Whatever Johnny Law might want, encryption is too essential to too many powerful industries to return to the bass-ackwards regulation we were subject to in years past.
Besides, restrictions on encryption technology can't stuff this cat back into the bag; the software is out there, and that's that.
Intelligence and police agencies have been using other techniques to get around the use of encryption since the late '80s, from keystroke logging hardware slipped into a suspect's keyboard (what was that about a passphrase?) to the simple and ancient techniques of Van Eyck/TEMPEST monitoring (nabbing the cleartext from the RF emissions of the CPU or display).
Informed sources tell me the NSA has been breaking PGP for years, but they'll generally only bother in cases where side-channel attacks are unfeasible, due to the required resources in time and labor.
Someone's pushing an agenda with this article, but I rather suspect it's Gannett (owners of USAToday) and CNN.com, who's essentially paraphrasing the USAToday article. Sadly for us/. paranoiacs, it's probably no agenda more sinister than "attract readers with inflammatory stories", just like many other sites we know and love.:)
I swear, all these comments along the lines of "well, FreeBSD might be better for big servers, but..." comments crack me up. Fact is, Linux (particularly the 2.4 series kernels) trounces FreeBSD when it comes to scaling on high-end (read: SMP) x86 hardware.
FreeBSD is probably still better for single-cpu boxes (think Hotmail or Yahoo's server farms), though I haven't yet tested FreeBSD against a 2.4 kernel in this configuration.
Don't take this as a flame against FreeBSD; I cut my teeth on netbsd and 386BSD back in the day. I just find the lack of proper SMP support is a showstopper when it comes to deploying Free/OpenBSD in many environments.
He was given a drug that made him feel sick before the sessions, as is explicitly stated and shown in the movie.
He was told they were vitamins.
/. has a good design - "Light" mode
on
Freshmeat II
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· Score: 2
Go to your homepage preferences in your user page and select "Light" mode. Set your preferred text/bg/link colors in your browser. Enjoy incredibly fast, clean slashdot.
Not a table in sight, just the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text.
-Isaac
What's legal isn't necessarily ethical or smart.
on
Kid Clicks For Sale
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· Score: 2
First of all, the title of this article is *extremely* misleading. This company is not selling "clicks" or any other type of advertising to children, nor are they providing confidential, or individually traceable information to advertisers. What they are doing, is selling statistical information about the surfing preferences of kids to potential advertisers. This article was written to intentionally put a shady, dishonest spin on N2H2's legitimate business practices and to try and spread Taco's own paranoid propaganda.
First of all, one cannot gather "statistical information" without gathering identifiable information about individual requests (IP address, time, URL requested, response returned). Second, identifiable information frequently appears in the URL field when browsing personalized sites or sites with lots of dynamic content. Let's not labor under the illusion that it's even possible to collect "clean" data.
That said, I want to know a few things about N2H2:
Why are schools paying money for a product that itself generates revenue for the software vendor? That's like paying to join an ad network.
How is N2H2 collecting this log data from schools? Is the collection mechanism silently built into the software, and if so was this disclosed to N2H2 software customers? (as opposed to their other customers - marketers purchasing the browsing habits of school children and library patrons)
What are N2H2's data retention policies? Whatever they might choose to sell, I suspect they're hoarding every scrap of data they come across.
Why are schools providing log data which will inevitably contain personally identifiable information to N2H2?
What I fail to understand about the role of journalists in this so-called "power crisis" is why everyone's ignoring the obvious question: Who owns California's so-called "investor owned" utilities? Take a look at San Diego Gas and Electric - one of California's "financially shaken" utilities -
it's owned by wildly profitable Sempra Energy.
Similarly, you'd think that PG&E
was simply the primary utility company in Northern California - wrong! It's a holding company that owns both out-of-state generating plants (in one arm) and the near-bankrupt utility (in the other) and a VC firm on the side (because they're from California, I guess). They reported positive earnings of 42 cents a share in December.
Sterling does mention that CA's energy usage is well below peak summer usage, but it bears repeating. The "shortage" is totally artificial, with generating companies shutting down generating capacity for "maintainance" at an unprecedented rate. Ever seen "Chinatown"? Remember the "water shortage" caused by deliberate dumping of reserviors into the ocean? Same deal here.
