If this company is really capable of recovering data that was overwritten, then why don't they seem to advertise the fact anywhere?
Yeah, exactly.
One thing that you may have caught but may not have thought to post, also related to Kroll, was something the OP probably neglected when mentioning the Columbia disaster:
In fact, the data was recovered in only two days, but it took nearly five years to process it in order to reveal the findings of the experiment. Other [sic] two hard drives on board Columbia, however, were not that fortunate and the information they were carrying was lost forever.
So it seems that there's a limit to data recovery, even if the data isn't overwritten!
The sad thing is that just yesterday I was praising Windows 7 for being at least a fairly reasonable improvement over Vista.
In a rather ironic twist, anti-piracy measures like this are the only thing that would stop me from buying it. Given Williams' comments, this may be the fastest I've changed my mind on a potential (future) purchase.
Vista is usually slower than XP - by about 2%. 7 is usually faster than XP - by 2-10%. Everyone who is posting the "I hate MS as much as every other weirdo Slashdot fanatic but it makes sense than XP is the fastest" should cut it out and note instead that 7 is the fastest OS that Microsoft has produced since at least Win2k.
I have to say I agree, and I was expecting Windows 7 to effectively be a rehash of Windows Vista. Here's the deal:
My desktop machine is an early '06 box (Core 2 Duo, dual core), and the only upgrades I've made fairly recently have been to add another 2GiB RAM and an updated video card (my old one blew up with bad caps--the NVIDIA-base 7600s were notorious about this). Yet the funny thing is that Vista is a sluggish beast on this system. Windows 7 is noticeably better--and smoother--even with Aero enabled. I can hardly tell the difference between XP and 7 performance-wise (though the new video card helps a lot!). Oddly, the upgraded card didn't impact Vista's performance much. Win 7 looks good and runs very nicely.
I confess that the 32-bit Win 7 release works better for me. The 64-bit distro has some odd annoyances. The window manager will periodically hang and the desktop feels sluggish. Not to mention the expected pre-release lack of vendor support such as the "Aw, Snap!" Google Chrome bug... Perhaps it's just me, but the x86 Win 7 build just works better. I daresay I like its UI a *lot*.
Even if Windows 7 is only a minor improvement over Vista, I'm planning on buying it, and I tend to dual boot between Gentoo and XP. I curse Microsoft, sure, but Win 7 is "Vista done right." Heck, the network performance seems slightly better than XP's. I can't say I really like the full screen user selection/login prompt. Unfortunately, everyone is moving to this paradigm, including most *nix login managers. *sigh*
If you have ever been to a liquidation of a store, after they sell you what is left on the racks, they sell you the racks,display cases, lights, left over toilet paper...
If anyone is at a loss for useful examples, I should think Circuit City ought to be a recent memory of exactly this.
And a family with a member who has a critical illness would still go bankrupt. And it would still leave the poor out in the cold.
Is is a *little* better? Maybe. But it's still bad.
Recall that much of the cost in our health care system is due to two factors: litigation and greed. Doctors pay a ridiculous amount on insurance in the hopes that they won't go bankrupt if someone decides to sue, and pharmaceutical companies want money.
Socializing the US health care system won't fix much. Tort reform will.
So because he is of Indian descent he must have a particular point of view? There is a name for that sort of prejudgement: Racism.
I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to make assumptions that people of certain cultural, ethnic, or national backgrounds are more likely to hold specific views. If someone made the assumption that I would be more lenient toward Australians (I'm American), they might be right: Part of my heritage is Australian. Would I consider it racist if someone speculated about my leniency toward Aussies? Of course not. Let's put it another way: Would I be offended if someone assumed that my own heritage meant I would be more likely to consider importing Vegemite into the United States as a policy position? Not at all.
The reason people make such assumptions is largely because they are correct; we are often a little more "fair" toward people we can better identify with. Go to a Mexican restaurant (run by individuals who are authentically Hispanic--not those crummy knock-off big chain restaurants) and tell me if the owners might be a little more friendly and outgoing to someone who speaks Spanish; Go to a German establishment and see if the owners are a little more friendly and outgoing to someone who speaks German.
It's unfortunate that making general assumptions about a person's ideology based upon their cultural background is considered racist. Sometimes those assumptions can be helpful, such as with personal space: Arabs tend to stand much closer together when talking in the company of friends of associates--distances that we Westerners are not altogether comfortable with. It is not racist, then, to assume that someone who is Arab may stand closer to you when they're talking! In fact, you might offend them if you fail to oblige (and back away, maintaining your "personal" space)!
It is not racist to consider that someone whose family may or may not be relatively new immigrants to the US might be a little more open to certain immigration-related activities. In fact, I'd expect it; if they weren't, I'd be worried!
You're partly right. Rule 1 in the Exploit Author's Bible : Wait for some MS Exec/Fanboy to say they have the most secure OS ever. Release exploit 5 minutes later.
