Asked to comment on an old, well documented and proven super-threat with complete details provided, a Microsoft spokesman responded "What the Hell are you talking about?"
The difference is that AA (and any accounting/auditing firm) is supposed to be keeping accurate records for reporting to the public (including 'The Man') whereas we hope the ISPs are protecting our privacy. We denizens of the 'Net are private citizens who have no requirement to report our activities to investors or government (aside from income for tax purposes), but AA must make those reports.
I like that; it works for me. You can tell I'm a rather mathematical person... I tend to use a lot of parentheses. The idea of using them to keep the meaning clear is great. I wonder if we could optimize software (and web) translators by including this method in them.
Funny... I saw a pic not related to him as well when I clicked on your search. Unlike my earlier test searches, clicking on the 'next page' link actually worked (somebody already mentioned the problem I was having: no search results found despite several thousand being available according to the first results page)... which led to another pic-problem: the wrong party logo associated with him! LOL
Since I comment a lot on various blogs, I've found it's easy to keep track of what I said and where by just googling the name I use. Google gives me very relevant, easy to understand results with very few false-positives (unknown misses, but it seems good in that respect). Cuil, on the other hand, was a bit off. The results look like they're all me in that the sites are places I've commented at, but the text blurbs for the links are collections of pieces of comments, some mine, others not. There are a lot of repeats. The pictures that come up have nothing to do with me and the ones I've checked has nothing to do with the item linked to.
Speaking of links... I'm sure it's a matter of getting used to how Cuil does things, but the linking is very much NOT obvious. All these links that are supposedly to my individual comments are each for a given story, right? Nope. The links at the top and bottom of each search result are to that website's log of my comments. So I have a bunch of links to my Lifehacker member's comments. Another to Gizmodo's index of my comments. (Yes, they're the same system, so it's the same list with a different background, but that isn't any search engine's fault.) I even get this for sites I've only left one comment at. Yet, each search result claims (via its headline) to be linking the story or comment directly. The only time I've found that to be true is on the websites that don't provide an index of members' comments (like Popular Science).
I want the competition and I hope it improves. The layout is pretty nice (well, would be if the info was accurate). So far, color me unimpressed.
With non-hijacked DNS, if you enter a non-existent hostname, you DO NOT receive a "404" error. "404" is an HTTP status code which means "not found". This can only be generated by a web server and only makes sense in the context of requesting a resource from a web server, and the server decides it does not exist. [snip] The point being, lots of people use "404" to mean any kind of error, whether it's a broken server or a missing resource or a host that doesn't exist; but that's technically wrong.
You are very correct and I should have known better than to take a terminology shortcut in this forum!
The end result is that we have to find some way around the ISP wrongfully hijacking not just our browsers, but our entire connectivity and these workarounds have pretty much the same drawbacks as the hijacks themselves. At least we have control over which drawbacks to choose or not choose. It's just that the ISPs shouldn't makes put us in these positions.
I think the most annoying aspect is how we get used to leaving off the 'www' at the beginning of domains with Firefox, and Firefox adds it in for you if the non-www address fails to resolve.
If I hadn't commented, I'd mod you up as informative. I didn't know this. In both browsers, I use {CTRL}{Enter} and they auto-add the 'www' prefix and 'com' suffix. I'd never not used that or manually typed 'www'.
When I get home, I'll have to see if OpenDNS handles this correctly (I think it should, but that's a guess).
On a side note, I used the usual brackets for CTRL and Enter to indicate the keys, but they were parsed out by the comment system, seemingly because they looked like HTML commands.:) Ergo, I used different brackets. I'm amused.
Maybe I don't understand the complaint. I use OpenDNS and I don't see any advertising. (If you do see heavy advertising, I'd love to see a screen shot.) It's true you don't get the "404" error and you instead get a search page provided by them, but that's no different than telling your browser to search Google/Yahoo/MSM when an address can't be found. Only a few of us prefer the old 404 error and most want suggestions on where to link to. The advantage to OpenDNS is in having an account (I use the free one) and applying filtering to suite your needs.
