If somebody is going to commit something illegal, he'll probably enter the country illegally. Probably through the porous mexican border
The US/Mexican border is one of the most highly policed on the planet, but that dosn't stop people being able to illegally cross it. The US also has thousands of miles of border with Canada
or the huge coastline that the US has.
There are criminal gangs who specialise in smuggling things and people. Just about every regular military on the planet trains people in methods of infiltration. It would be very suprising if para-militaries, including mercenaries and terrorists cannot do the same thing. It's also perfectly possible for a US citizen to be a terrorist or a terrorist to steal the identity of a US citizen (of "good standing").
Secondly, this is downright disrespectful.
As well as potentiall expensive. How soon before you have ads of the form "Thinking of visiting the US, come here instead. You'll be made to feel like a guest rather than a criminal when you step off the plane..."
Detractors will argue that it's for the safety of the US. Well, I really don't see how it'll help. Once the dude is in the country, and has committed the offence, this sort of system is absolutely worthless.
There are several hundred million people already in the US. The "terrorists" could already be there.
Effort should be put into preventing these sort of tragedies.
As well as conducting a proper investigation.
Efforts like putting more effort into the Israel Palestine crisis,
The US puts a lot of effort into that already. Unfortunatly it's the sort of effort which tends to perpetuate the status quo.
managing Iraq more effectively.
Effective management would mean a lack of "backhanders" to the various foreign contractors involved in "reconstriction". Contracts end up being awarded which are not only orders of magnitude higher than local estimates Iraqi civil engineers are left thinking "even flying all the workers and materials in shouldn't make it costs that much". There is also the situation that not only do most Iraqis not want foreign soldiers in their country most of the soldiers don't want to be their.
stop being so patriachal and showing more respect to the citizens of the world.
All too often US Government policy is to support one group of "thugs" over another. This was the situation in Somalia, it is the situation in Afghanistan. Which makes the US intervention unpopular. Most people would (reluctantly) accept a foreign invasion if it got rid of all "warlords" if the invader starts supporting some of these warlords or creating new ones then they have become part of the problem.
I for one, will be taking my tourist dollars elsewhere.
As canadian or Australian Dollers. Or alternativly tourist Euros/Pasos/Yen/etc.
If the Americans were really serious about saving lives, they would actually DO something about drunk drivers. They kill an airplane load of people every two days.
On top of that there are probably a large number of people who shouldn't be driving on the public roads even when sober. A radical idea would be for the state to issue permissions to drive on public roads which explicitally state "This is not an identification document. It's only purpose is to prove that the holder has passed a set of tests in their competancy to operate a motor vehicle". Rather than such stupidity as a "driver's license" being the prefered proof that someone is old enough to purchase alcohol.
How secure would you feel if your country's military were open source. Cameras everywhere, no privacy, people could see what was going on at all times and at all stages of planning.
This has more to do with David Brin's "Transparent Society" idea than Open Source Software.
People could browse through troop deployment schedules and bomb blueprints to their heart's content.
OSS does not require you to make the software available to anyone. It certainly does not require you to make the data you process using the software public. However some proprietary software does claim to give the vendor access, even copyright ownership, of data.
Or what if the internal diagram of your front door's lock were printed right on your front door, would that be OK.
You mean the diagram showing how it was pointless attempting to get the door open without the key...
Security through obscurity may not be reliable but it is at least a useful barrier to sort out opportunists and the unskilled but predatory.
In practice such information rarely stays obsure to those motivated by malice. Every "secret" is a potential "key".
I said nothing about open source being more secure. I think it is more secureable,
Security isn't actually a "product". It is an attribute of an entire system, not just certain components. A "good" choice of components can make the process of security easier than a "bad" choice.
but what annoys me is Microsoft whining that there is no one to sue with open source, when their EULAs have all manner of disclaimer.
How many cases are there of such suits taking place?
Microsoft should be sued for fraud.
Or even prosecuted. But corporations, unlike real people, don't tend to face a major risk by breaking criminal law.
