...is for Microsoft and/or AOL to pick a standard and integrate it into AOLmail, Hotmail and Outlook Express.
Excuse me? I'm sure M$ would like to pick a standard and shove it through everyone's throat. And I'm also sure that in the first one or two versions it would actually be compatible with PGP. But not in the long run. And I am very sure that M$ would build in some back door (what, a back Gate is more likely *grin*).
Nah, I'd rather go for a nice open source project. There's already OpenPGP, no need to let M$ invent the wheel again (they'd come up with a wheel that's incompatible with all wheels used so far anyway and it would require a license). In my opinion, the software isn't really the problem. There's enough software with which you can send decently encrypted messages. Problem is the majority of the users: users who don't know and don't care about their privacy. George W. Bush can serve as a nice example here: he said he quit sending e-mail because it was too insecure. This means he doesn't know about encryption (well, surprise, is there anything he does know about?) but at least he cares (not about world peace or environment, but that's not as important as an e-mail message of course). If people could be taught just a few little things about privacy and security, the situation could change quite dramatically. People don't use encryption because it's not worth the effort. What effort? It's not difficult or complicated if you have any idea of what you're doing. With a decent plugin, all it takes is one extra click and the typing of a passphrase. Explain them the basics of encryption and show them the few extra clicks it takes and they can use it.
Most people here on/. know about security and how to use PGP. Too bad that probably 90% of all people on the Internet don't. Change that and encryption will become commonly used. Explain your nitwit-friends, e-mail your colleagues that don't have a clue, put up a page on the Net that explains a few basic things about encryption and include some links to OpenPGP and PGP and make sure people start wondering what you mean by including the line Public key: http://www.here.com/mykey in all of your e-mails.
...you may be raising a red flag by the act of using encryption.
Correct. And ain't it wonderful? Try to imagine what happens if everyone starts using encryption. Any idea how many ppl they would have to monitor? It's like the idea of including random bad words in e-mail, trying to trigger Carnivore and its accomplices. Idea is, if everyone does it, they can't keep up with it anymore.
Get Microsoft and AOL to put PGP in their email agents.
No thanks, I sure hope M$ keeps its hands off of PGP. PGP and GPG are nice standards without any backdoors (although I remember PRZ telling something about no backdoors so far before he left) and I fear that if M$ is to put their own version of it into anything, it will very soon break the standard so that everyone will then have to use their version of it.
Indeed, the Freeware PGP installs nicely into every e-mail client I know for Windoze. And yes, it's perfectly simple to use it, for everyone. Problem seems to be that people think it's difficult because it deals with secrets. They have no interest whatsoever in the background of it and yes, then it can be a little confusing.
I tried to solve this by showing some of my friends what it did and how easy it was to operate. My intention was to install PGP on their computers (with their consent of course) and quit sending them unencrypted e-mail. In that way, I thought, they'd have to use it every time I sent them a message and they'd get used to it. Well, I was wrong. The problem started when one of them told me he couldn't install PGP on his machine at work, simply because it was against the policy to have employees install their own software (which is a very good policy, I think). Some others complained that they only wanted to use it when there was actually something secret in the message, which hardly ever occurs. So, exit PGP:(
Organisations could of course install PGP on all of their desktops, but usually the guys who have to decide on that, don't know shit about computers or security (I said usually, ok *grin*). Besides, what good would it be to block out your option to read your employees' e-mail? So maybe it would be a good idea to point out the dangers of unencrypted e-mail in a business environment: competitors who could eavesdrop, wrong addresses that would enable the wrong people to read things (yeah, sure, as if those messages at the bottom help, this is confidential, if you receive this in error, you're not allowed to tell anyone what you just read") and the government snooping your e-mail to read about that great merger you're planning... Maybe some managers could be convinced that installing PGP on the company's network wouldn't be so bad after all. Besides, everyone can get it for free, so money wouldn't play a role.
If more and more organisations would start to realise a few crucial things about security and at the same time see that these risks can be dodged very easily and without any cost, things would change.
