Why isn't municipal wiress (trust me, we're talking only wireless here) popping up all over?
In Tempe, AZ they put up a municipal wireless and I believe it is still in operation. However, the use is almost exclusively ASU students. I believe the system is free to use and is run by the city as a service for the college students in the ASU area.
In Chandler, AZ a company put together a similar system that was going to be charged for. They never got that far. The use of the system was minimal and subscribers (home and office connections requiring purchase of a transceiver) never amounted to any significant number. The system sits broadcasting an SSID but nobody wants to put up the money to connect it to anything. The original operator closed up shop when they figured out there wasn't going to be enough subscribers to pay for the operation.
This is the same story all over. It can be done as a gift to the population, tax-supported or forget it. It will never pay for itself.
One big reason is the nature of wireless. You get the bandwidth divided by the users and it can never get any better than that. So if there are 10 users on a 54Mb/sec B/G system everyone gets 5.4Mb/sec - more true today because people are using the Internet in ways that consume bandwidth capacity in far steadier ways than before where it was in brief bursts. Well, that is enough to run a Netflix HD stream. So what happens when there are 50 users? Or 100?
The Chandler system (there is a router on a light pole right outside my office) is a mesh with every router having three antennas - one of which is likely to link the system together outside of the 2.4Ghz band or at least well away from the B/G frequencies. This makes it very practical to install because all you need for an access point is power. However, the total bandwidth available in the entire system is likely the same, with all users everywhere sharing it. This doesn't work out very well for higher usage levels. I suspect one reason it never caught on is even operating unannounced and unknown by most people it was slow. If they ever made a big announcement there might have been thousands of users all competing for the same 54Mb/sec bandwidth space.
Sorry, but for large numbers of users wireless simply doesn't work. Need convincing? Have you been to a hotel lately?
So the logical thing to do is outlaw or re-regulate (out of existance) long-distance trucking. Logical that is, if you want a rail system.
What is going to go along with a revitalization of rail transit in the US is chopping down vast swaths of homes as well, so you better keep that in mind. Our elected officials made a deal starting around 1940 or so that was "Roads for Rails" - literally the right-of-way was ripped up and a highway built in its place. Or, the rail right-of-way was ripped up and homes put in where it was. The rather fanciful notion that rail transit can make some kind of comeback in the US is going to mean bulldozing a lot of homes that happen to be in the way. Fortunately, nearly all of those homes are going to be unoccupied these days.
So maybe this is the right time? Well, we better get on it. Because with the prices of homes at the lowest they have been in at least 40 years all is it is going to take is a surge of immigration in the wake of "immigration reform" that Obama wants and these homes will be sold to new occupants. It would then be racist and politically impossible to kick the new immigrants out of their homes in favor of putting down rails.
Now a far more drastic policy would be to rip up the Interstate highway system and replace it with rails. I don't think anyone is going to propose that with a straight face.
Don't forget - you need to show at least $25,000 worth of damages before anyone at a federal level will pay any attention at all. If you do not have even $25,000 worth of trumped-up lots-of-consulting-hours damages then it isn't worth their time.
You have hit upon the answer. It isn't profitable to prosecute minors for low-level crimes. It doesn't help anyone's career. You need to wait until the perp does something that will make the career needle move, or at least provide for some more prison guard employment.
Yes I used to wonder about the motivation for not even giving the script-kiddie a hand-slap in response to attempted breaking and entering, computer-style. I finally figured it out that at least 70-80% are going to go on and do something really serious later in life and they would much rather catch them at that. Of course, they aren't going to catch them unless they brag about it anyway.
Look, if Prop 65 wasn't enough to make you move already, this is nothing.
How many customers want to enter some place with a sign that says "Come in and you might die!" Of course, nobody really pays any attention to it anymore because in reality every store, manufacturing facility or office needs to have one of these signs. Why? Well, for starters how about laser printer toner? It is certainly carcinogenic even in small quantities. Of course, you aren't supposed to eat it or breathe it in, but you aren't supposed to be tasting the car batteries at a auto shop either. Both will kill you just as dead.
Did you know that CDs and DVDs have chemicals in them? That's right, they are made with CHEMICALS. Well, some of those a certainly known to cause cancer in large enough quantities. So any business using CDs and DVDs has to post a Prop. 65 sign.
