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Comment Re:I Only Do Symbolic Anonymity (Score 1) 333

by ios and web coder (#43194493) Attached to: Schneier: The Internet Is a Surveillance State

You are 100% correct. There's nothing there I'd disagree with.

However, lots and lots and LOTS of folks feel that "privacy" == "let my ID come out to PLAY!"

Humans don't seem able to behave without boundaries and rules.

In any case, alea jacta est. For a LONG time, internet trolls and really sociopathic folks have been using the same tools that we are screeching about in the hands of governments to do truly despicable things.

Exhibit A

It's only when folks who can track them down and punish them get the tools that the caterwauling starts.

Here's an interesting book (How To Disappear). It tells how skip tracers work. They use a lot of old-school techniques, and have been using these same techniques long before the Interwebs.

True anonymity has always been a myth. People who rebel; either legitimately or not, always take a risk. The old Internet fostered a myth of "risk free rebellion."

Like unicorns and high sidhe, risk-free rebellion doesn't exist. If you truly believe in what you are doing, you will find a way to fight. It is a lot more difficult, these days, but, as the Al Queda folks in Yemen (who, unfortunately, truly believe in what they are doing) are showing, good old human ingenuity still tends to come out on top.
Blackberry

Submission + - Blackberry sells 1 million units to a single buyer (androidanalyse.com) 3

Submitted by Gumbercules!!
Gumbercules!! writes: At the end of each quarter, investors eagerly await the sales figures for the last three months and probably no company (with the possible exception of Nokia) will be so closely watched this quarter as Blackberry. This quarter has seen the release of what many consider to be their last throw of the dice – the Blackberry 10 range introductory range of handsets and poor sales figures could portent a very difficult time ahead.

So with that in mind, it’s “odd”, in the least, that suddenly someone would suddenly step forward and buy a full and exact million handsets – and Blackberry won’t tell us who. Blackberry is touting this as a huge vote of confidence in their brand – however if someone is so amazingly confident in Blackberry, why do they need to remain secret?

Comment Re:I Only Do Symbolic Anonymity (Score 1) 333

by ios and web coder (#43194319) Attached to: Schneier: The Internet Is a Surveillance State

<sigh /> /b/ happened. That kind of stuff happened LONG before 4chan. Remember the Good Old Days? Before The September That Never Ended?

Remember alt.tastless? Remember all those really highbrow BBSes? THSTNE was the best thing that ever happened to the Internets, despite the (to this day) wailing of the oldtimers. There is no way that teacher could talk to that farmer without all those AOHell n00bs looking for pr0n on alt.binaries

Go ahead and give up on whatever you want. I take full advantage of the open nature of things, like sidewalks and crosswalks. Just because there is an 8-lane highway in between, doesn't mean that I should walk in it.

I really don't want some of the scumbags that let their ids puke all over the interwebs to be dictating any policy. They just fuel the watchers anyway.

There's always been a tradeoff between security, peace and prosperity. It is always about balance, a word that a lot of folks these days seem to need defined for them. I don't want all of anything, but I need some of everything. We all do.

Comment I Only Do Symbolic Anonymity (Score 3, Insightful) 333

by ios and web coder (#43194003) Attached to: Schneier: The Internet Is a Surveillance State

I have already written off true anonymity (years ago).

When I am in public, at work, or with friends and family, I am constrained to behave myself. There may be different rules in different contexts, but there are always rules. Some written, some not.

The Internet gave an illusion of a "rule free" context, and look what happened.

That vacation is over. Time to behave like a grown-up.
Beer

Submission + - Reddit Emboldens Young Woman to Fight Trademark Troll, We Win (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
Faulkner39
Faulkner39 writes: "Ali Spagnola, a Pittsburgh based musical artist, is an advocate of social media, free paintings, and alcohol accompanied partying. To unite the beer loving citizens of the internet, she composed 60 original songs and created a "Power Hour Drinking Game Album" based on the popular college pregame ritual. When a trademark troll was awarded rights to the term "Power Hour", he issued a Cease-and-Desist order on Ali to stop selling her game, had her albums taken down from Amazon and Rhapsody, and began bullying her on the internet and social media. Reddit was not amused, and quickly escalated her story to the front page. The online support encouraged Ali to stand up and fight for our right to binge responsibly. After a 3 year legal struggle costing Ali $30,000 of her own personal money in legal fees, Ali won, giving the internet the right to Power Hour freely. To celebrate the victory, Ali is now running a campaign to fund a Power Hour Freedom Victory Tour"
Government

Submission + - Massive security breech at US Federal Government contractors site (gsa.gov)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: SAM (Systems for Awards Management) is a financial management system that the US government requires all contractors and grantees to use. This system has recently been rolled out to replace the older CCR system. Last night, thousands of SAM users received the following message:

"Dear SAM user

The General Services Administration (GSA) recently has identified a security vulnerability in the System for Award Management (SAM), which is part of the cross-government Integrated Award Environment (IAE) managed by GSA. Registered SAM users with entity administrator rights and delegated entity registration rights had the ability to view any entity’s registration information, including both public and non-public data at all sensitivity levels."

