To commit 'identity theft' (horrible phrase), they would either need to compromise the financial institutions database with *write* access to replace my public key with their own (by the way, invalidating my real key so I should notice it) or steal my device physically, which I should know. I agree with what you said, except for this bit. To commit bank/credit card fraud, they would need to compromise your information that allows you to make transactions from your existing account. To commit identity theft, they still would just need to convince some bank B that they are you and to receive a line of credit. If they do that, the relationship between you and bank A really doesn't play into the picture.
Uh, no. "Rights" are bestowed by God. They exist because people exist, independent of governments. Not really applicable here. Corporations do not exist except at the whim of the government. The corporate charter that every corporation must have is a license from the government to exist and it allows the corporation some of the rights that a person would have. The government is perfectly able to revoke a corporations charter if the government determines that the corporation is no longer operating in a beneficial manner, though it rarely happens.
Without a citation, I'm inclined to think you're wrong. The clauses I quoted (and others from Article 4) do provide for non-uniformed combatants, but the general trend of the Geneva convention seems to indicate that it only provides protection for combatants openly resisting or openly fighting one another. It's very clear throughout that there is an emphasis on displaying a recognizable symbol or openly displaying arms. Plus, from Article 2, the following seems to indicate that forces who do not subscribe or abide by the Geneva Convention are not protected by it:
ARTICLE 2 ... [T]he present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them. ...
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof[emphasis mine].
I see a time when Google and other free-mail providers limit new accounts to a few dozen outgoing messages a day, and raises the limit only when you've 1) logged in to check mail on 10 different days over at least a 30-day period, 2) sent at least 100 distinct messages to at least a few dozen distinct addresses, and 3) actually requested the limit be raised. Those needing higher limits sooner can pay $1 by credit card to have an override-code mailed to them. Yes, but what is it about any of those tasks that the spammer wouldn't turn around and do? If Google requires X, then the spammers will do X.
As long as rain forests are stubbed for easier access to copper mines
As long as local people are poisoned by the toxic byproducts of metal refinement
As long as people in Africa or Eastern Europe dissable old computers without any protective clothing
As long as children assemble computers for $1/hour in Asia
I refuse to equal "green computing" and enviromental friendly. So, what you're saying is that because manufacturing a computer is not as environmentally friendly as it could be then that justifies using the manufactured product without regard to the environment?...
In other news, because the metal used to manufacture your car's engine uses the non-renewable resource of copper and the refining of that metal produces pollution we no longer should concern ourselves with the pollution produced by the actual car...
Yep, the GP really pulled that one from nowhere. However, this is actually there:
ARTICLE 4
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy: ...
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions: (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. ...
(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war. ... I can't claim to be familiar enough with how the Taliban operates, but if they disguise themselves as citizens, conceal their firearms, or violate the customs of war then they do not fall under the title of "Prisoner of War" and are not protected by it.
So, while wildly off on the citation, the GP is correct that a fighter who does not obey the Geneva convention (or any other customs of war) or does not openly display recognizable symbols or weaponry does not get protected by the Geneva convention.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but I don't think you're looking at the scenario correctly. The idea of whole disk encryption is that someone can't access the data if they only have access to the hardware, except in the case that the hardware is powered on and the disk is mounted. If the system is up and running with the disk mounted when the attacker has access to it, then you've already 'unlocked' the drive. The system is able to fully read the disk and an attacker with access to the system can read the disk as well. Even if the terminal is locked (assuming there was some absolute way to prevent OS access to someone with physical access to a running machine), as someone mentioned already you'd be able to probe the ram physically without removing it. The key or token that is being used by the OS to access the disk has to be stored somewhere, so the attacker can masquerade as the OS and read the drive in exactly the same way. If the system is on with the drive is not mounted, then the RAM doesn't have any data in it that will give access to the drive anyhow, so it doesn't matter if they can read it or not.
