Of course, any country does have plans to attack possible enemies, Soviet Union did have similar plans too, but afair they didn't have the exact date for these plans to start, it has always been "time X" or similar. This is so particular about "Dropshot", other US plans didn't have exact time and date when to begin.
You are right about ABM Treaty, "violated" was a wrong word for it, "cancelled" is better. I was just trying to show that the USA made first step here forcing Russia to respond.
We have a very interesting discussion here indeed and I truly enjoy it. But we're a bit off-topic now. Too much smoke and mirrors in these Middle East issues. Let us end this talk for now. We'll continue for sure - it will be enough relevant headlines in the future.
P.S. It is very interesting how you began to refer to the USA as "we". Both systems were actually much more similar than you can imagine.
Starting from 1948 USA has developed several plan to attack USSR: "Chorister", "Fleetwood" (100-130 nuclear bombs) and last but not least - infamous "Operation Dropshot" plan. The latter was developed in 1949 and the actual attack had to take place on the 1. of January 1950 with 300 nuclear bombs all over Soviet Union followed by a ground attack with 164 NATO divisions, along with them 69 American divisions (this plan was declassified in 1957). The attack never took place mostly because of Soviet's first nuclear test near Semipalatinsk that took place on 29. of August 1949 (RDS-1 aka Joe-1 bomb).
The USA have already attacked Iraq suddenly, unprovoked, and with total lack of rationale or sanity, except for oil. The WMD-s were never found there. Russia does have plenty of oil too...
Besides, what would be the reason for installing the shield in Eastern Europe again? No Islamic country will use this direction to attack USA no matter how radical their doctrine is. The "anti-missile shield in Easter Europe" may sound defensive and "new mobile multi-warhead nuclear missiles" - offensive, but if you look closer - it is exactly vice-verse. The USA broke clear international treatments when it started re-development of this shield. Do you expect the Russians to be that dumb or short-sighted that they don't respond to this move? They are unlikely to behave like there was never an "Operation Dropshot" plan.
As for Iran, Russia is forced to sell nuclear technique which cannot be used for weapons development by international conventions. There was a big discussion about this issue upon sighing Russian-Iranian nuclear contract, because this technique is not so energy-efficient and least safe. Yet I am no nuclear expert to verify this or explain the matter further. There are some rumours about Russia helping Iran to develop nuclear weapons but there are also rumours about USA giving nukes to Israel. Fact is, Iran's rockets may more likely be able to reach Moscow than Washington. That's why I don't think Russia is doing anything else than building a nuclear power plant for Iran.
Why not make voting machine programs open-source? Only then one can be sure of absolute transparency.
Of course, the end user will be unable to modify the program of a voting machine, so no GPLv3 here.
You do know about Truman's post-WWII plans to attack USSR using nuclear weapons? I don't know whether USA would actually attack USSR using these plans but it is for sure that Soviet Union's own nuclear tests were able to put those plans on ice.
Speaking about US anti-missile shield in Europe - the US has chosen wrong location if the were to protect themselves from some insane tyrannic regime with a few nuclear warheads - Russia would not allow any country of the region to acquire nukes. Simply because those nukes would pose a greater thread for Moscow than for Washington. Think of how Russia was able to safely remove huge nuclear arsenals from Belarus and Ukraine (the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world btw.). They don't want any uncontrolled nukes lying around, thats why terrorist groups with soviet-made nukes appeared only in bad Hollywood movies, never in real life.
As I already mentioned, the goal of the nuclear war is not to destroy your opponent with the first strike - you will achieve this anyway for no one is able to survive full-scaled attack. The real goal is to survive the last desperate counterattack of already ruined opponent. The anti-missile shield is unable to stand if Russians attack first, its goal is to stand against a counterattack, where they will be not so much ready-to-start missiles left in burning remains of Russia.
As for me, it is just an unnecessary escalation started by the US of A. It is much harder to make a shield than to deploy weapons that will penetrate this shield with ease. The US is wasting its money here. Russia's solution costs much less and given the economic growth in the county and the need to upgrade military forces anyway - they will make US multi-billion anti-missile shield totally useless at very low expense for themselves.
