I've lived in the are of Mexico hardest hit (just moved back to the states last year), and I visit regularly still. A couple of notes, first of all Mexico isn't as undeveloped as you may believe. In my experience the big difference between Mexico and the US is the standard of living. Mexico has everything the US has, and medically may be a bit better off since I believe it has a more socialized medical system. There are however two big issues, first the fact that penicillin and other antibiotics are readily available over the counter, and just like in the US it isn't uncommon for people to take medication until they feel better and then stop. Doing this with antibiotics causes a really big concern for drug resistant strains to show up. Also as some others have pointed out the flu virus actually spreads better in colder climates. Some of you may not be aware but not all of Mexico is warm like Cancun or Acapulco. Mexico City and especially Toluca are pretty high up in the mountains (7,349 and 8,790) and they do get downright chilly at night even in the summer.
My guess as to why this got bad so quick is the government trying not to panic everyone. You have to remember that parts of Mexico are completely dependent on tourism, and with the bad economy and the drug violence already going on I'm not sure the government didn't want to make matters worse by announcing a pandemic as well.
I've been following Mexican news and talking to family in the area and the situation is now completely out of control. The government has shut down all the schools in the affected areas, business, and restaurants are all closed. To put this in perspective imagine the whole state of New York shutting everything down for ten days because of the flu. The military is handing out what masks they have (everywhere is out of of them now). Major sporting events are being played without an audience (literally the stands are completely empty). What businesses are open (like banks) are rotating their staff every couple of hours to keep the number of people in one area at a time down. According to my relatives in the area the streets are deserted and even the grocery stores are empty. There is full on panic there.
BTW, the running joke down there is that Obama brought the virus with him, since the outbreak coincided with his visit. Obviously not true, but amusing.
So by that same logic you'd be fine with the poor guys down the street break into your house and start stealing your stuff at gun point?
There will always be inequality and even if there wasn't there will always be people who don't want to be "equal" but want more than others and are willing to do whatever it takes to get there. Just look at how many "rich" people steal, maybe not at gun point but white collar theft is still theft.
According to Webster's portal dates back to 14th century. While there may have been some sort of science fiction back then I don't think it's anything close to what we consider science fiction.
Lets see 20% of time surfing gets you 9% more productivity. So anyone surfing for 8% of their time gets a productivity boost, everyone else gets a productivity loss.
If say 5% of bitorrent users get the service and use it how could they afford the bandwidth costs at $7 an account. Now I know that a some of the traffic would remain on their network and wouldn't need to get out to the public net, but I can't imagine that $7 would cover even the bandwidth costs for the traffic going out of their network. Perhaps they plan on throttling the traffic, which would be ironic to a scary level.
Also I'm not that familiar with the technology behind bitorrent or how it works. But wouldn't this create a huge swarm on their network and another huge swarm at the point of their internet feed. How would this affect the protocol?
You are correct, however tor and anonymous proxies have limitations. Tor being slow (painfully at times) and anonymous proxies having limited functionality (can you ssh through an anonymous proxy?). I agree that open wireless access points is another way to do this, and I'm surprised governments haven't done more to shut them down, my guess is that there have been enough high profile cases of abuse to prompt legislation. The big difference with an open proxy is you either have to get within range of it, use one that's in range or get a powerful antenna to connect. With this service all you need to do is connect to it from home and you get (presumably) a decent connection speed that allows all sorts of attacks that wouldn't be possible or practical otherwise (say brute force ftp, telnet or ssh attacks) through the options you listed.
Sure there are lots other ways to anonymously wreak havoc, I'm just pointing out that this is just another enabling system which happens to be fairly efficient.
I'm all in favor of an anonymous internet however such an internet is impossible to regulate and governments love to regulate. The harder we push in one direction the harder they push in the other, and unfortunately they already push much much harder than we do. My concern is that when a large highly visible attack originates from this network the governments of the world will have a knee jerk reaction to regulate the internet and we'll see more great firewalls of china. A service that provides 100% fast anonymity was inevitable and the reaction from governments worldwide will be so as well. They'll block access which drops us down slippery slope we're already on. We as a community that believe in free and anonymous internet need to be prepared to defend it.
Sorry for the rambling, I guess I'm just trying to say that the pirate bay is about to escalate the war for a free internet, we should expect retaliation.
I'm all for an anonymous web, however this is really quickly going to be the way thieves, crackers and all the other low lifes on the net do their work. I can tell you that if I were to try and break into something like the pentagon or some large financial institution I'd use this service. How long will it be before see a major break in originate from this service?
Only the passengers of three of the four planes allowed it to happen. Once the passengers on the fourth heard what was going to happen they resisted. And I think up until 9/11 it not resisting was probably the best way to make it out alive. Most hijackers at that time didn't do it with the intent to kill everyone including themselves. Everything changed since then and I doubt any hijackers would be very successful now. Which is probably why they haven't tried it since.
