Re:Is finding the user really the point here?
on
File-sharing and AOL
·
· Score: 1
Not quite...
The DOWNLOADS aren't monitored so much as the UPLOADS are.
By that I mean the RIAA stoolie makes a song available and you download it. Technically it is the stoolie's UPLOAD they are keeping an eye on. They aren't looking at EVERYTHING you do, only what you do when connected to the stoolie.
It is more like entrapment, except the RIAA isn't law enforcement. More of a private sting operation.
Actually, in many states (Florida is one) large contract purchases such as cars, land, boats, etc. aren't binding on minors.
Many auto dealers refuse to title a vehicle in a minor's name unless it is paid for 100%.
In California, minors can't enter legally binding contracts. (Popular movie reference: Liar Liar -- under 21, no prenup) Yes, it is a movie, but in the case it is accurate.
Some new EULAs say you must be of legal age before giving consent.
It would be a bitch to use that argument to get a minor off the hook for copyright violations if a DA wanted to push, but it could complicate things to no end. It would be more effective under a civil suit.
Not really. People walk every day because of technicalities. The DAs determine what crime to charge based on the available evidence. To PROVE is a tough thing in criminal law.
If the RIAA wanted to convince the DA to prosecute 150 copyright violations based off of P2P downloads they would have to prove 150 separate downloads of any combination of copyrighted files.
PROVING would be a bitch.
You would be able to have to show:
1. The files were accessable to the PC/person. For example,.MP3s on the hard drive.
2. Assuming the person can produce actual CDs then show the files were actually SHARED, since just ripping isn't a violation. This means...
3. LOGS from the defendants ISP showing connections at the times in question, and possibly traffic on the port. The complaintant's word that they downloaded the files isn't good enough. The logs of the plaintiff's ISP isn't good enough, as headers can be forged.
Specifically, logs showing EACH violation.
4. Some sort of signature (MD5 sum of what the plaintiff has vs MD5 sum of what was found on the defendant's PC) showing the files were actually the ones shared, and not something the plaintiff got elsewhere.
All that is BEFORE you get to judge and jury. All that would be needed to convice a DA to decide to prosecute.
Remember -- a jury awarded HOW many millions to a woman who spilled McDonald's coffee in her lap? A jury determined OJ Simpson was not guilty. A jury though 7 armed police officers who were taped beating an unarmed, unresisting black man (Rodney King) for 5+ minutes were "not guilty". [I know, he supposedly resisted before -- it didn't justify what happened.]
All the rules of evidenture -- what is admissable, what is challenged, etc. come into play. It is harder than you think.
As far as not even your mother believing it was Bible reading... belief doesn't enter into it -- PROOF is a different animal altogether.
This will get interesting when the RIAA comes crashing into a dorm room that is NATted behind a proxy/firewall.
They have a warrant to search...
IP WW.XX.YY.ZZ, but THAT is the IP of the NAT proxy/firewall. Oops, no music THERE! No warrant for any OTHER IP, such as the PC which is 192.168.0.100...
User "Joe Schmoe", who, by the way, HAS no MP3s. THOSE are all stored on his friend's PC -- who isn't named in the warrant.
OR, "Joe Schmoe" doesn't OWN the PC, he only is paying for the service. The PCs actually belong to someone else -- who is not named in the warrant.
OR, the PC with the goods belongs to a minor, who just happened to be the purchaser of all the CDs that he ripped and shared. A minor who CAN'T ENTER INTO A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT such as a music licensing agreement...
OR... take your pick. The costs for the RIAA to start tracking down and legally pursuing individuals would be astronomical.
Good luck proving successful downloads of songs for copyright infringement. Not to mention proving the downloads were of the SONGS claimed, and not some other file with the same name. Even if the file "baby_one_more_time.mp3" exists on the subject's machine, and the RIAA downloaded it and tracked back to to the subject that is only ONE violation. There is no way they can legally prove other infringements -- maybe the person was sharing a copy of bible reading masquerading as Brittany Who's-Dumping-Me-Today Spears? Maybe the RIAA was the only one that got the real thing?
