I'm no tinfoilhatter (see my post history) and I can easily state that the government does and has been monitoring communications of citizens since before the PATRIOT Act.
Google any of the following:
Project Echelon
FBI Carnivore
FBI NarusInsight
This isn't fear mongering against the government. Those are actual programs/projects the government uses to watch those they want to watch. Actively, passively, whatever it is it doesn't change the fact that the government has the means and the will to watch those it finds worth watching.
Now, to think that the new system will watch international connections only is short sighted. All you have to do is argue that an "enemy" could bounce through an internal (to the US) proxy and the government would have wholesale reason to peek at _every_ connection, foreign or domestic.
Say I have 1000 PC's at my place of work and a certain percentage are usually a little fast (clock wise) while another percentage are usually a little slow.
If I use the average of all clocks to determine the "actual" time, wouldn't it slowly shift either to the slow side, or the fast side over time?
Say 550 of those 1000 are usually a second slow per day. That is a bias towards slow every time we take an average. We sync all clocks to the slow side and keep on repeating this. The longer you do this, the worse your accuracy is.
NTP works because we basically call one clock (or set of clocks that are synchronized) correct and we sync to those. If a correction to the master is needed, we will all correct at next sync.
Then again, for mental masturbation, how can you ever tell that one clock is right, versus another. Take two teams, put one on one side of the world and another team on the other. Give them a billion dollars each to develop the most precise clock in the world. When they are finished, compare the times on both. Which is correct? Especially considering time dilation, etc. I'll stop now since I've digressed considerably.
I like the idea in theory. Majority wins and not just the vocal (or rich) minority. However, how susceptible to fraud is this system going to be? Find an exploit in the code of the poll and run your opponents into the ground? Errors, glitches, server downtime, etc, etc, etc. I'm not saying any one of those problems is unique to this style of voting, but it does seem to be an easier target.
Originally Posted by Bashiok (Source)
One important point which I don't believe has been relayed yet is that the switch to showing RealID on the forums will only happen with the new forum systems we're launching for StarCraft II shortly before its release, and a new forum system for World of Warcraft launching shortly before the release of Cataclysm.
All posts here on the current World of Warcraft forums, or any of our classic Battle.net forums, will remain as-is. They won't (and can't) automatically switch to showing a real first and last name.
All posts in the future on the new forum systems will be an opt-in choice and ample warning will be given that you're posting with your real first and last name.
You can't be "smart" about your online identity when you're forced to post it in a games forums. The whole point of "being smart about your online identity" is by _staying_ anonymous. This act by Blizzard goes entirely against that principle.
So you see no problem with putting thousands upon thousands of hormone enraged teens into a setting, sometimes a highly polarizing setting, where they can easily find out who one another really is?
You think it's acceptable to force kids to _publicly_ post personally identifiable information about themselves if they want to chat about a game on the official game forums?
This isn't a "think of the children" stance, it's simple common sense. Kids can be _very_ irrational and vindictive on their own and in their own anonymous way. Force them to see each others real identities as well as adult strangers (who can see them) and you've got a recipe for disaster. Oh, that Rogue SmellyPantsNinja is that home schooled kid down the street? Time for revenge! He ninja'd my new boots from that new boss, time to smash a window! And both my posts don't even mention predators.
.. and for what?
To stop some internet trolling. Bravo. Good trade. Lets trade our internet anonymity away to _hope_ trolling, flaming, and general eAssHattery stops.
Imagine for a second a 42 year old lonely man (with very little social skills) playing World of Warcraft and he learns that Night Elf Rogue is actually a girl. They chat for a while and become friendly online. He starts to fixate and fantasize that those trips helping her level her alt are "dates" and eventually he falls in love with her. Or at least her character and voice.
Fixation turns into obsession and after a couple failed attempts to woo her into a real life relationship, she turns him down (hell, he's a creeper).
He gets upset and from the personal information he has gathered over their time "together" he is able to locate her using her _real_ name that Blizzard forces you to use (not a fictional "eName" you make up to give out on the intertubes to remain anonymous). Fill in the rest with your imagination.
Or, someone harasses you in game and you look to take revenge. Ninja looters, stealing quest mobs/items, kicking you from group/raid, etc. Maybe they simply want to threaten you (which already happens [NSFW] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUOI7BTmmk0 [NSFW]).
Of course, this can happen anywhere with any site that shows real names (facebook, etc). But forcing people to drop their anonymity is a bad thing overall. How many children play Blizzard's _games_ of which are going to be forced to link their, or more likely, their parents names to their account and be seen? It's not that hard to track someone down when you know their approximate location and their last name.
I guess the short is, anonymity can be bad. People act like punks and you have to put up with it from time to time, I know, it sucks. But the good part is, little Johnny potty mouth won't have to potentially pay with his life. Hopefully he learns to grow up on his own without someone like the chick from the link I posted above hunting him down.
