I should have answered you earlier. Sorry for not setting you straight sooner.
You'd best examine yourself because it looks from here as though it's you who's the asshole...
You go from incorrect analysis to faulty assumptions when you ASSume I'm either a foreigner or an asshole because of my opinions about our monotonically declining educational system. I was born and raised just north of Chicago. I hold the opinion I do about U.S. education because both of my sons, bright as they are, need frequent tutoring to compensate for the piss-poor teaching they're getting in school. If the teachers spent more time on the three R's and less on Halloween and Christmas parties and Superintendent's Day junkets, our whole society would be better off.
Now back to your non-existent point(s). Nowhere in the Consitution or Bill of Rights are we guaranteed a right to privacy or anonymity. Stop acting and spouting as though we are/were.
The cops' jobs are to keep us safe from crooks. That gives them the right, even the duty to be (ready now?) watching . Given the open nature of our society, and the wide open spaces we've been blessed with in this country, I'm all for a little techno-help to assist them in their watching. Maybe they'll see me pull out a hard booger every now and then, or go over the speed limit but, since I've no fundamental right to privacy in a public place, nor a fundamental right to disobey the laws (speeding or otherwise), I'm cool with that.
Crumple up that tin-foil hat, keep your own nose clean, and you stand only to benefit by a bit more watchful gendarme.
OJ got off, despite the overwhelming blood evidence, because a cadre of high-priced, high-profile defense attorneys outsmarted a much smaller and lesser-paid group of nearly incompetent prosecutors while at the same time hoodwinking a clearly racially biased jury into "stickin it to da man" and letting a violently compulsive and murderous bum walk. Hall of Famer or not, he was guilty as sin.
You're right. DNA does not guarantee a conviction. So why is everyone so worried about the cops getting some 'help'? Obviously, they need it.
Copying of copyrighted material is more akin to counterfeiting than it is to actual theft. Just as making copies of money doesn't actually take it away from anyone else (but does devalue the sum total of the money), isn't reproducing copies of music in at least some ways similar? It devalues the originals by spreading the "worth" of the material across more and more copies.
Now, I'm not proposing that we make similar penalties for file sharing as we have for currency counterfeiters but, in that light, doesn't some kind of punitive measure (or threat thereof) seem at least somewhat more reasonable?
The right to privacy in public is essential to our freedom.
Everytime I see a remark like this I realize why the U.S. is lagging further and further behind other countries in the three R's. Is there nobody out there with a dictionary anymore, or is there nobody left to understand the simplest, clearest meaning of words?
The relevant definition (to this discussion) of the word "public" means: 1) accessible to or shared by all members of the community; 2) EXPOSED to general view (i.e. OPEN).
I'll grant that threats of secret arrests and tribunals might give us reason to be wary, but this nonsense about privacy in public places is just absurd.
Can you, just for one second, comprehend what it would feel like to have a Chinese military base on US soil? To have them swaggering around, smoking opium and gang raping white Christian schoolgirls at will, with the tacit sanction of the Chinese military and the US government? How would you feel about that?
Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Thanks for playing. What your feeble analogy leaves out (apart from the swaggering, smoking, raping part, which takes place *everywhere* not just where groups of Americans are located) is that the U.S. military bases you allude to are there by invitation of the host government. Not by our will alone, not by force. Your whimsical vision of Chinese military bases on U.S. soil is not possible - we would not ask them here. The Saudis, however, did approve our presence. Perhaps if Bin Laden has an axe to grind, it should be with his own country, the inviters, not the invitees.
Nope. The only things worse than a worm is... half a worm - the half that remains after taking a nice juicy bite out of an apple. (That's apple, not Apple.)
Sadly, not even the correct name or expiry date seems to be required for many online authorizations of a card charged. I had an issue some years back where my number (apparently generated at random?) was used for several fraudulent charges to some shall-we-say questionable web sites. The name associated with the charges was not even mine - it was several made-up names like qazwsx (look at your keyboard). I had never used the card for other than my now-defunct CompuServe charges - there was no way someone could have gotten hold of even a discarded charge carbon as it was never used in such a way (and I'm a compulsive shredder). The authorizations were given without a notice of the phony name. I got the charges reversed, but the point is that many (most) online charges don't go through even the most basic of data verification.
How extremely petty to latch onto but two words of my post and thus screech your reply whilst calling me what, a communist? Hardly. Read the rest of it and think it over a bit longer.
