For ".banc," NSI recommends that a "core group" of global banking industry representatives be appointed as registry gatekeepers.
World Trade Organisation protestors and conspiracy theorists everywhere are likely to love this...
I can understand the country domains: presumably the government of the country is in some whay responsible.
I could understand domains for large NGOs like the United Nations.
But this suggestion seems to be a recipe for disaster. Next thing everybody will want to register their own top-level domains. Can I have.allan?
The UK have already tried someting similar with.plc.uk and.ltd.uk for the two main company types here. This arrangement is a complete failure: everybody registers.com (for example http://www.tesco.com/) and if that is unavailable.co.uk.
The suggestion here will also fail, for the same reasons.
As a combined entity, VeriSign and Thawte will be able to implement a consistent set of global standards for the issuance and management of digital certificates for websites and software developers
It sounds like they want to own the standards and establish a monopoly of closed source rules.
And it will be a monopoly:
They are also the only two digital certificate providers with commercial availability of 128-bit website certificates
Any chance that the mergers and monopolies comission (or whatever it is called in SA) will block this? Please!? Not another MSFT.
You don't need to test for nine (or whatever) years: you just have to test enough of them over a shorter period of time.
An example: if you test 1,000 devices for a day and three of them crash, then the MTBF is probably around 1,000/3 days i.e. a year.
Note: This example is a gross over-simplification! Please have a look at any decent statistics textbook for the correct details. I hope you get the idea anyhow.
Dyson has specially developed the first advanced microprocessor-driven SR motor to be installed in a domestic vacuum cleaner, for the DCO6. SR is a new generation of electrical motor technology, producing no harmful carbon emissions, and lasting twice as long as conventional motors with brushes.
There is probably no doubt that it is "the first... microprocessor-driven... motor to be installed in a domestic vacuum cleaner", but does anybody have a clue to how these new "SR" motors are supposed to work? Couldn't find anything on the web site.
Hey!That's interesting. I had not heard of Exokernels before. Anything that increases web server performance by half an order of magnitued is a Good Thing.
So what can I do to stop people getting into my computer?
Don't ever connect it to the internet. Keep it with you always.
Then you should be fine. They can still see what you are doing, but they'll have a hard time getting in to it without you knowing, which was what you asked for.
I doubt that most countries have a legal procedure for planting fabricated evidence.
Indeed I doubt so too. But they do have a legal procedure for, say, tapping your 'phone, and I was reading the article in the same vein. You need to be able to install bugs in the telephone and, similarly, in the computer. That means altering what is there.
[T]his provides an avenue to challenge any digital evidence presented by the police. It only makes it harder for honest policemen to do their jobs.
I read this as well, but I'm not sure I understand the issue fully. How does it work today with non-electronic evidence? If the police have previously searched your home and the later find evidence there, how do they prove they did not plant it?
It seems to me that the tracking and logging of what is being done sould be easier in the electronic world. Obviously you need proper controls in place, but you need that anyway for non-electronic information, police access and evidence.
If you trust the police for non-electronic evidence (and I relize that this is a big, big if for many slashdotters), then why not for electronic information?
I hope that when this exile is over I will feel very happy. But maybe I will just feel, well, dead?
Seriously: there is nothing wrong with murder (!) all you need is a good reason. Law enforcement and war are typical "good" reasons, but there are others (and better). Even Christian law (normally very anti-killing) acknowledges the need for a little killing every now and then.
Maybe it is not true in the States, but here in Europe the police seems to use their weapons sensibly. I don't have a problem with them carrying guns. I do not normally have a problem when they use them. They are accountable.
Is the[re] any difference... except the govt will be doing it better and to more people?
Yes, the government is, at least in principle, accountable to the Australian people, whereas the kid is not.
I realise that many people, on/. in particular but by no means exclusively, have little or no faith in this accountability. There is a general feeling of mistrust in the government and national agencies.
A lot of this mistrust is entirely understandable. But it is, I think, important to make a point of the principle, namely that the issue is not that the govenment has more power than the individual but that they are not (sufficiently) accountable for the exercise of this power.
This is to me the real issue. You do not trust government. But listen: you are the only people who can fix this. You elect these people (I can't vote for any national parliament so I deny all responsibility:-)). Don't just complain and then stay at home on polling day. (How many people in the USA vote? 20%?)
Seriously: if we have zero trust in govenrment then civilization falls. Think about it: some form of government is needed for large scale human organisation. With the population of this planet seemingly ever-groving, the case could be made that we need more government, not less. Of course, it should a government that is truely accountable to the people.
"If the government is allowed to be the biggest hacker in town, it really undermines computer security rather than enhances it," he [Paul Budde, a Sydney-based independent telecommunications analyst] said. "How can they now criticize 16-year-old kids who break into computer systems for fun if the government's doing it, too?"
With the same argument I guess that since the police carry guns we can no longer critizise violent murderers? This is just plain silly and pathetic.
