I guess I should pioneer the illiterate society we're about to become, since I can no longer read stories to my 4-year old daughter, so she gets used to hearing the words, seeing me point them out on the pages as we read, and teaching her to read in general... because "Hop on Pop", "Snowy Day", "Goodnight Moon" and other standard children's stories are now a "performance".
I should immediately alert the daycare facility also (200+ children, 50+ teachers and educators) and have them send out an immediate alert to all of the parents as well. Reading stories aloud is now illegal.
I hope this becomes terribly clear that this is facrical, and that this is a prime example of why this has gone WAY too far overboard. Seriously. If you can't make your money on the original work, become a better author.
We don't tolerate this same methodology in ANY other industry (well ok, except music, but that is corrupted by the same flawed thinking).
Please, stop. Think. Use your head, and put the needs of a literate society ahead of the fattening of your own wallet.
"The reason most (if not all of us) switched to and stayed with GMail in the first place back in 2004 and 2005 was the interface. Sure, it gave you a ton of storage space compared to Hotmail and Yahoo, but they've since caught up. What Microsoft and Yahoo haven't matched since then is the interface. Show a user IMAP through Thunderbird and Gmail side-by-side and see what interface they prefer."
I'm going to have to strongly disagree here. Gmail's interface is, hands-down, one of the clunkiest interfaces I've ever seen, and violates dozens of usability guidelines. Look where "Compose" is vs. "Reply" for one great example. How can I sort? What about removing "Labels" from a group of messages? No can do with Gmail.
Put Gmail side by side with something like Evolution and THEN ask what users would prefer. Yes, Thunderbird is clunky, but it wasn't meant to compete with Gmail. Look at something like Novell Evolution that has a LOT more power and flexibility over Gmail and you'll never go back.
Oh, and Evolution has "offline" Gmail as well, and always has. I love how I can treat all of my Gmail accounts as one single account if I want, unify the Inboxes, see all "Unread" email in a single folder (without creating a contrived filter as you would have to in Gmail), sees all folders and "Labels" as standard IMAP folders, allows me to read/reply online or off, and a whole host of other things Gmail can't and probably will not ever do.
Nope, Gmail's web interface is great in a pinch, but for actual, productive use of Email as an application and not just a replacement for "offline IM", I'll stick with Evolution thanks.
And I definitely know of what I speak because I've been doing this for a very long time (integrating Evolution with Gmail with Thunderbird across 3 platforms, transparently).
Looks like there are no "for() loops containing hdparm" in power.sh on my Ubuntu Hardy or Intrepid systems here, so I'm good. Power Management was also set to 254 without enabling LAPTOP_MODE at all.
"If some security manager reads this, goes back to work, and says "OK, change all our WPA passwords, our current ones may not be secure", he will be making a real improvement to his network. He might even be locking out an existing hacker in the process."
Until 3 hours later when THAT password is now cracked.
This is an incredibly stupid idea, UNLESS you're going to securely shred the data contents on the drive itself (i.e. Schneier 7-pass or similar method), and the smash it.
With drive capacities increasing at a geometric rate every single month, even a pinky fingernail-sized chip could contain 10 gigabytes of data. RECOVERABLE data. Are you going to smash the drive platters into pieces the size of matchsticks or smaller? You'll need to if you want to be sure someone isn't going to recover your data from your pieces.
"Statistically a larger proportion of crime is committed by people with coloured skin, should we treat all such people therefore as criminals?"
That's a pretty big myth, and I'm surprised people are still repeating it in 2008.
There's a Grand Canyon of difference between "arrested for" and "convicted of", with respect to crimes. The majority of crimes in the US are committed by whites and Asians (yes, you could say that the skin color is "white" and "yellow", fitting your statistical model), but the majority of convictions for crimes involves those of dark-colored skin (black or middle-eastern).
So the majority of crimes are not perpetrated by "blacks", but the majority of those jailed for crimes are. It continues to underscore our core racial foundations in this country.
"The complainers should be punished, and this is where the airline got it wrong: the Muslim Nine should have been let back on and the complainers gotten kicked off the plane and should have lost their fares."
Now THAT is the best answer I've seen all day! Not only would it cause people who were going to complain to REALLY think seriously about their actions, but it would also apply accountability and penalties on the person who raises their hand. That's the one thing we've lost in this country more than any other; accountability.
