In the UK the average time between moving house is about 5 years. There is no legal requirement to ensure that the old address is updated in the various databases (we're not supposed to know about the secret government ones anyway:-))
So the odds are that 20% of all home addresses in most databases are WRONG.
So what happens when some jobs'worth notices that the address in the database doesn't match the address you used when buying the ticket?
Re:IBM not OSS hero
on
Wired on McBride
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Though we don't know for sure, most people think that IBM has decided to destroy SCO in the courts in order to discourage any others who may think that it's a good business idea to sue IBM in the hope that they'll get bought just to put an end to the irritation.
IBM has a reputation to keep here - to be accused of theft and contract irregularities and not to prove the charges as false would be a very bad business move.
Someone in the FBI/NSA/etc seem to have the belief that it you gather terabytes of low grade "intelligence" that you can shove it through a computer and generate pearls of wisdom. Fortunately we already know that this will not happen. In fact Babbage knew it would not happen...
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], ``Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?'' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of
ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
Sometimes security people appear so clueless that you begin to think that it must be an act.
Then you discover that they are perfectly serious - it's just that they have zero imagination. They cannot imagine a novel threat mechanism and so assume that nobody else could.
I would guess that 110% of new "security" spending in the US is wasted money as it's targetted at old threats.
Shhhh, it's a secret but innovation is a people thing and nothing to do with styles of commerce.
There is still a huge problem to be solved. It costs over $1M an hour to produce quality TV. If there is no way to recover that cost why would anybody invest the money?
Perhaps a compromise is in order. Drastically reduce the copyright period (say to 7 years without exception) and in return put up with a working DRM for material still in copyright. Any material older than 7 years becomes public domain and free to re-distribute.
Of course, this assumes that someone can innovate a real, actual, working, DRM:-)
You may remember Qinetiq from a couple of years ago. They won a government contract to place some Census data online so that it could be accessed by people researching family trees.
The web site opened, crashed and remained unavailable for about a year.
Does anyone think that a company that can't build a simple web site can provide a working id cards system? I certainly don't.
The problem with paying Danegeld is that the Danes keep coming back for more.
Now that SCO know who the easy touch is they'll be back whenever funds are low, "Oh no Mr March the new IP wasn't covered by the previous license. $1M in small bills please. Have you met Big Frank and Slasher Bill?"
If MS believes that blackhats are reverse engineering patches to discover security problems and that their "solution" is to "upgrade" (which may mean replacing hardware as well as software) they have an insurmountable problem.
ANY two OS releases can be compared to detect the changes which can then be reversed engineered. It may be more complex as the security changes are mixed with other changes but blackhats have the time and, it increasingly appears funding, to do the research.
It looks like MS are applying "security through obscurity" as a business policy.
The trouble is DRM may well become common and intrusive but will never become effective as it is attempting to solve the wrong problem.
People just don't assign a value to non-material stuff. You will never convince the target audience (which lets face it is a bunch of kids) that it's wrong to copy a music track for a friend. The reason is obvious, nobody seems to be hurt and nobody is deprived of the orginal.
This goes to the fundemental problem with copyright law today. The law was written for a time where perfect copying machines (aka PCs) did not exist. While copyright law was mostly dealt with by printers and publishers it worked. Now it has to cope with billions of people it's failing.
DRM is a response but it too assumes a perfect, closed world where everybody plays the DRM game. As we have seen with DVD region coding, the hardware suppliers just gave it the minimal attention needed because they just spent 20 years getting rid of having to stock different versions for different markets; they were not going to start all over again just because Hollywood gets it's nickers in a twist.
If such a test becomes required, shortly afterwards there will appear on the market tubes of activated carbon (or similar) that absorb the material the the tester detects.
There is a _reason_ why breath tests must be done before a witness...
You could argue all the levels at which windows boxen are patched counts as "diversity"
It's not such a dumb idea. Many hacks rely on knowing exactly where to plant some nasty code on the stack or elsewhere within the program. If a binary provides the same functionality but with a different code and stack layout it's almost as good as having a different OS.
OTOH, not blindly executing anything that appears in your inbox is probably a better form of protection
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK the average time between moving house is about 5 years. There is no legal requirement to ensure that the old address is updated in the various databases (we're not supposed to know about the secret government ones anyway :-))
So the odds are that 20% of all home addresses in most databases are WRONG.
So what happens when some jobs'worth notices that the address in the database doesn't match the address you used when buying the ticket?
Though we don't know for sure, most people think that IBM has decided to destroy SCO in the courts in order to discourage any others who may think that it's a good business idea to sue IBM in the hope that they'll get bought just to put an end to the irritation.
