Oh, I get what you're saying, I totally do. Note the last sentence of that post, though, where it is made clear that this AC is only talking about CloudFlare "messing with" Tor, though. They're not thinking as deeply about this as you or I.
You are identified as the same individual who made some previous request, but not as a specific individual. That is to say, they could match your current requests with your historical requests, but not pick you out of a line-up based on those requests.
Make sense now?
This is useful for, say, determining that some user is the same user who made a previous malicious request and targeting them for further scrutiny (e.g. a CAPTCHA challenge) or (more likely, as malicious users would avoid the identification and tracking to begin with[1]) identify users who have not made any prior malicious requests, in order to allow them to bypass the additional scrutiny applied to other Tor users.
Think of CloudFlare like the TSA, if the TSA were actually effective at their jobs. What they're proposing here, then, is akin to TSA Pre Check, wherein the TSA (at your request) considers your history of not hijacking planes or being a general bad actor and allows you to pass through a lighter screening process with a shorter line, rather than assuming you're a terrorist like everyone else. CloudFlare would, for users who use the proposed plugin, keep a record of "malicious vs. benign" on a per-user basis, rather than per-IP, so they can, then, use your history of not spamming, hacking, or being a general bad actor to allow you to pass through their screening process, rather than assuming you're a spammer like everyone else.
[1]: As would others who erroneously think it actually buys them any privacy, likely because they harbor the same misunderstanding you do.
In all seriousness: Cloudflare needs to go fuck themselves. What, are they in the pocket of the FBI/NSA/CIA/NID/{insert government agency here}, now? Wouldn't at all be surprised.
You do realize that CloudFlare is simply looking for a solution to the problem Tor users are complaining about, right? CloudFlare provides a CDN caching service and HTTP firewall; it is that second item that is causing problems for Tor users, as any nefarious activity from an exit node gets all users of that node flagged as potentially malicious. CloudFlare has three options, then: do nothing (e.g. tell Tor users to go fuck themselves), stop offering the service their customers use and pay them for (e.g. tell their customers to go fuck themselves), or help Tor find a solution to their users' problem.
This story is about them attempting to do the latter, which leaves you, and others like you, to practice a bit of self-love.
The worst part, if you have phone service as well, is that they don't do POTS+U-Verse, they do U-Verse with Digital Voice. You lose the benefit of a regulated POTS line and probably pay more in the process.
And, in fact, Rhapsody is T-Mobile's music streaming partner; you get a free Rhapsody subscription with T-Mobile's JUMP! service, and that's zero-rated as well. Which, honestly, is fine, because they offer a free zero-rating option to any other music streaming provider who asks.
It's not like iOS had it from day one, either. In fact, iOS doesn't tell you up-front what permissions an app wants during install; it makes you wait for the app to request them before you find out, so you can't even decide which app to install based on permissions, you have to trial-and-error that shit.
And, now that Android does have this feature, and still provides an up-front listing of requested permissions...
Really, AT&T? You want yet more money from us, with no oversight or guarantee that you're going to use it for the purpose for which we would give it to you?
You think we don't see how poorly that arrangement has worked for us in the past? Kindly fuck off.
I already gave a solution, it's not my fault you missed it. Here it is in your format:
Problem: Zero-rating (can be used to hinder competition)
Solution: Require that no fee be charged for zero-rating and that it be voluntary for all parties involved and open-access for any providers wishing to participate. Bar companies who fail to uphold this standard from using it at all and fine them heavily.
I think we're in agreement on that last bit; your proposal simply lacks resolution. I may be wrong, but I'd ask that you more clearly state your position in that case.
This is just one of the incidents I'm referring to. Shot by a friend of mine (my wife reminded me that this footage existed). What you don't hear in this short clip is the repeated announcements that the train will not enter the station until the yellow tiles are clear; what you don't see is that the train advanced and stopped several times because people kept stepping back onto the tiles once the train wold start moving.
