[CanRay]

Back when I first moved to the city, a lot of wireless networks were just starting to get security passwords, and a lot of unsecured ones were around.  (I also had to support the damned things through tech support, so don't get me started, I'll end up in the corner, rocking back and forth, crying.).

Anyhow, I was at my local lounge enjoying the one thing I had going while rebuilding my life (I knew *NO ONE* in the city at the time!), wings and beer.  Well, football was on, and a trio of jocks from a close university were sitting and watching the game.  Two of them start getting into a massive argument about the stats of one player, and it was starting to get quite violent in language and posture.  Finally, the third, and largest fellow goes, "THAT'S IT, THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO DEAL WITH THIS!" in a massive booming voice.

He then pulls out an Apple iBook, finds an unsecured network at a weak signal strength, and looks up the stats somewhere online, "Bob's right, Ralph is wrong.  We're done."

I cried in my beer then.  Nerd culture stolen by jocks like it was our lunch money.   

[bigity]

We just have to take pride in nerdier things.  Like hashes or quips like 'There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.'

[Onion Man]

We just have to take pride in nerdier things.  Like hashes or quips like 'There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.'

Boolean logic is the only logic.

[Digital_Viking]

We just have to take pride in nerdier things.  Like hashes or quips like 'There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.'

Or we (nerd and geek culture) can stop being as inclusive as others and embrace the full spectrum of participants instead of finding minutae and other ways to put us above folks.

I'm a comic book nerd and security geek. I have loved/been fascinated by technology and hacking since the days of phreaking (yes, I'm as old as Fastjack and Bull)

I'm also 6'5" and a United States Marine on civilian duty. I played sports throughout school and I geek out as much about football,hockey and soccer as I do about comics, PRNG and cleartext.

There is absolutely no reason we as a culture should find ways to further differentiate ourselves or make "our thing" different - I'm glad that nerdy,geeky things are becoming mainstream accepted, and that my co workers who gave me puzzled looks previously are starting to get Anonymous, World Of Warcraft and Captain America.

[bigity]

Someone got way more serious than anyone else was all the sudden

[Digital_Viking]

Someone got way more serious than anyone else was all the sudden

/rage
I WAS NOT!!!!11!!!!
/rage

 

[bigity]

That's more like a Marine should be

You guys have my favorite military joke, about the Department of Navy and being the men's department thereof.  The crusty old gunny who told me that really had a way with telling that one.

[Deliverator]

I love encryption... I also love how the NSA and DOD are freaking out because civilian encryption is getting to be so good that if they haven't been actively tracking you there is no point in even attempting to decrypt your information because it will be severely outdated by the time they can make any sense of it.

[CanRay]

I'm glad that nerdy,geeky things are becoming mainstream accepted, and that my co workers who gave me puzzled looks previously are starting to get Anonymous, World Of Warcraft and Captain America.

At the risk of sounding like an Enraged Hipster (If there is such a thing)...

THEY'RE STEALING OUR DAMNED CULTURE!

'Course, that might also come from being Canadian and not having much culture of our own already that the US hasn't bought wholesale already...  *Shrugs*  OK, rage over.  Sorry about that.

...

DAMNIT!

[FastJack]

At the risk of sounding like an Enraged Hipster (If there is such a thing)...

THEY'RE STEALING OUR DAMNED CULTURE!

'Course, that might also come from being Canadian and not having much culture of our own already that the US hasn't bought wholesale already...  *Shrugs*  OK, rage over.  Sorry about that.

...

DAMNIT!

Wait, I thought hipsters stole their culture from everyone else...

Now I'm confused.

[Digital_Viking]

I love encryption... I also love how the NSA and DOD are freaking out because civilian encryption is getting to be so good that if they haven't been actively tracking you there is no point in even attempting to decrypt your information because it will be severely outdated by the time they can make any sense of it.

Hell they have been freaking since the days of PGP 

[CanRay]

Wait, I thought hipsters stole their culture from everyone else...

Now I'm confused.

I came very, very close to going, "I liked it better before they sold out.".

I now feel very, very dirty, and no amount of washing is getting me clean.  Where's the brain bleach?

[hobgoblin]

I love encryption... I also love how the NSA and DOD are freaking out because civilian encryption is getting to be so good that if they haven't been actively tracking you there is no point in even attempting to decrypt your information because it will be severely outdated by the time they can make any sense of it.

Hell they have been freaking since the days of PGP 

Yea, back in the early 90s USA classified anything above 64-bit encryption as weapons. Want to export it, you required a special license and likely DOD approval pr customer. Then came PGP, a humble shareware program released onto the early net. Damn did that ever get a big reaction...

Now there are programs like GPG (GNU Privacy Guard), a compatible, and widely used, encryption and certification system developed and maintained by the FSF.

Btw, some years ago i learned that one could only do online banking using IE in South Korea. This because they did not bother waiting on the development of SSL/HTTPS. Instead their government got a home grown standard made, and implemented in ActiveX (The single biggest security hole in IE).

[theKernel]

that have exactly zero to do with encryption. The only way it can help is if the next hop info is inside the encrypted data. Btw, Bluetooth uses such a setup in the 2.4Ghz band and recently someone made a Bluetooth sniffer that can keep up with the hopping.

You read 2600 huh?

Anyways if you can't hack in using software like ophcrack or something then you can use social engineering to get in. Windows will always be a security joke because they have the biggest target on their back and all the people that think apples any better will be rudely awakened in the coming years as to how wrong they are. As well as the fact that the people that citizens should be mad at are crackers not hackers. Hackers invent jailbreaking, make the connect usable on a computer and do a myriad of other things. Crackers steal information and money and break computer systems. The reason PSN was attacked was a combination of their stifling of Geohot through a settlement deal where he is no longer allowed to assist in any way or do any coding for jailbreaking a sony device along with sony stopping the ability to make the ps3 a linux box. Long story short they made alot of people mad and left passwords in plain text like idiots. Crackers did this. I don't condone what they did but we all love to see corps being attacked don't we? Or else we're denying that a part of us always lives vicariously through our characters in this game. Everyone has their purpose and when you make the wrong people mad things happen. But look at lulzsec, they terrorized for no other reason then a love for destruction even if the people that were attacked may or may not be liked by me or you. They attacked lockheed martin for god sakes lol. There are a billion people out there who goad security gurus to be better at their jobs and sometimes its not for the best (the manner it happens) I'm getting off track and just saying what I see in the computer world and what I will be dealing with in my career. Don't get me started on Anonymous lol

[hobgoblin]

that have exactly zero to do with encryption. The only way it can help is if the next hop info is inside the encrypted data. Btw, Bluetooth uses such a setup in the 2.4Ghz band and recently someone made a Bluetooth sniffer that can keep up with the hopping.

You read 2600 huh?

Hackaday.com actually. They had a video linked a while back from the creator of the Ubertooth talking about the process of doing so, at one convention or other.