The important part of the described attack is its ability to hop past the fried switch, possibly more than one level, to affect devices elsewhere on the network, possibly hundreds of meters away. That makes it distinct from traditional ethernet killer or hammer attacks.

With about 15 minutes of research and looking at electrical diagrams and discussion with a colleague, I figured out exactly what device he's using. If I can figure it out, so can anybody. Out of respect for the author, I won't disclose it either, but I'm sure most of the Slashdot crowd could figure it out as well. The device in question is not expensive and is portable as he describes and has the right electrical properties to not fry the voltage shielding on the ethernet cables while being able to bridge circuit gaps in a sustained manner, as he demonstrates with the 4-5cm spark distance. It is also distinct from lightning strikes because of the variable duration of application and precision with which it can be controlled, which can result in more damage than a large burst of lightning.

With some tweaking, it is conceivable that a single ethernet port in an unattended area like a hotel lobby or university public area (both of which are common) could be targeted such that in just a couple of seconds, damage could be done to devices throughout the building, even devices not directly connected to the switch to which that ethernet port is wired. It's unclear how many hops are theoretically possible, but I suspect at least 2. Research in a controlled lab environment would be worth exploring.

That's a threat worth serious consideration. None of the network architecture in the many different places I have worked was ever designed with this sort of attack in mind; a fried switch was considered the worst possible scenario. This is much worse. At the very least, it should remind people that unprotected ethernet ports can be a huge risk and encourage them to improve physical security design.

Great, awesome, now can we finally get updates for laptop video cards now too? You know, especially the ones marketed as "gaming laptops" that only ever get one driver release and are incompatible with the chipset manufacturer's source drivers?

Apparently News Corp. needs to direct its litigation employees to pay more attention to SuicideGirls... There's no way that could go wrong...

In Canada, the public is protected from such software bugs by statute, in the same way the public is protected from medical screw ups: a professional engineer is required by law to write any software code where safety is on the line. Just like when a new bridge is constructed and must be designed and validated by a professional engineer who is an expert in structures and who becomes professionally liable for the project, the same is true for software. If safety is on the line, a professional engineer who is an expert in software and/or computer systems (as the case may be) must design and validate the code and they become professionally liable for the software. Unfortunately, too many companies ignore the law.

Source: Professional Engineers Act of Ontario (http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90p28_e.htm ) and Professional Engineers Ontario (http://www.peo.on.ca/). There are similar acts and professional associations for all provinces and territories in Canada.

Full disclosure: I'm a professional computer engineer registered in Ontario with PEO.

If you enable replies on the Network Solutions' Twitter feed, you can see them responding to the flurry of crap they got from this. They mention that the email is the "first step".

Seems real: https://twitter.com/netsolcare...

It's worth noting that this action (auto-enroll and bill) is illegal in Canada. Each province/territory has its own consumer protection act that requires explicit opt-in for any new services that are provided to existing customers, in writing. You cannot auto-enroll people and require them to opt-out to not be charged.

Source (for Ontario, at least): http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/ht...

Non-legalese summary provided by the Ministry of Consumer Services of Ontario: http://www.sse.gov.on.ca/mcs/e...

In Canada, under the various provincial acts (and a National act that keeps them largely consistent), professional engineers (note, the word "engineer" is legally protected in Canada, like Medical Doctor or Lawyer, unlike in the US.) must do any work that involves human safety. That INCLUDES computer/technical related work. The classic example is software for air traffic control systems or software on space shuttle modules.

One of the problems for the engineering regulatory bodies (Professional Engineers Ontario - PEO - in the case of Ontario) is that many companies don't employ computer/software engineers even when their software involves human safety. They use computer science majors, or people with 1 year technical diplomas from the local college, or people with Microsoft or Cisco courses, or whoever happens to know whatever programming language they are using. The companies are legally required to have the work reviewed and signed off on by licensed engineers, but they just assume "oh, it's not like software is like a bridge or a building or something", so don't realise that the engineering priciples are no different than those used in structural engineering. Where it becomes even more fuzy is that the laws also state that licensed engineers must be used when "financial welfare" is on the line. Very few banking systems are properly designed by licensed computer/software engineers...

