a) Using the "I'm going to be moderated down for this" has become a cheap way of getting moderating points. Putting that in a post seems to work as moral extortion to moderators who then moderate the post up instead.
Now, so I don't get hit for being off-topic:
b) Well, of course you are an evil person. You ARE living a life of luxury while other people are starving. You are spending money for entertainment that another would need to save their childrens lives.
If you do not agree with this, I would say you have probably never lived in a third world country. Living among the starving, if secluded in a community of fellow evil rich people, permenantly jaded me from EVER thinking that I am not evil.
Yes of course, your money and time is probably doing them bigger favours if you spend it on what you are really good at until you can really help, rather than if you just slave away so you can send them your minimum wage. But are you truely devoting your life towards this goal? Are you sure you don't waist some money and time sometimes? Go out drinking? See a movie? Have a night on the town?
Can you honestly claim that you deserve such things while others are starving and than argue that you are not evil? I know I can't. I'm evil. I have walked over mothers with malnourished children, ignored hungry street-kids tugging at my shirt, and had employees who could hardly feed their families wait outside while I spent their monthly salary in a bar. I am the scum of the earth: and so are you, even if you do not live where you have to see what you are doing.
c) I think you misunderstood the question. It was slightly populistic, but there was more to it then just an accusation. While a little food can feed you for a day: freedom can feed for you for a lifetime.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Well, if anything, we out here in the rest of the world simply are not as desperately in need of a little apocalyptic action as you Americans are. Unlike you, this is not our first Millenia change, and while we had quite a good time shouting about the end of the world last time, we are now taking the cool approach. In general, everyone seems to agree that you Americans with your bunkers, canned beans, spam, and weeks of drinking water are, well, funny.
Most people here seem only moderately cautious. While the consensus seems to be against flying (who wants to be on a fucking airplane anyways?) I haven't heard anyone seriously worry about anything else. Partially I think its because we are less dependant on our machines (we don't eat out when our dishwashers break for example), and partially because we have a more rational approach to life (in general: you have to admit there are more crazy people ala militias, abductees, heelers etc in the US).
Also, I think because the idea of machines is less embedded in our culture and our psychee, to the extent that our mass psychology does seek an apocalyptic event to end the millenia, we are less likely to read it into a few computer failures.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
In general I think that opposition to digital signatures is the harmful kind of technophobia. It seems that people are ready to read a million problems into the system of signature when computers are involved, but at the same time they are completely comfortable with a system where you authenticate yourself by drawing a squiggle?
From a security engineers perspective, conventional signatures are insane. They are easy to fake, even easier to get around (how many cashiers even check for a signature on your ID? how many are trained in handwriting recognition? how hard is it to fake an ID? How hard is it to leave a space open on a contract and then print another clause onto it?) The fact that I can be accused of having signed something just because somebody could draw a squiggle like mine: now that is a rights violation if you ask me.
Yes, there is reason for healthy skeptisism on any system like this, after all the American government has a bad track record with both crypto and consumer rights. But DSA signatures have stood up until now, and there is little reason to believe they will be broken (they work a lot like other asymmetric cryptos). As a whole however, a truely functional system for digital signatures is an amazing blessing: a way to be truly, mathematically, sure that nobody can fake your signature.
I think that in the foreseeable future, people will think we were insane in basing our entire legal system on a bunch of squiggles...
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
There can be no doubt that this is the most awful, repressive, undemocratic law one could possibly imagine (and yes, I do realize the scope of that statement). I get bouts of serious vertigo just by the thought that this sort of shit goes on in a society that then turns the other way and claims that it is free.
At which point is self censorship manditory anyways? Is ok to think about the problem, but not to talk about ones thoughts, or maybe they shouldn't have thought about it in the first place? Maybe we should state that more clearly, how about something like:
"The large copororation who abuses its legal monopoly over the permutations of one and zeros to which it lays claim has the absolute right to legally attack and extract, for what they are worth, large sums of money from anybody thinking about, or considered intelligent enough to be a threat if thinking about, getting around their faulty, futile, schemes for preventing those particular permutations from appearing elsewhere in the universe."
The gist of the law is that you are not ALLOWED to outsmart people, no matter how stupid they are. By this the DVD people could have used a ROT13 encoding and then attacked any Linux player that had "cracked" that. So I guess instead of protecting the weak from the strong, we are now protecting the stupid from the smart. And using violence to enforce it. What a great day for our society.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Actually, Ericsson has showed an mp3 player that hooks up to the T-28. It plays tracks into the handsfree headphones, but automatically pauses when you get a call.
