« Source behind Internet attack on Clinton revealed | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | Foreclosures Force Suburbs to Fight Blight »
To some in Paris, sinister past is back
[Quote:]
In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family’s home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.’
Source behind Internet attack on Clinton revealed
[Quote:]
The mystery behind who produced an elaborate Internet ad slamming Sen. Hillary Clinton and promoting Sen. Barack Obama has been solved.
Phillip de Vellis, a Democrat and Obama supporter, said he made the video “because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process.”
[..]
De Vellis was an employee with Blue State Digital, an Internet company that provides technology to presidential campaigns, including Obama’s. De Vellis said he resigned from the company “so as not to harm them, even by implication.” The company issued a statement Wednesday, saying he was terminated.
“Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise, Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effective immediately.
Lack of Mac malware baffles experts
[Quote:]
Apple‘s Mac OS X remains almost completely free of any sort of malware threat despite several years of availability, a significant market share, and even an entire month dedicated to pointing out its flaws.
And security experts are not exactly sure why. In an article for the McAfee Avert Labs blog, security researcher Marius van Oers pointed out that Mac malware is “pretty much non-existent at the moment”.
The researcher said that out of 236,000 known pieces of malicious software, only seven affect Mac OS X.
“With an estimated OS X market share of about five per cent on desktop systems we would expect to see more malware for OS X,” said van Oers.
The Mac OS X system is not inherently more secure than other operating systems, according to the researcher.
The Unix/BSD code on which OS X is based is fairly well known, and van Oers noted that there are more than 700 pieces of malware targeting various Unix and Linux platforms.
Vulnerabilities in OS X are also plentiful. Apple’s most recent update patched more than 30 security flaws.
But van Oers pointed out that many malware authors simply prefer to target the low-hanging fruit of a poorly maintained Windows system.
The NSA agrees…
How I Became A Music Pirate
[Quote:]
Does DRM drive even honest well-meaning people to piracy? Yes, of course it does.
Reader and music lover Jarrett tried to send the following “detailed, passionate complaint letter” to Rhino, but their only reply was:
450 Server configuration problem
Good for us, because Jerrett decided to send his letter to us. So, without delay, here is “How I Become A Music Pirate” by Jarrett.
|
Judge’s decision leaves RIAA with lose-lose situation in Elektra v. Santangelo
[Quote:]
The case of Elektra v. Santangelo has been one of the more closely followed cases in the RIAA’s crusade against suspected file sharers, due in no small part to the aggressiveness of Patti Santangelo’s defense. Ray Beckerman is reporting that Judge Colleen McMahon has denied the RIAA’s motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, ruling that the case must either proceed to trial or be dismissed with prejudice.
It’s a noteworthy ruling because if the case is dismissed with prejudice, Santangelo would be considered the prevailing party and would likely be entitled to an award of attorneys’ fees, as in Capitol v. Foster. In her ruling, Judge McMahon concluded that “no conceivable interest of justice would be served by permitting this case to be dismissed without prejudice against defendant.” Instead, the defendant should have a shot at vindication via a trial or have the case dismissed with prejudice.
“This case is two years old,” wrote Judge McMahon. “There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not.”
The choice is clear-cut for the RIAA: either proceed with a full-blown jury trial in which they will have to convince a jury that the defendant is guilty of secondary infringement—making the same argument that the judge in Capitol v. Foster didn’t buy—or agree to an order dismissing the action with prejudice.
Downloaden wordt niet strafbaar in hele EU
[Quote:]
Het downloaden van auteursrechtelijk materiaal blijft in de Europese Unie toegestaan. VVD-Europarlementariër Toine Manders diende in december een voorstel in om consumenten die inbreuk maken op iemand auteursrecht te vervolgen voor heling, maar dat plan heeft het bij een stemming dinsdag niet gehaald.
Manders wilde met het voorstel productie van namaakartikelen, zoals valse merkkleding of nep-Rolexen, aanpakken. Maar volgens critici had hij zijn plan zo ruim geformuleerd dat consumenten ook tal van andere situaties strafbaar zouden worden. “Een pot huismerk pindakaas kan al inbreuk maken op een pot Calvé pindakaas. Hier hebben consumenten helemaal geen zicht meer op.”
Het voorstel zou ook het downloaden van auteursrechtelijk beschermd materiaal strafbaar gesteld hebben. Internetters die muziek of films van internet plukken, zouden dan vervolgd kunnen worden. Ook als ze die gekocht hebben in een webwinkel die – vaak zonder medeweten van de klanten – auteursrechten schendt, zoals het Russische AllofMP3.com.
