What constitutes 'Taking care of'? After all, opening and closing a laptop is a pretty basic part of using a laptop, and if it can't open/close with simple use (ie: setting it on the table, pushing in the release catches, and lifting the laptop lid open at a comfortable pace) then something's wrong.
If it's a case of jerking hard on the thing, hauling the laptop around by the LCD screen (stressing the hinges), or other such abuses, I think there's a (l)user error at fault. If it's going bad because the hinges were not sturdy enough to handle the strain of supporting the open laptop, someone at the company better come clean and fix it once and for all (if it goes in for repairs).
With companies working on making things cheaper to manufacture, they're taking some excessive cuts in areas that make their products (overall) nonfunctional. In the case of laptops, where repairs cannot be effected by the user, there should be a 'ruggedness' test that they have to pass before going to market. Would tend to save on these failed experiments in the commercial market.
I do believe that his story was not intended as a way to get around getting searched. I do believe that his story was intended to be a form of public feedback on the intrusiveness of the searches. While yes, searches are sometimes necessary, it would be nice to believe that the constitution still holds some weight as it concerns illegal search and seizure. Or is that unreasonable?
So now, because a handfull of people (24 ish or so, if that) decided to take plastic knives onto a plane and the pilots stupidly GAVE control over to the terrorists and did not fight to take it back (in this instance, gave is a loose term to imply they didn't try to keep control of a flying bomb), the entire flying population is going to be held to intrusive searches, body cavity (How did this plastic knife get into your bowels, Mr Passanger?) and the like. Are they searching checked-in baggage too? Are they strip searching people to make sure they don't have a plastic knife on them? How 'bout a pocket knife? This is a real good way to preserve the freedom this nation is supposed to be known for, isn't it?
I don't mind there being some form of copy protection within Minidiscs, BECAUSE it does not prevent copying all around. What it prevents is PRISTINE copying. You are always permitted to resort to analog copying.
There are MD players that are basically no bigger than the disc itself. Sony's slimline players literally can fit into the front pocket of a dress shirt, or into a pocket of a pair of snug jeans.
Let me go over a little bit of comparison shopping for you, concerning Cassettes and Minidiscs.
Cassettes have a shelf life of some few years before the magnetic tape degrades. Minidisc media is rated up to 1 million writes, 10 million reads (or more), and a shelf life that's not yet really defined.
Cassettes are analog signals only, and prone to have bad copies over just a few generations (5 copies) before it becomes unusable. Minidiscs can record near-pristine copies via one time digital recording, and better than average recording via analog means. (Read: The Magnetic read/write heads of cassettes pick up and write much of the garbage sound you hear on tapes).
Cassettes are larger than Minidiscs, thicker and wider. While bulk may not be a massive decider at home, on the road it is. (I carry around 50-60 MD's with me in a small bag no larger than a woman's purse. I could fit 20 cassettes in the same bag)
Cassettes used to offer "CD Quality" recordability for some of the high end tapes. Minidiscs offer this on all discs. Besides, I would love to play for you a Minidisc and CD of the same music, the minidisc a digital copy of the CD, and dare you to tell me which was which.
Cassettes are pre-ordered, and must be 'rewound' to find a particular track. MD's offer immediate jumping from track to track, AND full use of their media space. Cassettes lack that ability if a space crops up between 'tracks'.
Overall, the point of Minidiscs is to be highly portable, moreso than CD's, at better quality than Cassettes. For this niche, I believe they have done their job well. Unfortunately for MD makers, most people seem content to deal with bulkier, more fragile CD's than to shell out the money to have a more rugged portable system.
Just checking up on this (as I thought I heard about it before), Minidiscs can be 'burned' at faster than real time speeds (depending on the media copying from). In fact, Sony's MDS-JB940 model can burn CD->MD in 4x speeds (full 80 minute extended CD in 20 minutes.. you get the idea).
Other reason: Unless you're using memory sticks for your MP3's (ungodly expensive, $50 for 32 meg), I'd lay claims that an MD player has greater flexibility and cheaper media than MP3 players do.
Heh. Alas, MD's do have copy protection built in, with a caviat.
Once you record digitally onto a Minidisc (optical feed in), you cannot record digitally OFF of it. You can record Analog signals off of it onto another Minidisc. They do that because analog signals decay, whereas the digital ones wouldn't.
One bit of amusing information about Minidiscs and their skip protection.
