Sending out paper junk mail and making the recipient pay for it? Yes, absolutely there is a law against that.
Please cite it for me. I don't think you're right.
Feel free to try it. If companies could get away with this, do you seriously think that they wouldn't do it?
I'm not your legal council, go ask them. Postage due junk mail is absolutely illegal.
So...you'd limit my choices to "don't run an ISP" or "run an ISP and pay for a T1s worth of spam"?
You could always run an ISP without providing email accounts.
Brilliant idea! I'm sure such a business would be a great success. Tell you what, it's so brilliant an idea, I'm going to let you have first crack at it. Try it and let me know how it goes!
How about "run an ISP and eliminate spam by making it illegal"? That's what we're talking about, I thought.
Oh yeah, making spam illegal is really going to eliminate it. I doubt it.
Regardless of where the mail servers are, regardless of where the spam originates, there has to be some way to get their money from you to them. If those connected in that process were liable to be sued, get jail time, or better yet BOTH, do you really think they would risk it? Perhaps a few would...at first.
In any case, just because it's convenient for you to get the FBI to police your ISP instead of policing it yourself, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with it.
So now it's my ISP, when it comes to responsibility? You seem confused on this point later, when it comes to rights.
They [your upstream provider] don't have any more control over it [spam] than I do.
Sure they do. It's their downstream providers that are providing a large portion of the spam, and it's their peers that are providing the rest. Your upstream provider has terms of service agreements which all of these entities.
You're good at offering the useless option, but your logic is bunk. "They could always nullify their peering agreements." Right. Then they'd go out of business, just like I'd go out of business if I decided to stop offering e-mail as a service. Incidentally, I am picky about who I choose to use for connectivity, and all of my upstreams are reputable companies with well funded abuse departments and good SPEWS records.
Using your logic, the big picture is: either accept spam, or everyone who doesn't like it should leave. Following this through to its logical conclusion, the internet would be a bunch of spammers' networks and nothing else. Positively brilliant solution there, chum. The companies who the Department of Commerce say are losing $10billion a year to spam ought to love that solution -- just don't use the internet!
When someone DoSes me, I don't complain to my upstream, I contact the ISP of the person doing it.
When someone DoSes me, I contact my upstream provider, to have them block that IP.
You have no interest in alerting the ISP to the offender? That seems inherently selfish and irresponsible, given the cooperative nature of the internet. If one of my users was attacking you, I would hope you'd have the good sense to alert me to this fact so I could take action.
Of course, you are completely missing this aspect of the internet -- it is a collaborative, cooperative entity. The more that we all do our part, the better it is as a whole. Spammers are the folks that are pissing in the communal pool, taking advantage of the cooperation to do their dirty business without any regard for their fellow netizens (especially the ones who have to pay the bills for all their traffic). I can't believe that anyone can't understand how wrong that is, but of course, there's always someone willing to make a quick buck if the only thing they have to do for it is hurt someone else.
That's exactly why we have laws. It's time to get a new one. I'm no fan o
Spamming is equivalent to sending out paper junk mail, postage due.
Is there a law against that?
Sending out paper junk mail and making the recipient pay for it? Yes, absolutely there is a law against that.
Tell me, why on earth should we as a business pay for a pipe that's used to send our customers advertisements that they didn't ask for and universally don't want?!?
Umm, why do you do it? No one is forcing you to.
So...you'd limit my choices to "don't run an ISP" or "run an ISP and pay for a T1s worth of spam"? That's a false dichotomy. How about "run an ISP and eliminate spam by making it illegal"? That's what we're talking about, I thought.
We aren't being compensated, or given a choice.
Of course you have a choice. Just like you have a choice whether or not watch a television show which has commercials, or buy a newspaper which has advertisements. Your upstream ISP is entering into a voluntary contractual arrangement to provide you with a certain service which includes sending you spam. If you want to be compensated for the spam being sent through your system, you need to talk to your upstream ISP about that.
They don't have any more control over it than I do. There exist no reliable technical solutions for filtering out "only spam". I don't see the sense in holding my upstream responsible for that unwanted traffic, instead of the sender, anyway. When someone DoSes me, I don't complain to my upstream, I contact the ISP of the person doing it.
Spam is not a technical, nor a market, problem.
It's most certainly a market problem. The ISPs choose not to enforce their terms of service, and the upstream ISPs let them get away with it.
That's only the current methodology, not the actual problem. We're already starting to see increasing use of trojan proxies to send out spam. You have a real problem with attacking the middleman anyway, if there's a guy outside of my house with a bullhorn telling me to buy his penis enlargement formula, I don't complain to my landlord about not having built a soundproof house, nor do I try to build soundproof walls into the house myself. I call the freakin cops.
Witness the recent (and overwhelmingly celebrated) telemarketing restrictions. The only people upset over this are the telemarketers.
I personally disagree with it, but if an anti-spam law were made similar to it (a national do-not-email list) I'd support it as the lesser of many evils. At least my first amendment right to receive spam is not being infringed.
Your first amendment right to receive spam? You must be a spammer. Here's the problem with your "first amendment right to receive spam": it doesn't exist. My mail server is my property, not my customers', and certainly not some bozo spammer's. Besides, even if there was a stringent anti-spam law, if you opted in to receive such e-mail, you could. The burden of making the choice should fall on the minority in that case, not the majority (and certainly not in the way the DMA would like, opting out of each individual companies lists one by one, while the dedicated spammers just set about making new companies every other day).
You say you want to receive spam? That's why I say you must be a spammer...as I said, I run an ISP, and not a small one at that. I hear what our customers think of spam, and not a one of them complains that we filter it. In fact, we offer the users a choice -- they can log in via our web interface and customize their own spam filter settings, tuning them or even turning them off. Just now, I logged into our SQL preferences database and checked: out of our thousands of customers, exactly 0 have turned off spam filtering.
But, at any rate, if you value spam so highly, why is it that you disguise your e-mail address on slashdot? If you supply it to me privately, I will be happy to forward you all of it you've ever wanted.
People complain about government intruding in our lives, restricting what we do, not protecting our rights when the RIAA attacks, but that all goes away the minute the same stuff happens to people you don't like.
Trying to link an anti-spam law, which there seems to be an overwhelming demand from the populace for with attacks on our freedoms is patently absurd. Commercial speech does not carry the same weight as political speech, nor should it. Spamming is equivalent to sending out paper junk mail, postage due. This deserves to be restricted.
I run a mail server for a medium sized ISP that's been in business since before 1997. The amount of spam we receive is absolutely rediculous, on the order of 15 gigabytes a day. Tell me, why on earth should we as a business pay for a pipe that's used to send our customers advertisements that they didn't ask for and universally don't want?!? We aren't being compensated, or given a choice. This is, plain and simple, an abuse of the system. There ought to be a law specifically targetting spam just as there are already laws targetting other types of abuse of a service.
