Yahoo's new system works like this: Once a message is composed, it travels, unencrypted, to Yahoo, which sends it through a secure connection to SecureDelivery.com. There, the message and any attachments are scrambled.
Unencrypted between end-user and Yahoo! ? So a sniffer either at the local network (the norm, I'd think, at many institutions) or a crack at Yahoo! would still work?
You've never gotten something marked "non-transferrable"? A lot of items come with strings attached, and they're not all digital.
Some folks here use the metaphor of a car engine, noting you aren't prohibited from tinkering with it. I'd be surprised, however, if doing things like replacing the engine yourself didn't have the very explicit consequence of voiding your warranty...
You can act, but there are often consequences -- and not just with CDs.
It really doesn't matter what you think it is; it matters what it is, legally.
You can go on hollerin' about how, say, income taxes are illegal, and weed shouldn't be, and then withhold taxes on income from marijuana trafficking -- but don't be alarmed when the DEA or IRS comes after you. And, in court, you'd lose.
It's not code-level verification (say, proof-carrying code), but authentication.
You'd probably put more trust in, say, Citibank, if you were sure that you were really dealing with them, than some random lending institution that gives you a P.O. box and solicits money for new accounts, no? This is the same deal.
It's 'bout high time users realize that installing software without having a good idea of who wrote it -- such as the toy applets sent frequently in the mail -- is not the swiftest thing to do.
Know how many Open Source advocates compare computers to cars, and a closed system to a car with the hood welded shut? Installing random software without some reasonable basis for knowing who wrote it is like allowing random people to monkey with the internals of your car. Given that there are people who write trojans for kicks, the metaphor extends to letting people wire Semtex and blasting caps to your ignition -- if they choose. And knowing that they'll leave much less evidence, as well...
If it makes people realize how trivial it is for a program to damage their files -- at least in a system w/o strong access control and provisions for a "sandbox" environment -- maybe a) they'll actually back up more (I would *not* buy a desktop without simultaneously getting a tape drive. Period.) and b) they'll think about what they run.
It's why there is a "reasonable doubt" standard instead of absolute proof; absolute proof is impossible, since you can't disprove the existence of malevolent, shapeshifting teleporting aliens.
Or even the existence of people if you accept Descartes' _Meditations_ but exclude the ontological argument, but that's a bit much...
It's been a LONG time since I gave that game up (it consumed too much of my time...), but IIRC Netrek can be, and was, bypassed. And I'm not talking about servers set up to allow Borgs; the RSA authentication was bypassed on a Sun, IIRC -- probably by running both a 'real' client and the Borg, and using a proxy to monitor and redirect packets. The only time you need to get data from the blessed client is for RSA authentication; the rest of the traffic is cleartext, methinks.
Because companies aren't interested in pricing themselves out of the market. When they do charge large amounts, various countries then decide to ignore IP and allow their locals to infringe on patents, produce the drugs themselves, and sell 'em cheap. The local governments then refuse to enforce the patent laws, while the drug company gets shafted.
The less-well-educated are, historically, likely to have more children; and they're more likely to be poor, who are less likely to vote for the GOP I'd think -- compared to the middle and upper classes, which are more evenly split. So it's probably not off the mark.
In fact, my NYT almanac notes that black and Hispanic (especially the latter) have a significantly higher birth rate than that for whites. Blacks are a reliable Democratic voting block; Hispanics, depending on origin, often are (major exception: Cubans, who generally swing GOP. ) So it really would not surprise me at all that the demographics would favor the Democrats over time, although to be fair one would also have to take into account mortality rates...
That ballot design is not a new one, if memory serves; it's also been used in Chicago, as Mr. Daley is no doubt aware. In addition, 4-5% isn't that high of a discard rate, for PBC or elsewhere...
