I do not agree that privacy is a luxury. It is an essential right to be anonymous, especially not the government knowing every of your steps, likes, dislikes and such. You are right that this is not directly related to freedom of speech. But with the recent news about kidnappings by the cia of a German citizen (innocent, by the way...) without intense scrutiny by public (media, others) this makes me feel very scary. It was because of his name, that he was kidnapped. And nobody can assure me that no government will kidnap me because I like/. Or black cats. Or whatever. So, no government should know that much about me, because a government is not to be trusted, given the recent developments all around the world (haven't finished reading all comments about the sweet spot in the world). And this is a reason that no telco should be forced to hold that much data about me. If the government has some concern about me and my habits, please, go ahead and ask a judge to get a subpoena (however it is called in whatever country). THEN, and only then, a company shall collect data about me and hand it to government.
To the abuse point. There will always be abuse. Of freedom (e.g. "fire" in a crowed room) and privacy (any example). But the mis-habits of single persons NEVER should be used to remove a right from many! Rights always come with abuse, it is to be balanced and not black or white.
Don't think so. If a "normal" account is compromised, the attacker could read the root-passwort when su'ing. and this is worse than remote-root-login without password!
If you ONLY have the root account to remotely login and disable the password-auth (key-only) you're pretty much on the safe side.
But it doesn't help, when an attacker uses this damn xmlrpc vulnerability on php to capture apache and even get root with apache running as www-data.... this happened on a drupal installation within 6 days of the vulnerability being public.
we still didn't figure out how he gained root....
Luckily, he was just five minutes to late - he cleaned the syslog only minutes after logcheck sent an email to a remote host about a user creation. that was the only hint we got and reacted promptly. five more minutes later, he was gone. lucky us! if he'd removed the user-generation from syslog just five minutes earlier, we'd have get away with it, even aide was run by him already... damage done: defaced, backups in place and working. four hours work for removing the rootkit and upgrading/checking the machine.
I'd say, you have the same problem either way. Just think about all those services performed in your offices daily.
Cleaner? Trash-Remover? So called security?
Anything else. Having the passwords available to them makes it easy like clapping your hands.
And, with their salaries, I'd think they *are* vulnerable to external attempts to get to some information. Don't mind any contractual obligation to keep secret any information...
Devices under most attack are cd/dvd-burners, scanners, printers (copiers have this levy already). Of course, they try to embrace it for harddisks, as well, if I remember right. But I may mix it up with the other organisations for music, film etc.
To clarify: VG Wort, which was cited, is only doing its business for writers! Not anything to do with other organisations, which care about music, e.g.
And, this is just a levy for the so called "private copy" which is allowed in Germany under certain circumstances (e.g. it must be a copy of the original, not a copy of the copy).
Being green only if it's not hurting your bottom-line (i.e. "not economicly crippling") doesn't helpt the environment.
I for one feel, that high energy prices here in Germany (i.e. at the gas pump: $3,80 per gallon for all the non-standard's) lead to the development of economically vehicles. And look at their crash-tests - all well, no need to carry more than 2,5 tons to take the kids to school!
That's the real task of the government - to push the direction. And that's only possible via the price. Nothing else will work.
Another example: I used to live in the US for three years. Thanks to the almost non-existant insulation of our house we had a monthly gas/electric bill of USD 800 for one month in a cold winter! Here, I pay the same amount for the whole year! But it's not due to lower energy prices, but better insulation of our house.
And that's what the economy will be striving for if certain directions are given. Meet the customers demand to make profit (well, lately I have a feeling that the US-economy is only striving for profits, NOT meeting customer demands... but that's another story). And the economy is well prepared (or will be) to do whatever is necessary to cope with e.g. high energy prices.
So, please, either be green and with the consequences or keep Adam's leaf hidden (and I do agree on your hunting arguments).
