Unfortunately nothing is likely to change until people get fed up enough and start taking action into their own hands. I'm not American, but I do believe that is why you guys have the second amendment.
> Or did you mean that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. think I should also be paying more taxes?
No, that's not what I meant. Warrent Buffet has publicly stated he's *proud* of how much taxes he and his company (Bershire Hathaway) have paid, and that he hopes to pay more in the future. If I remember off the top of my head, this amounts to more than $300 million per year. Plus, he think the rules should be changed so *he* pays more (not middle or lower income people.) While most rich white guys may be greedy fascist assholes, they aren't *all*!
>I don't know of a single person who doesn't want to keep more $$$ in their pocket.
How about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Senior? They both think they, as some of the richest men in the world, should be paying *more* taxes, not less. This is in order to better help society, and to not create a new aristocracy (by passing all their money onto their children.)
We may well see an attack that wipes out most of the Internet-connected Windows machines in the world in a single day.
Unfortunately this is probably what it will take for most people and companies to wake up and do something. I hate to see so many people lose their files (yeah, there should be backups, but how many people actually make regular backups?) but that's probably what it's going to take for both joe sixpack and joe pinstripe to say "Okay, that's it, I'm going to throw out Windows and use something else."
Isn't OpenSSH, along with OpenBSD, developed in Canada? Well, the above letter only metions trademarks in the US and Europe, so doesn't make this all moot?
I think the question here is not whether or not SDMI has been cracked, but how the SDMI will choose to define "cracked".
As anyone who has studied advertising knows, a company will always make the strongest possible statement about a product they can, without breaking the law. For example, a company will say "no one else's window cleaner cleans better than ours", while in fact five other products clean just as well (but not better!) but may cost less, be more environmentally friendly, etc. So the statement is true, but misleading.
If SDMI hadn't been broken, they would have explicitly said "No, it hasn't been broken." The fact that they didn't means it probably has, but they're going to try to spin it, and redefine what they meant by "cracking" it, and just do a lot of hand waving.
If this keeps up for the next five to twenty years, I can see the real possibility of a violent uprising against the government or some of the large corporations.
While watching and reading about the various militia groups in the US, and their horrible actions in the past decade, I could never understand the motivation. I remember thinking that the US and Canada are among the most free countries in the world, with liberties broader than ever before in history. The idea that someone would think some type of armed resistance was needed would have been laughable if not for the tragic loss of life.
Recently, however, I've truly started to worry that maybe our freedom is not as secure as I had presumed. Over the past few years we've had a number of laws and rulings that have slowly started stripping our rights away. It's been subtle and most people probably haven't noticed, but it won't stay that way forever.
As one of the other posters pointed out, the groundwork is being laid for a society frighteningly similar to 1984. Maybe George Orwell's predictions weren't so wrong after all, but just off by a few decades.
Perhaps we've been naive to think that the so-called "information revolution" would be a bloodless one. When society has undergone massive changes in its structure in the past, there has always been violence. The old ways of thinking have never died out gracefully or quietly.
I'd very much like to hope that we've reached a turning point, that we've evolved past the need for such drastic action. I hope the courts and the politicians wake up and realize what's happening, what they're allowing to happen, and stop it now before it goes too far.
Forget about free dial-up access, this has other wonderful uses, such as bypassing corporate firewalls.
If you're on an internal network, no matter how protected it may be by firewalls, routers, etc., as long as you can make DNS queries to public systems, you can tunnel out. Combine this with ssh and you've got yet another way for internal data to untraceable escape your network.
I can imagine lots of network managers getting a headache after reading this and rushing to review their firewall rules.
The next step would be to see how this might work through an intermediary DNS server in cases where you can only access an internal name server which is the only system allowed to query external nameservers. Might need a ttl of 0 though, don't know if that would be respected.
Well, I don't want to start a flame-fest, but I think it's very clear that Windows 2000 is obviously superior. Here's a list of reasons why:
The patented "Reboot-safe"(tm) feature! When you make most changes to Windows 2000, the system will force you to reboot. This ensures the changes won't cause any strange problems while the system is still running. On the other hand, Linux almost never requires a reboot after changes, how stable can it possibly be?
