Encryption can be a matter of public health. Putting a back door into it might save lives. A back door should be required. Just like vaccines. Of course, there will be people who want to retain their liberties but they'll have to stay off the public infrastructure with their old fashioned rights - if you can imagine such a thing. How quaint!
Yup. That's what you sound like. The only thing you skipped was "think of the children!"
Show me 30,000 people killed a year by strong encryption - heck, show me 3 people killed a year by strong encryption.
Holy fuck dude. "Some people don't use their rights. They lead fulfilling lives. I'll decide what rights you have and how you use them - because I'm a coward."
Wow, have built quite the strawman, haven't you? There's a big difference between your "rights" and letting a car drive for you. Driving isn't even a right, it's a privilege, tell a judge that takes away your license for DUI that he's violating your constitutional right to drive, and he'll laugh you out of the court.
Again, why not just add, "Think of the children!!!" I sure as hell hope you don't have children. I'm sure as hell you'll find a way to keep justifying this to yourself. Now it's a matter of pride and it's not like you're going to actually stop wanting to take other people's ability to appreciate their freedoms. Never mind that this system can't work without it being monitored...
I do have children, but don't worry, they are all grown up so I can't poison them with my crazy thinking anymore. Neither one has a car because they both live in World Class cities with adequate transit (NYC & Paris)
I'm not going to change your mind, your ego is not willing to step aside. However, maybe you can consider not breeding or something. Unlike you, I won't force you to not breed. I'll just ask you nicely, for the sake of humanity.
People are just not good drivers, surely you can admit to that? 30,000 driving deaths a year, 30% of them due to DUI alone. The driving fatality is falling and will fall even further as manufacturers add more automatic features like collision avoidance, blind spot checking, pedestrian warnings, lane keeping, etc. You won't even notice that you bought a self-driving car because it's not going to be a revolution, it's going to be a slow-evolution.
Except you're not actually in the majority and, you're right, there's nothing you can do about it. Cars almost outnumber humans in the US. We have enough cars for almost every man, woman, and child. We have more cars than can be legally driven at any one time.
As I said above 809 automobiles for 1000 people. That doesn't include motorcycles and the 1000 people is not how many can lawfully drive but includes children, people without a license, and city dwellers. And no, no most Americans do not live in a city - unless you want to redefine the word city. That stat's made up and is only true for the reasons listed in my above post.
So, how do you like that?
No one is disputing that America has a lot of cars, but I don't see how that relates to people moving to self-driving cars? My household owns 2 cars, but that doesn't mean that we enjoy driving, the car is just a tool to go places. I'd be happy to turn driving over to the car if it can get me there as safe or more safely as I can get myself there. People drive today because they have no choice (outside of a few cities with good transit).
And no, no most Americans do not live in a city - unless you want to redefine the word city. That stat's made up and is only true for the reasons listed in my above post.
“urbanized areas” of 50,000 or more people... For the 2010 count, the Census Bureau has defined 486 urbanized areas, accounting for 71.2 percent of the U.S. population. http://www.citylab.com/housing...
This is America. You'll have better luck taking the firearms than you will taking the automobiles and the ability to control them.
Fewer and fewer young people are getting licenses -- By the time self driving cars are ready, that is the generation that will be deciding whether or not to embrace self driving cars. http://nypost.com/2016/01/31/w...
And many drivers are forgoing car ownership through car sharing. Put the two together (fewer licensed drivers, acceptance of a non-owned vehicle), and the intersection is a self driving car. http://www.alixpartners.com/en...
You can't have it your way and there's shit all you can do about it.
It's not "my" way, it's the way of the drivers 20 years from now.
Christ if drivers in general knew what they were doing 95% of the time the roads would be safer. Your assumption is that there is an entire mile in one go where the car doesn't know what it's doing. Where as the reality is that in ever 100 seconds it might have a blip for 0.01 of a second which amounts to 1 mile in every 10,000. It's the same with human drivers, they make mistakes, a lot of mistakes, but the good thing is that they recover from those errors before something bad happens.
