Write down everything you want to share on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope. Store the envelope with other important documents. Tell your spouse and maybe another family member or close friend of its existence. Every time you update your passwords or other information, shred the old one and make a new one. Envelopes and paper are cheap. If you're extra paranoid, use some method to mark the envelope so you can tell if it has been tampered with, and don't tell anyone.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that I think there should be an extra sales tax added or a new sales tax for states that don't currently have one. I am saying that I think it's reasonable for states that already have a sales tax to have some kind of simple method (for both the state and the citizen) to collect that sales tax on internet purchases.
I live in a state that collects sales tax. I'm not sure if the idea discussed in the article is the best solution, but something does need to be done. I can think of two main problems with the current system.
First of all, my state technically requires you to keep track of all of your untaxed internet purchases and pay sales tax on them at the end of the year. Almost no one actually pays. Even if money wasn't a concern, who really wants to spend the time to keep track of everything? The state doesn't seem to follow up, but I'm not sure what would happen if you end up being one of the unlucky few that is audited...
The other issue is that internet retailers have an unfair advantage over local retailers because people "don't have to pay" taxes on purchases from most internet purchases, and, especially on expensive electronics, shipping is often cheaper than taxes.
I don't like to pay taxes anymore than anyone else, but the states have to make their money somehow. And the current system is kind of messed up.
Most people don't care about your data. The fastest, easiest way to destroy the drive is to hit it a couple of times with a hammer. Smash the circuit board and put a couple of good dents in the top, and no one is going to bother messing with it. It should only take about 10 sec.
If you're dealing with irrational people or irrational policies, it's a different story. I worked at a university one summer that wanted hard drives destroyed in an approved way, but they never bothered specifying what that approved way was. We overwrote them with pseudorandom data and threw them in a pile under the workbench. Eventually I got tired of them being there and I took them apart one at a time. I took the board off and smashed it. Then I took the lid off, removed each platter, and bent it until it broke. I kept the magnets because they were awesome and threw the rest in the trash. I figured it was sufficient, but it was kind of a waste of time even though it was fun.
People spend money on all kinds of things that don't result in getting something "real" in return. Many of these things do give us something intangible in return though: entertainment.
I'm kind of reluctant to think that this ONLY has to do with cheating or auction house sales. There are several posts above discussing the merits of D2's approach, but D2 was exploited all to hell which is something that CAN'T happen in D3 if they plan on having a cash auction house.
Could it be that having so much of the game content stored on the PC and accessible offline made the game more vulnerable to exploitation somehow? Or could it at least be that designing the game so that it could be played both offline and securely online would not be feasible due to the amount of extra programming and maintenance involved in doing it? Or could it even be that, while feasible, the amount of time necessary to develop both an offline and a secure online version of D3 just wasn't deemed worth it when they looked at the percentage of players that they expected to play primarily offline?
I'm not saying that concern over piracy or a desire to push their cash auction house sales aren't possible motives for Blizzards decision. But there may have also been other factors involved.
The guy who wrote this article is a little biased. The original paper is available online for those who want to see what it really has to say.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
I agree that the new version numbering scheme is silly, and I can see where it could make it harder for a plugin developer to know when their plugin may become incompatible. But I would still argue that the fault, in your example, lies with the plugin design as opposed to Firefox. It's not like Google didn't get notice that the version numbering scheme was changing.
This is the golden age of hacking-for-publicity. I have seen a few people comment that the 80's were the golden age of hacking. I wasn't old enough then to agree or disagree, but I do think that hacking was just as big in the early to mid 90's, when I first came on the scene, as it is now. The only difference is that hackers get a lot more publicity now, and that has cause some to seek publicity.
It's more like a set of rules meant to apply some people's version of morality to others. I don't know that you could really call it morality if the only thing stopping you from cheating on your wife is that you are told that God wouldn't like it.
Streaming media is here to stay. I think that streaming media player sales will decline as more people purchase TVs, game consoles, and other devices that have streaming media capabilities built-in, but they won't totally be obsolete anytime soon. A standalone streaming media player will almost always be cheaper than a game console, and some people simply don't care about games. Often, a streaming media player also offers a better user experience than a TV/Bluray player/game console app because the manufacturer is able to focus on and support just that one thing instead of focusing on their main product and viewing the app as a side note.
