Correct. But would you prefer a contended 10GB/s fiber connection, or a contended 100MB/s LTE connection?
Yes, Wireless is getting better, but so is copper and so is fiber.
The current fiber speed record (held by NTT Japan) is 1,000,000 GB/s; compare this to wireless: Speeds of over 1 GB/s are expected to be delivered by 802.11ac.
Wireless has been "the future" for the last 40 years. Fixed technologies will always be more expensive to install, but faster, more reliable and more scalable than wireless. It's just physics.
There is a legal requirement for him to physically attend when the senate sits. There is a limited number of sittings that he can miss before his seat is decalared vacant. (I think you covered this)
I expect his strategy is to get elected, then call on the Australian government / Australian Military to explain how they are sitting idly by while the UK and USA prevent an Australian Senator from executing his elected responsibilities.
They are actually. The Sex Party, The Pirate Party and The Wikileaks Party have very similar pro-civil-rights views. But they don't preference each other as 1,2 & 3.
Preferencing stopped being about shared values a long time ago. It still is a *little* about shared values, but this year the primary opposition party (LNP) has preferenced their mortal enemy, the ALP, above all other parties.
Preferencing strategy goes like this: If a party higher than me on the ticket gets votes but doesn't win, I get their votes. Preferencing negotiations go like this: "I'll put you down as "2" on my ticket, if you put me down as "2" on yours."
So, preferencing for minor parties in reality works like this:
Approach all the parties that you think will be popular, but not popular enough to actually win, and try to get as high as possible in their preferences. Try not to sell your soul in the process, or align with any parties that will cause you to loose face.
The Wikileaks Party, who are new to politics forgot the last bit, and is now in damage control.
White man came, we had guns. They had sticks. There was a war, it was very short, we won. There were survivors, so we gave them gifts of alcohol and petrol. We don't talk about this part of our history in polite company.
The English didn't want to say there was a war, so they said "Terra Nullius".
Many years later a bunch of the more coherent Aboriginals kicked up a stink about this, which resulted in an empty apology from the government of the time.
Everything is sweet now between the old owners of our land, and the new.
Now, Aboriginals make up 2.3% of the population - hardly the ruling party (especially when at least 20% of this population has chronic drinking problems [source:ABS]).
We are all Australians now, most of us are white. Of those who are elected 99% are white.
It really is amazing that we (ANZUS+UK+Canada) can lecture the rest of the world about the virtues and freedoms of democracy, chastise China for censoring the Internet and making up economic figures and pass laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (mandating whistle-blowing for corporations); while we are so openly censoring our "free" press.
I do expect a certain level of hypocrisy and self-serving behavior from our governments, but am I alone in noticing this has really stepped up a notch recently?
I'm not trolling - I'm just saying, not all accidents at 800mph result in instant and catastrophic death.
Airlines hit birds fairly regularly with an impact speed of 800kph, and NASCAR's that crash usually have drivers walk away even though they're doing speeds in excess of 200mph. (Yes, I know the implications of E=0.5MV^2). Yet a person on a push bike can kill themselves at 40mph if they hit something large, solid and stationary.
As long as the integrity of the tunnel holds, there's nothing to hit at 800mph.
At the moment most ISP's do not support IPv6, and this is in part because (despite the press releases and tech specs released by Juniper and Cisco) the support for IPv6 in ISP core routers is buggy, experimental and feature-limited.
It turns out "Supports IPv6" doesn't mean "Expect full feature transparency between IPv4 and IPv6". In fact, on some routers it means "... but turning on IPv6 may cause random lockups"
In fact, it's so bad that you will often find ISP's who do "support IPv6" have enabled it on a couple of their BGP border routers, then drop it into an MPLS instance and tunnel it over their IPv4 core network, then expose it to customers on their LNS.
So yes, any ISP that has (a) taken the initiative, and (b) managed to get IPv6 working well enough to offer it to customers, is in the minority and should get commercial recognition for their effort.
Here's what my understanding of Net Neutrality was:
"I want to be clear what we mean by Net neutrality: What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favor of another. But it's okay to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue." -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt (August 4, 2010)
They can specify an upstream bandwidth without violating net neutrality, but to put arbitrary limits on what data I can send in my upstream packets is definitely violating neutrality.
