If you have TrueCrypt on there and they suspect something, they'll ask you to unlock it. If you do, then why bother having it at all? If you don't, best case you'll lose your laptop.
No, it won't work. They'll see TrueCrypt on there, they'll know (or suspect) there's data of interest on there, and at best you may never get your laptop back. (And even TrueCrypt is VERY clear stating that they can not guarantee that a transient "traveler" execution or removed install will be undetectable!)
Unfortunately when the battle is between you and your data and the guy who had a bad night last night, you're not going to win.
If you think otherwise, because of human rights, constitutional rights or any other right you believe you may have, you may want to give a moment of thought to the people in Guantanamo.
Can you play games with the government? Sure. Ask yourself, really, though if you think that right is worth giving up your freedom or your life for.
Its noble to think its not, but I doubt many people would agree with you.
This isn't the movies, and the good guy often doesn't win at the end.
I used to have a dual CPU P3 1U rackmount server I used for those sort of things. A day of running it through a Kill-A-Watt showed me it was costing almost $40 a month in electricity.
That buys a LOT of hosting when you look at places like dreamhost, etc.
I live in new england, Massachusetts, the next town over from Boston. Massachusetts is not the next town over from Boston, although I know people from Boston sometimes seem to think it is.
Is why we're once again bucking the trend and doing something different?
A lot of the world is using chip+PIN, which while not perfect is still drastically better than what we've got, can't be sniffed from remote, is much more of a distinct action and has a huge install base.
I'm not sure what this obsession with RFID payment methods is.
The corruption is an entirely different matter. Unless 100% of any money taken in from higher gas taxes is lost to corruption, you still have a net increase in money going to maintain the roads if you raise taxes.
You should see what you pay in other taxes. Gas taxes pay for the roads (and the taxes are not high enough based on the state of the roads in most of the country).
What builders of EV and alternate fuel cars tend to learn the hard way is if you're not paying taxes on your fuel, you're breaking the law.
Most states have substantial (to the tune of $500 or more) additional yearly registration or excise taxes which have to be payed on pluggable EVs.
You're not going to escape the gas tax one way or another.
You know, that sounds ridiculous to me, as well, but I've known enough people working on various imaging and other classified projects to know that these things aren't done arbitrarily and to know that sometimes requirements are dictated down because the real goal is some secondary effect of the requirement.
I don't think its unexpected, but I think its an unsafe assumption we tend to make when talking about life elsewhere in the universe that the development of social intelligence is really an evolutionary advantage. To the best of our knowledge its only happened a few times on Earth. It didn't help species like the Neanderthal, and our genes tell us we almost went extint at least once. There's substantial evidence that the sequence of events that lead to us becoming socially intelligent is uncommon -- us and our ancestors, perhaps elephants and some of the marine mammals.
But to be intelligent AND able to communicate between the stars means also developing technology, and there's possibly even LESS evolutionary pressure for that. For it to be beneficial you need to have some sort of external pressure that keeps a species from occupying once niche in the environment. You need that pressure to happen to a socially intelligent species (because you need to be able to share and communicate accumulated knowledge). You also need to presumably have fairly fine motor control -- elephants may be intelligent but they're never going to be building electronic devices, or mining, constructing habitats, etc.
You need to develop technology to a fairly advanced level without killing off your planet. You need to develop energy sources capable of powering long distance travel and communication... and you need to have something that drives you to that. Remember our brains have evolved to make us curious, to want to travel, to want to expand and we still don't have the motivation as a species to take the next step yet.
Thats a LOT of ifs. The universe could be teeming with life and most of it is likely not intelligent. And the universe could be teeming with intelligent life that never became technical.
Remember, success is survival of the species, not inventing TV or space flight. If it takes eight billion years between the development of life and the death of a star to weed out life that didn't evolve to travel between stars, there hasn't been much time to weed out the ones that didn't. Think planetary evolution on the scale of billions of years. We just haven't had that many billions yet.
(This ended up both longer and somewhat more rambling than I intended...)
I don't know if you have worked on the things you claim and just are confused now, or if you worked for companies that did those things and are just overstating your involvement, or what... but I do find your reply funny in a way. If you think your understanding of modern supercomputing architectures and cognitive science is up to the task, I'm sure you can find someone to back the prototyping of such a system.
Clearly they were made by intelligent life forms that no longer exist because moments later their particle accelerator produced a micro black hole AND a stragelet all at once.
FWIW, we do NOT have an infrastructure for distributing liquid fuels that are predominantly ethanol... thats one of the real big problems. It corrodes the living sh#% out of virtually all of our liquid fuel transportation infrastructure.
Cheap ethanol is good if the production of biomass to produce it doesn't displace food production, and $1/gallon would certainly be nice, but we have to be realistic about ALL the problems an ethanol-based fuel economy will entail... replacing all the pipelines being just the start.
We, as a species, haven't managed to solve the problem of destroying primitive cultures *here* or a thousand other problems that suggest not corrupting alien cultures is something we shouldn't worry too much about.
I mean seriously -- if we think our technology and culture is okay for the entire planet, why should we stop here?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you miss the point.
If you have TrueCrypt on there and they suspect something, they'll ask you to unlock it. If you do, then why bother having it at all? If you don't, best case you'll lose your laptop.
So what benefit does it buy you in that case?
No, it won't work. They'll see TrueCrypt on there, they'll know (or suspect) there's data of interest on there, and at best you may never get your laptop back. (And even TrueCrypt is VERY clear stating that they can not guarantee that a transient "traveler" execution or removed install will be undetectable!)
Unfortunately when the battle is between you and your data and the guy who had a bad night last night, you're not going to win.
