Most of the discussion of this merger in the mainstream media doesn't address this aspect of the deal at all. I admit I haven't read the DOJ's complaint, but again the coverage of the suit didn't mention monopolization of GSM services either.
Is this just "too geeky" for public discussion? As a current AT&T subscriber who was considering switching to T-Mobile before the merger was announced, monopolization of GSM services seemed the principal issue to me. I appreciate the ability to buy my own hardware and switch my SIM as needed and have little interest in a CDMA provider. Being able to use T-Mobile's network in Europe last summer for roaming without having to make any prior arrangements is another valuable feature of GSM.
Perhaps this aspect of the merger was a key aspect of the DOJ's thinking on the matter, but if so, I haven't heard about it from the news media.
I've had poor results with Kubuntu 11.04 and the 11.10 beta. One especially annoying problem with Ubuntu is that the support for my RT2500-based USB wifi adapter has been incredibly unstable across releases. I could understand if this were a new piece of hardware, but its at least five years old now.
My biggest complaint with Kubuntu 10.10 is that the upgrades to KDE 4.6.x have been removed from the kubuntu-backports repository with no explanation given whatsoever. So I'm stuck between 10.10 with KDE 4.5.5 or moving to 11.04/11.10 to get KDE 4.7. Looks like I'm sticking with 4.5.5 for the foreseeable future. Maybe Kubuntu 12.04 LTS will be worth installing.
Personally I don't think monthly releases make any sense. I've seen too many people on ubuntuforums.org that routinely upgrade to the latest-and-greatest release without any testing whatsoever. When something goes wrong, or major changes like Unity occur, they go off the deep end. This only happens twice a year at the moment. If it happened every month, I'd probably stop contributing to ubuntuforums because it would be full of complaints about wonky releases all the time.
2. Make the VPN tunnel the default route (just a routing table change).
Actually it's a bit tricker than that. You still need a route to the VPN server's public IP address via the original default gateway so that the tunnel can be maintained. After that route is established, you can switch the default route to the remote end of the tunnel.
After all, the Linux kernel doesn't wait for anyone, but that doesn't seem to be a huge problem for corporations
You're joking, right? If I had to guess, I'd suspect that most corporate users of Linux in the server room are running some version of RH or CentOS 5.x. My CentOS 5.5 boxes are running 2.6.18 with backported security updates.
No mod points for me today, or you would have gotten a +1 Informative.
Where, exactly, does this $16 trillion figure that Sanders cites appear in this document? That's about twice the current M2 money supply figure for the entire economy. The Executive Summary of the report cites a $1 trillion figure for the total of loans disbursed at the peak in 2008. As Figure 11 on the Report's page 137 shows, most of those loans have been fully paid back.
So thanks the power of Ctrl-F, I searched for every "16" in the document. The number Sanders is citing appears on page 131, which does report a figure slightly over $16 trillion. However if you look carefully at these numbers, the big items are all from the "PDCF" facility, which provided collateralized overnight loans to big banks. As the Report notes, it's unfair to compare an overnight loan to one that has a much longer term. When the GAO adjusts these figures by length of term, the adjusted figure is more like $1.1 trillion.
(1) There may be lots of multijurisdictional issues in any given case.
Yes, but I'm betting that's not true in this case. It wouldn't be hard to find a dozen US citizens whose computers were used, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to mount an attack against other computers also located in the US. (Mastercard and VISA come to mind right away, never mind government sites. I'm guessing the "retaliation" against payment processors over their refusal to send funds to Wikileaks is a central feature of this case. Suggesting these arrests have something to do with the Newscorp scandal is ludicrous.)
(2) Information illegally or unconstitutionally obtained, which our government has a lot of, cannot be used in court. (Whether it can be used to *impeach* someone's testimony in court is a more interesting question.)
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. There doesn't need to be any sort of data breach to run afoul of Federal law. Read 18 USC 1030 especially the list of offenses in section (a)(5)
[Whoever] (A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; (B) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or (C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss.
