I used to have the same problem with a local newspaper company. They would call once per month or so and say that they intended to deliver a free paper for a week. After a couple of calls I told them to put me on their Do-Not-Call list.
The next time they called, I got the name of the person who called, logged the time, and told them to put me on their Do-Not-Call list. I also informed them that this was the second time I had made the request.
Well, sure enough they called a third time, once again I logged the time, and name of the caller. Then asked to speak to a manager. I informed the manager that I had requested to be put on the Do Not Call list 3 times before, and that, if I was called again, I would have my lawyer ask them for me in a harrasment suit.
They have yet to call back again, which is kinda too bad. I have my logs, and would love to get some money out of them. If your local laws are anything like mine, you can take a company to small claims court (ok, so I wouldn't have a lawyer), and go after them if they don't respect the Do-Not-Call request.
This same sort of thing has worked for me twice, and it has the added bonus of scaring the hell out of the manager you are talking to (and I do mean talking, yelling is a really dumb way to accomplish things).
That's the really great thing about the phone companies and telemarketing. First, they sell your name to anyone and everyone who can pony up the cash. Then they charge you for a service that tries to prevent these people from calling you.
Does this remind anyone else of Dr.Seuss's "The Sneetches"? The phone companies are working both ends aginst the middle. First, let you pay them to be an "unlisted" number. Next, they sell the telemarketers the list of "unlisted" numbers. Then, they sell you Caller ID to allow you to tell friend from telemarketer. Next, the sell the telemarketers Caller ID block. Then they sell you a service to force telemarketers to identify themselves before they get to you. So what is the next step? Probably selling the telemarketers a way around the system. Truth is, its the phone companies who are to blame for a large part of this problem. They are using this game to profit from both you and the telemarketers. If you could actually rely on an "unlisted" number not getting called, we wouldn't have this problem. The phone book would probably be a lot smaller though.
I'm glad to see that congress is finally doing something to give us a bit of a break, though, as expected, they protected thier own interests by exempting themselves from the law, but I'll take what I can get. And just use this as an intellegence test for the politicians in my area, if you don't want me to vote for you, then go ahead and give me a call. If you have any interest in my vote then obligate yourself to follow the "Do Not Call" list, even if you are not required to.
As for the Charities exemption, I think this is just because they like to exempt charities from everything. Though calling me won't help their cause much, I already give to charity once a paycheck, that's more than enough. (Otherwise known as taxes).
Then, on the other hand they're spying on international communication lines as much as possible (Echelon, Echelon II, etc...). Of course that's perfectly legitimate for them because it hardly affects privacy of the American people.
You do realize that the US govenment exists to protect the people of the US, right? Sorry, if you're not a US citizen, you really shouldn't expect the US government to defend you, unless you are important to US interests.
With the way our govenment is set-up, I don't think it will work.
Instead of having to repeal 1 law, they would have to repeal 2. Unfortunatly, unless its put into the constitution, its well within the reach of congress. And, of course, there is really only 1 way for anything to be put into the constitution, and that road lies through congress. (Ok, technically, there is a second way, by a convention of the states, and when was the last time that was done?)
I agree that something needs to be done about the Micky Mouse protection racket. After all, you can expect that Disney will be hot to get another extension in 20 years, then one after that, etc.
As for what the article proposes, I actually think it could be made workable, its just a matter of hammering out the details. Consider the following:
1. Re-set the length of copyright to 14 years, renewable once.
2. Increse the punishment for infringment, and for contributory infringment. (Yes, Napster would have been nailed hard.)
3. Spell out, clearly, fair-use, and what it is allowed. (e.g. Personal archive, review, multicasting within your own home, etc.)
4. Create a "take-down" process for copyright holders to use. If they can show reasonable proof that a person is downloading, or making available, copyrighted works, then they can have that person's ISP disconnect them.
5. With the above "take-down" clause, if a company is found to have issued an invalid "take-down" order, they become liable to the person affected for the sum of $100,000 adjusted for inflation from 2003 dollars.
6. If a company makes copyrighted works available through a public network, and then issues a "take-down" order based upon someone downloading from the copyright holder, the "take-down" order is treated as invalid, and the company becomes liable as above. Further, since the copyright holder has made the work freely available in a public forum, it shall be considered to now be part of the public domain.
And lastly, make the whole thing a constitutional amendment. If its just a law, its going to get mangled by the coprorate lap dogs, a.k.a. congress.
Sadly, I doubt that the final outcome will be anywhere, even close to my idea. The content companies want to have thier cake and eat it too. They will just continue to stone wall any real comprimise, while shouting about piracy at the tops of their wallets. And, of course, congress will continue to listen.
As a bit of a related point, this is going to continue as long as carrer politicians control this country. If we could get some term limits in place, we could at least flush the bad ones out of congress on a regular basis, and stop them from continuing to buy elections from year to year.
>But wouldn't the intense pressure and high viscosity of the water at that depth make it nearly impossible to operate on the flight principle?
Other than the "crush you like a grape" factor of all that water above your head. I don't think there should be much of a problem with this craft manuvering.. From what I recall from my physics classes way back when, water is incompressable. That is, as more pressure is applied to it, its density does not increse significantly. So, I wouldn't expect the viscosity to change much.
Along the same lines, the control surfaces should continue to function. The big thing I would worry about is accidentally hitting something. "Land" on the bottom of the trench too hard, and you might dent the craft, and weaken the structure. And at that depth, you probably wouldn't get much of a chance to realize what happened.
But what would be the main delivery of the art [music] to the public?
I think we will probably see a shift to some sort of enhanced CD, or a DVD. Some sort of format what will offer extras above and beyond the music itself. As it is, one of the main reasons I am willing to buy a CD is the lyric sheet that is often put in the cover booklet. In a way, I fell ripped off if the lyrics aren't in there. And even then, I'm not up for paying $20 for a CD. A two disc set maybe (if its got a lot of songs I like on it), but never for a single disc, I can wait for it to hit the discount rack.
