The idea that you can somehow 'ban' a country from getting ahold of a commodity is ludicrious and stupid. The only way you could really do that would be to effectively seal and close their borders militarily and embargo them to the point that you controlled all of their travel and trade outside of their borders. Good luck with that.
Especially if you can't put your embago in quickly enough to prevent them getting hold of weapons to defend themselves. Anyway most countries can't even seal their own borders.
Take terrorism, for example. More Americans died fighting in Iraq than died on 9-11. Fewer than 3,000 people have died this entire century on American soil from terrorism, while half a million Americans die from cancer every year, another half million from heart attacks. The terrorists I'm more scared of are the terrorists who run the fast food and tobacco companies!
Wonder how many people have been killed in the same time by corrupt cops...
Meanwhile 40,000 Americans die on the highways every year. I'd like to see some of that Homeland Security money go to some guardrails - it would actually save some lives rather than being a political circus.
But guardrails don't give government officials more power.
Nor does giving goverment officals more power actually make people safer. It creates new dangers and rarely does anything to reduce whatever "danger" they made a big fuss about.
YMMV, but in Vermont last year I saw a news report talking about Megan's law and why VT needed something like that. The LEO pushing for it even said that 90% of molestation cases are by a DIRECT relative, not a stranger, but we still need such laws. We're not even talking about step fathers here, actual fathers.
Actually it's "fathers and mothers" but the sexist stereotype is even stronger than the stranger stereotype.
What good is a system of state-sponsored punishment if after you've paid your debt, you're still considered guilty? Why would that make any prisoner want to reform, if he/she knew they would be treated the same no matter what? Yes, there is the problem of recidivism, but I think that is exacerbated by this kind of thing.
The same issue applies to the practice of barring someone from voting after they have served their sentence.
My wife and I were checking out one of these databases for our neighborhood, and found more people than we would have liked. The problem is, they didn't give any detailed information, so there was no way of telling if the person was a child molester, a rapist, or an 18 year old guy who got statutory rape on his 16 year old girlfriend because he angered the girl's parents.
Such lists only contain the names of people who have actually been caught. At least in theory, in practice they can contain all sorts of errors. It's even possible that even people who have actually been caught will be excluded from such lists for, daft reasons, such as being women.
I also don't like it because I wonder why a list like this should be limited only to sex offenders.
The GPL IS a subversion of copyright law after a fashion.
Actually you could easily argue that it is a "back to basics" revision.
Perhaps you haven't yet realized this, but the more laws we make, the more criminals there are. Obviously, the more we criminalize the things people are already doing, the more people who are going to break them. And you can't have fewer than zero people breaking a law, so adding to the laws will certainly never create fewer criminals. The point isn't the ridiculous notion that we could just abolish all laws and have "zero" criminals. Some things, after all, are worth the cost of criminalizing them. But it's a mistake to think that laws are without cost. And here, a reasonable person can make the case that we're simply better off if we don't criminalize something, whether or not we like or agree with it.
There certainly exist situations where such a cost is very much greater than any problems associated with the whatever. The classic example being drug prohibition, due to it's creation of a black market.
Oh, copyright was a splendid idea when it came into existance. It allowed a great composer to work and create his art without having to find some nobility to sponsor him first. That's why you have near zero "commoner" stories, plays and art pieces before the advent of copyright, the highborns didn't really want to hear about that.
Or it could mean that a noble patron has been replaced by a publishing corporation.
Copyright finally allowed to create art that the "common man" enjoys without going piss poor in the process.
Of course you never have people struggling to get their works published; every record company on the planet wanted to sign "The Beatles"; every movie company wanted to make "Star Wars" and JK Rowling had to fight off publishers because they all wanted "Harry Potter"...
Before copyright came into existance, you had to have one filthy rich patron to sponsor you for your art, because you couldn't really perform or print it more than once before everyone copied it.
Of course before copyright no inn or pub would have "live entertainment", let alone "pay" performers with a decent meal. Also nowhere has any tradition of travelling entertainers.
With copyright, you could sell to the "masses", where you had to sell thousands of copies or perform it a few hundred times before you could make a living off it.
A few hundred performances is likely to be hard work, even if you are just entertaining your village and training up an apprentice.
I fully understand people's right to have a paper or E-mail trail to cover their ass, but it still gives me a kick to break the unwritten rule that all communication must be by E-mail'.
Email has the advantage over paper of being time stamped and easily searchable.
