The last mile may be a natural monopoly, but it doesn't have to be maintained by a single corporation. The last mile could easily be "owned" by the municipality and internet access could be handled by any number of ISPs who simply tap into the muni network. This would allow fair competition between huge national and small mom-and-pop ISPs. Charge a per-customer charge to the ISP for maintenance of the network (so that people don't whine that they're paying for the network but not using it, though the initial roll-out will be paid for by everybody). If your local government isn't corrupt and wasteful (this is actually possible, by the way), then the last mile net will be upgraded occasionally, unlike the one we have now.
The town I live in does something similar with electricity: they run and maintain the powerlines and buy the cheapest power at the moment from a number of different sources (with x% being from renewable sources). If power is expensive from everywhere, they fire up their own powerplant (coal, ugh) and generate the electricity themselves. The rates are good, the grid is well maintained, it all works pretty well.
The last mile may be a natural monopoly, but it doesn't have to be maintained by a single corporation. The last mile could easily be "owned" by the municipality and internet access could be handled by any number of ISPs who simply tap into the muni network. This would allow fair competition between huge national and small mom-and-pop ISPs. Charge a per-customer charge to the ISP for maintenance of the network (so that people don't whine that they're paying for the network but not using it, though the initial roll-out will be paid for by everybody). If your local government isn't corrupt and wasteful (this is actually possible, by the way), then the last mile net will be upgraded occasionally, unlike the one we have now.
The town I live in does something similar with electricity: they run and maintain the powerlines and buy the cheapest power at the moment from a number of different sources (with x% being from renewable sources). If power is expensive from everywhere, they fire up their own powerplant (coal, ugh) and generate the electricity themselves. The rates are good, the grid is well maintained, it all works pretty well.
The "What is your dream job?" question reminds me of a question asked by the lender of my student loans. There's something a little disturbing about someone that you owe vast sums of money to asking what your greatest fear is!
Tor is an anonymizing network, it's not end-to-end encryption.
With the use of Hidden services, it is. If you connect to a Hidden service on Tor, the last hop in the Tor network is to the server your connecting to and it is end-to-end encrypted.
Tracker data and.torrent transfer would be good uses for this channel, but not the raw data. I'm surprised TPB doesn't have it already set up.
Too true! Tracker data and.torrent files aren't illegal (for how long?), though, so hosting them isn't a big deal. The *AA/whoever can still connect to the tracker and get the IP addresses of the swarm, which is what you'd want to hide.
That's an interesting (and delightfully positive) view of things. It seems that the Gates' and Buffet's only start giving money when they start getting old, though. Maybe they see death coming and want to leave the world a better place or leave their name in a little higher esteem. Or maybe old age gives one some compassion regardless of looming death, and we would be surrounded by generous and wise old folks. It's hard to say.
With onion routing, the only opportunity for a man-in-the-middle attack occurs at the last hop (assuming a single entity doesn't control all of the nodes that you are passing through). Intermediate nodes can not see the innermost "envelope" and so can't read/modify it.
Adding more intermediate nodes lessens the chance that all nodes are operated by the same party and so decreases the chance of an man-in-the-middle attack by an intermediate node. It makes the whole transaction slower though and uses more resources of the Tor network.
But Tor isn't designed to insure the identity of the communicating parties. You should use PKI or some other method if you need to insure that your transmissions aren't being intercepted/modified at the last hop.
Tor provides anonymity at the source, too. Your first hop is encrypted from you to the Tor network. Your ISP only sees that you are using Tor, not to whom you are connecting. The last hop's ISP can see your traffic in the clear, though. If there's identifying (or secret) information it is vulnerable at the last hop.
But you're right, Tor is an anonymizing network, it's not end-to-end encryption.
So let's say that you or some other scientist in the field figures out a way to actually get humans to live to 1000 years. Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
Even worst than that is the wide wealth disparity that it would create. Imagine a Citizen Kane or Bill Gates type who never has to stop amassing wealth. Life+70yrs for copyrights would also take on a new meaning. Imagine a 22 year old fresh out of school trying to compete for a job with a bored multizillionare with 25 PhDs who just wants a job (something to do) and doesn't need to get paid.
The first phone on the market (i.e. one of the open platforms coming out) that treats text messages as ordinary data and eliminates the phone company's ability to charge outrageous per-message rates will kill this little "profit center" dead.
Can't you already do this? I've been selecting GPRS instead of GSM (or SMS or whatever the option was called) for text messages on old Nokia S40 phones since GPRS was available. The messages were always tallied under bulk data instead of SMS. (Or did that only work for outbound messages...? I don't remember.)
