Well, if you keep watching until about 3:45, you'll see he also says that they released the full material as well. I don't really have a problem with that - they have a position on the meaning of the material, and present it in a way which has the most impact, but they also released the whole tape (well, everything they had).
The New Yorker had an interesting piece on Assange & the publishing of the video recently. It discussed how he rented a house in Iceland for the process, the number of people helping make it all happen smoothly, etc. The fact is, doing that kind of stuff costs money. I'm sure he's no saint, but I think it's a good thing to have a site like Wikileaks out there as a check on excessive government secrecy. $200k isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
My basic understanding of it is that they're not breaking any encryption, they're just using this flaw to gather your real IP address when you are going through a VPN endpoint. Your hope would be that all anyone monitoring a torrent could see would be the address of your VPN endpoint (probably from a VPN provider like The Pirate Bay), but instead they're able to gather more information, presumably so they can identify and sue you.
What, then, is the best way to preserve anonymity when using, for instance, BitTorrent? I have looked at services like BTGuard & Predator, but there's always a little spidey-sense tingle of lack of trust...
The problem with the current "peak demand" is that they have to have excess, quickly accessible capacity available to meet it. If they can level out demand then they can always have their most efficient plants providing the energy, and not need to build more natural gas plants (for example) just to meet the air conditioning demands of a few weeks of summer. Around here, that's peak demand, and if you can ever level that out completely it will be a good thing.
They call it Energy Wise (energywiserewards.pepco.com) - basically they put a programmable thermostat in for you. At peak summer demand times, they can send out a radio signal which tells your thermostat for the next hour to cycle off for 50, 75 or 100% of the usage of the preceding hour, depending on which option you choose. They give you money off your bill depending on the option you pick, from $40-80. It seems like it's a good way to level peak demand, and I don't really care if the temperature goes up a few degrees on the hottest days. We don't keep the place frigid anyway. We'll see how it works this summer, just got it installed a few months ago.
I'm with Pepco, in MoCo, and they have the thermostat program (I'm on it) but not the tiered pricing. Still, it was easy to get them to put in the thermostat, so it's a start.
Even the Dual Core Revo, which has 2GB RAM, wireless KB & mouse, and Windows 7, is half the price of the Mini. For an HTPC, it's really hard to beat. Admittedly the Mini has a more powerful processor & a dvd drive, but for an HTPC I think that once you can play 1080p you can stop right there.
Having said that, if I were to get a Mac the Mini would probably be the one I'd get, I do like the form factor.
Here in the DC area, there are a number of "foreign" OTA broadcasts - I think it's up around channel 47. There are sub channels with Chinese and French, among lots of Spanish language and others. I also get the BBC America news broadcast. I canceled Dish network for an HTPC & OTA, and there's plenty of stuff for my limited TV watching needs.
In addition, the fact that Warren Buffet thought that the Gates Foundation was doing such a good job that he has them handling his money too makes me think that they are probably pretty good at what they do...
The problem is, to do that you'd need a MUCH bigger solar panel. I have one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Powermonkey-eXplorer-Portable-Charger-Solar/dp/B000Y9KW9G and the solar panel in full sunlight can just barely charge a phone. It can get the battery pack it comes with most of the way charged in a couple of days, which you can then use to recharge your phone. It's better than nothing, but it's not going to do that and be a light source too...
Is that the same f-spot that, according to a front page article on Slashdot, Ubuntu is replacing with Shotwell? It may actually be better than Lightroom, I don't know, but that's not a ringing endorsement...
The only thing that Atom excludes you from is HD Flash video and that's because Flash isn't adequately exploiting the available hardware.
The Flash 10.1 betas use hardware acceleration, that's why things like the Acer Revos (with the ION chipset) make good HTPCs. The Atom chips don't have to do all the work, the ION handles the video. I'm using one & it can handle 1080p mkvs flawlessly (that's not Flash, obviously). The only playback issues I'm seeing in Media Center is with the built in Netflix streaming - maybe it's a Silverlight issue, but it's not smooth for me right now. I suspect that Silverlight may not be correctly using the hardware acceleration.
