Yes but it's been reasonably well established now that they mean unlimited availability *not* unlimited data.
That's why some 'unlimited' plans have 'fair use' caps of 10GB, 5GB or less, and the ones that don't mention one have vague legalese about being able to cut you off/throttle you without warning if you 'affect the experience of other users'.
It is definately not illegal for them to filter bittorrent... it'll be in the contract you signed that they have the right to do exactly that.
There most definately is copyright on legal documents. They may not be art but they have been created in some sense.
By your definition I can freely copy anything by Britney Spears because it's not remotely creative:p
"Recently the RIAA made a claim that it is illegal to rip music from your own CDs to listen to that music on different devices that you own"
In the UK this is in fact 100% illegal. As is using a VCR to record a TV programme, for example.
Luckily we don't enforce the law over here... In Europe we only seem to enforce laws when we feel like it, pretty much.. hence the number of silly laws still on the books eg. it's legal to kill a welsh man with a bow whilst in Hereford.
There are also tortuous laws concerning corporate secrets (that we borrowed from the US) and can be invoked here.
Basically if you leak that kind of shareholder information you can end up in jail - that much is made clear to *anyone* who is party to such information. Printing that leak is a copyright issue, and also may open up the journal that prints it to other legal problems.
That's why leaks are always anonymous - wikileaks are treading a *very* thin line by not being anonymous. The NR lawyers also have a legal duty to protect such information and are acting within the law.
Actually most of that 100bn is worthless because it is mostly in mortgages, which it can't sell in the current market climate. That's why it got into that mess in the first place. If its depositors tried to withdraw their money there was a risk of running short of liquid assets. Plus if your reserves get too low you can't lend any more, and your business model is hosed - no loans == no new income.
Because NR didn't diversify (all the other banks did) it was left with a problem, hence this mess started.
price only up this morning as it looks like a deal has been reached which would avoid nationalising NR, which would make the shares essentially worthless.
It's still a *huge* risk. The strings attached to the deal mean that the prospective buyers might just walk away, leaving nationalisation the only option.
At least they've taken the shareholders out of the loop. They vetoed all the previous rescue bids and are basically to blame for how long this fiasco has gone on.
The second case could fall foul of EU law anyway, although I'm not sure of the specifics (press reporting hasn't been very deep in this area). That's the reason for the rapid sale/nationalisation options - if they kept it going much longer they'd be in breach (and, it appears, may already be in the opinion of some).
But that's normal for ecomomies based on credit - they're very fragile because, like the Northern Rock itself, they only work as long as no one starts asking for repayments of the capital.
IANABanker, but IIRC they're safe as long as inflation is above 0%.. as long as more wealth is being created, there's always more money to pay the loans plus interest (which is why the UK has an inflation target of 2.5% not 0%).
If inflation drops too low, or (worse) negative, then there's not enough wealth in the economy and the system basically collapses, leading to recession (presumably until the economy has deflated enough to sustain the existing loans).
I heard that about 98% of the wealth in a modern economy is loan generated... so it's a big issue that system keeps running.
If the government hadn't issued the guarantees they did the run on the bank would have continued and NR wouldn't have had any assets left with which to continue lending (in fact if it went on long enough there wouldn't be any assets with which to pay people withdrawing money from their accounts, which could(would?) be a disaster for banking in general - most people still believe that banks keep all the money they're given in safes... if joe public realised that that hasn't been true for 200 years it could trigger mass withdrawl from other banks as well, putting them in jeopardy).
I've heard it argued that the gov. should have guaranteed the assets much, much sooner to avoid the run on the bank in the first place. Certainly once it had started they IMO made the best of a bad situation.
What market segment up until now were saying to themselves "If only this laptop was exactly the same size but *thinner*"
My boss travels a lot on airlines and was waiting for an ultraportable macbook. He wanted one *smaller* - that could fit nicely in the limited space on airline seating in the way a normal laptop won't. This doesn't either.. so it's a missed opportunity.
