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China Walks Out of Wireless LAN Security Talks
Ant writes "A CommsDesign article reports that China walked out of a wireless standards meeting this week, accusing the International Organization for Standardization of favoring the IEEE's 802.11i ANSI-certified wireless LAN security scheme over its own controverisal proposal, EE Times has learned.
The gambit came after China's Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) security scheme was withdrawn and placed on a slower track by the ISO." From the article: "China initially agreed last year to refrain from making its WAPI security scheme mandatory for wireless LAN equipment in China. It then approached ISO with a fast-track submission in an effort to make WAPI an international security standard."
This really isn't China's fault. I used to do this kind of thing too when I was playing marbles around the age of 4. If things didn't go my way, I'd round up all my marbles and stomp off on my way home.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Perhaps China (or at least as personified by these officials) has forgotten where a lot of electronic equipment is manufactured.
Why not just take the new standard and profit on our willingness to buy their stuff, as usual?
Perhaps our dollars don't have the shine they used to?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
With 2,000,000,000 potential customers, and most of the world's manufacturing capability within two hours' flying time, you don't just get to choose standards, you get to write 'em.
"It is glorious to be rich! Let a thousand flowers bloom from the barrel of a Pringles can!"
China's being childish because a different scheme is favored for authentication over their scheme... unless their scheme has more merit over another scheme? Anyone know of an site with a side-by-side 802.11i-vs.-ANSI comparison? PS: First Post?
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Does this chinese standard is better than the other one ?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
According to this rant WAPI is "on old technology, performs poorly and is insecure"
whats the big deal?
the Chinese?
Seriously. Does China have a valid complaint or not? No one knows yet. Until then, there's nothing to report.
i would have to agree...other then producing the best, low cost , child sweat shops and product forgeries in the world...what does China really contribute to the world?
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
Remember, China still has a repressive few who are determined to remain in power and if strangling wireless LAN in their own country helps them stay in power one more day, so much the better for them. Not much of a difference between them and the old emperors and such, just exert power differently...
"We get signal!"
"No you don't, and off to reeducation camp for you!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...but an hour later, they were hungry for meeting again.
Following China's walkout, the resulting new coastal areas in central Asia are expected to provide new economic opportunities to the formerly isolated, landlocked region. A brief panic gripped the people of Japan, as China blocked out the sun for several hours as it stepped across the island nation. Geologists and the international community at large are eagerly waiting to see where and how the newly independent continent decides to settle. It was last seen striding across the South Pacific in a brisk huff towards the Isthmus of Panama. Panamanian officials have cautioned China to be careful as the newly mobile landmass will not fit through the canal and would need to carefully step over the fragile strip of land, which could be easily crushed into the seabed by an errant footstep. Representatives of the Chinese government could not be reached for comment.
Unknown host pong.
A lot of inventions.t ml
http://www.inventions.org/culture/asian/chinese.h
Because China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Thar's money in dem hills!
if (__mylocation == LOCAL_RICE_PATTY ||
LOCAL_SHANGHAI || LOCAL_BEIGING)
{
return WAPI_SECURITY_ENABLED;
} else {
return STANDARD_SECURITY;
}
Repeat after me... WAPI is Crappy.
WAPI is insecure, doesn't scale, late and undeployable.
If you read the specs and had any involvement in the 802.11i process, you will understand what an amature piece of work WAPI is. It was compounded with the blatant IP grab that China was trying to make with WAPI (you have to send China your RTL, they *THEY* can integrate it into your chip - yeah right).
The only way you can effectively write 802.11 specifications for anything as intertwined with the base spec is to go to the 802 meetings and propose your scheme. From 802, down through 802.11 and the 802.11 task groups, the documents are heavily cross dependent and part of the purpose of these massive meetings is to make sure that all the bits fit together and are kept up to date with respect to each other.
Trying to write an 802.11i replacement in isolation is doomed to failure and fail is exactly what they did.
Now they are forum shopping. ISO rubber stamps the 802 documents because 802 has a long history of succesful open standards development. Whining 'it's not fair! They won't take our spec but they will take the IEEE specs' is disingenuous bullshit and they know it. There is a basic quality threshold you have to pass first.
Evil people are out to get you.