I've flown back and forth to Central Mexico over the last 4 years (usually about once a month) with a laptop, and I've never had immigration or customs even look twice at it. While I know they are searching some laptops and probably confiscating some I think the rate at which it's happening is probably extremely small and much smaller than the paranoid folks here on slashdot make it out to be.
In other words I think the risk of losing or even having your laptop are small enough that it really isn't worth the effort to worry about it, (unless you fit the "profile" of a terrorist that is.
Your assuming the notaries would connect to the server for each initial connection by the users. More than likely I think they'd cache their results for a while as retrieving the same exact data (the digital signature) more than a certain number of times per minute would be wasteful.
If you think that is weird, my house in Mexico (only 10 or 15 years old) doesn't have air condition or heating and not insulation, this is the norm for houses in the area. BTW the temperature goes from low 30s to mid 90s. It's fucking unbearable sometimes, just try taking a shower when the air alone is 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can see a green laser's beam in day light not just what it illuminates. By pointing it at the star you show more clearly what your referencing better than pointing with your finger and saying the star to the left of those three stars. Using just your finger the person your pointing them out to has to look down your arm to see where your pointing, with a laser that's not necessary.
Just out of curiosity what document do you have that has your birth date and isn't government issued or based on government issued documents?
The closest I can come up with is a birth certificate and it's stored on a mainframe on the first floor of the Texas goverment's Health Deparment building. I'm 100% positive it wouldn't be any more difficult for the government to make me 2 years older than I am.
That's one of the most irritating things. I use a 12 character password, mixed upper and lower case, with two punctuation symbols, and no dictionary words and it's still insecure because it doesn't have a number?.
I wish there was a password standard everyone would adhere to, as it stands my more than complex enough password is impossible use everywhere because some sites require numbers, others won't allow certain symbols. What's the point in no punctuation I know that it's going into a database that allows punctuation in it's columns.
Hardly irrelevant, there are zoning laws that he broke. While I agree that those laws were vague enough they could potentially apply to just about anyone whats important is that they were broken and the police/government can choose to enforce the laws when they want. I personally don't like vague laws or laws that are only enforced when they want to charge you with something but that's a problem for another day.
Also there's a big difference in intent, having a couple of bottles of drano will and never should be illegal, however I think it's perfectly reasonable to make owning large quantities of explosive chemicals that by them selves have no purpose. Do you really think anyone is making their own household cleaners? If someone really is mixing explosive chemicals together for whatever reason they want I sure as hell don't think they should be doing it less than 100 feet from where my kids are sleeping, and if the neighborhood is zoned for that sort of thing, I'll be moving.
If there's ever a time to use a law it's when a sloppy at best person is keeping and experimenting with large quantities of explosive chemicals. And that's the point one of the reasons for zoning laws is prevent stupid people like this from blowing their family and house up and taking their neighbors with them.
The article doesn't say anything about him being arrested, just that the police were called and a hazmat team was called. From the article it doesn't sound like he was arrested at all just told to stay in a hotel until the cleanup is done.
As for confiscation of his chemicals, it sounds like he had way more chemicals than he should need, and wasn't storing them properly. TFA also says that some were potentially explosive and doesn't mention his qualifications.
Now a lot of people here will be screaming because his property was taken but keep in mind that no illegal search was made (the chemicals were found during an unrelated fire by the fire department), his housing area wasn't zoned for this (do they actually zone housing areas for chemical work?), some of the chemicals were potentially explosive, he had lots of chemicals some in large quantities, he wasn't arrested just asked to leave during the cleanup, his qualifications sound like a hobbyist not a professional.
I don't know about you but I'm not sure I'd want a hobbyist with an extremely large amount of potentially explosive material (stored improperly) doing "experiments" next door to me and my family.
Crap, I saw the laptop mentioned (http://revolv.in/2008/02/15-laptop-seen-in-mumbai.html) in a small rural market in Mexico next to a bunch of pirated DVDs. Thought that due to the location and price (I think it was 30 dollars) that it had to be a gimic like a screen that was nothing but a sticker. If I would have know that something like this exists I would have checked it out more.
That wasn't stated at all, perhaps you have a bias toward women and sports. All it said was the guys here wouldn't like the ribbon thing but women might. Which I happen to agree with, I think that if anyone watches it it's going to be a woman.
According to this wouldn't it be illegal for a network admin to do forensic research on a security breach? At the very least it seems it would make any evidence found inadmissible in court.
