Uh, last I checked, pretty much everyone who doesn't work in the marketing department of a tablet company, or in the newsroom of a computer magazine that needs sensationalistic headlines, or had a terrible accident during brain surgery agrees that the whole "post-PC" is either bullshit or at least doesn't mean that the PC is going away.
I've yet to see the first non-crazy argument about how exactly tablets are going to completely replace PCs. They take over in certain areas, they are better suited for some tasks, but they aren't going away and anyone who says so has had a bit too much of his favorite drug.
So accepting a reality is "serving the system" to you?
Tell me that you don't agree that if we simply closed down the public school system today, lots of children would not be given an education anymore. Mostly because their parents are already working two jobs and don't have the time nor energy to also be teachers.
I want to help kids escape the failing system and find a place they can learn.
And I'm telling you that your way works for some, but it won't work for all. And you can't leave those for whom it doesn't work stranded.
You appear to have no substantive criticism of my plan at all. And yet, as expected, you still want to say no to all the parents and kids who want a better education.
Your plan isn't a better system, it's the removal of the system and the unsubstantiated hope that somehow, magically, everything will work out.
I am split regarding home-schooling, respectively mandatory public school attendance. I do think that there is merit in a public school system, but I also see the current one is failing us. I'm not sure dropping out is the right solution, but I understand every parent who doesn't want to wait for the solution to appear because the time their kid has to get a good education is limited.
But your plan as presented, does nothing to solve the actual problem. It only makes it easier for those with the resources to avoid the issue. My original point still stands: We can assume that there will be a public school system in the future. If 100% or 90% or 50% of the children attend it doesn't matter, what matters is that it exists. If it exists, it should be good. Thus, the problems with the current system need to be solved, and home-schooling doesn't improve the system, it only removes people from it
I don't claim that this would end poverty and starvation and all the other world problems.
But eliminating one of them makes it easier to tackle the others. Sure, when you lift a carpet and the cockroaches all run and hide under the next one, you've not really eliminated the cockroaches - but you are one carpet closer to doing so.
If the school costs less than this amount (most will, because it's an unjustifiably large amount) and if the kids can prove they've learned the standard curriculum material by passing some tests, then the parents can keep half the savings. Schools where the students can't pass the tests end up being ineligible in future years.
So you hate "the system", but you put your trust in standardized tests? The dissonance there could split atoms, you realize that, yes?
The poor get a possible new income source.
And that, exactly, is the problem. I am speaking from experience, the social security system in my country does provide things like that (not for school, though), and there is quite a controversy going on because some of the poor spend the money intended for their children on alcohol and cigarettes.
there should be a lot more jobs available for poor folks at the schools -- because they won't need a certification
Thanks, but I'll pass. An ex-girlfriend of mine studied to become a teacher. I know what goes into making a teacher. Unfortunately, teacher is one of those jobs where every schmuck thinks he can do a better job, but most have no clue.
The problem with modern school isn't that the teachers suck or that "the system" sucks. Get a fucking clue, man, and stop believing all the home-schooling propaganda. There is some truth on every side of a conflict, and the educated man doesn't look for which side to pick but which truth to find.
There are problems with the current school system, absolutely. Getting out is one way to solve the problems for you. Actually solving the problems is the more difficult, but also more rewarding approach.
One of the primary issues of modern schools is that they are supposed to do so much more than just teaching. If, instead of home-schooling, parents would just bother enough with their kids to give them basic social skills, some breeding and basically not make them total assholes, the school could take care of the teaching. But as it stands, it has to provide all of education, including the breeding / upbringing part.
I can actually prove my point. Can you prove yours? Throughout history, the only approach that has ever resulted in education being provided to the entire population was a centralized school system. No other approach has ever managed to reach everyone, especially the poor.
Look at the statistics I linked to. Home-schoolers are predominantly white, middle or upper class. If you happen to be a poor hispanic, you are a very rare exception. If you aren't, how about you stop thinking that what works for you will work for everyone?
Yes, I prefer some education over no education. And quite frankly, unless you can show a different, more efficient, less expensive and whatever else system that guarantees an education to every child then honestly you can fuck off because if your proposal does not satisfy that requirement then it is elitest crap and a return to the dark ages where only the wealthy and powerful got education.
