Of course, it could also be a transparent proxy to improve your experience. But Virgin Media is not usually in the business of doing something to benefit their customers.
This is indeed not feasible, unless you use a proxy, or tor. However, the IP address alone doesn't imply anything about the kind of service, so it is unlikely that any ISPs would base their shaping decision on the IP alone (they'd need to manually maintain a map showing which IPs run which kind of services...)
"manually" is stretching it a bit, they can develop automatic tools for that -- and it's not as hard as one might imagine. They specifically say they are targeting Usenet downloads -- and the easiest way to do that is to just map the major usenet providers' address spaces and throttle them outright. Not hard to get, either. *.youtube.com is somewhat easily enumerated as well -- especially since you, as a provider, have lots of live traffic to observe and use (not that you would ever do that, no sir ! 'tis illegal, you see...)
We better not go down that road. Your ISP has enough data to do these things. They should simply not be allowed to and severely punished if found to do so.
You can encrypt the port numbers, but not the IP packet. We need a good encrypted transport protocol that encrypts everything except the IP header and maybe a session id (so each session can use its own keys). ISPs will know what computer each packet is going to, but not the content, port number, sequence number, etc.
This still would not help. Statistical traffic analysis will reveal the type of traffic being transported (just like you can with surprisingly high accuracy tell whether somebody using TOR is looking at Facebook at the moment just by looking at traffic directionality changes, amount of data, packet size, timing, etc.).
You might want to look into I2P though. It builds something like what you want on top of IP. You are not going to get IPv4/v6 replaced at the carrier level, so forget that.
You can make any traffic look just like encrypted p2p traffic.
This is actually not that easy. Sure, the plaintext looks like random numbers -- but you can read a lot into traffic directionality, packet sizes, connection structures, and even session setup. For instance, even though TOR is SSL, it was possible until recently to tag it based on the SSL setup not being exactly the same as a popular browser, leading to it being blocked in Iran (btw, any traffic "shaping" software is the same exact software you sell to dictatorships to block traffic of any kind. Good going supporting that kind of stuff by buying from an ISP buying from that kind of company). Even if that were not the case, traffic analysis can reveal a lot of interesting patterns (a HTTPS session for instance usually has a lot less upstream usage and a somewhat predictable lifetime).
Sure, you can't look into the packet to see what your customer is using P2P for, but you sure as hell can detect with reasonable certainty that they are using P2P. Statistics are a bitch that way.
There is also the other argument... http traffic (the first 10 kb of a connection, say), dns, gaming traffic,... is highly interactive, and generally it will result in massive slowdowns when even a minute amount of this traffic gets dropped. Result : just about every customer complains.
Long http downloads, p2p traffic,... is not interactive -at all- and nobody will be very upset if you drop all of it for 5 minutes.
So giving the interactive traffic absolute priority over the non-interactive traffic (ie. "throttling p2p (and all other large downloads)") is exactly what you'd want to do yourself on your own connection anyway to optimize the subjective speed of your internet connection. Treating p2p, with max downloading speed, the same as other traffic will make all other traffic (esp. http) horrendously slow.
The difference being that you can decide for yourself what you value more and what protocols you want to prioritize. There is absolutely nothing wrong with shaping traffic on your own premises if you so choose. There is something inherently wrong with the provider choosing what is good and what is not for you. Most providers now sell Voice over IP telephony connections as well (get your landline and your internet through the same pipe kind of deals). Skype, as you recall, is an inherently P2P protocol. It would be a damn shame if the traffic shaping just happened to hit Skype, wouldn't it ? Or another messaging/VoIP/cam-service ? I mean surely no conglomerate would ever do such a thing to make their own offering appear to be better, right ? There are legal P2P TV stations too (Zattoo et al). It would be a damn shame if they stopped working right, wouldn't it ? Better get the triple play offer from your ISP, guaranteed bandwidth to the TV server ! Wouldn't it also be a shame if YouTube was constantly buffering and no fun to use at all ? (this happens a lot with the biggest provider in Germany -- they don't call it shaping, they simply don't peer or upgrade their external pipes to those AS).
If you sell me the service you advertise, I can do all the shaping I want on my own and get the experience I am looking for. If you don't, you are defrauding me.
but "AROUND 10 Mbps" to "UP TO 20 Mbps".No company would do that unless they were forced to by the watchdog. Indeed, the UP TO is only there because they were forced.
Annoying yes, but thanks to the stink kicked up by the watchdog, a large part of the UK population know about the limitations and that you'll likely not get the advertised speed.
Thing is, they are not even selling you this "up to" and "around" thing anymore. They are trying to introduce the concept of tiered data -- From their actions, they don't consider P2P or Usenet (two protocols as different as can be) to be part of this "average" and "up to" promise.
It's ingenious that they are citing these two affecting other protocols on their network, "like gaming" (which many people like to do). Red Herring if I ever saw one. Invest in your infrastructure and that problem does not exist anymore. You could even allow the customer to choose whether they want low-ping or high bandwidth at a particular time of day. If you don't fuck it up, that might even be a selling point (provided high bandwidth actually means high bandwidth but possibly impacted RTT)
And they can just throttle all traffic then. Look, these are consumer level service that they're selling. It's not guaranteed, and you're not buying dedicated bandwidth. If you really want that, get a business level contract with dedicated bandwidth. It will just cost you a lot, but that's how it works.
That MAY be how it MAY work, but if I am being sold an unmetered, unfiltered connection in advertizing, I damn well better get an unmetered, unfiltered connection. If you are selling me an unmetered, unfiltered connection, you damn well better provide that. It's fine if you don't want to. Really. Just don't lie to me about it. I may then be able to compare your offering to others fairly.
