Most of the simplistic views held are due to institutionalizing the term "black and white" with the words "right" and "left". From there we blame everything unwanted on the "right" or "left" and take everything good in an economy as due to our loved "right" or "left".
This couldn't be farther from the truth, and one wonders how many Americans don't see that they do have a mixed economy, and every diplomatic capitalist country has undergone an evolution to reach this point. The mixed economy creates stability through economic automatic stabilizers, a larger middle class (i.e., simplistic - fulfilling maslows heirarchy of needs), and other such programs that help those that need such things - as well as stability economically due to the boom and bust of the business cycle, financial speculation, irrational (well bounded rational) markets, etc
In each country there are different degrees of balance. I would of course agree that the US is somewhat shifted to the worship of markets, sometimes forgetting that political and economic policy are supposed to benefit as many people in a country as possible -- as opposed to creating a situation where the few in country owns everything... etc
Such laws, of course, made perfect sense right after the war, as it could have lead to unwanted action.
However, consider this:
You have ideas outside of the mainstream. Let's say you speak out against nascent jewish nationalism and religious fervor in israel, which results in acts of opression and coercion of the palestinian people. Some might be offended by this and wish to violate your right to free speech through law.
The result is your trading free speech for comfort in the immutible moral standard from which you can not deviate.
"Why do you have to compile your kernel? In the several years I've used Linux, I've only done this three times, and only because I'm a technogeek. Most people will just buy an upgraded distribution for $20 if they really need the latest. "
It was only an example. Lots of hardware and software have complex installation and configuration procedures.
"I just don't agree. I use KDE, and feel that both it and Gnome are better-looking than Windows. Windows users in my office seem to think my desktop looks pretty nice. Actually, all you really need is a nice background, which works for any GUI. "
They look ok. IMO, windows looks much more polished and is completely standardized. They can be made to look OK, but once you click a button you run into non standard garbage, configuration procedures that don't work, exposed advanced functionality that can potentially confuse, lack of understandable documentation, weird file heirarchies, etc
"You're assuming that development costs are the same for all platforms"
I'm not assuming anything. Labor takes time and money. Therefore it is overhead. Give linux limited market and developing games for it is questionable at this time - just as it is for the Mac platform. The tools are pennies when compared to labor, support, modular/cross platform design, etc
The platforms are stable and unchanging. The PC platform is continuously changing. If Sony has a quicker release cycle for next generation platforms, this may be negated.
Isn't just so nice how we have to label people with "left" and "right" and "liberal" and "conservative"?
It's funny how some promoting gun control because they believe in their freedom also promote censorship for the children, because it will protect them from seeing evil nudity (which is by the way most often socially indoctrinated as a result of religion or society - and one can even possibly correlate that sexual starvation to resultant deviation)
The converse is the same for gun control (which I am moderate on as well);
Let's take guns away because we will statistically reduce deaths (US has 3x the murder rate with guns that canada and most of europe has), protecting the people from themselves; while censorship is evil because it stifles rights..
The censorship issue is often based on false information. The gun control issue is often also based on such false information - such as ignoring socio economic issues in a country, such as distribution of classes, basic ideals, repressive laws, terrible primary and secondary school education, gun culture, rabid paranoia about government or thugs going to come into your house, rape your wife and beat you over the head, etc.
Racist censorship is an even more touchy issue. How will we learn to identify racist material if we can't even read it? We seem to be using prohibition instead of education here.
All the arguments on both sides have some merit, which is why the are controversial. It would, IMO, be more fruitful to subjectively distill the assumptions of each, to reach prescient truth.
But of course, that doesn't happen in government, as the enlightened intellectuals that the founding fathers thought would be in office are now often instead partisan twits, often manipulating and grandstanding in the media, buying votes with advertising dollars.
Supply side economics (i.e., voodoo economics with the laffer curve). Total ignorance or convenient ignorance to Keynesian economics. Calling for privatization of everything, like that's going to solve anything beyond instituting service tiers. Lots of weird religious conservatives who would institute laws against their unskeptical understanding of religious dogma they were socially indoctrinated as in youth.
"Liberals"
Right shifted, completely redefining the etymology of the word "liberal"; massive cuts, gross mis management of money; stupid funds that institute corporate welfare; moronic leaders, incompetent bureaucrats lining their pockets with stolen government money
Conservatives:
Fiscally conservative. Want to actually save health care and education. One wonders if their party will even exist in a year.