It works a lot better than not giving them an education, which is what brutal no-holds-barred capitalism would result in, because no teacher would work for the money they can pay.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers don't, in general, have the problems you claim to be worried about. Home schooled kids get a better education than government schooled kids. It doesn't take an institutional setting to have learning standards -- anyone can do it.
I'm not going to enter a discussion about home vs. public schooling here. It is a fact that not everyone can or wants to do home schooling, so there is and for the forseable future will be a public school system. And if you have public schools, then having a system for them is a good thing, because otherwise those who can do the least about it will once again draw the short sticks.
A king can be overthrown, a dynasty can be terminated, a lineage can be brought to an end. A god remains. You can not remove him, you can not question him, change him, heck in the abrahamic religions you can not even hide from him, not even your thoughts.
Hitchens had it right: What a dictatorship!
If you'd rather have a halfway decent democracy over even a benevolent dictator, then how can you stand for having a religion?
The do the smart thing: attack the actual problem, those guy thirst for power, not the literary devices they use for rhetorical purposes while trying to get there.
No, you missed the point there:
Attacking the religious foundations is absolutely the right thing to do. The people at the top don't give a flying fuck about anything. I am 99% sure that you could convince the pope in private the his god is a fairy tale and it wouldn't change a thing.
Now you can convince the base of people who support these fuckers (and in the case of the catholic church, I mean that literally) that the people at the top are corrupt, power-greedy assholes. So what? Even if you succeed, they will remove them, and replace them with a new generation of corrupt, power-greedy assholes, or - even worse - idealists who quickly turn into evil, psychopathic inquisitors. Why am I so sure? Because it's happened before.
But remove the religious foundation and not only will the current generation of fuckers come crashing down, but there will be no place for the next one, either.
What the atheists I listen to are talking about most often is how other people try to control their life. In my country, for example, the churches are still receiving a few billion bucks every year in tax money. Not directly, of course, but through a vast network of indirect channels. Then there's all these bullshit laws they want to force on us. Right now, there's a discussion in Europe about new blasphemy laws. Blasphemy laws! You'd think the middle ages are past.
In america, religious service is forced again and again on soldiers, school children and other people who are in power-inequality positions.
The list goes on. God only enters the picture as the bullshit reason these control freaks give for their actions, but we have long ago realized that it's the reason for the dumb. The reason for the smart has always been power.
You can have as many imaginary friends as you want. But I and others will continue "preaching" to you every time you or someone like you tries to control my actions or restrict my freedoms because of something that you think one of your imaginary friends wants.
Despite loudmouth morons like this, there are plenty of religious people capable of managing their daily lives and even participating usefully in science.
And each and every one of them who doesn't stand up and put these extremist assholes in their place is guilty of collaboration.
What? America judges muslims the same way.
I would have a lot more respect for religion and religious people if you would stop allowing these fuckers to abuse your religion. As long as you do, I must assume that you don't think him all that bad. Not bad enough to get your asses up, at least.
I fear either you or someone reading that drivel might actually believe it, so I'll feed the troll:
The purpose of a system is the to make results less the result of chance and fortunate circumstances and more predictable.
Sure, a school system might actually diminish the teaching between the genius teacher and the bright kid. But they are each 1% of the teacher resp. school kid population and the chance that they actually meet is somewhere around one in a thousand. For the other 999 teachers and kids, the system helps. It also makes sure that when I hire you after you've completed school, I can make a few reasonable assumptions, like that you'll be able to read and do some basic arithmetics. Without an evil, horrible, oppressive system, you might have met a teacher who thinks all wisdom is in the arts, and all you can read is notes and all you can add is colours.
As far as the public trolling (that some ignorant observers call the republican campaign speeches) goes, it is fascinating how pretty much everything they dislike can, if you understand a tiny bit about history, be strongly correlated with culture, civilization, improved living standards, higher life expectancy and lots of other things that we generally consider good things.
If they are serious, you should shoot them all. Before innocent people start believing this shit and the USA enters history as yet another great power that mysteriously just fell apart and entered a long dark age before being forgotten by everyone but historians.
then just don't bother with it. Leave alone the poor guys believing such insanities
You miss the point of both his nonsense and religion in general.