You know, maybe they should; but even with the station manager, attendant, or whatever you want to call them, yelling it over the PA and a few dozen pissed off passengers glaring at them, it takes a good couple of minutes and several repetitions of the message for these idiots to move. A recorded message won't fare any better.
Zero-rating isn't akin to a speed limit; it's akin to changing lanes. We allow changing lanes, of course, with some restrictions; and we fine people for ignoring those restrictions. Let's do the same for zero-rating.
If an ISP wants to offer zero-rating for services fitting a given set of technical specifications (e.g. video streams under 1.5Mbps which can be detected as such) at no cost to participating providers, given the user's ability to enable or disable the service, what's the problem? More to the point, given the user's ability to enable or disable the service, it's user-requested traffic control, something we should be encouraging providers to implement!
Mandate that participation (on both ends) be voluntary and that no fee may be collected (on either end), and call it a day.
I somewhat understand it is "nice" for you because you are a part of the situation.
Then you understand incorrectly; I have unlimited LTE data on two devices and uncapped internet at home. Zero-rating provides literally zero benefit to me.
You said that just telling the provider what you prefer to use, then the provider will lower the cost for you.
I didn't read the rest of that paragraph, as it is entirely based on a misunderstanding of what I wrote. Go back, re-read what I write, and try again.
You seem to argue based on your current satisfaction.
On the contrary; I'm arguing based on what I feel is fair to others as, as notes above, I have unlimited data, so this does not affect me. You, on the other hand, appear to be arguing based on ignorance and inability to understand the posts you are replying to. For example:
we SHOULD NOT allow things that can be abused
So: water (can be used to drown someone), air (can be used to propel projectiles at high velocities), wood planks (can be used as a weapon), democracy (as we've seen, can certainly be abused)... these are all things you say we should not allow?
Why would you allow them to happen if you already see or know that there can be a problems/abuses/issues in the future? Could you tell me why? A short-term satisfaction, and being screwed later?
How's my attachment to reality strike you as an argument? You know, anything can be abused, so, rather than banning things with legitimate uses, why not ban the illegitimate uses and things without legitimate uses instead? Otherwise, well... we'd be banning literally everything.
That's why prevention is preferred over looking for a solution especially when you already know what issues/problems would happen if allowed.
Give a company the chance to screw up before you punish them (and their customers). If, and only if, they screw up,: by all means, throw the book at them.Bar them from any future participation in whatever activity they were doing (in this case, zero-rating) and fine the living shit out of them. That is prevention; not just a fine, but completely barring them from participating if they screw it up. However, if they operate fairly (as T-Mobile currently does), it does nobody any good to stop them. And I'll point to water again: we know people can drown in it; yet banning it would be far worse for society than allowing it.
If there's no system that lets a train detect foreign objects on the track ahead, then there is no hope at all for self-driving cars.
Such systems exist; the question is whether they exist within the closed-loop that is the BART system. They do not.
Likewise, passengers too close to the edge of theboarding platform can be solved by the same sliding doors that other automated train systems use.
And, again, the question is whether or not these exist within the ART system. And, again, they do not.
That said, if trains stopped short of a station just because someone is standing on the yellow tiles, they'd never get into the stations
And yet, though I've only ridden BART a couple dozen times, I've witnessed this on no less than six occasions.
Well that's part of the problem. Central dispatch should be able to route trains around a disabled train without an operator standing there throw a switch.
And you completely miss the point that I was talking about what is, not what should be. Look at the post I was replying to... I'll make it easy, here it is:
Save money by firing all the "drivers" since they absolutely aren't necessary (the trains are automated; the only reason they keep the driver around is to push the "start" button as a concession to unions). Then reinvest that money in actual maintenance costs.
While most of what you've said here is correct, none of that is relevant to this discussion; the only relevant thing you said also happened to be incorrect.
Pressing buttons to make the train go is "operating" and I would agree, someone who does that and only that is an "operator. Making in-service repairs and adjusting the ride parameters of individual cars to work around mechanical failures that cannot be repaired in-service goes well beyond "operating".
Given that I've actually witnessed the latter (I was on the car it was being done to, I can authoritatively say that yes, it does happen.
