Since alot of people claim that the judge has no ability to enforce this decision I would say she does. The courts have control of the capitol police directly and I believe they can instruct local and state police to enforce their decisions although the seperation between whom has ultimate say when governors and mayors are involved I'm not sure. Regardless a bench warant or summons for those that violate her order could be issued and failure to comply or show up coud result in them most likely being held in contempt of court. Bush may control the NSA, FBI, CIA and the standing army but aside from the FBI none of them are allowed to intervene within the US. I also belive that after the anti segregation ruling in the 40's? a federal judge ordered the states national guarge and state police escort the bussed children to school. I'm pretty sure if need be the judge has some teeth. No one is going to go against a federal judge maybe a state or local judge but federal is a whole different ball game.
The most likely course of action is a stay request tomorrow in a higher circuit pending appeal and an appeal of the ruling directly to scotus.
Yes some of this information that is on your taxes is already available. However your total income and your savings accounts and whatnot are not listed in your credit file, But lets give that information out now so criminals know who has the money to steal from and who is profitable to impersonate. They also do not nor does anyone else have ANY of your medical information however on your taxes you can find out how much you spent on reimbursible medical and medical insurance, and how about if you need an operation or some significant medical expense that costs alot of money. That you generally put on your taxes to try and lessen your tax burden but now companies can have that inforamation. So now who knows, well it looks like this guy spends too much on medical costs and must be sick alot or his family must be sick alot or some facimile so lets not hire him. Or lets raise his medical insurance rates, or lets drop his insurance or not insure him at all. Someone who spent alot on hospital bills last year might be more apt to get in a car crash so lets raise his rates. Or someone who shelled out money for medical treatment last year might have an ailment or die soon so lets not give him a loan. Then there are two more HUGE problems. A. People who donate to churchs or needy causes. So now if someone donates to the church of your favorite religion, ohh he practices islam don't hire him, or ohh he practices catholocism they are nothing but zealots, etc..etc... B. Donations to political parties, that information is supposed to be private and ALOT of people do not want anyone to know who they support because its such a highly contentious issue. Look he donated money to a republican group he's a Bush croney fire him. etc..
SUM it up: A. Some medical information on there that is sensitive B. Some Insurance information on there that is sensitive C. Savings and other bank account information that is sensitive and never found in credit statistics. (lets see who would be good to steal from) D. Charity and church donation information. (Not always good to let people know what religion you are or that you do not support a religion) E. Political donation information. (He's a republican, Fired) ** They have enough information they don't need more ** And the moron(s) that say ohh just do it yourself by hand probably only have to fill out 10 fields on one form. Mine required 8 forms this year and 2 hours for a certified tax person to do it, I can only imagine the amount of time it would take me and I would probably screw something up.
They are saying that it would take 20 years or so to significantly alter a comet or asteroids trajectory enough to correct a collision course. So they would have to start building it in 12 years or if Nasa is heading it up they'd have to have started building the first failure last year. Besides the length of copyrights has been repeatedly extended as well as patents who is to say they won't extend them for a 100 years or so in the near future..
I'm going to patent using a large mass mounted to a spacecraft to alter the trajectory of space debris (AKA a big freaking asteroid). Then when the US gov contracts a company to build it when an asteroid is on an emminent collision course with earth in 2048 I'm going to be sitting pretty. Talk about playing chicken on an interplanetary scale....
I don't know about you people but I'm not going to click on the link and help generate advertising revenue for Forbes. Why are we even bothering with Forbes? They cater to the uber rich and generally only value extreme oppulence. You know when you are out looking to meet women; no one wants to bother with those that are materialistic and money grubbing. So why read a magazine that is all about the lives of those that are nothing but that? One final note why does what forbes have to say even matter, the value of their comments are way down there with supermarket tabloids. In fact I think they are on the shelf with the tabloids in the checkout lanes in wegmans...
Just to characterise my comment so its properly interpreted. "So why read a magazine that is all about the lives of those that are nothing but that?"
What I mean to say is that people can be rich and not ignorant like the fools that Forbes generally talks to and about. If you have a hundred million dollars and go out and buy random shit like these people to just convey how weathly you are, you are a prick and a snob.
