Not any longer. I work at a telco and a while back we got smarter. Rather than bury strait fiber, and have to dig it up when technology changes, we now bury flexible PVC tubing that the fiber rides in. When we need to change it, rather than dig it up at great expense, we find the particular fiber we want to replace, and just pull it out of the housing by hand. Then we use a device that shoots the new fiber through to the other side with compressed air. It's really neat to watch several miles of cable just pop out the other end like there was nothing to it.
I'm not sure if we used this stuff everywhere, and I'm not sure if every phone company used it. But it certainly saved us enough money that I'd imagine it's quite common now.
My guess is this is an IT problem for them. They likely have scripts that troll un-classified networks looking for keywords that would indicated classified material and gotten onto them. When they find one, they flag it and investigate. They've probably had a huge spike in hits because of this, with most of them leading back to the guardian. Until they update their scripts they probably thought the easiest solution was to block the website. Just a guess...
Ok, lets make a simple example. Lets say that one of the governments primary duties was to demolish abandon houses. This was expensive, hiring crews, hauling away the rubble. So, the government secretly started placing C4 in every new home built and linking these homes up to a computer. When a home was declared abandon my the computer it would flag the home for human review. The human would verify that it was abandon and then the computer would detonate the house. BOOM... no more house, the lot could be sold and someone else could build there. It saves time, money, resources, and there are now very few abandon homes right?
Well it's silly... because it's over the top. So is tracking every vehicle on the road everywhere it goes to find a few criminals. The majority of citizens are not criminals, and the majority of houses do not get abandoned. And what if at some point in the future the government is a little less altruistic than our current government? They start blowing up houses of people that are threats to the state? What could they do with knowing everywhere you drive every day of the week?
The government does not need more power. They can legally have you put to death. That's power enough.
It's still not worth it. I live in America, got Netflix for free for 1 month... the content was such crap and so out of date it was laughable. The quality was terrible because it couldn't stream it live and the bandwidth I had at the time and there was no option to queue up a movie to watch later so all I could really do was pick from some crappy movies I'd already seen last year and see them in bellow 480 resolution. I think we watched half a movie before we just dumped the crap and went back to the piratebay.
Get a clue hollywood. I'm WILLING to pay. I'm begging for a way to do it... you just refuse to let me. Netflix's DRM, in no way stops me from getting your content. In fact, I had that content years ago. Getting it off of netflix would be a chore. You don't even need the stupid DRM. All of your movies are already available at thousands of site all over the web. Get over it. Oh well, you aren't going to listen and are just going to go bankrupt. Just remember: This is your own fault.
I see non-free art as non-art. Bach only ever accepted payment for a single piece of music he wrote. He spent the rest of his life lamenting that mistake. If only more artists had his integrity.
We will never travel faster than the speed of light. That, however, does not mean we can not reach distant star systems. It will simply be a very, very, long trip.
I used to think this to. Then, about 10 years ago, an apartment complex I lived in turned on the heat for the winter. It was set to 65. This is when I realized that I had no thermostat in the apartment. They told me there was no way to turn it up, it was a "fixed system" uh huh... after a bit of exploring I found a locked door in the basement. I did a couple of internet searches, watched some videos and an hour later I was standing in the now unlocked utility room looking at a VERY adjustable thermostat which then got set to 75 for the rest of the winter. When it got too hot we'd just open a window.
And just for clarification, picking a dead-bolt by a complete novice that had never done it before took all of 2min.
So... up until this NSA/Snowden incident, I believed the media was incompetent. Not malicious... just out to make a buck and real news was expensive to do research on. But now it's clear. The coverage on this entire affair by CNN, CBS, NBC, etc... is flat out propaganda. There is no question that what the NSA is doing is unconstitutional. It is, without a doubt, a violation of our rights. Snowden really is a political activist. The US would be applauding such behavior of a Chinese citizen, and we would provide them asylum in a heartbeat. The presidents that allowed this to continue (Bush and Obama) should be charged in criminal court for this. Obama, at the very least should be impeached. The courts involved, the members of congress that were aware, they should all lose their offices at the very least. The NSA should be shut down permanently. We still have a chance to save the republic... but it's a small one. Everyone in this country needs to vote 3rd party going forward. If you vote R or D in any election in the future, you're a traitor to your country and we should all be ashamed of you.
The earth has been getting bombarded by asteroids since before it was earth. To this day, 1000 tons of material lands on earth per year, every year with no noticeable effect on our orbit.
Also, "heavy things" are not what we'll want to be mining. Iron ore, for example, we have plenty of. We may mine some, but eventually the price will be so low that it won't be worth mining. Rare minerals will be where the money is at. Rare gasses... that sort of thing. Also, disposal of waste on asteroids or into the sun would be a money maker as well. None of this is really viable without a space elevator though. I don't think we're too far off from seeing one in our lifetime.
