As much as I dislike Mariott's practice here, this is clearly outside the scope of the FCC's regulatory powers and as far as I know isn't even in violation of their own regulations. First of all, WiFi operates on UNREGULATED spectrum, which means anyone can use, and anyone must accept interference from other users. Apparently, the FCC wasn't even concerned with the frequencies that Mariott was using, it was the fact that they were sending de-auth packets that bothered them. This is not the sort of thing FCC should be regulating. In fact, the technique used by Mariott is commonly used in many locations (hotels, universities, hospitals) that provide their own WiFi in order to prevent rogue setups from intercepting people's data, and possibly even redirecting traffic to their own phishing sites. (Not everyone checks that the SSL certificate fingerprints haven't changed when they log in to their bank account!) I used to work in the IT department at a university and we did EXACTLY the same thing that Mariott was doing, for just that reason. (Unlike Mariott, we didn't charge people to use our WiFi, but that should make no difference as far as the FCC is concerned.) When we set up that system, we also investigated the legality of it, and the conclusion we came to was that it was perfectly legal since it was on unregulated spectrum. In fact, many, if not most, commercial WiFi systems have this function built in. Ours certainly did, we only had to turn it on.
Submitter is a tyro. It was, of course, Visicalc which added to the Apple ]['s success. And, before Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC, there was Multiplan.
Multiplan though, didn't have a great deal more functionality than VisiCalc (although it did have a superior user interface in my opinion). Lotus 1-2-3 added graphics. You could now select ranges and make bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts, and do simple statistical things like finding lines of best fit. This is what really set it apart from VisiCalc and made it the dominant spreadsheet of its time.
Simply require a passport or driving license to register any domain name.
Believe it or not, there do exist domain name registrars outside the UK. They could certainly require this for anyone using the.uk TLD, but why would pirates do that when they could just buy a.com from GoDaddy or someone else in the US or elsewhere?
Fuck all those silly European countries with their "loser pays the winner's legal bills" socialist shit! USA! USA! USA!
Interesting that you call a loser pays system socialist. As I recall, tort reform of the type you suggest was one of the points in the Contract with America put forward by the Republican party (led by Newt Gingrich) in the 1990s. Never heard Newt or his policies described as "socialist" before.
...have to VPN in to the work network to deal with switches or to check the status of an outage, I'm automatically assumed to be a pirate?
Seems like the BBC is looking to piss off every IT department in the UK.
I'm sure VPNs at your place of work will be exempted from any new legislation. After all, they're never going to pass a law which will inconvenience banks and large corporations. It will be dedicated VPN services that will come under attack.
And how do you exchange key? Do they plan a web of trust à la GPG?
A better approach would be to generate a random session key and each user's client would display some sort of hash (it doesn't need to be really long: 6 or 8 digits would suffice) of that key. Assuming the two parties know each other and recognize each other's voice and/or face, one of them can read the hash to the other. If there's a MITM attack, they won't match. As I said, the hash doesn't need to be long, since one mismatch would indicate trouble.
maybe you should check out boardgamegeek. catan was a great game in its days, but it has been surpassed
It's been surpassed largely by its own expansion modules. My sister's family just got Explorers & Pirates last Christmas and they've been playing almost non-stop ever since.
He also can't disprove any allegations relating to what he's done over the Internet because he's purposefully removed all traces.
He doesn't have to disprove anything. In America it's up to the prosecution to prove that he did what they accused; it's not up to him to prove his innocence.
I really wish the academic world would go back to the actual proper learning languages, such as PASCAL. In my university, the introductory course for programming is C++ (as a freshman.) C++ has little 'English logic.' However, if you know English, you should be able to read PASCAL code much better than C/Java code. PASCAL is closer to pseudocode, which is (usually) the first assignment in these classes. Why would you jump from pseudocode to a 'stricter language' like Java?
What does/. think?