This is not about what he thinks or does. It is about controlling others. Religion is a dinosaur from times when politics worked by divine mandate. The early rulers of human tribes and ancient civilizations originated either from the warrior or from the priest class.
Religion is a form of oppression, control and politics. If you see it as anything else (especially as ethics) you've already fallen for half the trick.
There's no point in giving him a piece of your mind.
First, you should keep your mind, all of its pieces - he obviously doesn't use his, so he most probably wouldn't use yours.
Second, it only validates him. People who say things like that are either attention whores or really, really, really stupid or both. In either case, no matter what you say, he will see it as justification of his position.
Three, you are right that these fuckers have declared war on progress, humanity and everyone who isn't one of them. There's a point where you need to stop talking to the enemy and start fighting him.
Dawkins was right. We need more militant(*) atheists. We need to fight back because otherwise mankind just might enter a new dark age.
(*) Watch his TED speech before you make a fool out of yourself by saying anything about violence.
A multi-billion dollar company replacing its front page with a tribute video. You don't see that very often. To me, that says more than the contents of the video. Which, btw. is very well done, and his quote that technology alone is not the answer is something that a lot of tech companies should remember.
Anyone else think that we (the US) should follow Brazil's example?
No, too simple, and everyone did it, it would be the end of world trade.
But, there is a point in saying "you want our citizens money, then contribute something to our economy". So giving corporations a choice between various options would be a good way that solves both issues. Two immediately apparent ways are to either create jobs or pay an import tax. I'm sure there are others.
Now an import tax sounds crazy at first because, after all, it will be the local buyers and not the corporation that pays it. But its purpose is not to get money from the corporation, but to create more of an equality to local manufacturers and soften the impact of the low labour-cost country.
Ah. Yes, I indeed misunderstood that part. Agreed, physical access changes the game. It means you need to add tamper-resistance and temper-evidence to the equation. Again, something that someone with a bug budget who wants to get it right can do.
As with the electronic security, there is no 100% security, but you can definitely make it so costly and troublesome that your average murderer or bank robber can't get it done. And definitely not some random guy who wants to frame someone else.
And, most importantly, you'd have to train law enforcement and judges to treat this data as just another piece of evidence, not godlike truth.
It does depend on your threat-scenario, of course.
If you need statistical data, the unique IDs are just there to avoid counting errors. It doesn't matter if they can be manipulated, forged, whatever. So what if the bank robbers pass by without being counted due to their disabled transponder? That's a 1-car counting error on your "how much use does this street get" statistics, and doesn't matter.
For toll collection, etc. you would need to build the more reliable stations, and maybe people would still need to drive into lanes and slow down while driving through, but not come to a stop anymore. That would still be a gain, and give you the isolated targets and time required for a reliable exchange.
The basics of my argument remain: If you assume that someone with a large enough budget really wants to get this right, then it can be done. It's not trivial, it will need money and time and expertise, but there is no reason to assume theoretically that it will be as easy to hack as a private WiFi.
That is true in principle, but - in this case their policy is linked to national and international law. In order to get YouTube to take down my video, you have to make a specific claim, namely that it violates a copyright that you hold.
And if it doesn't, and you made that claim falsely or with no reasonable excuse for error, then that is a copyright fraud, and is a crime in itself.
What pisses me off more than the fact that YouTube did, in fact, wrongly flag videos of mine recently is that they never replied to my counterclaim where I explicitly asked for the contact details of whoever claimed the copyright was theirs so I could press charges.
As it is set up right now, YouTube offers big content producers a system where they have no downside to claiming everything under the sun as theirs, even if it clearly isn't. And that has to change. A false claim should have repercussions, just like copyright violation does.
if the uploader challenges the match, the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)
That is a long-needed step into the correct direction.
I recently uploaded 6 videos with background music that has a CC license. I even linked to the author's homepage AND his CC-licence page in the video comment. Still got flagged. Challenged it. After some weeks, flag went away, but I'm none the wiser as to the who and why.
I would love to be able to sue these fuckers. You don't mistakenly mis-identify original music creations. You can claim that if it's the music heard in the background of some video from a wedding or whatever, but not when I add a clean.mp3 as the audio track.
