University Professor Chastised For Using Tor

Irongeek_ADC writes with a first-person account from the The Chronicle of Higher Education by a university professor who was asked to stop using Tor. University IT and campus security staffers came knocking on Paul Cesarini's door asking why he was using the anonymizing network. They requested that he stop and also that he not teach his students about it. The visitors said it was likely against university policy (a policy they probably were not aware that Cesarini had helped to draft). The professor seems genuinely to appreciate the problems that a campus IT department faces; but in the end he took a stand for academic freedom.

Comments

Bravo

[QuantumG]

Good to see some university professors still have integrity.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

I wish I had "tenure" at my day to day job.

Re:Bravo

[Chikenistheman]

Looks like we as IT professionals will have to tighten security in order to keep these "Free Thinkers" from spreading the word. **crack the overloards whip**

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

He is an assistant professor. He is unlikely to have tenure.

Re:Bravo

[Synic]

You aren't preparing the youth of the country for their future lives either, though, are you? ;)

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector. That severely constrains my interest in executing it since my health care bills would be $300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

I applaud his efforts. And I chose not to work in academia so it's my responsibility that he has privileges that I do not.

Re:Bravo

[__aagmrb7289]

FYI (from TFA): My reason for downloading and installing the Tor plug-in was actually simple: I'd read about it for some time, was planning to discuss it in two courses I teach, and figured I should have some experience using it before I described it to my students. The courses in question both deal with controlling technology, diffusing it throughout society, and freedom and censorship online. When I cover online censorship in countries with no free press, I focus on how those countries rely on hardware, software, and phalanxes of people to make sure citizens can reach only government-approved media. Crackdowns on independent journalists, bloggers, and related dissidents all too often result in their being beaten, incarcerated, or worse. Technologies like Tor represent a beacon of freedom to people in those countries, and I would be doing my students a disservice if I didn't mention it.

Re:Bravo

[KerberosKing]

The thing is, tenure is earned by outstanding scholarship over years of teaching and research. It is a long-standing tradition of university life. Further, it is crucial that we as a society have high-profile people that can question and critique the status-quo of governments, companies and other powerful groups without great fear of reprisals. Such protections are needed, else the relatively low pay and long hours of professors would hardly seem worth it when contrasted with executives and their exorbitant pay.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector. That severely constrains my interest in executing it since my health care bills would be $300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG]

I think maybe there's something you're overlooking: a university is not a business. I know that folks in the US might be shocked to hear me say this.. after all, universities are run as if they are businesses, and typically in a more cutthroat fashion than regular businesses, but how many businesses do you know, outside the aviation industry, that receive regular funding from the government? The university network belongs to the people and, although that doesn't give people the right to do whatever they want on the network, it does mean that university IT has a responsibility to ensure civil liberties are not trampled. If they don't like that, then they shouldn't have taken government funding.

Re:Bravo

[nomadic]

I wish I had "tenure" at my day to day job.

This incident illustrates the precise reason tenure exists.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG]

Places like Sun Labs have something similar to tenure. In fact, Sun Labs runs a heck of a lot like a postgraduate university.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowhere in the article did it say he had tenure. Most professors do not have tenure. Many are adjuncts, which means if they cause problems, they are simply not hired again next semester. Most universities have policies about academic freedom (and tenure) because they don't want to turn into a place with group think. The private sector loves group think and towing the party line is the best way to climb the corporate ladder (until the whole ladder falls).

Re:Bravo

[neomunk]

Child porn like everybody else?

Fuck you.

I have had tor installed for many moons now, and have a severe reaction to child porn (or any type of sexual abuse, especially of children) due to the fact that an overwhelming majority of women I've gotten close enough to to talk about such things have been molested at some point in their life.

How about people who use it just because the country they are in has an abusive civil rights regime, or because they don't trust their ISP to keep their browsing habits secret? (Maybe they REALLY like the old cartoon Gem and are embarrassed about it) Maybe, just maybe, the person thinks that they are under surveillance for legal activities (like planning anti-war demonstrations).

Forget all that, the only thing you need know about it is that it's none of your fucking business what these people are doing. The old "they wouldn't care if they aren't doing anything wrong" bit is so played out, so proven stupid, and so indicative of 'fucktardation' that if you hadn't sent a damn shiver down my spine by calling me a supporter of child porn I'd have completely ignored you.

I couldn't though. Idiots are only dangerous when allowed to say such misinformed and ignorant things and are not called on it.

P.S.

Fuck you once more for implying that I'm some type of child molester (even a passive one) you freedom hating punk.

Re:Bravo

[calice]

I've never understood why people consider this kind of action by a university or other group to be so terrible. He is using the school's computer, in the school's building, with the school's internet connection. If the school sends someone to ask him not to do something specific with those things, then his reaction should be, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I'll stop now." The school has every right to do so. They also have the right to ask him not to cover the topic in the class. These are the people paying his salary, and if they don't want this going on, they can tell him to stop.

This isn't a major issue. It's not like the government is passing laws banning the use of the software for use in the US. That would be absolutely wrong. All he is standing up for is his right to be insubordinate to his superiors.

I believe we should be allowed to use the TOR software. But using it in my home, with my connection, on my computer (all of which _I_ paid for) is a completely different story than using it at work.

Re:Bravo

[daeg]

Please cite where Tor is only used for child porn.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

but how many businesses do you know ... that receive regular funding from the government?

You're... kidding, right?

Have you even HEARD the term "Pork"? Bridges to nowhere? Hell, I'd consider the defense industry to be subsidized by the government.

Besides, with the government lately, it seems like the university by taking federal money would DISALLOW any sort of anonymizing things under the guise of "protecting the children" or some such.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

Yes, because two things that government is known for are low costs and high quality.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG]

He's a professor. Without professors, there is no university. With the possible exception of flooding the network so that it is unusable, he should be free to do anything he wants with the network.

All he is standing up for is his right to be insubordinate to his superiors. No. He is the superior.. they are just punk kids, hired by the IT department, who think they have an open mandate.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using Tor right now. I'm reading your post. If Tor is just used for child porn, then your post must be child porn!

I hope you're happy, you sick pervert.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Right on. Why should I have to pay for a police force, judges, politicians, schools, military, highways, or anything else the public uses? I can educate my own kids, do some gardening, walk to town, and take care of myself.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Your job is to go to work and perform some task for the company that hired you. HIS job is to know about things like Tor, think about what they mean, and educate his students. See the difference? Knowing about Tor is part of his job.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

Not sure how you got that out of what I said.

What I was saying is that I face large bills if I lose my insurance so I do not feel free to "fight the man".

Answering your question however:

1) Every american should be able to pay the negotiated rate for items. If all blue cross pays the hospital is $1,375 for a gall bladder operation- why should an uninsured person have to pay $18,325 for the same exact operation? If you can show that the hospital is charging anyone a certain price, you should be able to pay that same price for the same service.

2) Every american should have basic (and I do mean *BASIC*) health care covered socially. This includes random things like broken legs and car wreck injuries and not things like chemo therapy (and I say that as a cancer survivor). The larger the pool, the lower the costs. Right now, cherry picking is getting so extreme that you can't get insurance unless you are well. If I were grand high poohbah, I would set this at $1,000 * the minimum wage with a 20% co-pay but 0% on annual physicals. Everything over $1,000 would be your cost. If you used no benefits except the free physicals, I'd give you back 5% ($350) as a tax credit.

Why I say this is that we are competing against countries where this is true and it puts our companies at a competative disadvantage.

Re:Bravo

[evil_Tak]

All you United States Postal Service dudes, chew on this for a bit.

You may not be sending or receiving child porn. BUT i GUARANTEE THAT SOMEONE IS SENDING OR RECEIVING CHILD PORN USING YOUR MAILBOX IF YOU ARE SET UP TO USE THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE. In this situation, you are enabling and promoting child abuse.

Or, a cop could see a request for child porn spew out of your mailbox, followed by your order for viagra that you were so ashamed about. Have fun talking your way out of that.

Re:Bravo

[PopeRatzo]

I should have to work and give a portion of my pay to supporting the medical problems of every jobless waif in the damned country? No thanks.

Wow. I hope if you ever find yourself jobless that the people around you who are working have a better attitude than yours.

If your Jackoff-in-Chief wasn't throwing away half-a-trillion a year on a failed war (see today's NIE report) there would be more than enough money to provide health care to uninsured Americans, even with the HMOs and insurance companies making obscene profits. And if we put a little thought into our Health Care System (besides just saying "Let the Market Do It"), we might actually have enough to provide health care for 300,000,000 million Americans. Have you ever given any thought to the teachings of Christ? He's pretty clear on how we're supposed to treat the poor and sick. But I'm sure you're too busy being a Right-Wing Christian to concern yourself with the actual teachings of Christ.

Asshole.

[note to mods: You is not flamebait, it's a goddamn FLAME]

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "Paul Cesarini is an assistant professor of visual communication and technology education at Bowling Green State University."

He's still pretty low on the feeding chain, so he is being somewhat gutsy by doing this.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

If your great grandparent (post-wise, not genetics-wise) did all that, he probably wouldn't have a need for the cholesterol and blood pressure medications. Fresh air, fresh fruits and veggies and a exercise are great for the cardiovascular system.

Re:Bravo

[flithm]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector.

This is not necessarily true. I've actually put myself into a position where I was SURE I'd be fired for refusing to go along with a company policy that I felt to be morally (and ethically) wrong. When you have righteousness on your side you'd be amazed at what can actually happen. (I wasn't fired, and I didn't follow policy).

I'm not saying you're lying or anything, because I don't know your situation. But I do know how scary it is to put yourself out there like that, and I know that it's a lot easier to say "Ohh pfft, he's in academia so he can get away with that... I could never do that." But really that's nothing more than an excuse.

There's plenty of situations where someone in the private sector could get away with a lot more than someone in academia, and vice versa. Making an insinuation that somehow life is easier in academia is not only wrong, but it's also a little insulting to what he decided to put himself through.

I'm not suggesting that you start using Tor even if it's against company policy (that would be something entirely different than what he did), but executing your basic rights as an individual will not result in instant unemployment.

Stand up for what you believe in! If it gets your fired, you're working in the wrong place. If you worked somewhere that wasn't going to immediately fire you for doing something you feel to be just, then maybe your blood pressure wouldn't be so high!

Re:Bravo

[s20451]

The thing is, tenure is earned by outstanding scholarship over years of teaching and research.

You clearly don't work in academia. It is surprisingly easy to publish, and tenure committees tend to look at quantity over quality.

Such protections are needed, else the relatively low pay and long hours of professors would hardly seem worth it

I don't know, I think I'm paid about right. As long as I show up to teach my classes, supervise students, and bring in grant money, nobody really cares what I do. Example: Today I had scheduled a couple of hours of off-site meetings, so I decided to work the rest of the day from home. Try doing that at Motorola.

Re:Bravo

[neomunk]

Are you shitting me? So by that logic everyone in Florida who's paid any taxes, or even anyone who's bought anything IN Florida and paid state sales tax on it was funding ole' cyber-fondle Foley's (attempted?, completed?) trysts with underage boys?

Or even better, everyone in the U.S. who has in any way paid for any road construction, well they've supported every criminal who tried to get away by car.

C'mon now, who's next in line for trying to tell me that the desire of privacy is indicative of criminal behavior.

Re:Bravo

[san]

In the case of health care, governments are known for low costs and high quality. Total medical expenditure per capita in western countries with universal healthcare tends to be around a quarter of what it is in the US, and people live longer and healthier lives.

These are fairly well established facts (I'm not going to dig up references now, but for example, there was a Nature article last year on how Brits live longer than Americans -- even if you account for any conceivable cultural/economical/whatever difference, and Brits have a lower life expectancy than other European countries. That should get you started). You can also easily look up medical expenditure per capita.

Whether you want universal healthcare should mainly be a political question: it does, undeniably, take away freedom (you're going to be taxed and you don't have a very direct say on how that money gets spent --- you're still free to go to any doctor you want if you're willing to pay more for it).

In many countries, people think it's worth the trade-off.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Well, private universities are businesses. Which is why I don't like private universities. Of course, here private universities are mostly of the advertise-for-students-on-TV variety. Not exactly bastions of academia.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

I expect Blue Cross buys a lot more gall bladder operations than you do. Ever hear of a bulk discount? Should you be able to buy all products at the same price Wal-Mart pays too? Seems to me such an idea is kind of anti-capitalistic. Sort of like a... centrally planned economy!

Re:Bravo

[jyx]

I think maybe there's something you're overlooking: a university is not a business. Sorry, maybe some time back that was correct, but universities are now businesses. Just like health care and police.

Go and work for them and see for yourself.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

a university is not a business

Then, in the U.S. anyway, what's with the numerous titles like "Ford distinguished professor of Computer Science", "Mitsubishi Professor of Functional Materials", "SONY Professor of Electronic Information Engineering Department", and so forth?

Re:Bravo

[joh6nn]

yeah, and by owning a car, i'm leaving myself wide open for when someone steals it and uses it in a bank robbery. if that's the best you can come up with, shut up and sit back down. criminals and assholes are always gonna find some way to make things suck. that absolutely can not be a reason for us not to try and make things better.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Why is this modded '-1 troll' but not it's parent?

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Jesus fucking Christ. People here speak of health care like it's just another commodity to be bought and sold. Will we never advance as a species above this exploitive outlook on life?

Re:Bravo

[TheCarp]

Civil liberties and government funding have little to do with it.

Its about academic freedom, and freedom of inquery.

Realise I worked in IT at a major university. I was there when we decided to impliment virus scanning, not even spam filtering (I was there for that too) but just virus scanning.

It was debated because well... what if someone had a legitimate acedemic need to recieve viruses in email?

Seriously! We gave unfettered internet access. Porn? Well... guess what... someone may be doing acedemic research into porn and needs to access porn sites. These are legitimate debates that come up in that environment because... they take the persuit of intellectual inquery as serious buisness... because it IS their buisness.

No firewalls, no filtering... unfettered access, because if someone needs it, they need it.

-Steve

Re:Bravo

[jacksonj04]

Yes, but you can't use that as reasoning. Buying in bulk of most goods and services is cheaper because of reduced production costs (You only need to configure machines once per run, staff get more efficient etc) and reduced admin costs (Instead of 2 minutes of paperwork per each item, there is 5 minutes of paperwork for 20,000 items). This is highly simplified, but roughly the idea.

Every operation is different, and often performed by specialist surgeons. Each one involves exactly the same amount of paperwork, excepting a near insignificant difference for payment methods. Additionally, the time and complexity of each operation is dependant on the patient and not who pays for the operation. Therefore, there is no good argument for applying bulk discount to operations other than if you charge 'bulk' at just above cost then you can charge individual purchases far more and make more profit.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG]

Unfortunately, by that logic, you can say undergraduates don't need tor access, unless they're in a class where tor use has been assigned as an academic need.. etc. It seems that "security" to some people means "make everyone ask for permission to do everything".

Re:Bravo

[anthony_dipierro]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector. That severely constrains my interest in executing it since my health care bills would be $300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

Surely you'd get more than $300/month in unemployment benefits while you looked for another job. That is, if you got truly got canned in the first place.

Of course, banning Tor from the workplace is something that makes sense for any job where the employees have access to trade secrets.

I applaud his efforts. And I chose not to work in academia so it's my responsibility that he has privileges that I do not.

I guess, but such jobs aren't limited to academia. And unless you're really unskilled and making very little it doesn't take that long to save enough money so you have the ability to stand up for what you believe in.

Re:Bravo

[HUADPE]

There were 2 requests made to him. The first is not objectionable, the second is highly objectionable.

First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing. Kind of like saying "please don't seed torrents of 20 Linux CD images on our network."

Second: please do not tell your class about Tor even though you believe it is relevant to what they are learning about. This is highly objectionable, and undermines the purpose of the university as a place for free exchange of ideas. Even assuming the university is private and can tell him to do this, they shouldn't tell him to do this. It makes them a worse university. Can do and should do are different questions.

Re:Bravo

[FLEB]

Or, a cop could see a request for child porn spew out of tor, followed by your order for viagra that you were so ashamed about. Have fun talking your way out of that.

Now, if I understand TOR correctly, wouldn't they see the child porn request, then just another indecipherably encrypted request (your order for Viagra) being sent off to some random TOR router?

Re:Bravo

[PagosaSam]

My good for little HMO costs me and my employer $6000 per year. 300M people would cost 1.8 Trillion bucks. Even with negotiated savings we're talking in the neighborhood of $1T per year. It might be worth it, but that is one hell of a new entitlement program.

Re:Bravo

[terrahertz]

(Maybe they REALLY like the old cartoon Gem and are embarrassed about it)

It's Jem. And she is outrageous.

(Oh no -- maybe I should have used Tor to submit this comment?!)

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

I guess you missed the sarcasm. I'm from Canada, and I think universal health care is one of the most important things that differentiates us from our... famous neighbor.

However, the original poster lives (I assume) in a place where capitalism is revered, including in health care. It's not how I'd want to live, and what you said in your post is an excellent summary of why.

Re:Bravo

[anthony_dipierro]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector. That severely constrains my interest in executing it since my health care bills would be $300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.

Sure, because it's the government's job to subsidize those who don't eat right and exercise. (Yes, some people have high blood pressure and high cholesterol naturally, but for many others it's just a matter of laying off the McDonalds fries.)

Re:Bravo

[paeanblack]

He's a professor. Without professors, there is no university. With the possible exception of flooding the network so that it is unusable, he should be free to do anything he wants with the network.

Yes...and no...

In academic IT, there really is only one cardinal rule for users: do nothing that interferes with others' ability to use the network. Beyond that, as long as some behavior is remotely academics related, accommodations can be made. Is this professor interfering with the network? Indirectly, yes. He is circumventing essentially all of the tools IT can use to maintain the network's functionality. He is opening the university network to carrying traffic over which nobody in the university has control. He is, in effect, monopolizing the time of the university IT staff by being such a special case.

There are other ways of handling the situation. He could have his own private external connection, for example.

If a physics professor wanted to build a new wind tunnel that would be so loud it would disturb the other activies of the school, would it be an oppression of academic freedom to not allow it in the middle of campus? Build it somewhere else.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

As a grad student at a giant public university, I also sit on various IT committees. The biggest problems I see stem from the IT department thinking that the university is a business, and the faculty thinking the university is a university. When the IT folks want to implement any changes (or attempt to restrict access to certain sites/services), the faculty will often resist. And, in the end, if the IT staff wants something, and the faculty disagree (even if just a few faculty disagree), the faculty will always win.

On one occasion, a fellow grad student was capturing faces from amateur porn sites for some research. He got a stern warning from the IT department, and, in return, the IT department got a stern warning from the Provost's office about disturbing researchers.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, duh, it was missing something.

All you United States Postal Service dudes, chew on this for a bit.

You may not be sending or receiving child porn. BUT i GUARANTEE THAT SOMEONE IS SENDING OR RECEIVING CHILD PORN USING YOUR MAILBOX IF YOU ARE SET UP TO USE THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE. In this situation, you are enabling and promoting child abuse.

Or, a cop could see a request for child porn spew out of your mailbox, followed by your order for viagra that you were so ashamed about. Have fun talking your way out of that.

Vista sucks! M$ M$ M$ M$ M$ Linux Rules!!!!

There, +5 insightful. This is Slashdot, after all.

Re:Bravo

[PopeRatzo]

Even gold-plated health coverage shouldn't cost 6k for everybody if it was done right.

I mean, most people are not usually sick. And I'm sick of people pointing to Canada or Britain and saying: "see, universal coverage doesn't work". We're the USA, goddammit, and we can spit farther, screw longer and piss farther than any other country on the planet, so you'd think we could figure this thing out so we don't have to have kids going without being able to see a doctor when they get sick. The fact that we have such a high infant mortality rate should cause every one of us to be ashamed. Once and for all, can we just build a good health-care system for every American and maybe put gay marriage, protecting the children from video games, and flag-burning amendments on the back burner for just a little while?

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Sorry about that. I live in the Corporate States of America where the almighty dollar is second only to Gawd. Or is it the other way around?

Re:Bravo

[blueskies]

Ha Ha.

Mod this troll funny. How can you say you guarantee if you are posting anonymous? Nice guarantee--backed fully by the name behind the guarantee.

Wouldn't it be easier to talk your way out if it since you are using Tor? Just like it would be easier to talk your way out of something if your AP is unsecured?

Re:Bravo

[Citizen of Earth]

$300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

OTOH, it sounds like you might benefit from not being able to put food on the table.

Re:Bravo

[I_Love_Pocky!]

Well we certainly wouldn't want to encourage innovation in heath care with a competitive market would we? Heavens, we might accidentally develop something helpful for the species. Money is such a terrible motivator.

Re:Bravo

[eMbry00s]

But you don't. Also, cleaning up streets is a full time job, so is taking care of the town water supply.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Yeah, wonderful. And then like maybe 0.0000001% of the population --- you know, the IMPORTANT people --- can actually afford to make use of it. Nice try though.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously only a true child molester would respond with such aggressive denial.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

I missed the sarcasm too. I guess too dry for me.

Here's the deal-- you cannot have unlimited medical coverage.

Period.

1) there are too many diseases that can be cured IF you have unlimited resources... well really about $2,000,000 to $10,000,000 or so. The point is- we can't afford to cure everyone's $350,000 bypass surgery so we let people pay for it themselves or die. You do it in canada too- you just do it via rationing and delays instead of via money. "Sure you can get your surgery-- in 17 months" vs "Sure you can get your surgery- for $350,000".

2) If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice. We currently say "no mistakes and no malpractice" but that decision probably doubles or triples every thing we do medically. Which in some cases means that the procedure that could be done cheaply- is now too expensive.

3) Even in socialist countries- you are paying. Sure- you may rip off the doctors (with a resulting shortage of doctors and hence long wait periods) but the drug company executives are still flying around in jets and vacationing in maui.

So the point is not curing every illness known regardless of price- but setting a reasonable amount of tax dollars aside to cover a reasonable amount of medical expenses for the most people possible. No open heart surgery for 98 year olds on the tax dollar but if they want to pay for it themselves- okay. Yes to vaccinations for everyone and broken limbs (tho perhaps a limit on the number of times to reign in the reckless types).

Re:Bravo

[I_Love_Pocky!]

Hmm... it seems that quite a few Americans find a way to obtain health care despite not having it provided by their government. Obviously not everyone gets everything they need, but I'd suspect a lot more than 0.0000001% are getting damn fine health care. Health care is not a right.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

Dude,
Compared to everyone around me, I'm killing myself saving my ass off (40% of my net) and it's going to be at least four more years (ignoring the health issues) before I reach that point. My only debt is my house. The rest of the folks around me dont' even have a chance- many are a paycheck from being on the street.

I *want* to be free like you talk about. It's a lot *harder* than you seem to think.

Once my medical issues developed a couple years ago, I realized I would have to save at least another $100,000 to pay the costs for my treatments without insurance. And I'm fit- play sports twice a week- lots of veggies, not many carbs. It's just a fact that as you get older your health gets worse.

I have the freedom to speak my mind- lose my job- and (assuming my house is paid for and i have saved enough for property taxes, utilities, and food) die years earlier without my meds. Or I can keep my trap shut- and get another 10 years of healthy life and another 12-15 years of total life. I'd prefer not to die at 64 like my grandpa when I know I can make it to 80.

Some people are willing to trade life later for certain things now- I'm not.

Re:Bravo

[neomunk]

Just so you know, the spelling of Jem (Gem) is the part of the post I struggled with the longest... I had a feeling it was with a J, but that was so long ago, and so edge-of-experience for me that I went with my first impulse, and left it as I first typed it.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

I don't want to talk past each other with statistics, because that's been done to death, and frankly neither side ever seems to trounce the other. All I know is that I keep seeing wealthy Canadians and even Europeans coming to the States for their elective procedures. You can live a long time and still be miserable because you can't get the knee surgery that you need.

The other problem is that the US market is currently subsidizing drug and equipment development (even in other countries). If you make the US market like France or Germany, either everyone's costs will rise or the rate of drug/device/procedure development will slow. It's not rocket science - if money flow goes down, the research dollars will flow elsewhere.

Do I like subsidizing the entire world when I buy my Nexium? No. Am I glad it is available, even if at an inflated cost? Yes.

There is the other issue, too. The model countries for socialized health care are Germany and France. These countries have horrible economic problems as a result of their social spending. I don't like the thought of 50% unemployment for those under 25. The last thing we need is more government spending.

I do support reform, however. The current system is not great. Specifically, our "universal health care" is the emergency room. We need to offer free or cheap clinics that will keep people out of the very expensive emergency rooms. I have no problem with government spending or social programs, but I believe that they should have as small a scope as is possible while still attacking the problem. Government is inefficient (by design) and usually inept (not by design, but in practice).

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

I'd suspect a lot more than 0.0000001% are getting damn fine health care.

How much of the medical skill required to deliver that health care has been around for awhile, and how much of it was developed due to economic forces? Hint: If it takes a lot of money to develop it, it takes a lot of money to make use of it. Something about return on investment.

Health care is not a right.

You see, THAT is where we fundamentally disagree.

Re:Bravo

[tezbobobo]

Actually, under the critical theorist rhetoric of the 70s I believe acedemic freedom was won as a right and not a privelege. Such is wgy it cannot be taken away, regardless of tenure, contract etcetera. This I believe was accomplished in te law courts of most commonwealth countries.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Every american should be able to pay the negotiated rate for items. If all blue cross pays the hospital is $1,375 for a gall bladder operation- why should an uninsured person have to pay $18,325 for the same exact operation? If you can show that the hospital is charging anyone a certain price, you should be able to pay that same price for the same service.

But how else are we supposed to keep the unwashed masses...unwashed? If we let them get medical treatment at fair prices, they might be able to afford to educate their children!

Re:Bravo

[malsdavis]

The USA is a strange place. Here in the U.K. a university student would probably recieve extra marks in modules just because he/she was using networks like Tor.

After all, it's academia, as long as the university keeps getting enough students in (for which they get thousand of pounds for each student off of the government) then why would they care?

It seems to me the problem lies with vested commercial interests. Once these infiltrate an academic institution, the focus is no longer purely about research but also about the commercial interests of the sponsor institutions. Such vested interests cannot be good for the long-term academic principles of any institution.

Re:Bravo

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector. That severely constrains my interest in executing it since my health care bills would be $300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone. Offtopic, but have you tried to adjust your diet? My family has a history of high blood pressure and cholesterol. Most of my relatives who are dead have died from heart attacks. My father is on several medications for blood pressure and thyroid. To avoid this happening to me (mid 20s), I switched to macrobiotic foods. I haven't been to a doctor in a few years so I don't know what my blood pressure and cholesterol levels are (were high last time I went), but since switching I've felt better than I've ever felt before and have more energy than I had when I was a child.

Re:Bravo

[Nasarius]

We're already paying more per capita for our limited health programs (Medicare and Medicaid) than countries with universal health care pay. It would require at least some restructuring, but yes, we can pay for universal health care for far less than $1 trillion.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG]

Couldn't agree with you more. Another person who would agree with you is Eben Moglen. He hates the vested interests so much he uses his legal skills to shorten patent lifetimes on drugs developed at his university. Best thing is, they can't even fire him. That's what tenure is for.

Re:Bravo

[I_Love_Pocky!]

Why would it be a right? It is nice to have, I'll grant you that, but no one owes me anything. Rights should be limited to those things which can not be taken away from me, not those things which must be given to me.

Health care is a luxury that some wealthy nations have decided to share amongst all of their citizens. That is a fair choice, and one which I don't particularly disagree with. In making such a choice, that nation must understand that as with socializing anything, they are introducing a bureaucracy that has no real incentive to do a good job. There is a danger that such a system will be less effective than a market driven system, but I will admit that it doesn't guarantee that.

I oppose socializing anything that doesn't have to be, because every socialized institution I've been exposed to has been severely flawed. If your nation has been successful in socializing medicine, then more power to you.

But please do explain to me how something others provide to you can be your right?

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consider that last six years regular, what about corporate tax breaks?

CAPTCHA: politics. How fitting.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who fear death and illness so greatly that they will steal the livelihood from others in order to protect themselves seem to be the ones with the exploitive outlook.

Re:Bravo

[Score Whore]

That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.

No that's why the government should be pointing and laughing at people who have such poor personal habits as to put themselves into such a dangerous state of health.

Queue people who say "genetics". The counter is that the number of people whose genetics would leave them with dangerously high blood pressure or cholesterol while eating a healthy diet is tiny. And for that miniscule minority, I'm not sure I agree that the nation has a responsibility to sustain their (evantually) fatally flawed body.

Yeah, I'm a dick. I'm fairly certain it's genetic. Yet astonishingly enough nobody in the government or populace is suggesting that the man provide me with regular sex with hot, std free, eighteen year olds.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

What's needed is for America to grow a spine and quit being such a batch of hypocrites.

Health care is not a right? Fine, then repeat after me: "If a person is too sick to work, then he or she should crawl into a gutter and die." If you can't swallow that, don't make the claim. Don't try to force people to keep brain dead women alive (or any terminal illness). Don't demand that women go through an expensive high-risk pregnancy to have a baby because the baby's life is somehow worth it. Don't charge people with crimes for not getting medical care for themselves or their dependents.

What would be ideal would be for company-based insurance plans to be outlawed. If I knew then what I know about insurance now, I'd have signed up for insurance fresh out of college and NEVER joined a group plan. Now, I've been diagnosed with MS, and if I ever want to change jobs, I'll have to have a $20k payraise just to cover the cost of the drugs which if I change insurance companies would just not be covered. Could you imagine buying car insurance, getting into a wreck, then getting only half of the claim paid because you changed jobs? I'm willing to bet that group health plans are NOT the result of companies "buying in bulk" but the result of insurers selling cheap plans knowing that they have an escape should they sell a policy to someone like me. Fortunately for me, our current rates are locked in by contract. Unfortunately for our company, the next person we hire will have to pay five times as much. Oh, but I'm sure there's no pressure to have me gotten rid of. All of the profit, none of the risk, group health insurance is such a joke.

Re:Bravo

[ShaunC]

how many businesses do you know, outside the aviation industry, that receive regular funding from the government?

A lot of them, lately.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

But please do explain to me how something others provide to you can be your right?

Well, there is no absolute reason carved on a stone somewhere. Likewise, why should life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be rights? Why should you have a right to physical property? Why should you have a right to move as you please, go where you want, under your own free will? In many times and places, people didn't have these rights. Hell, some people don't have them now. Therefore, they are not universal, but only what we agree upon. These "rights" are part of a social contract. I enumerate health care among them.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Monkey see, monkey do.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: The president wants to spend over $500 billion on the Iraq war next year.

Combine that with the Medicare and Medicaid budgets, and we'd almost be there.

Bush should have spent more time trying to solve actual problems, and less time war-mongering.

Re:Bravo

[Score Whore]

There is a bulk advantage to one offs. It allows you to guarantee a certain number of "sales". Additionally HMOs have specific menus of available health care. They might specify one particular type of sutures. Or a particular type of dental filling (metallic v. ceramic.) Or only certain types of treatments for particular ailments.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

So a researcher should go out and contract a new disease before attempting to discover a cure? If an educator wants to teach about spyware or trojans should she install and use them? I think the request not to use it because it is a violation of the AUP is legitimate and should be resolved. He mentions those terms of the AUP are vague. He also outlines some legitimate uses of TOR, these uses are focused on personal or political privacy. Depending on the situation the uses themselves may be in violation of a network AUP, for example if the network is intended solely for academic purposes. Alternatively, if the network is the only Internet access for on-campus students who are permitted to use it for personal use then it certainly weakens the case for banning this and similar technologies. If he has legitimate need to research TOR then perhaps he should set up an isolated network to prevent conflicts with the IT department. I am more concerned about the requests not to teach about it. If it is determined that it is a violation of the AUP then simply noting that in the class material should be sufficient to allow you to teach about TOR without encouraging its use.

Re:Bravo

[thuh Freak]

This is the CEO. Report to my office immediately.

Then get the fuck out, cuz your fired.

Re:Bravo

[Verloc]

I can follow your logic, but only to a certain point. I can certainly see how I could educate my children better then the education system.

But then I think about it bit more; as an urban dweller, how could I devote the time required to my kids? I would probably be working full time, my partner as well.

Can you assume everybody else is that competent though? Education isn't equal, live isn't equal; some people are going to be more able to raise children because of their history. Those people will find it very hard to survive in this state. I can't imagine a worse thing then being responsible for that.

Ultimately you have to deal with the system you have, change it where you can and hope for the best. The state plays an active role, we must work within that system.

Re:Bravo

[TheCarp]

> On one occasion, a fellow grad student was capturing faces from amateur porn sites for some
> research. He got a stern warning from the IT department, and, in return, the IT department got a
> stern warning from the Provost's office about disturbing researchers.

And well they should!

As someone who worked in University IT, we were often reminded of where we worked and what our purposes was. I think it was a good thing. IT exists to provide infrastructure for things to be done, not for its own ends.

Restricting porn in your house or in your buisness is one thing, but a university exists to promote knowledge and discover new knowledge. These sorts of restrictions and policing run directly against the very mission of the institution.

I think people tend to forget that there are reasons to block porn. Parents block porn in a misguided attempt to protect their children from some imagined harm (which is a very common thing for parents to do). Or to protect a company from potential legal liability from overly sensative workers. (I mean really... it has nothing to do with productivity. There are plenty of ways to be unproductive, thats like rotating the tires to see if it fixes that loud exhaust sound) .

A university has a completly different mission. Its good to see that the school has an intelligent provost.

-Steve

Re:Bravo

[bbtom]

Please come and work at my university. We need sane systems people. We have a Windows + wi-fi setup. It sucks. It's slow. The filters are extremely badly configured - the letters "mp3" are filtered from all URLs (no distinction between 'download a Jay-Z track' and 'download an MP3 of an academic debate'). The deskop environment is locked down so that the only applications that a user can use are Word and Internet Explorer. I wanted to work on an ASCII file the other day and Notepad is filtered. I shit you not.

I'd make a big fuss about it, but I finish in a couple of months and most of the time I can get around the filtering (SSH in to web server, wget/links - might set up a tunnel if I get bored).

Re:Bravo

[Cantus]

Because you live in a country, within a society, not in a remote island.

Re:Bravo

[anthony_dipierro]

Compared to everyone around me, I'm killing myself saving my ass off (40% of my net) and it's going to be at least four more years (ignoring the health issues) before I reach that point.

Huh? How much do you think you need? If you're saving 40% of your net, and you want to save enough to live off of for 3 months while looking for another job, then you only have to work for 7.5 months. Of course, that ignores unemployment, and it assumes you're already living at the bare minimum level.

My only debt is my house.

Maybe that's part of the problem. One way I acquired savings was by taking on low interest debt. It's much safer to have $10,000 in investments and $10,000 in debt than it is to have $0 either way. Of course, $0 either way plus a $10,000 credit limit is almost as safe (problem is you don't get a guaranteed rate that way).

I *want* to be free like you talk about. It's a lot *harder* than you seem to think.

I'm somewhat intrigued by the fact that you think this. For me it was pretty easy, and it wasn't because I was handed money from my parents, nor is it because I've ever had a huge salary. But for me that freedom is of great importance. It's probably the main reason I got out of the software engineering industry. I hated the idea that everything I created was owned by someone else.

I have the freedom to speak my mind- lose my job- and (assuming my house is paid for and i have saved enough for property taxes, utilities, and food) die years earlier without my meds. Or I can keep my trap shut- and get another 10 years of healthy life and another 12-15 years of total life. I'd prefer not to die at 64 like my grandpa when I know I can make it to 80.

You seem to be making the assumption that if you lose your job you couldn't get another one, with benefits, before your COBRA runs out (18 months). If that's your thinking then I guess I see where you're coming from.

Some people are willing to trade life later for certain things now- I'm not.

I guess I'm like that to some extent, but for the most part I guess I'm just fortunate enough to have never needed to make that choice. I've always been relatively healthy and relatively skilled for the job-market. By the way, I guess when you said you were "killing [yourself] saving [your] ass off" you meant it figuratively. But are you sure about that?

