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Comment ZOMG THE SKY [isn't] FALLING! (Score 1) 320

Guys, look at This list of Class A.

Prudential insurance? A class A? Almost 17 million addresses?

Ford motor company? General electric?

DoD has 11 class A chunks? That's almost 200 million addresses. You could give almost everybody in the united states a mobile phone with that.

These are just the most obvious ones. Does Apple really need 17 million addresses? Does HP? Xerox PARC?

This FUD has been getting spread around since the late 1990s. I think we're fine, and I think we're going to be fine for quite a while into the future.

Comment Re:Idiots! (Score 1) 715

On top of that... Do you understand how the money traffic servers work? They're not like publicly accessible HTTP Web servers, you can't DDoS them.

Yes, you absolutely can DDOS them, you just probably couldn't do it with an existing, canned tool like LOIC. (I'm assuming LOIC just does HTTP?). Have you ever noticed that, when the internet bails out at your friendly neighborhood coffee shop, they're usually unable to process credit card transactions? This is because all of those desktop card terminals talk to VISA/Mastercard/AMEX/etc's payment processing servers over the public internet. The transaction is protected with strong encryption the same as VPN or HTTPS is, but this doesn't mean it can't be attacked.

Keep in mind that there is almost no "hacking" going on here, they're just flooding it. This is why this type of DOS attack is almost impossible to stop. The same technique could be applied to any service.

In order to even reasonably take this down you not only need to know the IP of where these are entering (It COULD be the same as the web server, but I doubt it)

This shouldn't be even remotely difficult to do for anybody who has more than a very, very basic understanding of computer networking.

Then, suppose you've figured out your point to attack, you need to figure out the vector. Using the LOIC as is won't cut it, they probably have the most minimal of firewalls that knows to just drop anything that looks like an HTTP request - so in order to really DDoS it you'll need to figure out which port your using (Which shouldn't be too difficult if you've managed to reach this part) - but then you might also need to form your requests in such a way that they don't appear malformed either, lest they be trended and dropped.

Again, no. You're not worried about specifically attacking the protocol, you're looking to just overwhelm the machine with traffic.

Comment Re:Oh happy day (Score 1) 449

Maybe I'm out of the ordinary, but I've never replaced a phone because it was out of date, I've only ever replaced it when it breaks.

I doubt any of my desktop machines would still be crunching if they got banged up against my keys in my pocket for 16 hours a day.

Comment Good. (Score 4, Insightful) 379

This is something that I've tried and tried and tried to explain to some of my friends that work in marketing. When you are sending spam, you are literally using somebody *else's* property in a way that they don't want you to use it in order to give them messages.

This should be looked at no differently than causing unused speakers in my house to play radio advertisements when I want them turned off.

You send spam, and it's taking up a limited resource (disk, bandwidth, power, man hours, etc.) to your end and against the will of the recipient. I really hope that there are more cases like this.

Comment ...what? (Score 3, Interesting) 170

The real WTF here is that

A) Cryptome is running on Network Solutions
B) The email associated with the account is on *earthlink* ???
C) None of these things have been shut down.

Seriously, doesn't cryptome host some pretty shady stuff? On the same level as wikileaks, isn't it? What the hell is going on here?

Comment Re:SEE! (Score 4, Interesting) 271

It's already *here*.

That is absolutely fantastic news. Could you point me at a place where I could buy one?

The reality is that the derivative technologies are not always things like "we need to invent a solar panel", they're not even "we need to invent light composites", they're "we need to figure out a way of quickly producing these exotic materials on a large enough skill to fill the demand that the military is going to have for these.".

Comment Re:uhh...what? (Score 1) 661

I've flown out of Sky Harbor international airport, Dallas Ft-Worth international airport and tons of smaller regional aiports privately and never ever had my bags checked or had anybody even say anything to me other than "Do you want a cookie?"

I once even had the flight crew of a Gulfstream V invite me on board to check it out when they saw me oggling it.

The point is: at least in the US (which is where Jobs does most of his flying, I would imagine) having any type of airport security *at all* is not normal for private flights.

Comment uhh...what? (Score 5, Informative) 661

I just want to clarify that this is absolutely *not* how things work in the United States.

In the US, if you're flying privately, you walk through the lobby of whatever FBO (Which is a company that provides fuel, a pilot lounge, catering, etc.) your plane is parked at, smile at the person behind the desk, get on your plane, and leave.

Jobs was right to think that he could get on the plane with his stars because, usually, he would be able to.

Comment Re:Coming soon? (Score 3, Informative) 209

What you're saying is absolutely insane, I'm sorry.

The sensor in my copier costs, what, $10? Maybe?

You're talking about replacing that with something that would likely cost over $100,000 as well as well as the optics to support it.

The sensor in a fax machine and the sensor in a camera are *totally* different things.

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