Attempting to interfere with a "protected computer, one used in interstate commerce, pretty clearly violates (C) and maybe (B) and (A) as well. Most everyone's computer these days is used for interstate commerce (ever buy a product from Amazon?) so both the source of the attack and targets like computers owned by the payment networks fall into the "protected" category to which the laws apply.
The penalties for these crimes include 5-20 years imprisonment.
(3) Encryption.
See above; doesn't seem relevant to me.
If you're suggesting that there's a problem making a case concerning a US computer being controlled by a non-US resident and staging an attack on another US computer, I don't agree at all. The FBI isn't going to care about the foreign national, at least not in the short term. I believe they will prosecute the owners of the American computers involved. Some of them may be unknowing pawns of foreign hackers, but others probably downloaded the appropriate software and made themselves complicit.
The legality here, which the end of the summary alludes to, is that there's joint ownership involved with respect to the car.
That's what I first thought when I began reading the article, but later we find that "Appellate Judge Joseph Lisa, Jack Sabatino and Carmen Alvarez said [the plaintiff] had no right to expect privacy because the GPS tracked his movements on public streets."
If this is truly the basis of the decision, then ownership of the vehicle seems irrelevant. By that argument, I could put a GPS tracker on your car, and it would not constitute an invasion of your privacy as long as you're driving on public streets.
Of course, the article fails to give us any important particulars to know which of these arguments was the most influential in the Court's decision.
What if I simply follow you around all day in my car and note your movements, as PIs did before the advent of GPS? I'd bet that there is case law on being tailed as an invasion of privacy, and it's probably legal on the same grounds.
A more profound case might concern personal devices. Does your right to track my movements end at the doorstep?
Whatever distribution you choose, start with a LiveCD and boot from that. You won't have to make any changes to the computer at all. If you can install to a USB pendrive, it will be reasonably quick, too.
If the computer is reasonably hefty, with a modern processor and at least 1 GB of memory, I'd try Kubuntu 10.10 because I think the KDE desktop looks more like what someone used to Windows would expect. Otherwise, try Ubuntu 10.04LTS for the GNOME experience and avoid Ubuntu 11.04. It has an entirely different desktop environment (Unity) and is probably too buggy for someone whose never touched Linux before.
I haven't used Fedora in quite a while so I'm not competent to discuss its current incarnations. I've never taken to OpenSuSE, but I'm sure others here will tell you why to use that. Mandriva is likely to get some endorsements as well.
We use security questions like "what was the name of your favorite stuffed animal" or "where were you when you had your first kiss". It's much harder to spoof answers to questions like these even if you have access to ordinary information about the victim.
The dark horse in all of this: mobile. Everyone expects mobile Web browsing -- including with tablets -- to soar in the near future. Windows Mobile accounts for a measly 0.02 percent of all hits detected by Net Applications in May, while WP7 didn't even rate a roundoff error. Android ran on machines that accounted for 0.76 percent of all hits in May, and iOS ran on a noteworthy 2.38 percent.
Sure, changes in these low usage rates could have accounted for a decline in share as small as the 0.84% reported for IE. Still it's rather striking that mobiles only account for about three percent of browsers in use.
It looks like a few of Slashdot's servers decided to leave town early for the weekend today!
I was pleasantly surprised to see Okami take the award in the PS2 "Adventure" category. It's certainly one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen, and one that places art and artistry at the center of its game play.
My major disappointment was not seeing Chrono Cross as at least a runner up to FFVII. While I don't think the artwork in FFVII deserves it's first-place designation, its overall popularity assured it top honors in a poll like this. But to ignore the gorgeous watercolor designs in Chrono Cross does a disservice to one of the best, and certainly one of the most artistic, RPGs for the PS1.
Like it or not, the ISP is treated like a phone company
No, the problem is that ISPs are not treated like a phone company. They're not regulated as common-carriers. The FCC considered re-categorizing ISPs as a "Title II" telecommunications service, but backed away after Congressional opposition. Now the Commission is proposing a "third way" which seems unlikely to satisfy either the ISPs or their critics. Here's a quick summary: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/06/fcc-outlines-new-third-way-internet-regulatory-plan-will-spli/
To my mind, ISPs shouldn't be able to process traffic based on anything other than packet headers. Their job is to take a packet I create and deliver it to its intended destination. (Yes, yes, QOS, etc. Whatever is in the headers is fine by me.) DPI equipment should be banned. Anything else offers too many opportunities for censorship and manipulation.