By correctly I mean simply... steal or do not. Drive drunk or do not. Be responsible for your own actions or do not. Are those not simple choices between "correct" and not correct? Would we not be better off with one choice vs. the other? That has naught to do with the P.R.C. which also, by the way, is not my idea of freedom. Take your sophomoric debate tactics and get back to study hall, junior.
Just once I'd like to read in the news of someone asserting his responsibilities instead of his 'rights'.
and we're currently declining, in the most profound of American values-- personal liberty
Sorry to disagree, but I think the real decline in our society today (U.S. and abroad) is not in liberty, but in personal responsibility. It's too easy anymore, when we screw up, to say... "my parents made me thus and so"... "my lousy childhood made me this or that". Drunk drivers blame the bartender. Criminals blame the police. Or, worse still, that terrorism exists because of the U.S. policies towards some other part of the world. It seems anymore that everybody is responsible for everyone else's behaviour except their own. And so, now, it's easier to squawk about our liberties being "violated" so that we can continue in our petty little foibles, some of which may be immoral, or prurient, or downright illegal. Most people I've met who so vociferously claim to care about the decline of liberty in this, the most free country on earth, are actually concerned only for themselves, not so much for the good of the republic as a whole. There is a right and there is a wrong. If everyone chose correctly we'd never have to worry about our freedom being taken away by those who are actually seeking to protect it.
Funny. I just finished the update on my 5GB iPod and when I went to "Extras" to check the clock it was set and running. You sure you saw yours correctly?
I hope this firmware update really is a fix. I sent back my iPod twice (to Apple's glory they replaced it each time without blinking) because the battery life wasn't what it once was. It was only later that I learned of the possible connection to the 1.2.1 update (which I had installed).
Some say a comet will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
Maynard said it best... "Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay."
What a dumbass remark. They may know many (though certainly not ten million) different ways to "kill you", but what they really want is a way to kill ten million of you at the same time, with minimum effort. Cowering behind freedom of speech while simultaneously helping them achieve that knowledge is foolhardy at best, and worse still, negligent.
Declaring that refraining (note I did not say the dreaded word 'censorship') from publishing details on how to do certain seriously evil things (e.g. HOWTO details for constructing an atomic weapon) is akin to keeping secret the details of some Internet exploits from the script kiddies is the stupidest thing I've ever read.
It is certainly debateable that disclosure of the latter serves the public interest by focussing attention on fixing the problem. But... No good purpose is served in the former case (by highlighting the details of making weapons of mass destruction).
What's wrong with a little "self-restraint" in situations such as this? Isn't that what was being proposed? Have we really lost the ability to discern in matters such as this? Has political correctness made us that stupid?
If I know, and I know that others know, about an exploit that makes my Mac less secure, I can and should take steps to remedy the situation. There are no meaningful remedies I could employ to make myself more secure once Sadaam bin Laden has everything needed (materials AND knowledge) to make and deliver a bomb that could obliterate my city.
Come on, people, grow up and smell the coffee, and get some frelling perspective while you're at it!
Of course, you're right about that. I gave my old Verizon StarTac to the wife as an excuse for getting GSM w/ Bluetooth. (What can I say, she went for it!)
My T68i cost me -.01 dollars due to the Circuit City/ATT rebates offered. It's hard to beat that price! SO far I'm not complaining about reception, though I have managed to find at least one "dead spot" in my house with aluminum siding (aluminium for those of you on the other side of the pond!;-)
For all the features, the size, the battery life, etc., I think it is a great phone. Excuse me, gotta run and trade my Palm 515 w/ Bluetooth adapter for a Palm "T"... I thinnk that'll be a kick-ass combination.
If it is a joke, I don't get it. Either way, there is no "bad spelling" in the quote you clipped, just a really poor understanding that there are different words that sound alike but mean different things:
There, there, sonny, they're not going to unlearn their bad habits.
How do you view yourself and your own skills
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Lots has been made of your exploits, your crime, your punishment, your supposed skills, etc. Mostly by people who've read of you but don't really know you. You've been described as anything from a petty thief to a "computer genius". (I think of Bill Gates whenevr I hear that one!)
