The protocol existed long before the problem was rendered moot.
FTP ASCII mode is part of the reason the problem is moot.
It's so much easier to let the server, running on the system and able to understand the source file, deal with converting it to a byte stream in some common format that the client, running on the destination system and able to understand what an ASCII file is on that system, can convert to the correct system-dependent representation.
If all you do is copy the byte stream, you lose any information about the structure of the file on the source. You require all OSs to understand all other OSs formats, and SUPPORT all other formats. My Unix system would have to understand a VMS fixed-length format file AND know when it was looking at one, which is impossible when Unix systems don't keep that information about a file and VMS does.
Since ASCII files are also ultimately represented as particular sequences of binary data, why does FTP even have an ASCII transfer mode?
Because of differences between systems like Unix and Windows, where line ends are a simple newline on Unix but a CR/LF pair on Windows. Also systems like VMS which have (had) about thirteen different file formats all inherent in the file structure itself.
In other words, because all ASCII files are not represented the same way by all different operating systems.
I know that Windows uses CR/LF for line termination and *nix uses just LF. That's a very minor inconvenience at worst,
Not if you have an "ASCII" file you are trying to read on Windows that has Unix newline conventions. Try opening a newlined file with notepad, for example.
...and little standalone utilities to convert the formats are readily available and have been for some time now.
"Little standalone utilities" are really handy for small files and small numbers of files. It's really handy when you know the format the file you have is in and what it needs to be. Please tell me how you will identify a VMS fixed record file that you have just ftp'd from a VMS FTP server when it gets to your Windows system. It has NO newlines or CR/LF pairs. You might dump the file somehow and notice that the lines are all 93 characters long and then write yourself a perl script to split it up -- or you could simply tell your FTP client that you are in ASCII mode and let the FTP server/client negotiate some resulting format that your system likes. Now try that with a VMS variable length record file, where the lines are variable length, still without line endings.
FTP wasn't designed just for hobbyists who want a file or two and have the time to deal with file formats by hand. It was designed to move data, and anything that can be automated should be. "Little standalone utilities" are a pain in the ass when trying to automate something, especially when the critical information necessary to know what specific utility to use has been lost, or is completely unknown to the recipient's system. Like VMS fixed length records on Unix or Windows.
It just seems like it's not the job of a file transfer protocol to concern itself with what an independent, unrelated application can or cannot do with the file after it's transferred.
ASCII mode in FTP has nothing to do with anyone trying to tell anyone what they can or cannot do with a file after it's transferred. It's all about knowing how to deal with a hundred different ways of representing ASCII data on dozens of different operating systems and making life EASIER for people who have to do that on a daily basis.
If YOU would rather operate in BIN mode and worry about which file formats you've just downloaded and how to convert them to an ASCII representation that your software knows how to deal with, more power to you. I got tired of dealing with this the first time I had to convert a VMS "ASCII" file to Unix and I'll let FTP do it silently for me. Yes, I've dealt with users who didn't know what ASCII mode was and downloaded a zipped file in ASCII mode and it didn't work, but the time I've saved just myself not having to deal with converting crap has more than made up for the time I've spent telling them to use BIN mode.
What you should be asking yourself is: is it ethical to withhold information to the public, when the release of said information will cause more harm than good?
No, what you should be asking yourself first, is WHO gets to make the decision that some piece of information will cause more harm than good, and only THEN should we care if it is ethical to actually withhold that information. I don't believe that you can answer YOUR question without first answering the "who" part of mine.
Should the newspaper be allowed to make that decision?
Should a government employee be allowed to make the decision?
If the newspaper decides it will cause more harm than good, is it ethical for someone ELSE to decide differently?
If a government employee decides it will cause harm, is it ethical for a newspaper to decide differently?
I agree. But I'm leaning towards keeping the captives alive, as being the proper course of action.
Captives are kept alive for as long as they have value. A captive that nobody knows has been kidnapped has no value.
I really don't want my 15 minutes of fame if it gets me killed.
