"Releasing an IP address (which is not identifying information as we all know)"
Even if it's not directly identifying information, it can be used to derive the identity of the poster - and that is enough ot make disclosure without a court order problematic in a lot of jurisdictions.
This is the same connundrum that releasing anonymised data comes with - if you have enough such datasets you can use to very accurately identify people. Think about the incentive that insurers have to do that kind of analysis on anonymised medical data.
The thing about GPL is that it's a License - if you don't comply with it, then it's a simple copyright violation case.
It's also easy to comply with (open your source)
The vast majority of GPL cases have never hit court because it's been far more blatant cases (such as stealing busybox) and once the respondent's lawyers realised that if they argued the GPL wasn't enforceable, they'd then be fighting a copyright violation case - which in most cases would be open and shut with larger penalties because they'd already admitted using the code.
This case is more subtle and from the look of it the courts haven't allowed sufficient discovery to be done. VMware probably learned lessons from Fortinet being taken down over its "proprietary operating system" fiasco.
This will go to appeal and I doubt the higher courts will rule against discovery.
In some countries there's a countdown timer showing how much longer the light will stay green (or red)
In Yangon it starts flashing amber when there's less than 10 seconds green left.
It's interesting because it really does seem to calm people down if they know long they have to wait - and slow them down instead of attempting to race to a green light they might or might not make before it changes.
Unfortunately the rest of the time, the driving can best be described as "scrummage" descending to "rucking"
The concept of duress passwords has been around for a long time and they do exist on phones if you care to set them up.
30 years ago access cards we had as telco employees had secondary duress codes. If you entered them the doors will still open, but red lights would be flashing in the security centre.
After one "unfortunate incident", it was decided that using the codes would open doors you wouldn't normally get through - not that it mattered if the attackers had mugged the cleaning staff as their cards opened everything and tended not to need codes.
"It worked... never mind that the company needed to run like, I don't remember, a dozen web servers to make that shit run when all that was truly required (if the system had been built properly) was one server for the application and one for the database."
"It runs - badly" is not the same as "it works"
Anyway if you understand the calls, etc you should be able to get a nice 6-figure lumpsum payout for making the system run well. Pitch yourself as a contractor.
"Also, the highest crime areas (you know, the areas we tell our kids not to wander to?) are black."
No, the highest crime areas (anywhere in the world) are poor. Skin colour doesn't enter into that part.
If you start looking into the reasons why disproportionate ratios of the black population are poor then it's easy to see the systemic discrimination across the board which shows the Jim Crow laws might be gone, but Jim Crow attitudes still lurk just under the surface.
"You do know that China simply steals or buys its way into a lot of technological progress"
Once upon a time the USA achieved its objectives by doing the same thing - and if you don't believe that it's still doing so now, you're somewhat blinkered. ALL countries are doing it, only not so blatently as china (now) or 19th century USA (which was extremely blatent. Ask the Lumiere Brothers how Thomas Edison stole the copyright for _their_ film and sucessfully sued them for exhibiting their own work in New York City.
Military spending yes - three times as much as China (#2), more than the next 19 combined and more than everything from there down combined.
The USA has a higher percentage GDP spend on its military than the Soviet Union did at its peak - and it was overspending on the military which finally broke the USSR. That spending is coming at expense of infrastructure (you have bridges and highways rotting), education and healthcare.
How long until the USA breaks - and who will help keep the nuclear weapons out of dangerous hands when it does?
"Face it, the Chinese are rapidly become world technology leaders"
On put another way, they're resuming their position as world technology leaders. It's only something they lost since the industrial revolution and they didn't lag by much all along.
When B2s flew into the Uk for the first time the civilian systems didn't see the until transponders were enabled.
The UK military tracked them across the country simply by dialling up the gain on their radars. There aren't many flocks of birds flying at 600mph, so if you know to look for something, you'll find it.
"If you're willing not only to let your adversaries out-tech your airforce,"
The USA spends at least 3 times as much on its military as the next country on the list (China - and what they spend is less than the interest they earn on loans to the USA).
It spends more than the next NINETEEN countries combined and several times more more than all the rest combined too.
