Yeah, see, and here's the thing... information, just like any other inanimate object, doesn't want anything. it simply *is*, and personifying it is akin to using the passive voice to try and sound authoritative when you're really just pushing your own opinion.
There is no real reason that everyone should be able to know everything all the time. First off, that's on its face impossible, and when less hyperbolic is merely impractical. Plus, the facts of the matter are: - Most people aren't interested in actually knowing what's going on - Most people aren't clued in to understand even if they suddenly develop an interest - Facts without context aren't particularly helpful - Some things shouldn't be known by some people (particularly the proverbial "them"; the outsider. the "not us")
Would it be nice if citizens had more information about the workings of their government? yes. and on domestic policy that's totally fine. However, documents dealing with the prosecution of a war are different, and putting them on the internet is completely irresponsible. This should be perfectly evident by the fact that the Taliban have stated their intention, and probably have already started, killing Afghan civilians who are mentioned as helping NATO forces.
So, now we have a situation where people who were helping us are going to get killed for helping us. That makes our job over there harder as we won't have those sources, and people are going to be a lot less willing to cooperate in the future because what if another pissed off nerd who never should have joined the army decides he's going to go all Deep Throat and leaks those names onto the internet, thinking he's doing something noble?
Well, you know, I think I'm OK with *NOT* having that information if it means there is less chance that those people are going to be killed and that the job that my friends over there are doing is going to become harder than it already was.
Information wants to be free my ass. This isn't a math formula and isn't a basic, universal truth about the universe. Some stuff needs to be secret. Loose lips sink ships and all that jazz.
I caught the tail end of using BBSs, probably well after they were really dead, and mostly just 'cause. I did the Fidonet thing from time to time, and I made a lot of boxes back in the day. Telenet was still running and had local access dial-ins when I was in 7th and 8th grade, and I'd jump on there and some of the other old X.25 networks, hit in global outdials and make my free international calls that way.
Thus increasing the ease of seizing their property under the guise of a Coast Guard inspection/quaranteen, firing on them at sea, sinking them and blaming it on pirates/terrorists, etc? Sounds like a good plan to me.
Well, my point was more that, say, 15 years ago EVERYONE who wanted to be on the internet at home either had to shell out a shit ton of money for a leased line, or it was modem central. Everyone had to deal with setting up PPP, knowing whether their ISP supported PAP or CHAP in the configuration, Windowsers installing Winsock TCP/IP separately, because it wasn't built into the OS, etc.
Even normal people had to get a bit of a right of initiation just to get things working. For people like us, that wasn't that big of a deal. In fact, that's probably why I'm still working in computers today. But, progress has come at a price for us, too. My story about my local, dial-in ISP sort of brings this into perspective.
I got to hang out with the network admins who explained everything to me, showed me how it all went together, got me interested in using Unix and taught me what to do with it. You can't exactly just go down to Cox and get to see their infrastructure, have them show you diagrams of their WAN cloud, etc. That's all hidden away now.
My cable line is 15Mbps down, so about 14 channel-bonded T1 links, and I don't even pay $40 a month for that. Thats great, but because I'm limited in my access to the network (no shell account, no friendship with the admins, no getting to see the racks), I really don't know too much about it. I'm not really that interested in it as a result, because what's the point? I'd have to go work there to get to see anything, but how do I know that its something I really want to work with if I don't know what's going on?
So, basically, the younger "normal" people just look at their always-on internet connection as a public utility. They've never been without it. People my age and older, no matter what their interest level, had to fuss with stuff which was not always straight forward just to get basic connectivity going, and even then it was sort of spotty due to the nature of dial-up.
You're also part of a self-selected group which is not only more skilled at technology, but which has a higher degree of interest in it in general. You're basically skewed data.
