However, it seems that the only thing we are in disagreement with here is your understanding of what I said.
Um, I didn't misunderstand anything. A Court can't LEGALLY issue an Order to allow a PRIVATE COMPANY to come into your business and "Audit" or "Sieze" SHIT.
Do you REALLY think that a Court could issue an Order to allow ME to "audit" or "sieze evidence" from YOUR BUSINESS???
Guess what? Neither can the Court issue an Order to allow the BSA to act like LAW ENFORCEMENT, in ANY CAPACITY WHATSOEVER.
You're right, not in the US. But in Canada they have something called an Anton Pillar order, which incredibly not only allows all that but it takes place in secrecy. Even after the fact the person who was raided can't discuss it. It kind of blows my mind that Canada has that or that the people in Canada let that continue.
The difference between Canada and the US. In the US we are expected to challenge our government. Make them work, do their job correctly.
In Canada it seems a good number of the citizens have the mindset "oh, what am I gonna do about that?" I've heard them say it.
This has all been discussed recently in the Righthaven cases, where they were found to not actually have the right to enforce the copyrights they were suing for. As you recall they were essentially "outsourced copyright holders for the purpose of litigation."
The judge dismissed them, they went back and got a better contract with the copyright holder. We'll have to see what happens now.
After all this we may know to what extent and under what conditions a company can reasonably outsource their copyright ownership rights and enforcement claims.
It may turn out the BSA may need a much higher degree of involvement by the underlying copyright holder. And if you are accused, I suspect you deserve at least that much. To face your accuser.
They are accusers by proxy. Doesn't sound exactly right to me. Bring the actual aggrieved party into court every day.
Freedom means free choice. Nothing else come free with that. You are free to live where ever you want but you must face the consequences of that, good or bad. You are free to live in the city or in the middle of no where but if and when gas goes up you have to deal with it. It's not up to the Government to keep gas prices down just to support your choice.
Exactly right. It's also not the government's job to make the cost of energy necessarily skyrocket. Or to allow manipulation or collusion.
All of which seems to be going on now since there is a worldwide glut of oil. It's just not supply and demand this time. But they are ok with high energy prices.
OBAMA: "My vision of a cap and trade plan would cause energy costs to necessarily skyrocket"
I didn't say you should live in the middle of nowhere. I say live where you want. Freedom.
The guy who said move close to work and ride a bike? That's not me. It's Steven Chu, Obama's energy secretary. In a speech at Harvard a couple months ago. And he said gas should be $7-$9. Watch it, I found it on youtube.
If you want the government to tell you where to live, how to live, well I disagree with that.
Cable companies don't usually offer internet-only service and when they do they charge almost as much as if you had their overpriced television service.
That used to be the case. I am not promoting TWC since they are louts like the rest, but in LA they are finally advertising $29.99 cable modem service, no other crap required.
Http://www.switchtotwc.com
If you happen to be in a TIme Warner area.
why can't the US providers offer higher speeds in the areas with higher population density?
Can't? It's not that they *can't*. They don't want to.
These are big bad monopoly companies and they are having a great time screwing us all. The telcos and the cable companies are happy as clams with essentially no competition. They are metering us now, 15 years ago they offered us metered ISDN which no one wanted, or wanted to pay for. These same companies kept us from getting the broadband we wanted for *years*.
Now they are metering our DSL and discriminating against certain kinds of traffic. Witness if you have AT&T DSL and have AT&T UVERSE IP video they don't meter your TV usage at all. If you subscribe to another competing video service like Netflix you are metered. The essence of Non-Net Neutrality.
So it's not that they *can't*. It's that they want to meter us. They want to charge us for everything. Even electrons.
It's the same mentality that wants us to move to a high rise close to work so we can take a bicycle. They want us to not be able to go out in the car, gas is too expensive. Don't turn on the air conditioning, the electricity is too expensive.
Contrived shortages, every excuse to raise prices.
Like the worldwide glut of crude oil and gasoline, and here in the US I have already seen $5 a gallon. It can't be justified except by comparing to the price of gasoline in Europe.
But this is a big country. We need affordable gasoline.
Stay home. Don't make waves. Now they want to take away your internet.
By end of support do they mean you won't be able to call them on the phone when one of their myriad security updates breaks your system, like happened to two of mine in the last weeks?
