What I like about Babylon 5 is that when you get down to it, the series is one big story. Season after season, it unfolds and they do it epic wise:).
Imaginative and believable uiniverse... you say no? I like their universe. It's nice and chaotic and maybe a little too human. You don't find it believable? Why exactly not? Because two vastly superior races use the whole galaxy to fight out their doctrinal differences? Sounds rather human to me... a nice (kinda) religous war.
Or perhaps because some human group thinks it can use others for their advantage or feels superior towards another part of humanity... what is not believable about that?
Character driven? Yes. Definatly. TA large part of the plot exploits what some of the main characters want. That is what the Shadows ask: "What do you want?" And then they give it to you... slighty corrupted to fit in their plans off course. Still recognisable. And then even this turns out to be only a part of the story and we move deeper into the human issues.
And last... you have a problem with plotholes? In the whole series, 5 seasons and two movies there is exactly 1 inconsistancy (a matter who met who where and when). Impressed me. You don't get everything followed up? Ah yes. We deal with dozens of alian races (3 major races), at least 4 different factions in humanity, 2 superadvanced races, an interracial police force and an intragalactic war. Following all that up might take a few more seasons...
Whatever you say about B5, it is an impressive piece of work.
A rather broad question, no? If your IPv6 connection has AH and ESP enabled, then sure it is immume. As IPsec would be.
About the self-signed certificate: any self-respecting browser will complain about self-signed certificates (unless already known and told to accept it). Highjacking SSL isn't that easy.
Also, ISPs are increasingly willing to supply data without a subpoena or warrant.
Very interesting. Can you tell me where you find proof or numbers to back this up?
The EU is considering making it mandatory for ALL communications (of ALL citizens/companies, no due cause) to be stored for seven years, "just in case".
Same here. Haven't heard a word of this.
What is more important: seems rather unlikely/unfeasable to me. I have a quota of 10 Gb per month. I frequently use it all. That would add up to 840Gb for seven years, for me alone (and then I am only counting my internet traffic).
I know at least one large company that does nightly partial and weekly full backups from their Belgian offices to their Paris headquarters. Capturing that data would run into several Gbs a day.
And then, off course, I am not talking into account traffic from mirroring sites, indexing pages and so on (good luck on people who wish to capture/log googles traffic). Storing all data from all users/companies might be theoretically possible, but practially it is unfeasable.
Let's consider that filtering software you were talking about. It would have to be capable of realtime filtering. Determining whether transfered data is known must be done with hashes (since your database is way too big to search in realtime) thus you can only determine it after the transfer is complete (if not, I would just hide the message in the last few kb of say... a linux kernel download). You would have to know or store all media file transfered in p2p networks since they can all contains hidden messages. All encrypted traffic has to be stored (even trivially encrypted data since I seriously doubt you'll have enough processing capacity to break any encryption in realtime). You would even have to store, not only the data that is transfered, but the raw packets of the transfer too since those too contain bits that can be used to transfer data. As seen on slashdot a while back, you would even have to store all dns requests since they too can contain hidden messages. You would also have to store any packets containing unknown or unsupported protocols.
Even if what you say is true, this will just be a huge waste of money. It will only make the game more interesting for those so inclined.
Sitting under a tree in the snow with a laptop and a wireless node, connected @ 1mbit to the city 40km away, where I was connected with a dialup that barely got 14k4.
The button doesn't have to be large, it doesn't have to be red. It doesn't even have to be easy to find. It should be there though.
I want to be able to switch between modes easily. Getting an overview over a directory structure is much easier in tree mode than in spacial mode. Copying and moving files between directories is easier in spatial mode.
Maybe you should have thought about it a little longer. All those 0.5$ deposits would go to a traceable escrow account.Those virus writes are going to be in jail pretty fast. Even if the owner of the account is untraceable, the account itself is and action can be taken.
I have a friend who goes beserk (as in tearing up rooms, hitting everyone in sight) when he drinks alcohol (a single beer is enough). Some people just have allergies or react badly to some substances. If you are one of those... just say no.
Thank you for your positive view of Belgian people. As a Belgian I am a little more sceptical.
First, because of the laws in the Netherlands, prices of MJ are low. About 5 euros a gram for high quality weed or hash. One pure MJ joint around here and you are off the planet for a few hours (which is why it is usually smoked mixed with tabacco here). Availability is high as our most southern citizens have to make a maximum 300km drive to get it (for 80% of the population this is more like 80 to 100 km). It can easily be bought in quantities of 100gr or more (by stepping into a legal 'coffee shop' and asking for it).
Legal problems were one of the reasons it was legalised in Belgium. Too many convicts related to cannabis in already overpopulated prisons. By making possesion and use legal, you keep the users out of jail. By stepping up punishment for dealing in combination with the easy availability reduces the attractiveness of dealing. (Most cannabis dealers are people who regularly go to the netherlands and buy from 'contacts' there).