You know, the ones that say if you go in here that you are going to die and the State of California knows it. Heck, I can't think if a better way to keep people out of an office or a store. I have been thinking of posting one of those to discourage solicitors even though I am in Arizona. Fortunately, nobody that is a customer ever comes to see us. Most businesses however would like to see an occaisonal customer and having them run away in fear isn't going to do them any good at all.
So of course anyone with a business of any sort that involves CHEMICALS needs to leave California ASAP. It will make the state a lot more livable for the folks left.
I think you could easily justify requiring that sign on a bakery.
Simple. The police will use sufficent force and intimidation to control the situation immediately. A burgler will not.
Warrent? That is not the problem. The problem is meth users. Making and/or distrobuting meth is illegal and most of the people dealing have lots of weapons and cash. They are subject to getting robbed all the time so anyone that comes to the door unexpectedly is assumed to be a robber and is met with deadly force, obviously including the police.
Arizona is a big, big meth state. Well, actually just about every state is big into meth these days, but I do hear about Arizona a lot.
You might think that a knock on the door with "This is the police, we have a search warrent" would deter people from shooting first and asking questions later. Nope. That is the exact phrase the robbers are going to use - they watch TV too. Badges? Look online - anyone can buy a badge. Do you know exactly what a real badge for your community looks like?
Sorry, but the meth users these days are perfectly correct - anyone could be coming to rob them. Meth also tends to make the users just a wee bit paranoid as well. All this together means that the police are never sure if they are going to run into a paranoid, armed meth user or your average homeowner. They can be prepared and control the situation or they can be dead. They are trained heavily in control.
Gun control? These people are criminals. If you want a gun, go see a criminal that is dealing in guns. No amount of laws are going to make a difference with these people, only sealing the borders to prevent guns from getting in and ending all gun manufacture in the US would make a difference. We can't keep illegal people out, so how are we going to keep illegal guns out? We're not.
Anything that is "local" is going to be up to the local police with no knowledge of how to deal with an "Internet crime". That means any crime that involves use of the Internet at all - like a bank robber sending an email saying "give me all your money or I will kill people."
Anything that crosses international borders requires a great deal of cooperation and a great deal of interest. Frankly, most 2nd-world governments think they have much better things to do than prevent 1st-worlders from getting defrauded and ripped off. If someone in their country can sell fake meds to people in the USA well, more power to them. It is bringing money into their country and it isn't hurting anyone there. Maybe it is creating jobs in their little part of the world as well so it is a benefit. So (comparatively) rich Americans are losing their money? Boo hoo.
There is no way there is going to be any cooperation on an international level because of the perception that it isn't a crime and the requirement that people be trained for crimes that are a little more complicated than sticking a gun in someone's face and demanding money.
It isn't the cops you should be worried about. Everything thing you do online has value to someone. It will provide them valuable market information. The fact that you don't click on the CNN link but do click on the Stormfront link is saleable to someone. The fact that you sort things in a list of items on Amazon by "best selling" rather than "lowest price" is worth something.
Now maybe individually these actions aren't worth much, but if a company can assemble many people's habits and actions together and offer them as a package so that trend analysis and forecasting can be done... well, how much do you think Google was able to sell the brands of the routers actually be used in Chicago for? Better yet, how much do you think the brand names of routers in Highland Park (an affluent suburb) vs. brand names of routers in Wheeling (a mostly low-income suburb with trailer parks) is worth to DLink or Belkin?
This information is going to be collected and sold and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
How about if the individual signs the executable? With a tracable identity at stake people are less likely to do criminal things. OK, it isn't 100% foolproof because some malware (I think around 5%) is signed, but I'd be happy with 95% of it disappearing off the face of the Earth, wouldn't you?
You do know that there is a Windows Marketplace, right?
There is a default link that comes with IE to the Microsoft Store.
Want to know how many people buy/download software from there? Sorry, but folks have been educated already in other ways. Nobody is going to pay attention to anything like that.
Nearly all of the tablets and other devices are locked-down appliances which cannot have software installed on them written by people desiring to own the device. This is a good thing - most people have no business being in a position to decide to install software from people that want to take over their computer - but it happens every day.
The only way out of this is to have nearly everyone using locked-down appliances.
This has nothing to do with choice of OS. There is no choice on an appliance.