Now, who's going to convince the boss that he too would benefit from installing PGP (or any other decent encryption system for that matter)? Put one or two technicians together, add someone who does Sales and I'm sure they can come up with a presentation that's both factual correct and very convincing. So, who's taking the lead? I have my story ready, I think it's time to tell it to my boss. I hope many others will follow.
I've read some Marx, and I found him to be wholly unconvincing, not to mention a raving anti-semite.
Antisemitism is not part of communism, whether or not Marx had antisemitic feelings.
While Marx never specifies what happens to the people who refuse to be transformed, his cronies in the past century have been all too eager to demonstrate what happens to those poor souls.
That's what I meant when I mentioned Stalin: that's not what communism is about. The part of Marx you quote here, talks about the Revolution. I don't know too many revolutions that have taken place without some people getting killed. Bad thing, sure, but still nothing about the ideas behind communism. This part talks about the way towards communism, not when communism has been reached. Compare it to the French Revolution. I'm sure you feel good about the situation afterwards, but a lot of people lost their heads in the process. And what about the Civil War in America? Quite a lot of corpses, but a better situation afterwards. The struggle to get to that situation was not because the Northern states had the idea that killing Southerns was a good thing, but because they wanted to achieve a state in which certain things didn't happen.
The numerous deads under Stalin were not the victims of communism, but of the paranoia that Stalin suffered from (or should I say, that the East-European people suffered from). The ideas behind communism were great, but things just didn't turn out the way they should have. Described quite accurately by Orwell, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Communism is a great idea, it's just too fragile to be in use in a large community. During the sixties and seventies there were some communist settlements in the Netherlands. Worked great as long as everyone stood behind the ideas of it. Same goes for Israelian kibbutses. It's not the idea of communism that's wrong, just a few evil people that take advantage of it.
Read the Black Book of Communism sometime and then tell me if you still think Communism is such a hot idea.
(Guys, if you moderate this, please take the time to understand what I mean here before slapping Offtopic, Flamebait or whatever on it.)
And who do you think wrote that book? Try to read the real communist books, for example Das Kapital by Marx. That's a book that talks about communism the way it's meant to be, not what Stalin and his accomplices made of it. Ever read The Animal Farm and understood what it was talking about? Guess not, or you wouldn't have posted the article this way.
And no, I'm not a communist. I'm just a European guy that's open-minded enough to recognise that communism indeed is based on some great ideas. Guys like Stalin had as much to do with communism as Hitler had with fascism: they all used (or better: abused) a philosophy to suppress and murder. Mind you, I'm not defending these guys here, just mention them to illustrate things.
I know there are a lot of people that will disapprove of this post simply because I used the name of Hitler, but let's go even further... Have you ever read the Bible? As a good WASP I'm sure you have. Did it ever occur to you that what Jesus preached was more communism than the American dream or did you fail to notice that? His ideas where for the larger part the same as those of Engels and Marx. Still, most people in Western countries believe in this ideals but a lot frown on communism. Isn't that ironic? No, I'm not religious either...
Partially right. But guess who owns Aston Martin? Yup, the Ford Motor Company. And believe me, it's disgusting to see that a $150,000 car has the same huge, black plastic doorlocks as a normal Ford Transit van. Utterly tasteless.
Nah, how about instructing all his bots to send crap e-mail to his own address? Through a remailer, of course. Let's see if the kid's smart enough to see what happens or to stop it:)
The home user should be taught basic computer safety and security, IMO. However, vendors don't want to scare their customers, so real security is next to impossible to attain....
That could change quite dramatically if a few ISPs actually started to make their users aware of security and provide them with help (both helpdesk and software like ZoneAlarm). It happened to cars, for example. Manufacturers knew you were in big trouble when you crashed a car, but no one thought of telling the public, because it might scare them away from their cars. Look what the situation is nowadays: results from crash-tests (such as Euro NCAP) are heavily used in commercials for cars. The more security measures a car features, the better the public likes the car. Security sells!
