It's been long overdue - the level of surveillance the UK government has set up over the years is really overwhelming... how many more drops can that barrel take before the UK people finally kick them politicians in their well deserving @sses?
Here in Germany, with data retention and other laws like the BKA law that have been made over the last couple years, people are slowly waking up and seeing what is happening. 34000 people jointly went to the "Bundesverfassungsgericht" opposing the EU-originated data rentention law... court has already reduced the state and state institution access to data kept through that law, with final decision expected (or hoped for) some time first or second quarter...
It is time for every citizen in the so-called and formerly free and democratic countries to make sure they do everything they can and get the word out to get rid of the surveillance-measures their countries are putting into effect.
I guess the old saying "Orwell was an optimist" is true after all...
Anybody just remotely familiar with technology should have long been able to suspect SMS to be near free as far as the provider backbone goes...
In Germany, text messages were free when they started out... until the providers noticed they were sitting on a gold mine...
At least in Germany, receiving text messages is free...
I suspect that once data services catch on with a larger base, many people will move from SMS to email, increasing network load and lowering profits for providers...
The pretense of solving performance problems by adding more performance to the hardware is something typical of the MS Windows generation... instead of clean, optimized programming, relying on more CPU (or whatever) power to solve the problems is a very short-sighted solution. Sure, you'll be able to get your system performance up to par again, but what when you run out of performance yet again?
Instead, check where the actual bottlenecks are...
I believe, every person who wants to get into programming should get some hands-on training with either ancient systems like Atari or C64, or embedded systems like AVR or PIC. All of which with limited resources, but with decent programming style they are capable of getting the job done well!
A good friend of mine who died much too early last year had left all important passwords and stuff in a little book. Luckily, his next of kin let two of his friends on his computer to download unfinished work of his next book and other files that were of any value... with the passwords in the book, they were able to access most of the stuff they needed, except for one crypted volume I guess will be safe forever (his relatives most likely erased all the drives afterwards)
Of course, whoever you expect to take care of that kind of unfinished business will need to know where to look...
Running an (nowadays mostly) business ISP since 1996, I agree with some of your conclusions, but would like to add something to it...
Having started out with a 128k ISDN line in 1996 which served a total of three POPs, bandwidth usage was much more of a thing to watch out for back then than now... we even had our dialins limited to business users during the daytime to keep the bandwidth free for the better-paying customers...
Anyway, I blame the outrageous price dumping caused by most of the larger ISPs for the trouble of bandwidth shaping... seeing that one of those "bandwidth hogs" could cause something like 6-16 MBit of bandwidth use, for very low monthly fees (German Telekom charges around 35 for the basic aDSL 16mbit hookup - plus as low as 9-20 for flat Internet access), there is no way they will cover for the cost they cause... now, add to that that an ISP using Telekom as their DSL uplink (via L2TP or ATM) to a customer, they are charged for the bandwidth use on top of the actual internet they have to provide... this can quickly add up to something like 50-100 of cost that _ONE_ user can cause...
Sure, the percentage of high bandwidth users is usually relatively low, but it can quickly eat up the profits... in turn, making Hardware investment and line expansion impossible...
So, what to do? Easy - either prices need to rise again, or the pricing model needs to change - from flat rates to some kind of volume-based pricing (which can still include a reasonable amount of traffic). But many users seem very unreasonable nowadays - take for example a new offer a German low-cost mobile provider/reseller has just announced - a per-day mobile flat rate at 2,50, using UMTS/3G... they already openly said that the bandwidth for the transfer will be shaped to GPRS rates once you use 1Gig of traffic.
Guess what - in forums, people started complaining right away that "that's not a flat rate"! Heck, people, get real! You're talking about more traffic than can fit on a CD. For 2,50. Mobile. How awful is it to be throttled after a gig (per day!)...
Users are spoiled today. I guess prices will have to go up, or performance will go down. And if it's just the multi-hundred-GB bandwidth hog's bandwidth - that's fine with me. At least that way, all "normal" users won't be suffering. But at least providers should be fair enough to openly admit to what they're doing. By maybe offering a "flat time, XX gig" rate that will cover ANY normal user, even when doing some occasional P2P stuff...
Actually, it's not an infinite loop, it's just M$'s way of telling you your processor isn't suited for Vista and must be replaced by something faster...
Even having nothing to hide (read: de-centralized backup copies) and using mostly Linux, running a personal firewall that not only controls incoming, but also outgoing software is a total must nowadays. For Windows, there are several, even freeware (e.g. Ashampoo does a pretty good job), or things like Apparmor under Linux... So with any program suddenly requesting internet connection, just deny it once, or for good...