Spam is a problem that should be taken care of by the free market, not government. Just because it's easier to pass a law than deal with the actual issues doesn't mean that's the better choice.
Spam is not a technical, nor a market, problem. And at any rate, we regulate the "free market" all the time! Witness the recent (and overwhelmingly celebrated) telemarketing restrictions. The only people upset over this are the telemarketers.
The only absolutely effective technical solutions to prevent individuals from sending you unsolicited commercial e-mail is to prevent them from sending you unsolicited e-mail, as there is no reliable technical method to determine what is 'commercial'. Does anyone really want an e-mail system where you cannot send someone a message without their permission? That seems a much higher cost to pay in terms of restricting what individuals do than a law specifically targetting unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Congress, give me a break, a break from the penis enlargement, the herbal viagra, and the fat xxx teen sluts.
It sure is a great thing that our media organizations are forced to be small and independent so that they don't fall victim to pressure from corporate parents with conflicts of interest!
Errr...
That said, I agree with the sentiment you're expressing, I do however lack your faith in our representatives' willingness to listen to their constituents who don't make large campaign contributions. I can't (donate|bribe) as heavily as Wal-Mart, why should my word count as much?
Still, its better than doing nothing, or sitting around on slashdot and letting the RFID champions prepare their plans in advance to label as tin-foil hat wearing kooks anyone who suggests there are negative privacy implications to what they're trying to sell.
We as consumers probably would have the best luck getting congress to require a RFID tag to be clearly marked or in some way removable, like most bar codes are now.
Riiiight. Just like, ya know, all those other sensible, consumer-centric laws Congress passes daily. Just look at how effectively they dealt with spam, and file sharing, and CSS*...
Sorry to have to be the one to point this out to you, but in Congress, when its consumers versus corporate will, the lobbying bastards will win. This will continue until the populace wisens up enough so that campaign money matters less than the actual actions of the officials.
* That's as in DVDs/DMCA, not as in style sheets or cross site scripting.
You don't know the first thing about antennas and you tell me to "think before posting". "Think before posting" has nothing to do with my arguments. I wasn't even arguing something, just stating a fact.
No, you were stating incorrect factual information. Though not a matter of opinion, it was also not true.
You seem to believe you can "think" up facts. You can't. Your super mini coil antenna doesn't exist.
Since you seem unable to comprehend the written word, perhaps a picture will be better:
Figure 1:
--------------------
Figure 2:
| |~| |~| |~| |_| |_| |_| |
Notice that, though both contain the same number of characters, one is signifigantly shorter than the other? Are you actually saying that figure 2 does not exist as an antenna?
You may refer to the May 2003 issue of Wired for a more in depth article on the development of motes, but they will not have half-inch long antennae dangling from them -- that would be stupid.
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My point is the same: The ability to track an RFID signal is being pitched as an impossibility, something that cannot happen, in the garbs of scientific fact. In reality, we have only the promises of others, lack of current (known) motivation, and insufficiently deployed technology to constrain it.
Antennas can be a lot of shapes, but that doesn't make them smaller.
So, a coiled antenna isn't smaller than a straight one? Odd.
I'm not going to argue with you. It's clear you don't know anything about antennas and would rather insult me than learn anything.
I needn't know the first thing about antennas to know that if the Army is pursuing 1/32" size RF-talking motes, that it is withing the realm of physical possibility for something 1/32" to transmit and receive RF. Read the link I posted.
I don't mean to insult you, I mean to insult your argument, as it is wrong, and wrong arguments deserve ridicule.
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Actually there are "Physics based limitations" to these devices. They're RF devices and as such have to deal with the limitations of radio wavelengths. The amount of data they hold isn't the issue - the amount of RF energy going back and forth is.
There are physics based limitations, but not of a few inches. Sorry, that's bogus. Again, all you need to read one of these from further away is: a) a targetted transmitter; and b) a sensitive receiver.
[Snip haughty-lingo nonsense that you contradict directly below]
As for the NSA - yes, they have some very fancy systems for reading tiny signals at range. (as do the FCC, the military, and quite a few skilled amatures) They are highly directional and if they're not pointed in the right direction, they get nothing. You could read the rfid chip 400 feet in front of you, and completely MISS it's cousin 12 degrees to the left.
So after all the BS, you finally admit what I theorized to begin with -- it is possible to read these things at a great distance. Thank you. I rest my case.
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I just noticed that this wasn't the original poster, just someone reposting the reply from SecurityFocus by Unisys Security Director Stefan Sokolowski.
I withdraw my previous confusion as to why the person was being intentionally deceptive. It is now obvious.
Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.
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Everyone freaks out about RFIDs, but I remain in the camp that these could be really cool, as long as consumers (ok, geeks) figure out how to control them
What major technological innovation ever is that not true of? From fire to the machine gun to radio broadcasting, in the hands of geeks these would be great things.
Now, of the latest technologies of the past, lets say 100 years, how many can you argue are MORE in control of the geek or consumer than the government and large corporations? Have you turned on your car radio lately? Looked around the internet?
Cool empowering technology just doesn't end up the hands of Joe Blow. We must factor that into any evaluation.
They tags may someday be that small (doubt it), but they will always need an antenna. Currently 1/2" is about the smallest realistic antenna.
Nothing says the antenna has to be straight, though.
Think before you post, people. If radio transmitting devices smaller than half an inch were impossible, why would the military be investing very heavily in stuff like this?!?
Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article
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As a real security professional (i.e. one that does not go around screaming that the sky is falling) and as someone who has worked with RFID for the military and for civilian uses (mainly Post Offices) for over six years, I find your article makes a number of glaring omissions that would allow any sensible human being to make a rational judgement about this technology.
You are a black pot, and to top it all off the kettle is orange.
Omissions:
1) Range verses size. Very basic issue. The smaller it is, the closer you have to be to it to pick up the signal. For a small passive tag we are talking inches (3-4 feet max). In order to track something from 200 yards (maximum range currently in use), you need an active tag (i.e. with a battery) and it has to be the size of a beer mat. I think you would notice it in your jeans. The signal generator in this case is also a non-trivial device. It is the size on a lamp-post and weights in excuss of 30Kg. Hardly PDA attachment material.
If your experience is as you claim it, I can only conclude that you are intentionally lying. There is no inherent, physics based limitation of "a few feet" to how far these tags can be read: to read the tags from further away, all one needs is a better receiver. Your statement assumes that a newer, better receiver will never be invented or brought to market. Doesn't the NSA do quite a bit of work already on picking up radio signals at a distance?!?
