If you had two locks to choose from. One that is highly mainstream, which is sold at every hardware store and megamart across the country to which picking tools come with every toolbox and the maker of the lock only addresses flaws every couple of months
or
A lock that you had to get from a specialized "lock"-shop, which gives it to you for free if you promise to pay them to look after the lock every few weeks, whose tools are far more complicated to handle and whose training is largely focused on specialists.
Which one would you choose if you knew that millions of the standard locks are picked every day. That is as easy as I can break it down.
When all else fails and people don't buy into your mediocrity anymore you need either boobs or something adorably cute. This time they went for the ethnic little girl. If this was a gaming ad she'd have to be at least 16 years older AND the cuteness would be an optional feature.
We've asked other 4 1/2 year olds on their opinion:
"I'm a PC, when I grow up I want to be a Mac" Stevie, Redmond, WA
"I'm a Mac, when I grow up I want to be Photoshop" Stevie, Cupertino, CA
"I am Linux, I passed my SATs today." The guy with the cuddle blanket, Portland, OR
And even if he is a left-wing activist so what? The accusations made against him and the other alleged members of the "mg - Militante Gruppe" were arson charges on vehicles. That justifies total surveillance and remand even though there is no apparent connection between the alleged arson and him? At least that is what is communicated about the case. You don't hear much from the government side of things, they're probably too embarrassed to even admit to the proceedings. I, for one, have never heard an official explanations for the things I keep hearing. If there was no such thing, why not prove it? Or at least deny it? They don't. Usually that is already more than you'd get from the feds. In most cases they deny anything until there is proof. This time there is a plethora of accounts and evidence and they don't deny. Usually that means they've been caught but can't admit to it because that would weaken their position.
Maybe it's a clever political move by some witty left-wind terrorists that just tell us these stories about their kids being watched and about their gear being spied on to prepare for the downfall of the government. Yeah, that must be it.
Gentrifikation, Praekarisierung... there, I said it.
These are just a few that I found quickly Scroogling for it. Please excuse my lack of diversity in sources but I don't have that much time and you can find follow up literature through those on your own, I guess. I can't access my bookmarks from here so I couldn't give you the best but this should make my point just fine. As you might notice these are from two years ago, looong before any public discussion about the rightfulness of other means was even introduced. There was no legal basis for this mode of operation but it's a reality. This to me is enough proof that a lawful definition of "federal spyware" wasn't needed and is merely symbolic policy. Like I said, the people who are innocently subjected to these measures are seldomly reimbursed for their damages and in many cases of clandestine "Hausdurchsuchungen" not even notified.
Some of the things here come from official agency papers that suggest these measures in investigations (without any legal basis I might add). Especially the Skype "Quellen-TKÃoe" surveillance is characteristically done via clandestine software which is introduced into the users system. This is been done, there are documents which exemplify specific pricing ranges therefore, I believe, it can safely be assumed that this is not merely a theoretical possibility.
Sorry I didn't link to the file with the VoIP prices mentioned but I can't find the link at this moment. And yes, compared to the American system German bureaucracy has always been superior especially in terms of secrecy. There are gaps and mishaps everywhere but in Germany we also don't have this common "virtue" of wanting to blow the whistle. As you might know large parts of German history are coined by secret organizations and people that protect or ignore these proceedings because they are too afraid. Americans, strangely, seem to have a different approach and whistleblowers "sacrifice" their own good for justices sake more freely than here. This at least is my observation.
I didn't hear Andrej Holm complain except that his wife made a agitprop case of it.
Excuse me, the last thing you do if two words you've used in a scientific paper brought you constant surveillance and months of imprisonment is to give the people who still think you are a terrorist any reason to want so "silence" you even more. I would guess he keeps back with that because every word he says in his own defence would be interpreted as a terrorists denial.
So just because the press hasn't reported on it and the authorities deny it's existence no government agency has ever used illegal wiretaps or spy software to gather information. And you call me naive?
The Bundeswehr Tornado Bomber is usually only used with a mandate as well and yet these things flew recon missions during the G8 summit. So what? Let's just agree that this kind of publicly funded technology isn't always used according to it's dedicated purpose.
It's not any worse than in other countries but you claimed that "at least the safeguards are still in place" not really a soothing fact that we actually need to employ these safeguards to keep our politicians from abusing this power. Then again that is waht politics is.
It doesn't have to be worse "not any better" isn't too re-assuring either. Germany tolerated and supported the illegal detention of suspected terrorists. Aren't you aware of that? At least the name Kurnaz should mean something to you. Our foreign affairs minister Steinmeier still denies that he ever knew of that, yet, when a German citizen is captured and taken hostage in some mountainous tourist region he's the first on TV to talk about their negotiations. Do you actually believe that the US doesn't tell us about stuff like that? Why else do you think they keep calling us an "important partner".
You're trying to justify illegal means of intelligence gathering by giving me illegal rendition as a comparison? Sorry but you're out of your mind. Both are unacceptable in a free and democratic society. According to your definition all the real bad guys we catch with these illegal measures make up for all the innocent "Beifang" that we reel in. Since we strive to maintain both a democracy and freedom there is no way I can agree with you on this. This is the hard thing about freedom. You have to grant these rights to anybody even those that you suspect of being criminals, at least until you can definitely prove that they are guilty. It's called a Rechtsstaat.
Basically if you think a law keeps people from doing certain things you are way more naive then I am. What happens when such a law governing intelligence gathering or treatment of suspects is broken? Who ever made the government take responsibility? When the Bundesverfassungsgericht stops some legal act they don't stop the agencies from doing their word. They simply refuse to give permission. The innocent victims are usually released and awarded a symbolic reparation by a court. That doesn't repair the harm done (lost jobs/spouses/friends), that doesn't keep the feds from breaking the law again, it doesn't take away the nagging doubt, insecurity and paranoia these people have to live through. What will Andrej Holm get for his troubles? What will the government learn from their erroneous behavior? In both cases the answer is "not very much".
