#IFDEF PSYCHOTIC_RELIGIOUS_FREAKY_PERSON
on
Can Computers Pray?
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· Score: 1
It's a good thing that they used iMacs, that way you can see right into the heart of the prayer circle. I knew the investment in clear cases would pay off. Ms. Skeddle, the perpetrator of this madness, awarded all of us with this groovy comment:
"If I can teach a computer to do that, then, technically, a computer has reached the same spiritual level as many Catholics," she says.
She can think what she wants, and I can think what I want. Which is why I don't feel unjustified in exclaiming: WHAT? YOU FREAK!
Okay, I agree that the notion of such a thing (computers being religious) is mildly interesting to consider.. but not for more than about 2 seconds. Don't worry, it gets better:
Ms. Skeddle, who is Roman Catholic, arranged the iMacs in a circle, with one serving as the prayer leader.
That's cute. Lord knows (ha!), if the computers weren't praying in perfect synchronization (within n seconds of each other), the effectiveness of the Holy words on God's ears would be reduced by a factor of n^2. She's even brighter than you previously imagined:
If such progress continues, Ms. Skeddle wonders, will computers need some type of moral structure?
Not to be short-sighted or closed-minded, as I don't usually dismiss all of the future-cyber-robotic warfare movies, but at our current stage in AI development, moral structure for computers is another one of those "sounds interesting" (for 2 seconds) ideas. Nonetheless, this fruity female is hardly clueful on the topic, I'm sure.
It seems that her followers are equally endowed with wisdom:
One visitor asked: If the computers are praying, is God listening to them?
Wow. That is deep. Almost deeper than The Matrix. I'm going to leave the answer to that as an exercise to the reader.
It seems the key difference between the American music industry and the Canadian music industry is the existance of Canada's Audio Video Licensing Agency (AVLA). It's run by the CRIA (similar to RIAA). The AVLA can license music for specific uses if the record companies will agree.
I assumed that major record companies would be opposed to DJs' use of MP3s, as I always held the RIAA's opposition to MP3s as a projection of major record companies' opposition. However, the article says:
Most of the major record companies have signed on to AVLA's licensing scheme, although Universal Music -- which owns Polygram -- continues to hold out.
What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means that every major record company that sells music in Canada thought it was worth mentioning that MP3s even existed. In addition, they thought that it was just fine for some people to commercially use licensed music in MP3 format.
What does this mean?
The RIAA is more evil than the record companies they allege to represent.
The RIAA web site says:
Consumers, retailers and replicators can report suspected music piracy to the RIAA by dialing a toll-free hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT or sending e-mail to badbeat@riaa.com.
So call them and tell them that you spotted a geeky-looking DJ with a laptop possessing licensed copies of Top 40 MP3s run across the US-Canadian border to avoid capture by authorities. He's probably armed and dangerous.
I'm concerned with the following paragraph from the article:
And keyboards are also troublesome. They rely on a scanning signal, which radiates the pattern of keys being pressed. So the patent suggests using a random number generator to continually distort the scanning signal.
That's one of the the most vague things I've ever read in my life. That's like saying "I didn't want anyone to see me when I robbed the bank, so I used a random number generator to distort the police radio signal." It's apparent that they have some particular application of a random number generator in mind and that it is probably effective, but how on earth it's applied is neither implied nor apparent.
Already, a few people have posted expressing their misconceptions about what TEMPEST is. In a nutshell, it's the process by which radiation given off by electronic devices can be captured and analyzed in order to gather information about what that device is doing.
A good example of how it can be used was given during the October 1996 episode of Discovery Channel's "Cyberlife" show.
That seems like a very large assumption, especially considering the lack of information that is out there. I doubt they're going to stick an Abit BH-6, or any other standard motherboard in a console. They'll likely use a proprietary motherboard and chipset, since they are not aiming toward PC compatibility. Without knowing the details, it just strikes me as a very low possibility that you'll be able to run any existing desktop OS (Linux/Win/BSD/Be) on any console.
So, I'll conclude by saying it's all just speculation, and it's not quite as simple as "It should work just dandy with Linux," in my humble opinion.
Echelon servers note details such as the server you are logged onto, the geographic location of the ISP you use, the type of browser you use, and your IP address.
Do not buy anything from Echelon Entertinment! EVERY PRODUCT has a bug in it which transmits environmental information (temperature, amount of marijuana residue in the air, etc.) along with sound and radiation emissions via microwaves to the Echelon HQ.
