The really funny thing is that going electronic was the response to all of the claims of irregularities in the 2000 election.
Going electronic was the thing that was supposed to make voting uniform, easy, consistent, and fair, in all areas and for people of all stripes.
You make it sound as if Diebold is, quite literally, out to rig elections. All it's out to do is protect its code. Now, I'm NOT saying that is a good thing for a voting system!
Further, the lack of a requirement for a voter-verified paper trail was an oversight, and an unintentional one at that, in the haste of many lawmakers to fix the problems of 2000, and generally move the processes for holding elections forward. It was assumed, incorrectly and erroneously, that computers, the same broad devices that keep track of our money, run out nuclear power plants, and help keep us alive during surgery, could tally votes in a simple election. The oversight was one of unique proportions: all of these other systems have failsafes or backup records. The voting system, fundamental to our democracy, in the form called for, had no such safeguards or backups. But when this became an issue, the three major e-voting vendors ALL had equipment necessary to add voter-verified permanent paper trails to the systems. The problem? Many municipalities didn't want to pay for it.
I know it's fun for everyone to think that Diebold is a secret Republican conspiracy to steal elections, or to twist around the Diebold CEO's comments, however ignorant and inappropriate, as "proof" that their sole purpose is to steal elections. But the simple fact is that, frankly, voting CAN be done reliably with electronic systems, as long as there is also a physical paper trail, verified by the voter, and kept by the same electoral officials who have run our elections since the beginning of time (i.e., county government). If you can't or won't acknowledge that electronic voting can be done reliably, then we have another problem. And further still, as long as there is a voter-verified permanent paper trail, there is frankly absolutely no reason to see all of the code, though that would be a bonus: as long as the systems perform reliably, stand up to scrutiny and manual recounts from paper trails that cannot be forged, and so on (and you don't believe that county governments will band together in secret conspiracies to rig elections for Republicans), then there is no need for the code to even be open.
Note that personally, I'd love for it to be open, but this statute would require too much: as another poster who worked on the law itself confirmed above, there are NO exceptions, and ALL code on ALL systems has to be revealed. This means if they choose to run it on a best-of-breed closed-source embedded base, the manufacturer of that product would also be forced to open their code to the state. That is unacceptable. And if you think it should be a completely homebrew, from-the-ground-up, open source solution built on an open source OS, you'd probably be ignorant of the complexity in support and other factors for a system such as this, but at least you'd be logically consistent.
This being a good example, as you've framed the question as a dichotomy which seems to me to be a false one. Why are these new surveilance powers necessary for our domestic intelligence gathering to protect our assets? What power do they need that is incompatible with the standards of justice that the U.S.? You are asking me is it okay to give up my civil liberties in order to gain safety, and I ask why is that a necessary choice?
I'm not saying it is. That's what the article and the submitter of this slashdot story are insinuating. Why is making certain exceptions for investigations related to foreign intelligence "giving up my civil liberties"?
If you have reason to believe that circumstance exists, you should have no problem convincing a judge of the need for a warrant. If you do not have reason to believe that circumstance exists, then you are just using scare tactics to justify a decrease in privacy rights. Once again I'm seeing a false dichotomy, and it's the one the federal government always uses -- we can only protect you if we take away your righs.
No, I'm not saying that, and I don't think the federal government uses that argument either, intentionally or otherwise. Let's take the Jose Padilla example.
There was plenty of circumstantial evidence that he intended to obtain and detonate a dirty bomb in a US city (most likely downtown Chicago) in the service of radical Islam. However, the US government clearly didn't have enough evidence to charge him for such crimes for 3 years; at least, that's what I'm assuming, since I'd expect they would have charged him otherwise. The circumstantial evidence seemed overwhelming. Granted, I'm making that judgment on the basis of what the government asserted and generally as an outsider. But a lot of the circumstantial evidence (i.e., that he coverted to Islam, changed his name, went overseas to train in al Qaeda camps, etc.) is independently verifiable. But none of those things are "illegal". But would I want him to be free? Absolutely not. When someone asks, "well, what happens when the standard is lowered such that someone like yourself could be held without charge for 3 years?" I find myself being able to only respond "Well, I'll never convert to radical Islam, change my name, and train in al Qaeda terror camps, so I don't think I'll have to worry." Some here will no doubt find that trite, but I'm one hundred percent serious when I say that.
Since the "lives of thousands" that every American thinks of is 9/11, let me remind you that we really didn't need any additional surveilance powers to catch them. We had the evidence, the problems were focus (not on terrorism) and communication (security departments operating more like separate kingdoms than part of the same).
Okay. Now, I'm not saying YOU are making this argument, but let me remind you that many of the people who are vehemently anti-Bush also now say that the DHS is the worst bureaucracy ever to be created. And these were some of the same people who are making the exact claim you just did above, by calling for the ability for intelligence agencies to share information. I see that as an unwinnable "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. And worse yet, other people who no doubt disagree with the idea of expanded domestic intelligence gathering are making arguments that are essentially the exact opposite of the one you just made. I don't see how I can argue against two almost diametrically opposed viewpoints, both of which still purport to be uniformly opposed to expanded domestic intelligence.
Yes, they exist. If you can't get a warrant for what you need, then you probably don't need it. That is what "reasonable searches" means. We must have oversight. Most of the attempts at increasing police powers in the past decade have focused around having less oversight, whether that's Clinton's roving wiretaps or Bush's anti-terrorism memos. If these actions are so necessary, and so right, and so devoted to helping the people, why can they not s
I agree with everything you said about the Red Scare. The oaths, and associated similar crap, do NOTHING. I wasn't arguing they did.
And I'm not trying to use a strawman argument. But your implication with your McCarthy statement ("bend over") was clear. How else should that be taken? And the thing always ignored about McCarthy was that he was *right*. I'm NOT saying that the ensuing methods and madness were appropriate.
But once we found and suspected paid Soviet spies in government and press, including some high posts, what should our reaction have been?