Exactly and I'm sure customers are going to be happy to find out that you are selling your software to countries, knowing that it will be used to stifle human rights. Get a clue man, bad publicity goes a long ways in the eyes of investors, customers and the like..
It is a company's obligation to its shareholders, employees, customers and the human race to act in a manner that is at least on the right side of the morality line. Selling software to regimes that are oppressive to further their oppression of human rights is not moral.
Some have suggested that P2P software hides behind an argument in that they are not concerned with its use, however the supreme court has stated that you can not knowing selling something to someone that you know will be used in an illegal manner; be it guns, software, whatever. The gun argument is a little more tricky because a gun is a gun, but some people advocate that everyone has the right to protect themselves and have a gun for 'hunting' and such but they are often not used for that purpose, however I don't know if you can restrict the sales of all guns and make it overly difficult to obtain one without potentially negating a citizen's ability to protect themselves, especially in the type of countries we are talking about.
Maybe someone would be kind enough to create a hack to allow it to sniff out the BS from our politicians. Only down side is that people would think it was malfunctioning since it would go off every time any of them utter a word.
Joseph E. Sullivan, Director of Compliance and Law Enforcement Relations for eBay, had this to say to a group of law enforcement officials: 'I know from investigating eBay fraud cases that eBay has probably the most generous policy of any internet company when it comes to sharing information.
Another words we help you guys out in law enforcement alot when we shouldn't so please don't step in and bother us when you should. Its a win, win we can both screw the little people at the same time.
What we really need from government is an investigation of the long-term effects of OSS on our indigenous software industry, assistance to combat the threat to the industry's livelihood that OSS might pose and the development of a strategy to build on the opportunities that OSS has created.
If you read this guys rants A. They are all opinions and B. Most of them are incorrect because he is instantly assuming that proprietary software does no suffer from the same ills.
More importantly this guy is entirely concerned with making as much money as possible. The above statement is clearly reflective upon that. Sun, Oracle, MS, IBM, etc..etc... Are all Huge companies that are faltering against the OSS competition and have realized that it isn't just going to go away. IBM and Oracle seem to accepted it and are playing nicely, Sun is trying to pigyback on its popularity but not necesarily play nice, and MS is figting it tooth and nail and is two innovations from having a full fledge heart attack those being Acceptance of a cross platform document format and a better cross platform directory solution than exists today.
Another one of his arguments that the OSS industry is just churning out replicas of software that already exists as being bad is just preposterous. We will always need word processing software and it is vital for big business so why not an OSS solution? Same thing for Databases, OS, firewall, etc etc.. What he should be complaining about is that the OSS community has to reinvent the wheel because the proprietary solution often REFUSE to interoperate in order to facilitate customer lock in.
Lastly while it is currently true that employers own the IP of employees even if it is developed off the books, I do not see that staying that way forever. There are numerous arguments against it and no employee likes it, its just a matter of time before there is a resurgence of employee rights and the need to help the shrinking middle and growing lower class. I could turn this into a huge argument and support my statements but I just want to say that I think in the future that this will change eventually and what that catalyst will most likely be.
Actually they still hate that you can rent a movie or buy a casette tape and bring it home to watch for several reasons.
A. They can't completely control its distribution and therefore can't charge even more exorbitant prices than they already do. B. They can't make residual income off the hugely marked up food, beverages and other entertainment. C. They can't obtain franchise fees because of A.
In their minds they would still be far better off if they had never lost the betamax case.
So basically at some point in time we can expect the car dealerships to enforce a policy that you are only allowed to use Ford brand oil in your car? Or that only they can change the oil for $75 a pop? or that you are only allowed to use manufacturer certified parts which may or may not be marked up 100%?
Things are just continuing to go down hill and with George Bush being allowed to put another justice on the Supreme Court we're as good as screwed untill the next presidential elections.
I can just see this turning into some new unrealistic reality TV show.