Now at least they'll have to formally withdraw their claim.
Next step - and just as badly needed - is that if they make a claim, it's a DMCA claim, i.e. penalty of perjury and all that.
Can I send you my bank details and you transfer me your life insurance and retirement savings? You don't need that security, but you do sacrifice some (financial) freedom for it by paying into it every month. I will gladly relieve you of that burden.
I don't think so. I juxtaposed theory and practice. As I said: I'm with you when you want to argue that the way in which this is actually being done is not always how it should be. But the point that traffic tickets aren't a service because you pay and get nothing in return is simply wrong for the reasons I stated.
Give me a running SELinux box with your data on it and it's likely I'll hack it.
I actually used that back when I was giving speeches about SELinux. I'd put my IP address and root password on the blackboard at the conference. Someone once managed to drop a file into the root home directory due to a policy configuration error. That's as far as anyone has ever gotten.
I've not been doing SELinux for a few years, so I don't have a box around. But you can check if Russell's play machine is still up: http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/play.html
The issue here is they are then handing it to the end user, possibly the criminal end user who can then poke and prod at it endlessly.
And?
Security by obscurity is worthless anyways. Nobody can hack your machine because he could examine it. He can maybe hack it a bit quicker, but if he can hack it after examination, he could hack it without.
It's likely some group of researchers will find a way to break it quickly, and publish a paper on it.
Great! Then the problem can be fixed. Ideally, this happens before it hits the mass-market. If not, you'll have to upgrade existing devices. For a government mandated device, that's not half as troublesome as for private/commercial crap.
I doubt this system will be very secure because of it's nature alone, it needs to be cheap, easy and work in various circumstances, the cost of cryptology will be too high.
Economics 101: The cost of a solid crypto and hardware system is a one-time cost. Divided by the number of vehicles that'll use it over, say, the next ten years, it'll probably come out to less than a burger.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, last I checked, pretty much everyone who doesn't work in the marketing department of a tablet company, or in the newsroom of a computer magazine that needs sensationalistic headlines, or had a terrible accident during brain surgery agrees that the whole "post-PC" is either bullshit or at least doesn't mean that the PC is going away.
I've yet to see the first non-crazy argument about how exactly tablets are going to completely replace PCs. They take over in certain areas, they are better suited for some tasks, but they aren't going away and anyone who says so has had a bit too much of his favorite drug.
So accepting a reality is "serving the system" to you?
Tell me that you don't agree that if we simply closed down the public school system today, lots of children would not be given an education anymore. Mostly because their parents are already working two jobs and don't have the time nor energy to also be teachers.
I want to help kids escape the failing system and find a place they can learn.
And I'm telling you that your way works for some, but it won't work for all. And you can't leave those for whom it doesn't work stranded.
You appear to have no substantive criticism of my plan at all. And yet, as expected, you still want to say no to all the parents and kids who want a better education.
Your plan isn't a better system, it's the removal of the system and the unsubstantiated hope that somehow, magically, everything will work out.
I am split regarding home-schooling, respectively mandatory public school attendance. I do think that there is merit in a public school system, but I also see the current one is failing us. I'm not sure dropping out is the right solution, but I understand every parent who doesn't want to wait for the solution to appear because the time their kid has to get a good education is limited.
But your plan as presented, does nothing to solve the actual problem. It only makes it easier for those with the resources to avoid the issue. My original point still stands: We can assume that there will be a public school system in the future. If 100% or 90% or 50% of the children attend it doesn't matter, what matters is that it exists. If it exists, it should be good. Thus, the problems with the current system need to be solved, and home-schooling doesn't improve the system, it only removes people from it
I don't claim that this would end poverty and starvation and all the other world problems.
But eliminating one of them makes it easier to tackle the others. Sure, when you lift a carpet and the cockroaches all run and hide under the next one, you've not really eliminated the cockroaches - but you are one carpet closer to doing so.
If the school costs less than this amount (most will, because it's an unjustifiably large amount) and if the kids can prove they've learned the standard curriculum material by passing some tests, then the parents can keep half the savings. Schools where the students can't pass the tests end up being ineligible in future years.
So you hate "the system", but you put your trust in standardized tests? The dissonance there could split atoms, you realize that, yes?
