Only problem is if it involves the Internet until it moves into the real world completely, the crook gets off.
The police pretty much refuse to both with crimes dealing with "the Internet". Why? There is no proof who exactly is behind the keyboard. How can you arrest an IP address?
I don't understand why anonymous, untracable money transfer is needed, for anyone anywhere. When such things are easily stolen because they are anonymous and untracable.
If you wanted to send money to a relative or friend would it be a problem if it was indeed tracable and only for a particular person with a confirmed identity?
OK, if you wanted to send money to an overseas blackmailer that was holding your web site hostage you might want the money to be untracable. But why do we need to foster criminal enterprises?
Law enforcement isn't all that hep on even tracking down the mules. I'd be happier if the network got "rolled up" as soon as discovered. This would (a) limit the losses to some extent and (b) make it pretty clear to prospective mules that this is not a money-making opportunity.
I just recently got a fake check and the general attitude was that it wasn't a priority because I didn't lose any money. Not sure what they would have done had the scam run to a successful conclusion, because it wouldn't be any more tracible then either.
Unfortunately, the way the US elections are managed, we can have some type of "instant results" from voting machines or we can just let the TV News announce a winner based on exit polls and the like.
One way or the other, there will be results announced the night of the election. There is just too much ad money riding on the election coverage. It has to be relevent. And by relevent, I mean a winner has to be announced. Period.
They announced Gore as the winner in 2000. We're still getting over that. What happens this year if they announce Obama as the winner and then on Thursday the announcement comes out that, well, really, after counting all the votes for real it looks like McCain won? What do you think will happen?
Unfortunately, the cable company systems do not work that way. Their upload bandwidth is severely constricted and if you or your neighbor is running a server it could easily be sending "up" data in all of the available slots. My understanding is that for cable systems it is 10-20 to 1 for download vs. upload.
So how do you get equality here? I'd say the first step would be to eliminate cable TV wiring as an Internet provider. DSL unbalanced for upload vs. download speeds as well, so there will be no equality there.
Fiber has a chance, but the implementations that are likely are going to be weighted towards downloading bandwidth as well. Doesn't sound like any sort of equality to me.
This preferential treatment of downloading and a corresponding prohibition on high-bandwidth upstream traffic is however what the market apparently wants. Most people are perfectly happy with their web browsing and email reading Internet.
I would offer that MAD doesn't apply to Iran. The leaders are sufficiently distanced from the population at large that it very likely doesn't not concern them one bit if a large fraction of the population died in a retalitory strike.
If Iran believed they could attack Israel and wipe out 30% of their population and suffer a loss of 50% of their population in return, I believe they would do it. This is completely foreign to most people, as their government would not consider that a reasonable exchange. I don't think it has anything to do with the religion of the population either - you don't need a religion to see that the leaders in Iran are sufficiently disconnected from the population to write a bunch of them off.
Right. Payment for creativity, unless it is shrouded by something else, is gone. People will take whatever they want, however they can. And the lack of international enforcement and differing laws ensures that there can be no prosecution of any copyright, patent, or trademark laws.
As a software publisher, what this really means is that without some physical embodiment, anybody can take our software and republish it, free of cost or not, and there isn't anything that can be done about it. It means that if you spend five years creating anything that can be represented digitally, someone can take it from you and there is nothing you can do about it. Music, books, software, movies, plans, specifications, anything.
I certainly agree that copyright is pretty much dead. There isn't any way today to ensure that someone gets paid for their work when that work is available digitally. This specifically applies to GPL, which is a joke because it only applies to digital works.
Evidence of how badly ripped off you are in CD's is evident by the healthy profits made by DVD's which contain far more content, and cost far more to master and press, yet sell for nearly comparable prices.
Sorry, but today DVDs cost no more to manufacture than CDs. Virtually the same equipment is used and it is pretty much a closed process. You might be able to convince me that you are going to pay 2x for a dual-layer disc but not much more than that.
Trying to say a DVD contains "more" content than a CD fails in any terms other than bytes. You don't buy books by the pound nor do you buy concert tickets by the song. Quantative measurements do not reflect anything except a misguided attempt to justify pricing by marginal cost. You aren't paying because of what it cost to make CDs and DVDs any more than you are paying for any other creative work by what it cost to make.