I guess that's the curse of the ever-growing number of always-on internet users... guess one of these days, you won't be allowed to even launch your commercial apps without the software's main server confirming you're not running a pirated copy. Then, if the company dies, all the programs die with it...
Quote: Other countries don't have terrorist problems (yet), and so they don't have to perform intrusive procedures.
Well, there's a gap between reality and politicians' view of this issue... Take for example Germany - our minister of internal affairs keeps insisting in the terrorist threat, calling for impressive plans of data retention, which is NOT directed against any foreign travelers, but the WHOLE of German inhabitants...
Actually, the US price tag is pretty low compared to Germany... iPhone costs 400 ($560), cheapest contract is 49 (almost $70) per month, so over the two year contract time, you have at least about $2200 base cost... how much does AT&T charge?
Dream on... current discussions about drastically reduced personal freedom rights show what the future is going to be...
To make a long story short:
- Politician suggests a new law - other politicians pass it - court finds the law isn't constitutional - Politician is p@ssed - Politician demands changes of the constitution in order to prevent IYFV (Insert you favorite villain) from not being pursued by the law
Problem is, both major parties are backing this, when not, it's just for alibi, they will back down earlier or later (usually earlier, latest after the next elections)
Can someone please sue the translation studio (Combrink) into oblivion that is responsible for the German translation of the series before this comes out? They absolutely killed the series by there totally miserable, misunderstood and flat out wrong translation...
(I'm not concerned about myself, as I avoid watching much German TV)
Why should people with home networks not have this tool available? The German law is stupid and makes everyone a victim while not taking the tools out of the hands of people who will use them anyway for nefarious purposes. You're right. The law is stupid, as stupid as the politicians are that created it. This must be the first stupid law that has been passed.
NOT! Bro, take a look around - UK has a dense net of cameras all over, not too sure about their laws. US passed totally intolerable laws after 9/11 that even US courts decided later on were unconstitutional. European parliament passed a law requiring storage of communication information for anywhere between 6 months and 2 years, without the slightest evidence of the people breaking any law. There are discussions of allowing the nick-named "Federal Trojan" to be used to secretly invade and scan computers for proof of crimes, without requiring court orders. Plus several other laws in discussion that severely cut into the rights of free citizens. The most outrageous fact: Once they found out that what they were suggesting was against the german constitution, the next thing the said was that the constitution would have to be altered. Great. The bad thing is: Both German majority parties are in this together. So unless half of the German citizens start to vote for minorities, there's no real legal way of stopping this junk.
Actually, you missed two answers...
Question One: You are walking down the street and you see a box of puppies. Do you
_ Take the puppies home and sell them for profit.
X Hug the puppies and love them until you can find their owner.
_ Curb stomp the puppies
The correct answer on this is 1 - obviously, you are not profit-driven, so you can't be a real red-blooded American and therefore not suited to handle nuclear material.
We have already reported you to DHS for further questioning, make sure you pack everything you need for Guantanmo Bay...
If 7 checkboxes is too complicated for you, you definitely should never move to Germany... on local electiosn, you get an A1 size piece of paper (something like 84x60cm) where you can not only decide to vote for anything from 3 to \infty parties, but also cast 1-3 votes for single persons, or strike through names to cast a kind of "negative" vote for people whose party you vote for. Heck, if people were to actually go through more than just basic changes or votes, it would probably take like 15 minutes per person to vote... In other news, it seems more and more like you're voting between plague and cholera, with all the "big brother" style laws being prepared or passed...:(
... RIAA is already preparing the forty thousand claims against her pirating forty million songs... after all, what would anybody do witha 40gig link other than pirate music.
In related news, MPAA has announced they already have their lawyers working on the legal papers to sue, too...
Well, according to German politicians and security "experts", voting machines are secure, too --- because tampering with them is illegal and forbidden!
Any questions?
Sometimes I wonder if politicians are descendants from a certain Golgafrincham space ship's inhabitants...
... 40 million PC users re-install their old XP licenses or Linux after either missing out on the Vista experience (due to 512MB main memory, 32MB gfx card) and Vista disintegrating while trying to install a driver for hardware older than 6 months...
Slashdot Mirror
It's been long overdue - the level of surveillance the UK government has set up over the years is really overwhelming ... how many more drops can that barrel take before the UK people finally kick them politicians in their well deserving @sses?
Here in Germany, with data retention and other laws like the BKA law that have been made over the last couple years, people are slowly waking up and seeing what is happening. 34000 people jointly went to the "Bundesverfassungsgericht" opposing the EU-originated data rentention law ... court has already reduced the state and state institution access to data kept through that law, with final decision expected (or hoped for) some time first or second quarter ...
