I was shocked in 2008 when I read that Sarkozy and Merkel talked to each other about EU policies through SMS. Apparently, both French and German leaders do think that spying does not happen, that cell phones are secure, and are genuinely surprised by what happened.
The only thing Snowden has really revealed was the degree of incompetence of the politicians in my country (France)
The article is very light on details. I wonder if that could make it possible to produce small series of microchips. It would be an incredible tool for your local fablab...
My favorite feature of markdown is that it can easily be used to collaborate with people without having them learn a complicated syntax. "Use the same formatting as I did" is all they need to know.
Trends... USA does become a more closed and strictly controlled country, however, it is very hard (though possible) to have political opinions censored in America. If every country in the world suddenly aligned their policies on USA, that would be a tremendous step forward.
The more it unfolds, the more I feel like Snowden is a counter-intelligence operation to stop talking about Assange. Snowden teaches us nothing new, makes vague claims, redacts useful contents.
Luddites (contrary to more recent neo-luddites) was not an anti-technology group. They were depicted this way by their political enemies but actually they only protested to the way many workers were fired and obsoleted without any kind of safety net. There has been some machines destruction, but their revendications were social, not technological.
Not anymore. 2008 was the last year this was true. And consider that this table only shows the added value in dollars, not any kind of intrinsic value: for $1 you can manufacture more things in China than in US.
If you think about what this means, it means that wages will go down and prices will go down. Depending on which goes down fastest, it could resulg in global wealth of record inequalities.
The problem is that the jobs and the resources are all allocated wrong. We could (at least in America) have 20-30 hour work weeks, plenty of family time, decent pay, and a low unemployment rate.. if a certain select few did not make ALL the money and take control of ALL the resources.
Hear, hear!
Before dismissing it as partisan politics and easy wealthy-bashing, think about it for a second: generalized automation means that there won't be enough work for everyone. It either means unemployement for most people or it means shorter work weeks. Free market does not care to choose between these two alternative, the choice will only come from politics and from rules we make.
the US Government fucks up everything it touches
This is really a problem that US citizens need to solve quickly. Free market and automation won't lead to a techno-utopia without putting a brake on the concentration of capital. Automated industries are capital-biased instead of labor-biased (your output depends more on the amount of funds you can invest rather than on the labor you manage to hire) and therefore will worsen inequalities.
For example, the NSA said it will fire 90% of sysadmins and replace them with automation. Anyone in IT knows that idea is 100% stupid.
To be fair, I am not sure it would have been a worse idea than outsourcing it to private companies filled with people like Snowden who were not considered trustworthy enough to work in the NSA...
Understanding the system, using it, subverting it, is totally fine. But some people will always confuse "having a use for something" with "loving this system".
IP laws are despicable, costly to mankind, dangerous for research and harmful for the economy. I am still making business plans that rely on these bad rules of the game, just like I would include corruption in my plans if it was unavoidable in my country.
Yes, rethinking copyright laws would force us to rethink all the open source licences. We would do that happily. Software patents can disappear overnight, OSS would not break a sweat over that. And trademarks are currently the less problematic aspect of IP laws.
Ok, I am sick of people missing the point totally. This is not about saying "oh! nasty US! we should team up with Russia instead!". This is not about saying how easy or hard it is to break into a company's network
This is about TOR, this is about what TOR is supposed to be and this is about why it is unacceptable that the NSA can break a key in a few hours.
You are totally free to not care about security, but understand that in many fields, this mean lost contracts and millions wasted.In all IT wompanies where I had admin rights, and I did this job as a side attribution, a few hours a week, none of the tricks you proposed would have worked : network was switched, passwords encryted, local machines not trusted, printer maintenance was made internally, crucial technical information was not accessible by non tech-savvy people, and in two of them, offices were locked during lunch breaks. Basic security is easy and cheap, and some people do it well. Some of us take security seriously, and TOR is a tool that should be trustable in such a context. It is generally and, honestly, we were aware that it was probably not 100% NSA-resistant, but it aims at being, and in that context, this problem is a big problem.
