Certs are issued based on confirming the identity of the requester. They aren't granted on the basis of the business you are conducting. This is a common misconception. The only thing an SSL cert guarantees is that the information you are sending is going to the person you are sending it to. The CA confirms that this person is who they say they are. In theory, if a cert was issued correctly, law enforcement should be able to get the information from the CA identifing the individual who is conducting the fraud and apprehend this person.
I figured it was. Thing is racial profiling 'worked' during WWII.
If 90% of crime in any given region is committed by race X targeting that race will reduce the crime. Problem is 99% of race X are hard working honest citizens. Treating those 99% differently because of their race is wrong.
Many of us in the western world have a twisted view of why some of our freedoms are protected by law. Law enforcement would be much more effective if it wasn't for all of these pesky rights; sometimes these rights work in the favor of the criminal. We only see the incidents where criminals get away with their actions due to their rights, the times where innocent people are protected is much less visible. Many of the common arguments like 'this will only hurt people with something to hide' and 'I support anything that stops terrorism' fail to take into account the big picture.
The harder a government clamps down, e.g. subjecting individuals to racial profiling, etc. the greater the pool of discontented and potential terrorists become.
Do you really think so? I need to do some research, but it doesn't appear to me that, historically, in countries where personal freedom was completely revoked there is little record of terrorist attacks. I did quick search earlier for records of terrorist attacks in Soviet Russia, and couldn't find any records. I can't remember any in Maoist China, I haven't heard of any in North Korea. Perhaps these governments just suppress the reports.
Anything? How about summary executions or travel document requirements for movement between cities? Maybe you would prefer racial profiling and detention camps? Drastic enough measures will stop terrorism, but at what price?
Defining spam is tricky business - mostly because none of us can agree. I have friends that are militant about it and will only accept email from whitelists. I also have friends that will forward me every hoax, virus warning, coupon or anything else that comes down the line.
For me it comes down to two major things. The first is unique content. As you pointed out in your post, anyone that sends you ANYTHING 30 times in a row, in any medium, is spamming. I don't need more than one email with identical content, or selling an identical product, ever. As an example, I setup an account on perfectmatch.com a while back. I have deleted the account and emailed their customer support to get me off the mailing list, but still, about once a week I get an email with the same stupid promo offer. The second is content. I don't want questionable content in a generic email (if it's personal, that's a different story). If you wouldn't want your kids to see/read it, don't send it. I think most of us can agree on what's offensive.
If the politician in this article, or any politician for that matter, sends out an email once in a while with some unique content what does it hurt? Email is easy to delete, and I would rather delete something I don't want than miss something I do want. I think spam is the number one most overrated issue of our time. Most of us spend 10 minutes a week dealing with spam. It doesn't hurt anything, doesn't cost much besides our time. We probably spend more money and time filtering it than we would if everyone just deleted it.
Is this true? I listen (probably like everyone else here) to several podcasts. Most of my preferences are podcasts that play music. I know several of them have ASCAP licenses, CovervilleK for example, and I didn't think the license was that much. If a one man podcast can avoid all the licensing entanglements, why can't an actual radio station that has converted to the net?
It is always interesting to read how the Government wants to invade our lives, listen to you talking to your girlfriend about how your day went... Do you people honestly think that this is the goal?
Of course it's not the goal, now... Problem is it sets a precedent and leads us down a path to an Orwellian existence. Don't think this is true? Look at the western world's reaction to the cartoon issue. People are fired, governments are condemning the printing of the cartoons. How long before someone is incarcerated for publishing something of that nature on their blog. Fortunately we are still protected against that in the US, but as our rights continue to degrade we get closer and closer to that situation.
Seriously. If you are talking to someone in Iran about blowing up a site in the US, I want the Government listening to that call.
That's the issue exactly. I don't care what you want. The Bill of Rights were designed to protect us from each other. Maybe I don't want you watching that gay pron or listening to that rock and roll music. Where does it stop? If 90% of us are all for this, get them together and repeal the 1st Amendment. Then everything will be nice and legal.
That aside, what are the odds of the US Government, even with all the money they are throwing at this issue, to listen to my call. If I'm stupid enough to make a phone call from a phone registered in my name to plan a terrorist attack I'm likely too stupid to carry the attack out successfully. There are trivial ways to get around phone taps, email evesdropping and Internet spiders looking for chatroom activity. Listening to everything and everyone just isn't an efficient way of ensuring security.