People can just up and file a grievance, complain, point fingers... and walk away free, regardless of the outcome. If someone accuses me of being a terrorist, and I lose my right to fly, and am jailed and then found innocent of all of the accused charges, I should be able to receive compensation from the person who wrongfully accused me, including financial compensation for my lost flights and time and so on.
I'm going to now adopt your suggestion and push it firmly when I speak to people about these issues.
"How long are we going to use 9-11 to justify continued fear and ignorance?"
Precisely as long as it takes our Government to push its backroom political agenda through.
What better time to push through laws with illegal clauses and riders, further stripping the citizens of this country of their rights and freedoms, as when you can leverage the security theater built up from this manufactured event to do so? Look what we've accomplished so far:
Established a semi-permanent ground base in Iraq, sufficient to launch attacks against Iran and Syria as needed to secure the black elixir found in the ground there
Removed an unrelated, non-threatening dictator from power in order to achieve (1) above. When was the last time you heard anything about "Osama bin Laden"? Remember we trained, armed and funded Osama and the rest of the Taliban at least a decade earlier, to help them keep Russia out of Afghanistan. Now he's our enemy? Riiiight.
Stripped U.S. citizens of almost every one of their rights granted to them by the Constitution
Given the Executive Branch immunity from any laws or amendments, through the use of circumvention and signing statements
Established the USA Patriot Act, PA II, warrantless wiretapping, rigorous unnecessary restrictions on how we can travel, commune together and cross domestic and international borders
... and the list goes on and on
This agenda existed long before 9/11, and has been staged for execution for a very long time. Do you really think over 900 pages of the Patriot Act were drafted in the 48 hours after 9/11? Absolutely not.
9/11 wasn't about anything related to the Taliban or al-Queda, it was related to making sure we secure the oil and shred the Constitution, allowing the Federal Government and the Executive Branch to wipe their ass with it.
If you have the time, I strongly suggest watching "The Zeitgeist Movie" (available online for download legally, or watch it in-full online through your browser). Eye-opening to say the least, especially regarding this huge wool sweater being slowly drawn over our eyes.
"I have tried 7 different brands - none of them work. The first 4 brands simply burned out within a month. The next three have lasted a year so far, but the initial light output is so low that the light is useless and my wife complains - so I will not be buying any more, of course."
You must have the worst luck EVER! I've had the same CFLs in my apartment, every single fixture including outside floodlights for over a year without a single failure. The ones outside have survived rain and cold (and are not in an enclosure, because the bulbs are so large at the 30W variety for the amount of lumens a flood requires out there).
Previous to living here, we had CFLs in my house (again, every single fixture, including bathroom vanity and kitchen ballasts) for 4 years. I think we had one burn out, and that was on the back porch where there was some heavy condensation that rusted the fixture itself, grounding it out.
I'm not sure where you're getting your CFLs, but find a new place. I've bought all of ours from Home Depot (before they started carrying the ones that fail to show the brightness value) and WAL*MART. For the odd shape/custom ones, I've always used topbulb.com.
"I think a sex offender would have a much harder time in jail than anyone else. I'm sure they'll get beaten to within an inch of their lives frequently....for the sake of the children."
You spelled "Pedophile" wrong, fixed that for you.
Sex Offender: "Person convicted of a sexual offense such as rape (sexual assault), sexual contact, or lewdness. In some states sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex is classified as criminal."
Pedophile: "An adult who is sexually attracted to children"
I realize it can be confusing, but remember that urinating in public for example, is a crime that will get you labeled as a "sex offender". In Georgia (where this current law regarding passwords is being tested), the rules for sex offnders is the strictest in the country:
"The State of Georgia passed the most stringent sex offender law in the country, which took effect July 1, 2006 (HB-1059). The bill stipulated that sex offenders are prohibited from living within 1,000 feet of a school, day care center, church, and anywhere where children are known to congregate, including parks, playgrounds, and bus stops. Due to the bus stop regulation, most of Georgia, including virtually all of the metropolitan areas, is a prohibited area for sex offenders."
"Failure to do so would result in fines and/or jail time."
You get fed and have a great job (including up to a free college degree) if you're in jail or imprisoned. Not such a bad deal, when compared to being shunned by the entire US population for helping contribute to the further erosion of our liberties and rights.
No thanks, I'll take the jail time.
Let's be clear: NOBODY has the right to your passwords or accounts, except you. Period. That isn't even open to discussion or debate.
"It can be copied and presented to a machine that expects to be talking to a biometric scanner, but is actually talking to your computer pretending to be a biometric scanner and feeding it the same file."