If you want a more English-like language more closely tied to pseudo-code than C++ or Java, why not a language like Ruby or Python? At least that way students could learn object oriented programming as well. Pascal really doesn't have a niche anymore. It was a good teaching language in it's day. As a more up-to-date Algol it was a good language for teaching structured programming, but by today's standards, it's structures are not as flexible as they need to be, and classic Pascal is not object oriented. (There may be object-oriented versions of Pascal now, but that's not the original language any more than C++ is C.) Ruby and Python are both very easy to start programming in (one line "Hello World" programs) and scale well to more sophisticated projects. And they both remain very close to pseudo-code type designs at each step of the way.
One of the main reasons Java may be "cooler" today than when it was first introduced is performance.
In the early days of Java, it's VM architecture meant that it was significantly behind fully compiled languages like C/C++ in terms of performance. People were supposed to sacrifice speed for portability. Even for non-speed critical applications, slower languages were thought to be "less cool". Real men used C, and real, real men still coded in assembly language.
But the VM technology in Java has gotten so sophisticated that it isn't significantly behind languages like C/C++ in terms of performance, and that can't be ignored. This is allowing some of the advantages of Java over C/C++ such as garbage collection, dynamic class loading, a certain degree of reflection, various safety systems, etc., to win over some programmers. Java may well be cooler today than it was 10 years ago, because it's really grown up and become a fairly useful language.
-Microsoft develops product in U.S, generating tax credit for R&D.
And paying salaries to U.S. employees who pay income tax on it and spend their money in the US, thereby also paying US sales taxes.
-Microsoft shifts ownership, or "Profit Rights" of product off-shore, to say....The Bahamas.
Which only makes sense, since the US is one of the few countries in the world to tax people's oversea earnings. Only makes sense then that people and companies would move those profits offshore. If tax policies in the US were more reasonable, Microsoft wouldn't have to do that.
-Microsoft Bahamas subsidiary sells U.S developed product to Americans.
On which those Americans pay sales tax.
-Microsoft Bahamas claims all profit. Microsoft America gets all Tax Credits.
But as you said in your first part: the tax credits are for R&D, not for making profits!
But shouldn't that be up to the foreign countries where the money is earned? If a country doesn't want to tax earnings in its borders, that's their business. It doesn't mean the US or any other country should have a claim on it.
Trying to tell other people they are wrong all the time is a liability. Telling people, "I am smarter than you, so you are wrong" is a liability [...] If you're so smart, you should have figured this out by now.
You literally just did this with your own post. You told the parent he was wrong, and then implied it was because he wasn't smart enough.
I'm sure all you're saying is true, but I'm not sure he's marketing solely to court reporters. I think the idea is that it will be a keyboard that anyone who does a lot of typing (secretaries, journalists, writers, coders, etc.) might be interested in using to increase their typing speed, even if they don't reach 225 wpm. Many people would be happy to increase their typing speed from 75 wpm to say 150 wpm.
At the same time, they sure do like the granted right-of-way that allows their grid to exist.
As does the vast majority of the population. Imagine how much your utilities would cost if the utility companies had to pay rent to each property owner that their wires, pipes, cables, etc., crossed.
While that's true for lots of the objections raised, it isn't true for all of them. This, for example:
When Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., installed solar panels a few years ago, for example, the local utility, Dominion Virginia Power, threatened legal action. The utility said that only it could sell electricity in its service area.
Government-created incumbent monopolies seem to be playing their part as well.
The keyword there is sell. They're not objecting to her generating solar power for her own use, they only object to her selling it to others. That's what a monopoly means.
vaughnlive.tv and ivlog.tv are better than either of those. Vaughnlive.tv has an interface most like Justin.tv, while ivlog.tv is more like the now defunct blogtv.
In a nutshell, they simply had any computer that contacted the web site send back the computer's real IP address and its MAC address. The actual security of the Tor wasn't affected.
Ummm, the whole purpose of Tor is to make it impossible for the web host to determine your real IP address, so if it is so easy to get the browser to send that information back to the server then they've COMPLETELY disabled the security of the Tor network, so I really don't understand your statement that the "security of Tor wasn't affected."