I have, as a demonstration of my player, taken it in hand, and shaken, twisted, jostled, and otherwise tried to get my music to skip (quite rapidly). I can *almost* get it to, but rarely. My MD has only 10 seconds of skip protection built in.
To comment, as a MD using American, I'd like to add a few notions to the points you made.
1) While it's true that CD's and their shock protection certainaly quelled the need for MD's and their build in shock protection, jostling CD's has the added failing of occasionally bouncing the spinning disk against the lens. I believe the gap between the MD disk and the laser lens is greater, and hense less chance of it colliding under shock (and scratching the disk as a consiquence).
2) While it's all well and good that CD-R and CD-RW drives exist now, there's one problem that CD burners simply lack. Real Time recording capabilities. A minidisc is capable of recording any live realtime performance in a digital format (and if you got the equipment, even piped to the disk digitally). CD-R's require a preliminary stage (tape) to record live performances.
2a) To add an additional note to this point, it's always rubbed me the wrong way when I burn a CD and it gets scratched or the film flakes away right away, ruining that time of copying and/or making the disk. I can guarontee that the MD's you buy are going to be solid gold. I have yet to buy one that's failed me, and I've bought over 80 blank disks. That, and CD's have that same failing of being easily scratchable, whereas MD's do not by design.
Some people complain about music quality on MD's. While the music is compressed, listening to music piped from CD through an optical feed to the MD, it sounds identical to my ears, and I like to think of myself as a good judge of music quality. To add to the list of other benefits, I'd like to make one vague notion.
Minidiscs are not a good CD replacement. CD's hold data too as well as Music, and a better quality on CD's (by bitrate, aurally identical most of the time). Minidiscs ARE, however, ideal replacements for TAPES. Life expectancy of tapes: 2 years. Life expectancy of MD's (even through rerecording over and over), much much longer.
Any program can spawn another, but to assume that one program does just because it has 'web features' ignores the "keen" invention of Microsoft of ActiveX controls.
You see, for a program to spawn another, the former program is capable of passing arguments to it (in general) and that's it. No data can be returned unless the two programs establish communications on their own. It's easier, and far more logical, to simply call an ActiveX control (For all you Unix programmers, read this as a library). When using an ActiveX control, the main program has more control over the actions taken of the library, and can send and recieve more information using that control then it could otherwise.
While I don't know ZoneAlarm's capabilities specifically (as in, capable of program-based firewalling), I thought it was capable of it from what I'd heard a long while ago. Either way, I can bet, in the event that WMP uses IE to retrieve it's files, it still uses it as an ActiveX control, not as the full program.
During the period that Microsoft distributed Win95 on CD and no PC could boot off the CD, it was a nightmare. Nowadays, the install is somewhat easier. Wipe the hard drive, insert the CD, make sure the PC can boot the CD, and go. Before, one had to install a basic OS (Dos), install CD Rom drivers, then load Win95. Though, even now, Install and maintenance of drivers and such gets a little tedious.
Installing drivers with Linux is somewhat tricker still. If the driver isn't properly formatted for your kernel (you have a modified kernel), you have to rebuild the drivers, hope it doesn't error (I kept/keep running into this with the Best Crypt encryption driver), and then pray inserting it into the Module list doesn't hork the system (For an example of how a module can do that.. Box was hacked, driver that was loaded into the kernel broke all semblance of multithreading. Wouldn't be hard for an authorized driver to do this if they don't know what's up)
On some systems (Zone alarm installed locally), the firewall can be informed that programs matching this MD5 signature are permitted to access the internet (no matter what port they want), whereas everything else cannot.
This meaning.. if WMP is not defined by the user as being permitted to access the internet, no matter how much it tries, no matter what port it's on, it will not be able to access it. Using the IE ActiveX control does not change the WMP signature to IE. WMP would still be attempting the call.
That is, of course, only on firewall systems that can prevent program-based internet traffic, not just port based.
What happens when someone is about to take a plane and slam it into a huge building? Would you want that to be prevented, or would you favor 'watching and waiting' til they do it?
I know this is the same question that they are using in the government right now. Deterrants don't do anything for fanatics. They will go out and commit the crimes irreguardless of what will happen to them (most likely because they intend to die already). While direct intervention may not happen in 'personal' conflicts, I do think the government has the correct notion that consolidating their information (stuff they already have, in varried places) is a Good Thing, and can stop large scale attacks from occuring, if for no other reason than they are able to recognize a historic criminal where they couldn't before.
