You're basically right about the Trusted Computing thing.
They can never make it literally impossible to view the page ad-free, it's just a question of different levels of difficulty. A site using custom javascript or other techniques can make it "impossible" to view the site without viewing the ads, short of a programmer analyzing the technique and arranging to bypass it with GreaseMonkey or some other technique when the page is loaded.
A site using Trusted Computing can make it "impossible" to view the site without viewing the ads, short of a doing hardware hack on top of a major project software Trusted Computing emulator.
On the other hand, people in the US are being convicted because they have drawings of CP.
Which is why I had that one-word-sentence at the end of my last post.
Freedom of speech should allow everyone to divulge their political and social views, not to mock people around.
You're an idiot. You're ugly. And your mother wears army boots.
Just because I insult you or make fun of you does not give you a right to pull out a gun and shoot me. Nor can that non-existent right-to-use-force-in-self-defense be delegated to armed government enforcers applying that right-to-use-force-in-defense on your behalf.
You don't get to imprison someone under threat of deadly force simply because they hurt your feelings. You don't get to do it simply because someone offended you.
"Freedom" means more than "law of the jungle", where everyone can do what they want regardless of others.
Right. If someone picks your pocket or breaks your leg then we imprison them, and we have professional enforcers authorized to use deadly force to carry out that imprisonment.
If someone hurts your feelings you do not get to use violence in response. Grow up.
If someone says something that offends, or has some image that you find offensive, you do not get to use violence in response. There is no right-not-to-be-offended. Grow up.
Some people draw pictures of Mohamed. Some other people get angry about that physically attack the person who drew that picture, or they plant a bomb and blow him up along with any nearby bystanders, or they simply think they have some right to pull out a gun and imprison the artist or have the government's professional gunmen use their guns to imprison him.
The problem is not the artist drawing Mohamed. The problem is the people who dislike drawings of Mohamed, and who imagine their intense dislike gives them some right to use violence. THAT is the law of the jungle. That is what you are defending.
Freedom of speech should allow everyone to divulge their political and social views
The US Constitution reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Congress shall make no law [] abridging the freedom of speech.
It does not protect political and social views. It is a blanket coverage of speech. It is a recognition of the fact that speech itself cannot be a criminal act. Picking your pocket or breaking your leg cause material harm. Just because something hurts your feelings or offends you does not constitute a material harm and does not constitute a criminal act. You do not get to respond to unpleasant speech with physical force.
And an important aspect that needs to be addressed. There is no law against yelling fire in a theater. Congress CANNOT pass a law making it criminal to yell fire in a theater. However we do have laws making it criminal to deliberately or recklessly injure or kill people, or to place them in threat of life or limb. Causing a panicked stampede in a theater endangering people is criminal, the fact that you happened to use speech along the way is entirely incidental. The crime is injuring or endangering people. If you are in a theater filming a movie and everyone else are actors and crew who know yelling fire is part of the script, then you can indeed yell fire in a theater all you lie and it is not criminal. The speech itself is not criminal.
In fact I can say to you I'll give you a thousand dollars to kill my wife, and that speech is not criminal. I in fact have no wife, and it is blatantly obvious I am saying it to make a point, with no intention to cause a death to occur. Attempting to cause a death is criminal, and the fact that someone happens to use speech while trying to cause someone to carry out that murder is irrelevant. The speech itself is not criminal, but the attempt to cause a murder to occur is a crime and remains a crime even if they were using speech as a means of achieving that crime.
when the government is elected by public vote (like the Italian) those laws aren't "government censorship", their the "society censorship"
No, that most certainly IS government censorship.
The government is sending armed enforcers.
If you decline to comply, if you decline to comply with the desired censorship, if you decline to comply with the desired arrest, if you decline to comply with the desired imprisonment, if you decline to comply, then those gun-toting enforcers have government authority to shoot you dead.
If "society" (meaning "most people") dislike what you have to say then there are a variety of means of "social censorship" available. "Most people" can simply ignore you and your message, "most people" can decline to do business with out publishing or otherwise carrying your unwanted message, "most people" can can activle reject and avoid you and your message, "most people" can even try to actively suppress it by encouraging others towards one or more of those social responses.
For example holocaust denial is government-censored in Germany, and it is socially-censored in the US. In Germany the government will send armed men to enforce that censorship with lethal force. In the US the overwhelming majority of the population will ignore and actively avoid holocaust denialism, the overwhelming majority of publishing media will decline to carry your content, the overwhelming majority of stores and other outlets will decline to carry your content, and the overwhelming majority of the population actively encourage the rest of the population to participate in that "social censorship".
You clearly view "government censorship" as being a dirty word. And this is what i think I hear you saying:
'X' is bad. I want to do 'X'. When I do 'X' it's not really 'X'. When I do 'X' it's not bad.
Government censorship is bad. I want government censorship. When I do government censorship it's not really government censorship. When I do government censorship it's not bad.