I'm 26. We got our first dial-up internet connection when I was in 6th grade. I was tracked 'gifted and talented', and so got to do cooler science and math projects, and having the internet, even on 28.8k dial-up, was a major boost for me. (later I got 33.6 and 56k that only really ran at about 49-50k; broadband wasn't available in my area until my sophomore year of college, and then it didn't matter for me most of the time anyway). I was introduced to FreeBSD by the guys who ran my ISP, and then later to Linux which I've never really learned to like as much. I got to watch one day when the telco guys came to add a an additional T3 at the demarc, which was a big deal for scalability because they then added in a bunch more modem banks since they could handle the capacity.
I mention that because my "generation" grew up hearing carrier tones and having to do more things manually, with slower bandwidth. The "modern internet" by-and-large works so much more easily and at higher rates, that it doesn't take so much effort to get things done. Thus, most people never have to think about it.
Hell, I've talked to professional computer people in their earlier 20s, say 20-22, who think that 'kermit' is just a Muppet. That's truly sad.
UVA is a state school, but is sometimes called the "public Ivy" (Bobby and Ted Kennedy both went to law school there after Harvard). UVA and William & Marry cater more to the polo shirt and pearl set crowd than other state schools here like VCU, ODU, etc, which are more what one would consider "public".
Everyone I know that went to UVA came from a fairly well-to-do background, or had insane amounts of financial aid. A couple of my friends had full-ride scholarships + stipends for undergraduate to UVA.
I would be surprised if more than 10% of the students there couldn't afford a Mac if they wanted one.
Given the general attitude re: wikileaks around here, I'm having a hard time telling whether you'd think wikileaks getting this would be good in "stick it to the man" kind of way or bad in "z0mg, data on all the kids in Britain is free for the taking" kind of way.
I thought that bankruptcy didn't get you out of debt with the government? It's possible that I'm mistaken, or that laws are just different in CA, since I've never had to declare bankruptcy. But, yeah, he'll probably not do the full 4 years.
Well, I use my IronKey also for work stuff, which needs that level of security from time to time. Allegedly, the potting is meant to prevent the physical tampering that you describe, but I'm not going to take mine apart to see. At least I know it makes it waterproof for any reasonable amount of water that I'd encounter.
No, its understood. My passwords for all my online financial information, email addresses, user accounts and server root passwords are all randomly generated. They are stored in a keepassx database and locked with a passphrase that I know. The keepassx database is kept on my ironkey, which is locked with a passphrase that I know. I also have the passwords backed up in the IronKey password locker for when I'm on strange systems, especially those which use Windows, as those utilities on the IronKey only work with Windows (grr...).
I understand that it be a wicked long time before they crack the passphrase, and that a good passphrase is key. Mine is pretty amazingly awesome (long, case switching, numbers for letters, all that good stuff) but I still feel better knowing that there is a hard limit on the short side that prevents a successful attack.
The problem with Truecrypt is that the volume is portable and they can run a dictionary attack against the passphrase at their leisure. I roll with an IronKey, with hardware-driven AES encryption. After 10 unsuccessful attempts at entering the passphrase in a row, it destroys the key, never to be recovered again.
Also on the subject of drive encryption, I have a server here at work I built with an encrypted RAID5 array using the GELI drivers in FreeBSD. The server has to be booted with a USB drive containing the encryption key if you want the drives to come back up when you reboot the server (alternatively, you can manually mount them -- point is, you need the USB key). It's a pretty nice arrangement, too.
I agree that it's stupid. I don't think it should carry the same weight as a "real" offense (who among us hasn't had to do this before?), and at the end of the day it seems to be pretty much left to chance as to what the cop feels like and what kind of mood he's in at the time. But any jury and/or judge should be able to tell the difference between behind the dumpster in an alley at night and off the top of a jungle gym in the park onto some kids in the sandbox. They're completely different things even though they both involve "public urination"
Please note that there is a difference between a beach, where everyone is wearing fewer clothes in the first place, and where it is generally accepted that nudity is permissible, and some creep on a bus with nothing under his trench coat flashing unsuspecting girls on their way home from school.
It's not the content so much as it is the context. That's the difference between art and pornography.