Bandwidth isn't free, and the only way ISP's can sell good speeds to everyone is by "overselling" it. It's a technical limitation, there's not much they can do about that. I rather take a burstable 100mbit than guaranteed 1mbit anyway. If you want the latter, get it with a business contract.
You have gotten a lot of koolaid from your ISPs. Sure, bw is not free -- but also not as expensive as it is made out to be. There is such a thing as peering. There are such thing as caches. There is such a thing as proper network planning. It speaks volumes that they are shaping the upstream bandwidth primarily. (And even larger volumes that they are shaping usenet -- where they are decidedly not "just" shaping upstream -- hell, they could be either peering with major usenet providers or *gasp* provide their own servers and keep all that juicy traffic in-house).
I'd go so far as to say that the cost is mostly incurred in the "last mile" -- i.e. the part where providers would have to invest money.
it seems like all real development has ended on it which is a pity because I loved it until the lack of facebook support for months after Pidgin had it killed it for me.
"Facebook support" means XMPP support. You can access facebook via XMPP/Jabber. It would surprise me if Kopete did not work with that.
Recipient not there to sign ? No proof of personal delivery.
IIRC, this is not true. In particular the kind of mails that involve legal proceedings can be considered as delivered even if you weren't there. It sometimes is even written explicitly on top that for legal purposes you were there personally. German laws are strange.
There was a reason I put in "personal" there;-) You can get products like proof of delivery (Einschreiben Einwurf) which do not prove you personally received it, but which do prove that the letter was delivered to the address given. Then there is a product with proof of PERSONAL delivery (Einschreiben eigenhändig), which proves the recipient has personally received the piece of mail (but which also requires the recipient to sign for it of their own volition).
You are however correct that under German law, the actually important part is when a piece of mail enters the domain of the recipient -- i.e. even regular postal mail will start legally binding deadlines if it just enters your mailbox -- no matter whether you open it or not, or whether you are home or not. Question is how you prove this.
If you want to prove to a court that your letter from that day was delivered, the best option is to use a personal courier who observes you putting what you want to deliver into the envelope and personally delivers it to the recipient, noting when and how he did so -- to be used as a witness later on. Otherwise a recipient could simply claim he received an empty envelope, the letter was put into the wrong mailbox, or funny games like that. With the DE-Mail proposal, such "defenses" no longer work, and the act of delivery is a LOT easier and cheaper to prove for the sender. Legally speaking, the recipient will have limited his/her options considerably.
It's beautiful how you came up with that simple idea all of your own, and so elegant ! Implementation is not something to worry about, that's for the people who don't have ideas, they can do that easy work. Go plebs, implement !
I deduct points for not mentioning CompuServe and it not having any spam. I mean come on, that was so easy to reference !
Why would I volunteer to use a government sponsored program that I may get charged for when I can just use Enigmail in Thunderbird, or gpg the message otherwise?
Second problem: "It will allow service providers to charge for sending messages".
Major fail. It sounded almost good until I read that.
As a sender, you get to deliver stuff to DE-Mail addresses and they count as legally delivered. This is going to be very good to have for collection agencies or governmental agencies. Senders also get to save a bit compared to paper delivery while legally on the same footing. Senders also get proof of identity for the recipient. Senders get to spout bullshit about using the latest and most secure email standard ever.
Mail delivered to these accounts will count as delivered to the recipient, so any respite associated with the delivery starts running. Don't read your email regularly - miss deadlines.
How is this different from mail delivered to your snailmail box? "I wasn't at home" has not been a particularly good excuse for a very long time.
Actually that is a very, very good excuse when you require proof of delivery/acceptance -- since those are usually signed-for. Recipient not there to sign ? No proof of personal delivery. The difference with DE-Mail is that messages count delivered when they hit your service provider, no matter whether you read your account or not. This can have far-reaching consequences under German law.
The lack of end-to-end encryption is another matter entirely, and a rather obvious strategy to ensure that the government can eavesdrop. So much is clear.
Yes, and the lies and bullshit they spew when defending this are even more so. Too bad too few people will get the message -- or care.
Basically the whole things boils down to a giant waste of money and resources for everybody. Well, everybody not implementing such a system and getting paid for it.
This is a little bit pedantic, but I've noticed that brits usually refer to organizations as "their" not "its". I think there's value in the semantics. These organizations are not monolithic. It is comprised of individuals who make decisions. To refer to the FBI as an "it" is in a sense to enshrine the concept of corporate personhood - corporations are made up of individuals, and to speak of them monolithically lets the decision makers off the hook.
My choice of "its" was intentional though since I was not talking about individuals and their motives, but the motives the FBI itself has by definition and decree, i.e. the reason it exists as an organization. Indeed I try to look at the FBI without looking at its decisionmakers as people-to-blame-for-something, but for sake of this argument would rather adopt the theory of these decisionmakers being excellent at doing their job within the confines of their job description and organizational goals -- i.e. as rational individuals fulfilling the task that is asked of them as well as they can. Individuals can still fuck up and should be held accountable, but in the case we are talking about, the poster before me made the argument that what the FBI was doing was not problematic and indeed what they should be doing. I disagree.:)
I'd also not characterize the word "its" to bestow corporate personhood any more than "their" does -- in fact, "their" can be used to apply to a single person too if you do not know or are not willing to disclose their gender (the good ole pronoun game), while "its" generally does not work that well for this purpose.