I live in Charter territory and they too have setup their own DNS-fail page. You can opt out by going to some website of theirs and telling it to bugger off, but it requires cookies. If you wipe your cookies, you have to reset this. Their search results aren't very good and, since setting up OpenDNS on my router*, I've had better results. I've found that some types of common mistakes are auto-corrected (only if it can't find what you typed or clicked on), so the results have been very good. The users in my home only see my logo picture that I've uploaded and some relevant search results when they try to go to an invalid web address. Are some of these search results paying to be visible? Sure, just like Google, et. al. So what. I feel better with them because I control what happens with the 404 errors, not Charter. And, because there's a kid in the house, I can control the filtering. Just a side benefit.
As for they're being 'Open', I agree that the name is misleading due to the now common use of the word in computer culture. Where do they give us access to the code and how would we use it or implement it if we had it? However, they are open in that anybody can use the service for free.
Now, for the issue at hand, the ISP 'hijacking' DNS lookup errors, what is the real problem with this? A failed DNS lookup fires back the old 404. Used to be, that's exactly what we'd see. But browsers evolved and are now setup to use a search service (MS, Google, etc.). This is where the problem is with the ISPs performing this stunt. They are over-riding your personal settings. I don't think it has anything to do with DPI (as I read in someone else's comment) or even any invasion of privacy. I don't see any such conspiracy. The only Bad Thing® I see is that they ignore our personalized settings and force their setting upon us. So let's not jump up and down calling this something it isn't. We don't even need to since the real problem is bad enough a it is.
*You might not have access to do this to the router provided by your ISP, but you can hook up a router you do control to that one. Set it up to use DHCP, as you'd expect. It will, of course, get the standard IP/Gateway/Subnet/DNS info. But, since it's your router to control, you can now tell it what to assign to the computers attaching to it, including what DNS servers to use. In my case, I choose to use OpenDNS. You might choose something else that you have permission to use. I've had no failures in this at all and it seems Charter (Verizon, AT&T, whoever-ISP) can't 'fix' that.
I agree entirely. It's like true communism: looks great, all pie-in-the-sky, but when real people are involved, forget about it. But the web would improve if many of the people presenting fairly normal web sites adhered to the standards I noted. Yes, as you said, we would still need No Script or Flash Block, but it wouldn't be nearly as noticeable. Take the gadget blog Gizmodo as an example. They frequently have videos either in their postings, or in the readers' comments. None of them play automatically. Same with any of my preferred video sites. Most of the sites I visit actually already act this way. Ad Block Plus protects me from the major evils (along with anti-virus and anti-malware programs). So I actually don't even have No Script. I used to use Flash Block, might again, but I rarely need it due to the sites I visit behaving well.
Here in the US, many students feel that the tuition buys good grades, studying be damned. Classes have, in many but not all cases, been dumbed down for this very reason. Students (and their parents) have sued over and over again for grade increases AND WON, despite the fact they frequently didn't deserve the better grade. So, actually, the professor should be very afraid of a law suit, warranted or otherwise. Our universities still produce some great minds and great workers/creators/etc., but the grade inflation and resultant increase in useless or near useless graduates threatens to make our universities irrelevant to the rest of the world (though still required if you want one of the few jobs available here).
Same here. At first, I must admit I was ticked off that I had to drive out to the copy shop for this self-published book, fearing it would be dreck. Turned out to be one of the best books and the price was more than fair. That made me happy and much more receptive to the idea. Too bad none of the other professors bothered.
Thing is, however, what about quality control? Not that the commercially available text books are necessarily better, but you don't really have any QA for a self-published book. Perhaps if the other profs in the department signed off on it, we would be somewhat assured of a quality book.
Actually, if web programmers would adopt and adhere to some 'best practices', flash, applets, and the like would be less of a problem. What they should include on each of their web pages is a way to toggle each movie and each sound, with the default being to not play until told to do so. I shouldn't need No Script to stop the wailing of a page.
And along the lines of what Google-Yahoo-Adobe are trying to achieve here, they should make it so we can right click on any of the links and get my usual menu options: open link in new window; in new tab; in IE tab (for those who use this); copy link location; bookmark; etc. Then it would be much more integrated into the web experience and we'd all be (at least a little) more comfortable with it.