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
You saw quotes? That's funny, all I saw were comments seperated by "?". Since I don't read a question mark as a quote, the comments were not quoted but plagarized as far as I'm concerned...
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I'm sorry, and I'll probably get downed for this, but I have to react to all the bullshit I have read in the earlier discussions of this nature (particularly the one about rasing venture capital).
Do we only support the open source and free software ideals when it fits us, just to conveniently forget them as soon as we have an idea we feel we could profit off? Why are the same people who complain about the way that patents, trade-secrets, and NDA's are stifling the efforts of Linux and other free software, suddenly ready to give advice on how to patent ideas, force NDA's on people, ad infinum? (go back and read the comments in the "how to find a vc" thread for more).
Ask yourself why you are in this game. If all you are after is getting rich you might as well pack up and go home: one idea is never going to be enough (maybe not never, but you might as well play the lottey). If you are in it for the sake of humanity and that of your idea, then you KNOW it is best off if you let it fly freely. I know we are born into the box that patenting your idea and taught to wing-clip our invovations, but this is slashdot for gods sake: we spend our time PREACHING that this is not the way to it.
Why can't we live up to that?
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Actually putting it on a Friday to stop shock effects in the stock market doesn't say much: while MS stock would fall if the ruling is harsh, it would likely shoot up if not. Either way you have a shock effect.
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
This was not a good article at all, it was half a page of repetition of everything we already heard. The article also assumes that this was a bad development, failing to notice that while bad for the IP industry, this is a freedom issue for many users. I don't mind paying for my movies, but I don't like the idea that the producers and the player are conspiring to keep me from the accessing the actual movie. My machines work for me, following my agenda: I do not like the idea of having any machine that is doing somebody elses bidding in my house. period.
It also makes the assumption that the problem can be solved by simply tightening the security. Recalling all the millions of cdplayers that are out there would cost a fortune, as would halting the production of DVDs until all new keys were in every player. Who is going to pay? I doubt most of the electronics companies care enough.
And on top of that, what is about the new system that is going to make so magically more difficult to crack? Yes, the code got out easy because Xing were clumsy (or intentionally leaked it, who knows), but if they start again I can promise some other company will be clumsy next. And even if it isn't as easy next time, trying to make software running on somebodies PC safe against side channel attacks is a garantuan, if not impossible task.
And if they try to make the crypto stronger so people can't known-plaintext out the other keys once one is compromised, they have crypto restrictions to deal with. Wow, maybe the ip industry could do us a favour here...
The only way another CSS, or for that matter SDMI (any bets as to how long SDMI holds? A month? two?) will work is if the content creaters hold complete control over all the hardware that can decrypt the media, and allows no software players what so ever. How many would like to see new formats like that?
Maybe they should just bring back DivX. There's an idea (bar the fact that people realized you could "crack" DivX players by plugging them out)...
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
What makes you think that is the opinion of the "mainstream"? I don't know exactly how many viewers one can be expected to get from a link on slashdot, but consider that the polls here normally have like 30-50,000 votes. Also consider that the mainstream would have given up on that story before scrolling down to the poll (it might have been on the first page for you, but I bet you don't run 640*480 because reseting the res is too difficult either). And that NO geek could have passed by that one without voting.
I think the mainstream have no opinion on the subject. They have nothing to compare with, and Windows seldome crashes when in Solitaire...
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Xatrix and id have a history of working together, not only did Xatrix's Kingpin license the Quake 2 engine, but they also made one of the two Quake 2 add-on packs for id. I would be willing to be bet that Carmack is behind this.
After all, he has been hinting that they want to make a Doom2k themselves, what better way to build up to it then to have someone else do a Wolf2k?
They've got a customer in me as long as they have Linux versions.
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Since this is the first Slashdot thread in a while, I'll take the chance to say some stuff about the system:
a) There ought be a page that showed users ranked by karma. Or put a users rank on his page. Or at least show the percentile. I realize that Karma is not a competition, but I can't help but be curious who really is the top etc (and yes I realize I'm not "in the running", I just said its not a competition). Still, if people started treating it like a competition meta-moderating would get them, so it couldn't really hurt.
b) I'm bothered by "off-topic" and "redundant" moderating deep down in the discussions. There is no harm in people straying from the topic when its not in the main thread.
c) I see the "don't get +1" option has disappeared from below this window. Have the rules for getting +1 changed, or has the option been taken out? Why? To what?