I haven't determined it is actually possible to get support from them, and I tried.
There was no end to the muzak. It seems *support* has already ended, if there ever was any. Not much of a loss.
But, corporations don't pay taxes. They *can't*.
Taxes are paid by their customers.
The only money corporations have to pay taxes is their customer's money.
When you buy your washing machine for $399 the reason it's $399 is because of no taxes.
If corporations were made to pay taxes the washing machine would cost you $450 or maybe $500.
So you would be paying those taxes at some level.
What do you expect GE to do?
Should Immelt get a job at night to make extra money to pay GE's taxes? Ridiculous.
No, taxes are paid by you and I. Not by corporations.
This is pretty heavy economic theory, huh? But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
I'd prefer the washing machine cost $399.
Internet is now required, just like water or sewer. It needs to be regulated.
Clearly these huge companies would prefer to be able to charge us as much as they would like.
But in most areas you have only one or two broadband providers. One DSL and one Cable, and that's about it.
So no real competition.
If you don't like the prices at this gas station or supermarket you can go to another one.
You can't do that with phone, water, sewer, electricity, gas, or broadband internet.
So yes, there needs to be regulation, there needs to be more competition. We don't have it now.
We are different from our parents and grandparents. Grandma might still not have a computer.
As we all gray in our old age we are going to have the computer and internet, something past generations didn't have.
So there is going to need to be regulation. Like that last generation had regulated water and electricity. We need regulation on our internet service.
It's needed now.
With my satellite DVR I haven't watched live TV in years, but that is getting to the point of being passe.
I can't wait to get rid of it and just download and watch what I want when I want over the internet. This is going to require good speed and it can't be measured usage.
Interestingly, I called ATT a couple years ago, said I had my phone and I just wanted unsubsidized service rates with no contract.
Impossible. Couldn't get cellular service from ATT on any basis without a contract. Even at full price.
Crooks. Why did I have to have a contract if they were not giving me a phone? The contract was supposed to be to keep you around until you paid off your subsidized phone.
I suspect it was because the rep, whether in the store, on the phone, wherever, couldn't get paid without a contract.
So there you have it. These cellular carriers keep a stranglehold on the equipment and use that to keep their customers signed up for lengthy contracts.
The only one that doesn't insist on that is Tmobile.
I suspect t that whole affair was a 25 year plan.
The government made ATT divest the baby bells for more competition.
Then, 25 years later they are all together again. It was all planned. What a scam.
The zealots at the justice department that made them divest are all retired or dead. They waited for that.
It's ultimately not the FCC, but rather, the DOJ that would have to step in and stop it. So write them [justice.gov].
Listen to the man. Write a letter. Call your congress critter and tell them you want this stopped. Tell them you'll support their opponent if they don't listen (that gets their attention).
The telecommunications sector is already consolidated to the point where it's a nightmare for consumers and getting worse fast. The notion of AT&T buying T-Mobile should be laughed out of the room. AT&T should be broken (again) into little pieces.
Second that.
No more consolidations. More competition, not less.
I already got the letter from ATT about my ADSL line, I am about at their 150GB/month limit right now and I don't like it. Their limits are very low and intended to screw us. Those big companies always do that, find a way to screw their customers where they have nowhere to go.
The DOJ only has jurisdiction over federal anti-trust laws. And while we may not like it, this does not actually breach any of those laws
This does violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Why do you say having only one GSM carrier in the entire country wouldn't result in less or no competition?
GSM is the only network wherein your Iphone can talk and use data at the same time.
I for one am against any more consolidation among huge companies. We have had it in banks, supermarkets, phone companies, we don't need any more. Do you want there to be only one or two banks, one or two wireless carriers, one or two supermarkets, and that's it? If you don't like it you can just not buy any. I want more competition, not less. More companies duking it out so I have choice.
These wireless companies have spectrum licenses. They don't own those frequencies, they get to use them in the public interest. Remember when AT&T bought Cingular? They sold off the old AT&T network and frequencies to Tmobile. They kept the better performing Cingular Wireless network. Why did they do that? They had to. The Justice Department wouldn't let them buy their competition unless they divested those assets. That's fair. MORE competition, not less.