For example I don't know a single person on the road who hasn't once gone "shit, they are stopping faster than I thought" and had to push hard on the brakes.
And how many people have gone "Shit, where'd that deer come from", or "shit, this road is more slippery than I thought, wish I'd slowed down before this curve, now I'm going down an embankment, wish I wasn't heading right for that big tree".
It's a matter of public health - if self driving cars will save lives, they should be required. Just like vaccines. Of course, there will be the anti-robot-cars movement, but they'll have to stay on private property with their old fashioned manually driving cars -- with steering wheels if you can imagine such a thing! How quaint!
I have a suspicion that for 99 percent of the time, they will reduce accidents to a amazing minimum.
That one percent is going to be a spectacular bloodbath. Might be interesting to watch a few thousand cars slam into each other at 80 miles per hour. Just don't think about the carnage.
I used to ride shotgun with a friend that was an EMT in a volunteer fire department - I've seen some real blood baths, no self driving cars required. I was on brain hunting duty at one accident scene, though I think he did that to keep me staring at the guy that lost his head (literally)
But if the annual fatalities drop from 99% from 30,000 to 300, that still sounds like a net win, no matter how bloody the aftermath.
That's not the point. This isn't about replacing cars with trains or living in rat warrens where overpriced crap is shipped in (by truck drivers no less). This is about replacing self driving cars with 'autonomous' ones. Just because you would be happy with 35Mph doesn't mean the rest of us should slow down and lose liberty because you want to be lazy. If you don't want to drive, pay someone to drive or move to the rat warren nearest you.
There's a reason we still put humans behind the controls of already mostly automated vehicles. Even there, look what happens to airline pilots: they get bored, drink, fall asleep, and when something does go wrong they're not in a condition to deal with it. Same thing with train operators, and that solution only has to deal with a fixed path. Since ground-based free-roving is much more complex than air or track, I have strong doubts about these ever being safer. Maybe if/when quantum computing really takes off and sensor tech is better than it is now...
Your individual freedom ends just before my bumper, so if self-driving cars result in a significant decrease in accidents, I have little sympathy for your desire to be able to T-bone my car in an intersection and kill my family when you missed the stop sign because you sneezed.
I said that *I* would be willing to buy a 35mph self driving car, I don't expect you to, but when self-driving cars can drive the speed limit on roads of all types (and perhaps even reduce congestion through better traffic management), then driving your own car will be a novelty that only a few holdouts like you will want.
The media age of AAA members is 54 years old, in the 15 - 20 years before self driving cars reach that level of driving, most of those members will be too old to drive safely (and ironically, they'll be happy for the freedom afforded to them through self-driving cars)
I think you've watched too much sci-fi. Also, there is more to life than safety. Having control over one's transport is a core component of liberal (as in liberty) society.
You should travel more - many many people live happy fulfilling lives without ever driving a car. Or some drive but don't own a car. And it's not just in developing nations, many people in world class cities enjoy the freedom of *not* having a car. I would buy a self-driving car today even if it was limited to 35mph since I get no special joy from driving.
Some people enjoy shooting guns, and I have no problem with that as long as they do it in wilderness areas or shooting ranges where they have little or no chance of killing people. I hope cars become the same way - the death rate by cars in the USA just recently dropped low enough to equal the death rate by gun, and I hope that self-driving cars make it drop dramatically lower. 10,000 people die each year in drunk driving accidents alone and self driving cars never get drunk.
Company that will be redundant in a world of autonomous cars produces survey that shows people won't accept the very thing that will make it redundant.
Film at 11.
