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Theft of Signal

scaredpoet

Here’s an interesting article from a fellow blogger about his travails with a friendly neighborhood police officer about his “stealing” a wi-fi connection from a public library.

Very interesting now that police officers – some of which may be savvy of these things, but probably quite a few who aren’t – are now patrolling for random people with open laptops. My questions:

1. How did the cop know the person was using WiFi? And what’s more, how does he know which WiFi signal he was using?

2. Being a public library, wasn’t the signal available for the use of – look out now – the general public? If not, why not? And if the signal was for public use (which I suspect it was), what exactly is the difference if that public person was using the signal inside or outside of the building?

3. So he stopped using the connection, and the officer told him to put the computer away anyway. Since when was there a law against using a computer outside?

4. To totally put a wrench in things, I wonder how this same cop would’ve reacted if I had my setup out there. Considering I’d be online but not using anywireless connection at all (the connection would be 1xRTT over CDMA… basically using the cellular network like I normally do when no WiFi connection is available). I doubt whatever shaky ground he was on would’ve been far shakier in such a case.

Michael Moore, speaking-engagement whore

scaredpoet

Did you know that Michael Moore charges $35,000 for a speaking engagement? That’s how much Moore was going to receive as an honorarium for speaking at George Mason University, in Fairfax Virginia just days before the presidential election.

Unfortunately, republicans in that state got wind of the plan, and objected:

“We just felt it wasn’t the most appropriate use of (public) funds, so we decided the best thing to do was cancel,” school spokesman Daniel Walsch said.

[…]

Loudoun County Del. Richard L. Black wrote a letter dated Tuesday urging Merten to reconsider the university’s “lavish payment” to Moore, or to cancel the appearance.

“Tax money is being spent poorly, and for partisan purposes,” wrote Black, who has one of the General Assembly’s most conservative voting records.

What’s interesting about this is that I suppose these same folks weren’t as objecting about the innappropriate use of funds when Newt Gingrich showed up at William & Mary College for his speaking engagement. I guess Newt isn’t as, well, partisan, right?

Now, I agree that 35 grand might be a little much to pay for a guy who can’t even practice what he preaches in “Supersize Me,” and whose “facts” are exaggerated sometimes, at best. But Gingrich is just as much a media whore as Moore; no longer a politician, he pretty much makes his living extolling conservative virtues and gaping in horror at liberal agendas.

With conservatives pulling stunts like this, he’s only gaining credibility when Republicans hold these double standards.

The Mac, and a false sense of security

scaredpoet

Mac users have often extolled the virtues of security relating to their numbers, or rather lack thereof… surely such a niche market can’t be as vulenerable to attack as, say, Windows users, because writing malicious code for such a small segment wouldn’t be worth it. Can it?

Well, Mac users have a very false sense of securty. And the Witty worm is living historical proof.

Unlike the major virii that make headlines today and could potentially infect millions of unprotected computers, the targeted audience for Witty was a mere 12,000 workstations – those running BlackICE technology, found in certain niche firewall programs. And it managed to infect every one of them in less than 45 minutes. And not only did it infect with prodigious speed, but it destroyed with equal prowess too: Witty’s destructive payload would select a random 65K segment of a computer’s hard drive, and delete it, slowly rendering the host machine unusable.

To quote bynkii.com:

On March 8th, 2004, eEye Digital Security discovered a vulnerability in ISS’s BlackICE/RealSecure products. On March 9th, ISS released a patch for the vulnerability.

On March 18th, eEye published a high-level description of the vulnerability. 36 hours later, Witty was released into the wild.

Witty was only 637 bytes long.

Moral of this story? There is no such thing as a lack of interest through lack of numbers.

Why I’m not watching the presidential debates

scaredpoet

It would appear that both the main presidential candidates have decided together that the public should not be allowed to see those same candidates for who they really are. As such, they’ve chosen to give the public a heavily restricted, pre-packaged event this time around during the presidential debates. Things as minute as the room temperature are now strictly governed by a set of rules devised by an accord reached between both camps:

When the first of the three debates starts Thursday, the candidates will wait for a cue from the moderator and then “proceed to center stage, shake hands and proceed directly to their positions behind their podiums.”

Those lecterns must be set 10 feet apart and equally canted toward center stage, measuring 50 inches tall from the audience’s view and 48 inches tall to the writing surface on the candidates’ side. No risers, chairs or stools permitted.

And from CNN:

The 32-page agreement sets out the rules for the debates with great specificity, down to details such as the temperature of the hall, what kind of paper can be used to take notes and who can stand in the wings.

News networks are evidently not immune from the agreement. Even though none of the networks were involved in the agreement or have agreed to abide by these rules, the restrictions mandate that the journalistic pool camera televising the event is not allowed to show cadidates’ reactions to their opponent’s comments, any unfavorable behind-the-head shots, or audience or family members’ reactions.

In other words, if there’s any possibility of a gaffe or the showing of anything, well, human among the two candidates, it’s just not allowed.

Fox News, who will be running the cameras on behalf of the journalistic pool (gee, already this seems “fair and balanced,” eh?), says they will not abide by the agreement… fair enough, considering they didn’t even sign off on it. We’ll see if this truly ends up being the case though, or if they decide last-minute to capitulate.