So... you tell us... How do you rate your own computer engineering skills? It's obvious what you think of your social engineering skills (and rightly so). But... how do you rate your own technical skills in such areas as logical thinking, programming ability, problem solving ability, creative solutions to complex technical problems, understanding of current protocols, methods, etc.
Nope... guess again. The use of "hocking" as you suggest refers to leaving something with a pawn broker in exchange for a "loan". Derived from one of its meanings as "last resort". Hawking means, among other things, peddling, usually accompanied by a loud noise or shouting. Sheesh, don't any of you guys read anything besides slashdot!;-)
CSS was not "cracked" in five lines of Perl code, though it can be expressed in five lines of Perl code.
It was cracked, sooner rather than later, because engineers at Xing created a frivolous implementation of a software CSS descrambler - one that could be disassembled, analyzed and reverse engineered *far* more easily than it would have been had they taken steps to encrypt and otherwise protect their code.
Once reverse engineered and exposed, it was leaked and expressed in many different languages. (My favorite is the 'C' implementation on the back of my CopyLeft t-shirt!;-)
Markedly "low-tech", I know, but I use two brand new oblong erasers (Sanford-brand, "Magic Rub") that you can get in any stationery store (or your secretarial center). Toss 'em in your laptop bag to always have handy as they weigh next to nothing. One each under the rear corners give just enough tilt to get a nice airflow going and a decent typing angle to boot. I've found my TiPB to run much cooler - the fan doesn't come on very often at all. Plus, they don't slip around on the desk, holding the unit in place with simple friction.
And, if I ever make a mistake, I have an eraser handy!
NO, that is the point. As a private citizen, I have paid for the right to know who is calling before I pick it up. If Ma Bell charges me for that right, then they should not give away for free the ability for someone else to subvert what I have paid for.
I'd turn on Anonymous Call Rejection, but then my son can't easily use many pay phones to call and let me know when it is time to be picked up.
I think your example regarding calling a corporation or business is valid, but doesn't (and shouldn't) apply on incoming calls to private households. Surely such a distinction can (and should) be made. This is the computer age, after all.
Better still, how about the fact that the phone company charges you for Caller-ID service, then gives away for free the ability for anyone to block their outbound ID when calling you.
Before anyone mutters, "well, it's a privacy issue", let me point out that reaching into someone's home and making a noise (telephone ring sound inserted here) is a far larger invasion of privacy than me knowing who it is before I pick it up.
Of course, telemarketers nearly always have their outbound call ID blocked.
Slashdot Mirror
I should have answered you earlier. Sorry for not setting you straight sooner.
You'd best examine yourself because it looks from here as though it's you who's the asshole...
You go from incorrect analysis to faulty assumptions when you ASSume I'm either a foreigner or an asshole because of my opinions about our monotonically declining educational system. I was born and raised just north of Chicago. I hold the opinion I do about U.S. education because both of my sons, bright as they are, need frequent tutoring to compensate for the piss-poor teaching they're getting in school. If the teachers spent more time on the three R's and less on Halloween and Christmas parties and Superintendent's Day junkets, our whole society would be better off.
Now back to your non-existent point(s). Nowhere in the Consitution or Bill of Rights are we guaranteed a right to privacy or anonymity. Stop acting and spouting as though we are/were.
The cops' jobs are to keep us safe from crooks. That gives them the right, even the duty to be (ready now?) watching . Given the open nature of our society, and the wide open spaces we've been blessed with in this country, I'm all for a little techno-help to assist them in their watching. Maybe they'll see me pull out a hard booger every now and then, or go over the speed limit but, since I've no fundamental right to privacy in a public place, nor a fundamental right to disobey the laws (speeding or otherwise), I'm cool with that.
Crumple up that tin-foil hat, keep your own nose clean, and you stand only to benefit by a bit more watchful gendarme.
An 8 lb. rifle and a 30 lb. backpack?! Pussies. On my last backpacking trek, my pack weighed 66 pounds, not counting my rifle, er, hiking staff. ;-)
OJ got off, despite the overwhelming blood evidence, because a cadre of high-priced, high-profile defense attorneys outsmarted a much smaller and lesser-paid group of nearly incompetent prosecutors while at the same time hoodwinking a clearly racially biased jury into "stickin it to da man" and letting a violently compulsive and murderous bum walk. Hall of Famer or not, he was guilty as sin.
You're right. DNA does not guarantee a conviction. So why is everyone so worried about the cops getting some 'help'? Obviously, they need it.
