Yet I'm sure you would agree that we shouldn't revoke our trust of all people on the basis of the violations of a few.
When the people act in the name of "the government", then yes there *is* a monolithic entitiy called "the government", and yes, it's resonable to revoke trust in it.
When will the space cowboys realise we aussies don't like having other peoples space junk dropped on us ?
If you think about it a little bit, you realize that when they 'de-orbit' the satellites, they will be aiming at the Pacific Ocean, since it's far & away the largest target. It's an unfortunate fact that orbits that end in the Pacific will be coming over places like Australia. However, I suspect that the people doing the de-orbiting are much better at it now than in the Spacelab days, so you will likely not have anything to worry about.
Government violates privacy precisely because they expect to labor under secrecy.
The problem is that government has violated the trust given them. Again, look at Watergate and the Nixon enemies list as an example. Its those kinds of violations that make people nervous about giving them more trust.
Strawman arguments for privacy only benefit those with something to hide, and allow criminals and terrorists to plan their campaigns behind the shield of anonymity.
{sarcasm on}
Then I'm sure you'll have no problem handing over your social security number, street address and phone number, credit card numbers (with exp. dates, please) and bank account info, along with that for your kids. What? You're not going to? Why, then, you must have something to hide!
{sarcasm off}
That's the first problem with your stance - you do have an expecation of privacy, and I don't think you're a terrorist or a child pornographer.
The second problem is that parts of the government has historically shown an annoying tendency to violate privacy rights for no particular good reason. Watergate and other things Nixon is a classic example, particularly the 'enemies list'. (For those who don't remember, Nixon and his cronies ordered the FBI and the IRS to investigate and cause trouble for people who Nixon considered his political enemies - classic cases of misuse of power.) These reasons are enough for people to want to protect their privacy themselves, since we've already seen we can't rely on the government to do it.
Wake up people, there are some very evil people out there, and it is our duty as decent Christians to do everything we can to help stop them.
Many people, myself included, find it evil for the powers-that-be to trample all over the innocent in pursuit of the evil. And, given the recent track record of the government in the issue of things like wrongful convictions (remember that the gov. of Illinois has put all death sentences on hold, because of massive uncertainty in the process, or you can check here for organizations which track this sort of thing), many people are not sure the government is the best organization to give our absolute trust to.
Also note, while the vast majority are probably decent, there are a lot of people who are not christian. You're not calling their decency into question, are you?
Please. The entire reason for the Drake Equation was to try to put some analytical thought into the probabilities of life on other planets. Drake himself said the numbers were up for debate and rife with assumptions. Where you stand on the SETI debate will influence what numbers you put into the equation.
The bastions of religion are all in areas which are unknown or "unknowable". As science begins to peer into these subjects religious dogma is shown to be innacurate or downright wrong.
Do religions or their champions collapse? No. They simply retreat back into less-explored regions.
Note bene: this is called the God of the Gaps argument, and you've gone an excellent job of showing why it's a pointless position.
Do not interpret SETI's lack of results as meaning that there is no life elsewhere. There is just no life using radios.
It's a little premature to be saying even this, isn't it? We've barely started looking, and there's gobs of space and frequencies that we haven't examined yet. To proclaim failure at this point is not reasonable.
Now, with all that whirling and bumping, some of the stuff gets turned into x-rays...
Um, that's not correct, is it? I thought that the stuff whirling around is whirling so fast that when it bumps into other stuff, the energy from momentum is what's being given off as x-rays. The stuff itself is not destroyed (converted into energy) but rather slowed down. Unless you're suggesting that there's nuclear fusion happening, which I suppose is possible.
use a 2048 bit key; I know plenty of people that use a 4096 bit key. Look at how long it's taking distributed.net to crack 64 bit encryption. I doubt the government as a whole has as much power as d.net.
Ignoring your basically clueless estimate of the computing power available to the government, did your calculation take into account the amount of effort it takes to break the session key? "Session key? What's that?" you ask. Gee, didn't bother to read the documentation, did you? Why don't you go do your math again, only this time use the session key size (128 bits, last time I heard), and see what results you get. Also, you might check a message somewhere above this one, wherein somebody suggests that the session key is pretty poor quality, thus making the keyspace that much smaller.