That's one of the best prescriptions for a solution to such problems that I've ever heard.
If the federal government's power was as limited as the Constitution laid out, the concerns about the broad implications of "spies" in government would be moot.
I'll stipulate to everything else you've said as appropriate commentary on my questions, whether or not I necessarily agree or disagree with it. However, I take issue with:
Whoops, you forgot a few words:
you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best, for the government person's self or family or friends.
While I would agree that every person's view of the world is colored by their own experience, and that individuals may view society in the context of their own position in the overall scheme of things, and that of persons with whom they have the most contact and interpersonal experience (i.e., family and friends), I would dispute that these individuals still don't genuinely want to protect and serve even people who they don't know. Further, I'd argue that even if their primary motivation is protection of their "family and friends", such protection, on a broad and indirect scale (i.e., actions not taken specifically and explicitly to protect an individual person), necessarily extends to anyone of similar background: if an indirect action is believed to protect that federal official's "family", it also protects everyone else.
If you think that's a good thing (or that ignoring it is a good thing), then we probably won't see eye to eye...
I mean, if you shouldn't try to stop people who are paid by your national enemies, or who espouse the core political and ideological ideals of your national enemies, then why even have nations and borders? If any national government is legitimate, it stands to be protected, else, what is its purpose?
1.) Within the physical borders of the United States, and/or
2.) United States citizens or permanent residents,
to legitimately be conspiring to commit actions against the United States or its citizens that would be outside of the bounds of the law, in concert or cooperation with a foreign influence?
What follows is a series of honest, and not rhetorical, questions:
Is it ever ok for US intelligence and/or military capability to use domestic surveillance and/or intelligence-gathering to protect our assets (be they life, property, and so on), or is it always better to err on the side of privacy in domestic concerns, and use the standard US criminal justice system to prosecute crimes after they have already occurred?
Is there ever a circumstance where preemption could be appropriate, or would universal privacy always trump, say, the lives of thousands of others?
Black-and-white liberty and freedom quotes aside, is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic (e.g., 9/11-style) harm?[1]
Is it possible to have appropriate oversight of such activities, or would you argue that such mechanisms for oversight and investigation already exist (e.g., warrants, etc.)?
If so, how can we expect the government and those charged with protection to keep up with all potential threats? There were numerous calls for better "human intelligence" after 9/11, including many by those opposed to the current war effort. If the collection of such intelligence is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
I'd appreciate honest, and not cynical, answers.
[1] Please consider that no matter how much you personally may distrust the machinery of government, I would remind you that you would likely find that in face-to-face discussions with individual military, intelligence, or other government personnel, you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best.
In fairness, eEye has discovered legitimate vulnerabilities that Apple has actually included in OS and security updates.
However, I do agree with you.
And further, it's impossible for this to a "remote execute" vulnerability like the stories based on the extremely vague advisory make it out to be: you can't even talk to iTunes remotely when it's running (unless you have iTunes Sharing enabled, which is available on your local subnet). Therefore, as I've said in another post, this vulnerability *must* be exploited via visiting a malicious web site, which then passes a url and/or file to iTunes. Period. That's the only way this could happen. It's not just something where if you run iTunes, all of a sudden you're vulnerable. Bravo to the way they've positioned it though. They probably floated out some media releases, too. I especially like the last line of the advisory:
Protection: Blink Endpoint Vulnerability Prevention mitigates any potential exploitation of this vulnerability, without requiring a patch or invasive firewall actions.
And, for what it's worth, eEye will release the "details", whatever they are, after Apple has patched whatever the issue is.
I highly, highly doubt this is a "remote execute" bug. You can't even talk to iTunes remotely when it's running (unless you have iTunes Sharing running, which is a port available on your local subnet).
Therefore, this vulnerability must represent visiting a malicious web site, which then passes a url and/or file to iTunes. It is NOT a direct, remote execution vulnerability with iTunes itself.
Just having iTunes doesn't mean you're automagically vulnerable to whatever this still-unannounced exploit is. And I can say that with surety without even knowing what this "exploit" actually is. And further, iTunes isn't "mandatory" (even though this is repeated ad nauseum):
Nothing yet, since details of the flaw won't be released by eEye until a patch is released by Apple.
If someone is wondering "should I be worried", the answer is no; exploits of this nature are usually still theoretical and not being exploited en masse "in the wild". Many of these exploits are explicitly discovered by the security organizations who have released the advisories themselves and are often not necessarily representative of any actual exploit being applied maliciously: the idea is to catch security vulnerabilities before they are actually used maliciously. Further, the exploit in question probably requires the user to specifically visit a malicious web site (other than a port open via Rende..., er I mean, Bonjour, when iTunes Sharing is enabled, I don't know of any other avenue to exploit iTunes). The exploit must, therefore, pass a url and/or file to iTunes, and therefore would very likely require visiting a malicious web site.
We don't know the details of the exploit, I can still say with it's extremely likely that it is not something that would be able to spontaneously occur simply by using iTunes in a normal fashion.
This story would more accurately be:
"Some unknown and unannounced flaw found in a piece of software; fix coming from software vendor"
Is this news?
(And it's amusing that if you buy a commercial product from the vendor issuing the vulnerability, you'll be protected! Not a rip on eEye, who has discovered a good deal of vulnerabilities, but it's not as if many of these security entities themselves don't have an interest in finding "vulnerabilities", no matter how nebulous or unlikely.)
Um, you've never seen a corporation "contribute" money to something in the hopes of getting something back? Red Hat is absolutely seeing dollar signs out of this deal!! I can't believe how ignorant you and a couple of the other posters in this vein apparently are, AND that someone else modded you up for it! Red Hat would have an OS running on litterally TENS OF MILLIONS of machines over the next decade (if the plans for this program work out), and would have mindshare (and knowledge) of TENS OF MILLIONS of people in developing nations. People it hopes will run Red Hat Linux in corporate, educational, and government environments as these nations develop. People Red Hat hopes will buy commercialized products and services from them in the future. Lots of commercialized products and services. For a lot of money. Christ people, are you *that* blind? Why do you think Jobs was offering OS X? Sure, there may be elements of goodwill on the part of Red Hat *and* Jobs, but that's not the only, or even the biggest, reason they're doing it.