We KNOW enough about the math, even with all the estimations and incomplete theories, to be able to say that, on the extreme outside chance the LHC does make a mini black hole, the mini black hole will evaporate/destroy itself in a time frame measured in tiny fractions of a second. It cannot destroy the Earth, let alone the solar system or the galaxy.
On the other hand, know nothing of the possibilities of interdimensional travel. Therefore, we are safer considering, and maybe preparing for, the possibility of Hellboy landing in the lab. And he ain't such a bad guy, really.
While I don't use Hotmail as my main account (haven't for quite a while), I still use it. And Firefox. No, nobody installed it for me. I am the go-to guy for tech and science (etc, etc, etc.) And I don't have any trouble getting into Hotmail (full) at all.:)
The best way to preserve your movies for a great length of time is to encode the images in a flip book made of leather. BE CERTAIN THE LEATHER IS FULLY PRESERVED! Make sure the flip books have cover sheets (2 or 3 each front and back). Then wrap in leather and toss in a peat bog. They'll be there when you want them again in a thousand years or so. If you're not sufficiently near a peat bog, super dry desert sand (Egypt, etc.) will work.
Another style of this is to encode the images onto metal sheets, then coat them with something non-organic and non-corroding (what to use??) {actually, aluminum could work since the oxidized layer preserves the rest of the metal... just be sure the encoding is robust in case you have to sand off the oxidation before use}, but still see-through. A sheet metal would be best as then you could use a machine to flip the pages for you, giving you the 30FPS needed for a good viewing experience.
There's no point in paying hundreds of dollars per meter for a fetish item like monster cable but a thick copper cable does work better than lamp wire.
On the surface, you're exactly correct. However, much of the so-called speaker cable I see these days is crappy little stuff whereas most lamp cord actually is pretty thick, certainly thick enough for a proper signal in the average home audio system. But, again, you're basically right and the stuff I use is a little thicker than lamp cord.
A signifcant percentage of the total interconnect resistance is in the contacts, not the cable. Oxidation of the terminals results in a poor connection and is more sensitive to vibration. Gold is very resistant to corrosion and a thin coating uses so little gold that the effect on the price should be negligible.
Again, you're correct, but I want to clarify something. When you connect gold-plated connectors to the standard connectors on most equipment (not gold), you are creating a bi-metal joint. These connections do corrode more quickly than gold to gold or regular to regular and lead to a degradation of the quality of the system over time.
Somebody mod the parent up! R2.0 really nailed the issue on the head. As I commented here on/. for the story about the ISPs agreeing to filter based on the blacklist provided by the non-governmental group with no community oversight, it isn't going to work! If you want to protect the kids (like most of us do), then quit wasting time, money, and energy on garbage like this and go after the pervs and the server hosts.
What makes this interesting is the difference in implementation and how it's wrong. The U.S. version is derided because there is no oversight, no accountability. This French version, which seems so open and democratic will most likely end up being yet another implementation of McCarthyism.
Right now the question is there anything wrong with blocking sites that are known sources of kiddie porn?
Yes. It spends money, time, and other valuable resources on a 'solution' that doesn't work. I use Open DNS and block certain types of sites. It works because I control the household network. However, should a member of the house want to get around it, it isn't difficult at all. I'm sure the teenage girl could figure it out (not so sure about about the other roommates, actually). If one of them gets around it and their computer gets hacked or infected, that's their problem. If they get around it and do something illegal, get caught, and thrown in jail, that's their problem as well. If somebody in the house wants a change, we can discuss it and make the change if we agree to it. And that's the point: it is not the government's job to protect our computers or to protect us from ourselves. Should the government protect the children? Absolutely! Does this do that? Absolutely not! So, it is a waste.
My ISP is paid (way too much for way to poor a service) to transport the requested packets. If I want a filtering service from them, I'll ask for it (I'd rather select my own, you notice).
Do you really want to protect the children? Good. So do I. Then why don't we focus on (a) catching the perverts and (b) shutting down the servers. Think about this: If you know what to block, then you know where the server is. Go get it. Prosecute the baddies. This works without filtering and causes no heated debates about rights or costs because we can all agree the perverts need to be put away (or put down).