The friendly "Error-notifier"(tm)! Whenever there is a problem with the system, rather then just crashing, our innovative technology ensures that a friendly blue-coloured error screen is always made available first! (And unknown to many, you can actually customize the colour!) We tested Linux for a year, on the other hand, and didn't once see any friendly error message. Obviously it's not a very user-friendly system.
State-of-the-art "Intrusion-avoidance"(tm) features! You're always hearing about how other operating systems are broken into and used to attack yet more systems. Not with Windows 2000! Because of our intricate and sophisticated TCP/IP stack, most attacks will simply disable the system, preventing users from gaining access to data or being able to attack others!
See www.windows2000test.com for more information. (if it's up!)
Well, there's lots more wonderful features in Windows 2000 that you won't find in Linux, but I think I've made my point.
Well, I don't know about number 1, but mutt has many flexible options for pgp or gpg and should be able to handle all the other requirements you list.
It only asks for your pass-phrase once, and you can set it up to always sign, or sign/encrypt by default, and it handles keyring stuff. Check out www.mutt.org for more info.
Of course, everyone knows this is hogwash. Black holes are black, period. That's why they're called black holes and not multicolour rainbow holes!
This post is part of a larger conspiracy originated by Hollywood more than 20 years ago. You may remember a rather cheesy movie called "The Black Hole" that came out in 1979. Well, it seems clear this whole theory was created simply for sensationalization purposes. After all, who wants to watch a movie about a black hole in space that no one can see. Pretty boring stuff!
Of course, since then more and more movies and television shows took advantage of neat hole-in-space special effects, so it was obviously in their best interest to support this campaign of disinformation.
Fight the conspiracy!
(uh oh, I think I'm starting to sound like "The Conspiracy Guy" on Space!)
No, actually CSIS is the intelligence agency. The CSE is the "Communications Security Establishment" which is similar to the NSA in the States. In fact, it is the Canadian arm of Echelon.
I think all the RFCs provide an execellent historical account of how the Internet (and lately the web) have developed. They show how standards have evolved to meet the needs of the increasing number of users and new uses the Internet has been put to. Other similar documents from the IETF and the W3C would also be important.
Of course, some may view these as just "technical" documents, but considering that the Internet *is* a technical thing, and has evolved according to some sort of techno-sociological phenomenon, it seems appropriate.
Re: Free vs. non-free (was: Bloat...)
on
SuSE 6.2 in August
·
· Score: 2
I have now seen the complaint about non-free software not being properly "segregated" several times. I do not feel this is a fair criticism of SuSE Linux. In fact, I believe SuSE is one of the better distributions in this respect.
When choosing packages to install in SuSE (eithing during installation or later using YaST), the installer is very explicit about informing you if you choose a package that is non-free. Also, most of the commercial software is put into its own section (pay.)
For example, when you choose a package for installation, in many cases a pop-up box will appear informing you of something. This includes:
Copyright Notices: For example, you get these if you choose blender, MuPAD, etc.
Demo versions: These are clearly indicated as such. Examples include executor (Mac emulator), ARCAD (a CAD system, and it even tells you that the limitation is that you can't save), etc.
Library licensing issues: xforms, qtdevel (yes I know this is no longer an issue with 2.0)
These are just a few examples, but I have found that any software that is shareware, commercial or has a strange license will produce a warning.
On another note, SuSE also warns you about software that is alpha quality or not stable. They did this with some version of gnome, for example (and also with some kde packages too, just so you know they're not biased.:)
Wait, don't forget about "revolutionary!" Apparently they think that if they say it often enough and vehemently enough, then we might actually believe it.
Or maybe they're just trying to convince themselves.
This is why a lot of companies are going back to green screens for dedicated tasks, like customer service. People don't need to point and click for stuff like that, it's much too slow. Besides, when's the last time a terminal crashed on you?
People run into problems when they buy technology for the sake of technology rather than actually thinking about it and choosing the most appropriate solution for a given situation.