Legalise and provide it and the dealers will drop the trade in cannabis because it looses its profitability (relative to the other drugs at least). This will invalidate the stepping stone theory - that only applies when all drugs are treated the same from a legal point of view.
single users. Some people do actually stop after one shot. (A friend of mine tried a shot of cocaine and heroine. He said he'll never do it again because it is was "too sweet".)
Sexual partners of those addicts (many heroine addicts fall to prostitution for extra money).
What would be the point in stopping? Continue and die of heroine overdose, stop and die of aids. Tough choice.
We do have the needle trade points here. The trick is not to make too much fuzz about it. Bring in a dirty needle and get a clean one in return. Anonymously.
I think too few people realize that the problem is not the drugs. The problem is addiction. Whether it is drugs, sleeping pills, sigarets, alcohol, it remains addiction. You can use drugs without getting addicted (depends on which drug offcourse. Crack for example has a very low treshold). As long as you are not addicted there is not real problem.
Also, drugs users are not bad people. Usually they are miserable people looking to feel better. In such circumstances you make mistakes. Giving clean needles and keeping those people as healthy as possible is good for everyone as it contains the damage to your society. It also makes rehabiliation likelier.
My experiences tell me cannabis is a much more desirable drug than alcohol, both from the users and society's point of view.
Use both drugs with some sense and nothing bad will happen. Overdo alcohol and it will make you loud and often aggressive. Overdo cannabis and you will fall asleep (which can be loud but seldon aggressive). Neither are very suitable for driving. (Although I prefer people who smoked over people who drank: they drive more relaxed.)
It is when talking addiction that the large difference arises. Alcohol is a hard drug, you get physically addicted, cannabis is not. Alcohol demolishes you while it degrades you. Cannabis use over large timeperiods is claimed to deteriorate memory. (So, don't drink to forget, smoke!;) If you smoke the cannabis (instead of eating it) you get the same risks as with tabacco use.
Here in Belgium, cannabis is more or less legal now (we are allowed to carry upto 3.3 grams on the street and use it in private places and such). It is a good thing, because we did that anyway (I live about 40 kilometer from the closest cannabis shop in the Netherlands where I can buy as much as I like legally).
There were no sudden changes in behaviour. No millions extra addicts, no stepping stones, nothing. The people who are inclined to (ab)use drugs usually do not care about legality.
Actually, i am not German, so I wasn't terribly offended:). You french though? you sound a bit offended to me...
Second, can you find any way to talk about nationalities without generalizing?
And last... the key is probably trying to speak french. But never ever think that someone french guy arriving in our country actually tries to speak *our* language... (ok, ok this is a bit misleading. French is an offical language here too... and the reason french is hated soo much is because we have an aristocratic leftover that is arrongant and speaks french;)
There are two ways the community can support this.
First, we can actually buy the songs (I have no idea who these guys are though... and I bet I am not alone).
Second, not every musician is a php/asp/(insert favorite cgi language here) programmer or has to money to hire a few to set up a site like this. A open source solution would definitly help.
Providing the platform would also be the best way to ensure a platform we would like.
Actually, as a citizen of a country bordering on France... there is a bias there against everyone not speaking French.
Whenever a foreigner tries to speak to me I try to answer in their language (French and English are the limit i fear;) ). Most french people would do no such thing. Speak French or be ignored. (Isn't that something you canadians (quebecians) recognise?). Most french people do no bother to learn another language.
A html page is a bad example since it is trivial to prevent this: use a webproxy. This should alleviate the need for DNS resolving at the client system without blocking web access.
No external DNS resolving and use of a mail forwarder and a web proxy is a reasonable hardening of your network against this hack without sacrificing too much functionality.
If you still wish to allow external DNS access, you can (try to) detect DNS bursts. A real-time traffic analyser could be made to do this without (full trafic) logging. Then again this is such an arcane abuse that it is most likely not worth the effort of trying to detect it.
The point is that these people *do* try to lure people to their site using whatever means they can. They might think "joe porn hound" might put up with pop-ups etc, but they cannot (and most likely do not even try) to prevent others from being targeted by their ads. Their intentions might be understandable, their methods are too indisciminate.
And no, I do not suffer from pop-ups. Thank you for your concern.
1) the people who put porn up on the net aren't trying to "trap" or "trick" anyone into looking at it. Why would they? It'll just cause problems for them in the long run, and their target audience is willing to make a minimum effort to get to them anyways.
I do not agree with this point. IF these people are NOT trying to trap or trick or lure people into looking at their site (and thus porn), then why:
Pop-up, pop-unders, etc where ever they can get away with it.
Adding of as much keywords as they can to their pages, bordering on the absurd.
Have as much nude on their coverpage as possible (usually rather tasteless in my opinion).
heh. why would you bother stealing the Blackberries?