Also, I think we will see a rise in legal mp3/oog/[insert format here] sites which sell songs. I would expect that there will be a bit of a price war for a while, but it will probably settle at something below $1 a song. Unless, of course, the labels get their way and the labels control the online distribution. Though, wasn't this type of control the one of the things that landed Microsoft in hot water? But I digress.
I think that the death of the major labels could be a boon for the small performer. First and foremost, this may help to end radio payola. (Ok, so technically they go through a middleman, so it isn't payola, but its still a way to buy airtime.) It would be nice if the practice of buying airtime died. I for one am really damn tired of hearing the same 10 or so songs repeated ad nauseium, thoughout the day. Sadly, the only radio station in my area, which even closely matches my tastes is owned by Clear Channel, so all I get are loads of commercials interspersed with the same 10 songs. And with a 30 minute commute each way, I'm lucky to hear more than one song each way. The rest is commercials or the DJ's that don't shut-up.
More than the RIAA, I think that radio payola and the Clear[ly a trust] Channel, are the biggest problems with the music industry. If we could re-instate the pre-Telecommunications Act rules about station ownership, and make third-party payola illegal, we might see an improvement in music. At the very least, it might make it harder for the labels to foist the newest pop band, "he/she's a superstar because his/her fans all want to have sex with him/her" on the masses. We might also get some sort of veriety in radio. But this is probably just a dream.
Have you actually tried to erase a disk drive or even a disk with a magnet? It doesn't work as well as you'd think.
I've had good success with erasing a 3.5" disk with a magnet, which was salvaged from a dead hard drive.(Those are some powerful little suckers!) Also, we have a couple of cow magnets kicking around the office, and have used them to wipe floppies from time to time(we often have a lot of time on our hands). Though, again, those are pretty strong magnets.
Of course, you do need to find the chip first. Those things are getting really small at this point.
and soon enough with OCR traffic cameras will be able to record your passing. So anonymity in public is a fleeting thing anyway, and the Fourth Amendment won't stop it.
I hate this argument, every time I see it. I agree that with the current technology, it is becoming eaiser to do this sort of thing, but why exactly should we adopt the attitude of "roll over and accept it"? The only way privacy issues will ever gain any traction now, or in the future, is if we start fighting them where we can. The idea that privacy is already gone and we should "get over it" is absolute idiocy.
Also, it is easy enough to buy tires anonymously by using the green stuff.
You're forgetting that the shop, which installs the tires, collects all of the information about the customer. (VIN, name, address, telephone number). Unless you mount all of your tires yourself, which is a real pain without the right equipment.
In my not so humble opinion, this whole monitoring and tracking thing is really turned on its head. The govenment is there to serve the people. Not the other way around. If anything, we should have tracking devices implanted in all govenment officials, and in all govenment equipment, such that, any one who wishes to, could log on to a web site and track any and all govenment resources, except where it might create a real national security issue.
Actually, I gave this some thought a while back. What I came up with is very simple.
Put a largeish electomagnet on top of your hard drive, keep it powered off at all times, but with a switch to power and an occilator circuit. If you have a sudden need thrash your hard-drive you flip the switch. The electromagnet powers up and fluctuates in intensity. This should scramble the data on the drive beyond recognition in no time.
To take it one step further. You power this electromagnet off of a capacitor bank inside the case, and put trigger switches on the case and feet of the box. Then bolt the case to the desk. The idea being that, if the case is unbolted and moved, or if it is opened in place the electromagnet fires several times (set the circuit to cascade through the capacitors). Sort of an information bomb. You could probably go so far as to have a mercury switch, in case they try to move the desk as a unit, or cut the desk to allow the case to be moved without triggering the feet switches. And perhaps replace the internal case switches with a light sensor.
All in all, it would be expensive and difficult. Plus, if you ever had to get into your case, you would be killing your hard-drive, just to put in a new video card. The better solution is: quit pirating.
To get back to the original topic. I don't exactly feel bad for this guy. I'm going to assume that the newsmedia is clueless (as usual) and that this guy was making 600 songs available on a P2P network, not downloading 600 songs. If those 600 songs are from artists that are represented by the labels who make up the RIAA, then that guy is a wholesale pirate, nothing more. Moreover, the RIAA (I'm going to use this as a genreic term here, I realize that its more likely the record companies), is doing exactly what we have been wanting them to do, they are going after the individual pirates, and not the P2P network here. P2P apps have a valid purpose, for a small artist it can be a good way to get thier songs out there. Also, it could be useful to distributing things, such as open source software and programs which manage to make it to the public domain. Problem is that, right now, the biggest use for P2P apps is music and software piracy. If the pirates could be removed from the system, P2P technology might actually find some legitimate uses, and improve our lives.
The RIAA is going to go after pirates in one way or another. Now, we don't want them cracking systems, that I think is a given. And we don't want them distributing viruses on P2P networks. So what are they supposed to do? Seems obvious enough, they hire a few people to run those P2P apps, and search for people making the copyrighted works available. (Kinda like walking into a store to see if people are selling burned copies.) If they find a person making a huge amount of songs available, they download a few for evidence, and file a John Doe suit in court.
This is the one place this ruling bothers me. The RIAA should be forced to file a John Doe suit before they can subpenoa the records about the person. This, of course, goes back to how bad the DMCA is, but that is a whole different argument.
If I had to guess, most of the people whining about this ruling are the same people who are making copyrighted songs available on P2P networks, and are now realizing that they won't be able to hide behind their ISPs for long. If you want a song/game/application, buy it, or find a lower cost alternative.
Go back and re-uncheck those options. Hotmail is notrious for "forgetting" the fact that you unchecked those options. I have a hotmail address, for spam catching, and occasionally those check marks re-spawn inside the check boxes. At this point I have given up, and just let that address get spammed into oblivion, its usually full in a day or two, and I only check it when I am planning to use it to register with something that uses a mail validation system.
