... the USA abusing its baserights in my country (its ally) still further to spy on its allies popluation with these nifty new tools. What this ammounts to is that the USA's 1984 style surveillance has been reduced in scope, refocused and that the current US administration has (reluctantly) decided to define civil liberties as something that is only valid if you are a US citizen on US soil. I suppose that democracy and civil liberties are for everyone, but Non US citizens in general and US citizens abroad are only entitled to the limited edtition.
It would be even cooler if this thing was submergable, imagine what an LAPD helo would look like patrolling the city with sonar bouys and acoustic torpedos in place.
"Krusty is really a secret agent, engaged in counter-spying upon a group in Springfield. The group is there, trying to find out the amphibious cars (made only in Springfield) are made and what keeps them afloat."
They did not listen in on something that was broadcast to the entire internet. What the article stated was that the RIAA had been:
"tracking what was passing through the woman's internet connection"
That implies that they intercepted a packet stream one computer to another, meant for nobody other than the people at each end, and scrutinised the content. This sure sounds similar to intercepting an analog audio stream from one phone to another since this is also only intended to be witnessed by the people operating each telephone unless of course a Judge gives permission for bugging.
"the RIAA violated state and federal laws by tracking what was passing through the woman's internet connection"
Even the FBI needs a warrant to search or bug anything and that sure sounds like bugging to me. So who died and made the RIAA a government agency more powerful than the FBI? Why does the FBI need a warrant to bug the Mafia's telephones but these guys are:
..immume from rules on unreasonable searches on the internet, because it [RIAA] did not have links with law enforcement agencies
If this quote is a stement of fact and in vew of the above claim that the RIAA intercepted this girls internet traffic; this dude is claiming that anybody who is not a cop is for all pracical purposes allowed to bug anybody eles telephone line with impunity because pesky annoyances like search warrants only apply to cops.
.... for a while now. A couple of years ago the Dansish verson of RIAA set up a sting in the Student village where I lived. They nabbed one of the MP3/FTP site operators and cut him a deal. Then they monitored the traffic on the net for a few months in kahoots with the local net admins whom they also had by the balls. When they were good and ready people got billed. Some of these bills ran into the hundreds of thousands of Danish Krona. Of course it had no real effect on music piracy in Denmark, but it did cause a very sharp sore in the sales of USB hard disk adaptor boxes. Cheap and easily hidden!!
[RIAA vice-president] Mr Oppenheim also said the RIAA was immume from rules on unreasonable searches on the internet, because it did not have links with law enforcement agencies.
So if I hack Mr. Oppenheims computer and "unreasonably" search it (i.e. rifle through his private data) I am immune to rules on unreasonable searches because I am a hacker and not a cop? Nice to know.... Now where did I put that SubSeven kit.....
... is quite as galactically stupid as Microsoft/Apple seem to think. Microsoft for one has been very reluctant to introduce new features on its desktop. Just for example it has Microsoft years to finally produce a usable virtual desktop manager and even then it is not a part of the standard Windows XP installation. It is hidden on an obscure webpage deep inside the Microsoft website under the label "Power toys". I have introduced quite a number of "average Windows users" to the MSVDM and none of them took more than 60 seconds to grasp the concept of Multiple desktops.
Half the N-Polar icecap melting will have an effect and that effect is to decrease the salinity of the N-Atlantic. Precisely what happens when the salinity is reduced is not clear but there are strong indications it could cause shifting of the gulfstream or even cause it to stop flowing, which would cause a major cold period. Which in turn would cause the collapse of western civilization which in turn means we would be left sitting on a block of ice freezing our joysticks off.
Of course it is also possible that the followers of this teory are wrong and the evil Conservatives are right:
In that case the only effect will be the rise of sealevels, due to melting not of the N-Icecap but the Antarctica, the Greenland glacier etc. and of course it will be a great boon to the economy due to new traderoutes opening, huge untouched fish stocks to eradicate by overfishing and last but not least, lots of oil to drill. That last bit should make Dubya smile as he invades Canada to liberate its people (aka. oil) from oligarchic opression. This will in turn marginalize the southern hemesphere causing a huge global war that would cause the end of western civilization and we would be left sitting in the ruins pondering what our unborn kids will look like because our joysticks have been irradiated by nuclear weapons.