I use PGP 6.5.3 for Win32 to encrypt the e-mail between myself and home while I'm away at college. I generated both keypairs (mine and the home one) myself, and copied them between the two computers via diskette. In other words, the public keys themselves never traveled across an untrusted network (ie the Internet). So, does this PGP problem affect me in this case whatsoever?
Only if somebody gets ahold of your public key while you're not looking and modifies it to include the additional decryption key.
Extending the situation, does this problem have any effect if keys are exchanged via some secure channel, where no potentially untrusted third party has access to the keys (and the chance to add an ADK to them)? So, don't trust the keyservers (which I never use) and you'll pretty much be OK as long as you get the public key directly from the person it belongs to?
Sure, so long as that person keeps perfect control of the key. However, if he goes away for the weekend and a spook enters his house and modifies your public key on his machine, you're hosed.
You can't be held in contempt of court for exercising your constitutional rights. Forget it. You can't be punished in any way for exercising your constitutional rights.
640x480 is the resolution of a North American TV screen, which is in a 4:3 ratio. In fact, you'll find that all the standard settings are in the same 4:3 ratio.
Nice-sounding machine. Once again though, I have to ask: how much power does it use?
Bigger and faster isn't always better. While I'm not necessarily lining up to go buy one of these 486s, I have to point out that there's a niche for small, reasonably powerful and LOW ENERGY CONSUMPTION machines. What you describe is small and quite powerful, but it WILL NOT RUN on 7.5 watts.
But seriously, isn't that a bit much to spend on a 486, even if it is small and low powered?
Depends entirely on the application. Any project where space, power and weight are heavily constrained are potential targets. I thought of a couple: including one of those experimental electric car projects that you find at universities. Data collection and control would be good uses. A 486 is plenty fast enough if you're not running Windows, but finding that much processor horsepower that runs on a total of 7.5 watts is difficult.
No, it's $1500 for a REALLY TINY, REALLY LOW POWER 486. Don't compare it to running down to your local screwdriver shop and buying a $100 motherboard and a $75 Celeron, because you're talking two entirely different critters here.
Nope. Different beast. Cray machines are designed for high speed calculation. Also (and I'm sure somebody will jump in here to correct me), Cray can only handle a single operating system image. No support for virtual machines. IBM mainframes specialize in I/O, and business logic, not number crunching. And, the Cray cannot handle multi-terabyte databases, which is IBM's bread and butter.
DeCSS is open source, meaning there is no copyright.
Uh, no. Open Source is a particular type of distribution, controlled by copyright law. Copyright law gives the author the ability to control distribution. Making DeCSS open source means that the author chose, under his copyright, to distribute it in a certain way. It's still copyrighted.
Now, if you had said public domain, you'd be be right. However, DeCSS was not released to the public domain. (Maybe he should have.)
Lots of legislators throw up 'trial balloons', partly to impress the home electorate and partly to see what will fly. Many of the more odious things we here about early on are shot down as part of the normal process of making laws. It's no surprise that the anti-linking provisions were pulled - somebody had a rush of brains to the head and talked the sponsors into dropping it. Sometimes the system does work.
Every time I see a new Katz article, I'm drawn to it for the adrenaline rush I get out of being pissed off at his article
You know, I wonder if that's why we get so many Katz bashers? You recognize it, and are honest enough with yourself to say so out loud. I wonder if the others are getting off on the rush, but don't know why?
Lots of questions. Here are some answers, in some order or other.
Is a copyright implied and automatic?
Yes. It used to be that in order to register a copyright, you had to deposit a copy of whatever it was with the copyright office. There was a change to the copyright laws a little while back, that gave you a copyright as soon as you created the work in a "tangible medium", which includes data formats. So, your picture of a fish is copyrighted by you, automatically.
I snap a picture with my quickcam of my Pirhana swimming happily in his tank, and post it to rec.fish.with.big.teeth, and later find that same picture on some dudes webpage, do I have any legal recourse?
Yes, but you'd better check with a lawyer first.
I understand that there *are* copyrighted images... there are also a heck of a lot that *arent* copyrighted in any verifiable way.