The state deliberately has wider powers than the individual to ensure order and civilization. It is right to watch the way the state uses those powers carefully, but this article is just paranoid. There are (apparently) issues with the new law, but the journalists seems to have largely missed them.
To suggest that the police are cracking computer systems "for fun" is childish.
This seems to me to be largely a non-issue. The article states that
Under the new law, Australia's attorney general can authorize legal hacking into private computer systems, as well as copying or altering data...
The only issue to me seems to be that this is under the control of the attorney general rather than the courts. In moust countries the police or security forces have this sort of power with a court order over other information sources, e.g. letters. Why should electronic information be different?
I am a registered slashdot reader... I do not accept cookies...
Interesting, I wonder how that works:-) I don't think it is possible to be a/. user without accepting cookies. Maybe that's why you can not log in?
Re:Not all stupid, not all true
on
Dumb Laws
·
· Score: 1
I am talking about Northen Ireland, not Eire.
And Northen Ireleand is part of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", as I think the UK is formally called.
I guess "civil insurrection" would be the most appropriate term, but I can never remember how many r's go into that word (found a dictionary now).
Anyhow, this thread is sliding offtopic. [But I was never sure what the toipc was in the first place. That there are silly laws in this world? That CmdrTaco has finally found some stress relief and is laughing?]
Back to the topic (I think!?): My favourite Stupid Law (tm):
The Danish constitution guarantees everybody a job.
The unemployment rate was just under 10% last time I checked.
Not all stupid, not all true
on
Dumb Laws
·
· Score: 5
Not all the laws mentioned are stupid:
It is illegal to leave baggage unattended.
Rememeber that England has suffered from a prolonged civil war (known as "our little problem with Northern Ireland") with frequent bomb attacks on civilians. These bombs were often left in luggage on stations, airports, department stores and other corwded places.
This law therefore makes perfect sense. I rememeber when I first came to England, I was wodering why there were no luggage boxes on the stations. Such youthful innocence...
God (and the IRA et. al.) willing, this particular war should now be over. Now the poor English can concentrate on the ALF, the anti-capitalism terrorists, and whatever today's new violent fringe group is.
I would have liked the web site to have contained references to the law texts. That would have made it much more trustworthy. How many of the laws mentioned, I woder, are nothing more than urban legends?
Slashdot Mirror
The slashes are already there, so we could just have
And of course the dot is also there, so our favourite web site could be at
Now that would be way cool!
(This is getting silly...)
World Trade Organisation protestors and conspiracy theorists everywhere are likely to love this...
I can understand the country domains: presumably the government of the country is in some whay responsible.
I could understand domains for large NGOs like the United Nations.
But this suggestion seems to be a recipe for disaster. Next thing everybody will want to register their own top-level domains. Can I have .allan?
The UK have already tried someting similar with .plc.uk and .ltd.uk for the two main company types here. This arrangement is a complete failure: everybody registers .com (for example http://www.tesco.com/) and if that is unavailable .co.uk.
The suggestion here will also fail, for the same reasons.
Why banc instead of bank?
Us foreigners have just about gotten used to all the internet names being in [American] English only, that this seems strange?
Micro$oft Word suggests 'ban' as a replacement for 'banc' :-)
Don't know about the printer, but then all the Babbage papers can be purchased here.
Sorry, not free as in "no money", but I guess the copyright will have expired now so free in that sense?
It's a neat hack :-)
Frpom the Verisign press release:
It sounds like they want to own the standards and establish a monopoly of closed source rules.
And it will be a monopoly:
Any chance that the mergers and monopolies comission (or whatever it is called in SA) will block this? Please!? Not another MSFT.
Why on Earth did they do it? just to create a monopoly?
Probably not very good (!!) since the article mentions (my emphasis) that
The implication seems to be that FreeBSD is not optimal for servers. My guess is that they choose it for its (allegedly) superior security model.
Is there any chance that this discussion will not turn into a holy war? No? Thought not... :-(
You don't need to test for nine (or whatever) years: you just have to test enough of them over a shorter period of time.
An example: if you test 1,000 devices for a day and three of them crash, then the MTBF is probably around 1,000/3 days i.e. a year.
Note: This example is a gross over-simplification! Please have a look at any decent statistics textbook for the correct details. I hope you get the idea anyhow.
This is just a whole site of silly patent applications.
Arrrrrgh! (I still want one, though :-))
There is probably no doubt that it is "the first ... microprocessor-driven ... motor to be installed in a domestic vacuum cleaner", but does anybody have a clue to how these new "SR" motors are supposed to work? Couldn't find anything on the web site.
It seems that they have applied for a patent on the spiral as a form that covers a rectangle. (See http://dc06.dyson.com/solution2.htm.
Sad.