The other thing he asked for - solid state disks (hard disks don't last long if you fly a lot) - was answered, but he won't be getting the Air.
This is the same company that states writing a program that uses mysql as the backend (even via odbc) is the same as distributing mysql... even though not a single byte of mysql code is distributed.
"Dougrez-Lewis stood at the by-election as Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel having changed his name by deed poll from the somewhat plainer John Desmond Lewis"
Pity the US doesn't have this. Over here all you have to do to stand is place your name on the list and have a deposit (be prepared to lose it of course).
If a flash plugin can make outgoing XML requests it can persuade a upnp server to make your machine wide open, thus completely disabling your firewall. Making those kind of requests sounds like the kind of thing you want Flash to do, so I'd imagine all versions are vulnerable.
There are some ports.. 137,139,445,etc. that you really don't want on the open internet. If the plugin does something like a port forward of 0-65535 to your machine suddenly *every* service on there is wide open to any attack. It'll bypass protections from eg. the default XP firewall as the packets will appear to be coming from the local LAN (the router) rather than the original source.
It's not just flash (although a malicious advert on a page is the most obvious vector for this). Anything that runs on your machine can do it.. I reckon you could craft such an attack in javascript even (XMLHttpRequest with the right code).
Once the ports are open anything that manages to run on your machine can leave itself wide open without having to make telltale outgoing port connections (although it's often said that outgoing connections are the reason upnp is 'not worse' than existing protections, no working trojan would work in that manner, since the target of the outgoing connection would quickly be found and shut down.. OTOH leaving a trojan on your machine listening on your machine waiting for the command to send spam/infect others/distribute child porn/whatever is much more real a thread).
$trojan opens port. Talks to upnp server. Your machine gets pwned.
script/flash/exe/whatever opens port 445. Your network gets pwned.
Because there's no authentication upnp shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a network. At the very least a verified password should be needed to activate the port forwarding each time.
Really, developers shouldn't write shitty protocols that require it. Luckily it's becoming rarer.. few games need it (if any, these days.. certainly nothing recent), even bittorrent clients are getting better (the early ones needed something like 10 ports.. newer ones need 1). There's absolutely no need for a non-server to be requiring open incoming ports - on a client they should all be outgoing and handled naturally by the NAT logic.
I presume it means that it allows open ports (on the lan) to be seen by everyone (on the wan).
In some upnp implementations it's been shown that you can even do it the other way around - do things like forward port 80 outgoing to $hackers_proxy.
upnp is kinda useless anyway.. nothing that can't be done more safely and more controlled by static DHCP and standard port forwarding (or, better, getting multiple IP addresses from your ISP).
UPNP can be blown wide open with well crafted perl script. It has zero authentication and most implementations even allow portforwarding to machines outside the LAN.
Basically if you're going to enable UPNP you might as well disable all your other security as well in the name of convenience.
There would still be a delay because the safe distance at 30mph is totally different to the safe distance when stopped. Within a second is completely unrealistic. All it would stop is the idiot who takes 30 seconds to realize that the car in front has gone... but you can get pretty close to optimal already if the queue is seasoned drivers (eg. evenings after work, when the drive once a week crowd aren't usually out).
Such systems as you describe are in commercial deployment btw. - it's called adaptive cruise control - but they mostly handle moving traffic.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlimited MEANS unlimited.
Yes but it's been reasonably well established now that they mean unlimited availability *not* unlimited data.
That's why some 'unlimited' plans have 'fair use' caps of 10GB, 5GB or less, and the ones that don't mention one have vague legalese about being able to cut you off/throttle you without warning if you 'affect the experience of other users'.
It is definately not illegal for them to filter bittorrent... it'll be in the contract you signed that they have the right to do exactly that.
btw. the CD copying issue my be clarified eventually... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5cdcfcc-bd8d-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html
There most definately is copyright on legal documents. They may not be art but they have been created in some sense.
