Now, will it get scheduled to be heard on the House Floor? Probably not. Will it get voted on? Likely not.
Will it fly through the House? There is a lot of bad blood, and the guys who wrote the bill have (D) tags, and the House has flipped control -- it will be a hard sell there.
I wouldn't be 100% sure that it wouldn't pass, but I'm confident it will end up like the Son-of-DMCA act, INDUCE act, or the the many other bills that wind up on the committee table, and don't make it past that.
Ford's SYNC uses the BlueTooth pairing to dial 911 if the vehicle crashes. It doesn't seem as elegant as OnStar, but it is a lot better when it comes to privacy, and the fact that your vehicle can't be remotely killed.
People would be screaming if a life safety system like this got jammed by the USG.
The reason for this is that during the 1980s, Mercedes inundated the US market with smelly, slow turbo diesel cars. Because of the pollution they produced, and the fact that people would drive on breakdown lanes to get around those stench-belchers, it got ingraned in the American mind that diesel == slow and stinky.
Which is ironic. The Ford F250s and other heavy duty vehicles use diesel and nobody ever complains these days about them.
Now, if we can get some twin turbo diesel engines for midsize/fullsize rides (Camries, Accords, Tauruses), I'm sure this will go a way towards better MPG, even with the added weight of the diesel engine.
More diesels is better than the other thing I'm seeing here in the US, and that is a quiet push for more ethanol consumption. Especially proposals to change the amount of ethanol in gasoline from 10% to 15%. Larger vehicles don't mind E85, but woe to the person who fills up their Honda with the stuff.
That is what mainframes are for. Yes, the technology is old and not exciting, but one of the strong points of mainframes is I/O, which is critical to most database architectures.
You aren't rambling; you have a bunch of good points. It would be nice to see diesel alternatives here in the US, other than on the super duty trucks.
Another advantage is that diesel engines have fewer parts. For example, no spark plugs. Yes, glow plugs need to be replaced, but nowhere near as often, and they are not as critical to basic function of the engine.
Yet another advantage is that diesel fuel is relatively stable. Gasoline absorbs water turning into a nasty acid, and otherwise decomposes after a period of time. Because diesel is an oil, water doesn't mix with it.
The ideal would be a diesel hybrid. This way, at idle (stoplight), fuel isn't being consumed.
I wonder how a diesel would rate on the scale. Europe has a lot of hyper-efficient turbo diesels on the roads there with MPG equal or better than hybrids.
How about a balance between the two? Take a basic Nokia low-end phone, the ones which cost $15.00 with a prepaid service. They have a very good UI, and even allow for one to upload numbers to it. Now time for some add-ons:
1: Put it in a brushed metal case. No, not silverized plastic... CNC machined aluminum. Even without Apple's LiquidMetal advantage, this can be done without too many problems.
2: Allow it to use a SIM card or its own memory for storage. As a bonus, offer to back up the addressbook to the Web like CDMA providers do.
3: Provide some basic games, wallpapers and such.
4: Slap a Micro USB connector on it.
5: Basic BT connectivity. This isn't an iPod so all it needs is the phone profile.
6: Make the display out of 2mm thick Gorilla Glass.
7: Drop a decent battery in it.
8: Put decent rubber seals for the buttons and where the case meshes.
Now, market this phone as a rugged, good looking phone to have "for emergencies". Sell it as the phone to take to the frog baseball games, the chainsaw swordfighting championships, the beach, the Grand Canyon, and places where one would be afraid to take their main smartphone. Sell a case that is water resistant and has plugs for all the ports so it can take a dunking and emerge unscathed. This isn't meant to be a *rugged* phone, but something that strikes a balance between looking good and taking the punches. It should be able to be dropped multiple times from 4 feet onto cement without visible scratching or glass breakage, for example.
This phone's advantages will be a long battery life (so it can sit in a glovebox for days to weeks on end and still have enough juice for a call), decent looks (so it doesn't look like a throwback to the 1980s), and enough ruggedness so people are not afraid to bring it places.