That's true.
You've convinced me. It's like the policy that Telstra in Australia once had, where they wanted to charge you extra to have more than one PC access the net behind a NAT device. It's bullsh*t, because they should have the right to limit actual resources, not make arbitrary stereotypical rules.
As AC said in reply to my previous post - Arbitrarily blocking "server" traffic is behind both the letter, and (after a quick read of wiki) the intent of the Net Neutrality act.
However, we are beginning to see this plan be released in Australia, not just to arbitrarily segment the market, but because a residential plan will no longer get a real-world IP. You will be given a private IP and be one of 300 people sharing a single IPv4 address, masqueraded with carrier-grade NAT.
Why? Because when IPv4 address space is worth $20 per IP, putting 300 customers behind one IP address saves $6,000. Putting 30,000 customers behind only 100 IP addresses saves > $500,000.
So, the question is, if Google were supporting this arbitrary decision with a technical limitation done for commercial purposes - is it still a net neutrality issue?
After all, all "servers" are being treated equally.
This is a very, very common MBA question. The reasoning goes something like: "Directors have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder returns, so to not buy labor at the cheapest rate, and to not be ruthless in your pursuit of profits is not executing your Director's duties. Discuss".
Post Enron, the answer MBA lecturers are looking for is something like:
Shareholder return is measured in more than just dollars. Multi-national organisations have great power because they can't be controlled by a single government, and as such have a responsibility to act as good global citizens. Companies and their directors are legally obliged to maximize _long term_ returns, and you are not going to get long-term returns if you don't look after your customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders. This includes ensuring their welfare so everyone can live until tomorrow and loves the company brand and has money to spend on its products.
In short: Companies need to make money, but to be a global superpower for a sustained period, you need to manage your reputation and act in a way that makes people want to work for you and buy from you in the future.
On a side note, I reject the premise of this headline. I don't think offering a nobbled residential plan that doesn't allow for you to run a server - allowing Google to drive people onto a more expensive business plan that frees you from these constraints - is an assault to net neutrality. That's akin to charging more for a static IP address. It's just segmenting your market to extract better profits.
Prioritizing YouTube over bit-torrent or Netflix would be an assault to net neutrality.
Just in case that troublesome citizen we have hauled up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK has any aspirations of coming home, we changed our laws to facilitate extradition to the states for 'terrorists' without any of that annoying red tape.
America has been waging a "War on Drugs" for many years, and now is waging a "War on Terror" (by sending an army of robotic birds out to kill foreign nationals in their homes, no less).
But slashdot is "cheapening and trivializing" war.
Fair point. Momentum is such that nobody is really going to change this natural progression towards the spy agencies having complete interception and analysis capabilities, and an implicit ability to be able to operate outside the law.
The only big questions I have are: how long until the list of authorized users erodes to the point that basically every law enforcement officer, powerful corporation and organized crime syndicate has access to this treasure trove of information, and how do innovations like Google Glass, which has the potential to turn every set of eyes into a broadcasting video camera affect the situation.
I've given this a lot of thought, and compiled a solid rant on the subject.
My thesis about privacy in 2013 - 2020:
Lets start with some facts: 1. The Spy agencies in NZ, UK, USA, Australia and Canada spy on everyone, even their own citizens. 2. The UK copies literally everything that traverses the Internet and keeps it for 3 days for analysis (EVERYTHING!) 3. The USA shares this information (including commercial secrets) with its private enterprises to help them win international business. 4. So many people work for these agencies that from time to time this information is made public. 5. Nobody really cares. 6. The chances of any of these organisations giving up such a valuable source of power are about the same as global nuclear disarmament 7. It’s only a matter of time until the local police have access to all this information. 8 . In 2001, as sysadmin of BSSC I could read the email of every teacher and every student at that school, without leaving a trace of evidence, nor with any fear of punishment for wrongdoing.
So, I assert: You have no privacy online. You never really did. It was only by unspoken rule of sysadmins that we let you have the illusion of privacy. Ed Snowden betrayed sysadmins.