An add appearing in front of the screen? MS can implement this feature within an hour - all they have to do is to add adds to error messages, BSOD's and on Vista - to UAC dialogues.
Not enough horsepower?! Please! Are we talking about Vista here?
I have been using beryl on 16Mb integrated video card from Intel. Disable most resource-consuming features and it works just fine. You really need no powerful PC to use Compiz.
You need anything more than Nvidia GeForce MX 440 only for very few effects.
It is indeed an impressive weapon, is uses brand new fuel with even more devastating power. Yet it has its weaknesses.
You cannot use this bomb when it's windy/rainy - you'll get no fuel cloud to ignite. While being good at destroying all living in area, it is not so useless against armored vehicles. A proper sealed tank is able to survive the explosion flawlessly even in the epicenter of the explosion. Still, a great number of those bombs will surely wreak havoc on every front line if properly deployed. It is also extremely useful against terrorist groups. A "Buratino" flamethrower (do not think about old-style RTCW flamethrowers, it's more like a rocket tank) has been very useful in Chechnya, eliminating snipers and even bigger groups of terrorists. Later, the rumors of "Buratino"'s arrival were enough to drastically reduce attacks and terrorist activity in the given region.
As for Russia gearing up its military - well, it's not Russia who broke the conventions and began to rebuild anti-rocket shield (against what terrorists, btw?), it's not Russia installing military bases in Eastern Europe and Asia, it's not Russia trying to install parts of its anti-missile system in Eastern Europe (what missile-equipped terrorists are expected there?).
The only reason Russia is equipping its military with multi-headed warheads able to penetrate any anti-rocket shield is following: Imagine a full-scaled nuclear war. The first one who attacks will deal a great (even irreversible) damage for the opponent. The only thing matters after this is the ability of the attacked country to respond after the initial strike and do an irreversible damage to the attacker. Russia's simply want the ability to respond if attacked. Russia doesn't have a missile shield and the USA has the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet (and is the only country who actually used nuclear weapons). Russia is simply to big to protect itself from a possible counterattack properly and the USA's arsenal is too big to be destroyed in a single attack (also stationed in many countries). So Russia relies on its own arsenal to act as their protection. That's why it plans to equip the troops with a great number of MOBILE multi-warheaded platforms. Those are not very useful if you plan to attack first, but are likely to survive in an initial strike and deal irreversible damage to the attacker.
As far as i am concerned, you need to have administrative privileges to alter those files. That means - MS does have them. So they have access to all data on affected (or should I say infected) PC. Now that's something authorities have to be VERY worried about. If they can use this loophole - someone else can act the same way. So much for privacy...
Ahh, what a pleasure it is to run emerge -uDN world. Updates only when YOU decide to do them. Ultimate freedom if you wish.
This freedom clearly overcomes all artificial difficulties with Linux. By "artificial" i mean hardware providers who don't provide drivers/specs and stupid patent regulations that require you to manually install additional codecs in order to play mp3/dvd. Linux IS a superior system because both problems have nothing to do with the system itself.
Why is everyone talking about 9/11?
I have absolutely no idea what has happened on 9-th of November.
Speaking of international standards for dates... No wonder the USA has voted YES on OOXML issue.
This is just stupid, blocking those words brings nothing. It doesn't give me safety. Terrorists have their training camps, arab fundamentalists can search for the recipe in Arabic using other search engines. But imagine now - your arab neighbor buys some chemicals in large amount, yet you are unable to find out whether one may make a bomb with this or not. Less safety, in my opinion. No, i don't encourage anyone to spy on their neighbors, no, i'm not anti-arabic. I'm just trying to show, that there is no "evil" information. Any kind of information can be used for good as well as for bad purpose. It's like forbidding computer languages because one can write a computer virus using them - totally useless.
I do have another solution for the authorities - fill the Internet with bomb plans, with your own ones. The trick is - no bomb built using these instructions should ever be able to detonate. Let the terrorists find only these fake instructions on first 100+ google search results. Let them fail as they did lately in London.
