Or not.... damnit.... stupid submit button is right below the "post anonymously" checkbox. Too early for fine motor control. Someone with a fuller list will get modded up I hope. Sorry.:(
This is a really good point, and I suspect you are right.
The airports will forbid the use of non-airport systems via a condition in the carriers lease, and a clause in the boilerplate on your ticket. (Which you are required to have to get through the security gate....) So I suspect this will be a short lived victory.
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Wow. That's a strong take on ads. I guess the root of my point is vigilantism is seldom appropriate. Assuming you live in some sort of democracy, the law says they have the right to pay the owner of the billboard to display their message.
If I was your next door neighbor, and stood in my front yard making faces at you, you don't have the legal right (no matter how tempting) to come over an punch me in the mouth.
By the same token, the locations, size, and content of billboards is legally governed. If someone puts one up in my front yard, they're gonna have serious legal problems. But I'd work through the legal system.
I'd love to see billboards illegal everywhere. (In fact, the city I live in therorically is trying to accomplish that) The sad truth is that the majority of citizens have allowed it to be legal to post billboards in certain locations, and while I object, I have to respect that. Just as I expect the other citizens to follow the law and not loot and burn my house while I'm at work.
If you disagree with a law, get it changed. I'd gladly help you.
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Well, I agree with you in a utopian way, but not ultimately in practice. I think most billboard companies (e.g. ClearChannel, Reagan, etc...) are scum, but I have trouble encouraging destruction of someone else's paid property. Defacing a billboard often destroys the original "value".
As ugly, and often offensive as billboards are, the simple fact is that someone paid for their message. If your favorite charity or local business spend a few thousand on a billboard and it got defaced, it would be a blow because the entity lost money. Just because the billboard happens to be for Viagra (or some other massively corporate thing), doesn't really change things. It's sorta like saying it's okay to shoplift from WalMart because it's not hurting anyone.
The only time I agree with defacing signs is those hidious illegal signs which spring up on telephone polls and at intersections lately. ("Need Money Quick? Call 555-1212", "LA Weight Loss, Call 555-1212", and my favorite "Want signs like these? Call 555-1212") These signs aren't legal, and I think are fair game for whatever...
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"I've been graffing (its an industry term) for the last 5 years."
Don't get me wrong, I adore good graffiti, but I've never thought of it as an "industry." Doesn't that sorta go against the whole independant counter-culture (or pseudo-counter-culture) idea? Industries tend to be regulated, which would be both a good and a terrible thing for graffiti.
The idea of desiginated walls for graffiti is a good one, and I have seen some which have some nice pieces in that past. I also enjoy some of the stuff I see in the wild. I think a lot of the problem is that there are places where the owner of the property doesn't really care if you paint up their wall, and there are places where it is clearly unacceptable to do so.
For example, I don't have trouble with stuff I see painted on temporary walls around construction sites, or on top of those endless rows of exactly the same ad. By the same token, I beleive it's totally out of line when someone hits the side of a mom-n-pop grocery store, or a street sign.
I suspect you're not the kind of "graffer" who would do that, but just like the whole "hacker" vs. "cracker" thing, the few dumbasses out there are the most visable, and give the whole medium a bad name.
The issue is where do we set limits between the right to bear a squirt-pistol and the right to bear crew-served artillery? Obviously there needs to be a ceiling somewhere, but quantifying it is hard.
I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of citizens are opposed to private ownership of large artillery pieces. If they weren't, then the "ceiling" for gun ownership wouldn't be centered about "Class 3" weapons (fully auto, sound suppressed, etc), it would be around warhead yield or some such thing.
The argument was about the limitations being placed on rocket engines are overly restrictive. I think there "obviously" needs to be a point at which we regulate, but the criteria for regulation is going to be difficult to determine.
The propellent in rocketry is not well suited to explosives. Major truck bombs, like the one used in OKC, were ammonium nitrate and diesel. Technically that's a low power explosive too. Elsewhere in the thread someone was saying that a two foot rocket is starting to sound like an RPG, but they are forgetting that the lethality of an RPG is because they carry very exotic shaped charge high explosive and penetrators which turn into jets of plasma upon impact. Even assuming the rocket is easy to make, the warhead takes a lot more work.
And finally, I totally agree with you about stealing explosives. Without sounding to much like the "when guns are illegal only criminals will have guns" crowd, putting restrictions of materials that an accomplished amateur chemist could make from common ingredients isn't going to stop a serious terrorist. Look at the problem with illegal drugs. Thousands and thousands of less-than-rocket-scientists manage to cook up crystal meth in dilapidated shacks and bathrooms all the time.
Sure, a terrorist would prefer to buy off the shelf, but I don't think it's going to stop them if they can't. And, more to the point, they could always just knock over a quarry for some dynamite.
I agree about the notion of terrorism and rockets, after all, one of the first modern rockets with the V2 used by Hilter in WWII.
I'd have to disagree about the delivery mechanism part though. I used to build these things as a kid, and the amount of thrust needed to get just a tiny bit of payload into the air is enormous. The biggest thing I ever saw was an extremely light disposable camera, and the rocket it took to lift it used several of the biggest engines available at the time.
Even when they do lift off, they go straight up, and come down on a parachute. (If you are lucky) a few blocks away in a high wind. The mechanics and force required for lateral flight is a lot greater than almost any amateur can overcome.
