A Brief Primer on Information Security

Published
by
hackjob
on Sun, 12/19/2010 - 23:39
in

It seems the Internet is a dangerous place these days, what with all the DDoS attacks, the opening shots of a coming global cyberwar, attempts to legitimize surveillance through legislation, the opening shots of another cyberwar, the release of tools that make 'hacking' on open wireless networks laughably simple, plus the usual exploits of various popular websites. It's been quite a year.

The variety of threats is really the same as it ever was (script kiddie(s), cyber criminal(s), unscrupulous corporate content providers, ISP's and governments being the main ones) but everyone has started paying a lot more attention to digital security issues.

A list of things to dislike about the previous decade

Published
by
hackjob
on Tue, 01/12/2010 - 19:48
in
00s.jpg
  • The whole idea of it

    Let's face it, the name sucked. The 00's? Really? Did we actually want to go through that?

  • The rate at which iconic people are keeling over

    Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Scotty!, Ray Charles, Farrah Fawcett, Rosa Parks, The Swayze!, Marlon Brando, MJ, George Harrison, Cronkite, John Lee Hooker, Katherine Hepburn, Douglas Adams, Joe Strummer, Betty Freidan, James Brown, John Peel, Susan Sontag, Carson, John Tyndall, Stanislaw Lem, all of the standup comedians worth mentioning, Jane Jacobs, June Calwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Benazir Bhutto, Sydney Pollack, Paul Newman, DeepThroat, Arthur C. Clarke, Albert Hoffman, Yolanda King, Jeff Healey, Bea, David Karradine, the last of the WW1 veterans, Edmund Hillary, Richard Wright, John Hughes, Alec Guiness, Hunter S. Thompson, Pierre Trudeau, Betty Wilder, Indra Devi, Nina Simone, Bernard Katz, Peter Ustinov, the founders of most of the left wing Palestinian movements of the 70's, Jacques Derrida, and the Ramones. All of them.

    Hell -- Superman, The Pope, Saddam, Arafat, Bobby Fischer, James Brown and Pavarotti
    all went (not that I liked any of them...ok, except for James Brown). We even lost Mr. Rogers for fucks sake.

  • Imperialism

    • that'll be 25 cents per URL, please.

    Published
    by
    hackjob
    on Wed, 11/25/2009 - 22:54
    in
    alexwhite090300071.jpg

    You might recall News Corporation tyrant...er, mogul Rupert Murdoch earlier this year signalling his plan to make users pay for access to content on the websites of his newspapers. At the time, the neo-con media Boss began opining that the days of a free and open internet were limited.

    Now it seems as if other large corporations are falling into lockstep with this idea, potentially setting the stage for a more entrenched system of two-tiered access to online media content. The likely pact between Microsoft and NewsCorp, along with vocal support from other industry figures is an unwelcome development. Things seem to have come to a head with Assoicated Press chief Tom Curley's speech to the World Media conference labelling RSS feed syndicators (you? me? everybody?) 'content plagiarists' and accusing them of 'exploiting' the 'content providers' such as NewsCorp and AP. James Harding (Murdoch's minion in charge of the Financial Times) spoke in a similar vein, calling FT 'Independent Journalism' and 'confronting' the BBC because they are publicly owned and run and thus implicitly not independent.

    Well.