The obvious conclusion: In order to perform the perfect long-term denial of service you gain access to servers at the target company, then hack or launch a 'normal' denial of service attack on some high profile third party from there, leaving plenty of traces for the FBI to follow, then wait for the FBI to seize the servers at the real victim, causing an effective denial of service there that can't be easily alleviated or prosecuted. It's a perfect crime with the FBI as a key player.
The usual procedure is to seize the suspect servers and everything connected to it... Guess the FBI needs a bigger warehouse...
Seriously, all the unrelated companies affected by these over-raids need to join forces and sue the FBI for some serious cash, including personal liability for the agent in charge for the raid. If they win it will make any future agent in charge of raids very, very, very careful not to seize as much as an unrelated patch-cable... and that's the way it should have been from the beginning.
If not the courts strike down the very concept of seizing/stealing domain names the future of the internet is very dark indeed,
None of the laws used to justify this seizure have any moral merit. Why should a company in Spain be subject to some US customs or IP law?
The US waste enormous amounts of money on enforcing the unenforcible, like stupid gaming laws (native Americans can build and run casinos, other Americans cannot, people in the US can gamble in non-American casinos, not in casinos run by or for Americans etc.) or IP laws completely out of date made to protect a business model long obsolete.
Why don't they simply tax the casinos and make part of the taxes go to fighting gambling addiction? - And find a business model for IP that doesn't involve massive efforts in fighting the customers in various courts.
Ah. the Nikki Catsouras case... No sympathy there. Spoiled girl high on drugs steal Daddy's Porsche and drive it insanely and ends up hitting a concrete wall or similar at ridiculous high speed, getting severely smashed up in the process. The accident scene photos ends up on the net where they still are, thanks to the Streisand Effect (the more someone tries to have something removed from the net, the more it spreads). They're easy to find if you Google her name.
Her stupid antics could have killed dozens of random people but only ended up costing her her own life. It's perfectly okay to use these pictures to illustrate the dangers of drugs as she lost all rights to privacy by doing such a stupid stunt. Her parents should stop complaining about the leaked pictures and consider what they did wrong to have her ending up in bloody pieces like that, the use the efforts on educating others parents about it.
So, the only long term solution seems to be moving to stronger forms of authentication, like smart cards or using devices like smart phones as one-time password devices.
Actually, the only solution is to do away with passwords as the ONLY 'lock' on protected systems. Multi-factor authentication is the only way to go. Sure there can be a password in there (something the user KNOWS), but cracking that gets you nowhere in itself. You'll also need the access card, token or whatever the user HAS and the finger, eye or whatever biometric component that represents what the user IS.
So, with such systems you can't just steal a hash file and crack that. You'll also need to physically access the user and get his code key and his finger... As 99% of all computer crime is executed remotely, this will be efficient to stop intruders. Even social engineering is mostly done remotely over the phone. Having to get close physically means a greatly increased risk and thus chance of capture. In other words - it will be pretty efficient at keeping unwanted visitors out. This is probably why most online banks use something like this (two factors minimum) as their access security.
I must say - without having seen the broadcast - that if they attack Wikileaks on principal values it is perfectly valid to strike back.
The basic idea behind Wikileaks is that stuff that should be public knowledge - but isn't - will be.Doing this will step on some toes. It will especially be felt by those relying on security by obscurity, the need-to-know system, which is basically flawed as it by design doesn't have the outside control. The strange thing is that only the top classifications are really necessary, the rest is just there to differentiate people and to hide information that really should be known, at least by some outside controlling party. The current inside control obviously fails on many levels, revealed by the leaks, and it is completely useless as a controlling party.
Assange may be weird, eccentric or just a pervert - but it isn't relevant here. Wikileaks is not Assange, just as Assange is not Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a democratic necessity, going beyond any one person. It is perfectly valid to do hacks do defend this.
Windows 7 time is buggy. It actually worked in Vista but seems broken in Windows 7.
I switched servers and update interval (which worked perfectly in Vista on at least two different machines) and now the service only works once or twice before crashing. De-registering and re-registering it is required before it can be restarted and then it again only works briefly.
I then disabled Windows Time completely and installed a Windows port of ntpd... It works perfectly - and keeps doing so.
Outlawing symbols only makes whose symbols interesting and 'forbidden'... Stupid, stupid, stupid...
About headscarves, the trouble is what it is used for and why. Nobody wants to outlaw turbans despite every male Sikh wearing one.
Now, turbans are mandatory according to the Sikh belief but nowhere in the Koran is there anything about headscaves and more than half of the worlds female Muslim community does not wear any form of headscarves either. It is clearly a question of culture, not religion. The headscarves were exceedingly common a long time before Islam and was adapted as part of the 'uniform' just like what we today consider the dress code for Orthodox Jews or the Amish for that matter. It is not a religious requirement as such but just something they do in order to stand out and signal their religious affiliation. Similar with headscarves.
Most people agree that wearing this 'uniform' isn't always voluntary. Especially for Muslim girls there's massive pressure from both family and the community. Muslim boys seem to be taught that girls without headscarves are sluts, whores or worse so they react strongly if their sister doesn't want to wear a headscarf. A ban frees the girls from this pressure and from that point of view it is a very good thing.