And as for biowar and dirty bombs... I dunno... Heat and unreliablity aren't something I'd want to put my hard-obtained anthrax into. And most the radioactive metals are extremely massive. Combine that with the problems associated with lateral flight, and it's a pretty iffy proposition. I think anyone who obtains and uses radioactivity or biologicial agents is going to scare the pants of the general public reguardless of the delivery method.
I'd be much more concerned about people using balloons. If you're just trying to indiscrimately drop sometime nasty on people, a weather balloon and a tank of helium would reliably put a lot more payload in the air for a lot less money and exposure. The Japanese were able to achieve mild success during WWII using incerdiary devices and similiar devices from halfway across the world to the west coast of the US.
The problem is scale. In a lot of places in the US, you can buy small fireworks, but I can't go to a commerical supplier and pick up professional mortars and shells without some sort of license.
I've got no problem with there being limitations of people's ability to build, say, something which uses propellant measured in pounds (or tons). When it's clear the rocket poses a clear threat if accidents occur or it is intentionally misused. But people should still be able to build smaller things without massive hurdles.
I don't want to get much into guns because it is a bit of a charged subject. The issue is where do we set limits between the right to bear a squirt-pistol and the right to bear crew-served artillery? Obviously there needs to be a ceiling somewhere, but quantifying it is hard.
The question is where do you set the ceiling? And what are reasonable requirements for people who wish to exceed it? Model-rocketry is heading towards the squirt-pistol range of the scale...
I don't know the specifics of the rockets fired into Israel, but I suspect the damage done (even psychological) is greater when the same effort and material is put into simplier devices.
A rocket is pretty much a controlled bomb. Every joule spent on proplusion is a joule not spent on explosive. An amateur might be able to cobble together a rocket which would fly vaguely where the builder pointed it over a distance of a maybe a few miles, but the "warhead" would likely be only a few pounds. (plus the kinetic energy of the rocket.) If you took the same rocket fuel, and used it to make a big-ass truck bomb, you'd gain several magnitudes of precision and lethality.
Rockets are good for putting a small amount of explosive in a place you can't easily access. Since we're not going to outlaw trucks, fertilizer, and diesel fuel any time soon, the best way to "terrorize" the people remains.
Ultimately I'd much prefer the "evil doers" put their energy into exotic ideas like homemade rockets rather than simple ones like truck bombs and the classic "cheap-assault-rifle-and-a-crowd". The number of victims would be lower.
Someone could make a weapon out of rocketry supplies, but anyone with the skills to build a halfway decent rocket could build a pretty impressive bomb a lot easier.
Wow... I've started my first flame war! (I was afraid of that...) I'm going to do my best to avoid fanning the flames, so here goes:
I think the abuses of the executive branch have been growing since the 60's. Trying to point to one figure or party and say they are bad isn't really productive, because when it's the party you believe in, the offenses don't seem as bad.
For example, "state's rights" is a hot button issue for some people. The power the states once had has been greatly eroded by the power of the Federal government. For the most part, I personally could care less, because these erosions don't hurt me, so I don't care what leader/party/etc was behind the changes which lead to the current balance of power. (I can come up with examples where lack of state's rights matters to me it does, but on the whole I'm happy....) So, from my perception, nothing is "wrong" with this. However, there are people who have interests they feel are several impacted by the loss of state's rights, so the actions that lead to them are very distasteful to them.
The point is simply that the judicial branch is becoming more and more minimalized.
In a more appropriate forum I'd welcome the "Clinton vs. Bush" debate, but for now, let's just say: "Abuse of power == teh sux0r"
I completely agree with you in principle. Without getting overly political, I still feel it's appropriate to point out that lately the SCOTUS (and the judicial branch as a whole) has had a lot of its powers reduced. The PATRIOT act is just on of the ways the legislative branch has given the executative branch the ability to bypass the courts. The requirements for trials, warrants, and openness have been greatly reduced post 9/11. There was recently even a bill introduced to allow Congress to overrule the courts if they wanted. (Fortunately this got voted/laughed down).
This is to say nothing about the current "the president's executive priviledge overrides any other law" memos that are making news lately...
Finally, it's important to remember that the judicial system as a whole, especially the SCOTUS, is the slowest branch. As you pointed out, they mut wait to be called, and they almost always act after the fact. If legislators pass an unconsitutional law, or the executive branch steps on someone's rights, there is a considerable window in which the law is in effect, and those people rights are trampled before the SCOTUS can put a stop to it.
Checks and balances are the cornerstone of the US system, and branches fighting for power is in the design. Unfortunately there have been some fairly substantial swings lately which will hopefully right themselves soon.
I'm certainly not advocating physically harming spammers. (As tempting as it may be sometimes) However, I think the profit margin on spam isn't large enough to offset the cost of physical protection, protection fees, etc... The "market" for spam is pretty much saturated by definition, and even though the "production" cost is low, the number of customers is equally low. In your follow-up you do mention that getting rid of the few fools who buy via spam would fix the problem quickly, but there will always be a hardcore group of idiots out there.
Ultimately, I think the solution is to go after the providers of the goods and services sold through spam. Somewhere money changes hands, and that tends to be a fairly traceable transaction. (And when it isn't, the government is usually interested even more) I realize the vendors could claim the spam was sent by competitors, but it would be a start.