"Battle of the CEO's"
It pits CEO's of different companies against each other for pink slips to the companies themselves. Some of the tasks that they undertake would include. 1. Chair hurling. 2. Most cruel boss. 3. Who can make a worse decision 4. Who can get the intern to quit first 5. Longest tee shot and etc... Funny thing is that this would actually be reality TV as opposed to the crap they have on TV right now.
This controversial technology would require that disc players maintain permanent connections to content providers via the Internet, making it possible for discs that fail a security check to trigger a notification process, enabling the provider to send the player a sort of "self-destruct code." This code would come in the form of a flash ROM "update" that would actually render the player useless, perhaps unless and until it is taken to a repair shop for reprogramming.
Is it just me or does anyone else envision a virus that can actually destroy hardware? Its been a long time since hardware damage from virus's has been any concern but if something like this were actually implemented it would be all over. I can just see a piece of malware that crafts malicious packets to reply to ?software? that is running to ensure the disc is legit and wellah a dead drive. There is any number of ways that this could be abused to kill drives.
You both are missing the point in its entirety. Let me spell it out, there are legitimate open access points out there that people want you to feel free to use as is similar with FM, VHF, UHF, phone network, www, ftp, gopher, email, EBN, shortwave ham, etc... etc... However the current thought process that even if the wifi point is open and the person wants to allow you to use it it is still illegal unless you have expressly written permission. This goes against the current standards practiced in our industry and conflicts with our way of life. Those of you with the but you wouldn't come into my house bs are missing the point in its entirety, people don't expect EVER ANYWHERE for strangers to come in and want to borrow some space in your house. It is mainly a personal bubble and affraid of malicous intent problem. If someone went in your house they could do any number of things like steal things, break things, see you naked, kill you and etc.. An Access Point or wifi on the other hand is an entirely different ball game. All it allows someone to do is gain access to the network in which it is connected. Some would again argue that you are stealing bandwidth and again they would be missing the ENTIRE point. There are numerous people and businesses out there that want you to use their wifi but now the current thought process is that unless you have written permission from the person that owns and pays for the wifi you can't use it. That is like asking someone to find the priest during the week and ask his permission to attend sunday mass. And putting up a physical sign is about as moronic as one can be since there is no physical limitation as to where a signal can be. You expect someone to run around a residential house looking for a sign that says ok use me this is even more stupid when you think about apartment dwelers downtown that want people to use their wifi. Am I supposed to walk into the building lobby, get buzzed in from some random person, up to the 3rd floor after I've managed to locate the exact location of the access point by calculating it from 6 distinct locations, and then look on their door to see if their is a sign posted? You are just retarded.
I'll clear up some things since you felt it necessary to do so. The sole reason that the FCC liscences specturm is because and this is from their perspectus not mine.. The airways belong to everyone and therefore must be liscenced to serve the public. The 802.11 spectrum is not liscenced out to an individual corporation like the FM, VHF, and UHF ranges but instead has it opened up to anyone with limitations on the power and the way in which it can be used so everyone can use it.
The other argument don't even merit review.
Ah, right. So if you have your door open in summer, I'm welcome to walk into your house and help myself to some of the cookies that are on the kitchen table? Or print a few copies of the document you happen to have open on your PC? Just because something is easy doesn't mean it's morally justified.
This is way off base, not only is it pretty clear that no one would want strangers in their house, but that you are also trespassing on someone else's property. No one specifically owns the airwaves. In addition I don't know of anyone that leaves their door open, in fact I don't know of anyone that leaves their door unlocked that often even when home. If your door is wide open that is actually somewhat suspicious and police patrols will actually look into it if driving by. The police also consider open doors fair game for entry and do not require a warrant if I remember correctly. I could be wrong but if I am lets not nitpick about that last one it is minimal.
