I loved "2. Muzzy points out that the Sony uninstaller installs a "safe for scripting" Active-X control with remotely exploitable entry points for rebooting your machine and possibly for installing arbitrary code on your machine. More fuel for the tasty class action suits that are starting up."
One of the things that makes Active-X so very broken from a security standpoint is that the entire model is based upon code signing: "I know where this came from, and I trust them."
In the case of the uninstaller, this means trusting the coporation that you know just installed a process and file hider on your system. And people are using it! Argh! The only recovery from this install is a system reload, and restoring data from backups.
VENONA throws hands in air, walks away in disgust.
I just thought the article in Linux Journal from a few years back was cool, relevant to a universal deployment thread, and likely hadn't gotten much popular press recently.
How did newcomers and/or desktops become the foci of the thread, anyway? Some of us aren't evangelists. I couldn't care less about getting everyone to use what I use. To each their own. And as far as those newcomers go, a case could be made that more Linux newcomers are exposed to it on the server than on the desktop. That's certainly been the case at a couple of gigs I've done. Not that there's any way of proving either case, given the myriad ways Linux gets distributed. There are a lot more ways to be exposed to Linux (or the BSDs, etc.) than via the desktop.
You sound like yet another one of those people who think their environment constitutes all of computing. That's ugly enough in Windows people.
BTW, all this caused me to doubt the accuracy of your statement that it wasn't small enough to fit on a wristwatch. A good thing, because I just googled up http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linu xwatch/linuxwatch.html
Last entry in the timeline there is "May 2004: IBM demonstrates Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) on the watch.
Sounds as if the Linux watch project may still be getting sporadic work done on it.
I'm astounded. That may be the lamest thing I've ever encountered. I have _got_ to get off this benighted planet. So many people devoting time to producing brain-damaged crap.
And so far as I know, Linux is the only OS that runs in both the embedded market (can it still fit in, and run a wristwatch?) and has multiple Top 10 technical computing rankings. Surely that's *some* reason for newcomers to computing to see that computing != MS.
"I don't like being told by experts in their choosen feild that I have other things I need to panic over." is hard not to sympathize with. Especially as we both know this issue will be surrounded by talking heads and mondo media hype. Experts in their chosen fields is all we've got, unless you happen to be an expert in the field yourself, and know exactly how to think about problems of this sort. I'm certainly not.
The scary bit, to me, is that the cluefull could be overruled by political considerations. As usual. So I sort of go off on anything that might promote bad numbers, on the theory that good numbers will be hard enough to come by, and will be important.
I don't know about this year, and that number may not matter, as it's early in the season. Also, the measurement methodologies are still evolving. From http://www.usmedicine.com/dailyNews.cfm?dailyID=13 1 ----- ATLANTA-The number of deaths each year from the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are substantially higher than previous estimates, according to data released last month from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC estimates that an average of 36,000 people die from influenza-related complications each year in the United States, compared to the average of 20,000 deaths previously estimated.
Also, about 11,000 people on average are estimated to die each year from RSV, a virus that causes upper and lower respiratory tract infections mostly in young children and the elderly.
The data was published in the Jan. 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers at CDC derived the new figures through the use of improved statistical models, but they said the new numbers represented a "real" increase in deaths.
Estimates covering the 1970s into the 1980s showed that there was an average of 20,000 deaths per year from flu, with some years being higher or lower. The latest study, which provides information from the 1990-1991 flu season through the 1998-1999 flu season, shows that average growing to about 36,000 deaths per year. ----
So that's just the US, where measurement techniques are probably rather more advanced than in many countries. What's measurement noise, and what's the real increase? I guess you'd have to go the primary JAMA source for that. I've not done so, because while I know some statistics, it's on the level of statistical process control, and design of experiments in an engineering context. Learning the advanced statistics machinery that these guys deploy would be a case of Homer Simpson Does Astrophysics.