NDP: bye
"Alliance: Tax cuts, free trade, jobs, and budget surpluses. Yep, sounds good to me!"
You just outlined supply side economics. Tax cuts on a laffer curve hoping that it will magically increase demand from increased supply, created by that tax cut.
Let's look at Reagan's voodoo economics:
cut corporate and some other taxes taxes nothing happens
lets increase spending by 20x on military and other government spending via keynesian economics and pretend it was due to our supply side economics that the economy was back on track. Also completely ignore the tax act of 1984.
Also ignore the tax cuts instituted by bush sr in the early 90's, which was really needed, which led way for the loose monetary policy, the partial paying off of the debt created by reagan, and the subsequent boom that ensued.
warranty cards, in store forms, etc, you send in to company {x,y, and z}. You remembered not to include too much info on these, but you included different info on each card, which is then matched up.
Then they can match it up with this database, either directly or statistically.
So now they have your address, your profession, your education, prior buying habits, interests, credit rating and more.
"Let's face it. The biggest challenge to getting more Linux games is that the producers and distributors don't know enough about Linux"
I think there are other problems:
a) Linux is not easy to use. Compile my kernel? hahaha
b) KDE and Gnome are ugly much of the time. They are also not up to standard UI design for the average computer user.
c) Much smaller market at this time. Apple has the same problem here.
d) DRI and SDL are only now becoming viable. I know practically nothing about OGL and DX, but if the rumours and supposition on slashdot is right, OpenGL is losing ground to DX.
e) Developing for multiple platforms at the same time is overhead. This might not be a good idea unless the game is a guaranteed success - or your market is large enough that N idiots will buy it.
f) X-box, playstation 2, etc are supposedly going to threaten the PC (I laugh, but who knows).
"You just agreed to that, right? So why is life any easier just because one of the machines is configured as a firewall? "
So why is life any easier buying a monster router to block SYN floods?
Whoops, it is.
I set up a system to block and moderate traffic, and it does use resources. However, you are of course right, if you are trying to make a point regarding traffic coming in. If I have a 100mbps interface, and get hit with 109mbps of traffic coming in, there is nothing I can do. I either get a faster network, or have my ISP filter it at a point of bandwidth able to survive such an attack (like one of their monster routers), to ensure my service. However, the firewall on my side can work very well when I want to stop replies back on the network.
For example: someone hits me on port 80 with 60mbps of traffic. I send traffic back to either SYN ACK, or reset the connection if it is on a closed port. Also, by ignoring these packets, I am preventing further processing for a time. The firewall will prevent this.
1) Several people have asserted that a firewall somehow magically has more resources to deal with an attack. Sorry, no. If you have N+1 hosts, calling the one a firewall doesn't create more resources to deal with an attack.
Sure it does. Someone SYN floods when you don't have a firewall, and you send a packet back. If you ignore it, you effectively save bandwidth not sending packet back.
Using something like SYN_BANDLIM on freebsd, or Cisco synguard will allow you to start dropping SYN when an attack comes. Also, by blocking all IANA Reserved and all invalid ranges, attacks on your imperative open services from those ranges through spoofed attacks will be completely ignored (preventing further packets sent back across the wire)
"2) A firewall breaks the end-to-end communication paradigm of the Internet. The idea is that you place smarts in the middle. Sorry, no. Hosts should communicate with hosts, not with intermediaries"
Irrelevant.
"4) More often than not, a firewall is used to hide insecure hosts, and then people laughably call it "security in depth"."
IANA reserved range inside. Secure box or router on the outside. Security. Why would one laugh?
"You can't invent more CPU speed by dedicating one machine to filtering packets"
I believe the main problem is that the boxes are linux. They either have ipchains or iptables on top of netfilter.
The box they set up was using a firewall bridge, which if I remember correctly can not be done on linux at this time. As well, freebsd has ICMP_BANDLIM and SYN_BANDLIM mechanisms that allow for protection.
From there, they would block off some ICMP, like echo and echo replies, allowing the rest of the needed ICMP to be throttled; Then they would block all SYN on all but needed ports (even if a port is closed, you still send resets - so you have ot ignore); then they would block all IP on IANA reserved and other invalid ranges.
There you go. You've effectively block off a quite large range from which spoofed SYN attacks come. When the attacker finds this out, he may start attacking from valid (but still spoofed if they are smart) IP's, from which the only solution is to throttle, and then manually or automatically block traffic destined for port 80, or whatever they want to allow.
