This was exploited using a bug in strongwebmail's software.
They weren't sanitizing or validating inputs on CGIs, which allowed the contest winner to run some javascript on the target's machine.
The other thing they weren't doing was protecting themselves against CSRF attacks.
This was ABSOLUTELY a problem with strongwebmail's software. Yes, user interaction was required, but the interaction was to exploit flaws in the software.
While I am typically very much anti-piracy, I do draw the line at books.
There is a large collection of books sitting on my shelf that I have never opened. This is because I bought them only to put them on my ebook reader de jour (palm -> nokia 770 -> kindle2).
I'm sure that this violates some laws, but I feel like those laws are unjustified. If i were to take the time to scan the books that I purchased, then put them on my reader, that would be fair use, no? How is it different if I outsource the job to somebody that does it for free?
I'm arguing with my own arguments here, I know.
My point is: buy dead-tree versions of the books you want, then download the PDF from your favorite file network.
This happened to me when I was a kid. The school thought that I had signed up for Hockey, but hadn't. They sent me across town to hockey practice. Instead of freaking out, I got there and started playing hockey. Then I called my mom and told her to come and pick me up. Why? Because I didn't have psychotic over-reacting parents. I was smart enough to go "there is a problem here, I should fix it." And I did.
Teach your daughter this same thing. Make her memorize your phone number.
You really sound stuck in the past when it comes to your views of small computers.
And you really sound like a 17 year old coffee shop dwelling mac fanboi that can't pull his head out of his ass long enough to realize that the mobile computing market is driven by people that want to take their computers with them.
Nobody is going to lug a keyboard, and an external monitor with them. Possibly the people who buy their computers as fashion accessories (I suspect that you fall into this category) would, but the people using them will not.
You're citing mac's sales figures for the iPhone (a telephone) as evidence that notebooks (computers) are being dropped for iPhones (telephones); this pretty accurately demonstrates how much you misunderstand what we're talking about here.
At some point we're bound to see a company bring out what is essentially a laptop shell docking station and power supply for your phone.
Could we call it a "netbook" and have the "docking mechanism" be a USB cable?
These things are only going to improve, and they're already more powerful than high-end desktop machines from ten years ago.
I think you're missing the point. We're not using notebooks as number crunchers, they're mobile email/office/web platforms. The reason that they won't be replaced by phones is the screen and keyboard sizes. Processing power/ram has reached a point where it doesn't need to get any better for the typical sorts of things people use their computers for.
Don't forget that phone-sized-computers have existed (and failed miserably) before. There might be a niche' market of geeks that want to show off their neat toys (and there are already devices that fill this), but the laptop computer is never going to go away.
How much longer until these phones replace a laptop for most of our day-to-day computing?
As long as it takes them to create one with a real keyboard, and a monitor that is at least as big as the one on my Acer Aspire. The idea of a phone replacing your computer is probably really great if you're speculating from behind your iBook while sipping on a Mocha Frappacheeno, but for the people actually USING their computers? The ones traveling? The ones doing more than updating their twitter status?
Phones will not EVER replace their laptops (they will[do] supplement them).
we're talking about a new technology that's made the old technology completely obsolete.
In other words:
"I personally find this technology to be STOOPID! The huge hordes of people that still want it are equally STOOPID and we should ignore any opportunities to fulfill a demand because the demand is STOOPID and I disgree with it!"
Is that about right?
(hint: if I could get a Polaroid and the film for it at target, I would) (bonus: I shoot digital all day long [like it's my job{oh wait, it IS my job!}])
They're headphones designed for drummers and will cancel out almost ALL noise in your office except for some music if you want it. You might look like a dork, but you will have your sanity.
I've used similar tactics at work, but with much less success. "Here let me show you how this works so that you understand" turns into them going "No, do it this way because I understand and know better than you."
Example:
My boss's hard-disk recently failed. He asked me, "blhack, what is wrong with this?" "Well, it sounds like the platters start to spin up, then stop. It also sounds like the read-head might be stuck also. The disk is dead." "Is it possible to fix it?" "yes, it is! There are several companies that can fix it for you. Sometimes it is as simple as swapping out the circuit board on the back, sometimes they actually have to open it up and swap the platters into another disk" "oh, okay"
about a week later he comes into my office
"Blhack, do you have those torx wrenches?" "Yeah, sure, here you go....what did you need them for?" "I'm going to open that dead-disk up and try to unstick the read-head"
cue me snatching the torx bits out of his hand and this spiraling into an argument about WHY opening a hard-disk up and "unsticking the read-head" is a BAD idea.