Nope. But it doesn't sound like the work of a government either. It's a very typical move for your average internet criminal. Either one of the "members" of anon is an identity thief on the side and decided to steal some info unilaterally, or another for-profit hacker decided to take advantage of anon's attack. Either way, this has nothing to do with the government and little to do with Anonymous as a group.
I put information on Facebook that I want other people to see. It's not spying when I purposefully disclose the information.
And the US Government is the last thing I'm worried about. I block certain things from coworkers and certain family members to keep people from being offended, but I don't care of the government wants to read my crude jokes. If the government wants to know what I'm up to, checking my tax information and calling Master Card, Verizon, or Comcast is going to be much more revealing than Facebook.
That's what I was thinking too. I'm guessing the real reason it has been shut down is unpublicized. If I had to take a stab in the dark, I would say that it was something along the lines of: "We've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger..." Sony probably realized that there was a vulnerability present that would inevitably be exploited, and it required a significant amount of work to fix. Or it's possible that someone already did exploit it to access personal information or do something else that's more critical than just pirate games, and Sony has kept it quiet.
First of all, people seem to confuse rights and necessities quite often. Things like food, water, shelter, and medical care are necessities but not necessarily rights. I don't think that internet access is either a right or a necessity. It's definitely beneficial, but I would argue that you would fall farther behind your peers without access to transportation, a phone, or even a clean pair of clothes than you would without the internet.
Not all of us can afford a decent quality apartment downtown, let alone a private school for our kids. And not all of us live in cities with decent public transit. I live in a house in the suburbs mostly because it was my best option for my money.
I think that providing cellular coverage in the US is a slightly different animal than in Asia or Europe. The US is a large country relatively low population density compared to many other countries (87 people per sq mi vs 659 for the UK, for example,) and a large portion of the "empty" area of the country actually has coverage. I don't doubt that cellular companies would be happy to screw us, but I also think that there's a good chance that a cellular network in the US costs more money per subscriber to maintain than networks in many other parts of the world. I'm not absolutely sure that this is the case, but I wanted to play the devil's advocate anyway.
If this is really an issue of ageism, that's crappy. But I bet there's more to it. My thought is that it works out like this...
The senior employee was hired at a competitive salary at the time. He has since received average yearly raises. Over his time with the company, the average starting salary increased faster than average raises would usually match. Now the company needs someone for a new position. Rather than pull an experienced employee off of a currently needed task, retrain him, reassign him to a new task, then hire someone new and train him for the old task, etc, they decide to keep it simple and hire someone new for the new task... at a currently competitive salary.
I'm going to guess that's what happened, and the "new skill" thing is just an excuse. The senior employee should look on the bright side; apparently his current salary was good enough to keep him at the company, and now he can negotiate for something even better. Also, he should be glad it didn't go the other way... usually higher-paid, older employees are being forced out because the average salary has decreased, and fresh graduates can replace them at a fraction of the cost. If the senior guy chooses to leave, it sounds like he should at least be able to get a good starting salary somewhere else.
I'm not sure if the eel has to speed up its metabolism, but it does have to maintain it which takes food. When you consider the resources spent in taking care of the eel and farming/catching its food, I'm not sure if eel-power really turns out to be greener in the end. But it's amusing anyway.
Does this have something to do with economic stimulus money that needs to be used or lost? I wouldn't be surprised with an idea this unusual and seemingly trivial...
I have to be the devil's advocate in this case. I don't know the degree of testing that they are recommending be done, but I don't think this is as simple as "OMG someone might poke their eye with a paperclip."
For example...
A cheaply made wooden ruler that, after a small amount of bending, starts splintering in a way that will cause it to easily give people splinters may not be good for children under 12.
Or a plastic ruler that is made out of a material that, instead of simply breaking when bent, shatters and causes sharp shards to fly in all directions (think of bending a CD until it breaks) may not be good for children under 12.
Or even a paperclip that breaks easily leaving sharp edges or contains unsafe amounts of toxic metals may not be good for children under 12.
My guess is that reasons like these are why they don't relax the guidelines.
