The word "start" means more than "commence". It can also mean "the beginning" in the noun sense. Like, "let's go back to the start". Anyway, way back when I used windows, it never seemed odd to me -- it just seemed like the root of the menu tree, the beginning, the start..... not that I'd want to be caught defending windows, but this "start" confusion thing seems a little over the top.
Your math is pretty good -- I get tired of listening to everyone slamming this deal because DSL is only a buck or two more. It isn't like everyone in the world has equivalent access.
I can get a slow DSL (finally... it's been years) for about $60/month or pretty quick cable for $55/month. In my case broadband is more than double the cost of this dialup plan (not even counting the value of the computer). Although I won't be trading my broadband away, there are tons of people who don't find it valuable enough pay close to $660/yr. Many people will look at this way: you get (slow) network access, a computer, and money left over to boot. For those without a broadband addiction who live in locales where broadband is pricey, it's people like me paying $660/yr who are the "idiots".
Whoa, I should have read your post more carefully. You are completely correct when you say that if a person isn't charged with "X", the jury can't convict him of "X".
The jury might elect not to convict on something, but they can't cause a conviction (on other counts) where there should be one. This is particularly true where the nature of an act (like some innovative new form of online fraud, for example) hasn't been really contemplated by the justice system before.
It sounds like you are saying that if a person comes up with a new fraud scheme, he can't be tried and convicted. I think fraud is a very flexible term. Basically, any transaction in which Fraudster deceives "Mark" in order to get Mark to do something (transfer info, money, goods, whatever), that's fraud. It doesn't matter if you do it on the street corner, out of a brick and mortar shop, or on the internet -- the key is deception as the basis of an exchange. The problem with fraud isn't so much its definition, it's finding the fraudster and getting legal jurisdiction over him or her. A brand new innovative scam? If you can get the guy into court, he'll not get off merely because it's new.
I remember reading an article on Slashdot about this specifically about a year or so ago, but a search doesn't bring it up. Essentially, someone wrote a script to do just this.
My memory is failing me be it sounds akin to..... *thinking: brain wishing I'd had breakfast and a good night's sleep with a nun*... here it is: Make Love, Not Spam.
Click the little "click here" if you click the link I made above -- interesting factoids. I remember being all happy about this and saddened that it got shut down. I also remember being berated for that opinion -- one I still hold. I want this back! More good than harm you know?
Hmmm. I bought an Athlon 650 in February 2000 with Win98se (later Win2kPro), kept it patched, and kept the anti-virus and firewall updated once a week (for about 2 minutes in the background), and it's still going strong.
Remember, anecdotes aren't good evidence. I bought a Duron 700 machine in 2000. It burned out 18 months ago. I replaced it with an Athlon 20something-or-other. When I do backups, the machine overheats and shuts itself down unless I take the side panel off. Yeah, I've added more fans. I have compaq p133 that has been sitting in a semi-exposed environment for 2.5 years (roofed kiln shed -- no walls) exposed to tempteratures in the teens to the 90s in a humid environment. Still works like a charm.
So there are my three anecdotes. What's it mean? Nothing unless you have a statistically significant number of them.
Unlimited energy?
I bet this guy will now die froïÎfreak accident of some sort.
Well, he was a spook. Check out the bolded portion in the excerpt below:
----excerpt-----
September 1, 1985, dawned gray and ornery over the North Atlantic. For nine days Ballard's Titanic mission had the turgid sea to itself. But that morning, as first light broke, the crew was astonished to wake up smack in the middle of a NATO antisubmarine exercise. Hours earlier Ballard had radioed that he'd found the long-lost Titanic. Was it coincidence that NATO had chosen this morning, this exact spot, to flex its muscle?
"Just chance," Ballard assures me.
"Probably not," says John Piña Craven, former chief scientist of the navy's special projects office and project manager of its deep submergence projects program. "I'd suspect something else was down there. Something we didn't want the other side knowing about. Because that's how the CIA and the navy work."
Talk long enough to Craven and he will have you checking your back every few minutes to make sure you aren't being followed. He says things like, "I'm under continuous surveillance, so if I inadvertently leak classified information they're going to move in." Craven, who traces his forebears back to Moorish pirates and to the British navy at the time of Cromwell, is 80 now and lives in Hawaii. But in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, he was the navy's chief underwater spook.
