Against what standard would they evaluate that impact?
Anything that increases the efficiency, stability, and scientific advancement of society (essentially anything that perpetuates society) is good. Anything that opposes it is bad. Experimentation decides which is which. Societies that do not maximize these goals end up with far less power than those that do; at worst they collapse.
Negative and positive impact are subjective concepts. For example, by killing my noisy neighbour I rid society of someone who annoys me. Therefore, from my perspective, the overall impact of the action can be seen as positive.
The government exists to perpetuate and advance the society it was created for. No other reason. The desires of an the individual - what the individual may wish or not wish to happen - are outweighed by what is best for the whole.
If my neighbour was a hermit, without family, friendless and unemployed, it could also be argued that he provides no value to society and so his death is of no negative consequence. Why then should it be illegal?
Somebody who is mentally unstable enough to kill somebody represents a threat to society - that is why they are removed from society (that and the imprisonment serves as a deterrent for other potential criminals). The benefits he provides to society through tax money is far outweighed by the risk he poses to society. If there was no chance of him ever killing another person again, then the only reason to imprison him would be so the imprisonment serves as a deterrent for others.
And while we're at it, who gets the right to decide?
Whoever has the power to enforce their decision.
However, governments in democratic countries are *supposed to* act based on the majority opinion of their constituents
There are many checks and balances to ensure that the government cannot simply act on the will of the majority, particularly where that will doesn't benefit society as a whole. For example, the majority cannot decide to stop paying taxes. They can't decide to have somebody executed or imprisoned (that's for our legal system to decide). They can't enforce religious beliefs. The primary advantage of democracy isn't that the majority gets to decide government policy - it's that it is far better at limiting corruption than any other system.
Sorry, as I know this is slightly off-topic, but isn't that one of the government's main purposes? For example, most people consider it amoral to murder someone, so the government passes and enforces laws that specify penalties for murder.
Allowing people to murder each other has a negative impact on society that vastly outweighs any potential positive impact. For that reason, it is outlawed. Morality is not needed for the creation of laws.
Just as a small aside, something is 'amoral' when morality has no bearing on it. Something is 'immoral' when it violates moral rules.
Assuming a sufficiently sophisticated VM based rootkit, it couldn't be done. Any attempt to write back to the firmware would be subverted
Any modern BIOS will let you overwrite the firmware no matter what, so your motherboard doesn't suddenly become unrecoverable when you hose the firmware.
But you can prevent it from being easily detected. Especially the theoretical BIOS VM kit I mentioned.
Restoring the default firmware for hardware would be one of the first things done when a rootkit is suspected.
Under MD5 there are some single bits that do not affect the outcome of the MD5 hash.
Generating collisions is not that trivial. The only viable way to generate a MD5 collision involves creating both files involved. You cannot generate a same-size collision for a file that you did not specially craft for the purpose. In any realistic setup you don't have the luxery of being both the official distributer of the binaries a company or individual uses, and being the person implementing the rootkit. If you were both then you may as well just infect the official binaries and not worry about rootkits.
. The system could be almost completely restored on an orderly shutdown, leaving nothing detectable but a single hook (hide everything else in swap or unused sectors in filesystem)
The only way to leave a 'hook' on any common setup is to modify the storage medium of the OS or modify the firmware of a piece of hardware. Both can be detected, and there's no way to prevent that.
MD5 hashes can be subverted, which means the above mentioned initial hook could hide (I believe this is only really useful if the hook was in the original package and you are turning it on by changing a single bit)
There is no known computationally viable way any decent hash can be 'subverted' in the manner you are implying. Changing a single bit will completely change the hash of a binary with any decent hashing algorithm. You're not going to be able to find a hash collision that provides you with a binary that is the same size as the one you are replacing and does everything you want.
