"How many of them do you think have heard the name RedHat?"
Red Hat as the name of a computer software company, maybe not. But Red Hat as a name worth a bit of money and worth investing in is a different question. Most people aren't quite sure what IBM does, but they do know that IBM is a blue chip.
With the recent posting about the mystery blacklist in Australia, I don't see how hosting the service from Sydney is really going to improve the situation all that much from the Netherlands. Sure, they're not currently being sued in Australia, but they're not currently being sued in Australia.
If half of the things you have to say about the current state of American society were true, you would have been shot long before you got the chance to write this. I mean, really... Your continued existance on this planet invalidates most of what you had to say.
Why they're keeping the black-list secret seems pretty obvious to me. As soon as that list becomes known, well-meaning non-Australians will immediately start to mirror those sites, and those mirrors will be visible to Australians until the government is able to find the mirror and update their blacklist.
While censorship in and of itself is reprehensible, at least they're not going about it in a half-assed manner.
... Big Blue? IBM's commercials are pushing Linux more and more, and when it come to IBM, when you're talking Linux, you're talking Red Hat. What would a buy-out of RH by AOL leave them? Would there be deals made between AOL and IBM for the use of their software, or would IBM just whip up a distro of their very own? Or find another distro to hop into bed with?
Looking at the political fallout in the PRC because of this, I wonder if they were really bugs at all.
Here's what we know so far of what happened: A plane that was built in a hangar guarded by the People's Army, put together by workers under constant surveilance by officers in the PRC military, using parts gone over with a fine-toothed comb, had not one, not three, but over twenty "listening devices" planted on it. By all accounts, there is already some big political backlashes working their way through the ranks of the PRC military, with several arrests already made of the soldiers that were supposed to be guarding the plane.
On top of that, we know the plane was supposed to have the best defenses that money could buy. It might very well be the most secure plane in all of the PRC. But now that it's known to have been bugged, can the Party really believe that all the listening devices were removed? In a crisis with the US or one of its allies (like, say, Taiwan), can the plane truly be considered a safe and trusted hideaway for their president?
So will he be using an older, less well-defended plane instead? Wouldn't it be funny if that plane was the one that really had the bugs?
All the "listening devices" on the plane were discovered after somebody reported hearing static. Was that really static, or was it really an MP3 of the Marine Corps Band playing Stars and Stripes Forever, flaunting the PRC with the placement of these "listening devices?"
"The reports in Britain's Financial Times newspaper and the Washington Post quoted Chinese security sources as saying that the tiny, satellite-controlled bugs were discovered when they emitted static during test flights in China last year."
Static? As in they made noises? When last I checked, listening devices have small microphones, not speakers. And while a problem could cause sound to come out of the microphone, would it really be loud enough to hear? And are US listening devices so unreliable that all 20-something malfunctioned in the same way at the same time?
Either the story is made up, China isn't saying how they really found them, or these devices were meant to be found for whatever reason.
At any rate, finding the bugs only when they made their presence known is what happens when you have a system that values loyalty over skill...
"While AOL could provide a huge shot in the arm to Linux (it wont make a huge jump to the desktop without being able to run AOL, sad but true), what geek wants to run an AOL OS??"
I for one wouldn't mind. Keep in mind that, while it is AOHell we're talking about, it's also Linux, which means the user is free to open up the innards of it and take out what they don't like. Unhappy about how the way the file manager is tied to your web browser? Microsoft says "screw you" while Linux says "modify it."
I was about to ask what this might mean for Mandrake, but then I just realized that Mandrake would be the prime people to de-commercialize any AOLinux releases.
Oh, and I'm probably in the minority for saying this, but I don't use Gaim, I use the actual AIM client for Linux (not as pretty but it's more stable for me). And speaking of AIM, it's the only instant messaging software I can think of that actually HAS a Linux release.
"AOL/TW isn't much better than MS after all, they cater to the lowest common denominator."
Then it will probably end up as a "gateway distro" for most users, the way that the kernel-hacking Aunt Tillie from several articles back got her start. Just because you use AOL doesn't mean you stick with it for years and years. I started on Prodigy, but then I disovered local BBSes.
I'm still having difficulty seeing this as being anything but an overall Good Thing...