And, FWIW, Gore only called for hand counts in certain Democratic counties. That introduces additional inaccuracies in the margin, which is what matters, since hand counting is biased towards finding additional votes. The ONLY fair hand-recount is a statewide hand recount with uniform standards (e.g. standards for dealing with chad), and where each ballot is handled a minimum number of times (because this can loosen chad).
It's analogous to rolling 200 fair six-sided dice, rerolling all the dice that showed 1 or 2, then re-rolling those that still show 1 or 2, and then reporting that the dice have an average of 4.8 or whatever instead of 3.5. Any self-respecting statistician would die of laughter.
I'm reminded of the fact that in states with open primaries, some Democrats had publicly urged their supporters to go and vote for Sen. McCain in the GOP primary, and then to return to Gore in November.
IIRC, while id Software has this habit of releasing source code, they generally do NOT open up the copyrights on the *level data* -- that is, you can freely distribute the Doom source code IIRC, but duplicating and redistributing the various commercial.WADs, such as that for the full registered version of Doom, is still a no-no.
I don't think it's applicable to MSFT source code, since not only would they do backups, I'd think, but also each SDE normally has a local copy of the source of whatever project he's on, plus there are copies on build machines and so forth.
But if you wanted to 'hold hostage' data, that you were sure there was no other copy (Otherwise, it's more than slightly pointless. They can't guarantee that YOU didn't duplicate it, so their sole concern might be making sure that THEY still have a copy), strong encryption might be the way to go. Generate public/private key on your own machine, then only transfer the public and use that to encrypt the data as if it were a message to yourself. Wipe the original using many random bits. You don't need to get the data yourself (it could be a very, very large download depending on target), and you never sent the private key, so even if they were logging traffic at the time they won't snarf the decryption key.
Then, you make the demand (Probably not money. Money leaves trails if transferred electronically, and physically, well... I wonder if there are statistics on the percentage of people who try for money, and get arrested or KIA'd.), and promise to send the decryption key.
But how often is valuable data not archived elsewhere? Holding data hostage might be applicable for small businesses, or maybe highly technical / special data that doesn't get propagated highly within an organization, but other than that... ?
It's an improvement, at least. And he's right -- a lot of people would be helped more by basics like immunizations than, oh, Pocket PCs or e-mail.
The NYT almanac puts the life expectancy for those born in '94 in Rwanda at 23; Sierra Leone and Mozambique at 34; Liberia at 39, and so forth. These people have more immediate concerns, like war, famine, pestilence and plague, that should take precedence over hypertext. Funding something like immunizations (which his Foundation does), or, say, GM grains engineered for high yield (dunno if it does), would help a bit more...
I'd suspect it's more likely that he'd do it for himself, than for his party. It's arguable that his "leadership" has done significant damage to the party, ranging from fundraising excesses, to the calculated screwing-over of traditional constituencies (for instance, welfare advocates, homosexuals, union members, and environmentalists might all feel betrayed; but, as the President knows, with very high probability they'll vote Dem. anyway, so the downside to screwing 'em over should be absolutely minimal from his POV.).
He's going to retire soon. He probably does NOT want a legacy rife with mentions of impeachment, perhaps disbarment, and accusations of everything from perjury and rape, to espionage and conspiracy to commit murder, with varying levels of circumstantial evidence.
Not to mention the possibility of classified information being entered into a court record and possibly publicized.
My understanding is that in the Wen Ho Lee case, his attorneys threatened to try to get as much of the material thusly made public -- that is, they basically blackmailed the prosecution with threats of disclosing classified information. The Government did not want to have nuclear secrets read aloud in Court, 'natch, and backed down.
a) In the House, there would be no accountability on this case: it was passed via voice vote, apparently. There are references to Unanimous Consent for the Senate, however.
b) On issues, those categories are MUCH too broad -- and this is a basic problem with polls and so forth. "Do you support Affirmative Action?", for instance, arguably deserves an essay about WHAT TYPES are being considered, for whom, why, and so forth, rather than simply breaking down views into pro- / anti-. There's a whole continuum of opinions out there, so you'd have to post their entire voting histories (including link to bill text), plus probably any speeches they made or so forth, to do 'em justice.
