It's a tap card originally for public transport, but now widely used in stores, parking lots, post offices, fast food outlets, etc. throughout Hong Kong. It's very popular, and just about everyone in Hong Kong uses it every day.
It's anonymous in the sense that no ID's required to buy one.
But the cards are all numbered, of course, and if the Authorities know the number blind stamped on your Octopus card, then they can -- in theory at least -- match it with the payment record kept by Octopus. (Although Octopus is run as an independent, private venture, the HK Government effectively controls it with about a 60 percent indirect shareholding.) And with a maximum loaded value of HK$1000 (US$125) it's not really a high-value payment option.
A bank account I'd ignored got turned over to the state as abandoned property. Twenty-some years later when I woke up to the fact and claimed it back, the state wanted some proof that I'd lived at the address on the account. Those old phone and electric bills came in handy.
The Supreme Court was pretty clear in the leading case of Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), officially summarized thusly:
"Appellant was convicted of violating that part of Cal. Penal Code 415 which prohibits 'maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person . . . by . . . offensive conduct,' for wearing a jacket bearing the words 'Fuck the Draft' in a corridor of the Los Angeles Courthouse . . ..Held: Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense."
It says the computer simulation took over a year to make, and that only the final set of footprints was real. The simulation was created by a Beijing firm, Crystal Digital.
Just look at Dell's Chinese website: there, right in the middle, amongst all those Chinese characters, you'll see the caozuo xitong ("operating system") listed in clear Roman letters: Linux.
The Mint's restrictions on melting, which are formally promulgated by the Secretary of the Treasury, are of course specifically authorized by law.
See 31 USC 5111(d), under which the Secretary of the Treasury "may prohibit or limit the exportation, melting, or treatment of United States coins when the Secretary decides the prohibition or limitation is necessary to protect the coinage of the United States."
In response to Google's decision to censor searches on www.google.cn., John Young of Cryptome.org has just set up a new site which "publishes information, documents and opinions banned by the People's Republic of China."
Perhaps you can't read the notice, but is there, in Chinese, at the bottom of the search results on Google.com.cn:
"Ju dangdi falü fagui he zhengce, bufen sousuo jieguo weiyu xianshi."
"According to local laws, regulations and policies, part of the search results is not being shown."
I've used internet services in China, Vietnam and Russia and the rates shown on that map for those countries -- US$2.50 to US$3.00 -- bear no relationship to reality; they're pure nonsense.
Current rates in China are about RMB2/hour. That's US$0.25/hour, a tenth of what's shown. Maybe less at times -- I've paid as low as RMB1 -- and maybe a bit more, particularly for an LCD screen or such. But regardless of price, it's always broadband and always pretty quick.
That such a prestigious publication as Foreign Policy would host such a spurious study is dumbfounding.
Instead of posting excuses here, the author ought to be withdrawing the study and re-doing it properly. The results might surprise him.
Read the Complaint filed by the Secret Service agent. Posted over at Smoking Gun, it's fascinating and shows how Smathers pointed the finger right at himself: when he did a test retrieve, logged of course by AOL, he retrieved just one, incriminating account from the millions there: his own.
He also e-mailed himself logs of his IM conversations with the buyer, which his AOL laptop stored away, to wit:
"I think I found the member database . . . Just need to figure out how to get the SNs [screen names] it is spread over like 30 computers . ..
OK, I got it figured out . . . there are going to be millions of them so, will take time to extract I will do them a chunk at a time . . . "
Most interestingly, the government isn't just charging him with theft; it's also charging him with conspiracy to spam, under the so-called Can-Spam Act enacted late last year.
You'll find the list of banned mainland addresses HERE, the list of banned Taiwan addresses HERE, and the list of the other banned addresses HERE. There's a long report in Chinese about the blacklisting HERE; it notes the special effort China's made to close open relays nationwide.
Here's the list of 29 banned addresses outside the Mainland and Taiwan:
If you liked the silly old guilder notes don't despair. The designers of those crazy Dutch notes had to look elsewhere for work when the Euro came in and they found it in Hong Kong; unfortunately their design for the HK$10 note, interesting as it is, looks nothing Chinese and everything Dutch.
