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Linux Pipeline Newsletter www.LinuxPipeline.com Wednesday, November 16, 2005 In This Issue: - New Google Tool Does . . . Everything - Group Wants To Get Mobile Linux On A Roll - IBM, Novell Lead Group To Consolidate Linux Patents - More News... - Sony's 'Fix' Worse Than Original Problem, Experts Warn - Interview: Ethernet's Inventor Sounds Off - Review: OpenOffice.org 2.0 Office Suite For Windows - More Picks... Join Intelligent Enterprise for a FREE, live TechWebCast on Setting the Standard: A Formal Definition of the Enterprise Service Bus. In this presentation, Sonic Software will present a formal definition of ESB using industry standard notation, and share - through a number of customer examples - why it should be at the core of your SOA. Thursday, December 1, 2005 - 9:00-10:00 AM PT / 12:00-1:00 PM ET "http://www.techweb.com/webcasts/esb120105" ----------------------------------------- Editor's Note: Payback They would've shot the guy by now. That's what I keep thinking as I read one article after another detailing Sony's hell-bent rocket flight into what will certainly be billion-dollar lawsuit territory. By "the guy," I simply mean any garden-variety sociopath who had caused this much damage to so much property, all through the use of a rootkit-spyware combo that he spirited onto victims' systems by disguising it as a music CD. Nobody uses Celine Dion as a malware carrier, pal: Blindfold. Cigarette. Boom. And then maybe bill the next of kin for the bullets used to dispatch him, just for good measure. Yet this isn't some pathetic 22 year-old holed up in his parents' basement. It's a wholly-owned subsidiary of one of the world's largest industrial conglomerates. As a result, when it . . . --Treats millions (and it could easily be that many) of its own customers like thieving little turds, deliberately and systematically placing unambiguous malware on their systems, all without their knowledge or consent. --Hands other malware purveyors a gift in the form of a ready-to-repurpose rootkit that might as well be a hand grenade with a missing pin. --Issues a "fix" for its initial act of computing evil that, according to security experts, causes another, even more serious security gap. --Initially obstructs users' efforts to remove its garbage from their private property, and even now issues arrogant claims reserving the right to protect its content with future acts of fraud, trespass, theft by denial-of-use. . . .all of the law-and-order types who went after Kevin Mitnick as if he were the second coming of Adolf Hitler suddenly have someplace else to be. In fact, the silence from the door-kicking, gun-toting, cybecrime tough-guy contingent is overwhelming. Sony didn't make a "mistake" here -- and frankly, anyone willing to apply that term to the company's actions needs to spend some quality time with a dictionary. The person(s) within Sony who authorized this fiasco knew what they were doing and what the consequences might be -- and assumed they could ride out the aftermath if things went badly. Things did, indeed, go badly. And while the size of the ensuing class-action lawsuit might make a business peddling mail-order Thalidomide seem lucrative by comparison, a far more relevant and important idea -- that we should find the Sony decision-makers in this case and slap them with felony charges -- somehow has yet to enter the mainstream discussion. There's only one way, really, to make "don't do it" a more compelling moral to this story than "don't get caught": Identify the individual culprit(s), charge them, try them, and then leave them in peace to work out the bunk assignments with Tiny, and No-Neck, and their other new cellmates. If it's the right punishment for kids who are usually more interested in planting a virtual flag to mark a hacker "conquest," it's the ideal punishment for a bunch of well-paid rats who think they're above the law.
Matt McKenzie
Don't let future editions of Linux Pipeline Newsletter go missing. Take a moment to add the newsletter's address to your anti-spam whitelist: linuxed@techwire.com If you're not sure how to do that, ask your administrator or ISP. Or check your anti-spam utility's documentation. Thanks. Top Linux News New Google Tool Does . . . Everything Google's new tool, dubbed Base, promises to locate, instantly and accurately, nearly any type of user-generated content. Among other feats, Base could allow Google to claim billions of dollars in classified-ad revenues and turn ts once-fantastic objective of organizing the world's information into an achievable goal.
Group Wants To Get Mobile Linux On A Roll
IBM, Novell Lead Group To Consolidate Linux Patents
Microsoft: Sony Rootkit's Gotta Go
Google's Web-Analytics Free-For-All
EBay Opens Dev Program, APIs To All Comers
PodShow Catches iPodder Creator Grumet Editor's Picks Sony's 'Fix' Worse Than Original Problem, Experts Warn Security experts say Sony BMG's uninstaller is a bigger security threat than the corporate-backed malware it is supposed to remove. Even as some experts note that Sony has exposed victims' PCs to some of the most serious types of security problems, others are concluding that Sony's now-ticking time bomb may have landed on millions of consumers' PCs.
Interview: Ethernet's Inventor Sounds Off
Review: OpenOffice.org 2.0 Office Suite For Windows
Furious Users Keep Sony On The Hotseat
OpenMFG Uses Open Source Model To Partners' Advantage Cast Your Vote Now! Google has long been considered a friend and an ally to the open-source community. Today, however, as the company grows from a scrappy upstart into an IT superpower, is it time for open-source supporters to take a tougher attitude? Get More Out Of Linux Pipeline Try Linux Pipeline's RSS Feed Linux Pipeline's content is available via RSS feed: Get RSS link. The feed is also auto-discoverable to many RSS readers from the Linux Pipeline home page. Note: RSS feeds are not viewable in most Web browsers. You need an RSS reader, Web-based service, or plug-in to view RSS. Find out which RSS readers the Pipeline editors recommend.
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Join Intelligent Enterprise for a FREE, live TechWebCast on Setting the Standard: A Formal Definition of the Enterprise Service Bus. In this presentation, Sonic Software will present a formal definition of ESB using industry standard notation, and share - through a number of customer examples - why it should be at the core of your SOA. Thursday, December 1, 2005 - 9:00-10:00 AM PT / 12:00-1:00 PM ET "http://www.techweb.com/webcasts/esb120105" ----------------------------------------- Manage Your Newsletter Subscription We take your privacy very seriously. Please review our Privacy Policy.
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