Now, the Muslim culture also holds some limitations for girls in their interaction with men. That this is sexist is blatantly obvious because no similar limits exist for men in their interaction with women. These limitations tend to hinder headscarf-wearing girls from getting work, mostly due to misunderstandings, but it's still there. Also, some businesses refuse to allow their staff to send signals to the customers, neither political nor religious. And that's where the headscarf becomes a problem because sending a signal is what it is for. If it was a matter of covering their hair, why not wear a wig? - It covers your hair and yet you still look like everybody else and you will blend just fine. But no. It is not about covering the hair but rather about sending the signal that you're a devout Muslim.
So which standard are you using? Is nudity okay for your children as many Europeans would claim or is violence okay as many Americans would claim?
Well, both is fine actually. Countless studies have shown that players of violent computer games are not over-represented in jails neither in the US nor in Europe. Similar, the rate of violent crime with a sexual aspect (rape etc.) is actually much lower in most European countries than in the US, despite porn (even hardcore porn) being freely available in any convenience store and from specialized porn shops (featuring dildos, butt-plugs and sex dolls, as well as hardcore magazines in the window exhibit) in particular.
It seems that its a myth that porn turns people into rapists and violent games turns people into mindless violent thugs. It is obviously not true and we need to stop censoring everything accordingly because censorship without cause is just plain censorship and thus plain wrong, no exceptions.
Most Kindle users I know of are geeks/nerds, just like me. I had Calibre installed and busy doing conversions within 24 hours of unpacking my Kindle.
About 99% of the content on my Kindle was found on the net and converted to.mobi - but I own a paper version of each and every title, in some cases more than one, so in my book I have more than paid for the right to read those titles electronically, especially since the electronic versions usually only cost a fraction of the paper versions, and I did pay the high paper price.
It is obvious and has been so forever, even for wired connections.
Most (all?) standard Internet connections today gives you one IP per household, and inside each a number of private IP's are issued to the devices that request an IP. They all share the public IP. Now, households with just one person exist of course but most have more than one person and usually also more than one device that's using the Internet connection. Seen from the outside is it completely impossible to determine who in the household made any given request or announcement.
And don't get me started on outsiders abusing the connection without permission, either through open Wifi, hacking the Wifi or simply by running a 'secret' cable into an unseen switch. I've even heard of someone breaking into a nearby house to install an unauthorized wireless AP to be used by the intruder like the 'secret' cable but without the obvious cable revealing 'who did it'.
Now, you cannot prosecute a household, only specific people. But you cannot determine from the outside who was behind any action on the Internet so you cannot put a name on the offense. You can also not knowingly accuse an innocent of something (one committed the offense, everybody else is innocent), nor can you say that the Internet connection was used with permission, thus putting a name on someone 'responsible', so in essence you cannot use any log just showing an IP as any kind of 'proof' of someone in particular committing something, as you need a specific person to prosecute.
Thankfully the court have ruled in favor of this obvious fact.
It's just next to impossible to use the law as it is.
To me however it is very simple: A website can trivially obtain permission from the user for the site's own cookies. An advertiser needs to get opt-in consent before sending a cookie as it is unfeasible to obtain permission as you go. Basically this can be done in a simple way: A visitor to a site featuring ads from the advertiser will see nothing to requests to decide whether to accept cookies or not until this decision is made. The result is stored in a cookie which they need permission for as well. Now when sending ads the decision cookie is checked and if the answer is yes, the ads are sent with the tracking cookies, and if no, they are sent with no cookies.
This will obviously result in a lot of people saying no to the tracking cookies but that is as it should be. Tracking someone should only be done with consent.
As nice as distributions are when it comes to automated package handling and updating, as potentially disastrous are they when it comes to compatibility... we've had 'old' webservers being upgraded as they go, including to newer distributions when they became available, but unfortunately the morons developing PHP (among others) quite often break backward compatibility, thus rendering countless sites broken when you upgrade. Worst has been the upgrade from Debian Lenny (PHP 5.2.*) to Debian Squeeze (PHP 5.3.*) because it turns out that a lot of commercial stuff (shops, message boards etc.) simply doesn't work under PHP 5.3. But if you skip upgrading due to PHP you'll get stuck with apache 2.2.9 in as opposed to 2.2.16...
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for
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Is Sugar Toxic?
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Lots of stuff is toxic in both too high amounts and too low amounts... Too little water will (among other things) do the same as an overdose of NaCl and vice versa. It messes with the so-called 'Sodium Pump' that is critical to the whole cellular nutrition exchange. It won't kill you fast but it will make you seriously ill. Too much NaCl will also mess with blood pressure and can result in malignant hypertension if left untreated (eating way too much salt for a long time can trigger it) and that can - untreated - result in strokes, clots, heart attacks and what have you - basically unpleasant stuff that is likely to disable or kill you.