Here is a paper that describes the WAPI standard. As a cryptodilettante, damned if I know if it's any good.
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
Between this and the Chinese push for EVD it sounds like China is tired of paying royalties on technology they manufacture to foreign technology companies. Remember with one law they can include any standard they want in 75% percent of the electronics you buy. If they really want to push EVDs or WAPI they will not have much of a problem. I mean manufacturer's will have to choose between employing two standards in all products, or going with whatever China wants. Ubiquity makes for a de-facto standard.
Let's see...currently they produce about 10% of the textiles purchased in the US. At their current growth rate, they will have over 50% of the US market(this has been forecast by industry experts). Electronics, they are the new kid on the block, growing very fast. A lot of semiconductor production is moving there very rapidly along with the production of computer parts.
Since we so far, haven't done that well with the wireless security standard, and they are about to become the 800 lb gorrilla of the world, maybe we should take a look at using China's. Or they could just flood the market with their own standard.
Isn't that sort of oxymoronic? In a communist country how does one fit "privacy" and/or "secure" encryption? This is obviously for public use. The government can adopt whatever security standards they dam please for their own communications.
This, coming from the country who banned Hitman?
Jeez, this is like when I didn't win and Goldeneye 007. I throw the controller and strangle my teammate.
they are growing... which is great for a communist country to do... if im not mistaken other than cold war russia and germany... they would probably be the first sucessful communist government to succeed in producing a government with a stable economy. its true that textiles are comming from china ( which by the way has closed a lot of factories here in columbus, ga and lost many people there jobs..but thats another story) but its hard to push your standard if the rest of the world is not using it. they could push all day long ...other companies will go with the flow and follow ISO standards ( big companies like Cisco/Linksys and others) it would make sense for China to discuss why they feel their standard is better instead of stroming out... you cant act like the 800 lbs gorrilla until you weigh 800 lbs? but you bring alot of good points to the table
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
It seems that China wants to capitalize on the fact that they are considered a big potential market by the West. If they are insignificant, who would care if they want to use WAPI? It is greed by Western companies that have allowed China to do this--"hey, if I don't give in, some other company will and I cannot afford to lose potential market share in a country like China". The fact that they went to the ISO to give WAPI a fast-track course on standardization says out loud that as soon as WAPI is standardized, China will require WAPI.
Now we have to wait a few hours and call China, but hang up when they answer. If they pull that caller id crap, we have to say it was an accident. Then we'll run into them at some conference in a week and man, that shit is just awkward.
Oh come on, there are many reasons to like China:
1. It's a brutal dictatorship.
2. They invaded Tibet, and murdered 1/3 of the inhabitants.
3. 14 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are Chinese.
4. They make for extremely poor immigrants, refusing to integrate in the host country that graciously allowed them entry, and indeed consider themselves superior to the "mongrel people" (whites) and "black shit" (blacks).
5. To the Chinese, legal contracts are just sort of like suggested behaviour, but are in no way binding.
6. The bizarre, superstitious bullshit known as Chinese medicine has led to the decimation of Chinese wildlife, especially bears. So they've turned to other countryies, notably Canada, to provide the materials for their voodoo. In British Columbia, it's essentially a black bear holocaust.
7. The Chinese government brutally represses the Falun Gong people, who are a peaceful bunch.
I could go on and on, but it's too depressing.
You left out chinese food.
The dollars valuation has deteriorated pretty dramatically in the past months.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
No, I mean original inventions that were later improvised by the West that once used industrial espionage to obtain one of these inventions themselves.h tml
http://http//www.silk-road.com/artl/silkhistory.s
Why shouldn't they be ethnocentric? This is life. Life is lived where you are, so life for you revolves around your country. I'm not saying it's right, but that's just how the world is. Most countries are probably fairly ethocentric on some level, even if they don't openly show it.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Is China some communications company I've never heard of? Or is the government in talks with the ISO board?
That's how pretty much all international politics is - at best, international politics resembles 8 year olds in the school yard. Unfortunately for those of us who just want to get on with our lives, these particular 8 year olds have nuclear weapons.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"All right, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
what about the ones that invade other countries for no reason? and dont give me "for greater good" argument back..
