"Cisco solutions and products containing 64-bit or less encryption may be delivered to most end users worldwide, except to entities or end users in the following countries: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria."
I don't see any other trade embargo against China for encryption, so I doubt there is one for tracking and surveillance software and hardware. As well, AFAIK, China is a sovereign entity and it's government can do whatever they want on their soil. I doubt there is a case here, even if Cisco helped China.
Yes, you may be correct. Who knows if this is a publicity stunt or a legitimate lawsuit? I would be surprised by neither, but I hadn't heard of the Falun Gong religion until yesterday... Like most things in life, the issue is grey. I hardly doubt it went down like this:
China: "Cisco, please help us tamp down the Falun Gong with your cool tracking and surveillance hardware and software."
Cisco: "FAA-LOON GONG, ya say? Sounds like terrorist talk to me. How much of that American money you willin' to pay me?"
The extent at which Cisco helped them is not publicly known. Cisco does not admit to anything other than selling hardware and software services.
"Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression," the representative said in a statement, adding that the company sells the same equipment in China that it sells in other nations in compliance with U.S. government regulations."
Hard to say... but either way private multi-national corporations only operate for one thing: profit.
Calling all police forces: need to catch your bad guy? We can detect all potential threats for you, so all you have to do is cuff 'em and let the legal system sort it out. PoliceNet, a Cisco Product.
Yes, except this is a sovereign government hiring a network company to help them set up a network. Layer 2 and 3 don't need to know what applications are running on top of it.
The real issue here is how China is treating those it thinks are part of the Falun Gong movement. Cisco's equipment is one of the tools used to track the movement, but it doesn't seem that Cisco orchestrated the capture, detainment, torture, and deaths of innocent people. China did.
Slackware will fucking own the puny Ubuntu distro!!! All y'all Ubuntu luzers are just a bunch of hipster, geek wanna-be's. Unity this, unity that. Fuck you. Go command prompt or go home!
So, I am partial to Slack, as it taught me linux by fire... I am disappointed everyone here is talking about Ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is great in it's own ways, but this is fucking SLASHdot!!! Let's get some slack talk going here. I'll start by thanking Patrick V. He's the man and I strongly urge you to buy a DVD or CD set from the site to support this amazing distro.
Maybe others may benefit from my reflection of learning linux on Slack:
First, Penguins are pretty cool. So is the pipe smoking Bob Dobbs guy from the Church of Subgenius. Second, holy shit is this distro trial by fire, but I learned so, so much from the experience: installing linux by menu or command line, recompiling kernel to only include the libraries I need or that work, configuring XWindows and learning how it interacts with the linux subsystems, command line tools: grep, ps, fsck, top, etc., true networking tools, installing programs from scratch, hacking config files, etc.
So my advice if you haven't used Linux and want to give it a try: Nerds and geeks with time on your hands, go slack, otherwise go Ubuntu.
As well, if you want to resurrect an old box, go slack. It's old and supports lots of old hardware, like laptops and 486s with 8 megs of RAM and such.
YMMV a lot,
M
I fucked up my computer so many times learning partition tables, boot-loaders, kernel recompiles
DO IT! I learned linux from Slackware back in '99. One of the best experiences I ever had. Learned how to install linux, recompile the kernel to fit my system the best, deal with learning the command prompt... So many great things... Learn how XWindows interacts with the many subsystems in linux. Disk mounting, manual install of software... The list goes on and on... Man pages, grep, ps, netstats, top, etc. I learned so much of this and now use it day-to-day at my job.
Obscurity isn't security, but if you are a Mom and Pop shop, depending on the sector, I don't think you have much to worry about. You've done your due diligence in safeguarding your server. As long as it's only exposed to the internets on specific ports (80, 442, etc.) you really don't have much to worry about. Patch your shit, keep it up to date. Upgrade when it's safe (i.e. - not going to bork your apps.)