This attack must begin within minutes of the machine being powered off or the drive being unmounted (assuming the unmount command doesn't wipe the access token from memory, which it likely does). If someone has a desire to read your data that badly and they are able to physically access the machine within minutes of you leaving, then this attack would work (provided you didn't hang around for a few minutes after powering down). However, under those circumstances the attacker would also have physical access to you, and the attack that has the highest probability of success is going to involve a gun and firm instructions to unlock the drive. In a pinch, the attacker(s) could bring spare DRAM, yank and freeze the original DRAM and replace it with their DRAM, and then they could try this attack at the same time as you're being tortured for the passphrase to your key. The moral is that if the attacker is standing right next to you you likely have bigger problems than how quickly the DRAM loses voltage.
Right, holding hot coffee in your lap while adding sugar and whatnot would be stupid, or at the least risky. Regardless of whether or not this was the case in the lawsuit (it wasn't), people should be held accountable for their actions, I agree. On the other hand, driving a car into a building or another car would be even more stupid. However, cars still come with seat belts. Why? Because the manufacturers of cars know that this will happen anyway. Have you ever spilled a drink on yourself? Do you know someone that has? Can you imagine a situation in which a person spills a drink through no fault of their own? Yes, you can. It's foreseeable that people will spill coffee on themselves, and foreseeability is a required element of a negligence lawsuit.
Given the fact that a reasonable person will reasonably believe that it's likely that someone will spill coffee, the question becomes whether or not McDonalds considered this fact when deciding the policy that dictated how the coffee is prepared. Look at the facts:
McDonald's served coffee at a much (30-50 degrees) higher temperature than other places
McDonald's had previously had lawsuits brought against them because of the excessively high temperature of their coffee
McDonald's had previously been explicitly warned that the temperature of their coffee was high enough to cause serious damage
McDonald's could have easily fixed this problem at very little cost or inconvenience on their part
McDonald's willingly and knowingly did something that put the public in a significant amount of danger. A reasonable person knows that coffee will be spilled, sometimes onto a person. Knowing this, McDonald's served coffee at an excessive and dangerous temperature. Keep in mind, the woman did not spill a coffee brewer, she did not remove a coffee pot from a stove and immediately spill it on herself, she spilled coffee that had been brewed, poured, and sat for a short amount of time in a cup. The coffee was still hot enough to cause third degree burns. In case you're confusing an "ow, that burns" burn with a third degree burn, I'll leave you with this (courtesy of Wikipedia):
Third-degree burns are which most of the epidermis is lost. They additionally have charring of the skin, and sometimes produce hard eschars. An eschar is a scab that has separated from the unaffected part of the body. These types of burns are often considered painless, because nerve endings have been destroyed in the burned areas. However, there is in reality a significant amount of pain involved in a third degree burn. Hair follicles and sweat glands may also be lost. Third degree burns result in scarring. Elastic banding of the skin can smooth the scarred skin. Third degree burns over large surface areas are often fatal.
Here's a passing thought: I'm very against the practice of an ISP blocking incoming/outgoing ports as a general business practice, as this negatively affects the technically inclined users. However, what if an ISP had a default port 80 forward to their website, where the owner of the IP could authenticate and enable direct access to the port? That way, non-techie users don't serve up malware sites, and techie users can easily enable the service and go about their business.
Along the same lines, could this technique be expanded to more/all ports by default? What if the ISP blocked all incoming non-related connections by default (in the same manner as a firewall would, I'm unclear on the exact conditions), but had an easily accessible control page? Provided that the users were made very aware of this feature (not a simple task), wouldn't this do a great deal to curb the spread of malware?
Feel free to shoot this down, I'm not seeing a glaring flaw that would prevent this from being done. An ISP could even provide a notification utility that would alert the user if they have an application that tries to listen in on a protected port.
Sigh. I get tired of people using the McDonalds coffee lawsuit as an example. Yes, there are lots of frivolous law suits and suing these days, but this case wasn't one of them.
A quick google for "mcdonalds coffee sue" turns up a page with the actual facts as the first result. From http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-11.htm:
79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn.
There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. [Cases implying actual civil claims, not complaints]
Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees.
The jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million, but the judge cut it in half.
McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.
So, the woman sued because she suffered severe burns. The jury awarded damages based on the damage she suffered, and then awarded punitive damages because it was clear that McDonalds knewe there was a problem, had seen the consequences of this problem and been warned before, and still did not take the relatively simple corrective measure that would prevent severe burns from their product.