Take your pick, of course I exaggerated hugely in both cases but that is just because sarcastic ranting is one of my numerous human weaknesses. In the end nobody knows exactly what global warming will lead to because the mechanisms involved are so increadibly complex. Of course that stops nether the Scientists from pretending that their little theory explains everyting nor does it stop the Conservatives and capitalists from gleefully expecting global warming to free up new resources for them to exploit. Myself? I expect them both to be disappointed.
...something like 97% of the worlds worm/virus designers spend 100% of their time on trying to torpedo Windows. I wonder the people using Linux or any other Unix/Unix clone would do if they got that sort of non stop attention. Please note also that it is perfectly possible to harden Windows to the point that it will withstand all but the most determined of attacks. I know because I am responsible for a pool of Windows servers who never noticed this virus exists because I patch regularly, installed anti-virus and software, a firewall and took a number of elementary precautions way before this thing ever hit the net.
"....if you dont know something is dangerous it is your own damn stupid fault!!! Not the programmers's wrote your Open Source webserver so that it can be run as root on port 80!".
I also patched the day that patch hit the update server and I got a small kick out of sitting at my desk while 4 computers within a 10 meter radius of me crashed in a single morning. When a patch becomes available the sick individuals who craft these viruses and worms get to work using the MS technical bulletin as a blueprint and if you don't patch at least once a week don't blame Microsoft. They are only to blame if they fail to release a patch in time.
If the prospect of losing ground on the Russian market was enough to cause Microsoft to show its source code to Russian government representatives (aka. intellegence officers searching for NSA backdoors) I hardly think that Microsoft will be sending the EU any obscene gestures. Every time Microsoft steps on the EU commissions tail it strains the Europeans patience with Microsoft which is already wearing thin, they don't like MS and most of all they don't trust it. Any lack of compliance might have the effect of making what is currently a trend toward the increased use of LINUX by the EU-apparatus it self and individual European governments into an official policy! And THAT is the reason Microsoft will kiss the EU's collective ass in the hope of calming that fuming Godzilla down.
As far as I know China has not bought a Mig fighter design since the Mig-17 the Migs 19 and 21 they reverse engineered from pattern aircraft provided sans drawings from the USSR shortly before the schism between the two countries in the 60's. They did however purchase the Su-27 and Su-30 after the fall of the USSR. China is years away from building anything like the Su 27 or the Su 30 from ground up. They can reverse engineer it and manufacture it themselves the way they did with the Mig-21 (J/F-7) but they are incapable of actually designing a modern fighter 100% on their own from the ground up. Even the J-10 fighter which is so highly hyped up the US-senate's military budget debates (although it is usually labelled as complete junk by the USAF outside those gatherings) is probably based Israeli Lavi fighter programme which was sold to China by the Israelis to piss of the US when the US refused to fund it with even more millions of US tax dollars than they had already poured into it by then. Of course the Chinese will eventually become able to design their own, 100% Chinese built and designed, combat aircraft that can hope to compete with US/EU/Russian Bleeding edge fighters but the timeframe is probably on the order of 20-30 years or so.
...a pirated copy of a movie. The movie was Star Wars Episode I. The experience was so displeasing that I went to see Episode I in a movie theater and I do not plan to watch a pirated movie again. Mainly because the quality of the 80% of the pirated material sucks and also because I have better things to waste money/bandwith on. I will also continue to pay for movies as well as music and because I think it is worth while to support the people who create these works of art. Anybody who downloads pirate copies of movies taken on a camcorder in a movie theater really deserves the title "El Cheapo" because that shitty stuff will never compare to the big screen theater. These people are overreacting.
The news media can be explained simply in one word. Ratings.
That is very true. It is almost comical to read what the news media has been spewing out about the RQ-1K/L "Predadtor" recon drone precisely because the reports are so obviously sensationalised to increase ratings. Granted the fact that a UAV or UCAV to be precise has fired weapons in anger under genuine conditions of war for the first time ever is a historiclally significant event. But come on... The way CNN and the rest of that lot is discribing the RQ-1 as a "Hunter Killer" one might be tempted to think the RQ-1 is a super intelligent robot killer lifted straight out of the fantasy world of the movie Terminator II. In reality the Predator is just an RC-modellers wet dream with some very light armaments fitted and a quite limited spectrum of uses on the battlefield.
