Excuse me, but I really can't see the problem. In every corporate setup I've ever seen all employees have a phone sitting on their desk. Almost all these phones are fully connected to the outside world, i.e. lines out are not restricted. It really doesn't matter which phone or communication device that are used - secrets will get out regardless if someone is bent on doing so, and Skype isn't anything special in that regard.
Sure monitoring is easier on wired phones but the main concern must be to contain secrets, i.e. prevent the leak. Finding out that it happened and who did it is also interesting but that would help only in damage control and punishment, not in prevention. In these days where cell phones and other wireless devices are everywhere, focus must be on preventing access to the secrets, not preventing communication of the secrets to the outside world - because this last option borders on the almost impossible.
Actually SpamHaus does make mistakes, especially with listings that come from the people around the most mismanaged DNSBL of them all: SPEWS.
I worked for a company that got its IP-space listed on SPEWS due to the fact that we hosted a subsidiary of a company with another subsidirary that actively spammed. Soon after the SPEWS listing a SpamHaus listing appeared, clearly based on the SPEWS listing. No spam was ever sent from our network, nor was a single spamvertised website hosted there, but the listing was there regardless.
That issue was quickly resolved (back in 2002) and SpamHaus soon delisted the network as the 'offender' was clearly gone. SPEWS refused, demanding full disclosure of contractual and financial information before even considering a re-evaluation of the listing, which we either don't have or cannot release for obvious reasons. So the listing remains.
The good thing was that SpamHaus delisted quickly but I don't like the fact that they based a listing on a downright incorrect SPEWS listing.
Compared to SPEWS SpamHaus is reliable and fairly decent. Of course, anything is that, compared to the extreme vigilate overkill practised by SPEWS, making their 'service' completely useless as it lists about 1/10th of the entire IPv4 space, of which less than 0.001% are actively involved in spamming on any level.
Looks like Grandma and her illegal downloads of the "Happy Birthday" song can rest easy once again.
Rest easy... hehe! - That surely includes the dead grandmas that RIAA also sued... I mean, being dead is in no way a hinderance to filesharing in their opinion. Go figure.
It's out there in plain sight - just read MPAA's press announcement where they praise the raid and say that they worked closely with the US government and the Swedish government to make it happen.
Sure it was Swedish police that executed the raid, but as there's no legal foundation for the raid (it was previously determined by the Swedish attorney general that TPB couldn't be shut down or procecuted through current laws), it came about through direct government pressure on the police, something which is highly illegal in most democratic countries and thus has caused two members of the Swedish parliament to impeach the minister of justice who did the pressuring. And one have to be exceptionally stupid to believe that the minister did it all on his own accord, especially after his paid-by-MPAA visit to MPAA just last month...
Pointing someone to a computer that has a chunk of a file is indirect. Giving them that chunk is direct.
Also your example fails, because giving someone a file will not be contributory infringement, it will be direct infringement, in the form of distribution.
No, it's you that fails, fails at actually reading what you're responding to. Or maybe you're clueless as to how BitTorrent works....
The portal (The Pirate Bay or similar) gives you a webpage featuring links to torrent files. These files does not contain a single bit of copyrighted information, nor do they point to any. They point to someone that claims to a have one or more chunks of what may be copyrighted information (not known until these chunks are assembled). As TPB only point to something that points to something that points to chunks of something that may be copyrighted, there's no way any sane person can call this 'direct'. It is extremely indirect, if anything.
If you actually manage to cook up some legislation that truly bans BitTorrent portals like TPB, you'll have banned Google and every other search engine out there as well. It is trivial to use Google to fetch exabytes of copyrighted stuff, but so far they've lived in a grey area because it has been held that search engines are not responsible for what they link to, including direct links actually. TPB did not link to anything illegal at all because the torrent files they link to contain nothing copyrighted.
I, for one, am extremely happy to see The Pirate Bay back online again. Not that I use it much, it's the principle that the highly illegal attempt at shutting them down using cooked-up warrants, methods and overkill usually associated with fascist police states, failed miserably. They're back and their activities were only set back two days.
I hope that when the legal repercussions of that raid are settled, TPB moves back to Sweden where it will be protected against repeats due to the fallout of this affair. The raid itself was illegal, the minister of justice's involvement in the warrant was highly illegal and the execution of the raid was a massive abuse of power, complete with the covered cameras, 200 servers removed without warrant, and the refusal of the police to comment to the press on the many issues at hand.
The Ombudsman of Justice has decided to launch an investigation to determine if there were any wrongdoings in the raid, including whether the swedish government pressured the police to take action.
Wrongdoings in the raid? - How about the fact that TPB wasn't breaking any swedish law?
Sure, they provoked just about everybody but that's squarely within the freedom of expression. As to TPB aiding in copyright infringements, they were aiding about as much as google or any other seach engine would. They were just a specialized search engine that happened to return a lot of results pointing to copyrighted materials. What people did with the results of those searches was entirely up to themselves and if they decided to download, that's where the only laws would be broken.