Not a single mention of the National Association of Broadcasters, who represent the people who own the broadcast television stations throughout the US? Do you really think CBS is going to abandon its hundreds of affiliate stations, not to mention its owned-and-operated stations in major markets, to funnel TV programming to XBox users? The broadcasters have fought many battles with cable television operators over, first, the "must-carry" rules, then later "retransmission consent."
Slashdot commentators continue their tradition of ignoring the decades of industrial relationships that govern the television and other entertainment industries and focus only on the, often irrelevant, technological details.
I think that's the real headline here however the actual patents get worked out. I can't recall a decision from the Department of Justice, or indeed any Federal regulator, that expressed a concern about the impact of some private business decision on open source software.
Here's a key line from TFA: "The patent sale, as originally proposed, would have jeopardized the ability of open source software to innovate and compete in middleware, virtualization, and server, desktop and mobile OS markets, the DOJ said."
The linked Popular Mechanics article raises this as a possible rationale for seizing the phone, but also points out that it's not illegal to use a cell phone while driving in Michigan.
Does anyone really think Facebook wants to subject its operations to the scrutiny of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and any state regulators in any location where Facebook has facilities? California, where Facebook maintains its corporate headquarters, has extensive banking regulations as well.
American Express used to issue only credit-cards that carried no interest charges and required full and immediate payment of all outstanding balances. That's because AMEX didn't want to be regulated as a bank.
Yes, they were people. They got arrested, too. DDOS has no moral equivalence with lunch-counter sit-ins, and not just because the latter had to do with civil rights. DDOS is an act of cowards. Protest all you want but be ready to accept the consequences. Read some Thoreau.
I wouldn't be so sure. Netfilx relies on Silverlight to provide its DRM platform, but the actual client doesn't require Windows. Netflix on the PS3 certainly isn't Windows-based, and I wouldn't be surprised if the clients built into new TVs use Windows either. They need the Silverlight libraries, of course, but they don't need Windows itself.
I'd be surprised if the servers run Windows, too. All they need to do is ship the encumbered stream to the client. Linux usually provides a better platform for specialized tasks like that than does Windows.
Actually a lot of set-top boxes run Windows or a derivative like Win CE. The Verizon-provided Motorola DVR across the room from me is one. The GUI interface came from Redmond.
You can't censor some things then cry for "safe-harbor" in other areas. If you're simply a transparent conduit for user-provided data, fine, but Google clearly isn't transparent.
I just tried a couple good-old Anglo-Saxon words. I didn't get any suggestions for "assh" or "fuck" either.
What's more confounding is Google's implementation of the policy cited in TFA by the plaintiff's attorney: "Google argued that it could not be held liable because it is a hosting provider, but we showed that this is content produced by them (and by the way, they do filter out certain content, including terms that are known to be used to distribute copyright-infringing material), although through automated means," Piana wrote.
However Google's implementation of this promised screening policy turns out to be pretty inconsistent. Using google.com, it's still possible to search for "[name of movie] torrent" and get a list of torrent sites. So I tried a similar search at google.it. The results are mixed. Entering "la strada" prompts for "la strada streaming" (and even "la strada streaming megavideo"!) and takes me to a page of links. "la strada torrent" returns nothing. I tried a couple of other films. "Streaming" is often proposed, but the word "torrent" never appears in the suggested list.
So, if they are implementing the policy announced last December, that implementation differs by country and, within Italy at least, differs by your choice of infringement method.
Yes, I was talking about what would be needed if a unit of statistics were added to the HS curriculum.
I taught graduate-level econometrics for political scientists in an earlier life. There was often a lot of linear algebra on the board when I finished a class. Maximum-likelhood techniques were just coming into vogue at the time, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the discussion of this merger in the mainstream media doesn't address this aspect of the deal at all. I admit I haven't read the DOJ's complaint, but again the coverage of the suit didn't mention monopolization of GSM services either.