2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.
A KILOBYTE? Tell me, chum, how long is an IP address? A MAC Address? An IPv6 address? A 1 Kilobyte serial number is pretty damn big.
3)The logic associated with the tyre scenario. The association of the vehicle number and the tyre would not be stored on the tag. There is no space, and Read/Write tags are much more expensive (and larger). Easy to overwrite also. So for your big brother is watching scenario, you would need to replace every lamp-post on every highway with a signal generator, have assess to the database that cross-references your vehicle ID with the tag ids, and be able to monitor all of the signal generators in real-time to see what was happening.
OK...so...what's the problem? You don't think Big Brother has mastered the fine art of the database? Or a simple message passing network? It's not even as expensive as all that, as you wouldn't really need one for each lamp post, just one for each 'path'. One at the freeway entrance, one at each exit and the same for residential blocks - one at each end. Maybe, on freeways, a few here and there at mile markers and such.
It really seems intentional that you're overlooking the obvious -- that's not a typical trait of a "security professional".
Nullsoft's latest creation was a file-sharing program that allowed users to set up secure networks of no more than 50 people.
WASTE was pretty obviously not a filesharing program. It was a small group collaboration program, that allowed encrypted chat and transfers. Its use as a file-sharing mechanism in the way that your average NYTimes reader would interpret that term is extremely limited to non existent. It's a "file sharing program" in the same way that AOL Instant Messenger is. Does the NYT refer to AIM that way?
Then again, maybe I'm the silly one for expecting accuracy, nay, competence, in reporting in the major media outlets.
Zen is not about intelligence, it is the art of turning off intelligence.
Thus proving that the most successful Zen denomination so far is Christianity.
Sorry, couldn't resist....but seriously folks.
I, for one, remember sitting at my computer, so young that I wasn't really cognizant of the commands I was giving the computer. To 7-year-old-me on an Atari computer, I was speaking a magic spell, albeit with my fingers.
Is it any wonder that we're mystical as a group? We speak in arcane languages, and through our words and thoughts, actions are performed. Whether they be parlor tricks, or real power, we can still do something, merely by speaking, that 98% of humanity (or whatever) cannot, and honestly probably about 80% even if they devoted their lives to it. Why aren't we wizards, again?
"From a user's stand point Linux is now no more difficult to get around in than windows" Oh please! You can't be serious. Talking about FUD. You should spend some time with real users, the type that does not even know how to handle a mouse.
From the implied strawman that linux users in business are just going to be handed a Slackware 7 CD and be told "go to it", sure. This isn't the case with windows in that market. All computers need initial set-up, and if your linux (or windows) sysadmin isn't smart enough to make a template user system and clone it at setup, then you hired the wrong guy.
I challenge anyone to provide evidence that Windows 2K is any more user friendly for what Joe End User needs, which is e-mail and web browsing, and in some cases perhaps one specific other application, than is a cluefully set up Gnome/KDE environment. (No, I don't think they're equivalent either, but I want to avoid making coals for people to walk on -ed)
...and if my employees are going to find any games to play on the install, I'd rather it be nethack than Solitaire.
...and yet you do nothing to investigate this perception.
OK, well take it from someone who has then. JP, and his friend Carolyn, are the definition of shady. They are shameless self promoters, public image spin doctors, and can only be trusted to do what is best for themselves.
The first thing I asked when I read this was "Why on earth is/. giving JP another forum in which to convince the gullible that his mightily-spun version of everything is true?" This is not going to be an informative interview in the normal sense of the term. For those who already know JP, it will be nothing but another among many exhibitions of his spin-doctor skills. For those who don't know him, some may actually be decieved.
Why is he seeking this much publicity? Probably because his site is going down the tubes. Updates are anything but regular, the information available is the same stuff you can get anywhere (and in many cases, it's exactly the same information), and his investors may be getting a little antsy at all the hatred he's attracted in the community that he's claimed to be such a part of.
Anyway, if this is going to be a real interview, I'll play Mike Wallace and ask the tough questions:
John, how do you respond to the allegations made and supported by pretty convincing evidence that you've violated the copyright of numerous web news organizations by copy-pasting nearly (or in some cases, fully) verbatim, especially the cases of Discovery On-line, Hacker News Network, and Attrition?
You know what I've just about had enough of? The above. I see this all the time on IRC channels, usenet, and web pages when dealing with this stuff. The short end is this: "evolutionist" (seems a bit silly, like saying "gravityist") brings up mounds of evidence to support the theory of evolution. Creationist blows it all off by saying "Yes, those are all very compelling evidences. But creationism has just as many". Predictably, however, they never seem to cite any. And when asked, they'll proudly shout off several (usually silly) debunkings of evolution, hoping that nobody notices they didn't answer the question.
I've never seen any creationist actually list "evidence" for judeo-christian creationism. Would you be so kind?
Hrm...this is really asking to provoke a platform war. I thought we were trying to DIScourage this kind of thing.
Tsk tsk Rob.
(I'm [among other OSes] a mac user, and I thought it was mildly amusing, but were it a comment someone made, I would have moderated it down for being flamebait)
Atheist - One who without a doubt believes that a god does not exist.
Agnostic - One who does not believe there is conclusive evidence either way.
Hate to be pedantic, but this is actually a source of considerable confusion. An atheist is a person who _lacks a belief_ in god, not neccesarily a person who _believes in lack_ of god, although some people do fall into the later category.
I am an atheist, and my view is not that I firmly believe god doesn't exist, but that there is no evidence that god DOES exist, and that anything lacking evidence for existance is presumed not to exist. For example, invisible pink unicorns. Are we bothered by saying "well, they could exist, although I have no evidence to support that"? No, we usually just settle for "no, invisible pink unicorns do not exist".
Er being Nazi's does not stop them hating everyone else (despite the loving picture of Nazi's you may have in your mind). They more or less worshipped Hitler, that makes them Nazi's in my book.
NAZI's (Its an acronym, it should be capitalized) believed in a pure race, and hated all others. These kids hated everyone, including what the NAZIs would have considered the "perfect" race. I suspect they liked the NAZI image, the brutality, but they clearly did not have similar views, nor should they be called NAZIs by anyone who cares about being historically accurate. NAZIs didn't hate everyone equally, these kids did.
They were disturbed individuals who expressed their rage in a horrible, heinous way. They overreacted, yes, but its foolish to pretend that they weren't overreacting to a real problem. Why did they hate everyone? We come right back to Jon Katz's Tales from the Hellmouth.
I think the worst thing about this whole incident is what it has exposed in american culture.
Politicians don't REALLY care about why kids shoot other kids, they care about what will get them more brownie points with the sheep-public.