That said, I agree that the FBI will conduct their operations in the way in which you describe. Those with power consolidate that power, and the DHS, FBI, and CIA have been obscenely empowered in the last decade. I can't really imagine how that could get rolled back, or even moderated at this point.
Bad things.
Well, civil war is always an option. But things have to get quite a bit worse yet before that'll happen. We are steering in that direction though.
Here's a better idea. Rather than track all the cars, let's track the cars of people with red flags like sending lots of money to the Middle East, having a father with political connections in the Middle East,
Are either of these things illegal ? Are either of these things indicative of illegal behavior ? If you think so, I sure hope you never get racially profiled in the same way. It's bullshit. Unless you want to do the same to people who send money to Sweden and a father with political connections in Sweden. Or Mexico. Or Belgium. Or Japan. But then you are still just a xenophobe.
and having friends who make online posts about bombing malls.
Like in computer games ? Or as a hyperbolic way to point out the idiocy of security theatre ? Point out the idiocy of what the TSA is doing would be enough to get you "flagged" ? And what is a "flag" ? Who oversees these "flags" ? Is a judge ever involved ? We are infringing on an individual's liberties here; there better be judicial oversight. Alternatively, get rid of judges altogether and have the FBI carry out executions at will. Policestates are not that bad if you have nothing to hide.
And as a result of having red flags, the FBI decides to get a little more information about these people, not harassing them, damaging their property, or interfering with their lives in any way.
Other than infringing on their civil liberties and rights, sure. In that case, let's record every phone call ever made and keep it archived for a couple of years. This does not inconvenience people at all, they would not even notice it, nobody would be harassing them about it either. Better keep a log of all internet activity too. This is easily feasible. And it'll help with getting a little more information about people who get flagged in the future. Surely this is an idea we can all get behind ! Nobody would ever abuse this data or these privileges, not at the FBI. The FBI does not make mistakes, of course. And if they do, they can cover it up easily enough.
Yeah, I really have no problem with that. Why are you making a false equivalence between that totally reasonable activity and putting trackers "on all cars in the country" -- suggesting the FBI is just fishing randomly and harassing anybody they see fit.
Because the only reason the latter is not happening is that there are supposedly safeguards like judicial oversight. The FBI will conduct its operations the way it is most efficient and easiest for them to do. If they are allowed to use a tool, they will use it -- doing anything other than that would mean they are not doing their jobs efficiently or well.
Now an argument could be made that what they did here is reasonable. And if that argument can be made, why did they not make it to a judge and get a warrant ? We, as a society, infringe on people's liberties and rights all the time, balancing them against the interests of the society. To make sure this does not get abused by the executive, independent judicial oversight is necessary. That way we all get a fair shake and don't end up in a policestate. In an ideal world, anyway. We are far from an ideal world, and getting farther and farther away.
Speaking of Germany, third-party people are actually required to be present as witnesses. Usually these are city workers or other state-employed people, though not policemen (at least when the commanding officers give a flying crap about the legality of their raid). So long as these people do not actively help with the raid, this can be kosher. Of course, telco people directing people where and what to search is not "witnessing" anymore and probably not legal. No matter though, Germany has no such thing as the fruit of the poisonous tree. Even if a raid was illegal, even if evidence was obtained illegally, even if it was found "by accident" on a raid for an unrelated cause it can and is still used in court. This is why German police don't generally give a flying crap about the legality of their raids or actions -- they get to use what they find anyway.
It's astounding how you can read bits and snippets and form an entirely incorrect picture based on what you want it to be.
"screwing people on PSN" ? No. They pointed out that it was possible to disable consoles -- IF you know their exact console ID. Which is a long string of numbers, not easily guessed. The chance of this happening by accident is pretty damn small, and you don't usually display your console ID anywhere public. Granted, the people first "reporting" on this issue in "scene" sites did not understand this either and were after big headlines -- unfortunately, little substance.
"acting like martyrs" ? How do you act like a martyr ? Get the sanctity of your home invaded by thugs in uniform because you enjoy poking things you own ?
"free lunch" ? PS3s were sold with "Other OS" enabled. This was a reason for buying them for many people. You will also note that not a single one of the hackers which had their assets seized engaged in piracy or provided tools for piracy.
"they" ? Wow, it's a "us" vs "them", and your "they" is a conflated mass of nonsense.
If publishers "flee" the platform you "own", maybe those publishers are not worth supporting.
In many cases, the porn you download/is/ the advertisement. On most, if not all, current produced-for-internet porn you can find the name of the outlet somewhere in the frame. If you like the quality, you might want to go get the rest of their stuff. People who never pay for porn do not cost them anything -- question is whether the people who pay for it after having gotten parts for free outweigh the people who may have paid for it but opted to scour usenet instead -- the age-old unanswerable question, really. And this only works if you can stand behind your product. Granted, usually porn producing outlets do not seed torrents, so the seeder will not make money. But you asked who made money, not how the seeder makes any:P
Even if you buy the premise that this would work the way described and actually "increase" security and "decrease" the botnet problem, and even if it works 100% of the time, and even if they somehow also do this so that OSX, Ubuntu, and 1000 other operating system variants can take advantage of it, and even if you then do not run into the problem of the computer behind the computer/router having been certified (remember NAT?) being infected...
