Part of the idea is similar to London's congestion charge. You pay extra if you want to use busy roads at busy times. It's also far from new, it's been on and off subject of discussion for well over a decade. Now probably finally the tech is there to make it technically possible to begin with.
And most people in NL live at least some 50 km from one of the borders: most of the border areas are pretty thinly populated. And a 100 km detour has never been worth it.
Some weeks ago I've driven extensively in NL and DE and found fuel prices to be virtually the same. Differences between gas stations within one country (easily 5 cents per liter) are bigger than the differences between the countries (1-2 cents per liter). On a price of about E 1,60/l for standard Euro95 fuel.
Lots of mainland Internet users don't have access at home, but will use it in Internet cafés instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are still running XP (if a computer ain't broke, don't fix it - that costs too much), with the default IE6.
Many mainlanders have connection at home or at work as well of course, yet those are used far less intensive than shared computers.
Oh, so that's why the author called for laptop/netbook makers to ditch the touchpad and replace it with the IBM/Lenovo style pointer. I was already wondering why he had so much problems rubbing his finger up and down that pad instead of having a single point to fondle.
A totally underrated (and largely ignored) issue with long passwords, is the user's typing accuracy. I'm typing reasonably accurate I guess, but at least every 20 keystrokes I will mistype one. So a 10-character password has already a reasonable chance for a mistype, a 20-character phrase will have a very high chance to mistype. That would mean I have to re-try typing that long password a few times before it is finally accepted. And having your password hidden while you type it in doesn't help of course.
The 7-9 character passwords that I use normally are hard enough in that respect. I often have to re-type because of a typo. And that are strings that I type often, so have muscle memory developed for them already. I dread the idea of having to use 20-character phrases for that. Too much risk of re-typing, and too much work in having to re-type it five times until you're finally exactly right.
When it comes to web sites, the problem is still the sheer number of logins you have to maintain, and having to remember (or write down) all these passwords. That's probably a major part of the reason why people choose such weak passwords. Mind the sample set this article used is a compromised actual password set from some web site.
If you have to remember a single password, it's not too hard to come up with a good one. One that's strong, and easy to remember for you.
If you have to remember two dozen of them, many of which are for "throw-away" services like random online forums and the like, either they will become simple, or the user will use one password for all of them.
Recently I switched to using a password manager (the LastPass FF extension), and am now slowly but surely re-assigning passwords to all sites that I have a login to. I used the "one password for all" approach before, now creating random 16-character passwords all around. Such a pw manager surely has its own security issues but probably still the best approach available. And it's really convenient to have all my passwords available at all my systems, and having to remember just one master password.
The problem as I indicated is not as much that they do not know how to change it, but don't know what a DNS is to begin with. Then it becomes hard to search for settings.
Of course they can configure it, if they know what it is to begin with.
DNS is pretty deep down in the Internet configuration, not something the general user should have to deal with. Bittorrent is so commonplace these days that most users at least know about bittorrent, and many may even actively use it. Now of course if a law like this gets implemented then that may change very quickly.
The typical users will quickly learn how to set their DNS providers if this comes to pass.
Say rather that the users who are interested will quickly learn.
And the ones that are hit by such filtering are probably also the ones that are interested to route around it. If only by posting on their local message board "The Internetz seem broken, I can't reach The Pirate Bay any more!", likely quickly replied to by someone giving some overseas DNS and telling them how to change their settings to use that one. The ones that aren't affected will not change their settings, but then they're not affected to begin with so no reason for them to change it in the first place.
The vast majority of Internet users doesn't know their DNS, they probably don't even know what DNS is. They just open their browser (better known as "the Internet"), enter www.slashdot.org and expect to be able to read News for Nerds, Stuff that matters. Maybe not the best example but I bet you get the point.
typical users lack the expertise to select a different DNS server
They surely will as everyone asking for those scanners to be removed must be a terrorist. Because the peaceful people that just want to get from A to B have nothing to hide, right?
Expand your question: has the TSA stopped any actual terrorism attempt? DHS claims that DHS has, but they can't tell us about it[...]
Considering with how much fanfare other terrorist cells have been stopped, this sounds like pure BS. Or why would they publish the stopping of those liquid-bomb terrorists, for example? Such an attack has never been tried before, actually they didn't even get to the "attack" stage, they didn't even mange it to the airport, they barely managed to get the ingredients for the plan together when they got busted.
That one was allowed in the headlines worldwide.
Secondly, wouldn't actually stopping a terrorist attempt be the best justification of their actions the DHS and TSA could wish for? Now then they can say "look thanks to this pat-down/scanner we managed to foil this plot!". Yet they haven't published anything like it, so far. The liquid-bomb attempt was used as justification for that stupid ban on liquids that is still in force.
