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This is the result of visiting http://www.cryptodox.com/ which is the link given in the article. Either none of you who are commenting have bothered to check that site (big surprise huh), or the site has just recently decided to pull its index page, perhaps as a result of being slashdotted.
Either way, I find it hard to believe that no one else has noticed this.
I agree that some issues have to be fought for, but technological reasons necessitate an online identity. Without your IP, cookies, SSL, etc., you could not make secure purchases, or be trusted to sell something or give information.
I guard my information carefully. Therefore, if someone knows my full name, address, telephone number, credit card number, and credit card expiration date, and puts them on an order form, go ahead and assume that this is me. No IP address logging or tracking cookies needed (although cookies for the sole purpose of a shopping-cart may be handy). Certainly no directed advertising needed.
You cannot hide your normal activities in real life, and you cannot online, if you expect to be able to do things that require an identity or if you want the "online experience". It is a way of life, because we have chosen it.
But, unless you are under the scrutiny of a competent investigator, then your day-to-day whearabouts and what you are "up to" are generally unknown in real life. What Amazon is doing is like automatically bundling the investigator with the experience. This is really another one of those things that is poorly understood by Joe Sixpack and would never be tolerated if the same thing were done in meatspace.
Everyone loves Google's services, but they sacrifice their online privacy for it. People choose convenience over privacy. You can have privacy if you so choose, but most people have shown, by their actions, that they would rather have convenience.
There is no reason that I cannot use Google via a TOR proxy with cookies disabled. There is also no reason that I can't use my hosts file to make that annoying google-analytics.com host point back to 127.0.0.1. The fact that they have port 80 open to the entire world, with no passwords required, tells me that I can use their services any way I choose.
Now, I do block some ads, but they do power a majority of online conveniences, and you can expect to pay for everything online if everyone blocks ads. So it is your choice, cheap/free and convenient, or private and expensive?
This is really the logical fallacy of the false choice -- I don't think you realize just how well the Internet got along prior to any commercial entities establishing a presence here. The idea that the Web is nothing but a giant marketplace just waiting to be harnessed is a relatively new one, and with it came intrusive advertising, spam, botnets, advertising drones on IRC, spyware, adware, and other great ways to waste bandwidth. I consider myself fortunate, because I first started going online in the early 1990s when the above annoyances did exist but were still relatively unheard-of. You now have a new "generation" of users who have never known anything different and so fail to appreciate how things used to be.
At the end of the day I make my own buying decisions, and when listening to information I consider the source. Yeah, the retailer can probably tell me the price of the product with great accuracy, but I expect that retailer to be one of the worst sources of accurate information regarding the performance of their product. This is why it amazes me that people actually consider sales pitches delivered by ad banners and pop-ups as though they had any merit. To me they are nothing but noise, I will never buy something because of them (in fact, allowing me to see an ad for your product too many times in the same day is a great way to make sure I do not buy it), and if anything the advertisers should be grateful that I block them and save both of us the bandwidth.
Much better to have a bunch of bought-and-paid-for messages screaming at us to tell us what we need and what we should want and how we should spend our money.
I know, something really needs to be done about advertisments. I can't tell you how many times I saw an ad and then suddenly found myself typing in my credit card number and home address, totally unable to control my own actions, ordering whatever item it was regardless of if I actually needed it or could have even used it at all. The worst is when you see an ad for an item you already own..
My point was that the sheeplike nature of most people in the USA and their unwillingness to apply critical thought to what they are told via the TV, radio, etc. is very dangerous for a wide variety of reasons, and the way that advertising is done today is feeding this situation, rather than starving it. Call it the law of unintended consequences. That rectifying this situation would also imply not being bombarded with ads everywhere I go would just be a desirable side-effect.
Advertising as it is done now is based on manipulation, to convince you to do something that you otherwise would not do. This is why television commercials will so often use catchy jingles, flashy graphics, hot chicks, half-truths, skewed statistics, meaningless quantities such as "up to X" -- anything and everything other than a solid reason why the product is so great -- just to try and get you to buy. What I am advocating is advertising that aims at convincing you from whom to buy something that you have already decided to acquire, based on your own assessment of what you need. The difference is a bit subtle but also very important.
What are you looking at to decide which bluetooth adapter to get? Certainly you wouldn't look at the copy print on the retailer's site or shelf, because that's not an un-biased source, in fact, it's basically advertising. Ah, but I suppose once you found one that sounded decent, you could google it, and see if there are any reviews or complaints about it. I wonder though, what's stopping you from doing that when you see a normal ad for a product that looks interesting? Perhaps a product that is slightly more expensive, but offers some neat feature that's not readily explained in the title alone..
I thought that this distinction would be obvious with my later comparison of that model of advertising to a yellow pages-like directory. What I'd like to see is more "client-pull" advertising and less "server-push" advertising, both literally on the Internet and figuratively on other media such as television (i.e. fewer commercials and more options like Home Shopping Network). Thus, if I seek and then read the copy print on a retailer's site, I am merely looking up information. If a spammer sends me e-mail solicitations, this is an intrusion. Guess under which category I would place the practice of forming affiliate networks for the purpose of actively tracking your customers so that you can use this information to increase your ad revenue?
This has (in a way) been done. The problem with froogle, as you'll hear many retailers complain, is that it forces you to compete solely on price. Sometimes this is fine -- if for example, you're buying a bluetooth dongle. If you're buying something more expensive, however (say, a laptop), then it's also important to figure out what else they offer - how long is the warranty? What accessories come with it? Is there a trade-up program if you decide you need a better one in a couple months? Do the staff know what they're talking about if you have questions? These are things not easily accommodated with a 'yellow pages' style listing.
So you found an implementation with known "flaws" (in quotes because for all I know, listing by price only was a deliberate design trade-off) and
Surf tracking and targeted ads are a way of life. There is no privacy online. Get used to it.
