What we have now is 'security theatre' that we are convinced 'doesn't work' because everytime we turn on the tv the news is fear mongering us into believing that the bogeyman is just waiting to pounce.
If you read about the terrorism operations that have been stopped in the last few years _many_ of them have one truly scary thing in common: they were set up by government informants that just recruited a few yokels from a local mosque by offering them money / weapons and whipping previously just hot headed people into actually doing something. The attempted 'missile' attack in NYC about 6 months ago was a perfect example. The heads of the mosque had actually complained to the police that there was some nut offering people money to join his group - but nothing was done because he was a government guy and this is exactly what they wanted to happen.
John C Dvorak made a good point (gasp!) a few weeks ago on his blog: if terrorists are so bound and determined to get a plane down in the US why havent any snuck in a shoulder fired missile over the Mexican border along with the constant flow of immigrants every night? Why hasnt someone just blown themselves up in a security line at the airport (like they do in Israel where terrorism is truly a problem) instead of a poorly hatched plan to blow up their shoes or underwear while on a plane?
Why are we letting the goverment and media convince us that our doom is imminent (the entire point of terrorism) instead of going about our lives?
I find this is the major 'problem' in our current system.
Full disclosure: I live in China where 'terrorism' doesnt exist. Even in the rare cases that something does happen (a bus was blown up before the Olympics in Beijing near my home) it doesnt make the news, it isnt given any chance to 'terrorize' the public, and gives potential terrorists no incentive to try something again. The results are pretty clear - ask any Beijinger about the terrorist problem in China and they will say: "Oh thats an American problem, we dont have that here"
Wednesday Baidu went up 53 points for a 13.7% jump and today it rose 2.2% to close at a 52 week high.
So I was wrong, (repeated what my boss mentioned today without fact checking) but based on Wednesday mornings opening price it was damn near a 20% rise. And im sure that trend will continue - especially if (when) China just blocks them and gives away 35.6% of the Chinese search market....
Ok Beijinger here. Used to actually work in the Google office in Zhongguancun...
Prediction #1 - Not yet. Which is interesting (youre probably right in that China wont capitulate and it is coming). I think it honestly might be a grace period for everyone to move their accounts. When I woke up today I had the same feeling when an email was bouncing back - and all of a sudden realized that ALL my accounts are gmail. Time to set up some forwards pronto.
Prediction #2 - Exactly right. Yahoo and Microsoft (and ESPECIALLY Baidu of course) wont say a goddamn thing and will be happy with the gain in marketshare. Baidu (the leader in the Chinese market) stock went up over 20% today on the news.
And of course this all has a Streisand Effect to it.
I literally had never pirated an app from my Jailbroken since day one 2G iphone until a Slashdot story a few weeks ago told me how easy it was courtesy of appulo.us et al.
After going on an utter bonanza of "Yarrr prepare to be boarded - your booty be mine for the plunderin!" the only pirated app (out of.... 43 that I downloaded, just checked) is Wolfram Alpha ($50 for a web front end?!) and NBA Season Pass which now doesnt work since I moved back to China and would have made me LIVID had I paid the $60 for it only to be "Blacked Out Due To Location" a week later. Oddly enough though I can still watch their highlight reels....
The other ones (Brian Eno apps, some lame ass meteor game) were shareware at best anyways. I paid for Scrabble, I paid for my Chinese dictionary. Quit bitchin.
Ok I actually read this today (sorry but im calling out a great deal of this discussion as being just based on reaction the the summary and prior comments) and found it absurd myself, but not something I could instantly write off.
From TFA:
"During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman."
Well.... Shit. What does 'detect' mean here? This last unfinished thought could (stated differently) totally skew the article in the opposite direction. Im not saying it is anything more that a divining rod - because I dont know - but the level of technical depth in the article / argument is as nonexistant as it purports the devices to be. There isnt a single mention of 'what works' and 'how stuff works' on the US side other than 'large and expensive.'
Mid 90's in high school I had a '72 VW Beetle (convertible, loved that car). One of the many problems I encountered was a broken fuel gauge that couldnt be figured out - cheaply.
