Agreed, but for it to be effective, you have to make up a different fake persona for each account. You certainly wouldn't want to use the same fake persona for multiple accounts. That would only mean that the police wouldn't know whom to notify when "Norm D. Plume" got completely cleaned out.
Let me give you an example. When I got my American Express corporate card, part of the activation process was to create a PIN. The process is done through a voice menu system. The message suggests that you use your mothers birthdate (month and day).
My intention was to make the PIN a random four digit string. Turns out the system would not accept a four digit string that was not a valid month and day. They actually had software in place to make sure you didn't pick the 32nd of Grune.
So, yeah, I am surprised that this system would accept a grandmother's middle name that included numbers and punctuation characters. Or a "first pet's name" of "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries". ("By the time I had finished calling him in to dinner, he starved to death." But I digress.) Or that it didn't bother to check that my daughter's high school, hospital where she was born, and maternal grandmother were all coincidentally named "none of your damned business, monkey boy". [1]
I half expected to see the message "That name is not valid. Your grandmother's middle name must match an entry in 'The perfect book of baby names'. Available on Amazon." Or, more likely, get an email from the bank something to the effect "Our IT department does not appreciate your thoughts on their personal habits. You will have to re-enter your personal information to access your account."
[1] None of those are the real passphrase, of course.
I remember that thread! "Oh, the costs". Well, to be perfectly truthful, your earlier missive in that thread had so many inaccuracies that I basically stopped reading at that point. I mean that in the most positive sense, of course.
> 1) Renewables are very rapid growing. A third of the power that went onto our grid last year was wind alone. And that percent of renewables keeps rising, and is likely to rise even faster under the new administration.
I'm all for wind. (Although I've joked about "slowing down the earth" it's usually to trap people with no concept of scale.) But I remember reading that conservation organizations are trying to shut down wind farms because of the damage they do to birds and (more recently) bats. Is this still the case?
I'm also just tickled pink that the US is finally getting serious about lessening our dependence on middle-eastern oil, in any reasonable fashion. I worry a little about possible destabilization of that region when revenue drops significantly, but that's for the politicians to figure out.
I'm also just tickled pink that the US is finally getting serious about lessening our dependence on middle-eastern oil, in any reasonable fashion. I worry a little about possible destabilization of that region when revenue drops significantly, but that's for the politicians to figure out.
Although there is a potential for millions of cars in their charge cradles at night helping to balance out capacity, I suspect that in actual use people will want or need to charge up somewhere on the road, if only because that fits the paradigm to which they've become accustomed. (But for other practical reasons also.) The original poster alluded to this -- "filling" stations that dispense electricity, presumably for a fee. A 10 minute charge time would make this scenario more likely. (Although this seems astoundingly short -- I wonder what current would be required?) This won't necessarily help balance generator capacity.
I'm not sure, though, if I buy into the original poster's contention that water vapor from hydrogen fuel cells will contribute in any significant fashion to global warming. Water vapor is the most significant greenhouse gas, but I believe that's because of sheer volume, not because a little water vapor is a potent greenhouse contributor.
Just asking, how is electricity generated in your area? We're lucky enough to have mostly hydro, but I remember reading in one of those science mags that over 60% of electricity in the country was generated by burning coal.
My credit union suddenly adopted an "enhanced security" system where they come up with 10 personal questions (you don't have a choice which ones) and you have to provide answers to each one.
I looked over the questions, and decided I didn't want anyone knowing that information, even my bank. Called them and asked to opt out of the program. Was told that their system administrator said it was a new federal requirement. (Is this true? I haven't seen this practice at the competing credit union that has my car loan, or at the bank that has my mortgage.) They said it was for my own protection and there was no way to opt out.
I asked if I could use an additional, randomly generated password instead. (I already used a random string for my main password.) She said no, it had to be personal information.
I said it was an invasion of privacy and asked them what happens when their system administrator scoops all this personal information for his own use? (That was probably unfair, but I was getting annoyed at that point.) I pointed out that if everyone was required to use this system (which I still hadn't verified), Sysadmin from bank A could take your answers and use them to compromise your accounts B, C and D -- For instance posing as the account owner and answering the "magic question" (which is often a personal question) to reset the account password. She said that she didn't know about that, but I had to live with it.
I'm willing to bet that the "enhanced security" answers aren't even encrypted.