Actually we should care a lot more about salt than sugar. It is a much worse killer by far (even taking obesity into consideration) and there are ways to lessen the impact. One row down from Na in the periodic table we find K, and its chloride KCl is also salty in taste. It is much more rare in nature than NaCl and thus more expensive, but it can be used as a salt substitute. It does the opposite to the blood pressure compared to table salt but to a lesser extent. Replacing table salt with a combination of mostly KCl and a little NaCl should be ideal, blood pressure wise. But we still need some NaCl for the Sodium Pump so we can't leave out NaCl completely.
Oh, and about sugar - it a common misunderstanding that sugar is fattening. Sure, the body can convert sugar into fat but it is an expensive process that the body won't use unless it has no choice. The issue is that when both fats and sugar are available, the body takes the sugar for immediate energy and stores almost all the fat in the fatty tissues. The fat is stored to a lesser extent without the presence of sugar (because some is broken down for energy) so you can say that sugar makes fat more fattening... Now, most obese people tend to eat food with lots of fat and wash it down with lots of sugar filled sodas, and that is a really bad combination. Additionally most of the fast food these obese people eat is also extremely salty which both trigger even more soda drinking, as well as raising the already high blood pressure (obesity in itself is a major cause of hypertension)... a disaster waiting to happen.
Isn't the issue with solar power that the panels require some extremely rare metals that are quite harmful to the environment to produce?
As for the number of solar panels and windmills per square mile, it comes from a fairly simple calculation I did some years ago. Basically you take the energy used in a year for industry, transport (both cars, ships and planes) and homes, and divide by the total land area of the Earth (yes, I know you can put mills out into coastal waters) in square miles. Now you have the need per square mile, and just just have to look up the efficiency of a good solar panel or windmill, and find how many it takes to satisfy the need per square mile. Now, those are current numbers based on a very small amount of the global population being truly 'civilized' with cars, home appliances and so on. If you upgrade all 6-7 billion to this level, you need to multiply by a significant factor.
So, in order to replace all use of fossile fuels with solar and wind power, this is the number. Sure both mills and panels may become more effecient, but the need for energy per person may also need to be adjusted upwards, so on average the requirement for mills and panels will remain relatively constant.
Now, I don't know how far we are with the 2. generation geothermal energy systems, but from what I've read it's the optimal power source. It's super-abundant, inexhaustible and extremely safe with no pollution or waste. It simply takes advantage of the temperature difference between the surface and a few miles down, and does not like the current geothermal energy plants need to be located on the geological hot-spots. Placing a plant there would actually be less advisable as the underground simply is too hot for safe use. The energy comes from the hot core of the earth, which gets its heat mostly from tidal forces. But those tidal forces see the earth as a simple object, so using the heat by moving it elsewhere on it will not interact with the tidal system and thus the energy will never run out as long as the sun and the moon does what they've always done. We're just using energy that was previously lost.
Last, but not least, such plants can be placed completely underground thus removing the visual and auditory pollution all the windmills (and to some degree the solar panel farms) represent. People living near other peoples windmills often complain about both the constantly moving wings and their shadows and the deep but powerful infra-sound the generators in the mills generate. The people owning the mills usually just accept the discomfort for idealistic purposes.
Actually, less than 0.01% of any building or construction is wholly original. Most have zero original content. The rest just COPIES what others have done before, from components to styles, methods and design. Bricks are nothing but copies of 'the master brick' invented by someone a long time ago. Walls are built of bricks using methods and designs copied from those invented by others a long time ago. Same with roofs, windows, doors and so on. EVERYTHING is done as copies (partial or in full) of things done before.
Lego's express this most clearly. Each brick is a precise copy of a master brick, and while they can be combined into very unique and clever designs, nothing would exist without the bricks - which are copies.
Please don't be stupid... The essense is not whether we can affect the climate (we can) but whether there is a climate change beyond the normal caused by humans. Currently we're seeing an unparalled scare campaign by the UN and some environmental organizations based on the same data that three decades ago showed an iceage approaching... And we've just had the two coldest winters in decades/centuries here in Europe (and Northern America)... So much for global warming. IMHO of course.
If we are to replace fossile fuels it must in favor of something truly long-lasting. Forget solar power and wind as they're both unreliable and requires so many windmills and solar farms just to cover our current needs that every square mile of the Earth will be filled with them. Only fusion (water into power) and geothermal works in the long run and both still needs a lot of development to be practical or usable at all. Both will use 'plants' to manufacture the energy so the current transmission infrastructure can be used. But they're not ready yet so there's no need to rush things.
What about rising water levels? Well, if they don't rise like a flood there's no need to panic. Just move away from the affected areas and things will be fine.
Some decades ago the typesetters here in Denmark went on strike because their jobs were threatened by computers. Several other unions joined, demanding laws banning computers, robots and similar technological means to replace laborers. They lost of course but to me growing up at that time it showed just how reactionary people are to change - even change for the better.
Typesetters worked with lead and got poisoned (slowly) by it. Making it obsolete was actually a good thing. It was heavy work, always at night, and while it required some skill it was a pretty dull job. But the unions demanded that the times should stop changing instead of working with the management to find replacement work, maybe even work that was both safer and better paid. But no, change was evil and threatened the status quo.