My point is that I'd recommend reading *any* figures with a certain amount of skepticism, unless you're prepared to go to primary sources for some highly technical reading.
If you're making a case that 'regular' flu deserves more attention than a possible pandemic, I think that whatever numbers you might believe from the above reference, even best-case pandemic numbers would be much higher.
Re:look at past pandemics though
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Let me get this straight. You're plotting a curve on three data points, and not prefacing your remarks as idle speculation. Come on, admit it: you're the reason for Twain's statistics quote, aren't you? And you're briefly quoting a source, while admitting that even your three line reference contains two factual errors.
Are you scuffing your toe in the dirt, looking ashamed?
I can't help but feel that, while there may be a time to trust the collective 'wisdom' of Wikipedia and/or Slashdot, this almost perfectly fails to resemble that time. Granted, there are some bright people here. But a million monkeys don't make a Shakespeare, and reading something backed by peer review, or at least some editors of a vastly higher caliber than you get around here, would seem the wisest course.
Re:it would change the pharmaceutical industry
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
This could be real, though it astounded me. Googling around checking facts, I find:
I wish there had been references in the parent. It's stuff I'd like to know about.
Re:And the odds you'll be affected?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
You're choosing an arbitrary number, totally plucked from the air, and developing odds from there. Unless you can give sources, anyway.
I'd have to agree about which way to go would be easier. If I was looking at the incurable bone cancer thing, I'd be very glad that Oregon has a right to die law. I think we do, anyway. I lost track of the battles over this that Oregon fought against Bush's first AG-Nazi appointee, John Ashcroft. I probably shouldn't have.
Why do people seemingly not want to believe the numbers? This is no troll: some very talented people are saying there's a problem. I read at -1, and I'd like to hear honest opinions. I don't understand this at all, but I'd like to.
Re:Causing Panic
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So do you want to feel safe, or know something about a valid threat to the well-being of you and yours? Do you want to have any reasonable idea of which direction to try to chase your government to act responsibly? The US government does not have the ability to act in a timely fashion, as discussed in the article. The Katrina debacle gets a (IMHO valid) specific mention, as they give the numbers on CDC timelines.
Somewhere between the madness of Fox News, and knowing nothing about it whatever, a balance needs to be struck. I've followed the popular press in this a bit, though mostly the BBC, rather than US news agencies (though born, raised, and live in the US), as they seems more informative and essentially sane, regarding many international issues.
Certainly there will be panic buying of various products--many of them snake-oil. Some will die because of this. Human nature is what it is. But on balance I thought the article fair, and useful in reducing some of that thoughtless panic buying.
Here in the US, the next influenza pandemic will once again reveal the vast differences between our rich and poor, in the most basic terms of all: who lives and who dies. Part of the problem is the huge size of an underclass that will not be reading that SciAm article, or anything like it. Many will never even know that SciAm exists. 'No Child Left Behind' is *not* getting the job done.
URLs, or maybe hardcopies for the half of the US population with no Internet access, might be a good thing to disseminate. The truly poor may not have the resources to do what they think best, but they should have an opportunity to know the facts. I don't trust the government to inform them without a 'This here FEMA director is doin' good. He's workin' 24x7.' [ slant | ignorance | lies ]. It could save some lives.
"So the dog has spoken, at the end of the day the question remains, who the hell fracking cares?"
Corporations, as mentioned in the article. For the reasons given in the article, which sound valid enough to me. Duh. Example of what the authors were talking about, from US CERT Current Activities (http://www.us-cert.gov/current/) though page content may change by the time anyone wants to visit it: ----- Multiple Vulnerabilities in Skype added October 26, 2005
US-CERT is aware of several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Skype that may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.