Regardless, they still are copyrighted. If the picture was published in a traditional medium, it's easier (look at a magazine some time - you'll see all kinds of identifing info on the pictures, you just have to dig). When you "publish" via the Internet, you have to take further steps to protect yourself, like imbedding a copyright statement in the picture itself. Some picture formats (.jpg?.png? anybody?) allow you to include copyright data in the picture. You could "publish" via Usenet, and then collect a copy of the original picture and keep it as proof that you did so, so you could then confront the person who swiped the picture.
If you're serious about your pictures, then I'd consult with a copyright lawyer first, to find out how to protect your rights.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, as a more interesting question, did YOU submit the applications before linking in your article?
...phil
When the people act in the name of "the government", then yes there *is* a monolithic entitiy called "the government", and yes, it's resonable to revoke trust in it.
...phil
And, every year a new crop of eligible consumers die. And, the cellphones can be resold.
...phil
If you think about it a little bit, you realize that when they 'de-orbit' the satellites, they will be aiming at the Pacific Ocean, since it's far & away the largest target. It's an unfortunate fact that orbits that end in the Pacific will be coming over places like Australia. However, I suspect that the people doing the de-orbiting are much better at it now than in the Spacelab days, so you will likely not have anything to worry about.
...phil
The problem is that government has violated the trust given them. Again, look at Watergate and the Nixon enemies list as an example. Its those kinds of violations that make people nervous about giving them more trust.
...phil
{sarcasm on}
Then I'm sure you'll have no problem handing over your social security number, street address and phone number, credit card numbers (with exp. dates, please) and bank account info, along with that for your kids. What? You're not going to? Why, then, you must have something to hide!
{sarcasm off}
That's the first problem with your stance - you do have an expecation of privacy, and I don't think you're a terrorist or a child pornographer.
The second problem is that parts of the government has historically shown an annoying tendency to violate privacy rights for no particular good reason. Watergate and other things Nixon is a classic example, particularly the 'enemies list'. (For those who don't remember, Nixon and his cronies ordered the FBI and the IRS to investigate and cause trouble for people who Nixon considered his political enemies - classic cases of misuse of power.) These reasons are enough for people to want to protect their privacy themselves, since we've already seen we can't rely on the government to do it.
Wake up people, there are some very evil people out there, and it is our duty as decent Christians to do everything we can to help stop them.
Many people, myself included, find it evil for the powers-that-be to trample all over the innocent in pursuit of the evil. And, given the recent track record of the government in the issue of things like wrongful convictions (remember that the gov. of Illinois has put all death sentences on hold, because of massive uncertainty in the process, or you can check here for organizations which track this sort of thing), many people are not sure the government is the best organization to give our absolute trust to.
Also note, while the vast majority are probably decent, there are a lot of people who are not christian. You're not calling their decency into question, are you?
...phil
Has anybody checked to see if the same thing happens in Excel?
...phil
But, to call it nonsense is insulting at least.
...phil
Note bene: this is called the God of the Gaps argument, and you've gone an excellent job of showing why it's a pointless position.
...phil
It's a little premature to be saying even this, isn't it? We've barely started looking, and there's gobs of space and frequencies that we haven't examined yet. To proclaim failure at this point is not reasonable.
...phil
Um, that's not correct, is it? I thought that the stuff whirling around is whirling so fast that when it bumps into other stuff, the energy from momentum is what's being given off as x-rays. The stuff itself is not destroyed (converted into energy) but rather slowed down. Unless you're suggesting that there's nuclear fusion happening, which I suppose is possible.
...phil
Ignoring your basically clueless estimate of the computing power available to the government, did your calculation take into account the amount of effort it takes to break the session key? "Session key? What's that?" you ask. Gee, didn't bother to read the documentation, did you? Why don't you go do your math again, only this time use the session key size (128 bits, last time I heard), and see what results you get. Also, you might check a message somewhere above this one, wherein somebody suggests that the session key is pretty poor quality, thus making the keyspace that much smaller.
...phil
Only if somebody gets ahold of your public key while you're not looking and modifies it to include the additional decryption key.