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Yay, this makes me even more happy that I chose a soundcard by A3D, hoping to support competition rather than the market leader, when I bought my computer way back when. A year later, and now those who chose SB Live's have a opensource drivers, and what do I have? A $30 closed source (crippled and buggy) solution from Opensound, and Aureal support claiming they might have drivers out "towards the end of 1999" (though they also claim they will be "more open-source" whatever that means).
Never the less, I am not bitter. It's great that Creative are seeing the light here, and I hope that more companies (cough, cough) could follow in their footsteps. It just feels so wrong that the only way to get good sound support in Linux is to support a huge company with a defacto monopoly in this area. That was sort of what I was trying to get away from...
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Nothing is bad about p0rn. pr0n is good. People tend not to attack things that are bad (say Coliflower or banging your foot against the threshhold) but rather things that are good. Its not our fault, its how God wants it.
Your girlfriend needs a serious reality check. Can she explain her reasoning here? To people who accuse me of hurting creativity by pirating music I usually say "But I sent one dollar to the artist, thats more than it saw of your fifteen". That usually shuts them up.
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
True, but the fact is that 99% of the time the police is not there to actively watch over you either. As individuals criminals are irrational, but on a whole crime is pretty rational. The reason I can walk my dog at night here without getting mugged and killed is not that there are police everywhere, but because your sure enough to get caught to make getting my $4 of pocket change not worth it. In some areas this is obviously not the case (well, my dog is rather large, so...)
Violence will obviously be needed to fight violence. But as the technology protecting me gets smarter, I the authority of the violence protecting me can, and will, get weaker.
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
A lot of people think this way, in a way even Schneier is guilty of it when he says we can learn a 30 character passcode but most people can't be expected too
Here is a clue:
We are the future.
We may be the early adapters of the technology, but you bet your ass everybody will be doing it soon enough. Contrary to what one might think when watching daytime TV, society is not getting dumber as a whole. Here in Sweden the guy who mugs you is likely to have a mobile phone on him. In two years he is likely to have a WAP phone/PDA. In five years it likely to be permanently connected to the net. Etc.
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
The only real problem here is one of denial. I don't think that the loss of privacy is a problem, because there is nothing we can do about it. If anything, we need to face up to it.
Transparency is coming, like it, hate it, deny it, or embrace it. I don't think that the Sun dude is right, because in saying saying that we have already lost the war he makes it sound like it won't get much ~worse~. It will.
The thing is, transparency does not have to be bad. Transparency makes people accountable for their actions. It means that people will once again have to take responsibility for what they do. In my opinion, adults not taking responsibity for the effects of their own actions (be it through the American legal system or European welfair states) is one of the biggest problems with todays society.
If you are constantly broadcast on the Net, you are never alone. This has its vices, but it also has amazing virtues. Schneier notes that the telephones giving away their positions is for security reasons. And if you consider it, it does mean an amazing boost for safety to have a phone that can help rescue services find you. Store cameras, street cameras, home cameras all make your world safer. If you are walking around constantly webcasting everything you see, then you are never going to be alone in a dark alley again. Sure, there are people dumb enough to attack you even if it means putting their face on the web: but a hell of a lot fewer then if it doesn't.
The loss of privacy is a double bladed sword: It could topple us towards the true idealized global village, or towards Orwellian inferno. What we have to do is make sure we choose the right side.
Passing more laws to giving more power to the state to restrict peoples freedoms is not the right side. I don't care if the intentions are good, its a misguided idea.
If you ask me what makes the Orwellian world a hell is not the lack of privacy, but the combination of POWER and transparency. To fight the transparency is as futile as fighting the piracy, the drugs, or the gene technology. You can't kill ideas. But we can fight the power. For too long we have been imagining that we have found the perfect balance between totalitarian power and freedom, and have stood still at it. Well now technology is catching up with us. Transparency makes the governments that were designed to protect us our greatest enemies, while it at the same time weakens all the threats the power was established to protect us from. Its time to start moving.