It's a pecadillo compared to, oh, mislaying or obliterating subpoenaed evidence. Like, say, Rose Law Firm billing records turning up mysteriously in the WH. Or e-mail that conveniently was never backed up; despite earlier testimony that they WERE, just that it'd take a couple of months (only) to restore them; after, of course, an initial estimate that was WELL after the election... Right now, in fact, they're playing "Piss Off the Judge", namely Judge Lamberth who seems to believe that they're not being exactly forthcoming here.
Or bombing a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant on evidence shown to be flimsy at best. Oops. Clinton's watch, but Gore called him the best president ever...
Or finding NOTHING SUSPICIOUS AT ALL about people fleeing the country during a campaign finance investigation.
Or claims that his advisors would NOT give him meeting minutes, would NOT inform him about the reason for a Temple visit, and would NOT otherwise brief him about what he missed, due to allegedly drinking too much iced tea.
Whether a fetus qualifies as human versus, say, property, also has certain other complications... fetal alcohol syndrome, and other items such as miscarriages induced by domestic violence.
What is an appropriate charge for a miscarriage that appears to be caused by an assault? Murder? Homicide? Destruction of property? Cruelty to animals? Or is the sole charge just the perhaps aggravated assault itself, with the miscarriage only a factor rather than a separate charge?
If a physician carelessly prescribes drugs that induce harm to a fetus, what is the appropriate charge, if any? And so forth.
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Yahoo's new system works like this: Once a message is composed, it travels, unencrypted, to Yahoo, which sends it through a secure connection to SecureDelivery.com. There, the message and any attachments are scrambled.
Unencrypted between end-user and Yahoo! ? So a sniffer either at the local network (the norm, I'd think, at many institutions) or a crack at Yahoo! would still work?
Strange decision.
You've never gotten something marked "non-transferrable"? A lot of items come with strings attached, and they're not all digital.
Some folks here use the metaphor of a car engine, noting you aren't prohibited from tinkering with it. I'd be surprised, however, if doing things like replacing the engine yourself didn't have the very explicit consequence of voiding your warranty...
You can act, but there are often consequences -- and not just with CDs.
It really doesn't matter what you think it is; it matters what it is, legally.
You can go on hollerin' about how, say, income taxes are illegal, and weed shouldn't be, and then withhold taxes on income from marijuana trafficking -- but don't be alarmed when the DEA or IRS comes after you. And, in court, you'd lose.
Well, if they don't start tracking, the BMG deal is off...
It's not code-level verification (say, proof-carrying code), but authentication.
You'd probably put more trust in, say, Citibank, if you were sure that you were really dealing with them, than some random lending institution that gives you a P.O. box and solicits money for new accounts, no? This is the same deal.
That is a GOOD thing.
It's 'bout high time users realize that installing software without having a good idea of who wrote it -- such as the toy applets sent frequently in the mail -- is not the swiftest thing to do.
Know how many Open Source advocates compare computers to cars, and a closed system to a car with the hood welded shut? Installing random software without some reasonable basis for knowing who wrote it is like allowing random people to monkey with the internals of your car. Given that there are people who write trojans for kicks, the metaphor extends to letting people wire Semtex and blasting caps to your ignition -- if they choose. And knowing that they'll leave much less evidence, as well...
If it makes people realize how trivial it is for a program to damage their files -- at least in a system w/o strong access control and provisions for a "sandbox" environment -- maybe a) they'll actually back up more (I would *not* buy a desktop without simultaneously getting a tape drive. Period.) and b) they'll think about what they run.
It's why there is a "reasonable doubt" standard instead of absolute proof; absolute proof is impossible, since you can't disprove the existence of malevolent, shapeshifting teleporting aliens.
Or even the existence of people if you accept Descartes' _Meditations_ but exclude the ontological argument, but that's a bit much...