Simply because our country hasn't deteriorated into the mess that many other governments have become after 9/11 doesn't mean we're better. Apparently the people here simply take greater care in actually securing the freedoms that the US for example fought so hard to give us.
Why does everyone focus immediately on the "black hat" side of the story, and neglect that the group is supposed to do BOTH sides, which in some ways, is a good aspect of ANY security team... just hopefully, your security team follows ethics.
Because in general, the military is not exactly known for it's humanitarian altruistic approach. Most military define security by going into the enemies home and screwing them there.
The constitutional safeguards still work? How exactly would the limits on the actions of the Bundeswehr be any different from the secret "Federal trojan" and other unauthorized methods which have been employed without constitutional authorization? Safeguards are a nice concept but you need people that are actually afraid of getting caught in them.
Just because the publisher is broke that doesn't mean the developer dies with them. That's why they are different branches of the same business. But it certainly won't give 2D Boy any more reason to actually finish the Linux support.
How exactly is article by "The Inquirer" a rip-off? The link to the original source and claim nowhere that it's their own. Below the article there is another reference to The Inquirer. This ain't ripping off just lazy re-posting.
The game problem is that Linux does not have a decent replacement for DirectX. It's that simple.
I'd call this an understatement of the problem. The PS3 doesn't have DirectX either and none of the tools that Xbox360 devs can use but still they see the very same titles. Both Bioshock and The Orange Box under Windows heavily rely on DirectX and yet, they've been ported with virtually no difference in quality. For Bioshock it took them several months to adapt the engine to a non-DirectX platform and thus had a delay of half a year between Xbox and PS3. The problem here isn't that the toolset isn't available for the platform but that the re-implementation that is done for lucrative non-MS platforms like Mac and the PS3 isn't happening. Most of the things DX does for the developers have to be re-written by hand to work without it. That takes some time. Like I said they don't think it's a good investment, apparently.
In March Postal 3 is supposed to come out on Linux. The game runs the Source engine and I expect Valve to announce all the other Source based titles for Linux around that time. They've been hiring Linux devs for a while now and the signs all point into the general direction as Linux being the third major OS to be featured on game packaging soon. It's all a matter of incentives and I think if Valve becomes the first big distributor/developer to sell their products to a Linux audience on a large scale some of the other companies might follow. I, for one, would buy all my Valve games again just to play them natively.
I looked at all of these links and personally I never experienced ANY of these bugs during my 2 1/2 years with Ubuntu. I did have some problems, granted, but I also installed Windows XP at least 20 times in 3 years because it screwed itself up so badly that it couldn't be saved. So this is a common experience for all OSs. I don't want to play that blame-game anymore. Windows is buggy, Linux is buggy. Windows has shit support hotlines and costs lots of money, Linux has enthusiastic users (which sometimes don't know their ass from their face) but is free. Some of the things you linked here were "I hate Ubuntu because I had that problem" type blogs. No explanation of what actually happened just "I used it and it was shit". A post titled "Ubuntu sucks... get a Mac" is not exactly what I would want to use to make a point. One of the things you linked was an OpenOffice bug. How do you make an argument out of that. That's like saying "MS Access crashed on my SQL database... windows sucks". Apples and Peaches wha...?
Ubuntu is buggy. Period. The fact that Vista, or any Windows for that regard, might be buggy too, does not invalidate that perception.
Ack! You're right about that. But let's be fair. You use Ubuntu's bugginess to discredit it as a "good desktop" and I do the same for several Windows versions. We're all happy.
Don't compare apples to oranges. Compare Ubuntu (a distro, or a complex of distros) to other distros: CentOS, PCLinuxOS, LinuxMint, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Slackware... you get the idea.
It was YOU who started the apples and oranges cars against Operating systems analogy. Nevermind.
I stand by my point. Putting a slow, buggy distro with a GNOME frontend = big mess. I've seen that before (summoning Red Hat Linux versions from the dead...).
You might get a decent implementation of GNOME on another distro, who knows... (Debian, perhaps?). You might also get a good, stable distro who also happens to be very fast (Vector Linux).
But these two damning factors (GNOME and a slow, buggy linux) are present in Ubuntu and this is a trend that is only going to get worse as far as I can see.
Maybe slow and buggy is the compromise to make for the regular user? No, but seriously. I use Ubuntu for a while now, I did have problems, still have some inexplicable bugs but compared to some of the other distros the work that has been put into the usability outweighs these minor flaws for me. Compared to the non-existing debugging in Windows I even fixed a host of my problems myself simply by analyzing the error logs and actually looking through the sources. That might not be the average user's business but at least I can do it here. Back to Linux in General: I tried installing Arch Linux one of the distros that is heralded as exquisit, I got it onto my machine and got stuck. Gentoo, same thing, compiling everything as a guy like me with ten years Windows experience and all time already spent on learning other Linux basics? I tried but failed miserably. I don't know
Software compatibility? Maybe they are going to "persuade" commercial sw companies not to make Linux compatible apps.
They already do it's called "Games for Windows". Right now the market is divided in companies that accept FOSS and see it as a valid market and those who have stupid pre-occupations about it and don't use it's potential. I don't know maybe some developers think that publishing software for Linux means you will give away your code. Apparently they don't get the implications of binaries. I've never seen a single line of code from my native Linux games and I bought them just as every other game. Same goes for other applications. The problem is simply that the knowledge around development for Linux and the potential is underrated at best. I'd even say it's a matter of prejudice caused by lobbyism.
Ballmer did say he'd rather someone used an illegal copy of Windows over another operating system, so it's not outside the realms of possibility that they'll give you windows for free just to continue the monopoly.
Of course he says that, if you'd calculate the actual number of "Genuine" windows installations compared to the pirated ones their "95% installbase" would melt quicker than ice cubes in a firestorm.