In tegenstelling tot het aanbieden van dergelijke bestanden, is het downloaden ervan onder de huidige wetgeving in Nederland toegestaan.
update: English article that also states downloading will remain legal, but has a lot of other interesting details as well.
Cartoons
Mumbai Traffic Police: Blood Coasters
[Quote:]
The coasters were printed using a special invisible red ink, which spreads only when moistened. The Mumbai Traffic Police placed at tables and bar counters in Mumbai’s prominent bars. When a customer places their moist glass of alcohol on it, the red ink starts spreading and the face starts to bleed.
Alaska and Dell team on $38bn bungle
[Quote:]
A database service call went rather awry when a network specialist accidentally wiped a hard-drive containing Alaska’s $38bn Oil Fund. The multi-billion-dollar boner was performed under the watchful eyes of a Dell storage specialist working on a remote desktop session, a report obtained today by The Register has revealed.
In June, Alaska’s Department of Revenue attempted to fix errors reported in its Dell/EMC storage system’s processors. (The department used a cluster of Dell servers running MS SQL 2005 connected to Dell/EMC storage boxes with approximately 3TB of space.) The technician given the fix assignment — who mercifully is kept anonymous but herein known as Johnny McBunglepants — was advised by the Dell specialist to unbind then bind the two partitions (LUNs) that were corrupted after a first attempt to correct the error failed.
Unfortunately, neither administrator managed to correlate which data partition corresponded to which drive letter on the server and moved some files — notably containing 800,000 PDFs of Alaska’s applicant information for an oil-funded sales account — on to the doomed drive. Both the Dell specialist and McBunglepants missed the error.
McBunglepants’s attempts to restore the database from tape were thwarted when he realized the primary filegroup (MDF) of the 2006 PDF database had not been selected to be backed up. Because a check box had not been placed next to the .MDF file restoration was futile. The department worked over the weekend to restore file groups for 2000-2005 using an older backup MDF file, but was unable to use it for the 2006 file group.
Shades of Rose Mary Woods? An 18 day gap?
[Quote:]
I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.
(Our commenter saw it late on the evening of the dump itself — see the comment date-stamped March 20, 2007 02:19 AM in the research thread)
The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.
Mike Allen spotted it this evening in the Politico.
I’m sure Khalid Sheikh Mohammed already confessed to erasing those 18 days worth of emails.
I can’t speak for other Mac users, but when I log into my account, it’s as a limited user not an administrator. Anything that gets into my system will only have access to my account, and not any other part of the system. That would pretty much be true with an Admin account too, since many things you do as an administrator still requires you to enter the accounts password.
I’m not exactly sure why this “researcher” thinks that Unix/Linux/OS X is as insecure as Windows is, but I don’t believe it.
That said, the main reason is pretty much what the last sentence up there says. Poorly maintained Windows systems are rampant on the net. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to write a Visual Basic script to infect a computer, then start that newly infected computer looking for other open systems to infect.
Vista isn’t going to fix that since users will disable the UAC dialogs pretty much as soon as they start using Vista.
What is really amusing is that if ISP’s simply blocked a few ports for their users, a lot of systems would be better protected. ISP users could still share files between computers in their home, they just wouldn’t be accessible to other systems on the net.
That said, a $50 router would protect every computer in a persons home without any major work at all.
On my Windows boxes, I don’t run anti-virus software, I don’t run firewall software. I simply have a router between my internet connection and my computers. I don’t open attachments and I don’t download files from P2P sites or “warez” sites. I use Firefox as a browser and stay as far away from Internet Explorer as humanly possible.
Of course, with my Mac’s, I don’t have to worry about any of this stuff, and since I use a Mac primarily and only use Windows to play games, I don’t even have to worry about the Windows boxes now.
“What is really amusing is that if ISP’s simply blocked a few ports for their users, a lot of systems would be better protected. ISP users could still share files between computers in their home, they just wouldn’t be accessible to other systems on the net.”
And if I just happen to need those blocked ports for my work, I am busted, right?
I mean, the police just should come, and to prevent burglary, the could just wall up your windows, and confiscate all your keys except one per family member living in your house.
Come on….
Roland, You don’t think those ports could be opened upon request?
