Could such a bill be established in the U.S.?...
on
UK Drafts Crypto Bill
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· Score: 2
...Or, would the self-incrimination exception prevent it, assuming the three branches of government are not all corrupt? Does anyone know of any precedents similar to this sort of intrusion of privacy in America?
It's just unbelievable to me that they really think they can do anything about strong encryption in other countries with these dumbass laws. Either they are, as you say, idiots or they have a different agenda in mind.
The only thing that these laws seem to accomplish is to prevent U.S. companies from putting strong encryption into their mainstream products in order to (a) avoid managing two versions and (b) avoid the legal liability of accidental exports of the products.
Therefore, I think this law is aimed at us, the regular citizens of the United States, rather then foreign countries. While there are undoubtedly "useful idiots" helping in this effort, I'm afraid it is optimistic to conclude that idiocy is the core problem. The real problem is people who don't want to be inconvenienced in reading our "private" correspondence.
Ahhh... Thanks. But I still have trouble believing that those things actually dominate "home networking". Everyone I know with a network at home uses ethernet. Of course, my friends do tend toward the geeky end of the bell curve.;)
Yes, finding that hatch will be hard indeed. It is probably nestled tightly against the ground, perhaps covered with a thin layer of sediment by now. A sonar won't distinguish it from the not-quite-smooth sea floor. Worse, if it's aluminum, it will be mostly corroded away, leaving an even smaller sonar/visual target.
':! Congratulations to the ': editorial staff, sysadmins, reporters, and stockholders. You have produced a parody worthy of being called a, uh, well, parody.
As the only volunteer judge in this contest I had to be even more objective than possible. However, after visiting the ': site, I see no need to go on. Surely the only thing that could be funnier than ': would be a parody of ': -- and that would be a different contest.
So, with these words I turn over the coveted trophy to brennanw, representative of all those at ': who made this day possible. Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, and good evening.
Can ANYONE do a better Slashdot parody than the legendary Hashsnot? If so, please put your HTML coding where your flaming comments are and do it. You all know the standard for entry here -- you have to raise the bar on Hashsnot. This will be difficult for some of you, impossible for others. Consider that the task is made even more difficult by the fact that Hashsnot survived the Slashdot effect and, therefore, must be a solidly designed site running on a massive SMP server.
As one who would stand no chance in such a contest, I volunteer to help judge the entries.
If a bank holiday is used to "force the idiots to keep their money in the bank" it might inconvenience you. If, due to your foresight, you took money out to avoid the inconvenience of the bank holiday or the idiot-inspired bank runs, would that make you an idiot also?
You seem to be making an argument for both idiots and non-idiots to withdraw some money...;)
Exactly. Significant parts of the infrastructure of our civilization are so fragile and precariously balanced that they cannot withstand even unfounded fears from a minority "fringe" element. This is not good design;) and puts all of us who understand that secondary problem on the fringe as well.
Those of you who have done extensive analysis of the Y2K-related technical problems may see big problems or not, depending on where you looked and the assumptions you worked under. If you looked *only* at the original technical problems, however, you may well have underestimated the magnitude and misdiagnosed the nature of the Y2K situation.
...now that I can no longer think of Amazon as a book store. It's important for simple minds like mine to tie an outlet to a product, service, or a particularly advantageous way of doing business. Some places offer good prices -- important to consider on items that are easy to find. Others offer a wide choice -- good when you're not an expert on a category and want to do some comparisons. Some are *never* out of what's important and are open anytime you're awake -- my friendly Publix supermarket. And, of course, I can rely on slashdot to give me the news that's interesting...
So, that brings up the question: what is Amazon's core strength now and how will the public file that information in their busy minds?
Intel has tried to keep the Celeron's performance a secret -- except at the "low end" where it has been pitted against AMD chips. I was a little surprised at how far they were willing to go to prevent cannibalizing sales of the PII when I first read the benchmarks on their site and found that they measured performance of the Celerons and the PII's using different benchmarks! They have since added several other benchmarks including SPECint 95, allowing comparisons. I guess with all the articles about Celeron performance they just gave up. However, my C366 came in a box clearly labeled "For basic computing" with no bragging about performance whatsoever.
Meanwhile, in many niches the Celeron is eating away at the PII/III market share now. If AMD loses their competitiveness, I fear that the days of cheapo, high performance processors will be over.