Previous to this change, I had the option of show ID or get felt up. Now, really, how the hell do the two equate? Does showing an ID prove I don't have a gun, knife, or bomb? Conversely, does getting felt up prove I am who I say? No and no. There is absolutely no need to prove who I am in order to make the flight safe. And when the more intrusive pat-down search is an option declared when I refuse to show an ID, clearly it is used solely as a tool of intimidation.
With the change, the charade is essentially over. To travel anonymously now, I have to lie by saying I forgot my ID, then get the pat-down.
First, if the pat-down is really necessary for the protection of the passengers, et al, then they are admitting their equipment stinks. That being the case, we ALL should be getting the pat-down! The only search, the only reasonable search is for weapons to prevent hijacking and/or loss of life and limb.
Second, the ID requirement is a joke. Any kid can get a fake ID, so you know damn well someone with ill intent can do so. Any five year old knows s/he can lie to get past the ID requirement, so you know damn well someone with ill intent can do so. Moreover, the ID requirement is used for profiling, as admitted by the TSA. You provide your ID, they get access to your life. From this, they form a risk assessment, a number assigned to you by some algorithm of unknown quality with an unknown rule base. For most, it's not an issue at all. Most of us have a low threat score. "I have nothing to hide," say many. Wrong! The government has nothing to look for is my take on this. Innocent until proven guilty. This makes 'no fly' lists, 'watch' lists, and 'threat scores' not only illegal, but entirely unconstitutional. If somebody is a threat, form an active investigation. Then, with the legal system already in place, the authorities can go after them, or find a lack of evidence and back off. We have absolutely no need for special laws to protect us from terrorism. Treat terrorists like any common criminal with all the rights confirmed by the US Constitution. For those special cases not covered by the Constitution (visitors), human rights still apply and, frankly, so do most citizen rights. This preemptive strike for our security is a breach of the Constitution AND provides absolutely no benefit. It is so bad, it doesn't even fall under the old Ben Franklin quote, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one," since it utterly fails to provide any security right from the start!
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't encourage the masses of Star* geeks. If you do, D&B will be so over crowded, I won't get to play! (No, I do not dress up in costumes... The full kilt may be old fashioned to some, but it's perfectly acceptable clothing for one of Scottish decent or honoring the Scots' fine taste in clothing.)
Slashdot Mirror
Asked to comment on an old, well documented and proven super-threat with complete details provided, a Microsoft spokesman responded "What the Hell are you talking about?"
The difference is that AA (and any accounting/auditing firm) is supposed to be keeping accurate records for reporting to the public (including 'The Man') whereas we hope the ISPs are protecting our privacy. We denizens of the 'Net are private citizens who have no requirement to report our activities to investors or government (aside from income for tax purposes), but AA must make those reports.
Or perhaps a General Nuisance.
I like that; it works for me. You can tell I'm a rather mathematical person... I tend to use a lot of parentheses. The idea of using them to keep the meaning clear is great. I wonder if we could optimize software (and web) translators by including this method in them.
Does it matter what Genesis says? The Pope's own astronomer says life is out there: Pope's Astronomer Insists Alien Life Would be Part of God's Creation (The Independent)
But I thought the Nazis were anti-semantic.
Funny... I saw a pic not related to him as well when I clicked on your search. Unlike my earlier test searches, clicking on the 'next page' link actually worked (somebody already mentioned the problem I was having: no search results found despite several thousand being available according to the first results page)... which led to another pic-problem: the wrong party logo associated with him! LOL
Since I comment a lot on various blogs, I've found it's easy to keep track of what I said and where by just googling the name I use. Google gives me very relevant, easy to understand results with very few false-positives (unknown misses, but it seems good in that respect). Cuil, on the other hand, was a bit off. The results look like they're all me in that the sites are places I've commented at, but the text blurbs for the links are collections of pieces of comments, some mine, others not. There are a lot of repeats. The pictures that come up have nothing to do with me and the ones I've checked has nothing to do with the item linked to.