The most critical of these issues can be exploited by sending a specially crafted packet to a vulnerable Skype installation. More information about this vulnerability can be found in the following US-CERT Vulnerability Note: VU#905177 - Skype vulnerable to heap-based buffer overflow
The other two vulnerabilities can be exploited by accessing a specially crafted VCARD or Skype URI. More information about these vulnerabilities can be found in the following US-CERT Vulnerability Notes: VU#668193 - Skype VCARD handling routine contains a buffer overflow VU#930345 - Skype URI handling routine contains a buffer overflow
Skype has released the following Security Bulletins to address these vulnerabilities:
SKYPE-SB/2005-003 to address VU#905177
SKYPE-SB/2005-002 to address VU#668193 and VU#930345
US-CERT encourages Skype users to upgrade to the latest fixed version of Skype as soon as possible. ----- I take it you have limited experience in a corporate network environment?
Re:Monitoring traffic by source, destination and t
on
Darknets Coming Soon?
·
· Score: 1
Please mod parent up. It's nice to a) read this glimpse of the real world of larger scale network ops, and b) see it mentioned that PtoP, which IMHO is still used primarily for illegal purposes, costs us all.
b) is gonna cost me karma, big-time.
I'm aware that torrents are a legitimate and effective means of getting that latest Linux distro out, that there are other legitimate uses for PtoP, etc. But I suspect the number of packets in transit at just about any given time carry a lot more illegal films and music than legal software, etc.
Before a lot of people pile in with how they're stealing music, etc., for some noble purpose, let me say that the vast majority of/. posts I've read (I read at -1) don't strike me as coming from particularly noble people. I think of theft as theft. If you don't like music label policies, etc., get the word out, boycot, etc. Stealing makes you, guess what, a friggin' *thief*.
Maybe legal things you can do won't have any affect, because people don't care. That sad state of affairs would then simply be the reality of our society. People with the morality of a thief are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Perhaps you have a wonderful future ahead of you, as a record company executive.
Um, we've had darknets pretty much since we've had networks. At least IP networks.
There's prior usage of the term as an unpopulated region of your IP space. Security people use the term and concept a lot in intrustion detection systems, etc. For instance, if you're not knowingly using a block of IP numbers, any attempted non-broadcast traffic involving that block needs to be investigated. You could have a missconfigured, rogue or compromised host.
Possibly (as OP indicated) it can all be traced back to the P. Biddle, P. England, M. Peinado, and B. Willman (Microsoft) paper presented at 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management, which Cory Doctorow used as Exhibit A in his presentation to Microsoft presentation. The for ease of searching, the title is "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution." Most popular engines turn it up near the top of results.
Of course the media have completely seized upon the term, because it sounds eviiil. True geeks will have to know both definitions. The current media usage does indeed sound more like a VPN to me. I wish the four Microsofties above hadn't used the term. It's not as accurate in their sense as in it's original sense.
So don't use IE for casual surfing. Use it only for those sites that you absolutely must have for business or whatever, and which absolutely require it. Even *then* you may be at risk, due to attacks on third party ad servers, etc. Remember the Bofra exploits caused by system compromises of Falk AG's ad servers?
IE still has unpatched exploits against it. I almost always does. This is the normal state of affairs.
I don't know if I'd trust the numbers in this paper at all.
From TFA: There are three distinct ways in which IPRs in software lead to economic inefficiency:
1) The gap between the IPR-protected price and
the competitive-market price (which would be
zero for most software, since it can be transferred
costlessly over the Internet) leads to a deadweight
efficiency loss...
Obviously, distribution costs != development costs.
I'm a believer in Free software, but it appears that this study has been built upon a foundation of sand. So I stopped reading that 20-page PDF at that point, on page 5. I may finish it at some point, out of curiosity, but it doesn't get any more of my precious weekend time.
Damn. Beat me to it.
You have to hope that the error was made by whoever transcribed the interview, eh?
I've never heard of these guys (which means nothing) but they've done all sorts of stuff. Their recent history is at:
http://www.amec.com/about/aboutwide.asp?pageid=24
Then you must mean *latitude*. While latitude does matter, it's probably more important that you have good views of the southern sky. Lots of interesting astronomy to be done there. You can't see into the galactic center from far northern latitudes.