So why wouldn't this be true for ISPs? Suppose I'm someone who wants to get a cable modem because I want to surf a lot and maybe run some other stuff. Not an advanced user, just John Doe who likes having a permanent and fast connection (and I think that's the larger part of cable modem users all over the world). Now two of my friends have normal providers who keep their mouths shut about whatever might concern security and two others have a decent ISP, that explains about what might happen and how to avoid it. Sure, the first two guys will probably have less "strange messages" to worry about, but I think I'd sleep a lot better if I knew that my connection had at least some sort of protection against the threats my other two friends don't even know exist.
And I think it would be better for ISPs themselves. After all, if their users have some basic knowledge of security and check their configuration every now and then, the ISP will not get involved in this kind of stories as often. Better for their name and the chance of probable claims from victims.
Again I want to point to a story from car history: the Ford Pinto. This car had the petrol tank behind the rear wheels. It proved that this was catastrophic when another car crashed into your back: the tank would burst and the petrol would instantly turn to fire because it was in immediate contact with the hot engine of the car that crashed into it. Ford didn't change it, because at that time security didn't sell. When it turned out that Ford had known that this car was dangerous and hadn't done anything to change it (because it was cheaper to pay a few claims than to change the design of the car), they got the public opinion against them.
I think the same goes for ISPs: security does sell, it's just that the general public needs to be made aware of it. I'm sure a lot of @Home users aren't too pleased to hear that they've been abused for criminal activities, while their ISP knew that but didn't act. So let's spread the word: using the Internet can be dangerous, just as driving a car can be dangerous. Don't be defenseless, do something about it!
I suspect the same coutries that have problems with people using PGP/GPG, such as France and Iraq. I don't mind about Iraq, but France is damn close to where I live:)
And of course, in the free West, being America, this will be verboten too (isn't it ironic that this word comes from the country that doesn't prohibit this?).
The Babelfish-English is a little strange indeed. This sentence could be translated into it would take a thousand pentium computers over 10 years to decode a 10-minutes phonecall BTW, but I guess you already got that:)
I don't think the engineer who was cited, made any calculations. My bet is that he simply said this to emphasize the fact that it would take a lot of brute force to eavesdrop on such a call. After all, most people who will buy these things at this price, are the ones with money and without any real knowledge. And those people aren't interested in MIPS or algorithms, they just want to hear that it's (almost) impossible to crack.
The main obstacle is the expected cost and weight of hydrogen tanks for vehicles.
Forgive me my ignorance if I'm asking a question that's already been answered, but wasn't the problem with hydrogen that the molecules are so damn small that they simply leak through the tanks? Has that problem been solved or am I seeing problems that don't exist?
I read about fuel cells quite some time ago and I must say, it looks promising. This would be an interesting addition to the diesel discussion here on/. earlier this week.
It seems that the natural gas option is the best one, but I think it could be a lot better. Windmills were mentioned, but I think that's not all. There are great projects going on for pollution-free energy. Think about what great place the Sahara desert could be if it would be stuffed with solarpower stations! Blazing sun all day long, enough to provide the entire world of hydrogen.
Think about the oceans, they can be used to generate enormous amounts of energy. Think of all those tons and tons of water, moving steadily from A to B in tides and gulfstreams. Put a few big watermills in it and you have both water to convert to hydrogen and energy to do so. I'm not talking bullshit here, I read articles about these ideas. I remember one about giant balloons some place near the seashore: they rose at high tide and sank back at low tide, thus generating energy.
Sadly, that's going to take a while. First off, there's the problem of millions of cars using petrol/diesel that will not be traded in for new ones with fuel cells in one day. Neither will gas stations be provided with hydrogen pumps overnight. So what I foresee is that we're going to have hybrids: vehicles that have a fuel cell but can also run on regular fuel. And from this point, I think we're going to need the government to invest a whole lot of money in providing the infrastructure needed to make hydrogen available all over the country (I'm talking about the entire world here, so this is something every government in the world would have to do). Once that's completed and fuel cells can be used without too many problems, it's time to cash in on the investments by increasing taxes on fossile fuels bigtime. I think we should start by sending George W. Bush on the first manned mission to Mars, he wouldn't understand anyway.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. It would take years, but I think it would certainly be worth the effort.