People get so deliciously annoyed because they know they can't go and justify their objections to direct contact, to their bosses, without admitting that most of their insistence on E-mail only communication is mostly just an excuse to make it easier to procrastinate.
Other than it being an interruption to the work they are doing.
Unless the site owners want to restrict file types to a specific subset, then todays technology leaves no other option than using file suffixes also.
Actually the webserver can quite easily use something like/etc/magic to work out what the file actually is. In order to serve the file it has to read it anyway. So all it has to do is something along the lines of read first part of file into memory; examine it to work out the MIME type; output MIME type; output buffered start of file; output rest of file.
I spend a year (or more) writing a novel. My income depends on the advance my publisher gives me (if I am lucky), as well as royalties from additional sales.
Both you and your publisher are taking a gamble on how many people want to buy/read your book in the first place.
The novel is published and put in the book stores, priced at $25.
You come along and copy it, then sell it in the same book stores for $20.
Maybe your publisher overpriced the book in the first place.
It's easy to understand _why_ copyright exists, but that doesn't mean that copyright is a good idea in the first place.
Even if it was a good idea in the "first place", that dosn't mean that it is a good idea now. There are plenty of things which were good ideas 2-300 years ago, which would be considered otherwise now.
The fact is that "promoting the progress of science and useful arts" is not verifiably helped by copyright law, there's no evidence: nada. zip. zilch.
Thus the question needs to be asked "if it dosn't help does it hinder?" The answer to which appears to be "yes, in some cases".
If the goal is to just block copyrighted material that is illegal being transferred, it's not going to happen, today. They cannot break the encryption and run the fingerprint algorithm in real time. Not today, not publicly.
Even if they could identify the content it's impossible to know if the transfer is legal or not. Since permission from the copyright holder can easily be "out of band" from the ISP's POV.
If "illegal images" are images that depict illegal acts, then 80% of the Library of Congress should be burned down and the corresponding writers arrested for depicting "illegal acts" in their books. That includes the fucking Bible (for all of you christian talibans out there) which has a murder or two every other page, sometimes without sparing the gory details.
If you were to apply current US standards to Genesis chapter 19. Then it probably qualifies as "child porn". Once you get past the genocide and rape that is...
It would save everyone wondering to simply pass a law stating that an "illegal image" is any photograph of a (current or former) polican doing something they wish you hadn't seen them doing. Which, let's face it, is probably what most of them want anyway.
next thing you know, there will be "illegal sounds"
As above, but replace "photograph" with "sound recording".
and "illegal ideas"
The likes of "equality before the law", maybe.
This planet is getting more and more fucked up by the day and nobody seems to notice.
It's not a matter of noticing, so much as what to do about it.
As for the air traffic control issue there is no reason that ATC cannot control a UAV in the way that they contol other aircraft in civilian airspace - but instead of talking to it on the radio, send it a message to change course/altitude.
Unless these UAVs are fitted with transponders ATC (and other aircraft) have no way of knowing where they are or what they are doing. In which case a modified version of TCAS will probably keep them out of harm's way most of the time
There are already standard systems for controlling piloted aricraft (automated landings etc.)
In the case of a manned aircraft the final authority is with the pilot(s). Any instructions from ATC are not "orders". Even with an autoland system nothing prevents a pilot taking over and either landing manually or executing a "go around".
Recently, the parents of a 1000-jump skydiver sued the aircraft manufacturer when the pilot flew the plane into icy clouds and crashed the plane because the wing de-icing equipment was overwhelmed. It's like suing Chrysler because the driver of the car drove it into a brick wall at 90 MPH, and the seat belts just weren't quite enough. Except in this case, Cessna will probably have to settle.
WTF!
Private airplanes == Rich guys == $target.
As a result, nobody wants to develop any new technology because the technology, even if demonstrably safer, will still be sued if it should ever fail. (which it would, eventually)
There's also the problem that anything new would face an expensive certifciation process. Which would increase the cost. Even if it was something as difficult as a stupid pilot proof wing anti-ice. AFAIK nobody tried to sue Boeing over Air Florida Palm 90 though. So it's a bit strange that they didn't try and sue the aircraft owner in this case (or their estate if the pilot was the owner).
Those problems also apply to other aircraft in the sky as well - gliders/sailplanes, microlights, hang gliders, balloons.
However these are unlikely to be above 10,000 feet. Whereas UAVs can operate higher than 45,000 feet. Thus are a hazard at any altitude for a civil aircraft.
