Some are arguing that allowing cookies in the browser is basically equivalent to giving your consent.
That sounds to me like implicit consent, while the EU requires explicit consent. Though I suppose asking permission once per site is enough - not every single visit. And after receiving such explicit permission the site may store a cookie on your computer indicating that they have that permission already.
TFA mentions "explicit consent" is needed. Burying stuff in some legal notices will be considered implicit consent at best. So at least from the face of it every site will have to ask for it. TFA specifically mentions more use of pop-up windows... interesting... are there still people without pop-up blockers then?
In case of Trumpet Winsock the vast majority of people didn't know it was not a part of Windows. That it was some third-party piece of software instead. That it was even possible to pay for it. Let alone knowing how to pay for it. PayPal didn't exist; on-line credit card payments were unheard of. Sending out cheques or doing an (international) remittance were the only options of making payments at the time - and for such small amounts an international remittance simply is not an option.
Without the possibility of doing online payments iTunes wouldn't exist. Amazon may exist (they are basically a mail-order company so relatively easy to offer traditional off-line payment methods). And it also left lots of shareware makers out in the cold: ease of payment is an important factor in having people actually make payment.
Re:It's a bit more complex than this article...
on
Pocket Wars and Cores
·
· Score: 1
For a fair comparison you should also include the screen sizes of the two devices, particularly the resolution.
An average smart phone is doing something like 320x480 pixels; an average netbook (say a 1000-series EEEPC) is more like 1024x600 pixels: four times as many.
Also a smart phone is likely to be more specialised, and it could well be that they have built-in video decoding hardware. Also I don't know much about code paths but it seems to me that video is a quite linear and highly predictable code path, which may simply not use any of the out-of-order execution or large caches present in your x86 processor.
Yet indeed I totally agree that a quite modest computer is more than enough for 90% of the daily tasks we do. A modern desktop is as powerful as a supercomputer from a few decades ago!
From my FidoNet days, some 15 years ago, I recall a netmail/echomail editor called GoldEd. That was shareware; the only thing you got when you had it registered was a tagline that indicated so; yet many people did register and the author was making money off of it. It was said that he was actually making a living with it.
And indeed regarding to Winsock, well I never knew it was supposed to be shareware... I always thought it was simply something that belonged to Windows, like a kind of network driver.
As I said IIRC the first protests (Tunisia) were a direct result from leaked information. So for that one there was a causal relation. Of course Internet communications make distribution of the news a lot easier and faster than it used to be. The rest of the revolts indeed have no direct relation to WikiLeaks.
Now the ISPs can not read the content, but won't they be able to still see the type of traffic? For example https uses port 443 - you can not encrypt that part,
You can run your Apache on a non-standard port (other than 80 and 443), so that part can indeed be taken care of.
As long as you don't care that no-one can connect to your server... may be OK for a home brew that you only use to check what's left in the fridge, not for any serious application. Standard port numbers are standard, and that's not just because.
It sounds that you're then encrypting a level deeper than what's done now; encrypting at packet level and not protocol level.
Could this give problems on the way? Or would it be possible to start implementing slowly without affecting the existing connections? In a way that your computer could do packet-level encryption for those connections where remote supports it as well, but does not do it for other connections.
Encrypt everything is good indeed. With modern processors even on the server side it should be no problem to encrypt everything; usually bandwidth is the limiting factor anyway when it comes to serving data such as web pages.
Now the ISPs can not read the content, but won't they be able to still see the type of traffic? For example https uses port 443 - you can not encrypt that part, or the destination IP, as otherwise the intermediate servers have no idea what to do with the packets, and the destination doesn't know it's theirs.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I do recall that the protests in Tunesia were sparked by leaks (on WikiLeaks) about misbehaviour, corruption and self enrichment by their then-government. This sparked serious anger, and caused an uprising that quickly grew in strength when people realised that by standing together they were far stronger than their government.
People in nearby countries saw the news - Internet helps to spread it quickly - and organised themselves to rise against their respective governments. Egypt started, they also found their government to be weak and overthrown quickly, and again the news spread.