Now what I think is interesting, is the question whether this paperclip was extinct in the same period as the dinosaurs or if it survived the meteor-impact that is supposed to have put an end to the dinosaurs. Or maybe it developed so quickly that after just a few centuries it had evolved into something like a mouse? After all, animals can develop rather quickly if the conditions are right. If so, we're never going to find remnants of it that are younger than 40 million years (that's when the dinosaurs disappeared, if I'm right).
I don't particularly like the idea of requiring someone to do something, but it could be stimulated, yes. As a matter of fact, most car manufacturers I know try to put their cars together in such a way that enables them to recycle them after a few years. And why not? I mean, there's a lot of material in a car that you can simply reuse.
Every new computer would come with an expiration-date, and you'd have until that time to turn it in, or the squad swoops in and takes it from you -- disposing of it properly, where will have to deal with it (even if they, like morons, want to)
We actually abandoned those methods in 1945, remember?
I think that the government should put a small tax on computer purchases, and then the government pays a recycling company once it is time to retire your old computer.
We have such a regulation in the Netherlands. Seems our government is actually doing a good thing *grin*. As I already stated in a previous post, we have a so-called verwijderingsbijdrage, a removal fee. You pay a little extra tax when buying some electronic stuff and that extra money is being used to recycle the stuff that gets dumped.
And I think that's the best thing to do. It's probably far more efficient to have one organisation taking care of the recycling of all kinds of electronic things, than to compel every producer of electronics to do it.
And to stimulate producers to make stuff that's easy to recycle or that lasts longer or that consumes less energy, there's the incentive of a reduction in tax, which makes a product cheaper in the shop and thus more attractive for both consumer and producer.
I remember being so impressed when I saw my first 486 run windows 3.1. I wondered how anyone could possibly afford to have one in their house.
I know the feeling. I had saved every penny I could to buy such a beast. Ok, I didn't run Windoze on it, DOS was just fine. It was a marvellous machine compared to my dad's XT. The magic bond between me and my electronic friend never died *grin*. That was the reason I kept using it, even though I had several more advanced machines after a while and didn't need the 486 anymore. It was simply my first machine! To bad it died about 2 years ago. Crashed harddisk, strange reboots and suddenly a big bang from the power supply put an end to its life. I'm sure it rests in peace somewhere in the big server-farm in the sky...
This take-back-your-old-products sheme is allready in place for refridgerators in many European countries.
Correct. In the Netherlands it's not only for fridges, but for all kinds of household appliances. You pay the normal price in the shop plus a removal fee (verwijderingsbijdrage in Dutch, I wonder if the Fish knows that word *grin*). These funds are then used to recycle the stuff after it's obsoleted. You don't just throw stuff in your wastebin here (at least, there's quite some legislation about what you can and can't throw in there), I always take my special stuff to the right box on the dump. Once in a while, they empty that box and recycle all the stuff. Takes a little money, but that's what you pay your removal fee for.
But honestly, I like the idea of sending this stuff to developing countries. Question is, what kind of hardware would you send them? I mean, when I ditched my old 486, it was not because I had no use for it anymore (as a matter of fact, it served as my home web and FTP-server and was also dial-in/gateway machine). The reason was that after a long life of hard work, it just died. I wonder if anyone in a developing country has any use for a dead machine. If you send this stuff, you'll have to revive it first. Which costs money.
Maybe the idea of our removal fee could be applied to this scenario: you pay it when you buy your hardware and will be used to make sure that every wasted machine sent to some developing country actually works. I think it wouldn't cost much more than the way we do it now, but I think our environment surely would benefit from it. I'm not an environmentalist, but with George W. Bush on the wheel, the rest of the world has to pace things up in order to compensate for this genius.