Sometimes it is good to inform the users, sometimes it is good that they *DON'T* understand what is going on.
The real pressed long-lasting DVD side is a LiveDVD that boots an OS, downloads the tracks via torrent, and mixes them with a script, in the DJ's style, with a bit of individuality for every buyer.
You can use the same script that I use for generating symphonies in the style of Beethoven. It turns out that all the guy was doing was manipulating about 88 different sounds that his piano could make! He didn't even build the piano!
First, I apologize for my first post; I come from a future where windows 7 is released alongside office 2009, and they are both hated.
Second, I'm not saying that UI design is ALWAYS bad, and I know what you're talking about with flight instruments (Dad and brother are both pilots...dad just finished his IFR, bro is a full-time commercial pilot...i fly right-seat with both of them all the time).
What I'm saying is that needless UI redesign is usually bad. Anecdotal evidence:
I used gimp. A lot. I use gimp pretty much all day long every day....buuutttt...I've been using Gimp 2.4... I needed to use a plugin called "ufraw" (a frontend for dcraw, which processes raw files)...but ufraw is only compatible with gimp 2.6.x... They totally redisgned the UI (err...not totally, but enough to frustrate me)...for what seems like no reason at all. Once you get in to using a product, be it office 2003, or gimp 2.4.x, or windows xp, or whatever, needlessly changing it means that you have to start learning all over again.
I'm not saying ALL redesign is bad, I'm just saying that *needless* redesign is bad. In my opinion, redesigning the UI for OO is needless.
The only logical thing to do in this case is raid the recycling heap. Or make a media fiasco out of IBM not allowing a bunch of starving geeks the opportunity to put a bunch of garbage to good use. BAD, IBM, BAD!
Yeah, but I'm one of those crazy people who fix their own fences, hang their own ceiling fans, build treehouses for their kids, and generally like to do things not conducive to the strictly consumer lifestyle.
Good god yes. I cannot tell you how angry paying somebody to do something that I know I could do myself makes me.
Paying ~$1 a foot...for an ethernet cable? Seriously?
I cannot tell you how true this is in software for me. If it isn't something huge, I will almost always code it up myself. That way, when there are bugs, I know where they are, there isn't anybody to get mad at except myself.
The worst thing is having something go wrong and knowing that the person who caused it doesn't know and doesn't care. Doubly so if you know how to fix it (closed source stuff etc.).
I don't think you're understanding how this works.
Becoming infected with this worm does give you the ability to control of the computers that are infected with it. Think of it like VNC, or Dameware, it lets THEM control YOU, not the other way around.
They didn't brick his kindle, they banned him from the kindle store. He can still load anything on his kindle that he wants to! He just can't shop in the kindle store.
The argument that some people seem like they're trying to make here is akin to:
"Borders banned me from their store and now my bookshelf is totally worthless!! I can't put borders books on it anymore!"
The guy didn't lose the books that he had already purchased. What amazon did was the equivalent of Borders books getting angry with you and deciding that you're not allowed to shop their anymore.
A douchey practice, sure, but it really feels like people just want to hate the kindle for some reason.
Oh gawd, I'm defending a chunk of white plastic...i feel like a mac user..
I don't know about now, but about three years ago this wasn't possible (at least not in Mexico City, where I was).
Our company was building an office in MC, we were just in the "looking for some land" stages, and the "office" consisted of 3 people. We needed to get them some cellphones.
In mexico city, at that time, you couldn't get a phone "over-the-counter", you had to sign up for service, and they would mail you a phone later. It took about a week.
This was very, very confusing to me, and I argued with him about it the whole way to the mall until we went into the store and had the very cute mexican girl tell me the exact same thing.
The surprising thing is that all that "web 2.0" crap? Yeah, not that many people actually like it very much, especially not nerds (from what I've seen).
Craigslist is so popular because it just works there are no stupid buttons or widgets are anything that doesn't work on anything other than IE6 running on windows XP.
