Explosives detection technology is most likely to
be used by elements of the US government,
specifically the DHS, TSA and other TLAs.
Patents make no difference to the US government
-- it has a perpetual, royalty free licence to
use any patent it wishes, any way it wishes.
Frequently disasterously.
Once debugged
(meat), the mfr will probably be able to sell
the devices to the govt. If they charge too
much, the GSA (procurement) will go out for bids.
Local and state bomb squads will have more
trouble, but the Federal govt could just give
them detectors under some fancy pgm.
As near as I can tell, Bill Gates only code contribution to MicroSoft was he wrote the non-runtime (ie editor) for GW-BASIC. Two other guys wrote the runtime (interpreter) and mathlib.
Sure, MSFT could buy RIM. A Bush FTC might even let them, even though they are an adjudged monopolist and they are looking to extend their monopoly by eliminating/controlling a competitor.
But portible devices are just too popular, and someone else will step up. There may be some patents to get around, but MSFT might face an anti-trust suit if it tried to enforce them.
I have little doubt that VoIP voice quality can be made excellent (via compression). All it takes is a modest amount of bandwidth (6kByte/s?).
I wonder how latency can be brought below 100 ms even with QoS. It's probably close to the 230 ms delay you get on phone calls routed through satellites. I find it irksome.
Think "users are idiots" through: In the unlikely event MS releases a patch, it won't get installed, so probably should not have been released. Anyone know if patches have been used by exploit writers?
CERT and Bugtraq also MUST be shutdown if users don't use this info. Might as well just write the software authors when a bug is found. Quiet-like. MS would approve."
The problem with this scenario is that exploits would be less public, and more private and nasty. No public pressure to fix. Those who wanted to protect themselves really couldn't.
The bulk may be [l]users, but the few who are not drive the business, and to some extent, protect everyone.
I'll ignore the "ad hominem" -- I don't think you really mean to concede the argument.
From the storm of peer objections, I'm not sure how much the professor thought.
Students, especially undergrad, are a skittish bunch. Many do not understand that a good argument will be just as acceptable to a good professor. Perhaps because such arguments have failed on bad profs. Then again, some may not wish to discuss their voting status. Are they not entitled to privacy?
BTW, I'm personally with the objectors. Not voting is an excellent choice, mostly because it deprives the elected of mandate and power. Probably better than "the lesser of two evils", and possibly better than 3rd party votes. What else can you do in a first-past-the-post system? The US isn't proportional representation.
Nothing against female involvement. As she says, the detachment can be good for perspective.
But success in most business revolves around a very good understanding of customers. Most women have very
poor understandings of male sexuality because the media sensationalizes and distorts.
That's why Hef could build the Playboy empire, and Christine could revitalize it with a new (but not radical) perspective.
It wouldn't have worked the other way 'round.
Re:Neighbor Discovery vs Theft-of-Service
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 1
I thought ARP was dependant on MAC, and that some cable modems used DHCP.
Neighbor Discovery vs Theft-of-Service
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 1
Sure, an open peered ethernet will work just fine.
But what of the residential-service routers (especially cable) that have to worry about Theft-of-Service?
How can SCO make complaints about Linux 2.6 which didn't exist at the time they
launched their suit? Are they clairvoyant?
Re:Only if implemented
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Sure, you can implement it and twiddle some bits,
but it won't be successful if your ISP can't
route packets back to you!
It will depend on
whether the ISP's router is sufficiently stateful
(and lax about MAC) and/or willing to do
broadcasts.
This is were a few quiet
conversations between security authorities and
the larger router manufacturers (Cisco) can have
large impacts. "Our routing/auth tables key off
MAC for speed and efficiency. We don't do
broadcasts to avoid congestion and security
concerns." Plausible deniability.
MAC is published via nonymous communications
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 1
MACs become very public because everyone has a combination of public & private personnae.
You might send email to your professor, employer or other potential adversary. They then scan USENET or SlashDot for your MAC substring. Searches run both ways.
Resetting MAC might not help if your ISP adds a UID string or grants access by MAC.
Yes, PE can work! But the real question is whether
they will be implemented, or whether various authorities will pressure ISPs
to not implement, citing such bogeymen as "national security", spam and kiddie-porn.
Still the anonymity problem
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
With 128 bit addresses, even DHCP will contain personal identifiers (MAC?).
The current IPv4 net has de-facto weak anonymity via DHCP, proxying, etc. It is effectively anonymous unless police authorities
get very interested and are willing to wade through logs. And these logs get quickly lost/deleted.
IPv6 is the end of the 'net as we know it. Whether it will be an improvement is hard to say. I'm sure it will have a chilling effect. This
might be good at stopping some undesireable activities (spam, etc. if enforced) but will also
inhibit free speech, particularly in less-free countries.
I'm also deeply disturbed by baseless statistics such as 10,000 hits/day. It means something very different if BT has only 10,000 ISP subscribers or has 1?5 million.
BT's disclaiming malware is disingenuous they ought to do simple traffic analysis. Was that 10,000 hit/day on 10,000 different websites, or 10 different sites? Most likely, some interesting distribution.
Good point, but carry it further. Who is going to write the apps using the WM codecs? Does Linspire have that kind of talent? Is BSD code available? So if they don't get MS code, they might need to modify GPL code.