My my, a good idea. From you, of all people *grin*. How's life, BTW?
Certainly a nice idea, but this would stop new members. After all, you'd have to pay for your posts simply because you don't have any karma yet. So something should be made that newcomers can post for free until x weeks after their subscription.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me? I'm sure M$ would like to pick a standard and shove it through everyone's throat. And I'm also sure that in the first one or two versions it would actually be compatible with PGP. But not in the long run. And I am very sure that M$ would build in some back door (what, a back Gate is more likely *grin*).
Nah, I'd rather go for a nice open source project. There's already OpenPGP, no need to let M$ invent the wheel again (they'd come up with a wheel that's incompatible with all wheels used so far anyway and it would require a license). In my opinion, the software isn't really the problem. There's enough software with which you can send decently encrypted messages. Problem is the majority of the users: users who don't know and don't care about their privacy. George W. Bush can serve as a nice example here: he said he quit sending e-mail because it was too insecure. This means he doesn't know about encryption (well, surprise, is there anything he does know about?) but at least he cares (not about world peace or environment, but that's not as important as an e-mail message of course). If people could be taught just a few little things about privacy and security, the situation could change quite dramatically. People don't use encryption because it's not worth the effort. What effort? It's not difficult or complicated if you have any idea of what you're doing. With a decent plugin, all it takes is one extra click and the typing of a passphrase. Explain them the basics of encryption and show them the few extra clicks it takes and they can use it.
Most people here on /. know about security and how to use PGP. Too bad that probably 90% of all people on the Internet don't. Change that and encryption will become commonly used. Explain your nitwit-friends, e-mail your colleagues that don't have a clue, put up a page on the Net that explains a few basic things about encryption and include some links to OpenPGP and PGP and make sure people start wondering what you mean by including the line Public key: http://www.here.com/mykey in all of your e-mails.
Correct. And ain't it wonderful? Try to imagine what happens if everyone starts using encryption. Any idea how many ppl they would have to monitor? It's like the idea of including random bad words in e-mail, trying to trigger Carnivore and its accomplices. Idea is, if everyone does it, they can't keep up with it anymore.
No thanks, I sure hope M$ keeps its hands off of PGP. PGP and GPG are nice standards without any backdoors (although I remember PRZ telling something about no backdoors so far before he left) and I fear that if M$ is to put their own version of it into anything, it will very soon break the standard so that everyone will then have to use their version of it.
Indeed, the Freeware PGP installs nicely into every e-mail client I know for Windoze. And yes, it's perfectly simple to use it, for everyone. Problem seems to be that people think it's difficult because it deals with secrets. They have no interest whatsoever in the background of it and yes, then it can be a little confusing.
I tried to solve this by showing some of my friends what it did and how easy it was to operate. My intention was to install PGP on their computers (with their consent of course) and quit sending them unencrypted e-mail. In that way, I thought, they'd have to use it every time I sent them a message and they'd get used to it. Well, I was wrong. The problem started when one of them told me he couldn't install PGP on his machine at work, simply because it was against the policy to have employees install their own software (which is a very good policy, I think). Some others complained that they only wanted to use it when there was actually something secret in the message, which hardly ever occurs. So, exit PGP :(
Organisations could of course install PGP on all of their desktops, but usually the guys who have to decide on that, don't know shit about computers or security (I said usually, ok *grin*). Besides, what good would it be to block out your option to read your employees' e-mail? So maybe it would be a good idea to point out the dangers of unencrypted e-mail in a business environment: competitors who could eavesdrop, wrong addresses that would enable the wrong people to read things (yeah, sure, as if those messages at the bottom help, this is confidential, if you receive this in error, you're not allowed to tell anyone what you just read") and the government snooping your e-mail to read about that great merger you're planning... Maybe some managers could be convinced that installing PGP on the company's network wouldn't be so bad after all. Besides, everyone can get it for free, so money wouldn't play a role.