You can say this with such surety? Please explain.
I don't have to. You think OS X will run as-is on a hand-cranked machine with an AMD processor, no hard disk, flash storage, and for which one requirement is that it operate in a tablet mode? To any logical person, it goes without saying that a special version of Mac OS X would be created for such a project, just as a special version of Red Hat will be, and in fact is being, created. Red Hat, of course, will say "no, it's just normal Red Hat Linux", just as Apple would claim it's just "normal" OS X.
I didn't say it would be a "incredibly stripped down" version of OS X that wouldn't resemble OS X.
I said it would be a version of OS X targeted for this platform and program. In other words, all the comments like "OMG, I heard some of OS X's special fancy graphic effects are slow on an iBook, so, OMG, how would it run on a $100 laptop?!??!?!??!!11111one" are completely irrelevant, because the 3D graphic effects aren't what's important. It would most certainly resemble OS X, and would in fact be OS X, and the things that are most important about OS X are things like its frameworks and APIs, and extensive support for languages and extensively polished user interface.
"There are people in developing countries who have never seen computers so it's not like, 'How is this better than Windows?"'
Well, with that argument, why not just hand them a pile of dogshit?
That's the most useless justification for staying with Red Hat Linux as I've ever heard.
Further, it's not as if Red Hat-proper is "free". You can bet your bottom dollar that Red Hat is seeing dollar signs out of this deal. Big dollar signs.
Sure, Jobs may have been in it partly for ulterior reasons as well - I'm not going to pretend to know what he's thinking - but considering that the entire core of Mac OS X is open source, and what's not open source is a very polished, easy to use, major-vendor-supported OS with amazing language and multilingual support, revolutionary accessibility support, including the first commercial OS to include a free full-fledged spoken interface, and so on, I think that rejecting it out-of-hand on the basis of wanting to be "100%" open source is a little bit short-signted and foolish, when one steps back and looks at the big picture.
I literally can't believe MIT rejected this offer.
(And no, there wouldn't be concerns with system requirements. Apple would have engineered a targeted version of Mac OS X specifically for this program.)
Um, do you *really think* that OS X would be running as-is on these $100 laptops?
AMD processors with flash memory in place of a hard disk? A tablet mode?
If the project accepted, they'd be running a specially targeted and customized version of OS X specifically for this application, so all of the "hardware requirements" arguments are straw men. They'd be able to run "OS X", as engineered for this project, just fine.
How did you get your own "personal stockpile"...
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
...when it's a prescription drug that is normally administered by a physician in a clinical setting?
I'm depressed about this.. I wanted this to flop so that Apple and the studios would be forced to give us more content, higher res, and less DRM... And I'm an Apple shareholder!
Because, up until now, the studios had given us so much full-quality digital non-DRM encumbered content?
Please.
When they were already providing essentially *no* content, how would the first major commercial offering of such a service flopping "force" them to provide *more* content?
Further, you think that they'll provide content with "less" DRM? (Are you implying you'll accept DRM, if there's "less" of it? Or do you really mean no DRM? Because if that's what you mean, you'll NEVER get it.)
As to higher res, there's a problem here other than the content providers or Apple. And it's just a little one called "bandwidth". Before you go off telling me that you want to download your 1080i movies, even H.264 compressed, please explain how, even on the highest bandwidth home broadband connections generally available in the US, a 6 hour download jibes with Apple's strategy.
Never underestimate of the power of stupid anonymous coward posts on Slashdot.
The biggest issue with media centers is a very practical one: tuning. How do you tune channels from cable or satellite providers when a set top box provided by cable or satellite provider is essentially required? The "IR blaster" solution is inelegant at best, and gets even more inelegant if you want more than one tuner. That was Microsoft's biggest miscalculation in the media center strategy.
Conversely, the cable and satellite providers themselves will be able to provide one device that can record all of your digital content, AND acts as your set top box, AND has multiple tuners AND handles SD, HD, digital, and analog, AND doesn't require a large initial expenditure: most providers will give you all of this for under $10/month, in a turnkey solution that "just works". Granted, it's not as flexible and capable as your own box, but most will accept this tradeoff. Most won't even know there *was* a tradeoff.
But what of all your other media? Your music, your movies, your videos? Indeed, Apple's media center strategy is a novel one: it includes all traditional media center functions except perhaps the primary one: television recording. Instead, it's taken the bold next step: bypass the tuning issue and the recording issue entirely by bypassing the cable and satellite operators entirely, and delivering the content directly to you. The cable operators will still provide a service: it will just be bandwidth, and not content.
And we gave deadly gas to Saddam Hussein, what does this have to do with deciding the proper governance of root servers?
What does your statement have to do with anything we're talking about, other than to get in a politically-charged jab?
But to answer the second part of question, I'd hope it would be reasonably obvious that a nation may be compelled to retain an element of control over things that it created, has a huge historical and ongoing investment in, and in which it has a major vested interest.
they have given control of.com to very unscrupulous people who intentionally violated their agreement and broke routing worldwide for profit.
Yes. One arguably major misstep and egregious violation by Verisign, which was then corrected under the contract terms. So you're saying it's not possible for a contractor to err or intentionally misbehave anywhere outside the US?
As to the rest of your points, it sounds like your issue is really with ICANN, not strictly Department of Commerce (i.e., US) influence with regard to ICANN. Whether you would like to believe it or not, those are two different things.
As to the root servers, most of them (physical machines) are located, paid for, and maintained by foreign companies and reside outside the U.S.