You can't fight change. You can only adapt or be left behind. It doesn't matter of the change is for good or for bad. It's there and it's going to happen.
Sure, right now iPads can be manufactured cheaply in the far east, but all the business they're getting now will result in change there too, and the costs will go up there as well. Supply and demand. At some point there will be nowhere left on Earth where you can place a production and have people work for starvation wages and thus save a lot of money. Then costs are equal and it's back to skill as to who gets to build the next big thing.
But right now there's no need for iPad builders in the US. So people need to find something else to do. Either join the businesses already there or think of something new. Maybe it will be the next big thing?
Now, back in the day of the typesetters strike I actually did a report for school on "automatisering" (replacing manual labor with machines) and it turns out that while a dozen typesetters lost their job at a newspaper, it required twice as many people to install, maintain, repair and upgrade the electronic systems replacing the typesetters, not to mention develop the software for them. So the change resulted in more jobs, not less. Jobs elsewhere in other trades of course but still jobs. The newspapers didn't save money on this, but it gave them almost unlimited flexibility, a much later deadline and the possibility of a more direct workflow.
I much prefer background profiling only, as opposed to the rigorous checks they now perform on everybody. It would have caught all the 9/11 terrorists, something none of the methods in use today would.
I take it personally when they check me, as should everybody else. If they want to check me, they're actively accusing me of being a terrorist and I cannot accept that. I demand an apology and the exact reason why I specifically should be checked. Arguing that they check everybody is equivalent to saying that everybody is a suspected terrorist and that is of course absurd. Of course people get annoyed when they are accused of being terrorists, and even more so when you have to subject to comical and invasive searches that you know have no purpose.
Yes, the screenings are completely useless. They just hassle people as an act in their ridiculous security theater. Not only will the scanning miss countless types of dangerous materials (undetectable by the technology), but the scanners will miss most of the stuff it is supposed to detect anyway (75-80%). They just don't work. Oh, and the terrorists knows this.
The TSA has only two purposes:
1) To make people believe 'something is being done'. Stupidity for the stupid people.
2) To pave the way for even more intrusive methods, both at airports and elsewhere. Soon you might be stopped on the road and subject to a TSA search because you might be carrying a bomb in the trunk... and you have to prove you're innocent because the TSA has 'strong indicators' that you are guilty. Welcome to the police state.
This is the core issue - power-crazed TSA agents randomly abusing travellers. Until they do a major cleanup in TSA ranks I'm not going anywhere near a US border. I've visited the US many times in the past, the last in 2001 just after 9/11 but no more. Walking through the old metal detector was bordering on too much already and the searches they do now are way beyond my tolerance. Search those flagged by intelligence for it, not everybody. Let everybody else alone.
After all, what happened on 9/11 can still happen today as the current methods are unlikely to find a well-hidden carbon fiber box cutter which won't set off metal detectors either. But all 19 hijackers were flagged by FBI and/or CIA and/or NSA so if you did a special search on those instead of wasting time on everybody else, you would find a well-hidden box cutter and could have prevented the whole thing. But nobody learns and repeats the same mistakes again and again...
Search engines are now required to remove links to any and all illegal items, ideas or concepts. No bomb recipes. No lock picking manuals. No gay-support (homosexuality is illegal in dozens of countries), no free speech (outlawed in many countries)... Oh wait, it's only items owned by Big Corporations (tm) that gets this treatment. All other illegalities are still welcome on the search engines... Go figure.
You also don't have the right to remain silent in the UK... Basically if the police asks you: "Did you do it?" and you remain silent, you might as well have said "Yes, I did it" - it will be taken as an admission.
In my native Denmark, format shifting for personal use is legal; it's even legal to circumvent copy protection if that's the only way you can listen to the music you've purchased.
Maybe I'm just an insensitive clod but I don't find cartoons involving nuclear themes inappropriate or offensive at this point in time. Yes, I find it quite okay to poke fun at the reasons and the issues making this a lot worse than it ought to be. I mean, building nuclear plants in one of the Earth's worst earthquake zones... utterly stupid. Not maintaining them properly for 40 years... even worse. Especially considering the limitless and easily accessible thermal energy in the area. It's completely pollution free, CO2 neutral, no waste issues and as I wrote - practically limitless. I mean, the thermal energy of the Earth could easily power all the needs of a multi billion population using energy like the US does it currently for eons to come, and it would not even have a measurable effect on the available energy.
Next time they file a lawsuit like this, they'll use those made-up words that we used to use as kids. They'll sue TPB for 890 gazillionmilliontrillion dollars!
A danish Donald Duck translator invented countless words in order to translate stuff into danish in ways the kids would understand, and to describe the size of Scrooge McDuck's fortune she invented "fantasillion" (combining "fantasi" (imagination) and "million") and I would say that it should come in handy here. Or the words "bazillion" or "gazillion"... Or maybe Googolplex... Like Googolplexillions...