If more and more organisations would start to realise a few crucial things about security and at the same time see that these risks can be dodged very easily and without any cost, things would change.
Now, who's going to convince the boss that he too would benefit from installing PGP (or any other decent encryption system for that matter)? Put one or two technicians together, add someone who does Sales and I'm sure they can come up with a presentation that's both factual correct and very convincing. So, who's taking the lead? I have my story ready, I think it's time to tell it to my boss. I hope many others will follow.
Antisemitism is not part of communism, whether or not Marx had antisemitic feelings.
While Marx never specifies what happens to the people who refuse to be transformed, his cronies in the past century have been all too eager to demonstrate what happens to those poor souls.
That's what I meant when I mentioned Stalin: that's not what communism is about. The part of Marx you quote here, talks about the Revolution. I don't know too many revolutions that have taken place without some people getting killed. Bad thing, sure, but still nothing about the ideas behind communism. This part talks about the way towards communism, not when communism has been reached. Compare it to the French Revolution. I'm sure you feel good about the situation afterwards, but a lot of people lost their heads in the process. And what about the Civil War in America? Quite a lot of corpses, but a better situation afterwards. The struggle to get to that situation was not because the Northern states had the idea that killing Southerns was a good thing, but because they wanted to achieve a state in which certain things didn't happen.
The numerous deads under Stalin were not the victims of communism, but of the paranoia that Stalin suffered from (or should I say, that the East-European people suffered from). The ideas behind communism were great, but things just didn't turn out the way they should have. Described quite accurately by Orwell, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Communism is a great idea, it's just too fragile to be in use in a large community. During the sixties and seventies there were some communist settlements in the Netherlands. Worked great as long as everyone stood behind the ideas of it. Same goes for Israelian kibbutses. It's not the idea of communism that's wrong, just a few evil people that take advantage of it.
Correct, that's exactly why every modern car has ABS.
(Guys, if you moderate this, please take the time to understand what I mean here before slapping Offtopic, Flamebait or whatever on it.)
And who do you think wrote that book? Try to read the real communist books, for example Das Kapital by Marx. That's a book that talks about communism the way it's meant to be, not what Stalin and his accomplices made of it. Ever read The Animal Farm and understood what it was talking about? Guess not, or you wouldn't have posted the article this way.
And no, I'm not a communist. I'm just a European guy that's open-minded enough to recognise that communism indeed is based on some great ideas. Guys like Stalin had as much to do with communism as Hitler had with fascism: they all used (or better: abused) a philosophy to suppress and murder. Mind you, I'm not defending these guys here, just mention them to illustrate things.
I know there are a lot of people that will disapprove of this post simply because I used the name of Hitler, but let's go even further... Have you ever read the Bible? As a good WASP I'm sure you have. Did it ever occur to you that what Jesus preached was more communism than the American dream or did you fail to notice that? His ideas where for the larger part the same as those of Engels and Marx. Still, most people in Western countries believe in this ideals but a lot frown on communism. Isn't that ironic? No, I'm not religious either...
Just my 2 Eurocents opinion...
Don't know who came up with the idea of modding your post to Flamebait... But this demonstrates the truth in this post.
Maybe this vehicle is for his kids, so they can drink and drive without being arrested?
Partially right. But guess who owns Aston Martin? Yup, the Ford Motor Company. And believe me, it's disgusting to see that a $150,000 car has the same huge, black plastic doorlocks as a normal Ford Transit van. Utterly tasteless.
Nah, how about instructing all his bots to send crap e-mail to his own address? Through a remailer, of course. Let's see if the kid's smart enough to see what happens or to stop it :)
Yeah, sounded to me like if I'm very nice and respectful to him, maybe he won't give my details to the Feds.