What killed the Nazis was overspending on hi-tech solutions which ended up to expensive to produce (eg: tiger tanks), instead of concentrating on using what they had efficiently. What killed the Soviet Union was spending too much on its military systems as cost of everything else
The USA seems to be waltzing down both paths simultaneously - your education, medical and transportation infrastructure are all suffering badly whilst the country continues to invest vast amounts of wealth into unusable military systems. It's unsustainable and eventually something's going to break, despite the continuing militarisation of civilian peacekeepers.
The F22 was supposed to be the expensive air superiority fighter and the F35 the cheap aircraft for close air support after the opposition's airforce and defences were taken out.
F22 was canned because it was too expensive - as you say, ironic because the per-piece price of the "cheap" F35 is now higher.
> You just detect, "gosh there is something out there."
Knowing something's out there is important intelligence all by itself. It allows the AA operators to be prepared for something they wouldn't normally have time to react to.
F35 is this generation's F-111B, except this time around it isn't being dumped and replaced with the equivalent of the F14/F15 (which were much cheaper but developed from knowledge gained in the F111B development program).
It seems one of the lessons learned from the F111B program was how to rig things so it was impossible to cancel.
"It is only "stealthy" if the radar transmitter and receiver are co-located. "
It's also only stealthy in a 30 degree cone about the nose, so a networked air defense system will be able to track them - and like the B2 it's not stealthy at all to VHF radar or HF over-the-horizon stuff (eg, Australia's Jindalee and Russia's Duga - also known as "the russian woodpecker")
This underscores the point that they're not an air-superiority weapon - that would be the F22 - and all those non-USAian airforces planning to use them in that role are likely to get a very rude awkening in a battlefield environment if going up against a well-equipped foe (to be honest, this is rare. Iraq was about the most prepared for invasion and they failed spectacularly).
It didn't carry enough passengers to be economic and it couldn't handle containers - which was unfortunate when containerisation was taking over the cargo trade. That essentially relegated her to low yield operations.
Otto Hahn had similar problems and PWR reactors are simply too fiddly for commercial use, which in turn means they're expensive to operate thanks to labour costs.
If/when LFTRs are commercialised they should prove worthwhile for large operators to look at as the vast majority of operations can be automated and the things can provide on-demand power (steamers generally can't, which is one of the reasons they're no longer built. The others are lower efficiency and far higher maintenance load. With virtually all nuclear plants being steamers, it's pretty much the case that it's only navies still operating the technology.)
It's assumed that every address has a television, therefore those addresses without a license are watching illegally.
Once they have enough in an area to justify the costs, they break out the "detector vans" (which have 7 seats in the back and no electronics) and go doorknocking. The idea is to elicit an admission or observe the TV in use. (This was long before it was farmed out to Crapita)
I know, because I've been one of the door knockers.
Yes, it was possible to "detect" TVs or radios in the dim dark past, usually by listening for the heterodyne frequencies - but the reality is that that it only works when they're uncommon devices and it will be trivial to generate spoof traffic.
The fact that the BBC's enforcement arm (which is a wholly-owned, fully commercial subsidiary) has apparently managed to obtain permission to use RIPA is far more disturbing, both because it is the first time a private company has been allowed to use RIPA and because it means they can simply hit ISPs with orders to disclose what customer is on what IP at what time - and it's a criminal offence for the ISP to send a headsup to the subject of the RIPA investigation
IE: If you want to avoid "the detector vans", use a proxy.
For a more prosaic evaluation of their level of competence: I've had a UK TV license for the last 14 years and for the last 12 years they've been sending me nasty letters threatening prosecution because I don't have a TV license. The one time an "inspector" showed up, he ran away when I started filming him.
"Can this not all be extrapolated to mean that there was a time when high-dollar spinning rust was actually generally more reliable than lower-dollar spinning rust? "
In brief: No.
Enterprise drives used to be higher priced because they were individually tested, etc and had longer/better warranties with faster RMAs. In practice they failed more quickly than desktop drives, but that doesn't take into account any differences in loading/headseeking over that period.
"the total ice cover of the globe is actually increasing"
1km^3 of land ice makes about 750-800km^2 of sea ice - and once it's on the sea, it's already affected sea levels.
Increases in Antarctic sea ice are a direct result of increased melt runoff (it's making the water less salty which in turn means it freezes at higher temperatures) and they ONLY happen in winter. All that sea ice rapidly disappears in summer.