As for me, I keep on forgetting to change permissions from my default of "Administrators, Creator/Owner, and System" whenever I share something to the workgroup.:)
"Is this so people can't change the password, log in as the person, and access their files? Seems quite annoying with limited benefits.."
According to the MCSE stuff I read a few months back, it's so the admin can't log in as another user without their permission/knowledge. This would prevent, for example, a soon to be fired/laid-off sysadmin from logging in as Joe EmployeeOfTheMonth and hosing the network from there.
As for EFS encrypted files, there are ways to get them back (ie. decrypt them) from the administrator account. I don't remember the details without looking them up, but in short, EFS is an escrow encryption system.
Of course, this was all for Win2k (where I've never heard of a password reset floppy disk), and I'm not clear on the EFS differences between it and XP beyond the multi-access bit.
According to Stratfor's analysis (which I tend to agree with on this issue), this trade dispute is, if anything, a sign of the warming ties between Russia and the US than anything else. Russia would rather be the best friend of all the CIS members, and until this bucket of cold water was thrown on the relationship, the Ukraine was getting pretty buddy-buddy with the US. This was done more for the sake of making Russia feel better about itself than any real demand from the likes of Valenti.
"Because strong encryption is available to anyway who really wants to get it..."
All information is available to those who really want to get it. The restrictions, like crypto, simply make those who want to get it stop to ask themselves "is it worth it?"
My God, it seems like some of you posters do nothing but cut-and-paste posts from articles five years ago!
1.) Export restrictions aren't about making it impossible to get high encryption (that in and of itself would be impossible), but to make it more difficult. Much like the point of encryption itself. Sure, you could get PGP and the like, but could you be bothered to go out of your way like that? Obviously at least one criminal didn't, or else you wouldn't be reading this.
2.) No, the criminals won't automatically be the most heavily-encrypted amongst us. If you actually took two seconds to read the description of the article (if not the article itself), you'd see that this is about a very big isntance where a criminal DIDN'T use heavy encryption. Your argument officially doesn't hold as much water as it used to any more. Time to try something new.
3.) This is about EXPORT restrictions. EXPORT! EXPORT! You know, where something LEAVES THE US!?!? Restricting what kind of crypto can be exported doesn't do a damned thing to the domestic market unless you're a seller trying to export your stuff or you're a foreign organization trying to buy the software on the open market. Restrictions on domestic crypto sale and use may or may not be an issue, but it doesn't have a damned thing to do with this article beyond sharing the words "crypto" and "export." If you read things more closely than your average IRC bot, you'd have noticed that.
Go ahead, mod me down to -17 flamebait or troll or whatever. Just so long as you're spending your mod points on sending me down there instead of modding up some of the posts I've seen in here so far described as "interesting" and "insightful."
"Just because one person chose to use weaker encryption and had his files broken by our government, it does NOT mean that he could not have found PGP on the internet and used that instead."
That's like saying that you shouldn't use encryption at all because it will always be crackable with enough time.
The point of this legislation is the same as the point of encryption to begin with. It's not designed to totally prevent someone else from getting and using this software (that would be impossible), it's desinged to make it more difficult to get, enough so that some people decide that it's not worth the effort. Some people like our shoe bomb suspect.
Um... maybe because we're the world's biggest importer/exporter of just about everything under the sun?
"They think they are the king of the world,"
And unlike all the other crackpots out there who think the same thing, we're right.
" but why should they decide for other country what to do?"
We decide only so far as how that country interacts with the US. After all, we're talking about export restrictions from the US, aren't we? The rest of the world has no right to dictate how we handle our own affairs or how we make decisions that affect us.
"that's the same for encryption, US should control everything, every bits, every communication, every philosophies?"
Control? Probably not. But have a hand in it or an eye on it for the sake of improving our own? Hell yes. And if you don't like dealing with US export policies, there's always the alternative of not using US software. Ever think of that before you started whining?
"sorry, but I just hate US way of thinking and Bush administration."
You hate it so much you come to a forum where the majority of the participants are from the US?
"I lives in Canada and we are becoming a state of the US Empire, I just soooo hate and disapprove this,"
... and bitching about it here is more effective than writing a letter of complaint to your MPs because...?
