It depends if you have to retrain staff to use the new systems,

Well it would if staff were going to use them. But to me, public ascess terminals kind of means termminals, for public (as in menmbers of, alias Joe) access.

You both read it wrong, go read it just one more time, very carefully - - it states 138 is possible but certainly does not indicate it is the heaviest possible.

>138 is certainly possible.

A: It appears so, since we have a top-poster

Q: Did AOL just open a gateway to slashdot?

Every medium/large institution has a team somewhere whose mission is to create the Great Amazing Knowledge Sharing XML Driven Generic Information Infrastructure that will enable everyone to find stuff by magic.

Even if it worked technically, everyone is jealous/afraid of their colleagues. In consequence any information they have is hidden and hoarded.

Ugh, I think the last entry didn't get written. Let's hope not, or Slashdot will start having duplicate journal entries besides duplicate stories! lol

Anyway. This is my last post. I'm moving and switching jobs - my new job will have a very tight schedule, but this is necessary for my realization. It will be politics-based, I want to fight for people's rights. Unfortunately this will leave me with practically no time for any online activities. Sorry.

(This means I had to resign from the Okopipi group, but I wasn't really necessary so I hope it's no problem for them)

Farewell, everyone. Happy troll^H^H^H^Hposting! :)

Today I discussed with a low-IQ person about second votations in Mexico.

What we live in Mexico is having three major parties, and other parties with very low percentage of voting. It's hard to believe that a party which just appeared could EVER win the elections for president.

This idea of democracy in Mexico is almost showbiz. You present to the people one or two additional candidates to show the idea that there is a democracy in the country. In reality, these additional candidates will lose their registry and the party will disappear because they didn't get enough votes.

Why is that? Because there's this concept called "useful vote". In other words, there's some guy who you DON'T want to become president. So to prevent him from winning, you vote for the candidate that could win against him - even if it's not the one you'd want to be president.

This useful vote demonstrated its utility when president Vicente Fox won the elections. But after this, the system needs to change. People should be allowed to initiate their own political parties and contend for the presidency. The "useful vote" hinders that, and we end up having the same parties ruling, over and over (PRI,PAN,PRD).

How to get rid of the necessary evil that the Useful Vote is, there needs to be a second votation (only for president and governor). This allows the new parties to be elected FREELY by the voters without resorting to the "Useful Vote" to prevent someone they don't like from winning. Why? Because that will be decided on the second votation.

This low-IQ person told me that more money would be wasted, that we needed a bipartisan system like in the US.

Then it was when the brawl started. I tried to convince him about lobbying, the RIAA, the MPAA, the Patriot Act and how people were powerless precisely because of the bipartisan system in the US.

In the end, he answered none of my objections - he tried to oversimplify things saying that in Mexico and in the US politics were the same. I said "lobbying is an aberration in the US, the big companies give money to the parties" and he kept saying "and in here they don't do that?"

OF COURSE THEY DON'T, YOU IDIOT. They can try to promote and coerce the votes, but as long as they don't pay the candidates directly (through lobbying), the candidates can't be bribed to obey them. And THIS is the difference between the US and Mexico. In Mexico, the senators and congressmen do what they want - but in the US, the senators and congressmen do what the COMPANIES want.

Of course, someone who hasn't been in touch with politics around the world keeps thinking that everything everywhere is like in his fishbowl. Their criteria is incomplete, flawed and distorted.

What to do with people like him? It's true what they say, people have the government they deserve. It's in times like this where I think could simply try to gather power and get rich at the expense of the voters, why? Let the idiots choose their ruler, but let ME stay away from it and be safe from the political problems. As long as I have money, I'm safe. Live and let die.

But is this the right thing to do? Of course not. This is the irony. You can't force fools to take the right choice - but at the same time, when the majority of people are poor and uneducated (and easy to manipulate), you end up being ruled by them. They choose your president, so you're screwed.

So, what to do then? Education. Education is the ONLY way that people can learn about the mistakes of other administrations and countries, and to avoid them.

While couch potatoes in the US are worried about terrorists and arabs trying to take over their pitiful country, educated people are worried about really meaningful things, like the patriot act, the bipartisan system, and thinking of a way to solve this.

TRUE DEMOCRACY CANNOT BE ACHIEVED WITHOUT EDUCATION. If you want to promote democracy in your country, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WITH PROPAGANA. EDUCATE!!

You have knowledge. Knowledge is power. You can educate your family. Do it!

It happened when I was tired and read two adyacent headlines in digg stories and something completely different came out.