AMD's only chance is quality of manufacturing and Yield, Yield, Yield!
I wonder if Britain would give us the same deal again if we surrendered peacefully?
Colonies calling London...
Come in London...
Re:THERE IS NO GLOBAL EMAIL TAX... bandwidth tax?
on
UN Proposes Email Tax
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· Score: 1
Actually, this sounds much worse than an "email tax"... it's a bandwidth tax at 1 cent per megabyte, if I did the math correctly.;)
Of course, the actual price is not the issue. That, and the Good Cause, are just to make it sound palatable and to get good PR. As I said before, once you concede the principle, all that remains is to haggle over the price.
Nope, I can't find the logic in this either. All the stuff they tell us on TV and in the papers is designed for children. Historically, that has been sufficient.
I have completely abandoned cryptography in favor of development projects that don't have to be locked in a vault. Meanwhile, in countries far away, cryptographers advance the art steadily, secure in the knowlege that there'll be no competition coming from the powerhouse of software development, the United States.
The penumbra of our policy extends to many other areas where cryptography is only a feature, not the central function, of important applications. We cannot compete on a level field in an ever growing list of niches, big and small. Business is injured even as we subsidize the development of cryptography and general development outside our borders.
I expect no better from Janet Reno. She is a "legend" in Dade County, Fla; Waco, Tx;, Washington, D.C.; and, now, the high tech centers of the rest of the world.
The first thing I thought of when I read about this issue is the proverbial "nose of the camel". I was pleased to see that the first few messages to scroll across my screen had already nailed the issue.:)
But, at the risk of being moderated down for redundancy, I'll add my spin...
Once people are used to thinking about a *tiny tax* for a *good cause* the battle is lost. After that, there will be no single event left (the introduction of internet taxes) to focus the resistance.
Once you concede the principle, all that is left is to haggle over the price.
Yes, this article wasn't intended to be funny. They are serious, right down to the many little errors like the "Journal Filing System" which helps to "reassemble a program after the system crashes", etc.
It was interesting in that it talks matter-of-factly about the problems with NT/Win2K but suggests we will all probably be using it anyway. I'm not as confident...
While he is referring to disbelief that the open source model can produce robust and complex software, I think it applies just as well here.
Consider the statistics for server growth... *Somebody* must be choosing Linux. Further, as we've seen, success breeds success in the software platforms world. When the "Sky Magazines" and computer management journals start to tell PHB's that Linux is the Next Big Thing you'd better get out of the way. Just make sure you dump your Microsoft stock before the herd instinct takes over and the stampede away from Win2000 begins!
As noted in other comments, of course this is not a Slashdot error. As for why IBM would present it in such a misleading light, consider:
Whenever an IBM buys a controlling interest in a smaller company like Sequent, they have might have several motivations. In this case, I suspect there are two major ones. First, this gives IBM a position at the top, although a small one, in the large-scale business Unix systems market. Second, and possibly even more important, this buys them a lot of engineering experience and expertise in increasingly important NUMA design. With Sequent being one of approximately two large NUMA systems companies, IBM buys their way out of the mistake(?) of not developing NUMA themselves years ago -- and possibly saves money in the process.
If the acquisition of expertise and engineering work is the major reason for the purchase, IBM must go to some considerable trouble to prevent Sequent engineers from jumping ship. Otherwise, this deal is not much of a bargain. The first thing IBM will do is treat Sequent, it's employees, designs, and market with the utmost respect. They might even make noises about improving the compensation of engineers and knowlegable sales staff.
While referring to this purchase as a "merger" is pretty transparent, it still conveys respect and accomplishes the same objective. It is a flattering way to tell Sequent that what they are doing is important and that IBM understands and respects it.
Seconded. I would sure like an Adaptec RAID controller on my server... I use only Adaptec SCSI controllers in my Linux machines, but my next server will have RAID -- of one kind or another.
Slashdot Mirror
...Or, would the self-incrimination exception prevent it, assuming the three branches of government are not all corrupt? Does anyone know of any precedents similar to this sort of intrusion of privacy in America?
It's just unbelievable to me that they really think they can do anything about strong encryption in other countries with these dumbass laws. Either they are, as you say, idiots or they have a different agenda in mind.