Speaking as a former citizen of Baltimore, the issue is not with the police or the law-abiding citizens. I went to Johns Hopkins, were getting stuck up was really more of a question of "when" rather than "if". Baltimore has some desperately poor people, which unfortunately often results in desperate criminals, who do desperate things. My roommate had some wires(!) stolen out of his car. (They broke the window and cut off the wires coming from the cassette adapter in his crapped out stereo). I got held up by three losers with a.38 my senior year, and they actually got caught.
The police were fabulous about the whole thing. The resulting trial left a really bad taste in my mouth. To start with, when you are a witness, you have to sit either in the "Victims Services" office, or outside the courtroom on a hard wooden bench. You get to do this whenever there is a chance you might be called. Usually this means you sit there from 9 AM to 5 PM. If you get lucky, they'll call you when they think you might be needed. In my experience, this consisted of "Hello, we need you at the courthouse in 25 minutes. *click*" And then nothing once you got there.
The police fell into the same "witness" catagory I did. Since I got stuck up at 3 AM, the cops who handled the case were night shift guys. So, they got to work all night, and then spend all day in the courthouse waiting to be called. And they took it seriously. One guy showed up with mild food poisoning, because if they called him and he wasn't there, the preps could get off. So, they didn't sleep or see their families much.
Let me tell you a bit about the "Victim's Services" room. It was a long, narrow, hastily converted place filled with a mix of bored witnesses and severely tramatized victims. I saw mothers crying and screaming hysterically to prosecuters "How could you let him get off! He killed my baby in front of me! He's gonna kill me next!" And they meant it. Truly horrifying stuff. Not a comfortable place to sit and chill with a book for eight hours. Oh, and even though this was pre-9/11, you couldn't bring any electronics in. No laptops, no discmans, nothing. Just you, a book, and people living though things most people are fortunate to never even imagine. It was surreal, and made me feel almost guilty for being in there for something as minor as getting stuck up.
The other option was to sit outside the courtroom. On a highbacked oak bench set against the wall. And I mean sit. Not lay, not sprawl, not slouch. Sit. Because if you didn't a bailiff would come by and make you do so. Oh, and this is also where the defense witnesses get to hang out. So, a lot of my time there was spent in the brooding presence of one of the dumbasses who robbed me. Two of the three perps rolled over on the third, and plead to reduced charges. So they still went to prison for 35-50 years, (multiple counts + prior felonies + handgun in the commission adds up quick) but not for their involvement in my case. (They robbed multiple people that night). Needless to say, having one of these guys handcuffed to the adjacent bench didn't improve the ambiance.
I spent something like 5 days there, and even had to reschedule job interviews around it. (Try telling a prospective employee you need to reschedule due to a court date... fun times...) I testified once for 7 minutes in open court, and spent a lot of time waiting around while the defense tried to suppress what I said. (Another story, but the short version was the defense maintained that as a white person I wasn't qualified to look at a lineup of non-white people because even if I did correctly identify the suspect it must be a lucky guess. Their argument fell apart when I revealed that I not only knew people who didn't look like me, but grew up going to a school which was 87% non-white. Was pretty funny...)
I don't want to make it seem like I was some sort of martyr. They robbed 10 different people that night, and every one of them was there the same as I was.
I know it's a nitpick, but "The Internet" is a lot bigger than just what you see in your browser. I agree that there are legitimate uses for javascript, css, and even flash. But all languages evolve. Just because a language goes from version 1 to version 2 doesn't mean it can only add bells and whistles, sometimes it's good to take away "features" which have proven themselves to be liabilities.
Two points in response:
1) motion sensors for lights conserve energy
The lights in the park I'm talking about are not there to conserve energy. They are there to pop on and say: "hey, look out for the pervert sneaking up the hill!" If you go to a hardware store, motion-sensitive lights are usually sold as "security lighting". Yeah, they are dual-use, but most of them are security-oriented.
2) The sensors they are talking about track you
The sensors may indicate probable presence, but this is a far cry from "tracking" While it is possible to build sensors with the sensitivity to detect and discern footfalls, the sensors in question are much courser in resolution. These are for detecting vehicles. They don't pop up out of the ground, jab you in the arm, and implant a radio beacon, they simply make a light come on in some guard shack saying "look at sector *whatever* and see if we should be concerned". Unless the Area 51 boys have stolen some really good alien technology, these sensors can't identify you, your license plates, or divine your ATM PIN. Would you prefer a bored teenager with an automatic rifle taking your picture and following you around?
You have a "reasonable" expectation of privacy in public places. I'm a pretty big fan of personal privacy. I strongly oppose things like RFID, CAPPS, and all the myriad "anti-terror" BS which is supposed to be making the world a safer place. At the same time, I think the sensors in the article are a perfectly reasonable, cheap, and effective way to help keep all the over-curious nuts from going where they aren't supposed to.
Ultimately, this isn't even about the sensors. It's not about personal freedom. It's about a dumbass poking at things until he got a response. If the Fed's put an observation post in the middle of the road running by my house, I'd put up a huge stink, but I sure as hell wouldn't go over to it with a screwdriver. (And assuming I did, I wouldn't have the local news record my actions) Society is about playing by rules. Even if you think one party is cheating, you don't get to cheat back.
Thanks, I did RTFA, hence "around" meaning "surrounding" not "on" or "in" meaning "contained within". And "public" means anyone is allowed to access it, but it is still technically owned by the govenment. A lot of stuff is found on public land which is government owned (or sanctioned) which isn't to be messed with. Roads, lighting, utilities, etc... The park down the street from my house has lights connected to motion sensors, how is that different?