In 5 years of driving that car I probably ran out of gas.... 3 times. So yes, I was incompetent (and broke) as well. But somehow I trusted that car more than I do my VW CC today. I could literally _turn the car off_ with the key driving down the road and coast along with no problem - downshifting and letting out the clutch to turn the car back on (now with the key in the 'off' position.
Broken starter? Just park aimed downhill everywhere - worked for me for months.
I fixed about 60% of every problem I had on that car with duct tape, coat hanger wire, elbow grease and a little time figuring it out.
My point: I miss those days. Yes the cars broke down more often but at least I could do something about it. Now every other month the "Check Engine" comes on and its a couple hundred bucks at the dealership for 'a chip malfunction' or 'a bad sensor.' Screw it, I might hop onto Craigslist right now and see what I can pick up as a 'weekender' for a grand...
I know you are being flippant about it but I want to run with your original point.
It IS very dangerous to play real football. Full stop. Science is just starting to reveal what the long term effects of concussions are, and frankly I think many people including myself were horrified about how potentially dangerous it really is. Not to mention ligament damage and broken bones that can easily happen as a hazard.
As a hocker player and boxer I think I can weigh in and say "Yes, some sports unless yo/// EVEN if you are a trained professional are crazy dangerous and in some cases (boxing) should probably be outlawed." This isnt tennis which is a great workout for any age and completely safe. I mean look at how loopy Brett Fahrve is now;) Play Fight Night and Madden at home - then go outside, ride your bike over to a friends, and get some more gaming on there.
It also sounds like a great way to bring the exercise back into it as well. Remember Nintendo is also huge in the Japanese market.
... how would you determine how they are related in the first place if you dont RTFA? Especially given the complexity of these issues in their relation to your understanding of them.
After living in China for years I can tell you the second this went into effect they would have set up stalls right beside the dealer to uninstall it before you left the building (ok maybe not if you bought it at Carrefore but they would just be outside then.
What strikes me as interesting in all this is the redundancy (ie they arleady have the Great Firewall - which works pretty well) why do they need to wear two condoms all of a sudden? My guess would be cyber warfare. Sell a few hundred million PC's in the next few years and have the biggest nastiest botnet in the world with some back end hooks for military access. Actually quite genius (until another country figures out how to access it and wipes you out from the inside...).
Picked up an HP Mini 1000 series 10" about a month ago when my original Macbook Pro drank a glass of water as a stop gap measure. I have run this thing through 4 operating systems and (goddammit) it has been my primary computer with about 8-10 hourse use daily in that time.
First was winXP - as you can infer from my screen name I have never been its biggest fan.
Second was OSX using iDeneb - such a pain in the ass to get everything working right that it completely undermines the entire idea of having a mac. Clones will never kill Apples marketshare.
Third round Ubuntu Netbook Remix... Ok, the install was a breeze, the price cant be beat, and it picked up 90% of the hardware without a hiccup. Not bad. Until you start using it - graphical glitches everywhere. There is some single window dashboard on the netbook version that is sluggish and confusing garbage - turn it off first to even attempt to have a decent time. It still fails on so many common tasks without tweaking / dl'ing that it failed "The Wife Test" and that was it.
I cant see some hardware manufacturer sitting down and saying "Yes, this is the best way to show off and sell my hardware" after using it for a week.
Fourth and finally: Windows 7. Mac zealot since '99 here - first gen iPod and iPhone fanboy - and I have to say Windows 7 is by far the best thing Microsoft has put out since Windows 2000. THIS is what is going to kill Linux on netbook - the fact that Microsoft realized that they couldnt hand this segment to the Open Source community on a platter and designed an OS to run GREAT on a 1.6 Core Solo with 2GB of ram.
XP is garbage. Linux had a great chance to lead this market. But now Win7 is here and there is no way in hell the user experiences can be compared. [That said I am still just biding MY time for another macbook;]
After living in Beijing for three years and becoming a Call Of Duty 4 freak (a nasty opium like habit that some Chinese friends gave me)I have seen that their net cafe's are _sketchy_.
