You are totally right; I'm also Brazilian and I remember those times very well.
Brazil's case was also kinda unique at that time because in the later stages of hyperinflation, like you said, all contracts and salaries were indexed based on the inflation rate; this made the problem worse because this created a positive loop: people were predicting and compensating for the upcoming inflation, effectively *causing* it.
That's why the Plano Real (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real) from 2003 was so brilliant: the government correctly identified the cause, created an index to base the prices, sallaries and contracts on, and one year later threw the old currency away and declared the *index* to be the real currency. It's amazing if you think about it: inflation went down from 60% per *month* to less than 10% per year with the stroke of a pen.
A miracle, even. I was born in 1980 and never before in my life I had ever seen stable prices. I thought we would never pull this off; but we did.
First of all, Google (the branch) is incorporated in Brazil, so by law it is a Brazilian company and has to follow Brazilian laws. This is way different than claiming jurisdiction because of nothing more than a top level domain, without any other kind of presence, like the US does. Google is a legal company in Brazil, with local offices, executives, employees and engineers and offers products in Brazil, in Portuguese, using a.com.br domain, to Brazilian customers. Users accept EULAs in Portuguese, citing Brazilian law, and the other party is the Brazilian office. Comparing this to enforcing jurisdiction abroad is a joke and totally stupid.
Second of all, the law is ridiculous and it is from decades ago, pre-Internet and made to control the message since politicians or their close allies own most of TV and paper media in Brazil. This kind of law makes no sense in a world with Internet and user-generated content.
But, having said that, I also think that a company has to comply with the laws and especially with a court order. (They can dispute in court if they don't like it, but they cannot pick and choose what to comply.) And the appropriate response for not following the laws or for contempt is arresting the top executive (not a sales droid like some other posts imply) of said company. I just wish we were as severe to punish misdeeds from companies as severely as when we are trying to enforce a ridiculous and arcane law from the 50-60s.
Remember, the executive is not being punished for the video, which is sadly illegal under the current laws (the author if found is liable for defamation, libel and breaking the electoral law). The top executive is being held responsible for his company not removing the video (blocking it until after the election was also an acceptable solution mentioned in the court order) when requested by a lawful court order and given one week to comply.
The current situation in Argentina reminds me of Brazil before Plano Real when inflation was around 60% per month and people where running for the dollar. Some years before that the government froze 80% of the bank assets of the whole population, which was a total disaster.
In retrospect, it is amazing that Plano Real actually worked. I'm still amazed when I think about it: I was born in 1980 and in my lifetime I've seen Brazil adopt 6 different currencies! New governments would announce over the weekend that the currency have been renamed and three zeros have been cut (1000 = 1); until new banknotes were available the banks were stamping the old ones with the new name and value. Prices and contracts were frozen; it was a mess...
Even today many people still go to the supermarket and buy groceries for the whole month, out of habit. In the old times of hyper-inflation, you had to rush to the supermarket and buy everything you could because if you went in the morning and later went again in the same day but during the afternoon instead, prices would have changed already. When I was a young kid, and before we had barcode scanners and a ticket with the price was fixed in every piece of merchandise, supermarkets had full-time employees that spend their whole day attaching the new prices. I remember that I ran more than once to grab something in the end of a long corridor while the employee was setting the new prices at the other end, so I could pay the old price before he had the opportunity to change it.
If Brazil managed to fix that mess I bet Argentina can, too. It might take a while, though: it took us more than two decades.
I remember the discussion some years ago here in Slashdot about why ICANN and DNS should stay under U.S. control because it was the "land of the free", the country was neutral regarding these matters, there would be no political pressure of any kind, guaranteed freedom of speech, yada yada yada.
It's also funny (in a sad way) that we are seeing this whole apparent enforcement of U.S. jurisdiction on foreign countries (NZ, Megaupload, the extradition of the British guy that posted links, etc.) when the military on American bases abroad are never subjected to local laws even when committing crimes locally outside the base, and when U.S. absolutely refuses to sign or endorse the International Court of Justice (recognised by more than 190 countries) because it will not accept foreign influence on its sovereignty in any way.