Speaking of links... I'm sure it's a matter of getting used to how Cuil does things, but the linking is very much NOT obvious. All these links that are supposedly to my individual comments are each for a given story, right? Nope. The links at the top and bottom of each search result are to that website's log of my comments. So I have a bunch of links to my Lifehacker member's comments. Another to Gizmodo's index of my comments. (Yes, they're the same system, so it's the same list with a different background, but that isn't any search engine's fault.) I even get this for sites I've only left one comment at. Yet, each search result claims (via its headline) to be linking the story or comment directly. The only time I've found that to be true is on the websites that don't provide an index of members' comments (like Popular Science).
I want the competition and I hope it improves. The layout is pretty nice (well, would be if the info was accurate). So far, color me unimpressed.
You are very correct and I should have known better than to take a terminology shortcut in this forum!
The end result is that we have to find some way around the ISP wrongfully hijacking not just our browsers, but our entire connectivity and these workarounds have pretty much the same drawbacks as the hijacks themselves. At least we have control over which drawbacks to choose or not choose. It's just that the ISPs shouldn't makes put us in these positions.
If I hadn't commented, I'd mod you up as informative. I didn't know this. In both browsers, I use {CTRL}{Enter} and they auto-add the 'www' prefix and 'com' suffix. I'd never not used that or manually typed 'www'.
When I get home, I'll have to see if OpenDNS handles this correctly (I think it should, but that's a guess).
On a side note, I used the usual brackets for CTRL and Enter to indicate the keys, but they were parsed out by the comment system, seemingly because they looked like HTML commands. :) Ergo, I used different brackets. I'm amused.
Maybe I don't understand the complaint. I use OpenDNS and I don't see any advertising. (If you do see heavy advertising, I'd love to see a screen shot.) It's true you don't get the "404" error and you instead get a search page provided by them, but that's no different than telling your browser to search Google/Yahoo/MSM when an address can't be found. Only a few of us prefer the old 404 error and most want suggestions on where to link to. The advantage to OpenDNS is in having an account (I use the free one) and applying filtering to suite your needs.
I live in Charter territory and they too have setup their own DNS-fail page. You can opt out by going to some website of theirs and telling it to bugger off, but it requires cookies. If you wipe your cookies, you have to reset this. Their search results aren't very good and, since setting up OpenDNS on my router*, I've had better results. I've found that some types of common mistakes are auto-corrected (only if it can't find what you typed or clicked on), so the results have been very good. The users in my home only see my logo picture that I've uploaded and some relevant search results when they try to go to an invalid web address. Are some of these search results paying to be visible? Sure, just like Google, et. al. So what. I feel better with them because I control what happens with the 404 errors, not Charter. And, because there's a kid in the house, I can control the filtering. Just a side benefit.
As for they're being 'Open', I agree that the name is misleading due to the now common use of the word in computer culture. Where do they give us access to the code and how would we use it or implement it if we had it? However, they are open in that anybody can use the service for free.
Now, for the issue at hand, the ISP 'hijacking' DNS lookup errors, what is the real problem with this? A failed DNS lookup fires back the old 404. Used to be, that's exactly what we'd see. But browsers evolved and are now setup to use a search service (MS, Google, etc.). This is where the problem is with the ISPs performing this stunt. They are over-riding your personal settings. I don't think it has anything to do with DPI (as I read in someone else's comment) or even any invasion of privacy. I don't see any such conspiracy. The only Bad Thing® I see is that they ignore our personalized settings and force their setting upon us. So let's not jump up and down calling this something it isn't. We don't even need to since the real problem is bad enough a it is.
*You might not have access to do this to the router provided by your ISP, but you can hook up a router you do control to that one. Set it up to use DHCP, as you'd expect. It will, of course, get the standard IP/Gateway/Subnet/DNS info. But, since it's your router to control, you can now tell it what to assign to the computers attaching to it, including what DNS servers to use. In my case, I choose to use OpenDNS. You might choose something else that you have permission to use. I've had no failures in this at all and it seems Charter (Verizon, AT&T, whoever-ISP) can't 'fix' that.