Slashdot Mirror
The obvious conclusion: In order to perform the perfect long-term denial of service you gain access to servers at the target company, then hack or launch a 'normal' denial of service attack on some high profile third party from there, leaving plenty of traces for the FBI to follow, then wait for the FBI to seize the servers at the real victim, causing an effective denial of service there that can't be easily alleviated or prosecuted. It's a perfect crime with the FBI as a key player.
The usual procedure is to seize the suspect servers and everything connected to it... Guess the FBI needs a bigger warehouse...
Seriously, all the unrelated companies affected by these over-raids need to join forces and sue the FBI for some serious cash, including personal liability for the agent in charge for the raid. If they win it will make any future agent in charge of raids very, very, very careful not to seize as much as an unrelated patch-cable... and that's the way it should have been from the beginning.
OMG! They were hacked from the Internet! Seize the Internet! All of it!
If not the courts strike down the very concept of seizing/stealing domain names the future of the internet is very dark indeed,
None of the laws used to justify this seizure have any moral merit. Why should a company in Spain be subject to some US customs or IP law?
The US waste enormous amounts of money on enforcing the unenforcible, like stupid gaming laws (native Americans can build and run casinos, other Americans cannot, people in the US can gamble in non-American casinos, not in casinos run by or for Americans etc.) or IP laws completely out of date made to protect a business model long obsolete.
Why don't they simply tax the casinos and make part of the taxes go to fighting gambling addiction? - And find a business model for IP that doesn't involve massive efforts in fighting the customers in various courts.
Ah. the Nikki Catsouras case... No sympathy there. Spoiled girl high on drugs steal Daddy's Porsche and drive it insanely and ends up hitting a concrete wall or similar at ridiculous high speed, getting severely smashed up in the process. The accident scene photos ends up on the net where they still are, thanks to the Streisand Effect (the more someone tries to have something removed from the net, the more it spreads). They're easy to find if you Google her name.
Her stupid antics could have killed dozens of random people but only ended up costing her her own life. It's perfectly okay to use these pictures to illustrate the dangers of drugs as she lost all rights to privacy by doing such a stupid stunt. Her parents should stop complaining about the leaked pictures and consider what they did wrong to have her ending up in bloody pieces like that, the use the efforts on educating others parents about it.
So, the only long term solution seems to be moving to stronger forms of authentication, like smart cards or using devices like smart phones as one-time password devices.
Actually, the only solution is to do away with passwords as the ONLY 'lock' on protected systems. Multi-factor authentication is the only way to go. Sure there can be a password in there (something the user KNOWS), but cracking that gets you nowhere in itself. You'll also need the access card, token or whatever the user HAS and the finger, eye or whatever biometric component that represents what the user IS.
So, with such systems you can't just steal a hash file and crack that. You'll also need to physically access the user and get his code key and his finger... As 99% of all computer crime is executed remotely, this will be efficient to stop intruders. Even social engineering is mostly done remotely over the phone. Having to get close physically means a greatly increased risk and thus chance of capture. In other words - it will be pretty efficient at keeping unwanted visitors out. This is probably why most online banks use something like this (two factors minimum) as their access security.
I must say - without having seen the broadcast - that if they attack Wikileaks on principal values it is perfectly valid to strike back.
The basic idea behind Wikileaks is that stuff that should be public knowledge - but isn't - will be.Doing this will step on some toes. It will especially be felt by those relying on security by obscurity, the need-to-know system, which is basically flawed as it by design doesn't have the outside control. The strange thing is that only the top classifications are really necessary, the rest is just there to differentiate people and to hide information that really should be known, at least by some outside controlling party. The current inside control obviously fails on many levels, revealed by the leaks, and it is completely useless as a controlling party.
Assange may be weird, eccentric or just a pervert - but it isn't relevant here. Wikileaks is not Assange, just as Assange is not Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a democratic necessity, going beyond any one person. It is perfectly valid to do hacks do defend this.
Windows 7 time is buggy. It actually worked in Vista but seems broken in Windows 7.
I switched servers and update interval (which worked perfectly in Vista on at least two different machines) and now the service only works once or twice before crashing. De-registering and re-registering it is required before it can be restarted and then it again only works briefly.
I then disabled Windows Time completely and installed a Windows port of ntpd... It works perfectly - and keeps doing so.
Outlawing symbols only makes whose symbols interesting and 'forbidden'... Stupid, stupid, stupid...
About headscarves, the trouble is what it is used for and why. Nobody wants to outlaw turbans despite every male Sikh wearing one.
Now, turbans are mandatory according to the Sikh belief but nowhere in the Koran is there anything about headscaves and more than half of the worlds female Muslim community does not wear any form of headscarves either. It is clearly a question of culture, not religion. The headscarves were exceedingly common a long time before Islam and was adapted as part of the 'uniform' just like what we today consider the dress code for Orthodox Jews or the Amish for that matter. It is not a religious requirement as such but just something they do in order to stand out and signal their religious affiliation. Similar with headscarves.