I'd gladly keep paying for my hardware if that means I don't have to use Windows. I can see a subsidized model for computers like cellphone carriers have been running for years now but if that means I'll have to buy into a 24 month contract with Microsoft where everything is metered and billed according to my use... I'd much rather buy regular hardware and use FOSS. Currently you don't even have a choice. You can buy a hugely expensive un-branded cellphone and then still have to maintain a contract with the carrier. In this model you pay twice if you want "your" hardware. Same thing with using proprietary hard/software. You pay for the hardware AND for the software. One of those will have to go, since software obviously CAN be free I guess hardware will have to stay or you'll end up in one of these contractual monitoring models. Millions of people would sign up, I'm quite sure. But it wouldn't be a good thing.
Let Microsoft go after Ubuntu. Because Ubuntu is slow, buggy, and not a good desktop.
I don't know which Ubuntu you are talking about but the three machines that I run don't have any problems that they wouldn't have under (or because of) Vista. And I can maintain all three free of cost. Let's not forget that Ubuntu still beats Vista in benchmarks. A "good desktop" is a matter of expectation. Ubuntu with it's GNOME interface is much more than Windows ever was for me. Just because it doesn't fulfill your expectations doesn't mean it's not a good desktop. Windows doesn't fulfill mine... so what do you say to that?
Ubuntu is not the best GNU/Linux distribution. For starters, their quality assurance could be much better, and it is not economical in resource usage. Moreover, it was infected with the "Red Hat" disease of patching everything, introducing more, difficult to track and patch, bugs.
With Microsoft it's literally IMPOSSIBLE for an end user to track and patch bugs. So you're saying?
Worse yet, Ubuntu uses by default the GNOME Desktop. It's my personal preference, but I can't stand GNOME, period. It is so aggravating I can't even use it. A GNU/Linux desktop using GNOME is like using a Ferrari car only in first shift. Its vast potential is completely underused.
Correction: It's a FREE Ferrari that outruns the MS Ferrari at many many occasions and you don't have to buy a special screwdriver for thousands of dollars to open the hood. What is KDE then? A Lamborghini in first gear? Same here, they do a lot of stuff but it has it's problems too. Yeah, the lack of dedicated mechanics makes GNU/Linux less competitive in some areas (namely gaming) but that's not Linux' fault but that the mechanics focus on making more money with special screwdrivers. If some more people would dedicate their time to improve OpenSource interfaces like GNOME, KDE, Xfce, E17 etc. you'd probably get the results you're demanding. Right now there is not much of a coordinated effort to push this into the right direction because the people who COULD work on this are either to busy making money in the closed source market or don't care about Linux at all.
Therefore, my guess is that Ubuntu is in fact a low-hanging fruit. Let Microsoft go after Ubuntu; meanwhile... KDE will eat their lunch. 4.2 is just the harbinger of things to come and it's that terrific. Period.
Oh so you're just a KDE fanboy? Nevermind that KDE copies Windows usability in all aspects even the bad ones. I like what GNOME does and compared to KDE4 I'd choose it any time of the day. Simply because every time I start KDE I'm reminded why I stopped using Windows in the first place.
Btw. in case you didn't realize it. The Ubuntu Desktop is all variants of Ubuntu. They're not losing market share to GNOME they're losing market share to free Linux distributions with usable interfaces. Which includes RedHat and as window manager your beloved KDE.
Or shut the hell up. How does one even want to compete with something that's free. Certainly not with the quality of their own products, the incredible support services or recent history in innovation.
My problem with that argument is that if I don't "view" an ad (because I rarely pay attention to annoying crap) the whole purpose of ads is gambling. Basically advertisement IS gambling. You pay someone a wad of cash to have them show your ads around and HOPE (there's nothing more) that someone will fall for it and actually look at your stuff and eventually buy something. There is no guaranteed revenue from that. If every user ignores the add and just continues browsing you have basically paid for nothing. But that's completely OK because I had to do the filtering in my head and not with software on a browser level. That's retarded. You're basically betting this guy that he won't be able to give you more customers. To me, that's a ridiculously flawed system from the beginning and expecting me to take part in that is more than insulting -especially since most ads aren't actual product advertisements anymore, they're emotionally laden propaganda manipulation attempts that try to trick my brain into preferring certain brands. I hate that.
I suspect that this is targeted at the aXXos of the world. 30,000 peers on a TV rip probably qualifies in their eyes as "commercial scale" but not for financial gain. Lending a disk to a mate to get a copy of same probably does not.
My question would be, why try to establish a multi-lateral global framework of fascist information distribution restrictions and not battling pirates with their own weapons? I'd pay for a movie as aXXo style 700MB rip. But only if I can watch a decent sample beforehand (not a shit trailer that gives me all the important moments). They don't try to evolve, what they do is to dig their trenches deeper and try to force everyone to pay for their lack of common sense and flexibility. Sure people trading free stuff is a huge problem but they're not even trying to combat that with improved offers. Screw all those region based single market corporate interest endeavors. They don't realize what their markets oughta be and don't even try to work there.
I can't accept this. There is no reasonable explanation to be such a blockhead and they blame their failure to adapt on their consumers by abusing policy. That's neither right nor justified. I feel ashamed that our politicians even cooperate with this corrupt sack of liars. But then again, what else is politics than a bunch of liars tickling each others balls.
Otherwise, I think this whole process should be shut down. It has been going on far too long for any good that we have been getting from it.
I whole heartedly agree, I also think it should be stopped immediately but what you're not realizing is that the people proposing these legislations don't give a rats ass about what you and me think. They will do that anyway, the politicians are suckered into compliance by payolas and the promise of future support for their ideas so there is no actual way of stopping this. The only way to have a say in the ACTA negotiations would be for a large part of the userbase and public to cry out about the foul play here. Trust me, I tried requesting ACTA documents through my EU parliament people and they all refused on grounds of secrecy laws that don't actually apply to the proceedings and other baseless bullshit.
If you haven't realized it, we are governed. There is no such thing as a people-led democracy, at least in no state that I know of. They're all aristocratic dictatorships that make the appearance of democratic proceeding so there is no civil war. Unless more people realize this and stop paying attention to the farcical sharade that is sold to us as citizen participation there will be no way to stop these people from getting where they want to be.