You can argue about where the money goes that you are paying, but trying to say you should pay what it costs to make is saying there are no other costs. Surely "creativity" is worth something, isn't it? If you are employed to write code how would you feel about being paid by the line, as if the only effort was simply typing and nothing else was a part of what you were doing?
This is the problem with making court records, police records and the like freely available to all comers. Arrests are news. People being set free are not. Having a lawsuit filed is news. Having the case dismissed is not.
Same problem with allowing people to take pictures of police arresting people. It gets on the news, on the web, etc. and we have a whole round of "guilty until... well, forever" because there is no retraction. Sure, if the police are doing something wrong it might be handy. But think how much the TV news folks would have paid for a video of the parent's father being arrested. And what they would have done with it.
We have not reached the point where society can tolerate complete openness like this. Too many people are interested in dirt, rumors and gossip. News organizations, some at least, exist to promote this sort of thing and are in high demand because of it. And this is not confined to celebrities. You too can be famous for a day if the news decides it can make an item out of you.
I would offer a question. What happens when someone that is on some kind of watch list or no-fly list or some "suspected terrorist" list is allowed on an airplane?
Do all the passengers get to sue the airline because of increased stress?
If there is some kind of crash - for whatever reason - is the airline clearly responsible until proven otherwise?
I would say that given the legal climate in the US, this would absolutely be the case. You will notice the "flying imams" case was thrown out. I'm waiting for a case where a passenger sues successfully for the fear and stress caused by being seated next to a Muslim passenger in full Arab dress.
Face it, until some very real problems are resolved, there is a considerable degree of liability on the part of the airlines. They are not going to want this because one successful lawsuit would pretty much drive the airline out of business.
As somebody that hires developers - and has been doing so for 10+ years, there is a point but not much of one.
Work on a large open-source project might be an indication that a developer can work with others well. Work on a solitare open-source project is an indication often of a huge ego and complete inability to work with others. Not only that, but it strongly suggests the candidate eats, sleeps and codes and has no life away from the keyboard.
If you are looking for a "coding god" and this person comes along the ego might be tolerable because of the work output. In a team environment this sort of person is a disaster.
Re:No Chapter On The "Failed Off-Shoring"??
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My Job Went To India
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I keep hearing if all the company had was "imaginary property" then they didn't have anything to begin with, now did they?
Sorry, but it works both ways. If folks in the US and Europe get all our movies and music for free because "IP is dead", then basing a company on something that can be easily reproduced or reverse-engineered is just handing the folks with lower labor costs money.
Either there is value in IP or there isn't. Either it is a good thing that is it shared freely and has no value or it isn't.
China, India and most of that part of the world are just fine with the "sharing" idea. Of course, that is because they aren't investing any time in R & D work.
Logs? I seriously doubt child porn sites keep logs that are available to any authorities. This is the Internet we're talking about. Mostly, illegal acts on the Internet get a free ride because it is difficult to prove anything.
If they can find child porn on YOUR computer, then YOU have possession of it which is a crime. Assuming some incredibly intrusive ISP log that showed you downloaded a picture named LittleAnnieNaked9YrsOld.jpg would not be proof of anything. If the ISP had the picture as well as the log it would prove that SOMEONE downloaded the picture but without possession of the picture it again proves nothing.
In most cases what this is going to mean is... nothing. Most of the people out there have no idea how to encrypt their files and didn't pop for the expensive version of Vista with Bitlocker. So no encryption. This does mean you are going to see more keylogger warrants as this will be the only way to deal with people that are smart enough to encrypt.
The general tone here seems to be that the only security that is worth anything is unbreakable and it is the responsibility of the implementer to make sure any system is secure against attacks. Well, sorry but your front door lock is clearly defective by those standards. As is every single door lock the world over.
See, the security really only needs to be "good enough". What is that? Well, for a front door lock it is enough to keep homeless people out of your house. A determined thief might be able to defeat it in less than a minute but it isn't intended for that - the really determined thief might use a chainsaw to get in just as easily.
The transit system was designed to validate cards and the so-called "security" is probably more of a validation measure rather than a defense against attacks. The idea that attacking the transit system should not be done and should be illegal seems to have gotten lost. What has happened is now the door is open for anyone to duplicate this work and ride free.
