An excellent analogy, but let's be practical here. You can either encrypt your phone or try to improve your civil rights in a country with a two-party political system where neither party is too hot on them. Which one's easier?
The big problem with TrueCrypt is that it doesn't allow you to perform lower-level maintenance operations (like fsck) on partitions. Yes even if you unmount the mountpoint and try to fsck / fdisk the device under/dev/mapper/ it won't be recognized. This is why I changed my home backup drives to dm-crypt/luks.
Hah I've been trying to overclock, but I can't get around this bug in the kernel - and me and another guy tried custom-coding a solution with no luck. I tried the power kernel with the bleeding-edge wifi drivers but after a while it wouldn't see any APs and I'd have to reload the drivers. It was way too much of a PITA so I had to go back to the stock kernel and drivers.
Yep it would need to have full-disk encryption just like a PC, with no unauthorized access to lower-level functions given physical access that can be done in a roadside stop at the very least. And you better use a damn good password now that quantum computers are on the market...
My next phone will need to have full-disk encryption. I could do it on my N900 but it's a massive amount of work and I can't spare the processing power either.
Just in case you aren't joking (hauling heavy nuclear waste into space would cost a metric shit-ton of money, even by space travel standards), that would be a dumb thing to do. Nuclear waste can either be re-used, or if completely depleted, used where ultra-hard/heavy metals are needed (like armor and ammo...not the most desirable use, but those are the most common applications).
Skype's a toy - nothing wrong with having it but it can't be relied on to replace a cellular connection. The only protocols that could replace a cellular connection are SIP and perhaps IAX.
The problem is that Skype gives the user even less control than a regular cellular connection. A SIM card is device-agnostic. You put one into a phone with the right specs and you're on. A Skype client can be denied service at any time, even if you're on an open OS - for example outdated Windows clients were kept from connecting at one point until they upgraded. Other OSes were unaffected. The same could happen on any platform, and if you don't get an upgrade you're screwed.
This way if for business reasons, Skype decides that their client for the iPad or whatever you're using (even, in theory, something like the N900) should no longer be able to make calls to anything but Skype users or remove the capability entirely, there's nothing you can do.
With SIP on the other hand, SIP is device-agnostic, it's an open protocol so trying to identify a client platform would be useless, and there are many SIP providers to choose from, and what you can do with SIP is limited by little more than your imagination. If we all switched to SIP tomorrow, voice calls would be as free and open as emails. SIP providers allow you to link SIP to the existing phone system, but that's just legacy tech as far as SIP is concerned.
IAX is just as open and gets around the problem of SIP being designed for an ideal IPv6 world where every device is connected straight to the Internet - IAX runs on a single port so the traffic doesn't get mangled by half the firewalls and NAT devices out there. It's just not as popular.
Technically, it would lower their IQ. The IQ scale is based on an average, so getting rid of dumb people will increase the level of intelligence needed to reach the 100 mark, lowering everyone's numerical scores.
So, this makes you either an ignorant fool that should read a book, or an unashamed partisan propagandists that must resort to such obvious lies. I hope its the prior. The latter is just so Joseph Goebbels (that's not a compliment btw).
Funny, that's what I thought about you.
Confident that I hadn't accidentally brainwashed myself with revisionist history, and encouraged by the fact that you couldn't be bothered to casually mention a single issue that would contradict my argument despite the alleged abundance of such issues, I decided to dedicate my evening to proving my point.
First of all, I'd like to cover the role reversal on civil rights issues which you know less about than a foreigner:
Next I want to continue your timeline up to the present day, but I had to help a relative with a cell phone problem and won't have time to finish it tonight, however I'll try again tomorrow evening. It will start with the (SPOILERShorrifyingly racist/SPOILERS) history of the Reagan administration.
I know you're talking about some kind of VoIP system (SIP, IAX, and a variety of proprietary system can all work on an iPad). But they're not practical as a cell phone replacement outside of North America and some places in Europe. I really wish they were, but they aren't, and region-specific solutions aren't really solutions.
Yeah IIRC one of the points of their early "constitution" (which conflicted with itself) was basically pushing a theocracy, making the US a Christian nation or something like that. This was one of the points that conflicted with another point, religious freedom.
"You can worship anyone you want, as long as it's Jesus."
Slashdot Mirror
An excellent analogy, but let's be practical here. You can either encrypt your phone or try to improve your civil rights in a country with a two-party political system where neither party is too hot on them. Which one's easier?
For now, all you can do is get a Blackberry. Which is such a big functionality tradeoff that it's almost like replacing your phone with a river rock.
Yes but the Blackberry's a useless locked-in POS.
TrueCrypt would actually allow this.
The big problem with TrueCrypt is that it doesn't allow you to perform lower-level maintenance operations (like fsck) on partitions. Yes even if you unmount the mountpoint and try to fsck / fdisk the device under /dev/mapper/ it won't be recognized. This is why I changed my home backup drives to dm-crypt/luks.
