Everybody seems to hate the government and everybody now seems to think that the NSA is the worst thing since AIDS.
Governments, like corporations and individuals, have the reputations they earn by their conduct.
All the Russians, Iraqs, Cambodians, Chinese, Pakistanis, etc. will just have to go to Radio Shack, buy a digital phone and nobody can hear them.
Criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. Laws restricting privacy, by definition, violate only the privacy of law-abiding people. This lesson has been brought to you by the letters "N", "S", and "A".
Let's remember, we wouldn't have won WWII without the NSA
You mean the techcorp in Timeline is really an NSA front?
Let's think as people and as a nation about something as important as national security before everyone goes shooting their mouths off.
I think about something even more important: the Constitution. Lose that, and national security becomes irrelevant; it will matter naught whether the bandits who rule you are based in Washington or elsewhere.
I wrote a letter to my senator and congressmen in support of Echelon and the NSA, and I think you should also.
By all means, write your senators and congressman, pointing out that somebody who doesn't know which one comes one to a district and which one comes two to a state is hardly likely to bother showing up at the polls.
Stupid People Shouldn't Breed
The unintentionally hilarious.sigs are always the best. /.
It's not an objection to them owning it, it's an objection to them owning it for ETERNITY.
But why?
Because Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution (which is supposed to be the ultimate authority in matters of US law) provides that copyrights and patents shall have limited terms, duh. /.
Re:God this section of Slashdot gets old quick...
on
Copyright!
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· Score: 1
I would suggest that life + 95 years is a perfectly legitimate definition of limited.
You're evading the issue. If a genie gave me three wishes, and I responded, "a government that obeys the Constitution, and a billion dollars, and three more wishes, and a gorgeous babe who's madly in lust with me, and a personal FTL spaceship, and three more wishes, and..." -- well, that wouldn't be at all "limited", now would it? Neither is the pattern of recent copyright-extension laws.
I am all in favor of copyright, within the scope set out in the Constitution: with limited terms, enforced by legitimate methods. /.
copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.
I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
A feature built into the infrastructure interferes with both illegal and legal copying. Not all data is copyrighted, and the data I create is copyrighted to me -- in either case, interference with my ability to manipulate the data is an infringement on my rights. /.
Re:so what's the problem?
on
Copyright!
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· Score: 1
I can't say I see anything really wrong here... The owners are asking for help in catching people who abuse something that doesn't belong to them.
No, they are fraudulently misrepresenting the law in order to create the impression that sysdamins are required to provide them with free services -- quite a different thing than "asking for help". /.
"secure the Blessings of Liberty" == restrain their natural greed for power and keep the government on a tight leash. This they have grossly failed to do. /.
I am surprised by the general tone of the posts talking about the government and the politicians as if they were coming from outer space to rule you. This is YOUR Government.
Well, then, perhaps the people in power should start conducting themselves accordingly. With rare exceptions, they behave more like feudal lords of all they survey than like stewards of a Constitutional republic, so it is hardly surprising that people are alienated from them.
You voted for them to be the ones taking decisions for the good of your nation.
No, we voted for them to wield a strictly limited governing authority. No one group, certainly not the government, has an open-ended mandate to serve "the good of the nation". /.
I really shouldn't bother to finish reading a post in which basic ignorance is displayed in, literally, the first word, but having nothing better to do at the moment....
["first we should create a perfect world" rant snipped]
OK, folks, if you want to pick somebody's pocket, here's your man. His principles will absolutely forbid him from sending the police after you until there is no longer any murder, rape, car-jacking, or other crime more serious than pick-pocketing.
Its far cheaper and more respectable to Take Care Of It Yourself than to get the government to Do It For You.
I'm glad we agree -- by all means, the government should simply step out of the way and let us take care of the spammers, just as I suggested. /.
A better arrangement, IMO, would be to start increasing delays on messages after a given account had sent mail to more than 100 recipients that don't match any recent mail recipients from that account.
If that's too much record-keeping (I can see why neither ISPs nor users would care for the idea of even short-term records of mail senders and recipients), a sliding reverse-teergrube (e.g. after 100 outgoing mails in a day, delay each 1 second and send the user a note; after 500, delay each 2 seconds and flag the account for scrutiny; after 2000, delay each 10 seconds) would greatly limit spam. /.