You dare to say something positive about MS on Slashdot, even about a security issue? Wow, you've got guts :)
That could change quite dramatically if a few ISPs actually started to make their users aware of security and provide them with help (both helpdesk and software like ZoneAlarm). It happened to cars, for example. Manufacturers knew you were in big trouble when you crashed a car, but no one thought of telling the public, because it might scare them away from their cars. Look what the situation is nowadays: results from crash-tests (such as Euro NCAP) are heavily used in commercials for cars. The more security measures a car features, the better the public likes the car. Security sells!
So why wouldn't this be true for ISPs? Suppose I'm someone who wants to get a cable modem because I want to surf a lot and maybe run some other stuff. Not an advanced user, just John Doe who likes having a permanent and fast connection (and I think that's the larger part of cable modem users all over the world). Now two of my friends have normal providers who keep their mouths shut about whatever might concern security and two others have a decent ISP, that explains about what might happen and how to avoid it. Sure, the first two guys will probably have less "strange messages" to worry about, but I think I'd sleep a lot better if I knew that my connection had at least some sort of protection against the threats my other two friends don't even know exist.
And I think it would be better for ISPs themselves. After all, if their users have some basic knowledge of security and check their configuration every now and then, the ISP will not get involved in this kind of stories as often. Better for their name and the chance of probable claims from victims.
Again I want to point to a story from car history: the Ford Pinto. This car had the petrol tank behind the rear wheels. It proved that this was catastrophic when another car crashed into your back: the tank would burst and the petrol would instantly turn to fire because it was in immediate contact with the hot engine of the car that crashed into it. Ford didn't change it, because at that time security didn't sell. When it turned out that Ford had known that this car was dangerous and hadn't done anything to change it (because it was cheaper to pay a few claims than to change the design of the car), they got the public opinion against them.
I think the same goes for ISPs: security does sell, it's just that the general public needs to be made aware of it. I'm sure a lot of @Home users aren't too pleased to hear that they've been abused for criminal activities, while their ISP knew that but didn't act. So let's spread the word: using the Internet can be dangerous, just as driving a car can be dangerous. Don't be defenseless, do something about it!
And of course, in the free West, being America, this will be verboten too (isn't it ironic that this word comes from the country that doesn't prohibit this?).
I don't think the engineer who was cited, made any calculations. My bet is that he simply said this to emphasize the fact that it would take a lot of brute force to eavesdrop on such a call. After all, most people who will buy these things at this price, are the ones with money and without any real knowledge. And those people aren't interested in MIPS or algorithms, they just want to hear that it's (almost) impossible to crack.
Sure, you're just not allowed to make international calls *grin*.
Forgive me my ignorance if I'm asking a question that's already been answered, but wasn't the problem with hydrogen that the molecules are so damn small that they simply leak through the tanks? Has that problem been solved or am I seeing problems that don't exist?
I read about fuel cells quite some time ago and I must say, it looks promising. This would be an interesting addition to the diesel discussion here on /. earlier this week.
It seems that the natural gas option is the best one, but I think it could be a lot better. Windmills were mentioned, but I think that's not all. There are great projects going on for pollution-free energy. Think about what great place the Sahara desert could be if it would be stuffed with solarpower stations! Blazing sun all day long, enough to provide the entire world of hydrogen.
Think about the oceans, they can be used to generate enormous amounts of energy. Think of all those tons and tons of water, moving steadily from A to B in tides and gulfstreams. Put a few big watermills in it and you have both water to convert to hydrogen and energy to do so. I'm not talking bullshit here, I read articles about these ideas. I remember one about giant balloons some place near the seashore: they rose at high tide and sank back at low tide, thus generating energy.
Sadly, that's going to take a while. First off, there's the problem of millions of cars using petrol/diesel that will not be traded in for new ones with fuel cells in one day. Neither will gas stations be provided with hydrogen pumps overnight. So what I foresee is that we're going to have hybrids: vehicles that have a fuel cell but can also run on regular fuel. And from this point, I think we're going to need the government to invest a whole lot of money in providing the infrastructure needed to make hydrogen available all over the country (I'm talking about the entire world here, so this is something every government in the world would have to do). Once that's completed and fuel cells can be used without too many problems, it's time to cash in on the investments by increasing taxes on fossile fuels bigtime. I think we should start by sending George W. Bush on the first manned mission to Mars, he wouldn't understand anyway.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. It would take years, but I think it would certainly be worth the effort.