You raise an interesting point that popped into my mind when I was reading the summary. Does their COO actually want to raise a challenge to current and potential black hats? I realize one way to test a system's security is to issue the challenge that it is uncrackable, but given the ubiquity of Microsoft's OSes, why would they even want to consider the idea?
Then again, I've always been of the opinion that Windows 7 is really Vista (SP2|SP3), so perhaps this is planned obsolescence: Issue a challenge to hackers of the world to break Vista SP2 (when it is released), then learn from the flaws and patch Win 7.
Still, I can't see why anyone would even consider stating something so brazen, particularly as the COO of the company that controls and overwhelming majority of desktop computers world-wide! Wasn't there something said of the Titanic by its builder/owner relating to its impunity? I can't seem to put my finger on it...;)
So, does Gmail post any new email addresses in a sort of anonymous phone book, or was my user name easy to guess (I had used the same set of letters and numbers on very many sites before I got the Gmail account)? I don't know, but in my case, the popular domain seemed to bring spam.
I'd imagine you don't even need to worry about someone giving out your e-mail address. Spammers could potentially crawl Slashdot for usernames, then try those @gmail.com. If they work and match up, there's a new address for them to spam.
Of course, the reason your university address would be safe is because spammers wouldn't think to target ${name}@someplace.edu for each username they have; it's not economical, and they'd get far greater exposure on something like Gmail. That, and it's relatively safe to assume that most Slashdotters have a Gmail address--which probably consists of their username!
I just realized I forgot to include a link to the article I mentioned about Gates. Here it is. It explains his idea of using computationally intensive challenges to limit the flow of large quantities of e-mail.
I thought I had included it, but I must have forgotten.
I'm assuming you didn't see the humor in Matt Perry'spost. I hate to sound like such a pessimist, but your solution and response is naively optimistic. Let's examine why.
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
It becomes the credit-card co's or ISP's problem, not yours. It's like any other $ transaction.
ISPs already have a lot on their plate insofar as legislation and (potential) filtration goes. Forcing them to operate as a collection agency simply won't work. I also doubt anyone would advocate or appreciate giving credit card companies (i.e. banks) even more control. They've already demonstrated a certain incompetency in recent years that has most certainly been making news!
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
Why do you say that? It would be mostly automatic.
If you have to ask this question, you don't understand the problem.
E-mail has been effectively "free" since the inception of the Internet (more on this in a moment). As it stands, spam is killing e-mail, and fees intended to kill spam will only succeed in killing both.
We should also consider those ISPs which charge their customers on a per megabyte basis. In effect, users of such services are already paying a tax on e-mails they send; it's just that e-mail is often times such a small chunk of data that it would hardly go noticed, unless of course you were about 2KiB from a threshold that would require paying a little extra and happened to send an e-mail that bumped you over. In either case, charging on a per e-mail basis simply won't be accepted by users. They'll feel they're already paying for e-mail as part of their service plan.
And let's not even mention the technical aspect of it being "mostly automatic." There is no such thing. If you forcible turn off non-payment e-mail services, you kill e-mail as we know it. Without a great deal of unprecedented international cooperation (and good luck getting those governments who are probably influenced by people making money from nefarious deeds), this sort of thing simply will not happen. In fact, I predict two things will happen before any significant change is made to e-mail: IPv6 rollout or Duke Nukem Forever's debut.
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
No, just agreement between a few big co's and/or a gov't project.
No, the semi-humorous post in reply to yours is correct. It doesn't require the cooperation of a "few big [companies]" or a "[government] project." It requires cooperation from hundreds of individual businesses, ISPs, organizations, and governmental cooperation on an international scale. You can't just simply rewrite SMTP and say "here, everyone download this. This will fix the problem with spam." For one, you're assume the new system would be impregnable to spammers and two that it is a wide-sweeping, multi-platform solution that can just be fitted in place.
Here's a hint: It won't happen.
(X) Jurisdictional problems
International may be a little tricky, but this may also keep out "shady" foreign operators.
Not if, say, several dozen European countries (rightfully) decline to participate. Then what do you do? Shut off e-mail to all of Europe?
Remember, just because someone doesn't find it fair to tax their people more doesn't mean they're a "'shady' foreign" operator. They could be mindful of the rights of their people to freely exchange information. (See my comments earlier on "free.")
If you only send a few messages a day, it would probably be part of ISP bundle, and frequent recipients
I asked about Saddam's dead Iraqis; the source you quote includes dead Iranians. Iranians are not Iraqis.
They're not? I had no idea.
I admit I selected the article I did because it was more sensationalized (though in my defense, you could have subtracted the deaths attributed to the Iran-Iraq war--approximately 1 million--and come to a similar conclusion).