"I wanna go somewhere else!"
... and Slashdot counts as "somewhere else" because...?
1.) This is about whether or not to export strong crypto, nothing more. So you'll need to rephrase to specify whether you mean foreign or domestic.
2.) What we have here is an example of an outlaw who DIDN'T have strong crypto. Now, did you actually read the article (or the post), or is this just your automatic response to anything that has "crypto" and "restrict" in the same paragraph?
"The laws are meaningless. I'm sure we can all think of dozens of ways to subvert them."
But the question is whether they would bother with trying to. This is an instance where either he didn't bother with trying to subvert or didn't think of it as an issue.
"For instance, I could just fly over the US, buy/borrow/steal a copy of whatever software I wanted, dupe the CD and label it "Backstreet Boy's Greatest Hits" for my carry-on CD case."
And you could do that as much as you want, I imagine, as long as your name doesn't sent off any warning bells when the FBI does a cursory scan of the passenger list.
"If legislation restricts crypto, we will find ourselves in a situation in which the FBI can't crack terrorist comms, yet terrorists can intercept commercial data. Airline security information, oilrig blueprints, whatever."
1.) We're not talking about restricting domestic encryption here. The issue is specifically about export restrictions.
2.) What I see here is an instance where, because of our export restrictions, we WERE able to crack terrorist comms. The old argument of "They won't use handicapped software" doesn't seem to hold as much water as it used to.
Maybe next time you should look for material that's a bit more popular among servers and draws a slightly more highbrow collector. In other words, lay off the barnyard sex movies.:)
Slashdot Mirror
"How many of them do you think have heard the name RedHat?"
Red Hat as the name of a computer software company, maybe not. But Red Hat as a name worth a bit of money and worth investing in is a different question. Most people aren't quite sure what IBM does, but they do know that IBM is a blue chip.
"is it possible that RH can just say no?"
That depends on whether or not RH still owns 51% of itself.
"RedHat has no value other than the employees working for them."
*cough* name recognition *cough*...
"Soon AOL will be held holding an empty bag."
An empty bag with the name "Red Hat" on it, for them to fill as they please.
With the recent posting about the mystery blacklist in Australia, I don't see how hosting the service from Sydney is really going to improve the situation all that much from the Netherlands. Sure, they're not currently being sued in Australia, but they're not currently being sued in Australia.
If half of the things you have to say about the current state of American society were true, you would have been shot long before you got the chance to write this. I mean, really... Your continued existance on this planet invalidates most of what you had to say.
Why they're keeping the black-list secret seems pretty obvious to me. As soon as that list becomes known, well-meaning non-Australians will immediately start to mirror those sites, and those mirrors will be visible to Australians until the government is able to find the mirror and update their blacklist.
While censorship in and of itself is reprehensible, at least they're not going about it in a half-assed manner.
... Big Blue? IBM's commercials are pushing Linux more and more, and when it come to IBM, when you're talking Linux, you're talking Red Hat. What would a buy-out of RH by AOL leave them? Would there be deals made between AOL and IBM for the use of their software, or would IBM just whip up a distro of their very own? Or find another distro to hop into bed with?
Looking at the political fallout in the PRC because of this, I wonder if they were really bugs at all.
Here's what we know so far of what happened: A plane that was built in a hangar guarded by the People's Army, put together by workers under constant surveilance by officers in the PRC military, using parts gone over with a fine-toothed comb, had not one, not three, but over twenty "listening devices" planted on it. By all accounts, there is already some big political backlashes working their way through the ranks of the PRC military, with several arrests already made of the soldiers that were supposed to be guarding the plane.
On top of that, we know the plane was supposed to have the best defenses that money could buy. It might very well be the most secure plane in all of the PRC. But now that it's known to have been bugged, can the Party really believe that all the listening devices were removed? In a crisis with the US or one of its allies (like, say, Taiwan), can the plane truly be considered a safe and trusted hideaway for their president?
So will he be using an older, less well-defended plane instead? Wouldn't it be funny if that plane was the one that really had the bugs?
All the "listening devices" on the plane were discovered after somebody reported hearing static. Was that really static, or was it really an MP3 of the Marine Corps Band playing Stars and Stripes Forever, flaunting the PRC with the placement of these "listening devices?"