And that's what I like about the "old world" and I'm glad to be back here - even if some other things go terribly wrong - still better than fully-openly-industry-funded-government
Probably it's the same problem as with billion in the US system and billion in Germany - one billion in germany actually is 1000 billion in the US.... as in Germany we have 1000 million = 1 milliarde (=1 US-billion) = 0.001 (German) billion)
You're right. But that's what I love to read every now and then (say, three times a week).
And, to continue on the flamewar: it's the other way round with the transmission thing. Linux is like automatic, because it just works, and M$ is manual because you have to fiddle to get it done right...
Oh, sure. And the government has no means to rectify such situation on short notice?
Ever wondered how fast they can get anything done to get more information about you??
And you tell us about a scrappy SCSI problem, costing 0.000000001% of the governments budget??
(figures actually not verified - please use wisely)
Downtime? Bah, when are they working anyway for the people (except on collecting data)?
I'll repeat another story. Citi was forcing users to IE times ago (Helpdesk-quote: we only support IE! Change your browser! me: heh, think of non-ms! them: sorry, change your os!). I complained. As probably a lot of people did. Eventually, it helped.
Although, due to my then resident alien status and a <nil> credit history, I had no real chance to change my bank at that time...
But that would be my second best hint. Let them know what you think of doing business the force-it way! That's what they understand.
That's what I have a problem with all the time. Make someone responsible you can get/hurt/damage, instead of finding the one responsible.
Of course, it's a tough part to track that one down and always means more work. But, as an auditor, I feel it's a lot more rewarding to have the one responisble tracked down and actually made responsible...
Always ask yourself: would you like yourself been made responsible for someoneelse's wrongdoing?
Another possibility in Germany is to have your bank card carry a secret key, protected by (another) pin. This is the hbci standard. Combined with a class 3 cardreader (cheap from your bank, having it's own keypad (for secure pin processing) and display (for interaction with the card), this is secure enough for me.
Thief would need my account-no. (ok, that's _pretty_ easy), my card and my card-pin (different to my internet banking pin). And, I can use some fancy home-banking apps (even available for linux).
Much better than the former times with such bignames as citi, which, at some point in time provided no usable access for linux (i.e. non-ie-users) in the us.
But as long as there are services providing account-agregation (using your voluntarily provided accounts and passwords!), there probably won't be much increase of security in the US, I guess. And reading those "contracts" and "disclaimers" with the banks (i.e. you're not allowed to sue them anymore, it's your fault anyway etc.), I don't expect any customer to have a good chance to get some money back, if the customer didn't do anything wrong...
Depends on the country you live in. Here in Germany it's more expensive to get to the pump than to go to Aldi, if they have their vegetable oil on sale. We're currently paying EUR 1.22 for a liter (1/3.8 gallons!!) for premium gas. Diesel probably short of 1 EUR/liter.
(for all the non-calculator owners outside the metric system: the premium price translates to approx. USD 3.86 per gallon!!)
Why not put the PVR in a different room and just run the tv-cable to the TV? Lan cables are a no-go due to installation requirements, wifi's not fast enough to have the necessary data transferred over the needed distance and a box in living room is prohibited by wife.
That's what I'm doing here: mythtv (debian sid) on a rather aged dual pIII-1G with 2x160+40G, which gives you plenty of space and power for a PVR solution using the PVR350 from hauppauge.
Connecting the incoming tv-cable with the box, putting a VCR as HF-converter on the output side of the PVR350 (using the fb-device of the hauppauge) and feeding the HF-out of the VCR back into the tv-cable.
Voila! You have a PVR available in all rooms you have tv-cable. And you can still use the workstation. And you can still upgrade it. You could even use the old second VCR to feed another channel in your home-tv-network...
Make an IR-connection with these nasty small transmitter/receiver combos (aprox. EUR 40), and get some learning remotes.
Drawback: you need to have proper tv-cable wiring in your house, as the pvr-box needs to be connected as early to the tv-cable as possible, your tv-cable needs to feed the rooms serially (is there any such word?).