Even so, most of the tittles 10 years ago and beyond, do not control timing at all. If you run them in "fast" computers (more than 60Mhz) they will go crazy. Ah... what a pity for my Caesar and Theme Park:(
I'm reasonably certain you can fiddle with the 'cycles' setting of DOSBox in order to control how quickly it emulates the game. If the game is running too fast, try lowering 'cycles'.
A link for you if you haven't heard of DOSBox (and you thought I was referring to 'a DOS box' rather than 'DOSBox').
Misuse? When I see assholish shit like this tacked onto the end of a post:
"Hope your brain hasn't exploded. I know there's actual information here, which might be too much for you."
Then I'll mod it right the fuck down where it belongs.
I have absolutely zero sympathy for the individual who was replied to after posting something full of so much idiotic misinformation. A five minute Google search would have cured him of his ignorance, but instead he decided to shoot off nonsense as fact.
The post putting him in his place 'belongs' at +5.
Therefore, the OS designer should do it for them, to prevent damage to other users.
If a user is dead set on running something then he is going to run it. There is little that can done to fix that. Implementing a TPM system where the user simply can't run unsigned binaries without flipping some switch is the only solution I can think of, and you can be sure most users will flip that switch as soon as whatever piece of malware they are attempting to install requests it.
think they had to keep it that way because of the pressure sensative nature of the Dualshock 2 (did any games actually use that besides MGS2?).
I believe Sony had to configure their pad as they did because Nintendo has a patent on traditional 'plus' shaped d-pads.
While I dislike the split d-pad, I feel the other aspects of the DS controller are far superior to that of the GCN controller. Every button can be hit in a split second, making it perfect for twitch games.
Since your controller doesn't stop in midair when your sword in the game makes contact with another sword, of course anything resembling actual swordplay isn't there.
You could have the position of the wiimote represent the desired position of the sword, and have the difference between the desired and actual positions affect the amount of force behind the sword. A transparent model of the sword could be used to provide feedback as to where the desired position is.
Interactive fiction. The best resource for IF games is probably the IF Archive. The Underdogs has a fairly extensive collection as well, along with reviews for the games.
What rubbish, if it's on the machine it's detectable. May not be easy, but you'll find it eventually if you look hard enough.
Not while you are booted into the compromised OS.
You have to scan your machine from some read-only media to know with certainty that you are not infected.
We even had the option of reading your mail and then checking a box to Mark them as "Unread". Because you are such a compliant citizen, it makes no difference to you, I'm sure, but all servers do that.
Nobody intelligent should expect plain-text communication over the internet to be private.
Slashdot Mirror
You do not suddenly become less guilty for a terrible act simply because somebody else did something similarly terrible.
Just as a small aside, something is 'amoral' when morality has no bearing on it. Something is 'immoral' when it violates moral rules.
Generating collisions is not that trivial. The only viable way to generate a MD5 collision involves creating both files involved. You cannot generate a same-size collision for a file that you did not specially craft for the purpose. In any realistic setup you don't have the luxery of being both the official distributer of the binaries a company or individual uses, and being the person implementing the rootkit. If you were both then you may as well just infect the official binaries and not worry about rootkits.
There is no known computationally viable way any decent hash can be 'subverted' in the manner you are implying. Changing a single bit will completely change the hash of a binary with any decent hashing algorithm. You're not going to be able to find a hash collision that provides you with a binary that is the same size as the one you are replacing and does everything you want.
A link for you if you haven't heard of DOSBox (and you thought I was referring to 'a DOS box' rather than 'DOSBox').
The post putting him in his place 'belongs' at +5.
Err, that was sitting at -1:Troll when I posted that.
Wow, what a blatant misuse of mod points. Hopefully metamoderation will catch that.
Automation of repetitive tasks is useful in just about any career where you will be using a computer.
While I dislike the split d-pad, I feel the other aspects of the DS controller are far superior to that of the GCN controller. Every button can be hit in a split second, making it perfect for twitch games.
If you want privacy, you use encryption.
Ouch! How much did that set you back?