Let's stop putting the blame in the wrong place. It's not Wikipedia or the NYT killing the hostage, it is the Taliban kidnappers. Terrorists kill for reasons only they fully understand. Blaming NYT is like blaming the people riding the bus for being killed when a suicide bomber shows up.
"Nightline", the ABC nightly news magazine, began as a nightly report on the kidnapped American embassy workers in Iran. http://www.wchstv.com/abc/nightline/.
Do you imagine that the kidnappers of those Americans didn't seek the massive news attention to their actions?
Because it doesn't really matter as long as *your* house has [a toilet].
Uhhh, yeah, it does. Shit has to go somewhere, and if it doesn't go down a sewer it tends to stay above ground. It's so much fun to kick back after a day at the office making your $40k, sipping your imported Coors Light to the smell of the next door neighbors' honey pots.
Money really isn't everything.
When you don't have any, yes, it takes on a certain importance.
In this case, I don't think the timely publishing of the event was all that valuable, especially in comparison to the potential downside of publishing it.
The job of the press is to report. They've made this claim so often in the past when it has been the government holding on to information that it's carved into the press plates 1/4 inch deep. They haven't cared what the information was or how damaging it could be, their job is to inform and damn it, they are going to do it. The government has no right to decide the information is sensitive and shouldn't be printed.
And now the New York Times makes that decision. Where's my spelling checker, I need to see how to spell "hypocrite".
You know, for all the hype over Wikipedia, something appearing there certainly isn't advertising it or broadcasting it. The poster who made grandiose claims about how this should be secret admitted that he'd read it somewhere else, so I guess it should only be a secret from everyone but him. Yep, the word contains a 'y'.
(For those with access to Nature through school or work...)
The shame of the big city, everyday people losing access to nature unless they happen to be in school or have a job where they can afford to drive to Atlantic City and see it first-hand.
I didn't say "do real work", I said "talk to the real world."
You and this 'internet is the world' guy have such a severe case of myopia when it comes to computers that it's ridiculous.
Yeah, if your use of computers is limited to running software that moves data around on the computer, you're fine. Keyboard and disk and display drivers are stock items on all OSs. If all you do is have a low-paid lackey sitting at a keyboard entering numbers and making spreadsheet printouts, you can use any OS.
Start trying to deal with devices that talk to the real world that don't have linux drivers and you'll find out that sometimes windows is a requirement.
I've got an eeprom burner that doesn't have linux drivers. It has microsoft drivers, though. I can spend a bundle and get a new burner and migrate all the data to linux, yes, but that's not 'free' in any sense of the word. I could waste a lot of my time (my bosses time) writing a driver, after reverse engineering the hardware to know what bits of what register do what, but that's not "free", and would cost more than simply buying Windows. I have an IDE for TI micros that runs on Windows. It has to talk to the hardware, which linux won't let it do virtualized, and even so, a virtualized Microsoft OS requires a license just like any other MSOS.
Might I recommend to you a 2007 or later version of Linux to try...
Might I recommend you pull your head out of your ass and look around at all the things the computers are used for these days and figure out that bookkeeping and accounting and keeping Doctor's records aren't the only things being done anymore.
But, on the flip side, there are devices I have that talk to the real world where the Windows drivers are crap and the only good drivers are on Linux. The bug in the ointment is that the company that makes the devices only supports Windows when it comes to downloading firmware updates or answering support questions, so I am still stuck needing a Windows system.
The internet is what you use to communicate. You said you needed windows to communicate, it's just untrue that you need windows to communicat.
No, I said I needed to talk to hardware in the real world. Don't tell me what I use to "communicate" with the real world, because it is obvious that you are so stuck in "the internet is the world" mode that you wouldn't know what an EEPROM burner is if it bit you in the ass. Or an A/D converter.
Actually my real world isn't even on a computer, and my work world involves mostly spreadsheets and databases.
Yes, it's obvious you use computers for nothing but software, and have no clue what it takes to have a computer do useful work controlling real-world applications. For you, it doesn't matter what the OS is because someone IS writing all your applications for you and you don't need any drivers but the run-of-the-mill. How nice for you.
Your communications skills (both input and output) seem to be quite lacking.