AT&T and the baby bells were all separated out years ago in the AT&T Divestiture. Now, Pacbell turned into SBC which bought Bellsouth and others and finally bought their former parent AT&T, and whopee, they are all back together. It was a 25 year plan, they planned it all, the crooks.
Now they want to take away more customer choice.
Just say no. No to companies buying their competition. No to consolidations that limit competition. Especially where these companies have government licenses. It's just not right.
"Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access
service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory
manner."
Where:
"We understand the term "nondiscriminatory" to mean that a broadband Internet access service provider may not charge a content, application, or service provider for enhanced or prioritized access to the subscribers of the broadband Internet access service provider...We propose that this rule would not prevent a broadband Internet access service provider from charging subscribers different prices for different services."
Which still leaves a lot of holes - can an Internet access provider have both free peering and then ask CDN's for money?
The key there is "would not prevent a broadband Internet access service provider from charging subscribers different prices for different services."
Subscribers. Charge your own customers for the services they want. If you charge your own customers an extra $50 a month to deliver Netflix data to them, they can decide if they think that's fair. Vote with their feet, assuming the ISP doesn't have a broadband monopoly in the area. Which does happen.
No fair setting up toll gates for some content or websites that you don't like. That's what Comcast was doing.
Comcast has been caught blocking websites multiple times and/or slowing-down traffic they don't like (netflix video and bittorrents).
And is that still happening?
Yes, it's still happening. Comcast has been found to throttle bittorrent traffic.
Just this week Comcast charged Netflix' ISP to connect to their network and allow the Comcast customers who order from Netflix to get what they ordered.
So what you're saying is that if there's a 0.00001% chance that somebody who looks like a nun is a terrorist, and a 0.01% chance that somebody who looks like a young Arab male is a terrorist, we should search every young Arab male and miss the terrorist nuns? Oh, and there's also the not-insignificant problem that any terrorist who notices this sort of profiling will simply recruit a lighter-skinned female terrorist and dress her up like a nun.
What I think you're actually saying here is "Go ahead and violate other people's rights, just don't mess the rights of people like me." They came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist...
So the young arab male is 1000x the chance of being a terrorist than the nun, and somehow that's not a good enough odds to prioritize? It sure is.
Your math, btw.
In any case this airport screening is a complete waste of time. It's just that the government is able to spend our tax money on it, so they do.
Terrorists have many targets, if they can't blow up planes they will just blow up buildings, bridges, subway trains, the target is immaterial. These very same Al Qlaeda terrorists have already attacked all those. How long before people are comfortable with being accosted on the street by stormtroopers asking "where are you going?"
I for one don't ever want to live in a world like that.
Disarming everyone at the airport is not the answer.
The better solution for air travel would be to give qualified passengers who have a concealed carry permit a 30% airfare discount if they take a class and become certified as an auxiliary air marshall. I would get a CCW.
If there were 30 or 40 armed trained civilians on every flight the terrorists would be unable to do anything. How would it be to try to blow up or hijack the plane and have 20 people pull guns on you?
Heh.
This does not solve the problems of terrorism in the world anymore than sexually assaulting three year olds would. The solution to that, well, I have one but it would be very messy.
You call your own voicemail from your own cellphone, the operator of your own network is *supposed* to know who you are. It's just not too much to ask.
Making you use a password to call your own voicemail from your own phone, well, if that's the only security the telcos have they are very lacking.
I am not going to give the telcos a pass on the security of your own phone and your own voicemail, calling from their own network. They need to secure all that.
If their system is so lame they don't know who is calling on their own network, well, they should be shut down. They are bozos.
The fault here is entirely with AT&T, it is not because of missing passwords/pin numbers (which should not matter), nor is it a lack of regulation concerning caller ID.
The fault is the telcos (of which ATT is the biggest and oldest one) who years ago designed an insecure caller ID system. It's been known that the system is insecure for *years* now, and there has been no move to fix it. Not a single effort by anyone.
The solution is to make delivery of caller ID data that is not true and correct just ILLEGAL. A $1,000 fine per incident.
The telcos would have to turn off the caller ID until they could secure that whole system. Unfortunately they are the only ones who could do it. And as soon as possible please.
It's not just ATT or Android, it's the whole insecure system. It sucks terribly and needs to be fixed. I don't see the telcos doing it until they are forced to. A $1,000 fine per incident would do it.
Or use scroogle.org which proxies your google searches so they have no idea whom you are.
