That would have to be one hell of a scratch to damage it. Surface scratches can be repaired, you can buy the stuff to fill in the scratches at computer/music stores. The scratch would have to be deep enough to actually damage the metal within; unless your intern regularly plays with belt sanders in the office I wouldn't worry.
Additionally, it's a lot easier to protect against scratches; i.e., if the disk is out of physical harm's way (you know, like in a CD case!), it won't get scratched. It's a lot harder to defend against magnetic damage (e.g., you would need specially shielded cases or whatnot).
The Scientology incident was not about someone posting potentially-libellous comments, it was about someone posting material copyrighted by the CoS:
It contained a text called "OT III", part of what is known as the Fishman Affidavit. This text is Copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. In compliance with the DMCA, we are removing it from Slashdot. In its place we are putting non-copyrighted text: Links to websites about the church of Scientology, as well as links to how you can contact your congressman about the DMCA.
On Thursday, November 22, an article ran in the Washington Post titled "FBI
Develops Eavesdropping Tools." The article speculates about the FBI's
development of a password-stealing Trojan, Magic Lantern, as part of the
FBI's surveillance efforts. In the article, the AP reporter writes "At
least one anti-virus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI on
Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's
snooping software and alert a criminal suspect."
The Network Associates official position on this is as follows:
1. Network Associates/McAfee has not contacted the FBI, nor has the FBI
contacted NAI/McAfee, regarding Magic Lantern.
2. We do not expect the FBI to contact Network Associates/McAfee regarding
Magic Lantern.
3. Network Associates/McAfee is not going to speculate on Magic Lantern as
it's existence has not even been confirmed by the FBI or any government
agency.
4. Network Associates/McAfee does and will continue to comply with any and
all U.S. laws and legislation.
Regards,
Allysa Myers
Virus Research Analyst
McAfee AVERT
A division of McAfee, Inc.
Dont use any version of MacOS before MacOSX? MacOS was pretty secure, more so than OSX rather difficult to crack MacOS remotely considering that there is no command line, and it comes with no services installed (let alone enabled).
The best snooping technology that the FBI currently uses, the controversial software called Carnivore, has been useless against suspects clever enough to encrypt their files.
And so will this be. People smart enough to install encryption on their computer, configure it to work with their email client, and use it each time, are not stupid enough to open mysterious.VBS files in Outlook Express downloaded that they received from an unknown sender.
Actually, bloodshed has always been the response, historically speaking. A society where a government has convinced the people they can effect change by mere complaint, then the government can simply ignore the complaints, is a society that can easily turn despotic.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence (emphasis added)
Although I would have to say that I am much more amenable to flight than fight, as I dont see anyone having a chance in hell of knocking down the United States government in its current size. You wont find a country that lives according to the original intent of the founders of the United States (considering the U.S. invented that system of democracy), but some still come closer than the U.S. does now. Theres Canada, but they seem to be headed the same way the U.S. is, like you said. Australia and England, re censorship and state control of information, are far worse than the United States. If you want a country that doesnt involve itself in foreign affairs, theres Switzerland. I still think Canada is the best bet, however.
When the government publishes information, it is nearly always published as public domain information this means that the information becomes public knowledge, available to everyone, etc., etc. When they published their information, they had their say, and they chose a license, public domain, that is essentially irrevocable.
Take for example, The CIA World Factbook, essentially a full-fledged atlas/almanac published by the CIA, yearly. See the copyright notice on the publication:
The Factbook is in the public domain. Accordingly, it may be copied freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Remove all the information after its published, cached, archived, and probably already been read by anyone planning to use it soon should be most effective. The next step is to try and outlaw the information itself, because we know that if its illegal to possess the information, the terists will just hand over what they have and miraculously forget what they already read, just like if we outlaw strong encryption.
Maybe we should just get to the heart of the matter and outlaw terrorism. Oh, wait...
And yes, I think the government has the right to keep certain information secret to protect lives.
Thats what the label CLASSIFIED is for. This is information already released to the public that theyre trying to recover ex post facto. And one should not have to get special permission from anyone to write a paper about a bloody power plant.
A more immediate solution to this situation would be to download and mirror as much of this information as possible. Preferably on overseas servers, however I dont see why you cannot mirror it on an American webserver most, if not all government-produced and publically available information is placed into the public domain; they cannot actually order you to remove it (because its not classified, and they do not own any copyrights on the material).
Actually, many compression algorithms are patented (not that I agree with this, I dont; but Apple is not the first). For example, LZW compression, used in GIFs, is patented, by Unisys. I believe the algorithm used by the Aladdin StuffIt program is, also.
I think that depends on how you are defining a trojan. Cookies certainly fall under that category if youre defining a trojan as any kind of computer program (or data) that is performing actions on your computer that you are not aware of. Cookies placed by, say, Slashdot, are not trojans as these are necessary for log-in purposes (maintaining state in a stateless protocol, HTTP). Cookies placed by advertisers to see what youre doing with your computer what sites you are visiting certainly are.