The analogy Rather like if a webserver is publicly accessible, then anyone can connect to it. If there's stuff you don't want people to see, then force people to authenticate. is pretty dead on. There are alot of people that provide open wifi usage for whomever wants to use it in the area, as well as coffee shops, libraries, bars, community centers, etc... The list is rather endless, so how can you differentiate what access points you are allowed to access? My answer is that it should be if the access point is open then it is open for public use. One good analogy is this is similar to the phone network, businesses especially pollsters and advertisers are allowed to assume that any phone number is fair game to be called unless it is on the federal do not call list. I interpret this as my phone lines are fair game to be used to contact my house unless I explicity require authorization or deny you to call them via do not call lists. The authorization part is that as an addon you can have white lists of phone numbers allowed to call you and people often will only answer phone numbers on their caller id that they know ignoring the others. Another analogy is potentially FM radio (FCC restrictions aside) the signal is open to the public unless otherwise restricted.
In my area there are alot of newer development that end with circles and people put portable basketball hoops on the side of the road but do not care if kids besides their own use it as long as they don't break it. Sometime people play football or soccer in the yards but I and most other people don't care if they use some of my lawn as long as it isn't too close to the house. I paid for that land and pay taxes to own it and etc..., but I don't mind sharing.
One of the churches in my area put up an open wifi access point for anyone to use, the only reason I know that is we were looking for a church to attend and the pastor happened to mention it when he found out I was into IT. How would anyone else know? but yet they want people to feel free to use it.
I'm not sure what the law is right now in the US as far as using someone's open wifi AP. I would honestly feel that a decent attorney would get any charges thrown out of court unless the AP owner wanted to specifically press charges of theft. This is something that definitely belongs in the civil realm unless it is an actual hack to the AP or systems on the network.
For those about to scream about the insecurity of my open AP and that I am a moron because of it I have an AP setup on its own supernet range firewalled off from the rest of my network and bandwidth limited for those that do want to use it. It also has some specific ports blocked like ftp, bt, and a few others. My other AP has WPA enabled and only I, some friends and the wife have access to use it.
I do not know the condition of the power system in your area. Are there alot of brownouts/blackouts spikes etc... Up untill recently I have had pretty bad luck with power so I would suggest look into putting in a central power conditioning system to protect all of those electronic goodies and if you are insane like I am and think your personal server needs five 9's for uptime you should look into a UPS system for your server(s) and possibly your network. Remember with Bush in the white house for another 3 years our environment is going to go to hell in a handbasket so even if your power situation is ok now it may not be if we start having frequent adverse weather.
I think you probably need to go back to college because your thought process and information is way out of wack.
1. protect themselves from the internet? You are talking about viruses and other malicious code? Doesn't everyone have to? So does that mean everyone has to cough up all of their information?
2. I've been to alot of large univ's and I work for a large one 15,000 students and I can tell you that this is not true 99% of the time. You register your computers MAC address with the dhcp server and some run a util from MS that verifies what patches you have installed on your system but that is the extent of what information they collect. There are no agents installed on computers not personal computers anyways. On staff and lab computers yes there could be but generally there isn't in fact the policy is that you get canned if you violate someones privacy no questions.
3. again there are no agents you have been watching too many tv shows. Personal information is treated like gold anything that we can do to secure it is done. That includes securing it from the IT staff if possible.
4. The RIAA or the MPAA cannot subpeana this information with out cause or justification and even if they do or can the colleges do not invade the privacy of their students or staff as a rule. You wouldn't have much of a university if you were employing gestapo tactics on your students and employees.
Going to a private institution myself I know full well that college tuition is way out of control and reaching the point where it is unaffordable. When I started 4 years ago tuition was $5600 a quarter ie you paid $16,800 in tuition a year because generally you don't attend during the summer unless you want to. Tuition is now $7,350 per quarter which equates out to $22,050 for a year or 3 quarters of school. That doesn't include health, computer, activities fees nor have you even accounted for housing and living expenses which I would say are at least $7000 a year if you do not live in on campus housing. Now they want to tack on some more fees and get some additional money out of you for a music service which you may or may not use. Heck alot of students are barely affording college and can't afford the computers, portable music players and the like that you need to listen to this. In addition last time I checked most private schools are listed as non profit I know the one I go to is. I think it is unethical for a non-profit organization to be making a profit for a corporation at the expense of the people that it was granted the not for profit liscence for. I think these collegs need a wakeup call and have their not-for-profit liscences revoked and someone needs to sue the RIAA or something for unethical business practices or some facimile.
