stories on sites such as Geocities, Tripod and TalkCity and he praised the News for Nerds discussion group Slashdot:
"If Slashdot were a mammal, most of our news sites would be the dinosaurs. Many journalists don't understand this and don't think it's journalism."
That a no-nothing kid and a flack like Clown Princess can call up Harvard and threaten lawsuits against one of the best security talents in the ether is absolutely abominable...
Slashdot Mirror
A free speech site, huh? Been there, doing that!
Talk to any lawyer (if you're American). The way to go is to create a corporation, not be a non-profit or just a bunch of individuals. That way you and your staff are protected by 'the Corporate Shell'; otherwise it's just your person on the line to face any lawsuits. When you incorporate, you actually 'create' another entity with rights and privaleges called the 'corporation'. Email me if you have more questions.
Oh, and another great group to be a part of is the fabulously de-centralized FreeNet.
And good luck!
I think it could easily be argued that the posters are protected by the Fair Use Law.
See this post above.
See here.
A quote from the above link:
Downloading or Printing a Document from the Internet
A professor is conducting research by finding materials on the Internet and locates a report that is directly relevant to his current study. The document was made available on the Internet with the copyright owner's permission, and the professor had lawful access to it. For research purposes only, the professor wants to download a copy of the document to a computer disk or print a copy on the attached printer.
Analysis
The Internet provides access to a wealth of original material and, although it is freely and easily accessible, we must assume that original materials on the Internet are protected by copyright until we learn explicitly that the copyright owner has dedicated the materials to the public domain, or the copyrights have expired. Therefore, the fair-use limits for materials found on the Internet are essentially the same as the fair use of materials disseminated by any other means.
Single copies of short items for a person's own study may fall within fair use. If a work is freely available on the Internet, making a copy will have little or no effect on its market simply because no commercial market for the work has been established or claimed. Nevertheless, some publishers have argued that the potential market for charging Internet users for each copy means that any copying hinders the market. In the meantime, copying of works that are freely accessible to the public for personal uses only will likely satisfy the "purpose" and the "effect" factors of fair use.
As with photocopying, one might reasonably conclude that the "nature" factor would favor uses of non-fiction rather than fiction, and that the "amount" factor might reasonably favor copying excerpts of longer works or copying short essays or articles rather than copying an entire book or other longer piece.
Here is the Fair Use Law:
Fair Use Law 17 U.S.C. 107 (1988 & Supp. IV 1993).
Section 107 provides in part: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
It seems clear to me that in this case /. posters were using Microsoft's specs information for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and research which are all protected by the Fair Use Law.
Therefore, /. posters have done nothing illegal and their comments should under no circumstances be removed.
---diva
Here's one for you lawyers out there:
Is Slashdot/Andover violating the privacy of underage posters by publishing their comments in a book, even if they are stripped of user names?
Could the parents of one of those posters take legal action against Slashdot/Andover?
I don't know the answer, which is why I am asking...
Now here is what went wrong:
Many people didn't first hear about this from reading Rob's comments here. They found out about it through Andover's press release. If you read the original press release there is no mention that proceeds of the book are going to a charity. Also the release calls the book 'Jon Katz's'. Anyone practiced at the art of trolling through PR can easily see the release as an incredibly unsubtle attempt to firstly get attention on the year memorial of the massacre and secondly to sell the book by attaching Katz's name to it rather than the more-true-but-not-as-market-sexy 'written by slashdot posters'.
I think Rob's intentions were good, BUT someone on the Slashdot team MUST start reading Andover's PR firm's announcements before they go out on the wire. Because they are destroying Slashdot's reputation. In this case the offending PR was released by: CONTACT: Andover.Net Janet Holian, 978/635-5300
janet@andover.net
or Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Manya Rossignoli/Chris Stamm, 781/684-0770
cstamm@schwartz-pr.com
Hope that helps...
Yep. It's not just your bank. I have seen many new snafus (Wall Street firms- New York)in the past two days, and like you mentioned, nothing has been released into production. The production freeze began at some places on October 1 so changes have been made in modl, but there are bound to be mistakes as they are put into production throughout January... which is why other Wall Street people are saying we won't really feel the financial and market snafus until mid-January.
We used to make fun of stupid PR like this...hmm, maybe I'll show up and throw spitballs or something...someone needs to liven this up...