Still, I find it highly curious that you're willing to make outrageous claims and not supply sources tying the US/UK directly to civilian deaths. Why, then, should the burden of proof be on me? I cited the Iraqi Body Count site, which I feel is a fairly impartial site, and even then the total civilian deaths are nowhere near estimates under Saddam's regime. Furthermore, IBC counts deaths attributed to suicide bombers, murders, and such that are not the fault of the US or the UK. I'd wager actual deaths caused by either nation are very likely much lower.
It's a bit of a toss-up as to who should carry the can for the estimated 500,000 Iraqi children who died as a result of the trade sanctions. Could Saddam have saved them? Could the US/UK have saved them? Both, probably.
I wasn't aware that "international trade sanctions" were necessarily the fault of the US and the UK. I'll give you that we could have saved them under ideal circumstances, but under a despot, I sincerely doubt that any such aid would have reached those most in need.
I did have a suspicion you'd pick out the 500,000 figure and largely ignore the others. I should confess it was a measurement to see precisely what notions you were gravitating toward. I have my answers, so thank you. Now I'm almost certain you were trolling.:)
A couple years earlier, a small group of murderers with a handful of commercial jets had managed to immediately drive Cheney into a hole^H^H^H^H^H undisclosed location and Bush into underground shelter. A couple years later, it just took a single report of an off-course plane to send Bush underground again.
Placing the president and vice president into shelters during potential attacks and emergencies is protocol. If this were to happen under Obama's administration, they'd be hidden as well. I realize you're attempting to make a point of "pot, meet kettle," but this is a matter of protocol. Saddam went around in hiding and eventually wound up in a primitive hole. The two are entirely different issues.
What IS the exact count for each? In terms of sheer body count, there's a pretty fair chance that the US/UK coalition killed more Iraquis than Saddam did during his entire reign. Of course, the coalition killed them in order to liberate them, so that's OK.
Okay, either you're regurgitating anti-American propaganda or, more likely, haven't paid much mind to history since the late 1970s.
Now, to be fair, Saddam ruled for approximately 24 years, and his numbers include deaths that were not necessarily civilian casualities. That gives him a death tally of about 80,000 deaths per year versus around 17,000 per year under coalition forces. However, it is exceedingly important to remember that many of the deaths recorded in Iraq, particularly recently, have been the result of suicide bombings, executions, and other acts of violence not tied to the coalition. If you have an unbiased source that supports your view, I'd certainly be happy to hear it.
Yes, the deaths per year is still unnecessarily high, but to make the statement that MORE deaths have occurred because US/UK forces have actively killed civilians is an outright lie. On the other hand, yours could be a two-liner troll!
Thank you for the link, it isn't often posters reply on Slashdot constructively!
I don't think I was able to find anything other than what the AP and other outlets have been reporting (just as you indicated would happen), but I'll examine it a little more tomorrow when I have time. I'm half-asleep right now, so I'd imagine conducting any sort of search might be a fruitless endeavor.:)
Not surprisingly, US government sites are fairly tight-lipped about it. I have my speculation as to why this might be, but it's simply conjecture void of fact at this point.
You keep using this term. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Ah, an overused meme. Thank you. I realize you're probably trolling here, but I'll bite.
NK has NO INTEREST in a peaceful space program. This was an obvious workaround to demonstrate their capability to launch missiles.
I honestly don't think you're reading my replies in their entirety. For one, I was referring to our space program; our knowledge of ballistics could be considered derived from both the purposes of weaponry and space flight. Oftentimes, it is difficult to see where one begins and another ends. Two, we're discussing the NK launch as it stands under the guise of a peaceful space program. Perhaps my impartiality confuses you, but I will say this much: I agree with you. I think it is largely an effort to bring international attention on Pyongyang. While I consider it possible that NK may be attempting to create a ballistic missile system capable of attacking the US, I suspect it is more an effort to gain attention. If it is intended to be a weapons delivery platform (a possibility, most certainly), then it will most likely be used to test the current administration's ability to defend the US from foreign attacks. However, given NK's history, it appears that their launches happen whenever their despot feels he needs to draw attention to himself.
Seriously. Take a deep breath, you might find some folks more in agreement with yourself than you think.:)
This was a perfect success, they got to say "look how far our rockets go".
I addressed this notion briefly in another post, but I forgive you for not being able to see it. I never look at other comments individual posters have made unless I have them "friended." You might be interested in reading my reply there.
Although you're an AC, I look forward to your reply.
Of course if we recover the upper stage and there wasn't/isn't a satellite in it, it would be hard to argue that it was anything but a ballistic test, so it seems like the NK claim to it claiming it was a spacecraft wouldn't be relevant.
Exactly. Considering how much valuable data for South Korea, Japan, and the US hinges on knowing more about the payload, I think it's important to recover the wreckage.
Wouldn't you surmise that discovering a potentially ballistic payload (rather than a satellite) might trump international laws of ownership claims over the wreckage?