Back then the submarine world -- in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. -- was a labyrinth of secrecy and tension. With good reason: Subs, particularly the newer, nuclear-powered ones, could lurk for days just offshore, virtually undetectable, capable of lobbing nuclear payloads hundreds of miles inland at unprotected cities.
In that supercharged atmosphere the slightest strategic advantage was critical. Spies were our first line of defense, and Craven was the best. In 1966 he was on the team that located and retrieved a hydrogen bomb lost after a midair refueling collision off the coast of Spain. He outfitted a sub with a deep compression chamber, so divers could tap Soviet undersea cables. He located a sunken Soviet nuclear sub that the Russians had lost track of, and fished nuclear hardware from the sea. Over the phone he says, "Ballard is me, 20 years later."
There is no reason that this device should be solely for browsing the web or checking email. In fact, they make a big deal about all the media formats it supports:
I have an MP3 player from a while back, 64mb built in with 128mb card -- 192 mbs is really not adequate. You have to carefully select and predict what you want to listen to with that little space. No room for spontaneity. My camera has a 128 mb card. For good picture quality, that's 70 pics. Wanna show friends some pictures -- make sure to carefully select and plan ahead. Want to have some portable porn? Better be a quickie. And last, what movie is going to fit into this space? Why even make it video capable if there is no storage?
My first impression of this was "COOL" - perfect thing to pack along on an extended motorcycle trip where limited space makes even a laptop seem too big. But as I consider the storage limitations intentionally built in to the device, it seems more and more like a toy instead of something useful. Other than not competing with the iPod, why would they cripple it this way? There is no good reason. With CF, you could have a gig of storage for $100, and several if you are willing to spring for the "big" cards. This thing would suddenly be able to function pretty close to a real computer. Right now, it's a toy. I'm feeling burned and I haven't even bought it. If it had CF, I'd be in line to get one first day out.
That's a really great price and this looks like a really cool device. I just wish they had gone with compact flash instead of the card format they chose. It would be nice to be able to slap in a couple gigs of extra memory.
Let me preface this by saying I know nothing of MN law or the facts of this case beyond the short article. However, I am a lawyer and I can guess at why the prosecution would want to get this evidence in the record and why it would be admitted.
The Prosecutor would likely argue that the existence of the encryption software demonstrates that the defendant knew that what he was doing was wrong and that he was trying to hide damning evidence. Hiding evidence against you is frowned on. If you know evidence could be used against you and then go about destroying it, in certain situations the court is entitled to instruct the jury to presume that the destroyed evidence would be harmful to your case.
Now, encrypted evidence may not be literally destroyed, but it is as good as destroyed as long as it remains encrypted. It's kind of like a shredded document -- although it is conceivable that it could be reassembled, if it is mixed with enough random material, reassembly is all but impossible.
Anyway, I don't see this as a suggestion that encryption is bad per se. I see it as an extension of basic evidence rules -- if there is other evidence suggesting you have bad files and you have intentionally made those file unreadable, the tools you used to do that are possibly relevant. Kind of like pointing out the defendant owned a shredder, there was huge pile of shredded paper by it, and the "smoking gun" documents are no where to be found.
Last, it doesn't exactly sound like PGP was a "factor in his punishment". Rather, it sounds like it was a factor in his conviction. If the court had ruled that the evidence was inadmissible, then a new trial might have been ordered. This would require a finding that the irrelevant evidence was prejudicial enough that it could have formed a basis for the conviction. If the error was not considered substantial, then no new trial would have been ordered. Obviously, one never reaches the punishment phase without conviction, but I didn't read anything that suggested the punishment was more severe by virtue of the PGP software (kind of like a firearm enhancement).
That's a good point I should doublecheck. I've always assumed that it encrypts the file so even if viewed, it would be scrambled. At least that is what it ought to do and if doesn't I'll find something else. As for syncing, since I've gotten a laptop I haven't done that in ages.... which presents a problem should the thing die and I have no backup. Personally, I don't think there is any great solution to password issues. I know I can't remember them all, and recording them makes for other problems.
I just cryptopad for my Handspring. It doesn't connect to the internet so even if keylogging is available for palm, I don't care much. I have 30 or so passwords in there -- there's no way I could possibly remember them as most are basically alphabet soup.
easy fix, just line the inside of the house with foil.
They would probably prefer a "belt and suspenders" technique. Lucky for them, there is a ready made legal solution: aluminum siding. They could even place foil under the siding -- lead foil available anywhere? That would do the trick for sure!