That is my rant.
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Since alot of people claim that the judge has no ability to enforce this decision I would say she does. The courts have control of the capitol police directly and I believe they can instruct local and state police to enforce their decisions although the seperation between whom has ultimate say when governors and mayors are involved I'm not sure. Regardless a bench warant or summons for those that violate her order could be issued and failure to comply or show up coud result in them most likely being held in contempt of court. Bush may control the NSA, FBI, CIA and the standing army but aside from the FBI none of them are allowed to intervene within the US. I also belive that after the anti segregation ruling in the 40's? a federal judge ordered the states national guarge and state police escort the bussed children to school. I'm pretty sure if need be the judge has some teeth. No one is going to go against a federal judge maybe a state or local judge but federal is a whole different ball game. The most likely course of action is a stay request tomorrow in a higher circuit pending appeal and an appeal of the ruling directly to scotus.
Yes some of this information that is on your taxes is already available. However your total income and your savings accounts and whatnot are not listed in your credit file, But lets give that information out now so criminals know who has the money to steal from and who is profitable to impersonate. They also do not nor does anyone else have ANY of your medical information however on your taxes you can find out how much you spent on reimbursible medical and medical insurance, and how about if you need an operation or some significant medical expense that costs alot of money. That you generally put on your taxes to try and lessen your tax burden but now companies can have that inforamation. So now who knows, well it looks like this guy spends too much on medical costs and must be sick alot or his family must be sick alot or some facimile so lets not hire him. Or lets raise his medical insurance rates, or lets drop his insurance or not insure him at all. Someone who spent alot on hospital bills last year might be more apt to get in a car crash so lets raise his rates. Or someone who shelled out money for medical treatment last year might have an ailment or die soon so lets not give him a loan. Then there are two more HUGE problems. A. People who donate to churchs or needy causes. So now if someone donates to the church of your favorite religion, ohh he practices islam don't hire him, or ohh he practices catholocism they are nothing but zealots, etc..etc... B. Donations to political parties, that information is supposed to be private and ALOT of people do not want anyone to know who they support because its such a highly contentious issue. Look he donated money to a republican group he's a Bush croney fire him. etc..
SUM it up:
A. Some medical information on there that is sensitive
B. Some Insurance information on there that is sensitive
C. Savings and other bank account information that is sensitive and never found in credit statistics. (lets see who would be good to steal from)
D. Charity and church donation information. (Not always good to let people know what religion you are or that you do not support a religion)
E. Political donation information. (He's a republican, Fired)
** They have enough information they don't need more **
And the moron(s) that say ohh just do it yourself by hand probably only have to fill out 10 fields on one form. Mine required 8 forms this year and 2 hours for a certified tax person to do it, I can only imagine the amount of time it would take me and I would probably screw something up.
They are saying that it would take 20 years or so to significantly alter a comet or asteroids trajectory enough to correct a collision course. So they would have to start building it in 12 years or if Nasa is heading it up they'd have to have started building the first failure last year. Besides the length of copyrights has been repeatedly extended as well as patents who is to say they won't extend them for a 100 years or so in the near future..
I'm going to patent using a large mass mounted to a spacecraft to alter the trajectory of space debris (AKA a big freaking asteroid). Then when the US gov contracts a company to build it when an asteroid is on an emminent collision course with earth in 2048 I'm going to be sitting pretty. Talk about playing chicken on an interplanetary scale....
I don't know about you people but I'm not going to click on the link and help generate advertising revenue for Forbes. Why are we even bothering with Forbes? They cater to the uber rich and generally only value extreme oppulence. You know when you are out looking to meet women; no one wants to bother with those that are materialistic and money grubbing. So why read a magazine that is all about the lives of those that are nothing but that? One final note why does what forbes have to say even matter, the value of their comments are way down there with supermarket tabloids. In fact I think they are on the shelf with the tabloids in the checkout lanes in wegmans...
Just to characterise my comment so its properly interpreted. "So why read a magazine that is all about the lives of those that are nothing but that?"