They need power for communications anyway, and COTS mode C/A and mode S transponders are not designed for low power electrical systems, but they probably could be.
The transponder needs to be able to operate from the RAT and/or battery. Though I'm not sure how well TCAS would would work in the case of two "engine out" planes being on collision course.
The real problem is however what happens in case of a crash.
Those aircraft are very low weight composite aircraft with very thight energy budgets. Due to the composite parts, they are invisible to primary radar. Due to the energy budget, they cannot install an SSR transponder. In other words, they are completely invisble in case something goes wrong. (in which you cannot trust the transponder anyhow)
Maybe the solution is to work out a way of increasing the RCS of such a device. NB these things are dangerous even a few hundred grams of bird will destroy a jet engine and cockpit windows probably arn't tested to withstand hitting a UAV.
Like many institutions, the Canadian government has their own security initiative: MITS (Management of Information Technology Security). It aims specifically at being proactive at safeguarding information and IT systems. It is mandatory for all systems to be certified before they are put into production.
Such "initiatives" are only any good if they are followed and actually meaningful in the first place. If the same bunch of fools are involved in both managing projects and drawing these up then it's unlikely that they will be anything other than a waste of time and money.
Canada is no different to the rest of the world. The majority of projects are run by bean counters who wouldn't no the correct solution if it jumped and bit them on the ass.
IMHO they would better be called "idiots". Since any half way competent "bean counter" could at least count beans and stop things going completely over budget. i.e. pull the plug long before things were costing a thousand times the initial estimate.
But most Canadians already know our SIN numbers are in essence public, have been for some time.
If things are set up sensibly in the first place the only thing anyone knowing these details should be able to do is contribute to your income tax/state pension. On the other hand they have no relevence to passports...
Not so much a security flaw is it is incompetence.
Incompetence is the cause, security flaws are one of the results.
HAHA! "URL HACKING" is easy to protect against. Maybe they've gone so high tech in security they totally passed on the low tech?
Most likely the underlaying reason is that the whole process of assigning and managing government IT projects is fundermantally broken. (I don't just mean in Canada either.)
Slashdot Mirror
The idea that you can somehow 'ban' a country from getting ahold of a commodity is ludicrious and stupid. The only way you could really do that would be to effectively seal and close their borders militarily and embargo them to the point that you controlled all of their travel and trade outside of their borders. Good luck with that.
Especially if you can't put your embago in quickly enough to prevent them getting hold of weapons to defend themselves. Anyway most countries can't even seal their own borders.
Take terrorism, for example. More Americans died fighting in Iraq than died on 9-11. Fewer than 3,000 people have died this entire century on American soil from terrorism, while half a million Americans die from cancer every year, another half million from heart attacks. The terrorists I'm more scared of are the terrorists who run the fast food and tobacco companies!
Wonder how many people have been killed in the same time by corrupt cops...
Meanwhile 40,000 Americans die on the highways every year. I'd like to see some of that Homeland Security money go to some guardrails - it would actually save some lives rather than being a political circus.
But guardrails don't give government officials more power.
Nor does giving goverment officals more power actually make people safer. It creates new dangers and rarely does anything to reduce whatever "danger" they made a big fuss about.
YMMV, but in Vermont last year I saw a news report talking about Megan's law and why VT needed something like that. The LEO pushing for it even said that 90% of molestation cases are by a DIRECT relative, not a stranger, but we still need such laws. We're not even talking about step fathers here, actual fathers.
Actually it's "fathers and mothers" but the sexist stereotype is even stronger than the stranger stereotype.
What good is a system of state-sponsored punishment if after you've paid your debt, you're still considered guilty? Why would that make any prisoner want to reform, if he/she knew they would be treated the same no matter what? Yes, there is the problem of recidivism, but I think that is exacerbated by this kind of thing.
The same issue applies to the practice of barring someone from voting after they have served their sentence.
My wife and I were checking out one of these databases for our neighborhood, and found more people than we would have liked. The problem is, they didn't give any detailed information, so there was no way of telling if the person was a child molester, a rapist, or an 18 year old guy who got statutory rape on his 16 year old girlfriend because he angered the girl's parents.
Such lists only contain the names of people who have actually been caught. At least in theory, in practice they can contain all sorts of errors. It's even possible that even people who have actually been caught will be excluded from such lists for, daft reasons, such as being women.
I also don't like it because I wonder why a list like this should be limited only to sex offenders.
It's purely political.
The GPL IS a subversion of copyright law after a fashion.