:p
By your definition I can freely copy anything by Britney Spears because it's not remotely creative
"Recently the RIAA made a claim that it is illegal to rip music from your own CDs to listen to that music on different devices that you own"
In the UK this is in fact 100% illegal. As is using a VCR to record a TV programme, for example.
Luckily we don't enforce the law over here... In Europe we only seem to enforce laws when we feel like it, pretty much.. hence the number of silly laws still on the books eg. it's legal to kill a welsh man with a bow whilst in Hereford.
It's not censorship at all it's copyright.
There are also tortuous laws concerning corporate secrets (that we borrowed from the US) and can be invoked here.
Basically if you leak that kind of shareholder information you can end up in jail - that much is made clear to *anyone* who is party to such information. Printing that leak is a copyright issue, and also may open up the journal that prints it to other legal problems.
That's why leaks are always anonymous - wikileaks are treading a *very* thin line by not being anonymous. The NR lawyers also have a legal duty to protect such information and are acting within the law.
The problem with that video is it confuses fractional reserve with tort money and as a result its conclusions are nonsense.
If the system were as that video states than banks would never go bust - they could make infinite money just by lending it to each other!
The wikipedia article covers what really happens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
it had about 100bn of assets
Actually most of that 100bn is worthless because it is mostly in mortgages, which it can't sell in the current market climate. That's why it got into that mess in the first place. If its depositors tried to withdraw their money there was a risk of running short of liquid assets. Plus if your reserves get too low you can't lend any more, and your business model is hosed - no loans == no new income.
Because NR didn't diversify (all the other banks did) it was left with a problem, hence this mess started.
price only up this morning as it looks like a deal has been reached which would avoid nationalising NR, which would make the shares essentially worthless.
It's still a *huge* risk. The strings attached to the deal mean that the prospective buyers might just walk away, leaving nationalisation the only option.
At least they've taken the shareholders out of the loop. They vetoed all the previous rescue bids and are basically to blame for how long this fiasco has gone on.
The second case could fall foul of EU law anyway, although I'm not sure of the specifics (press reporting hasn't been very deep in this area). That's the reason for the rapid sale/nationalisation options - if they kept it going much longer they'd be in breach (and, it appears, may already be in the opinion of some).
But that's normal for ecomomies based on credit - they're very fragile because, like the Northern Rock itself, they only work as long as no one starts asking for repayments of the capital.
IANABanker, but IIRC they're safe as long as inflation is above 0%.. as long as more wealth is being created, there's always more money to pay the loans plus interest (which is why the UK has an inflation target of 2.5% not 0%).
If inflation drops too low, or (worse) negative, then there's not enough wealth in the economy and the system basically collapses, leading to recession (presumably until the economy has deflated enough to sustain the existing loans).
I heard that about 98% of the wealth in a modern economy is loan generated... so it's a big issue that system keeps running.
If the government hadn't issued the guarantees they did the run on the bank would have continued and NR wouldn't have had any assets left with which to continue lending (in fact if it went on long enough there wouldn't be any assets with which to pay people withdrawing money from their accounts, which could(would?) be a disaster for banking in general - most people still believe that banks keep all the money they're given in safes... if joe public realised that that hasn't been true for 200 years it could trigger mass withdrawl from other banks as well, putting them in jeopardy).
I've heard it argued that the gov. should have guaranteed the assets much, much sooner to avoid the run on the bank in the first place. Certainly once it had started they IMO made the best of a bad situation.
Well yeah, it's illegal for a start...
What *is* the point.
What market segment up until now were saying to themselves "If only this laptop was exactly the same size but *thinner*"
My boss travels a lot on airlines and was waiting for an ultraportable macbook. He wanted one *smaller* - that could fit nicely in the limited space on airline seating in the way a normal laptop won't. This doesn't either.. so it's a missed opportunity.
The other thing he asked for - solid state disks (hard disks don't last long if you fly a lot) - was answered, but he won't be getting the Air.
