>such privacy was simply a fact of life, like >getting up in the morning and feeding your horse.
Are you implying that privacy is no longer a fact of life? I know that *I* certainly don't get up every morning and feed my horse. My cats, yes, but no horse. Society and technology are much different from what the "Founding Fathers" lived with. I'm not saying that privacy isn't good, I'm just saying that "people 200 years ago took it for granted" is a piss-poor argument in its favor. People a thousand years ago took for granted that the earth was flat and the center of the universe. Just because a belief is obvious and universal doesn't make it true. There are better arguments for privacy than, "they took it for granted".
>it just says that I don't have to pay for you to look at porn.
Actually, since we're giving them money for installing filtering software, it's more along the lines of saying, "If you don't look at porn, we'll pay you."
Hmmmmm....That sounds like a good deal. I already don't look at porn, so can I get the government to subsidize my internet use in return for my not looking at porn? Sounds good...I can get taxpayer money to not do something I already don't do...
They want to block "child pornography and obscene content", eh?
Well, I can agree with not wanting child porn available to children, but, as a one-time library employee and current library volunteer (as well as a person capable of rational thought), I must say that this is a Bad Plan.
It's a Bad Plan because libraries are meant to be educational resources. Once we start banning "obscene content" from the screens of library computers, we have precedent to start banning "obscene content" from the shelves of the library. Which means that any overprotective mother who finds her child in the reference section browsing art books could sue the library for having books with pictures of Michealangelo's sculpture "David". (and wasn't the person who modeled for said sculpture only about 15? making it child porn, in a sense?) That's *just* what we need. Some of Picasso's works (if I'm identifying them correctly as his) have bare breasts represented. Can't have that, now can we? Our library carries movies too, including _Pleasantville_. In said movie, there is a painting of a nude woman. Need to get rid of that movie too.
And that's not even a very broad definition of "obscene content". Depending on how you interpret it, all of the trash romance novels (big loss, i know:), Stephen King books, war novels, chemistry books, newspapers, magazines, etc could be defined as containing "obscene content" (especially considering the post-Littleton context in which this is being proposed...I remember reading about the VietCong's homemade weaponry when I was a kid; we don't want kids learning how to fashion weapons, now do we?)
Granted, this law may not specifically endanger our book collections, but it's only a short step further. Also, I grant that censoring public library collections isn't a new thing, but it's something that (in my opinion, at least) we should not encourage with laws of this kind.
Does anyone know of any petitions we can sign against this?
Heh...Perhaps we should change the title from "Anonymous Coward" to "Anonymous Moron"? (as opposed to those of us morons who bother to log in:) That would keep the privacy people from ranting that anonymity != cowardice.
(shielding self from flames by people who don't realize I'm being facetious)
I am an engineering student with a Palm III that I use for the exact purpose you mentioned: assignments and day planning. (the shareware RPN calculator doesn't hurt either) Of course, Hardball (like Breakout) sees some use during pathetically boring lectures (and has much higher replay value than the HP-48's Minesweeper:)
You're right in that they cost a bit much for a student, but if you look around the various mailorder-type websites until they have specials on them, you can get them for significantly under list price. I got mine at MicroWarehouse for about $75 under the price listed on 3Com's site.
(note: this is a shot in the dark, I have no clue if it would work)
Depending on how similar your musical tastes are, you wouldn't need to exchange cd's with keys. Just use music in digital form as your noise. Granted, a.wav isn't exactly random noise, but it's a lot of bits at your disposal. In order to have a changing key, simply make an agreement along the lines of taking the date and converting it to start time on the cd. For example, if the date is 22 December, then your string of "noise" starts 12 minutes (months) and 22 seconds (days) from the beginning of U2's "Joshua Tree" album. You could change albums once in a while in order to prevent a third party with a copy of the album (it's not exactly scarce) from decoding your transmission. As long as you came up with a rule complex enough to foil casual observation but simple enough that you don't have to write it down on anything that could fall into the wrong hands, you have a system that could withstand most scrutiny. Either that, or I could just be on crack.
> The info is locked away for the 1e35 years it > would take to break it. No amount of brute > force gets the data out
Sure it would. 1e35 years worth of brute force would get it out. Isn't "break it" fairly synonymous with "brute force" in this sense? Unless you were only referring to physical force, in which case you're still only mostly right. Depending on how desperate/corrupt the law enforcement agency is, there's probably an amount of physical brute force which, when applied in the right place (family?), would coerce the person with the key to talk.
Plus, to jump/. discussions, they could always just dump the message into Seti@Home and distributed.net and let the unwitting citizens who have no way of knowing what exactly their clients are chewing on break the key. That would cut the time for unencryption from 1e35 years to a much more managable million or so.;)
As long as StarDivision ceased all RE activities the second the law was passed, they'd be fine. You can't be charged for a crime that wasn't yet a crime when you committed it. (though I feel silly for forgetting what this principle is called) Now, MS and other big companies could (and, I have no doubt, would) try to sue the OSS crowd for RE the second this law passed, but the charges would be thrown out, despite the amount of money MS would be willing to throw at the legal system. If RE the product was legal when they did it, then they're fine, whether it becomes illegal or not. If their actions were illegal when they took them, then they're in trouble, whether this law passes or not.
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>such privacy was simply a fact of life, like
>getting up in the morning and feeding your horse.
