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The Federal Government vs. The Simpsons->

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes "In 1990, the federal "drug czar" for President Bush warned patients at a drug treatment center that watching the Simpsons was "not going to help you." Before Friday's movie cements the cartoon's hold on the mainstream media, it's worth noting that it continued challenging federal drug policy for the next 17 years. (And it isn't stopping; the movie's trailer shows Homer demanding more psychotropes...) Just remember that it was at the height of the war of drugs when the Simpsons first began proving that Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. In 1990 Matt Groening even issued a response to the drug czar on behalf of Bart Simpson. "If our drug czar thinks he's going to have a conversation with a cartoon character, he must be smoking something.""
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Networking

TimeWarner DNS Hijacking 339

Posted by kdawson
from the can-you-spell-ham-handed dept.
Exstatica writes "It looks like TimeWarner is taking vigilante action on the botnet problem. They've hijacked DNS for a few IRC servers, the latest being irc.mzima.net and irc.nac.net — both part of EFNet. (irc.vel.net was hijacked earlier but has been restored.) Using ns1.sd.cox.net, the lookup returns an IP for what looks to be a script that forces the user into a channel and issues a set of commands to clean the drones. There have been different reports of other IRC networks being hijacked and other DNS servers involved. Is this the right way to handle the botnet problem? Is hijacking DNS legal?" Botnets are starting to move off of IRC for command and control, anyway.
Update: 07/24 00:01 GMT by KD : Updated and added more links; thanks to Drew Matthews at vel.net. 07/24 11:52 GMT by KD : Daniel Haskell wrote in to say that ircd.nac.net is seeing cox.net connections again, and that they are in discussion with the EFF over the matter.

I have that old biological urge, I have that old irresistible surge, I'm hungry.