??? Linux runs great on Sun hardware. They have something few of Linux' foes have: a well-established product line which *benefits* from the availability of Linux. The hardware side of the house wins no matter what the customer loads. Solaris is just something Sun had to spend bazillions on in order to sell their unique hardware.
Why don't *you* write an emulator that can make an intelligible certificate signed by a private key you don't have. If you do, a lot of cryptologists will want to talk with you.
There's a bit of a difference, though, between "I'm some random 7-year-old" and "I'm some *specific*, *registered* 7-year-old and here's unique proof". "Jason Smith" could be anyone, but that number was issued to one person who can be questioned. False use of a personal token is not nearly as safe as just making up a name and history.
Not to mention that, if the same person uses two different names in different cases, now there is an arguably unique common thread (the personal certificate) which links them. Get busted for one, automatically get busted for all. At the very least, get thoroughly investigated for all.
It's even possible to set alarms to ring when a given cert. shows up in a chat, and traceroute the user back to his lair. The Feds call the Moose Lake PD and five minutes later the user is having a meeting with the Guys With Guns, who can spin the alert into probable cause to look around for any *other* relevant evidence.
Even if they do carry actual personal information, it could be birthdate instead of age. Then age = now - birthdate, forever.
What's really clever is that they're training the next generation to expect to have, and have demanded of them, personal cryptographic tokens. Which Verisign will make a mint selling to future generations ad infinitum. I don't object to the general idea so much as I dimly dislike that one company is doing this through the back door to lock up the whole market. [Cue discussion of the evils of single-sourcing.] Standards, anyone?
[Feds want to issue tokens for access to government services]
They should ask themselves. The DoD has been doing a decent job for some time.
[Some think National ID == Number of the Beast]
No no no, the Number of the Beast is always the same, while National ID numbers should all be unique. The NotB essentially *destroys* identity and makes the bearer an interchangeable unit of someone else's property. The two concepts are antithetical.
You're right that it won't happen soon due to this silly association, but I wanted to point out that that's not because people are thinking but because they are NOT thinking.
I mean to imply, in fact I will assert, that two or more humans cannot live in contact with one another for an extended period without forming a government. Every society has rules, and some of the rules are always about punishing and/or ejecting members who won't follow the rules.
I utterly reject the notion that government==force. Government is people working out norms of behavior and abiding by them.
You have the whole ownership thing backwards. WE own our GOVERNMENT. Sometimes the people we hire from among ourselves to embody our government's purposes need to be reminded of that, but that makes it no less true.
Human beings have proven through millennia that they are NOT capable of always making moral and rational decisions which will be universally accepted by their fellow human beings. That's why we have laws, and lawbreakers.
If I'd meant "all people" ("the people"), I would have said so. Some people are not getting what they wanted. "People are dying" does not mean that we are all dying; it means "there exists a nonempty class D of people such that all members of D are currently dying," which does not deny the existence of some other nonempty class L containing people who are not currently dying.
I honestly don't know what to do for people who don't want to be part of a society. I suppose we could all get together and set aside a place where all governments have agreed not to go or claim. I don't want to live there myself, though, as I expect it will turn out rather like Heinlein's "Coventry".
Time for another DNS blacklist? This one to maintain a list of domains which have registered falsified contact information, and provide a source of "negative hits" to those who wish to use it? We'd need some work on the domain resolvers to take advantage of it, of course.
"Keep the laws simple" is a good goal, but the problem is that people are complicated. Like some old book says, "they invent new ways of doing evil" and so law accumulates more and more specifics and corner cases as time marches on.
It's probably a good idea to do a thorough overhaul every generation or two, to see what can be generalized and resimplified.
I would submit that the U.S. learned how to be full of its own sense of importance from observation of many worthy predecessors in international politics. That doesn't make it right, of course, and I'll try to remember that whenever people around the world are asking, "why doesn't the U.S. do something about X?"