Many more countries see serious unrest, and I expect it's far from over. Especially Lybia where the government is stronger than expected and which is now descending into total chaos and civil war.
It's not just coinciding, it's a direct relation. Easy spread of information, in part facilitated by WikiLeaks, and easy and fast communication between people.
I'm getting old. After reading your comment my first thought was "how did you manage to get 64 MB in a 80286 computer?" until I realised you're talking about 266 MHz... which is a few generations later.
Maybe it was a fantastic too, but there will be a good reason why it's gone. Steam engines are also gone and have been replaced by much more efficient engines.
If it were really that great, there would be people maintaining it. I mean, even vi is actively maintained, and now that's a tool that's only useful for power users, definitely not for the unwashed masses.
I have a similar problem with one of my computers: when I have my phone (Android smart phone) connected to the USB (for charging;USB is also used for downloaded data etc) it gets stuck on the memory test. That caused me a lot of frustration to figure out! Other computers don't have this problem.
Anyway to come back to your point: it would be most interesting if people don't know they have a modem, AND have this modem connected to a phone line at the same time!
I can imagine many have a modem as standard part in a computer which was still quite common a few years ago; so people with an older PC simply have one in it.
Nowadays modems are really rare; it's hard to find one. My server has one connected, which I bought about seven years ago, just to receive faxes. Not easy to find a shop selling them back then; will be harder now. It has never been used for a data connection. Nonetheless they are still available. Dial-up internet is even still available.
This story started in 2003, when modem use was quite common at least in Europe. In 2001/2002 I worked for about half a year at the telephone help desk of a major Dutch ISP, dial-up was for many people the main way to connect to the Internet. I recall even a serious reorganisation of the telephone system to accomodate all those dial-up users. At the time probably still more dial-up users than ADSL or cable users. By 2003 dial-up must still have been very common. And people that switched possibly simply had their modem still connected. Indeed nowadays this kind of fraud would not work anymore.
What I encountered very often when talking to people was that they had multiple dial-in icons in their network settings. One from our ISP, sometimes one or two from a previous ISP, and a handful of icons that they didn't even realise are there. Most were porn dialers, installed by malicious sites (usually porn sites), that would try to dial expensive numbers. This sounds very much like what these people have been sentenced for.
Anyway it's not surprising that it worked in those years, as modems were simply a really common way to connect to the Internet. It wasn't fast but it worked, and it worked on existing infrastructure. Add to that the plethora of security issues in Win98 and WinXP and these things happened - and happened a lot.
The most remarkable part of this story, besides that such a common crime even appears on the/. home page, is that the culprits have been caught and sentenced.
Oh yes that as well. And he's writing about "this mystery material" without having introduced it beforehand... what mystery material I'd say. Oh and considering the temperature there can be so many other ice-like substances, like methane or carbon dioxide. That there is water in space is no surprise - no water out there would be more of a surprise. I always hear talk about meteors being clumps of rock and ice.
That article is far worse than your average/. post: it lacks cohesion, and sounds more like rambling than a serious piece of journalism. I would bet the author hasn't had it proof-read, probably not even by himself. There must be better articles around describing this event.
The point is no one falls into this trap using the Google market or the upcoming Amazon market, or a couple others.
where he implied that Google's official Android market is guaranteed trusted. And I just wanted to point out that at least Google's market is not to be trusted blindly, and that due diligence remains important. Amazon's market is not up yet, they may vet apps before release so may be better, but nonetheless even Apple's thoroughly vetted app store is not perfectly clean. They will definitely be better and safer than many third-party app stores; it doesn't mean they're perfect.
And to come back on your metaphor: even on brand new PCs from well known brands viruses have been found.
The difference is that there is no gain to be made by the sender.
And if receiving texts has a benefit for the sender, then there are usually serious measures in place from the phone company's side to prevent such abuse.
Considering the ease with which one can release software in the Android Market I'm not that sure. Of course they have some measures in place to verify identity (the small, one-off registration fee particularly), this is not much to stop malicious software from entering that market.
