Technically, the EU Data Retention Directive requires retention of comms data pertaining to 'Internet E-mail' - it doesn't make a distinction between SMTP/POP3 e-mail and web-based e-mail.
If an ISP is running a mail system for its customers, then it should have comms data from use of its own mail system. For webmail, it should be the organisation running the webmail system which retains this data & provides it to the police on request - as the ISP obviously knows nothing about this without digging into all the traffic its customers pass over the network. Of course, many webmail systems are outside the jurisdiction of the EU - which causes a bit of a problem!
Whether this is a good thing or bad thing is an interesting debate & I think less obvious than the case made by privacy advocates tends to state. The police have relied on such comms data from telephone systems for decades to help catch the bad guys...
However, there were reports that the German law enforcement agencies had contracted a company to produce a method of monitoring Skype conversations, which consisted of software to be installed on the target's computer which would intercept the voice traffic before Skype encrypted it.
It also tends to be peer-to-peer, though sometimes running through a 'super-node' & I've seen a conversation happen with traffic going one-way through one super-node & the return traffic coming back through a different super-node. This presents some basic challenges in terms of exactly where you stick your wire-tap & how you correlate both channels of the conversation!
I got a Spectrum when they first appeared (aged about 13). I found it was a great machine to learn about computing - you had a Sinclair Basic interpreter as the main interface & Z80 assembler underneath. I spent many happy hours coding & hacking games on it. It & its predecessor, the ZX81, were what got me hooked on IT & software development. One of the great things was full manual it came with & fairly straightforward books you could buy detailing the full ROM disassembly!
I wonder whether those at that age now find it as easy to learn as much about the basics of computing? How hard is it to understand the fundamentals of how the machine really works, when most teenagers probably have a PC & Windows OS to play with?
I may be missing something here, but as I understand it the windows registry is just a repository for configuration information. The real problem lies in the system config settings that are exposed in the registry eg. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run & the general lack of access control to update such keys.
On a unix box a virus could achieve similar effects by writing itself into the/etc/init.d directory - except of course the default permissions mean you normally need root access to do that, making unix a little more secure by default. Otherwise, the/etc directory performs a pretty similar function to the windows registry.
I've been working on a tool for a while which may be of interest in this discussion. The site is at www.forcomment.com.
The concept is that a single user tends to create a document (or part of one) and usually then e-mails it out to others for comment. I allow the user to upload the document to our site, convert it from native format to HTML (where needed), invite those required to comment, and allow discussions to happen at the sentence level in the document. It should also work from all browsers. It is being used successfully by several UK universities now for Europe-wide projects.
I've come across other ways of doing this before, but they all seem to be embedded into proprietary document formats or editors, so requiring that all parties collaborating have the same editing software.
Rather than: What implications does this have and how will the ramifications impact how businesses view and utilize the web?
The question should be: What implications does this have for how web users view greedy businesses who are out to make a fast buck without any consideration for the bigger picture & long-term effects on the environment in which they operate? (eg. new.net)
And that question generalises somewhat beyond this particular context.
This is exactly what I did with my current employer. They were a bit unsure when I disclosed my existing business, which I'd been running in my spare time for several years, but agreed to a rider on the employment contract acknowledging its existance & IP.
A year later and there have been no problems at all so far.
I used to work for a software company that did this sort of thing. While you can't predict exactly what an individual is going to do from an equation, it always amazed me just how good a hit-rate you can get when you test against a larger group.
The mathematics behind it is actually fairly straightforward & there's a lot you can do to bias the results so the most commonly listened to tracks don't always appear at the top of the list of recommendations.
The harder part is analysing the data-set & computing the recommendations in a reasonable time frame. Particularly since the quality tends to increase with larger & richer data-sets.
I studied as an undergrad 10ish years ago in DAMTP (Dept of Applied Maths & Theoretical Physics) at Cambridge. Stephen was often seen trundling around in his wheelchair. He was lethal in it (& probably still is) - you had to get out of the way quick or you got run-over!!
From going to one or two of his lectures, the one question that always got asked at the end is whether he believes in God. His answers were usually rather ambiguous, but the impression he gave was probably not. After reading this article, it looks like nothings changed. It is obviously a question he has thought about deeply, and whether his works allows us to see into the mind of God (if such a being exists).