The smaller ones will sell you pornography. EVERYONE is smoking like a chimney (I know I was lighting up between rounds) and in general they are just dark, seedy, places that I wouldnt want my kid within 100 yards of.
I know its easy to say 'think of the children!' but in this case ill actually go along.
Yeah I would say a citation is needed here. Zero day exploits exist - on every system - but as a Mac user since '99 and a Windows admin since I can tell you no matter the skill level of the user: Macs dont get viruses. Period. Full stop. Yes I saw the embedded trojan in iLife and the zero day sploit that got the guy a free laptop recently but as a person who has really seen a wide cross section of computers and users all the way up to Vista it is decidedly two different worlds.
Im glad Apple dropped the "100% virus free" moniker from marketing as has been pointed out it makes them a target - and good job on hiring forward thinking people in _all_ facets of the business. Now just get ZFS plugged in as the default file system and I will officially drown myself in kool-aid.
And I hate to even point this out but look at the submitters username. If you just got to/. since the mac ads came out you might want to sit back and listen for a few. Years. I know I did.
But then again I will spread any FUD to keep my/. username relevant another 7 years. And if it keeps my consultant prices up in the meanwhile so be it.
This is what I scanned the comments for - my worst fears realized.
Or is it?
I guess this isnt as bad as having a straight "points" system - and I was automagically given some pretty neat 'achievements' (user stats) retroactively. But after last years great "dupe of a dupe of a dupe" I honestly couldnt believe this was real.
Wow, and I thought the subtle redesign was shocking. I cant remember the last time slashdot _itself_ made my jaw drop.
I just left Beijing in November (each province and city has different protocols and sites that are to be blocked - its not just one Great Firewall) and can pass on what I have seen.
Most people (foreign and Chinese) just use an ever evolving list of proxy sites for "that one site" that is being blocked for whatever reason. I remember having to finally give up on http://postsecret.com/ as Chinese censors had seen the name and apparently added it to the list sight unseen. http://flyproxy.com/ was the most used and usually quite fast and able to handle most flash/cgi.
TOR and all that are great but who is running the nodes? If you dont think China is combing through traffic of people TRYING to hide you have another thing coming (I dont feel like combing through but there was a/. article some time ago discussing that Fort Mead MD seems to have a hugely disproportionate amount of TOR nodes so it seems the NSA is on the same page). China is all about stability and.... actually no, thats it, stability. As long as you are using proxyserver of the month for negligible things there will never be a problem. If you are using TOR/Anonymizer/etc to attempt to break down the walls and change the government - aiya - watch out.
In your scenario someone posts excerpts of a book they are writing online, say as a series of notes on Facebook, then after this book is published Facebook Lawyers® are going to 1. hunt down a user and then 2. sue them in open court for a share of the profits?
Im sorry but im still not buying these hypothetical situations. Can we pin down anyone actually ever getting screwed by this (be it FB, Myspace, Youtube, Flikr, Whatevr)? I mean this is capitalism - saying "once there is money in ripping people off it will happen" doesnt cut it - lets see it actually happen.
I remember the exact same thing going down with Flikr, Myspace, Youtube... Of course I dont agree with the wording and implications of the new TOS but can anyone point me to an example where any of these sites have commandeered content and used it nefariously? Microsoft maybe once?
Ok pardon the ignorance but I was under the impression that OSX and Windows had pretty stable window managers already. What would be the benefits / drawbacks of installing KDE on a non *NIX system?
Slashdot Mirror
RTFV: this is one of the more interesting problems ive seen posted in years.... Especially as a China resident... Odd... Thought /. community?
"Does this mean anything?"
I couldnt agree more.
What we have now is 'security theatre' that we are convinced 'doesn't work' because everytime we turn on the tv the news is fear mongering us into believing that the bogeyman is just waiting to pounce.
