Call me paranoid but I believe the big picture is they want an excuse to create a Global Cop organization, so that the "evil criminals aren't out of reach". "concerted efforts and all that".
But if you go see what the current Global Cops are doing ("rendition" aka kidnapping), I don't think you'd want more of these sort of thing happening, or make it easier for them.
Maybe you will hear more calls to make legal the illegal stuff they are already doing. Just like the calls for retroactively making the illegal wiretaps= legal, "fight against the evil terrorists" and all that.
For this "initiative" they'll probably use the "fight child porn" and "evil hacker" excuses.
I'm silly - I'm more afraid of such Cops than the "evil hackers".
And I personally think the child porn thing is overhyped. There are already laws against kidnapping, and against child abuse, with fairly hefty punishments.
I'd definitely feel a lot safer if all would be rapists were just staying at home and watching stuff on screen than going outside and raping me. Just like kids killing people in some computer game rather than in real life.
If we think the "virtual" automatically leads to the other, then maybe we should really ban video games too. And also ban the legal porn available. Not the same? How so?
Sure thinking some things is wrong, but are we sure we want go further down this "thoughtcrime" thing?
Which would lead to greater evil - thoughtcrime or making thoughtcrime crime?
Sure. Do you think he's really that stupid? Maybe he's trying to get more people to think "A second internet won't work because hardly anyone will use it, what we need is a Global Cop with powers to arrest people".
And my answer is "No thanks!".
I like the different legal systems, if the people in those countries don't like them they can go work to change them, or leave a for a country they like. I don't see why any Global Authority should keep going around trying to make them all the same.
Vive la différence!
If they all become the same, the next inhabitable planet is rather far away...
"requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction."
While they are in prison or once they get out?
Or are you going to keep convicted criminals in prison because it "would be a step in the right direction"? Or keep them permanently on public "* Offender" lists?
If rehabilitation rates are so low and nobody really gives a damn, why not just execute them like they do in China? Since obviously "everyone hates them so much".
The only big difference between you and a convicted criminal is you haven't been caught yet.
Given that > 90% of the stuff out there is not even made of the same stuff like us - in the great scheme of things we are: a) Interesting b) Not interesting c) Both (don't you love quantum superpositions;) )
No idea, I see all sorts of strange claims in spam and phish mails all the time. Believe me, lots of people just click on anything. And some even jump through hoops to get infected, not sure if you remember the malware that spread via password protected zipfiles (user has to type in the password, open it and get infected). Amazing but true.
There have been plenty of exploitable firefox bugs. Most desktop linux users don't run firefox using a separate user from the user account that holds their important information - work, private data etc.
But even running as a separate user leaves you vulnerable if you are using a kernel that's vulnerable to the vmsplice kernel bug or other similar bugs.
For untrusted sites I currently use IE in a vmware virtual machine, while that's vulnerable to VM bugs and CPU bugs, I'm currently betting that most attackers won't bother exploiting that yet. The vmsplice kernel bug has exploit code out already, and it's not very kernel version specific either.
Re:Time to ban Microsoft products
on
Gmail CAPTCHA Cracked
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· Score: 2, Interesting
How's that relevant?
A linux desktop O/S is just as insecure technically.
The linux (and Apple) desktops are just more secure by the same reason a hut in a small remote village is more secure than an apartment in a big city ghetto - a one room apartment with many locks, metal doors and chains, but where the occupants let in muggers just because they said they were from Ebay.
They're both not secure.
The trick is to NOT have a _one_room_ apartment or hut. You need an "airlock" (sandbox) for your browser (not just rooms for each person).
It's NOT property that's why there's no property tax. And it should NEVER be property.
Believe me, most of us won't want it to be property if we really know the full implications.
Copying is a big difference from moving.
People keep saying without patents and copyright nobody will do stuff, that's BULLSHIT.
What next, tennis players or martial artists or golfers copyrighting/patenting moves so that their opponents can't copy them? The last I checked they still compete, the top ones aren't a bunch of wusses and cry babies.
If anyone really thinks that sort of thing will speed up progress and benefit society then they're smoking some serious shit (and I don't want any).
Patents are for inventors who can only come up with one good idea in their entire life. Copyrights are for singers who can only come up with one good song in their whole lifetime (or for companies who enslave them). They can't compete, not even with their previous work, and so we have to slow down progress for them?
OK I exaggerate a bit, but point is the monopolies are for way too long (120 years = bullshit), the faster the pace of the world the shorter the terms should be. Making money from a super "long tail" is not what we want to encourage. If copyright terms were shorter Microsoft won't dare make something as crap as Vista. If you say they wouldn't have bothered making windows at all, I think Apple or someone else would have been happy to take our money instead.