You also care about percent cloudcover, and having nice laminar windflows to improve the image stability. Both of these are arguments against high latitudes. AFAIK, the only telescope places at a polar station was an IR scope at or near the S. Pole to take advantage of extreme aridity. I don't know if it's still in operation.
There are good dark sky sites in Chile, Hawaii, etc., which are already hosts for other large installations. The odds of this thing being built in Canada are zero. Which sucks in a way--I'll never get to go play tourist.
I think Lardmonster was joking. The RH/gcc-2.96 fiasco caused a lot of problems. Like not being able to reliably run binaries built in this environment on other distros. A PITA for admins at large installations.
The lean toward calling it exceptionaly bad DRM, rather than a rootkit. Fair enough. It doesn't contain anything that maintains a cracker's ability to reenter a system, which is part of most people's definition of a rootkit.
But its good to see that they've picked up. Other media outlets often seem to follow what's seen on el Reg.
Sony is having financial troubles.
"Sony is set to cut product lines as well as ditch non profitable categories in a move aimed at injecting profitability back into the ailing company. They are also investing in direct to consumer operations with new direct sell stores and online operations set to be launched."
http://www.smarthousenews.com.au/ and cruise around, or Google 'sony restructure'.
You can send mail to the band, or the corporation. I chose to mail The Register, as they have guys qualified to evaluate Win issues, and I'm a Unix guy.
Maybe it would be best to keep an eye on major media. If and when confirmation comes in (which shouldn't be long at all), contact local media. What we don't need is for this to turn out to be less than 100% factual. No reflection on the author, but independent confirmation would seem to be indicated. We can't risk crying wolf about this.
If it's confirmed, it will be all over the traditional wire services--Reuter's, API, UPI, etc. Nobody will touch it unless it *is* confirmed. I expect it will be. Once confirmed, *then make sure it's locally distributed*. It's not something we'd want missed by even small town media.
"No if I wanted to show of my "highly-evolved sense of morality" and not refute the agument I would have claimed not to have problems with sterotyping people, and then probably claimed you were just a rationalist bigot:P"
I do not understand this argument. I never claimed that stereotyping people was a Good Thing. I just advanced a possible explanation for why it happens for many, based on how it's happened for at least one. Me. But you're more than welcome to call me a rationalist bigot. I'd take that as a complement.
"I don't have a highly-evolved moral sense. I just know most of the flaws that it has."
Again, complete lack of understanding. I would think that actually having a highly-evolved moral sense would be a Good Thing. But then I don't equate religious with moral.
"As to your argument, I just don't see how a backlash based on lack of understanding and sterotypes should be coming from intelligent and rational people."
For the reasons given in my previous post. As to the rest of that paragraph, I'd say that it has certainly has merit. And since this whole thing boiled up in the previous/. post a couple of days ago, I've surfed around a bit, and now know at least some of the differences between Pentecostals and Southern Baptists, etc.
Trying to sort all this weirdness out has been painful. Also time consuming, and there's deadlined work to be done. There will now be further pain involved with mentally aligning with supernaturalist group foo who are less of a threat than supernaturalist group bar. Worthwhile? Probably, as it's a 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing. Painful? Definitely. I fundamentally do not understand how at least several of these groups think.
"And I don't want to live in a theocracy." 100% agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
You did indeed. See:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=927
A remote reboot exploit exists as a proof of concept.
Sony has hit bottom, and commenced digging.
I loved "2. Muzzy points out that the Sony uninstaller installs a "safe for scripting" Active-X control with remotely exploitable entry points for rebooting your machine and possibly for installing arbitrary code on your machine. More fuel for the tasty class action suits that are starting up."
One of the things that makes Active-X so very broken from a security standpoint is that the entire model is based upon code signing: "I know where this came from, and I trust them."