Most people agree that wearing this 'uniform' isn't always voluntary. Especially for Muslim girls there's massive pressure from both family and the community. Muslim boys seem to be taught that girls without headscarves are sluts, whores or worse so they react strongly if their sister doesn't want to wear a headscarf. A ban frees the girls from this pressure and from that point of view it is a very good thing.
Now, the Muslim culture also holds some limitations for girls in their interaction with men. That this is sexist is blatantly obvious because no similar limits exist for men in their interaction with women. These limitations tend to hinder headscarf-wearing girls from getting work, mostly due to misunderstandings, but it's still there. Also, some businesses refuse to allow their staff to send signals to the customers, neither political nor religious. And that's where the headscarf becomes a problem because sending a signal is what it is for. If it was a matter of covering their hair, why not wear a wig? - It covers your hair and yet you still look like everybody else and you will blend just fine. But no. It is not about covering the hair but rather about sending the signal that you're a devout Muslim.
So which standard are you using? Is nudity okay for your children as many Europeans would claim or is violence okay as many Americans would claim?
Well, both is fine actually. Countless studies have shown that players of violent computer games are not over-represented in jails neither in the US nor in Europe. Similar, the rate of violent crime with a sexual aspect (rape etc.) is actually much lower in most European countries than in the US, despite porn (even hardcore porn) being freely available in any convenience store and from specialized porn shops (featuring dildos, butt-plugs and sex dolls, as well as hardcore magazines in the window exhibit) in particular.
It seems that its a myth that porn turns people into rapists and violent games turns people into mindless violent thugs. It is obviously not true and we need to stop censoring everything accordingly because censorship without cause is just plain censorship and thus plain wrong, no exceptions.
Most Kindle users I know of are geeks/nerds, just like me. I had Calibre installed and busy doing conversions within 24 hours of unpacking my Kindle.
About 99% of the content on my Kindle was found on the net and converted to .mobi - but I own a paper version of each and every title, in some cases more than one, so in my book I have more than paid for the right to read those titles electronically, especially since the electronic versions usually only cost a fraction of the paper versions, and I did pay the high paper price.
It is obvious and has been so forever, even for wired connections.
Most (all?) standard Internet connections today gives you one IP per household, and inside each a number of private IP's are issued to the devices that request an IP. They all share the public IP. Now, households with just one person exist of course but most have more than one person and usually also more than one device that's using the Internet connection. Seen from the outside is it completely impossible to determine who in the household made any given request or announcement.
And don't get me started on outsiders abusing the connection without permission, either through open Wifi, hacking the Wifi or simply by running a 'secret' cable into an unseen switch. I've even heard of someone breaking into a nearby house to install an unauthorized wireless AP to be used by the intruder like the 'secret' cable but without the obvious cable revealing 'who did it'.
Now, you cannot prosecute a household, only specific people. But you cannot determine from the outside who was behind any action on the Internet so you cannot put a name on the offense. You can also not knowingly accuse an innocent of something (one committed the offense, everybody else is innocent), nor can you say that the Internet connection was used with permission, thus putting a name on someone 'responsible', so in essence you cannot use any log just showing an IP as any kind of 'proof' of someone in particular committing something, as you need a specific person to prosecute.
Thankfully the court have ruled in favor of this obvious fact.
It's just next to impossible to use the law as it is.
To me however it is very simple: A website can trivially obtain permission from the user for the site's own cookies. An advertiser needs to get opt-in consent before sending a cookie as it is unfeasible to obtain permission as you go. Basically this can be done in a simple way: A visitor to a site featuring ads from the advertiser will see nothing to requests to decide whether to accept cookies or not until this decision is made. The result is stored in a cookie which they need permission for as well. Now when sending ads the decision cookie is checked and if the answer is yes, the ads are sent with the tracking cookies, and if no, they are sent with no cookies.
This will obviously result in a lot of people saying no to the tracking cookies but that is as it should be. Tracking someone should only be done with consent.
As nice as distributions are when it comes to automated package handling and updating, as potentially disastrous are they when it comes to compatibility... we've had 'old' webservers being upgraded as they go, including to newer distributions when they became available, but unfortunately the morons developing PHP (among others) quite often break backward compatibility, thus rendering countless sites broken when you upgrade. Worst has been the upgrade from Debian Lenny (PHP 5.2.*) to Debian Squeeze (PHP 5.3.*) because it turns out that a lot of commercial stuff (shops, message boards etc.) simply doesn't work under PHP 5.3. But if you skip upgrading due to PHP you'll get stuck with apache 2.2.9 in as opposed to 2.2.16...
Lots of stuff is toxic in both too high amounts and too low amounts... Too little water will (among other things) do the same as an overdose of NaCl and vice versa. It messes with the so-called 'Sodium Pump' that is critical to the whole cellular nutrition exchange. It won't kill you fast but it will make you seriously ill. Too much NaCl will also mess with blood pressure and can result in malignant hypertension if left untreated (eating way too much salt for a long time can trigger it) and that can - untreated - result in strokes, clots, heart attacks and what have you - basically unpleasant stuff that is likely to disable or kill you.