Company knowingly does potentially harmful act. Act harms woman. Woman sues company. Company is penalized and corrects their behavior. Isn't that exactly how the system is supposed to work?
The latent problem with 'tyranny via corporation' is that it doesn't remain in the corporate sector. A corporation may not be allowed to bust down your door and arrest you, but that's not the route they'd go anyhow. In a society with evil and corrupt corporations, the corporations extend their power into the government, lobby for laws that make whatever you were doing that they didn't like illegal, and then sit back and let the government do the rest. A small government is ideal, but it has to be balanced against the fact that, if you allow corporate power to expand and become corrupt, the corporation will continue to do what it's done all along: it will use its assets to make profitable things happen. The fact that the assets are used to buy or influence public policy doesn't matter to the corporation one bit.
Re:Why Build new ones? Unless you want the Bigger.
on
The Shadow Space Race
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· Score: 1
If they have good enough optics they could listen to enemies from space. All they would need was for the enemy to be in a room with a window. They could measure the vibrations of the window and turn the measurements into a reproduction of the sounds inside the room. Only if the speaker was in a very unmodern location. The laser bounce trick only works (reliably) on single paned windows. Double paned windows, which include pretty much all modern windows, provide a buffer zone that tends to distort the vibrations that make it to the outside pane.
Since when does EBay get to decide who is responsible for fraud? It's the latest trend in corporate liability. All they do is assure the consumer that they get to decide, and tell them that it would be upheld in a court of law and that the agreement is legally binding. Clueless consumer believes all the legalese being thrown at them, and the issue never goes to an actual courtroom. An actual judge would rule anything from Monroe is liable (for doing the actual act) to Paypal/Ebay is liable (because both the auction and the PayPal accounts are under their control and they didn't adequately protect against fraud) to the buyer is liable (for not adequately investigating the purchase). However, because Monroe bought the "Look at this thing we made you agree to, our word is legally binding" bit, it never goes to court and Monroe continues to believe the lie.
It's no different than the dump trucks with the words "Not responsible for objects falling from truck" printed on the back of them. They are damn liable, but most people take the claim at face value and don't push the issue. IANAL, etc.
I'd tell you all [...] but doing so would violate the First and Second Rules, respectively. The first rule of Usenet: you don't talk about Usenet. I believe the second rule had something to do with September...
I would tend to agree. That thought occurred to me while I was reading a book on trusted computing implementation. Why don't we, as the public that the officials are payed by and purport to serve, mandate that public officials must use trusted computers that log their actions while under web-accessible surveillance? Seems fair, if other employers can do that, why can't the employers of the State do it?
Free market economy comes into play here as well. Right now, AT&T is a major part of the backbone because they have the fiber/facilities already built, and building a duplicate set of facilities to offer a service that the market is perfectly happy with is a losing venture. If AT&T suddenly decides that they are going to censor and monitor all the traffic over their wires, they've changed the nature of the service that they offer. It then becomes profitable to offer the service that they used to offer, provided the consumers don't desire the censored service.
Firefox with AdBlock+, EasyElement, EasyList, SpyBot S&D, SpywareBlaster, disable Flash and UPnP, SMC Barricade 7004VBR (w NAT and firewall)...what's the problem? The problem is that 90% of computer users either don't know what that stuff is, don't have it installed, or (most likely) both.
Am I the only guy out here that thinks the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray is irrelevant? With flash memory as cheap as it is and only getting cheaper, the logical progression is going to be selling thumb drives with movies on them. The size of the drive can be only as large (within a power of two...) as the content requires, and the corporate bobble-heads can decide to change up the DRM scheme ad infinium, provided there's a DVD-player firmware update standard of some sort...
A tad cynical perhaps, but you can bet if they thought there was more money in closed source than open, they'd go that way.
More than that, now that they're a publicly traded corporation the board can be sued by investors if Google knew that closed source was more profitable but chose not to pursue that route. Public corporations (unfortunately) have the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value, and they are legally obligated to do so. Theoretically, a more socially oriented government could require corporations to have goals other than this, but this won't happen for a loong time, if ever.
More to the point, they don't care if we like him or not. That was never the goal, the goal is page views. There are 4 ads (including a popup) on that page, not counting advertising for other parts of PC Mag. Counting self referential ads, the number jumps to over 40, many of which want you to sign up for continued contact. This is on page one of a two page article, when the article could easily have been fit on one page.