So with a little experimentation, I discovered that the "enhanced security" system will take any string as an answer. So, for instance, to the question "what is your maternal grandmother's middle name" (I actually don't know the answer.) you could answer "20382-0qopw" (string was generated by pounding on my keyboard) and the answer will be accepted.
I also found out that you could put random strings (or a rude phrase) for each answer, or use the same passphrase for every answer, and the system will accept it.
This opened whole new vistas of "security".
So, for my daughter's account, which doesn't have much to lose, I set all her "enhanced security" questions to the same passphrase, (you will never guess it, don't even try) and set up different passphrases for each security question for my accounts.
One big win to making up your answers is that a bad guy can't use the information to break into accounts in other institutions. Even if it's sold to a third party or published on the internet, the information only works with that one account. Moreover, there's no way someone can research my family history and come up with "asawi0egh" for my mother's maiden name. (Again, generated by slapping the keyboard a few times.)
In other words, don't buy into it. Treat it as just another password that you make up yourself.
How does one keep track of all these passwords? Find a secure password keeper application and use it religiously. Sourceforge is a good place to look. Some even work on PDAs.
Hey you, get offa my lawn! I'm quite a bit over 40 and haven't watched "live" TV in years. I'm proud to say I have no idea what commercials are like nowdays. I hear it's mostly about various colored pills.
I must be dyslexic. Now I think it must have been the right hand. I have a memory of him using the opposite hand (out of cop's direct vision) to operate the hand brake, but that probably means the bike was a right foot shift (left foot brake) which fits for the time. Well, that's what we get for using vehicle analogies.
What we need is a car analogy. I don't have one. How about a motorcycle analogy?
My step-dad rode an old BSA (British bike, leaked oil) when I was a kid. It had a minor fault -- the required (in California) stoplight button on the rear brake pedal didn't work, and he never bothered to fix it. In those days and that area, cops would randomly pull over bikers ostensibly for safety checks, but actually to check their id and registration, run the plate, and generally look for trouble.
Step-dad would be required to demonstrate that the rear stoplight function worked. So he'd get in the bike, steady himself with his left hand on the handlebars, push the rear brake pedal down while simultaneously squeezing the front brake lever, which did turn on the stoplight. Ran it like that for years, was stopped many times, cops never caught on.
This is a feel-good law. I can't imagine that the people writing it really think it'll work. At most it'll nail a few people on false positives, but the true hard-core perverts, and the geeks who can't resist a challenge, will figure out work-arounds in next to no time. It's just software, after all. If you can jailbreak a phone, you can probably figure out how to temporarily turn off a mandatory feature.
If there is a list, and it has value, it will eventually be sold. It is important to remember that the government consists of regular people, not angels, no different from people doing any other job. A certain percentage will be unscrupulous, as in any collection of people, and the unscrupulous will be attracted to positions of power, influence and money, just like in any other organization.
You might be able to vote out the person who wrote the bill, and the politicians that put it into law, but you can't vote out the bureaucrat that actually handles the goods -- that person is outside the influence of us regular citizens. Not because of any Star Room conspiracy, but simply because he's the person who has access, and the temptation is too great.
So for a given list, like a do-not-call list, or back-door passwords held in escrow, or a list of people in a certain position, if it has value, an unscrupulous person will find a way to cash in on it, or someone will be coerced into doing so by another unscrupulous person. The more valuable the list, the more likely that the attempt will be made.
This is vital to remember. When you hear "the government will take care of it" the first question you should ask is "why do you think so? What makes the people that make up the government any different from the people who make up, say, the phone company?"
I've got to add this: When mom-in-law first called to report problems, I was at work and fourteen-year-old daughter took the call. She took less than 30 seconds to assess the situation. "He fell for a trojan, Grandma. Your computer is infected. Sorry." (Nephew is 19!)
Didn't want to muddy the waters, but I did, it wasn't, (whew) but it all turned out for nothing, because a week later a nephew clicked on a popup and loaded "antivirus 2000" or whatever it was called. The trojan that pretends it's an antivirus tool. That's days of my life I'll never get back, researching and scrubbing that thing. I told mom-in-law, please tell nephew I'm gonna kick his ass next time I see him. See, if he had done it on his own damned machine, it would have been "too bad, so sad, put it back in the box, you're too dumb to own a computer". But mom-in-law was the ideal user, always practicing safe computing (not falling for trojans, not opening attachments, running regular scans) and she didn't deserve that kind of abuse.