They will not be pressured to delete it, they will be strongly encouraged never to install it in the first place. After all, once it is installed (in Administrator rights mode) any damage has already been done. The horse has left the barn and the barn is likely on fire.
And this is a good thing. Unfortunately, most people don't pay any attention to this. If they did botnets would be smaller.
No, applications that are not signed are more likely to be flagged but by no means is this some sort of gatekeeper.
Besides, the real point is "So?" You want to distribute something - pay the money if you want Joe Sixpack to install it. I'd be perfectly happy turning on the "signed programs only" on Windows - except Microsoft doesn't bother to sign everything. Most of MS Office is not signed, for example. Most of the executables that come with Windows (e.g., notepad.exe) are not signed. So forcing only signed executables doesn't really work, even though it is an option for Windows.
What effect does this have on distributing some command-line tool for the l33t free-software user community? None. Signing is irrelevent for anything except the Joe Sixpack community as there is a web of trust established by other things.
Anyone can get a code-signing certificate, and it isn't that expensive. It is not something that is restricted to businesses although you might have more credibility signing things as Frank's Nifty Software rather than just Frank Slobbowitz. The requirements are not strict in any way.
The problem is for a home/SMB user (who can't/won't pay for proffessional IT to make the descisions) the only real alternative would be to have those descisions made for you by a coporate overlord like sony, MS or apple.
Experiance from smartphones and games consoles shows that when corportate overlords make those kind of descisions they don't always have their users best interests at heart.
Yes, except there is no other real solution. What is needed is to get the hundreds of thousands of general-purpose computers with "open" operating systems and replace them with something like an iPad. Sure, you can add "approved" applications to your computer, but you cannot "administer" it in any meaningful way - that is done remotely, by someone else. Best of such "administration" is not needed, but whatever it is the user isn't qualified or capable of doing it right.
OK, there are a few people that need something more. They have been trained and are qualified. The rest of the people that are not trained and are not qualified should not be messing with things that result in botnets, phishing, trojans and such.
Oh, and I would have zero problems with a requirement - worldwide - that says to connect a "general-purpose" computer to the Internet you have to have a license of some sort. Something you have to prove your qualifications to get. Overnight this eliminates all spam, phishing and most everything else that we associate with evil on the Internet. Should we fail to do this the Internet can only go in one of two directions: it can be an unusable mess for 99% of the people in the world or it can be some ultra-controlled thing that exists for selling stuff only. Today we are only a small step away from it being an unusable mess.
There is only one solution to the "Israel problem" - every single Jewish person in Israel needs to be moved somewhere else. Until the land is returned to Palestinian hands there will be no peace, unless the Palestinian people are allowed to become citizens of existing Arab countries and the camps dismantled.
You do realise that the UN has been maintaining "refugee camps" for the displaced people of Palestine since 1948? The Arab states do not really want the Palestinian people but the UN has been maintaining the camps far in excess of what is actually required. It is a power grab by the UN departments that are in charge of it.
So, how about if we carve out a piece of Montana and give it to the Jews? Empty out Israel and move everyone there. Do you think that would solve the problem? For a people that believe every Jew must be killed? No, I don't really think that is a solution. Killing every Jew might work, but Hitler tried to the shame of the rest of the human race. I don't see that being implemented.
UK, Germany and Australia today have implemented Sharia law to some degree. In Germany the German courts can be circumvented through Sharia law and Muslim clerics. In Australia the police are specifically banned from intefering in cases where Sharia law has been invoked and the parties are being dealt with by clerics.
It is a part of life in these countries today. It will be a part of life in the US where we will have two distinct legal systems, one for Muslims and one for the rest of us. I don't think there is an way for an "open" society to deal with this other than to allow it.
The problem with this thinking is that if you have a school with 300 students and every single one of them grabs a cell phone in some kind of emergency and tries to make a call... they will all fail. Maybe one person will get through. Maybe, but unlikely.
Much better if the 12 teachers and 30 administration staff members have cell phones. With trying to occupy only 42 channels instead of 300 it might work and a call would go out.
Schools are empires in the making and every administrator wants to create his or her own little empire where he or she is the absolute ruler. Because of the way schools work in the US, this is the scenario for maybe 75% of the public schools today. Putting sensible people in doesn't work because they aren't paid enough to hold onto sensible people. So you get the folks that are there for the power.
