Agreed. (and thank you for being one of the only comments not related to Chuck Norris)
Inputing informations into facebook and expecting them to be kept private is a bit like lending money to a complete stranger and hoping it will turn out like a good investment. Facebook can be a useful tool (I actually learnt to like it) but just know what it is and what to expect from it.
This is an email sent to people who subscribed the "Change Congress" newsletter. If you read Slashdot, you probably are interested in this movement too.
Friend --
I'm about to get on a plane, and I've only had a brief chance to look over the decision, but it appears the Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on corporate speech in political campaigns -- overturning 20 years of campaign finance regulations and allowing corporations to wield unprecedented control over our elections.
What we need is a system in which the American people can trust that when Congress acts, it does so based on principle, or reason, or the will of the voters -- but not on the need for campaign funds. This decision erodes that trust down to nothingness.
We need to act now to fix this broken system -- and fortunately, the path forward is clear.
I just recorded a video from the terminal with my initial reaction -- watch the video and please say you'll join this battle for fundamental reform:
Please forward this email to everyone you know who cares about the future of our democracy and ask them to get involved. And please stay tuned to http://change-congress.org/ for more on today's decision.
Ok then, what about DeBoer and the blood diamonds ? Any oil company and any oil-rich African country ? Sometimes these companies waged armed war against a government. Don't get me right, Google is doing interesting things but don't blow it out of proportions either.
I think that Google can't accept that their own offices in China are spied on by the government. It is this issue that makes them consider to get out of China but before living, they wanted to do a last PR shot by uncensoring their search results (btw, 48h later, google.cn was filtered from China). They acknowledge that the CCP will not accept the fact that any foreign company can make profits on their territory. Google is just pulling out. With style.
A bit offtopic but I think it is important for lawmakers : stop doing analogies. Cryptography does not work like a lock or like an opaque case, owning cryptographic keys does not make you the landlord of anything. Cryptography works by taking a clear message and a key and mix them in a way that produces a seemingly random information but that can be made sense of thanks to the decoding key and the decoding algorithm. It is not that hard to understand. It requires 30 secondes of focus to understand and twenty minutes of thinking about and around, and you have understood the basis of crypto.
Dear lawmakers, please make laws about cryptography, not about analogies of cryptography if you don't want me to just be an analogy of a law abiding citizen.
Except that the investigation is in Google China, which is in...wait for it...China.
Ooops, missed that part. Mod me offtopic then... I thought it was about Chinese developers in USA. Indeed, if that is the case nothing can really be done and Google had really no other choices than closing its offices there.
IANAL but I think that if Google cannot do much, the USA can do : If it is proven they broke into computer systems in order to aid a foreign country against the interests of the United States, it can be considered as the crime of treason. (I am assuming they are American citizens). If they are citizens of China, they can still be judged on the ground of breaking into a computerized system and on the ground of conspiracy.
USA has no extradition treaties with China so I think they have no obligations to let China judge them.
Even without that, I am shocked that emails are not encrypted by default. In theory it is bad practice to trust the keyserver, but the occasional physical meeting and keysigning will allow to detect if a tampering happened.
What is holding back mail cryptography ? Outlook. It doesn't respect the RFC that would allow every email to be at least signed in a a transparent way. There has been urge to change it for more than 8 years.
Meybe it is time to mandate GPG key generation transparently at thunderbird's install ? Forget about having the regular paranoid crypto-phreak security, a locally stored password would still allow a lot of phishing attacks to be detected and would offer a good layer of privacy against eavesdropping.
A pedophile that doesn't understand his pulsions and do not interest in existing treatments, who believes sexual drive come from the devil and are a challenge to his own faith, yes act more out of stupidity than of "evilness".
I once heard the story of the first serial killer arrested thanks to psychological profiling (someone who murdered old women and mutilated them). Do you know what was his reaction when he heard about how he was found ? He wanted psychological help. Until then he did not understand he was struggling with abnormal urges.
There is such thing as criminal incomptence. If a script kiddie can be arrested for having a virus "out of control" I don't see why Microsoft engineers DDOSing a website couldn't be charged.