I'm sick and I'm rambling. This probably made no sense. He:-)
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
This is not a data haven in the Kinakuta way at all, its simply a the same kind of anonymous offshore banking that has been done on small island countries for many years now. Nothing actually goes on in the country, but because it can register companies, operating under its flag can be used to overcome all sorts of regulations. Its really not to different from convenience flagging of boats to get around safety regulations. Or cheap domain names (like Nuine, Cocos, and Turkmenistan).
In a way its a sad story how this country which overspent its natural resources is now forced to prostitute itself to Russian organized crime in order to fund its budget. Not that I am against offshore banking (I am in principle against taxes), but still...
However, if the article mentions that the country has 190 million dollars in a fund left from its wealthier days. Maybe, if the leaders are willing to play "dirty" against the big guys, doing a Cryptonomicum wouldn't be such a bad idea. How much would putting a good pipe to the island (or a permanent sattelite link) cost?
I am doubtful of the realism of Stephensons vision however. If an offshore datahaven were to succeed with causing an upheaval in the western economies, you can bet your ass America wouldn't think twice before the island had a carrier permanently docked in its harbour. Its funny how much influence that can have over a very small country, huh?
I mean, just look what happens when anything threatens the American oil market...
The true datahaven can't be located in some physical place. It has to be nowhere, and it has to be everywhere. It will not gain its security by mountain vaults but by crypography, and it won't secure its existance by oceans but by being dynamic, distributed, and smart. Lately I have seen a few projects in the open source world aspiring towards solutions in this direction (Freenet, the Eternity system) and they are much better news in this front than the existance of roque island states.
- /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Slashdot Mirror
a) Using the "I'm going to be moderated down for this" has become a cheap way of getting moderating points. Putting that in a post seems to work as moral extortion to moderators who then moderate the post up instead.
Now, so I don't get hit for being off-topic:
b) Well, of course you are an evil person. You ARE living a life of luxury while other people are starving. You are spending money for entertainment that another would need to save their childrens lives.
If you do not agree with this, I would say you have probably never lived in a third world country. Living among the starving, if secluded in a community of fellow evil rich people, permenantly jaded me from EVER thinking that I am not evil.
Yes of course, your money and time is probably doing them bigger favours if you spend it on what you are really good at until you can really help, rather than if you just slave away so you can send them your minimum wage. But are you truely devoting your life towards this goal? Are you sure you don't waist some money and time sometimes? Go out drinking? See a movie? Have a night on the town?
Can you honestly claim that you deserve such things while others are starving and than argue that you are not evil? I know I can't. I'm evil. I have walked over mothers with malnourished children, ignored hungry street-kids tugging at my shirt, and had employees who could hardly feed their families wait outside while I spent their monthly salary in a bar. I am the scum of the earth: and so are you, even if you do not live where you have to see what you are doing.
c) I think you misunderstood the question. It was slightly populistic, but there was more to it then just an accusation. While a little food can feed you for a day: freedom can feed for you for a lifetime.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Well, if anything, we out here in the rest of the world simply are not as desperately in need of a little apocalyptic action as you Americans are. Unlike you, this is not our first Millenia change, and while we had quite a good time shouting about the end of the world last time, we are now taking the cool approach. In general, everyone seems to agree that you Americans with your bunkers, canned beans, spam, and weeks of drinking water are, well, funny.
Most people here seem only moderately cautious. While the consensus seems to be against flying (who wants to be on a fucking airplane anyways?) I haven't heard anyone seriously worry about anything else. Partially I think its because we are less dependant on our machines (we don't eat out when our dishwashers break for example), and partially because we have a more rational approach to life (in general: you have to admit there are more crazy people ala militias, abductees, heelers etc in the US).
Also, I think because the idea of machines is less embedded in our culture and our psychee, to the extent that our mass psychology does seek an apocalyptic event to end the millenia, we are less likely to read it into a few computer failures.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
In general I think that opposition to digital signatures is the harmful kind of technophobia. It seems that people are ready to read a million problems into the system of signature when computers are involved, but at the same time they are completely comfortable with a system where you authenticate yourself by drawing a squiggle?
From a security engineers perspective, conventional signatures are insane. They are easy to fake, even easier to get around (how many cashiers even check for a signature on your ID? how many are trained in handwriting recognition? how hard is it to fake an ID? How hard is it to leave a space open on a contract and then print another clause onto it?) The fact that I can be accused of having signed something just because somebody could draw a squiggle like mine: now that is a rights violation if you ask me.