Just because 51% of people dislike the same thing you dislike does not change the fact that using the government to censor it is government censorship.
and the majority rules
The majority of Americans once opposed interracial marriage, democratically passed laws against it, and even had it in some state constitutions. The fact that it was the majority of society didn't change the fact that it was discrimination, didn't make it right or good. It just means that most people are all too willing to abuse force and violence against anything or anyone they dislike. That most people are wannabe abusive dictators, and they are perfectly willing and able to join with other wannabe abusive dictators. It's called Tyranny of the Majority.
As an American one of the things I am most grateful for is that a couple of noble idealists thought a lot about Tyranny of the Majority, and those idealists wrote a couple of fateful words into our constitution, and now our courts are fairly good at striking down most democratic-majority-will laws for government censorship. Most.
I think any lost revenues from Italy would be dwarfed by the advertising and brand recognition value from the global media shitstorm that would ensue if Google dropped service to Italy.
the system to be bootable to deliver his ransom message. So, basically, your entire hypothetical situation is absurd.
It's not absurd at all - in fact that is exactly what they are designing this new drive system to do. Either a limited boot mode for management, and/or booting the actual operating system and locking you out of your application/data compartments on the drive. They want to enable each application to control its own locked down drive compartment.
Even without these new drives, Trusted Computing has essentially the same issue. If even a single bit gets flipped in a critical location a certain file(s), the Trust-chip will lock you out of your identity and your applications and data utilizing the Trust system. It's all encrypted, and the chip will refuse to give you any of the crypto-keys locking down your computer.
In the standard current case you would need to read-encrypt-rewrite all several hundred gigs of the drive. I would guesstimate that would probably take over an hour to complete. If you realize something is wrong you could simply hit the power button and nearly all of your data will still be retrievable.
With this system all of the data is encrypted. If I'm understanding the system correctly the owner is forbidden to know his encryption key. The system maintains a list of access profiles, you enter your password linked to your access profile, and then the drive internally generates or accesses the actual encryption key. Malware could potentially create do something like creating new access profile locked to some new password, and then delete or reset your access profile. That would involve only a few dozen bytes of data, and it would be completed almost instantaneously. All of your data is effectively destroyed instantaneously, unless you can get the unlock code from the attacker.
I agree completely, with the note that the earlier poster wanting to teach students "two sides of an argument" didn't exactly mean teaching his voodoo as an "unscientific dead end". Chuckle.
I'm sure he actually intended to teach that evolution was an unscientific dead end, and was merely playing the teach-the-controversy charade.
People have already been complaining that electric cars are too quite and people may get run over trying to cross the street without looking.
I assume the only reason THAT problem hasn't been fixed yet is because legislators are still too busy squabbling whether electric cars will have to make a 'Vroooom Vrooom' sound, or a 'Clickety Clop Clickity Clop' of horse hooves.
If they didn't care about it working as a phone, why wouldn't they have just gotten a stand-alone camera instead?
I don't support this proposed law, but just to answer your question...
If you planned to take "creepy" photos of one sort or another and someone semi-caught you fiddling with some strange device in a peculiar situtation, would you rather be able to answer "oh that's just my cellphone" or would you rather have to explain why you were pointing a camera in awkward places?
Thanks for the link on the Reset attack. I figured other people had spotted it as well:)
I wonder if anyone has done the reverse-reset attack I also mentioned... actually load the system and TPM into the trusted state, isolate the TPM communication line(s) to preserve that authentically generated TPM state, and then preform a reset on the CPU instead of the TPM.
The reverse-reset is less flexible, but it is in some ways simpler and it trivially defeats the OSLO Bootloader (mentioned in your link) or almost any other technique against the reset attack.
I just thought of another example I wanted to add. Galileo was right and astronomy was right for hundreds of years before science had any explanation at all for the origin of the sun&planets. An argument that Galileo's science was wrong or weak because he had no explanation for the origin of the sun&planets is obviously invalid, it is obviously silly.
Attacking evolution based on the origin of life is just as obviously invalid, and just as obviously silly.
I've yet to see an example of speciation that is not extremely trivial.
Right, speciation *is* pretty trivial.
And then over time separated populations will increasingly diverge. Again a trivial fact. Pretty much all of evolution is trivial - about the only less-than-obvious point is just how powerful selection is in creating complexity and new useful information. And I have PERSONALLY experimentally tested and witnessed that information creating power of evolutionary selection myself.
Ok, so selective pressures cause small changes in fruit flies or mosquitoes, probably just because of weeding out of certain genes from the existing gene pool.
I guess losing genes is a valid route for speciation, however it is most certainly not "just" by weeding out genes. There are several routs to speciation, and many documented cases of of creating novel useful genes.
>The origin of life is an interesting question... And it has no bearing on the validity of evolution. I obviously disagree.
How you can possibly disagree?
Are you asserting that a lack of explanation for the origin of elements affected the validity of chemistry? That seems pretty obviously silly to me.
Chemistry is shown true by the evidence, even without explaining the origin of elements. Evolution is shown true by the evidence, even without explaining the origin of life.