**********************
Watch out for the 6 foot blond!
**********************
Yes, Get Off Your Ass!...There's a huge, global job that needs to be undertaken.
Every person should be PAID for access to their personal details. It's unjust that companies can collate individuals' details and sell them for millions of dollars to other companies. Your free info = money in their pockets.
This isn't new either. Insurance companies have been paying banks for a long time for access to their customers' details in order to market products to them and give them leads for business insurance markets. And mail-order catalogs constant;y buy or swap each others' lists of customer details.
The only difference now is that entire online companies' stock is valued by the sophistication of customer detail they can deliver to the highest bidder.
Do you really think Amazon and AOL valuations are about their "product"? Hell, no...it's because they can spit up detailed demographic lists of who is buying what, when, how, and by what form of payment.
Just about every company out there is killing themselves to get more and more user info so they can increase what they charge advertisers.
Which is EXACTLY what Andover has done with the purchase of Slashdot and Freshmeat and Animation Factory, whether they admit it or not.
Now, maybe right this minute it's not SO ominous as all it takes for advertisers to throw money at you is by simply saying you have millions of page views BUT the time is already upon us where advertisers will pay sites MORE whose info on their users is not just the number of them but other details as well. This will then cause sites to fall all over each other trying to build the most sophisticated back-ends in order to cough up more of YOUR info so that they can continue to increase their "value" in the eyes of institutional investors and advertisers.
I am not making this up. NewsTrolls has been approached by several parties who have been boldly upfront about what they want. More info on your site's users = more money for you.
It's disgusting and I'm fighting it in my own small way but it's going to take all of us around the world fighting against it, demanding payment for our details.
The question is: Do people really give a damn or are they more interested in Quake and Buffy?
Wake up, people!
--diva
Here are some I like:
Sterling silver Om mani padme hung pendant with all sale proceeds going towards the Tibet Fund
Another cool idea:
Sponsor a Tibetan child, monk or nun or adopt-a-yak or sheep for a Tibetan family
And, if you want to help out NewsTrolls and look cool you can get out our limited edition T-shirts, mugs, and mousepads...
This comment first appeared here...
;-)
Now as I've publicly said before, I will always back jericho on the facts about AntiOnline, but one thing JP said was interesting...
The fact that nearly every malicious hacker (or cracker if you prefer the term) dislikes AntiOnline is actually good for us, and is the exact position I want to be in. Some people even "joke" that I intentionally try to "piss off large groups of people at a time". Well, it's not just a joke, it's the truth. I think I'm pretty good at doing it too. We average between 200-500 intrusion attempts against one of our systems AN HOUR, and every time I piss another segment of the cyber-population off, that number skyrockets. We probably have one of the most targeted networks on the internet today, and we take full advantage of that. Do you think that we let the type of data that we're able to collect and log just go to waste? I don't
It's pretty simple to see through JP's claims here as to what is really making him money. He has purposely set up AntiOnline to be a target for hackers. It's a smart move, albeit probably not one he actually thought up but received, ironically, as a gift from the hacking community.
Say you've got a security product and you want to know how secure it really is. You want to test it in the wild. Well, you can't really do it thoroughly by yourself. You have to attack it in as many ways as you can think of, but you're just one person or group of people so you're not going to think of everything. So, what better than contacting JP and having him run your product as his site's protection and then seeing if it can hold up. That way you get many random attacks from anti-JP people and if you're really lucky some of those attacks will be very sophisticated and you will learn, before you go to market, how secure your security really is...
It is important to realize that by attempting to attack JP's site, you do, in effect allow him and whomever has paid him for his attack details, to better his reputation as THE place to go if you really want to test the security of your product.
So the best thing the hacker communtiy could do is NOT to attack his site. Because that's how he's making his money off of you.
This really is not a new idea. Government and military sites of a certain nature have spent countless hours attacking their own boxes. The only difference is that you, the hacker, are allowing JP's site to be even more successful off of the labor of the creative hacks that you have designed. Your work makes him money, not you.
Just a thought...
NewsTrolls
...is not easy...
From the article:
Tracking Nauru banks is difficult, the State Department report said, because all "have the same post office box." The only visible presence offshore firms have on Nauru may be a wall display in a hallway of the Nauru Agency Corp., where their names are engraved in plastic.