It is fairly easy for the govt. to track "professional" terrorists - i mean those who were in training camps around the Middle East. And it is almost impossible to prevent local sleepers from doing terrorist attacks using self-build bombs. Look at London bombings - the bombers were locals, they were born in England of were living there for a long time. So, let those "amateur" terrorists build exactly the bombs we want them to build - harmless as a Storm Worm on Linux.
Illiterate users will have no idea how to make chmod +x. Besides, it is possible to prevent execution of a file from any non-root-owned folder. But even without this measure the whole system is hardly to be compromised - only the users profile. And it's much easier to deal with than with an infected windows machine where only full reinstall helps.
And I have actually clicked those links. But do nor worry about me and do not call me stupid. I just wanted to see, whether something new happen in the malware scene. Yet I was disappointed - same shitty *.scr binary file. I've seen this years before... Same stupidity-driven "worms" with end users to blame (and, to lesser extend, windows is also to blame since it executes the files without asking, where is chmod +x when you need one...). BTW, I was asked by Firefox whether I want to download those files. And I didn't. They would never work on my Gentoo system anyway.
Oh, has anyone tried whether it works with wine?
I was unable to find this worm in Gentoo's portage tree. When do we get our ebuilds? Yet again, it is a discrimination for all Linux people.
I'll tell you - as long as there are no worms for GNU/Linux, we won't see the masses converting to free operation system! RMS has to write a Gworm at last! If an open-source worm beats closed and proprietary Storm Worm this will be a clear indication of superiority of FLOSS!
Well, i disagree with your point. Corporates want control and profit and pirates is just an excuse for them. Similar with terrorists - a phantom threat that allows governments worldwide to spy on their citizens.
Pirates are indeed a useful tool for MS - they helped secure it's dominance in developing markets, where people are unable to pay a month' salary for legit copy of Windows. BTW, pirates are just dumping for MS helping to keep any competition out because they are giving windows away for free. People get addicted and then companies and governments buy MS software. Price dumping is illegal jet MS is able to do this and act as a victim at the same time. A win-win situation.
"They steal from us, as long as we want them to steal ours." Bill Gates.
Think about this. The only thing you can do about this is to stop using their products entirely. I have done this already. Not because of protest, but rather because open systems are much more comfortable, but here is the point: if you don't like something about MS - quit using their projects. If you prefer to beg down and accept anything they throw at your face - don't blame pirates/penguins/human errors for your misery. You are just a lemming, get used to it.
I agree that unauthorized access to a wireless network is illegal and must be punished. Jet I consider that authorization happens on the router side, i.e:
User: May I use your bandwith?
Router: Sure thing!
It is up to owner of the router to secure it properly, same as securing your land with a fence/sign in order to prevent people to walk on it. Car analogy is bad, a car is material and solid anf if someone steals it, it's not there anymore. Land analogy is better when speaking about bandwidth: if someone walks through your private ground you take no damage. If someone uses your bandwith while you have a flatrate (and nowaday most router owners have one) you take no damage. You may also like to thare your internet connection for one reason or another.
Of course, it might be unconvenient if you experience internet slowdown due to someone else's torrents. Worse, one may do illegal things from within your network i.e child pornography, but if you don't want this to happen - just secure your network. If you can't do it yourself - there are enough your ISP provider's technicians to help you. If they refuse - you can sue them and make them responsible.
Ignorance is not an argument. By leaving an open network you authorize just about everyone to use it. If a crime is commited using your open bandwith, it's your fault. Same as if you leave a gun laying in the open and someone will be killed by it - it's partly your fault too.
If you wish to set an open network, you may setup squid properly to prevent crimes, because you have to deal with the fact that you are giving an authorization to use your bandwith to anyone, including thieves and pedofiles. And it will be (at very least partly) your fault if people steal or download child porn for you were the one who gave them instruments to do this.
But there is also a way to avid this: just secure your network. Call tech support if you are unable to do it yourself. Even WEP with a simplest password is a better protection for if someone uses this poorly-potected network without permission then it is still a crime.
An open network is public and you are responcible for it.