No, I doubt very much if PC Magazine cares about whether people 'like' Dvorak, as long as they know the name enough to have an opinion.
I'm sure it varies from school to school and person to person, but as a senior undergraduate in the computer science program at the university of Tennessee in Knoxville, I can tell you that being able to 'breaaze through four years without a challenge' is definitely dependent on what you're doing and where you're doing it. Sure, I've had my share of easy classes, but considering that this week I have to turn in my final project report for my Reinforcement Learning class that details how I was able to program an algorithm that allowed Matlab to learn to play Texas Hold'em, hand over the source code that demonstrates how I was able to make a Sony AIBO robot able to navigate a maze consisting of 16" (406.6mm) x 16" cells on a 'go one cell left/right/forward' level without running into walls, and turn in my final project report detailing how my team successfully completed development of a (simulated, no actual hardware) computer designed to be placed on bicycles and report trip times and odometry stats, I would say that some programs require a little actual thought. Nevermind that I'm not even in a college considered to especially excel at computer science...
I think you're missing a crucial benefit to robotic warfare. You no longer have any need to concern yourself with morale. The morale of the troops is vital to any military operation; once the soldiers either feel like they're losing or feel like they're fighting a battle that shouldn't be fought, their performance suffers tremendously. I.E. a so-called 'civilized' country's military forces (arguably) would have serious issues when ordered to open fire on an unarmed civilian population, but that is a non-issue with robotic forces. I know the response to this will be 'but there's still a human deciding when to shoot', but the key fact behind that is which humans are doing the deciding. There's no need to have 1 man for each robot (and indeed it would kind of defeat the purpose), and it's more likely that the controllers will have greater knowledge of how to use this force and more personal investment in the outcome.
Slashdot Mirror
So where's the Knoxville protest?
[T]he present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof[emphasis mine].
In other news, because the metal used to manufacture your car's engine uses the non-renewable resource of copper and the refining of that metal produces pollution we no longer should concern ourselves with the pollution produced by the actual car...
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
...
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions: (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
...
(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
... I can't claim to be familiar enough with how the Taliban operates, but if they disguise themselves as citizens, conceal their firearms, or violate the customs of war then they do not fall under the title of "Prisoner of War" and are not protected by it.
So, while wildly off on the citation, the GP is correct that a fighter who does not obey the Geneva convention (or any other customs of war) or does not openly display recognizable symbols or weaponry does not get protected by the Geneva convention.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but I don't think you're looking at the scenario correctly. The idea of whole disk encryption is that someone can't access the data if they only have access to the hardware, except in the case that the hardware is powered on and the disk is mounted. If the system is up and running with the disk mounted when the attacker has access to it, then you've already 'unlocked' the drive. The system is able to fully read the disk and an attacker with access to the system can read the disk as well. Even if the terminal is locked (assuming there was some absolute way to prevent OS access to someone with physical access to a running machine), as someone mentioned already you'd be able to probe the ram physically without removing it. The key or token that is being used by the OS to access the disk has to be stored somewhere, so the attacker can masquerade as the OS and read the drive in exactly the same way. If the system is on with the drive is not mounted, then the RAM doesn't have any data in it that will give access to the drive anyhow, so it doesn't matter if they can read it or not.
This attack must begin within minutes of the machine being powered off or the drive being unmounted (assuming the unmount command doesn't wipe the access token from memory, which it likely does). If someone has a desire to read your data that badly and they are able to physically access the machine within minutes of you leaving, then this attack would work (provided you didn't hang around for a few minutes after powering down). However, under those circumstances the attacker would also have physical access to you, and the attack that has the highest probability of success is going to involve a gun and firm instructions to unlock the drive. In a pinch, the attacker(s) could bring spare DRAM, yank and freeze the original DRAM and replace it with their DRAM, and then they could try this attack at the same time as you're being tortured for the passphrase to your key. The moral is that if the attacker is standing right next to you you likely have bigger problems than how quickly the DRAM loses voltage.