Even then, do you really think that if this infrastructure were pervasively implemented, it would not then get used for something entirely different? I mean, you are already looking deeply into the system, you are already cutting off internet access permanently... Why not simply check for Limewire while you are at it? Or uTorrent? I am sure the right lobby could persuade Microsoft to do that with a wad of cash or some juicy contracts for their media division... And really, LibreOffice is not certified secure (all those homeless, stinky hackers working on it for free never really got a proper Microsoft Certified Security Expert badge, they probably don't even know what security is all about... so better not allow subversive freeloader-stuff like that to run, either. Oracle OpenOffice is OK, after all, they are a big company and MS really needs that patent exchange deal with their database folks, right? And everybody knows people get their viruses and worms via social networks, especially the newfangled ones like Ping or newcomers... Surely facebook can secure their stuff (they can pay MS Security experts with badges to secure their Windows servers, after all), but twitter? Those guys don't even have a revenue stream. Better to just cut off access to that as well.
Granted, I need to patch some holes in my tinfoil hat, but is it really so far-fetched to assume MS or whoever were to be in charge of it would not abuse it? And if they are all ethical, reasonable people who will not at all abuse their power when given the chance, do you really think they could secure their own services so that they are beyond reproach? Why develop a botnet to take down Amazon.com when you can simply flip a switch and take half the planet offline?
"Offensiveness"-statutes would be porn (which Google does not allow on YouTube in any case, in no jurisdiction), and stuff related to hatespeech and Nazi symbols -- though I somehow suspect that Sony/BMG/EMI would not be cited as the culprits for blocking in that case. Furthermore, most hatespeech is probably against the general ToS of YouTube, as well;)
Look to Youtube, a certain country said "pull this video, pull that, setup office here, pay taxes". You know what Youtube did? Ignored! Don't they lose money/marketshare? Of course they do.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is simply not true. Try surfing YouTube in Germany, for instance. Lots and LOTS of videos are pulled or "not available in your country", they do pay out some local media conglomerates, and, guess what, Google has offices here too.
Which would do absolutely nothing for poor editing, since it is actually impossible to edit things there and the editors on Slashdot are not, you know, editors. They like to pretend they are, though.
It's also full of spam and things that could be weeded out automatically, these days. It's not enough to just point people there, they need the tools for it, too.
the point is that they pretend to be unbiased, when in fact they take an active role in promoting a particular point of view.
They do not pretend to be unbiased.
He plainly acts as if he were spreading truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. From the Wikileaks website:
"you can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism. - Julian Assange"
That's exactly/not/ what that quote is saying. This quote you provided highlights the fact that they feel it is their mission to release the entire source material, in addition to any conclusion they might have arrived at -- so that you can then look at the source data and come to your own conclusions. That is precisely the reason why they can "frame" their releases in such a way -- because you can disagree and point to the source as proof.
The heavily edited 17-minute video doesn't offend me as an American. It offends me as an historian because it is propaganda.
I read the statement you quote as it relates to the release of the source material. You know, the unedited source material -- which is now in the historic record, along with the edited version which is quite plainly biased -- you can see this in the title itself. Unlike propaganda spewn on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, various print magazines, etc., you have the tools to examine their claims from the source material.
Actually, yes, to different degrees. The trick is to get a story from different points of view, and sort out the likely truth based on what you know about your sources. Fox news (contrary to popular opinion here) is neither worse nor better than MSNBC, ABC, and CNN.
I'll share the opinion that it is a lot worse than those three, but this in no way means that MSNBC, ABC, or CNN are doing a bang-up job -- they are not. Just not as ridiculously bad as Fox.
Each of them have their particular editorial "perspective", but by and large they deliver the news.
Debatable:P
However, each network also has a cadre of talking heads spouting "commentary" and "opinion". Think Olberman, or Beck. My take on Assange is that he is one of the latter. He presents the facts that he wants in order to prove his point, when in fact a) that's not all the facts, and b) he shouldn't have a point.
Ok, why should he not have a point? This is not a journalist. He does not purport to be a journalist. He purports to supply journalists with source data. We could talk about selection bias -- and there will be some -- but to Mr. Assange's credit, unlike Mr. Beck, Mr. Olberman, and Mr. O'Reilly, he actually provides his source material rather accessibly. You do not have to take his word for it, or subscribe to his opinions to evaluate the leaks.
According to Wikileaks' own statement, he should be a conduit for information while protecting his source. Nothing more, nothing less.
By your own logic, even that would still be biased -- namely one would have to assume selection bias (what gets released, what does not, what gets held back from releases, etc.)
Given that Wikileaks is actually doing its job as a conduit for information while protecting their sources, personally I have no problems with them/also/ providing their own commentary on their releases -- provided this commentary is in addition to, not instead of, the data. If and when you provide the same service WikiLeaks does, I'll grant you the same prerogative.
For what it's worth, I also read BBC, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and various other sources when I can.
Which is useful, especially when one is interested in what media not centered in the US makes of things.
The retraction has happened before release. Furthermore, the White House was offered, prior to release, a chance to review and suggest additional retractions. They declined. So, Bobby, can you please tell us what more you want them to do?
Also, Bobby, what new things did you learn on the news last night that you did not already know? Corporations are evil, you knew that before, traffic accidents happen, you knew that before, politicians are sleazebags, you knew that before... so why report on all this irrelevant stuff? Why is it of any public interest? What NEW things have you learned, Bobby?
Also, Bobby, my name is not Bobby. Maybe yours is Bubba, not Bobby, too, I don't know. Mind if I call you Joe?
Slashdot Mirror
*ahem* transparent http proxy ...
That's the "nice" way of interpreting this.
Monitoring box is apt. Shaping box may be, too.