Yes, the Spam Fairy leaves quarters under the server to compensate ISPs for spam costs, so they don't have to pass them along to their legitimate customers.
If you're going to fight, fight for a legitmate cause.
Such as ridding the Net of spam-thieves.
My proposed solution is old-fashioned outlawry -- get caught spamming, and the authorities will turn a blind eye to anything that is done to your system. Solves the spam problem, and gives 3133+ hacqer d00dz a place to play and a useful function. /.
I expect we will experience no major national breakdowns as a result of the Year 2000 date change," President Clinton said Wednesday at a news conference at the White House.
A slightly related question: what is the maximum size for a portable computer screen?
Well, if they could make them out of material that would conveniently roll up (like the keyboard in that one ST:TNG episode) when not in use, I suppose they could get up to a yard or so in the short dimension -- you'd carry it around in a scabbard like a sword.
Oh, you were saying something about penis envy? /.
Can a system be designed where it is intrinsically difficult, but not impossible for society to spy on certain individuals' communications?
It is trivially easy to design such a system. Just say no to any form of general built-in tap capability. If the government wants to spy on Joe Blow, it will always be possible for them to send in a black bag man to install a hardware bug or software Trojan Horse on Joe Blow's equipment. Alternatively, monitoring of Van Eck emissions can be performed from anywhere within a hundred yards or so (depending on local conditions and shielding).
Of course, this means a lot of work and a risk of getting caught at it if they do it illegally -- which is a bug for them (hence their Big Brother wish list) but a feature for a free citizenry. /.
This is about the application of existing law-enforcement techniques (wiretapping phones) to new technology (wiretapping information transactions).
Why is it that when some new developements erode an existing zone of privacy, the privacy baseline shifts downward to accomodate them, but when other new developments erode an existing zone of surveillance, special government privileges are demanded to maintain the status quo? Where is it written that technological advance is supposed to be a one-way ratchet, so that the State's pressures are efficiently applied against the individual, but the individual's pressures in the other direction produce nothing but a bit of noise?
Unless you are a criminal, and quite a significant one, you have nothing to fear from the FBI.
Define "criminal". The government scores 0 out of 2 when the questions are "Was Vicki Weaver a criminal?" and "Is Lon Horiuchi a criminal?"
or we can't get the information needed to convict dangerous criminals
Bravo Sierra. The police managed to get the evidence required to convict dangerous criminals when the most advanced communication systems known to man were literally based upon smoke and mirrors.
I hate to be this way, but I feel that some/.ers are law-enforcement luddites. On one hand, they believe technology is great, and we can use it in new and exciting ways. On the other hand, they believe law-enforcement shouldn't be allowed to expand their existing abilities to take new technologies into account.
I believe that the technology of firearms is great. I wouldn't hand a gun to a serial killer. I believe that the technology of automated banking is great. I wouldn't hire someone who just served 2-5 for embezzlement to maintain such a system. I believe that the technology to monitor complex data flows is great. I wouldn't provide the root password to government agencies that have a long and disgraceful record of using the Constitution for a doormat.
It's very apparent from reading the ongoing stories about the trial the Microsoft legal team shot themselves in the foot repeatedly, and ruined their credibility with the judge.
After stories like the notorious rigged demo (to "prove" that Windows wouldn't work properly without Internet Explorer), assertions that Microsoft management were among the last people on Earth to hear of the Internet, etc, I was thinking that Bill Gates ought to just walk in, flip off the judge, and get it over with.
These idiotic boners are of course independent of the merits or demerits of their case, but they surely didn't do their side any good. /.
Both CD/Radio combination units I've tried have been crap -- they barely fit into standard CD carriers (partly because of fat cases, partly because of imbecilic placement of the volume knob and headphone jack), highly vulnerable to skipping (even when the buffer was allegedly working), and built with thin plastic casings (obviously an AM loop antenna can't be put inside a metal casing, but that's no excuse for such flimsy plastic, and if necessary they could forget about AM and pick up FM via the headphone cord).
