Slashdot Mirror


User: Bob9113

Bob9113's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,511
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,511

  1. All Good Laws Have Costs on Wikipedia's "Complicated" Relationship With Net Neutrality · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every good law has counterpoints. Traffic signals prevent me from driving through the intersection even when there are no other cars there. Assault laws mean you can't punch someone who talks on their phone at the movies. The right to a trial means we can't just execute people we know are guilty.

    One of the other examples I've been hearing lately is about Citizen's United. They say overturning it or passing contradictory legislation could hamper Steven Colbert, or limit the ACLU or EFF. Well, yes, it might. But that would be better, overall, than what we have now.

    The goal is not to have laws that capture every nuance. Government is a blunt weapon that must operate in a non-discriminatory fashion. Special cases exist that show the friction in every law. The objective is not for every special case to be efficient, but for the law overall to be efficient.

    Last mile providers colluding with incumbents to provide preferential access to consumers harms competition in content. Competition is good in the long run, even for the things we like that may appear to be harmed in the short run. There are natural limitations to competition on carriage, we should not extend those competition limitations to making discriminatory deals with content providers.

  2. Re:Well if two google engineers say so on Two Google Engineers Say Renewables Can't Cure Climate Change · · Score: 4, Informative

    TL;DR version: Register.co.uk is a serial clickbaiting site, they admit it, and this article is an intentional, blatant misrepresentation of the research. Link to El Reg only for the same sort of reasons you would link to The National Enquirer.

  3. Total Packet Inspection on Cameron Accuses Internet Companies Of Giving Terrorists Safe Haven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some have pointed out the explicit invocation of the slippery slope, but it is worse than that.

    His comments to the House of Commons came after the parliamentary intelligence and security committee concluded that the brutal murder of Rigby could have been prevented if an internet company had passed on an online exchange in which one of the killers expressed "in the most graphic terms" his intention to carry out an Islamist jihadi attack.

    This is not the same as blocking access to child porn sites. He is calling for the content of all packets to be inspected for unapproved speech.

  4. There's Still Time! on Here's What Your Car Could Look Like In 2030 · · Score: 2

    Blade Runner, for example, posited that the skies above Los Angeles would swarm with flying cars by 2019.

    It's only 2014. There's still 5 years. Get to work, everyone!

  5. Not What I Guessed on 2014 Hour of Code: Do Ends Justify Disney Product Placement Means? · · Score: 1

    I can't believe I didn't guess that this was the particular flavor of corporate whoring that Gates and Zuckerberg were up to. Get into the educational pipeline with whatever education issue is hot (it started as just STEM, but then shifted to women in STEM when that started sizzling, if you'll remember). Get some big names to attach their reputations to its success. Then start selling ad space to Disney, who can't get much traction buying ad space inside the schools themselves. I should have guessed, but I didn't. I just thought they were after the data.

  6. Pi Hundred Million! on Mozilla's 2013 Report: Revenue Up 1% To $314M; 90% From Google · · Score: 1

    Pi hundred million. Nothing more to say, but I'm guessing if I don't add more I will run into the lameness filter.

  7. Pray to God and Row Toward Shore on Greenwald Advises Market-Based Solution To Mass Surveillance · · Score: 2

    There's a religious refrain, "Pray to God but row toward shore." It means you should ask for God's help, but that doesn't mean you should just sit there in the boat and wait to be saved.

    From the Cryptome PDF:
    Yesterday the USA Freedom Act was blocked in the Senate as it failed to garner the 60 votes required to move forward. Presumably the bill would have imposed limits on NSA surveillance. Careful scrutiny of the billâ(TM)s text however reveals yet another mere gesture of reform, one that would codify and entrench existing surveillance capabilities rather than eliminate them.

    We didn't really lose anything. The government chose not to pass a platitude. That's probably not going to change until we manage to fix the twin problem of fear and hatred, being stoked by those who gain from emotionalism.

    In the meantime, we need to row toward shore. Keep working on all the cryptography solutions you have time to help with. If you have an interest in meme propagation on social media or propaganda, see if you can figure out some ways to weaken the grip of emotionalism. I am, and it's fun.

