How is it "wrong"? How is the fact that itunes 11 won't install on Leopard in any way even the slightest bit different from what Microsoft is doing? Both companies just want to move on and not support the old stuff.
Apple doesn't artifically limit it.
Yes, actually they do. Hell there have been OS X upgrades that they have simply DECIDED not to let run on older Apple hardware.
LeopardAssist is a simple tool to install Leopard on older, unsupported Power Macs.
"It bypasses the 867 MHz processor check in the Leopard installer to allow systems that don't meet the requirements to complete installation. It achieves this by temporarily faking the clock speed in the device tree, changing it to 933MHz, and then launching the Leopard Installer. No modified Leopard DVD's, no hardware hacks or tweaks, just a one-time run application. (Much like XPostFacto)"
It doesn't get to be any more of an artificial limit than that. 900MHz = "Ok" 800MHz = "No you can't install it".
There are a number of other similar OSX upgrade related jerk moves like this over the years.
What could be more artificial than that?
They make it clear they move on and don't support old stuff because that's what they want to do not because it's physically impossible.
Same as microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't want to support directX on XP. They said so. Nobody ever claimed it would be "impossible". Ditto for Internet Explorer. They could support IE10 on XP but they don't want to, and said so. But at least in those cases it would be actual work to get them running on the older system.
Apple is the only one that completely artificially blocks you from running new software on old OSes, or new OSes on older hardware. Safari 5 was artificially exclusive to Tiger. Itunes restrictions have also been pretty artificial. I think my favorite is itunes because you needed the latest itunes to support new iphones, but itunes only supports the latest macs.
My brother got burned by an iphone, forcing him to update itunes, forcing him to update his OSX, forcing him to buy a new computer. And he wasn't running a decrepit old computer either; it was meeting his needs just fine.
It was rather ironic that itunes supported Windows XP PC which came out years before his Mac computer. (Granted it required XPSP2... but XPSP2 is a free upgrade that worked on any computer that ran XP. vs OSX updates which were not free and which do not run on any Mac made in 2002 onwards with nothing more than a (optional) ram upgrade.
So, over a decade now without a single one? Last one was in 1991.
Plus apparently only 3 American's have ever defected, none since 1967, and all to cuba, and none taking planes of real value. (A Cessna, a Piper, and a single engine training prop plane).
I really don't see mass defections as much of a real problem.
Meanwhile, one only has to look at atrociously bad movies like Star Wars Phantom Menace or Independance Day or I, Robot to see the Achilles heel in "drone armies".
Where the whole force is substantially hacked / shut down more or less all at once.
Netflix still has an incredible library of movies-on-disc, and it's pretty inexpensive to use even though it costs a lot more than it used to.
Netflix disc service isn't available in Canada; but even in the states I doubt anyone is rushing out to buy a bluray player so that they can subscribe to netflix. It caters to the people who already have them.
Big name new-releases are sold next to the eggs and milk at the grocery store by my house, with a Red Box out in front that will rent the same titles (eventually) for $1.20. The Dollar General store nearby has movies near the checkout line; I've picked up a few gems there for cheap.
Right. They are down there with candy as impulse buys now; to appeal to people who aren't actually looking to buy them, so they're now cheap at the checkout line. The public doesn't think about it the same way. Nobody is going to buy a blu-ray player so they can play an impulse buy at the checkout line.
And nevermind paid streaming, paid-for digital downloads (I understand that some people actually -like- "buying" movies on iTunes, or with a PS3 or Xbox), or torrents.
Yup, this is where it's at right now. This is where the real growth is. But this would not compel a consumer to buy a blu-ray player, which is what the context is.
Things are different these days. I call it "progress."
And that 'progress' has meant that blu-ray arrived just as people were moving away from physical media in a big way. Sure blu-ray has higher quality and supports 3D, but most consumers just don't care enough to get one.
o you won't be able to prove which factory gave you cancer... because you don't know. How do you know it was any of those factories and not something that would have happened anyway? Why would you expect to win a lawsuit on that basis?
Precisely. You don't. And you won't win the lawsuit. Which means that the factories polluting your land would be able to do so with impunity. That was my entire point.
In the upcoming generation, both Sony and Microsoft are expected to support Blu-ray it.
Meanwhile the steady closure of places to rent or buy blu ray movies (or movies at all) ensures that the public's shift to downloads / steaming happens whether they want to or not.