Now what I think is interesting, is the question whether this paperclip was extinct in the same period as the dinosaurs or if it survived the meteor-impact that is supposed to have put an end to the dinosaurs. Or maybe it developed so quickly that after just a few centuries it had evolved into something like a mouse? After all, animals can develop rather quickly if the conditions are right. If so, we're never going to find remnants of it that are younger than 40 million years (that's when the dinosaurs disappeared, if I'm right).
I don't particularly like the idea of requiring someone to do something, but it could be stimulated, yes. As a matter of fact, most car manufacturers I know try to put their cars together in such a way that enables them to recycle them after a few years. And why not? I mean, there's a lot of material in a car that you can simply reuse.
We actually abandoned those methods in 1945, remember?
We have such a regulation in the Netherlands. Seems our government is actually doing a good thing *grin*. As I already stated in a previous post, we have a so-called verwijderingsbijdrage, a removal fee. You pay a little extra tax when buying some electronic stuff and that extra money is being used to recycle the stuff that gets dumped.
And I think that's the best thing to do. It's probably far more efficient to have one organisation taking care of the recycling of all kinds of electronic things, than to compel every producer of electronics to do it.
And to stimulate producers to make stuff that's easy to recycle or that lasts longer or that consumes less energy, there's the incentive of a reduction in tax, which makes a product cheaper in the shop and thus more attractive for both consumer and producer.
I know the feeling. I had saved every penny I could to buy such a beast. Ok, I didn't run Windoze on it, DOS was just fine. It was a marvellous machine compared to my dad's XT. The magic bond between me and my electronic friend never died *grin*. That was the reason I kept using it, even though I had several more advanced machines after a while and didn't need the 486 anymore. It was simply my first machine! To bad it died about 2 years ago. Crashed harddisk, strange reboots and suddenly a big bang from the power supply put an end to its life. I'm sure it rests in peace somewhere in the big server-farm in the sky...
Correct. In the Netherlands it's not only for fridges, but for all kinds of household appliances. You pay the normal price in the shop plus a removal fee (verwijderingsbijdrage in Dutch, I wonder if the Fish knows that word *grin*). These funds are then used to recycle the stuff after it's obsoleted. You don't just throw stuff in your wastebin here (at least, there's quite some legislation about what you can and can't throw in there), I always take my special stuff to the right box on the dump. Once in a while, they empty that box and recycle all the stuff. Takes a little money, but that's what you pay your removal fee for.
But honestly, I like the idea of sending this stuff to developing countries. Question is, what kind of hardware would you send them? I mean, when I ditched my old 486, it was not because I had no use for it anymore (as a matter of fact, it served as my home web and FTP-server and was also dial-in/gateway machine). The reason was that after a long life of hard work, it just died. I wonder if anyone in a developing country has any use for a dead machine. If you send this stuff, you'll have to revive it first. Which costs money.
Maybe the idea of our removal fee could be applied to this scenario: you pay it when you buy your hardware and will be used to make sure that every wasted machine sent to some developing country actually works. I think it wouldn't cost much more than the way we do it now, but I think our environment surely would benefit from it. I'm not an environmentalist, but with George W. Bush on the wheel, the rest of the world has to pace things up in order to compensate for this genius.
Or will it work only on those websites that support this card type.
Erm, both, I would say: it will work only on those websites that support this card i.e. it is the same as a credit card.
I can think of quite some sites where I can buy things online, but that don't take credit cards.
Certainly a nice idea, but this would stop new members. After all, you'd have to pay for your posts simply because you don't have any karma yet. So something should be made that newcomers can post for free until x weeks after their subscription.