Yes, there is reason for healthy skeptisism on any system like this, after all the American government has a bad track record with both crypto and consumer rights. But DSA signatures have stood up until now, and there is little reason to believe they will be broken (they work a lot like other asymmetric cryptos). As a whole however, a truely functional system for digital signatures is an amazing blessing: a way to be truly, mathematically, sure that nobody can fake your signature.
I think that in the foreseeable future, people will think we were insane in basing our entire legal system on a bunch of squiggles...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
There can be no doubt that this is the most awful, repressive, undemocratic law one could possibly imagine (and yes, I do realize the scope of that statement). I get bouts of serious vertigo just by the thought that this sort of shit goes on in a society that then turns the other way and claims that it is free.
At which point is self censorship manditory anyways? Is ok to think about the problem, but not to talk about ones thoughts, or maybe they shouldn't have thought about it in the first place? Maybe we should state that more clearly, how about something like:
"The large copororation who abuses its legal monopoly over the permutations of one and zeros to which it lays claim has the absolute right to legally attack and extract, for what they are worth, large sums of money from anybody thinking about, or considered intelligent enough to be a threat if thinking about, getting around their faulty, futile, schemes for preventing those particular permutations from appearing elsewhere in the universe."
The gist of the law is that you are not ALLOWED to outsmart people, no matter how stupid they are. By this the DVD people could have used a ROT13 encoding and then attacked any Linux player that had "cracked" that. So I guess instead of protecting the weak from the strong, we are now protecting the stupid from the smart. And using violence to enforce it. What a great day for our society.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Actually, Ericsson has showed an mp3 player that hooks up to the T-28. It plays tracks into the handsfree headphones, but automatically pauses when you get a call.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
You saw quotes? That's funny, all I saw were comments seperated by "?". Since I don't read a question mark as a quote, the comments were not quoted but plagarized as far as I'm concerned...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I'm sorry, and I'll probably get downed for this, but I have to react to all the bullshit I have read in the earlier discussions of this nature (particularly the one about rasing venture capital).
Do we only support the open source and free software ideals when it fits us, just to conveniently forget them as soon as we have an idea we feel we could profit off? Why are the same people who complain about the way that patents, trade-secrets, and NDA's are stifling the efforts of Linux and other free software, suddenly ready to give advice on how to patent ideas, force NDA's on people, ad infinum? (go back and read the comments in the "how to find a vc" thread for more).
Ask yourself why you are in this game. If all you are after is getting rich you might as well pack up and go home: one idea is never going to be enough (maybe not never, but you might as well play the lottey). If you are in it for the sake of humanity and that of your idea, then you KNOW it is best off if you let it fly freely. I know we are born into the box that patenting your idea and taught to wing-clip our invovations, but this is slashdot for gods sake: we spend our time PREACHING that this is not the way to it.
Why can't we live up to that?
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Quake3 is low-end graphics. High-end gaming maybe, but when was last time a high-end CAD rendering had models with 1-2000 ploys.
Graphics that are being rendered in real time on home PCs 60 times per second are by definition not high end.
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Actually putting it on a Friday to stop shock effects in the stock market doesn't say much: while MS stock would fall if the ruling is harsh, it would likely shoot up if not. Either way you have a shock effect.
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This was not a good article at all, it was half a page of repetition of everything we already heard. The article also assumes that this was a bad development, failing to notice that while bad for the IP industry, this is a freedom issue for many users. I don't mind paying for my movies, but I don't like the idea that the producers and the player are conspiring to keep me from the accessing the actual movie. My machines work for me, following my agenda: I do not like the idea of having any machine that is doing somebody elses bidding in my house. period.
It also makes the assumption that the problem can be solved by simply tightening the security. Recalling all the millions of cdplayers that are out there would cost a fortune, as would halting the production of DVDs until all new keys were in every player. Who is going to pay? I doubt most of the electronics companies care enough.
And on top of that, what is about the new system that is going to make so magically more difficult to crack? Yes, the code got out easy because Xing were clumsy (or intentionally leaked it, who knows), but if they start again I can promise some other company will be clumsy next. And
even if it isn't as easy next time, trying to make software running on somebodies PC safe against side channel attacks is a garantuan, if not impossible task.
And if they try to make the crypto stronger so people can't known-plaintext out the other keys once one is compromised, they have crypto restrictions to deal with. Wow, maybe the ip industry could do us a favour here...