Just pointing this out, but power bricks generally warm up and some get what I would consider "hot". My work issued Dell is already quite warm when you put it on your lap, I'd hate to see how warm/hot it gets with the heat from the proposed "built-in" power brick added in.
Interesting, but you seem to have assumed something HUGE in your first sentence of which _needs_ a citation provided.
"Nearly all the value of nearly all copyrighted works comes from ideas that the author learned from people who came before and who the author didn't pay."
To be fair, you don't get to set the price for anyone else's goods. You, and the rest of the consumers can choose not to pay his price. That's your choice. The sellers choice is to then drop the price or stop selling it. Again, that's _their_ choice.
If over pressurizing a container until it explodes is a felony, make sure your kids don't:
1) Blow up a finished juice box and stomp on it.
2) Blow up a plastic bag and hit it.
3) Blow up and pop a balloon.
4) Pop bubble packaging wrap.
5) Blowing and popping bubble gum.
Those are all variations on the same theme. Now I get it, dry ice "bombs" can cause injury if used without a tiny bit of common sense. But then again, a staircase can be deadly if used incorrectly. But yes, I see the "safety" factor, but a felony? Are we serious?
On the other, your husband just died. You have to deal with the arrangements, family, cancelling everything else he had, all on top of grieving. That's when Verizon basically says, I don't care about your loss, we want the ETF and here is your bill.
That being said, I believe in contracts. If you didn't want the contract, don't sign it. Then again, from a business perspective, I'd probably just ask for a fax of a death certificate and immediately close the account with no penalties. In the end, the population on earth is growing, there are more people buying plans (as a whole on earth) than there are dying (I would assume anyways, makes sense). They will get a contract to replace the death soon enough.
Or the obvious, if it was known to be easily breakable, the US Government standard for encryption of Top Secret information would be something other than AES. But no, AES _is_ the standard for Top Secret information encryption.
You should add another layer to your tinfoil hat. The US Government standard is AES.
If AES was easily and by easily, I mean anyone has the capability to crack it in a reasonable amount of time and reasonable being within the timeframe of normal declassification, you really think they would be using it as their standard?
It's fun to think there exists the ability to just unlock any code (think Sneakers little black box), but the fact is that if that technology existed, it would be exploited and sold to the highest bidder ASAP.
But of course, "that's what they want you to think". If you thought this, add a third layer to that hat.
1. Buy the game for the MSRP of $50
2. Play 50 hours for "free."
3. Buy additional game time using one of two options:
a) $6.99 for 20 hours
b) $9.99 for unlimited hours during the next 30 days (or you can also buy 60 or 90 day subscriptions)
So, first, you're out $50 for the game itself. Then you're out basically $9.99 a month for the subscription. On top of that they want to send you advertisements?
Seriously, WTF? Pick either the advertising supported model or subscription model, don't double dip at the customers expense.
Re:Can you find a high end phone with zero problem
on
iPhone 4 News Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Maybe not, but you'd hope they would at least get the whole phone part done properly first, including the reception, before worrying about all the add-ons for it.
There are two, rather humorous, points I take away from your post.
1) It comes off more trollish than mine.
2) The iPhone 4 has reception issues making it less reliable a phone than all the other "things" it can do, yet you claim it has "changed phones" in a positive way.
Seems like a step backwards to me. But that's probably because I use phones to talk on and not to do whatever else it is the iPhone does. But whatever, to each their own. My only comment was to the effect that there is other technology besides this one piece of hardware out there that probably deserve some front page articles instead of yet another iWhatever Apple article that we seem to get one, if not more of, daily.
Seriously, is anyone else getting tired of the daily Apple story on the iPhone?
I get it, it's tech that people like, but do we really need daily updates on it? This site tends to be a heavy linux advocate and there is a nice writeup of the EVO 4G on Ars today. Not a peep of that though, MORE APPLE!
Of course. In a time of national emergency I'm sure the government has the power to take over public utilities, etc. The phone company CO locations would probably be considered essential emergency communications locations and "guarded"/controlled by the military. If they have control of the facilities, they can do what they want with them. Not tin-foil-hatting, but I see that as entirely possible.
I'm going to bet that has everything to do with your home being a constitutionally protected zone. Work computers and school computers aren't protected the same way.
If you write it on a Business/School computer with a policy in place where you have no expected right to privacy, yes. If you don't like that, don't sign the AUP, etc, and subsequently don't get hired there.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no tinfoilhatter (see my post history) and I can easily state that the government does and has been monitoring communications of citizens since before the PATRIOT Act.
Google any of the following:
Project Echelon
FBI Carnivore
FBI NarusInsight
This isn't fear mongering against the government. Those are actual programs/projects the government uses to watch those they want to watch. Actively, passively, whatever it is it doesn't change the fact that the government has the means and the will to watch those it finds worth watching.
