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Comment Probably exploited in the wild already (Score 2, Interesting) 600

by What the Frag (#30281106) Attached to: Ethics of Releasing Non-Malicious Linux Malware?

My linux systems get a lot of attacks every day. SSH, FTP and HTTP attacks are the most common.

On HTTP attacks most ones try to get a page /phpmyadmin or some other (most of the time php-) application which seem to have severe security issues. There are many insecure web applications out there that are not patched or pretty much broken by design.

I bet the security hole you're exploiting is already used in the wild. If that's so, who cares if another kid takes your code and turns it into real malware?
I personally believe it's more benefit to release your code as "penetration test" and help some admins to check their servers of potential security holes than to do nothing in fear of a few kids.

Comment Re:Why now? (Score 1) 327

by What the Frag (#29376083) Attached to: Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants

What they are trying to do is very clever. The main target audience are large householders which have old, gas powered heaters. The replacement cost is relatively low.

The problem which the power suppliers see in the future: A rising amount of electricity is generated by wind and solar power. Some of Germany's nuclear power plants are getting old and may not get an approval to run further / or to build a new one in the future.

So, with rising amount of "natural" energy, there must be a solution to compensate if those solar/wind power plants are not generating power. Having lots of those small remote-controlled power plants on the network can easily and quickly compensate this.
Censorship

Submission + - German member of parliament joins Pirate PArty

Submitted by Political Observer
Political Observer writes: Jörg Tauss, member of the German Parliament, Bundestag, left the social democratic party SPD, which is part of a coalition government, and announced (German article on his site) to join the German Pirate Party. He left the SPD after most members of the party voted for a new censorship law which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at blocking child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS based content blocking and is subject of major critics from Internet users.

In March 2009 Tauss became subject of investigations by the German police for owning child pornographic material. He said he owned this material only due to research as part of his role as member of parliament. Investigations are still running.
Censorship

Submission + - German Member of Parliament supports Pirate Party 1

Submitted by
erlehmann
erlehmann writes: "On todays rally against internet censorship in Berlin, German long-term member of parliament Jörg Tauss announced he had quit the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and will support the Pirate Party in the upcoming elections (Twitter status, press statement, both in German). Tauss, Member of Parliament since 1994, is widely regarded as an internet expert and was one of only 4 politicians of the ruling coalition voting against the bill implementing secret lists of censored web content under the guise of fighting child porn, which has since become law.

Critics point to an ongoing investigation against Tauss regarding child porn, while he himself says he only purchased the pictures in question to prove that the internet is not a primary distribution channel and had hopes of blowing up a child porn ring. The Social Democratic Party has asked Tauss to resign from parliament after he quit the party."
The Internet

Submission + - Pirate Bay Four Found Guilty, Get Year in Jail (reuters.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: STOCKHOLM (Reuters) — A Swedish court handed down a guilty verdict and a year in prison on Friday to all four defendants in a copyright test case involving The Pirate Bay, one of the world's biggest free file-sharing websites.

The verdict could be a step toward helping music and film companies seeking to recoup millions of dollars in revenues lost through illegal downloads.

"The Stockholm district court has today found guilty the four individuals that were charged with accessory to breaching copyright laws," the court said in a statement. "The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison."

Companies including Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI were also asking for damages of more than 100 million crowns ($12 million) to cover lost revenues.

The court also ordered the defendants to pay just over 30 million Swedish crowns ($3.58 million).

The men linked to The Pirate Bay — Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom — were charged early last year by a Swedish prosecutor with conspiracy to break copyright law and related offences.

Reuters : http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE53G1WU20090417
Republicans

Submission + - Republican IT Specialist Dies in Plane Crash (democracynow.org) 1

Submitted by nbauman
nbauman writes: Surprisingly ignored by the NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post is this story, the least-conspiratorial version of which is on Democracy Now:

"A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Michael Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. Michael Connell was deposed one day before the election this year by attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions during the 2004 vote count in Ohio and his access to Karl Rove's email files and how they went missing."

"The lawyers in the case refer to him as a high-IQ Forrest Gump, by which they mean that he seems to have been present at the scene of every dubious election of the last eight years," Florida 2000, Ohio in 2004, Alabama 2002, Don Siegelman's re-election for governor, the Saxby Chambliss-Max Cleland Senate race in Georgia 2002, said Mark Crispin Miller. "To be Karl Rove's IT guru seems to have meant basically setting it up so that votes could be electronically shaved to the disadvantage of the Democrats and the advantage of Republicans."

The suggestion that Republicans murdered Connell to keep him from exposing their voter fraud is far-fetched and ridiculous.

Comment Define "modern players" (Score 2, Interesting) 622

by What the Frag (#24375465) Attached to: Have Modern Gamers Lost the Patience For Puzzles?

I play computer games since ~1995. I liked the LucasArts adventures at this time most.
One thing I noted, the quality of games went down from time to time. Many game studios went bankruptcy or were bought by big game studios, which made bad sequels out of the games.

What I noted, especially in the last 2 years are two things:
- Games are often made to run on PC and consoles. That makes the developers design it for the most limited platform in terms of input devices. This is usually bad for the PC port of the game.
- Games are made in a way to maximize profit.

Maximizing profit means to appeal as many customers as possible. That often include people who want to play something like an "interactive movie", without any real challenges or parts where serious thinking is needed.

If this matches your definition of "modern players", I think they never had a patience for such puzzles.
iMac

Submission + - new 20" iMacs have color gradient problem 1

Submitted by Pond823
Pond823 writes: The new 20" iMac seems to have a common screen fault that causes a colour gradient from top to bottom. The discussion on the Apple support site implies that this only affects the 20" model only. An photograph of the problem can be seen here. My friend who is a freelance graphic artist and does a lot of work on collectible card games has just moved to using OS X and the 20" .He has found this problem unworkable and it looks like he'll have to pay to upgrade further to a 24" iMac, which he can ill afford. Had I known about this problem, I would never had recommended he moved to the iMac at this point.
Software

Submission + - Open Source Software Brings Transparency to Math (uwnews.org)

Submitted by
William Stein
William Stein writes: "The free open source mathematics program Sage that was recently mentioned on slashdot just won first prize in the scientific software category of Les Trophees du Libre, an international competition for free software. Soon Sage will face off against the major software companies in San Diego at the American Mathematical Society Meeting."
Television

Submission + - Canadian VCRs/PVRs illegal, Bill direction unclear

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Few Canadians probably realize that using a VCR to record/time shift Television programming is illegal. That's one of the reasons that Tivo has been reluctant to introduce the device in Canada until this year and even so, it's availability if very limited. Canada's laws in fact, are more restrictive than the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand when it comes to Home/Private use of Copyrighted materials. According to an article in the Toronto Star, http://www.thestar.com/article/277621 , Michael Geist writes that the upcoming Copyright Bill being proposed needs to include 3 provisions.. First, "Time-Shifting" should be clarified to remove any ambiguity and Grant ability to record Television programs. Second, allow 'Media Shifting' — transfer of content to different devices and finally, expand the current backup provision, that applies to Computer Programs on media to include other copyrighted material such as music and video. He asks in the end if the Lobbyists will win or the consumer...."

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