Influencing other people gives potentially more power than conquering their land, killing them or threatening to do so (only uses of military power). When you force someone to do something he won't do it well, but when you will make them believe in what they are doing - they will be doing it to the best of their abilities.
So your religious analogy is not that bad when you notice that monopoly you wrote about wasn't based on military power (Vatican as a state never had that powerful army) but on influencing people into believing in their cause.
IIRC patent issues are already causing problems with the adoption of IPv6.
I didn't know that, but I expected something like this - it is a logical consequence of current approach to patent law in the US. The problem is: how far will it get?
You are probably right that it's not the NAT itself, but still we (or rather - you out there in the US) are moving in a bad direction. Internet - AFAIK - was built upon the idea that protocols are public property, open for everyone to read, implement and use. Imagine where would we be now if all the "founding fathers" of the Net filed patents instead of writing RFCs?
In my opinion this is just another example that the concept of copyright and intellectual property as defined by current US laws is simply wrong and doesn't fit into our networked world. It's a pity that now US wants to force its patent laws also in the EU.
I read the story (they say that this software was released and is available) and then I went to NetworkICE's web site. There is no mention of Altivore there (even in the press releases section)and it's not available for download yet.
It is a very good thing. And it is a good thing, because it might raise the awareness of general public about how insecure (when it comes to protection against eavesdropping) the Net is. To all experienced net users it is obvious that an e-mail message is less secure than a postcard (not many post offices are broken into just to read other people's mail). While a message travels through the net all the sniffers along its way can pick it up without leaving any trace. Once an e-mail message arrives to its destination it lies in a file on a server - where all administrators (and hackers) can read it - and abusing users' mail privacy is probably the most common abuse of administrator's power on the system. I think it's the speed of an e-mail that gives a false sense security - if something goes so fast how can someone else read it.
We all know that the real solution to these problems is encryption. However, most Net users probably don't realize how serious the problem is in the first place. Carnivore won't alert the general public, because most law-abiding citizens think that they don't have anything to hide and they don't suspect that they might be under FBI's scrutiny. But if people would know that everywhere - in their office (colleague from next cubicle), at their ISP etc. - someone may be sitting with a free, easy to use spying application then maybe they would finally realize how dangerous unencrypted e-mail is. And then maybe - maybe - encrypting e-mails would become more common.
Why, oh why does the stupidity allways win? Why we see the world becoming more and more insane before our wide opened eyes? Why there is nothing that can stop this?
I don't think adventure games are dead - as far as I know Ultima Online is doing great with thousands of people paying them ten bucks a month to play.
It's possible that more people prefer shotem'ups than adventures - but as I remember it was exactly the same back in the 8-bit "home computers" days and somehow adventure games didn't die back then...
Sorry Thal, but it seems that what you know about situation in Russia is based on what you heard on CNN. If you live in US or any Western country then Russia is something entirely different from anything you know and simple analogies still don't work. Russian media is quite different from US media, especially when we look at its origins.
Keep in mind that ten years from now there were no private enterprise in Russia and a massive change happened since. However, because of how this change took place and who was in charge then most of those who ended up as rich "enterpreneurs" were previously within higher ranks of the communist pary ('nomenklatura') and much of their activites afterwards was in fact fraud on an immense scale.
Putin knows that this probably cannot be reversed, however he also correctly sees them as a threat to a free-market Russia he wants to build. That was the reason behind his actions, not the question of freedom of speech.
Russia is indeed a country which has problem with crime, corruption, fraud and inability of state's law enforcement to do anything with that. However, Gusinski's arrest is not the best example of that.
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Influencing other people gives potentially more power than conquering their land, killing them or threatening to do so (only uses of military power). When you force someone to do something he won't do it well, but when you will make them believe in what they are doing - they will be doing it to the best of their abilities.
So your religious analogy is not that bad when you notice that monopoly you wrote about wasn't based on military power (Vatican as a state never had that powerful army) but on influencing people into believing in their cause.
IIRC patent issues are already causing problems with the adoption of IPv6.
I didn't know that, but I expected something like this - it is a logical consequence of current approach to patent law in the US. The problem is: how far will it get?
You are probably right that it's not the NAT itself, but still we (or rather - you out there in the US) are moving in a bad direction. Internet - AFAIK - was built upon the idea that protocols are public property, open for everyone to read, implement and use. Imagine where would we be now if all the "founding fathers" of the Net filed patents instead of writing RFCs?
In my opinion this is just another example that the concept of copyright and intellectual property as defined by current US laws is simply wrong and doesn't fit into our networked world. It's a pity that now US wants to force its patent laws also in the EU.
Unless Cisco (or Microsoft) patents IPv6 or at least one important aspect of it (like method of constructing datagrams from optional headers).
(OK, I do know that it's probably impossible to patent the IP protocol, but someone might just try)
I read the story (they say that this software was released and is available) and then I went to NetworkICE's web site. There is no mention of Altivore there (even in the press releases section)and it's not available for download yet.
It is a very good thing. And it is a good thing, because it might raise the awareness of general public about how insecure (when it comes to protection against eavesdropping) the Net is. To all experienced net users it is obvious that an e-mail message is less secure than a postcard (not many post offices are broken into just to read other people's mail). While a message travels through the net all the sniffers along its way can pick it up without leaving any trace. Once an e-mail message arrives to its destination it lies in a file on a server - where all administrators (and hackers) can read it - and abusing users' mail privacy is probably the most common abuse of administrator's power on the system. I think it's the speed of an e-mail that gives a false sense security - if something goes so fast how can someone else read it.
We all know that the real solution to these problems is encryption. However, most Net users probably don't realize how serious the problem is in the first place. Carnivore won't alert the general public, because most law-abiding citizens think that they don't have anything to hide and they don't suspect that they might be under FBI's scrutiny. But if people would know that everywhere - in their office (colleague from next cubicle), at their ISP etc. - someone may be sitting with a free, easy to use spying application then maybe they would finally realize how dangerous unencrypted e-mail is. And then maybe - maybe - encrypting e-mails would become more common.
Why, oh why does the stupidity allways win? Why we see the world becoming more and more insane before our wide opened eyes? Why there is nothing that can stop this?
Maybe we are indeed inside the Matrix?
I don't think adventure games are dead - as far as I know Ultima Online is doing great with thousands of people paying them ten bucks a month to play.
It's possible that more people prefer shotem'ups than adventures - but as I remember it was exactly the same back in the 8-bit "home computers" days and somehow adventure games didn't die back then...
> Right. History has shown that invading Russia is always a bad idea.
Yep, it worked only twice in the past.
Sorry Thal, but it seems that what you know about situation in Russia is based on what you heard on CNN. If you live in US or any Western country then Russia is something entirely different from anything you know and simple analogies still don't work. Russian media is quite different from US media, especially when we look at its origins.
Keep in mind that ten years from now there were no private enterprise in Russia and a massive change happened since. However, because of how this change took place and who was in charge then most of those who ended up as rich "enterpreneurs" were previously within higher ranks of the communist pary ('nomenklatura') and much of their activites afterwards was in fact fraud on an immense scale.
Putin knows that this probably cannot be reversed, however he also correctly sees them as a threat to a free-market Russia he wants to build. That was the reason behind his actions, not the question of freedom of speech.
Russia is indeed a country which has problem with crime, corruption, fraud and inability of state's law enforcement to do anything with that. However, Gusinski's arrest is not the best example of that.