I think the countries being spied upon would argue your point.
Also, the leak on the G8 spying was a side affect. What he was actually leaking was their methods, used in the US and the UK to do illegal spying, and in those documents they use the G8 as an example. Also, the revelation that they are spying on the G8 is one of the most important pieces of information released... their excuse this entire time has been that they are defending against terrorism. But clearly the G8 operation was an attempt to gain economic advantage.
Why does it have to be common knowledge? What is common knowledge is Apple likes to have fucked up ports and charge a fortune for the rights to makes a cable that fits them.
The point is, if all this data is cached to disc, if you hardware is EVER compromised... now or in the future... they have it. If it weren't cached, then they'd have to attempt to circumvent the banks security system. I think the most likely scenario here is your laptop gets stolen, the thieves search for images and find all kinds of pictures of old checks in your cache folder.
I work for a telco, and not too long ago I got to chat with one of our VPs about why this happens. I'm a total net neutrality guy, but after talking to him I understood his point of view a bit better.
With most large content providers, like google for example, ISPs can go to them and say "hey, we're getting a lot of traffic from you. It's cheaper for us if we can make arrangements that are beneficial to the both of us." and then the ISP and the content provider enter into an agreement where the ISP pays a bulk rate for trunks to a network, and the content provider remains on that network and gives plenty of warning before switching so the ISP can make sure that they have enough capacity in that direction.
Netflix however, doesn't make these kind of agreements. The switch providers and hosting at will. The ISP will pay for large trunks leading to where the majority of netflix traffic is coming from and then Netflix will suddenly drop that host and switch to another. Suddenly 20% of the ISPs traffic is coming from an entirely new network. But they are still locked into a contract with that other network.
Also, Netflix has no interest in the health of the ISPs network. If Netflix had a financial interest in the health of the network they could do some rather simple things to help the isp, like encourage users to queue up movies ahead of time, have them download at off peak times and then play when they wanted to watch them. This is was cable companies do after all... but netflix has no interest in this sort of thing and as far as the ISP is concerned is doing is best to be as damaging to the network as possible.
I'm still all for net neutrality, but its good to understand the ISPs concerns. They aren't just out to thwart Netflix. But Netflix is digging their own grave on this one.
Exactly, every time I'm talking to a VP at Oracle support (Every level 2 support tech is a VP at oracle) all I can picture in my head is them looking like Cobra Commander.
So let me get this strait... while he's a citizen, submitting to power, freedom of speech is the most important right we have. Then, once he gains a leadership role of a community that has freedom to say whatever it is they want, suddenly that right isn't so appealing? Excuse me while I fall out of my chair laughing at his dumb ass.
They have Batteries/Generators as well as teams of guys running around keeping them fueled up even during a hurricane. I used to be a part of disaster preparedness at a telco. Often our guys were the ones alerting first responders to problem spots and trapped people. But this is still a stupid idea. The idea that a solar panel would survive weather that a power line couldn't is a joke.
Agreed, those books are awesome... and despite the subject matter being ridiculously complex he doesn't go over the top and make it an unintelligible physics lecture. He just surmises how the universe might work and puts a story in the middle of it. One of the more creative works I've ever read.
That would violate one of the first fundamental laws of security. Despite what people on slashdot like to rant and rave about, many times being behind on updates has nothing to do with being cheap or lazy. Real networks are complicated... and often you have nested dependencies that force you into situations you'd rather not be in. Load Balancer A has a bug in it's newest OS update, so you can't upgrade to that unless you want to lose access to 4 of your biggest clients. So you have to wait 6 months for the patch to come down, meanwhile their older OS version is not compatible with the latest LDAP implementation so now you're out of date on your... yada yada yada...
When a number comes out of that lock box, it's just a phone number — no names, no addresses," he said. "If they think that's relevant to their counterterrorism investigation, they give that to the FBI. Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is.
Just based on the title you can tell this is a bunch of crap. First, Apple hasn't invented anything new since the 80s and it's arguable if they ever did even then. Google came up with their search engine and Android, but other than that they've basically just bought up other companies that have had good ideas... wait, didn't they buy Android to? I don't care enough to look it up. And Facebook? What on earth did Facebook do?
As was always the case, all the innovation is coming from start ups and individuals in their basements that have good ideas. Then they go on to get bought by some larger company.
None of this matters, it's a distraction. If PRISM is not capable of doing what the young man claims, then the federal government should have no problem passing a bill that describes that sort of surveillance as illegal. Also, if he's just a braggart and a liar, they have no reason to prosecute him as he hasn't actually revealed anything but a made up story.
