I still don't like the anti-politician bias on slashdot, I must say.
It's not bias; it's judgment based on experience. We've seen too much damage done by politicians who are ignorant, self-important, pushy, and vicious toward anyone who gets in their way or refuses to conform to their model. In short, a lot of them are what the bullies described in the Hellmouth threads a few weeks back grow up to be.
Admittedly, the politicians who fit this description cast an unfair cloud over the other 5%.
Just today, I stumbled across a recurrence of the "Internet tax" rumor. Despite the obviousness bogosity of the "alert" (for example, it cites a "Bill 602P" allegedly pending in Congress, which is not even the correct format -- real US bills are S[number] for Senate bills or H[number] for House bills), I'm sure lots of people will fall for it and send nastygrams to their reps, thus diluting the credibility of Internet activism on real issues. Feh.
I see your point about "xxxsucks" being a rather childish name, but the content is more important than the label. There's at least one well-researched universal "sucks" site ( The Skeleton Closet), and probably others.
Granted spam is a pain in the ass at times (especially if you get a lot of it), but i would much rather hit 'd' and have it be gone w/o looking at it, then having someone send me a pound and a half of paper mail that goes straight from the mailbox to the trashcan, Im no "tree huggin' hippie", but we should at least attempt to be ecologically responsible.
You've been suckered by Spammer Big Lie #573a -- "Spam Is Like Paper Junk Mail" and its companion #573b -- "Spam Saves Trees".
The bottom-line truth is: When somebody sends paper junk mail, they pay; when somebody sends spam, you pay. For this reason, paper junk mail is self-limiting -- advertisers will only pay for so much of it, especially if it gets a low response rate. Spam, if not punished, will grow indefinitely until it makes e-mail unusable.
The way to stop spam is to stop the spammer's incentive to spam. The problem with spam is simply a matter of economics -- the spammer has no reason not to spam, and substantial incentive to spam.
The simplest way to do this is by extension of the current civil penaties (up to $500) for junk faxes.
I hate spam too. But the more I think about the "spam is theft" argument, the more is smacks of BS--it may take time to deal with incoming spam (and it does take time, I appreciate that). But you opened your SMTP server to the public. Saying spam is theft is like having an open house, then arresting people you don't like for trespassing.
The time it takes to deal with spam is the least of the problem -- it wastes the bandwidth I am paying for, causes the loss of my legitimate e-mail if my box fills, and would have made e-mail completely useless by now if not suppressed.
The correct analogy is "Saying spam is theft is like having an open-house, then arresting somebody who shows up with a wheelbarrow, pushes the legitimate guests aside, and starts carting away every hors d'oeurve tray and punch bowl within reach".
Thinking it through, it's obvious that the government is trying to preserve its ability to engage in illegal surveillance, including large-scale fishing expeditions (such as automated mass scanning of e-mail communication).
Certainly, the government's claim that it merely wants to preserve court-authorized wiretaps doesn't hold water. If that's all they want, ubiquitous encryption is a mere inconvenience, not a showstopper. They can use TEMPEST vans to read a suspect's outgoing e-mail before encryption and incoming e-mail after decryption. They can plant Trojan horse chips or programs in a suspect's computer. They can plant a hidden camera to read the suspect's passphrase over his shoulder.
Note that these alternatives don't scale well. They're fine for the few hundred authorized taps each year, but aren't suitable for COINTELPRO-type shenanigans -- it's too much work, with too much risk of being caught.
The government considers that a bug; I call it a feature.
Bottom line: Anybody who insists on crypto limits or backdoors has an agenda that goes far beyond catching the real bad guys.
A ruling that computer code is a form of speech (as, IMO, it clearly is) puts a "strict scrutiny" burden on the government to prove that any restrictions serve a vitally necessary interest and are the least restrictive means to accomplish that interest.
This is an impossible burden to prove with crypto export laws -- they don't serve any "vitally necessary interest" in keeping foreigners from having the technology, since it's much too late for that, and the courts are unlikely to recognize the government's real objective (maintaining the ability to do widespread, as opposed to individually targeted, surveillance) as a legitimate "vitally necessary interest".
The laws are left over from the days when the *algorithm itself* was an important secret that needed to be protected.
