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posted by LaminatorX on Monday December 29 2014, @11:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the Grab-some-popcorn dept.

Neowin has been following the tweet war between the two hacker collectives Lizard Squad and Anonymous as the former tries to take down the Tor anonymity network. Lizard Squad apparently called off its successful attack on the PlayStation and Xbox networks on Christmas day following a deal or bribe from Kim Dotcom, who offered the attackers free cloud storage. It's not clear what the relationship between Anonymous and Tor is, but Anonymous claims that Tor is going strong in spite of the attack, and that moreover, Lizard Squad is a bunch of lamers.

Anonymous @TheAnonMovement

#LizardSquad member begging us to stop. [image] @GDKJordie @LizardMafia no mercy for dirty lizards.

However, Lizard Squad claims the tweet was faked. Tech Times has another report.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @11:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @11:37AM (#129927)

    I wonder what Natalie Portman's labia smells like.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @12:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @12:14PM (#129932)

      what Natalie Portman's labia smells like.

      If naked and petrified, of hot grits of course.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @11:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @11:54AM (#129931)

    I hope we can find out how. So the folks behind Tor can make the network even stronger.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @12:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @12:49PM (#129936)

    https://stallman.org/doxing.html [stallman.org]

    On doxing, and how to spell it.

    There is a controversy about the proper spelling of the word "doxing"; some write it with a double x, but that is a mistake.

    The digraph "xx" is pronounced like j in Spanish or the "ch" in German "ach". It is used with computers a replacement for the letter exx, which has a single stroke going down to the right and two parallel strokes going down to the left, because computers generally can't handle that letter. The exx is derived from the Greek letter chi, and pronounced like it; but since that Greek letter looks like our "x", it had to be modified with an added parallel stroke when it was introduced into English.

    Thus, we usually have to write the name of the oil company as "Exxon", though its proper spelling is "e exx o n". (Don't make the mistake of pronouncing "Exxon" like "exon"; you will appear unsophisticated.)

    The exx also gives us an unambiguous way to phonetically spell the exclamation of disgust, "yexx" or "ixx".

    Since the word "doxing" is derived from "docs", it should be written with a single "x", as it is pronounced.

    As for the ethics of doxing, I think it is ethical to reveal the home addresses of people who have committed grave crimes such as torture and aggressive war if the state declines to prosecute them, but it is wrong to do that to people one simply disagrees with.

    Copyright 2014 Richard Stallman Released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivatives 3.0 or later

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Monday December 29 2014, @02:05PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 29 2014, @02:05PM (#129950) Journal

      Duly noted and fixed — thanks for not only pointing it out, but giving references, too!

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by khedoros on Monday December 29 2014, @11:58PM

        by khedoros (2921) on Monday December 29 2014, @11:58PM (#130070)
        Please note the date for the original post about Exxon's name on RMS' site [stallman.org]. His post on "doxxing" vs "doxing" is dated the 15th of October, 2014, but it seems to use his previous April Fools' Day post as an example...so I'm not sure that I'd take it so seriously, either. Second, "doxxing" gets about twice as many results as "doxing" on Google. It's somewhat of a neologism, so I'm not sure that an accepted spelling has really solidified.
    • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday December 29 2014, @02:50PM

      by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Monday December 29 2014, @02:50PM (#129959)

      Wait, is this saying that the oil company name is supposed to be pronounced "e (Voiceless velar fricative) on"? Really? Because I've yet to hear anyone, ever, pronounce it like that, not even people who speak languages where that sound is used. And, the Wikipedia page implies pretty damn hard that it's pronounced "exon": 'The company initially planned to change its name to "Exon", in keeping with the four-letter format of Enco and Esso. However, during the planning process, it was noted that James Exon was the governor of Nebraska. Renaming the company after a sitting governor seemed ill-advised, and the second "x" was added to the new name and logo.'

