An informant/snitch generally is someone who is a criminal hacker or member of a crew, who betrays his or her own crew to provide information to another crew (usually the police). Albert Gonzalez fits the definition of a snitch, the worst kind.>/quote?> There is no honor among thieves.
The hacker trades in secrets - and there is no bigger secret than the identity of other hackers.
If someone is a friend, or is family, and you know ratting them out will put them in prison where they'll be ass raped for a decade, what kind of person are you if you give their identity to the FBI?
Just because you would die for a random rich person, does not mean a random rich person would save your life.
So if you want to die for some rich asshole, go ahead and be my guest. The only people who matter are the people who you actually know. You think otherwise? Maybe you should have stopped the troops from bombing Iraq and stealing the oil and maybe you should have saved the Soviet Union from the cold war, and maybe you should have helped save the children.
But if you want to be realistic, if you are a rich person you are only rich because millions of other people are suffering. So to lecture a poor person on morality, when the world exists with this much suffering precisely because there are obscenely rich people in it is completely hypocritical.
Don't expect me to care anymore than the rich man cares about members of my family. Are they going around helping the poor and bringing equal justice? If they were I might know who they are and might give a shit if someone were robbing their house. If they never did anything for anyone I know, then they why should I do anything for them?
Now if the roles were completely reserved and I'm the rich person and I'm watching a ghetto dwelling persons house getting broken into, maybe I'd decide to be a witness as a way to give back for what society has given me. In fact maybe I'd just give the unfortunate person some financial assistance, pay the legal fees, or give them a job.
No, you wouldn't.
You would likely feel you'd earned every penny you had and not owe anything back to society. You certainly wouldn't risk it for some poor person who could never pay you back and might expose you to personal risk.
Not if I were poor and became rich. If I were born rich you'd probably be right, but since I wasn't, I wont think rich.
When you are rich it's no personal risk to yourself to help a poor person but when you are poor there is great personal risk to yourself to help a rich person.
that they must submit it the information, in my opinion it should be submitted to the person directly above them and that person should decide whether to submit it to the government or not. I just want full disclosure. If some security researcher is collecting information about me, shouldn't I know that they might give it to the government if the government asks for it?
How delusional are you? You pretty much waive this right when you willfully submit that information to the public. If I see evidence of you doing something illegal and then you post a video of yourself committing a crime in Youtube, you've pretty much waived all rights to disclosure.
Everything is public though. Thats not really fair.
If they knew me I would expect them to have compassion. If they don't then I wouldn't expect any compassion just as most of you don't have compassion for people dying in foreign countries.
You are right I am amoral. Just like a corporation, a government, etc.
Exactly. As Cullen Hightower said: "There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else."
I always ask people, at what magical number does 'theft' become 'economic justice'?
Justice is for the strong. What that means is that the rich typically get justice through the law and the poor do not. The law does not treat rich and poor equally, you know this and I know this.
So if a rich strangers house is being broken into and burglarized I'm just not going to care about that rich persons junk. That rich person has more stuff than they need anyway, and I wouldn't want to spend my time sitting in court.
Now if the roles were completely reserved and I'm the rich person and I'm watching a ghetto dwelling persons house getting broken into, maybe I'd decide to be a witness as a way to give back for what society has given me. In fact maybe I'd just give the unfortunate person some financial assistance, pay the legal fees, or give them a job.
But I'm not the rich person. Justice is not likely to work in my favor. A rich stranger is not likely to rescue me if I'm victimized. So if the rich person wants justice, they can buy it just like the poor person is expected to buy it. Unless you believe poor individuals should be expected to protect the mansions and property of rich individuals without being paid, hired, or without their property being equally protected by rich individuals. Since the property of poor individuals is not equally protected I just don't care what happens to some rich strangers mansion.
That depends on whose home it is. If it's a rich assholes home, probably not
You do realize that this means you, too, are an asshole, and that someone even lower on the moral chain than yourself will watch someone break into your house and do nothing for the same reason?
The chain of violence only stops when people like you stop demonizing based on external factors.
If I don't know anything at all about a person, never met the person in my life, I don't have any responsibility to care about the person.