It is most likely easier to hack into their server from the internet. (How else are the blackberries going to be connected to the server?) Especially if they are still running Microsoft SQL server.
Further, if these cops have access to all this data, I think most airport passengers have little to worry. Afterall, humans are limited in their ability to process information. How much do you think these people are going to remember of your precious private data? And the more likely a cop is to look up data, the more likely he is to forget it too.
As a sidenote: someone talked about earning some cash as a result of this? The article mentioned 16000 entinties (DEA, FBI,...) using this service and a price of US$99 per device per month this results in a healthy US$1.600.000 per month! Not bad for running a SQL database.
Slashdot Mirror
What I like about Babylon 5 is that when you get down to it, the series is one big story. Season after season, it unfolds and they do it epic wise :).
Imaginative and believable uiniverse... you say no? I like their universe. It's nice and chaotic and maybe a little too human. You don't find it believable? Why exactly not? Because two vastly superior races use the whole galaxy to fight out their doctrinal differences? Sounds rather human to me... a nice (kinda) religous war.
Or perhaps because some human group thinks it can use others for their advantage or feels superior towards another part of humanity... what is not believable about that?
Character driven? Yes. Definatly. TA large part of the plot exploits what some of the main characters want. That is what the Shadows ask: "What do you want?" And then they give it to you... slighty corrupted to fit in their plans off course. Still recognisable. And then even this turns out to be only a part of the story and we move deeper into the human issues.
And last... you have a problem with plotholes? In the whole series, 5 seasons and two movies there is exactly 1 inconsistancy (a matter who met who where and when). Impressed me. You don't get everything followed up? Ah yes. We deal with dozens of alian races (3 major races), at least 4 different factions in humanity, 2 superadvanced races, an interracial police force and an intragalactic war. Following all that up might take a few more seasons...
Whatever you say about B5, it is an impressive piece of work.
If it was, it was never released...
About the self-signed certificate: any self-respecting browser will complain about self-signed certificates (unless already known and told to accept it). Highjacking SSL isn't that easy.
Very interesting. Can you tell me where you find proof or numbers to back this up?
The EU is considering making it mandatory for ALL communications (of ALL citizens/companies, no due cause) to be stored for seven years, "just in case".
Same here. Haven't heard a word of this.
What is more important: seems rather unlikely/unfeasable to me. I have a quota of 10 Gb per month. I frequently use it all. That would add up to 840Gb for seven years, for me alone (and then I am only counting my internet traffic).
I know at least one large company that does nightly partial and weekly full backups from their Belgian offices to their Paris headquarters. Capturing that data would run into several Gbs a day.
And then, off course, I am not talking into account traffic from mirroring sites, indexing pages and so on (good luck on people who wish to capture/log googles traffic). Storing all data from all users/companies might be theoretically possible, but practially it is unfeasable.
Let's consider that filtering software you were talking about. It would have to be capable of realtime filtering. Determining whether transfered data is known must be done with hashes (since your database is way too big to search in realtime) thus you can only determine it after the transfer is complete (if not, I would just hide the message in the last few kb of say... a linux kernel download). You would have to know or store all media file transfered in p2p networks since they can all contains hidden messages. All encrypted traffic has to be stored (even trivially encrypted data since I seriously doubt you'll have enough processing capacity to break any encryption in realtime). You would even have to store, not only the data that is transfered, but the raw packets of the transfer too since those too contain bits that can be used to transfer data. As seen on slashdot a while back, you would even have to store all dns requests since they too can contain hidden messages. You would also have to store any packets containing unknown or unsupported protocols.
Even if what you say is true, this will just be a huge waste of money. It will only make the game more interesting for those so inclined.
yep. it's just another piece of car that can break down.
Install cygwin and install their X server. Wish granted.
Proof and pictures.
If you have contacts that can pull this off, why bother becoming a viruswriter?
I want to be able to switch between modes easily. Getting an overview over a directory structure is much easier in tree mode than in spacial mode. Copying and moving files between directories is easier in spatial mode.
Maybe you should have thought about it a little longer. All those 0.5$ deposits would go to a traceable escrow account.Those virus writes are going to be in jail pretty fast. Even if the owner of the account is untraceable, the account itself is and action can be taken.
I have a friend who goes beserk (as in tearing up rooms, hitting everyone in sight) when he drinks alcohol (a single beer is enough). Some people just have allergies or react badly to some substances. If you are one of those... just say no.
Thank you for your positive view of Belgian people. As a Belgian I am a little more sceptical.
First, because of the laws in the Netherlands, prices of MJ are low. About 5 euros a gram for high quality weed or hash. One pure MJ joint around here and you are off the planet for a few hours (which is why it is usually smoked mixed with tabacco here). Availability is high as our most southern citizens have to make a maximum 300km drive to get it (for 80% of the population this is more like 80 to 100 km). It can easily be bought in quantities of 100gr or more (by stepping into a legal 'coffee shop' and asking for it).
