Did you notice the warning at the end? Apparently, trolling has been illegal in the UK since 1990. Gotta hand it to the Brits, they may have crappy weather & crappy food, but they sure do know how to make a solid police state.
given that everyone is suffering over a few people's illegal actions
Sounds more like everyone is suffering over a local court's clumsy trampling of free speech in order to protect the profits of some broadcast monopoly-holders.
there is no compelling reason I can think of that the privileges associated with copyrighted works, such as the ability to legally make a private use copy for your own personal use, should actually apply.
Who cares, man? Data is just an idea. Anyone who wants ideas to be owned, longs for tyranny. Fuck that shit.
You don't suppose there might be really basic issues with free, anonymous, classified ads?
You all can pick on the study all you want, but I find it hard to believe anyone can reject the basic premise that anonymity with zero cost advertising is an unnecessarily high risk environment in which to do your business.
Have you ever actually sold anything on Craigslist? Or bought anything through it? I'm guessing you have not. Because if you had, you'd realize there is no true anonymity. Contact between the buyer & seller is through email or phone, both of which are decidedly traceable.
Yes, craigslist anonymizes the email address of the seller on the posted ad. However, that affects only the initial email from the seller to the buyer - the (potential) buyer does not see the seller's email until the seller writes back. All subsequent interaction is done via non-anonymized email or telephone.
1. Remove all mission critical systems from the internet.
This is already a goal of all reasonable security folks. However it's harder to implement than to talk about.
2. Remove all other systems that do not require the internet from the internet.
Good luck with that, and let us know how it works out for you.
3. Do not allow employees to take their non-internet laptops and use the internet from home.
Why bother giving them laptops if they can't take them anywhere? Save some cash, make employees do their sensitive work at the office. This will be a big political struggle, of course, as many people holding powerful positions within an institution will resent the restriction of their working freedom.
4. Do not allow employees to use removable media.
I've never heard of an organization that does, intentionally, allow use of removable media on secure computers.
5. Preferably use a thin client setup so that the machines can more easily be secured.
Sounds like a good idea to me. However I'm sure thin clients have their own security issues I haven't considered.
The problem I see here is, that whereas Silly Valley jobs create wealth (and knowledge, infrastructure, etc) for the nation, defense jobs only consume wealth. Maybe that's part of the plan, tho... If we bankrupt the country with lavish expenditure on an oppressive security apparatus, we may just get rid of all our enemies. We'll no longer have wealth for anyone to envy, global influence for anyone to resent, or freedom for anyone to hate. Good plan, right?
Do we have any reason at all to suspect that Facebook is not cooperating with the Algerian regime? So far FB has never done anything that would make me afford them the benefit of the doubt. I would be shocked - nay, it would strain my belief - if they didn't willingly cooperate with the government.
Yes, it's fucking obvious that a government can send thugs to beat the crap out of a person until he divulges a password. However, this is expensive (wrench wielding henchman isn't exactly a career that makes mama proud, so you need to pay them a lot); intrusive (you need to bust into someone's house to do it, and you might just get shot in the process); and likely to provoke violent backlash from the beaten person's family & friends. Probably works great under normal conditions, when there are just a handful of activists to crush. In revolutionary times there are tens of thousands of dissidents active at the same time, and government simply doesn't have enough thugs to go wrench them all.
The kind of people who can organize a stable government are the kind of people who are already on the winning side.
Under almost any regime, there are some castes of powerful, intelligent, and/or well-connected people who are not winners. For example, heavy industry magnates in post-Cold War America. Groups like this often do have the traits necessary to organize a stable government - and in fact sometimes these "powerful loser" groups manage to get control and set up a new government. However, they typically have no interest in benefiting the common man, they just want to displace the old elites with themselves.
The idea may have merit in theory, but so far efforts at implimentation have been less than successful.
One might say the same of government in general. Or maybe it's a not a very meaningful statement, because its meaning depends entirely on how one defines 'success'.
As much as we may disdain the political repression of the Soviet Union, or the class exploitation & imperialism of the United States, we must also acknowledge that both states also made great advances in production, education, building, etc. Should we call either of them "a success"? I don't know.
I know people who avoid using cars or gasoline-powered vehicles. I myself find not using Microsoft products quite easy.
Me too, but getting one's life setup to live car-free and Microsoft-free requires a good bit of effort - one has to really want it. Most people don't have the kind of vehement feeling about Facebook, that would make them put a lot of effort into avoiding it.
