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It's a nice utopia but there's a simple flaw: decreasing the rationality of terrorism is no easier than decreasing the rationality of full-scale war.

That's not to say that you're not right - removing the incentive is key. But it's wise to avoid appeasement as well - and as we didn't have rational policies in place to prevent this outcome, and now face hatred, many, from what I've seen and read, translate reducing motivation into appeasement.

The other problem with the concept is that it's bad enough that the US has been guilty of things - subsequent propaganda enflames things beyond apology or fix.

It's a common myth, for some folks, that we're just all people and that we can all learn to get along. The sad reality is that the world's socio-economic / cultural divides are so incredibly great that that makes many apparently probative solutions wrong. Some cultures simply have batshit crazy values - and both sides of that looking at each other think so.

Then, add in that there will always be another megalomaniac around the corner - history's taught us that. Forget social forces and yadda yadda - the irrational criminal mindset will always exist.

So - the student's example response in Lessig's article sounds great - but it's impractical in the real world.

It requires rationality. Our electorate isn't rational - they don't even vote, much less get non-propaganda education on the issues - so how will our elected officials suddenly be rational? And if we consider mid-East terrorists, driven by a religious oligarchy then they're no better than the oligarchy of our religious right.

Sad.

Some helpful links:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/view_pr.html (scroll down for Lessig's essay)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html (spawned Lessig's essay)

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/06/gallery_ascii_art/1.jpg

It's about pay-per-view.

Yeah, that's what they said about the Broadcast Flag. Most people didn't believe them then, and rightfully so.

Oops, I forgot lacks basic security. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/windows7

Did you even read this article? The claim Wired is reporting about is that Windows 7 security isn't such a big leap over Vista that you can ditch your anti-virus software. They go on to conclude, "Clearly, the company is sensationalizing its findings in order to sell more anti-virus software.".

Oops, I forgot lacks basic security. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/windows7

What would the NSA's, CIA's, DIA's, GCHQ's ect do if the public started running heavy encryption in their pockets?
Part of the charm is tracking, easy to tap, seeing who you phone and getting a voice print.
Some computer company could upset this balance of total information awareness that is the phone.
Costas Tsalikidis, the Greek telco whistleblower who was found hanged.
Adamo Bove head of security at Telecom Italia who exposed the CIA renditions via cell phones ‘fell’ to his death.
Or http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/blackberry-spies/
So an average this is all just warmed over epic Magic Lantern for your pocket.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software)
An always on zfoneproject.com like layer would be great :)

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/apple-denied-health-care-app-for-political-reasons-developer-says/ Too late for that idea...

Just because they did censure another app, doesn't mean we shouldn't congratulate them when they do NOT censure. Quite the contrary.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/apple-denied-health-care-app-for-political-reasons-developer-says/ Too late for that idea...

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/apple-denied-health-care-app-for-political-reasons-developer-says/ Or just google the phrase "apple rejects health care app".

Amazing! There's hundreds of posts on this page, and yours is near the bottom. It's the only one to point out that the hacker story was a HOAX.

The true cause of the power failure in 2007 was not hackers. It was shitty maintenance causing a failure.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/brazil_blackout/

One of these characters is already under indictment for similar shenanigans http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/rbs-worldpay , so a good bet is that the Feds have a rat, sorry, a cooperative concerned citizen, big deal. The real story, not these unfortunate Estonian freelance security consultants, but that if RBS was stupid enough to get nailed like this, who else is this sloppy with their security? A decent amount of work and planning went into this ( except for the exit strategy), and no one noticed all of the poking and prodding that was going on in RBS' network. Banking regulators have their own IT security compliance audit, that is a lot more serious than PCI certification, so did RBS have a few holes that got covered up for the audit, then put back in production later? We may never know.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/rbs-worldpay/

The biggest worry to me is the line "...not to disclose the request". They can issue a bogus request and get shot down via proper channels. But asking everyone to keep it a secret smells fishy.

There's been a lot of this since Patriot passed.

Here's an article from last month about the gag orders. Did /. pick it up back then? I'm new to the world here.

Edward Tufte got it right some years ago. Powerpoint actually caused the failure of the space shuttle Columbia.

Just show these articles to your faculty...

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
http://spectrum.troy.edu/~rbeaver/PPEvil.html

Might do some good.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/brazil_blackout/

Cause was bad insulators according to Brazilian government regulators.