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Of course, any country does have plans to attack possible enemies, Soviet Union did have similar plans too, but afair they didn't have the exact date for these plans to start, it has always been "time X" or similar. This is so particular about "Dropshot", other US plans didn't have exact time and date when to begin.
You are right about ABM Treaty, "violated" was a wrong word for it, "cancelled" is better. I was just trying to show that the USA made first step here forcing Russia to respond.
We have a very interesting discussion here indeed and I truly enjoy it. But we're a bit off-topic now. Too much smoke and mirrors in these Middle East issues. Let us end this talk for now. We'll continue for sure - it will be enough relevant headlines in the future.
P.S. It is very interesting how you began to refer to the USA as "we". Both systems were actually much more similar than you can imagine.
Starting from 1948 USA has developed several plan to attack USSR: "Chorister", "Fleetwood" (100-130 nuclear bombs) and last but not least - infamous "Operation Dropshot" plan. The latter was developed in 1949 and the actual attack had to take place on the 1. of January 1950 with 300 nuclear bombs all over Soviet Union followed by a ground attack with 164 NATO divisions, along with them 69 American divisions (this plan was declassified in 1957). The attack never took place mostly because of Soviet's first nuclear test near Semipalatinsk that took place on 29. of August 1949 (RDS-1 aka Joe-1 bomb).
The USA have already attacked Iraq suddenly, unprovoked, and with total lack of rationale or sanity, except for oil. The WMD-s were never found there. Russia does have plenty of oil too...
Besides, what would be the reason for installing the shield in Eastern Europe again? No Islamic country will use this direction to attack USA no matter how radical their doctrine is. The "anti-missile shield in Easter Europe" may sound defensive and "new mobile multi-warhead nuclear missiles" - offensive, but if you look closer - it is exactly vice-verse. The USA broke clear international treatments when it started re-development of this shield. Do you expect the Russians to be that dumb or short-sighted that they don't respond to this move? They are unlikely to behave like there was never an "Operation Dropshot" plan.
As for Iran, Russia is forced to sell nuclear technique which cannot be used for weapons development by international conventions. There was a big discussion about this issue upon sighing Russian-Iranian nuclear contract, because this technique is not so energy-efficient and least safe. Yet I am no nuclear expert to verify this or explain the matter further. There are some rumours about Russia helping Iran to develop nuclear weapons but there are also rumours about USA giving nukes to Israel. Fact is, Iran's rockets may more likely be able to reach Moscow than Washington. That's why I don't think Russia is doing anything else than building a nuclear power plant for Iran.
Why not make voting machine programs open-source? Only then one can be sure of absolute transparency.
Of course, the end user will be unable to modify the program of a voting machine, so no GPLv3 here.
You do know about Truman's post-WWII plans to attack USSR using nuclear weapons? I don't know whether USA would actually attack USSR using these plans but it is for sure that Soviet Union's own nuclear tests were able to put those plans on ice.
Speaking about US anti-missile shield in Europe - the US has chosen wrong location if the were to protect themselves from some insane tyrannic regime with a few nuclear warheads - Russia would not allow any country of the region to acquire nukes. Simply because those nukes would pose a greater thread for Moscow than for Washington. Think of how Russia was able to safely remove huge nuclear arsenals from Belarus and Ukraine (the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world btw.). They don't want any uncontrolled nukes lying around, thats why terrorist groups with soviet-made nukes appeared only in bad Hollywood movies, never in real life.
As I already mentioned, the goal of the nuclear war is not to destroy your opponent with the first strike - you will achieve this anyway for no one is able to survive full-scaled attack. The real goal is to survive the last desperate counterattack of already ruined opponent. The anti-missile shield is unable to stand if Russians attack first, its goal is to stand against a counterattack, where they will be not so much ready-to-start missiles left in burning remains of Russia.
As for me, it is just an unnecessary escalation started by the US of A. It is much harder to make a shield than to deploy weapons that will penetrate this shield with ease. The US is wasting its money here. Russia's solution costs much less and given the economic growth in the county and the need to upgrade military forces anyway - they will make US multi-billion anti-missile shield totally useless at very low expense for themselves.
