The idea that a virtual country could be formed from the populace of the internet is not a new one, but until now it's been done in the wrong ways: A group tries to get people to join, bringing accusations of clubs, cults, or money-making scams.
The right way is more simple, and requires work *outside* the net, rather than inside. The right way is to declare the internet its own sovereign territory.
Every government on earth is tripping over themselves trying to regulate, control, or spy on the internet. And because of the net's basic concept and infrastructure, they'll never succeed. What we need is an advocacy group who will tell the governments of the world to Get Out. We have our own laws, and they should have no jurisdiction here. Every visitor to the internet should only have to worry about the laws of the medium. It's only information, after all...and governments should be taught that free speech includes free information.
But that would require both a volunteer law enforcement squadron for the net and a powerful multi-national lobby outside of it, so I doubt we'll see the internet declared sovereign territory anytime soon. Even if the powermongers in the real world could be persuaded to keep away from the net, we are not ready to govern ourselves.
I haven't read any of the books, I'm not a knowledgeable Star Wars fanatic, so the following is not a spoiler, just speculation.:) But I have seen people mention that the Empire comes to power via an incident known as the 'clone wars'...
I predict that we'll see Darth Maul, or his clone, in the next movie. Actually, I'm hoping that we see a SQUADRON of him in action. (drool):)
I guess this is a matter of personal taste, but I thought the Uplift series was some of the most awful SF I have ever read. Poor characterization, and often painful prose. I only read all of the first three books out of a sense of duty (i.e. I will read all the books in a trilogy if I start it). They were all three of them equally bad.
Which Uplift Trilogy are you referring to? The first one (Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War) was one of the best-written trilogies in sci-fi. I loved them, and there was a time when I would have bought anything Brin wrote, sight unseen. I loved the man.
But some time after that, Brin ceased being 'fun'. His second Uplift Trilogy (Brightness Reef, et al) was horrible and dull. I think that he's starting to intentionally include messages and teachings in his books...and the moral lessons are making them as dry as bleached cardboard.
And by the way, I thought that Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series was overblown and tedious. Some neat ideas and a few instances of good writing, but it's like reading a dictionary to admire the illustrations.
Um...wasn't Palpatine the ambassador from Naboo? It would seem to me that if he was going to use any planet as a pawn in a power-grab, he'd choose the one whose defenses and abilities he knew best. Why Naboo? Accident of fate -- it just happened to be the planet Palpatine was born upon.
When F&P did their experiment in the late 1980's, I and my senior class went through their results. They did find (or claim) a 1200% return on the energy they were pumping into the experiment. I don't have my papers with me...but I recall that some other chemist pointed out that palladium acts as a catalyst between free hydrogen and oxygen, releasing heat. The excess heat produced could be explained by a chemical reaction between the palladium, hydrogen liberated in the water, and oxygen at the surface of the bath.
The Fleischmann and Pons results were worthless, pure and simple. I think that some minimal funds should be put into cold fusion research, because it is an interesting field. But people, don't get your hopes up.
>>This isn't bad sigint. There are a lot of messages that aren't encrypted for one reason or another.
Not in sensitive government or military communications. I don't know about corporate communications, but I had the impression that they're getting smarter.
>> And lastly, there is pattern recognition. Having been in sigint, you should know that who is talking to whom is almost as good as what they are saying.
Absolutely. Traffic analysis is useful, too; just the percentage of data passing through the pacific backbone encrypted is valuable information. But that could be garnered using more mundane means than eavesdropping on satellites.
My point was that Echelon has an unguaranteed tap into a bandwidth that is both enormous and almost completely non-relevant. All the legitimate sigint that can be done in this matter could be done better using other approaches. And so it is valid to begin worrying about the illegitimate uses for Echelon.
I don't mind governments spying on each other -- I agree, it's necessary for world peace. I don't even mind my government performing some limited monitoring of its citizens -- I do not break the laws of this country, and I'd like them to catch the people who do.