Actually, China has lost two million such jobs in the last couple of years to even lower-cost countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Phillipines. They still have an edge in some things where infrastructure counts, but for knock-off items, they're overpriced on the world market.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Synthetic insulin?t ml
http://www.huaren.org/contributions/wangyinglai.h
Except that China isn't really Communist any more, and hasn't been Communist since Mao's death.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hope so, or WiFi there will have no chance to survive make their time.
Cats jokes aside, that'll be hard to prove if some of the "Security" involves cautious Communist censorship.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It's pretty funny. Are you even aware as to why Israel was founded? Are you aware that Palestine, while having Arabs there, was never an Arab province. It was a Roman province, then Byzantine, then Ottoman, and then British, before the Brits partitioned between the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli Jews. And before we get into a "the Brits had no right" line, ponder that the Arabs had pretty much been doing the same thing until the Turks came along and beat the hell out of them, the Byzantines and anybody else that got in their way.
But however you slice it, there hadn't been any local rule of the region for two thousand years. The Palestinians, if they can restrain the lunatics who think it's real keen and holy to strap nail bombs to themselves and blow up nightclubs, will actually be the first of their people to actually run their own affairs since Rome took over.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"4. They make for extremely poor immigrants, refusing to integrate in the host country that graciously allowed them entry, and indeed consider themselves superior to the "mongrel people" (whites) and "black shit" (blacks)."
Huh? I'm a son of 2nd generation Chinese immigrants and they've never exhibited opinions like that. In addition, they get along quite nicely with neighbors of various ethnicities. (Indian, Arab, white, to name a few) in one of the most racially diverse towns in North America: Toronto. Your generalizations are totally misguided, seriously.
Europe wants to sell their soul to the chinese; they want in on some of that Wal-Mart action.
/at the same time criticizing Wal-Mart
//business as usual (see Iraq, Iran, other axis's of evil)
There is no Global body that makes laws!
There is no international legislature (the UN ain't it), there is no international monarch. They are the two groups that make laws. When there is a 1:1 correlation between cause & effect, if you don't have the cause (international legislature) you can't have the effect (international law).
So despite the lies that a bandied about, international law doesn't exist.
What people often mean when they say "international law" is "treaties," but they usually have some agenda they are hiding behind and intentionally misleading you. I assume that since God is dead and humans can no longer appeal to the moral authority of God that they feel the need to appeal the moral authority of some other fictitious being. In this case, international law (aka global standards).
Now on to treaties.
Treaties are just agreements between governments to enact laws. They aren't law by themselves. The US Constitution gives the President the authority to make treaties, but Congress gets to ratify and then make laws based upon them.
So, the US & AU make a treaty to do W, X & Y
When it gets run through the AU Parliament they don't like W. So they pass a law that allows for V, X & Y. That law is only enforceable in AU. It is an imperfect implementation of the treaty, but an implementation nonetheless. It is like a standard that is implemented but not fully.
Same thing happens in the US Congress. But they pass law with X, Y & Z.
Now you have 2 national laws. A AU law. A US law. You don't have an international law. Why? No international legislature remember.
You can sue in AU under the AU law, but not the US law. So in AU you are entitled to V, X & Y.
You can sue in US under the US law, but not the AU law. So in US you are entitled to Z, X & Y.
No where can you sue under the treaty. You never are entitled to W. Because te treaty (which entitled you to W) isn't a law, just an agreement to make a law.
You can't sue in NZ under either the AU or US laws. Because NZ, has neither of these laws and their courts don't care about US or AU laws.
Now we mis-use the term "treaty" to refer to both the AU & US laws collectively, but neither of them is really the treaty as negotiated by the PM/President.
Hey what about these international courts?
Well, they are really arbitration bodies.
They have no legal power beyond what the individual nations give them.
The UK may pass a law giving ICC judgments full effect, but that is due to the UK ceding sovereignty to the ICC, not because the ICC is inherently morally superior or because of some international law (which doesn't exist remember).
Now the US doesn't agree to cede its sovereignty to the ICC. So the ICC has no effect in the US.
Why no power beyond what the individual nations give them?
It comes down to a concept called jurisdiction.
See, ultimately might does make right. Not moral correctness, but the right to do something is ultimately based upon your ability to enforce that right.