Here are the originals:

Toshiba Wants Unified Next-Gen DVD Format
Global Opium Cultivation In Decline
Sun says open-source Java possible in 'months'
Hubble Finds Possible Planets Around Nearby Star
Senator says Net Neutrality law would make the Internet less free

And here are the undersleeping-altered headlines:

Toshiba Wants Unified Opium Cultivation
Sun says DVD Cultivation In Decline
Hubble Finds open-source Java
...and this is my favorite:
Senator Finds Possible Planets Around Nearby Star

Yeah, I'm tired. But it may amuse one of you guys.

With all this questioning on privacy, people still wonder why the government should NOT do arbitrary searches and spying on people's phone conversations and account.

"It's for National Security", they say. "We need protection from terrorists". So, the question is: Why should the government be restricted? I present my argument with a "worst case", which I call "the terrorist president".

The Terrorist President

Let's assume a close friend of Osama Bin Laden (or another famous terrorist) turns out to be elected by the people as president of the United States (without disclosing of course, his relationships with the terrorists themselves).

Using National Security as an excuse, the terrorist president begins wiretapping phone conversations, internet chats, and money transfers of bank accounts in the country. Using the "war on terror" as an excuse, use of encryption is forbidden and classified as treason.

Little by little, the terrorist president limits freedom of speech and uses the music and film industry associations of america (MAFIAA) to limit free distribution of content. Only content approved by the government will be able to get distributed.

Under the excuse of a terrorist threat, the terrorist president imposes new taxes on people, and begins seizing properties arbitrarily to fund his "war on terror".

The press is punished whenever they criticize the terrorist president, who accuses them of conspiracy and takes control of the press. When people begin to notice that their freedoms are limited, they want to move out of the country, but the terrorist president uses the wiretapping to arrest them and charging them for treason to the country. (Something like what happened on Eastern Germany before the Wall was brought down)

All in the name of "National Security".

Eventually, his relationships with terrorist groups are leaked. Everyone who posesses this information is charged with terrorism, and executed. Because the media is controlled by DRM restrictions, people can't distribute this information freely without being charged for piracy either.

Then, under this information control regime, the president manipulates the political parties and supresses candidates which are not "in line" with his thoughts. And how does he know? Because the NSA allowed him to. They have the whole country wiretapped.

Eventually, new elections come. The official candidates all support the terrorist president, and the congress approves unlimited re-election, and unlimited control of the government by the president.

The new Reign of Terror has finally been established. All in the name of "National Security".

--

So, why must the people's privacy be protected? Simple. To protect the people from a possible "terrorist government". The current government MUST FOLLOW THE LAW, and protect the FREEDOM of the people. Because if they don't, eventually a "terrorist president" could seize power. The current government must protect the people from the government itself. The government is NOT the Country. The people ARE the country. The government should PROTECT the people, not TERRORIZE THEM.

It's so ironic how the US declares war on "dictatorship states" (Iraq, Cuba, Venezuela), but paves the way so the US can become a dictatorship itself.

So, who will protect the United States from future terrorist governments? The actual government must. With legislation to limit the powers of the government.

Yes, we're screwed.

I submitted an ask slashdot story on choosing a networking model for Okopipi. This was the first week of June, when we were deciding what P2P network to use.

Well, since I got no response, in 2 days i began studying a lot about networking models, and downloaded several megs of networking papers. Less than a week later, the model was decided.

It's been two weeks since then, and the "ask slashdot" submission is still pending. :-/

I can imagine the embarrassment if the story gets posted after Okopipi is released. X-D

Slashdot, if you're reading this, cancel my previous submission. Thank you.

I've been following the global warming discussions on Digg, and I noticed a very interesting trend.

People who claimed that global warming wasn't caused by humans, or that it simply didn't exist, got a lot of possitive diggs. People who claimed that global warming WAS caused by humans, got their comments moderated down to the point of getting a negative score.

Originally, one could think: Ah, many people in digg agree that global warming is NOT caused by humans, so they're modding down their opposers.

But here's the trick: *ANYONE* can become a digg user, just by signing up. So what happens when the almighty buck is involved?

Picture this. Oil companies have astrotufing campaigns (like the "friends of science" website) to throw bogus claims on Global Warming. Obviously they have the money to do that.

So what happens when *ANYONE* can mod down a comment that seems uncomfortable? Since my involvement in the Okopipi anti-spam project I've studied the phenomenon of infiltartion in peer to peer networks, and how some rogue nodes can try to insert chaos into the network. This can happen, and there are many papers in P2P networking dealing with sybil attacks and eclipse attacks.