I don't think my country (Brazil) is any better, but at least I'm not brainwashed since birth to think otherwise.
I live in Sweden and the doorbell in the building's entrance calls my mobile phone. So if there's a package to be delivered and I'm not at home I can still talk to the deliveryman. It's very cool (unless you're at home with your mobile off).
That is exactly what I thought: is 6 cups a day normal?? What's the normal size for a cup in U.S.? I'm from Brazil and we like strong coffee here; I heard that Americans coffee is weaker, that might also be an explanation.
Not exactly. But if you manage to compromise or convince any of the built-in CAs trusted by browsers (or any of the hundreds -- or thousands -- of sub-CAs they delegate to) to give you a certificate for any website on Earth, and you can redirect your victims to go to your website instead of the real one, then yes.
By compromising any CA where you can build a chain of trust to a trusted root, then you can impersonate any website (if you manage to get a certificate). Some of these CAs are actually owned/controlled by some not-so-trustful governments, and they can generate any certificate they want.
Quite a weak weakest link, don't you think?
Exactly, and as a Brazilian I can emphasize that the US subsidies on sugar cane and corn have been affecting us for decades. Brazil has been complaining to the WTO since a long time ago and recently we started getting some victories there. It is the same thing with a lot of countries in Europe. I know there is no saint in this fight, but it seems very hypocritical to me to see Americans complaining about China practices when they have been doing the same thing to others for years and years.
I agree with some points you make, but being a Brazilian who lives in Sweden and works in Denmark I can say that I have intimate knowledge of both "Brazilian-style" and "Europen-style" socialisms. Brazil can indeed teach a lot of lessons to the Europeans, but we're still far away from a place like Sweden. We are advancing, that's a fact, but in a very slow pace compared to what we could achieve according to our size and resources.
Why do everybody have this idea of topless ladies in Brazil? It's considered indecent exposure, and you can go to jail for that. Europe in fact is much more liberal in this regard.
I have Windows 7 and a X25-M G2 that I was going to update but I gave up after I found via Google a lot of forums posts from people who bricked their drives with the new firmware.
This split is for the process address space, it has nothing to do with the actual amount of RAM in the machine. It exists so a process can go from user to kernel space and back without having to update the page tables, resulting in a faster transition.
The only relation this split has with physical RAM is that if a process has 2 GB of address space and the computer has more free RAM than that the process cannot use it all without tricks like AWE/PAE.
I don't agree. A false sense of security is worse than no security. By using a self-signed certificate I have no idea if I'm encrypting the data to the right recipient.
Of course, I still can validate the certificate via an out-of-band mechanism. In Firefox 3 I can validate and accept it with 4 clicks instead of one. So what? This is something I should do very seldom for a specific web site. Four clicks are even better than one because it forces me to *think* before accepting an unknown certificate and potentially exposing myself to men-in-the-middle attacks.
Do you think that the average user knows what a certificate is and how to validate a self-signed one out-of-band? Most users were just clicking "Accept" and unknowingly exposing themselves to MITM attacks. Then they saw the padlock and thought they were safe, when in fact they could be getting *zero* protection.
If you don't want average users to be scared, then don't use self-signed certs. Don't use SSL. Average users don't validate self-signed certs anyway, so it's better for them *not* to have a padlock and be aware that they are getting *zero* security.
If your users are tech-savy enough to know how to validate a self-signed cert they will know exactly how to proceed when they get the warning in Firefox 3.
This is by no means on oversight. The Brazilian Federal Police has been investigating Cisco for the last two years and it found out that for the last 5 years Cisco has been illegally shipping equipment to Brazil:
Cisco opened companies in tax heavens like Panama, Bahamas and British Virgin Islands. The companies where registered in the name of Brazilian nationals. The investigation found out the those Brazilians are poor and live in poor neighborhoods; the article is not clear but it is most likely that those people didn't even know about the companies.