Did it ever occur to you that this "lie down and take it" attitude is mostly responsible for the current situation? For every measure there are countermeasures. Adblock and its companion Filterset Updater are two (of many) which happen to be very effective, especially when combined with restrictions on cookies. And remember that at the end of the day, it is we who buy things from companies which employ these practices who are ultimately responsible for this situation. Companies do whatever rewards them with profits in the marketplace. I submit that the current situation is caused mostly by the apathy that you proclaim and the failure of most people to take a principled stand on much of anything.
Kudos to their web developers for making a relatively simple (technically speaking) mod that dramatically increased their store value to most people
Yes, because heaven forbid that people should objectively evaluate their own needs and use basic research skills to find the products and services that are most likely to meet those needs. Much better to have a bunch of bought-and-paid-for messages screaming at us to tell us what we need and what we should want and how we should spend our money. Oh, and targeting these advertisements means that they can more efficiently tell you what you should want and need? And are more likely to be rewarded for doing so? Apparently the sheeple have spoken.
Realistically, the only entity for whom this increases value are the shareholders of Amazon.com. I certainly don't need to be told what's good for me or how I should make economic decisions, and knowing that I may have been shopping around for a good Bluetooth device (or whatever) does absolutely nothing to change this basic fact. How much less would we pay for everyday goods and services if sizable portions of every dollar spent did not go towards these marketing budgets? I wish we could get rid of this idea that intrusive advertising benefits anyone other than the advertisers. If you feel a need to track your customer's habits and otherwise keep tabs on them, it is because your model is fundamentally flawed and the "need" to do this is an effort to work around this fact.
A much better model for advertising would be, let's say, the yellow pages. You know what you you are looking for and you search a directory to see who is offering it and for how much. Anything more involved than this is intrusive and based on the expectation that we are all too stupid to make our own decisions -- and oddly enough, you tend to get what you expect.
For this reason, if I see something advertised widely (and particularly if the ads are especially annoying), and there is a competitor who does a better job of allowing the quality of their products to speak for itself, I make it a point to never buy the one that is more widely advertised. This usually saves me money and always gives me the satisfaction of voting with my feet by not supporting marketing practices that are not in my best interests.
No commerical ever interests me. When I am making a purchasing decision, I seek out unbiased sources of information. All commerical fail that requirement.
The only thing that amazes me is that people respond to advertising so well as they do.
Re:It is modded as funny beacuse is nonsense.
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Computer Voodoo?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Obviously you have never worked in a support position.
The average user doesn't give a damn how it works, doesn't care if their own actions are contributing to the failure(s) experienced, and will resist being educated. The technician who is called in after-the-fact is only half of the equation.
The way most users handle computing could be compared to approaching your doctor, complaining that there is something wrong with you, and then putting your fingers in your ears and saying "BLAH BLAH I CANT HEAR YOU!!!" when he gives advice or asks if you are willing to undergo some tests. Oh, and then getting pissed off at the doctor when you have the same complaint again. Now, would you say this is the doctor's fault? Similarly, the best technician in the world needs someone willing to work with them in order to truly solve problems instead of merely applying band-aids.
I totally understand where wiretapping "innocent" people is a Bad Thing, in principle. It definitely violates "privacy" (although we could still debate whether you can actually expect privacy over public lines to foreign countries- I might not be so quick to assume you can). But there is absolutely nothing here stopping you from talking about whatever you want.
I expect privacy unless clear, unambiguous notice is given that the conversation may be monitored. What bothers me about the situation is that if you make a phone call, domestic or international, you have no knowledge; maybe you are being monitoried right this moment... and maybe you're not. There's an insidious element to this lack of disclosure that is without explanation -- the question has not even come up so I have not even heard the usual "national security!" excuse used. Rest assured that anyone with a reason to be paranoid already assumes no privacy and uses countermeasures, such as speaking in code. In fact, I would have to say that anyone trying to get away with something evil who fails to plan on such simple and obvious possibilities was too stupid to be much of a threat. So really, whom do they intend to monitor? And why would they have any problem obtaining a warrant? Just maybe the statists who want this are not 100% pure, saintly, full of love for all of humankind, selfless, and charitable but have their own motives which are not in our best interests.
I'm actually not sure which is the bigger threat: the long-term planner who is fine with the idea of an eventual police state just so long as they will play a part in running it, or, the well-intentioned but shortsighted do-gooder who fails to forsee major future problems caused by actions taken and precedents set that seem good right now in a climate of fear.
If the ACLU or whoever they're representing is talking about illegal stuff with people overseas, then the government should probably be listening, right? And if they're not talking about such things, then you're not going to have the government busting you for anything. I'd be a lot more worried about the government passing laws making more things illegal than the government checking to see that existing laws are being followed.
It seems like you would be amazed at how much leverage over a person can be obtained by this level of surveillance. Accepting this fact is no great leap of faith. When you are prepared to make that leap, consider also that the executive branch in general, and police power in particular, tend towards attracting the power-hungry. This is an artifact of the very nature of the job, and as a result it cannot be remedied by any mere procedural change except for direct and enforcable limits on the scope and extent of that power. Bear in mind that often these are people who know what's best for you, like to enforce it, and often picture themselves as self-sacrificing civil servants with the purest of intentions -- and it would probably be a hard, thankless, unrewarding job otherwise. Making it too easy and efficient for the government to enforce its laws is a direct precursor of fascism.
Also, I'm not really sure how many more things one could make illegal. The tax code alone is so complex that 10 different specialists will give you nine different answers to the same question. Let alone every last local ordinance, state law, and federal law, and as others have pointed out, ignorance of the law is not an allowed excuse. Therefore, I believe that battle has been lost.
You may trust Bush, others may not, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether or not illegal stuff is going on right now over the telephone under existing laws. This is a country of laws, not leaders. Nixon was proof of that.
