One of the Geneva Conventions' articles states, that the violations (real or perceived) by one side, can not be used as justification for violations by the other.
This may all be fine and true, but has little to do with Neal's advice to avoid fights altogether -- the piece of wisdom, you wanted somebody to pass to "Bush and his drinking buddies".
For, after all, "Saddam had to be disarmed, and I am glad we did it," said John Kerry in May 2003. And Iraqis seem to concurr, however dissatisfied they (and Kerry) may be with some aspects of the post-war period...
Once that is sniffed, an attacker can not only read my e-mail, she/he can also delete it.
A minor inconvenience at the worst.
For you -- may be. For me, e-mail is the most reliable form of communication, I have -- better than phone or personal communication, better than written (on paper or some such). It is possible to encrypt a letter sent to me to protect it, but someone with access to my mbox can delete it for good -- I'll may never know and neither may the sender.
There may be people already having access to it, indeed, but there is no reason to let their ranks grow gratuitously.
Email should be considered compromised anyway
Well, my home is "compromised", because the lock is easy to pick. But I still shut the door. It ain't Fort Knox, nor do I need it to be, but it is protected from a casual observer or a simple burglar.
What's your point anyway? That encryption is useless, other than between totally "trusted" systems? Sorry, but no, that's not convincing. The less holes the better, but a leaky bucket can still be used to carry water. Use of SSL plugs a big hole right in the bottom -- even if others remain.
seem to think that killing and displacing thousands of Iraqis is going to solve the base problem [...] Bush Sr. betrayed the Iraqis who answered his call for a revolt against Saddamn.
So Bush Jr. made up for the father's mistake by finally deposing of the despot, that his predecessors failed to finish off. Do you honestly believe, going to Baghdad in 1991 (as, indeed, Bush Sr. should've done) would've required much less "killing and displacing" somehow?
Yeah, you wouldn't want anyone intercepting those
emails which were sent to you in plaintext via SMTP.
For one, the sooner the encryption begins the better. If I was not using ssh-tunnel, all my e-mail would've been available to my ISP, my school's ISP, and whoever is in between. With it, only separate pieces are available to whatever ISPs were used to send it (and the school's ISP, of course). That's not as convenient for an attacker -- like picking apples in someone else's orchard is not as convenient as taking boxes full of already picked fruit.
Most importantly, however, without SSL my password travels in plain text. Once that is sniffed, an attacker can not only read my e-mail, she/he can also delete it. Because the passwords for IMAP and shell are the same, he/she can also login to the school's servers as me.
I disagree. Regardless of the particular institution, I think we're all aware of the fact that providing sensitive information to a university without tight controls is amazingly dangerous.
No disagreement here. In fact, even the CA's government agrees, and the controls were, presumably, tight. Just not tight enough...
I don't blame Berkeley here, nor would I blame any school.
Basing policy decisions on the possibility of future breakthroughs is not a solid long-term plan. It is far more efficient, and prudent, to begin the change gradually, and then, if the change is later deemed unnecessary, roll back the changes.
If the term is long enough to cover several millenia, a plan for it, that begins with a few centuries of mere discussions, is a perfectly good one. Aggressive even...
Indeed. It took years for my ex-school to switch to ssh and ban outside telnet-ing. At the conclusion of one discussion, the head admin said, that she is still not convinced, they need ssh, but that she might consider disabling rsh... May be, because it is a government-run school, I don't know.
And there still is no SSL support on IMAP server(s). To protect my account, I have to ssh in and create a tunnel -- this way I am only exposed to a hacker already on the department net...
The only real admin I know there seems quite competent, but either he is overloaded by work or the security just is not a high priority, I guess...
They have a nice policy, of keeping accounts of alumnis alive for as long as they are active, though.
I agree -- this is the state, where anti-outsourcing lawmakers tried to illegalize exporting work to countries, whose "privacy laws" are not as good as in California. And according to these lawmakers, no country is good enough...
Had it been the Bob Jones University or some other ubber-conservative school, we'd never hear the end of conspiracy theories viz. rights-trampling and spying on fellow citizens (not that there was anything in there unknown to the government yet).
Let's see, how it plays out for this ubber-liberal establishment.
We can't wait 3 to 7 thousand years. I never said that. I simply said that it's insane to even consider that we can continue pumping out CO2 indefinitely. We can't. No one could possibly suggest that we could. 10,000 years is still less than infinity. That's all that I meant.
I said, we can wait 3 to 7 thousand years before working on avoiding suffocation based on your figure of 10 thousand years before we begin to suffocate.
You are right, the problem can not be put off infinitely, but even 3 thousand years is about 10 times the history of these Colonies. An awful lot will change -- we may have cold fusion and interstellar travel by then.