I don't have a lot of sympathy for this guy. Let's review: He finds security sensors around well-known secure area, digs up a bunch of them and opens them, and calls in a TV news crew to watch him do so, and then gets fingered when one of the devices comes up missing. Not suprisingly, the Fed's want to talk to him.
Now, granted he did rebury the devices, and granted, they were in the public park, not Area 51 itself, but it's not hard for the average person to see why this is a bad idea. There's a lot of stuff in "public" areas you're not allowed to monkey with. If a public park provided restrooms with those annoying motion-sensor faucets, does anyone think they would be within their rights to repeatedly take them apart?
Sure, there is a worry in this case about the government monitoring private citizens in a public place, but "approach" sensors invade privacy a lot less than swarms of armed guards peering through binoculars from the fenceline 24x7.
In short, this guy crossed the line. I understand being intrigued, and even outraged by these devices, but making a map is one thing, and once he figured out what the devices were he never should have touched them.
(Just had a scary thought on preview: what if the odd buried device he found had turned out to be a errant landmine? Of course it's massively criminal for it to be there, but there is a reason you don't got poking unknown military hardware...)
I realize I haven't the slightest idea what sort of business you are in, but I'm a little surprised to see you reaching for the SLA so quickly. I understand that recourse for outages is the who reason for a SLA, but have you had problems before? Are you going to pursue this if it turns out the problem wasn't the result of negligience and they made good faith efforts to get things resolved?
It's completely plausable that a 90 minute outage is a big deal for you, but I have to wonder if it was such a big deal if why you didn't have redundancy built in. Sometimes, sh*t happens, especially when computers are involved.
On the other hand, if you don't enforce a contract, does it lose it's teeth?
I hope I'm not trolling here, especially since I sacrified the modpoints I'd already spent on this article. I'm just curious as to your position.
This whole thing is ludicris. First of all, I don't think anyone is entitled to derivatives of parts of speech contributed to the general language. If I name 10 ^ 6653 a "haloplex" that's great, but it doesn't mean I can control people using the name. A single integer is not intellectual property. 17 is not, 10^100 is not.
What about other word derived terms? Trillian? Is whoever can prove a DNA link to the person who first uttered "million" , "billion", etc going to sue people for refering to someone as a "millionaire"? Or the governments of the world for issuing budgets in billions and trillions?
I may be wrong, and I suppose I shouldn't trust evil Google to check, but I thought the actual name for the number was a "googleplex"? And why aren't they going after GooglePlex Media?
Google is near and dear to a lot of nerds' hearts, mine included. One of my favorite profs in college was a good friend of Brin, and got me started using Google when the whole thing was still beta.
Yeah, I agree that the speed is getting to where it would be possible. But, the question is still one of terminology. If I'm relying solely on the integrity of the transmission channel, I'm not doing "cryptography" any more.
One of the hallmarks of cryptography is that it is medium independant. If I encrypt something, I can print the output on paper, copy it to a floppy, etc and the security isn't weakened. With a simple secure channel, I lose all my protection as soon as the message stops being photons on the fiber and becomes an electrical signal in my computer.
The German Navy suffered huge leaks of information when their Enigma machine was "broken", but the "breaks" were due in large part to captured key material and human factors. The Germans investigated these areas a few times, but always concluded that their machine was too strong to be broken, so their codes were secure. And, to a certain degree they were correct. In periods when the Allies didn't have captured keys, the time to break a message was often in the weeks, rendering the majority of the messages out of date. But when they had the key material, they could solve messages in hours.
I totally agree this is a really cool technology, and it make crypto much harder to crack, but it may breed dangerous over-confidence.
One last example: SSL. Sites often refer to themselves as being protected with 4096 bit RSA (or whatever....) But this is really only partly true. The initial key exchange may be in RSA, but the actual data is usually 112 bit 3DES. It would take a really long time to brute force either factor, but I suspect if I had magical NSA-type teraflops at my disposal, I'd start with the 3DES.
The whole "unbreakable" thing is a little bit of a misnomer. Yes, you can detect if someone observes the transimission of the key, but that doesn't mean the encryption is unbreakable. In fact, it's not really encryption at all. It's simply a fancy type of secure, out-of-band key exchange. Once the key is exchanged, the parties will generally use it to key a symmetric algorithm like 3DES or AES. (At which point the encryption is only as strong as those algorithms...)
I realize I'm being painfully pendantic here, but when the self-proclaimed nerds start abusing a term, the general public is going to be hopelessly confused. (Think the whole hacker/cracker thing...)
Quantum key exchange is unbeleivably cool, but doesn't guanentee secure crypto. It just takes one of the weakest links in the chain, and makes it the strongest.
I actually kinda agree with both of you. I think the real crux of the matter is the definition of a "patentable" idea.
Patents shouldn't be granted just because you were the first one to have a problem in a new field and came up with an obvious solution. They should be granted because a LOT of people have the same problem, and you've come up with something which substantially differs from the ideas of all the people to come before.
My employer compensates employees which do this, reguardless of if the patent actually gets issued or is shot down on prior art. So long as you can get it by the internal review board, you get a small check... I used to be on a team with a guy who pretty much did nothing but file patents all day. People couldn't stand him, because you couldn't talk to him without hearing: "We should patent this, let's file a disclosure together!" For the product I was working used tamper-responsive cryptographic co-processors. This meant they couldn't be shipped by air, because the X-Rays, pressure, and tempature changes would trigger the lockdown response. Still, we needed to ship one to a business partner across the company. I suggested wrapping it in lead-foil and putting it in a small cooler. He immediately began going on and on about how we should patent the idea of a protective shipping case for this sort of device. I refused on the grounds that anyone with half a brain would come to the same idea as soon as they were presented with the same problem.
