XMPP is nifty, but it's also TCP based. TCP transport has some pathologies in low latency work, specifically for things like waiting to resend data that's been dropped. Classically things like position updates get stale fast, so you don't care about resending data. More recent data is already ready to go. The XMPP protocol is oriented towards a persistent connection. In fact, you're supposed to tear down the XMPP session if the underlying TCP socket is closed.
TCP also has some problems scaling since it's unicast. Multicast would be better, but its deployment penetration has not set the world afire. Maybe workable as a server-to-server protocol, or using an overlay multicast network.
This is a classic problem that efficient XML Interchange (EXI, nee binary XML) should address. The problem with compression of text XML via gzip is the latency and CPU cycles involved in the decompression, and, less obviously, the data binding step. Once you decompress the XML you still typically need to parse the XML and convert the text representation of "17" into a binary integer or floating point representation of 17.
EXI is simply another representation of XML that is not entirely text. If you've got a schema for it the messages transmitted are fairly compact.
Aside from the fact that Reynolds is no conservative--he's often said he looks forward to an age when married gay couples have closets full of assault rifles--the underlying premise of the above comment is even sillier. Reynold's opinion on knobs should be ignored because of his views on the Iraq war? What does that have to do with anything?
There isn't necessarily much of a distinction between "chinese government supported" and "commercial spam botnet operator". Someone like the Chinese government could easily contract with the spambot operators to get the latest sploits. It's not like either party is noted for their scruples.
The basic problem is that Linux installs spew a zillion freakin' files across the filesystem, and keeping track of them and their interactions is a mess.
OS X has applications (drag & drop, self-contained) and system-level frameworks for shared stuff. All nicely compartmentalized. If you want auto-update you can just retrofit an rss feed to the system.
God, Slashdot is awful whenever it ventures outside technology.
The terrorists in Iraq can't easily get satellite data from elsewhere. Yes, someone could mail off a request to Kronos, but that isn't the same as sitting in an internet cafe and downloading the lat/long of a mess hall inside a base so you can target 107 mm rockets and mortars from outside the wire. Since the insurgency in Iraq is not extremely sophisticated in the sense that someone in Damascus orders a cell in Mosul to attack a base and provides them with the overhead photos and GPS coordinates, this is a significant intelligence asset to the terrorists. This furthers the aims of a savage, anti-liberal, anti-western, anti-modern insurgency that any right-thinking human would want to see defeated.
On the other hand, what is the benefit to having the imagery up on the web? Very little, aside from some mild curiosity on the part of westerners. Plus some idiot technophiles on slashdot who don't know anyone actually at risk in Iraq, and are so reflexively wedded to their techno-toys that they're willing to see American and British troops killed, and potentially see Iraq plunged back into a savage dictatorship that will serve as a terrorist base for further attacks on the US.
The problem is the quote isn't even remotely related to the 4th amendment, which, for example, makes no mention whatsoever of a jury approving a search warrant.
Is is so difficult to copy and paste from the actual text? Jayzus.
The problem is that slashdot readers are pig-ignorant about law and the constitution. I've seen at least four butchered versions of the fourth amendment posted so far. And that only requires a copy-and-paste from any of thousands of sites on the web. God help us if the readers try to figure out that things like "unreasonable" are also in the 4th. The strategy of slashdot lately seems to be to post something and then let the bozos vent at length.
This is why slashdot is such a waste of time these days. Or, more accurately, even MORE of a waste of time. Someone posts an obviously butchered, incorrrect version of the 4th amendment and it gets modded to "insightful". Slashdot is not the place to go for constitutional or legal analysis, but it seems to be increasingly filled with idiots opining about it at considerable length anyway. What happened to articles about, you know, technology?
Exactly. If someone mails a leaky container of plutonium the post office can open it up before it poisons their workforce, and the CIA can open the mail for foreign intelligence reasons, just as the feds have been able to do and have been doing for centuries. It's a bunch of fear-mongering.
"The gov abandoned the idea of a state regulated militia in favor of a federally regulated national guard."
No, they didn't. That's completely false.
First of all, the National Guard is dual-headed entity; it's both a state militia and a reserve component of the US armed forces. Until federalized it's a state militia controlled by the state governor.
