Used to be people didn't need laws to tell them that, especially for obvious shit like this.
The people neglecting the social contract are the people who don't bother to turn on encryption or other access control features, and then complain that strangers are accessing their open networks. It used to be people didn't need lengthy discussions to understand that, especially for obvious shit like this. People who bought computers knew how to use them properly. Unfortunately this isn't the case anymore and the people who buy wireless network hardware these days are kicking and screaming while we're trying to make things as easy and secure for everyone as possible, even for them. People like you, who insist that technically open does not mean legally open, are doing the uninformed users a great disservice, because this "pretend" legal security removes the incentive to actually secure private networks. Besides, listening to unencrypted radio transmissions is legal in many places, also with good reason.
All you need to do is replace "unsecured WAP" with just about any other good or service people pay for. Power, gas, electricity, telephone, satellite TV.
No, that's a biased choice. There are very few free public phones, for example. There are many intentionally free wireless networks however. The social norm with computers is generally that if you can access it remotely without providing credentials, access is allowed. An access point is a computer, and it is frequently installed and used by businesses, cities and individuals according to that social norm.
Automatic connections are a legitimate application of wireless network technology. I am not obligated to use wireless networks that way, but it is not reasonable to forbid it, because that would not do the people whom you're trying to protect any good. You're in a public space, so you have to be cooperative. Pretending to provide an open access network when you're doing no such thing is not cooperative.
The SSID is a free form string of 1-32 characters and its name defines its meaning. As far as the standard is concerned, it has no access control purpose (that's why even encrypted networks broadcast it in the clear). You can offer an encrypted network that is open to the public, but the standard includes no provisions that could enable automatic connections in that case. If you put information in the SSID that can help people figure out how to connect anyway, that's fine. In the normal case of an unencrypted public access network, requiring a human to read the SSID is not necessary because the computer already has sufficient information. Requiring manual intervention limits the usefulness of the technology in an unnecessary way and achieves nothing that enabling encryption wouldn't achieve more easily and thoroughly.
Can you quote the part of the relevant standard that describes how allowing a computer to connect to an unsecured HTTP server implies consent to access any or all services available via that HTTP server? Do you get explicit permission before you access someone else's computer network and server resources over the internet?
The simple truth is that the only way to have a private wireless network is to encrypt it. Legislation which hides that fact is irresponsible and has further unacceptable side effects.
I'm not stretching anything. Automatic connections are only possible if the computer can decide whether a network is open or not. That requires that you can trust that open really means open. To a computer, "Free" is as meaningless an SSID as "linksys" or "keepout". The SSID is not the place to state your intentions, the encryption dialog is. By not using the available standard-compliant means for declaring networks private, you're depriving others of unambiguous automatic access to intentionally public networks.
Not encrypting a private network is stupid, irresponsible and, if you're handling sensitive data, possibly illegal. It should under no circumstances be protected behaviour. More than two thirds of all AP owners have enabled encryption or bought hardware which comes with encryption enabled as a default. That is not irrelevant but testament to the fact that the need to enable encryption is common knowledge and that it isn't hard to do, so people who don't do it are just lazy, not in need of help. And if they needed help, that could only reasonably come in the form of mandatory encryption-enabled defaults, because that's the only way to protect these people's networks. Telling them instead that others must ask their permission before they may connect to their network would send the message that it is OK to leave the wireless network unencrypted because it is protected by the law, and THAT would be totally irresponsible.
They're using a shared resource (the 2.4GHz ISM frequency band) and by (inadvertently) offering something which they do not intend to provide, they "damage" that resource, because they make it impossible to provide public networks to which computers can automatically connect without endangering their owners by connecting to a looks-public-but-isn't network. Configuring encryption isn't hard, benefits the users because it protects their data from eavesdroppers, and allows others to unambiguously offer public network access. Get with the times: More than 2/3 of all wireless networks are encrypted, and those aren't all owned or managed by computer wizards.
The key difference is that the possibility of an openly accessible network is designed into the wireless network standard, and that option is in widespread use. The same standard also includes means to keep unwanted users out, an option which is also in widespread use (which means that laymen can do it, because at least 2/3 of all wireless networks are encrypted and there aren't that many computer professionals. Also, you'd be surprised how legal it is in many places to eavesdrop on unencrypted communication in public frequency bands. For your own good, buy a modern phone.
Would you connect to a website at stayaway.com? Would you think it's right to prosecute people who connect to stayaway.com through a redirecting link? There are technical means to clearly and automatically keep unwanted visitors out. Using MAC filtering as the only security mechanism is stupid because it doesn't protect your data from eavesdroppers, but it is sufficient for declaring a network off limits. The SSID is the "Service set identifier", which identifies packets as belonging to a service set (i.e. network). It is not a legal statement.