I don't trust anyone who wants to be President badly enough that he is willing to perform the type of bargaining and the w
Great life lesson there, especially as a warning for all the computer science students who will grow up to see their work copied and dished out for free.
As opposed to being protected by artificial scarcity?
I'm absolutely amazed. When you already know the answer and derive keywords from the answer you already know, searching for the solution is trivial!
As though it would take anything more than high school-level research skills to find such an answer via Google. This really is just another case of RTFM only it would be more accurate to say "quit being willfully helpless".
Some people like to assume that everyone either is a helpless moron, or should be -- and I would agree that many people are, and would vehemently disagree that anyone should be. This is why I view this kind of helplessness as pathological, and if you intend to solve problems for these people you must consider whether you are really helping them or merely enhancing their dependence on others by handing out easy answers ("teach a man to fish" versus "give a man a fish"). That is, if the idea is for people to learn and grow in their understanding and eventually come to master the equipment that they use on a daily basis. If that idea is not to your liking then the current status quo where no one is ever expected to learn anything should be ideal to you.
I much prefer to give people enough credit that they can be expected to solve their own problems or make arrangements (i.e. hire a tech) for someone else to do so, and then question the individuals who, from time to time, insist on using free, community-supported resources prior to exhausting other available options first. When you expect that everyone is so unable to take care of their own issues, you tend to get what you expect.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but I notice that self-sufficiency is on the decline.
I think you perhaps need to take some lessons in critical thinking. This is the equivelent of saying, "The only reason auto-manufactuers put problems into cars so they have to recall them is because the government makes them, which is why Japanese cars are better than American cars."
My critical thinking skills tell me that this is a false analogy because the government has no incentive to make automobile manufacturers issue recalls, and really the attorneys and enforcement and regulations involved would make this nothing but an expense for the government. When consumer protection laws are enforced, the governmental officials involved can at least claim that they are doing this to benefit the public, even when doing so does further someone's personal agenda.
The situation as described by the A.C. is where the government requires backdoors so that its own governmental snoops (law enforcement and possibly more shady, less accountable organizations) can easily access systems that would otherwise be difficult to access due to security protections. This directly benefits the government because it makes their legitimate law enforcement job easier and it also makes less legitimate ventures (potential data mining, eavesdropping, etc) much easier and has the nice side-effect of eliminating some of the need to do old-fashioned police work. This scenario certainly does not benefit the users of Microsoft software and so the intent shown is nothing like your analogy. If this is actually happening, then this is a very dangerous precedent for two reasons: One, if the government can use such a backdoor, so can anyone else who learns of it; two, the job of law enforcement was not intended to be easy and efforts to make it an easy job immediately preceded the rise of most totalitarian states that existed during the 20th century (at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, Nazi Germany and the USSR did not take place due to powerless and ill-informed police forces).
Further, when speaking about Windows you are dealing with proprietary, closed-source software. You and I simply do not know with 100% certainty whether or not there actually is such a backdoor in any of the Windows code, nor do we know what agreements Microsoft has made with which governments. What you can know is that we are in an era where privacy is on the decline and law enforcement powers are increasing, and being able to easily access over 90% of all desktop computer systems does fit the stated purpose of programs that we do know about, such as the NSA wiretap program. To say that we already know about every possible threat to privacy and that the statists who desire this kind of surveillance are now satisfied and will not be seeking further powers is a lofty claim indeed. Study history and you will observe that the USA has a bad case of "it can't happen here" regarding foreseeable abuses of power.
Also, unmotivated programmers and undocumented backdoors are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that they both contribute to the sad state of security in Microsoft's code. It is also possible that neither are true and that some third factor (such as program design being dominated by marketing and forcing otherwise good programmers to work within these parameters) can explain the lack of security. But to observe that the possible existence of unmotived programmers could explain the situation and then claim that this is a valid reason to dismiss other arguments out-of-hand does not fit the spirit of critical thinking that you mentioned earlier.
But it does indicate that maybe, just maybe, you live in the USA and are in denial about the direction towards which it is headed.
That's odd. In my experience, the moderators tend to use "Offtopic" when they wish to say "Hey you, shut the fuck up and don't point out the truth unless it's what we want to hear." Other than the use of "Troll" instead of "Offtopic," believe me when I tell you that this is nothing new. This is simply one of the easier ways to abuse this particular system.
I see this going on often enough that I am heading towards the conclusion that meta-moderation is not a strong enough solution for this problem. Meta-moderation is great against mods who deliberately abuse their mod points, but it doesn't work so well against the no-regard-for-facts crowd, which is much larger by comparison. However, because a partial solution is superior to no solution at all in this case, I usually meta-moderate any chance I get and when doing so, I am swift to mark idiot moderations like this as "Unfair."
As to why the moderation is a shitty judgment call, I will give a hopefully adequate analogy: I do not blame Microsoft for producing half-ass products and profiting handsomely from it; I blame anyone who decides to reward their lack of quality with cold hard cash. By random chance, we ended up with an example of this named Microsft, but there is an entire world full of people with situational ethics waiting to exploit any situation where shit gets rewarded. If Microsoft had not so effectively capitalized on this situation, rest assured that another player would have done so. It's a giant whack-a-mole game until you address the actual problem, which is the decline of the discriminating customer. Therefore, it makes no sense to blame the guy who points out the fact that the Slashdot editors have a mediocre command of the English language. If you must place blame, this would belong to the editors for having a mediocre command of the English language combined with the audacity to still refer to themselves as "editors" because once this is established, it becomes a predictable eventuality that a user who actually cares about quality will point out their shortcomings.
Incidentally, "Overrated" is a pansy-ass way to express your disapproval with a post, because it allows you to make a claim (that the post deserves a negative sanction) without even giving so much as a hint of reasoning explaining why.
I'll assume we're talking about the American constitution and go ahead and ask you: if the constitution is (or should be) made to limit the role of government to a default deny all, wouldn't *it* need to be amended every time the government needs to pass a novel law?
