While I agree with you that the info is already in the wrong hands I don't thjink that widenting the spread is going to help any. In the end I think that the more that this information spreads the worse off we are. Yes If I biy this I can look up data on my neighbor and perhaps on John Ascroft (or his family) but that won't make things any better. My Neighbor won't be able to do anything about it and John Ascroft will come down on me like a ton of bricks (and, on top of that probably get his data removed from the system).
At the end of the day all that this will do is erode our privacy further, make blackmail a more common practice, and let the powerful stay powerful.
As the "War on Drugs" has shown, depite increasing sentences through the roof drug use is still increasing. Unfortunately noone wants to back off on these entences because they will a) look weak on crime, and b) annoy all those voters who are emplopyed by the DEA, the prisons, gun manufacturers, etc.
Recently a study in the State of California showed that despite the appeal of the "3-strikes you're out" law id has had a negligable (possibly even harmful) effect on crime. It has also cost the sate so much money that (before the gubernator arrived) there was open talk of dropping it. Haven't heard anything along those lines lately.
As for the other restrictions that you mentioned, the scary part is under the SSSCA and it's descendents they were proposing exactly that mandatory restrictions on tools for the sake of one or two corporations.
The 2000 Election was also the first presidential election in which Diebold machines were used. Florida's Velousa (sp?) County. When the initial results came in they were devastating -16,022 (yes that's a negative number) votes were cast for Al Gore. This massive deficit caused Gore to appear diasterously behind Bush in the polls. It was at this point in the night that Gore gave his first resignation speech.
Later on the "official" counts were reset and a (more belivable) set of (nonnegative) numbers came in from the county in question. Gore then retracted his resignation. However that resignation came back to haunt him during the court case because Kathrine Harris used it to argue that he had already qut the reace and wasn't entitled to a recount.
Notreably, the recounts took place in other counties as Velousa county's machines did not produce paper records and could not be verified.
See Bev Harris's Site Blackboxvoting.org for details. See here for data on Volusia county. See here for internal Diebold memos discussing the -16,022 problem, and see here for more general info on the 2000 election.
Hynds' statement may also anger those who believe that one of the Web's great strengths is that it accommodates such a wide range of interests, free from censorship.
Seriously though if this person is so highly placed doesn't he understand how hard/impossible this would be. Part of the reason that speech is so free is that it is more or less impossible to police everyone.
Take the Great Firewall of China as a case in point. There the entire national internet infrastructure was built to accomidate censoship, The full weight of the government is behind it and yet it still doesn't work perfectly. Yes people are slowed down but, as the recent postings on bird flu have shown the government's power is fundamentally limited.
It reminds me of an old articel in wired that covered the firewall. They interviewed one party offoicial that talked with stars in her eyes about an internet made "safe" were everything that you did was logged (for your protection) and noone was anonymous. They then interviewed the man who designed, built and runs the firewall. When presented with the comments of the party official he asserted that she was (to paraphrase) "dreaming on".
About the only place taxpayers can fudge on their federal returns and not get caught, absent an audit, is their charitable contributions, said Frederick Beebe, the state's deputy commissioner for audits. But he said it's only a matter of time before charities start reporting donors and the size of their gifts to tax-collection agencies for verification.
Considering the efforts that were made in the 60's to locate and persecute people who participated in or contributed to anti-war groups, gay and lesbian groups, etc. Can we really be comfortable knowing that every charity dollar we send out it recorded. Especially since the federal government is seeking increased powers to spy on nonviolent groups.
I don't want my life to be scanned by some homophobic beureucrat with access to a database and time on his hands. Or for my donations to the green party to put me on any watch lists.
Don't laugh, it happened in the 60's under COINTELPRO. And, despite the fact that it was illegal it happened to the Japenese-Americans in WWII.
and sell off the HDTV spectrum for 10s of billions of dollars."
Why should I be psyched about selling off spectrum. Shouldn't the spectrum (like all public resources) be licenced for the public good not sold in perpetuity to the greedy demonspawn that pass for "corporate leaders" in this country?
In World-War II, despite laws to the contrary the Census Department's data was used to locate and round up Japenese Americans for "interment" (see here) And, while the truth has indeed come out as most sanctimonious defenders of PATRIOT Et al, insist it will, it came out 50 years later. The pendulum it seems is quite slow.