Why the heck would they need that? They don't need stateful inspection of every packet or a bunch of application proxies.
They can instead install FreeBSD, rate limit SYN and ICMP (echo, echo-rep, or everything), block all SYN and ICMP right out from reserved and invalid IP ranges, and then drop in rules using IPfilter or ipfw when needed. You can do hundreds of mb/s on this setup.
I have this and more, including automa set up to establish damaging patterns, using my logging mechanism (no, I'm not writing to a file and creating a DoS for myself).
'The source of the "US economic boom" is open to a wide spectrum of debate, but I rather doubt that the boom is the result of "lack of job security"'
loose monetary policy strong demand new and exciting tech markets!!! (see irrational) margin lending, credit, zero savings of course information technology, although often overstated
"fear of job insecurity has nearly vanished in the last three years for all Americans"
Lots and lots and lots of temps and part time workers in blue collar manufacturing, services and retail markets.
Well, I was trolling in an attempt to elicit a crazy response. Yes, I am guilty of omission. I sometimes like fucking with Chomsky readers on Usenet, and figured I could do the same here. Oh well, didn't work.
I am fully aware of the complexity inherent in being complicit with morally untenable business practices, as evaluated by our modern society, exemplified by our history, and perfectly symbolized in events such as the boston tea party.
Perhaps if you weren't blinded by your emotional assertions, you would have understood what I was writing. It's really actually impossible in many cases to extrapolate your isolated use of cheap labour to macro issues. For example, the current US economic boom is largely due to a lack of job security, and real wages that have not gone up in years to match inflation.
"How can you compare a highly skilled and educated engineer who makes a six figure salary with a nine-year-old girl who make 30 cents per day?"
Sure we can. In my illustrated case, they do not make six figures. They are both cheaper labour, and both accept these jobs because they are much better conditions than they are used to. Simple.
"Because amoral corporate pirates take advantage of corrupt "third world" governments and ultimately their citizens, does not excuse their amoral and highly destructive behavior. "Gosh, everyone else is doing it..." is no excuse!"
Whether it is an excuse or not is irrelevant.
"Finally, Nike's use of slave labor is well documented, and continues to this day."
I never held Nike in high regard before -- but really, thanks for the evidence.
You're either being dense, or my post wasn't articulated clearly.
The situation is as such that it is acceptable to employ cheap labour in foreign markets. My pasting a PR article doesn't mean I agree with it in part or whole. My point was that he does genuinely believe that such acts are acceptable - and his "reform" efforts further illustrate this.
"The facts are that Mr. Knight's corporation makes use child slave labor"
Given I have not done any kind of research on Nike corporation, would you impart your information and source resources on me?
I consult with several companies that also use foreign labour in the form of engineers from India. Do you consider it morally wrong because it is relatively cheap according to our standard?
There are some that argue that the minimum wage is too low, and should be raised; so is everyone employing cheap labour for services and manufacturing doing something morally untenable?
There are, of course, slight distinctions between acceptable and unnaceptable behavior. However, my original point was that this is acceptable behavior through repetition and no consequences. I was not vindicating his statements or actions - my opinion is actually largely irrelevant when trying to explain the behavior of others in a group whose function in the game I take no part in.
"Yep, basically money is what drives these companies. They have no divine right to our money. Be thankful that we have the right to NOT buy Windows and NOT buy Gap or Nike for their practices or failings. Some people (in poorer countries, or command economies) do not enjoy the wealth of options that western people have, and all of this moaning is frankly very annoying"
This is an interesting statement. So your conclusion is that since conditions are worse in country x, we should absolutely accept what we have, and consider change or deviation from the status quo out of the question? Oh yes; interesting.
"As middle class westerners, you have more options available to express yourself than ever before. People in the 1900s could buy a car as long as it was a black model T. Do you think choice has diminshed since then??? "
Actually yes. Shortly after there were hundreds of companies selling autos. This evolved into a natural auto oligopoly due to efficient commodities of scale, standards processes, etc. Then japanese cars entered the market, with their reliability and overall quality, forcing the american auto oligopolies to increase quality in their products.
"Most companies are not manipulating people for sinister reasons, it is because they are scared of this power and choice, and need to try everything in the book to stop you from moving on to something else - most companies realise today that customers are more fickle than ever. "
You are analyzing this at the surface level of complexity.