For most of these little items, open regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
Inside that key you will find items which are set to start on startup. Real loves to put something in there, as do lots of other companies. Just find the offending application and delete the value.
There is one downfall to this, some programs check to see if thier entry exists in the Run key, whenever the program starts, and if it does not exist, the program creates the entry. But, its at least one way to try and keep control of your system.
P.S. for those running Win98, msconfig handles this portion of the registry.
Along the same lines, I think I need to offer an apology to the owners of the following email addresses:
spam@spam.com
dont.spam@me.com
fuck@you.com
I tend to rotate between those three adresses when signing up for stuff. Unless the company requesting it actually requires a valid email address for some reason. Then I use a junk address which I maintain for that purpose.
Why can't sysadmins be "the authorities" in these cases??
Acountability.
With the govenment authorities we have a few layers of oversight and control which makes the "the authorites" accountable to the people they serve.
The sysadmins would be acting completly without oversight, and it would be difficult to hold them accountable if thier actions cause unintended harm.
To use a comparitive analogy:
If a police officer is involved in a shooting, there is a set of rules he must follow, or he will be fired or jailed. For example, he's not allowed to shoot if there is a good chance he will injure an innocent bystander in the process. This is why its only in the movies that a police office will shoot at the car of a fleeing suspect on a crowded street. If an officer were to fire randomly like that and hit a bystander, the officer would end up in jail. Even if every shot misses, or he hits the suspect, he is likely to end up with a repremand. We can be fairly sure that a police office is going to be more responsible in the use of his weapon, due to training and oversight. Not to mention that there are even rules about the types of rounds an officer uses. Most of your police issue weapons are loaded with low velocity rounds, so as to prevent a bullet from passing through the target and hitting someone on the other side.
Now on the other end we have a private citizen. To begin with, there is no oversight. There is no group making sure that a private person is following the rules, or even keeping a list of who is performing these sorts of actions. Further, the private citizens don't have the training in how to handle these types of situations, and how to minimize incedental damage. And there is no control of what tools are given to the private citizen.
The sysadmins can't be "the authorities" in this case because there is no one looking over their sholder, making sure that they are doing things the way they are supposed to do them. This situation is likely to lead to lots of incendental damage to a system, or worse a wonton disreguard for the damage done to the attacking system, and any associated functions.
If it is indeed a business critical machine, then they should have secured it better in the first place.
That still begs the question about two very possible scenarios.
1. The vendor has not released a patch yet.
So, since I run progran XYZ on my server and it has a hole, but there is not a patch out for it yet, you can come in and shut down my business? Sorry to burst your bubble, but its not always (if ever) possible to have a 100% secure system (short of unplugging it and burying it in concrete).
2. A previously unknown vulerabilty is used.
Time to burst another bubble. No, you don't know everything. No matter how good you think you are, there will always be someone out there that is either lucky enough, or good enough to find a hole in your system.
I agree that in a perfect world, this would be a great solution, you would actually be doing the affected system's admin a favor. But this isn't a perfect world.
Consider for a moment the following idea. A hacker with some times on his hands sets up a script, which sends requests to your system, which look like Code Red or Nimda. Now, to add a bit of fun to this, he does some basic IP spoofing and makes the requests appear to come from another system entriely. And, to add to the fire, your system is only one of 100 that the requests are being sent to.
Now in the spirit of the strikeback idea you and 50 of the other admins attack the source of the requests. Oops, you went after the wrong IP, and just killed someone's online store, which had nothing to do with the attack. In short, its a kind of reverse DOS attack.
There's too many holes in this idea. for it to be truly workable. You'd end up with people forging logs to validate them killing a competitor's online store.
Not necessarally so. IIRC, we here in CA, passed a law a little while back that states that if you are in the comission of a felony (breaking and entering comes to mind), and are injured, you are not allowed to sue. We got tired of hearing about the burgler who cut humself of the window, which he broke, suing and winning.
So, if somone breaks into my home, they can expect to be on the receiveing end of a shotgun.
I'm talking about disabling the offending instrament in an electronic attack... You're talking about damaging property completely unrelated to the attack.
I'm talking about protecting my own property. You're talking about destroying someone else's property.
While I disagree with the AC above, I don't think I can agree with your position on this.
In a black and white interpretation of the idea of downing a system to protect one's self, it does sound good. Problem is, we don't exactly live in that sort of world.
For starters, consider the burden of proof.
Ok, you down a rouge server. In doing so you disrupt a business and cost them money. You are hauled before a court and asked to defend your actions. Now, how are you going to prove that you were defending your system? Router logs? Those could have been forged, your ability to down the offending server would indicate that you have that level of ability.
Scan the affected system? Comes up clean. After all, once the server went down, the admin did a full scan of the system and cleaned out the problem. And he's not going to admit that he was at fault.
Or consider the abuses of his sort of thing.
"Your honor, we here at Walmart.com found it necessary to down the smallstore.com web server, because it was sending out a requests, to our server, which appeared to be a worm"
I'm afraid that this type of idea is just inviting disaster. I agree that, in a perfect world, this would be a great idea, but this is not a perfect world.
As for the self defence analogy, I see it as invalidating the argument for this sort of thing.
Its a matter of perception though, so we are almost certain to not agree, but I'll put this forth anyhow.
The internet is a public place. It is not your home, it is not your property. When you open that pipe to the internet you are creating a presence in this public place.
As such, if you come under attack, you have that "Duty to Retreat". Actively hacking the attacking server is an overuse of force. You could have contacted your ISP and insisted that they firewall you off from the attacking server.
Yes, your computer is your property, and if they attacking server starts a process on your system, you have every right to halt that process. The whole point about your rights ending at the tip of my nose still holds, but its a two way thing. You can do whatever you want on your own system, but you are not allowed to reach into someone elses and monkey with it, no matter how well intentioned.
I agree, I think the American people aren't the problem. Its the people in our govenment.