Also, TPB seems to be back in full again, although they currently have some database issues:
Lost connection to MySQL server during query in/var/tracker/www/include/database.inc.php on line 21 [Database problems] We're experiencing some issues with the database. Please try again soon.
Hopefully they will be resolved soon so we can get back to pointing fingers (the stiff middle finger kind) at the incredibly stupid swedish police, MPAA and all those other power abusers.
It is necessary to use something that can be used in a non-deniable (regular) mode as well is in deniable mode. If you use Windows or Linux, I recommend the open source TrueCrypt [truecrypt.org].
Exactly. Using TrueCrypt you have an encrypted container where you for instance can keep your credit card numbers, password lists and other sensitive stuff. It can also contain a hidden volume which can contain the real secrets. If you read the writeup on this, you'll see that there's absolutely no way you can prove the existence of the hidden volume in the unused space of the primary container because all free space in any volume (hidden or otherwise) can be scrambled (actually it's random data encrypted) so that no analysis can see the difference between this encrypted garbage and the encrypted data of the hidden volume. This is called plausible deniability. With TrueCrypt you can even hide a volume inside a hidden volume, hidden inside a hidden volume etc.
I'm using TrueCrypt obviously and I'm not telling whether there's something hidden inside the free space on my encrypted disks...;)
The more affluent areas of every city will be filled with cameras that anyone can monitor. Crime will simply be displaced to the non-CCTV areas. Meanwhile, the public will gradually be getting used to the concept of never expecting to be able to go totally unobserved. The way will be paved for ever deeper intrusions into individuals' lives.
Now, think about this: Do you really notice those cameras at the bank, in the bus or train or whereever they have been for a while? - Well, here in Denmark almost all trains and buses are equipped with cameras in order to prevent vandalism, and people just don't notice them anymore. This includes the vandals like the bozo who tagged away at the back of a bus on the way to his school. The camera caught it all including where he got off the bus. A few days later he was identified by his principal and billed for the damages (as alternative to fighting it in court).
It is impossible to enter a bus or a train or train station without being recorded and this cuts down a lot on the crimes committed there - and help solve crimes elsewhere as well. We've had murderers and rapists caught on tape, providing a timestamp and location fix that kills fake alibis and even show the the rape victim and her stalker just prior to the rape.
These cameras are very closed, the recording are only viewed when there's an incident requiring it. But people go about their business not noticing them and only people doing something serious enough to mandate a look at the recordings may notice them.
So, if a system is as closed as this, I don't mind cameras being everywhere. Human time is precious and expensive and nobody will waste time (and money) on studying a law-abiding citizen going about his daily business. Only those breaking the law will have something to fear, and if the society is a well-oiled democracy with a judicial system that's fair and just, there's no reason for anybody to break the law in any serious way.
This includes the bozos that don't respect democracy and want a minority to decide a policy or similar (civil disobedience). There's no excuse for not going through the motions of advocating the issue through regular channels and drumming up support that way, changing the policy through the democratic way of a majority vote. Just because you feel very deeply that you're right about something doesn't justify you - as a minority - to dictate the issue against the will of the majority. That's a form of fascism actually (minority rule).
Well livejournal does need to pay for their bandwidth and running costs right?
With ad blockers getting more and more prevalent and sometimes getting installed by default with some firewall software, it might get problematic for websites depending on ad revenue.
Although I guess peopl installing ad blockers on their own, probably would just ignore the ads anyway.
Yeah! - The reson why I've been using ad-blockers (often more than one at the same time) ever since the first banner ads progressed from a simple static image to animated flashing monsters, was that they were too distracting to live with. Later came pop-ups, pop-unders, circle-jerk scripting and worse and that made everybody take notice and include blocking in browsers out of the box.
I don't mind text-only ads or the static banners. As I've also got an animation killer (also kills flash) in my browser, most animated ads gets muted pretty well.
It's my opinion that services running in parallel with a real life service shouldn't need to use ads online. A good example are newspapers that IMHO should make all their money on the paper version (ads + retail) and offer the online version for free (perhaps with some paper-subscriber-only content) with no ads.
It the issue with the bad experience most of us have when visiting a movie theater directly related to the crappy staff (minimum-wage PFYs) that just don't give a damn?
I mean at the insane prices they charge these days there should be enough money to hire some decent staff that will set the sound at the correct level, focus the projector, reject obvious troublemakers at the door and of course make people shut up during the show or throw them out with an optional refund for everybody else (paid for by the morons being thrown out naturally).
Also a better cleaning between shows would be a very nice thing.
So, if they have to charge those high prices they should make it a luxury experience instead of the discount one we get now. That way more people would go.
But if something is not copyright infringement to start with, it doesn't matter if you turn copyright infringement criminal or not.
Exactly!
Linking to a URL which doesn't point directly to a copyrighted file cannot by any reason be considered infringing. Because if it is then all links on the entire are infringing because nothing is more than an average of 6 clicks away, including every illegal file on the net.
Making the act of linking to copyright infringements illegal is like making this statement illegal: "You can find unbelievably cheap tv's at name-of-bar". Why should it be legal to point people in the direction of stolen goods (result of real theft) but not in the direction of copyright infringements?