If you think otherwise, because of human rights, constitutional rights or any other right you believe you may have, you may want to give a moment of thought to the people in Guantanamo.
Can you play games with the government? Sure. Ask yourself, really, though if you think that right is worth giving up your freedom or your life for.
Its noble to think its not, but I doubt many people would agree with you.
This isn't the movies, and the good guy often doesn't win at the end.
Seriously.
I used to have a dual CPU P3 1U rackmount server I used for those sort of things. A day of running it through a Kill-A-Watt showed me it was costing almost $40 a month in electricity.
That buys a LOT of hosting when you look at places like dreamhost, etc.
Is why we're once again bucking the trend and doing something different?
A lot of the world is using chip+PIN, which while not perfect is still drastically better than what we've got, can't be sniffed from remote, is much more of a distinct action and has a huge install base.
I'm not sure what this obsession with RFID payment methods is.
I think you may be missing the subtle sarcasm and passing commentary on the quality of Slashdot editors...
Whew yeah, those are amazing. World-changing, even.
What am I looking at?
The corruption is an entirely different matter. Unless 100% of any money taken in from higher gas taxes is lost to corruption, you still have a net increase in money going to maintain the roads if you raise taxes.
You should see what you pay in other taxes. Gas taxes pay for the roads (and the taxes are not high enough based on the state of the roads in most of the country).
What builders of EV and alternate fuel cars tend to learn the hard way is if you're not paying taxes on your fuel, you're breaking the law.
Most states have substantial (to the tune of $500 or more) additional yearly registration or excise taxes which have to be payed on pluggable EVs.
You're not going to escape the gas tax one way or another.
Um, some of us live in states that don't have sales tax.
And we've got guns.
And we believe we should live free or die.
Just sayin'.
(Actually I have no guns, but I think all my neighbors do...)
You know, that sounds ridiculous to me, as well, but I've known enough people working on various imaging and other classified projects to know that these things aren't done arbitrarily and to know that sometimes requirements are dictated down because the real goal is some secondary effect of the requirement.
I don't think its unexpected, but I think its an unsafe assumption we tend to make when talking about life elsewhere in the universe that the development of social intelligence is really an evolutionary advantage. To the best of our knowledge its only happened a few times on Earth. It didn't help species like the Neanderthal, and our genes tell us we almost went extint at least once. There's substantial evidence that the sequence of events that lead to us becoming socially intelligent is uncommon -- us and our ancestors, perhaps elephants and some of the marine mammals.
But to be intelligent AND able to communicate between the stars means also developing technology, and there's possibly even LESS evolutionary pressure for that. For it to be beneficial you need to have some sort of external pressure that keeps a species from occupying once niche in the environment. You need that pressure to happen to a socially intelligent species (because you need to be able to share and communicate accumulated knowledge). You also need to presumably have fairly fine motor control -- elephants may be intelligent but they're never going to be building electronic devices, or mining, constructing habitats, etc.
You need to develop technology to a fairly advanced level without killing off your planet. You need to develop energy sources capable of powering long distance travel and communication... and you need to have something that drives you to that. Remember our brains have evolved to make us curious, to want to travel, to want to expand and we still don't have the motivation as a species to take the next step yet.
Thats a LOT of ifs. The universe could be teeming with life and most of it is likely not intelligent. And the universe could be teeming with intelligent life that never became technical.
Remember, success is survival of the species, not inventing TV or space flight. If it takes eight billion years between the development of life and the death of a star to weed out life that didn't evolve to travel between stars, there hasn't been much time to weed out the ones that didn't. Think planetary evolution on the scale of billions of years. We just haven't had that many billions yet.
(This ended up both longer and somewhat more rambling than I intended...)
Imagine how he's going to feel when he realizes all the computers run Windows 2000.
I don't know if you have worked on the things you claim and just are confused now, or if you worked for companies that did those things and are just overstating your involvement, or what... but I do find your reply funny in a way. If you think your understanding of modern supercomputing architectures and cognitive science is up to the task, I'm sure you can find someone to back the prototyping of such a system.
However, this sort of reminds me of the guy who inspired this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E87WAAJt6ZI
Don't be that guy.
Yeah, thats all we need to break the laws of physics, a billion PCs all working together!
Computers can't consider anything. They can't contemplate, they can't theorize.
They pretty much do math.
Of course as I read your post, I realize you're probably joking. Oh well, my statement stands.
Clearly they were made by intelligent life forms that no longer exist because moments later their particle accelerator produced a micro black hole AND a stragelet all at once.
Woh, I swear I thought you said fscking her right pooper and I wondered what kind of girl this is that has a right and left pooper.
Lots of engine blocks. Most heads. Most valves. Most fuel lines. Most pipelines, at least parts of them.
What the body is made out of doesn't matter. You're not pumping fuel through the body.
Yes, the corrosion of aluminum...
FWIW, we do NOT have an infrastructure for distributing liquid fuels that are predominantly ethanol... thats one of the real big problems. It corrodes the living sh#% out of virtually all of our liquid fuel transportation infrastructure.
Cheap ethanol is good if the production of biomass to produce it doesn't displace food production, and $1/gallon would certainly be nice, but we have to be realistic about ALL the problems an ethanol-based fuel economy will entail... replacing all the pipelines being just the start.
We, as a species, haven't managed to solve the problem of destroying primitive cultures *here* or a thousand other problems that suggest not corrupting alien cultures is something we shouldn't worry too much about.
I mean seriously -- if we think our technology and culture is okay for the entire planet, why should we stop here?
Um, you can do that with gasoline, too.
Wow I read that as Madonna, and was going to make some crack about crying for Argentina...