Teachers aren't paid all that well for the most part either, partly because they aren't all that valued and partly because there just isn't enough money to go around at the level public schools are funded. Public school funding in the US is designed to create at least differentiation in neighborhoods if not outright segregation. High property taxes = more money for schools, whereas low property taxes = less money. So areas with high-density housing (apartments, government housing, etc.) have low taxes plus lots of children. Conversely, low-density suburban housing is extremely attractive to parents because the schools have lots of money. This results in the most crowded schools having the lowest paid teachers.
Changing the way schools are funded would mean changing the idea that low-density suburban homes are desirable, which isn't going to happen in the US any time soon.
You ever thought about banning hand guns and imprisoning anyone who carries one like the rest of the civilised world does?
Unfortunately, it is a little late for that. If we can't be bothered to secure the border to keep illegal workers out (so native folks can have jobs), how can you possibly expect that we would be able to keep guns from being imported? Similarly, we are incapable of blocking devices which are in clear violation of US patents and trademarks - they are imported every day by the containerload. So why do you think we would be able to keep guns out?
Sure, it would be illegal to have one - you can make laws like that all day long which will affect some of the population. The rest? Well, let's see... if you were going to rob a liquor store (lots of cash usually) which is already illegal might it not matter to you if you had a gun? Today it is illegal to sell a gun to someone that has already committed a felony - but felons are caught every day holding guns.
At this point in the US with porous borders and lack of enforcement of existing laws all we can do is suggest that responsible people have a responsibility to go armed. Then, when the liquor store is being robbed the owner, a customer or a passer-by can suggest to the nice robber that he gently put the gun down before getting shot. Law enforcement used to rely on the fact that "nice people just wouldn't do things like rob people", but since the 1950s or so people just haven't had all that much respect for law enforcement or the laws themselves. We also have substantial popular culture glorifying the criminals and showing law enforcement is mostly corruption and abuse. End result is there are no more "nice people" any more.
It is a proven fact that only around 20% of crimes ever result in a conviction - either the criminal isn't caught or isn't convicted after being caught. This means the odds are in favor of the criminal every time. Now because of the way things work over time with enough of a history of crime eventually people are caught and convicted - but it may take a very, very long time for this to happen. The result of this is clearly that prison is no deterrent to crime.
So where does this leave us? Banning guns takes them away from law-abiding people where they were never a problem to begin with and makes sure that every criminal knows he will never come face-to-face with someone with a gun. Therefore with a gun the criminal is king.
Right. Any attempt to reduce the size or scope of the TSA will be met with PSAs showing happy families with their children at play... and then a scene showing empty playgrounds, empty homes with foot-high grass and a line of people outside a shelter in February in Chicago. See what happens if we put these nice people out of work?
The total staff for TSA is pretty large - I'm sure it is in the tens of thousands when you add up all of the people in Washington DC, all the airports and all of the off-airport facilities. Come on, you wouldn't really want these people to be out of work and their children going hungry, would you?
That is exactly what it would take. Never going to happen.
No, the difference between doing it on paper and the web is on paper it has a lifetime of maybe 1 day. On the web it has a lifetime of, oh FOREVER.
Imagine a 30-year-old professional woman being in a promotion interview where her competition is a male jerk. He posts copies of this list with pictures of this woman as a high school student with her "rankings". Depending on the company and how male-centric they are this could easily cost her a promotion, many, many dollars and a lot of dignity.
Stuff that happens on the web is going to be there until pretty much the end of time if people are interested in looking for it. If it is even remotely popular - as this certainly will be - it will be mirrored and saved far and wide. It will follow people around for the rest of their lives.
Imagine having to live down whatever stupid stuff you did in high school all over again when you're 40. You have just described the Internet.
I see around 215 million people total with over 300 million in the US. OK, so those three countries together have 2/3rds the population of the US. Pakistan isn't that big, so it must be really, really crowded there.
Assuming a human needs a 2.5 foot square to stand on, I was in an airport yesterday where we were approaching running out of 2.5 foot squares. Amazing what a little thunderstorm does to Southwest Airlines.
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Why isn't municipal wiress (trust me, we're talking only wireless here) popping up all over?