Nowadays is retrieval of the missile by NK necessary? (yes for us, but for them?) With all the electronic doodads that can report speed, pressure, direction, altitude, etc., I'd think most of the flight data could be simply sent back to them over radio frequency.
Yes, because we might want to know if they have such telemetry instrumentation installed. I mentioned this in a previous post, also somewhere in this thread. Certainly, if NK had such instrumentation, they could intimate what the failure mode was based upon their flight data. However, discovering what they know will help us infer their sophistication. So really, discovering both the root cause of the failure and how they intended to measure it will be useful to us. On the other hand, absence of any such instrumentation may indicate that they had other motives (ballistic or political rather than orbital).
While the second stage failed to separate, chances are they have data of exactly what parts of the mechanism worked and didn't work and can make educated guesses about what happened.
IANARS (I Am Not A Rocket Scientist), but if you read any published story from NASA, the ESA, or the likes, you get the idea that a failure is vastly more complex than "it didn't separate." I do agree that they can infer a great deal about what fundamentally caused the failure, but assuming they have limited or no instrumentation, inferences are going to be of little value.
And besides, what do you think could be done if the US or Japan happened to raise the wreck? Go to the UN? Whine about us stealing their technology? Complaining that someone has stolen your satellite from the bottom of the ocean is a little counter to suggesting that same satellite is in orbit... (Yes, I'm intentionally ignoring the contortion of information flow in an Orwellian society, but play along with me.)
Of course, that won't stop the North Korean population from throwing a spontaneous demonstration celebrating their newly launched space satellite from which their Dear Leader can now beam his messages of strength and hope throughout the world.
Rockets are great for brainwashed populations. They see it go up, they don't see it come down, so it must be in space!
Exactly. I did neglect (intentionally) to mention the impact on propaganda. You do raise valid points about where this test was highly successful.
What's interesting is that eleven years ago, the north had launched a satellite and also suggested it had been playing revolutionary melodies. I guess they need a lift me up every decade or so.
Anyway, yes, thank you for mentioning the propaganda aspect, which most certainly is successful. I suppose I suffer from intellectual myopia when deliberately disagreeing with someone.;)
The first stage landed in the ocean west of Japan. The second stage landed in the ocean east of Japan. So that says they had a successful launch, successful separation of the first and second stages and a successful flight of the second stage - over 200 seconds of continuous flight.
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you wrote or the general news reported, but if the second stage successfully separated, then wouldn't that imply the third stage failed to ignite? All of the sources I've seen seem to hint that the first stage separated but the second stage--and all subsequent ones--splashed down east of Japan.
I'm not disagree with you, I'm just interested in clearer verbiage. Perhaps you have access to a more recent, more detailed report.
How is this a failure? They launched an ICBM that cleared Japan before hitting the water, thus proving they now have the capability to deliver a nuclear strike against Japan.
If this was a test to see what the effective range was of the missile, then they absolutely determined that and there was no failure. While I dislike the way North Korea interacts with the rest of the world, I find the highly suggestive wording of the write-up to be misleading and inaccurate.
As I mentioned in reply to another poster, this is still technically a failure--though, I suppose you're right, as it depends on what their intent was. If in fact the initial report from the US and Japan is correct (and I think it is) that there was a failure in stage separation, the launch was most certainly a failure. For the developed world, the best course of action we have is to recover the debris and determine precisely what that failure was. One, we stand to learn more about their technology, how progressed they are, and how they've corrected previous engineering mistakes and oversights. Two, we can learn more about the payload, if in fact it was a satellite, or if it wasn't, what they were attempting to launch. We can probably also learn more about their telemetry, if any, and what sort of instrumentation they had installed. This is valuable information in its own right, because we can determine what they probably learned from their own launch. (My gut feel is that they didn't have much in the way of telemetry; if they were intent on developing a serious weapon system, they wouldn't make quite so much noise. This is a political ploy as much as a test--maybe more so.)
To be honest, I have a feeling that this is more along the lines of what other posters have mentioned. The launch is an attempt to get attention from the developed world, drag the US back into six party talks, and possibly seek aid from Washington (or bargain for lesser sanctions so they can work on more nefarious programs). Of course, there's the other side of the coin: Kim Jung Il could be a raving lunatic who honestly doesn't understand that dropping a nuke on Japan, US, or Australia would imply that his regime would suddenly disappear overnight. Still, I think it's a test of the Obama administration, and sabre-rattling.
The US government and the popular media have been spouting this nonsense that it was a "failure."
I guarantee you the NK engineers learned from this "failure." Tests aren't failures as long as you learn from them. Since we don't know whether or what NK learned from this, calling the test a "failure" is pure speculation.
