It would be a Live CD that would leave no trace on who was using a internet connection at a cyber cafe. It would be similar to a standard Ubuntu live CD except that:
It would leave no trace the hard disk, except possibly on encrypted partitons if desired.
It would wipe all memory on shutdown.
It would change the MAC address of all interface cards (lan or otherwise) before using them to some standard value having no connection to the original MAC address.
It would by default, use generic email addresses that would give no clue as to the true sender.
It would make available an abundance of encryption and security software such as GPG, SSH ect.
We are all dead if we can not figure a way out of the solar system. (Read any newspaper.)
We will never get out of the solar system using rockets.
NASA should stop fooling around with rockets and instead focus on fundamental physics that will alow us to invent a space drive that will allow us to escape.
This is possible, because the UFO space aliens have obviously done it.
Play it like a bridge hand. That is assume the cards are so placed that it is possible to make the contract, and play it that way.
Scientists already assume the "Anthropic principle", that is "if it were not true, we would not be here".
I believe that in addition we should assume the "forward looking Anthropic principle" which states "if it is not true, then we are all dead anyway".
Physicists should be told to assume that it is possible to build a space drive break the speed of light and exit the solar system. They should be assigned to go and find out how.
Google groups has to be poorly maintained. There is link on google group's front page labeled "Take the tour". It points to "http://groups.google.com/intl/en/googlegroups/tour3/index.html?lnk=hptt#" which is 404. A 404 link on a front page clearly indicates that google does not care about google groups.
As others have pointed out there are some disadvantages to whole disk encryption. Whole disk encryption does not solve all security problems.
But if in spite of this, you still want to use whole disk encryption, I do not think that PGP is the answer. I think that simple symmetric crypto is a better fit.
PGP's claim to fame is its public key nature. That is it solves the key distribution problem. A sender does not have to contact a receiver to agree on a symmetric key. The receiver can look up the sender's "public key" from published sources.
But in the case of whole disk encryption there is no key distribution problem. All necessary keys must exist at boot time, under any whole disk encryption scheme. Therefore the key distribution problem is solved beforehand by definition.
PGP uses a hybrid solution to the key distribution problem. Public key encryption is used to distribute a symmetric key which is used for the bulk of the work. Since in the case of whole disk encryption there is by definition no key distribution problem, the public key stuff can be eliminated resulting in stronger simpler crypto.
Also, symmetric key disk encryption is available for free (both in the since of beer and freedom) with most Linux distributions.
Do not mess with your computer's clocks twice a year. Set your computer's real time clock to UTC (world time), and forget about it. Your computer keeps time in UTC anyway. It only converts to local time when a program requests local time. If you set the real time clock to UTC, you can move your computer between timezones and never have to set a clock. Just tell the computer what zone you are in, so it can convert to local time correctly, but you have to do that anyway.
It may be somewhat more difficult to determine UTC to set your real time clock, but you only have to do it once!
Only inferior proprietary Operating Systems mess with the clock twice a year.
Why would anyone put capitol at risk in the people republic of California? The State Legislature may confiscate the investmet and use the money to buy votes. It has already done this to power distribution companies by requiring them to sell power at less than cost, putting them into bankruptcy.
It makes absolutely no sense for anyone to put capitol at risk in California. If you make a profit you are rich and therefore a suitable target for confiscation.
California is a third world country that does not know it yet.
If someone has not patented it already, I put the Idea of an aerobic keyboard and aerobic editor into the public domain! An aerobic keyboard's keys are huge, can be activated by arms an feet and require large leg and arm movements to press them. Such a keyboard will allow a geek to continue to edit while doing his exercises!
Of course specialized editors will be used to take advantage of the aerobic keyboard. I can hardly wait till emacs is modified for the aerobic keyboard, but I expect some atheists will want to use vi.
How do I publish this idea so no one else can patent it? Or is there prior art?
The usage of the word education has evolved to mean a mechanical process whereby an institution can add knowledge and wisdom to an individual, like QuickLube changing your oil.
Teachers are taught that they can "motivate" students, that is, make them want something the institution wants them to want.
It is all part of the scientific pretensions of the academic "Education departments".
Let us replace this false belief in institutional "education" with the original concept of "learning".
It used to be that a person with knowledge and wisdom was called "learned".
Teachers should be thought of as helpers who assist those who want to learn, rather that god like knowledge creators who apply some "educational" algorithm.