To enforce a court order to, for example, the ability to forcibly imprison someone, take their personal and real property from them, you need an army and a police system. Nations have these things. NGO bodies don't. Even the UN has no standing military. It relies on borrowing the military of its member nations.
If the ICC has a judgement it wants enforced in the UK, it needs to get the approval of the UK government to use the UK police force to do that. Alone, the ICC is impotent.
Ultimately, every country acts unilaterally. Every country implements their own version of treaties. Every country decides whether or not to cede sovereignty to an international arbitration board.
Just like on the old music stands:
MAN|HAS|SET in shit
you can glue a cotton ball to the back of a turtle but it doesnt make him a jack rabbit. they may have changed somethings that dont make them "technicaly" a communist country...but they still do things the communist way
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
There are always anecdotal counterexamples. But come to Vancouver sometime, and ask people what their impressions of the Chinese are. Or ask the Chinese about white people. Or ask a bouncer at a bar what it means when the bar "goes Asian".
The affects are much more profound here than in Toronto - Vancouver bears the brunt of Chinese immigration to Canada, but is a far smaller city.
Congratulations! You are being a tedious bore, and simultaneously insulting the memory of the hundreds of millions killed by Communism. Nice trick. Too bad your insight is not original to you, but has been an article of faith among marginalized leftists for fifty years.
Ask most (American) people what they think communism is, and if they have any idea at all, it'll be something like totalitarianism.
Americans know damn good and well what Communism is. Any high school student can tell you "From each according to abilities, to each according to needs," and any decently educated college student can tell you about the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you have any understanding of human nature, that's all you need to know about Communism and why it is doomed.
If there is any firm lesson from the history of the last century, it is that Communist ideals, always and everywhere, fail in practice. This is due to immutable laws of human nature and behavior. It can only be artificially maintained at the point of a gun, and then only for a limited time. Wherever and whenever it has been tried, it has lead to tyranny, mass slaughter, famine, and misery. Wherever and whenever it is tried in the future, the result will be the same.
Of course, none of this made the least impression on the sheltered twits of the academic Left, who insist against all evidence that "real" Communism has not yet been tried. If only, if only, they whine, everybody would just be nice little Communists and accept their lot in life "according to their needs", then Utopia would arrive and all our problems would be solved.
I think that if the economic ideals of communism (everyone contributes, everyone receives) were put into place in a political system, you'd have something like ancient Greece.
I think that if my auntie had bollocks, she'd be my uncle.
What you are describing has never happened and never will. Quit deluding yourself and join the reality-based community.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Has anyone considered that the reason that the Chinese were mandating a wireless encryption standard with such force would be specficially because it has been designed with a back-door of some form that allows easy identification of keys?
Take all the facts into consideration, this country has more human rights violations than most can keep track of, and habitually shuts down any means by which the people can read unauthorized material, often resulting in illegal, indefinate jail sentances. All that, for reading CNN?
The fact the Chinese are happy about encryption is nothing more than a single loud beacon that it's not strong enough. If its safe enough to hide Falun Gong meetings or whatever else, you can bet your testicles (Lets face it, everyone who reads this site has them, if only in jars) that it's worth use in commerce.
If it werent, a small dasiy chain of wireless networks could flood Bejing with "unauthorized" material in days, destroying the virtue of the Great Firewall of China.
Except that China isn't really Communist any more, and hasn't been Communist since Mao's death.
One might even go so far as to say China has never been communists according to the doctrine laid out by Marx, but some form of Socialist Dictatorship. Even when Mao was in charge, they had constant battles with Moscow over the fact that China's communisim didn't match up with Russia's communisim. And neither was what Marx had envisioned.
They make good fortune cookies, though.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
i agree. the reason you have so many fanboy americans. is because there is no country like us..and no one else makes any sense = )and by the way im cuban - american so you can go play the redneck card somewhere else
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
So what does it mean? The bar going asian, i mean.
That China wanted WAPI that much probably means they can easily crack it. The last thing they want is to not be able to eavesdrop on their citizens. Just ask the Falun Gong.
they would probably be the first sucessful communist government to succeed in producing a government with a stable economy.