5 of the 13 roots are outside of the US. Unless you're talking about multiple servers within a single root, such as F, which you appear to be since you say "physical machines". There is also the same level of redundancy within the US. So while it's splitting hairs, I would still guess that more physical machines serving in roots are located within the US, even though this really has no bearing one way or another on this discussion.
Because by distributing responsibility you need a majority of countries to agree before they can really mess things up, as opposed to just the US, which is already messing things up and is likely to do so more in the future.
Howso? By granting.com and.net management to Verisign, and then correcting Verisign when it inappropriately asserts authority out of the bounds of its contract? By disallowing new TLDs? When compared on balance with 20+ years of sound and able management? Yeah, that's really messing things up.
The root server list is simply an agreed upon standard, decided by the U.S. and incompatible with other standards, more or less by definition. If the whole world agrees to move the standard in one direction, not chosen by the US, and the US disagrees, who is it that is being arrogant and stupid?
And why, exactly, does the root server "standard" need to move in any other direction? What's deficient about it or its management now? Be specific, keeping in mind that I don't really think we randomly need to introduce new and arbitrary TLDs.
To put it another way, if you were the minister of technology in the Iraq, Russia, or Chile would you recommend that your government invest billions in and build a technological infrastructure for all communications within and outside your country upon which your economy is dependent, if you knew a political shift in Washington could completely cripple that architecture? Would you not feel safer if it required a majority of countries to agree to cripple your infrastructure and if you were given the opportunity to have representation when decisions were made?
But they already have made such an investment. And further, you act is if such an investment is completely negated if the US makes changes. Any change that would "cripple" any other nation's technical investment would also cripple our own (unless you're talking about deliberately removing a country's TLD from the root). The mechanics of a network aren't dependent upon the current root server status quo. Indeed, as has been pointed out many times, nations could in fact create the own "internets" separate from the internet that uses the US-managed root servers.
I'm not quite sure how to react when I read things like this.
First of all, the US isn't going to disconnect New Zealand from the internet or cut anyone's fiber.
Second, the "reinterpretation" of the laws is designed to make sure that porn performers are of legal age. Period. If you have problems with that and think they should be able to be younger than 18, or that porn sites shouldn't be able to produce records that indicate that they ARE over 18, then we probably won't see eye to eye on this. No matter how fringe or uncommon it is, anything else would allow child pornographers to operate more easily and/or go unpunished.
Third, "anti-nuclear" isn't necessarily a good thing. Since I'm assuming by the rest of your message that you're probably against things that gobble up and/or destroy the earth's natural resources, it might serve you to consider that nuclear power is one of the BEST options we collectively have for the future, and being "anti-nuclear" just for the sake of it is probably one of the most patently absurd, ridiculous, and ignorant positions you can take.
Which, in turn, is trumped only by the arrogance and narrowness of vision of this statement itself. What you are implying is that without content from the U.S. of A the Internet is worthless and crippled. Have a slice of humble pie while you contemplate the creative potential of the billions of people who aren't between the right and left coast. If they choose fragmentation it will not mean imminent death.
Except for one thing: it's not me making that argument. It's the "experts" and pundits *opposed* to continuing US control. They're the ones saying that a fragmented internet significantly reduces its value and utility. So your assumption that I'm somehow saying US content is more important is an incorrect one, and my statement is based on the assertions of *opponents* of US control warning about fragmentation.
ICANN should remain, and it should be free of government control. No "international bodies" or U.N. review or U.S. censorship because the christian right is more afraid of kids seeing boobies at a.xxx domain than at a.com domain.
How is it "censorship" if, as you imply, the content is still easily accessible via the same means it always has been?
Why wouldn't these people be in favour of an.xxx domain? Hell, wouldn't it make it easier to block sites at work or home?
Because they don't see it that way.
They want to pretend those sites don't exist, and/or want the ones that do exist banned or shut down altogether, and don't want anything that legitimizes it.
They feel that the fantasy of somehow "banning" all porn sites could still become a reality if porn sites aren't "legitimized" with their own top level domain.
Therefore, they oppose the creation of a new TLD that is specifically and explicitly (no pun intended) for porn.
Is there anything stopping any porn site from setting up shop on the internet? (I'd hope the answer to that is obvious.)
Does the lack of a.xxx TLD (as stupid as the arguments against it were) make it any more or less difficult for a new porn site to set up shop?
Sorry, but this isn't censorship, moral or otherwise. It's too bad that the people arguing against.xxx didn't realize that it would actually be easier to avoid pornographic sites by avoiding.xxx, instead of pretending that porn itself doesn't exist and that.xxx would somehow magically enable it more than it is already enabled now. But other than providing new namespace to new porn sites, I don't see anything useful that.xxx would have brought to the internet, regardless of who fought against it or for what reasons, and whether or not you or I disagree with them.
1. Why in many of these articles is there no consideration for the facts that:
- The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet (note: I am talking about the *internet*, not the world wide web, which itself would not have existed were it not for the internet)?
- Aside from the politics and issues surrounding.xxx, that the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet and the root servers (several of which are outside of the US, albeit under ultimate control of the US)?
2. Why is there no consideration that other governments jockeying for position and control over DNS and the root servers could and probably will actually provide a greater chance for problems, mismanagement, miscommunication, and so on?
3. Why is there this concept floated in every one of these articles that makes it seem as if nations will have no choice but to create their "own" internets, disconnected from the "primary" internet, simply because of DNS? I'd say the stupidity and arrogance of disconnecting from the internet and making your own, whether out of principle or some perceived need to have a new top level domain, trumps any stupidity and arrogance of the internet's original creator and caretaker retaining control...
For a brief and concise summary of the issues, let's remind ourselves with this:
U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System
The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.
Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.
ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.
Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly.
Slashdot Mirror
It's too bad you see it that way.
The really funny thing is that going electronic was the response to all of the claims of irregularities in the 2000 election.
Going electronic was the thing that was supposed to make voting uniform, easy, consistent, and fair, in all areas and for people of all stripes.
