First you are missing the point. If you have access to the exchange of course you can listen. This either requires a warrant, or some good social engineering skills. However intercepting between mobile and base station is untraceable and can be done by anybody. By tabloid journalists, criminals, jealous spouses, or somebody that just wants to cause mischief.
Second it is A5/3 which has been broken. A5/1 is used in Europe and A5/2 outside (the US probably uses a modified A5/1 with reduced key length to allow real-time NSA intercepts) for standard GSM voice calls. A5/1 is still secure as far as we know.
AES became a standard on November 26, 2001. The GSM standard was published in 1990, over 10 years earlier. The fact AES is NSA approved means security agencies can probably crack it in reasonable time, but it should certainly be strong enough for most uses.
Only by Opera standards. Even then Firefox extensions are worth the bloat.
"no internal resource (extensions, etc.) memory management"
Why would any user care about this?
"No multiprocess ability"
Slashdot is the best place to post this. I'm pretty fed up with 50 Firefox tabs freezing for 10 seconds every time I click on a Slashdot link.
"Slow user interface"
Certainly not noticed this. I can quite easily have a dozen windows open with 50+ tabs total and it's still responsive (as long as I avoid Slashdot) on a netbook.
"Archaic code base"
Again why would a user care about this? Every code base is 'archaic' the moment you do your first maintenance release. I've never seen any software I've had to maintain I haven't thought I could code better. Which is easy in retrospect. But rewriting will consume an indeterminate amount of man-hours and then will suffer the same fate. I used to use my own web browser which I wrote myself. The jump in complexity going from HTTP 1.0 to 1.1 was obscene, and that was over a decade ago. Then trying to fix a browser to work with a site just because it works with Explorer, even though Explorer is broken? Unfortunately "mature/stable" and "cutting edge" are not compatible.
"Hell, even Microsoft is rumored to be working on a replacement for Internet Explorer due to architectural issues."
No point comparing yourself to the lowest common denominator. When Microsoft was turning out that junk IE3, I was with Acorn who produced !Browse which blew it away performance-wise. I can tell you that the latter team was *significantly* smaller.
"I'm not saying the gecko engine and/or Firefox can't be fixed, but from history, I think it's pretty safe to say that Mozilla won't be able to accompish what needs to be done."
You haven't defined 'fixed' or 'what needs to be done'.
"Just look how long it took them to get from 3.0 to 3.5, and how relatively marginal the improvements were (though they were improvements)."
They made it more stable, faster, provided an upgrade path so the authors of my plugins were able to update them. They are going to provide embedded video and svg so I can ditch Flash, which kills the performance of my computer. The only think I would like is for xmarks to also remember my plugins and their configuration, so when I install Firefox somewhere I don't have to reinstall them all. Other than that, what improvements should I be asking for?
Maybe I am misremembering, but my memories of Opera 'tabs' were initially a clunky Windows MDI system. Firefox was the first browser I used that had proper usable tabs. It was also the first browser with a nice array for plugins. The first with a decent ad-blocking system. My first native 64-bit browser. It has had its fair share of innovations. Thanks to the plugins there have been plenty of super innovations (flashblock, xmarks, autopager, etc), so I agree with your last point. However, remember the origins of Firefox. It was supposed to be a less bloated version of Seamonkey. It was supposed to be evolution, not revolution. You are projecting your own desires onto somebody else's project. For me personally, Firefox has exceeded my expectations.
And if you'd bought your goods before 31st Dec 2009 you only had to pay 15% VAT instead of 19.6% in France. However Gordon Brown has decided the recession is over and the economy is back to tip-top shape so it is back to 17.5% in the UK.
A lot of providers have a cheap option, which is limited to something like 8Mbps and 40GB/month, for about $10/month and a more expensive unlimited 24Mbps for around $20/month. The former is more for the 'silver surfer' that will just occasionally check email from the grandkids.
The majority of people will find something like this useful as they spend most of their time either at home or in the office. It combines the beauty of having your cellphone available anywhere, yet making 95% of your calls free. However it won't take off as the cellphone providers will just bundle enough minutes to not make it worth it. Here in the UK you can pay £30/month for unlimited calls and sms. More expensive but less hassle.
It gives the appearance that if enough cash is paid into Mandelson's pocket, a corporation can have their own state backed 'enforcers' with the sole purpose of protecting a revenue stream. All at the tax-payers expense. It rather makes a sham of the governments consultation in which people were sympathetic but clearly showed the recording industry is not a special case and should sort out its own problems.
The BBC is both producer and distributer. Maybe it should be split into "BBC TV" and "BBC Production"? After Dirac leading to a Windows only iPlayer I think we can dismiss their 'research' department.