I used to buy a few blu rays a month, usually previous viewed, at the local rental places. I have binders full of DVDs and blurays. Within 6 months both local rental chains closed down (5 locations between the two of them within a 10 minute drive), the HMV at the mall closed down. Theres one indie rental place left locally, and then theirs walmart and bestbuy and I'm pretty sure their movie sections are shrinking too despite all the competition going belly up.
So its not just me, people just aren't buying movies anymore at anywhere near the rate they used to.
This. I think. For us, we were planning to skip the WiiU for Christmas but we definitely expected to get it "eventually".
Ultimately the kids wanted the new skylanders giants and we thought the WiiU version was head and shoulders above the Wii version, so we picked it up earlier instead of later, but if it hadn't been for that, we'd probably still be waiting.
We picked up the wiiu mario title, which isn't ground breaking, but is quite a lot of fun. And the black model came with an assortment of mini-games which show off the new tablets features and actually are quite a lot of fun. I've got the Batman which is well done and I am eyeing ZombieU, but there is definitely a dearth of really good launch titles.
The day I can take a 4 year old laptop over to my TV, plug it in with an HDMI cable, insert a game DVD, sit on my couch with a blutooth controller, and immediately start playing the latest AAA title (all with the lid closed!), is the day when PC gaming is as good (for the average user) as console gaming.
And that day is pretty much here. I've got a windows 8 htpc (4 year old pc with a Q6600 and 9500GT or something for video). Its attached to via hdmi for sound and video. We have a wireless microsoft XBOX controller for it. And steam.
So there is no lid to bother with, and no DVDs to mess with either. Steams latest push has been towards being able to download, install and a run the game all from the controller on the TV. It works and it's gaining traction.
Windows 8 actually turns out to be a pretty good HTPC OS too. Netflix as a 'metro' app is pretty good, and overall the start screen is pretty friendly and functional on the big screen.
Seems the only place the windows 8 new-ui doesn't make a lot of sense is on the traditional workstation desktop.
In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court
The victims would have to establish that they have been harmed. And we all know how easy it is to prove that the cancer you got was because of the pollution from a particular factory, and not the other factory down the road owned by someone else, or perhaps something else entirely.
Good luck individually suing a city full of factories because collectively you think they caused your cancer.
And that's assuming a remotely fair fight. It won't be. Because collectively they have more money to hire more and better lawyers then you do.
And that's not even considering that you are out of work, sick, and have expensive health bills to cover... what with the cancer and all.
A real world analogy: encryption is like a room within a room.
I -wish- my phone supported multiple "rooms".
I want some of my data encrypted and behind password protection, but not all of it. I don't want to enter a password to make a phone call, send a text message, or pull up google maps.If someone steals my phone I can live with them accessing my contact list, call log and even text messages. I also don't care if they play a game of Tetris or Angry birds or use the calculator,
However I do want my documents, dropbox, pictures, settings, saved passwords, and so forth protected.
And ideally, I'd like to subdivide even further. Some of those things I want behind a simple passphrase, or even just a gesture-password (to keep idle hands out), while another batch of items I might want the whole 60 character passphrase and full encryption.
The convenience of me not having to enter a passcode every time I pick the damned thing up makes it worth it. And being able to let my kids make calls, and play games or calculate the cosin of 25 without me having to log in or give them my password is just part of that convenience.
There doesn't seem to be away to partition it to manage that balance. Either everything is wide open, or I am prompted each time I do anything.
"However, the articles also contained data less suited to a traditional database. For example, each article could have multiple authors, so there were actually more authors than there were articles."
Good god, how would he model invoices with multiple line items? Where, you know, there were actually more line items than invoices?! Mind blown.
Or customers that might belong to zero more demographics? There could be more customers than defined demographics to tag them with... or less... we don't even know and it could change as more of either are added!!
We need a whole new database paradigm!
Or the sample Northwind database that's been shipping with access since the 90's.
But the more I think about it, the more likely it is that this story is completely fictional.
Perhaps. But its an interesting thought experiment even so. And as a teen I knew people who got onto neighbors wifi, cracked WEP, rummaged around on open shares on their computers, or broke into the computers, and even installed remote access software etc.
It does happen.
And while "YOUR NETWORK" matters to you, it probably doesn't to anyone else. Unless they like the same kind of porn you do. So of course you want to protect it, but it's more likely to be collateral damage than a targeted assault.