Picture this theory, it's up to you to believe it or not.
Oil companies hire people to (or tell their employees to) mod down "global warming is caused by humans" comments on digg. They have the means, and the motive. So why don't they? We've already seen astroturfers invade slashdot with their comments.

So, are the oil companies astroturfing digg? We'll never know FOR SURE, because digg is anonymous. But it seems too much of a coincidence, don't you think? My theory is that they ARE doing it.

Let me explain similar events that happen on TV. In my country, there's a news program that has a phone-call enabled poll. Normally the polls look balanced, but when the target of that poll is a political candidate or party, suddenly the number of calls (also shown on the poll) goes up 10 times, and as if magic, the left-wing candidate always gets the preference or the best comment.

Coincidence?

In other news, the TV show is vulnerable to UNMODERATED VOTING which skews the statistics. Since the calls are not sent by the TV company at random, but received, the left-wing party (which is in power right now) can as well tell their employees to call the TV show and vote in favor of the party in power. Again, astroturfing.

In the case of digg, what we're dealing with is UNMODERATED MODERATION. Comments can be modded down, but where are the metamods? There is no metamoderation in digg, and moderation is INSTANT.

And that's another reason I like slashdot: To moderate, you need to have metamod experience. And metamods are only given to people with high karma. It's a self-regulated system that depends on the long-term participation of members.

In contrast, the digg moderation system is vulnerable to coordinated attacks by astroturfers.

Conclusion: Even if we aren't sure if oil companies ARE "astromodding" digg, what we are sure of, is that THEY CAN. Therefore, the digg moderation system needs to change.

OK this is it. Microsoft, you've finally done it. I've had to cope with GIFs, animated GIFs, and then flash ads. But now you're forcing me to watch your VIDEO and AUDIO ads?

This is not a freaking TV! You're invading my workspace, my boss' office workspace, and my computer's CPU cycles. I'm going to find out how to turn this off and share it in the journal. Who do you think you are, anyway? Gator?

Climbing the stairs at work I spy what looks like a VERY large spider, stranded between steps. I prod it with a pen and it proves to be very quick and agile, capable of leaping several inches. I empty a water bottle and catch it in the bottle. It's clearly pissed and adopts a threatening stance safely behind a few mills of plastic. It looks like it has 10 legs and has a pair of beaks rather than the usual aparatus. I quick search on google for 'spider 10 legs' brings up some promising results, family solifugid - commonly called Sun Spiders/Wind Scorpions. A little reading yields the information this is no true spider, but is an arachnid, somewhere between spiders and scorpions. After a bit more searching I find this site which is a pretty good read. I work in an area which is near-desert so this shouldn't be too surprising, but it's a new creature to me. About 20 years go, living in Michigan, which is frozen about half the year, I found something else which was quite a surprise, climing the wall of the bath, a pseudoscorpion. Tiny, but unmistakeable pincers. Neat stuff.

Is the internet safe anymore?
by Spy der Mann

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are entirely and exclusively mine. No other party or group is responsible for this publication.

I was wondering about the attack on Blue Security and SixApart by the infamous hacker "PharmaMaster". Apparently there were DNS servers involved in the attack. But how?

DDOS ATTACKS

I searched in the internet, and found an advisory with the following description:

"Small DNS queries are sent from the attacker to each of the DNS servers. These queries contain the spoofed IP address of the target. The DNS servers respond to the small query with a large response. These responses are routed to the target, causing link congestion and possible denial of Internet connectivity.

Solution: Since this attack relies upon spoofed source IP addresses, source address checking by ISPs originating traffic is the only means to entirely defeat this form of denial of service attack."

DEATH BY NEGLIGENCE

It should be obvious by now that DNS and ISP administrators have not moved a finger to prevent this, and instead they blamed Blue Security for "redirecting" the attack. Fine, blame the victim.

INVASION OF THE PC SNATCHERS

Meanwhile, botnets around the world are spreading like wildfire, due to unpatched Windows machines. Why is this? Because patching your Windows takes several megabytes of download, while turning a PC into a soldier of a zombie army controlled by hackers, takes only a few kilobytes of download. And there are still many PC's using Windows 98, or running behind a dial-up internet.

What's easier? To ask their owners to download the patches and leave their computers (AND phone lines) connected for 48 hours, or to just infect them with a little virus?

