A quote from http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
which was thoughtfully linked by 'futuresheep':
The Mafia might use the same facilities: they could arrange that the spreadhseet with
the latest drug shipments can only be read on accredited Mafia PCs, and will vanish at the end of the month. This might make life harder for the FBI -
though Microsoft is in discussions with governments about whether policemen and spies will get some kind of access to master keys.
The skeliton key concept has two edges: it thwarts the bad guys, but it also thwarts the good guys. In truth, it raises the question of who is 'bad' and who is 'good,' which is more impossible to answer unless you subscribe to holier-than-thou dogmas.
I believe the reason that the clipper chip did not take off is because _business_ does not trust the gov't not to snoop. Business is less enamored with dogma and more committed to dispassionate pragmatism. The ability for the FBI et al to snoop on the so-called mafia also gives them the ability to snoop on Microsoft (there's that good/bad dichotomy again;-). Since business ultimately rules the government, the needs for secrecy in business will weigh against the grant of skeliton keys to governments.
IMHO.
> Perhaps, but what will probably happen > is the law will be modified to allow Adobe, > et al. to do what they want, but still > eliminate, de facto, our fair use rights.
Perhaps it will, but only to the extent that they can maintain the sham under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Fair use was designed to ultimately promote commerce. We can hope that, eventually, commercial interests will want it back.
"Can moderation on Slashdot really work? Internot Publishing 2.0 stole my research paper about Slashdot and wrote an article about it. In my paper, I argue that CowboyNeal may have an inherent "tipping point" that can be triggered without modding-down 100% of the trolls on the network, using a model borrowed from biological systems. For those who think they have a technical solution to the problem, I modded-up a few problems with the obvious solutions (karma-whoring, etc.)."
As any Batman reader knows, a mad scientist bent on planetary vengeance could use the same pillow/sail technology to push an asteroid _into_ earth's path.
I noticed that a drawing of a circle is copyrighted. It's a the top of the list on NASA's webpage on the Voyager photograpic recordings.
Makes me wonder, will extraterrestrials be sued under DMCA?
The U.S. government has a history of abusing its citizens based on itentity as:
- Viet-nam war protesters - Communist Sympathizers - Descendants of Japanese immigrants - Not being "caucasian"
That's just off-the-cuff by someone who didn't pay much attention in high-school history.
If you look around European history, you'll find times and places where people were put on a list and rounded up, ostensibly for the common good, but actually to be made victims of crimes against humanity. And I'm not talking just about Naziism.
Just because the key database doesn't have certain personal facts in it doesn't protect you. Once the identifier is created, it's all of the _other_ databases that can start to be kept. Who your parents are, what your religion is, what your political party is, what diseases you have, whether you vote.
A government that protects it's people from abuses could provide assurances that this would not get out of hand. However, some of us live in countries where the government has been the abuser, not the protecter
Naturally, in such countries, we're skeptical about whether we're ready to have a handy-dandy identifier so people can index all sorts of interesting "facts" about us.
> Denmark has had this since the 1970's, > which is also the reason why the Danish > population is very popular amongst > researchers. All health care information is > available through this central computer system, > and this makes researchers able to > find correlations quickly.
Do you have socialized medicine in Denmark? If so, you wouldn't have to worry about being _denied_ health care based on what some researcher found out about you in a database.
In the U.S.A. we don't have a right to health care. We can be denied care if we have certain unpopular diseases.
A Graviton is a spinning cylinder, not a spinning disk. When you get inside, it starts to spin, and you slide across the floor and stick to the inside wall of the cylinder. Then they drop the floor and friction holds you to the wall. But it gets boring pretty quickly.
I once snuck a tennis ball inside and tried to throw it to my buddy on the far side of the cylinder, but it didn't travel in a straight line. Spooky.
Dating myself here; I flashed on June Lockhart picking up the earpiece of the phone at the farmhouse, cranking feverishly on the wooden box, and shouting into that carbon microphone. (It was all a fake set piece by 1963 when they filmed the series, but still...)
Maybe I read too quickly, but I didn't pick up on the names of the "missing" elements.