If we don't do it soon, we're just putting it off, and we're going to make the rate at which we have to cut down on emissions much, much higher.
7 thousands years from now? Somehow, I'm not worried. Any attempts to predict, what is going to happen in 1 thousand years are solidly in the realm of fiction -- predominantly unscientific. I'm sorry, but your demands, start we start sacrificing now for the sake of our future great-great-....-grandchildren thousands of years from now are not at all convincing.
We're clearly approaching the peak of oil production in less than 100 years.
Aha, now we are switching the subject slightly from CO2 emissions to oil shortage. Let's look at this. For one, according to the past predictions expressed with the same vigor, we were supposed to run out of the stuff already. Or 10 years ago. Yet today's proven reserves world-wide are bigger than they were 30 years ago -- according to Economist.
Second, and most important, if we do start experiencing the oil shortage, the price will start climbing and the genuine market forces will make us switch to more economical technologies. No need for the "command and control" mandating, that you consider necessary somehow.
Why do you think people are talking about "reducing our dependency on foreign oil"?
Because they hope, it may get them elected.
Why don't we tackle both problems at once and reduce CO2 emissions as well?
Because both require very expensive solutions to something, that is not even problem. At least, not yet -- unlike, say, cancer, terrorism, AIDS, budget deficit, malaria, and obesity.
we'll kill ourselves in 10,000-20,000 years or so from too high CO2 concentration
...
If you approach the problem logically, we're fools not to start cutting down on CO2 usage now and start phasing in newer, cleaner technologies (mandating hybrid cars, pushing towards non-fossil fuel power plants, etc.).
Actually, your proposal is as illogical as it gets. By your own numbers, we will begin facing dangers 10000-20000 years from now -- that is, roughly, the length of the known history.
Why mandate anything now, when both the technology is still expensive, and the need is far from obvious? By your estimates, we can safely wait another 3-7 thousand years, and if our kin does not have the right technology by that time, than may be they deserve to die out.
A simple cost-benefit analysis suggests, the resources can be spent on something much more useful.
at any rate the device that he described would look something like the size of a coin and be able to send data in the high ghz range using spread spectrum burst communications directly to an overhead LEO satellite
This would seem to make the charges, that Mr. Bush wore "a wire", bulky enough to show through his suit, hard to believe... Just a thought.
By keeping Echelon closed, it's exploitable by its supplier corporations. Keeping its algorithms secret prevents the larger community of "good guys" from improving it, as well as keeping its improvements from feeding back into the American tech edge. It's a backwards combination of secrecy and corporate development that makes it both more expensive and less safe.
This, unfortunately, is true for just about any defense project. There usually is some congressional oversight, but only by Congressmen/Senators with clearance, etc.
Opening it up wider will, indeed, make it more accountable and thus cheaper, but will also release to our enemies more information about the system and its capabilities. Some of them may realize, they were listened to and switch addresses, phone numbers, and codes. Others may realize, they can lower their expenses because the system does not parse their tongue, or is incapable of intercepting faxes...
Public accountability is almost always desirable. Except in some rarecases -- such as national defense.
What kind of irrelevant comment about Linux is that?
That was a joke. Sorry.
I'm not upset, I'm just unhappy about being ripped off by the government for spying on my fellow countrymen for corporate profit six ways from sunday.
Echelon is not (supposed to be) used for internal intelligence gathering. Only to spy on foreigners. If you are one -- sorry. But then it ain't your money being spent.
I don't mind corporate profit, and neither should you -- as long as your freedoms are not restricted, which they aren't -- not by Echelon, anyway. After all, corporations are owned by your fellow countrymen...
The "enemies" have their own spy networks of tech and people, and of course know about Echelon.
There is a lot to know about a system beyond "it exists".
What do they know? Do they know, if the system processes all calls, or only some of them (like 10%)? Do they know, whether it can access wireless calls, and if so, which ones? Do they know, how good the software is and how powerful the hardware? Do they know, if it is enough to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian to confuse the system, or whether it is good enough to recognize the speaker whatever language?
The "Intelligence community" keeps these systems secret from us to perpetuate exactly the kind of scam I've detailed, as proven by its existence as such.
What scam? Have you ever tried to devise a system of such complexity? Of course, anything made by a government (space flights, tanks, healthcare, bread, TV) is more bloated and expensive than when made by private sector through free markets, but defense is something, I'm willing to see in government's hands.
What exactly is *your* major malfunction, that you're apologizing for these vampires?
What "vampires"? They certainly waste a lot of money. But for charges of "scam" to stick, there have to be grounds to suspect them of wasting knowingly for the purpose of enriching themselves. Can you prove that? Can you even hint at that? Can Michael Moore make a documentary about it? Oops...
