Posted on 10/03/2010 7:30:05 PM PDT by cycjec
Recently a high school in Pennsylvania shocked the nation when it became the subject of a lawsuit alleging that webcams in school-issued laptop computers were being remotely activated by school staff, used to snap photos of students in their homes. As a computer security professional I dug into the story with the help of my colleagues, and together we found that the networked webcam capability built into these computers by the school district was absolutely real. Our findings were greeted with surprise and dismay; they have caused a nationwide outcry. The truth is, this shouldn't have been a surprise. America has been on this road for years.
... ...
Historian James Bradley writes in FlyBoys about a nation of young men growing up in pre-WWII America tinkering, modifying, and optimizing a new wave of internal combustion powered machines. Bradley talks about the inherent advantage that this generation of tinkers gave America in the coming aerial conflict, where pushing new technology to its limits was the key to a new form of warfare: aerial combat. When it comes to information technology, it's time we ask ourselves: where will we find our next generation of computing tinkers? This problem is only now becoming apparent at a national level.
Social Security office, and the VA to get the varicose veins looked at, then to the dentist for a refit of the dentures. Why?
/johnny
As far as experimenting with systems is concerned, some of the 3D software is quite challenging, and pushing terabytes on a home system definitely gives you a whole different understanding of everything.
Have a lot of fun with linux still...
Doing “stuff.”
Did a family reunion this weekend, and the 18-20 y.o group (7 of them) were playing a retro form of D&D that I recognized from the '70s, and they were shocked to know that I knew anything about it.
When I asked to borrow a laptop, because the one I had with didn't have specific mem-card reader that I needed, one loaned me one instantly.
Later they came around and the kid was suprised that I had it operating, since he had it locked up pretty tight. He had loaned it to me to give me a gig for being an old fart.
I mentioned that maybe he should get rid of some of the stuff on it before his grandmother saw the stuff. His blood pressure dropped pretty hard when I mentioned some specifics. ;)
Later, I left an 8" floppy (SSSD) and a thank you note on the laptop. ;)
There are old hackers, and there are new hackers. This article is sorta silly.
/johnny
:-)
I would be *delighted* if his alarm is overstated.
The guys most on top of thinking about all that were in their 50s. In fact, one of them brought me an article about that development, and shortly after that I met the 50 year old guy who'd quit being an Office Director at the Pentagon so he could work in the Postal Service with the latest and greatest stuff ~ and I've mentioned we bought some of everything in those days ~ and I mean "everything".
Still, later (5 years+), when it came to C and C+ and C++ our management could not be convinced anybody at USPS should be trained ~ guess management simply didn't understand what that was all about.
All of the hackers have either grown old or have been hounded into hiding by the digital rights management people. Everything now is proprietary, secret and expensive.
Back when I could buy a good compiler and assembler for under a hundred bucks, I could actually control my environment. Now I can only do that in Linux. I can’t afford programs like Windows C++, it just costs too much for tinkering with. I do like Linux and the free stuff that you can get. Once upon a time, achieving the distincting hacker was something to be proud of; it meant that you could understand, design and build amplifiers and radios. You new how a computer worked and could write self-modifying code; something they don’t even teach anymore. Now hacker means you are a criminal in the eyes of society, because your knowledge is dangerous and a potential threat; like you would ever do something actually illegal with your knowledge.
"Old age and trickery shall always defeat youth and ambition."
I used to sneer when I read that, now I find it a source of great comfort.
I don't know if this is still their policy, but for a while whenever Microsoft released a new version of Visual Studio, they would make the previous version available as a free download.
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