That's ludicrous, every OS can get on the internet.
So what? You do realize that some people use computers to do things other than 'get on the internet', don't you? That some people have hardware that talks to the real world and needs software that can control it? No, maybe you think that "the internet" is all there is.
Tell me how an OS that can "get on the internet" is going to control the PCI-based EEPROM burner I use. Just where 'on the internet' do I go to have my EEPROM burner read the 27256 I just plugged into it so I can burn another copy?
The onlt three reasons I can see for Windows is Excel, the program that does slideshows (what's that called again, haven't used it for years), and playing some games.
That's because you are ignorant. Your "real world" is "on the internet".
Unfortunately, there are hardware vendors who don't bother supporting anything but windows, and if you use your computer to talk to the real world sometimes you are stuck with windows if you want to get the work done. Wine is nice, but adding layers of abstraction adds a speed penalty, too, along with the question of "will it work, I don't know, let's spend a week testing it...", which has costs of its own.
If you really want/have to use Windows, then pay for it and shut up.
Please send me your email address so I can subscribe to your "I have money coming out my wazoo and can waste it on overpriced operating systems" newsletter.
Third, who said genetically engineered? The article didn't, the summary didn't, and not even the headline did, which is well above par for Slashdot fearmongering! They're talking about selective breeding.
What do you think "selective breeding" is modifying, if not the genes? Selective breeding is the low-tech version of genetic engineering. "We want these properties, so we cross these..."
In fact, this is why fainting at the mention of "genetic engineering" (or picketing, or boycotting...) is so silly. We were "genetic engineering" before Gregor Mendel figured out there were genes. Almost everything you eat today has been "genetically engineered" through selective breeding to be completely different than whatever it was that it started out as. It's just that today we can be a bit more specific about what we are doing.
Please at least take a moment to think about the scenario before making a snide commentary on it.
I took a long moment to think about "the scenario" before replying. I read your comment that your self-respect and dignity did not depend on what you doing in public being a secret. I also read your comment that people who tape you in public have some kind of power over you. That's why I asked you what I did.
Er, because they can reveal suspicious information about what I do without revealing the exonerating evidence?
So what? So can anyone who sees you doing something in public.
Because they can selectively release video of me doing things that are frowned upon in polite society, without everyone realizing that *everyone* does things that are frowned upon in polite society?
I think everyone already realizes that they sometimes do things that are frowned upon in polite society, or at least that many people do. And again, so what? If your dignity is intact, why do you care if anyone knows that you are one of the ones who sometimes does things like that? I mean, your comment about not relying on what you do in public being a secret is an awfully big statement.
Because I can point to things that they do that are just as "suspicious" as the things I do,
Again, so what? How does that give them any power over you?
And how does any of this result it in being ok if lots of people do it compared to just a few? More people who can "selectively release" video of you would seem, to me, to be a much worse situation than having just one or two who could embarrass you, even IF they could embarrass you -- which you said they can't.
I cant connect Mrs Simpson optic nerves to youTube, thats a big difference...
Not really. Mrs Simpson sees you and tells everyone she knows what you did. The word is out. The only difference is the level of proof available. Most people think Mrs. Simpson is unimpeachable as a witness. She has no reason to lie. If you are a defendant, you do.
And Mrs Simpson does own a video camera. She CAN connect THAT to youTube.
Seriously, if there was no difference, people would not bother with this project...
I didn't ask if there were differences, I asked about significant differences. Of course there are technical differences, and differences in specifically who saw you do what.
The fact that Mrs Simpson is no longer required to spend her time monitoring one small window on the world is a difference that is significant in justifying this. It's a "why bother" difference. I don't think there is any question that there are differences that explain why people want to do it.
What I want to know is what difference is there that makes this unacceptable, whereas having Mrs Simpson glued to the window is acceptable. An observer unknown to you is viewing your activity in a public place, with a potential to alert authorities to any illegal activity you may participate in, or even report those embarassing things you do. (Mrs Simpson loves AFV and Bob Saggett.) Specifically who, or specifically where that person is don't seem relevant. Specifically how many people they can watch at one time doesn't seem relevant. The fact that it may be recorded doesn't seem significant. These are differences of magnitude.