Actually you could easily argue that it is a "back to basics" revision.
Perhaps you haven't yet realized this, but the more laws we make, the more criminals there are. Obviously, the more we criminalize the things people are already doing, the more people who are going to break them. And you can't have fewer than zero people breaking a law, so adding to the laws will certainly never create fewer criminals. The point isn't the ridiculous notion that we could just abolish all laws and have "zero" criminals. Some things, after all, are worth the cost of criminalizing them. But it's a mistake to think that laws are without cost. And here, a reasonable person can make the case that we're simply better off if we don't criminalize something, whether or not we like or agree with it.
There certainly exist situations where such a cost is very much greater than any problems associated with the whatever. The classic example being drug prohibition, due to it's creation of a black market.
Oh, copyright was a splendid idea when it came into existance. It allowed a great composer to work and create his art without having to find some nobility to sponsor him first. That's why you have near zero "commoner" stories, plays and art pieces before the advent of copyright, the highborns didn't really want to hear about that.
Or it could mean that a noble patron has been replaced by a publishing corporation.
Copyright finally allowed to create art that the "common man" enjoys without going piss poor in the process.
Of course you never have people struggling to get their works published; every record company on the planet wanted to sign "The Beatles"; every movie company wanted to make "Star Wars" and JK Rowling had to fight off publishers because they all wanted "Harry Potter"...
Before copyright came into existance, you had to have one filthy rich patron to sponsor you for your art, because you couldn't really perform or print it more than once before everyone copied it.
Of course before copyright no inn or pub would have "live entertainment", let alone "pay" performers with a decent meal. Also nowhere has any tradition of travelling entertainers.
With copyright, you could sell to the "masses", where you had to sell thousands of copies or perform it a few hundred times before you could make a living off it.
A few hundred performances is likely to be hard work, even if you are just entertaining your village and training up an apprentice.
I fully understand people's right to have a paper or E-mail trail to cover their ass, but it still gives me a kick to break the unwritten rule that all communication must be by E-mail'.
Email has the advantage over paper of being time stamped and easily searchable.
People get so deliciously annoyed because they know they can't go and justify their objections to direct contact, to their bosses, without admitting that most of their insistence on E-mail only communication is mostly just an excuse to make it easier to procrastinate.
Other than it being an interruption to the work they are doing.
Unless the site owners want to restrict file types to a specific subset, then todays technology leaves no other option than using file suffixes also.
/etc/magic to work out what the file actually is. In order to serve the file it has to read it anyway. So all it has to do is something along the lines of read first part of file into memory; examine it to work out the MIME type; output MIME type; output buffered start of file; output rest of file.
Actually the webserver can quite easily use something like
I spend a year (or more) writing a novel. My income depends on the advance my publisher gives me (if I am lucky), as well as royalties from additional sales.
Both you and your publisher are taking a gamble on how many people want to buy/read your book in the first place.
The novel is published and put in the book stores, priced at $25. You come along and copy it, then sell it in the same book stores for $20.
Maybe your publisher overpriced the book in the first place.
It's easy to understand _why_ copyright exists, but that doesn't mean that copyright is a good idea in the first place.
Even if it was a good idea in the "first place", that dosn't mean that it is a good idea now. There are plenty of things which were good ideas 2-300 years ago, which would be considered otherwise now.
The fact is that "promoting the progress of science and useful arts" is not verifiably helped by copyright law, there's no evidence: nada. zip. zilch.
Thus the question needs to be asked "if it dosn't help does it hinder?" The answer to which appears to be "yes, in some cases".
If the goal is to just block copyrighted material that is illegal being transferred, it's not going to happen, today. They cannot break the encryption and run the fingerprint algorithm in real time. Not today, not publicly.
Even if they could identify the content it's impossible to know if the transfer is legal or not. Since permission from the copyright holder can easily be "out of band" from the ISP's POV.
If "illegal images" are images that depict illegal acts, then 80% of the Library of Congress should be burned down and the corresponding writers arrested for depicting "illegal acts" in their books. That includes the fucking Bible (for all of you christian talibans out there) which has a murder or two every other page, sometimes without sparing the gory details.
If you were to apply current US standards to Genesis chapter 19. Then it probably qualifies as "child porn". Once you get past the genocide and rape that is...
There is such a thing as an "illegal image"????