So what is the transit system supposed to do? Revamp the entire system at a cost in the millions? Ignore it and hope nobody ever uses this information? I suspect neither is going to happen, but the most sensible outcome would be to replace automation with human ticket agents. Unlikely to happen. I'd guess that millions of dollars will be spent to implement an utterly new, slightly more secure, different system that requires every single piece of hardware and software to be replaced. Which will then be "cracked" within a few months and the details made available to everyone that wants to ride free. The endgame is probably closing the transit system because by its nature it cannot be made completely secure.
I doubt there is an attack-proof and cost-effective solution to the "problem" that is user-friendly and reasonable for a transit system. Why are we so hell-bent on breaking down society that we can't have people just use and pay for a transit system?
The homeless problem is caused by a lot of things, and helping doesn't solve many of them. If you have a motivated person with some self-worth they aren't going to stay homeless for long. They will find a way.
The problem is the people that are determined, one way or another, to fail at integrating into society. Sure, they might be homeless but they are also having other problems. Drugs. Psychiatric problems. Maybe they just distrust all authority so completely they cannot accept it in any form. You can't help these people much without forcing the help upon them. What do you do with the drug user that can't hold a job? About the only way to "help" them so the welfare money gets spent on rent is to confine them.
We in the US used to confine these people. They were taken care of in a fairly respectable manner in most cases. "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest" is the outlier rather than the rule. In the 1970's it was deemed that all such facilities were abusive and denied the people their rights. So they were dumped on the streets with nowhere else to go. We now have a massive homeless problem where prior to 1970 we did not.
The problem is who exactly do you hire as a "toilet lady"? Clearly the job isn't worth $100,000 a year and so nobody is really going to pay that. They might pay someone $30,000 and another $60,000 to a manager to oversee the worker. Unfortunately, the manager's job will really be to continously hire workers because the turnover will be high. Lots of money spent on properly advertising for the position in a non-discriminatory manner. Then you have to add in the taxes and other benefits. You now have spent closer to $250,000 a year on this.
Sure, if you could hire someone to do the work properly you could pay them $50,000 a year (fully loaded it would be more like $75,000 in cost). But the truth is today, you can't hire that person.
It is therefore cheaper and more efficient to figure out some way of not hiring the person at all. It leaves the government, lawyers and insurance companies out of the problem as well. You can't be sued by or on behalf of a non-existent employee.
I seriously doubt the WTO would go along with an embargo of any sort.
Then, with the way that people currently respect US law within the US, there would be all sorts of black market folks selling Chinese goods and US Customs would just continue passing the stuff as they do today. For an example, it is against US law to import unlicensed DVD players that the manufacturer is not paying license fees on. Since the fee is $5 per unit, how can anyone sell a licensed DVD player for $30 (retail)? Answer: they can't. Any player under probably $60-70 is unlicensed. Check out WalMart for lots of $30 DVD players. US Customs is certainly doing their job!
As it would in the case of any embargo. The only way to enforce it would be a naval blockade, as if that would happen.
Between the UN, the WTO and good Americans you can assume there can never be any embargo or trade sanctions against China. Impossible.
The point of piracy, beyond just "I want it now!", is the endgame is nobody gets to profit from digital media. Period. It is "shared" immediately with (maybe) one sale. From then on, it is free.
Sure, for a little while the DVDs will still be on the shelf at WalMart and available for rental at Blockbuster. But why? If everyone has a high-bandwidth Internet connection and knows the materials are available for downloading without paying, why would anyone in their right mind still go to the store and pay?
Oh, it is because they want the nifty DVD case and the FBI warnings that come on that version of the disc? I doubt it. They want the comments from the director stepping all over the dialog of the movie? How about they want the satisfaction of knowing they paid rather than just taking? No, I don't see any of these as a compelling argument in the future. I see everyone downloading after one or two people acquire the song, movie, book or software. And downloading without any guilt because they have been doing it since childhood. Their parents (perhaps dead parents) might have felt some guilt but that has been erased from the mindset of the next generation.
So how long do you think WalMart will continue to stock DVDs when sales are zero? I'd give it about a week. Same with Blockbuster - they either adapt or die. And by adapt it means getting out of the so-called business of distributing digital goods. There is no business for that any longer, or certainly will not be shortly.
I'm betting the last sale is somewhere around 2015. And after that, it will be quite different. Everything from around 1970 on forward will be freely available for downloading. Of course all the new stuff will look quite different - there won't be any big money behind new releases. There will be new releases, just the same. They will be from people that are doing it for love or for ego. And my guess is the folks doing it for ego will outnumber the ones doing it for love by 10 to 1.