Now, to think that the new system will watch international connections only is short sighted. All you have to do is argue that an "enemy" could bounce through an internal (to the US) proxy and the government would have wholesale reason to peek at _every_ connection, foreign or domestic.
Say I have 1000 PC's at my place of work and a certain percentage are usually a little fast (clock wise) while another percentage are usually a little slow.
If I use the average of all clocks to determine the "actual" time, wouldn't it slowly shift either to the slow side, or the fast side over time?
Say 550 of those 1000 are usually a second slow per day. That is a bias towards slow every time we take an average. We sync all clocks to the slow side and keep on repeating this. The longer you do this, the worse your accuracy is.
NTP works because we basically call one clock (or set of clocks that are synchronized) correct and we sync to those. If a correction to the master is needed, we will all correct at next sync.
Then again, for mental masturbation, how can you ever tell that one clock is right, versus another. Take two teams, put one on one side of the world and another team on the other. Give them a billion dollars each to develop the most precise clock in the world. When they are finished, compare the times on both. Which is correct? Especially considering time dilation, etc. I'll stop now since I've digressed considerably.
Isn't that an update nearly every 20 seconds? How fast do people need to see that you're currently wiping your butt?
If you bothered to read the complete submission, you would have noticed it's free to their municipality due to an existing agreement.
"Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982."
At this point, he's trying to stop from using taxpayer money to pay for and run the cable boxes. Hence the point of the submission.
I like the idea in theory. Majority wins and not just the vocal (or rich) minority. However, how susceptible to fraud is this system going to be? Find an exploit in the code of the poll and run your opponents into the ground? Errors, glitches, server downtime, etc, etc, etc. I'm not saying any one of those problems is unique to this style of voting, but it does seem to be an easier target.
Funny how you ask for citations and then make a grand claim without any citations yourself.
Answer to your last question, no.
Originally Posted by Bashiok (Source)
One important point which I don't believe has been relayed yet is that the switch to showing RealID on the forums will only happen with the new forum systems we're launching for StarCraft II shortly before its release, and a new forum system for World of Warcraft launching shortly before the release of Cataclysm.
All posts here on the current World of Warcraft forums, or any of our classic Battle.net forums, will remain as-is. They won't (and can't) automatically switch to showing a real first and last name.
All posts in the future on the new forum systems will be an opt-in choice and ample warning will be given that you're posting with your real first and last name.
More info @: http://us.battle.net/realid/faq.html
You can't be "smart" about your online identity when you're forced to post it in a games forums. The whole point of "being smart about your online identity" is by _staying_ anonymous. This act by Blizzard goes entirely against that principle.
So you see no problem with putting thousands upon thousands of hormone enraged teens into a setting, sometimes a highly polarizing setting, where they can easily find out who one another really is?
You think it's acceptable to force kids to _publicly_ post personally identifiable information about themselves if they want to chat about a game on the official game forums?
This isn't a "think of the children" stance, it's simple common sense. Kids can be _very_ irrational and vindictive on their own and in their own anonymous way. Force them to see each others real identities as well as adult strangers (who can see them) and you've got a recipe for disaster. Oh, that Rogue SmellyPantsNinja is that home schooled kid down the street? Time for revenge! He ninja'd my new boots from that new boss, time to smash a window! And both my posts don't even mention predators.
.. and for what?
To stop some internet trolling. Bravo. Good trade. Lets trade our internet anonymity away to _hope_ trolling, flaming, and general eAssHattery stops.
Imagine for a second a 42 year old lonely man (with very little social skills) playing World of Warcraft and he learns that Night Elf Rogue is actually a girl. They chat for a while and become friendly online. He starts to fixate and fantasize that those trips helping her level her alt are "dates" and eventually he falls in love with her. Or at least her character and voice.
Fixation turns into obsession and after a couple failed attempts to woo her into a real life relationship, she turns him down (hell, he's a creeper).
He gets upset and from the personal information he has gathered over their time "together" he is able to locate her using her _real_ name that Blizzard forces you to use (not a fictional "eName" you make up to give out on the intertubes to remain anonymous). Fill in the rest with your imagination.
Or, someone harasses you in game and you look to take revenge. Ninja looters, stealing quest mobs/items, kicking you from group/raid, etc. Maybe they simply want to threaten you (which already happens [NSFW] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUOI7BTmmk0 [NSFW]).
Of course, this can happen anywhere with any site that shows real names (facebook, etc). But forcing people to drop their anonymity is a bad thing overall. How many children play Blizzard's _games_ of which are going to be forced to link their, or more likely, their parents names to their account and be seen? It's not that hard to track someone down when you know their approximate location and their last name.