We are the greatest country in the world, and I don't care if anyone thinks differently. We are, and I would fight and die for the US and my way of life if I had to.
Absolutely, but I would fight for the freedoms our country enjoys and represents. If we end up living in a totalitarian society we will no longer be the greatest country in the world.
Just because JFK, Carter, Lincoln, FDR, Carter, Nixon and how many others did things that compromised our freedoms and society does NOT make them right. I'm not anti-Bush. I disagree with some of his policies, but overall I like the guy. I AM against the foolishness and wastefulness that has saturated our government. If you want ideas about effective security measures I suggest you read Bruce Schneier's writing on the subject. He has excellent, well thought out reasons why things will and won't work. Most of the actions since 9/11 taken by our government have been politically motivated, not security motivated. Until the political agendas are removed I will continue to be extremely critical of the government's security activites.
Everyone should all add entries to their robots.txt to keep Alexa (or whoever the government is using) out of our sites completely. If the spider didn't respect the robots.txt I would think there would be grounds for a civil suit. Of course, their IPs could always be added to the firewalls to keep the spiders out. iptables could probably be configured to recognize the packets as well.
Personally I'll restrict their access if I can to my sites. Why would I want to waste bandwidth on a spider that's not putting me in a valid search engine or driving real traffic to my site?
From TFA:...whether it is ethical for those with a vested interest in the subject to edit entries about it.
Absolutely not. It would be much more ethical for someone with no interest at all to edit the entries.
Seriously, someone with a vested interest should know the more about any given subject than most. The unethical part would be anyone that knowingly adds lies to an entry.
Hell, you don't have to go all the way to the Middle East to find someone who hates me. There are people much closer than that, should we be spying on them too?
The FAULT lies with the US Government and the US citizens. Yes, certain groups in the middle east have done horrible things, and we have no/little control over what they do. OTOH, we have complete control in how we respond.
it's not only unclear what they're up and who's the prime mover; it's not clear which "side" is stirring the pot
Are you kidding? It's the Illuminati, the Council on Foriegn Relations and the Trilateral Commission of course. They are all in on it. The question is what's their agenda, besides the so trite 'one world government'.
Also, although the source code is available (as required by GPL2) it is useless when run on hardware that doesn't have the right keys embeded in it.
I'm not sure how this could happen. If I have the source, couldn't I (well maybe not me, but some genius) just disable the checks for the keys? Might not be that straight forward, but at worst it would be obfuscated and with enough work could be extracted.
However, it should be up to who ever owns the code...and in this case, it's Sun. This is a free society right?
Absolutely, but it's also free to ask them to give up those rights. No one is forcing them or infringing on their rights, the developers that work on the project are 'urging' Sun to create a foundation. OpenOffice is a good product, it would be a shame to fork it so other big companies would feel more comfortable increasing thier contributions. The best thing for the community as a whole would be to separate OOo from Sun, of course this may not be the best thing for Sun and they get to make the decision.
Since this hasn't actually been implemented yet, it's difficult to know what form it would ultimately take. I believe the the big ISP and email provider's goal is to ultimately collect 'postage' on each piece of email that comes through their system. In the short term, based on the plan set forth in TFA, it seems logical that their plan would encourage the tightening of their current email filters. Currently the burden is on the ISPs to set their filters at a level where legit email gets through and spam gets filtered. If they don't, the large number of false positives would cost them customers. Adoption of a 'certified mail plan' would enable the ISPs to tighten filters and explain to customers that this was all in their best interest.
I would be less critical of this if it didn't seem so obvious that this is just big corporate America trying to squeeze an extra buck out of it's customer base.
Maybe, but doubtful. The scheme will only work if everyone pays. If any big companies hold out and people don't get their email this will never work and I just can't see everyone jumping on board. Think your mortgage company is going to pay to email you and let you know when your payment is due? Think your church/lodge/coven is going to want to pay to send you the week's schedule? Think your kids elementary school is going to be willing to pay to send links to their online classroom out to all parents? No way.
If a system like this does arise it will kill email as we know it. The only people willing to send email will be advertisers wanting to sell you something. Much of our current legit email will dissappear. SMS or some other type of, as yet unknown, messaging will completely take over the market, spammers will move in and we will be in EXACTLY the same place we are now.
We need to find a solution keeps email free for legitimate communication, but controls the spam that is sent. We DON'T need a solution that just lines the pockets of big companies like Time Warner/AOL and Yahoo.