Of course, it could also be a transparent proxy to improve your experience. But Virgin Media is not usually in the business of doing something to benefit their customers.
or the destination IP,
This is indeed not feasible, unless you use a proxy, or tor. However, the IP address alone doesn't imply anything about the kind of service, so it is unlikely that any ISPs would base their shaping decision on the IP alone (they'd need to manually maintain a map showing which IPs run which kind of services ...)
"manually" is stretching it a bit, they can develop automatic tools for that -- and it's not as hard as one might imagine. They specifically say they are targeting Usenet downloads -- and the easiest way to do that is to just map the major usenet providers' address spaces and throttle them outright. Not hard to get, either. *.youtube.com is somewhat easily enumerated as well -- especially since you, as a provider, have lots of live traffic to observe and use (not that you would ever do that, no sir ! 'tis illegal, you see ...)
We better not go down that road. Your ISP has enough data to do these things. They should simply not be allowed to and severely punished if found to do so.
You can encrypt the port numbers, but not the IP packet. We need a good encrypted transport protocol that encrypts everything except the IP header and maybe a session id (so each session can use its own keys). ISPs will know what computer each packet is going to, but not the content, port number, sequence number, etc.
This still would not help. Statistical traffic analysis will reveal the type of traffic being transported (just like you can with surprisingly high accuracy tell whether somebody using TOR is looking at Facebook at the moment just by looking at traffic directionality changes, amount of data, packet size, timing, etc.).
You might want to look into I2P though. It builds something like what you want on top of IP. You are not going to get IPv4/v6 replaced at the carrier level, so forget that.
You can make any traffic look just like encrypted p2p traffic.
This is actually not that easy. Sure, the plaintext looks like random numbers -- but you can read a lot into traffic directionality, packet sizes, connection structures, and even session setup. For instance, even though TOR is SSL, it was possible until recently to tag it based on the SSL setup not being exactly the same as a popular browser, leading to it being blocked in Iran (btw, any traffic "shaping" software is the same exact software you sell to dictatorships to block traffic of any kind. Good going supporting that kind of stuff by buying from an ISP buying from that kind of company). Even if that were not the case, traffic analysis can reveal a lot of interesting patterns (a HTTPS session for instance usually has a lot less upstream usage and a somewhat predictable lifetime).
Sure, you can't look into the packet to see what your customer is using P2P for, but you sure as hell can detect with reasonable certainty that they are using P2P. Statistics are a bitch that way.
There is also the other argument ... http traffic (the first 10 kb of a connection, say), dns, gaming traffic, ... is highly interactive, and generally it will result in massive slowdowns when even a minute amount of this traffic gets dropped. Result : just about every customer complains.
Long http downloads, p2p traffic, ... is not interactive -at all- and nobody will be very upset if you drop all of it for 5 minutes.
So giving the interactive traffic absolute priority over the non-interactive traffic (ie. "throttling p2p (and all other large downloads)") is exactly what you'd want to do yourself on your own connection anyway to optimize the subjective speed of your internet connection. Treating p2p, with max downloading speed, the same as other traffic will make all other traffic (esp. http) horrendously slow.
The difference being that you can decide for yourself what you value more and what protocols you want to prioritize. There is absolutely nothing wrong with shaping traffic on your own premises if you so choose. There is something inherently wrong with the provider choosing what is good and what is not for you. Most providers now sell Voice over IP telephony connections as well (get your landline and your internet through the same pipe kind of deals). Skype, as you recall, is an inherently P2P protocol. It would be a damn shame if the traffic shaping just happened to hit Skype, wouldn't it ? Or another messaging/VoIP/cam-service ? I mean surely no conglomerate would ever do such a thing to make their own offering appear to be better, right ? There are legal P2P TV stations too (Zattoo et al). It would be a damn shame if they stopped working right, wouldn't it ? Better get the triple play offer from your ISP, guaranteed bandwidth to the TV server ! Wouldn't it also be a shame if YouTube was constantly buffering and no fun to use at all ? (this happens a lot with the biggest provider in Germany -- they don't call it shaping, they simply don't peer or upgrade their external pipes to those AS).
If you sell me the service you advertise, I can do all the shaping I want on my own and get the experience I am looking for. If you don't, you are defrauding me.
but "AROUND 10 Mbps" to "UP TO 20 Mbps".No company would do that unless they were forced to by the watchdog. Indeed, the UP TO is only there because they were forced.
Annoying yes, but thanks to the stink kicked up by the watchdog, a large part of the UK population know about the limitations and that you'll likely not get the advertised speed.
Thing is, they are not even selling you this "up to" and "around" thing anymore. They are trying to introduce the concept of tiered data -- From their actions, they don't consider P2P or Usenet (two protocols as different as can be) to be part of this "average" and "up to" promise.
It's ingenious that they are citing these two affecting other protocols on their network, "like gaming" (which many people like to do). Red Herring if I ever saw one. Invest in your infrastructure and that problem does not exist anymore. You could even allow the customer to choose whether they want low-ping or high bandwidth at a particular time of day. If you don't fuck it up, that might even be a selling point (provided high bandwidth actually means high bandwidth but possibly impacted RTT)
And they can just throttle all traffic then. Look, these are consumer level service that they're selling. It's not guaranteed, and you're not buying dedicated bandwidth. If you really want that, get a business level contract with dedicated bandwidth. It will just cost you a lot, but that's how it works.
That MAY be how it MAY work, but if I am being sold an unmetered, unfiltered connection in advertizing, I damn well better get an unmetered, unfiltered connection. If you are selling me an unmetered, unfiltered connection, you damn well better provide that. It's fine if you don't want to. Really. Just don't lie to me about it. I may then be able to compare your offering to others fairly.