In the case of the uninstaller, this means trusting the coporation that you know just installed a process and file hider on your system. And people are using it! Argh! The only recovery from this install is a system reload, and restoring data from backups.
VENONA throws hands in air, walks away in disgust.
I just thought the article in Linux Journal from a few years back was cool, relevant to a universal deployment thread, and likely hadn't gotten much popular press recently. How did newcomers and/or desktops become the foci of the thread, anyway? Some of us aren't evangelists. I couldn't care less about getting everyone to use what I use. To each their own. And as far as those newcomers go, a case could be made that more Linux newcomers are exposed to it on the server than on the desktop. That's certainly been the case at a couple of gigs I've done. Not that there's any way of proving either case, given the myriad ways Linux gets distributed. There are a lot more ways to be exposed to Linux (or the BSDs, etc.) than via the desktop. You sound like yet another one of those people who think their environment constitutes all of computing. That's ugly enough in Windows people. BTW, all this caused me to doubt the accuracy of your statement that it wasn't small enough to fit on a wristwatch. A good thing, because I just googled up http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linu xwatch/linuxwatch.html
Last entry in the timeline there is "May 2004: IBM demonstrates Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) on the watch.
Sounds as if the Linux watch project may still be getting sporadic work done on it.
I'm astounded. That may be the lamest thing I've ever encountered. I have _got_ to get off this benighted planet. So many people devoting time to producing brain-damaged crap.
And so far as I know, Linux is the only OS that runs in both the embedded market (can it still fit in, and run a wristwatch?) and has multiple Top 10 technical computing rankings. Surely that's *some* reason for newcomers to computing to see that computing != MS.
Mod parent up. In the days when humor posts can be +5, why can't an essentially sane and common viewpoint?
And thanks in return for your link to http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
I be liking it.
"I don't like being told by experts in their choosen feild that I have other things I need to panic over." is hard not to sympathize with. Especially as we both know this issue will be surrounded by talking heads and mondo media hype. Experts in their chosen fields is all we've got, unless you happen to be an expert in the field yourself, and know exactly how to think about problems of this sort. I'm certainly not.
The scary bit, to me, is that the cluefull could be overruled by political considerations. As usual. So I sort of go off on anything that might promote bad numbers, on the theory that good numbers will be hard enough to come by, and will be important.
I'm probably just obsessing.
I don't know about this year, and that number may not matter, as it's early in the season. Also, the measurement methodologies are still evolving. From http://www.usmedicine.com/dailyNews.cfm?dailyID=13 1
-----
ATLANTA-The number of deaths each year from the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are substantially higher than previous estimates, according to data released last month from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC estimates that an average of 36,000 people die from influenza-related complications each year in the United States, compared to the average of 20,000 deaths previously estimated.
Also, about 11,000 people on average are estimated to die each year from RSV, a virus that causes upper and lower respiratory tract infections mostly in young children and the elderly.
The data was published in the Jan. 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers at CDC derived the new figures through the use of improved statistical models, but they said the new numbers represented a "real" increase in deaths.
Estimates covering the 1970s into the 1980s showed that there was an average of 20,000 deaths per year from flu, with some years being higher or lower. The latest study, which provides information from the 1990-1991 flu season through the 1998-1999 flu season, shows that average growing to about 36,000 deaths per year.
----
So that's just the US, where measurement techniques are probably rather more advanced than in many countries. What's measurement noise, and what's the real increase? I guess you'd have to go the primary JAMA source for that. I've not done so, because while I know some statistics, it's on the level of statistical process control, and design of experiments in an engineering context. Learning the advanced statistics machinery that these guys deploy would be a case of Homer Simpson Does Astrophysics.
My point is that I'd recommend reading *any* figures with a certain amount of skepticism, unless you're prepared to go to primary sources for some highly technical reading.
If you're making a case that 'regular' flu deserves more attention than a possible pandemic, I think that whatever numbers you might believe from the above reference, even best-case pandemic numbers would be much higher.
