To be honest, Google Earth is in no way comparable to a browser. Earth is more of a toy, while a Chrome is, as a browser, a daily tool. I feel pretty safe saying that Chrome will be kept fairly up-to-date across various platforms.
I would tend to agree, the "Definitive Guide" DHTML reference manual is one of my favorite and most used books in my collection for doing just about any client-side web programming. If I could find a book like that for every programming language I would own them all. Although those manuals are not for everyone, since I have turned some people I work with on to that one, they too use it constantly and swear by it just as much as I do.
I'm pretty sure what this program does is, as mentioned, makes a copy of or accesses the running program directly in memory. If the software modifies, in any way, the WoW client - and he is making money off of it, then he is violating copyright laws.
Well at just first glance I would say that that particular area, being on the lower slope of a mountain side, and having signs of frequent water run-off, is subject to frequent change. I am not immediately sure how often Google (DigitalGlobe, TerraMetrics) updates their satellite images, not am I sure how often the NASA's World Wind program updates their (actually I've never looked at the NASA yet, I'll check that out later)... well I'm starting to wander with this post. My point is the area where this image is appears to undergo frequent change. So this could be here in some photos and gone in others. Interesting nonetheless, think I might look into it more actually.
Potentially, yes. It also needs to be able to operate outside of its containing application, such as retrieving and loading external content without the approval of the user.
While you are technically correct, the author of this did not want to provide self-propogating attributes to it. That would take it more out of the realm of Proof-of-Concept and place it as an actual virus or worm. Anyone with any type of macro, scripting, programming skills could add a simple email routine and/or with a bit more skill scan for open network drives and copy itself out, etc...
The fact that it can run script on a client machine once a user opens the document is the entire point of the "virus".
So back to what I was orignally saying, this is, as you said, not a "virus". It is a "Proof-of-Concept Virus" however.
As stated in the article it is an Ecosystem. Ecosystems on any scale you look at it are presumably self-sustaining in and of themselves. Just like anywhere else you can have bacteria, fungus, slime molds, etc at the primary level feeding off disolved minerals, then the next step up would be tiny micro-organisms living off the fungus and slime-molds, next step up - insects, small critters feeding off the micro-organisms, etc... so on and so forth.
Ariel Roth of the Geoscience Research Institute has commented on the fact that estimates of net reef growth rates vary from 0.8 millimetres per year to 80 millimetres per year, whereas actual measurements based on soundings at depth are many times these estimates.3 Roth suggests a number of reasons for this difference.
Formation of the calciferous exoskeleton involves deposition of calcium carbonate by the polyps from calcium ions isolated from seawater. The rate of deposition, while varying greatly between species and environmental conditions, can be as much as 10 g / m2 of polyp / day (0.3 ounce / sq yd / day). This is however hugely dependent on light, with production reduced by 90% at night compared to the middle of the day[6].
You are correct, you do see this in many fields of scientific research. An idea catches on, and just as quickly it fades away. In the 1930's two men invented what is called the "bathysphere", it was eventually made by GE (General Electric), the home appliance company. The two men were Barton and Beebe, they got to a depth of around 1,400 feet.
After that, in 1953, a Swiss explorer, Auguste Piccard, made a record shattering dive to almost 7 miles. This vessel, the Trieste, was sponsored by the U.S. Navy. After that they funding stopped citing it as a waste of money. Man has not since been back to that depth (AFAIK), making it strikingly similar to the space program and the Lunar projects. =/
We really need to get back on this train. Oceanography wasn't really even around until relatively recent times. Even once it started catching on, it quickly died off. To date, one of our biggest contributions to oceanography and marine biology has been the H.M.S. Challenger in the 1870's, it's three year mission to explore strange... well, nevermind you get the picture.
Sure we have made some large steps since then, but nothing that comes close.
The problem with your example is that a tactical nuke has but one purpose. It was created to destroy. A hammer, kitchen knife, even a gun have several purposes.
The gun, granted, is used for one primary reason: to kill. It is what it is used to kill that gives it the ability to be used as a tool for survival: hunting for food, disposing of threatening animals.