It's not about thought crimes. It's about catching a criminal ABOUT to do something. Do notice when the police would properly step in to interact with said Mr Flamer.
Your thought: Catch Mr. Flamer in his own home, after flaming your commentary for some reason or another.
My thought: Catching Mr Flamer as he's stalking you in a mall, because a police officer recognized him. (Note: Stalking you - following you everywhere, and very specifically following a specific person, NOT simply being in a mall. The two are disginguisable).
You are correct in that being a very bad example. Probably shouldn't've been used due to it being a personal conflict, and their intended prevention is slaughter in the thousands or more.
Actually, in some cases (spyware, online ventures, your credit report), you do not typically state "Sure, record for me that I purchased this set of so that later on you might have (a) a profile of what I like to spend my money on and (b) maybe provide me discounts." And typically, you also don't state that "You are free to tell anyone else you want of what I spend my money on."
When I want to buy something from.. say.. Amazon.com, I want the deal to be over and done with as soon as they ship things out, and they have recieved payment. Can I tell them "Do not ever record any information longer than the transaction takes about what I buy from you."? See, what information corperations can record about you (with or without your knowledge) seems to be whatever they can get their hands on, and few have a way to let you have your spending habits wiped from their databases.
As for what information the government would be forcing you to divulge.. i'm unclear. You don't want the government to know you have blond hair, green eyes, were born in the spring, and stand 6'6" tall? The Government has the DUTY (not right) to protect it's citizens from each other, as well as to defend the country as a whole from outside threats.
I guess what the government REALLY wants (since a forced ID would probably cause riots) is a national database on criminal history, INS records, and the like. See, unfortunately, when it comes to laws, you only have 2 choices. Obey them, and get left alone (usually) or alternatively break the law, and have information recorded about you for your fellow citizen's good. There is no right to anonymity in the US. It's nowhere in our constitution that it is something granted us.
I have a feeling, in the long run, the government will not force a nationwide ID upon people. Many are stubborn, and will not accept it. After all, it does nothing to further their desired goals (tracking all revelant criminal information across all internal borders), and if most resisted, most citizens would then be criminals. Somehow, I think the majority of citizens being criminals tends to put such policy on the rocks.
Hmm.. Actually, I think you are correct, and even I saw that:P Only protocol it supports, I *think* is plain SMTP AUTH (I had found a list of clients around somewhere, and their auth capabilities once.) That is probably what I was thinking of.:P
No, they couldn't've used SMTP AUTH. Unfortunately, Outlook Express doesn't support SMTP AUTH protocols. In fact, a lot of programs that people use as email clients don't support SMTP AUTH protocols. I know, as I tried to set up my sendmail program to work with SMTP AUTH. I got it, but to my dismay, my users programs would not support or accept it.
Workaround: Seperate email password from Shell password. That prevents shell exploits, but unfortunatly, for sending, I still have to resort to site-based access rules.
I sometimes question the stability of Microsoft Bugfixes. This comes with experience from their NT service packs. Service packs are "Supposed" to be bug fixes, yet each one lumps in new features, etc. Not only that, Microsoft's "Bug fix" mentality is to, at times, do a knee jerk reaction. The I Love You virus spreads due to the Autorun code, so rather than give the customer the OPTION to say 'yes, run this', their bug fix is to outright disable it. Some fix, considering that autorun feature was touted by Microsoft as being an ideal way for something or other. Never did quite understand it.
Point is, sometimes, IT professionals are lazy and stupid. Sometimes, Bug fixes are buggy themselves. Because of Microsoft's poor rep (with me at least, and likely others), even deploying a Service pack turns into a major endevor to ensure productivity remains.
Here's a simple thought. Have a national criminal database that all state/local/federal police authorities have access to. There would be no need for a 'national ID' (though the option for one STILL is usefull in some situations), and law abiding citizens would not be in this database ON THE BASIS OF if they never commit a crime, there's no need to enter them into the database.
Right now, I'm sure that state and local, and federal have seperate databases for criminal records, and that information sharing between branches like the INS, CIA, Highway patrol, etc is slim to none.
... an unprecedented tracking and cross-refrencing of data - and that, while it will no doubt aid law enforcement, will most certainly have VAST privacy issues.