Extending the situation, does this problem have any effect if keys are exchanged via some secure channel, where no potentially untrusted third party has access to the keys (and the chance to add an ADK to them)? So, don't trust the keyservers (which I never use) and you'll pretty much be OK as long as you get the public key directly from the person it belongs to?
Sure, so long as that person keeps perfect control of the key. However, if he goes away for the weekend and a spook enters his house and modifies your public key on his machine, you're hosed.
...phil
Yeah, right. Try telling that to Kevin Mitnick.
...phil
Members of the Microsoft Developer's Network have had access to Windows ME for a little while now. Our copy arrived in the mail today.
...phil
640x480 is the resolution of a North American TV screen, which is in a 4:3 ratio. In fact, you'll find that all the standard settings are in the same 4:3 ratio.
...phil
Bigger and faster isn't always better. While I'm not necessarily lining up to go buy one of these 486s, I have to point out that there's a niche for small, reasonably powerful and LOW ENERGY CONSUMPTION machines. What you describe is small and quite powerful, but it WILL NOT RUN on 7.5 watts.
...phil
Depends entirely on the application. Any project where space, power and weight are heavily constrained are potential targets. I thought of a couple: including one of those experimental electric car projects that you find at universities. Data collection and control would be good uses. A 486 is plenty fast enough if you're not running Windows, but finding that much processor horsepower that runs on a total of 7.5 watts is difficult.
How much power does your Athlon chip dissapate?
...phil
Because not every computing solution can be solved by a computer that has to sit on a desk.
...phil
No, it's $1500 for a REALLY TINY, REALLY LOW POWER 486. Don't compare it to running down to your local screwdriver shop and buying a $100 motherboard and a $75 Celeron, because you're talking two entirely different critters here.
...phil
Nope. Different beast. Cray machines are designed for high speed calculation. Also (and I'm sure somebody will jump in here to correct me), Cray can only handle a single operating system image. No support for virtual machines. IBM mainframes specialize in I/O, and business logic, not number crunching. And, the Cray cannot handle multi-terabyte databases, which is IBM's bread and butter.
...phil
Uh, no. Open Source is a particular type of distribution, controlled by copyright law. Copyright law gives the author the ability to control distribution. Making DeCSS open source means that the author chose, under his copyright, to distribute it in a certain way. It's still copyrighted.
Now, if you had said public domain, you'd be be right. However, DeCSS was not released to the public domain. (Maybe he should have.)
...phil
Lots of legislators throw up 'trial balloons', partly to impress the home electorate and partly to see what will fly. Many of the more odious things we here about early on are shot down as part of the normal process of making laws. It's no surprise that the anti-linking provisions were pulled - somebody had a rush of brains to the head and talked the sponsors into dropping it. Sometimes the system does work.
...phil
You know, I wonder if that's why we get so many Katz bashers? You recognize it, and are honest enough with yourself to say so out loud. I wonder if the others are getting off on the rush, but don't know why?
...phil
Is a copyright implied and automatic?
Yes. It used to be that in order to register a copyright, you had to deposit a copy of whatever it was with the copyright office. There was a change to the copyright laws a little while back, that gave you a copyright as soon as you created the work in a "tangible medium", which includes data formats. So, your picture of a fish is copyrighted by you, automatically.
I snap a picture with my quickcam of my Pirhana swimming happily in his tank, and post it to rec.fish.with.big.teeth, and later find that same picture on some dudes webpage, do I have any legal recourse?
Yes, but you'd better check with a lawyer first.
I understand that there *are* copyrighted images... there are also a heck of a lot that *arent* copyrighted in any verifiable way.
Regardless, they still are copyrighted. If the picture was published in a traditional medium, it's easier (look at a magazine some time - you'll see all kinds of identifing info on the pictures, you just have to dig). When you "publish" via the Internet, you have to take further steps to protect yourself, like imbedding a copyright statement in the picture itself. Some picture formats (.jpg? .png? anybody?) allow you to include copyright data in the picture. You could "publish" via Usenet, and then collect a copy of the original picture and keep it as proof that you did so, so you could then confront the person who swiped the picture.
If you're serious about your pictures, then I'd consult with a copyright lawyer first, to find out how to protect your rights.
...phil