If some people who use cell phones weren't ASSHOLES about how they use them, it woudn't be a problem...
Then take your frustrations out on them, not everybody!
It's kind of tragic, that almost none of those jerks abusing the cell phone in sensitive places really need their cell phone there, while those that really needs their cell phone always seem to be extremely considerate (using silent mode, not replying until outside etc.)... but it's the wrong people this thing hurts.
As one of those that need my cell phone, things like this will force me to take my business elsewhere.
So by the same reasoning would concrete bunkers deep underground be illegal?
Nope, because you have no expectation about the availability of cell phone service in such a place.
In a regular building in the middle of a city, you'd expect cell phone coverage so some extent, and thus blocking all signal should be illegal unless clearly stated on signs everywhere, including at the entrance. This way people that need cell phone coverage can avoid doing business with cell phone unfriendly establishments.
It's quite simple: Make sure that people cannot get to hardware they're not administrators of! - If someone can touch the hardware, they can get at the information inside with some tools, so make that impossible.
Own PC's? - Shouldn't be a problem provided they're properly configured, preferably with USB-ports locked out unless in use for keyboard/mouse, and with P&P disabled so new hardware added to these ports won't be installed.
Servers? - Should be in locked racks/rooms, not dumped in corners of common rooms.
Restricted physical access will also make it inpossible to 'borrow' a harddrive home for copying or wharever.
It also happens to be a great way for anonymous pedophiles to surf kiddie porn without having their IP exposed. All they have to do is impersonate web-deprived Chinese surfers.
This is quickly turning out to be a new twist on Godwin's Law on usenet discussions always degrading into namecalling and nazi references: Any/. discussion on privacy and/or free speech will degrade to the point where someone will invoke 'The Pedophile Threat' - i.e. 'pedophiles can use this to evade detection' or similar.
Come on and face it. Pedophiles are not the greatest threat to mankind. They've always been around and as long as they keep to the net, no children are physically harmed. Stop limiting everybodys freedom on the net in order to make some often rather futile moves against online pedophiles. Use all those misspent efforts to go after the real life pedophiles and those helping them (sleezeball photographers making kiddie porn etc.). This will do much more in preventing harm to children and it will cut off the feed of kiddie porn at the source.
A much bigger threat to mankind are the repressive regimes bent on controlling how people think. Making it possible for free thought and expression to spread and flourish and thus paving the way for those regimes to fall, are far more important than preventing a few pedophiles from sharing their filth.
This is why software like this is nessesary and why the risk of abuse by pedophiles, nazis and other 'undesirables' is an acceptable risk.
Well, as most experts agree, it wasn't much of a choice. The alternative was so bad that a lot of democrats actually voted for Bush to avoid Kerry. Of course there were also republicans that voted for Kerry to avoid Bush, but the Kerry off-factor combined with the Michael Moore effect ensured that Bush won.
Hopefully next time the democrats picks one that actually has a decent chance of winning and no dark past that can be lied about or otherwise abused. Because with no real choice there's no democracy, and for some reason the democrats chose to run with an unelectable candidate, reducing the election to something eerily like the Saddam regime for instance... Although those not voting for Bush wasn't imprisoned or summarily executed as the norm used to be in Iraq when voting for Saddam.
As a network manager I'm against Skype. If a problem appears (eg some nasty exploit) then it's going to be like pulling bamboo out of the garden. The only safe method to isolate an organisation is effectively to cut the link to the Internet.
Wrong! - That would be overkill and will only serve as an unsubstantiated threat to bully people into not using Skype without posting a serious argument.
Get real, people. All Skype's ports are well documented and easily verifiable and any serious organization has a central firewall, so just block all traffic on these ports there and Skype is dead. I can do that using just one line of pf-rule so it really isn't hard at all.
You can even go a step futher and block everything except whitelisted ports, maybe even linked to specific IP's. This way there will be no backdoors regardless of how many trojans stupid lusers install on their Windoze boxes. We have used this for years and the few vira that made it though mailscanners were all harmless when it came to external access. Sure the boxes needed a re-install just to be safe but no hackers gained entry, nor was a single spam ever sent out (smtp is of course only allowed to the corporate mailservers (running FreeBSD), and only they can send and receive from the outside world).
No, this article has but one purpose: Scaring management from abandoning expensive big business-run communications in favour of cheaper/free alternatives. The security implications of Skype are no worse than any other closed-source software, the most common OS being one of the worst in itself.
My school states that rules apply during the term and during break, on campus or off. I think they shouldn't have that rule and of course, there is no real way to keep track of what happens during the breaks but they do state it in the rulebook.
Well, they can state whatever they want but cannot legally enforce them off-campus for students not appearing on behalf on the school. When you're off-campus in private you're only subject to the normal laws and regulations, and only if the school has a rule stating that any infraction against the law will cause local disciplinary action, can they do anything.
I suggest breaking those rules in private while staying clearly within the law and then sue the school for everything they got (and then some) if they're stupid enough to expel you. It's easy money and it jusy might teach them a lesson. Warning: It might take a few years if the case needs to go through several appeals, but it's a sure win because only the lawgivers can set rules for conduct on public ground when you're there as a private citizen. You cannot sign away your personal rights out of school just by attending a school in the daytime. Only special case here in the armed services and we're not talking about anything down that alley.