Bandwidth isn't free, and the only way ISP's can sell good speeds to everyone is by "overselling" it. It's a technical limitation, there's not much they can do about that. I rather take a burstable 100mbit than guaranteed 1mbit anyway. If you want the latter, get it with a business contract.
You have gotten a lot of koolaid from your ISPs. Sure, bw is not free -- but also not as expensive as it is made out to be. There is such a thing as peering. There are such thing as caches. There is such a thing as proper network planning. It speaks volumes that they are shaping the upstream bandwidth primarily. (And even larger volumes that they are shaping usenet -- where they are decidedly not "just" shaping upstream -- hell, they could be either peering with major usenet providers or *gasp* provide their own servers and keep all that juicy traffic in-house).
I'd go so far as to say that the cost is mostly incurred in the "last mile" -- i.e. the part where providers would have to invest money.
it seems like all real development has ended on it which is a pity because I loved it until the lack of facebook support for months after Pidgin had it killed it for me.
"Facebook support" means XMPP support. You can access facebook via XMPP/Jabber. It would surprise me if Kopete did not work with that.
Recipient not there to sign ? No proof of personal delivery.
IIRC, this is not true. In particular the kind of mails that involve legal proceedings can be considered as delivered even if you weren't there. It sometimes is even written explicitly on top that for legal purposes you were there personally. German laws are strange.
There was a reason I put in "personal" there ;-) You can get products like proof of delivery (Einschreiben Einwurf) which do not prove you personally received it, but which do prove that the letter was delivered to the address given. Then there is a product with proof of PERSONAL delivery (Einschreiben eigenhändig), which proves the recipient has personally received the piece of mail (but which also requires the recipient to sign for it of their own volition).
You are however correct that under German law, the actually important part is when a piece of mail enters the domain of the recipient -- i.e. even regular postal mail will start legally binding deadlines if it just enters your mailbox -- no matter whether you open it or not, or whether you are home or not. Question is how you prove this.
If you want to prove to a court that your letter from that day was delivered, the best option is to use a personal courier who observes you putting what you want to deliver into the envelope and personally delivers it to the recipient, noting when and how he did so -- to be used as a witness later on. Otherwise a recipient could simply claim he received an empty envelope, the letter was put into the wrong mailbox, or funny games like that.
With the DE-Mail proposal, such "defenses" no longer work, and the act of delivery is a LOT easier and cheaper to prove for the sender. Legally speaking, the recipient will have limited his/her options considerably.
It's the impossible part. It simply is not feasible. As such, the "idea" is a dud and timewaster.
It's beautiful how you came up with that simple idea all of your own, and so elegant ! Implementation is not something to worry about, that's for the people who don't have ideas, they can do that easy work. Go plebs, implement !
I deduct points for not mentioning CompuServe and it not having any spam. I mean come on, that was so easy to reference !
Why would I volunteer to use a government sponsored program that I may get charged for when I can just use Enigmail in Thunderbird, or gpg the message otherwise?
Second problem: "It will allow service providers to charge for sending messages".
Major fail. It sounded almost good until I read that.
As a sender, you get to deliver stuff to DE-Mail addresses and they count as legally delivered. This is going to be very good to have for collection agencies or governmental agencies. Senders also get to save a bit compared to paper delivery while legally on the same footing. Senders also get proof of identity for the recipient. Senders get to spout bullshit about using the latest and most secure email standard ever.
Recipients get shafted, in more ways than one.
Mail delivered to these accounts will count as delivered to the recipient, so any respite associated with the delivery starts running. Don't read your email regularly - miss deadlines.
How is this different from mail delivered to your snailmail box? "I wasn't at home" has not been a particularly good excuse for a very long time.
Actually that is a very, very good excuse when you require proof of delivery/acceptance -- since those are usually signed-for. Recipient not there to sign ? No proof of personal delivery. The difference with DE-Mail is that messages count delivered when they hit your service provider, no matter whether you read your account or not. This can have far-reaching consequences under German law.
The lack of end-to-end encryption is another matter entirely, and a rather obvious strategy to ensure that the government can eavesdrop. So much is clear.
Yes, and the lies and bullshit they spew when defending this are even more so. Too bad too few people will get the message -- or care.
Basically the whole things boils down to a giant waste of money and resources for everybody. Well, everybody not implementing such a system and getting paid for it.
The FBI will conduct its operations
This is a little bit pedantic, but I've noticed that brits usually refer to organizations as "their" not "its". I think there's value in the semantics. These organizations are not monolithic. It is comprised of individuals who make decisions. To refer to the FBI as an "it" is in a sense to enshrine the concept of corporate personhood - corporations are made up of individuals, and to speak of them monolithically lets the decision makers off the hook.
My choice of "its" was intentional though since I was not talking about individuals and their motives, but the motives the FBI itself has by definition and decree, i.e. the reason it exists as an organization. Indeed I try to look at the FBI without looking at its decisionmakers as people-to-blame-for-something, but for sake of this argument would rather adopt the theory of these decisionmakers being excellent at doing their job within the confines of their job description and organizational goals -- i.e. as rational individuals fulfilling the task that is asked of them as well as they can. Individuals can still fuck up and should be held accountable, but in the case we are talking about, the poster before me made the argument that what the FBI was doing was not problematic and indeed what they should be doing. I disagree. :)
I'd also not characterize the word "its" to bestow corporate personhood any more than "their" does -- in fact, "their" can be used to apply to a single person too if you do not know or are not willing to disclose their gender (the good ole pronoun game), while "its" generally does not work that well for this purpose.