Second, the state militias still exist, often called "State Guards." These are NOT elements of the US army or the National Guard and are controlled entirely by the state governor, unless and until called into national service by the President per the Constitution's militia clauses. The Texas State Guard and California State Guard are two examples.
Third, explictly enumerated rights or powers don't disappear simply because of disuse. There are any other numbers of objections as well; the 2nd revers to a "right", which devolves to persons, not a "power" which devolves to governmental organizations. It also revers to "the people", which is deployed as a term of art in the constitution, a three-party document with the federal government, state governments, and the people.
The Supreme Court said no such thing about foreigners and the 6th amendment. The Hamdan case turned on congress's power to define the mlitary commisons under which detainees could be tried. And congress has just defined exactly that.
Perhaps you can point out the part of the consitution that specifies foreigners who have never been on US territory are afforded full rights of US citizens.
In fact, in US vs. Verdugo-Urquidez and other cases the Supreme Court has made it quite clear that non-US citizens not on US soil have next to no protections offered by the US Constitution. To say otherwise would bring us to the ridiculous position of the 82nd airborne needing a US court warrant before they kick in the door of a shack in Afghanistan in the middle of a firefight.
From Verdugo: "The Fourth Amendment does not apply to the search and seizure by United States agents of property owned by a nonresident alien and located in a foreign country".
It would apply even less so in the middle of a war.
It's actually closer to a violation of international norms. Geneva sets out a series of tests that a combatant must pass before they are accorded POW status, including wearing recognizable insignia, carrying arms openly, and belonging to an organized group that answers to a chain of command and follows the norms of warfare. Al qaeda fails all those tests, hence no POW status for them.
I don't believe it applies to only foreign enemy combatants. During WWII there were a number of US citizens who were captured while fighting for the other side. They were either tossed in a cage for the duration or tried for espionage by military commissions as well. And yet, the Republic managed to survive.
If you think you're going to get arrested for posting to Slashdot you've got a screw loose.
That's right. If Osama doesn't like it he can sign a surrender document on the deck of the Missouri.
In fact, there are three review procedures for detainees. they are initially screened on arrival; once a year they are screened again to determine if they are still a risk; and, in the case of detainees who have committed war crimes, such as KSM, tribunals are being put in place to try them and perhaps permanently detain them even if Osama does sign a surrender document. All this is completely within the ambit of wartime powers of the president.
They don't get Geneva protections because they don't meet the criteria. They're unlawful combatants, and thus don't get the better-than-normal protection of members of enemy armed forces who comply with the laws of war.
God, the level of political comment on Slashdot has dropped to abysmal levels.
The detainees are unlawful combatants. We didn't offer habeus corpus to German POWs during WWII, either. They didn't get lawyers, they got tossed into a cage for the duration. The Republic seems to have survived.
Offering the full, baroque level of procedural protections to jihadists picked up on the battlefield is nothing short of insane. The 82nd Airborne are not cops, and they won't offer a Miranda warning and a lawyer to Joe Jihad when they capture him.
Before software goes onto NMCI it has to be certified. The certification process is obscure and not well documented, so the people doing the certification clean up--it takes around $30K of contractor work to get the software certified. It's full employment for DoD contractors who know something about NMCI certification.
"Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up ten planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now."
Well, aside from the several thousand dead people that would have resulted if the planes blew up.
Schneier is conflating the annoying side effects of security with the intended result of the terrorists. I'm not terrorized by waiting in line at the airport. I'm mildly annoyed and face it with bored resignation. _It isn't terrorism_.
Schneier is out of his depth here. Why should we accept his pronouncement that "not focusing on specific plots" is a correct approach to anti-terror policy? He's trading on his deserved repuation in crypto to comment on areas on which his expertise has no bearing.
Slashdot Mirror
XMPP is nifty, but it's also TCP based. TCP transport has some pathologies in low latency work, specifically for things like waiting to resend data that's been dropped. Classically things like position updates get stale fast, so you don't care about resending data. More recent data is already ready to go. The XMPP protocol is oriented towards a persistent connection. In fact, you're supposed to tear down the XMPP session if the underlying TCP socket is closed.