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, some people complain and criticize unions and their contributions to worker's rights like job security, welfare, health insurance and all other bad things to do. Yey savage capitalism.

Re:Bravo

[Score Whore]

Would you assert that auto repairs is a right? Or a right to electrician labor? Or a right to sofas? Health care is a service delivered by extensively educated people. Medicine is a product created by educated people with an expensive development process and a risky investment.

Or do you endorse dictating to doctors what they can charge for their services?

Re:Bravo

[TeraCo]

The thing is.. the US is really the only first world country where this viewpoint exists. Most of the other first world countries do have national healthcare. In Australia, our healthcare system is far from perfect, but it's still there and that's important.

Re:Bravo

[networkBoy]

Every american should have basic (and I do mean *BASIC*) health care covered socially. This includes random things like broken legs and car wreck injuries and not things like chemo therapy (and I say that as a cancer survivor). We already have this in the US, and IIRC it includes chemo if you are sick enough. It's called the emergency room, the USA's secrete socialized healthcare.
-nB

Re:Bravo

[networkBoy]

Eight ball says:
no

I'm inclined to agree.
-nB

Re:Bravo

[ichandarin]

Professors pay a good deal of money for their tenure. The opportunity cost of a tenured job at a university can be measured as the difference in salary between this IT professor's job and a job with the same requirements in the private sector. Professors also pay a premium for the independence and flexible work hours of life in the academic world. The extra salary you get over the salary of a potential professiorship is the cost of tenure (which includes the cost of getting a Phd if you don't have one, etc.)

I'm sure that there's an economist who can correct me on this - but it is basically correct.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Health care is a service delivered by extensively educated people. Medicine is a product created by educated people with an expensive development process and a risky investment.

And your point is??? Police officers, judges, soldiers also require training and financing. Why don't we leave their services to the free market?

Face it --- You have no good argument. As a society, what we choose to finance through taxes and what we choose to finance directly from our own pocketbook is COMPLETELY arbitrary. However, some people, such as yourself apparently, value money above human life. That speaks volumes about your character.

Re:Bravo

[daigu]

You miss one small fact. Often, insurance companies do not have a negotiated rate. So, they get billed $18,325 and decide they are going to pay $1,375. Doing so, they run the risk of having the hospital or the physician involved deciding that they are not going to continue providing service for that price - and so you see people that belong to groups like HMOs getting the same treatment as people on Medicare/Medicaid or that are uninsured. That is, they have to go to state or local hospitals that will provide these services irrespective of whether they get paid for them or how much they get paid.

The bottom line is that there needs to be a much larger discussion on what is valuable in our society and the role of socialized medicine in it. You can't arbitrarily implement price controls and expect the system to function as it currently does. You will need to fundamentally change the structure. Now, there are many good arguments ranging from healthcare as a public good to privatized medicine providing high quality medical services. I don't care to debate the merits of the role of socialized medicine here (and clearly we already have a limited form of it due to necessity) - but you do have to recognize the problem is not as simple or simply solved as you pretend it is in your post.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

so I decided to work the rest of the day from home. Try doing that at Motorola.

Better to work at Best Buy.

Re:Bravo

[anthony_dipierro]

First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing. Kind of like saying "please don't seed torrents of 20 Linux CD images on our network."

The IT staff doesn't own the network. Bowling Green State University owns the network. Most likely the University is a non-profit organization (if not government run), and most likely its mission is to educate its students. So if the professor's use of Tor helps him educate his students, and he isn't using a lot of bandwidth during peak times, then no, no one has a right to tell him to stop.

Seeding torrents of 20 Linux CD images is somewhat different, as it more likely uses a lot of bandwidth, but still I think the educational benefits outweigh the costs (especially if the bandwidth is kept limited).

Re:Bravo

[PopeRatzo]

But I'm sure you're too busy being a Right-Wing Christian to concern yourself with the actual teachings of Christ.

I'm truly sorry if my comment offended anybody. But when I hear some bright boy who's probably still dodging his college loans say that he hates having to "pay for all the uninsured waifs" it makes me so angry that my usually calm demeanor abandons me. Knowing that smug pricks like that actually think that because their uncle got them a job doing tech support at an insurance company that they're suddenly better than some laid-off factory worker with three kids really puts a snag in my merkin. This country is so frigging wealthy that a one-bedroom condo on Manhattan now averages about a million bucks, and it's still a seller's market. You'd think the least we could do is work out something so that everybody here can have their kids' tonsils taken out (do they still do that?) or get decent care for their elderly parents without having it destroy them economically.

I let it get to me sometimes, and it makes me lose my cool. I start making typos and going through keyboards every other week. Then when I lay my head down at night I get headaches from grinding my teeth. It's why my wife doesn't let me listen to talk radio any more. And hearing about a half-dozen helicopters in two weeks, full of 20 year-olds who should be listening to bad rock music and getting laid, going down half a world away in a war that every single military expert now says was a loser from the beginning (see today's National Intelligence Estimate), can make me downright unpleasant.

So I'm sorry. Next time some arrogant c-sucker wants to complain about all those icky poor people who are getting in the way of his new 3-series, I'll go walk the dog instead of telling him what I think. There are other people around here who do it better anyway.

Re:Bravo

[MoralHazard]

1) Every american should be able to pay the negotiated rate for items. If all blue cross pays the hospital is $1,375 for a gall bladder operation- why should an uninsured person have to pay $18,325 for the same exact operation? If you can show that the hospital is charging anyone a certain price, you should be able to pay that same price for the same service.

I would question this statement. WHY should every American get the same price? Is it a matter of fairness, that there's some moral wrong being done to you if you have to pay more than me for the same item? Or is it just a plausible-on-the-surface argument that happens to support your case, but has no real basis?

Consider that many different grocery stores offer the same red delicious apples for different prices. In Los Angeles, Ralph's carries them for TWO DIFFERENT prices: a lower price if you're a "club member", and a higher price if you're not. Pavillion's has them for a totally different price. Is this all somehow wrong? I mean, they're all selling the exact same apples: they are grown in the same fields, picked by the same hands, and transported by the same trucks. Since wholesale produce pricing is determined by auction, all of the grocers have the exact same wholesale cost, too. If this is unjust or wrong, somehow, explain it to me, because I don't get it.

What if I own a grocery store (I'm the sole owner, to simplify things), and I let the local boy scout troop have a discount when they're stocking up for camping trips. They pay 1/2 price, barely enough over the wholesale cost of goods to cover my overhead, because I believe in encouraging kids to get outdoors. Sure, I won't sell YOU anything at that price, but that's because I feel no obligation to encourage you to do anything. Where's the harm, here? What have I done wrong, in your world?

What about when prices change, over time? If a movie theater decides to have a promotion, where it sells the first 100 tickets on any given night at 1/2 price, and I'm the 101st person in line, have the somehow wronged me? What exactly did they do to me?

Seriously, I can't think of a single reason why your point, above, could be true. Help a brother out, here.

Re:Bravo

[StikyPad]

I don't see how Tor would be a tool in an oppressive society. Quite the opposite: Its use, as was your experience, would be a beacon to "suspicious" activity.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, ORs standing idle are free. Collecting from a thousand individual people, most of whom probably can't pay in full doesn't cost anything either. It's exactly the same as a nice steady supply of custom, er, patients from a nice, large, established firm that you know is going to pay up.

Take a plane ride as a similar case. If I tell an airline I'll charter a flight (plane+facilities+flight crew is a similar circumstance to an OR+recovery unit + staff) once a week for the next five years I'm going to get a WAY better per-passenger rate than you will walking up to the ticket counter and asking for the next flight. The expensive equipment and expensive personnel are guaranteed to be utilized so the price is much lower.

Not that any of this should apply to people's lives, but there are countries in the world where it does.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Judging by some of the programs I see on satellite, and the fact that many of the, uh, hosts of those programs have chief financial officers, I strongly suspect it's the other way around.

Re:Bravo

[san]

I don't want to talk past each other with statistics, because that's been done to death, and frankly neither side ever seems to trounce the other. All I know is that I keep seeing wealthy Canadians and even Europeans coming to the States for their elective procedures. You can live a long time and still be miserable because you can't get the knee surgery that you need.

You're right, that's indeed one of the trade-offs. Although on average people do get more and easier access to decent healthcare, that doesn't mean that specific cases are better off -- quite the opposite for some people. If you have a rare disease, you might be out of luck.

The other problem is that the US market is currently subsidizing drug and equipment development (even in other countries). If you make the US market like France or Germany, either everyone's costs will rise or the rate of drug/device/procedure development will slow. It's not rocket science - if money flow goes down, the research dollars will flow elsewhere.

I don't see how this is an argument against universal healthare in the US. If anything, it would force more equitable prices. There's still a lot of money to be made on sick and unhealthy people, no matter who pays.

There is the other issue, too. The model countries for socialized health care are Germany and France. These countries have horrible economic problems as a result of their social spending. I don't like the thought of 50% unemployment for those under 25. The last thing we need is more government spending.

That argument keeps coming up, but people fail to realize that Germany had jumped in population but not in GDP when it unified; East Germany (1/3 of current Germany) really was bankrupt. Other countries are doing just fine with their socialized care (the Netherlands, Sweden, etc.). The UK (with its uber-socialized NHS) is doing fine, but it's true that France has been a basket-case for quite a while.

I do support reform, however. The current system is not great. Specifically, our "universal health care" is the emergency room. We need to offer free or cheap clinics that will keep people out of the very expensive emergency rooms. I have no problem with government spending or social programs, but I believe that they should have as small a scope as is possible while still attacking the problem. Government is inefficient (by design) and usually inept (not by design, but in practice).

I was in for quite a shock when I had an accident and ended up in an emergency room for the first time in the US. Those places really epitomize the failure of a system where free markets collide with basic ethics (like not turning away people without insurance).

Another shock upon coming here was the inefficiency of government: bureaucracy and slowness are more like what I'd seen in communist countries than like what I've experienced in Northwestern Europe. I think it has to do with the fact that working for government in the US has such low status and that many government agencies are chronically underfunded.

You get what you pay for, also in government :-)

Re:Bravo

[Donniedarkness]

Wow, IT warned a student for porn? I'm not into porn (I've actually never seen any unless you count popups and the banners on warez sites), but I always assumed that since students LIVE in their dorms, that they could use their internet connections for pretty much whatever they wanted. After all, porn's not illegal, and I guess that it's a way for some people to fap fap relax... how the hell can the IT staff warn students (unless it's stated in the rules that porn isn't allowed...which it obviously isn't, if the Provost responded that way). Is this common?

Re:Bravo

[f1055man]

Many "nonprofit" hospitals are getting nailed for this practice. They strike sweetheart deals with insurers then screw over the uninsured, send their bills to collection and seize their house. We all end up paying for everyone else's medical problems anyways. The emergency room treats whoever they get, able to pay or not so that's where the uninsured go and we get stuck with the bill. I'd rather help pay for their use of preventive medicine than end up with the tab for their far more expensive ER visits when their their treatable conditions become catastrophic.

Re:Bravo

[jmv]

The school has every right to do so. They also have the right to ask him not to cover the topic in the class. These are the people paying his salary, and if they don't want this going on, they can tell him to stop.

Sure, just like they have the right to tell all biology professors to only teach creat^H^H^H^H^H intelligent design, right? It's their money after all.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

When everyone is as well intentioned as you then I'm sure the human race will have arrived. But here isn the real world people are greedy and the laws of economics apply. Get with the fucking program!

Re:Bravo

[jonadab]

> I would question this statement. WHY should every American get the same price?

Because the current system is essentially a price-fixing conspiracy and is only even legal due to weird technical loopholes.

When the insurance company forces health care providers to provide discounts for its customers that are not provided to anyone else, the end result is that the health care providers, in order to cover their real costs (including their own not insignificant insurance against litigation) and make a profit, raise their rates for everyone, so that the price for the insurance company's customers is enough to cover expenses.

So the rest of us are actually paying *more* than we otherwise would be, because of the demands of an insurance company we *don't* do business with.

Imagine if one of the banks in town negotiates a deal with all the grocery stores, wherein customers of that bank get a 50% discount on all groceries, versus the marked price that everyone else pays. The grocery stores then raises their prices, so now anyone who doesn't use Eighteenth Street Bank is now paying significantly more for groceries than they're really worth.

There are basically five ways to respond. You can pay the higher prices, switch your banking to Eighteenth Street Bank, ship groceries in from out of town where the deal is not in effect, stop buying groceries altogether and grow your own food, or resort to criminal actions of one sort or another to address the situation. None of these are very good options, but the *worst* one, as far as I'm concerned, is to switch your banking to Eighteenth Street Bank, because that makes you an assessory to what they're doing. (Yes, the fifth option, resorting to crime, is potentially worse, depending on the exact nature of the crime you resort to.) When the class action suit is finally filed, I would hope that anyone who chose the switch-banks option would be named as a defendant.

The big problem with the health insurance price fixing scam is that it's absurd to name that many defendants. We're going to have to let the insurance customers totally off the hook on the assessory charge, simply because there are so many of them.

Re:Bravo

[Ancil]

it is crucial that we as a society have high-profile people that can question and critique the status-quo of governments, companies and other powerful groups without great fear of reprisals.

Not sure where you're from, but here in the United States we call those people "citizens".

Re:Bravo

[wall0159]

I agree with you 100%.

Furthermore, while sexual exploitation (especially involving children) is terrible, awful, and shouldn't be condoned by any civilised society it is not the Greatest Evil In The World.

Imagine if a law was passed that said all houses must have glass walls and no curtains, because we want to find child molestors. You shouldn't mind if you've nothing to hide, right?
If we start unravelling our society to catch the tiny minority of assholes - throwing away all the great things that our ancestors have faught for over the centuries - then we've wasted all that effort, and we _still_ wouldn't stop child porn.

I wish those dickheads would get a sense of perspective!

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Certainly you can't have unlimited coverage. You can't in a private system either. However, public systems all seem to cost less than private ones. I know, weird, but there are lots of examples.

At present there are not lots of diseases that can be cured with unlimited resources. In fact, I can't really think of any (by the way, I work in the medical field). Believe me, whenever someone has something serious that could maybe be treated with some expensive treatment that's not covered, the news is full of it. It happens, infrequently. Usually the treatment is something unproven, that has a low probability of helping, never mind curing.

The treatment for some diseases is very expensive. MS comes to mind. The treatment can run into the tens of thousands a month. But it's covered.

Yes, of course we pay for it. But again, we pay less than private systems, and EVERYBODY gets to participate. It does mean it's harder in such countries to amass enough money to buy small countries. I think that's just fine.

Don't believe everything you hear on tv about waiting lists. If you need a bypass operation you're not going to die on the waiting list because it's too expensive to do it. You might die because you're too sick, and the surgery will more likely kill you than help you. You also might spend a few months on a waiting list for your new knee so you can play squash again. Yes, if you're rich you can go and pay a bunch of money to a clinic that can keep their staff and equipment sitting idle some of the time so they're ready and waiting with your knew knee when you walk in the door.

My city is experiencing a huge population boom. So much so that a specialized neonatal unit is packed full. So do the babies get put on a waiting list to die? Nope. They get sent to Montana... fully covered, until the backlog clears or new facilities can be built.

Re:Bravo

[compro01]

Now, if I understand TOR correctly, wouldn't they see the child porn request, then just another indecipherably encrypted request (your order for Viagra) being sent off to some random TOR router?

i believe that the guy is refering to if the computer is acting as an exit node.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the cost burden would just be shifted from you and your employer to the Government. The Government might end up charging more tax as a result, but in the end, you end up in roughly the same situation.

You might end up paying a little more to cover the health insurance for unemployed people, but you have the luxury of knowing that if you lose your job you will still have medical care while you look for another one.

Someone has to pay for health insurance. It might as well be the Government. That way, everyone gets coverage.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

The visitors said it was likely against university policy (a policy they probably were not aware that Cesarini had helped to draft).

Any cop or "security officer" pussy who says that should be told, "Fuck you in the mouth, you silly son of a bitch. Come back with the relevant governing rule on paper and countersigned by someone with real authority. Now shut your motherfucking gob so I can finish watching The Simpaons."

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

You see how your examples are different? This guy using TOR doesn't hurt anyone. It does tend to expose an IT department with some questionable practices, but I don't consider that harm. A researcher catching a disease, or actively using trojans and spyware does do harm.

Did you read the article? Carefully? Use of TOR being against the terms of service was VERY questionable (the guy in question WROTE the terms of service!) and if it actually is, that means the terms of service need to be rewritten. This story is an example of an IT department on a power trip (BOTH because they asked him not to use it, and even more so because they asked him not to teach about it). They've forgotten who they're there to serve, as so many IT departments seem to do.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

And that's why public health care costs less than private. Which, if for some reason the moral arguments aren't enough, is an excellent argument against letting capitalism take care of things like basic health care.

Re:Bravo

[Score Whore]

Police officers, judges, soldiers also require training and financing. Why don't we leave their services to the free market?

We absolutely do leave their services to the free market. The fact that they are employed by the government doesn't change that. They are paid what it takes to get them to do the job. However, other than the president, the government doesn't pay anyone a salary that compares to that of even your average GP.

However, some people, such as yourself apparently, value money above human life. That speaks volumes about your character.

I value freedom above slavery. What I find interesting is that after claiming I have no good argument you have to resort to ad hominem attacks on my character.

Of course I'm sure that you live in a tent in the forest and every penny of your income above the amount required for basic subsistence you are giving it away to help the millions of people who lack the basics necessities of life. And I'm not talking advanced medical care, I'm talking food, shelther, and clean water.

No, I bet you don't. My guess is that you are completely willing to spend other people's money to subsidize your own personal lifestyle, carefully disguised in terms of public good; but when it comes to prying open your own tightly closed wallet you are nowhere to be found.

Does it chap your ass that conservatives give more charity, among all income ranges, than liberals?

Re:Bravo

[Goaway]

Your simile doesn't make any sense, but let's for a second assume it does. If the USPS was used mainly by child porn traffickers, do you really think anybody would mind it being shut down? Because it's pretty obvious the majority of Tor users are using it for child porn.

Re:Bravo

[jrau]

I think you missed the point of his post, even though you copied it into your own. Allow me to repeat it.

But please do explain to me how something others provide to you can be your right?

This is not something that you have which is then removed, or a freedom curbed by government, but rather a service provided to you by others.

It would be nice if everyone could get the best possible healthcare for very little money... but it's not going happen anytime soon. Every healthcare system in the world has its problems. In the U.S. its expensive, but it's also the most advanced and best in the world... if you can afford it. In Canada and numerous E.U. countries its available to everyone and its pretty good. There is a reason rich Europeans and rich Canadians come to the U.S. for critical (and elective) problems if they can afford it.

What is obvious, however, is that the insurance companies are reaming everyone in the ass, right along with the drug companies.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

What I find interesting is that after claiming I have no good argument you have to resort to ad hominem attacks on my character.

Dude, I didn't attack you. You typed in your views on the matter for all to see. "Health care is a service" implicitly says that if you don't have the money, do without. You are entitled to that opinion. But at least have the balls to own up to your own lack of concern for the welfare of your fellow human beings and don't whine when someone points out that you are a selfish prick, as indicted by your own words.

Of course I'm sure that you live in a tent in the forest and every penny of your income above the amount required for basic subsistence you are giving it away to help the millions of people who lack the basics necessities of life. And I'm not talking advanced medical care, I'm talking food, shelther, and clean water.

Getting waaay off track here. I'm not talking about donating everything you make to the needy. I'm talking about including health care among the benefits we pay for through our tax dollars --- mine included.

Does it chap your ass that conservatives give more charity, among all income ranges, than liberals?

Ahhh, right of the old Yahoo! message boards. You know those are spelled LIB and CON, don't you?

Re:Bravo

[Vellmont]

It's all nice to talk about the legit uses of Tor, but that doesn't mean you get to just gloss over the problems it creates.

The question is really, how much is legit use, and how much is something most people would have a problem with? (i.e. child porn, harassment, etc). I hear a lot of people talking about fighting oppressive governments, but very little of what the majority of Tor is used for. Talking about your hate for child porn is nice and all, but it doesn't really address the problem or how big it is. I really have little idea what the majority of Tor use is, but your post doesn't have any indication you do either.

Re:Bravo

[rm999]

I don't know of any University where the IT department holds more sway than the professors, regardless of their tenure situation.

Re:Bravo

[drsmithy]

I don't want to talk past each other with statistics, because that's been done to death, and frankly neither side ever seems to trounce the other. All I know is that I keep seeing wealthy Canadians and even Europeans coming to the States for their elective procedures. You can live a long time and still be miserable because you can't get the knee surgery that you need.

This is not a apples to apples comparison. You are highlighting the difference between getting your knee reconstruction done in, say, 3 months instead of 12.

What you should be thinking about is the difference between getting your knee reconstruction done in 12 months vs not getting it done at all.

The other problem is that the US market is currently subsidizing drug and equipment development (even in other countries).

The US is not the only place in the world contributing to medical research. _Especially_ when you take out the mostly-worthless lifestyle drugs like Viagra.

There is the other issue, too. The model countries for socialized health care are Germany and France. These countries have horrible economic problems as a result of their social spending. I don't like the thought of 50% unemployment for those under 25. The last thing we need is more government spending.

Firstly, their economic problems are not directly related to socialised healthcare. Secondly, I suggest you cast your net a bit wider and look at places like, say, Australia.

Re:Bravo

[PrinceOfStorms]

If all universities decided that they would teach ID in their biology classes, giving it equal time with the theory known as evolution, would that be acceptable to you? After all, the students could still read more about evolution at home if they were so inclined, right?

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

I don't swear for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. We've got to use all the words we've got. Besides, there are damn few words anybody understands.

-- from Inherit the Wind

Re:Bravo

[krotkruton]

Maybe you should have to give a portion of your pay to supporting the medical problems of every jobless waif in the damned country because the unemployment rate is usually caused by banks and the government instead of the unemployed individuals choosing not to work. Many governments work to have an unemployment rate somewhere between 4 and 10% for a variety of reasons, most of which go over my head. What I do understand, is that our economy functions properly with a certain level of unemployment, so in many ways, we depend on the unemployed for our livelihood. If we need the unemployed to function, then shouldn't we support them?

Re:Bravo

[Vulturejoe]

That's because that is what it is. It is a paid service. By socializing medicine, you aren't making the costs dissapear -- you're just having taxpayers foot the bill.

Re:Bravo

[vux984]

"Don't believe everything you hear on tv about waiting lists."

Agreed!

" If you need a bypass operation you're not going to die on the waiting list because it's too expensive to do it."

To be fair, people do sometimes die on the waiting lists. Its tragic when it occurs, and often makes the national news. Its certainly something that a lot of effort is spent on preventing, and that effort is largely successful. In the vast majority of cases people on long waiting lists are generally in pretty stable condition. And that is part of the "problem", deteriorating cases are prioritized over stable cases -- so if you are stable it can take a long time to reach the front of line, leading to the unbelievable long waiting lists you read about.

For a good analagy consider a combat medic performing triage - patients that are deemed stable may have to wait hours or days to get patched up while people in critical/deteriorating condition are processed immediately. If people are continually coming in off the field, the stable patients just get pushed back further, and are only finally tended to during lulls, or if their condition deteriorates. Its a terrible thing to have to go through, but it is the fairest and most just approach in the situation.

Thus the main problem with the waiting lists in Canada isn't that you are likely to die while you wait, but rather that you have to deal with the condition (and associated pain and inconvenience) WHILE you wait, and that is admittedly terribly terribly frustrating, especially if its disabling in any manner.

But despite the waiting lists and issues associated with them, I suspect that Canada's health care is more effective than the US's is, when measured in terms of how many people live vs die due to availability of care. (Whether its waiting "too long" in Canada, or not being able to afford care in the States.) For the simple reason that a national-scale system of triage seems far more effective at saving the largest number of people vs hoping that only people who can afford care will need it. (the only way the US system could reliably care for more patients.)

Naturally there is pressure from the well-to-do to desire to 'queue-jump' by spending some of that money to avoid time spent in pain. Currently that is disallowed, and that is controversial. I don't have a problem with the rich spending money to get out pain faster; I have a problem with the fact that the more they are allowed to queue jump, the longer the poor have to wait.

The argument that if they queue jump to a 2nd tier in a two-tier system so the poor actually get served faster if the rich can 'pay to get out of the way' doesn't hold water for the simple reason that supply is relatively inelastic. I.e. the doctors and nurses that will staff that 2nd tier are going to come from the first tier. So the poor will have to wait longer. Worse, the more profitable tier will be more attractive, and will be where you find the 'best and brightest', further disadvantaging the poor.

Because of our proximity to the US we essentially have the two-tier system NOW, and the problems with it are apparent.

Wealthy Canadians willing to pay go to the states to "queue jump", and Canada loses doctors and nurses to the states due to the greater earnings potential. I think Canada's socialized medical system suffers overall as a result.

Re:Bravo

[Lord Ender]

Maybe if you didn't have to work you would lose the stress and gain the time to exercise...

Re:Bravo

[MrNaz]

Mods, that's not flamebait, that's damn funny!

Re:Bravo

[MrNaz]

G'day mate! I just got me Vallium from me quack. He put it on me scrippo and I didn't 'ave to pay for it nither!

Re:Bravo

[Lord Ender]

I'm from Canada

Do you play hockey?

Re:Bravo

[Lord Ender]

university IT has a responsibility to ensure civil liberties are not trampled

Keeping costs down so that the poor can afford to go to a university helps ensure civil liberties...

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

That's a pretty good summary. I went back and checked... you're not the poster I replied to, "Maxo-Texas" who implied that waiting lists were a means of killing off patients to make the system cheaper.

I agree, when you look at it honestly it comes down to this decision: should we allow rich people to pay for the privilege of getting treatment sooner at the cost of delaying treatment for sicker patients. The US system takes that even further, prioritizing essentially by how much you can pay.

To me, the answer is a simple no. The rich can buy privilege in many areas, but as another poster pointed out, health care should not be treated like a commodity.

You're right too, about the proximity of the US and the problems it causes, but the problem is not as bad as it should be. I know several medical professionals who moved to the US for the money but came back fairly quickly -- they found they couldn't work under the US system. I also know a prominent, world class professor who moved back to Canada after spending some time in the US. When he had children he realized that even though he was a prominent researcher at an ivy league university he couldn't afford to send his kids there, and growing old under the US health care system didn't look like such a good prospect.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, most people are not usually sick. And I'm sick of people pointing to Canada or Britain and saying: "see, universal coverage doesn't work".

As someone who:

1) Lives in England
2) Has a relative who works for the NHS

I find your comments confusing as the health care system here works extremely well, although that doesn't mean there won't be negative press as they're always looking for more money or MP's are always promising more money to the NHS to "fix" problems.

Anything negative you have heard about our health system is from the media and not first hand experience.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Of course. It's the law.

(Just watched Romeo Must Die, where the girl asks Jet Li if, since he's from Hong Kong, he does Kung Fu)

Re:Bravo

[Lord Ender]

an overwhelming majority of women I've gotten close enough to to talk about such things have been molested at some point in their life.

Dude--where do you go to meet women?

(Oh, and Gem, Gem is truly amazing...)

Re:Bravo

[Lord Ender]

Still, there has to be some limit to what the professor can do on the school network. Suppose he is doing research on denial of service attacks. Should he be allowed to saturate his 1,000Mbps link?

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

You both have good points and your opinion is actually a lot closer to my own than you might imagine.

It hurts a bit to type so sometimes I am overly brief.

And it's slashdot so sometimes I use a bit too much hyperbole.

I don't think you can stop your queue jumping problem- there is always india, europe, etc. (Some people from the states are going to india for medical care (esp heart surgery) since it is cheaper than the cost here *with* insurance - including airfare there and back!)

I'm not totally in your camp- I see the value of limited socialism and I see the cost of unlimited capitalism. I see the cost of unlimited socialism. Both unlimited socialism and unlimited capitalism are fairly corrosive (in different ways) to society over the course of two to three decades. Both can devolve into a defacto nobility.

There are actually quite a lot of illnesses where the cost goes over a couple million pretty quickly.

Re:Bravo

[Oracle of Bandwidth]

I personally believe that if the government of the US ever introduced more socalized healthcare, it'd be the duty of every upstanding citizen to revolt, and force them away. No government of mine will ever do this, because a government that would is not mine and does not represent me or my consent.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm a bit overly paranoid about the job market because (tho it never happened to me), I've had 3 close friends who went over a year between jobs (looking hard too). One of them never made it back in and had to fall down to fairly low paying jobs.

Cobra for me would run about $600 a month. That's going to rip through your savings.

But yea- I basically am living with the assumption that if I lose my job, it might be two years before I get another one and that I might never make half the pay that I'm making now again.

I get zero percent offers all the time (good til 2008 currently). I owe to much on the house to transfer them at this time. And the house is at a low rate so I would be taking risk (lose the job- miss a 0% payment- suddenly at 24% interest for 10 grand).

I have a fairly low tolerance for risk-- unless it's a double diamond.

Re:Bravo

[RSKennan]

If you're not altruistic, think of it this way- you're paying to prevent epidemics that can come back to bite you.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Sure, you can't stop queue jumpers. And you probably shouldn't. As a society you can decide not to let them decide how your health care is going to work though.

Certainly, unlimited socialism doesn't work so well on a large scale, and unlimited capitalism is so abhorrent that nobody's practiced it on a large scale since the industrial revolution. But health care is one area where a socialist approach has proven to be superior to the capitalist approach, both morally and economically.

Sure, lots of treatments go into the millions. I think I mentioned MS, which is one of them. But they're quite successfully included in the world's various examples of universal health care programs. Including the one here, in a province that happens to have one of the highest rates of MS in the world.

Re:Bravo

[DeadChobi]

The funny thing about our politicians in America is that they never seem to solve problems, only invent them.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

try working for a nonprofit, then.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

You say: I mean, most people are not usually sick.

I think you may be a bit young. After a certain age, almost everyone is sick all the time.

The body breaks down in ways that can be adjusted and fixed if you have insurance or lots of money.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, cataracts, arthritis, low thyroid (VERY COMMON*), low hormones etc. etc.

People are very healthy until they are in their 30's. By their 50's most people have something going on. So for the last 10 to 40 years of their life they are taking something daily. Whatever is wrong usually won't kill them right away but it will carve several years off their lives.

* If you do not feel normal (tired, foggy thinking, losing the outer third of your eyebrows, anxious, low energy, sleep but it doesn't get you rested) you really should have your thyroid and primary sex hormones tested. Thyroid has lots of random symptoms. Testosterone is almost a miracle drug for men 40 to 60 (take saw palmetto to help keep your prostate healthy tho).

Re:Bravo

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice.

Nah, make a 2-3 strike law for malpractice - screw up enough and you aren't a doctor anymore. You've heard of the thin blue line, right? There's one for doctors, too. Get the crap out.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

and small companies could offer the same health benefits as large ones.
and you'd have the same health benefits if you were self employed.
and companies would not have an incentive to move jobs to countries without (or with much cheaper) health insurance.

Re:Bravo

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The last study I saw showed us paying about $10k per year per patient, which is more than the Netherlands (one of the better rated places with public health care) by a wide margin. When Hillary put together her universal health care plan about 10 years back it was about $600B, which was less than we were spending for healthcare at the time - I would expect that public healthcare here could save us about $200B/year.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how such naive silliness automatically zooms up to "5, Insightful" at the hands of slashdot moderators. Thank God there is a market for health care. And thank God the 16-year-olds, bless them, are not running the world.

Re:Bravo

[Fulcrum of Evil]

First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing.

You're half right - they can request he stop, and he can decline. They don't actually own the network, though. They just run it.

Re:Bravo

[UncleTogie]

Or do you endorse dictating to doctors what they can charge for their services?

Why not? The insurance companies already do.

To (mis-)quote a certain medical figure of yesteryear:
"A physician should not enter the trade with the soul of a moneychanger."

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Well, I don't happen to believe that the marketplace is the pinnacle of human achievement. How naive of me.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "obvious"? I'm not sure you know what this word means. I wouldn't even know how to begin assessing what proportion of Tor traffic consists of any particular thing, or what proportion of Tor users use it for any particular thing. It certainly isn't easily perceived or understood that the majority of Tor users are using it for child porn. What leads you to make this statement?

Re:Bravo

[omeomi]

I applaud his efforts. And I chose not to work in academia so it's my responsibility that he has privileges that I do not.

Realistically, if he doesn't have tenure, he might still lose his job over this. It will just take a little longer than it would in the corporate world.

Re:Bravo

[ATMD]

It could be that spending per capita is less in countries like the UK because you have to wait so damn long for treatment - I don't know what the state of waiting lists is in the USA, but I suspect it's better - so more people get treated, per day, per capita, resulting in the higher expenditure.

Re:Bravo

[Kjella]

1) there are too many diseases that can be cured IF you have unlimited resources... well really about $2,000,000 to $10,000,000 or so. The point is- we can't afford to cure everyone's $350,000 bypass surgery so we let people pay for it themselves or die. You do it in canada too- you just do it via rationing and delays instead of via money. "Sure you can get your surgery-- in 17 months" vs "Sure you can get your surgery- for $350,000".

Actually, the huge money sink isn't the $350,000 one-time bypass surgery, at least not for people who can get back to work. The biggest money sink is treatments of chronic conditions, things like MS or mental disorders where the patient isn't going to recover but is going to live on and needs medical care for decades on end. I recently read about a girl in my country, 15yo who killed her mother and also got her own child, they have 8 nurses on her 24x7. If we wanted to save money, we'd put her in a padded room and the kid in foster care.

However, there are priority queues to get otherwise healthy, working (read: tax-paying) citizens back to work. A rather young relative of mine needed a hip surgery - rushed to the head of the line, then retraining. Same with a neighbor in his 50s, if not quite as expendient. That 80yo that's probably going to have a hard time recovering from major surgery? Well, if we get around to it. And in the final stages of life, there are limits to what they'll do. The difference is that we're trying to give everyone a good run - that 30yo isn't going to die while the 90yo millionaire lives on for another year if we can help it. We do have private clinics here too, if you can afford it though.

2) If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice. We currently say "no mistakes and no malpractice" but that decision probably doubles or triples every thing we do medically. Which in some cases means that the procedure that could be done cheaply- is now too expensive.

I'm not sure I follow you because there's accepted medical protocol and there's not accepted protocol, aka malpractise. While we don't have your multi-million dollar lawsuits (though we of course pay damages to people that have been mistreated) we do have medical review boards which can do everything from give you a mild criticism to having your license revoked, which is basicly the end of your medical career. You certainly see far less unserious fly by night clinics here than you do in the US.

3) Even in socialist countries- you are paying. Sure- you may rip off the doctors (with a resulting shortage of doctors and hence long wait periods) but the drug company executives are still flying around in jets and vacationing in maui.

They pretty much hate us. One you don't get to bribe the doctors to prescribe their brand of medicine, second as a matter of public policy doctors must prescribe cheaper knock-off drugs if they work on the patient without any ill effects. If they're flying around in jets and vacationing in Maui, it's not because of us. As for shortage of doctors - not really. The biggest issue with doctors is that they're educated in big cities, while they're needed way out in the countryside where well - most of these urban doctors don't want to live. We're not above laws of supply and demand when it comes to getting people to educate themselves to doctors.

Yes to vaccinations for everyone and broken limbs (tho perhaps a limit on the number of times to reign in the reckless types).

And then you'll bring back the courts who'll decide on reckless etc., we cover everyone even if you're a mountain climber, basejumper or whatever else stupid thing you were doing. Turns out that those kind of people go absolutely crazy from limping around on crutches a few weeks, not to mention the pain and aches so there's actually no problem at all. People don't just set off down a double black diamond slope thinking "who cares if I beat myself half to death, the healthcare will cover it".

Re:Bravo

[Alsee]

put gay marriage, protecting the children from video games, and flag-burning amendments on the back burner for just a little while?

But if we ban gay marriage and protect the children from video games and outlaw flag-burning then God will love us more... and the American people won't get all these diseases and won't run around stabbing and raping each other, and we won't need all that stupid health care to treat God-forsaken sinners.