What is the difference of kind that converts this from good to bad?
...whether its a positive or negative difference is what the discussion is about...
No, what THIS discussion is about is whether that difference is significant.
For example, in a discussion about red-light cameras, the difference that the accuser is an employee of a company that prints pictures and not a trained police officer is, IMHO, a significant difference. Further, the fact that the accuser is basing the accusation on a single image ignoring any temporal or spatial context, instead of a trained police office observing the location in real-time, is a significant difference.
In this discussion, the fact that someone has recorded your activity and reported it to police is no different whether that someone is recording 100 video feeds or one. Mrs Simpson can tape you pissing on the street corner and it is apparently ok. Why is it not ok when Mr Brown, sitting in a room two blocks away, tapes you doing it?
I mean, I'm not saying it IS ok, but I'm trying to examine the issue at more than a "I don't like it" level to see if there is a reason.
Also, my dignity and self-respect aren't contingent on my public actions being secret.
Ok.
I do object to a small group reserving the right to video me,...
If it is a right, why can't they "reserve" it, or even execute it? It sounds like you are referring to a privilege here.
...for the practical reason that it gives them power over me for no good reason.
What "power"? What can they force you do to that you wouldn't otherwise? Isn't that contradicting your first statement? If your very dignity isn't contingent on your actions in public remaining a secret, what WILL you lose? They would have the power to call the cops and have you arrested for doing something illegal, but then, that contradicts your claims about your public actions not being secret. It would also be a "good reason", if you are in public committing crimes.
The same doesn't hold true when everyone does it.
Wait a minute. It's a problem if a few people do it, but it isn't a problem if everyone does it? Doesn't the latter mean that more people have some control over you?
My friend is part of a neighborhood watch. She has a camera.
Your answer is a non-sequitor. How is this different than neighborhood watch? All the camera does is allow people to watch without being right there. How does this differ in any significant way from Old Mrs. Simpson sitting at her window watching?
Yes, and just as rare is the question "what are the 6 extra states you think compose the 'fifty-six US states'?" Or "why would you think a foreign dignitary would want either a DVD box-set of region 1 DVDs or an iPod filled with audio files of your speeches?" Or "why do you think calling a woman a pig is appropriate even if she is campaigning against you?"
Faux-paux are rarely the sole possession of one political party.
Like I said, if someone is as clueless as you think, they will have no idea what dangers await for making the wrong settings to Unite and probably shouldn't be doing it at all.
As said, user access controls and the services/widgets DONT run on by default.
As I said, if you have to be explicit, fine. But giving someone who doesn't know what he is doing the option of sharing his entire computer is not a good thing. I don't know if ISPs like the cable systems block the standard MS filesharing ports or not (my firewall is there just so I don't have to know) but they should. I don't want them blocking everything because a few users get themselves into trouble by turning on something they don't understand. I'd rather they spend the time learning what they are doing and installing a web server if they really want to provide web services.
Not anyone has interest to learn how to install and configure apache...
While us nerds know that apache is the default power server, it isn't the only one. There are others, simpler, less prone to error.
... I would be more worried about someone using apache instead of opera's very basic webserver, if they get it working they most likely dont know what they're doing.
I would be more worried that someone doesn't know what he is doing if he is given a checkbox "share all my crap" instead of needing to explicitly install and start a web server. Even the most "hole-less" code is a security hole when it is installed in a way that it shares every file, and just how many people who are trying to share one thing using Unite are going to wind up sharing it all when they can't figure out how to get it to share just the one thing they want?
And how many people are going to lulled into complacency when they see whatever "turn on the server" box there is, thinking "it's Opera, it's secure, it must be ok?", without even thinking of the implications?
Last I checked, the G1 is only available through T-Mobile. The terms of their agreements PROHIBIT tethering on any phone, including the G1.
That's funny. When I got my W490 T-Mobile was quite happy to try to sell me an internet package which would allow me to use bluetooth from my laptop to my phone to access the Internet. Maybe that's not called "tethering", but that would seem to fit the definition I've seen.