Surely there's no actual engineering reason for this -- the electronics for a basic radio tuner ought to fit in the unused space of most portable CD players -- so I can only assume that it's the work of marketing droids. /.
Assuming the toll free numbers are legit - why don't we just set our modems to autodial the voice number all night long - every connect will add to their phone bill - we could bankrupt somebody in a hurry!
Seriously - why would this not be a good idea?
Toll free numbers have built-in caller ID. Spammers will then dump junk phone calls on you, the same way they send you more e-mail spam if you are foolish enough to reply via e-mail.
To avoid such harassment, you want to make your complaints via a pay phone not particularly close to your home or office. /.
Making backups is legal Media shifting is legal Fair use is legal these are all things that this coding is preventing things that are legal...
There are conflicting claims about the legality of backups and media-shifting. The bottom line is that no sane person is going to object if you (for example) playing a tape into your sound card, digitally cleaning it up, and burning the result to CD-R, so long as you do not redistribute copies.
Fair use is, by definition, legal, but the waters have been muddied by people who think that "fair use" is some sort of magical invocation. The current precedent is to weigh the situation against a four-part test.
It can't really be copying because the only copying that can do any real harm is done with disk pressing not disk burning.
True; this whole business is irrelevant to the economically significant piracy problem, which is factories in see-no-evil jurisdictions where the entire DVD, CSS key track and all, is simply copied bit-for-bit and pressed. /.
But the police are the police, and the university administration is a private entity. Students sign away the majority of their rights when the arrive.
If the students signed a contract that says they have to provide the passwords to their private systems, then there would have been no need for the sysadmins to guess. If not, then the ease of guessing passwords is irrelevant -- while legions of 3133+ hacquer d00dz would cry "KEWL!" if told that it's legal to go anywhere you can guess the password, it just ain't so in reality. /.
vilifying CMU is (at least in this instance) childish and frankly more than a bit stupid
Part of the reason CMU is vilified is that it has earned itself a very bad reputation when it comes to the Net (e.g. its association with the Marty Rimm-job "cyberporn" hysteria wave during the CDA fight).
When I read the words of J. Random Slashdotter, I evaluate it from a neutral starting point. When I read the words of Bill Clinton or one of his minions, I start from the assumption that it's nothing but CYA BS. So it is with the average university administration on the one hand, and CMU on the other. /.
It's this idea that has completely shackled law enforcement when it has come to dealing with computer crimes.
No, what has shackled law enforcement is the fact that it has chosen to piss away its own credibility. Most people a generation or two ago had the highest respect for police officers, G-Men, etc -- but not any more, after a long list of dirty deeds (COINTELPRO, MOVE, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Filegate, etc ad nauseam) has come to light.
Attempting to point the spotlight at citizen skepticism toward the government is a blame-the-victim scam. /.
I assume you are saying that it will cost the GOVERNMENT money.
Meaningless -- the government doesn't have any money of its own; it can only transfer money from the taxpayers to its own ends. Over time, the government tends to bloat (just like Microsoft code) as more and more special interests get their hands into the till. /.
Slashdot Mirror
Governments, like corporations and individuals, have the reputations they earn by their conduct.
All the Russians, Iraqs, Cambodians, Chinese, Pakistanis, etc. will just have to go to Radio Shack, buy a digital phone and nobody can hear them.
Criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. Laws restricting privacy, by definition, violate only the privacy of law-abiding people. This lesson has been brought to you by the letters "N", "S", and "A".
Let's remember, we wouldn't have won WWII without the NSA
You mean the techcorp in Timeline is really an NSA front?
Let's think as people and as a nation about something as important as national security before everyone goes shooting their mouths off.
I think about something even more important: the Constitution. Lose that, and national security becomes irrelevant; it will matter naught whether the bandits who rule you are based in Washington or elsewhere.
I wrote a letter to my senator and congressmen in support of Echelon and the NSA, and I think you should also.
By all means, write your senators and congressman, pointing out that somebody who doesn't know which one comes one to a district and which one comes two to a state is hardly likely to bother showing up at the polls.
Stupid People Shouldn't Breed
The unintentionally hilarious .sigs are always the best.
/.
But why?