If you read about the terrorism operations that have been stopped in the last few years _many_ of them have one truly scary thing in common: they were set up by government informants that just recruited a few yokels from a local mosque by offering them money / weapons and whipping previously just hot headed people into actually doing something. The attempted 'missile' attack in NYC about 6 months ago was a perfect example. The heads of the mosque had actually complained to the police that there was some nut offering people money to join his group - but nothing was done because he was a government guy and this is exactly what they wanted to happen.
John C Dvorak made a good point (gasp!) a few weeks ago on his blog: if terrorists are so bound and determined to get a plane down in the US why havent any snuck in a shoulder fired missile over the Mexican border along with the constant flow of immigrants every night? Why hasnt someone just blown themselves up in a security line at the airport (like they do in Israel where terrorism is truly a problem) instead of a poorly hatched plan to blow up their shoes or underwear while on a plane?
Why are we letting the goverment and media convince us that our doom is imminent (the entire point of terrorism) instead of going about our lives?
I find this is the major 'problem' in our current system.
Full disclosure: I live in China where 'terrorism' doesnt exist. Even in the rare cases that something does happen (a bus was blown up before the Olympics in Beijing near my home) it doesnt make the news, it isnt given any chance to 'terrorize' the public, and gives potential terrorists no incentive to try something again. The results are pretty clear - ask any Beijinger about the terrorist problem in China and they will say: "Oh thats an American problem, we dont have that here"
And theyre right.
Wednesday Baidu went up 53 points for a 13.7% jump and today it rose 2.2% to close at a 52 week high.
So I was wrong, (repeated what my boss mentioned today without fact checking) but based on Wednesday mornings opening price it was damn near a 20% rise. And im sure that trend will continue - especially if (when) China just blocks them and gives away 35.6% of the Chinese search market....
Ok Beijinger here. Used to actually work in the Google office in Zhongguancun...
Prediction #1 - Not yet. Which is interesting (youre probably right in that China wont capitulate and it is coming). I think it honestly might be a grace period for everyone to move their accounts. When I woke up today I had the same feeling when an email was bouncing back - and all of a sudden realized that ALL my accounts are gmail. Time to set up some forwards pronto.
Prediction #2 - Exactly right. Yahoo and Microsoft (and ESPECIALLY Baidu of course) wont say a goddamn thing and will be happy with the gain in marketshare. Baidu (the leader in the Chinese market) stock went up over 20% today on the news.
Ahh China. Interesting times.
Im still waiting for the scientific community weigh in on whether bonking your own clone is considered as such as well.
Ahh what an age of wizardry we live in!
And of course this all has a Streisand Effect to it.
I literally had never pirated an app from my Jailbroken since day one 2G iphone until a Slashdot story a few weeks ago told me how easy it was courtesy of appulo.us et al.
After going on an utter bonanza of "Yarrr prepare to be boarded - your booty be mine for the plunderin!" the only pirated app (out of.... 43 that I downloaded, just checked) is Wolfram Alpha ($50 for a web front end?!) and NBA Season Pass which now doesnt work since I moved back to China and would have made me LIVID had I paid the $60 for it only to be "Blacked Out Due To Location" a week later. Oddly enough though I can still watch their highlight reels....
The other ones (Brian Eno apps, some lame ass meteor game) were shareware at best anyways. I paid for Scrabble, I paid for my Chinese dictionary. Quit bitchin.
Ok I actually read this today (sorry but im calling out a great deal of this discussion as being just based on reaction the the summary and prior comments) and found it absurd myself, but not something I could instantly write off.
From TFA:
"During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman."
Well.... Shit. What does 'detect' mean here? This last unfinished thought could (stated differently) totally skew the article in the opposite direction. Im not saying it is anything more that a divining rod - because I dont know - but the level of technical depth in the article / argument is as nonexistant as it purports the devices to be. There isnt a single mention of 'what works' and 'how stuff works' on the US side other than 'large and expensive.'
Mid 90's in high school I had a '72 VW Beetle (convertible, loved that car). One of the many problems I encountered was a broken fuel gauge that couldnt be figured out - cheaply.
In 5 years of driving that car I probably ran out of gas.... 3 times. So yes, I was incompetent (and broke) as well. But somehow I trusted that car more than I do my VW CC today. I could literally _turn the car off_ with the key driving down the road and coast along with no problem - downshifting and letting out the clutch to turn the car back on (now with the key in the 'off' position.