Look at their demographics and their survey results make sense:
Median Age: 54 69% of members are age 55+ 10% of members are age 18-34
Older people are naturally going to reject new technology, my parents have never gotten an ATM card, when they need cash, they go to a bank and cash a check, like they always did. And they carry vast sums (in my eyes) of cash around with them -- dad has over $500 in his wallet (mostly in 100's tucked in a "hidden" picket), *and* he has another thousand hidden in his pickup *and* they have a safe at home with another $1000+.
I haven't ridden in one but I would vote for feeling safe in an autonomous vehicle today. Why? I trust the engineers to account for 99.99% of the driving I intend to do.
So if you drive 10000 miles a year, that means there will be one mile a year when your car has no idea what it's doing.
1. Response time is only a small part of the equation. 2. It's not all about what YOU want.
It's a matter of public health - if self driving cars will save lives, they should be required. Just like vaccines. Of course, there will be the anti-robot-cars movement, but they'll have to stay on private property with their old fashioned manually driving cars -- with steering wheels if you can imagine such a thing! How quaint!
I'd rather see the law changed so companies (and people) that file bogus takedown notices are fined (or better, face criminal charges, or both)
If fair damages for each infringing song range from $750 to $80,000 per song, then the record industry can afford to hire lawyers to thoroughly vet each takedown notice. Even if it takes 15 minutes to review the video and ensure it's a valid copyright claim, that lawyer will be saving the industry $3000 - $320,000 per hour. They'll all be rich!
The price is right. Its game over now to get literally anything online. I'm building an interface for my garage doors. Also, I still cant get my hands on a pi zero.
Sparkfun has it for pre-order ($39.95) and says they'll have 1800 units for sale on March 15th. Though they don't say how many pre-orders they already have.
because the last thing *anyone* wants is to waste the time of an Anonymous Coward.
Lol. My user ID is less than half of yours. Posting anonymous lately due to a stalky ex. Anyhuw, thanks for the reasonable explanation, that makes it less annoying.
I'm pretty sure that having a low slashdot uid also went out of vogue 20 years ago. And besides this is just an account I use to get around a stalky ex, my real account has a single digit uid.
Why the fuck do you quote the full posts of 2 parents up, just to add two lines of your own? That just wastes my time scanning for what was added, and is just plain annoying. This isn't email...
I can't speak for that poster but the reason I do it is because it's difficult to edit Slashdot posts on a phone - it's hard to mark and cut text when it exceeds the size of the input window (vertical scrolling is hard to control). Perhaps if Slashdot weren't locked into a 20 year old UI, then people would be able to do what you ask, because the last thing *anyone* wants is to waste the time of an Anonymous Coward.
The British spy agency GCHQ, with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewalls made by Juniper Networks.
I hope we all understand now what “acquired the capability” means. The NSA planted a programmer within Jupiter Networks. The was no other way to “acquire" this capability.
Except that he just referenced a claim that the British acquired the capability by being told about the backdoor, and he then goes on to say that the Chinese acquired the same capability by discovering the backdoor through reverse-engineering. So there is another way after all.
Which raises the following possibilities, each just as plausible as "The NSA planted a programmer":
1. The Chinese planted a programmer, and the NSA or GCHQ discovered it via reverse-engineering and shared it with the other. 2. The Chinese planted a programmer, and the NSA discovered it during review of source-code shared as a condition of purchasing for sensitive government use. 3. A programmer was paid to create the backdoor by a non-governmental entity interested in corporate espionage, and all the state actors discovered it via reverse-engineering. 4. The backdoor was created unintentionally (e.g. failure to remove white-box test code before going to production), and all the actors discovered it via reverse-engineering and/or source review.
Basically, John presents no evidence whatsoever for his claim that the NSA caused the backdoor.
Ultimately, I do agree with his point he does make is that code inspections can catch and close both intentional and unintentional backdoors. But the rest of the article is FUD.
If the NSA discovered the backdoor on their own and didn't share it with Juniper so they could close it, that's arguably worse than if the NSA planted it themselves. At least if they planted it themselves, they could convince themselves that it's buried too deep to be discovered, but if they stumbled upon it themselves, then they *knew* it was discoverable and that it's likely that others had discovered it too.