Same exact thing.
Without a self replicating cell, evolution would not be even conceivable.
Without elements, chemistry would not be even conceivable.
The field of chemistry STARTS with the given existence of elements. As far as chemistry is concerned it doesn't matter where they came from.
The field of evolution STARTS with the given existence of life. As far as biology is concerned it doesn't matter where life came from.
'm sorry, but the theory of evolution is such a gigantic leap onwards...about a billion-trillionth (well, whatever) of the claimed whole.
Every component of evolution has been tested and confirmed. Speciation has been repeatably tested. Increases in information has been repeatably tested. For phylum foraminifera we have an absolutely continuous complete fossil record spanning thousands of species over tens of millions of years - not merely every intermediate species but hyper-continuous transitional forms along individual speciation events - a continuous complete fossil record tracing diverse living species back to their common ancestor. The family tree of common descent has been endlessly tested and proven by DNA analysis - DNA analysis that establishes the family tree relationships between species with the same Court-of-Law Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt certainty as DNA analysis establishes the family tree relationships between people.
Every fundamental part of evolution is repeatably experimentally demonstrated, and/or conclusively confirmed by mountains of evidence.
Scientists resolved the basic question of evolution over a hundred years ago. Today they are studying things like the Foraminifera fossil record and studying exactly how long each speciation event took and examining in detail the population dynamics along individual speciation events, and studying how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events.
It's like people are attempting to debate the existence of atoms, when scientists have moved on to advanced chemistry and nuclear physics decades ago.
It's not like a high school freshman is going to be scarred for life by hearing two sides of an argument.
You really want to go with that?
Should we waste time in science class teaching "two sides" of the solar system argument? We spend only half the time teaching the standard science that the earth orbits the sun, and then we spend the other half of the time teaching students that the earth is the center of the universe and that the earth does not move? Shall we we spend time teaching students the "two sides" of chemistry vs the four earth/air/fire/water elements? Shall we we spend time teaching students the "two sides" of astronomy vs astrology?
Teaching students the four element earth/air/fire/water idea won't scar them for life. No, it won't make their heads explode. And it is a really really lousy way to try to get them to "think about opposing ideas".
That's exactly what's happening here. That's exactly what you are proposing and defending.
In science there is no more argument over evolution than there is over the solar system. These are science classes. We teach science in science class. That really should be the end of debate. These are science classes and we teach science in science class.
Perhaps because the theory of evolution has had a profound impact on Western thought, far more so than any other scientific theory I can think of.
I dunno. The idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe is comparable and arguably bigger shift in thought. And the religious fundamentalist wing fought that idea and that science much as they are fighting this idea and this science today.
And because although scientists can explain how they think evolution might have occurred, the scientific method can't be used to actually directly test the "origin of the species" - it isn't repeatable.
You are mistaken. That is one of the most common problems with anti-evolution arguments. Anti-evolutionists are unfamiliar with the science and unfamiliar with the evidence, they don't want the science to be right and they don't want the valid evidence to exist, and their anti-evolutionist sources push the idea that the science and evidence doesn't exist, so they assume that the science and evidence backing up evolution doesn't exist.
Speciation *is* repeatable. It and has been tested. It has been observed many times, both in the wild and in numerous laboratory experiments.
A specific event may not be repeatable - for example we cannot repeat the specific volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii nearly two thousand years ago, but volcanoes do repeatably erupt today just as species do repeatably originate today.
If you check good evolution textbooks or go through published science papers, yes speciation is documented and is repeatable.
And perhaps also because the theory of evolution depends on the pre-existence of DNA, and there is currently no satisfactory explanation for how it originated.
So? Chemistry depends on the pre-existence of elements. A hundred years ago, in 1909, we did not have any "satisfactory explanation for how [elements] originated".
Do you see how silly that argument is? You're saying chemistry would wrong or untrustworthy without an explanation for elements. No, a hundred years ago scientists know chemistry was valid science. The evidence established the truth of chemistry beyond any reasonable doubt. Just as evolution today is valid science, just as evolution today is established by the evidence as being accurate beyond any reasonable doubt.
The origin of elements was and is an interesting question. One which we later explained by the theory of nuclear fusion in stars.
The origin of life is an interesting question. One which we are currently working on in the field of abiogenesis. There is some solid and promising work there, but it is as yet a poorly developed poorly supported field of science. And it has no bearing on the validity of evolution. God could ave come down and manually placed the first living cell on earth - DNA and all - and evolution would still be just as valid. Just as chemistry would still be just as valid if God had hand-crafted every atom of every element in the universe.
And finally, because many proponents of evolution are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the ID'ers.
I will grant that there may certainly exist people who are "proponents of evolution are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the ID'ers". However I say any such people are quite rare and irrelevant.
I'll agree there are people who are quite forceful and self certain about evolution, but I say that must such people are no different than Galileo or any of his supporters "forcefully and self certainly" defending the solar system based on their knowledge of the facts and their knowledge of the evidence and their understanding.