ANTITERROR VACCINES - NOT FOR FREE.

What is worse is that many of the infected machines are running pirated XP, using the "devils-own" serial number. They CANNOT be patched. And pirated machines CANNOT get the latest updates because of Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage".

I'd like to propose the following analogy. Let's suppose that there is a biotechnological weapon - a virus - that turns all the infected people into murderers. What will you do (after purchasing the vaccine for $200), if you find out that your neighbor doesn't have ANY money and he will most likely be infected and turned into a murderer?

I had asked Microsoft's Security VP, Mike Nash, about the problem of infected pirated machines. And what did he say?

"It's hard for me to feel too bad for the person who you know who doesn't have a licensed copy of Windows and is infected. They are using stolen software."

The problem with this shortsight of Microsoft, is that they DON'T REALIZE that the problem is NOT whether those machines are running "stolen" software. They're running DANGEROUS software. Microsoft should either update them BY FORCE, DELETE them or CUT OFF their internet access with a worm or "forced update" or something.

But no, instead they prefer to sell protection (Windows Vista) - to those who can afford it.

"Hey, that's a nice computer you got there - it would be a shame if ... something ... happened to it."

"DOING OUR BEST" IS NOT ENOUGH.

Currently there are security groups struggling to disable the botnets, one by one, by cutting their command and control. But the infected machines aren't cleansed, and their owners aren't notified of this. They're still infected, waiting for a new head to appear and take control over them.

WHAT, ME WORRY?

So why doesn't anybody notify them? Oh, because finding the owner of a machine requires a subpoena. And the police doesn't have the obligation to do something trivial such as "cleaning viruses".

And what about ISPs? "Oh, it's our clients' computers, we're not allowed to do anything". Oh really? Are you telling me that you can spy on them AND get paid for it, to "find terrorist activity", but you can't notify your clients that they're being infected with a botnet? It's VERY easy to find suspucious activity - SPAM comes out of the client, internet packets with spoofed IP's, and frequent connections to irc. Why don't you detect them? Oh... it costs money, right? Because I haven't heard ISPs talk about internet security, instead they keep babbling about the "two tiered internet", without even worrying for freedom of speech.

CYBERTERRORISM

The whole economy today depends on the Internet, just as it depended on electricity before. Any hacker could dedicate himself to shut down any area of the internet if he wanted to. Just connect to the bots, and voila. I wonder how this is any different from the old movies in the 50 with the mad scientists working on secret armies of robots to take over the world. As I see it right now, SPAM is the least of our problems.

ROME HAS FALLEN

Currently if you want to work on a project that could at least annoy spammers or hackers, if not cutting their funds completely, you cannot feel safe anymore - they might retaliate. Look at what happened to Blue Security and their related websites.

So who do you fear now? The authorities, or the hackers? Where's the freaking police when we need them?

Oh, right - they're going after the movie pirates, they're the real criminals!

The internet, the supposedly invincible network that could survive a nuclear war, has fallen prey of organized crime syndicates and vendors of cheap v1@gra.

GOT ROOT?

And right now, your own computer, as you read this, could be recording what you type, what websites you visit, what's your credit card and social security number. Don't count on antiviruses - today's viruses, worms and botnets are using state-of-the-art technology - you need a rootkit detector to find them, and if you're infected, the only safe solution is to DELETE EVERYTHING and reinstall Windows.

WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL

What PharmaMaster has done is to actually show us the Truth: That hackers have more power than the US government, and that nobody is safe anymore.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

We recently received an e-mail supposedly from the legal owners of the trademark "Blue Frog", which by the way, were NOT related to Blue Security.

The mail states that the term "Blue frog" (or any colored frog for that matter) should not be used anymore describing software.

Additionally, according to the e-mail, the now extinct Blue Security is going to be sued for damages.

Even if the mail turns out to be fake (you never know what spammers are capable of), we made a shocking discovery: The name "Black Frog" is already used by another company (which fortunately hasn't sued us yet), so we have taken a decision.

Okopipi is from now on the official name of both the project and the software.

I've already cancelled the "blackfrog" project at Sourceforge. We will issue an official press release soon.

Wow, it's been barely a week and we already got 3 people from different tech-related news agencies asking us for interviews.

Stay tuned for the latest news on the Okopipi / Black Frog anti-spam project. Let's just hope Pharma doesn't screw our website, too :(

OK, I just got myself GNUPG and now I got a Private/Public key pair. My question is, why does slashdot have a slot for your public key, and how the heck is it used?