In Tempe, AZ they put up a municipal wireless and I believe it is still in operation. However, the use is almost exclusively ASU students. I believe the system is free to use and is run by the city as a service for the college students in the ASU area.
In Chandler, AZ a company put together a similar system that was going to be charged for. They never got that far. The use of the system was minimal and subscribers (home and office connections requiring purchase of a transceiver) never amounted to any significant number. The system sits broadcasting an SSID but nobody wants to put up the money to connect it to anything. The original operator closed up shop when they figured out there wasn't going to be enough subscribers to pay for the operation.
This is the same story all over. It can be done as a gift to the population, tax-supported or forget it. It will never pay for itself.
One big reason is the nature of wireless. You get the bandwidth divided by the users and it can never get any better than that. So if there are 10 users on a 54Mb/sec B/G system everyone gets 5.4Mb/sec - more true today because people are using the Internet in ways that consume bandwidth capacity in far steadier ways than before where it was in brief bursts. Well, that is enough to run a Netflix HD stream. So what happens when there are 50 users? Or 100?
The Chandler system (there is a router on a light pole right outside my office) is a mesh with every router having three antennas - one of which is likely to link the system together outside of the 2.4Ghz band or at least well away from the B/G frequencies. This makes it very practical to install because all you need for an access point is power. However, the total bandwidth available in the entire system is likely the same, with all users everywhere sharing it. This doesn't work out very well for higher usage levels. I suspect one reason it never caught on is even operating unannounced and unknown by most people it was slow. If they ever made a big announcement there might have been thousands of users all competing for the same 54Mb/sec bandwidth space.
Sorry, but for large numbers of users wireless simply doesn't work. Need convincing? Have you been to a hotel lately?
So the logical thing to do is outlaw or re-regulate (out of existance) long-distance trucking. Logical that is, if you want a rail system.
What is going to go along with a revitalization of rail transit in the US is chopping down vast swaths of homes as well, so you better keep that in mind. Our elected officials made a deal starting around 1940 or so that was "Roads for Rails" - literally the right-of-way was ripped up and a highway built in its place. Or, the rail right-of-way was ripped up and homes put in where it was. The rather fanciful notion that rail transit can make some kind of comeback in the US is going to mean bulldozing a lot of homes that happen to be in the way. Fortunately, nearly all of those homes are going to be unoccupied these days.
So maybe this is the right time? Well, we better get on it. Because with the prices of homes at the lowest they have been in at least 40 years all is it is going to take is a surge of immigration in the wake of "immigration reform" that Obama wants and these homes will be sold to new occupants. It would then be racist and politically impossible to kick the new immigrants out of their homes in favor of putting down rails.
Now a far more drastic policy would be to rip up the Interstate highway system and replace it with rails. I don't think anyone is going to propose that with a straight face.
Don't forget - you need to show at least $25,000 worth of damages before anyone at a federal level will pay any attention at all. If you do not have even $25,000 worth of trumped-up lots-of-consulting-hours damages then it isn't worth their time.
You have hit upon the answer. It isn't profitable to prosecute minors for low-level crimes. It doesn't help anyone's career. You need to wait until the perp does something that will make the career needle move, or at least provide for some more prison guard employment.
Yes I used to wonder about the motivation for not even giving the script-kiddie a hand-slap in response to attempted breaking and entering, computer-style. I finally figured it out that at least 70-80% are going to go on and do something really serious later in life and they would much rather catch them at that. Of course, they aren't going to catch them unless they brag about it anyway.
Look, if Prop 65 wasn't enough to make you move already, this is nothing.
How many customers want to enter some place with a sign that says "Come in and you might die!" Of course, nobody really pays any attention to it anymore because in reality every store, manufacturing facility or office needs to have one of these signs. Why? Well, for starters how about laser printer toner? It is certainly carcinogenic even in small quantities. Of course, you aren't supposed to eat it or breathe it in, but you aren't supposed to be tasting the car batteries at a auto shop either. Both will kill you just as dead.
Did you know that CDs and DVDs have chemicals in them? That's right, they are made with CHEMICALS. Well, some of those a certainly known to cause cancer in large enough quantities. So any business using CDs and DVDs has to post a Prop. 65 sign.
You know, the ones that say if you go in here that you are going to die and the State of California knows it. Heck, I can't think if a better way to keep people out of an office or a store. I have been thinking of posting one of those to discourage solicitors even though I am in Arizona.