What I mean to say is that people can be rich and not ignorant like the fools that Forbes generally talks to and about. If you have a hundred million dollars and go out and buy random shit like these people to just convey how weathly you are, you are a prick and a snob.
Exactly and I'm sure customers are going to be happy to find out that you are selling your software to countries, knowing that it will be used to stifle human rights. Get a clue man, bad publicity goes a long ways in the eyes of investors, customers and the like..
It is a company's obligation to its shareholders, employees, customers and the human race to act in a manner that is at least on the right side of the morality line. Selling software to regimes that are oppressive to further their oppression of human rights is not moral.
Some have suggested that P2P software hides behind an argument in that they are not concerned with its use, however the supreme court has stated that you can not knowing selling something to someone that you know will be used in an illegal manner; be it guns, software, whatever. The gun argument is a little more tricky because a gun is a gun, but some people advocate that everyone has the right to protect themselves and have a gun for 'hunting' and such but they are often not used for that purpose, however I don't know if you can restrict the sales of all guns and make it overly difficult to obtain one without potentially negating a citizen's ability to protect themselves, especially in the type of countries we are talking about.
My 2 cents.
Maybe someone would be kind enough to create a hack to allow it to sniff out the BS from our politicians. Only down side is that people would think it was malfunctioning since it would go off every time any of them utter a word.
Joseph E. Sullivan, Director of Compliance and Law Enforcement Relations for eBay, had this to say to a group of law enforcement officials: 'I know from investigating eBay fraud cases that eBay has probably the most generous policy of any internet company when it comes to sharing information.
Another words we help you guys out in law enforcement alot when we shouldn't so please don't step in and bother us when you should. Its a win, win we can both screw the little people at the same time.
What we really need from government is an investigation of the long-term effects of OSS on our indigenous software industry, assistance to combat the threat to the industry's livelihood that OSS might pose and the development of a strategy to build on the opportunities that OSS has created.
If you read this guys rants A. They are all opinions and B. Most of them are incorrect because he is instantly assuming that proprietary software does no suffer from the same ills.
More importantly this guy is entirely concerned with making as much money as possible. The above statement is clearly reflective upon that. Sun, Oracle, MS, IBM, etc..etc... Are all Huge companies that are faltering against the OSS competition and have realized that it isn't just going to go away. IBM and Oracle seem to accepted it and are playing nicely, Sun is trying to pigyback on its popularity but not necesarily play nice, and MS is figting it tooth and nail and is two innovations from having a full fledge heart attack those being Acceptance of a cross platform document format and a better cross platform directory solution than exists today.
Another one of his arguments that the OSS industry is just churning out replicas of software that already exists as being bad is just preposterous. We will always need word processing software and it is vital for big business so why not an OSS solution? Same thing for Databases, OS, firewall, etc etc.. What he should be complaining about is that the OSS community has to reinvent the wheel because the proprietary solution often REFUSE to interoperate in order to facilitate customer lock in.
Lastly while it is currently true that employers own the IP of employees even if it is developed off the books, I do not see that staying that way forever. There are numerous arguments against it and no employee likes it, its just a matter of time before there is a resurgence of employee rights and the need to help the shrinking middle and growing lower class. I could turn this into a huge argument and support my statements but I just want to say that I think in the future that this will change eventually and what that catalyst will most likely be.
Actually they still hate that you can rent a movie or buy a casette tape and bring it home to watch for several reasons.
A. They can't completely control its distribution and therefore can't charge even more exorbitant prices than they already do.
B. They can't make residual income off the hugely marked up food, beverages and other entertainment.
C. They can't obtain franchise fees because of A.
In their minds they would still be far better off if they had never lost the betamax case.
So basically at some point in time we can expect the car dealerships to enforce a policy that you are only allowed to use Ford brand oil in your car? Or that only they can change the oil for $75 a pop? or that you are only allowed to use manufacturer certified parts which may or may not be marked up 100%? Things are just continuing to go down hill and with George Bush being allowed to put another justice on the Supreme Court we're as good as screwed untill the next presidential elections.
I can just see this turning into some new unrealistic reality TV show.