Legal problems were one of the reasons it was legalised in Belgium. Too many convicts related to cannabis in already overpopulated prisons. By making possesion and use legal, you keep the users out of jail. By stepping up punishment for dealing in combination with the easy availability reduces the attractiveness of dealing. (Most cannabis dealers are people who regularly go to the netherlands and buy from 'contacts' there).
Legalise and provide it and the dealers will drop the trade in cannabis because it looses its profitability (relative to the other drugs at least). This will invalidate the stepping stone theory - that only applies when all drugs are treated the same from a legal point of view.
We do have the needle trade points here. The trick is not to make too much fuzz about it. Bring in a dirty needle and get a clean one in return. Anonymously.
I think too few people realize that the problem is not the drugs. The problem is addiction. Whether it is drugs, sleeping pills, sigarets, alcohol, it remains addiction. You can use drugs without getting addicted (depends on which drug offcourse. Crack for example has a very low treshold). As long as you are not addicted there is not real problem.
Also, drugs users are not bad people. Usually they are miserable people looking to feel better. In such circumstances you make mistakes. Giving clean needles and keeping those people as healthy as possible is good for everyone as it contains the damage to your society. It also makes rehabiliation likelier.
My experiences tell me cannabis is a much more desirable drug than alcohol, both from the users and society's point of view.
Use both drugs with some sense and nothing bad will happen. Overdo alcohol and it will make you loud and often aggressive. Overdo cannabis and you will fall asleep (which can be loud but seldon aggressive). Neither are very suitable for driving. (Although I prefer people who smoked over people who drank: they drive more relaxed.)
It is when talking addiction that the large difference arises. Alcohol is a hard drug, you get physically addicted, cannabis is not. Alcohol demolishes you while it degrades you. Cannabis use over large timeperiods is claimed to deteriorate memory. (So, don't drink to forget, smoke! ;) If you smoke the cannabis (instead of eating it) you get the same risks as with tabacco use.
Here in Belgium, cannabis is more or less legal now (we are allowed to carry upto 3.3 grams on the street and use it in private places and such). It is a good thing, because we did that anyway (I live about 40 kilometer from the closest cannabis shop in the Netherlands where I can buy as much as I like legally).
There were no sudden changes in behaviour. No millions extra addicts, no stepping stones, nothing. The people who are inclined to (ab)use drugs usually do not care about legality.
because it won't be malaysain jobs that get killed anyway...
The system used to implement #2 can very easily be used to arrange those bookmark lists from #1. About the #5, how about using directories?
Second, can you find any way to talk about nationalities without generalizing?
And last... the key is probably trying to speak french. But never ever think that someone french guy arriving in our country actually tries to speak *our* language... (ok, ok this is a bit misleading. French is an offical language here too... and the reason french is hated soo much is because we have an aristocratic leftover that is arrongant and speaks french ;)
First, we can actually buy the songs (I have no idea who these guys are though... and I bet I am not alone).
Second, not every musician is a php/asp/(insert favorite cgi language here) programmer or has to money to hire a few to set up a site like this. A open source solution would definitly help.
Providing the platform would also be the best way to ensure a platform we would like.
Whenever a foreigner tries to speak to me I try to answer in their language (French and English are the limit i fear ;) ). Most french people would do no such thing. Speak French or be ignored. (Isn't that something you canadians (quebecians) recognise?). Most french people do no bother to learn another language.
These are, offcourse, biased opinions.
sexist!
You can show that you wrote that code in under a month. This would put the value of the code to one man-month?
No external DNS resolving and use of a mail forwarder and a web proxy is a reasonable hardening of your network against this hack without sacrificing too much functionality.
If you still wish to allow external DNS access, you can (try to) detect DNS bursts. A real-time traffic analyser could be made to do this without (full trafic) logging. Then again this is such an arcane abuse that it is most likely not worth the effort of trying to detect it.
And no, I do not suffer from pop-ups. Thank you for your concern.
I do not agree with this point. IF these people are NOT trying to trap or trick or lure people into looking at their site (and thus porn), then why:
As for motivation: competition.
It is most likely easier to hack into their server from the internet. (How else are the blackberries going to be connected to the server?) Especially if they are still running Microsoft SQL server.
Further, if these cops have access to all this data, I think most airport passengers have little to worry. Afterall, humans are limited in their ability to process information. How much do you think these people are going to remember of your precious private data? And the more likely a cop is to look up data, the more likely he is to forget it too.
As a sidenote: someone talked about earning some cash as a result of this? The article mentioned 16000 entinties (DEA, FBI,...) using this service and a price of US$99 per device per month this results in a healthy US$1.600.000 per month! Not bad for running a SQL database.