Well, but those are actually 800GB native; you can get 1.6TB native but like I guessed the tapes are around $100. With tape I have always gone by native and taken compression as a bonus, especially since the bulk of our data is images which don't compress well. If you're doing over a TB nightly, the 800GB native tapes may well not cut it for you.
My idea for an e-book reader is something I call Gutenberg friendly: It has what I need to download and display text, HTML, PDF, and Postscript files that I might download from Project Gutenberg or other open sites as well as software manuals. That and a $100 price tag could win me over to the e-book world.
For $150, I'm tempted by the Sony e-reader. Sony does have an e-book store, but they seem to be the most open e-readers out there & usable under Linux. If/when my ancient Palm Tungsten dies, it'll be between the Sony or a Touch for a replacement - I mostly use it for reading, but the PIM features are still handy.
The more I read about the decision, the less worried about it I am. It seems to me that under this ruling if you tell the police that you're invoking your Miranda rights, they will stop all interrogation. If you simply remain silent, they can keep questioning you, and if you then speak, that can be used against you. Honestly, that was the way I had always thought it would work - you know, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
I don't really see this as Miranda rights going away, more as a slightly altered interpretation of how a suspect's initial silence is to be interpreted.
And TFA (the BBC one) mentions that one of the possible uses for the studies they are doing would be to mitigate the effects of isolation on the elderly.
30 2TB external drives are about $4500 right now; I haven't priced 1.6TB tape drives recently, but 30 tapes alone have got to be around $3000, plus the cost of the drive. I stuck with tapes as long as my drives worked, but when they died it seemed like hard drives were the way to go and I've been happy with it.
I've had Comcast Business at my small office for a year; there have been two outages in that time, of perhaps 3 hours each. If it were a problem, we could add FIOS as a backup, and still be way cheaper than a T1. The owners would rather save the $1000/year, so we deal with it if it happens. So it all depends on your environment.
You're assuming that everyone drives the way they do in the US, little short runs to work or the shops. In the UK (and particularly in rural areas), we use our cars a lot more, and tend to take far longer trips.
I've lived in the UK, and I have to disagree - my friends in Edinburgh can't understand why I'd drive down to London, rather than take a train or fly. People in the US tend, in my experience, to do a lot more long distances in cars. Once I looked at the numbers - the US has almost twice the cars per capita as the UK, and each of them is driven 50% more per year than in the UK. Ask someone in the UK how far someplace is, and you'll get an answer in miles. In the US, like as not, you'll get an answer in hours, even here on the relatively crowded East coast. New York - 4 hours. Boston - 8 hours. Orlando - 15 hours. And around here, a "little short run to work" averages 45min each way.
CAn any nettops run media PC stuff reasonably well?
Look for the Acer Revo - $200 for the single core Atom version, ION chipset, does full HD easily, small, quiet, HDMI out... I have the dual core version which was $330, but that also comes with twice the RAM, a wireless keyboard & mouse, & Windows 7. There are a lot of places with information on XBMC & Windows MC setups, search for Revo HTPC. I really like mine, it's recording OTA HD & works great.
Thanks for that - I hadn't thought of the 4 cores issue. I have been a little frustrated with the difficulty of moving images around, though. Maybe I'll dig out an old server & do some playing with alternatives, I have a buddy who loves Xen but I haven't done anything with it or KVM.
Why do you assume drugs are the "top reason" why one would want anonymous communications? What about a whistle blower? What about a witness to a crime?
There are lots of avenues for a whistle blower or a witness to transmit information anonymously, since the information needs to only go one way. Ongoing criminal enterprises need two way communications, like burner phones.
So, where does one need to move to secure such service, and at what cost?
Just as a point of reference, I'm in the DC metro area, and I have FIOS 15/5 at home for $50/month. They also offer 25/25 for $65, and 50/20 is $140 per month, a big jump. For work, Comcast business internet 22/5 is $100/month and they offer 50/10 for $190.
Certainly not representative of the whole US, and there are pockets around here which still don't have such fast options, but that's what I get.