Even if they don't exist, they can still have names, can't they? (I know that this wouldn't be scientifically valid, but hey, we're just naming numbers.) Presumably, if they're legitmately discovered, the discoverer gets to name them, but until then, we need placeholders.
I say we name them! How about fraudium and forgium? Worldcomium? Enronium? Coldfusigen? (Of course, we need to draw on more languages than English.)
> Television decides for us, tells us what to think about the matter, > and then we just shrug and go to work.
Television is not artificially intelligent. Someone is deciding what message gets delivered via television. You are deciding whether to receive the message.
Some of "us" use a few brain cycles to understand this as we choose, watch, and interpret. Others of "us" use a switch on the box. Still others of "us" use our choice of whether to have the box at all.
> I think there needs to be a citizen's veto system.... > If you, the citizen, feel as though a program is a useless shill and waste of money, > you simply click the check box, and submit your veto.
That would be a sword with two edges. Don't you think that, for any proposal, however meritorious, someone will object? If you'd like online privacy, more honest government, or even more honest television, I think you would find that there are plenty of people who would use your "online veto" to quash your vision's chances of realization.
Alternatively, you could count up all the vetos and anti-vetos. But wait...someone already invented that system two or three centuries ago. It's called "democracy."
The trouble is, someone is always dissatisfied with the outcome. The best you can do is try to satisfy more people than you dissatisfy, and bring about a balance where people can live and work together without killing each other very often. That's an even older invention called "civilization."
(Don't forget that it's up to you to remember to turn off your TV when you leave for work; have you noticed that it only tells you to that you should stay tuned?)
Re:interesting approach
on
Enigma
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Charles invented the stored-program computer, but Blechley Park built the first electronic one. Theirs predated ENIAC, but it was secret, so the ENIAC builders thought they were first. See "The Code Book" by Simon Singh.
The notes about releasing a benivolent virus that locks down Outlook features reminds me of the movie "Brazil," where there was a character that clandestinely made repairs to the failing infrastructure. The "legitimate" repair people never fixed anything; they stalled with paperwork and broke more things than they fixed. On top of that, numerous products were advertised and sold that just put pretty paint over the top of the flawed plumbing, instead of actually improving anything. To top it all off, nearly everybody thought that the "official" technology worked fine, because they'd never experienced anything that actually worked _well_.
> How do you know that 1000 years from now, someone > will not have perfected time travel and >invisibility... how do you know that someone is > not standing over your shoulder while you are > locked in a lead-lined vault deep inside Mt. > Everest as you key in the pad?
(a) If someone has these capabilities, encryption doesn't help you at all, because secrets don't help you at all.
(b) "How do you know that..." is a degenerate argument; how do you know that 'reality' is real? Any rational discussion has to start with agreed-to premises and it's basically childs-play to deny the discussion by rejecting the premises.
I find it odd that after being hit with waves of terrestrial trojans like Code Red and Melissa, we still think it's kewl to connect the planetary computer network to the sky via a radio-telescope.
What we're hoping for is to find the big IRC in the sky. Careful what you wish for--those aliens might me more than just chatty. If they're ever-so-much more intelligent than us, think of the viruses some of them must be writing....
>I have seen cases where the BSA isn't satisfied with responses and comes back with Federal agents (yes, guys armed with subpoenas and guns.) ... > Basically, you are screwed if you a) don't comply with them and b) don't have your licensing in order.
If you're remotely close to satisfying (a) and (b), find a lawyer who can say the word "racketeering."
> I would do exactly what pitcrew suggested -- tell them to go to hell.
A safer strategy is to pretend you didn't hear them in the first place.
Ever send a registered letter with return receipt, and never get the return receipt? It happens, and it's because the recipient doesn't want to acknowledge the communications.
IANAL, but it seems to me, to haul you into court requires a subpoena or a summons. Those documents require a response. Others could be ignored, as long as you don't intend to do business with the source of the noise.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the reason that the clipper chip did not take off is because _business_ does not trust the gov't not to snoop. Business is less enamored with dogma and more committed to dispassionate pragmatism. The ability for the FBI et al to snoop on the so-called mafia also gives them the ability to snoop on Microsoft (there's that good/bad dichotomy again ;-). Since business ultimately rules the government, the needs for secrecy in business will weigh against the grant of skeliton keys to governments.