However, Washington has a nice workaround for all that b.s.
We are home to Microsoft.:-) The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation gives tons of money to schools and libraries for computer equipment, etc. Our very small library also has three or four computers with MS Office licenses (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Encarta) that were puchased with this grant.
The locals aren't really hurting for PCs or MS Licenses.
My local library -- Spokane County, WA -- seems to have found a reasonable compromise.
When obtaining a library card for a minor, if they want Internet access they need a parent/guardian to sign off on it.
The library cards are barcoded and that is used to activate the Internet terminals.
To sign off, a parent basically signs a form saying "no access", "filtered access" or "unfiltered access". It is explained to them that "filtered access" is a "best effort only" and that the library staff aren't babysitters or the moral guardians of your children.
It seems to have placated the locals -- very few complaints have been generated.
Fragments coming back aren't going to be in your "private counting" order, but rather 1,2,3,4...
Actually, it does sound like randomizing the initial sequence number would be the solution. I seem to remember a number of other attacks based off of TCP sequence prediction and seeing nice graphs that looked like pointilistic cubes showing how various OSes sucked at this...
Maybe the "mangling" feature of IP tables can provide a quick fix -- if one is even needed. Time to fire up Ethereal!
And how long until someone comes up with something to basically make nonsense out of the ipid fields?
Sequential order is what you want it to be. Maybe I'll teach my ip stack to count 54, 2, 87, 456, 112.
The problem isn't with YOUR box sending packets out, it is with the fragments coming back in reply from some far-off server. THOSE are sequenced as well.
Of course, you could manually set your MTU to a minimal number (576?) so packets don't get fragmented to begin with. Of course, that will slow things down on the LAN side a bit...
There are two types of government systems -- secure classified and non-secure.
While hacking a bank may be easier than getting into a military system, a national ID would most likely be managed by the non-military -- like the SSA or IRS.
In those cases, you're talking about one agency (SSA) who once allowed people to log in and review their SS record with a name, SSN and mother's maiden name -- over an unencrypted web connection!
I think you'll find hacking a bank -- much less getting away with the money -- much tougher than any but the most sensative military systems.
As far as fraud goes, the card won't stop it. Fraud usually consists of TWO people: the one with the card, and the one assisting. Like the store clerk who gives $0.20 per $1.00 for food stamps, so the person has cash and can buy smokes, drugs, booze, etc. Or the overcharges to the state medical systems (Medicare/Medicade in the U.S.).
I've dealt with government databases and those that run them. Bureaucrats -- tired, bored, and couldn't-care-less. There will be tons of errors resulting in worse problems. The biggest will be that one small error will instantly propagate to your entire life.
Most of what you mentioned were non-Government methods. You can "Just Say NO!" -- albiet with some inconvenience.
With a government mandated ID of this type, you can't opt out.
Governments are also very hard to police on the proper use of data/powers. They tend to classify things under "National Security" when they frequently mean "Political Career Security".
They can also change the rules on a whim. Monday could be "this can only be used/accessed under an active law enforcement investigation". Whereas Tuesday could be "...or for proactive monitoring of persons deemed suspicious". [Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?]
Worse, the changes and the very rules themselves could be classified. Witness the bullshit the pull when asking for an ID to fly in the U.S. [You need a government issued ID, it is the law. Which law? We can't tell you, it is a secret. It isn't even written down -- the TSA communicated it to us verbally.]
Governments with too much power and information are more of a danger to individual liberties than anything they are trying to protect us from.
and stop whining about "losing freedoms" or "privacy". Sure it can be abused. But we need a way to identify people, and if you think that driver's licenses and social security numbers aren't already doing this, you're just closing your eyes to it.
If anything, requiring fingerprints or retinal scans will make these ids more secure and trustworthy.
A photograph gives some way for the PERSON to validate the ID -- so does a signature. With a retinal/fingerprint scan, you are totally at the mercy of the machine. The cop isn't going to ink your finger and doublecheck against what is stored on the card.