Maybe this is a better analogy...
Copying of copyrighted material is more akin to counterfeiting than it is to actual theft. Just as making copies of money doesn't actually take it away from anyone else (but does devalue the sum total of the money), isn't reproducing copies of music in at least some ways similar? It devalues the originals by spreading the "worth" of the material across more and more copies.
Now, I'm not proposing that we make similar penalties for file sharing as we have for currency counterfeiters but, in that light, doesn't some kind of punitive measure (or threat thereof) seem at least somewhat more reasonable?
The right to privacy in public is essential to our freedom.
Everytime I see a remark like this I realize why the U.S. is lagging further and further behind other countries in the three R's. Is there nobody out there with a dictionary anymore, or is there nobody left to understand the simplest, clearest meaning of words?
The relevant definition (to this discussion) of the word "public" means: 1) accessible to or shared by all members of the community; 2) EXPOSED to general view (i.e. OPEN).
I'll grant that threats of secret arrests and tribunals might give us reason to be wary, but this nonsense about privacy in public places is just absurd.
Can you, just for one second, comprehend what it would feel like to have a Chinese military base on US soil? To have them swaggering around, smoking opium and gang raping white Christian schoolgirls at will, with the tacit sanction of the Chinese military and the US government? How would you feel about that?
Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Thanks for playing. What your feeble analogy leaves out (apart from the swaggering, smoking, raping part, which takes place *everywhere* not just where groups of Americans are located) is that the U.S. military bases you allude to are there by invitation of the host government. Not by our will alone, not by force. Your whimsical vision of Chinese military bases on U.S. soil is not possible - we would not ask them here. The Saudis, however, did approve our presence. Perhaps if Bin Laden has an axe to grind, it should be with his own country, the inviters, not the invitees.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Nope. The only things worse than a worm is... half a worm - the half that remains after taking a nice juicy bite out of an apple. (That's apple, not Apple.)
I've never had my modem "bajad" before. I did get Tijuana'ed once, though. I was sore for a week.
Sadly, not even the correct name or expiry date seems to be required for many online authorizations of a card charged. I had an issue some years back where my number (apparently generated at random?) was used for several fraudulent charges to some shall-we-say questionable web sites. The name associated with the charges was not even mine - it was several made-up names like qazwsx (look at your keyboard). I had never used the card for other than my now-defunct CompuServe charges - there was no way someone could have gotten hold of even a discarded charge carbon as it was never used in such a way (and I'm a compulsive shredder). The authorizations were given without a notice of the phony name. I got the charges reversed, but the point is that many (most) online charges don't go through even the most basic of data verification.
How extremely petty to latch onto but two words of my post and thus screech your reply whilst calling me what, a communist? Hardly. Read the rest of it and think it over a bit longer.
By correctly I mean simply... steal or do not. Drive drunk or do not. Be responsible for your own actions or do not. Are those not simple choices between "correct" and not correct? Would we not be better off with one choice vs. the other? That has naught to do with the P.R.C. which also, by the way, is not my idea of freedom. Take your sophomoric debate tactics and get back to study hall, junior.
Just once I'd like to read in the news of someone asserting his responsibilities instead of his 'rights'.
Sorry to disagree, but I think the real decline in our society today (U.S. and abroad) is not in liberty, but in personal responsibility. It's too easy anymore, when we screw up, to say... "my parents made me thus and so"... "my lousy childhood made me this or that". Drunk drivers blame the bartender. Criminals blame the police. Or, worse still, that terrorism exists because of the U.S. policies towards some other part of the world. It seems anymore that everybody is responsible for everyone else's behaviour except their own. And so, now, it's easier to squawk about our liberties being "violated" so that we can continue in our petty little foibles, some of which may be immoral, or prurient, or downright illegal. Most people I've met who so vociferously claim to care about the decline of liberty in this, the most free country on earth, are actually concerned only for themselves, not so much for the good of the republic as a whole. There is a right and there is a wrong. If everyone chose correctly we'd never have to worry about our freedom being taken away by those who are actually seeking to protect it.
IANAL - I am not a Latin (but I saw one on TV).
Funny. I just finished the update on my 5GB iPod and when I went to "Extras" to check the clock it was set and running. You sure you saw yours correctly?