Slashdot Mirror
Write down everything you want to share on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope. Store the envelope with other important documents. Tell your spouse and maybe another family member or close friend of its existence. Every time you update your passwords or other information, shred the old one and make a new one. Envelopes and paper are cheap. If you're extra paranoid, use some method to mark the envelope so you can tell if it has been tampered with, and don't tell anyone.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that I think there should be an extra sales tax added or a new sales tax for states that don't currently have one. I am saying that I think it's reasonable for states that already have a sales tax to have some kind of simple method (for both the state and the citizen) to collect that sales tax on internet purchases.
I live in a state that collects sales tax. I'm not sure if the idea discussed in the article is the best solution, but something does need to be done. I can think of two main problems with the current system.
First of all, my state technically requires you to keep track of all of your untaxed internet purchases and pay sales tax on them at the end of the year. Almost no one actually pays. Even if money wasn't a concern, who really wants to spend the time to keep track of everything? The state doesn't seem to follow up, but I'm not sure what would happen if you end up being one of the unlucky few that is audited...
The other issue is that internet retailers have an unfair advantage over local retailers because people "don't have to pay" taxes on purchases from most internet purchases, and, especially on expensive electronics, shipping is often cheaper than taxes.
I don't like to pay taxes anymore than anyone else, but the states have to make their money somehow. And the current system is kind of messed up.
Most people don't care about your data. The fastest, easiest way to destroy the drive is to hit it a couple of times with a hammer. Smash the circuit board and put a couple of good dents in the top, and no one is going to bother messing with it. It should only take about 10 sec. If you're dealing with irrational people or irrational policies, it's a different story. I worked at a university one summer that wanted hard drives destroyed in an approved way, but they never bothered specifying what that approved way was. We overwrote them with pseudorandom data and threw them in a pile under the workbench. Eventually I got tired of them being there and I took them apart one at a time. I took the board off and smashed it. Then I took the lid off, removed each platter, and bent it until it broke. I kept the magnets because they were awesome and threw the rest in the trash. I figured it was sufficient, but it was kind of a waste of time even though it was fun.
People spend money on all kinds of things that don't result in getting something "real" in return. Many of these things do give us something intangible in return though: entertainment.
I'm kind of reluctant to think that this ONLY has to do with cheating or auction house sales. There are several posts above discussing the merits of D2's approach, but D2 was exploited all to hell which is something that CAN'T happen in D3 if they plan on having a cash auction house.
Could it be that having so much of the game content stored on the PC and accessible offline made the game more vulnerable to exploitation somehow? Or could it at least be that designing the game so that it could be played both offline and securely online would not be feasible due to the amount of extra programming and maintenance involved in doing it? Or could it even be that, while feasible, the amount of time necessary to develop both an offline and a secure online version of D3 just wasn't deemed worth it when they looked at the percentage of players that they expected to play primarily offline?
I'm not saying that concern over piracy or a desire to push their cash auction house sales aren't possible motives for Blizzards decision. But there may have also been other factors involved.
The guy who wrote this article is a little biased. The original paper is available online for those who want to see what it really has to say.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
Whoa! That's some LulzSec logic there. ;)
I agree that the new version numbering scheme is silly, and I can see where it could make it harder for a plugin developer to know when their plugin may become incompatible. But I would still argue that the fault, in your example, lies with the plugin design as opposed to Firefox. It's not like Google didn't get notice that the version numbering scheme was changing.
This is the golden age of hacking-for-publicity. I have seen a few people comment that the 80's were the golden age of hacking. I wasn't old enough then to agree or disagree, but I do think that hacking was just as big in the early to mid 90's, when I first came on the scene, as it is now. The only difference is that hackers get a lot more publicity now, and that has cause some to seek publicity.
It's more like a set of rules meant to apply some people's version of morality to others. I don't know that you could really call it morality if the only thing stopping you from cheating on your wife is that you are told that God wouldn't like it.
Streaming media is here to stay. I think that streaming media player sales will decline as more people purchase TVs, game consoles, and other devices that have streaming media capabilities built-in, but they won't totally be obsolete anytime soon. A standalone streaming media player will almost always be cheaper than a game console, and some people simply don't care about games. Often, a streaming media player also offers a better user experience than a TV/Bluray player/game console app because the manufacturer is able to focus on and support just that one thing instead of focusing on their main product and viewing the app as a side note.
I have a 3 character AIM screen name. So there.