I agree its not likely a targeted assault or a case of it "mattering" to someone else. Having someone rummage around your network has the same effect as someone breaking into your home... even if they didn't take anything of value. You still feel violated.
Someone looking through your documents, your pictures of your kids, or wife, its just creepy. Maybe you have private photos of your wife. Maybe your medical records, or your financials...
Is the neighbor likely to steal your identity and drain your bank accounts? No, not unless he's really stupid, so I'd agree that's highly improbable.
But anyone who would go to that much effort to break into your wifi where it is not a high level criminal targeted attack is doing it just because he can, for the thrill of breaking in. That's why my teenaged friends did it. Such a person will break into your computer next. Not because they really wants anything from it - although racy/nude pictures/video of the neighbors wife might be a big prize -- but simply for the challenge of proving he can.
Whether you are really "harmed" in the process or not you still feel pretty violated.
The idea that you should "be nice and learn to live it" is simply ridiculous.
Though I once cracked a neighbour's wifi.
I knew a number of people who cracked their neighbours WEP and so forth for the fun of it.
Maybe. But again, it would be really stupid to do that to a neighbour. An online criminal can target anyone, anywhere, and fade away if he's detected. If he's connecting via wifi, you can turn up on his door with a baseball bat 3 minutes later
Unless you assume your neighbor is technical noob, will never even notice you did it. And to be fair, this would be true of pretty much everyone. I'm not even sure *I'd* notice unless it was noticeably disrupting my network.
A 15 year old in an apartment block might well think he's invincible.
Is it really going to be that hard, or very long, before the warrant is issued anyway? You were arrested, for cripes sake.
I'd think it depends a lot on what you were arrested for. You got drunk at a bar and punched someone...why do they need access to your phone for anything other than a fishing expedition for something else to charge you with in addition to assault?
I dunno, its not that bad. Unlimited local voice, unlimited text, caller id, basic voice mail, no silly 'system access fees', and a 1GB of data is now quite reasonable on all the major carriers.
Its not perfect, but its heading the right direction steadily.
Anyone doing really illegal stuff wouldn't leech off a neighbour a hundred yards away as a proxy, he'd spend $5 a month and get an overseas VPN.
Criminal minds aren't really all the bright, that said, why not proxy off your neighbors wifi to the overseas VPN your paying for with your neighbors credit card...
(and if he exists at all, and isn't just a totally made up story to generate slashdot hits, which is more than likely)
Agreed; but you know what, this particular story has generated more comments and technical discussion than most, which is nice to see. If it were a hypothetical scenario instead of a real one it would be better if they were honest about it, but overall I've enjoyed this thread. Although I'm appalled at the poor advice being given -- mac filtering and turning off ssid broadcast vs an attack allegedly this sophisticated is like making sure the backyard gate is closed to secure your home against a SWAT.
he's just some jerk in his basement who thinks it's fun, but not doing anything more illegal online than you (aside from cracking your router, that is)
I tend to mostly agree. And it wouldn't be such a big deal if he was just cracking your router to leech off your internet. The sort of person who does that is the sort of person who, once on your lan will amuse himself by breaking into your computer next. (and given that he's inside the network you might well have poor passwords, open shares, and so on. Rummaging through your documents, pictures, email... slurp copies of anything remotely interesting, grab the notepad file/excel sheet/whatever with your passwords, the vpn credentials for the office, whatever... and then start rummaging around there too.
It might be a simple "I want to leech some free internetz" but odds are if someone is going to that much trouble to get into your network they're going to rummage around ON YOUR NETWORK too with the same level of sophistication.
I'd use 802.1x with EAP-TLS and implement certificates that you can revoke if they're cracked. A lot of work to set up a PKI, but might be worth it.
And what about your ipod touch/ipad/nexus/ tablet? Nintendo DS / 3DS? and Xbox/PS3/Wii/Wii-U?
Everytime I look at adding a more advanced wireless security system, I look at that list of devices and give up. The kids DS's won't even do better than WEP; so that's now on a separate access point entirely that we only turn on when they use their DS.
Re:How long until the PS4 is irrelevant?
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Sony Announces the PS4
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· Score: 5, Informative
If I want to play the latest game for a PC, I have to check the specs, buy a new video card every year.