You're OK. Now if you are a Mom and Pop shop with $Billions of loan documents floating through your server, I'd be a bit more worried.;-)
WebOS could work as one of those minimal "instant on" OSs like iOS, Android, Chrome and some other proprietary menu driven mini-OSs. Here's an example: Instant boot laptop for "everyday" computer use, and a real OS for real computing. I could see my 2.5 and 5 year old daughters dealing with WebOS much more easily than, say, Windows or OS X. So, when they want to use the tablet/laptop/computer they get WebOS or iOS. When they need to start doing word processing, layout, image manipulation, they can use the grown-up OS.
That being said, this market is already taken by iOS and Android. It's probably too late.
So True! I was one of them as well! I just thought it was a DLL I needed to get TCP/IP traffic. Of course, I was 14, so registration, keys, or anything of the sort was far from my mind. Plus, BBSs were all about shareware/freeware/warez in my circles. I didn't even see the value it FidoNet back then... not 'till the WWW was around did I truly see the value of a wide scale network.
Out of all the movies that Alcon has done, I've only wanted to see and seen one: The Book of Eli. It was lacking in some respects, but in general, was a pretty good post-apocalyptic flick, worth the rental. This is not where Bladerunner should sit in people's memory, though.
I have the same experience with home/family support. I work in IT at a college and I can also explain computers and their functions to people so they understand and replicate what they need.
I bought my wife and will be giving my children Apple machines. Easy to use, has a pretty decent command prompt, is transparent as I want in most circumstances, rarely needs a restart, and well, is just the best computer for the money. I don't see it as that "Luxury." Buy a used/refurbished iBook/MacBook or iMac or MacMini and try it out. Get the warranty. Use an educational discount. Show your cleavage and ask for discounts. Save your coffee/beer/weed/crack money for a couple of months. Whatever. It's still worth it IMO.
I would love to switch my extended family over to OS X or Linux, but they choose to stay with Windows. God anything would be better than windows. Fucking Minix would be better than Windows.
BUT
My father-in-law "has to use Outlook." That's just a shitty policy for any company, yes, including blue shops, but let's not get into that. That ties him to Windows. Period. No Parallels, No VMWare, and hell no WINE.
Same with all my other extended family. They have some app they cling to or "don't want to learn a new OS." Most don't even know what an OS is. How do you overcome that? Put it on things they use. If you have some amazing netbook that everyone wants, they will use Linux if that's what comes on it. If some amazing phone comes out that natively runs linux and gets market share, then people will use linux.
I'm just happy that Dell and ASUS offer Linux support at all.
At this point, it's really up to the developers to start to support Linux and OS X. I don't see Microsoft supporting any app running on the linux kernel until satan's ballsack freezes. There are plenty of other companies that support all 3 OSs, though. It's just a forward way of thinking that corporate bitches are just now starting to realize. Let's see how this recession and netbooks chang things... Devs will just need to adapt. I'm sure it's looking more and more interesting since Vista, Mojave, Windows 7 or whatever has hit the market. There are some great companies out there supporting all three major workstation operating systems.
I just bought a game, My Tribe, from them for OS X, but I can't imagine it should run much differently under linux. They use a portable gaming engine of somesort. It'd be fun to compare the game on all three systems.
Happy gaming on Linux. It is happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Cisco did nothing illegal so far:
"Cisco solutions and products containing 64-bit or less encryption may be delivered to most end users worldwide, except to entities or end users in the following countries: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria."
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/global_export_trade/general_export/contract_compliance.html
I don't see any other trade embargo against China for encryption, so I doubt there is one for tracking and surveillance software and hardware. As well, AFAIK, China is a sovereign entity and it's government can do whatever they want on their soil. I doubt there is a case here, even if Cisco helped China.