One of the main problems with commercial electric vehicles has been the treatement of the batteries. The GM EV1 was classed by California as a rolling hazardous waste dump which was partly why none of them could be sold only leased. There was no other way that GM could assure the California government that the batteries would not somehow end up in a landfill.
Think about it. What are lead-acid batteries? Well, first you have the acid. It would certainly burn any child's hand if you poured some on the child. That is obviously hazardous then. Lead comes next. Lead causes all sorts of learning disabilities and is toxic. Lead has to be hazardous also. So we have a lead-acid battery which is doubly toxic and hazardous. How many of these do you need for a car? Right next to a child? Sounds like some serious regulation is needed.
From what I understand mass production of lithium batteries isn't much cleaner, and the lithium batteries themselves aren't 100% perfectly safe. So you can expect the same kind of reaction when hybrid vehicles start reaching end-of-life. It hasn't happened yet, mostly because of sheer blindness to facts - something that will certainly disappear the first time somebody puts a hybrid car into a car crusher without removing the battery first.
You can be there will be regulations in place long before there are a lot of electric vehicles on the road. Some places they might make sense, but it is doubtful there will be any sense in them in California.
Why the heck should they spend time and money on a working system? If nobody uses this information, the system works fine and it is not a problem. If they spend a huge amount of money "solving" this non-existent problem, who does that benefit?
The solution is to make sure the system is not exploited in this manner, not to make sure that it cannot be.
I would argue that it is the responsibility of the public to specifically not screw around with the system and that any security in place over the top of a fare collection system is there by accident. In other words, it should be treated as an "honor system" and what you are perceiving as "security" is merely validation to prevent errors.
I suppose you could then argue that disclosing the nature of these validations is meaningless in and of itself. However, doing so in a forum of the nature where it was to be presented clearly is offering it to individuals with the capabilities to take unfair advantage.
If I lived in Boston, or any other area where these sorts of disclosures have been made, I would object strenously to the transit authority making any changes whatsoever to "improve security". It wasn't intended to be secure from the beginning. However, I'd certainly agree with increasing penalties for anyone caught screwing the system to the point where nobody would ever want to be caught.
This is like turnstyle jumping in some ways, only it enables large numbers of people to do so without being observed by station attendents. I guess to some folks with a "grab all you can" mindset this sort of thing just begs to be exploited. Sadly, what it really means is everyone else suffers for the misdeeds of the exploiter.
I for one would really, really like to have some central authority able to disable botnets, viruses, worms, trojans and other such malicious software on Windows instantly all by remote control.
This could solve many common user problems instantly. Why do you think this might be a bad thing? Oh, they might disable BitTorrent? Probably hard to do - smart people able to use BitTorrent just might be able to work around it. Whereas your neighbor Joe Sixpack just might be able to have their spambot software turned off remotely.
Education is pointless when you have government officials dismissing the idea that you get AIDS from sex, as is the case in Africa.
Education is pointless when the gay community is beset with people that feel AIDS is just something that happens to you. I'm not saying the folks with the "gift giving" and "bug chasing" mindsets are all that common, but come on! Treating it with privacy, secrecy and protection isn't sensible either - people that have it can spread it, and they do. Sometimes intentionally. If we treated people infected with AIDS as we treated people infected with syphilis 200 years ago we would be much further ahead of the game.
AIDS is primarily a behavior-driven problem. It is harder to cure than syphilis but just as behavior driven. Most of the people that got syphilis before 1900 died from it in one way or another. And it wasn't pretty. However, syphilis wasn't viewed the way that AIDS is today because it was pretty clear how not to get syphilis even in 1700. It is just as clear today how not to get AIDS. Why is the infection rate 100 or 1000 times what the syphilis infection rate was, even factoring it by population?
Until we can convince people that it isn't fun, necessary or invitable that they will get AIDS we aren't going to do anything about it in the US. Until incredibly ignorant people stop spreading silly lies about AIDS in Africa and elsewhere, nothing is going to improve.
Trying to frame this as a rich first-world vs. poor third-world problem is pointless. For the most part, drugs that allow infected people to live longer in some places are pointless. The point is to reduce the level of infection the same way it would have been reduced long before there were antibiotics or treatments for other diseases. Why aren't we doing that?