The poor get a possible new income source.
And that, exactly, is the problem. I am speaking from experience, the social security system in my country does provide things like that (not for school, though), and there is quite a controversy going on because some of the poor spend the money intended for their children on alcohol and cigarettes.
there should be a lot more jobs available for poor folks at the schools -- because they won't need a certification
Thanks, but I'll pass. An ex-girlfriend of mine studied to become a teacher. I know what goes into making a teacher. Unfortunately, teacher is one of those jobs where every schmuck thinks he can do a better job, but most have no clue.
The problem with modern school isn't that the teachers suck or that "the system" sucks. Get a fucking clue, man, and stop believing all the home-schooling propaganda. There is some truth on every side of a conflict, and the educated man doesn't look for which side to pick but which truth to find.
There are problems with the current school system, absolutely. Getting out is one way to solve the problems for you. Actually solving the problems is the more difficult, but also more rewarding approach.
One of the primary issues of modern schools is that they are supposed to do so much more than just teaching. If, instead of home-schooling, parents would just bother enough with their kids to give them basic social skills, some breeding and basically not make them total assholes, the school could take care of the teaching. But as it stands, it has to provide all of education, including the breeding / upbringing part.
I can actually prove my point. Can you prove yours? Throughout history, the only approach that has ever resulted in education being provided to the entire population was a centralized school system. No other approach has ever managed to reach everyone, especially the poor.
Look at the statistics I linked to. Home-schoolers are predominantly white, middle or upper class. If you happen to be a poor hispanic, you are a very rare exception. If you aren't, how about you stop thinking that what works for you will work for everyone?
Are you just dense?
Yes, I prefer some education over no education. And quite frankly, unless you can show a different, more efficient, less expensive and whatever else system that guarantees an education to every child then honestly you can fuck off because if your proposal does not satisfy that requirement then it is elitest crap and a return to the dark ages where only the wealthy and powerful got education.
It doesn't work for kids in poor neighborhoods.
It works a lot better than not giving them an education, which is what brutal no-holds-barred capitalism would result in, because no teacher would work for the money they can pay.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers don't, in general, have the problems you claim to be worried about. Home schooled kids get a better education than government schooled kids. It doesn't take an institutional setting to have learning standards -- anyone can do it.
Home schooling isn't for everyone. Most importantly, the demographic with the lowest percentage of home schooling in the USA are - what a surprise - the poor (source: http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/twps0053.html).
I'm not going to enter a discussion about home vs. public schooling here. It is a fact that not everyone can or wants to do home schooling, so there is and for the forseable future will be a public school system. And if you have public schools, then having a system for them is a good thing, because otherwise those who can do the least about it will once again draw the short sticks.
Absolutism.
A king can be overthrown, a dynasty can be terminated, a lineage can be brought to an end. A god remains. You can not remove him, you can not question him, change him, heck in the abrahamic religions you can not even hide from him, not even your thoughts.
Hitchens had it right: What a dictatorship!
If you'd rather have a halfway decent democracy over even a benevolent dictator, then how can you stand for having a religion?
The do the smart thing: attack the actual problem, those guy thirst for power, not the literary devices they use for rhetorical purposes while trying to get there.
No, you missed the point there:
Attacking the religious foundations is absolutely the right thing to do. The people at the top don't give a flying fuck about anything. I am 99% sure that you could convince the pope in private the his god is a fairy tale and it wouldn't change a thing.
Now you can convince the base of people who support these fuckers (and in the case of the catholic church, I mean that literally) that the people at the top are corrupt, power-greedy assholes. So what? Even if you succeed, they will remove them, and replace them with a new generation of corrupt, power-greedy assholes, or - even worse - idealists who quickly turn into evil, psychopathic inquisitors.
Why am I so sure? Because it's happened before.
But remove the religious foundation and not only will the current generation of fuckers come crashing down, but there will be no place for the next one, either.
You have strange friends. Imaginary?
What the atheists I listen to are talking about most often is how other people try to control their life. In my country, for example, the churches are still receiving a few billion bucks every year in tax money. Not directly, of course, but through a vast network of indirect channels.