I agree entirely. It's like true communism: looks great, all pie-in-the-sky, but when real people are involved, forget about it. But the web would improve if many of the people presenting fairly normal web sites adhered to the standards I noted. Yes, as you said, we would still need No Script or Flash Block, but it wouldn't be nearly as noticeable. Take the gadget blog Gizmodo as an example. They frequently have videos either in their postings, or in the readers' comments. None of them play automatically. Same with any of my preferred video sites. Most of the sites I visit actually already act this way. Ad Block Plus protects me from the major evils (along with anti-virus and anti-malware programs). So I actually don't even have No Script. I used to use Flash Block, might again, but I rarely need it due to the sites I visit behaving well.
Here in the US, many students feel that the tuition buys good grades, studying be damned. Classes have, in many but not all cases, been dumbed down for this very reason. Students (and their parents) have sued over and over again for grade increases AND WON, despite the fact they frequently didn't deserve the better grade. So, actually, the professor should be very afraid of a law suit, warranted or otherwise. Our universities still produce some great minds and great workers/creators/etc., but the grade inflation and resultant increase in useless or near useless graduates threatens to make our universities irrelevant to the rest of the world (though still required if you want one of the few jobs available here).
Same here. At first, I must admit I was ticked off that I had to drive out to the copy shop for this self-published book, fearing it would be dreck. Turned out to be one of the best books and the price was more than fair. That made me happy and much more receptive to the idea. Too bad none of the other professors bothered.
Thing is, however, what about quality control? Not that the commercially available text books are necessarily better, but you don't really have any QA for a self-published book. Perhaps if the other profs in the department signed off on it, we would be somewhat assured of a quality book.
Actually, if web programmers would adopt and adhere to some 'best practices', flash, applets, and the like would be less of a problem. What they should include on each of their web pages is a way to toggle each movie and each sound, with the default being to not play until told to do so. I shouldn't need No Script to stop the wailing of a page.
And along the lines of what Google-Yahoo-Adobe are trying to achieve here, they should make it so we can right click on any of the links and get my usual menu options: open link in new window; in new tab; in IE tab (for those who use this); copy link location; bookmark; etc. Then it would be much more integrated into the web experience and we'd all be (at least a little) more comfortable with it.
Ditto. But I took advantage of this with the ultimate case mod: LEDs on my skeleton.
Let's put it this way:
We KNOW enough about the math, even with all the estimations and incomplete theories, to be able to say that, on the extreme outside chance the LHC does make a mini black hole, the mini black hole will evaporate/destroy itself in a time frame measured in tiny fractions of a second. It cannot destroy the Earth, let alone the solar system or the galaxy.
On the other hand, know nothing of the possibilities of interdimensional travel. Therefore, we are safer considering, and maybe preparing for, the possibility of Hellboy landing in the lab. And he ain't such a bad guy, really.
While I don't use Hotmail as my main account (haven't for quite a while), I still use it. And Firefox. No, nobody installed it for me. I am the go-to guy for tech and science (etc, etc, etc.) And I don't have any trouble getting into Hotmail (full) at all. :)
The best way to preserve your movies for a great length of time is to encode the images in a flip book made of leather. BE CERTAIN THE LEATHER IS FULLY PRESERVED! Make sure the flip books have cover sheets (2 or 3 each front and back). Then wrap in leather and toss in a peat bog. They'll be there when you want them again in a thousand years or so. If you're not sufficiently near a peat bog, super dry desert sand (Egypt, etc.) will work.
Another style of this is to encode the images onto metal sheets, then coat them with something non-organic and non-corroding (what to use??) {actually, aluminum could work since the oxidized layer preserves the rest of the metal... just be sure the encoding is robust in case you have to sand off the oxidation before use}, but still see-through. A sheet metal would be best as then you could use a machine to flip the pages for you, giving you the 30FPS needed for a good viewing experience.
On the surface, you're exactly correct. However, much of the so-called speaker cable I see these days is crappy little stuff whereas most lamp cord actually is pretty thick, certainly thick enough for a proper signal in the average home audio system. But, again, you're basically right and the stuff I use is a little thicker than lamp cord.
Again, you're correct, but I want to clarify something. When you connect gold-plated connectors to the standard connectors on most equipment (not gold), you are creating a bi-metal joint. These connections do corrode more quickly than gold to gold or regular to regular and lead to a degradation of the quality of the system over time.