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That is exactly what happens under Sharia law. Only the girl doesn't get jailed, she is stoned or hanged. Enticing men is strongly frowned upon.
Look for this to be enacted soon in Germany, UK and maybe Australia.
Only problem is if it involves the Internet until it moves into the real world completely, the crook gets off.
The police pretty much refuse to both with crimes dealing with "the Internet". Why? There is no proof who exactly is behind the keyboard. How can you arrest an IP address?
I don't understand why anonymous, untracable money transfer is needed, for anyone anywhere. When such things are easily stolen because they are anonymous and untracable.
If you wanted to send money to a relative or friend would it be a problem if it was indeed tracable and only for a particular person with a confirmed identity?
OK, if you wanted to send money to an overseas blackmailer that was holding your web site hostage you might want the money to be untracable. But why do we need to foster criminal enterprises?
Law enforcement isn't all that hep on even tracking down the mules. I'd be happier if the network got "rolled up" as soon as discovered. This would (a) limit the losses to some extent and (b) make it pretty clear to prospective mules that this is not a money-making opportunity.
I just recently got a fake check and the general attitude was that it wasn't a priority because I didn't lose any money. Not sure what they would have done had the scam run to a successful conclusion, because it wouldn't be any more tracible then either.
Unfortunately, the way the US elections are managed, we can have some type of "instant results" from voting machines or we can just let the TV News announce a winner based on exit polls and the like.
One way or the other, there will be results announced the night of the election. There is just too much ad money riding on the election coverage. It has to be relevent. And by relevent, I mean a winner has to be announced. Period.
They announced Gore as the winner in 2000. We're still getting over that. What happens this year if they announce Obama as the winner and then on Thursday the announcement comes out that, well, really, after counting all the votes for real it looks like McCain won? What do you think will happen?
Unfortunately, the cable company systems do not work that way. Their upload bandwidth is severely constricted and if you or your neighbor is running a server it could easily be sending "up" data in all of the available slots. My understanding is that for cable systems it is 10-20 to 1 for download vs. upload.
So how do you get equality here? I'd say the first step would be to eliminate cable TV wiring as an Internet provider. DSL unbalanced for upload vs. download speeds as well, so there will be no equality there.
Fiber has a chance, but the implementations that are likely are going to be weighted towards downloading bandwidth as well. Doesn't sound like any sort of equality to me.
This preferential treatment of downloading and a corresponding prohibition on high-bandwidth upstream traffic is however what the market apparently wants. Most people are perfectly happy with their web browsing and email reading Internet.
I would offer that MAD doesn't apply to Iran. The leaders are sufficiently distanced from the population at large that it very likely doesn't not concern them one bit if a large fraction of the population died in a retalitory strike.
If Iran believed they could attack Israel and wipe out 30% of their population and suffer a loss of 50% of their population in return, I believe they would do it. This is completely foreign to most people, as their government would not consider that a reasonable exchange. I don't think it has anything to do with the religion of the population either - you don't need a religion to see that the leaders in Iran are sufficiently disconnected from the population to write a bunch of them off.
Right. Payment for creativity, unless it is shrouded by something else, is gone. People will take whatever they want, however they can. And the lack of international enforcement and differing laws ensures that there can be no prosecution of any copyright, patent, or trademark laws.
As a software publisher, what this really means is that without some physical embodiment, anybody can take our software and republish it, free of cost or not, and there isn't anything that can be done about it. It means that if you spend five years creating anything that can be represented digitally, someone can take it from you and there is nothing you can do about it. Music, books, software, movies, plans, specifications, anything.
I certainly agree that copyright is pretty much dead. There isn't any way today to ensure that someone gets paid for their work when that work is available digitally. This specifically applies to GPL, which is a joke because it only applies to digital works.
I believe they were based on floppy discs. Remember, these came from 1980, not 1993 as the summary seems to suggest.
Check out the book at http://www.infinadyne.com/cddvdforensicsbook.html
Sorry, but today DVDs cost no more to manufacture than CDs. Virtually the same equipment is used and it is pretty much a closed process. You might be able to convince me that you are going to pay 2x for a dual-layer disc but not much more than that.
Trying to say a DVD contains "more" content than a CD fails in any terms other than bytes. You don't buy books by the pound nor do you buy concert tickets by the song. Quantative measurements do not reflect anything except a misguided attempt to justify pricing by marginal cost. You aren't paying because of what it cost to make CDs and DVDs any more than you are paying for any other creative work by what it cost to make.