In my not so humble opinion, what we need is a good house cleaning. We have people who are pushing 100 running a world that they are utterly unequiped to understand. Now, I don't have anything against the elderly, but most humans do face a decline in the ability to learn as they age. It happens to everyone, and will happen to me eventually. Its part of the "human experience". And how can we expect people to make informed decisions about computers and the internet, when they can't even find the power switch on a computer?
Also, most of the people in govenment have been there for a while, some of them for a very long while. And during that time they have worked to consolidate and keep a large power base. Also, the lobbyists have been working on one person for many years. And don't have to worry about being faced with new people, who may not be as corruptable as the previous person.
A while back, IIRC, there was an attempt by the people, here in CA, to create some sort of term limits on congress critters. It passed, but was struck down by the courts as Unconstitutional. Now, could somone with more knowledge than I, please tell me how Presidential term limits are valid, but Senetor and Representative term limits are not? I don't think there is a valid answer. Moreover, I think its exactly what we need. No more carrer politicians.
I think of the govenment as a lake, if its allowed to just sit and stagnate it becomes a poisonious bog, which We the People, can no longer abide. But, if its kept churning, constantly refreshed by new people and new ideas, it will be clean and able to serve the People more effectivly.
I tend to belive that the ISPs are all getting together and having a grand laugh about those letters.
The letters cite several laws, all of which are US laws. Last time I checked, the US doesn't run the world quite yet. These letters are just blowing smoke, hoping to scare a few ignorant people, and maybe create a bit of press.
For example the letters go on about the violations of the DMCA. Fortunatly, us Americans are the only people who have to deal with that horrible law. The letters also cite US copyright law, with a quick afternote that there are internarional copyright laws as well.
These letters are just the RIAA/MPAA blowing smoke. They have about as much hope in actually doing something against these ISPs, as I do of becoming president. (Vote Sylver Dragon in '04, I'll only accept bribes... er, campaign contributions from slashdot members!)
No I think its just a matter of setting a baseline. If security at a site is breached, the company is going to have to go through the whole system check. Its just good sense. If they find nothing, and don't have to go any further, then good. These types of crimes should be the ones treated as misdemeanors. I would probably make the cracker liable for the costs involved in the security audit that was forced by his actions. This might be likened to the costs to clean up grafitti. The security check is part of the required clean-up. Even if the cracker had no malicious intent he did break the law, and he did create a problem for the owner of the web site.
From there we move up in severity depending upon the actions taken by the cracker while illegally accessing a system. If he planted a trojan, etc. you raise the crime to a felony, and increse the punishment accordingly.
When you get down to it, cracking a web site, even if its just to be able to say, "look what I did" is still a crime. The person doing it is doing something that we, as a society, have decided is wrong, and that person should be held accountable for his actions.
The physical break-in analogy is really flawed in this case (And in most for that matter). Consider some of the very basic differences in the two:
Ok in a physical break-in, how often do you hear about a bomb being planted? Not very often, its not what the person usually breaks in for.
Planting cameras, again, in a store break-in this is not very common.
Now, on the other side we have a cracker breaking into a web-store.
They are going to be there for one of two reasons.
1. They are just hacking to hack. No malicious intent, they are not intending to steal.
2. They are trying to get either money, mechandise, or customer information that will get them either of the two above. In this case it is a common tactic to plant a trojan horse, backdoor, etc. on the system. Or, at the very least to make modifications to the database.
So how does a sysadmin know which type of person just broke into thier database? Check the log files? Not likely, a good cracker would have killed those on his way out. Maybe the hacker left a note saying "Hi, I broke into your system, but I didn't do anything untoward." And, if the sysadmin belives that note, he should be taken out and shot. Anyway you look at it, in a web based break-in, it is common for a cracker to plant these types of programs, so you have to error on the side of caution.
As I said, the analogy doesn't hold water. Go try and find 5 incidents, in the past year where a person broke into a store to plant a bomb. Now, go try and find 5 incidents where a person cracked a web site and planted a malicious program. Which was eaiser?
Its not about what can be done its about what is usually done. Burglers don't usually plant bomb. But crackers do usually plant viruses, backdoors, etc.
I recently finished a server for a client that involved managing RFID tags. They have extremely short range, so anybody wanting to track you would probably prefer something that can support a greater distance.
You were probably working with one of the lower power models.
I work for a company that manufactures and sells access control systems. We do everything from magstripe to proximity (read RFID) to bio-metric readers. And the idea that the prox type readers are only short range is wrong. Hughes Identity Corporation (HID) makes a higher power reader that is capable of reading at several feet. Mind you its bulky (about 18" per side and 3" thick.) and pulls a good bit of power, but it is accurate and can cover a doorway easily enough. We have several customers that use them for inventory control, you put one of the tags on each item, then, as it is moved through a doorway, it is read and tracked.
The only draw back I have ever seen to these types of readers is that they have a rough time of it if you put 3 or 4 cards near them at once, they just refuse to read them. Also, if you put a switching power supply next to one, it all but loses its ability to read the card. Though, these are access control readers and so tend to avoid reading if conditions aren't just right (its a security feature).
As for the idea of microwaving them, I don't know, I've never tried it. But from what I understand about them, it would probably work. If the antenna picked up enough energy, it might overcharge, and fry, the capacitor that is used to power the response circut.
Why not just cut out all the waste/fraud before they raise taxes again?
You'd probably have better luck trying to turn lead into gold.
I agree, saving money by cutting spending would be the best solution, but where do you cut it from?
Waste? Define waste.
Fraud, sure we need to catch this, but again, how do we define it?
You've got a nice sounding solution there, but its not a real solution, just a catch phrase.
Nope, we just the only ones that have gotten a civil suit to the point of getting a payout. That's kinda the way it works, this was done by the US states, so its their citizens that benefit.
So how many of you that qualify actually have receipts to prove your purchases during the period.
Doesn't matter, they get some info from you, to keep people from filing multipul claims, and then review your claim. No receipts necessary.
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I used to have the same problem with a local newspaper company. They would call once per month or so and say that they intended to deliver a free paper for a week. After a couple of calls I told them to put me on their Do-Not-Call list.