It is time for every citizen in the so-called and formerly free and democratic countries to make sure they do everything they can and get the word out to get rid of the surveillance-measures their countries are putting into effect.
I guess the old saying "Orwell was an optimist" is true after all ...
... why would a blind person even get a touch-display phone? Probably not for the sleek UI, or?
Happened before? They've had 4 years to fix it and haven't?
So? You should know it takes M$ more than 4 years to even acknowledge the existence of the bug, let alone fix it ...
Anybody just remotely familiar with technology should have long been able to suspect SMS to be near free as far as the provider backbone goes ...
In Germany, text messages were free when they started out ... until the providers noticed they were sitting on a gold mine ...
At least in Germany, receiving text messages is free ...
I suspect that once data services catch on with a larger base, many people will move from SMS to email, increasing network load and lowering profits for providers ...
The pretense of solving performance problems by adding more performance to the hardware is something typical of the MS Windows generation ... instead of clean, optimized programming, relying on more CPU (or whatever) power to solve the problems is a very short-sighted solution. Sure, you'll be able to get your system performance up to par again, but what when you run out of performance yet again?
Instead, check where the actual bottlenecks are ...
I believe, every person who wants to get into programming should get some hands-on training with either ancient systems like Atari or C64, or embedded systems like AVR or PIC. All of which with limited resources, but with decent programming style they are capable of getting the job done well!
... seems to work fine ...
A good friend of mine who died much too early last year had left all important passwords and stuff in a little book. Luckily, his next of kin let two of his friends on his computer to download unfinished work of his next book and other files that were of any value ... with the passwords in the book, they were able to access most of the stuff they needed, except for one crypted volume I guess will be safe forever (his relatives most likely erased all the drives afterwards)
Of course, whoever you expect to take care of that kind of unfinished business will need to know where to look ...
Can any BT Customer still trust that ANYTHING (s)he's reading through non-SSL-connections is unmodified? Or even unmoderated?
Sorry, but why do the UK people let their government and companies put them way beyond "1984"?
Then again, this is Microsoft. They probably throw an office party every time something compiles without errors.
So you're saying M$ is being cheated out of having office parties due to inferior Devel^h^h^h^h^hCompilers? :)
Running an (nowadays mostly) business ISP since 1996, I agree with some of your conclusions, but would like to add something to it ...
Having started out with a 128k ISDN line in 1996 which served a total of three POPs, bandwidth usage was much more of a thing to watch out for back then than now ... we even had our dialins limited to business users during the daytime to keep the bandwidth free for the better-paying customers ...
Anyway, I blame the outrageous price dumping caused by most of the larger ISPs for the trouble of bandwidth shaping ... seeing that one of those "bandwidth hogs" could cause something like 6-16 MBit of bandwidth use, for very low monthly fees (German Telekom charges around 35 for the basic aDSL 16mbit hookup - plus as low as 9-20 for flat Internet access), there is no way they will cover for the cost they cause ... now, add to that that an ISP using Telekom as their DSL uplink (via L2TP or ATM) to a customer, they are charged for the bandwidth use on top of the actual internet they have to provide ... this can quickly add up to something like 50-100 of cost that _ONE_ user can cause ...
Sure, the percentage of high bandwidth users is usually relatively low, but it can quickly eat up the profits ... in turn, making Hardware investment and line expansion impossible ...
So, what to do? Easy - either prices need to rise again, or the pricing model needs to change - from flat rates to some kind of volume-based pricing (which can still include a reasonable amount of traffic). But many users seem very unreasonable nowadays - take for example a new offer a German low-cost mobile provider/reseller has just announced - a per-day mobile flat rate at 2,50, using UMTS/3G ... they already openly said that the bandwidth for the transfer will be shaped to GPRS rates once you use 1Gig of traffic.
Guess what - in forums, people started complaining right away that "that's not a flat rate"! Heck, people, get real! You're talking about more traffic than can fit on a CD. For 2,50. Mobile. How awful is it to be throttled after a gig (per day!) ...
Users are spoiled today. I guess prices will have to go up, or performance will go down. And if it's just the multi-hundred-GB bandwidth hog's bandwidth - that's fine with me. At least that way, all "normal" users won't be suffering. But at least providers should be fair enough to openly admit to what they're doing. By maybe offering a "flat time, XX gig" rate that will cover ANY normal user, even when doing some occasional P2P stuff ...
Actually, it's not an infinite loop, it's just M$'s way of telling you your processor isn't suited for Vista and must be replaced by something faster ...