You can argue about where the money goes that you are paying, but trying to say you should pay what it costs to make is saying there are no other costs. Surely "creativity" is worth something, isn't it? If you are employed to write code how would you feel about being paid by the line, as if the only effort was simply typing and nothing else was a part of what you were doing?
This is the problem with making court records, police records and the like freely available to all comers. Arrests are news. People being set free are not. Having a lawsuit filed is news. Having the case dismissed is not.
Same problem with allowing people to take pictures of police arresting people. It gets on the news, on the web, etc. and we have a whole round of "guilty until ... well, forever" because there is no retraction. Sure, if the police are doing something wrong it might be handy. But think how much the TV news folks would have paid for a video of the parent's father being arrested. And what they would have done with it.
We have not reached the point where society can tolerate complete openness like this. Too many people are interested in dirt, rumors and gossip. News organizations, some at least, exist to promote this sort of thing and are in high demand because of it. And this is not confined to celebrities. You too can be famous for a day if the news decides it can make an item out of you.
I would offer a question. What happens when someone that is on some kind of watch list or no-fly list or some "suspected terrorist" list is allowed on an airplane?
Do all the passengers get to sue the airline because of increased stress?
If there is some kind of crash - for whatever reason - is the airline clearly responsible until proven otherwise?
I would say that given the legal climate in the US, this would absolutely be the case. You will notice the "flying imams" case was thrown out. I'm waiting for a case where a passenger sues successfully for the fear and stress caused by being seated next to a Muslim passenger in full Arab dress.
Face it, until some very real problems are resolved, there is a considerable degree of liability on the part of the airlines. They are not going to want this because one successful lawsuit would pretty much drive the airline out of business.
As somebody that hires developers - and has been doing so for 10+ years, there is a point but not much of one.
Work on a large open-source project might be an indication that a developer can work with others well. Work on a solitare open-source project is an indication often of a huge ego and complete inability to work with others. Not only that, but it strongly suggests the candidate eats, sleeps and codes and has no life away from the keyboard.
If you are looking for a "coding god" and this person comes along the ego might be tolerable because of the work output. In a team environment this sort of person is a disaster.
I keep hearing if all the company had was "imaginary property" then they didn't have anything to begin with, now did they?
Sorry, but it works both ways. If folks in the US and Europe get all our movies and music for free because "IP is dead", then basing a company on something that can be easily reproduced or reverse-engineered is just handing the folks with lower labor costs money.
Either there is value in IP or there isn't. Either it is a good thing that is it shared freely and has no value or it isn't.
China, India and most of that part of the world are just fine with the "sharing" idea. Of course, that is because they aren't investing any time in R & D work.
Logs? I seriously doubt child porn sites keep logs that are available to any authorities. This is the Internet we're talking about. Mostly, illegal acts on the Internet get a free ride because it is difficult to prove anything.
If they can find child porn on YOUR computer, then YOU have possession of it which is a crime. Assuming some incredibly intrusive ISP log that showed you downloaded a picture named LittleAnnieNaked9YrsOld.jpg would not be proof of anything. If the ISP had the picture as well as the log it would prove that SOMEONE downloaded the picture but without possession of the picture it again proves nothing.
In most cases what this is going to mean is ... nothing. Most of the people out there have no idea how to encrypt their files and didn't pop for the expensive version of Vista with Bitlocker. So no encryption. This does mean you are going to see more keylogger warrants as this will be the only way to deal with people that are smart enough to encrypt.
The general tone here seems to be that the only security that is worth anything is unbreakable and it is the responsibility of the implementer to make sure any system is secure against attacks. Well, sorry but your front door lock is clearly defective by those standards. As is every single door lock the world over.
See, the security really only needs to be "good enough". What is that? Well, for a front door lock it is enough to keep homeless people out of your house. A determined thief might be able to defeat it in less than a minute but it isn't intended for that - the really determined thief might use a chainsaw to get in just as easily.
The transit system was designed to validate cards and the so-called "security" is probably more of a validation measure rather than a defense against attacks. The idea that attacking the transit system should not be done and should be illegal seems to have gotten lost. What has happened is now the door is open for anyone to duplicate this work and ride free.