One of the things that I always find most telling in an article is the last word. What source gets quoted last, what side gets to put the final, lasting emphasis on the issue. All too often the last word is chosen to be the most direct and "hard hitting" piece.
I was bothered by the fact the last word here was from the pro cctv side who directly lkinked their case to terrorism but without any actual context. It feels too much like the bad arguments here in the U.S. Person A asserts that they oppose attacking Iraq Person B then screas about Terrorism or 9/11 to shut them up.
Mind you I'm not saying that I hated the artuicle as a whole, I'm glad that they did it although I'm supprised that they didn't cite some of the material availible at EPIC on the topic. It just felt like the balance was trhown off by that conclusion. That the author intended to leave a lasting pro-cctv impression.
Seriously, a ruling of this type not only rectifies a bad law but serves to remind people that bad laws can be changed. Lord knows I needed some good news like that.
Is Access a suitable tool for teaching database concepts to students?
Having used both of them I would say no. Access is a nice front-end and can be used for small databases. But, in order to do anything with it you need to spend a great deal of time learning how to do access-specific things such as forms and so on, all of which exist so that the underlying relational database cen be kept hidden.
If your goal is to teach the students how to make pretty guis but not understand the basic system, and to lock them into a proprietary tool from Microsoft then fine, use Access.
But, If your goal is to teach the students how to use databases and to develop real, portable IT skills that can take them from one job to the next in the workplace environment then give them the real thing; SQL.
The bottom line is, every tool that I have seen built "in" Access (Even in microsoft-only environments) has been riddled with special tweaks and typically had a short lifespan. That's just not worth a class.
While Diebold has backed down it is still not clear that their actions were "wrong" (in the legal sense). According to the EFF the case is still pending. The battle isn't over completely. Lest we forget the machines are still in use.
Have you told congress to Verify The Vote? Sign the petition here
Who wants a society where everything that you buy is done with a unique chip. The way I see it there are two issues here.
1) The fact that anyone using this has a uniquely-identifiable RFID tag that can be scanned by anyone at any time. Personally I'm not all that paranoid but I just don't want a society where everything I do involved broadcasting "I 2934208209348230 am here!" to anyone and everyone. While it's true that the Government can track most of my financial transactions now I don't really want to make it that much easier for them, for my bank, my credit-card company, my parents, etc. to follow my every financial (and physical) move.
2) How does this work with the modern financial market? Most of my aqquaintances make use of more than one form of payment on a day-to-day basis. Most of us have at least one bank account, credit card, and use at least some cash. I at least do this partly from convenience (who wants to sign their name all the time) and partly from necessity (not all stores take plastic or cheques).
How would this work with that? Would eveyone whyo uses it be forced to draw from a single account or to use some brokering service to select. I.E. do I give them a finger and then say "cheque" or "Mastercard?" Or do I give them a separate finger, hand, etc for each source.
It would seem to me that: This would only work with such a hybrid system or else the financial community who depends upon competition for their products would be devastated.
It also seems to me that this will never become "the way to pay for everything" unless the federal government mandates that everyone use it. If not then all the small shops who only take cash now will just stay with cash. Or WalMart and Target will so come to dominate the market that noone shops at small stores anymore. Given that the Small Business Administration (A branch of the U.S. Government) has had to sure other parts of the government to stop some anti-small business policies this isn't that unthinkable.
3) Lastly, am I the only one who thinks that the pictures attatched to the wired story resemble "the bug" from The Matrix (the thing that they stick in Neo's stomach).
The essential inefficiencies of the current system are one of the surest safeguards of our privacy. If they can't do it by law then they will break the law. If they can't do it at all then they can't do it at all.
The EFF is running an action alert on the Voter confidence and Increased Accessability act of 2003 which mandates public review of the machines (i.e. opening the source for review) and including paper recipts for recounts. U.S. Citizens can go here to submit a letter to your congressional rep.
The Link is here. Noteably it is on the show Fresh Air with Terry Gross who has recently interviewed Al Franken and a Bill O'Reilly about their Hate/Hate relationship and the lawsuit itself. As a side note O'Reilly walked out of the interview.