How does this relate to the thread? Well, if it took a half hour to download the thing over dial-up, he might not have done it. It's possible I'm just fooling myself.
Ok, here's how it relates: Some people just shouldn't be on the Internet. It's a dangerous place, and you have to know what the hell you're doing. Mom-in-law knows enough (for a non-geek) to get by if someone set things up for her. Nephew shouldn't be allowed access at all, except perhaps on an isolated machine that could be easily re-imaged.
Saying "everyone should have broadband access" is like saying "everyone should take up rock climbing".
> Didn't you say in the past that MS could give away Windows for free for 7 years before they started running out of money?
Are you talking to me personally? I don't recall ever saying that, unless in jest. But I'm old and my memory is going. Where was I alleged to have said that?
> Could IBM manage that? If so, why didn't you say it then? If not, there's your difference.
Um what? How strange. Ok, I'll bite: At the end of 2008 IBM had 12.9 billion cash on hand. Not counting repurchased shares, it would be a little over $23 billion. In the same time period, Microsoft had $10 billion in cash, or about $21 billion if you add in short term investments.
I could stop right there, but just for the sake of argument, let's continue with the $10 billion figure. That's 42,553,191 copies of Vista Ultimate at Amazon prices. (I'm sure Amazon would love the business.) or 111 million copies of Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade. Microsoft claims to have sold 60 million copies of Vista from July 2005 to July 2007, (which I suspect is stretching the definition of "sold" but let's go ahead and use that) so let's say 30 million copies a year. So either company, should they be so inclined, could give Windows away for between 1.5 (Ultimate) and around 4 years (Home) just with cash on hand. Double that if you consider short term investments (Microsoft) or shares repurchased (IBM). That'd be really close to 8 years of Vista Home Premium, so yeah, from back-of-napkin figuring it could technically be done. And that's using retail figures. Using wholesale costs, I can't imagine how long Microsoft could give away Windows using cash on hand. A really, really long time.
I'm not sure where we're going with this.
My original point was that IBM is heavily invested in Linux, (which was inferred, sorry if you missed that) and if Microsoft's layoff was due to the threat of Linux, (whatever that means) then why is IBM doing a comparable RIF at almost exactly the same time?
In other words, "it's the economy, stupid". Companies don't wait until they're out of cash before shedding employees, they do it as soon as the immediate future starts to look bad.
In conclusion, I'd like to blame the Microsoft RIF on the impact of open source software as much as the next Linux geek. But you'd have to make that observation in a complete vacuum.
Every new PC with a fast internet connection is another potential spambot. Knowledgeable people, or people who know knowledgeable people, can take steps to avoid getting pwn3d. The rank and file are at the mercy of, well, everyone, and the ISPs are not helping.
When I heard that mother-in-law had finally gotten cable internet, I asked her how they had set it up... They powered up a vanilla cable modem and connected her Windows PC to the raw internet! I told her to turn off her computer, drove the 3 hours to her house, installed and configured a firewall appliance between her computer and the modem. It was a pain, but scrubbing her computer later would potentially have been a greater pain.
Many ISPs give you a router with some firewall capabilities, but there are many others, especially the cheaper ones, who are just passing out modems without even NAT capability. Imagine another 100 million spambots with broadband. I know, it's your responsibility to keep your own machine secure, but most people will just reboot to catch an IP address and then "hey, look at all the pr0n!".
I would submit that we don't *want* millions of new Joe Sixpacks on the net until we establish that it can be done with reasonable safety.
This is not elitist. It's self-defense.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat for a minute... I have it somewhere. Ah here it is. Consider this: What is our main defense against the pap that talking heads feed us in monolithically owned news services? The internet. What would be a really great way to severely diminish it's usefulness? Cause the creation of the largest botnet in history. Not that I'm paranoid or anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, but for it to be effective, you have to make up a different fake persona for each account. You certainly wouldn't want to use the same fake persona for multiple accounts. That would only mean that the police wouldn't know whom to notify when "Norm D. Plume" got completely cleaned out.
Think "Terrorist".
Oh, don't be like that.
Let me give you an example. When I got my American Express corporate card, part of the activation process was to create a PIN. The process is done through a voice menu system. The message suggests that you use your mothers birthdate (month and day).