Yes, you may be correct. Who knows if this is a publicity stunt or a legitimate lawsuit? I would be surprised by neither, but I hadn't heard of the Falun Gong religion until yesterday... Like most things in life, the issue is grey. I hardly doubt it went down like this:
China: "Cisco, please help us tamp down the Falun Gong with your cool tracking and surveillance hardware and software."
Cisco: "FAA-LOON GONG, ya say? Sounds like terrorist talk to me. How much of that American money you willin' to pay me?"
You'll be back... for LINUX 3000!
M
So true. Media attention is still attention to a cause.
M
Yes, but Cisco also provides these services to businesses.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6712/index.html
The extent at which Cisco helped them is not publicly known. Cisco does not admit to anything other than selling hardware and software services.
"Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression," the representative said in a statement, adding that the company sells the same equipment in China that it sells in other nations in compliance with U.S. government regulations."
Hard to say... but either way private multi-national corporations only operate for one thing: profit.
Calling all police forces: need to catch your bad guy? We can detect all potential threats for you, so all you have to do is cuff 'em and let the legal system sort it out. PoliceNet, a Cisco Product.
M
Yes, except this is a sovereign government hiring a network company to help them set up a network. Layer 2 and 3 don't need to know what applications are running on top of it.
M
The real issue here is how China is treating those it thinks are part of the Falun Gong movement. Cisco's equipment is one of the tools used to track the movement, but it doesn't seem that Cisco orchestrated the capture, detainment, torture, and deaths of innocent people. China did.
M
Right?!??! What could one possibly gain besides ruining a profile page? It's not like there's payment info there.
M
Hell yeah!!! Thanks Patrick, you rule!!! You taught me linux from a young age... I use that knowledge to this day!
M
Slackware will fucking own the puny Ubuntu distro!!! All y'all Ubuntu luzers are just a bunch of hipster, geek wanna-be's. Unity this, unity that. Fuck you. Go command prompt or go home!
M
PS - Hope that was good enough for you Jodster!
Pat's awesome. I owe him big time for learning true linux.
M
So, I am partial to Slack, as it taught me linux by fire... I am disappointed everyone here is talking about Ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is great in it's own ways, but this is fucking SLASHdot!!! Let's get some slack talk going here. I'll start by thanking Patrick V. He's the man and I strongly urge you to buy a DVD or CD set from the site to support this amazing distro.
Maybe others may benefit from my reflection of learning linux on Slack:
First, Penguins are pretty cool. So is the pipe smoking Bob Dobbs guy from the Church of Subgenius. Second, holy shit is this distro trial by fire, but I learned so, so much from the experience: installing linux by menu or command line, recompiling kernel to only include the libraries I need or that work, configuring XWindows and learning how it interacts with the linux subsystems, command line tools: grep, ps, fsck, top, etc., true networking tools, installing programs from scratch, hacking config files, etc.
So my advice if you haven't used Linux and want to give it a try: Nerds and geeks with time on your hands, go slack, otherwise go Ubuntu.
As well, if you want to resurrect an old box, go slack. It's old and supports lots of old hardware, like laptops and 486s with 8 megs of RAM and such.
YMMV a lot,
M
I fucked up my computer so many times learning partition tables, boot-loaders, kernel recompiles
DO IT! I learned linux from Slackware back in '99. One of the best experiences I ever had. Learned how to install linux, recompile the kernel to fit my system the best, deal with learning the command prompt... So many great things... Learn how XWindows interacts with the many subsystems in linux. Disk mounting, manual install of software... The list goes on and on... Man pages, grep, ps, netstats, top, etc. I learned so much of this and now use it day-to-day at my job.
Good Luck and GO FOR IT!
M
Obscurity isn't security, but if you are a Mom and Pop shop, depending on the sector, I don't think you have much to worry about. You've done your due diligence in safeguarding your server. As long as it's only exposed to the internets on specific ports (80, 442, etc.) you really don't have much to worry about. Patch your shit, keep it up to date. Upgrade when it's safe (i.e. - not going to bork your apps.)