And no I don't assume a majority of rich persons care about me. My decision of whether or not to be a witness would depend on factors such as whether or not I knew them, whether or not I want to sit in court for weeks or months, but it's still my decision to make.
Just like if someone decides to give to charity or give a donation, it's their decision to make. Nobody should call them an asshole if they don't donate to an African charity to help some starving family. And it's simple, if you know the guy then you get involved and if you don't know the guy then you don't get involved.The guy you save could be the mafia don and that guy could go on to be the biggest criminal in the city. When you deal with a complete stranger it's 50/50 like that so if it's some strangers house being robbed, and it's a mansion, I'm sorry I honestly don't give a fuck.
Am I supposed to feel bad that a rich persons mansion is being robbed when some poor person is probably living homeless that I actually might know? Yes sometimes you can be wrong and not help the rich person who might have been a great person, but so what? The rich person loses material items that they can afford to buy again, and more than likely the people stealing it are just as good or just as bad as the people it's being stole from.
If you saw people breaking into a home wouldn't you report it? Or would the stigma of "confidential informant" be to much?
That depends on whose home it is. If it's a rich assholes home, probably not. If it's my friends home, most definitely. If it's a complete strangers home, probably not because the complete stranger could be an even bigger crook than the burglars in the end.
Ok...but in this case it's more like breaking into the hospital to steal drugs...
And if I were the one who cracked the case then I would not be a security researcher, I would be a cyber crime investigator. I mean what is so difficult to understand? If someone does the police work or the police then the police don't have to pay anybody. This saves the police money but it does not necessary make us any safer. Whether or not we'd be safer would have to be decided on a case by case basis.
So what I'm saying is, if there really are cyber police or if there should be cyber police, shouldn't they have that in their job title, wear a uniform, or other insignia? I'm more concerned about functions, labels, and roles, than whether or not you decide to be a witness. Somebody has to be a witness of course, but when someone is a security researcher and a witness at the same time it puts their role as an impartial or neutral security researcher in jeopardy and can get them the stigma of being a government security researcher or something along those lines. It will make it harder for other researchers to do research, kind of like how if journalists report every crime they see then it can make it much more difficult for other journalists who don't report every crime they say because they are after the big story or the interview with Bin Laden or whatever.
that they must submit it the information, in my opinion it should be submitted to the person directly above them and that person should decide whether to submit it to the government or not. I just want full disclosure. If some security researcher is collecting information about me, shouldn't I know that they might give it to the government if the government asks for it?
Anyway if it's in the contract or a part of their job title and definition then nobody can accuse them of being an informant, and at the same time nobody can mistake them for being an ordinary joe. They'd basically be like cops.
The stigma of being a "confidential informant" is quite hazardous. Why do you think there's a Witness Protection Program?
And yes, the only way to enforce laws effectively is for crimes to be reported effectively. It's unfortunate that so many people think that reporting a crime is cause for immediate public execution, but the attitude will be there so long as there is no effective punishment for violently repressing anyone willing to call 911.
That is not the situation at all. Being a witness to a crime is not the same as being a snitch. A snitch knows the individuals who committed the crime, had the trust of these individuals, and betrayed them. I'm not saying the guy who found the photo and reported it to the FBI is a snitch like Albert Gonzalez and I'm not saying someone who witnesses a crime is snitching. You do risk your life and limb as a witness but it's not betraying anyone or harming your friendships to be a witness so the stigma is only bad to people who weren't your friends to begin with.
On the other hand if you pretend to be someone you aren't, pretend to be friends with a group of hackers to gather enough dirt to "inform" the FBI. Then you are a confidential informant, a snitch, a rat, etc. This carries a stigma because it involves personal betrayal of trust, destruction if personal friendships, and has a virus like effect on the hacker community.