IMHO.
> Perhaps, but what will probably happen
> is the law will be modified to allow Adobe,
> et al. to do what they want, but still
> eliminate, de facto, our fair use rights.
Perhaps it will, but only to the extent that they can maintain the sham under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Fair use was designed to ultimately promote commerce. We can hope that, eventually, commercial interests will want it back.
"Can moderation on Slashdot really work? Internot Publishing 2.0 stole my research paper about Slashdot and wrote an article about it. In my paper, I argue that CowboyNeal may have an inherent "tipping point" that can be triggered without modding-down 100% of the trolls on the network, using a model borrowed from biological systems. For those who think they have a technical solution to the problem, I modded-up a few problems with the obvious solutions (karma-whoring, etc.)."
As any Batman reader knows, a mad scientist bent on planetary vengeance could use the same pillow/sail technology to push an asteroid _into_ earth's path.
The proverbial sword cuts both ways.
I noticed that a drawing of a circle is copyrighted. It's a the top of the list on NASA's webpage on the Voyager photograpic recordings. Makes me wonder, will extraterrestrials be sued under DMCA?
Your message was here?
Perhaps, with a pile of spam,
I deleted it.
I'd like to see him paint a split infinitive!
New Orleans wants to be a sacrificial lamb.
They can take Microsoft down a notch when they crash.
How many people are going to mourn either of the co-victims? Not many, I'll wager.
Pasty basement Linux hackers?
"I'm a top programmer at a Fortune 500 Company and write open source software in my spare time...I cherish mowing my lawn"
"Growing Problem of Obesity in America"
"Starving Children in Africa"
"Even Theo DeRaadt..."
*** The real dilemma ***: should this me modded up as "Funny" or modded down as "Troll"???
The U.S. government has a history of abusing its citizens based on itentity as:
- Viet-nam war protesters
- Communist Sympathizers
- Descendants of Japanese immigrants
- Not being "caucasian"
That's just off-the-cuff by someone who didn't pay much attention in high-school history.
If you look around European history, you'll find times and places where people were put on a list and rounded up, ostensibly for the common good, but actually to be made victims of crimes against humanity. And I'm not talking just about Naziism.
Just because the key database doesn't have certain personal facts in it doesn't protect you. Once the identifier is created, it's all of the _other_ databases that can start to be kept. Who your parents are, what your religion is, what your political party is, what diseases you have, whether you vote.
A government that protects it's people from abuses could provide assurances that this would not get out of hand. However, some of us live in countries where the government has been the abuser, not the protecter
Naturally, in such countries, we're skeptical about whether we're ready to have a handy-dandy identifier so people can index all sorts of interesting "facts" about us.
> Denmark has had this since the 1970's,
> which is also the reason why the Danish
> population is very popular amongst
> researchers. All health care information is
> available through this central computer system,
> and this makes researchers able to
> find correlations quickly.
Do you have socialized medicine in Denmark? If so, you wouldn't have to worry about being _denied_ health care based on what some researcher found out about you in a database.
In the U.S.A. we don't have a right to health care. We can be denied care if we have certain unpopular diseases.
... is just the flip side of different than "break it 'till it's fixed"
A Graviton is a spinning cylinder, not a spinning disk. When you get inside, it starts to spin, and you slide across the floor and stick to the inside wall of the cylinder. Then they drop the floor and friction holds you to the wall. But it gets boring pretty quickly.
I once snuck a tennis ball inside and tried to throw it to my buddy on the far side of the cylinder, but it didn't travel in a straight line. Spooky.
Dating myself here; I flashed on June Lockhart picking up the earpiece of the phone at the farmhouse, cranking feverishly on the wooden box, and shouting into that carbon microphone. (It was all a fake set piece by 1963 when they filmed the series, but still...)
Lassie come home!
Q: "Do you want fries with that?"
Maybe I read too quickly, but I didn't pick up on the names of the "missing" elements.