"Credit where credit is due" is a fine concept, but I think people tend to go a bit far with this whole Microsoft brought us the PC thing.
Bill Gates does deserve some credit though. He was smart enough, or lucky enough, to recognize the beginning of a trend, and was able to capitalize on it. Congratulations to him. But let's not mix up cause and effect please.
All Unices may not currently come packaged with GNU tools, but it has certainly been my experience that the tools somehow manage to appear on all of them shortly after installation.:)
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>If you are not in a swing state, and your candidate won't win, vote for a party you actually like.
:)
Dude, you need a new sig.
Well, I think they got Darl's a while back, although though that was barely an appetizer.
So does this mean they are throwing away mach and switching to a BSD kernel? That seems like a big deal, but I haven't heard anything about it before.
Unfortunately nothing is likely to change until people get fed up enough and start taking action into their own hands. I'm not American, but I do believe that is why you guys have the second amendment.
> Or did you mean that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. think I should also be paying more taxes?
No, that's not what I meant. Warrent Buffet has publicly stated he's *proud* of how much taxes he and his company (Bershire Hathaway) have paid, and that he hopes to pay more in the future. If I remember off the top of my head, this amounts to more than $300 million per year. Plus, he think the rules should be changed so *he* pays more (not middle or lower income people.) While most rich white guys may be greedy fascist assholes, they aren't *all*!
>I don't know of a single person who doesn't want to keep more $$$ in their pocket.
How about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Senior? They both think they, as some of the richest men in the world, should be paying *more* taxes, not less. This is in order to better help society, and to not create a new aristocracy (by passing all their money onto their children.)
Unfortunately this is probably what it will take for most people and companies to wake up and do something. I hate to see so many people lose their files (yeah, there should be backups, but how many people actually make regular backups?) but that's probably what it's going to take for both joe sixpack and joe pinstripe to say "Okay, that's it, I'm going to throw out Windows and use something else."
Most people can only learn things the hard way.
I wrote the following last year when I was job hunting to explain to people why I could not send my resume in Word (.DOC) format:
http://www.unixzone.com/why_no_word.html
Isn't OpenSSH, along with OpenBSD, developed in Canada? Well, the above letter only metions trademarks in the US and Europe, so doesn't make this all moot?
I think the question here is not whether or not SDMI has been cracked, but how the SDMI will choose to define "cracked".
As anyone who has studied advertising knows, a company will always make the strongest possible statement about a product they can, without breaking the law. For example, a company will say "no one else's window cleaner cleans better than ours", while in fact five other products clean just as well (but not better!) but may cost less, be more environmentally friendly, etc. So the statement is true, but misleading.
If SDMI hadn't been broken, they would have explicitly said "No, it hasn't been broken." The fact that they didn't means it probably has, but they're going to try to spin it, and redefine what they meant by "cracking" it, and just do a lot of hand waving.
If this keeps up for the next five to twenty years, I can see the real possibility of a violent uprising against the government or some of the large corporations.
While watching and reading about the various militia groups in the US, and their horrible actions in the past decade, I could never understand the motivation. I remember thinking that the US and Canada are among the most free countries in the world, with liberties broader than ever before in history. The idea that someone would think some type of armed resistance was needed would have been laughable if not for the tragic loss of life.
Recently, however, I've truly started to worry that maybe our freedom is not as secure as I had presumed. Over the past few years we've had a number of laws and rulings that have slowly started stripping our rights away. It's been subtle and most people probably haven't noticed, but it won't stay that way forever.
As one of the other posters pointed out, the groundwork is being laid for a society frighteningly similar to 1984. Maybe George Orwell's predictions weren't so wrong after all, but just off by a few decades.
Perhaps we've been naive to think that the so-called "information revolution" would be a bloodless one. When society has undergone massive changes in its structure in the past, there has always been violence. The old ways of thinking have never died out gracefully or quietly.
I'd very much like to hope that we've reached a turning point, that we've evolved past the need for such drastic action. I hope the courts and the politicians wake up and realize what's happening, what they're allowing to happen, and stop it now before it goes too far.