The rest of us know that coming up with good tunes and good ideas isn't that difficult. It's getting them to market at the right time, and getting market share/acceptance is the hard bit.
Go ask Douglas Engelbart and his team. They're what I call true innovators.
In China the companies there rampantly copy each other too and there's still money to be made.
Despite that sort of thing a Chinese singer[1] said she makes more money in China than in Europe, but she prefers Europe because she thinks they're actually fans of her music (rather than her looks etc)
"If I was Desire2Learn I would patent all the improvements/methods (totally legal) and then submarine Blackboard every time they try and improve their product."
Ah, the wonderful benefits of Patents. Speeding up progress and all that, by encouraging innovation. Wait...
Imagine being able to patent new effective moves/combos in tennis/judo/tekken so that your competitors can't copy and use them. Yeah that encourages innovation and progress in the field.
Personally I really don't think we really _need_ patents anymore. If someone fixes them they might be nice/OK to have around, but that's it.
People copy each other in China all the time, sure many aren't happy with being copied, but they still make new stuff anyway.
Patents only encourage innovation from people who can only come up with ONE good idea in their whole life.
The rest of us know that ideas are easy. Getting the right one to market at the right time, and getting people to "get it" is hard. Look at Douglas Engelbart. That's what I call innovation. So far ahead of his time. Patents are _useless_ for encouraging people like that, or for companies funding people like that.
I just run the sshd on a different port. That way if someone targets my sshd, I KNOW something unusual is going on.
If someone writes a "zero day" worm, they are likely to stick to the default ports to maximize the spread speed. So that means I have more time to fix the affected service.
There are people who think obscurity isn't useful, and there are people who genuinely have more time to read Slashdot:).
Durian? I bet you won't even get it into the spaceport;).
I actually like durian though.
Fresh ripe durian smells good to me. It's the _stale_ durian smells that I don't like - e.g. what's left the next day after the "nice" smells are gone.
As for kimchi I like the red chili + cabbage kimchi too. I'm not sure I'd like the smellier versions of kimchi:).
On a related note, I didn't like "Chow Tofu" aka "stinky tofu". Tasted like it smelt... Oh yeah, check out belacan sometime - once you heat it up the smell gets stronger;).
They also _delay_ payouts (in addition to not paying out for ethically _bogus_ reasons - you did stuff 10 years ago so we're not paying, don't like it? Don't think that's relate? Sue us - have fun attending court while you're dying)
Say a company makes millions of dollars worth of payouts a day, if they delay for 2 months, they make a LOT of money.
Doctors paid by the insurance companies usually have an incentive to work for the insurance company rather than the patient. So more people die that way.
Sometimes it's cheaper if the person dies - sure you pay out eventually, but I think you pay out less. They'll do the math accordingly.
I guess the idea is if some people have to die so that you can afford another yacht/plane/mansion, too bad for them.
"I might have to revise my stance of refusing point blank to support it if a friend asks for help"
Heh, if a friend/relative asks me for help on Vista, I'll only help if their hardware supports Windows XP. Go figure:).
In theory I could install a Linux distro for them, but so far I don't think Linux is suitable for them yet.
But setting up Windows XP properly on a _personal_ computer does take quite a lot of time - the amount of updates you have to download, configuring it decently, installing drivers, codecs, PDF reader, bios updates (to patch the core 2 duo bugs). It's not like you can get all your friends and relatives to buy the same hardware and then just image all of them (and run new sid etc)...
I wonder if many carpenters or plumbers give free house calls to friends and relatives.
That'll be rather hard, since you'd have to send all the conversations across the Atlantic.
Much easier if you shipped the Brits to the USA to listen and then ask them if they heard anything interesting;). Then you have some of your people to the UK to listen to the UK people and do the same thing. Similarly for the rest of the Echelon members.
BUT the main thing is, it looks like they've even stopped bothering to go through the proper motions. And that should worry the people in the USA (and people elsewhere because the USA is the most powerful nation and willing to unilaterally use that power for bad reasons).
When the people in power regard their _subjects_ with such contempt that they even stop putting on a "quality show", then it makes you wonder what's next.
OK, volunteers for anyone willing to get shipped to "friends of the CIA" for rendition, and somehow get back in shape to "expose the whole mess" after X years...
Sounds like a combo Darwin "Peace Prize" Award sort of thing. You might even get a "Purple Heart"...
How about having a geostationary satellite with a 30000km tether earthwards to the "dish"? This will reduce the latency problem a bit. Doing this might be good practice for the space elevator stuff that people are talking about.
It's still impractical though (more "research" than anything) - the trouble with satellite for "internet" is the connections/$$$ ratio is usually not very good. You're basically doing something like a "cell phone station" but with a very very big cell.
If you can somehow have millions of users per cell up in the sky, someone will be able to do the same thing for cheaper/better on land. So you're stuck to selling to those in the ocean or in the air, or some niche (in the middle of nowhere).
Satellite is great for broadcast - a few talk, billions listen (including a few from the CIA/NSA/Echelon bunch;) ).
Or for people who waiting for their "internet" cables to be repaired/installed;).
In the first place how'd that employee get hired AND promoted to the point where he got the chance to choose what to buy? So who promoted that person?
If your company has people in charge who buy IT stuff based on brand without thinking then that usually works out to be the same as buying expensive crap. Imagine if your Bank was just buying software and hardware like that from vendors... I think I'd want to say "No. Wrong" etc etc to the people responsible. Trouble is, it's likely that many of the Banks are doing that;).
In many companies, there's a big difference between a) spending the company's money to try to keep your job b) spending the company's money for the company's benefit
I suggest that it's in the interest of a Company to try to make a) and b) close enough;).
Slashdot Mirror
Well my country (Malaysia) already has detention without trial, and for indefinite period - it's called the Internal Security Act.
;).
Sorry to hear your country has joined the race to the bottom
Trouble is it's usually not at _their_expense_.
Call me paranoid but I believe the big picture is they want an excuse to create a Global Cop organization, so that the "evil criminals aren't out of reach". "concerted efforts and all that".
But if you go see what the current Global Cops are doing ("rendition" aka kidnapping), I don't think you'd want more of these sort of thing happening, or make it easier for them.
Maybe you will hear more calls to make legal the illegal stuff they are already doing. Just like the calls for retroactively making the illegal wiretaps= legal, "fight against the evil terrorists" and all that.
For this "initiative" they'll probably use the "fight child porn" and "evil hacker" excuses.
I'm silly - I'm more afraid of such Cops than the "evil hackers".
And I personally think the child porn thing is overhyped. There are already laws against kidnapping, and against child abuse, with fairly hefty punishments.
I'd definitely feel a lot safer if all would be rapists were just staying at home and watching stuff on screen than going outside and raping me. Just like kids killing people in some computer game rather than in real life.
If we think the "virtual" automatically leads to the other, then maybe we should really ban video games too. And also ban the legal porn available. Not the same? How so?
Sure thinking some things is wrong, but are we sure we want go further down this "thoughtcrime" thing?
Which would lead to greater evil - thoughtcrime or making thoughtcrime crime?
Sure. Do you think he's really that stupid? Maybe he's trying to get more people to think "A second internet won't work because hardly anyone will use it, what we need is a Global Cop with powers to arrest people".
And my answer is "No thanks!".
I like the different legal systems, if the people in those countries don't like them they can go work to change them, or leave a for a country they like. I don't see why any Global Authority should keep going around trying to make them all the same.
Vive la différence!
If they all become the same, the next inhabitable planet is rather far away...
"requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction."
While they are in prison or once they get out?
Or are you going to keep convicted criminals in prison because it "would be a step in the right direction"?
Or keep them permanently on public "* Offender" lists?
If rehabilitation rates are so low and nobody really gives a damn, why not just execute them like they do in China? Since obviously "everyone hates them so much".
The only big difference between you and a convicted criminal is you haven't been caught yet.
Is copying stuff a criminal offense yet?
Given that > 90% of the stuff out there is not even made of the same stuff like us - in the great scheme of things we are: ;) )
a) Interesting
b) Not interesting
c) Both (don't you love quantum superpositions
Probably cheaper to do a tower with the same amount of power, cooling, expansion space.
I think it was easier to stick new graphics/sound/network cards into a PC tower than it was into a flat pizza box case.
"They need all that concentration on how best to screw the consumer :)"
;).
I thought most of these women try to concentrate on other things when doing that, otherwise it's just too unpleasant for them
Yeah I know I know...
No idea, I see all sorts of strange claims in spam and phish mails all the time. Believe me, lots of people just click on anything. And some even jump through hoops to get infected, not sure if you remember the malware that spread via password protected zipfiles (user has to type in the password, open it and get infected). Amazing but true.
There have been plenty of exploitable firefox bugs. Most desktop linux users don't run firefox using a separate user from the user account that holds their important information - work, private data etc.
But even running as a separate user leaves you vulnerable if you are using a kernel that's vulnerable to the vmsplice kernel bug or other similar bugs.
For untrusted sites I currently use IE in a vmware virtual machine, while that's vulnerable to VM bugs and CPU bugs, I'm currently betting that most attackers won't bother exploiting that yet. The vmsplice kernel bug has exploit code out already, and it's not very kernel version specific either.
How's that relevant?
A linux desktop O/S is just as insecure technically.
The linux (and Apple) desktops are just more secure by the same reason a hut in a small remote village is more secure than an apartment in a big city ghetto - a one room apartment with many locks, metal doors and chains, but where the occupants let in muggers just because they said they were from Ebay.
They're both not secure.
The trick is to NOT have a _one_room_ apartment or hut. You need an "airlock" (sandbox) for your browser (not just rooms for each person).
It's NOT property that's why there's no property tax. And it should NEVER be property.
Believe me, most of us won't want it to be property if we really know the full implications.
Copying is a big difference from moving.
People keep saying without patents and copyright nobody will do stuff, that's BULLSHIT.
What next, tennis players or martial artists or golfers copyrighting/patenting moves so that their opponents can't copy them? The last I checked they still compete, the top ones aren't a bunch of wusses and cry babies.
If anyone really thinks that sort of thing will speed up progress and benefit society then they're smoking some serious shit (and I don't want any).
Patents are for inventors who can only come up with one good idea in their entire life.
Copyrights are for singers who can only come up with one good song in their whole lifetime (or for companies who enslave them). They can't compete, not even with their previous work, and so we have to slow down progress for them?
OK I exaggerate a bit, but point is the monopolies are for way too long (120 years = bullshit), the faster the pace of the world the shorter the terms should be. Making money from a super "long tail" is not what we want to encourage. If copyright terms were shorter Microsoft won't dare make something as crap as Vista. If you say they wouldn't have bothered making windows at all, I think Apple or someone else would have been happy to take our money instead.
The rest of us know that coming up with good tunes and good ideas isn't that difficult. It's getting them to market at the right time, and getting market share/acceptance is the hard bit.
Go ask Douglas Engelbart and his team. They're what I call true innovators.
In China the companies there rampantly copy each other too and there's still money to be made.
Despite that sort of thing a Chinese singer[1] said she makes more money in China than in Europe, but she prefers Europe because she thinks they're actually fans of her music (rather than her looks etc)
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7251211.stm
"If I was Desire2Learn I would patent all the improvements/methods (totally legal) and then submarine Blackboard every time they try and improve their product."
Ah, the wonderful benefits of Patents. Speeding up progress and all that, by encouraging innovation. Wait...
Imagine being able to patent new effective moves/combos in tennis/judo/tekken so that your competitors can't copy and use them. Yeah that encourages innovation and progress in the field.
Personally I really don't think we really _need_ patents anymore. If someone fixes them they might be nice/OK to have around, but that's it.
People copy each other in China all the time, sure many aren't happy with being copied, but they still make new stuff anyway.
Patents only encourage innovation from people who can only come up with ONE good idea in their whole life.
The rest of us know that ideas are easy. Getting the right one to market at the right time, and getting people to "get it" is hard. Look at Douglas Engelbart. That's what I call innovation. So far ahead of his time. Patents are _useless_ for encouraging people like that, or for companies funding people like that.
I just run the sshd on a different port. That way if someone targets my sshd, I KNOW something unusual is going on.
:).
If someone writes a "zero day" worm, they are likely to stick to the default ports to maximize the spread speed. So that means I have more time to fix the affected service.
There are people who think obscurity isn't useful, and there are people who genuinely have more time to read Slashdot
"but the unholy farts that can be generated afterwards"
Imagine the Korean astronaut testing the specific impulse of his personal "reaction jet".
Whilst the other astronauts test their "forced reactions".
Koreans are taking repulsion propulsion to new heights (or high heaven as some might say).
Durian? I bet you won't even get it into the spaceport ;).
:).
;).
I actually like durian though.
Fresh ripe durian smells good to me. It's the _stale_ durian smells that I don't like - e.g. what's left the next day after the "nice" smells are gone.
As for kimchi I like the red chili + cabbage kimchi too. I'm not sure I'd like the smellier versions of kimchi
On a related note, I didn't like "Chow Tofu" aka "stinky tofu". Tasted like it smelt... Oh yeah, check out belacan sometime - once you heat it up the smell gets stronger
The company _lied_ (fake sales agreement) so should have been smacked down MUCH harder than what they got.
;).
But what's the difference between copying photos and copying music?
I'd say most decent photos are far easier to make than most decent music.
Photographers are lucky that it's not cheaper to have some guy in Mumbai, India somehow taking photos of stuff in San Francisco remotely
Try convincing Microsoft.
:).
;).
They obviously have a different idea of win-win
Microsoft vs Stac Electronics
Microsoft vs IBM (OS/2)
Microsoft vs Sendo
Microsoft vs Burst.com
Microsoft vs Vista user
They also _delay_ payouts (in addition to not paying out for ethically _bogus_ reasons - you did stuff 10 years ago so we're not paying, don't like it? Don't think that's relate? Sue us - have fun attending court while you're dying)
Say a company makes millions of dollars worth of payouts a day, if they delay for 2 months, they make a LOT of money.
Doctors paid by the insurance companies usually have an incentive to work for the insurance company rather than the patient. So more people die that way.
Sometimes it's cheaper if the person dies - sure you pay out eventually, but I think you pay out less. They'll do the math accordingly.
I guess the idea is if some people have to die so that you can afford another yacht/plane/mansion, too bad for them.
"I might have to revise my stance of refusing point blank to support it if a friend asks for help"
:).
Heh, if a friend/relative asks me for help on Vista, I'll only help if their hardware supports Windows XP. Go figure
In theory I could install a Linux distro for them, but so far I don't think Linux is suitable for them yet.
But setting up Windows XP properly on a _personal_ computer does take quite a lot of time - the amount of updates you have to download, configuring it decently, installing drivers, codecs, PDF reader, bios updates (to patch the core 2 duo bugs). It's not like you can get all your friends and relatives to buy the same hardware and then just image all of them (and run new sid etc)...
I wonder if many carpenters or plumbers give free house calls to friends and relatives.
Better access control. :) ).
Group policy to help lockdown accounts on a shared PC.
Automated System Recovery (but does that really work?
Some home users might be interested in encryption but I don't have much confidence in EFS being suitable.
That'll be rather hard, since you'd have to send all the conversations across the Atlantic.
;). Then you have some of your people to the UK to listen to the UK people and do the same thing. Similarly for the rest of the Echelon members.
Much easier if you shipped the Brits to the USA to listen and then ask them if they heard anything interesting
BUT the main thing is, it looks like they've even stopped bothering to go through the proper motions. And that should worry the people in the USA (and people elsewhere because the USA is the most powerful nation and willing to unilaterally use that power for bad reasons).
When the people in power regard their _subjects_ with such contempt that they even stop putting on a "quality show", then it makes you wonder what's next.
OK, volunteers for anyone willing to get shipped to "friends of the CIA" for rendition, and somehow get back in shape to "expose the whole mess" after X years...
Sounds like a combo Darwin "Peace Prize" Award sort of thing. You might even get a "Purple Heart"...
Sure but the contention for stuff in the ISP's network usually isn't that much for ADSL users - e.g. Akamai stuff, mirrors, caches.
;).
Whereas for the wireless stuff, you could still get crap speeds even from the ISP's "Bandwidth test" server
ADSL users contend in the ISP's pipes to other ISPs. Wireless users do the same AND also have to contend at the cell level too.
Not sure if "wired" will always support more bandwidth/$$$ than wireless, but for the near future it seems like it.
How about having a geostationary satellite with a 30000km tether earthwards to the "dish"? This will reduce the latency problem a bit. Doing this might be good practice for the space elevator stuff that people are talking about.
;) ).
;).
It's still impractical though (more "research" than anything) - the trouble with satellite for "internet" is the connections/$$$ ratio is usually not very good. You're basically doing something like a "cell phone station" but with a very very big cell.
If you can somehow have millions of users per cell up in the sky, someone will be able to do the same thing for cheaper/better on land. So you're stuck to selling to those in the ocean or in the air, or some niche (in the middle of nowhere).
Satellite is great for broadcast - a few talk, billions listen (including a few from the CIA/NSA/Echelon bunch
Or for people who waiting for their "internet" cables to be repaired/installed
Don't have to buy it :).
Just like I'm not buying Vista.
In the first place how'd that employee get hired AND promoted to the point where he got the chance to choose what to buy? So who promoted that person?
;).
;).
If your company has people in charge who buy IT stuff based on brand without thinking then that usually works out to be the same as buying expensive crap. Imagine if your Bank was just buying software and hardware like that from vendors... I think I'd want to say "No. Wrong" etc etc to the people responsible. Trouble is, it's likely that many of the Banks are doing that
In many companies, there's a big difference between
a) spending the company's money to try to keep your job
b) spending the company's money for the company's benefit
I suggest that it's in the interest of a Company to try to make a) and b) close enough