It's a long-standing principle of cryptology that a system must be secure if the algorithm is generally known. The spooks may have used arguments about the secrecy of algorithms to bamboozle Congress and other laypeople, but it's not a real issue.
I'd consider the $200 price acceptable if there's a reasonably convenient way to get the MP3 files from my computer to the microdrive and the microdrive holds up well under normal usage conditions (no skipping & 5+ years life expectancy). I like the IR port idea; what MP3 players need is a decent capacity and a convenient way to get a new playlist into the gadget. An IR port or onboard Zip/microdrive/whatever would solve the latter problem -- the IR port is cheaper and lighter, whereas an onboard drive would make it easier to swap in a new playlist on the road.
What this means is this: About 10 days (reread the article if you don't believe me) to crack an RSA-140 encryption which uses a 465 bit key. Netscape and most other browsers running encryption software of some sort use 128 bit encryption.
You're comparing apples and oranges. A 465-bit RSA public key is vulnerable to advances in factoring because an RSA key has to be based on the product of two large prime numbers. The 128-bit Netscape key is not an RSA key -- it is an arbitrary 128-bit number used in a private-key encryption system. Unless the algorithm has some flaw, a 128-bit private key ought to be good for quite some time.
How long will Moore's Law hold before it bumps into the fundamental limits (the hardware is made up of discrete atoms, and signals can't go faster than c)? A GHz clock is cycling in the time light takes to travel one foot; a THz clock (ten doublings) would be the time light travels 0.3mm; ten doublings after that and it would seem that light is barely covering the space (0.3um) into which you can cram a few billion components, each molecule-sized.
My TANSTAAFL instincts suggest to me that 1)a quantum computer will solve a problem rapidly once configured for that problem, and 2)configuring a quantum computer for a given problem takes approximately as much work as solving the problem through deterministic algorithms.
The head of the Dartmouth Review supporting a UN initiative? If people hear about this, they'll think you've gone soft....
Seriously, though, what would you do if this proposal were made law and somebody else who owns the name Dart Review gets to you before you get to the www.dartmouthreview.com guy?
You're suggesting we use exactly the same policy that they're using -- punish behaviour that is feared.
That's not a solution. It's not constructive. You're no better than they are.
Frankly, this is a vacuous bit of moral equivalence. Some behaviors merit punishment, and in civilized society there is general agreement that this includes threatened or actual assault (which is the very habit that defines a "bully").
By your argument, throwing someone in jail for criticizing the President and throwing someone in jail for attempting to assassinate the President are both "punishing behavior that the President doesn't like".
In the real world, creating a "hostile work environment" is a firing offense -- if anything, the trigger for punishment and standards of evidence for workplace harassment have become hypersensitive and unfair toward the accused.
Why, then, should creators of a hostile learning environment get off scot-free as a matter of course?
What I'd really like to see is one that reads Zip disks (or whatever turns out to be the replacement for A Big Stack Of Floppies) to a memory (which could just be plain volatile RAM, since you can just reload from the Zip disk if you lose power). That combines the advantages of having everything in memory (no skips, longer battery life) and the advantages of CDs (portable media, easy to load a new playlist).
You cannot send a C.O.D. package to someone who has not specifically requested it.. It's against the law, period..
With e-mail, the user and ISP incurs the costs before the user sees what he's gotten. It's equivalent to sending a COD package knowing that the user will have to pay for all his packages sight unseen if he wants to get any packages at all.
But the problem is that there is no 'law' that states that email is different. I'm wondering why they didn't enforce it as spam and sue..;-P
It's been done by several ISPs -- there are a few examples mentioned in The Netizen's Guide to Spam, Abuse, and Internet Advertising at http://com.primenet.com/spamking/.
In fact, I wonder why Intel didn't implement a global killfile across its mail servers instead of going to court
This is like asking why someone whose pocket is picked doesn't get pants with a difficult-to-open button on the pocket instead of calling the cops -- one or the other may be the more practical option, but when it's a matter of protecting your property the latter is certainly a legitimate recourse.
I'm looking at the local charter schools (and the extreme hostility towards such schools shown by several of the local school boards, even in the face of outright court orders that they obey with the law!)