For improperly-designed and secured biometrics, I'd agree. However, that's not how most properly-written biometric systems work.
The biometric data is stored hashed with the user's biometric data as well as another piece of data, thwarting any "brute force" or "offsite" reads of that data. There is a whole series of regulations governing this (CFR 21:11), basically saying you should have 2 out of 3 pieces of biometry to be considered "secure":
Something you have (keyfob, usb dongle, etc.)
Something you know (passphrase, password, key, pin code)
Something you are (fingerprint, iris scan, voiceprint, etc.)
"Does that mean if I was a sex offender in Georgia I'd have to hand over my finger? Talk about illegal search and seizure."
I remember hearing a case (which escapes me at this point) where someone was arrested, and argued that their fingerprints were property (of course it is), and that since they did not waive their rights to their property, they could not be taken without being convicted, not accused of the crime against them.
Perhaps something similar should be made of this as well.
"Of course, if I ran a site that allowed user logins, perhaps I might add: "Unless it is to undermine the exploitation of children" or an "I reserve the right to cooperate with authorities".
NO NO NO NO NO!
You would (and should) retain the rights of your users, above and beyond any government pressure. Remember, WE give the government their rights and power, they do not give it to us.
Uphold your TOS and hold them liable when they violate it. The State does not get to supersede the rules you set on systems you control and own, under your own management and guidance.
Do not cave in... if you do, you end up eroding more and more of our precious rights away, which is exactly what they want you to do. Persist, resist and just say NO!
If they're already a sex offender, then they've already been convicted, and presumably done whatever time/penance for their "crimes", right?
What if they just say "No." when asked for their passwords? What can happen? Is it a crime to deny someone the right to violate your rights now? Remember, criminals have rights, just like the rest of us. You can't just slap some "rider" on their crime and force compliance.
And more importantly, what would handing over those passwords do to protect the rights and privacy of those who have been "offended"?
Does having a sex offender's password protect another child from harm? No.
Does having a sex offender's password stop them from opening up a new account? No.
Does having a sex offender's password reduce their own right to privacy, as well as everyone else's privacy? YES.
If someone has already done their time and chooses to go online and join some knitting mailing lists or decides to take up scrapbooking (let's not forget that women are an equal, if not larger percentage of sex offenders, caught and convicted, not just men), does some government lackey then log into their email account "just to make sure" there's nothing incriminating in there? Do they log into all of the systems they have access to? I just don't see the point.
Nothing good can come of this.
Do the government lackeys change the password, locking out the original owner? Do they send emails on their behalf? I don't see the point of asking for this information, since it can provide ABSOLUTELY zero additional security to the "offended", nor can it stop a determined prior offender from creating a new identity and account.
This does nothing, except further erode our existing privacy and rights and sets a precedent that is impossible to undo, once ingrained. The government has proven themselves time and time again to be incapable of properly handling data in a secure way (losing emails, warrantless searches and wiretapping, etc.) that handing them this information would be downright stupid.
Seriously, "Just Say No", and let them slap you with contempt or a fine, then fight that in court, instead of setting a precedent that erodes all of our rights; those who are not being convicted of any crimes.
I have access to systems that requires password access to, that I will NEVER give access to anyone from any government, especially if they say I "have to" give them the password. (But I've already made this clear before).
"Take your cash incentives (salary, bonuses) subtract in HR benefits (health/dental/optical) plus all the other discounted benefits (daycare, gyms, educational reimbursement etc..) and then the stock purchase plans (either awarded options or ESPP) and 401k."
I'm not sure where you work, but this is no longer 2001. In today's employment landscape and economy, you are not "given" health insurance or SPP/EPP. You are offered an a-la carte menu of choices, ALL of which you must pay for out of your own paycheck. My health insurance costs somewhere along the lines of $700/month, and that's the cheapest option offered to me through a major financial services institution.
Add to that, the cost of Dependent Care (daycare, $400), Dental (another $300-400), and so on... and you're looking at a net salary of almost $2k less per-month than I would if I didn't choose healthcare/dental/daycare.
No, in today's economy, you don't get health benefits for free, not anymore.
100% absolutely incorrect. This is a very common myth.
What happens when you're going a compilation that fills all 8gb of RAM, with no ability to swap a single page of RAM to disk? You seize the system up. Try it, it's very-well documented all over the web. Google it. I've personally done it, as have hundreds of other people.