The food that Echelon Entertainment sells has chemicals which are mind-altering. They make you believe that people who are concerned about privacy are all paranoid freaks and induce feeling of pride and passion toward the NSA and Echelon.
Their humour and sports section has jokes which use special combinations of words to trigger the feelings that the food you eat produces. (Food + eating = brainwash).
The auction section is simply to make you think you're in control of your life, even though you aren't. Also, everything sold there is junk out of NSA agents' basements.
They also have mailing lists and newspaper publications for spreading their disinformation to the general public. Is their any avenue of thought which they do not stomp on?!
The webmaster's section is the first way for ordinary citizens to participate in a global spy network. They bribe Internet-savvy people into advertising their covert products to their friends, which is how they'll takeover the world.
I hereby revoke all rights and privileges of Echelon Entertainment, Inc., its affiliates, or subsidiaries to own my soul. I would like to point out a judicial example, similar to the class action lawsuit which I intend to be apart of, the Salem Witch Trials. I request that you cease and desist from all distribution, commercial or othwerise, of products, consumables, and misinformation which promotes the global spy network known as Echelon.
A correction to my post: "Assuming their aren't white.." should be "Assuming there aren't white..". I noticed it after re-reading my post (yes, I proofread it twice..oh well)
Obviously, he's (Temporal) talking about deserting his freedoms if he's saying "I want the government to read my e-mail and listen to my phone conversations without my knowing it." He's obviously talking about deserting his freedom of privacy. The purpose of my post isn't to say whether this is good or bad, but simply to clarify the reply to the aforementioned poster's position.
Having read mosts of the posts on this article, I haven't been able to find any that directly address the issue of monitoring e-mail. Here's my address:
Echelon couldn't possibly be able to intercept and read everybody's e-mail. Keep in mind that this is a very large part of what Echelon is described as. Having been the Systems Administrator at an ISP, I can assure you that I was never approached by anyone who was probably a representative of the NSA and asked to transmit copies of all of our customer's e-mail over microwaves to their sattelite, or any other such thing. This sort of scenario seems ridiculous, and is probably not quite what most people are suggesting.
But, then again, how on earth would Echelon get copies of our customers' e-mail to each other? Really. Think about it. The mail travels from their computer to our mail server and then someone retrieves it from the mail server.
Assuming their aren't white TEMPEST vans outside all of our customers houses, how would they get this information?
"The phone company, obviously," you say. Nope. Previous to my experience as a Systems Administrator, I really wouldn't have any information that would leave me to believe that Ma Bell wasn't the NSA's puppet. However, when you really start to analyze this possibility, you again see that this just couldn't be the case, especially given the current evidence that exists. (Note that all I'm saying is that the phone company isn't used to intercept your e-mail, and will refrain from addressing voice phone calls as others have done this previously).
The first thing to look to is the existance of CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers). These are entirely private companies that decide they want to run their own phone network, either alongside Bell's or by building their own and interconnecting (yes, I know some CLECs just resell Bell's services). Here in Kansas City, these companies are Birch Telecom and MCI Worldcom (formerly Brookes Fiber Communications). In addition, the medium-sized ISP I ran also considered becoming a CLEC. This involves little more than paying twenty-give grand to a few lawyers.
Now, in the same way that I ran our e-mail servers and was confident that we weren't working with Echelon to give them all of our customer's e-mail (sent to each other over our mail servers), I am also confident that if I and my engineers ran copper between multiple suburban areas of the city, install SS7 switches, etc., that I would fail to setup the Echelon port (or somesuch other method of giving info to Echelon) on any of these switches. Any phone call that stayed within our phone network (our phone customer calling another one of our phone customers) would be known secure. Certainly, the FBI has the ability to tap individual phone lines and we're aware of that. You'd be a fool not to recognize the difference between access to a single phone line and access to every trunk in your network. It would be painfully obvious to myself and everyone involved in the construction of the phone network of an international ring of spies was going to be looking at the data.
So, I contend that because most any telecommunications company can start their own phone network in competition with Ma Bell and since all of these companies would become aware of the Echelon network if they were apart of it, that when one of our customers sent e-mail to our mail server and another one of our customers retrieved that e-mail, no one was intercepting that e-mail.