Actually we should care a lot more about salt than sugar. It is a much worse killer by far (even taking obesity into consideration) and there are ways to lessen the impact. One row down from Na in the periodic table we find K, and its chloride KCl is also salty in taste. It is much more rare in nature than NaCl and thus more expensive, but it can be used as a salt substitute. It does the opposite to the blood pressure compared to table salt but to a lesser extent. Replacing table salt with a combination of mostly KCl and a little NaCl should be ideal, blood pressure wise. But we still need some NaCl for the Sodium Pump so we can't leave out NaCl completely.
Oh, and about sugar - it a common misunderstanding that sugar is fattening. Sure, the body can convert sugar into fat but it is an expensive process that the body won't use unless it has no choice. The issue is that when both fats and sugar are available, the body takes the sugar for immediate energy and stores almost all the fat in the fatty tissues. The fat is stored to a lesser extent without the presence of sugar (because some is broken down for energy) so you can say that sugar makes fat more fattening... Now, most obese people tend to eat food with lots of fat and wash it down with lots of sugar filled sodas, and that is a really bad combination. Additionally most of the fast food these obese people eat is also extremely salty which both trigger even more soda drinking, as well as raising the already high blood pressure (obesity in itself is a major cause of hypertension)... a disaster waiting to happen.
Isn't the issue with solar power that the panels require some extremely rare metals that are quite harmful to the environment to produce?
As for the number of solar panels and windmills per square mile, it comes from a fairly simple calculation I did some years ago. Basically you take the energy used in a year for industry, transport (both cars, ships and planes) and homes, and divide by the total land area of the Earth (yes, I know you can put mills out into coastal waters) in square miles. Now you have the need per square mile, and just just have to look up the efficiency of a good solar panel or windmill, and find how many it takes to satisfy the need per square mile. Now, those are current numbers based on a very small amount of the global population being truly 'civilized' with cars, home appliances and so on. If you upgrade all 6-7 billion to this level, you need to multiply by a significant factor.
So, in order to replace all use of fossile fuels with solar and wind power, this is the number. Sure both mills and panels may become more effecient, but the need for energy per person may also need to be adjusted upwards, so on average the requirement for mills and panels will remain relatively constant.
Now, I don't know how far we are with the 2. generation geothermal energy systems, but from what I've read it's the optimal power source. It's super-abundant, inexhaustible and extremely safe with no pollution or waste. It simply takes advantage of the temperature difference between the surface and a few miles down, and does not like the current geothermal energy plants need to be located on the geological hot-spots. Placing a plant there would actually be less advisable as the underground simply is too hot for safe use. The energy comes from the hot core of the earth, which gets its heat mostly from tidal forces. But those tidal forces see the earth as a simple object, so using the heat by moving it elsewhere on it will not interact with the tidal system and thus the energy will never run out as long as the sun and the moon does what they've always done. We're just using energy that was previously lost.
Last, but not least, such plants can be placed completely underground thus removing the visual and auditory pollution all the windmills (and to some degree the solar panel farms) represent. People living near other peoples windmills often complain about both the constantly moving wings and their shadows and the deep but powerful infra-sound the generators in the mills generate. The people owning the mills usually just accept the discomfort for idealistic purposes.
Actually, less than 0.01% of any building or construction is wholly original. Most have zero original content. The rest just COPIES what others have done before, from components to styles, methods and design. Bricks are nothing but copies of 'the master brick' invented by someone a long time ago. Walls are built of bricks using methods and designs copied from those invented by others a long time ago. Same with roofs, windows, doors and so on. EVERYTHING is done as copies (partial or in full) of things done before.
Lego's express this most clearly. Each brick is a precise copy of a master brick, and while they can be combined into very unique and clever designs, nothing would exist without the bricks - which are copies.
Please don't be stupid... The essense is not whether we can affect the climate (we can) but whether there is a climate change beyond the normal caused by humans. Currently we're seeing an unparalled scare campaign by the UN and some environmental organizations based on the same data that three decades ago showed an iceage approaching... And we've just had the two coldest winters in decades/centuries here in Europe (and Northern America)... So much for global warming. IMHO of course.
If we are to replace fossile fuels it must in favor of something truly long-lasting. Forget solar power and wind as they're both unreliable and requires so many windmills and solar farms just to cover our current needs that every square mile of the Earth will be filled with them. Only fusion (water into power) and geothermal works in the long run and both still needs a lot of development to be practical or usable at all. Both will use 'plants' to manufacture the energy so the current transmission infrastructure can be used. But they're not ready yet so there's no need to rush things.
What about rising water levels? Well, if they don't rise like a flood there's no need to panic. Just move away from the affected areas and things will be fine.
You can't fight them.
Some decades ago the typesetters here in Denmark went on strike because their jobs were threatened by computers. Several other unions joined, demanding laws banning computers, robots and similar technological means to replace laborers. They lost of course but to me growing up at that time it showed just how reactionary people are to change - even change for the better.
Typesetters worked with lead and got poisoned (slowly) by it. Making it obsolete was actually a good thing. It was heavy work, always at night, and while it required some skill it was a pretty dull job. But the unions demanded that the times should stop changing instead of working with the management to find replacement work, maybe even work that was both safer and better paid. But no, change was evil and threatened the status quo.