While I agree with you that the profit motive will encourage if not mandate the development of thee technologies I dispute your claim that all of this is "inevitable."
Unbiquitous computing like any other techynology can be employed in a myriad of ways. You seem to be arguing that the profit motive will force this technology to be used in the worst possible way and that there isn't anything that can be done about it. I disagree.
I think that a rational and aware populace can restruct how this technology is used in some ways to avoid fitting into the dystopic fears that many of us have. Unfortunately, doing so requires effort and many poeple don't want to expend any.
Several years ago poeple said that CCTV systems in public places and face-scanning technologies were "inevitable." Yet some cities including San Diego have turned it down and, contrary to predictions., other cities are not snapping it up like crazy. At the same time CCTV adoption has been mixed even being rejected in some cities like Oakland California. Even the herald of Big-Brother, the Total Information Awareness Project was shot down.
So no, I don;'t think that our darkest fears will inevitably be realized or that we are powerless to do anything. I think that it is really up to us to decide and, given sufficient efforts, Big Brother can still be avoided.
From the language of the article this seems like an odd bill. Basically they are forcing you to give a warning that things may be insecure, while allocating large amounts of funding for advertisements to make you afraid of things that "may be insecure."
It's easy to see how this could be used as a tool against unpopular sites much in the same way that the DMCA's takedown notices are used now. Even if you have a warning you could always be attacked for not warning someone "enough."
What intrigues me more are the educational provisions. That represents something new in the sense that the bill hopes to attack the culture of filesharing rather than the filesharers themselves. Perhaps they've concluded that threatening peple with lawsuits won't work unless those people already live in fear of such things. In some ways that worries me as much as the notice provision.
Some of that is already appearing. Take a look at some of the more recent distributions by Redhat, Debian or Gentoo. It used to be that installing the minimal size was the default. Now some distros such as Gentoo won't even do anything without Python, Java, Perl, etc. Of course the real issue is, how do you define "Linux" are we talking the Kernel, or a fully built Redhat system with loads of interdependencies?
I can't help but think that, left unchecked, the windows state is where some of these distros will go.
About Bill, He's no idiot either. If he's not lying outright then he's stretching the truth and he's smart enough to know that too.
But look at it this way, of course we aren't going to believe him. Neither are most people who know Linux. But for those that don't know it or don't care -- or say used to work at Microsoft and have since become the cybersecurity czar and need to sell it in Congress -- these statements will have wieght.
An initial lack of customer interest if not outright failure. This should be immediately followed by loud public statements blaming the lack of interest on air piracy (hacking the signal see also here), the Internet, and El Nino, at which point they will look to begin lawsuits, sell the technology to someone else, or change the law to compel each and every one of us to buy the damn things.
Perhaps they'll even sue all satellite dish manufacturers and radio makers under the DMCA!
So far as I can tell the author made no attempt to cross-check the claims made or to get a critical opinion of the standard from a third party. Rather he spent his time extolling the future of media pcs (more like a tv, if I wanted a TV I'd buy a stupid TV not a broken excuse for a computer) than discussing the topic at hand.
It may just be me but that felt less like an article and more like a pure press-release unfiltered by journalism in any way. I'm not sure what pisses me off more, companies that make this kind of stuff or the journalists who blindly pass it on as if it was a non-issue.
It continually amazes me how much people forget this when dealing with privacy-invasive technologies.
When such cameras first appeared some people predicted that this kind of thing would happen. In response Police and "spy on the public" types said no they would never do such a thing and even gave us their word on the matter. The same was true for the PATRIOT act. When people are given such a tool, even if they do not use it today, someone will come along and use it tomorrow.
Anyone who believes otherwize should contact me about this great deal I've got. I'll sell you the brooklyn bridge for just 50 bucks.
I'm not that worried by the fact that the parents let their kids play a game that was clearly rated MA (with a big warning on the box and nice pics of violence i might add). What worries me is the fact that those same parents allowed their kids to take real guns out to shoot at people "because they were bored."
Letting your kid play a violent game without asking what's up wna dhwat it is doing to them is foolish. Letting your kid take a loaded weapon out with without investigating their activities, that's gross negligence.