"On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely."
What is it with those regional codes?! - Even tamper-proof drives will not prevent you from simply having a second player coded for another region at your disposal. THEY WILL NEVER WORK!!!
They need to think global and market their releases globally at every step (cinema, tv, home) instead of a local offset of several months. It will seriously cut down on piracy in itself and eliminate the need for stupid thing like regional codes.
Besides, even with advanced call-home systems people will simply buy a black box from some non-DRM country that will filter the call-home communication and thus allow modified players unrestricted use, similar to the region code killers available today.
At some point these corporations will have to realize that the many gazillions thrown into development of protection schemes and bribes/lobbying for more DRM is a waste of money because they all get defeated almost before they are ready to be put into use.
I some ways I understand this senator... The UN is an obsolete monster that feeds on insane amounts of money and left wing people's naïvity. So far the US seems to have done a decent job running the Internet, while the UN have failed miserably in the primary task it was created for: Preserving World Peace.
A few years ago the US tried - and failed - to get the UN to do something serious about this warmonger sitting in Baghdad making fun of the UN with a history of attacking three neighbouring countries (Iran, Kuwait and Israel) and mass-exterminating certain segments of his own population (sounds a lot like nazi-germany, right? - the very thing that inspired the creation of the UN).
The UN could only agree to disagree internally, and the US was thus forced to act alone (with the support of a few allies that agreed on the principle that warmongering dictators should be removed with any means nessesary) and still the UN fails to step in and help defeat the Baathists and the Al-Queda wannabees that use Iraq as a violent playground, and thus create the peace that it was founded to create and promote.
I've blocked ads ever since the very first simple static banner ads. I use whatever utilities are available to do so, currently The Proxomitron, Privoxy and FireFox' AdBlock, in order to get a completely ad-free surfing experience.
Why? - Because I'm an old enough Internet user (since 1988) to remember the good old days where the net held information and just that. No stupid sales pitches (especially no spam) and no irrelevant junk in newsgroups or webpages (when they began around 1992). I want that back and by blocking ads I can almost get there when we're talking about webpages.
I've heard many people whine that blocking ads deprive businesses of income. That's a load of bull! - It all comes down to chosing the right business model. Make your site a paysite or finance it through the real life business. Ads are never truly nessesary. I've run webpages since 1992 and they've all been completely ad-free. Donations or percentages of real life sales (site for downloading own shareware) was used and that was enough. It still is. I even host friends' sites for free because there's enough resources to do that. Yes, here information truly is free...:)
These days ads are everywhere and they intrude more and more. They've also become more and more stupid ("Your computer is at risk!" - no it isn't, because I patch and use antivirus and antispyware leaps and bounds better than the junk advertised). Drop that business model and get real! - Some of us have had enough a long time ago!
Okay, right from the start, the headline is an editorial via the use of the term "victim."
A most well-chosen word! - Anyone on the receiving end of RIAA/MPAA's lawsuits are most certainly victims. It doesn't matter whether this victim brought it upon themselves or not, but the kind of threats these lawsuit include raises everything from a simple legal matter to pure blackmail, and that's most certainly a trademark of organinized crime.
Now you make several other factual errors, the most blatant is equalling P2P with piracy. First of all, there is no theft! - Nobody loses anything. It's copyright infringement.
It is also a myth that every illegal download equals a lost sale. Studies have clearly shown that these downloads only rarely substitudes a purchase. There's a lot of sneak previews (purchase follows later or the download is deleted), deleted titles (a re-release would have been purchased if available) and similar, and the total loss is less than 5% of downloads.
What is more important still is that some people see file sharing as a political statement against greedy corporations that wallow in cash, cocaine and so on, ripping the talent off big time. How come the profit per sold CD is ten times higher for the label than for the artists? - and don't even get me stated on movies!
So, the reply to the question posed in your subject is: No, it's not biased at all. But your post may be one of the more blatant flamebaits seen in quite a while. There's precious few supporters here of greedy big corporation that have no problems suing the smallest person with no real means for obscene amounts of money.
As opposed to the RIAA's original suggestion: "ALERT! ALERT! You are engaging in CRIMINAL ACTIVITY! Stop now or we'll sue you for everything you've got!"
No, no... The original RIAA suggestion was:
"ALERT! - You are about to STEAL copyrighted material! - This is a CRIMINAL ACTIVITY which can cost you everything you got and then something. We have already logged your IP and you can expect our auditors to pay you a visit soon as we're convinced that you must have commited other copyright-related CRIMES that can prosecute and sue you for. Have a nice day."
It should also be fairly trivial to create a filter that will block all infrared light coming from the inside of the camera, something like a one-way-mirror for infrared light. It can enter (and be captured as part of the light balance of the scene you're photographing) but any reflection is severely impeeded. And no obvious reflection, no punishing light beam.
