As a parent of a three year old girl, I agree with you. However, standing over their shoulder the entire time they use a computer is not going to be very productive.

I wish more parents would understand that you have about 8 years from the time that a kid is born to install a sense of confidence and worth in them that can't be easily (if at all) broken by future peers, predators or come what may. If you manage to do it, your kid will make good choices.

No software is a substitute for a desire in a child to make good, positive self serving choices when they are confronted with the various bumps in growing up.

What a world this police state is becoming, sheesh.

Actually, I think that was recursive.

Hi! Billy Mays here with a completely new and revolutionary product called Internet Astroturfing! Read what thousands of our satisfied clients have to say about IA on popular blogs and forums ....

A future break-up email? Or perhaps, mind mail?

"We are all engineered beings .. I'm sorry that your makeup shows that you have a high risk for heart attacks, .. so you are not for me. The lab made the miistake, its not your fault and don't blame god especially Pfizer or you'll vanish like the rest. But, my kids must be adequate for space careers, so I simply can not date you now, in grade 3. When I cease fertility, we can reconsider!"

I don't see what is creepy about this.

I suspect that you don't have children. If you do have children and feel this way, I admire your mindset.

It is hard to avoid a sense of the "creeps" when you see pictures of your child(ren) used without your knowledge or permission, especially in another country. While in this case, any rational brain would conclude that there is no harm done, it still feels .. well .. creepy.

I have very mixed feelings on security firms releasing exploits to the public just to try and get results. In my (admittedly limited) experience, more bad has come from releasing exploits publicly than good.

I have the same mixed feelings. The problem is frustration stemming from vendor lock-in. If you use a proprietary product to deploy 200 servers, you basically become married to the product. The applications organize things in their own way, switching to something else is a very costly and aggravating ordeal.

If you have discovered a string (note, dozens) of serious vulnerabilities in the software and get no response from the vendor, what do you do? What immediately comes to mind is "stop using the software", however as I noted, that is not so easy.

I would never disclose something until / if the vendor patched it. I would also never accept an end user license agreement that did not clearly specify the responsibilities of the vendor with regards to security patches. If they fail to fix them in a timely manner (two weeks is MORE than timely to at least show some progress), lawyers can work it out.

If you think about it, telling someone "Fix this issue within xx days or I'll disclose it" is borderline blackmail. You're telling someone that if they don't do what you want, when you want it, you'll cause them grief. Changing that to say "If you don't address these, I'll have to involve my lawyer as you are clearly not holding up your end of our contract" is another story.

The lesson learned, use free/open source software or buy from vendors with an excellent track record of addressing these kinds of problems quickly and transparently. If you're going to get married to a product, be sure to have a prenup.

This will probably not see the light of day from /. moderators but:

ITS CRACKERS, NOT HACKERS, JACKASS.

Hackers make your kernels, operating systems and generally improve life for computer users.

Crackers exploit what hackers write.

Its a vicious cycle that took decades to perfect.

My guess is the conversations go like this:

Front-line Manager: We need to

It probably ended there ...

And the US export encryption laws, described at http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/default.htm [doc.gov]. It would also interfere with the Patriot Act warrant and supervision free phone tapping, and whatever the NSA has put in lately to tap the major fiber optic backbones without warrant or any appeal to inappropriate monitoring available, as they've previously done to AT&T.

What part of that did you mistake to read "I can't encrypt server side even if I must make clients use clear text" ?

Why isn't this stuff encrypted?

Because people who manage programmers are (sadly) often not qualified programmers.

Sent via SMS (just now):

"Hello! My name is Ignito Montoya, you killed my father, my new number is ...."

"If you don't have it, don't spend it"

Expand that:

"If you don't have it to burn, don't give it to someone who uploaded a youtube video after you had a few beers"

Expand that:

Never, ever watch youtube after drinking, while depressed or after consuming any other mind altering substance. If you do, give your car keys (and credit cards) to someone sober.

In the case of those who do very stupid things WHILE sober:

There will always be predators, there will always be fools, why is this news beyond the phenomenon being demonstrated on a larger scale?

Here is a great demonstration of a known phenomenon demonstrated on a huge scale:

Everyone reading this, find a way to escape gravity without assistance.

But, well since most cars have a big fat "USE YOUR SEATBELT" message on the sun visors, youtube should have a big fat "DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON THE INTERNET" message.

The problem is, stupid people often have brilliant children who depend on them. So, I'll agree with others who said stop spoon feeding common sense, at least then its agreeable to the majority who (could have) gotten it.

Because the whole point was to see how long the pages would remain undeleted. You can't determine that with a sandbox.

You can, but it would not be QUITE as accurate as it would be out of the sandbox.

You could have some of your dummy sites purge posts based on Akismet scores, you could have some of them purge posts as though a human was seeing the spam, you could have others remove them at random.

The point is, you'd have a very good idea of just how tolerant your network _should_ be, have data to publish a paper, then get real world testing condoned and endorsed by the university.

At that point, you could contact various wiki owners and ask permission. In the forum threads mentioned by TFA, most people would have been very willing to help and participate.

The guys behind it just did not see that they were doing anything that could be considered bad or annoying. That's why CS departments have faculty advisors, and what I've suggested is (likely) what said faculty advisor would have recommended.

Downside of course is fun jail time, but it is for a good purpose.

Taking one in the 'name of science' ends, for me, at the prospect of dropping the soap. I guess I'm just not very dedicated :)