From March 8 to 10, any registered user who searched the system could view confidential information including account and social security numbers for any other user of the system. Oops! The Government Services administration says that they have fixed the problem, but this is a serious black eye for the Fed.
Privacy

Submission + - Should We Be Afraid of Google Glass? (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article at TechCrunch bemoans the naysayers of ubiquitous video camera headsets, which seems like a near-term certainty whether it comes in the form of Google Glass or a similar product. The author points out, rightly, that surveillance cameras are already everywhere, and increasingly sophisticated government drones and satellites mean you're probably on camera more than you think already. 'But there’s something about being caught on video, not by some impersonal machine but by another human being, that sticks in people’s craws and makes them go irrationally berserk.' However, he also seems happy to trade privacy security, which may not be palatable to others. He references a time he was mugged in Mexico and a desire to keep an eye on abuses of authority from police and others. 'If pervasive, ubiquitous networked cameras ultimately make public privacy impossible, which seems likely, then at least we can balance the scales by ensuring that we have two-way transparency between the powerful and the powerless.'
NASA

Submission + - NASA satellite snaps rare cloud-free and not so rare snow covered Ireland (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A couple years ago NASA's Aqua satellite took an out-of-this-world shot of a cloud-free shot of Ireland. NASA noted at the time that the cloud-free view is rare as the country is almost entirely cloud covered 50% of the time according to the Irish Meteorological Service, Met Éireann. There are more clouds during the day than at night, and fog is common."

Submission + - Panicked porn troll Prenda Law now dismissing pending lawsuits (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by JayRott
JayRott writes: "The embattled copyright trolling firm Prenda Law is seeking to contain the fallout from a looming identity theft scandal by voluntarily dismissing lawsuits filed by the shell company AF Holdings. A Minnesota man named Alan Cooper has charged that Prenda fraudulantly used his name as the CEO of AF Holdings, allegations that have attracted the attention of a California judge.

Ken at the legal blog Popehat broke the news that Prenda attorney Paul Duffy has sought dismissal of at least four pending infringement cases involving the Prenda-linked shell company AF Holdings. All four dismissals occurred in the Northern District of Illinois."

I don't see how Prenda thinks this is going to make one lick of difference to an already angry Judge.
The Internet

Submission + - This Story Stinks: Researchers Explain Why Trolls Win With Toxic Comments 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas but NPR reports that researchers have found that rude comments on articles can change the way we interpret the news. "It's a little bit like the Wild West. The trolls are winning," says Dominique Brossard, co-author of the study on the so-called "Nasty Effect." Researchers worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, a topic chosen so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity then asked 1,183 subjects to review the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits. Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments like, "If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you're an idiot." People that were exposed to the polite comments didn't change their views really about the issue covering the story, while the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story. We need to have an anchor to make sense of complicated issues says Brossard. "And it seems that rudeness and incivility is used as a mental shortcut to make sense of those complicated issues." Brossard says there's no quick fix for this issue (PDF) and while she thinks it's important to foster conversation through comments sections, every media organization has to figure out where to draw the line when comments get out of control. "It’s possible that the social norms in this brave new domain will change once more — with users shunning meanspirited attacks from posters hiding behind pseudonyms and cultivating civil debate instead," writes Broussard. "Until then, beware the nasty effect.""
Java

Submission + - Apple Fixes OS X Flaw That Allowed Java Apps to Run With Plugin Disabled (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Apple on Thursday released a large batch of security fixes for its OS X operating system, one of which patches a flaw that allowed Java Web Start applications to run even when users had Java disabled in the browser. There have been a slew of serious vulnerabilities in Java disclosed in the last few months, and security experts have been recommending that users disable Java in their various browsers as a protection mechanism. However, it appears that measure wasn't quite enough to protect users of some versions of OS X.

Comment Lot Less Useful, These Days (Score 3, Informative) 40

by ios and web coder (#43175257) Attached to: Adobe Shuts Down Browser Testing Service BrowserLab

The Web standards are being followed a lot more closely by browsers. Of course, Microsoft doesn't believe in rounded corners (Anyway, I think that may be patented).

IE7 sucks just about as bad as IE6, but I keep a VM with IE7 (Vista) around for extreme testing.

Most of the issues I encounter these days come from JavaScript/DOM differences, and this service was worthless for that. I need to have VMs on my Mac with multiple versions of browsers. For this kind of testing, Macs are extremely useful, as I can run a full LAMP server on my Air, and run multiple VMs that connect to it as external sites. I can tweak in realtime.

VirtualHostX is also pretty useful, as I can develop sites on my laptop, then directly transition them to the server with no fiddling with mod_rewrite or DB settings.

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