Finally, what happens if someone DOES steal your identity? Exactly how are you going to "invalidate" your thumbprint or retinal scan? If someone steals your ATM card and PIN, you get a new one.
Latent fingerprints can be enhanced with superglue fumes, scanned, touched up and reproduced with latex or gelatin. VERY low cost.
The big problem is that people think biometrics are inherently more secure than traditional methods of identification but that isn't necessarily true.
People trust the machine, and the machine isn't reliable enough for that type of trust, yet.
Better have some healthy airflow for the IA64 and maybe some active cooling to keep the system from melting down. No way they intend on putting that thing in a laptop...
Heat dissipation, in watts, is listed in the table near the end. I believe it was mentioned a couple times, especially in conjunction with the PPC 970 processor.
This article didn't address the embedded space. Who in their right mind is going to stick a CPU with a die size about that of a pack of playing cards in an embedded device?
Notice the absence of the XScale and Hitachi lines of embedded processors? This was a preview of the direction of 64-bit SERVER and WORKSTATION processors.
While you are right, power is a concern, it is way down on the list for the target audience of that article.
...in such pesky little cases as United Nation votes on the legitimization of certain wars against certain oil-producing countries. "Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem," said Rumsfeld, a former NATO ambassador. [cnn.com] And what a shitstorm it caused over here - did you get any feedback on that in the US at all?
We got feedback, but you would be amazed at the apathy over here. The general feeling is almost 100% opposite from what it was in the early 1800s -- now the U.S. is the big power and every one else is yapping little dogs barking at their feet.
We listen politely then do what we want, regardless.
I'm not saying it is right, I'm just saying that is the way it is. People here say "If France and Germany don't want a war in Iraq, then they don't need to fight."
Not that everyone in the U.S. is please with the situation, either. Many protest, speak out and disagree. However, the VAST majority are apathetic. The situation with Iraq should have been resolved 10 years ago -- it has dragged on too long and will continue to drag on forever if the Europeans have their way.
Well, DMCA-like laws popping up won't have much effect in loosening the grip of the West until the majority of content is produced outside the West.
You are right in that China, Germany and India have potential. However, India is too distracted by: Pakistan, Muslim vs Christian vs Hindu violence, and extreme contrasts in infrastructure development. They need another 20-50 years.
Germany just needs to get its economy together. If they stick with quasi-socialism, they are going to have a hard time strengthening it to the point of being a major power.
China is the interesting one. If they can deal with their internal political issues (Tibet, Tiawan and the western separatists) AND make a transition to a government not run by 80-year-old hardliners -- they could be a major world player. However, it is going to take a few of their leaders dying off for that to happen.
In all reality, Australia -- as well as New Zealand -- has been the United States' bitches since right after WWII.
Remember Echelon? Back in 1947 the U.S. and the U.K. signed the Ukusa (really creative name) agreement that was soon after signed on by Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This basically cemented the major former U.K. colonies and English-speaking countries as the axis around which the future world would spin.
Despite the occasional noise made by various MPs, PMs, Congressman and other politicians, there is a stranglehold of a tie between those 5 countries that will be almost impossible to break.
The U.S. leads because of the simple fact that they are the biggest, baddest and richest. (Usable natural resources, military, population, economy, etc.) The others may not toe the exact line, but everyone moves in the same direction.
Minor dissent is allowed, because it gives the illusion of self determination and national sovereignty. Major dissent never happens -- not over anything important.
The rest of Europe and Russia bitch because they aren't that important anymore. The world no longer spins around France, Germany and Russia. They are being pushed to the sidelines. Hell, they did it and now it is someone else's turn.
While I don't know about DirectWay, I do know why StarBand claims to do this.
They mangle packets by both compression and stuffing as much of the TCP packets and HTTP requests into single packets as possible. This is to cut down on the little packets going back and forth like and TCP-IP 3-way handshake and the like.
Their proxy at the earthstation undoes a lot of this. They also do things like stripping destination IPs out of subsequent packets and packet fragments, inserting them back in at the earthstation proxy.