Classic, theoretical communism implies there will be a dissolution of the central gov't into a form of anarchism. Soviet communism (as we currently see communism) bans private ownership of property, and the gov't regulates all operation of all material production. China's economic system currently has "rich" private owners of various enterprises, and looks to divest the gov't of almost all industries. There is even an entrepeneur class that extends beyond Hong Kong. The catch is that almost all the owners of the really important industries happen to also be the highest ranked gov't officials, that the gov't can arbitrarily come down on any private owner at any time, and there are still industries which haven't been privatized by the central gov't.
But once the bulk of industries stop being owned and managed by the central gov't, it stops being communism. What to call it is another dilemna. You could argue its evolving to a western socialist state, or merely into an oligarchy; my problem with China is that it appears to me to be evolving into a fascist gov't, similar to what was seen in post-WWI Germany and Italy.
Tragic that the average slashdotter (and thus, the 1st world citizen) doesn't really understand these distinctions. Perhaps if one phrased the question as "What would have Fascist Germany have been like without Hitler? Lets say, a Fidel Castro or Kim Il Sung", and you might start to appreciate the potential for problems. Even worse, one will still be looking at China as a communist country, when it will be a significantly more efficient economy and better operated. Then kick in 1+ billion people and 20% of their nationalistic, military aged males not able to marry. Interesting times ahead.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Its only anecdotal evidence that's supporting both sides of this argument.
Sure there are many Chinese with bad attitudes. There are also many with good attitudes. There are also many white people with good/bad attitudes.
"They don't integrate" may be true in many places as it is with many other cultures. In multicultural societies often you end up with some (if I may borrow terms from Chemistry) "suspensions" rather than "solutions". We all have to put in an effort. For some, this is a lot of work apparently.
Some people seem to think that this superficial arrogance/ racism is genetic. It's much more a societal issue than a medical issue.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Slashdot is not a pro-American forum. If you were paying attention, you would realize that America is not criticizing the rest of the world -- the rest of the world is criticizing the Chinese government.
I wanted to mod you down, but I don't currently have any mod points. Sorry.
...just my 2 gil.
> Now, yeah, immutable. But genetic engineering is going
> to get there, quite possibly this century.
"We are the Borg. Prepare to be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
The DVD thing was all about patent royalties.
Probably this is more of the same.
We have a bad habit of writing patented stuff
into standards. China will help us fix this.
In past times China would just ignore royalties,
but they're trying to make nice with the WTO and
all... so they need to make patent-free standards.
7. The Chinese government brutally represses the Fa lun Gong people, who are a peaceful bunch. Ridiculous, they are a peaceful bunch... Majority of them are mentally controlled by Master Li, who is the leader and a cheat. Btw, they used to refer 'light-year' as a unit of time....
Also, although killing civilians is wrong, it's not like the Palestinians are in any position to fight the Israeli army (supported by the US). They had land that should have been theirs (whether it was before or not) taken away from them, at which time they began to receive treatment as second class citizens, despite having a reasonable claim to rule the land (certainly moreso than a Zionist state created by Britian on, more or less, a whim). Wouldn't you fight to take it back in any way you could?
Also, allow me to point out that one of the reasons that non-Jews wanted the state of Israel to be created was that Jesus would only come back if Jews controlled the Holy Land. How's that for irrational foreign policy? At least Bush gets oil out of the Iraq war...
Not that I trust Washington all that much more, but I'm glad I won't be using an "encryption" standard that Beijing wants its own people to use. Seriously, if they want it so bad, there has to be something wrong with it, some sort of back door to let them crack down on dissidents.
Just for your information:
Data till 11/2004
The number of mobile users in China is
329.92 million. Compared to last year, the number is increased by 59.97 million. The penetration rate of cell phone is 24.8%. That means, in every 4 chinese, there is one mobile phone user.
By the way, the number of landline telephone users in China is 313.15 million. There are 50.4 million new landline phone users in the past year. The penetration rate for landline phone is 24.5%.
The number of Internet users is 90 million (3 million new internet users in recent 3 months), and among them 22.86 million users use broadband connection ( the growth rate for broadband users is 105%, compared with the number for last year).
Considering that there is a large portion of people who are small children and old seniors, 24.8% cell phone penetration rate is very big. Let's just say your information about China is not correct. During 7-day Chinese New Year holidays, 10 billion text messages (SMS) were sent. The China telecom companies make 1 billion yuans in just seven days.