I halfway agree with you. The fact that the missile made it over Japan was a success. However, be aware that in our own space program, whenever we had failures, we were often able to recover enough debris to determine precisely what the cause of the failure was. With the rocket splashed down somewhere in the Pacific, NK is only going to have pure speculation as to what the probable cause was. I can guarantee you that the US and her allies probably have a good idea where the upper stage and payload landed, and are probably planning on recovering it. After all, we need to know: 1) what the payload really was and 2) what the failure mode of the missile was in order to estimate how advanced their technology is.
Plus, there's other advantages to having a splashdown in our backyard: We can prevent them from recovering the rocket and learning about their own failures except through further trial and error. Will NK eventually solve these problems? Probably. However, our best bet is to delay them.
Remember, early in our space program, test failures were what happened when the rocket blew up on the launch pad. We could learn from that. No doubt NK did the same thing. However, whenever we had launch failures where a rocket came down a significant distance from the launch point, few things beat examining the wreckage for probable problems. Yes, we had extensive telemetry during flight, too, and maybe NK has that; but until the wreckage is recovered--hopefully by us--there's no telling how it failed. We stand to learn a lot from their failure, too, as I've mentioned before.
One other poster below made the point about this being successful if the intent were to test the range of the rocket. I find that to be much more likely. As far as the story goes, however, the rocket itself was most likely a failure.
Never has the gravity of an accident (of any kind) been so exaggerated. Before or after.
Yes, exactly. Three Mile Island was used for years by the environmentalists to "prove" that nuclear power was unsafe, and effectively consisted of a bomb just waiting to go off. If they wanted a disaster, they should examine Chernobyl.
Granted, we learned much about what worked--and what didn't--but I should think that Three Mile Island ought to be praised as successful! It averted creating a much worse disaster with consequences we would still be feeling today.
As one locksmith told me: "Locks are there to keep your peace of mind. It's an illusion. And there is nothing a person can't get into without a little determination. The alarms are there to inform someone of an illegal entry, post factum, and nothing else.
This is exactly right. Really, the only thing people can do is increase their own layers of security (bars on windows, fencing, and so forth), but it still doesn't prevent someone from breaking into their house, just as you said. Unfortunately, the only thing homeowners can do is attempt to make the house so difficult to break into that someone else's house looks to be a far more attractive prospect.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I'm absolutely certain that no one would ever consider randomly punching anyone on the street or otherwise.
Yeah, exactly.
One thing that you may have caught but may not have thought to post, also related to Kroll, was something the OP probably neglected when mentioning the Columbia disaster:
So it seems that there's a limit to data recovery, even if the data isn't overwritten!
The sad thing is that just yesterday I was praising Windows 7 for being at least a fairly reasonable improvement over Vista.
In a rather ironic twist, anti-piracy measures like this are the only thing that would stop me from buying it. Given Williams' comments, this may be the fastest I've changed my mind on a potential (future) purchase.
I have to say I agree, and I was expecting Windows 7 to effectively be a rehash of Windows Vista. Here's the deal:
My desktop machine is an early '06 box (Core 2 Duo, dual core), and the only upgrades I've made fairly recently have been to add another 2GiB RAM and an updated video card (my old one blew up with bad caps--the NVIDIA-base 7600s were notorious about this). Yet the funny thing is that Vista is a sluggish beast on this system. Windows 7 is noticeably better--and smoother--even with Aero enabled. I can hardly tell the difference between XP and 7 performance-wise (though the new video card helps a lot!). Oddly, the upgraded card didn't impact Vista's performance much. Win 7 looks good and runs very nicely.
I confess that the 32-bit Win 7 release works better for me. The 64-bit distro has some odd annoyances. The window manager will periodically hang and the desktop feels sluggish. Not to mention the expected pre-release lack of vendor support such as the "Aw, Snap!" Google Chrome bug... Perhaps it's just me, but the x86 Win 7 build just works better. I daresay I like its UI a *lot*.
Even if Windows 7 is only a minor improvement over Vista, I'm planning on buying it, and I tend to dual boot between Gentoo and XP. I curse Microsoft, sure, but Win 7 is "Vista done right." Heck, the network performance seems slightly better than XP's. I can't say I really like the full screen user selection/login prompt. Unfortunately, everyone is moving to this paradigm, including most *nix login managers. *sigh*
If anyone is at a loss for useful examples, I should think Circuit City ought to be a recent memory of exactly this.
Recall that much of the cost in our health care system is due to two factors: litigation and greed. Doctors pay a ridiculous amount on insurance in the hopes that they won't go bankrupt if someone decides to sue, and pharmaceutical companies want money.
Socializing the US health care system won't fix much. Tort reform will.
I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to make assumptions that people of certain cultural, ethnic, or national backgrounds are more likely to hold specific views. If someone made the assumption that I would be more lenient toward Australians (I'm American), they might be right: Part of my heritage is Australian. Would I consider it racist if someone speculated about my leniency toward Aussies? Of course not. Let's put it another way: Would I be offended if someone assumed that my own heritage meant I would be more likely to consider importing Vegemite into the United States as a policy position? Not at all.