Basically, their software does some really nasty things to the packets and undoes it at the earthstation. They claim they optimize the hell out of everything for high-latency sat connections.
Thus, you can't just open up the box and wire in an ethernet jack. Black-magic, voodoo packet-mangling software is needed as well.
I thought of that, but keep in mind the star is going to then be pulling on the orbit of the "moon" at a right angle.
Eventually, the "moon's" orbit would slip down to around the plane of the ecliptic, like everything else. All that gravity in that one plane makes it hard to do anything else.
Now, if you had a BINARY system with similar-sized stars, and the gas giant doing a figure-8 orbit around the two suns, then the gravity from the stars would counteract each other in relation to the "moon"...
Of course, the odds of finding a system where THAT is workable is about the same as me winning PowerBall AND having Katherine Zeta-Jones leave her husband to be my love slave (and have my wife agree to it...)
"I don't see what the problem would be with an earth-size moon orbiting a gas giant within the habitable zone...
Ceti Alpha V... unless it was theh radiation, Cap'n?"
Okay, okay -- I knew I should have hit "preview" first. Ceti it is.:-)
Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant? My first thought is the orbit of a moon that big would have to be pretty far out from the gas giant, thus making for some interesting temperature variations.
My second thought is -- when the "moon" goes behind the gas giant, and thus gets cut off from the sun's heat... it is gonna get REAL cold.
This is a holdout from older Unix. It is an error message that is supposed to stimulate lazy users to get off their ass and LOOK at the printer, instead of just calling the admin and saying "my job won't print".
It frequently stemmed from a paper jam, no toner or other trivial fix that simply required someone to physically go to the printer.
My info on that (3-man/1-man capsule) came from a Discovery/History Channel show, I forget which. It was very inline with the excerpt below, but went more into detail about the U.S. Administration's beliefs about and reactions to the Soviet space program.
"Korolev hurriedly designed a manned 'stopgap' program called Voskhod ('Sunrise') to satisfy Khrushchev's apetite for new space spectaculars. First proposed in February 1964 (Hedrickx, 1997), Voskhod was basically a Vostok capable of carrying 2-3 cosmonauts into low Earth orbit to practise long duration spaceflight or (using additional equipment) spacewalks and dockings in space before Soyuz became available in 1966. But in order to accomodate more cosmonauts, Vostok's single ejection seat had to be removed, leaving the crew with no chance of survival if the R7 carrier rocket malfunctioned during the first 27 seconds of launch until the upper stage could fire (Harvey, 1996). Despite the huge risks, Voskhod 1 took off on 12 October 1964 with three cosmonauts on board - then a new record."
The Voskhod was touted to the world as a "new design", and was feared by the U.S. Gov't as proof that Soviet space program under Kruschev's regime . Reality was it was a gutted version of the Vostok. A political note -- Kruschev was removed as leader by the Politboro the very next day and Leonid Breshnev was his replacement. Breshnev was MUCH less interested in the "We're #1!" attitude towards space firsts than Kruschev.
Can you back up that claim that the Russian's have the best success rate in space?
For decades the Russian space program was shrouded in secrecy. They publicized only their successes, and frequently lied about them as well. i.e. -- gutting their 1-man capsule, stuffing 3 people in there and claiming it was a new capsule.
Often, the only way we knew what was going on was successive spy sattelite passovers. Pass #1 showed a rocket; pass #2 showed a blast crater strewn with debris. These trials were denied by the Kremlin.
I'm not saying you can't be right -- I'm saying I want to see where you get your stats from to justify the claim.
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Not quite...
The DOWNLOADS aren't monitored so much as the UPLOADS are.
By that I mean the RIAA stoolie makes a song available and you download it. Technically it is the stoolie's UPLOAD they are keeping an eye on. They aren't looking at EVERYTHING you do, only what you do when connected to the stoolie.
It is more like entrapment, except the RIAA isn't law enforcement. More of a private sting operation.
