If some rich person becomes less rich because people no longer want the dirty polluting coal their companies extract from the ground, GOOD. If that means a bunch of people no longer have a job going down into a hole every day digging out that filthy stuff, GOOD.
Just like the motor car made the horse obsolete as a means of transport, there will come a time when mankind invents a technology (or technologies) that make the use of coal for generating electricity obsolete and that will be a GOOD thing for the planet.
Firstly, any content Netflix distributes in this way would almost certainly have DRM still applied to it and the Netflix client software would make sure that the end user had the right to purchase that content before playing it (and would still have to pull the keys from the central key server in doing this) And secondly, they wouldn't roll this out unless they had approval to do this from the entities providing Netflix with content.
Everything comes down to the fact that Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Charter and the other big ISPs ALL sell both transit (i.e. internet access) AND content (i.e. "TV" whether that be delivered by cable, fiber or otherwise) and are willing to do everything in their power to make sure that you have to keep buying your content from them and not from someone else (otherwise they would become dumb pipes and lose most of their control)
If I know Tony Abbot and co, there are government law drafters who have been given the task of taking the UK RIP act (the one that lets them send you to jail for refusing to hand over encryption keys) and invent a similar law that fits the Australian system.
All in the name of fighting "Terrorism", "Child Pornography" (that TV star who recently went down for being a kiddy fiddler will probably be used as an example of the sort of people these laws are intended to stop), "Organized Crime" (bikie gangs, gun violence, drug rings etc) and whatever else the government and the mainstream media can BS the general public into thinking is a far bigger problem than it actually is and that the only way to stop it is to bring in these new laws.
I cant believe there are people in this country stupid enough to actually vote for these guys after what happened during the Howard years when we got all sorts of stupid laws (quite a few of which Labor repealed and Abbot now wants to bring back)
Only 2 of the 95 elevators are going to be the super-high-speed models. The others are going to be the regular cheaper kind it would seem (not that an elevator is ever cheap to build or maintain regardless of speed)
+1 to this, trying to make golf "better" by adding giant holes or making it faster would ruin the sport for all the people who play it now AND would not pull the younger generations away from their screens.
I live in Australia and most medical practioners dont care how you pay. I bought glasses recently and the optometrist charged me no different because I was claiming on my health insurance (why would they, they get the same amount no matter how I pay)
The difference is that those EULAs are license agreements for software (including the pre-installed software that comes on your new hardware) and there is precedent for it being legal to put those clauses in software EULAs.
Anyone who chooses to pay for cable TV, internet access or cellphone service instead of paying for necessary medical care is an idiot IMO (the exceptions being if not paying for the service will cost more in termination charges than paying for it would or if having the service is essential for the job that person is in or for finding a job for that person)
What is needed is a law or regulation that requires medical care (anything from a visit to a doctor to a prosthetic hand to an MRI to major surgery to a pair of prescription sunglasses) to cost exactly the same amount no matter how it is paid for.
Shouldn't matter whether its being paid for by a government program, by an insurance company, by a corporate health plan or by an individual with cash, it should cost the same amount for the same service.
The only real winner from corn ethanol is giant agribusiness companies who produce the GM corn seeds, sell the massive amount of chemicals the corn requires and makes ethanol from the result. It does nothing to reduce green house gas emissions. It does nothing to reduce the dependance on foreign oil (especially given all the oil-derived products required to grown that corn including the diesel for the tractors and harvesters). And it probably doesn't put all that much extra money in the pockets of small corn farmers.
Ethanol from hemp or switch grass or any number of other plants is much better for the environment, doesn't require anywhere near as many inputs, can be grown on land that other stuff wont grow on, can genuinely reduce dependance on oil (foreign or otherwise) AND can reduce green house gas emissions. But there is no "Switch grass lobby" to fight the corn lobby so everything is pushed to corn ethanol and the planet is worse because of it.
I guess I am spoilt by living in Australia where pretty much all the major universities I know of are well served by good public transport and are surrounded by piles of privately-owned student housing.
If you live in an area where the only way to get from where you live to where you study is private transport (be that a car you own or something else like a taxi) you may not think a car is a luxury.
