A very Merry Christmas to all from Compublab.com!
Category: Translated Tech News Page 1 of 2
Greetings all!
It is hard to believe how much time has passed since I last posted on the blog. A string of illnesses in our family had us all gasping for air (and antibiotics) for a quite a while. Fortunately, we are all back on our feet and up and at’em once more!
During that brief hiatus, two not-so-little bills made their way through the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. You may have heard about them. One was called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) while the other was called PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). Both laws were, on the surface, designed to help law enforcement officials combat piracy of digital products overseas. The problem with these laws was that they were so broad, they could (and would) have been used (more like “abused”) to disrupt sites acting legally within the United States.
There is a lot that can be said about these two laws, but I found the best introduction to the issue was given by the talented folks over at the Khan Academy. I am including that roughly 11 minute video in this post for your viewing pleasure.
The only point I want to make here and now is that as you watch the video, keep in mind that the SOPA/PIPA issue is anything but over. Lawmakers were surprised at the amount of backlash that was generated from those laws and now they will regroup before trying to put such legislation through the system a second time. Since this topic *will* come up again, it behooves you, a consumer of digital and online products, to understand at least in general what the big flap was all about.
Yes, laws to combat the theft of intellectual property are needed, but we must as consumers make certain that the laws that are crafted make sense, and do not go beyond the mark of what they are supposed to do.
Give the video a look, and draw your own conclusions.
If you have read this blog at all you know I have a very dim view of software patents. The system is so horribly broken, and most Americans, unfamiliar with the details of the technology, have no idea just how dangerously out of hand the situation has become.
Now it comes out that a “patent troll” (a company that exists only to acquire patents and then sue people over them…contributing nothing to society and leeching off of those who are truly trying to innovate) has started suing businesses that provide wireless access to their customers (like hotel chains and shops like Panera Bread) claiming that they (the patent troll company) own the patent on wireless networking.
By extension, if you have a wireless router in your house, you could be sued (though it is unlikely).
If you’d like to read more about this utter stupidity, check out this link: http://patentexaminer.org/2011/09/innovatios-infringement-suit-rampage-expands-to-corporate-hotels/
Sad to say, the so-called “America Invents Act,” that lovely bit of legislation passed in the last month that promised to fix the patent system, will do NOTHING for this situation.
Give the above article a read…then give your congressman an earful.
More cheerful posts to come soon…
I have to say, this was an idea I had thought about years ago. If you want to be free of viruses and trojan horses and other malicious software while surfing the internet, the BEST way to go about it is to boot your operating system from a non-writable CD-ROM disk. The US Department of Defense so believes in this technique that they have created their own version of Linux specifically for this purpose!
(click here for the original article that inspired this post)
So technically, how does this work? Well, when you start your computer, the usual steps involved include your computer starting your operating system (like some variant of Microsoft Windows) from your hard disk. Once that is started, you are free to go about your computing business. But malicious software that makes its way onto your computer wants to be run every time you turn on your computer. So how does it do this? It modifies the startup files to your operating system on your hard disk so that every time you turn on your computer, the malicious software becomes active each time.
Well, the folks from the Department of Defense are suggestion that instead of booting your computer from a hard drive, you insert something called a “live CD”, which is an operating system (perhaps like windows) that starts up from a CD ROM disk (or DVD), rather than the hard drive. The key here is that the disk used to start the operating system is NOT WRITABLE. Since CD ROM and DVD-ROM discs cannot be written to after they have been created (assuming here that you have correctly created the CD-ROM disc, closed the writing session, etc.). It then becomes much more difficult for the malicious software to get “entrenched” onto your computer such that it will activate each time you start your machine.
Of course, in the world of technology there are few (if any) “absolutes”, but this method *IS* a powerful one to prevent having one’s computer from being infected by malicious software.
I don’t know if there are any “live CDs” of Windows operating systems. I don’t know because I personally don’t use Windows in that manner. However, there are many Linux “live CDs” out there in the world. Linux is a different operating system from Windows, but for simple surfing the internet and similar tasks, it is fairly easy to get running (indeed, in most cases you just insert the live CD and power up the machine).
Anyway, I just thought I would comment on this story as I felt it was worth understanding how and why booting from a CD or DVD was a good idea under the right circumstances.
