I shared my AirPort for anyone in the neighborhood. Then I thought for a while.
What happens if somebody sends spam to my ISP's SMTP server through my wireless connection? Properly configured SMTP servers will not relay messages from outside their networks. This protects the ISP from spammers. But once someone connects to my wireless connection, the SMTP server would let them right in because they're now inside the network. Right? The spam came from my IP address so I get my service terminated. Suddenly I have no high speed connection. Ouch!
Isn't there something called authenticated SMTP? Would this help?
Doesn't FAA require that any device that transmits a signal, such as a cell phone, be turned off during the entire flight? Wouldn't this restriction also apply to wireless ethernet?
Laptops, devices that don't intentionally transmit signals, are allowed to be turned on 10 minutes after takeoff and must be shut down 10 minutes before landing.
I know that anything the FAA says would apply only to the US but still.
I usually consider good example screen shots to be an indicator of how much a programmer has thought about their users and their user interface. A little time spent by a programmer making screen shots saves me, and tons of other people, a lot of time deciding whether the program might useful for my needs.
Programmers who do not provide screen shots seem to make programs that are difficult to use, even if the programs have cool capabilities.
AT&T Cable prohibits VNC
on their network, at least from my work computer to my home computer. This probably comes under the "no servers" rule. It seems to be blocked at their firewall.
My work's firewall prohibits VNC (or any direct connections) from my home computer to my work computer in the name of security.
Now I have this really fast connection which has no value for telecommuting: remote control, file transfer, telnet, etc. Great! Maybe this can be fixed by a VPN, but that's just some other thing that I have to figure out rather than getting real work done.
and this helps me why? Why cant get get some decent articles on/. nowadays? what happened?
Maybe doesn't. So what? It's a cool hack, just what/. is all about.
This reminds me of way back when Steve Wozniak wrote a program for the Apple ][ (8 bit processor, 4.xx Mhz, 64K (!) of RAM, no fan) that calculated pi to some huge number of decimal places. The program would churn for a week and then print out pages of numbers. Cool hack!
and this helps me why? Why cant get get some decent articles on/. nowadays? what happened?
A message from God? (really)
For some people, this kind of thing is where science and religion meet. Imagine looking for a message from God in the digits. If she wanted to put a message somewhere for all of us to see, the digits of pi would be a great place.
If delete actually deleted things instead of sending them to the trash bin, I don't think the prosecutors in the Microsoft anti-trust could have got their hands on those emails they used against Microsoft.
Don't blame the trash bin. The trash bin is not what is causing the files not to be deleted. Even before there was ever a concept of a trash bin, files already weren't being deleted. They were just marked as deleted, their space marked ready for reuse. The data was still there, completely unerased. It's just that without a trash bin you didn't really notice.
Note: emptying the trash also does not erase the data. Again, it just marks the files deleted, their space ready for reuse.
Even erasing the data doesn't really mean anything. Getting paranoid, the FBI and others have the technology to read your data even after it's been written over. Tiny traces of your data's magnetic fields still remain on the hard disk. Someone who knows how to get at them can get at your data anyway. The government's standard for erasing data when you are really paranoid, is writing over the data ten times (I think) with 0s and 1s before it is considered really ereased.
The current survey of planets on nearby sun-like stars has a scary early conclusion: all nearby stars surveyed so far (about 30?) are completely uninhabitable because of huge Jupiter sized gas planets in really eccentric orbits. (Anyone have the URL?)
It would seem that our solar system with almost round orbits is very rare. Just how many light years out are we supposed to go, all the while dragging all our stuff with us?
Anyway, I have a difficult time just dragging the stuff that I need for a two week camping trip. How much stuff am I going to need for a journey of 100 light years? Will I even be alive once I get there?
The article says that bacteria can encase themselves inside "armored shells of semiconductor". Could this also mean that bacteria could encase themselves inside other minerals, such as the rock in meteorites and survive for an indefinite peroid?
"When we started this study, we were just trying to find the source of bacteria in the fab, and how they could remain alive after all the heroic measures to eradicate them with ultraviolet light, ozone and everything else including a dollar a gallon to purify the water," said Baier, who is director of the Center for Biosurfaces at SUNY
...[the fab contamination problem] concerned some clever bugs that just wouldn't die, no matter what -- bacteria that can survive in the vacuum of space, or inside a volcanic vent at the bottom of the sea. They can hibernate indefinitely and only need the slightest bit of light to wake up and thrive anew.