No, it's more like they interpret the "implied powers" in whatever way is most convenient... For example, if the founding fathers intended for the government to regulate what one can and cannot do with one's own body, they likely would have stated this plainly (and I strongly doubt that they would have wanted this; I can tell you what you may and may not do with my car because I own it and for the state to tell you what you may and may not do with your body implies that the state owns your whole person). As they did not, the "interstate commerce" clause is interpreted to allow Congress to conduct a "drug war." Nevermind that someone who were to, let's say, grow their own marijuana on their own land and use it on their own land (which would be a silly thing to do in this current climate of drug hysteria) is not conducting interstate commerce, nor commerce of any sort.
Also, I was talking more in terms of how I believe it should be; in US History classes I was also taught that this was the intention of the Constitution - that is, to grant the government powers that it otherwise does not have, versus placing specific limits on an otherwise all-powerful government. See also the 10th amendment.
Furthermore, an example of the Constitution being amended in order to pass a novel law was the 16th Amendment. The founding fathers saw no need for the government to have an income tax - one can only guess as to why this is, but I like to think that in their wisdom they understood how easily this can be abused to control behavior in the form of tax incentives and the enormous amount of information on, and tracking of, the citizens that is necessary in order to enforce an income tax. The founders probably would have agreed that where you work, where you live, how much money you make, whether you are married, what dependents you have, and all the other personal information we have been conditioned to give to the government without question today, is not the government's business. At any rate, the 16th Amendment was ratified for the sole purpose of allowing this form of taxation. Perhaps it would interest you to know that this was sold to the people as a temporary measure that was necessary only because of the war we were fighting at the time, which is the same old pattern being used now with the Patriot Act and other recent power grabs.
Also, I could have done better than to call you a dumbass but I was frustrated... it is frustrating when you have a point and you attempt to express it, and rather than find the interpretation that does make your point, people instead choose the interpretation that most harms the point you are trying to make. You cannot really do that without knowing what the point was, so the fact that it was missed comes across as willful and designed as a straw man device. If this was not the case, and from your reaction it seems not, then I am sorry for not finding a more graceful way to express my frustration with that.
Hey dumbass, I was talking about what the GOVERNMENT can do. I.e. the GOVERNMENT cannot do anything at all, until and unless the Constitution allows it to do so. I was not referring in any way whatsoever to what citizens can and cannot do; for them it would be the opposite; they can do anything they like until and unless it is made illegal.
Sorry guys, I have karma to burn so take your moderator frustrations out on me if you must, but that moderation is bullshit (and damn do mods seem to dislike it when you point this out). Flamebait? What strong belief does it blatently attack in an attempt to start a verbal war? Try reading the FAQ you fucks. Articles like this are shit, and I am also not going to continue viewing this article because I do not wish to knowingly reward shit with ad revenue dollars -- yes, you see, there is a decision to make here involving voting with your feet and whether you wish or do not wish to reward something with real $$. Just think about the kind of traffic the Slashdot Effect generates for a site and its advertisers. Therefore, if anything, kimvette is doing me a favor, and I suspect I am not the only person who can say that. So anyway, it is likely that calling bullshit when I see it, in the only forum in which I can do so (seeing how I do not have mod points right now and there is no section here devoted to discussing this sort of thing) will cost me a few points, but oh well.
Slashdot badly needs a way to moderate articles themselves, and "-1 Conflict of Interest" (for obvious attempts to drive traffic to sites that just happen to be ad-supported and also just happen to be owned by the person who submitted the article) and "-1 Excess Pagination" need to be two of the categories. I'm not even going to mention dupes.
Then they rethink the UI and people start going "OMG! Training!". Let's be realistic here -- a substantial portion of the userbase is still on MS Office 2000 -- companies will have at least 5 years to get ready to adapt to this, and by that time it will be quite easy to hire people who know the new UI.
Slashdot is the kind of place where everyone thinks that enveryone should all switch to Linux/Mac/OpenOffice/Whatever tomorrow as the magic bullet. Nobody here ever seems to care about training until MS Office comes up.
A new UI is going to confuse a user for all of 5 minutes while they navigate through it and find where their favorite functions are... provided that said user had any clue what the fuck they were doing in the first place.
Your typical go-through-the-motions formulaic user who merely repeats a set of memorized steps with no understanding of what they are doing and why may have problems, however. The thing is, if you subsidize something, you tend to get more of it. Do we really want to go to any great lengths to make life any easier for people who just want to be automatons? And is this the kind of element that we would like to see thrive in our society? Resistance to change (rather than fascination by it) and a hatred of learning (rather than a joy of discovery) also go with the package when you are talking about this type of person, not to mention they tend to be content with mediocrity as evident by a lack of a deep understanding of their skills and the tools necessary to perform them.
What would you think about an automobile mechanic who knew internal combustion engines inside and out, but who felt that how to properly and safely use an engine hoist or a floor jack or any other machine necessary to perform his job was knowledge suitable only for the machinists who built them? Or how about a doctor who knew all about the human body but who felt that knowledge of pharmacology was only for drug companies? I feel the same way about anyone who must use a computer as a tool in order to perform their job but who feels that anything resembling a deep understanding of this tool is "only for technicians" and not only does not know, but does not want to know.
Shit goes wrong, things happen, events don't work out as planned, programs crash, computers get misconfigured. Why the hell would anyone find it desirable to be unprepared for these things when they happen to a tool that has become so indispensable? People who give a damn about excellence enjoy learning something new each day about the things they do and the tools they use. And no, everyone can not and probably should not be a computer specialist, but when someone has been on IRC every day for the last three years and still needs handholding to register a nick, or when someone has used e-mail for seven years and has never heard of blind carbon copy, you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with them and how much it could be holding back our brightest people when they have to deal with an environment (read: nearly all of them) which caters to this kind of mediocrity.
As an aside, if you want to know frustration, start expecting better of people than they do, based on a realistic idea of what is and is not possible. But either way, why do we support people who are willfully helpless?