The next time they called, I got the name of the person who called, logged the time, and told them to put me on their Do-Not-Call list. I also informed them that this was the second time I had made the request.
Well, sure enough they called a third time, once again I logged the time, and name of the caller. Then asked to speak to a manager. I informed the manager that I had requested to be put on the Do Not Call list 3 times before, and that, if I was called again, I would have my lawyer ask them for me in a harrasment suit.
They have yet to call back again, which is kinda too bad. I have my logs, and would love to get some money out of them. If your local laws are anything like mine, you can take a company to small claims court (ok, so I wouldn't have a lawyer), and go after them if they don't respect the Do-Not-Call request.
This same sort of thing has worked for me twice, and it has the added bonus of scaring the hell out of the manager you are talking to (and I do mean talking, yelling is a really dumb way to accomplish things).
That's the really great thing about the phone companies and telemarketing. First, they sell your name to anyone and everyone who can pony up the cash. Then they charge you for a service that tries to prevent these people from calling you.
Does this remind anyone else of Dr.Seuss's "The Sneetches"? The phone companies are working both ends aginst the middle. First, let you pay them to be an "unlisted" number. Next, they sell the telemarketers the list of "unlisted" numbers. Then, they sell you Caller ID to allow you to tell friend from telemarketer. Next, the sell the telemarketers Caller ID block. Then they sell you a service to force telemarketers to identify themselves before they get to you. So what is the next step? Probably selling the telemarketers a way around the system. Truth is, its the phone companies who are to blame for a large part of this problem. They are using this game to profit from both you and the telemarketers. If you could actually rely on an "unlisted" number not getting called, we wouldn't have this problem. The phone book would probably be a lot smaller though.
I'm glad to see that congress is finally doing something to give us a bit of a break, though, as expected, they protected thier own interests by exempting themselves from the law, but I'll take what I can get. And just use this as an intellegence test for the politicians in my area, if you don't want me to vote for you, then go ahead and give me a call. If you have any interest in my vote then obligate yourself to follow the "Do Not Call" list, even if you are not required to.
As for the Charities exemption, I think this is just because they like to exempt charities from everything. Though calling me won't help their cause much, I already give to charity once a paycheck, that's more than enough. (Otherwise known as taxes).
Then, on the other hand they're spying on international communication lines as much as possible (Echelon, Echelon II, etc...). Of course that's perfectly legitimate for them because it hardly affects privacy of the American people.
You do realize that the US govenment exists to protect the people of the US, right? Sorry, if you're not a US citizen, you really shouldn't expect the US government to defend you, unless you are important to US interests.
With the way our govenment is set-up, I don't think it will work.
Instead of having to repeal 1 law, they would have to repeal 2. Unfortunatly, unless its put into the constitution, its well within the reach of congress. And, of course, there is really only 1 way for anything to be put into the constitution, and that road lies through congress. (Ok, technically, there is a second way, by a convention of the states, and when was the last time that was done?)
I agree that something needs to be done about the Micky Mouse protection racket. After all, you can expect that Disney will be hot to get another extension in 20 years, then one after that, etc.
As for what the article proposes, I actually think it could be made workable, its just a matter of hammering out the details. Consider the following:
1. Re-set the length of copyright to 14 years, renewable once.
2. Increse the punishment for infringment, and for contributory infringment. (Yes, Napster would have been nailed hard.)
3. Spell out, clearly, fair-use, and what it is allowed. (e.g. Personal archive, review, multicasting within your own home, etc.)
4. Create a "take-down" process for copyright holders to use. If they can show reasonable proof that a person is downloading, or making available, copyrighted works, then they can have that person's ISP disconnect them.
5. With the above "take-down" clause, if a company is found to have issued an invalid "take-down" order, they become liable to the person affected for the sum of $100,000 adjusted for inflation from 2003 dollars.
6. If a company makes copyrighted works available through a public network, and then issues a "take-down" order based upon someone downloading from the copyright holder, the "take-down" order is treated as invalid, and the company becomes liable as above. Further, since the copyright holder has made the work freely available in a public forum, it shall be considered to now be part of the public domain.
And lastly, make the whole thing a constitutional amendment. If its just a law, its going to get mangled by the coprorate lap dogs, a.k.a. congress.
Sadly, I doubt that the final outcome will be anywhere, even close to my idea. The content companies want to have thier cake and eat it too. They will just continue to stone wall any real comprimise, while shouting about piracy at the tops of their wallets. And, of course, congress will continue to listen.
As a bit of a related point, this is going to continue as long as carrer politicians control this country. If we could get some term limits in place, we could at least flush the bad ones out of congress on a regular basis, and stop them from continuing to buy elections from year to year.
>But wouldn't the intense pressure and high viscosity of the water at that depth make it nearly impossible to operate on the flight principle?
Other than the "crush you like a grape" factor of all that water above your head. I don't think there should be much of a problem with this craft manuvering.. From what I recall from my physics classes way back when, water is incompressable. That is, as more pressure is applied to it, its density does not increse significantly. So, I wouldn't expect the viscosity to change much.
Along the same lines, the control surfaces should continue to function. The big thing I would worry about is accidentally hitting something. "Land" on the bottom of the trench too hard, and you might dent the craft, and weaken the structure. And at that depth, you probably wouldn't get much of a chance to realize what happened.
But what would be the main delivery of the art [music] to the public?
I think we will probably see a shift to some sort of enhanced CD, or a DVD. Some sort of format what will offer extras above and beyond the music itself. As it is, one of the main reasons I am willing to buy a CD is the lyric sheet that is often put in the cover booklet. In a way, I fell ripped off if the lyrics aren't in there. And even then, I'm not up for paying $20 for a CD. A two disc set maybe (if its got a lot of songs I like on it), but never for a single disc, I can wait for it to hit the discount rack.