I'm still using a GTX260 from 2008. It still meets the Recommended specs for games like Skyrim. "Recommended", not "minimum"; and I can play with graphics settings on "high" without issue. Admittedly I ~am~ now starting to look at upgrading it in the near future, but its pushing 5 years now and I could probably squeeze another year or three out of it.
I'll have to upgrade the CPU and RAM every 2 years or so as well.
A core 2 quad (Q6600) from 2007 is still perfectly fine for pretty much everything on the market today.
A decent gaming rig will set me back $1500 and be a money sink.
None of that has been true for 5+ years. A decent gaming rig costs $600. For that you can get a very solid budget oriented system. And you won't have to upgrade it for several years.
At $1500 you are buying premium brand power supplies with modular interconnects, brand name RAM, deluxe motherboards, nice big solid state primary drives, and seriously flirting with the idea of SLI graphics.
No. In this case it is irrelevant. The attacker has already demonstrated relatively sophisticated attacks. We are well past SSID broadcast as being remotely relevant.
He is using tools that will find your network regardless of whether SSID is on or off. There is no point in inconveniencing yourself.
Its the equivalent of trying to hide by putting on dark clothes and a hat when you already know your pursuer is using infrared, passive sonar, and motion sensors to find you.
The idea that more people are alive than have died is an urban myth; if you google it, estimates are that about 100 billion people have lived and died over the last 50k years. So we're outnumbered by dead people by quite a bit.
Well yeah, but what if you run the numbers against a 6000 year old earth or whatever creationists are pegging it at?
Slashdot Mirror
The funny thing is that everyone else manages to produce a modern browser without altering the underlying OS to do so.
Everyone else? Apple's Safari 5.1.7 requires 10.6.8 and Safari 6 requires 10.7.4...
I'm just saying its not "only Microsoft."
Wrong.
How is it "wrong"? How is the fact that itunes 11 won't install on Leopard in any way even the slightest bit different from what Microsoft is doing? Both companies just want to move on and not support the old stuff.
Apple doesn't artifically limit it.
Yes, actually they do. Hell there have been OS X upgrades that they have simply DECIDED not to let run on older Apple hardware.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26562/leopardassist
LeopardAssist is a simple tool to install Leopard on older, unsupported Power Macs.
"It bypasses the 867 MHz processor check in the Leopard installer to allow systems that don't meet the requirements to complete installation. It achieves this by temporarily faking the clock speed in the device tree, changing it to 933MHz, and then launching the Leopard Installer. No modified Leopard DVD's, no hardware hacks or tweaks, just a one-time run application. (Much like XPostFacto)"
It doesn't get to be any more of an artificial limit than that. 900MHz = "Ok" 800MHz = "No you can't install it".
There are a number of other similar OSX upgrade related jerk moves like this over the years.
What could be more artificial than that?
They make it clear they move on and don't support old stuff because that's what they want to do not because it's physically impossible.
Same as microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't want to support directX on XP. They said so. Nobody ever claimed it would be "impossible". Ditto for Internet Explorer. They could support IE10 on XP but they don't want to, and said so. But at least in those cases it would be actual work to get them running on the older system.
Apple is the only one that completely artificially blocks you from running new software on old OSes, or new OSes on older hardware. Safari 5 was artificially exclusive to Tiger. Itunes restrictions have also been pretty artificial. I think my favorite is itunes because you needed the latest itunes to support new iphones, but itunes only supports the latest macs.
My brother got burned by an iphone, forcing him to update itunes, forcing him to update his OSX, forcing him to buy a new computer. And he wasn't running a decrepit old computer either; it was meeting his needs just fine.
It was rather ironic that itunes supported Windows XP PC which came out years before his Mac computer. (Granted it required XPSP2... but XPSP2 is a free upgrade that worked on any computer that ran XP. vs OSX updates which were not free and which do not run on any Mac made in 2002 onwards with nothing more than a (optional) ram upgrade.
Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows.
And OS X.
Here is the list of real pilots who defected with their aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cold_War_pilot_defections
So, over a decade now without a single one? Last one was in 1991.
Plus apparently only 3 American's have ever defected, none since 1967, and all to cuba, and none taking planes of real value. (A Cessna, a Piper, and a single engine training prop plane).
I really don't see mass defections as much of a real problem.
Meanwhile, one only has to look at atrociously bad movies like Star Wars Phantom Menace or Independance Day or I, Robot to see the Achilles heel in "drone armies".