For the N'th time NO Record Company Garbage does not just come on CD, it comes on Video Tape, on DVD, Over cable, Over satelite and TV channles, Radio, The Internet........
Ya.. well.. that comment was a blooper, I accidentally hit the Submit button when I meant to hit Preview. I intended to edit the post further before submitting it. I wish they would move the Submit button to the other side of the combo box. Ahh well.. Karma burns.......
Hmmm.... my opener has a 10 digit authentication code, somebody will have a cool time hacking that one. Even if that only leaves 1024 possibilities the burglar would have to try every combination which translates into sitting in front of my garage in the freezing cold for a few hours. My garage door opener is an old one of course and I suspect the security on modern garage door openers is much tighter. The point here seems to be that this universal remote the manufacturer of the garage door opener feels so threatened by will work with most kinds of opener and not that it will work like a master key to open every garage door at random. If this suit suceeds the manufacturer of the garage door opener could set him self up as the only supplyer of remotes for his own openers. This in it self is not so bad, if he sells the spare remotes at a reasonable price. Unfortunately businesses of any kind, once in a monopoly position, have a sorry history of charging obscene prices. This translates into you the consumer paying a lot more than you have to for a spare remote. What's more he could sue anyone who tries to elnbow in on his little monopoly out of business. All thanks to DMCA. The more time that passes the more DMCA is being discovered not as a copyright protection tool but a general purpose profit generation and competition elimination tool of hitherto unknow potential. I somehow dont thik that eliminating competitors was the idea behind DMCA. If it was this piece of legislation should not be called DMCA (Digital Milennium Copyright Act) but DMCIA (Digital Milennium Competition Inhibition Act)
..ass bigntime. What is next? Universal TV remotes? I recently had the misfortune that a child (Somebody elses btw) broke my TV remote After trying for ages to get a new remote out of the manufacturer, they finally sent me to his subcontratctor who sent me still somewhere else with the general result that I did not get an autheintic brand remote with all the channel setting features. So I bought a Universal one which after a bit of hacking turned out to have all the features of the old one. If this suit is won We will have a nice Kafaesqe situation where you cant get a replacement remote or at best can only buy a universal one at hugely inflated prices.
With all the voices here on/. defending the righ of big buisinesses to screw us consumers over with DMCA they will probably suceed.
Philip of Macedon said that (I seem to remember) 2300 year ago. To put it short more codes have been cracked and more defenses of any kind have been breached by exploiting simple human weakness than any clever hacking/engineering ever has and ever will. It usually is the easyest way. Take the Enigma code, it was cracked, partly, because of the simplistic and repetitive choices of code key words made by the Wehrmacht communications personnel. It never ceases to amaze me how deeply this fact disappoints the tech freaks of this world. If I had to guess all the nerds at CIA-Langley with all their cool equipment will not contribute even half as much to catching Osam Bin Landen or determining his fate as simple traitors within Al Quaeda will do.
What will probably happen, if the EU lives up to its effort to put a stop atempts create DMCA style monopolies, is that European manufacturers will produce hacked Lexmark toner cartridge clones. These will then be imported into the USA by some circutous route. From what I have been told, the wonderful thing about NAFTA is that lack of legislative syncronization among the member states creates all sorts of cute little loopholes. If Mexico for example does not have any DMCA laws forbidding the import of Lexmark toner cartridge clones, then the import of such goods through that country into the USA is quite possible though not quite legal and will become easyer the more liberal the inter NAFTA trade becomes. In the EU this is less of an issue because the degree of syncronization in laws and regulations, mandated by the EU commision, is much greater. Of course the US.Govt can legislate agianst such loopholes but they will still have a hard time enforcing DMCA without broad support in Asia and Europe.
.... once and for all. It should not be that much of a problem proving that the landings took place. Build it into a probe mission to photograph the stuff left on the moon? Perhaps as a kind of "The moon landings 30something years later" kind of documentary?.... but eeeehhh. No wait, I can see it now, a vision, it is crearing up, yess there it is, the conspracy theory they will put up after any attempt by Nasa to prove the moonlandings existed:
"How NASA faked its proof of the fact that the moonlandings are not a fake; read all about it at www.crackpot.org"
Sigh! They should really create a new top level domain suffix, www.something.moron
There seems to be no shortage of csutomers for it.