So what you're saying is that the notion of cross referencing information (read: what corperations do to track spending habits for their own advertisement gains) is bad because the government would now be doing it? Is it because now, there would be fewer places to slip through the gaps, to be bad (commit crimes) and still proceed about your life as normal?
There are two things at stake here. First, the addage 'Commit no crime, and you will not be detained/harmed/harrassed/jailed/etc'. This is pretty straight forwards, and a 'duh' statement for many people. The second, and perhaps more important, is the number of assinine and stupid laws getting voted onto the books nowadays. Under 'reasonable' laws, the first statement is the ideal. If you don't break the law, then you won't be harrassed. Simple. Problem REALLY is not that a law abiding citizen will be detained, but rather there are fewer and fewer totally law abiding citizens due to the fact that laws get tighter and tighter over what can and cannot be done.
I must be thinking of military ID's then. I know they didn't used to let you keep the old one. (unless you do something weird like I did and just not renew it because it expired along with your elegibility for it).
Don't they generally ask for the old ID card when you go to renew it? While I could see the ol' "I lost it" excuse comming up, that aught to be a 'tip off' to the DMV to record that nugget of information, and perhaps track how many times said ID card is "lost".
I seem to recall a Solaris admin telling me once about SunOS and Solaris. As he explained to me, Solaris is essentially a full rewrite of SunOS, with some lingering aspects of SunOS at it's core. The reason they did a complete rewrite of the system? SunOS stunk, and was full of problems. Solution: Ditch the problems and the source, and take what lessons you learned about design flaws and bad programming and write a new version based on what you learned from your prior failed experience.
It's not as if they're going to be totally unaware of what stupidity is strewn throughout IIS. They've been fixing holes, and patching things. Sometimes, however, bugs and security holes are so esoteric that you could literally search for weeks and still not find or reproduce it.
That's all well and good, but if you note the date they signed on the header:
29-June-2000
Michael Howard
Windows 2000 Security Team
Then apparently, up until the end of June, securing (or easily securing) IIS wasn't a high priority item, and they hadn't concerned themselves with it. Look for something similar for IIS4, and I'm sure you'll find "Upgrade and spend more money for IIS5 (or IIS6, if it's out)!"
Slashdot Mirror
What constitutes 'Taking care of'? After all, opening and closing a laptop is a pretty basic part of using a laptop, and if it can't open/close with simple use (ie: setting it on the table, pushing in the release catches, and lifting the laptop lid open at a comfortable pace) then something's wrong.
If it's a case of jerking hard on the thing, hauling the laptop around by the LCD screen (stressing the hinges), or other such abuses, I think there's a (l)user error at fault. If it's going bad because the hinges were not sturdy enough to handle the strain of supporting the open laptop, someone at the company better come clean and fix it once and for all (if it goes in for repairs).
With companies working on making things cheaper to manufacture, they're taking some excessive cuts in areas that make their products (overall) nonfunctional. In the case of laptops, where repairs cannot be effected by the user, there should be a 'ruggedness' test that they have to pass before going to market. Would tend to save on these failed experiments in the commercial market.
I do believe that his story was not intended as a way to get around getting searched. I do believe that his story was intended to be a form of public feedback on the intrusiveness of the searches. While yes, searches are sometimes necessary, it would be nice to believe that the constitution still holds some weight as it concerns illegal search and seizure. Or is that unreasonable?
So now, because a handfull of people (24 ish or so, if that) decided to take plastic knives onto a plane and the pilots stupidly GAVE control over to the terrorists and did not fight to take it back (in this instance, gave is a loose term to imply they didn't try to keep control of a flying bomb), the entire flying population is going to be held to intrusive searches, body cavity (How did this plastic knife get into your bowels, Mr Passanger?) and the like. Are they searching checked-in baggage too? Are they strip searching people to make sure they don't have a plastic knife on them? How 'bout a pocket knife? This is a real good way to preserve the freedom this nation is supposed to be known for, isn't it?
I don't mind there being some form of copy protection within Minidiscs, BECAUSE it does not prevent copying all around. What it prevents is PRISTINE copying. You are always permitted to resort to analog copying.
There are MD players that are basically no bigger than the disc itself. Sony's slimline players literally can fit into the front pocket of a dress shirt, or into a pocket of a pair of snug jeans.
Just a quick note, MD's DO have a lossy compression. Something like 5:1 I believe is the ratio. It might be better now, but that's what I read it as.