Strangely, Google poise to release the most important advancement toward our goal of total access to information - a video camera strapped to every second person’s head (Google Glass), and people are up in arms (9) and so are the governments best poised to take advantage! (10). I think we’ve got it all wrong. Let’s stop bitching about this rampant surveillance and embrace it.
Let’s get our spy agencies to make everything they’ve got available to everyone! Let’s mandate that every Google glass camera must be on all the time, every phone must have its microphone on all the time, every GPS recording its location and all this content uploading to the cloud!
Information WANTS to be free! EVERYONE should have access to EVERYTHING!
Then it will hardly be accessed, because if Facebook status updates have proven anything it’s that it’s no fun spying on all your friends if all they do all day is play Farmville.
Finally, these civil libertarians realise that nobody really cares about them, or their “right to privacy”, and we will be able to make the most out of google glass (11).
Seumas: I couldn't agree more with your position. In fact I have stated the same position a number of times previously. To clarify your point on "spying on our own citizens" it's an open secret that one of the benefits of having bilateral spying alliances, is when the NSA wants to know something about a US citizen, ASIO or MI5 do the spying then share the information (and vice versa). That way none of the agencies have to break their legal obligations but neatly avoid this getting in the way of them spying on whomever they like.
I wish I could find the quote, but recently a USA military leader said that Obama wouldn't pressure china too much about their cyber-espionage programse, because 'we wouldn't ask them to do something that we would never agree to ourselves'. It's also old news that this surveillance is used to advance US commercial interests. There have been previous statements that this is clearly inside the NSA's published goals "to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances."
Basically, everybody is spying on everybody these days, and have been for some time. Nobody who is spying wants to stop spying, and we have about as much chance of de-armament as we do with nuclear weaponry - we may as well get the f*ck over it, and get on with our lives.
The recent issue is that it's becoming apparent that this information is no longer confined to the spy agencies, for two reasons: 1. It's only a matter of time (and a very short time at that) before other law enforcement agencies get access to that information because if we all agree someone has broken the law, and the law is just, why should they NOT have access to all the evidence to convict criminals? and 2. Unsurprisingly, when you have spy agencies that employ thousands of people, you get leaks. It's only a matter of time before these massive databases of information get compromised, and the public gets access to information about their neighbors.
So it's public now, and to take a quote from a crappy 1995 Steven Segal film:
" We know this. The Chinese know that we know. But we make-believe that we don't know and the Chinese make-believe that they believe that we don't know, but know that we know. Everybody knows. "
I think the logic there is that sales over the counter aren't interstate commerce, so they're open to state regulation. Mail-order direct to consumers would be interstate and a Federal matter.
How is buying a car directly from Tesla or Honda on their website and having it shipped or driven to me any different to mail-order?
It sounds like a restriction on inter-state trade.
That said, the other examples (California's 'amazon tax', liquor legislation etc.) shows that it's not likely to be something the Fed will want to get involved in.
Good to see the USA mindlessly protects its auto industry the same way we do in Australia.
"They sat by the kitchen table and discussed the morning's news"
English-German-English becomes:
They all sat around the large rectangular lump of wood suspended by four vertical pillars and held a multidirectional conversation regarding that day before noon which owned its events.
Or English-Mandarin-English becomes:
Sat in Kitchen by table discussed news of morning....
At risk of being modded as a troll, I'm going to say this - Snowden is an idiot.
Anybody who was surprised by his 'announcement' that the US government is 'invading your privacy' is an idiot. PRISM is nothing more than an evolution of ECHELON, which has been public knowledge for more than a decade (a quick search on Wikipedia could have saved him a lifetime as a fugitive). Let's get one thing straight, when the Government and Intelligence agencies say they have found a "balance between privacy and surveillance" that balance is 100% surveillance, 0% privacy.
In the words of Sun Microsystems CEO (1999): You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.
Seriously, PGP is very well respected for crypto, but I remember Phil Zimmermann very publicly saying "There will never be a government backdoor in PGP as long as I work here" about six months before he stopped working there. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the NSA probably can read your PGP encrypted messages without resorting to brute force. There are open-source alternatives, but they all have limitations. Not least of which is this one: http://xkcd.com/538/
But just because *some people* can crack your encryption, doesn't mean you shouldn't encrypt. We need to stop looking at privacy as an all or nothing thing. I value my privacy from my peers and the police. I don't give a crap what the spy agencies know, or what my government knows, because you like to think they have bigger things to worry about than me. I also care very little that my workplace can read all my emails, because they also have better things to worry about.