The license could pay basic infrastructure costs for "BBC TV" running the distribution infrastructure (transmitters, etc). If they want to play the silly "ratings war" games they are playing, then they can buy up foreign commercial pap and be allowed to play a couple of adverts before and afterwards to pay for it. This would mean tax payers money isn't being sucked abroad for rubbish reality tv shows.
Most of the money goes into "BBC Production". This produces content as per their remit. This then goes to to "BBC TV" and is played for free, or is licensed to foreign TV stations. As soon as it is broadcast it is then put up for free on the BBC torrent site unrestricted. It is not even worth blocking foreign IPs, getting more private worldwide viewers will put pressure on other TV stations to license the content from the BBC.
Just food for thought, I am sure there may be problems with this I haven't thought of.
However, there is no major study disproving a link between garden gnomes and cancer. In fact, extensive searching shows no studies at all from which we can infer they are being suppressed. Whether this cover-up is by the government or by corporations is yet to be determined, but in the mean time there is no harm in warning the public that garden gnomes MIGHT cause cancer. And possibly syphilis.
This is disappointing. The States has been well known for a while as the most hostile and least welcoming country in the world. I refuse to fly to the States after all the awful stories I've heard from friends that have been there (border control, the people are apparently fantastic once actually inside). However a Canadian friend suggested I fly to Canada and drive to New York (somewhere I would like to visit). However, after everybody pretty much backing up the posted story with their experiences, I guess that is out too. Not a huge loss, as the States is just one small place and there are thousands of other more friendly places to go to, but still it's a shame to cross something from my To Do list for such a reason.
If you watch police beating up innocent people, often the victim tries to get out of range. This is an unwelcome interruption to sadistic pleasures, and so the shirt of the victim may be grabbed. The tension between the two opposing forces can cause the aforementioned shirt to be rendered asunder. The victim then finds themselves "half naked". When no longer cocooned within a warm environment, such as a motor vehicle, this can be be an unpleasant experience and possibly deleterious.
Everybody in the services industry has a difficult job, and we all have bad days or come across obnoxious people we have to deal with. However I don't expect a waitress to spit in somebody's food, for a computer technician to hide kiddie porn on a drive whilst 'fixing' it, or a policeman to abuse and torture civilians by tasers or in this case pepper spray and fists.
Health insurance companies have the bucks and the incentive to purchase this information. Doing a search for this could flag you and possibly bump up your health premiums. In your hypothetical world, a person has a strong disincentive to look up his symptoms to find possible causes hence possibly costing lives. If the person then claims it is "for a friend" this could possibly start a witch-hunt and unfairly cast suspicions on those close.
Join Scientology. Then claim the files were posted online as a falsified attack by somebody that disagrees with your religious beliefs. The web site will be shut down in no time.
Biometrics can be used for prevention but also detection. The scanner may not be doing a comparison at all but just recording the fingerprint. Simply a digital way of "signing in". If another employee or an outsider logs in under a false employee number then at least you now have recorded evidence. And implementing this will be dirt cheap.
That is a massively damaging statement by Eric Schmidt, especially considering the large amount of personal data held by the company. Acceptable statements would be "If a user is committing an illegal activity, we have to comply with local laws" or "If law enforcement turns up with a warrant for personal information then we will be obliged to turn it over".
However, ""If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" is (if not taken out of context, I am waiting for a statement from Google) kamikaze. I would also be interested to hear a response from Bing, and what their privacy policy is. I love Google, but I wouldn't be crazy enough to carry on using them if that really is their policy.
Google offering free DNS makes sense for everybody: a) it is a low cost / low bandwidth service Google can integrate into its infrastructure for negligible cost, and the public get free reliable DNS b) ISPs are 'stealing' search traffic by hijacking millions of misspelled domains, Google can try and eliminate this fraud which will more than cover the costs of (a) c) why do people need to invent a (c)?
At the end of the day, Google's money-spinner is ads on search results. The free DNS is a move to protect this. As people write above, a bonus side-effect is that makes life easier for developers of sites and browsers when ISPs don't corrupt the RFCs.
He's not a fool because, faced with internet censorship in his country, he decides to use OpenDNS that works for him now. At least he is doing something. When it fails, then he can turn his ingenuity to finding the latest innovation for privacy protection that does work. sexconker does not appear to appreciate the cat-and-mouse game that those that live in oppressive regimes have to play.
Slashdot Mirror
First you are missing the point. If you have access to the exchange of course you can listen. This either requires a warrant, or some good social engineering skills. However intercepting between mobile and base station is untraceable and can be done by anybody. By tabloid journalists, criminals, jealous spouses, or somebody that just wants to cause mischief.
Second it is A5/3 which has been broken. A5/1 is used in Europe and A5/2 outside (the US probably uses a modified A5/1 with reduced key length to allow real-time NSA intercepts) for standard GSM voice calls. A5/1 is still secure as far as we know.