But I'm sure US government officials will say it is possible and they'll need an internet "patriot" act real soon or else the sky will fall.

Wired story reports blackout was caused by sooty insulators, not hackers http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/brazil_blackout/

My impression is, that economists in general don't have a good grasp of math

I don't think the biggest problem is economists' grasp of math. Rather, it's that (a) the people implementing the economists' mathematical theories don't have a good grasp of the math, and (b) economists don't have a good grasp of the people their math is supposed to model.

Wired's survey put Verizon's 3G network at an average of 1.9 Mbps / ~240 KBps.

If that's the case, we're talking 12 minutes of saturation per day.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/3g-speed-test/

I'd be nice if you could do math. It's more like 6 hours.

Twelve minutes a day is exactly six hours per month...

Wired's survey put Verizon's 3G network at an average of 1.9 Mbps / ~240 KBps.

If that's the case, we're talking 12 minutes of saturation per day.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/3g-speed-test/

I'd be nice if you could do math. It's more like 6 hours.

Wired's survey put Verizon's 3G network at an average of 1.9 Mbps / ~240 KBps. If that's the case, we're talking 12 minutes of saturation per day. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/3g-speed-test/

I wonder if that means humans taste like crap.

Well, if you insist on eating the intestines ...

Reporter to native: What is your favourite food?
Native: Beans.
Reporter: Really. What type of beans? Navy beans, baked beans, kidney beans?
Native: Human Beans.

BTW: It's been proven that even robots think people taste like salt pork.

The bad side with Skype is that it seems to be rather bloated these days occupying a rather large amount of memory in our computers. It's the #3 application in memory consumption on my machine. Considering the services it's offering that is a bit high.

More bad sides: Details on the consortium buying Skype:IQT (with precedents) Skype already comes with back door into your system now..
The question is, what will skype in all its bloated glory be capable of after it is taken off eBays hands? At least eBay had the goal of making money off their investment.
Open sourcing the Skype linux client also benefits IQT, since Linux skype users are such a small fraction of the market getting them on side only helps increase the network effect for the closed source skype spy client.

Skype spy client is an extremely poor alternative to an open communication standard with a lively community of compatible talk clients. Unfortunately such a community has not yet materialized. And before you point to SIP clients, please do a little bit of research from "Joe Six pack's" point of view which is: Download and install Skype spy client in three mouse clicks and talk. SIP clients AFAIK are overly complicated to use - and it seems the protocol is built to make sure they stay that way. Sad, just sad.

.

Wired actually had an article the other day on how many ads are still effective, even when the user fast-forwards through them.

Okay, I get it. "Psychoacoustic Simulation" means he compressed it with MP3. See? It's not the same anymore.

One might call this the "lame" defense.

Or Ogg Vorbis, or any modern mdct-based audio codec. All of the newer ones have psychoacoustic models built in that reject frequencies that you probably can't hear, in favor of ones that you can.

"Psychoacoustic simulations are my synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard as a live performance." Total audio engineering bullsht, but entertaining bullsht nonetheless.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/bluebeat-claims-to-own-new-copyrights-to-old-beatles-songs/

This really is getting a bit old

The placebo effect isn't getting weaker, it's getting more effective. The /. article linked even states that. It the reason why if prozac was a new drug today it more than likely would have been rejected by the FDA.

Also see these Wired & TechDirt articles.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090827/0212446014.shtml

Elcomsoft has been charged with conspiracy, aiding and abetting computer intrusion and wire fraud.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/derengel/

This is a perfect opportunity to plug Neal Stephenson's excellent essay on fibre-optic cables: Mother Earth, Mother Board. It's well worth reading, being gripping, easy to get into, endlessly fascinating, and funny --- all the qualities that essays on cable laying usually aren't. He answers all your questions and more. (It also turned into research for Cryptonomicon.)

The short answers to your questions, though, are yes, yes, and by being very clever, respectively.

The Bush administration based their court arguments on an extended interpretation of executive privilege , whereas the Obama administration is making an argument based in precedent and case law - state secrets.

That you've presented your argument as "See, Bush is right because Obama seems to be doing the same" shows you probably know nothing about the arguments in this case, or the executive privilege abuses Bush's administration made in the name of our country.

You do your country a serious disservice with the same old mindless "my team right, your team wrong" dittohead rhetoric. Means another ignorant voter, with no idea what their government is up to, regardless which party is in office -- and no clue how to fight it.