I'm sure something like this would sell to smartphone users, because who would want to take their good smartphone to a joust, for example.
It would be in their interest to stop getting bullied by ISPs. Else I can see the following happen:
1: Being charged per bit to a "non-premiere" provider. Your ISP blessed Bing and you use Google? Better pony up a buck a query.
2: Being automatically redirected to the "premiere" providers on links. You click a link for a vend a goat machine, ISP routes you to the turtle-o-matic corporation.
3: In-transit ads. Phorm anyone? I can even see ISPs telling customers to drop a cert into their browser, and doing Phorm based stuff over SSL. With NAC, it would be easy to force all subscribers to have software installed that automatically does this.
4: Ads on the website replaced by the ISP's ads, like early 2000s malware used to do so their people got the click traffic, not the people on the site.
Maybe Google should, and state that because of the hostile practices that $ISP does, Google is forced to delay each search for $TIME. Most users would get onto their ISP's case real fast if the daily content they access, they have to wait 30-60 seconds for like one of the filesharing sites.
It would be good for Google. ISPs have more to lose if content providers pick up their toys and go home.
Debt collection law is valid, IF the bill collectors are in the US. However, a lot of them are in India, where they can happily call someone up at all hours, call their friends, call their managers, call their neighbors, or their kids's schools saying that Johnny's parents are failing in their duties as a child rearer because they are deadbeats.
Just host offshore, and the $1000 per violation of the FDCA means nothing.
I can see this... but all parties would have to have PGP Desktop, or a similar utility to encrypt/decrypt messages, as well as a pre-established WOT.
This comes to mind something... Perhaps combine Facebook and Hushmail? Result, every object (status update, message) is encrypted with its own key, and the key be decryptable by users, groups of users, or everyone. This way, a break in, or a goof in the backend application wouldn't reveal any information that has not been configured to reveal unless the key storage/decryption system was massively smashed. It would not be completely secure, and definitely not from governments (most likely they would want a recovery key), but it would keep data well under wraps from almost anything else.
Wasn't IPSec supposed to protect against stuff like this, so even if someone was able to route internal traffic through a hostile source, all that could be done would be traffic analysis (finding which machines put more packets on the wire than others)?
TPMs can be used for nasty things, but this is one of the good things about BitLocker and TPMs -- a modified MBR would result in the machine not booting because the TPM would not hand the key over to the encrypted system partition due to the changed code.
Of course, the TPM would have to be "sealed" before the malware hit the system, and a viral infection is not the first thing on the list to check if a box is sitting there in recovery mode asking for a key or a USB flash drive to continue booting.
To me, if one has Windows 7, an edition that supports BitLocker, and a TPM/support for it in hardware, it becomes a no brainer to enable BitLocker if only to have protection against "evil maid" attacks, as well as MBR infections.
It depends on how sane the leadership is in Russia and other places. The one thing that kept the US and Russia from going full tilt at it back in the days of the Iron Curtain is the fact that both countries are more into living and allowing their kids to grow up than fighting just to fight. Other historically nuclear++ countries like France are similar -- they rather not exchange warheads for anything but to retaliate against incoming warheads.
However, most of the world has forgotten the lesson of World War 1, where people said that there would never be a war in Europe because of the trade ties... and it took one August for Europe to go from a continent of old empires to one beset by global conflict. Things can turn on a dime, especially if a country decides that the fires of nationalism or treaty obligations are more important than the light of their people's existence.
Bleah, hate to reply to my own post, but the reason why people don't care about DPI as a whole is because they don't know or don't care. They are also used to "well, SOMEONE knows what I do on the Internet at all times", and being watched constantly online, either by LEOs, or private companies looking to slurp knowledge about someone to sell for a buck.
It is a heck of a lot easier to store indexes of people's communications via the Internet than it is to do physical objects. If someone wants to dig up dirt on a target (say to find charges to put them in jail as revenge for them dating an ex), it isn't hard to do. Disk is cheap, and it is easy to filter out chaff and store the juicy stuff indefinitely.
To boot, the information also has a lot of secondary value to marketers and advertisers.