    Sometimes your nation calls on you for service. Sometimes you have to know what it needs even if it doesn't know how to ask.

  8. I Tried To Skeptic The Review on "Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer" Pulled From Amazon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I saw this yesterday and tried, so hard, to be the skeptic poking holes in a feminist's overreaction -- and failed. This thing is just awful. The best I could come up with was, "Well, there are valuable people on software development teams who do design. I value them immensely, because I can't do it."

    Well, sure, and maybe they should also put out a book titled, "I can be a game designer." But that's not the title, and (I can tell you from personal experience) women make fine software engineers. Some great, some awful, most somewhere in between -- just like guys. If they want to make a book with a title about Barbie being a software engineer, they should just tell that story.

  9. Re:So don't use Tor at home? on 81% of Tor Users Can Be De-anonymized By Analysing Router Information · · Score: 1

    >> when you want to do something without being watched, you use TOR with clean hardware and connectivity.

    > So what is clean? I can only think of an Ubuntu VM, default install with maybe one or two addons in Firefox to delete cookies. Nothing that changes or adds fonts...

    That's a fairly good version. I think it's about how extreme you want to go and how secure you feel you need to be. You could grab a fresh laptop off Craig's List and only use it for a few days. You could get a Raspberry Pi with no writable storage and change the MAC address every time you power it up. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, you could just have one laptop that you only use for your alternate persona, and always use it for that, if what you need is pseudonymity instead of anonymity (that's the most aggressive thing I do, actually, being one of those people who doesn't actually have anything to hide, but still believes in privacy as a matter of principle).

    And, of course, every step you take is a good one. It all helps to confound those who would violate what I believe are inalienable rights.

  10. Re:Can government solve government problems? on Can the US Actually Cultivate Local Competition in Broadband? · · Score: 1

    Frequency allocations, overseen by the FCC, are a government protected monopoly.

    Frequency competition has the most clear natural limits on competition of any of the carriage technologies you mention, but they exist for all of them. If more than one carrier uses the same slice of spectrum, they all degrade. Laissez-faire does a horrible job of maximizing production with wireless spectrum. Easements for wires and the natural barrier to entry of sinking new cables create a similar problem with wired carriage.

    The FCC is not creating fiat carriage monopolies, they are managing natural limitations to carriage competition.

    It is worth noting that there are genuine fiat monopolies at the local and state levels, but those are almost always created by the corporations through lobbying, partnerships, or collusion, not by the unaided whim of a bureaucrat.

  11. Re:Nov 25 or 26?, or Dec 19, 22, or 23? on FCC Says Net Neutrality Decision Delay Is About Courts, Not Politics · · Score: 1

    which form of Net Neutrality? A) protocol neutral? B) endpoint neutral?

    Both -- the carrier should not make prioritization decisions for me. My network and software should handle that, since my ISP can't know which packets are highest priority to me.

    I am convinced that government regulators will find a third definition for Net Neutrality

    That is a good reason to be eternally vigilant of the FCC, and the Internet is worth our effort. It is not a good reason to abdicate the decision to the ISPs, whose financial interests and both naturally- and regulatory- limited competition ensures a market-inefficient solution. The ISPs have the privilege of operating the carriage of our network for a profit. If they don't want that privilege, they can sell their gear and rights-of-way to a competitor. Both Google and municipal operations are wiping the floor with the incumbents everywhere they pop up.

  12. Re:Nov 25 or 26?, or Dec 19, 22, or 23? on FCC Says Net Neutrality Decision Delay Is About Courts, Not Politics · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As to the will of the people--we're talking net neutrality. People support it because they like the word "Neutral."

    There may be some like that, but people like me, who have been working on the Internet since before hypertext, support it because the idea of letting ISPs make deals for fast lanes is about as stupid as allowing the electric company make deals with companies to cut off electricity to their competitors.

