If HTTPS becomes ubiquitous, then there will be much more opportunity, as well as more incentive, to break the encryption consistently and therefore nullify the security.
On the other hand, if everything is encrypted, the traffic that truly NEEDS encryption will be less likely to call attention to itself, because the 'needle' will be in a bigger 'haystack'.
After all, they seem to be pulling out all the stops to ensure that our privacy is a thing of the past. Maybe they just don't want the advertisers on their turf.
But who would we elect? Seriously. Not that there aren't lots of viable candidates, but how many of those candidates have access to the millions of dollars required to run a campaign big enough to have even a small chance of winning an election?
Politics is a rich man's game, and that essentially means that it's a game for corporations. The game is rigged, the playing field is nowhere near level, and the days are long gone, (if they ever really existed), when people were elected based on their ability to do the job and represent their constituents effectively.
Putting meaningful, effective, and most importantly low, limits on election spending, is the only way to prevent corporations from buying their preferred form of governance. But they already own the government, so changes in election spending rules won't be coming any time soon.
You just can't do that without dumbing-down the system.
Sure you can. GUI tools can be written to allow tweaking without directly editing config files. I use such tools under Gnome, I like them, and I wish there were more of them and that they were better than they are. But the people who like tinkering needn't use such tools at all. (I'm perfectly capable of editing config files and writing scripts to tweak my computing experience - I just don't really want to).
The 90% of users who are not hobbyists and are not tinkerers and do not find the technology fascinating already have several companies that are happy to meet their needs.
Yes, but there are still compelling reasons for that "90% of users" to adopt FOSS, such as lower operating costs, better community support, and a higher degree of autonomy. And there are still compelling reasons for the FOSS community to accommodate them, such as a broader user base to support development of software that otherwise might not garner enough users to achieve critical mass.
The availability of tools to make Linux friendlier and more accessible to the average computer user, need not compromise geek appeal and nerd cred.
The only way to make extremely RF tolerant electronics is to use analog vacuum tube based designs (the Russians continued using tube designs into the 90's).
Tube-based designs are no more tolerant than semiconductor-based designs, as far as interference is concerned. What tube-based circuits DO tolerate better is EMP's, (Electro-Magnetic Pulses), from sources such as nuclear blasts - that's why the Russians continued using vacuum tubes. EMP's will damage or destroy destroy most semiconductors within range, (often even in equipment that isn't powered at the time), but properly hardened vacuum tube circuits usually survive.
Your comment was modded 'Funny', but in my experience as a Gnome user, it is sadly true. At that, I've always found Gnome to be the best of a bad lot as far as Linux goes. But with this latest lot of 'innovations' from Gnome, Fluxbox with a few other apps added is looking more and more attractive.
There's new for the sake of improvement, and there's new for the sake of being new. Gnome seems to fall into the latter category pretty consistently.
And in fact, it's likely that you have several in your home, in various electronic devices. Aerogel capacitors, (sometimes known as 'supercaps'), have been around for years:
1) Print 2) Scan 3) OCR 4) PDF 5) Lend at will, as many times as you please.
Although it isn't legal, in this case I think it could and should be regarded as simple civil disobedience. Prohibition was brought down largely by people's flagrant disregard for it. If enough people thumb their noses at this foolishness, then perhaps we can all stop fighting about obsolete business models and get on with taking full advantage of the things our shiny new technology offers us.
PayPal can not be morally bankrupt as it is a corporation, not a person. Morals do not apply to corporations.
Under the law, a corporation IS a person. If 'morals do not apply', then that's because we fail to apply them. Shame on us - we should be hounding these bastards out of existence.
...who in their right mind would ever use this fucktards as their clearing house for financial transactions?
...who in their right mind would ever use these fucktards FOR ANY REASON AT ALL, given their long history of consistently conscienceless, corrupt, evil behavior?"
Entirely aside from the direct attack on privacy that asking for social networking login info represents, this policy is an insidious way of 'un-levelling' the playing field in favour of ass-kissing suck-ups who would sell their souls for job advancement. Those who co-operate are likely to get preferential treatment come review time, while those who protect their privacy, (and by extension ours as well), are likely to be discriminated against in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Such prying into individuals' personal lives on the part of ANY employer should be made illegal, with stiff penalties for first offences and even more onerous ones for repeat offences.