It is true that if you can play it, you can copy it, but it is also possible to watermark the product with unique keys that can be traced to the original purchaser - and since they require server connection, the IP address of the person who made the first gen copy from the "locked" product.
I've never seen a store record the serial number of a disk before I buy it, but if they start doing so, then just shoplift it before you rip it and post it online... or buy it used from eBay using a throwaway debit card, or one of the myriad of other ways to hide the purchaser's identity.
Having more cars than licensed drivers sounds good for the environment - it means some aren't being driven...
That's only "good" if no resources are needed to build a car. Depending on how far down the chain you track resources, building a car has a higher carbon footprint than driving it:
the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of over half a million cars.
Is half a million cars a lot in a nation that has over 230 million cars on the road? LA County alone has over 7 million cars and trucks registered.
Having more cars than licensed drivers in the USA sounds like more of an environmental disaster... and worse yet, China already has more drivers than the entire population of the USA, and the numbers are still climbing.
That's hackable. The other solution has codes generated by the servers. I think it's safer.
Both solutions are hackable. If someone can hack the app to get to the private key, they can hack the app to get to the set of pre-generated codes. I'm assuming that you're not suggesting that public key cryptography itself is hackable.
But the nice thing about PKI is that the app doesn't have to set an upper bound on how many transactions can be completed offline, while if a static set of single-use codes is downloaded, that puts a hard cap on how many transactions can be completed offline.
Anything that can protect the list of single-use codes (i.e. only generated when I request it, expired and replaced daily, etc) can also be used to protect the private key.
The bank can chose to put their own cap on the number of offline PKI transactions, but it doesn't have to be baked into the app based on how many codes it downloaded, and if I call the bank from Bagladesh and say that I'm stranded there and I *have* to use my card, they can lift the cap for me.
The bigger question is, why shouldn't it be safe to connect to any random Wifi hotspot? Literally everything should be using https by now, SSL certs are even available for free, so there's no excuse not to. I often connect to public Wifi hotspots (and use a VPN since I know that everything is *not* secured with SSL) and there's really no other option (other than "never use public wifi hotspots") since there is no way to know whether the "Starbucks" or "Starbucks - SFO" or "Starbucks - Public" SSID is the legitimate one.
I've been saying this for years but the major challenge is allowing the transaction to go forward when that is not available like travelling to another country with roaming off or simply in the middle of nowhere with no access to data all together.
I think there's a way to make this work and considering the big CC companies have plenty of resources at hand I'm surprised things are moving quicker.
The app can keep a set of one-time-use codes for times when your phone is off the network. Use of such codes could trigger more stringent fraud protection for those transactions.
Or it can just keep a private key for each user and generate codes with that private key on its own when it's off network -- the bank can validate those offline codes against their copy of the public key. They can rekey periodically so even if someone compromises the app, the key has a limited lifetime.
I've been saying this for years but the major challenge is allowing the transaction to go forward when that is not available like travelling to another country with roaming off or simply in the middle of nowhere with no access to data all together.
I think there's a way to make this work and considering the big CC companies have plenty of resources at hand I'm surprised things are moving quicker.
The app can keep a set of one-time-use codes for times when your phone is off the network. Use of such codes could trigger more stringent fraud protection for those transactions.
Slashdot Mirror
For a tech site Slashdot sure has its cluster of Luddites.
It's no wonder they're being replaced by H1Bs. I bet most guys here still want to use punch cards as well.
I suspect that Slashdot's demographic has aged as much as AAA's - not many young kids around here these days.
Encryption can be a matter of public health. Putting a back door into it might save lives. A back door should be required. Just like vaccines. Of course, there will be people who want to retain their liberties but they'll have to stay off the public infrastructure with their old fashioned rights - if you can imagine such a thing. How quaint!