There's one thing I seem to be missing in all of the comments here: what's the point of this exactly?
The massive DDoS attacks generally come from botnets that do not need to bother spoofing their source IP. Also, anyone who relies on IP address alone (especially with "connectionless" protocols like IP/ICMP/UDP) for their security needs is just begging for problems because they're trusting a network that is not trustworthy. Seems to me it would be far easier to discourage the practice of trusting an untrustworthy network -- the black hats seem useful for this purpose -- than it would be to check each and every individual subnet for whether they will pass spoofed packets.
Given this, what does it matter whether I can spoof UDP/ICMP packets? What service or what architecture that is widely used today is so brain-dead that it does not require a password or strong encryption or some other form of security and/or authentication that would ensure that spoofing the IP address does not constitute a successful attack?
All of this would have been great ten years ago but today, the DDoS kiddies and spam botnets are enabled by the unwillingness to value security on the part of too many Windows users with broadband connections, combined with Microsoft's inability or unwillingness to market a secure-by-default OS. I say "market" here because I am assuming that with the resources at their disposal, Microsoft could create an extremely secure OS, if they really wanted to. Just look at what the OpenBSD team has done with far fewer resources available to them.
And yes, I see that as a responsibility of Microsoft's since their fortunes are largely built by mass-marketing a technical product to the non-technical, "I just want it to work with zero effort" crowd (and apparently this type of can't-be-bothered-to-learn-anything user wants it to be the first thing in this life ever observed to do so, other than entropy). If Windows were marketed exclusively to computer security specialists then I would not blame Microsoft if extremely insecure configurations kept happening.
So anyway, somebody please explain to me how it will matter one way or the other whether 0% of all internet users can spoof or whether 100% of them can spoof.
And worse, they think it's okay because you're an underling in the corporate food chain. Few seem to realize these days that how you treat people you do not need to be kind to is what really tells me what kind of person you are.
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Either way, I find it hard to believe that no one else has noticed this.
You're thinking too objectively about it. Just relax and let it be played enough times on the media and it will try to become true.
I guard my information carefully. Therefore, if someone knows my full name, address, telephone number, credit card number, and credit card expiration date, and puts them on an order form, go ahead and assume that this is me. No IP address logging or tracking cookies needed (although cookies for the sole purpose of a shopping-cart may be handy). Certainly no directed advertising needed.
But, unless you are under the scrutiny of a competent investigator, then your day-to-day whearabouts and what you are "up to" are generally unknown in real life. What Amazon is doing is like automatically bundling the investigator with the experience. This is really another one of those things that is poorly understood by Joe Sixpack and would never be tolerated if the same thing were done in meatspace.
There is no reason that I cannot use Google via a TOR proxy with cookies disabled. There is also no reason that I can't use my hosts file to make that annoying google-analytics.com host point back to 127.0.0.1. The fact that they have port 80 open to the entire world, with no passwords required, tells me that I can use their services any way I choose.
This is really the logical fallacy of the false choice -- I don't think you realize just how well the Internet got along prior to any commercial entities establishing a presence here. The idea that the Web is nothing but a giant marketplace just waiting to be harnessed is a relatively new one, and with it came intrusive advertising, spam, botnets, advertising drones on IRC, spyware, adware, and other great ways to waste bandwidth. I consider myself fortunate, because I first started going online in the early 1990s when the above annoyances did exist but were still relatively unheard-of. You now have a new "generation" of users who have never known anything different and so fail to appreciate how things used to be.
At the end of the day I make my own buying decisions, and when listening to information I consider the source. Yeah, the retailer can probably tell me the price of the product with great accuracy, but I expect that retailer to be one of the worst sources of accurate information regarding the performance of their product. This is why it amazes me that people actually consider sales pitches delivered by ad banners and pop-ups as though they had any merit. To me they are nothing but noise, I will never buy something because of them (in fact, allowing me to see an ad for your product too many times in the same day is a great way to make sure I do not buy it), and if anything the advertisers should be grateful that I block them and save both of us the bandwidth.
My point was that the sheeplike nature of most people in the USA and their unwillingness to apply critical thought to what they are told via the TV, radio, etc. is very dangerous for a wide variety of reasons, and the way that advertising is done today is feeding this situation, rather than starving it. Call it the law of unintended consequences. That rectifying this situation would also imply not being bombarded with ads everywhere I go would just be a desirable side-effect.
Advertising as it is done now is based on manipulation, to convince you to do something that you otherwise would not do. This is why television commercials will so often use catchy jingles, flashy graphics, hot chicks, half-truths, skewed statistics, meaningless quantities such as "up to X" -- anything and everything other than a solid reason why the product is so great -- just to try and get you to buy. What I am advocating is advertising that aims at convincing you from whom to buy something that you have already decided to acquire, based on your own assessment of what you need. The difference is a bit subtle but also very important.
I thought that this distinction would be obvious with my later comparison of that model of advertising to a yellow pages-like directory. What I'd like to see is more "client-pull" advertising and less "server-push" advertising, both literally on the Internet and figuratively on other media such as television (i.e. fewer commercials and more options like Home Shopping Network). Thus, if I seek and then read the copy print on a retailer's site, I am merely looking up information. If a spammer sends me e-mail solicitations, this is an intrusion. Guess under which category I would place the practice of forming affiliate networks for the purpose of actively tracking your customers so that you can use this information to increase your ad revenue?
So you found an implementation with known "flaws" (in quotes because for all I know, listing by price only was a deliberate design trade-off) and
Did it ever occur to you that this "lie down and take it" attitude is mostly responsible for the current situation? For every measure there are countermeasures. Adblock and its companion Filterset Updater are two (of many) which happen to be very effective, especially when combined with restrictions on cookies. And remember that at the end of the day, it is we who buy things from companies which employ these practices who are ultimately responsible for this situation. Companies do whatever rewards them with profits in the marketplace. I submit that the current situation is caused mostly by the apathy that you proclaim and the failure of most people to take a principled stand on much of anything.