I know this won't be a popular position here, but the problem here isn't with what the FBI is doing, but rather the fact that they can do it. The problem is with the technology: it just isn't as secure as it's supposed to be. When a hacker finds a vulnerability in a security system, most people on Slashdot say don't blame the hacker, but rather fix the underlying vulnerabilities in the system. Instead of pointing the finger at the FBI for using vulnerabilities in TOR, web browsers, and/or operating systems, we should be glad that they're making this public, so the vulnerabilities can be fixed. After all, if the FBI can do this, so can criminals, governments hostile to free speech, and many other malicious parties. Let's learn from what the FBI is doing and harden the systems, to make legitimate users of Tor and similar services safer.
The parent post was clearly not written by a Canadian, as any good Canadian knows that Tim Horton's does NOT serve poutine. Otherwise though, your post is spot on.
A restaurant supply reclamation company should surely have the expertise and the responsibility, no?
Responsibility to do what? It's not their data nor their customers data on the stuff they're selling. They're just a buyer and seller of goods. As long as the equipment is not stolen and is in good working order when supplied to their customers they've met their responsibility. I'm not aware they have any responsibility to the former owners or their employees at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, I'm not a lawyer.
When someone goes out of business and liquidates (is forced to liquidate) their capital assets, they're not going to give a crap about what data might be left on these devices.
And even if they do give a crap, they might not be able to do anything about it. It is not uncommon in bankruptcy or liquidation proceedings for property to be seized immediately in order to prevent the (former) owners from carting off all the valuable goods and hiding them, possibly selling them off at a much later time. Businesses can be locked up and chains put on the doors to prevent the owners from looting the place before their inventory can be assessed. This could very well prevent even a security conscious business from deleting private data from systems before they're taken and sold off.
Slashdot Mirror
As much as I dislike Mariott's practice here, this is clearly outside the scope of the FCC's regulatory powers and as far as I know isn't even in violation of their own regulations. First of all, WiFi operates on UNREGULATED spectrum, which means anyone can use, and anyone must accept interference from other users. Apparently, the FCC wasn't even concerned with the frequencies that Mariott was using, it was the fact that they were sending de-auth packets that bothered them. This is not the sort of thing FCC should be regulating. In fact, the technique used by Mariott is commonly used in many locations (hotels, universities, hospitals) that provide their own WiFi in order to prevent rogue setups from intercepting people's data, and possibly even redirecting traffic to their own phishing sites. (Not everyone checks that the SSL certificate fingerprints haven't changed when they log in to their bank account!) I used to work in the IT department at a university and we did EXACTLY the same thing that Mariott was doing, for just that reason. (Unlike Mariott, we didn't charge people to use our WiFi, but that should make no difference as far as the FCC is concerned.) When we set up that system, we also investigated the legality of it, and the conclusion we came to was that it was perfectly legal since it was on unregulated spectrum. In fact, many, if not most, commercial WiFi systems have this function built in. Ours certainly did, we only had to turn it on.
Submitter is a tyro. It was, of course, Visicalc which added to the Apple ]['s success. And, before Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC, there was Multiplan.
Multiplan though, didn't have a great deal more functionality than VisiCalc (although it did have a superior user interface in my opinion). Lotus 1-2-3 added graphics. You could now select ranges and make bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts, and do simple statistical things like finding lines of best fit. This is what really set it apart from VisiCalc and made it the dominant spreadsheet of its time.
Simply require a passport or driving license to register any domain name.
Believe it or not, there do exist domain name registrars outside the UK. They could certainly require this for anyone using the .uk TLD, but why would pirates do that when they could just buy a .com from GoDaddy or someone else in the US or elsewhere?
Corporations want infrastructure, rule of the law, and educated workforce that comes with doing business in US
What, you think Canada doesn't have an educated workforce?
Fuck all those silly European countries with their "loser pays the winner's legal bills" socialist shit! USA! USA! USA!