Yup. That's what you sound like. The only thing you skipped was "think of the children!"
Show me 30,000 people killed a year by strong encryption - heck, show me 3 people killed a year by strong encryption.
Holy fuck dude. "Some people don't use their rights. They lead fulfilling lives. I'll decide what rights you have and how you use them - because I'm a coward."
Wow, have built quite the strawman, haven't you? There's a big difference between your "rights" and letting a car drive for you. Driving isn't even a right, it's a privilege, tell a judge that takes away your license for DUI that he's violating your constitutional right to drive, and he'll laugh you out of the court.
Again, why not just add, "Think of the children!!!" I sure as hell hope you don't have children. I'm sure as hell you'll find a way to keep justifying this to yourself. Now it's a matter of pride and it's not like you're going to actually stop wanting to take other people's ability to appreciate their freedoms. Never mind that this system can't work without it being monitored...
I do have children, but don't worry, they are all grown up so I can't poison them with my crazy thinking anymore. Neither one has a car because they both live in World Class cities with adequate transit (NYC & Paris)
I'm not going to change your mind, your ego is not willing to step aside. However, maybe you can consider not breeding or something. Unlike you, I won't force you to not breed. I'll just ask you nicely, for the sake of humanity.
People are just not good drivers, surely you can admit to that? 30,000 driving deaths a year, 30% of them due to DUI alone. The driving fatality is falling and will fall even further as manufacturers add more automatic features like collision avoidance, blind spot checking, pedestrian warnings, lane keeping, etc. You won't even notice that you bought a self-driving car because it's not going to be a revolution, it's going to be a slow-evolution.
Except you're not actually in the majority and, you're right, there's nothing you can do about it. Cars almost outnumber humans in the US. We have enough cars for almost every man, woman, and child. We have more cars than can be legally driven at any one time.
As I said above 809 automobiles for 1000 people. That doesn't include motorcycles and the 1000 people is not how many can lawfully drive but includes children, people without a license, and city dwellers. And no, no most Americans do not live in a city - unless you want to redefine the word city. That stat's made up and is only true for the reasons listed in my above post.
So, how do you like that?
No one is disputing that America has a lot of cars, but I don't see how that relates to people moving to self-driving cars? My household owns 2 cars, but that doesn't mean that we enjoy driving, the car is just a tool to go places. I'd be happy to turn driving over to the car if it can get me there as safe or more safely as I can get myself there. People drive today because they have no choice (outside of a few cities with good transit).
And no, no most Americans do not live in a city - unless you want to redefine the word city. That stat's made up and is only true for the reasons listed in my above post.
“urbanized areas” of 50,000 or more people ... For the 2010 count, the Census Bureau has defined 486 urbanized areas, accounting for 71.2 percent of the U.S. population.
http://www.citylab.com/housing...
This is America. You'll have better luck taking the firearms than you will taking the automobiles and the ability to control them.
Fewer and fewer young people are getting licenses -- By the time self driving cars are ready, that is the generation that will be deciding whether or not to embrace self driving cars.
http://nypost.com/2016/01/31/w...
And many drivers are forgoing car ownership through car sharing. Put the two together (fewer licensed drivers, acceptance of a non-owned vehicle), and the intersection is a self driving car.
http://www.alixpartners.com/en...
You can't have it your way and there's shit all you can do about it.
It's not "my" way, it's the way of the drivers 20 years from now.
But if the annual fatalities drop from 99% from 30,000 to 300, that still sounds like a net win, no matter how bloody the aftermath.
And if farts were gold, we'd be stinking rich!
I'm using your gold farts:
I have a suspicion that for 99 percent of the time, they will reduce accidents to a amazing minimum.
Admittedly you left yourself a lot of wiggle room with that sentence, perhaps you were already feeling gassy.