"Wifi piggybacking" is just communication, and standards compliant communication at that. There's nothing that a person accessing another person's unencrypted wireless network is doing which isn't covered by the design of the wireless network standards. Anyone has the right to use the frequency band and if you respond, that's entirely your decision to make. It's not wrong to use a public resource (the 2.4GHz ISM frequency band) in a standard compliant way. It's wrong to inadvertently or intentionally pretend that you're offering a publicly accessible network, but then turn around and say you didn't intend to give access to your network and have the people who took your beacons at face value prosecuted (and it's stupid, because your data is still going over the air unencrypted and you won't catch a passive eavesdropper as easily.)
broke into the global communications network used by embassies around the world in August and gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts
He acquired access credentials to 1000 email accounts used by embassies. He did so by becoming an exit node of the TOR anonymizing network and reading the unencrypted exit traffic. That may have been in violation of the law, but does not constitute "breaking into the global communications network used by embassies".
The illusion is constructed to look like the different colors of the surrounding area are caused by different lighting (the object looks the same, except for the color, the color difference is such that it can be caused by tinted light and there is an indication of shadow and surrounding tinted light on the "ground"). Our visual system would still be fooled if they had just split a 2D checkerboard in half and colored it differently, but then we would be more cautious about our conscious assessment. The illusion shows that we don't "see" the absolute color of the reflected light but subconsciously attempt to deduce the object color by compensating for the lighting, which is a good thing, not a defect.
But you don't want them to see the same color, because in the computer vision application it is important to deduce the object color. You can't just measure the reflected light. The optical illusion shows that, in our attempt to find the object color, we "guess" the light color from the colors of the surrounding scene and compensate for it, and so do the robots with automatic white balance. We're still fooled by light sources which aren't approximately black body radiators and robots face the same problems if they use RGB sensors.
The popular checkerboard illusion where the square in the shadow of the cylinder and the square in the light have the same brightness doesn't show that there's something wrong with our vision, it shows that our visual system is context-sensitive, as it should be, because we rarely need to be able to measure illumination*objectcolor. We need to deduce the object color quickly and with good reliability. Not subconsciously removing the illumination from the equation would only get in the way of that.
These things are called psychological barriers. Likewise with the $1.40 per Euro mark that was reached at about the same time. If these barriers fall, people take extra notice of the trend, not because there's much of a difference to the day before, but because humans pay more attention to round numbers. On your 20th birthday, you're just one day older than the day before, but you don't celebrate the day before or after your 20th birthday. It's kinda stupid, but that's the way it is.
No, the network time protocol accounts for latency and eliminates its influence almost completely as long as the latency is roughly symmetric, which it usually is for small packets.
All providers do it that way. It only happens if you use conditional call diversion: You're in a foreign country, your cellphone rings and you don't answer it (or you reject the call or the phone is off), the call is diverted (back) to your mailbox, you pay roaming charges for "receiving" the call in the foreign country and for diverting the call back to your home country. Yes, it's a trap. It's particularly dangerous for people who live close to a border where the phone often switches to the foreign network based on reception strength.
The GPL people aren't exploiting a loophole. They do exactly what the GPL and BSD licenses are intended for: They use code that is supposed to be used as widely as possible, like the BSD license authors intended, and they protect their additions from proprietization, as you would expect GPL license proponents to do. License header mishaps aside, this is exactly how I would have expected it. If a BSD license guy is unhappy about not getting anything back, he's using the wrong license. The BSD license is designed to not require reciprocity.
How is that hypocracy? Developers who use the GPL do so because they believe that it's prudent to require "contributing back" because otherwise people just take the code and run with it. The developers who use the GPL code for the port do what they think is best. It's pretty arrogant to proclaim that GPL developers should deviate from their license of choice even though the BSD license doesn't require it and BSD license proponents don't miss a chance to rub it in everybody's faces that they are supposedly more "free" because there's no requirement to share back.
The BSD developers got what they wanted. Their code is in use. The BSD license intentionally trades away protection from inclusion in differently licensed projects in return for the increased likelihood that the code can be used.
The GPL developers got what they wanted. Their code is protected from proprietization (And ONLY their code. Anyone can take the original BSD licensed code and do what they want with it).