Yes, because heaven forbid that people should objectively evaluate their own needs and use basic research skills to find the products and services that are most likely to meet those needs. Much better to have a bunch of bought-and-paid-for messages screaming at us to tell us what we need and what we should want and how we should spend our money. Oh, and targeting these advertisements means that they can more efficiently tell you what you should want and need? And are more likely to be rewarded for doing so? Apparently the sheeple have spoken.
Realistically, the only entity for whom this increases value are the shareholders of Amazon.com. I certainly don't need to be told what's good for me or how I should make economic decisions, and knowing that I may have been shopping around for a good Bluetooth device (or whatever) does absolutely nothing to change this basic fact. How much less would we pay for everyday goods and services if sizable portions of every dollar spent did not go towards these marketing budgets? I wish we could get rid of this idea that intrusive advertising benefits anyone other than the advertisers. If you feel a need to track your customer's habits and otherwise keep tabs on them, it is because your model is fundamentally flawed and the "need" to do this is an effort to work around this fact.
A much better model for advertising would be, let's say, the yellow pages. You know what you you are looking for and you search a directory to see who is offering it and for how much. Anything more involved than this is intrusive and based on the expectation that we are all too stupid to make our own decisions -- and oddly enough, you tend to get what you expect.
For this reason, if I see something advertised widely (and particularly if the ads are especially annoying), and there is a competitor who does a better job of allowing the quality of their products to speak for itself, I make it a point to never buy the one that is more widely advertised. This usually saves me money and always gives me the satisfaction of voting with my feet by not supporting marketing practices that are not in my best interests.
No commerical ever interests me. When I am making a purchasing decision, I seek out unbiased sources of information. All commerical fail that requirement.
The only thing that amazes me is that people respond to advertising so well as they do.
Obviously you have never worked in a support position.
The average user doesn't give a damn how it works, doesn't care if their own actions are contributing to the failure(s) experienced, and will resist being educated. The technician who is called in after-the-fact is only half of the equation.
The way most users handle computing could be compared to approaching your doctor, complaining that there is something wrong with you, and then putting your fingers in your ears and saying "BLAH BLAH I CANT HEAR YOU!!!" when he gives advice or asks if you are willing to undergo some tests. Oh, and then getting pissed off at the doctor when you have the same complaint again. Now, would you say this is the doctor's fault? Similarly, the best technician in the world needs someone willing to work with them in order to truly solve problems instead of merely applying band-aids.
The solution to that is to never fix their problems for free.
I expect privacy unless clear, unambiguous notice is given that the conversation may be monitored. What bothers me about the situation is that if you make a phone call, domestic or international, you have no knowledge; maybe you are being monitoried right this moment ... and maybe you're not. There's an insidious element to this lack of disclosure that is without explanation -- the question has not even come up so I have not even heard the usual "national security!" excuse used. Rest assured that anyone with a reason to be paranoid already assumes no privacy and uses countermeasures, such as speaking in code. In fact, I would have to say that anyone trying to get away with something evil who fails to plan on such simple and obvious possibilities was too stupid to be much of a threat. So really, whom do they intend to monitor? And why would they have any problem obtaining a warrant? Just maybe the statists who want this are not 100% pure, saintly, full of love for all of humankind, selfless, and charitable but have their own motives which are not in our best interests.
I'm actually not sure which is the bigger threat: the long-term planner who is fine with the idea of an eventual police state just so long as they will play a part in running it, or, the well-intentioned but shortsighted do-gooder who fails to forsee major future problems caused by actions taken and precedents set that seem good right now in a climate of fear.
It seems like you would be amazed at how much leverage over a person can be obtained by this level of surveillance. Accepting this fact is no great leap of faith. When you are prepared to make that leap, consider also that the executive branch in general, and police power in particular, tend towards attracting the power-hungry. This is an artifact of the very nature of the job, and as a result it cannot be remedied by any mere procedural change except for direct and enforcable limits on the scope and extent of that power. Bear in mind that often these are people who know what's best for you, like to enforce it, and often picture themselves as self-sacrificing civil servants with the purest of intentions -- and it would probably be a hard, thankless, unrewarding job otherwise. Making it too easy and efficient for the government to enforce its laws is a direct precursor of fascism.
Also, I'm not really sure how many more things one could make illegal. The tax code alone is so complex that 10 different specialists will give you nine different answers to the same question. Let alone every last local ordinance, state law, and federal law, and as others have pointed out, ignorance of the law is not an allowed excuse. Therefore, I believe that battle has been lost.
I don't trust anyone who wants to be President badly enough that he is willing to perform the type of bargaining and the w
As opposed to being protected by artificial scarcity?
As though it would take anything more than high school-level research skills to find such an answer via Google. This really is just another case of RTFM only it would be more accurate to say "quit being willfully helpless".
Some people like to assume that everyone either is a helpless moron, or should be -- and I would agree that many people are, and would vehemently disagree that anyone should be. This is why I view this kind of helplessness as pathological, and if you intend to solve problems for these people you must consider whether you are really helping them or merely enhancing their dependence on others by handing out easy answers ("teach a man to fish" versus "give a man a fish"). That is, if the idea is for people to learn and grow in their understanding and eventually come to master the equipment that they use on a daily basis. If that idea is not to your liking then the current status quo where no one is ever expected to learn anything should be ideal to you.
I much prefer to give people enough credit that they can be expected to solve their own problems or make arrangements (i.e. hire a tech) for someone else to do so, and then question the individuals who, from time to time, insist on using free, community-supported resources prior to exhausting other available options first. When you expect that everyone is so unable to take care of their own issues, you tend to get what you expect.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but I notice that self-sufficiency is on the decline.