Where the whole force is substantially hacked / shut down more or less all at once.
Netflix still has an incredible library of movies-on-disc, and it's pretty inexpensive to use even though it costs a lot more than it used to.
Netflix disc service isn't available in Canada; but even in the states I doubt anyone is rushing out to buy a bluray player so that they can subscribe to netflix. It caters to the people who already have them.
Big name new-releases are sold next to the eggs and milk at the grocery store by my house, with a Red Box out in front that will rent the same titles (eventually) for $1.20. The Dollar General store nearby has movies near the checkout line; I've picked up a few gems there for cheap.
Right. They are down there with candy as impulse buys now; to appeal to people who aren't actually looking to buy them, so they're now cheap at the checkout line. The public doesn't think about it the same way. Nobody is going to buy a blu-ray player so they can play an impulse buy at the checkout line.
And nevermind paid streaming, paid-for digital downloads (I understand that some people actually -like- "buying" movies on iTunes, or with a PS3 or Xbox), or torrents.
Yup, this is where it's at right now. This is where the real growth is. But this would not compel a consumer to buy a blu-ray player, which is what the context is.
Things are different these days. I call it "progress."
And that 'progress' has meant that blu-ray arrived just as people were moving away from physical media in a big way. Sure blu-ray has higher quality and supports 3D, but most consumers just don't care enough to get one.
As my grandmother once said, "Don't confuse me with facts - I know what the truth is."
I think your Grandmother is setting the school curriculum too. Or at least someone who lives by her advice.
o you won't be able to prove which factory gave you cancer... because you don't know. How do you know it was any of those factories and not something that would have happened anyway? Why would you expect to win a lawsuit on that basis?
Precisely. You don't. And you won't win the lawsuit. Which means that the factories polluting your land would be able to do so with impunity. That was my entire point.
In the upcoming generation, both Sony and Microsoft are expected to support Blu-ray it.
Meanwhile the steady closure of places to rent or buy blu ray movies (or movies at all) ensures that the public's shift to downloads / steaming happens whether they want to or not.
I used to buy a few blu rays a month, usually previous viewed, at the local rental places. I have binders full of DVDs and blurays. Within 6 months both local rental chains closed down (5 locations between the two of them within a 10 minute drive), the HMV at the mall closed down. Theres one indie rental place left locally, and then theirs walmart and bestbuy and I'm pretty sure their movie sections are shrinking too despite all the competition going belly up.
So its not just me, people just aren't buying movies anymore at anywhere near the rate they used to.
This. I think. For us, we were planning to skip the WiiU for Christmas but we definitely expected to get it "eventually".
Ultimately the kids wanted the new skylanders giants and we thought the WiiU version was head and shoulders above the Wii version, so we picked it up earlier instead of later, but if it hadn't been for that, we'd probably still be waiting.
We picked up the wiiu mario title, which isn't ground breaking, but is quite a lot of fun. And the black model came with an assortment of mini-games which show off the new tablets features and actually are quite a lot of fun. I've got the Batman which is well done and I am eyeing ZombieU, but there is definitely a dearth of really good launch titles.
The day I can take a 4 year old laptop over to my TV, plug it in with an HDMI cable, insert a game DVD, sit on my couch with a blutooth controller, and immediately start playing the latest AAA title (all with the lid closed!), is the day when PC gaming is as good (for the average user) as console gaming.
And that day is pretty much here. I've got a windows 8 htpc (4 year old pc with a Q6600 and 9500GT or something for video). Its attached to via hdmi for sound and video. We have a wireless microsoft XBOX controller for it. And steam.
So there is no lid to bother with, and no DVDs to mess with either. Steams latest push has been towards being able to download, install and a run the game all from the controller on the TV. It works and it's gaining traction.
Windows 8 actually turns out to be a pretty good HTPC OS too. Netflix as a 'metro' app is pretty good, and overall the start screen is pretty friendly and functional on the big screen.
Seems the only place the windows 8 new-ui doesn't make a lot of sense is on the traditional workstation desktop.
Yup. My kids and I absolutely love that feature;
I would never have guessed how much we would use that feature. It wasn't a selling point of the WiiU at all for us.
But it gets used pretty almost daily.