I have noticed that when a major political topic is talked about in the news for some time (such as the debt crisis right now), some lawmakers see it as an opportunity to ram through legislation that any literate American would object too. Now they have done it again. Using a bill named Protecting Children from Internet Pornographer’s Act of 2011, congress wants to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to track your every move on the internet, and to keep such logs for at least 12 months (click here for the original story).
I personally cannot think of anyone who would be against a bill that was aimed at protecting children from internet pornography. However, to track every American’s move on the internet, including exposing their credit card numbers and bank account numbers, is going so far past the mark that it is even laughable that they might try to pull this one over on the American people.
Today, ISP’s already track enough information to match up a user with a temporarily assigned internet address, which is what law enforcement officials need when trying to track down someone on the internet who is trying to be anonymous. However, this new bill wants to FORCE the ISP’s to expose all of the following personal information into their logs:
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Credit Card Number
- Bank Account number
- Temporarily assigned network (IP) address
- EVERY site visited on the internet
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digitally focused civil liberties group, summed it up nicely as follows (click here for the complete EFF statement):
The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans’ expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to try to make available a layman’s description to those whose career were not in technology of issues that would effect them. I have found over the years that organizations, including governments, prey upon people’s lack of knowledge in order to manipulate them. I am very sorry to say that this is what is going on here.
Most ISP’s (this could be your cable company, AT&T UVerse, etc.) provide you with an internet connection that assigns a dynamic IP address, a network address that is not specific to you, but can change every time you log into the Internet (okay, so technically it is a bit more involved than that, but for the lay person the thing to understand is that your network address could change at nearly any moment). The difficulties that law enforcement officials have had in the past was trying to track down a specific individual’s actions on the Internet.
Let’s say that a person sends as threatening email to the President…which happens to be illegal. Law enforcement officials would want to know who it was that sent that message. With a network address that can change over time, it might be difficult to track down who it was. However, most (if not all) ISP’s keep a log of which network addresses are assigned to which of their customers at any given moment. This gives law enforcement officials the ability to back-track to a specific computer should they need to.
What ISP’s most often DO NOT DO is track/log EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO ONLINE. There is no need for this with respect to law enforcement. At least none that anyone has been able to explain to me. I certainly invite law enforcement officials to make it clear to me as to why this information is insufficient for their needs.
If you are getting the technical gist but are not understanding the reason for my concern at this point, pick up a copy of George Orwell’s book entitled 1984.
Sadly, another illustration as to all that is wrong with the US Patent system. Today we talk about the story of Patent Trolls.
Once upon a time there was a country who loved to build things. They had manufacturing plants all over the place, with plenty of proud families who for generations worked in the plants. Day after day, these people toiled to produce some of the best products in the land. Sure, they ran into various problems when trying to manufacture new products, but these workers were so skilled and so experienced, nothing could hold them back for long.
Then one day someone in this country got the idea that manufacturing was a job best left for others. It was too hard to try to run manufacturing plants in the United States, and cheap labor could be had abroad. So in a stampede that would have dwarfed any stampede ever seen out west, most manufacturers moved their facilities over seas.
Now, this worked reasonably well for the manufacturers, who no longer had to pay for things such as worker’s benefits, health care, plant safety, livable salaries, etc. If you ignored the fact that they were turning their backs on the workers who had for generations toiled in their plants and made them what they are, and the fact that the owners were selling their souls to the devil, things would look pretty rosy for the manufacturers.
Once this great country abandoned its ability to make things, a new economics market was necessary. Of course, the old market of:
- make something
- sell it to consumers
- reinvest in your business
- repeat
had to be replaced, since almost no one had the ability to make things any more.
Well, it took some searching, but then some unnamed group of people decided that since they didn’t want to make money by MAKING stuff, they would look for a way to make money by simply THINKING of stuff. Now the problem became how to get people to pay them for merely THINKING stuff.
Well, an old method that had always worked in the past was to get laws enacted that could FORCE people to pay them for their thoughts. However, after looking around for a while, these “new” entrepreneurs settled on the US Patent system.
You see, the Patent system was originally designed to allow a small-time, simple inventor to take his new inventions to a larger company to partner with in order to bring his ideas to market…without having to worry about that big company simply stealing his idea and doing it themselves. It was supposed to encourage the independent inventor to go ahead and invent without fear that the big bad corporations would steal all of his hard work. The inventor would obtain a patent, and the US Government would protect that inventor such that no one else could financially benefit from his invention for some amount of time, after which the idea would be released into the public domain.