So it's simple. If you are a cyber crime investigator, then don't pretend to just be a "researcher". But if you are just a researcher then your interest is purely academic, so what would you have to gain by reporting every crime you see? Sure if you want to report a crime you can be a witness, you wouldn't be labeled a snitch, but in this instance where the guy got 10 years in prison and fined for $30,000, while the security researcher didn't necessarily do the wrong thing, there probably should be more clarity as to the roles. Otherwise when researches claim they want to collect harmless statistics which they claim will be destroyed after it's analyzed, well perhaps people will think otherwise of them and wont be so quick to allow them to gather those statistics if you know what I mean.
If you saw people breaking into a home wouldn't you report it? Or would the stigma of "confidential informant" be to much?
That depends on whose home it is. If it's a rich assholes home, probably not. If it's my friends home, most definitely. If it's a complete strangers home, probably not because the complete stranger could be an even bigger crook than the burglars in the end.
Who cares if the person was a "security researcher" or "cybercop detective"? What's it matter?
Just like it matters that police have badges, wear uniforms, have warrants, it matters to most people whether or not their friend who claims to be a security researcher is actually a cop. Does the security researcher need a search warrant? I don't have a problem with cops, I just have a problem with undercover cops who pretend to be my friend. Wouldn't you have a problem with that situation?
You took the term "security researcher", substituted your own definition of "confidential informant", and then hinted that the person might be a snitch...
No I'm asking the question of what exactly the role of a security researcher is. A cyber crime investigator we know what their role is. A cybercop we know what their role is. A security researcher is not the same thing as a security investigator. Researchers are interested in academic pursuits, not crime fighting, not law enforcement. The guys who built freenet, tor, the linux kernel, these sorts of people are security researchers. If crime fighters are supposed to be honest, and supposed to be the good guys, why do they have to pretend or dress up in plain clothes, and act like the bad guys?
This question goes out to security researchers. When is it a good idea to inform the FBI of a crime? Does it depend on whether or not you are white hat, black hat, grey hat? Does it depend on whether or not you are in the same crew as the person, or know the person? And if you do, does it remain just research or does the function of the security researcher change to investigator?
I keep seeing various different job titles, security researcher, cyber crime investigator, cyber cop, cyber warrior, and I do not understand the different inherent functions of these terms. At the same time you have obvious professional betrayers like Albert Gonzalez being called "agents" and "heroes" by the feds in one sentence and then later on the feds are locking him up and he's a dirty rotten snitch greedy scoundrel.
So which security researcher, hacker, or cyber crime investigator wants to clear up exactly the different functions and roles?
"FBI agents have raided the homes of three alleged members of a hacker gang that harassed a security expert who helped put the group’s leader in jail, according to a recently unsealed search warrant affidavit.
Jesse William McGraw, aka “GhostExodus,” pleaded guilty in May to computer-tampering charges for putting malware on a dozen machines at the Texas hospital where he worked as a security guard. He also installed the remote-access program LogMeIn on the hospital’s Windows-controlled HVAC system.
Last month’s raids were prompted by the aftermath of McGraw’s arrest. McGraw was the leader of an anarchistic hacking group called the Electronik Tribulation Army, and his bust led to a flood of harassment against the Mississippi computer-security researcher who discovered screenshots of the HVAC access online and informed the FBI." http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/eta/
Has "security researcher" become the code for for confidential informant? Why else would the "researcher" go out of his way to "inform" the FBI?
Why do articles even call them "security researchers"? Now if this guys job is to investigate hackers, then he should be called a "cyber crime investigator". It's disingenuous to call an a cyber crime investigator/cybercop detective a security researcher.
What is with this trend? And what is the official function of a security researcher? Are they informants? I'd think maybe not if they aren't pretending to be outlaw/blackhats, so I cannot put them in the obvious informant/snitch category that albert gonzalez is in. An informant/snitch generally is someone who is a criminal hacker or member of a crew, who betrays his or her own crew to provide information to another crew (usually the police). Albert Gonzalez fits the definition of a snitch, the worst kind.
In other words, the government seeks to turn hackers into informants aka stooges?
What isn't know is how the government gets them to do that, without paying then any money. Threats? Help us or gitmo? Why would any hacker want "community cred" as an informant? And why would a hacker risk their lives for free? Patriotism?