Schools don't REALLY care about stopping the problem that CAUSES this, they want to get bigger budgets, so they turn schools into prisons rather than places of learning. If they fixed the real problem, they would have to admin partial fault for overlooking the bullying done by the "cool" cliques.
The popular media doesn't care about what REALLY happened, they want what will get them better ratings with Soccer Mom. Soccer Mom doesn't want to think that her kid may be driving someone else to the very same acts every day at school. Soccer Mom wants to hear that any kid that does this is an evil racist NAZI psycho from hell.
Church doesn't care about fixing the REAL problem, they would rather turn any situation into a chance to convert as many people as they can, and wag their pseudomoralistic fingers at the rest while whispering "I told you so" under their breath.
Everyone cares about their own agenda. Nobody cares about finding the truth about anything, because truth can be inconvenient, so every problem becomes a platform for every group who wants you to come over to their side.
Thats the world we live in. People only pretend to care as long as it gets them what they want. Depressing, isn't it?
Expect within 10-15 years you will look back on the '90s as the golden years before the big evil governments woke up and took back control. Not only do we have to fight this at the law making level, we also have to create bigger and better protocols and workarounds to make it impossible for tier 1 & 2 providers to filter content.
Now, I know this has been tossed around a bit, but wouldn't the best solution to removing the backbones' ability to filter be end-to-end (strong) encryption using secure protocols for every service? As ssh has shown us, encrypted traffic doesn't need to be that much slower.
I'm surprised nobody is working on a secure service suite. I would, but I lack the programming talent to do anything other than write obfuscated perl, but a lot of groups (l0pht, etc.) surprise me by not doing anything of this sort.
Ideally, this encrypted IP network would:
1) help preserve anonymity 2) increase security 3) foil censorship on the network level 4) take pressure off the NAPs, by giving them the excuse "Hey, its all encrypted, there is NO way we can know whats going across our network, therefor we cannot be held responsible"
Seems like encrypted IP would provide us with solutions to a lot of problems. Why isn't there a bigger push for this tech?
Didn't Antionline (John Vranesevich) behave in a very unpleasant manner recently (PacketStorm -- Harvard)? I thought that he was relegated to the "don't touch with a 10-foot pole" category.
Yes, he did, and yes, he pretty much is in that category, as is his friend Carolyn Meinel.
The whole reason they host this stuff is so they get to see the attacks people use. You think they're just putting this box on the net with nothing between it and the pipe? Hah. They're packet sniffing, monitoring everything.
Why?
Well, so that in the off chance someone either writes his own exploit or gets ahold of a non-public one, and that person is stupid or naive enough to use it on them, they get to break the news, and claim the glory for it and use it themselves. Or better yet, have Carolyn write a book about it or turn the guy in to the FBI (which jaypee has said he will do and already has done, in fact, he's got an entire section of his website that is accessable only to law enforcement).
They (antionline) been doing a "contest" like this already, called happy hacker, for a while now. Its a scam, just like this is. The only thing you do by breaking into their machine is to give carolyn and jaypee knowledge that they didn't earn, and can't be trusted to use wisely.
I can't help feeling that the linuxppc folks got scammed. They probably didn't know who they were really dealing with.
Antionline, and the people who run it, are not to be trusted, folks. Jaypee has just enough of a clue to be dangerous, and carolyn, well, everything that one can say about her already has been said better than I can. Check out attrition.org's negation site for a few examples.
So? While I won't dispute that the scientific method has proven to be very useful in many areas, it's a long way from perfect and it's a long way from useful in every sphere. I've never claimed that the truthfulness of the Bible is or should be subject to verification via the scientific method.
Okay, one question then. Can you name me something OTHER than religion that isn't subject to verification or corroboration by the scientific method?
It's not as if evolutionists haven't done the same thing, either. They have always assumed a materialist view of the world, even though such a model cannot explain consciousness.
"Evolutionists" (in itself a title which tries to stress the "multiple opinion" viewpoint. Do we really refer to anyone as "geocentrists" anymore?)
Evolutionists != materialists.
Evolutionists are no less "guilty" (if one must use such a term) than Christians of holding to a raft of unchallenged presuppositions. As such, they are no less religionists than the most pious Puritan.
I'm sorry, its a wonderful accusation, but you haven't supplied me with even one example of "evolutionists" doing this sort of thing. Evolution is HARDLY an unchallenged presupposition, this whole article is ABOUT a challenge to it. Now if you mean scientific challenge to it, feel free to think one up.
This all strikes me as the tired old "it takes more faith to believe in evolution..." thing, attractively packaged. It takes NO faith to accept evolution as fact, because we have been around for many changes ourselves. How did HIV evolve into a human-inhabitable virus? If you claim that it didn't, then you admit that genetically humans and apes are extremely similar.
The question really is: Is it fair, in a science class, to refrain from teaching SCIENCE because it offends religionists?
Would any of you support rules to force sunday school teachers and ministers to mention that creationism is just a theory, and that there are many others which may be true?
Next time, try assuming that the Bible is true rather than false.
I just felt like pointing out that this thinking is exactly the opposite of the scientific method. In science, you assume your hypothesis is WRONG, and you think up as many ways as you can to prove that its wrong, which is exactly what experimentation is -- trying to find things that either break or demonstrate your hypothesis.
When you start out by assuming your hypothesis is correct and looking at the evidence that way, then you put yourself in great danger of making the evidence fit your model, rather than making your model fit the evidence. This is most clearly the case with christianity. Creationists are the only group I can think of that continually tries to assault evolution. They say that "competing viewpoints" should be respected as well. My question is, "What competing viewpoints?!". Scientifically speaking, creationism is bunk. Not one shred of evidence supports creationism (at least that I have seen), and not one practical theory of creationism has been put forth. The best that creationists can do is say "goddidit". Perhaps thats valid for a sunday school brainwashing session, but remember that evolution is being taught in science and biology classes, and saying "goddidit", regardless of its factuality (or lack thereof), is neither appropriate nor relevent to such a class.
To all you creationists out there: instead of spending your time trying to disprove a competing theory, make your own coherent one. If you can make a scientifically valid theory of creationism, that stands up as well as evolution, I will personally help you to get it taught in schools. To claim the current "creationism" is a scientific equal to evolution and therefor belongs in classrooms equally, however, is what I find positively laughable. (That is to say, it would be laughable if it wasn't happening in MY country, a place that already lags behind much of the world in science education, on the eve of the 21st century.)
Why should one assume the bible is true, anyway? Why not assume its false? If I assume that the theory of gravity is false, and attempt to set about demonstrating it, I'm still going to end up concluding that there is a force quantifiable as "gravity". Why is the bible a special case?
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Sending out paper junk mail and making the recipient pay for it? Yes, absolutely there is a law against that.