The Dutch had a few barcoded banknotes until the Euro replaced them. If you're interested in ordering some for your own economy, the Dutch printers Joh. Enschedé will do them up for you. As they say "The use of bar-codes . . . gives a banknote an unmistakable contemporary feel."
Here's a rough translation of the article, by hand. Feel free to point out any mistakes, it was done too rapidly. Note that according to the article, the government has already made this request to MS.
Reading the article as a whole, I think the talk about firewalls is a polite smoke screen and that the Taiwanese, like the Mainlanders, are really concerned about backdoors and such.
Government Asks MS To Open Source Code
Lin Shuling reporting from Taipei
On the eve of MS's submission of its administrative reconciliation plan to the Fair Trade Committee, the chairman of the Administrative Research Committee Lin Jiacheng stated that in order to increase administrative security and loosen monopoly, the Government has already requested MS to release its source code. But he emphasized that there's no connection between this request and the FTC proceeding. Asking MS to release its source code and promoting development of open-source software are two linch pins of government policy.
Lin, head of e-government planning, said that in addition to Taiwan, many other countries have recently asked MS to open its source code and he believes that MS is now making a full appraisal of these requests, as it must given the wave of these requests.
Lin emphasized that as open-source programming gives users the opportunity to access source code, government users could take advantage of this access to build firewalls, and thus create relatively safe protection for government data. But looking at MS's operating system now, government agencies don't have the source code and thus can't themselves properly design a firewall and increase data protection.
Lin also stated that since MS's operating system is relatively widely used by the government, the failure of MS to make its source code available is particularly disadvantageous.
Regarding MS's previous "copyright protection" excuse for not making its source code available, Lin noted that source code can be opened on many different levels and opening the source code of the entire operating system is just one level, opening just a part is another level. He emphasized that in view of operating needs, "asking MS to open its source code is very reasonable."
Lin believes that since IBM, HP, Shengyang, and other MS competitors are now actively developing Linux-based operating systems, government cannot as a matter of policy rely solely on one vendor, MS. Given the importance of safe-keeping its data, the government must act to protect itself.
As a related official pointed out, when source code is open, the user can modify and improve it directly, and thus good and cheap and secure Linux has made inroads into become an operating system for large government systems worldwide, especially in military and intelligence fields. The US Pentagon, Air Force, FAA and other agencies are now using Linux.
Lin Jiacheng believes that from a policy standpoint "asking MS to open its source code" and "promoting open-source software" are hand-in-hand measures, and government data systems can't rely on a single supplier. The relevant organ of the Administrative Yuan has already established a Guiding Committee On Open-Source Software with the goal that by 2007 at least 30 percent of public and commercial internet servers will use open-source software and 10 percent of PCs will run on open-source platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a tap card originally for public transport, but now widely used in stores, parking lots, post offices, fast food outlets, etc. throughout Hong Kong. It's very popular, and just about everyone in Hong Kong uses it every day.
It's anonymous in the sense that no ID's required to buy one.
But the cards are all numbered, of course, and if the Authorities know the number blind stamped on your Octopus card, then they can -- in theory at least -- match it with the payment record kept by Octopus. (Although Octopus is run as an independent, private venture, the HK Government effectively controls it with about a 60 percent indirect shareholding.) And with a maximum loaded value of HK$1000 (US$125) it's not really a high-value payment option.
A bank account I'd ignored got turned over to the state as abandoned property. Twenty-some years later when I woke up to the fact and claimed it back, the state wanted some proof that I'd lived at the address on the account. Those old phone and electric bills came in handy.
The Supreme Court was pretty clear in the leading case of Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), officially summarized thusly:
.Held: Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense."
"Appellant was convicted of violating that part of Cal. Penal Code 415 which prohibits 'maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person . . . by . . . offensive conduct,' for wearing a jacket bearing the words 'Fuck the Draft' in a corridor of the Los Angeles Courthouse . . .