But if you are doing that, you are also stupid for not living somewhere close to campus (or to public transport links to campus)
With all the noise about OpenSSL lately, running this Coverity test on it (and other security software like GNUTLS) and sharing the results seems like it would be a good thing...
Here in Australia, my experience is that the genuinely local newspapers (limited to specific suburbs or council areas and usually available for free every week) are great as a way of finding out whats going on in the local area. The normal daily newspapers are full of crap and not worth reading.
Here in Oz we dont have state income taxes or state returns to worry about and if you don't want to use an accountant or tax agent to do the return (because you have a simple return), you can just file it electronically with the free government-supplied etax app. (or as a paper form if you really want to)
IMO the NSA should be split into 2 agencies. One would be tasked with protecting the security of data, information, communications and networks of the United States government, its agencies and any entity deemed to be vital to national security. And this does include finding and fixing (or giving to vendors to fix) bugs in software being used by those entities it is tasked with protecting. And developing new protocols and algorithms and systems and hardware and software to protect the stuff it is tasked with protecting. And certifying software, hardware, algorithms, protocols and systems (developed in-house or externally) as being safe (or unsafe) for use in storing, manipulating, handling, transmitting or receiving the stuff it is tasked with protecting.
The other would be tasked with spying on threats to national security. Including monitoring communications, email, data, computers and software belonging to those threats. Yes that includes hacking into the computer of a bad guy who stole classified secrets or launched malware that compromised government systems.
This agency would have constraints placed on it so that it was only monitoring threats and not anyone else and so that it was not compromising global security in the course of carrying out its mission (e.g. it would be prohibited from trying to weaken the security of software/hardware/protocols/algorithms/etc in order to be able to spy on entities using those things)
Remember that when Truman created the NSA, a computer was a device that took up several rooms, there were only a handful in the entire world and only a small number of of people even knew what one was, let alone were able to use one. And the closest thing to digital communications networks were teleprinters. And the biggest threat to national security was a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 bomber with a nuclear bomb underneath.
These days, computers are everywhere and being used for all sorts of things never imagined in the 50s. And the biggest threat to US national security is not a Russian bomber or missile but a terrorist with a suitcase bomb or hijacked airliner. Or a hacker from a foreign intelligence agency.
FPGA vendors probably don't want to open up their specs and stuff because they are worried that opening up everything will give their competitors the secrets to what makes their FPGA "good".
Patents may come into it as well (I dont know how the patent situation is in the FPGA marketplace). And possibly a desire to stop people from being able to just buy the FPGAs at x amount per unit and force them to pay up for the toolchain too.
The problem with replacing HTTPS is that you will need to maintain regular HTTPS for all those clients that cant upgrade to a newer browser. (which exposes web sites to these threats) And you have to convince browser and web server vendors to support the new HTTPS replacement.
Google would probably do it (on desktop, ChromeOS, Android and its custom web/SSL server software) especially if it made it harder for the kind of man-in-the-middle-using-fake-certificates type attacks the NSA have been using (the ones that let the NSA serve up fake copies of popular web sites as a vector to infect other machines). Opera and others that use the Google rendering engine would probably use the Google support.
Mozilla would probably do it if you could convince them that its not just going to be bloat that never gets used.
Apache would probably support it via a mod_blah and if they dont, someone else would probably write one.
Other FOSS browsers and servers (those that do HTTPS) would probably support it if someone wrote good patches.
But good luck convincing commercial vendors like Microsoft and Apple to support a new protocol. And the Certificate Authorities would fight hard against anything that made them obsolete (which any new protocol really needs to do)
What might be useful would depend on how bad the catastrophe is. If its something like the TV show "Revolution" where electricity magically stops working, different people would be useful vs a situation where electricity is still available.
Slashdot Mirror
If some rich person becomes less rich because people no longer want the dirty polluting coal their companies extract from the ground, GOOD. If that means a bunch of people no longer have a job going down into a hole every day digging out that filthy stuff, GOOD.
