What's a good way of ensuring data integrity (and possibly repairing any corruption) that might happen? Is two copies and a checksum enough to be able to reasonably repair a (not too) corrupt file?
But we're talking terabytes here: most cloud storage providers will not cater for such users (or charge exorbitant fees). Moreover, he's not interested in cloud backups. There are many, many good reasons to resist dumping your stuff onto some cloud service.
My post wasn't intended as a flamebait and, to be honest, I don't necessarily think that it needs to be interpreted as such. I just wish that the article had been less of an ad for Linux (which is really all it is) and had instead discussed some of the (genuinely interesting) computational problems that the scientists encountered. The really interesting things here are the underlying mathematics, the design and operation of the accelerator and the algorithms and hardware on which the analysis was performed. I don't really believe that the fact that everything ran on Linux is all that interesting. According to my wife (who does this kind of thing for a living, albeit in Japan and on a smaller scale) most of the libraries that she needs to run her algorithms can be found on Solaris or Linux and she (and her group) are quite happy to use either: to some extend OS just isn't all that important.
No, Linux didn't play a vital role; computing, brains, mathematics and a big-ass particle accelerator did. On the computational side, BSD, Windows, Aix, Irix, Solaris could have all done exactly the same thing. I thought Mac Fanboys were bad, but Linux uncovering the fundamental nature of the universe? Wow.
Given the massive increases in domestic surveillance, you'd expect that demands would decrease. This is very worrying. Perhaps the government needs more surveillance powers to catch teh pedo-terrorists.
It's amusing that an influential person like (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee can make a statements such as this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17753971 in the national press and the population don't even blink...
It's been quite private though because no one's ever taken the time to look at it. Now it can all be logged, stored, processed, lost, stolen or used for blackmail. How about a Tory MP buying a DVD from a known source of Fetish porn? Even in this case you'd expect an obscured return to sender address.
Fedex and DHL will also be bound by the law and will always know sender and recipient. Stamps can still be bought with cash though. It's also illegal to withhold encryption keys from the government (senility or internet induced ADHD isn't a defense either).
Silk Road? Bath Salts? Snail mail would also become an attractive method of communication amongst bad guys if the internet surveillance bill goes through (and it probably will).
Someone should really tell the guys in power that 1984 was more of warning and less of a plan. Guess the old e-petition becomes invalid now: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/32400
Difficult to say. If you've got AppleCare, it should be easy (and fast) to get a replacement or recover your data. I think my point was that a Raspberry Pi will break (I've got one and it and it's associated peripherals don't exactly fill me with confidence: mine gets upset if I try to use both a mouse and an ethernet connection and likes to reboot randomly).
A MacBook air, on the other hand, is a very well engineered machine: all solid state storage, aluminum unibody case and LED backlight (more reliable than CCFL) should mean that it'll run for many, many years without fault. My plastic cased MacBook is six years old has put up with all kinds of abuse but still runs like new. From what I hear, this isn't the exception to the rule.
Apple tech support is genuinely excellent. Raspberry Pi tech support doesn't exist and I doubt that getting a (surprisingly) expensive projector fixed at short notice is much easier. My day-to-day machine is a beat up six year old MacBook. Bits are breaking off the case, it's been dropped, had a bottle of ink spilled on the keyboard, gotten wet and been through all kinds of abuse but it still works as well as the day I got it. A MacBook air with a unibodied aluminum case, LED backlight and all solid state storage should last a lifetime.
It'll break, you won't be able to fix it, the ergonomics will be terrible, you'll get hassled in airport security. This is a recipe for you getting pissed. Just get a MacBook air: built to last, lightweight and usable.
Two problems: (i) feature creep (ii) Traffic analysis is a well developed field and logs can be easily data-mined.
Once you have access to the logs, you're eventually going to start storing them. Maybe not now, but how about in 10 years? Sooner or later, another attack will occur and, of course, existing powers will be deemed insufficient. Next step: store the logs, combine them with other existing databases and start to data-mine them. Given that the hardware and legislation are in place, this will be an almost trivial step.
