A proper mirror for small sites in an upcoming story is a necessity. Slashdot should already be contacting site owners to warn them before posting a story and knowingly sending them a huge flood of visitors that they may not be able to deal with, so copyright issues could be worked out then. A standard "we'll only mirror it for 24 hours" deal would be fine with most everyone. Some story submitters are already doing this, but it's not their responsibility - it's slashdots.
This problem will eventually result in a lawsuit if it's not addressed. It stopped being funny years ago.
Web sites are put up to be viewed by anyone on the planet who chooses to go there.
Going to court with an accusation of 'I put up a nifty web site and all these slashdot people killed it because it was so popular' will not sit easy with any Judge I have seen.
If Slashdot was such a menace to the internet, web servers would be configured to barf up some small page to http referrers from slashdot.org.
It may seem like a big deal to us from the inside, but from the outside, the total percentage of web sites per YEAR slashdotted comes extremely close to 0%.
The CIA reported to congress that N. Korea may have the ability to reach the west coast with a missile. You'll notice that nobody has discussed invading N. Korea even though they are 10 times the threat Iraq ever was. They developed nukes exactly for that reason.
True. But, it's about location also.
If North Korea didn't have China next door and instead were where Hawaii is, we would have probably used a few of our so-called 'tactical' nukes and made them glow in the dark by now.
North Korea and Iran don't have delivery systems that can reach the US and China has a very limited capability.
No country would nuke the US because the harm they can do would very limited, especially compared to the response that is expected.
We can't keep drugs from flowing into this country in any meaningful way. Even the US admits that 90% or more of illegal drug shipments in Florida alone make it without being stopped.
If a Nuke were to be hidden with the tons of Cocaine that arrive here each day, it wouldn't be detected. The delivery mechanism would be our own vices.
Not to mention, China has more than a handful of submarines ready to make every major US coastal city look like a lit Xmas ornament within 10 minutes time.
It worked except for the fact that the people who were responsible for keeping it safe didn't get punished.
Even worse, Anthrax is still being manufactured here and passed around to our (current) friends.
(Before anyone screams NO WAY, remember where the Middle East got their samples of Anthrax)
Keep up your current foreign policy and you won't have long to wait.
Unfortunately, that statement, regardless of the flamebait moderations, has too much truth in it. It offends many people.
Our current foreign policy isn't working out very well. We need to do something about it no matter who's running the show next January. Bush, Kerry, whatever. Something's got to give.
Let's try something that more often embraces the world instead of making others wonder where our baseball bat will strike next.
If we didn't finger print bombs, pakistan or any other nuclear capable country could supply a terrorist group with a bomb without any fear of retaliation.
It could work.
After all, the US has been 'fingerprinting' Anthrax for quite a while.
That's how we found out the Anthrax used against us was a batch we had created ourselves.
We never did get around to punishing anyone though or even publicly pursue it for any length of time.
>90% of the home user population can't completely keep people on the internet out of their computers because most home users don't have a firewall.
With inbound security such a mess, and more relaxed rules for getting OUT to the internet, even with a firewall present, there isn't any way this will change a thing.
But, being a parent who keeps tabs on s/he's kids, is a completely different matter.
AFAIK, Microsoft does not include support for sending or recieving strongly encrypted files through email in Outlook; you have to get 3rd party tools, and that's outside the scope of a lot of people's desire to care.
They can't include the support.
MS wouldn't be able to distribute Office in countries that have laws against (public) strong encryption.
So track my finances, profile me, catalog my usenet posts, whatever, if it makes everyone else feel comfortable enough that I'm not going to randomly kill people. I have nothing to hide.
"I'm sorry sir, but we'll have to detain you for a while. You see, our software has flagged you as RED. To avoid this inconvenience in the future, please refrain from the usage of 'but fuck', 'blow up', 'nutcase', 'crazy', 'killing people', 'remember that pan am 747', 'security checks', and 'kill people' on the internet."