Its a great thing for an user who doesn't care or know how to install webservers,
I'd say it is a BAD THING when someone who doesn't care or know how to install a web server winds up installing a web server just because it is part of his web browser. I'd say it is a massive hole through which bad guys can poke at someone's system without the victim knowing that he's installed it.
No, "Unite" isn't the only thing that does this; it's sometimes instructive to do a "netstat -na" on your system to see just what ports are open, and then 'lsof' to see who is running them.
Personally, I don't want my VNC server also running an http demon to distribute widgets to anyone who comes by. I don't want my web browser doing the same thing.
The thing here is that instead of using websites, you can connect to your friends directly.
As long as your friends are explicit in wanting you to be able to this, ok. If that were true, it's trivial to set up a real webserver to provide exactly what you want them to get, instead of it being a side-effect of browsing the morning's ration of pr0n.
Slashdot Mirror
FTP ASCII mode is part of the reason the problem is moot.
It's so much easier to let the server, running on the system and able to understand the source file, deal with converting it to a byte stream in some common format that the client, running on the destination system and able to understand what an ASCII file is on that system, can convert to the correct system-dependent representation.
If all you do is copy the byte stream, you lose any information about the structure of the file on the source. You require all OSs to understand all other OSs formats, and SUPPORT all other formats. My Unix system would have to understand a VMS fixed-length format file AND know when it was looking at one, which is impossible when Unix systems don't keep that information about a file and VMS does.
Because of differences between systems like Unix and Windows, where line ends are a simple newline on Unix but a CR/LF pair on Windows. Also systems like VMS which have (had) about thirteen different file formats all inherent in the file structure itself.
In other words, because all ASCII files are not represented the same way by all different operating systems.
I know that Windows uses CR/LF for line termination and *nix uses just LF. That's a very minor inconvenience at worst,
Not if you have an "ASCII" file you are trying to read on Windows that has Unix newline conventions. Try opening a newlined file with notepad, for example.
"Little standalone utilities" are really handy for small files and small numbers of files. It's really handy when you know the format the file you have is in and what it needs to be. Please tell me how you will identify a VMS fixed record file that you have just ftp'd from a VMS FTP server when it gets to your Windows system. It has NO newlines or CR/LF pairs. You might dump the file somehow and notice that the lines are all 93 characters long and then write yourself a perl script to split it up -- or you could simply tell your FTP client that you are in ASCII mode and let the FTP server/client negotiate some resulting format that your system likes. Now try that with a VMS variable length record file, where the lines are variable length, still without line endings.
FTP wasn't designed just for hobbyists who want a file or two and have the time to deal with file formats by hand. It was designed to move data, and anything that can be automated should be. "Little standalone utilities" are a pain in the ass when trying to automate something, especially when the critical information necessary to know what specific utility to use has been lost, or is completely unknown to the recipient's system. Like VMS fixed length records on Unix or Windows.
It just seems like it's not the job of a file transfer protocol to concern itself with what an independent, unrelated application can or cannot do with the file after it's transferred.
ASCII mode in FTP has nothing to do with anyone trying to tell anyone what they can or cannot do with a file after it's transferred. It's all about knowing how to deal with a hundred different ways of representing ASCII data on dozens of different operating systems and making life EASIER for people who have to do that on a daily basis.
If YOU would rather operate in BIN mode and worry about which file formats you've just downloaded and how to convert them to an ASCII representation that your software knows how to deal with, more power to you. I got tired of dealing with this the first time I had to convert a VMS "ASCII" file to Unix and I'll let FTP do it silently for me. Yes, I've dealt with users who didn't know what ASCII mode was and downloaded a zipped file in ASCII mode and it didn't work, but the time I've saved just myself not having to deal with converting crap has more than made up for the time I've spent telling them to use BIN mode.
No, what you should be asking yourself first, is WHO gets to make the decision that some piece of information will cause more harm than good, and only THEN should we care if it is ethical to actually withhold that information. I don't believe that you can answer YOUR question without first answering the "who" part of mine.