If you are not familiar with the evidence backing up that certainty, if you don't want to understand it, if you want to believe it's mere religion, then yes to you it is going to appear that "proponents of [the solar system] are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the [16th century Church was in opposing it]".
I agree we should "make video games eligible for the same tax breaks that apply to TV and film", but do it the other way around.
Why the hell is the government telling TV and film that they don't have to pay the standard taxes everyone else has to pay?
A lot of people have this candyland fantasy that "tax cuts" and "tax breaks" and "tax relief" are a good thing. You can change SPENDING, but aside from that it is impossible to change the total money in taxes you have to collect. If you give some people a "tax break" independent of a spending change, then the bill on that spending still comes due and still needs to be paid for. Any "tax cut" or "tax break" or "tax relief" without a matching spending adjustment enforces an equal and opposite tax hike on others when the spending bills come due. If you give TV and film a tax break, then government expenses and government taxes simply get shifted into a tax hike on everyone else. The Bush tax-cut-for-millionaires did the same thing. If you cut government revenue collection from millionaires and maintain or increase government spending, that means you are in fact dumping and equal-and-opposite delayed tax hike on the poor and middle class. You can temporarily hide from reality - you can have the government temporarily put the bill on their credit card - but then you just have to pay the bill PLUS INTEREST. Creditcard financing just means a bigger tax hike later to cover the interest.
If someone wants to propose slashing $X dollars from the military budget, or slashing $X dollars from education, or slashing $X dollars from senior's Social Security and Medicade, if someone wants to slash $X in food aid for children in poverty, or any other specific spending cut, then fine. THAT is the only possible actual tax cut when the bills come due. Anyone else talking about tax-cuts is full of shit. They are engaging in candyland fantasy economics, and they are in fact proposing TAX REDISTRIBUTION, not a "tax cut", not a "tax break", not "tax relief". Discussing tax distribution can be legitimate, but calling it a cut or a break or relief is false and delusional.
I don't see why TV film or software industries should be getting a special government hand-out to cover their taxes at the standard rate that applies to every other industry. I don't see why the TV film or software industry tax bills should be redistributed as tax hike ultimately dumped onto everyone else.
mineral oil... drop all of the components in, and seal it up.
Beware, mineral oil as well as some other supposedly inert liquids can act as solvents leaching certain chemicals out of plastics or other components, causing breakdown. You have to be really careful what you use, especially for long term immersion.
I think for a "time capsule" you're better off just storing it in a sealed air container. If you want to get fancy maybe go for an inert CO2 or nitrogen atmosphere.
I do not know the expected lifetime of standard CDs and DVDs, but I have heard several reports of recordable CDs and DVDs getting bit rot after just a couple of years.
The previous post was an anonymous crapflood whining that Slashdot "is irrelevant, the editors have no talent, and the news sucks!". The rest of the post just goes downhill from there. It is blatantly offtopic, it very may well be a deliberate troll, and even at +1 Funny it is overrated.
but thanks to Slashdot's groupthink enforcement mechanism, metamoderation, I am no longer allowed to moderate.
Surprise surprise, considering the above.
But in any case, your post is currently sitting at +4 Interesting, so I will respond to it semi seriously. Ok, are you (1) deliberately trolling for the Slashdot-discussion-sucks point of the original anonymous crapflood? Or are you (2) just whining for the sake of whining? Or do you (3) have something productive to contribute? Because I for one find the Slashdot moderation and metamod system invaluable. Imperfect yes, but invaluable. I read a lot of Slashdot, I value the posts, but the only thing making it manageable is using the imperfect mod system to read at +3 most of the time.
If (1) you were Trolling, congratulations on baiting in a couple of frustrated mods, and thereby baiting in my post. See my final paragraph on that. If (2) you're whining for the sake of whining, awwwwwww poor baby. The system is indeed imperfect, but if the system smacked you down there is a strong chance you deserved it, even if you don't think so. And even if you didn't deserve it, oh well. The system is valuable and works pretty well, albeit imperfectly. You are heartily invited to move on to option 3. If (3) you think the system unfairly smacked you down, and you have any sort of productive suggestion on how to fix it, swell! Try posting that instead of a naked whine.
And to the mods, in my opinion my own post is offtopic and I don't mind if you mod it as such. I really don't care if my post is modded down to -1, but please first mod down the worthless whine post above and the grandparent Slashdot_sucks crapflood. I really don't need the karma. I get dozens and dozens of upmods for each downmod(usually for making a botched attempt at humor). Mod the crap out of sight, and then if you like mod this out of sight along with it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're basically right about the Trusted Computing thing.
They can never make it literally impossible to view the page ad-free, it's just a question of different levels of difficulty. A site using custom javascript or other techniques can make it "impossible" to view the site without viewing the ads, short of a programmer analyzing the technique and arranging to bypass it with GreaseMonkey or some other technique when the page is loaded.
A site using Trusted Computing can make it "impossible" to view the site without viewing the ads, short of a doing hardware hack on top of a major project software Trusted Computing emulator.