You are only upset, because they don't use Linux, aren't you... Just like Linux, whatever cheaper alternatives (hardware and software) may exist today, did not exist, when the system was designed and implemented.
It was secret, not because it costs too much, but because the enemies weren't supposed to know about it. Or -- once the news trickled out -- they weren't supposed to know the exact capabilities. Duh...
Blame the Electoral College. Massachussetts hasn't gone with a GOP candidate since Calvin Coolidge in 1924. I seriously doubt Bush will win it this year.
For one, my non-Kerry vote will help reduce the "lost popular vote charges". Two, I plan to vote libertarian anyway. I just strongly prefer Bush over this new incarnation of Dukakis, that Democracts are trying to impose on us.
I have no problem with Electoral College -- we are a not a state, but a union of states...
I chopped, what I consider insignificant -- no matter, what the circumstances are, an ear-piece does not automatically make its wearer into "a puppet" -- someone without free will, controlled by the others. We don't have that technology yet.
Wearing a wire at a debate would in my opinion make him a puppet of the people feeding him lines.
How so? Is a special-forces soldier in a jungle with an ear-piece -- to stay in touch with his partners -- "a puppet"? He is in a much tougher spot, than a debating presidential candidate...
If true, it means, he has a good team around him. Which is fine by me.
Kerry -- wired or not -- gets no vote from me. And I am voting in Massachussetts, where the rest of electorate barely remembers the disaster named Dukakis...
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One of the Geneva Conventions' articles states, that the violations (real or perceived) by one side, can not be used as justification for violations by the other.
For, after all, "Saddam had to be disarmed, and I am glad we did it," said John Kerry in May 2003. And Iraqis seem to concurr, however dissatisfied they (and Kerry) may be with some aspects of the post-war period...
For you -- may be. For me, e-mail is the most reliable form of communication, I have -- better than phone or personal communication, better than written (on paper or some such). It is possible to encrypt a letter sent to me to protect it, but someone with access to my mbox can delete it for good -- I'll may never know and neither may the sender.
There may be people already having access to it, indeed, but there is no reason to let their ranks grow gratuitously.
Well, my home is "compromised", because the lock is easy to pick. But I still shut the door. It ain't Fort Knox, nor do I need it to be, but it is protected from a casual observer or a simple burglar.
What's your point anyway? That encryption is useless, other than between totally "trusted" systems? Sorry, but no, that's not convincing. The less holes the better, but a leaky bucket can still be used to carry water. Use of SSL plugs a big hole right in the bottom -- even if others remain.
So Bush Jr. made up for the father's mistake by finally deposing of the despot, that his predecessors failed to finish off. Do you honestly believe, going to Baghdad in 1991 (as, indeed, Bush Sr. should've done) would've required much less "killing and displacing" somehow?
Talk about off-topic flamebaits...
For one, the sooner the encryption begins the better. If I was not using ssh-tunnel, all my e-mail would've been available to my ISP, my school's ISP, and whoever is in between. With it, only separate pieces are available to whatever ISPs were used to send it (and the school's ISP, of course). That's not as convenient for an attacker -- like picking apples in someone else's orchard is not as convenient as taking boxes full of already picked fruit.
Most importantly, however, without SSL my password travels in plain text. Once that is sniffed, an attacker can not only read my e-mail, she/he can also delete it. Because the passwords for IMAP and shell are the same, he/she can also login to the school's servers as me.
You knew, all that, of course, did not you?
No disagreement here. In fact, even the CA's government agrees, and the controls were, presumably, tight. Just not tight enough...
Very sensible. I would not either.
If the term is long enough to cover several millenia, a plan for it, that begins with a few centuries of mere discussions, is a perfectly good one. Aggressive even...
And there still is no SSL support on IMAP server(s). To protect my account, I have to ssh in and create a tunnel -- this way I am only exposed to a hacker already on the department net...
The only real admin I know there seems quite competent, but either he is overloaded by work or the security just is not a high priority, I guess...
They have a nice policy, of keeping accounts of alumnis alive for as long as they are active, though.
I agree -- this is the state, where anti-outsourcing lawmakers tried to illegalize exporting work to countries, whose "privacy laws" are not as good as in California. And according to these lawmakers, no country is good enough...
Let's see, how it plays out for this ubber-liberal establishment.
from just about every software author/vendor -- including myself.
I said, we can wait 3 to 7 thousand years before working on avoiding suffocation based on your figure of 10 thousand years before we begin to suffocate.
You are right, the problem can not be put off infinitely, but even 3 thousand years is about 10 times the history of these Colonies. An awful lot will change -- we may have cold fusion and interstellar travel by then.