The reason people make such assumptions is largely because they are correct; we are often a little more "fair" toward people we can better identify with. Go to a Mexican restaurant (run by individuals who are authentically Hispanic--not those crummy knock-off big chain restaurants) and tell me if the owners might be a little more friendly and outgoing to someone who speaks Spanish; Go to a German establishment and see if the owners are a little more friendly and outgoing to someone who speaks German.
It's unfortunate that making general assumptions about a person's ideology based upon their cultural background is considered racist. Sometimes those assumptions can be helpful, such as with personal space: Arabs tend to stand much closer together when talking in the company of friends of associates--distances that we Westerners are not altogether comfortable with. It is not racist, then, to assume that someone who is Arab may stand closer to you when they're talking! In fact, you might offend them if you fail to oblige (and back away, maintaining your "personal" space)!
It is not racist to consider that someone whose family may or may not be relatively new immigrants to the US might be a little more open to certain immigration-related activities. In fact, I'd expect it; if they weren't, I'd be worried!
You raise an interesting point that popped into my mind when I was reading the summary. Does their COO actually want to raise a challenge to current and potential black hats? I realize one way to test a system's security is to issue the challenge that it is uncrackable, but given the ubiquity of Microsoft's OSes, why would they even want to consider the idea?
Then again, I've always been of the opinion that Windows 7 is really Vista (SP2|SP3), so perhaps this is planned obsolescence: Issue a challenge to hackers of the world to break Vista SP2 (when it is released), then learn from the flaws and patch Win 7.
Still, I can't see why anyone would even consider stating something so brazen, particularly as the COO of the company that controls and overwhelming majority of desktop computers world-wide! Wasn't there something said of the Titanic by its builder/owner relating to its impunity? I can't seem to put my finger on it... ;)
I'd imagine you don't even need to worry about someone giving out your e-mail address. Spammers could potentially crawl Slashdot for usernames, then try those @gmail.com. If they work and match up, there's a new address for them to spam.
Of course, the reason your university address would be safe is because spammers wouldn't think to target ${name}@someplace.edu for each username they have; it's not economical, and they'd get far greater exposure on something like Gmail. That, and it's relatively safe to assume that most Slashdotters have a Gmail address--which probably consists of their username!
I just realized I forgot to include a link to the article I mentioned about Gates. Here it is. It explains his idea of using computationally intensive challenges to limit the flow of large quantities of e-mail.
I thought I had included it, but I must have forgotten.
I'm assuming you didn't see the humor in Matt Perry's post. I hate to sound like such a pessimist, but your solution and response is naively optimistic. Let's examine why.
ISPs already have a lot on their plate insofar as legislation and (potential) filtration goes. Forcing them to operate as a collection agency simply won't work. I also doubt anyone would advocate or appreciate giving credit card companies (i.e. banks) even more control. They've already demonstrated a certain incompetency in recent years that has most certainly been making news!
If you have to ask this question, you don't understand the problem.
E-mail has been effectively "free" since the inception of the Internet (more on this in a moment). As it stands, spam is killing e-mail, and fees intended to kill spam will only succeed in killing both.
We should also consider those ISPs which charge their customers on a per megabyte basis. In effect, users of such services are already paying a tax on e-mails they send; it's just that e-mail is often times such a small chunk of data that it would hardly go noticed, unless of course you were about 2KiB from a threshold that would require paying a little extra and happened to send an e-mail that bumped you over. In either case, charging on a per e-mail basis simply won't be accepted by users. They'll feel they're already paying for e-mail as part of their service plan.
And let's not even mention the technical aspect of it being "mostly automatic." There is no such thing. If you forcible turn off non-payment e-mail services, you kill e-mail as we know it. Without a great deal of unprecedented international cooperation (and good luck getting those governments who are probably influenced by people making money from nefarious deeds), this sort of thing simply will not happen. In fact, I predict two things will happen before any significant change is made to e-mail: IPv6 rollout or Duke Nukem Forever's debut.
No, the semi-humorous post in reply to yours is correct. It doesn't require the cooperation of a "few big [companies]" or a "[government] project." It requires cooperation from hundreds of individual businesses, ISPs, organizations, and governmental cooperation on an international scale. You can't just simply rewrite SMTP and say "here, everyone download this. This will fix the problem with spam." For one, you're assume the new system would be impregnable to spammers and two that it is a wide-sweeping, multi-platform solution that can just be fitted in place.
Here's a hint: It won't happen.
Not if, say, several dozen European countries (rightfully) decline to participate. Then what do you do? Shut off e-mail to all of Europe?
