How long will it take before some member of some enforcement organization somewhere in the world sells a copy of this to some other organization?

Huh?

I thought:
  - all this stuff (including the tools source code) was looted from "The Hacking Team" and dumped on the net.
  - A security researcher compiled it and tested it.
  - And this article was about what he got it to do.

So It's already out there, right now! Anybody who snagged a copy and figured out how to compile and run it can now do this.

Have I misunderstood something?

THIS is why it's not a good idea for governments to fund building and perfecting such tools, and to encourage the installation, rather than removal, of backdoors and vulnerabilities. Eventually they leak. Then these advanced capabilities are available to script kiddies, crooks, enemy spies, the tyrannical security forces of even minor regimes, and every jealous spouse and malicious bully with a trace of technical savvy.

I recall thinking "Oh, no" when I saw the first HP presentation on the subject...

Yep.

If you can software define the entire switch (or other network device), you can software design an invisible-to-the-rest-of-it tap component for it. B-b

Didn't we fight a big war in the 1860s to end the ownership of humans by other humans?

Wow. What kind of fucked up bible are you reading that makes you think that Jesus would support abortion?

I'd rather see the practice of "donating" dead baby parts completely banned than argue about whether $100 dollars for a dead baby's liver is just reimbursement for the cost and whether the "research" being performed is worthy. Being pro choice doesn't mean I am going to look the other way.

That's such a broad enough charter as to make any sort of nerd filter meaningless.

Then every free speech case in the country is going to be posted on /.?

but how is this news for nerds?

Can't wait to see this applied to the abortion video TROs.

And what do you think the hydroelectric plant was doing with that power before the data center showed up? Dumping it in the ocean?

Of course not. It was going to homes and industries. Every watt of smug power that Google uses for their datacenters is a watt of hydrocarbon or nuclear generated power next door.

A datacenter with 10,000 servers may be more efficient because of scale than 10,000 homes with one server each. But if you are on grid power, each watt that you use comes from a combination of coal, nuclear and smug sources, in the ratio of your grid and the grids your grid is tied to.

Just because your local power utility company is willing to sell you the fiction that you are exclusively on one source or another doesn't make it so.

lol. There are a *lot* of people that I don't want swimming in the gene pool. (But I'm sure that there are many who don't want relatively stable corporate drones like me in the gene pool either...)

That used to be true but not for modern plants. Here is one close to me and it puts out mostly steam and CO2.

http://www.ouc.com/environment...

Gah. That's *exactly* what I was thinking. Also that he has a very reduced chance of transmitting his DNA to the next generation...

The government could best encourage solar by streamlining regulations,

The biggest thing they could do is change the regulations on their subsidies, tax breaks, and the like to replace the requirement "installed by a licensed contractor" to "installed in conformance with the applicable electrical code, permitted and inspected where applicable". This would allow do-it-yourself installations, where done properly, to receive the same benefits as professional installations.

The price difference between a homeowner-installed and a contractor-installed system is typically larger than the subsidies. So the current programs amount to welfare for the government-approved contractors rather than the homeowners.