I think it's safe to assume none has been caught by the scanners or pat-downs. We only know about the ones that got caught by police and related organisations before they could actually do anything bad, and about the ones that did manage to get through.
I've been through metal detector gates, have had to take my shoes off (very irritating), have had re-scans with a hand-held scanner because of some metal buds in my jeans or so, but not a single pat-down so far. And my flights included international and local flights in and out of Muslim countries.
The tightest security I ever experienced (on a flight some 18 years ago) was flying out of the northern Indian city of Leh, near disputed Kashmir, down to Delhi. On that flight hand luggage was not allowed due to the quite real risk of attacks. But still no pat-downs.
And, some years ago flying out of Korea, I was picked up by security after entering the secure zone because I had an electrical alarm clock in my check-in luggage, and they wanted me to take out the battery (they probably saw it ticking on the x-ray or so). That was interesting.
Google is a private, foreign, totally unaccountable organisation. And such an organisation has that much power in their hands. I don't know what should be done about it, but something should be done about it. They're just getting too much power over the Internet these days. And their power is only growing, and their tentacles are ever extending and multiplying. Isn't it time to put a stop to that?!
And that statement in itself shows the severity of the current situation on the Internet. And how much power is in the hands of a foreign, private, and fully unaccountable organisation.
Searching for the news paper names on Google you can not find them, at all. Not even their home page, their "about" pages, whatever. It's as if they do not exist. I don't think that is what the court demanded Google to do, nor what the news papers wanted to be done.
Google obviously went a big step beyond what was required of them.
He was talking about sunlight. As in: exposure of the skin to daylight, not necessarily sunbathing.
Your body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D. And you don't need much: just 20-30 minutes of exposing your face and arms to outdoor day conditions goes a long way, and that doesn't have to be direct sunlight though it helps a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
Part of the idea is similar to London's congestion charge. You pay extra if you want to use busy roads at busy times. It's also far from new, it's been on and off subject of discussion for well over a decade. Now probably finally the tech is there to make it technically possible to begin with.
Reality calling.
That price advantage was 10 years ago, or more.
And most people in NL live at least some 50 km from one of the borders: most of the border areas are pretty thinly populated. And a 100 km detour has never been worth it.
Some weeks ago I've driven extensively in NL and DE and found fuel prices to be virtually the same. Differences between gas stations within one country (easily 5 cents per liter) are bigger than the differences between the countries (1-2 cents per liter). On a price of about E 1,60/l for standard Euro95 fuel.
Automated expressway driving isn't that hard.
You obviously have no experience with Chinese-style driving. At all.
Lots of mainland Internet users don't have access at home, but will use it in Internet cafés instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are still running XP (if a computer ain't broke, don't fix it - that costs too much), with the default IE6.
Many mainlanders have connection at home or at work as well of course, yet those are used far less intensive than shared computers.
Oh, so that's why the author called for laptop/netbook makers to ditch the touchpad and replace it with the IBM/Lenovo style pointer. I was already wondering why he had so much problems rubbing his finger up and down that pad instead of having a single point to fondle.
A totally underrated (and largely ignored) issue with long passwords, is the user's typing accuracy. I'm typing reasonably accurate I guess, but at least every 20 keystrokes I will mistype one. So a 10-character password has already a reasonable chance for a mistype, a 20-character phrase will have a very high chance to mistype. That would mean I have to re-try typing that long password a few times before it is finally accepted. And having your password hidden while you type it in doesn't help of course.
The 7-9 character passwords that I use normally are hard enough in that respect. I often have to re-type because of a typo. And that are strings that I type often, so have muscle memory developed for them already. I dread the idea of having to use 20-character phrases for that. Too much risk of re-typing, and too much work in having to re-type it five times until you're finally exactly right.
When it comes to web sites, the problem is still the sheer number of logins you have to maintain, and having to remember (or write down) all these passwords. That's probably a major part of the reason why people choose such weak passwords. Mind the sample set this article used is a compromised actual password set from some web site.
If you have to remember a single password, it's not too hard to come up with a good one. One that's strong, and easy to remember for you.
If you have to remember two dozen of them, many of which are for "throw-away" services like random online forums and the like, either they will become simple, or the user will use one password for all of them.
Recently I switched to using a password manager (the LastPass FF extension), and am now slowly but surely re-assigning passwords to all sites that I have a login to. I used the "one password for all" approach before, now creating random 16-character passwords all around. Such a pw manager surely has its own security issues but probably still the best approach available. And it's really convenient to have all my passwords available at all my systems, and having to remember just one master password.
The problem as I indicated is not as much that they do not know how to change it, but don't know what a DNS is to begin with. Then it becomes hard to search for settings.
Of course they can configure it, if they know what it is to begin with.