For the last freaking time, the GPL is *not* a EULA. It is a distribution license.
Some people just don't "get it". Possibly they are never going to get it... Especially the fact that distribution licences for as long as there has been copyright law of a form which allowed them and have been legally tested over the past couple of hundred years. EULAs have only been around for a few decades and have never been properly legally tested, even clauses which don't conflict with relevent statute and case law.
You've noticed the same kinds of disclaimers on the GPL, yes?
The GPL is not an EULA, for starters.
If the warranty disclaimer on a Microsoft license is invalid, what makes the one on the GPL valid; and if it is not, then how would, say, the contributors to the Linux kernel fare if they were sued for a major security breach?
With a piece of open source software anyone who requires security can fromally verify and audit the software. With a piece of proprietary software the EULA typically prevents then from performing the kind of actions they'd been to do as a precursor to auditing the software security.
But, if you search another way...
Google for "Microsoft Exploit" yields 993 hits,
Google for "Linux exploit" yields 1880 hits.
These numbers don't actually indicate the number of actual exploits...
So, it's all in the reporting. I mean, you know and I know that it's not suprising that there might be more hits for linux, cause the linux community tends to shout it loud that there are exploits, and that they're either fixed or being fixed,
The figures could mean that Windows and Linux have similar numbers of exploits. But with Linux there are reports of both the exploit and of the exploit having been fixed. Whereas with Windows exploits just get reported....
There's two conflicting maxims when it comes to updating systems:
'Always apply the latest updates' and 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
The latter maxim also applies to whoever is producing the "update". Espcially if the software in question isn't written in a well structured way. With "sphagetti code" attempting to remove a bug or add a new feature can have all sorts of unwanted effects.
What you don't realise is that your polititians get ideas from watching what goes on over here. So I hope you are still laughing when they decide to copy
the new taxes that are rumoured to be coming:
In which case what is needed is a lawyer tax (especially in the USA), politican tax, corporate "fat cat" tax and so on...
The patent office itself has the same problem. They can tell if someone else patented the same thing (did they copy?) but they simply don't have resources to tell if some technical thing has ever occured before.
In which case they should either reject applications in areas they are not competent to research or not accept these applications in the first place.
Sure, we all know about domains, but we're computer nerds.
Patents should not be "obvious" to those "skilled in the art". Regardless of if they are in-obvious to people with some other specialty.
Most people in the patent office could probably not make that claim, just as they couldn't claim to be automobile designers or materials scientists.
In which case they shouldn't be handling applications for automobiles or materials...
Is it non-obvious? Again, it probably was non-obvious in the early 80's, but it's definitely very obvious since 95.
The DNS dates from 1982. The earliest example of a "sub-domain" is in RFC 819 which dates from August of that year.
Are they the inventor of sub-domain... I don't know them, but I would bet that they aren't.
Unless they are either Jon Postal (who is dead) or Zaw-Sing Su then they self evidently arn't. Finding the relevent "prior art" takes seconds using Google.
Ah, but you miss an important point - USPTO grants patents because its also a source of income (and a pretty good one at that).
In which case what difference would it make to them if applications are accepted or rejected? Indeed it might make more sense to reject any questionable applications ASAP.
Theres probably a clause in their phone contracts that stated if you have no service for X hours after you notify us we will give you y! There are jut trying to avoid some payouts!
BT tend to suspend this where they have "out of the ordinary conditions", They have been known to do this for all customers, even those where the fault is nothing to do with the whatever...
I was under the impression that many of these tunnels were filled with inert gasses, such as SF6 to prevent this exact sort of problem. I assume its very hard to keep an old tunnel air tight,
Assuming they ever were air tight. Typically bunkers would operate under positive preasure, so that air would exit through any cracks, as opposed to fallout entering.
The term "price sensitive" is used to describe this phenomena in general, but the specific twist that the digital age brings is the delivery of a lot of goods that are ordinarily priced at some level at a price of zero.