The only thing that these laws seem to accomplish is to prevent U.S. companies from putting strong encryption into their mainstream products in order to (a) avoid managing two versions and (b) avoid the legal liability of accidental exports of the products.
Therefore, I think this law is aimed at us, the regular citizens of the United States, rather then foreign countries. While there are undoubtedly "useful idiots" helping in this effort, I'm afraid it is optimistic to conclude that idiocy is the core problem. The real problem is people who don't want to be inconvenienced in reading our "private" correspondence.
No, but they are alluding to "home networking" at approximately 1 Mbps, so 28.8K and 56K modems don't appear to be what they mean.
Ahhh... Thanks. But I still have trouble believing that those things actually dominate "home networking". Everyone I know with a network at home uses ethernet. Of course, my friends do tend toward the geeky end of the bell curve. ;)
Perhaps they mean it's up to 10 *percent* faster... At 11 Mbps, I can't imagine it being 10 times faster than anything still in common use.
Anyway, it sounds perfect to me. I just moved into a new house and I really, really don't want to cable it!
Yes, finding that hatch will be hard indeed. It is probably nestled tightly against the ground, perhaps covered with a thin layer of sediment by now. A sonar won't distinguish it from the not-quite-smooth sea floor. Worse, if it's aluminum, it will be mostly corroded away, leaving an even smaller sonar/visual target.
':! Congratulations to the ': editorial staff, sysadmins, reporters, and stockholders. You have produced a parody worthy of being called a, uh, well, parody.
As the only volunteer judge in this contest I had to be even more objective than possible. However, after visiting the ': site, I see no need to go on. Surely the only thing that could be funnier than ': would be a parody of ': -- and that would be a different contest.
So, with these words I turn over the coveted trophy to brennanw, representative of all those at ': who made this day possible. Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, and good evening.
Can ANYONE do a better Slashdot parody than the legendary Hashsnot? If so, please put your HTML coding where your flaming comments are and do it. You all know the standard for entry here -- you have to raise the bar on Hashsnot. This will be difficult for some of you, impossible for others. Consider that the task is made even more difficult by the fact that Hashsnot survived the Slashdot effect and, therefore, must be a solidly designed site running on a massive SMP server.
As one who would stand no chance in such a contest, I volunteer to help judge the entries.
Good point. What I was *trying* to say is "Are they building useful robot learning technology -- or toys?"
The hard part is still how the robot learns and applies its knowlege. Are they making robots or the next generation of Furbys? ;)
If a bank holiday is used to "force the idiots to keep their money in the bank" it might inconvenience you. If, due to your foresight, you took money out to avoid the inconvenience of the bank holiday or the idiot-inspired bank runs, would that make you an idiot also?
;)
You seem to be making an argument for both idiots and non-idiots to withdraw some money...
Exactly. Significant parts of the infrastructure of our civilization are so fragile and precariously balanced that they cannot withstand even unfounded fears from a minority "fringe" element. This is not good design ;) and puts all of us who understand that secondary problem on the fringe as well.
Those of you who have done extensive analysis of the Y2K-related technical problems may see big problems or not, depending on where you looked and the assumptions you worked under. If you looked *only* at the original technical problems, however, you may well have underestimated the magnitude and misdiagnosed the nature of the Y2K situation.
...now that I can no longer think of Amazon as a book store. It's important for simple minds like mine to tie an outlet to a product, service, or a particularly advantageous way of doing business. Some places offer good prices -- important to consider on items that are easy to find. Others offer a wide choice -- good when you're not an expert on a category and want to do some comparisons. Some are *never* out of what's important and are open anytime you're awake -- my friendly Publix supermarket. And, of course, I can rely on slashdot to give me the news that's interesting...
So, that brings up the question: what is Amazon's core strength now and how will the public file that information in their busy minds?
Intel has tried to keep the Celeron's performance a secret -- except at the "low end" where it has been pitted against AMD chips. I was a little surprised at how far they were willing to go to prevent cannibalizing sales of the PII when I first read the benchmarks on their site and found that they measured performance of the Celerons and the PII's using different benchmarks! They have since added several other benchmarks including SPECint 95, allowing comparisons. I guess with all the articles about Celeron performance they just gave up. However, my C366 came in a box clearly labeled "For basic computing" with no bragging about performance whatsoever.