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I wonder how much more surreal we can make this?
http://timecube.com/
Do I win?
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On the other hand, people in the US are being convicted because they have drawings of CP.
Which is why I had that one-word-sentence at the end of my last post.
Freedom of speech should allow everyone to divulge their political and social views, not to mock people around.
You're an idiot.
You're ugly.
And your mother wears army boots.
Just because I insult you or make fun of you does not give you a right to pull out a gun and shoot me. Nor can that non-existent right-to-use-force-in-self-defense be delegated to armed government enforcers applying that right-to-use-force-in-defense on your behalf.
You don't get to imprison someone under threat of deadly force simply because they hurt your feelings. You don't get to do it simply because someone offended you.
"Freedom" means more than "law of the jungle", where everyone can do what they want regardless of others.
Right. If someone picks your pocket or breaks your leg then we imprison them, and we have professional enforcers authorized to use deadly force to carry out that imprisonment.
If someone hurts your feelings you do not get to use violence in response. Grow up.
If someone says something that offends, or has some image that you find offensive, you do not get to use violence in response. There is no right-not-to-be-offended. Grow up.
Some people draw pictures of Mohamed.
Some other people get angry about that physically attack the person who drew that picture, or they plant a bomb and blow him up along with any nearby bystanders, or they simply think they have some right to pull out a gun and imprison the artist or have the government's professional gunmen use their guns to imprison him.
The problem is not the artist drawing Mohamed.
The problem is the people who dislike drawings of Mohamed, and who imagine their intense dislike gives them some right to use violence. THAT is the law of the jungle. That is what you are defending.
Freedom of speech should allow everyone to divulge their political and social views
The US Constitution reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Congress shall make no law [] abridging the freedom of speech.
It does not protect political and social views. It is a blanket coverage of speech. It is a recognition of the fact that speech itself cannot be a criminal act. Picking your pocket or breaking your leg cause material harm. Just because something hurts your feelings or offends you does not constitute a material harm and does not constitute a criminal act. You do not get to respond to unpleasant speech with physical force.
And an important aspect that needs to be addressed. There is no law against yelling fire in a theater. Congress CANNOT pass a law making it criminal to yell fire in a theater. However we do have laws making it criminal to deliberately or recklessly injure or kill people, or to place them in threat of life or limb. Causing a panicked stampede in a theater endangering people is criminal, the fact that you happened to use speech along the way is entirely incidental. The crime is injuring or endangering people. If you are in a theater filming a movie and everyone else are actors and crew who know yelling fire is part of the script, then you can indeed yell fire in a theater all you lie and it is not criminal. The speech itself is not criminal.
In fact I can say to you I'll give you a thousand dollars to kill my wife, and that speech is not criminal. I in fact have no wife, and it is blatantly obvious I am saying it to make a point, with no intention to cause a death to occur. Attempting to cause a death is criminal, and the fact that someone happens to use speech while trying to cause someone to carry out that murder is irrelevant. The speech itself is not criminal, but the attempt to cause a murder to occur is a crime and remains a crime even if they were using speech as a means of achieving that crime.
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when the government is elected by public vote (like the Italian) those laws aren't "government censorship", their the "society censorship"
No, that most certainly IS government censorship.
The government is sending armed enforcers.
If you decline to comply,
if you decline to comply with the desired censorship,
if you decline to comply with the desired arrest,
if you decline to comply with the desired imprisonment,
if you decline to comply,
then those gun-toting enforcers have government authority to shoot you dead.
If "society" (meaning "most people") dislike what you have to say then there are a variety of means of "social censorship" available. "Most people" can simply ignore you and your message, "most people" can decline to do business with out publishing or otherwise carrying your unwanted message, "most people" can can activle reject and avoid you and your message, "most people" can even try to actively suppress it by encouraging others towards one or more of those social responses.
For example holocaust denial is government-censored in Germany, and it is socially-censored in the US. In Germany the government will send armed men to enforce that censorship with lethal force. In the US the overwhelming majority of the population will ignore and actively avoid holocaust denialism, the overwhelming majority of publishing media will decline to carry your content, the overwhelming majority of stores and other outlets will decline to carry your content, and the overwhelming majority of the population actively encourage the rest of the population to participate in that "social censorship".
You clearly view "government censorship" as being a dirty word. And this is what i think I hear you saying:
'X' is bad.
I want to do 'X'.
When I do 'X' it's not really 'X'.
When I do 'X' it's not bad.
Government censorship is bad.
I want government censorship.
When I do government censorship it's not really government censorship.
When I do government censorship it's not bad.
Just because 51% of people dislike the same thing you dislike does not change the fact that using the government to censor it is government censorship.
and the majority rules
The majority of Americans once opposed interracial marriage, democratically passed laws against it, and even had it in some state constitutions. The fact that it was the majority of society didn't change the fact that it was discrimination, didn't make it right or good. It just means that most people are all too willing to abuse force and violence against anything or anyone they dislike. That most people are wannabe abusive dictators, and they are perfectly willing and able to join with other wannabe abusive dictators. It's called Tyranny of the Majority.