My critical thinking skills tell me that this is a false analogy because the government has no incentive to make automobile manufacturers issue recalls, and really the attorneys and enforcement and regulations involved would make this nothing but an expense for the government. When consumer protection laws are enforced, the governmental officials involved can at least claim that they are doing this to benefit the public, even when doing so does further someone's personal agenda.
The situation as described by the A.C. is where the government requires backdoors so that its own governmental snoops (law enforcement and possibly more shady, less accountable organizations) can easily access systems that would otherwise be difficult to access due to security protections. This directly benefits the government because it makes their legitimate law enforcement job easier and it also makes less legitimate ventures (potential data mining, eavesdropping, etc) much easier and has the nice side-effect of eliminating some of the need to do old-fashioned police work. This scenario certainly does not benefit the users of Microsoft software and so the intent shown is nothing like your analogy. If this is actually happening, then this is a very dangerous precedent for two reasons: One, if the government can use such a backdoor, so can anyone else who learns of it; two, the job of law enforcement was not intended to be easy and efforts to make it an easy job immediately preceded the rise of most totalitarian states that existed during the 20th century (at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, Nazi Germany and the USSR did not take place due to powerless and ill-informed police forces).
Further, when speaking about Windows you are dealing with proprietary, closed-source software. You and I simply do not know with 100% certainty whether or not there actually is such a backdoor in any of the Windows code, nor do we know what agreements Microsoft has made with which governments. What you can know is that we are in an era where privacy is on the decline and law enforcement powers are increasing, and being able to easily access over 90% of all desktop computer systems does fit the stated purpose of programs that we do know about, such as the NSA wiretap program. To say that we already know about every possible threat to privacy and that the statists who desire this kind of surveillance are now satisfied and will not be seeking further powers is a lofty claim indeed. Study history and you will observe that the USA has a bad case of "it can't happen here" regarding foreseeable abuses of power.
Also, unmotivated programmers and undocumented backdoors are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that they both contribute to the sad state of security in Microsoft's code. It is also possible that neither are true and that some third factor (such as program design being dominated by marketing and forcing otherwise good programmers to work within these parameters) can explain the lack of security. But to observe that the possible existence of unmotived programmers could explain the situation and then claim that this is a valid reason to dismiss other arguments out-of-hand does not fit the spirit of critical thinking that you mentioned earlier.
But it does indicate that maybe, just maybe, you live in the USA and are in denial about the direction towards which it is headed.
Google!
Apparently you've never listened to Bill Hicks.
That's odd. In my experience, the moderators tend to use "Offtopic" when they wish to say "Hey you, shut the fuck up and don't point out the truth unless it's what we want to hear." Other than the use of "Troll" instead of "Offtopic," believe me when I tell you that this is nothing new. This is simply one of the easier ways to abuse this particular system.
I see this going on often enough that I am heading towards the conclusion that meta-moderation is not a strong enough solution for this problem. Meta-moderation is great against mods who deliberately abuse their mod points, but it doesn't work so well against the no-regard-for-facts crowd, which is much larger by comparison. However, because a partial solution is superior to no solution at all in this case, I usually meta-moderate any chance I get and when doing so, I am swift to mark idiot moderations like this as "Unfair."
As to why the moderation is a shitty judgment call, I will give a hopefully adequate analogy: I do not blame Microsoft for producing half-ass products and profiting handsomely from it; I blame anyone who decides to reward their lack of quality with cold hard cash. By random chance, we ended up with an example of this named Microsft, but there is an entire world full of people with situational ethics waiting to exploit any situation where shit gets rewarded. If Microsoft had not so effectively capitalized on this situation, rest assured that another player would have done so. It's a giant whack-a-mole game until you address the actual problem, which is the decline of the discriminating customer. Therefore, it makes no sense to blame the guy who points out the fact that the Slashdot editors have a mediocre command of the English language. If you must place blame, this would belong to the editors for having a mediocre command of the English language combined with the audacity to still refer to themselves as "editors" because once this is established, it becomes a predictable eventuality that a user who actually cares about quality will point out their shortcomings.
Incidentally, "Overrated" is a pansy-ass way to express your disapproval with a post, because it allows you to make a claim (that the post deserves a negative sanction) without even giving so much as a hint of reasoning explaining why.
Whatever that cost is, it would be well worth it. Right now that would be something that money cannot buy.
No, it's more like they interpret the "implied powers" in whatever way is most convenient... For example, if the founding fathers intended for the government to regulate what one can and cannot do with one's own body, they likely would have stated this plainly (and I strongly doubt that they would have wanted this; I can tell you what you may and may not do with my car because I own it and for the state to tell you what you may and may not do with your body implies that the state owns your whole person). As they did not, the "interstate commerce" clause is interpreted to allow Congress to conduct a "drug war." Nevermind that someone who were to, let's say, grow their own marijuana on their own land and use it on their own land (which would be a silly thing to do in this current climate of drug hysteria) is not conducting interstate commerce, nor commerce of any sort.
Also, I was talking more in terms of how I believe it should be; in US History classes I was also taught that this was the intention of the Constitution - that is, to grant the government powers that it otherwise does not have, versus placing specific limits on an otherwise all-powerful government. See also the 10th amendment.
Furthermore, an example of the Constitution being amended in order to pass a novel law was the 16th Amendment. The founding fathers saw no need for the government to have an income tax - one can only guess as to why this is, but I like to think that in their wisdom they understood how easily this can be abused to control behavior in the form of tax incentives and the enormous amount of information on, and tracking of, the citizens that is necessary in order to enforce an income tax. The founders probably would have agreed that where you work, where you live, how much money you make, whether you are married, what dependents you have, and all the other personal information we have been conditioned to give to the government without question today, is not the government's business. At any rate, the 16th Amendment was ratified for the sole purpose of allowing this form of taxation. Perhaps it would interest you to know that this was sold to the people as a temporary measure that was necessary only because of the war we were fighting at the time, which is the same old pattern being used now with the Patriot Act and other recent power grabs.
