And sending power from africa to europe is equally stupid with the current state of african countries... You'd be better off building the panels in the currently stable middle eastern countries, although those countries would rather just sell you their oil instead.
If you're going to build a massive solar installation, it makes sense to start with somewhere like nevada or arizona - politically stable, infrastructure already in place and plenty of nearby demand.
The problem is that a lack of government would not result in freedom for many... It would result in a select few simply establishing a new government through force (and likely a long war until one group emerged victorious), and then most likely taking away any freedom that the vast majority of people had.
The hack brought a lot of publicity for the site, i wasn't previously aware that it existed and i'm sure many others weren't too. Would be interesting to know how many people have signed up using fake details, or have signed up solely out of curiosity having read about the hack...
proprietary lock-in is an attempt to subvert the free market, and in an idealised free market (ie one in which the consumers are sufficiently informed to make sensible buying decisions) would not work.
No company likes a free market, and will do everything they can to ensure the market ceases to be free. Consider a state of anarchy, without a government at all you technically have ultimate freedom but it never lasts long because others will try to use their freedom to take away yours.
And how does a firewall help in that instance? It's just an additional routing device between you and the outside, so there is a good likelihood that such an attack will still reach you via whatever services you do have opened. Plus you now have the added risk of such a kernel vulnerability existing on the firewall device itself too.
The internet is full of background noise, not a lot you can do about it.. Chances are this isn't even a portscan at all, because what would be the point of scanning the same thing repeatedly? Chances are they've configured the target IP wrong, or the IP you now have used to be used by someone else etc.
Having a router constantly notifying you about internet background noise is pointless and will only waste your time.
I have many boxes directly on the internet, NAT would only add an extra layer of headaches... I only open the services i actually want to offer, so if i used port forwarding i would have exactly the same services listening but with added overhead.
A sign is a notification... A notification on a website could be placed within the text of the site itself, using javascript is a very poor attempt to do more than just post a sign... It's more akin to an extremely low fence.
The worst part is that whoever requests stuff like this be added generally believe it's actually effective, but all it does is serve to irritate users.
This wouldn't have been possible until recently, as x86 was too power hungry (and the low power versions too slow)... It's been possible with Linux for a long time, but never supplied preconfigured or marketed as a feature.
But what's to prevent someone skinning Android with a new UI? MS could create an Android variant with their own UI and their own apps set as the defaults instead of Google's, while also providing compatibility with the huge array of existing Android apps... This would be a lot less development effort, a lot less risky for the users etc..
Windows phone has a lot of negatives going against it... The "Windows" brand is not generally associated with phones, and carries negative connotations both from its desktop reputation (crashing, insecurity) and its previous mobile incarnations. The brand also implies compatibility which isn't there, i knew several people who bought windows ce based netbooks a few years ago only to be disappointed they couldn't run regular windows apps on them. Their sole reason for buying the "windows" netbook instead of the linux ones also offered, was this mistaken notion of compatibility.
It's possible but unlikely... If a device gets root on your phone then it's untraceable after the fact - as with root it has sufficient access to remove any traces that it was ever there.
There have been jailbreaks for phones which executed from within the browser, to exploit such a vulnerability on a wireless network under your own control only requires that the victim attempt to make a single http request over your network. The same is potentially true for any application which makes an outbound connection over a network you control.
Apps ask for your permission because they play by the rules, software running as root is not constrained by such things.
In any case, you would need the device to connect to your rogue wireless network (which isnt too hard really, you broadcast the ssid of a common free public wifi network and lots of devices will automatically connect) and potentially for some software on that device to make an insecure request over your network that you can intercept. In all cases you would need to be aware of a vulnerability in the device you're targeting.
The majority are not usually corrupt, in most cases they are either uninformed, apathetic, or sufficiently informed to realise that the only realistic alternative is even worse.
And most of these large telcos were started with government support... The infrastructure they now make huge profits off was paid for by the tax payers originally.
we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done
We have that, even without government involvement...
The private sector only works when there's competition, and a lack of competition is precisely why government run systems usually don't work well either.
Just like people who pay every month over 2 years for a phone instead of buying the phone as a one off... Short term is usually more important, people will rarely consider the long term implications.
As opposed to Microsoft who are known to take marching orders from the NSA? Unless you actually live in Russia or one of the former soviet countries it's highly unlikely that the FSB cares what you do, so if someone's going to have the keys to spy on you better that it's someone who won't bother to do so.
By making it a pain in the ass to copy, they also make it more of a pain in the ass to use at all... And it only requires one person to copy it and make it available in an unrestricted format.
That's what people often fail to consider, the car costs about the same for between 1 and 5 people, or more if you have a 7 seater etc whereas the train ticket costs increase linearly.
Carrying goods is impractical on public transport too, so going on a shopping trip is painful without a car.
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And sending power from africa to europe is equally stupid with the current state of african countries... You'd be better off building the panels in the currently stable middle eastern countries, although those countries would rather just sell you their oil instead.