Public urination involves a level of "indecent exposure." It's more like flashing, but without the same intent (probably). Should being a flasher get you a "sex offender" rap? I guess, if we're going to have the term "sex offender," a flasher would be one.
Basically, I think that if there is no intent to commit a crime, then that should be taken into consideration in sentencing, if the jury doesn't realize what an asinine state of affairs they've been roped into and acquit. Peeing down an alley beyond a dumpster, making a good-faith effort not to be seen and having the un-luck of a cop coming down just before you zip up is completely different from exposing yourself to kids on the playground humming 'aqua lung' to yourself.
I admin FreeBSD and Linux systems and do a bunch of q/a work on FreeBSD-based "black box" type networking devices for a specific type of client. I don't do a lot of dev work, what I do is mostly in Perl and BASH. I didn't mean to suggest that finding the bug in the code is easy, but that knowing when there is a problem is easier than doing anything about it.
My roll in q/a involves a lot of use-case testing, and gathering packet capture and log information for use in debugging any potential issues before a production release is rolled out. I don't do any patching of the C code base, in fact it's been months since I've had to use C for anything that wasn't just for fun.
I'd say ~20% for often. 50%+ is "usualy" and over 75% can be "most of the time" with "nearly always" reserved for over 90%. So, depending on how you want to spin this, it can be "bug submitters nearly always accept cash," or "often times, bug submitters reject cash" (rounding 15% up to 20% for often-ness). But, as I noted in a previous post, the important thing is which way the numbers are trending, not necessarily what the numbers are, when determining how good news this is. The story title is actually pretty "fair and balanced" with how it frames it.
Slashdot Mirror
No, once someone is famous murdering them is called assassination. The difference is we'd likely learn the GP's middle name, too.
Yeah, see, and here's the thing... information, just like any other inanimate object, doesn't want anything. it simply *is*, and personifying it is akin to using the passive voice to try and sound authoritative when you're really just pushing your own opinion.
There is no real reason that everyone should be able to know everything all the time. First off, that's on its face impossible, and when less hyperbolic is merely impractical. Plus, the facts of the matter are:
- Most people aren't interested in actually knowing what's going on
- Most people aren't clued in to understand even if they suddenly develop an interest
- Facts without context aren't particularly helpful
- Some things shouldn't be known by some people (particularly the proverbial "them"; the outsider. the "not us")
Would it be nice if citizens had more information about the workings of their government? yes. and on domestic policy that's totally fine. However, documents dealing with the prosecution of a war are different, and putting them on the internet is completely irresponsible. This should be perfectly evident by the fact that the Taliban have stated their intention, and probably have already started, killing Afghan civilians who are mentioned as helping NATO forces.
So, now we have a situation where people who were helping us are going to get killed for helping us. That makes our job over there harder as we won't have those sources, and people are going to be a lot less willing to cooperate in the future because what if another pissed off nerd who never should have joined the army decides he's going to go all Deep Throat and leaks those names onto the internet, thinking he's doing something noble?
Well, you know, I think I'm OK with *NOT* having that information if it means there is less chance that those people are going to be killed and that the job that my friends over there are doing is going to become harder than it already was.
Information wants to be free my ass. This isn't a math formula and isn't a basic, universal truth about the universe. Some stuff needs to be secret. Loose lips sink ships and all that jazz.
I caught the tail end of using BBSs, probably well after they were really dead, and mostly just 'cause. I did the Fidonet thing from time to time, and I made a lot of boxes back in the day. Telenet was still running and had local access dial-ins when I was in 7th and 8th grade, and I'd jump on there and some of the other old X.25 networks, hit in global outdials and make my free international calls that way.
Thus increasing the ease of seizing their property under the guise of a Coast Guard inspection/quaranteen, firing on them at sea, sinking them and blaming it on pirates/terrorists, etc? Sounds like a good plan to me.
Yes, could it have been Ku Klux Klan members, and ranking Democrats, such as Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond? Methinks so...