Reg fees can be paid with stolen credit card numbers, for example. And good chance it takes a month for the owner to realise this has happened (as in next billing cycle), so it may take a while before such fraudulent accounts are taken off-line.
Secondly apps are released without vetting whatsoever by Google. Upload, click "Publish", and it's out there, so it's quite easy to get fraudulent apps out on the market.
That said Googles official market has a reason to keep their house clean, so I do expect they will follow up on user complaints and remove offending apps when reported. That after all is in their own interest.
Finally there's also due diligence from downloaders of course. Apps ask for permissions - and why should say a wallpaper app need access to phone control and messaging? Android has quite some security measures built in, but if a user decides to grant those illogical requests then of course anything may happen.
It is just one avenue of copyright holders to protect their copyrights. Notices may have the effect of stopping an infringement that is going on without having to involve the courts immediately, I don't see anything bad there. However they will have to pay the cost of the ISP that deals with the notices, and I think that's a good thing. It basically means the copyright owner has to pay for their own cost of protecting their rights.
I have no idea what the legal value is of such a notice; though if a user is doing infringement, is served notices, and continues, then the damages to be gained in court will be higher. Though if the user stops, s/he may get off without any further ado. Which would be a win/win: copyrights protected, no ridiculous fines for the user. Nothing bad there again.
In the end suing someone for damages should be a last resort. Providing alternative solutions that can (and should) be tried first, is a good thing.
It makes me wonder what arcane version of Linux they were using - or what kind of obscure brand of printers and scanners they insist on using. Any serious manufacturer these days supports Linux.
Now I know not all printers have Linux drivers available; yet this migration has been going on for five years and has been planned probably for years before that.Easy enough to replace equipment that comes to the end of its life span with equipment that's known to work with Linux. At least that is assuming they have a serious and competent IT department.
Slashdot Mirror
Some are arguing that allowing cookies in the browser is basically equivalent to giving your consent.
That sounds to me like implicit consent, while the EU requires explicit consent. Though I suppose asking permission once per site is enough - not every single visit. And after receiving such explicit permission the site may store a cookie on your computer indicating that they have that permission already.
TFA mentions "explicit consent" is needed. Burying stuff in some legal notices will be considered implicit consent at best. So at least from the face of it every site will have to ask for it. TFA specifically mentions more use of pop-up windows... interesting... are there still people without pop-up blockers then?
In case of Trumpet Winsock the vast majority of people didn't know it was not a part of Windows. That it was some third-party piece of software instead. That it was even possible to pay for it. Let alone knowing how to pay for it. PayPal didn't exist; on-line credit card payments were unheard of. Sending out cheques or doing an (international) remittance were the only options of making payments at the time - and for such small amounts an international remittance simply is not an option.
Without the possibility of doing online payments iTunes wouldn't exist. Amazon may exist (they are basically a mail-order company so relatively easy to offer traditional off-line payment methods). And it also left lots of shareware makers out in the cold: ease of payment is an important factor in having people actually make payment.
For a fair comparison you should also include the screen sizes of the two devices, particularly the resolution.
An average smart phone is doing something like 320x480 pixels; an average netbook (say a 1000-series EEEPC) is more like 1024x600 pixels: four times as many.
Also a smart phone is likely to be more specialised, and it could well be that they have built-in video decoding hardware. Also I don't know much about code paths but it seems to me that video is a quite linear and highly predictable code path, which may simply not use any of the out-of-order execution or large caches present in your x86 processor.
Yet indeed I totally agree that a quite modest computer is more than enough for 90% of the daily tasks we do. A modern desktop is as powerful as a supercomputer from a few decades ago!
From my FidoNet days, some 15 years ago, I recall a netmail/echomail editor called GoldEd. That was shareware; the only thing you got when you had it registered was a tagline that indicated so; yet many people did register and the author was making money off of it. It was said that he was actually making a living with it.
And indeed regarding to Winsock, well I never knew it was supposed to be shareware... I always thought it was simply something that belonged to Windows, like a kind of network driver.