Even if they don't exist, they can still have names, can't they? (I know that this wouldn't be scientifically valid, but hey, we're just naming numbers.) Presumably, if they're legitmately discovered, the discoverer gets to name them, but until then, we need placeholders.
I say we name them! How about fraudium and forgium? Worldcomium? Enronium? Coldfusigen? (Of course, we need to draw on more languages than English.)
It's not like Apple sold their soul to The Beast; as a corporation, they don't even have a soul to sell.
Another instance of Microsoft's confusion about the difference between people and institutions?
> Television decides for us, tells us what to think about the matter,
> and then we just shrug and go to work.
Television is not artificially intelligent. Someone is deciding what message gets delivered via television. You are deciding whether to receive the message.
Some of "us" use a few brain cycles to understand this as we choose, watch, and interpret. Others of "us" use a switch on the box. Still others of "us" use our choice of whether to have the box at all.
> I think there needs to be a citizen's veto system....
> If you, the citizen, feel as though a program is a useless shill and waste of money,
> you simply click the check box, and submit your veto.
That would be a sword with two edges. Don't you think that, for any proposal, however meritorious, someone will object? If you'd like online privacy, more honest government, or even more honest television, I think you would find that there are plenty of people who would use your "online veto" to quash your vision's chances of realization.
Alternatively, you could count up all the vetos and anti-vetos. But wait...someone already invented that system two or three centuries ago. It's called "democracy."
The trouble is, someone is always dissatisfied with the outcome. The best you can do is try to satisfy more people than you dissatisfy, and bring about a balance where people can live and work together without killing each other very often. That's an even older invention called "civilization."
(Don't forget that it's up to you to remember to turn off your TV when you leave for work; have you noticed that it only tells you to that you should stay tuned?)
Charles invented the stored-program computer, but Blechley Park built the first electronic one. Theirs predated ENIAC, but it was secret, so the ENIAC builders thought they were first. See "The Code Book" by Simon Singh.
If this news came out in September of 2001, it was probably (figuratively) buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
A shocked and grieving nation could be forgiven for missing a legal event or two in France.
The notes about releasing a benivolent virus that locks down Outlook features reminds me of the movie "Brazil," where there was a character that clandestinely made repairs to the failing infrastructure. The "legitimate" repair people never fixed anything; they stalled with paperwork and broke more things than they fixed. On top of that, numerous products were advertised and sold that just put pretty paint over the top of the flawed plumbing, instead of actually improving anything. To top it all off, nearly everybody thought that the "official" technology worked fine, because they'd never experienced anything that actually worked _well_.
Life imitates art.
> How do you know that 1000 years from now, someone
> will not have perfected time travel and
>invisibility... how do you know that someone is
> not standing over your shoulder while you are
> locked in a lead-lined vault deep inside Mt.
> Everest as you key in the pad?
(a) If someone has these capabilities, encryption doesn't help you at all, because secrets don't help you at all.
(b) "How do you know that..." is a degenerate argument; how do you know that 'reality' is real? Any rational discussion has to start with agreed-to premises and it's basically childs-play to deny the discussion by rejecting the premises.
I find it odd that after being hit with waves of terrestrial trojans like Code Red and Melissa, we still think it's kewl to connect the planetary computer network to the sky via a radio-telescope.
What we're hoping for is to find the big IRC in the sky. Careful what you wish for--those aliens might me more than just chatty. If they're ever-so-much more intelligent than us, think of the viruses some of them must be writing....
>I have seen cases where the BSA isn't satisfied with responses and comes back with Federal agents (yes, guys armed with subpoenas and guns.)
...
> Basically, you are screwed if you a) don't comply with them and b) don't have your licensing in order.
If you're remotely close to satisfying (a) and (b), find a lawyer who can say the word "racketeering."
Treble damages.
> I would do exactly what pitcrew suggested -- tell them to go to hell.
A safer strategy is to pretend you didn't hear them in the first place.
Ever send a registered letter with return receipt, and never get the return receipt? It happens, and it's because the recipient doesn't want to acknowledge the communications.
IANAL, but it seems to me, to haul you into court requires a subpoena or a summons. Those documents require a response. Others could be ignored, as long as you don't intend to do business with the source of the noise.