Prove me wrong, I dare you, prove me wrong. I'd LOVE to see proof that there is actually stuff done in the name of the people and not just in the name of money. Right now, people are sold these ACTA treaties as a means of fighting economy degrading piracy... what it is in reality is a competition stifling set of rules that will tighten the grip of the industry on the freedom of choice of people and means to make non-compliers obey.
Today the Piratebay, tomorrow independent music labels.
But someone is far more likely to rob a gun from me and use it, or sell it to someone who will use it, than to randomly pick up one of my hairs somewhere, transport it to a future crime scene and drop only the hair that is mine (if they drop their own hair then they'll be the suspect.) As far as picking up DNA from me sneezing, the minuscule amount of saliva left on the bus from me sneezing wouldn't be enough to get onto someones hand, be transported elsewhere, then be picked up by a forensic scientist for DNA testing (I would have to basically spit in that persons hand for them to have enough DNA on them to transfer it somewhere else where it will be noticed and picked up by a forensic investigator.)
Granted the sneezing example probably wasn't the best argument. Sure they are more likely to steal a personal item from you and use that for a crime than plant evidence but the thing is if you don't show up in either database there will never be any risk of you even getting involved in that investigation. Now, if for whatever reason your prints are in the database (which they usually aren't) they will get your data as a result, no doubt. The thing is these sets of data will be taken from everyone arrested even if they are released with no charges afterwards. These records stay on file indefinitely. That's a bad practice (maybe convenient and practical for investigators).
No, not at all, I'm only pointing out that having a photo or video of someone that looks like you committing a crime is about the same amount of evidence as DNA that matches yours (actually it's probably worse as the jury can see that you look exactly like the person in the video, whereas DNA evidence is a lot more confusing.)
But isn't it also true that some criminal cases are based solely on DNA evidence? If a jury is faced with some inconsistent witness accounts and confusing but nonetheless plausible DNA evidence don't you think they are more likely to utter a verdict that would be different than without the evidence? I'm just asking this because if the existence of DNA evidence leads to sentences then the possibility of a misconviction and false trial based on DNA databases and gathered evidence is not only likely but almost inevitable.
I don't think you fully understand how DNA matching works, DNA is far less unique than a fingerprint. A sampling of DNA left at a crime scene could potentially match yours, and unless there's some reason to believe that you were involved in the crime, NO ONE would come looking for you. There's no reason to round up everyone whose DNA could match, especially if there's no reason to believe that person could in any way be connected to the crime.
Yes, agreed. On the other hand once you have a database that you can run cross-checks on that will spit out all potential matches for a set of DNA you will consider questioning them. And that's where it gets dangerous. You find DNA at a crime scene, ask the computer for potential matches, computer says Joe X. lives two blocks away. So you go down and ask him questions or arrest the guy only to find out later on that he didn't do anything. Yet he's in all the legal trouble for getting arrested and has to explain himself to neighbors and employers. These are usually the problems that people suffering from misconduct in investigation suffer from. I'm not trying to defend actual criminals here but the risk of false positives grows by a magnitude if you gain unquestioned access to such tools.
Even if they choose not to destroy the DNA sample, it's no worse than keeping the existing fingerprint or mugshot databases. They want this so if someone gets raped they can search the database, if you have a history of committing crimes (if you're found not guilty you won't have a history), your DNA is a match, you're living in the area around the crime, the victim has no recollection of what the person looked like, and they have no other suspects, they
Yes, and there's no way someone can steal something from your home with your fingerprints on it (like a knife or a gun) and kill someone else with it.
At least they'll have to break into your house first. That's a little more effort than bumping into you in the street.
Or someone who looks like you has to be there...
So you think it's alright for someone that looks a bit like a criminal should be arrested for that? Same problem here with photography than with DNA evidence. Just because you have something resembling that which you are looking for doesn't necessarily mean you already found it.
1. DNA is not entirely unique, so even if they found DNA that matched yours, it didn't necessarily have to come from you
Sure it doesn't but how often is that actually a valuable defense in court? If trials were held on that premise nobody would ever be able to use DNA evidence because there's only a ~3% chance that the murderer isn't a chimp. I'd like to see your argument when a judge finds DNA traces very similar to yours at the scene of a murder and everyone with a similar profile has a good alibi. Then what? I think the judge wouldn't care for your "could be someone else's DNA" chain of thought.
You've got that backwards, THEY have to prove that you've not only been there, but have done the crime, despite the fact that you have no connection to the person or the crime whatsoever.
Hold up, we're discussing this because they want to take DNA samples off of people for mere suspicion. Then they will file you as a potential suspect so YOU have to prove to them that you're not. We all know that they won't destroy the evidence once they determined that you're not the guy (this time). I agree that so far courts will give you the benefit of the doubt but I don't think there are that many cases in which the suspect had a good alibi for his DNA being in an unlikely place and walked. Usually if you DNA is found and held against you, you'll go to jail.
At least if you pointed me to an actual case where someone who had no ties to a person was convicted based on DNA evidence I'd understand (and I know there have been wrongful convictions based on DNA evidence before), but Gattaca? Really? That's the best evidence you can think of?
Well sorry, I'm not a lawyer. I don't dig around in court files all day. So far DNA analysis outside of criminal cases isn't that far spread. I'm not familiar with the minutae of such cases but they exist (as you say). Once we get some exemplary cases in, I'll get back to you. I didn't offer this as evidence, just as a potentially entertaining work of fiction to get a certain idea across. Next you'll tell me I can't quote from 1984 anymore because that's all literature bullshit and no real evidence for oppression and infringements on human rights. Calm down.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask them what they think about this situation:
If you had two locks to choose from. One that is highly mainstream, which is sold at every hardware store and megamart across the country to which picking tools come with every toolbox and the maker of the lock only addresses flaws every couple of months
or
A lock that you had to get from a specialized "lock"-shop, which gives it to you for free if you promise to pay them to look after the lock every few weeks, whose tools are far more complicated to handle and whose training is largely focused on specialists.