Also, I think we will see a rise in legal mp3/oog/[insert format here] sites which sell songs. I would expect that there will be a bit of a price war for a while, but it will probably settle at something below $1 a song. Unless, of course, the labels get their way and the labels control the online distribution. Though, wasn't this type of control the one of the things that landed Microsoft in hot water? But I digress.
I think that the death of the major labels could be a boon for the small performer. First and foremost, this may help to end radio payola. (Ok, so technically they go through a middleman, so it isn't payola, but its still a way to buy airtime.) It would be nice if the practice of buying airtime died. I for one am really damn tired of hearing the same 10 or so songs repeated ad nauseium, thoughout the day. Sadly, the only radio station in my area, which even closely matches my tastes is owned by Clear Channel, so all I get are loads of commercials interspersed with the same 10 songs. And with a 30 minute commute each way, I'm lucky to hear more than one song each way. The rest is commercials or the DJ's that don't shut-up.
More than the RIAA, I think that radio payola and the Clear[ly a trust] Channel, are the biggest problems with the music industry. If we could re-instate the pre-Telecommunications Act rules about station ownership, and make third-party payola illegal, we might see an improvement in music. At the very least, it might make it harder for the labels to foist the newest pop band, "he/she's a superstar because his/her fans all want to have sex with him/her" on the masses. We might also get some sort of veriety in radio. But this is probably just a dream.
Have you actually tried to erase a disk drive or even a disk with a magnet? It doesn't work as well as you'd think.
I've had good success with erasing a 3.5" disk with a magnet, which was salvaged from a dead hard drive.(Those are some powerful little suckers!) Also, we have a couple of cow magnets kicking around the office, and have used them to wipe floppies from time to time(we often have a lot of time on our hands). Though, again, those are pretty strong magnets.
Just use an icepick to perforate the chip
Of course, you do need to find the chip first. Those things are getting really small at this point.
and soon enough with OCR traffic cameras will be able to record your passing. So anonymity in public is a fleeting thing anyway, and the Fourth Amendment won't stop it.
I hate this argument, every time I see it. I agree that with the current technology, it is becoming eaiser to do this sort of thing, but why exactly should we adopt the attitude of "roll over and accept it"? The only way privacy issues will ever gain any traction now, or in the future, is if we start fighting them where we can. The idea that privacy is already gone and we should "get over it" is absolute idiocy.
Also, it is easy enough to buy tires anonymously by using the green stuff.
You're forgetting that the shop, which installs the tires, collects all of the information about the customer. (VIN, name, address, telephone number). Unless you mount all of your tires yourself, which is a real pain without the right equipment.
In my not so humble opinion, this whole monitoring and tracking thing is really turned on its head. The govenment is there to serve the people. Not the other way around. If anything, we should have tracking devices implanted in all govenment officials, and in all govenment equipment, such that, any one who wishes to, could log on to a web site and track any and all govenment resources, except where it might create a real national security issue.
Actually, I gave this some thought a while back. What I came up with is very simple.
Put a largeish electomagnet on top of your hard drive, keep it powered off at all times, but with a switch to power and an occilator circuit. If you have a sudden need thrash your hard-drive you flip the switch. The electromagnet powers up and fluctuates in intensity. This should scramble the data on the drive beyond recognition in no time.
To take it one step further. You power this electromagnet off of a capacitor bank inside the case, and put trigger switches on the case and feet of the box. Then bolt the case to the desk. The idea being that, if the case is unbolted and moved, or if it is opened in place the electromagnet fires several times (set the circuit to cascade through the capacitors). Sort of an information bomb. You could probably go so far as to have a mercury switch, in case they try to move the desk as a unit, or cut the desk to allow the case to be moved without triggering the feet switches. And perhaps replace the internal case switches with a light sensor.
All in all, it would be expensive and difficult. Plus, if you ever had to get into your case, you would be killing your hard-drive, just to put in a new video card. The better solution is: quit pirating.
To get back to the original topic. I don't exactly feel bad for this guy. I'm going to assume that the newsmedia is clueless (as usual) and that this guy was making 600 songs available on a P2P network, not downloading 600 songs. If those 600 songs are from artists that are represented by the labels who make up the RIAA, then that guy is a wholesale pirate, nothing more. Moreover, the RIAA (I'm going to use this as a genreic term here, I realize that its more likely the record companies), is doing exactly what we have been wanting them to do, they are going after the individual pirates, and not the P2P network here. P2P apps have a valid purpose, for a small artist it can be a good way to get thier songs out there. Also, it could be useful to distributing things, such as open source software and programs which manage to make it to the public domain. Problem is that, right now, the biggest use for P2P apps is music and software piracy. If the pirates could be removed from the system, P2P technology might actually find some legitimate uses, and improve our lives.
The RIAA is going to go after pirates in one way or another. Now, we don't want them cracking systems, that I think is a given. And we don't want them distributing viruses on P2P networks. So what are they supposed to do? Seems obvious enough, they hire a few people to run those P2P apps, and search for people making the copyrighted works available. (Kinda like walking into a store to see if people are selling burned copies.) If they find a person making a huge amount of songs available, they download a few for evidence, and file a John Doe suit in court.
This is the one place this ruling bothers me. The RIAA should be forced to file a John Doe suit before they can subpenoa the records about the person. This, of course, goes back to how bad the DMCA is, but that is a whole different argument.
If I had to guess, most of the people whining about this ruling are the same people who are making copyrighted songs available on P2P networks, and are now realizing that they won't be able to hide behind their ISPs for long. If you want a song/game/application, buy it, or find a lower cost alternative.
Go back and re-uncheck those options. Hotmail is notrious for "forgetting" the fact that you unchecked those options. I have a hotmail address, for spam catching, and occasionally those check marks re-spawn inside the check boxes. At this point I have given up, and just let that address get spammed into oblivion, its usually full in a day or two, and I only check it when I am planning to use it to register with something that uses a mail validation system.
For most of these little items, open regeditr entVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
Inside that key you will find items which are set to start on startup. Real loves to put something in there, as do lots of other companies. Just find the offending application and delete the value.