Only thing I'm not really happy about is 2.6 and ivtv at the moment...
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I do not agree that privacy is a luxury. It is an essential right to be anonymous, especially not the government knowing every of your steps, likes, dislikes and such. You are right that this is not directly related to freedom of speech. But with the recent news about kidnappings by the cia of a German citizen (innocent, by the way...) without intense scrutiny by public (media, others) this makes me feel very scary. It was because of his name, that he was kidnapped. And nobody can assure me that no government will kidnap me because I like /. Or black cats. Or whatever. So, no government should know that much about me, because a government is not to be trusted, given the recent developments all around the world (haven't finished reading all comments about the sweet spot in the world). And this is a reason that no telco should be forced to hold that much data about me. If the government has some concern about me and my habits, please, go ahead and ask a judge to get a subpoena (however it is called in whatever country). THEN, and only then, a company shall collect data about me and hand it to government.
To the abuse point. There will always be abuse. Of freedom (e.g. "fire" in a crowed room) and privacy (any example). But the mis-habits of single persons NEVER should be used to remove a right from many! Rights always come with abuse, it is to be balanced and not black or white.
Not allow root logins?
Don't think so. If a "normal" account is compromised, the attacker could read the root-passwort when su'ing. and this is worse than remote-root-login without password!
If you ONLY have the root account to remotely login and disable the password-auth (key-only) you're pretty much on the safe side.
But it doesn't help, when an attacker uses this damn xmlrpc vulnerability on php to capture apache and even get root with apache running as www-data.... this happened on a drupal installation within 6 days of the vulnerability being public.
we still didn't figure out how he gained root....
Luckily, he was just five minutes to late - he cleaned the syslog only minutes after logcheck sent an email to a remote host about a user creation. that was the only hint we got and reacted promptly. five more minutes later, he was gone. lucky us! if he'd removed the user-generation from syslog just five minutes earlier, we'd have get away with it, even aide was run by him already... damage done: defaced, backups in place and working. four hours work for removing the rootkit and upgrading/checking the machine.
I'd say, you have the same problem either way. Just think about all those services performed in your offices daily.
Cleaner? Trash-Remover? So called security?
Anything else. Having the passwords available to them makes it easy like clapping your hands.
And, with their salaries, I'd think they *are* vulnerable to external attempts to get to some information. Don't mind any contractual obligation to keep secret any information...
To clarify: VG Wort, which was cited, is only doing its business for writers! Not anything to do with other organisations, which care about music, e.g.
And, this is just a levy for the so called "private copy" which is allowed in Germany under certain circumstances (e.g. it must be a copy of the original, not a copy of the copy).
I for one feel, that high energy prices here in Germany (i.e. at the gas pump: $3,80 per gallon for all the non-standard's) lead to the development of economically vehicles. And look at their crash-tests - all well, no need to carry more than 2,5 tons to take the kids to school!
That's the real task of the government - to push the direction. And that's only possible via the price. Nothing else will work.
Another example: I used to live in the US for three years. Thanks to the almost non-existant insulation of our house we had a monthly gas/electric bill of USD 800 for one month in a cold winter! Here, I pay the same amount for the whole year! But it's not due to lower energy prices, but better insulation of our house.
And that's what the economy will be striving for if certain directions are given. Meet the customers demand to make profit (well, lately I have a feeling that the US-economy is only striving for profits, NOT meeting customer demands... but that's another story). And the economy is well prepared (or will be) to do whatever is necessary to cope with e.g. high energy prices.
So, please, either be green and with the consequences or keep Adam's leaf hidden (and I do agree on your hunting arguments).
And that's what I like about the "old world" and I'm glad to be back here - even if some other things go terribly wrong - still better than fully-openly-industry-funded-government
Although, might not be that much better...