Bottom line is, this is the weakness in Capitalism.
Hold on, this isn't a weakness in Capitalism. In a pure free market there would be no patents. While the problems you discussed do exist, they are not a result of the Capitalistic system. On the contrary, they are a result of inept governments monkeying with the system.
Patents have been twisted and corrupted from something to protect innovators from having their ideas ripped off to one that penalizes innovators for having good ideas and spending the time and money and effort to make an idea a reality.
Saw this line, so I thought I would go to wikipedia and see what the actual history of patents was. Turns out they started because the governments (Kings) wanted to get paid to protect inventors.
...a long tradition by the English Crown of the granting of "letters patent" (meaning 'open letter', as opposed to a letter under seal) which granted "monopolies" to favoured persons (or people who were prepared to pay for them).
Looks to me like there have historically been many more abuses of the patent systems, both by the administrators and the inventors, than there have been benefits to any inventors or individuals. I think the whole 'protecting innovators' concept is more a sham than anything.
I wonder if anyone is going to make a bid for GENE (General Electric Nuclear Energy)...
I have a family member that is an engineer for GE. Based on what I know from him, I think it would be unlikely that GE would sell it's Nuclear division. Over the last several years many of GE's departments haven't made much money, doesn't make sense to me that they would sell off a department that has potential. Plus, GE is more known for buying other businesses, not selling them off.
Of course this doesn't mean that someone wouldn't make a bid for GENE, but I would be surprised if GE accepts. I'm actually surprised that they aren't bidding against Toshiba buy Westinghouse.
a confusing in GUI and lacks good help mode fits my perception of Microsoft Word and plenty of people use that. Gimp's GUI is adequate for basic operations. More advanced work can be confusing. Photoshop isn't the easies app to just pickup and use either, that's why most colleges have classes on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, the mold in my shower just stole my car.
Certs are issued based on confirming the identity of the requester. They aren't granted on the basis of the business you are conducting. This is a common misconception. The only thing an SSL cert guarantees is that the information you are sending is going to the person you are sending it to. The CA confirms that this person is who they say they are. In theory, if a cert was issued correctly, law enforcement should be able to get the information from the CA identifing the individual who is conducting the fraud and apprehend this person.
I figured it was. Thing is racial profiling 'worked' during WWII.
If 90% of crime in any given region is committed by race X targeting that race will reduce the crime. Problem is 99% of race X are hard working honest citizens. Treating those 99% differently because of their race is wrong.
Many of us in the western world have a twisted view of why some of our freedoms are protected by law. Law enforcement would be much more effective if it wasn't for all of these pesky rights; sometimes these rights work in the favor of the criminal. We only see the incidents where criminals get away with their actions due to their rights, the times where innocent people are protected is much less visible. Many of the common arguments like 'this will only hurt people with something to hide' and 'I support anything that stops terrorism' fail to take into account the big picture.
Didn't have any of our 'dangerous Japanese citizens' blowing anything up, now did we?
The harder a government clamps down, e.g. subjecting individuals to racial profiling, etc. the greater the pool of discontented and potential terrorists become.
Do you really think so? I need to do some research, but it doesn't appear to me that, historically, in countries where personal freedom was completely revoked there is little record of terrorist attacks. I did quick search earlier for records of terrorist attacks in Soviet Russia, and couldn't find any records. I can't remember any in Maoist China, I haven't heard of any in North Korea. Perhaps these governments just suppress the reports.
I'm all for anything that will stop terrorism.
Anything? How about summary executions or travel document requirements for movement between cities? Maybe you would prefer racial profiling and detention camps? Drastic enough measures will stop terrorism, but at what price?
Defining spam is tricky business - mostly because none of us can agree. I have friends that are militant about it and will only accept email from whitelists. I also have friends that will forward me every hoax, virus warning, coupon or anything else that comes down the line.
For me it comes down to two major things. The first is unique content. As you pointed out in your post, anyone that sends you ANYTHING 30 times in a row, in any medium, is spamming. I don't need more than one email with identical content, or selling an identical product, ever. As an example, I setup an account on perfectmatch.com a while back. I have deleted the account and emailed their customer support to get me off the mailing list, but still, about once a week I get an email with the same stupid promo offer. The second is content. I don't want questionable content in a generic email (if it's personal, that's a different story). If you wouldn't want your kids to see/read it, don't send it. I think most of us can agree on what's offensive.