Wikipedia, pfffft. I learned all I need to know about Trans Oceanic Fiber Optic cables in 56 short pages thanks to Neal Stephenson... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

Back in 1996 Neal Stephenson wrote a really excellent article, "Mother Earth Mother Board" in Wired. If you're curious about what it actually takes to wire the world it's a really excellent read.

Paged:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

Single-page:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

Back in 1996 Neal Stephenson wrote a really excellent article, "Mother Earth Mother Board" in Wired. If you're curious about what it actually takes to wire the world it's a really excellent read.

Paged:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

Single-page:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

For a human trait where the average is not moving up or down, then the individuals far out on either side of the bell curve must be failing to reproduced to roughly the same degree. If you think about this with respect to intelligence, then if the really smart ones are not reproducing, the ones on the other end of the scale are unlikely to be reproducing either. If this was not the case, then the average over generations would drift up or down until the curve was being trimmed on both sides equally.

To give an example far from western culture, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/why-pygmies-are-small In this case, the larger ones didn't have enough reproductive years to replace themselves. (High mortality.)

The ones who matured too soon didn't do as well in child bearing either.

While we notice the smart people who are not having kids, the ones who are equally far from the mean on the low side don't reproduce either.

Keith Henson

IANAL, but I'd never before heard of a law that explicitly required software to behave in a very specific way, and display very specific warnings. That alone tips this bill into the "big deal" category for me.

Add to this the tendency of prosecutors to misuse Federal statutes in ways that clearly exceed the legislative intent, and this law seems to open the door for prosecution of any government-targeted "bad guy" who also happens to have such 'illegal' network software.

And, of course, the original reason for this bill also stinks: it's almost certainly an RIAA-bought-and-paid-for law clearly designed to eliminate the "I didn't know" defense when suing file-sharers.

PDF/A is already open. However, that doesn't mean that anyone knows how to produce it, especially some R.O.A.D. staffer or random hourly GS1.

Open or not, PDF/A is a display format and, in most cases, useless for information retrieval or automated data processing. PDF/A is a useful alternative to paper. However, the open government initiative is not talking about paper. It's about 'born digital', machine readable data.

Tesla roadsters are built to handle crashes on the same road as your car, and aren't nearly as tissue-like as you seem to imagine.

Tesla was rear-ended by a Prius, and the impact pushed it under the rear of a SUV.
Wired.com has more:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/10/totaled-tesla-driver/

Yeah, that's a VW Touareg ass-end up in the air. Tesla driver walked away, his only complaint was the headrest/roof hurt the top of his head. With a multi-ton SUV on it, I'm not surprised...

How does the energy of hundreds of laptop batteries compare with the energy of 60 litres of petrol?

They are fairly robust.

Where do you expect countries run by dictators (Syria has been under martial law since 1963 and more or less a client state for Iran) that have shit for university, shit for engineering, and oppression as the norm to get advanced anti-missile systems? They cant design their own. They would be starting with 1950s tech at best.

They knew they were taking a chance with foreign made equipment, but, they really dont have a choice.

Also, its worth noting that there may not have been an intentional backdoor/killswitch, this could have been a hack known to the US and others but not to Syria:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/how-israel-spoo/

According to a recent Wired article, Netflix buys their discs retail just like everyone else.

> Ethnic groups are a sociological classification and have little or no bearing on actual genetics.

But there are breeds of humans nonetheless. Though the differences are not as significant as they are for dogs, they are there.

So far there's just one breed of humans that does well in the 100m race. Only two non-west african breeds have done sub 10 seconds, and one of them just barely. Out of more than 1 billion chinese, they still can't field a sub 10 sec 100m sprinter. African pygmies aren't going to be running faster than the west-african breeds either.

The fastest chihuahua isn't going be faster than the fastest greyhound anytime soon. A fat slob couch potato greyhound may be beaten by the fastest chihuahua, but there certainly is a difference in the breeds.

And the East African breeds seem better suited for long distance running than the white caucasian breeds especially in warm humid conditions:

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/96/1/124

I'm curious how the white caucasians will do in freezing air temperatures or even subzero. After all it seems insufficient cooling can be the first limiter for physical performance, see:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore_pr.html

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/french-branch-of-scientology-is-convicted-of-fraud/ or http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/27/scientology-church-fraud-france

People should really stop using the word secure with Tor. Anonymous, sure, but you actually forfeit some of your security and privacy when using Tor. Anyone can snoop your outgoing connections from Exit node, or if you're using https or other secure connection, change the certificates. On top of that there's a change the exit node changes your http pages in addition to stealing or just snooping for information. Implying "secure" in news likes this gives lots of false sense of security to users, like has been seen many times before.