      But I admit that's in a part of the article with no citations. Problem is, when I tried to attack the problem from the other end, I didn't get much further: I tried looking up more info on the letter exx but all the top results are pages quoting Stallman. Perhaps I just suck at searching, though. Anyone got a better citation for us, in either direction?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Zinho on Monday December 29 2014, @05:13PM

        by Zinho (759) on Monday December 29 2014, @05:13PM (#129985)

        Here's an anecdote for you:
        I work in the Oil + Gas industry, and have been on rig sites and in corporate offices operated by the ExxonMobil corporation. I've never heard any of their employees or managers pronounce the company name with the "exx" sound described. If the pronunciation RMS suggested were in fact the preferred one, I'd imagine that their corporate representatives would use it.

        Further reading in Wikipedia suggests that Exxon considers its rendering of the double-X in a single character to be a stylistic part of its trade dress [wikipedia.org], and defends it from use by other corporations. This being the case, I suspect that RMS may be incorrect, and should perhaps stick to computer science instead of dabbling in linguistics.

        --
        "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
        • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday December 29 2014, @06:01PM

          by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Monday December 29 2014, @06:01PM (#130000)

          > I suspect that RMS may be incorrect, and should perhaps stick to computer science instead of dabbling in linguistics.

          After he did so well with getting GNU/Linux into the language?:)

      • (Score: 2) by martyb on Monday December 29 2014, @07:20PM

        by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 29 2014, @07:20PM (#130009) Journal

        Well, THAT was fun.

        Try #1: I thought it might be instructive to find any English words that contained "xx" and use those as a guide to proper pronunciation.
          So, I needed a list of words — the more inclusive the better. Over the years I have collected many a wordlist and by far the most extensive one I have found is allwords.txt.

        With that file in hand, I then issued the command: grep -i "xx" allwords.txt and saw 30 "words" displayed. Of these, 13 were roman numerals (lxx, LXX, xx, xxi, xxii, etc.), and three more were the names of popes (John XXI, John XXII, and John XXIII). Excluding those left me with this list:

        • arexx
        • boxx
        • coxxa
        • exxon
        • Exxon
        • exxon's
        • Exxon Valdez
        • foxx
        • maxx
        • maxxam
        • maxxim
        • NXX
        • rexx
        • REXX

        There are four variants containing "exxon", so I excluded those. It appears that NXX [wikipedia.org] is an acronym for Network Numbering Exchange, REXX [wikipedia.org] is the Restructured Extended Executor interpreted programming language developed at IBM by Mike Cowlishaw, (Hi Mike!) and arexx [wikipedia.org] is a variant of REXX for the Amiga. So I excluded those, too. Now I was left with:

        • boxx
        • coxxa
        • foxx
        • maxx
        • maxxam
        • maxxim

        I won't bother to enumerate the rest of these, but a quick search on each revealed only proper names.

        In summary, all entries in "allwords.txt" that contained "xx" were either used as a roman numeral or as part of a proper name. So, no joy was had in trying to find an English word that could provide guidance to the proper pronunciation of "xx".

        Try #2:Wikipedia's reference for doxxing [wikipedia.org] redirects to: doxing [wikipedia.org] where it states:

        Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents),[1] alternatively spelled doxxing,[2][3] is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.[3][4][5][6] The methods employed in pursuit of this information include searching publicly available databases and social media websites (like Facebook), hacking, and social engineering. It is closely related to cyber-vigilantism, hacktivism, and cyber-bullying.

        In short, both spelling variants are listed, but it appears that the one-x spelling is the preferred variant.

        Try #3: I took a quick scan through thousands of Unicode [wikipedia.org] characters. A useful on-line resource can be found at this Code Charts page which is produced by the Unicode Consortium. [unicode.org]
        Another great resource is located at Unicode - FileFormat.Info · The Digital Rosetta Stone [fileformat.info]. I could not find anything matching a double-slashed "x" char as described by Stallman. Admittedly, I did not look at every single character. Still, a search on "exx" came up empty, too.

        Conclusion: I am of the opinion that "exx" and "ex" sound EXactly alike.

        --
        Wit is intellect, dancing.
        • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday December 29 2014, @08:31PM

          by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Monday December 29 2014, @08:31PM (#130027)

          Fascinating and thorough stuff, thank you! I think your conclusion is spot-on.

          (You fared far better than I did today: I tried looking up something on Wikipedia by just typing in the name and landed on something... rather not work safe.)