In short order, the bacteria have encased themselves inside armored shells of semiconductor, making them impervious to all the attempts by clean-room personnel to kill them.
I don't know if you're being sarcastuc on the theft front, but...
copyright infringement is wrong. While you might want freedom to do what you want, so do the people who put copyrights on things. They want the freedom to do what they want with their ideas, and not have every john doe screwing around with it. There's more than one kind of liberty.... freedom to do what you want with other peoples things, and freedom to do what you want with your own. People generally forget about the second one on/.
As I'm already an established customer on a couple of other well known e-commerce sites would it not be possible to get some kind of referral from these sites, saying that I'm a worthy customer?
I like the idea of an online reputation. eBay has a feedback machanism that allows a user to get a reputation, a rating from others about how good a customer they are.
The interesting thing about the way eBay does it, is that you can both have a reputation and remain somewhat anonymous. Your email address is visible, but your name, address, etc. does not need to be visible to anyone.
I am not sure that you appreciate that long term harrassment can have serious affects upon the victum.
I do appreciate it. As a gay kid who somehow survived high school, then later a counselor to gay kids, I'm all too familiar with long term harassment and its effects.
I have been harrassed for 8+ months by daily connection attempts to my system....
Continous prank phone calls are indeed a crime in my state...
Yes, it is a crime, but what kind of crime? There is a huge difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. A misdemeanor may carry a fine, some forced public service, or a few days in jail. A criminal offence is a felony and carries long term prison time with hardened criminals, a completely different thing. Is this a criminal offence?
I recognize that this kind of harassment can and does occur and that the effects are bad. Does that make this kind of act a criminal offfence? And even if it does, does it justify giving up our liberties to prevent it. I say that it does not.
Could it be hundreds of billions of dollars of Credit Card fraud?
How do you commit hundreds of billions of dollars of credit card fraud? I know that it's theoretically possible, but how does even a savy internet guy like you commit this kind of fraud? Do you know how? I don't.
One thing is for sure: a criminal with this kind of knowledge already has anonymity. It doesn't matter whether somebody granted him anonymity or not. This type of criminal has anonymity because he takes anonymity.
Do you take away the anonymity of all people on the net just so that someone, who will have anonymity anyway, has a little more trouble committing credit card fraud?
To put it another way, do we take away all people's freedom to freely walk the streets, just because that freedom might allow a criminal to walk into somebody's house and take somebody's stuff?
See my post (#61) as just a small example of an abuse that I, at least, feel should be criminal.
A snipped of #61:
I have been harrassed for 8+ months by daily connection attempts to my system. They come at irregular times of day usually 3-5 times daily to different ports, and the packets have always had spoofed source addresses.
I realize that you're being harassed. I realize that you are frustrated and angry. You should be. But should harassment like what you are experiencing be criminal?
What they are doing to you is equivalent to prank phone calling you. Should prank phone calling be criminal? Even now, I can make any phone call anonymously by using a prepaid phone card. The phone card blocks Caller ID. The person called cannot be sure of the identity of the caller. Should this be criminal?
What they are doing to you is equivalent to toilet papering the trees in your front lawn. It's annoying and stupid, a futile gesture. But it's still minor vandalism. Should this be a criminal act?
And are these "criminal" acts so serious that we should give up our privacy so that they can be prevented?
Snibor Eoj writes "There's an article at CNet about the desire of some to reduce or eliminate anonymity on the Internet. There is a fine line, so it seems, between respecting privacy, and providing aonymity behind which crimes may be committed without fear of reprisal. "
What crimes? The problem with this question is the premise that "crimes" can be committed on the internet in the first place. The premise is that these crimes are so serious that we should give up our privacy to be sure that such crimes cannot be committed. So where are these crimes? Do they even exist?
If you're the president of Segrams then these "crimes" are piracy, that is the copying of his intellectual property, an action which he considers to be stealing in the same way that taking a CD from a store is stealing.
If you are on a discussion forum like this one, another crime could be libel. Of course, if I'm anonymous then why should anybody believe me all that much.
