By following the money. Server logs show which online personas bought and sold what, intercepting packages can tie those to physical addresses and identities, and comparing bitcoin IDs on suspects' computers with the block chain provides irrefutable cryptographic proof that the transactions took place. They could probably even wind everything up into one big RICO case, and then everyone who used silkroad is potentially on the hook for every transaction that took place there.
Do you think the DEA cares about going after kids who buy $100 worth of LSD?
To turn that question around for a minute, if the DEA had a chance to put literally thousands of dealers and users in prison for life, and take a huge number of bitcoins out of circulation, do you think they would pass it up?
How will Twitter distinguish between positive Tweets coming from voters or news outlets and those from spam bots designed to drive the conversation surrounding a candidate one way or the other?
An employees Drop Box account was hacked that had a file with client email addresses in it.
Well, yeah. Can you imagine the field day Wuala et al would have if word got out that Dropbox created a second, more secure file storage and transfer service for internal use? Not eating one's dogfood is a huge sign of lacking confidence in the product...
the Mexican hotel chain could find their servers are grabbed by the FBI in some heavy handed Anti-Pirate operation.
...or some drug enforcement operation, or terrorism, or tax-dodging, or anonymous/lulzsec/etc, or the next WikiLeaker, or just "National security letter. We don't have to tell you why, just hand over the servers."
I can only conclude that the countries with "protectionist legislation" that makes it hard to outsource their cloud data services to us are doing a service to their citizens.
"This is the backwards era...", he typed on a virtual keyboard displayed on the touchscreen of his tablet computer, linked via a 54 megabit/second radio connection to his office's network infrastructure, and from there to AT&T's core network switching terabits/second of traffic, and on to a data center in Michigan hosting a tech news website where it was added to the log of a hundred-thousand-person virtual conference.
Now we see why they fight so hard not to have to compete. Rolling out new equipment is hard, buying a cable monopoly from the local government is easy, and you can charge $40/month for the same crap service forever.
Privacy disappears because people don't value it. If they did, they wouldn't be using Facebook for all their communications. If they cared, they'd be using encrypted point-to-point VOIP for voice, not Skype. If they cared, they would be using OTR and Pidgin for chat.
WHAT alternatives? Where's a one-stop "download client (available for all major desktop/mobile platforms, of course), punch in your buddies' pseudonyms, and start an encrypted point-to-point VOIP conference" alternative to Skype? Where's Diaspora? (I know, perpetual beta) Where's crypto-twitter?
Until people start to care about their security and privacy, they won't have any. You have to vote with your actions.
There's a slight problem with that: network effects mean that the value of a communication channel scales with some power of the number of people who use it. Kim Kardashian (thanks to her huge twitter following) probably has more "votes" than all of Slahdot put together.
And after learning those new skills, your handmade windows will be every bit as good as the mass-produced ones... were at the time that secondhand book was written. Single glazing held up by putty, solid wood frame and muttens, copper weather-stripping; aspiring window-makers better include "budgeting for a doubled heating bill" as part of the learning process.
The U.S. Congress considered several bills to foster similar competition, but decided they like the large campaign donations incumbent ISPs can afford because their near-monopoly positions allow them to impose huge economic rents.
Snap a photo of someone with a smartphone, analyze an image against a database of social media or Flickr pics and, voila, you have a name. From there, it's easy to get someone's age, hometown, interests, news coverage, you name it."
Interesting tech, and more than a little bit scary. However, I don't think that congress passing a law restricting it is going to slow our march toward cyberpunk dystopia one bit. In the post-9/11 security state, it's an absolute certainty that the three-letter agencies will continue to develop and use face recognition, and pretty much a given that soon afterward local cops will be using their hand-me-downs on routine drug cases (just like GPS trackers and smartphone data loggers). Businesses big enough to have offshore tax shelters will just build offshore data-processing shelters, streaming images from their front door cameras to foreign locales to be analyzed by restricted facial-recognition algorithms and customer profiles back in real time. In the end this would only bite individuals and small businesses (much like our allegedly-high taxes).
It's the perceived Lucasing astronomy. People see, read, become emotionally invested in the possibilities of a universe (whether it's the galaxy-spanning empire of Star Wars or the slightly more realistic solar system as-it-was-understood-in-1970). Then the body that nominally owns that work decides to go in and hack up established story line. Predictably, some fans become upset and rage about it on the internet.
Greedo shot first, The feds in E.T. never had guns, Pluto was never a planet.
"American Ninja Warrior"... suffers badly from human interest bloat.
It's endemic in US TV coverage of any individual sport, it seems. The Olympics have been unwatchable for years, because you get 2 minutes of sprinting or swimming or tumbling, and a half-hour sob story about the life struggles of one of the American athletes. Great, she was orphaned at age 2 and raised in abject poverty by her quadrapeligic great-aunt in the basement of a pig slaughterhouse; it's amazing that she overcame that to become a world champion gymnast. Now can we PLEASE turn off the sad music and cut to cycling or equestrian jumping, or javelin-throwing, or archery, or any one of the other dozen events you've been ignoring all week because there's not a photogenic American with a compelling life story in the top 5 contenders?