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=403&invol=15
A Chinese website reported over the weekend that the opening swoop over Beijing was a computer simulation:
http://cd.qq.com/a/20080809/000059.htm
It says the computer simulation took over a year to make, and that only the final set of footprints was real. The simulation was created by a Beijing firm, Crystal Digital.
http://www.crystalcg.com/
At least not in Hong Kong, where the local phone company has been offering this service for years:
http://www.nowbroadbandtv.com/eng/
Nothing at all.
. aspx/dimen_c521?c=cn&cs=cndhs1&l=zh&s=dhs
Just look at Dell's Chinese website: there, right in the middle, amongst all those Chinese characters, you'll see the caozuo xitong ("operating system") listed in clear Roman letters: Linux.
http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/features
(The stuff at the top says Dell "recommends the use of" XP Professional.)
The Mint's restrictions on melting, which are formally promulgated by the Secretary of the Treasury, are of course specifically authorized by law.
See 31 USC 5111(d), under which the Secretary of the Treasury "may prohibit or limit the exportation, melting, or treatment of United States coins when the Secretary decides the prohibition or limitation is necessary to protect the coinage of the United States."
In response to Google's decision to censor searches on www.google.cn., John Young of Cryptome.org has just set up a new site which "publishes information, documents and opinions banned by the People's Republic of China."
http://www.cryptome.cn/
Perhaps you can't read the notice, but is there, in Chinese, at the bottom of the search results on Google.com.cn:
"Ju dangdi falü fagui he zhengce, bufen sousuo jieguo weiyu xianshi."
"According to local laws, regulations and policies, part of the search results is not being shown."
I've used internet services in China, Vietnam and Russia and the rates shown on that map for those countries -- US$2.50 to US$3.00 -- bear no relationship to reality; they're pure nonsense.
Current rates in China are about RMB2/hour. That's US$0.25/hour, a tenth of what's shown. Maybe less at times -- I've paid as low as RMB1 -- and maybe a bit more, particularly for an LCD screen or such. But regardless of price, it's always broadband and always pretty quick.
That such a prestigious publication as Foreign Policy would host such a spurious study is dumbfounding.
Instead of posting excuses here, the author ought to be withdrawing the study and re-doing it properly. The results might surprise him.
Read the Complaint filed by the Secret Service agent. Posted over at Smoking Gun, it's fascinating and shows how Smathers pointed the finger right at himself: when he did a test retrieve, logged of course by AOL, he retrieved just one, incriminating account from the millions there: his own.
.
He also e-mailed himself logs of his IM conversations with the buyer, which his AOL laptop stored away, to wit:
"I think I found the member database . . . Just need to figure out how to get the SNs [screen names] it is spread over like 30 computers . .
OK, I got it figured out . . . there are going to be millions of them so, will take time to extract I will do them a chunk at a time . . . "
Most interestingly, the government isn't just charging him with theft; it's also charging him with conspiracy to spam, under the so-called Can-Spam Act enacted late last year.
You'll find the list of banned mainland addresses HERE, the list of banned Taiwan addresses HERE, and the list of the other banned addresses HERE. There's a long report in Chinese about the blacklisting HERE; it notes the special effort China's made to close open relays nationwide.