The patent laws in the US do say something about "non-obvious" but when I see all the patents of things like "one click shopping", "html", and "the internet" I think the examiners need to enforce the clause a bit harder. In the one submission I did have which survived the search, I had a scary moment when I had to defend my idea against a patent filed in the late-80's which claimed among other things: "Transmission of a signal between two electronic devices using wires" !
One of the problems with ideas is that multiple people can have the same one independantly. It's really hard to accept that just because an idea is original to you it may have occured to others.
As part of my job, I sometimes apply for patents. (Which first goes to an internal company board to be judged if it's worth the cost of a real search-and-file) I've submitted 5 so far, and even though all of them we totally new concepts for me, only one of them survived a patent search. I have to admit that when the search committee has presented me with clear prior art, it's hard not to feel some sort of stupid "you sneaky bastards" type feelings directed at the party who thought of the idea before me. (Of course, being a sane person, I realize this is irrational, and get over it quickly.) Still, it's a blow to the ego.
A the corporate level, I don't think things are much different. I can see some senior mucky-muck at a company which had been issued an overly broad patent for say, "Using a cathode ray tube to display the output of a computer" having trouble seeing the difference between reason and greed.
Sometimes corporations have larger egos and senses of entitlement than even the most arrogant people. I suspect some manager got sort on funds, heard some tech say something like: "Heh, yeah, techinically we own JPEG..." and got visions of an easy buck.
Slashdot Mirror
ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/mozilla/
http://mozilla.gnusoft.net/
These worked for me. (Posted as AC to avoid whore-accusations. :) )
The airports will forbid the use of non-airport systems via a condition in the carriers lease, and a clause in the boilerplate on your ticket. (Which you are required to have to get through the security gate....) So I suspect this will be a short lived victory.
If I was your next door neighbor, and stood in my front yard making faces at you, you don't have the legal right (no matter how tempting) to come over an punch me in the mouth.
By the same token, the locations, size, and content of billboards is legally governed. If someone puts one up in my front yard, they're gonna have serious legal problems. But I'd work through the legal system.
I'd love to see billboards illegal everywhere. (In fact, the city I live in therorically is trying to accomplish that) The sad truth is that the majority of citizens have allowed it to be legal to post billboards in certain locations, and while I object, I have to respect that. Just as I expect the other citizens to follow the law and not loot and burn my house while I'm at work.
If you disagree with a law, get it changed. I'd gladly help you.
As ugly, and often offensive as billboards are, the simple fact is that someone paid for their message. If your favorite charity or local business spend a few thousand on a billboard and it got defaced, it would be a blow because the entity lost money. Just because the billboard happens to be for Viagra (or some other massively corporate thing), doesn't really change things. It's sorta like saying it's okay to shoplift from WalMart because it's not hurting anyone.
The only time I agree with defacing signs is those hidious illegal signs which spring up on telephone polls and at intersections lately. ("Need Money Quick? Call 555-1212", "LA Weight Loss, Call 555-1212", and my favorite "Want signs like these? Call 555-1212") These signs aren't legal, and I think are fair game for whatever...
Don't get me wrong, I adore good graffiti, but I've never thought of it as an "industry." Doesn't that sorta go against the whole independant counter-culture (or pseudo-counter-culture) idea? Industries tend to be regulated, which would be both a good and a terrible thing for graffiti.
The idea of desiginated walls for graffiti is a good one, and I have seen some which have some nice pieces in that past. I also enjoy some of the stuff I see in the wild. I think a lot of the problem is that there are places where the owner of the property doesn't really care if you paint up their wall, and there are places where it is clearly unacceptable to do so.
For example, I don't have trouble with stuff I see painted on temporary walls around construction sites, or on top of those endless rows of exactly the same ad. By the same token, I beleive it's totally out of line when someone hits the side of a mom-n-pop grocery store, or a street sign.
I suspect you're not the kind of "graffer" who would do that, but just like the whole "hacker" vs. "cracker" thing, the few dumbasses out there are the most visable, and give the whole medium a bad name.
The issue is where do we set limits between the right to bear a squirt-pistol and the right to bear crew-served artillery? Obviously there needs to be a ceiling somewhere, but quantifying it is hard.
I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of citizens are opposed to private ownership of large artillery pieces. If they weren't, then the "ceiling" for gun ownership wouldn't be centered about "Class 3" weapons (fully auto, sound suppressed, etc), it would be around warhead yield or some such thing.
The argument was about the limitations being placed on rocket engines are overly restrictive. I think there "obviously" needs to be a point at which we regulate, but the criteria for regulation is going to be difficult to determine.
The propellent in rocketry is not well suited to explosives. Major truck bombs, like the one used in OKC, were ammonium nitrate and diesel. Technically that's a low power explosive too. Elsewhere in the thread someone was saying that a two foot rocket is starting to sound like an RPG, but they are forgetting that the lethality of an RPG is because they carry very exotic shaped charge high explosive and penetrators which turn into jets of plasma upon impact. Even assuming the rocket is easy to make, the warhead takes a lot more work.