As an American one of the things I am most grateful for is that a couple of noble idealists thought a lot about Tyranny of the Majority, and those idealists wrote a couple of fateful words into our constitution, and now our courts are fairly good at striking down most democratic-majority-will laws for government censorship. Most.
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I think any lost revenues from Italy would be dwarfed by the advertising and brand recognition value from the global media shitstorm that would ensue if Google dropped service to Italy.
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These kinds of criminal prosecutions are a uniquely Italian phenomenon
for sufficiently unique definitions of 'unique'.
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the system to be bootable to deliver his ransom message. So, basically, your entire hypothetical situation is absurd.
It's not absurd at all - in fact that is exactly what they are designing this new drive system to do. Either a limited boot mode for management, and/or booting the actual operating system and locking you out of your application/data compartments on the drive. They want to enable each application to control its own locked down drive compartment.
Even without these new drives, Trusted Computing has essentially the same issue. If even a single bit gets flipped in a critical location a certain file(s), the Trust-chip will lock you out of your identity and your applications and data utilizing the Trust system. It's all encrypted, and the chip will refuse to give you any of the crypto-keys locking down your computer.
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There is a bit of a difference.
In the standard current case you would need to read-encrypt-rewrite all several hundred gigs of the drive. I would guesstimate that would probably take over an hour to complete. If you realize something is wrong you could simply hit the power button and nearly all of your data will still be retrievable.
With this system all of the data is encrypted. If I'm understanding the system correctly the owner is forbidden to know his encryption key. The system maintains a list of access profiles, you enter your password linked to your access profile, and then the drive internally generates or accesses the actual encryption key. Malware could potentially create do something like creating new access profile locked to some new password, and then delete or reset your access profile. That would involve only a few dozen bytes of data, and it would be completed almost instantaneously. All of your data is effectively destroyed instantaneously, unless you can get the unlock code from the attacker.
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Yes, I did think this whole thing though pretty thoroughly.
Very complex. It took me nearly two and a half seconds.
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I agree completely, with the note that the earlier poster wanting to teach students "two sides of an argument" didn't exactly mean teaching his voodoo as an "unscientific dead end". Chuckle.
I'm sure he actually intended to teach that evolution was an unscientific dead end, and was merely playing the teach-the-controversy charade.
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Pervs will just use the publicly available hack which will come out less than 12 hours after this is passed into law.
Much like DRM, the hack will most certainly be available well before the law is passed.
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Don't forget to include an H2S gas canister to complete the effect.
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I was worried that congress had stuff to address that actually matters.
Maybe they could reduce the crap level slightly by introducing idle.Congress.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
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People have already been complaining that electric cars are too quite and people may get run over trying to cross the street without looking.
I assume the only reason THAT problem hasn't been fixed yet is because legislators are still too busy squabbling whether electric cars will have to make a 'Vroooom Vrooom' sound, or a 'Clickety Clop Clickity Clop' of horse hooves.
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If they didn't care about it working as a phone, why wouldn't they have just gotten a stand-alone camera instead?
I don't support this proposed law, but just to answer your question...
If you planned to take "creepy" photos of one sort or another and someone semi-caught you fiddling with some strange device in a peculiar situtation, would you rather be able to answer "oh that's just my cellphone" or would you rather have to explain why you were pointing a camera in awkward places?
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Stop thinking abut the children, you pervert!
;)
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Thanks for the link on the Reset attack. I figured other people had spotted it as well :)
I wonder if anyone has done the reverse-reset attack I also mentioned... actually load the system and TPM into the trusted state, isolate the TPM communication line(s) to preserve that authentically generated TPM state, and then preform a reset on the CPU instead of the TPM.
The reverse-reset is less flexible, but it is in some ways simpler and it trivially defeats the OSLO Bootloader (mentioned in your link) or almost any other technique against the reset attack.
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I just thought of another example I wanted to add. Galileo was right and astronomy was right for hundreds of years before science had any explanation at all for the origin of the sun&planets. An argument that Galileo's science was wrong or weak because he had no explanation for the origin of the sun&planets is obviously invalid, it is obviously silly.
Attacking evolution based on the origin of life is just as obviously invalid, and just as obviously silly.
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I've yet to see an example of speciation that is not extremely trivial.
Right, speciation *is* pretty trivial.
And then over time separated populations will increasingly diverge. Again a trivial fact. Pretty much all of evolution is trivial - about the only less-than-obvious point is just how powerful selection is in creating complexity and new useful information. And I have PERSONALLY experimentally tested and witnessed that information creating power of evolutionary selection myself.
Ok, so selective pressures cause small changes in fruit flies or mosquitoes, probably just because of weeding out of certain genes from the existing gene pool.
I guess losing genes is a valid route for speciation, however it is most certainly not "just" by weeding out genes. There are several routs to speciation, and many documented cases of of creating novel useful genes.