Hah I've been trying to overclock, but I can't get around this bug in the kernel - and me and another guy tried custom-coding a solution with no luck. I tried the power kernel with the bleeding-edge wifi drivers but after a while it wouldn't see any APs and I'd have to reload the drivers. It was way too much of a PITA so I had to go back to the stock kernel and drivers.
Yep it would need to have full-disk encryption just like a PC, with no unauthorized access to lower-level functions given physical access that can be done in a roadside stop at the very least. And you better use a damn good password now that quantum computers are on the market...
My next phone will need to have full-disk encryption. I could do it on my N900 but it's a massive amount of work and I can't spare the processing power either.
Just in case you aren't joking (hauling heavy nuclear waste into space would cost a metric shit-ton of money, even by space travel standards), that would be a dumb thing to do. Nuclear waste can either be re-used, or if completely depleted, used where ultra-hard/heavy metals are needed (like armor and ammo...not the most desirable use, but those are the most common applications).
Maybe the sun is made of the same stuff everything in Michael Bay movies is made of! Has anyone checked this!? 8-(
I know you're not referencing Frontier/Elite because in those games the scoop was for picking up hydrogen from gas giants like Jupiter.
Skype's a toy - nothing wrong with having it but it can't be relied on to replace a cellular connection. The only protocols that could replace a cellular connection are SIP and perhaps IAX.
The problem is that Skype gives the user even less control than a regular cellular connection. A SIM card is device-agnostic. You put one into a phone with the right specs and you're on. A Skype client can be denied service at any time, even if you're on an open OS - for example outdated Windows clients were kept from connecting at one point until they upgraded. Other OSes were unaffected. The same could happen on any platform, and if you don't get an upgrade you're screwed.
This way if for business reasons, Skype decides that their client for the iPad or whatever you're using (even, in theory, something like the N900) should no longer be able to make calls to anything but Skype users or remove the capability entirely, there's nothing you can do.
With SIP on the other hand, SIP is device-agnostic, it's an open protocol so trying to identify a client platform would be useless, and there are many SIP providers to choose from, and what you can do with SIP is limited by little more than your imagination. If we all switched to SIP tomorrow, voice calls would be as free and open as emails. SIP providers allow you to link SIP to the existing phone system, but that's just legacy tech as far as SIP is concerned.
IAX is just as open and gets around the problem of SIP being designed for an ideal IPv6 world where every device is connected straight to the Internet - IAX runs on a single port so the traffic doesn't get mangled by half the firewalls and NAT devices out there. It's just not as popular.
Technically, it would lower their IQ. The IQ scale is based on an average, so getting rid of dumb people will increase the level of intelligence needed to reach the 100 mark, lowering everyone's numerical scores.
Pull off a sick ski run and he'll show up to ruin your day. Then make sure you ski Faster.
Aww the facts hurt your widdle conservative worldview and you can't dispute them, hombre pequenito?
Too bad. More coming tomorrow.
I have my own place BTW. Surely better than the squalid little shack or worthless HOA hellhole you types often live in.
So, this makes you either an ignorant fool that should read a book, or an unashamed partisan propagandists that must resort to such obvious lies. I hope its the prior. The latter is just so Joseph Goebbels (that's not a compliment btw).
Funny, that's what I thought about you.
Confident that I hadn't accidentally brainwashed myself with revisionist history, and encouraged by the fact that you couldn't be bothered to casually mention a single issue that would contradict my argument despite the alleged abundance of such issues, I decided to dedicate my evening to proving my point.
First of all, I'd like to cover the role reversal on civil rights issues which you know less about than a foreigner:
http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/programs/beyond/workshops/ampolpapers/fall07-schickler.pdf
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_the_Democratic_Party_(United_States)#The_Johnson_Years:_1963.E2.80.931968
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6980.html
tl;dr-friendly summary: http://civilliberty.about.com/od/historyprofiles/p/democratic.htm
Next I want to continue your timeline up to the present day, but I had to help a relative with a cell phone problem and won't have time to finish it tonight, however I'll try again tomorrow evening. It will start with the (SPOILERS horrifyingly racist /SPOILERS) history of the Reagan administration.
Not going down this road again, see here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2461378&cid=37615968
I know you're talking about some kind of VoIP system (SIP, IAX, and a variety of proprietary system can all work on an iPad). But they're not practical as a cell phone replacement outside of North America and some places in Europe. I really wish they were, but they aren't, and region-specific solutions aren't really solutions.
Somebody hooked up a GSM modem to an iPad? I'll admit, that's pretty damn l33t. Got a source?
To follow the tradition of the DethPhone, it should also have spikes around the screen that stab you in the wrist every time you use it.
Hey don't give 'em any ideas.
Tablet makers should give everything crazy bladed corners like the tech in Metalocalypse as a fuck-you to Apple.
Hi there pardner, name's, uh, Ranjeep, now wut can I do ya fer with that there tablet thingy?
And it can't make calls.
Yeah IIRC one of the points of their early "constitution" (which conflicted with itself) was basically pushing a theocracy, making the US a Christian nation or something like that. This was one of the points that conflicted with another point, religious freedom.
"You can worship anyone you want, as long as it's Jesus."
I fucking hate that kid >_<
#nerdrage