Thing is that "content" is not "goods", a CD or any other piece of media is a "good". Goods are made of real physical property. In the past it was difficult to get hold of "content" without needing a media. So the fiction of "intellectual property" was accepted.
That can only happen if the system knows that there are implications. 911 calls are routed to a central switch, then become 'normal' phone numbers and are then routed to the 911 call center, if you 'hardwire' those secondary numbers into the system you make it more difficult to re-configure your 911 system.
Depends if the system can take note of the number actually dialed with respect to routing decisions. This may be something the software for "North American Numbering Plan" does not support whereas the software for "Rest of the Planet" does. The companies making telephone switching hardware do actually divide their code bases up in that way.
Although the NYC system has a backup central offices and call centers, it apparently routes all calls from the affected area through a single Verizon subsystem. Their system is fully redundant except where its not.
Any system is only as redundent as it's least redundent part
Except that the natural material is purified to increase the proportion of U235. Also, I never heard of radioactive iodine or calcium occurring naturally in the environment.
That's because their half life is short compared with the age of the Earth.
So, because there's less energy per gram, CANDU system have online fueling, which means that the reactor is fueled/refueled while it's still producing power. This actually happens (ideally) everyday.
A side effect of this is that there are less fission products in the reactor.
CANDU reactors are far from a panacea. Everything is a tradeoff here and CANDU reactors produce massive amounts of radioactive tritium waste in the heavy water coolant which is usually just dumped into the environment, unlike light water reactors.
If the plant can separate the tritium from the duterium why throw it away? Considering that it might come in useful for building hydrogen bombs.
Slashdot Mirror
If somebody is going to commit something illegal, he'll probably enter the country illegally. Probably through the porous mexican border
The US/Mexican border is one of the most highly policed on the planet, but that dosn't stop people being able to illegally cross it. The US also has thousands of miles of border with Canada
or the huge coastline that the US has.
There are criminal gangs who specialise in smuggling things and people. Just about every regular military on the planet trains people in methods of infiltration. It would be very suprising if para-militaries, including mercenaries and terrorists cannot do the same thing. It's also perfectly possible for a US citizen to be a terrorist or a terrorist to steal the identity of a US citizen (of "good standing").
Secondly, this is downright disrespectful.
As well as potentiall expensive. How soon before you have ads of the form "Thinking of visiting the US, come here instead. You'll be made to feel like a guest rather than a criminal when you step off the plane..."
Detractors will argue that it's for the safety of the US. Well, I really don't see how it'll help. Once the dude is in the country, and has committed the offence, this sort of system is absolutely worthless.
There are several hundred million people already in the US. The "terrorists" could already be there.
Effort should be put into preventing these sort of tragedies.
As well as conducting a proper investigation.
Efforts like putting more effort into the Israel Palestine crisis,
The US puts a lot of effort into that already. Unfortunatly it's the sort of effort which tends to perpetuate the status quo.
managing Iraq more effectively.
Effective management would mean a lack of "backhanders" to the various foreign contractors involved in "reconstriction". Contracts end up being awarded which are not only orders of magnitude higher than local estimates Iraqi civil engineers are left thinking "even flying all the workers and materials in shouldn't make it costs that much". There is also the situation that not only do most Iraqis not want foreign soldiers in their country most of the soldiers don't want to be their.
stop being so patriachal and showing more respect to the citizens of the world.
All too often US Government policy is to support one group of "thugs" over another. This was the situation in Somalia, it is the situation in Afghanistan. Which makes the US intervention unpopular. Most people would (reluctantly) accept a foreign invasion if it got rid of all "warlords" if the invader starts supporting some of these warlords or creating new ones then they have become part of the problem.
I for one, will be taking my tourist dollars elsewhere.
As canadian or Australian Dollers. Or alternativly tourist Euros/Pasos/Yen/etc.
If the Americans were really serious about saving lives, they would actually DO something about drunk drivers. They kill an airplane load of people every two days.
On top of that there are probably a large number of people who shouldn't be driving on the public roads even when sober.