Actually, in many states (Florida is one) large contract purchases such as cars, land, boats, etc. aren't binding on minors.
Many auto dealers refuse to title a vehicle in a minor's name unless it is paid for 100%.
In California, minors can't enter legally binding contracts. (Popular movie reference: Liar Liar -- under 21, no prenup) Yes, it is a movie, but in the case it is accurate.
Some new EULAs say you must be of legal age before giving consent.
It would be a bitch to use that argument to get a minor off the hook for copyright violations if a DA wanted to push, but it could complicate things to no end. It would be more effective under a civil suit.
Not really. People walk every day because of technicalities. The DAs determine what crime to charge based on the available evidence. To PROVE is a tough thing in criminal law.
.MP3s on the hard drive.
If the RIAA wanted to convince the DA to prosecute 150 copyright violations based off of P2P downloads they would have to prove 150 separate downloads of any combination of copyrighted files.
PROVING would be a bitch.
You would be able to have to show:
1. The files were accessable to the PC/person. For example,
2. Assuming the person can produce actual CDs then show the files were actually SHARED, since just ripping isn't a violation. This means...
3. LOGS from the defendants ISP showing connections at the times in question, and possibly traffic on the port. The complaintant's word that they downloaded the files isn't good enough. The logs of the plaintiff's ISP isn't good enough, as headers can be forged.
Specifically, logs showing EACH violation.
4. Some sort of signature (MD5 sum of what the plaintiff has vs MD5 sum of what was found on the defendant's PC) showing the files were actually the ones shared, and not something the plaintiff got elsewhere.
All that is BEFORE you get to judge and jury. All that would be needed to convice a DA to decide to prosecute.
Remember -- a jury awarded HOW many millions to a woman who spilled McDonald's coffee in her lap? A jury determined OJ Simpson was not guilty. A jury though 7 armed police officers who were taped beating an unarmed, unresisting black man (Rodney King) for 5+ minutes were "not guilty". [I know, he supposedly resisted before -- it didn't justify what happened.]
All the rules of evidenture -- what is admissable, what is challenged, etc. come into play. It is harder than you think.
As far as not even your mother believing it was Bible reading... belief doesn't enter into it -- PROOF is a different animal altogether.
This will get interesting when the RIAA comes crashing into a dorm room that is NATted behind a proxy/firewall.
They have a warrant to search...
IP WW.XX.YY.ZZ, but THAT is the IP of the NAT proxy/firewall. Oops, no music THERE! No warrant for any OTHER IP, such as the PC which is 192.168.0.100...
User "Joe Schmoe", who, by the way, HAS no MP3s. THOSE are all stored on his friend's PC -- who isn't named in the warrant.
OR, "Joe Schmoe" doesn't OWN the PC, he only is paying for the service. The PCs actually belong to someone else -- who is not named in the warrant.
OR, the PC with the goods belongs to a minor, who just happened to be the purchaser of all the CDs that he ripped and shared. A minor who CAN'T ENTER INTO A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT such as a music licensing agreement...
OR... take your pick. The costs for the RIAA to start tracking down and legally pursuing individuals would be astronomical.
Good luck proving successful downloads of songs for copyright infringement. Not to mention proving the downloads were of the SONGS claimed, and not some other file with the same name. Even if the file "baby_one_more_time.mp3" exists on the subject's machine, and the RIAA downloaded it and tracked back to to the subject that is only ONE violation. There is no way they can legally prove other infringements -- maybe the person was sharing a copy of bible reading masquerading as Brittany Who's-Dumping-Me-Today Spears? Maybe the RIAA was the only one that got the real thing?
The sheer expense will deal with this issue.
Wow! And I thought Slashdot's ads were large!
Interesting...
:-) The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation gives tons of money to schools and libraries for computer equipment, etc. Our very small library also has three or four computers with MS Office licenses (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Encarta) that were puchased with this grant.
However, Washington has a nice workaround for all that b.s.
We are home to Microsoft.
The locals aren't really hurting for PCs or MS Licenses.