Forget about free dial-up access, this has other wonderful uses, such as bypassing corporate firewalls.
If you're on an internal network, no matter how protected it may be by firewalls, routers, etc., as long as you can make DNS queries to public systems, you can tunnel out. Combine this with ssh and you've got yet another way for internal data to untraceable escape your network.
I can imagine lots of network managers getting a headache after reading this and rushing to review their firewall rules.
The next step would be to see how this might work through an intermediary DNS server in cases where you can only access an internal name server which is the only system allowed to query external nameservers. Might need a ttl of 0 though, don't know if that would be respected.
Well, I don't want to start a flame-fest, but I think it's very clear that Windows 2000 is obviously superior. Here's a list of reasons why:
Well, there's lots more wonderful features in Windows 2000 that you won't find in Linux, but I think I've made my point.
Well, I don't know about number 1, but mutt has many flexible options for pgp or gpg and should be able to handle all the other requirements you list.
It only asks for your pass-phrase once, and you can set it up to always sign, or sign/encrypt by default, and it handles keyring stuff. Check out www.mutt.org for more info.
Of course, everyone knows this is hogwash. Black holes are black, period. That's why they're called black holes and not multicolour rainbow holes!
This post is part of a larger conspiracy originated by Hollywood more than 20 years ago. You may remember a rather cheesy movie called "The Black Hole" that came out in 1979. Well, it seems clear this whole theory was created simply for sensationalization purposes. After all, who wants to watch a movie about a black hole in space that no one can see. Pretty boring stuff!
Of course, since then more and more movies and television shows took advantage of neat hole-in-space special effects, so it was obviously in their best interest to support this campaign of disinformation.
Fight the conspiracy!
(uh oh, I think I'm starting to sound like "The Conspiracy Guy" on Space!)
So does this mean they are going to release the SecuRemote VPN client for Linux as well?
No, actually CSIS is the intelligence agency. The CSE is the "Communications Security Establishment" which is similar to the NSA in the States. In fact, it is the Canadian arm of Echelon.
Visit their web page and say hi.
I think all the RFCs provide an execellent historical account of how the Internet (and lately the web) have developed. They show how standards have evolved to meet the needs of the increasing number of users and new uses the Internet has been put to. Other similar documents from the IETF and the W3C would also be important.
Of course, some may view these as just "technical" documents, but considering that the Internet *is* a technical thing, and has evolved according to some sort of techno-sociological phenomenon, it seems appropriate.
I have now seen the complaint about non-free software not being properly "segregated" several times. I do not feel this is a fair criticism of SuSE Linux. In fact, I believe SuSE is one of the better distributions in this respect.
When choosing packages to install in SuSE (eithing during installation or later using YaST), the installer is very explicit about informing you if you choose a package that is non-free. Also, most of the commercial software is put into its own section (pay.)
For example, when you choose a package for installation, in many cases a pop-up box will appear informing you of something. This includes:
These are just a few examples, but I have found that any software that is shareware, commercial or has a strange license will produce a warning.
On another note, SuSE also warns you about software that is alpha quality or not stable. They did this with some version of gnome, for example (and also with some kde packages too, just so you know they're not biased. :)
Wait, don't forget about "revolutionary!" Apparently they think that if they say it often enough and vehemently enough, then we might actually believe it.
Or maybe they're just trying to convince themselves.
This is why a lot of companies are going back to green screens for dedicated tasks, like customer service. People don't need to point and click for stuff like that, it's much too slow. Besides, when's the last time a terminal crashed on you?
People run into problems when they buy technology for the sake of technology rather than actually thinking about it and choosing the most appropriate solution for a given situation.
"Credit where credit is due" is a fine concept, but I think people tend to go a bit far with this whole Microsoft brought us the PC thing.
Bill Gates does deserve some credit though. He was smart enough, or lucky enough, to recognize the beginning of a trend, and was able to capitalize on it. Congratulations to him. But let's not mix up cause and effect please.
All Unices may not currently come packaged with GNU tools, but it has certainly been my experience that the tools somehow manage to appear on all of them shortly after installation. :)