Is this just "too geeky" for public discussion? As a current AT&T subscriber who was considering switching to T-Mobile before the merger was announced, monopolization of GSM services seemed the principal issue to me. I appreciate the ability to buy my own hardware and switch my SIM as needed and have little interest in a CDMA provider. Being able to use T-Mobile's network in Europe last summer for roaming without having to make any prior arrangements is another valuable feature of GSM.
Perhaps this aspect of the merger was a key aspect of the DOJ's thinking on the matter, but if so, I haven't heard about it from the news media.
+1 for 10.10, especially Kubuntu 10.10.
I've had poor results with Kubuntu 11.04 and the 11.10 beta. One especially annoying problem with Ubuntu is that the support for my RT2500-based USB wifi adapter has been incredibly unstable across releases. I could understand if this were a new piece of hardware, but its at least five years old now.
My biggest complaint with Kubuntu 10.10 is that the upgrades to KDE 4.6.x have been removed from the kubuntu-backports repository with no explanation given whatsoever. So I'm stuck between 10.10 with KDE 4.5.5 or moving to 11.04/11.10 to get KDE 4.7. Looks like I'm sticking with 4.5.5 for the foreseeable future. Maybe Kubuntu 12.04 LTS will be worth installing.
Personally I don't think monthly releases make any sense. I've seen too many people on ubuntuforums.org that routinely upgrade to the latest-and-greatest release without any testing whatsoever. When something goes wrong, or major changes like Unity occur, they go off the deep end. This only happens twice a year at the moment. If it happened every month, I'd probably stop contributing to ubuntuforums because it would be full of complaints about wonky releases all the time.
2. Make the VPN tunnel the default route (just a routing table change).
Actually it's a bit tricker than that. You still need a route to the VPN server's public IP address via the original default gateway so that the tunnel can be maintained. After that route is established, you can switch the default route to the remote end of the tunnel.
After all, the Linux kernel doesn't wait for anyone, but that doesn't seem to be a huge problem for corporations
You're joking, right? If I had to guess, I'd suspect that most corporate users of Linux in the server room are running some version of RH or CentOS 5.x. My CentOS 5.5 boxes are running 2.6.18 with backported security updates.
No mod points for me today, or you would have gotten a +1 Informative.
Where, exactly, does this $16 trillion figure that Sanders cites appear in this document? That's about twice the current M2 money supply figure for the entire economy. The Executive Summary of the report cites a $1 trillion figure for the total of loans disbursed at the peak in 2008. As Figure 11 on the Report's page 137 shows, most of those loans have been fully paid back.
So thanks the power of Ctrl-F, I searched for every "16" in the document. The number Sanders is citing appears on page 131, which does report a figure slightly over $16 trillion. However if you look carefully at these numbers, the big items are all from the "PDCF" facility, which provided collateralized overnight loans to big banks. As the Report notes, it's unfair to compare an overnight loan to one that has a much longer term. When the GAO adjusts these figures by length of term, the adjusted figure is more like $1.1 trillion.
(1) There may be lots of multijurisdictional issues in any given case.
Yes, but I'm betting that's not true in this case. It wouldn't be hard to find a dozen US citizens whose computers were used, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to mount an attack against other computers also located in the US. (Mastercard and VISA come to mind right away, never mind government sites. I'm guessing the "retaliation" against payment processors over their refusal to send funds to Wikileaks is a central feature of this case. Suggesting these arrests have something to do with the Newscorp scandal is ludicrous.)
(2) Information illegally or unconstitutionally obtained, which our government has a lot of, cannot be used in court. (Whether it can be used to *impeach* someone's testimony in court is a more interesting question.)
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. There doesn't need to be any sort of data breach to run afoul of Federal law. Read 18 USC 1030 especially the list of offenses in section (a)(5)
Attempting to interfere with a "protected computer, one used in interstate commerce, pretty clearly violates (C) and maybe (B) and (A) as well. Most everyone's computer these days is used for interstate commerce (ever buy a product from Amazon?) so both the source of the attack and targets like computers owned by the payment networks fall into the "protected" category to which the laws apply.