My local library -- Spokane County, WA -- seems to have found a reasonable compromise.
When obtaining a library card for a minor, if they want Internet access they need a parent/guardian to sign off on it.
The library cards are barcoded and that is used to activate the Internet terminals.
To sign off, a parent basically signs a form saying "no access", "filtered access" or "unfiltered access". It is explained to them that "filtered access" is a "best effort only" and that the library staff aren't babysitters or the moral guardians of your children.
It seems to have placated the locals -- very few complaints have been generated.
...isn't "big crunch" but "Gnab Gib".
Or is it "Gib Gnab"? It's been a while since I've read those books...
Fragments coming back aren't going to be in your "private counting" order, but rather 1,2,3,4...
Actually, it does sound like randomizing the initial sequence number would be the solution. I seem to remember a number of other attacks based off of TCP sequence prediction and seeing nice graphs that looked like pointilistic cubes showing how various OSes sucked at this...
Maybe the "mangling" feature of IP tables can provide a quick fix -- if one is even needed. Time to fire up Ethereal!
And how long until someone comes up with something to basically make nonsense out of the ipid fields?
Sequential order is what you want it to be. Maybe I'll teach my ip stack to count 54, 2, 87, 456, 112.
The problem isn't with YOUR box sending packets out, it is with the fragments coming back in reply from some far-off server. THOSE are sequenced as well.
Of course, you could manually set your MTU to a minimal number (576?) so packets don't get fragmented to begin with. Of course, that will slow things down on the LAN side a bit...
You're making one critical error...
There are two types of government systems -- secure classified and non-secure.
While hacking a bank may be easier than getting into a military system, a national ID would most likely be managed by the non-military -- like the SSA or IRS.
In those cases, you're talking about one agency (SSA) who once allowed people to log in and review their SS record with a name, SSN and mother's maiden name -- over an unencrypted web connection!
I think you'll find hacking a bank -- much less getting away with the money -- much tougher than any but the most sensative military systems.
As far as fraud goes, the card won't stop it. Fraud usually consists of TWO people: the one with the card, and the one assisting. Like the store clerk who gives $0.20 per $1.00 for food stamps, so the person has cash and can buy smokes, drugs, booze, etc. Or the overcharges to the state medical systems (Medicare/Medicade in the U.S.).
I've dealt with government databases and those that run them. Bureaucrats -- tired, bored, and couldn't-care-less. There will be tons of errors resulting in worse problems. The biggest will be that one small error will instantly propagate to your entire life.
Most of what you mentioned were non-Government methods. You can "Just Say NO!" -- albiet with some inconvenience.
With a government mandated ID of this type, you can't opt out.
Governments are also very hard to police on the proper use of data/powers. They tend to classify things under "National Security" when they frequently mean "Political Career Security".
They can also change the rules on a whim. Monday could be "this can only be used/accessed under an active law enforcement investigation". Whereas Tuesday could be "...or for proactive monitoring of persons deemed suspicious". [Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?]
Worse, the changes and the very rules themselves could be classified. Witness the bullshit the pull when asking for an ID to fly in the U.S. [You need a government issued ID, it is the law. Which law? We can't tell you, it is a secret. It isn't even written down -- the TSA communicated it to us verbally.]
Governments with too much power and information are more of a danger to individual liberties than anything they are trying to protect us from.
and stop whining about "losing freedoms" or "privacy". Sure it can be abused. But we need a way to identify people, and if you think that driver's licenses and social security numbers aren't already doing this, you're just closing your eyes to it.
If anything, requiring fingerprints or retinal scans will make these ids more secure and trustworthy.
A photograph gives some way for the PERSON to validate the ID -- so does a signature. With a retinal/fingerprint scan, you are totally at the mercy of the machine. The cop isn't going to ink your finger and doublecheck against what is stored on the card.
Finally, what happens if someone DOES steal your identity? Exactly how are you going to "invalidate" your thumbprint or retinal scan? If someone steals your ATM card and PIN, you get a new one.