Obviously from my other postings, I am positive on stem cell research. However, if the luddites refuse treatment, and others do not, then defective genes that activate prior to the age of procreation should be selected out in the luddite population. This says nothing about the baddies that turn on at 20, 30 or later, nor about children injured in accidents. But over time, the luddites may become less likely to have a predisposition for childhood genetic disorders which interfere with reproduction than those who cure their children. The reason being that those with the defects would either die prior to procreation or be unable to procreate for some reason. All bets are off though if the problem kicks in a bit later than Mother Nature would expect you to get laid. At that point, the non-luddites will be stronger by virtue of superior healthcare.
Sadly, natural selection only works if the "darwin award qualified" individual removes itself form the gene pool prior to procreation. The sad fact is, those most likely to procreate at the most prolific rate will be those most likely to believe stem cell research is a tool of satan.
I don't want to be perceived as being on the phone companies' side, but it wouldn't take too long to assemble a list of 911 call centers. I have a kiln which tends to attract attention during firings (8' plume of flame from the chimney during the peak of firing). After my first firing (the fire department showed up) I learned to call the 911 center about week before the firing, and then again when the firing starts to get dramatic (it lasts 5 days BTW) to let them know that everything is normal at my address if they happen to get calls. They put a note up at the center there and grumpy firemen/cops don't show up at 2:00 am anymore (*). I got their non-emergency number by calling the fire department's non-emergency number to get the phone number of the 911 call center covering my address. Although it would be way better if the phone companies would just turn over the info, it isn't impossible for the VOIP companies to compile the information independently.
(*) On a side note, I have learned that there are people who want to be helpful, which makes me feel good that the world isn't all bad. Every firing I get some early morning commuters rushing down the driveway blowing their horns, jumping out and yelling "your house is on fire!! -- your house is on fire!!"... I invite them down to the work pit for coffee or tea and peek at the inferno.;-)
I signed up for vonage 4 or 5 months ago -- maybe more even -- I can't recall exactly. It was spelled out all over the place that in order to get 911 service, you had to activate the service (this meant associating a location with your phone number). I mean it was in the books that came with the device, it was on the website when you signed on, it was in the welcome email... misleading?? Get real. It's kind of like complaining about being hit by a train -- sure, the crossing gate was down, the lights were flashing, it was blowin' its horn -- but gosh, does that really mean it might be dangerous to step into the tracks?? Who would guess??
You can't say to that person, "We need your root password because we're going to fire your ass and we need to change it so you can't access the system anymore. Oh, and by the way, can you show us how to do that?"
Well, just pop in a bootable linux cd, reboot from cd, become root, mount hard drive, edit/etc/shadow (delete the encrypted string relating to root's password), reboot from HD, enter root account (it is no longer password protected -- leave password blank), set root password to something new. It only takes a couple minutes to do (duration to fix is largely dependent on how fast your machine reboots).
This has saved my butt a few times when I've forgotten my root password on a machine I need to administer.
Slashdot Mirror
Who doesn't already have a phone?
The word "start" means more than "commence". It can also mean "the beginning" in the noun sense. Like, "let's go back to the start". Anyway, way back when I used windows, it never seemed odd to me -- it just seemed like the root of the menu tree, the beginning, the start. .... not that I'd want to be caught defending windows, but this "start" confusion thing seems a little over the top.
Your math is pretty good -- I get tired of listening to everyone slamming this deal because DSL is only a buck or two more. It isn't like everyone in the world has equivalent access.
I can get a slow DSL (finally
Whoa, I should have read your post more carefully. You are completely correct when you say that if a person isn't charged with "X", the jury can't convict him of "X".
It sounds like you are saying that if a person comes up with a new fraud scheme, he can't be tried and convicted. I think fraud is a very flexible term. Basically, any transaction in which Fraudster deceives "Mark" in order to get Mark to do something (transfer info, money, goods, whatever), that's fraud. It doesn't matter if you do it on the street corner, out of a brick and mortar shop, or on the internet -- the key is deception as the basis of an exchange. The problem with fraud isn't so much its definition, it's finding the fraudster and getting legal jurisdiction over him or her. A brand new innovative scam? If you can get the guy into court, he'll not get off merely because it's new.
My memory is failing me be it sounds akin to
Click the little "click here" if you click the link I made above -- interesting factoids. I remember being all happy about this and saddened that it got shut down. I also remember being berated for that opinion -- one I still hold. I want this back! More good than harm you know?