The only way another CSS, or for that matter SDMI (any bets as to how long SDMI holds? A month? two?) will work is if the content creaters hold complete control over all the hardware that can decrypt the media, and allows no software players what so ever. How many would like to see new formats like that?
Maybe they should just bring back DivX. There's an idea (bar the fact that people realized you could "crack" DivX players by plugging them out)...
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Oh come, don't be so square. May he who didn't sniff a little freon now and then back in junior-high throw the first stone.
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What makes you think that is the opinion of the "mainstream"? I don't know exactly how many viewers one can be expected to get from a link on slashdot, but consider that the polls here normally have like 30-50,000 votes. Also consider that the mainstream would have given up on that story before scrolling down to the poll (it might have been on the first page for you, but I bet you don't run 640*480 because reseting the res is too difficult either). And that NO geek could have passed by that one without voting.
I think the mainstream have no opinion on the subject. They have nothing to compare with, and Windows seldome crashes when in Solitaire...
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Xatrix and id have a history of working together, not only did Xatrix's Kingpin license the Quake 2 engine, but they also made one of the two Quake 2 add-on packs for id. I would be willing to be bet that Carmack is behind this.
After all, he has been hinting that they want to make a Doom2k themselves, what better way to build up to it then to have someone else do a Wolf2k?
They've got a customer in me as long as they have Linux versions.
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Since this is the first Slashdot thread in a while, I'll take the chance to say some stuff about the system:
a) There ought be a page that showed users ranked by karma. Or put a users rank on his page. Or at least show the percentile. I realize that Karma is not a competition, but I can't help but be curious who really is the top etc (and yes I realize I'm not "in the running", I just said its not a competition). Still, if people started treating it like a competition meta-moderating would get them, so it couldn't really hurt.
b) I'm bothered by "off-topic" and "redundant" moderating deep down in the discussions. There is no harm in people straying from the topic when its not in the main thread.
c) I see the "don't get +1" option has disappeared from below this window. Have the rules for getting +1 changed, or has the option been taken out? Why? To what?
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Yay, this makes me even more happy that I chose a soundcard by A3D, hoping to support competition rather than the market leader, when I bought my computer way back when. A year later, and now those who chose SB Live's have a opensource drivers, and what do I have? A $30 closed source (crippled and buggy) solution from Opensound, and Aureal support claiming they might have drivers out "towards the end of 1999" (though they also claim they will be "more open-source" whatever that means).
Never the less, I am not bitter. It's great that Creative are seeing the light here, and I hope that more companies (cough, cough) could follow in their footsteps. It just feels so wrong that the only way to get good sound support in Linux is to support a huge company with a defacto monopoly in this area. That was sort of what I was trying to get away from...
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Nothing is bad about p0rn. pr0n is good. People tend not to attack things that are bad (say Coliflower or banging your foot against the threshhold) but rather things that are good. Its not our fault, its how God wants it.
Your girlfriend needs a serious reality check. Can she explain her reasoning here? To people who accuse me of hurting creativity by pirating music I usually say "But I sent one dollar to the artist, thats more than it saw of your fifteen". That usually shuts them up.
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But he didn't post the comment. Most media will retain the copyright for what you say when they interview you, I believe.
I mean, I can't take an interview with me from Spin (cause you know I'm in there all the time) and sell it straight out to Rolling Stone...
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Its not going to change. I guess I'm just a pessimistic American. Will moving to Sweden restore my faith in Gov't? If so, lemme know. :>
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Quite possibly. Then, after 2 minutes, it will destroy your faith in the democracy that put that government in place...
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True, but the fact is that 99% of the time the police is not there to actively watch over you either. As individuals criminals are irrational, but on a whole crime is pretty rational. The reason I can walk my dog at night here without getting mugged and killed is not that there are police everywhere, but because your sure enough to get caught to make getting my $4 of pocket change not worth it. In some areas this is obviously not the case (well, my dog is rather large, so...)
Violence will obviously be needed to fight violence. But as the technology protecting me gets smarter, I the authority of the violence protecting me can, and will, get weaker.
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A lot of people think this way, in a way even Schneier is guilty of it when he says we can learn a 30 character passcode but most people can't be expected too
Here is a clue:
We are the future.