TCP also has some problems scaling since it's unicast. Multicast would be better, but its deployment penetration has not set the world afire. Maybe workable as a server-to-server protocol, or using an overlay multicast network.
This is a classic problem that efficient XML Interchange (EXI, nee binary XML) should address. The problem with compression of text XML via gzip is the latency and CPU cycles involved in the decompression, and, less obviously, the data binding step. Once you decompress the XML you still typically need to parse the XML and convert the text representation of "17" into a binary integer or floating point representation of 17. EXI is simply another representation of XML that is not entirely text. If you've got a schema for it the messages transmitted are fairly compact.
...In that case we're doomed.
Aside from the fact that Reynolds is no conservative--he's often said he looks forward to an age when married gay couples have closets full of assault rifles--the underlying premise of the above comment is even sillier. Reynold's opinion on knobs should be ignored because of his views on the Iraq war? What does that have to do with anything?
Word confirmation: "ideology".
Heh.
There isn't necessarily much of a distinction between "chinese government supported" and "commercial spam botnet operator". Someone like the Chinese government could easily contract with the spambot operators to get the latest sploits. It's not like either party is noted for their scruples.
The basic problem is that Linux installs spew a zillion freakin' files across the filesystem, and keeping track of them and their interactions is a mess.
OS X has applications (drag & drop, self-contained) and system-level frameworks for shared stuff. All nicely compartmentalized. If you want auto-update you can just retrofit an rss feed to the system.
What next for slashdot? 9/11 conspiracy theories? Sheesh. I guess as long as it drives traffic the owners will be happy.
God, Slashdot is awful whenever it ventures outside technology.
The terrorists in Iraq can't easily get satellite data from elsewhere. Yes, someone could mail off a request to Kronos, but that isn't the same as sitting in an internet cafe and downloading the lat/long of a mess hall inside a base so you can target 107 mm rockets and mortars from outside the wire. Since the insurgency in Iraq is not extremely sophisticated in the sense that someone in Damascus orders a cell in Mosul to attack a base and provides them with the overhead photos and GPS coordinates, this is a significant intelligence asset to the terrorists. This furthers the aims of a savage, anti-liberal, anti-western, anti-modern insurgency that any right-thinking human would want to see defeated.
On the other hand, what is the benefit to having the imagery up on the web? Very little, aside from some mild curiosity on the part of westerners. Plus some idiot technophiles on slashdot who don't know anyone actually at risk in Iraq, and are so reflexively wedded to their techno-toys that they're willing to see American and British troops killed, and potentially see Iraq plunged back into a savage dictatorship that will serve as a terrorist base for further attacks on the US.
It should be easy to get an ssh terminal running on this thing. In fact, I think you could get X running on it.
An obvious home run. Crackberrys are history. Every admin is going to be leashed to one of these things.
The problem is the quote isn't even remotely related to the 4th amendment, which, for example, makes no mention whatsoever of a jury approving a search warrant.
Is is so difficult to copy and paste from the actual text? Jayzus.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016398.php
0 061220-6.html
for a lawyer's view of the signing statement.
The actual signing statement is here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/2
The problem is that slashdot readers are pig-ignorant about law and the constitution. I've seen at least four butchered versions of the fourth amendment posted so far. And that only requires a copy-and-paste from any of thousands of sites on the web. God help us if the readers try to figure out that things like "unreasonable" are also in the 4th. The strategy of slashdot lately seems to be to post something and then let the bozos vent at length.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016398.php
for an actual lawyers view of the subject.
This is why slashdot is such a waste of time these days. Or, more accurately, even MORE of a waste of time. Someone posts an obviously butchered, incorrrect version of the 4th amendment and it gets modded to "insightful". Slashdot is not the place to go for constitutional or legal analysis, but it seems to be increasingly filled with idiots opining about it at considerable length anyway. What happened to articles about, you know, technology?
Exactly. If someone mails a leaky container of plutonium the post office can open it up before it poisons their workforce, and the CIA can open the mail for foreign intelligence reasons, just as the feds have been able to do and have been doing for centuries. It's a bunch of fear-mongering.