Futhermore, there would be way too many switch managers and other telco engineers that would have to be aware of such a massive network of spying for it to exist. It's absurd to think that one of these persons wouldn't have come forward with evidence showing the existence of Echelon before now.
"But what about e-mail sent all over the world that goes through large carriers?" you ask. It's true that I only addressed e-mail sent locally to a medium-sized ISP in Kansas City, but I think it's easy to see how the scenario scales to any large service provider. It is obvious that if Echelon wanted to read everybody's e-mail, they would be reading everybody's e-mail, not just some of it. When it comes down to it, Echelon would have to be working with a bunch of administrators working for AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc., just like they would have to be working with me in a medium-sized ISP to get everyone's e-mail. Think about all the e-mail that only stays on AOL's network, or just Netcom's. Wouldn't criminals be flocking to signup for service from my ISP if they knew that none of it would intercepted by Echelon since it wasn't traveling over large carriers' networks?
Certainly, I haven't addressed every possibility or methodology of spying on e-mail, but I think I at least put some doubt in the minds of those assuming that it wouldn't be that hard for NSA to intercept every piece of data in the world. I think it all comes down to remembering that the Internet is just a bunch of companies, large and small, working together, and that there would have to be a lot of these companies in on the masterplan for Echelon to be what everyone thinks it is. Now, maybe just UUnet, Sprint, MCI, Savvis, and Qwest are all in on covertly redirecting packets to Echelon, and no one else. I have nothing to offer to show why this wouldn't ve happening. While that might be a large percentage of Internet traffic, I still think Echelon would be largely pointless if it could be averted by using a small service provider (voice, data, or otherwise).
So, if you're still convinced that the Echelon crew is reading your e-mail, switch your phone lines to the smallest CLEC in your area, signup for service from a smalltown ISP, and have all the people you communicate with do the same.
What sucks is that I might be entirely wrong; that might be able to detect everything traveling on copper wire from hundreds of miles above the earth.
This page has pictures that people have submitted who claim to have spotted the ghost. Having made every effort to try not to be overly cynical, I must say that those pictures combined with their comments make for the dumbest reading ever. This would likely be more interesting to an individual with vision impairment than it is to me, because I can clearly see that there isn't a ghost.. they'd have to squint or take the ignorant folks' words for it. People appear to be seeing ghosts in the graphic compression algorithm (blocky images in certain places), not to mention some outright hallucination.
At first glance it seems as though this is some public service to people who are ghost-seeking folks. But, then you scroll down and see ad banners and (at least to me) it all clicks. They want tons of people to spend their entire day sitting on their web site looking at the "ghost cam" as it refreshes every 30 seconds, building up tons of impressions. Okay, don't think I'm pretending that 90% of Slashdot readers didn't realize this.. but for those of you who are too skeptical to even go look at the Ghost Cam (or when everyone wakes up in the morning in the US and the site dies), I think my explanation is pretty valid.
Another thing that's interesting is that all of the "comments" on the proof page seem strikingly similar. Without knowing anything else I'd say that most of them were fabricated. Who knows? I think I have an extreme aversion to anything on the Net with a central theme of "ghosts". Except maybe GhostView.
Why on earth is this moderated "Flamebait"? Go MetaModerate and hope that you get this comment and metamoderate the "flamebait" moderation as unfair. This comment is exceptionally insightful, and explains, at least, where the author of the article is coming from.
I got news for you, buddy. The Slashdot comments area is all about the exchange of opinions. By pointing out that what someone says is their opinion, you haven't provided a valuable insight into anything.
Wouldn't it be just as bad if we let people suffer from tuberculosis without administering antibiotics? I see your point, but I don't see where you suggest an alternative.
Sure, the use of drugs brings about mutations of a disease which are immune to the drug, but you don't let people die of a disease for the sake of preventing a mutation of the disease from coming about.. do you? I really don't know the answers to these questions and am hoping you can shed some light on this for me and possibly other readers.
It's being financed by Vulcan Ventures Inc., the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
It must be bad!
This company must be the embodiment of Satan in the form of animated entertainment!
Chill, those of you who have to say "Microslop" and "Micro$oft". It's okay. Really.
I hope I caught this before the anti-Microsoft crew kicks in.. surely we can give 'em a break on this one, eh?
Notice how they DID NOT mention that the title of their first film is "Bill Gates: Man or God"? That's because it isn't. Take note, ye of little faith.