If the politician in this article, or any politician for that matter, sends out an email once in a while with some unique content what does it hurt? Email is easy to delete, and I would rather delete something I don't want than miss something I do want. I think spam is the number one most overrated issue of our time. Most of us spend 10 minutes a week dealing with spam. It doesn't hurt anything, doesn't cost much besides our time. We probably spend more money and time filtering it than we would if everyone just deleted it.
Is this true? I listen (probably like everyone else here) to several podcasts. Most of my preferences are podcasts that play music. I know several of them have ASCAP licenses, CovervilleK for example, and I didn't think the license was that much. If a one man podcast can avoid all the licensing entanglements, why can't an actual radio station that has converted to the net?
Might not be the best term. Anyone that actually knows the story would realize the folly in siding with Goliath.
...in this case (unlike, say, RIM/NTP), the congresspeople probably don't have much of a vested interest to care.
I bet most of the congresspeople have iPods.
It is always interesting to read how the Government wants to invade our lives, listen to you talking to your girlfriend about how your day went... Do you people honestly think that this is the goal?
Of course it's not the goal, now... Problem is it sets a precedent and leads us down a path to an Orwellian existence. Don't think this is true? Look at the western world's reaction to the cartoon issue. People are fired, governments are condemning the printing of the cartoons. How long before someone is incarcerated for publishing something of that nature on their blog. Fortunately we are still protected against that in the US, but as our rights continue to degrade we get closer and closer to that situation.
Seriously. If you are talking to someone in Iran about blowing up a site in the US, I want the Government listening to that call.
That's the issue exactly. I don't care what you want. The Bill of Rights were designed to protect us from each other. Maybe I don't want you watching that gay pron or listening to that rock and roll music. Where does it stop? If 90% of us are all for this, get them together and repeal the 1st Amendment. Then everything will be nice and legal.
That aside, what are the odds of the US Government, even with all the money they are throwing at this issue, to listen to my call. If I'm stupid enough to make a phone call from a phone registered in my name to plan a terrorist attack I'm likely too stupid to carry the attack out successfully. There are trivial ways to get around phone taps, email evesdropping and Internet spiders looking for chatroom activity. Listening to everything and everyone just isn't an efficient way of ensuring security.
We are the greatest country in the world, and I don't care if anyone thinks differently. We are, and I would fight and die for the US and my way of life if I had to.
Absolutely, but I would fight for the freedoms our country enjoys and represents. If we end up living in a totalitarian society we will no longer be the greatest country in the world.
Just because JFK, Carter, Lincoln, FDR, Carter, Nixon and how many others did things that compromised our freedoms and society does NOT make them right. I'm not anti-Bush. I disagree with some of his policies, but overall I like the guy. I AM against the foolishness and wastefulness that has saturated our government. If you want ideas about effective security measures I suggest you read Bruce Schneier's writing on the subject. He has excellent, well thought out reasons why things will and won't work. Most of the actions since 9/11 taken by our government have been politically motivated, not security motivated. Until the political agendas are removed I will continue to be extremely critical of the government's security activites.
Everyone should all add entries to their robots.txt to keep Alexa (or whoever the government is using) out of our sites completely. If the spider didn't respect the robots.txt I would think there would be grounds for a civil suit. Of course, their IPs could always be added to the firewalls to keep the spiders out. iptables could probably be configured to recognize the packets as well.
Personally I'll restrict their access if I can to my sites. Why would I want to waste bandwidth on a spider that's not putting me in a valid search engine or driving real traffic to my site?
From TFA: ...whether it is ethical for those with a vested interest in the subject to edit entries about it.
Absolutely not. It would be much more ethical for someone with no interest at all to edit the entries.
Seriously, someone with a vested interest should know the more about any given subject than most. The unethical part would be anyone that knowingly adds lies to an entry.
You have no way of knowing that, so what's the point of saying it?
Thought it was funny... good way to turn a boring political/religious discussion into a much more interesting flamefest about Linux v Windows.
Hell, you don't have to go all the way to the Middle East to find someone who hates me. There are people much closer than that, should we be spying on them too?
The FAULT lies with the US Government and the US citizens. Yes, certain groups in the middle east have done horrible things, and we have no/little control over what they do. OTOH, we have complete control in how we respond.
it's not only unclear what they're up and who's the prime mover; it's not clear which "side" is stirring the pot
Are you kidding? It's the Illuminati, the Council on Foriegn Relations and the Trilateral Commission of course. They are all in on it. The question is what's their agenda, besides the so trite 'one world government'.