Source: I'm a professional engineer (P.Eng) registered in Ontario. Related legislation in Ontario:http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90p28_e.htm - Professional regulatory body in Ontario: www.peo.on.ca

Why is it that in 2013 the majority of discussions about generating revenue using a free/libre/open source strategy are still focused on "clamping down" and other zero-sum game thought patterns? Haven't we shown yet that there are not only strategies to generate revenue with open source that don't involve trying to control everything, but also that these strategies can be more successful in the long run? The type of "collision course" competition that the OP mentions is strategy thinking from the 70s and 80s. We're past that. We can do better.

I think a more interesting question to ask is: "How can Google generate revenue from Android while continuing to nurture the ecosystem and helping other stakeholders also continue to benefit from its success?". Facing challenging questions and trying to solve them is far more interesting than simply assuming that there is no solution, especially when anecdoctal evidence suggests otherwise.

Disclaimer: I'm doing my doctoral research in strategic management in the area of open source strategy, so my perspective is necessarily biased. Some of my work can be found at http://osstrategy.org/

The real problem is that pharmaceutical companies don't think there is a market for male contraceptives. It has nothing to do with technologies. There have been many effective, reversible, non-invasive procedures in human trials for the past 30 years:

http://www.malecontraceptives.org/

The issue is that "most men" think contraceptives are "unmanly" and will "never take them". At least that's what several doctors have personally told me when I was investigating contraceptive options. Nothing will move forward until there is a (at least perceived) cultural shift towards the acceptance that males should be responsible for their own fertility, creating a (at least perceived) market to justify the large capital expenses required to finalize and make available the various drugs and procedures.

Because the death of Lucas Arts wasn't painful enough for Star Wars fans, we can now look forward to all future Star Wars games being in the Origin-only, Rootkit-DRM enabled, online-at-all-times failboat that is EA's formula. Or is my lack of faith disturbing?

Rationality is only one way of viewing the world. Lots of people aren't rational and a lot of social behaviour isn't rational. As an engineer, my brain is wired to think rationally and to view the world through a rational lense. It's my prefered way of interacting with people. A very large percentage of people don't work that way. They are driven more by emotions, communicate with emotions, interpret the world through feelings, not reason. They're humans too. Part of the point of the blog post I linked is to help you step into their world and understand it. Trying to understand people who don't see the world through a rational lense is still a worthy pursuit and can help you grow as a person, even if your preferred way of understanding the world (and mine too) is rationality. It's too easy to just say "they're not rational" and leave it there. Let's dig deeper and see what we can learn.

New rule: If you don't know the difference between trademark and copyright, you're not allowed to send DMCA takedown notices on behalf of your company.

Can we encode this rule into a simple test like the Kingdom of Loathing literacy test? http://i.imgur.com/PeClG.jpg

While reading about all of this, my biggest issue was that I felt like I was lacking perspective. I was seeing a lot of arguments from various people but I didn't understand how anyone's perspective could lead to the given outcomes.

I found this post very helpful: http://griffin.oobleyboo.com/archive/on-pycon2013-and-equality/

It does a good job of moving you into someone else's shoes; some who is very different from you, whoever you might be. It was helpful. Viewing things from another perspective is NOT condoning actions. It's learning. Understanding. It's a step in the direction of addressing long-standing systematic issues. A first step.

You would think someone as big as VMware would have figured out, by now, that if "An inadvertent press of a key on a keyboard" can lead to "a full outage of the network infrastructure [including] all load balancers, routers, and firewalls [resulting] in a complete external loss of connectivity to [their Cloud service]" that they are DOING IT WRONG!

In other news, VMware announces they're releasing a new voting machine: http://xkcd.com/463/