There are a lot of customers in China, and there are even more potential customers there. For example, for cell phone users, the number of cell phone users in China is already larger than the population of the USA.
You missed the part where those residents of Palestine never did form a state, at least not one since the Romans walked in there. No state during Roman times, no state during Byzantine times, no state during Ottoman times, no state during British times.
The Jews were promised a state in Palestine for their aid in WWI. Whether you like it or not, Britain, like the Ottomans, Byzantines and Romans before them, were calling the shots.
If this bothers you so much, I take it you also would like to see the Copts get their country back from Muslim overlords.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
" Neither the IEEE nor ANSI is American."
And what does the "A" in "ANSI" stand for again?
About one third of the population in Lower British Columbia Mainland is of Chinese origin. Early Chinese settled there when they built the railroads hundreds years ago.
I guess you might live in Vancouver and have a bad experience with some Chinese. The fact is, most Chinese currently living in Vancouver are rich people from Hong Kong. The attitude about you might not be something about race. Most likely it is the culture difference or social-class difference. Some might even deny they are Chinese. Contrary to your point#1, they left Hong Kong because they were afraid of the communist party when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1989. That group is totally different from the poorest peasants (they are the poorest even in China) living in Chinatown restaurants. These illegal immigrants come from one province (FuJian) mainland China. They live in Chinatown forever and they don't mingle into local. That's true. But that is only a small part. Also, they mind their own business, and they work hard to make a living. Even being hungry, they won't rob you or make any troubles.
The third group might be the largest group recently coming from mainland China. They are students and engineers as legal immigrants. They do NOT live in Chinatown. They work in tech companies, universties, hosipitals, almost everywhere. They are integrating into the local country and contribute to the country.
So when you talk about Chinese. Please do not mix them up. They are different. As a matter of fact, every single Chinese is unique. Do NOT sterotyping. The Chinese peopole living in Chinatown won't do a name-calling or feel superior to you. Most likely the rich Hong Kong might have an attitude about you, but I believe that might be related to the social class, not race. Even us, poor software engineers from mianland China have some bad experiences about being looked down upon by some rich Hong Kong women.
Like the US and Kyoto?
it's not that communist ... most "capitalist" countries have free medical care. In China you have to pay.
Political totalitarianism, yes;socialist economic system, no.
This misses the fact that Israel comprises only 20% of Palestine Most of Palestine is and has been since 1948 under Arab rule. It's called Jordan.
Arabs in Israel may in some respects be second class citizens,but they're much better off than Jews under Arab rule, and in fact, they are better off than Arabs under Arab rule. In Israel Arabs have the vote. In Arab countries, they either don't have the vote at all or it doesn't mean much. Israel, by the way, was the first country to give Arab WOMEN the vote. In Israel Arabs can freely form their own political parties or join others, and they can be, and are, elected to the Knesset. In Israel there are real civil liberties for Arabs as well as Jews, enforced by the courts. In case after case, Arabs have WON cases in the Israeli courts. The Supreme Court of Israel has on numerous occasions over-ruled the government in favor of Arabs.
It's a Monty Python & the Life of Brian quote. Not a serious post.
You mean a lot of improvised inventions taken using existing 1st world technology with a dash of industrial espionage.
YES! Because all 1st world inventions were made in a box. All the advancements even! They even invented numbers!
Even as the dollar falls, Chinese imports become no less or no more expensive because the exchange rate has stayed the same.
Don't confuse a currency peg with the purchasing power. A currency peg does not mean that the value of imports/exports remains fixed. You are also assuming that the Dollar and Renminbi are the only two currencies out there. I'll try to explain because it's not entirely intuitive. (and I'll try to keep it simple because it isn't - hopefully I've gotten my cash flows right...)
If the US buys goods from China, capital (money) *has* to flow into China. There is now a smaller supply of capital (money) in the US and a larger money supply in China. When the money supply gets larger, the value of a unit of currency (absent government action) falls.
The next time China wants to buy (import) some goods, they have all this extra supply of dollars. Excess supply reduces the real value of their currency so they can buy less goods/services. Having a "cheap" currency makes exports cheaper but imports more expensive.