My intention was to make the PIN a random four digit string. Turns out the system would not accept a four digit string that was not a valid month and day. They actually had software in place to make sure you didn't pick the 32nd of Grune.
So, yeah, I am surprised that this system would accept a grandmother's middle name that included numbers and punctuation characters. Or a "first pet's name" of "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries". ("By the time I had finished calling him in to dinner, he starved to death." But I digress.) Or that it didn't bother to check that my daughter's high school, hospital where she was born, and maternal grandmother were all coincidentally named "none of your damned business, monkey boy". [1]
I half expected to see the message "That name is not valid. Your grandmother's middle name must match an entry in 'The perfect book of baby names'. Available on Amazon." Or, more likely, get an email from the bank something to the effect "Our IT department does not appreciate your thoughts on their personal habits. You will have to re-enter your personal information to access your account."
[1] None of those are the real passphrase, of course.
I remember that thread! "Oh, the costs". Well, to be perfectly truthful, your earlier missive in that thread had so many inaccuracies that I basically stopped reading at that point. I mean that in the most positive sense, of course.
Exactly. There's a copy in my pda, a copy on my home computer, and a copy on my work computer. Should be sufficient.
> 1) Renewables are very rapid growing. A third of the power that went onto our grid last year was wind alone. And that percent of renewables keeps rising, and is likely to rise even faster under the new administration.
I'm all for wind. (Although I've joked about "slowing down the earth" it's usually to trap people with no concept of scale.) But I remember reading that conservation organizations are trying to shut down wind farms because of the damage they do to birds and (more recently) bats. Is this still the case? I'm also just tickled pink that the US is finally getting serious about lessening our dependence on middle-eastern oil, in any reasonable fashion. I worry a little about possible destabilization of that region when revenue drops significantly, but that's for the politicians to figure out.
I'm also just tickled pink that the US is finally getting serious about lessening our dependence on middle-eastern oil, in any reasonable fashion. I worry a little about possible destabilization of that region when revenue drops significantly, but that's for the politicians to figure out.
Although there is a potential for millions of cars in their charge cradles at night helping to balance out capacity, I suspect that in actual use people will want or need to charge up somewhere on the road, if only because that fits the paradigm to which they've become accustomed. (But for other practical reasons also.) The original poster alluded to this -- "filling" stations that dispense electricity, presumably for a fee. A 10 minute charge time would make this scenario more likely. (Although this seems astoundingly short -- I wonder what current would be required?) This won't necessarily help balance generator capacity.
I'm not sure, though, if I buy into the original poster's contention that water vapor from hydrogen fuel cells will contribute in any significant fashion to global warming. Water vapor is the most significant greenhouse gas, but I believe that's because of sheer volume, not because a little water vapor is a potent greenhouse contributor.
Just asking, how is electricity generated in your area? We're lucky enough to have mostly hydro, but I remember reading in one of those science mags that over 60% of electricity in the country was generated by burning coal.
My credit union suddenly adopted an "enhanced security" system where they come up with 10 personal questions (you don't have a choice which ones) and you have to provide answers to each one.
I looked over the questions, and decided I didn't want anyone knowing that information, even my bank. Called them and asked to opt out of the program. Was told that their system administrator said it was a new federal requirement. (Is this true? I haven't seen this practice at the competing credit union that has my car loan, or at the bank that has my mortgage.) They said it was for my own protection and there was no way to opt out.
I asked if I could use an additional, randomly generated password instead. (I already used a random string for my main password.) She said no, it had to be personal information.
I said it was an invasion of privacy and asked them what happens when their system administrator scoops all this personal information for his own use? (That was probably unfair, but I was getting annoyed at that point.) I pointed out that if everyone was required to use this system (which I still hadn't verified), Sysadmin from bank A could take your answers and use them to compromise your accounts B, C and D -- For instance posing as the account owner and answering the "magic question" (which is often a personal question) to reset the account password. She said that she didn't know about that, but I had to live with it.
I'm willing to bet that the "enhanced security" answers aren't even encrypted.
So with a little experimentation, I discovered that the "enhanced security" system will take any string as an answer. So, for instance, to the question "what is your maternal grandmother's middle name" (I actually don't know the answer.) you could answer "20382-0qopw" (string was generated by pounding on my keyboard) and the answer will be accepted.
I also found out that you could put random strings (or a rude phrase) for each answer, or use the same passphrase for every answer, and the system will accept it.