"Have a nice day and just for your information, privacy will be on the list soon so avoid that one too."
Sounds great if you're an airline passenger, but what if you ride the bus?
You have nothing to worry about in that case.
Riding Greyhound has to be one of the most horrifying experiences this great land has to offer any terrorist.
If perchance a terrorist did get on a bus, take the driver's seat, and announce he had a bomb, he'd most likely hear stuff like "well, light it up already" or "thank god, at least this guy isn't going to wake me up every 30 minutes for 3+ days announcing cigarette smoking stops" or "It's about time someone did something about this hell ride".
And just where is the office that those who are wrongly accused by this system go to in order to get their good names back?
Even if there was one, it won't help much unless you have lots of money & time.
I suffered identity theft quite a while back. Someone got my SS#, a copy of my birth certificate, and then a driver's license. He went on to rack up a quite a number of charges in another State including Spousal Abuse, Grand Theft Auto, Resisting Arrest.
On top of that, he then stopped using my identification which created a 'Flight To Avoid Prosecution' when it was noticed I had a drivers license in another state.
Over the years, I've been trying to clear this all up and it's cost quite a bit of money and time. I've barely put a dent in the problem because of how the system is set up.
Now, here's the not-so-amusing part. The man who used my identity is obviously of a very different racial heritage than I am and cannot possibly be mistaken as me!
CAPSII will flag me RED every time I fly. After all, if our national database software STILL isn't up to the job of filtering out obvious problems in it's records (such as mine), how well will software that depends on those same databases fare?
Airline security will be less secure because many security personnel will trust the software to do the job for them. Just like firewalls/anti-virus, it won't stop the people who really want to get in. It'll just encourage security to slack off of screening all people.
Terrorists will figure out all of the things that the system is checking for and find ways around it. Then, we'll be caught with our pants down when a bunch of 'green' passengers take a plane under control. After all, security was concentrating on the red/yellows. Those yellows/reds could easily be co-conspirators attracting attention away from the real threat.
Now, 15K might not seem like much, but when you multiply it by the considerable amount of traffic Anandtech receives, the savings quickly become significant.
Plus, modem users will appreciate it.
And, Flash scales well if the author sticks with vector for creating the material and doesn't imbed gif's.
What I don't understand is, why most Antivirus software does not scan after installing update by default
Plus, the full anti-virus checks (in XP) need to be done in safe mode at least weekly with 'system restore' off.
I see plenty of XP boxes roll through here on a daily basis that pass anti-virus checks from f-prot - symantec - panda - etc... and yet miss some existing infections if the box got hit before the update AND the computer isn't in safe mode during the scan.
And in theory you can prevent people from suing you if you put up a "Beware of Dog" sign or a "Private Property" sign. In reality you'll always find some clever lawyer or easily-swayed jury that rules the other way.
Are you going to trust the future of your business and life to a disclaimer?
Not to mention, laws vary depending on location about disclaimers.
Slashdot Mirror
A proper mirror for small sites in an upcoming story is a necessity. Slashdot should already be contacting site owners to warn them before posting a story and knowingly sending them a huge flood of visitors that they may not be able to deal with, so copyright issues could be worked out then. A standard "we'll only mirror it for 24 hours" deal would be fine with most everyone. Some story submitters are already doing this, but it's not their responsibility - it's slashdots.
This problem will eventually result in a lawsuit if it's not addressed. It stopped being funny years ago.
Web sites are put up to be viewed by anyone on the planet who chooses to go there.
Going to court with an accusation of 'I put up a nifty web site and all these slashdot people killed it because it was so popular' will not sit easy with any Judge I have seen.
If Slashdot was such a menace to the internet, web servers would be configured to barf up some small page to http referrers from slashdot.org.
It may seem like a big deal to us from the inside, but from the outside, the total percentage of web sites per YEAR slashdotted comes extremely close to 0%.
The CIA reported to congress that N. Korea may have the ability to reach the west coast with a missile. You'll notice that nobody has discussed invading N. Korea even though they are 10 times the threat Iraq ever was. They developed nukes exactly for that reason.