America, God's favorite.

-

Re:Bravo

[Skrynesaver]

Flamebait? I thought it was a hilarious (though completely off-topic) parody. I'm afraid that's how USians appear to those of us in civilised countries these days.
Get yourselves a social safety net, a decent healthcare system and half a clue in your dealings with the outside world and your country would be a truly amazing place.

Re:Bravo

[sg_oneill]

In australia I'll pay maybe $3 to fill any prescription of any drug I purchase (I'm on welfare currently)

The unemployment rate in my city is just a fraction under 5% and my last job my taxation was around 25%

Having been to hospital (free) a few times now, the service is [i]excellent[/i].

Re:Bravo

[gritak]

The queue is shorter in America, not because people are getting treated. Poor people who cant afford expensive treatment simply don't get on the queue at all. Health care wise, if you're rich, you want to be in America. Otherwise, the place to be is Europe.

Re:Bravo

[bitt3n]

Right on. Why should I have to pay for a police force, judges, politicians, schools, military, highways, or anything else the public uses?

whatever one thinks of the feasability of public healthcare, this argument is facetious. it is not possible for each individual to have his own road system, nor his own military, judiciary or legislature, on account of the fact that we live on the same piece of land, and, for example, having multiple judiciaries and legislatures that each has hegemony over this land is impossible.

It is however quite possible to make each person responsible for paying the cost his own health insurance, whether or not one thinks this is a good idea. This type of condescending and simplistic rhetoric merely cheapens legitimate arguments for government-sponsored health insurance.

Re:Bravo

[gritak]

"I don't think you can stop your queue jumping problem- there is always india, europe, etc. (Some people from the states are going to india for medical care (esp heart surgery) since it is cheaper than the cost here *with* insurance - including airfare there and back!)" You know, if America made peace with Cuba, there's a ton of doctors there, and they're so much closer. :)

Re:Bravo

[ne0n]

police forces are paid for by property taxes.
judges are paid for by property tax, fines, city-owned parking meters, and the mob.
politicians are paid for by lobbyists and big oil and Disney and other private donors with an interest
highways are paid for by gas taxes (of which a whopping 10% goes to road/highway maintenance in my country)
schools - property tax, again
and the gardener is your own responsibility.

Nobody quite knows where income taxes go.. it's like a big mystery. "Income Tax pays for the Deficit, stupid!" but nobody knows exactly who created it in the first place, or why.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking jeez. And the bakers, and the people who teach, and the people who build computers, they all surely exploit us, because they want to be paid!!!11!eleven!

In all honesty, healthcare is a service, because it COSTS a lot in equipment and specialized personnel. If the risk is too expensive for you, get an insurance (the concept is that 1000s of people pay, and therefore the risk is distributed).

If insurance is too expensive, ask government to stop their stupid fiddling with the healthcare sector that made it so fucking expensive. It wasn't always that way, you know?

Re:Bravo

[mike2R]

But please do explain to me how something others provide to you can be your right?

It requires a shift in perception - you are looking at a nation purely as an association of individuals, equal and free to enter contracts. Looked at like this then Healthcare (and also many other things such as security and policing I would argue) cannot be viewed as rights.

But not everyone looks at things like this, particularly Europeans. If you conceive of a society as a whole, it is a small step to see inequalities that are more than just differing rewards in a free market. Letting people die for lack of healthcare *that can easilly be afforded by society as a whole* is wrong from this viewpoint. Healthcare becomes a right.

Re:Bravo

[arachnoprobe]

So the point is not curing every illness known regardless of price- but setting a reasonable amount of tax dollars aside to cover a reasonable amount of medical expenses for the most people possible.

Very true. But that amount is an ethical question, which has to be decided better sooner than later. In the UK, there is the following limit for operations: approx. 40.000$ per additional year to life per person.

Re:Bravo

[Sique]

2) If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice. We currently say "no mistakes and no malpractice" but that decision probably doubles or triples every thing we do medically. Which in some cases means that the procedure that could be done cheaply- is now too expensive. This sounds fine in theory, but practice says that the country with the least socialized health care system, e.g. the country where the legal system tries to keep out of health care as much as possible, is at the same time the country which spends the biggest part of its GDP on health care. For some reason the privatized health care is (against all economic theories) the most expensive to have. Silly reality. Should definitly wise up.

Re:Bravo

[ScottCooperDotNet]

That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.

Health insurance isn't the answer, health care is. Just watch the GOP create some scheme where "everyone is insured" but paying 90% of the cost of care out of pocket.

I wonder if the education and training to become a doctor is too much; is it not close to 10 years before seeing a patient?

Re:Bravo

[bmcage]

What you say looks believing, but is fortunately wrong.

In Belgium there is a maximum amount per year you have to pay for medical costs, the rest is paid by the government. It's called maximum invoice. There are some add-ons, like if you want to be on a room alone (but that is really your choice, being sick is not), and the dentist is not included I think. Belgium paid in 2005 850 miljoen euro for this, so the US has what, 25times as many inhabitants?

There is no division between public and private sector, they are governed by the exact same rules. You have complete freedom in your choice of hospital.

People from around europe are coming here for medical attention (liver transplants, hart surgery, a lot of english patients), so the service cannot be bad.

Oh, and there are enough doctors, and they drive around in mercedes's. Yes, socialist are in the government at the moment. Don't know if that has to do anything with it though, they are governing with the liberals at the moment. Oh, and yes, the law is fair, if you earn more, the amount you have to pay yourself is higher. Of course! Just search on 'MAF, Maximum Factuur, maximum-factuur or maximumfactuur (yes, dutch spelling rules changed a lot the last years ;-) ).

Re:Bravo

[julesh]

Or to protect a company from potential legal liability from overly sensative workers. (I mean really... it has nothing to do with productivity.

I dunno, I think my productivity has gone up since we blocked access to porn. And I'm the IT manager.

Re:Bravo

[julesh]

First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing.

Not really. The university owns it. The university employs both the professor and the IT services people, so both are representatives of the university and therfore have roughly equal rights to university resources.

But: IT services exist, in a university, in order to provide services to staff and students. Not the other way around. It isn't up to them to regulate what is done with the network, but merely to enforce the university's decisions about what should be done with it. It sounds as though the university's decisions in this matter (the policy that the professor helped write) isn't clear, so if IT services really want to stop this behaviour, they should seek clarification from somebody who has more authority.

Re:Bravo

[shadanan]

People are missing the sarcasm because the issue falls to close to home.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the deal-- you cannot have unlimited medical coverage.

Period. Strange. It works fine here in Norway.
Cured my daughter's leuchemia while giving me an almost full salary for 3 years.

Kind of makes it easy to pay the taxes for unlimited medical coverage, doesn't it?

Re:Bravo

[HuguesT]

Hello,

Health care is not a right.

You mean, in the USA ? Why not ? In many countries around the world, it is. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, people live measurably longer in these countries.

Among countries that have a longer average lifespan than the ol' US of A, you'll find some Asian countries where the custom is to pay your doctor only if you *don't* get sick. If you do, they look after you for free. Interesting concept, no ?

Re:Bravo

[moonbender]

It still provides some security: the transmitted content is encrypted, the remote party remains secret and it lets you contact parties that you cannot access without tunnelling, e.g. to circumvent the Great Firewall. Still, what you say is true.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

What! In Finland cancer medicine is totally free as it should be in all civilized nations.

Re:Bravo

[master_p]

Hey, your president wants 500 billion dollars for the war in Iraq. I guess that is more important than health care, isn't it?

Re:Bravo

[Ingolfke]

Good to see some university professors still have integrity.

Yes, and it's also good to see that they can understand both sides of the argument and not get their heads so far up their asses they sound like a complete nutjob (RMS... cough... RMS)

Re:Bravo

[HuguesT]

Hello, for a start, ask around people who are not young adults with few brushes with serious illness if they think healh care is a luxury.

Second, this makes no sense :

Rights should be limited to those things which can not be taken away from me, not those things which must be given to me.

Everything can be taken away from you, including life and liberty. Are these not rights ?

This also does not compute :

But please do explain to me how something others provide to you can be your right?

Do you consider voting a right ? Pretty much everything you have is provided to you by society. Precious democracy is still a novel thing not available everywhere on the planet, yet that you may enjoy (I don't know your particulars). Do you consider that you provide yourself unaided the right to vote ? I think not. What about the rest of what you consider your rights ?

If anything, your health is something that is an essential part of you. It should be your right, and in many countries it is, for it to be maintained to an acceptable degree by society. Sure a doctor must care for you, but in what way is it different than a politician or a journalist fighting for your right to freedom of speech ?

Personal health insurance is not enough. I personnally know people who contacted serious enough, however curable a disease that their insurance refused to pay for under some weird excuse. They had to fight this throught the courts. How can that be an effective way to run a society?

You don't trust your current government to run health care, fine. Why don't you use your society-maintained voting rights to put someone in place you think you will trust for this task, assuming you find it worthwhile ?

Re:Bravo

[MoralHazard]

magine if one of the banks in town negotiates a deal with all the grocery stores, wherein customers of that bank get a 50% discount on all groceries, versus the marked price that everyone else pays. The grocery stores then raises their prices, so now anyone who doesn't use Eighteenth Street Bank is now paying significantly more for groceries than they're really worth.

Wow. You are to economics as that "Time Cube" guys is the physics. Sigh. I know this is a waste of time, but you sound like Rush Limbaugh or something, so I'm going to bite. Makes me feel better about myself.

1) You suggest that the providers (hospitals, etc.) are losing money on the insured patients because the negotiated rates are so low. This cannot possible be true: the negotiated rate will always be at least high enough per patient so that the provider can make *some* profit on the transaction. Otherwise, why are they in business? Hospitals may be owned by non-profits, but they still can't run at a loss. HOW, seriously, HOW THE FUCK could an insurance company *force* a hospital to accept less money than that procedure actually costs? They can't hold a gun to the hospital's head, and they can't have the government force them to do it. If the insurance company won't agree to a high enough rate, the hospital will tell them to kiss off and take their customers (the insured citizens) elsewhere. Contract negotiation, 101.

2) Even in your make-believe, magical fairy-tale land of hospitals run by idiots, you're still wrong. You suggest that hospitals make up the money they're losing to insured patients by over-charging the uninsured (or under-insured). That's not possible, because providers actually make less money, on average, per patient on uninsured cases. Less than 25% of the US has no insurance, and they tend to avoid doctors and hospitals because of the expense. That means that the number of patients and procedures that are covered by insurance are a *lot* more than the number that don't have insurance. Also, under-insured patients have a very high non-payment rate for medical bills--they are much more likely to default, go bankrupt, or just give false names at the ER. It's just not feasible to pay for our health-care system on the backs of the uninsured.

I suggest you go to college.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Its about academic freedom, and freedom of inquery.

Realise I worked in IT at a major university. I was there when we decided to impliment virus scanning, not even spam filtering (I was there for that too) but just virus scanning.

It was debated because well... what if someone had a legitimate acedemic need to recieve viruses in email?

Seriously! We gave unfettered internet access. Porn? Well... guess what... someone may be doing acedemic research into porn and needs to access porn sites. These are legitimate debates that come up in that environment because... they take the persuit of intellectual inquery as serious buisness... because it IS their buisness. No offense there, buddy, but next time some university library offers you six bucks an hour to reboot their Windows machines twice a day and de-gunk the miceballs, I'd suggest you take advantage of whatever discounts for education they grant employees.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG]

I actually think RMS is 100% right. The difference is, I can be bought.

Re:Bravo

[HuguesT]

That would work if there were an oversupply of (good) doctors, which is not the case. Good medical talent is hard to come by, like any true talent.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The other problem is that the US market is currently subsidizing drug and equipment development (even in other countries). If you make the US market like France or Germany, either everyone's costs will rise or the rate of drug/device/procedure development will slow.

Or the drug companies will simply make less money.

It's not rocket science - if money flow goes down, the research dollars will flow elsewhere.

Except that there's nowhere else for the drug companies to spend their money. Big Pharma is probably the most lucrative commercial R&D area since forever. Even with significantly lower prices, the companies would still be very profitable. They're not stupid, and not likely to back out of a good deal just because an obscenely good deal is no longer an option.

Re:Bravo

[anthony_dipierro]

But yea- I basically am living with the assumption that if I lose my job, it might be two years before I get another one and that I might never make half the pay that I'm making now again.

Fair enough. I don't know your situation, so I'll take your word for that. But still, I didn't mean to suggest that standing up for what you believe in is necessarily the right thing to do. You might have to settle for average or even below average pay, and for some people that's not worth it.

I get zero percent offers all the time (good til 2008 currently). I owe to much on the house to transfer them at this time. And the house is at a low rate so I would be taking risk (lose the job- miss a 0% payment- suddenly at 24% interest for 10 grand).

I have a fairly low tolerance for risk-- unless it's a double diamond.

You could always take the 0% offer and put all the money into a paypal money market account earning 5% interest. So then if you ever missed a payment and the interest rate went up to 24% you can just pay it all off. Then again, if you call the credit card company and apologize for missing the payment 9 times out of 10 they'll reinstate your 0% rate anyway, if you ask. Or by then you've probably gotten a different offer from a different credit card company. I've forgotten to make a payment on time far too many times and only one time have I been rejected when I asked them to remove the late fees and reinstate the interest rate. The time they did that I transferred all the money to a different card and closed the account.

But please don't take any of this as a suggestion. My risk tolerance is extremely high when it comes to money.

Re:Bravo

[budgenator]

Non-Profit just means that expenses must meet revenues each year; our two local non-profit hospitals have become the second largest employers and the largest property owners.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

You're right, that's indeed one of the trade-offs. Although on average people do get more and easier access to decent healthcare, that doesn't mean that specific cases are better off -- quite the opposite for some people. If you have a rare disease, you might be out of luck.

My main issue is that socialize health care still does not provide everyone with everything they need/want. All it really does is shift the priority system from more-or-less dollar driven to some other priority system. Sometimes they try to use "need", usually age is a factor, and position on a waiting list is also used. While on the surface this seems fairer to the poor (and it is!), when I step back and think about it from a moral position, you are still metering out healthcare. All you've done is shift the metering system... if an economic model is arbitrary, so is any other metering system. Yes, the Christian tradition is to be especially considerate to the poor, but I still think that it's arbitrary.

I realize that this might not be a popular position :)

I don't see how this is an argument against universal healthare in the US. If anything, it would force more equitable prices. There's still a lot of money to be made on sick and unhealthy people, no matter who pays.

Yes, but I think that there will be a lot LESS money to be made. Governments are chronically under-funding everything that they do - healthcare is not any different. Personally, I am willing to overpay as an American to keep the whole system functioning at a higher level worldwide, because I do not think the current rate of progress would continue without the US market.

That argument keeps coming up, but people fail to realize that Germany had jumped in population but not in GDP when it unified; East Germany (1/3 of current Germany) really was bankrupt. Other countries are doing just fine with their socialized care (the Netherlands, Sweden, etc.). The UK (with its uber-socialized NHS) is doing fine, but it's true that France has been a basket-case for quite a while.

I'm not in Europe, so forgive me if I misunderstand the events there, but I thought that the UK was steadily (if extremely slowly) marching towards a freer market in health care - that the private sector was slowly getting larger at the expense of the NHS? Also, I didn't mean to imply that Germany or France's sole source of economic woe is their health care system, but I do believe that the huge expenditures on social programs have a lot to do with it, along with very pro-employee rules in business.

I was in for quite a shock when I had an accident and ended up in an emergency room for the first time in the US. Those places really epitomize the failure of a system where free markets collide with basic ethics (like not turning away people without insurance).

The mess you saw only scratches the surface. Servicing our poor with emergency rooms is terrible for everyone. First, it is hideously expensive. While the government requires the hospitals not turn anyone away, they do not entirely pay for the treatment. This has led to many fantastic hospitals located in poor areas closing down, exacerbating the problem of health care to the poor. Second, as you say it highlights the collision of basic ethics and the free market. We need to just accept that we already have (crappy) universal healthcare, and execute it properly. That's why I support free or cheap clinics, though I would like it if they were still pretty unhappy places so that most folks would not abandon their private health care. I'm fairly confident that with the government running them, they will be crappy and under-funded :)

Another shock upon coming here was the inefficiency of government: bureaucracy and slowness are more like what I'd seen in communist countries than like what I've experienced in Northwestern Europe. I think it has to do with the fact that working for government in the

Re:Bravo

[mazarin5]

I just want to say that the thread on universal health care was so long that I was confused by this comment, until I realized that it was actually related to the story!

Re:Bravo

[rearden]

There are three major and important facts that proponents of Universal Heathcare ignore when pointing to Germany, Sweden, etc...

1. The US is both population wise and land wise considerably larger- at last estimate over 300 million people. This means the logistical and administrative demands of any such system would be orders of magnitude larger than anything Germany (82m ppl), England (60m ppl), or Sweden (9m ppl) have thus making the program harder to manage and much more expensive.

2. Germany, England and Sweden are central government countries. They have a strong national government with mutiple parties working in coalitions and the Prime Minister is selected from this. This allows for things to work "all in one direction". However, the US is fragmented with a weakened federal government (though stronger over the last 50 years) and many fragmented states with no single direction or goal- and often opposit goals. This would make it both politically and socially difficult to implement a single Universal Heathcare without it being very regonal, complex, and beholden to local politics thus negating many of the advantages of "national heathcare".

3. The US has no National will. It is far easier to geta majority of 80, 60 or especially 9 million people to have a single set of goals or objectives. Especially when that social structure has been in existance for over a thousand years, they all speak the same language and they share common cultural and social norms. The US is to use a cliche a melting pot only 200 years old- getting five random people in a room that have anything in common is nearly impossible in a big city. Trying to find commonality beyond Nation & Citizenship for 300 million in this country is pipe dream.

Antoher issue is Univeral Healthcare does not solve the litigation issue in this country, but that is a whole nother topic.

So, that said what do I think the solution is? Univeral Healthcare laws. Too many of our basic healthcare laws are done state by state thus making it an administrative and paperwork nightmare. Meeting the laws in each state, region and area drive the cost of Healthcare and Insurance up. We need to allow people to pool their insurance- without requiring the involvment of their employer, and we need to standardize the laws across the nation thus lowering the adminstrative and legal cost for both insurers and providers. Once this is done the free market competition in insurance will help drive down cost as each insurer demands lower prices for drugs, medical equipment, and even procedures.

My 2 cents

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

For low cost preventive care, universal health care is good. For long-term illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis, emphysema, or diabetes, it tends to be awful. I'm watching a friend in Dublin, with multiple sclerosis and a work permit, getting his care fobbed off to "specialists" with MS who are only specialized in filling out the paperwork and limiting treatment, not able to aggressively treat his medical issues and expand or extend his work capabilities to pay for it with taxes.

His doctors from the US are horrified, especially because the UK paperwork pushers (not the doctors, the bureaucrats who keep trying to tell him he doesn't have NHS coverage despite the fact that he does) don't want to pay for his current prescriptions but to use cheaper, less effective alternatives that would in effect not allow him to work productively. He's in real trouble, and it's going to cost him as much as health insurance cost in the US to arrange private, cash up-front medical care.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

This is not a apples to apples comparison. You are highlighting the difference between getting your knee reconstruction done in, say, 3 months instead of 12.

What you should be thinking about is the difference between getting your knee reconstruction done in 12 months vs not getting it done at all. Fair enough - but does one have a fundamental right to knee surgery? Will I be able to keep my job if I can't really walk for the extra 9 months?

The US is not the only place in the world contributing to medical research. _Especially_ when you take out the mostly-worthless lifestyle drugs like Viagra. And I would never claim the contrary. However, is the US a major profit center for international drug companies? What happens when that profit center shrinks? How will international drug development be funded? Also, don't short Viagra - it's what people want. Who are you to dictate what people should be buying? A healthy sex life is very important to the emotional well being of many people.

Firstly, their economic problems are not directly related to socialised healthcare. No, but overall socialist policies and massive government spending certainly are.

Secondly, I suggest you cast your net a bit wider and look at places like, say, Australia. I only picked France and Germany because those systems are often held up as shining examples of socialized health care... very short waiting lists. Australia has a mixed system which is certainly more socialized than the US, but is nowhere near universal. I am certainly not arguing that government shouldn't be involved in health care - just that its role should be minimized. I think the current US system is not socialized enough, but I'd start with more meager changes first instead of adopting wholesale socialized care.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

I certainly agree that the US needs to provide care to its poor in a better way than the current "go to the emergency room system". Australia's system is not 100% socialized, but it is more socialized than the US.

Re:Bravo

[Antique Geekmeister]

That $6K is an easy figure to reach. One child, with dental care, vaccines, and an occasional emergency room visit for stitches can do a few thousand dollars a year. So can adults with prostate exams, mammograms, eyeglasses, and other basic medical costs. Then take one out of 10 people, and give them something chronic: diabetes, congestive heart failure,or the simple needs of old age. Then take one in 20 and give them something drastically expensive: child birth with complications, kidney failure, or a traffic accident. A single such event can easily cost $20,000. Then add in one in 20 in a nursing home, or needing other chronic hands-on medical support: those easily cost $100/day, or $30,000/year.

It adds up pretty fast.

Re:Bravo

[ourcraft]

Sorry the whole post is pretty wrong.

"Here's the deal-- you cannot have unlimited medical coverage."

Real coverage, all things covered, heart surgery, bone marrow transplants, pancreous transplants its all there, you're wrong. Are there things that aren't covered in Canada? Yes, almost all because they are unproven uses of unscrupulously priced new treatments. Do people leave Canada to get treatment in other countries? Yes and those costs are covered too. The philosophiocal stuff about "everything" being covered is a red herring and dosen't contribute to the discussion.

1) there are too many diseases that can be cured IF you have unlimited resources... well really about $2,000,000 to $10,000,000 or so. The point is- we can't afford to cure everyone's $350,000 bypass surgery so we let people pay for it themselves or die. You do it in canada too- you just do it via rationing and delays instead of via money. "Sure you can get your surgery-- in 17 months" vs "Sure you can get your surgery- for $350,000".

You're wrong -everyone gets by-pass surgery, and there's no rationing. And there's no wait. Annoying even painful waits for Hip replacement? There can be waits, even months, but for life threatening crises? Nope, doesn't happen. You cannot pay for services in Canada to jump the line, get services not paid for, or to end wait times, nope doesn't happen, ever, against the law.

2) If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice. We currently say "no mistakes and no malpractice" but that decision probably doubles or triples every thing we do medically. Which in some cases means that the procedure that could be done cheaply- is now too expensive.

The real costs of American health care is billing. The billing systems are bigger than than the treatment buildings. There are so many insurance companies, government agencies, poor people, volunteer organizations and charities to deal with that hospitals, and health organizations, have billing and payment departments that have to employ more people, (who are often better paid) than care-providing staff. They spend more money trying to find ways to collect from working people that can't pay than they do on their treatments. The reason litigation is so expensive is because there are so many unscruplous people trying to make a killing off a money machine called healthcare, start to change that, and you massively lower the court costs.

3) Even in socialist countries- you are paying. Sure- you may rip off the doctors (with a resulting shortage of doctors and hence long wait periods) but the drug company executives are still flying around in jets and vacationing in maui.

Doctors in Canada get paid the same way as the U.S., buy the insurance company, and they set their own rates. Many make hundreds of thousands of dollars, many make in the realm of a million dollars, (though it is Canadian money). Canada has approximately the same number of Doctors per household as the reat of the OECD, and from I can tell more than the U.S. Yes, drug companies and their execs get far too much money, it's theft. But that has more to do with the same kind of copywrite legislation, and intellectuall property laws that are hurting society everywhere else, like technology, movies and software. The whole world is coming to the conclusion that this whole set of issues has run it's course. New laws need to be enacted to solve these problems.

So the point is not curing every illness known regardless of price- but setting a reasonable amount of tax dollars aside to cover a reasonable amount of medical expenses for the most people possible. No open heart surgery for 98 year olds on the tax dollar but if they want to pay for it themselves- okay. Yes to vaccinations for everyone and broken limbs (tho perhaps a limit on the number of times to reign in the reckless types).

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

Or the drug companies will simply make less money. Unfortunately, that is not how the capital markets work. Investors will take their money elsewhere.

Except that there's nowhere else for the drug companies to spend their money. Big Pharma is probably the most lucrative commercial R&D area since forever. Even with significantly lower prices, the companies would still be very profitable. They're not stupid, and not likely to back out of a good deal just because an obscenely good deal is no longer an option. They will have less profit. Less profit means less investment money. Less investment money means lower budgets, including R&D. Less investment money means fewer startups. In short, lower profits are bad for all of us.

Re:Bravo

[Garrett Fox]

That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.

You mean, solving the problem of people not having enough money for it by taking money from them and indirectly funneling it back to them? Well, as long as there are enough rich people to overcharge, and as long as you can force people to join and pay who don't want to, you can hide the true costs and make the health care look cheaper than private industry can provide. Maybe. For a while. Assuming that individual choice and minimizing bureaucracy aren't factors worth considering.

Re:Bravo

[Peter La Casse]

Most universities have policies about academic freedom (and tenure) because they don't want to turn into a place with group think.

Unfortunately, those policies have failed.

Re:Bravo

[FLEB]

Right, but even if you were an exit node, you wouldn't be routing your own Viagra request out through your own node, would you?

Re:Bravo

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Considering America's health care system is rated in the world at #1 in per-capita costs and #37 for quality of service, you have obviously confused your nasty and immoral CORPORATIONS with your government. Please report to a nearby college for deprogramming (i.e. education). Oh, and turn off O'Reilly, Limbaugh and the rest of the proven rightwingnut propaganda ministers who have so misled you into thinking what you did. kthkbye

Re:Bravo

[budgenator]

Like many /.ers I discovered that about the 7th grade that I really was as smart as my teachers, just less educated; and like many I took things into my own hands and a lot of what I actually learned was self directed. When you get into college, self-directed learning isn't unusual, it's expected and called research. Students are supposed to do research, and frequently poke their heads into unproductive areas and that's ok because finding out what doesn't work is learning too. IT at a university had better expect that there will be all kinds of whacko stuff on their networks being used in new and unexpected ways.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. And up. And up!

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

Sorry, but the government is inefficient. I see no evidence that the US government is capable of providing health care for the entire population of the US at an adequate service level or cost. If you are aware of an American government agency of that scale that is not wasteful, please point me to it.

America's health care costs are high in part because of the government and in part because our unregulated market tends to subsidize pharmaceutical development for the whole world. I am not one of the right wing nuts that you think I am - I support some low level of government health care. I haven't heard a Rush Limbaugh program since the early 90's, and I haven't seen O'Reilly since he was on the Daily Show. I just think government involvement should be limited as much as possible. French-style health care is simply not possible to implement across the entire US, though it may be possible in some individual states.

Now, can you say that you are not a left wing nut? The anti-corporate, pro-government nature of your post kind of tags you as a Nader voter. Or, like you, am I assuming too much? Can we get along and have a discussion without name calling then?

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a MIDDLE school teacher, not a college prof, but even I know that teaching people ABOUT something is pretty damn useless -- it just won't stick -- unless you can a) SHOW them the thing itself in action, and b) have them use it themselves.

It's basic learning theory, folks. Telling people ABOUT something isn't teaching, it's talking.

This prof wants his students to actually learn. So he needs to be able to play with and learn about Tor so he can answer questions about it, and he needs to be able to do it on his professional (in-office) time. Even more, he needs to be able to let students play with it IN his classroom, if it comes up, even if it's his hands on the keys.

As such: BOTH demands are objectionable, because they are inseparable -- you can't teach it unless you can do it; you can't learn it unless you can do it.

Re:Bravo

[drinkypoo]

The thing is, tenure is earned by outstanding scholarship over years of teaching and research.

Yes, and then after you go senile you can stand in front of the blackboard and say nothing for 20 minutes, then pick up where you left off like nothing ever happened, leaving your students utterly confused, and still keep your job. Tenure is like labor unions. It's good at first, but as time goes by, they become more and more corrupt. (Word is the local plumber's union in my area is Mafia-controlled, for example) :)

Re:Bravo

[mutterc]

the negotiated rate will always be at least high enough per patient so that the provider can make *some* profit on the transaction

I know personally of one case where this isn't true... my daughter.

Born 6 weeks early, she had "Apnea of Prematurity", where the nervous system controlling breathing wasn't quite mature enough, and so she'd very occasionally forget to breathe. Before she could come home, she had to go 5 days without forgetting to breathe.

She was in the NICU for 5 weeks 2 days, on a monitor to see when breathing stopped. This required 1/4 of a nurse, 24/7 during that time.

The hospital bill alone (not counting the occasional neonatologist) was $58000ish. BCBS-NC paid them $5400 and I paid $600 as my 10% coinsurance. The rest was written off. (This bothers me... were I uninsured, I'd be on the hook for the whole amount).

There's no possible way that the hospital broke even on that, even if you only consider the nursing salary.

A reply to a post about this in a discussion some weeks ago posited the theory that the insurance company found some reason to deny payment, and told the hospital, "take 10% or we'll pay nothing and you can take your chances appealing for years".

Re:Bravo

[Andy Somnifac]

No that's why the government should be pointing and laughing at people who have such poor personal habits as to put themselves into such a dangerous state of health.

Right, and then we have people like my girlfriend who has no health insurance, a childhood where her mother neglected her dental health (where she's doing everything she can to undo the neglect, but there's nothing like the public dental clinic, run by the lowest bidder), relies on SSRI antidepressants to function outside the home, and female issues that are beyond her control... Shall I go on?

She is currently in school, working towards a career where she will still most likely have to provide her own insurance, once she progresses beyond entry level.

So, don't give me that all health problems are genetic, because that's a load of crap.

As a side note, I have medical insurance and keep myself in good health. I do not drink alcohol in any form, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs of any kind (other than those prescribed by a doctor), and have been a vegetarian for nearly a decade. Yet, I occasionally have to see the doctor. I don't think I was genetically predisposed to that peritonsillar abscess that I had last year.

Re:Bravo

[kharchenko]

While it's true that emergency rooms will provide necessary aid to you regardless of your ability to pay, they'll also bill you for the services afterwards. So the "secret" system you're talking about only helps you if you don't have any assets (i.e. broke).

Re:Bravo

[smellsofbikes]

>There are other people around here who do it better anyway.

If there are, I haven't read them lately. I wish I had mod points, and I hope you post more.

Re:Bravo

[petermgreen]

I'm not sure I follow you because there's accepted medical protocol and there's not accepted protocol, aka malpractise. While we don't have your multi-million dollar lawsuits (though we of course pay damages to people that have been mistreated) we do have medical review boards which can do everything from give you a mild criticism to having your license revoked, which is basicly the end of your medical career.
right, the trouble with huge damages as a punishment measure is that people who are vulnerable to them get insurance and insurers can only determine risk in a fairly rough manner. The end result is everyone pays more to give a few malpractice victims huge windfalls.

whereas being chucked out of the proffesion has far more direct affects on the person who performed the malpractice.

Re:Bravo

[Poruchik]

Americans live less... but not necessarily because of quality of healthcare. Average American gets two less vacation weeks per year:


Employed adults in the United States on average receive about 14 vacation days per year

Employed adults in Canada on average receive about 19 vacation days per year.
Employed adults in Great Britain on average receive about 24 vacation days per year.
Employed adults in France on average receive about 39 vacation days per year.
Employed adults in Germany on average receive about 27 vacation days per year.
Employed adults in Australia on average receive about 17 vacation days per year.
Source: www.vacationdeprivation.com/survey_results.pdf

Americans also tend to work longer hours.

In essence, we are killing ourselves.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo]

Some people miss the sarcasm because so many people actually think in those terms about issues like health care.

Re:Bravo

[ScrewMaster]

Here are some more well-established facts. I live in the U.S. and my government a. doesn't do anything for low costs and hasn't a clue what that phrase means and b. what medical care it does provide is generally not of high quality. Medicare is better than nothing, I suppose, but not by a whole lot.

The real question isn't whether universal coverage vs. on-demand care is inherently better ... I refuse to be drawn into that debate because there are valid arguments either way and whether or not one is truly better depends too much on the particular culture implementing it. However, when it comes to universal coverage of any kind, it's ultimately a matter of a particular government's bureacracy being capable of managing that kind of money well. Ours isn't. End of story.

Re:Bravo

[Proteus Child]

If he's running Tor as a client and not an exit or routing node, then he isn't. Tor doesn't work like Skype - running the daemon does not immediately mean that you're helping to transmit the traffic of other Tor users. The article says nothing about Cesarini setting up a node of either kind, only that he was using it in client mode.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

Try doing that at Motorola.

I do that in a private company all the time. As long as my job gets done and I make the rare scheduled meeting, nobody really cares when or where I work. I also have an extra week of annual holidays I negotiated in place of a raise one year. The trick is to not be a pain in the ass except when it really means something to you (and doing a really good job most of the time).

Re:Bravo

[Kijori]

Asking everyone to own their own road system is more like asking everyone to own their own health care practice that asking them to pay health insurance. As you yourself said, all you're advocating is people paying for their own health insurance - what could be fairer? Similarly, everyone should pay for:

• The amount of road they use, as a proportion of the cost to build and maintain it
• The amount of protection they want from the police
• The amount of time they need from judges
• The amount of a politician's time they need or want

After all, it's not like the poorest people tend to need to use roads, need police protection, need criminal justice or need political representation as much or more than the rest of us! If they insist on living in dangerous neighborhoods, wanting to change the country's 'unfair' laws (voting rights? Whiners!) or any of the other unnecessary things they insist on doing, they can at least pay for it. No reason the rest of us should have to pay extra!

Re:Bravo

[cayenne8]

"You mean, in the USA ? Why not ? In many countries around the world, it is. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, people live measurably longer [cia.gov] in these countries."

It also might be that we work much harder and longer than those in most countries. No one here takes off 4 weeks to a month or more a year. Hell, most people over here don't even take of the normal 2 weeks a year for vacation.....

We work ourselves into the grave....

Re:Bravo

[Some_Llama]

"This is the CEO. Report to my office immediately.

Then get the fuck out, cuz your fired."

This is the head of the board of directors, please come to the board room, and pack up your shit, your fired.. we don't need any Enron types at this company.

Re:Bravo

[san]

My main issue is that socialize health care still does not provide everyone with everything they need/want. All it really does is shift the priority system from more-or-less dollar driven to some other priority system. Sometimes they try to use "need", usually age is a factor, and position on a waiting list is also used. While on the surface this seems fairer to the poor (and it is!), when I step back and think about it from a moral position, you are still metering out healthcare. All you've done is shift the metering system... if an economic model is arbitrary, so is any other metering system. Yes, the Christian tradition is to be especially considerate to the poor, but I still think that it's arbitrary.

I think that you've hit a very important point; ultimately the best system is the system that promotes the priorities that are chosen by the people. The priorities of socialized healthcare are clear and statistics seem to back up that it actually is successful in promoting general public health --- on average.

What I'm still not sure about are the priorities of the US healthcare system. It doesn't seem to have any, and maybe that's the root cause of the problems with it.

Finally, the US is huge! Compare the US government to the EU and the speed is comparatively high :) Government does not seem to scale very well. Imagine the EU trying to compose a uniform socialized healthcare system for all of Europe!

Good point. After getting to know a little bit about US history, I'm more and more under the impression that the current EU is kind of like the US in the first half of the 19th century: a weak confederation of states.

It's not all bad though: the US is (IMO, at least) a good example that large countries have advantages that smaller countries don't. I don't think people in the EU realize fully that the scale of countries that actually matter has now grown far beyond the size of the typical EU member state. And easy trade within a country the size of a continent has been very good for American corporations.

One interesting trend in the US is that the states are implementing socialized health care. Massachusetts, California, and some others are going for it as we type. I think that this approach is probably best, at least in the short term. Let the individual states figure out what works best for each of them - similar to the current state of health care in Europe. It would be silly to expect the same health system to work in the crowded, urban Northeast as in rural Mississippi.

That's going to be interesting. I wonder why states haven't tried that before. It is strange though, that both those states have Republican governors backing these proposals..