If you're paranoid about kids, then you could be scared of people luring children over the internet. Of course no kid is stupid enough to give out their real names, addresses, and phone numbers so that some stranger can harass them. Kids know that anonymity is safety. They use anonymity as their protection on the net. For kids, anonymity is a good thing. It allows them to explore the world from the privacy and safety fo their homes.
So what crimes? What kinds of crimes can be committed over the internet are so serious that it should justify our loss of privacy?
Re:Yeah, I'm thinking about getting rid of ACs
on
Privacy vs. Anonymity
·
· Score: 1
I have to agree.
I think that it would be a good idea that to post, you must be logged in. That would discourage a lot lamers who post just because it's easy.
Still I think that the Post Anonymously option should be kept for those who are logged in.
I have my own DSL installation horror story, the details of which I will spare you. The Covad installation was held up by US West for months. US West is required to install a line in a timely manner so I called the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. They have been very helpful when I have dealt with US West in the past.
I was amazed to find out that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission would not and could not help me. I couldn't even file a complaint. It seems that since I am a customer of speakeasy.net and they are a customer of Covad and Covad is a customer of US West, that only Covad can complain to the Comission. Of course, the last thing that Covad wants is an even worse relationship with US West so they don't complain.
The phone company really does not want companies like Covad to be able to offer DSL. Here's my story.
I tried to get DSL into my apartment. Because US West will not share their voice lines with Covad (even though by law they must) I had to have a second copper pair for the DSL line. The installation stalled on that copper pair - a "facilities issue" the phone company likes to call it. There was not a free copper pair from my apartment to the telephone pole. US West swore that there was no way that they could install another copper pair. Even though I could almost reach out my window and touch the telephone pole, they said that it was a big job, digging and everything and that it would never happen. After three months, US West finally canceled the order.
The other day, just to see what would happen, I ordered a second voice line. The operator did say that there was no extra copper pair, which I already knews, but that there would be no problem. He gave me an appointment for them to install the second copper pair on Friday. As soon as the second phone line works, I'm going to disconnect the line and reorder DSL with Covad, through speakeasy.net.
This kind of thing reminds me of Lilly Tomlin's skit that appeared on Saturday Night Live so often in the 70s. It was true then and it's still true. "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company."
I'm not sure this is the norm, seems to me that USWest is just an awful telco.
This is the norm.
When I did have DSL service from US West, it did work well. The problem was that I routinely got monthly bills for $800 - out of the blue - double billing, extra installation charges, long distance at $0.60 per minute. I spent hours per month on the phone each month fixing it up. A co-worker had the same problem, just not as bad. It never ended even after I moved out. They're still trying to sue me for $150 that they billed to me after I moved out and disconnected my phone line. Really:o
Lars wrote: There has been no [support] from the record companies; they never instigated anything, so we took it upon ourselves, there was never really much in term of support. There's been the occasional pat on the back, the occasional call, but I would say that I'm quite, I'd say, more than surprised, I'm quite stunned at the lack of communication and input from the record company. I wonder why there is no support from the record companies.
Could it be that the record companies really want Napster to succeed? I think that the record companies want this Napster thing gets out of hand so that there will be a backlash. Then they can push for even more restrictive laws because as they say, these "pirates" are "stealing" from them.
The War on Piracy has started. Maybe it should be called the War on Information?
This kind of thing is going to be a really big hit, especially for renters. It's way too much bother trying to get your own high speed internet connection. It can take so long that you don't get the connection til you move out.
I once had a DSL connection at my last place. I moved - still only 4000 feet from the central office. The problem is that US West can't figure out how to get a pair of copper wires into my apartment from the telephone pole. Really. By the time I get it installed (I've been waiting 8 months now) I will have already moved out to some other place. And almost every DSL provider has a 1 year contract. Ouch!:o
Slashdot Mirror
I shared my AirPort for anyone in the neighborhood. Then I thought for a while.
What happens if somebody sends spam to my ISP's SMTP server through my wireless connection? Properly configured SMTP servers will not relay messages from outside their networks. This protects the ISP from spammers. But once someone connects to my wireless connection, the SMTP server would let them right in because they're now inside the network. Right? The spam came from my IP address so I get my service terminated. Suddenly I have no high speed connection. Ouch!