Because Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution (which is supposed to be the ultimate authority in matters of US law) provides that copyrights and patents shall have limited terms, duh.
/.
You're evading the issue. If a genie gave me three wishes, and I responded, "a government that obeys the Constitution, and a billion dollars, and three more wishes, and a gorgeous babe who's madly in lust with me, and a personal FTL spaceship, and three more wishes, and..." -- well, that wouldn't be at all "limited", now would it? Neither is the pattern of recent copyright-extension laws.
I am all in favor of copyright, within the scope set out in the Constitution: with limited terms, enforced by legitimate methods.
/.
I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
A feature built into the infrastructure interferes with both illegal and legal copying. Not all data is copyrighted, and the data I create is copyrighted to me -- in either case, interference with my ability to manipulate the data is an infringement on my rights.
/.
No, they are fraudulently misrepresenting the law in order to create the impression that sysdamins are required to provide them with free services -- quite a different thing than "asking for help".
/.
"secure the Blessings of Liberty" == restrain their natural greed for power and keep the government on a tight leash. This they have grossly failed to do.
/.
Well, then, perhaps the people in power should start conducting themselves accordingly. With rare exceptions, they behave more like feudal lords of all they survey than like stewards of a Constitutional republic, so it is hardly surprising that people are alienated from them.
You voted for them to be the ones taking decisions for the good of your nation.
No, we voted for them to wield a strictly limited governing authority. No one group, certainly not the government, has an open-ended mandate to serve "the good of the nation".
/.
BZZZZTTT!!!! I'm sorry; 30% is not "minimal".
I really shouldn't bother to finish reading a post in which basic ignorance is displayed in, literally, the first word, but having nothing better to do at the moment....
["first we should create a perfect world" rant snipped]
OK, folks, if you want to pick somebody's pocket, here's your man. His principles will absolutely forbid him from sending the police after you until there is no longer any murder, rape, car-jacking, or other crime more serious than pick-pocketing.
Its far cheaper and more respectable to Take Care Of It Yourself than to get the government to Do It For You.
I'm glad we agree -- by all means, the government should simply step out of the way and let us take care of the spammers, just as I suggested.
/.
Green!
Purple!
/.
If that's too much record-keeping (I can see why neither ISPs nor users would care for the idea of even short-term records of mail senders and recipients), a sliding reverse-teergrube (e.g. after 100 outgoing mails in a day, delay each 1 second and send the user a note; after 500, delay each 2 seconds and flag the account for scrutiny; after 2000, delay each 10 seconds) would greatly limit spam.
/.
Yes, the Spam Fairy leaves quarters under the server to compensate ISPs for spam costs, so they don't have to pass them along to their legitimate customers.
If you're going to fight, fight for a legitmate cause.
Such as ridding the Net of spam-thieves.
My proposed solution is old-fashioned outlawry -- get caught spamming, and the authorities will turn a blind eye to anything that is done to your system. Solves the spam problem, and gives 3133+ hacqer d00dz a place to play and a useful function.
/.
Christopher Beamon, is that you? Your language skills seem to be deteriorating with time....
/.
We're boned.
/.
Well, if they could make them out of material that would conveniently roll up (like the keyboard in that one ST:TNG episode) when not in use, I suppose they could get up to a yard or so in the short dimension -- you'd carry it around in a scabbard like a sword.
Oh, you were saying something about penis envy?
/.
It is trivially easy to design such a system. Just say no to any form of general built-in tap capability. If the government wants to spy on Joe Blow, it will always be possible for them to send in a black bag man to install a hardware bug or software Trojan Horse on Joe Blow's equipment. Alternatively, monitoring of Van Eck emissions can be performed from anywhere within a hundred yards or so (depending on local conditions and shielding).
Of course, this means a lot of work and a risk of getting caught at it if they do it illegally -- which is a bug for them (hence their Big Brother wish list) but a feature for a free citizenry.
/.
Why is it that when some new developements erode an existing zone of privacy, the privacy baseline shifts downward to accomodate them, but when other new developments erode an existing zone of surveillance, special government privileges are demanded to maintain the status quo? Where is it written that technological advance is supposed to be a one-way ratchet, so that the State's pressures are efficiently applied against the individual, but the individual's pressures in the other direction produce nothing but a bit of noise?