"What people like JK advocate through a thinly veiled socialist/marxist idelogy is that the intelligencia should decide what is good and what is not good for us, since people are nothing but sheep anyway. Surely better for the great men to control us sheep than corporations who only want our money? "
I do not know how you come to this conclusion. His individualist assertions are surely vapid - yet, I could just as easily replace your supposition that it is marxist/socialist, to the objective reality of our representative republic. As an individual in such a system, all you can do is assert yourself, meet with representatives directly (letters, meetings) or indirectly (civil disobedience, march down on washington hoping to create coercion in the crowd, whatever), and vote.
Further, I do not know where you are going with this argument, so I can not comment further.
"I prefer to wield the little monetary power I have than give up my freedom to choose to someone else, who gets that choice because he deems himself my intellectual superior. "
You over estimate your power as a consumer. Sometimes the natural evolution is congruent with the consumer and producer; sometimes it is not. Case in point: homogenuity in media industries. This is not good for the consumer. It is good for the businessman due to monopoly and increased advertising revenue.
Also please do not accuse others of being marxist or propounding marxist ideas when there is no evidence of this being true. This is what some close minded individuals often do when there is talk of change -- "you damn commie, you're against all of us; america is an immutible force of nature that is the absolute best, and anyone propounding otherwise is a kook or a communist" etc.
"but to state that corporate elites are not "bent on extreme self gain at the expense of others" is a little niave."
Oh, I'm not saying that it isn't true. I am saying that it often isn't a cogent decision.
Take Phil Knight for example. Here is a PR statement I grabbed off of google:
"WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The chief executive officer of NIKE Inc. (NYSE:NKE - news), responding to congressional accusations the firm used exploited workers overseas, said on Wednesday that good working conditions were a company priority.
NIKE's athletic products "must also be produced in the best working conditions," Philip Knight, NIKE chairman and CEO, said in a letter to Rep. Bernard Sanders. "We won't stand for anything less. That's why we have made labor practices a priority."
The Independent congressman from Vermont was quick to respond to Knight with a letter outlining past reports from news media, human rights groups and labor organizations that showed poor working conditions at some factories that manufacture NIKE products abroad.
"It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to know that the bulk of your money is made by paying desperate Asian workers 20 or 30 cents an hour, and then selling your product in the United States for $100 or $150," Sanders said in his return letter.
Earlier this month, a report by auditors Ernst & Young said an audit conducted a year ago found many unsafe conditions at a Vietnamese factory that produced shoes for NIKE.
Knight in his letter said the company had "zero tolerance" for child labor and takes steps to ensure its contractors adhere to the minimum age standards.
He cited other reports that found workers in factories making NIKE products were well-treated.
"We're by no means perfect, but when problems do arise, and they do from time to time, they are addressed and remedied in a timely fashion," Knight wrote.
Knight invited Sanders to visit a factory making NIKE footwear in Asia, and the congressman replied he would be interested if he was given the freedom to visit the factory unaccompanied and to talk to any of the workers. "
Of course conditions are bad. Yet, if competition is doing the same, how will you continue to exist? The precedent set is that cheap labour is right, especially given uneducated populaces in these foreign labour markets. This of course inevitably ends in a vicious cycle - yet solutions are questionable, as the cultural and political evolution in developing countries takes time.
But yes, you are right in a sense. Take Wal-Mart for example: they have been caught numerous times employing slave labour in countries like bangladesh. However, the shareholders hear none of this. It is done behind the scenes, through business deals, whether the buyers (Wal-Mart in this case) are aware of it or not. There is of course pressure for growth - and since Wal-Mart's only source of profit is cheap products at extremely high commodities of scale, this is how it is done. Labour prices increasing would destroy them. This does not mean what they are doing is morally tenable - it is just the established pattern.
And then there are further blatant examples. Crony capitalism and multinational imperialism. Often sponsored by the tyrannical governments themselves. Foreign, markets purposely destroyed and then bought up by capital congomerates, leaving the native peoples with nothing. The problem is there are no solutions to this yet. I would think the answer might lie, at least as a start, in democratizing organizations such as the WTO and IMF.
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't FUD, isn't FUD, and no amount of wishful thinking on your part is going to make your false statement true.
Most of the simplistic views held are due to institutionalizing the term "black and white" with the words "right" and "left". From there we blame everything unwanted on the "right" or "left" and take everything good in an economy as due to our loved "right" or "left".