By the way a philosopher once told that "evil" did not exist. That it was most of the time just a kind of hidden stupidity.
Honestly, I'm not sure which side I'm on. The guy makes a joke on twitter, which is public and made for raw information without context. It is akin to write a tag saying the same thing in front of the airport. It is normal for police to investigate, I really don't blame them there. They quickly saw there was nothing to it. I prefer to criticize the airport (who banned the man for life) and his company which suspended him for a lack of common sense.
It is worth noting that one data that is easily computed by the visual cortex is the "time to impact" of an object. Something far coming quickly (like a car) or something close moving slowly but in the good direction (like an insect). I think that someone on a cell phone ignores easily the high tti objects but is well aware of the lower one.
There is no question that one is less aware of its surroundings when using a cell phone. The real question is to see whether this lower perception is acually any danger for pedestrians. I have the feeling that when walking and using a cellphone, I am less aware of my distant environment but still keep a keen picture of everything that could hit me directly.
Actually, it is less error-prone to work with fixed fonts, IMHO.
In many occurences, one can anticipate if one line will have one more or one less characters than the previous one. Having a way to quickly check this gives a little supplemantal layer of proof-reading.
this->posx=0;
this->posy=0;
tis->ttl=40;
this->source="";
The typo is easier to spot in fixed font.
Note that what we call "Hollywood looks" is a sort of uncanny valley we learned to love. Were you in front of someone really as good looking as a movie star after make-up and post-processing, you would certainly have an uncanny valley feeling. But when seen through the screen, that looks okay. Actually, many actors are already being "smoothed" in movies and pictures.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. (and thank you for being one of the only comments not related to Chuck Norris)
Inputing informations into facebook and expecting them to be kept private is a bit like lending money to a complete stranger and hoping it will turn out like a good investment. Facebook can be a useful tool (I actually learnt to like it) but just know what it is and what to expect from it.
Friend --
I'm about to get on a plane, and I've only had a brief chance to look over the decision, but it appears the Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on corporate speech in political campaigns -- overturning 20 years of campaign finance regulations and allowing corporations to wield unprecedented control over our elections.
What we need is a system in which the American people can trust that when Congress acts, it does so based on principle, or reason, or the will of the voters -- but not on the need for campaign funds. This decision erodes that trust down to nothingness.
We need to act now to fix this broken system -- and fortunately, the path forward is clear.
I just recorded a video from the terminal with my initial reaction -- watch the video and please say you'll join this battle for fundamental reform:
Watch my reaction to the Citizens United decision
http://action.change-congress.org/SupremeCourt
Please forward this email to everyone you know who cares about the future of our democracy and ask them to get involved. And please stay tuned to http://change-congress.org/ for more on today's decision.
-- Lawrence Lessig
You almost made me cry...
To be fair it is also a good firefox downloader.
Ok then, what about DeBoer and the blood diamonds ? Any oil company and any oil-rich African country ? Sometimes these companies waged armed war against a government. Don't get me right, Google is doing interesting things but don't blow it out of proportions either.
I think that Google can't accept that their own offices in China are spied on by the government. It is this issue that makes them consider to get out of China but before living, they wanted to do a last PR shot by uncensoring their search results (btw, 48h later, google.cn was filtered from China). They acknowledge that the CCP will not accept the fact that any foreign company can make profits on their territory. Google is just pulling out. With style.
You may have missed a whole series of antitrust cases in EU and US...
A bit offtopic but I think it is important for lawmakers : stop doing analogies. Cryptography does not work like a lock or like an opaque case, owning cryptographic keys does not make you the landlord of anything. Cryptography works by taking a clear message and a key and mix them in a way that produces a seemingly random information but that can be made sense of thanks to the decoding key and the decoding algorithm. It is not that hard to understand. It requires 30 secondes of focus to understand and twenty minutes of thinking about and around, and you have understood the basis of crypto.
Dear lawmakers, please make laws about cryptography, not about analogies of cryptography if you don't want me to just be an analogy of a law abiding citizen.