You make it sound as if Diebold is, quite literally, out to rig elections. All it's out to do is protect its code. Now, I'm NOT saying that is a good thing for a voting system!
Further, the lack of a requirement for a voter-verified paper trail was an oversight, and an unintentional one at that, in the haste of many lawmakers to fix the problems of 2000, and generally move the processes for holding elections forward. It was assumed, incorrectly and erroneously, that computers, the same broad devices that keep track of our money, run out nuclear power plants, and help keep us alive during surgery, could tally votes in a simple election. The oversight was one of unique proportions: all of these other systems have failsafes or backup records. The voting system, fundamental to our democracy, in the form called for, had no such safeguards or backups. But when this became an issue, the three major e-voting vendors ALL had equipment necessary to add voter-verified permanent paper trails to the systems. The problem? Many municipalities didn't want to pay for it.
I know it's fun for everyone to think that Diebold is a secret Republican conspiracy to steal elections, or to twist around the Diebold CEO's comments, however ignorant and inappropriate, as "proof" that their sole purpose is to steal elections. But the simple fact is that, frankly, voting CAN be done reliably with electronic systems, as long as there is also a physical paper trail, verified by the voter, and kept by the same electoral officials who have run our elections since the beginning of time (i.e., county government). If you can't or won't acknowledge that electronic voting can be done reliably, then we have another problem. And further still, as long as there is a voter-verified permanent paper trail, there is frankly absolutely no reason to see all of the code, though that would be a bonus: as long as the systems perform reliably, stand up to scrutiny and manual recounts from paper trails that cannot be forged, and so on (and you don't believe that county governments will band together in secret conspiracies to rig elections for Republicans), then there is no need for the code to even be open.
Note that personally, I'd love for it to be open, but this statute would require too much: as another poster who worked on the law itself confirmed above, there are NO exceptions, and ALL code on ALL systems has to be revealed. This means if they choose to run it on a best-of-breed closed-source embedded base, the manufacturer of that product would also be forced to open their code to the state. That is unacceptable. And if you think it should be a completely homebrew, from-the-ground-up, open source solution built on an open source OS, you'd probably be ignorant of the complexity in support and other factors for a system such as this, but at least you'd be logically consistent.
This being a good example, as you've framed the question as a dichotomy which seems to me to be a false one. Why are these new surveilance powers necessary for our domestic intelligence gathering to protect our assets? What power do they need that is incompatible with the standards of justice that the U.S.? You are asking me is it okay to give up my civil liberties in order to gain safety, and I ask why is that a necessary choice?
I'm not saying it is. That's what the article and the submitter of this slashdot story are insinuating. Why is making certain exceptions for investigations related to foreign intelligence "giving up my civil liberties"?
If you have reason to believe that circumstance exists, you should have no problem convincing a judge of the need for a warrant. If you do not have reason to believe that circumstance exists, then you are just using scare tactics to justify a decrease in privacy rights. Once again I'm seeing a false dichotomy, and it's the one the federal government always uses -- we can only protect you if we take away your righs.
No, I'm not saying that, and I don't think the federal government uses that argument either, intentionally or otherwise. Let's take the Jose Padilla example.
There was plenty of circumstantial evidence that he intended to obtain and detonate a dirty bomb in a US city (most likely downtown Chicago) in the service of radical Islam. However, the US government clearly didn't have enough evidence to charge him for such crimes for 3 years; at least, that's what I'm assuming, since I'd expect they would have charged him otherwise. The circumstantial evidence seemed overwhelming. Granted, I'm making that judgment on the basis of what the government asserted and generally as an outsider. But a lot of the circumstantial evidence (i.e., that he coverted to Islam, changed his name, went overseas to train in al Qaeda camps, etc.) is independently verifiable. But none of those things are "illegal". But would I want him to be free? Absolutely not. When someone asks, "well, what happens when the standard is lowered such that someone like yourself could be held without charge for 3 years?" I find myself being able to only respond "Well, I'll never convert to radical Islam, change my name, and train in al Qaeda terror camps, so I don't think I'll have to worry." Some here will no doubt find that trite, but I'm one hundred percent serious when I say that.
Since the "lives of thousands" that every American thinks of is 9/11, let me remind you that we really didn't need any additional surveilance powers to catch them. We had the evidence, the problems were focus (not on terrorism) and communication (security departments operating more like separate kingdoms than part of the same).
Okay. Now, I'm not saying YOU are making this argument, but let me remind you that many of the people who are vehemently anti-Bush also now say that the DHS is the worst bureaucracy ever to be created. And these were some of the same people who are making the exact claim you just did above, by calling for the ability for intelligence agencies to share information. I see that as an unwinnable "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. And worse yet, other people who no doubt disagree with the idea of expanded domestic intelligence gathering are making arguments that are essentially the exact opposite of the one you just made. I don't see how I can argue against two almost diametrically opposed viewpoints, both of which still purport to be uniformly opposed to expanded domestic intelligence.
Yes, they exist. If you can't get a warrant for what you need, then you probably don't need it. That is what "reasonable searches" means. We must have oversight. Most of the attempts at increasing police powers in the past decade have focused around having less oversight, whether that's Clinton's roving wiretaps or Bush's anti-terrorism memos. If these actions are so necessary, and so right, and so devoted to helping the people, why can they not s
I agree with everything you said about the Red Scare. The oaths, and associated similar crap, do NOTHING. I wasn't arguing they did.
And I'm not trying to use a strawman argument. But your implication with your McCarthy statement ("bend over") was clear. How else should that be taken? And the thing always ignored about McCarthy was that he was *right*. I'm NOT saying that the ensuing methods and madness were appropriate.
But once we found and suspected paid Soviet spies in government and press, including some high posts, what should our reaction have been?
That's one of the best prescriptions for a solution to such problems that I've ever heard.
If the federal government's power was as limited as the Constitution laid out, the concerns about the broad implications of "spies" in government would be moot.