... etc
This couldn't be farther from the truth, and one wonders how many Americans don't see that they do have a mixed economy, and every diplomatic capitalist country has undergone an evolution to reach this point. The mixed economy creates stability through economic automatic stabilizers, a larger middle class (i.e., simplistic - fulfilling maslows heirarchy of needs), and other such programs that help those that need such things - as well as stability economically due to the boom and bust of the business cycle, financial speculation, irrational (well bounded rational) markets, etc
In each country there are different degrees of balance. I would of course agree that the US is somewhat shifted to the worship of markets, sometimes forgetting that political and economic policy are supposed to benefit as many people in a country as possible -- as opposed to creating a situation where the few in country owns everything
I agree and will refuse to comply with such legislation if it ever becomes reality.
Such laws, of course, made perfect sense right after the war, as it could have lead to unwanted action.
However, consider this:
You have ideas outside of the mainstream. Let's say you speak out against nascent jewish nationalism and religious fervor in israel, which results in acts of opression and coercion of the palestinian people. Some might be offended by this and wish to violate your right to free speech through law.
The result is your trading free speech for comfort in the immutible moral standard from which you can not deviate.
"Why do you have to compile your kernel? In the several years
I've used Linux, I've only done this three times, and only because
I'm a technogeek. Most people will just buy an upgraded
distribution for $20 if they really need the latest.
"
It was only an example. Lots of hardware and software have complex installation and configuration procedures.
"I just don't agree. I use KDE, and feel that both it and Gnome
are better-looking than Windows. Windows users in my office
seem to think my desktop looks pretty nice. Actually, all you
really need is a nice background, which works for any GUI. "
They look ok. IMO, windows looks much more polished and is completely standardized. They can be made to look OK, but once you click a button you run into non standard garbage, configuration procedures that don't work, exposed advanced functionality that can potentially confuse, lack of understandable documentation, weird file heirarchies, etc
"You're assuming that development costs are the same for
all platforms"
I'm not assuming anything. Labor takes time and money. Therefore it is overhead. Give linux limited market and developing games for it is questionable at this time - just as it is for the Mac platform. The tools are pennies when compared to labor, support, modular/cross platform design, etc
The types of games are usually different.
The platforms are stable and unchanging. The PC platform is continuously changing. If Sony has a quicker release cycle for next generation platforms, this may be negated.
Isn't just so nice how we have to label people with "left" and "right" and "liberal" and "conservative"?
It's funny how some promoting gun control because they believe in their freedom also promote censorship for the children, because it will protect them from seeing evil nudity (which is by the way most often socially indoctrinated as a result of religion or society - and one can even possibly correlate that sexual starvation to resultant deviation)
The converse is the same for gun control (which I am moderate on as well);
Let's take guns away because we will statistically reduce deaths (US has 3x the murder rate with guns that canada and most of europe has), protecting the people from themselves; while censorship is evil because it stifles rights..
The censorship issue is often based on false information. The gun control issue is often also based on such false information - such as ignoring socio economic issues in a country, such as distribution of classes, basic ideals, repressive laws, terrible primary and secondary school education, gun culture, rabid paranoia about government or thugs going to come into your house, rape your wife and beat you over the head, etc.
Racist censorship is an even more touchy issue. How will we learn to identify racist material if we can't even read it? We seem to be using prohibition instead of education here.
All the arguments on both sides have some merit, which is why the are controversial. It would, IMO, be more fruitful to subjectively distill the assumptions of each, to reach prescient truth.
But of course, that doesn't happen in government, as the enlightened intellectuals that the founding fathers thought would be in office are now often instead partisan twits, often manipulating and grandstanding in the media, buying votes with advertising dollars.
sorry, that was tax *increase* by bush in the early 90's. That was fiscally responsible.
"Why the fuck do you not like the Alliance"
Supply side economics (i.e., voodoo economics with the laffer curve). Total ignorance or convenient ignorance to Keynesian economics. Calling for privatization of everything, like that's going to solve anything beyond instituting service tiers. Lots of weird religious conservatives who would institute laws against their unskeptical understanding of religious dogma they were socially indoctrinated as in youth.
"Liberals"
Right shifted, completely redefining the etymology of the word "liberal"; massive cuts, gross mis management of money; stupid funds that institute corporate welfare; moronic leaders, incompetent bureaucrats lining their pockets with stolen government money
Conservatives:
Fiscally conservative. Want to actually save health care and education. One wonders if their party will even exist in a year.
NDP: bye
"Alliance: Tax cuts, free trade, jobs, and budget surpluses. Yep, sounds good to me!"