Also, I could have done better than to call you a dumbass but I was frustrated... it is frustrating when you have a point and you attempt to express it, and rather than find the interpretation that does make your point, people instead choose the interpretation that most harms the point you are trying to make. You cannot really do that without knowing what the point was, so the fact that it was missed comes across as willful and designed as a straw man device. If this was not the case, and from your reaction it seems not, then I am sorry for not finding a more graceful way to express my frustration with that.
Hey dumbass, I was talking about what the GOVERNMENT can do. I.e. the GOVERNMENT cannot do anything at all, until and unless the Constitution allows it to do so. I was not referring in any way whatsoever to what citizens can and cannot do; for them it would be the opposite; they can do anything they like until and unless it is made illegal.
Sorry guys, I have karma to burn so take your moderator frustrations out on me if you must, but that moderation is bullshit (and damn do mods seem to dislike it when you point this out). Flamebait? What strong belief does it blatently attack in an attempt to start a verbal war? Try reading the FAQ you fucks. Articles like this are shit, and I am also not going to continue viewing this article because I do not wish to knowingly reward shit with ad revenue dollars -- yes, you see, there is a decision to make here involving voting with your feet and whether you wish or do not wish to reward something with real $$. Just think about the kind of traffic the Slashdot Effect generates for a site and its advertisers. Therefore, if anything, kimvette is doing me a favor, and I suspect I am not the only person who can say that. So anyway, it is likely that calling bullshit when I see it, in the only forum in which I can do so (seeing how I do not have mod points right now and there is no section here devoted to discussing this sort of thing) will cost me a few points, but oh well.
Slashdot badly needs a way to moderate articles themselves, and "-1 Conflict of Interest" (for obvious attempts to drive traffic to sites that just happen to be ad-supported and also just happen to be owned by the person who submitted the article) and "-1 Excess Pagination" need to be two of the categories. I'm not even going to mention dupes.
Because they have yet to post his garbage and have that post result in zero comments. So if you're OSDN, then fuck it, that's ad revenue baby!
A new UI is going to confuse a user for all of 5 minutes while they navigate through it and find where their favorite functions are
Your typical go-through-the-motions formulaic user who merely repeats a set of memorized steps with no understanding of what they are doing and why may have problems, however. The thing is, if you subsidize something, you tend to get more of it. Do we really want to go to any great lengths to make life any easier for people who just want to be automatons? And is this the kind of element that we would like to see thrive in our society? Resistance to change (rather than fascination by it) and a hatred of learning (rather than a joy of discovery) also go with the package when you are talking about this type of person, not to mention they tend to be content with mediocrity as evident by a lack of a deep understanding of their skills and the tools necessary to perform them.
What would you think about an automobile mechanic who knew internal combustion engines inside and out, but who felt that how to properly and safely use an engine hoist or a floor jack or any other machine necessary to perform his job was knowledge suitable only for the machinists who built them? Or how about a doctor who knew all about the human body but who felt that knowledge of pharmacology was only for drug companies? I feel the same way about anyone who must use a computer as a tool in order to perform their job but who feels that anything resembling a deep understanding of this tool is "only for technicians" and not only does not know, but does not want to know.
Shit goes wrong, things happen, events don't work out as planned, programs crash, computers get misconfigured. Why the hell would anyone find it desirable to be unprepared for these things when they happen to a tool that has become so indispensable? People who give a damn about excellence enjoy learning something new each day about the things they do and the tools they use. And no, everyone can not and probably should not be a computer specialist, but when someone has been on IRC every day for the last three years and still needs handholding to register a nick, or when someone has used e-mail for seven years and has never heard of blind carbon copy, you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with them and how much it could be holding back our brightest people when they have to deal with an environment (read: nearly all of them) which caters to this kind of mediocrity.
As an aside, if you want to know frustration, start expecting better of people than they do, based on a realistic idea of what is and is not possible. But either way, why do we support people who are willfully helpless?
Oh, I wouldn't worry too much. That part does not seem to be the problem
There's one thing I seem to be missing in all of the comments here: what's the point of this exactly?
The massive DDoS attacks generally come from botnets that do not need to bother spoofing their source IP. Also, anyone who relies on IP address alone (especially with "connectionless" protocols like IP/ICMP/UDP) for their security needs is just begging for problems because they're trusting a network that is not trustworthy. Seems to me it would be far easier to discourage the practice of trusting an untrustworthy network -- the black hats seem useful for this purpose -- than it would be to check each and every individual subnet for whether they will pass spoofed packets.
Given this, what does it matter whether I can spoof UDP/ICMP packets? What service or what architecture that is widely used today is so brain-dead that it does not require a password or strong encryption or some other form of security and/or authentication that would ensure that spoofing the IP address does not constitute a successful attack?
All of this would have been great ten years ago but today, the DDoS kiddies and spam botnets are enabled by the unwillingness to value security on the part of too many Windows users with broadband connections, combined with Microsoft's inability or unwillingness to market a secure-by-default OS. I say "market" here because I am assuming that with the resources at their disposal, Microsoft could create an extremely secure OS, if they really wanted to. Just look at what the OpenBSD team has done with far fewer resources available to them.
And yes, I see that as a responsibility of Microsoft's since their fortunes are largely built by mass-marketing a technical product to the non-technical, "I just want it to work with zero effort" crowd (and apparently this type of can't-be-bothered-to-learn-anything user wants it to be the first thing in this life ever observed to do so, other than entropy). If Windows were marketed exclusively to computer security specialists then I would not blame Microsoft if extremely insecure configurations kept happening.
So anyway, somebody please explain to me how it will matter one way or the other whether 0% of all internet users can spoof or whether 100% of them can spoof.
And worse, they think it's okay because you're an underling in the corporate food chain. Few seem to realize these days that how you treat people you do not need to be kind to is what really tells me what kind of person you are.