Re:Bravo

[Paperweight]

Naturally there is pressure from the well-to-do to desire to 'queue-jump' by spending some of that money to avoid time spent in pain. Currently that is disallowed, and that is controversial. I don't have a problem with the rich spending money to get out pain faster; I have a problem with the fact that the more they are allowed to queue jump, the longer the poor have to wait.

Aha! Let's just let the rich jump to the front of the queue if they pay enough to make up the difference for everyone else... If they pay enough, then everyone else gets treated even faster too! (The fact they already pay more in taxes has little to do with this proposal.)
I am much enlightened by this discussion.

Re:Bravo

[Fulcrum of Evil]

There's an oversupply of good doctors - the AMA restricts the supply artificially for its own ends.

Re:Bravo

[bitt3n]

I'm having a hard time figuring out whether you actually disagree with me.

Asking everyone to own their own road system is more like asking everyone to own their own health care practice that asking them to pay health insurance.

Yes, I agree. That is why the comparison between private roads and private healthcare doesn't make sense.

what could be fairer?

this part makes me suspect you are speaking ironically.

As for people paying for that proportion of the judiciary, legislature etc. that they actually use, that seems fair, but I don't see how it could be practical. After all, when a judge sentences a car thief, a given person will usually have no direct interest in this event, being neither the victim nor the perpetrator of the crime, and yet this person will benefit from the sentencing on account of the fact that it may deter the theft of his own car. It is therefore impractical to allocate the costs based on benefits for the judiciary, and similar arguments can be made for other public services like the legislature (although roads are somewhat different on account of the fact that gas taxes and tolls are possible).

You appear to be arguing that because allocating the costs of some services is impractical, therefore, one should not allocate the costs of health insurance. This does not follow because it is not impractical to allocate the costs of health insurance (although it may not be a good idea).

As for your following argument, it appears to be that poor people need healthcare just like they need the services of the legislature, judiciary and police, and that it is the government's role to ensure that they have it, because not to provide it would be irresponsible. One might respond with the argument that it is not the government's responsibility to ensure the well-being of the people, but to ensure that the people's right to pursue their own well-being is not curtailed, and that the latter requires some public services whose costs must be shared because it is not practical to allocate them, but that healthcare is not among these. You would probably have an easier time convincing someone who argues this of your own point of view if you abandoned your tendency toward sarcasm and condescension ("what could be fairer?" "voting rights? Whiners!" and so on), and instead explained why you believe their understanding of the purpose of government is incorrect.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Unfortunately, that is not how the capital markets work. Investors will take their money elsewhere.

In the short term, perhaps. Nevertheless, the market is good at exactly one thing: correcting itself. As I said, Big Pharma would still be hugely profitable even with a much smaller profit margin, and investors as a whole will not run from a sure return on investment. You seem to be confusing the share price of a company with several other things that are not the same number.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

While I have no doubt that a big, established company would continue to turn a profit, what would seek greener pastures is venture capital. They go where the high share prices are. All of these biomed startups would simply cease to appear. Don't discount the value of venture capital.

A market can't correct itself if there is no free market.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

That's going to be interesting. I wonder why states haven't tried that before. It is strange though, that both those states have Republican governors backing these proposals.. Republicans can be quite reasonable in the Northeast. It is not uncommon to find a pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage Republican up here. Hell, even New York City has a Republican mayor, and he's very popular. Bush has given them all a bad name, and they paid dearly in the last election.

I think that the states haven't really attacked the problem themselves because the problem is only now coming to a head. You have hospitals not just in trouble, but actually closing. You have record numbers of uninsured. You have massive doctor flight as lawsuits get out of hand. Medication prices have gotten out of hand. Prior to now, the issue just wasn't big enough to register on most voters' radar. In the US, the fed almost always follows the states' lead.

Re:Bravo

[BgJonson79]

The Constitution prohibits the federal gov't for paying for healthcare, like it prohibits the gov't paying for education and a whole host of social programs we currently have.

Re:Bravo

[glazener]

There are a couple of things that everyone should seriously consider when talking about doctor's and hospital's "network negotiated charges" and their "standard rates".

The first is that the standard rate is a negotiating position for the hospital. It generally has little or nothing to do with the actual cost of providing the service. The stories about the $12 asprin tablet are true. You see this same type of behavior with the hotel industry. Almost no one pays the room rack rate, even on season. The difference is, in my experience, no doctor or hospital will negotiate rates with an individual. I know that I tried when my insurance provider dropped a particular doctor from my plan, the practice simply refused to consider giving me the same rate as my old insurer paid. This was even after I offered to pay them up front, in cash for the service provided. The negotiated rate was less than 50 percent of the standard rate, and the office had to wait from 30 to 45 days for payment.

The second (and kind of related) thing about standard rates it that it gives hospitals a nice, high dollar figure for the amount of uncompensated care provided. This makes for great public relations, not to mention being a great negotiating point when setting wages for their employees. Our local state run hospital (a non-profit institution) has reported hundreds of millions of dollars in uncompensated care over the last ten years, but has also reported retained earnings (profits) of nearly a billion dollars during that same time period. The reason given for the retained earnings is they need to build a cushion for any future losses from uncompensated care. Clearly, even heavily discounting their services, they were making substantial amounts of money.

An earlier post talked about insurance companies "buying in bulk" and used the example of purchasing the services of an airline pilot and crew in a guaranteed purchase agreement. This doesn't really fit the insurance model very well. Insurance companies don't really bring a big influx of patients to either physician practices, or to hospitals. In most areas of the country that I am familiar with, there is a certain population of people and a certain number of physicians to fill their needs. Demand for physician services is pretty inelastic. Few medical practitioneers have a lot of open slots in their daily appointment book. Unlike hotels, airlines, cruise ships, etc. hospitals and individual medical practioneers just aren't in a position to give substantial discounts in order to bring in base business. So the bulk purchase model doesn't work very well here. Furthermore, I know of no insurance company that pays hospitals and physicians a fixed amount regardless of whether treatment is provided or not. A few years ago, some insurance companies tried this approach, but it generally didn't work out.

Comparing an essential, monopoly business like health care to a business where there are low barriers to entry, and people aren't required to purchase the service seems kind of unfair. I would like to see some market discipline put into the health care business, but both the government and the providers themselves have rigged the market to the point that that is probably impossible, at least in the short term. I am more than willing to shoulder reasonable risk for health care expenses. It seems reasonable to expect every one to pay for basic health care such as yearly check ups, treatment for minor illnesses, the cost of most medications, etc. That would stop some of the over use of the system. But almost no one can carry the burden of a heart transplant, or major cancer treatment, or serious injury without some type of insurance.

I used to be uncomfortable with the idea that health care is a right to which everyone is entitled. But I honestly can't see the difference between society providing for a standing army, police protection, food inspection, mail delivery and a host of other things that we expect, and society providing for basic health care. A

Re:Bravo

[orcrist]

I don't know what the state of waiting lists is in the USA, but I suspect it's better

For the 40+ million people without insurance the waiting list is forever. What does that do to the average? Or were you only counting the people who are insured?

-chris

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm really pretty cynical about the value of standing up for what I believe in. I do things on a personal level (habitat for humanity, donations to charities) but really want to get in a bullet proof situation before I do anything political. I view that I have a lot to lose with little to gain. The stakes went up even more when I developed the medical conditions.

Underlying all of it is a fairly nihilistic philosophy tho I have to admit. If I were to shoot for the bleachers, in 100 years, I would have suffered and the world will be exactly the same as if I minded my peace and enjoyed my private personal life.

I even feel that way for my charity activities but at least they make me feel good. But when I save a few kids from starving today, they are just going to grow up and have two to three times as many kids- making the basic problem (too many people) much worse.

It's hard to think of areas where any impact I might have are worth the stakes. And I'm able to help several friends who are worse off because of my position. But I have to admit, it's a wariness and lack of confidence that prevents me from striving.

Re:Bravo

[LaCosaNostradamus]

"Sorry"? Yes, you are sorry. 36 nations deliver better health care for less money per capita. It's not magic, and it's not hopeless -- obviously IT CAN BE DONE.

Your allergy to using government solutions is blinding you to the truth of the wholesale failure of using the profit motive to deliver health care. You may not listen to Limbaugh et al, yet you parrot the rightwingnut mantra almost word for word. You picked it up from the Rightwingnut Information Ministry one way or another. (BTW, isn't it funny how Limbaugh and the rest have NO PROBLEM using government to deliver warfare (and corporate welfare) solutions? Food for thought, eh?)

Since corporations can't be controlled by anything less than government, government is the solution to the American health care crisis, one way or another.

So, I just proved your viewpoint dead wrong, and your howling isn't going to change that ... fuckmeat. If you can't stand the truth or the name-calling, then leave this forum so we adults can continue discussing the matter without your sophomoric whining.

P.S. #1 in cost, #37 in service, and the only First World nation WITHOUT universal health care. Your idiocy can't do away with those truths, and it's time for those facts to change.

Re:Bravo

[neomunk]

I don't see tor creating any problems, maybe making them a bit difficult to solve, but not creating them.

Child pornography is not caused by tor, nor is it caused by the internet, though I think a better case could be made for that than tor. The problem is a social one, without a technological solution. The whole point here seems to be that somehow because it allows anonymity tor is responsible for child pornography. This is utterly absurd, at least when viewed from the context of a free society.

As to your point about not knowing what tor is used for, the burden of proof is not on me here. People accusing tor of being mainly used for illegal purposes are the ones who need some evidence. In fact, SOME evidence wouldn't be enough, I think a claim like 'product x is used mainly for child pornography' would need some SERIOUS backing, don't you?

As much as child molestation bothers me, I will never surrender my freedom, even if it because I've been promised it'll stop child molestation cold. In my opinion doing so would be trading significant pain for a fat dose of doom. Freedom DOES mean my ability to do things without your knowledge or consent by the way.

That's all I have to say about that for now, but one last nugget I'd like to toss out is a practical solution to child pornography. Legalize cyber-vigilantism in this particular area. In fact, offer a $25,000 reward for the arrest of one of these individuals, topped off with immunity for the crimes you broke in this specific instance of network security violation. No getting away with botnetting everyone to search or anything, but if you sucker some pervert in a chatroom, own his network and call the fuzz, you get a check without worries.
What's that? Said pervert isn't really a pervert at all, just some dude from work you wanted harassed for awhile? Welp, it's off to the jailhouse for you my friend, already plenty of laws to take care of that kind of behavior.

Just a thought, might be a bad idea, but WAY better than banning tor at any rate.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

The government we currently have is not mine and does not represent me or my consent when it starts a war in Iraq, slaughters innocent women and children, engages in corporate welfare, outlaws certain species of plants, and dozens of other things.

Re:Bravo

[HuguesT]

No there isn't. There is an artificial restriction of people who could go on to become doctors, but it doesn't follow that these people would necessarily be any good.

Re:Bravo

[jonadab]

> You suggest that the providers (hospitals, etc.) are losing money on the insured
> patients because the negotiated rates are so low.

I didn't mean to imply that. They avoid this situation by artificially inflating the official list price that self-insured people must pay.

> You suggest that hospitals make up the money they're losing to insured patients
> by over-charging the uninsured (or under-insured).

I didn't mean to imply that either. They over-charge the uninsured (and the self-insured) in order to inflate the *perceived* cost of the procedure, to place them in a better bargaining position with the insurance companies, so they can say, "Look, you're already paying less than 25% of our usual rate, we really can't afford to discount you any further!" or something along those lines.

> providers actually make less money, on average, per patient on uninsured cases.

If that's true, it's because a lot of uninsured people end up being indigent or charity cases, and the hospital ends up writing those off as a loss. Those of us who actually set aside 10% of our income for medical care, but don't go through an insurance company, get the nasty end of the stick. I am certain I pay more for dental procedures, for instance, than the insurance companies pay on behalf of the people they insure.

If somebody is living in a magical make-believe fairy-tale land, it's the person who believes that the health care providers can charge uninsured people a fair amount, charge the insurance companies a lot less for insured people, and still make money hand over fist.

> I suggest you go to college.

If you argue ad hominem, I get to argue ad quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur. (I'd use Greek, but slashdot's code filters it out.)

Re:Bravo

[jonadab]

> But I honestly can't see the difference between society providing for
> a standing army, police protection, food inspection, mail delivery and
> a host of other things that we expect, and society providing for basic
> health care

I will tell you what the difference is.

First, let's set mail delivery aside, because, at least in the US, it is not subsidized (on average). The USPS has to charge enough to break even (and to cover the small amount of franked mail). (I wish they were required by law to charge the same amount for bulk mail as for first class mail, but that's a separate issue entirely. So although the USPS is a government agency, mail delivery isn't really provided by the government, in the sense of being paid for out of public funds like the other things you list.

With the standing army, police protection, and food inspection, there is a limit to how much people want to have provided. Well, in peace time there is, at any rate. Wartime is... more complicated. Note however that despite the current action in Iraq we really are at peace, in terms of how people look at the military, and have been at least since the eighties. The Vietnam conflict was also a peacetime war, in terms of how it was perceived at home. Nobody felt directly threatened by the enemy. The cold war is arguable, and even there there were (admittedly high) limits on how much military we really wanted. The last time we really had an unbounded demand for military was WWII. Note too that I don't mean to imply the military doesn't want more funding. Every government program always want more funding. The USDA wants more funding. However, there is a limit to the military services that the public are generally interested in having available. Similarly, there is a limit to how much police protection we require. (In the city I live in, two patrol cars at night and three in the daytime, plus the dispatcher, is enough. If we have that much police protection all the time, nobody argues for more. We can easily afford that amount. Heck, we didn't even *notice* the city taxes, which are negligable in comparison to the federal and state ones, until the city started requiring everyone to *file* them, which is an annoying waste of time since most people end up owing exactly $0 anyway, due to employers withholding the correct amount. If the city just kept what our employers withheld, they'd be welcome to it.)

When it comes to medical care, there is no limit to how much people will consume if they don't have to personally pay for it. In fairness, you did say "basic health care", so perhaps you were thinking in terms of there being limits on what the government plan will pay for. That would potentially be workable, but it won't satisfy anyone: whatever limits are set will be a major source of contention. People will want more medical care than can be provided.

The only government-provides service I can think of off the top of my head (in the US, currently) that is in that same "unlimited needs" category with health care, is education. And if you think about the kind of job that the government is doing with education, you may ask yourself if you really want those people running your health care. As bad as health care seems now, it could easily be worse. Indeed, all you have to do is look at the Canadian system, to see how it could be worse. At any rate, if you want to argue for socialized medicine, it's not fair to compare to police protection and food inspection. It would be a lot more like the education system.

Re:Bravo

[MightyYar]

You aren't worth talking to, and you aren't even reading what I wrote. Grow up.

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus]

Then I suppose you find this perfectly acceptable.

Re:Bravo

[Fulcrum of Evil]

It doesn't follow that they would all be incompetent, so the reasonable conclusion is that removing the artificial restriction would increase the supply of competent doctors.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas]

They definately keep an artificially low supply of doctors. Hell they talk about it openly in their own press releases.
By restricting the supply of doctors they keep them rare and expensive. There is no reason that lots of people couldn't be doctors (not specialists) and there is no reason for the insane residency hazing programs.

Re:Bravo

[turbidostato]

"There are three major and important facts that proponents of Universal Heathcare ignore when pointing to Germany, Sweden, etc...
1. The US is both population wise and land wise considerably larger- at last estimate over 300 million people"

While this is true, the fact is that the whole EU goes with a universal health-care system, and the EU is... about 300 million people and about the surface the USA is.

"This means the logistical and administrative demands of any such system would be orders of magnitude larger"

This means the logistical and administrative demands of any such system on the USA would be exactly the same order of magnitude that it is in EU.

"2. Germany, England and Sweden are central government countries. They have a strong national government with mutiple parties working in coalitions and the Prime Minister is selected from this. This allows for things to work "all in one direction". However, the US is fragmented with a weakened federal government"

Still, the EU has an even weakener "federal" government that the USA has and all the countries within EU have universal-healthcare systems.

"This would make it both politically and socially difficult to implement a single Universal Heathcare without it being very regonal, complex, and beholden to local politics thus negating many of the advantages of "national heathcare"."

This could only be worse (by orders of magnitude) within the UE. Still, I, as an EU citizen (I'm Spanish) can go everywhere within the EU and recieve the benefits of the healthcare system of the country I happen to be by the moment. Would it be impossible or would it?

"Trying to find commonality beyond Nation & Citizenship for 300 million in this country is pipe dream."

And then, we in EU are managing to find common grounds even on the glaringly fact that we only have in common bloody wars for about a millenium.

So, don't tell us it is impossible when you just have to have a look at old Europe to see it is certainly possible.

Re:Bravo

[N3wsByt3]

If you really analyse it, there is only one right, and this is the right of those that are/is in power.

ALL the other rights, even the 'natural' ones are abritrary distinctions made by people (which usually have a wide consensus, but are still arbitrary). If you have a society where one elite reserves all rights for themselves just because they are the elite (by birth, for instance), then one can make a completely internally valid reasoning where even the 'natural' rights are only reserved to the elite, and not to the non-elite.

This issue is only a topic of debate in a philosophical sense (this is where Locke comes in) because of people *agreeing* that there are such things as 'natural' and 'non-natural' rights, or even THAT there are universal rights at all. When you have people that don't agree with that basic premise, and those have the power, then all philosophing amounts to nothing.

In short, it amounts to the question of a social contract (thus, ppl agreeing on basic premises), even when it comes down to things as the right to live for everybody, and the right on private property, etc. Once one has concluded that, one can see that health care is another part of such social contract, and people can as validly see that as a 'basic right' as much as the other rights already mentionned.

Re:Bravo

[Cervantes]

We already have this in the US, and IIRC it includes chemo if you are sick enough. It's called the emergency room, the USA's secrete socialized healthcare.
-nB

There's a joke involving secret secretions here, but it's early and I am caffine-less....

Re:Bravo

[cthulhu11]

Fixing your daily diet would obviate those meds.

eep

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe i ought to uninstall tor now
gods damn BGSU
always runing on office porn searching

ill prepared?

[mhokie]

"The visitors said it was likely against university policy"

Could they not be bothered with actually checking the policy since they were there to enforce it?

Re:ill prepared?

[Anonymous Coward]

big brother gets pissed off when they cant see everything your doing

Re:ill prepared?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The visitors said it was likely against university policy"

Could they not be bothered with actually checking the policy since they were there to enforce it?

Because the policy is a little vague. Until the lawyers & judges have a go at it, some of the grey areas are not well-defined.

Re:ill prepared?

[Selanit]

"The visitors said it was likely against university policy" Could they not be bothered with actually checking the policy since they were there to enforce it?

In fact, they brought a printout of the policy to the meeting with the professor. The reason they weren't sure is that when the policy was written, Tor didn't exist yet. It might violate the policy, but they hadn't faced this kind of thing before, so they weren't certain.

Re:ill prepared?

[Kadin2048]

Well, we can't say for sure now, because it's not like TFA included a copy of the relevant policy (although, if someone wanted to, they could probably figure out where the guy in the article works, and find the policy from there), but he admits that it's vaguely written, and was written back before Tor existed. So there are two immediate issues:

1) The policy may be so vague, as written, so as to make it unclear whether Tor is legitimate or not. For instance, it could simply have a blanket prohibition of doing things that are detrimental to the network, but not specify exactly what's prohibited and allowed. This is fairly common in most AUPs that I've read, particularly academic ones; rather than attempting to specifically outline what you can't do, they basically say "anything that's bad, don't do it." (Usually in a more verbose fashion, but that's the general idea.) Sometimes they're clear about who decides what is 'bad,' other times less so. It all depends on how bright a person wrote the policy.

2) The policy, as written, may actually prohibit Tor, but the faculty member, who said he was part of the committee that wrote the policy, believes that owing to the age of the policy and his knowledge of the writers intentions, that it was never intended to prohibit something like Tor. Thus, his usage, while technically in violation, he believes is OK because -- to put it bluntly -- he knows what behaviors the policy was supposed to prohibit better than the sysadmin does. (This seems like it could be a dangerous position for him to take, but I guess if you've got tenure, you might as well use it.)

Re:ill prepared?

[crush]

I guess the thing to do is to stop Tor spewing out the plaintext: "TOR 1.0 Proxy Connection Attempt" which any half-assed network admin could detect. Run wireshark and watch how Tor gives itself away. I suppose that they could then block people trying to get to known Tor entry nodes, but with enough of them then that becomes foolish.

Re:ill prepared?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an IT professional working in private enterprise, as apposed to university or government, I can say that for the most part the average person in charge computer security has little understanding of their rules, and are for the most part no better than automatons.

In fact they are little more than glorified auditors, and change their rules on a whim. If even 1/10 their rules were followed there would be no way that businesses would work.

Re:ill prepared?

[mhokie]

It doesn't matter if they brought fifty copies of the policy with them. My point was that they could have taken a few hours and determined how his actions were against university policy. Hell, write an addendum if you need to, just don't show up at his door thinking he might, possibly, could be, may be breaking the university's policy. Does guilty until proven innocent make anyone else queasy?

Re:ill prepared?

[FLEB]

OTOH, this gives you the obvious alibi when someone asks about the certain-to-occur (if you believe the above threads) child porn requests.

Re:ill prepared?

[FLEB]

"This stack of paper says you're in the wrong. Remember, you signed it."
"What about that stack of paper says I'm in the wrong?"
(frantic whispering)
"Okay, you won... this time. We'll be back-- and we're going to read this stack of paper first."

Re:ill prepared?

[poot_rootbeer]

The reason they weren't sure is that when the policy was written, Tor didn't exist yet.

Maybe not, but surely anon.penet.fi had existed by then. It's not as though the concept of an Internet anonymization service could not have been predicted.

Re:ill prepared?

[mothas]

The people who came to his office aren't the sort who would normally get to make that determination. They were security techs and campus police, and it's actually nice that they came directly to him before taking their case further up the chain - and chose to do so during his office hours, if you notice, so I think they were acting as reasonably as you could ask.

Good idea

[Derek Loev]

I think that if they would want to keep something like Tor quiet on the campus this is probably the worst way possible.
If anything, it will do more damage.

Loop-hole.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But in 2000, Amazon admitted experimenting with so-called dynamic pricing, charging different people different prices for the same MP3 player; the prices were presumably based on estimates of what each user would be willing to pay, considering prior purchases. Online merchants could all do that, thanks to traffic analysis. They know who I am when I log on -- unless I delete their cookies or use Tor."

And pay only in cash. And ship to an untraceable address.

Re:Loop-hole.

[Anonymous Coward]

With Amazon, you can browse their site, find an item *with a price*, add it to your cart and proceed to checkout - all before you ever log in. Once an item is in your cart, they don't magically change the price on you once they see your username.

Campus Intelligence Agency...

[gd23ka]

--"The other men were not familiar, but a quick glance at their cards told me they were detectives on our campus police force."

_Detectives_ of the campus police force. What's next? Agents of the Campus Intelligence Agency?
the Department of Campus Security?

This is really ridiculous.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[LiquidCoooled]

Just wait until they take you to a small off-campus building and lock you up there for a while.

Those MIT hackers won't get away with it again.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[aarmenaa]

I work as an RA on my campus, and we speak with the campus police force often. On our small campus of ~4000 students, we have at least one detective and probably 10 officers that I know of. And they're not just rent-a-cops. They're real, badge-carrying officers from the city police force. Salaries are paid from the campus operating budget I believe.

Back on topic, my school is downright draconian on what's allowed on the residential side of their network (the campus network is separate). They block anything bandwidth intensive, from Youtube to videos on Apple's website. FTP is throttled to 0.1 KB/sec. Absolutely NO access to SMTP (can't send mail except through their shitty webmail client), and POP3 is throttled back to dialup speeds. ICMP is dropped - don't ping anything because it'll never come back anyways (it's not even bandwidth intensive, WTF!). In fact they do so much throttling that we almost never run out of bandwidth; the pack shaper gives out long before that. It's a consistent point of contention between the residents and the school, as many residents play games online in their spare time. The latency is consistently measured in seconds. Oh, and if you request a file that ends in ".torrent" over HTTP, the file will never finish downloading.

The solution? I use TOR for anything that won't load. It's slow, but not much slower than my school during peak hours. I just stick it in a tab and let it go.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[IthnkImParanoid]

I know it was a joke, but...
Many campuses have their own PD and FD. Why?
10,000 staff.
25,000 students.
A couple square miles
It's basically a small, densely populated town...only with higher rates of rape, assault, drug use, theft, and copyright infringement.
You know, the big 5 :)

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[Surt]

Large universities commonly have their own police force. Try to find a city in this country with a population over 25,000 without one. We have a number of universities with populations higher than that, even twice that.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I don't see why a college, especially those in large cities, needs its own police force. For the same reason I don't see why most large cities needs overlapping police jurisdictions including county sherrif, township, city and state highway patrol all covering the same roads. Seems like an extensive waste of resources for what seems like nothing else but to increase bureaucracy

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[ChaosDiscord]

_Detectives_ of the campus police force.

Yes, detectives. Note that he's talking about "police," not "security guards." Large enough campuses can benefit from having a focused police force. These aren't thugs in the employ of the university, these are just a real police just like the city-wide force, they just have a more specialized focus. They have the same powers and restrictions. As such it's only logical that they would have detectives, just like the city-wide force. By being specialized they can focus on the more specialized problems of a campus, including the complications of having a large population that moves in and out each year, frequently rotating. They've existed at a number of universities for decades. There is no evil conspiracy here.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[SecurityGuy]

A university can have a population larger than many small towns. I know of at least one where the campus police are certified by the local municipality and *do* have legal police authority.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[FLEB]

(Talking out my ass here, but I'd suspect...) The city needs more services to support the mass of temporary residents. By splitting it off into a distinct organization, they can more easily quantify and justify the cost, and make the college pay out for it. Instead of "the college should be paying for the 18% portion of extra police force needed to attend to students", it's "the college should oversee and maintain a campus security force of ___ size".

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most campus cops in Texas are State Officers and have greater jurisdiction than city boys.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[dcam]

You have issues in the US.

I went to the largest university in Australia and there were no police. Just your garden variety overweight security guards. In my 5 years there I recall seeing a real policeman there once.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[10101001 10101001]

...only with higher rates of ... copyright infringement.

You know, the big 5 :)

Did copyright infringement bump murder off the list?

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[Viceroy Potatohead]

It's basically a small, densely populated town...only with higher rates of rape, assault, drug use, theft, and copyright infringement.

s/small/large/

= city (maybe not, except copyright infringement...)

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[g1zmo]

Police officers for the University of Texas system (nine universities and six medical-related schools) are actually a branch of the DPS, and as such have jurisdiction anywhere and everywhere in the state. They are in fact more powerful than their corresponding municipal police force.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[julesh]

There is no evil conspiracy here.

So why, exactly, were the police turning up to enforce a violation of the university's IT policy? Is it just me that finds this scary as hell?

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[Ogive17]

_Detectives_ of the campus police force. What's next? Agents of the Campus Intelligence Agency? the Department of Campus Security? I think they are the ones that put you on double secret probation.

Re:Campus Intelligence Agency...

[ring-eldest]

State universities like mine (U of Memphis) don't really have "their own" police / fire. They have a special division of the state police, and when you really think about the property rights involved (Controlled by the TBR in my case) it makes a lot of sense. As far as FD, as far as I know we do not have our own but make use of the local FD (for a price).

Be careful with your assumptions too... Memphis is a fairly dangerous city, usually around the top in the nation percap for car theft, rape, domestic abuse, etc... But not at the U of M. We have one of the safest campuses in the region, with almost no violent crime to speak of at all. Despite being a fairly large school (or as you describe, a dense town).

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the issue was not with his use of it but being told that he couldn't talk about it in his classes.

question

[Peter La Casse]

Widespread use of Tor could be a huge headache for network-security administrators, particularly in higher education. My university alone has more than 21,000 students. Imagine what would happen if even a tenth of them and a similar percentage of faculty and staff members started using Tor regularly. With all the spam scams, phishing scams, identity theft, and related criminal enterprises going on around the world many of which involve remotely hijacking university-owned computers we could approach technological anarchy on the campus.

How does Tor enable those things, and how would more people using Tor make those things worse than they already are?

Re:question

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. There is nothing wrong with Tor, and people need to use it for regular use, otherwise there will be instant suspicion put upon anybody who does.

If someone wants to leak some documents that are in the public interest, or post dissenting messages on a Chinese message-board, then they can use Tor to do so. But, unless other people are using Tor for regular use, then it will be pretty easy to identify which users had used it, and to heap the suspicion onto them.

Re:question

[xenocide2]

I think the bigger problem is that they still figured out it was him!

Re:question

[huckamania]

Tor annonymizes content. So, from my university account I can now annonymously: control a botnet setup a hidden tor server with kiddie porn access an email account used to scam senior citizens etc... I'm sure most universities have user agreements which frown on this sort of behavior. Additionally, Tor increases bandwidth. It takes a lot more bandwidth to setup all those hops and also to encrypt all of the content. Basically, this is free internet access for the students and faculty so I have zero sympathy. For all we know, he really was using Tor for something nefarious.

Re:question

[crush]

http://www.packetstormsecurity.org/0610-advisories /Practical_Onion_Hacking.pdf

Re:question

[Katmando911]

Tor won't keep them from figuring out THAT he was using Tor, but it will keep them from figuring out WHAT he was using Tor for.

Re:question

[Anonymous Coward]

For all we know, he really was using Tor for something nefarious.

What kind of twisted moon logic is that? For all we know, you are up to something nefarious right now!

Re:question

[Katmando911]

"For all we know, he really was using Tor for something nefarious."

What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Re:question

[Krakhan]

Human nature. Typically when people are accused of something, they are guilty by assumption. That's most likely the whole reason for the phrase "innocent until proven guilty", since otherwise it wouldn't need to be said.

That's how I look at it anyways.

Re:question

[novus ordo]

It was originally developed by the U.S. Navy...(hint hint) But in the non-tinfoil hat land there are currently 2 weaknesses in Tor: DNS leaking and probabilistic traffic analysis. I can guess that the former was probably the source of his outing since I don't know of anybody that has used the latter to find an originator.

Re:question

[xenocide2]

I guess he has a practical example now to demonstrate the difference with to his students ;)

Re:question

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tor traffic is still coming from his IP address, which the IT people should easily be able to track to a certain room.

What Tor also needs is a LAN onion routing function, where bandwidth is 'free', so that with a large enough install base, figuring out who the traffic originates from is difficult, if not impossible.

Re:question

[Raideen]

You could do all that before Tor. For all we know, he was using Tor for something innocuous.

Re:the ivory tower

[Captain Splendid]

Gee, maybe he's using it in order to get a better appreciation for the potential problems he himself talks about as opposed to wanting to leech warez anonymously? Come on, I'd understand giving him shit if he came across as your typical 'free speech' idiot, but he seems to have a fairly good handle on what really is going on.

Bowling Green State University

[imaginaryelf]

According to the article, he's in Bowling Green State University, which is in Ohio. So DHS will be on this case in no time.

Re:Bowling Green State University

[thesupermikey]

it might also be noted the BGSU, along with other state universities in ohio force graduate students on assistantships to sign forms saying that they are not members, or have not supported terrorist groups.

Since these are stored in university archives, and not checked, new graduate studies are (more or less) required by the state to sign loyalty oaths.

Re:Bowling Green State University

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a former student of BGSU--I know the person in question who went and questioned paul with the detectives--he caused me to lose my job as a network admin because I posessed a copy of knoppix std

Re:Bowling Green State University

[Katmando911]

that sucks
Knoppix is a tool that every admin should be able to use

Re:Bowling Green State University

[Anonymous Coward]

it might also be noted the BGSU, along with other state universities in ohio force graduate students on assistantships to sign forms saying that they are not members, or have not supported terrorist groups.

Since these are stored in university archives, and not checked, new graduate studies are (more or less) required by the state to sign loyalty oaths.

Not really. It is currently a crime in the USA to be a member of or support a terrorist group. Asking your employees if they are currently committing a crime is not uncommon.

Re:Bowling Green State University

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it even legal for employers to ask potential employees about 'crimes' that they've not been convicted of?

Re:Bowling Green State University

[AK Marc]

Depends. Asking them about past crimes not prosecuted for is questionable. Asking them about current crimes that are being committed or will be committed in the near future is just fine. Having a new employee turn out to be a child pornographer would be bad for business. Asking about one and only one crime is peculiar.

But...

[Stanistani]

Nothing really happened to him... no sanctions, penalties, threats of actions... they didn't even say "Halt thy nefarious actions, or I shall chastise thee anon!"

Overblown.

Re:But...

[baptiste]

It's not overblown at all. Just like the earlier article about the RIAA sending cease and desist just because you were in a swarm, not actually up or downloading. This professor was doing something completely legal and as asked by law enforcement to stop - it is inferred because they could not monitor his activities. This has a chilling effect. Notice that it wasn't just an IT person requesting he stop - he showed up with two detectives - who probably instigated the entire thing.

Common sense would dictate that the detectives, doing their jobs and trying to investigate an online scam, ask the professor some questions to determine if he was involved. But instead they asked him to stop doing something legal, tried to get him to NOT share something with his students, and used some vague provisions of an IT policy to back it up. This is a direct attack on academic freedom - 'Thou shalt not tell your students about this' and even worse, telling him not to use Tor himself - obviously because they couldn't track what he was doing.

Overblown? Hardly - we are losing our rights bit by bit by bit and people who think something like this is 'overblown' are part of the reason. By the time you all realize you've lost most of your rights it'll be too late.

Re:But...

[sBox]

If it was about rights, he could run it on his own private connection. It's about responsibility. The university is ultimately responsible for the use and content on its network.

Chastising him for teaching it is ridiculous in the modern age though. It's the equivalent of a chastising a professor in the 60's for mentioning J. Edgar Hoover's files.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Common sense would dictate that the detectives, doing their jobs and trying to investigate an online scam, ask the professor some questions to determine if he was involved. But instead they asked him to stop doing something legal, tried to get him to NOT share something with his students, and used some vague provisions of an IT policy to back it up.

Folks who police others for a living HATE not having control. The job of policing others brings out the worst in people. This is why it's the job of the citizenry to keep them in their place: and that place is often to protect and serve the public.

It's just a fact -- that's one of your responsibilities as a citizen. To do it vigilantly and without malice, a little bit every day. Bravo to Paul Cesarini.

Re:But...

[Stanistani]

>people who think something like this is 'overblown' are part of the reason.

Don't ascribe motives and responsibilities to people you don't know. You have no idea what I do for a living, what my political activities are, or what steps I've taken on behalf of individual freedoms.

Nor am I obligated to tell you.

half reasonable request

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking the professor not to use Tor on the university-owned network is reasonable.
Attempting to censure what he can say to his students is clearly not reasonable.

Re:half reasonable request

[QuantumG]

I beg to differ. Without the professors there *is* no university network.

Re:half reasonable request

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. Without the professors there *is* no university network.

I don't follow you, care to explain your thought? I can't think of any way in which that is true (speaking as a programmer who understands networks down to the protocol and up to the application level and is familiar, at a distance, with how universities typically install, maintain, and use their networks).

Re:half reasonable request

[QuantumG]

You can't have a university without professors (by definition). You can't have a university network without a university (by definition). Therefore, without professors there is no university network.

Re:half reasonable request

[dlt074]

unless he's trying to tell them that global warming MAY not be caused by man...

Re:half reasonable request

[anthony_dipierro]

Asking the professor not to use Tor on the university-owned network is reasonable.

Asking is reasonable. Forcing him to wouldn't be. The network is there to allow the professor to do research which helps him do his job. The IT staff has no business telling the professor how to do that. So long as the professor isn't using excessive resources, and barring a subpoena or court order, they shouldn't care what protocols the professor uses.

Re:half reasonable request

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have a university with professors - 1 (by definition)

Re:half reasonable request

[QuantumG]

Fire a professor? hahaha. You really don't have a clue do you?