But just because a few people can read my email, doesn't mean I'm going to do away with a password altogether.
The only thing we can do to fight back is get the same level of surveillance over our governments, that our governments have over us. This is not done by one or two whistleblowers (while we're at it, isn't it funny that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act enforces criminal penalties for not 'blowing the whistle' in corporate america, but that Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden will be hunted to the death for doing it to the government?); it's done by voting in mandatory transparency of government affairs.
Wired will always be faster and more reliable. Physics just isn't on your side.
Just think, Wireless has come from 2MB/s to 108MB/s in the last 10 years... Soon it will be 1GB/s
But in the same period Copper has come from 10Mb/s to 1,000Mb on the LAN and from 1200 bps to 24,000,000 bps in telco.
T1, T3, ISDN still have a place for the next couple of years in regional and remote. Copper (ADSL etc.) still has a life of at least 10 years in regional and remote.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really need CAT6 in your house?
In the entire time that you've had your network, have you ever exceeded the limitations of Cat5e?
CAT6 isn't just more expensive, it's a bastard to work with.
Correct. But would you prefer a contended 10GB/s fiber connection, or a contended 100MB/s LTE connection?
Yes, Wireless is getting better, but so is copper and so is fiber.
The current fiber speed record (held by NTT Japan) is 1,000,000 GB/s; compare this to wireless: Speeds of over 1 GB/s are expected to be delivered by 802.11ac.
Wireless has been "the future" for the last 40 years. Fixed technologies will always be more expensive to install, but faster, more reliable and more scalable than wireless. It's just physics.
There is a legal requirement for him to physically attend when the senate sits. There is a limited number of sittings that he can miss before his seat is decalared vacant. (I think you covered this)
I expect his strategy is to get elected, then call on the Australian government / Australian Military to explain how they are sitting idly by while the UK and USA prevent an Australian Senator from executing his elected responsibilities.
They are actually. The Sex Party, The Pirate Party and The Wikileaks Party have very similar pro-civil-rights views.
But they don't preference each other as 1,2 & 3.
Preferencing stopped being about shared values a long time ago. It still is a *little* about shared values, but this year the primary opposition party (LNP) has preferenced their mortal enemy, the ALP, above all other parties.
Preferencing strategy goes like this: If a party higher than me on the ticket gets votes but doesn't win, I get their votes.
Preferencing negotiations go like this: "I'll put you down as "2" on my ticket, if you put me down as "2" on yours."
So, preferencing for minor parties in reality works like this:
Approach all the parties that you think will be popular, but not popular enough to actually win, and try to get as high as possible in their preferences.
Try not to sell your soul in the process, or align with any parties that will cause you to loose face.
The Wikileaks Party, who are new to politics forgot the last bit, and is now in damage control.
Perhaps you didn't study history.
White man came, we had guns. They had sticks. There was a war, it was very short, we won. There were survivors, so we gave them gifts of alcohol and petrol.
We don't talk about this part of our history in polite company.
The English didn't want to say there was a war, so they said "Terra Nullius".
Many years later a bunch of the more coherent Aboriginals kicked up a stink about this, which resulted in an empty apology from the government of the time.
Everything is sweet now between the old owners of our land, and the new.
Now, Aboriginals make up 2.3% of the population - hardly the ruling party (especially when at least 20% of this population has chronic drinking problems [source:ABS]).
We are all Australians now, most of us are white. Of those who are elected 99% are white.
Is it because they have big noses?
It really is amazing that we (ANZUS+UK+Canada) can lecture the rest of the world about the virtues and freedoms of democracy, chastise China for censoring the Internet and making up economic figures and pass laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (mandating whistle-blowing for corporations); while we are so openly censoring our "free" press.
I do expect a certain level of hypocrisy and self-serving behavior from our governments, but am I alone in noticing this has really stepped up a notch recently?