I hope this firmware update really is a fix. I sent back my iPod twice (to Apple's glory they replaced it each time without blinking) because the battery life wasn't what it once was. It was only later that I learned of the possible connection to the 1.2.1 update (which I had installed).
Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
Maynard said it best... "Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay."
Declaring that refraining (note I did not say the dreaded word 'censorship') from publishing details on how to do certain seriously evil things (e.g. HOWTO details for constructing an atomic weapon) is akin to keeping secret the details of some Internet exploits from the script kiddies is the stupidest thing I've ever read.
It is certainly debateable that disclosure of the latter serves the public interest by focussing attention on fixing the problem. But... No good purpose is served in the former case (by highlighting the details of making weapons of mass destruction).
What's wrong with a little "self-restraint" in situations such as this? Isn't that what was being proposed? Have we really lost the ability to discern in matters such as this? Has political correctness made us that stupid?
If I know, and I know that others know, about an exploit that makes my Mac less secure, I can and should take steps to remedy the situation. There are no meaningful remedies I could employ to make myself more secure once Sadaam bin Laden has everything needed (materials AND knowledge) to make and deliver a bomb that could obliterate my city.
Come on, people, grow up and smell the coffee, and get some frelling perspective while you're at it!
Of course, you're right about that. I gave my old Verizon StarTac to the wife as an excuse for getting GSM w/ Bluetooth. (What can I say, she went for it!)
My T68i cost me -.01 dollars due to the Circuit City/ATT rebates offered. It's hard to beat that price! SO far I'm not complaining about reception, though I have managed to find at least one "dead spot" in my house with aluminum siding (aluminium for those of you on the other side of the pond! ;-)
For all the features, the size, the battery life, etc., I think it is a great phone. Excuse me, gotta run and trade my Palm 515 w/ Bluetooth adapter for a Palm "T"... I thinnk that'll be a kick-ass combination.
There, there, sonny, they're not going to unlearn their bad habits.
So... you tell us... How do you rate your own computer engineering skills? It's obvious what you think of your social engineering skills (and rightly so). But... how do you rate your own technical skills in such areas as logical thinking, programming ability, problem solving ability, creative solutions to complex technical problems, understanding of current protocols, methods, etc.
Nope... guess again. The use of "hocking" as you suggest refers to leaving something with a pawn broker in exchange for a "loan". Derived from one of its meanings as "last resort". Hawking means, among other things, peddling, usually accompanied by a loud noise or shouting. Sheesh, don't any of you guys read anything besides slashdot! ;-)
CSS was not "cracked" in five lines of Perl code, though it can be expressed in five lines of Perl code.
;-)
It was cracked, sooner rather than later, because engineers at Xing created a frivolous implementation of a software CSS descrambler - one that could be disassembled, analyzed and reverse engineered *far* more easily than it would have been had they taken steps to encrypt and otherwise protect their code.
Once reverse engineered and exposed, it was leaked and expressed in many different languages. (My favorite is the 'C' implementation on the back of my CopyLeft t-shirt!
Markedly "low-tech", I know, but I use two brand new oblong erasers (Sanford-brand, "Magic Rub") that you can get in any stationery store (or your secretarial center). Toss 'em in your laptop bag to always have handy as they weigh next to nothing. One each under the rear corners give just enough tilt to get a nice airflow going and a decent typing angle to boot. I've found my TiPB to run much cooler - the fan doesn't come on very often at all. Plus, they don't slip around on the desk, holding the unit in place with simple friction.
And, if I ever make a mistake, I have an eraser handy!
NO, that is the point. As a private citizen, I have paid for the right to know who is calling before I pick it up. If Ma Bell charges me for that right, then they should not give away for free the ability for someone else to subvert what I have paid for.
I'd turn on Anonymous Call Rejection, but then my son can't easily use many pay phones to call and let me know when it is time to be picked up.
I think your example regarding calling a corporation or business is valid, but doesn't (and shouldn't) apply on incoming calls to private households. Surely such a distinction can (and should) be made. This is the computer age, after all.
Better still, how about the fact that the phone company charges you for Caller-ID service, then gives away for free the ability for anyone to block their outbound ID when calling you.
Before anyone mutters, "well, it's a privacy issue", let me point out that reaching into someone's home and making a noise (telephone ring sound inserted here) is a far larger invasion of privacy than me knowing who it is before I pick it up.
Of course, telemarketers nearly always have their outbound call ID blocked.