You just outlined supply side economics. Tax cuts on a laffer curve hoping that it will magically increase demand from increased supply, created by that tax cut.
Let's look at Reagan's voodoo economics:
cut corporate and some other taxes taxes
nothing happens
lets increase spending by 20x on military and other government spending via keynesian economics and pretend it was due to our supply side economics that the economy was back on track. Also completely ignore the tax act of 1984.
Also ignore the tax cuts instituted by bush sr in the early 90's, which was really needed, which led way for the loose monetary policy, the partial paying off of the debt created by reagan, and the subsequent boom that ensued.
Let's see.
Age group, profession, education.
matched with:
warranty cards, in store forms, etc, you send in to company {x,y, and z}. You remembered not to include too much info on these, but you included different info on each card, which is then matched up.
Then they can match it up with this database, either directly or statistically.
So now they have your address, your profession, your education, prior buying habits, interests, credit rating and more.
"Let's face it. The biggest challenge to getting more Linux games is that the producers and distributors don't know enough about Linux"
I think there are other problems:
a) Linux is not easy to use. Compile my kernel? hahaha
b) KDE and Gnome are ugly much of the time. They are also not up to standard UI design for the average computer user.
c) Much smaller market at this time. Apple has the same problem here.
d) DRI and SDL are only now becoming viable. I know practically nothing about OGL and DX, but if the rumours and supposition on slashdot is right, OpenGL is losing ground to DX.
e) Developing for multiple platforms at the same time is overhead. This might not be a good idea unless the game is a guaranteed success - or your market is large enough that N idiots will buy it.
f) X-box, playstation 2, etc are supposedly going to threaten the PC (I laugh, but who knows).
"You just agreed to that, right? So why is life any easier just because one of the machines is configured as a firewall? "
So why is life any easier buying a monster router to block SYN floods?
Whoops, it is.
I set up a system to block and moderate traffic, and it does use resources. However, you are of course right, if you are trying to make a point regarding traffic coming in. If I have a 100mbps interface, and get hit with 109mbps of traffic coming in, there is nothing I can do. I either get a faster network, or have my ISP filter it at a point of bandwidth able to survive such an attack (like one of their monster routers), to ensure my service. However, the firewall on my side can work very well when I want to stop replies back on the network.
For example: someone hits me on port 80 with 60mbps of traffic. I send traffic back to either SYN ACK, or reset the connection if it is on a closed port. Also, by ignoring these packets, I am preventing further processing for a time. The firewall will prevent this.
1) Several people have asserted that a firewall somehow magically has more resources to deal with an attack. Sorry, no. If you have N+1 hosts, calling the one a firewall doesn't create more resources to deal with an attack.
Sure it does. Someone SYN floods when you don't have a firewall, and you send a packet back. If you ignore it, you effectively save bandwidth not sending packet back.
Using something like SYN_BANDLIM on freebsd, or Cisco synguard will allow you to start dropping SYN when an attack comes. Also, by blocking all IANA Reserved and all invalid ranges, attacks on your imperative open services from those ranges through spoofed attacks will be completely ignored (preventing further packets sent back across the wire)
"2) A firewall breaks the end-to-end communication paradigm of the Internet. The idea is that you place smarts in the middle. Sorry, no. Hosts should communicate with hosts, not with intermediaries"
Irrelevant.
"4) More often than not, a firewall is used to hide insecure hosts, and then people laughably call it "security in depth"."
IANA reserved range inside. Secure box or router on the outside. Security. Why would one laugh?
"You can't invent more CPU speed by dedicating one machine to filtering packets"
I believe the main problem is that the boxes are linux. They either have ipchains or iptables on top of netfilter.
The box they set up was using a firewall bridge, which if I remember correctly can not be done on linux at this time. As well, freebsd has ICMP_BANDLIM and SYN_BANDLIM mechanisms that allow for protection.
From there, they would block off some ICMP, like echo and echo replies, allowing the rest of the needed ICMP to be throttled; Then they would block all SYN on all but needed ports (even if a port is closed, you still send resets - so you have ot ignore); then they would block all IP on IANA reserved and other invalid ranges.
There you go. You've effectively block off a quite large range from which spoofed SYN attacks come. When the attacker finds this out, he may start attacking from valid (but still spoofed if they are smart) IP's, from which the only solution is to throttle, and then manually or automatically block traffic destined for port 80, or whatever they want to allow.
Or how about closing telnet, ssh, everything to the public.