That being said, these hackers would be informing or working for the mafias and others if not the government because the mob runs a protection racket just as the government does. But what you describe seems to be a protection racket, where the government offers hackers protection in exchange for information, and who knows what would happen to the hackers who don't receive protection.
The original console should come in three versions, the low cost, medium cost, and high performance version.
This has been tried, and failed. For the same reason that having differing performance and/or user upgradable parts doesn't work.
Look at the Xbox 360. How many games take full advantage of a hard drive? Now look at the PS3. How many games take full advantage of a hard drive?
Because the HDD wasn't included in the base SKU for the 360, games makers couldn't rely on it as they'd lose sales to people who didn't have a HDD. Each and every PS3 has a hard drive, so games developers can do things assuming there will be a hard drive there and the experience is better for it.
I said upgrade the graphics card and ram. The game can automatically take advantage of these upgrades via changes in textures and graphics models. It would be effortless and automated.
SSD only costs $200 and by that time might cost even less. 64 gigs of ram would only cost $100 or less. Arm CPU is among the cheapest even if it's custom designed. The video card would cost $100-200.
Someone made a point that Arm might not be powerful enough. That may be the place where the price point goes up.
No I'm saying consoles should replace gaming PC's, but should be more arcade. The console should be as easily upgraded as the PC, in fact easier to upgrade.
Sony is not and was never a game company. Microsoft knows more about doing this than Sony. Sony is good at designing hardware but horrible at designing software and not particularly good at developing gaming hardware.
Microsoft has developed keyboards, mice, and games in the past. Microsoft understands how PCs work and could probably do it. Nintendo could probably do it also. Sony will have learned their lesson, the main lesson was they only offered an expensive version of PS3. The trick is to offer different versions, much like how you can get the value edition of a video card.
Slashdot Mirror
An informant/snitch generally is someone who is a criminal hacker or member of a crew, who betrays his or her own crew to provide information to another crew (usually the police). Albert Gonzalez fits the definition of a snitch, the worst kind.>/quote?>
There is no honor among thieves.
The hacker trades in secrets - and there is no bigger secret than the identity of other hackers.
If someone is a friend, or is family, and you know ratting them out will put them in prison where they'll be ass raped for a decade, what kind of person are you if you give their identity to the FBI?
Just because you would die for a random rich person, does not mean a random rich person would save your life.
So if you want to die for some rich asshole, go ahead and be my guest. The only people who matter are the people who you actually know. You think otherwise? Maybe you should have stopped the troops from bombing Iraq and stealing the oil and maybe you should have saved the Soviet Union from the cold war, and maybe you should have helped save the children.
But if you want to be realistic, if you are a rich person you are only rich because millions of other people are suffering. So to lecture a poor person on morality, when the world exists with this much suffering precisely because there are obscenely rich people in it is completely hypocritical.
Don't expect me to care anymore than the rich man cares about members of my family. Are they going around helping the poor and bringing equal justice? If they were I might know who they are and might give a shit if someone were robbing their house. If they never did anything for anyone I know, then they why should I do anything for them?
Give to us, protect our rights, die for us, give us justice.
But they can't give healthcare, a job, or an education.
Why should I give random rich people a handout?
Now if the roles were completely reserved and I'm the rich person and I'm watching a ghetto dwelling persons house getting broken into, maybe I'd decide to be a witness as a way to give back for what society has given me. In fact maybe I'd just give the unfortunate person some financial assistance, pay the legal fees, or give them a job.
No, you wouldn't.
You would likely feel you'd earned every penny you had and not owe anything back to society. You certainly wouldn't risk it for some poor person who could never pay you back and might expose you to personal risk.
Not if I were poor and became rich. If I were born rich you'd probably be right, but since I wasn't, I wont think rich.
When you are rich it's no personal risk to yourself to help a poor person but when you are poor there is great personal risk to yourself to help a rich person.
that they must submit it the information, in my opinion it should be submitted to the person directly above them and that person should decide whether to submit it to the government or not. I just want full disclosure. If some security researcher is collecting information about me, shouldn't I know that they might give it to the government if the government asks for it?