Christ if drivers in general knew what they were doing 95% of the time the roads would be safer. Your assumption is that there is an entire mile in one go where the car doesn't know what it's doing. Where as the reality is that in ever 100 seconds it might have a blip for 0.01 of a second which amounts to 1 mile in every 10,000. It's the same with human drivers, they make mistakes, a lot of mistakes, but the good thing is that they recover from those errors before something bad happens.
For example I don't know a single person on the road who hasn't once gone "shit, they are stopping faster than I thought" and had to push hard on the brakes.
And how many people have gone "Shit, where'd that deer come from", or "shit, this road is more slippery than I thought, wish I'd slowed down before this curve, now I'm going down an embankment, wish I wasn't heading right for that big tree".
It's a matter of public health - if self driving cars will save lives, they should be required. Just like vaccines. Of course, there will be the anti-robot-cars movement, but they'll have to stay on private property with their old fashioned manually driving cars -- with steering wheels if you can imagine such a thing! How quaint!
I have a suspicion that for 99 percent of the time, they will reduce accidents to a amazing minimum.
That one percent is going to be a spectacular bloodbath. Might be interesting to watch a few thousand cars slam into each other at 80 miles per hour. Just don't think about the carnage.
I used to ride shotgun with a friend that was an EMT in a volunteer fire department - I've seen some real blood baths, no self driving cars required. I was on brain hunting duty at one accident scene, though I think he did that to keep me staring at the guy that lost his head (literally)
But if the annual fatalities drop from 99% from 30,000 to 300, that still sounds like a net win, no matter how bloody the aftermath.
That's not the point. This isn't about replacing cars with trains or living in rat warrens where overpriced crap is shipped in (by truck drivers no less). This is about replacing self driving cars with 'autonomous' ones. Just because you would be happy with 35Mph doesn't mean the rest of us should slow down and lose liberty because you want to be lazy. If you don't want to drive, pay someone to drive or move to the rat warren nearest you.
There's a reason we still put humans behind the controls of already mostly automated vehicles. Even there, look what happens to airline pilots: they get bored, drink, fall asleep, and when something does go wrong they're not in a condition to deal with it. Same thing with train operators, and that solution only has to deal with a fixed path. Since ground-based free-roving is much more complex than air or track, I have strong doubts about these ever being safer. Maybe if/when quantum computing really takes off and sensor tech is better than it is now...
Your individual freedom ends just before my bumper, so if self-driving cars result in a significant decrease in accidents, I have little sympathy for your desire to be able to T-bone my car in an intersection and kill my family when you missed the stop sign because you sneezed.
I said that *I* would be willing to buy a 35mph self driving car, I don't expect you to, but when self-driving cars can drive the speed limit on roads of all types (and perhaps even reduce congestion through better traffic management), then driving your own car will be a novelty that only a few holdouts like you will want.
The media age of AAA members is 54 years old, in the 15 - 20 years before self driving cars reach that level of driving, most of those members will be too old to drive safely (and ironically, they'll be happy for the freedom afforded to them through self-driving cars)
I think you've watched too much sci-fi. Also, there is more to life than safety. Having control over one's transport is a core component of liberal (as in liberty) society.
You should travel more - many many people live happy fulfilling lives without ever driving a car. Or some drive but don't own a car. And it's not just in developing nations, many people in world class cities enjoy the freedom of *not* having a car. I would buy a self-driving car today even if it was limited to 35mph since I get no special joy from driving.
Some people enjoy shooting guns, and I have no problem with that as long as they do it in wilderness areas or shooting ranges where they have little or no chance of killing people. I hope cars become the same way - the death rate by cars in the USA just recently dropped low enough to equal the death rate by gun, and I hope that self-driving cars make it drop dramatically lower. 10,000 people die each year in drunk driving accidents alone and self driving cars never get drunk.
Company that will be redundant in a world of autonomous cars produces survey that shows people won't accept the very thing that will make it redundant.
Film at 11.
Look at their demographics and their survey results make sense:
http://www.aaapublishingnetwor...