"Your swap problem also only applies to the olden days. Now that we have machines with 16GB of RAM, who still uses swap?"
Who still uses swap? Those who don't want to grind their machine to a halt when building large projects like gcc, boost, RogueWave and so on. I can take that 16GB-no-swap machine and get it to seize up very quickly, running it out of physical RAM during a parallelized build of any of those projects. Add just 1MB of swap and that problem goes away (though the machine will obviously perform poorly with so few pages available to swap to disk).
The "I have lots of RAM, I don't need swap" myth is still running strong I see. You NEED swap, no matter how much RAM you have.
"TrueCrypt allows you to make it that different passwords decrypt different parts of the encrypted partition, and there is no way to know if there's more than one part."
You are 100% incorrect on this point, and this is a major misconception of Truecrypt's encrypted volumes or "plausible deniability" feature.
Your secondary, encrypted volume is visible and its existence exposed if you are using Truecrypt on Linux, Windows or Mac.
Each of these systems DOES peek into the encrypted container and proves its existence by default, unless you specifically take very detailed steps to prevent it, and it isn't obvious on those systems for those users, what to do to disable that vulnerability. Disabling updatedb, Tomboy, Finder, Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, Indexing Service and so on.
Once you do this, it also requires that you encrypt and securely wipe swap at startup and shutdown, as well as fill and purge your MFT (Windows), etc. Any search or find(1) operation that queries anything inside your hidden volume or swaps to disk or pages to the swap file, will expose your encrypted volume. It's not as straightforward as installing Truecrypt and setting up the secondary encrypted volume.
Most people who use the secondary container in Truecrypt, do not do this, and mistakenly believe they are "safe".
"Then it's a crime, and they can put you in jail."
So they put me in jail, and everyone gets to retain their freedoms.
Isn't that what this is all about? If I hand over my keys, I have been complicit with an unjust law, the law gains strength, and the collective masses are further suppressed and lose more of their freedoms. Maybe if 100,000 people just decided to say "No!", they'd revisit the law, or maybe not... they'd just have to build more prisons to hold 100,000 people, maybe 1M people, maybe 30M people. Where does it end?
Our founding fathers (granted, dissidents from the UK) fought for and died for the rights we're so willing to give away in today's society. Just say "No!" and be done with it. If you go to jail, know you went for a cause that was right and just and that you're saving the freedoms of people who will come after you.
"There's no way for them to prove that you used TrueCrypt for anything more than that."
Unless of course you use Truecrypt on Linux, Windows or Mac.
Each of these systems DOES peek into the encrypted container and proves its existence by default, unless you specifically take very detailed steps to prevent it, and it isn't obvious on those systems for those users, what to do to disable that vulnerability. Disabling updatedb, Tomboy, Finder, Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, Indexing Service and so on.
Once you do this, it also requires that you encrypt and securely wipe swap at startup and shutdown, as well as fill and purge your MFT (Windows), etc. Any search or find(1) operation that queries anything inside your hidden volume or swaps to disk or pages to the swap file, will expose your encrypted volume. It's not as straightforward as installing Truecrypt and setting up the secondary encrypted volume.
Most people who use the secondary container in Truecrypt, do not do this, and mistakenly believe they are "safe".
I'd much rather go to prison, than reduce the collective privacy of millions of other people from that point forward into the future, and strip the whole country down to a point where we were 200+ years ago. Our founding fathers DIED to provide us the rights we're so willing to just give away now, in exchange for a little less "involvement".
This isn't really news. AT&T's "unlimited" data plan (i.e. the one all iPhone uses have), has a 5GB/month cap, and has since the beginning. You can ask them yourself if you don't believe me.
I just bought a Blackberry in the store on Friday (returned it already, what a horrible device), and the woman I bought it from warned me about reaching my "data plan bandwidth limits". I thought it was odd that an "unlimited" data plan would be limited... but it is. The charge for going over your 5GB limit? $0.40/k. Owch.
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I guess I should pioneer the illiterate society we're about to become, since I can no longer read stories to my 4-year old daughter, so she gets used to hearing the words, seeing me point them out on the pages as we read, and teaching her to read in general... because "Hop on Pop", "Snowy Day", "Goodnight Moon" and other standard children's stories are now a "performance".
I should immediately alert the daycare facility also (200+ children, 50+ teachers and educators) and have them send out an immediate alert to all of the parents as well. Reading stories aloud is now illegal.