What happened to "majority rule, minority rights". I can't push our governmental system upon the rest of the world.. but that method doesn't seem entirely unfair to me.
Since I'm an American, it's hard to reflect on my own thoughts, such as, "If Americans represent the majority of the people on the Internet, why do we only have one representative in ICANN?" and not dismiss my thoughts as being biased toward my own interests. However, when I think of an analogy like this, I believe it sheds light on the subject:
The Internet started in Russia. Russians were the largest contributors to the development of the Internet. Decades later, proportionally huge sections of the Russian population are on the Net. There are also a lot of people from other countries, but the Internet is primarily Russian based and since Russian is spoken in most parts of the world, the vast majority of web pages are in Russian. Eventually, ICANN comes to be and representatives are elected. ICANN is made up entirely of Americans, except for one Russian. Wouldn't those of you who aren't Americans (and Americans, too) be bitching about how horribly stuck-up and power-hungry and unfair that Americans were? Of course. We'd be bastards. It would make no sense whatsoever for us to run ICANN, unless we just despised Russians and didn't recognize their right to have any significant say in that which was significantly theirs.
Well, my analogy has some inherent flaws (ICANN isn't run entirely by any country), but I think it expresses the clarity of thought that's necessary to attempt to evaluate an issue fairly, even though it strikes so close to home for many.
I think the primary question everyone should be asking themselves is:
Even if IPv6 is as horrible as the most skeptical, paranoid, privacy-centric folks think it must be, how could it possibly be any worse than IPv4?
The answer is (get ready for this, cause it's a huge surprise): it couldn't be. Under IPv4, it's simple to find out the geographical location of every web surfer as well as what ISP you should contact should they be doing anything bad. If they have a static IP or they have cookies enabled, it's also simple to tell if they come to your site often. All of these can be bypassed (disabling cookies and changing your MAC address), as most of the world is aware.
Even under the guise of part of your IP address being "randomly generated," it's still traceable directly back to your ISP, for all intents and purposes.
In other words, what on earth is anyone worried about? I see comments like "Well, it sounds good, but is it really?" and "Be careful.. 128 bits is a lot of IPs.. the government must be spying on us," (among others which have no real logical basis and leave me wondering why the poster is imparting his lack of knowledge upon us).
For those of you who aren't aware, the IETF is a highly respectable organization. If you can trust them with the responsibility of making every other protocol you touch, then surely this one isn't too much of a leap. The last thing you have to worry about is that they would intentionally deceive you into adopting some sort of covertly anti-privacy concept (don't think for a second I'm asserting that everything that the IETF produces is perfect.. merely that they're honest and have genuinely good-karma-filled intentions).
Some choice quotes from the RealAudio streams that require no external comments to make you realize what a quality piece of journalism that this isn't:
"All I did was sell weed and listen to loud music and stay out all night. I was one of those kinds thinking 'Wow, I can change my grades or I can hack into a bank and do wire transfers'. It's the glamour of that that drew me in."
"There's no people telling you what you can and can't do. At 16, Chameleon left high school and became a superstar at the hacking underground. Working from a computer in his mother's garage, he penetrated some of the government's most secure military computers."
"Gotta breath. Your heart's beating. You don't know what you're getting into but then yet again you wanna do it. Typing the final commands and then you're wondering whether the other guy at the other end is waiting for you to come and bust you. You break into somebody's system, that's not allowed. Just by having the password for the other account, that's not allowed; it's all illegal."
Well, at least MTV didn't just find a buncha wannabes who thought they were radical dudes. Er.. doh!
I don't see at all how putting it on Slashdot is a slap in the face. It's obviously just for everyone to laugh at. I don't think anyone is suggesting or even pretending to imply that this is anything resembling accurate or useful journalism.
I don't even understand why MTV is doing this. Obviously, the movie "Hackers" told me everything I needed to know about the computer underworld. I can't imagine there being a more relevant, comprehensive, or realistic documentary about the subject.. except for maybe "Hackers 2".
Slashdot Mirror
It's a good thing that they used iMacs, that way you can see right into the heart of the prayer circle. I knew the investment in clear cases would pay off. Ms. Skeddle, the perpetrator of this madness, awarded all of us with this groovy comment:
"If I can teach a computer to do that, then, technically, a computer has reached the same spiritual level as many Catholics," she says.
She can think what she wants, and I can think what I want. Which is why I don't feel unjustified in exclaiming: WHAT? YOU FREAK!