If you have friends, family, and/or coworkers who have internet access - and most people do - you will be solicited to join Facebook by these people. They will think you are batty for refusing to join, and you will spend a lot of time explaining your reasons why to various people. Since those people use FB to communicate, you will be at least partially out of the loop. It's totally doable, but a pain in the ass.
an extended period of hazing: working around the clock, being awakened at random intervals, etc.
The bizarre schedule is typically justified as 'necessary' due to shortage of physicians relative to demand. While this shortage no doubt exists, it is by no means unique to the medical profession -- how many of you readers have more workers than work to do at your job? Most companies I have been with, the amount of work to be done always exceeds the manpower available for it. Yet workers are never expected to stay on the job for days at a stretch.
Maybe doctors are different because they deal with life and death? This might be true if life hinged on every single interaction between doctor and patient. But it does not. Some of these interactions are more critical than others, and existing medical practice acknowledges this. If I showed up at the emergency ward on New Years Even complaining of a sore throat, I would not expect to be seen promptly if at all.
Yet despite the fact that physician time is already tightly rationed, and despite the widespread acknowledgement that physician productivity and quality of care are severely impacted by overwork, little effort is made to change. Don't look at individual cases -- doctor X was paged at 3am because of horrible catastrophe Y -- but at the organizational structure that causes this to happen again and again, as a matter of course. The work-to-death hours are a cultural choice made by the medical community. I will leave it to others to speculate about the psychology behind it.
I am quite certain this culture has the effect of keeping otherwise capable people out of the medical profession. I have met several extremely bright people working in software who said they had never seriously considered becoming physicians precisely because of the long and godawful hazing period.
the man doesnt seem like the kind of person youd want running one (and not because of the assault allegations).
Why, what's it matter if he's the all-time greatest douchebag in the history of douchebaggery? The big qualification to be spokesman for a free information site, is a serious dedication to freedom of information. Assange seems to have that one down pretty well.
I also find our [sic] definition to be not only far more narrow and constricting in accounting for complicated relationship dynamics, but also far more black and white and ideological.
Yup, I think rape -- a pretty heinous crime -- should be defined narrowly. The penalties for rape were set in a not-too-distant past when rape was defined narrowly in law, as use of physical force or immediate threat thereof to coerce a person into sex.
If you think beginning consensual sexual activity then failing to immediately stop upon verbal request ought to be a crime, fine argue that point, but please come up with a new name. This act is not the same as rape, any more than mugging is the same as murder.
There's lots of open source code protected by copyright, but not generating any profit. Should that all go into public domain and not have any copyright protection?
It's not that the works are unprofitable - it's that they're inaccessible. Most open source code is pretty easy to get a hold of.
So if I write a book or a song or something I have to give it to you for free because it's *your* culture? Wow, I've seen some wacky stuff on copyright around here but this takes the cake.
You don't have to give it out to anyone - feel free to keep it all to yourself, or take whatever measures you see fit (DRM) to keep your song from being copied. Make anyone who wants a copy sign a long, onerous legal agreement - not some contract of adhesion or EULA a court won't enforce, but a real signed contract - promising to take strict security precautions, and pay massive damages if they let your data get loose. (And see how many people want to listen to your song badly enough to go along.)
But once I've got a copy of the song - one I didn't steal btw, it was given to me quite freely by the network - I don't see why you can tell me what to do with my damn copy. The spec of hard disk on which the song is stored belongs to me in a much more real way, than the idea of the song belongs to you.
Most folks decided a long time back that the work of their own hands should go to those of their own choosing
Whose hands made the copies we are talking about? Nobody wants to take the original manuscript - the work of the creator's hands - from the his widow & children.
Maybe a more clear way to put the issue at hand: An author has created and made public a piece of data which many find useful or enjoyable to copy. Does this oblige those who have made a copy of that data to support the author's widow, progeny, pets, etc long after the author himself has died? There is zero possibility that payments will encourage the dead man to produce more data.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you notice the warning at the end? Apparently, trolling has been illegal in the UK since 1990. Gotta hand it to the Brits, they may have crappy weather & crappy food, but they sure do know how to make a solid police state.
given that everyone is suffering over a few people's illegal actions
Sounds more like everyone is suffering over a local court's clumsy trampling of free speech in order to protect the profits of some broadcast monopoly-holders.
there is no compelling reason I can think of that the privileges associated with copyrighted works, such as the ability to legally make a private use copy for your own personal use, should actually apply.