I am starting to wonder when VPS companies will start taking off, stock-wise. With the screws tightening all around the globe, it is only a matter of time before the average person starts using a VPN for all their Internet traffic, most likely in another country.
Canada forcing this is stupid -- as of now, the crooks are fairly easy to catch (as few use encrypted services). However, if countries keep pushing, everyone (including the bad guys) will start moving their traffic offshore. Result, police work which was moderately difficult becomes completely impossible without international cooperation on even the smallest case. Even with treaties making it easy, there will be exit nodes (Tor or commercial VPNs) in countries who have not signed them.
Of course, the next step is trying to actively block VPNs, but that changes the game from passive eavesdropping to active censorship, and escalates the cat and mouse game.
This is exactly why it would be in some third party's interest to provoke conflict between Iran and Israel. WWIII would drastically change the balance of power, and there are countries who would take the time to try to provoke it, even if it means dealing with the ramifications of most of the world being radioactive glass.
Even it if wasn't a country, I'm sure there are individuals or groups out there who are sociopathic enough to do such a thing. Look at the fringe groups in the US. I'm sure there are those who would love to test out their new bong shelter.
The key here is knowledge. The knowledge to write Stuxnet is extremely hard to get (the holes in operating systems, the ability to jump from Windows to SCADA systems, knowing what speed the uranium was spinning), but this may not be impossible for someone who has a lot of connections, perhaps someone whose family has nuclear process engineers.
There are a lot of people and organizations who don't like either Iran or Israel, and who would happily eat popcorn as both countries went to war with each other. It could be a guy in someone's basement who gets amusement from it the same way someone gets amusement from cracking root and rm-ing / on a university system.
If someone floods me with crap, I have three choices:
1: Hide their status updates. They won't know, and likely don't care that their prattle isn't making my morning reading.
2: Add them in a group that denies them access to most of your profile. I do this with the people that are questionable (lots of friends in common, but don't know personally, and don't want to be impolite.) This way, if they are spambots, they won't have access to much, and if they are bona fide people worth knowing, I don't have to apologize -- just say it was a FB glitch.
3: Unfriend their ass. This is reserved for the bots, as well as people not personally known.
A few years ago, I bought a rebranded HTC Wizard from T-Mobile. It allowed full tethering albeit at only EDGE speeds, a good amount of apps, Skype, full BT and Wi-Fi capability, and even the ability to have the device use the computer for its IP connection so it didn't require a Wi-Fi link when charging. Ringtone? Any mp3 worked. The only thing it didn't do which the first iPhone did was have a finger-friendly UI -- it still required a stylus (although one could use fingers for almost all apps.)
These days, I can get tethering... if I pay $10 a gig, or hack a device and hope that some device update doesn't undo the work or even worse, brick the phone. Tethering at no extra charge just does not exist. Since the N1 is not being sold through official channels in the US, I have to keep playing the root/counter-root game with whatever phone maker and cellular company.
My point stays -- there are no open devices sold in the US by the cellular carriers whatsoever.
I'm just wondering if/when Nokia will be making a N900 successor anytime soon. It seems that Maemo/Meego is the only way to get a phone that doesn't treat the owner like a convicted criminal with regards to locking down.
Out of all the antivirus utilities, MSE does the job, does it right without prompting or harassing about subscriptions or registration, and is very lightweight.
Now, enterprise-level, I'd recommend something different, but for home users, MSE is licensed at no charge, and does as good a job as anything else out there. Best deal running, IMHO.
This is one advantage of mobile devices -- historically they tend to be clean, with relatively (especially considering the size of the market) few exceptions. They are not completely secure, but it is rare to hear of a device being infected or compromised. I have yet to see a compromised phone firsthand. This does not mean it doesn't happen, but it isn't a commonplace problem like malware on Windows is.
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It made it through a committee.
Now, will it get scheduled to be heard on the House Floor? Probably not. Will it get voted on? Likely not.
Will it fly through the House? There is a lot of bad blood, and the guys who wrote the bill have (D) tags, and the House has flipped control -- it will be a hard sell there.