Given the fact that a reasonable person will reasonably believe that it's likely that someone will spill coffee, the question becomes whether or not McDonalds considered this fact when deciding the policy that dictated how the coffee is prepared. Look at the facts:
- McDonald's served coffee at a much (30-50 degrees) higher temperature than other places
- McDonald's had previously had lawsuits brought against them because of the excessively high temperature of their coffee
- McDonald's had previously been explicitly warned that the temperature of their coffee was high enough to cause serious damage
- McDonald's could have easily fixed this problem at very little cost or inconvenience on their part
McDonald's willingly and knowingly did something that put the public in a significant amount of danger. A reasonable person knows that coffee will be spilled, sometimes onto a person. Knowing this, McDonald's served coffee at an excessive and dangerous temperature. Keep in mind, the woman did not spill a coffee brewer, she did not remove a coffee pot from a stove and immediately spill it on herself, she spilled coffee that had been brewed, poured, and sat for a short amount of time in a cup. The coffee was still hot enough to cause third degree burns. In case you're confusing an "ow, that burns" burn with a third degree burn, I'll leave you with this (courtesy of Wikipedia):Third-degree burns are which most of the epidermis is lost. They additionally have charring of the skin, and sometimes produce hard eschars. An eschar is a scab that has separated from the unaffected part of the body. These types of burns are often considered painless, because nerve endings have been destroyed in the burned areas. However, there is in reality a significant amount of pain involved in a third degree burn. Hair follicles and sweat glands may also be lost. Third degree burns result in scarring. Elastic banding of the skin can smooth the scarred skin. Third degree burns over large surface areas are often fatal.
Here's a passing thought: I'm very against the practice of an ISP blocking incoming/outgoing ports as a general business practice, as this negatively affects the technically inclined users. However, what if an ISP had a default port 80 forward to their website, where the owner of the IP could authenticate and enable direct access to the port? That way, non-techie users don't serve up malware sites, and techie users can easily enable the service and go about their business.
Along the same lines, could this technique be expanded to more/all ports by default? What if the ISP blocked all incoming non-related connections by default (in the same manner as a firewall would, I'm unclear on the exact conditions), but had an easily accessible control page? Provided that the users were made very aware of this feature (not a simple task), wouldn't this do a great deal to curb the spread of malware?
Feel free to shoot this down, I'm not seeing a glaring flaw that would prevent this from being done. An ISP could even provide a notification utility that would alert the user if they have an application that tries to listen in on a protected port.
- 79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn.
-
There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. [Cases implying actual civil claims, not complaints]
-
Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees.
-
The jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million, but the judge cut it in half.
-
McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.
So, the woman sued because she suffered severe burns. The jury awarded damages based on the damage she suffered, and then awarded punitive damages because it was clear that McDonalds knewe there was a problem, had seen the consequences of this problem and been warned before, and still did not take the relatively simple corrective measure that would prevent severe burns from their product.Company knowingly does potentially harmful act. Act harms woman. Woman sues company. Company is penalized and corrects their behavior. Isn't that exactly how the system is supposed to work?
The latent problem with 'tyranny via corporation' is that it doesn't remain in the corporate sector. A corporation may not be allowed to bust down your door and arrest you, but that's not the route they'd go anyhow. In a society with evil and corrupt corporations, the corporations extend their power into the government, lobby for laws that make whatever you were doing that they didn't like illegal, and then sit back and let the government do the rest. A small government is ideal, but it has to be balanced against the fact that, if you allow corporate power to expand and become corrupt, the corporation will continue to do what it's done all along: it will use its assets to make profitable things happen. The fact that the assets are used to buy or influence public policy doesn't matter to the corporation one bit.
Only if the speaker was in a very unmodern location. The laser bounce trick only works (reliably) on single paned windows. Double paned windows, which include pretty much all modern windows, provide a buffer zone that tends to distort the vibrations that make it to the outside pane.
LOSE! It's LOSE! I swear, this has become so common it's starting to infect even the intelligent ones...