Okay, I agree that the notion of such a thing (computers being religious) is mildly interesting to consider.. but not for more than about 2 seconds. Don't worry, it gets better:
Ms. Skeddle, who is Roman Catholic, arranged the iMacs in a circle, with one serving as the prayer leader.
That's cute. Lord knows (ha!), if the computers weren't praying in perfect synchronization (within n seconds of each other), the effectiveness of the Holy words on God's ears would be reduced by a factor of n^2. She's even brighter than you previously imagined:
If such progress continues, Ms. Skeddle wonders, will computers need some type of moral structure?
Not to be short-sighted or closed-minded, as I don't usually dismiss all of the future-cyber-robotic warfare movies, but at our current stage in AI development, moral structure for computers is another one of those "sounds interesting" (for 2 seconds) ideas. Nonetheless, this fruity female is hardly clueful on the topic, I'm sure.
It seems that her followers are equally endowed with wisdom:
One visitor asked: If the computers are praying, is God listening to them?
Wow. That is deep. Almost deeper than The Matrix. I'm going to leave the answer to that as an exercise to the reader.
It seems the key difference between the American music industry and the Canadian music industry is the existance of Canada's Audio Video Licensing Agency (AVLA). It's run by the CRIA (similar to RIAA). The AVLA can license music for specific uses if the record companies will agree.
I assumed that major record companies would be opposed to DJs' use of MP3s, as I always held the RIAA's opposition to MP3s as a projection of major record companies' opposition. However, the article says:
Most of the major record companies have signed on to AVLA's licensing scheme, although Universal Music -- which owns Polygram -- continues to hold out.
What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means that every major record company that sells music in Canada thought it was worth mentioning that MP3s even existed. In addition, they thought that it was just fine for some people to commercially use licensed music in MP3 format.
What does this mean?
The RIAA is more evil than the record companies they allege to represent.
The RIAA web site says:
Consumers, retailers and replicators can report suspected music piracy to the RIAA by dialing a toll-free hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT or sending e-mail to badbeat@riaa.com.
So call them and tell them that you spotted a geeky-looking DJ with a laptop possessing licensed copies of Top 40 MP3s run across the US-Canadian border to avoid capture by authorities. He's probably armed and dangerous.
Someone refresh my memory.. what's the official sound card of the People's Republic of China?
I'm concerned with the following paragraph from the article:
And keyboards are also troublesome. They rely on a scanning signal, which radiates the pattern of keys being pressed. So the patent suggests using a random number generator to continually distort the scanning signal.
That's one of the the most vague things I've ever read in my life. That's like saying "I didn't want anyone to see me when I robbed the bank, so I used a random number generator to distort the police radio signal." It's apparent that they have some particular application of a random number generator in mind and that it is probably effective, but how on earth it's applied is neither implied nor apparent.
Does any have a clue what they're referring to?
Already, a few people have posted expressing their misconceptions about what TEMPEST is. In a nutshell, it's the process by which radiation given off by electronic devices can be captured and analyzed in order to gather information about what that device is doing.
A good example of how it can be used was given during the October 1996 episode of Discovery Channel's "Cyberlife" show.
A couple other decent sites with more information about TEMPEST are:
The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page
TEMPEST monitoring in the real world
According to the data I retrieved from doubletwist.com, Rob Malda is my daddy!
Best way to impress a woman...
- Candy
- Flowers
- Hack someone's arm
- Crack someone's arm
./hackarm --script="pick nose" --target=="Kevin Warwick"
That seems like a very large assumption, especially considering the lack of information that is out there. I doubt they're going to stick an Abit BH-6, or any other standard motherboard in a console. They'll likely use a proprietary motherboard and chipset, since they are not aiming toward PC compatibility. Without knowing the details, it just strikes me as a very low possibility that you'll be able to run any existing desktop OS (Linux/Win/BSD/Be) on any console.
So, I'll conclude by saying it's all just speculation, and it's not quite as simple as "It should work just dandy with Linux," in my humble opinion.
Check out Echelon Entertinment at http://www.eesite.com/. This is obviously a front for the massive spy network.
Take a further look at their Privacy policy. I quote:
Echelon servers note details such as the server you are logged onto, the geographic location of the ISP you use, the type of browser you use, and your IP address.