Slashdot Mirror
... the USA abusing its baserights in my country (its ally) still further to spy on its allies popluation with these nifty new tools. What this ammounts to is that the USA's 1984 style surveillance has been reduced in scope, refocused and that the current US administration has (reluctantly) decided to define civil liberties as something that is only valid if you are a US citizen on US soil. I suppose that democracy and civil liberties are for everyone, but Non US citizens in general and US citizens abroad are only entitled to the limited edtition.
"Torvalds: They are smoking crack."
Isnt that the Microsoft kernel team?
It would be even cooler if this thing was submergable, imagine what an LAPD helo would look like patrolling the city with sonar bouys and acoustic torpedos in place.
This brings back memories of the Simpsons!
"Krusty is really a secret agent, engaged in counter-spying upon a group in Springfield. The group is there, trying to find out the amphibious cars (made only in Springfield) are made and what keeps them afloat."
In the words of Troy Mclure:
"Keep it up boys!"
They did not listen in on something that was broadcast to the entire internet. What the article stated was that the RIAA had been:
"tracking what was passing through the woman's internet connection"
That implies that they intercepted a packet stream one computer to another, meant for nobody other than the people at each end, and scrutinised the content. This sure sounds similar to intercepting an analog audio stream from one phone to another since this is also only intended to be witnessed by the people operating each telephone unless of course a Judge gives permission for bugging.
"the RIAA violated state and federal laws by tracking what was passing through the woman's internet connection"
..immume from rules on unreasonable searches on the internet, because it [RIAA] did not have links with law enforcement agencies
Even the FBI needs a warrant to search or bug anything and that sure sounds like bugging to me. So who died and made the RIAA a government agency more powerful than the FBI? Why does the FBI need a warrant to bug the Mafia's telephones but these guys are:
If this quote is a stement of fact and in vew of the above claim that the RIAA intercepted this girls internet traffic; this dude is claiming that anybody who is not a cop is for all pracical purposes allowed to bug anybody eles telephone line with impunity because pesky annoyances like search warrants only apply to cops.
.... for a while now. A couple of years ago the Dansish verson of RIAA set up a sting in the Student village where I lived. They nabbed one of the MP3/FTP site operators and cut him a deal. Then they monitored the traffic on the net for a few months in kahoots with the local net admins whom they also had by the balls. When they were good and ready people got billed. Some of these bills ran into the hundreds of thousands of Danish Krona. Of course it had no real effect on music piracy in Denmark, but it did cause a very sharp sore in the sales of USB hard disk adaptor boxes. Cheap and easily hidden!!
[RIAA vice-president] Mr Oppenheim also said the RIAA was immume from rules on unreasonable searches on the internet, because it did not have links with law enforcement agencies.
So if I hack Mr. Oppenheims computer and "unreasonably" search it (i.e. rifle through his private data) I am immune to rules on unreasonable searches because I am a hacker and not a cop? Nice to know.... Now where did I put that SubSeven kit.....
... is quite as galactically stupid as Microsoft/Apple seem to think. Microsoft for one has been very reluctant to introduce new features on its desktop. Just for example it has Microsoft years to finally produce a usable virtual desktop manager and even then it is not a part of the standard Windows XP installation. It is hidden on an obscure webpage deep inside the Microsoft website under the label "Power toys". I have introduced quite a number of "average Windows users" to the MSVDM and none of them took more than 60 seconds to grasp the concept of Multiple desktops.
... and the treehuggers:
Half the N-Polar icecap melting will have an effect and that effect is to decrease the salinity of the N-Atlantic. Precisely what happens when the salinity is reduced is not clear but there are strong indications it could cause shifting of the gulfstream or even cause it to stop flowing, which would cause a major cold period. Which in turn would cause the collapse of western civilization which in turn means we would be left sitting on a block of ice freezing our joysticks off.
Of course it is also possible that the followers of this teory are wrong and the evil Conservatives are right:
In that case the only effect will be the rise of sealevels, due to melting not of the N-Icecap but the Antarctica, the Greenland glacier etc. and of course it will be a great boon to the economy due to new traderoutes opening, huge untouched fish stocks to eradicate by overfishing and last but not least, lots of oil to drill. That last bit should make Dubya smile as he invades Canada to liberate its people (aka. oil) from oligarchic opression. This will in turn marginalize the southern hemesphere causing a huge global war that would cause the end of western civilization and we would be left sitting in the ruins pondering what our unborn kids will look like because our joysticks have been irradiated by nuclear weapons.