Only if you hit something stationary.
I'm not trolling - I'm just saying, not all accidents at 800mph result in instant and catastrophic death.
Airlines hit birds fairly regularly with an impact speed of 800kph, and NASCAR's that crash usually have drivers walk away even though they're doing speeds in excess of 200mph. (Yes, I know the implications of E=0.5MV^2). Yet a person on a push bike can kill themselves at 40mph if they hit something large, solid and stationary.
As long as the integrity of the tunnel holds, there's nothing to hit at 800mph.
Yes, I do; but not for ever.
At the moment most ISP's do not support IPv6, and this is in part because (despite the press releases and tech specs released by Juniper and Cisco) the support for IPv6 in ISP core routers is buggy, experimental and feature-limited.
It turns out "Supports IPv6" doesn't mean "Expect full feature transparency between IPv4 and IPv6". In fact, on some routers it means "... but turning on IPv6 may cause random lockups"
In fact, it's so bad that you will often find ISP's who do "support IPv6" have enabled it on a couple of their BGP border routers, then drop it into an MPLS instance and tunnel it over their IPv4 core network, then expose it to customers on their LNS.
So yes, any ISP that has (a) taken the initiative, and (b) managed to get IPv6 working well enough to offer it to customers, is in the minority and should get commercial recognition for their effort.
AC: You're right, I stand corrected.
Here's what my understanding of Net Neutrality was:
"I want to be clear what we mean by Net neutrality: What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favor of another. But it's okay to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue." -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt (August 4, 2010)
They can specify an upstream bandwidth without violating net neutrality, but to put arbitrary limits on what data I can send in my upstream packets is definitely violating neutrality.
That's true.
You've convinced me. It's like the policy that Telstra in Australia once had, where they wanted to charge you extra to have more than one PC access the net behind a NAT device. It's bullsh*t, because they should have the right to limit actual resources, not make arbitrary stereotypical rules.
As AC said in reply to my previous post - Arbitrarily blocking "server" traffic is behind both the letter, and (after a quick read of wiki) the intent of the Net Neutrality act.
However, we are beginning to see this plan be released in Australia, not just to arbitrarily segment the market, but because a residential plan will no longer get a real-world IP. You will be given a private IP and be one of 300 people sharing a single IPv4 address, masqueraded with carrier-grade NAT.
Why? Because when IPv4 address space is worth $20 per IP, putting 300 customers behind one IP address saves $6,000. Putting 30,000 customers behind only 100 IP addresses saves > $500,000.
So, the question is, if Google were supporting this arbitrary decision with a technical limitation done for commercial purposes - is it still a net neutrality issue?
After all, all "servers" are being treated equally.
This is a very, very common MBA question. The reasoning goes something like: "Directors have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder returns, so to not buy labor at the cheapest rate, and to not be ruthless in your pursuit of profits is not executing your Director's duties. Discuss".
Post Enron, the answer MBA lecturers are looking for is something like:
Shareholder return is measured in more than just dollars. Multi-national organisations have great power because they can't be controlled by a single government, and as such have a responsibility to act as good global citizens. Companies and their directors are legally obliged to maximize _long term_ returns, and you are not going to get long-term returns if you don't look after your customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders. This includes ensuring their welfare so everyone can live until tomorrow and loves the company brand and has money to spend on its products.
In short: Companies need to make money, but to be a global superpower for a sustained period, you need to manage your reputation and act in a way that makes people want to work for you and buy from you in the future.
On a side note, I reject the premise of this headline. I don't think offering a nobbled residential plan that doesn't allow for you to run a server - allowing Google to drive people onto a more expensive business plan that frees you from these constraints - is an assault to net neutrality. That's akin to charging more for a static IP address. It's just segmenting your market to extract better profits.
Prioritizing YouTube over bit-torrent or Netflix would be an assault to net neutrality.
For continuing this pointless thread by highlighting your failure to close your parenthesis. I give myself (-2) redundant and off-topic.
Not Australia though.