True. But, it's about location also.
If North Korea didn't have China next door and instead were where Hawaii is, we would have probably used a few of our so-called 'tactical' nukes and made them glow in the dark by now.
North Korea and Iran don't have delivery systems that can reach the US and China has a very limited capability.
No country would nuke the US because the harm they can do would very limited, especially compared to the response that is expected.
We can't keep drugs from flowing into this country in any meaningful way. Even the US admits that 90% or more of illegal drug shipments in Florida alone make it without being stopped.
If a Nuke were to be hidden with the tons of Cocaine that arrive here each day, it wouldn't be detected. The delivery mechanism would be our own vices.
Not to mention, China has more than a handful of submarines ready to make every major US coastal city look like a lit Xmas ornament within 10 minutes time.
And that's why, after decades of above-ground nuclear tests on our own soil, we're all dead, right? Oh, wait.
We won't be dead. OTOH, we won't be too happy with the tumors we'll be more likely to get as a result.
It's better to have a bomb blow up in the middle of a wasteland than to have long-term radioactivity scattered directly over a densely populated area.
Btw, they did catch the guy who sent the letters.
(ie: sometimes the system works).
It worked except for the fact that the people who were responsible for keeping it safe didn't get punished.
Even worse, Anthrax is still being manufactured here and passed around to our (current) friends. (Before anyone screams NO WAY, remember where the Middle East got their samples of Anthrax)
"One moron to bind us all into darkness", and I suppose you can guess where I got that pharpahrase from.
Lemme guess, it's spraypainted on one of your (most likely dark) basement walls?
Keep up your current foreign policy and you won't have long to wait.
Unfortunately, that statement, regardless of the flamebait moderations, has too much truth in it. It offends many people.
Our current foreign policy isn't working out very well. We need to do something about it no matter who's running the show next January. Bush, Kerry, whatever. Something's got to give.
Let's try something that more often embraces the world instead of making others wonder where our baseball bat will strike next.
If we didn't finger print bombs, pakistan or any other nuclear capable country could supply a terrorist group with a bomb without any fear of retaliation.
It could work.
After all, the US has been 'fingerprinting' Anthrax for quite a while.
That's how we found out the Anthrax used against us was a batch we had created ourselves.
We never did get around to punishing anyone though or even publicly pursue it for any length of time.
Go figure that one.
>90% of the home user population can't completely keep people on the internet out of their computers because most home users don't have a firewall.
With inbound security such a mess, and more relaxed rules for getting OUT to the internet, even with a firewall present, there isn't any way this will change a thing.
But, being a parent who keeps tabs on s/he's kids, is a completely different matter.
P2P file sharing makes all of the effort (for or against .xxx) a COMPLETE waste of time.
The people who really want something will get it. If they are inconvenienced, they'll use p2p networks (or usenet) where TLD's don't matter at all.
AFAIK, Microsoft does not include support for sending or recieving strongly encrypted files through email in Outlook; you have to get 3rd party tools, and that's outside the scope of a lot of people's desire to care.
They can't include the support.
MS wouldn't be able to distribute Office in countries that have laws against (public) strong encryption.
So track my finances, profile me, catalog my usenet posts, whatever, if it makes everyone else feel comfortable enough that I'm not going to randomly kill people. I have nothing to hide.
"I'm sorry sir, but we'll have to detain you for a while. You see, our software has flagged you as RED. To avoid this inconvenience in the future, please refrain from the usage of 'but fuck', 'blow up', 'nutcase', 'crazy', 'killing people', 'remember that pan am 747', 'security checks', and 'kill people' on the internet."
"Have a nice day and just for your information, privacy will be on the list soon so avoid that one too."
A LOT of comments about loss of privacy, false positives, etc, etc
Ok....how would YOU do it?
If this is the wrong solution, what is the right solution?
A better & more consistent foreign policy.