But this band of lazy men thought that perhaps they could subvert this very patent system to FORCE people to pay them for their ideas. Sadly, they did indeed find a way.
Today we have a totally broken patent system awarding patents on just about any idea…no matter how obvious and no matter how much the idea has been USED in the past.
So now we have patents for things like:
- On a computer screen, putting a box around an input field
- On a check-out screen for a website, have a single click complete the transaction
- Using a computer system for generating messages electronically instead of physically
- Using a computer to print out a report
- Using a digital method of delivering music (think mp3 downloads)
So now we have all of these patents floating around…and along comes the Patent Troll (sorry it took me so long to finally get to this point)!
The Patent Troll is a new breed of business…though in my opinion it is not a business…it is a blight on business. You see, a Patent Troll produces NOTHING of value to the community. They don’t “make” anything (indeed, “making” something would be a liability for a patent troll…but that is a tale for another time). They simply scour the earth looking for patents that other people have registered and are looking to sell. These could be the most SILLY patents in creation. The only thing the Patent Troll cares about is whether or not they can sue someone with it.
Oh! I forgot! I hadn’t told you the other side to the broken patent system! You see, it can cost between $1 million and $5 million dollars to legally defend yourself against the most stupid/silly/asinine patent. Therefore, a lot of people who get sued over patent issues simply settle out of court because in the end it is a lot cheaper than battling it. In effect, what we now have in the US Patent system is a government sponsored extortion racket.
So why are my hackles up on patents right now? You may not have known it, but those <sarcasm> shifty, greedy folks that made the popular game Angry Birds (which I proudly state I have NEVER played)</sarcasm> have just been sued by a “patent troll.” Yes, you got that right. Apparently the folks that made Angry Birds infringed on someone’s “invention,” and now the Patent Troll is coming to try and get his “cut” (click here to read the original article that inspired this post).
Oh…but the story gets ohhhhhh so much better…
You see, this particular lawsuit opens up a HUGE can of worms because Lodsys, the Patent Troll…errrr…the company filing the suit…is claiming that they hold a patent that was violated in Apple’s Software Development Kit (SDK) that it gives to software developers to use to create programs such as Angry Birds. Now you need to know that Apple “bit the bullet” and signed a licensing agreement with Lodsys over this for the expressed purpose of protecting developers that use Apple’s SDK. Apparently Lodsys was just waiting for a few big-revenue games to be released so that they could assert that Apple’s license agreement DOES NOT protect user’s of the SDK (click here to read the other article that inspired this post).
Anyway, you now get a taste of why it is that I am so against patents in software, and with a lot of other technology fields. I believe that patents have their place, but that the system has been so incredibly perverted, especially in the area of software patents, that it is now used primarily by large corporations to prevent smaller organizations from encroaching on their markets. The solution to this problem certainly IS NOT to ram 1.2 million patent applications through an already broken system, which would only compound the problems.
This happened a few days ago, but I thought I would comment briefly on the story that hackers from the group “Anonymous” are claiming not only to have stolen about 1 gigabyte of data from NATO computer systems, but they have already released two documents that they claim came from this data incursion (click here to see the original article that inspired this post).
I wanted to include this bit of information to continue the discussion I have had for a while that most people simply do not understand the nature of computer security. I myself have been in the computer field for over 30 years, and through I am not a specialist in the area of security, I know enough to understand just how secure your online data is…and basically it just isn’t that secure.
Again I will repeat the analogy that I have used in the past that the security measures that you often hear being touted by online vendors (encryption, firewalls, and my personal favorite “the latest in security measures”) is a lot like what my mother taught me about locking the doors on our car when I was growing up. Locking your doors discourages the amateurs, the pranksters, and those perpetrators of opportunity who want to make off with your car. However, a professional car thief will indeed make off with your car if he or she wants it.
And so it is similar in the world of computer security.
There are just too many ways that data can be compromised…and that’s when you are talking about simply breaking into a computer system (guessing weak passwords, exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems, exploiting vulnerabilities in applications, etc.). This is before you get into such areas as:
- attacks on data that prey on people’s psychology
- mistakes that are made by companies that accidentally expose their customer’s information
- unscrupulous employees of companies who hold your information
- and more
I certainly do not condone the unauthorized intrusion into computer systems. However, with such intrusions occurring so often, I sincerely hope that the general public is beginning to get a better understanding about the true state of computer security at the current time.