If the filter (mounted inside the camera) shouldn't reflect the light directly back into the camera, it can be reflected off to the side using a prism system like the one used for the optics in the classic SLR cameras.
Another alternative would be to flood the scene with light of the same wavelength as the 'scanner light', thus completely washing out any reflection and thus making the device useless.
Paparazzi Shields for famous celebrities. It's like a force field!... except that this only works against digital cameras and there's still analogue paparazzi out there...;)
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Excuse me, but I really can't see the problem. In every corporate setup I've ever seen all employees have a phone sitting on their desk. Almost all these phones are fully connected to the outside world, i.e. lines out are not restricted. It really doesn't matter which phone or communication device that are used - secrets will get out regardless if someone is bent on doing so, and Skype isn't anything special in that regard.
Sure monitoring is easier on wired phones but the main concern must be to contain secrets, i.e. prevent the leak. Finding out that it happened and who did it is also interesting but that would help only in damage control and punishment, not in prevention. In these days where cell phones and other wireless devices are everywhere, focus must be on preventing access to the secrets, not preventing communication of the secrets to the outside world - because this last option borders on the almost impossible.
Actually SpamHaus does make mistakes, especially with listings that come from the people around the most mismanaged DNSBL of them all: SPEWS.
I worked for a company that got its IP-space listed on SPEWS due to the fact that we hosted a subsidiary of a company with another subsidirary that actively spammed. Soon after the SPEWS listing a SpamHaus listing appeared, clearly based on the SPEWS listing. No spam was ever sent from our network, nor was a single spamvertised website hosted there, but the listing was there regardless.
That issue was quickly resolved (back in 2002) and SpamHaus soon delisted the network as the 'offender' was clearly gone. SPEWS refused, demanding full disclosure of contractual and financial information before even considering a re-evaluation of the listing, which we either don't have or cannot release for obvious reasons. So the listing remains.
The good thing was that SpamHaus delisted quickly but I don't like the fact that they based a listing on a downright incorrect SPEWS listing.
Compared to SPEWS SpamHaus is reliable and fairly decent. Of course, anything is that, compared to the extreme vigilate overkill practised by SPEWS, making their 'service' completely useless as it lists about 1/10th of the entire IPv4 space, of which less than 0.001% are actively involved in spamming on any level.
Looks like Grandma and her illegal downloads of the "Happy Birthday" song can rest easy once again.
Rest easy... hehe! - That surely includes the dead grandmas that RIAA also sued... I mean, being dead is in no way a hinderance to filesharing in their opinion. Go figure.
It's out there in plain sight - just read MPAA's press announcement where they praise the raid and say that they worked closely with the US government and the Swedish government to make it happen.
Sure it was Swedish police that executed the raid, but as there's no legal foundation for the raid (it was previously determined by the Swedish attorney general that TPB couldn't be shut down or procecuted through current laws), it came about through direct government pressure on the police, something which is highly illegal in most democratic countries and thus has caused two members of the Swedish parliament to impeach the minister of justice who did the pressuring. And one have to be exceptionally stupid to believe that the minister did it all on his own accord, especially after his paid-by-MPAA visit to MPAA just last month...
No, it's you that fails, fails at actually reading what you're responding to. Or maybe you're clueless as to how BitTorrent works....
The portal (The Pirate Bay or similar) gives you a webpage featuring links to torrent files. These files does not contain a single bit of copyrighted information, nor do they point to any. They point to someone that claims to a have one or more chunks of what may be copyrighted information (not known until these chunks are assembled). As TPB only point to something that points to something that points to chunks of something that may be copyrighted, there's no way any sane person can call this 'direct'. It is extremely indirect, if anything.
If you actually manage to cook up some legislation that truly bans BitTorrent portals like TPB, you'll have banned Google and every other search engine out there as well. It is trivial to use Google to fetch exabytes of copyrighted stuff, but so far they've lived in a grey area because it has been held that search engines are not responsible for what they link to, including direct links actually. TPB did not link to anything illegal at all because the torrent files they link to contain nothing copyrighted.
I, for one, am extremely happy to see The Pirate Bay back online again. Not that I use it much, it's the principle that the highly illegal attempt at shutting them down using cooked-up warrants, methods and overkill usually associated with fascist police states, failed miserably. They're back and their activities were only set back two days.
I hope that when the legal repercussions of that raid are settled, TPB moves back to Sweden where it will be protected against repeats due to the fallout of this affair. The raid itself was illegal, the minister of justice's involvement in the warrant was highly illegal and the execution of the raid was a massive abuse of power, complete with the covered cameras, 200 servers removed without warrant, and the refusal of the police to comment to the press on the many issues at hand.
Wrongdoings in the raid? - How about the fact that TPB wasn't breaking any swedish law?
Sure, they provoked just about everybody but that's squarely within the freedom of expression. As to TPB aiding in copyright infringements, they were aiding about as much as google or any other seach engine would. They were just a specialized search engine that happened to return a lot of results pointing to copyrighted materials. What people did with the results of those searches was entirely up to themselves and if they decided to download, that's where the only laws would be broken.