The penalties for these crimes include 5-20 years imprisonment.
(3) Encryption.
See above; doesn't seem relevant to me.
If you're suggesting that there's a problem making a case concerning a US computer being controlled by a non-US resident and staging an attack on another US computer, I don't agree at all. The FBI isn't going to care about the foreign national, at least not in the short term. I believe they will prosecute the owners of the American computers involved. Some of them may be unknowing pawns of foreign hackers, but others probably downloaded the appropriate software and made themselves complicit.
That's what I first thought when I began reading the article, but later we find that "Appellate Judge Joseph Lisa, Jack Sabatino and Carmen Alvarez said [the plaintiff] had no right to expect privacy because the GPS tracked his movements on public streets."
If this is truly the basis of the decision, then ownership of the vehicle seems irrelevant. By that argument, I could put a GPS tracker on your car, and it would not constitute an invasion of your privacy as long as you're driving on public streets.
Of course, the article fails to give us any important particulars to know which of these arguments was the most influential in the Court's decision.
What if I simply follow you around all day in my car and note your movements, as PIs did before the advent of GPS? I'd bet that there is case law on being tailed as an invasion of privacy, and it's probably legal on the same grounds.
A more profound case might concern personal devices. Does your right to track my movements end at the doorstep?
Whatever distribution you choose, start with a LiveCD and boot from that. You won't have to make any changes to the computer at all. If you can install to a USB pendrive, it will be reasonably quick, too.
If the computer is reasonably hefty, with a modern processor and at least 1 GB of memory, I'd try Kubuntu 10.10 because I think the KDE desktop looks more like what someone used to Windows would expect. Otherwise, try Ubuntu 10.04LTS for the GNOME experience and avoid Ubuntu 11.04. It has an entirely different desktop environment (Unity) and is probably too buggy for someone whose never touched Linux before.
I haven't used Fedora in quite a while so I'm not competent to discuss its current incarnations. I've never taken to OpenSuSE, but I'm sure others here will tell you why to use that. Mandriva is likely to get some endorsements as well.
We use security questions like "what was the name of your favorite stuffed animal" or "where were you when you had your first kiss". It's much harder to spoof answers to questions like these even if you have access to ordinary information about the victim.
TFA suggests otherwise.
Sure, changes in these low usage rates could have accounted for a decline in share as small as the 0.84% reported for IE. Still it's rather striking that mobiles only account for about three percent of browsers in use.
It looks like a few of Slashdot's servers decided to leave town early for the weekend today!
Is it just to annoy people? What benefit do the authors receive from getting the phone to make random calls or send SMS?
Proof of concept, perhaps?
I was pleasantly surprised to see Okami take the award in the PS2 "Adventure" category. It's certainly one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen, and one that places art and artistry at the center of its game play.
My major disappointment was not seeing Chrono Cross as at least a runner up to FFVII. While I don't think the artwork in FFVII deserves it's first-place designation, its overall popularity assured it top honors in a poll like this. But to ignore the gorgeous watercolor designs in Chrono Cross does a disservice to one of the best, and certainly one of the most artistic, RPGs for the PS1.
Like it or not, the ISP is treated like a phone company
No, the problem is that ISPs are not treated like a phone company. They're not regulated as common-carriers. The FCC considered re-categorizing ISPs as a "Title II" telecommunications service, but backed away after Congressional opposition. Now the Commission is proposing a "third way" which seems unlikely to satisfy either the ISPs or their critics. Here's a quick summary: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/06/fcc-outlines-new-third-way-internet-regulatory-plan-will-spli/
To my mind, ISPs shouldn't be able to process traffic based on anything other than packet headers. Their job is to take a packet I create and deliver it to its intended destination. (Yes, yes, QOS, etc. Whatever is in the headers is fine by me.) DPI equipment should be banned. Anything else offers too many opportunities for censorship and manipulation.