I wouldn't be 100% sure that it wouldn't pass, but I'm confident it will end up like the Son-of-DMCA act, INDUCE act, or the the many other bills that wind up on the committee table, and don't make it past that.
Ford's SYNC uses the BlueTooth pairing to dial 911 if the vehicle crashes. It doesn't seem as elegant as OnStar, but it is a lot better when it comes to privacy, and the fact that your vehicle can't be remotely killed.
People would be screaming if a life safety system like this got jammed by the USG.
The reason for this is that during the 1980s, Mercedes inundated the US market with smelly, slow turbo diesel cars. Because of the pollution they produced, and the fact that people would drive on breakdown lanes to get around those stench-belchers, it got ingraned in the American mind that diesel == slow and stinky.
Which is ironic. The Ford F250s and other heavy duty vehicles use diesel and nobody ever complains these days about them.
Now, if we can get some twin turbo diesel engines for midsize/fullsize rides (Camries, Accords, Tauruses), I'm sure this will go a way towards better MPG, even with the added weight of the diesel engine.
More diesels is better than the other thing I'm seeing here in the US, and that is a quiet push for more ethanol consumption. Especially proposals to change the amount of ethanol in gasoline from 10% to 15%. Larger vehicles don't mind E85, but woe to the person who fills up their Honda with the stuff.
That is what mainframes are for. Yes, the technology is old and not exciting, but one of the strong points of mainframes is I/O, which is critical to most database architectures.
Another idea is to scale using other layers, if there are problems at the SQL server level.
At the lower areas, one can go with a mainframe (parallel sysplex) and have geographically separate pieces of hardware acting coherently.
At the higher layers, have the app use multiple SQL servers and handle the redundancy in this layer.
You aren't rambling; you have a bunch of good points. It would be nice to see diesel alternatives here in the US, other than on the super duty trucks.
Another advantage is that diesel engines have fewer parts. For example, no spark plugs. Yes, glow plugs need to be replaced, but nowhere near as often, and they are not as critical to basic function of the engine.
Yet another advantage is that diesel fuel is relatively stable. Gasoline absorbs water turning into a nasty acid, and otherwise decomposes after a period of time. Because diesel is an oil, water doesn't mix with it.
The ideal would be a diesel hybrid. This way, at idle (stoplight), fuel isn't being consumed.
I wonder how a diesel would rate on the scale. Europe has a lot of hyper-efficient turbo diesels on the roads there with MPG equal or better than hybrids.
How about a balance between the two? Take a basic Nokia low-end phone, the ones which cost $15.00 with a prepaid service. They have a very good UI, and even allow for one to upload numbers to it. Now time for some add-ons:
1: Put it in a brushed metal case. No, not silverized plastic... CNC machined aluminum. Even without Apple's LiquidMetal advantage, this can be done without too many problems.
2: Allow it to use a SIM card or its own memory for storage. As a bonus, offer to back up the addressbook to the Web like CDMA providers do.
3: Provide some basic games, wallpapers and such.
4: Slap a Micro USB connector on it.
5: Basic BT connectivity. This isn't an iPod so all it needs is the phone profile.
6: Make the display out of 2mm thick Gorilla Glass.
7: Drop a decent battery in it.
8: Put decent rubber seals for the buttons and where the case meshes.
Now, market this phone as a rugged, good looking phone to have "for emergencies". Sell it as the phone to take to the frog baseball games, the chainsaw swordfighting championships, the beach, the Grand Canyon, and places where one would be afraid to take their main smartphone. Sell a case that is water resistant and has plugs for all the ports so it can take a dunking and emerge unscathed. This isn't meant to be a *rugged* phone, but something that strikes a balance between looking good and taking the punches. It should be able to be dropped multiple times from 4 feet onto cement without visible scratching or glass breakage, for example.
This phone's advantages will be a long battery life (so it can sit in a glovebox for days to weeks on end and still have enough juice for a call), decent looks (so it doesn't look like a throwback to the 1980s), and enough ruggedness so people are not afraid to bring it places.