IBM has a reputation to keep here - to be accused of theft and contract irregularities and not to prove the charges as false would be a very bad business move.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], ``Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
...it's sooo much easier to get work done under a unix-like operating system shell. Not having to fight a GUI is so liberating.
Not having to worry about viruses and worms means
I'm NOT afraid of receiving email from total strangers.
The last people to use a five circle logo were sued by the olympic committee.
It IS Microsofts problem that after infection the system has no defences and so goes on to infect other computers.
You need to seperate priviledges and not trust data from untrusted external sources.
As you won't OWN the hardware it's just spin claiming that it is free.
This is an attempt to return to the old IBM leasing method where you never owned anything but paid IBM huge amounts of money anyway.
Sometimes security people appear so clueless that you begin to think that it must be an act.
Then you discover that they are perfectly serious - it's just that they have zero imagination. They cannot imagine a novel threat mechanism and so assume that nobody else could.
I would guess that 110% of new "security" spending in the US is wasted money as it's targetted at old threats.
But this is essentially about programming style - Lisp has been around a long time and programs using object-like access methods for about as long.
If you know that a particular site is on the whitelist it makes sense to route your spam via that site if you can.
Honeypot, flies, attract are some words that come to mind.
Shhhh, it's a secret but innovation is a people thing and nothing to do with styles of commerce.
:-)
There is still a huge problem to be solved. It costs over $1M an hour to produce quality TV. If there is no way to recover that cost why would anybody invest the money?
Perhaps a compromise is in order. Drastically reduce the copyright period (say to 7 years without exception) and in return put up with a working DRM for material still in copyright. Any material older than 7 years becomes public domain and free to re-distribute.
Of course, this assumes that someone can innovate a real, actual, working, DRM
Sun sparc and intel blades plug into a rack mounted unit that contains two gigabit switches
What is the range of a RPG?
You may remember Qinetiq from a couple of years ago. They won a government contract to place some Census data online so that it could be accessed by people researching family trees.
The web site opened, crashed and remained unavailable for about a year.
Does anyone think that a company that can't build a simple web site can provide a working id cards system? I certainly don't.
Has anybody, anywhere, ever found a pop-up ad both in context and immediately useful?
Where are all the relevant, context sensitive ads we were promised?
For additional credit, did the X10 company go bust or did they learn a valuable lesson?
but finally a chance to test that copy of elisa you've had for years. Just code up a suitable interface and watch the sales droid go into meltdown...
I hope all languages and religions are given equal treatment.
In my native language, Microsoft is both profane and indecent!
Exactly how will they get at all those Indian programmers?
The problem with paying Danegeld is that the Danes keep coming back for more.
Now that SCO know who the easy touch is they'll be back whenever funds are low, "Oh no Mr March the new IP wasn't covered by the previous license. $1M in small bills please. Have you met Big Frank and Slasher Bill?"
If MS believes that blackhats are reverse engineering patches to discover security problems and that their "solution" is to "upgrade" (which may mean replacing hardware as well as software) they have an insurmountable problem.
ANY two OS releases can be compared to detect the changes which can then be reversed engineered. It may be more complex as the security changes are mixed with other changes but blackhats have the time and, it increasingly appears funding, to do the research.
It looks like MS are applying "security through obscurity" as a business policy.
The trouble is DRM may well become common and intrusive but will never become effective as it is attempting to solve the wrong problem.
People just don't assign a value to non-material stuff. You will never convince the target audience (which lets face it is a bunch of kids) that it's wrong to copy a music track for a friend. The reason is obvious, nobody seems to be hurt and nobody is deprived of the orginal.
This goes to the fundemental problem with copyright law today. The law was written for a time where perfect copying machines (aka PCs) did not exist. While copyright law was mostly dealt with by printers and publishers it worked. Now it has to cope with billions of people it's failing.
DRM is a response but it too assumes a perfect, closed world where everybody plays the DRM game. As we have seen with DVD region coding, the hardware suppliers just gave it the minimal attention needed because they just spent 20 years getting rid of having to stock different versions for different markets; they were not going to start all over again just because Hollywood gets it's nickers in a twist.
DRM will be treated in the same manner.
shop.sco.com not accepting connections.
503 Service Unavailable
...invest in the opposite :-)
Seriously, Rob has an interesting history of being on the wrong side of almost every opinion.
What is being detected by the test? Stupidity?
If such a test becomes required, shortly afterwards there will appear on the market tubes of activated carbon (or similar) that absorb the material the the tester detects.
There is a _reason_ why breath tests must be done before a witness...
It's not such a dumb idea. Many hacks rely on knowing exactly where to plant some nasty code on the stack or elsewhere within the program. If a binary provides the same functionality but with a different code and stack layout it's almost as good as having a different OS.
OTOH, not blindly executing anything that appears in your inbox is probably a better form of protection