Don't forget that most of the terrorists we're dealing with were at least partially trained, armed, fed, and financed by our tax dollars.
Most of the people who are pissed off enough to blow us up are the ones we left hanging in the wind when our goals were accomplished.
It takes two to tango.
Sounds great if you're an airline passenger, but what if you ride the bus?
You have nothing to worry about in that case.
Riding Greyhound has to be one of the most horrifying experiences this great land has to offer any terrorist.
If perchance a terrorist did get on a bus, take the driver's seat, and announce he had a bomb, he'd most likely hear stuff like "well, light it up already" or "thank god, at least this guy isn't going to wake me up every 30 minutes for 3+ days announcing cigarette smoking stops" or "It's about time someone did something about this hell ride".
And just where is the office that those who are wrongly accused by this system go to in order to get their good names back?
Even if there was one, it won't help much unless you have lots of money & time.
I suffered identity theft quite a while back. Someone got my SS#, a copy of my birth certificate, and then a driver's license. He went on to rack up a quite a number of charges in another State including Spousal Abuse, Grand Theft Auto, Resisting Arrest.
On top of that, he then stopped using my identification which created a 'Flight To Avoid Prosecution' when it was noticed I had a drivers license in another state. Over the years, I've been trying to clear this all up and it's cost quite a bit of money and time. I've barely put a dent in the problem because of how the system is set up.
Now, here's the not-so-amusing part. The man who used my identity is obviously of a very different racial heritage than I am and cannot possibly be mistaken as me!
CAPSII will flag me RED every time I fly. After all, if our national database software STILL isn't up to the job of filtering out obvious problems in it's records (such as mine), how well will software that depends on those same databases fare?
Airline security will be less secure because many security personnel will trust the software to do the job for them. Just like firewalls/anti-virus, it won't stop the people who really want to get in. It'll just encourage security to slack off of screening all people.
Terrorists will figure out all of the things that the system is checking for and find ways around it. Then, we'll be caught with our pants down when a bunch of 'green' passengers take a plane under control. After all, security was concentrating on the red/yellows. Those yellows/reds could easily be co-conspirators attracting attention away from the real threat.
Now, 15K might not seem like much, but when you multiply it by the considerable amount of traffic Anandtech receives, the savings quickly become significant.
Plus, modem users will appreciate it.
And, Flash scales well if the author sticks with vector for creating the material and doesn't imbed gif's.
The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents
Yes, it's true. SURVEY: MAJORITY OF WEB USERS ARE FBI AGENTS POSING AS TEENAGE GIRLS
Not to be pedantic or anything, but shouldn't that be an RF receiver on your nuts? Unless you broadcast whenever you have sex...
It does both, it's bi- It gives and receives.
Now we know more than we ever wanted to.
I believe either the Melissa virus or Sircam already did that.
We had a serious security breach when that first hit.
Excel & Word documents were getting emailed out randomly from Accounting boxes for several hours until someone internally got one of the emails.
Extremely sensitive accounting information was released to the wild...including critical bank and payroll information.
Exchange server will glady pass around email addresses if configured to do so...without the actual recipient doing any address book changes at all.
Not to mention, temporary & other files sprayed all over by NT/2K/XP often contain email addresses.
What I don't understand is, why most Antivirus software does not scan after installing update by default
Plus, the full anti-virus checks (in XP) need to be done in safe mode at least weekly with 'system restore' off.
I see plenty of XP boxes roll through here on a daily basis that pass anti-virus checks from f-prot - symantec - panda - etc... and yet miss some existing infections if the box got hit before the update AND the computer isn't in safe mode during the scan.
And in theory you can prevent people from suing you if you put up a "Beware of Dog" sign or a "Private Property" sign. In reality you'll always find some clever lawyer or easily-swayed jury that rules the other way.
Are you going to trust the future of your business and life to a disclaimer?
Not to mention, laws vary depending on location about disclaimers.
what does "virii" mean?
I think it's similar to "wormii".
Smallest market share?