Re:half reasonable request

[Fred Ferrigno]

Asking is reasonable. Forcing him to wouldn't be. The network is there to allow the professor to do research which helps him do his job. The IT staff has no business telling the professor how to do that. So long as the professor isn't using excessive resources, and barring a subpoena or court order, they shouldn't care what protocols the professor uses. This is relying on forgiveness rather than simply asking permission. I'm sure the university has a procedure on the books to request a specific, temporary exemption from school policies to conduct bona-fide research. The important factor is oversight: the university still has the authority and responsibility to tell a professor no if the request is not reasonable.

Re:half reasonable request

[anthony_dipierro]

I'm sure the university has a procedure on the books to request a specific, temporary exemption from school policies to conduct bona-fide research. The important factor is oversight: the university still has the authority and responsibility to tell a professor no if the request is not reasonable.

This presumes that Tor is against school policies in the first place, which it isn't nor should it be.

Professors should be using the schools resources primarily for the purpose of performing their job. But requiring them to get approval ahead of time before doing something which doesn't harm anyone else on the network is what is not reasonable. If the professor is using excessive bandwidth that's one situation I could see requiring a request for permission ahead of time. But for just for using Tor? No, I don't buy it.

Re:half reasonable request

[Copid]

This is relying on forgiveness rather than simply asking permission. I'm sure the university has a procedure on the books to request a specific, temporary exemption from school policies to conduct bona-fide research. The important factor is oversight: the university still has the authority and responsibility to tell a professor no if the request is not reasonable.

I think that the problem here is that Tor is not (in and of itself) a problem for network administrators. There's no reason to assume that it will adversely impact the network. If the admins suddenly noticed that the prof was soaking up enough bandwidth to bring down a portion of the network or otherwise degrading an academic resource, they'd certainly have the authority (moral and statutory) to ask him to stop. There's no reason to have yet another rule on the books saying "No Tor because it causes bad behavior X to occur" when you could simply have a rule that states "Don't do bad behavior X."

Re:half reasonable request

[Goaway]

No scientist has ever been silenced for saying so. Stop believing ridiculous blog propaganda.

I'll grant you, though, that this might just be because so few scientists would want to say something this, seeing as how it's so demonstratably wrong and it would do great harm to their reputation for them to spout idiotic nonsense.

Re:half reasonable request

[Fred Ferrigno]

Here is the regulation in question, Bowling Green State University's Information Technology Services Network and Computer Policies:

22. Anonymous use, or use of pseudonyms on a computer system or computer network
to escape responsibility. No person shall use a computer system or computer
network anonymously or use pseudonyms to attempt to escape from prosecution of
laws or regulations, or otherwise to escape responsibility for their actions. As I read it, using Tor to evade responsibility is against the rules, using it for research purposes is not. It's a matter of intent, which is a pain because they can't look at the network traffic and determine your intent. So they knocked on this guy's door, asked him a few questions, and it sounds like they bought his story and left him alone. They requested that he not spread the word about Tor because no doubt a campus full of students using Tor would be a headache for them.

Re:half reasonable request

[dlt074]

blog? http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_020607_n ews_taylor_title.59f5d04a.html looks like a news site to me. he's not agreeing with the state and thus will be treated accordingly. maybe not silenced in a traditional way, but punished none the less. "seeing as how it's so demonstratably wrong and it would do great harm to their reputation for them to spout idiotic nonsense." no room for debate? no room for dissension? no room for questions? no room for doubt? just right to the calls of heretic! where is all that inclusive diversity we so cherish in the university setting? oh yeah, that's only if you follow the party line.

Re:half reasonable request

[Goaway]

He's not being silenced. He was given the privilege of a special position with the state, and that privilege is being withdrawn because he is not performing his task to the satisfaction of those who granted him said privilege. He is perfectly free to keep denying global warming as a private individual.

And there's about as much room for debate about the existence of global warming as there is for debate about the Earth's orbit around the sun, the germ theory of disease, or the evolution of species.

Re:half reasonable request

[Doug Merritt]

You can't have a university without professors (by definition). You can't have a university network without a university (by definition). Therefore, without professors there is no university network.

If that's all you meant, then sorry, that's completely vacuous. By similar logic, since a university needs students, then without students there is no university network -- an observation irrelevant to the discussion.

The physical network depends on IT staff, and is used by staff, students, faculty, etc. The content of the university web site(s) sometimes (but not always) includes content generated by professors, but without exception includes content contributed by students (including serious research by post docs, grad students, and indeed by some undergrads) and non-faculty staff.

The truth of the matter is that university networks and web sites, in any sense of the term, would continue to exist even without contributions from professors.\

It is a frivolous digression to point out that the university wouldn't exist if professors didn't exist. Imagine if all electrons disappeared; no university network! Please.

On the other hand, it certainly is true that use (e.g. for research and teaching) of the university network/web sites/etc by professors is an important function and goal of those facilities, which is perhaps closer to what you ultimately meant.

But think of the children!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait - maybe he is.

Re:the ivory tower

[JesseL]

The university does have an absolute right to dictate how their network is used. That doesn't mean that nothing they do is ignorant or boneheaded.

I'd say that if widespread use of a particular application could wreak such havoc on your network, there's something you need to rethink about how your network is structured and managed.

Eventually all network traffic is going to be encrypted, and administrators will have to figure out how to deal with that.

It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[mark-t]

After all, they were able to identify him as one of the users of the application.

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh. Tor doesn't hide the fact you are using Tor. It is only designed to encrypt the data stream and keep the remote end of the connection from knowing who you really are.

I can sniff your home network and tell when you visit your bank's website, but that doesn't mean I will know your account balances or password.

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can never disguise the fact that your computer sends packets accross the intranet. At some level, your node must form a secure connection to another node (which connects to another, and another, etc. Read up on Onion Routing). Network monitoring tools can detect that intranet connection, its source, its destination, and the ports it uses. They can't detect the content sent across that connection.

In addition, once your secure packets reach that first onion-routing node it acts as a proxy, keeping anyone who can't see your last-mile connection from detecting from where your connection really comes.

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it real hard to identify someone using TOR...any ids / ips system looking for Tor in the packet will discover you...

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[mark-t]

Which makes it peculiar, don't you think... that they couldn't figure out who the other user of the software was on campus?

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[stratjakt]

The detectives wanted to know whether the other user was a former student of mine, and why I was using Tor.

I read that as in they know who he was, know his name, and possibly are talking to the professor as a part of THAT investigation (that the other user was participating in some online scam).

Either way, you can tell what node is sending out the traffic. One in this guys private office (so, duh, wonder who's using it), and the other possibly a terminal in the library, or through a wifi hotspot, etc.

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

What the hell are you talking about? The campus IT department can tell equally as well who is using TOR. The article doesn't even say what you are claiming was stated.

Take your pills.

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[Tim_UWA]

Why? I assume that he's got a permanent IP assigned to his computer, whereas the other person could be some student who plugs their laptop in various places or uses WiFi and gets a different IP each time. Seems reasonable that they can only catch the person with the known IP.

Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please take a class on reading comprehension, because neither of your posts made ANY sense if you could comprehend the article.

Re:the ivory tower

[__aagmrb7289]

FYI (from TFA): "My reason for downloading and installing the Tor plug-in was actually simple: I'd read about it for some time, was planning to discuss it in two courses I teach, and figured I should have some experience using it before I described it to my students. The courses in question both deal with controlling technology, diffusing it throughout society, and freedom and censorship online. When I cover online censorship in countries with no free press, I focus on how those countries rely on hardware, software, and phalanxes of people to make sure citizens can reach only government-approved media. Crackdowns on independent journalists, bloggers, and related dissidents all too often result in their being beaten, incarcerated, or worse. Technologies like Tor represent a beacon of freedom to people in those countries, and I would be doing my students a disservice if I didn't mention it."

Re:the ivory tower

[stratjakt]

No, it's not his network, and they aren't his rules, even if he did "co-chair the comittee to decide what color to keep the folder that the proposed amendments to the original proposal were in and they kept it grey".

Good for him, he had a reasonable chat with the detectives and they dropped it. I just cant stand the rhetoric about "rights" and "academic freedoms".

If the police visited him at home, because of his use of tor on his own connection that he paid for - then you got a story. But this guys a guest on someone elses network.

If I let you connect to my AP, then I reserve every right to tell you I don't want you using tor, or kazaa, or bittorrent, or playing WoW, or what the hell ever.

As for police telling him what to teach? He just threw that in there for drama and FUD. Since when the fuck do campus police go around telling professors what they can and cant teach? I don't believe that part of the story is even true. I don't believe the police asked him not to teach his students about it.

I hate empty rhetoric, I hate embellishments, I hate academic dishonesty, and I especially hate it from professors. It made my time at university infuriating. I was there to study math and computers, and instead, I'm constantly bombarded with lefty bullshit propoganda (not that I'd prefer righty bullshit - I just wanted to learn calculus, chemistry, comp sci, and other subjects that deal in facts)

So whatever, this guy talked himself out of trouble. Big whoop. He can get off the fucking cross now, all that happened was a cop came to talk to him about some suspicious behaviour he was engaged in.

Once I was hanging around at night, waiting for a buddy, and a cop stopped to talk to me to ask what I was doing. STOP THE PRESSES MY STORY MUST BE TOLD.

He's lucky...

[BronsCon]

If using the service was against university policy, they very well could have Tor him a new one.

University IT

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

What is it about university IT departments that attracts such incompetent people?

Hint: If you're pouncing on people as often as a small frisky dog does, you're the problem.

Re:University IT

[jay2003]

Lack of appreciation or even awareness of the mission of the organization they work for is a disease not limited to University IT departments. Corporate IT departments have same affliction. Most IT departments do not do cost analysis on the impact on the organization as a whole of the their decisions. In this case, the IT department wanted to complete undermine the entire mission of the organization, dissemination of knowledge, by telling the professor not to teach something to his students in a misguided attempt to give a negligible boost to security. In addition to disrespecting the mission of the institution, they presumed the students are too dumb to use Google.

In corporate IT departments, this disease takes the form of security measures that cost far more in lost productivity than they save through better security. Sadly, executives don't ask what the productivity and other costs are to IT decisions and thus we left to suffer a waste of the shareholders money while IT departments run amok locking everything down to the point where no one can get any work done. In a well managed organization, security proposal would be rejected on face unless they had cogent analysis of all costs involved.

Re:University IT

[ceoyoyo]

And campus "detectives??"

Around here the campus cops are like mall security. Be nice to them, or they might call the real cops, but if they're out of line tell them to go ahead.

Re:University IT

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently work for a university IT department, we don't have an unusually high number of incompetent people. We don't pounce on people unless we're legally mandated or they are doing something which negatively impacts other users. We'll hand out the DMCA notices when asked and we'll hand over the email archives and server logs when someone shows up with a subpoena. Besides that academic freedom covers everything. We don't even lock down what staff can do on their machines because it's a management issue. If an employee's supervisor doesn't give a shit we don't give a shit. We don't even block p2p apps, although we do run a packet-shaper to keep it from eating all our bandwidth. In my experience most universities understand the concept of academic freedom and thus tread very lightly, sometimes this is only true for the faculty side of things, but universities like the one I work at apply that principle across the board (probably because it is cheaper and keeps things simple).

Re:University IT

[anthony_dipierro]

What is it about university IT departments that attracts such incompetent people?

I didn't really see any incompetence on the part of the IT staff in this story. They tried to intimidate the professor into stopping the use of Tor (which makes it impossible for them to spy on him). They failed, but I bet 95% of the time, using the same tactics, they would succeed.

Re:University IT

[lahvak]

Lack of appreciation or even awareness of the mission of the organization they work for is a disease not limited to University IT departments.

That's funny, when I read this sentence, my first reaction was: that's true, it's usually spread through the entire administration.

Re:University IT

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

The fact that they feel the need to try suggests zeal, which is always a sign of incompetence. It's a classic case of thinking "I am in charge" rather than "what can I do to help?"

Re:University IT

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Oops. s/always//

Re:University IT

[Caspian]

What is it about university IT departments that attracts such incompetent people?

In addition to the fact (as mentioned by other posters) that the pay is shite, there is the fact that University IT departments absolutely will not hire anyone without a degree. Since they're in the degree "business", they seem to expect their systems admins to have advanced CS degrees.

They would rather hire someone with a 15-year-old MS in CS than someone who's a good admin.

Responsible IT Staff

[skoaldipper]

In a summary, sounds like police were just questioning a homeowner for selling mustache kits and wigs out of his garage. Homeowner, "Well, some people cannot grow a beard or hair". Officer, "Well, you know some kids will try to buy beer with this." Homeowner, "Possibly, but I run a practice as an Oncologist who treats radiation patients." Officer, "Very well, remember you need a business permit to do that. Good day."

Piss poor

[Anonymous Coward]

What university?
WTF is Tor? It kind of rings a bell though...

No wonder there is a love affair between slashdot and google. Half the stories require googling to find out what the topic is about.

Re:Piss poor

[HTH NE1]

WTF is Tor?

It's where the virus Megabyte lived with his army of viral binomes and henchmen Hack and Slash while plotting to take over Mainframe and the Supercomputer.

Re:Piss poor

[SeaDour]

Ah, Reboot lives on...

Re:the ivory tower

[wernst]

I'm not sure what the story is here, the right to use tor on someone elses network? Does he have that right? It's not his network. I've used tor at home, but completely understand I cant use it at work, and if during my university days, had it existed (maybe it did but whatever), and was told I couldnt use it, I'd just deal with that.

What are you talking about?

The use of tor on "someone else's network" is implicit, because you are connecting to someone on the other side of the network as a whole.

You say you use tor at home, but that's not "your" network either. I think your ISP would say that you are connecting to *their* network. I think the Hosting Provider of the web server you're connecting to would say it is *their* network. I think AT&T, (or whoever owns the backbone your data is traveling across) would say it is *their* network too.

If any of these network owners told you to stop using tor at home, what would you say to that? I'm guessing it would be pretty close to what this professor said to the IT goons trying to intimidate him into stopping.

The only time it's "your" network is when you have two of your own computers on your own LAN, and a tor router between them.

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Editing

[wbren]

The article mentioned the name of the university: Bowling Green State University. In this case I don't think the name of the university is as important as the incident itself. If it had been a major, famous university you might have a point. Plus, I think witholding the name of the university creates more of a "it could happen anywhere" type of vibe. Maybe it's just me..

From Someone Who Has Been There

[nuintari]

I attended said university, I know Paul very well. I still run into him in town occasionally, and I will be sure to shake his hand for this.

I could say a lot of BAD things about *university* ITS, but I'd probably get me in far more trouble than it is worth to say them out loud. I am not there anymore, they don't effect me. I will just be happy that Paul is still the fine individual I have always looked up to.

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[QuantumG]

I could say a lot of BAD things about *university* ITS, but I'd probably get me in far more trouble than it is worth to say them out loud. Wow, you don't even go there anymore and you're afraid to speak out against these people? WTF? Who you guys got running the network over there? The Mafia?

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[jyoull]

I did too. Speak up, or it will never get any better.

Are you seriously afraid? please.

I'm mostly now embarrassed about a connection to that place, but the IT department have always had a perverse and questionable interest in what everyone else was up to.

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Let him know that there's many more people out here who appreciate his courage. Seriously.

But since my persona here is Profane Muthafucka, I am compelled to add that I'll give him a handjob as a sign of my gratitude.

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[dcam]

I attended said university, I know Paul very well. I still run into him in town occasionally, and I will be sure to shake his hand for this.

I could say a lot of BAD things about *university* ITS, but I'd probably get me in far more trouble than it is worth to say them out loud. I am not there anymore, they don't effect me. I will just be happy that Paul is still the fine individual I have always looked up to.

affect. I wouldn't rule out further studies.

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[Anonymous Coward]

I also attended this university and was a student employee of the IT deparment during my time there. My technical position with in the student ranks was considered at the top with the highest security levels, that didn't stop the "Mafia" from knocking on my door a few times, with the FBI on their heals. Their under the table policy is, If it can look bad for the IT Director (not CIO) then it is bad for the department. I'm glad to see that Paul stood up for what he believes is right, but I fear he's not out of the woods yet. Yes, I'm staying anonymous.. They have no problem crossing state lines.

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[nuintari]

Fear has nothing to do with it, but it will end up giving me a headache for 2 days straight, and it just isn't worth the effort. Some of us are so sick of that university, that we don't want to even think about any new tales of 100% grade A idiocy, with a healthy dose of retro grade evil thrown in, it just makes our heads hurt.

But I will say this, 'Hey Strick, if you are reading this, a talk on network security should _not_ be 45 minutes of you saying, "Well, we noticed a student doing something suspicious, so we called the FBI.... and then this other time.... we contacted the FBI...... FBI...... FBI" You don't know dick about security, never will, your idea of proactive security is to arrest any student who runs traceroute across your fine, fine stupernet.'

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[nuintari]

No, I am mostly embarressed about my connection to that hellhole as you are. Speaking out would mostly annoy me, and that is enough to make me not care that much anymore. The higher ups in ITS at that place are the lowest forms of life I have ever had to deal with. My skin crawls with the thought of being near them, so I won't.

Re:From Someone Who Has Been There

[nuintari]

I already sent him a letter about this.

And I am pretty sure his wife would not appreciate that offer.

Ummm, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DoD (or Naval Research Laboratory, I suppose) sponsored the creation of TOR:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_networ k)

It's not exactly counter-government and I'm not sure why you think DHS would get involved.

Act like you do.

[Some guy named Chris]

At most places, if you act like you've got tenure, it's almost as good.

Re:This is academic freedom?

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

What are you smoking? Tor doesn't suck up lots of resources. Its very bandwidth efficient. Do you even know what Tor is and how it works, or are you just making stupid unfounded statements for dramatic effect?

We Already Have a Problem.

[twitter]

Widespread use of Tor could be a huge headache for network-security administrators, particularly in higher education. My university alone has more than 21,000 students. Imagine what would happen if even a tenth of them and a similar percentage of faculty and staff members started using Tor regularly. With all the spam scams, phishing scams, identity theft, and related criminal enterprises going on around the world many of which involve remotely hijacking university-owned computers we could approach technological anarchy on the campus.

With 25% of Windoze PCs already part of a botnet, I imagine more than 1/10 of those computers are already using some form of TOR. What will thwarting my privacy achieve again?

Re:We Already Have a Problem.

[Achromatic1978]

With 25% of Windoze PCs already part of a botnet

Cite please, or is this another baseless Twitter Anti-M$ wankfest? (Do I even need to ask?)

Re:We Already Have a Problem.

[anthony_dipierro]

With 25% of Windoze PCs already part of a botnet, I imagine more than 1/10 of those computers are already using some form of TOR.

According to the article, which I believed until I read the last few lines, there are only two people on campus that use Tor, including the professor.

Re:We Already Have a Problem.

[Joe U]

Cite please, or is this another baseless Twitter Anti-M$ wankfest?

Good lord, no. Twitter got those numbers from a very reliable source. He used Teh Intarweb.

Let me look it up, I'll just fire up my search engine here...

OK, here are the results:

spam, spam, porn, spam, alien mind control article, spam, porn, porn, spam, ah here it is, Super Awesum Dude says 'at least 25% of all Windoze PCs are already part of a botnet'.

So, lets re-write that.

With 25% of Windoze PCs already part of a botnet
Source: Super Awesum Dude from a blog I found somewhere and copied to Slashdot.

Seriously, use the right tools for the job. If you need a multipurpose OS that runs most of the worlds software, you use Windows. If you need some serious workstation stuff, there's Sun and Solaris. If you do some graphics or writing, a Mac might be a good idea. And if you're a pompous ass, there's Linux and Mac, most likely both at the same time.

Re:We Already Have a Problem.

[twitter]

Cite please, or is this another baseless Twitter Anti-M$ wankfest? (Do I even need to ask?)

Would you believe Vint Cerf and Michael Dell? The latter would tend to underestimate.

Re:We Already Have a Problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear, still trotting out that tired statistic, you daft cunt?

Did you miss the post that replied to your original "I HATE TEH MS" comment on that article that pointed out that the statistics used also seem to show that 24% of Linux machines are also part of botnets?

Shall we link that one? The beauty of it is, you can't call that statistic into question without having to stop using your "25% of Windows machines in a botnet" comment! Unless, of course, you were some kind of self-serving ignorant hypocritical turd.

Oh, wait...

Re:We Already Have a Problem.

[Keith Russell]

But it's 24% of Linux installs, versus 25% for Windows. That one percent is all the difference in the world between "general security crisis" and "OMG LINUX ROOLZ M$ IS TEH SUXX0RZ!!!!111!"

</sarcasm>

Re:the ivory tower

[illegalcortex]

It's not his network

So, is it the IT folks network? The campus detectives network? I don't understand your reasoning on this one. In fact, FTA it sounds like he was more involved for setting policy for these situations than any of the people who were doing the questioning.

In truth, most network admins tend to like things as nice an neat as possible. If they can use their power and influence to squash harmless but annoying things like a few people on the whole campus using Tor, they will. Just to make sure they don't have those pesky log entries saying there might be something bad going on.

This could have been prevented

[brouski]

If he had only used Log Deleter 5.0, there would have been no record of his router hopping.

Re:This could have been prevented

[Lurker2288]

You just have to make sure to kill the logs on InterNIC so they can't trace back to your gateway.

Re:This could have been prevented

[reverseengineer]

I bet his machine doesn't have enough gigaquads to run that.

Re:This could have been prevented

[PrinceOfStorms]

Link please!

Just to expand on that

[benhocking]

He likely has several students in his class from countries, such as China, that have such censorship. If he can reach out to a few of these and give them the tools to combat that censorship, then he will have helped them make a difference when they return to China, if they are so inclined.

Re:Just to expand on that

[cp.tar]

<paranoia>But what if they learn how to detect Tor users and CRUSH them like BUGS!!1one</paranoia>

Seriously, why should he not teach about it?

Re:Just to expand on that

[budgenator]

I find it curious that the other day we find out about legislation that would let the AG regulate theoretically what data and logs must be kept by ISP's and for how long they must be kept, and now the university's network admins and police are wigging out about an internet anonymisizer. Given the amount of monies universities are making off patents resulting from academic research, you would think that the use of a security device like TOR would be mandatory. Anything that makes it easier for the government to track child-porn and terrorists also makes it easier for foreign governmental and industrial spy's to conduct espionage. Anything that points to where a researcher's thoughts are headed would have to be considered probably information of intelligence value. If I had a business that had any R and D involved in it, I wouldn't even reveal if somebody was a former employee or not.

if only the good stuff is obscured by TOR then they know that their is good stuff so he should use TOR for mundane browsing as well; if your going to shred paper with sensitive info on it like account numbers, then you should shred all mail and maybe a newspaper or two for good measure.

Re:Just to expand on that

[Anonymous Coward]

... or influence them to risk something in their homelands that will get them shot. The crux of the matter is that they can learn, and then decide, for themselves.

Re:the ivory tower

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

No they don't. Its a public university.

Do you think they have the right to say "Whites Only" or "No visiting Republican Websites"?

Now, that is not to say that the University is not allowed to draft up a reasonable set of rules. Perhaps it could even be argued that the right to anonymous communications and encryption fall under the 1st amendment, but thats not really my point here.

Woops!

[twitter]

While I couldn't dispute most of the details in the logs, they seemed inaccurate. For example, the technician said I had been using Tor earlier that morning. In fact, I had been at Wal-Mart that morning looking for a good deal on an HDTV; I had reached my office only about five minutes earlier.

So, Dr. CESARINI, are you a Windoze user? It may be time to wipe and reload.

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

Now *that* was an awesome troll! Kudos for posting logged in!

Re:the ivory tower

[calice]

The school still has every right to direct what he teaches at thier institution. If they don't want him teaching that, he should stop. After all, he works for them. The fact that he is a professor does not eliminate the fact that he has a superior he is supposed to listen to. This isn't government censorship, this is simply a case of a man wanting to disobey his boss.

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Editing

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Indeed it did. However this could have been titled "Political Dissident Tortured", described the water boarding techniques used and the injuries he received but it if does not mention WHO did it, then its a really useless summary.

Why post it at all if the university only gets such an inconsequential mention?

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Editing

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can't believe people get paid to do basically nothing.

And I'm sure you're reading Slashdot in your own free time, right?

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the article, hot head? He never said they told him what to teach. He said they asked him not to tell his students about Tor. Now, get off your friggin' soap box. You hate rhetoric? I hate loud-mouthed know-nothings.

Re:the ivory tower

[Alchemar]

He did not say that he had the right to and no one else did. He said that he could understand that it was a nightmare to administer. I understand that driving a car is very hazardous, I want to continue driving, that does not mean I am telling other people not to drive. Acknowledging that it is difficult to scale does not imply not scaling up, it means that they should find a solution. By saying that he should be allowed to continue using tor, he is making the statement that asking everyone to stop using it is not the best solution.

Why is this someone elses network? It is a network that has been provided for his use. It may not be his exclusive network, but it is his network. Please clarify who you think owns it? The university? As a member of the university staff, wouldn't that make it his? or is it the exclusive network of the IT department of said university. Or maybe it is the sutdents who pay the money for said network. I am getting tired of people using the phrase "not their network" to imply that you have to take whatever is handed you. Can only call who Ma Bell wants because it's not your network, can't do anything about warrentless phone taps because it's not your network. If I have been given use of a network, then the part of the network I have been given use of is mine for the duration of that use. There might be contracts or agreements that stipulate what is or is not allowed, but when they add one sided rules after the agreement has been reached, then "it is not your network" is not an acceptable answer.

Just because you don't need tor to browse the web anonymously, does not make it a valid application for doing just that. I don't need to have firefox installed to access the web, that does not automatically exlude firefox as a legitimate application for doing just that.

Re:the ivory tower

[xenocide2]

"The university does have an absolute right to dictate how their network is used. That doesn't mean that nothing they do is ignorant or boneheaded."

That's not quite true. As a university, their mission is furthering educational development. They can argue over how such and such use does or doesn't advance educational goals, but there should be no dispute that education is the goal. The campus IT department then, as an administrative branch, is in a unique position of trying to accommodate all party's interests, rather than dictate the limited uses of "their" infrastructure. They're supposed to make it happen, not "enforce the AUP".

Double entendre

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "Someone looking up potentially sensitive information might prefer to use [Tor] -- like a person who is worried about potential exposure to a sexually transmitted disease and shares a computer with roommates."

So, sharing a computer with roommates might give you an STD and Tor will protect you from it? Hmmm...

Re:Double entendre

[lord_sarpedon]

Not Tor. I'd use some Germ-X on the keyboard first.

Re:Double entendre

[MillionthMonkey]

I'm glad I searched for that quote and found it your post instead of reposting the same observation about it.

Re:Double entendre

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, I spent a great deal of time debating that particular sentence with the editor I worked with at the Chronicle. I, too, thought it could be read two different ways. They revised it a few more times there, but this was the best compromise we could come up with.

Government funding

[sjbe]

how many businesses do you know, outside the aviation industry, that receive regular funding from the government?

Oil, farming, auto (roads), space (NASA), rail (AMTRAK), the defense industry, telecom, utilities, ... Do I need to go on? The government subsidizes most industries to some extent and some (defense and farming among others) to a very large extent. Sometimes it's grants, sometimes it's in the form of tax relief, sometimes its as a customer but the government funds a huge variety of industries.

Re:Government funding

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is a government agency, not a private business.

Re:Government funding

[Rakishi]

Which pays many private companies for their services, in some cases to a very high degree. If you include the defense industry then space is equally valid to put there, with NASA being what agency the funding is done through.

Re:Government funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look, they're all pretty fucked up. Go figure.

Re:Government funding

[DarrylKegger]

Which is why people should lose the weight they place on crumby taxonomies such as 'government' and 'business'; it's far more accurate to view them as members of a single network of power, as conscienceless cultural organisms looking out for number 1.

Re:Government funding

[DogBotherer]

The government subsidizes most industries to some extent and some (defense and farming among others) to a very large extent

Indeed, and some, such as Walmart, are subsidised to such an enormous extent that it is laughable that they even be considered capitalist enterprises. Corporate socialism more like.

How does it work?

[frdmfghtr]

I looked at the Tor website and while I followed the basic description, I can't see how packets can get from point A to point B without having the full route indicated somewhere.

Here's how I understand it; please correct as necessary.

(1) The client decides on a route to get a packet from point A to point B, by knowing where several Tor servers are located.

(2) The packet goes to the first location encrypted and determines where it goes next.

This is where I get confused. Once the packet gets from node 1 to node 2, how does node 2 know where to send it next? Is the route encrypted in the packet somewhere? Are there several layers of encryption, so that as each node peels away a layer of encryption, the next destination is exposed, leaving the remainder of the packet still encrypted?

If this is the case, then at some point the client must have negotiated keys with each node in the selected path. Can't these negotiations be watched to see what path the packet takes?

I see how each node individually may not know the source AND destination of the packet at the same time, but there must be a full path somewhere at some point. Otherwise how does the final node know where to send the unencrypted packet?

Re:How does it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Four nodes, A (start point), B (router node), C (router node), D (end point)

Point A asks point B to find it a way to get to D, point B asks C, point C establishes a connection to D.

If point A needs to know the whole route then it can ask B, which asks C which asks D and then the whole stack gets passed back through B.

Therefore all communication occurs between A and B. I'd imagine that communication is encrypted.

This is without doing any reading, it's just an obvious way that would work.

Re:How does it work?

[macshit]

If this is the case, then at some point the client must have negotiated keys with each node in the selected path. Can't these negotiations be watched to see what path the packet takes?

Remember public-key encryption? The client doesn't need a private key for each node along the path, he just needs some key, so it may as well be a public one.

Re:How does it work?

[alphamugwump]

Yes, it's not totally 100% anonymous, just anonomous enough to make it very, very difficult to figure out who you are.

Re:How does it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

They establish a circuit, so the exit node knows from what node it got the first packet, and then it simply sends the return data there, and that node knows where it got from etc.

Well, that is my guess.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

What if I replace the word TOR with the word "internet". Do you see why your post doesn't make sense?

Bit torrent gets throttled because it is a bandwidth hog, not because its often used for copyright infringement. If that was the issue, it would be blocked totally in the places where it is throttled instead.

What exactly is your point? Shit gets abused all the time.

How did they find out?

[ThePepe]

Its possible that I'm simply missing the point, but if Tor is so effective then how exactly did a university IT guy and two campus cops find out it was in use and trace it so easily to the professor in question? Isn't anonymity the whole point?

Re:How did they find out?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of tor isn't to hide that your using Tor, the point of Tor is to hide what you did WHILE you were using it. Sure they know he used tor, there is no way to stop that but the thing that irked them and the thing that tor was designed for was the fact they had no idea what he did while using tor. Without Tor its real easy to ger a nice easy printout of every web page, or ftp server any user on a network has accessed.

Re:How did they find out?

[anthony_dipierro]

The point of tor isn't to hide that your using Tor, the point of Tor is to hide what you did WHILE you were using it. Sure they know he used tor, there is no way to stop that [...]

An important lesson which should be made very clear when the professor suggests to his students that Chinese citizens can use Tor. The fact that the use of Tor can't be (easily or perfectly) hidden severely limits its usefulness when dealing with a government like that in China.

Re:How did they find out?

[vga_init]

Its possible that I'm simply missing the point, but if Tor is so effective then how exactly did a university IT guy and two campus cops find out it was in use and trace it so easily to the professor in question? Isn't anonymity the whole point?

Every technology has its limits, and the anonymity is actually pretty good. When you browse with TOR, you do these things:

• Prevent anyone between your computer and TOR from discovering what data is being transferred. In this case it's the university.
• Prevent anyone between your computer and TOR from discovering the destination of the data.
• Prevent the recipient of the data (whoever you are connecting to) from discovering its source (who/where you are).

The university can see that something went between TOR and one of their computers, but they have no idea what that something is or where it's going. Since anyone who can get access to a computer can use it, the university actually doesn't know who was using the computer. They can only guess because it belongs to that professor and is in his office.

If the professor had taken an extra precaution and used a computer that was not linked to his identity, there really would have been no way to catch him unless they ran over to the machine while he was on it. If were truly a sneaky bastard, he would have installed TOR along with a program to activate it and do some communications and left before it went on. At some later time he could come back to that machine briefly just to retrieve the data.

If you are in a repressive country, you could start by using TOR discretely at an internet cafe. As long as the managers of the cafe are not actively policing their clients, you won't get caught. Better still, your government has no clue and will mistake TOR for traffic they're not interested in.

Re:How did they find out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up "JAP" (anonymous proxy much like TOR ) and you will see how the government put in "back doors" and the developers were ordered not to talk about it but they did talk. So much for privacy.

Re:How did they find out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming this is a university-owned computer. If this is the case, a sysadmin could see what programs are running on what systems (there are agents that report processes running on a system back to a domain admin). The sysadmin sees systems X, Y, and Z are running Tor. The sysadmin doesn't know what the user is using Tor for, just that it is running. That's how the sysadmin knows the professor is running Tor.

To recap, the sysadmin knows that the user is running Tor, not what the user is accessing through Tor.

Poor excuse

[adambha]

From the article:

Of course, anonymous Web surfing can be used to conceal fraud and other forms of electronic malfeasance. That was why the police had come to see me. Sure, that logic is like saying, "Of course, steak knives can be used to commit murderous crimes. That was why the police had began questioning all of the patrons at a local Outback Steakhouse..."

Re:Poor excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer this analogy:
With credit/debit card payment methods as common as they are, anyone that uses cash is obviously trying to hide their financial transactions and should be treated with suspicion.

Re:Poor excuse

[chrismcb]

If one of the Outback Steakhouse customers was killed with a steak knife, you bet that the police would be questioning all of the patrons of the local Outback Steakhouse. The police believed one of the users of TOR was committing a crime (there was an implication that they had evidence to support this.) The IT department knew that two people on campus used TOR. They went and questioned both of them. Sounds like pretty darn good use of logic to me. Not sure where the fault lies.

Re:question...

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Tor keeps you from being detected by the remote end of a connection. Nobody said you can't be detected as a Tor user on the local network itself.

Re:the ivory tower

[PitaBred]

Because, you know, academic freedom is bullshit. Why be allowed to think and teach freely without fear of reprisal? It's much easier to just teach what is government approved goodthink.

Re:the ivory tower

[stratjakt]

Sounds like a stupid semantic difference. When a professor stands in front of a class and talks about tor, he's merely "telling them about it", and not "teaching", like if he was talking about, i dunno, PGP?

Either way, it never happened, the police said no such thing, and from his description of what he thinks tor even is (a browser plug in, really?) I bet his students know more about computers than he does.

Sounds like he teaches "lefty bullshit 101". I'm glad I never took the "comp sci" course where we sat around listening to some hippy pontificate about censorship. My comp sci courses were all about math and logic and algorithms and cpu design and shit like that.

Why not?

[TWX]

It's not really surprising to have Detectives on a campus police force. There are rapes, burglaries, drug deals, prostitutes, assaults, and even the occasional murder on large college campuses, and the cities that the colleges are located in usually don't have the resources to direct that much attention to that area. Also since much of the in-residence populace is temporary the city's funding wouldn't be as stable for covering that segment of the population. The campus police force is paid for ultimately by tuition and/or state money based on enrollment and need.

Also, campus-exclusive cops would have a much better feel for what's going on around them and would probably also know where to look when there's a problem due to experience. While a Constable on Patrol would be able to address most of what's going on, higher-profile cases would require detectives just like a normal municipal police force, and if a particular kind of crime (rape, assault, and the like) is reasonably common then an internal investigator would remove the need for an outside inspector to attempt to conduct an investigation in a microcosm that is unfamiliar. Obviously crimes like murder would use the municipality's law enforcement, but that kind of crime is also reasonably rare.

I will agree that Campus Traffic Police suck though.

Re:Why not?

[CmdrGravy]

We have them in the UK too ( made famous of course in the television show and books - Inspector Morse ).

At least I assume he's a dedicated campus cop since almost every single episode seems to take place in his old university.

hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

i liked the ending. anyway, well i didn't know about tor before, but i do now. i'm glad they kept quite otherwise i would never know.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[presidentbeef]

The creators of TOR couldn't have possibly missed this, and anyone who complains should remember that when you lie with dogs, you may wake with fleas. You're going to have to take the bad with the good.