Who cares, man? Data is just an idea. Anyone who wants ideas to be owned, longs for tyranny. Fuck that shit.
Seriously dudes, mod this shit up, it IS funny because it's true.
They are a bank. Whether they are currently regulated as such in the US is irrelevant to the question of whether they are one.
Thank you, sir, for reasoning like an honest man not a lawyer.
You don't suppose there might be really basic issues with free, anonymous, classified ads?
You all can pick on the study all you want, but I find it hard to believe anyone can reject the basic premise that anonymity with zero cost advertising is an unnecessarily high risk environment in which to do your business.
Have you ever actually sold anything on Craigslist? Or bought anything through it? I'm guessing you have not. Because if you had, you'd realize there is no true anonymity. Contact between the buyer & seller is through email or phone, both of which are decidedly traceable.
Yes, craigslist anonymizes the email address of the seller on the posted ad. However, that affects only the initial email from the seller to the buyer - the (potential) buyer does not see the seller's email until the seller writes back. All subsequent interaction is done via non-anonymized email or telephone.
1. Remove all mission critical systems from the internet.
This is already a goal of all reasonable security folks. However it's harder to implement than to talk about.
2. Remove all other systems that do not require the internet from the internet.
Good luck with that, and let us know how it works out for you.
3. Do not allow employees to take their non-internet laptops and use the internet from home.
Why bother giving them laptops if they can't take them anywhere? Save some cash, make employees do their sensitive work at the office. This will be a big political struggle, of course, as many people holding powerful positions within an institution will resent the restriction of their working freedom.
4. Do not allow employees to use removable media.
I've never heard of an organization that does, intentionally, allow use of removable media on secure computers.
5. Preferably use a thin client setup so that the machines can more easily be secured.
Sounds like a good idea to me. However I'm sure thin clients have their own security issues I haven't considered.
The problem I see here is, that whereas Silly Valley jobs create wealth (and knowledge, infrastructure, etc) for the nation, defense jobs only consume wealth. Maybe that's part of the plan, tho... If we bankrupt the country with lavish expenditure on an oppressive security apparatus, we may just get rid of all our enemies. We'll no longer have wealth for anyone to envy, global influence for anyone to resent, or freedom for anyone to hate. Good plan, right?
Do we have any reason at all to suspect that Facebook is not cooperating with the Algerian regime? So far FB has never done anything that would make me afford them the benefit of the doubt. I would be shocked - nay, it would strain my belief - if they didn't willingly cooperate with the government.
God I'm sick of that cartoon.
Yes, it's fucking obvious that a government can send thugs to beat the crap out of a person until he divulges a password. However, this is expensive (wrench wielding henchman isn't exactly a career that makes mama proud, so you need to pay them a lot); intrusive (you need to bust into someone's house to do it, and you might just get shot in the process); and likely to provoke violent backlash from the beaten person's family & friends. Probably works great under normal conditions, when there are just a handful of activists to crush. In revolutionary times there are tens of thousands of dissidents active at the same time, and government simply doesn't have enough thugs to go wrench them all.
We have no justice system in the US, we have an exploitation system.
Yup.
I wish people would think about that, when they are about to vote for "law & order" candidates who wish to expand the police state.
The kind of people who can organize a stable government are the kind of people who are already on the winning side.
Under almost any regime, there are some castes of powerful, intelligent, and/or well-connected people who are not winners. For example, heavy industry magnates in post-Cold War America. Groups like this often do have the traits necessary to organize a stable government - and in fact sometimes these "powerful loser" groups manage to get control and set up a new government. However, they typically have no interest in benefiting the common man, they just want to displace the old elites with themselves.
The idea may have merit in theory, but so far efforts at implimentation have been less than successful.
One might say the same of government in general. Or maybe it's a not a very meaningful statement, because its meaning depends entirely on how one defines 'success'.
As much as we may disdain the political repression of the Soviet Union, or the class exploitation & imperialism of the United States, we must also acknowledge that both states also made great advances in production, education, building, etc. Should we call either of them "a success"? I don't know.
What the hell is the point of the "check in" feature, anyways? Why is it supposed to be appealing to people?
I know people who avoid using cars or gasoline-powered vehicles. I myself find not using Microsoft products quite easy.