Police suspects that Cisco used falsified invoices and undervalued the equipment.
The equipment arrived at Salvador airport where customs officers are suspected of corruption and helping the smuggling.
All the paperwork was handled by an offshore office from Panama, working for Cisco.
More than 30 other companies are involved in this scheme.
The amount of taxes that were not paid is about 1,5 billion BRL.
Federal Police then raided offices (including Cisco Brasil) and arrested 40 people, including Cisco executives and government employees.
I don't understand why the criticism against the Brazilian government here. Look, I am a Brazilian and I know that the import taxes here are ridiculous. Most people try to avoid taxes as much as possible. But if you gamble the system you risk being caught. It is impossible that those executives didn't know what the company was doing, and if they didn't know it's their problem. Cisco and their buyers were knowingly committing FRAUD. The police investigated for two years and when it got enough proof it raided places and arrested people. What should it do? Say "don't do it again" and give a tap on the back?
I really don't understand this. All software should support arbitrary dates for DST start and end.
I am from Brazil and here we don't have fixed dates for DST. The stupid government change them every year. But at least every single piece of software produced here supports changing the DST period. You shouldn't have to patch anything but just change some configuration file (ok, changing the configuration file is still patching, but you got my point). How hard is this?
And probably most of those new patches *still* have hardcoded dates for the new DST period. So if it ever changes this whole mess happen again. Sigh... Won't they ever learn? Y2K, anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
One word: Petrobras.
You are totally right; I'm also Brazilian and I remember those times very well.
Brazil's case was also kinda unique at that time because in the later stages of hyperinflation, like you said, all contracts and salaries were indexed based on the inflation rate; this made the problem worse because this created a positive loop: people were predicting and compensating for the upcoming inflation, effectively *causing* it.
That's why the Plano Real (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real) from 2003 was so brilliant: the government correctly identified the cause, created an index to base the prices, sallaries and contracts on, and one year later threw the old currency away and declared the *index* to be the real currency. It's amazing if you think about it: inflation went down from 60% per *month* to less than 10% per year with the stroke of a pen.
A miracle, even. I was born in 1980 and never before in my life I had ever seen stable prices. I thought we would never pull this off; but we did.
Some considerations:
First of all, Google (the branch) is incorporated in Brazil, so by law it is a Brazilian company and has to follow Brazilian laws. This is way different than claiming jurisdiction because of nothing more than a top level domain, without any other kind of presence, like the US does. Google is a legal company in Brazil, with local offices, executives, employees and engineers and offers products in Brazil, in Portuguese, using a .com.br domain, to Brazilian customers. Users accept EULAs in Portuguese, citing Brazilian law, and the other party is the Brazilian office. Comparing this to enforcing jurisdiction abroad is a joke and totally stupid.
Second of all, the law is ridiculous and it is from decades ago, pre-Internet and made to control the message since politicians or their close allies own most of TV and paper media in Brazil. This kind of law makes no sense in a world with Internet and user-generated content.
But, having said that, I also think that a company has to comply with the laws and especially with a court order. (They can dispute in court if they don't like it, but they cannot pick and choose what to comply.) And the appropriate response for not following the laws or for contempt is arresting the top executive (not a sales droid like some other posts imply) of said company. I just wish we were as severe to punish misdeeds from companies as severely as when we are trying to enforce a ridiculous and arcane law from the 50-60s.
Remember, the executive is not being punished for the video, which is sadly illegal under the current laws (the author if found is liable for defamation, libel and breaking the electoral law). The top executive is being held responsible for his company not removing the video (blocking it until after the election was also an acceptable solution mentioned in the court order) when requested by a lawful court order and given one week to comply.
The current situation in Argentina reminds me of Brazil before Plano Real when inflation was around 60% per month and people where running for the dollar. Some years before that the government froze 80% of the bank assets of the whole population, which was a total disaster.