There is one downfall to this, some programs check to see if thier entry exists in the Run key, whenever the program starts, and if it does not exist, the program creates the entry. But, its at least one way to try and keep control of your system.
P.S. for those running Win98, msconfig handles this portion of the registry.
Along the same lines, I think I need to offer an apology to the owners of the following email addresses:
spam@spam.com
dont.spam@me.com
fuck@you.com
I tend to rotate between those three adresses when signing up for stuff. Unless the company requesting it actually requires a valid email address for some reason. Then I use a junk address which I maintain for that purpose.
Ok you got me, I majored in Math, not English. My spelling is iffy at best.
Why can't sysadmins be "the authorities" in these cases??
Acountability.
With the govenment authorities we have a few layers of oversight and control which makes the "the authorites" accountable to the people they serve.
The sysadmins would be acting completly without oversight, and it would be difficult to hold them accountable if thier actions cause unintended harm.
To use a comparitive analogy:
If a police officer is involved in a shooting, there is a set of rules he must follow, or he will be fired or jailed. For example, he's not allowed to shoot if there is a good chance he will injure an innocent bystander in the process. This is why its only in the movies that a police office will shoot at the car of a fleeing suspect on a crowded street. If an officer were to fire randomly like that and hit a bystander, the officer would end up in jail. Even if every shot misses, or he hits the suspect, he is likely to end up with a repremand. We can be fairly sure that a police office is going to be more responsible in the use of his weapon, due to training and oversight. Not to mention that there are even rules about the types of rounds an officer uses. Most of your police issue weapons are loaded with low velocity rounds, so as to prevent a bullet from passing through the target and hitting someone on the other side.
Now on the other end we have a private citizen. To begin with, there is no oversight. There is no group making sure that a private person is following the rules, or even keeping a list of who is performing these sorts of actions. Further, the private citizens don't have the training in how to handle these types of situations, and how to minimize incedental damage. And there is no control of what tools are given to the private citizen.
The sysadmins can't be "the authorities" in this case because there is no one looking over their sholder, making sure that they are doing things the way they are supposed to do them. This situation is likely to lead to lots of incendental damage to a system, or worse a wonton disreguard for the damage done to the attacking system, and any associated functions.
If it is indeed a business critical machine, then they should have secured it better in the first place.
That still begs the question about two very possible scenarios.
1. The vendor has not released a patch yet.
So, since I run progran XYZ on my server and it has a hole, but there is not a patch out for it yet, you can come in and shut down my business? Sorry to burst your bubble, but its not always (if ever) possible to have a 100% secure system (short of unplugging it and burying it in concrete).
2. A previously unknown vulerabilty is used.
Time to burst another bubble. No, you don't know everything. No matter how good you think you are, there will always be someone out there that is either lucky enough, or good enough to find a hole in your system.
I agree that in a perfect world, this would be a great solution, you would actually be doing the affected system's admin a favor. But this isn't a perfect world.
Consider for a moment the following idea. A hacker with some times on his hands sets up a script, which sends requests to your system, which look like Code Red or Nimda. Now, to add a bit of fun to this, he does some basic IP spoofing and makes the requests appear to come from another system entriely. And, to add to the fire, your system is only one of 100 that the requests are being sent to.
Now in the spirit of the strikeback idea you and 50 of the other admins attack the source of the requests. Oops, you went after the wrong IP, and just killed someone's online store, which had nothing to do with the attack. In short, its a kind of reverse DOS attack.
There's too many holes in this idea. for it to be truly workable. You'd end up with people forging logs to validate them killing a competitor's online store.
Not necessarally so. IIRC, we here in CA, passed a law a little while back that states that if you are in the comission of a felony (breaking and entering comes to mind), and are injured, you are not allowed to sue. We got tired of hearing about the burgler who cut humself of the window, which he broke, suing and winning.
So, if somone breaks into my home, they can expect to be on the receiveing end of a shotgun.
I'm talking about disabling the offending instrament in an electronic attack... You're talking about damaging property completely unrelated to the attack.
I'm talking about protecting my own property. You're talking about destroying someone else's property.
While I disagree with the AC above, I don't think I can agree with your position on this.
In a black and white interpretation of the idea of downing a system to protect one's self, it does sound good. Problem is, we don't exactly live in that sort of world.
For starters, consider the burden of proof.
Ok, you down a rouge server. In doing so you disrupt a business and cost them money. You are hauled before a court and asked to defend your actions. Now, how are you going to prove that you were defending your system? Router logs? Those could have been forged, your ability to down the offending server would indicate that you have that level of ability.
Scan the affected system? Comes up clean. After all, once the server went down, the admin did a full scan of the system and cleaned out the problem. And he's not going to admit that he was at fault.
Or consider the abuses of his sort of thing.
"Your honor, we here at Walmart.com found it necessary to down the smallstore.com web server, because it was sending out a requests, to our server, which appeared to be a worm"
I'm afraid that this type of idea is just inviting disaster. I agree that, in a perfect world, this would be a great idea, but this is not a perfect world.
As for the self defence analogy, I see it as invalidating the argument for this sort of thing.
Its a matter of perception though, so we are almost certain to not agree, but I'll put this forth anyhow.
The internet is a public place. It is not your home, it is not your property. When you open that pipe to the internet you are creating a presence in this public place.
As such, if you come under attack, you have that "Duty to Retreat". Actively hacking the attacking server is an overuse of force. You could have contacted your ISP and insisted that they firewall you off from the attacking server.
Yes, your computer is your property, and if they attacking server starts a process on your system, you have every right to halt that process. The whole point about your rights ending at the tip of my nose still holds, but its a two way thing. You can do whatever you want on your own system, but you are not allowed to reach into someone elses and monkey with it, no matter how well intentioned.
I agree, I think the American people aren't the problem. Its the people in our govenment.
