Whatever his motivation, Savoy logged on to the 120 machine using the "temp/temp" username and password he had found on Mail2. He spent 15 minutes there, looking at a phonebook file, and a list of account names, and found information that led him to believe Heckenkamp had an account on the machine. He also saw what he called "computer hacking tools" and files that Qualcomm had described. Savoy made screen-print copies of these files as evidence.

Jennifer Granick has more information about the University hacking case.

Appeals Court Misfired in Hack-Counterhack Dispute

One of my favorite moments from William Gibson's Virtual Light, which I highly recommend if you haven't read it:

Nightmare Folk Art was like that, sandwiched between a dead hair-extension franchise and some kind of failing real estate place that sold insurance on the side. NIGHTMARE FOLK ART-SOUTHERN GOTHIC, the letters hand-painted all lumpy and hairy, like mosquito legs in a cartoon, white on black. But with a couple of expensive cars parked out front: a silver-gray Range Rover, looking like Gunhead dressed up for the prom, and one of those little antique Porsche two-seaters that always looked to
Rydell like the wind-up key had fallen off. He gave the Porsche a wide berth; cars like that tended to have hypersensitive anti-theft systems, not to mention hyper-aggressive.

There was a rentacop looking at him through the armored glass of the door; not IntenSecure, but some off brand. Rydell had borrowed a pair of pressed chinos from Kevin. They were a little tight in the waist, but they beat hell out of the orange trunks. He had on a black IntenSecure uniform-shirt with the patches ripped off, his Stetson, and his SWAT shoes. He wasn't sure black really made it with khaki. He pushed the button. The rentacop buzzed him in.

'Got an appointment with Justine Cooper,' he said, taking his sunglasses off.

'With a client,' the rentacop said. He looked about thirty, and like he should've been out on a farm in Kansas or somewhere. Rydell looked over and saw a skinny woman with black hair. She was talking to a fat man who had no hair at all. Trying to sell him something, it looked like.

'I'll wait,' Rydell said.

The farmer didn't answer. State law said he couldn't have a gun, just the industrial-strength stunner he wore in a beat-up plastic holster, but he probably did anyway. One of those little Russian hold-outs that chambered some godawful overheated caliber originally intended for killing the engine blocks of tanks. The Russians, never too safety-minded, had the market in Saturday-night specials.

Rydell looked around. That ol' Rapture was big at Nightmare Folk Art, he decided. Those kind of Christians, his father had always maintained, were just pathetic. There the Millennium had up, come, and gone, no Rapture to speak of, and here they were, still beating that same drum. Sublett and his folks down in their trailer-camp in Texas, watching old movies for Reverend Fallon-at least that had some kind of spin on it.

He tried to sneak a look, see what the lady was trying to sell to the fat man, but she caught his eye and that wasn't good. So he worked his way deeper into the shop, pretending to check out the merchandise. There was a whole section of these nasty-looking spidery wreath-things, behind glass in faded gilt frames. The wreaths looked to Rydell like they were made of frizzy old hair. There were tiny little baby coffins, all corroded, and one of them had been planted with ivy. There we... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]

RE: Southern Expressions: Part 3

This is a handy tool, and it's one you aren't likely to find on a lender's web site.

From the accompanying article:

By the Realtors’ way of thinking, it’s always a good time to buy. Homeownership, they argue, is a way to achieve the American dream, save on taxes and earn a solid investment return all at the same time.

That’s how it has worked out for much of the last 15 years. But in a stark reversal, it’s now clear that people who chose renting over buying in the last two years made the right move. In much of the country, including large parts of the Northeast, California, Florida and the Southwest, recent home buyers have faced higher monthly costs than renters and have lost money on their investment in the meantime. It’s almost as if they have thrown money away, an insult once reserved for renters.

Most striking, perhaps, is the fact that prices may not yet have fallen far enough for buying to look better than renting today, except for people who plan to stay in a home for many years.

Is It Better to Buy or Rent?

Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.

Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors.

Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84 - washingtonpost.com

Patrick Rissmiller scored at 11:46 of the second overtime, and the San Jose Sharks beat the Nashville Predators 5-4 Wednesday night after blowing a two-goal lead in the opening game of the Western Conference first-round series.

Damnit. Playoff Scoreboard here. Hopefully we'll turn this around on Friday!

SI.com - 2007 NHL Playoffs - Sharks blow early lead, dump Predators in 2OT - Thursday April 12, 2007 12:06AM

Vidmeter, which tracks the online video business, determined that the clips that were removed for copyright violations — most of them copyrighted by big media companies — comprise just 9 percent of all videos on the site. Even more surprising, the videos that have been removed make up just 6 percent of the total views (vidmeter.com).

YouTube’s Favorite Clips Aren't Copyrighted - New York Times

Thou shalt always covet tasty nuggets of your neighbors pop culture.

YouTube - Dan Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip - 'Thou Shalt always Kill'

To celebrate Easter..........Some egg art

Happy Easter

The film is set in the East Berlin of 1989 . Alexander Kerner's mother, Christiane Kerner, an ardent supporter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, suffers a heart attack when she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration and falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. After eight months she awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally, and doctors say that any shock may cause another, possibly fatal, attack. Alex realises that her discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as normal in the German Democratic Republic. To this end, he and his family revert the flat to its previous drab decor, dress in their old clothes, and feed the bed-ridden Christiane new, Western produce from old labeled jars. For a time the deception works, but gradually becomes increasingly complicated and elaborate.

I saw this film tonight and really enjoyed it. I'd recommend it if you're in a video rental place and dismayed at the wealth of junk being pushed out these days.

Good Bye Lenin! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although he was aware that the FBI was already seeking a warrant to search Heckenkamp's computer in order to serve the FBI’s law enforcement needs, Savoy believed that the university's separate security interests required immediate action. Just as requiring a warrant to investigate potential student drug use would disrupt operation of a high school ... requiring a warrant to investigate potential misuse of the university's computer network would disrupt the operation of the university and the network that it relies upon in order to function. Moreover, Savoy and the other network administrators generally do not have the same type of "adversarial relationship" with the university’s network users as law enforcement officers generally have with criminal suspects.

This case is going to have widespread ramifications. Overall I'm pretty unhappy with this conclusion and I think this will be abused left and right in ways these judges wouldn't have intended or approved of.

There is a wide varience in competence among system's administrators, particularly between different Universities. Technical schools that have complex networks tend to attract smart people to their IT staffs who could probably handle this deputization responsibly. However, smaller schools with less interesting technology tend to have less competent admins... People who have difficulty understanding the difference between a security breach, and someone doing something with the network that they don't understand or haven't explicitly approved, but isn't a security breach. I suspect that some of these people will take an unreasonably broad view of their powers under this ruling.

(The same thing can also be said of private computer network administrators, who might also be deputized by this. Its not clear whether this ruling would fit outside the context of a University. It might.)

In general, people had always assumed that retalitory hacking was illegal. Here, the 9th has actually managed to make the wild west of the Internet a little bit wilder. I think ultimately that undermines the purpose that the Court is supposed to be serving. I hope this goes up to the SCOTUS.

9th Circuit Appeals Courth Authorizes University Admins to Hack Student Computers