Meanwhile, in many niches the Celeron is eating away at the PII/III market share now. If AMD loses their competitiveness, I fear that the days of cheapo, high performance processors will be over.
AMD's only chance is quality of manufacturing and Yield, Yield, Yield!
I wonder if Britain would give us the same deal again if we surrendered peacefully?
Colonies calling London...
Come in London...
Actually, this sounds much worse than an "email tax"... it's a bandwidth tax at 1 cent per megabyte, if I did the math correctly. ;)
Of course, the actual price is not the issue. That, and the Good Cause, are just to make it sound palatable and to get good PR. As I said before, once you concede the principle, all that remains is to haggle over the price.
Nope, I can't find the logic in this either. All the stuff they tell us on TV and in the papers is designed for children. Historically, that has been sufficient.
I have completely abandoned cryptography in favor of development projects that don't have to be locked in a vault. Meanwhile, in countries far away, cryptographers advance the art steadily, secure in the knowlege that there'll be no competition coming from the powerhouse of software development, the United States.
The penumbra of our policy extends to many other areas where cryptography is only a feature, not the central function, of important applications. We cannot compete on a level field in an ever growing list of niches, big and small. Business is injured even as we subsidize the development of cryptography and general development outside our borders.
I expect no better from Janet Reno. She is a "legend" in Dade County, Fla; Waco, Tx;, Washington, D.C.; and, now, the high tech centers of the rest of the world.
The first thing I thought of when I read about this issue is the proverbial "nose of the camel". I was pleased to see that the first few messages to scroll across my screen had already nailed the issue. :)
But, at the risk of being moderated down for redundancy, I'll add my spin...
Once people are used to thinking about a *tiny tax* for a *good cause* the battle is lost. After that, there will be no single event left (the introduction of internet taxes) to focus the resistance.
Once you concede the principle, all that is left is to haggle over the price.
Yes, this article wasn't intended to be funny. They are serious, right down to the many little errors like the "Journal Filing System" which helps to "reassemble a program after the system crashes", etc.
It was interesting in that it talks matter-of-factly about the problems with NT/Win2K but suggests we will all probably be using it anyway. I'm not as confident...
Well, it *did* take them 24 hours!
To select out a fingerprint only took the experts an hour. wow.
In your description of Lucifer's Hammer, you didn't mention all the practical info -- like how to make land mines out of shotgun shells.
:)
Please moderate this post down to -2. Thanks!
As Mr. Gurley says, "...get over it."
While he is referring to disbelief that the open source model can produce robust and complex software, I think it applies just as well here.
Consider the statistics for server growth... *Somebody* must be choosing Linux. Further, as we've seen, success breeds success in the software platforms world. When the "Sky Magazines" and computer management journals start to tell PHB's that Linux is the Next Big Thing you'd better get out of the way. Just make sure you dump your Microsoft stock before the herd instinct takes over and the stampede away from Win2000 begins!
As noted in other comments, of course this is not a Slashdot error. As for why IBM would present it in such a misleading light, consider:
Whenever an IBM buys a controlling interest in a smaller company like Sequent, they have might have several motivations. In this case, I suspect there are two major ones. First, this gives IBM a position at the top, although a small one, in the large-scale business Unix systems market. Second, and possibly even more important, this buys them a lot of engineering experience and expertise in increasingly important NUMA design. With Sequent being one of approximately two large NUMA systems companies, IBM buys their way out of the mistake(?) of not developing NUMA themselves years ago -- and possibly saves money in the process.
If the acquisition of expertise and engineering work is the major reason for the purchase, IBM must go to some considerable trouble to prevent Sequent engineers from jumping ship. Otherwise, this deal is not much of a bargain. The first thing IBM will do is treat Sequent, it's employees, designs, and market with the utmost respect. They might even make noises about improving the compensation of engineers and knowlegable sales staff.
While referring to this purchase as a "merger" is pretty transparent, it still conveys respect and accomplishes the same objective. It is a flattering way to tell Sequent that what they are doing is important and that IBM understands and respects it.
Seconded. I would sure like an Adaptec RAID controller on my server... I use only Adaptec SCSI controllers in my Linux machines, but my next server will have RAID -- of one kind or another.
heh. You could start by setting a better example. From now on, I'll be monitoring your posts to make sure they are in Esperanto! ;)