This opened whole new vistas of "security".
So, for my daughter's account, which doesn't have much to lose, I set all her "enhanced security" questions to the same passphrase, (you will never guess it, don't even try) and set up different passphrases for each security question for my accounts.
One big win to making up your answers is that a bad guy can't use the information to break into accounts in other institutions. Even if it's sold to a third party or published on the internet, the information only works with that one account. Moreover, there's no way someone can research my family history and come up with "asawi0egh" for my mother's maiden name. (Again, generated by slapping the keyboard a few times.)
In other words, don't buy into it. Treat it as just another password that you make up yourself.
How does one keep track of all these passwords? Find a secure password keeper application and use it religiously. Sourceforge is a good place to look. Some even work on PDAs.
> Maybe you oughtta start paying attention to those pill commercials, gramps. You might need 'em soon.
You can avoid acid reflux by eating early and reducing liquids after 6:00 PM. Nothing to it.
Hey you, get offa my lawn! I'm quite a bit over 40 and haven't watched "live" TV in years. I'm proud to say I have no idea what commercials are like nowdays. I hear it's mostly about various colored pills.
I must be dyslexic. Now I think it must have been the right hand. I have a memory of him using the opposite hand (out of cop's direct vision) to operate the hand brake, but that probably means the bike was a right foot shift (left foot brake) which fits for the time. Well, that's what we get for using vehicle analogies.
What we need is a car analogy. I don't have one. How about a motorcycle analogy?
My step-dad rode an old BSA (British bike, leaked oil) when I was a kid. It had a minor fault -- the required (in California) stoplight button on the rear brake pedal didn't work, and he never bothered to fix it. In those days and that area, cops would randomly pull over bikers ostensibly for safety checks, but actually to check their id and registration, run the plate, and generally look for trouble.
Step-dad would be required to demonstrate that the rear stoplight function worked. So he'd get in the bike, steady himself with his left hand on the handlebars, push the rear brake pedal down while simultaneously squeezing the front brake lever, which did turn on the stoplight. Ran it like that for years, was stopped many times, cops never caught on.
This is a feel-good law. I can't imagine that the people writing it really think it'll work. At most it'll nail a few people on false positives, but the true hard-core perverts, and the geeks who can't resist a challenge, will figure out work-arounds in next to no time. It's just software, after all. If you can jailbreak a phone, you can probably figure out how to temporarily turn off a mandatory feature.
How much anyone want to bet, there'll be a hardhack within 24 hours?
If there is a list, and it has value, it will eventually be sold. It is important to remember that the government consists of regular people, not angels, no different from people doing any other job. A certain percentage will be unscrupulous, as in any collection of people, and the unscrupulous will be attracted to positions of power, influence and money, just like in any other organization.
You might be able to vote out the person who wrote the bill, and the politicians that put it into law, but you can't vote out the bureaucrat that actually handles the goods -- that person is outside the influence of us regular citizens. Not because of any Star Room conspiracy, but simply because he's the person who has access, and the temptation is too great.
So for a given list, like a do-not-call list, or back-door passwords held in escrow, or a list of people in a certain position, if it has value, an unscrupulous person will find a way to cash in on it, or someone will be coerced into doing so by another unscrupulous person. The more valuable the list, the more likely that the attempt will be made.
This is vital to remember. When you hear "the government will take care of it" the first question you should ask is "why do you think so? What makes the people that make up the government any different from the people who make up, say, the phone company?"
> What kind of class is so unimportant that you wouldn't want to keep your notes and maybe texts.
Well, Economics, actually...
I've got to add this: When mom-in-law first called to report problems, I was at work and fourteen-year-old daughter took the call. She took less than 30 seconds to assess the situation. "He fell for a trojan, Grandma. Your computer is infected. Sorry." (Nephew is 19!)
Didn't want to muddy the waters, but I did, it wasn't, (whew) but it all turned out for nothing, because a week later a nephew clicked on a popup and loaded "antivirus 2000" or whatever it was called. The trojan that pretends it's an antivirus tool. That's days of my life I'll never get back, researching and scrubbing that thing. I told mom-in-law, please tell nephew I'm gonna kick his ass next time I see him. See, if he had done it on his own damned machine, it would have been "too bad, so sad, put it back in the box, you're too dumb to own a computer". But mom-in-law was the ideal user, always practicing safe computing (not falling for trojans, not opening attachments, running regular scans) and she didn't deserve that kind of abuse.
