Ye Clipping Fogs, this is a most unusual car-crash of a thread. Doesn't fit any category of trolling I've ever seen before. You throw a cat on the table, and then you pick it up and throw it down again, and then you repeat until the poor thing is dead and everybody at the table gives in and talks about your wretched dead cat. I'm going to christen this the "Chopped Dead Cat and Ham" Strategy.
Meanwhile, hundreds (thousands?) of innocent Americans _still_ can't access financial services and _still_ get extra attention at the airport. But oh no let's not talk about that.
Anonymous Gamasutra-hater, if this is your ethics then I'm glad you're not in journalism.
>> Whoops forgot to delete illicit material from camera. It's worse than "forgot". Often you can't properly delete data from flash memory.
And if you do find a device with correct support for secure erase in its firmware, what you get at retail won't necessarily be what was reviewed:
"Instead of the original Silicon Motion controller, the new batch of PNY Optima drives had a different, SandForce-based controller known for its less-than-perfect implementation of garbage collection leaving data on the disk for a long time after it’s been deleted." http://articles.forensicfocus.com/2014/09/23/recovering-evidence-from-ssd-drives-in-2014-understanding-trim-garbage-collection-and-exclusions/
About the only cure for this is going to be for someone overseas to purchase one of these tainted goods, and then publically gift it to one of the idiots who drafted this law, and add "oh by the way, STRICT LIABILITY".
What if I uuencode my audio file? Isn't it now text?
What if my website hosts a transcript of my audio only, but some of my readership are visually impaired and using screen readers? Isn't my text now an encoding of audio?
>>> Upgrade RAM, use up an activation.
It's worse than that.
Ever had dodgy RAM?
I once had a batch that returned a different figure for total RAM on every boot, depending on how it coped with POST.
Three activations would be gone in three boots.
The PRS should be careful what it wishes for. If this becomes the standard interpretation of the law, then the only music that can be safely played at any volume will be . . . music released under a Creative Commons or similar licence. And once there's no need to collect performance royalties, we won't need a PRS.
> Re: Ditto - ROFL by Vincent Clement on Aug 29th, 2007 @ 10:06am
>
> Matt, it sounds like you have never used p2p networks.
> If you can download 1gb in under an hour on a p2p network,
> please share with us the software and settings you are using
> - I'm sure many people would be interested.
It won't be what software and settings, it'll be where he is and what he's downloading. 1GB in an hour requires a 2.5Mbps connection or better. Where I am (England) that's available to anyone living reasonably close to an urban telephone exchange. But the most common maximum upload speed here is 448kbps (about 200MB/hour), so it takes 5 seeders (or 5 leechers with more of the download) for every new leecher to achieve that 1GB/hour.
I've never seen such a good seed/leech ratio on pirated material, but I have seen it on Linux distro torrents and other legal downloads.
Your counter-example is invalid. I'd like to see the look on your face when the mounties lock you up and remind you that homicide is illegal in both Canada and NY. In the paper plane example, the message is carried by an object launched by a deliberate human act. Sue the aviator (if you can find him/her). In the billboard example, the offending message is carried across the border by photons. To put a stop to that, you'd have to sue the sun. If you had any capacity for logic, then you might have understood that an action can be both a crime and a non-crime, when its location straddles a jurisdictional boundary. You might also have realised that my being annoying does not allow you to infer that I'm a politician - I might be a lawyer :-) As it happens, I'm a programmer. But enough about me, you need some help for those violent fantasies :-p
Maryland has every right to declare spam as a crime within its jurisdiction - and this should not extend to other internet activities. This analogy might help: Imagine that you're walking in the New York countryside on the border with Canada. Looking north, you see a billboard with a message on it that is legal in Canada, but not in the US. Now that's insensitive, offensive and may be cause for a diplomatic incident, but no crime has been committed. The next day you're out walking again. From the other side of the border, somebody throws a paper plane at you. You never get to see who, because they dash into a Canadian forest after throwing the plane. Unfolding the paper plane, you read the same message that was on the billboard yesterday. The unknown aviator has not committed any crime in Canada, but by sending an illegal message over the border he/she has committed a crime in New York state. Blogs and websites are like the billboard. Spam is like the paper plane. Or at least, that's how it should be.
> Also, who really thinks that the feds > actually have the resources to store > masses of information about millions > of people. We're talking EXABYTES of > information here!!!
Think of the data-gathering in this decade as a dry run. If Moore's Law keeps on going, those Exabytes will become manageable, and sooner not later. Astronomers already handle thousands of gigabytes of telescope data, and they don't have the Feds' budget.
Second all the above posts - ongoing coverage much appreciated. This is one of those stories where even the tiniest new detail changes who is vulnerable to what, and that makes every last bit important to know.