45-day review of the policy? Get stuffed, you bastards! You don't own ANY part of me beyond working hours, and my private life is none of your fucking business!
They have little interest in actually responding properly to authority and I'd be absolutely and utterly shocked if, in a decade when they're adults, if they have any more respect for the laws of society.
Whoa, dude! What are you, a crystal ball reader? If you're not, then you have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what the future holds for these students.. You seem to think they have a 'bad attitude'. What if they're just bored? What if their teachers are clueless assholes who have no competence either at teaching in general or in the subject they're teaching? What if they're getting bullied and no-one is intervening? What if these kids are getting a more comprehensive and useful education outside of school?
This GPS thing is the beginning of a slippery slope. If the practice remains unchallenged, it may not be long before our children are wearing ankle monitors, as some criminals are required to wear. If you think this isn't the logical outome here, have a look at history, and read '1984' again while you're at it. Orwell's timeline was a few decades off, but his predictions were pretty much on target.
they have more important things to worry about like clean water, healthy food, safety from oppressive governments and war. I doubt they care about free internet.
Yeah, modern technology has absolutely nothing to do with clean water and healthy food, and Internet access has nothing to do with safety from oppressive governments and war. Do you not follow the news?
I never browse by category, so I never expect to use those links on the left that sit there... I'm on a wide screen so that would just give me more white space and nothing useful...
I also never use those links, however I use two 4X3 monitors, (with 16X9, two-wide = too-wide), and I would REALLY like to have that side space for article/comment text. So if the 'architects' of this design are married to the 'Slashdot Toolbar', then they might as well put those left-side links in pulldowns on the top bar. I hate pulldowns as much as the next (sensible) person, but if it comes to a choice between having no pulldowns and having more space for real content, I'll take the space.
Another attempt by Facebook to undermine its users' privacy? I'm shocked!
Facebook introduces some hugely draconian abuse of privacy, then 'backs off' - lather, rinse, repeat. And every time this happens, their users, and the public-at-large, get more and more immune to the controversy, and more and more immune to the abuse. That's why Facebook, and Google, and your-favourite-evil-giant-company, and your-country's-government, do this kind of thing.
Sadly, as a society, we keep falling for it, over and over again.
Admittedly Toronto's electric buses weren't battery operated - they were powered by overhead wires - but they were in service from 1947 to 1993. That start date beats South Korea by more than 6 decades.
As usual, the sensible view is somewhere in the middle. Yes, the details of nuclear shipments and defense deployments need to be secret. No, diplomatic insults DO NOT need to be secret.
Governments the world over keep far, far too many secrets. Most of them are designed merely to avoid embarrassment and/or recriminations and/or removal from power, or to further the interests of corporate elites and other power-mongers. These secrets ought to be revealed expeditiously, repeatedly, and mercilessly until the evil they support comes crashing down.
From TFA: "Mr. Assange views the very notion of government secrecy as totalitarian in nature".
Well, I tend to agree with Assange here. SOME secrets are necessary, but governments have gone way, way, way too far in this area. The whole world needs to get past the notion of secrecy being the primary currency of national and international affairs. So a country's people and/or leaders are offended/embarrassed/hurt/angered over some revelation? Get over it! For the most part, institutionalized secrecy is a vile addiction, not a necessary element of either government or diplomacy.
Again, from TFA: "An indictment of (Assange) could be followed by the judicial articulation of far more speech-limiting legal principles than currently exist with respect to even the most responsible reporting about both diplomacy and defense".
Wait a minute here. So Assange should keep his mouth shut just so the U.S. and other countries don't clamp down on 'journalistic freedoms'? Here's the real upshot of that argument: don't push us or we may become MORE totalitarian. To that I say, Bullshit!
The Internet is doing to politics and diplomacy what it did to recording industry extortionists and Hollywood rip-off artists. The genie can't be stuffed back into the bottle, and the sooner governments realize that there is no more 'business as usual', the better off we'll all be.
Slashdot Mirror
...so can we consider this an update of a 'flying carpet'?
If HTTPS becomes ubiquitous, then there will be much more opportunity, as well as more incentive, to break the encryption consistently and therefore nullify the security.
On the other hand, if everything is encrypted, the traffic that truly NEEDS encryption will be less likely to call attention to itself, because the 'needle' will be in a bigger 'haystack'.