  13. Nov 25 or 26?, or Dec 19, 22, or 23? on FCC Says Net Neutrality Decision Delay Is About Courts, Not Politics · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The best days to announce things like, "We've decided to completely ignore the will of the people and do what the guys with wheelbarrows full of money tell us to" are the days right before Thanksgiving and right before Christmas. My bet is on Nov. 25, leaving a day to get home to family, but Nov 26, or Dec 19, 22, or 23 would not surprise me.

    We can also say with some certainty when they won't announce; Dec 2, 9, or 16 -- Tuesdays during full work weeks -- are extremely unlikely.

  14. Re:So don't use Tor at home? on 81% of Tor Users Can Be De-anonymized By Analysing Router Information · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Basically what they are saying is that you should not use Tor at home or at work, but in other places, where you don't do your normal browsing.

    Close, but not quite ideal. You should use TOR at home to do strictly legitimate things, to create the haystack in which the needles can be hidden. Then, when you want to do something without being watched, you use TOR with clean hardware and connectivity. Also, when travelling to your clean connectivity, leave your cell phone and other tracking devices at home, and do it somewhere with lots of other people.

  15. Sufficient & Necessary on How To End Online Harassment · · Score: 1

    'With Gamergate, it's not enough to ignore the trolls.'

    It may not be sufficient, and if you have good ideas to add please do. But an effective solution to any problem must be both sufficient and necessary. And in this case, ignoring the trolls is necessary, even if you do not find it to be sufficient.

    Trolls gain steam from attention. Any strategy for shutting down trolls must include ignoring them. There may be additional tactics that are worth employing, like advocating courtesy in Internet communications, but "don't feed the trolls" is a required part of the solution.

  16. Re:Bullshit on Net Neutrality Alone Won't Solve ISP Throttling Abuse, Here's Why · · Score: 1

    That it is realistic to have highways wide enough that there will never be congestion?

    Obviously not, and you can't possibly think I do think that. So I can only conclude that your question is not sincere, but meant to be dismissive. That is neither mature nor productive.

    In a real internet (in fact on the internet for its entire existence), the network is managed.

    The provider should be managing the allocation of data based on the subscribers' contracts, not on who they are connecting to, the content of the packets, what port it is on, what protocol it is using, or anything else. People who need high speed should order high speed packages. People who need low latency should pay for low latency. People who need both should pay for both.

    Different data has different priorities, it just does.

    Of course it does, but the ISP cannot know which data has what priority based on the port, protocol, endpoints, or packet content. Only the end user can determine those things, and the ISP making contradictory decisions is a breach of the data carriage obligation under which we have granted them privileges like rights-of-way and protection from liability for the data they transport.

  17. Bullshit on Net Neutrality Alone Won't Solve ISP Throttling Abuse, Here's Why · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Email and web traffic can tolerate significantly higher latencies, for example.

    Bullshit. You don't know which of my traffic is higher priority. The end user can and should have network management tools, but the ISP better damned well not decide that my kids watching Nemo in HD is more important than my rsync transfer of a log file telling me why the master server just barfed. That is my choice, not the ISP's.

    Similarly, almost everyone agrees that ISPs have some responsibility to control network performance in a manner that guarantees the best service for the most number of people,

    Bullshit. Just, bullshit. Citation needed. No, people who understand networks do not believe that the pipeline providers should be doing traffic prioritization based on endpoints.

    or that prioritizes certain traffic over others in the event of an emergency.

    Vague fear mongering. What if the network companies prioritize the wrong things in their search for a little more revenue and something bad happens to the children? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

    These are all issues that a careful set of regulations could preserve while still mandating neutral traffic treatment in the majority of cases, but it's a level of nuance that most discussions of the topic don't touch. The larger and more serious problem with net neutrality as its often defined, however, is that it typically deals only with the "last mile," or the types and nature of the filtering an ISP can apply to your personal connection.

    I don't know if this is intentional or not, but throwing piles of vaguely related and confusing facts at a story then saying, "Therefore, we shouldn't regulate now!" is a standard tactic from the Koch plalybook. Shove it.

