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Tech at Night: Microsoft, Blogetry, Issa, Net Neutrality

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 19th, 2010 at 11:45 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Tech at Night

Uh oh, we’re getting close to midnight on the east coast, and Tech at Night for Monday still isn’t out! Time to hurry…

We start this week with the shutdown of Blogetry.com. I’ve been assured this is a very disturbing thing that should concern me greatly, but I’m not so sure. Look: when your free service has become a nest of sites conspiring to distribute copyrighted works, you should expect things like this.

Do your homework. Don’t be the failed state on the Internet. Don’t host your site on services that act that way, either.

Something else I expect to hear about some more is the newest Microsoft Windows glitch. It’ll kill the Internet! is the cry. Sure, we’ve heard it before. I remember when the Michelangelo virus was the one that was going to destroy us all. But it’s super serial this time, this “LNK exploit?” Bah. The Internet is more robust than that. We may have some slowness, but capable engineers will deal with it, because the Internet is mostly unregulated and ISPs have the ability to act quickly without Commissars from the White House or the FCC dictating to them how they must route packets.

Oh yes, and the opposition to that freedom, is apparently still racist, if the “group of minority and diversity organizations” (The Hill’s words) are to be believed about the FCC Deem and Pass Reclassification route to Net Neutrality. Pass the popcorn.

Lastly, Darrell “The Machine” Issa is still pushing for oversight of the White House, now calling for records to be kept of White House telecommuting, so that working from home can’t be used to get around data storage requirements applicable to anyone working physically in the White House. Good on Issa.

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COMMENTS

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  • eastbaylarry

    if this is the confiscated server I commented on last week, my concern was the WAY it was done rather than the justification, (which was probably valid).
    The cross-talk about this implied that the ‘authorities’ would not talk to the owner fearing he would ‘destroy evidence’, but it’s not like the guy is unaware that something’s up.

  • acat

    I have to assume that anything done on the corp-provided laptop is visible to the corp. I do, however, have the freedom to open up my Mac and live my online so-called life without having them look over my shoulder.

    The question for me comes down to where the government should draw the line – whether it should be drawn to restrict privacy even more for government workers because of the potential for abuse.

    I hope Issa keeps after this, in any case. Obviously, we can’t fill all government positions with angels – but we should at least try to find stand-up guys instead of tax cheats and con men.

    Mew

  • Joliphant

    Hasn’t that been their business model since the 90s and Active X ?

    You are correct if we have survived what they have done on purpose there isn’t much to worry about from what was done by accident.

    the blogetery take down is a bit more curious

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/201423/blogeterycom_shut_down_danger_on_the_internet.html?tk=hp_blg

    I found this on pc world, it looks like they are saying the site was hosting and Al Queda hit list and bomb making instructions. Don’t see how that mandates the removal of 70,000 blogs but this seems more Abbot and Costello than Gestapo

  • nohone2

    I am a former Microsoft employee, an author of part of the COM (ActiveX) specification, and have written a couple books on the subject. Perhaps you could explain to us what the difference is between ActiveX and Plug-ins such as those supported by Netscape, Firefox, Safari, and the other popular browsers. A plug-in architecture is necessary to allow in-browser components such as Java, Flash, media players, etc. There is no difference between how these browsers allow components to be hosted by the browser. There have been security holes in ActiveX/COM components, just as there have been security holes in plug-in components for the other browsers, but claiming it is the fault of ActiveX is incorrect.

    There have been security holes discovered through scripting, and scripting, through some marketing terminology (ActiveScripting is often called ActiveX script), but then again, all browsers have had vulnerabilities through scripting exploits.

    So if you wish to claim one component architecture is a security problem, then ***all*** browsers have security holes through their component architecture.

  • Joliphant

    “So if you wish to claim one component architecture is a security problem, then ***all*** browsers have security holes through their component architecture.”

    What you are doing is comparing a cyst to a malignant melanoma and saying see they are both unwanted growths. One may be a potential problem the other is an inherent problem.

    Active X exposes the underlying OS to the web, java, flash, pdf plugins expose the plug in then the browser to the web. The universe of potential security holes for Active X is considerably larger than that of restricted sandbox plug ins.

    and just

  • Berean

    Computerworld is not exactly the top of the pack in reputability, especially in matters Microsoft (they are blatantly anti-MS and it has shown before in stories they ran that turned out not to be true).

    In this case, the blogger is doing a LOT of extrapolation. The reality is the only way to use this “exploit” is to plug in a USB drive with the malware and then execute it or to connect to a network or WebDAV share containing the malware. In other words, this is not an exploit passed over webpages – you need to deliberately connect to an infected source.