There is no story here. The GPL and BSD licenses try to achieve different goals and both work as advertised. If you want an analogy: BSD is like the girl who sleeps with everybody. She gets a lot of sex and is invited to every party, but nobody respects her. GPL is like the girl who is selective about her partners. She doesn't have quite as much "fun" and has earned herself a little bit of a hard-to-get reputation, but the people who know her treat her well. Proprietary licenses usually require payment.
someone who acquires your material could claim that you stole it from him and published the hash afterwards.
Well, stupid me. Of course you could have simply added the name. Putting the personal information into the package doesn't prevent anyone from claiming that you stole it (which they can't prove with or without the name in the package). There's still the advantage that putting your full info into the package instead of the ad is cheaper though.
Correct answer. Make sure to choose a newspaper that is widely published and archived in an immutable form, in its entirety and in many places. Don't forget to put your personal information into the package of which you're going to publish the cryptographically secure hash value. It's not enough to put your name in the ad, because then someone who acquires your material could claim that you stole it from him and published the hash afterwards.
Microsoft, it offends me that you don't even try to hide your manipulations anymore. It's all out in the open. Everybody can see that the whole process is bullshit. As long as it's legal or can be twisted to look legal, you don't seem to mind anymore. Other businesses at least make an effort not to upset the public that is being raped.
The problem isn't the image data but the way it's presented to you. A normal computer monitor has a very limited dynamic range (compared to the real world). So does a paper print. Your eyes expect a certain contrast between parts of an image. If that contrast isn't there, the image looks dull and appears to lack detail. Now take a picture with a natural dynamic range that far exceeds what a monitor can recreate (just about any picture you take outside. The dynamic range is even greater in space due to the lack of atmosphere). If you map the brightest spot in that image to white on your monitor and the darkest to black, then you get a washed out image, because the original contrast is compressed to the maximum contrast that your monitor can produce. One bright highlight in the full range data means that another area in the picture which would normally be mapped to white is now a medium gray or less on the computer screen.
That's an important point. Blogs are nice for getting the news out and keeping up-to-date without having to sift through all documentation over and over again, but "official" blogs in particular also need to be condensed into a more structured form of documentation for when you can't or don't want to keep up-to-date and still need to find some information about a product/event/whatever. Search engines don't magically turn blog archives into usable documentation.
Slashdot Mirror
Used to be people didn't need laws to tell them that, especially for obvious shit like this.
The people neglecting the social contract are the people who don't bother to turn on encryption or other access control features, and then complain that strangers are accessing their open networks. It used to be people didn't need lengthy discussions to understand that, especially for obvious shit like this. People who bought computers knew how to use them properly. Unfortunately this isn't the case anymore and the people who buy wireless network hardware these days are kicking and screaming while we're trying to make things as easy and secure for everyone as possible, even for them. People like you, who insist that technically open does not mean legally open, are doing the uninformed users a great disservice, because this "pretend" legal security removes the incentive to actually secure private networks. Besides, listening to unencrypted radio transmissions is legal in many places, also with good reason.
All you need to do is replace "unsecured WAP" with just about any other good or service people pay for. Power, gas, electricity, telephone, satellite TV.
No, that's a biased choice. There are very few free public phones, for example. There are many intentionally free wireless networks however. The social norm with computers is generally that if you can access it remotely without providing credentials, access is allowed. An access point is a computer, and it is frequently installed and used by businesses, cities and individuals according to that social norm.
Automatic connections are a legitimate application of wireless network technology. I am not obligated to use wireless networks that way, but it is not reasonable to forbid it, because that would not do the people whom you're trying to protect any good. You're in a public space, so you have to be cooperative. Pretending to provide an open access network when you're doing no such thing is not cooperative.
The SSID is a free form string of 1-32 characters and its name defines its meaning. As far as the standard is concerned, it has no access control purpose (that's why even encrypted networks broadcast it in the clear). You can offer an encrypted network that is open to the public, but the standard includes no provisions that could enable automatic connections in that case. If you put information in the SSID that can help people figure out how to connect anyway, that's fine. In the normal case of an unencrypted public access network, requiring a human to read the SSID is not necessary because the computer already has sufficient information. Requiring manual intervention limits the usefulness of the technology in an unnecessary way and achieves nothing that enabling encryption wouldn't achieve more easily and thoroughly.
Can you quote the part of the relevant standard that describes how allowing a computer to connect to an unsecured HTTP server implies consent to access any or all services available via that HTTP server? Do you get explicit permission before you access someone else's computer network and server resources over the internet?
The simple truth is that the only way to have a private wireless network is to encrypt it. Legislation which hides that fact is irresponsible and has further unacceptable side effects.