I'm sure something like this would sell to smartphone users, because who would want to take their good smartphone to a joust, for example.
All Android phones can go rotary dial if you so choose -- the dialer can be easily switched out for the most part.
It would be in their interest to stop getting bullied by ISPs. Else I can see the following happen:
1: Being charged per bit to a "non-premiere" provider. Your ISP blessed Bing and you use Google? Better pony up a buck a query.
2: Being automatically redirected to the "premiere" providers on links. You click a link for a vend a goat machine, ISP routes you to the turtle-o-matic corporation.
3: In-transit ads. Phorm anyone? I can even see ISPs telling customers to drop a cert into their browser, and doing Phorm based stuff over SSL. With NAC, it would be easy to force all subscribers to have software installed that automatically does this.
4: Ads on the website replaced by the ISP's ads, like early 2000s malware used to do so their people got the click traffic, not the people on the site.
Maybe Google should, and state that because of the hostile practices that $ISP does, Google is forced to delay each search for $TIME. Most users would get onto their ISP's case real fast if the daily content they access, they have to wait 30-60 seconds for like one of the filesharing sites.
It would be good for Google. ISPs have more to lose if content providers pick up their toys and go home.
Debt collection law is valid, IF the bill collectors are in the US. However, a lot of them are in India, where they can happily call someone up at all hours, call their friends, call their managers, call their neighbors, or their kids's schools saying that Johnny's parents are failing in their duties as a child rearer because they are deadbeats.
Just host offshore, and the $1000 per violation of the FDCA means nothing.
I can see this... but all parties would have to have PGP Desktop, or a similar utility to encrypt/decrypt messages, as well as a pre-established WOT.
This comes to mind something... Perhaps combine Facebook and Hushmail? Result, every object (status update, message) is encrypted with its own key, and the key be decryptable by users, groups of users, or everyone. This way, a break in, or a goof in the backend application wouldn't reveal any information that has not been configured to reveal unless the key storage/decryption system was massively smashed. It would not be completely secure, and definitely not from governments (most likely they would want a recovery key), but it would keep data well under wraps from almost anything else.
Wasn't IPSec supposed to protect against stuff like this, so even if someone was able to route internal traffic through a hostile source, all that could be done would be traffic analysis (finding which machines put more packets on the wire than others)?
TPMs can be used for nasty things, but this is one of the good things about BitLocker and TPMs -- a modified MBR would result in the machine not booting because the TPM would not hand the key over to the encrypted system partition due to the changed code.
Of course, the TPM would have to be "sealed" before the malware hit the system, and a viral infection is not the first thing on the list to check if a box is sitting there in recovery mode asking for a key or a USB flash drive to continue booting.
To me, if one has Windows 7, an edition that supports BitLocker, and a TPM/support for it in hardware, it becomes a no brainer to enable BitLocker if only to have protection against "evil maid" attacks, as well as MBR infections.
It depends on how sane the leadership is in Russia and other places. The one thing that kept the US and Russia from going full tilt at it back in the days of the Iron Curtain is the fact that both countries are more into living and allowing their kids to grow up than fighting just to fight. Other historically nuclear++ countries like France are similar -- they rather not exchange warheads for anything but to retaliate against incoming warheads.
However, most of the world has forgotten the lesson of World War 1, where people said that there would never be a war in Europe because of the trade ties... and it took one August for Europe to go from a continent of old empires to one beset by global conflict. Things can turn on a dime, especially if a country decides that the fires of nationalism or treaty obligations are more important than the light of their people's existence.
Bleah, hate to reply to my own post, but the reason why people don't care about DPI as a whole is because they don't know or don't care. They are also used to "well, SOMEONE knows what I do on the Internet at all times", and being watched constantly online, either by LEOs, or private companies looking to slurp knowledge about someone to sell for a buck.
It is a heck of a lot easier to store indexes of people's communications via the Internet than it is to do physical objects. If someone wants to dig up dirt on a target (say to find charges to put them in jail as revenge for them dating an ex), it isn't hard to do. Disk is cheap, and it is easy to filter out chaff and store the juicy stuff indefinitely.