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While I agree with you that the info is already in the wrong hands I don't thjink that widenting the spread is going to help any. In the end I think that the more that this information spreads the worse off we are. Yes If I biy this I can look up data on my neighbor and perhaps on John Ascroft (or his family) but that won't make things any better. My Neighbor won't be able to do anything about it and John Ascroft will come down on me like a ton of bricks (and, on top of that probably get his data removed from the system).
At the end of the day all that this will do is erode our privacy further, make blackmail a more common practice, and let the powerful stay powerful.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an Action Alert on this. U.S. Citizens can go there and send e-mails, faxes, and letters to their respective congresspersons.
All it takes is a few minutes. Do it, Do it NOW! While its still legal to report the fact that this bill exists.
As the "War on Drugs" has shown, depite increasing sentences through the roof drug use is still increasing. Unfortunately noone wants to back off on these entences because they will a) look weak on crime, and b) annoy all those voters who are emplopyed by the DEA, the prisons, gun manufacturers, etc.
Recently a study in the State of California showed that despite the appeal of the "3-strikes you're out" law id has had a negligable (possibly even harmful) effect on crime. It has also cost the sate so much money that (before the gubernator arrived) there was open talk of dropping it. Haven't heard anything along those lines lately.
As for the other restrictions that you mentioned, the scary part is under the SSSCA and it's descendents they were proposing exactly that mandatory restrictions on tools for the sake of one or two corporations.
The 2000 Election was also the first presidential election in which Diebold machines were used. Florida's Velousa (sp?) County. When the initial results came in they were devastating -16,022 (yes that's a negative number) votes were cast for Al Gore. This massive deficit caused Gore to appear diasterously behind Bush in the polls. It was at this point in the night that Gore gave his first resignation speech.
Later on the "official" counts were reset and a (more belivable) set of (nonnegative) numbers came in from the county in question. Gore then retracted his resignation. However that resignation came back to haunt him during the court case because Kathrine Harris used it to argue that he had already qut the reace and wasn't entitled to a recount.
Notreably, the recounts took place in other counties as Velousa county's machines did not produce paper records and could not be verified.
See Bev Harris's Site Blackboxvoting.org for details. See here for data on Volusia county. See here for internal Diebold memos discussing the -16,022 problem, and see here for more general info on the 2000 election.
Seriously though if this person is so highly placed doesn't he understand how hard/impossible this would be. Part of the reason that speech is so free is that it is more or less impossible to police everyone.
Take the Great Firewall of China as a case in point. There the entire national internet infrastructure was built to accomidate censoship, The full weight of the government is behind it and yet it still doesn't work perfectly. Yes people are slowed down but, as the recent postings on bird flu have shown the government's power is fundamentally limited.
It reminds me of an old articel in wired that covered the firewall. They interviewed one party offoicial that talked with stars in her eyes about an internet made "safe" were everything that you did was logged (for your protection) and noone was anonymous. They then interviewed the man who designed, built and runs the firewall. When presented with the comments of the party official he asserted that she was (to paraphrase) "dreaming on".
Considering the efforts that were made in the 60's to locate and persecute people who participated in or contributed to anti-war groups, gay and lesbian groups, etc. Can we really be comfortable knowing that every charity dollar we send out it recorded. Especially since the federal government is seeking increased powers to spy on nonviolent groups.
I don't want my life to be scanned by some homophobic beureucrat with access to a database and time on his hands. Or for my donations to the green party to put me on any watch lists.
Don't laugh, it happened in the 60's under COINTELPRO. And, despite the fact that it was illegal it happened to the Japenese-Americans in WWII.
Why should I be psyched about selling off spectrum. Shouldn't the spectrum (like all public resources) be licenced for the public good not sold in perpetuity to the greedy demonspawn that pass for "corporate leaders" in this country?
In World-War II, despite laws to the contrary the Census Department's data was used to locate and round up Japenese Americans for "interment" (see here) And, while the truth has indeed come out as most sanctimonious defenders of PATRIOT Et al, insist it will, it came out 50 years later. The pendulum it seems is quite slow.