Latent fingerprints can be enhanced with superglue fumes, scanned, touched up and reproduced with latex or gelatin. VERY low cost.
The big problem is that people think biometrics are inherently more secure than traditional methods of identification but that isn't necessarily true.
People trust the machine, and the machine isn't reliable enough for that type of trust, yet.
Better have some healthy airflow for the IA64 and maybe some active cooling to keep the system from melting down. No way they intend on putting that thing in a laptop...
You obviously haven't been keeping up with the news. Man burns penis with laptop.
Heat dissipation, in watts, is listed in the table near the end. I believe it was mentioned a couple times, especially in conjunction with the PPC 970 processor.
This article didn't address the embedded space. Who in their right mind is going to stick a CPU with a die size about that of a pack of playing cards in an embedded device?
Notice the absence of the XScale and Hitachi lines of embedded processors? This was a preview of the direction of 64-bit SERVER and WORKSTATION processors.
While you are right, power is a concern, it is way down on the list for the target audience of that article.
"Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem," said Rumsfeld, a former NATO ambassador. [cnn.com] And what a shitstorm it caused over here - did you get any feedback on that in the US at all?
We got feedback, but you would be amazed at the apathy over here. The general feeling is almost 100% opposite from what it was in the early 1800s -- now the U.S. is the big power and every one else is yapping little dogs barking at their feet.
We listen politely then do what we want, regardless.
I'm not saying it is right, I'm just saying that is the way it is. People here say "If France and Germany don't want a war in Iraq, then they don't need to fight."
Not that everyone in the U.S. is please with the situation, either. Many protest, speak out and disagree. However, the VAST majority are apathetic. The situation with Iraq should have been resolved 10 years ago -- it has dragged on too long and will continue to drag on forever if the Europeans have their way.
Well, DMCA-like laws popping up won't have much effect in loosening the grip of the West until the majority of content is produced outside the West.
You are right in that China, Germany and India have potential. However, India is too distracted by: Pakistan, Muslim vs Christian vs Hindu violence, and extreme contrasts in infrastructure development. They need another 20-50 years.
Germany just needs to get its economy together. If they stick with quasi-socialism, they are going to have a hard time strengthening it to the point of being a major power.
China is the interesting one. If they can deal with their internal political issues (Tibet, Tiawan and the western separatists) AND make a transition to a government not run by 80-year-old hardliners -- they could be a major world player. However, it is going to take a few of their leaders dying off for that to happen.
In all reality, Australia -- as well as New Zealand -- has been the United States' bitches since right after WWII.
s C: mondediplo.com/1999/01/04echelon+australia+united+ states+echelon&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Remember Echelon? Back in 1947 the U.S. and the U.K. signed the Ukusa (really creative name) agreement that was soon after signed on by Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This basically cemented the major former U.K. colonies and English-speaking countries as the axis around which the future world would spin.
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:OU6RBkDIMK
Despite the occasional noise made by various MPs, PMs, Congressman and other politicians, there is a stranglehold of a tie between those 5 countries that will be almost impossible to break.
The U.S. leads because of the simple fact that they are the biggest, baddest and richest. (Usable natural resources, military, population, economy, etc.) The others may not toe the exact line, but everyone moves in the same direction.
Minor dissent is allowed, because it gives the illusion of self determination and national sovereignty. Major dissent never happens -- not over anything important.
The rest of Europe and Russia bitch because they aren't that important anymore. The world no longer spins around France, Germany and Russia. They are being pushed to the sidelines. Hell, they did it and now it is someone else's turn.
Sad, but that is the way it works.
While I don't know about DirectWay, I do know why StarBand claims to do this.
They mangle packets by both compression and stuffing as much of the TCP packets and HTTP requests into single packets as possible. This is to cut down on the little packets going back and forth like and TCP-IP 3-way handshake and the like.
Their proxy at the earthstation undoes a lot of this. They also do things like stripping destination IPs out of subsequent packets and packet fragments, inserting them back in at the earthstation proxy.