Disclosure: I work with climate scientists. They're fed up to the back teeth of ignorant people claiming that increases in Antarctic sea ice mean AGW isn't a "thing". The reality is that summer ice minimums keep decreasing.
Most scientists who actually study climate and are actually experts in the field are deeply worried. What they're saying publically mostly errs on the cautious side, simply because they get shat on politically when they start telling it like it is.
My personal worry is the increasing risk of an anoxic oceanic event - which is something most climate scientists haven't considered (or won't discuss publically) even though the possibility was raised as far back as 1976. Again, they'll get shat on if they start bringing this up. It's bad enough when they point out the economic and ecological effects of coral bleaching and ocean acidification that's already occuring.
"They eventually shut down when the glacier moved south, it being really difficult to graze cattle on top of a glacier"
This part has been disproven. The moraines of the glaciers in question show they never moved forward.
There's no doubt it got colder - this was part of the european medeval cooling period - which was probably related to a peturbation of the Gulf Stream (aka "the mini-ice age") but increased glaciation had little to do with the settlements being abandoned. It was just plain tough living there and the rewards didn't outweigh the inconvenience.
There are several factors at work for smoking-related cancers.
1: Chemical (tobacco smoke and the additives in cigarettes that are there to keep them burning) 2: Thermal - this is what gets pipe smokers with lip and tooth cancers 3: Radiological - yes really. Look up "Polonium 210 on tobacco"
#2 stops being a factor as soon as the smoker stops. #1 clears out after 6-10 weeks
#3 is the gift that keeps on giving. A smoker's lungs are fizzing with radioactivity, to the point where they'd be classified as high-level radioactive waste if left on a nuclear plant site.
Slashdot Mirror
"Releasing an IP address (which is not identifying information as we all know)"
Even if it's not directly identifying information, it can be used to derive the identity of the poster - and that is enough ot make disclosure without a court order problematic in a lot of jurisdictions.
This is the same connundrum that releasing anonymised data comes with - if you have enough such datasets you can use to very accurately identify people. Think about the incentive that insurers have to do that kind of analysis on anonymised medical data.
The thing about GPL is that it's a License - if you don't comply with it, then it's a simple copyright violation case.
It's also easy to comply with (open your source)
The vast majority of GPL cases have never hit court because it's been far more blatant cases (such as stealing busybox) and once the respondent's lawyers realised that if they argued the GPL wasn't enforceable, they'd then be fighting a copyright violation case - which in most cases would be open and shut with larger penalties because they'd already admitted using the code.
This case is more subtle and from the look of it the courts haven't allowed sufficient discovery to be done. VMware probably learned lessons from Fortinet being taken down over its "proprietary operating system" fiasco.
This will go to appeal and I doubt the higher courts will rule against discovery.
In some countries there's a countdown timer showing how much longer the light will stay green (or red)
In Yangon it starts flashing amber when there's less than 10 seconds green left.
It's interesting because it really does seem to calm people down if they know long they have to wait - and slow them down instead of attempting to race to a green light they might or might not make before it changes.
Unfortunately the rest of the time, the driving can best be described as "scrummage" descending to "rucking"
The concept of duress passwords has been around for a long time and they do exist on phones if you care to set them up.
30 years ago access cards we had as telco employees had secondary duress codes. If you entered them the doors will still open, but red lights would be flashing in the security centre.
After one "unfortunate incident", it was decided that using the codes would open doors you wouldn't normally get through - not that it mattered if the attackers had mugged the cleaning staff as their cards opened everything and tended not to need codes.
"And they in turn can choose to tell you, too, to fuck right off. It's the prerogative of a border agent"
In general it is not permissible for border agents to refuse entry to a citizen of the country he is entering.(*)
This was a Canadian, entering Canada, coming up against canadian border agents.
(*) There are some countries like this, but we tend to call those "repressive regiemes", not "western democracies"
"It worked... never mind that the company needed to run like, I don't remember, a dozen web servers to make that shit run when all that was truly required (if the system had been built properly) was one server for the application and one for the database."
"It runs - badly" is not the same as "it works"
Anyway if you understand the calls, etc you should be able to get a nice 6-figure lumpsum payout for making the system run well. Pitch yourself as a contractor.
"Also, the highest crime areas (you know, the areas we tell our kids not to wander to?) are black."
No, the highest crime areas (anywhere in the world) are poor. Skin colour doesn't enter into that part.