We may be the early adapters of the technology, but you bet your ass everybody will be doing it soon enough. Contrary to what one might think when watching daytime TV, society is not getting dumber as a whole. Here in Sweden the guy who mugs you is likely to have a mobile phone on him. In two years he is likely to have a WAP phone/PDA. In five years it likely to be permanently connected to the net. Etc.
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No one misspells Torvalds because Swedish is such a lovely, logical language that it leaves no room for misspelling. Except when I'm writing.
/me waits patiently for the first american to say "You mean Finish"...
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The only real problem here is one of denial. I don't think that the loss of privacy is a problem, because there is nothing we can do about it. If anything, we need to face up to it.
:-)
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Transparency is coming, like it, hate it, deny it, or embrace it. I don't think that the Sun dude is right, because in saying saying that we have already lost the war he makes it sound like it won't get much ~worse~. It will.
The thing is, transparency does not have to be bad. Transparency makes people accountable for their actions. It means that people will once again have to take responsibility for what they do. In my opinion, adults not taking responsibity for the effects of their own actions (be it through the American legal system or European welfair states) is one of the biggest problems with todays society.
If you are constantly broadcast on the Net, you are never alone. This has its vices, but it also has amazing virtues. Schneier notes that the telephones giving away their positions is for security reasons. And if you consider it, it does mean an amazing boost for safety to have a phone that can help rescue services find you. Store cameras, street cameras, home cameras all make your world safer. If you are walking around constantly webcasting everything you see, then you are never going to be alone in a dark alley again. Sure, there are people dumb enough to attack you even if it means putting their face on the web: but a hell of a lot fewer then if it doesn't.
The loss of privacy is a double bladed sword: It could topple us towards the true idealized global village, or towards Orwellian inferno. What we have to do is make sure we choose the right side.
Passing more laws to giving more power to the state to restrict peoples freedoms is not the right side. I don't care if the intentions are good, its a misguided idea.
If you ask me what makes the Orwellian world a hell is not the lack of privacy, but the combination of POWER and transparency. To fight the transparency is as futile as fighting the piracy, the drugs, or the gene technology. You can't kill ideas. But we can fight the power. For too long we have been imagining that we have found the perfect balance between totalitarian power and freedom, and have stood still at it. Well now technology is catching up with us. Transparency makes the governments that were designed to protect us our greatest enemies, while it at the same time weakens all the threats the power was established to protect us from. Its time to start moving.
I'm sick and I'm rambling. This probably made no sense. He
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After reading that I'm not quite sure that valium is enough to hold me down while they pull the cornea off my eye.
If you do it in California, can the doctor perscripe you some pot?
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Freenet is at: http://freenet.on.openprojects.net/
The design of the Eternity Service is here: http://www.cypherspace.org/eternity-design.html I'm not sure where they have a "live" webpage.
Just to clarify, I'm not part of either of these projects, just interested.
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This is not a data haven in the Kinakuta way at all, its simply a the same kind of anonymous offshore banking that has been done on small island countries for many years now. Nothing actually goes on in the country, but because it can register companies, operating under its flag can be used to overcome all sorts of regulations. Its really not to different from convenience flagging of boats to get around safety regulations. Or cheap domain names (like Nuine, Cocos, and Turkmenistan).
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
In a way its a sad story how this country which overspent its natural resources is now forced to prostitute itself to Russian organized crime in order to fund its budget. Not that I am against offshore banking (I am in principle against taxes), but still...
However, if the article mentions that the country has 190 million dollars in a fund left from its wealthier days. Maybe, if the leaders are willing to play "dirty" against the big guys, doing a Cryptonomicum wouldn't be such a bad idea. How much would putting a good pipe to the island (or a permanent sattelite link) cost?
I am doubtful of the realism of Stephensons vision however. If an offshore datahaven were to succeed with causing an upheaval in the western economies, you can bet your ass America wouldn't think twice before the island had a carrier permanently docked in its harbour. Its funny how much influence that can have over a very small country, huh?
I mean, just look what happens when anything threatens the American oil market...
The true datahaven can't be located in some physical place. It has to be nowhere, and it has to be everywhere. It will not gain its security by mountain vaults but by crypography, and it won't secure its existance by oceans but by being dynamic, distributed, and smart. Lately I have seen a few projects in the open source world aspiring towards solutions in this direction (Freenet, the Eternity system) and they are much better news in this front than the existance of roque island states.
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