Let me get this straight. You're plotting a curve on three data points, and not prefacing your remarks as idle speculation. Come on, admit it: you're the reason for Twain's statistics quote, aren't you? And you're briefly quoting a source, while admitting that even your three line reference contains two factual errors.
Are you scuffing your toe in the dirt, looking ashamed?
I can't help but feel that, while there may be a time to trust the collective 'wisdom' of Wikipedia and/or Slashdot, this almost perfectly fails to resemble that time. Granted, there are some bright people here. But a million monkeys don't make a Shakespeare, and reading something backed by peer review, or at least some editors of a vastly higher caliber than you get around here, would seem the wisest course.
This could be real, though it astounded me. Googling around checking facts, I find:
i agra_free/index.htm
Viagra even has a loyalty program
http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/14/news/fortune500/v
Viagra: the hard sell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4222045.stm
I wish there had been references in the parent. It's stuff I'd like to know about.
You're choosing an arbitrary number, totally plucked from the air, and developing odds from there. Unless you can give sources, anyway.
I'd have to agree about which way to go would be easier. If I was looking at the incurable bone cancer thing, I'd be very glad that Oregon has a right to die law. I think we do, anyway. I lost track of the battles over this that Oregon fought against Bush's first AG-Nazi appointee, John Ashcroft. I probably shouldn't have.
Why do people seemingly not want to believe the numbers? This is no troll: some very talented people are saying there's a problem. I read at -1, and I'd like to hear honest opinions. I don't understand this at all, but I'd like to.
So do you want to feel safe, or know something about a valid threat to the well-being of you and yours? Do you want to have any reasonable idea of which direction to try to chase your government to act responsibly? The US government does not have the ability to act in a timely fashion, as discussed in the article. The Katrina debacle gets a (IMHO valid) specific mention, as they give the numbers on CDC timelines.
Somewhere between the madness of Fox News, and knowing nothing about it whatever, a balance needs to be struck. I've followed the popular press in this a bit, though mostly the BBC, rather than US news agencies (though born, raised, and live in the US), as they seems more informative and essentially sane, regarding many international issues.
Certainly there will be panic buying of various products--many of them snake-oil. Some will die because of this. Human nature is what it is. But on balance I thought the article fair, and useful in reducing some of that thoughtless panic buying.
Here in the US, the next influenza pandemic will once again reveal the vast differences between our rich and poor, in the most basic terms of all: who lives and who dies. Part of the problem is the huge size of an underclass that will not be reading that SciAm article, or anything like it. Many will never even know that SciAm exists. 'No Child Left Behind' is *not* getting the job done.
URLs, or maybe hardcopies for the half of the US population with no Internet access, might be a good thing to disseminate. The truly poor may not have the resources to do what they think best, but they should have an opportunity to know the facts. I don't trust the government to inform them without a 'This here FEMA director is doin' good. He's workin' 24x7.' [ slant | ignorance | lies ]. It could save some lives.
"So the dog has spoken, at the end of the day the question remains, who the hell fracking cares?"
Corporations, as mentioned in the article. For the reasons given in the article, which sound valid enough to me. Duh. Example of what the authors were talking about, from US CERT Current Activities (http://www.us-cert.gov/current/) though page content may change by the time anyone wants to visit it:
-----
Multiple Vulnerabilities in Skype
added October 26, 2005
US-CERT is aware of several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Skype that may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.
The most critical of these issues can be exploited by sending a specially crafted packet to a vulnerable Skype installation. More information about this vulnerability can be found in the following US-CERT Vulnerability Note:
VU#905177 - Skype vulnerable to heap-based buffer overflow
The other two vulnerabilities can be exploited by accessing a specially crafted VCARD or Skype URI. More information about these vulnerabilities can be found in the following US-CERT Vulnerability Notes:
VU#668193 - Skype VCARD handling routine contains a buffer overflow
VU#930345 - Skype URI handling routine contains a buffer overflow
Skype has released the following Security Bulletins to address these vulnerabilities:
SKYPE-SB/2005-003 to address VU#905177
SKYPE-SB/2005-002 to address VU#668193 and VU#930345
US-CERT encourages Skype users to upgrade to the latest fixed version of Skype as soon as possible.