DNS is pretty deep down in the Internet configuration, not something the general user should have to deal with. Bittorrent is so commonplace these days that most users at least know about bittorrent, and many may even actively use it. Now of course if a law like this gets implemented then that may change very quickly.
The typical users will quickly learn how to set their DNS providers if this comes to pass.
Say rather that the users who are interested will quickly learn.
And the ones that are hit by such filtering are probably also the ones that are interested to route around it. If only by posting on their local message board "The Internetz seem broken, I can't reach The Pirate Bay any more!", likely quickly replied to by someone giving some overseas DNS and telling them how to change their settings to use that one. The ones that aren't affected will not change their settings, but then they're not affected to begin with so no reason for them to change it in the first place.
The vast majority of Internet users doesn't know their DNS, they probably don't even know what DNS is. They just open their browser (better known as "the Internet"), enter www.slashdot.org and expect to be able to read News for Nerds, Stuff that matters. Maybe not the best example but I bet you get the point.
typical users lack the expertise to select a different DNS server
is definitely a true statement.
They surely will as everyone asking for those scanners to be removed must be a terrorist. Because the peaceful people that just want to get from A to B have nothing to hide, right?
Expand your question: has the TSA stopped any actual terrorism attempt? DHS claims that DHS has, but they can't tell us about it[...]
Considering with how much fanfare other terrorist cells have been stopped, this sounds like pure BS. Or why would they publish the stopping of those liquid-bomb terrorists, for example? Such an attack has never been tried before, actually they didn't even get to the "attack" stage, they didn't even mange it to the airport, they barely managed to get the ingredients for the plan together when they got busted.
That one was allowed in the headlines worldwide.
Secondly, wouldn't actually stopping a terrorist attempt be the best justification of their actions the DHS and TSA could wish for? Now then they can say "look thanks to this pat-down/scanner we managed to foil this plot!". Yet they haven't published anything like it, so far. The liquid-bomb attempt was used as justification for that stupid ban on liquids that is still in force.
I think it's safe to assume none has been caught by the scanners or pat-downs. We only know about the ones that got caught by police and related organisations before they could actually do anything bad, and about the ones that did manage to get through.
I've been through metal detector gates, have had to take my shoes off (very irritating), have had re-scans with a hand-held scanner because of some metal buds in my jeans or so, but not a single pat-down so far. And my flights included international and local flights in and out of Muslim countries.
The tightest security I ever experienced (on a flight some 18 years ago) was flying out of the northern Indian city of Leh, near disputed Kashmir, down to Delhi. On that flight hand luggage was not allowed due to the quite real risk of attacks. But still no pat-downs.
And, some years ago flying out of Korea, I was picked up by security after entering the secure zone because I had an electrical alarm clock in my check-in luggage, and they wanted me to take out the battery (they probably saw it ticking on the x-ray or so). That was interesting.
This is talking about the US so there are two answers possible. It's not the first time I see a question like yours pop up.
1) No, there is no alternative (and that's for many people there apparently the reality, unbelievable as it sounds), or:
The alternatives are as bad/even worse.
Welcome to the free market, right?
The problem lies in the enormous concentration of power. Not the organisation that holds it as such.
I'm Dutch too. I know the Flemish part is the rich part of Belgium, I didn't know that they are even richer than the Dutch. Interesting.
One Belgian joke indeed goes like "how many Belgian jokes are there?" "None - they are all true".
Oh and for people not from our part of the world: they're basically the same as the jokes about blondes. Just replace "blond" by "Belgian".
Possibly the Dutch speaking half is the smart half?
Oh, wait a moment... that would imply there are smart Belgians... then how about all those Belgian jokes we always tell in The Netherlands?
Google is a private, foreign, totally unaccountable organisation. And such an organisation has that much power in their hands. I don't know what should be done about it, but something should be done about it. They're just getting too much power over the Internet these days. And their power is only growing, and their tentacles are ever extending and multiplying. Isn't it time to put a stop to that?!
Without Google websites have nothing.
And that statement in itself shows the severity of the current situation on the Internet. And how much power is in the hands of a foreign, private, and fully unaccountable organisation.
Searching for the news paper names on Google you can not find them, at all. Not even their home page, their "about" pages, whatever. It's as if they do not exist. I don't think that is what the court demanded Google to do, nor what the news papers wanted to be done.
Google obviously went a big step beyond what was required of them.
Good solution against tailgaters. The hot exhaust of the turbine will take care of them!
He was talking about sunlight. As in: exposure of the skin to daylight, not necessarily sunbathing.
Your body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D. And you don't need much: just 20-30 minutes of exposing your face and arms to outdoor day conditions goes a long way, and that doesn't have to be direct sunlight though it helps a lot.