All in all I think it'll end up being a wash.
After all, they seem to be pulling out all the stops to ensure that our privacy is a thing of the past. Maybe they just don't want the advertisers on their turf.
The solution is to stop electing assholes.
But who would we elect? Seriously. Not that there aren't lots of viable candidates, but how many of those candidates have access to the millions of dollars required to run a campaign big enough to have even a small chance of winning an election?
Politics is a rich man's game, and that essentially means that it's a game for corporations. The game is rigged, the playing field is nowhere near level, and the days are long gone, (if they ever really existed), when people were elected based on their ability to do the job and represent their constituents effectively.
Putting meaningful, effective, and most importantly low, limits on election spending, is the only way to prevent corporations from buying their preferred form of governance. But they already own the government, so changes in election spending rules won't be coming any time soon.
You just can't do that without dumbing-down the system.
Sure you can. GUI tools can be written to allow tweaking without directly editing config files. I use such tools under Gnome, I like them, and I wish there were more of them and that they were better than they are. But the people who like tinkering needn't use such tools at all. (I'm perfectly capable of editing config files and writing scripts to tweak my computing experience - I just don't really want to).
The 90% of users who are not hobbyists and are not tinkerers and do not find the technology fascinating already have several companies that are happy to meet their needs.
Yes, but there are still compelling reasons for that "90% of users" to adopt FOSS, such as lower operating costs, better community support, and a higher degree of autonomy. And there are still compelling reasons for the FOSS community to accommodate them, such as a broader user base to support development of software that otherwise might not garner enough users to achieve critical mass.
The availability of tools to make Linux friendlier and more accessible to the average computer user, need not compromise geek appeal and nerd cred.
The only way to make extremely RF tolerant electronics is to use analog vacuum tube based designs (the Russians continued using tube designs into the 90's).
Tube-based designs are no more tolerant than semiconductor-based designs, as far as interference is concerned. What tube-based circuits DO tolerate better is EMP's, (Electro-Magnetic Pulses), from sources such as nuclear blasts - that's why the Russians continued using vacuum tubes. EMP's will damage or destroy destroy most semiconductors within range, (often even in equipment that isn't powered at the time), but properly hardened vacuum tube circuits usually survive.
Your comment was modded 'Funny', but in my experience as a Gnome user, it is sadly true. At that, I've always found Gnome to be the best of a bad lot as far as Linux goes. But with this latest lot of 'innovations' from Gnome, Fluxbox with a few other apps added is looking more and more attractive.
There's new for the sake of improvement, and there's new for the sake of being new. Gnome seems to fall into the latter category pretty consistently.
And in fact, it's likely that you have several in your home, in various electronic devices. Aerogel capacitors, (sometimes known as 'supercaps'), have been around for years:
http://powerelectronics.com/portable_power_management/batteries/power_aerogel_capacitors_support/
1) Print
2) Scan
3) OCR
4) PDF
5) Lend at will, as many times as you please.
Although it isn't legal, in this case I think it could and should be regarded as simple civil disobedience. Prohibition was brought down largely by people's flagrant disregard for it. If enough people thumb their noses at this foolishness, then perhaps we can all stop fighting about obsolete business models and get on with taking full advantage of the things our shiny new technology offers us.
PayPal can not be morally bankrupt as it is a corporation, not a person. Morals do not apply to corporations.
Under the law, a corporation IS a person. If 'morals do not apply', then that's because we fail to apply them. Shame on us - we should be hounding these bastards out of existence.
...who in their right mind would ever use this fucktards as their clearing house for financial transactions?
...who in their right mind would ever use these fucktards FOR ANY REASON AT ALL, given their long history of consistently conscienceless, corrupt, evil behavior?"
There, fixed that for you!
Entirely aside from the direct attack on privacy that asking for social networking login info represents, this policy is an insidious way of 'un-levelling' the playing field in favour of ass-kissing suck-ups who would sell their souls for job advancement. Those who co-operate are likely to get preferential treatment come review time, while those who protect their privacy, (and by extension ours as well), are likely to be discriminated against in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Such prying into individuals' personal lives on the part of ANY employer should be made illegal, with stiff penalties for first offences and even more onerous ones for repeat offences.
45-day review of the policy? Get stuffed, you bastards! You don't own ANY part of me beyond working hours, and my private life is none of your fucking business!