  • tropicgirl

    “”"Look: when your free service has become a nest of sites conspiring to distribute copyrighted works, you should expect things like this.”"”

    Once again, a writer at RedState shows a lack of scrutiny toward the “copyright infringement” system, as it has been manufactured today, into a total tool to be used, at will, by bullying corporations.

    I would point you toward the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, regarding their opinion of copyrights and HOW THEY SHOULD BE EXTREMELY LIMITED. This is free enterprise and the creator must take responsibility for making their work public. Please google for yourself.

    The main reason for this is that copyrights today, and “intellectual property” (no such thing) ARE USED TODAY FOR UNFAIR COMPETITION AND CENSORSHIP. Take it from the mouths of the Founding Fathers directly, as they predicted. Its a tool of monopolies and commercial thugs.

    Example: Public domain classics too numerous to name, “claimed” by Disney as their own property. We could go on forever (Microsoft, et al.) on examples of unfair competition and censorship. We could also ask You Tube about ITS copyright abuses, toward the original artists, no less. Copyright accusations are often used by groups, such as Scientologists, to censor information about themselves on the web.

    As I had an issue with the praise of women’s liberation on Red State, being used to further the war in Afghanistan, a few months ago, I have as issue here. Please RESEARCH THE CONSERVATIVE POSITION BEFORE YOU PARROT THE CORPORATE LINE and join the neo-cons and neo-libs. Good luck, seriously.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Look. Firstly, you haven’t the foggiest idea what my position on copyright is. So you’re just beclowning yourself here.

    But if you don’t like the law, you change the law. You don’t just ignore it.

  • nohone2

    You are mixing the architecture with the hosted component. ActiveX is the underlying mechanism allowing components to be loaded into the browser. Flash, Java, etc are the components that are loaded. Java, Flash, etc., and in IE these components are ActiveX controls loaded into IE. Firefox contains their own component model that allows components to be loaded, such as Flash, Java, etc. This FF component model as well as the one in IE (and known as ActiveX/COM), is what makes the object tag in HTML possible. FF does not contain a special programming language to separate the component from the OS, and therefore the component has full access to the hardware and OS, just as ActiveX allows.

  • nohone2

    Let me add an example to clarify –
    For years people have complained about the performance of Flash when using the OS X (Mac) operating system. Adobe’s response that it was Apple’s fault, because Apple had not released the hardware acceleration API documentation (you know, that same thing that people complained about with MS, where they were gaining a competitive advantage by keeping special APIs for themself). Apple recently (within the past couple months) released the APIs to allow Adobe to hardware accelerate Flash when running on OS X, and therefore when Flash runs within Safari, FF, etc., it would be hardware accelerated. Now if Safari and FF did not offer a plug-in component model architecture that allowed access to the underlying OS, then what good would this newly-documented API be to Adobe?

  • Joliphant

    Flash and Java run restricted pseudocodes that are not native to the underlying architecture.

    For a java bytecode program to infect your pc, it first has to compromise the bytecode interpreter ( your java) then it has to further exploit that vulnerability to put native code on the system and get it to execute.

    if you want to view it as layers

    ——————- Browser
    ||
    \ /
    ——————- Sandbox (Flash/Java/Etc)
    ||
    \ /
    ——————- Native OS (Windows/Mac/Linux/Qnx/Etc)

    With Active X you dont have that sandbox layer. Active X controls are windows programs pure and simple. That was their point. If Microsoft had of been able to establish Active X as a legitimate way of creating websites they would have been able to balkanize the web into windows only websites and other.

  • nohone2

    I am not talking about some pseudo code, I am talking about how something plugs into the hosting program. ActiveX provides the infrastructure how components are hosted. Java, in IE, is an ActiveX component. Flash is an ActiveX component. Any plug-in component for IE is a ActiveX component. Likewise, FireFox has a model where components, such as Flash, Java, etc. plug into the browser. When using the Windows OS, Java is a Windows program, Flash is a Windows irregardless of which browser you are using. ActiveX defines the protocols to which a component plugs into IE (and other ActiveX control containers), just like FF defines their own, plug-in protocol for hosting components.

    ActiveX makes it easier for components to be resued among many different programs, but underneath, there is not one bit of difference between ActiveX and tthe plug-in model used by other browsers.

  • Joliphant

    There is a vast difference between having one or two trusted plug ins and having everything be a plugin.

    From a security perspective trust is defined as rights extended to something that can break your system. Active X extends trust to the entire web java and flash extends trust to macro media and sun microsystems