So the trick is to open your own BANK, not just an account with one of the banks...
Check this out:
In 1998, $70 billion was transferred from Russian banks to accounts of banks chartered in Nauru, primarily to evade taxes, Victor Melnikov, deputy chairman of the Russian central bank, said in an interview yesterday...The estimated volume of Nauru's Russian capital flow is so staggering as to strain credulity, some analysts said. In comparison, Russia's total exports amounted to only $74 billion last year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
How about a Bank of Andover/Slashdot incorporated in Nauru?
--diva
*sniff*...if that's what they want, good for them, but I tell ya it sure is weird to see all the sites in the community getting bought up by Suits...
What's next?...Rupert Murdoch buys Attrition.org?...Martha Stewart buys 2600?...Proctor&Gamble buys HNN?
-diva
(poor but having a damn good time!)
Says HERE
BlackICE was designed for multiple platforms, but currently does not run on Linux. However, it detects many attacks directed against Linux machines, such as the rpc.mountd overflow.
DETAILS We plan to support UNIX platforms, especially Linux, in the future. This page will be updated in the future as we get more information.
I installed it on a Windoze and found it useful. I watched it detect a NetBus probe-- the icon flashes and you are given the date, time, info, and IP address. When you select the attack for more info it brings up a web page telling you what the attack is, how common it is, not to panic, what you can do about it, including a submit-the-IP address option that tells you to what ISP the attacker's IP (theoretically) belongs to. The info was easy-to-understand and direct so that non-techies won't panic if they read it-- and that's obviously who the product is geared towards.
Overall, it has an intuitive GUI, logical tracking methodology, and is a thorough product.
Good for them (although I concurr that they REALLY should remove an enorsement from JP)...
Well, NewsTrolls is headed up by me and we run Linux/Apache and at home I've got a dual-boot Win98/OpenLinux2.2 and a G4...(and a Globablys 130 that I haven't figured out what to do with...yet)
;P)...
Seriously, women in Linux is a real issue b/c the entire tech industry except PR and marketing is almost void of woman (and please don't bring up the what-about-Kim-Polese-example
I brought the issue up in my review-- On Bill, his Mini-Me's and the Linux Alternative of Gary Rivlin's book the Plot to Get Bill Gates and it got a lot of reaction. I got tons of emails from women and some men thanking me for pointing out some of the bullshit in tech in general but also got some seriously disturbed and angry guys telling me to shut the hell up...
I wrote to Gary Rivlin about it which turned into an interview on the whole issue of women in tech
Personally, I can count on one hand the women I feel like can relate to what I do, and I think that's sad. I wish there were more of us out there...real women who want to know more than where to shop and read friggin' horoscopes and snotty guys-are-losers advice columns...
--diva
me: DHEA, L-cys., DMAE, 5-HTP...
My opine on this is ULG is doing some important work...their hacks demonstrate visibly that major commerce sites and government is unsecured and IT IS A VALUABLE SERVICE they are doing by showing to the public these flaws. Wouldn't you WANT to know if Nasdaq was unsecured? I sure as shit would!
JP is a total flak so I'm not even thinking about him, but I am disturbed by this new trend in security sites to NAME the people involved in groups or to prove the groups' existances. What the hell is that? Are people ratting on each other to earn gold stars with the Feds?
I see hacking as 1. a public service and 2. art. (Stealing is different and I don't condone that)
So whoever ULG is-- who cares? What's important is that their voices are heard.
My 2 cents...
New stuff: I'll also add that Brian and all of Attrition provide one of the most valuable services in security news in that they analyze journalists' articles and point out the mistakes and mis-information; in other words, they find the "bugs" in the reporting...this service is INCREDIBLY valuable and needed as most writers don't know anything about the underground and so sometimes rely on total flaks like JP or Clown Princess for information, which in turn makes them look bad. So Attrition is really SAVING a lot of writers' asses from looking like total fools and they should be thanked for that.
And for all you admins/security/Feds reading these posts, if you've never read Attrition, start doing so now. You owe yourself and your bosses the education.
--diva
Glad to see it done in a Open IPO format...yes, it means there won't be a huge run-up in the price b/c it's not as sexy to institutional investors as traditional IPOs but it DOES mean that individuals get a shot at the IPO price instead of buying in when it's inflated only to lose money when IIs sell it while you're still holding...