Broken starter? Just park aimed downhill everywhere - worked for me for months.
I fixed about 60% of every problem I had on that car with duct tape, coat hanger wire, elbow grease and a little time figuring it out.
My point: I miss those days. Yes the cars broke down more often but at least I could do something about it. Now every other month the "Check Engine" comes on and its a couple hundred bucks at the dealership for 'a chip malfunction' or 'a bad sensor.' Screw it, I might hop onto Craigslist right now and see what I can pick up as a 'weekender' for a grand...
Have Leo Laporte and the TWiT's had their Windows 7 party yet?
He said that they were signing up (2 weeks ago?) and would receive among other things: Windows 7 themed balloons, napkins and cups.
Wow, Microsoft.... Just, wow...
I know you are being flippant about it but I want to run with your original point.
It IS very dangerous to play real football. Full stop. Science is just starting to reveal what the long term effects of concussions are, and frankly I think many people including myself were horrified about how potentially dangerous it really is. Not to mention ligament damage and broken bones that can easily happen as a hazard.
As a hocker player and boxer I think I can weigh in and say "Yes, some sports unless yo/// EVEN if you are a trained professional are crazy dangerous and in some cases (boxing) should probably be outlawed." This isnt tennis which is a great workout for any age and completely safe. I mean look at how loopy Brett Fahrve is now ;) Play Fight Night and Madden at home - then go outside, ride your bike over to a friends, and get some more gaming on there.
It also sounds like a great way to bring the exercise back into it as well. Remember Nintendo is also huge in the Japanese market.
People that feel the need to shout that sort of nonsense probably have something going on themselves....
There, fixed it.
Pointless anyways.
After living in China for years I can tell you the second this went into effect they would have set up stalls right beside the dealer to uninstall it before you left the building (ok maybe not if you bought it at Carrefore but they would just be outside then.
What strikes me as interesting in all this is the redundancy (ie they arleady have the Great Firewall - which works pretty well) why do they need to wear two condoms all of a sudden? My guess would be cyber warfare. Sell a few hundred million PC's in the next few years and have the biggest nastiest botnet in the world with some back end hooks for military access. Actually quite genius (until another country figures out how to access it and wipes you out from the inside...).
Picked up an HP Mini 1000 series 10" about a month ago when my original Macbook Pro drank a glass of water as a stop gap measure. I have run this thing through 4 operating systems and (goddammit) it has been my primary computer with about 8-10 hourse use daily in that time.
First was winXP - as you can infer from my screen name I have never been its biggest fan.
Second was OSX using iDeneb - such a pain in the ass to get everything working right that it completely undermines the entire idea of having a mac. Clones will never kill Apples marketshare.
Third round Ubuntu Netbook Remix... Ok, the install was a breeze, the price cant be beat, and it picked up 90% of the hardware without a hiccup. Not bad. Until you start using it - graphical glitches everywhere. There is some single window dashboard on the netbook version that is sluggish and confusing garbage - turn it off first to even attempt to have a decent time. It still fails on so many common tasks without tweaking / dl'ing that it failed "The Wife Test" and that was it.
I cant see some hardware manufacturer sitting down and saying "Yes, this is the best way to show off and sell my hardware" after using it for a week.
Fourth and finally: Windows 7. Mac zealot since '99 here - first gen iPod and iPhone fanboy - and I have to say Windows 7 is by far the best thing Microsoft has put out since Windows 2000. THIS is what is going to kill Linux on netbook - the fact that Microsoft realized that they couldnt hand this segment to the Open Source community on a platter and designed an OS to run GREAT on a 1.6 Core Solo with 2GB of ram.
XP is garbage. Linux had a great chance to lead this market. But now Win7 is here and there is no way in hell the user experiences can be compared. [That said I am still just biding MY time for another macbook ;]
Ok this one I will definitely go with.
After living in Beijing for three years and becoming a Call Of Duty 4 freak (a nasty opium like habit that some Chinese friends gave me)I have seen that their net cafe's are _sketchy_.