Just like the motor car made the horse obsolete as a means of transport, there will come a time when mankind invents a technology (or technologies) that make the use of coal for generating electricity obsolete and that will be a GOOD thing for the planet.
Firstly, any content Netflix distributes in this way would almost certainly have DRM still applied to it and the Netflix client software would make sure that the end user had the right to purchase that content before playing it (and would still have to pull the keys from the central key server in doing this)
And secondly, they wouldn't roll this out unless they had approval to do this from the entities providing Netflix with content.
Everything comes down to the fact that Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Charter and the other big ISPs ALL sell both transit (i.e. internet access) AND content (i.e. "TV" whether that be delivered by cable, fiber or otherwise) and are willing to do everything in their power to make sure that you have to keep buying your content from them and not from someone else (otherwise they would become dumb pipes and lose most of their control)
If I know Tony Abbot and co, there are government law drafters who have been given the task of taking the UK RIP act (the one that lets them send you to jail for refusing to hand over encryption keys) and invent a similar law that fits the Australian system.
All in the name of fighting "Terrorism", "Child Pornography" (that TV star who recently went down for being a kiddy fiddler will probably be used as an example of the sort of people these laws are intended to stop), "Organized Crime" (bikie gangs, gun violence, drug rings etc) and whatever else the government and the mainstream media can BS the general public into thinking is a far bigger problem than it actually is and that the only way to stop it is to bring in these new laws.
I cant believe there are people in this country stupid enough to actually vote for these guys after what happened during the Howard years when we got all sorts of stupid laws (quite a few of which Labor repealed and Abbot now wants to bring back)
Only 2 of the 95 elevators are going to be the super-high-speed models. The others are going to be the regular cheaper kind it would seem (not that an elevator is ever cheap to build or maintain regardless of speed)
I have a Nokia N900 and LOVE the keyboard.
+1 to this, trying to make golf "better" by adding giant holes or making it faster would ruin the sport for all the people who play it now AND would not pull the younger generations away from their screens.
I live in Australia and most medical practioners dont care how you pay. I bought glasses recently and the optometrist charged me no different because I was claiming on my health insurance (why would they, they get the same amount no matter how I pay)
It should be like that in the US,
Not all lawyers are evil or bad, By far the worst kind is the "Corporate Lawyer". Get rid of those and the world would be a better place.
The difference is that those EULAs are license agreements for software (including the pre-installed software that comes on your new hardware) and there is precedent for it being legal to put those clauses in software EULAs.
Anyone who chooses to pay for cable TV, internet access or cellphone service instead of paying for necessary medical care is an idiot IMO (the exceptions being if not paying for the service will cost more in termination charges than paying for it would or if having the service is essential for the job that person is in or for finding a job for that person)
What is needed is a law or regulation that requires medical care (anything from a visit to a doctor to a prosthetic hand to an MRI to major surgery to a pair of prescription sunglasses) to cost exactly the same amount no matter how it is paid for.
Shouldn't matter whether its being paid for by a government program, by an insurance company, by a corporate health plan or by an individual with cash, it should cost the same amount for the same service.
The only real winner from corn ethanol is giant agribusiness companies who produce the GM corn seeds, sell the massive amount of chemicals the corn requires and makes ethanol from the result. It does nothing to reduce green house gas emissions. It does nothing to reduce the dependance on foreign oil (especially given all the oil-derived products required to grown that corn including the diesel for the tractors and harvesters). And it probably doesn't put all that much extra money in the pockets of small corn farmers.
Ethanol from hemp or switch grass or any number of other plants is much better for the environment, doesn't require anywhere near as many inputs, can be grown on land that other stuff wont grow on, can genuinely reduce dependance on oil (foreign or otherwise) AND can reduce green house gas emissions. But there is no "Switch grass lobby" to fight the corn lobby so everything is pushed to corn ethanol and the planet is worse because of it.
Not only can they deliver supplies to the ISS without the need to pay the Russians to do it but they can probably do it cheaper than the Russians too.
I guess I am spoilt by living in Australia where pretty much all the major universities I know of are well served by good public transport and are surrounded by piles of privately-owned student housing.