Here's the list of 29 banned addresses outside the Mainland and Taiwan:
1. 200.84.154.28 dC8549A1C.dslam-01-1-2-01-01-01.acr.dsl.cantv.net 2. 24.29.146.158 (RoadRunner) 3. 64.15.239.131 mail.bigfoot.com 4. 65.54.247.110 bay2-f110.bay2.hotmail.com 5. 66.218.66.101 n33.grp.scd.yahoo.com
6. 66.218.66.103 n35.grp.scd.yahoo.com 7. 66.218.66.106n38.grp.scd.yahoo.com 8. 66.218.66.66 n11.grp.scd.yahoo.com 9. 66.218.66.72 n17.grp.scd.yahoo.com 10. 66.218.66.73 n18.grp.scd.yahoo.com
11. 66.218.66.77 n21.grp.scd.yahoo.com 12. 66.218.66.80 n24.grp.scd.yahoo.com 13. 66.218.66.84 n28.grp.scd.yahoo.com 14. 66.218.66.92 n8.grp.scd.yahoo.com 15. 66.218.78.131 web40514.mail.yahoo.com
16. 207.199.160.40 (Crosslink, US) 17. 216.33.121.8 www01.rfaweb.org 18. 195.147.87.107 ip03.afrocari.adsl.gxn.net 19. 80.49.187.11 pd11.ostroleka.sdi.tpnet.pl 20. 61.41.62.138 (Mobile Leader, Korea) 21. 203.251.44.102 (Taejon, Korea)
22. 210.121.220.77 (Woosung, Korea) 23. 211.186.145.100 (Thrunet, Korea) 24. 211.198.226.96 (Korea Telecom) 25. 211.206.199.2 (Sunchunac, Korea)
26. 202.144.67.19 (Satyam Infoway, India) 27. 193.162.153.2 (Tele Danmark) 28. 24.81.222.210 h24-81-222-210.vc.shawcable.net 29. 202.163.130.7 (Online Training, Australia)
If you liked the silly old guilder notes don't despair. The designers of those crazy Dutch notes had to look elsewhere for work when the Euro came in and they found it in Hong Kong; unfortunately their design for the HK$10 note, interesting as it is, looks nothing Chinese and everything Dutch.
The Dutch had a few barcoded banknotes until the Euro replaced them. If you're interested in ordering some for your own economy, the Dutch printers Joh. Enschedé will do them up for you. As they say "The use of bar-codes . . . gives a banknote an unmistakable contemporary feel."
Here's a rough translation of the article, by hand. Feel free to point out any mistakes, it was done too rapidly. Note that according to the article, the government has already made this request to MS.
Reading the article as a whole, I think the talk about firewalls is a polite smoke screen and that the Taiwanese, like the Mainlanders, are really concerned about backdoors and such.
Government Asks MS To Open Source Code
Lin Shuling reporting from Taipei
On the eve of MS's submission of its administrative reconciliation plan to the Fair Trade Committee, the chairman of the Administrative Research Committee Lin Jiacheng stated that in order to increase administrative security and loosen monopoly, the Government has already requested MS to release its source code. But he emphasized that there's no connection between this request and the FTC proceeding. Asking MS to release its source code and promoting development of open-source software are two linch pins of government policy.
Lin, head of e-government planning, said that in addition to Taiwan, many other countries have recently asked MS to open its source code and he believes that MS is now making a full appraisal of these requests, as it must given the wave of these requests.
Lin emphasized that as open-source programming gives users the opportunity to access source code, government users could take advantage of this access to build firewalls, and thus create relatively safe protection for government data. But looking at MS's operating system now, government agencies don't have the source code and thus can't themselves properly design a firewall and increase data protection.
Lin also stated that since MS's operating system is relatively widely used by the government, the failure of MS to make its source code available is particularly disadvantageous.
Regarding MS's previous "copyright protection" excuse for not making its source code available, Lin noted that source code can be opened on many different levels and opening the source code of the entire operating system is just one level, opening just a part is another level. He emphasized that in view of operating needs, "asking MS to open its source code is very reasonable."
Lin believes that since IBM, HP, Shengyang, and other MS competitors are now actively developing Linux-based operating systems, government cannot as a matter of policy rely solely on one vendor, MS. Given the importance of safe-keeping its data, the government must act to protect itself.
As a related official pointed out, when source code is open, the user can modify and improve it directly, and thus good and cheap and secure Linux has made inroads into become an operating system for large government systems worldwide, especially in military and intelligence fields. The US Pentagon, Air Force, FAA and other agencies are now using Linux.
Lin Jiacheng believes that from a policy standpoint "asking MS to open its source code" and "promoting open-source software" are hand-in-hand measures, and government data systems can't rely on a single supplier. The relevant organ of the Administrative Yuan has already established a Guiding Committee On Open-Source Software with the goal that by 2007 at least 30 percent of public and commercial internet servers will use open-source software and 10 percent of PCs will run on open-source platforms.
Source: Zhongshi Dianzi Bao 2002-11-10