-----
I take it you have limited experience in a corporate network environment?
Please mod parent up. It's nice to a) read this glimpse of the real world of larger scale network ops, and b) see it mentioned that PtoP, which IMHO is still used primarily for illegal purposes, costs us all.
/. posts I've read (I read at -1) don't strike me as coming from particularly noble people. I think of theft as theft. If you don't like music label policies, etc., get the word out, boycot, etc. Stealing makes you, guess what, a friggin' *thief*.
b) is gonna cost me karma, big-time.
I'm aware that torrents are a legitimate and effective means of getting that latest Linux distro out, that there are other legitimate uses for PtoP, etc. But I suspect the number of packets in transit at just about any given time carry a lot more illegal films and music than legal software, etc.
Before a lot of people pile in with how they're stealing music, etc., for some noble purpose, let me say that the vast majority of
Maybe legal things you can do won't have any affect, because people don't care. That sad state of affairs would then simply be the reality of our society. People with the morality of a thief are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Perhaps you have a wonderful future ahead of you, as a record company executive.
Um, we've had darknets pretty much since we've had networks. At least IP networks.
There's prior usage of the term as an unpopulated region of your IP space. Security people use the term and concept a lot in intrustion detection systems, etc. For instance, if you're not knowingly using a block of IP numbers, any attempted non-broadcast traffic involving that block needs to be investigated. You could have a missconfigured, rogue or compromised host.
Possibly (as OP indicated) it can all be traced back to the P. Biddle, P. England, M. Peinado, and B. Willman (Microsoft) paper presented at 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management, which Cory Doctorow used as Exhibit A in his presentation to Microsoft presentation. The for ease of searching, the title is "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution." Most popular engines turn it up near the top of results.
Of course the media have completely seized upon the term, because it sounds eviiil. True geeks will have to know both definitions. The current media usage does indeed sound more like a VPN to me. I wish the four Microsofties above hadn't used the term. It's not as accurate in their sense as in it's original sense.
So don't use IE for casual surfing. Use it only for those sites that you absolutely must have for business or whatever, and which absolutely require it. Even *then* you may be at risk, due to attacks on third party ad servers, etc. Remember the Bofra exploits caused by system compromises of Falk AG's ad servers?
IE still has unpatched exploits against it. I almost always does. This is the normal state of affairs.
Duh.
"It is easy to define science: it is the advancement (or state of) human knowledge acquired through the scientific method."
Not in Kansas. Not any more.
The Flat State has now become the Flat Earth.
Gotta love the state motto: Ad astra per aspera To the stars through difficulties
I'd say they've added a large steaming pile of..."difficulties".
I don't know if I'd trust the numbers in this paper at all.
From TFA:
There are three distinct ways in which IPRs in software lead to economic inefficiency:
1) The gap between the IPR-protected price and
the competitive-market price (which would be
zero for most software, since it can be transferred
costlessly over the Internet) leads to a deadweight
efficiency loss...
Obviously, distribution costs != development costs.
I'm a believer in Free software, but it appears that this study has been built upon a foundation of sand. So I stopped reading that 20-page PDF at that point, on page 5. I may finish it at some point, out of curiosity, but it doesn't get any more of my precious weekend time.
Damn. Beat me to it. You have to hope that the error was made by whoever transcribed the interview, eh? I've never heard of these guys (which means nothing) but they've done all sorts of stuff. Their recent history is at: http://www.amec.com/about/aboutwide.asp?pageid=24
Then you must mean *latitude*. While latitude does matter, it's probably more important that you have good views of the southern sky. Lots of interesting astronomy to be done there. You can't see into the galactic center from far northern latitudes.