One of the things that I always find most telling in an article is the last word. What source gets quoted last, what side gets to put the final, lasting emphasis on the issue. All too often the last word is chosen to be the most direct and "hard hitting" piece.
I was bothered by the fact the last word here was from the pro cctv side who directly lkinked their case to terrorism but without any actual context. It feels too much like the bad arguments here in the U.S. Person A asserts that they oppose attacking Iraq Person B then screas about Terrorism or 9/11 to shut them up.
Mind you I'm not saying that I hated the artuicle as a whole, I'm glad that they did it although I'm supprised that they didn't cite some of the material availible at EPIC on the topic. It just felt like the balance was trhown off by that conclusion. That the author intended to leave a lasting pro-cctv impression.
Seriously, a ruling of this type not only rectifies a bad law but serves to remind people that bad laws can be changed. Lord knows I needed some good news like that.
Having used both of them I would say no. Access is a nice front-end and can be used for small databases. But, in order to do anything with it you need to spend a great deal of time learning how to do access-specific things such as forms and so on, all of which exist so that the underlying relational database cen be kept hidden.
If your goal is to teach the students how to make pretty guis but not understand the basic system, and to lock them into a proprietary tool from Microsoft then fine, use Access.
But, If your goal is to teach the students how to use databases and to develop real, portable IT skills that can take them from one job to the next in the workplace environment then give them the real thing; SQL.
The bottom line is, every tool that I have seen built "in" Access (Even in microsoft-only environments) has been riddled with special tweaks and typically had a short lifespan. That's just not worth a class.
While Diebold has backed down it is still not clear that their actions were "wrong" (in the legal sense). According to the EFF the case is still pending. The battle isn't over completely. Lest we forget the machines are still in use.
Have you told congress to Verify The Vote?
Sign the petition here
1) The fact that anyone using this has a uniquely-identifiable RFID tag that can be scanned by anyone at any time. Personally I'm not all that paranoid but I just don't want a society where everything I do involved broadcasting "I 2934208209348230 am here!" to anyone and everyone. While it's true that the Government can track most of my financial transactions now I don't really want to make it that much easier for them, for my bank, my credit-card company, my parents, etc. to follow my every financial (and physical) move.
2) How does this work with the modern financial market? Most of my aqquaintances make use of more than one form of payment on a day-to-day basis. Most of us have at least one bank account, credit card, and use at least some cash. I at least do this partly from convenience (who wants to sign their name all the time) and partly from necessity (not all stores take plastic or cheques).
How would this work with that? Would eveyone whyo uses it be forced to draw from a single account or to use some brokering service to select. I.E. do I give them a finger and then say "cheque" or "Mastercard?" Or do I give them a separate finger, hand, etc for each source.
It would seem to me that: This would only work with such a hybrid system or else the financial community who depends upon competition for their products would be devastated.
It also seems to me that this will never become "the way to pay for everything" unless the federal government mandates that everyone use it. If not then all the small shops who only take cash now will just stay with cash. Or WalMart and Target will so come to dominate the market that noone shops at small stores anymore. Given that the Small Business Administration (A branch of the U.S. Government) has had to sure other parts of the government to stop some anti-small business policies this isn't that unthinkable.
3) Lastly, am I the only one who thinks that the pictures attatched to the wired story resemble "the bug" from The Matrix (the thing that they stick in Neo's stomach).
The EFF is running an action alert on the Voter confidence and Increased Accessability act of 2003 which mandates public review of the machines (i.e. opening the source for review) and including paper recipts for recounts. U.S. Citizens can go here to submit a letter to your congressional rep.
What's a few minutes of your time for democracy?
The Link is here. Noteably it is on the show Fresh Air with Terry Gross who has recently interviewed Al Franken and a Bill O'Reilly about their Hate/Hate relationship and the lawsuit itself. As a side note O'Reilly walked out of the interview.
I For one suggest that we take a vote on this preferably with Diebold Touchscreen machines. Thas way the truly determined hackers will win.
While I agree with you that the profit motive will encourage if not mandate the development of thee technologies I dispute your claim that all of this is "inevitable."
Unbiquitous computing like any other techynology can be employed in a myriad of ways. You seem to be arguing that the profit motive will force this technology to be used in the worst possible way and that there isn't anything that can be done about it. I disagree.