Interesting that you call a loser pays system socialist. As I recall, tort reform of the type you suggest was one of the points in the Contract with America put forward by the Republican party (led by Newt Gingrich) in the 1990s. Never heard Newt or his policies described as "socialist" before.
...have to VPN in to the work network to deal with switches or to check the status of an outage, I'm automatically assumed to be a pirate? Seems like the BBC is looking to piss off every IT department in the UK.
I'm sure VPNs at your place of work will be exempted from any new legislation. After all, they're never going to pass a law which will inconvenience banks and large corporations. It will be dedicated VPN services that will come under attack.
And how do you exchange key? Do they plan a web of trust à la GPG?
A better approach would be to generate a random session key and each user's client would display some sort of hash (it doesn't need to be really long: 6 or 8 digits would suffice) of that key. Assuming the two parties know each other and recognize each other's voice and/or face, one of them can read the hash to the other. If there's a MITM attack, they won't match. As I said, the hash doesn't need to be long, since one mismatch would indicate trouble.
maybe you should check out boardgamegeek. catan was a great game in its days, but it has been surpassed
It's been surpassed largely by its own expansion modules. My sister's family just got Explorers & Pirates last Christmas and they've been playing almost non-stop ever since.
He also can't disprove any allegations relating to what he's done over the Internet because he's purposefully removed all traces.
He doesn't have to disprove anything. In America it's up to the prosecution to prove that he did what they accused; it's not up to him to prove his innocence.
I really wish the academic world would go back to the actual proper learning languages, such as PASCAL. In my university, the introductory course for programming is C++ (as a freshman.) C++ has little 'English logic.' However, if you know English, you should be able to read PASCAL code much better than C/Java code. PASCAL is closer to pseudocode, which is (usually) the first assignment in these classes. Why would you jump from pseudocode to a 'stricter language' like Java? What does /. think?
If you want a more English-like language more closely tied to pseudo-code than C++ or Java, why not a language like Ruby or Python? At least that way students could learn object oriented programming as well. Pascal really doesn't have a niche anymore. It was a good teaching language in it's day. As a more up-to-date Algol it was a good language for teaching structured programming, but by today's standards, it's structures are not as flexible as they need to be, and classic Pascal is not object oriented. (There may be object-oriented versions of Pascal now, but that's not the original language any more than C++ is C.) Ruby and Python are both very easy to start programming in (one line "Hello World" programs) and scale well to more sophisticated projects. And they both remain very close to pseudo-code type designs at each step of the way.
One of the main reasons Java may be "cooler" today than when it was first introduced is performance.
In the early days of Java, it's VM architecture meant that it was significantly behind fully compiled languages like C/C++ in terms of performance. People were supposed to sacrifice speed for portability. Even for non-speed critical applications, slower languages were thought to be "less cool". Real men used C, and real, real men still coded in assembly language.
But the VM technology in Java has gotten so sophisticated that it isn't significantly behind languages like C/C++ in terms of performance, and that can't be ignored. This is allowing some of the advantages of Java over C/C++ such as garbage collection, dynamic class loading, a certain degree of reflection, various safety systems, etc., to win over some programmers. Java may well be cooler today than it was 10 years ago, because it's really grown up and become a fairly useful language.
RTFA.
-Microsoft develops product in U.S, generating tax credit for R&D.
And paying salaries to U.S. employees who pay income tax on it and spend their money in the US, thereby also paying US sales taxes.
-Microsoft shifts ownership, or "Profit Rights" of product off-shore, to say....The Bahamas.
Which only makes sense, since the US is one of the few countries in the world to tax people's oversea earnings. Only makes sense then that people and companies would move those profits offshore. If tax policies in the US were more reasonable, Microsoft wouldn't have to do that.
-Microsoft Bahamas subsidiary sells U.S developed product to Americans.
On which those Americans pay sales tax.
-Microsoft Bahamas claims all profit. Microsoft America gets all Tax Credits.
But as you said in your first part: the tax credits are for R&D, not for making profits!
without US political and military might, Microsoft wouldn't be nearly as safe doing business abroad as they are now.
i don't know exactly how much they should owe for this service, but it's stupid to say it's nothing.