So what is the transit system supposed to do? Revamp the entire system at a cost in the millions? Ignore it and hope nobody ever uses this information? I suspect neither is going to happen, but the most sensible outcome would be to replace automation with human ticket agents. Unlikely to happen. I'd guess that millions of dollars will be spent to implement an utterly new, slightly more secure, different system that requires every single piece of hardware and software to be replaced. Which will then be "cracked" within a few months and the details made available to everyone that wants to ride free. The endgame is probably closing the transit system because by its nature it cannot be made completely secure.
I doubt there is an attack-proof and cost-effective solution to the "problem" that is user-friendly and reasonable for a transit system. Why are we so hell-bent on breaking down society that we can't have people just use and pay for a transit system?
The homeless problem is caused by a lot of things, and helping doesn't solve many of them. If you have a motivated person with some self-worth they aren't going to stay homeless for long. They will find a way.
The problem is the people that are determined, one way or another, to fail at integrating into society. Sure, they might be homeless but they are also having other problems. Drugs. Psychiatric problems. Maybe they just distrust all authority so completely they cannot accept it in any form. You can't help these people much without forcing the help upon them. What do you do with the drug user that can't hold a job? About the only way to "help" them so the welfare money gets spent on rent is to confine them.
We in the US used to confine these people. They were taken care of in a fairly respectable manner in most cases. "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest" is the outlier rather than the rule. In the 1970's it was deemed that all such facilities were abusive and denied the people their rights. So they were dumped on the streets with nowhere else to go. We now have a massive homeless problem where prior to 1970 we did not.
The problem is who exactly do you hire as a "toilet lady"? Clearly the job isn't worth $100,000 a year and so nobody is really going to pay that. They might pay someone $30,000 and another $60,000 to a manager to oversee the worker. Unfortunately, the manager's job will really be to continously hire workers because the turnover will be high. Lots of money spent on properly advertising for the position in a non-discriminatory manner. Then you have to add in the taxes and other benefits. You now have spent closer to $250,000 a year on this.
Sure, if you could hire someone to do the work properly you could pay them $50,000 a year (fully loaded it would be more like $75,000 in cost). But the truth is today, you can't hire that person.
It is therefore cheaper and more efficient to figure out some way of not hiring the person at all. It leaves the government, lawyers and insurance companies out of the problem as well. You can't be sued by or on behalf of a non-existent employee.
I seriously doubt the WTO would go along with an embargo of any sort.
Then, with the way that people currently respect US law within the US, there would be all sorts of black market folks selling Chinese goods and US Customs would just continue passing the stuff as they do today. For an example, it is against US law to import unlicensed DVD players that the manufacturer is not paying license fees on. Since the fee is $5 per unit, how can anyone sell a licensed DVD player for $30 (retail)? Answer: they can't. Any player under probably $60-70 is unlicensed. Check out WalMart for lots of $30 DVD players. US Customs is certainly doing their job!
As it would in the case of any embargo. The only way to enforce it would be a naval blockade, as if that would happen.
Between the UN, the WTO and good Americans you can assume there can never be any embargo or trade sanctions against China. Impossible.
The point of piracy, beyond just "I want it now!", is the endgame is nobody gets to profit from digital media. Period. It is "shared" immediately with (maybe) one sale. From then on, it is free.
Sure, for a little while the DVDs will still be on the shelf at WalMart and available for rental at Blockbuster. But why? If everyone has a high-bandwidth Internet connection and knows the materials are available for downloading without paying, why would anyone in their right mind still go to the store and pay?
Oh, it is because they want the nifty DVD case and the FBI warnings that come on that version of the disc? I doubt it. They want the comments from the director stepping all over the dialog of the movie? How about they want the satisfaction of knowing they paid rather than just taking? No, I don't see any of these as a compelling argument in the future. I see everyone downloading after one or two people acquire the song, movie, book or software. And downloading without any guilt because they have been doing it since childhood. Their parents (perhaps dead parents) might have felt some guilt but that has been erased from the mindset of the next generation.
So how long do you think WalMart will continue to stock DVDs when sales are zero? I'd give it about a week. Same with Blockbuster - they either adapt or die. And by adapt it means getting out of the so-called business of distributing digital goods. There is no business for that any longer, or certainly will not be shortly.