Unless you are a criminal, and quite a significant one, you have nothing to fear from the FBI.
Define "criminal". The government scores 0 out of 2 when the questions are "Was Vicki Weaver a criminal?" and "Is Lon Horiuchi a criminal?"
or we can't get the information needed to convict dangerous criminals
Bravo Sierra. The police managed to get the evidence required to convict dangerous criminals when the most advanced communication systems known to man were literally based upon smoke and mirrors.
I hate to be this way, but I feel that some /.ers are law-enforcement luddites. On one hand, they believe technology is great, and we can use it in new and exciting ways. On the other hand, they believe law-enforcement shouldn't be allowed to expand their existing abilities to take new technologies into account.
I believe that the technology of firearms is great. I wouldn't hand a gun to a serial killer. I believe that the technology of automated banking is great. I wouldn't hire someone who just served 2-5 for embezzlement to maintain such a system. I believe that the technology to monitor complex data flows is great. I wouldn't provide the root password to government agencies that have a long and disgraceful record of using the Constitution for a doormat.
What part of this progression eludes you?
/.
After stories like the notorious rigged demo (to "prove" that Windows wouldn't work properly without Internet Explorer), assertions that Microsoft management were among the last people on Earth to hear of the Internet, etc, I was thinking that Bill Gates ought to just walk in, flip off the judge, and get it over with.
These idiotic boners are of course independent of the merits or demerits of their case, but they surely didn't do their side any good.
/.
Surely there's no actual engineering reason for this -- the electronics for a basic radio tuner ought to fit in the unused space of most portable CD players -- so I can only assume that it's the work of marketing droids.
/.
Seriously - why would this not be a good idea?
Toll free numbers have built-in caller ID. Spammers will then dump junk phone calls on you, the same way they send you more e-mail spam if you are foolish enough to reply via e-mail.
To avoid such harassment, you want to make your complaints via a pay phone not particularly close to your home or office.
/.
Media shifting is legal
Fair use is legal
these are all things that this coding is preventing things that are legal...
There are conflicting claims about the legality of backups and media-shifting. The bottom line is that no sane person is going to object if you (for example) playing a tape into your sound card, digitally cleaning it up, and burning the result to CD-R, so long as you do not redistribute copies.
Fair use is, by definition, legal, but the waters have been muddied by people who think that "fair use" is some sort of magical invocation. The current precedent is to weigh the situation against a four-part test.
It can't really be copying because the only copying that can do any real harm is done with disk pressing not disk burning.
True; this whole business is irrelevant to the economically significant piracy problem, which is factories in see-no-evil jurisdictions where the entire DVD, CSS key track and all, is simply copied bit-for-bit and pressed.
/.
If the students signed a contract that says they have to provide the passwords to their private systems, then there would have been no need for the sysadmins to guess. If not, then the ease of guessing passwords is irrelevant -- while legions of 3133+ hacquer d00dz would cry "KEWL!" if told that it's legal to go anywhere you can guess the password, it just ain't so in reality.
/.
Part of the reason CMU is vilified is that it has earned itself a very bad reputation when it comes to the Net (e.g. its association with the Marty Rimm-job "cyberporn" hysteria wave during the CDA fight).
When I read the words of J. Random Slashdotter, I evaluate it from a neutral starting point. When I read the words of Bill Clinton or one of his minions, I start from the assumption that it's nothing but CYA BS. So it is with the average university administration on the one hand, and CMU on the other.
/.
No, what has shackled law enforcement is the fact that it has chosen to piss away its own credibility. Most people a generation or two ago had the highest respect for police officers, G-Men, etc -- but not any more, after a long list of dirty deeds (COINTELPRO, MOVE, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Filegate, etc ad nauseam) has come to light.
Attempting to point the spotlight at citizen skepticism toward the government is a blame-the-victim scam.
/.
Of course not. Moderation is just the aggregate result of individual reviews.
/.
Meaningless -- the government doesn't have any money of its own; it can only transfer money from the taxpayers to its own ends. Over time, the government tends to bloat (just like Microsoft code) as more and more special interests get their hands into the till.
/.