You also care about percent cloudcover, and having nice laminar windflows to improve the image stability. Both of these are arguments against high latitudes. AFAIK, the only telescope places at a polar station was an IR scope at or near the S. Pole to take advantage of extreme aridity. I don't know if it's still in operation.
There are good dark sky sites in Chile, Hawaii, etc., which are already hosts for other large installations. The odds of this thing being built in Canada are zero. Which sucks in a way--I'll never get to go play tourist.
Techworld picked it up today (November 02, 05): http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index.cf m?featureid=1931
It's on the lead page of Google News: http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8 &q=
with links to the Washington Post article, and a C Net article, etc. Also a
link to 47 more articles:
http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8 &ncl=http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php%3Fp% 3D690
So the news is on at least four continents, and in at least some mainstream press. Serves Sony right, and I hope this gives them a major black eye.
I think Lardmonster was joking. The RH/gcc-2.96 fiasco caused a lot of problems. Like not being able to reliably run binaries built in this environment on other distros. A PITA for admins at large installations.
See:k it_drm/
Removing Sony's CD 'rootkit' kills Windows
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/01/sony_root
The lean toward calling it exceptionaly bad DRM, rather than a rootkit. Fair enough. It doesn't contain anything that maintains a cracker's ability to reenter a system, which is part of most people's definition of a rootkit.
But its good to see that they've picked up. Other media outlets often seem to follow what's seen on el Reg.
Sony is having financial troubles. "Sony is set to cut product lines as well as ditch non profitable categories in a move aimed at injecting profitability back into the ailing company. They are also investing in direct to consumer operations with new direct sell stores and online operations set to be launched." http://www.smarthousenews.com.au/ and cruise around, or Google 'sony restructure'. You can send mail to the band, or the corporation. I chose to mail The Register, as they have guys qualified to evaluate Win issues, and I'm a Unix guy. Maybe it would be best to keep an eye on major media. If and when confirmation comes in (which shouldn't be long at all), contact local media. What we don't need is for this to turn out to be less than 100% factual. No reflection on the author, but independent confirmation would seem to be indicated. We can't risk crying wolf about this. If it's confirmed, it will be all over the traditional wire services--Reuter's, API, UPI, etc. Nobody will touch it unless it *is* confirmed. I expect it will be. Once confirmed, *then make sure it's locally distributed*. It's not something we'd want missed by even small town media.
"No if I wanted to show of my "highly-evolved sense of morality" and not refute the agument I would have claimed not to have problems with sterotyping people, and then probably claimed you were just a rationalist bigot :P"
/. post a couple of days ago, I've surfed around a bit, and now know at least some of the differences between Pentecostals and Southern Baptists, etc.
I do not understand this argument. I never claimed that stereotyping people was a Good Thing. I just advanced a possible explanation for why it happens for many, based on how it's happened for at least one. Me. But you're more than welcome to call me a rationalist bigot. I'd take that as a complement.
"I don't have a highly-evolved moral sense. I just know most of the flaws that it has."
Again, complete lack of understanding. I would think that actually having a highly-evolved moral sense would be a Good Thing. But then I don't equate religious with moral.
"As to your argument, I just don't see how a backlash based on lack of understanding and sterotypes should be coming from intelligent and rational people."
For the reasons given in my previous post. As to the rest of that paragraph, I'd say that it has certainly has merit. And since this whole thing boiled up in the previous
Trying to sort all this weirdness out has been painful. Also time consuming, and there's deadlined work to be done. There will now be further pain involved with mentally aligning with supernaturalist group foo who are less of a threat than supernaturalist group bar. Worthwhile? Probably, as it's a 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing. Painful? Definitely. I fundamentally do not understand how at least several of these groups think.
"And I don't want to live in a theocracy."
100% agreement.