That said, I agree that the FBI will conduct their operations in the way in which you describe. Those with power consolidate that power, and the DHS, FBI, and CIA have been obscenely empowered in the last decade. I can't really imagine how that could get rolled back, or even moderated at this point.
Bad things.
Well, civil war is always an option. But things have to get quite a bit worse yet before that'll happen. We are steering in that direction though.
Here's a better idea. Rather than track all the cars, let's track the cars of people with red flags like sending lots of money to the Middle East, having a father with political connections in the Middle East,
Are either of these things illegal ? Are either of these things indicative of illegal behavior ? If you think so, I sure hope you never get racially profiled in the same way. It's bullshit. Unless you want to do the same to people who send money to Sweden and a father with political connections in Sweden. Or Mexico. Or Belgium. Or Japan. But then you are still just a xenophobe.
and having friends who make online posts about bombing malls.
Like in computer games ? Or as a hyperbolic way to point out the idiocy of security theatre ? Point out the idiocy of what the TSA is doing would be enough to get you "flagged" ? And what is a "flag" ? Who oversees these "flags" ? Is a judge ever involved ? We are infringing on an individual's liberties here; there better be judicial oversight. Alternatively, get rid of judges altogether and have the FBI carry out executions at will. Policestates are not that bad if you have nothing to hide.
And as a result of having red flags, the FBI decides to get a little more information about these people, not harassing them, damaging their property, or interfering with their lives in any way.
Other than infringing on their civil liberties and rights, sure. In that case, let's record every phone call ever made and keep it archived for a couple of years. This does not inconvenience people at all, they would not even notice it, nobody would be harassing them about it either. Better keep a log of all internet activity too. This is easily feasible. And it'll help with getting a little more information about people who get flagged in the future. Surely this is an idea we can all get behind ! Nobody would ever abuse this data or these privileges, not at the FBI. The FBI does not make mistakes, of course. And if they do, they can cover it up easily enough.
Yeah, I really have no problem with that. Why are you making a false equivalence between that totally reasonable activity and putting trackers "on all cars in the country" -- suggesting the FBI is just fishing randomly and harassing anybody they see fit.
Because the only reason the latter is not happening is that there are supposedly safeguards like judicial oversight. The FBI will conduct its operations the way it is most efficient and easiest for them to do. If they are allowed to use a tool, they will use it -- doing anything other than that would mean they are not doing their jobs efficiently or well.
Now an argument could be made that what they did here is reasonable. And if that argument can be made, why did they not make it to a judge and get a warrant ? We, as a society, infringe on people's liberties and rights all the time, balancing them against the interests of the society. To make sure this does not get abused by the executive, independent judicial oversight is necessary. That way we all get a fair shake and don't end up in a policestate. In an ideal world, anyway. We are far from an ideal world, and getting farther and farther away.
Speaking of Germany, third-party people are actually required to be present as witnesses. Usually these are city workers or other state-employed people, though not policemen (at least when the commanding officers give a flying crap about the legality of their raid). So long as these people do not actively help with the raid, this can be kosher. Of course, telco people directing people where and what to search is not "witnessing" anymore and probably not legal. No matter though, Germany has no such thing as the fruit of the poisonous tree. Even if a raid was illegal, even if evidence was obtained illegally, even if it was found "by accident" on a raid for an unrelated cause it can and is still used in court. This is why German police don't generally give a flying crap about the legality of their raids or actions -- they get to use what they find anyway.
It's astounding how you can read bits and snippets and form an entirely incorrect picture based on what you want it to be.
"screwing people on PSN" ? No. They pointed out that it was possible to disable consoles -- IF you know their exact console ID. Which is a long string of numbers, not easily guessed. The chance of this happening by accident is pretty damn small, and you don't usually display your console ID anywhere public. Granted, the people first "reporting" on this issue in "scene" sites did not understand this either and were after big headlines -- unfortunately, little substance.
"acting like martyrs" ? How do you act like a martyr ? Get the sanctity of your home invaded by thugs in uniform because you enjoy poking things you own ?
"free lunch" ? PS3s were sold with "Other OS" enabled. This was a reason for buying them for many people. You will also note that not a single one of the hackers which had their assets seized engaged in piracy or provided tools for piracy.
"they" ? Wow, it's a "us" vs "them", and your "they" is a conflated mass of nonsense.
If publishers "flee" the platform you "own", maybe those publishers are not worth supporting.
And then you can get overpriced, DRM-inflicted emulators in Steam for very old Sega games.
That, or you go non-legal. Great.
In many cases, the porn you download /is/ the advertisement. On most, if not all, current produced-for-internet porn you can find the name of the outlet somewhere in the frame. If you like the quality, you might want to go get the rest of their stuff. People who never pay for porn do not cost them anything -- question is whether the people who pay for it after having gotten parts for free outweigh the people who may have paid for it but opted to scour usenet instead -- the age-old unanswerable question, really. And this only works if you can stand behind your product. :P
Granted, usually porn producing outlets do not seed torrents, so the seeder will not make money. But you asked who made money, not how the seeder makes any
Even if you buy the premise that this would work the way described and actually "increase" security and "decrease" the botnet problem, and even if it works 100% of the time, and even if they somehow also do this so that OSX, Ubuntu, and 1000 other operating system variants can take advantage of it, and even if you then do not run into the problem of the computer behind the computer/router having been certified (remember NAT?) being infected ...