Just in case that troublesome citizen we have hauled up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK has any aspirations of coming home, we changed our laws to facilitate extradition to the states for 'terrorists' without any of that annoying red tape.
http://castancentre.com/2012/03/07/extradition-and-mutual-assistance-changes-slip-in-under-the-radar/
America has been waging a "War on Drugs" for many years, and now is waging a "War on Terror" (by sending an army of robotic birds out to kill foreign nationals in their homes, no less).
But slashdot is "cheapening and trivializing" war.
Great observation but i still find the calculations involved trivial.
Really Sheldon?
Show me.
I do not like that Sam I am.
Fair point. Momentum is such that nobody is really going to change this natural progression towards the spy agencies having complete interception and analysis capabilities, and an implicit ability to be able to operate outside the law.
The only big questions I have are: how long until the list of authorized users erodes to the point that basically every law enforcement officer, powerful corporation and organized crime syndicate has access to this treasure trove of information, and how do innovations like Google Glass, which has the potential to turn every set of eyes into a broadcasting video camera affect the situation.
I've given this a lot of thought, and compiled a solid rant on the subject.
My thesis about privacy in 2013 - 2020:
Lets start with some facts:
1. The Spy agencies in NZ, UK, USA, Australia and Canada spy on everyone, even their own citizens. 2. The UK copies literally everything that traverses the Internet and keeps it for 3 days for analysis (EVERYTHING!) 3. The USA shares this information (including commercial secrets) with its private enterprises to help them win international business. 4. So many people work for these agencies that from time to time this information is made public. 5. Nobody really cares. 6. The chances of any of these organisations giving up such a valuable source of power are about the same as global nuclear disarmament 7. It’s only a matter of time until the local police have access to all this information. 8 . In 2001, as sysadmin of BSSC I could read the email of every teacher and every student at that school, without leaving a trace of evidence, nor with any fear of punishment for wrongdoing.
So, I assert: You have no privacy online. You never really did. It was only by unspoken rule of sysadmins that we let you have the illusion of privacy. Ed Snowden betrayed sysadmins.
Strangely, Google poise to release the most important advancement toward our goal of total access to information - a video camera strapped to every second person’s head (Google Glass), and people are up in arms (9) and so are the governments best poised to take advantage! (10).
I think we’ve got it all wrong. Let’s stop bitching about this rampant surveillance and embrace it.
Let’s get our spy agencies to make everything they’ve got available to everyone! Let’s mandate that every Google glass camera must be on all the time, every phone must have its microphone on all the time, every GPS recording its location and all this content uploading to the cloud!
Information WANTS to be free! EVERYONE should have access to EVERYTHING!
Then it will hardly be accessed, because if Facebook status updates have proven anything it’s that it’s no fun spying on all your friends if all they do all day is play Farmville.
Finally, these civil libertarians realise that nobody really cares about them, or their “right to privacy”, and we will be able to make the most out of google glass (11).
Sources:
1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whistleblower-edward-snowden-on-global-spying-a-910006.html
2. http://mashable.com/2013/06/21/gchq-spy-agency-taps-global-internet/
3. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html
4. Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden
5. http://www.news.com.au/
6. http://io9.com/5969204/could-nuclear-disarmament-actually-increase-our-chance-of-an-apocalypse
7. “if the information is there, it’s already collected, why not use it to prosecute the crime? Why are you protecting the guilty? If you’re innocent you will want us to use this information to exonerate you.”
8. I read your email. Get over it.
9. http://www.policymic.com/articles/29585/3-new-ways-google-glass-invades-your-privacy
10. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591975-93/google-glass-privacy-concerns-persist-in-congress/
11.
Seumas: I couldn't agree more with your position. In fact I have stated the same position a number of times previously. To clarify your point on "spying on our own citizens" it's an open secret that one of the benefits of having bilateral spying alliances, is when the NSA wants to know something about a US citizen, ASIO or MI5 do the spying then share the information (and vice versa). That way none of the agencies have to break their legal obligations but neatly avoid this getting in the way of them spying on whomever they like.
I wish I could find the quote, but recently a USA military leader said that Obama wouldn't pressure china too much about their cyber-espionage programse, because 'we wouldn't ask them to do something that we would never agree to ourselves'. It's also old news that this surveillance is used to advance US commercial interests. There have been previous statements that this is clearly inside the NSA's published goals "to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances."