Oh sweet zombie Jeebus, yes. They call me at least once a week from a different number in area code 360, and like a chump I pick up every damn time because I know people there.
20 years to life sharing a cheap cruise ship cabin with a dozen rabid weasels is too good for them!
...Microsoft is still unlikely to pay the reduced fine. A Microsoft spokesman was quoted as saying "Awww, the widdle EU antitrust court thinks it can fine us. Isn't that just precious?"
$30/user for what? A few lame tweets (yamms?), real name, work email, work phone number, and a rough org chart?
Yeah, that seems very high to me, especially considering how many of those users are probably in the same "log in once or twice a month to see if anything is going on" category as I am.
It'll slow them down by a factor of the number of leaked hashes, which while not magic is pretty significant when you have a million hashes!
With no salt, they can attack in parallel, testing each dictionary word against the whole hash list at the same time. With unique salt for each user, they have to run the same dictionary attack against each hash sequentially.
Yes, with Intel putting all the traditional northbridge functions on the CPU die now, that 100MHz only drives the PCIe bus directly. There's no FSB to speak of anymore.
This is a problem that could be solved if universities were willing to let students run their computer systems. I don't just mean students owning their own desktops, I mean really running the school's systems -- maintaining software, managing servers, etc.
But if students did those jobs, there wouldn't be a juicy outsourcing contract to bid! How will the people in procurement eat if they don't have every IT vendor in the state take them out to lunch a few times? How will IT service firms with personal connections to school administrators but no ability to manage a huge network get contracts they can't actually deliver on?
Please, somebody think of the hungry procurement managers and the well-connected service firms!
Slashdot Mirror
You could just as well expand that to "everything Stephen Baxter ever wrote".
After Manifold Space/Time/Destiny, I'm convinced he keeps writing because he enjoys seeing his characters suffer...
A judge can generally order parties to a case in his court to disclose all sorts of things that would normally be confidential.
How exactly would your theoretical honeypot work?
By following the money. Server logs show which online personas bought and sold what, intercepting packages can tie those to physical addresses and identities, and comparing bitcoin IDs on suspects' computers with the block chain provides irrefutable cryptographic proof that the transactions took place. They could probably even wind everything up into one big RICO case, and then everyone who used silkroad is potentially on the hook for every transaction that took place there.
Do you think the DEA cares about going after kids who buy $100 worth of LSD?
To turn that question around for a minute, if the DEA had a chance to put literally thousands of dealers and users in prison for life, and take a huge number of bitcoins out of circulation, do you think they would pass it up?
How will Twitter distinguish between positive Tweets coming from voters or news outlets and those from spam bots designed to drive the conversation surrounding a candidate one way or the other?
There's a difference? /s
An employees Drop Box account was hacked that had a file with client email addresses in it.
Well, yeah. Can you imagine the field day Wuala et al would have if word got out that Dropbox created a second, more secure file storage and transfer service for internal use? Not eating one's dogfood is a huge sign of lacking confidence in the product...
the Mexican hotel chain could find their servers are grabbed by the FBI in some heavy handed Anti-Pirate operation.
...or some drug enforcement operation, or terrorism, or tax-dodging, or anonymous/lulzsec/etc, or the next WikiLeaker, or just "National security letter. We don't have to tell you why, just hand over the servers."
I can only conclude that the countries with "protectionist legislation" that makes it hard to outsource their cloud data services to us are doing a service to their citizens.
"This is the backwards era...", he typed on a virtual keyboard displayed on the touchscreen of his tablet computer, linked via a 54 megabit/second radio connection to his office's network infrastructure, and from there to AT&T's core network switching terabits/second of traffic, and on to a data center in Michigan hosting a tech news website where it was added to the log of a hundred-thousand-person virtual conference.
Because if you aren't there, and the train is sold out, they want to sell your seat to someone on standby.
Will I be able to afford to ride it after it's built?
Depends on how old you are now and how good your doctors and investment advisers are, I suppose...
Now we see why they fight so hard not to have to compete. Rolling out new equipment is hard, buying a cable monopoly from the local government is easy, and you can charge $40/month for the same crap service forever.
Privacy disappears because people don't value it. If they did, they wouldn't be using Facebook for all their communications. If they cared, they'd be using encrypted point-to-point VOIP for voice, not Skype. If they cared, they would be using OTR and Pidgin for chat.
WHAT alternatives? Where's a one-stop "download client (available for all major desktop/mobile platforms, of course), punch in your buddies' pseudonyms, and start an encrypted point-to-point VOIP conference" alternative to Skype? Where's Diaspora? (I know, perpetual beta) Where's crypto-twitter?