The last time Democrats in this country had balls, they seceded from the union to keep their slaves.
Well, my point was more that, say, 15 years ago EVERYONE who wanted to be on the internet at home either had to shell out a shit ton of money for a leased line, or it was modem central. Everyone had to deal with setting up PPP, knowing whether their ISP supported PAP or CHAP in the configuration, Windowsers installing Winsock TCP/IP separately, because it wasn't built into the OS, etc.
Even normal people had to get a bit of a right of initiation just to get things working. For people like us, that wasn't that big of a deal. In fact, that's probably why I'm still working in computers today. But, progress has come at a price for us, too. My story about my local, dial-in ISP sort of brings this into perspective.
I got to hang out with the network admins who explained everything to me, showed me how it all went together, got me interested in using Unix and taught me what to do with it. You can't exactly just go down to Cox and get to see their infrastructure, have them show you diagrams of their WAN cloud, etc. That's all hidden away now.
My cable line is 15Mbps down, so about 14 channel-bonded T1 links, and I don't even pay $40 a month for that. Thats great, but because I'm limited in my access to the network (no shell account, no friendship with the admins, no getting to see the racks), I really don't know too much about it. I'm not really that interested in it as a result, because what's the point? I'd have to go work there to get to see anything, but how do I know that its something I really want to work with if I don't know what's going on?
So, basically, the younger "normal" people just look at their always-on internet connection as a public utility. They've never been without it. People my age and older, no matter what their interest level, had to fuss with stuff which was not always straight forward just to get basic connectivity going, and even then it was sort of spotty due to the nature of dial-up.
You're also part of a self-selected group which is not only more skilled at technology, but which has a higher degree of interest in it in general. You're basically skewed data.
I'm 26. We got our first dial-up internet connection when I was in 6th grade. I was tracked 'gifted and talented', and so got to do cooler science and math projects, and having the internet, even on 28.8k dial-up, was a major boost for me. (later I got 33.6 and 56k that only really ran at about 49-50k; broadband wasn't available in my area until my sophomore year of college, and then it didn't matter for me most of the time anyway). I was introduced to FreeBSD by the guys who ran my ISP, and then later to Linux which I've never really learned to like as much. I got to watch one day when the telco guys came to add a an additional T3 at the demarc, which was a big deal for scalability because they then added in a bunch more modem banks since they could handle the capacity.
I mention that because my "generation" grew up hearing carrier tones and having to do more things manually, with slower bandwidth. The "modern internet" by-and-large works so much more easily and at higher rates, that it doesn't take so much effort to get things done. Thus, most people never have to think about it.
Hell, I've talked to professional computer people in their earlier 20s, say 20-22, who think that 'kermit' is just a Muppet. That's truly sad.
I did not go to ODU, nor VCU and I share your opinion of both.
UVA is a state school, but is sometimes called the "public Ivy" (Bobby and Ted Kennedy both went to law school there after Harvard). UVA and William & Marry cater more to the polo shirt and pearl set crowd than other state schools here like VCU, ODU, etc, which are more what one would consider "public".
Everyone I know that went to UVA came from a fairly well-to-do background, or had insane amounts of financial aid. A couple of my friends had full-ride scholarships + stipends for undergraduate to UVA.
I would be surprised if more than 10% of the students there couldn't afford a Mac if they wanted one.
Given the general attitude re: wikileaks around here, I'm having a hard time telling whether you'd think wikileaks getting this would be good in "stick it to the man" kind of way or bad in "z0mg, data on all the kids in Britain is free for the taking" kind of way.
All the cool kids are using 'pf' these days: https://cipitunk.wordpress.com/2007/07/07/ipfw-vs-pf/
I thought that bankruptcy didn't get you out of debt with the government? It's possible that I'm mistaken, or that laws are just different in CA, since I've never had to declare bankruptcy. But, yeah, he'll probably not do the full 4 years.
The song is about a pedo. "sitting on a park bench (duh-nah-nuh) eying little girls with bad intent". Was that not obvious?