Are you implying that privacy is no longer a fact of life? I know that *I* certainly don't get up every morning and feed my horse. My cats, yes, but no horse. Society and technology are much different from what the "Founding Fathers" lived with. I'm not saying that privacy isn't good, I'm just saying that "people 200 years ago took it for granted" is a piss-poor argument in its favor. People a thousand years ago took for granted that the earth was flat and the center of the universe. Just because a belief is obvious and universal doesn't make it true. There are better arguments for privacy than, "they took it for granted".
>it just says that I don't have to pay for you to look at porn.
Actually, since we're giving them money for installing filtering software, it's more along the lines of saying, "If you don't look at porn, we'll pay you."
Hmmmmm....That sounds like a good deal. I already don't look at porn, so can I get the government to subsidize my internet use in return for my not looking at porn? Sounds good...I can get taxpayer money to not do something I already don't do...
They want to block "child pornography and obscene content", eh?
:), Stephen King books, war novels, chemistry books, newspapers, magazines, etc could be defined as containing "obscene content" (especially considering the post-Littleton context in which this is being proposed...I remember reading about the VietCong's homemade weaponry when I was a kid; we don't want kids learning how to fashion weapons, now do we?)
Well, I can agree with not wanting child porn available to children, but, as a one-time library employee and current library volunteer (as well as a person capable of rational thought), I must say that this is a Bad Plan.
It's a Bad Plan because libraries are meant to be educational resources. Once we start banning "obscene content" from the screens of library computers, we have precedent to start banning "obscene content" from the shelves of the library. Which means that any overprotective mother who finds her child in the reference section browsing art books could sue the library for having books with pictures of Michealangelo's sculpture "David". (and wasn't the person who modeled for said sculpture only about 15? making it child porn, in a sense?) That's *just* what we need. Some of Picasso's works (if I'm identifying them correctly as his) have bare breasts represented. Can't have that, now can we? Our library carries movies too, including _Pleasantville_. In said movie, there is a painting of a nude woman. Need to get rid of that movie too.
And that's not even a very broad definition of "obscene content". Depending on how you interpret it, all of the trash romance novels (big loss, i know
Granted, this law may not specifically endanger our book collections, but it's only a short step further. Also, I grant that censoring public library collections isn't a new thing, but it's something that (in my opinion, at least) we should not encourage with laws of this kind.
Does anyone know of any petitions we can sign against this?
No way would I trust my brain to a Zip drive. Can you imagine how much a Click of Death would *hurt*?
(being facetious...)
Heh...Perhaps we should change the title from "Anonymous Coward" to "Anonymous Moron"? (as opposed to those of us morons who bother to log in :) That would keep the privacy people from ranting that anonymity != cowardice.
(shielding self from flames by people who don't realize I'm being facetious)
I am an engineering student with a Palm III that I use for the exact purpose you mentioned: assignments and day planning. (the shareware RPN calculator doesn't hurt either) Of course, Hardball (like Breakout) sees some use during pathetically boring lectures (and has much higher replay value than the HP-48's Minesweeper :)
You're right in that they cost a bit much for a student, but if you look around the various mailorder-type websites until they have specials on them, you can get them for significantly under list price. I got mine at MicroWarehouse for about $75 under the price listed on 3Com's site.
(note: this is a shot in the dark, I have no clue if it would work)
.wav isn't exactly random noise, but it's a lot of bits at your disposal. In order to have a changing key, simply make an agreement along the lines of taking the date and converting it to start time on the cd. For example, if the date is 22 December, then your string of "noise" starts 12 minutes (months) and 22 seconds (days) from the beginning of U2's "Joshua Tree" album. You could change albums once in a while in order to prevent a third party with a copy of the album (it's not exactly scarce) from decoding your transmission. As long as you came up with a rule complex enough to foil casual observation but simple enough that you don't have to write it down on anything that could fall into the wrong hands, you have a system that could withstand most scrutiny. Either that, or I could just be on crack.
Depending on how similar your musical tastes are, you wouldn't need to exchange cd's with keys. Just use music in digital form as your noise. Granted, a
> The info is locked away for the 1e35 years it
/. discussions, they could always just dump the message into Seti@Home and distributed.net and let the unwitting citizens who have no way of knowing what exactly their clients are chewing on break the key. That would cut the time for unencryption from 1e35 years to a much more managable million or so. ;)
> would take to break it. No amount of brute
> force gets the data out
Sure it would. 1e35 years worth of brute force would get it out. Isn't "break it" fairly synonymous with "brute force" in this sense? Unless you were only referring to physical force, in which case you're still only mostly right. Depending on how desperate/corrupt the law enforcement agency is, there's probably an amount of physical brute force which, when applied in the right place (family?), would coerce the person with the key to talk.
Plus, to jump
As long as StarDivision ceased all RE activities the second the law was passed, they'd be fine. You can't be charged for a crime that wasn't yet a crime when you committed it. (though I feel silly for forgetting what this principle is called) Now, MS and other big companies could (and, I have no doubt, would) try to sue the OSS crowd for RE the second this law passed, but the charges would be thrown out, despite the amount of money MS would be willing to throw at the legal system. If RE the product was legal when they did it, then they're fine, whether it becomes illegal or not. If their actions were illegal when they took them, then they're in trouble, whether this law passes or not.