Basically, their software does some really nasty things to the packets and undoes it at the earthstation. They claim they optimize the hell out of everything for high-latency sat connections.
Thus, you can't just open up the box and wire in an ethernet jack. Black-magic, voodoo packet-mangling software is needed as well.
re: moon orbiting on a different axis
I thought of that, but keep in mind the star is going to then be pulling on the orbit of the "moon" at a right angle.
Eventually, the "moon's" orbit would slip down to around the plane of the ecliptic, like everything else. All that gravity in that one plane makes it hard to do anything else.
Now, if you had a BINARY system with similar-sized stars, and the gas giant doing a figure-8 orbit around the two suns, then the gravity from the stars would counteract each other in relation to the "moon"...
Of course, the odds of finding a system where THAT is workable is about the same as me winning PowerBall AND having Katherine Zeta-Jones leave her husband to be my love slave (and have my wife agree to it...)
"I don't see what the problem would be with an earth-size moon orbiting a gas giant within the habitable zone ...
... unless it was theh radiation, Cap'n?"
:-)
Ceti Alpha V
Okay, okay -- I knew I should have hit "preview" first. Ceti it is.
Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant? My first thought is the orbit of a moon that big would have to be pretty far out from the gas giant, thus making for some interesting temperature variations.
My second thought is -- when the "moon" goes behind the gas giant, and thus gets cut off from the sun's heat... it is gonna get REAL cold.
This is a holdout from older Unix. It is an error message that is supposed to stimulate lazy users to get off their ass and LOOK at the printer, instead of just calling the admin and saying "my job won't print".
It frequently stemmed from a paper jam, no toner or other trivial fix that simply required someone to physically go to the printer.
"This study is referring to the distance of the star to the planet being far enough that the sun doesn't fry the planet."
Actually, it referrs to a bit more than that...
It referrs to the ability of an Earth-sized planet to exist in a stable "habitable zone" orbit (not too hot, not too cold).
Not being torn apart or having a perturbed orbit due to the proximity of gas giants, etc. is another big factor.
However, it isn't exactly time to start looking for a nice time-share condo on Ceta Alpha V, yet.
My info on that (3-man/1-man capsule) came from a Discovery/History Channel show, I forget which. It was very inline with the excerpt below, but went more into detail about the U.S. Administration's beliefs about and reactions to the Soviet space program.
"Korolev hurriedly designed a manned 'stopgap' program called Voskhod ('Sunrise') to satisfy Khrushchev's apetite for new space spectaculars. First proposed in February 1964 (Hedrickx, 1997), Voskhod was basically a Vostok capable of carrying 2-3 cosmonauts into low Earth orbit to practise long duration spaceflight or (using additional equipment) spacewalks and dockings in space before Soyuz became available in 1966. But in order to accomodate more cosmonauts, Vostok's single ejection seat had to be removed, leaving the crew with no chance of survival if the R7 carrier rocket malfunctioned during the first 27 seconds of launch until the upper stage could fire (Harvey, 1996). Despite the huge risks, Voskhod 1 took off on 12 October 1964 with three cosmonauts on board - then a new record."
The Voskhod was touted to the world as a "new design", and was feared by the U.S. Gov't as proof that Soviet space program under Kruschev's regime . Reality was it was a gutted version of the Vostok. A political note -- Kruschev was removed as leader by the Politboro the very next day and Leonid Breshnev was his replacement. Breshnev was MUCH less interested in the "We're #1!" attitude towards space firsts than Kruschev.
Can you back up that claim that the Russian's have the best success rate in space?
For decades the Russian space program was shrouded in secrecy. They publicized only their successes, and frequently lied about them as well. i.e. -- gutting their 1-man capsule, stuffing 3 people in there and claiming it was a new capsule.
Often, the only way we knew what was going on was successive spy sattelite passovers. Pass #1 showed a rocket; pass #2 showed a blast crater strewn with debris. These trials were denied by the Kremlin.
I'm not saying you can't be right -- I'm saying I want to see where you get your stats from to justify the claim.