Also, TPB seems to be back in full again, although they currently have some database issues:
Hopefully they will be resolved soon so we can get back to pointing fingers (the stiff middle finger kind) at the incredibly stupid swedish police, MPAA and all those other power abusers.
It is necessary to use something that can be used in a non-deniable (regular) mode as well is in deniable mode. If you use Windows or Linux, I recommend the open source TrueCrypt [truecrypt.org].
;)
Exactly. Using TrueCrypt you have an encrypted container where you for instance can keep your credit card numbers, password lists and other sensitive stuff. It can also contain a hidden volume which can contain the real secrets. If you read the writeup on this, you'll see that there's absolutely no way you can prove the existence of the hidden volume in the unused space of the primary container because all free space in any volume (hidden or otherwise) can be scrambled (actually it's random data encrypted) so that no analysis can see the difference between this encrypted garbage and the encrypted data of the hidden volume. This is called plausible deniability. With TrueCrypt you can even hide a volume inside a hidden volume, hidden inside a hidden volume etc.
I'm using TrueCrypt obviously and I'm not telling whether there's something hidden inside the free space on my encrypted disks...
The more affluent areas of every city will be filled with cameras that anyone can monitor. Crime will simply be displaced to the non-CCTV areas. Meanwhile, the public will gradually be getting used to the concept of never expecting to be able to go totally unobserved. The way will be paved for ever deeper intrusions into individuals' lives.
Now, think about this: Do you really notice those cameras at the bank, in the bus or train or whereever they have been for a while? - Well, here in Denmark almost all trains and buses are equipped with cameras in order to prevent vandalism, and people just don't notice them anymore. This includes the vandals like the bozo who tagged away at the back of a bus on the way to his school. The camera caught it all including where he got off the bus. A few days later he was identified by his principal and billed for the damages (as alternative to fighting it in court).
It is impossible to enter a bus or a train or train station without being recorded and this cuts down a lot on the crimes committed there - and help solve crimes elsewhere as well. We've had murderers and rapists caught on tape, providing a timestamp and location fix that kills fake alibis and even show the the rape victim and her stalker just prior to the rape.
These cameras are very closed, the recording are only viewed when there's an incident requiring it. But people go about their business not noticing them and only people doing something serious enough to mandate a look at the recordings may notice them.
So, if a system is as closed as this, I don't mind cameras being everywhere. Human time is precious and expensive and nobody will waste time (and money) on studying a law-abiding citizen going about his daily business. Only those breaking the law will have something to fear, and if the society is a well-oiled democracy with a judicial system that's fair and just, there's no reason for anybody to break the law in any serious way.
This includes the bozos that don't respect democracy and want a minority to decide a policy or similar (civil disobedience). There's no excuse for not going through the motions of advocating the issue through regular channels and drumming up support that way, changing the policy through the democratic way of a majority vote. Just because you feel very deeply that you're right about something doesn't justify you - as a minority - to dictate the issue against the will of the majority. That's a form of fascism actually (minority rule).
Yeah! - The reson why I've been using ad-blockers (often more than one at the same time) ever since the first banner ads progressed from a simple static image to animated flashing monsters, was that they were too distracting to live with. Later came pop-ups, pop-unders, circle-jerk scripting and worse and that made everybody take notice and include blocking in browsers out of the box.
I don't mind text-only ads or the static banners. As I've also got an animation killer (also kills flash) in my browser, most animated ads gets muted pretty well.
It's my opinion that services running in parallel with a real life service shouldn't need to use ads online. A good example are newspapers that IMHO should make all their money on the paper version (ads + retail) and offer the online version for free (perhaps with some paper-subscriber-only content) with no ads.
It the issue with the bad experience most of us have when visiting a movie theater directly related to the crappy staff (minimum-wage PFYs) that just don't give a damn?
I mean at the insane prices they charge these days there should be enough money to hire some decent staff that will set the sound at the correct level, focus the projector, reject obvious troublemakers at the door and of course make people shut up during the show or throw them out with an optional refund for everybody else (paid for by the morons being thrown out naturally).
Also a better cleaning between shows would be a very nice thing.
So, if they have to charge those high prices they should make it a luxury experience instead of the discount one we get now. That way more people would go.
But if something is not copyright infringement to start with, it doesn't matter if you turn copyright infringement criminal or not.
Exactly!
Linking to a URL which doesn't point directly to a copyrighted file cannot by any reason be considered infringing. Because if it is then all links on the entire are infringing because nothing is more than an average of 6 clicks away, including every illegal file on the net.
Making the act of linking to copyright infringements illegal is like making this statement illegal: "You can find unbelievably cheap tv's at name-of-bar". Why should it be legal to point people in the direction of stolen goods (result of real theft) but not in the direction of copyright infringements?
If some people who use cell phones weren't ASSHOLES about how they use them, it woudn't be a problem...
Then take your frustrations out on them, not everybody!
It's kind of tragic, that almost none of those jerks abusing the cell phone in sensitive places really need their cell phone there, while those that really needs their cell phone always seem to be extremely considerate (using silent mode, not replying until outside etc.)... but it's the wrong people this thing hurts.
As one of those that need my cell phone, things like this will force me to take my business elsewhere.