In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court
The victims would have to establish that they have been harmed. And we all know how easy it is to prove that the cancer you got was because of the pollution from a particular factory, and not the other factory down the road owned by someone else, or perhaps something else entirely.
Good luck individually suing a city full of factories because collectively you think they caused your cancer.
And that's assuming a remotely fair fight. It won't be. Because collectively they have more money to hire more and better lawyers then you do.
And that's not even considering that you are out of work, sick, and have expensive health bills to cover... what with the cancer and all.
A real world analogy: encryption is like a room within a room.
I -wish- my phone supported multiple "rooms".
I want some of my data encrypted and behind password protection, but not all of it. I don't want to enter a password to make a phone call, send a text message, or pull up google maps.If someone steals my phone I can live with them accessing my contact list, call log and even text messages. I also don't care if they play a game of Tetris or Angry birds or use the calculator,
However I do want my documents, dropbox, pictures, settings, saved passwords, and so forth protected.
And ideally, I'd like to subdivide even further. Some of those things I want behind a simple passphrase, or even just a gesture-password (to keep idle hands out), while another batch of items I might want the whole 60 character passphrase and full encryption.
The convenience of me not having to enter a passcode every time I pick the damned thing up makes it worth it. And being able to let my kids make calls, and play games or calculate the cosin of 25 without me having to log in or give them my password is just part of that convenience.
There doesn't seem to be away to partition it to manage that balance. Either everything is wide open, or I am prompted each time I do anything.
a) The topic is cellular in canada. ting.com is american.
b) google voice is also not easily available in canada last time i checked
c) 12$ a month represents almost no usage; based on this chart: https://ting.com/plans
I'd still average $55+ depending on what the "regulatory" surcharges add up to. (E911 service, taxes and so forth).
"However, the articles also contained data less suited to a traditional database. For example, each article could have multiple authors, so there were actually more authors than there were articles."
Good god, how would he model invoices with multiple line items? Where, you know, there were actually more line items than invoices?! Mind blown.
Or customers that might belong to zero more demographics? There could be more customers than defined demographics to tag them with... or less... we don't even know and it could change as more of either are added!!
We need a whole new database paradigm!
Or the sample Northwind database that's been shipping with access since the 90's.
But the more I think about it, the more likely it is that this story is completely fictional.
Perhaps. But its an interesting thought experiment even so. And as a teen I knew people who got onto neighbors wifi, cracked WEP, rummaged around on open shares on their computers, or broke into the computers, and even installed remote access software etc.
It does happen.
And while "YOUR NETWORK" matters to you, it probably doesn't to anyone else. Unless they like the same kind of porn you do. So of course you want to protect it, but it's more likely to be collateral damage than a targeted assault.
I agree its not likely a targeted assault or a case of it "mattering" to someone else. Having someone rummage around your network has the same effect as someone breaking into your home... even if they didn't take anything of value. You still feel violated.
Someone looking through your documents, your pictures of your kids, or wife, its just creepy. Maybe you have private photos of your wife. Maybe your medical records, or your financials...
Is the neighbor likely to steal your identity and drain your bank accounts? No, not unless he's really stupid, so I'd agree that's highly improbable.
But anyone who would go to that much effort to break into your wifi where it is not a high level criminal targeted attack is doing it just because he can, for the thrill of breaking in. That's why my teenaged friends did it. Such a person will break into your computer next. Not because they really wants anything from it - although racy/nude pictures/video of the neighbors wife might be a big prize -- but simply for the challenge of proving he can.
Whether you are really "harmed" in the process or not you still feel pretty violated.
The idea that you should "be nice and learn to live it" is simply ridiculous.
Though I once cracked a neighbour's wifi.
I knew a number of people who cracked their neighbours WEP and so forth for the fun of it.
Maybe. But again, it would be really stupid to do that to a neighbour. An online criminal can target anyone, anywhere, and fade away if he's detected. If he's connecting via wifi, you can turn up on his door with a baseball bat 3 minutes later
Unless you assume your neighbor is technical noob, will never even notice you did it. And to be fair, this would be true of pretty much everyone. I'm not even sure *I'd* notice unless it was noticeably disrupting my network.
A 15 year old in an apartment block might well think he's invincible.
Is it really going to be that hard, or very long, before the warrant is issued anyway? You were arrested, for cripes sake.
I'd think it depends a lot on what you were arrested for. You got drunk at a bar and punched someone...why do they need access to your phone for anything other than a fishing expedition for something else to charge you with in addition to assault?