How does this relate to the thread? Well, if it took a half hour to download the thing over dial-up, he might not have done it. It's possible I'm just fooling myself.
Ok, here's how it relates: Some people just shouldn't be on the Internet. It's a dangerous place, and you have to know what the hell you're doing. Mom-in-law knows enough (for a non-geek) to get by if someone set things up for her. Nephew shouldn't be allowed access at all, except perhaps on an isolated machine that could be easily re-imaged.
Saying "everyone should have broadband access" is like saying "everyone should take up rock climbing".
Should??
Not primarily, but, well geeze, you have been following the SCO trials?
> Didn't you say in the past that MS could give away Windows for free for 7 years before they started running out of money?
Are you talking to me personally? I don't recall ever saying that, unless in jest. But I'm old and my memory is going. Where was I alleged to have said that?
> Could IBM manage that? If so, why didn't you say it then? If not, there's your difference.
Um what? How strange. Ok, I'll bite: At the end of 2008 IBM had 12.9 billion cash on hand. Not counting repurchased shares, it would be a little over $23 billion. In the same time period, Microsoft had $10 billion in cash, or about $21 billion if you add in short term investments.
I could stop right there, but just for the sake of argument, let's continue with the $10 billion figure. That's 42,553,191 copies of Vista Ultimate at Amazon prices. (I'm sure Amazon would love the business.) or 111 million copies of Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade. Microsoft claims to have sold 60 million copies of Vista from July 2005 to July 2007, (which I suspect is stretching the definition of "sold" but let's go ahead and use that) so let's say 30 million copies a year. So either company, should they be so inclined, could give Windows away for between 1.5 (Ultimate) and around 4 years (Home) just with cash on hand. Double that if you consider short term investments (Microsoft) or shares repurchased (IBM). That'd be really close to 8 years of Vista Home Premium, so yeah, from back-of-napkin figuring it could technically be done. And that's using retail figures. Using wholesale costs, I can't imagine how long Microsoft could give away Windows using cash on hand. A really, really long time.
I'm not sure where we're going with this.
My original point was that IBM is heavily invested in Linux, (which was inferred, sorry if you missed that) and if Microsoft's layoff was due to the threat of Linux, (whatever that means) then why is IBM doing a comparable RIF at almost exactly the same time?
In other words, "it's the economy, stupid". Companies don't wait until they're out of cash before shedding employees, they do it as soon as the immediate future starts to look bad.
In conclusion, I'd like to blame the Microsoft RIF on the impact of open source software as much as the next Linux geek. But you'd have to make that observation in a complete vacuum.
Zero, really? You're replying to a thread called "Obama sides with Bush In Spy Case".
I suspect it's mindshare, not marketshare, that's doing the damage. If any.
That was my first thought also. If it's all Linux, why did IBM announce massive layoffs in the same time frame?
The other day, someone on the radio commented that the Obama administration is shaping up to be "bush on steroids". I fervently hope that's wrong.
Every new PC with a fast internet connection is another potential spambot. Knowledgeable people, or people who know knowledgeable people, can take steps to avoid getting pwn3d. The rank and file are at the mercy of, well, everyone, and the ISPs are not helping.
When I heard that mother-in-law had finally gotten cable internet, I asked her how they had set it up... They powered up a vanilla cable modem and connected her Windows PC to the raw internet! I told her to turn off her computer, drove the 3 hours to her house, installed and configured a firewall appliance between her computer and the modem. It was a pain, but scrubbing her computer later would potentially have been a greater pain.
Many ISPs give you a router with some firewall capabilities, but there are many others, especially the cheaper ones, who are just passing out modems without even NAT capability. Imagine another 100 million spambots with broadband. I know, it's your responsibility to keep your own machine secure, but most people will just reboot to catch an IP address and then "hey, look at all the pr0n!".
I would submit that we don't *want* millions of new Joe Sixpacks on the net until we establish that it can be done with reasonable safety.
This is not elitist. It's self-defense.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat for a minute... I have it somewhere. Ah here it is. Consider this: What is our main defense against the pap that talking heads feed us in monolithically owned news services? The internet. What would be a really great way to severely diminish it's usefulness? Cause the creation of the largest botnet in history. Not that I'm paranoid or anything.