Oooh, nasty! Can GPL code be modified to use an MS proprietary lib & not violate the GPL???
We use SmartCards with PINs at work in an MS-Win2k environment. They take ~5 sec to authenticate. UID/pw takes less than 1 sec.
A restaurant-type system might be best/fastest.
Perhaps forgo authentication? Or make it concurrent with data entry? A "secret" 4-6 char UID field that whoever fills-in when they enter other data (vitals).
OK, so it looks like a sellout, but 20 M$ is decent money and legal fees would have been a large fraction of this. Unfortunately, M$ has become a 800lib gorilla.
I'm more interested in one of the settlement terms where Lindows..er..Linspire will remove certain components and M$ will provide alternatives. This means that MS will have to port some software to Linux. Ouch!
Personally, I like yahoo.com's webmail interface with a "SPAM" button.
Yahoo should be using these clicks statistically to refine it's filters (which I don't use) and launch complaints against spammer ISPs and/or filter trojan relays.
If something is done on behalf of a company who pays for it and eith knows about it or willfully ignores consequences, the company _still_ is liable.
After all, the evil act would not have been done without the inducement.
Slashdot Mirror
Once debugged (meat), the mfr will probably be able to sell the devices to the govt. If they charge too much, the GSA (procurement) will go out for bids. Local and state bomb squads will have more trouble, but the Federal govt could just give them detectors under some fancy pgm.
But portible devices are just too popular, and someone else will step up. There may be some patents to get around, but MSFT might face an anti-trust suit if it tried to enforce them.
I wonder how latency can be brought below 100 ms even with QoS. It's probably close to the 230 ms delay you get on phone calls routed through satellites. I find it irksome.
CERT and Bugtraq also MUST be shutdown if users don't use this info. Might as well just write the software authors when a bug is found. Quiet-like. MS would approve."
The problem with this scenario is that exploits would be less public, and more private and nasty. No public pressure to fix. Those who wanted to protect themselves really couldn't.
The bulk may be [l]users, but the few who are not drive the business, and to some extent, protect everyone.
From the storm of peer objections, I'm not sure how much the professor thought.
Students, especially undergrad, are a skittish bunch. Many do not understand that a good argument will be just as acceptable to a good professor. Perhaps because such arguments have failed on bad profs. Then again, some may not wish to discuss their voting status. Are they not entitled to privacy?
BTW, I'm personally with the objectors. Not voting is an excellent choice, mostly because it deprives the elected of mandate and power. Probably better than "the lesser of two evils", and possibly better than 3rd party votes. What else can you do in a first-past-the-post system? The US isn't proportional representation.
Vitrification is nice (better be multi-layer), but there'll have to be one hell of a vapor recovery system.
Some students may be in-eligible to vote -- too young, non-US citizens, felons, ... etc.
For other students, it might be quite a morass to figure out if they can vote away from their home presincts. Different state laws.
Of course, silliness must [statictically] happen.
That's why Hef could build the Playboy empire, and Christine could revitalize it with a new (but not radical) perspective. It wouldn't have worked the other way 'round.
But what of the residential-service routers (especially cable) that have to worry about Theft-of-Service?
It will depend on whether the ISP's router is sufficiently stateful (and lax about MAC) and/or willing to do broadcasts.
This is were a few quiet conversations between security authorities and the larger router manufacturers (Cisco) can have large impacts. "Our routing/auth tables key off MAC for speed and efficiency. We don't do broadcasts to avoid congestion and security concerns." Plausible deniability.
You might send email to your professor, employer or other potential adversary. They then scan USENET or SlashDot for your MAC substring. Searches run both ways.
Resetting MAC might not help if your ISP adds a UID string or grants access by MAC.
The current IPv4 net has de-facto weak anonymity via DHCP, proxying, etc. It is effectively anonymous unless police authorities get very interested and are willing to wade through logs. And these logs get quickly lost/deleted.
IPv6 is the end of the 'net as we know it. Whether it will be an improvement is hard to say. I'm sure it will have a chilling effect. This might be good at stopping some undesireable activities (spam, etc. if enforced) but will also inhibit free speech, particularly in less-free countries.
I'm also deeply disturbed by baseless statistics such as 10,000 hits/day. It means something very different if BT has only 10,000 ISP subscribers or has 1?5 million.
BT's disclaiming malware is disingenuous they ought to do simple traffic analysis. Was that 10,000 hit/day on 10,000 different websites, or 10 different sites? Most likely, some interesting distribution.
Oooh, nasty! Can GPL code be modified to use an MS proprietary lib & not violate the GPL???
Agreed on the typing, I was measuring from complete entry of data to access-grant.
A restaurant-type system might be best/fastest.
Perhaps forgo authentication? Or make it concurrent with data entry? A "secret" 4-6 char UID field that whoever fills-in when they enter other data (vitals).
I'm more interested in one of the settlement terms where Lindows..er..Linspire will remove certain components and M$ will provide alternatives. This means that MS will have to port some software to Linux. Ouch!
Yahoo should be using these clicks statistically to refine it's filters (which I don't use) and launch complaints against spammer ISPs and/or filter trojan relays.