Take your pick, of course I exaggerated hugely in both cases but that is just because sarcastic ranting is one of my numerous human weaknesses. In the end nobody knows exactly what global warming will lead to because the mechanisms involved are so increadibly complex. Of course that stops nether the Scientists from pretending that their little theory explains everyting nor does it stop the Conservatives and capitalists from gleefully expecting global warming to free up new resources for them to exploit. Myself? I expect them both to be disappointed.
...something like 97% of the worlds worm/virus designers spend 100% of their time on trying to torpedo Windows. I wonder the people using Linux or any other Unix/Unix clone would do if they got that sort of non stop attention. Please note also that it is perfectly possible to harden Windows to the point that it will withstand all but the most determined of attacks. I know because I am responsible for a pool of Windows servers who never noticed this virus exists because I patch regularly, installed anti-virus and software, a firewall and took a number of elementary precautions way before this thing ever hit the net.
"....if you dont know something is dangerous it is your own damn stupid fault!!! Not the programmers's wrote your Open Source webserver so that it can be run as root on port 80!".
I also patched the day that patch hit the update server and I got a small kick out of sitting at my desk while 4 computers within a 10 meter radius of me crashed in a single morning. When a patch becomes available the sick individuals who craft these viruses and worms get to work using the MS technical bulletin as a blueprint and if you don't patch at least once a week don't blame Microsoft. They are only to blame if they fail to release a patch in time.
If the prospect of losing ground on the Russian market was enough to cause Microsoft to show its source code to Russian government representatives (aka. intellegence officers searching for NSA backdoors) I hardly think that Microsoft will be sending the EU any obscene gestures. Every time Microsoft steps on the EU commissions tail it strains the Europeans patience with Microsoft which is already wearing thin, they don't like MS and most of all they don't trust it. Any lack of compliance might have the effect of making what is currently a trend toward the increased use of LINUX by the EU-apparatus it self and individual European governments into an official policy! And THAT is the reason Microsoft will kiss the EU's collective ass in the hope of calming that fuming Godzilla down.
As far as I know China has not bought a Mig fighter design since the Mig-17 the Migs 19 and 21 they reverse engineered from pattern aircraft provided sans drawings from the USSR shortly before the schism between the two countries in the 60's. They did however purchase the Su-27 and Su-30 after the fall of the USSR. China is years away from building anything like the Su 27 or the Su 30 from ground up. They can reverse engineer it and manufacture it themselves the way they did with the Mig-21 (J/F-7) but they are incapable of actually designing a modern fighter 100% on their own from the ground up. Even the J-10 fighter which is so highly hyped up the US-senate's military budget debates (although it is usually labelled as complete junk by the USAF outside those gatherings) is probably based Israeli Lavi fighter programme which was sold to China by the Israelis to piss of the US when the US refused to fund it with even more millions of US tax dollars than they had already poured into it by then. Of course the Chinese will eventually become able to design their own, 100% Chinese built and designed, combat aircraft that can hope to compete with US/EU/Russian Bleeding edge fighters but the timeframe is probably on the order of 20-30 years or so.
...a pirated copy of a movie. The movie was Star Wars Episode I. The experience was so displeasing that I went to see Episode I in a movie theater and I do not plan to watch a pirated movie again. Mainly because the quality of the 80% of the pirated material sucks and also because I have better things to waste money/bandwith on. I will also continue to pay for movies as well as music and because I think it is worth while to support the people who create these works of art. Anybody who downloads pirate copies of movies taken on a camcorder in a movie theater really deserves the title "El Cheapo" because that shitty stuff will never compare to the big screen theater. These people are overreacting.
The news media can be explained simply in one word. Ratings.
... The way CNN and the rest of that lot is discribing the RQ-1 as a "Hunter Killer" one might be tempted to think the RQ-1 is a super intelligent robot killer lifted straight out of the fantasy world of the movie Terminator II. In reality the Predator is just an RC-modellers wet dream with some very light armaments fitted and a quite limited spectrum of uses on the battlefield.