I was thinking that. Must all be Windows servers. Should be a windfall for Linux and Apache. Woo Hoo!!
Also, although the source code is available (as required by GPL2) it is useless when run on hardware that doesn't have the right keys embeded in it.
I'm not sure how this could happen. If I have the source, couldn't I (well maybe not me, but some genius) just disable the checks for the keys? Might not be that straight forward, but at worst it would be obfuscated and with enough work could be extracted.
Or put adsense on all of their websites - like everyone else.
However, it should be up to who ever owns the code...and in this case, it's Sun. This is a free society right?
Absolutely, but it's also free to ask them to give up those rights. No one is forcing them or infringing on their rights, the developers that work on the project are 'urging' Sun to create a foundation. OpenOffice is a good product, it would be a shame to fork it so other big companies would feel more comfortable increasing thier contributions. The best thing for the community as a whole would be to separate OOo from Sun, of course this may not be the best thing for Sun and they get to make the decision.
Since this hasn't actually been implemented yet, it's difficult to know what form it would ultimately take. I believe the the big ISP and email provider's goal is to ultimately collect 'postage' on each piece of email that comes through their system. In the short term, based on the plan set forth in TFA, it seems logical that their plan would encourage the tightening of their current email filters. Currently the burden is on the ISPs to set their filters at a level where legit email gets through and spam gets filtered. If they don't, the large number of false positives would cost them customers. Adoption of a 'certified mail plan' would enable the ISPs to tighten filters and explain to customers that this was all in their best interest.
I would be less critical of this if it didn't seem so obvious that this is just big corporate America trying to squeeze an extra buck out of it's customer base.
Maybe, but doubtful. The scheme will only work if everyone pays. If any big companies hold out and people don't get their email this will never work and I just can't see everyone jumping on board. Think your mortgage company is going to pay to email you and let you know when your payment is due? Think your church/lodge/coven is going to want to pay to send you the week's schedule? Think your kids elementary school is going to be willing to pay to send links to their online classroom out to all parents? No way.
If a system like this does arise it will kill email as we know it. The only people willing to send email will be advertisers wanting to sell you something. Much of our current legit email will dissappear. SMS or some other type of, as yet unknown, messaging will completely take over the market, spammers will move in and we will be in EXACTLY the same place we are now.
We need to find a solution keeps email free for legitimate communication, but controls the spam that is sent. We DON'T need a solution that just lines the pockets of big companies like Time Warner/AOL and Yahoo.
Bottom line is, this is the weakness in Capitalism.
...a long tradition by the English Crown of the granting of "letters patent" (meaning 'open letter', as opposed to a letter under seal) which granted "monopolies" to favoured persons (or people who were prepared to pay for them).
Hold on, this isn't a weakness in Capitalism. In a pure free market there would be no patents. While the problems you discussed do exist, they are not a result of the Capitalistic system. On the contrary, they are a result of inept governments monkeying with the system.
Patents have been twisted and corrupted from something to protect innovators from having their ideas ripped off to one that penalizes innovators for having good ideas and spending the time and money and effort to make an idea a reality.
Saw this line, so I thought I would go to wikipedia and see what the actual history of patents was. Turns out they started because the governments (Kings) wanted to get paid to protect inventors.
Looks to me like there have historically been many more abuses of the patent systems, both by the administrators and the inventors, than there have been benefits to any inventors or individuals. I think the whole 'protecting innovators' concept is more a sham than anything.
I wonder if anyone is going to make a bid for GENE (General Electric Nuclear Energy)...
I have a family member that is an engineer for GE. Based on what I know from him, I think it would be unlikely that GE would sell it's Nuclear division. Over the last several years many of GE's departments haven't made much money, doesn't make sense to me that they would sell off a department that has potential. Plus, GE is more known for buying other businesses, not selling them off.
Of course this doesn't mean that someone wouldn't make a bid for GENE, but I would be surprised if GE accepts. I'm actually surprised that they aren't bidding against Toshiba buy Westinghouse.
a confusing in GUI and lacks good help mode fits my perception of Microsoft Word and plenty of people use that. Gimp's GUI is adequate for basic operations. More advanced work can be confusing. Photoshop isn't the easies app to just pickup and use either, that's why most colleges have classes on it.