Please cite it for me. I don't think you're right.
Feel free to try it. If companies could get away with this, do you seriously think that they wouldn't do it?
I'm not your legal council, go ask them. Postage due junk mail is absolutely illegal.
So...you'd limit my choices to "don't run an ISP" or "run an ISP and pay for a T1s worth of spam"?
You could always run an ISP without providing email accounts.
Brilliant idea! I'm sure such a business would be a great success. Tell you what, it's so brilliant an idea, I'm going to let you have first crack at it. Try it and let me know how it goes!
How about "run an ISP and eliminate spam by making it illegal"? That's what we're talking about, I thought.
Oh yeah, making spam illegal is really going to eliminate it. I doubt it.
Regardless of where the mail servers are, regardless of where the spam originates, there has to be some way to get their money from you to them. If those connected in that process were liable to be sued, get jail time, or better yet BOTH, do you really think they would risk it? Perhaps a few would...at first.
In any case, just because it's convenient for you to get the FBI to police your ISP instead of policing it yourself, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with it.
So now it's my ISP, when it comes to responsibility? You seem confused on this point later, when it comes to rights.
They [your upstream provider] don't have any more control over it [spam] than I do.
Sure they do. It's their downstream providers that are providing a large portion of the spam, and it's their peers that are providing the rest. Your upstream provider has terms of service agreements which all of these entities.
You're good at offering the useless option, but your logic is bunk. "They could always nullify their peering agreements." Right. Then they'd go out of business, just like I'd go out of business if I decided to stop offering e-mail as a service. Incidentally, I am picky about who I choose to use for connectivity, and all of my upstreams are reputable companies with well funded abuse departments and good SPEWS records.
Using your logic, the big picture is: either accept spam, or everyone who doesn't like it should leave. Following this through to its logical conclusion, the internet would be a bunch of spammers' networks and nothing else. Positively brilliant solution there, chum. The companies who the Department of Commerce say are losing $10billion a year to spam ought to love that solution -- just don't use the internet!
When someone DoSes me, I don't complain to my upstream, I contact the ISP of the person doing it.
When someone DoSes me, I contact my upstream provider, to have them block that IP.
You have no interest in alerting the ISP to the offender? That seems inherently selfish and irresponsible, given the cooperative nature of the internet. If one of my users was attacking you, I would hope you'd have the good sense to alert me to this fact so I could take action.
Of course, you are completely missing this aspect of the internet -- it is a collaborative, cooperative entity. The more that we all do our part, the better it is as a whole. Spammers are the folks that are pissing in the communal pool, taking advantage of the cooperation to do their dirty business without any regard for their fellow netizens (especially the ones who have to pay the bills for all their traffic). I can't believe that anyone can't understand how wrong that is, but of course, there's always someone willing to make a quick buck if the only thing they have to do for it is hurt someone else.
That's exactly why we have laws. It's time to get a new one. I'm no fan o
Spamming is equivalent to sending out paper junk mail, postage due.
Is there a law against that?
Sending out paper junk mail and making the recipient pay for it? Yes, absolutely there is a law against that.
Tell me, why on earth should we as a business pay for a pipe that's used to send our customers advertisements that they didn't ask for and universally don't want?!?
Umm, why do you do it? No one is forcing you to.
So...you'd limit my choices to "don't run an ISP" or "run an ISP and pay for a T1s worth of spam"? That's a false dichotomy. How about "run an ISP and eliminate spam by making it illegal"? That's what we're talking about, I thought.
We aren't being compensated, or given a choice.
Of course you have a choice. Just like you have a choice whether or not watch a television show which has commercials, or buy a newspaper which has advertisements. Your upstream ISP is entering into a voluntary contractual arrangement to provide you with a certain service which includes sending you spam. If you want to be compensated for the spam being sent through your system, you need to talk to your upstream ISP about that.
They don't have any more control over it than I do. There exist no reliable technical solutions for filtering out "only spam". I don't see the sense in holding my upstream responsible for that unwanted traffic, instead of the sender, anyway. When someone DoSes me, I don't complain to my upstream, I contact the ISP of the person doing it.
Spam is not a technical, nor a market, problem.
It's most certainly a market problem. The ISPs choose not to enforce their terms of service, and the upstream ISPs let them get away with it.
That's only the current methodology, not the actual problem. We're already starting to see increasing use of trojan proxies to send out spam. You have a real problem with attacking the middleman anyway, if there's a guy outside of my house with a bullhorn telling me to buy his penis enlargement formula, I don't complain to my landlord about not having built a soundproof house, nor do I try to build soundproof walls into the house myself. I call the freakin cops.
Witness the recent (and overwhelmingly celebrated) telemarketing restrictions. The only people upset over this are the telemarketers.
I personally disagree with it, but if an anti-spam law were made similar to it (a national do-not-email list) I'd support it as the lesser of many evils. At least my first amendment right to receive spam is not being infringed.
Your first amendment right to receive spam? You must be a spammer. Here's the problem with your "first amendment right to receive spam": it doesn't exist. My mail server is my property, not my customers', and certainly not some bozo spammer's. Besides, even if there was a stringent anti-spam law, if you opted in to receive such e-mail, you could. The burden of making the choice should fall on the minority in that case, not the majority (and certainly not in the way the DMA would like, opting out of each individual companies lists one by one, while the dedicated spammers just set about making new companies every other day).
You say you want to receive spam? That's why I say you must be a spammer...as I said, I run an ISP, and not a small one at that. I hear what our customers think of spam, and not a one of them complains that we filter it. In fact, we offer the users a choice -- they can log in via our web interface and customize their own spam filter settings, tuning them or even turning them off. Just now, I logged into our SQL preferences database and checked: out of our thousands of customers, exactly 0 have turned off spam filtering.
But, at any rate, if you value spam so highly, why is it that you disguise your e-mail address on slashdot? If you supply it to me privately, I will be happy to forward you all of it you've ever wanted.
People complain about government intruding in our lives, restricting what we do, not protecting our rights when the RIAA attacks, but that all goes away the minute the same stuff happens to people you don't like.
Trying to link an anti-spam law, which there seems to be an overwhelming demand from the populace for with attacks on our freedoms is patently absurd. Commercial speech does not carry the same weight as political speech, nor should it. Spamming is equivalent to sending out paper junk mail, postage due. This deserves to be restricted.
I run a mail server for a medium sized ISP that's been in business since before 1997. The amount of spam we receive is absolutely rediculous, on the order of 15 gigabytes a day. Tell me, why on earth should we as a business pay for a pipe that's used to send our customers advertisements that they didn't ask for and universally don't want?!? We aren't being compensated, or given a choice. This is, plain and simple, an abuse of the system. There ought to be a law specifically targetting spam just as there are already laws targetting other types of abuse of a service.