In retrospect, it is amazing that Plano Real actually worked. I'm still amazed when I think about it: I was born in 1980 and in my lifetime I've seen Brazil adopt 6 different currencies! New governments would announce over the weekend that the currency have been renamed and three zeros have been cut (1000 = 1); until new banknotes were available the banks were stamping the old ones with the new name and value. Prices and contracts were frozen; it was a mess...
Even today many people still go to the supermarket and buy groceries for the whole month, out of habit. In the old times of hyper-inflation, you had to rush to the supermarket and buy everything you could because if you went in the morning and later went again in the same day but during the afternoon instead, prices would have changed already. When I was a young kid, and before we had barcode scanners and a ticket with the price was fixed in every piece of merchandise, supermarkets had full-time employees that spend their whole day attaching the new prices. I remember that I ran more than once to grab something in the end of a long corridor while the employee was setting the new prices at the other end, so I could pay the old price before he had the opportunity to change it.
If Brazil managed to fix that mess I bet Argentina can, too. It might take a while, though: it took us more than two decades.
...for now.
I remember the discussion some years ago here in Slashdot about why ICANN and DNS should stay under U.S. control because it was the "land of the free", the country was neutral regarding these matters, there would be no political pressure of any kind, guaranteed freedom of speech, yada yada yada. It's also funny (in a sad way) that we are seeing this whole apparent enforcement of U.S. jurisdiction on foreign countries (NZ, Megaupload, the extradition of the British guy that posted links, etc.) when the military on American bases abroad are never subjected to local laws even when committing crimes locally outside the base, and when U.S. absolutely refuses to sign or endorse the International Court of Justice (recognised by more than 190 countries) because it will not accept foreign influence on its sovereignty in any way. I don't think my country (Brazil) is any better, but at least I'm not brainwashed since birth to think otherwise.
I live in Sweden and the doorbell in the building's entrance calls my mobile phone. So if there's a package to be delivered and I'm not at home I can still talk to the deliveryman. It's very cool (unless you're at home with your mobile off).
That is exactly what I thought: is 6 cups a day normal?? What's the normal size for a cup in U.S.? I'm from Brazil and we like strong coffee here; I heard that Americans coffee is weaker, that might also be an explanation.
Oops. I meant trustworthy, not trustful.
Not exactly. But if you manage to compromise or convince any of the built-in CAs trusted by browsers (or any of the hundreds -- or thousands -- of sub-CAs they delegate to) to give you a certificate for any website on Earth, and you can redirect your victims to go to your website instead of the real one, then yes. By compromising any CA where you can build a chain of trust to a trusted root, then you can impersonate any website (if you manage to get a certificate). Some of these CAs are actually owned/controlled by some not-so-trustful governments, and they can generate any certificate they want. Quite a weak weakest link, don't you think?
Exactly, and as a Brazilian I can emphasize that the US subsidies on sugar cane and corn have been affecting us for decades. Brazil has been complaining to the WTO since a long time ago and recently we started getting some victories there. It is the same thing with a lot of countries in Europe. I know there is no saint in this fight, but it seems very hypocritical to me to see Americans complaining about China practices when they have been doing the same thing to others for years and years.
I agree with some points you make, but being a Brazilian who lives in Sweden and works in Denmark I can say that I have intimate knowledge of both "Brazilian-style" and "Europen-style" socialisms. Brazil can indeed teach a lot of lessons to the Europeans, but we're still far away from a place like Sweden. We are advancing, that's a fact, but in a very slow pace compared to what we could achieve according to our size and resources.
Why do everybody have this idea of topless ladies in Brazil? It's considered indecent exposure, and you can go to jail for that. Europe in fact is much more liberal in this regard.
Ask me about Loom.
-- Pirate Cobb
Intel pulled the new firmware from its website because it would brick the drive in some machines with Windows 7: http://www.buzzbox.com/preview/intel_pulls_ssd_toolbox_for_killing_drives_under_windows_7/?id=154783
I have Windows 7 and a X25-M G2 that I was going to update but I gave up after I found via Google a lot of forums posts from people who bricked their drives with the new firmware.