Then there's all these bullshit laws they want to force on us. Right now, there's a discussion in Europe about new blasphemy laws. Blasphemy laws! You'd think the middle ages are past.
In america, religious service is forced again and again on soldiers, school children and other people who are in power-inequality positions.
The list goes on. God only enters the picture as the bullshit reason these control freaks give for their actions, but we have long ago realized that it's the reason for the dumb. The reason for the smart has always been power.
You can have as many imaginary friends as you want. But I and others will continue "preaching" to you every time you or someone like you tries to control my actions or restrict my freedoms because of something that you think one of your imaginary friends wants.
Despite loudmouth morons like this, there are plenty of religious people capable of managing their daily lives and even participating usefully in science.
And each and every one of them who doesn't stand up and put these extremist assholes in their place is guilty of collaboration.
What? America judges muslims the same way.
I would have a lot more respect for religion and religious people if you would stop allowing these fuckers to abuse your religion. As long as you do, I must assume that you don't think him all that bad. Not bad enough to get your asses up, at least.
I fear either you or someone reading that drivel might actually believe it, so I'll feed the troll:
The purpose of a system is the to make results less the result of chance and fortunate circumstances and more predictable.
Sure, a school system might actually diminish the teaching between the genius teacher and the bright kid. But they are each 1% of the teacher resp. school kid population and the chance that they actually meet is somewhere around one in a thousand. For the other 999 teachers and kids, the system helps. It also makes sure that when I hire you after you've completed school, I can make a few reasonable assumptions, like that you'll be able to read and do some basic arithmetics. Without an evil, horrible, oppressive system, you might have met a teacher who thinks all wisdom is in the arts, and all you can read is notes and all you can add is colours.
As far as the public trolling (that some ignorant observers call the republican campaign speeches) goes, it is fascinating how pretty much everything they dislike can, if you understand a tiny bit about history, be strongly correlated with culture, civilization, improved living standards, higher life expectancy and lots of other things that we generally consider good things.
If they are serious, you should shoot them all. Before innocent people start believing this shit and the USA enters history as yet another great power that mysteriously just fell apart and entered a long dark age before being forgotten by everyone but historians.
then just don't bother with it. Leave alone the poor guys believing such insanities
You miss the point of both his nonsense and religion in general.
This is not about what he thinks or does. It is about controlling others. Religion is a dinosaur from times when politics worked by divine mandate. The early rulers of human tribes and ancient civilizations originated either from the warrior or from the priest class.
Religion is a form of oppression, control and politics. If you see it as anything else (especially as ethics) you've already fallen for half the trick.
There's no point in giving him a piece of your mind.
First, you should keep your mind, all of its pieces - he obviously doesn't use his, so he most probably wouldn't use yours.
Second, it only validates him. People who say things like that are either attention whores or really, really, really stupid or both. In either case, no matter what you say, he will see it as justification of his position.
Three, you are right that these fuckers have declared war on progress, humanity and everyone who isn't one of them. There's a point where you need to stop talking to the enemy and start fighting him.
Dawkins was right. We need more militant(*) atheists. We need to fight back because otherwise mankind just might enter a new dark age.
(*) Watch his TED speech before you make a fool out of yourself by saying anything about violence.
A multi-billion dollar company replacing its front page with a tribute video. You don't see that very often. To me, that says more than the contents of the video. Which, btw. is very well done, and his quote that technology alone is not the answer is something that a lot of tech companies should remember.
Anyone else think that we (the US) should follow Brazil's example?
No, too simple, and everyone did it, it would be the end of world trade.
But, there is a point in saying "you want our citizens money, then contribute something to our economy". So giving corporations a choice between various options would be a good way that solves both issues. Two immediately apparent ways are to either create jobs or pay an import tax. I'm sure there are others.
Now an import tax sounds crazy at first because, after all, it will be the local buyers and not the corporation that pays it. But its purpose is not to get money from the corporation, but to create more of an equality to local manufacturers and soften the impact of the low labour-cost country.
Physical access opens far more avenues of attack
Ah. Yes, I indeed misunderstood that part. Agreed, physical access changes the game. It means you need to add tamper-resistance and temper-evidence to the equation. Again, something that someone with a bug budget who wants to get it right can do.