Median Age: 54
69% of members are age 55+
10% of members are age 18-34
Older people are naturally going to reject new technology, my parents have never gotten an ATM card, when they need cash, they go to a bank and cash a check, like they always did. And they carry vast sums (in my eyes) of cash around with them -- dad has over $500 in his wallet (mostly in 100's tucked in a "hidden" picket), *and* he has another thousand hidden in his pickup *and* they have a safe at home with another $1000+.
I haven't ridden in one but I would vote for feeling safe in an autonomous vehicle today. Why? I trust the engineers to account for 99.99% of the driving I intend to do.
So if you drive 10000 miles a year, that means there will be one mile a year when your car has no idea what it's doing.
You may as well let your dog drive for that mile: http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.c...
I hope they have much better than four 9's of coverage before self-driving cars are let loose on the world.
1. Response time is only a small part of the equation.
2. It's not all about what YOU want.
It's a matter of public health - if self driving cars will save lives, they should be required. Just like vaccines. Of course, there will be the anti-robot-cars movement, but they'll have to stay on private property with their old fashioned manually driving cars -- with steering wheels if you can imagine such a thing! How quaint!
I'd rather see the law changed so companies (and people) that file bogus takedown notices are fined (or better, face criminal charges, or both)
If fair damages for each infringing song range from $750 to $80,000 per song, then the record industry can afford to hire lawyers to thoroughly vet each takedown notice. Even if it takes 15 minutes to review the video and ensure it's a valid copyright claim, that lawyer will be saving the industry $3000 - $320,000 per hour. They'll all be rich!
The price is right. Its game over now to get literally anything online. I'm building an interface for my garage doors. Also, I still cant get my hands on a pi zero.
Sparkfun has it for pre-order ($39.95) and says they'll have 1800 units for sale on March 15th. Though they don't say how many pre-orders they already have.
because the last thing *anyone* wants is to waste the time of an Anonymous Coward.
Lol. My user ID is less than half of yours. Posting anonymous lately due to a stalky ex. Anyhuw, thanks for the reasonable explanation, that makes it less annoying.
I'm pretty sure that having a low slashdot uid also went out of vogue 20 years ago. And besides this is just an account I use to get around a stalky ex, my real account has a single digit uid.
Why the fuck do you quote the full posts of 2 parents up, just to add two lines of your own?
That just wastes my time scanning for what was added, and is just plain annoying.
This isn't email...
I can't speak for that poster but the reason I do it is because it's difficult to edit Slashdot posts on a phone - it's hard to mark and cut text when it exceeds the size of the input window (vertical scrolling is hard to control). Perhaps if Slashdot weren't locked into a 20 year old UI, then people would be able to do what you ask, because the last thing *anyone* wants is to waste the time of an Anonymous Coward.
From TFA:
The British spy agency GCHQ, with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewalls made by Juniper Networks.
I hope we all understand now what “acquired the capability” means. The NSA planted a programmer within Jupiter Networks. The was no other way to “acquire" this capability.
Except that he just referenced a claim that the British acquired the capability by being told about the backdoor, and he then goes on to say that the Chinese acquired the same capability by discovering the backdoor through reverse-engineering. So there is another way after all.
Which raises the following possibilities, each just as plausible as "The NSA planted a programmer":
1. The Chinese planted a programmer, and the NSA or GCHQ discovered it via reverse-engineering and shared it with the other.
2. The Chinese planted a programmer, and the NSA discovered it during review of source-code shared as a condition of purchasing for sensitive government use.
3. A programmer was paid to create the backdoor by a non-governmental entity interested in corporate espionage, and all the state actors discovered it via reverse-engineering.
4. The backdoor was created unintentionally (e.g. failure to remove white-box test code before going to production), and all the actors discovered it via reverse-engineering and/or source review.
Basically, John presents no evidence whatsoever for his claim that the NSA caused the backdoor.