Fortunately, nobody that is a customer ever comes to see us. Most businesses however would like to see an occaisonal customer and having them run away in fear isn't going to do them any good at all.
So of course anyone with a business of any sort that involves CHEMICALS needs to leave California ASAP. It will make the state a lot more livable for the folks left.
I think you could easily justify requiring that sign on a bakery.
Why not? I believe they were started under Reagan. Certainly they were there under Clinton.
Simple. The police will use sufficent force and intimidation to control the situation immediately. A burgler will not.
Warrent? That is not the problem. The problem is meth users. Making and/or distrobuting meth is illegal and most of the people dealing have lots of weapons and cash. They are subject to getting robbed all the time so anyone that comes to the door unexpectedly is assumed to be a robber and is met with deadly force, obviously including the police.
Arizona is a big, big meth state. Well, actually just about every state is big into meth these days, but I do hear about Arizona a lot.
You might think that a knock on the door with "This is the police, we have a search warrent" would deter people from shooting first and asking questions later. Nope. That is the exact phrase the robbers are going to use - they watch TV too. Badges? Look online - anyone can buy a badge. Do you know exactly what a real badge for your community looks like?
Sorry, but the meth users these days are perfectly correct - anyone could be coming to rob them. Meth also tends to make the users just a wee bit paranoid as well. All this together means that the police are never sure if they are going to run into a paranoid, armed meth user or your average homeowner. They can be prepared and control the situation or they can be dead. They are trained heavily in control.
Gun control? These people are criminals. If you want a gun, go see a criminal that is dealing in guns. No amount of laws are going to make a difference with these people, only sealing the borders to prevent guns from getting in and ending all gun manufacture in the US would make a difference. We can't keep illegal people out, so how are we going to keep illegal guns out? We're not.
Anything that is "local" is going to be up to the local police with no knowledge of how to deal with an "Internet crime". That means any crime that involves use of the Internet at all - like a bank robber sending an email saying "give me all your money or I will kill people."
Anything that crosses international borders requires a great deal of cooperation and a great deal of interest. Frankly, most 2nd-world governments think they have much better things to do than prevent 1st-worlders from getting defrauded and ripped off. If someone in their country can sell fake meds to people in the USA well, more power to them. It is bringing money into their country and it isn't hurting anyone there. Maybe it is creating jobs in their little part of the world as well so it is a benefit. So (comparatively) rich Americans are losing their money? Boo hoo.
There is no way there is going to be any cooperation on an international level because of the perception that it isn't a crime and the requirement that people be trained for crimes that are a little more complicated than sticking a gun in someone's face and demanding money.
It isn't the cops you should be worried about. Everything thing you do online has value to someone. It will provide them valuable market information. The fact that you don't click on the CNN link but do click on the Stormfront link is saleable to someone. The fact that you sort things in a list of items on Amazon by "best selling" rather than "lowest price" is worth something.
Now maybe individually these actions aren't worth much, but if a company can assemble many people's habits and actions together and offer them as a package so that trend analysis and forecasting can be done ... well, how much do you think Google was able to sell the brands of the routers actually be used in Chicago for? Better yet, how much do you think the brand names of routers in Highland Park (an affluent suburb) vs. brand names of routers in Wheeling (a mostly low-income suburb with trailer parks) is worth to DLink or Belkin?
This information is going to be collected and sold and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
How about if the individual signs the executable? With a tracable identity at stake people are less likely to do criminal things. OK, it isn't 100% foolproof because some malware (I think around 5%) is signed, but I'd be happy with 95% of it disappearing off the face of the Earth, wouldn't you?
You do know that there is a Windows Marketplace, right?
There is a default link that comes with IE to the Microsoft Store.
Want to know how many people buy/download software from there? Sorry, but folks have been educated already in other ways. Nobody is going to pay attention to anything like that.
Nearly all of the tablets and other devices are locked-down appliances which cannot have software installed on them written by people desiring to own the device. This is a good thing - most people have no business being in a position to decide to install software from people that want to take over their computer - but it happens every day.
The only way out of this is to have nearly everyone using locked-down appliances.
This has nothing to do with choice of OS. There is no choice on an appliance.