Slashdot Mirror
Not any longer. I work at a telco and a while back we got smarter. Rather than bury strait fiber, and have to dig it up when technology changes, we now bury flexible PVC tubing that the fiber rides in. When we need to change it, rather than dig it up at great expense, we find the particular fiber we want to replace, and just pull it out of the housing by hand. Then we use a device that shoots the new fiber through to the other side with compressed air. It's really neat to watch several miles of cable just pop out the other end like there was nothing to it.
I'm not sure if we used this stuff everywhere, and I'm not sure if every phone company used it. But it certainly saved us enough money that I'd imagine it's quite common now.
My guess is this is an IT problem for them. They likely have scripts that troll un-classified networks looking for keywords that would indicated classified material and gotten onto them. When they find one, they flag it and investigate. They've probably had a huge spike in hits because of this, with most of them leading back to the guardian. Until they update their scripts they probably thought the easiest solution was to block the website. Just a guess...
Ok, lets make a simple example. Lets say that one of the governments primary duties was to demolish abandon houses. This was expensive, hiring crews, hauling away the rubble. So, the government secretly started placing C4 in every new home built and linking these homes up to a computer. When a home was declared abandon my the computer it would flag the home for human review. The human would verify that it was abandon and then the computer would detonate the house. BOOM... no more house, the lot could be sold and someone else could build there. It saves time, money, resources, and there are now very few abandon homes right?
Well it's silly... because it's over the top. So is tracking every vehicle on the road everywhere it goes to find a few criminals. The majority of citizens are not criminals, and the majority of houses do not get abandoned. And what if at some point in the future the government is a little less altruistic than our current government? They start blowing up houses of people that are threats to the state? What could they do with knowing everywhere you drive every day of the week?
The government does not need more power. They can legally have you put to death. That's power enough.
It's still not worth it. I live in America, got Netflix for free for 1 month... the content was such crap and so out of date it was laughable. The quality was terrible because it couldn't stream it live and the bandwidth I had at the time and there was no option to queue up a movie to watch later so all I could really do was pick from some crappy movies I'd already seen last year and see them in bellow 480 resolution. I think we watched half a movie before we just dumped the crap and went back to the piratebay.
Get a clue hollywood. I'm WILLING to pay. I'm begging for a way to do it... you just refuse to let me. Netflix's DRM, in no way stops me from getting your content. In fact, I had that content years ago. Getting it off of netflix would be a chore. You don't even need the stupid DRM. All of your movies are already available at thousands of site all over the web. Get over it. Oh well, you aren't going to listen and are just going to go bankrupt. Just remember: This is your own fault.
I see non-free art as non-art. Bach only ever accepted payment for a single piece of music he wrote. He spent the rest of his life lamenting that mistake. If only more artists had his integrity.
We will never travel faster than the speed of light. That, however, does not mean we can not reach distant star systems. It will simply be a very, very, long trip.
Lie
I used to think this to. Then, about 10 years ago, an apartment complex I lived in turned on the heat for the winter. It was set to 65. This is when I realized that I had no thermostat in the apartment. They told me there was no way to turn it up, it was a "fixed system" uh huh... after a bit of exploring I found a locked door in the basement. I did a couple of internet searches, watched some videos and an hour later I was standing in the now unlocked utility room looking at a VERY adjustable thermostat which then got set to 75 for the rest of the winter. When it got too hot we'd just open a window.
And just for clarification, picking a dead-bolt by a complete novice that had never done it before took all of 2min.
So... up until this NSA/Snowden incident, I believed the media was incompetent. Not malicious... just out to make a buck and real news was expensive to do research on. But now it's clear. The coverage on this entire affair by CNN, CBS, NBC, etc... is flat out propaganda. There is no question that what the NSA is doing is unconstitutional. It is, without a doubt, a violation of our rights. Snowden really is a political activist. The US would be applauding such behavior of a Chinese citizen, and we would provide them asylum in a heartbeat. The presidents that allowed this to continue (Bush and Obama) should be charged in criminal court for this. Obama, at the very least should be impeached. The courts involved, the members of congress that were aware, they should all lose their offices at the very least. The NSA should be shut down permanently. We still have a chance to save the republic... but it's a small one. Everyone in this country needs to vote 3rd party going forward. If you vote R or D in any election in the future, you're a traitor to your country and we should all be ashamed of you.
The earth has been getting bombarded by asteroids since before it was earth. To this day, 1000 tons of material lands on earth per year, every year with no noticeable effect on our orbit.
Also, "heavy things" are not what we'll want to be mining. Iron ore, for example, we have plenty of. We may mine some, but eventually the price will be so low that it won't be worth mining. Rare minerals will be where the money is at. Rare gasses... that sort of thing. Also, disposal of waste on asteroids or into the sun would be a money maker as well. None of this is really viable without a space elevator though. I don't think we're too far off from seeing one in our lifetime.
Prior Art -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HVA5MuWy8o
I think the countries being spied upon would argue your point.