Does anybody know what comouters and OS it uses? :-9
Emacs is actually the first thing they got running - how else would they create all the other software?? :-)
Hey! That's interesting. I had not heard of Exokernels before. Anything that increases web server performance by half an order of magnitued is a Good Thing.
Read more about XOK and ExOS at http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/exo/ as the man said.
I wonder if whoever moderated this post up actually tried the link. I get the 'Not Found' error.
Don't ever connect it to the internet. Keep it with you always.
Then you should be fine. They can still see what you are doing, but they'll have a hard time getting in to it without you knowing, which was what you asked for.
Indeed I doubt so too. But they do have a legal procedure for, say, tapping your 'phone, and I was reading the article in the same vein. You need to be able to install bugs in the telephone and, similarly, in the computer. That means altering what is there.
I read this as well, but I'm not sure I understand the issue fully. How does it work today with non-electronic evidence? If the police have previously searched your home and the later find evidence there, how do they prove they did not plant it?
It seems to me that the tracking and logging of what is being done sould be easier in the electronic world. Obviously you need proper controls in place, but you need that anyway for non-electronic information, police access and evidence.
If you trust the police for non-electronic evidence (and I relize that this is a big, big if for many slashdotters), then why not for electronic information?
I hope that when this exile is over I will feel very happy. But maybe I will just feel, well, dead?
Seriously: there is nothing wrong with murder (!) all you need is a good reason. Law enforcement and war are typical "good" reasons, but there are others (and better). Even Christian law (normally very anti-killing) acknowledges the need for a little killing every now and then.
Maybe it is not true in the States, but here in Europe the police seems to use their weapons sensibly. I don't have a problem with them carrying guns. I do not normally have a problem when they use them. They are accountable.
Yes, the government is, at least in principle, accountable to the Australian people, whereas the kid is not.
I realise that many people, on /. in particular but by no means exclusively, have little or no faith in this accountability. There is a general feeling of mistrust in the government and national agencies.
A lot of this mistrust is entirely understandable. But it is, I think, important to make a point of the principle, namely that the issue is not that the govenment has more power than the individual but that they are not (sufficiently) accountable for the exercise of this power.
This is to me the real issue. You do not trust government. But listen: you are the only people who can fix this. You elect these people (I can't vote for any national parliament so I deny all responsibility :-)). Don't just complain and then stay at home on polling day. (How many people in the USA vote? 20%?)
Seriously: if we have zero trust in govenrment then civilization falls. Think about it: some form of government is needed for large scale human organisation. With the population of this planet seemingly ever-groving, the case could be made that we need more government, not less. Of course, it should a government that is truely accountable to the people.
You thought that was bad? How about:
Trying 152.91.15.15...
Connected to www.asio.gov.au.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1999 00:21:19 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGQGGQQPD=GFGIOFHCFOBKHKJFCCAPFNDG; path=/ Cache-control: private
No comments.
This article really p*sses me off.
With the same argument I guess that since the police carry guns we can no longer critizise violent murderers? This is just plain silly and pathetic.
The state deliberately has wider powers than the individual to ensure order and civilization. It is right to watch the way the state uses those powers carefully, but this article is just paranoid. There are (apparently) issues with the new law, but the journalists seems to have largely missed them.
To suggest that the police are cracking computer systems "for fun" is childish.
This seems to me to be largely a non-issue. The article states that
The only issue to me seems to be that this is under the control of the attorney general rather than the courts. In moust countries the police or security forces have this sort of power with a court order over other information sources, e.g. letters. Why should electronic information be different?
Interesting, I wonder how that works :-) I don't think it is possible to be a /. user without accepting cookies. Maybe that's why you can not log in?
I am talking about Northen Ireland, not Eire.
And Northen Ireleand is part of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", as I think the UK is formally called.
I guess "civil insurrection" would be the most appropriate term, but I can never remember how many r's go into that word (found a dictionary now).
Anyhow, this thread is sliding offtopic. [But I was never sure what the toipc was in the first place. That there are silly laws in this world? That CmdrTaco has finally found some stress relief and is laughing?]
Back to the topic (I think!?): My favourite Stupid Law (tm):
The Danish constitution guarantees everybody a job.
The unemployment rate was just under 10% last time I checked.
Not all the laws mentioned are stupid:
Rememeber that England has suffered from a prolonged civil war (known as "our little problem with Northern Ireland") with frequent bomb attacks on civilians. These bombs were often left in luggage on stations, airports, department stores and other corwded places.
This law therefore makes perfect sense. I rememeber when I first came to England, I was wodering why there were no luggage boxes on the stations. Such youthful innocence...
God (and the IRA et. al.) willing, this particular war should now be over. Now the poor English can concentrate on the ALF, the anti-capitalism terrorists, and whatever today's new violent fringe group is.
I would have liked the web site to have contained references to the law texts. That would have made it much more trustworthy. How many of the laws mentioned, I woder, are nothing more than urban legends?