If you're going to build a massive solar installation, it makes sense to start with somewhere like nevada or arizona - politically stable, infrastructure already in place and plenty of nearby demand.
The problem is that a lack of government would not result in freedom for many... It would result in a select few simply establishing a new government through force (and likely a long war until one group emerged victorious), and then most likely taking away any freedom that the vast majority of people had.
Well how do you know that any given site hasn't been compromised?
Any company that supplies and manages that spyware themselves...
The hack brought a lot of publicity for the site, i wasn't previously aware that it existed and i'm sure many others weren't too.
Would be interesting to know how many people have signed up using fake details, or have signed up solely out of curiosity having read about the hack...
They aren't mandated, they are suggested and virtually no government department actually uses them...
proprietary lock-in is an attempt to subvert the free market, and in an idealised free market (ie one in which the consumers are sufficiently informed to make sensible buying decisions) would not work.
No company likes a free market, and will do everything they can to ensure the market ceases to be free.
Consider a state of anarchy, without a government at all you technically have ultimate freedom but it never lasts long because others will try to use their freedom to take away yours.
A human driver will always choose self preservation even if it means killing others, so why should an autonomous car behave any differently?
And how does a firewall help in that instance? It's just an additional routing device between you and the outside, so there is a good likelihood that such an attack will still reach you via whatever services you do have opened.
Plus you now have the added risk of such a kernel vulnerability existing on the firewall device itself too.
The internet is full of background noise, not a lot you can do about it..
Chances are this isn't even a portscan at all, because what would be the point of scanning the same thing repeatedly? Chances are they've configured the target IP wrong, or the IP you now have used to be used by someone else etc.
Having a router constantly notifying you about internet background noise is pointless and will only waste your time.
I have many boxes directly on the internet, NAT would only add an extra layer of headaches... I only open the services i actually want to offer, so if i used port forwarding i would have exactly the same services listening but with added overhead.
A sign is a notification...
A notification on a website could be placed within the text of the site itself, using javascript is a very poor attempt to do more than just post a sign...
It's more akin to an extremely low fence.
The worst part is that whoever requests stuff like this be added generally believe it's actually effective, but all it does is serve to irritate users.
This wouldn't have been possible until recently, as x86 was too power hungry (and the low power versions too slow)...
It's been possible with Linux for a long time, but never supplied preconfigured or marketed as a feature.
But what's to prevent someone skinning Android with a new UI?
MS could create an Android variant with their own UI and their own apps set as the defaults instead of Google's, while also providing compatibility with the huge array of existing Android apps...
This would be a lot less development effort, a lot less risky for the users etc..
Windows phone has a lot of negatives going against it...
The "Windows" brand is not generally associated with phones, and carries negative connotations both from its desktop reputation (crashing, insecurity) and its previous mobile incarnations.
The brand also implies compatibility which isn't there, i knew several people who bought windows ce based netbooks a few years ago only to be disappointed they couldn't run regular windows apps on them. Their sole reason for buying the "windows" netbook instead of the linux ones also offered, was this mistaken notion of compatibility.
It's possible but unlikely...
If a device gets root on your phone then it's untraceable after the fact - as with root it has sufficient access to remove any traces that it was ever there.
There have been jailbreaks for phones which executed from within the browser, to exploit such a vulnerability on a wireless network under your own control only requires that the victim attempt to make a single http request over your network. The same is potentially true for any application which makes an outbound connection over a network you control.
Apps ask for your permission because they play by the rules, software running as root is not constrained by such things.
In any case, you would need the device to connect to your rogue wireless network (which isnt too hard really, you broadcast the ssid of a common free public wifi network and lots of devices will automatically connect) and potentially for some software on that device to make an insecure request over your network that you can intercept.
In all cases you would need to be aware of a vulnerability in the device you're targeting.
The majority are not usually corrupt, in most cases they are either uninformed, apathetic, or sufficiently informed to realise that the only realistic alternative is even worse.
And most of these large telcos were started with government support... The infrastructure they now make huge profits off was paid for by the tax payers originally.
we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done
We have that, even without government involvement...
The private sector only works when there's competition, and a lack of competition is precisely why government run systems usually don't work well either.
And this can be installed on a server under your own control, so you have the best of both.
Just like people who pay every month over 2 years for a phone instead of buying the phone as a one off... Short term is usually more important, people will rarely consider the long term implications.
ASLR doesn't prevent exploitation, it just makes it more difficult.
As opposed to Microsoft who are known to take marching orders from the NSA?
Unless you actually live in Russia or one of the former soviet countries it's highly unlikely that the FSB cares what you do, so if someone's going to have the keys to spy on you better that it's someone who won't bother to do so.
By making it a pain in the ass to copy, they also make it more of a pain in the ass to use at all... And it only requires one person to copy it and make it available in an unrestricted format.
That's what people often fail to consider, the car costs about the same for between 1 and 5 people, or more if you have a 7 seater etc whereas the train ticket costs increase linearly.
Carrying goods is impractical on public transport too, so going on a shopping trip is painful without a car.