    The public, including tens of thousands of network administrators, have spoken without equivocation: We want net neutrality. Period. When the ISPs come up with better regulation, they can propose it, and we will consider it. Until then, we will not move an inch on our demand for Net Neutrality. It has worked since the first day of the Internet. It is why the Internet made so many people, including the ISPs, rich. If they don't like it, they can GTFO or DIAF.

  18. Emacs! on The Effect of Programming Language On Software Quality · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't care what they say, software written with Emacs is way better than software writen with Vi!

  19. Re:It's just business - nothing personal on Online Payment Firm Stripe Boots 3D Gun Designer Cody Wilson's Companies · · Score: 1

    Why should [Stripe] be forced to pick a side?

    The reality is they probably were. Agreed it is probably not Stripe's choice -- but if it is, I feel that all payment processors have a duty to not pick and choose the businesses they will cut off. Trade and the economy are too important to allow payment gateways to act as a choke point for morality enforcement. If the business is illegal, it should be shut down. If it is not, all businesses should have equal right and opportunity to engage in trade.

    Privately operated toll bridges shouldn't be allowed to ban FedEx trucks, electric companies shouldn't be allowed to refuse service to stores that sell cigarettes, ISPs shouldn't be allowed to throttle content providers who don't pay extra, and payment processors shouldn't be allowed to enforce morality.

    But, again, I think this was more likely DOJ or ATF bullying, not Stripe's choice.

  20. Libel Could Work That Way, Too on Pianist Asks Washington Post To Remove Review Under "Right To Be Forgotten" · · Score: 2

    It's also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work.

    Yes, but not of how it does work. Libel law could work exactly the same way, but it doesn't.

    It is important to find cases where this ruling does cause problems, so we can amend or reverse it. Pointing out cases where it could result in legally enforced removal of information that is in the public interest, but almost certainly won't, is crying wolf and is harmful to the goal of reforming the ruling.

  21. Simply Protecting the Proletariat on Is Public Debate of Trade Agreements Against the Public Interest? · · Score: 1

    According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done."

    I do not understand the lack of clarity in his speech. He could simply have said, "The proletariat are too ignorant for their own good, and must be protected from their stupidity by the aristocracy, like dogs or goats."

  22. Re:News for Nerds? on Tim Cook: "I'm Proud To Be Gay" · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But considering just how straight white male oriented the tech industry is

    You mean demographic-wise or acceptance-wise? If the former, maybe, I haven't really taken a statistical sample. But if you mean the latter, where have you been working? I mean, when I was working in NYC and SF, and even Seattle, I suppose it would be expected that most of my fellow geeks didn't care about sexual orientation and were vocally pro gay rights, but even now in Phoenix almost all of my geek friends feel the same. I've always assumed it was a natural result of being future-oriented and of geekiness being an outsider culture. If your geek friends are homophobes, they'd strike me as statistically rare. Maybe you just need new friends.

  23. Re:What about the "old normal"? on New Crash Test Dummies Reflect Rising American Bodyweight · · Score: 1

    What happens when we start tuning our restraint systems for the obese? Will they continue to function properly for trim people, will they work less effectively, or might they actually become harmful, like airbags for kids?

    Perhaps there will be restraint system option packages. The Kid-Size, Fit-Size, Fun-Size, and Super-Size. Of course, then there might be size inflation like women's dresses, so eventually fit people will be driving size zero cars and slender people won't be able to buy off-the-rack at all.

  24. Net Neutrality Case-In-Point on Verizon Launches Tech News Site That Bans Stories On US Spying · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.

    You gotta admire the chutzpah. Even as they are saying to the FCC that they can be trusted with the authority to be the gatekeepers of the Internet, they put on a public display of their intent to inhibit public policy debate on the very issue of Net Neutrality itself.

    The extraordinary lack of self-consciousness is difficult to fathom. It rises to the level of, "Let them eat cake."

  25. Re:Server On The Desktop on Debate Over Systemd Exposes the Two Factions Tugging At Modern-day Linux · · Score: 1

    My personal choice now is Gentoo. Maybe it would be good for you, maybe not.

    Others who have similar tastes to mine have recommended Gentoo. I'll probably give it a try. Thanks for the getting started tips!