Until people start to care about their security and privacy, they won't have any. You have to vote with your actions.
There's a slight problem with that: network effects mean that the value of a communication channel scales with some power of the number of people who use it. Kim Kardashian (thanks to her huge twitter following) probably has more "votes" than all of Slahdot put together.
And after learning those new skills, your handmade windows will be every bit as good as the mass-produced ones... were at the time that secondhand book was written. Single glazing held up by putty, solid wood frame and muttens, copper weather-stripping; aspiring window-makers better include "budgeting for a doubled heating bill" as part of the learning process.
It's been said that we are now in a 12% year of inflation because of it.
It's been said, and often by people who ought to know better. Of course, arguing with them usually goes about like this...
Q: What prices specifically have gone up 330% since 2002, grandpa?
A: Blrgh, grumble, Obama, socialism, deficits, buy gold now.
The U.S. Congress considered several bills to foster similar competition, but decided they like the large campaign donations incumbent ISPs can afford because their near-monopoly positions allow them to impose huge economic rents.
T, FTFUSA
Snap a photo of someone with a smartphone, analyze an image against a database of social media or Flickr pics and, voila, you have a name. From there, it's easy to get someone's age, hometown, interests, news coverage, you name it."
Interesting tech, and more than a little bit scary. However, I don't think that congress passing a law restricting it is going to slow our march toward cyberpunk dystopia one bit. In the post-9/11 security state, it's an absolute certainty that the three-letter agencies will continue to develop and use face recognition, and pretty much a given that soon afterward local cops will be using their hand-me-downs on routine drug cases (just like GPS trackers and smartphone data loggers). Businesses big enough to have offshore tax shelters will just build offshore data-processing shelters, streaming images from their front door cameras to foreign locales to be analyzed by restricted facial-recognition algorithms and customer profiles back in real time. In the end this would only bite individuals and small businesses (much like our allegedly-high taxes).
Another benefit of offshoring. Not only are the wages lower, so are the bribes!
It's the perceived Lucasing astronomy. People see, read, become emotionally invested in the possibilities of a universe (whether it's the galaxy-spanning empire of Star Wars or the slightly more realistic solar system as-it-was-understood-in-1970). Then the body that nominally owns that work decides to go in and hack up established story line. Predictably, some fans become upset and rage about it on the internet.
Greedo shot first, The feds in E.T. never had guns, Pluto was never a planet.
"American Ninja Warrior" ... suffers badly from human interest bloat.
It's endemic in US TV coverage of any individual sport, it seems. The Olympics have been unwatchable for years, because you get 2 minutes of sprinting or swimming or tumbling, and a half-hour sob story about the life struggles of one of the American athletes. Great, she was orphaned at age 2 and raised in abject poverty by her quadrapeligic great-aunt in the basement of a pig slaughterhouse; it's amazing that she overcame that to become a world champion gymnast. Now can we PLEASE turn off the sad music and cut to cycling or equestrian jumping, or javelin-throwing, or archery, or any one of the other dozen events you've been ignoring all week because there's not a photogenic American with a compelling life story in the top 5 contenders?
Oh sweet zombie Jeebus, yes. They call me at least once a week from a different number in area code 360, and like a chump I pick up every damn time because I know people there.
20 years to life sharing a cheap cruise ship cabin with a dozen rabid weasels is too good for them!
...Microsoft is still unlikely to pay the reduced fine. A Microsoft spokesman was quoted as saying "Awww, the widdle EU antitrust court thinks it can fine us. Isn't that just precious?"
$30/user for what? A few lame tweets (yamms?), real name, work email, work phone number, and a rough org chart?
Yeah, that seems very high to me, especially considering how many of those users are probably in the same "log in once or twice a month to see if anything is going on" category as I am.
It'll slow them down by a factor of the number of leaked hashes, which while not magic is pretty significant when you have a million hashes!
With no salt, they can attack in parallel, testing each dictionary word against the whole hash list at the same time. With unique salt for each user, they have to run the same dictionary attack against each hash sequentially.
Yes, with Intel putting all the traditional northbridge functions on the CPU die now, that 100MHz only drives the PCIe bus directly. There's no FSB to speak of anymore.
Standard base clock for Sandy/Ivy Bridge is 100MHz...
This is a problem that could be solved if universities were willing to let students run their computer systems. I don't just mean students owning their own desktops, I mean really running the school's systems -- maintaining software, managing servers, etc.
But if students did those jobs, there wouldn't be a juicy outsourcing contract to bid! How will the people in procurement eat if they don't have every IT vendor in the state take them out to lunch a few times? How will IT service firms with personal connections to school administrators but no ability to manage a huge network get contracts they can't actually deliver on?
Please, somebody think of the hungry procurement managers and the well-connected service firms!