I'll stipulate to everything else you've said as appropriate commentary on my questions, whether or not I necessarily agree or disagree with it. However, I take issue with:
Whoops, you forgot a few words:
you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best, for the government person's self or family or friends.
While I would agree that every person's view of the world is colored by their own experience, and that individuals may view society in the context of their own position in the overall scheme of things, and that of persons with whom they have the most contact and interpersonal experience (i.e., family and friends), I would dispute that these individuals still don't genuinely want to protect and serve even people who they don't know. Further, I'd argue that even if their primary motivation is protection of their "family and friends", such protection, on a broad and indirect scale (i.e., actions not taken specifically and explicitly to protect an individual person), necessarily extends to anyone of similar background: if an indirect action is believed to protect that federal official's "family", it also protects everyone else.
...was that there actually were high ranking US government officials who were Soviet spies, including some paid by the Soviets.
If you think that's a good thing (or that ignoring it is a good thing), then we probably won't see eye to eye...
I mean, if you shouldn't try to stop people who are paid by your national enemies, or who espouse the core political and ideological ideals of your national enemies, then why even have nations and borders? If any national government is legitimate, it stands to be protected, else, what is its purpose?
...for persons either:
1.) Within the physical borders of the United States, and/or
2.) United States citizens or permanent residents,
to legitimately be conspiring to commit actions against the United States or its citizens that would be outside of the bounds of the law, in concert or cooperation with a foreign influence?
What follows is a series of honest, and not rhetorical, questions:
Is it ever ok for US intelligence and/or military capability to use domestic surveillance and/or intelligence-gathering to protect our assets (be they life, property, and so on), or is it always better to err on the side of privacy in domestic concerns, and use the standard US criminal justice system to prosecute crimes after they have already occurred?
Is there ever a circumstance where preemption could be appropriate, or would universal privacy always trump, say, the lives of thousands of others?
Black-and-white liberty and freedom quotes aside, is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic (e.g., 9/11-style) harm?[1]
Is it possible to have appropriate oversight of such activities, or would you argue that such mechanisms for oversight and investigation already exist (e.g., warrants, etc.)?
If so, how can we expect the government and those charged with protection to keep up with all potential threats? There were numerous calls for better "human intelligence" after 9/11, including many by those opposed to the current war effort. If the collection of such intelligence is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
I'd appreciate honest, and not cynical, answers.
[1] Please consider that no matter how much you personally may distrust the machinery of government, I would remind you that you would likely find that in face-to-face discussions with individual military, intelligence, or other government personnel, you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best.
In fairness, eEye has discovered legitimate vulnerabilities that Apple has actually included in OS and security updates.
However, I do agree with you.
And further, it's impossible for this to a "remote execute" vulnerability like the stories based on the extremely vague advisory make it out to be: you can't even talk to iTunes remotely when it's running (unless you have iTunes Sharing enabled, which is available on your local subnet). Therefore, as I've said in another post, this vulnerability *must* be exploited via visiting a malicious web site, which then passes a url and/or file to iTunes. Period. That's the only way this could happen. It's not just something where if you run iTunes, all of a sudden you're vulnerable. Bravo to the way they've positioned it though. They probably floated out some media releases, too. I especially like the last line of the advisory:
Protection: Blink Endpoint Vulnerability Prevention mitigates any potential exploitation of this vulnerability, without requiring a patch or invasive firewall actions.
And, for what it's worth, eEye will release the "details", whatever they are, after Apple has patched whatever the issue is.
I highly, highly doubt this is a "remote execute" bug. You can't even talk to iTunes remotely when it's running (unless you have iTunes Sharing running, which is a port available on your local subnet).
Therefore, this vulnerability must represent visiting a malicious web site, which then passes a url and/or file to iTunes. It is NOT a direct, remote execution vulnerability with iTunes itself.
Just having iTunes doesn't mean you're automagically vulnerable to whatever this still-unannounced exploit is. And I can say that with surety without even knowing what this "exploit" actually is. And further, iTunes isn't "mandatory" (even though this is repeated ad nauseum):
QuickTime 7 standalone installer, linked right from the download page as "QuickTime Standalone Installer"
Nothing yet, since details of the flaw won't be released by eEye until a patch is released by Apple.
If someone is wondering "should I be worried", the answer is no; exploits of this nature are usually still theoretical and not being exploited en masse "in the wild". Many of these exploits are explicitly discovered by the security organizations who have released the advisories themselves and are often not necessarily representative of any actual exploit being applied maliciously: the idea is to catch security vulnerabilities before they are actually used maliciously. Further, the exploit in question probably requires the user to specifically visit a malicious web site (other than a port open via Rende..., er I mean, Bonjour, when iTunes Sharing is enabled, I don't know of any other avenue to exploit iTunes). The exploit must, therefore, pass a url and/or file to iTunes, and therefore would very likely require visiting a malicious web site.
We don't know the details of the exploit, I can still say with it's extremely likely that it is not something that would be able to spontaneously occur simply by using iTunes in a normal fashion.
This story would more accurately be:
"Some unknown and unannounced flaw found in a piece of software; fix coming from software vendor"
Is this news?
(And it's amusing that if you buy a commercial product from the vendor issuing the vulnerability, you'll be protected! Not a rip on eEye, who has discovered a good deal of vulnerabilities, but it's not as if many of these security entities themselves don't have an interest in finding "vulnerabilities", no matter how nebulous or unlikely.)
Um, you've never seen a corporation "contribute" money to something in the hopes of getting something back? Red Hat is absolutely seeing dollar signs out of this deal!! I can't believe how ignorant you and a couple of the other posters in this vein apparently are, AND that someone else modded you up for it! Red Hat would have an OS running on litterally TENS OF MILLIONS of machines over the next decade (if the plans for this program work out), and would have mindshare (and knowledge) of TENS OF MILLIONS of people in developing nations. People it hopes will run Red Hat Linux in corporate, educational, and government environments as these nations develop. People Red Hat hopes will buy commercialized products and services from them in the future. Lots of commercialized products and services. For a lot of money. Christ people, are you *that* blind? Why do you think Jobs was offering OS X? Sure, there may be elements of goodwill on the part of Red Hat *and* Jobs, but that's not the only, or even the biggest, reason they're doing it.