So, the lawlessness in your school system goes beyond the usual blind eye toward thuggery in the student body. The school board itself is outlaw, treating the taxpayers' property like its own private fiefdom.
And there's still debate as to whether this system needs to be torn down and rebuilt?? /.
And how do people get to be this sort of sad joke?
Might it be that one of the real-world lessons they absorbed in school was "if you're popular enough, you can get away with anything"?
(I've found this a useful way to frame the issue when facing a conservative audience. It neatly taps into their frustration with That Man In The White House[tm] without vulgar pandering.) /.
I notice the presence of another/. thread titled "Students Opting Away from high-tech Degrees?"
While an Atlas-Shrugged scenario is silly for the same reason conspiracy theories generally are silly, the same result can occur through spontaneous consensus. /.
>> The fact is, if a teacher or two had concealed >> carry permits and had a gun they could have >> fought back. >> They could probably have taken out the shooters >> before they killed all those people. > > That is NOT fact. That is speculation.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Israelis have proven that it is fact. They used to have quite a problem with Palestinian terrorists shooting up schools until they adopted a policy of having the teachers arm themselves.
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It's not bias; it's judgment based on experience. We've seen too much damage done by politicians who are ignorant, self-important, pushy, and vicious toward anyone who gets in their way or refuses to conform to their model. In short, a lot of them are what the bullies described in the Hellmouth threads a few weeks back grow up to be.
Admittedly, the politicians who fit this description cast an unfair cloud over the other 5%.
Just today, I stumbled across a recurrence of the "Internet tax" rumor. Despite the obviousness bogosity of the "alert" (for example, it cites a "Bill 602P" allegedly pending in Congress, which is not even the correct format -- real US bills are S[number] for Senate bills or H[number] for House bills), I'm sure lots of people will fall for it and send nastygrams to their reps, thus diluting the credibility of Internet activism on real issues. Feh.
I see your point about "xxxsucks" being a rather childish name, but the content is more important than the label. There's at least one well-researched universal "sucks" site ( The Skeleton Closet), and probably others.
The bottom-line truth is: When somebody sends paper junk mail, they pay; when somebody sends spam, you pay. For this reason, paper junk mail is self-limiting -- advertisers will only pay for so much of it, especially if it gets a low response rate. Spam, if not punished, will grow indefinitely until it makes e-mail unusable.
The time it takes to deal with spam is the least of the problem -- it wastes the bandwidth I am paying for, causes the loss of my legitimate e-mail if my box fills, and would have made e-mail completely useless by now if not suppressed.
The correct analogy is "Saying spam is theft is like having an open-house, then arresting somebody who shows up with a wheelbarrow, pushes the legitimate guests aside, and starts carting away every hors d'oeurve tray and punch bowl within reach".
Certainly, the government's claim that it merely wants to preserve court-authorized wiretaps doesn't hold water. If that's all they want, ubiquitous encryption is a mere inconvenience, not a showstopper. They can use TEMPEST vans to read a suspect's outgoing e-mail before encryption and incoming e-mail after decryption. They can plant Trojan horse chips or programs in a suspect's computer. They can plant a hidden camera to read the suspect's passphrase over his shoulder.
Note that these alternatives don't scale well. They're fine for the few hundred authorized taps each year, but aren't suitable for COINTELPRO-type shenanigans -- it's too much work, with too much risk of being caught.
The government considers that a bug; I call it a feature.
Bottom line: Anybody who insists on crypto limits or backdoors has an agenda that goes far beyond catching the real bad guys.
This is an impossible burden to prove with crypto export laws -- they don't serve any "vitally necessary interest" in keeping foreigners from having the technology, since it's much too late for that, and the courts are unlikely to recognize the government's real objective (maintaining the ability to do widespread, as opposed to individually targeted, surveillance) as a legitimate "vitally necessary interest".
It's a long-standing principle of cryptology that a system must be secure if the algorithm is generally known. The spooks may have used arguments about the secrecy of algorithms to bamboozle Congress and other laypeople, but it's not a real issue.