>The origin of life is an interesting question ... And it has no bearing on the validity of evolution.
I obviously disagree.
How you can possibly disagree?
Are you asserting that a lack of explanation for the origin of elements affected the validity of chemistry? That seems pretty obviously silly to me.
Chemistry is shown true by the evidence, even without explaining the origin of elements.
Evolution is shown true by the evidence, even without explaining the origin of life.
Same exact thing.
Without a self replicating cell, evolution would not be even conceivable.
Without elements, chemistry would not be even conceivable.
The field of chemistry STARTS with the given existence of elements. As far as chemistry is concerned it doesn't matter where they came from.
The field of evolution STARTS with the given existence of life. As far as biology is concerned it doesn't matter where life came from.
'm sorry, but the theory of evolution is such a gigantic leap onwards ...about a billion-trillionth (well, whatever) of the claimed whole.
Every component of evolution has been tested and confirmed. Speciation has been repeatably tested. Increases in information has been repeatably tested. For phylum foraminifera we have an absolutely continuous complete fossil record spanning thousands of species over tens of millions of years - not merely every intermediate species but hyper-continuous transitional forms along individual speciation events - a continuous complete fossil record tracing diverse living species back to their common ancestor. The family tree of common descent has been endlessly tested and proven by DNA analysis - DNA analysis that establishes the family tree relationships between species with the same Court-of-Law Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt certainty as DNA analysis establishes the family tree relationships between people.
Every fundamental part of evolution is repeatably experimentally demonstrated, and/or conclusively confirmed by mountains of evidence.
Scientists resolved the basic question of evolution over a hundred years ago. Today they are studying things like the Foraminifera fossil record and studying exactly how long each speciation event took and examining in detail the population dynamics along individual speciation events, and studying how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events.
It's like people are attempting to debate the existence of atoms, when scientists have moved on to advanced chemistry and nuclear physics decades ago.
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It's not like a high school freshman is going to be scarred for life by hearing two sides of an argument.
You really want to go with that?
Should we waste time in science class teaching "two sides" of the solar system argument? We spend only half the time teaching the standard science that the earth orbits the sun, and then we spend the other half of the time teaching students that the earth is the center of the universe and that the earth does not move? Shall we we spend time teaching students the "two sides" of chemistry vs the four earth/air/fire/water elements? Shall we we spend time teaching students the "two sides" of astronomy vs astrology?
Teaching students the four element earth/air/fire/water idea won't scar them for life. No, it won't make their heads explode. And it is a really really lousy way to try to get them to "think about opposing ideas".
That's exactly what's happening here. That's exactly what you are proposing and defending.
In science there is no more argument over evolution than there is over the solar system. These are science classes. We teach science in science class. That really should be the end of debate. These are science classes and we teach science in science class.
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Perhaps because the theory of evolution has had a profound impact on Western thought, far more so than any other scientific theory I can think of.
I dunno. The idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe is comparable and arguably bigger shift in thought. And the religious fundamentalist wing fought that idea and that science much as they are fighting this idea and this science today.
And because although scientists can explain how they think evolution might have occurred, the scientific method can't be used to actually directly test the "origin of the species" - it isn't repeatable.
You are mistaken. That is one of the most common problems with anti-evolution arguments. Anti-evolutionists are unfamiliar with the science and unfamiliar with the evidence, they don't want the science to be right and they don't want the valid evidence to exist, and their anti-evolutionist sources push the idea that the science and evidence doesn't exist, so they assume that the science and evidence backing up evolution doesn't exist.
Speciation *is* repeatable. It and has been tested. It has been observed many times, both in the wild and in numerous laboratory experiments.
A specific event may not be repeatable - for example we cannot repeat the specific volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii nearly two thousand years ago, but volcanoes do repeatably erupt today just as species do repeatably originate today.
If you check good evolution textbooks or go through published science papers, yes speciation is documented and is repeatable.
And perhaps also because the theory of evolution depends on the pre-existence of DNA, and there is currently no satisfactory explanation for how it originated.
So? Chemistry depends on the pre-existence of elements. A hundred years ago, in 1909, we did not have any "satisfactory explanation for how [elements] originated".
Do you see how silly that argument is? You're saying chemistry would wrong or untrustworthy without an explanation for elements. No, a hundred years ago scientists know chemistry was valid science. The evidence established the truth of chemistry beyond any reasonable doubt. Just as evolution today is valid science, just as evolution today is established by the evidence as being accurate beyond any reasonable doubt.
The origin of elements was and is an interesting question. One which we later explained by the theory of nuclear fusion in stars.
The origin of life is an interesting question. One which we are currently working on in the field of abiogenesis. There is some solid and promising work there, but it is as yet a poorly developed poorly supported field of science. And it has no bearing on the validity of evolution. God could ave come down and manually placed the first living cell on earth - DNA and all - and evolution would still be just as valid. Just as chemistry would still be just as valid if God had hand-crafted every atom of every element in the universe.
