] What happened specifically is now -- it's against
] the law to start counting the votes before the polls have
] closed. But this file is date and time stamped at 3:31 in
] the afternoon on election day, and somehow all 57
] precincts managed to call home add them themselves up in
] the middle of the day. Not only once but three times. If
] you have no electronic communications between the polling
] places and the main office, how does that happen? Because
] what would you literally have to do is you would have to
] shut down the polling place in 57 places at once and get
] in a car and drive this card into the county office.
] That's not going to happen.

The voting machines have modems. (Or at least, it appears that way...)

The leader of the movement against electronic voting machines says she has a smoking gun.

flynn23 wrote:
] o broadband line capping

Do you understand the rational with this? I don't get it...

] o high cost with costs rising ($50/mo for avg 384k line)

Well, yes, rising in general, but there is another way to put this. Asymetric access is cheap. Symetric access is not. Most broadband cannot be used for servers. Symetric access is priced to suck money out of businesses. I can think of a wide range of potential applications for home servers, but I think there are niches where those applications can exist today, and until they become popular enough to create competitive pressures this is not going to change.

] o bandwidth intensive applications destroyed (ie Napster)
] o bandwidth intensive sectors under assault (ie RIAA, MPAA,
] etc)

Look for PVR based VoD in 2004, probably not over the Internet though. Their strategy with this will be to create proprietary devices that are computers but aren't open, upon which they can provide access to content in a controlled way. (This is, in general, an extremely dangerous development worth serious consideration. On the one side we have computers, which are a totally open platform upon which to build these services, and on the other side we have these closed systems, like X-boxes and PVRs, which are essentially the same things, and competing for the same space, but are totally closed and not adaptable. Currently the Tivos and x-boxes of the world are blowing the pants off the snapstreams and pc gamers...)

The reason I'm putting so much effort into getting a stable mythtv running is that it is a frontier that needs to be settled. There are lots of opportunities for interesting, legitimate applications here that won't be developed in the cable world because its so closed. At the same time, about 50% of what presently makes mythtv interesting is currently illegal. The copyright problem continues to be something that holds us back.

] o legislation preventing use of NAT, firewalls, multiple
] machines on home networks (TN HB457, S-DMCA laws, etc)

I don't think its fair to call this a block, but it could be a block if it is passed and enforced. A pre-emptive strike to (essentially) outlaw computers as a platform for certain kinds of broadband services...

] ] What is the application for all this bandwidth?
]
] it's already here. Imagine having a device in your home which
] allows you to check email, video and audio conference with
] anyone anywhere, visit any website, play any song ever
] recorded, watch any television or movie ever made, play any
] video game ever made, store your pictures and home movies, and
] turn your lights on and off for you automatically.

Yeah, sounds like mythtv to me... The thing is that this isn't all that interesting to me. VoD, MoD, and GoD are interesting because I don't have to go out to the store, but thats really it. Netflix is almost as good. Is it rea... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: The Many Paradoxes of Broadband | Andrew Odlyzko [PDF]

] The American Library Association (ALA) is investigating
] whether its relationship with law firm Jenner & Block is
] a conflict of interest, as the firm has represented the
] Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its
] recent efforts to gather the names of those suspected of
] illegal file-sharing. In a letter to ALA executive
] director Keith Fiels, Emily Sheketoff, executive director
] of ALA's Washington Office, said that the office has
] grown "very uncomfortable" with Jenner & Block's legal
] activities on behalf of the RIAA. ALA is seeking a letter
] from the firm setting forth how it would handle any
] potential conflict.

This is an odd newsbite in that it only appears in one journal and isn't very detailed. No formal statements on the ALA's website.

ALA might toss their lawyers...

] An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by
] the US Department of Defense could blur the critical
] distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The
] work has also raised fears that weapons based on this
] technology could trigger the next arms race.

New Scientist: Gamma Bombs

Jeremy wrote:
] If you are unable to actually solve your problems, you can at
] least generate a lot of paperwork to document those failures
] for posterity.

I tend to agree. These problems are not the result of negligence. They are the result of complexity. Clearly the standards for handling all of this stuff are not "stable" enough to warrant the kind of controls that are possible in the automotive industry. These rules would create barrriers to entry for small companies (which is why Microsoft likes them), but would do little to improve the situation (this code is already subject to review).