Phillip.
AES became a standard on November 26, 2001. The GSM standard was published in 1990, over 10 years earlier. The fact AES is NSA approved means security agencies can probably crack it in reasonable time, but it should certainly be strong enough for most uses.
Phillip.
If you can still access your information on the phone, and it can still make and receive calls, then it's not broken. Just damaged.
Phillip.
"Bloated, lots of memory use"
Only by Opera standards. Even then Firefox extensions are worth the bloat.
"no internal resource (extensions, etc.) memory management"
Why would any user care about this?
"No multiprocess ability"
Slashdot is the best place to post this. I'm pretty fed up with 50 Firefox tabs freezing for 10 seconds every time I click on a Slashdot link.
"Slow user interface"
Certainly not noticed this. I can quite easily have a dozen windows open with 50+ tabs total and it's still responsive (as long as I avoid Slashdot) on a netbook.
"Archaic code base"
Again why would a user care about this? Every code base is 'archaic' the moment you do your first maintenance release. I've never seen any software I've had to maintain I haven't thought I could code better. Which is easy in retrospect. But rewriting will consume an indeterminate amount of man-hours and then will suffer the same fate. I used to use my own web browser which I wrote myself. The jump in complexity going from HTTP 1.0 to 1.1 was obscene, and that was over a decade ago. Then trying to fix a browser to work with a site just because it works with Explorer, even though Explorer is broken? Unfortunately "mature/stable" and "cutting edge" are not compatible.
"Hell, even Microsoft is rumored to be working on a replacement for Internet Explorer due to architectural issues."
No point comparing yourself to the lowest common denominator. When Microsoft was turning out that junk IE3, I was with Acorn who produced !Browse which blew it away performance-wise. I can tell you that the latter team was *significantly* smaller.
"I'm not saying the gecko engine and/or Firefox can't be fixed, but from history, I think it's pretty safe to say that Mozilla won't be able to accompish what needs to be done."
You haven't defined 'fixed' or 'what needs to be done'.
"Just look how long it took them to get from 3.0 to 3.5, and how relatively marginal the improvements were (though they were improvements)."
They made it more stable, faster, provided an upgrade path so the authors of my plugins were able to update them. They are going to provide embedded video and svg so I can ditch Flash, which kills the performance of my computer. The only think I would like is for xmarks to also remember my plugins and their configuration, so when I install Firefox somewhere I don't have to reinstall them all. Other than that, what improvements should I be asking for?
Phillip.
Maybe I am misremembering, but my memories of Opera 'tabs' were initially a clunky Windows MDI system. Firefox was the first browser I used that had proper usable tabs. It was also the first browser with a nice array for plugins. The first with a decent ad-blocking system. My first native 64-bit browser. It has had its fair share of innovations. Thanks to the plugins there have been plenty of super innovations (flashblock, xmarks, autopager, etc), so I agree with your last point. However, remember the origins of Firefox. It was supposed to be a less bloated version of Seamonkey. It was supposed to be evolution, not revolution. You are projecting your own desires onto somebody else's project. For me personally, Firefox has exceeded my expectations.
Phillip.
And if you'd bought your goods before 31st Dec 2009 you only had to pay 15% VAT instead of 19.6% in France. However Gordon Brown has decided the recession is over and the economy is back to tip-top shape so it is back to 17.5% in the UK.
Phillip.
A lot of providers have a cheap option, which is limited to something like 8Mbps and 40GB/month, for about $10/month and a more expensive unlimited 24Mbps for around $20/month. The former is more for the 'silver surfer' that will just occasionally check email from the grandkids.
Phillip.
The majority of people will find something like this useful as they spend most of their time either at home or in the office. It combines the beauty of having your cellphone available anywhere, yet making 95% of your calls free. However it won't take off as the cellphone providers will just bundle enough minutes to not make it worth it. Here in the UK you can pay £30/month for unlimited calls and sms. More expensive but less hassle.
Phillip.
It gives the appearance that if enough cash is paid into Mandelson's pocket, a corporation can have their own state backed 'enforcers' with the sole purpose of protecting a revenue stream. All at the tax-payers expense. It rather makes a sham of the governments consultation in which people were sympathetic but clearly showed the recording industry is not a special case and should sort out its own problems.
Phillip.
I've not tried it myself, but I've heard good things about OpenShot. I'd be interested to hear what people on here think about it.
Phillip.
The BBC is both producer and distributer. Maybe it should be split into "BBC TV" and "BBC Production"? After Dirac leading to a Windows only iPlayer I think we can dismiss their 'research' department.
The license could pay basic infrastructure costs for "BBC TV" running the distribution infrastructure (transmitters, etc). If they want to play the silly "ratings war" games they are playing, then they can buy up foreign commercial pap and be allowed to play a couple of adverts before and afterwards to pay for it. This would mean tax payers money isn't being sucked abroad for rubbish reality tv shows.