It's the latest trend in corporate liability. All they do is assure the consumer that they get to decide, and tell them that it would be upheld in a court of law and that the agreement is legally binding. Clueless consumer believes all the legalese being thrown at them, and the issue never goes to an actual courtroom. An actual judge would rule anything from Monroe is liable (for doing the actual act) to Paypal/Ebay is liable (because both the auction and the PayPal accounts are under their control and they didn't adequately protect against fraud) to the buyer is liable (for not adequately investigating the purchase). However, because Monroe bought the "Look at this thing we made you agree to, our word is legally binding" bit, it never goes to court and Monroe continues to believe the lie.
It's no different than the dump trucks with the words "Not responsible for objects falling from truck" printed on the back of them. They are damn liable, but most people take the claim at face value and don't push the issue.
IANAL, etc.
The first rule of Usenet: you don't talk about Usenet. I believe the second rule had something to do with September...
I would tend to agree. That thought occurred to me while I was reading a book on trusted computing implementation. Why don't we, as the public that the officials are payed by and purport to serve, mandate that public officials must use trusted computers that log their actions while under web-accessible surveillance? Seems fair, if other employers can do that, why can't the employers of the State do it?
Free market economy comes into play here as well. Right now, AT&T is a major part of the backbone because they have the fiber/facilities already built, and building a duplicate set of facilities to offer a service that the market is perfectly happy with is a losing venture. If AT&T suddenly decides that they are going to censor and monitor all the traffic over their wires, they've changed the nature of the service that they offer. It then becomes profitable to offer the service that they used to offer, provided the consumers don't desire the censored service.
The problem is that 90% of computer users either don't know what that stuff is, don't have it installed, or (most likely) both.
A large sum of cash, payable to your local geneticist. That's why the haves and the have-nots would benefit disproportionately.
Am I the only guy out here that thinks the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray is irrelevant? With flash memory as cheap as it is and only getting cheaper, the logical progression is going to be selling thumb drives with movies on them. The size of the drive can be only as large (within a power of two...) as the content requires, and the corporate bobble-heads can decide to change up the DRM scheme ad infinium, provided there's a DVD-player firmware update standard of some sort...
More than that, now that they're a publicly traded corporation the board can be sued by investors if Google knew that closed source was more profitable but chose not to pursue that route. Public corporations (unfortunately) have the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value, and they are legally obligated to do so. Theoretically, a more socially oriented government could require corporations to have goals other than this, but this won't happen for a loong time, if ever.
More to the point, they don't care if we like him or not. That was never the goal, the goal is page views. There are 4 ads (including a popup) on that page, not counting advertising for other parts of PC Mag. Counting self referential ads, the number jumps to over 40, many of which want you to sign up for continued contact. This is on page one of a two page article, when the article could easily have been fit on one page.
No, I doubt very much if PC Magazine cares about whether people 'like' Dvorak, as long as they know the name enough to have an opinion.
I'm sure it varies from school to school and person to person, but as a senior undergraduate in the computer science program at the university of Tennessee in Knoxville, I can tell you that being able to 'breaaze through four years without a challenge' is definitely dependent on what you're doing and where you're doing it. Sure, I've had my share of easy classes, but considering that this week I have to turn in my final project report for my Reinforcement Learning class that details how I was able to program an algorithm that allowed Matlab to learn to play Texas Hold'em, hand over the source code that demonstrates how I was able to make a Sony AIBO robot able to navigate a maze consisting of 16" (406.6mm) x 16" cells on a 'go one cell left/right/forward' level without running into walls, and turn in my final project report detailing how my team successfully completed development of a (simulated, no actual hardware) computer designed to be placed on bicycles and report trip times and odometry stats, I would say that some programs require a little actual thought. Nevermind that I'm not even in a college considered to especially excel at computer science...
I think you're missing a crucial benefit to robotic warfare. You no longer have any need to concern yourself with morale. The morale of the troops is vital to any military operation; once the soldiers either feel like they're losing or feel like they're fighting a battle that shouldn't be fought, their performance suffers tremendously. I.E. a so-called 'civilized' country's military forces (arguably) would have serious issues when ordered to open fire on an unarmed civilian population, but that is a non-issue with robotic forces. I know the response to this will be 'but there's still a human deciding when to shoot', but the key fact behind that is which humans are doing the deciding. There's no need to have 1 man for each robot (and indeed it would kind of defeat the purpose), and it's more likely that the controllers will have greater knowledge of how to use this force and more personal investment in the outcome.