If you live in an area where the only way to get from where you live to where you study is private transport (be that a car you own or something else like a taxi) you may not think a car is a luxury.
But if you are doing that, you are also stupid for not living somewhere close to campus (or to public transport links to campus)
With all the noise about OpenSSL lately, running this Coverity test on it (and other security software like GNUTLS) and sharing the results seems like it would be a good thing...
Here in Australia, my experience is that the genuinely local newspapers (limited to specific suburbs or council areas and usually available for free every week) are great as a way of finding out whats going on in the local area. The normal daily newspapers are full of crap and not worth reading.
Here in Oz we dont have state income taxes or state returns to worry about and if you don't want to use an accountant or tax agent to do the return (because you have a simple return), you can just file it electronically with the free government-supplied etax app. (or as a paper form if you really want to)
How do we know that serious security flaws don't exist in the SSL implementations used by Microsoft or other proprietary vendors?
IMO the NSA should be split into 2 agencies.
One would be tasked with protecting the security of data, information, communications and networks of the United States government, its agencies and any entity deemed to be vital to national security. And this does include finding and fixing (or giving to vendors to fix) bugs in software being used by those entities it is tasked with protecting. And developing new protocols and algorithms and systems and hardware and software to protect the stuff it is tasked with protecting. And certifying software, hardware, algorithms, protocols and systems (developed in-house or externally) as being safe (or unsafe) for use in storing, manipulating, handling, transmitting or receiving the stuff it is tasked with protecting.
The other would be tasked with spying on threats to national security. Including monitoring communications, email, data, computers and software belonging to those threats. Yes that includes hacking into the computer of a bad guy who stole classified secrets or launched malware that compromised government systems.
This agency would have constraints placed on it so that it was only monitoring threats and not anyone else and so that it was not compromising global security in the course of carrying out its mission (e.g. it would be prohibited from trying to weaken the security of software/hardware/protocols/algorithms/etc in order to be able to spy on entities using those things)
Remember that when Truman created the NSA, a computer was a device that took up several rooms, there were only a handful in the entire world and only a small number of of people even knew what one was, let alone were able to use one. And the closest thing to digital communications networks were teleprinters. And the biggest threat to national security was a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 bomber with a nuclear bomb underneath.
These days, computers are everywhere and being used for all sorts of things never imagined in the 50s. And the biggest threat to US national security is not a Russian bomber or missile but a terrorist with a suitcase bomb or hijacked airliner. Or a hacker from a foreign intelligence agency.
FPGA vendors probably don't want to open up their specs and stuff because they are worried that opening up everything will give their competitors the secrets to what makes their FPGA "good".
Patents may come into it as well (I dont know how the patent situation is in the FPGA marketplace). And possibly a desire to stop people from being able to just buy the FPGAs at x amount per unit and force them to pay up for the toolchain too.
https://www.openssl.org/docs/a... suggests that OpenSSL (the official upstream version at least) does in fact support DHE and PFS without EC.
The problem with replacing HTTPS is that you will need to maintain regular HTTPS for all those clients that cant upgrade to a newer browser. (which exposes web sites to these threats) And you have to convince browser and web server vendors to support the new HTTPS replacement.
Google would probably do it (on desktop, ChromeOS, Android and its custom web/SSL server software) especially if it made it harder for the kind of man-in-the-middle-using-fake-certificates type attacks the NSA have been using (the ones that let the NSA serve up fake copies of popular web sites as a vector to infect other machines). Opera and others that use the Google rendering engine would probably use the Google support.
Mozilla would probably do it if you could convince them that its not just going to be bloat that never gets used.
Apache would probably support it via a mod_blah and if they dont, someone else would probably write one.
Other FOSS browsers and servers (those that do HTTPS) would probably support it if someone wrote good patches.
But good luck convincing commercial vendors like Microsoft and Apple to support a new protocol. And the Certificate Authorities would fight hard against anything that made them obsolete (which any new protocol really needs to do)
What might be useful would depend on how bad the catastrophe is. If its something like the TV show "Revolution" where electricity magically stops working, different people would be useful vs a situation where electricity is still available.