The smaller ones will sell you pornography. EVERYONE is smoking like a chimney (I know I was lighting up between rounds) and in general they are just dark, seedy, places that I wouldnt want my kid within 100 yards of.
I know its easy to say 'think of the children!' but in this case ill actually go along.
Yeah I would say a citation is needed here. Zero day exploits exist - on every system - but as a Mac user since '99 and a Windows admin since I can tell you no matter the skill level of the user: Macs dont get viruses. Period. Full stop. Yes I saw the embedded trojan in iLife and the zero day sploit that got the guy a free laptop recently but as a person who has really seen a wide cross section of computers and users all the way up to Vista it is decidedly two different worlds.
Im glad Apple dropped the "100% virus free" moniker from marketing as has been pointed out it makes them a target - and good job on hiring forward thinking people in _all_ facets of the business. Now just get ZFS plugged in as the default file system and I will officially drown myself in kool-aid.
And I hate to even point this out but look at the submitters username. If you just got to /. since the mac ads came out you might want to sit back and listen for a few. Years. I know I did.
I am sure this is going to be a total disaster!
But then again I will spread any FUD to keep my /. username relevant another 7 years. And if it keeps my consultant prices up in the meanwhile so be it.
This is what I scanned the comments for - my worst fears realized.
Or is it?
I guess this isnt as bad as having a straight "points" system - and I was automagically given some pretty neat 'achievements' (user stats) retroactively. But after last years great "dupe of a dupe of a dupe" I honestly couldnt believe this was real.
Wow, and I thought the subtle redesign was shocking. I cant remember the last time slashdot _itself_ made my jaw drop.
So basically youre saying it WAS my fault I tried to get a first post here?
Not to split hairs but the meaning is actually:
"Go 'make love' to your mother."
And if you ever NEED to cure someone out in Mandarin just remember "shabby" but pronounce it with a litte "shaah bee."
And then if they are bigger than you: run.
I just left Beijing in November (each province and city has different protocols and sites that are to be blocked - its not just one Great Firewall) and can pass on what I have seen.
Most people (foreign and Chinese) just use an ever evolving list of proxy sites for "that one site" that is being blocked for whatever reason. I remember having to finally give up on http://postsecret.com/ as Chinese censors had seen the name and apparently added it to the list sight unseen. http://flyproxy.com/ was the most used and usually quite fast and able to handle most flash/cgi.
TOR and all that are great but who is running the nodes? If you dont think China is combing through traffic of people TRYING to hide you have another thing coming (I dont feel like combing through but there was a /. article some time ago discussing that Fort Mead MD seems to have a hugely disproportionate amount of TOR nodes so it seems the NSA is on the same page). China is all about stability and.... actually no, thats it, stability. As long as you are using proxyserver of the month for negligible things there will never be a problem. If you are using TOR/Anonymizer/etc to attempt to break down the walls and change the government - aiya - watch out.
What?
In your scenario someone posts excerpts of a book they are writing online, say as a series of notes on Facebook, then after this book is published Facebook Lawyers® are going to 1. hunt down a user and then 2. sue them in open court for a share of the profits?
Im sorry but im still not buying these hypothetical situations. Can we pin down anyone actually ever getting screwed by this (be it FB, Myspace, Youtube, Flikr, Whatevr)? I mean this is capitalism - saying "once there is money in ripping people off it will happen" doesnt cut it - lets see it actually happen.
Dont we have this discussion about once a year?
I remember the exact same thing going down with Flikr, Myspace, Youtube... Of course I dont agree with the wording and implications of the new TOS but can anyone point me to an example where any of these sites have commandeered content and used it nefariously? Microsoft maybe once?
Ok pardon the ignorance but I was under the impression that OSX and Windows had pretty stable window managers already. What would be the benefits / drawbacks of installing KDE on a non *NIX system?
Every last one of the "Alternate name to bypass Great Firewall" are blocked here in China btw.
Most stuff you can get to through proxy - but some things they have managed to block through that somehow...