Should the newspaper be allowed to make that decision?
Should a government employee be allowed to make the decision?
If the newspaper decides it will cause more harm than good, is it ethical for someone ELSE to decide differently?
If a government employee decides it will cause harm, is it ethical for a newspaper to decide differently?
Captives are kept alive for as long as they have value. A captive that nobody knows has been kidnapped has no value.
I really don't want my 15 minutes of fame if it gets me killed.
Let's stop putting the blame in the wrong place. It's not Wikipedia or the NYT killing the hostage, it is the Taliban kidnappers. Terrorists kill for reasons only they fully understand. Blaming NYT is like blaming the people riding the bus for being killed when a suicide bomber shows up.
Do you imagine that the kidnappers of those Americans didn't seek the massive news attention to their actions?
I died in the bombing of Coventry, you insensitive clod!
Uhhh, yeah, it does. Shit has to go somewhere, and if it doesn't go down a sewer it tends to stay above ground. It's so much fun to kick back after a day at the office making your $40k, sipping your imported Coors Light to the smell of the next door neighbors' honey pots.
Money really isn't everything.
When you don't have any, yes, it takes on a certain importance.
The job of the press is to report. They've made this claim so often in the past when it has been the government holding on to information that it's carved into the press plates 1/4 inch deep. They haven't cared what the information was or how damaging it could be, their job is to inform and damn it, they are going to do it. The government has no right to decide the information is sensitive and shouldn't be printed.
And now the New York Times makes that decision. Where's my spelling checker, I need to see how to spell "hypocrite".
You know, for all the hype over Wikipedia, something appearing there certainly isn't advertising it or broadcasting it. The poster who made grandiose claims about how this should be secret admitted that he'd read it somewhere else, so I guess it should only be a secret from everyone but him. Yep, the word contains a 'y'.
The shame of the big city, everyday people losing access to nature unless they happen to be in school or have a job where they can afford to drive to Atlantic City and see it first-hand.
I didn't say "do real work", I said "talk to the real world."
You and this 'internet is the world' guy have such a severe case of myopia when it comes to computers that it's ridiculous.
Yeah, if your use of computers is limited to running software that moves data around on the computer, you're fine. Keyboard and disk and display drivers are stock items on all OSs. If all you do is have a low-paid lackey sitting at a keyboard entering numbers and making spreadsheet printouts, you can use any OS.
Start trying to deal with devices that talk to the real world that don't have linux drivers and you'll find out that sometimes windows is a requirement.
I've got an eeprom burner that doesn't have linux drivers. It has microsoft drivers, though. I can spend a bundle and get a new burner and migrate all the data to linux, yes, but that's not 'free' in any sense of the word. I could waste a lot of my time (my bosses time) writing a driver, after reverse engineering the hardware to know what bits of what register do what, but that's not "free", and would cost more than simply buying Windows. I have an IDE for TI micros that runs on Windows. It has to talk to the hardware, which linux won't let it do virtualized, and even so, a virtualized Microsoft OS requires a license just like any other MSOS.
Might I recommend to you a 2007 or later version of Linux to try...
Might I recommend you pull your head out of your ass and look around at all the things the computers are used for these days and figure out that bookkeeping and accounting and keeping Doctor's records aren't the only things being done anymore.
But, on the flip side, there are devices I have that talk to the real world where the Windows drivers are crap and the only good drivers are on Linux. The bug in the ointment is that the company that makes the devices only supports Windows when it comes to downloading firmware updates or answering support questions, so I am still stuck needing a Windows system.
No, I said I needed to talk to hardware in the real world. Don't tell me what I use to "communicate" with the real world, because it is obvious that you are so stuck in "the internet is the world" mode that you wouldn't know what an EEPROM burner is if it bit you in the ass. Or an A/D converter.
Actually my real world isn't even on a computer, and my work world involves mostly spreadsheets and databases.
Yes, it's obvious you use computers for nothing but software, and have no clue what it takes to have a computer do useful work controlling real-world applications. For you, it doesn't matter what the OS is because someone IS writing all your applications for you and you don't need any drivers but the run-of-the-mill. How nice for you.