Probably it's the same problem as with billion in the US system and billion in Germany - one billion in germany actually is 1000 billion in the US.... as in Germany we have 1000 million = 1 milliarde (=1 US-billion) = 0.001 (German) billion)
You're right. But that's what I love to read every now and then (say, three times a week).
And, to continue on the flamewar: it's the other way round with the transmission thing. Linux is like automatic, because it just works, and M$ is manual because you have to fiddle to get it done right...
Just my 2 eurocents...
That did happen before, didn't it?
/. story handy nor could I find it with a quick search, though...
I don't have the
Oh, sure. And the government has no means to rectify such situation on short notice?
Ever wondered how fast they can get anything done to get more information about you??
And you tell us about a scrappy SCSI problem, costing 0.000000001% of the governments budget?? (figures actually not verified - please use wisely) Downtime? Bah, when are they working anyway for the people (except on collecting data)?
I'll repeat another story. Citi was forcing users to IE times ago (Helpdesk-quote: we only support IE! Change your browser! me: heh, think of non-ms! them: sorry, change your os!). I complained. As probably a lot of people did. Eventually, it helped.
Although, due to my then resident alien status and a <nil> credit history, I had no real chance to change my bank at that time...
But that would be my second best hint. Let them know what you think of doing business the force-it way! That's what they understand.
That's what I have a problem with all the time. Make someone responsible you can get/hurt/damage, instead of finding the one responsible.
Of course, it's a tough part to track that one down and always means more work. But, as an auditor, I feel it's a lot more rewarding to have the one responisble tracked down and actually made responsible...
Always ask yourself: would you like yourself been made responsible for someoneelse's wrongdoing?
Oh, I knew you'd say that...
Another possibility in Germany is to have your bank card carry a secret key, protected by (another) pin. This is the hbci standard. Combined with a class 3 cardreader (cheap from your bank, having it's own keypad (for secure pin processing) and display (for interaction with the card), this is secure enough for me.
Thief would need my account-no. (ok, that's _pretty_ easy), my card and my card-pin (different to my internet banking pin). And, I can use some fancy home-banking apps (even available for linux).
Much better than the former times with such bignames as citi, which, at some point in time provided no usable access for linux (i.e. non-ie-users) in the us.
But as long as there are services providing account-agregation (using your voluntarily provided accounts and passwords!), there probably won't be much increase of security in the US, I guess. And reading those "contracts" and "disclaimers" with the banks (i.e. you're not allowed to sue them anymore, it's your fault anyway etc.), I don't expect any customer to have a good chance to get some money back, if the customer didn't do anything wrong...
Depends on the country you live in. Here in Germany it's more expensive to get to the pump than to go to Aldi, if they have their vegetable oil on sale. We're currently paying EUR 1.22 for a liter (1/3.8 gallons!!) for premium gas. Diesel probably short of 1 EUR/liter.
(for all the non-calculator owners outside the metric system: the premium price translates to approx. USD 3.86 per gallon!!)
That's what I'm doing here: mythtv (debian sid) on a rather aged dual pIII-1G with 2x160+40G, which gives you plenty of space and power for a PVR solution using the PVR350 from hauppauge.
Connecting the incoming tv-cable with the box, putting a VCR as HF-converter on the output side of the PVR350 (using the fb-device of the hauppauge) and feeding the HF-out of the VCR back into the tv-cable.
Voila! You have a PVR available in all rooms you have tv-cable. And you can still use the workstation. And you can still upgrade it. You could even use the old second VCR to feed another channel in your home-tv-network...
Make an IR-connection with these nasty small transmitter/receiver combos (aprox. EUR 40), and get some learning remotes.
Drawback: you need to have proper tv-cable wiring in your house, as the pvr-box needs to be connected as early to the tv-cable as possible, your tv-cable needs to feed the rooms serially (is there any such word?).
Only thing I'm not really happy about is 2.6 and ivtv at the moment...