"Battle of the CEO's"
It pits CEO's of different companies against each other for pink slips to the companies themselves. Some of the tasks that they undertake would include.
1. Chair hurling.
2. Most cruel boss.
3. Who can make a worse decision
4. Who can get the intern to quit first
5. Longest tee shot
and etc... Funny thing is that this would actually be reality TV as opposed to the crap they have on TV right now.
This controversial technology would require that disc players maintain permanent connections to content providers via the Internet, making it possible for discs that fail a security check to trigger a notification process, enabling the provider to send the player a sort of "self-destruct code." This code would come in the form of a flash ROM "update" that would actually render the player useless, perhaps unless and until it is taken to a repair shop for reprogramming.
Is it just me or does anyone else envision a virus that can actually destroy hardware? Its been a long time since hardware damage from virus's has been any concern but if something like this were actually implemented it would be all over. I can just see a piece of malware that crafts malicious packets to reply to ?software? that is running to ensure the disc is legit and wellah a dead drive. There is any number of ways that this could be abused to kill drives.
You both are missing the point in its entirety. Let me spell it out, there are legitimate open access points out there that people want you to feel free to use as is similar with FM, VHF, UHF, phone network, www, ftp, gopher, email, EBN, shortwave ham, etc... etc... However the current thought process that even if the wifi point is open and the person wants to allow you to use it it is still illegal unless you have expressly written permission. This goes against the current standards practiced in our industry and conflicts with our way of life. Those of you with the but you wouldn't come into my house bs are missing the point in its entirety, people don't expect EVER ANYWHERE for strangers to come in and want to borrow some space in your house. It is mainly a personal bubble and affraid of malicous intent problem. If someone went in your house they could do any number of things like steal things, break things, see you naked, kill you and etc.. An Access Point or wifi on the other hand is an entirely different ball game. All it allows someone to do is gain access to the network in which it is connected. Some would again argue that you are stealing bandwidth and again they would be missing the ENTIRE point. There are numerous people and businesses out there that want you to use their wifi but now the current thought process is that unless you have written permission from the person that owns and pays for the wifi you can't use it. That is like asking someone to find the priest during the week and ask his permission to attend sunday mass. And putting up a physical sign is about as moronic as one can be since there is no physical limitation as to where a signal can be. You expect someone to run around a residential house looking for a sign that says ok use me this is even more stupid when you think about apartment dwelers downtown that want people to use their wifi. Am I supposed to walk into the building lobby, get buzzed in from some random person, up to the 3rd floor after I've managed to locate the exact location of the access point by calculating it from 6 distinct locations, and then look on their door to see if their is a sign posted? You are just retarded. I'll clear up some things since you felt it necessary to do so. The sole reason that the FCC liscences specturm is because and this is from their perspectus not mine.. The airways belong to everyone and therefore must be liscenced to serve the public. The 802.11 spectrum is not liscenced out to an individual corporation like the FM, VHF, and UHF ranges but instead has it opened up to anyone with limitations on the power and the way in which it can be used so everyone can use it. The other argument don't even merit review.
This is way off base, not only is it pretty clear that no one would want strangers in their house, but that you are also trespassing on someone else's property. No one specifically owns the airwaves. In addition I don't know of anyone that leaves their door open, in fact I don't know of anyone that leaves their door unlocked that often even when home. If your door is wide open that is actually somewhat suspicious and police patrols will actually look into it if driving by. The police also consider open doors fair game for entry and do not require a warrant if I remember correctly. I could be wrong but if I am lets not nitpick about that last one it is minimal.
The analogy Rather like if a webserver is publicly accessible, then anyone can connect to it. If there's stuff you don't want people to see, then force people to authenticate. is pretty dead on. There are alot of people that provide open wifi usage for whomever wants to use it in the area, as well as coffee shops, libraries, bars, community centers, etc... The list is rather endless, so how can you differentiate what access points you are allowed to access? My answer is that it should be if the access point is open then it is open for public use. One good analogy is this is similar to the phone network, businesses especially pollsters and advertisers are allowed to assume that any phone number is fair game to be called unless it is on the federal do not call list. I interpret this as my phone lines are fair game to be used to contact my house unless I explicity require authorization or deny you to call them via do not call lists. The authorization part is that as an addon you can have white lists of phone numbers allowed to call you and people often will only answer phone numbers on their caller id that they know ignoring the others. Another analogy is potentially FM radio (FCC restrictions aside) the signal is open to the public unless otherwise restricted.