It's been a LONG time since I gave that game up (it consumed too much of my time...), but IIRC Netrek can be, and was, bypassed. And I'm not talking about servers set up to allow Borgs; the RSA authentication was bypassed on a Sun, IIRC -- probably by running both a 'real' client and the Borg, and using a proxy to monitor and redirect packets. The only time you need to get data from the blessed client is for RSA authentication; the rest of the traffic is cleartext, methinks.
Because companies aren't interested in pricing themselves out of the market. When they do charge large amounts, various countries then decide to ignore IP and allow their locals to infringe on patents, produce the drugs themselves, and sell 'em cheap. The local governments then refuse to enforce the patent laws, while the drug company gets shafted.
...and people thought Descent caused nausea and disorientation the first time around...
:)
I'm glad that there doesn't seem to be a force-feedback version. That would hurt.
The less-well-educated are, historically, likely to have more children; and they're more likely to be poor, who are less likely to vote for the GOP I'd think -- compared to the middle and upper classes, which are more evenly split. So it's probably not off the mark.
In fact, my NYT almanac notes that black and Hispanic (especially the latter) have a significantly higher birth rate than that for whites. Blacks are a reliable Democratic voting block; Hispanics, depending on origin, often are (major exception: Cubans, who generally swing GOP. ) So it really would not surprise me at all that the demographics would favor the Democrats over time, although to be fair one would also have to take into account mortality rates...
That ballot design is not a new one, if memory serves; it's also been used in Chicago, as Mr. Daley is no doubt aware. In addition, 4-5% isn't that high of a discard rate, for PBC or elsewhere...
And, FWIW, Gore only called for hand counts in certain Democratic counties. That introduces additional inaccuracies in the margin, which is what matters, since hand counting is biased towards finding additional votes. The ONLY fair hand-recount is a statewide hand recount with uniform standards (e.g. standards for dealing with chad), and where each ballot is handled a minimum number of times (because this can loosen chad).
It's analogous to rolling 200 fair six-sided dice, rerolling all the dice that showed 1 or 2, then re-rolling those that still show 1 or 2, and then reporting that the dice have an average of 4.8 or whatever instead of 3.5. Any self-respecting statistician would die of laughter.
Sen.-Elect Clinton has, if memory serves, already publicly stated that she would support the elimination of the EC.
I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that birth rates were at least somewhat correlated with political affiliation, incidentally.
Heh.
I'm reminded of the fact that in states with open primaries, some Democrats had publicly urged their supporters to go and vote for Sen. McCain in the GOP primary, and then to return to Gore in November.
IIRC, while id Software has this habit of releasing source code, they generally do NOT open up the copyrights on the *level data* -- that is, you can freely distribute the Doom source code IIRC, but duplicating and redistributing the various commercial .WADs, such as that for the full registered version of Doom, is still a no-no.
You might not be able to buy BOP (except a used copy), but you might be able to download a Mac version from Chris Crawford's company.
I wonder how many people would tune into a live webcast of VS models providing election coverage. ;-)
I don't think it's applicable to MSFT source code, since not only would they do backups, I'd think, but also each SDE normally has a local copy of the source of whatever project he's on, plus there are copies on build machines and so forth.
But if you wanted to 'hold hostage' data, that you were sure there was no other copy (Otherwise, it's more than slightly pointless. They can't guarantee that YOU didn't duplicate it, so their sole concern might be making sure that THEY still have a copy), strong encryption might be the way to go. Generate public/private key on your own machine, then only transfer the public and use that to encrypt the data as if it were a message to yourself. Wipe the original using many random bits. You don't need to get the data yourself (it could be a very, very large download depending on target), and you never sent the private key, so even if they were logging traffic at the time they won't snarf the decryption key.
Then, you make the demand (Probably not money. Money leaves trails if transferred electronically, and physically, well... I wonder if there are statistics on the percentage of people who try for money, and get arrested or KIA'd.), and promise to send the decryption key.