He is, without doubt, a brilliant man and has achieved an unbelieveable level of fame for a mathematician. However, most of that fame seems to derive from a book that a lot of people bought but few actually read, his physical condition, and that he works in a trendy area of mathematics. I think this sometimes obscures the real quality of his academic work.
I've got exactly the same situation going on with my e-mail host name right now. I get approximately 200 bounced e-mails coming to me per day. I tracked the ISP down to the Philippines, & no response so far from several e-mails.
Is there any way of stopping them? The only thing I can thing of is a direct attack on some of their systems, but that probably just reduces me to their level.
If you've done something a thousand times, then you'll probably just re-use the one you built last time, so development time is negligible. I suspect virtually every project undertaken is new to the team attempting it, hence the estimation problem.
Crypto is a tool, the crimes are committed by the people who use the tool - not by those who create the tool.
In the case of the Bomb, those responsible for the destruction caused by it are those that order it dropped - not the scientists that invented it.
If the US clamps down on encryption, there are several possible results:
1. It's already out there - assuming the current stuff can't be cracked easily for a while there will be no effect until it can.
2. It will stimulate development of crypto technology in the rest of the world. A unilateral crippling of crypto in the US will just cripple crypto in the US - not the world.
3. If crypto does become crippled worldwide, criminals will just revert to older methods of passing messages confidentially - using couriers, etc.
I worked on some open source crypto software some time ago & distributed it freely. Most of the people that requested a copy from me & used it were in places like Russia or South America where free speech doesn't have the same kind of protection it has in the Western world. I found this showed that there are good solid requirements for strong crypto in the world & we shouldn't allow the use of it by terrorists to diminish that.
This would be an excellent opportunity for non-US software companies to develop and export real crypto products without backdoors. There was a good market in this stuff a few years ago when the US had more restrictive export controls.
Obviously any terrorist organisation would then use the international versions of such software rather than the US version!
It seems to me that underlying Mundie's argument is the assumption that the only reason to produce software is to make money. Therefore, because Open Source software doesn't generate much profit, it is a bad thing.
So we're down to arguing over a basic political philosophy - is pure Capitalism (as practised by Microsoft) really a good thing?
Personally, I don't always think it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, the EU Data Retention Directive requires retention of comms data pertaining to 'Internet E-mail' - it doesn't make a distinction between SMTP/POP3 e-mail and web-based e-mail.
If an ISP is running a mail system for its customers, then it should have comms data from use of its own mail system. For webmail, it should be the organisation running the webmail system which retains this data & provides it to the police on request - as the ISP obviously knows nothing about this without digging into all the traffic its customers pass over the network. Of course, many webmail systems are outside the jurisdiction of the EU - which causes a bit of a problem!
Whether this is a good thing or bad thing is an interesting debate & I think less obvious than the case made by privacy advocates tends to state. The police have relied on such comms data from telephone systems for decades to help catch the bad guys ...
However, there were reports that the German law enforcement agencies had contracted a company to produce a method of monitoring Skype conversations, which consisted of software to be installed on the target's computer which would intercept the voice traffic before Skype encrypted it.
It also tends to be peer-to-peer, though sometimes running through a 'super-node' & I've seen a conversation happen with traffic going one-way through one super-node & the return traffic coming back through a different super-node. This presents some basic challenges in terms of exactly where you stick your wire-tap & how you correlate both channels of the conversation!
I got a Spectrum when they first appeared (aged about 13). I found it was a great machine to learn about computing - you had a Sinclair Basic interpreter as the main interface & Z80 assembler underneath. I spent many happy hours coding & hacking games on it. It & its predecessor, the ZX81, were what got me hooked on IT & software development. One of the great things was full manual it came with & fairly straightforward books you could buy detailing the full ROM disassembly!
I wonder whether those at that age now find it as easy to learn as much about the basics of computing? How hard is it to understand the fundamentals of how the machine really works, when most teenagers probably have a PC & Windows OS to play with?
I may be missing something here, but as I understand it the windows registry is just a repository for configuration information. The real problem lies in the system config settings that are exposed in the registry eg. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run & the general lack of access control to update such keys.
/etc/init.d directory - except of course the default permissions mean you normally need root access to do that, making unix a little more secure by default. Otherwise, the /etc directory performs a pretty similar function to the windows registry.