It will be great to watch it all so that we can learn from it for NewsTrolls' future IPO!...
Congrats Rob, Jeff, and crew!
-diva
My fave!
---diva
OK, as the head of NewsTrolls, I've been watching this growing phenomena with interest. It seems painfully obvious that Andover.net is planning an IPO-- they are in their third round of financing now. So how do you get an IPO off the ground? You show your investors your unique users count. What if you don't have enough unique users? Well, you better go buy you some...and that's exactly what Andover did, which all things considered is a smart buisness move to make.
.uk and yes, NewsTrolls, link up together and create a meta-company that could have been IPO'd with percentage of company ownership based on eyeballs of each site...well, who knows?...maybe we can create something like that anyway...
But what would be interesting to know is: have Rob and Scoop been given percent of ownership in Andover? Options is fine for most employees, but if you are the guys who are actually bringing them the eyeballs that lets them tout big numbers, YOU should have partial ownership pre-IPO. If you don't, I'm saddened to say, I think you've been had.
Of course they're going to let you "do whatever you want" content-wise, they are reaping HUGE benefits when you think of the potential money to be made from an IPO...1 million?...that's chump change compared to $60 million or more raised in an IPO...
I also hope you have contracts that state you can walk from your relationship at any time.
What I would have liked to see is the sites like Slashdot, Freshmeat, HNN, HNS, Attrition.org, LinuxToday, OS Opinion, The Register
Best wishes to scoop and as always to Rob, but I REALLY hope you guys aren't being screwed...cause you're the ones with the gold...
--diva CEO NewsTrolls, Inc.
Cheez-o-rama!
Can you imagine the kind of potato-head suits you're going to get to herd around?
"...uh, yeah, so this uh Leenoox...uh, like how come those drives don't have alphabet letters?...Does it come in colors?...what's Slashdot mean anyhoo?...are you married?..."
How ghastly!
Rob, remember, the best things about PR firms is that THEY WORK FOR YOU and hence CAN BE FIRED...
I'd be bitchin to someone if I were you...
I'm *sure* (* denotes heavy sarcasm) all the /. peeps just *love* Fatbrain for their partnership with Microsoft...
You TOTALLY miss the coolest thing Amazon offers which is their excellent Advantage program for independent musicians and authors and publishers and now even for independent film and video makers
That a total unknown artist (who doesn't have a prayer of getting her product in a book, music, or video store without a serious distribution relationship) can sell their art on Amazon in my eyes makes Amazon one of the best ecommerce companies out there!
Clueville...forget Bill Gates, he doesn't exist...the Pia is one of the first examples of the Internet appliance (and who would have thought an "appliance" would have 2GB?) that runs Linux and will basically kick ass, not because it's better than MS but because it really doesn't care that MS is there...it's compact, quick and dirty and that makes good biz sense...
(aside...ebiz will become a much higher evaluated stock once it fixes its horrible customer service inadequacies...the big dogs are watching...)
Congrats, Rob and crew!
Steve Yelvington offers high praise for Slashdot:
Steve Yelvington, Executive Editor of Cox Interactive Media in the US, told the annual Netmedia conference in London that the rules were changing in the new medium of the Internet.
"We are not gatekeepers anymore, the city walls are down, we don't own customers, we don't control information," he said.
Slashdot threatens extinction
"But they still need us as guides. They need to know what's important, what's true and what's useful. Our new role is as a trusted guide."
Mr Yelvington said in his keynote speech that, in the new journalism, people were telling their own stories on sites such as Geocities, Tripod and TalkCity and he praised the News for Nerds discussion group Slashdot:
"If Slashdot were a mammal, most of our news sites would be the dinosaurs. Many journalists don't understand this and don't think it's journalism."
That a no-nothing kid and a flack like Clown Princess can call up Harvard and threaten lawsuits against one of the best security talents in the ether is absolutely abominable...
It's time to act...submit your protest letter online [you can even cut and paste this one in] to Harvard's handy UIS Suggestion Box
and/or email Harvard at:
uis-webadmin@harvard.edu
provost@harvard.edu
--diva
That's what I mean...I know plenty of people who have "swung" at Star Trek conventions...it happens at the SCA get-togethers, too
Life is not G-rated.
Still don't like that Troll title...hmm...