How delusional are you? You pretty much waive this right when you willfully submit that information to the public. If I see evidence of you doing something illegal and then you post a video of yourself committing a crime in Youtube, you've pretty much waived all rights to disclosure.
Everything is public though. Thats not really fair.
But I'm trying to figure out why they think that way.
If they knew me I would expect them to have compassion. If they don't then I wouldn't expect any compassion just as most of you don't have compassion for people dying in foreign countries.
You are right I am amoral. Just like a corporation, a government, etc.
Exactly. As Cullen Hightower said: "There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else."
I always ask people, at what magical number does 'theft' become 'economic justice'?
Justice is for the strong. What that means is that the rich typically get justice through the law and the poor do not.
The law does not treat rich and poor equally, you know this and I know this.
So if a rich strangers house is being broken into and burglarized I'm just not going to care about that rich persons junk. That rich person has more stuff than they need anyway, and I wouldn't want to spend my time sitting in court.
Now if the roles were completely reserved and I'm the rich person and I'm watching a ghetto dwelling persons house getting broken into, maybe I'd decide to be a witness as a way to give back for what society has given me. In fact maybe I'd just give the unfortunate person some financial assistance, pay the legal fees, or give them a job.
But I'm not the rich person. Justice is not likely to work in my favor. A rich stranger is not likely to rescue me if I'm victimized. So if the rich person wants justice, they can buy it just like the poor person is expected to buy it. Unless you believe poor individuals should be expected to protect the mansions and property of rich individuals without being paid, hired, or without their property being equally protected by rich individuals. Since the property of poor individuals is not equally protected I just don't care what happens to some rich strangers mansion.
That depends on whose home it is. If it's a rich assholes home, probably not
You do realize that this means you, too, are an asshole, and that someone even lower on the moral chain than yourself will watch someone break into your house and do nothing for the same reason?
The chain of violence only stops when people like you stop demonizing based on external factors.
If I don't know anything at all about a person, never met the person in my life, I don't have any responsibility to care about the person.
And no I don't assume a majority of rich persons care about me. My decision of whether or not to be a witness would depend on factors such as whether or not I knew them, whether or not I want to sit in court for weeks or months, but it's still my decision to make.
Just like if someone decides to give to charity or give a donation, it's their decision to make. Nobody should call them an asshole if they don't donate to an African charity to help some starving family. And it's simple, if you know the guy then you get involved and if you don't know the guy then you don't get involved .The guy you save could be the mafia don and that guy could go on to be the biggest criminal in the city. When you deal with a complete stranger it's 50/50 like that so if it's some strangers house being robbed, and it's a mansion, I'm sorry I honestly don't give a fuck.
Am I supposed to feel bad that a rich persons mansion is being robbed when some poor person is probably living homeless that I actually might know? Yes sometimes you can be wrong and not help the rich person who might have been a great person, but so what? The rich person loses material items that they can afford to buy again, and more than likely the people stealing it are just as good or just as bad as the people it's being stole from.
If you saw people breaking into a home wouldn't you report it? Or would the stigma of "confidential informant" be to much?
That depends on whose home it is. If it's a rich assholes home, probably not. If it's my friends home, most definitely. If it's a complete strangers home, probably not because the complete stranger could be an even bigger crook than the burglars in the end.
Ok...but in this case it's more like breaking into the hospital to steal drugs...
And if I were the one who cracked the case then I would not be a security researcher, I would be a cyber crime investigator. I mean what is so difficult to understand? If someone does the police work or the police then the police don't have to pay anybody. This saves the police money but it does not necessary make us any safer. Whether or not we'd be safer would have to be decided on a case by case basis.
So what I'm saying is, if there really are cyber police or if there should be cyber police, shouldn't they have that in their job title, wear a uniform, or other insignia? I'm more concerned about functions, labels, and roles, than whether or not you decide to be a witness. Somebody has to be a witness of course, but when someone is a security researcher and a witness at the same time it puts their role as an impartial or neutral security researcher in jeopardy and can get them the stigma of being a government security researcher or something along those lines. It will make it harder for other researchers to do research, kind of like how if journalists report every crime they see then it can make it much more difficult for other journalists who don't report every crime they say because they are after the big story or the interview with Bin Laden or whatever.
that they must submit it the information, in my opinion it should be submitted to the person directly above them and that person should decide whether to submit it to the government or not. I just want full disclosure. If some security researcher is collecting information about me, shouldn't I know that they might give it to the government if the government asks for it?