You can say this with such surety?
Please explain.
I don't have to. You think OS X will run as-is on a hand-cranked machine with an AMD processor, no hard disk, flash storage, and for which one requirement is that it operate in a tablet mode? To any logical person, it goes without saying that a special version of Mac OS X would be created for such a project, just as a special version of Red Hat will be, and in fact is being, created. Red Hat, of course, will say "no, it's just normal Red Hat Linux", just as Apple would claim it's just "normal" OS X.
I didn't say it would be a "incredibly stripped down" version of OS X that wouldn't resemble OS X.
I said it would be a version of OS X targeted for this platform and program. In other words, all the comments like "OMG, I heard some of OS X's special fancy graphic effects are slow on an iBook, so, OMG, how would it run on a $100 laptop?!??!?!??!!11111one" are completely irrelevant, because the 3D graphic effects aren't what's important. It would most certainly resemble OS X, and would in fact be OS X, and the things that are most important about OS X are things like its frameworks and APIs, and extensive support for languages and extensively polished user interface.
"There are people in developing countries who have never seen computers so it's not like, 'How is this better than Windows?"'
Well, with that argument, why not just hand them a pile of dogshit?
That's the most useless justification for staying with Red Hat Linux as I've ever heard.
Further, it's not as if Red Hat-proper is "free". You can bet your bottom dollar that Red Hat is seeing dollar signs out of this deal. Big dollar signs.
Sure, Jobs may have been in it partly for ulterior reasons as well - I'm not going to pretend to know what he's thinking - but considering that the entire core of Mac OS X is open source, and what's not open source is a very polished, easy to use, major-vendor-supported OS with amazing language and multilingual support, revolutionary accessibility support, including the first commercial OS to include a free full-fledged spoken interface, and so on, I think that rejecting it out-of-hand on the basis of wanting to be "100%" open source is a little bit short-signted and foolish, when one steps back and looks at the big picture.
I literally can't believe MIT rejected this offer.
(And no, there wouldn't be concerns with system requirements. Apple would have engineered a targeted version of Mac OS X specifically for this program.)
Um, do you *really think* that OS X would be running as-is on these $100 laptops?
AMD processors with flash memory in place of a hard disk? A tablet mode?
If the project accepted, they'd be running a specially targeted and customized version of OS X specifically for this application, so all of the "hardware requirements" arguments are straw men. They'd be able to run "OS X", as engineered for this project, just fine.
...when it's a prescription drug that is normally administered by a physician in a clinical setting?
I'm depressed about this.. I wanted this to flop so that Apple and the studios would be forced to give us more content, higher res, and less DRM... And I'm an Apple shareholder!
Because, up until now, the studios had given us so much full-quality digital non-DRM encumbered content?
Please.
When they were already providing essentially *no* content, how would the first major commercial offering of such a service flopping "force" them to provide *more* content?
Further, you think that they'll provide content with "less" DRM? (Are you implying you'll accept DRM, if there's "less" of it? Or do you really mean no DRM? Because if that's what you mean, you'll NEVER get it.)
As to higher res, there's a problem here other than the content providers or Apple. And it's just a little one called "bandwidth". Before you go off telling me that you want to download your 1080i movies, even H.264 compressed, please explain how, even on the highest bandwidth home broadband connections generally available in the US, a 6 hour download jibes with Apple's strategy.
Never underestimate of the power of stupid anonymous coward posts on Slashdot.
Many cable operators, such as Charter, encrypt all digital channels. Including non-premium channels.
So while this may work for you, it doesn't work for most people (and probably won't work for you in the future).
If I thought this, or even CableCard, was a solution, I would have mentioned it.
The biggest issue with media centers is a very practical one: tuning. How do you tune channels from cable or satellite providers when a set top box provided by cable or satellite provider is essentially required? The "IR blaster" solution is inelegant at best, and gets even more inelegant if you want more than one tuner. That was Microsoft's biggest miscalculation in the media center strategy.
Conversely, the cable and satellite providers themselves will be able to provide one device that can record all of your digital content, AND acts as your set top box, AND has multiple tuners AND handles SD, HD, digital, and analog, AND doesn't require a large initial expenditure: most providers will give you all of this for under $10/month, in a turnkey solution that "just works". Granted, it's not as flexible and capable as your own box, but most will accept this tradeoff. Most won't even know there *was* a tradeoff.
But what of all your other media? Your music, your movies, your videos? Indeed, Apple's media center strategy is a novel one: it includes all traditional media center functions except perhaps the primary one: television recording. Instead, it's taken the bold next step: bypass the tuning issue and the recording issue entirely by bypassing the cable and satellite operators entirely, and delivering the content directly to you. The cable operators will still provide a service: it will just be bandwidth, and not content.
And we gave deadly gas to Saddam Hussein, what does this have to do with deciding the proper governance of root servers?
.com to very unscrupulous people who intentionally violated their agreement and broke routing worldwide for profit.
.com and .net management to Verisign, and then correcting Verisign when it inappropriately asserts authority out of the bounds of its contract? By disallowing new TLDs? When compared on balance with 20+ years of sound and able management? Yeah, that's really messing things up.
What does your statement have to do with anything we're talking about, other than to get in a politically-charged jab?
But to answer the second part of question, I'd hope it would be reasonably obvious that a nation may be compelled to retain an element of control over things that it created, has a huge historical and ongoing investment in, and in which it has a major vested interest.
they have given control of
Yes. One arguably major misstep and egregious violation by Verisign, which was then corrected under the contract terms. So you're saying it's not possible for a contractor to err or intentionally misbehave anywhere outside the US?