Meanwhile, some good news. Thanks to Mark Russinovich's original post at sysinternals.com, I now know what a filter driver is, how to find them on your PC and how to remove one safely (it wasn't a Sony thing in my case, I think pxhelp20.sys came with WinAmp). My ancient CD-writer drive now burns CD's again.
BTW, if you find pxhelp20.sys on your system, don't just delete the file, your CD drive will probably become unusable in Windows.
If he was running as admin (as so many WinXP users still do), and his firewall was a common one, then the trojan may have recognised it and arranged to give itself access.
It's not a temporary solution, because on Linux and OSX you normally run as a limited user. The malware can't install itself unless the current user has admin rights. But you're right to be tired. The simplest answer is to (upgrade to WinXP if you're still using 9x/ME and) learn how to work with limited user accounts. OTOH, if Big Music's next step is to add privilege escalation exploits to the malware, then yes, it was a temporary solution :-O
Fit a second network in your office, or use wireless, and buy everyone a small quiet mini-ITX PC (they're fast enough for surfing) and a KVM switch. Make it clear that frivolous use of the work systems instead of the ITX will be a sacking offence. For personal mail, get a webmail account and access it from the ITX box. Similarly, placing commercial data on the ITX boxes is a serious offence. Now you can lock down your original business network and apply some aggressive filtering. If anyone wants to check out a filtered site for business purposes, they do it from the ITX box then put in an unblocking request. Requests could be granted automatically for established employees and domains that aren't explicitly blacklisted. Now when a PC goes down to a security hole, 19 times out of 20 it'll be one of the ITX boxes, no data to rescue, and all the IT guys have to do is boot it from a recovery disc. And if you use Linux, you can leave the discs with the employees. If this sounds too expensive, well so long as Moore's Law keeps going it can only get cheaper.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Pennog.
re: Gamasutra is poison
Ye Clipping Fogs, this is a most unusual car-crash of a thread. Doesn't fit any category of trolling I've ever seen before. You throw a cat on the table, and then you pick it up and throw it down again, and then you repeat until the poor thing is dead and everybody at the table gives in and talks about your wretched dead cat. I'm going to christen this the "Chopped Dead Cat and Ham" Strategy.
Meanwhile, hundreds (thousands?) of innocent Americans _still_ can't access financial services and _still_ get extra attention at the airport. But oh no let's not talk about that.
Anonymous Gamasutra-hater, if this is your ethics then I'm glad you're not in journalism.
Re: Money maker
Re: Blame Game
So if every town comes with an unfortunate headline, there will be
nowhere to go to complete the TPP?
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
Arsenal Altercation
Batman Brouhaha
Caracas Fracas
Damascus Derailment
Edinburgh Enmity
Failsworth Flip-Flop
Godalming Grief
The Hague Howler
Inulec Implosion
Karachi Skid
Lanark Calamity
(Maui Meltdown)
Nairobi Nightmare
Owen Goal
Penistone Disaster Zone
Qaasuitsup Titsup
Rangoon Wreck
Scunthorpe Squabble
Tokyo Rift
Utrecht Uproar
Verona Game-Over
Weston Super-Mare
Xiangyang Prang
Yoxall Yips
Zhengzhou Zinger
Any more for any more?
Re: "crude age verification would not be too difficult"
All text is audio. All audio is text.
What if I uuencode my audio file? Isn't it now text?
What if my website hosts a transcript of my audio only, but some of my readership are visually impaired and using screen readers? Isn't my text now an encoding of audio?
Re: Oh wow i can change my GFX...
>>> Upgrade RAM, use up an activation.
It's worse than that.
Ever had dodgy RAM?
I once had a batch that returned a different figure for total RAM on every boot, depending on how it coped with POST.
Three activations would be gone in three boots.
re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: the anti-mike's standard incendiary device
please do not feed the troll.
Please Do Not Feed The Troll.
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!
Thank you!
Merry Christmas everyone!
PRS seeks Darwin award
The PRS should be careful what it wishes for. If this becomes the standard interpretation of the law, then the only music that can be safely played at any volume will be . . . music released under a Creative Commons or similar licence. And once there's no need to collect performance royalties, we won't need a PRS.
re: what software and settings? (#29)
> Re: Ditto - ROFL by Vincent Clement on Aug 29th, 2007 @ 10:06am
>
> Matt, it sounds like you have never used p2p networks.
> If you can download 1gb in under an hour on a p2p network,
> please share with us the software and settings you are using
> - I'm sure many people would be interested.