An add appearing in front of the screen? MS can implement this feature within an hour - all they have to do is to add adds to error messages, BSOD's and on Vista - to UAC dialogues.
Not enough horsepower?! Please! Are we talking about Vista here?
I have been using beryl on 16Mb integrated video card from Intel. Disable most resource-consuming features and it works just fine. You really need no powerful PC to use Compiz.
You need anything more than Nvidia GeForce MX 440 only for very few effects.
It is indeed an impressive weapon, is uses brand new fuel with even more devastating power. Yet it has its weaknesses.
You cannot use this bomb when it's windy/rainy - you'll get no fuel cloud to ignite. While being good at destroying all living in area, it is not so useless against armored vehicles. A proper sealed tank is able to survive the explosion flawlessly even in the epicenter of the explosion.
Still, a great number of those bombs will surely wreak havoc on every front line if properly deployed. It is also extremely useful against terrorist groups. A "Buratino" flamethrower (do not think about old-style RTCW flamethrowers, it's more like a rocket tank) has been very useful in Chechnya, eliminating snipers and even bigger groups of terrorists. Later, the rumors of "Buratino"'s arrival were enough to drastically reduce attacks and terrorist activity in the given region.
As for Russia gearing up its military - well, it's not Russia who broke the conventions and began to rebuild anti-rocket shield (against what terrorists, btw?), it's not Russia installing military bases in Eastern Europe and Asia, it's not Russia trying to install parts of its anti-missile system in Eastern Europe (what missile-equipped terrorists are expected there?).
The only reason Russia is equipping its military with multi-headed warheads able to penetrate any anti-rocket shield is following: Imagine a full-scaled nuclear war. The first one who attacks will deal a great (even irreversible) damage for the opponent. The only thing matters after this is the ability of the attacked country to respond after the initial strike and do an irreversible damage to the attacker. Russia's simply want the ability to respond if attacked. Russia doesn't have a missile shield and the USA has the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet (and is the only country who actually used nuclear weapons). Russia is simply to big to protect itself from a possible counterattack properly and the USA's arsenal is too big to be destroyed in a single attack (also stationed in many countries). So Russia relies on its own arsenal to act as their protection. That's why it plans to equip the troops with a great number of MOBILE multi-warheaded platforms. Those are not very useful if you plan to attack first, but are likely to survive in an initial strike and deal irreversible damage to the attacker.
As far as i am concerned, you need to have administrative privileges to alter those files. That means - MS does have them. So they have access to all data on affected (or should I say infected) PC. Now that's something authorities have to be VERY worried about. If they can use this loophole - someone else can act the same way. So much for privacy...
Ahh, what a pleasure it is to run emerge -uDN world. Updates only when YOU decide to do them. Ultimate freedom if you wish.
This freedom clearly overcomes all artificial difficulties with Linux. By "artificial" i mean hardware providers who don't provide drivers/specs and stupid patent regulations that require you to manually install additional codecs in order to play mp3/dvd. Linux IS a superior system because both problems have nothing to do with the system itself.
Why is everyone talking about 9/11?
I have absolutely no idea what has happened on 9-th of November.
Speaking of international standards for dates... No wonder the USA has voted YES on OOXML issue.
This is just stupid, blocking those words brings nothing. It doesn't give me safety. Terrorists have their training camps, arab fundamentalists can search for the recipe in Arabic using other search engines. But imagine now - your arab neighbor buys some chemicals in large amount, yet you are unable to find out whether one may make a bomb with this or not. Less safety, in my opinion. No, i don't encourage anyone to spy on their neighbors, no, i'm not anti-arabic. I'm just trying to show, that there is no "evil" information. Any kind of information can be used for good as well as for bad purpose. It's like forbidding computer languages because one can write a computer virus using them - totally useless.
I do have another solution for the authorities - fill the Internet with bomb plans, with your own ones. The trick is - no bomb built using these instructions should ever be able to detonate. Let the terrorists find only these fake instructions on first 100+ google search results. Let them fail as they did lately in London.