Basically, everybody is spying on everybody these days, and have been for some time. Nobody who is spying wants to stop spying, and we have about as much chance of de-armament as we do with nuclear weaponry - we may as well get the f*ck over it, and get on with our lives.
The recent issue is that it's becoming apparent that this information is no longer confined to the spy agencies, for two reasons: 1. It's only a matter of time (and a very short time at that) before other law enforcement agencies get access to that information because if we all agree someone has broken the law, and the law is just, why should they NOT have access to all the evidence to convict criminals? and 2. Unsurprisingly, when you have spy agencies that employ thousands of people, you get leaks. It's only a matter of time before these massive databases of information get compromised, and the public gets access to information about their neighbors.
So it's public now, and to take a quote from a crappy 1995 Steven Segal film:
" We know this. The Chinese know that we know. But we make-believe that we don't know and the Chinese make-believe that they believe that we don't know, but know that we know. Everybody knows. "
So, what do we do about it?
I think the logic there is that sales over the counter aren't interstate commerce, so they're open to state regulation. Mail-order direct to consumers would be interstate and a Federal matter.
How is buying a car directly from Tesla or Honda on their website and having it shipped or driven to me any different to mail-order?
It sounds like a restriction on inter-state trade.
That said, the other examples (California's 'amazon tax', liquor legislation etc.) shows that it's not likely to be something the Fed will want to get involved in.
Good to see the USA mindlessly protects its auto industry the same way we do in Australia.
Yes, so:
...
"They sat by the kitchen table and discussed the morning's news"
English-German-English becomes:
They all sat around the large rectangular lump of wood suspended by four vertical pillars and held a multidirectional conversation regarding that day before noon which owned its events.
Or English-Mandarin-English becomes:
Sat in Kitchen by table discussed news of morning.
What could possibly go wrong?
Yup, it'd be trivial to write a program that would take 3 dirty copies and return a clean one.
So, if I give the program 3 copies of "50 shades of grey" it would return a version that is safe for my kids to read?
At risk of being modded as a troll, I'm going to say this - Snowden is an idiot.
Anybody who was surprised by his 'announcement' that the US government is 'invading your privacy' is an idiot. PRISM is nothing more than an evolution of ECHELON, which has been public knowledge for more than a decade (a quick search on Wikipedia could have saved him a lifetime as a fugitive). Let's get one thing straight, when the Government and Intelligence agencies say they have found a "balance between privacy and surveillance" that balance is 100% surveillance, 0% privacy.
In the words of Sun Microsystems CEO (1999): You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.
Seriously, PGP is very well respected for crypto, but I remember Phil Zimmermann very publicly saying "There will never be a government backdoor in PGP as long as I work here" about six months before he stopped working there. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the NSA probably can read your PGP encrypted messages without resorting to brute force. There are open-source alternatives, but they all have limitations. Not least of which is this one: http://xkcd.com/538/
But just because *some people* can crack your encryption, doesn't mean you shouldn't encrypt. We need to stop looking at privacy as an all or nothing thing. I value my privacy from my peers and the police. I don't give a crap what the spy agencies know, or what my government knows, because you like to think they have bigger things to worry about than me. I also care very little that my workplace can read all my emails, because they also have better things to worry about.
But just because a few people can read my email, doesn't mean I'm going to do away with a password altogether.
The only thing we can do to fight back is get the same level of surveillance over our governments, that our governments have over us. This is not done by one or two whistleblowers (while we're at it, isn't it funny that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act enforces criminal penalties for not 'blowing the whistle' in corporate america, but that Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden will be hunted to the death for doing it to the government?); it's done by voting in mandatory transparency of government affairs.
And it will be 'the future' for the next 20.
Wired will always be faster and more reliable. Physics just isn't on your side.
Just think, Wireless has come from 2MB/s to 108MB/s in the last 10 years... Soon it will be 1GB/s
But in the same period Copper has come from 10Mb/s to 1,000Mb on the LAN and from 1200 bps to 24,000,000 bps in telco.
T1, T3, ISDN still have a place for the next couple of years in regional and remote. Copper (ADSL etc.) still has a life of at least 10 years in regional and remote.