It won't be what software and settings, it'll be where he is and what he's downloading. 1GB in an hour requires a 2.5Mbps connection or better. Where I am (England) that's available to anyone living reasonably close to an urban telephone exchange. But the most common maximum upload speed here is 448kbps (about 200MB/hour), so it takes 5 seeders (or 5 leechers with more of the download) for every new leecher to achieve that 1GB/hour.
I've never seen such a good seed/leech ratio on pirated material, but I have seen it on Linux distro torrents and other legal downloads.
Re: A simple case of 'push' versus 'pull'
Your counter-example is invalid. I'd like to see the look on your face when the mounties lock you up and remind you that homicide is illegal in both Canada and NY.
In the paper plane example, the message is carried by an object launched by a deliberate human act. Sue the aviator (if you can find him/her).
In the billboard example, the offending message is carried across the border by photons. To put a stop to that, you'd have to sue the sun.
If you had any capacity for logic, then you might have understood that an action can be both a crime and a non-crime, when its location straddles a jurisdictional boundary. You might also have realised that my being annoying does not allow you to infer that I'm a politician - I might be a lawyer :-)
As it happens, I'm a programmer. But enough about me, you need some help for those violent fantasies :-p
A simple case of 'push' versus 'pull'
Maryland has every right to declare spam as a crime within its jurisdiction - and this should not extend to other internet activities. This analogy might help:
Imagine that you're walking in the New York countryside on the border with Canada. Looking north, you see a billboard with a message on it that is legal in Canada, but not in the US. Now that's insensitive, offensive and may be cause for a diplomatic incident, but no crime has been committed.
The next day you're out walking again. From the other side of the border, somebody throws a paper plane at you. You never get to see who, because they dash into a Canadian forest after throwing the plane. Unfolding the paper plane, you read the same message that was on the billboard yesterday. The unknown aviator has not committed any crime in Canada, but by sending an illegal message over the border he/she has committed a crime in New York state.
Blogs and websites are like the billboard. Spam is like the paper plane. Or at least, that's how it should be.
Re: No need to put foil on your head...
> Also, who really thinks that the feds
> actually have the resources to store
> masses of information about millions
> of people. We're talking EXABYTES of
> information here!!!
Think of the data-gathering in this decade as a dry run. If Moore's Law keeps on going, those Exabytes will become manageable, and sooner not later. Astronomers already handle thousands of gigabytes of telescope data, and they don't have the Feds' budget.
One good thing did arise from this mess...
>>> The saga continues
[...]
>>> Yes, Again.
Second all the above posts - ongoing coverage much appreciated. This is one of those stories where even the tiniest new detail changes who is vulnerable to what, and that makes every last bit important to know.
Meanwhile, some good news. Thanks to Mark Russinovich's original post at sysinternals.com, I now know what a filter driver is, how to find them on your PC and how to remove one safely (it wasn't a Sony thing in my case, I think pxhelp20.sys came with WinAmp). My ancient CD-writer drive now burns CD's again.
BTW, if you find pxhelp20.sys on your system, don't just delete the file, your CD drive will probably become unusable in Windows.
OT: Re: What devices?
>>Do you think it could be my hardware devices?
>>Specifically my DVD Burner??
Try disconnecting power and data cables from it, boot up, see if you've still got noise? Can't hurt to try.
Re: he had firewall software ?
If he was running as admin (as so many WinXP users still do), and his firewall was a common one, then the trojan may have recognised it and arranged to give itself access.
Re: Rootkits All Around
It's not a temporary solution, because on Linux and OSX you normally run as a limited user. The malware can't install itself unless the current user has admin rights.
But you're right to be tired. The simplest answer is to (upgrade to WinXP if you're still using 9x/ME and) learn how to work with limited user accounts.
OTOH, if Big Music's next step is to add privilege escalation exploits to the malware, then yes, it was a temporary solution :-O
A second computer for all would be cheaper
Fit a second network in your office, or use wireless, and buy everyone a small quiet mini-ITX PC (they're fast enough for surfing) and a KVM switch.
Make it clear that frivolous use of the work systems instead of the ITX will be a sacking offence. For personal mail, get a webmail account and access it from the ITX box. Similarly, placing commercial data on the ITX boxes is a serious offence.
Now you can lock down your original business network and apply some aggressive filtering.
If anyone wants to check out a filtered site for business purposes, they do it from the ITX box then put in an unblocking request. Requests could be granted automatically for established employees and domains that aren't explicitly blacklisted.
Now when a PC goes down to a security hole, 19 times out of 20 it'll be one of the ITX boxes, no data to rescue, and all the IT guys have to do is boot it from a recovery disc. And if you use Linux, you can leave the discs with the employees.
If this sounds too expensive, well so long as Moore's Law keeps going it can only get cheaper.