Or startpage.com / ixquick.com which meta searches multiple search facilities and keeps no private information.
http://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
Startpage is powered by Ixquick.
The only search engine that does not record your IP address.
Your privacy is under attack !
Every time you use a regular search engine, your search data are recorded.
Your search terms, the time of your visit, the links you choose, your IP address and your User ID cookies all get stored in a database.
The identity profiles that can be constructed from this cloud of information represent modern day gold for marketers.
But government officials, hackers and even criminals also have an interest in getting their hands on your personal search data.
And sooner or later they will...
This is a problem with "Privacy Policies" in the US.
They are weak, and kept that way by lobbyists lobbying congress.
Witness that you get by US mail a multiple page fine print privacy policy from each of your banks, credit card companies, etc. with the requirement that if you don't want them to essentially use your information as they like you have to take steps to opt-out, usually by mailing a letter or calling on the phone.
How can anyone be expected to take affirmative steps to opt out of 15 or 20 privacy policies?
Whereas the way it should be is you should have privacy unless you opt out of that.
I think it's essentially like that in the EU with the EU privacy practices. Anyone who can elaborate and compare the US with the EU in this area please jump in.
If the US were to establish laws requiring privacy rather that requiring essentially none, things would be better for us all.
Theres's another firewall appliance software from german firm Astaro.com, free for home use. I haven't tried it but since it runs on standard hardware I assume you can put it on a fast machine if you need more performance.
The OP's question is very timely. We have all these cheap linksys, netgear, etc. routers which provide great functionality and are easy to use. But now that he has a 30 MBPS circuit his router doesn't have enough performance.
These type performance specs have not been published in the past for the cheap home use routers, mostly because it was not necessary, any of them would be fast enough in raw speed to subscribe any home circuit. Now, we have bumped against their capabilities.
FWIW Cisco has long published packet switching performance specs for their equipment, since that was required to size the equipment for the site. I guess it's time to start performance benchmarking of the cheap home use routers.
Slashdot Mirror
However, it seems that the only thing we are in disagreement with here is your understanding of what I said.
Um, I didn't misunderstand anything. A Court can't LEGALLY issue an Order to allow a PRIVATE COMPANY to come into your business and "Audit" or "Sieze" SHIT. Do you REALLY think that a Court could issue an Order to allow ME to "audit" or "sieze evidence" from YOUR BUSINESS??? Guess what? Neither can the Court issue an Order to allow the BSA to act like LAW ENFORCEMENT, in ANY CAPACITY WHATSOEVER.
You're right, not in the US. But in Canada they have something called an Anton Pillar order, which incredibly not only allows all that but it takes place in secrecy. Even after the fact the person who was raided can't discuss it. It kind of blows my mind that Canada has that or that the people in Canada let that continue.
The difference between Canada and the US. In the US we are expected to challenge our government. Make them work, do their job correctly.
In Canada it seems a good number of the citizens have the mindset "oh, what am I gonna do about that?" I've heard them say it.
This has all been discussed recently in the Righthaven cases, where they were found to not actually have the right to enforce the copyrights they were suing for. As you recall they were essentially "outsourced copyright holders for the purpose of litigation."
The judge dismissed them, they went back and got a better contract with the copyright holder. We'll have to see what happens now.
After all this we may know to what extent and under what conditions a company can reasonably outsource their copyright ownership rights and enforcement claims.
It may turn out the BSA may need a much higher degree of involvement by the underlying copyright holder. And if you are accused, I suspect you deserve at least that much. To face your accuser.
They are accusers by proxy. Doesn't sound exactly right to me. Bring the actual aggrieved party into court every day.
Which is the whole problem. You have to be logged into a search engine?
More and more reason to use IXQUICK.com so you won't be tracked. At all.
Freedom means free choice. Nothing else come free with that. You are free to live where ever you want but you must face the consequences of that, good or bad. You are free to live in the city or in the middle of no where but if and when gas goes up you have to deal with it. It's not up to the Government to keep gas prices down just to support your choice.
Exactly right. It's also not the government's job to make the cost of energy necessarily skyrocket. Or to allow manipulation or collusion.
All of which seems to be going on now since there is a worldwide glut of oil. It's just not supply and demand this time. But they are ok with high energy prices.