Are you saying that you need those ports open to the public? Really? I connect to my companies file network via a VPN. I suspect most people do. If your company has their file servers exposed to the internet that is open to the public, I really hope that your company doesn’t mind snooping eyes.
OK, now that we have all the ridiculous statements out of the way. How sir, do you propose, shoring up the millions of machines out there so that they stop being used as spamming and dDOS zombies? I would love to hear what you have for ideas.
“OK, now that we have all the ridiculous statements out of the way. How sir, do you propose, shoring up the millions of machines out there so that they stop being used as spamming and dDOS zombies? I would love to hear what you have for ideas.”
I love arrogant people. It is fun to see them throw a fit all high and mighty
Chill out mate, it not you throat being cut. Sheesh…
You really, really believe that you can stop them with technical solutions? That’s a naive idea, just look at car and home security systems.
You can not stop this with technology, short of pulling your PC or Mac or whatever off the net.
“I love arrogant people.”
That’s really rich considering your first comment, however…
“You really, really believe that you can stop them with technical solutions?”
Yes, I believe that if you block the file sharing ports on an ISP, you will eliminate the spreading of 99.9% of all the Script-Kiddy viruses out there.
I don’t believe that all viruses will be blocked, but most will. Seriously, why do the file sharing ports need to be open to the internet? Unless you have serious upload speeds, having the file sharing ports open is all but useless. I have played with connecting to a machine that was open to the net with file sharing turned on. It took way to long to get a file list, let alone a file downloaded or uploaded.
There will always be viruses that attack with other ports. However, if we can at least limit the damage, it would be a start in the right direction.
We are not talking about people like you and myself here. We are talking about folks like my parents who have absolutely no idea what a port is let along what file sharing is.
This would also not stop malware/spyware from getting into systems which currently is the real problem these days. There are some malware programs out there that make viruses look like cookies. My parents had something on their system that all but took over the computer to such a degree that they might as well had thrown the thing away. They were not able to do anything with it. As it happened, we did throw the thing away and I got them a Mac Mini and they haven’t seen a nasty thing since.
“That’s really rich considering your first comment, however…”
Me:
“And if I just happen to need those blocked ports for my work, I am busted, right?
I mean, the police just should come, and to prevent burglary, the could just wall up your windows, and confiscate all your keys except one per family member living in your house.
Come on….”
You:
“OK, now that we have all the ridiculous statements out of the way.”
Yes, I can see that I was writing an offensive, rather arrogant post. The “come on” was a lot stronger than your “ridiculous statements” (actually calling me an idiot
)
I do agree.. Sorry… Never will say “come on” in the future.
Now to the important things:
Blocking the ports? Sure.
Letting someone else deciding which of my ports to block?
No.
Or maybe you are right. Let them block the ports.
And decide which software to use to play my music.
And where can I eat my dinner.
Your proposition of letting the providers decide what can I do with my computer is the same as letting the music industry decide how I can play/copy/use my music.
The solution is teaching the people, and not giving control over my computer to a company.
Your proposition is simply goes against all the things this blog fights for.
Actually, I understand your point, it’s just I don’t agree with letting companies decide what can I do with my ports.
“This would also not stop malware/spyware from getting into systems which currently is the real problem these days. ”
So, actually, your solution won’t solve the real problem, only some, and with giving up considerable control over how I use my PC?
My problem really is that letting the ISP provider block 1 port will give a precedent, then they can say that “ok, we will block this and this too” and soon, they will have the legal basis of deciding what you can do with the net connection you pay for and so on.
I still think that teaching my mum what she can do and what she can’t was better than limiting her access to the net – and she has not had any malware/spyware/virus/troyan for the last two years and she is on the net all day long, and uses Windows.
And would be fun if we could just drive it home to the script kiddies that writing viruses is no fun, that would lessen viruses a great deal.
See, you are reading statements into my comments that I am just not making. I “never” called you an idiot. I don’t do that. I also never ever stated that ISP’s should block every port. I stated that ISP’s should be blocking the ports that allow file sharing. Now, I can see where that may have been mistaken for P2P, but I am referring to Windows File Sharing where one Windows computer can connect to another Windows computer to see files and folders as if the remote computer was just another drive on the local computer.
Also, no one is saying that you can’t open those ports if you want them open, but 99% of the population does not need these ports open. Yet they are.
I wish it was as easy as teaching people that doing “this” or “that” is bad and if you do “this” or “that” bad things will happen. I know presidents of technology companies that still open attachments and get worms installed due to it.