Spam is a problem that should be taken care of by the free market, not government. Just because it's easier to pass a law than deal with the actual issues doesn't mean that's the better choice.
Spam is not a technical, nor a market, problem. And at any rate, we regulate the "free market" all the time! Witness the recent (and overwhelmingly celebrated) telemarketing restrictions. The only people upset over this are the telemarketers.
The only absolutely effective technical solutions to prevent individuals from sending you unsolicited commercial e-mail is to prevent them from sending you unsolicited e-mail, as there is no reliable technical method to determine what is 'commercial'. Does anyone really want an e-mail system where you cannot send someone a message without their permission? That seems a much higher cost to pay in terms of restricting what individuals do than a law specifically targetting unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Congress, give me a break, a break from the penis enlargement, the herbal viagra, and the fat xxx teen sluts.
Heck, call your local news program if you want.
It sure is a great thing that our media organizations are forced to be small and independent so that they don't fall victim to pressure from corporate parents with conflicts of interest!
Errr...
That said, I agree with the sentiment you're expressing, I do however lack your faith in our representatives' willingness to listen to their constituents who don't make large campaign contributions. I can't (donate|bribe) as heavily as Wal-Mart, why should my word count as much?
Still, its better than doing nothing, or sitting around on slashdot and letting the RFID champions prepare their plans in advance to label as tin-foil hat wearing kooks anyone who suggests there are negative privacy implications to what they're trying to sell.
We as consumers probably would have the best luck getting congress to require a RFID tag to be clearly marked or in some way removable, like most bar codes are now.
Riiiight. Just like, ya know, all those other sensible, consumer-centric laws Congress passes daily. Just look at how effectively they dealt with spam, and file sharing, and CSS*...
Sorry to have to be the one to point this out to you, but in Congress, when its consumers versus corporate will, the lobbying bastards will win. This will continue until the populace wisens up enough so that campaign money matters less than the actual actions of the officials.
* That's as in DVDs/DMCA, not as in style sheets or cross site scripting.
You don't know the first thing about antennas and you tell me to "think before posting". "Think before posting" has nothing to do with my arguments. I wasn't even arguing something, just stating a fact.
No, you were stating incorrect factual information. Though not a matter of opinion, it was also not true.
You seem to believe you can "think" up facts. You can't. Your super mini coil antenna doesn't exist.
Since you seem unable to comprehend the written word, perhaps a picture will be better:
Figure 1:
--------------------
Figure 2:
| |~| |~| |~|
|_| |_| |_| |
Notice that, though both contain the same number of characters, one is signifigantly shorter than the other? Are you actually saying that figure 2 does not exist as an antenna?
You may refer to the May 2003 issue of Wired for a more in depth article on the development of motes, but they will not have half-inch long antennae dangling from them -- that would be stupid.
My point is the same: The ability to track an RFID signal is being pitched as an impossibility, something that cannot happen, in the garbs of scientific fact. In reality, we have only the promises of others, lack of current (known) motivation, and insufficiently deployed technology to constrain it.
Antennas can be a lot of shapes, but that doesn't make them smaller.
So, a coiled antenna isn't smaller than a straight one? Odd.
I'm not going to argue with you. It's clear you don't know anything about antennas and would rather insult me than learn anything.
I needn't know the first thing about antennas to know that if the Army is pursuing 1/32" size RF-talking motes, that it is withing the realm of physical possibility for something 1/32" to transmit and receive RF. Read the link I posted.
I don't mean to insult you, I mean to insult your argument, as it is wrong, and wrong arguments deserve ridicule.
Actually there are "Physics based limitations" to these devices. They're RF devices and as such have to deal with the limitations of radio wavelengths. The amount of data they hold isn't the issue - the amount of RF energy going back and forth is.
There are physics based limitations, but not of a few inches. Sorry, that's bogus. Again, all you need to read one of these from further away is: a) a targetted transmitter; and b) a sensitive receiver.
[Snip haughty-lingo nonsense that you contradict directly below]
As for the NSA - yes, they have some very fancy systems for reading tiny signals at range. (as do the FCC, the military, and quite a few skilled amatures) They are highly directional and if they're not pointed in the right direction, they get nothing. You could read the rfid chip 400 feet in front of you, and completely MISS it's cousin 12 degrees to the left.
So after all the BS, you finally admit what I theorized to begin with -- it is possible to read these things at a great distance. Thank you. I rest my case.
I just noticed that this wasn't the original poster, just someone reposting the reply from SecurityFocus by Unisys Security Director Stefan Sokolowski.
I withdraw my previous confusion as to why the person was being intentionally deceptive. It is now obvious.
Everyone freaks out about RFIDs, but I remain in the camp that these could be really cool, as long as consumers (ok, geeks) figure out how to control them
What major technological innovation ever is that not true of? From fire to the machine gun to radio broadcasting, in the hands of geeks these would be great things.
Now, of the latest technologies of the past, lets say 100 years, how many can you argue are MORE in control of the geek or consumer than the government and large corporations? Have you turned on your car radio lately? Looked around the internet?
Cool empowering technology just doesn't end up the hands of Joe Blow. We must factor that into any evaluation.
They tags may someday be that small (doubt it), but they will always need an antenna. Currently 1/2" is about the smallest realistic antenna.
Nothing says the antenna has to be straight, though.
Think before you post, people. If radio transmitting devices smaller than half an inch were impossible, why would the military be investing very heavily in stuff like this?!?
As a real security professional (i.e. one that does not go around screaming that the sky is falling) and as someone who has worked with RFID for the military and for civilian uses (mainly Post Offices) for over six years, I find your article makes a number of glaring omissions that would allow any sensible human being to make a rational judgement about this technology.
You are a black pot, and to top it all off the kettle is orange.
Omissions: 1) Range verses size. Very basic issue. The smaller it is, the closer you have to be to it to pick up the signal. For a small passive tag we are talking inches (3-4 feet max). In order to track something from 200 yards (maximum range currently in use), you need an active tag (i.e. with a battery) and it has to be the size of a beer mat. I think you would notice it in your jeans. The signal generator in this case is also a non-trivial device. It is the size on a lamp-post and weights in excuss of 30Kg. Hardly PDA attachment material.
If your experience is as you claim it, I can only conclude that you are intentionally lying. There is no inherent, physics based limitation of "a few feet" to how far these tags can be read: to read the tags from further away, all one needs is a better receiver. Your statement assumes that a newer, better receiver will never be invented or brought to market. Doesn't the NSA do quite a bit of work already on picking up radio signals at a distance?!?
2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.