What we have here is a choice example of what happens when regulated industries get to write their own regulations by proxy.
Transistor radios typically contain an RF-emmitting local oscillator circuit.
Try and unpowered, crystal AM radio like the children's kits they sell at Radio Shaft. You might get some funny looks whipping it out on the plane to listen to Paul Harvey.
I knew I had heard of the so-called "Greening Earth Society" before, but couldn't quite place them. Then I read to the bottom of their "The CO2 Issue"
page:
Western Fuels Association, founders of the Greening Earth Society, continues to engage this issue at a leadership level. One way we do this is by partnership with the National Mining Association (NMA). Western Fuels and NMA will dedicate substantial resources in resisting the EPAs initiative to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Western Fuels also continues to defend Americans reliance on fossil fuels through grassroots mobilization.
Folks, I won't even bother making fun of this. The "Greening Earth Society" is a joke of an astroturf campaing fronted by a coal mining cartel. Couple the link to obvious astroturf site with nonsense sentences like "Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of on an expanding popular", and you've got a rather sad troll. But at least Mr. Alien54 is indirectly helping to spread the word of Greening Earth's astroturf status.
Sorry, Bayer didn't lose their Aspirin trademark in WWII - it was actually stripped from them (at least within the US, France, UK, and Russia) by the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919 at the end of WWI!
Another trademark was stripped from Bayer in that treaty - Heroin.
Bayer AG still owns the "Aspirin" trademark in most of the world. They lost their trademark on Aspirin in the US not as a result of disuse, but of WWII.
Check out aspirin.com for yourself.
"Kleenex" is very much a registered and protected trademark, despite the yabberings of the uninformed.
To test this, I propose the author attempt to bring to market a line of facial tissues called "Kleenex", and see exactly how long it takes for him to hear from the Kimberly-Clark corporation. Indeed, even if he were marketing Kleenex-brand Bowling Balls, I suspect he'd hear from K-C. This is such a stupid myth that would never be propagated but for poor fact-checking.
I've been a happy Ricochet 128k user for months, since the day it became officially available in the SF Bay Area. Currently, 128k service is available in most major US cities (NYC, Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose), 28.8k (R1) service is available in DC and Seattle while the 128k upgrade takes place, and new 128k buildouts are in progress in Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Salt Lake City, and St Louis.
Service is good, the external modem includes both serial and USB interfaces, and both work beautifully under linux. The modem is a "standard" USB modem and works with the ACM driver; the connection is simply a high-speed PPP connection. It's amazing how liberating the service is, if you have a laptop. It works just about anywhere in the cities with coverage, it's flat-rate, and there are no "roaming fees" letting me travel back East and get online just as I would at home.
I prepaid $825 for a year of service, which works out to $68.75/month - acceptable for my primary connection. It's a bit like wireless ISDN -
fast enough for streaming audio or kernel source downloads, but not DSL or cable speeds. At times I've seen >220 kbits/sec, but 80-140 is typical. Latency is too high for shooters (typically 200-600 msec - the problem is the latency fluctuates), but I can listen to a 64kbit shoutcast/icecast MP3 stream while playing gtetrinet without a hitch.
It's not telephone service, and isn't meant to be, which is why it works so well. Who needs G3?
Let's give this latest clever attempt to coopt our eyeballs and dollars the amount of attention it deserves - i.e. none but the energy expended to warn others away.
Remember that the dollars you give the studio when you go to the theatre are being used to lobby for laws like the DMCA, wage lawsuits like MPAA vs.
Eric Corley, and lobby the FCC on copy-controls for digital broadcasts (just to name a few of the more well-known examples of the ways the MPAA members are attempting to limit your freedom).
Let's not give these pricks the chance to use our own money against us.
If, perchance, you're actually boycotting DVDs and MPAA members because you disagree with the law that they lobbied through, get off your ass and attack the law on the battleground where it matters-- Congress. Your boycott is ineffectual and your voice unheard until you do. Go call your elected representatives. Daily. Meanwhile, quit urging people to join you in a futile struggle and then assuming a holier-than-thou posture when they fail to. Some of us recognize a flawed battle plan and the resulting lost cause.