Anyway if it's in the contract or a part of their job title and definition then nobody can accuse them of being an informant, and at the same time nobody can mistake them for being an ordinary joe. They'd basically be like cops.
The stigma of being a "confidential informant" is quite hazardous. Why do you think there's a Witness Protection Program?
And yes, the only way to enforce laws effectively is for crimes to be reported effectively. It's unfortunate that so many people think that reporting a crime is cause for immediate public execution, but the attitude will be there so long as there is no effective punishment for violently repressing anyone willing to call 911.
That is not the situation at all. Being a witness to a crime is not the same as being a snitch. A snitch knows the individuals who committed the crime, had the trust of these individuals, and betrayed them. I'm not saying the guy who found the photo and reported it to the FBI is a snitch like Albert Gonzalez and I'm not saying someone who witnesses a crime is snitching. You do risk your life and limb as a witness but it's not betraying anyone or harming your friendships to be a witness so the stigma is only bad to people who weren't your friends to begin with.
On the other hand if you pretend to be someone you aren't, pretend to be friends with a group of hackers to gather enough dirt to "inform" the FBI. Then you are a confidential informant, a snitch, a rat, etc. This carries a stigma because it involves personal betrayal of trust, destruction if personal friendships, and has a virus like effect on the hacker community.
So it's simple. If you are a cyber crime investigator, then don't pretend to just be a "researcher". But if you are just a researcher then your interest is purely academic, so what would you have to gain by reporting every crime you see? Sure if you want to report a crime you can be a witness, you wouldn't be labeled a snitch, but in this instance where the guy got 10 years in prison and fined for $30,000, while the security researcher didn't necessarily do the wrong thing, there probably should be more clarity as to the roles. Otherwise when researches claim they want to collect harmless statistics which they claim will be destroyed after it's analyzed, well perhaps people will think otherwise of them and wont be so quick to allow them to gather those statistics if you know what I mean.
If you saw people breaking into a home wouldn't you report it? Or would the stigma of "confidential informant" be to much?
That depends on whose home it is. If it's a rich assholes home, probably not. If it's my friends home, most definitely. If it's a complete strangers home, probably not because the complete stranger could be an even bigger crook than the burglars in the end.
Who cares if the person was a "security researcher" or "cybercop detective"? What's it matter?
Just like it matters that police have badges, wear uniforms, have warrants, it matters to most people whether or not their friend who claims to be a security researcher is actually a cop. Does the security researcher need a search warrant? I don't have a problem with cops, I just have a problem with undercover cops who pretend to be my friend. Wouldn't you have a problem with that situation?
You took the term "security researcher", substituted your own definition of "confidential informant", and then hinted that the person might be a snitch...
No I'm asking the question of what exactly the role of a security researcher is. A cyber crime investigator we know what their role is. A cybercop we know what their role is. A security researcher is not the same thing as a security investigator. Researchers are interested in academic pursuits, not crime fighting, not law enforcement. The guys who built freenet, tor, the linux kernel, these sorts of people are security researchers. If crime fighters are supposed to be honest, and supposed to be the good guys, why do they have to pretend or dress up in plain clothes, and act like the bad guys?
This is a legitimate question to ask.
Neither does closed source. Who knows whether or not an informant or undercover cop put a backdoor in the botnet.
Thats not bad? Do you know how many years that is? Thats terrible.
He got caught so he has to do the time, but 110 months is around 9 years.
This question goes out to security researchers. When is it a good idea to inform the FBI of a crime? Does it depend on whether or not you are white hat, black hat, grey hat? Does it depend on whether or not you are in the same crew as the person, or know the person? And if you do, does it remain just research or does the function of the security researcher change to investigator?