What frightens me about Echelon is that it appears to be shared data consortium, if you believe the conspiracy theorists. Thus, data collected by Australia/Canada/US/UK are available to them all. I know that I've done things that, though perfectly legal in the US, break the laws of the UK. Next time I go overseas, do I have to worry about overzealous law enforcement meeting me at british customs?
Overzealous law enforcement is a danger here at home, too, if you break any of the unenforced-but-still-in-effect laws. (Sodomy, for example.) I just have to trust that my government doesn't lose its mind and start pursuing such minor crimes. But there's no way I should have to trust other governments as well.
Just a guess, but perhaps they're just cleared terrain. Any ground clutter can reduce the effective angles of operation of a telemetry dish. Since they're spying on satellites (the satellites are not pointed directly at those dishes), they probably want to have a maximum field of operation, to catch more signals.
I've worked in sigint, myself. And I find it hard to believe that a system set up to detect key words and phrases in common internet traffic can be useful enough to justify its cost. Nations and security agencies *know* that internet communications can be intercepted, and so they send messages encrypted or not at all. Corporations are beginning to understand this, also. The only messages that Echelon could usefully intercept are personal communication and the rare 'slip-up' of a corporation or agency.
That being said, I can easily believe that it exists. Slip-ups do happen, and I can see a government betting a few billion dollars on the off chance of finding one. But the most frightening aspect is that the Echelon system is just better suited towards everyday unencrypted communication between private individuals...and thus, whether chartered or not, that's likely how it will be used. Thank you, Orwell.
You don't want to fight FUD with FUD in that way. It's not just a matter of morality, either. Microsoft has clout because of their success as a big corporation with an established monopoly. They can afford to lose a little credibility by spinning a few lies. The Linux community has only one source of credibility -- that their stuff *works* -- and that's the very thing M$ is attacking. If you bend the truth and are caught, your credibility will suffer a lot more than Microsoft's. You'll be helping their FUD campaign, not hindering it.
Keep the high ground, folks. It's really in your best interests.
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The idea that a virtual country could be formed from the populace of the internet is not a new one, but until now it's been done in the wrong ways: A group tries to get people to join, bringing accusations of clubs, cults, or money-making scams.
:)
The right way is more simple, and requires work *outside* the net, rather than inside. The right way is to declare the internet its own sovereign territory.
Every government on earth is tripping over themselves trying to regulate, control, or spy on the internet. And because of the net's basic concept and infrastructure, they'll never succeed. What we need is an advocacy group who will tell the governments of the world to Get Out. We have our own laws, and they should have no jurisdiction here. Every visitor to the internet should only have to worry about the laws of the medium. It's only information, after all...and governments should be taught that free speech includes free information.
But that would require both a volunteer law enforcement squadron for the net and a powerful multi-national lobby outside of it, so I doubt we'll see the internet declared sovereign territory anytime soon. Even if the powermongers in the real world could be persuaded to keep away from the net, we are not ready to govern ourselves.
Just my humble, seditious opinions...
I haven't read any of the books, I'm not a knowledgeable Star Wars fanatic, so the following is not a spoiler, just speculation. :) But I have seen people mention that the Empire comes to power via an incident known as the 'clone wars'...
:)
I predict that we'll see Darth Maul, or his clone, in the next movie. Actually, I'm hoping that we see a SQUADRON of him in action. (drool)
Which Uplift Trilogy are you referring to? The first one (Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War) was one of the best-written trilogies in sci-fi. I loved them, and there was a time when I would have bought anything Brin wrote, sight unseen. I loved the man.
But some time after that, Brin ceased being 'fun'. His second Uplift Trilogy (Brightness Reef, et al) was horrible and dull. I think that he's starting to intentionally include messages and teachings in his books...and the moral lessons are making them as dry as bleached cardboard.
And by the way, I thought that Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series was overblown and tedious. Some neat ideas and a few instances of good writing, but it's like reading a dictionary to admire the illustrations.