OBAMA: "My vision of a cap and trade plan would cause energy costs to necessarily skyrocket"
I didn't say you should live in the middle of nowhere. I say live where you want. Freedom.
The guy who said move close to work and ride a bike? That's not me. It's Steven Chu, Obama's energy secretary. In a speech at Harvard a couple months ago. And he said gas should be $7-$9. Watch it, I found it on youtube.
If you want the government to tell you where to live, how to live, well I disagree with that.
Cable companies don't usually offer internet-only service and when they do they charge almost as much as if you had their overpriced television service.
That used to be the case. I am not promoting TWC since they are louts like the rest, but in LA they are finally advertising $29.99 cable modem service, no other crap required.
Http://www.switchtotwc.com
If you happen to be in a TIme Warner area.
Can't? It's not that they *can't*. They don't want to.
These are big bad monopoly companies and they are having a great time screwing us all. The telcos and the cable companies are happy as clams with essentially no competition.
They are metering us now, 15 years ago they offered us metered ISDN which no one wanted, or wanted to pay for. These same companies kept us from getting the broadband we wanted for *years*.
Now they are metering our DSL and discriminating against certain kinds of traffic.
Witness if you have AT&T DSL and have AT&T UVERSE IP video they don't meter your TV usage at all. If you subscribe to another competing video service like Netflix you are metered. The essence of Non-Net Neutrality.
So it's not that they *can't*. It's that they want to meter us. They want to charge us for everything. Even electrons.
It's the same mentality that wants us to move to a high rise close to work so we can take a bicycle. They want us to not be able to go out in the car, gas is too expensive. Don't turn on the air conditioning, the electricity is too expensive.
Contrived shortages, every excuse to raise prices.
Like the worldwide glut of crude oil and gasoline, and here in the US I have already seen $5 a gallon. It can't be justified except by comparing to the price of gasoline in Europe.
But this is a big country. We need affordable gasoline.
Stay home. Don't make waves. Now they want to take away your internet.
By end of support do they mean you won't be able to call them on the phone when one of their myriad security updates breaks your system, like happened to two of mine in the last weeks?
I haven't determined it is actually possible to get support from them, and I tried.
There was no end to the muzak.
It seems *support* has already ended, if there ever was any. Not much of a loss.
But, corporations don't pay taxes. They *can't*.
Taxes are paid by their customers.
The only money corporations have to pay taxes is their customer's money.
When you buy your washing machine for $399 the reason it's $399 is because of no taxes.
If corporations were made to pay taxes the washing machine would cost you $450 or maybe $500.
So you would be paying those taxes at some level.
What do you expect GE to do?
Should Immelt get a job at night to make extra money to pay GE's taxes? Ridiculous.
No, taxes are paid by you and I. Not by corporations.
This is pretty heavy economic theory, huh? But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
I'd prefer the washing machine cost $399.
Internet is now required, just like water or sewer. It needs to be regulated.
Clearly these huge companies would prefer to be able to charge us as much as they would like.
But in most areas you have only one or two broadband providers. One DSL and one Cable, and that's about it.
So no real competition.
If you don't like the prices at this gas station or supermarket you can go to another one.
You can't do that with phone, water, sewer, electricity, gas, or broadband internet.
So yes, there needs to be regulation, there needs to be more competition. We don't have it now.
We are different from our parents and grandparents. Grandma might still not have a computer.
As we all gray in our old age we are going to have the computer and internet, something past generations didn't have.
So there is going to need to be regulation. Like that last generation had regulated water and electricity. We need regulation on our internet service.
It's needed now.
With my satellite DVR I haven't watched live TV in years, but that is getting to the point of being passe.
I can't wait to get rid of it and just download and watch what I want when I want over the internet. This is going to require good speed and it can't be measured usage.
Interestingly, I called ATT a couple years ago, said I had my phone and I just wanted unsubsidized service rates with no contract.
Impossible. Couldn't get cellular service from ATT on any basis without a contract. Even at full price.
Crooks. Why did I have to have a contract if they were not giving me a phone? The contract was supposed to be to keep you around until you paid off your subsidized phone.
I suspect it was because the rep, whether in the store, on the phone, wherever, couldn't get paid without a contract.
So there you have it. These cellular carriers keep a stranglehold on the equipment and use that to keep their customers signed up for lengthy contracts.