Do not buy anything from Echelon Entertinment! EVERY PRODUCT has a bug in it which transmits environmental information (temperature, amount of marijuana residue in the air, etc.) along with sound and radiation emissions via microwaves to the Echelon HQ.
The food that Echelon Entertainment sells has chemicals which are mind-altering. They make you believe that people who are concerned about privacy are all paranoid freaks and induce feeling of pride and passion toward the NSA and Echelon.
Their humour and sports section has jokes which use special combinations of words to trigger the feelings that the food you eat produces. (Food + eating = brainwash).
The auction section is simply to make you think you're in control of your life, even though you aren't. Also, everything sold there is junk out of NSA agents' basements.
They also have mailing lists and newspaper publications for spreading their disinformation to the general public. Is their any avenue of thought which they do not stomp on?!
The webmaster's section is the first way for ordinary citizens to participate in a global spy network. They bribe Internet-savvy people into advertising their covert products to their friends, which is how they'll takeover the world.
Send an e-mail to echelon@eesite.com with the following message:
Dear Sir or Madam:
I hereby revoke all rights and privileges of Echelon Entertainment, Inc., its affiliates, or subsidiaries to own my soul. I would like to point out a judicial example, similar to the class action lawsuit which I intend to be apart of, the Salem Witch Trials. I request that you cease and desist from all distribution, commercial or othwerise, of products, consumables, and misinformation which promotes the global spy network known as Echelon.
Regards,
<your name here>
A correction to my post: "Assuming their aren't white.." should be "Assuming there aren't white..". I noticed it after re-reading my post (yes, I proofread it twice..oh well)
Obviously, he's (Temporal) talking about deserting his freedoms if he's saying "I want the government to read my e-mail and listen to my phone conversations without my knowing it." He's obviously talking about deserting his freedom of privacy. The purpose of my post isn't to say whether this is good or bad, but simply to clarify the reply to the aforementioned poster's position.
Having read mosts of the posts on this article, I haven't been able to find any that directly address the issue of monitoring e-mail. Here's my address:
Echelon couldn't possibly be able to intercept and read everybody's e-mail. Keep in mind that this is a very large part of what Echelon is described as. Having been the Systems Administrator at an ISP, I can assure you that I was never approached by anyone who was probably a representative of the NSA and asked to transmit copies of all of our customer's e-mail over microwaves to their sattelite, or any other such thing. This sort of scenario seems ridiculous, and is probably not quite what most people are suggesting.
But, then again, how on earth would Echelon get copies of our customers' e-mail to each other? Really. Think about it. The mail travels from their computer to our mail server and then someone retrieves it from the mail server.
Assuming their aren't white TEMPEST vans outside all of our customers houses, how would they get this information?
"The phone company, obviously," you say. Nope. Previous to my experience as a Systems Administrator, I really wouldn't have any information that would leave me to believe that Ma Bell wasn't the NSA's puppet. However, when you really start to analyze this possibility, you again see that this just couldn't be the case, especially given the current evidence that exists. (Note that all I'm saying is that the phone company isn't used to intercept your e-mail, and will refrain from addressing voice phone calls as others have done this previously).
The first thing to look to is the existance of CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers). These are entirely private companies that decide they want to run their own phone network, either alongside Bell's or by building their own and interconnecting (yes, I know some CLECs just resell Bell's services). Here in Kansas City, these companies are Birch Telecom and MCI Worldcom (formerly Brookes Fiber Communications). In addition, the medium-sized ISP I ran also considered becoming a CLEC. This involves little more than paying twenty-give grand to a few lawyers.
Now, in the same way that I ran our e-mail servers and was confident that we weren't working with Echelon to give them all of our customer's e-mail (sent to each other over our mail servers), I am also confident that if I and my engineers ran copper between multiple suburban areas of the city, install SS7 switches, etc., that I would fail to setup the Echelon port (or somesuch other method of giving info to Echelon) on any of these switches. Any phone call that stayed within our phone network (our phone customer calling another one of our phone customers) would be known secure. Certainly, the FBI has the ability to tap individual phone lines and we're aware of that. You'd be a fool not to recognize the difference between access to a single phone line and access to every trunk in your network. It would be painfully obvious to myself and everyone involved in the construction of the phone network of an international ring of spies was going to be looking at the data.
So, I contend that because most any telecommunications company can start their own phone network in competition with Ma Bell and since all of these companies would become aware of the Echelon network if they were apart of it, that when one of our customers sent e-mail to our mail server and another one of our customers retrieved that e-mail, no one was intercepting that e-mail.