These are a patch, but not a long term solution. They work by using an interstice that law-makers do not understand very well. I, for one, do not want to consider that it is an acceptable practice to censor or spy on regular communication.
See, if we rely too much on a solely technical solution without having also a strong political stance, the mentality will slowly change to say that censorship and spying are a necessity, and to slowly make people admit that secure cryptography is the tool of the terrorist and should be banned.
Ask yourself : how many people would really understand and be angry if tomorrow the Congress decided to criminalize the use of encryption algorithms not vetted by the NSA ?
I think that technical solution are very important and should continue to be improved, but raising a political voice is in my opinion a very useful thing to do in parallel.
This is good only if you work under the assumption that you will not disturb any entrenched interests. As a European who works for European companies with US competitors, I can not assume that no one will ever spend a few hours to know what is inside the mails I sent to my boss.
This is not an hypothetical case. In my last job we were in direct competition with IBM and were exchanging crucial pricing information through email. There has been precedents of ECHELON being used to gain economic intelligence (google "echelon airbus boeing" to learn about that)
My guess is that they have a hard time finding people who speak Arabic and support Israel as much as the US government would want them to.
Considering the failry lax criterion to label someone a terrorist, I am not surprised that a lot of their potential hires had "connections" to terrorists.
To put things in perspective:
Lenovo 2012 profits : $472 millions
Yang's share of that : $33 millions
Lenovo's employees : 27 000
Lenovo profit per employee : $17,481
What Yang offers them : $300
Slashdot Mirror
I was shocked in 2008 when I read that Sarkozy and Merkel talked to each other about EU policies through SMS. Apparently, both French and German leaders do think that spying does not happen, that cell phones are secure, and are genuinely surprised by what happened.
The only thing Snowden has really revealed was the degree of incompetence of the politicians in my country (France)
I know better than to laugh at Fortran developpers.
That's what Aaron Swartz gave his life for.
The source is not stated. I guess it is a Japanese governmental source. So the government anonymously says it did nothing wrong? Astounding.
The article is very light on details. I wonder if that could make it possible to produce small series of microchips. It would be an incredible tool for your local fablab...
My favorite feature of markdown is that it can easily be used to collaborate with people without having them learn a complicated syntax. "Use the same formatting as I did" is all they need to know.
Switching sides when comfronted to new data is a desirable behavior.
I agree. All I have to add has been in my slashdot signature for years.
Trends... USA does become a more closed and strictly controlled country, however, it is very hard (though possible) to have political opinions censored in America. If every country in the world suddenly aligned their policies on USA, that would be a tremendous step forward.
The more it unfolds, the more I feel like Snowden is a counter-intelligence operation to stop talking about Assange. Snowden teaches us nothing new, makes vague claims, redacts useful contents.
People who are suprised by this behavior from Apple in 2013 deserve what happens to them.
Luddites (contrary to more recent neo-luddites) was not an anti-technology group. They were depicted this way by their political enemies but actually they only protested to the way many workers were fired and obsoleted without any kind of safety net. There has been some machines destruction, but their revendications were social, not technological.
That's what the masses killed in the Paris Commune of 1871 thought too...
Not anymore. 2008 was the last year this was true. And consider that this table only shows the added value in dollars, not any kind of intrinsic value: for $1 you can manufacture more things in China than in US.
If you think about what this means, it means that wages will go down and prices will go down. Depending on which goes down fastest, it could resulg in global wealth of record inequalities.
Snowden could snoop through emails and is considered a criminal by the US government.
The problem is that the jobs and the resources are all allocated wrong. We could (at least in America) have 20-30 hour work weeks, plenty of family time, decent pay, and a low unemployment rate.. if a certain select few did not make ALL the money and take control of ALL the resources.