The only one that doesn't insist on that is Tmobile.
They had to wait for enough time to pass, and for a Republican administration.
heh.
I suspect t that whole affair was a 25 year plan.
The government made ATT divest the baby bells for more competition.
Then, 25 years later they are all together again. It was all planned. What a scam.
The zealots at the justice department that made them divest are all retired or dead. They waited for that.
Listen to the man. Write a letter. Call your congress critter and tell them you want this stopped. Tell them you'll support their opponent if they don't listen (that gets their attention).
The telecommunications sector is already consolidated to the point where it's a nightmare for consumers and getting worse fast. The notion of AT&T buying T-Mobile should be laughed out of the room. AT&T should be broken (again) into little pieces.
Second that.
No more consolidations. More competition, not less.
I already got the letter from ATT about my ADSL line, I am about at their 150GB/month limit right now and I don't like it. Their limits are very low and intended to screw us. Those big companies always do that, find a way to screw their customers where they have nowhere to go.
This does violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Why do you say having only one GSM carrier in the entire country wouldn't result in less or no competition?
GSM is the only network wherein your Iphone can talk and use data at the same time.
I for one am against any more consolidation among huge companies. We have had it in banks, supermarkets, phone companies, we don't need any more. Do you want there to be only one or two banks, one or two wireless carriers, one or two supermarkets, and that's it? If you don't like it you can just not buy any. I want more competition, not less. More companies duking it out so I have choice.
These wireless companies have spectrum licenses. They don't own those frequencies, they get to use them in the public interest.
Remember when AT&T bought Cingular? They sold off the old AT&T network and frequencies to Tmobile. They kept the better performing Cingular Wireless network. Why did they do that? They had to. The Justice Department wouldn't let them buy their competition unless they divested those assets. That's fair. MORE competition, not less.
AT&T and the baby bells were all separated out years ago in the AT&T Divestiture. Now, Pacbell turned into SBC which bought Bellsouth and others and finally bought their former parent AT&T, and whopee, they are all back together. It was a 25 year plan, they planned it all, the crooks.
Now they want to take away more customer choice.
Just say no. No to companies buying their competition. No to consolidations that limit competition. Especially where these companies have government licenses. It's just not right.
You've been seriously misinformed about what "net neutrality" actually means.
This is what the FCC thinks it is:
The key point being:
"Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access
service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory
manner."
Where:
"We understand the term "nondiscriminatory" to mean that a broadband Internet access service provider may not charge a content, application, or service provider for enhanced or prioritized access to the subscribers of the broadband Internet access service provider...We propose that this rule would not prevent a broadband Internet access service provider from charging subscribers different prices for different services."
Which still leaves a lot of holes - can an Internet access provider have both free peering and then ask CDN's for money?
The key there is "would not prevent a broadband Internet access service provider from charging subscribers different prices for different services."
Subscribers. Charge your own customers for the services they want. If you charge your own customers an extra $50 a month to deliver Netflix data to them, they can decide if they think that's fair. Vote with their feet, assuming the ISP doesn't have a broadband monopoly in the area. Which does happen.
No fair setting up toll gates for some content or websites that you don't like. That's what Comcast was doing.
Yes, it's still happening. Comcast has been found to throttle bittorrent traffic.
Just this week Comcast charged Netflix' ISP to connect to their network and allow the Comcast customers who order from Netflix to get what they ordered.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/30/0246235/Level-3-Shaken-Down-By-Comcast-Over-Video-Streaming Comcast's own customers. Data blocked at the Comcast network. Netflix' ISP, Level3, paid them, incredibly. A shakedown.
That's what congress should ban. Shakedowns.
So what you're saying is that if there's a 0.00001% chance that somebody who looks like a nun is a terrorist, and a 0.01% chance that somebody who looks like a young Arab male is a terrorist, we should search every young Arab male and miss the terrorist nuns? Oh, and there's also the not-insignificant problem that any terrorist who notices this sort of profiling will simply recruit a lighter-skinned female terrorist and dress her up like a nun.
What I think you're actually saying here is "Go ahead and violate other people's rights, just don't mess the rights of people like me." They came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist...
So the young arab male is 1000x the chance of being a terrorist than the nun, and somehow that's not a good enough odds to prioritize? It sure is.