Security is a systemic problem and it requires a systemic solution. The original White House plan emboddied the right kind of approach and I don't think we should change course in a reactionary way. I still haven't seen the stuff in the WhiteHouse strategy come down the pipe ::

1. Government systems should be audited and subject to stringent standards.
2. Essential non-goverment systems should also be subject to standards. The existing HIPPA regulations are not an unreasonable starting point.
3. There ought to be clearing houses for information about vulnerabilities and good administrative practices.
4. Network service providers should be required to implement certain basic restrictions, such as anti-spoofing filters on the network's edge. We ought to offer tax subsidies and liability shelters to ISPs that "keep there house clean" in terms of scanning their customer's networks, running IDS systems, and moving "owned" customer machines off of the internet until they can be repaired.
5. This stuff ought to trickle down all the way to the home user. Home computer users ought to get messages from Tom Ridge telling them to keep their patches up to date. Your personal internet security status impacts all of us.

Implicit in all of this mostly educational effort ought to be the message that computer security, much like preventing forest fires, is everybody's job. You ought to think about it.

We need to train people to think about how their computers expose them to the network. What services are they offering? Should they implement NBT for file sharing, or something like WebDAV? Furthermore, we need to train people to feel personal ownership of the computer security problem and be responsible about it.

This is not a silver bullet, but it would certainly have been possible for the 500,000 machines that got infected with blaster to have patched their systems beforehand. How hard is it to click that Windows Update button when it flashes? Solid efforts to train people to do this will pay off in less costly incidents.

RE: Digital Vandalism Spurs a Call for Oversight

Scanning cellular phone calls, back when it was inexpensive, used to be exciting mostly because you weren't supposed to be able to do that. Once you'd done it, and done it for a while, it lost its edge. There was the occaisonal gem, like the time we caught a redneck admitting to her boyfriend (much to his chagrin) that she had tried LSD at a party the night before, but these were mostly lost in a sea of boring conversations about dinner and pets... This website is similar, but its about written notes, found floating in the street, and this guy has filtered out all of the grocery lists, flyers, and forms. All thats left is the acid.

FOUND Magazine, if you're bored

] Issuing an egregiously overbroad subpoena for stored
] e-mail qualifies as a computer intrusion in violation of
] anti-hacking laws, a federal appeals court ruled
] Thursday, deciding a case in which a litigant in a civil
] matter subpoenaed every single piece of e-mail his
] courtroom adversary sent or received.

I share the mixed opinions of the commentators. The problem isn't that there ought to be serious criminal penalties for misuse of subpoena powers. Certainly there ought to be, but this attacks the symptom and not the problem. The problem is the ever widening group of people who can issue subpoenas for private information without any judicial oversight. Violent predators do not care about being in contempt of court. In serious misuse cases by the time you get around to arguing about the reasonablness of the subpoena the damage has already been done. The power of the court should only be used with the explicit approval of the court.

SecurityFocus HOME News: Hacking-by-subpoena ruled illegal

] Abortion Doc's Killer Expects 'Reward in Heaven' After
] Execution
]
] Abortion-rights groups worry that Hill's execution will trigger
] reprisals by those who share his steadfast belief that violence to
] stop abortion is justified. Several Florida officials connected to
] the case received threatening letters last week, accompanied by
] rifle bullets.

The only people crazier then the fundamentalists in the Middle East are the fundamentalists in the South East.

Killing for Jesus

] In no other area is it more important to have a sense of
] what you don't know than it is in IT management. The most
] dangerous advice to CEOs has come from people who either
] had no idea of what they did not know, or from those who
] pretended to know what they didn't. Couple not knowing
] that you don't know with fuzzy logic, and you have the
] makings of Nicholas Carr's article.

The response to the article that caused so much hullabaloo.

Innovation: Why IT Does Matter

] "Even now I still don't fully understand the
] charges against me. I don't even have a copy of the
] complaint, and don't have a lawyer that has
] explained the specific charges to me."

Here is the actual interview with Parsons. You can basically see someone who has a normal life, is about to start school, and is suddenly getting fucked up the ass by a country full of raving lunatics who are holding him responsible for Blaster and SoBig, neither of which he is actually responsible for. He doesn't get that large numbers of people are calling for him to go to prison for a decade. It just doesn't make any sense to him. It wouldn't to you either. It doesn't to me. But I won't be surprised if it happens.

This person did NOT write the blaster worm. He is NOT responsible for the damage caused by the blaster worm. And yet every major news story about him has waxed on for paragraphs about the damage caused by the blaster worm. This interviewer went further and told him that the American public thinks he is responsible for all the trouble they are having with their email! Sobig is even further removed and bears absolutely no relationship to what this person did whatsoever.

The fact is that this person may go to prison for a decade. That thousands are calling for exactly this. The media and the FBI have intentionally deceived the public into associating this person with Blaster in the same way that they deceived the public into associating Iraq with 911. And all of this so that the media companies can post more revenue for this quarter and so that Ashcroft can claim a political victory. That is 100,000 times more sinister then anything that this person is actually guilty of.

Parsons ought to be punished, but so should the press. He ought to file slander charges against all of the major media outlets.

Worm suspect: I'm not the one