I can't tell if you are saying that they are purposefully ignoring the possibility or what, but take a look here: http://tor.eff.org/faq-abuse.html.en

They are clearly aware of what Tor could be used for.

Nice Straw Man

[zippthorne]

He doesn't mind sharing the costs for essential services with his peers in good faith. The jobless waifs he's referring to are benefiting from those services in bad faith: they have no intention of bearing any of the burden. Not all of the jobless are waifs of course, but he wasn't talking about them either.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[miskatonic alumnus]

He doesn't mind sharing the costs for essential services with his peers ...

You know, health care is pretty goddamn essential.

... in good faith.

In good faith or otherwise, it is in the public interest for people to have basic health care. The fewer sick people there are, the less likely you are to contract something. Furthermore, his point of view is predicated on the false assumption that if he doesn't contribute to public health care through taxes, that he won't end up paying anyway through insurers who will charge higher rates in response to higher hospitalization fees due to the poor being unable to pay for their health care.

The jobless waifs he's referring to are benefiting from those services in bad faith: they have no intention of bearing any of the burden.

Can you prove that? Or are you just parroting what you've heard from the well-to-do?

Re:Nice Straw Man

[I_Love_Pocky!]

In good faith or otherwise, it is in the public interest for people to have basic health care. The fewer sick people there are, the less likely you are to contract something.

The vast majority of health care costs are related to noncommunicable diseases (heart disease, cancer, etc.).

Re:Nice Straw Man

[miskatonic alumnus]

Ever hear of the Black Death? Nahhh. Nothing like that could ever happen again.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I find it unlikely that in the event of a major pandemic folks would be denied medical assistance due to lack of insurance coverage. Besides, I'd suspect that medical bills would be the least of our concerns were that to happen.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it unlikely that in the event of a major pandemic folks would be denied medical assistance due to lack of insurance coverage.

Haha thats a laugh, next thing you'll tell me is that all the folks from Katrina are just homeless bums and that the government didn't run out of its budget for the flood insurance it had sold them before it could pay for all the rotten lumps of wood so they could buy new lumps of wood.

Trust me, if there was a crisis, the only way it'd be done for free is if the government's lapdogs could skim $10 billion off the top like they have in Iraq.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[I_Love_Pocky!]

While the government's response to Katrina was slow and poorly executed, it was not contingent upon ability to pay. If there was a pandemic illness sweeping the nation, a national emergency would be declared, and people would get the immediate attention they required. If I can count on my government for anything, I can count on it to blow through money in a panic.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[644bd346996]

While that is an exaggeration (at least for public health spending), it is intimately connected with the fact that it is very hard to secure funding for prevention programs. As for the assertion that non-communicable diseases are the bulk of spending, that is often not the case. It just happpens that it has been a while since there was a major threat like polio. MRSA and bird flu, however, are waiting in the wings to become epidemics on the policy-altering scale.

And on the subject of public health costs: Yes, Medicare pays for a lot of things that are consequenses of people not dying as young as they used to. But look at the spending for a county level public health agency, and you see a lot going to non-disease related programs, such as prenatal care, drug rehab, child vaccinations, and in some areas, mental health and social services (foster parents, child abuse, etc.). Public health is far from geriatric care and epidiemology.

I'm not trying to imply that you don't know any of this, but it doesn't seem like many slashdotters do.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[shaitand]

'If there was a pandemic illness sweeping the nation, a national emergency would be declared, and people would get the immediate attention they required.'

Most illnesses of this sort, including the black plague; could have been stopped if appropriate care were provided BEFORE the pandemic was a pandemic. Bum A slips off a ship carrying the new plague. He feels sick but can't afford healthcare and doubts he'll receive the treatment he needs if he shows up at the ER claiming a heart attack again. So he hangs out with other bums on the street. They in turn ask you for change outside the subway. 48hrs later thousands of people are infected and starting to feel sick. But they don't go to the doctor either. After all, you only go to the doctor if you are really sick in this country because it is expensive. So they wait and thousands more contract the illness. Some of the first were on their way to the airport so they spread it from city to city. And so on and so forth it goes from there. With free healthcare you go to the doctor when you feel sick and everytime you feel sick. The doctor doesn't prescribe anti-biotics if you have a cold because he no longer feels like he has to do something to justify your $75. Anti-biotics remain effective and plagues have a much higher probability of being caught in the first place.

Oh yeah. Plus nobody dies sick, alone, and unable to chew their food because you are rich, cheap, and have principles. Healthcare (including the sub-aspects like Dental, Vision, etc) is a basic fundemental human need. This is the wealthiest nation in the world; this nation is so wealthy that our definition of lower income bracket has a lifestyle that exceeds the wealthy of other nations in many respects. It is just fucking pathetic that a wealthy nation like this can't afford to provide the essentials to its citizens.

It might hurt your work ethic but the secret is that working hard does NOT bring success or a guarantee of making your way in life. The only ones who claim that are the ones that worked hard and succeeded.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[Maxo-Texas]

In part is from our examples of welfare in america. when it was relaxed and easy to get we developed large populations of people that never worked nor did they intend to work. Read about the hippy communes and so on in california. Part of the reasons they did so well were welfare checks.

Welfare and unemployment is a wonderful thing to give to people in need. It is a horrible and corrosive thing to give to people too tho and can absolutely destroy them. Any drive they may have had to create, to learn, to thrive is instead destroyed and they just get by.

It finally got bad enough here that a democratic president ended it for the most part.

The fact that large numbers of people were on welfare and had no intention of getting off it is just embedded in any discussion about the subject now.

It can be really heartless to not help someone who is permanently disabled. When you do tho, you get 4 other people pretending to be permanently disabled (hell they may even believe it themselves). You'd have people "too sick to work" out doing yardwork, gardening, mowing, etc. Bit of a travesty.

In the end- if you want to help people without money- give them yours. That's what I do-- habitat humanity, the food bank, and red cross of the tsunami. But it's MY money to do that with.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[Fulcrum of Evil]

While the government's response to Katrina was slow and poorly executed, it was not contingent upon ability to pay.

Yes it was. The government put up matching funds, so the poor areas were doublby fucked.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[julesh]

While the government's response to Katrina was slow and poorly executed, it was not contingent upon ability to pay.

Yes, it was. The people who could afford to leave the area using their own transport by-and-large did so, and were therefore not at risk of death. Those who had either (a) no transport or (b) no funds to pay for emergency accomodation were basically left at the government's mercy, and so huge numbers of them were still in the danger area when K struck, because the arrangements made in advance (despite the fact that there was plenty of warning that it would be bad) were totally inadequate.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[ElleyKitten]

I find it unlikely that in the event of a major pandemic folks would be denied medical assistance due to lack of insurance coverage. Besides, I'd suspect that medical bills would be the least of our concerns were that to happen.

In a major pandemic resources to help the sick would be scarce, so the ones who can pay the most for it will get it. I wouldn't put it past drug companies to artifically reduce the supply or raise the prices because they can. Even once the medicine becomes not scarce, the US government only requires hospitals to give emergency treatment to those who can't pay, so unless the disease and drug are fast enough that you can take the drug within hours of the disease otherwise killing you, emergency rooms won't be much help for the poor. If you have to take the drug before the disease progresses to a dangerous point, then the hospitals don't have to help you, and if the drug requires several doses over a period of time then all they'll do is give you a prescription, and if you can't pay the pharmacist you're out of luck. We might like to think that the government would change things in the result of an emergency, but in a major pandemic they'd probably be more worried about themselves than changing the healthcare system. If we want the poor to be taken care of in a major pandemic, we need to make sure the poor can taken care of when it's not a national emergency.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[Anonymous Coward]

The jobless "waifs" pay taxes, too. In the US, AFDC ended a decade ago. "Welfare as we know it" ended. In its place is Transitional Assistance to Needy Families. You can only be on TANF for two years at a time, five years lifetime maximum. People on TANF are paying their own way, either through income tax when they were working, or income tax when they regain employment.

The unemployed pay property tax (which is where most money for public school comes from), whether or not they own their own home. If you rent, your landlord's property tax is paid by the tenant's rent.

The unemployed pay sales tax whenever they buy anything. And since they're unemployed, a far greater portion of their income is taxed in sales than yours or mine, as we don't live hand to mouth.

The unemployed also pay excise taxes. The roads are paid for by state and federal gasoline taxes. If you drive a car, you're paying for the roads every time you buy gas. If you're a nicotine or alcohol addict you're spending a LOT of money on excise taxes.

The poor aren't getting a free ride on taxes. They're paying a far higher percentage of their earnings in taxes than you or I. And you and I are paying a far greater percentage of our taxes than the rich do. My income tax is far higher than the tax on capital gains. I don't have the deductions a rich man does. And Social Security tax, which has been "borrowed" for the general revinue funds for decades (leading to the current funding problems they want the middle class to pay for) is capped; a man making seventy five million dollars per year pays no more in absolute dollars (not percentages) than a man making seventy five thousand dollars per year. I and my employer pay a combined 15% of my salary in SS tax, while Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (and Apple and Microsoft) pay a tiny fraction of a percent of their salaries to the SS tax that has been raided for the general fund.

It's not the "jobless waifs" that aren't paying their fair share in taxes, it's the greedy, selfish rich who are not paying their share.

In short, you, sir, and the grandparent (rightly modded "troll") have been brainwashed by the neocons. As to insurance (whether private or government funded), my cousin (a university professor) had a heart infection that resulted in her needing a heart transplant. The bill was in the millions of dollars. You would rather have had her die? What kind of heartless bastards are you people, anyway?

Re:Nice Straw Man

[I_Love_Pocky!]

The people who could afford to leave the area using their own transport by-and-large did so, and were therefore not at risk of death.

First of all, as I originally stated, the GOVERMENT's response in the immediate aftermath was not contingent on ability to pay. How is it that the wealthy leaving is the government discriminating against the poor?

That said I think it is interesting that just like in health care, those who can afford to provide for themselves, are able to do so in a better fashion than those who look to the government to help them. Looks like you proved the point that leaving things to the government leads to massive incompetence and inefficiency.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[miskatonic alumnus]

In the end- if you want to help people without money- give them yours. That's what I do-- habitat humanity, the food bank, and red cross of the tsunami. But it's MY money to do that with.

It's only your money because we agree to it. You have no kind of divine or natural right to it, as amply illustrated in the history books. Do you or do you not support everyone paying a portion of their income to provide for a police force, a military, etc? If I am self-sufficient, I can argue that I shouldn't be forced to pay for those things either. So why do we do it? Because it is mutually beneficial. Likewise, paying a portion of our income to provide for health-care is also mutually beneficial.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[triskaidekaphile]

A plague that spread as easily as you describe would likely be a viral infection, not a bacterial infection. The antibiotics would help with secondary infections, but the viral infection would continue on. The contagious would still be contagious. They should be sent home and told to stay there until they recover (or get worse and go back for more care) so they wouldn't keep spreading the contagion.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[mstahl]

While the government's response to Katrina was slow and poorly executed, it was not contingent upon ability to pay.

If that's true, how come all the rich neighbourhoods in New Orleans are fine now but all the poor ones are still in ruins to this day?

Re:Nice Straw Man

[Em Adespoton]

I find it unlikely that in the event of a major pandemic folks would be denied medical assistance due to lack of insurance coverage. Besides, I'd suspect that medical bills would be the least of our concerns were that to happen.

I guess you missed the story about Avian Flu in Indonesia yesterday?

Re:Nice Straw Man

[shaitand]

How about they keep them at the hospital in containment to assure they don't spread anything. As for bacteria I didn't mean the plague so much as that the high cost of healthcare makes doctors feel obligated to prescribe medicine to the patient when they don't need it. This causes overuse of anti-biotics and makes the ones we have less effective.

Re:Nice Straw Man

[zippthorne]

The oldest parts of town, which happen to also be the most expensive, were not built below the water level. There was only so much dry land, and once the hills were filled, the only way to go was out to the lowlands. This is evidence that New Orleans is unsuitable for the population level it once supported and should not be returned to its pre-katrina state.

Of course, let's not let logic get in the way of a perfectly good opportunity to trash "The Rich"

Re:Nice Straw Man

[shaitand]

'That said I think it is interesting that just like in health care, those who can afford to provide for themselves, are able to do so in a better fashion than those who look to the government to help them. Looks like you proved the point that leaving things to the government leads to massive incompetence and inefficiency.'

No doubt, although any entity the size of the government would have the same problems. Large private entities are nearly as bad as governments. However, like healthcare those who can afford to provide for themselves will always have the option of doing so if they feel it will provide them with a better level of care. The problem is that those who can provide for themselves aren't happy with their success providing them a higher quality of care. They want those who can't provide for themselves to be screwed as well. It isn't as if private healthcare would suddenly be unavailable if public healthcare were available.

Actually I find most of the inefficiency and incompetence that goes with government management comes from the side that is opposed to the program. For instance if government provided healthcare were to be passed in the United States; those opposed to that healthcare system would continue to fight every aspect of it. They would fight to minimize the cost by insisting on as much oversight over every penny spent as possible. They would fight to have experimental procedures and new drugs excluded from the program arguing that tax payer dollars should only be spent on proven treatments. Basically they would bog the system down with so much red tape that their predictions of inefficiency would be a self-fullfilled prophecy.

Ideally healthcare would never go completely public. Currently government employees enjoy some of the best health, dental, and vision benefits available. There is no reason that providing healthcare can't be as simple as extending those programs to all citizens and letting them visit healthcare professionals of their choice. The money has to come from somewhere but there is plenty of fat in the defense budget. There really is nothing to justify letting citizens die or live in poor health when we paid more than all of Europe for defense DURING PEACETIME.

The outrageous costs in private healthcare are largely associated with government intervention. For instance, without government granted monopolies in the form of patents, prescription medication will quickly become affordable. Without the ridiculous government oversight over prescription medication development the costs associated with developing drugs will be reduced by millions and would reach the people who need them in a 10th of the time. Without creative accounting the costs would be reduced by billions. Without drugs being worth billions because there are no more drug patents the free market will dramatically reduce the cost of the equipment and personel needed to develop the drugs. This will again drop the costs.

If you want an example of this just look at Social Security Disability. Virtually every claim is rejected. I can think of 8 people off hand who recieve disability for legitimate problems. Of those 8 people 7 were initially rejected. To the best of my knowledge those seven people had to live without any sort of income for a minimum of three years before they saw a dime of their benefits. The political forces that oppose disability seek to minimize it. The result is millions of americans paying into an insurance policy that the government refuses to honor. Personally I don't like social security but there are millions of upright hard working middle-class citizens who have paid into that systems for decades and if a credible doctor says they can't work they should be granted benefits on the spot. How much the appeals judges, career experts, transporation reimbursement, and second and third opinions from doctors who are so incompetent that the only way they can fill their schedule is to take SS appointments in the first place; cost taxpayers?

you don't understand organizations

[idlake]

The university does have an absolute right to dictate how their network is used.

The university does, but the IT department and the campus police don't. Their function is merely to implement university policies, they ultimately don't have a right to make them.

Re:the ivory tower

[sBox]

Harmless but annoying Harmless according to the Tor user? This assumes that the Tor user is not pursuing illegal activities, but no one knows since it's Tor. Who's to say if he wasn't running a Tor server, allowing external users use of the university's resources? Who's to say the external users aren't kiddie porn sickos?

Just to make sure they don't have those pesky log entries saying there might be something bad going on. Should the university reliquish its responsibility for the use of its network? Of course not. If hanky panky is going on via Tor, the university may not be liable, but most certainly the PR fallout would be unwelcome. Who wants to send their kid to KPU?

The other side of Tor.

[Vellmont]

I'm curious about the problems that Tor creates. I was talking with someone who runs a Tor node, and he was dismayed that he was banned from most EFNet IRC servers. My guess was that people had abused Tor and used it to escape bans on IRC. It seemed perfectly reasonable to ban all Tor nodes if it created those problems.

So my question is, what problems does Tor create for us all? I'm all for people being able to escape governments that want to control what they do.. but I can't imagine that this doesn't create other problems, so of which might not be immediately apparent.

Re:The other side of Tor.

[Dragonslicer]

As you've noticed on EFNet, it allows people to launch disruption attacks, such as channel flooding, without the risk of getting caught and punished. Because of the large number of attacks from Tor users and the relatively small number of well-behaved Tor users, many IRC networks and channels ban Tor nodes. As far as they're concerned, keeping all of the non-Tor users is worth losing the few Tor users that aren't wrecking the network or channel. I certainly won't fault people that might use Tor to try to get around oppressive governments, but in my personal experience, a lot of people that espouse the virtues of Tor are of the tinfoil-hat variety.

Re:The other side of Tor.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with anonymity is that it prevents accountability. Of course, that's also the purpose, not just a problem. It's a bug and a feature.

Justice is the goal. We want people to be accountable to the just (e.g. people who don't want to get spammed), and unaccountable to the unjust (e.g. dissent-crushing government). But Tor is not intelligent, and can't know against whom it is being used.

So you're damned right it creates problems. I would say, though, that those problems already exist anyway. There are so many compromised machines out there, that Bad Guys can do their Bad Things indirectly anyway, without ever being held accountable. We might as well level the playing field.

Re:The other side of Tor.

[Vellmont]

I would say, though, that those problems already exist anyway. There are so many compromised machines out there, that Bad Guys can do their Bad Things indirectly anyway, without ever being held accountable.


That's assuming that the Bad Guys all have an equal amount of resources and skills. There's a lot of Bad Guys that couldn't compromise a host if they tried, but can still cause problems for others when given access to an anonymous network. The problems on EFNet IRC that another poster mentioned and I alluded to are a prime example of this.

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

Plagiarizing off yourself for more karma, eh?

Re:the ivory tower

[NMerriam]

After all, he works for them. The fact that he is a professor does not eliminate the fact that he has a superior he is supposed to listen to. This isn't government censorship, this is simply a case of a man wanting to disobey his boss.

Somehow I suspect that this university's professors do not report to the IT or security staff. They certainly don't at any of the universities I attended or worked at

Having an IT guy show up with campus police and telling you what you are not allowed to teach in class is the sort of thing I'd expect to make interesting conversation at the next faculty meeting. It is not the professor who would be reprimanded in such a situation.

If the CS department chair decides to remove all discussion of anonymizing networks from the class' curriculum, then the professor will certainly have to choose whether to stay or leave.

I think they were from...

[JourneyExpertApe]

Department of Intracollegiate Campus Killing Stoppers (DICKS)

Re:the ivory tower

[idlake]

I'm not sure what the story is here, the right to use tor on someone elses network? Does he have that right? It's not his network.

Well, it's more "his" network than that of the IT department: the primary purpose of the university and its various employees is to support him and his students.

And that is reflected to a large degree in the governance of universities. Ultimately, the IT department must implement what the faculty and the university administration tell them; they have no independent authority to set policy for the university.

University ID depts pay peanuts

[TheMCP]

I was a university IT director a few years ago. The university told me outright when they hired me that they expected to pay me 25% less than an identical job would pay in industry, because they're a not-for-profit organization, and that I should desire to accept this because of the benefits of working in an academic environment (which they listed as long term job security and minimum of four weeks of vacation per year). Okay, fine. They weren't happy when I came back with documentation showing that my industry value was about twice what they thought, but they coughed up the 75% of my industry value that they said they would.

Then when I wanted to hire anyone, however, they dictated to me what I could offer, and refused to accept any input regarding what industry norms were. So, when I needed a DBA (and frankly needed a really good one), they told me I should get someone Oracle certified, and that I should pay no more than $50k. Skilled, experienced, product certified DBAs, as you may know, tended to go for over twice that (usually more like three times that) a few years back in Boston, and our database wasn't Oracle anyway. I ended up hiring a junior-level person (when I really needed a senior level person) because that was the best I could get for the money they were offering (in fact the only applicant we had received who had any experience with the database products we actually used), and told HR they could forget about certification. Their response was to complain a lot that I hadn't hired a good enough person, despite that they hadn't actually asked me (his manager) about his performance, and he was actually doing unusually well for someone of his level. They also nagged me extensively to replace him with a woman who had applied who was oracle certified (which was still useless because we still didn't have oracle), but didn't actually speak English. (Presumably that's why she was willing to take the lousy pay rate.)

10 months after I was hired the university outsourced my job, proving that their claim of long term job security was a lie in the first place. (I hear they had to hire three consultants to replace me, each one at a cost of two to three times my salary.)

I've seen this pattern repeatedly in university IT groups; they won't pay what it really costs to get someone who can really do the job, but they insist on unreasonable qualifications given the pay level they're offering, so instead of either shelling out what it costs to get what they want or accepting the best qualified person who would normally be in the pay range they're offering, they instead hire the loser who is willing to both take the low pay rate AND inflate their qualifications (either by exaggeration or outright lies) to meet the university's unreasonable demands. So, when they most need a skilled, experienced person, they're most likely to get a lying fraud who can't get the job done and will give everyone else a hard time to try to make it look like nothing is their fault.

Re:University ID depts pay peanuts

[Anonymous Coward]

You're website sucks, and doesn't mention any job where you were an 'IT Director' of a University

Actually, the only time 'Director' is mentioned is for some shitty telemarketing firm.

Re:University ID depts pay peanuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, the simians on Slashdot usually use "your" when "you're" is called for - not the other way 'round.

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Editing

[Achromatic1978]

And more importantly, which is The Bowling Green State? I know Washington is the Evergreen state...

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[ceoyoyo]

You know, 100% of the spam, much of it criminal, that reaches my mail server is from the SMTP protocol. In fact, the majority of traffic on that protocol is spam, and I believe that's true in general. Better block it and send cops after anyone who uses it.

Re:the ivory tower

[idlake]

The school still has every right to direct what he teaches at thier institution. If they don't want him teaching that, he should stop. After all, he works for them.

"The school" has that right to some degree, but a network manager is not "the school" and does not have the right to set school policy. At best, the network manager can make a temporary decision (arguing that this was necessary to protect the university), which the faculty and university administration can overturn. And if faculty and the university administration don't like what the network manager did, they can fire him.

Re:the ivory tower

[GameMaster]

Actually, he says "could be a huge headache for network-security administrators" and "could approach technological anarchy". Notice the use of the work "could" as opposed to the more definite "will".

Furthermore, just because something "could be a huge headache" for IT doesn't, necessarily, mean it isn't, still, part of their job responsibilities. Giving students/faculty at a university access to the Internet in the first place will, inevitably, produce headaches for IT. That said, it's also the only reason they have a job. It would be just as absurd for the IT department to attempt to strong-arm all the students/faculty into not using the Internet at all as a method of decreasing the IT workload.

The fact is, there are ways to deal with it in the event it ever, actually, became a problem such as announcing a ban on the software for student PCs and banning systems from the network as soon as Tor use is detected. It's not difficult to do and means that Tor would only cause the network to dissolve into "technological anarchy" if the IT people sat around and did nothing. If they were even more reasonable and even handed about it, they could ban or traffic shape Tor users that were found to be using an obscene amount of bandwidth (most likely to have had their system injected). This, probably, wouldn't even require a re-write of their network use policies.

"He has the RIGHT to use it, of course, nobody else should. It's a tool only for the gifted."

While I'm assuming you meant this to be sarcastic, YES HE DOES HAVE THAT RIGHT! Its called academic freedom and was, clearly, mentioned in the article. It allows him and other professors to do their job. There are plenty of times that professors research/teach about controversial topics or topics that could cause problems if they were abused. He was teaching a class directly related to Tor and was using it as a way to become more familiar with the software. He never suggests that the general student body, or even the rest of the university employees should, necessarily, be allowed to use the software. You and I may not have the right to use Tor on out employer's networks but, then again, we aren't college professors (unless you happen to be). They represent a, very specific, special case when it comes to thing like this.

As an example, I went to school for computer science. In one of my classes, on how operating systems work, our professor explained how a programmer could, very easily, take down almost any flavor of Unix system no matter how well secured the system was (thus causing headaches for anyone else using that system at the same time as was common in our CS computer labs). This was a fundamental flaw in the design of operating systems that, for Unix systems at least, was pretty universal. He also informed us, very clearly, that we were, in no uncertain terms, banned from using this technique on any of the lab systems (which ran Sun Unix). Furthermore, he informed us that, should we decide to try, they would, very easily, find out who did it and deal with them accordingly. This was an issue directly related to the subject of the class. Knowing it meant that we, as students, could avoid it in our own future software. There is a good chance that, at least one time, my professor had to write a program like this himself (or one of his colleagues did) and test it on one of the lab systems just to prove that it did, in fact, work that way.

The story is that an IT guy and two Campus Security goons came to his door and tried to strong-arm him into not using the software or teaching about it. It's like a bad scene from a melodramatic police drama. They tried to feed him some nebulous garbage about it being against "policy" (a policy he actually helped edit and probably knows better than they do) and use it to threaten his job. The story is about a professor having his job threatened for researching a topic they don't like which flys against the very essence of acade

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Commenting

[Anonymous Coward]

Another typical slashdot "commenting" job. Was the article read? Nope.

All these words were wasted to complain about the editor, but a tiny effort such as clicking on the article link and scrolling down was never made, even though such an effort would help tremendously in giving this guy a fucking clue.

I can't believe people have the audacity to sign off on such idiotic comments.

Tor is FREEDOM

[Werrismys]

I have run TOR node for some 18 months or so, about 24/7. I don't care what goes through it at the measly bandwidth cost - I just make sure it does not have any exit ports because the legislators usually have No Clue.

Freenet, Entropy, Tor... they usually host "secret" stuff that can be googled off open sites anyway. The kid porn pervs have their own networks. Even bittorrent is now mostly blocked through tor.

Tor is Good. Support Tor.

Ya, not only that...

[msimm]

But if you wear flea powder the whole issue becomes moot.

Re:the ivory tower

[ceoyoyo]

Professors ARE the bosses. Understanding that, your post makes no sense.

Decide for yourself...

[mattmacf]

For a website dedicated to the tech crowd, you'd think somebody had tried to dig up the actual policy (it's the first PDF link). The policy in question is likely number 22 on page 3. It states:

The following is prohibited conduct for any individual using ITS managed computers or networks:
...
22. Anonymous use, or use of pseudonyms on a computer system or computer network to escape responsibility. No person shall use a computer system or computer network anonymously or use pseudonyms to attempt to escape from prosecution of laws or regulations, or otherwise to escape responsibility for their actions.

Obviously using Tor qualifies as "anonymous use," but whether or not it's being used "to escape responsibility for [an individual's] actions" is certainly a judgment call. It's entirely likely that the writer(s) of the policy simply never took into account either explicitly allowing or preventing the use of Tor as a matter of policy.

Re:Decide for yourself...

[xsbellx]

Obviously FTP would also qualify as "anonymous use" and logging to /. would qualify as a use of a pseudonym (I can assure you, my parents did not name me xsbellx).

And if you would read TFA, you would see that the AUP preceded TOR by about 10 years so it would quite an accomplishment (Kerskin like) to either explicitly allow or prevent Tor. Rather like coming up with a policy for SSL and HTTP in 1981.

Re:Decide for yourself...

[Anonymous Coward]

The original AUP may have been created prior to TOR, but if TOR is about a decade old, and the AUP shows it was last updated in '00, then it was updated after TOR came about. Mind you, it's tragically out of date, but some of the items can be interpretted as applying to TOR. Not just #22 (anonymous use), but also #12 (circumventing network security systems, which could be read as implying you can't dodge university monitoring).

Good policies are written in a way that they can apply to new technologies, by focusing on concepts instead of technology. Technology is always changing, so you cover that in actual standards documents; conceptual approaches take a lot longer to change, which makes them the foundation of the policies - so if you, like BGSU, forget to update the policy for 7 years, it'll still hold some level of relevance.

They're not paying his salary

[benhocking]

These are the people paying his salary, and if they don't want this going on, they can tell him to stop.

Most likely, they're not paying his salary and didn't even pay for his equipment. His grants are probably paying for the majority of his salary (as well as part of the salary of some liberal arts professors), and possibly for his computers. (Unfortunately, many computer science grants won't actually pay for computers, so that's no guarantee.)

I read that assassinshipts...

[msimm]

I was ready to drop everything and move there.

Re:the ivory tower

[mythandros]

Right...because if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, right?

Do we REALLY have to cover why this line of thought is assinine YET AGAIN?

Oblig. Tor Johnson

[MS-06FZ]

"TIME FOR GO TO BED..."

Re:Oblig. Tor Johnson

[tomservo84]

Why is this labelled "Troll"?? "Funny" is more appropriate.

Thanks for making me laugh, MS-06FZ. At least I got it.

(And Tor Johnson would be more labelled an "Ogre" than "Troll") Heh.

VPN, Proxies, etc...

[Ohio Calvinist]

I used to work for a large Midwestern University, and we blocked outgoing connections to some services, such as VPNs and some proxies. The reason we did this was during the outbreak of the virus (can't remember the name), that hammered Windows on Port 135, we blocked incoming Port 135 connections at the University border. It was hypothesized that if users VPNed to other networks, they would circumvent the port block and become a vector.

I know everyone worth their weight in IT realizes that a secure border isn't enough. We had virus protection available for free for every seat on campus, however, in a huge distributed environment (where departments and colleges were "islands" in a network ocean, with their own IT staff) we couldn't gaurantee the integrity of these machines. But we were sure going to be the ones to take the hit when their "nice kid that they liked to much to see them move on after graduation system admin" didn't bother to CHECK to see if the definitions his AD-out-the-box for dummies was pushing those defs.

We also disallowed some of these services because it became harder to effectively monitor our network. When some s5r1pt k1dd13 in CIS 201 decides that he is now a UNIX god is and is going to put "Bush Sucks - $college_name is #1, fark $rival" on whitehouse.gov to impress his pink haired, pot smoking, PETA member across the hall in the dorms who only talks to him when he removes the spyware she got trying to download off KaZaa, we look like complete dickheads when the Feds show up (or the **AA) and the best we can do is say "I don't know... what goes on in them there tubes" the suits tend to get pretty agrivated.

On the other hand, even if they are SSHing into an intermediary (which we strongly encouraged over telnet), we can at least say "Well, we had an outgoing SSH connection from 4 machines on campus at that time going to these 4 addresses, do any of those ring a bell? We happened to have authenticated WPA, so we can tell you who these folks are even if the machine name is PoPPySeeD420 and done from the student union.

Privacy is wonderful, but when the shit hits the proverbal fan, IT would like to know who is pulling shenanagins on the network. The rest of the time, 99.9999% of the time, we'd rather NOT know what you're up to, and every one of us in the office (except for that one windows fanboi MS office specialist who we used to throw beanbags at) had our open source/linux/free as in beer and freedom/crypto-privacy street cred.

Re:VPN, Proxies, etc...

[22_9_3_11_25]

I wonder if you have spoken to a lawyer about turning over that information. I did support for a public library where someone had sent an email bomb threat. Like in your above mentioned example we could trace it back to the exact computer. At that time people signed in paper logs to use the computers, on the advice of legal councel those logs are destroyed and never allowed to be turned over to any other agency. It is an interesting legal problem. I wonder if the above mentioned university legal representative would have them turn over the logs also.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[Krakhan]

By your logic, anyone that owns a knife or knows how to start a fire is a murderer or a pyromaniac by association.

It's never the tools themselves that are bad. It's only what the people themselves that are bad for using these tools for less than savory purposes.

And yet...

[spun]

Everyone says the free market leads to freedom. It seems to lead to people having to shut the hell up or not eat, to me. Wage slavery is still slavery. No matter that you are free to pick your master, if you can't speak your mind or do what you want with your time and resources, you are a slave.

Re:And yet...

[BoberFett]

The free market does take care of itself. The problem is that we haven't had a truly free market since the government started choosing economic winners and losers through tax laws and business subsidies.

Re:And yet...

[anthony_dipierro]

The free market doesn't force freedom upon you, and most people frankly don't want freedom all that much.

But at least with a free market most people have the choice of freedom.

Re:And yet...

[daigu]

Free market means a place where the strong take advantage of the weak. Rich of the poor. Employers of employees. Developed nations of less developed nations. On ever level the story is the same, and the people praising free markets are typically those that are with the strong directly benefiting. Don't believe the hype.

Re:And yet...

[StikyPad]

No matter that you are free to pick your master, if you can't speak your mind or do what you want with your time and resources, you are a slave.

Except you can be a master as well. It's insanely easy to start your own business. If you don't have enough ambition, that's not slavery, it's laziness. Sure, there's a lot of risk involved, but the world doesn't owe you anything, let alone guarantees of success. You have the opportunity to succeed, which is all anyone should expect.

Re:And yet...

[potat0man]

Sure, in the US there are some people actually making minimum wage who barely get by.

Then there are the other people who drive cars when they could be bicycling everywhere. Have a McMansion instead of renting a room. Buy frozen food or worse, fast food, instead of learning to cook. Have cable, internet and go to the movies on the weekend because those are minimum 'necessities'.

Take a look at Ben Franklin, stranded in England, penniless. He got a job and saw all his co-workers spending their daily pay on beer and a hot supper. What did he do? Ate practically nothing more than bread and water for almost two years so he could invest his money.

Sure, there are some people, people who have backed themselves into corners by having kids they can't afford or financing everything they own to the hilt. And there are people I actually feel bad for who need a break who had a kid they thought they could afford but then ended up requiring huge medical bills, or they themselves have huge medical bills. That can't be helped.

But that's a small minority of the financially oppressed. The rest just don't know how to hold onto a buck.

Work two jobs. Don't buy shit. Get rid of the internet at home, use the library. Don't buy what you can borrow. Get rid of the cell phone. Reconsider what you call a necessity. Stop eating meat and fresh milk. Downgrade your life, trade in the SUV for a sub-compact or the sub-compact for a bicycle or the bicyle for your legs. Get an apartment instead of a house. A studio instead of a one-bedroom. A room instead of a studio. Invest in your own job-training. Then instead of biting your tongue and living against your moral principles tell your boss to fuck off next time you really think you should since you're no longer banking on the next paycheck just to make rent.

Or consider an unused bedroom, a car, 5MB/s internet access and ready-made frozen food a necessity and continue to slave away. Let's just be clear though; it's your choice.

_
"Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money if what you want to do is make a lot of money." - Berstein in Citizen Kane

Re:And yet...

[Logic and Reason]

What exactly is your point? Can you offer an alternative?

Re:And yet...

[beakerMeep]

Who says the free market leads to freedom? It leads to competition, which in theory leads to the highest productivity and, also in theory, the overall standard of living improves. I'm not saying these are correct theories, but if anyone is telling you that X economic theory leads to Y political benefit, then they are comparing apples to oranges with smoke and mirrors ;)

Still, your comment, and most of the replies, remind me of Marxism (who im just now reading for the first time). One of the things that strikes me about it, is that it's very poetic and philisophical (like your post) and emotionaling riling, but the details, the practical methods seem lacking. So my question to you is this: what would be a viable alternative to free markets? bonus points if you can say it in a short simple statement.

Re:And yet...

[Goaway]

But at least with a free market most people have the choice of freedom.

Please justify this claim, without assuming that you are rich to start with.

Re:And yet...

[russellh]

Free market means a place where the strong take advantage of the weak. Rich of the poor. Employers of employees. Developed nations of less developed nations. On ever level the story is the same, and the people praising free markets are typically those that are with the strong directly benefiting. Don't believe the hype.

actually you're describing a laissez-faire or anarcho-capitalist economy which take the .gov out of the picture and allows massive wealth concentration, leading to a kind of feudalism complete with company towns, private armies, etc. We've been there, and it's bad. When the weak are under the thumb of the strong, that's obviously not a free market, hence the need for actual laws and regulation, not to mention transparency. Even Adam Smith wrote about the necessity of a strong central government to regulate the economy, something many seem to have forgotten. But back in the real world, the kinds of things we need to do are not on the level of restructuring the economy from capitalism to something else. No, the kinds of things we need to fix are inbreeding among lobbyists, pundits, politicians, and the media. The famous revolving door from government to private industry. We can't have industry lobbyists writing legislation. We can't have four corporations owning all the newspapers in the country, or one corporation owning most of the radio stations. But these problems aren't the result of "free market principles" ; they're the result of the powerful abusing their influence to protect it and acquire more. And it's not as if people seeking power is unique to capitalism. No theoretical ideas are going to stop the will to power. The system requires constant and vigilant maintenance and at the moment there's a lot of work to do.