7 thousands years from now? Somehow, I'm not worried. Any attempts to predict, what is going to happen in 1 thousand years are solidly in the realm of fiction -- predominantly unscientific. I'm sorry, but your demands, start we start sacrificing now for the sake of our future great-great-....-grandchildren thousands of years from now are not at all convincing.
Aha, now we are switching the subject slightly from CO2 emissions to oil shortage. Let's look at this. For one, according to the past predictions expressed with the same vigor, we were supposed to run out of the stuff already. Or 10 years ago. Yet today's proven reserves world-wide are bigger than they were 30 years ago -- according to Economist.
Second, and most important, if we do start experiencing the oil shortage, the price will start climbing and the genuine market forces will make us switch to more economical technologies. No need for the "command and control" mandating, that you consider necessary somehow.
Because they hope, it may get them elected.
Because both require very expensive solutions to something, that is not even problem. At least, not yet -- unlike, say, cancer, terrorism, AIDS, budget deficit, malaria, and obesity.
Actually, your proposal is as illogical as it gets. By your own numbers, we will begin facing dangers 10000-20000 years from now -- that is, roughly, the length of the known history.
Why mandate anything now, when both the technology is still expensive, and the need is far from obvious? By your estimates, we can safely wait another 3-7 thousand years, and if our kin does not have the right technology by that time, than may be they deserve to die out.
A simple cost-benefit analysis suggests, the resources can be spent on something much more useful.
Who else?
Disguising it as a news story? Oh, wait... Ooops, never mind...
This would seem to make the charges, that Mr. Bush wore "a wire", bulky enough to show through his suit, hard to believe... Just a thought.
Do you have any pointers to back this up?
This, unfortunately, is true for just about any defense project. There usually is some congressional oversight, but only by Congressmen/Senators with clearance, etc.
Opening it up wider will, indeed, make it more accountable and thus cheaper, but will also release to our enemies more information about the system and its capabilities. Some of them may realize, they were listened to and switch addresses, phone numbers, and codes. Others may realize, they can lower their expenses because the system does not parse their tongue, or is incapable of intercepting faxes...
Public accountability is almost always desirable. Except in some rarecases -- such as national defense.
That was a joke. Sorry.
Echelon is not (supposed to be) used for internal intelligence gathering. Only to spy on foreigners. If you are one -- sorry. But then it ain't your money being spent.
I don't mind corporate profit, and neither should you -- as long as your freedoms are not restricted, which they aren't -- not by Echelon, anyway. After all, corporations are owned by your fellow countrymen...
There is a lot to know about a system beyond "it exists".
What do they know? Do they know, if the system processes all calls, or only some of them (like 10%)? Do they know, whether it can access wireless calls, and if so, which ones? Do they know, how good the software is and how powerful the hardware? Do they know, if it is enough to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian to confuse the system, or whether it is good enough to recognize the speaker whatever language?
What scam? Have you ever tried to devise a system of such complexity? Of course, anything made by a government (space flights, tanks, healthcare, bread, TV) is more bloated and expensive than when made by private sector through free markets, but defense is something, I'm willing to see in government's hands.
What "vampires"? They certainly waste a lot of money. But for charges of "scam" to stick, there have to be grounds to suspect them of wasting knowingly for the purpose of enriching themselves. Can you prove that? Can you even hint at that? Can Michael Moore make a documentary about it? Oops...
It was secret, not because it costs too much, but because the enemies weren't supposed to know about it. Or -- once the news trickled out -- they weren't supposed to know the exact capabilities. Duh...
For one, my non-Kerry vote will help reduce the "lost popular vote charges". Two, I plan to vote libertarian anyway. I just strongly prefer Bush over this new incarnation of Dukakis, that Democracts are trying to impose on us.
I have no problem with Electoral College -- we are a not a state, but a union of states...
See you at the polls.
The capitalists will not do, what their paying customers don't want...
I chopped, what I consider insignificant -- no matter, what the circumstances are, an ear-piece does not automatically make its wearer into "a puppet" -- someone without free will, controlled by the others. We don't have that technology yet.
How so? Is a special-forces soldier in a jungle with an ear-piece -- to stay in touch with his partners -- "a puppet"? He is in a much tougher spot, than a debating presidential candidate...
A person wearing a wire is not automatically a puppet. Not of whoever speaks into his ear, nor of anyone else.
Heavens! All these laws requiring hands-free cell-phones were designed to turn the hapless drivers into puppets?..
Kerry -- wired or not -- gets no vote from me. And I am voting in Massachussetts, where the rest of electorate barely remembers the disaster named Dukakis...