In my not so humble opinion, what we need is a good house cleaning. We have people who are pushing 100 running a world that they are utterly unequiped to understand. Now, I don't have anything against the elderly, but most humans do face a decline in the ability to learn as they age. It happens to everyone, and will happen to me eventually. Its part of the "human experience". And how can we expect people to make informed decisions about computers and the internet, when they can't even find the power switch on a computer?
Also, most of the people in govenment have been there for a while, some of them for a very long while. And during that time they have worked to consolidate and keep a large power base. Also, the lobbyists have been working on one person for many years. And don't have to worry about being faced with new people, who may not be as corruptable as the previous person.
A while back, IIRC, there was an attempt by the people, here in CA, to create some sort of term limits on congress critters. It passed, but was struck down by the courts as Unconstitutional. Now, could somone with more knowledge than I, please tell me how Presidential term limits are valid, but Senetor and Representative term limits are not? I don't think there is a valid answer. Moreover, I think its exactly what we need. No more carrer politicians.
I think of the govenment as a lake, if its allowed to just sit and stagnate it becomes a poisonious bog, which We the People, can no longer abide. But, if its kept churning, constantly refreshed by new people and new ideas, it will be clean and able to serve the People more effectivly.
Thank you.
I tend to belive that the ISPs are all getting together and having a grand laugh about those letters.
The letters cite several laws, all of which are US laws. Last time I checked, the US doesn't run the world quite yet. These letters are just blowing smoke, hoping to scare a few ignorant people, and maybe create a bit of press.
For example the letters go on about the violations of the DMCA. Fortunatly, us Americans are the only people who have to deal with that horrible law. The letters also cite US copyright law, with a quick afternote that there are internarional copyright laws as well.
These letters are just the RIAA/MPAA blowing smoke. They have about as much hope in actually doing something against these ISPs, as I do of becoming president. (Vote Sylver Dragon in '04, I'll only accept bribes... er, campaign contributions from slashdot members!)
No I think its just a matter of setting a baseline. If security at a site is breached, the company is going to have to go through the whole system check. Its just good sense. If they find nothing, and don't have to go any further, then good. These types of crimes should be the ones treated as misdemeanors. I would probably make the cracker liable for the costs involved in the security audit that was forced by his actions. This might be likened to the costs to clean up grafitti. The security check is part of the required clean-up. Even if the cracker had no malicious intent he did break the law, and he did create a problem for the owner of the web site.
From there we move up in severity depending upon the actions taken by the cracker while illegally accessing a system. If he planted a trojan, etc. you raise the crime to a felony, and increse the punishment accordingly.
When you get down to it, cracking a web site, even if its just to be able to say, "look what I did" is still a crime. The person doing it is doing something that we, as a society, have decided is wrong, and that person should be held accountable for his actions.
The physical break-in analogy is really flawed in this case (And in most for that matter). Consider some of the very basic differences in the two:
Ok in a physical break-in, how often do you hear about a bomb being planted? Not very often, its not what the person usually breaks in for.
Planting cameras, again, in a store break-in this is not very common.
Now, on the other side we have a cracker breaking into a web-store.
They are going to be there for one of two reasons.
1. They are just hacking to hack. No malicious intent, they are not intending to steal.
2. They are trying to get either money, mechandise, or customer information that will get them either of the two above. In this case it is a common tactic to plant a trojan horse, backdoor, etc. on the system. Or, at the very least to make modifications to the database.
So how does a sysadmin know which type of person just broke into thier database? Check the log files? Not likely, a good cracker would have killed those on his way out. Maybe the hacker left a note saying "Hi, I broke into your system, but I didn't do anything untoward." And, if the sysadmin belives that note, he should be taken out and shot. Anyway you look at it, in a web based break-in, it is common for a cracker to plant these types of programs, so you have to error on the side of caution.
As I said, the analogy doesn't hold water. Go try and find 5 incidents, in the past year where a person broke into a store to plant a bomb. Now, go try and find 5 incidents where a person cracked a web site and planted a malicious program. Which was eaiser?
Its not about what can be done its about what is usually done. Burglers don't usually plant bomb. But crackers do usually plant viruses, backdoors, etc.
I recently finished a server for a client that involved managing RFID tags. They have extremely short range, so anybody wanting to track you would probably prefer something that can support a greater distance.
You were probably working with one of the lower power models.
I work for a company that manufactures and sells access control systems. We do everything from magstripe to proximity (read RFID) to bio-metric readers. And the idea that the prox type readers are only short range is wrong. Hughes Identity Corporation (HID) makes a higher power reader that is capable of reading at several feet. Mind you its bulky (about 18" per side and 3" thick.) and pulls a good bit of power, but it is accurate and can cover a doorway easily enough. We have several customers that use them for inventory control, you put one of the tags on each item, then, as it is moved through a doorway, it is read and tracked.
The only draw back I have ever seen to these types of readers is that they have a rough time of it if you put 3 or 4 cards near them at once, they just refuse to read them. Also, if you put a switching power supply next to one, it all but loses its ability to read the card. Though, these are access control readers and so tend to avoid reading if conditions aren't just right (its a security feature).
As for the idea of microwaving them, I don't know, I've never tried it. But from what I understand about them, it would probably work. If the antenna picked up enough energy, it might overcharge, and fry, the capacitor that is used to power the response circut.
Why not just cut out all the waste/fraud before they raise taxes again?
You'd probably have better luck trying to turn lead into gold.
I agree, saving money by cutting spending would be the best solution, but where do you cut it from?
Waste? Define waste.
Fraud, sure we need to catch this, but again, how do we define it?
You've got a nice sounding solution there, but its not a real solution, just a catch phrase.
So only Americans pay too much for CDs? Damn :(
Nope, we just the only ones that have gotten a civil suit to the point of getting a payout. That's kinda the way it works, this was done by the US states, so its their citizens that benefit.
So how many of you that qualify actually have receipts to prove your purchases during the period.
Doesn't matter, they get some info from you, to keep people from filing multipul claims, and then review your claim. No receipts necessary.