Remember, anecdotes aren't good evidence. I bought a Duron 700 machine in 2000. It burned out 18 months ago. I replaced it with an Athlon 20something-or-other. When I do backups, the machine overheats and shuts itself down unless I take the side panel off. Yeah, I've added more fans. I have compaq p133 that has been sitting in a semi-exposed environment for 2.5 years (roofed kiln shed -- no walls) exposed to tempteratures in the teens to the 90s in a humid environment. Still works like a charm.
So there are my three anecdotes. What's it mean? Nothing unless you have a statistically significant number of them.
Goddamned athiests. Hope you burn in Seattle!!
Well, he was a spook. Check out the bolded portion in the excerpt below:
----excerpt-----
September 1, 1985, dawned gray and ornery over the North Atlantic. For nine days Ballard's Titanic mission had the turgid sea to itself. But that morning, as first light broke, the crew was astonished to wake up smack in the middle of a NATO antisubmarine exercise. Hours earlier Ballard had radioed that he'd found the long-lost Titanic. Was it coincidence that NATO had chosen this morning, this exact spot, to flex its muscle?
"Just chance," Ballard assures me.
"Probably not," says John Piña Craven, former chief scientist of the navy's special projects office and project manager of its deep submergence projects program. "I'd suspect something else was down there. Something we didn't want the other side knowing about. Because that's how the CIA and the navy work."
Talk long enough to Craven and he will have you checking your back every few minutes to make sure you aren't being followed. He says things like, "I'm under continuous surveillance, so if I inadvertently leak classified information they're going to move in." Craven, who traces his forebears back to Moorish pirates and to the British navy at the time of Cromwell, is 80 now and lives in Hawaii. But in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, he was the navy's chief underwater spook.
Back then the submarine world -- in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. -- was a labyrinth of secrecy and tension. With good reason: Subs, particularly the newer, nuclear-powered ones, could lurk for days just offshore, virtually undetectable, capable of lobbing nuclear payloads hundreds of miles inland at unprotected cities.
In that supercharged atmosphere the slightest strategic advantage was critical. Spies were our first line of defense, and Craven was the best. In 1966 he was on the team that located and retrieved a hydrogen bomb lost after a midair refueling collision off the coast of Spain. He outfitted a sub with a deep compression chamber, so divers could tap Soviet undersea cables. He located a sunken Soviet nuclear sub that the Russians had lost track of, and fished nuclear hardware from the sea. Over the phone he says, "Ballard is me, 20 years later."
There is no reason that this device should be solely for browsing the web or checking email. In fact, they make a big deal about all the media formats it supports:
I have an MP3 player from a while back, 64mb built in with 128mb card -- 192 mbs is really not adequate. You have to carefully select and predict what you want to listen to with that little space. No room for spontaneity. My camera has a 128 mb card. For good picture quality, that's 70 pics. Wanna show friends some pictures -- make sure to carefully select and plan ahead. Want to have some portable porn? Better be a quickie. And last, what movie is going to fit into this space? Why even make it video capable if there is no storage?
My first impression of this was "COOL" - perfect thing to pack along on an extended motorcycle trip where limited space makes even a laptop seem too big. But as I consider the storage limitations intentionally built in to the device, it seems more and more like a toy instead of something useful. Other than not competing with the iPod, why would they cripple it this way? There is no good reason. With CF, you could have a gig of storage for $100, and several if you are willing to spring for the "big" cards. This thing would suddenly be able to function pretty close to a real computer. Right now, it's a toy. I'm feeling burned and I haven't even bought it. If it had CF, I'd be in line to get one first day out.
That's a really great price and this looks like a really cool device. I just wish they had gone with compact flash instead of the card format they chose. It would be nice to be able to slap in a couple gigs of extra memory.
Let me preface this by saying I know nothing of MN law or the facts of this case beyond the short article. However, I am a lawyer and I can guess at why the prosecution would want to get this evidence in the record and why it would be admitted.
The Prosecutor would likely argue that the existence of the encryption software demonstrates that the defendant knew that what he was doing was wrong and that he was trying to hide damning evidence. Hiding evidence against you is frowned on. If you know evidence could be used against you and then go about destroying it, in certain situations the court is entitled to instruct the jury to presume that the destroyed evidence would be harmful to your case.
Now, encrypted evidence may not be literally destroyed, but it is as good as destroyed as long as it remains encrypted. It's kind of like a shredded document -- although it is conceivable that it could be reassembled, if it is mixed with enough random material, reassembly is all but impossible.