Then you'll have a algorithm performing automated traffic analysis: who connects to who? Is the other person vaguely suspicious? Are they communicating in a suspicious way? Perhaps deep packet inspection will also be used and keyword scanning will be used (as it is in the USA). There's a large immigrant population in the UK. How many of those who have been born into the UK and raised in its culture are going to produce false leads based on routinely examining their communications data and then having the algorithm worry when it notices that their last name sounds foreign? Computers are dumb but people are always happy to put their faith in a black box. How many will be wrongly interrogated? How many will have undue suspicion placed upon them? Maybe the system flags suspects with a 1% false positive rate. There are 1.2 million people of Pakistani origin living in the UK so potentially you have 12 000 false suspects. That's a lot of people to investigate and a lot of people who will potentially experience a major disruption to their life.
Most people are politically apathetic. Half of those who aren't politically apathetic aren't willing to think very hard and become anti-intellectual populists (tea party et al) and the half that are willing to think find that most of the apathetic population don't understand them (the other half can't be bothered to understand them) as they haven't been paying close attention to the potentially complex political ideas. What can be done? People say that they're not apathetic: they get angry and demand lower taxes, but how many can truthfully claim to be involved? How many understand why it's hard to provide lower taxes? How many genuinely understand that some economic suffering, say, might be completely unavoidable? How many understand that the government isn't the source of all good?
Result:
Majority of Population: "Down with pedos! Down with terrorists! Down with risk!"
Government: "Time to monitor your internet"
"They are responsible for enforcing the law and creating an effective justice system"
Firstly accept risk: supervise you kids and accept that it is not impossible for you be killed by a madman. Perhaps the individual should take some responsibility for their own protection and entrust less of it to the warm bosom of the government.
Secondly accept that if you decide to give a government huge amounts of powerful you must also watch to see that they do not misuse their power. If they ever did misuse their power, have you already given them so much that you are unable to do anything about it?
Slashdot Mirror
What's a good way of ensuring data integrity (and possibly repairing any corruption) that might happen? Is two copies and a checksum enough to be able to reasonably repair a (not too) corrupt file?
But we're talking terabytes here: most cloud storage providers will not cater for such users (or charge exorbitant fees). Moreover, he's not interested in cloud backups. There are many, many good reasons to resist dumping your stuff onto some cloud service.
My post wasn't intended as a flamebait and, to be honest, I don't necessarily think that it needs to be interpreted as such. I just wish that the article had been less of an ad for Linux (which is really all it is) and had instead discussed some of the (genuinely interesting) computational problems that the scientists encountered. The really interesting things here are the underlying mathematics, the design and operation of the accelerator and the algorithms and hardware on which the analysis was performed. I don't really believe that the fact that everything ran on Linux is all that interesting. According to my wife (who does this kind of thing for a living, albeit in Japan and on a smaller scale) most of the libraries that she needs to run her algorithms can be found on Solaris or Linux and she (and her group) are quite happy to use either: to some extend OS just isn't all that important.
No, Linux didn't play a vital role; computing, brains, mathematics and a big-ass particle accelerator did. On the computational side, BSD, Windows, Aix, Irix, Solaris could have all done exactly the same thing. I thought Mac Fanboys were bad, but Linux uncovering the fundamental nature of the universe? Wow.
Given the massive increases in domestic surveillance, you'd expect that demands would decrease. This is very worrying. Perhaps the government needs more surveillance powers to catch teh pedo-terrorists.
It's amusing that an influential person like (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee can make a statements such as this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17753971 in the national press and the population don't even blink...
You can when half of the population read the Daily Mail.
It's been quite private though because no one's ever taken the time to look at it. Now it can all be logged, stored, processed, lost, stolen or used for blackmail. How about a Tory MP buying a DVD from a known source of Fetish porn? Even in this case you'd expect an obscured return to sender address.
Royal Mail have actually been using OCR for at least 20 years.
Those sneaky bastards... :)
Fedex and DHL will also be bound by the law and will always know sender and recipient. Stamps can still be bought with cash though. It's also illegal to withhold encryption keys from the government (senility or internet induced ADHD isn't a defense either).
Silk Road? Bath Salts? Snail mail would also become an attractive method of communication amongst bad guys if the internet surveillance bill goes through (and it probably will).