You can't fight change. You can only adapt or be left behind. It doesn't matter of the change is for good or for bad. It's there and it's going to happen.
Sure, right now iPads can be manufactured cheaply in the far east, but all the business they're getting now will result in change there too, and the costs will go up there as well. Supply and demand. At some point there will be nowhere left on Earth where you can place a production and have people work for starvation wages and thus save a lot of money. Then costs are equal and it's back to skill as to who gets to build the next big thing.
But right now there's no need for iPad builders in the US. So people need to find something else to do. Either join the businesses already there or think of something new. Maybe it will be the next big thing?
Now, back in the day of the typesetters strike I actually did a report for school on "automatisering" (replacing manual labor with machines) and it turns out that while a dozen typesetters lost their job at a newspaper, it required twice as many people to install, maintain, repair and upgrade the electronic systems replacing the typesetters, not to mention develop the software for them. So the change resulted in more jobs, not less. Jobs elsewhere in other trades of course but still jobs. The newspapers didn't save money on this, but it gave them almost unlimited flexibility, a much later deadline and the possibility of a more direct workflow.
I much prefer background profiling only, as opposed to the rigorous checks they now perform on everybody. It would have caught all the 9/11 terrorists, something none of the methods in use today would.
I take it personally when they check me, as should everybody else. If they want to check me, they're actively accusing me of being a terrorist and I cannot accept that. I demand an apology and the exact reason why I specifically should be checked. Arguing that they check everybody is equivalent to saying that everybody is a suspected terrorist and that is of course absurd. Of course people get annoyed when they are accused of being terrorists, and even more so when you have to subject to comical and invasive searches that you know have no purpose.
Yes, the screenings are completely useless. They just hassle people as an act in their ridiculous security theater. Not only will the scanning miss countless types of dangerous materials (undetectable by the technology), but the scanners will miss most of the stuff it is supposed to detect anyway (75-80%). They just don't work. Oh, and the terrorists knows this.
The TSA has only two purposes:
1) To make people believe 'something is being done'. Stupidity for the stupid people.
2) To pave the way for even more intrusive methods, both at airports and elsewhere. Soon you might be stopped on the road and subject to a TSA search because you might be carrying a bomb in the trunk... and you have to prove you're innocent because the TSA has 'strong indicators' that you are guilty. Welcome to the police state.
This is the core issue - power-crazed TSA agents randomly abusing travellers. Until they do a major cleanup in TSA ranks I'm not going anywhere near a US border. I've visited the US many times in the past, the last in 2001 just after 9/11 but no more. Walking through the old metal detector was bordering on too much already and the searches they do now are way beyond my tolerance. Search those flagged by intelligence for it, not everybody. Let everybody else alone.
After all, what happened on 9/11 can still happen today as the current methods are unlikely to find a well-hidden carbon fiber box cutter which won't set off metal detectors either. But all 19 hijackers were flagged by FBI and/or CIA and/or NSA so if you did a special search on those instead of wasting time on everybody else, you would find a well-hidden box cutter and could have prevented the whole thing. But nobody learns and repeats the same mistakes again and again...
Search engines are now required to remove links to any and all illegal items, ideas or concepts. No bomb recipes. No lock picking manuals. No gay-support (homosexuality is illegal in dozens of countries), no free speech (outlawed in many countries)... Oh wait, it's only items owned by Big Corporations (tm) that gets this treatment. All other illegalities are still welcome on the search engines... Go figure.
UK is well on the way to becoming a police state.
You also don't have the right to remain silent in the UK... Basically if the police asks you: "Did you do it?" and you remain silent, you might as well have said "Yes, I did it" - it will be taken as an admission.
In my native Denmark, format shifting for personal use is legal; it's even legal to circumvent copy protection if that's the only way you can listen to the music you've purchased.
Maybe I'm just an insensitive clod but I don't find cartoons involving nuclear themes inappropriate or offensive at this point in time. Yes, I find it quite okay to poke fun at the reasons and the issues making this a lot worse than it ought to be. I mean, building nuclear plants in one of the Earth's worst earthquake zones... utterly stupid. Not maintaining them properly for 40 years... even worse. Especially considering the limitless and easily accessible thermal energy in the area. It's completely pollution free, CO2 neutral, no waste issues and as I wrote - practically limitless. I mean, the thermal energy of the Earth could easily power all the needs of a multi billion population using energy like the US does it currently for eons to come, and it would not even have a measurable effect on the available energy.
Next time they file a lawsuit like this, they'll use those made-up words that we used to use as kids. They'll sue TPB for 890 gazillionmilliontrillion dollars!
A danish Donald Duck translator invented countless words in order to translate stuff into danish in ways the kids would understand, and to describe the size of Scrooge McDuck's fortune she invented "fantasillion" (combining "fantasi" (imagination) and "million") and I would say that it should come in handy here. Or the words "bazillion" or "gazillion"... Or maybe Googolplex... Like Googolplexillions...