If you start looking into the reasons why disproportionate ratios of the black population are poor then it's easy to see the systemic discrimination across the board which shows the Jim Crow laws might be gone, but Jim Crow attitudes still lurk just under the surface.
or "collect the usual suspects"
"You do know that China simply steals or buys its way into a lot of technological progress"
Once upon a time the USA achieved its objectives by doing the same thing - and if you don't believe that it's still doing so now, you're somewhat blinkered. ALL countries are doing it, only not so blatently as china (now) or 19th century USA (which was extremely blatent. Ask the Lumiere Brothers how Thomas Edison stole the copyright for _their_ film and sucessfully sued them for exhibiting their own work in New York City.
"Raw power."
Not even that.
Military spending yes - three times as much as China (#2), more than the next 19 combined and more than everything from there down combined.
The USA has a higher percentage GDP spend on its military than the Soviet Union did at its peak - and it was overspending on the military which finally broke the USSR. That spending is coming at expense of infrastructure (you have bridges and highways rotting), education and healthcare.
How long until the USA breaks - and who will help keep the nuclear weapons out of dangerous hands when it does?
"Face it, the Chinese are rapidly become world technology leaders"
On put another way, they're resuming their position as world technology leaders. It's only something they lost since the industrial revolution and they didn't lag by much all along.
When B2s flew into the Uk for the first time the civilian systems didn't see the until transponders were enabled.
The UK military tracked them across the country simply by dialling up the gain on their radars. There aren't many flocks of birds flying at 600mph, so if you know to look for something, you'll find it.
"If you're willing not only to let your adversaries out-tech your airforce,"
The USA spends at least 3 times as much on its military as the next country on the list (China - and what they spend is less than the interest they earn on loans to the USA).
It spends more than the next NINETEEN countries combined and several times more more than all the rest combined too.
What killed the Nazis was overspending on hi-tech solutions which ended up to expensive to produce (eg: tiger tanks), instead of concentrating on using what they had efficiently.
What killed the Soviet Union was spending too much on its military systems as cost of everything else
The USA seems to be waltzing down both paths simultaneously - your education, medical and transportation infrastructure are all suffering badly whilst the country continues to invest vast amounts of wealth into unusable military systems. It's unsustainable and eventually something's going to break, despite the continuing militarisation of civilian peacekeepers.
The F22 was supposed to be the expensive air superiority fighter and the F35 the cheap aircraft for close air support after the opposition's airforce and defences were taken out.
F22 was canned because it was too expensive - as you say, ironic because the per-piece price of the "cheap" F35 is now higher.
> You just detect, "gosh there is something out there."
Knowing something's out there is important intelligence all by itself. It allows the AA operators to be prepared for something they wouldn't normally have time to react to.
F35 is this generation's F-111B, except this time around it isn't being dumped and replaced with the equivalent of the F14/F15 (which were much cheaper but developed from knowledge gained in the F111B development program).
It seems one of the lessons learned from the F111B program was how to rig things so it was impossible to cancel.
"It is only "stealthy" if the radar transmitter and receiver are co-located. "
It's also only stealthy in a 30 degree cone about the nose, so a networked air defense system will be able to track them - and like the B2 it's not stealthy at all to VHF radar or HF over-the-horizon stuff (eg, Australia's Jindalee and Russia's Duga - also known as "the russian woodpecker")
This underscores the point that they're not an air-superiority weapon - that would be the F22 - and all those non-USAian airforces planning to use them in that role are likely to get a very rude awkening in a battlefield environment if going up against a well-equipped foe (to be honest, this is rare. Iraq was about the most prepared for invasion and they failed spectacularly).
Savannah was a pretty unfortunate design.
It didn't carry enough passengers to be economic and it couldn't handle containers - which was unfortunate when containerisation was taking over the cargo trade. That essentially relegated her to low yield operations.
Otto Hahn had similar problems and PWR reactors are simply too fiddly for commercial use, which in turn means they're expensive to operate thanks to labour costs.
If/when LFTRs are commercialised they should prove worthwhile for large operators to look at as the vast majority of operations can be automated and the things can provide on-demand power (steamers generally can't, which is one of the reasons they're no longer built. The others are lower efficiency and far higher maintenance load. With virtually all nuclear plants being steamers, it's pretty much the case that it's only navies still operating the technology.)
"it was retired quite early in its life"
If you look at the lifespans of modern passenger ships, 20 years is about normal.
They're sometimes onsold to third-level operators but even then it's unusual to see one more than 40 years old.
Is more prosaic.
It's assumed that every address has a television, therefore those addresses without a license are watching illegally.
Once they have enough in an area to justify the costs, they break out the "detector vans" (which have 7 seats in the back and no electronics) and go doorknocking. The idea is to elicit an admission or observe the TV in use. (This was long before it was farmed out to Crapita)
I know, because I've been one of the door knockers.
Yes, it was possible to "detect" TVs or radios in the dim dark past, usually by listening for the heterodyne frequencies - but the reality is that that it only works when they're uncommon devices and it will be trivial to generate spoof traffic.
The fact that the BBC's enforcement arm (which is a wholly-owned, fully commercial subsidiary) has apparently managed to obtain permission to use RIPA is far more disturbing, both because it is the first time a private company has been allowed to use RIPA and because it means they can simply hit ISPs with orders to disclose what customer is on what IP at what time - and it's a criminal offence for the ISP to send a headsup to the subject of the RIPA investigation
IE: If you want to avoid "the detector vans", use a proxy.
For a more prosaic evaluation of their level of competence: I've had a UK TV license for the last 14 years and for the last 12 years they've been sending me nasty letters threatening prosecution because I don't have a TV license. The one time an "inspector" showed up, he ran away when I started filming him.
"Can this not all be extrapolated to mean that there was a time when high-dollar spinning rust was actually generally more reliable than lower-dollar spinning rust? "
In brief: No.
Enterprise drives used to be higher priced because they were individually tested, etc and had longer/better warranties with faster RMAs. In practice they failed more quickly than desktop drives, but that doesn't take into account any differences in loading/headseeking over that period.
"I've found hard drives the past few years to be incredibly reliable compared to what they used to be"
Right up to the 2011 Thai floods. At that point reliabiilty plummeted and prices are still slightly higher than before that event.
My point was actually that adequate RAID and backup policies mean losing a drive is no big deal.
I would never _ever_ trust any device enough to keep the only copy of any data on it.
"the total ice cover of the globe is actually increasing"
1km^3 of land ice makes about 750-800km^2 of sea ice - and once it's on the sea, it's already affected sea levels.
Increases in Antarctic sea ice are a direct result of increased melt runoff (it's making the water less salty which in turn means it freezes at higher temperatures) and they ONLY happen in winter. All that sea ice rapidly disappears in summer.
Disclosure: I work with climate scientists. They're fed up to the back teeth of ignorant people claiming that increases in Antarctic sea ice mean AGW isn't a "thing". The reality is that summer ice minimums keep decreasing.
Most scientists who actually study climate and are actually experts in the field are deeply worried. What they're saying publically mostly errs on the cautious side, simply because they get shat on politically when they start telling it like it is.
My personal worry is the increasing risk of an anoxic oceanic event - which is something most climate scientists haven't considered (or won't discuss publically) even though the possibility was raised as far back as 1976. Again, they'll get shat on if they start bringing this up. It's bad enough when they point out the economic and ecological effects of coral bleaching and ocean acidification that's already occuring.
"They eventually shut down when the glacier moved south, it being really difficult to graze cattle on top of a glacier"
This part has been disproven. The moraines of the glaciers in question show they never moved forward.
There's no doubt it got colder - this was part of the european medeval cooling period - which was probably related to a peturbation of the Gulf Stream (aka "the mini-ice age") but increased glaciation had little to do with the settlements being abandoned. It was just plain tough living there and the rewards didn't outweigh the inconvenience.
There are several factors at work for smoking-related cancers.
1: Chemical (tobacco smoke and the additives in cigarettes that are there to keep them burning)
2: Thermal - this is what gets pipe smokers with lip and tooth cancers
3: Radiological - yes really. Look up "Polonium 210 on tobacco"
#2 stops being a factor as soon as the smoker stops. #1 clears out after 6-10 weeks
#3 is the gift that keeps on giving. A smoker's lungs are fizzing with radioactivity, to the point where they'd be classified as high-level radioactive waste if left on a nuclear plant site.
After this amount of time the radioactives are fairly benign.
I'd be far more worried about the PCBs and other toxic chemical nasties on the site.