As with the electronic security, there is no 100% security, but you can definitely make it so costly and troublesome that your average murderer or bank robber can't get it done. And definitely not some random guy who wants to frame someone else.
And, most importantly, you'd have to train law enforcement and judges to treat this data as just another piece of evidence, not godlike truth.
It does depend on your threat-scenario, of course.
If you need statistical data, the unique IDs are just there to avoid counting errors. It doesn't matter if they can be manipulated, forged, whatever. So what if the bank robbers pass by without being counted due to their disabled transponder? That's a 1-car counting error on your "how much use does this street get" statistics, and doesn't matter.
For toll collection, etc. you would need to build the more reliable stations, and maybe people would still need to drive into lanes and slow down while driving through, but not come to a stop anymore. That would still be a gain, and give you the isolated targets and time required for a reliable exchange.
The basics of my argument remain: If you assume that someone with a large enough budget really wants to get this right, then it can be done. It's not trivial, it will need money and time and expertise, but there is no reason to assume theoretically that it will be as easy to hack as a private WiFi.
That is true in principle, but - in this case their policy is linked to national and international law. In order to get YouTube to take down my video, you have to make a specific claim, namely that it violates a copyright that you hold.
And if it doesn't, and you made that claim falsely or with no reasonable excuse for error, then that is a copyright fraud, and is a crime in itself.
What pisses me off more than the fact that YouTube did, in fact, wrongly flag videos of mine recently is that they never replied to my counterclaim where I explicitly asked for the contact details of whoever claimed the copyright was theirs so I could press charges.
As it is set up right now, YouTube offers big content producers a system where they have no downside to claiming everything under the sun as theirs, even if it clearly isn't. And that has to change. A false claim should have repercussions, just like copyright violation does.
When the original story aired, I couldn't make sense of it, had no clue what the scam was. Now I at least have a rough idea.
if the uploader challenges the match, the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)
That is a long-needed step into the correct direction.
I recently uploaded 6 videos with background music that has a CC license. I even linked to the author's homepage AND his CC-licence page in the video comment. Still got flagged. Challenged it. After some weeks, flag went away, but I'm none the wiser as to the who and why.
I would love to be able to sue these fuckers. You don't mistakenly mis-identify original music creations. You can claim that if it's the music heard in the background of some video from a wedding or whatever, but not when I add a clean .mp3 as the audio track.
Now at least they'll have to formally withdraw their claim.
Next step - and just as badly needed - is that if they make a claim, it's a DMCA claim, i.e. penalty of perjury and all that.
Can I send you my bank details and you transfer me your life insurance and retirement savings? You don't need that security, but you do sacrifice some (financial) freedom for it by paying into it every month. I will gladly relieve you of that burden.
I think you may have contradicted yourself there.
I don't think so. I juxtaposed theory and practice. As I said: I'm with you when you want to argue that the way in which this is actually being done is not always how it should be. But the point that traffic tickets aren't a service because you pay and get nothing in return is simply wrong for the reasons I stated.
Give me a running SELinux box with your data on it and it's likely I'll hack it.
I actually used that back when I was giving speeches about SELinux. I'd put my IP address and root password on the blackboard at the conference. Someone once managed to drop a file into the root home directory due to a policy configuration error. That's as far as anyone has ever gotten.
I've not been doing SELinux for a few years, so I don't have a box around. But you can check if Russell's play machine is still up:
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/play.html
The issue here is they are then handing it to the end user, possibly the criminal end user who can then poke and prod at it endlessly.
And?
Security by obscurity is worthless anyways. Nobody can hack your machine because he could examine it. He can maybe hack it a bit quicker, but if he can hack it after examination, he could hack it without.
It's likely some group of researchers will find a way to break it quickly, and publish a paper on it.
Great! Then the problem can be fixed. Ideally, this happens before it hits the mass-market. If not, you'll have to upgrade existing devices. For a government mandated device, that's not half as troublesome as for private/commercial crap.
I doubt this system will be very secure because of it's nature alone, it needs to be cheap, easy and work in various circumstances, the cost of cryptology will be too high.
Economics 101: The cost of a solid crypto and hardware system is a one-time cost. Divided by the number of vehicles that'll use it over, say, the next ten years, it'll probably come out to less than a burger.