There are, no doubt, software applications that are developed for the single purpose of attacking this or that. These are the specific cases in which the particular software package should be evaluated. But should they be made illegal? I don't necessarily think so. Perhaps I would want to use these tools to see how they would work on my personal network. Use them in a way that I can monitor my network for particular signatures that would distinguish an attack as originating from this particular software.
Posessing "questionable" software is akin to posessing any other "questionable" multi-purpose tool. It's only as evil as the person who uses it.
Person 1: Hi, I make hammers, would you like to buy one? You can use them to "hammer" nails into things, really quite nice for building houses and such.
Person 2: Wow, this is nice. I'll take one!
Law: Woah woah woah! Hold on right here... This "hammer" you got here... yeah well that can be used to bash someone in the head, so... it's now illegal, you'll have to come with me now. That's right, hands behind your back.
I've never understood the idea that because a tool can be used to commit a crime, that it inherantly makes the tool evil.
That is correct. Usually Zero-Day's are released by the person who found the hole/bug/exploitable code. At times this due to someone who actually has a hand in the code and knows these weak points lets it slip or designs it him/herself, but that is not a requirement.
Here is an article you can check out: zero-day
Consider that many on-line applications for jobs require cover letters and resumes as WORD attachments. Now, consider the temporary suggested workaround:
As a temporary mitigation method, Symantec is recommending that Microsoft Word document e-mail attachments be blocked at the network perimeter. "Furthermore, extreme caution should be exercised while processing Microsoft Word attachments received as an unexpected e-mail Attachment," company officials said.
This is disruptive and lose-lose, either organizations heed the advice, and now for as long as it takes to fix Microsoft's problem applicants will have their documents blocked, or some of these hackers profuse their new hack and compromise organization's infrastructure.
This suggested work-around should never have been... well, suggested. Unfortunately, until this has been fixed it leaves a network wide open to potential problems. One must weigh the losses and choose the lesser. Infected network potental compromise/loss of data/work/money, or block files for the time being, perhaps quarantine them until proper detection methods are ready and possible loss of a few hours for a few people.
That all depends on the organization as to what would be more acceptable.
Continuing on, I see this all the time, people immediately bash MS. Granted, it is their software, however, it could be (and occasionally is) software created by other companies. It just so happens that MS is a popular choice for the majority of the world.
I know the recommendation is everyone accessing their XP as non-administration users, but how do you enforce that
Any properly admin'ed network can easily do this. At home is a different story, but those that refuse to work with only the minimum required permissions take the risk of exposing themselves to a larger selection of potentially harmfull attacks.
I must say I admire Microsoft's savvy more each day in their EULA -- crafted to absolve Microsoft of any responsibility for bad things happening to users because of Microsoft's software. It must be reassuring to offer a product and not have to assume responsibility. What a unique privelege
I doubt you would happily take responsability if you let your neighbor borrow your lawnmower who then promptly used it to run over his own dog...
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, Google Earth is in no way comparable to a browser. Earth is more of a toy, while a Chrome is, as a browser, a daily tool. I feel pretty safe saying that Chrome will be kept fairly up-to-date across various platforms.
I would tend to agree, the "Definitive Guide" DHTML reference manual is one of my favorite and most used books in my collection for doing just about any client-side web programming. If I could find a book like that for every programming language I would own them all. Although those manuals are not for everyone, since I have turned some people I work with on to that one, they too use it constantly and swear by it just as much as I do.
I'm pretty sure what this program does is, as mentioned, makes a copy of or accesses the running program directly in memory. If the software modifies, in any way, the WoW client - and he is making money off of it, then he is violating copyright laws.
I downloaded the NASA program and checked it out, if you enable NLT Landsat7 (Pseudo Color) mode you can clearly see this face.
Well at just first glance I would say that that particular area, being on the lower slope of a mountain side, and having signs of frequent water run-off, is subject to frequent change. I am not immediately sure how often Google (DigitalGlobe, TerraMetrics) updates their satellite images, not am I sure how often the NASA's World Wind program updates their (actually I've never looked at the NASA yet, I'll check that out later)... well I'm starting to wander with this post. My point is the area where this image is appears to undergo frequent change. So this could be here in some photos and gone in others. Interesting nonetheless, think I might look into it more actually.
Potentially, yes. It also needs to be able to operate outside of its containing application, such as retrieving and loading external content without the approval of the user.