This is just my own experience, so bear with me here. I remember when digg first came out, I was on that site all day, every day reading stories, posting stories, commenting on stories etc. etc. etc. Then...well, then they changed the layout, added all kinds of gradients and 50 billion buttons that have no discernible purpose. I think I continued trying to use the site before I gave it up and migrated back to fark. Then...and this one made me really sad, Slashdot jumped on the web 2.0 bandwagon. What was once a clean, obvious, straight-forward website was transformed into a disgusting mess of collapse/expand buttons (wtf, guys...really?), buttons, more buttons, buttons here and buttons freaking everywhere. slashdot.org/~$username/ no longer took me to my comment history, but rather to some mess of a page with no sort of explanation and, you guessed it, more fucking buttons. Also, some sort of a speech bubble with a number in it next to my latest one? What the hell is that?
So I've decreased my usage of slashdot but don't know where to turn to? There is my own website which i tried to make as clean as I could. There is reddit, which is an ungodly clusterfuck of conspiracy theorist whackjobs who think that the government is out to get them and post stories like "How can I hack a satelite?" which gets rocketed on to the front page.
It seems like the only place left, really, is hackernews. Their confusing policy of not having their name be the same as their URL has kept MOST of the retards away, but I fear that they're going to discover bookmarks soon./rant over.
What we're experience is what I call "designers designing for designers". Its what happens when a designer (or a coder in this case) changes something because it looks really cool to people in-the-know, but fucking hideous to the people actually doing the consumption. Craigslist seems to be immune to this syndrome. I have no idea why, but I suggest that if they ever hire a graphic designer we take a flamethrower to their wacom tablet and CSS manual immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
This was exploited using a bug in strongwebmail's software.
They weren't sanitizing or validating inputs on CGIs, which allowed the contest winner to run some javascript on the target's machine.
The other thing they weren't doing was protecting themselves against CSRF attacks.
This was ABSOLUTELY a problem with strongwebmail's software. Yes, user interaction was required, but the interaction was to exploit flaws in the software.
That can't happen today; there are multiple backups at multiple locations.
That did happen today, which is why we're talking about it.
*DING* you win.
This is a problem that I'm sure most of slashdot is familiar with: coworkers wanting you to give tech support to their home machines.
For me, the answer is relative to "how many times have you grabbed me a coffee on your way in to work".
If the answer is "none", then the answer is "none". It goes up from there until it reaches "do a reinstall"
While I am typically very much anti-piracy, I do draw the line at books.
There is a large collection of books sitting on my shelf that I have never opened. This is because I bought them only to put them on my ebook reader de jour (palm -> nokia 770 -> kindle2).
I'm sure that this violates some laws, but I feel like those laws are unjustified. If i were to take the time to scan the books that I purchased, then put them on my reader, that would be fair use, no? How is it different if I outsource the job to somebody that does it for free?
I'm arguing with my own arguments here, I know.
My point is: buy dead-tree versions of the books you want, then download the PDF from your favorite file network.
This happened to me when I was a kid. The school thought that I had signed up for Hockey, but hadn't. They sent me across town to hockey practice.
Instead of freaking out, I got there and started playing hockey. Then I called my mom and told her to come and pick me up.
Why? Because I didn't have psychotic over-reacting parents. I was smart enough to go "there is a problem here, I should fix it."
And I did.
Teach your daughter this same thing. Make her memorize your phone number.
You really sound stuck in the past when it comes to your views of small computers.
And you really sound like a 17 year old coffee shop dwelling mac fanboi that can't pull his head out of his ass long enough to realize that the mobile computing market is driven by people that want to take their computers with them.
Nobody is going to lug a keyboard, and an external monitor with them. Possibly the people who buy their computers as fashion accessories (I suspect that you fall into this category) would, but the people using them will not.
You're citing mac's sales figures for the iPhone (a telephone) as evidence that notebooks (computers) are being dropped for iPhones (telephones); this pretty accurately demonstrates how much you misunderstand what we're talking about here.
At some point we're bound to see a company bring out what is essentially a laptop shell docking station and power supply for your phone.
Could we call it a "netbook" and have the "docking mechanism" be a USB cable?
These things are only going to improve, and they're already more powerful than high-end desktop machines from ten years ago.
I think you're missing the point. We're not using notebooks as number crunchers, they're mobile email/office/web platforms. The reason that they won't be replaced by phones is the screen and keyboard sizes. Processing power/ram has reached a point where it doesn't need to get any better for the typical sorts of things people use their computers for.