Teachers should stop trying to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Instead, they should assist those with the desire and ability to learn.
Perhaps the best example of this is mathematics. Many (perhaps most) people lack the ability to do mathematics beyond what can be done by a calculator. Instead of egalitarian, futile attempts to turn these people into Eulers, teachers should focus on those with actual math ability. Civilization only needs a few people with the ability to do mathematics, the rest are incapable of it.
The coverup is much more alarming than the aliens. This coverup has been carried on both Democrats and Republicans. They hate each other! Each administration has turned down an opportunity to embarrass the other by revealing its secrets. And then there was the ex-soviet union. They used to hate us almost as much as the Democrats hate the Republicans!
What possible stimulus could be so powerfull as to cause these diverse groups that hate each other to agree on a coverup? Whatever it is must be truly terrifying. That aliens exist can not be the whole story.
Everyone seems to be focusing on the existance of UFO aliens and a coverup, but few seem to have thought about what it would mean if there were aliens associated with a secret so powerfull that could cause the world's governments to actually agree on something!
Assume the existance of the aliens and coverup, and do some deductive reasoning like the great Sherlock. What results do you get?
Is it possible that aliens are smart enough to build interstellar craft, but are unable to do simple Malthusian arithmetic?
If human beings had interstellar craft and were unopposed, how long until human beings filled up the galaxy? Do you really think the space aliens are unable to do this calculation?
Do the aliens view us as Redwood trees or as med-fly? Put yourself in the alien's place and how would you view us? The possibilities are truly alarming and no one seems to be thinking about them!
On the otherhand, we are all dead if we do not figure a way out of this solar system. (Read a newspaper.) If the aliens did it, it is not impossible. All human resources should be devoted to working on this problem.
This solution can not and will not be accepted even if it is technically correct. The purpose of the Global Warming hysteria is not to protect humanity from the negative effects of higher temperatures. The purpose of the Global Warming hysteria is to achieve a massive transfer of power from those who consume energy by burning to the political realm, that is to the government bureaucrats and legislatures. This solution obviously does not accomplish that. If you watch carefully, the global warming advocates will not even examine this "solution" before rejecting it.
Think about it. Suppose the U.S. cut fossil fuel burning 50%. Under Global warming theory, this would mean we would still be going to hell only half as fast. No, it would not even be half as fast because the developing world would not make similar cuts. But a 50% cut is totally politically impossible. It would cause a depression that would make the 1930s look like a picnic. Several years ago, when a drought caused a small electric energy shortage in California, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most liberal senators in the Senate, was demanding that the power of the federal government be used to force out of state power producers to sell power at less than market prices! No questions were asked about the CO2 produced while creating that power. All this over a small percentage cut in one state for only one mode of energy production. A 50% cut in all states for all energy sources would create a political firestorm that Washington has never seen. Anyone with half a political brain knows this.
The leadership of the global warming people also knows this. They do not intend to cut CO2 production enough to actually have an effect on total CO2 and cause economic and political chaos. That would just undermine themselves politically. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. They plan to cut fossil fuel burning just enough so that Joe Sixpack feels a little bit of pain, to make it feel like something is actually happening, but not enough so that the peasants with pitchforks throw them out.
Fossil fuel burning is fungible. If you squeeze the balloon in one spot, it just gets fatter somewhere else. In order to cause a 1% decrease in fossil burning, you have to control all burning everywhere. But this is just what the leadership of the Global Warming people want. A global warming bureaucrat everywhere important enough to have a campfire. Think of the bribes and campaign contributions this will generate. This is a total victory of politics over every other mode of decision making.
This is why politically minded people like Global warming.
OK, so now the whole problem is going to be solved by throwing some lime in the oceans? What transfer of power does that achieve? This "solution" can not be allowed.
By the way, if Global Warming advocates are motivated by the good of humanity, why is it that no one is concerned about the erruption of the Yellowstone super volcano/caldera? It has the power to wipe out several year's harvests. Killing billions by economic disruption. Why are no plans being made for national survival when this MF blows? FEMA is not going to come to the rescue. IC engines do not work with air filters filled with volcanic dust.
The answer is that this problem does not transfer power to governmental functionaries. It does not fit environmental dogma that only humanity is the problem.
The erruption of this super volcano is established scientific fact, not speculation like global warming. It is supposed to be 10**5 years overdue.
If someone does not solve this problem of the volcano, then we, or our children, or our grandchildren are all dead. Dead people do not have to think about global warming.
Regardless of any conceivable law or supreme court decision, international ( and probably some domestic ) phone calls are going to be tapped, if not my the United States, then certainly by foreign governments such as China, France, Russia, the Russian Mob, and many others.
This used to be the way the U.S. government did it. Get some client government do the actual tapping and pass the info on to the U.S. Thus avoiding any pesky laws passed by congress. I guess this got to be too inconvenient resulting in the current controversies.
It is time to face up to the reality, that no legal sheet of paper can stop a foreign government from tapping.
Suits like this one, falsely encourage people to believe that legal pieces of paper can keep their phone conversations safe. Foreign governments and criminal organizations do not care what laws congress and the courts create.
If you require confidentiality for international communications, use end to end encryption and control both ends yourself.
Because of the so called viral clause, GNU/LINUX can not be attacked by embrace, extend, extinguish.
GPL provides that any extension must be GPLed. (viral clause)
Therefore if the extension contains any positive features, these features can be embraced by the original branch! So extinguish does not work!
Nightmare scenario
If by chance, one of the BSDs had become the dominant free OS instead of LINUX, it would have been already attacked by MicroSoft using embrace, extend, and extinguish.
That is, MicroSoft would have created a windows/BSD hybrid capable of running both windows and BSD programs. As time went on, the BSD side of this monstrosity would have been extended thereby extinguishing the original BSD!
The GPL stops hybrid monster creation!
If proprietary code is mixed with GPLed code, in a distributed product, then by the terms of the GPL, that proprietary code must be released under the GPL.
This is totally unacceptable to proprietary developers. The proprietary nature of their code is the indispensable basis of all of their tricks and traps and it is the only reason they get paid! To them, it is sine qua non.
This stops hybrid monster creation.
It is also the true reason that the GPL is hated by proprietary developers and their lackeys!
RMS (Richard Stallman) is a hero who dedicated his life to the creation of the Free Software movement. He created the GPL which made the GNU/Linux possible. He personally started almost all of the parts of GNU/Linux except the kernel. He created gcc without which all the Free OS efforts would be impossible.
He failed to create the kernel because he believes in a misguided idea from academia called the micro kernel. This allowed Linux Torvalds to create the Linux kernel "just for fun". Torvalds is a talented kernel engineer, but he does not have the vision necessary to create the GPL or the GNU project. Witness the Bitkeeper Debacle.
Gates on the otherhand, is a money grubbing horse thief, that has screwed a long list of people and companies on his way to becoming a billionare. His company is a convicted monopolist. Almost everyone that has anything to do with computers (that is everyone, whether they know it or not,) has been hurt by Bill Gates.
US will be wiped out by yellowstone. Nobody cares.
on
Earthquake In China
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The US will be wiped out by the yellowstone super volcano/caldera. FEMA will not come to the rescue IC engines do not work when filters clogged with volcanic dust. This volcano blows at regular times and it is about 1000 years overdue. Land movement has been noticed in yellowstone area. This could be the last warning we will ever receive. People in the immediate vicinity (1000 miles) killed by pyroplastic flows. Pyroplastic dust cut peoples lungs to pieces. Dust on power lines short out. Can't grow crops in dust. Volcanic winter kills harvests. Dust on roofs crush houses. IC engines do not work because of dust.
There are preparations that could be made. Could end the pay farmers not to grow food program and use savings to buy excess, stockpiling food. Filter masks could be stockpiled. Filters for IC engines could be stockpiled. Power companies could be encouraged to find rapid ways to clear dust from power lines.
None of these things are being done. Without them we and/or children grandchildren are all dead.
Republicans should be told that dead people do not have to worry about Iraq.
Democrats should be told that dead people do not have to worry about the Global Warming nonsense.
If you ask for both encrypted and signed, PGP signs first then encrypts. This is the correct order, they can't see the signature unless they can decrypt. S/MIME does it in the wrong order so that everyone can see the signature. This is perfect for government agencies that want to do traffic analysis. It is so obviously wrong that the only explanation is that government agencies applied pressure to get it done that way.
Stephen Hawking asks this rhetorical question in dismissing the possibility of intelligent alien life:
If there is life elsewhere in the universe, Hawking asks why haven't we stumbled onto some alien broadcasts in space, maybe something like "alien quiz shows?"
There is an answer to this question that is so simple and elegant and decisive that it shocking that a great mind like Hawking has not already thought of it:
Because the aliens have learned to compress their data stream!
The better you compress a data stream the more it looks like random noise!
Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.
Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.
Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.
Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.
This violates two laws. First the ECPA. In order to modify a web page you have to intercept it. Ok, maybe the ISP can get out of this by getting you to wave this as part of your term of service agreement. Further, even if you could catch them in the act and get the government to prosecute, the fines would go to the government. There is no Gold here.
Second, it violate the copyright act! The right to create derived works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders! Secondly, the right to create derived works is separate from the right to copy. So even though it could be argued that the author has waved the right to copy by putting the page on the web (you have to copy to display the page, and that is the purpose of the web), this does not waive the exclusive right to create derived works. I am sure that all the proffessionally created web pages have not waved their derived works rights. If this were the case, you would see non fair use knock offs of professional web pages on the web all the time and you don't. Thirdly, the right to create derived works belongs to the WEB page creator, not to the viewer. The web page creator is not a party to the terms of service agreement, so the terms of service agreement can not wave this exclusive right! Fourthly, the copyright act has civil penalties. They range from $750 to $30,000. OK, if the judge goes for the low end this could be chicken feed. But not if you have a lot of counts!. $750 times 10,000 counts is a lot of money. In addition the amount can go up to $150,000 if the infringement is willfull which this kind clearly is. In addition you get attorneys fees. Just to be on the safe side our troll could warn the ISP. They will probably stupidly ignore it, or they would not have setup this scheme in the first place. They probably think they are protected by the terms of service agreement. They are not.
Ok, lets set up the troll. We need to find or create a web page with a lot of traffic and it would be helpfull if the author were sympathetic to the rights of computer users. Groklaw comes to mind, but I can not remember seeing any advertising there. Can anyone think of some good candidates?
Ordinarily, I am against trolls but this is an opportunity for the Good guys to profit from one! As well as reform some bad ISP behavior!
This violates two laws. First the ECPA. In order to modify a web page you have to intercept it. Ok, maybe the ISP can get out of this by getting you to wave this as part of your term of service agreement. Further, even if you could catch them in the act and get the government to prosecute, the fines would go to the government. There is no Gold here.
Second, it violate the copyright act! The
right to create derived works
is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders!
There is another kind of Internet Black Hole. Imagine that you are a UFO space alien bureaucrat. You want to do routine monitoring of the Planet Earth.
Solution: Covertly, establish an bridge between our internet and the Intergalactic network. Make this bridge look like an ordinary internet user from the point of view of earth bound monitors.
Then you can sit quietly in the equivalent of your office and learn almost everything you need to know about events on Earth.
The people of Earth know nothing about this monitoring, because the bridge is concealed as the interconnect to regular earth internet users!
Logic and discernment should tell us that the interconnects should be located somewhere with in either AOL or EarthLink! If you want to hide a needle, you look for a large heystack!
It is commonly known that many AOL users seem to be not human.
The name Earthlink is a giveaway. Who would think to take this name literally? The purloined letter method.
Super Challenge to Earth Hackers:
Locate the interconnect, and hack it extracting data from the alien network!
The aliens have used this software many times before and have had eons to debug their security. The aliens use non-earth language that no one (except for coopted government personal) has seen it before. So you have an almost unsolvable problem in both hacking and translation. Earth governments have been coopted and will work against you, so you must keep your activities secret from all earth governments as well.
(1) Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter
any person who -.......
(d) intentionally uses, or endeavors to use, the
contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication, knowing
or having reason to know that the information was obtained
through the interception of a wire, oral, or electronic
communication in violation of this subsection; or.......
shall be punished as provided in subsection (4) or shall be
subject to suit as provided in subsection (5).
There is only one question: If no one else volunteers, will SourceForge, Inc volunteer to host the movie for free!
If the answer is no, then Slashdot has no right to an opinion.
I always assume that all international phone calls are tapped, if not by the U.S. Government, then by foreign governments such as the Chinese, the French and the Israel. This used to be the way the U.S government did it all the time, get some foreign government to do the tap then pass on the info, thus avoiding any pesky laws passed by Congress.
I guess that got to be too inconvenient, hence the recent controversies.
Foreign governments are going to spy regardless of any possible law or supreme court decision.
If I need to send something secret internationally I send an encrypted email.
I can not get excited by one more government tapping international phone calls.
Please continue with the petty bickering, I find it fascinating.
We had a perfectly good constitution, with a bill of rights and that restricted to power of government.
The pesky thing, according to its original meaning, would have stopped many social programs such a social security. It would have allowed ordinary people to be armed. Rather than go to the trouble of amending the thing, they decided to turn it into a "living document" that could be redefined on the spot, by redefining what the meaning of "is" is.
Another great step in social progress.
So now the problem is: how do we write a new constitution that will allow "the people" to vote themselves free bread and circuses and free health care, and not take away anyone's rights.
Everyone is refusing to admit it to themselves. Government big enough to take care of everyone, will inevitably "take care" of every one's rights as well.
The power of self deception is such that the people of America are now selling the most precious thing they have, freedom, for the pot of pourage of the promise of free services. No one can tell them that that is what they are doing.
It will take rivers of blood, to get that freedom back!
The more government regulates to turn insurance in to a welfare program, by refusing to let insurance companies charge according to known risk, the more incentive low risk people have to buy their insurance offshore, evading government regulation.
This is beginning to happen already. Government refuses to let insurance companies exclude alcoholism because they don't want a lot of uninsured drunks clogging up the system. This hurts T-totalers like Mormons that could otherwise get a lower rate. Another example, if you are monomogous or celibate you might want to exclude AIDS, but government won't let you do that in many places with a politically correct disease, like AIDS.
At some point the amount of the exclusions potentially available, will be greater than the hassle and overhead of going offshore. That will be the tipping point. Past that point, large numbers of low risk people will buy their insurance offshore.
Of course, government will then make buying insurance offshore illegal. That will work, government would not be so dumb as to create a black market.:-) And of course people do not go offshore right now to evade taxes.:-)
Of course I hear the cries of outrage from people who think low risk people should share their good fortune with the high risk people.
According to the theory of evolution by natural selection, the struggle for existence has been going on this planet for at least 3 billion years. I don't think soft hearted sensibilities are going to stop it.
So where do I find a reputable offshore insurance company?
Slashdot Mirror
I have a secret plan to run ipods off of the Cosmic microwave background radiation.
We will never get out of the solar system using rockets.
NASA should stop fooling around with rockets and instead focus on fundamental physics that will alow us to invent a space drive that will allow us to escape.
This is possible, because the UFO space aliens have obviously done it.
Play it like a bridge hand. That is assume the cards are so placed that it is possible to make the contract, and play it that way.
Scientists already assume the "Anthropic principle", that is "if it were not true, we would not be here".
I believe that in addition we should assume the "forward looking Anthropic principle" which states "if it is not true, then we are all dead anyway".
Physicists should be told to assume that it is possible to build a space drive break the speed of light and exit the solar system. They should be assigned to go and find out how.
If they can not, we are all dead.
Google groups has to be poorly maintained. There is link on google group's front page labeled "Take the tour". It points to "http://groups.google.com/intl/en/googlegroups/tour3/index.html?lnk=hptt#" which is 404. A 404 link on a front page clearly indicates that google does not care about google groups.
But if in spite of this, you still want to use whole disk encryption, I do not think that PGP is the answer. I think that simple symmetric crypto is a better fit.
PGP's claim to fame is its public key nature. That is it solves the key distribution problem. A sender does not have to contact a receiver to agree on a symmetric key. The receiver can look up the sender's "public key" from published sources.
But in the case of whole disk encryption there is no key distribution problem. All necessary keys must exist at boot time, under any whole disk encryption scheme. Therefore the key distribution problem is solved beforehand by definition.
PGP uses a hybrid solution to the key distribution problem. Public key encryption is used to distribute a symmetric key which is used for the bulk of the work. Since in the case of whole disk encryption there is by definition no key distribution problem, the public key stuff can be eliminated resulting in stronger simpler crypto.
Also, symmetric key disk encryption is available for free (both in the since of beer and freedom) with most Linux distributions.
Do not mess with your computer's clocks twice a year. Set your computer's real time clock to UTC (world time), and forget about it. Your computer keeps time in UTC anyway. It only converts to local time when a program requests local time. If you set the real time clock to UTC, you can move your computer between timezones and never have to set a clock. Just tell the computer what zone you are in, so it can convert to local time correctly, but you have to do that anyway.
It may be somewhat more difficult to determine UTC to set your real time clock, but you only have to do it once!
Only inferior proprietary Operating Systems mess with the clock twice a year.
Why would anyone put capitol at risk in the people republic of California? The State Legislature may confiscate the investmet and use the money to buy votes. It has already done this to power distribution companies by requiring them to sell power at less than cost, putting them into bankruptcy.
It makes absolutely no sense for anyone to put capitol at risk in California. If you make a profit you are rich and therefore a suitable target for confiscation.
California is a third world country that does not know it yet.
If someone has not patented it already, I put the Idea of an aerobic keyboard and aerobic editor into the public domain! An aerobic keyboard's keys are huge, can be activated by arms an feet and require large leg and arm movements to press them. Such a keyboard will allow a geek to continue to edit while doing his exercises!
Of course specialized editors will be used to take advantage of the aerobic keyboard. I can hardly wait till emacs is modified for the aerobic keyboard, but I expect some atheists will want to use vi.
How do I publish this idea so no one else can patent it? Or is there prior art?
The usage of the word education has evolved to mean a mechanical process whereby an institution can add knowledge and wisdom to an individual, like QuickLube changing your oil.
Teachers are taught that they can "motivate" students, that is, make them want something the institution wants them to want.
It is all part of the scientific pretensions of the academic "Education departments".
Let us replace this false belief in institutional "education" with the original concept of "learning".
It used to be that a person with knowledge and wisdom was called "learned".
Teachers should be thought of as helpers who assist those who want to learn, rather that god like knowledge creators who apply some "educational" algorithm.
Teachers should stop trying to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig. Instead, they should assist those with the desire and ability to learn.
Perhaps the best example of this is mathematics. Many (perhaps most) people lack the ability to do mathematics beyond what can be done by a calculator. Instead of egalitarian, futile attempts to turn these people into Eulers, teachers should focus on those with actual math ability. Civilization only needs a few people with the ability to do mathematics, the rest are incapable of it.
What possible stimulus could be so powerfull as to cause these diverse groups that hate each other to agree on a coverup? Whatever it is must be truly terrifying. That aliens exist can not be the whole story.
Everyone seems to be focusing on the existance of UFO aliens and a coverup, but few seem to have thought about what it would mean if there were aliens associated with a secret so powerfull that could cause the world's governments to actually agree on something!
Assume the existance of the aliens and coverup, and do some deductive reasoning like the great Sherlock. What results do you get?
Is it possible that aliens are smart enough to build interstellar craft, but are unable to do simple Malthusian arithmetic?
If human beings had interstellar craft and were unopposed, how long until human beings filled up the galaxy? Do you really think the space aliens are unable to do this calculation?
Do the aliens view us as Redwood trees or as med-fly? Put yourself in the alien's place and how would you view us? The possibilities are truly alarming and no one seems to be thinking about them!
On the otherhand, we are all dead if we do not figure a way out of this solar system. (Read a newspaper.) If the aliens did it, it is not impossible. All human resources should be devoted to working on this problem.
Think about it. Suppose the U.S. cut fossil fuel burning 50%. Under Global warming theory, this would mean we would still be going to hell only half as fast. No, it would not even be half as fast because the developing world would not make similar cuts. But a 50% cut is totally politically impossible. It would cause a depression that would make the 1930s look like a picnic. Several years ago, when a drought caused a small electric energy shortage in California, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most liberal senators in the Senate, was demanding that the power of the federal government be used to force out of state power producers to sell power at less than market prices! No questions were asked about the CO2 produced while creating that power. All this over a small percentage cut in one state for only one mode of energy production. A 50% cut in all states for all energy sources would create a political firestorm that Washington has never seen. Anyone with half a political brain knows this.
The leadership of the global warming people also knows this. They do not intend to cut CO2 production enough to actually have an effect on total CO2 and cause economic and political chaos. That would just undermine themselves politically. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. They plan to cut fossil fuel burning just enough so that Joe Sixpack feels a little bit of pain, to make it feel like something is actually happening, but not enough so that the peasants with pitchforks throw them out.
Fossil fuel burning is fungible. If you squeeze the balloon in one spot, it just gets fatter somewhere else. In order to cause a 1% decrease in fossil burning, you have to control all burning everywhere. But this is just what the leadership of the Global Warming people want. A global warming bureaucrat everywhere important enough to have a campfire. Think of the bribes and campaign contributions this will generate. This is a total victory of politics over every other mode of decision making.
This is why politically minded people like Global warming.
OK, so now the whole problem is going to be solved by throwing some lime in the oceans? What transfer of power does that achieve? This "solution" can not be allowed.