Re:And yet...

[DarrylKegger]

Still, your comment, and most of the replies, remind me of Marxism (who im just now reading for the first time). One of the things that strikes me about it, is that it's very poetic and philisophical (like your post) and emotionaling riling...

I find Capitalism rather 'emotionaling' riling!!

Re:And yet...

[daigu]

Actually, I'm not describing laissez-faire or anarcho-capitalism. When people use the term "free market", they usually aren't concerned about those elements that define it in its idealized form - no barriers to entry or exit, homogeneous products, mobility of productive resources, many small buyers and sellers, etc. The way it is generally used is to imply freedom - primarily from government intervention. It is used to justify everything from robber baron capitalism to organized crime. The latter is basically the situation you describe.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

If competition truly led to higher productivity, then large corporations would be internaly structured as redundant competing units. In reality, this has been tried and failed miserably. Our ability to cooperate is one thing that sets us apart from other animals.

Re:And yet...

[Lord Ender]

Is there an alternative? Do you know of an economic system in which the strong do not take advantage of the weak? Put up or shut up.

Re:And yet...

[bataras]

but while you're at work it's not your time and resources to speak your mind with. You're oppressed at work? Leave. If you can't leave for whatever reason or aren't oppressed 'enough' and don't care to be climbing the 'ladder' at your present point in life, give them their 8 hours/day and go the fuck home to your family where everything matters.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

You know that was sarcasm, right?

Re:And yet...

[spun]

Wow, so everyone can be a master, and no one has to be a slave? Uh, how's that work? I hear this line a lot from people who don't know what it's like to struggle your whole life and never get anywhere. The rags-to-riches story is a myth that people who have benefited from the injustices of the system tell themselves to reduce their feelings of guilt.

Re:And yet...

[Maxo-Texas]

No he's right.

You don't have to have a nice place to live, a computer worth a grand, a car, etc.

Lots of people choose freedom all the time.

We *are* slaves for computers, big screen tv's, even our pet bills (mine run almost $1,500 a year between food and vet bills).

I *AM* a slave and will be until I save up enough money to cover my life style. I'm giving up a couple decades of healthy life where I could be wandering around (without a car), talking, playing, etc.

The entire system is set up so you can be a willing slave or you can be poor and powerless with very few exceptions.

But like democracy, it is better than many of the alternatives.

Re:And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course those who praise free markets are those who benefit from them. Why would you praise something that does you harm?

However, the reverse does not follow. Many people who benefit don't praise the system. How many American poor praise the system? I imagine many of them don't. Those that do certainly aren't visible. And yet they still have cable TV and DVD players and nice places to live and huge amounts of clothing and all sorts of other things that really poor people don't have. The rising tide has lifted their boat a great deal, but I imagine they still complain. Truly it is their right to complain, and whine, and fight for something better. But you shouldn't pretend that they haven't benefitted from the system just because other people have benefitted more. I would much rather be a poor American than a rich person in a place where free markets are not allowed to work.

Re:And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there an alternative? Do you know of an economic system in which the strong do not take advantage of the weak? Put up or shut up.

There is but it won't happen until people stop competing with social status. IOW, until we become more than mere animals, we'll use our personal resources to get a bigger car (or any contemporary status item) than our neighbour has.

We're so far off from that point that even our visionaries, sci-fi authors, can't imagine such a state. Most of them still fantasize about future technology while their characters have same needs and behaviour for status and hierarchy as we do. We're practically still in stone age.

So far off that we might as well kill ourselves now, it's pointless to even try.

Re:And yet...

[master_p]

'Free' can be different flavors. It can mean unregulated markets where the strong exploit the weak (as you described) or regulated markets where people have equal opportunities.

Building a good society is not very difficult. All that it takes is to support the less fortunate, i.e. take the excessive money from the rich and give it to the poor. This means public services like education and health care, without restricting private education and health care.

But we have gotten so far into pharisaism (and I do not talk about the USA; I speak about anyone on this planet) that we can not see the simpler truths any more.

Re:And yet...

[soliptic]

The problem is that we haven't had a truly free market ever

Fixed that for you :)

Re:And yet...

[anthony_dipierro]

Please define rich, and define freedom. My statement was very ambiguous, but I think Maxo-Texas understood what I was getting at. A vagrant in the United States, for instance, does not need to "work" very much at all to survive. Earn enough to buy an old beat up VW bus and you've got shelter and transportation. Get your clothes at the thrift store for a few bucks a month. Buy the cheapest stuff you can find at the grocery store which meets your basic nutritional needs. Or maybe better, hang out at a college where you can probably find people willing to feed you for a while. Sure, you'll have to work once in a while to support this lifestyle. But you won't have to work very hard or very long, and you won't have to commit to any particular location for a very long period of time. I've known people who have done this. They weren't rich, but they were free.

Re:And yet...

[goldspider]

What you described is called "human nature", not "free market". The desire of one human to control another predates the concept of "wealth" (tho, granted, not by much).

Re:And yet...

[spun]

The first step towards change is acknowledging that you need to change. Do you believe the strong should take advantage of the weak? If so, we have nothing further to discuss. If not, then you acknowledge that we need to change. Our system isn't terrible, it does have some protections for the weak. But it could be better.

Networks of cooperatively owned and run businesses operating in a regulated free market with garaunteed access to basic necessities through a social safety net and a cap on both earnings and ownership would work better. Cooperative ownership and management leads to higher productivity by workers that actually have a stake in their business. The free market needs regulation to stay free, given that it fails in the case of monopoly, imbalance of information, and externalities. If people felt they would be taken care of, no matter what, they would be free to let go of jobs that were no longer necessary or useful to society instead of hanging on tooth and nail through manipulation of markets and governments. A cap on earnings and ownership would prevent the runaway feedback loop of concentration of wealth. No one is worth millions of times more to society than any other, so society should not reward them that way.

Re:And yet...

[daigu]

Of course I know it was sarcasm. I just made the point because there are people, as evidenced by the replies to my post, that don't acknowledge the truth the sarcasm was pointing to - so I wanted to bring it out with a little more clarity.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

You did a good job. If you read my posts, you'll see that I take every opportunity to point out the inherent injustice of our free market system, founded as it is on the ideas that humans are selfish and logical. Neither of which is entirely true. And while the free market sysetm does not encourage logic, focused as it is on short term gains, it does encourage selfishness. Most people are not naturally selfish, but they will resort to it if they feel taken advantage of.

Competition itself is also inherently inefficient, which is why you never see large corporations organized as a system of competing business units. Internally, all businesses are cooperative. Competition destroys intrinsic motivation, substituting the fear of death as a motivator. Intrinsic motivations to do what one loves are always more powerful. Competition is inherently inefficient, by duplicating effort that could be shared. If there is a best way to do something, shouldn't all businesses be doing it that way?

I am speaking of competition in the form where some must lose in order for others to win. That is inherently inefficient. Conflict, on the other hand, is good. Resolving conflict leads to more efficient solutions. When the rights of the minority group are protected, democracy and debate are excellent tools for resolving conflict.

Re:And yet...

[daigu]

You know what I find most interesting about comments like yours? It is the false dichotomy. Why not say instead,

"Is there an alternative? Do you know of an economic system in which the strong take less advantage of the weak? Put up or shut-up."

But I also know why you didn't go that route. Because the answer is that of course there are alternatives and that many of these alternatives are better for the population as a whole. It is so self-evident that by asking that question you would sound silly.

So, you went instead with the dichotomy either come up with a system where advantage is never taken or be satisfied with what we have. I'd respond that systems, by definition, can be taken advantage of. The people in a position to take advantage? They are, again by definition, the strong. The feature of "free markets" that I was pointing to is that it specifically devalues economic safeguards designed to protect the weak and by so doing, creates and justifies environments of organized robbery and tyranny.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

Nah, I think I'll organize with my fellow workers and we will demand our rights be respected. If the boss doesn't like it, we will do one of the following:

Work to rule: follow every little inane rule the management sets, causing immense slowdowns.
Slowdown: Work at a speed proprtional to the pay and respect given.
Sickout: Everyone calls in sick.
Strike: Picket and don't work.
Sabotage: if they try to strike-break, throw them a monkey wrench.
Boost: If they won't pay you enough, take what you are due whether they like it or not.

If the boss doesn't respect you, why should you respect him? If the rules are set up to oppress you, why should you follow them? The workers make everything of value in the world. Bosses are leaches who provide nothing of value. Workers are not idiots and could probably run the business better than the boss on his best day. Put the leaches in their place.

Re:And yet...

[daigu]

I agree that there is inherent injustice in free markets. The model is based on assumptions and circumstances that typically do not exist in the real world. I also think that it is damaging because there are many externalities and costs that cannot be factored into the price ranging from pollution, human exploitation, destruction of important societial values such as reciprical responsibility, etc.

Granted it is difficult to evaluate these things, but we need to do what we can to make an honest assessment and to choose alternatives, as appropriate. Simply subscribing to free market fundamentalism as a faith is a grievous misstep that unfortunately many make.

Re:And yet...

[daigu]

Does being able to purchase products cheaply at Wal-Mart because they are made with child and slave labor abroad or by prison labor here in the U.S. mean that my boat has been lifted? You would rather be a poor American than a rich person elsewhere - perhaps because at least here even poor people can get in on the exploitation? It's a pyramid scheme, just because you can't see all the levels don't mean they aren't there.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

Ah yes, the "No True Scotsman Fallacy." Ironic, as the capitalists level this very charge against any who say that real communism has never been implemented.

You would really like to go back to the lassez faire days of child labor, sweatshops, 18/7 work weeks, no worker safety laws, enormous poverty, violent strikebreaking, etc.?

The free market does not self correct. Money can be used to manipulate the system just as effectively as political power can be. The more money one accumulates, the more power one has to change the way the market functions, leading to even more accumulation of wealth and power in a runaway feedback loop.

Re:And yet...

[mutterc]

Good advice about living below one's means. I, personally, at least stay within them, I wish I could go as low as you.

I wonder sometimes, because consumer spending drives the economy, if one day advocating living below your means becomes illegal, e.g. "economic terrorism". (There are a lot of powerful forces interested in keeping the GDP growing at all costs).

That's my favorite hypothetical example of anti-terrorism laws gone awry; even if there's an ironclad promise of "we'll only circumvent the legal process for terrorists", the loophole is in the definition of "terrorist". I could see anti-consumerism being demonized in this way...

Re:And yet...

[spun]

Human nature does not have a single, static state. It has two stable states, let's call them feast mode and famine mode. In feast mode, humans are loving, open, sharing, cooperative creatures because when resources are relatively abundant but there may be local scarcities of certain commodities, this is the most efficient strategy. When resources are very scarce, humans enter famine mode. Unfortunately, a large climatic shift happened in the Sahara and Central Asian areas after we had developed agriculture and animal husbandry, settled down, and developed a more complex society with our newfound surplus. This happened about 4500BC. Before that point, you do not see weapons whose sole purpose is killing other humans. You do not see mass graves. You do not see fortified towns. After the fertile plains of the Sahara and Central Asian regions dried up, the people who had settled there were thrown into a massive famine. Instead of doing the hunter gatherer thing and moving on, they used their organization and surplus to wage war on theier neighbors. For the first time in human history, war was waged on a large scale. You had a whole generation of post-traumatic stress disordered parents raising a whole generation of brain damaged children. (no B vitamins, no myelin sheaths) The famine mentality was locked in, so that even now, when we have more abundance than ever, people still act as if we need to fight tooth-and-nail for every last scrap.

Re:And yet...

[nosferat]

Everyone says the free market leads to freedom. It seems to lead to people having to shut the hell up or not eat, to me. Wage slavery is still slavery. No matter that you are free to pick your master, if you can't speak your mind or do what you want with your time and resources, you are a slave.

Nowhere in the world have ordinary people more freedom than in countries with free market. This is empirical observation.

People have to work. It is not fault of free market. It is what makes it possible for people to survive. If nobody worked humankind would die of hunger. Free market is the most efficient known way to determine what sort of work should one do for the biggest profit for himself and for society.

I live in a country that has been transforming its economy from socialism to free market for almost two decades now and indeed every step away from socialism towards free market is also a great step for a freedom of ordinary people.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

The free market is indeed a good solution. But the good is the enemy of the best. Is there room for improvement? We shouldn't dismiss the possiblity. From what I've seen of formerly socialist countries moving towards a free market economy, when factories and such-like businesses are privatized, efficiency increases. When public utilites are privatized, disaster follows. Look at Bechtel's privatization of water utlities in South America.

People do indeed have to work to eat. But billions world-wide are forced to accept the unpleasant compromise of giving up freedoms in order to survive. The free market is not magical, it is not divine, and it is not the ultimate or only solution.

Re:And yet...

[FallLine]

If competition truly led to higher productivity, then large corporations would be internaly structured as redundant competing units. In reality, this has been tried and failed miserably.

This is a logical fallacy. Corporations are structured to improve shareholder wealth. If each division shared the same amount and kind of resources (e.g, IP, manufacturing, capital resources, etc) and truly competed without restriction, then this would push profit margins way down. Furthermore, this model dramatically increases overhead costs and thus would make many large companies dramatically less efficient. One larger division producing a mature product can usually produce it more cheaply than several smaller divisions producing the same amount of goods. In other words, there are usually very large economic disincentives for shareholders to agree to what you suggest (companies have formed internal competition in some cases though and spun off them at some point... it can make sense in limited context). This does not disprove the well documented theory that competition boosts productivity for society though.

Our ability to cooperate is one thing that sets us apart from other animals.

Uh, wolves, dolphins, and other animals cooperate to hunt for food and for self-defence purposes. Also, you're ignoring that companies are truly always been a hybrid. Companies both cooperate and compete. To wholly ignore one or both elements is just plain silly.

Re:And yet...

[spun]

No, it is not a logical fallacy, and nothing in your post says it is. Your post supports my point. If you consider all of us to be shareholders in society, then it makes sense for society to be organized as corporations are, cooperatively. If it makes sense for a corporation to have one larger division rather than several smaller ones, because of overhead costs and duplication of effort, it makes sense for all of society to be so organized. If there are a number of studies proving competition boosts productivity, perhaps you could point them out?

Regarding us vs. the animals, perhaps I was being a bit glib. And I agree, companies do both cooperate and compete. But the balance between cooperation and competition is what I was really trying to address. We are the best cooperators, would you disagree? Then why not use that strength in organizing our society?

Re:And yet...

[FallLine]

No, it is not a logical fallacy, and nothing in your post says it is.

Your statement is an obvious non sequitur (more specifically, you are denying the antecedent.) You posit that if competition actually improves productivity, then most/all companies would be structured this way. Your argument is based on the false assumption that productivity is the sole concern of shareholders (not mention another critical assumption: that management is completely free of any relevant conflicts, e.g., agency costs). Long term profitability (or future cash flows) is the chief concern of shareholders and I demonstrated how increased productivity can dramatically reduce net profitability. Therefore your assertion that competition does not improve productivity does not follow from your argument.

Your argument is kind of like arguing that "If good deeds contribute to the welfare of society, then this big group of people would be doing more good deeds. Because they're not, good deeds must not be good for society."

What's more, your argument does not really even compute. You imply that there are many companies that are unnecessarily competing against their own interests, but suggest that management is at once too stupid to know better (due to the fact that they're competing externally) and simultaneously suggest that their lack of internal competition is clear evidence of management's belief in cooperation. It'd be one thing if you wish to finger antitrust regulation as being the culprit (that some mergers would not be allowed), but I think the real issue is that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Management is insightful and properly motivated when you agree with them, but not otherwise.

If you consider all of us to be shareholders in society, then it makes sense for society to be organized as corporations are, cooperatively. If it makes sense for a corporation to have one larger division rather than several smaller ones, because of overhead costs and duplication of effort, it makes sense for all of society to be so organized.

More logical fallacies. Your argument is too simplistic and too polar. You might as well argue that if two packets of sugar in your coffee is better than none, then an entire cup of sugar would be the best. There is a balance to be struck. A company can get too big for their own good or sell too much internally and that can create very real inefficiencies. Small companies are usually dramatically more efficient in terms of management than big companies are... where big companies make up for it is when production/manufacturing scale creates dramatic efficiencies (e.g., producing cars) or where having vast amounts of capital is extremely important (e.g., building a cell phone network). The point that you are missing is that the free market, under our system of government, usually allows the participants to decide when to cooperate/merge (with the exception of very large companies when they are deemed by the powers that be to have "market powers") and when to compete (where the government hasn't granted monopolies, e.g., land-line phones). When it is in the interest of two or more companies to merge or for one to acquire the other, this happens fairly frequently. In point of fact, this has happened throughout the agricultural industry in the United States. Big corporate owned farms can farm far more efficiently than small ones do and this has put market pressure on those small farms to sell to bigger ones or to, at least, form collective agreements with previously competing farms.

If there are a number of studies proving competition boosts productivity, perhaps you could point them out?

I don't keep them at my finger tips since this is sufficiently obvious to most people, but here's One

Re:And yet...

[bodan]

This is very interesting. To my (admittedly very limited) knowledge of things economical, a "very cooperative society" as you describe translates to a communist country. Which (I'm sure it's been said before) always sounds like a very good idea, but was never implemented acceptably _on a large scale_. (Meaning several million people. If you feel I'm wrong about this, please explain in reasonable detail why.)

I tried to figure out the apparent paradox: cooperation should be more efficient, but competition seems to work better in practice. I'm sure the answer is very complex, but the two things that first come to my mind are (a) "efficient" is only a small part of "better" almost every time and --I had a bit more trouble with this one-- (b) "cooperation" is only possible if the participants' intentions are very compatible.

a) efficient != better
This should be quite easy to notice. There are other goals beside "bare efficiency". Consider flexibility, resiliency, evolution. This is the classic trade-off between monolithic and modular. Since this is /., a vague analogy: the most efficient way to do some task is to write a monolithic hand-optimized assembler-written (or hardware-implemented) block that does it. (Note that this is for efficiently _executing_ the task, not writing it.)

However, tasks where resiliency is important use redundancy a lot. I've even heard of (though I can't name any, they may be hypothetical) systems that, in order to be error resilient, have several redundant implementations of the same functionality on different hardware designed by different teams running different software written by different teams, each implementation checking the others.

Flexibility is important too. Several different groups doing the same things in parallel can try different ways of doing it. Many improvements can be made this way that would be impossible with a single "efficient" implementation. (Take the problem of 3D graphics. Suppose at one point raster algorithms are more efficient. If everything is done using raster algorithms, though, no innovations in ray-tracing are possible, though perhaps there is one that would make ray-tracing much more efficient than raster. This is the common "local minima" problem. See the paragraph after the next.)

Also, the conditions of the game (i.e., the definition of efficiency) may change. This is (AFAIK) often noticed in biology: species that are very efficient at something are very specialized, so can't adapt where the conditions change.

There's also the problem that often the problem is just very hard to solve. Meaning that, while there is a cooperative solution that is very efficient, it is not known. It's often more advantageous to form several teams that compete trying to solve the problem rather than just one trying to improve itself.

b) full cooperation needs people that want the same thing
This is a bit more philosophical, I don't think I know enough to give lots of arguments. But I think that often people simply want different things.

The simplest case is resource contention: say you and I want an X, but there's just one X. Suppose X can't be shared. Our wishes are mutually exclusive. This is an intrinsically competitive problem; no solution (cooperative or not) can give us both X, so there needs to be some competition for it.

Of course, we don't have to start bashing our heads with sticks to resolve our differences. Society and governments are (at least partially) a cooperative method of solving these problems. A communist government tries (ideally) to solve the difference by estimating what everyone _needs_ and allocating all resources in such a way as to maximally satisfy those needs. A capitalist government system (ideally) sets up some rules that approximate the "free market" concept and then lets people do what the _want_ (not need!), within those rules. When a resource is limited, in the latter system leads (theoretically) to the resource being distributed by "how good people are at

Re:And yet...

[nosferat]

When public utilites are privatized, disaster follows. Look at Bechtel's privatization of water utlities in South America.

It is OK to make money by selling water. But it is not OK to disallow the others from doing the same and that is what government during Bechtel's privatization did - the state enforced a monopoly for Bechtel's company. This is definitely a failure of the government by restricting the free market.

When industry in the Czech Republic was being privatized in nineties, it was very often sold by corrupt politicians to former communists for a price that was far below the market price. For many Czechs this proves that free market is unjust and criminal in essence. However again this is not failure of free market, but failure of government that refused to sell industry in a transparent way at a stock exchange.

I have another example of public service. In the Czech Republic there is huge postal service company that has privileged position by law. They screw up half of the deliveries (they damage packages, delay deliveries, fail to notify about incoming mail waiting at post office) and you have to queue absolutely every time you go to post office. These issues would be solved by privatization according to my experience with past privatizations.

People do indeed have to work to eat. But billions world-wide are forced to accept the unpleasant compromise of giving up freedoms in order to survive.

While majority of the world population live in a poverty, again I do not think it is a failure of a free market. Moreover I believe it is free market that can elevate these people to better standard of living.

Russian revolutionists in 1917 were convicted that the poverty of Russian people was the consequence of capitalism. They replaced capitalism with communism and the result was disastrous. Millions died of famine and those who survived were forced to face even worse poverty, oppression and lack of freedom.

The free market is not magical, it is not divine, and it is not the ultimate or only solution.

Definitely. The most problematic area of free market is IMHO how it handles negative externalities.

Bigger breach

[lord_sarpedon]

Admins should be more concerned about Tor's Hidden Service feature. It's handy to avoid censorship and all, but it allows you to connect to hosts behind a NAT or firewall (the node keeps a circuit open). Not only that, the person using the service remotely is unrelated to the host that shows up in the logs... It's a drop-in backdoor tool. Instant access to the internal network.

Re:question...

[crush]

Run wireshark while you use Tor and you'll see.

Re:the ivory tower

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Personally, I don't use software like Tor but I respect peoples right to privacy and believe that it is enshrined in the US Constitution.

The word "privacy" isn't even mentioned in the entire document. "Private" is there, but only in the context of property.

Duh ... its a network security risk!

[Anonymous Coward]

Academic freedom, my ass. Supporting whatever the flavor-of-the-week professor wants, my ass.

University IT, just like a business, is there to keep the IT functions running to complete the mission objectives. In most cases, it means making sure people can get their mail, do their homework, get journals, and all that jazz. It also includes billing, grades, transcripts, payroll and all that other backroom stuff that keeps the lights on.

It may include various research areas, but in order to be able to conduct research safely and not violate the other business areas/be violated by them, they should be isolated.

So, we'll go back to the article.

So, he installed a Tor client.

This serves to render a lot of firewalling and intrusion detection COMPLETELY useless.

If his endpoint was compromised over tor, they would not be able to detect it until maybe after it started attacking/compromising other university systems.

If his endpoint was compromised, it could attack other systems over tor.

If he was acting as a router, rather than an endpoint, the situation gets just that much worse.

So, he did something that broke firewalling, intrusion detection, and/or auditing -- all of which could have compromised everyone ELSE doing their work.

Believe me, if he got his ass owned, and it took down backroom servers or another flavor-of-the-week professor's favorite toy, there would be MOBS outside IT's door -- complete with pitchforks and torches.

Re:Duh ... its a network security risk!

[anthony_dipierro]

Believe me, if he got his ass owned, and it took down backroom servers or another flavor-of-the-week professor's favorite toy, there would be MOBS outside IT's door -- complete with pitchforks and torches.

If breaking into a single professor's computer can take down a backroom server, then the IT staff deserves the pitchforks and torches. By your rationale Tor should be banned completely from every network in existence, because hey, my laptop might get owned and take down all of Verizon.

A university network is not a typical business environment. You can't control every computer that gets connected to the network, and you can't shut off encrypted traffic. So by your rationale, "a lot of firewalling and intrusion detection" is already COMPLETELY useless.

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

The network belongs to the IT director. That person makes all decisions about managing the network; thats why they were hired for that position. If someone has a complaint, and the university president requests a change then the IT director will make it. But all initial decisions are controlled by the IT director, which basically makes it their network. If the director wants to limit gaming traffic, Kazza, Tor its their decision, good luck trying to convince the university president to make his IT director change his decision.

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Editing

[neomunk]

I'm nearly sure it's Ohio.

I think I've passed BGSU on I-75.

An hour south of Toledo, maybe?

university administration is full of thugs

[Goldsmith]

Having been in a few meetings where administrators quoted policy to the people who wrote it and then went on to bash faculty and students over the head with illogical interpretations of that policy, I don't find this surprising at all.

These people have hard jobs, but so do we. Should someone teaching computer security not be able to use or talk about things which are important in doing computer security? I know my University administrators think they shouldn't.

Many people come to academia to get away from the frustration of petty, ineffective management only to find it just as entrenched here.

Re:the ivory tower

[Valar]

No, it is news because instead of framing the issue in terms of 'you are using our resources in an unauthorized way', they immediately came to him and asked him what illegal thing he had been doing. Do you see why people are upset? It is an example of the exercise of privacy been conflated with illegality and immorality. It is, in fact, one of the most fundamental rights.

WTF?

[DeeVeeAnt]

As TOR is a tool used by people to hide their internet activities from repressive regimes, and the USA is obviously not one, it's use should be repressed. QED.

Re:WTF?

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

nice troll.

the reason we have TOR is that so if i think we ARE living in a repressive regime, a**holes like yourself can't harm me for saying so.

Q E mutha-f'in D.

Re:WTF?

[wes33]

time to recalibrate your sarcasm meter maybe?

Re:WTF?

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

(it's possible you were outlining a paradox, if so, forget the post)

Re:the ivory tower

[Petrushka]

And, as others have pointed out already (though in different words), the expert on what to teach and how to teach it is ... well, let's say it's not the campus cops, it's not the IT department, and it's not the university management.

Bascially, in a commercial business, the employees are there to serve the business; but in a university, everyone is there to serve the professor's needs. (Or should be. That's not actually been the case at any university I've been to.) I get the feeling academic freedom is often a misnomer, really; the real issue is with bureaucrats not trusting the expertise of the experts.

Tor is not so effective

[iminplaya]

if its use can be detected.

Re:Tor is not so effective

[compro01]

the purpose of tor is not to hide that you're using tor. the purpose is to hide what you're doing and where you are. a man in the middle (IT in this instance) has no clue where you are going or what you are accessing and the server on the other end has no clue where you actually are.

Re:Tor is not so effective

[iminplaya]

the purpose of tor is not to hide that you're using tor...

I do understand that. That why I made the statement. Now tor has a second purpose, to hide its use entirely. It has to blend in better. If it's sending traffic over "unusual" ports for instance, it's going to raise alarms. It has to imbed itself into a meaningless google search for example. It needs to throw out lots of chaff to divert attention away from itself. It will make the connection even slower. Collateral damage in the fight for freedom on the net. Those limitations will be overcome.

Re:Tor is not so effective

[compro01]

they're working on it. they're only at 0.1.1.26, this is still heavy beta, give it time. Linux didn't spring up overnight either.

Re:Tor is not so effective

[compro01]

why can't the preview and submit buttons be further apart? i wasn't done yet...

anyway, look at the list of stuff they're working on and are requesting assitance with.

http://tor.eff.org/volunteer.html.en/

they've got a bunch of stuff planned, but stuff takes time. if you know what to do for any of the stuff, get in there and go at it!

Re:the ivory tower

[dcollins]

"Good for him, he had a reasonable chat with the detectives and they dropped it. I just cant stand the rhetoric about "rights" and "academic freedoms"... If the police visited him at home, because of his use of tor on his own connection that he paid for - then you got a story. But this guys a guest on someone elses network."

You clearly have a weak understanding of "academic freedom". It is the principal cornerstone of how our universities our structured, and how professors do their work.

This guy is NOT a "guest on someone elses network". It is HIS network (as a professor). Everything about the university is structured around providing the capacity for an academic to do his or her research. The Prime Directive of college life is that professors run the show, and everyone else is there to support them and disseminate their findings. It's not the other way around (although you may be trained to think the opposite in the context of modern workplaces).

More on what academic freedom represents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_freedom

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ dude, you really hate academics. Give the guy a break!

Surely we can agree that online anonymity is an important right, if for no other reason than this. If anonymity is outlawed, criminals will still have the ability to use other people's identities through botnets.

It's important that TOR exists, and it's not a left/right issue. Even the most diehard of conservatives would say that the machinery of democracy requires the public to be able to be anonymous if they wish. Conservatives can advocate civil liberties too, you know.

Extreme cherry picking?

[Dr. Cody]

Whoa--you are not dropping "cherry picking" in the middle of a sentence like that and getting away with it!

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because when it was written, security meant privacy and privacy meant toilet, and back them toilets were disgusting things you didn't talk about in public.

Re:This is academic freedom?

[Spy der Mann]

wasn't aware that "Academic Freedom" meant sucking up as much resources as you can use.

How much is much? As much as the congress? As much as SPAM? As much as the MAFIAA (TM)? As much as George Bush?

The fact that the professor was threatened er... given "friendly advice" is the very reason for promoting even more privacy.

Re:the ivory tower

[__aagmrb7289]

Repeats deserve repeats, sometimes. Note the parent in both cases. :) Nice to know SOMEONE is paying attention.

Re:the ivory tower

[mungtor]

"So, is it the IT folks network?"

Yes. Because they are the ones ultimately responsible when there are problems with it. They are the one who deal with the security breaches and all the other bullshit that the "elite" professors and "uber" students bring in. If you work in IT, and you have any professional integrity or even a decent work ethic, it is _your_ network.

Must be an American thing

[sn00ker]

I'm at the largest university in New Zealand, and all we have are campus security. The concept of "campus police" is entirely foreign to me, and to both my fellow students and my colleagues (I work for the Computer Science department as well as studying). Hell we don't even see uniformed cops on campus routinely.

Other than a lot of theft of bicycles (I lost two in six months), there's not all that much crime on campus. Lots of drugs, I'm sure, but bad things happening to people are pretty rare. We're more than adequately served by the same police stations that protect the rest of Auckland City.

Of course, we are a country that doesn't even have permanently-armed police officers. Quite why we would devolve policing functions to employees of some private institution is completely beyond me. I suspect, though, that not even the likes of Cambridge or Oxford would have their own police forces. The notion of letting non-state employees enforce the law seems to be quite uniquely American, witness their gun-toting security guards who patrol gated communities.

Re:the ivory tower

[Sam Nitzberg]

I remember some time back a comparison of a number of universities by their computer-access and use policies. Some were very open and permissive for students, others were severely limiting. This sort of thing could be one more factor in helping prospective students determine which school is right for them.
I think this also sends a message about what students may expect on the network. At many universities, students will expect (and have) almost total freedom as long as their actions are benign. Included in this is a recognition that they may largely utilize the Internet without unnecessary restriction or undue scrutiny. I suspect at this university, they can't assume a right to privacy on their transactions, or even a presumption of anonymity should they desire it. Some universities provide this - as long as students don't interfere with the basic function of the network, or necessary operations don't require inspection of their network traffic.
I also think this uniersity might be taking the easist approach. A thoughtful approach to network security incorporating network sensors and intrusion detection packages could very well largely mitigate risks they are concerned about, especially with an appropriate overall security architecture - which their campus may - or may very well not - have in place.

what about /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, /. won't let users log in from tor either. Not even from non-exit tor nodes.

Seems like a wee bit of a double standard, no?

Not insightful, merely repeating University line.

[jbn-o]

Merely repeating the University's capricious and overreaching-on-uncertainties line is hardly insightful. Bringing hardcopies of a text doesn't imply having read and understood that text. Universities ought to understand this concept, what with all the students toting their mostly unread textbooks around campus.

As for who's unsure: One can reasonably infer that the detectives and network-security technician probably hadn't read or completely understood the policy, certainly not as well as the professor who helped write it. But they seemed sure in the professor's description of what happened when they first brought the complaint to the professor:

The detectives and network-security technician listened patiently to me, wearing their best poker faces. They then gave me a copy of the university's responsible-use policy, which employees must agree to abide by when we first sign up for our e-mail accounts. They pointed out that my actions violated at least three provisions of that policy.

In the paragraph following this one, it was the professor who said the policy was vague. The visitors may have been less sure by the time they left, but a larger issue had arisen by then.

Don't ever step up to defend the actions of someone who asks you not to teach someone something new as these visitors asked of the professor when they requested "that I stop using Tor, and that I avoid covering it in class". This is flatly unacceptable anywhere in society and should be anathema at a University.

Too many people who frequent /. don't appreciate freedom—note the number of people who champion the "open source" lines about adopting and recommending non-free/proprietary software—but the professor's conclusion should not be overlooked here. This is about academic freedom and we would all do well to work to spread awareness and defense of it.

Re:Poor Quality Slashdot Editing

[causality]

Another typical Slashdot "editing" job. Was the university mentioned? Nope.

All these words were wasted to tell us about what happened, but a significant detail such as the name of the university was never mentioned, even though such a mention would help tremendously in putting pressure on the unnamed university to reverse their policy.

I can't believe people get paid to do basically nothing.

I tell you what else is typical of Slashdot. If I post a comment like this, I quickly get modded down as "off-topic" (never fucking mind that the article and summary we are reading is on-topic for the discussion - hey guess what mods, "I don't like that he said that" is not the same thing as "this is off-topic") but if an Anonymous Coward posts a comment like this, he/she gets modded up.

The summary was indeed rather shitty to omit that vital piece of information. The one and only solution to that is to write better summaries, not to abuse the moderation system to punish people who point this out.

I probably should have posted this anonymously, but I pity the mod who must mod me down for speaking my mind on-topic because they really truly can't find a good article to mod up, which is a much better use of those scarce mod points. In other words, I expect this one to sit at -1 in short order.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[Kozz]

What if I replace the word TOR with the word "internet". Do you see why your post doesn't make sense?

If your only experience with Tor was having to clean up an exploited website, wouldn't your first reaction be, "Fuck you, Tor" ?

Bit torrent gets throttled because it is a bandwidth hog, not because its often used for copyright infringement. If that was the issue, it would be blocked totally in the places where it is throttled instead.

Bit torrent gets blocked when a network admin is annoyed with the side-effects: both bandwidth usage and one's cover-your-ass instinct.

What exactly is your point? Shit gets abused all the time.

My point is this: Tor is something used only by a small number of people (a guess). Network administrators and such might see Tor as something which provides them with no value, but great liability. Why, then, would they want to keep it around? It's not nearly as entrenched as e-mail (which certainly has its own problems). It's easy to see why they'd want to eliminate it.

Re:the ivory tower

[bogjobber]

If the police visited him at home, because of his use of tor on his own connection that he paid for - then you got a story. But this guys a guest on someone elses network. If I let you connect to my AP, then I reserve every right to tell you I don't want you using tor, or kazaa, or bittorrent, or playing WoW, or what the hell ever.

The difference is that you're not a publicly funded university with obligations to free speech and academic freedom. So while, I agree it's not the end of the world, it still is newsworthy. They had no right to tell him to stop using tor, especially as he was researching it to teach in his class. Using tor should not be "suspicious behavior" and require a visit from a campus detective.

Re:the ivory tower

[Anonymous Coward]

If I use it over my ISP's network, I'm paying to do so. That gives me some rights under my contract with my ISP; in a certain sense, the network *is* mine in the same way that the apartment I live in is mine. I don't own the apartment or the network connection - I rent both - but as long as I keep paying my rent, I'm legally entitled to something that works out to be very much like ownership.