Um...wasn't Palpatine the ambassador from Naboo? It would seem to me that if he was going to use any planet as a pawn in a power-grab, he'd choose the one whose defenses and abilities he knew best. Why Naboo? Accident of fate -- it just happened to be the planet Palpatine was born upon.
Thanks for contributing to the discussion, Anton.
When F&P did their experiment in the late 1980's, I and my senior class went through their results. They did find (or claim) a 1200% return on the energy they were pumping into the experiment. I don't have my papers with me...but I recall that some other chemist pointed out that palladium acts as a catalyst between free hydrogen and oxygen, releasing heat. The excess heat produced could be explained by a chemical reaction between the palladium, hydrogen liberated in the water, and oxygen at the surface of the bath.
The Fleischmann and Pons results were worthless, pure and simple. I think that some minimal funds should be put into cold fusion research, because it is an interesting field. But people, don't get your hopes up.
>>This isn't bad sigint. There are a lot of messages that aren't encrypted for one reason or another.
Not in sensitive government or military communications. I don't know about corporate communications, but I had the impression that they're getting smarter.
>> And lastly, there is pattern recognition. Having been in sigint, you should know that who is talking to whom is almost as good as what they are saying.
Absolutely. Traffic analysis is useful, too; just the percentage of data passing through the pacific backbone encrypted is valuable information. But that could be garnered using more mundane means than eavesdropping on satellites.
My point was that Echelon has an unguaranteed tap into a bandwidth that is both enormous and almost completely non-relevant. All the legitimate sigint that can be done in this matter could be done better using other approaches. And so it is valid to begin worrying about the illegitimate uses for Echelon.
I don't mind governments spying on each other -- I agree, it's necessary for world peace. I don't even mind my government performing some limited monitoring of its citizens -- I do not break the laws of this country, and I'd like them to catch the people who do.
What frightens me about Echelon is that it appears to be shared data consortium, if you believe the conspiracy theorists. Thus, data collected by Australia/Canada/US/UK are available to them all. I know that I've done things that, though perfectly legal in the US, break the laws of the UK. Next time I go overseas, do I have to worry about overzealous law enforcement meeting me at british customs?
Overzealous law enforcement is a danger here at home, too, if you break any of the unenforced-but-still-in-effect laws. (Sodomy, for example.) I just have to trust that my government doesn't lose its mind and start pursuing such minor crimes. But there's no way I should have to trust other governments as well.
Just a guess, but perhaps they're just cleared terrain. Any ground clutter can reduce the effective angles of operation of a telemetry dish. Since they're spying on satellites (the satellites are not pointed directly at those dishes), they probably want to have a maximum field of operation, to catch more signals.
I've worked in sigint, myself. And I find it hard to believe that a system set up to detect key words and phrases in common internet traffic can be useful enough to justify its cost. Nations and security agencies *know* that internet communications can be intercepted, and so they send messages encrypted or not at all. Corporations are beginning to understand this, also. The only messages that Echelon could usefully intercept are personal communication and the rare 'slip-up' of a corporation or agency.
That being said, I can easily believe that it exists. Slip-ups do happen, and I can see a government betting a few billion dollars on the off chance of finding one. But the most frightening aspect is that the Echelon system is just better suited towards everyday unencrypted communication between private individuals...and thus, whether chartered or not, that's likely how it will be used. Thank you, Orwell.
You don't want to fight FUD with FUD in that way. It's not just a matter of morality, either. Microsoft has clout because of their success as a big corporation with an established monopoly. They can afford to lose a little credibility by spinning a few lies. The Linux community has only one source of credibility -- that their stuff *works* -- and that's the very thing M$ is attacking. If you bend the truth and are caught, your credibility will suffer a lot more than Microsoft's. You'll be helping their FUD campaign, not hindering it.
Keep the high ground, folks. It's really in your best interests.