So by the same reasoning would concrete bunkers deep underground be illegal?
Nope, because you have no expectation about the availability of cell phone service in such a place.
In a regular building in the middle of a city, you'd expect cell phone coverage so some extent, and thus blocking all signal should be illegal unless clearly stated on signs everywhere, including at the entrance. This way people that need cell phone coverage can avoid doing business with cell phone unfriendly establishments.
...is king!
It's quite simple: Make sure that people cannot get to hardware they're not administrators of! - If someone can touch the hardware, they can get at the information inside with some tools, so make that impossible.
Own PC's? - Shouldn't be a problem provided they're properly configured, preferably with USB-ports locked out unless in use for keyboard/mouse, and with P&P disabled so new hardware added to these ports won't be installed.
Servers? - Should be in locked racks/rooms, not dumped in corners of common rooms.
Restricted physical access will also make it inpossible to 'borrow' a harddrive home for copying or wharever.
It also happens to be a great way for anonymous pedophiles to surf kiddie porn without having their IP exposed. All they have to do is impersonate web-deprived Chinese surfers.
/. discussion on privacy and/or free speech will degrade to the point where someone will invoke 'The Pedophile Threat' - i.e. 'pedophiles can use this to evade detection' or similar.
This is quickly turning out to be a new twist on Godwin's Law on usenet discussions always degrading into namecalling and nazi references: Any
Come on and face it. Pedophiles are not the greatest threat to mankind. They've always been around and as long as they keep to the net, no children are physically harmed. Stop limiting everybodys freedom on the net in order to make some often rather futile moves against online pedophiles. Use all those misspent efforts to go after the real life pedophiles and those helping them (sleezeball photographers making kiddie porn etc.). This will do much more in preventing harm to children and it will cut off the feed of kiddie porn at the source.
A much bigger threat to mankind are the repressive regimes bent on controlling how people think. Making it possible for free thought and expression to spread and flourish and thus paving the way for those regimes to fall, are far more important than preventing a few pedophiles from sharing their filth.
This is why software like this is nessesary and why the risk of abuse by pedophiles, nazis and other 'undesirables' is an acceptable risk.
You re-elected Bush. Who's dumb?
Well, as most experts agree, it wasn't much of a choice. The alternative was so bad that a lot of democrats actually voted for Bush to avoid Kerry. Of course there were also republicans that voted for Kerry to avoid Bush, but the Kerry off-factor combined with the Michael Moore effect ensured that Bush won.
Hopefully next time the democrats picks one that actually has a decent chance of winning and no dark past that can be lied about or otherwise abused. Because with no real choice there's no democracy, and for some reason the democrats chose to run with an unelectable candidate, reducing the election to something eerily like the Saddam regime for instance... Although those not voting for Bush wasn't imprisoned or summarily executed as the norm used to be in Iraq when voting for Saddam.
As a network manager I'm against Skype. If a problem appears (eg some nasty exploit) then it's going to be like pulling bamboo out of the garden. The only safe method to isolate an organisation is effectively to cut the link to the Internet.
Wrong! - That would be overkill and will only serve as an unsubstantiated threat to bully people into not using Skype without posting a serious argument.
Get real, people. All Skype's ports are well documented and easily verifiable and any serious organization has a central firewall, so just block all traffic on these ports there and Skype is dead. I can do that using just one line of pf-rule so it really isn't hard at all.
You can even go a step futher and block everything except whitelisted ports, maybe even linked to specific IP's. This way there will be no backdoors regardless of how many trojans stupid lusers install on their Windoze boxes. We have used this for years and the few vira that made it though mailscanners were all harmless when it came to external access. Sure the boxes needed a re-install just to be safe but no hackers gained entry, nor was a single spam ever sent out (smtp is of course only allowed to the corporate mailservers (running FreeBSD), and only they can send and receive from the outside world).
No, this article has but one purpose: Scaring management from abandoning expensive big business-run communications in favour of cheaper/free alternatives. The security implications of Skype are no worse than any other closed-source software, the most common OS being one of the worst in itself.
My school states that rules apply during the term and during break, on campus or off. I think they shouldn't have that rule and of course, there is no real way to keep track of what happens during the breaks but they do state it in the rulebook.
Well, they can state whatever they want but cannot legally enforce them off-campus for students not appearing on behalf on the school. When you're off-campus in private you're only subject to the normal laws and regulations, and only if the school has a rule stating that any infraction against the law will cause local disciplinary action, can they do anything.
I suggest breaking those rules in private while staying clearly within the law and then sue the school for everything they got (and then some) if they're stupid enough to expel you. It's easy money and it jusy might teach them a lesson. Warning: It might take a few years if the case needs to go through several appeals, but it's a sure win because only the lawgivers can set rules for conduct on public ground when you're there as a private citizen. You cannot sign away your personal rights out of school just by attending a school in the daytime. Only special case here in the armed services and we're not talking about anything down that alley.
"On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely."
What is it with those regional codes?! - Even tamper-proof drives will not prevent you from simply having a second player coded for another region at your disposal. THEY WILL NEVER WORK!!!