To boot, the information also has a lot of secondary value to marketers and advertisers.
I am starting to wonder when VPS companies will start taking off, stock-wise. With the screws tightening all around the globe, it is only a matter of time before the average person starts using a VPN for all their Internet traffic, most likely in another country.
Canada forcing this is stupid -- as of now, the crooks are fairly easy to catch (as few use encrypted services). However, if countries keep pushing, everyone (including the bad guys) will start moving their traffic offshore. Result, police work which was moderately difficult becomes completely impossible without international cooperation on even the smallest case. Even with treaties making it easy, there will be exit nodes (Tor or commercial VPNs) in countries who have not signed them.
Of course, the next step is trying to actively block VPNs, but that changes the game from passive eavesdropping to active censorship, and escalates the cat and mouse game.
This is exactly why it would be in some third party's interest to provoke conflict between Iran and Israel. WWIII would drastically change the balance of power, and there are countries who would take the time to try to provoke it, even if it means dealing with the ramifications of most of the world being radioactive glass.
Even it if wasn't a country, I'm sure there are individuals or groups out there who are sociopathic enough to do such a thing. Look at the fringe groups in the US. I'm sure there are those who would love to test out their new bong shelter.
The key here is knowledge. The knowledge to write Stuxnet is extremely hard to get (the holes in operating systems, the ability to jump from Windows to SCADA systems, knowing what speed the uranium was spinning), but this may not be impossible for someone who has a lot of connections, perhaps someone whose family has nuclear process engineers.
There are a lot of people and organizations who don't like either Iran or Israel, and who would happily eat popcorn as both countries went to war with each other. It could be a guy in someone's basement who gets amusement from it the same way someone gets amusement from cracking root and rm-ing / on a university system.
If someone floods me with crap, I have three choices:
1: Hide their status updates. They won't know, and likely don't care that their prattle isn't making my morning reading.
2: Add them in a group that denies them access to most of your profile. I do this with the people that are questionable (lots of friends in common, but don't know personally, and don't want to be impolite.) This way, if they are spambots, they won't have access to much, and if they are bona fide people worth knowing, I don't have to apologize -- just say it was a FB glitch.
3: Unfriend their ass. This is reserved for the bots, as well as people not personally known.
A few years ago, I bought a rebranded HTC Wizard from T-Mobile. It allowed full tethering albeit at only EDGE speeds, a good amount of apps, Skype, full BT and Wi-Fi capability, and even the ability to have the device use the computer for its IP connection so it didn't require a Wi-Fi link when charging. Ringtone? Any mp3 worked. The only thing it didn't do which the first iPhone did was have a finger-friendly UI -- it still required a stylus (although one could use fingers for almost all apps.)
These days, I can get tethering... if I pay $10 a gig, or hack a device and hope that some device update doesn't undo the work or even worse, brick the phone. Tethering at no extra charge just does not exist. Since the N1 is not being sold through official channels in the US, I have to keep playing the root/counter-root game with whatever phone maker and cellular company.
My point stays -- there are no open devices sold in the US by the cellular carriers whatsoever.
I'm just wondering if/when Nokia will be making a N900 successor anytime soon. It seems that Maemo/Meego is the only way to get a phone that doesn't treat the owner like a convicted criminal with regards to locking down.
Avast! does the same exact thing.
Out of all the antivirus utilities, MSE does the job, does it right without prompting or harassing about subscriptions or registration, and is very lightweight.
Now, enterprise-level, I'd recommend something different, but for home users, MSE is licensed at no charge, and does as good a job as anything else out there. Best deal running, IMHO.
This is one advantage of mobile devices -- historically they tend to be clean, with relatively (especially considering the size of the market) few exceptions. They are not completely secure, but it is rare to hear of a device being infected or compromised. I have yet to see a compromised phone firsthand. This does not mean it doesn't happen, but it isn't a commonplace problem like malware on Windows is.