And this is different from regular web browsing....how, exactly? You're not forteiting any of your security or privacy. You're just not necessarily gaining any more in certain areas. But, this only applies if the exit node you happen to be using for that connection is a malicious node. Yes, governments can set up an awful lot of nodes, but the size of the network itself is going to dwarf anything a government can do. The vast majority of exit nodes are legitimate.
You can also specify not to use certain exit nodes. If you're in China, and you don't want to risk government interference, then configure your node to not use any Chinese exit nodes.

Eavesdropping by exit nodes

In September 2007, Dan Egerstad, a Swedish security consultant, revealed that by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts.[15] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passing through it which does not use end-to-end encryption, e.g. SSL. While this does not inherently violate the anonymity of the source, it affords added opportunities for data interception by self-selected third parties, greatly increasing the risk of exposure of sensitive data by users who are careless or who mistake Tor's anonymity for security.[16]

So, jerks can break your security. Big news. Film at 11. Maybe the fact that this can be done anywhere at all, unless you're using an unbreakable encryption/authentication method, means you shouldn't be worrying about Tor specifically.

Another thing is that you are still usually leaking DNS queries to your ISP, which may even return false results if you're being censored in China or something and they still see what sites you're visiting.

The summary also quickly mentions geo-aware phones. If you happen to be using that bad exit node, now your geo-location updates will be transmitted via it too. And goverments should be able to set up a lot different exit nodes all around the world easily.

So no, it's not secure. It's maybe anonymous, if you use it correctly and don't login to your banking, slashdot account or whatever with it.

This is patently incorrect. All DNS queries from a Tor-surfing browser are routed over the Tor network. There are specific instructions for the setup of a Tor exit node that state basically "If your ISP blocks access to certain sites, make sure your Tor node knows about them, otherwise Tor users will get NORECORD results from DNS queries, and think the site is down/missing. If your node knows about them, the Tor network will not use your node to attempt access to those sites."

I've stumbled across a misconfigured Tor exit node before that did this. Trying to access a site over Tor resulted in an error page, but the same site over the Internet worked fine. Waited for 10 minutes for the Tor connection to cycle to a different route, and all of a sudden I could access it over Tor, too.

Secure, anonymous access to the web via Tor on Android is now a reality

People should really stop using the word secure with Tor. Anonymous, sure, but you actually forfeit some of your security and privacy when using Tor. Anyone can snoop your outgoing connections from Exit node, or if you're using https or other secure connection, change the certificates. On top of that there's a change the exit node changes your http pages in addition to stealing or just snooping for information. Implying "secure" in news likes this gives lots of false sense of security to users, like has been seen many times before.

Eavesdropping by exit nodes

In September 2007, Dan Egerstad, a Swedish security consultant, revealed that by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts.[15] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passing through it which does not use end-to-end encryption, e.g. SSL. While this does not inherently violate the anonymity of the source, it affords added opportunities for data interception by self-selected third parties, greatly increasing the risk of exposure of sensitive data by users who are careless or who mistake Tor's anonymity for security.[16]

Another thing is that you are still usually leaking DNS queries to your ISP, which may even return false results if you're being censored in China or something and they still see what sites you're visiting.

The summary also quickly mentions geo-aware phones. If you happen to be using that bad exit node, now your geo-location updates will be transmitted via it too. And goverments should be able to set up a lot different exit nodes all around the world easily.

So no, it's not secure. It's maybe anonymous, if you use it correctly and don't login to your banking, slashdot account or whatever with it.

Similarly, the suggestion that pharmaceutical companies make vaccines hoping to pocket huge profits is ludicrous to Offit. Vaccines, after all, are given once or twice or three times in a lifetime. Diabetes drugs, neurological drugs, Lipitor, Viagra, even Rogaine — stuff that a large number of people use every day — that’s where the money is.

That’s not to say vaccines aren’t profitable: RotaTeq costs a little under $4 a dose to make, according to Offit. Merck has sold a total of more than 24 million doses in the US, most for $69.59 a pop — a 17-fold markup. Not bad, but pharmaceutical companies do sell a lot of vaccines at cost to the developing world and in some cases give them away. Merck committed $75 million in 2006 to vaccinate all children born in Nicaragua for three years. In 2008, Merck’s revenue from RotaTeq was $665 million. Meanwhile, a blockbuster drug like Pfizer’s Lipitor is a $12 billion-a-year business.