Anyway you see how much agreement there is *within* the U.S. on this issue, so that should give you some idea of just how long it would take international bodies, which typically love to talk about their authority but never assert it, to come to such an agreement.
I don't recall anonymity being mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. There's nothing about a right to petition for redress of grievances while wearing a false face. I am consistently amazed by citizens who demand the right to be heard but would rather die than be seen.
"If your payment to the registrar works, it works."
If, OTOH, your contact information doesn't work, having made a reasonable effort, the registrar should feel free to consider the registration abandoned and the fee forfeit, stop serving the associated RRs, and accept another registrant for that name as soon as one comes along.
The contact information is not for when your system is *having* trouble, it's for when it is *causing* trouble. And if nobody can reach you to demand that it be fixed, yanking the name mapping is the only other thing that can be done to protect the network.
A really big gun? A libertarian would believe that people should be able to own weapons for their protection and to use appropriate violence, if necessary, in defense of their lives, no?
OTOH if you try to sell me tractor parts, claiming to represent John Deere, when you are in fact John Doe and have no relationship with the company, that *is* the business of the government that I support for my protection.
I wonder what libertarians did in the premodern world, when it was impossible for anyone other than a hermit to establish anonymity, and even few hermits could achieve it.
Yes, that's part of my point: if it is warranted then it is not harassment. The contact has to be one which one is legally empowered to refuse. Otherwise, in the eyes of the law, (2) never takes place.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I *like* conservative, utilitarian gear.
??? Linux runs great on Sun hardware. They have something few of Linux' foes have: a well-established product line which *benefits* from the availability of Linux. The hardware side of the house wins no matter what the customer loads. Solaris is just something Sun had to spend bazillions on in order to sell their unique hardware.
Why don't *you* write an emulator that can make an intelligible certificate signed by a private key you don't have. If you do, a lot of cryptologists will want to talk with you.
There's a bit of a difference, though, between "I'm some random 7-year-old" and "I'm some *specific*, *registered* 7-year-old and here's unique proof". "Jason Smith" could be anyone, but that number was issued to one person who can be questioned. False use of a personal token is not nearly as safe as just making up a name and history.
Not to mention that, if the same person uses two different names in different cases, now there is an arguably unique common thread (the personal certificate) which links them. Get busted for one, automatically get busted for all. At the very least, get thoroughly investigated for all.
It's even possible to set alarms to ring when a given cert. shows up in a chat, and traceroute the user back to his lair. The Feds call the Moose Lake PD and five minutes later the user is having a meeting with the Guys With Guns, who can spin the alert into probable cause to look around for any *other* relevant evidence.
Even if they do carry actual personal information, it could be birthdate instead of age. Then age = now - birthdate, forever.
What's really clever is that they're training the next generation to expect to have, and have demanded of them, personal cryptographic tokens. Which Verisign will make a mint selling to future generations ad infinitum. I don't object to the general idea so much as I dimly dislike that one company is doing this through the back door to lock up the whole market. [Cue discussion of the evils of single-sourcing.] Standards, anyone?
[Feds want to issue tokens for access to government services]
They should ask themselves. The DoD has been doing a decent job for some time.
[Some think National ID == Number of the Beast]
No no no, the Number of the Beast is always the same, while National ID numbers should all be unique. The NotB essentially *destroys* identity and makes the bearer an interchangeable unit of someone else's property. The two concepts are antithetical.
You're right that it won't happen soon due to this silly association, but I wanted to point out that that's not because people are thinking but because they are NOT thinking.
...when accounting/auditing firms say it, it begins to become obvious to the suits. This is indeed good news.
I mean to imply, in fact I will assert, that two or more humans cannot live in contact with one another for an extended period without forming a government. Every society has rules, and some of the rules are always about punishing and/or ejecting members who won't follow the rules.
I utterly reject the notion that government==force. Government is people working out norms of behavior and abiding by them.
You have the whole ownership thing backwards. WE own our GOVERNMENT. Sometimes the people we hire from among ourselves to embody our government's purposes need to be reminded of that, but that makes it no less true.