While you are technically correct, the author of this did not want to provide self-propogating attributes to it. That would take it more out of the realm of Proof-of-Concept and place it as an actual virus or worm. Anyone with any type of macro, scripting, programming skills could add a simple email routine and/or with a bit more skill scan for open network drives and copy itself out, etc...
The fact that it can run script on a client machine once a user opens the document is the entire point of the "virus".
So back to what I was orignally saying, this is, as you said, not a "virus". It is a "Proof-of-Concept Virus" however.
As stated in the article it is an Ecosystem. Ecosystems on any scale you look at it are presumably self-sustaining in and of themselves. Just like anywhere else you can have bacteria, fungus, slime molds, etc at the primary level feeding off disolved minerals, then the next step up would be tiny micro-organisms living off the fungus and slime-molds, next step up - insects, small critters feeding off the micro-organisms, etc... so on and so forth.
You are correct, you do see this in many fields of scientific research. An idea catches on, and just as quickly it fades away. In the 1930's two men invented what is called the "bathysphere", it was eventually made by GE (General Electric), the home appliance company. The two men were Barton and Beebe, they got to a depth of around 1,400 feet.
After that, in 1953, a Swiss explorer, Auguste Piccard, made a record shattering dive to almost 7 miles. This vessel, the Trieste, was sponsored by the U.S. Navy. After that they funding stopped citing it as a waste of money. Man has not since been back to that depth (AFAIK), making it strikingly similar to the space program and the Lunar projects. =/
We really need to get back on this train. Oceanography wasn't really even around until relatively recent times. Even once it started catching on, it quickly died off. To date, one of our biggest contributions to oceanography and marine biology has been the H.M.S. Challenger in the 1870's, it's three year mission to explore strange... well, nevermind you get the picture. Sure we have made some large steps since then, but nothing that comes close.
Use double-click to select single words, this speeds up the whole process of executing a single word command. Double-Left-Click, Single-Middle-Click.
The problem with your example is that a tactical nuke has but one purpose. It was created to destroy. A hammer, kitchen knife, even a gun have several purposes.
The gun, granted, is used for one primary reason: to kill. It is what it is used to kill that gives it the ability to be used as a tool for survival: hunting for food, disposing of threatening animals.
There are, no doubt, software applications that are developed for the single purpose of attacking this or that. These are the specific cases in which the particular software package should be evaluated. But should they be made illegal? I don't necessarily think so. Perhaps I would want to use these tools to see how they would work on my personal network. Use them in a way that I can monitor my network for particular signatures that would distinguish an attack as originating from this particular software.
Posessing "questionable" software is akin to posessing any other "questionable" multi-purpose tool. It's only as evil as the person who uses it.
To compare this to another industry:
Person 1: Hi, I make hammers, would you like to buy one? You can use them to "hammer" nails into things, really quite nice for building houses and such.
Person 2: Wow, this is nice. I'll take one!
Law: Woah woah woah! Hold on right here... This "hammer" you got here... yeah well that can be used to bash someone in the head, so... it's now illegal, you'll have to come with me now. That's right, hands behind your back.
I've never understood the idea that because a tool can be used to commit a crime, that it inherantly makes the tool evil.
That is correct. Usually Zero-Day's are released by the person who found the hole/bug/exploitable code. At times this due to someone who actually has a hand in the code and knows these weak points lets it slip or designs it him/herself, but that is not a requirement. Here is an article you can check out: zero-day
This suggested work-around should never have been... well, suggested. Unfortunately, until this has been fixed it leaves a network wide open to potential problems. One must weigh the losses and choose the lesser. Infected network potental compromise/loss of data/work/money, or block files for the time being, perhaps quarantine them until proper detection methods are ready and possible loss of a few hours for a few people.
That all depends on the organization as to what would be more acceptable.
Continuing on, I see this all the time, people immediately bash MS. Granted, it is their software, however, it could be (and occasionally is) software created by other companies. It just so happens that MS is a popular choice for the majority of the world.
Any properly admin'ed network can easily do this. At home is a different story, but those that refuse to work with only the minimum required permissions take the risk of exposing themselves to a larger selection of potentially harmfull attacks.
I doubt you would happily take responsability if you let your neighbor borrow your lawnmower who then promptly used it to run over his own dog...