As you probably know, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), with their HUGE lobbying power in DC, has for years been telling us about the billions (or was that trillions?) of dollars lost each year due to piracy. Even with the inflated numbers, these two organizations have been pushing congress for years to enact legislation such as the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to give power to law enforcement officials to crack down on music and movie piracy.
Never mind that the legal power they seem to be garnering against copyright infringement is getting to be downright frightening (think about the RIAA suing grandmothers, 11-year olds, and the estates of people who have died just because someone…not necessarily them…downloaded a music or video file from their house), and never mind that they are having to come up with a “cutesie” name for their legislation so that you don’t realize exactly what it is that they are doing (think “The Patriot Act”…a piece of legislation that stripped more rights from Americans than…well…I digress…). Never mind all of that…and ponder this: Research shows that those who pirate a movie are MORE likely to buy a movie than those who don’t!
Yep! That’s right! All this time when the MPAA has been complaining about the lawlessness of the standard human being who would steal from a fine organization such as the MPAA by downloading movies illegally…they’ve really been talking about some of their best customers!
It turns out that a study performed by one of the largest research companies in the world (click here to read the original article that inspired this post) concluded that those who pirate movies are MORE likely to buy DVDs and MORE likely to attend the release of a new movie at the theater (when the ticket prices are the highest).
Man, I’d LOVE to read such a study…wouldn’t you? Too bad, we won’t be able to. It seems that the un-named person or persons who requested and funded the study decided to “bury” the study…because they found the results to be “unpleasant.”
Well then, I wonder why the MPAA continues to lobby for even more powerful (some might say “outlandish”) powers to be given to law enforcement officials to be used…apparently…against some of their best customers?
Bloggers Note: When you get past the tongue-and-cheek style of my writing for this article, I hope you’ll remember that despite all the antics of the MPAA and the RIAA, downloading movies and recordings illegally is still exactly that…illegal! Please don’t sell your personal integrity for such a small price. More specifically, please do not sell your personal integrity at all. If you want to stick it to the MPAA and RIAA…do it legally. Vote with your dollars! Don’t buy their stuff! Contrary to popular belief, not downloading the latest recording of your favorite artist, or not downloading the latest movie of your favorite actor will NOT immediately turn you into dust! Just some food for thought…
A somewhat sobering article appeared over on TechGoblin (click here to see the original story) regarding a Laptop Rental Company that installed software to take pictures using the computer’s built-in webcam and to transmit them back to the rental company. Of course, they never DISCLOSED this minor detail to their customers.
Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that such behavior is well outside of what one would consider proper conduct with respect to a customer’s privacy. Apparently, a lot of customers agreed with my opinion as they opened up a class-action lawsuit against the company.
Well, the surprising part of this little story is that the judge recently decided not to issue an injunction against the laptop rental company (that is, the judge did not order them to stop). You’ll have to read the article yourself (see the link to the original article I listed previously) to try to understand why it is the judge decided the way he did. I for one seem to have too much common sense to be able to understand the twisted nature of our legal system.
The best that I can come up with is that the judge did not necessarily disagree with the plaintiffs that what this laptop rental company was going was despicable, but that he was saying that the WAY the plaintiff’s attorney was trying to argue the case was not going to be very strong.
No matter what the reason, apparently the judge did not feel it necessary to put an end to this invasion of privacy.
Earlier this week I posted about a hacker who broke into the Florida voting database to demonstrate how vulnerable it was (click here for original post on hacked Florda voter database). True to form, Florida officials downplayed the entire incident, stating that Florida elections were now more secure than ever.
Not to be dissuaded, our intrepid hacker has struck again, this time publicly posting a file directory from the voting database with the message “Glad you cleaned things up, pretty secure now guys” (click here for original article on the re-hack).
So this begs the question: Are the Florida officials incompetent or simply liars?
As bad as online security is, I think perhaps the worst aspect of the problem is that those in authority either don’t understand the problem themselves, or perhaps in their petty behind-covering mentality, refuse to acknowledge the problem.
In either event, I doubt that “the powers that be” in Florida have thanked their lucky stars that this guy or gal has only been interested in illustrating his point…not in actually causing any real damage. They seem more interested in trying not to look bad. To that end, they simply throw out that it is a felony to tamper with a voting database and if/when caught, this perpetrator will get jail time.
In my opinion, they ought to thank this hacker…but…since he offended their pride, I doubt that will ever happen. Humility and politics rarely mix.