I hope this becomes terribly clear that this is facrical, and that this is a prime example of why this has gone WAY too far overboard. Seriously. If you can't make your money on the original work, become a better author.
We don't tolerate this same methodology in ANY other industry (well ok, except music, but that is corrupted by the same flawed thinking).
Please, stop. Think. Use your head, and put the needs of a literate society ahead of the fattening of your own wallet.
I'm going to have to strongly disagree here. Gmail's interface is, hands-down, one of the clunkiest interfaces I've ever seen, and violates dozens of usability guidelines. Look where "Compose" is vs. "Reply" for one great example. How can I sort? What about removing "Labels" from a group of messages? No can do with Gmail.
Put Gmail side by side with something like Evolution and THEN ask what users would prefer. Yes, Thunderbird is clunky, but it wasn't meant to compete with Gmail. Look at something like Novell Evolution that has a LOT more power and flexibility over Gmail and you'll never go back.
Oh, and Evolution has "offline" Gmail as well, and always has. I love how I can treat all of my Gmail accounts as one single account if I want, unify the Inboxes, see all "Unread" email in a single folder (without creating a contrived filter as you would have to in Gmail), sees all folders and "Labels" as standard IMAP folders, allows me to read/reply online or off, and a whole host of other things Gmail can't and probably will not ever do.
Nope, Gmail's web interface is great in a pinch, but for actual, productive use of Email as an application and not just a replacement for "offline IM", I'll stick with Evolution thanks.
And I definitely know of what I speak because I've been doing this for a very long time (integrating Evolution with Gmail with Thunderbird across 3 platforms, transparently).
Looks like there are no "for() loops containing hdparm" in power.sh on my Ubuntu Hardy or Intrepid systems here, so I'm good. Power Management was also set to 254 without enabling LAPTOP_MODE at all.
But the interesting thing was this...:
225 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 095 095 000 Old_age Always - 58667
This drive, a 500G laptop drive, is about 2-3 months old. Killed already? Who knows.
hdparm -i /dev/sdX
not
hdparm -l /dev/sdX
-l is an unsupported option in hdparm
Until 3 hours later when THAT password is now cracked.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
This is an incredibly stupid idea, UNLESS you're going to securely shred the data contents on the drive itself (i.e. Schneier 7-pass or similar method), and the smash it.
With drive capacities increasing at a geometric rate every single month, even a pinky fingernail-sized chip could contain 10 gigabytes of data. RECOVERABLE data. Are you going to smash the drive platters into pieces the size of matchsticks or smaller? You'll need to if you want to be sure someone isn't going to recover your data from your pieces.
Resist the urge to smash, unless you shred first.
That's a pretty big myth, and I'm surprised people are still repeating it in 2008.
There's a Grand Canyon of difference between " arrested for " and " convicted of ", with respect to crimes. The majority of crimes in the US are committed by whites and Asians (yes, you could say that the skin color is "white" and "yellow", fitting your statistical model), but the majority of convictions for crimes involves those of dark-colored skin (black or middle-eastern).
So the majority of crimes are not perpetrated by "blacks", but the majority of those jailed for crimes are. It continues to underscore our core racial foundations in this country.
Now THAT is the best answer I've seen all day! Not only would it cause people who were going to complain to REALLY think seriously about their actions, but it would also apply accountability and penalties on the person who raises their hand. That's the one thing we've lost in this country more than any other; accountability.
People can just up and file a grievance, complain, point fingers... and walk away free, regardless of the outcome. If someone accuses me of being a terrorist, and I lose my right to fly, and am jailed and then found innocent of all of the accused charges, I should be able to receive compensation from the person who wrongfully accused me, including financial compensation for my lost flights and time and so on.
I'm going to now adopt your suggestion and push it firmly when I speak to people about these issues.
Precisely as long as it takes our Government to push its backroom political agenda through.
What better time to push through laws with illegal clauses and riders, further stripping the citizens of this country of their rights and freedoms, as when you can leverage the security theater built up from this manufactured event to do so? Look what we've accomplished so far:
This agenda existed long before 9/11, and has been staged for execution for a very long time. Do you really think over 900 pages of the Patriot Act were drafted in the 48 hours after 9/11? Absolutely not.
9/11 wasn't about anything related to the Taliban or al-Queda, it was related to making sure we secure the oil and shred the Constitution, allowing the Federal Government and the Executive Branch to wipe their ass with it.