On a unix box a virus could achieve similar effects by writing itself into the
I've been working on a tool for a while which may be of interest in this discussion. The site is at www.forcomment.com.
The concept is that a single user tends to create a document (or part of one) and usually then e-mails it out to others for comment. I allow the user to upload the document to our site, convert it from native format to HTML (where needed), invite those required to comment, and allow discussions to happen at the sentence level in the document. It should also work from all browsers. It is being used successfully by several UK universities now for Europe-wide projects.
I've come across other ways of doing this before, but they all seem to be embedded into proprietary document formats or editors, so requiring that all parties collaborating have the same editing software.
Rather than: What implications does this have and how will the ramifications impact how businesses view and utilize the web?
The question should be: What implications does this have for how web users view greedy businesses who are out to make a fast buck without any consideration for the bigger picture & long-term effects on the environment in which they operate? (eg. new.net)
And that question generalises somewhat beyond this particular context.
This is exactly what I did with my current employer. They were a bit unsure when I disclosed my existing business, which I'd been running in my spare time for several years, but agreed to a rider on the employment contract acknowledging its existance & IP.
A year later and there have been no problems at all so far.
I used to work for a software company that did this sort of thing. While you can't predict exactly what an individual is going to do from an equation, it always amazed me just how good a hit-rate you can get when you test against a larger group.
The mathematics behind it is actually fairly straightforward & there's a lot you can do to bias the results so the most commonly listened to tracks don't always appear at the top of the list of recommendations.
The harder part is analysing the data-set & computing the recommendations in a reasonable time frame. Particularly since the quality tends to increase with larger & richer data-sets.
I studied as an undergrad 10ish years ago in DAMTP (Dept of Applied Maths & Theoretical Physics) at Cambridge. Stephen was often seen trundling around in his wheelchair. He was lethal in it (& probably still is) - you had to get out of the way quick or you got run-over!!
From going to one or two of his lectures, the one question that always got asked at the end is whether he believes in God. His answers were usually rather ambiguous, but the impression he gave was probably not. After reading this article, it looks like nothings changed. It is obviously a question he has thought about deeply, and whether his works allows us to see into the mind of God (if such a being exists).
He is, without doubt, a brilliant man and has achieved an unbelieveable level of fame for a mathematician. However, most of that fame seems to derive from a book that a lot of people bought but few actually read, his physical condition, and that he works in a trendy area of mathematics. I think this sometimes obscures the real quality of his academic work.
Is there any way of stopping them? The only thing I can thing of is a direct attack on some of their systems, but that probably just reduces me to their level.
If you've done something a thousand times, then you'll probably just re-use the one you built last time, so development time is negligible. I suspect virtually every project undertaken is new to the team attempting it, hence the estimation problem.
Crypto is a tool, the crimes are committed by the people who use the tool - not by those who create the tool.
In the case of the Bomb, those responsible for the destruction caused by it are those that order it dropped - not the scientists that invented it.
If the US clamps down on encryption, there are several possible results:
1. It's already out there - assuming the current stuff can't be cracked easily for a while there will be no effect until it can.
2. It will stimulate development of crypto technology in the rest of the world. A unilateral crippling of crypto in the US will just cripple crypto in the US - not the world.
3. If crypto does become crippled worldwide, criminals will just revert to older methods of passing messages confidentially - using couriers, etc.
I worked on some open source crypto software some time ago & distributed it freely. Most of the people that requested a copy from me & used it were in places like Russia or South America where free speech doesn't have the same kind of protection it has in the Western world. I found this showed that there are good solid requirements for strong crypto in the world & we shouldn't allow the use of it by terrorists to diminish that.
This would be an excellent opportunity for non-US software companies to develop and export real crypto products without backdoors. There was a good market in this stuff a few years ago when the US had more restrictive export controls.
Obviously any terrorist organisation would then use the international versions of such software rather than the US version!
It seems to me that underlying Mundie's argument is the assumption that the only reason to produce software is to make money. Therefore, because Open Source software doesn't generate much profit, it is a bad thing. So we're down to arguing over a basic political philosophy - is pure Capitalism (as practised by Microsoft) really a good thing? Personally, I don't always think it is.