Even having nothing to hide (read: de-centralized backup copies) and using mostly Linux, running a personal firewall that not only controls incoming, but also outgoing software is a total must nowadays. For Windows, there are several, even freeware (e.g. Ashampoo does a pretty good job), or things like Apparmor under Linux ... So with any program suddenly requesting internet connection, just deny it once, or for good ...
... guess one of these days, you won't be allowed to even launch your commercial apps without the software's main server confirming you're not running a pirated copy. Then, if the company dies, all the programs die with it ...
I guess that's the curse of the ever-growing number of always-on internet users
Quote: Other countries don't have terrorist problems (yet), and so they don't have to perform intrusive procedures.
... Take for example Germany - our minister of internal affairs keeps insisting in the terrorist threat, calling for impressive plans of data retention, which is NOT directed against any foreign travelers, but the WHOLE of German inhabitants ...
Well, there's a gap between reality and politicians' view of this issue
How afraid do you have to be???
Actually, the US price tag is pretty low compared to Germany ... iPhone costs 400 ($560), cheapest contract is 49 (almost $70) per month, so over the two year contract time, you have at least about $2200 base cost ... how much does AT&T charge?
Wonder if I should put in for a patent on identifying the urge for critical bodily relief and subsequent acting on the urge.
When is the USPO finally going to kick the big players in their behinds for even thinking of patenting such obvious things?
Dream on ... current discussions about drastically reduced personal freedom rights show what the future is going to be ...
... :(
To make a long story short:
- Politician suggests a new law
- other politicians pass it
- court finds the law isn't constitutional
- Politician is p@ssed
- Politician demands changes of the constitution in order to prevent IYFV (Insert you favorite villain) from not being pursued by the law
Problem is, both major parties are backing this, when not, it's just for alibi, they will back down earlier or later (usually earlier, latest after the next elections)
Brave new world
Disconnect it from the LAN, WLAN and power, and you might get as close as 99% ... ;)
By bundeling ad-ware with Works, it gives Ad-Ware a bad name ...
(I'm not concerned about myself, as I avoid watching much German TV)
Why should people with home networks not have this tool available? The German law is stupid and makes everyone a victim while not taking the tools out of the hands of people who will use them anyway for nefarious purposes.
You're right. The law is stupid, as stupid as the politicians are that created it. This must be the first stupid law that has been passed.
NOT! Bro, take a look around - UK has a dense net of cameras all over, not too sure about their laws. US passed totally intolerable laws after 9/11 that even US courts decided later on were unconstitutional. European parliament passed a law requiring storage of communication information for anywhere between 6 months and 2 years, without the slightest evidence of the people breaking any law. There are discussions of allowing the nick-named "Federal Trojan" to be used to secretly invade and scan computers for proof of crimes, without requiring court orders. Plus several other laws in discussion that severely cut into the rights of free citizens. The most outrageous fact: Once they found out that what they were suggesting was against the german constitution, the next thing the said was that the constitution would have to be altered. Great. The bad thing is: Both German majority parties are in this together. So unless half of the German citizens start to vote for minorities, there's no real legal way of stopping this junk.
OK, admitted, the phones are most likely smarter than most their users, given reports like this one
- _ Take the puppies home and sell them for profit.
- X Hug the puppies and love them until you can find their owner.
- _ Curb stomp the puppies
The correct answer on this is 1 - obviously, you are not profit-driven, so you can't be a real red-blooded American and therefore not suited to handle nuclear material.We have already reported you to DHS for further questioning, make sure you pack everything you need for Guantanmo Bay
If 7 checkboxes is too complicated for you, you definitely should never move to Germany ... on local electiosn, you get an A1 size piece of paper (something like 84x60cm) where you can not only decide to vote for anything from 3 to \infty parties, but also cast 1-3 votes for single persons, or strike through names to cast a kind of "negative" vote for people whose party you vote for. Heck, if people were to actually go through more than just basic changes or votes, it would probably take like 15 minutes per person to vote... ... :(
In other news, it seems more and more like you're voting between plague and cholera, with all the "big brother" style laws being prepared or passed
... RIAA is already preparing the forty thousand claims against her pirating forty million songs ... after all, what would anybody do witha 40gig link other than pirate music.
...
In related news, MPAA has announced they already have their lawyers working on the legal papers to sue, too
Well, according to German politicians and security "experts", voting machines are secure, too --- because tampering with them is illegal and forbidden!
...
Any questions?
Sometimes I wonder if politicians are descendants from a certain Golgafrincham space ship's inhabitants
... 40 million PC users re-install their old XP licenses or Linux after either missing out on the Vista experience (due to 512MB main memory, 32MB gfx card) and Vista disintegrating while trying to install a driver for hardware older than 6 months ...