Your communications skills (both input and output) seem to be quite lacking.
Yeah, whatever.
So what? You do realize that some people use computers to do things other than 'get on the internet', don't you? That some people have hardware that talks to the real world and needs software that can control it? No, maybe you think that "the internet" is all there is.
Tell me how an OS that can "get on the internet" is going to control the PCI-based EEPROM burner I use. Just where 'on the internet' do I go to have my EEPROM burner read the 27256 I just plugged into it so I can burn another copy?
The onlt three reasons I can see for Windows is Excel, the program that does slideshows (what's that called again, haven't used it for years), and playing some games.
That's because you are ignorant. Your "real world" is "on the internet".
Unfortunately, there are hardware vendors who don't bother supporting anything but windows, and if you use your computer to talk to the real world sometimes you are stuck with windows if you want to get the work done. Wine is nice, but adding layers of abstraction adds a speed penalty, too, along with the question of "will it work, I don't know, let's spend a week testing it ...", which has costs of its own.
If you really want/have to use Windows, then pay for it and shut up.
Please send me your email address so I can subscribe to your "I have money coming out my wazoo and can waste it on overpriced operating systems" newsletter.
What do you think "selective breeding" is modifying, if not the genes? Selective breeding is the low-tech version of genetic engineering. "We want these properties, so we cross these ..."
In fact, this is why fainting at the mention of "genetic engineering" (or picketing, or boycotting...) is so silly. We were "genetic engineering" before Gregor Mendel figured out there were genes. Almost everything you eat today has been "genetically engineered" through selective breeding to be completely different than whatever it was that it started out as. It's just that today we can be a bit more specific about what we are doing.
I took a long moment to think about "the scenario" before replying. I read your comment that your self-respect and dignity did not depend on what you doing in public being a secret. I also read your comment that people who tape you in public have some kind of power over you. That's why I asked you what I did.
Er, because they can reveal suspicious information about what I do without revealing the exonerating evidence?
So what? So can anyone who sees you doing something in public.
Because they can selectively release video of me doing things that are frowned upon in polite society, without everyone realizing that *everyone* does things that are frowned upon in polite society?
I think everyone already realizes that they sometimes do things that are frowned upon in polite society, or at least that many people do. And again, so what? If your dignity is intact, why do you care if anyone knows that you are one of the ones who sometimes does things like that? I mean, your comment about not relying on what you do in public being a secret is an awfully big statement.
Because I can point to things that they do that are just as "suspicious" as the things I do,
Again, so what? How does that give them any power over you?
And how does any of this result it in being ok if lots of people do it compared to just a few? More people who can "selectively release" video of you would seem, to me, to be a much worse situation than having just one or two who could embarrass you, even IF they could embarrass you -- which you said they can't.
Not really. Mrs Simpson sees you and tells everyone she knows what you did. The word is out. The only difference is the level of proof available. Most people think Mrs. Simpson is unimpeachable as a witness. She has no reason to lie. If you are a defendant, you do.
And Mrs Simpson does own a video camera. She CAN connect THAT to youTube.
Seriously, if there was no difference, people would not bother with this project...
I didn't ask if there were differences, I asked about significant differences. Of course there are technical differences, and differences in specifically who saw you do what.
The fact that Mrs Simpson is no longer required to spend her time monitoring one small window on the world is a difference that is significant in justifying this. It's a "why bother" difference. I don't think there is any question that there are differences that explain why people want to do it.
What I want to know is what difference is there that makes this unacceptable, whereas having Mrs Simpson glued to the window is acceptable. An observer unknown to you is viewing your activity in a public place, with a potential to alert authorities to any illegal activity you may participate in, or even report those embarassing things you do. (Mrs Simpson loves AFV and Bob Saggett.) Specifically who, or specifically where that person is don't seem relevant. Specifically how many people they can watch at one time doesn't seem relevant. The fact that it may be recorded doesn't seem significant. These are differences of magnitude.
What is the difference of kind that converts this from good to bad?