And finally, I totally agree with you about stealing explosives. Without sounding to much like the "when guns are illegal only criminals will have guns" crowd, putting restrictions of materials that an accomplished amateur chemist could make from common ingredients isn't going to stop a serious terrorist. Look at the problem with illegal drugs. Thousands and thousands of less-than-rocket-scientists manage to cook up crystal meth in dilapidated shacks and bathrooms all the time.
Sure, a terrorist would prefer to buy off the shelf, but I don't think it's going to stop them if they can't. And, more to the point, they could always just knock over a quarry for some dynamite.
I'd have to disagree about the delivery mechanism part though. I used to build these things as a kid, and the amount of thrust needed to get just a tiny bit of payload into the air is enormous. The biggest thing I ever saw was an extremely light disposable camera, and the rocket it took to lift it used several of the biggest engines available at the time.
Even when they do lift off, they go straight up, and come down on a parachute. (If you are lucky) a few blocks away in a high wind. The mechanics and force required for lateral flight is a lot greater than almost any amateur can overcome.
And as for biowar and dirty bombs... I dunno... Heat and unreliablity aren't something I'd want to put my hard-obtained anthrax into. And most the radioactive metals are extremely massive. Combine that with the problems associated with lateral flight, and it's a pretty iffy proposition. I think anyone who obtains and uses radioactivity or biologicial agents is going to scare the pants of the general public reguardless of the delivery method.
I'd be much more concerned about people using balloons. If you're just trying to indiscrimately drop sometime nasty on people, a weather balloon and a tank of helium would reliably put a lot more payload in the air for a lot less money and exposure. The Japanese were able to achieve mild success during WWII using incerdiary devices and similiar devices from halfway across the world to the west coast of the US.
I've got no problem with there being limitations of people's ability to build, say, something which uses propellant measured in pounds (or tons). When it's clear the rocket poses a clear threat if accidents occur or it is intentionally misused. But people should still be able to build smaller things without massive hurdles.
I don't want to get much into guns because it is a bit of a charged subject. The issue is where do we set limits between the right to bear a squirt-pistol and the right to bear crew-served artillery? Obviously there needs to be a ceiling somewhere, but quantifying it is hard.
The question is where do you set the ceiling? And what are reasonable requirements for people who wish to exceed it? Model-rocketry is heading towards the squirt-pistol range of the scale...
A rocket is pretty much a controlled bomb. Every joule spent on proplusion is a joule not spent on explosive. An amateur might be able to cobble together a rocket which would fly vaguely where the builder pointed it over a distance of a maybe a few miles, but the "warhead" would likely be only a few pounds. (plus the kinetic energy of the rocket.) If you took the same rocket fuel, and used it to make a big-ass truck bomb, you'd gain several magnitudes of precision and lethality.
Rockets are good for putting a small amount of explosive in a place you can't easily access. Since we're not going to outlaw trucks, fertilizer, and diesel fuel any time soon, the best way to "terrorize" the people remains.
Ultimately I'd much prefer the "evil doers" put their energy into exotic ideas like homemade rockets rather than simple ones like truck bombs and the classic "cheap-assault-rifle-and-a-crowd". The number of victims would be lower.
Someone could make a weapon out of rocketry supplies, but anyone with the skills to build a halfway decent rocket could build a pretty impressive bomb a lot easier.
Wow... I've started my first flame war! (I was afraid of that...) I'm going to do my best to avoid fanning the flames, so here goes:
I think the abuses of the executive branch have been growing since the 60's. Trying to point to one figure or party and say they are bad isn't really productive, because when it's the party you believe in, the offenses don't seem as bad.
For example, "state's rights" is a hot button issue for some people. The power the states once had has been greatly eroded by the power of the Federal government. For the most part, I personally could care less, because these erosions don't hurt me, so I don't care what leader/party/etc was behind the changes which lead to the current balance of power. (I can come up with examples where lack of state's rights matters to me it does, but on the whole I'm happy....) So, from my perception, nothing is "wrong" with this. However, there are people who have interests they feel are several impacted by the loss of state's rights, so the actions that lead to them are very distasteful to them.
The point is simply that the judicial branch is becoming more and more minimalized.
In a more appropriate forum I'd welcome the "Clinton vs. Bush" debate, but for now, let's just say: "Abuse of power == teh sux0r"
I completely agree with you in principle. Without getting overly political, I still feel it's appropriate to point out that lately the SCOTUS (and the judicial branch as a whole) has had a lot of its powers reduced. The PATRIOT act is just on of the ways the legislative branch has given the executative branch the ability to bypass the courts. The requirements for trials, warrants, and openness have been greatly reduced post 9/11. There was recently even a bill introduced to allow Congress to overrule the courts if they wanted. (Fortunately this got voted /laughed down).
This is to say nothing about the current "the president's executive priviledge overrides any other law" memos that are making news lately...
Finally, it's important to remember that the judicial system as a whole, especially the SCOTUS, is the slowest branch. As you pointed out, they mut wait to be called, and they almost always act after the fact. If legislators pass an unconsitutional law, or the executive branch steps on someone's rights, there is a considerable window in which the law is in effect, and those people rights are trampled before the SCOTUS can put a stop to it.
Checks and balances are the cornerstone of the US system, and branches fighting for power is in the design. Unfortunately there have been some fairly substantial swings lately which will hopefully right themselves soon.