I'm not stretching anything. Automatic connections are only possible if the computer can decide whether a network is open or not. That requires that you can trust that open really means open. To a computer, "Free" is as meaningless an SSID as "linksys" or "keepout". The SSID is not the place to state your intentions, the encryption dialog is. By not using the available standard-compliant means for declaring networks private, you're depriving others of unambiguous automatic access to intentionally public networks.
Not encrypting a private network is stupid, irresponsible and, if you're handling sensitive data, possibly illegal. It should under no circumstances be protected behaviour. More than two thirds of all AP owners have enabled encryption or bought hardware which comes with encryption enabled as a default. That is not irrelevant but testament to the fact that the need to enable encryption is common knowledge and that it isn't hard to do, so people who don't do it are just lazy, not in need of help. And if they needed help, that could only reasonably come in the form of mandatory encryption-enabled defaults, because that's the only way to protect these people's networks. Telling them instead that others must ask their permission before they may connect to their network would send the message that it is OK to leave the wireless network unencrypted because it is protected by the law, and THAT would be totally irresponsible.
They're using a shared resource (the 2.4GHz ISM frequency band) and by (inadvertently) offering something which they do not intend to provide, they "damage" that resource, because they make it impossible to provide public networks to which computers can automatically connect without endangering their owners by connecting to a looks-public-but-isn't network. Configuring encryption isn't hard, benefits the users because it protects their data from eavesdroppers, and allows others to unambiguously offer public network access. Get with the times: More than 2/3 of all wireless networks are encrypted, and those aren't all owned or managed by computer wizards.
The key difference is that the possibility of an openly accessible network is designed into the wireless network standard, and that option is in widespread use. The same standard also includes means to keep unwanted users out, an option which is also in widespread use (which means that laymen can do it, because at least 2/3 of all wireless networks are encrypted and there aren't that many computer professionals. Also, you'd be surprised how legal it is in many places to eavesdrop on unencrypted communication in public frequency bands. For your own good, buy a modern phone.
Would you connect to a website at stayaway.com? Would you think it's right to prosecute people who connect to stayaway.com through a redirecting link? There are technical means to clearly and automatically keep unwanted visitors out. Using MAC filtering as the only security mechanism is stupid because it doesn't protect your data from eavesdroppers, but it is sufficient for declaring a network off limits. The SSID is the "Service set identifier", which identifies packets as belonging to a service set (i.e. network). It is not a legal statement.
"Wifi piggybacking" is just communication, and standards compliant communication at that. There's nothing that a person accessing another person's unencrypted wireless network is doing which isn't covered by the design of the wireless network standards. Anyone has the right to use the frequency band and if you respond, that's entirely your decision to make. It's not wrong to use a public resource (the 2.4GHz ISM frequency band) in a standard compliant way. It's wrong to inadvertently or intentionally pretend that you're offering a publicly accessible network, but then turn around and say you didn't intend to give access to your network and have the people who took your beacons at face value prosecuted (and it's stupid, because your data is still going over the air unencrypted and you won't catch a passive eavesdropper as easily.)
broke into the global communications network used by embassies around the world in August and gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts
He acquired access credentials to 1000 email accounts used by embassies. He did so by becoming an exit node of the TOR anonymizing network and reading the unencrypted exit traffic. That may have been in violation of the law, but does not constitute "breaking into the global communications network used by embassies".
The illusion is constructed to look like the different colors of the surrounding area are caused by different lighting (the object looks the same, except for the color, the color difference is such that it can be caused by tinted light and there is an indication of shadow and surrounding tinted light on the "ground"). Our visual system would still be fooled if they had just split a 2D checkerboard in half and colored it differently, but then we would be more cautious about our conscious assessment. The illusion shows that we don't "see" the absolute color of the reflected light but subconsciously attempt to deduce the object color by compensating for the lighting, which is a good thing, not a defect.
But you don't want them to see the same color, because in the computer vision application it is important to deduce the object color. You can't just measure the reflected light. The optical illusion shows that, in our attempt to find the object color, we "guess" the light color from the colors of the surrounding scene and compensate for it, and so do the robots with automatic white balance. We're still fooled by light sources which aren't approximately black body radiators and robots face the same problems if they use RGB sensors.
The popular checkerboard illusion where the square in the shadow of the cylinder and the square in the light have the same brightness doesn't show that there's something wrong with our vision, it shows that our visual system is context-sensitive, as it should be, because we rarely need to be able to measure illumination*objectcolor. We need to deduce the object color quickly and with good reliability. Not subconsciously removing the illumination from the equation would only get in the way of that.