Don't forget that phone-sized-computers have existed (and failed miserably) before. There might be a niche' market of geeks that want to show off their neat toys (and there are already devices that fill this), but the laptop computer is never going to go away.
How much longer until these phones replace a laptop for most of our day-to-day computing?
As long as it takes them to create one with a real keyboard, and a monitor that is at least as big as the one on my Acer Aspire.
The idea of a phone replacing your computer is probably really great if you're speculating from behind your iBook while sipping on a Mocha Frappacheeno, but for the people actually USING their computers? The ones traveling? The ones doing more than updating their twitter status?
Phones will not EVER replace their laptops (they will[do] supplement them).
we're talking about a new technology that's made the old technology completely obsolete.
In other words:
"I personally find this technology to be STOOPID! The huge hordes of people that still want it are equally STOOPID and we should ignore any opportunities to fulfill a demand because the demand is STOOPID and I disgree with it!"
Is that about right?
(hint: if I could get a Polaroid and the film for it at target, I would)
(bonus: I shoot digital all day long [like it's my job{oh wait, it IS my job!}])
Get yourself a set of these
They're headphones designed for drummers and will cancel out almost ALL noise in your office except for some music if you want it.
You might look like a dork, but you will have your sanity.
I've used similar tactics at work, but with much less success. "Here let me show you how this works so that you understand" turns into them going "No, do it this way because I understand and know better than you."
Example:
My boss's hard-disk recently failed.
He asked me, "blhack, what is wrong with this?"
"Well, it sounds like the platters start to spin up, then stop. It also sounds like the read-head might be stuck also. The disk is dead."
"Is it possible to fix it?"
"yes, it is! There are several companies that can fix it for you. Sometimes it is as simple as swapping out the circuit board on the back, sometimes they actually have to open it up and swap the platters into another disk"
"oh, okay"
about a week later he comes into my office
"Blhack, do you have those torx wrenches?"
"Yeah, sure, here you go....what did you need them for?"
"I'm going to open that dead-disk up and try to unstick the read-head"
cue me snatching the torx bits out of his hand and this spiraling into an argument about WHY opening a hard-disk up and "unsticking the read-head" is a BAD idea.
Sometimes it is good to inform the users, sometimes it is good that they *DON'T* understand what is going on.
The real pressed long-lasting DVD side is a LiveDVD that boots an OS, downloads the tracks via torrent, and mixes them with a script, in the DJ's style, with a bit of individuality for every buyer.
You can use the same script that I use for generating symphonies in the style of Beethoven. It turns out that all the guy was doing was manipulating about 88 different sounds that his piano could make!
He didn't even build the piano!
First, I apologize for my first post; I come from a future where windows 7 is released alongside office 2009, and they are both hated.
Second, I'm not saying that UI design is ALWAYS bad, and I know what you're talking about with flight instruments (Dad and brother are both pilots...dad just finished his IFR, bro is a full-time commercial pilot...i fly right-seat with both of them all the time).
What I'm saying is that needless UI redesign is usually bad.
Anecdotal evidence:
I used gimp. A lot. I use gimp pretty much all day long every day....buuutttt...I've been using Gimp 2.4...
I needed to use a plugin called "ufraw" (a frontend for dcraw, which processes raw files)...but ufraw is only compatible with gimp 2.6.x...
They totally redisgned the UI (err...not totally, but enough to frustrate me)...for what seems like no reason at all. Once you get in to using a product, be it office 2003, or gimp 2.4.x, or windows xp, or whatever, needlessly changing it means that you have to start learning all over again.
I'm not saying ALL redesign is bad, I'm just saying that *needless* redesign is bad. In my opinion, redesigning the UI for OO is needless.
Why do people do this?
Vista, windows 7, office 2009, etc. etc.
These things are all failures for more-or-less one reason: the UI has advanced as far as it needs to. Interface revisions are okay, overhauls are NOT.
The only logical thing to do in this case is raid the recycling heap.
Or make a media fiasco out of IBM not allowing a bunch of starving geeks the opportunity to put a bunch of garbage to good use.
BAD, IBM, BAD!
Yeah, but I'm one of those crazy people who fix their own fences, hang their own ceiling fans, build treehouses for their kids, and generally like to do things not conducive to the strictly consumer lifestyle.
Good god yes. I cannot tell you how angry paying somebody to do something that I know I could do myself makes me.