I'm no physicist, but isn't that supposed to be impossible? (knowing where a particle is and what its velocity is at the same time).
Cool.. then we can look through them :p
This is the same company that states writing a program that uses mysql as the backend (even via odbc) is the same as distributing mysql... even though not a single byte of mysql code is distributed.
Hopefully Sun can bash some sanity into them.
You've gotta love british politics...
"Dougrez-Lewis stood at the by-election as Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel having changed his name by deed poll from the somewhat plainer John Desmond Lewis"
Pity the US doesn't have this. Over here all you have to do to stand is place your name on the list and have a deposit (be prepared to lose it of course).
I suspect that I've got less than 15 months before my son discovers youPorn
:p
When he's bored of pornhub, redtube, pornotube, etc. you mean?
You'd be amazed how many PS3 owners live there. :p
It's not just the old days. The old workaround of downright lying about where you live still works fine.
If a flash plugin can make outgoing XML requests it can persuade a upnp server to make your machine wide open, thus completely disabling your firewall. Making those kind of requests sounds like the kind of thing you want Flash to do, so I'd imagine all versions are vulnerable.
There are some ports.. 137,139,445,etc. that you really don't want on the open internet. If the plugin does something like a port forward of 0-65535 to your machine suddenly *every* service on there is wide open to any attack. It'll bypass protections from eg. the default XP firewall as the packets will appear to be coming from the local LAN (the router) rather than the original source.
It's not just flash (although a malicious advert on a page is the most obvious vector for this). Anything that runs on your machine can do it.. I reckon you could craft such an attack in javascript even (XMLHttpRequest with the right code).
Once the ports are open anything that manages to run on your machine can leave itself wide open without having to make telltale outgoing port connections (although it's often said that outgoing connections are the reason upnp is 'not worse' than existing protections, no working trojan would work in that manner, since the target of the outgoing connection would quickly be found and shut down.. OTOH leaving a trojan on your machine listening on your machine waiting for the command to send spam/infect others/distribute child porn/whatever is much more real a thread).
$trojan opens port. Talks to upnp server. Your machine gets pwned.
script/flash/exe/whatever opens port 445. Your network gets pwned.
Because there's no authentication upnp shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a network. At the very least a verified password should be needed to activate the port forwarding each time.
Really, developers shouldn't write shitty protocols that require it. Luckily it's becoming rarer.. few games need it (if any, these days.. certainly nothing recent), even bittorrent clients are getting better (the early ones needed something like 10 ports.. newer ones need 1). There's absolutely no need for a non-server to be requiring open incoming ports - on a client they should all be outgoing and handled naturally by the NAT logic.
xbox live works fine without any port forwarding at all.
Any half decent bittorrent client works of a single port and can be setup in minutes.
What is this 'chore' you're on about. I known virtual newbies do it without prompting.
I presume it means that it allows open ports (on the lan) to be seen by everyone (on the wan).
In some upnp implementations it's been shown that you can even do it the other way around - do things like forward port 80 outgoing to $hackers_proxy.
upnp is kinda useless anyway.. nothing that can't be done more safely and more controlled by static DHCP and standard port forwarding (or, better, getting multiple IP addresses from your ISP).
UPNP can be blown wide open with well crafted perl script. It has zero authentication and most implementations even allow portforwarding to machines outside the LAN.
Basically if you're going to enable UPNP you might as well disable all your other security as well in the name of convenience.
How much fuel is required to lift helium down from orbit?
Very little.. you just need to encase it in something heavy enough to offset the lift, and let gravity take over.
There would still be a delay because the safe distance at 30mph is totally different to the safe distance when stopped. Within a second is completely unrealistic. All it would stop is the idiot who takes 30 seconds to realize that the car in front has gone... but you can get pretty close to optimal already if the queue is seasoned drivers (eg. evenings after work, when the drive once a week crowd aren't usually out).
Such systems as you describe are in commercial deployment btw. - it's called adaptive cruise control - but they mostly handle moving traffic.