These things are called psychological barriers. Likewise with the $1.40 per Euro mark that was reached at about the same time. If these barriers fall, people take extra notice of the trend, not because there's much of a difference to the day before, but because humans pay more attention to round numbers. On your 20th birthday, you're just one day older than the day before, but you don't celebrate the day before or after your 20th birthday. It's kinda stupid, but that's the way it is.
You're supposed to open the provided KML file with Google Earth. That will add a "layer" with new image data which isn't normally in Google Earth.
No, the network time protocol accounts for latency and eliminates its influence almost completely as long as the latency is roughly symmetric, which it usually is for small packets.
KML files can be used to overlay external data. There are KML files for "live" cloud cover images, for example.
All providers do it that way. It only happens if you use conditional call diversion: You're in a foreign country, your cellphone rings and you don't answer it (or you reject the call or the phone is off), the call is diverted (back) to your mailbox, you pay roaming charges for "receiving" the call in the foreign country and for diverting the call back to your home country. Yes, it's a trap. It's particularly dangerous for people who live close to a border where the phone often switches to the foreign network based on reception strength.
The GPL people aren't exploiting a loophole. They do exactly what the GPL and BSD licenses are intended for: They use code that is supposed to be used as widely as possible, like the BSD license authors intended, and they protect their additions from proprietization, as you would expect GPL license proponents to do. License header mishaps aside, this is exactly how I would have expected it. If a BSD license guy is unhappy about not getting anything back, he's using the wrong license. The BSD license is designed to not require reciprocity.
How is that hypocracy? Developers who use the GPL do so because they believe that it's prudent to require "contributing back" because otherwise people just take the code and run with it. The developers who use the GPL code for the port do what they think is best. It's pretty arrogant to proclaim that GPL developers should deviate from their license of choice even though the BSD license doesn't require it and BSD license proponents don't miss a chance to rub it in everybody's faces that they are supposedly more "free" because there's no requirement to share back.
The BSD developers got what they wanted. Their code is in use. The BSD license intentionally trades away protection from inclusion in differently licensed projects in return for the increased likelihood that the code can be used.
The GPL developers got what they wanted. Their code is protected from proprietization (And ONLY their code. Anyone can take the original BSD licensed code and do what they want with it).
There is no story here. The GPL and BSD licenses try to achieve different goals and both work as advertised. If you want an analogy: BSD is like the girl who sleeps with everybody. She gets a lot of sex and is invited to every party, but nobody respects her. GPL is like the girl who is selective about her partners. She doesn't have quite as much "fun" and has earned herself a little bit of a hard-to-get reputation, but the people who know her treat her well. Proprietary licenses usually require payment.
someone who acquires your material could claim that you stole it from him and published the hash afterwards.
Well, stupid me. Of course you could have simply added the name. Putting the personal information into the package doesn't prevent anyone from claiming that you stole it (which they can't prove with or without the name in the package). There's still the advantage that putting your full info into the package instead of the ad is cheaper though.
Correct answer. Make sure to choose a newspaper that is widely published and archived in an immutable form, in its entirety and in many places. Don't forget to put your personal information into the package of which you're going to publish the cryptographically secure hash value. It's not enough to put your name in the ad, because then someone who acquires your material could claim that you stole it from him and published the hash afterwards.
Microsoft, it offends me that you don't even try to hide your manipulations anymore. It's all out in the open. Everybody can see that the whole process is bullshit. As long as it's legal or can be twisted to look legal, you don't seem to mind anymore. Other businesses at least make an effort not to upset the public that is being raped.
The problem isn't the image data but the way it's presented to you. A normal computer monitor has a very limited dynamic range (compared to the real world). So does a paper print. Your eyes expect a certain contrast between parts of an image. If that contrast isn't there, the image looks dull and appears to lack detail. Now take a picture with a natural dynamic range that far exceeds what a monitor can recreate (just about any picture you take outside. The dynamic range is even greater in space due to the lack of atmosphere). If you map the brightest spot in that image to white on your monitor and the darkest to black, then you get a washed out image, because the original contrast is compressed to the maximum contrast that your monitor can produce. One bright highlight in the full range data means that another area in the picture which would normally be mapped to white is now a medium gray or less on the computer screen.
then let's have multicasting. There you are, another good reason for IPv6. Get to it.
That's an important point. Blogs are nice for getting the news out and keeping up-to-date without having to sift through all documentation over and over again, but "official" blogs in particular also need to be condensed into a more structured form of documentation for when you can't or don't want to keep up-to-date and still need to find some information about a product/event/whatever. Search engines don't magically turn blog archives into usable documentation.