Someone should really tell the guys in power that 1984 was more of warning and less of a plan. Guess the old e-petition becomes invalid now: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/32400
Difficult to say. If you've got AppleCare, it should be easy (and fast) to get a replacement or recover your data. I think my point was that a Raspberry Pi will break (I've got one and it and it's associated peripherals don't exactly fill me with confidence: mine gets upset if I try to use both a mouse and an ethernet connection and likes to reboot randomly). A MacBook air, on the other hand, is a very well engineered machine: all solid state storage, aluminum unibody case and LED backlight (more reliable than CCFL) should mean that it'll run for many, many years without fault. My plastic cased MacBook is six years old has put up with all kinds of abuse but still runs like new. From what I hear, this isn't the exception to the rule.
Apple tech support is genuinely excellent. Raspberry Pi tech support doesn't exist and I doubt that getting a (surprisingly) expensive projector fixed at short notice is much easier. My day-to-day machine is a beat up six year old MacBook. Bits are breaking off the case, it's been dropped, had a bottle of ink spilled on the keyboard, gotten wet and been through all kinds of abuse but it still works as well as the day I got it. A MacBook air with a unibodied aluminum case, LED backlight and all solid state storage should last a lifetime.
But an Apple genius might.
It'll break, you won't be able to fix it, the ergonomics will be terrible, you'll get hassled in airport security. This is a recipe for you getting pissed. Just get a MacBook air: built to last, lightweight and usable.
A rare Granny Smith bearing the Apple logo was sold to a turtleneck wearing gentleman in exchange for his life savings.
Misread title as "England Criminalizes VoIP Services". Didn't even look twice...
Two problems: (i) feature creep (ii) Traffic analysis is a well developed field and logs can be easily data-mined.
Once you have access to the logs, you're eventually going to start storing them. Maybe not now, but how about in 10 years? Sooner or later, another attack will occur and, of course, existing powers will be deemed insufficient. Next step: store the logs, combine them with other existing databases and start to data-mine them. Given that the hardware and legislation are in place, this will be an almost trivial step.
Then you'll have a algorithm performing automated traffic analysis: who connects to who? Is the other person vaguely suspicious? Are they communicating in a suspicious way? Perhaps deep packet inspection will also be used and keyword scanning will be used (as it is in the USA). There's a large immigrant population in the UK. How many of those who have been born into the UK and raised in its culture are going to produce false leads based on routinely examining their communications data and then having the algorithm worry when it notices that their last name sounds foreign? Computers are dumb but people are always happy to put their faith in a black box. How many will be wrongly interrogated? How many will have undue suspicion placed upon them? Maybe the system flags suspects with a 1% false positive rate. There are 1.2 million people of Pakistani origin living in the UK so potentially you have 12 000 false suspects. That's a lot of people to investigate and a lot of people who will potentially experience a major disruption to their life.
Most people are politically apathetic. Half of those who aren't politically apathetic aren't willing to think very hard and become anti-intellectual populists (tea party et al) and the half that are willing to think find that most of the apathetic population don't understand them (the other half can't be bothered to understand them) as they haven't been paying close attention to the potentially complex political ideas. What can be done? People say that they're not apathetic: they get angry and demand lower taxes, but how many can truthfully claim to be involved? How many understand why it's hard to provide lower taxes? How many genuinely understand that some economic suffering, say, might be completely unavoidable? How many understand that the government isn't the source of all good?
Result:
Majority of Population: "Down with pedos! Down with terrorists! Down with risk!"
Government: "Time to monitor your internet"
"They are responsible for enforcing the law and creating an effective justice system"
Firstly accept risk: supervise you kids and accept that it is not impossible for you be killed by a madman. Perhaps the individual should take some responsibility for their own protection and entrust less of it to the warm bosom of the government.
Secondly accept that if you decide to give a government huge amounts of powerful you must also watch to see that they do not misuse their power. If they ever did misuse their power, have you already given them so much that you are unable to do anything about it?
France beat you to it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10129324
Depends if you filmed him... http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/aug/31/do-we-have-right-to-film-police
Nothing to hide, no reason to look.