As I said IIRC the first protests (Tunisia) were a direct result from leaked information. So for that one there was a causal relation. Of course Internet communications make distribution of the news a lot easier and faster than it used to be. The rest of the revolts indeed have no direct relation to WikiLeaks.
Now the ISPs can not read the content, but won't they be able to still see the type of traffic? For example https uses port 443 - you can not encrypt that part,
You can run your Apache on a non-standard port (other than 80 and 443), so that part can indeed be taken care of.
As long as you don't care that no-one can connect to your server... may be OK for a home brew that you only use to check what's left in the fridge, not for any serious application. Standard port numbers are standard, and that's not just because.
It sounds that you're then encrypting a level deeper than what's done now; encrypting at packet level and not protocol level.
Could this give problems on the way? Or would it be possible to start implementing slowly without affecting the existing connections? In a way that your computer could do packet-level encryption for those connections where remote supports it as well, but does not do it for other connections.
Encrypt everything is good indeed. With modern processors even on the server side it should be no problem to encrypt everything; usually bandwidth is the limiting factor anyway when it comes to serving data such as web pages.
Now the ISPs can not read the content, but won't they be able to still see the type of traffic? For example https uses port 443 - you can not encrypt that part, or the destination IP, as otherwise the intermediate servers have no idea what to do with the packets, and the destination doesn't know it's theirs.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I do recall that the protests in Tunesia were sparked by leaks (on WikiLeaks) about misbehaviour, corruption and self enrichment by their then-government. This sparked serious anger, and caused an uprising that quickly grew in strength when people realised that by standing together they were far stronger than their government.
People in nearby countries saw the news - Internet helps to spread it quickly - and organised themselves to rise against their respective governments. Egypt started, they also found their government to be weak and overthrown quickly, and again the news spread.
Many more countries see serious unrest, and I expect it's far from over. Especially Lybia where the government is stronger than expected and which is now descending into total chaos and civil war.
It's not just coinciding, it's a direct relation. Easy spread of information, in part facilitated by WikiLeaks, and easy and fast communication between people.
That's like the first "real" PC my parents had. With a 20 MB hard disk even.
I'm getting old. After reading your comment my first thought was "how did you manage to get 64 MB in a 80286 computer?" until I realised you're talking about 266 MHz... which is a few generations later.
It seems like Linux is just as good as MS Windows these days. Too bad. I liked it when Linux was an improvement over MS Windows.
Really? Windows improved that much? Maybe I should give it a try. Do you still have to type "win" at the prompt after booting up?
Maybe it was a fantastic too, but there will be a good reason why it's gone. Steam engines are also gone and have been replaced by much more efficient engines.
If it were really that great, there would be people maintaining it. I mean, even vi is actively maintained, and now that's a tool that's only useful for power users, definitely not for the unwashed masses.
Don't forget that 30% of China (about 400 mln people) is more than 100% of USA (just over 300 mln).
Interesting.
I have a similar problem with one of my computers: when I have my phone (Android smart phone) connected to the USB (for charging;USB is also used for downloaded data etc) it gets stuck on the memory test. That caused me a lot of frustration to figure out! Other computers don't have this problem.
Anyway to come back to your point: it would be most interesting if people don't know they have a modem, AND have this modem connected to a phone line at the same time!
I can imagine many have a modem as standard part in a computer which was still quite common a few years ago; so people with an older PC simply have one in it.
Nowadays modems are really rare; it's hard to find one. My server has one connected, which I bought about seven years ago, just to receive faxes. Not easy to find a shop selling them back then; will be harder now. It has never been used for a data connection. Nonetheless they are still available. Dial-up internet is even still available.
This story started in 2003, when modem use was quite common at least in Europe. In 2001/2002 I worked for about half a year at the telephone help desk of a major Dutch ISP, dial-up was for many people the main way to connect to the Internet. I recall even a serious reorganisation of the telephone system to accomodate all those dial-up users. At the time probably still more dial-up users than ADSL or cable users. By 2003 dial-up must still have been very common. And people that switched possibly simply had their modem still connected. Indeed nowadays this kind of fraud would not work anymore.