Which one would you choose if you knew that millions of the standard locks are picked every day. That is as easy as I can break it down.
When all else fails and people don't buy into your mediocrity anymore you need either boobs or something adorably cute.
This time they went for the ethnic little girl. If this was a gaming ad she'd have to be at least 16 years older AND the cuteness would be an optional feature.
We've asked other 4 1/2 year olds on their opinion:
"I'm a PC, when I grow up I want to be a Mac" Stevie, Redmond, WA
"I'm a Mac, when I grow up I want to be Photoshop" Stevie, Cupertino, CA
"I am Linux, I passed my SATs today." The guy with the cuddle blanket, Portland, OR
Source opens you ...
sorry I couldn't resist it.
But why Fedora? Is it because they'd rather be "Dead than Red(Hat)"?
I would not buy into that propaganda.
He is no simple scientist.
And even if he is a left-wing activist so what? The accusations made against him and the other alleged members of the "mg - Militante Gruppe" were arson charges on vehicles. That justifies total surveillance and remand even though there is no apparent connection between the alleged arson and him? At least that is what is communicated about the case. You don't hear much from the government side of things, they're probably too embarrassed to even admit to the proceedings. I, for one, have never heard an official explanations for the things I keep hearing. If there was no such thing, why not prove it? Or at least deny it? They don't. Usually that is already more than you'd get from the feds. In most cases they deny anything until there is proof. This time there is a plethora of accounts and evidence and they don't deny. Usually that means they've been caught but can't admit to it because that would weaken their position.
... there, I said it.
Maybe it's a clever political move by some witty left-wind terrorists that just tell us these stories about their kids being watched and about their gear being spied on to prepare for the downfall of the government. Yeah, that must be it.
Gentrifikation, Praekarisierung
I will assume that you are able to read German:
http://www.searchsecurity.de/themenbereiche/bedrohungen/viren-wuermer-trojaner/articles/107236
http://octo.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/sammelsurium-der-grausamkeiten-aus-allen-lander-polizeigesetzen/
http://octo.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/bundesregierung-legt-einsatz-von-trojanern-beim-voip-abhoren-nahe/
These are just a few that I found quickly Scroogling for it. Please excuse my lack of diversity in sources but I don't have that much time and you can find follow up literature through those on your own, I guess. I can't access my bookmarks from here so I couldn't give you the best but this should make my point just fine. As you might notice these are from two years ago, looong before any public discussion about the rightfulness of other means was even introduced. There was no legal basis for this mode of operation but it's a reality. This to me is enough proof that a lawful definition of "federal spyware" wasn't needed and is merely symbolic policy. Like I said, the people who are innocently subjected to these measures are seldomly reimbursed for their damages and in many cases of clandestine "Hausdurchsuchungen" not even notified.
Some of the things here come from official agency papers that suggest these measures in investigations (without any legal basis I might add). Especially the Skype "Quellen-TKÃoe" surveillance is characteristically done via clandestine software which is introduced into the users system. This is been done, there are documents which exemplify specific pricing ranges therefore, I believe, it can safely be assumed that this is not merely a theoretical possibility.
Sorry I didn't link to the file with the VoIP prices mentioned but I can't find the link at this moment. And yes, compared to the American system German bureaucracy has always been superior especially in terms of secrecy. There are gaps and mishaps everywhere but in Germany we also don't have this common "virtue" of wanting to blow the whistle. As you might know large parts of German history are coined by secret organizations and people that protect or ignore these proceedings because they are too afraid. Americans, strangely, seem to have a different approach and whistleblowers "sacrifice" their own good for justices sake more freely than here. This at least is my observation.
I didn't hear Andrej Holm complain except that his wife made a agitprop case of it.
Excuse me, the last thing you do if two words you've used in a scientific paper brought you constant surveillance and months of imprisonment is to give the people who still think you are a terrorist any reason to want so "silence" you even more. I would guess he keeps back with that because every word he says in his own defence would be interpreted as a terrorists denial.
So just because the press hasn't reported on it and the authorities deny it's existence no government agency has ever used illegal wiretaps or spy software to gather information. And you call me naive?
The Bundeswehr Tornado Bomber is usually only used with a mandate as well and yet these things flew recon missions during the G8 summit. So what? Let's just agree that this kind of publicly funded technology isn't always used according to it's dedicated purpose.
It's not any worse than in other countries but you claimed that "at least the safeguards are still in place" not really a soothing fact that we actually need to employ these safeguards to keep our politicians from abusing this power. Then again that is waht politics is.
It doesn't have to be worse "not any better" isn't too re-assuring either. Germany tolerated and supported the illegal detention of suspected terrorists. Aren't you aware of that? At least the name Kurnaz should mean something to you. Our foreign affairs minister Steinmeier still denies that he ever knew of that, yet, when a German citizen is captured and taken hostage in some mountainous tourist region he's the first on TV to talk about their negotiations. Do you actually believe that the US doesn't tell us about stuff like that? Why else do you think they keep calling us an "important partner".
You're trying to justify illegal means of intelligence gathering by giving me illegal rendition as a comparison? Sorry but you're out of your mind. Both are unacceptable in a free and democratic society. According to your definition all the real bad guys we catch with these illegal measures make up for all the innocent "Beifang" that we reel in. Since we strive to maintain both a democracy and freedom there is no way I can agree with you on this. This is the hard thing about freedom. You have to grant these rights to anybody even those that you suspect of being criminals, at least until you can definitely prove that they are guilty. It's called a Rechtsstaat.
Basically if you think a law keeps people from doing certain things you are way more naive then I am. What happens when such a law governing intelligence gathering or treatment of suspects is broken? Who ever made the government take responsibility? When the Bundesverfassungsgericht stops some legal act they don't stop the agencies from doing their word. They simply refuse to give permission. The innocent victims are usually released and awarded a symbolic reparation by a court. That doesn't repair the harm done (lost jobs/spouses/friends), that doesn't keep the feds from breaking the law again, it doesn't take away the nagging doubt, insecurity and paranoia these people have to live through. What will Andrej Holm get for his troubles? What will the government learn from their erroneous behavior? In both cases the answer is "not very much". Simply because our country hasn't deteriorated into the mess that many other governments have become after 9/11 doesn't mean we're better. Apparently the people here simply take greater care in actually securing the freedoms that the US for example fought so hard to give us.