By the way, if Global Warming advocates are motivated by the good of humanity, why is it that no one is concerned about the erruption of the Yellowstone super volcano/caldera? It has the power to wipe out several year's harvests. Killing billions by economic disruption. Why are no plans being made for national survival when this MF blows? FEMA is not going to come to the rescue. IC engines do not work with air filters filled with volcanic dust.
The answer is that this problem does not transfer power to governmental functionaries. It does not fit environmental dogma that only humanity is the problem.
The erruption of this super volcano is established scientific fact, not speculation like global warming. It is supposed to be 10**5 years overdue.
If someone does not solve this problem of the volcano, then we, or our children, or our grandchildren are all dead. Dead people do not have to think about global warming.
This used to be the way the U.S. government did it. Get some client government do the actual tapping and pass the info on to the U.S. Thus avoiding any pesky laws passed by congress. I guess this got to be too inconvenient resulting in the current controversies.
It is time to face up to the reality, that no legal sheet of paper can stop a foreign government from tapping.
Suits like this one, falsely encourage people to believe that legal pieces of paper can keep their phone conversations safe. Foreign governments and criminal organizations do not care what laws congress and the courts create.
If you require confidentiality for international communications, use end to end encryption and control both ends yourself.
Nightmare scenario
If by chance, one of the BSDs had become the dominant free OS instead of LINUX, it would have been already attacked by MicroSoft using embrace, extend, and extinguish. That is, MicroSoft would have created a windows/BSD hybrid capable of running both windows and BSD programs. As time went on, the BSD side of this monstrosity would have been extended thereby extinguishing the original BSD!
The GPL stops hybrid monster creation!
If proprietary code is mixed with GPLed code, in a distributed product, then by the terms of the GPL, that proprietary code must be released under the GPL. This is totally unacceptable to proprietary developers. The proprietary nature of their code is the indispensable basis of all of their tricks and traps and it is the only reason they get paid! To them, it is sine qua non. This stops hybrid monster creation. It is also the true reason that the GPL is hated by proprietary developers and their lackeys!
He failed to create the kernel because he believes in a misguided idea from academia called the micro kernel. This allowed Linux Torvalds to create the Linux kernel "just for fun". Torvalds is a talented kernel engineer, but he does not have the vision necessary to create the GPL or the GNU project. Witness the Bitkeeper Debacle.
Gates on the otherhand, is a money grubbing horse thief, that has screwed a long list of people and companies on his way to becoming a billionare. His company is a convicted monopolist. Almost everyone that has anything to do with computers (that is everyone, whether they know it or not,) has been hurt by Bill Gates.
History of free software
Meaning of free software history
Mirco kernel debate
There are preparations that could be made. Could end the pay farmers not to grow food program and use savings to buy excess, stockpiling food. Filter masks could be stockpiled. Filters for IC engines could be stockpiled. Power companies could be encouraged to find rapid ways to clear dust from power lines.
None of these things are being done. Without them we and/or children grandchildren are all dead.
Republicans should be told that dead people do not have to worry about Iraq.
Democrats should be told that dead people do not have to worry about the Global Warming nonsense.
If you ask for both encrypted and signed, PGP signs first then encrypts. This is the correct order, they can't see the signature unless they can decrypt. S/MIME does it in the wrong order so that everyone can see the signature. This is perfect for government agencies that want to do traffic analysis. It is so obviously wrong that the only explanation is that government agencies applied pressure to get it done that way.
Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.
Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.
Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.
Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.
Stephen Hawking should have thought of this.
This violates two laws. First the ECPA. In order to modify a web page you have to intercept it. Ok, maybe the ISP can get out of this by getting you to wave this as part of your term of service agreement. Further, even if you could catch them in the act and get the government to prosecute, the fines would go to the government. There is no Gold here.
Second, it violate the copyright act! The
right to create derived works
is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders! Secondly, the right to create derived works is separate from the right to copy. So even though it could be argued that the author has waved the right to copy by putting the page on the web (you have to copy to display the page, and that is the purpose of the web), this does not waive the exclusive right to create derived works. I am sure that all the proffessionally created web pages have not waved their derived works rights. If this were the case, you would see non fair use knock offs of professional web pages on the web all the time and you don't. Thirdly, the right to create derived works belongs to the WEB page creator, not to the viewer. The web page creator is not a party to the terms of service agreement, so the terms of service agreement can not wave this exclusive right! Fourthly, the copyright act has
civil penalties. They range from $750 to $30,000. OK, if the judge goes for the low end this could be chicken feed. But not if you have a lot of counts!. $750 times 10,000 counts is a lot of money. In addition the amount can go up to $150,000 if the infringement is willfull which this kind clearly is. In addition you get
attorneys fees. Just to be on the safe side our troll could warn the ISP. They will probably stupidly ignore it, or they would not have setup this scheme in the first place. They probably think they are protected by the terms of service agreement. They are not.