And finally, because many proponents of evolution are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the ID'ers.
I will grant that there may certainly exist people who are "proponents of evolution are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the ID'ers". However I say any such people are quite rare and irrelevant.
I'll agree there are people who are quite forceful and self certain about evolution, but I say that must such people are no different than Galileo or any of his supporters "forcefully and self certainly" defending the solar system based on their knowledge of the facts and their knowledge of the evidence and their understanding.
If you are not familiar with the evidence backing up that certainty, if you don't want to understand it, if you want to believe it's mere religion, then yes to you it is going to appear that "proponents of [the solar system] are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the [16th century Church was in opposing it]".
I agree we should "make video games eligible for the same tax breaks that apply to TV and film", but do it the other way around.
Why the hell is the government telling TV and film that they don't have to pay the standard taxes everyone else has to pay?
A lot of people have this candyland fantasy that "tax cuts" and "tax breaks" and "tax relief" are a good thing. You can change SPENDING, but aside from that it is impossible to change the total money in taxes you have to collect. If you give some people a "tax break" independent of a spending change, then the bill on that spending still comes due and still needs to be paid for. Any "tax cut" or "tax break" or "tax relief" without a matching spending adjustment enforces an equal and opposite tax hike on others when the spending bills come due. If you give TV and film a tax break, then government expenses and government taxes simply get shifted into a tax hike on everyone else. The Bush tax-cut-for-millionaires did the same thing. If you cut government revenue collection from millionaires and maintain or increase government spending, that means you are in fact dumping and equal-and-opposite delayed tax hike on the poor and middle class. You can temporarily hide from reality - you can have the government temporarily put the bill on their credit card - but then you just have to pay the bill PLUS INTEREST. Creditcard financing just means a bigger tax hike later to cover the interest.
If someone wants to propose slashing $X dollars from the military budget, or slashing $X dollars from education, or slashing $X dollars from senior's Social Security and Medicade, if someone wants to slash $X in food aid for children in poverty, or any other specific spending cut, then fine. THAT is the only possible actual tax cut when the bills come due. Anyone else talking about tax-cuts is full of shit. They are engaging in candyland fantasy economics, and they are in fact proposing TAX REDISTRIBUTION, not a "tax cut", not a "tax break", not "tax relief". Discussing tax distribution can be legitimate, but calling it a cut or a break or relief is false and delusional.
I don't see why TV film or software industries should be getting a special government hand-out to cover their taxes at the standard rate that applies to every other industry. I don't see why the TV film or software industry tax bills should be redistributed as tax hike ultimately dumped onto everyone else.
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mineral oil... drop all of the components in, and seal it up.
Beware, mineral oil as well as some other supposedly inert liquids can act as solvents leaching certain chemicals out of plastics or other components, causing breakdown. You have to be really careful what you use, especially for long term immersion.
I think for a "time capsule" you're better off just storing it in a sealed air container. If you want to get fancy maybe go for an inert CO2 or nitrogen atmosphere.
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I do not know the expected lifetime of standard CDs and DVDs, but I have heard several reports of recordable CDs and DVDs getting bit rot after just a couple of years.
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I'd mod you up
The previous post was an anonymous crapflood whining that Slashdot "is irrelevant, the editors have no talent, and the news sucks!". The rest of the post just goes downhill from there. It is blatantly offtopic, it very may well be a deliberate troll, and even at +1 Funny it is overrated.
but thanks to Slashdot's groupthink enforcement mechanism, metamoderation, I am no longer allowed to moderate.
Surprise surprise, considering the above.
But in any case, your post is currently sitting at +4 Interesting, so I will respond to it semi seriously. Ok, are you (1) deliberately trolling for the Slashdot-discussion-sucks point of the original anonymous crapflood? Or are you (2) just whining for the sake of whining? Or do you (3) have something productive to contribute? Because I for one find the Slashdot moderation and metamod system invaluable. Imperfect yes, but invaluable. I read a lot of Slashdot, I value the posts, but the only thing making it manageable is using the imperfect mod system to read at +3 most of the time.
If (1) you were Trolling, congratulations on baiting in a couple of frustrated mods, and thereby baiting in my post. See my final paragraph on that.
If (2) you're whining for the sake of whining, awwwwwww poor baby. The system is indeed imperfect, but if the system smacked you down there is a strong chance you deserved it, even if you don't think so. And even if you didn't deserve it, oh well. The system is valuable and works pretty well, albeit imperfectly. You are heartily invited to move on to option 3.
If (3) you think the system unfairly smacked you down, and you have any sort of productive suggestion on how to fix it, swell! Try posting that instead of a naked whine.
And to the mods, in my opinion my own post is offtopic and I don't mind if you mod it as such. I really don't care if my post is modded down to -1, but please first mod down the worthless whine post above and the grandparent Slashdot_sucks crapflood. I really don't need the karma. I get dozens and dozens of upmods for each downmod(usually for making a botched attempt at humor). Mod the crap out of sight, and then if you like mod this out of sight along with it.
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