Stan: Oh my God! They killed Kenny!
Kyle: You BASTARDS!
Well, I use my IronKey also for work stuff, which needs that level of security from time to time. Allegedly, the potting is meant to prevent the physical tampering that you describe, but I'm not going to take mine apart to see. At least I know it makes it waterproof for any reasonable amount of water that I'd encounter.
No, its understood. My passwords for all my online financial information, email addresses, user accounts and server root passwords are all randomly generated. They are stored in a keepassx database and locked with a passphrase that I know. The keepassx database is kept on my ironkey, which is locked with a passphrase that I know. I also have the passwords backed up in the IronKey password locker for when I'm on strange systems, especially those which use Windows, as those utilities on the IronKey only work with Windows (grr...).
I understand that it be a wicked long time before they crack the passphrase, and that a good passphrase is key. Mine is pretty amazingly awesome (long, case switching, numbers for letters, all that good stuff) but I still feel better knowing that there is a hard limit on the short side that prevents a successful attack.
The problem with Truecrypt is that the volume is portable and they can run a dictionary attack against the passphrase at their leisure. I roll with an IronKey, with hardware-driven AES encryption. After 10 unsuccessful attempts at entering the passphrase in a row, it destroys the key, never to be recovered again.
Also on the subject of drive encryption, I have a server here at work I built with an encrypted RAID5 array using the GELI drivers in FreeBSD. The server has to be booted with a USB drive containing the encryption key if you want the drives to come back up when you reboot the server (alternatively, you can manually mount them -- point is, you need the USB key). It's a pretty nice arrangement, too.
Unless someone who hated him uploaded some photos of someone else's kids in an attempt to frame him...
I agree that it's stupid. I don't think it should carry the same weight as a "real" offense (who among us hasn't had to do this before?), and at the end of the day it seems to be pretty much left to chance as to what the cop feels like and what kind of mood he's in at the time. But any jury and/or judge should be able to tell the difference between behind the dumpster in an alley at night and off the top of a jungle gym in the park onto some kids in the sandbox. They're completely different things even though they both involve "public urination"
Please note that there is a difference between a beach, where everyone is wearing fewer clothes in the first place, and where it is generally accepted that nudity is permissible, and some creep on a bus with nothing under his trench coat flashing unsuspecting girls on their way home from school.
It's not the content so much as it is the context. That's the difference between art and pornography.
Public urination involves a level of "indecent exposure." It's more like flashing, but without the same intent (probably). Should being a flasher get you a "sex offender" rap? I guess, if we're going to have the term "sex offender," a flasher would be one.
Basically, I think that if there is no intent to commit a crime, then that should be taken into consideration in sentencing, if the jury doesn't realize what an asinine state of affairs they've been roped into and acquit. Peeing down an alley beyond a dumpster, making a good-faith effort not to be seen and having the un-luck of a cop coming down just before you zip up is completely different from exposing yourself to kids on the playground humming 'aqua lung' to yourself.
I admin FreeBSD and Linux systems and do a bunch of q/a work on FreeBSD-based "black box" type networking devices for a specific type of client. I don't do a lot of dev work, what I do is mostly in Perl and BASH. I didn't mean to suggest that finding the bug in the code is easy, but that knowing when there is a problem is easier than doing anything about it.
My roll in q/a involves a lot of use-case testing, and gathering packet capture and log information for use in debugging any potential issues before a production release is rolled out. I don't do any patching of the C code base, in fact it's been months since I've had to use C for anything that wasn't just for fun.
I'd say ~20% for often. 50%+ is "usualy" and over 75% can be "most of the time" with "nearly always" reserved for over 90%. So, depending on how you want to spin this, it can be "bug submitters nearly always accept cash," or "often times, bug submitters reject cash" (rounding 15% up to 20% for often-ness). But, as I noted in a previous post, the important thing is which way the numbers are trending, not necessarily what the numbers are, when determining how good news this is. The story title is actually pretty "fair and balanced" with how it frames it.