Ok, lets set up the troll. We need to find or create a web page with a lot of traffic and it would be helpfull if the author were sympathetic to the rights of computer users. Groklaw comes to mind, but I can not remember seeing any advertising there. Can anyone think of some good candidates?
Ordinarily, I am against trolls but this is an opportunity for the Good guys to profit from one! As well as reform some bad ISP behavior!
This violates two laws. First the ECPA. In order to modify a web page you have to intercept it. Ok, maybe the ISP can get out of this by getting you to wave this as part of your term of service agreement. Further, even if you could catch them in the act and get the government to prosecute, the fines would go to the government. There is no Gold here.
Second, it violate the copyright act! The right to create derived works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders!
Solution: Covertly, establish an bridge between our internet and the Intergalactic network. Make this bridge look like an ordinary internet user from the point of view of earth bound monitors.
Then you can sit quietly in the equivalent of your office and learn almost everything you need to know about events on Earth.
The people of Earth know nothing about this monitoring, because the bridge is concealed as the interconnect to regular earth internet users!
Logic and discernment should tell us that the interconnects should be located somewhere with in either AOL or EarthLink! If you want to hide a needle, you look for a large heystack!
It is commonly known that many AOL users seem to be not human.
The name Earthlink is a giveaway. Who would think to take this name literally? The purloined letter method.
Super Challenge to Earth Hackers:
Locate the interconnect, and hack it extracting data from the alien network!
The aliens have used this software many times before and have had eons to debug their security. The aliens use non-earth language that no one (except for coopted government personal) has seen it before. So you have an almost unsolvable problem in both hacking and translation. Earth governments have been coopted and will work against you, so you must keep your activities secret from all earth governments as well.
Good Luck.
There is only one question: If no one else volunteers, will SourceForge, Inc volunteer to host the movie for free! If the answer is no, then Slashdot has no right to an opinion.
I guess that got to be too inconvenient, hence the recent controversies.
Foreign governments are going to spy regardless of any possible law or supreme court decision.
If I need to send something secret internationally I send an encrypted email.
I can not get excited by one more government tapping international phone calls.
Please continue with the petty bickering, I find it fascinating.
The pesky thing, according to its original meaning, would have stopped many social programs such a social security. It would have allowed ordinary people to be armed. Rather than go to the trouble of amending the thing, they decided to turn it into a "living document" that could be redefined on the spot, by redefining what the meaning of "is" is.
Another great step in social progress.
So now the problem is: how do we write a new constitution that will allow "the people" to vote themselves free bread and circuses and free health care, and not take away anyone's rights.
Everyone is refusing to admit it to themselves. Government big enough to take care of everyone, will inevitably "take care" of every one's rights as well.
The power of self deception is such that the people of America are now selling the most precious thing they have, freedom, for the pot of pourage of the promise of free services. No one can tell them that that is what they are doing.
It will take rivers of blood, to get that freedom back!
This is beginning to happen already. Government refuses to let insurance companies exclude alcoholism because they don't want a lot of uninsured drunks clogging up the system. This hurts T-totalers like Mormons that could otherwise get a lower rate. Another example, if you are monomogous or celibate you might want to exclude AIDS, but government won't let you do that in many places with a politically correct disease, like AIDS.
At some point the amount of the exclusions potentially available, will be greater than the hassle and overhead of going offshore. That will be the tipping point. Past that point, large numbers of low risk people will buy their insurance offshore.
Of course, government will then make buying insurance offshore illegal. That will work, government would not be so dumb as to create a black market. :-) And of course people do not go offshore right now to evade taxes. :-)
Of course I hear the cries of outrage from people who think low risk people should share their good fortune with the high risk people.
According to the theory of evolution by natural selection, the struggle for existence has been going on this planet for at least 3 billion years. I don't think soft hearted sensibilities are going to stop it.
So where do I find a reputable offshore insurance company?