Why does everyone focus immediately on the "black hat" side of the story, and neglect that the group is supposed to do BOTH sides, which in some ways, is a good aspect of ANY security team... just hopefully, your security team follows ethics.
Because in general, the military is not exactly known for it's humanitarian altruistic approach. Most military define security by going into the enemies home and screwing them there.
The constitutional safeguards still work? How exactly would the limits on the actions of the Bundeswehr be any different from the secret "Federal trojan" and other unauthorized methods which have been employed without constitutional authorization? Safeguards are a nice concept but you need people that are actually afraid of getting caught in them.
Just because the publisher is broke that doesn't mean the developer dies with them. That's why they are different branches of the same business. But it certainly won't give 2D Boy any more reason to actually finish the Linux support.
I heard recently someone disbanded one of the largest tables ever inserted into one of those ... amazing stuff.
Intel building GPU's for gaming consoles, nVidia building a x86 CPU, Microsoft looking for OpenSource strategy.
I am confused. Or rather: I totally know what's going on.
How exactly is article by "The Inquirer" a rip-off? The link to the original source and claim nowhere that it's their own. Below the article there is another reference to The Inquirer. This ain't ripping off just lazy re-posting.
The game problem is that Linux does not have a decent replacement for DirectX. It's that simple.
I'd call this an understatement of the problem. The PS3 doesn't have DirectX either and none of the tools that Xbox360 devs can use but still they see the very same titles. Both Bioshock and The Orange Box under Windows heavily rely on DirectX and yet, they've been ported with virtually no difference in quality. For Bioshock it took them several months to adapt the engine to a non-DirectX platform and thus had a delay of half a year between Xbox and PS3. The problem here isn't that the toolset isn't available for the platform but that the re-implementation that is done for lucrative non-MS platforms like Mac and the PS3 isn't happening. Most of the things DX does for the developers have to be re-written by hand to work without it. That takes some time. Like I said they don't think it's a good investment, apparently.
In March Postal 3 is supposed to come out on Linux. The game runs the Source engine and I expect Valve to announce all the other Source based titles for Linux around that time. They've been hiring Linux devs for a while now and the signs all point into the general direction as Linux being the third major OS to be featured on game packaging soon. It's all a matter of incentives and I think if Valve becomes the first big distributor/developer to sell their products to a Linux audience on a large scale some of the other companies might follow. I, for one, would buy all my Valve games again just to play them natively.
I looked at all of these links and personally I never experienced ANY of these bugs during my 2 1/2 years with Ubuntu. I did have some problems, granted, but I also installed Windows XP at least 20 times in 3 years because it screwed itself up so badly that it couldn't be saved. So this is a common experience for all OSs. I don't want to play that blame-game anymore. Windows is buggy, Linux is buggy. Windows has shit support hotlines and costs lots of money, Linux has enthusiastic users (which sometimes don't know their ass from their face) but is free. Some of the things you linked here were "I hate Ubuntu because I had that problem" type blogs. No explanation of what actually happened just "I used it and it was shit". A post titled "Ubuntu sucks ... get a Mac" is not exactly what I would want to use to make a point. One of the things you linked was an OpenOffice bug. How do you make an argument out of that. That's like saying "MS Access crashed on my SQL database ... windows sucks". Apples and Peaches wha...?
Ubuntu is buggy. Period. The fact that Vista, or any Windows for that regard, might be buggy too, does not invalidate that perception.
Ack! You're right about that. But let's be fair. You use Ubuntu's bugginess to discredit it as a "good desktop" and I do the same for several Windows versions. We're all happy.
Don't compare apples to oranges. Compare Ubuntu (a distro, or a complex of distros) to other distros: CentOS, PCLinuxOS, LinuxMint, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Slackware... you get the idea.
It was YOU who started the apples and oranges cars against Operating systems analogy. Nevermind.
I stand by my point. Putting a slow, buggy distro with a GNOME frontend = big mess. I've seen that before (summoning Red Hat Linux versions from the dead...).
You might get a decent implementation of GNOME on another distro, who knows... (Debian, perhaps?). You might also get a good, stable distro who also happens to be very fast (Vector Linux).
But these two damning factors (GNOME and a slow, buggy linux) are present in Ubuntu and this is a trend that is only going to get worse as far as I can see.
Maybe slow and buggy is the compromise to make for the regular user? No, but seriously. I use Ubuntu for a while now, I did have problems, still have some inexplicable bugs but compared to some of the other distros the work that has been put into the usability outweighs these minor flaws for me. Compared to the non-existing debugging in Windows I even fixed a host of my problems myself simply by analyzing the error logs and actually looking through the sources. That might not be the average user's business but at least I can do it here. Back to Linux in General: I tried installing Arch Linux one of the distros that is heralded as exquisit, I got it onto my machine and got stuck. Gentoo, same thing, compiling everything as a guy like me with ten years Windows experience and all time already spent on learning other Linux basics? I tried but failed miserably. I don't know
Software compatibility? Maybe they are going to "persuade" commercial sw companies not to make Linux compatible apps.
They already do it's called "Games for Windows". Right now the market is divided in companies that accept FOSS and see it as a valid market and those who have stupid pre-occupations about it and don't use it's potential. I don't know maybe some developers think that publishing software for Linux means you will give away your code. Apparently they don't get the implications of binaries. I've never seen a single line of code from my native Linux games and I bought them just as every other game. Same goes for other applications. The problem is simply that the knowledge around development for Linux and the potential is underrated at best. I'd even say it's a matter of prejudice caused by lobbyism.
Ballmer did say he'd rather someone used an illegal copy of Windows over another operating system, so it's not outside the realms of possibility that they'll give you windows for free just to continue the monopoly.