In my area there are alot of newer development that end with circles and people put portable basketball hoops on the side of the road but do not care if kids besides their own use it as long as they don't break it. Sometime people play football or soccer in the yards but I and most other people don't care if they use some of my lawn as long as it isn't too close to the house. I paid for that land and pay taxes to own it and etc..., but I don't mind sharing.
One of the churches in my area put up an open wifi access point for anyone to use, the only reason I know that is we were looking for a church to attend and the pastor happened to mention it when he found out I was into IT. How would anyone else know? but yet they want people to feel free to use it.
I'm not sure what the law is right now in the US as far as using someone's open wifi AP. I would honestly feel that a decent attorney would get any charges thrown out of court unless the AP owner wanted to specifically press charges of theft. This is something that definitely belongs in the civil realm unless it is an actual hack to the AP or systems on the network.
For those about to scream about the insecurity of my open AP and that I am a moron because of it I have an AP setup on its own supernet range firewalled off from the rest of my network and bandwidth limited for those that do want to use it. It also has some specific ports blocked like ftp, bt, and a few others. My other AP has WPA enabled and only I, some friends and the wife have access to use it.
Oops my bad I forgot Microsoft only makes shitty proprietary technology....
I thought that we were shunning this approach at standards wrangling? Whenever MS or Sony tries this we are against it what is different this time?
I do not know the condition of the power system in your area. Are there alot of brownouts/blackouts spikes etc... Up untill recently I have had pretty bad luck with power so I would suggest look into putting in a central power conditioning system to protect all of those electronic goodies and if you are insane like I am and think your personal server needs five 9's for uptime you should look into a UPS system for your server(s) and possibly your network. Remember with Bush in the white house for another 3 years our environment is going to go to hell in a handbasket so even if your power situation is ok now it may not be if we start having frequent adverse weather.
1. protect themselves from the internet? You are talking about viruses and other malicious code? Doesn't everyone have to? So does that mean everyone has to cough up all of their information?
2. I've been to alot of large univ's and I work for a large one 15,000 students and I can tell you that this is not true 99% of the time. You register your computers MAC address with the dhcp server and some run a util from MS that verifies what patches you have installed on your system but that is the extent of what information they collect. There are no agents installed on computers not personal computers anyways. On staff and lab computers yes there could be but generally there isn't in fact the policy is that you get canned if you violate someones privacy no questions.
3. again there are no agents you have been watching too many tv shows. Personal information is treated like gold anything that we can do to secure it is done. That includes securing it from the IT staff if possible.
4. The RIAA or the MPAA cannot subpeana this information with out cause or justification and even if they do or can the colleges do not invade the privacy of their students or staff as a rule. You wouldn't have much of a university if you were employing gestapo tactics on your students and employees.
5. the game has just begun
Going to a private institution myself I know full well that college tuition is way out of control and reaching the point where it is unaffordable. When I started 4 years ago tuition was $5600 a quarter ie you paid $16,800 in tuition a year because generally you don't attend during the summer unless you want to. Tuition is now $7,350 per quarter which equates out to $22,050 for a year or 3 quarters of school. That doesn't include health, computer, activities fees nor have you even accounted for housing and living expenses which I would say are at least $7000 a year if you do not live in on campus housing. Now they want to tack on some more fees and get some additional money out of you for a music service which you may or may not use. Heck alot of students are barely affording college and can't afford the computers, portable music players and the like that you need to listen to this. In addition last time I checked most private schools are listed as non profit I know the one I go to is. I think it is unethical for a non-profit organization to be making a profit for a corporation at the expense of the people that it was granted the not for profit liscence for. I think these collegs need a wakeup call and have their not-for-profit liscences revoked and someone needs to sue the RIAA or something for unethical business practices or some facimile. That is my rant.