I dunno, its not that bad. Unlimited local voice, unlimited text, caller id, basic voice mail, no silly 'system access fees', and a 1GB of data is now quite reasonable on all the major carriers.
Its not perfect, but its heading the right direction steadily.
Anyone doing really illegal stuff wouldn't leech off a neighbour a hundred yards away as a proxy, he'd spend $5 a month and get an overseas VPN.
Criminal minds aren't really all the bright, that said, why not proxy off your neighbors wifi to the overseas VPN your paying for with your neighbors credit card...
(and if he exists at all, and isn't just a totally made up story to generate slashdot hits, which is more than likely)
Agreed; but you know what, this particular story has generated more comments and technical discussion than most, which is nice to see. If it were a hypothetical scenario instead of a real one it would be better if they were honest about it, but overall I've enjoyed this thread. Although I'm appalled at the poor advice being given -- mac filtering and turning off ssid broadcast vs an attack allegedly this sophisticated is like making sure the backyard gate is closed to secure your home against a SWAT.
he's just some jerk in his basement who thinks it's fun, but not doing anything more illegal online than you (aside from cracking your router, that is)
I tend to mostly agree. And it wouldn't be such a big deal if he was just cracking your router to leech off your internet. The sort of person who does that is the sort of person who, once on your lan will amuse himself by breaking into your computer next. (and given that he's inside the network you might well have poor passwords, open shares, and so on. Rummaging through your documents, pictures, email... slurp copies of anything remotely interesting, grab the notepad file/excel sheet/whatever with your passwords, the vpn credentials for the office, whatever... and then start rummaging around there too.
It might be a simple "I want to leech some free internetz" but odds are if someone is going to that much trouble to get into your network they're going to rummage around ON YOUR NETWORK too with the same level of sophistication.
I'd use 802.1x with EAP-TLS and implement certificates that you can revoke if they're cracked. A lot of work to set up a PKI, but might be worth it.
And what about your ipod touch/ipad/nexus/ tablet? Nintendo DS / 3DS? and Xbox/PS3/Wii/Wii-U?
Everytime I look at adding a more advanced wireless security system, I look at that list of devices and give up. The kids DS's won't even do better than WEP; so that's now on a separate access point entirely that we only turn on when they use their DS.
If I want to play the latest game for a PC, I have to check the specs, buy a new video card every year.
I'm still using a GTX260 from 2008. It still meets the Recommended specs for games like Skyrim. "Recommended", not "minimum"; and I can play with graphics settings on "high" without issue. Admittedly I ~am~ now starting to look at upgrading it in the near future, but its pushing 5 years now and I could probably squeeze another year or three out of it.
I'll have to upgrade the CPU and RAM every 2 years or so as well.
A core 2 quad (Q6600) from 2007 is still perfectly fine for pretty much everything on the market today.
A decent gaming rig will set me back $1500 and be a money sink.
None of that has been true for 5+ years. A decent gaming rig costs $600. For that you can get a very solid budget oriented system. And you won't have to upgrade it for several years.
At $1500 you are buying premium brand power supplies with modular interconnects, brand name RAM, deluxe motherboards, nice big solid state primary drives, and seriously flirting with the idea of SLI graphics.
Which would make for a console with mid-level to high-end gaming rig frame rates at resolutions PC gamers expect which we haven't had up till now.
Yeah! Decent framerates at 1080p! Wooo! The future was a few years ago!
Yup. I'd say its either:
a) a hacker in the classic sense that is learning his craft by breaking into the local networks just for the practice and thrills.
b) something illegal. Identity theft, probing your network for something to steal, child porn consumption or distribution using your internet, etc.
No. In this case it is irrelevant. The attacker has already demonstrated relatively sophisticated attacks. We are well past SSID broadcast as being remotely relevant.
He is using tools that will find your network regardless of whether SSID is on or off. There is no point in inconveniencing yourself.
Its the equivalent of trying to hide by putting on dark clothes and a hat when you already know your pursuer is using infrared, passive sonar, and motion sensors to find you.
The idea that more people are alive than have died is an urban myth; if you google it, estimates are that about 100 billion people have lived and died over the last 50k years. So we're outnumbered by dead people by quite a bit.
Well yeah, but what if you run the numbers against a 6000 year old earth or whatever creationists are pegging it at?