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Well, if you keep watching until about 3:45, you'll see he also says that they released the full material as well. I don't really have a problem with that - they have a position on the meaning of the material, and present it in a way which has the most impact, but they also released the whole tape (well, everything they had).
The New Yorker had an interesting piece on Assange & the publishing of the video recently. It discussed how he rented a house in Iceland for the process, the number of people helping make it all happen smoothly, etc. The fact is, doing that kind of stuff costs money. I'm sure he's no saint, but I think it's a good thing to have a site like Wikileaks out there as a check on excessive government secrecy. $200k isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
My basic understanding of it is that they're not breaking any encryption, they're just using this flaw to gather your real IP address when you are going through a VPN endpoint. Your hope would be that all anyone monitoring a torrent could see would be the address of your VPN endpoint (probably from a VPN provider like The Pirate Bay), but instead they're able to gather more information, presumably so they can identify and sue you.
What, then, is the best way to preserve anonymity when using, for instance, BitTorrent? I have looked at services like BTGuard & Predator, but there's always a little spidey-sense tingle of lack of trust...
The problem with the current "peak demand" is that they have to have excess, quickly accessible capacity available to meet it. If they can level out demand then they can always have their most efficient plants providing the energy, and not need to build more natural gas plants (for example) just to meet the air conditioning demands of a few weeks of summer. Around here, that's peak demand, and if you can ever level that out completely it will be a good thing.
They call it Energy Wise (energywiserewards.pepco.com) - basically they put a programmable thermostat in for you. At peak summer demand times, they can send out a radio signal which tells your thermostat for the next hour to cycle off for 50, 75 or 100% of the usage of the preceding hour, depending on which option you choose. They give you money off your bill depending on the option you pick, from $40-80. It seems like it's a good way to level peak demand, and I don't really care if the temperature goes up a few degrees on the hottest days. We don't keep the place frigid anyway. We'll see how it works this summer, just got it installed a few months ago.
I'm with Pepco, in MoCo, and they have the thermostat program (I'm on it) but not the tiered pricing. Still, it was easy to get them to put in the thermostat, so it's a start.
Even the Dual Core Revo, which has 2GB RAM, wireless KB & mouse, and Windows 7, is half the price of the Mini. For an HTPC, it's really hard to beat. Admittedly the Mini has a more powerful processor & a dvd drive, but for an HTPC I think that once you can play 1080p you can stop right there.
Having said that, if I were to get a Mac the Mini would probably be the one I'd get, I do like the form factor.
Here in the DC area, there are a number of "foreign" OTA broadcasts - I think it's up around channel 47. There are sub channels with Chinese and French, among lots of Spanish language and others. I also get the BBC America news broadcast. I canceled Dish network for an HTPC & OTA, and there's plenty of stuff for my limited TV watching needs.
In addition, the fact that Warren Buffet thought that the Gates Foundation was doing such a good job that he has them handling his money too makes me think that they are probably pretty good at what they do...
The problem is, to do that you'd need a MUCH bigger solar panel. I have one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Powermonkey-eXplorer-Portable-Charger-Solar/dp/B000Y9KW9G
and the solar panel in full sunlight can just barely charge a phone. It can get the battery pack it comes with most of the way charged in a couple of days, which you can then use to recharge your phone. It's better than nothing, but it's not going to do that and be a light source too...
Is that the same f-spot that, according to a front page article on Slashdot, Ubuntu is replacing with Shotwell? It may actually be better than Lightroom, I don't know, but that's not a ringing endorsement...
The only thing that Atom excludes you from is HD Flash video and that's because Flash isn't adequately exploiting the available hardware.
The Flash 10.1 betas use hardware acceleration, that's why things like the Acer Revos (with the ION chipset) make good HTPCs. The Atom chips don't have to do all the work, the ION handles the video. I'm using one & it can handle 1080p mkvs flawlessly (that's not Flash, obviously). The only playback issues I'm seeing in Media Center is with the built in Netflix streaming - maybe it's a Silverlight issue, but it's not smooth for me right now. I suspect that Silverlight may not be correctly using the hardware acceleration.