They have little interest in actually responding properly to authority and I'd be absolutely and utterly shocked if, in a decade when they're adults, if they have any more respect for the laws of society.
Whoa, dude! What are you, a crystal ball reader? If you're not, then you have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what the future holds for these students.. You seem to think they have a 'bad attitude'. What if they're just bored? What if their teachers are clueless assholes who have no competence either at teaching in general or in the subject they're teaching? What if they're getting bullied and no-one is intervening? What if these kids are getting a more comprehensive and useful education outside of school?
This GPS thing is the beginning of a slippery slope. If the practice remains unchallenged, it may not be long before our children are wearing ankle monitors, as some criminals are required to wear. If you think this isn't the logical outome here, have a look at history, and read '1984' again while you're at it. Orwell's timeline was a few decades off, but his predictions were pretty much on target.
they have more important things to worry about like clean water, healthy food, safety from oppressive governments and war. I doubt they care about free internet.
Yeah, modern technology has absolutely nothing to do with clean water and healthy food, and Internet access has nothing to do with safety from oppressive governments and war. Do you not follow the news?
Now we're gonna have to worry about drivers playing games...
Fuel from Olive Oyl?
...is an effort at branding herself. And I'd be happy to help her. Can I start the fire and hold the branding iron, dear Sarah?
"Well, er, um... why do you ask sweetie?"
"Because there's a picture of me in a Trojan advertisement saying I like them."
"AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
'Nuff said.
I never browse by category, so I never expect to use those links on the left that sit there... I'm on a wide screen so that would just give me more white space and nothing useful...
I also never use those links, however I use two 4X3 monitors, (with 16X9, two-wide = too-wide), and I would REALLY like to have that side space for article/comment text. So if the 'architects' of this design are married to the 'Slashdot Toolbar', then they might as well put those left-side links in pulldowns on the top bar. I hate pulldowns as much as the next (sensible) person, but if it comes to a choice between having no pulldowns and having more space for real content, I'll take the space.
Another attempt by Facebook to undermine its users' privacy? I'm shocked!
Facebook introduces some hugely draconian abuse of privacy, then 'backs off' - lather, rinse, repeat. And every time this happens, their users, and the public-at-large, get more and more immune to the controversy, and more and more immune to the abuse. That's why Facebook, and Google, and your-favourite-evil-giant-company, and your-country's-government, do this kind of thing.
Sadly, as a society, we keep falling for it, over and over again.
Gee - do you think we can successfully upload an 'emergency patch' to DHS and TSA?
Admittedly Toronto's electric buses weren't battery operated - they were powered by overhead wires - but they were in service from 1947 to 1993. That start date beats South Korea by more than 6 decades.
that 'cheaters' is an anagram of 'teachers'?
As usual, the sensible view is somewhere in the middle. Yes, the details of nuclear shipments and defense deployments need to be secret. No, diplomatic insults DO NOT need to be secret.
Governments the world over keep far, far too many secrets. Most of them are designed merely to avoid embarrassment and/or recriminations and/or removal from power, or to further the interests of corporate elites and other power-mongers. These secrets ought to be revealed expeditiously, repeatedly, and mercilessly until the evil they support comes crashing down.
From TFA: "Mr. Assange views the very notion of government secrecy as totalitarian in nature".
Well, I tend to agree with Assange here. SOME secrets are necessary, but governments have gone way, way, way too far in this area. The whole world needs to get past the notion of secrecy being the primary currency of national and international affairs. So a country's people and/or leaders are offended/embarrassed/hurt/angered over some revelation? Get over it! For the most part, institutionalized secrecy is a vile addiction, not a necessary element of either government or diplomacy.
Again, from TFA: "An indictment of (Assange) could be followed by the judicial articulation of far more speech-limiting legal principles than currently exist with respect to even the most responsible reporting about both diplomacy and defense".
Wait a minute here. So Assange should keep his mouth shut just so the U.S. and other countries don't clamp down on 'journalistic freedoms'? Here's the real upshot of that argument: don't push us or we may become MORE totalitarian. To that I say, Bullshit!
The Internet is doing to politics and diplomacy what it did to recording industry extortionists and Hollywood rip-off artists. The genie can't be stuffed back into the bottle, and the sooner governments realize that there is no more 'business as usual', the better off we'll all be.