Hear, hear! Before dismissing it as partisan politics and easy wealthy-bashing, think about it for a second: generalized automation means that there won't be enough work for everyone. It either means unemployement for most people or it means shorter work weeks. Free market does not care to choose between these two alternative, the choice will only come from politics and from rules we make.
the US Government fucks up everything it touches
This is really a problem that US citizens need to solve quickly. Free market and automation won't lead to a techno-utopia without putting a brake on the concentration of capital. Automated industries are capital-biased instead of labor-biased (your output depends more on the amount of funds you can invest rather than on the labor you manage to hire) and therefore will worsen inequalities.
For example, the NSA said it will fire 90% of sysadmins and replace them with automation. Anyone in IT knows that idea is 100% stupid.
To be fair, I am not sure it would have been a worse idea than outsourcing it to private companies filled with people like Snowden who were not considered trustworthy enough to work in the NSA...
Understanding the system, using it, subverting it, is totally fine. But some people will always confuse "having a use for something" with "loving this system".
IP laws are despicable, costly to mankind, dangerous for research and harmful for the economy. I am still making business plans that rely on these bad rules of the game, just like I would include corruption in my plans if it was unavoidable in my country.
Yes, rethinking copyright laws would force us to rethink all the open source licences. We would do that happily. Software patents can disappear overnight, OSS would not break a sweat over that. And trademarks are currently the less problematic aspect of IP laws.
Did he get a seat?
Ok, I am sick of people missing the point totally. This is not about saying "oh! nasty US! we should team up with Russia instead!". This is not about saying how easy or hard it is to break into a company's network
This is about TOR, this is about what TOR is supposed to be and this is about why it is unacceptable that the NSA can break a key in a few hours.
You are totally free to not care about security, but understand that in many fields, this mean lost contracts and millions wasted.In all IT wompanies where I had admin rights, and I did this job as a side attribution, a few hours a week, none of the tricks you proposed would have worked : network was switched, passwords encryted, local machines not trusted, printer maintenance was made internally, crucial technical information was not accessible by non tech-savvy people, and in two of them, offices were locked during lunch breaks. Basic security is easy and cheap, and some people do it well. Some of us take security seriously, and TOR is a tool that should be trustable in such a context. It is generally and, honestly, we were aware that it was probably not 100% NSA-resistant, but it aims at being, and in that context, this problem is a big problem.
These are a patch, but not a long term solution. They work by using an interstice that law-makers do not understand very well. I, for one, do not want to consider that it is an acceptable practice to censor or spy on regular communication.
See, if we rely too much on a solely technical solution without having also a strong political stance, the mentality will slowly change to say that censorship and spying are a necessity, and to slowly make people admit that secure cryptography is the tool of the terrorist and should be banned.
Ask yourself : how many people would really understand and be angry if tomorrow the Congress decided to criminalize the use of encryption algorithms not vetted by the NSA ?
I think that technical solution are very important and should continue to be improved, but raising a political voice is in my opinion a very useful thing to do in parallel.
This is good only if you work under the assumption that you will not disturb any entrenched interests. As a European who works for European companies with US competitors, I can not assume that no one will ever spend a few hours to know what is inside the mails I sent to my boss.
This is not an hypothetical case. In my last job we were in direct competition with IBM and were exchanging crucial pricing information through email. There has been precedents of ECHELON being used to gain economic intelligence (google "echelon airbus boeing" to learn about that)
Exactly. I can't understand why anyone in technical circle would not scream SCAM! at this claim to be NSA resistant.
My guess is that they have a hard time finding people who speak Arabic and support Israel as much as the US government would want them to.
Considering the failry lax criterion to label someone a terrorist, I am not surprised that a lot of their potential hires had "connections" to terrorists.
To put things in perspective :
Lenovo 2012 profits : $472 millions
Yang's share of that : $33 millions
Lenovo's employees : 27 000
Lenovo profit per employee : $17,481
What Yang offers them : $300
I am not sure I want to reward that.