From the BBC:
"The reports in Britain's Financial Times newspaper and the Washington Post quoted Chinese security sources as saying that the tiny, satellite-controlled bugs were discovered when they emitted static during test flights in China last year."
Static? As in they made noises? When last I checked, listening devices have small microphones, not speakers. And while a problem could cause sound to come out of the microphone, would it really be loud enough to hear? And are US listening devices so unreliable that all 20-something malfunctioned in the same way at the same time?
Either the story is made up, China isn't saying how they really found them, or these devices were meant to be found for whatever reason.
At any rate, finding the bugs only when they made their presence known is what happens when you have a system that values loyalty over skill...
How does the recent observation of quantum gravity effects change the model of either singularities or "gravistars?"
"That doesn't make sense."
Nobody ever said quantum mechanics made sense, either (and if they did, they're lying). But not making sense doesn't mean it's not right.
"While AOL could provide a huge shot in the arm to Linux (it wont make a huge jump to the desktop without being able to run AOL, sad but true), what geek wants to run an AOL OS??"
I for one wouldn't mind. Keep in mind that, while it is AOHell we're talking about, it's also Linux, which means the user is free to open up the innards of it and take out what they don't like. Unhappy about how the way the file manager is tied to your web browser? Microsoft says "screw you" while Linux says "modify it."
I was about to ask what this might mean for Mandrake, but then I just realized that Mandrake would be the prime people to de-commercialize any AOLinux releases.
Oh, and I'm probably in the minority for saying this, but I don't use Gaim, I use the actual AIM client for Linux (not as pretty but it's more stable for me). And speaking of AIM, it's the only instant messaging software I can think of that actually HAS a Linux release.
"AOL/TW isn't much better than MS after all, they cater to the lowest common denominator."
Then it will probably end up as a "gateway distro" for most users, the way that the kernel-hacking Aunt Tillie from several articles back got her start. Just because you use AOL doesn't mean you stick with it for years and years. I started on Prodigy, but then I disovered local BBSes.
I'm still having difficulty seeing this as being anything but an overall Good Thing...
"hehe that's what mine are set to :P"
:)
As for me, I keep on forgetting to change permissions from my default of "Administrators, Creator/Owner, and System" whenever I share something to the workgroup.
"Is this so people can't change the password, log in as the person, and access their files? Seems quite annoying with limited benefits.."
According to the MCSE stuff I read a few months back, it's so the admin can't log in as another user without their permission/knowledge. This would prevent, for example, a soon to be fired/laid-off sysadmin from logging in as Joe EmployeeOfTheMonth and hosing the network from there.
As for EFS encrypted files, there are ways to get them back (ie. decrypt them) from the administrator account. I don't remember the details without looking them up, but in short, EFS is an escrow encryption system.
Of course, this was all for Win2k (where I've never heard of a password reset floppy disk), and I'm not clear on the EFS differences between it and XP beyond the multi-access bit.
According to Stratfor's analysis (which I tend to agree with on this issue), this trade dispute is, if anything, a sign of the warming ties between Russia and the US than anything else. Russia would rather be the best friend of all the CIS members, and until this bucket of cold water was thrown on the relationship, the Ukraine was getting pretty buddy-buddy with the US. This was done more for the sake of making Russia feel better about itself than any real demand from the likes of Valenti.
Strange things abound at the Olympic Rings.
"Because strong encryption is available to anyway who really wants to get it..."
All information is available to those who really want to get it. The restrictions, like crypto, simply make those who want to get it stop to ask themselves "is it worth it?"
"The problem is that WinXP adds nothing to Win2k from a corporate point of view."
IMHO, file encryption that doesn't restrict file use to just one user is pretty damned nifty, if not useful.
My God, it seems like some of you posters do nothing but cut-and-paste posts from articles five years ago!
1.) Export restrictions aren't about making it impossible to get high encryption (that in and of itself would be impossible), but to make it more difficult. Much like the point of encryption itself. Sure, you could get PGP and the like, but could you be bothered to go out of your way like that? Obviously at least one criminal didn't, or else you wouldn't be reading this.