Somebody mod the parent up! R2.0 really nailed the issue on the head. As I commented here on /. for the story about the ISPs agreeing to filter based on the blacklist provided by the non-governmental group with no community oversight, it isn't going to work! If you want to protect the kids (like most of us do), then quit wasting time, money, and energy on garbage like this and go after the pervs and the server hosts.
What makes this interesting is the difference in implementation and how it's wrong. The U.S. version is derided because there is no oversight, no accountability. This French version, which seems so open and democratic will most likely end up being yet another implementation of McCarthyism.
To complete that thought...
And you are not back in the U.S. until you clear Customs/Border Control, even if your plane landed in Nebraska.
That was beautiful. You made my morning with that one!!
Right now the question is there anything wrong with blocking sites that are known sources of kiddie porn?
Yes. It spends money, time, and other valuable resources on a 'solution' that doesn't work. I use Open DNS and block certain types of sites. It works because I control the household network. However, should a member of the house want to get around it, it isn't difficult at all. I'm sure the teenage girl could figure it out (not so sure about about the other roommates, actually). If one of them gets around it and their computer gets hacked or infected, that's their problem. If they get around it and do something illegal, get caught, and thrown in jail, that's their problem as well. If somebody in the house wants a change, we can discuss it and make the change if we agree to it. And that's the point: it is not the government's job to protect our computers or to protect us from ourselves. Should the government protect the children? Absolutely! Does this do that? Absolutely not! So, it is a waste.
My ISP is paid (way too much for way to poor a service) to transport the requested packets. If I want a filtering service from them, I'll ask for it (I'd rather select my own, you notice).
Do you really want to protect the children? Good. So do I. Then why don't we focus on (a) catching the perverts and (b) shutting down the servers. Think about this: If you know what to block, then you know where the server is. Go get it. Prosecute the baddies. This works without filtering and causes no heated debates about rights or costs because we can all agree the perverts need to be put away (or put down).
Yes, I do.
Previous to this change, I had the option of show ID or get felt up. Now, really, how the hell do the two equate? Does showing an ID prove I don't have a gun, knife, or bomb? Conversely, does getting felt up prove I am who I say? No and no. There is absolutely no need to prove who I am in order to make the flight safe. And when the more intrusive pat-down search is an option declared when I refuse to show an ID, clearly it is used solely as a tool of intimidation.
With the change, the charade is essentially over. To travel anonymously now, I have to lie by saying I forgot my ID, then get the pat-down.
First, if the pat-down is really necessary for the protection of the passengers, et al, then they are admitting their equipment stinks. That being the case, we ALL should be getting the pat-down! The only search, the only reasonable search is for weapons to prevent hijacking and/or loss of life and limb.
Second, the ID requirement is a joke. Any kid can get a fake ID, so you know damn well someone with ill intent can do so. Any five year old knows s/he can lie to get past the ID requirement, so you know damn well someone with ill intent can do so. Moreover, the ID requirement is used for profiling, as admitted by the TSA. You provide your ID, they get access to your life. From this, they form a risk assessment, a number assigned to you by some algorithm of unknown quality with an unknown rule base. For most, it's not an issue at all. Most of us have a low threat score. "I have nothing to hide," say many. Wrong! The government has nothing to look for is my take on this. Innocent until proven guilty. This makes 'no fly' lists, 'watch' lists, and 'threat scores' not only illegal, but entirely unconstitutional. If somebody is a threat, form an active investigation. Then, with the legal system already in place, the authorities can go after them, or find a lack of evidence and back off. We have absolutely no need for special laws to protect us from terrorism. Treat terrorists like any common criminal with all the rights confirmed by the US Constitution. For those special cases not covered by the Constitution (visitors), human rights still apply and, frankly, so do most citizen rights. This preemptive strike for our security is a breach of the Constitution AND provides absolutely no benefit. It is so bad, it doesn't even fall under the old Ben Franklin quote, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one," since it utterly fails to provide any security right from the start!
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't encourage the masses of Star* geeks. If you do, D&B will be so over crowded, I won't get to play! (No, I do not dress up in costumes... The full kilt may be old fashioned to some, but it's perfectly acceptable clothing for one of Scottish decent or honoring the Scots' fine taste in clothing.)