I guess the short is, anonymity can be bad. People act like punks and you have to put up with it from time to time, I know, it sucks. But the good part is, little Johnny potty mouth won't have to potentially pay with his life. Hopefully he learns to grow up on his own without someone like the chick from the link I posted above hunting him down.
Just pointing this out, but power bricks generally warm up and some get what I would consider "hot". My work issued Dell is already quite warm when you put it on your lap, I'd hate to see how warm/hot it gets with the heat from the proposed "built-in" power brick added in.
Interesting, but you seem to have assumed something HUGE in your first sentence of which _needs_ a citation provided.
"Nearly all the value of nearly all copyrighted works comes from ideas that the author learned from people who came before and who the author didn't pay."
How in the world can you make that claim?
To be fair, you don't get to set the price for anyone else's goods. You, and the rest of the consumers can choose not to pay his price. That's your choice. The sellers choice is to then drop the price or stop selling it. Again, that's _their_ choice.
If over pressurizing a container until it explodes is a felony, make sure your kids don't:
1) Blow up a finished juice box and stomp on it.
2) Blow up a plastic bag and hit it.
3) Blow up and pop a balloon.
4) Pop bubble packaging wrap.
5) Blowing and popping bubble gum.
Those are all variations on the same theme. Now I get it, dry ice "bombs" can cause injury if used without a tiny bit of common sense. But then again, a staircase can be deadly if used incorrectly. But yes, I see the "safety" factor, but a felony? Are we serious?
Ehh, I can see both sides.
On the one hand, hey, that was the contract.
On the other, your husband just died. You have to deal with the arrangements, family, cancelling everything else he had, all on top of grieving. That's when Verizon basically says, I don't care about your loss, we want the ETF and here is your bill.
That being said, I believe in contracts. If you didn't want the contract, don't sign it. Then again, from a business perspective, I'd probably just ask for a fax of a death certificate and immediately close the account with no penalties. In the end, the population on earth is growing, there are more people buying plans (as a whole on earth) than there are dying (I would assume anyways, makes sense). They will get a contract to replace the death soon enough.
Or the obvious, if it was known to be easily breakable, the US Government standard for encryption of Top Secret information would be something other than AES. But no, AES _is_ the standard for Top Secret information encryption.
You should add another layer to your tinfoil hat. The US Government standard is AES.
If AES was easily and by easily, I mean anyone has the capability to crack it in a reasonable amount of time and reasonable being within the timeframe of normal declassification, you really think they would be using it as their standard?
It's fun to think there exists the ability to just unlock any code (think Sneakers little black box), but the fact is that if that technology existed, it would be exploited and sold to the highest bidder ASAP.
But of course, "that's what they want you to think". If you thought this, add a third layer to that hat.
1. Buy the game for the MSRP of $50
2. Play 50 hours for "free."
3. Buy additional game time using one of two options:
a) $6.99 for 20 hours
b) $9.99 for unlimited hours during the next 30 days (or you can also buy 60 or 90 day subscriptions)
So, first, you're out $50 for the game itself. Then you're out basically $9.99 a month for the subscription. On top of that they want to send you advertisements?
Seriously, WTF? Pick either the advertising supported model or subscription model, don't double dip at the customers expense.
Maybe not, but you'd hope they would at least get the whole phone part done properly first, including the reception, before worrying about all the add-ons for it.
It is an iPhone after all..
Stock market pretty much is monopoly money. It's all based off perceived value.
There are two, rather humorous, points I take away from your post.
1) It comes off more trollish than mine.
2) The iPhone 4 has reception issues making it less reliable a phone than all the other "things" it can do, yet you claim it has "changed phones" in a positive way.
Seems like a step backwards to me. But that's probably because I use phones to talk on and not to do whatever else it is the iPhone does. But whatever, to each their own. My only comment was to the effect that there is other technology besides this one piece of hardware out there that probably deserve some front page articles instead of yet another iWhatever Apple article that we seem to get one, if not more of, daily.
Seriously, is anyone else getting tired of the daily Apple story on the iPhone?
I get it, it's tech that people like, but do we really need daily updates on it? This site tends to be a heavy linux advocate and there is a nice writeup of the EVO 4G on Ars today. Not a peep of that though, MORE APPLE!
Of course. In a time of national emergency I'm sure the government has the power to take over public utilities, etc. The phone company CO locations would probably be considered essential emergency communications locations and "guarded"/controlled by the military. If they have control of the facilities, they can do what they want with them. Not tin-foil-hatting, but I see that as entirely possible.
I'm going to bet that has everything to do with your home being a constitutionally protected zone. Work computers and school computers aren't protected the same way.
If you write it on a Business/School computer with a policy in place where you have no expected right to privacy, yes. If you don't like that, don't sign the AUP, etc, and subsequently don't get hired there.