Easy? I thought so. You can't break in to the box when there are no ports open.
Very nice detective work, sir.
Why the heck would they need that? They don't need stateful inspection of every packet or a bunch of application proxies.
They can instead install FreeBSD, rate limit SYN and ICMP (echo, echo-rep, or everything), block all SYN and ICMP right out from reserved and invalid IP ranges, and then drop in rules using IPfilter or ipfw when needed. You can do hundreds of mb/s on this setup.
I have this and more, including automa set up to establish damaging patterns, using my logging mechanism (no, I'm not writing to a file and creating a DoS for myself).
You're scaring me.
Oh, and:
'The source of the "US economic boom" is open to a wide spectrum of debate, but I rather doubt that the boom is the result of "lack of job security"'
loose monetary policy
strong demand
new and exciting tech markets!!! (see irrational)
margin lending, credit, zero savings
of course information technology, although often overstated
"fear of job insecurity has nearly vanished in the last three years for all Americans"
Lots and lots and lots of temps and part time workers in blue collar manufacturing, services and retail markets.
Well, I was trolling in an attempt to elicit a crazy response. Yes, I am guilty of omission. I sometimes like fucking with Chomsky readers on Usenet, and figured I could do the same here. Oh well, didn't work.
I am fully aware of the complexity inherent in being complicit with morally untenable business practices, as evaluated by our modern society, exemplified by our history, and perfectly symbolized in events such as the boston tea party.
Perhaps if you weren't blinded by your emotional assertions, you would have understood what I was writing. It's really actually impossible in many cases to extrapolate your isolated use of cheap labour to macro issues. For example, the current US economic boom is largely due to a lack of job security, and real wages that have not gone up in years to match inflation.
"How can you compare a highly skilled and educated engineer who makes a six figure salary with a nine-year-old girl who make 30 cents per day?"
Sure we can. In my illustrated case, they do not make six figures. They are both cheaper labour, and both accept these jobs because they are much better conditions than they are used to. Simple.
"Because amoral corporate pirates take advantage of corrupt "third world" governments and ultimately their citizens, does not excuse their amoral and highly destructive behavior. "Gosh, everyone else is doing it..." is no excuse!"
Whether it is an excuse or not is irrelevant.
"Finally, Nike's use of slave labor is well documented, and continues to this day."
I never held Nike in high regard before -- but really, thanks for the evidence.
"Even free market absolutist Milton Friedman says that lawsuits are more efficient market regulators than government agencies could ever be"
You mean for those who have the money to prosecute, and those who can rally up enough support to warrant a lawsuit. whoops.
Milton Friedman and his son David are both delusional.
You're either being dense, or my post wasn't articulated clearly.
The situation is as such that it is acceptable to employ cheap labour in foreign markets. My pasting a PR article doesn't mean I agree with it in part or whole. My point was that he does genuinely believe that such acts are acceptable - and his "reform" efforts further illustrate this.
"The facts are that Mr. Knight's corporation makes use child slave labor"
Given I have not done any kind of research on Nike corporation, would you impart your information and source resources on me?
I consult with several companies that also use foreign labour in the form of engineers from India. Do you consider it morally wrong because it is relatively cheap according to our standard?
There are some that argue that the minimum wage is too low, and should be raised; so is everyone employing cheap labour for services and manufacturing doing something morally untenable?
There are, of course, slight distinctions between acceptable and unnaceptable behavior. However, my original point was that this is acceptable behavior through repetition and no consequences. I was not vindicating his statements or actions - my opinion is actually largely irrelevant when trying to explain the behavior of others in a group whose function in the game I take no part in.
"Yep, basically money is what drives these companies. They have no divine right to our money. Be thankful that we have the right to NOT buy Windows and NOT buy Gap or Nike for their practices or failings. Some people (in poorer countries, or command economies) do not enjoy the wealth of options that western people have, and all of this moaning is frankly very annoying"
This is an interesting statement. So your conclusion is that since conditions are worse in country x, we should absolutely accept what we have, and consider change or deviation from the status quo out of the question? Oh yes; interesting.
"As middle class westerners, you have more options available to express yourself than ever before. People in the 1900s could buy a car as long as it was a black model T. Do you think choice has diminshed since then??? "
Actually yes. Shortly after there were hundreds of companies selling autos. This evolved into a natural auto oligopoly due to efficient commodities of scale, standards processes, etc. Then japanese cars entered the market, with their reliability and overall quality, forcing the american auto oligopolies to increase quality in their products.