Remember, just because someone doesn't find it fair to tax their people more doesn't mean they're a "'shady' foreign" operator. They could be mindful of the rights of their people to freely exchange information. (See my comments earlier on "free.")
They're not? I had no idea.
I admit I selected the article I did because it was more sensationalized (though in my defense, you could have subtracted the deaths attributed to the Iran-Iraq war--approximately 1 million--and come to a similar conclusion).
Still, I find it highly curious that you're willing to make outrageous claims and not supply sources tying the US/UK directly to civilian deaths. Why, then, should the burden of proof be on me? I cited the Iraqi Body Count site, which I feel is a fairly impartial site, and even then the total civilian deaths are nowhere near estimates under Saddam's regime. Furthermore, IBC counts deaths attributed to suicide bombers, murders, and such that are not the fault of the US or the UK. I'd wager actual deaths caused by either nation are very likely much lower.
I wasn't aware that "international trade sanctions" were necessarily the fault of the US and the UK. I'll give you that we could have saved them under ideal circumstances, but under a despot, I sincerely doubt that any such aid would have reached those most in need.
I did have a suspicion you'd pick out the 500,000 figure and largely ignore the others. I should confess it was a measurement to see precisely what notions you were gravitating toward. I have my answers, so thank you. Now I'm almost certain you were trolling. :)
Placing the president and vice president into shelters during potential attacks and emergencies is protocol. If this were to happen under Obama's administration, they'd be hidden as well. I realize you're attempting to make a point of "pot, meet kettle," but this is a matter of protocol. Saddam went around in hiding and eventually wound up in a primitive hole. The two are entirely different issues.
Okay, either you're regurgitating anti-American propaganda or, more likely, haven't paid much mind to history since the late 1970s.
Let's take a look.
Saddam Hussein: ~2 million.
Since the invasion: almost 100,000.
Now, to be fair, Saddam ruled for approximately 24 years, and his numbers include deaths that were not necessarily civilian casualities. That gives him a death tally of about 80,000 deaths per year versus around 17,000 per year under coalition forces. However, it is exceedingly important to remember that many of the deaths recorded in Iraq, particularly recently, have been the result of suicide bombings, executions, and other acts of violence not tied to the coalition. If you have an unbiased source that supports your view, I'd certainly be happy to hear it.
Yes, the deaths per year is still unnecessarily high, but to make the statement that MORE deaths have occurred because US/UK forces have actively killed civilians is an outright lie. On the other hand, yours could be a two-liner troll!
Thank you for the link, it isn't often posters reply on Slashdot constructively!
I don't think I was able to find anything other than what the AP and other outlets have been reporting (just as you indicated would happen), but I'll examine it a little more tomorrow when I have time. I'm half-asleep right now, so I'd imagine conducting any sort of search might be a fruitless endeavor. :)
Not surprisingly, US government sites are fairly tight-lipped about it. I have my speculation as to why this might be, but it's simply conjecture void of fact at this point.
Ah, an overused meme. Thank you. I realize you're probably trolling here, but I'll bite.
I honestly don't think you're reading my replies in their entirety. For one, I was referring to our space program; our knowledge of ballistics could be considered derived from both the purposes of weaponry and space flight. Oftentimes, it is difficult to see where one begins and another ends. Two, we're discussing the NK launch as it stands under the guise of a peaceful space program. Perhaps my impartiality confuses you, but I will say this much: I agree with you. I think it is largely an effort to bring international attention on Pyongyang. While I consider it possible that NK may be attempting to create a ballistic missile system capable of attacking the US, I suspect it is more an effort to gain attention. If it is intended to be a weapons delivery platform (a possibility, most certainly), then it will most likely be used to test the current administration's ability to defend the US from foreign attacks. However, given NK's history, it appears that their launches happen whenever their despot feels he needs to draw attention to himself.
Seriously. Take a deep breath, you might find some folks more in agreement with yourself than you think. :)
I addressed this notion briefly in another post, but I forgive you for not being able to see it. I never look at other comments individual posters have made unless I have them "friended." You might be interested in reading my reply there.
Although you're an AC, I look forward to your reply.
Exactly. Considering how much valuable data for South Korea, Japan, and the US hinges on knowing more about the payload, I think it's important to recover the wreckage.
Wouldn't you surmise that discovering a potentially ballistic payload (rather than a satellite) might trump international laws of ownership claims over the wreckage?
Yes, because we might want to know if they have such telemetry instrumentation installed. I mentioned this in a previous post, also somewhere in this thread. Certainly, if NK had such instrumentation, they could intimate what the failure mode was based upon their flight data. However, discovering what they know will help us infer their sophistication. So really, discovering both the root cause of the failure and how they intended to measure it will be useful to us. On the other hand, absence of any such instrumentation may indicate that they had other motives (ballistic or political rather than orbital).