But how often is valuable data not archived elsewhere? Holding data hostage might be applicable for small businesses, or maybe highly technical / special data that doesn't get propagated highly within an organization, but other than that... ?
*shrug*
It's an improvement, at least. And he's right -- a lot of people would be helped more by basics like immunizations than, oh, Pocket PCs or e-mail.
The NYT almanac puts the life expectancy for those born in '94 in Rwanda at 23; Sierra Leone and Mozambique at 34; Liberia at 39, and so forth. These people have more immediate concerns, like war, famine, pestilence and plague, that should take precedence over hypertext. Funding something like immunizations (which his Foundation does), or, say, GM grains engineered for high yield (dunno if it does), would help a bit more...
That which a Government redistributes has mostly, if not entirely, been taken away from the people -- usually with the threat of force.
I'd suspect it's more likely that he'd do it for himself, than for his party. It's arguable that his "leadership" has done significant damage to the party, ranging from fundraising excesses, to the calculated screwing-over of traditional constituencies (for instance, welfare advocates, homosexuals, union members, and environmentalists might all feel betrayed; but, as the President knows, with very high probability they'll vote Dem. anyway, so the downside to screwing 'em over should be absolutely minimal from his POV.).
He's going to retire soon. He probably does NOT want a legacy rife with mentions of impeachment, perhaps disbarment, and accusations of everything from perjury and rape, to espionage and conspiracy to commit murder, with varying levels of circumstantial evidence.
Not to mention the possibility of classified information being entered into a court record and possibly publicized.
My understanding is that in the Wen Ho Lee case, his attorneys threatened to try to get as much of the material thusly made public -- that is, they basically blackmailed the prosecution with threats of disclosing classified information. The Government did not want to have nuclear secrets read aloud in Court, 'natch, and backed down.
a) In the House, there would be no accountability on this case: it was passed via voice vote, apparently. There are references to Unanimous Consent for the Senate, however.
b) On issues, those categories are MUCH too broad -- and this is a basic problem with polls and so forth. "Do you support Affirmative Action?", for instance, arguably deserves an essay about WHAT TYPES are being considered, for whom, why, and so forth, rather than simply breaking down views into pro- / anti-. There's a whole continuum of opinions out there, so you'd have to post their entire voting histories (including link to bill text), plus probably any speeches they made or so forth, to do 'em justice.
It's a pecadillo compared to, oh, mislaying or obliterating subpoenaed evidence. Like, say, Rose Law Firm billing records turning up mysteriously in the WH. Or e-mail that conveniently was never backed up; despite earlier testimony that they WERE, just that it'd take a couple of months (only) to restore them; after, of course, an initial estimate that was WELL after the election... Right now, in fact, they're playing "Piss Off the Judge", namely Judge Lamberth who seems to believe that they're not being exactly forthcoming here.
Or bombing a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant on evidence shown to be flimsy at best. Oops. Clinton's watch, but Gore called him the best president ever...
Or finding NOTHING SUSPICIOUS AT ALL about people fleeing the country during a campaign finance investigation.
Or claims that his advisors would NOT give him meeting minutes, would NOT inform him about the reason for a Temple visit, and would NOT otherwise brief him about what he missed, due to allegedly drinking too much iced tea.
Yup, that DUI should really hurt him. Right.
Whether a fetus qualifies as human versus, say, property, also has certain other complications... fetal alcohol syndrome, and other items such as miscarriages induced by domestic violence.
What is an appropriate charge for a miscarriage that appears to be caused by an assault? Murder? Homicide? Destruction of property? Cruelty to animals? Or is the sole charge just the perhaps aggravated assault itself, with the miscarriage only a factor rather than a separate charge?
If a physician carelessly prescribes drugs that induce harm to a fetus, what is the appropriate charge, if any? And so forth.
Can of worms, can of worms...