A radical idea would be for the state to issue permissions to drive on public roads which explicitally state "This is not an identification document. It's only purpose is to prove that the holder has passed a set of tests in their competancy to operate a motor vehicle". Rather than such stupidity as a "driver's license" being the prefered proof that someone is old enough to purchase alcohol.
How secure would you feel if your country's military were open source. Cameras everywhere, no privacy, people could see what was going on at all times and at all stages of planning.
This has more to do with David Brin's "Transparent Society" idea than Open Source Software.
People could browse through troop deployment schedules and bomb blueprints to their heart's content.
OSS does not require you to make the software available to anyone. It certainly does not require you to make the data you process using the software public. However some proprietary software does claim to give the vendor access, even copyright ownership, of data.
Or what if the internal diagram of your front door's lock were printed right on your front door, would that be OK.
You mean the diagram showing how it was pointless attempting to get the door open without the key...
Security through obscurity may not be reliable but it is at least a useful barrier to sort out opportunists and the unskilled but predatory.
In practice such information rarely stays obsure to those motivated by malice.
Every "secret" is a potential "key".
The point that I was trying to make is that security through obscurity does not work.
Something which has been known since the 19th century. Long before electronic computers were invented.
I said nothing about open source being more secure. I think it is more secureable,
Security isn't actually a "product". It is an attribute of an entire system, not just certain components. A "good" choice of components can make the process of security easier than a "bad" choice.
but what annoys me is Microsoft whining that there is no one to sue with open source, when their EULAs have all manner of disclaimer.
How many cases are there of such suits taking place?
Microsoft should be sued for fraud.
Or even prosecuted. But corporations, unlike real people, don't tend to face a major risk by breaking criminal law.
For the last freaking time, the GPL is *not* a EULA. It is a distribution license.
Some people just don't "get it". Possibly they are never going to get it...
Especially the fact that distribution licences for as long as there has been copyright law of a form which allowed them and have been legally tested over the past couple of hundred years. EULAs have only been around for a few decades and have never been properly legally tested, even clauses which don't conflict with relevent statute and case law.
You've noticed how EULA is typically attached to things you pay MONEY for? (and get sued for using if you have not).
Actually quite a bit of proprietary software is "given away". Most notably driver software.
Notice how EULA does NOT usually cover things for which you have access to source code?
Typically an EULA will attempt to deny you the ability to investigate what it actually does.
You've noticed the same kinds of disclaimers on the GPL, yes?
The GPL is not an EULA, for starters.
If the warranty disclaimer on a Microsoft license is invalid, what makes the one on the GPL valid; and if it is not, then how would, say, the contributors to the Linux kernel fare if they were sued for a major security breach?
With a piece of open source software anyone who requires security can fromally verify and audit the software. With a piece of proprietary software the EULA typically prevents then from performing the kind of actions they'd been to do as a precursor to auditing the software security.
But, if you search another way... Google for "Microsoft Exploit" yields 993 hits, Google for "Linux exploit" yields 1880 hits.
:)
These numbers don't actually indicate the number of actual exploits...
So, it's all in the reporting. I mean, you know and I know that it's not suprising that there might be more hits for linux, cause the linux community tends to shout it loud that there are exploits, and that they're either fixed or being fixed,
The figures could mean that Windows and Linux have similar numbers of exploits. But with Linux there are reports of both the exploit and of the exploit having been fixed. Whereas with Windows exploits just get reported....
but it gets distorted by the media.
"Lies, damed lies and statistics
There's two conflicting maxims when it comes to updating systems:
'Always apply the latest updates' and 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
The latter maxim also applies to whoever is producing the "update". Espcially if the software in question isn't written in a well structured way. With "sphagetti code" attempting to remove a bug or add a new feature can have all sorts of unwanted effects.
They could simply tax what it's worth, instead of what you paid for it.
:)
If this was done efficently some software, including a number of proprietary offerings, would require the government to pay money to people
What you don't realise is that your polititians get ideas from watching what goes on over here. So I hope you are still laughing when they decide to copy the new taxes that are rumoured to be coming:
In which case what is needed is a lawyer tax (especially in the USA), politican tax, corporate "fat cat" tax and so on...