It would save everyone wondering to simply pass a law stating that an "illegal image" is any photograph of a (current or former) polican doing something they wish you hadn't seen them doing. Which, let's face it, is probably what most of them want anyway.
next thing you know, there will be "illegal sounds"
As above, but replace "photograph" with "sound recording".
and "illegal ideas"
The likes of "equality before the law", maybe.
This planet is getting more and more fucked up by the day and nobody seems to notice.
It's not a matter of noticing, so much as what to do about it.
As for the air traffic control issue there is no reason that ATC cannot control a UAV in the way that they contol other aircraft in civilian airspace - but instead of talking to it on the radio, send it a message to change course/altitude.
Unless these UAVs are fitted with transponders ATC (and other aircraft) have no way of knowing where they are or what they are doing. In which case a modified version of TCAS will probably keep them out of harm's way most of the time
There are already standard systems for controlling piloted aricraft (automated landings etc.)
In the case of a manned aircraft the final authority is with the pilot(s). Any instructions from ATC are not "orders". Even with an autoland system nothing prevents a pilot taking over and either landing manually or executing a "go around".
Recently, the parents of a 1000-jump skydiver sued the aircraft manufacturer when the pilot flew the plane into icy clouds and crashed the plane because the wing de-icing equipment was overwhelmed. It's like suing Chrysler because the driver of the car drove it into a brick wall at 90 MPH, and the seat belts just weren't quite enough. Except in this case, Cessna will probably have to settle.
WTF!
Private airplanes == Rich guys == $target.
As a result, nobody wants to develop any new technology because the technology, even if demonstrably safer, will still be sued if it should ever fail. (which it would, eventually)
There's also the problem that anything new would face an expensive certifciation process. Which would increase the cost. Even if it was something as difficult as a stupid pilot proof wing anti-ice.
AFAIK nobody tried to sue Boeing over Air Florida Palm 90 though. So it's a bit strange that they didn't try and sue the aircraft owner in this case (or their estate if the pilot was the owner).
Those problems also apply to other aircraft in the sky as well - gliders/sailplanes, microlights, hang gliders, balloons.
However these are unlikely to be above 10,000 feet. Whereas UAVs can operate higher than 45,000 feet. Thus are a hazard at any altitude for a civil aircraft.
they are very low weight structures (in the referenced article, they state 27 kg
Low in comparison to other flying machines. In comparison with the average bird it's rather heavy.
They need power for communications anyway, and COTS mode C/A and mode S transponders are not designed for low power electrical systems, but they probably could be.
The transponder needs to be able to operate from the RAT and/or battery. Though I'm not sure how well TCAS would would work in the case of two "engine out" planes being on collision course.
The real problem is however what happens in case of a crash.
Those aircraft are very low weight composite aircraft with very thight energy budgets. Due to the composite parts, they are invisible to primary radar. Due to the energy budget, they cannot install an SSR transponder. In other words, they are completely invisble in case something goes wrong. (in which you cannot trust the transponder anyhow)
Maybe the solution is to work out a way of increasing the RCS of such a device.
NB these things are dangerous even a few hundred grams of bird will destroy a jet engine and cockpit windows probably arn't tested to withstand hitting a UAV.
Like many institutions, the Canadian government has their own security initiative: MITS (Management of Information Technology Security). It aims specifically at being proactive at safeguarding information and IT systems. It is mandatory for all systems to be certified before they are put into production.
Such "initiatives" are only any good if they are followed and actually meaningful in the first place.
If the same bunch of fools are involved in both managing projects and drawing these up then it's unlikely that they will be anything other than a waste of time and money.
Canada is no different to the rest of the world. The majority of projects are run by bean counters who wouldn't no the correct solution if it jumped and bit them on the ass.
IMHO they would better be called "idiots". Since any half way competent "bean counter" could at least count beans and stop things going completely over budget. i.e. pull the plug long before things were costing a thousand times the initial estimate.
But most Canadians already know our SIN numbers are in essence public, have been for some time.
If things are set up sensibly in the first place the only thing anyone knowing these details should be able to do is contribute to your income tax/state pension. On the other hand they have no relevence to passports...
Not so much a security flaw is it is incompetence.
Incompetence is the cause, security flaws are one of the results.
HAHA! "URL HACKING" is easy to protect against. Maybe they've gone so high tech in security they totally passed on the low tech?
Most likely the underlaying reason is that the whole process of assigning and managing government IT projects is fundermantally broken. (I don't just mean in Canada either.)
Unfortunately, Canada has a really bad track record for IT.
:)
Can anyone name a government which dosn't