By your logic everyone in the world should pay taxes to the US for keeping the world a safe place to do business.
because they don't pay tax on it there either.
But shouldn't that be up to the foreign countries where the money is earned? If a country doesn't want to tax earnings in its borders, that's their business. It doesn't mean the US or any other country should have a claim on it.
You literally just did this with your own post. You told the parent he was wrong, and then implied it was because he wasn't smart enough.
WHOOOOSH!
Fair Dealing is like fair use, but much more restrictive.
Maybe so, but even under the US Fair Use doctrine, I don't think you can offer full episodes of a TV show without permission of the copyright holder.
I'm sure all you're saying is true, but I'm not sure he's marketing solely to court reporters. I think the idea is that it will be a keyboard that anyone who does a lot of typing (secretaries, journalists, writers, coders, etc.) might be interested in using to increase their typing speed, even if they don't reach 225 wpm. Many people would be happy to increase their typing speed from 75 wpm to say 150 wpm.
At the same time, they sure do like the granted right-of-way that allows their grid to exist.
As does the vast majority of the population. Imagine how much your utilities would cost if the utility companies had to pay rent to each property owner that their wires, pipes, cables, etc., crossed.
While that's true for lots of the objections raised, it isn't true for all of them. This, for example:
When Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., installed solar panels a few years ago, for example, the local utility, Dominion Virginia Power, threatened legal action. The utility said that only it could sell electricity in its service area.
Government-created incumbent monopolies seem to be playing their part as well.
The keyword there is sell. They're not objecting to her generating solar power for her own use, they only object to her selling it to others. That's what a monopoly means.
vaughnlive.tv and ivlog.tv are better than either of those. Vaughnlive.tv has an interface most like Justin.tv, while ivlog.tv is more like the now defunct blogtv.
In a nutshell, they simply had any computer that contacted the web site send back the computer's real IP address and its MAC address. The actual security of the Tor wasn't affected.
Ummm, the whole purpose of Tor is to make it impossible for the web host to determine your real IP address, so if it is so easy to get the browser to send that information back to the server then they've COMPLETELY disabled the security of the Tor network, so I really don't understand your statement that the "security of Tor wasn't affected."
I know this won't be a popular position here, but the problem here isn't with what the FBI is doing, but rather the fact that they can do it. The problem is with the technology: it just isn't as secure as it's supposed to be. When a hacker finds a vulnerability in a security system, most people on Slashdot say don't blame the hacker, but rather fix the underlying vulnerabilities in the system. Instead of pointing the finger at the FBI for using vulnerabilities in TOR, web browsers, and/or operating systems, we should be glad that they're making this public, so the vulnerabilities can be fixed. After all, if the FBI can do this, so can criminals, governments hostile to free speech, and many other malicious parties. Let's learn from what the FBI is doing and harden the systems, to make legitimate users of Tor and similar services safer.
The parent post was clearly not written by a Canadian, as any good Canadian knows that Tim Horton's does NOT serve poutine. Otherwise though, your post is spot on.
A restaurant supply reclamation company should surely have the expertise and the responsibility, no?
Responsibility to do what? It's not their data nor their customers data on the stuff they're selling. They're just a buyer and seller of goods. As long as the equipment is not stolen and is in good working order when supplied to their customers they've met their responsibility. I'm not aware they have any responsibility to the former owners or their employees at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, I'm not a lawyer.
When someone goes out of business and liquidates (is forced to liquidate) their capital assets, they're not going to give a crap about what data might be left on these devices.
And even if they do give a crap, they might not be able to do anything about it. It is not uncommon in bankruptcy or liquidation proceedings for property to be seized immediately in order to prevent the (former) owners from carting off all the valuable goods and hiding them, possibly selling them off at a much later time. Businesses can be locked up and chains put on the doors to prevent the owners from looting the place before their inventory can be assessed. This could very well prevent even a security conscious business from deleting private data from systems before they're taken and sold off.