Hey, you don't know me. It's all about the law. In fact, I just moved across the country to gain residency in California for the express purpose of applying to law school (much easier to get into the *excellent* law schools at Berkeley and UCLA as a resident), specifically because this shit pisses me off. I've written more letters than I can remember to my representatives and senators, going back to when the DMCA was still Orrin Hatch's baby and not yet law of the land.
The struggle is not futile - it just has to be taken to the people. I know Disney doesn't miss my money alone, but I can't attack them with one hand and feed them with the other (if that makes sense).
In other words, you are letting CSS control your viewing habits. You are letting the DVD industry take away something from you that you love: watching movies.
Umm, it's about balance. I love watching movies much less than I love being true to my ideals, and much *MUCH* less than I love my freedom.
It's not CSS that's controlling my viewing habits - it's my conscious choice not to give up my time and money to those who are actively selling our freedoms up the river in exchange for a rigged, anti-competitive marketplace. Fuck that shit.
Just wanted to remind everyone considering this purchase that the dollars you spend on this Disney-marketed DVD will be used to lobby congress for longer copyright terms and legislation restricting what you can do with hardware/software you have legally purchased. As a bonsu, your dollars will also prop up the ongoing lawsuits against programmers and journalists accused of the heinous crime of spreading knowledge.
Don't buy it, don't go see their crap in theaters, don't watch their TV networks, don't give them your own money and time only to let it be used against you!
PBS was not involved. PBS is TV. NPR was involved, and I'm pissed. They get no further contributions from me (a once-loyal listener *AND CONTRIBUTOR*) for pulling this shit. In fact, I call up my stations during pledge drives just to remind them that I normally would give cash, but since NPR got in bed with the NAB, they can go fuck themselves.
NPR was supposed to be about alternative (i.e. non-corporate) voices on the radio.
-Isaac
APRS would probably be a good starting point.
on
The Encryption Wars
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· Score: 2
Check out what ham-radio operators are doing with APRS - basically automated location broadcasting with some messaging features tacked on, using packet radio.
I can walk over to my local Circuit Shitty today and buy a $199 Philips or
$150 D-Link portable CD/MP3-CDR(W) player (there's even an off-brand "Classic" MP3CDRW player for $99), a $299
Aiwa car unit, a $299 Philips mini-system (sorry, no link. I think the model is FWM55M37),
and an Apex
or Aiwa (model XD-DV370, I think) or Raite or similar DVD/VCD/SVCD/MP3 player for ~$200, and have MP3 capability with media compatibility across all typical listening environments for under $1000.
Ogg can't chain me to my computer or even to a PDA and expect to thrive. Ogg should spend some time bringing their codec to the typical embedded A/V processors found in the new generation of cheap OEM DVD and CD chipsets for consumer electronics (like the ESS VideoDrive 4308 and 4318, found in most of the DVD/VCD/MP3 combo players)
-Isaac
You know, with an Aiwa/Philips/Apex combo...
on
Gifts For Geeks
·
· Score: 2
With this Aiwa car unit,
the Philips Expanium portable, and the
Apex or other similar DVD/VCD/SVCD/MP3 player (Raite 715, etc.), you could have MP3 functionality with media compatibility across all listening environments for under $1000. That wouldn't be a bad gift package!
A digicam that uploaded images as you shot them to a remote server would be perfect when confronted with cops and/or other hired goons trying to confiscate the incriminating snaps you just shot of them. Now *THAT* would be useful.
Might take something like 128k Ricochet to upload high-res images in reasonable time, but a 640x480 jpeg at a high compression rate is small enough to send usefully at 19.2k (CDPD) or even 9.6k (GSM) rates.
Remember kids, your keystroke logger records EVERY keystroke. Typed out a phrase that might be a little too strong, but then thought better and erased it? Logged. No opportunity for revision, as soon as you press the key the FIRST time, the event is recorded, even if it was never saved to a file/sent in email/sent in chat.
You could type "I accept suitcases full of cash in exchange for contraband" at a random and inappropriate time, and it would be logged, even though your sentiment was not reflected in any saved file or communication.