Nope. But it doesn't sound like the work of a government either. It's a very typical move for your average internet criminal. Either one of the "members" of anon is an identity thief on the side and decided to steal some info unilaterally, or another for-profit hacker decided to take advantage of anon's attack. Either way, this has nothing to do with the government and little to do with Anonymous as a group.
I put information on Facebook that I want other people to see. It's not spying when I purposefully disclose the information.
And the US Government is the last thing I'm worried about. I block certain things from coworkers and certain family members to keep people from being offended, but I don't care of the government wants to read my crude jokes. If the government wants to know what I'm up to, checking my tax information and calling Master Card, Verizon, or Comcast is going to be much more revealing than Facebook.
That's what I was thinking too. I'm guessing the real reason it has been shut down is unpublicized. If I had to take a stab in the dark, I would say that it was something along the lines of: "We've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger..." Sony probably realized that there was a vulnerability present that would inevitably be exploited, and it required a significant amount of work to fix. Or it's possible that someone already did exploit it to access personal information or do something else that's more critical than just pirate games, and Sony has kept it quiet.
First of all, people seem to confuse rights and necessities quite often. Things like food, water, shelter, and medical care are necessities but not necessarily rights. I don't think that internet access is either a right or a necessity. It's definitely beneficial, but I would argue that you would fall farther behind your peers without access to transportation, a phone, or even a clean pair of clothes than you would without the internet.
Not all of us can afford a decent quality apartment downtown, let alone a private school for our kids. And not all of us live in cities with decent public transit. I live in a house in the suburbs mostly because it was my best option for my money.
I think that providing cellular coverage in the US is a slightly different animal than in Asia or Europe. The US is a large country relatively low population density compared to many other countries (87 people per sq mi vs 659 for the UK, for example,) and a large portion of the "empty" area of the country actually has coverage. I don't doubt that cellular companies would be happy to screw us, but I also think that there's a good chance that a cellular network in the US costs more money per subscriber to maintain than networks in many other parts of the world. I'm not absolutely sure that this is the case, but I wanted to play the devil's advocate anyway.
If this is really an issue of ageism, that's crappy. But I bet there's more to it. My thought is that it works out like this...
The senior employee was hired at a competitive salary at the time. He has since received average yearly raises. Over his time with the company, the average starting salary increased faster than average raises would usually match. Now the company needs someone for a new position. Rather than pull an experienced employee off of a currently needed task, retrain him, reassign him to a new task, then hire someone new and train him for the old task, etc, they decide to keep it simple and hire someone new for the new task... at a currently competitive salary.
I'm going to guess that's what happened, and the "new skill" thing is just an excuse. The senior employee should look on the bright side; apparently his current salary was good enough to keep him at the company, and now he can negotiate for something even better. Also, he should be glad it didn't go the other way... usually higher-paid, older employees are being forced out because the average salary has decreased, and fresh graduates can replace them at a fraction of the cost. If the senior guy chooses to leave, it sounds like he should at least be able to get a good starting salary somewhere else.
I'm not sure if the eel has to speed up its metabolism, but it does have to maintain it which takes food. When you consider the resources spent in taking care of the eel and farming/catching its food, I'm not sure if eel-power really turns out to be greener in the end. But it's amusing anyway.
Does this have something to do with economic stimulus money that needs to be used or lost? I wouldn't be surprised with an idea this unusual and seemingly trivial...
I have to be the devil's advocate in this case. I don't know the degree of testing that they are recommending be done, but I don't think this is as simple as "OMG someone might poke their eye with a paperclip."
For example...
A cheaply made wooden ruler that, after a small amount of bending, starts splintering in a way that will cause it to easily give people splinters may not be good for children under 12.
Or a plastic ruler that is made out of a material that, instead of simply breaking when bent, shatters and causes sharp shards to fly in all directions (think of bending a CD until it breaks) may not be good for children under 12.
Or even a paperclip that breaks easily leaving sharp edges or contains unsafe amounts of toxic metals may not be good for children under 12.
My guess is that reasons like these are why they don't relax the guidelines.
Unless Comcast decides to give me more IP addresses for free just because they can, I will have a need for NAT.
pfffffff
Any schmuck can make a baby, but it costs $50 to get Civ 5. Now who's laughing poor boy?