Slashdot Mirror
Expect me to not be living in the United States of Microsoft by the time that happens.
Expect me to not use Windows.
The people behind CSS refused to license their specs to Linux developers, too. Look what happened to them . . .
That would have to be one hell of a scratch to damage it. Surface scratches can be repaired, you can buy the stuff to fill in the scratches at computer/music stores. The scratch would have to be deep enough to actually damage the metal within; unless your intern regularly plays with belt sanders in the office I wouldn't worry.
Additionally, it's a lot easier to protect against scratches; i.e., if the disk is out of physical harm's way (you know, like in a CD case!), it won't get scratched. It's a lot harder to defend against magnetic damage (e.g., you would need specially shielded cases or whatnot).
. . . and others. Who do you think those others are?
Why is copyrighting a license in and of itself bad? The license is a work of written text, so it can be copyrighted just like any other text.
...You think that U.S. law only applies in the U.S.? You havent heard of DeCSS, have you?
On Thursday, November 22, an article ran in the Washington Post titled "FBI
Develops Eavesdropping Tools." The article speculates about the FBI's
development of a password-stealing Trojan, Magic Lantern, as part of the
FBI's surveillance efforts. In the article, the AP reporter writes "At
least one anti-virus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI on
Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's
snooping software and alert a criminal suspect."
The Network Associates official position on this is as follows:
1. Network Associates/McAfee has not contacted the FBI, nor has the FBI
contacted NAI/McAfee, regarding Magic Lantern.
2. We do not expect the FBI to contact Network Associates/McAfee regarding
Magic Lantern.
3. Network Associates/McAfee is not going to speculate on Magic Lantern as
it's existence has not even been confirmed by the FBI or any government
agency.
4. Network Associates/McAfee does and will continue to comply with any and
all U.S. laws and legislation.
Regards,
Allysa Myers
Virus Research Analyst
McAfee AVERT
A division of McAfee, Inc.
502? I get a 302 (Found), but it doesnt actuall perform the redirect. Not to mention it is redirecting to itself...
0 MB? Doesnt sound like it has much storage space...
Dont use any version of MacOS before MacOSX? MacOS was pretty secure, more so than OSX rather difficult to crack MacOS remotely considering that there is no command line, and it comes with no services installed (let alone enabled).
Although I would have to say that I am much more amenable to flight than fight, as I dont see anyone having a chance in hell of knocking down the United States government in its current size. You wont find a country that lives according to the original intent of the founders of the United States (considering the U.S. invented that system of democracy), but some still come closer than the U.S. does now. Theres Canada, but they seem to be headed the same way the U.S. is, like you said. Australia and England, re censorship and state control of information, are far worse than the United States. If you want a country that doesnt involve itself in foreign affairs, theres Switzerland. I still think Canada is the best bet, however.
Take for example, The CIA World Factbook, essentially a full-fledged atlas/almanac published by the CIA, yearly. See the copyright notice on the publication:
Remove all the information after its published, cached, archived, and probably already been read by anyone planning to use it soon should be most effective. The next step is to try and outlaw the information itself, because we know that if its illegal to possess the information, the terists will just hand over what they have and miraculously forget what they already read, just like if we outlaw strong encryption.
Maybe we should just get to the heart of the matter and outlaw terrorism. Oh, wait...
A more immediate solution to this situation would be to download and mirror as much of this information as possible. Preferably on overseas servers, however I dont see why you cannot mirror it on an American webserver most, if not all government-produced and publically available information is placed into the public domain; they cannot actually order you to remove it (because its not classified, and they do not own any copyrights on the material).
Well, first off, what kind of errors do you mean? It actually breaks (as in an error message or even crashing the shell) or it just doesnt work?
Does the analogous
if [ -e "file.foo" ]; then
something
fi
also have the same problems?
Actually, many compression algorithms are patented (not that I agree with this, I dont; but Apple is not the first). For example, LZW compression, used in GIFs, is patented, by Unisys. I believe the algorithm used by the Aladdin StuffIt program is, also.
...your credit card number gets stored in yet another insecure database and your email address gets sold to spammers.
No, thanks.
What are these banner ads you speak of? I do not believe I have ever seen one.
I think that depends on how you are defining a trojan. Cookies certainly fall under that category if youre defining a trojan as any kind of computer program (or data) that is performing actions on your computer that you are not aware of. Cookies placed by, say, Slashdot, are not trojans as these are necessary for log-in purposes (maintaining state in a stateless protocol, HTTP). Cookies placed by advertisers to see what youre doing with your computer what sites you are visiting certainly are.
In other words, were only a few millimeters down the slippery slope instead of the whole way.
I know I feel better now.