Shit! Meanwhile, in Sweden I pay the equivalent to 40 dollars a month for a uncapped 100 Mbps broadband connection.
CPU complexity now sufficient for creative output:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4nhGS0OL4
This split is for the process address space, it has nothing to do with the actual amount of RAM in the machine. It exists so a process can go from user to kernel space and back without having to update the page tables, resulting in a faster transition.
The only relation this split has with physical RAM is that if a process has 2 GB of address space and the computer has more free RAM than that the process cannot use it all without tricks like AWE/PAE.
In other news, TSA agents are salivating of anticipation.
I don't agree. A false sense of security is worse than no security. By using a self-signed certificate I have no idea if I'm encrypting the data to the right recipient.
Of course, I still can validate the certificate via an out-of-band mechanism. In Firefox 3 I can validate and accept it with 4 clicks instead of one. So what? This is something I should do very seldom for a specific web site. Four clicks are even better than one because it forces me to *think* before accepting an unknown certificate and potentially exposing myself to men-in-the-middle attacks.
Do you think that the average user knows what a certificate is and how to validate a self-signed one out-of-band? Most users were just clicking "Accept" and unknowingly exposing themselves to MITM attacks. Then they saw the padlock and thought they were safe, when in fact they could be getting *zero* protection.
If you don't want average users to be scared, then don't use self-signed certs. Don't use SSL. Average users don't validate self-signed certs anyway, so it's better for them *not* to have a padlock and be aware that they are getting *zero* security.
If your users are tech-savy enough to know how to validate a self-signed cert they will know exactly how to proceed when they get the warning in Firefox 3.
This is by no means on oversight. The Brazilian Federal Police has been investigating Cisco for the last two years and it found out that for the last 5 years Cisco has been illegally shipping equipment to Brazil:
- Cisco opened companies in tax heavens like Panama, Bahamas and British Virgin Islands. The companies where registered in the name of Brazilian nationals. The investigation found out the those Brazilians are poor and live in poor neighborhoods; the article is not clear but it is most likely that those people didn't even know about the companies.
- Police suspects that Cisco used falsified invoices and undervalued the equipment.
- The equipment arrived at Salvador airport where customs officers are suspected of corruption and helping the smuggling.
- All the paperwork was handled by an offshore office from Panama, working for Cisco.
- More than 30 other companies are involved in this scheme.
- Since Brazil does not tax software imports, Cisco then separated the software from the hardware, over-valuated the software and under-valuated the hardware. Source: http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Economia_Negocios/0,,MUL151347-9356,00-AMERICANA+CISCO+E+ACUSADA+DE+INTEGRAR+ESQUEMA+DE+FRAUDE+TRIBUTARIA.html
- The amount of taxes that were not paid is about 1,5 billion BRL.
- Federal Police then raided offices (including Cisco Brasil) and arrested 40 people, including Cisco executives and government employees.
I don't understand why the criticism against the Brazilian government here. Look, I am a Brazilian and I know that the import taxes here are ridiculous. Most people try to avoid taxes as much as possible. But if you gamble the system you risk being caught. It is impossible that those executives didn't know what the company was doing, and if they didn't know it's their problem. Cisco and their buyers were knowingly committing FRAUD. The police investigated for two years and when it got enough proof it raided places and arrested people. What should it do? Say "don't do it again" and give a tap on the back?I really don't understand this. All software should support arbitrary dates for DST start and end.
I am from Brazil and here we don't have fixed dates for DST. The stupid government change them every year. But at least every single piece of software produced here supports changing the DST period. You shouldn't have to patch anything but just change some configuration file (ok, changing the configuration file is still patching, but you got my point). How hard is this?
And probably most of those new patches *still* have hardcoded dates for the new DST period. So if it ever changes this whole mess happen again. Sigh... Won't they ever learn? Y2K, anyone?
You Americans are in fact lucky. To put things in perspective: in Brazil the Congress changes the DST rules *every year*.