Creepy, when you think about it. How many times have I thought better of saying something in chat or email, for fear of it being interpreted the wrong way, and erased it before sending? More than a few times, anyways. If my employer or my gov't had tapped those messages at the keystroke level, I might as well have sent them the moment I typed them. Ugh.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, restrictions on encryption technology can't stuff this cat back into the bag; the software is out there, and that's that.
Intelligence and police agencies have been using other techniques to get around the use of encryption since the late '80s, from keystroke logging hardware slipped into a suspect's keyboard (what was that about a passphrase?) to the simple and ancient techniques of Van Eyck/TEMPEST monitoring (nabbing the cleartext from the RF emissions of the CPU or display).
Informed sources tell me the NSA has been breaking PGP for years, but they'll generally only bother in cases where side-channel attacks are unfeasible, due to the required resources in time and labor.
Someone's pushing an agenda with this article, but I rather suspect it's Gannett (owners of USAToday) and CNN.com, who's essentially paraphrasing the USAToday article. Sadly for us /. paranoiacs, it's probably no agenda more sinister than "attract readers with inflammatory stories", just like many other sites we know and love. :)
-Isaac
How about mature, working SMP support?
I swear, all these comments along the lines of "well, FreeBSD might be better for big servers, but..." comments crack me up. Fact is, Linux (particularly the 2.4 series kernels) trounces FreeBSD when it comes to scaling on high-end (read: SMP) x86 hardware.
FreeBSD is probably still better for single-cpu boxes (think Hotmail or Yahoo's server farms), though I haven't yet tested FreeBSD against a 2.4 kernel in this configuration.
Don't take this as a flame against FreeBSD; I cut my teeth on netbsd and 386BSD back in the day. I just find the lack of proper SMP support is a showstopper when it comes to deploying Free/OpenBSD in many environments.
-Isaac
He was given a drug that made him feel sick before the sessions, as is explicitly stated and shown in the movie.
He was told they were vitamins.
Not a table in sight, just the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text.
-Isaac
First of all, one cannot gather "statistical information" without gathering identifiable information about individual requests (IP address, time, URL requested, response returned). Second, identifiable information frequently appears in the URL field when browsing personalized sites or sites with lots of dynamic content. Let's not labor under the illusion that it's even possible to collect "clean" data.
That said, I want to know a few things about N2H2:
- Why are schools paying money for a product that itself generates revenue for the software vendor? That's like paying to join an ad network.
- How is N2H2 collecting this log data from schools? Is the collection mechanism silently built into the software, and if so was this disclosed to N2H2 software customers? (as opposed to their other customers - marketers purchasing the browsing habits of school children and library patrons)
- What are N2H2's data retention policies? Whatever they might choose to sell, I suspect they're hoarding every scrap of data they come across.
- Why are schools providing log data which will inevitably contain personally identifiable information to N2H2?
I smell a class action waiting to happen.-Isaac
Sterling does mention that CA's energy usage is well below peak summer usage, but it bears repeating. The "shortage" is totally artificial, with generating companies shutting down generating capacity for "maintainance" at an unprecedented rate. Ever seen "Chinatown"? Remember the "water shortage" caused by deliberate dumping of reserviors into the ocean? Same deal here.
What we have here is a choice example of what happens when regulated industries get to write their own regulations by proxy.
-Isaac
Try and unpowered, crystal AM radio like the children's kits they sell at Radio Shaft. You might get some funny looks whipping it out on the plane to listen to Paul Harvey.
-Isaac
Folks, I won't even bother making fun of this. The "Greening Earth Society" is a joke of an astroturf campaing fronted by a coal mining cartel. Couple the link to obvious astroturf site with nonsense sentences like "Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of on an expanding popular", and you've got a rather sad troll. But at least Mr. Alien54 is indirectly helping to spread the word of Greening Earth's astroturf status.
-Isaac
Another trademark was stripped from Bayer in that treaty - Heroin.
See about.com's aspirin page.
-Isaac
-Isaac
To test this, I propose the author attempt to bring to market a line of facial tissues called "Kleenex", and see exactly how long it takes for him to hear from the Kimberly-Clark corporation. Indeed, even if he were marketing Kleenex-brand Bowling Balls, I suspect he'd hear from K-C. This is such a stupid myth that would never be propagated but for poor fact-checking.