2.) No, the criminals won't automatically be the most heavily-encrypted amongst us. If you actually took two seconds to read the description of the article (if not the article itself), you'd see that this is about a very big isntance where a criminal DIDN'T use heavy encryption. Your argument officially doesn't hold as much water as it used to any more. Time to try something new.
3.) This is about EXPORT restrictions. EXPORT! EXPORT! You know, where something LEAVES THE US!?!? Restricting what kind of crypto can be exported doesn't do a damned thing to the domestic market unless you're a seller trying to export your stuff or you're a foreign organization trying to buy the software on the open market. Restrictions on domestic crypto sale and use may or may not be an issue, but it doesn't have a damned thing to do with this article beyond sharing the words "crypto" and "export." If you read things more closely than your average IRC bot, you'd have noticed that.
Go ahead, mod me down to -17 flamebait or troll or whatever. Just so long as you're spending your mod points on sending me down there instead of modding up some of the posts I've seen in here so far described as "interesting" and "insightful."
"Just because one person chose to use weaker encryption and had his files broken by our government, it does NOT mean that he could not have found PGP on the internet and used that instead."
That's like saying that you shouldn't use encryption at all because it will always be crackable with enough time.
The point of this legislation is the same as the point of encryption to begin with. It's not designed to totally prevent someone else from getting and using this software (that would be impossible), it's desinged to make it more difficult to get, enough so that some people decide that it's not worth the effort. Some people like our shoe bomb suspect.
"why it's always to usa to restrict something?"
Um... maybe because we're the world's biggest importer/exporter of just about everything under the sun?
"They think they are the king of the world,"
And unlike all the other crackpots out there who think the same thing, we're right.
" but why should they decide for other country what to do?"
We decide only so far as how that country interacts with the US. After all, we're talking about export restrictions from the US, aren't we? The rest of the world has no right to dictate how we handle our own affairs or how we make decisions that affect us.
"that's the same for encryption, US should control everything, every bits, every communication, every philosophies?"
Control? Probably not. But have a hand in it or an eye on it for the sake of improving our own? Hell yes. And if you don't like dealing with US export policies, there's always the alternative of not using US software. Ever think of that before you started whining?
"sorry, but I just hate US way of thinking and Bush administration."
You hate it so much you come to a forum where the majority of the participants are from the US?
"I lives in Canada and we are becoming a state of the US Empire, I just soooo hate and disapprove this,"
... and bitching about it here is more effective than writing a letter of complaint to your MPs because...?
"I wanna go somewhere else!"
... and Slashdot counts as "somewhere else" because...?
"Only Outlaws Will have Strong Crypto."
1.) This is about whether or not to export strong crypto, nothing more. So you'll need to rephrase to specify whether you mean foreign or domestic.
2.) What we have here is an example of an outlaw who DIDN'T have strong crypto. Now, did you actually read the article (or the post), or is this just your automatic response to anything that has "crypto" and "restrict" in the same paragraph?
"The laws are meaningless. I'm sure we can all think of dozens of ways to subvert them."
But the question is whether they would bother with trying to. This is an instance where either he didn't bother with trying to subvert or didn't think of it as an issue.
"For instance, I could just fly over the US, buy/borrow/steal a copy of whatever software I wanted, dupe the CD and label it "Backstreet Boy's Greatest Hits" for my carry-on CD case."
And you could do that as much as you want, I imagine, as long as your name doesn't sent off any warning bells when the FBI does a cursory scan of the passenger list.
"If legislation restricts crypto, we will find ourselves in a situation in which the FBI can't crack terrorist comms, yet terrorists can intercept commercial data. Airline security information, oilrig blueprints, whatever."
1.) We're not talking about restricting domestic encryption here. The issue is specifically about export restrictions.
2.) What I see here is an instance where, because of our export restrictions, we WERE able to crack terrorist comms. The old argument of "They won't use handicapped software" doesn't seem to hold as much water as it used to.
Maybe next time you should look for material that's a bit more popular among servers and draws a slightly more highbrow collector. In other words, lay off the barnyard sex movies. :)
"I'm not sure I'm convinced that this is really the reason they won't give any guarantees, it seems like a reasonably safe thing to do to me."
I'd have to say because they're cheap bastards and if they were to make such a guarentee, their insurance rates would spike.