Human beings have proven through millennia that they are NOT capable of always making moral and rational decisions which will be universally accepted by their fellow human beings. That's why we have laws, and lawbreakers.
Try making a society that has no rules. Just try.
If I'd meant "all people" ("the people"), I would have said so. Some people are not getting what they wanted. "People are dying" does not mean that we are all dying; it means "there exists a nonempty class D of people such that all members of D are currently dying," which does not deny the existence of some other nonempty class L containing people who are not currently dying.
I honestly don't know what to do for people who don't want to be part of a society. I suppose we could all get together and set aside a place where all governments have agreed not to go or claim. I don't want to live there myself, though, as I expect it will turn out rather like Heinlein's "Coventry".
"The point of privacy is to protect even those with nothing to hide."
Protect us from what?
Time for another DNS blacklist? This one to maintain a list of domains which have registered falsified contact information, and provide a source of "negative hits" to those who wish to use it? We'd need some work on the domain resolvers to take advantage of it, of course.
"Federalization" also comes from the grass roots. People are not getting what they wanted from their state legislatures so they turn to the Feds.
"In Britain, if you get banned for drink driving you are BANNED."
Wimps. Kids around here, when they reach driving age, get a nice little handout explaining that in some countries your first DUI gets you *executed*.
"Keep the laws simple" is a good goal, but the problem is that people are complicated. Like some old book says, "they invent new ways of doing evil" and so law accumulates more and more specifics and corner cases as time marches on.
It's probably a good idea to do a thorough overhaul every generation or two, to see what can be generalized and resimplified.
I would submit that the U.S. learned how to be full of its own sense of importance from observation of many worthy predecessors in international politics. That doesn't make it right, of course, and I'll try to remember that whenever people around the world are asking, "why doesn't the U.S. do something about X?"
Anyway you see how much agreement there is *within* the U.S. on this issue, so that should give you some idea of just how long it would take international bodies, which typically love to talk about their authority but never assert it, to come to such an agreement.
I don't recall anonymity being mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. There's nothing about a right to petition for redress of grievances while wearing a false face. I am consistently amazed by citizens who demand the right to be heard but would rather die than be seen.
"If your payment to the registrar works, it works."
If, OTOH, your contact information doesn't work, having made a reasonable effort, the registrar should feel free to consider the registration abandoned and the fee forfeit, stop serving the associated RRs, and accept another registrant for that name as soon as one comes along.
The contact information is not for when your system is *having* trouble, it's for when it is *causing* trouble. And if nobody can reach you to demand that it be fixed, yanking the name mapping is the only other thing that can be done to protect the network.
[thugs want to kill libertarian webmaster]
"your recourse?"
A really big gun? A libertarian would believe that people should be able to own weapons for their protection and to use appropriate violence, if necessary, in defense of their lives, no?
OTOH if you try to sell me tractor parts, claiming to represent John Deere, when you are in fact John Doe and have no relationship with the company, that *is* the business of the government that I support for my protection.
I wonder what libertarians did in the premodern world, when it was impossible for anyone other than a hermit to establish anonymity, and even few hermits could achieve it.
You are not alone. If someone wants to give a name he wasn't born with, let him file a D.B.A. or something.
Yes, that's part of my point: if it is warranted then it is not harassment. The contact has to be one which one is legally empowered to refuse. Otherwise, in the eyes of the law, (2) never takes place.
Aye, I usually consider the presence of Flash a mark of poor design.
Amen. If the page is legible, my work is done. A good layout is one that nobody notices. Keep it simple and problems will be few.
Most of this "looks different" stuff boils down to the page designer wanting HTML to be PostScript. It isn't. Get used to it.
And I have never yet seen a site that *needs* Flash, or that wouldn't be improved by taking it out.
Uhhuh. "makes them hated by even more people". How much is that in dollars?
Until you have an answer to that question, they aren't interested in what you have to say.