-Isaac
Service is good, the external modem includes both serial and USB interfaces, and both work beautifully under linux. The modem is a "standard" USB modem and works with the ACM driver; the connection is simply a high-speed PPP connection. It's amazing how liberating the service is, if you have a laptop. It works just about anywhere in the cities with coverage, it's flat-rate, and there are no "roaming fees" letting me travel back East and get online just as I would at home.
I prepaid $825 for a year of service, which works out to $68.75/month - acceptable for my primary connection. It's a bit like wireless ISDN - fast enough for streaming audio or kernel source downloads, but not DSL or cable speeds. At times I've seen >220 kbits/sec, but 80-140 is typical. Latency is too high for shooters (typically 200-600 msec - the problem is the latency fluctuates), but I can listen to a 64kbit shoutcast/icecast MP3 stream while playing gtetrinet without a hitch.
It's not telephone service, and isn't meant to be, which is why it works so well. Who needs G3?
Just one data point in the US,
-Isaac
Remember that the dollars you give the studio when you go to the theatre are being used to lobby for laws like the DMCA, wage lawsuits like MPAA vs. Eric Corley, and lobby the FCC on copy-controls for digital broadcasts (just to name a few of the more well-known examples of the ways the MPAA members are attempting to limit your freedom).
Let's not give these pricks the chance to use our own money against us.
-Isaac
I bet they sound better than your winds.
My winds sound like Bill the Cat - "Thpppt".
Hey, you don't know me. It's all about the law. In fact, I just moved across the country to gain residency in California for the express purpose of applying to law school (much easier to get into the *excellent* law schools at Berkeley and UCLA as a resident), specifically because this shit pisses me off. I've written more letters than I can remember to my representatives and senators, going back to when the DMCA was still Orrin Hatch's baby and not yet law of the land.
The struggle is not futile - it just has to be taken to the people. I know Disney doesn't miss my money alone, but I can't attack them with one hand and feed them with the other (if that makes sense).
-Isaac
Umm, it's about balance. I love watching movies much less than I love being true to my ideals, and much *MUCH* less than I love my freedom.
It's not CSS that's controlling my viewing habits - it's my conscious choice not to give up my time and money to those who are actively selling our freedoms up the river in exchange for a rigged, anti-competitive marketplace. Fuck that shit.
-Isaac
Don't buy it, don't go see their crap in theaters, don't watch their TV networks, don't give them your own money and time only to let it be used against you!
-Isaac
jafac's quoting one of the greatest movies ever, "Repo Man".
-Isaac
NPR was supposed to be about alternative (i.e. non-corporate) voices on the radio.
-Isaac
-Isaac
Competition (between companies) isn't a problem. Cooperation (aka collusion) is a problem.
Competition gives you faster hardware, low-cost bandwidth, cheap long-distance service, and other nice things.
Cooperation/Collusion gives you MSFT OEM licensing agreements, the MPAA, the RIAA, price-fixing, etc. etc.
If I read swordgeek right, he's saying the same thing.
-Isaac
Ogg can't chain me to my computer or even to a PDA and expect to thrive. Ogg should spend some time bringing their codec to the typical embedded A/V processors found in the new generation of cheap OEM DVD and CD chipsets for consumer electronics (like the ESS VideoDrive 4308 and 4318, found in most of the DVD/VCD/MP3 combo players)
-Isaac
-Isaac
A digicam that uploaded images as you shot them to a remote server would be perfect when confronted with cops and/or other hired goons trying to confiscate the incriminating snaps you just shot of them. Now *THAT* would be useful.
Might take something like 128k Ricochet to upload high-res images in reasonable time, but a 640x480 jpeg at a high compression rate is small enough to send usefully at 19.2k (CDPD) or even 9.6k (GSM) rates.
-Isaac
You could type "I accept suitcases full of cash in exchange for contraband" at a random and inappropriate time, and it would be logged, even though your sentiment was not reflected in any saved file or communication.
Creepy, when you think about it. How many times have I thought better of saying something in chat or email, for fear of it being interpreted the wrong way, and erased it before sending? More than a few times, anyways. If my employer or my gov't had tapped those messages at the keystroke level, I might as well have sent them the moment I typed them. Ugh.
-Isaac