I keep seeing various different job titles, security researcher, cyber crime investigator, cyber cop, cyber warrior, and I do not understand the different inherent functions of these terms. At the same time you have obvious professional betrayers like Albert Gonzalez being called "agents" and "heroes" by the feds in one sentence and then later on the feds are locking him up and he's a dirty rotten snitch greedy scoundrel.
So which security researcher, hacker, or cyber crime investigator wants to clear up exactly the different functions and roles?
"FBI agents have raided the homes of three alleged members of a hacker gang that harassed a security expert who helped put the group’s leader in jail, according to a recently unsealed search warrant affidavit.
Jesse William McGraw, aka “GhostExodus,” pleaded guilty in May to computer-tampering charges for putting malware on a dozen machines at the Texas hospital where he worked as a security guard. He also installed the remote-access program LogMeIn on the hospital’s Windows-controlled HVAC system.
Last month’s raids were prompted by the aftermath of McGraw’s arrest. McGraw was the leader of an anarchistic hacking group called the Electronik Tribulation Army, and his bust led to a flood of harassment against the Mississippi computer-security researcher who discovered screenshots of the HVAC access online and informed the FBI."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/eta/
Has "security researcher" become the code for for confidential informant? Why else would the "researcher" go out of his way to "inform" the FBI?
Why do articles even call them "security researchers"? Now if this guys job is to investigate hackers, then he should be called a "cyber crime investigator". It's disingenuous to call an a cyber crime investigator/cybercop detective a security researcher.
What is with this trend? And what is the official function of a security researcher? Are they informants? I'd think maybe not if they aren't pretending to be outlaw/blackhats, so I cannot put them in the obvious informant/snitch category that albert gonzalez is in. An informant/snitch generally is someone who is a criminal hacker or member of a crew, who betrays his or her own crew to provide information to another crew (usually the police). Albert Gonzalez fits the definition of a snitch, the worst kind.
Why shouldn't corporations be able to do publicly what they do privately?
I thought bribing foreign officials was a good thing?
In other words, the government seeks to turn hackers into informants aka stooges?
What isn't know is how the government gets them to do that, without paying then any money. Threats? Help us or gitmo? Why would any hacker want "community cred" as an informant? And why would a hacker risk their lives for free? Patriotism?
That being said, these hackers would be informing or working for the mafias and others if not the government because the mob runs a protection racket just as the government does. But what you describe seems to be a protection racket, where the government offers hackers protection in exchange for information, and who knows what would happen to the hackers who don't receive protection.
Someone as naive as Eric Schmidt would be perfect, because hes naive but also commercially connected.
The original console should come in three versions, the low cost, medium cost, and high performance version.
This has been tried, and failed. For the same reason that having differing performance and/or user upgradable parts doesn't work.
Look at the Xbox 360. How many games take full advantage of a hard drive? Now look at the PS3. How many games take full advantage of a hard drive?
Because the HDD wasn't included in the base SKU for the 360, games makers couldn't rely on it as they'd lose sales to people who didn't have a HDD. Each and every PS3 has a hard drive, so games developers can do things assuming there will be a hard drive there and the experience is better for it.
I said upgrade the graphics card and ram. The game can automatically take advantage of these upgrades via changes in textures and graphics models. It would be effortless and automated.
SSD only costs $200 and by that time might cost even less.
64 gigs of ram would only cost $100 or less.
Arm CPU is among the cheapest even if it's custom designed.
The video card would cost $100-200.
Someone made a point that Arm might not be powerful enough. That may be the place where the price point goes up.
I'd expect the system to cost $800.
No I'm saying consoles should replace gaming PC's, but should be more arcade. The console should be as easily upgraded as the PC, in fact easier to upgrade.
Sony is not and was never a game company. Microsoft knows more about doing this than Sony.
Sony is good at designing hardware but horrible at designing software and not particularly good at developing gaming hardware.
Microsoft has developed keyboards, mice, and games in the past. Microsoft understands how PCs work and could probably do it. Nintendo could probably do it also. Sony will have learned their lesson, the main lesson was they only offered an expensive version of PS3. The trick is to offer different versions, much like how you can get the value edition of a video card.