As a rule, you don't copyright the exact data (i.e. the sequence of numbers representing a digital file). You copyright the actual tangible information. Attempting to abstract the law into mathematics is pointless. They are not compatible.
That's not the point. The point is that if someone downloads blocks from me to be used for copyrighted material, I cannot know what it is used for. Maybe these block also encode legal stuff. Because the same block encodes multiple files, and because a request does not state what the data is gonna be used for, I (probably) cannot be holded responsable for sharing copyrighted material.
This is interesting. If it works like this, then the downloader could use blocks downloaded from you to make a file that you don't possess. It's still copyright infringement in spirit, but it's difficult to make available a file that you don't actually have.
Huh. I live in the US and I've never been robbed. I don't even know anybody who has ever been robbed. Sounds like you live in a pretty crime-ridden country if you take being robbed so lightly.
I know you're joking, but many of the university surplus departments will let you "transfer" the items in their warehouse back into other departments for the price of a little paperwork. I used to get all sorts of goodies for our lab that way. They're a good place to look for anything from furniture to computers and all sorts of weird shit in between.
I almost picked up a big jet engine once (who knows how they got it?!), but I knew I'd have a hard time a) moving it, b) explaining why our chemistry lab needed a jet engine, c) avoiding mounting it to my car or something.
Have you considered adding some images (preferably a standard banner ad size) to these pages? It's conceivable that the injected ads may replace already present banner ads to avoid screwing up the page layout and drawing attention to the practice to the content providers.
I really don't understand why everyone has such a hard time understanding this. You're spot on.
I assume they have always had the capacity to censor things like that. The situation generally only begins to be a problem when the person holding this power (the President in this case) violates the trust (or appears to) of everybody else. The President's power in this matter is pretty reasonable in responsible hands. It's the last part that's brought into question.
the US Department of Defense announced that they would not procure any more satellites capable of implementing Selective Availability.
Selective availability is done through software. I have no doubt that every satellite in the GPS constellation is reprogrammable from the ground. So, even if new satellites dont't have the Selective Availibility option on launch, it's just a short upload away. Unless the US relinquishes control of the GPS satellite system to the UN where it belongs, SA activation is always going to be a option available to US. I'm not a big fan of infrastructure in the hands of one party (with interests different from my own), but how on earth does control of the US Department of Defense's GPS system belong to the UN? It's great that it's a useful system to the entire world, but building systems that depend vitally on the good will and generosity another country's military seems more than a little stupid to me. Especially when you helped exactly zero in the implementation of and paying for the GPS program.
Galileo, and the lack of dependence on a single country, is a fantastic idea. I suppose you think that the EU should give up control of it to the UN also. It's at least closer to an international effort.
I honestly can't understand all of the pissing and moaning here. If denying me the right to eat my favorite food isn't a burden on me, then why is wearing a respirator in public such a burden on them? You can be damn sure that if 99.999% of the population enjoyed snacking on cyanide that I wouldn't venture out around them without some sort of personal protection!
Why are they trusting their lives to the assumption that other people will bend over backward for them (or even know that they have a sensitivity). If someone can really be killed by the smell of peanuts on someone's breath, they have an extremely serious medical condition and should be taking steps themselves to prevent their death. They can form peanut-free zones and clubs and only associate with sworn peanut avoiders and so on. I'll totally respect that. I'll lay off of the peanuts for a day if they're visiting, even. But the suggestion that as a society we should shun a tasty treat because one in a million (that many, even?) people are allergic is asinine and I don't believe that you're seriously proposing it.
Slashdot Mirror
The town I live in does something similar with electricity: they run and maintain the powerlines and buy the cheapest power at the moment from a number of different sources (with x% being from renewable sources). If power is expensive from everywhere, they fire up their own powerplant (coal, ugh) and generate the electricity themselves. The rates are good, the grid is well maintained, it all works pretty well.
The town I live in does something similar with electricity: they run and maintain the powerlines and buy the cheapest power at the moment from a number of different sources (with x% being from renewable sources). If power is expensive from everywhere, they fire up their own powerplant (coal, ugh) and generate the electricity themselves. The rates are good, the grid is well maintained, it all works pretty well.
The "What is your dream job?" question reminds me of a question asked by the lender of my student loans. There's something a little disturbing about someone that you owe vast sums of money to asking what your greatest fear is!
As he said, it's either reinvested in the business or returned as a "refund" to the same people who paid it in the first place. No profit involved.