Bravo-At all $$$

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually last year a popular news program came to the conclusion that a lot of the cost of medical care can be traced to the "save me at all costs" mentality. An undertsandable mentality (who doesn't want everything humanly possible to be done when they're sick?). However it's not a sustainable mentality. Some hard decisions are going to have to be made. Also IMHO I think that a lot of the publics approach to health care is reactive, instead of proactive. We wait till we are ill before doing something, instead of living a good clean life, and then dealing with the much smaller number of situations were any form of health care would be effective. In other words the system is being overwelmed, and it doesn't matter what kind of system you have. e.g. socialism, capitalism, etc.*

*I lean more towards a blend of minimum socialism with a layer of free market were I can shop for my medical care, and pay for it out of my pretax dollars, with catastrophic (shared risk) for the most extreme medical conditions. e.g. insurance. This does put a burden on me to manage my affairs properly, but then that's the way all things should be, unless I want to pay someone else to manage. e.g. a funds manager, pensions, etc. Freedom will always have a price. That's mine.

Re:the ivory tower

[StikyPad]

Now, that is not to say that the University is not allowed to draft up a reasonable set of rules.

Well that's always the problem, isn't it? Defining reasonable.

Bat#*($# Insane

[The Second Horseman]

I'm a systems and network administrator at a University. Frankly, we'd never dream of doing this to anyone on campus (faculty, staff or student). Unless there was compelling evidence of illegal activity, or activity that had a serious impact on the network, we leave them alone. Even staff - supervising staff is their manager's job, not the responsibility of the IT group. If he was sharing his password and outside folks were crowding up the terminal server, or he was running a warez site, sure. But this?

Here's a legit situation I can see coming up - if a faculty person was somehow using 90% of our internet bandwidth, we'd have to have a chat. Sure, it might be for their research, but that doesn't matter in that case. It's a shared resource, there's a limited (by the University) budget, and it's not an academic freedom issue. It might be convenient for one of the physics faculty to have a supercollider as well, but it's not in the University's budget. You have to partner with someone outside, or get grants, etc. Every instituation has limits and priorities.

But this? This is bizarre. The only awkward situation I can think of in some states is that state schools can fall under open records laws that require that the public can check on certain information (in some states, browser histories have come up in the past). In that case, as a state employee, they might be violating the open records law by going out of their way to hide their activity. Hell, even under a Patriot Act search, we'd have to give them whatever information we had about a user, but we're not obligated to keep information to track back every outbound internet connection - even under CALEA. We probably can't link a PAT assignment on the outside of our firewall to an inside machine for more than a couple of days, at best We just don't have the space to keep the logs.

Re:Bat#*($# Insane

[alienmole]

Nice to hear that sanity still exists inside the walls of our fine educational institutions.

The irony of this case is mind-boggling: a teacher being investigated for using the tools that he's going to be teaching about. Didn't any of those people, walking over to see the prof, think to themselves "wait, this is a university... why are we investigating one of our profs for communicating over a network?"

peeve: "vast" majority

[David Gould]

I can't stand how the word "majority" has in recent years disappeared from our language and been replaced by the phrase " vast majority" (at least in any context that's even remotely political).

This may sound like mere linguistic pedantry, but it really isn't -- this usage both feeds, and is part of, the trend toward polarization and "extremification" (yes, afaik, I just made up that word) of political discourse. When you claim not just a majority but a vast majority, you're doing more than just adding emphasis: you're actively marginalizing the other side (by implying that they're not just a minority but a tiny, insignificant minority).

And it's self-escalating: it creates a sort of "linguistic arms race", where "everyone else does it", so people feel compelled to tack on the "vast", lest it sound like their side is only a mere "majority". But that just leads to linguistic inflation: when (almost) everyone says "vast", it loses its meaning, sending everyone scrambling to find ever-more-emphatic (and more insulting) modifiers, like "overwhelming".

It may seem to make your argument sound a bit stronger, but the constant minor insults don't help us get anywhere closer to building true consenus. After all, wouldn't the overwhelming majority prefer to see a political arena with more true communication and less poo-flinging?

Re:peeve: "vast" majority

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent points, well stated.

Re:the ivory tower

[Copid]

Harmless according to the Tor user? This assumes that the Tor user is not pursuing illegal activities, but no one knows since it's Tor. Who's to say if he wasn't running a Tor server, allowing external users use of the university's resources? Who's to say the external users aren't kiddie porn sickos?

Indeed. In fact, who's to say he's not conducting illegal drug deals over his office phone when the door is closed? Wait a minute. How do I know that you're not doing something terrible right now. The implications of my uncertainty are staggering!

Answer: mutual aid

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the term 'mutual aid', then look up anarchism and libertarian socialism. No, it's the complete opposite of Russion/Chinese communism, that is, anti-statist socialism.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[Viceroy Potatohead]

On the surface, this seems reasonable. But it's garbage. It's similar to saying someone who's been abused as a kid is more likely to abuse, so it's reasonable to restrict the rights of everyone who was abused, or at least place them under suspicion of wrong-doing). Or saying blacks have a higher probability of committing a crime (sure, it's bound to happen during some periods), so it's appropriate to be suspicious of black people. Or whites have a higher rate (sure, it's bound to happen during some periods)...

Sandbagging a moment in history, isn't really fair, or just. Nor is questioning the legitimacy of someone's behaviour, based on what someone else is doing, especially on such limited datasets

Post Disclaimer:

Sorry if this comes across as inflamatory, due to the nature of my examples. They seem illustrative to me, and no offense is meant. I'll take the modding if I have to.

Tor is applied democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Without the right to express yourself without fear of censorship, democracy cannot exist. Tor is a fundamental tool of democracy and accepting its use is a true test for a democratic government. Those who criticize it are directly criticizing the Constitution of the United States of America.

"Those countries"?

[Rob Simpson]

I think he needs to add another country to his list. And find a better technology.

Re:the ivory tower

[GameMaster]

That, particular, sentence wasn't, directly, referring to the article. It was responding to the Parent poster's premise that no-one really needs to run Tor. The whole point of Tor is trying to ensure privacy (from overly invasive governments/agencies, corporate data-miners, etc.). The general attitude expressed by the parent and others is that we should be allowed to make serious attempts to ensure out privacy and I was trying to point out that attitudes like that seem to be in direct opposition to the concept of having a right to privacy (which, many, people believe is protected by the US Constitution).

-GameMaster

Bravo-Unlimited freedom isn't free.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Porn? Well... guess what... someone may be doing acedemic research into porn and needs to access porn sites."

Works well at those private catholic universities.

"It was debated because well... what if someone had a legitimate acedemic need to recieve viruses in email?"

Biotech-U.

"No firewalls, no filtering... unfettered access, because if someone needs it, they need it."

I need a spam relay. Can you accommodate me?

Who funded Tor? That's right, the good old US of A

[turing_m]

While I'm not sure whether this was the case or not, it pays to be aware that Tor, while OSS, was originally funded by the Naval Research Laboratory. So it is probably wise to use Tor with the assumption that the NSA can probably still see what it is you are getting up to.

I read the following on wikipedia, and it gels with what I remember from reading the Tor site many moons ago:

"Tor is not suitable for protection against observation when the observer has access to both ends of the communication, for example a government with access to a large number of Internet service providers."

Not that I think Tor is any worse than those private anonymity proxy servers, where in addition to letting the NSA read your stuff, you also let another questionable private entity read your stuff, and you can't see their source code or logs.

Re:question...

[compro01]

tor encrypted packets practically scream that tor is being used. the thing with tor is that they (IT) don't have the slightest clue what or where he is accessing and the place/thing that he is accessing has no clue where he is.

Bravo-The other side of freedom.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a question for you. Do you think that freedom means that actions shouldn't have responsabilities or even consequences? Everyone here talks about freedom this, and freedom that. But I've noticed the large hole known as "a discussion on the responsabilites and consequences that go with freedom". Now why do you think that is? I don't expect an answer, and silence would say far more than any words.

BGSU's IT usage policies

[harpune]

A little digging on BGSU's website comes up with what is likely the actual policies:

http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/cio/file9602.pdf

12. Attempting to circumvent computer system or computer network security systems. Attempting to circumvent University computer system or computer network security systems, or using University computer systems or computer networks in attempting to circumvent security systems elsewhere.
and

22. Anonymous use, or use of pseudonyms on a computer system or computer network to escape responsibility. No person shall use a computer system or computer network anonymously or use pseudonyms to attempt to escape from prosecution of laws or regulations, or otherwise to escape responsibility for their actions.

Now, the first one seems like it is worded vaguely and may or may not apply in this situation, but the second one is pretty clear: as long as you are using anonymity services "to escape responsibility". Clearly, the professor was not trying to skirt the law or detection for any shady behaviour. of course, in the eyes of admins, allowing any use of such anonymizers could be dangerous to their network, and make their jobs harder.

I take most issue to the detectives' request that the professor refrain from discussing Tor in his classes. It would be academically unethical for the prof to bend to this pressure because a little pressure was put on him by the rent-a-cops. The detectives can ask the professor to do whatever they want, but dictating what he can and cannot teach in his classroom is inappropriate.

Re:BGSU's IT usage policies

[Anonymous Coward]

I should point out that in no way was I attempting to use the network anonymously, despite infrequently using Tor. Even with Tor activated, my IT department could still see my IP address, which is associated with my laptop, which is of course associated with me. So, since I intentionally made no attempt to hide the fact that it was me using Tor, they could easily trace it directly back to me, which is what they did (hence, the visit to my office). They simply could not see what web sites I was visiting while I was using Tor, but they still could see that I was using it.

Re:BGSU's IT usage policies

[harpune]

You should point that out to all the people who say "if they found out who he was, how good can Tor be?"

Research on the Admin's part??

[yintercept]

On my read of the article it sounds like the network admins were going to talk the to the professor about TOR, and were not out to bust the dude. The second thing to note in the article is that this Paul Cesarini seemed to realize that TOR would be a problem for the University admins if a large number of people started using it.

I can't tell if the admins in this article were the goons that many of the posts in this thread assume that they were. For example, it is completely apropriate for an administrator to ask someone to cease an activity until they have a policy in place. That is not a denial of academic freedom.

Related to Network Neutrality

[yintercept]

The relation university's have with there network is somewhat amusing in light of the network neutrality debate. American Universities have this massive government funded network with bandwidth up the wazoo that fills all of us in the private sector with envy.

The administrators of these networks share a single minded passion. They do not want commercial activities taking place on their precious little taxpayer funded socialized network heaven. Widespread use of Tor might make avenues where commericial traffic gets in sullies the university backbone with commercial traffic.

It is really funny because professors will come out and spit venom about the idea of a telephone company breaking net neutrality, but will turn a strange shade of blue if you were to suggest that university servers should be neutral and allow commerce on the internet meant exclusively for university traffic.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[asuffield]

Bit torrent gets throttled because it is a bandwidth hog

Smart ISPs do not throttle bittorrent. They just throttle everything.

Attempting to distinguish between protocols for this sort of thing, when you're in an ISP role, is ineffective, wasteful, and dumb. Users will always evade your hostile attempts to classify their traffic. Traffic classification only works with the cooperation of at least one of the participants, which ISPs do not have in this instance.

If the problem is bandwidth usage, set realistic bandwidth limits and don't sell bandwidth that you don't have. Selling bandwidth that you don't have is fraud. Advertising bandwidth rates and then setting lower limits for certain protocols is fraud. People get prosecuted for this kind of nonsense all the time.

The point: people who talk about a protocol being abused are more or less always wrong. It is not about the protocols. (Yes, that makes these university networks admins wrong, and also dumb)

Something to hide?

[jandersen]

What you say is true, up to a point. When I'm asked if I have something to hide, I have to answer 'Yes - my privacy'.

It is good to hear that this is important in the US, that the majority shouldn't lose their freedom because there may be a minorty who would misuse. If only this fairness was extended to others as well, like people 'suspected' of terrorism. I'm not talking about letting people off the hook easily, but about fairness, you know the thing that legal justice was supposed to be all about, which is enshrined in such principles as being told what the charges and evidence against you are, so you have the chance to defend yourself. The principle that you are innocent until PROVEN guilty in a court of law etc.

Bowling Green State University

[lilmouse]

although, if someone wanted to, they could probably figure out where the guy in the article works, and find the policy from there

He work at Bowling Green State University (bgsu.edu) (in Ohio). The IT acceptable use policy is at http://www.bgsu.edu/its/page9605.html

--LWM

ps - whooooooo telling campus police to p*ss off!

Right, it's like GNU vs. BSD

[Captain Tripps]

Laissez-Faire capitalism is in one sense the most free because it puts least restriction on the players in the market. It's sort the of BSD approach to running an economy. But that form of capitalism isn't stable. It inevitably seems to lead to an imbalance, as the rich and powerful leverage their existing success to give themselves an advantage in gaining more money and power.

Thus, during the 20th century, we moved over to a regulated system, that tries to use the law to enforce principles of political freedom. We sacrificed freedom of action for the developers (corporations and lobbyists) to preserve certain rights of the users (consumers and workers). This represents a GNU-style of "free" market.

From this analysis, we can conclude once and for all that the GPL is superior. Join us now, hackers, and you'll be free!

Re:the ivory tower

[Fulcrum of Evil]

So, what is this fundamental flaw, a forkbomb? I seriously can't think of anything, aside from DOS attacks.

Re:the ivory tower

[Alsee]

The only time it's "your" network is when you have two of your own computers on your own LAN, and a tor router between them.

... because you don't want the toaster to find out you're taking to the living room home entertainment center in the middle of the night from your bedroom.

-

Off topic, but...

[jwdb]

for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

Try garlic for the cholesterol. I have a great uncle who had a serious cholesterol problem (he was a butcher, might have something to do with it) and he managed to improve it significantly by regularly eating a whole ball of garlic. It's apparently great roasted in the oven with some toast.

Can't guarantee it won't affect your social life, though.

Who's that trip trapping over my bridge

[DeeVeeAnt]

Apology accepted, easy on that trigger finger cowboy. How would you recognize a repressive regime? Possibly one that indulges in repression?

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

If your only experience with Tor was having to clean up an exploited website, wouldn't your first reaction be, "Fuck you, Tor" ?

Given that Tor connections are a subset of internet connections, and that non-Tor internet connections are used all the time for illegal activities such as what you describe, I do not really agree. I think your response is a bit irrational.

Bit torrent gets blocked when a network admin is annoyed with the side-effects: both bandwidth usage and one's cover-your-ass instinct.

Thats not true. Heard of the common carrier laws? An ISP is not responsible for the illegal activities of its users. Why did you mention bittorrent throttling when such throttling obviously has nothing to do with the illegal uses of bittorent? You don't throttle something that you feel is so 'illegal' that you would rather not have in the first place.

My point is this: Tor is something used only by a small number of people (a guess). Network administrators and such might see Tor as something which provides them with no value, but great liability. Why, then, would they want to keep it around? It's not nearly as entrenched as e-mail (which certainly has its own problems). It's easy to see why they'd want to eliminate it.

Tor clients are not a liability. If a Tor user does something nefarious, nobody is going to know who did it anyway!

Apache on playboy.com

[mcvos]

Until quite recently, there was a mirror of Apache's maven repository on playboy.com. We found out because someone on the Apache/Cocoon mailinglist complained that his employer blocked access to a randomly assigned mirror.

Hear, hear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Your post is absolutely the most perceptive comment that I have ever seen on the single most grossly misleading political PR technique of the entire millenium. I concur wholeheartedly and without reservation, and so do all my imaginary friends.

But seriously, yes, it's damned annoying, and for what it's worth, I too wish people would remember how to argue a case using clear, objective, non-inflammatory language.

Re:Hear, hear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Damn, I can't spell millennium. I suck. Sorry.

here's reality

[budgenator]

third party health care payor are in the middle and competing at both ends; here's what frequently happens. Company A may pay a higher reasonable and customary fee to the provider (95%), but they may also demand that the provider accepts the payment, this means the provide can not charge the patient the difference between what the insurance pays and what the provider's normally charges and has to write-off the difference. Company A may also play games by"losing claims" at random and especially near end-of-month, end-of quarter or end-of-year; they also reject about 10% for no appearent reason. Company B pays less, 75%, but actually pays without playing games and allow the provider to collect the difference from the patient. Now your the doctor, who are you going to deal with? some companies have more patients to send you, some have less; for some you may be the only provider and will get more than you can handle. Some companies have higher quality patients, you know ones that actually cooperate with treatment, show up for appointments and on time and appreciate the work your doing, others get the lower quality patients that no-show with out notice, don't participate with the care and blame the provide for not have a magic wand to make everything instantly all right. That's how the Medical/Dental business works.

Re:the ivory tower

[Tim C]

The school still has every right to direct what he teaches at thier institution.

The school does, the IT department does not. According to TFA, it was a "network-security technician" that made the request, accompanied by campus security.

Re:the ivory tower

[simm1701]

It should be perfectly reasonable to ban the use of red or green network cables being used to connect to the network!!

Just think, the network manager trying to see which computer connected the the 4 port hub in the dorm room might be colour blind!

DMCA?

[woolio]

At my university, they even have a special contact for DMCA-related issues!

I usually fire them a nice little email when I think a spammer has copied the entire directory (which is copyrighted, probably as a collection).

The spam tends to go away but the DMCA people never reply...

Re:the ivory tower

[Alchemar]

That is like saying that because the police enforce the law, they are the ones that get to dictate what it is. I know that is what happens more than it should in the real world, but that does not make it right or correct. The network does not "own" the network because he has been hired to manage it anymore than your mechanic owns your car because he was hired to fix it. You mechanic might suggest that your particular driving style is causing excessive wear and tear, but he doesn't have the right to enforce it. I still hold to my position that if you are using a network, that network is your under the condition of the contract that you use it under. If they list you have a specific bandwidth, but failed to stipulate in the contract for what services, then having the IT director restricting those services is a change in contract, and the contract needs to be renegotiated. More componies need to get the IT directors input before the network was loaned, leased, or sold, but their failure to do so does not give the IT director supreme authority.

The purpose of a campus police force.

[Kludge]

The primary purpose of the "campus police" (as once explained to me by a campus officer) is to pick up the drunk, unruly college students before the city police do.

Distinction Between Natural and Invented Rights

[Garrett Fox]

I've heard this before, and disagree partly because it ignores a distinction between a respect for the freedom of the individual that exists by default (in Locke's "state of nature") and a "right" to take things by force from other people.

That is, under a social contract theory of government, each person gives up some range of the things they would be able to do under anarchy, such as shooting anyone who annoys them. A relatively small government takes away only a limited range of that freedom of action, creating a framework of rules by which people can form enforceable contracts and protect themselves from violence. The purpose of that framework is to protect the remainder of individuals' freedom. A large and intrusive government does something fundamentally different: it invents new rights to receive goods and services at others' expense. Taxation -- taking wealth by force -- becomes not just a necessary evil to fund basic regulation of society, but a way of redistributing wealth.

So, failing to distinguish between a right not to be robbed and a right to rob others seems to me a failure to distinguish between what we could plausibly call "natural rights" and a series of invented rights. These invented rights actually limit individual freedom rather than protecting it.

(See Frederic Bastiat's The Law.)

Re:Distinction Between Natural and Invented Rights

[miskatonic alumnus]

I've heard this before, and disagree partly because it ignores a distinction between a respect for the freedom of the individual that exists by default (in Locke's "state of nature") and a "right" to take things by force from other people.

This distinction is arbitrary. How is it any different if you lose your freedom because I club you over the head, or mother nature does it with some disease? You attach a special significance to the former case, but not the latter. Either way, you've lost your freedom. What's really important here: what happens to you, or what is responsible for it?

Re:Distinction Between Natural and Invented Rights

[Garrett Fox]

The difference is in whether you can negotiate. You can't sign a non-aggression pact with nature, or with a violent beast that can't or won't negotiate (a category that includes some H. sapiens). The only options against those things are to surrender, run or fight. Dealing with civilized humans allows the non-aggression pact as a better option. So again, there's a fundamental difference: is the enemy something you could negotiate with?

Getting back to rights and health care, there are some basic freedoms -- abilities -- that exist by virtue of a person being alive, like the abilities to move around and speak. When we codify these things as "rights" we're just setting limits on what anyone is allowed to do to anyone else, as individuals or as agents of the state. When an axe murderer is going around killing people, someone who's part of that social contract is breaking it. When a virus is killing people, there's no violation, because viruses aren't people! So, demanding police protection at taxpayers' expense is just part of that elaborate non-aggression pact with other people. Demanding health care at their expense (or education, or free cars, or bread and circuses...) is something new and different because it doesn't fall within the scope of protecting the individual's natural rights from other people.

What you could argue is that once that social contract is created, people can and should collectively give up more of their freedom for the sake of getting goods and services. But that's a different issue from whether "the right not to be sworded" and "the right to force others to give you medical treatment" are in the same category.

As a side note, your earlier saying that "there is no absolute reason carved on a stone somewhere" and therefore all rights are arbitrary is probably one of the reasons that religious folk criticize secular morality. Attacking the Enlightenment-era version of natural rights, so that there's no philosophical footing at all for a rule against shootin' and killin', is likely to scare some people into wanting religiously-imposed moral rules that look solid and virtuous on the surface.

Re:Distinction Between Natural and Invented Rights

[miskatonic alumnus]

First of all, thanks for the intelligent responses. I can understand your point of view.

What makes this topic so difficult to argue is that many folks have unidentified prejudices. For example, I once argued with someone about marijuana legalization -- I advocated it. She said it was wrong because it was against the law. I countered that laws are mutable. She argued that it is bad for your health. I countered that there were mountains of evidence to indicate that at worst marijuana was no worse for you than cigarettes, which are still legal. In fact, I countered every argument she made except for one: she finally said "Well, there MUST be something wrong with it." And here we arrive at the crucial point of the debate. She took it as axiomatic that smoking marijuana was wrong and should be illegal. There is no compelling argument I could make to counter that fundamental assumption.

Similarly, aristocrats might take it as axiomatic that some people are better than others by virtue of what family they are born into. Racists may take it as axiomatic that some people are better than others by virtue of their skin color. Capitalists may take it as axiomatic that some people are better than others by virtue of the quality/quantity of their work. Barring any Gods who say otherwise, each of these is a valid point of view. Only if people have reached these outlooks by argument can they be convinced otherwise. But if they take these positions as axiomatic, you can say nothing to change their minds.

I feel that denying health care to the poor is incompatible with a point of view that places value on all human life. Furthermore, I call on those who don't value all human life to identify their prejudices, so I can see where they are really coming from. All this talk about natural rights is a diversion --- it sidesteps the actual issue since all these rights are arbitrary. Should the poor be denied health care? What about African-Americans? What about Jews? What about women?

As a side note, your earlier saying that "there is no absolute reason carved on a stone somewhere" and therefore all rights are arbitrary is probably one of the reasons that religious folk criticize secular morality. Attacking the Enlightenment-era version of natural rights, so that there's no philosophical footing at all for a rule against shootin' and killin', is likely to scare some people into wanting religiously-imposed moral rules that look solid and virtuous on the surface.

Religious people can't argue from a position of moral high-ground either. For example, I seem to recall from the Old Testament that slavery was A-OK with YHWH as long as the right people were slaves --- in other words, it advocated racism. There are many other examples.

Re:Distinction Between Natural and Invented Rights

[miskatonic alumnus]

Getting back to rights and health care, there are some basic freedoms -- abilities -- that exist by virtue of a person being alive, like the abilities to move around and speak. When we codify these things as "rights" we're just setting limits on what anyone is allowed to do to anyone else, as individuals or as agents of the state. When an axe murderer is going around killing people, someone who's part of that social contract is breaking it.

Consider this in your analysis: Are the unemployed a party to the social contract? After all, they don't surrender taxes to uphold their part of the contract. Therefore, why can I not go around killing hobos and welfare moms? If they don't uphold their end of the deal, why are they afforded the same protections as taxpayers?

Re:Distinction Between Natural and Invented Rights

[Garrett Fox]

Consider this in your analysis: Are the unemployed a party to the social contract? After all, they don't surrender taxes to uphold their part of the contract. Therefore, why can I not go around killing hobos and welfare moms? If they don't uphold their end of the deal, why are they afforded the same protections as taxpayers?

Because they're still presumably following the basic rules of not hurting anyone else. If they actually do attack people, then we punish them. As for their not following the "advanced rules" of working and paying taxes, we don't actually demand that of everyone in exchange for police protection. We only demand that they pay whatever taxes are assigned to them (often, none) and find some way of living that doesn't involve theft (but which can include any welfare we set up).

On drugs and religion: Right on. On identifying biases, I'd consider questioning the framework you set up to suggest that "natural rights" theory and capitalism are no better than racism and nobility, but it's a little late at night for that! Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

Verra Nice .. if it only worked

[Toad-san]

All this is very interesting. Too bad Tor doesn't work as advertised. Just installed it on my Win2K system, plugged in the Firefox plugin .. and lost my Internet. Privoxy pops up, says I have no connectivity (doh), says it might just be temporary (it's not) .. not very useful.

Settings mean nothing to me, defaults should work but don't. Disable Tor (via the handy button at the bottom right of Firefox's screen) and all is working again.

So much for privacy.

Mod parent funny.

[ah.clem]

Pretty much puts all this self-righteous finger-pointing/name calling in the proper perspective. Thanks for the mid-morning laugh.

ah.clem

Just block Tor

[Skapare]

OK, I admit I don't know much about Tor. I know what its role is and what it does. I don't know anything about the protocol, such as what ports are used. But it seems to me that if the IT department network people know how to selectively log it (which means they know more about it than I do), then perhaps they can just block it at the firewall (if they believe any use of it whatsoever will somehow destroy the campus network ... which is silly). If they are concerned that excessive use of Tor would somehow overload the campus network with traffic that they cannot determine is acceptable use or not, then why not just bandwidth throttle it to something like 2% of the connectivity bandwidth, which could allow the legitimate uses but effectively discourage the uses the policy is probably focused on (pirating copyrighted content and spewing out tons of spam).

Bravo, now what does the school have to say.

[budgenator]

If the school sends someone to ask him not to do something specific with those things, then his reaction should be, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I'll stop now." The school has every right to do so. They also have the right to ask him not to cover the topic in the class. These are the people paying his salary, and if they don't want this going on, they can tell him to stop.
I think the point is not that the school is asking him to do anything, it's the school's IT department along with the school's rent-a-cops. We don't know what the school want's only what some of the school's employees want an other school employee to do. Finding out what the School wants is going to be like mating elephants, it'll be noisy, it'll take place at a high level, it'll take two years to produce results, and the mice are likely to be trampled and the IT dept and the rent-a-cops are most likely to be the mice.

Fight Google With This?

[Nom du Keyboard]

Can Tor successfully fight Google logging all your search queries? More than once now, Google -- who are reported to have a database of every query ever made to their search engine -- have given police lists of searches made from a given computer. Would Tor stop them from being able to do this? Would this destroy a valuable asset of Google if Tor became widely used?

Society and Government

[Khammurabi]

Likewise, why should life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be rights?

If you do not believe these ideals to be "rights", I ask you to whom would you entrust these things on your behalf? What guarantee is there that the entrusted entity would not abuse these things you have given unto them? I find it difficult to believe that the best protector of one's own life, liberty and happiness is another party or entity.

Why should you have a right to physical property?

If I do not own property, who does? Who has the right to say what can and can not happen to a piece of property? If the governing body reserves the right to seize anything at anytime, what motive is there for me to accomplish anything in life? "Someone" or "something" _always_ has the right to physical property (except in cases of great abundance), and I find it difficult to believe that if it were centralized in a governing body of a few individuals it would not become abused.

Why should you have a right to move as you please, go where you want, under your own free will?

Your body belongs to you and you alone. Who is restricting you from movement? Is everyone being restricted equally? If it is a governing body, why was it granted this power over you by your peers?

Society craves security, which is different from protection. "Security" is a concept where if something "bad" befalls a person in society, society will punish the offending individual. "Prevention" usually refers to steps to deter a repeat of the "bad", with the most effective steps being the least involved ones. While "protection" is the misguided belief that all "bad" can be prevented from happening in the first place.

In many times and places, people didn't have these rights.

In many times and places, the governing body of a society was not actually put in place by that society. Enacting change on the existing government is difficult, and overthrowing a governing body is very very daunting. So these hardships are suffered because they seem tolerable compared to the alternative. If everyone were to rise up at once, it would change. But no one wants to be the first to rise up, and to remain alone.

Re:Society and Government

[Garrett Fox]

Well said. See also my own reply to Miskatonic. Re: the problem of no one wanting to be the first to rebel, have you heard of this group, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict? One of its founders gave a speech at my school explaining the group's mission to promote peaceful resistance against oppressive governments. (Lots of swag including a computer game the group has put out; see link.) One example he cited of how people have overcome the problem was a case of signaling: someone put out the word that those opposing the government should bang pots and pans out their windows on a certain day. So many people did it, and were hard enough to identify, that it was a relatively low-risk way for people to discover how much support a resistance movement had. Finding people willing to take action is sort of a Prisoner's Dilemma problem, and sharing information and building trust are ways of getting to a shared-victory outcome.

Re:Society and Government

[miskatonic alumnus]

If I do not own property, who does?

That depends on what type of government you live under. There have been many societies where property rights are denied or severely restricted to certain classes of people.

Who has the right to say what can and can not happen to a piece of property?

Maybe the ruling class under a faux-communist government, or an aristocratic government. "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"

If the governing body reserves the right to seize anything at anytime, what motive is there for me to accomplish anything in life?

Why should your motives be the concern of any person other than yourself? Does the world revolve around you? Imprisonment, torture, murder of your loved ones can serve to motivate you. These have been used before by certain oppressive governments, and are probably still used today. Democracy is not a foundation upon which all societies are built.

Your body belongs to you and you alone.

Really??? Maybe you should step outside your insulated little sphere of existence and examine how people live (have lived) under tyranny and slavery. Hell, before Roe vs. Wade women in the U.S. couldn't legally have abortions. Even now, I can't legally light up a marijuana cigarette in the privacy of my own home. Under times of war, people can be drafted into service. So don't give me this demonstrably false bullshit that your body belongs to you --- it doesn't.

Re:Society and Government

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I do not own property, who does?"

The strongest.

"Who has the right to say what can and can not happen to a piece of property?"

The strongest.

"Your body belongs to you and you alone. Who is restricting you from movement?"

The strongest.

"If it is a governing body, why was it granted this power over you by your peers? "

Because both you and your peers agreed to be so, so sharing this commonality you and your peers can become "the strongest".

"If the governing body reserves the right to seize anything at anytime, what motive is there for me to accomplish anything in life?"

On one hand, if the strongest reserves the right to seize anything at anytime, what motive is there your you to acomplish anything in life? Still, while terribly imperfect, this society clearly shows that people find some motives, since we are not (to some extent) within the realm of the law of the jungle on civilized countries (in fact, that they are not under the law of the jungle is what defines such countries as civilized).

On the other hand, you seem to forget about a tiny circumnstance: it is not you vs. the government; on a republic *you* are the government. There is no way to avoid the strongest to seize anything at anytime. There's simply No Way. But, by means of a democratic republic the individual makes his way to be the strongest that is able to seize anything at anytime... by means of a government. Think about it for a moment. Are you the strongest man you know (by a definition of "strongest" that fits on your society, which currently tends to mean "the richest")? Do you know of *any* way to avoid the strongest to go out with his will? Then, it's on your best interest to find a way to be you the strongest. You may try by means of a crudest free market (good luck) or you can try by means of a government that truly acts in your behalf (wasn't it Jefferson the one that talked about the prize of freedom being the perpetual vigilancy?)

"But no one wants to be the first to rise up, and to remain alone"

That is no less certain with regards to corporations than it is about governments. But regarding governments at least you got to vote each four years.

Re:the ivory tower

[illegalcortex]

Responsibility != Ownership

If you aren't the one who is paying for it, you don't own it. In the case of a university network, it is owned by a community of taxpayers , fee payers (students) and donation-makers. They EMPLOY people to be responsible for it. But they do not cede ownership to those people. Those people should constantly remember they are employees and are there to serve the owners, not the other way around.

Note that I don't claim the professor is an owner of the network. He is an employee as well and therefore on the same level as the IT folks, detectives, etc. As the article has pointed out, they tried to assert an authority over certain use that was never given to them. Until it is, they should butt the hell out.

Re:the ivory tower

[illegalcortex]

The other two replies to this comment have gone a long way towards restoring my faith that at least some people get it.

Re:the ivory tower

[Ernesto Alvarez]

You didn't get it right, Mr Coward.

The point in the GP post is that you don't own the Internet.
Let's assume that your point is 100% valid, and you 'own' your ISP's network.
You the use tor and your packets go through your ISP's network to the nearest point of presence (a big room where all ISPs meet), do you own it too?
Then your packets go thru an international link to a national network of another country. Do you own that too? Same when the packets enter the onion router, the routers are not yours, neither the networks they are on. Same about the exit point.

By definition, you use tor on someone else's network. That's precisely the idea: if you remained in your own network, with your own servers, using tor would make no sense.

Bravo-Double indention.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is not something that you have which is then removed, or a freedom curbed by government, but rather a service provided to you by others."

You know the above could be applied to content created by others. Musicians, directors, etc.

Re:the ivory tower

[scot4875]

I'm constantly bombarded with lefty bullshit propoganda (not that I'd prefer righty bullshit - I just wanted to learn calculus, chemistry, comp sci, and other subjects that deal in facts)

Then maybe you should have taken stuff like calculus, chemistry, and compilers instead of whatever poli-sci classes you must have been in.

Maybe it's just because I'm left-leaning myself, but I never really noticed a leftist bias when learning about linked lists or integrating by parts. There might have been a *tiny* bit of leftism in sociology when the professor mentioned that he thought that the "right to life" movement should be called "right to birth," seeing as how as soon as these kids are born, the right wingers don't want to have anything to do with them anymore. There might have also been a slightly liberal bias to ethics, since, well, liberalism is kind of grounded in ethics anyway.

all that happened was a cop came to talk to him about some suspicious behaviour he was engaged in.

It wasn't suspicious behavior. Period.

Once I was hanging around at night, waiting for a buddy, and a cop stopped to talk to me to ask what I was doing.

You should say "nothing." If the cop presses further, then don't be a cowardly douchebag and play his game -- tell him to piss off instead like a responsible citizen.

--Jeremy

How to read percentages.

[twitter]

the statistics used also seem to show that 24% of Linux machines are also part of botnets?

No, they show that 0.092% of Linux machines are in a botnet, if we can trust the poster. His link to marketshare did not work but his numbers were:

OS Market Share(Percent) Botnet(Percent)
Windows 93.87 23.47
Mac 5.67 1.42
Linux 0.37 0.09
Other 0.09 0.02

The way you want to look at it, the botnet numbers should add to 100%. They don't, so the numbers don't mean what you want them to.

If you want to be usefull you could find a working link, preferably from a site that shows Linux market penetration at something more realistic than 0.37%.

Re:How to read percentages.

[jb.hl.com]

If you want to be usefull you could find a working link, preferably from a site that shows Linux market penetration at something more realistic than 0.37%.

Maybe YOU could find that link then, since you're the one arguing the point.

Or does "realistic" revolve around YOUR view of reality (e.g. OMG LUNIX HAS 9 BILLION PERCENT MARKETSHARE)?

VPN, ... safe?

[hadaso]

I don't know too much about VPN. My employer (Israeli Open University) gives me a Windows client called "CheckPoint VPN-1 SecuRemote" that I can download from their site and install to access the network from home (needless to say, I need to use my username and password). Most people use it to connect their PC and access their email from home using Outlook, accessing their files and folders on the intranet and accessing the internal website that is only accessible from withing the intranet. When I use it (I don't do it often) it connects me to the intranet and displays a Windows desktop for me to use logged into my account. It automatically mapped my local drives until I configured it to stop doing so fearing that I am connecting my Hard drives to the same Windows machine with lots of others that connect from home and might have all kinds of malware.

I don't really understand the logic of this: is it really safer to have people connect using VPN than to let them access specific services using authentication? (like use IMAP to use work email from home, connect to the intranet website using usermname/password authentication (perhaps only over ssl) and using a protocol like webdav or ftp (over ssl) to access files? And am I being paranoid about connecting my machine to the internal network this way (given that in the university all users are using Outlook+IE on Windows admin accounts, and at home I don't use either and only use limited privileges account for anything but maintenance).

US spend more for less compare to other G7 nation

[BlueYoshi]

I think this link could be usefull: http://www.pnrec.org/2001papers/DaigneaultLajoie.p df