Isn't there something called authenticated SMTP? Would this help?
Doesn't FAA require that any device that transmits a signal, such as a cell phone, be turned off during the entire flight? Wouldn't this restriction also apply to wireless ethernet?
Laptops, devices that don't intentionally transmit signals, are allowed to be turned on 10 minutes after takeoff and must be shut down 10 minutes before landing.
I know that anything the FAA says would apply only to the US but still.
It would be great for a Beowulf cluster if only it were cheaper.
It's fast, it takes up minimal space. You could fit hundreds on a few racks if you could just figure out how to cool it.
Programmers who do not provide screen shots seem to make programs that are difficult to use, even if the programs have cool capabilities.
My work's firewall prohibits VNC (or any direct connections) from my home computer to my work computer in the name of security.
Now I have this really fast connection which has no value for telecommuting: remote control, file transfer, telnet, etc. Great! Maybe this can be fixed by a VPN, but that's just some other thing that I have to figure out rather than getting real work done.
Yeah, but what if you go down the digits far enough and it stops being "random" :)
Maybe doesn't. So what? It's a cool hack, just what /. is all about.
This reminds me of way back when Steve Wozniak wrote a program for the Apple ][ (8 bit processor, 4.xx Mhz, 64K (!) of RAM, no fan) that calculated pi to some huge number of decimal places. The program would churn for a week and then print out pages of numbers. Cool hack!
A message from God? (really)
For some people, this kind of thing is where science and religion meet. Imagine looking for a message from God in the digits. If she wanted to put a message somewhere for all of us to see, the digits of pi would be a great place.
Note: emptying the trash also does not erase the data. Again, it just marks the files deleted, their space ready for reuse.
Even erasing the data doesn't really mean anything. Getting paranoid, the FBI and others have the technology to read your data even after it's been written over. Tiny traces of your data's magnetic fields still remain on the hard disk. Someone who knows how to get at them can get at your data anyway. The government's standard for erasing data when you are really paranoid, is writing over the data ten times (I think) with 0s and 1s before it is considered really ereased.
The current survey of planets on nearby sun-like stars has a scary early conclusion: all nearby stars surveyed so far (about 30?) are completely uninhabitable because of huge Jupiter sized gas planets in really eccentric orbits. (Anyone have the URL?)
It would seem that our solar system with almost round orbits is very rare. Just how many light years out are we supposed to go, all the while dragging all our stuff with us?
Anyway, I have a difficult time just dragging the stuff that I need for a two week camping trip. How much stuff am I going to need for a journey of 100 light years? Will I even be alive once I get there?
The article says that bacteria can encase themselves inside "armored shells of semiconductor". Could this also mean that bacteria could encase themselves inside other minerals, such as the rock in meteorites and survive for an indefinite peroid?
I know this looks stupid. Hit the submit button by mistake. :{
copyright infringement is wrong. While you might want freedom to do what you want, so do the people who put copyrights on things. They want the freedom to do what they want with their ideas, and not have every john doe screwing around with it. There's more than one kind of liberty.... freedom to do what you want with other peoples things, and freedom to do what you want with your own. People generally forget about the second one on /.
Morality doesn't matter?.
The point of the is radical. The point is that morality doesn't matter. The article is not about whether it's right or wrong to copy information. The article states that it is possible so it will happen. There's nothing that can be done about it. Period.
The interesting thing about the way eBay does it, is that you can both have a reputation and remain somewhat anonymous. Your email address is visible, but your name, address, etc. does not need to be visible to anyone.
I do appreciate it. As a gay kid who somehow survived high school, then later a counselor to gay kids, I'm all too familiar with long term harassment and its effects.
I have been harrassed for 8+ months by daily connection attempts to my system....
Continous prank phone calls are indeed a crime in my state...
Yes, it is a crime, but what kind of crime? There is a huge difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. A misdemeanor may carry a fine, some forced public service, or a few days in jail. A criminal offence is a felony and carries long term prison time with hardened criminals, a completely different thing. Is this a criminal offence?
I recognize that this kind of harassment can and does occur and that the effects are bad. Does that make this kind of act a criminal offfence? And even if it does, does it justify giving up our liberties to prevent it. I say that it does not.