Let me go over a little bit of comparison shopping for you, concerning Cassettes and Minidiscs.
Cassettes have a shelf life of some few years before the magnetic tape degrades. Minidisc media is rated up to 1 million writes, 10 million reads (or more), and a shelf life that's not yet really defined.
Cassettes are analog signals only, and prone to have bad copies over just a few generations (5 copies) before it becomes unusable. Minidiscs can record near-pristine copies via one time digital recording, and better than average recording via analog means. (Read: The Magnetic read/write heads of cassettes pick up and write much of the garbage sound you hear on tapes).
Cassettes are larger than Minidiscs, thicker and wider. While bulk may not be a massive decider at home, on the road it is. (I carry around 50-60 MD's with me in a small bag no larger than a woman's purse. I could fit 20 cassettes in the same bag)
Cassettes used to offer "CD Quality" recordability for some of the high end tapes. Minidiscs offer this on all discs. Besides, I would love to play for you a Minidisc and CD of the same music, the minidisc a digital copy of the CD, and dare you to tell me which was which.
Cassettes are pre-ordered, and must be 'rewound' to find a particular track. MD's offer immediate jumping from track to track, AND full use of their media space. Cassettes lack that ability if a space crops up between 'tracks'.
Overall, the point of Minidiscs is to be highly portable, moreso than CD's, at better quality than Cassettes. For this niche, I believe they have done their job well. Unfortunately for MD makers, most people seem content to deal with bulkier, more fragile CD's than to shell out the money to have a more rugged portable system.
"Gone" in terms of Minidiscs is only a state of mind. So long as people owning MD recorders can get their hands on media, Minidiscs won't be gone.
Considering the lack of good standards and 'thrown-together' feel of the MP3 player market, I wonder how long it'll be before they, too, are gone?
Just checking up on this (as I thought I heard about it before), Minidiscs can be 'burned' at faster than real time speeds (depending on the media copying from). In fact, Sony's MDS-JB940 model can burn CD->MD in 4x speeds (full 80 minute extended CD in 20 minutes.. you get the idea). Other reason: Unless you're using memory sticks for your MP3's (ungodly expensive, $50 for 32 meg), I'd lay claims that an MD player has greater flexibility and cheaper media than MP3 players do.
Heh. Alas, MD's do have copy protection built in, with a caviat.
Once you record digitally onto a Minidisc (optical feed in), you cannot record digitally OFF of it. You can record Analog signals off of it onto another Minidisc. They do that because analog signals decay, whereas the digital ones wouldn't.
Nice little feep, considering.
One bit of amusing information about Minidiscs and their skip protection.
I have, as a demonstration of my player, taken it in hand, and shaken, twisted, jostled, and otherwise tried to get my music to skip (quite rapidly). I can *almost* get it to, but rarely. My MD has only 10 seconds of skip protection built in.
To comment, as a MD using American, I'd like to add a few notions to the points you made.
1) While it's true that CD's and their shock protection certainaly quelled the need for MD's and their build in shock protection, jostling CD's has the added failing of occasionally bouncing the spinning disk against the lens. I believe the gap between the MD disk and the laser lens is greater, and hense less chance of it colliding under shock (and scratching the disk as a consiquence).
2) While it's all well and good that CD-R and CD-RW drives exist now, there's one problem that CD burners simply lack. Real Time recording capabilities. A minidisc is capable of recording any live realtime performance in a digital format (and if you got the equipment, even piped to the disk digitally). CD-R's require a preliminary stage (tape) to record live performances.
2a) To add an additional note to this point, it's always rubbed me the wrong way when I burn a CD and it gets scratched or the film flakes away right away, ruining that time of copying and/or making the disk. I can guarontee that the MD's you buy are going to be solid gold. I have yet to buy one that's failed me, and I've bought over 80 blank disks. That, and CD's have that same failing of being easily scratchable, whereas MD's do not by design.
Some people complain about music quality on MD's. While the music is compressed, listening to music piped from CD through an optical feed to the MD, it sounds identical to my ears, and I like to think of myself as a good judge of music quality. To add to the list of other benefits, I'd like to make one vague notion.
Minidiscs are not a good CD replacement. CD's hold data too as well as Music, and a better quality on CD's (by bitrate, aurally identical most of the time). Minidiscs ARE, however, ideal replacements for TAPES. Life expectancy of tapes: 2 years. Life expectancy of MD's (even through rerecording over and over), much much longer.
