Really, if they have a way to safely remove the infection, they should go right ahead. Preventing harm from someone without risking any other harm should not require informed consent.
If their cure involves a potential risk to the infected computer, then it's more questionable. But allowing the bot to continue to thrive is to convenience an irresponsible user whose computer got compromised at the cost of a responsible user whose secure computer is still vulnerable to DoS attacks...
"By clicking on this email attachment, you agree to become a member of the Storm botnet indefinitely, and agree to never remove this bot. You further agree to remove all virus protection and open all ports on your computer.
Oh, and you have agreed to get a better internet connection. Seriously, how am I supposed to spam people over dial-up?
PGP has no influence over what is attached to your keyboard or your monitor.
So unless you use a real-time disk encryption and an invisible editor where you can tap in your message in morse code using the Space bar (hey Neal!) it's not really that secure.
I guess it's much more efficient this way - Randall Munroe explained that a normal reflection sail only harvests a fraction of the photon's energy. The solar panel does not reflect the photon perfectly (unlike a mirror surface), so it picks up more of the photon's energy.
PS: The mouse and screen can be intercepted, too. Sure, it's extremely inconvenient, but if you are accessing company secrets worth millions (or missile launch codes), you are dealing with people who have a lot to gain.
I presume you are using your own browser on a USB key, and encrypted https, too?
Because otherwise it would be trivial to intercept the form you submit via a misbehaving browser plugin (Firefox + "iScam Form Data interceptor") or a packet sniffer.
"Yes/no"? Sorry, but ur rong. Or you failed at reading.
You are welcome to try writing a parser that replaces "cousin" with "daughter" in this particular sentence, but if you're a spammer, it's not really worth your time.
Trivia questions. Most internet communities are dedicated to some kind of specific topic. Even someone who is unfamiliar with the trivia can use Google, which the machine cannot.
(Also, said trivia questions will be applicable only to one specific site, so it would never pay for the spammers to build a database of them.)
Dear Linus, From all of us here at the Fedora Project we just wanted you to know we're very pleased you're testing Fedora 9 and filing bugs. We also wanted to let you know that we're never gonna give up fixing these bugs.We know when we do our best we're never gonna let our users down. Sometimes it may feel like it but we're never gonna give you the run around on these bugs, either. We don't want to desert you nor you to desert us.
As frustrating as they are we hope we're never gonna make you cry.
I mean, sure, I get a few per week in my Inbox, but that's hardly the problem it used to be with my former accounts. I've stopped using those and forward them to the Gmail account now.
*Someone* (either those who are against or those who are for Wikipedia here, or both) does not understand the difference between research and citation. Wikipedia is an excellent research tool, and the professors are wrong to say otherwise - but you cannot cite it as a source, and a student would be foolish to do so.
You can research a subject by entering it into Google, but you wouldn't cite the Google results page in a paper. Instead, you read what the results say, find out where they got their information from, and trace the facts back to an authority you can safely cite.
With Wikipedia, these authorities and the facts are handily edited, summarized and cited neatly at the end, but it works the same way as the Google search.
I think I can see the origin of this confusion. When I was in high school, the teachers were paranoid about us plagiarizing stuff from somewhere, and therefore were leaning on us to mention every book we'd so much as seen the cover of during research. This was because the books were all primary sources.
Once you research on the web, you're dealing with secondary sources (or further than that), and these should *not* be cited as they are not authoritative on their own.
In fairness, Wikipedia tends to cover some topics in more depth, as they can afford more space than a paper encyclopedia. So it is easy to make the mistake of citing this in-depth article even though it is still only an "executive summary" of the topic.
---
Wikipedia itself has a "No Original Research" policy, of course, so if the article is good it should provide a reference for every fact you might want to cite.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you allowed to go after them?
Really, if they have a way to safely remove the infection, they should go right ahead. Preventing harm from someone without risking any other harm should not require informed consent.
If their cure involves a potential risk to the infected computer, then it's more questionable. But allowing the bot to continue to thrive is to convenience an irresponsible user whose computer got compromised at the cost of a responsible user whose secure computer is still vulnerable to DoS attacks...
