Well as of today, other then the tcpreplay mailing lists and file downloads, I’ve moved off of SourceForge. SF is a nice service (hard to complain about free) but it’s missing a lot of features which I’ve grown to expect. Hence, I’ve now moved the offical tcpreplay homepage to tcpreplay.synfin.net.
As you’ll no doubt quickly notice, I’ve moved to using Trac which is a great wiki, ticking and front-end to SVN all in one. Be sure to check it out and leave a comment!
Apparently doesn’t mean a whole lot! This is a great little example of how no good deed goes unpunished.
Thanks to Linux Weekly News for that link.
According to this report on USA Today, members of the House of Representitives worked for a total of 47 hours in Janurary and February of this year. As of March 17, the House was in session for just 19 days. At this rate and with plenty of more vacations planned, they’ll only have worked 97 days this year- far fewer then the 141 worked last year.
Lawmakers will make $165,200 this year. Leaders earn more.
Would your boss put up with that?
Michael Crichton wrote a great opt-ed piece for the New York Times called, This Essay Breaks the Law. It’s a great two pager on how the patent system in the US has gone to hell and how it will effect not just large corporations, but you and your family.
Btw, don’t read this next sentance, because just merely thinking it is illegal:
Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.
So let me get this straight… it’s ok for South Park (one of my favorite shows on TV) to make fun of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons, but when they make fun of Scientology (which is more cult then religion) all of a sudden Comedy Central pulls re-airing the episode because of religious insensitivity and the voice of Chef, Issac Hayes, (who is a Scientologist) quits (oddly though, not in protest of the original airing months ago, but in the re-airing).
I thought Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s response was well thought out and to the point:
“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!! [Signed,] Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu.”
To find out more about Scientology you should read this interview and check out Operation Clambake.
Or grab the torrent and download the South Park episode and watch it anyways.
I dunno, I should be shocked (shocked I say!), but I’m not…
Every so often, the US Copyright Office takes comments regarding the DMCA (the law which makes it a crime to use products you paid for in ways other then the creator intended). Most recently, Sony-BMG (a member of the RIAA) added DRM technology to music CD’s (actually, technically, they’re not a real music CD because of the DRM, hence they don’t carry the CD logo) which ended up creating a security hole on people’s computers. This security hole was then abused by other people (criminals to be precise) to break into those computers.
In response, people like Ed Felton requested the the USCO grant an exception to the DMCA which would allow users to remove DRM software which caused harm for the end users. Others asked for an excemption which covered DRM which, “employ access control measures which threaten critical infrastructure and potentially endanger lives.”
Sounds pretty reasonable right? Apparently though the RIAA doesn’t think so.
Richard Bejtlich wonders in light of Tor being able to be used to anonymously attack other systems, will Tor add extrusion detection capabilities?
I seriously doubt it. First, there are technical reasons for this, namely each exit node would need to have their own policy since some operators would want very strict polices and others more open policies. Pushing knowledge of that policy to the rest of the network to make routing decisions would be very complex and incurr high overhead on a system which is by it’s nature not very efficent.
Secondly, adding additional monitoring to an anonymity system is just ass-backwards. The whole point of Tor is to allow people to be untraceable and access content that they normally are unable to access (get around filters) or unwilling to access if it was known they were accessing it. Actively monitoring anonymity systems reduces the effectiveness of the primary purpose of the system.
Lastly, most attack monitoring systems are simply ineffective out of the box. They require extensive configuration and tuning, something that a Tor node operator either has no interest, time or expertise to do.
Well I finally got a real SSL certificate, signed by a trusted CA for www.synfin.net. For less then $20/yr no more annoying popups in webbrowsers, mail clients or my Treo. Anyways, overall I’ve got to say that GoDaddy made the process pretty painless and quick. So far I’ve tested Firefox and Safari and both seem to be happy with the cert. Two thumbs up.
One thing to note, if you’re grabbing the tcpreplay source from SVN the SSL Certificate has changed. If anyone knows how to pass in a certificate chain file for svn let me know.
Shame on Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. But part of me understands. For better or worse, companies are ultimately responsible to their shareholders, not morals or concepts of right and wrong. Even Google’s motto of “Do no evil” is convienently pushed aside when it becomes monetarilay inconvient.
Given the choice of helping the Chinese government put a dissident behind bars or pissing off the Chinese government which allows them access to the largest potential customer base, Yahoo decided to assist the communist dictatorship which resulted in Shi Tao getting 10 years in jail.
But perhaps the most scary thing is that Microsoft couldn’t say under oath wether or not IBM should be ashamed for helping the Nazi’s. I guess if even in hindsight you can’t figure out what is wrong, how can you be expected to know right here and now?
Actually, there are a lot of reasons why I support the Electronic Frontier Foundation. One such reason, is that they’re one of the few organizations fighting for our Fair Use rights. Fair Use provides some basic rights allowing greater creativity and expression of ideas. It also is the legal basis for technologies that we take for granted like the VCR, Tivo and iPod.
And like so many other freedoms, Fair Use is under attack. What are you going to do about it?