I'm certainly not advocating physically harming spammers. (As tempting as it may be sometimes) However, I think the profit margin on spam isn't large enough to offset the cost of physical protection, protection fees, etc... The "market" for spam is pretty much saturated by definition, and even though the "production" cost is low, the number of customers is equally low. In your follow-up you do mention that getting rid of the few fools who buy via spam would fix the problem quickly, but there will always be a hardcore group of idiots out there.
Ultimately, I think the solution is to go after the providers of the goods and services sold through spam. Somewhere money changes hands, and that tends to be a fairly traceable transaction. (And when it isn't, the government is usually interested even more) I realize the vendors could claim the spam was sent by competitors, but it would be a start.
Speaking as a former citizen of Baltimore, the issue is not with the police or the law-abiding citizens. I went to Johns Hopkins, were getting stuck up was really more of a question of "when" rather than "if". Baltimore has some desperately poor people, which unfortunately often results in desperate criminals, who do desperate things. My roommate had some wires(!) stolen out of his car. (They broke the window and cut off the wires coming from the cassette adapter in his crapped out stereo). I got held up by three losers with a .38 my senior year, and they actually got caught.
The police were fabulous about the whole thing. The resulting trial left a really bad taste in my mouth. To start with, when you are a witness, you have to sit either in the "Victims Services" office, or outside the courtroom on a hard wooden bench. You get to do this whenever there is a chance you might be called. Usually this means you sit there from 9 AM to 5 PM. If you get lucky, they'll call you when they think you might be needed. In my experience, this consisted of "Hello, we need you at the courthouse in 25 minutes. *click*" And then nothing once you got there.
The police fell into the same "witness" catagory I did. Since I got stuck up at 3 AM, the cops who handled the case were night shift guys. So, they got to work all night, and then spend all day in the courthouse waiting to be called. And they took it seriously. One guy showed up with mild food poisoning, because if they called him and he wasn't there, the preps could get off. So, they didn't sleep or see their families much.
Let me tell you a bit about the "Victim's Services" room. It was a long, narrow, hastily converted place filled with a mix of bored witnesses and severely tramatized victims. I saw mothers crying and screaming hysterically to prosecuters "How could you let him get off! He killed my baby in front of me! He's gonna kill me next!" And they meant it. Truly horrifying stuff. Not a comfortable place to sit and chill with a book for eight hours. Oh, and even though this was pre-9/11, you couldn't bring any electronics in. No laptops, no discmans, nothing. Just you, a book, and people living though things most people are fortunate to never even imagine. It was surreal, and made me feel almost guilty for being in there for something as minor as getting stuck up.
The other option was to sit outside the courtroom. On a highbacked oak bench set against the wall. And I mean sit. Not lay, not sprawl, not slouch. Sit. Because if you didn't a bailiff would come by and make you do so. Oh, and this is also where the defense witnesses get to hang out. So, a lot of my time there was spent in the brooding presence of one of the dumbasses who robbed me. Two of the three perps rolled over on the third, and plead to reduced charges. So they still went to prison for 35-50 years, (multiple counts + prior felonies + handgun in the commission adds up quick) but not for their involvement in my case. (They robbed multiple people that night). Needless to say, having one of these guys handcuffed to the adjacent bench didn't improve the ambiance.
I spent something like 5 days there, and even had to reschedule job interviews around it. (Try telling a prospective employee you need to reschedule due to a court date... fun times...) I testified once for 7 minutes in open court, and spent a lot of time waiting around while the defense tried to suppress what I said. (Another story, but the short version was the defense maintained that as a white person I wasn't qualified to look at a lineup of non-white people because even if I did correctly identify the suspect it must be a lucky guess. Their argument fell apart when I revealed that I not only knew people who didn't look like me, but grew up going to a school which was 87% non-white. Was pretty funny...)
I don't want to make it seem like I was some sort of martyr. They robbed 10 different people that night, and every one of them was there the same as I was.
I know it's a nitpick, but "The Internet" is a lot bigger than just what you see in your browser. I agree that there are legitimate uses for javascript, css, and even flash. But all languages evolve. Just because a language goes from version 1 to version 2 doesn't mean it can only add bells and whistles, sometimes it's good to take away "features" which have proven themselves to be liabilities.
Ultimately, this isn't even about the sensors. It's not about personal freedom. It's about a dumbass poking at things until he got a response. If the Fed's put an observation post in the middle of the road running by my house, I'd put up a huge stink, but I sure as hell wouldn't go over to it with a screwdriver. (And assuming I did, I wouldn't have the local news record my actions) Society is about playing by rules. Even if you think one party is cheating, you don't get to cheat back.
Now, granted he did rebury the devices, and granted, they were in the public park, not Area 51 itself, but it's not hard for the average person to see why this is a bad idea. There's a lot of stuff in "public" areas you're not allowed to monkey with. If a public park provided restrooms with those annoying motion-sensor faucets, does anyone think they would be within their rights to repeatedly take them apart?
Sure, there is a worry in this case about the government monitoring private citizens in a public place, but "approach" sensors invade privacy a lot less than swarms of armed guards peering through binoculars from the fenceline 24x7.
In short, this guy crossed the line. I understand being intrigued, and even outraged by these devices, but making a map is one thing, and once he figured out what the devices were he never should have touched them.
(Just had a scary thought on preview: what if the odd buried device he found had turned out to be a errant landmine? Of course it's massively criminal for it to be there, but there is a reason you don't got poking unknown military hardware...)