As to the rest of your points, it sounds like your issue is really with ICANN, not strictly Department of Commerce (i.e., US) influence with regard to ICANN. Whether you would like to believe it or not, those are two different things.
As to the root servers, most of them (physical machines) are located, paid for, and maintained by foreign companies and reside outside the U.S.
5 of the 13 roots are outside of the US. Unless you're talking about multiple servers within a single root, such as F, which you appear to be since you say "physical machines". There is also the same level of redundancy within the US. So while it's splitting hairs, I would still guess that more physical machines serving in roots are located within the US, even though this really has no bearing one way or another on this discussion.
Because by distributing responsibility you need a majority of countries to agree before they can really mess things up, as opposed to just the US, which is already messing things up and is likely to do so more in the future.
Howso? By granting
The root server list is simply an agreed upon standard, decided by the U.S. and incompatible with other standards, more or less by definition. If the whole world agrees to move the standard in one direction, not chosen by the US, and the US disagrees, who is it that is being arrogant and stupid?
And why, exactly, does the root server "standard" need to move in any other direction? What's deficient about it or its management now? Be specific, keeping in mind that I don't really think we randomly need to introduce new and arbitrary TLDs.
To put it another way, if you were the minister of technology in the Iraq, Russia, or Chile would you recommend that your government invest billions in and build a technological infrastructure for all communications within and outside your country upon which your economy is dependent, if you knew a political shift in Washington could completely cripple that architecture? Would you not feel safer if it required a majority of countries to agree to cripple your infrastructure and if you were given the opportunity to have representation when decisions were made?
But they already have made such an investment. And further, you act is if such an investment is completely negated if the US makes changes. Any change that would "cripple" any other nation's technical investment would also cripple our own (unless you're talking about deliberately removing a country's TLD from the root). The mechanics of a network aren't dependent upon the current root server status quo. Indeed, as has been pointed out many times, nations could in fact create the own "internets" separate from the internet that uses the US-managed root servers.
Would
I'm not quite sure how to react when I read things like this.
First of all, the US isn't going to disconnect New Zealand from the internet or cut anyone's fiber.
Second, the "reinterpretation" of the laws is designed to make sure that porn performers are of legal age. Period. If you have problems with that and think they should be able to be younger than 18, or that porn sites shouldn't be able to produce records that indicate that they ARE over 18, then we probably won't see eye to eye on this. No matter how fringe or uncommon it is, anything else would allow child pornographers to operate more easily and/or go unpunished.
Third, "anti-nuclear" isn't necessarily a good thing. Since I'm assuming by the rest of your message that you're probably against things that gobble up and/or destroy the earth's natural resources, it might serve you to consider that nuclear power is one of the BEST options we collectively have for the future, and being "anti-nuclear" just for the sake of it is probably one of the most patently absurd, ridiculous, and ignorant positions you can take.
Which, in turn, is trumped only by the arrogance and narrowness of vision of this statement itself. What you are implying is that without content from the U.S. of A the Internet is worthless and crippled. Have a slice of humble pie while you contemplate the creative potential of the billions of people who aren't between the right and left coast. If they choose fragmentation it will not mean imminent death.
.xxx domain than at a .com domain.
Except for one thing: it's not me making that argument. It's the "experts" and pundits *opposed* to continuing US control. They're the ones saying that a fragmented internet significantly reduces its value and utility. So your assumption that I'm somehow saying US content is more important is an incorrect one, and my statement is based on the assertions of *opponents* of US control warning about fragmentation.
ICANN should remain, and it should be free of government control. No "international bodies" or U.N. review or U.S. censorship because the christian right is more afraid of kids seeing boobies at a
How is it "censorship" if, as you imply, the content is still easily accessible via the same means it always has been?
Why wouldn't these people be in favour of an .xxx domain? Hell, wouldn't it make it easier to block sites at work or home?
Because they don't see it that way.
They want to pretend those sites don't exist, and/or want the ones that do exist banned or shut down altogether, and don't want anything that legitimizes it.
They feel that the fantasy of somehow "banning" all porn sites could still become a reality if porn sites aren't "legitimized" with their own top level domain.
Therefore, they oppose the creation of a new TLD that is specifically and explicitly (no pun intended) for porn.
Is there anything stopping any porn site from setting up shop on the internet? (I'd hope the answer to that is obvious.)
.xxx TLD (as stupid as the arguments against it were) make it any more or less difficult for a new porn site to set up shop?
.xxx didn't realize that it would actually be easier to avoid pornographic sites by avoiding .xxx, instead of pretending that porn itself doesn't exist and that .xxx would somehow magically enable it more than it is already enabled now. But other than providing new namespace to new porn sites, I don't see anything useful that .xxx would have brought to the internet, regardless of who fought against it or for what reasons, and whether or not you or I disagree with them.
Does the lack of a
Sorry, but this isn't censorship, moral or otherwise. It's too bad that the people arguing against
1. Why in many of these articles is there no consideration for the facts that:
.xxx, that the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet and the root servers (several of which are outside of the US, albeit under ultimate control of the US)?
- The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet (note: I am talking about the *internet*, not the world wide web, which itself would not have existed were it not for the internet)?
- Aside from the politics and issues surrounding
2. Why is there no consideration that other governments jockeying for position and control over DNS and the root servers could and probably will actually provide a greater chance for problems, mismanagement, miscommunication, and so on?
3. Why is there this concept floated in every one of these articles that makes it seem as if nations will have no choice but to create their "own" internets, disconnected from the "primary" internet, simply because of DNS? I'd say the stupidity and arrogance of disconnecting from the internet and making your own, whether out of principle or some perceived need to have a new top level domain, trumps any stupidity and arrogance of the internet's original creator and caretaker retaining control...
For a brief and concise summary of the issues, let's remind ourselves with this:
U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System
The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.
Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.
ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.
Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly.