But that's not very useful in the UK. Should 'they' wish to, they can demand your keys, and if you deny you have them/refuse you can go to jail (sentenced in a private court) for up to 5 years (I think it's 5). If you tell anyone about being asked for your keys, you can similarly be sent to jail.
Technically I doubt it's a problem. I work in the video/film post-production industry. On a film shoot, you can get (say) 40 Terabytes of data coming in every day on DTF tape. All that happens is the tape is thrown into a robot the size of a warehouse. Now, to access that tape I just do something similar to 'cp/array/Scene_xxx/Shot_yyy/frame_zzz my.local.file'. What's my point ? IT WORKS BOTH WAYS. I can put a feed (hell, this is an ISP/fibre-forest location!) to a Petasite (that's what these robots are called) and transparently copy all data from the ISP line to my central location. All I need to do for maintenance is unload tapes that fill and load up blank new ones. Everything else is managed.
So say I have a capacity of 100 Pb (Petabytes) in a huge wartime bunker under Hyde Park (Central London, for those who don't know). I put an ADSL-like line into each ISP going to my bunker, and simply store it as a datastream. Petasites running SAM-FS use several Terabytes of disk as a cache onto the tapes - all you do is write the file to a disk, SAM-FS copes with archiving it to tape using a prioritised LRU algorithm.
Every tape holds (standard DTF) 42Gb. Every day I change (say) 100 tapes max. Get monkeys to do it. 100 tapes gives me 4.2Tb/day using DTF, significantly larger than 1.7Tb/day... Assume tape storage goes up roughly with bandwidth use, even if it doesn't you can employ more monkeys!
Store tapes ordered by date. Have a separate (small) robot for queries. Insert tapes for time period and employ (presumably custom written) query tools. All the tools have to do is pretend they're looking at a network datastream (netmon!) and have some query/report on top of that. Do datamining if you want, but it's not necessary.
As for costs, even smallish (40 people) Post-production houses can have a (admittedly single-robot:-) Petasite running. I personally know of two in Soho. Budget 7 million pounds (*way* over the top, even including running costs) for the robots, and 13 million for tapes (100/day, #50/tape * 365 * 7). 20 million quid? pocket money!
What you also have to remember is that the British (how would you like being called Ammericans?:-) Government have just passed the RIP (sic!) bill specifically to implement this spying within the law.
It seems to me it should be possible to circumvent though. Should be pretty easy to adapt the ideas behind spread-spectrum wireless comms to wired comms using cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity of the request. Given a co-operating network of servers to which (using PKC) you submit requests (for the same page but different portions of it using Range: headers), which further split the requests between themselves and others, I don't see how they could track you down.
All they'd be able to say was that you submitted a request to a 'reflection-server' and it sent some data back to you, and during that time the 'reflection server' also visited all these porn sites '...'
I know I'm going to take a hard look at encryption technologies everywhere within my business now. I think you can get around the 'we can demand your keys' RIP clause by setting up a webserver with an HTTPS connection somewhere abroad (or in SeaLand:-) and using HTTP-uploads on that HTTPS connection to POST files to the webserver.At that point I think you could prove you didn't have the cryptographic key (and so avoid being sent to jail!). This is all IMHO of course, but I think we'll be opening a foreign web presence soon!
So, do you do anything to contribute to the kernel development ?
If not, I don't see how you can complain about what others do!
If you do, then the people to ask will already know you and your concerns, right ?
Are you a shareholder in Redhat ? Do you therefore have any say in what they should(n't) do ? If so,
take your complaint to them.
It's a shame, but a lot of people on slashdot seem to think they have some god-given right to order the world as they see fit. Maybe 'I'm not the centre of the universe' classes should be compulsory before net.access is granted (note: I am not being serious here, for the humour-impaired:-)
I'll probably get flamed for this, but if yo're new to Linux, there are easier distributions than Debian. Try Redhat or Suse until you know the intricacies of the/etc/rc.d/init.d directory:-)
Actually, it all becomes very logical with time. The reason Linux garners so much support is that you look back and think "Well, of course it's done that way". This works well in situations where you don't yet know the answer, but you can have a damn good stab at guessing it:-))
Linux is cool not because it's easy to user (it's not, yet), but because it's predictable and logical. Try asking your MCSE-certified Win-32 expert (whoever (s)he is) what the exact cause of problem X is. I'd be willing to bet a linux 'expert' would be better equipped to give you a correct answer under Linux than a windows 'expert' under any microsoft OS. To my (admittedly techy)
mind, that speaks volumes.
Having spent 3 days re-installing 3 machines (each
with identical hardware and different symptoms!)
I have to say I prefer the Linux solution. At
least the "components" in Linux behave in a
predictable manner. I have yet to find that in
any windows system!
Unix is not really an Operating system any more. Unix has evolved to be a set of principles that define an elegant solution to the problem of many users with their various problem spaces.
The original unix was an implementation of these principles - the first CS project to gain admiration from pure mathematicians:-)
Everything is a file. Consider a uniform address space where accessing data can be done via the standard file i/o routines no matter what that device is in the physical world.
Create tools to do specific jobs and do them well within their own problem domain.
Create a uniform interface for programs to interoperate (stdin, stdout, and stderr). Allow programs to take advantage of this easily.
Foster an environment of utility. Create toolsets that easily allow scripting and client/server implementations.
Build the network in at the lowest levels. Make a network connection an intrinsic facility that a program can take advantage of. Unix considers a network connection to be a file. Does this ring a bell...
Build environments layered on other environments. Make them non-essential as much as possible.
The UI is the shell
The GUI is X
The graphical shell is Gnome or KDE
The next thing is...
There is the famous comment "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to re-invint it poorly". This isn't quite as trite as it may first appear... If you don't understand the reasons why Unix is an excellent OS, you won't be able to produce a better implementation.
Who would have thought way back then that a really neat implentation of a grapical user environment would consider it to be a file. X, with its network-transparent nature fits so neatly into the unix paradigm that it could have been designed that way. It wasn't. The crucial point here is that we don't need a new paradigm to cope with the sudden demands, we just use the existing Unix interfaces. This is a hallmark of a good design.
> Ireland is part of Britain which refused invitation into the EU, remember?
> It will hurt US and British economies but not EU
Hmm. Two points:
Ireland is not part of the UK. You're thinking of the province of Northern Ireland (which if things go smoothly will be devolved soon anyway:-)
Britain is a member state of the EU. Has been for a very long time. Britain put off membership of the EMU (The european-wide monetary policy, that's all!) for a year or so.
My company (unique-id) run an entire back-end (including video streaming, real-time video encoding, and image processing) under java using the gcj compiler.
Gnu Software Rocks! (yes I know it's an infantile salutation but in this case it's deserved:-)
Gcj has reduced our development time many-fold, and increased our productivity. I love it:-)))
Server-side stuff (depending on what you need, of course) runs like greased-lightning. Useful, in my business (post-production, video editing, film, etc.)
Despite being brought up in a religious family, (church on Sunday, Sunday School for weekly indoctrination etc.) I am now an atheist (if He is listening, I meant agnostic:-)
It only became apparent to me just how deep this indoctrination went when (years later) I was best man at my friends wedding. They had the traditional service in church, and I realised that (without being in church for 15 or more years) I knew almost the entire service - not just my words but the Vicar's words as well. Scary!
Perhaps Henry VIII did us all a favour in Britain when he divorced the church from the state all that time ago - perhaps we no longer consider it important. Personally I think this is a good thing.
It might be instructive to look at *why* 'ole Kingy decided to get rid of the church. He was an absolute power in his land. None could 'say him nay', and yet this bunch of meddlesome priests were dictating how he lived his life - saying he couldn't just kill his wives and get more of them.
I think this brings home what the church (and I lump all organised religions and cults in with this) actually is - a power structure for those who would otherwise have no say over your life. How many people actually believe the most religious of (wo)men are actually those at the top of any religious order you care to mention ? Show me a true believer, and I'll show you a fool.
My views boil down to:
I have tolerance and (some) respect for other beliefs, as long as they don't inflict them on others. I even think the church plays a valuable role in society as a crutch for those who need one, either temporarily or permanently.
I would greatly resist the "teaching" of creationism in UK schools as policy. OTOH, I don't expect that will ever happen, this religious fervour is all a very US thing.
*If* this is true (I don't have Windows, so I can't try and check!) then surely its one more reason for Linux to be trusted over Windows. Or (more accurately) for open source to be trusted over closed source.
Re:This should be displayed somewhere where PHB's
on
911 Calls Linux
·
· Score: 1
Hmm. You may be right about the Linux bit - I don't know because it's never crashed on me.
Still, I have to disagree over the windows bit. We've moved away from Windows in our office after having lost data too many times for it to be even 'liveable-with'. We're now completely linux - from desktop to server:-)))
Speaking as an Atari user (I ended up with 4 of them over a 4 year period, as far I recall), I'd love to see the Amiga resurface.
It sounds to me like a Linux box (yes!) with some great extra hardware (yes!) and the traditional strengths of graphics and sound (yes!).
So it runs my favourite OS, and it has all the bells and whistles. The technology it's based on is secondary (as far as I'm concerned). I'd be perfectly happy if it was the Transmeta chip, but it's not my majot concern.
Amiga/ST's etc all lost the plot because they weren't mainstream. Here's a chance for a non-mainstrema platform to change the world, folks. And why not ?
I may have it all wrong here, but what's to stop them just using Apache, adding their proprietary extensions to Apache, and publishing the source code to those extensions.
Of course, all the extensions would just be calls to the Micro$oft API, so they'd essentially be worthless, but they'd have complied with the letter of the GPL, if not the spirit. They can then crow about how 'integrated' they are with OSS, and that people can safely and happily use OSS within the Micro$oft environment if they wish.
Until the performance deficit of Apache vs IIS is corrected, users will see Apache lag behind IIS on their machines. This is all good PR for Micro$oft.
Slashdot Mirror
> That's why PGP exists.
But that's not very useful in the UK. Should 'they' wish to, they can demand your keys, and if you deny you have them/refuse you can go to jail (sentenced in a private court) for up to 5 years (I think it's 5). If you tell anyone about being asked for your keys, you can similarly be sent to jail.
Britain - the police state of tomorrow!
Simon.
Technically I doubt it's a problem. I work in the video/film post-production industry. On a film shoot, you can get (say) 40 Terabytes of data coming in every day on DTF tape. All that happens is the tape is thrown into a robot the size of a warehouse. Now, to access that tape I just do something similar to 'cp /array/Scene_xxx/Shot_yyy/frame_zzz my.local.file'. What's my point ? IT WORKS BOTH WAYS. I can put a feed (hell, this is an ISP/fibre-forest location!) to a Petasite (that's what these robots are called) and transparently copy all data from the ISP line to my central location. All I need to do for maintenance is unload tapes that fill and load up blank new ones. Everything else is managed.
:-) Petasite running. I personally know of two in Soho. Budget 7 million pounds (*way* over the top, even including running costs) for the robots, and 13 million for tapes (100/day, #50/tape * 365 * 7). 20 million quid? pocket money!
:-) Government have just passed the RIP (sic!) bill specifically to implement this spying within the law.
:-) and using HTTP-uploads on that HTTPS connection to POST files to the webserver.At that point I think you could prove you didn't have the cryptographic key (and so avoid being sent to jail!). This is all IMHO of course, but I think we'll be opening a foreign web presence soon!
So say I have a capacity of 100 Pb (Petabytes) in a huge wartime bunker under Hyde Park (Central London, for those who don't know). I put an ADSL-like line into each ISP going to my bunker, and simply store it as a datastream. Petasites running SAM-FS use several Terabytes of disk as a cache onto the tapes - all you do is write the file to a disk, SAM-FS copes with archiving it to tape using a prioritised LRU algorithm.
Every tape holds (standard DTF) 42Gb. Every day I change (say) 100 tapes max. Get monkeys to do it. 100 tapes gives me 4.2Tb/day using DTF, significantly larger than 1.7Tb/day... Assume tape storage goes up roughly with bandwidth use, even if it doesn't you can employ more monkeys!
Store tapes ordered by date. Have a separate (small) robot for queries. Insert tapes for time period and employ (presumably custom written) query tools. All the tools have to do is pretend they're looking at a network datastream (netmon!) and have some query/report on top of that. Do datamining if you want, but it's not necessary.
As for costs, even smallish (40 people) Post-production houses can have a (admittedly single-robot
What you also have to remember is that the British (how would you like being called Ammericans?
It seems to me it should be possible to circumvent though. Should be pretty easy to adapt the ideas behind spread-spectrum wireless comms to wired comms using cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity of the request. Given a co-operating network of servers to which (using PKC) you submit requests (for the same page but different portions of it using Range: headers), which further split the requests between themselves and others, I don't see how they could track you down.
All they'd be able to say was that you submitted a request to a 'reflection-server' and it sent some data back to you, and during that time the 'reflection server' also visited all these porn sites '...'
I know I'm going to take a hard look at encryption technologies everywhere within my business now. I think you can get around the 'we can demand your keys' RIP clause by setting up a webserver with an HTTPS connection somewhere abroad (or in SeaLand
ATB,
Simon.
So, do you do anything to contribute to the kernel development ?
:-)
If not, I don't see how you can complain about what others do! If you do, then the people to ask will already know you and your concerns, right ?
Are you a shareholder in Redhat ? Do you therefore have any say in what they should(n't) do ? If so, take your complaint to them.
It's a shame, but a lot of people on slashdot seem to think they have some god-given right to order the world as they see fit. Maybe 'I'm not the centre of the universe' classes should be compulsory before net.access is granted (note: I am not being serious here, for the humour-impaired
I'll probably get flamed for this, but if yo're new to Linux, there are easier distributions than Debian. Try Redhat or Suse until you know the intricacies of the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory :-)
:-))
Actually, it all becomes very logical with time. The reason Linux garners so much support is that you look back and think "Well, of course it's done that way". This works well in situations where you don't yet know the answer, but you can have a damn good stab at guessing it
Linux is cool not because it's easy to user (it's not, yet), but because it's predictable and logical. Try asking your MCSE-certified Win-32 expert (whoever (s)he is) what the exact cause of problem X is. I'd be willing to bet a linux 'expert' would be better equipped to give you a correct answer under Linux than a windows 'expert' under any microsoft OS. To my (admittedly techy)
mind, that speaks volumes.
ATB,
Simon.
"Windows is pretty so it's better".
No. Enough said.
Simon.
Having spent 3 days re-installing 3 machines (each with identical hardware and different symptoms!) I have to say I prefer the Linux solution. At least the "components" in Linux behave in a predictable manner. I have yet to find that in any windows system!
The original unix was an implementation of these principles - the first CS project to gain admiration from pure mathematicians
this ring a bell...
possible.
There is the famous comment "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to re-invint it poorly". This isn't quite as trite as it may first appear... If you don't understand the reasons why Unix is an excellent OS, you won't be able to produce a better implementation.
Who would have thought way back then that a really neat implentation of a grapical user environment would consider it to be a file. X, with its network-transparent nature fits so neatly into the unix paradigm that it could have been designed that way. It wasn't. The crucial point here is that we don't need a new paradigm to cope with the sudden demands, we just use the existing Unix interfaces. This is a hallmark of a good design.
Enough,
Simon
> It will hurt US and British economies but not EU
Hmm. Two points:
Care to have a bet on that ?
:-)
:-)))
My company (unique-id) run an entire back-end (including video streaming, real-time video encoding, and image processing) under java using the gcj compiler.
Gnu Software Rocks! (yes I know it's an infantile salutation but in this case it's deserved
Gcj has reduced our development time many-fold, and increased our productivity. I love it
Server-side stuff (depending on what you need, of course) runs like greased-lightning. Useful, in my business (post-production, video editing, film, etc.)
Simon.
I'm with you on this one.
:-)
Despite being brought up in a religious family, (church on Sunday, Sunday School for weekly indoctrination etc.) I am now an atheist (if He is listening, I meant agnostic
It only became apparent to me just how deep this indoctrination went when (years later) I was best man at my friends wedding. They had the traditional service in church, and I realised that (without being in church for 15 or more years) I knew almost the entire service - not just my words but the Vicar's words as well. Scary!
Perhaps Henry VIII did us all a favour in Britain when he divorced the church from the state all that time ago - perhaps we no longer consider it important. Personally I think this is a good thing.
It might be instructive to look at *why* 'ole Kingy decided to get rid of the church. He was an absolute power in his land. None could 'say him nay', and yet this bunch of meddlesome priests were dictating how he lived his life - saying he couldn't just kill his wives and get more of them.
I think this brings home what the church (and I lump all organised religions and cults in with this) actually is - a power structure for those who would otherwise have no say over your life. How many people actually believe the most religious of (wo)men are actually those at the top of any religious order you care to mention ? Show me a true believer, and I'll show you a fool.
My views boil down to:
I have tolerance and (some) respect for other beliefs, as long as they don't inflict them on others. I even think the church plays a valuable role in society as a crutch for those who need one, either temporarily or permanently.
I would greatly resist the "teaching" of creationism in UK schools as policy. OTOH, I don't expect that will ever happen, this religious fervour is all a very US thing.
Simon.
*If* this is true (I don't have Windows, so I can't try and check!) then surely its one more reason for Linux to be trusted over Windows. Or (more accurately) for open source to be trusted over closed source.
Hmm. You may be right about the Linux bit - I don't know because it's never crashed on me.
:-)))
Still, I have to disagree over the windows bit. We've moved away from Windows in our office after having lost data too many times for it to be even 'liveable-with'. We're now completely linux - from desktop to server
No crashes yet, either!
Speaking as an Atari user (I ended up with 4 of them over a 4 year period, as far I recall), I'd love to see the Amiga resurface.
It sounds to me like a Linux box (yes!) with some great extra hardware (yes!) and the traditional strengths of graphics and sound (yes!).
So it runs my favourite OS, and it has all the bells and whistles. The technology it's based on is secondary (as far as I'm concerned). I'd be perfectly happy if it was the Transmeta chip, but it's not my majot concern.
Amiga/ST's etc all lost the plot because they weren't mainstream. Here's a chance for a non-mainstrema platform to change the world, folks. And why not ?
Simon.
According to their roadmap, there is an SGI/Linux compatibility library to be in-place by 2003.
I had thought that this would just let Irix run Linux programs (perhaps with recompile), but it
might just be two-way (or the other way around!)
Simon.
I may have it all wrong here, but what's to stop them just using Apache, adding their proprietary extensions to Apache, and publishing the source code to those extensions.
Of course, all the extensions would just be calls to the Micro$oft API, so they'd essentially be worthless, but they'd have complied with the letter of the GPL, if not the spirit. They can then crow about how 'integrated' they are with OSS, and that people can safely and happily use OSS within the Micro$oft environment if they wish.
Until the performance deficit of Apache vs IIS is corrected, users will see Apache lag behind IIS on their machines. This is all good PR for Micro$oft.
Just a thought.
Simon.
> Does your April Fool's day end at
:-)
:-)
> noon or something?
By popular decree, all April's fools jokes played
after 12:00 noon are reversed, so that the
person playing the prank is the fool
So, yes
All I got was the following message:
:-(
[an error occurred while processing this
directive]
... when I went to the link