Slashdot Mirror
I've lived in the are of Mexico hardest hit (just moved back to the states last year), and I visit regularly still. A couple of notes, first of all Mexico isn't as undeveloped as you may believe. In my experience the big difference between Mexico and the US is the standard of living. Mexico has everything the US has, and medically may be a bit better off since I believe it has a more socialized medical system. There are however two big issues, first the fact that penicillin and other antibiotics are readily available over the counter, and just like in the US it isn't uncommon for people to take medication until they feel better and then stop. Doing this with antibiotics causes a really big concern for drug resistant strains to show up. Also as some others have pointed out the flu virus actually spreads better in colder climates. Some of you may not be aware but not all of Mexico is warm like Cancun or Acapulco. Mexico City and especially Toluca are pretty high up in the mountains (7,349 and 8,790) and they do get downright chilly at night even in the summer.
My guess as to why this got bad so quick is the government trying not to panic everyone. You have to remember that parts of Mexico are completely dependent on tourism, and with the bad economy and the drug violence already going on I'm not sure the government didn't want to make matters worse by announcing a pandemic as well.
I've been following Mexican news and talking to family in the area and the situation is now completely out of control. The government has shut down all the schools in the affected areas, business, and restaurants are all closed. To put this in perspective imagine the whole state of New York shutting everything down for ten days because of the flu. The military is handing out what masks they have (everywhere is out of of them now). Major sporting events are being played without an audience (literally the stands are completely empty). What businesses are open (like banks) are rotating their staff every couple of hours to keep the number of people in one area at a time down. According to my relatives in the area the streets are deserted and even the grocery stores are empty. There is full on panic there.
BTW, the running joke down there is that Obama brought the virus with him, since the outbreak coincided with his visit. Obviously not true, but amusing.
So by that same logic you'd be fine with the poor guys down the street break into your house and start stealing your stuff at gun point?
There will always be inequality and even if there wasn't there will always be people who don't want to be "equal" but want more than others and are willing to do whatever it takes to get there. Just look at how many "rich" people steal, maybe not at gun point but white collar theft is still theft.
According to Webster's portal dates back to 14th century. While there may have been some sort of science fiction back then I don't think it's anything close to what we consider science fiction.
Lets see 20% of time surfing gets you 9% more productivity. So anyone surfing for 8% of their time gets a productivity boost, everyone else gets a productivity loss.
If say 5% of bitorrent users get the service and use it how could they afford the bandwidth costs at $7 an account. Now I know that a some of the traffic would remain on their network and wouldn't need to get out to the public net, but I can't imagine that $7 would cover even the bandwidth costs for the traffic going out of their network. Perhaps they plan on throttling the traffic, which would be ironic to a scary level.
Also I'm not that familiar with the technology behind bitorrent or how it works. But wouldn't this create a huge swarm on their network and another huge swarm at the point of their internet feed. How would this affect the protocol?
You are correct, however tor and anonymous proxies have limitations. Tor being slow (painfully at times) and anonymous proxies having limited functionality (can you ssh through an anonymous proxy?). I agree that open wireless access points is another way to do this, and I'm surprised governments haven't done more to shut them down, my guess is that there have been enough high profile cases of abuse to prompt legislation. The big difference with an open proxy is you either have to get within range of it, use one that's in range or get a powerful antenna to connect. With this service all you need to do is connect to it from home and you get (presumably) a decent connection speed that allows all sorts of attacks that wouldn't be possible or practical otherwise (say brute force ftp, telnet or ssh attacks) through the options you listed.
Sure there are lots other ways to anonymously wreak havoc, I'm just pointing out that this is just another enabling system which happens to be fairly efficient.
I'm all in favor of an anonymous internet however such an internet is impossible to regulate and governments love to regulate. The harder we push in one direction the harder they push in the other, and unfortunately they already push much much harder than we do. My concern is that when a large highly visible attack originates from this network the governments of the world will have a knee jerk reaction to regulate the internet and we'll see more great firewalls of china. A service that provides 100% fast anonymity was inevitable and the reaction from governments worldwide will be so as well. They'll block access which drops us down slippery slope we're already on. We as a community that believe in free and anonymous internet need to be prepared to defend it.
Sorry for the rambling, I guess I'm just trying to say that the pirate bay is about to escalate the war for a free internet, we should expect retaliation.
I'm all for an anonymous web, however this is really quickly going to be the way thieves, crackers and all the other low lifes on the net do their work. I can tell you that if I were to try and break into something like the pentagon or some large financial institution I'd use this service. How long will it be before see a major break in originate from this service?
I've seen Venus during the day, although it was later in the day just before the sun set.
Only the passengers of three of the four planes allowed it to happen. Once the passengers on the fourth heard what was going to happen they resisted. And I think up until 9/11 it not resisting was probably the best way to make it out alive. Most hijackers at that time didn't do it with the intent to kill everyone including themselves. Everything changed since then and I doubt any hijackers would be very successful now. Which is probably why they haven't tried it since.