A KILOBYTE? Tell me, chum, how long is an IP address? A MAC Address? An IPv6 address? A 1 Kilobyte serial number is pretty damn big.
3)The logic associated with the tyre scenario. The association of the vehicle number and the tyre would not be stored on the tag. There is no space, and Read/Write tags are much more expensive (and larger). Easy to overwrite also. So for your big brother is watching scenario, you would need to replace every lamp-post on every highway with a signal generator, have assess to the database that cross-references your vehicle ID with the tag ids, and be able to monitor all of the signal generators in real-time to see what was happening.
OK...so...what's the problem? You don't think Big Brother has mastered the fine art of the database? Or a simple message passing network? It's not even as expensive as all that, as you wouldn't really need one for each lamp post, just one for each 'path'. One at the freeway entrance, one at each exit and the same for residential blocks - one at each end. Maybe, on freeways, a few here and there at mile markers and such.
It really seems intentional that you're overlooking the obvious -- that's not a typical trait of a "security professional".
From the NYT article:
Nullsoft's latest creation was a file-sharing program that allowed users to set up secure networks of no more than 50 people.
WASTE was pretty obviously not a filesharing program. It was a small group collaboration program, that allowed encrypted chat and transfers. Its use as a file-sharing mechanism in the way that your average NYTimes reader would interpret that term is extremely limited to non existent. It's a "file sharing program" in the same way that AOL Instant Messenger is. Does the NYT refer to AIM that way?
Then again, maybe I'm the silly one for expecting accuracy, nay, competence, in reporting in the major media outlets.
Zen is not about intelligence, it is the art of turning off intelligence.
...but seriously folks.
Thus proving that the most successful Zen denomination so far is Christianity.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I, for one, remember sitting at my computer, so young that I wasn't really cognizant of the commands I was giving the computer. To 7-year-old-me on an Atari computer, I was speaking a magic spell, albeit with my fingers.
Is it any wonder that we're mystical as a group? We speak in arcane languages, and through our words and thoughts, actions are performed. Whether they be parlor tricks, or real power, we can still do something, merely by speaking, that 98% of humanity (or whatever) cannot, and honestly probably about 80% even if they devoted their lives to it. Why aren't we wizards, again?
"From a user's stand point Linux is now no more difficult to get around in than windows" Oh please! You can't be serious. Talking about FUD. You should spend some time with real users, the type that does not even know how to handle a mouse.
...and if my employees are going to find any games to play on the install, I'd rather it be nethack than Solitaire.
From the implied strawman that linux users in business are just going to be handed a Slackware 7 CD and be told "go to it", sure. This isn't the case with windows in that market. All computers need initial set-up, and if your linux (or windows) sysadmin isn't smart enough to make a template user system and clone it at setup, then you hired the wrong guy.
I challenge anyone to provide evidence that Windows 2K is any more user friendly for what Joe End User needs, which is e-mail and web browsing, and in some cases perhaps one specific other application, than is a cluefully set up Gnome/KDE environment. (No, I don't think they're equivalent either, but I want to avoid making coals for people to walk on -ed)
-- -mrex
...and yet you do nothing to investigate this perception.
/. giving JP another forum in which to convince the gullible that his mightily-spun version of everything is true?" This is not going to be an informative interview in the normal sense of the term. For those who already know JP, it will be nothing but another among many exhibitions of his spin-doctor skills. For those who don't know him, some may actually be decieved.
OK, well take it from someone who has then. JP, and his friend Carolyn, are the definition of shady. They are shameless self promoters, public image spin doctors, and can only be trusted to do what is best for themselves.
The first thing I asked when I read this was "Why on earth is
Why is he seeking this much publicity? Probably because his site is going down the tubes. Updates are anything but regular, the information available is the same stuff you can get anywhere (and in many cases, it's exactly the same information), and his investors may be getting a little antsy at all the hatred he's attracted in the community that he's claimed to be such a part of.
Anyway, if this is going to be a real interview, I'll play Mike Wallace and ask the tough questions:
John, how do you respond to the allegations made and supported by pretty convincing evidence that you've violated the copyright of numerous web news organizations by copy-pasting nearly (or in some cases, fully) verbatim, especially the cases of Discovery On-line, Hacker News Network, and Attrition?
There are also many compelling ones for it.
You know what I've just about had enough of? The above. I see this all the time on IRC channels, usenet, and web pages when dealing with this stuff. The short end is this: "evolutionist" (seems a bit silly, like saying "gravityist") brings up mounds of evidence to support the theory of evolution. Creationist blows it all off by saying "Yes, those are all very compelling evidences. But creationism has just as many". Predictably, however, they never seem to cite any. And when asked, they'll proudly shout off several (usually silly) debunkings of evolution, hoping that nobody notices they didn't answer the question.
I've never seen any creationist actually list "evidence" for judeo-christian creationism. Would you be so kind?
I-thought-they-were-called-macintosh dept.
Hrm...this is really asking to provoke a platform war. I thought we were trying to DIScourage this kind of thing.
Tsk tsk Rob.
(I'm [among other OSes] a mac user, and I thought it was mildly amusing, but were it a comment someone made, I would have moderated it down for being flamebait)
Atheist - One who without a doubt believes that a god does not exist.
Agnostic - One who does not believe there is conclusive evidence either way.
Hate to be pedantic, but this is actually a source of considerable confusion. An atheist is a person who _lacks a belief_ in god, not neccesarily a person who _believes in lack_ of god, although some people do fall into the later category.
I am an atheist, and my view is not that I firmly believe god doesn't exist, but that there is no evidence that god DOES exist, and that anything lacking evidence for existance is presumed not to exist. For example, invisible pink unicorns. Are we bothered by saying "well, they could exist, although I have no evidence to support that"? No, we usually just settle for "no, invisible pink unicorns do not exist".
Er being Nazi's does not stop them hating everyone else (despite the loving picture of Nazi's you may have in your mind). They more or less worshipped Hitler, that makes them Nazi's in my book.
NAZI's (Its an acronym, it should be capitalized) believed in a pure race, and hated all others. These kids hated everyone, including what the NAZIs would have considered the "perfect" race. I suspect they liked the NAZI image, the brutality, but they clearly did not have similar views, nor should they be called NAZIs by anyone who cares about being historically accurate. NAZIs didn't hate everyone equally, these kids did.
They were disturbed individuals who expressed their rage in a horrible, heinous way. They overreacted, yes, but its foolish to pretend that they weren't overreacting to a real problem. Why did they hate everyone? We come right back to Jon Katz's Tales from the Hellmouth.
I think the worst thing about this whole incident is what it has exposed in american culture.
Politicians don't REALLY care about why kids shoot other kids, they care about what will get them more brownie points with the sheep-public.