If you have the time, I strongly suggest watching "The Zeitgeist Movie" (available online for download legally, or watch it in-full online through your browser). Eye-opening to say the least, especially regarding this huge wool sweater being slowly drawn over our eyes.
You must have the worst luck EVER! I've had the same CFLs in my apartment, every single fixture including outside floodlights for over a year without a single failure. The ones outside have survived rain and cold (and are not in an enclosure, because the bulbs are so large at the 30W variety for the amount of lumens a flood requires out there).
Previous to living here, we had CFLs in my house (again, every single fixture, including bathroom vanity and kitchen ballasts) for 4 years. I think we had one burn out, and that was on the back porch where there was some heavy condensation that rusted the fixture itself, grounding it out.
I'm not sure where you're getting your CFLs, but find a new place. I've bought all of ours from Home Depot (before they started carrying the ones that fail to show the brightness value) and WAL*MART. For the odd shape/custom ones, I've always used topbulb.com.
You spelled "Pedophile" wrong, fixed that for you.
I realize it can be confusing, but remember that urinating in public for example, is a crime that will get you labeled as a "sex offender". In Georgia (where this current law regarding passwords is being tested), the rules for sex offnders is the strictest in the country:
You get fed and have a great job (including up to a free college degree) if you're in jail or imprisoned. Not such a bad deal, when compared to being shunned by the entire US population for helping contribute to the further erosion of our liberties and rights.
No thanks, I'll take the jail time.
Let's be clear: NOBODY has the right to your passwords or accounts, except you. Period. That isn't even open to discussion or debate.
For improperly-designed and secured biometrics, I'd agree. However, that's not how most properly-written biometric systems work.
The biometric data is stored hashed with the user's biometric data as well as another piece of data, thwarting any "brute force" or "offsite" reads of that data. There is a whole series of regulations governing this (CFR 21:11), basically saying you should have 2 out of 3 pieces of biometry to be considered "secure":
I remember hearing a case (which escapes me at this point) where someone was arrested, and argued that their fingerprints were property (of course it is), and that since they did not waive their rights to their property, they could not be taken without being convicted, not accused of the crime against them.
Perhaps something similar should be made of this as well.
NO NO NO NO NO!
You would (and should) retain the rights of your users, above and beyond any government pressure. Remember, WE give the government their rights and power, they do not give it to us.
Uphold your TOS and hold them liable when they violate it. The State does not get to supersede the rules you set on systems you control and own, under your own management and guidance.
Do not cave in... if you do, you end up eroding more and more of our precious rights away, which is exactly what they want you to do. Persist, resist and just say NO!
If they're already a sex offender , then they've already been convicted, and presumably done whatever time/penance for their "crimes", right?
What if they just say "No." when asked for their passwords? What can happen? Is it a crime to deny someone the right to violate your rights now? Remember, criminals have rights, just like the rest of us. You can't just slap some "rider" on their crime and force compliance.
And more importantly, what would handing over those passwords do to protect the rights and privacy of those who have been "offended"?
If someone has already done their time and chooses to go online and join some knitting mailing lists or decides to take up scrapbooking (let's not forget that women are an equal, if not larger percentage of sex offenders, caught and convicted, not just men), does some government lackey then log into their email account "just to make sure" there's nothing incriminating in there? Do they log into all of the systems they have access to? I just don't see the point.
Nothing good can come of this.
Do the government lackeys change the password, locking out the original owner? Do they send emails on their behalf? I don't see the point of asking for this information, since it can provide ABSOLUTELY zero additional security to the "offended", nor can it stop a determined prior offender from creating a new identity and account.
This does nothing, except further erode our existing privacy and rights and sets a precedent that is impossible to undo, once ingrained. The government has proven themselves time and time again to be incapable of properly handling data in a secure way (losing emails, warrantless searches and wiretapping, etc.) that handing them this information would be downright stupid.
Seriously, " Just Say No ", and let them slap you with contempt or a fine, then fight that in court, instead of setting a precedent that erodes all of our rights; those who are not being convicted of any crimes.
I have access to systems that requires password access to, that I will NEVER give access to anyone from any government, especially if they say I "have to" give them the password. (But I've already made this clear before).
I'm not sure where you work, but this is no longer 2001. In today's employment landscape and economy, you are not "given" health insurance or SPP/EPP. You are offered an a-la carte menu of choices, ALL of which you must pay for out of your own paycheck. My health insurance costs somewhere along the lines of $700/month, and that's the cheapest option offered to me through a major financial services institution.