IANARS (I Am Not A Rocket Scientist), but if you read any published story from NASA, the ESA, or the likes, you get the idea that a failure is vastly more complex than "it didn't separate." I do agree that they can infer a great deal about what fundamentally caused the failure, but assuming they have limited or no instrumentation, inferences are going to be of little value.
Considering past cover stories in recovery, I honestly don't see why it would be such a concern. :)
And besides, what do you think could be done if the US or Japan happened to raise the wreck? Go to the UN? Whine about us stealing their technology? Complaining that someone has stolen your satellite from the bottom of the ocean is a little counter to suggesting that same satellite is in orbit... (Yes, I'm intentionally ignoring the contortion of information flow in an Orwellian society, but play along with me.)
Exactly. I did neglect (intentionally) to mention the impact on propaganda. You do raise valid points about where this test was highly successful.
What's interesting is that eleven years ago, the north had launched a satellite and also suggested it had been playing revolutionary melodies. I guess they need a lift me up every decade or so.
Anyway, yes, thank you for mentioning the propaganda aspect, which most certainly is successful. I suppose I suffer from intellectual myopia when deliberately disagreeing with someone. ;)
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you wrote or the general news reported, but if the second stage successfully separated, then wouldn't that imply the third stage failed to ignite? All of the sources I've seen seem to hint that the first stage separated but the second stage--and all subsequent ones--splashed down east of Japan.
I'm not disagree with you, I'm just interested in clearer verbiage. Perhaps you have access to a more recent, more detailed report.
As I mentioned in reply to another poster, this is still technically a failure--though, I suppose you're right, as it depends on what their intent was. If in fact the initial report from the US and Japan is correct (and I think it is) that there was a failure in stage separation, the launch was most certainly a failure. For the developed world, the best course of action we have is to recover the debris and determine precisely what that failure was. One, we stand to learn more about their technology, how progressed they are, and how they've corrected previous engineering mistakes and oversights. Two, we can learn more about the payload, if in fact it was a satellite, or if it wasn't, what they were attempting to launch. We can probably also learn more about their telemetry, if any, and what sort of instrumentation they had installed. This is valuable information in its own right, because we can determine what they probably learned from their own launch. (My gut feel is that they didn't have much in the way of telemetry; if they were intent on developing a serious weapon system, they wouldn't make quite so much noise. This is a political ploy as much as a test--maybe more so.)
To be honest, I have a feeling that this is more along the lines of what other posters have mentioned. The launch is an attempt to get attention from the developed world, drag the US back into six party talks, and possibly seek aid from Washington (or bargain for lesser sanctions so they can work on more nefarious programs). Of course, there's the other side of the coin: Kim Jung Il could be a raving lunatic who honestly doesn't understand that dropping a nuke on Japan, US, or Australia would imply that his regime would suddenly disappear overnight. Still, I think it's a test of the Obama administration, and sabre-rattling.
I halfway agree with you. The fact that the missile made it over Japan was a success. However, be aware that in our own space program, whenever we had failures, we were often able to recover enough debris to determine precisely what the cause of the failure was. With the rocket splashed down somewhere in the Pacific, NK is only going to have pure speculation as to what the probable cause was. I can guarantee you that the US and her allies probably have a good idea where the upper stage and payload landed, and are probably planning on recovering it. After all, we need to know: 1) what the payload really was and 2) what the failure mode of the missile was in order to estimate how advanced their technology is.
Plus, there's other advantages to having a splashdown in our backyard: We can prevent them from recovering the rocket and learning about their own failures except through further trial and error. Will NK eventually solve these problems? Probably. However, our best bet is to delay them.
Remember, early in our space program, test failures were what happened when the rocket blew up on the launch pad. We could learn from that. No doubt NK did the same thing. However, whenever we had launch failures where a rocket came down a significant distance from the launch point, few things beat examining the wreckage for probable problems. Yes, we had extensive telemetry during flight, too, and maybe NK has that; but until the wreckage is recovered--hopefully by us--there's no telling how it failed. We stand to learn a lot from their failure, too, as I've mentioned before.
One other poster below made the point about this being successful if the intent were to test the range of the rocket. I find that to be much more likely. As far as the story goes, however, the rocket itself was most likely a failure.
Yes, exactly. Three Mile Island was used for years by the environmentalists to "prove" that nuclear power was unsafe, and effectively consisted of a bomb just waiting to go off. If they wanted a disaster, they should examine Chernobyl.
Granted, we learned much about what worked--and what didn't--but I should think that Three Mile Island ought to be praised as successful! It averted creating a much worse disaster with consequences we would still be feeling today.
This is exactly right. Really, the only thing people can do is increase their own layers of security (bars on windows, fencing, and so forth), but it still doesn't prevent someone from breaking into their house, just as you said. Unfortunately, the only thing homeowners can do is attempt to make the house so difficult to break into that someone else's house looks to be a far more attractive prospect.