Notice that exchange rates haven't even been mentioned yet. With a floating currency, the Renminbi (China's currency) would devalue in the Foreign Exchange (FX) markets. But to keep this from happening, China does something clever. First, they do not permit the Renminbi to be traded in Foreign Exchange markets keeping the supply low. They maintain the exact exchange rate by buying/selling US Bonds (dollars but in the future) with the dollars they got earlier from selling goods.
One problem is that this can lead to speculation. (Read about George Soros and the Bank of England for details) To avoid this problem China keeps a HUGE foreign reserve (over $600 billion and rising) to keep speculators at bay, even though it is widely recognized that China is enjoying a 20-40% advantage in exports. Since China's economy is export driven, they aren't about to change that suddenly either. Yes, they will have to adjust the peg to keep inflation in check but it's going to happen gradually. I'm getting aside however.
The point is, that a currency peg does NOT keep the prices of goods between the US and China constant. The US can't keep printing dollars and selling them to China forever without inflation occuring. Likewise China can't keep selling goods to the US for increasingly more plentiful (and thus less valuable in the world market - remember there are other countries besides the US and China) dollars.
The most valuable thing for monitoring someone is something they believe to be secure, but you can break. If they think they are at risk of being monitored/overheard, they are much more likely to be careful/deceptive/secretive. However, if they believe that they are secure and that you can't know what they are doing, they are very likely to be very unguarded.
So if you want to know what they are doing, you want them to have the illusion of security. Encryption that you can break would be right up that alley. They believe their data to be encrypted and thus unreadable, so are inclined to store whatever they like in it. You can then decrypt it and see what they are up to.
The last thing you want is something that really is secure. If they can encrypt something and you can't get at it, then you are screwed. This goes double for something that is in common usage. If normal people use nothing, then someone using something good sets off a red flag and you can check it out. However if everyone is using good encryption, you have no idea who to check out, and no way to find out.
So yes, if you want to monitor people, the false appearance of security is just what you need.
You don't trust crypto that is secret, period. For everything I'm aware of short of a one time pad (and even that sort of) you don't prove it to be strong, you prove it to be not weak. Ok sounds like a silly language game but here's what I mean:
A proof something is strong would mean you could conduct a single test that would prove that an algorithm didn't have any flaws. That test would be all that's needed. It'd get redone a number of times to ensure there were no errors in testing, but if it passed, you'd know it's good.
Well, can't do that. What you can do, and do in reality, is try over and over to break it. You have all kinds of experts back away at an algorithm and see if they can crack it. When nobody can, and when they do all sorts of mathematical tests showing that probably it can't be broken, you feel confident in calling it strong.
There's a reason why it took so long for Rijndael to become AES. It had to undergo a lot of testing (past what it already had) before FIPS was convinced that yes, it really was secure. It wasn't proved in one magic test, rather the continual failures to break it were seen as a mounting amount of evidence that, indeed no break is possible.
So you never, ever, trust an encryption that uses a secret method. If it hasn't been tested by the world mathematical and cryptographic communities, it isn't worth its shit. For all you know there could be a gaping hole that even the developers don't know about, but will be discovered soon. You only ever use tested, reviewed, public crypto.
Hell, for the reason of testing, some peopel still recommend the use of 3DES instead of AES. Why? Well though AES is superior in the long term, since it'll be harder to crack brute force, it just don't have the history 3DES does. There has been a couple of decades of DES usage, with no breaks. Thus you can pretty confidently say there will be no breaks, until computers are of sufficient power to brute force 3DES, you are safe, and that's going to be a while. AES is almost certianly as good or better, but still, there's not that history of proof, it's the new kid.
So regardless you your trust for a particular nation, don't ever trust secret crypto. EVen if the intent isn't ot have it breakable, it very well could be.
of business monopolies - "embrace and extend"!
/. articles about how
There were several older
Intel's new Cetrino chip would NOT use China's
WAPI security paradigm for WiFi. China has been
protecting their IP in this regard - only Chinese
companies are permitted to sub-license the WAPI
IP. So, China, arguably one of the biggest
offenders in regards to OPIP (Other People's IP),
is now using their market share to make their own
standards to generate royalties - what a concept!
Their original claims that Western WiFi security
models were flawed (well, we know that, right?)
as their justification for espousing their very
own security standard. Is WAPI a better standard?