Of course he says that, if you'd calculate the actual number of "Genuine" windows installations compared to the pirated ones their "95% installbase" would melt quicker than ice cubes in a firestorm.
I'd gladly keep paying for my hardware if that means I don't have to use Windows. I can see a subsidized model for computers like cellphone carriers have been running for years now but if that means I'll have to buy into a 24 month contract with Microsoft where everything is metered and billed according to my use ... I'd much rather buy regular hardware and use FOSS. Currently you don't even have a choice. You can buy a hugely expensive un-branded cellphone and then still have to maintain a contract with the carrier. In this model you pay twice if you want "your" hardware. Same thing with using proprietary hard/software. You pay for the hardware AND for the software. One of those will have to go, since software obviously CAN be free I guess hardware will have to stay or you'll end up in one of these contractual monitoring models. Millions of people would sign up, I'm quite sure. But it wouldn't be a good thing.
Let Microsoft go after Ubuntu. Because Ubuntu is slow, buggy, and not a good desktop.
I don't know which Ubuntu you are talking about but the three machines that I run don't have any problems that they wouldn't have under (or because of) Vista. And I can maintain all three free of cost. Let's not forget that Ubuntu still beats Vista in benchmarks. A "good desktop" is a matter of expectation. Ubuntu with it's GNOME interface is much more than Windows ever was for me. Just because it doesn't fulfill your expectations doesn't mean it's not a good desktop. Windows doesn't fulfill mine ... so what do you say to that?
Ubuntu is not the best GNU/Linux distribution. For starters, their quality assurance could be much better, and it is not economical in resource usage. Moreover, it was infected with the "Red Hat" disease of patching everything, introducing more, difficult to track and patch, bugs.
With Microsoft it's literally IMPOSSIBLE for an end user to track and patch bugs. So you're saying?
Worse yet, Ubuntu uses by default the GNOME Desktop. It's my personal preference, but I can't stand GNOME, period. It is so aggravating I can't even use it. A GNU/Linux desktop using GNOME is like using a Ferrari car only in first shift. Its vast potential is completely underused.
Correction: It's a FREE Ferrari that outruns the MS Ferrari at many many occasions and you don't have to buy a special screwdriver for thousands of dollars to open the hood. What is KDE then? A Lamborghini in first gear? Same here, they do a lot of stuff but it has it's problems too. Yeah, the lack of dedicated mechanics makes GNU/Linux less competitive in some areas (namely gaming) but that's not Linux' fault but that the mechanics focus on making more money with special screwdrivers. If some more people would dedicate their time to improve OpenSource interfaces like GNOME, KDE, Xfce, E17 etc. you'd probably get the results you're demanding. Right now there is not much of a coordinated effort to push this into the right direction because the people who COULD work on this are either to busy making money in the closed source market or don't care about Linux at all.
Therefore, my guess is that Ubuntu is in fact a low-hanging fruit. Let Microsoft go after Ubuntu; meanwhile... KDE will eat their lunch. 4.2 is just the harbinger of things to come and it's that terrific. Period.
Oh so you're just a KDE fanboy? Nevermind that KDE copies Windows usability in all aspects even the bad ones. I like what GNOME does and compared to KDE4 I'd choose it any time of the day. Simply because every time I start KDE I'm reminded why I stopped using Windows in the first place.
Btw. in case you didn't realize it. The Ubuntu Desktop is all variants of Ubuntu. They're not losing market share to GNOME they're losing market share to free Linux distributions with usable interfaces. Which includes RedHat and as window manager your beloved KDE.
Or shut the hell up. How does one even want to compete with something that's free. Certainly not with the quality of their own products, the incredible support services or recent history in innovation.
My problem with that argument is that if I don't "view" an ad (because I rarely pay attention to annoying crap) the whole purpose of ads is gambling. Basically advertisement IS gambling. You pay someone a wad of cash to have them show your ads around and HOPE (there's nothing more) that someone will fall for it and actually look at your stuff and eventually buy something. There is no guaranteed revenue from that. If every user ignores the add and just continues browsing you have basically paid for nothing. But that's completely OK because I had to do the filtering in my head and not with software on a browser level. That's retarded. You're basically betting this guy that he won't be able to give you more customers. To me, that's a ridiculously flawed system from the beginning and expecting me to take part in that is more than insulting -especially since most ads aren't actual product advertisements anymore, they're emotionally laden propaganda manipulation attempts that try to trick my brain into preferring certain brands. I hate that.
I suspect that this is targeted at the aXXos of the world. 30,000 peers on a TV rip probably qualifies in their eyes as "commercial scale" but not for financial gain. Lending a disk to a mate to get a copy of same probably does not.
My question would be, why try to establish a multi-lateral global framework of fascist information distribution restrictions and not battling pirates with their own weapons? I'd pay for a movie as aXXo style 700MB rip. But only if I can watch a decent sample beforehand (not a shit trailer that gives me all the important moments). They don't try to evolve, what they do is to dig their trenches deeper and try to force everyone to pay for their lack of common sense and flexibility. Sure people trading free stuff is a huge problem but they're not even trying to combat that with improved offers. Screw all those region based single market corporate interest endeavors. They don't realize what their markets oughta be and don't even try to work there.
I can't accept this. There is no reasonable explanation to be such a blockhead and they blame their failure to adapt on their consumers by abusing policy. That's neither right nor justified. I feel ashamed that our politicians even cooperate with this corrupt sack of liars. But then again, what else is politics than a bunch of liars tickling each others balls.
Otherwise, I think this whole process should be shut down. It has been going on far too long for any good that we have been getting from it.
I whole heartedly agree, I also think it should be stopped immediately but what you're not realizing is that the people proposing these legislations don't give a rats ass about what you and me think. They will do that anyway, the politicians are suckered into compliance by payolas and the promise of future support for their ideas so there is no actual way of stopping this. The only way to have a say in the ACTA negotiations would be for a large part of the userbase and public to cry out about the foul play here. Trust me, I tried requesting ACTA documents through my EU parliament people and they all refused on grounds of secrecy laws that don't actually apply to the proceedings and other baseless bullshit.