Not a single mention of the National Association of Broadcasters, who represent the people who own the broadcast television stations throughout the US? Do you really think CBS is going to abandon its hundreds of affiliate stations, not to mention its owned-and-operated stations in major markets, to funnel TV programming to XBox users? The broadcasters have fought many battles with cable television operators over, first, the "must-carry" rules, then later "retransmission consent."
Slashdot commentators continue their tradition of ignoring the decades of industrial relationships that govern the television and other entertainment industries and focus only on the, often irrelevant, technological details.
I think that's the real headline here however the actual patents get worked out. I can't recall a decision from the Department of Justice, or indeed any Federal regulator, that expressed a concern about the impact of some private business decision on open source software.
Here's a key line from TFA:
"The patent sale, as originally proposed, would have jeopardized the ability of open source software to innovate and compete in middleware, virtualization, and server, desktop and mobile OS markets, the DOJ said."
The linked Popular Mechanics article raises this as a possible rationale for seizing the phone, but also points out that it's not illegal to use a cell phone while driving in Michigan.
Does anyone really think Facebook wants to subject its operations to the scrutiny of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and any state regulators in any location where Facebook has facilities? California, where Facebook maintains its corporate headquarters, has extensive banking regulations as well.
American Express used to issue only credit-cards that carried no interest charges and required full and immediate payment of all outstanding balances. That's because AMEX didn't want to be regulated as a bank.
Read some Karl Popper, then add in a dash of Thomas Kuhn and a soupcon of Stephen Toulmin for good measure. The post-modernist take on all of this starts with Lakatos and Musgrave.
Neither is destructive, it merely blocks access and ties up resources that could potentially be used to make money. So how are they different?
Because there are no physical people involved violating a law that puts them at risk of physical arrest.
Yes, they were people. They got arrested, too. DDOS has no moral equivalence with lunch-counter sit-ins, and not just because the latter had to do with civil rights. DDOS is an act of cowards. Protest all you want but be ready to accept the consequences. Read some Thoreau.
I've done that in some applications, too. It's not that hard. You obviously need to control access to the key, though.
I wouldn't be so sure. Netfilx relies on Silverlight to provide its DRM platform, but the actual client doesn't require Windows. Netflix on the PS3 certainly isn't Windows-based, and I wouldn't be surprised if the clients built into new TVs use Windows either. They need the Silverlight libraries, of course, but they don't need Windows itself.
I'd be surprised if the servers run Windows, too. All they need to do is ship the encumbered stream to the client. Linux usually provides a better platform for specialized tasks like that than does Windows.
Actually a lot of set-top boxes run Windows or a derivative like Win CE. The Verizon-provided Motorola DVR across the room from me is one. The GUI interface came from Redmond.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
You can't censor some things then cry for "safe-harbor" in other areas. If you're simply a transparent conduit for user-provided data, fine, but Google clearly isn't transparent.
I just tried a couple good-old Anglo-Saxon words. I didn't get any suggestions for "assh" or "fuck" either.
What's more confounding is Google's implementation of the policy cited in TFA by the plaintiff's attorney:
"Google argued that it could not be held liable because it is a hosting provider, but we showed that this is content produced by them (and by the way, they do filter out certain content, including terms that are known to be used to distribute copyright-infringing material), although through automated means," Piana wrote.
However Google's implementation of this promised screening policy turns out to be pretty inconsistent. Using google.com, it's still possible to search for "[name of movie] torrent" and get a list of torrent sites. So I tried a similar search at google.it. The results are mixed. Entering "la strada" prompts for "la strada streaming" (and even "la strada streaming megavideo"!) and takes me to a page of links. "la strada torrent" returns nothing. I tried a couple of other films. "Streaming" is often proposed, but the word "torrent" never appears in the suggested list.
So, if they are implementing the policy announced last December, that implementation differs by country and, within Italy at least, differs by your choice of infringement method.
Yes, I was talking about what would be needed if a unit of statistics were added to the HS curriculum.
I taught graduate-level econometrics for political scientists in an earlier life. There was often a lot of linear algebra on the board when I finished a class. Maximum-likelhood techniques were just coming into vogue at the time, too.