Your math, btw.
In any case this airport screening is a complete waste of time. It's just that the government is able to spend our tax money on it, so they do.
Terrorists have many targets, if they can't blow up planes they will just blow up buildings, bridges, subway trains, the target is immaterial. These very same Al Qlaeda terrorists have already attacked all those.
How long before people are comfortable with being accosted on the street by stormtroopers asking "where are you going?"
I for one don't ever want to live in a world like that.
Disarming everyone at the airport is not the answer.
The better solution for air travel would be to give qualified passengers who have a concealed carry permit a 30% airfare discount if they take a class and become certified as an auxiliary air marshall.
I would get a CCW.
If there were 30 or 40 armed trained civilians on every flight the terrorists would be unable to do anything. How would it be to try to blow up or hijack the plane and have 20 people pull guns on you?
Heh.
This does not solve the problems of terrorism in the world anymore than sexually assaulting three year olds would. The solution to that, well, I have one but it would be very messy.
Not at all true. On Cellphones they have thrown in CID. On landlines it's a cash cow, they charge $3-$4 for it.
You call your own voicemail from your own cellphone, the operator of your own network is *supposed* to know who you are. It's just not too much to ask.
Making you use a password to call your own voicemail from your own phone, well, if that's the only security the telcos have they are very lacking.
I am not going to give the telcos a pass on the security of your own phone and your own voicemail, calling from their own network. They need to secure all that.
If their system is so lame they don't know who is calling on their own network, well, they should be shut down. They are bozos.
The fault is the telcos (of which ATT is the biggest and oldest one) who years ago designed an insecure caller ID system. It's been known that the system is insecure for *years* now, and there has been no move to fix it. Not a single effort by anyone.
The solution is to make delivery of caller ID data that is not true and correct just ILLEGAL. A $1,000 fine per incident.
The telcos would have to turn off the caller ID until they could secure that whole system. Unfortunately they are the only ones who could do it. And as soon as possible please.
It's not just ATT or Android, it's the whole insecure system. It sucks terribly and needs to be fixed. I don't see the telcos doing it until they are forced to. A $1,000 fine per incident would do it.
Not http://scroogle.org/
That is an anonymous proxy for google.
You must be thinking of something else.
http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
no cookies | no search-term records | access log deleted within 48 hours
Or use scroogle.org which proxies your google searches so they have no idea whom you are.
Or startpage.com / ixquick.com which meta searches multiple search facilities and keeps no private information.
http://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
Startpage is powered by Ixquick. The only search engine that does not record your IP address. Your privacy is under attack ! Every time you use a regular search engine, your search data are recorded. Your search terms, the time of your visit, the links you choose, your IP address and your User ID cookies all get stored in a database. The identity profiles that can be constructed from this cloud of information represent modern day gold for marketers. But government officials, hackers and even criminals also have an interest in getting their hands on your personal search data. And sooner or later they will...
This is a problem with "Privacy Policies" in the US.
They are weak, and kept that way by lobbyists lobbying congress.
Witness that you get by US mail a multiple page fine print privacy policy from each of your banks, credit card companies, etc. with the requirement that if you don't want them to essentially use your information as they like you have to take steps to opt-out, usually by mailing a letter or calling on the phone.
How can anyone be expected to take affirmative steps to opt out of 15 or 20 privacy policies?
Whereas the way it should be is you should have privacy unless you opt out of that.
I think it's essentially like that in the EU with the EU privacy practices. Anyone who can elaborate and compare the US with the EU in this area please jump in.
If the US were to establish laws requiring privacy rather that requiring essentially none, things would be better for us all.
Theres's another firewall appliance software from german firm Astaro.com, free for home use. I haven't tried it but since it runs on standard hardware I assume you can put it on a fast machine if you need more performance.
The OP's question is very timely. We have all these cheap linksys, netgear, etc. routers which provide great functionality and are easy to use. But now that he has a 30 MBPS circuit his router doesn't have enough performance.
These type performance specs have not been published in the past for the cheap home use routers, mostly because it was not necessary, any of them would be fast enough in raw speed to subscribe any home circuit. Now, we have bumped against their capabilities.
FWIW Cisco has long published packet switching performance specs for their equipment, since that was required to size the equipment for the site. I guess it's time to start performance benchmarking of the cheap home use routers.