Me too, but getting one's life setup to live car-free and Microsoft-free requires a good bit of effort - one has to really want it. Most people don't have the kind of vehement feeling about Facebook, that would make them put a lot of effort into avoiding it.
If you have friends, family, and/or coworkers who have internet access - and most people do - you will be solicited to join Facebook by these people. They will think you are batty for refusing to join, and you will spend a lot of time explaining your reasons why to various people. Since those people use FB to communicate, you will be at least partially out of the loop. It's totally doable, but a pain in the ass.
Wow - and here, I didn't even realize 90% of the Chinese already had boats, let alone parrots and eye patches!
an extended period of hazing: working around the clock, being awakened at random intervals, etc.
The bizarre schedule is typically justified as 'necessary' due to shortage of physicians relative to demand. While this shortage no doubt exists, it is by no means unique to the medical profession -- how many of you readers have more workers than work to do at your job? Most companies I have been with, the amount of work to be done always exceeds the manpower available for it. Yet workers are never expected to stay on the job for days at a stretch.
Maybe doctors are different because they deal with life and death? This might be true if life hinged on every single interaction between doctor and patient. But it does not. Some of these interactions are more critical than others, and existing medical practice acknowledges this. If I showed up at the emergency ward on New Years Even complaining of a sore throat, I would not expect to be seen promptly if at all.
Yet despite the fact that physician time is already tightly rationed, and despite the widespread acknowledgement that physician productivity and quality of care are severely impacted by overwork, little effort is made to change. Don't look at individual cases -- doctor X was paged at 3am because of horrible catastrophe Y -- but at the organizational structure that causes this to happen again and again, as a matter of course. The work-to-death hours are a cultural choice made by the medical community. I will leave it to others to speculate about the psychology behind it.
I am quite certain this culture has the effect of keeping otherwise capable people out of the medical profession. I have met several extremely bright people working in software who said they had never seriously considered becoming physicians precisely because of the long and godawful hazing period.
journalists are more likely to have the connections to properly redact incriminating documents.
TFTFY
Only when it began to close itlself,
??
the man doesnt seem like the kind of person youd want running one (and not because of the assault allegations).
Why, what's it matter if he's the all-time greatest douchebag in the history of douchebaggery? The big qualification to be spokesman for a free information site, is a serious dedication to freedom of information. Assange seems to have that one down pretty well.
I also find our [sic] definition to be not only far more narrow and constricting in accounting for complicated relationship dynamics, but also far more black and white and ideological.
Yup, I think rape -- a pretty heinous crime -- should be defined narrowly. The penalties for rape were set in a not-too-distant past when rape was defined narrowly in law, as use of physical force or immediate threat thereof to coerce a person into sex.
If you think beginning consensual sexual activity then failing to immediately stop upon verbal request ought to be a crime, fine argue that point, but please come up with a new name. This act is not the same as rape, any more than mugging is the same as murder.
but it appears that these works do have legitimate owners who don't necessarily agree.
legal != legitimate
There's lots of open source code protected by copyright, but not generating any profit. Should that all go into public domain and not have any copyright protection?
It's not that the works are unprofitable - it's that they're inaccessible. Most open source code is pretty easy to get a hold of.
So if I write a book or a song or something I have to give it to you for free because it's *your* culture? Wow, I've seen some wacky stuff on copyright around here but this takes the cake.
You don't have to give it out to anyone - feel free to keep it all to yourself, or take whatever measures you see fit (DRM) to keep your song from being copied. Make anyone who wants a copy sign a long, onerous legal agreement - not some contract of adhesion or EULA a court won't enforce, but a real signed contract - promising to take strict security precautions, and pay massive damages if they let your data get loose. (And see how many people want to listen to your song badly enough to go along.)
But once I've got a copy of the song - one I didn't steal btw, it was given to me quite freely by the network - I don't see why you can tell me what to do with my damn copy. The spec of hard disk on which the song is stored belongs to me in a much more real way, than the idea of the song belongs to you.
Most folks decided a long time back that the work of their own hands should go to those of their own choosing
Whose hands made the copies we are talking about? Nobody wants to take the original manuscript - the work of the creator's hands - from the his widow & children.
Maybe a more clear way to put the issue at hand: An author has created and made public a piece of data which many find useful or enjoyable to copy. Does this oblige those who have made a copy of that data to support the author's widow, progeny, pets, etc long after the author himself has died? There is zero possibility that payments will encourage the dead man to produce more data.