Add to that, the cost of Dependent Care (daycare, $400), Dental (another $300-400), and so on... and you're looking at a net salary of almost $2k less per-month than I would if I didn't choose healthcare/dental/daycare.
No, in today's economy, you don't get health benefits for free, not anymore.
100% absolutely incorrect. This is a very common myth.
What happens when you're going a compilation that fills all 8gb of RAM, with no ability to swap a single page of RAM to disk? You seize the system up. Try it, it's very-well documented all over the web. Google it. I've personally done it, as have hundreds of other people.
Who still uses swap? Those who don't want to grind their machine to a halt when building large projects like gcc, boost, RogueWave and so on. I can take that 16GB-no-swap machine and get it to seize up very quickly, running it out of physical RAM during a parallelized build of any of those projects. Add just 1MB of swap and that problem goes away (though the machine will obviously perform poorly with so few pages available to swap to disk).
The "I have lots of RAM, I don't need swap" myth is still running strong I see. You NEED swap, no matter how much RAM you have.
You are 100% incorrect on this point, and this is a major misconception of Truecrypt's encrypted volumes or "plausible deniability" feature.
Your secondary, encrypted volume is visible and its existence exposed if you are using Truecrypt on Linux, Windows or Mac.
Each of these systems DOES peek into the encrypted container and proves its existence by default, unless you specifically take very detailed steps to prevent it, and it isn't obvious on those systems for those users, what to do to disable that vulnerability. Disabling updatedb, Tomboy, Finder, Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, Indexing Service and so on.
Once you do this, it also requires that you encrypt and securely wipe swap at startup and shutdown, as well as fill and purge your MFT (Windows), etc. Any search or find(1) operation that queries anything inside your hidden volume or swaps to disk or pages to the swap file, will expose your encrypted volume. It's not as straightforward as installing Truecrypt and setting up the secondary encrypted volume.
Most people who use the secondary container in Truecrypt, do not do this, and mistakenly believe they are "safe".
They aren't.
So they put me in jail, and everyone gets to retain their freedoms.
Isn't that what this is all about? If I hand over my keys, I have been complicit with an unjust law, the law gains strength, and the collective masses are further suppressed and lose more of their freedoms. Maybe if 100,000 people just decided to say "No!", they'd revisit the law, or maybe not... they'd just have to build more prisons to hold 100,000 people, maybe 1M people, maybe 30M people. Where does it end?
Our founding fathers (granted, dissidents from the UK) fought for and died for the rights we're so willing to give away in today's society. Just say "No!" and be done with it. If you go to jail, know you went for a cause that was right and just and that you're saving the freedoms of people who will come after you.
Unless of course you use Truecrypt on Linux, Windows or Mac.
Each of these systems DOES peek into the encrypted container and proves its existence by default, unless you specifically take very detailed steps to prevent it, and it isn't obvious on those systems for those users, what to do to disable that vulnerability. Disabling updatedb, Tomboy, Finder, Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, Indexing Service and so on.
Once you do this, it also requires that you encrypt and securely wipe swap at startup and shutdown, as well as fill and purge your MFT (Windows), etc. Any search or find(1) operation that queries anything inside your hidden volume or swaps to disk or pages to the swap file, will expose your encrypted volume. It's not as straightforward as installing Truecrypt and setting up the secondary encrypted volume.
Most people who use the secondary container in Truecrypt, do not do this, and mistakenly believe they are "safe".
They aren't.
For how long? A year? 5 years?
I'd much rather go to prison, than reduce the collective privacy of millions of other people from that point forward into the future, and strip the whole country down to a point where we were 200+ years ago. Our founding fathers DIED to provide us the rights we're so willing to just give away now, in exchange for a little less "involvement".
But I've already mentioned this before, 3 years ago.
Your candidate exists, he's just not on the ballot this year.
Incidentally, he's my candidate as well. I also did not vote in this election.
This isn't really news. AT&T's "unlimited" data plan (i.e. the one all iPhone uses have), has a 5GB/month cap, and has since the beginning. You can ask them yourself if you don't believe me.
I just bought a Blackberry in the store on Friday (returned it already, what a horrible device), and the woman I bought it from warned me about reaching my "data plan bandwidth limits". I thought it was odd that an "unlimited" data plan would be limited... but it is. The charge for going over your 5GB limit? $0.40/k. Owch.