          • (Score: 2) by martyb on Monday December 29 2014, @09:49PM

            by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 29 2014, @09:49PM (#130050) Journal

            For those who would like to attempt to reproduce my results, I obtained "allwords.txt" from The National Puzzler's League website where they provide a wide selection of wordlists [puzzlers.org]. Scroll down to the Consolidated list [puzzlers.org] and there you will find these direct links to allwords.txt [puzzlers.org] and allwords.zip [puzzlers.org].

            --
            Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by khedoros on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:01AM

        by khedoros (2921) on Tuesday December 30 2014, @12:01AM (#130073)
        I've seen two posts where he refers to the "xx" in Exxon. The first was an April Fools' posting in 2013, and the second was in October 2014. I'm not planning on digging deeply, but I read the Wikipedia page and came to the same conclusion as you did. It kind of looks like RMS was just making a tongue-in-cheek reference to a previous joke, or something.
    • (Score: 1) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Monday December 29 2014, @07:18PM

      by Bill, Shooter Of Bul (3170) on Monday December 29 2014, @07:18PM (#130008)

      Ok... Stallman is not God, you're aware of that, right?

      He doesn't get to set rules about acceptable behavior that we should all follow. I mean, he had some good ideas on Free Software, but I'm not coming to him for advice on baking the perfect cake, or how to fix my 96 Jetta.

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday December 29 2014, @10:14PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Monday December 29 2014, @10:14PM (#130057) Homepage Journal

      What?

      is pronounced like j in Spanish or the "ch" in German "ach".

      In Spanish, the J is pronounced like the English H. The letter is called jolta, which in English would be spelled holta. It's nothing like the German "ach", so what the hell are you talking about?

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:19PM (#130240)

        It's jota, not jolta.

    • (Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday December 30 2014, @09:12AM

      by mtrycz (60) on Tuesday December 30 2014, @09:12AM (#130155)

      My name is Boxxy, and, uhm, I don't do drugs, no no!

      --
      In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @03:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @03:01PM (#129963)

    Blogger Brian Krebs (formerly reporter for the Washington Post) says he thinks Lizard Squad is two guys [krebsonsecurity.com], whom he names, one from the UK and one from Finland.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @03:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @03:06PM (#129965)

      Oops, sorry. After re-reading, Krebs does not claim that these two kids comprise the entire group (however they might).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @04:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @04:47PM (#129979)

    and I approve of this story.

    PS: hackers smell of poo

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @05:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @05:14PM (#129986)

    Lizard Squad apparently called off its successful attack on the PlayStation and Xbox networks following a deal or bribe from Kim Dotcom. It's not clear what the relationship between Anonymous and Tor is

    It's not clear what the relationship between Kim Dotcom and Playstation / Xbox is either. Why would he bother to meddle in this attack?

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 29 2014, @06:08PM

      by Freeman (732) on Monday December 29 2014, @06:08PM (#130002) Journal

      Maybe he just really likes to game?

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @06:33PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @06:33PM (#130003)

        yeah... his tweet said that he was disappointed he couldnt play with some friends and so he thought he'd offer up free storage space if the attackers would accept a trade from him. They apparently said yes, and he probably was then able to play, and get free positive marketing as part of the package.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:05AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:05AM (#130162)

        Kim got a glass fibre line to New Zealand just to keep his ping to the XBox CoD-Servers low and his player rank at the top spot.
        He noticed he was being spied on when the ping went up to levels normal for mere mortals.

        • (Score: 1) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:29PM

          by Bill, Shooter Of Bul (3170) on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:29PM (#130270)

          Wow if they screwed up his ping times by tapping the fiber, they really screwed up. The right way spys do it doesn't interfere. Its completely ... transparent

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:28AM (#130139)

      It's not clear what the relationship between Kim Dotcom and Playstation / Xbox is either.

      Let me clear that up for you:
      http://www.p4rgaming.com/sony-discusses-taco-bell-promotion-people-will-eat-anything-for-a-ps4/ [p4rgaming.com]
      http://www.8bitbites.com/2013/05/23/nasa-teams-up-with-microsoft-and-pizza-hut-to-bring-3d-pizza-printer-to-xbox-one/ [8bitbites.com]