Futhermore, there would be way too many switch managers and other telco engineers that would have to be aware of such a massive network of spying for it to exist. It's absurd to think that one of these persons wouldn't have come forward with evidence showing the existence of Echelon before now.
"But what about e-mail sent all over the world that goes through large carriers?" you ask. It's true that I only addressed e-mail sent locally to a medium-sized ISP in Kansas City, but I think it's easy to see how the scenario scales to any large service provider. It is obvious that if Echelon wanted to read everybody's e-mail, they would be reading everybody's e-mail, not just some of it. When it comes down to it, Echelon would have to be working with a bunch of administrators working for AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc., just like they would have to be working with me in a medium-sized ISP to get everyone's e-mail. Think about all the e-mail that only stays on AOL's network, or just Netcom's. Wouldn't criminals be flocking to signup for service from my ISP if they knew that none of it would intercepted by Echelon since it wasn't traveling over large carriers' networks?
Certainly, I haven't addressed every possibility or methodology of spying on e-mail, but I think I at least put some doubt in the minds of those assuming that it wouldn't be that hard for NSA to intercept every piece of data in the world. I think it all comes down to remembering that the Internet is just a bunch of companies, large and small, working together, and that there would have to be a lot of these companies in on the masterplan for Echelon to be what everyone thinks it is. Now, maybe just UUnet, Sprint, MCI, Savvis, and Qwest are all in on covertly redirecting packets to Echelon, and no one else. I have nothing to offer to show why this wouldn't ve happening. While that might be a large percentage of Internet traffic, I still think Echelon would be largely pointless if it could be averted by using a small service provider (voice, data, or otherwise).
So, if you're still convinced that the Echelon crew is reading your e-mail, switch your phone lines to the smallest CLEC in your area, signup for service from a smalltown ISP, and have all the people you communicate with do the same.
What sucks is that I might be entirely wrong; that might be able to detect everything traveling on copper wire from hundreds of miles above the earth.
Who knows? Not me. So reply!
This page has pictures that people have submitted who claim to have spotted the ghost. Having made every effort to try not to be overly cynical, I must say that those pictures combined with their comments make for the dumbest reading ever. This would likely be more interesting to an individual with vision impairment than it is to me, because I can clearly see that there isn't a ghost.. they'd have to squint or take the ignorant folks' words for it. People appear to be seeing ghosts in the graphic compression algorithm (blocky images in certain places), not to mention some outright hallucination.
At first glance it seems as though this is some public service to people who are ghost-seeking folks. But, then you scroll down and see ad banners and (at least to me) it all clicks. They want tons of people to spend their entire day sitting on their web site looking at the "ghost cam" as it refreshes every 30 seconds, building up tons of impressions. Okay, don't think I'm pretending that 90% of Slashdot readers didn't realize this.. but for those of you who are too skeptical to even go look at the Ghost Cam (or when everyone wakes up in the morning in the US and the site dies), I think my explanation is pretty valid.
Another thing that's interesting is that all of the "comments" on the proof page seem strikingly similar. Without knowing anything else I'd say that most of them were fabricated. Who knows? I think I have an extreme aversion to anything on the Net with a central theme of "ghosts". Except maybe GhostView.
Why on earth is this moderated "Flamebait"? Go MetaModerate and hope that you get this comment and metamoderate the "flamebait" moderation as unfair. This comment is exceptionally insightful, and explains, at least, where the author of the article is coming from.
I got news for you, buddy. The Slashdot comments area is all about the exchange of opinions. By pointing out that what someone says is their opinion, you haven't provided a valuable insight into anything.
Wouldn't it be just as bad if we let people suffer from tuberculosis without administering antibiotics? I see your point, but I don't see where you suggest an alternative.
Sure, the use of drugs brings about mutations of a disease which are immune to the drug, but you don't let people die of a disease for the sake of preventing a mutation of the disease from coming about.. do you? I really don't know the answers to these questions and am hoping you can shed some light on this for me and possibly other readers.
I quote directly:
It's being financed by Vulcan Ventures Inc., the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
It must be bad!
This company must be the embodiment of Satan in the form of animated entertainment!
Chill, those of you who have to say "Microslop" and "Micro$oft". It's okay. Really.
I hope I caught this before the anti-Microsoft crew kicks in.. surely we can give 'em a break on this one, eh?