I cannot answer that question, but it could be.
(But I also cannot discount the possibility that
they have also created their own "backdoors" into
the protocol stack.)
Between China's internal market share (100%) and
their share of global manufacturing for WiFi (as
much as 50%), they may well be able to enforce
their own security standard on the rest of the
world. I suspect that if this issue escalates
up to the WTO, the Chinese will win the argument.
One might hope, however, that the Chinese do not
follow the Microsoft "model of business practice"
that has so recently emerged in the news...
You must be joking. Chinese food is so heavy and greasy I don't need to eat for days afterwards.
It WAS ratified by congress back during the 1990s and signed by Clinton. It is a treaty, not just an agreement.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Ok, so if the ICC is impotent without the help of a nation's own lawmakers and police, then how is that nation ceding sovereignty by agreeing to it? I mean if the ICC asked for something unreasonable, couldn't a country's leaders simply say no? Is there anything in the ICC treaty that says that it can forcibly render judgements inside one member country, using borrowed militaries from other member countries? Under the ICC, if a country refuses to comply with a request for extradition, will that country's wishes be honored if the judged were to step into another ICC country that supported the extradition? Just how gung-ho can the ICC and its members get - could they swoop into a non-ICC country with borrowed military to force an extradition? And just what sort of crimes is the ICC allowed to prosecute under the proposed treaty?
Your argument falls strongly on the side against the ICC, but a few key issues seem to be glossed over, which makes me suspicious. Just how much sovereignty would be lost? I would expect these sorts of issues to be clarified in the treaty, and if they haven't been, then that should be a cause for alarm. Can anyone clarify?
I agree with most of your statements, but HongKong was returned to China in 1997, not 1989.
Is the quote in your sig yours or someone else's?
[o]_O
Also, I think it would be good for you to realize that basic human rights, and standard of living, mean more than the right to vote.
Well not so much 'industrial' espionage back then, but yeah, Europe worked its way out of the dark ages by ripping off everyone else. Literally, everyone else.
Anyway, I'd feel a lot better if China didn't control the standard, as it is they have a ton of control over our economy, and quite frankly every once a while there comes an entity that makes Bill Gates seem like the lesser of two threats.
RIAA and the MPAA, putting the "F U" in "fair use".
The next time China wants to buy (import) some goods, they have all this extra supply of dollars.
Like, for example, petroleum:)
This American is expecting some serious stagflation, where the price of almost everything, including credit, will increase.
The only price that will not increase in the U.S. is that of labor.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Arabs in Israel have far more than just the right to vote. They have "basic human rights", such as a real legal system, which does not exist in countries like Saudi Arabia. In Israel, in addition to the right to vote, Arab women are allowed to drive cars, dress as they wish to, leave the country without the permission of their male guardian, and walk about alone. In Saudi Arabia they aren't. It simply isn't the case that Arabs in Israel have a "useless" right to vote but lack other basic human rights.
The idea that Arab mistreatment of Jews began only as a result of the creation of Israel is a myth, due in part to the fact that overall Jews were treated better by Arabs than by Christians. That just shows how badly the Christians behaved, not how well the Muslims behaved.
In some Arab countries at some times the situation of Jews was not too bad, but Jews have been second-class citizens in virtually Arab regimes and badly mistreated much of the time. Under Islamic law, Jews are required to pay Jizya "tribute", a special tax not levied on Muslims. Construction of new synagogues is not permitted. Indeed, in Saudi Arabia today the open practice of any religion other than Islam is forbidden and Saudi citizens must be Muslims. A Muslim man can marry a Jewish woman, but a Jewish man cannot marry a Muslim woman. Jews cannot testify in court. Jews were required to wear distinctive clothing and in most countries were restricted in where they could live and forced to live in ghettoes.(here is one of many summaries of the status of non-Muslims under Islamic law, with extensive quotations from Muslim sources.) There are numerous examples of mass murders of Jews in Arab countries long before 1948, such as the extermination of the 120,000 Jews of Fez, Morocco in 1146. Other massacres took place in Granada (Spain, under Moorish rule) in 1066, Libya in 1785, and Algeria in 1805, 1815, and 1830, to mention only a few.