They need to think global and market their releases globally at every step (cinema, tv, home) instead of a local offset of several months. It will seriously cut down on piracy in itself and eliminate the need for stupid thing like regional codes.
Besides, even with advanced call-home systems people will simply buy a black box from some non-DRM country that will filter the call-home communication and thus allow modified players unrestricted use, similar to the region code killers available today.
At some point these corporations will have to realize that the many gazillions thrown into development of protection schemes and bribes/lobbying for more DRM is a waste of money because they all get defeated almost before they are ready to be put into use.
I some ways I understand this senator... The UN is an obsolete monster that feeds on insane amounts of money and left wing people's naïvity. So far the US seems to have done a decent job running the Internet, while the UN have failed miserably in the primary task it was created for: Preserving World Peace.
A few years ago the US tried - and failed - to get the UN to do something serious about this warmonger sitting in Baghdad making fun of the UN with a history of attacking three neighbouring countries (Iran, Kuwait and Israel) and mass-exterminating certain segments of his own population (sounds a lot like nazi-germany, right? - the very thing that inspired the creation of the UN).
The UN could only agree to disagree internally, and the US was thus forced to act alone (with the support of a few allies that agreed on the principle that warmongering dictators should be removed with any means nessesary) and still the UN fails to step in and help defeat the Baathists and the Al-Queda wannabees that use Iraq as a violent playground, and thus create the peace that it was founded to create and promote.
I've blocked ads ever since the very first simple static banner ads. I use whatever utilities are available to do so, currently The Proxomitron, Privoxy and FireFox' AdBlock, in order to get a completely ad-free surfing experience.
:)
Why? - Because I'm an old enough Internet user (since 1988) to remember the good old days where the net held information and just that. No stupid sales pitches (especially no spam) and no irrelevant junk in newsgroups or webpages (when they began around 1992). I want that back and by blocking ads I can almost get there when we're talking about webpages.
I've heard many people whine that blocking ads deprive businesses of income. That's a load of bull! - It all comes down to chosing the right business model. Make your site a paysite or finance it through the real life business. Ads are never truly nessesary. I've run webpages since 1992 and they've all been completely ad-free. Donations or percentages of real life sales (site for downloading own shareware) was used and that was enough. It still is. I even host friends' sites for free because there's enough resources to do that. Yes, here information truly is free...
These days ads are everywhere and they intrude more and more. They've also become more and more stupid ("Your computer is at risk!" - no it isn't, because I patch and use antivirus and antispyware leaps and bounds better than the junk advertised). Drop that business model and get real! - Some of us have had enough a long time ago!
Okay, right from the start, the headline is an editorial via the use of the term "victim."
A most well-chosen word! - Anyone on the receiving end of RIAA/MPAA's lawsuits are most certainly victims. It doesn't matter whether this victim brought it upon themselves or not, but the kind of threats these lawsuit include raises everything from a simple legal matter to pure blackmail, and that's most certainly a trademark of organinized crime.
Now you make several other factual errors, the most blatant is equalling P2P with piracy. First of all, there is no theft! - Nobody loses anything. It's copyright infringement.
It is also a myth that every illegal download equals a lost sale. Studies have clearly shown that these downloads only rarely substitudes a purchase. There's a lot of sneak previews (purchase follows later or the download is deleted), deleted titles (a re-release would have been purchased if available) and similar, and the total loss is less than 5% of downloads.
What is more important still is that some people see file sharing as a political statement against greedy corporations that wallow in cash, cocaine and so on, ripping the talent off big time. How come the profit per sold CD is ten times higher for the label than for the artists? - and don't even get me stated on movies!
So, the reply to the question posed in your subject is: No, it's not biased at all. But your post may be one of the more blatant flamebaits seen in quite a while. There's precious few supporters here of greedy big corporation that have no problems suing the smallest person with no real means for obscene amounts of money.
As opposed to the RIAA's original suggestion: "ALERT! ALERT! You are engaging in CRIMINAL ACTIVITY! Stop now or we'll sue you for everything you've got!"
No, no... The original RIAA suggestion was:
"ALERT! - You are about to STEAL copyrighted material! - This is a CRIMINAL ACTIVITY which can cost you everything you got and then something. We have already logged your IP and you can expect our auditors to pay you a visit soon as we're convinced that you must have commited other copyright-related CRIMES that can prosecute and sue you for. Have a nice day."
It should also be fairly trivial to create a filter that will block all infrared light coming from the inside of the camera, something like a one-way-mirror for infrared light. It can enter (and be captured as part of the light balance of the scene you're photographing) but any reflection is severely impeeded. And no obvious reflection, no punishing light beam.
If the filter (mounted inside the camera) shouldn't reflect the light directly back into the camera, it can be reflected off to the side using a prism system like the one used for the optics in the classic SLR cameras.
Another alternative would be to flood the scene with light of the same wavelength as the 'scanner light', thus completely washing out any reflection and thus making the device useless.
Paparazzi Shields for famous celebrities. It's like a force field! ... except that this only works against digital cameras and there's still analogue paparazzi out there... ;)