What I encountered very often when talking to people was that they had multiple dial-in icons in their network settings. One from our ISP, sometimes one or two from a previous ISP, and a handful of icons that they didn't even realise are there. Most were porn dialers, installed by malicious sites (usually porn sites), that would try to dial expensive numbers. This sounds very much like what these people have been sentenced for.
Anyway it's not surprising that it worked in those years, as modems were simply a really common way to connect to the Internet. It wasn't fast but it worked, and it worked on existing infrastructure. Add to that the plethora of security issues in Win98 and WinXP and these things happened - and happened a lot.
The most remarkable part of this story, besides that such a common crime even appears on the /. home page, is that the culprits have been caught and sentenced.
Oh yes that as well. And he's writing about "this mystery material" without having introduced it beforehand... what mystery material I'd say. Oh and considering the temperature there can be so many other ice-like substances, like methane or carbon dioxide. That there is water in space is no surprise - no water out there would be more of a surprise. I always hear talk about meteors being clumps of rock and ice.
That article is far worse than your average /. post: it lacks cohesion, and sounds more like rambling than a serious piece of journalism. I would bet the author hasn't had it proof-read, probably not even by himself. There must be better articles around describing this event.
The point is no one falls into this trap using the Google market or the upcoming Amazon market, or a couple others.
where he implied that Google's official Android market is guaranteed trusted. And I just wanted to point out that at least Google's market is not to be trusted blindly, and that due diligence remains important. Amazon's market is not up yet, they may vet apps before release so may be better, but nonetheless even Apple's thoroughly vetted app store is not perfectly clean. They will definitely be better and safer than many third-party app stores; it doesn't mean they're perfect.
And to come back on your metaphor: even on brand new PCs from well known brands viruses have been found.
The difference is that there is no gain to be made by the sender.
And if receiving texts has a benefit for the sender, then there are usually serious measures in place from the phone company's side to prevent such abuse.
Considering the ease with which one can release software in the Android Market I'm not that sure. Of course they have some measures in place to verify identity (the small, one-off registration fee particularly), this is not much to stop malicious software from entering that market.
Reg fees can be paid with stolen credit card numbers, for example. And good chance it takes a month for the owner to realise this has happened (as in next billing cycle), so it may take a while before such fraudulent accounts are taken off-line.
Secondly apps are released without vetting whatsoever by Google. Upload, click "Publish", and it's out there, so it's quite easy to get fraudulent apps out on the market.
That said Googles official market has a reason to keep their house clean, so I do expect they will follow up on user complaints and remove offending apps when reported. That after all is in their own interest.
Finally there's also due diligence from downloaders of course. Apps ask for permissions - and why should say a wallpaper app need access to phone control and messaging? Android has quite some security measures built in, but if a user decides to grant those illogical requests then of course anything may happen.
But they can send notices now - bad
Why is that bad?
It is just one avenue of copyright holders to protect their copyrights. Notices may have the effect of stopping an infringement that is going on without having to involve the courts immediately, I don't see anything bad there. However they will have to pay the cost of the ISP that deals with the notices, and I think that's a good thing. It basically means the copyright owner has to pay for their own cost of protecting their rights.
I have no idea what the legal value is of such a notice; though if a user is doing infringement, is served notices, and continues, then the damages to be gained in court will be higher. Though if the user stops, s/he may get off without any further ado. Which would be a win/win: copyrights protected, no ridiculous fines for the user. Nothing bad there again.
In the end suing someone for damages should be a last resort. Providing alternative solutions that can (and should) be tried first, is a good thing.
What you forget to mention is that the UK is a country which is part of Europe, but it's also a member of the European Union.
It makes me wonder what arcane version of Linux they were using - or what kind of obscure brand of printers and scanners they insist on using. Any serious manufacturer these days supports Linux.
Now I know not all printers have Linux drivers available; yet this migration has been going on for five years and has been planned probably for years before that.Easy enough to replace equipment that comes to the end of its life span with equipment that's known to work with Linux. At least that is assuming they have a serious and competent IT department.