The patent office itself has the same problem. They can tell if someone else patented the same thing (did they copy?) but they simply don't have resources to tell if some technical thing has ever occured before.
In which case they should either reject applications in areas they are not competent to research or not accept these applications in the first place.
Sure, we all know about domains, but we're computer nerds.
Patents should not be "obvious" to those "skilled in the art". Regardless of if they are in-obvious to people with some other specialty.
Most people in the patent office could probably not make that claim, just as they couldn't claim to be automobile designers or materials scientists.
In which case they shouldn't be handling applications for automobiles or materials...
Is it non-obvious? Again, it probably was non-obvious in the early 80's, but it's definitely very obvious since 95.
The DNS dates from 1982. The earliest example of a "sub-domain" is in RFC 819 which dates from August of that year.
Are they the inventor of sub-domain... I don't know them, but I would bet that they aren't.
Unless they are either Jon Postal (who is dead) or Zaw-Sing Su then they self evidently arn't.
Finding the relevent "prior art" takes seconds using Google.
Unfortunately, many patents issued these days fail the "high school kid" test.
:)
Maybe the first test of a patent application should be to show it to some high school kids
Ah, but you miss an important point - USPTO grants patents because its also a source of income (and a pretty good one at that).
In which case what difference would it make to them if applications are accepted or rejected? Indeed it might make more sense to reject any questionable applications ASAP.
Theres probably a clause in their phone contracts that stated if you have no service for X hours after you notify us we will give you y! There are jut trying to avoid some payouts!
BT tend to suspend this where they have "out of the ordinary conditions", They have been known to do this for all customers, even those where the fault is nothing to do with the whatever...
I was under the impression that many of these tunnels were filled with inert gasses, such as SF6 to prevent this exact sort of problem. I assume its very hard to keep an old tunnel air tight,
Assuming they ever were air tight. Typically bunkers would operate under positive preasure, so that air would exit through any cracks, as opposed to fallout entering.
The term "price sensitive" is used to describe this phenomena in general, but the specific twist that the digital age brings is the delivery of a lot of goods that are ordinarily priced at some level at a price of zero.
Thing is that "content" is not "goods", a CD or any other piece of media is a "good". Goods are made of real physical property. In the past it was difficult to get hold of "content" without needing a media. So the fiction of "intellectual property" was accepted.
Personally I like the term "pirate." It's such an antiquated term that it lacks most of its original meaning, actual piracy is incredibly rare,
It depends where you are. In some parts of the world piracy aka "armed robbery on the high seas" is still fairly common.
That can only happen if the system knows that there are implications. 911 calls are routed to a central switch, then become 'normal' phone numbers and are then routed to the 911 call center, if you 'hardwire' those secondary numbers into the system you make it more difficult to re-configure your 911 system.
Depends if the system can take note of the number actually dialed with respect to routing decisions. This may be something the software for "North American Numbering Plan" does not support whereas the software for "Rest of the Planet" does. The companies making telephone switching hardware do actually divide their code bases up in that way.
Although the NYC system has a backup central offices and call centers, it apparently routes all calls from the affected area through a single Verizon subsystem. Their system is fully redundant except where its not.
Any system is only as redundent as it's least redundent part
Except that the natural material is purified to increase the proportion of U235. Also, I never heard of radioactive iodine or calcium occurring naturally in the environment.
That's because their half life is short compared with the age of the Earth.
So, because there's less energy per gram, CANDU system have online fueling, which means that the reactor is fueled/refueled while it's still producing power. This actually happens (ideally) everyday.
A side effect of this is that there are less fission products in the reactor.
CANDU reactors are far from a panacea. Everything is a tradeoff here and CANDU reactors produce massive amounts of radioactive tritium waste in the heavy water coolant which is usually just dumped into the environment, unlike light water reactors.
If the plant can separate the tritium from the duterium why throw it away? Considering that it might come in useful for building hydrogen bombs.