Ultimately, I do agree with his point he does make is that code inspections can catch and close both intentional and unintentional backdoors. But the rest of the article is FUD.
If the NSA discovered the backdoor on their own and didn't share it with Juniper so they could close it, that's arguably worse than if the NSA planted it themselves. At least if they planted it themselves, they could convince themselves that it's buried too deep to be discovered, but if they stumbled upon it themselves, then they *knew* it was discoverable and that it's likely that others had discovered it too.
It is true that if you can play it, you can copy it, but it is also possible to watermark the product with unique keys that can be traced to the original purchaser - and since they require server connection, the IP address of the person who made the first gen copy from the "locked" product.
I've never seen a store record the serial number of a disk before I buy it, but if they start doing so, then just shoplift it before you rip it and post it online... or buy it used from eBay using a throwaway debit card, or one of the myriad of other ways to hide the purchaser's identity.
Having more cars than licensed drivers sounds good for the environment - it means some aren't being driven...
That's only "good" if no resources are needed to build a car. Depending on how far down the chain you track resources, building a car has a higher carbon footprint than driving it:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
Anyhow, that "fact" isn't true, at least as of the given dates.
Try "licensed drivers".
the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of over half a million cars.
Is half a million cars a lot in a nation that has over 230 million cars on the road? LA County alone has over 7 million cars and trucks registered.
Having more cars than licensed drivers in the USA sounds like more of an environmental disaster... and worse yet, China already has more drivers than the entire population of the USA, and the numbers are still climbing.
That's hackable. The other solution has codes generated by the servers. I think it's safer.
Both solutions are hackable. If someone can hack the app to get to the private key, they can hack the app to get to the set of pre-generated codes. I'm assuming that you're not suggesting that public key cryptography itself is hackable.
But the nice thing about PKI is that the app doesn't have to set an upper bound on how many transactions can be completed offline, while if a static set of single-use codes is downloaded, that puts a hard cap on how many transactions can be completed offline.
Anything that can protect the list of single-use codes (i.e. only generated when I request it, expired and replaced daily, etc) can also be used to protect the private key.
The bank can chose to put their own cap on the number of offline PKI transactions, but it doesn't have to be baked into the app based on how many codes it downloaded, and if I call the bank from Bagladesh and say that I'm stranded there and I *have* to use my card, they can lift the cap for me.
You need line of sight, it's nice for a few things but not much.
Build the receivers into the top of monitors and it would be great for office use.
The bigger question is, why shouldn't it be safe to connect to any random Wifi hotspot? Literally everything should be using https by now, SSL certs are even available for free, so there's no excuse not to. I often connect to public Wifi hotspots (and use a VPN since I know that everything is *not* secured with SSL) and there's really no other option (other than "never use public wifi hotspots") since there is no way to know whether the "Starbucks" or "Starbucks - SFO" or "Starbucks - Public" SSID is the legitimate one.
I've been saying this for years but the major challenge is allowing the transaction to go forward when that is not available like travelling to another country with roaming off or simply in the middle of nowhere with no access to data all together.
I think there's a way to make this work and considering the big CC companies have plenty of resources at hand I'm surprised things are moving quicker.
The app can keep a set of one-time-use codes for times when your phone is off the network. Use of such codes could trigger more stringent fraud protection for those transactions.
Or it can just keep a private key for each user and generate codes with that private key on its own when it's off network -- the bank can validate those offline codes against their copy of the public key. They can rekey periodically so even if someone compromises the app, the key has a limited lifetime.
I've been saying this for years but the major challenge is allowing the transaction to go forward when that is not available like travelling to another country with roaming off or simply in the middle of nowhere with no access to data all together.
I think there's a way to make this work and considering the big CC companies have plenty of resources at hand I'm surprised things are moving quicker.
The app can keep a set of one-time-use codes for times when your phone is off the network. Use of such codes could trigger more stringent fraud protection for those transactions.