Well, but those are actually 800GB native; you can get 1.6TB native but like I guessed the tapes are around $100. With tape I have always gone by native and taken compression as a bonus, especially since the bulk of our data is images which don't compress well. If you're doing over a TB nightly, the 800GB native tapes may well not cut it for you.
My idea for an e-book reader is something I call Gutenberg friendly: It has what I need to download and display text, HTML, PDF, and Postscript files that I might download from Project Gutenberg or other open sites as well as software manuals. That and a $100 price tag could win me over to the e-book world.
For $150, I'm tempted by the Sony e-reader. Sony does have an e-book store, but they seem to be the most open e-readers out there & usable under Linux. If/when my ancient Palm Tungsten dies, it'll be between the Sony or a Touch for a replacement - I mostly use it for reading, but the PIM features are still handy.
That's truly the most asinine thing I have ever heard of. Even for the UK government.
The more I read about the decision, the less worried about it I am. It seems to me that under this ruling if you tell the police that you're invoking your Miranda rights, they will stop all interrogation. If you simply remain silent, they can keep questioning you, and if you then speak, that can be used against you. Honestly, that was the way I had always thought it would work - you know, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
I don't really see this as Miranda rights going away, more as a slightly altered interpretation of how a suspect's initial silence is to be interpreted.
And TFA (the BBC one) mentions that one of the possible uses for the studies they are doing would be to mitigate the effects of isolation on the elderly.
30 2TB external drives are about $4500 right now; I haven't priced 1.6TB tape drives recently, but 30 tapes alone have got to be around $3000, plus the cost of the drive. I stuck with tapes as long as my drives worked, but when they died it seemed like hard drives were the way to go and I've been happy with it.
I've had Comcast Business at my small office for a year; there have been two outages in that time, of perhaps 3 hours each. If it were a problem, we could add FIOS as a backup, and still be way cheaper than a T1. The owners would rather save the $1000/year, so we deal with it if it happens. So it all depends on your environment.
You're assuming that everyone drives the way they do in the US, little short runs to work or the shops. In the UK (and particularly in rural areas), we use our cars a lot more, and tend to take far longer trips.
I've lived in the UK, and I have to disagree - my friends in Edinburgh can't understand why I'd drive down to London, rather than take a train or fly. People in the US tend, in my experience, to do a lot more long distances in cars. Once I looked at the numbers - the US has almost twice the cars per capita as the UK, and each of them is driven 50% more per year than in the UK. Ask someone in the UK how far someplace is, and you'll get an answer in miles. In the US, like as not, you'll get an answer in hours, even here on the relatively crowded East coast. New York - 4 hours. Boston - 8 hours. Orlando - 15 hours. And around here, a "little short run to work" averages 45min each way.
CAn any nettops run media PC stuff reasonably well?
Look for the Acer Revo - $200 for the single core Atom version, ION chipset, does full HD easily, small, quiet, HDMI out... I have the dual core version which was $330, but that also comes with twice the RAM, a wireless keyboard & mouse, & Windows 7. There are a lot of places with information on XBMC & Windows MC setups, search for Revo HTPC. I really like mine, it's recording OTA HD & works great.
Thanks for that - I hadn't thought of the 4 cores issue. I have been a little frustrated with the difficulty of moving images around, though. Maybe I'll dig out an old server & do some playing with alternatives, I have a buddy who loves Xen but I haven't done anything with it or KVM.
Why do you assume drugs are the "top reason" why one would want anonymous communications? What about a whistle blower? What about a witness to a crime?
There are lots of avenues for a whistle blower or a witness to transmit information anonymously, since the information needs to only go one way. Ongoing criminal enterprises need two way communications, like burner phones.
So, where does one need to move to secure such service, and at what cost?
Just as a point of reference, I'm in the DC metro area, and I have FIOS 15/5 at home for $50/month. They also offer 25/25 for $65, and 50/20 is $140 per month, a big jump. For work, Comcast business internet 22/5 is $100/month and they offer 50/10 for $190.
Certainly not representative of the whole US, and there are pockets around here which still don't have such fast options, but that's what I get.