That is very true. It is almost comical to read what the news media has been spewing out about the RQ-1K/L "Predadtor" recon drone precisely because the reports are so obviously sensationalised to increase ratings. Granted the fact that a UAV or UCAV to be precise has fired weapons in anger under genuine conditions of war for the first time ever is a historiclally significant event. But come on
".... all of their garbage came on CD"
........
For the N'th time NO Record Company Garbage does not just come on CD, it comes on Video Tape, on DVD, Over cable, Over satelite and TV channles, Radio, The Internet
"the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man"
:-D
What??? Serial ATA???
Dude! I second that......
Ya.. well.. that comment was a blooper, I accidentally hit the Submit button when I meant to hit Preview. I intended to edit the post further before submitting it. I wish they would move the Submit button to the other side of the combo box. Ahh well .. Karma burns .......
Hmmm.... my opener has a 10 digit authentication code, somebody will have a cool time hacking that one. Even if that only leaves 1024 possibilities the burglar would have to try every combination which translates into sitting in front of my garage in the freezing cold for a few hours. My garage door opener is an old one of course and I suspect the security on modern garage door openers is much tighter. The point here seems to be that this universal remote the manufacturer of the garage door opener feels so threatened by will work with most kinds of opener and not that it will work like a master key to open every garage door at random. If this suit suceeds the manufacturer of the garage door opener could set him self up as the only supplyer of remotes for his own openers. This in it self is not so bad, if he sells the spare remotes at a reasonable price. Unfortunately businesses of any kind, once in a monopoly position, have a sorry history of charging obscene prices. This translates into you the consumer paying a lot more than you have to for a spare remote. What's more he could sue anyone who tries to elnbow in on his little monopoly out of business. All thanks to DMCA. The more time that passes the more DMCA is being discovered not as a copyright protection tool but a general purpose profit generation and competition elimination tool of hitherto unknow potential. I somehow dont thik that eliminating competitors was the idea behind DMCA. If it was this piece of legislation should not be called DMCA (Digital Milennium Copyright Act) but DMCIA (Digital Milennium Competition Inhibition Act)
..ass bigntime. What is next? Universal TV remotes? I recently had the misfortune that a child (Somebody elses btw) broke my TV remote After trying for ages to get a new remote out of the manufacturer, they finally sent me to his subcontratctor who sent me still somewhere else with the general result that I did not get an autheintic brand remote with all the channel setting features. So I bought a Universal one which after a bit of hacking turned out to have all the features of the old one. If this suit is won We will have a nice Kafaesqe situation where you cant get a replacement remote or at best can only buy a universal one at hugely inflated prices.
/. defending the righ of big buisinesses to screw us consumers over with DMCA they will probably suceed.
With all the voices here on
....can scale any fortress wall.
Philip of Macedon said that (I seem to remember) 2300 year ago. To put it short more codes have been cracked and more defenses of any kind have been breached by exploiting simple human weakness than any clever hacking/engineering ever has and ever will. It usually is the easyest way. Take the Enigma code, it was cracked, partly, because of the simplistic and repetitive choices of code key words made by the Wehrmacht communications personnel. It never ceases to amaze me how deeply this fact disappoints the tech freaks of this world. If I had to guess all the nerds at CIA-Langley with all their cool equipment will not contribute even half as much to catching Osam Bin Landen or determining his fate as simple traitors within Al Quaeda will do.
What will probably happen, if the EU lives up to its effort to put a stop atempts create DMCA style monopolies, is that European manufacturers will produce hacked Lexmark toner cartridge clones. These will then be imported into the USA by some circutous route. From what I have been told, the wonderful thing about NAFTA is that lack of legislative syncronization among the member states creates all sorts of cute little loopholes. If Mexico for example does not have any DMCA laws forbidding the import of Lexmark toner cartridge clones, then the import of such goods through that country into the USA is quite possible though not quite legal and will become easyer the more liberal the inter NAFTA trade becomes. In the EU this is less of an issue because the degree of syncronization in laws and regulations, mandated by the EU commision, is much greater. Of course the US.Govt can legislate agianst such loopholes but they will still have a hard time enforcing DMCA without broad support in Asia and Europe.
"How NASA faked its proof of the fact that the moonlandings are not a fake; read all about it at www.crackpot.org"
Sigh! They should really create a new top level domain suffix,
www.something.moron
There seems to be no shortage of csutomers for it.