Does the bot binary come with a EULA too?
"By clicking on this email attachment, you agree to become a member of the Storm botnet indefinitely, and agree to never remove this bot. You further agree to remove all virus protection and open all ports on your computer.
Oh, and you have agreed to get a better internet connection. Seriously, how am I supposed to spam people over dial-up?
[Agree] [Own me] [Bend over]"
The country is named Wales.
PGP has no influence over what is attached to your keyboard or your monitor.
So unless you use a real-time disk encryption and an invisible editor where you can tap in your message in morse code using the Space bar (hey Neal!) it's not really that secure.
Dammit, don't tell them about encryption! Now they're going to subpoena our keys the next time they sue us for music piracy!
Microsoft patented a method of avoiding system reboots?
:P
WHY ARE THEY NOT USING IT?
I guess it's much more efficient this way - Randall Munroe explained that a normal reflection sail only harvests a fraction of the photon's energy. The solar panel does not reflect the photon perfectly (unlike a mirror surface), so it picks up more of the photon's energy.
PS: The mouse and screen can be intercepted, too. Sure, it's extremely inconvenient, but if you are accessing company secrets worth millions (or missile launch codes), you are dealing with people who have a lot to gain.
I presume you are using your own browser on a USB key, and encrypted https, too?
Because otherwise it would be trivial to intercept the form you submit via a misbehaving browser plugin (Firefox + "iScam Form Data interceptor") or a packet sniffer.
"Yes/no"? Sorry, but ur rong. Or you failed at reading.
You are welcome to try writing a parser that replaces "cousin" with "daughter" in this particular sentence, but if you're a spammer, it's not really worth your time.
(Mystcommunity forum captcha)
Trivia questions. Most internet communities are dedicated to some kind of specific topic. Even someone who is unfamiliar with the trivia can use Google, which the machine cannot.
(Also, said trivia questions will be applicable only to one specific site, so it would never pay for the spammers to build a database of them.)
The only thing that we know for sure is that that music won't play anymore. :P
No you're not. =P
Sure, if by "job" he means "temper" or "sanity".
Heh. But really, the major online news sites are too big to be brought down by normal visitors.
What about the millions and millions of search spam comments on blogs that are only kept in check by nofollow?
Or just deleting those databases in order to reduce the set of information it has to index. Google "Google Purge onion"! :P
What is this "spam"? :P
I mean, sure, I get a few per week in my Inbox, but that's hardly the problem it used to be with my former accounts. I've stopped using those and forward them to the Gmail account now.
And a few relevant URLs from helpful sponsors?
Now you just need to hire a few sweatshop workers to get past those pesky captchas...
Exactly. Next up: A "Don't put me into a registry" registry.
*Someone* (either those who are against or those who are for Wikipedia here, or both) does not understand the difference between research and citation. Wikipedia is an excellent research tool, and the professors are wrong to say otherwise - but you cannot cite it as a source, and a student would be foolish to do so.
You can research a subject by entering it into Google, but you wouldn't cite the Google results page in a paper. Instead, you read what the results say, find out where they got their information from, and trace the facts back to an authority you can safely cite.
With Wikipedia, these authorities and the facts are handily edited, summarized and cited neatly at the end, but it works the same way as the Google search.
I think I can see the origin of this confusion. When I was in high school, the teachers were paranoid about us plagiarizing stuff from somewhere, and therefore were leaning on us to mention every book we'd so much as seen the cover of during research. This was because the books were all primary sources.
Once you research on the web, you're dealing with secondary sources (or further than that), and these should *not* be cited as they are not authoritative on their own.
In fairness, Wikipedia tends to cover some topics in more depth, as they can afford more space than a paper encyclopedia. So it is easy to make the mistake of citing this in-depth article even though it is still only an "executive summary" of the topic.
---
Wikipedia itself has a "No Original Research" policy, of course, so if the article is good it should provide a reference for every fact you might want to cite.
If the satellite + launch - salvage flyby costs more than 50 million (which is not unrealistic), they might go for it.
Can they really contractually obligate themselves to drop and not refile a lawsuit, though?