I'd consider the $200 price acceptable if there's a reasonably convenient way to get the MP3 files from my computer to the microdrive and the microdrive holds up well under normal usage conditions (no skipping & 5+ years life expectancy). I like the IR port idea; what MP3 players need is a decent capacity and a convenient way to get a new playlist into the gadget. An IR port or onboard Zip/microdrive/whatever would solve the latter problem -- the IR port is cheaper and lighter, whereas an onboard drive would make it easier to swap in a new playlist on the road.
You're comparing apples and oranges. A 465-bit RSA public key is vulnerable to advances in factoring because an RSA key has to be based on the product of two large prime numbers. The 128-bit Netscape key is not an RSA key -- it is an arbitrary 128-bit number used in a private-key encryption system. Unless the algorithm has some flaw, a 128-bit private key ought to be good for quite some time.
How long will Moore's Law hold before it bumps into the fundamental limits (the hardware is made up of discrete atoms, and signals can't go faster than c)? A GHz clock is cycling in the time light takes to travel one foot; a THz clock (ten doublings) would be the time light travels 0.3mm; ten doublings after that and it would seem that light is barely covering the space (0.3um) into which you can cram a few billion components, each molecule-sized.
My TANSTAAFL instincts suggest to me that 1)a quantum computer will solve a problem rapidly once configured for that problem, and 2)configuring a quantum computer for a given problem takes approximately as much work as solving the problem through deterministic algorithms.
Hmmm... how about this picture for the poster?
Seriously, though, what would you do if this proposal were made law and somebody else who owns the name Dart Review gets to you before you get to the www.dartmouthreview.com guy?
That's not a solution. It's not constructive. You're no better than they are.
Frankly, this is a vacuous bit of moral equivalence. Some behaviors merit punishment, and in civilized society there is general agreement that this includes threatened or actual assault (which is the very habit that defines a "bully").
By your argument, throwing someone in jail for criticizing the President and throwing someone in jail for attempting to assassinate the President are both "punishing behavior that the President doesn't like".
Why, then, should creators of a hostile learning environment get off scot-free as a matter of course?
What I'd really like to see is one that reads Zip disks (or whatever turns out to be the replacement for A Big Stack Of Floppies) to a memory (which could just be plain volatile RAM, since you can just reload from the Zip disk if you lose power). That combines the advantages of having everything in memory (no skips, longer battery life) and the advantages of CDs (portable media, easy to load a new playlist).
With e-mail, the user and ISP incurs the costs before the user sees what he's gotten. It's equivalent to sending a COD package knowing that the user will have to pay for all his packages sight unseen if he wants to get any packages at all.
But the problem is that there is no 'law' that states that email is different. I'm wondering why they didn't enforce it as spam and sue.. ;-P
It's been done by several ISPs -- there are a few examples mentioned in The Netizen's Guide to Spam, Abuse, and Internet Advertising at http://com.primenet.com/spamking/.
This is like asking why someone whose pocket is picked doesn't get pants with a difficult-to-open button on the pocket instead of calling the cops -- one or the other may be the more practical option, but when it's a matter of protecting your property the latter is certainly a legitimate recourse.
So, the lawlessness in your school system goes beyond the usual blind eye toward thuggery in the student body. The school board itself is outlaw, treating the taxpayers' property like its own private fiefdom.
And there's still debate as to whether this system needs to be torn down and rebuilt??
/.
And how do people get to be this sort of sad joke?
Might it be that one of the real-world lessons they absorbed in school was "if you're popular enough, you can get away with anything"?
(I've found this a useful way to frame the issue when facing a conservative audience. It neatly taps into their frustration with That Man In The White House[tm] without vulgar pandering.)
/.
While an Atlas-Shrugged scenario is silly for the same reason conspiracy theories generally are silly, the same result can occur through spontaneous consensus.
/.
Nobody is interested in your skill at the Kevin Bacon game of tying the subject under discussion to your personal hobbyhorse in six steps or less.
/.
>> The fact is, if a teacher or two had concealed
>> carry permits and had a gun they could have
>> fought back.
>> They could probably have taken out the shooters
>> before they killed all those people.
>
> That is NOT fact. That is speculation.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Israelis
have proven that it is fact. They used to have
quite a problem with Palestinian terrorists
shooting up schools until they adopted a policy
of having the teachers arm themselves.
/.