Paying ~$1 a foot...for an ethernet cable?
Seriously?
I cannot tell you how true this is in software for me. If it isn't something huge, I will almost always code it up myself. That way, when there are bugs, I know where they are, there isn't anybody to get mad at except myself.
The worst thing is having something go wrong and knowing that the person who caused it doesn't know and doesn't care. Doubly so if you know how to fix it (closed source stuff etc.).
Can you give any insight to how it works (is this a trade secret or anything?)
This has been bothering me ever since I learned how to make cables myself. How on earth could a machine do it?
So to increase the chance of survival if infected: lots of sugar and alcohol?
I'll be staying home from work tomorrow and drinking margaritas all day just to be sure.
Everybody come to my house to get "immunized"! :-D!
I don't think you're understanding how this works.
Becoming infected with this worm does give you the ability to control of the computers that are infected with it.
Think of it like VNC, or Dameware, it lets THEM control YOU, not the other way around.
What the hell are you talking about?
They didn't brick his kindle, they banned him from the kindle store. He can still load anything on his kindle that he wants to! He just can't shop in the kindle store.
The argument that some people seem like they're trying to make here is akin to:
"Borders banned me from their store and now my bookshelf is totally worthless!! I can't put borders books on it anymore!"
What does this have to do with DRM?
The guy didn't lose the books that he had already purchased. What amazon did was the equivalent of Borders books getting angry with you and deciding that you're not allowed to shop their anymore.
A douchey practice, sure, but it really feels like people just want to hate the kindle for some reason.
Oh gawd, I'm defending a chunk of white plastic...i feel like a mac user..
what I meant to say was "DOWN WITH BEZOS!!!"
I don't know about now, but about three years ago this wasn't possible (at least not in Mexico City, where I was).
Our company was building an office in MC, we were just in the "looking for some land" stages, and the "office" consisted of 3 people. We needed to get them some cellphones.
In mexico city, at that time, you couldn't get a phone "over-the-counter", you had to sign up for service, and they would mail you a phone later. It took about a week.
This was very, very confusing to me, and I argued with him about it the whole way to the mall until we went into the store and had the very cute mexican girl tell me the exact same thing.
Thank the gods there isn't a way to automate the task!
(in about 10 lines of perl/bash).
Yup, and I'd love to see how it manages an emergency stop!
Look at the Photo of the thing.
It has wheelie bars on the front and back that prevent it from tipping over on a hard stop.
The surprising thing is that all that "web 2.0" crap? Yeah, not that many people actually like it very much, especially not nerds (from what I've seen).
Craigslist is so popular because it just works there are no stupid buttons or widgets are anything that doesn't work on anything other than IE6 running on windows XP.
This is just my own experience, so bear with me here.
I remember when digg first came out, I was on that site all day, every day reading stories, posting stories, commenting on stories etc. etc. etc.
Then...well, then they changed the layout, added all kinds of gradients and 50 billion buttons that have no discernible purpose. I think I continued trying to use the site before I gave it up and migrated back to fark.
Then...and this one made me really sad, Slashdot jumped on the web 2.0 bandwagon. What was once a clean, obvious, straight-forward website was transformed into a disgusting mess of collapse/expand buttons (wtf, guys...really?), buttons, more buttons, buttons here and buttons freaking everywhere. slashdot.org/~$username/ no longer took me to my comment history, but rather to some mess of a page with no sort of explanation and, you guessed it, more fucking buttons. Also, some sort of a speech bubble with a number in it next to my latest one? What the hell is that?
So I've decreased my usage of slashdot but don't know where to turn to? There is my own website which i tried to make as clean as I could. There is reddit, which is an ungodly clusterfuck of conspiracy theorist whackjobs who think that the government is out to get them and post stories like "How can I hack a satelite?" which gets rocketed on to the front page.
It seems like the only place left, really, is hackernews. Their confusing policy of not having their name be the same as their URL has kept MOST of the retards away, but I fear that they're going to discover bookmarks soon. /rant over.
What we're experience is what I call "designers designing for designers". Its what happens when a designer (or a coder in this case) changes something because it looks really cool to people in-the-know, but fucking hideous to the people actually doing the consumption. Craigslist seems to be immune to this syndrome. I have no idea why, but I suggest that if they ever hire a graphic designer we take a flamethrower to their wacom tablet and CSS manual immediately.