Most of the money goes into "BBC Production". This produces content as per their remit. This then goes to to "BBC TV" and is played for free, or is licensed to foreign TV stations. As soon as it is broadcast it is then put up for free on the BBC torrent site unrestricted. It is not even worth blocking foreign IPs, getting more private worldwide viewers will put pressure on other TV stations to license the content from the BBC.
Just food for thought, I am sure there may be problems with this I haven't thought of.
Phillip.
The BBC has had 845 people jailed last year alone. In Ireland, 220 were jailed over the last 5 years.
Phillip
However, there is no major study disproving a link between garden gnomes and cancer. In fact, extensive searching shows no studies at all from which we can infer they are being suppressed. Whether this cover-up is by the government or by corporations is yet to be determined, but in the mean time there is no harm in warning the public that garden gnomes MIGHT cause cancer. And possibly syphilis.
Phillip.
This is disappointing. The States has been well known for a while as the most hostile and least welcoming country in the world. I refuse to fly to the States after all the awful stories I've heard from friends that have been there (border control, the people are apparently fantastic once actually inside). However a Canadian friend suggested I fly to Canada and drive to New York (somewhere I would like to visit). However, after everybody pretty much backing up the posted story with their experiences, I guess that is out too. Not a huge loss, as the States is just one small place and there are thousands of other more friendly places to go to, but still it's a shame to cross something from my To Do list for such a reason.
Phillip.
did the border guards seize his clothes?
If you watch police beating up innocent people, often the victim tries to get out of range. This is an unwelcome interruption to sadistic pleasures, and so the shirt of the victim may be grabbed. The tension between the two opposing forces can cause the aforementioned shirt to be rendered asunder. The victim then finds themselves "half naked". When no longer cocooned within a warm environment, such as a motor vehicle, this can be be an unpleasant experience and possibly deleterious.
Phillip.
I don't think paying them less will improve their quality of service. Judging from other countries, it will only make them more corrupt.
Phillip.
Everybody in the services industry has a difficult job, and we all have bad days or come across obnoxious people we have to deal with. However I don't expect a waitress to spit in somebody's food, for a computer technician to hide kiddie porn on a drive whilst 'fixing' it, or a policeman to abuse and torture civilians by tasers or in this case pepper spray and fists.
Phillip.
Health insurance companies have the bucks and the incentive to purchase this information. Doing a search for this could flag you and possibly bump up your health premiums. In your hypothetical world, a person has a strong disincentive to look up his symptoms to find possible causes hence possibly costing lives. If the person then claims it is "for a friend" this could possibly start a witch-hunt and unfairly cast suspicions on those close.
Phillip.
If the organization was that concerned, they'd drop Google as the default browser.
Unless they've signed a contract.
Phillip.
Join Scientology. Then claim the files were posted online as a falsified attack by somebody that disagrees with your religious beliefs. The web site will be shut down in no time.
Phillip.
Well done. Now if you can do the same for your CO2, welcome to those making the world a better place.
Phillip.
Biometrics can be used for prevention but also detection. The scanner may not be doing a comparison at all but just recording the fingerprint. Simply a digital way of "signing in". If another employee or an outsider logs in under a false employee number then at least you now have recorded evidence. And implementing this will be dirt cheap.
Phillip.
That is a massively damaging statement by Eric Schmidt, especially considering the large amount of personal data held by the company. Acceptable statements would be "If a user is committing an illegal activity, we have to comply with local laws" or "If law enforcement turns up with a warrant for personal information then we will be obliged to turn it over".
However, ""If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" is (if not taken out of context, I am waiting for a statement from Google) kamikaze. I would also be interested to hear a response from Bing, and what their privacy policy is. I love Google, but I wouldn't be crazy enough to carry on using them if that really is their policy.
Phillip.
Google offering free DNS makes sense for everybody:
a) it is a low cost / low bandwidth service Google can integrate into its infrastructure for negligible cost, and the public get free reliable DNS
b) ISPs are 'stealing' search traffic by hijacking millions of misspelled domains, Google can try and eliminate this fraud which will more than cover the costs of (a)
c) why do people need to invent a (c)?
At the end of the day, Google's money-spinner is ads on search results. The free DNS is a move to protect this. As people write above, a bonus side-effect is that makes life easier for developers of sites and browsers when ISPs don't corrupt the RFCs.
Phillip.
He's not a fool because, faced with internet censorship in his country, he decides to use OpenDNS that works for him now. At least he is doing something. When it fails, then he can turn his ingenuity to finding the latest innovation for privacy protection that does work. sexconker does not appear to appreciate the cat-and-mouse game that those that live in oppressive regimes have to play.
Phillip.