"Most companies are not manipulating people for sinister reasons, it is because they are scared of this power and choice, and need to try everything in the book to stop you from moving on to something else - most companies realise today that customers are more fickle than ever. "
You are analyzing this at the surface level of complexity.
"What people like JK advocate through a thinly veiled socialist/marxist idelogy is that the intelligencia should decide what is good and what is not good for us, since people are nothing but sheep anyway. Surely better for the great men to control us sheep than corporations who only want our money? "
I do not know how you come to this conclusion. His individualist assertions are surely vapid - yet, I could just as easily replace your supposition that it is marxist/socialist, to the objective reality of our representative republic. As an individual in such a system, all you can do is assert yourself, meet with representatives directly (letters, meetings) or indirectly (civil disobedience, march down on washington hoping to create coercion in the crowd, whatever), and vote.
Further, I do not know where you are going with this argument, so I can not comment further.
"I prefer to wield the little monetary power I have than give up my freedom to choose to someone else, who gets that choice because he deems himself my intellectual superior. "
You over estimate your power as a consumer. Sometimes the natural evolution is congruent with the consumer and producer; sometimes it is not. Case in point: homogenuity in media industries. This is not good for the consumer. It is good for the businessman due to monopoly and increased advertising revenue.
Also please do not accuse others of being marxist or propounding marxist ideas when there is no evidence of this being true. This is what some close minded individuals often do when there is talk of change -- "you damn commie, you're against all of us; america is an immutible force of nature that is the absolute best, and anyone propounding otherwise is a kook or a communist" etc.
[... snip]
"but to state that corporate elites are not "bent on extreme self gain at the expense of others" is a little niave."
Oh, I'm not saying that it isn't true. I am saying that it often isn't a cogent decision.
Take Phil Knight for example. Here is a PR statement I grabbed off of google:
"WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The chief executive officer of NIKE Inc. (NYSE:NKE - news), responding to congressional accusations the firm used exploited workers overseas, said on Wednesday that good working conditions were a company priority.
NIKE's athletic products "must also be produced in the best working conditions," Philip Knight, NIKE chairman and CEO, said in a letter to Rep. Bernard Sanders. "We won't stand for anything less. That's why we have made labor practices a priority."
The Independent congressman from Vermont was quick to respond to Knight with a letter outlining past reports from news media, human rights groups and labor organizations that showed poor working conditions at some factories that manufacture NIKE products abroad.
"It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to know that the bulk of your money is made by paying desperate Asian workers 20 or 30 cents an hour, and then selling your product in the United States for $100 or $150," Sanders said in his return letter.
Earlier this month, a report by auditors Ernst & Young said an audit conducted a year ago found many unsafe conditions at a Vietnamese factory that produced shoes for NIKE.
Knight in his letter said the company had "zero tolerance" for child labor and takes steps to ensure its contractors adhere to the minimum age standards.
He cited other reports that found workers in factories making NIKE products were well-treated.
"We're by no means perfect, but when problems do arise, and they do from time to time, they are addressed and remedied in a timely fashion," Knight wrote.
Knight invited Sanders to visit a factory making NIKE footwear in Asia, and the congressman replied he would be interested if he was given the freedom to visit the factory unaccompanied and to talk to any of the workers. "
Of course conditions are bad. Yet, if competition is doing the same, how will you continue to exist? The precedent set is that cheap labour is right, especially given uneducated populaces in these foreign labour markets. This of course inevitably ends in a vicious cycle - yet solutions are questionable, as the cultural and political evolution in developing countries takes time.
But yes, you are right in a sense. Take Wal-Mart for example: they have been caught numerous times employing slave labour in countries like bangladesh. However, the shareholders hear none of this. It is done behind the scenes, through business deals, whether the buyers (Wal-Mart in this case) are aware of it or not. There is of course pressure for growth - and since Wal-Mart's only source of profit is cheap products at extremely high commodities of scale, this is how it is done. Labour prices increasing would destroy them. This does not mean what they are doing is morally tenable - it is just the established pattern.
And then there are further blatant examples. Crony capitalism and multinational imperialism. Often sponsored by the tyrannical governments themselves. Foreign, markets purposely destroyed and then bought up by capital congomerates, leaving the native peoples with nothing. The problem is there are no solutions to this yet. I would think the answer might lie, at least as a start, in democratizing organizations such as the WTO and IMF.