... what it is in reality is a competition stifling set of rules that will tighten the grip of the industry on the freedom of choice of people and means to make non-compliers obey.
If you haven't realized it, we are governed. There is no such thing as a people-led democracy, at least in no state that I know of. They're all aristocratic dictatorships that make the appearance of democratic proceeding so there is no civil war. Unless more people realize this and stop paying attention to the farcical sharade that is sold to us as citizen participation there will be no way to stop these people from getting where they want to be.
Prove me wrong, I dare you, prove me wrong. I'd LOVE to see proof that there is actually stuff done in the name of the people and not just in the name of money. Right now, people are sold these ACTA treaties as a means of fighting economy degrading piracy
Today the Piratebay, tomorrow independent music labels.
But someone is far more likely to rob a gun from me and use it, or sell it to someone who will use it, than to randomly pick up one of my hairs somewhere, transport it to a future crime scene and drop only the hair that is mine (if they drop their own hair then they'll be the suspect.) As far as picking up DNA from me sneezing, the minuscule amount of saliva left on the bus from me sneezing wouldn't be enough to get onto someones hand, be transported elsewhere, then be picked up by a forensic scientist for DNA testing (I would have to basically spit in that persons hand for them to have enough DNA on them to transfer it somewhere else where it will be noticed and picked up by a forensic investigator.)
Granted the sneezing example probably wasn't the best argument. Sure they are more likely to steal a personal item from you and use that for a crime than plant evidence but the thing is if you don't show up in either database there will never be any risk of you even getting involved in that investigation. Now, if for whatever reason your prints are in the database (which they usually aren't) they will get your data as a result, no doubt. The thing is these sets of data will be taken from everyone arrested even if they are released with no charges afterwards. These records stay on file indefinitely. That's a bad practice (maybe convenient and practical for investigators).
No, not at all, I'm only pointing out that having a photo or video of someone that looks like you committing a crime is about the same amount of evidence as DNA that matches yours (actually it's probably worse as the jury can see that you look exactly like the person in the video, whereas DNA evidence is a lot more confusing.)
But isn't it also true that some criminal cases are based solely on DNA evidence? If a jury is faced with some inconsistent witness accounts and confusing but nonetheless plausible DNA evidence don't you think they are more likely to utter a verdict that would be different than without the evidence? I'm just asking this because if the existence of DNA evidence leads to sentences then the possibility of a misconviction and false trial based on DNA databases and gathered evidence is not only likely but almost inevitable.
I don't think you fully understand how DNA matching works, DNA is far less unique than a fingerprint. A sampling of DNA left at a crime scene could potentially match yours, and unless there's some reason to believe that you were involved in the crime, NO ONE would come looking for you. There's no reason to round up everyone whose DNA could match, especially if there's no reason to believe that person could in any way be connected to the crime.
Yes, agreed. On the other hand once you have a database that you can run cross-checks on that will spit out all potential matches for a set of DNA you will consider questioning them. And that's where it gets dangerous. You find DNA at a crime scene, ask the computer for potential matches, computer says Joe X. lives two blocks away. So you go down and ask him questions or arrest the guy only to find out later on that he didn't do anything. Yet he's in all the legal trouble for getting arrested and has to explain himself to neighbors and employers. These are usually the problems that people suffering from misconduct in investigation suffer from. I'm not trying to defend actual criminals here but the risk of false positives grows by a magnitude if you gain unquestioned access to such tools.
Even if they choose not to destroy the DNA sample, it's no worse than keeping the existing fingerprint or mugshot databases. They want this so if someone gets raped they can search the database, if you have a history of committing crimes (if you're found not guilty you won't have a history), your DNA is a match, you're living in the area around the crime, the victim has no recollection of what the person looked like, and they have no other suspects, they
Yes, and there's no way someone can steal something from your home with your fingerprints on it (like a knife or a gun) and kill someone else with it.
At least they'll have to break into your house first. That's a little more effort than bumping into you in the street.
Or someone who looks like you has to be there...
So you think it's alright for someone that looks a bit like a criminal should be arrested for that? Same problem here with photography than with DNA evidence. Just because you have something resembling that which you are looking for doesn't necessarily mean you already found it.
1. DNA is not entirely unique, so even if they found DNA that matched yours, it didn't necessarily have to come from you
Sure it doesn't but how often is that actually a valuable defense in court? If trials were held on that premise nobody would ever be able to use DNA evidence because there's only a ~3% chance that the murderer isn't a chimp. I'd like to see your argument when a judge finds DNA traces very similar to yours at the scene of a murder and everyone with a similar profile has a good alibi. Then what? I think the judge wouldn't care for your "could be someone else's DNA" chain of thought.
You've got that backwards, THEY have to prove that you've not only been there, but have done the crime, despite the fact that you have no connection to the person or the crime whatsoever.
Hold up, we're discussing this because they want to take DNA samples off of people for mere suspicion. Then they will file you as a potential suspect so YOU have to prove to them that you're not. We all know that they won't destroy the evidence once they determined that you're not the guy (this time). I agree that so far courts will give you the benefit of the doubt but I don't think there are that many cases in which the suspect had a good alibi for his DNA being in an unlikely place and walked. Usually if you DNA is found and held against you, you'll go to jail.
At least if you pointed me to an actual case where someone who had no ties to a person was convicted based on DNA evidence I'd understand (and I know there have been wrongful convictions based on DNA evidence before), but Gattaca? Really? That's the best evidence you can think of?
Well sorry, I'm not a lawyer. I don't dig around in court files all day. So far DNA analysis outside of criminal cases isn't that far spread. I'm not familiar with the minutae of such cases but they exist (as you say). Once we get some exemplary cases in, I'll get back to you. I didn't offer this as evidence, just as a potentially entertaining work of fiction to get a certain idea across. Next you'll tell me I can't quote from 1984 anymore because that's all literature bullshit and no real evidence for oppression and infringements on human rights. Calm down.