Thanks.
Are the android phones manufactured in China ?
Meh, I'm writing from France...
Except that the investigation is in Google China, which is in...wait for it...China.
Ooops, missed that part. Mod me offtopic then... I thought it was about Chinese developers in USA. Indeed, if that is the case nothing can really be done and Google had really no other choices than closing its offices there.
IANAL but I think that if Google cannot do much, the USA can do : If it is proven they broke into computer systems in order to aid a foreign country against the interests of the United States, it can be considered as the crime of treason. (I am assuming they are American citizens). If they are citizens of China, they can still be judged on the ground of breaking into a computerized system and on the ground of conspiracy.
USA has no extradition treaties with China so I think they have no obligations to let China judge them.
Even without that, I am shocked that emails are not encrypted by default. In theory it is bad practice to trust the keyserver, but the occasional physical meeting and keysigning will allow to detect if a tampering happened.
What is holding back mail cryptography ? Outlook. It doesn't respect the RFC that would allow every email to be at least signed in a a transparent way. There has been urge to change it for more than 8 years.
Meybe it is time to mandate GPG key generation transparently at thunderbird's install ? Forget about having the regular paranoid crypto-phreak security, a locally stored password would still allow a lot of phishing attacks to be detected and would offer a good layer of privacy against eavesdropping.
A pedophile that doesn't understand his pulsions and do not interest in existing treatments, who believes sexual drive come from the devil and are a challenge to his own faith, yes act more out of stupidity than of "evilness".
I once heard the story of the first serial killer arrested thanks to psychological profiling (someone who murdered old women and mutilated them). Do you know what was his reaction when he heard about how he was found ? He wanted psychological help. Until then he did not understand he was struggling with abnormal urges.
There is such thing as criminal incomptence. If a script kiddie can be arrested for having a virus "out of control" I don't see why Microsoft engineers DDOSing a website couldn't be charged.
By the way a philosopher once told that "evil" did not exist. That it was most of the time just a kind of hidden stupidity.
Ok, forget what I said, the police is nuts as well. The guy is a bit irresponsible but this is really blown out or proportions.
Honestly, I'm not sure which side I'm on. The guy makes a joke on twitter, which is public and made for raw information without context. It is akin to write a tag saying the same thing in front of the airport. It is normal for police to investigate, I really don't blame them there. They quickly saw there was nothing to it. I prefer to criticize the airport (who banned the man for life) and his company which suspended him for a lack of common sense.
It is worth noting that one data that is easily computed by the visual cortex is the "time to impact" of an object. Something far coming quickly (like a car) or something close moving slowly but in the good direction (like an insect). I think that someone on a cell phone ignores easily the high tti objects but is well aware of the lower one.
Obviously, an anecdote allows to prove an entire theory...
As a general rule, when someone anthropomorphizes companies, it is a half baked theory.
There is no question that one is less aware of its surroundings when using a cell phone. The real question is to see whether this lower perception is acually any danger for pedestrians. I have the feeling that when walking and using a cellphone, I am less aware of my distant environment but still keep a keen picture of everything that could hit me directly.
Actually, it is less error-prone to work with fixed fonts, IMHO.
In many occurences, one can anticipate if one line will have one more or one less characters than the previous one. Having a way to quickly check this gives a little supplemantal layer of proof-reading.
this->posx=0;
this->posy=0;
tis->ttl=40;
this->source="";
The typo is easier to spot in fixed font.
Note that what we call "Hollywood looks" is a sort of uncanny valley we learned to love. Were you in front of someone really as good looking as a movie star after make-up and post-processing, you would certainly have an uncanny valley feeling. But when seen through the screen, that looks okay. Actually, many actors are already being "smoothed" in movies and pictures.
... but will there be excuses ? And indemnities for the violation of privacies (the parents got their garage raided) ?
And make stupidity on the company's part profitable for you : offer them the license they like for a price.
Also be very careful that the company's license will not forbid you from continuing to offer BSD-style licenses