It's completely plausable that a 90 minute outage is a big deal for you, but I have to wonder if it was such a big deal if why you didn't have redundancy built in. Sometimes, sh*t happens, especially when computers are involved.
On the other hand, if you don't enforce a contract, does it lose it's teeth?
I hope I'm not trolling here, especially since I sacrified the modpoints I'd already spent on this article. I'm just curious as to your position.
What about other word derived terms? Trillian? Is whoever can prove a DNA link to the person who first uttered "million" , "billion", etc going to sue people for refering to someone as a "millionaire"? Or the governments of the world for issuing budgets in billions and trillions?
I may be wrong, and I suppose I shouldn't trust evil Google to check, but I thought the actual name for the number was a "googleplex"? And why aren't they going after GooglePlex Media?
Google is near and dear to a lot of nerds' hearts, mine included. One of my favorite profs in college was a good friend of Brin, and got me started using Google when the whole thing was still beta.
Yeah, I agree that the speed is getting to where it would be possible. But, the question is still one of terminology. If I'm relying solely on the integrity of the transmission channel, I'm not doing "cryptography" any more.
One of the hallmarks of cryptography is that it is medium independant. If I encrypt something, I can print the output on paper, copy it to a floppy, etc and the security isn't weakened. With a simple secure channel, I lose all my protection as soon as the message stops being photons on the fiber and becomes an electrical signal in my computer.
The German Navy suffered huge leaks of information when their Enigma machine was "broken", but the "breaks" were due in large part to captured key material and human factors. The Germans investigated these areas a few times, but always concluded that their machine was too strong to be broken, so their codes were secure. And, to a certain degree they were correct. In periods when the Allies didn't have captured keys, the time to break a message was often in the weeks, rendering the majority of the messages out of date. But when they had the key material, they could solve messages in hours.
I totally agree this is a really cool technology, and it make crypto much harder to crack, but it may breed dangerous over-confidence.
One last example: SSL. Sites often refer to themselves as being protected with 4096 bit RSA (or whatever....) But this is really only partly true. The initial key exchange may be in RSA, but the actual data is usually 112 bit 3DES. It would take a really long time to brute force either factor, but I suspect if I had magical NSA-type teraflops at my disposal, I'd start with the 3DES.
The whole "unbreakable" thing is a little bit of a misnomer. Yes, you can detect if someone observes the transimission of the key, but that doesn't mean the encryption is unbreakable. In fact, it's not really encryption at all. It's simply a fancy type of secure, out-of-band key exchange. Once the key is exchanged, the parties will generally use it to key a symmetric algorithm like 3DES or AES. (At which point the encryption is only as strong as those algorithms...)
I realize I'm being painfully pendantic here, but when the self-proclaimed nerds start abusing a term, the general public is going to be hopelessly confused. (Think the whole hacker/cracker thing...)
Quantum key exchange is unbeleivably cool, but doesn't guanentee secure crypto. It just takes one of the weakest links in the chain, and makes it the strongest.
I actually kinda agree with both of you. I think the real crux of the matter is the definition of a "patentable" idea.
Patents shouldn't be granted just because you were the first one to have a problem in a new field and came up with an obvious solution. They should be granted because a LOT of people have the same problem, and you've come up with something which substantially differs from the ideas of all the people to come before.
My employer compensates employees which do this, reguardless of if the patent actually gets issued or is shot down on prior art. So long as you can get it by the internal review board, you get a small check... I used to be on a team with a guy who pretty much did nothing but file patents all day. People couldn't stand him, because you couldn't talk to him without hearing: "We should patent this, let's file a disclosure together!" For the product I was working used tamper-responsive cryptographic co-processors. This meant they couldn't be shipped by air, because the X-Rays, pressure, and tempature changes would trigger the lockdown response. Still, we needed to ship one to a business partner across the company. I suggested wrapping it in lead-foil and putting it in a small cooler. He immediately began going on and on about how we should patent the idea of a protective shipping case for this sort of device. I refused on the grounds that anyone with half a brain would come to the same idea as soon as they were presented with the same problem.
The patent laws in the US do say something about "non-obvious" but when I see all the patents of things like "one click shopping", "html", and "the internet" I think the examiners need to enforce the clause a bit harder. In the one submission I did have which survived the search, I had a scary moment when I had to defend my idea against a patent filed in the late-80's which claimed among other things: "Transmission of a signal between two electronic devices using wires" !
One of the problems with ideas is that multiple people can have the same one independantly. It's really hard to accept that just because an idea is original to you it may have occured to others.
As part of my job, I sometimes apply for patents. (Which first goes to an internal company board to be judged if it's worth the cost of a real search-and-file) I've submitted 5 so far, and even though all of them we totally new concepts for me, only one of them survived a patent search. I have to admit that when the search committee has presented me with clear prior art, it's hard not to feel some sort of stupid "you sneaky bastards" type feelings directed at the party who thought of the idea before me. (Of course, being a sane person, I realize this is irrational, and get over it quickly.) Still, it's a blow to the ego.
A the corporate level, I don't think things are much different. I can see some senior mucky-muck at a company which had been issued an overly broad patent for say, "Using a cathode ray tube to display the output of a computer" having trouble seeing the difference between reason and greed.
Sometimes corporations have larger egos and senses of entitlement than even the most arrogant people. I suspect some manager got sort on funds, heard some tech say something like: "Heh, yeah, techinically we own JPEG..." and got visions of an easy buck.