I've flown back and forth to Central Mexico over the last 4 years (usually about once a month) with a laptop, and I've never had immigration or customs even look twice at it. While I know they are searching some laptops and probably confiscating some I think the rate at which it's happening is probably extremely small and much smaller than the paranoid folks here on slashdot make it out to be.
In other words I think the risk of losing or even having your laptop are small enough that it really isn't worth the effort to worry about it, (unless you fit the "profile" of a terrorist that is.
Your assuming the notaries would connect to the server for each initial connection by the users. More than likely I think they'd cache their results for a while as retrieving the same exact data (the digital signature) more than a certain number of times per minute would be wasteful.
Never heard of Carlos Slim have you, second richest person on earth and lives in Mexico.
I see a new Richard Gere joke forming from this :-)
If you think that is weird, my house in Mexico (only 10 or 15 years old) doesn't have air condition or heating and not insulation, this is the norm for houses in the area. BTW the temperature goes from low 30s to mid 90s. It's fucking unbearable sometimes, just try taking a shower when the air alone is 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can see a green laser's beam in day light not just what it illuminates. By pointing it at the star you show more clearly what your referencing better than pointing with your finger and saying the star to the left of those three stars. Using just your finger the person your pointing them out to has to look down your arm to see where your pointing, with a laser that's not necessary.
Just out of curiosity what document do you have that has your birth date and isn't government issued or based on government issued documents? The closest I can come up with is a birth certificate and it's stored on a mainframe on the first floor of the Texas goverment's Health Deparment building. I'm 100% positive it wouldn't be any more difficult for the government to make me 2 years older than I am.
That's one of the most irritating things. I use a 12 character password, mixed upper and lower case, with two punctuation symbols, and no dictionary words and it's still insecure because it doesn't have a number?.
I wish there was a password standard everyone would adhere to, as it stands my more than complex enough password is impossible use everywhere because some sites require numbers, others won't allow certain symbols. What's the point in no punctuation I know that it's going into a database that allows punctuation in it's columns.
Hardly irrelevant, there are zoning laws that he broke. While I agree that those laws were vague enough they could potentially apply to just about anyone whats important is that they were broken and the police/government can choose to enforce the laws when they want. I personally don't like vague laws or laws that are only enforced when they want to charge you with something but that's a problem for another day.
Also there's a big difference in intent, having a couple of bottles of drano will and never should be illegal, however I think it's perfectly reasonable to make owning large quantities of explosive chemicals that by them selves have no purpose. Do you really think anyone is making their own household cleaners? If someone really is mixing explosive chemicals together for whatever reason they want I sure as hell don't think they should be doing it less than 100 feet from where my kids are sleeping, and if the neighborhood is zoned for that sort of thing, I'll be moving.
If there's ever a time to use a law it's when a sloppy at best person is keeping and experimenting with large quantities of explosive chemicals. And that's the point one of the reasons for zoning laws is prevent stupid people like this from blowing their family and house up and taking their neighbors with them.
The article doesn't say anything about him being arrested, just that the police were called and a hazmat team was called. From the article it doesn't sound like he was arrested at all just told to stay in a hotel until the cleanup is done.
As for confiscation of his chemicals, it sounds like he had way more chemicals than he should need, and wasn't storing them properly. TFA also says that some were potentially explosive and doesn't mention his qualifications.
Now a lot of people here will be screaming because his property was taken but keep in mind that no illegal search was made (the chemicals were found during an unrelated fire by the fire department), his housing area wasn't zoned for this (do they actually zone housing areas for chemical work?), some of the chemicals were potentially explosive, he had lots of chemicals some in large quantities, he wasn't arrested just asked to leave during the cleanup, his qualifications sound like a hobbyist not a professional.
I don't know about you but I'm not sure I'd want a hobbyist with an extremely large amount of potentially explosive material (stored improperly) doing "experiments" next door to me and my family.
I'm an agnostic in a very red state (texas) and I can honestly say I can't remember anyone here ever trying to "convert me".
Crap, I saw the laptop mentioned (http://revolv.in/2008/02/15-laptop-seen-in-mumbai.html) in a small rural market in Mexico next to a bunch of pirated DVDs. Thought that due to the location and price (I think it was 30 dollars) that it had to be a gimic like a screen that was nothing but a sticker. If I would have know that something like this exists I would have checked it out more.
That wasn't stated at all, perhaps you have a bias toward women and sports. All it said was the guys here wouldn't like the ribbon thing but women might. Which I happen to agree with, I think that if anyone watches it it's going to be a woman.
I do use that quite a bit, but a preference option to always exclude certain sites would be nice.
I wish there was a way to default google so it didn't include expert exchange in the results.
According to this wouldn't it be illegal for a network admin to do forensic research on a security breach? At the very least it seems it would make any evidence found inadmissible in court.