(Source -- definitely worth reading)

Vaccines save lives. Anti-vaxxers use lies and bullying to kill people and promote their pseudoscientific nonsense. It's a shame they won this battle, and people will die as a result. If there's one area of science and technology that needs an army of Slashdotters defending it today, it's vaccines and science-based medicine in general. Fight back.

If you want the right to refuse a vaccine, DON'T WORK IN HEATHCARE.

This is, just as the top poster says, anti-vaccine hysteria from people who think their gut beats experts, research, fact.

Yes, they're all just nut jobs because the last time there was a swine flu panic and the federal government released a vaccine on an abbreviated testing schedule nothing bad at all happened right? I'm not saying this will happen again, but their concern is certainly not blind "hysteria" you try to paint it.

I'll bet these health care workers would feel a lot better about the safety of the vaccine Congress, the Obama family, and his cabinet members would agree to having their children vaccinated as a show of confidence.

"there would be a furor on every single technical forum lashing Microsoft that would make the noise that was made when the NSAKey label was found in NT4 be a drop in the bucket. "
Nobody cares. You get the lunch with the MS sales rep and some good back of the napkin numbers for the upgrades, thats all that matters
MS will tell you with a straight face that your data is secure.
Whats a corp to do? All their just in time, billing, admin, production, shipping ect is locked into MS only software.
Govs trusted crypto AG, corps upgrade to MS, power companies use MS front ends ect.
The history of US gov letting strong encryption out is not good.
Their digital telco system is part of the NSA/??? from day one.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/att-doj-foia/
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/11/securitymatters_1115
The idea that Apple or MS could ship anything without a backdoor just does not add up historically, from telegrams to sat links to popular search engines the US gov has been directly involved or provided seed money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK
If a dev in Apple or MS does not get with the backdoor idea, they are replaced, promoted or retire.
Any chatter about BitLocker would be lost in "outrageous conspiracy theories" about NSAKeys in NT4
Nobody working in Apple or MS could publish a book on the fact as they would be reported by a publishers legal department soon after submitting a draft. The US gov would visit the author.
Publish outside the US and the US gov would hire some one to visit author and the publisher.

"there would be a furor on every single technical forum lashing Microsoft that would make the noise that was made when the NSAKey label was found in NT4 be a drop in the bucket. "
Nobody cares. You get the lunch with the MS sales rep and some good back of the napkin numbers for the upgrades, thats all that matters
MS will tell you with a straight face that your data is secure.
Whats a corp to do? All their just in time, billing, admin, production, shipping ect is locked into MS only software.
Govs trusted crypto AG, corps upgrade to MS, power companies use MS front ends ect.
The history of US gov letting strong encryption out is not good.
Their digital telco system is part of the NSA/??? from day one.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/att-doj-foia/
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/11/securitymatters_1115
The idea that Apple or MS could ship anything without a backdoor just does not add up historically, from telegrams to sat links to popular search engines the US gov has been directly involved or provided seed money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK
If a dev in Apple or MS does not get with the backdoor idea, they are replaced, promoted or retire.
Any chatter about BitLocker would be lost in "outrageous conspiracy theories" about NSAKeys in NT4
Nobody working in Apple or MS could publish a book on the fact as they would be reported by a publishers legal department soon after submitting a draft. The US gov would visit the author.
Publish outside the US and the US gov would hire some one to visit author and the publisher.

The Feds did this to bypass PGP on a mobster's computer almost a decade ago. Well not exactly a bootloader, they put in a keylogger. Gee, if a Gman thought of this back in double ought, why is this making news for nerds today?

All the easier to crack... if we only need to find one key this becomes trivial. The key to decode any DRM is in the hardware or software of the product somewhere... with $10K 40000X scanning electron microscopes, it's just a matter of time before any important key is found. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/03/gallery_nanotech?slide=7&slideView=9

If any company could legally take a found key and produce hardware/software for it, then DRM becomes futile.

Watermarked content (...) Amazon audio

I'm gonna need some more information here.
According to this:

Since Amazon itself does not apply the watermarks, and labels presumably supply only one MP3 copy of any given song, there’s no way for a label to directly identify and sue an individual if, say, someone were to steal that person’s iPod and share its songs all over the internets

You privy to any more information than that?