They will not be pressured to delete it, they will be strongly encouraged never to install it in the first place. After all, once it is installed (in Administrator rights mode) any damage has already been done. The horse has left the barn and the barn is likely on fire.
And this is a good thing. Unfortunately, most people don't pay any attention to this. If they did botnets would be smaller.
No, applications that are not signed are more likely to be flagged but by no means is this some sort of gatekeeper.
Besides, the real point is "So?" You want to distribute something - pay the money if you want Joe Sixpack to install it. I'd be perfectly happy turning on the "signed programs only" on Windows - except Microsoft doesn't bother to sign everything. Most of MS Office is not signed, for example. Most of the executables that come with Windows (e.g., notepad.exe) are not signed. So forcing only signed executables doesn't really work, even though it is an option for Windows.
What effect does this have on distributing some command-line tool for the l33t free-software user community? None. Signing is irrelevent for anything except the Joe Sixpack community as there is a web of trust established by other things.
Anyone can get a code-signing certificate, and it isn't that expensive. It is not something that is restricted to businesses although you might have more credibility signing things as Frank's Nifty Software rather than just Frank Slobbowitz. The requirements are not strict in any way.
The problem is for a home/SMB user (who can't/won't pay for proffessional IT to make the descisions) the only real alternative would be to have those descisions made for you by a coporate overlord like sony, MS or apple.
Experiance from smartphones and games consoles shows that when corportate overlords make those kind of descisions they don't always have their users best interests at heart.
Yes, except there is no other real solution. What is needed is to get the hundreds of thousands of general-purpose computers with "open" operating systems and replace them with something like an iPad. Sure, you can add "approved" applications to your computer, but you cannot "administer" it in any meaningful way - that is done remotely, by someone else. Best of such "administration" is not needed, but whatever it is the user isn't qualified or capable of doing it right.
OK, there are a few people that need something more. They have been trained and are qualified. The rest of the people that are not trained and are not qualified should not be messing with things that result in botnets, phishing, trojans and such.
Oh, and I would have zero problems with a requirement - worldwide - that says to connect a "general-purpose" computer to the Internet you have to have a license of some sort. Something you have to prove your qualifications to get. Overnight this eliminates all spam, phishing and most everything else that we associate with evil on the Internet. Should we fail to do this the Internet can only go in one of two directions: it can be an unusable mess for 99% of the people in the world or it can be some ultra-controlled thing that exists for selling stuff only. Today we are only a small step away from it being an unusable mess.
There is only one solution to the "Israel problem" - every single Jewish person in Israel needs to be moved somewhere else. Until the land is returned to Palestinian hands there will be no peace, unless the Palestinian people are allowed to become citizens of existing Arab countries and the camps dismantled.
You do realise that the UN has been maintaining "refugee camps" for the displaced people of Palestine since 1948? The Arab states do not really want the Palestinian people but the UN has been maintaining the camps far in excess of what is actually required. It is a power grab by the UN departments that are in charge of it.
So, how about if we carve out a piece of Montana and give it to the Jews? Empty out Israel and move everyone there. Do you think that would solve the problem? For a people that believe every Jew must be killed? No, I don't really think that is a solution. Killing every Jew might work, but Hitler tried to the shame of the rest of the human race. I don't see that being implemented.
UK, Germany and Australia today have implemented Sharia law to some degree. In Germany the German courts can be circumvented through Sharia law and Muslim clerics. In Australia the police are specifically banned from intefering in cases where Sharia law has been invoked and the parties are being dealt with by clerics.
It is a part of life in these countries today. It will be a part of life in the US where we will have two distinct legal systems, one for Muslims and one for the rest of us. I don't think there is an way for an "open" society to deal with this other than to allow it.
The problem with this thinking is that if you have a school with 300 students and every single one of them grabs a cell phone in some kind of emergency and tries to make a call ... they will all fail. Maybe one person will get through. Maybe, but unlikely.
Much better if the 12 teachers and 30 administration staff members have cell phones. With trying to occupy only 42 channels instead of 300 it might work and a call would go out.
Sorry, not going to happen.
Schools are empires in the making and every administrator wants to create his or her own little empire where he or she is the absolute ruler. Because of the way schools work in the US, this is the scenario for maybe 75% of the public schools today. Putting sensible people in doesn't work because they aren't paid enough to hold onto sensible people. So you get the folks that are there for the power.