"The gov abandoned the idea of a state regulated militia in favor of a federally regulated national guard." No, they didn't. That's completely false. First of all, the National Guard is dual-headed entity; it's both a state militia and a reserve component of the US armed forces. Until federalized it's a state militia controlled by the state governor. Second, the state militias still exist, often called "State Guards." These are NOT elements of the US army or the National Guard and are controlled entirely by the state governor, unless and until called into national service by the President per the Constitution's militia clauses. The Texas State Guard and California State Guard are two examples. Third, explictly enumerated rights or powers don't disappear simply because of disuse. There are any other numbers of objections as well; the 2nd revers to a "right", which devolves to persons, not a "power" which devolves to governmental organizations. It also revers to "the people", which is deployed as a term of art in the constitution, a three-party document with the federal government, state governments, and the people.
The Supreme Court said no such thing about foreigners and the 6th amendment. The Hamdan case turned on congress's power to define the mlitary commisons under which detainees could be tried. And congress has just defined exactly that.
Perhaps you can point out the part of the consitution that specifies foreigners who have never been on US territory are afforded full rights of US citizens.
In fact, in US vs. Verdugo-Urquidez and other cases the Supreme Court has made it quite clear that non-US citizens not on US soil have next to no protections offered by the US Constitution. To say otherwise would bring us to the ridiculous position of the 82nd airborne needing a US court warrant before they kick in the door of a shack in Afghanistan in the middle of a firefight.
From Verdugo: "The Fourth Amendment does not apply to the search and seizure by United States agents of property owned by a nonresident alien and located in a foreign country".
It would apply even less so in the middle of a war.
It's actually closer to a violation of international norms. Geneva sets out a series of tests that a combatant must pass before they are accorded POW status, including wearing recognizable insignia, carrying arms openly, and belonging to an organized group that answers to a chain of command and follows the norms of warfare. Al qaeda fails all those tests, hence no POW status for them.
I don't believe it applies to only foreign enemy combatants. During WWII there were a number of US citizens who were captured while fighting for the other side. They were either tossed in a cage for the duration or tried for espionage by military commissions as well. And yet, the Republic managed to survive.
If you think you're going to get arrested for posting to Slashdot you've got a screw loose.
That's right. If Osama doesn't like it he can sign a surrender document on the deck of the Missouri.
In fact, there are three review procedures for detainees. they are initially screened on arrival; once a year they are screened again to determine if they are still a risk; and, in the case of detainees who have committed war crimes, such as KSM, tribunals are being put in place to try them and perhaps permanently detain them even if Osama does sign a surrender document. All this is completely within the ambit of wartime powers of the president.
They don't get Geneva protections because they don't meet the criteria. They're unlawful combatants, and thus don't get the better-than-normal protection of members of enemy armed forces who comply with the laws of war.
God, the level of political comment on Slashdot has dropped to abysmal levels. The detainees are unlawful combatants. We didn't offer habeus corpus to German POWs during WWII, either. They didn't get lawyers, they got tossed into a cage for the duration. The Republic seems to have survived. Offering the full, baroque level of procedural protections to jihadists picked up on the battlefield is nothing short of insane. The 82nd Airborne are not cops, and they won't offer a Miranda warning and a lawyer to Joe Jihad when they capture him.
It's a money scam, but the perp isn't Microsoft.
Before software goes onto NMCI it has to be certified. The certification process is obscure and not well documented, so the people doing the certification clean up--it takes around $30K of contractor work to get the software certified. It's full employment for DoD contractors who know something about NMCI certification.
And in patently obvious ways.
"Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up ten planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now."
Well, aside from the several thousand dead people that would have resulted if the planes blew up.
Schneier is conflating the annoying side effects of security with the intended result of the terrorists. I'm not terrorized by waiting in line at the airport. I'm mildly annoyed and face it with bored resignation. _It isn't terrorism_.
Schneier is out of his depth here. Why should we accept his pronouncement that "not focusing on specific plots" is a correct approach to anti-terror policy? He's trading on his deserved repuation in crypto to comment on areas on which his expertise has no bearing.
"Emerging neo-fascist society?" Sheesh. Get a grip.