Schools don't REALLY care about stopping the problem that CAUSES this, they want to get bigger budgets, so they turn schools into prisons rather than places of learning. If they fixed the real problem, they would have to admin partial fault for overlooking the bullying done by the "cool" cliques.
The popular media doesn't care about what REALLY happened, they want what will get them better ratings with Soccer Mom. Soccer Mom doesn't want to think that her kid may be driving someone else to the very same acts every day at school. Soccer Mom wants to hear that any kid that does this is an evil racist NAZI psycho from hell.
Church doesn't care about fixing the REAL problem, they would rather turn any situation into a chance to convert as many people as they can, and wag their pseudomoralistic fingers at the rest while whispering "I told you so" under their breath.
Everyone cares about their own agenda. Nobody cares about finding the truth about anything, because truth can be inconvenient, so every problem becomes a platform for every group who wants you to come over to their side.
Thats the world we live in. People only pretend to care as long as it gets them what they want. Depressing, isn't it?
Expect within 10-15 years you will look back on the '90s as the golden years before the big evil governments woke up and took back control. Not only do we have to fight this at the law making level, we also have to create bigger and better protocols and workarounds to make it impossible for tier 1 & 2 providers to filter content.
Now, I know this has been tossed around a bit, but wouldn't the best solution to removing the backbones' ability to filter be end-to-end (strong) encryption using secure protocols for every service? As ssh has shown us, encrypted traffic doesn't need to be that much slower.
I'm surprised nobody is working on a secure service suite. I would, but I lack the programming talent to do anything other than write obfuscated perl, but a lot of groups (l0pht, etc.) surprise me by not doing anything of this sort.
Ideally, this encrypted IP network would:
1) help preserve anonymity
2) increase security
3) foil censorship on the network level
4) take pressure off the NAPs, by giving them the excuse "Hey, its all encrypted, there is NO way we can know whats going across our network, therefor we cannot be held responsible"
Seems like encrypted IP would provide us with solutions to a lot of problems. Why isn't there a bigger push for this tech?
Didn't Antionline (John Vranesevich) behave in a very unpleasant manner recently (PacketStorm -- Harvard)? I thought that he was relegated to the "don't touch with a 10-foot pole" category.
Yes, he did, and yes, he pretty much is in that category, as is his friend Carolyn Meinel.
The whole reason they host this stuff is so they get to see the attacks people use. You think they're just putting this box on the net with nothing between it and the pipe? Hah. They're packet sniffing, monitoring everything.
Why?
Well, so that in the off chance someone either writes his own exploit or gets ahold of a non-public one, and that person is stupid or naive enough to use it on them, they get to break the news, and claim the glory for it and use it themselves. Or better yet, have Carolyn write a book about it or turn the guy in to the FBI (which jaypee has said he will do and already has done, in fact, he's got an entire section of his website that is accessable only to law enforcement).
They (antionline) been doing a "contest" like this already, called happy hacker, for a while now. Its a scam, just like this is. The only thing you do by breaking into their machine is to give carolyn and jaypee knowledge that they didn't earn, and can't be trusted to use wisely.
I can't help feeling that the linuxppc folks got scammed. They probably didn't know who they were really dealing with.
Antionline, and the people who run it, are not to be trusted, folks. Jaypee has just enough of a clue to be dangerous, and carolyn, well, everything that one can say about her already has been said better than I can. Check out attrition.org's negation site for a few examples.
So? While I won't dispute that the scientific method has proven to be very useful in many areas, it's a long way from perfect and it's a long way from useful in every sphere. I've never claimed that the truthfulness of the Bible is or should be subject to verification via the scientific method.
Okay, one question then. Can you name me something OTHER than religion that isn't subject to verification or corroboration by the scientific method?
It's not as if evolutionists haven't done the same thing, either. They have always assumed a materialist view of the world, even though such a model cannot explain consciousness.
"Evolutionists" (in itself a title which tries to stress the "multiple opinion" viewpoint. Do we really refer to anyone as "geocentrists" anymore?)
Evolutionists != materialists.
Evolutionists are no less "guilty" (if one must use such a term) than Christians of holding to a raft of unchallenged presuppositions. As such, they are no less religionists than the most pious Puritan.
I'm sorry, its a wonderful accusation, but you haven't supplied me with even one example of "evolutionists" doing this sort of thing. Evolution is HARDLY an unchallenged presupposition, this whole article is ABOUT a challenge to it. Now if you mean scientific challenge to it, feel free to think one up.
This all strikes me as the tired old "it takes more faith to believe in evolution..." thing, attractively packaged. It takes NO faith to accept evolution as fact, because we have been around for many changes ourselves. How did HIV evolve into a human-inhabitable virus? If you claim that it didn't, then you admit that genetically humans and apes are extremely similar.
The question really is: Is it fair, in a science class, to refrain from teaching SCIENCE because it offends religionists?
Would any of you support rules to force sunday school teachers and ministers to mention that creationism is just a theory, and that there are many others which may be true?
Next time, try assuming that the Bible is true rather than false.
I just felt like pointing out that this thinking is exactly the opposite of the scientific method. In science, you assume your hypothesis is WRONG, and you think up as many ways as you can to prove that its wrong, which is exactly what experimentation is -- trying to find things that either break or demonstrate your hypothesis.
When you start out by assuming your hypothesis is correct and looking at the evidence that way, then you put yourself in great danger of making the evidence fit your model, rather than making your model fit the evidence. This is most clearly the case with christianity. Creationists are the only group I can think of that continually tries to assault evolution. They say that "competing viewpoints" should be respected as well. My question is, "What competing viewpoints?!". Scientifically speaking, creationism is bunk. Not one shred of evidence supports creationism (at least that I have seen), and not one practical theory of creationism has been put forth. The best that creationists can do is say "goddidit". Perhaps thats valid for a sunday school brainwashing session, but remember that evolution is being taught in science and biology classes, and saying "goddidit", regardless of its factuality (or lack thereof), is neither appropriate nor relevent to such a class.
To all you creationists out there: instead of spending your time trying to disprove a competing theory, make your own coherent one. If you can make a scientifically valid theory of creationism, that stands up as well as evolution, I will personally help you to get it taught in schools. To claim the current "creationism" is a scientific equal to evolution and therefor belongs in classrooms equally, however, is what I find positively laughable. (That is to say, it would be laughable if it wasn't happening in MY country, a place that already lags behind much of the world in science education, on the eve of the 21st century.)
Why should one assume the bible is true, anyway? Why not assume its false? If I assume that the theory of gravity is false, and attempt to set about demonstrating it, I'm still going to end up concluding that there is a force quantifiable as "gravity". Why is the bible a special case?