Really, I would be really happy if ISP’s would give out “routers” instead of “modems” when they get their users setup on the net. A simple router will stop 99.9% of all the script-kiddy viruses out there now from spreading.
It’s due to these viruses that we get millions and millions of spam messages every day. It’s just too easy for spammers to hire black hat hackers to write viruses for them to turn unsuspecting open Windows systems into zombie SMTP servers for their spamming needs.
It’s never going to happen anyway, so it’s an entirely moot point. It’s just a wish I have and will never see realized.
“See, you are reading statements into my comments that I am just not making. I “never” called you an idiot.”
We should take it off here, but whatever. Calling one’s comment a “ridiculous statement” means that the person writing that comment is ridiculous, and so…
Never mind, I don’t really care about what you call me, just don’t really like “politician like” arguments.
“I never called you a communist!! All I said is that you are a fan of Lenin!”
“I also never ever stated that ISP’s should block every port.”
Never stated that you did. Period. Don’t imply that I did. To quote you “See, you are reading statements into my comments that I am just not making”
My sentence actually looked like “My problem really is that letting the ISP provider block 1 port will give a precedent”
Please note the number 1 (one).
But look into the relevant parts
“but I am referring to Windows File Sharing where one Windows computer can connect to another Windows computer to see files and folders as if the remote computer was just another drive on the local computer.”
Actually, I don’t know many people who use that function. To be honest, I don’t know anyone who uses that function, did not even hear about anyone using it. Actually, I totally forgot such thing exists, so that’s my bad.
And I think people not in the IT don’t really know what that is and what it is good for.
“Also, no one is saying that you can’t open those ports if you want them open,”
If my provider closes them, then I can’t open them. I can send them a letter, beg a few months, and maybe they will open it. Or maybe they won’t. Looking at my provider, they won’t.
“Really, I would be really happy if ISP’s would give out “routers” instead of “modems” when they get their users setup on the net. A simple router will stop 99.9% of all the script-kiddy viruses out there now from spreading.”
Now, that sounds more like a good solution.
“I wish it was as easy as teaching people ”
No, it is not easy. Computers are a relatively new thing, and internet is even newer. The people who use it were not born into it, but those who spend their childhood with the internet will be a different bunch. It has to be built into the “cultural knowledge”, not a learnt thing as math or literature, but more like using a phone or a tv set.
P.S.: I actually don’t mind this conversation, but I think we should take it to a more “private” place, and not clutter up the comments section here.
“Actually, I don’t know many people who use that function. To be honest, I don’t know anyone who uses that function, did not even hear about anyone using it. Actually, I totally forgot such thing exists, so that’s my bad.
And I think people not in the IT don’t really know what that is and what it is good for.”
This has been my point all along! Blocking the ports that allow Windows File Sharing would stop about 90% of all the crap that’s floating around on the internets since the late 90′s. I don’t know if the SPAM Zombie viruses are keyed to those ports or if they get on peoples computers in other ways, but there are certainly a bunch of open systems out there with programs on their computers with names like SEX.EXE and GAY.EXE that are probably script-kiddie viruses that will slow Windows systems down to a crawl as they try to spread themselves to other open systems out there.
I wouldn’t want to “send a request” to an ISP to open a port either. I would prefer if the ISP had a control panel that allowed knowledgeable users the ability to open ports that were closed by default if needed and close ports that the user felt were not necessary. They wouldn’t tell their users that the service existed, but folks like us would know that they did and allow us to customize it to our needs and the needs of our families.
I don’t think that we need to take it private, I’m pretty much done here and I think you know what I was getting at. I am fully aware that I am not the best writer in the world and definitely have problems presenting ideas, but I know that I am civil.
What you took for being called an idiot, I was simply stating that now that the “extreme” examples have been stated, maybe we can close in on what is really needed. Again, not the best at presenting myself via writing.
I’m sorry if my statements sounded personal.
“I would prefer if the ISP had a control panel that allowed knowledgeable users the ability to open ports that were closed by default if needed and close ports that the user felt were not necessary.I would prefer if the ISP had a control panel that allowed knowledgeable users the ability to open ports that were closed by default if needed and close ports that the user felt were not necessary.”
Ok, that was the point I totally misunderstood, and thought you propose that the provider should block them in the center. Yes, a hardware solution seems like a good solution.
“I’m sorry if my statements sounded personal.”
Sorry for misunderstanding.