You're OK. Now if you are a Mom and Pop shop with $Billions of loan documents floating through your server, I'd be a bit more worried. ;-)
WebOS could work as one of those minimal "instant on" OSs like iOS, Android, Chrome and some other proprietary menu driven mini-OSs. Here's an example: Instant boot laptop for "everyday" computer use, and a real OS for real computing. I could see my 2.5 and 5 year old daughters dealing with WebOS much more easily than, say, Windows or OS X. So, when they want to use the tablet/laptop/computer they get WebOS or iOS. When they need to start doing word processing, layout, image manipulation, they can use the grown-up OS.
That being said, this market is already taken by iOS and Android. It's probably too late.
M
So True! I was one of them as well! I just thought it was a DLL I needed to get TCP/IP traffic. Of course, I was 14, so registration, keys, or anything of the sort was far from my mind. Plus, BBSs were all about shareware/freeware/warez in my circles. I didn't even see the value it FidoNet back then... not 'till the WWW was around did I truly see the value of a wide scale network.
M
sudo make me a sandwich
M
Nice! If I had mod points, you'd get em.
M
Ask and you shall receive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoX3X3QhnNM
Enjoy!
M
Oh no. Not Bladerunner.
Out of all the movies that Alcon has done, I've only wanted to see and seen one: The Book of Eli. It was lacking in some respects, but in general, was a pretty good post-apocalyptic flick, worth the rental. This is not where Bladerunner should sit in people's memory, though.
I agree. This will not end well at all.
M
PLEASE, stop. Think. If you will be taking a video, even drunk, of an event with your phone: Turn. It. Sideways. The tubez will thank you for it. M
I have the same experience with home/family support. I work in IT at a college and I can also explain computers and their functions to people so they understand and replicate what they need.
I bought my wife and will be giving my children Apple machines. Easy to use, has a pretty decent command prompt, is transparent as I want in most circumstances, rarely needs a restart, and well, is just the best computer for the money. I don't see it as that "Luxury." Buy a used/refurbished iBook/MacBook or iMac or MacMini and try it out. Get the warranty. Use an educational discount. Show your cleavage and ask for discounts. Save your coffee/beer/weed/crack money for a couple of months. Whatever. It's still worth it IMO.
I would love to switch my extended family over to OS X or Linux, but they choose to stay with Windows. God anything would be better than windows. Fucking Minix would be better than Windows.
BUT
My father-in-law "has to use Outlook." That's just a shitty policy for any company, yes, including blue shops, but let's not get into that. That ties him to Windows. Period. No Parallels, No VMWare, and hell no WINE.
Same with all my other extended family. They have some app they cling to or "don't want to learn a new OS." Most don't even know what an OS is. How do you overcome that? Put it on things they use. If you have some amazing netbook that everyone wants, they will use Linux if that's what comes on it. If some amazing phone comes out that natively runs linux and gets market share, then people will use linux.
I'm just happy that Dell and ASUS offer Linux support at all.
At this point, it's really up to the developers to start to support Linux and OS X. I don't see Microsoft supporting any app running on the linux kernel until satan's ballsack freezes. There are plenty of other companies that support all 3 OSs, though. It's just a forward way of thinking that corporate bitches are just now starting to realize. Let's see how this recession and netbooks chang things... Devs will just need to adapt. I'm sure it's looking more and more interesting since Vista, Mojave, Windows 7 or whatever has hit the market. There are some great companies out there supporting all three major workstation operating systems.
Here's a company that makes... drumroll.... games for all three OSs: http://www.grubbygames.com/ .
I just bought a game, My Tribe, from them for OS X, but I can't imagine it should run much differently under linux. They use a portable gaming engine of somesort. It'd be fun to compare the game on all three systems. Happy gaming on Linux. It is happening.
Thank you for this comment. Now I know I shouldn't care about my MacBook not playing it...