How do you commit hundreds of billions of dollars of credit card fraud? I know that it's theoretically possible, but how does even a savy internet guy like you commit this kind of fraud? Do you know how? I don't.
One thing is for sure: a criminal with this kind of knowledge already has anonymity. It doesn't matter whether somebody granted him anonymity or not. This type of criminal has anonymity because he takes anonymity.
Do you take away the anonymity of all people on the net just so that someone, who will have anonymity anyway, has a little more trouble committing credit card fraud?
To put it another way, do we take away all people's freedom to freely walk the streets, just because that freedom might allow a criminal to walk into somebody's house and take somebody's stuff?
No. That's the price of freedom.
What they are doing to you is equivalent to prank phone calling you. Should prank phone calling be criminal? Even now, I can make any phone call anonymously by using a prepaid phone card. The phone card blocks Caller ID. The person called cannot be sure of the identity of the caller. Should this be criminal?
What they are doing to you is equivalent to toilet papering the trees in your front lawn. It's annoying and stupid, a futile gesture. But it's still minor vandalism. Should this be a criminal act?
And are these "criminal" acts so serious that we should give up our privacy so that they can be prevented?
"...cause every tool's a weapon - if you hold it right."
If you're the president of Segrams then these "crimes" are piracy, that is the copying of his intellectual property, an action which he considers to be stealing in the same way that taking a CD from a store is stealing.
If you are on a discussion forum like this one, another crime could be libel. Of course, if I'm anonymous then why should anybody believe me all that much.
If you're paranoid about kids, then you could be scared of people luring children over the internet. Of course no kid is stupid enough to give out their real names, addresses, and phone numbers so that some stranger can harass them. Kids know that anonymity is safety. They use anonymity as their protection on the net. For kids, anonymity is a good thing. It allows them to explore the world from the privacy and safety fo their homes.
So what crimes? What kinds of crimes can be committed over the internet are so serious that it should justify our loss of privacy?
I think that it would be a good idea that to post, you must be logged in. That would discourage a lot lamers who post just because it's easy.
Still I think that the Post Anonymously option should be kept for those who are logged in.
I was amazed to find out that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission would not and could not help me. I couldn't even file a complaint. It seems that since I am a customer of speakeasy.net and they are a customer of Covad and Covad is a customer of US West, that only Covad can complain to the Comission. Of course, the last thing that Covad wants is an even worse relationship with US West so they don't complain.
I tried to get DSL into my apartment. Because US West will not share their voice lines with Covad (even though by law they must) I had to have a second copper pair for the DSL line. The installation stalled on that copper pair - a "facilities issue" the phone company likes to call it. There was not a free copper pair from my apartment to the telephone pole. US West swore that there was no way that they could install another copper pair. Even though I could almost reach out my window and touch the telephone pole, they said that it was a big job, digging and everything and that it would never happen. After three months, US West finally canceled the order.
The other day, just to see what would happen, I ordered a second voice line. The operator did say that there was no extra copper pair, which I already knews, but that there would be no problem. He gave me an appointment for them to install the second copper pair on Friday. As soon as the second phone line works, I'm going to disconnect the line and reorder DSL with Covad, through speakeasy.net.
This kind of thing reminds me of Lilly Tomlin's skit that appeared on Saturday Night Live so often in the 70s. It was true then and it's still true. "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company."
This is the norm.
When I did have DSL service from US West, it did work well. The problem was that I routinely got monthly bills for $800 - out of the blue - double billing, extra installation charges, long distance at $0.60 per minute. I spent hours per month on the phone each month fixing it up. A co-worker had the same problem, just not as bad. It never ended even after I moved out. They're still trying to sue me for $150 that they billed to me after I moved out and disconnected my phone line. Really :o
Could it be that the record companies really want Napster to succeed? I think that the record companies want this Napster thing gets out of hand so that there will be a backlash. Then they can push for even more restrictive laws because as they say, these "pirates" are "stealing" from them.
The War on Piracy has started. Maybe it should be called the War on Information?
I once had a DSL connection at my last place. I moved - still only 4000 feet from the central office. The problem is that US West can't figure out how to get a pair of copper wires into my apartment from the telephone pole. Really. By the time I get it installed (I've been waiting 8 months now) I will have already moved out to some other place. And almost every DSL provider has a 1 year contract. Ouch! :o