Even then, do you really think that if this infrastructure were pervasively implemented, it would not then get used for something entirely different? I mean, you are already looking deeply into the system, you are already cutting off internet access permanently ... Why not simply check for Limewire while you are at it? Or uTorrent? I am sure the right lobby could persuade Microsoft to do that with a wad of cash or some juicy contracts for their media division ... And really, LibreOffice is not certified secure (all those homeless, stinky hackers working on it for free never really got a proper Microsoft Certified Security Expert badge, they probably don't even know what security is all about ... so better not allow subversive freeloader-stuff like that to run, either. Oracle OpenOffice is OK, after all, they are a big company and MS really needs that patent exchange deal with their database folks, right? ... Surely facebook can secure their stuff (they can pay MS Security experts with badges to secure their Windows servers, after all), but twitter? Those guys don't even have a revenue stream. Better to just cut off access to that as well.
And everybody knows people get their viruses and worms via social networks, especially the newfangled ones like Ping or newcomers
Granted, I need to patch some holes in my tinfoil hat, but is it really so far-fetched to assume MS or whoever were to be in charge of it would not abuse it? And if they are all ethical, reasonable people who will not at all abuse their power when given the chance, do you really think they could secure their own services so that they are beyond reproach? Why develop a botnet to take down Amazon.com when you can simply flip a switch and take half the planet offline?
It's almost entirely the former.
"Offensiveness"-statutes would be porn (which Google does not allow on YouTube in any case, in no jurisdiction), and stuff related to hatespeech and Nazi symbols -- though I somehow suspect that Sony/BMG/EMI would not be cited as the culprits for blocking in that case. Furthermore, most hatespeech is probably against the general ToS of YouTube, as well ;)
Look to Youtube, a certain country said "pull this video, pull that, setup office here, pay taxes". You know what Youtube did? Ignored! Don't they lose money/marketshare? Of course they do.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is simply not true. Try surfing YouTube in Germany, for instance. Lots and LOTS of videos are pulled or "not available in your country", they do pay out some local media conglomerates, and, guess what, Google has offices here too.
You know, you could do your part to prevent this by participating in Firehose moderation. http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl
Which would do absolutely nothing for poor editing, since it is actually impossible to edit things there and the editors on Slashdot are not, you know, editors. They like to pretend they are, though.
It's also full of spam and things that could be weeded out automatically, these days. It's not enough to just point people there, they need the tools for it, too.
the point is that they pretend to be unbiased, when in fact they take an active role in promoting a particular point of view.
They do not pretend to be unbiased.
He plainly acts as if he were spreading truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. From the Wikileaks website:
"you can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism. - Julian Assange"
That's exactly /not/ what that quote is saying. This quote you provided highlights the fact that they feel it is their mission to release the entire source material, in addition to any conclusion they might have arrived at -- so that you can then look at the source data and come to your own conclusions. That is precisely the reason why they can "frame" their releases in such a way -- because you can disagree and point to the source as proof.
The heavily edited 17-minute video doesn't offend me as an American. It offends me as an historian because it is propaganda.
I read the statement you quote as it relates to the release of the source material. You know, the unedited source material -- which is now in the historic record, along with the edited version which is quite plainly biased -- you can see this in the title itself. Unlike propaganda spewn on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, various print magazines, etc., you have the tools to examine their claims from the source material.
Actually, yes, to different degrees. The trick is to get a story from different points of view, and sort out the likely truth based on what you know about your sources. Fox news (contrary to popular opinion here) is neither worse nor better than MSNBC, ABC, and CNN.
I'll share the opinion that it is a lot worse than those three, but this in no way means that MSNBC, ABC, or CNN are doing a bang-up job -- they are not. Just not as ridiculously bad as Fox.
Each of them have their particular editorial "perspective", but by and large they deliver the news.
Debatable :P
However, each network also has a cadre of talking heads spouting "commentary" and "opinion". Think Olberman, or Beck. My take on Assange is that he is one of the latter. He presents the facts that he wants in order to prove his point, when in fact a) that's not all the facts, and b) he shouldn't have a point.
Ok, why should he not have a point? This is not a journalist. He does not purport to be a journalist. He purports to supply journalists with source data. We could talk about selection bias -- and there will be some -- but to Mr. Assange's credit, unlike Mr. Beck, Mr. Olberman, and Mr. O'Reilly, he actually provides his source material rather accessibly. You do not have to take his word for it, or subscribe to his opinions to evaluate the leaks.
According to Wikileaks' own statement, he should be a conduit for information while protecting his source. Nothing more, nothing less.
By your own logic, even that would still be biased -- namely one would have to assume selection bias (what gets released, what does not, what gets held back from releases, etc.)
Given that Wikileaks is actually doing its job as a conduit for information while protecting their sources, personally I have no problems with them /also/ providing their own commentary on their releases -- provided this commentary is in addition to, not instead of, the data. If and when you provide the same service WikiLeaks does, I'll grant you the same prerogative.
For what it's worth, I also read BBC, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and various other sources when I can.
Which is useful, especially when one is interested in what media not centered in the US makes of things.
We have what they let us see. Wh
Hello Bobby,
The retraction has happened before release. Furthermore, the White House was offered, prior to release, a chance to review and suggest additional retractions. They declined. So, Bobby, can you please tell us what more you want them to do?
Also, Bobby, what new things did you learn on the news last night that you did not already know? Corporations are evil, you knew that before, traffic accidents happen, you knew that before, politicians are sleazebags, you knew that before ... so why report on all this irrelevant stuff? Why is it of any public interest? What NEW things have you learned, Bobby?
Also, Bobby, my name is not Bobby. Maybe yours is Bubba, not Bobby, too, I don't know. Mind if I call you Joe?