Teachers aren't paid all that well for the most part either, partly because they aren't all that valued and partly because there just isn't enough money to go around at the level public schools are funded. Public school funding in the US is designed to create at least differentiation in neighborhoods if not outright segregation. High property taxes = more money for schools, whereas low property taxes = less money. So areas with high-density housing (apartments, government housing, etc.) have low taxes plus lots of children. Conversely, low-density suburban housing is extremely attractive to parents because the schools have lots of money. This results in the most crowded schools having the lowest paid teachers.
Changing the way schools are funded would mean changing the idea that low-density suburban homes are desirable, which isn't going to happen in the US any time soon.
You ever thought about banning hand guns and imprisoning anyone who carries one like the rest of the civilised world does?
Unfortunately, it is a little late for that. If we can't be bothered to secure the border to keep illegal workers out (so native folks can have jobs), how can you possibly expect that we would be able to keep guns from being imported? Similarly, we are incapable of blocking devices which are in clear violation of US patents and trademarks - they are imported every day by the containerload. So why do you think we would be able to keep guns out?
Sure, it would be illegal to have one - you can make laws like that all day long which will affect some of the population. The rest? Well, let's see... if you were going to rob a liquor store (lots of cash usually) which is already illegal might it not matter to you if you had a gun? Today it is illegal to sell a gun to someone that has already committed a felony - but felons are caught every day holding guns.
At this point in the US with porous borders and lack of enforcement of existing laws all we can do is suggest that responsible people have a responsibility to go armed. Then, when the liquor store is being robbed the owner, a customer or a passer-by can suggest to the nice robber that he gently put the gun down before getting shot. Law enforcement used to rely on the fact that "nice people just wouldn't do things like rob people", but since the 1950s or so people just haven't had all that much respect for law enforcement or the laws themselves. We also have substantial popular culture glorifying the criminals and showing law enforcement is mostly corruption and abuse. End result is there are no more "nice people" any more.
It is a proven fact that only around 20% of crimes ever result in a conviction - either the criminal isn't caught or isn't convicted after being caught. This means the odds are in favor of the criminal every time. Now because of the way things work over time with enough of a history of crime eventually people are caught and convicted - but it may take a very, very long time for this to happen. The result of this is clearly that prison is no deterrent to crime.
So where does this leave us? Banning guns takes them away from law-abiding people where they were never a problem to begin with and makes sure that every criminal knows he will never come face-to-face with someone with a gun. Therefore with a gun the criminal is king.
Right. Any attempt to reduce the size or scope of the TSA will be met with PSAs showing happy families with their children at play ... and then a scene showing empty playgrounds, empty homes with foot-high grass and a line of people outside a shelter in February in Chicago. See what happens if we put these nice people out of work?
The total staff for TSA is pretty large - I'm sure it is in the tens of thousands when you add up all of the people in Washington DC, all the airports and all of the off-airport facilities. Come on, you wouldn't really want these people to be out of work and their children going hungry, would you?
That is exactly what it would take. Never going to happen.
No, the difference between doing it on paper and the web is on paper it has a lifetime of maybe 1 day. On the web it has a lifetime of, oh FOREVER.
Imagine a 30-year-old professional woman being in a promotion interview where her competition is a male jerk. He posts copies of this list with pictures of this woman as a high school student with her "rankings". Depending on the company and how male-centric they are this could easily cost her a promotion, many, many dollars and a lot of dignity.
Stuff that happens on the web is going to be there until pretty much the end of time if people are interested in looking for it. If it is even remotely popular - as this certainly will be - it will be mirrored and saved far and wide. It will follow people around for the rest of their lives.
Imagine having to live down whatever stupid stuff you did in high school all over again when you're 40. You have just described the Internet.
In that part of the world you are better off leaving your dick at home rather than your AK47.
It is a statement about your manhood.
Pakistan has about 170 million people.
Afganistan has about 30 million people
Yemen has less than 25 million people.
I see around 215 million people total with over 300 million in the US. OK, so those three countries together have 2/3rds the population of the US. Pakistan isn't that big, so it must be really, really crowded there.
Assuming a human needs a 2.5 foot square to stand on, I was in an airport yesterday where we were approaching running out of 2.5 foot squares. Amazing what a little thunderstorm does to Southwest Airlines.