Any program can spawn another, but to assume that one program does just because it has 'web features' ignores the "keen" invention of Microsoft of ActiveX controls.
You see, for a program to spawn another, the former program is capable of passing arguments to it (in general) and that's it. No data can be returned unless the two programs establish communications on their own. It's easier, and far more logical, to simply call an ActiveX control (For all you Unix programmers, read this as a library). When using an ActiveX control, the main program has more control over the actions taken of the library, and can send and recieve more information using that control then it could otherwise.
While I don't know ZoneAlarm's capabilities specifically (as in, capable of program-based firewalling), I thought it was capable of it from what I'd heard a long while ago. Either way, I can bet, in the event that WMP uses IE to retrieve it's files, it still uses it as an ActiveX control, not as the full program.
During the period that Microsoft distributed Win95 on CD and no PC could boot off the CD, it was a nightmare. Nowadays, the install is somewhat easier. Wipe the hard drive, insert the CD, make sure the PC can boot the CD, and go. Before, one had to install a basic OS (Dos), install CD Rom drivers, then load Win95. Though, even now, Install and maintenance of drivers and such gets a little tedious.
Installing drivers with Linux is somewhat tricker still. If the driver isn't properly formatted for your kernel (you have a modified kernel), you have to rebuild the drivers, hope it doesn't error (I kept/keep running into this with the Best Crypt encryption driver), and then pray inserting it into the Module list doesn't hork the system (For an example of how a module can do that.. Box was hacked, driver that was loaded into the kernel broke all semblance of multithreading. Wouldn't be hard for an authorized driver to do this if they don't know what's up)
On some systems (Zone alarm installed locally), the firewall can be informed that programs matching this MD5 signature are permitted to access the internet (no matter what port they want), whereas everything else cannot.
This meaning.. if WMP is not defined by the user as being permitted to access the internet, no matter how much it tries, no matter what port it's on, it will not be able to access it. Using the IE ActiveX control does not change the WMP signature to IE. WMP would still be attempting the call.
That is, of course, only on firewall systems that can prevent program-based internet traffic, not just port based.
Problem:
What happens when someone is about to take a plane and slam it into a huge building? Would you want that to be prevented, or would you favor 'watching and waiting' til they do it?
I know this is the same question that they are using in the government right now. Deterrants don't do anything for fanatics. They will go out and commit the crimes irreguardless of what will happen to them (most likely because they intend to die already). While direct intervention may not happen in 'personal' conflicts, I do think the government has the correct notion that consolidating their information (stuff they already have, in varried places) is a Good Thing, and can stop large scale attacks from occuring, if for no other reason than they are able to recognize a historic criminal where they couldn't before.
It's not about thought crimes. It's about catching a criminal ABOUT to do something. Do notice when the police would properly step in to interact with said Mr Flamer.
Your thought: Catch Mr. Flamer in his own home, after flaming your commentary for some reason or another.
My thought: Catching Mr Flamer as he's stalking you in a mall, because a police officer recognized him. (Note: Stalking you - following you everywhere, and very specifically following a specific person, NOT simply being in a mall. The two are disginguisable).
You are correct in that being a very bad example. Probably shouldn't've been used due to it being a personal conflict, and their intended prevention is slaughter in the thousands or more.
Actually, in some cases (spyware, online ventures, your credit report), you do not typically state "Sure, record for me that I purchased this set of so that later on you might have (a) a profile of what I like to spend my money on and (b) maybe provide me discounts." And typically, you also don't state that "You are free to tell anyone else you want of what I spend my money on."
When I want to buy something from.. say.. Amazon.com, I want the deal to be over and done with as soon as they ship things out, and they have recieved payment. Can I tell them "Do not ever record any information longer than the transaction takes about what I buy from you."? See, what information corperations can record about you (with or without your knowledge) seems to be whatever they can get their hands on, and few have a way to let you have your spending habits wiped from their databases.
As for what information the government would be forcing you to divulge.. i'm unclear. You don't want the government to know you have blond hair, green eyes, were born in the spring, and stand 6'6" tall? The Government has the DUTY (not right) to protect it's citizens from each other, as well as to defend the country as a whole from outside threats.