I think that a rational and aware populace can restruct how this technology is used in some ways to avoid fitting into the dystopic fears that many of us have. Unfortunately, doing so requires effort and many poeple don't want to expend any.
Several years ago poeple said that CCTV systems in public places and face-scanning technologies were "inevitable." Yet some cities including San Diego have turned it down and, contrary to predictions., other cities are not snapping it up like crazy. At the same time CCTV adoption has been mixed even being rejected in some cities like Oakland California. Even the herald of Big-Brother, the Total Information Awareness Project was shot down.
So no, I don;'t think that our darkest fears will inevitably be realized or that we are powerless to do anything. I think that it is really up to us to decide and, given sufficient efforts, Big Brother can still be avoided.
From the language of the article this seems like an odd bill. Basically they are forcing you to give a warning that things may be insecure, while allocating large amounts of funding for advertisements to make you afraid of things that "may be insecure."
It's easy to see how this could be used as a tool against unpopular sites much in the same way that the DMCA's takedown notices are used now. Even if you have a warning you could always be attacked for not warning someone "enough."
What intrigues me more are the educational provisions. That represents something new in the sense that the bill hopes to attack the culture of filesharing rather than the filesharers themselves. Perhaps they've concluded that threatening peple with lawsuits won't work unless those people already live in fear of such things. In some ways that worries me as much as the notice provision.
Some of that is already appearing. Take a look at some of the more recent distributions by Redhat, Debian or Gentoo. It used to be that installing the minimal size was the default. Now some distros such as Gentoo won't even do anything without Python, Java, Perl, etc. Of course the real issue is, how do you define "Linux" are we talking the Kernel, or a fully built Redhat system with loads of interdependencies?
I can't help but think that, left unchecked, the windows state is where some of these distros will go.
About Bill, He's no idiot either. If he's not lying outright then he's stretching the truth and he's smart enough to know that too.
But look at it this way, of course we aren't going to believe him. Neither are most people who know Linux. But for those that don't know it or don't care -- or say used to work at Microsoft and have since become the cybersecurity czar and need to sell it in Congress -- these statements will have wieght.
Not hideously expensive as things go but the Geekiness factor is astronomical.
An initial lack of customer interest if not outright failure. This should be immediately followed by loud public statements blaming the lack of interest on air piracy (hacking the signal see also here), the Internet, and El Nino, at which point they will look to begin lawsuits, sell the technology to someone else, or change the law to compel each and every one of us to buy the damn things.
Perhaps they'll even sue all satellite dish manufacturers and radio makers under the DMCA!
Sue everyone who disagrees with you, lie, and make half statements. When that fails pull cheap legal tricts to get your detractors silenced.
No I'm serious, it's been working so well for SCO and the RIAA why not try it here. After all its only democracy thats at stake.
I don't know about you but I trust them more already.
So far as I can tell the author made no attempt to cross-check the claims made or to get a critical opinion of the standard from a third party. Rather he spent his time extolling the future of media pcs (more like a tv, if I wanted a TV I'd buy a stupid TV not a broken excuse for a computer) than discussing the topic at hand.
It may just be me but that felt less like an article and more like a pure press-release unfiltered by journalism in any way. I'm not sure what pisses me off more, companies that make this kind of stuff or the journalists who blindly pass it on as if it was a non-issue.
It continually amazes me how much people forget this when dealing with privacy-invasive technologies.
When such cameras first appeared some people predicted that this kind of thing would happen. In response Police and "spy on the public" types said no they would never do such a thing and even gave us their word on the matter. The same was true for the PATRIOT act. When people are given such a tool, even if they do not use it today, someone will come along and use it tomorrow.
Anyone who believes otherwize should contact me about this great deal I've got. I'll sell you the brooklyn bridge for just 50 bucks.
I'm not that worried by the fact that the parents let their kids play a game that was clearly rated MA (with a big warning on the box and nice pics of violence i might add). What worries me is the fact that those same parents allowed their kids to take real guns out to shoot at people "because they were bored."
Letting your kid play a violent game without asking what's up wna dhwat it is doing to them is foolish. Letting your kid take a loaded weapon out with without investigating their activities, that's gross negligence.