With the use of Hidden services, it is. If you connect to a Hidden service on Tor, the last hop in the Tor network is to the server your connecting to and it is end-to-end encrypted. Tracker data and .torrent transfer would be good uses for this channel, but not the raw data. I'm surprised TPB doesn't have it already set up.
Too true! Tracker data and .torrent files aren't illegal (for how long?), though, so hosting them isn't a big deal. The *AA/whoever can still connect to the tracker and get the IP addresses of the swarm, which is what you'd want to hide.
That's an interesting (and delightfully positive) view of things. It seems that the Gates' and Buffet's only start giving money when they start getting old, though. Maybe they see death coming and want to leave the world a better place or leave their name in a little higher esteem. Or maybe old age gives one some compassion regardless of looming death, and we would be surrounded by generous and wise old folks. It's hard to say.
Adding more intermediate nodes lessens the chance that all nodes are operated by the same party and so decreases the chance of an man-in-the-middle attack by an intermediate node. It makes the whole transaction slower though and uses more resources of the Tor network.
But Tor isn't designed to insure the identity of the communicating parties. You should use PKI or some other method if you need to insure that your transmissions aren't being intercepted/modified at the last hop.
But you're right, Tor is an anonymizing network, it's not end-to-end encryption.
So let's say that you or some other scientist in the field figures out a way to actually get humans to live to 1000 years. Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
Even worst than that is the wide wealth disparity that it would create. Imagine a Citizen Kane or Bill Gates type who never has to stop amassing wealth. Life+70yrs for copyrights would also take on a new meaning. Imagine a 22 year old fresh out of school trying to compete for a job with a bored multizillionare with 25 PhDs who just wants a job (something to do) and doesn't need to get paid.
Financially speaking, the pilot is more expensive than the plane.
The first phone on the market (i.e. one of the open platforms coming out) that treats text messages as ordinary data and eliminates the phone company's ability to charge outrageous per-message rates will kill this little "profit center" dead.
Can't you already do this? I've been selecting GPRS instead of GSM (or SMS or whatever the option was called) for text messages on old Nokia S40 phones since GPRS was available. The messages were always tallied under bulk data instead of SMS. (Or did that only work for outbound messages...? I don't remember.)
As a rule, you don't copyright the exact data (i.e. the sequence of numbers representing a digital file). You copyright the actual tangible information. Attempting to abstract the law into mathematics is pointless. They are not compatible.
That's not the point. The point is that if someone downloads blocks from me to be used for copyrighted material, I cannot know what it is used for. Maybe these block also encode legal stuff. Because the same block encodes multiple files, and because a request does not state what the data is gonna be used for, I (probably) cannot be holded responsable for sharing copyrighted material.
This is interesting. If it works like this, then the downloader could use blocks downloaded from you to make a file that you don't possess. It's still copyright infringement in spirit, but it's difficult to make available a file that you don't actually have.
Huh. I live in the US and I've never been robbed. I don't even know anybody who has ever been robbed. Sounds like you live in a pretty crime-ridden country if you take being robbed so lightly.
We'd really be in a much better state if we could get away from the reactor designs we've been using for so long.
I almost picked up a big jet engine once (who knows how they got it?!), but I knew I'd have a hard time a) moving it, b) explaining why our chemistry lab needed a jet engine, c) avoiding mounting it to my car or something.
Have you considered adding some images (preferably a standard banner ad size) to these pages? It's conceivable that the injected ads may replace already present banner ads to avoid screwing up the page layout and drawing attention to the practice to the content providers.
Air is a fluid.
This is absolutely not true in the US. Can someone find a citation for me?
Galileo, and the lack of dependence on a single country, is a fantastic idea. I suppose you think that the EU should give up control of it to the UN also. It's at least closer to an international effort.
I think you meant Sierpinski.
Why are they trusting their lives to the assumption that other people will bend over backward for them (or even know that they have a sensitivity). If someone can really be killed by the smell of peanuts on someone's breath, they have an extremely serious medical condition and should be taking steps themselves to prevent their death. They can form peanut-free zones and clubs and only associate with sworn peanut avoiders and so on. I'll totally respect that. I'll lay off of the peanuts for a day if they're visiting, even. But the suggestion that as a society we should shun a tasty treat because one in a million (that many, even?) people are allergic is asinine and I don't believe that you're seriously proposing it.
...excessively bright lights(mine were 100w bulbs, max is 65)...excessive number...(I had six, although four of them were foglights)...I'd rather enjoy not going blind thanks to some dirtbag with a high powered laser.
The oncoming traffic felt the same way, too.The problem lies with them, not everybody else. Why should I be denied peanuts because somebody else can't handle them?
Not any more.