Notice how they DID NOT mention that the title of their first film is "Bill Gates: Man or God"? That's because it isn't. Take note, ye of little faith.
As long as it's better than that Pixelon garbage..
What happened to "majority rule, minority rights". I can't push our governmental system upon the rest of the world.. but that method doesn't seem entirely unfair to me.
Since I'm an American, it's hard to reflect on my own thoughts, such as, "If Americans represent the majority of the people on the Internet, why do we only have one representative in ICANN?" and not dismiss my thoughts as being biased toward my own interests. However, when I think of an analogy like this, I believe it sheds light on the subject:
The Internet started in Russia. Russians were the largest contributors to the development of the Internet. Decades later, proportionally huge sections of the Russian population are on the Net. There are also a lot of people from other countries, but the Internet is primarily Russian based and since Russian is spoken in most parts of the world, the vast majority of web pages are in Russian. Eventually, ICANN comes to be and representatives are elected. ICANN is made up entirely of Americans, except for one Russian. Wouldn't those of you who aren't Americans (and Americans, too) be bitching about how horribly stuck-up and power-hungry and unfair that Americans were? Of course. We'd be bastards. It would make no sense whatsoever for us to run ICANN, unless we just despised Russians and didn't recognize their right to have any significant say in that which was significantly theirs.
Well, my analogy has some inherent flaws (ICANN isn't run entirely by any country), but I think it expresses the clarity of thought that's necessary to attempt to evaluate an issue fairly, even though it strikes so close to home for many.
I think the primary question everyone should be asking themselves is:
Even if IPv6 is as horrible as the most skeptical, paranoid, privacy-centric folks think it must be, how could it possibly be any worse than IPv4?
The answer is (get ready for this, cause it's a huge surprise): it couldn't be. Under IPv4, it's simple to find out the geographical location of every web surfer as well as what ISP you should contact should they be doing anything bad. If they have a static IP or they have cookies enabled, it's also simple to tell if they come to your site often. All of these can be bypassed (disabling cookies and changing your MAC address), as most of the world is aware.
Even under the guise of part of your IP address being "randomly generated," it's still traceable directly back to your ISP, for all intents and purposes.
In other words, what on earth is anyone worried about? I see comments like "Well, it sounds good, but is it really?" and "Be careful.. 128 bits is a lot of IPs.. the government must be spying on us," (among others which have no real logical basis and leave me wondering why the poster is imparting his lack of knowledge upon us).
For those of you who aren't aware, the IETF is a highly respectable organization. If you can trust them with the responsibility of making every other protocol you touch, then surely this one isn't too much of a leap. The last thing you have to worry about is that they would intentionally deceive you into adopting some sort of covertly anti-privacy concept (don't think for a second I'm asserting that everything that the IETF produces is perfect.. merely that they're honest and have genuinely good-karma-filled intentions).
I've been trying to get laws passed against "bad faith squatters" for years..
Wait.. If I say "Yes, kids should be genetically engineered," does that imply that I'm going to have sex some day? Hell yes!
:-)
Some choice quotes from the RealAudio streams that require no external comments to make you realize what a quality piece of journalism that this isn't:
"All I did was sell weed and listen to loud music and stay out all night. I was one of those kinds thinking 'Wow, I can change my grades or I can hack into a bank and do wire transfers'. It's the glamour of that that drew me in."
"There's no people telling you what you can and can't do. At 16, Chameleon left high school and became a superstar at the hacking underground. Working from a computer in his mother's garage, he penetrated some of the government's most secure military computers."
"Gotta breath. Your heart's beating. You don't know what you're getting into but then yet again you wanna do it. Typing the final commands and then you're wondering whether the other guy at the other end is waiting for you to come and bust you. You break into somebody's system, that's not allowed. Just by having the password for the other account, that's not allowed; it's all illegal."
Well, at least MTV didn't just find a buncha wannabes who thought they were radical dudes. Er.. doh!
I don't see at all how putting it on Slashdot is a slap in the face. It's obviously just for everyone to laugh at. I don't think anyone is suggesting or even pretending to imply that this is anything resembling accurate or useful journalism.
I don't even understand why MTV is doing this. Obviously, the movie "Hackers" told me everything I needed to know about the computer underworld. I can't imagine there being a more relevant, comprehensive, or realistic documentary about the subject.. except for maybe "Hackers 2".
:-)