I'm betting the last sale is somewhere around 2015. And after that, it will be quite different. Everything from around 1970 on forward will be freely available for downloading. Of course all the new stuff will look quite different - there won't be any big money behind new releases. There will be new releases, just the same. They will be from people that are doing it for love or for ego. And my guess is the folks doing it for ego will outnumber the ones doing it for love by 10 to 1.
One of the main problems with commercial electric vehicles has been the treatement of the batteries. The GM EV1 was classed by California as a rolling hazardous waste dump which was partly why none of them could be sold only leased. There was no other way that GM could assure the California government that the batteries would not somehow end up in a landfill.
Think about it. What are lead-acid batteries? Well, first you have the acid. It would certainly burn any child's hand if you poured some on the child. That is obviously hazardous then. Lead comes next. Lead causes all sorts of learning disabilities and is toxic. Lead has to be hazardous also. So we have a lead-acid battery which is doubly toxic and hazardous. How many of these do you need for a car? Right next to a child? Sounds like some serious regulation is needed.
From what I understand mass production of lithium batteries isn't much cleaner, and the lithium batteries themselves aren't 100% perfectly safe. So you can expect the same kind of reaction when hybrid vehicles start reaching end-of-life. It hasn't happened yet, mostly because of sheer blindness to facts - something that will certainly disappear the first time somebody puts a hybrid car into a car crusher without removing the battery first.
You can be there will be regulations in place long before there are a lot of electric vehicles on the road. Some places they might make sense, but it is doubtful there will be any sense in them in California.
Why the heck should they spend time and money on a working system? If nobody uses this information, the system works fine and it is not a problem. If they spend a huge amount of money "solving" this non-existent problem, who does that benefit?
The solution is to make sure the system is not exploited in this manner, not to make sure that it cannot be.
I would argue that it is the responsibility of the public to specifically not screw around with the system and that any security in place over the top of a fare collection system is there by accident. In other words, it should be treated as an "honor system" and what you are perceiving as "security" is merely validation to prevent errors.
I suppose you could then argue that disclosing the nature of these validations is meaningless in and of itself. However, doing so in a forum of the nature where it was to be presented clearly is offering it to individuals with the capabilities to take unfair advantage.
If I lived in Boston, or any other area where these sorts of disclosures have been made, I would object strenously to the transit authority making any changes whatsoever to "improve security". It wasn't intended to be secure from the beginning. However, I'd certainly agree with increasing penalties for anyone caught screwing the system to the point where nobody would ever want to be caught.
This is like turnstyle jumping in some ways, only it enables large numbers of people to do so without being observed by station attendents. I guess to some folks with a "grab all you can" mindset this sort of thing just begs to be exploited. Sadly, what it really means is everyone else suffers for the misdeeds of the exploiter.
I for one would really, really like to have some central authority able to disable botnets, viruses, worms, trojans and other such malicious software on Windows instantly all by remote control.
This could solve many common user problems instantly. Why do you think this might be a bad thing? Oh, they might disable BitTorrent? Probably hard to do - smart people able to use BitTorrent just might be able to work around it. Whereas your neighbor Joe Sixpack just might be able to have their spambot software turned off remotely.
Think about it.
Education is pointless when the gay community is beset with people that feel AIDS is just something that happens to you. I'm not saying the folks with the "gift giving" and "bug chasing" mindsets are all that common, but come on! Treating it with privacy, secrecy and protection isn't sensible either - people that have it can spread it, and they do. Sometimes intentionally. If we treated people infected with AIDS as we treated people infected with syphilis 200 years ago we would be much further ahead of the game.
AIDS is primarily a behavior-driven problem. It is harder to cure than syphilis but just as behavior driven. Most of the people that got syphilis before 1900 died from it in one way or another. And it wasn't pretty. However, syphilis wasn't viewed the way that AIDS is today because it was pretty clear how not to get syphilis even in 1700. It is just as clear today how not to get AIDS. Why is the infection rate 100 or 1000 times what the syphilis infection rate was, even factoring it by population?
Until we can convince people that it isn't fun, necessary or invitable that they will get AIDS we aren't going to do anything about it in the US. Until incredibly ignorant people stop spreading silly lies about AIDS in Africa and elsewhere, nothing is going to improve.
Trying to frame this as a rich first-world vs. poor third-world problem is pointless. For the most part, drugs that allow infected people to live longer in some places are pointless. The point is to reduce the level of infection the same way it would have been reduced long before there were antibiotics or treatments for other diseases. Why aren't we doing that?