Anyway, I don't see this as a suggestion that encryption is bad per se. I see it as an extension of basic evidence rules -- if there is other evidence suggesting you have bad files and you have intentionally made those file unreadable, the tools you used to do that are possibly relevant. Kind of like pointing out the defendant owned a shredder, there was huge pile of shredded paper by it, and the "smoking gun" documents are no where to be found.
Last, it doesn't exactly sound like PGP was a "factor in his punishment". Rather, it sounds like it was a factor in his conviction. If the court had ruled that the evidence was inadmissible, then a new trial might have been ordered. This would require a finding that the irrelevant evidence was prejudicial enough that it could have formed a basis for the conviction. If the error was not considered substantial, then no new trial would have been ordered. Obviously, one never reaches the punishment phase without conviction, but I didn't read anything that suggested the punishment was more severe by virtue of the PGP software (kind of like a firearm enhancement).
That's a good point I should doublecheck. I've always assumed that it encrypts the file so even if viewed, it would be scrambled. At least that is what it ought to do and if doesn't I'll find something else. As for syncing, since I've gotten a laptop I haven't done that in ages .... which presents a problem should the thing die and I have no backup. Personally, I don't think there is any great solution to password issues. I know I can't remember them all, and recording them makes for other problems.
I just cryptopad for my Handspring. It doesn't connect to the internet so even if keylogging is available for palm, I don't care much. I have 30 or so passwords in there -- there's no way I could possibly remember them as most are basically alphabet soup.
True -- but once it's hidden behind the protective aluminum siding, who will know??
Lasers and silver foil houses don't mix well either. Case in point: Heart of Gold.
Obviously from my other postings, I am positive on stem cell research. However, if the luddites refuse treatment, and others do not, then defective genes that activate prior to the age of procreation should be selected out in the luddite population. This says nothing about the baddies that turn on at 20, 30 or later, nor about children injured in accidents. But over time, the luddites may become less likely to have a predisposition for childhood genetic disorders which interfere with reproduction than those who cure their children. The reason being that those with the defects would either die prior to procreation or be unable to procreate for some reason. All bets are off though if the problem kicks in a bit later than Mother Nature would expect you to get laid. At that point, the non-luddites will be stronger by virtue of superior healthcare.
Sex is fun. Procreation isn't. Word to the wise, vasectomy = good time.
Sadly, natural selection only works if the "darwin award qualified" individual removes itself form the gene pool prior to procreation. The sad fact is, those most likely to procreate at the most prolific rate will be those most likely to believe stem cell research is a tool of satan.
I don't want to be perceived as being on the phone companies' side, but it wouldn't take too long to assemble a list of 911 call centers. I have a kiln which tends to attract attention during firings (8' plume of flame from the chimney during the peak of firing). After my first firing (the fire department showed up) I learned to call the 911 center about week before the firing, and then again when the firing starts to get dramatic (it lasts 5 days BTW) to let them know that everything is normal at my address if they happen to get calls. They put a note up at the center there and grumpy firemen/cops don't show up at 2:00 am anymore (*). I got their non-emergency number by calling the fire department's non-emergency number to get the phone number of the 911 call center covering my address. Although it would be way better if the phone companies would just turn over the info, it isn't impossible for the VOIP companies to compile the information independently.
... I invite them down to the work pit for coffee or tea and peek at the inferno. ;-)
(*) On a side note, I have learned that there are people who want to be helpful, which makes me feel good that the world isn't all bad. Every firing I get some early morning commuters rushing down the driveway blowing their horns, jumping out and yelling "your house is on fire!! -- your house is on fire!!"
I signed up for vonage 4 or 5 months ago -- maybe more even -- I can't recall exactly. It was spelled out all over the place that in order to get 911 service, you had to activate the service (this meant associating a location with your phone number). I mean it was in the books that came with the device, it was on the website when you signed on, it was in the welcome email ... misleading?? Get real. It's kind of like complaining about being hit by a train -- sure, the crossing gate was down, the lights were flashing, it was blowin' its horn -- but gosh, does that really mean it might be dangerous to step into the tracks?? Who would guess??
Weren't you told? This is for backups after mcrypting them.
re resetting bios
I had to do that once too. Physical access rocks.
Well, just pop in a bootable linux cd, reboot from cd, become root, mount hard drive, edit
This has saved my butt a few times when I've forgotten my root password on a machine I need to administer.