I guess what the government REALLY wants (since a forced ID would probably cause riots) is a national database on criminal history, INS records, and the like. See, unfortunately, when it comes to laws, you only have 2 choices. Obey them, and get left alone (usually) or alternatively break the law, and have information recorded about you for your fellow citizen's good. There is no right to anonymity in the US. It's nowhere in our constitution that it is something granted us.
I have a feeling, in the long run, the government will not force a nationwide ID upon people. Many are stubborn, and will not accept it. After all, it does nothing to further their desired goals (tracking all revelant criminal information across all internal borders), and if most resisted, most citizens would then be criminals. Somehow, I think the majority of citizens being criminals tends to put such policy on the rocks.
Hmm.. Actually, I think you are correct, and even I saw that :P Only protocol it supports, I *think* is plain SMTP AUTH (I had found a list of clients around somewhere, and their auth capabilities once.) That is probably what I was thinking of. :P
No, they couldn't've used SMTP AUTH. Unfortunately, Outlook Express doesn't support SMTP AUTH protocols. In fact, a lot of programs that people use as email clients don't support SMTP AUTH protocols. I know, as I tried to set up my sendmail program to work with SMTP AUTH. I got it, but to my dismay, my users programs would not support or accept it.
Workaround: Seperate email password from Shell password. That prevents shell exploits, but unfortunatly, for sending, I still have to resort to site-based access rules.
I sometimes question the stability of Microsoft Bugfixes. This comes with experience from their NT service packs. Service packs are "Supposed" to be bug fixes, yet each one lumps in new features, etc. Not only that, Microsoft's "Bug fix" mentality is to, at times, do a knee jerk reaction. The I Love You virus spreads due to the Autorun code, so rather than give the customer the OPTION to say 'yes, run this', their bug fix is to outright disable it. Some fix, considering that autorun feature was touted by Microsoft as being an ideal way for something or other. Never did quite understand it.
Point is, sometimes, IT professionals are lazy and stupid. Sometimes, Bug fixes are buggy themselves. Because of Microsoft's poor rep (with me at least, and likely others), even deploying a Service pack turns into a major endevor to ensure productivity remains.
Here's a simple thought. Have a national criminal database that all state/local/federal police authorities have access to. There would be no need for a 'national ID' (though the option for one STILL is usefull in some situations), and law abiding citizens would not be in this database ON THE BASIS OF if they never commit a crime, there's no need to enter them into the database.
Right now, I'm sure that state and local, and federal have seperate databases for criminal records, and that information sharing between branches like the INS, CIA, Highway patrol, etc is slim to none.
... an unprecedented tracking and cross-refrencing of data - and that, while it will no doubt aid law enforcement, will most certainly have VAST privacy issues.
So what you're saying is that the notion of cross referencing information (read: what corperations do to track spending habits for their own advertisement gains) is bad because the government would now be doing it? Is it because now, there would be fewer places to slip through the gaps, to be bad (commit crimes) and still proceed about your life as normal?
There are two things at stake here. First, the addage 'Commit no crime, and you will not be detained/harmed/harrassed/jailed/etc'. This is pretty straight forwards, and a 'duh' statement for many people. The second, and perhaps more important, is the number of assinine and stupid laws getting voted onto the books nowadays. Under 'reasonable' laws, the first statement is the ideal. If you don't break the law, then you won't be harrassed. Simple. Problem REALLY is not that a law abiding citizen will be detained, but rather there are fewer and fewer totally law abiding citizens due to the fact that laws get tighter and tighter over what can and cannot be done.
I must be thinking of military ID's then. I know they didn't used to let you keep the old one. (unless you do something weird like I did and just not renew it because it expired along with your elegibility for it).
Don't they generally ask for the old ID card when you go to renew it? While I could see the ol' "I lost it" excuse comming up, that aught to be a 'tip off' to the DMV to record that nugget of information, and perhaps track how many times said ID card is "lost".
It's not as if they're going to be totally unaware of what stupidity is strewn throughout IIS. They've been fixing holes, and patching things. Sometimes, however, bugs and security holes are so esoteric that you could literally search for weeks and still not find or reproduce it.
29-June-2000
Michael Howard
Windows 2000 Security Team
Then apparently, up until the end of June, securing (or easily securing) IIS wasn't a high priority item, and they hadn't concerned themselves with it. Look for something similar for IIS4, and I'm sure you'll find "Upgrade and spend more money for IIS5 (or IIS6, if it's out)!"