younata

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's back up and take a deep breath.

Ok. These politicians get "elected" because they, quite simply, can buy their elections. When you can tell your constituents "look! I got you <latest bill of pork>! I'm doing good for you! Re-elect me!", they will re-elect you.

The only thing we're guilty of is being incredibly short-sighted.

Sure!

starts off with <Topiary> telling everyone to get off this network, ED IRC (it could be a server in their own network, but if that were the case their network would already be breached)

<pwnsauce> calls for a new operation (similar to how anon has various operations).

Then <Topiary> admits to hiring a botnet to help them.

<joepie91> chimes in, talking about an irc server exploit is basically killing his computer.

<storm> asks for an exploit, <lol> says he has it, but is scared to get it out and give it to him (meaning that, for all his "security knowledge" he still managed to get viruses on his stuff.

About half an hour later, <Topiary> insults a few people they want to crack, and mentions an apache 0 day exploit. The rest is them asserting their masculinity, and a mention of the gawker root.

oh, and then a message saying one of the guys is in FBI custody, but I assume that's not part of what you wanted translated.

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation." [1] There are many places for insulting others, HN is not one of those places.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

oh, gods, BASIC.

my first programming experience was in unstructured BASIC. I think I've managed to reverse the brain damage from that, but I can't be too sure.

Indeed. I implemented a linked list in C the other day, and it's the most fun I've had programming in years.

as an aside, I feel old being able to talk about having programmed for years.

I thought that calling patent infringement based on a patent you applied for is illegal. I thought you have to have been awarded the actual patent.

My understanding of patent laws is near non-existant, though. I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong.

In a month, we may see a new headline: The Police Stole my MacBook.

just convince them that patent trolls support the "homosexual agenda".

Doing that is the hard part. Good luck.

incorrect, watson was fed a text of the question over ethernet right after Trebek finished reading the question.

Imagine, in about 20-30 years time, humans land on Mars. If Spirit still has its data stored to disk, and we can retrieve it, then that would mean that the most expensive rescue operation in human history was made to rescue... a robot that was designed to last 90 days on the Martian surface.

I wasn't going for the legality of the issue, I was going for it's overall more dangerous to drive while using the phone.

This looks to be a ton of fun. Thanks!

If you're in your car (which implies you're driving, since it's YOUR car), you shouldn't be using a phone.

Even though these aren't really obscure, but they're worth mentioning as some of the best unix "tools" I've seen:

    Irssi - irc client
    Mutt  - email client

These are mentioned mostly because he included the newsbeuter rss client (which is amazing, I highly recommend it).

USAA is also available only to members of the military and their families (they've been getting more lax over the years, though).

There's been serious malware on the mac for ages. You have to be doing some really stupid things to get it, e.g. illegally downloading software, several porn sites do it, etc.,

It looks as if it's now requiring much less stupidity to get malware on the mac, but that's really all that's changed. Email scams are now considering the fact that I might be using a mac.

This is seriously awesome. It'll allow us to have hard data on where corruption is most concentrated. Maybe, we'll be able to focus on fixing those areas, to make the world a better place.

"hoisting the red and black"?

Google doesn't help (suggests maybe resorting to piracy, but that wouldn't result in you getting kidnapped/murdered), so would you explain that idiom?

s/bay/state of California/

Sadly, it's true.

children have always had less rights than adults.

One of the things I've learned in the year I've been a legal adult is the amount of rights I suddenly was granted. It took a while for me to adjust to both the freedom, and the idea that I can actually screw up my entire life with just one/a few bad decision(s).

why do they need to enter the console market? They already dominate the handheld market, which is a better thing to dominate. It may just be me, but I play games on my iphone far more often than I play stuff on any of my consoles.

You know what? I was born after the 8/16 bit era (well, born just as the 16 bit was closing). My choices for playing these games are: ebay, emulators, and virtual consoles.

ebay can get too expensive REALLY quickly. emulators are legal, but the games I would play on them are definitely pirated. That, and I have to deal with a control scheme the game wasn't designed to be played on. virtual consoles offer pretty much the exact experience as the real thing, and they're affordable.

So, yeah, I'd much rather pay for a Virtual Console than go out and buy hardware which is older than me.

Oh, thanks. Signed up!

hasn't iChat had this for several years now?

The link that points to [1] states the difference in where the money goes for CDs/donating. I wasn't aware of this split.

[1] http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=130322381504860&w...

or, you know, just donate to the project.

oh. right. that would make all the difference, wouldn't it?

Interesting speculation, but this likely isn't what happened.

As others have pointed out, for a MiTM/ddos attack, the ps3 isn't a better target than anything else out there. In fact, given the amount of ps3s, it makes more sense to go after windows update and get what is likely an order of magnitude more infected windows machines.

Even if I had a ps3 (which I don't, while I wanted one about 6 months ago, the geohot incident has dissuaded me from touching new sony equipment), I wouldn't be worried.

It could be. Anonymous is stating that they have nothing to do with it, though it could be a more radical offshoot of them.[1]

It could be some massive hardware problem, and they are taking advantage of the ill-will related to geohot to say that it's not their fault, even though it could be.

[1] http://www.anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=848

You suffer from a common delusion here: everybody wants to program.

I attend a uni where probably 75% of students are in either science or engineering, yet I still come across a lot of people who don't like coding (example: my current roommate). Just because it's becoming easier for people to learn to program doesn't mean that people want to learn it.