Also, the leak on the G8 spying was a side affect. What he was actually leaking was their methods, used in the US and the UK to do illegal spying, and in those documents they use the G8 as an example. Also, the revelation that they are spying on the G8 is one of the most important pieces of information released... their excuse this entire time has been that they are defending against terrorism. But clearly the G8 operation was an attempt to gain economic advantage.
It's not the same reaction, and that's the point. It should be.
The chance that I'll be killed in a terrorist attack are 1 in 20million.
The chance my government will put me in prison is 1 in 100.
I'll take my chances with the terrorists thank you.
Why does it have to be common knowledge? What is common knowledge is Apple likes to have fucked up ports and charge a fortune for the rights to makes a cable that fits them.
The point is, if all this data is cached to disc, if you hardware is EVER compromised... now or in the future... they have it. If it weren't cached, then they'd have to attempt to circumvent the banks security system. I think the most likely scenario here is your laptop gets stolen, the thieves search for images and find all kinds of pictures of old checks in your cache folder.
I work for a telco, and not too long ago I got to chat with one of our VPs about why this happens. I'm a total net neutrality guy, but after talking to him I understood his point of view a bit better.
With most large content providers, like google for example, ISPs can go to them and say "hey, we're getting a lot of traffic from you. It's cheaper for us if we can make arrangements that are beneficial to the both of us." and then the ISP and the content provider enter into an agreement where the ISP pays a bulk rate for trunks to a network, and the content provider remains on that network and gives plenty of warning before switching so the ISP can make sure that they have enough capacity in that direction.
Netflix however, doesn't make these kind of agreements. The switch providers and hosting at will. The ISP will pay for large trunks leading to where the majority of netflix traffic is coming from and then Netflix will suddenly drop that host and switch to another. Suddenly 20% of the ISPs traffic is coming from an entirely new network. But they are still locked into a contract with that other network.
Also, Netflix has no interest in the health of the ISPs network. If Netflix had a financial interest in the health of the network they could do some rather simple things to help the isp, like encourage users to queue up movies ahead of time, have them download at off peak times and then play when they wanted to watch them. This is was cable companies do after all... but netflix has no interest in this sort of thing and as far as the ISP is concerned is doing is best to be as damaging to the network as possible.
I'm still all for net neutrality, but its good to understand the ISPs concerns. They aren't just out to thwart Netflix. But Netflix is digging their own grave on this one.
Exactly, every time I'm talking to a VP at Oracle support (Every level 2 support tech is a VP at oracle) all I can picture in my head is them looking like Cobra Commander.
So let me get this strait... while he's a citizen, submitting to power, freedom of speech is the most important right we have. Then, once he gains a leadership role of a community that has freedom to say whatever it is they want, suddenly that right isn't so appealing? Excuse me while I fall out of my chair laughing at his dumb ass.
They have Batteries/Generators as well as teams of guys running around keeping them fueled up even during a hurricane. I used to be a part of disaster preparedness at a telco. Often our guys were the ones alerting first responders to problem spots and trapped people. But this is still a stupid idea. The idea that a solar panel would survive weather that a power line couldn't is a joke.
Agreed, those books are awesome... and despite the subject matter being ridiculously complex he doesn't go over the top and make it an unintelligible physics lecture. He just surmises how the universe might work and puts a story in the middle of it. One of the more creative works I've ever read.
That would violate one of the first fundamental laws of security. Despite what people on slashdot like to rant and rave about, many times being behind on updates has nothing to do with being cheap or lazy. Real networks are complicated... and often you have nested dependencies that force you into situations you'd rather not be in. Load Balancer A has a bug in it's newest OS update, so you can't upgrade to that unless you want to lose access to 4 of your biggest clients. So you have to wait 6 months for the patch to come down, meanwhile their older OS version is not compatible with the latest LDAP implementation so now you're out of date on your... yada yada yada...
When a number comes out of that lock box, it's just a phone number — no names, no addresses," he said. "If they think that's relevant to their counterterrorism investigation, they give that to the FBI. Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is.
Because doing a reverse phone lookup isn't possible until they have a court order right?
http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone
What a joke.
Just based on the title you can tell this is a bunch of crap. First, Apple hasn't invented anything new since the 80s and it's arguable if they ever did even then. Google came up with their search engine and Android, but other than that they've basically just bought up other companies that have had good ideas... wait, didn't they buy Android to? I don't care enough to look it up. And Facebook? What on earth did Facebook do?
As was always the case, all the innovation is coming from start ups and individuals in their basements that have good ideas. Then they go on to get bought by some larger company.
None of this matters, it's a distraction. If PRISM is not capable of doing what the young man claims, then the federal government should have no problem passing a bill that describes that sort of surveillance as illegal. Also, if he's just a braggart and a liar, they have no reason to prosecute him as he hasn't actually revealed anything but a made up story.