It is fairly easy for the govt. to track "professional" terrorists - i mean those who were in training camps around the Middle East. And it is almost impossible to prevent local sleepers from doing terrorist attacks using self-build bombs. Look at London bombings - the bombers were locals, they were born in England of were living there for a long time. So, let those "amateur" terrorists build exactly the bombs we want them to build - harmless as a Storm Worm on Linux.
Illiterate users will have no idea how to make chmod +x. Besides, it is possible to prevent execution of a file from any non-root-owned folder. But even without this measure the whole system is hardly to be compromised - only the users profile. And it's much easier to deal with than with an infected windows machine where only full reinstall helps.
And I have actually clicked those links. But do nor worry about me and do not call me stupid. I just wanted to see, whether something new happen in the malware scene. Yet I was disappointed - same shitty *.scr binary file. I've seen this years before... Same stupidity-driven "worms" with end users to blame (and, to lesser extend, windows is also to blame since it executes the files without asking, where is chmod +x when you need one...).
BTW, I was asked by Firefox whether I want to download those files. And I didn't. They would never work on my Gentoo system anyway.
Oh, has anyone tried whether it works with wine?
I was unable to find this worm in Gentoo's portage tree. When do we get our ebuilds? Yet again, it is a discrimination for all Linux people.
I'll tell you - as long as there are no worms for GNU/Linux, we won't see the masses converting to free operation system! RMS has to write a Gworm at last! If an open-source worm beats closed and proprietary Storm Worm this will be a clear indication of superiority of FLOSS!
Well, i disagree with your point. Corporates want control and profit and pirates is just an excuse for them. Similar with terrorists - a phantom threat that allows governments worldwide to spy on their citizens. Pirates are indeed a useful tool for MS - they helped secure it's dominance in developing markets, where people are unable to pay a month' salary for legit copy of Windows. BTW, pirates are just dumping for MS helping to keep any competition out because they are giving windows away for free. People get addicted and then companies and governments buy MS software. Price dumping is illegal jet MS is able to do this and act as a victim at the same time. A win-win situation. "They steal from us, as long as we want them to steal ours." Bill Gates. Think about this. The only thing you can do about this is to stop using their products entirely. I have done this already. Not because of protest, but rather because open systems are much more comfortable, but here is the point: if you don't like something about MS - quit using their projects. If you prefer to beg down and accept anything they throw at your face - don't blame pirates/penguins/human errors for your misery. You are just a lemming, get used to it.
I agree that unauthorized access to a wireless network is illegal and must be punished. Jet I consider that authorization happens on the router side, i.e: User: May I use your bandwith? Router: Sure thing! It is up to owner of the router to secure it properly, same as securing your land with a fence/sign in order to prevent people to walk on it. Car analogy is bad, a car is material and solid anf if someone steals it, it's not there anymore. Land analogy is better when speaking about bandwidth: if someone walks through your private ground you take no damage. If someone uses your bandwith while you have a flatrate (and nowaday most router owners have one) you take no damage. You may also like to thare your internet connection for one reason or another. Of course, it might be unconvenient if you experience internet slowdown due to someone else's torrents. Worse, one may do illegal things from within your network i.e child pornography, but if you don't want this to happen - just secure your network. If you can't do it yourself - there are enough your ISP provider's technicians to help you. If they refuse - you can sue them and make them responsible. Ignorance is not an argument. By leaving an open network you authorize just about everyone to use it. If a crime is commited using your open bandwith, it's your fault. Same as if you leave a gun laying in the open and someone will be killed by it - it's partly your fault too. If you wish to set an open network, you may setup squid properly to prevent crimes, because you have to deal with the fact that you are giving an authorization to use your bandwith to anyone, including thieves and pedofiles. And it will be (at very least partly) your fault if people steal or download child porn for you were the one who gave them instruments to do this. But there is also a way to avid this: just secure your network. Call tech support if you are unable to do it yourself. Even WEP with a simplest password is a better protection for if someone uses this poorly-potected network without permission then it is still a crime. An open network is public and you are responcible for it.