No, what THIS discussion is about is whether that difference is significant.
For example, in a discussion about red-light cameras, the difference that the accuser is an employee of a company that prints pictures and not a trained police officer is, IMHO, a significant difference. Further, the fact that the accuser is basing the accusation on a single image ignoring any temporal or spatial context, instead of a trained police office observing the location in real-time, is a significant difference.
In this discussion, the fact that someone has recorded your activity and reported it to police is no different whether that someone is recording 100 video feeds or one. Mrs Simpson can tape you pissing on the street corner and it is apparently ok. Why is it not ok when Mr Brown, sitting in a room two blocks away, tapes you doing it?
I mean, I'm not saying it IS ok, but I'm trying to examine the issue at more than a "I don't like it" level to see if there is a reason.
Ok.
I do object to a small group reserving the right to video me,...
If it is a right, why can't they "reserve" it, or even execute it? It sounds like you are referring to a privilege here.
What "power"? What can they force you do to that you wouldn't otherwise? Isn't that contradicting your first statement? If your very dignity isn't contingent on your actions in public remaining a secret, what WILL you lose? They would have the power to call the cops and have you arrested for doing something illegal, but then, that contradicts your claims about your public actions not being secret. It would also be a "good reason", if you are in public committing crimes.
The same doesn't hold true when everyone does it.
Wait a minute. It's a problem if a few people do it, but it isn't a problem if everyone does it? Doesn't the latter mean that more people have some control over you?
Come brick over my windows, because I've put cameras connected to a VCR in some of them at times. My GOD! Who KNOWS what I'm doing with that video!
Your answer is a non-sequitor. How is this different than neighborhood watch? All the camera does is allow people to watch without being right there. How does this differ in any significant way from Old Mrs. Simpson sitting at her window watching?
Faux-paux are rarely the sole possession of one political party.
It would be funnier if you had a patent on submarine trees.
Like I said, if someone is as clueless as you think, they will have no idea what dangers await for making the wrong settings to Unite and probably shouldn't be doing it at all.
As I said, if you have to be explicit, fine. But giving someone who doesn't know what he is doing the option of sharing his entire computer is not a good thing. I don't know if ISPs like the cable systems block the standard MS filesharing ports or not (my firewall is there just so I don't have to know) but they should. I don't want them blocking everything because a few users get themselves into trouble by turning on something they don't understand. I'd rather they spend the time learning what they are doing and installing a web server if they really want to provide web services.
Not anyone has interest to learn how to install and configure apache...
While us nerds know that apache is the default power server, it isn't the only one. There are others, simpler, less prone to error.
I would be more worried that someone doesn't know what he is doing if he is given a checkbox "share all my crap" instead of needing to explicitly install and start a web server. Even the most "hole-less" code is a security hole when it is installed in a way that it shares every file, and just how many people who are trying to share one thing using Unite are going to wind up sharing it all when they can't figure out how to get it to share just the one thing they want?
And how many people are going to lulled into complacency when they see whatever "turn on the server" box there is, thinking "it's Opera, it's secure, it must be ok?", without even thinking of the implications?
That's funny. When I got my W490 T-Mobile was quite happy to try to sell me an internet package which would allow me to use bluetooth from my laptop to my phone to access the Internet. Maybe that's not called "tethering", but that would seem to fit the definition I've seen.
I'd say it is a BAD THING when someone who doesn't care or know how to install a web server winds up installing a web server just because it is part of his web browser. I'd say it is a massive hole through which bad guys can poke at someone's system without the victim knowing that he's installed it.
No, "Unite" isn't the only thing that does this; it's sometimes instructive to do a "netstat -na" on your system to see just what ports are open, and then 'lsof' to see who is running them.
Personally, I don't want my VNC server also running an http demon to distribute widgets to anyone who comes by. I don't want my web browser doing the same thing.
The thing here is that instead of using websites, you can connect to your friends directly.
As long as your friends are explicit in wanting you to be able to this, ok. If that were true, it's trivial to set up a real webserver to provide exactly what you want them to get, instead of it being a side-effect of browsing the morning's ration of pr0n.