An operator... well... operates a well-functioning device. An engineer or, at least, a technician keeps it functioning; typically, a technician doesn't also operate the device, though. What I've seen BART "operators" do is "engineering". That makes them engineers in my book; though, I suppose when BART calls them operators, it's difficult to argue. Legally, the difference is that the engineer must have a Federal Railroad Administration certification; while they crap they have to know how to deal with in the course of their job is different, the amount and difficulty of said crap is not.
Call me when a diesel engineer has to perform a live repair on a train's 1000VDC electrical system because there is no way to remove power from a train sitting on the track with a connection to the third rail. Oh, wait, diesel engineers don't have to do that, they can kill the generator or pull a disconnect.
This zero rating can be an anti-competitive move that is unrelated to costs.
Fixed that for you.
In Comcast's case, zero-rating their own services while not upgrading backbone links to allow Netflix traffic was most certainly anti-competitive. In T-Mobile's case, not offering their own streaming services and not collecting a single cent from their zero-rated "partners" (look up how to become a partner; you can enroll your personal media server if it can provide a stream at less than 1.5Mbps), not so much.
Comcast's actions prevented a competitor from providing decent service, with no possible recourse; T-Mobile's actions encourage companies in the music and video streaming markets (not competitors, as T-Mobile is not in that space) to provide better service and sets clear guidelines that any legitimate service should already be following in the first place. The only non-technical requirement is that a provider request to be zero-rated; and one cold argue that to be a technical requirement as T-Mobile can't possibly know of every single provider in existence.
Your argument amounts to "we shouldn't be allowed to have nice things that might be able to be abused, whether or not they're being abused". Apply that elsewhere and see what happens: you can abuse water, for fuck's sake.
We're talking about T-Mobile, here, where becoming a "business partner" takes a phone call, a couple of forms, and the technical ability to provide service at the bitrates allowed when zero-rating. They've yet to charge anyone a single penny for participation, or turn away anyone who met those qualifications.
Slashdot Mirror
And there will be people ... for their own power/greed etc.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Wait...
How do people mess up such a simple rule?
Oh, I get what you're saying, I totally do. Note the last sentence of that post, though, where it is made clear that this AC is only talking about CloudFlare "messing with" Tor, though. They're not thinking as deeply about this as you or I.
You are identified as the same individual who made some previous request, but not as a specific individual. That is to say, they could match your current requests with your historical requests, but not pick you out of a line-up based on those requests.
Make sense now?
This is useful for, say, determining that some user is the same user who made a previous malicious request and targeting them for further scrutiny (e.g. a CAPTCHA challenge) or (more likely, as malicious users would avoid the identification and tracking to begin with[1]) identify users who have not made any prior malicious requests, in order to allow them to bypass the additional scrutiny applied to other Tor users.
Think of CloudFlare like the TSA, if the TSA were actually effective at their jobs. What they're proposing here, then, is akin to TSA Pre Check, wherein the TSA (at your request) considers your history of not hijacking planes or being a general bad actor and allows you to pass through a lighter screening process with a shorter line, rather than assuming you're a terrorist like everyone else. CloudFlare would, for users who use the proposed plugin, keep a record of "malicious vs. benign" on a per-user basis, rather than per-IP, so they can, then, use your history of not spamming, hacking, or being a general bad actor to allow you to pass through their screening process, rather than assuming you're a spammer like everyone else.
[1]: As would others who erroneously think it actually buys them any privacy, likely because they harbor the same misunderstanding you do.
In all seriousness: Cloudflare needs to go fuck themselves. What, are they in the pocket of the FBI/NSA/CIA/NID/{insert government agency here}, now? Wouldn't at all be surprised.
You do realize that CloudFlare is simply looking for a solution to the problem Tor users are complaining about, right? CloudFlare provides a CDN caching service and HTTP firewall; it is that second item that is causing problems for Tor users, as any nefarious activity from an exit node gets all users of that node flagged as potentially malicious. CloudFlare has three options, then: do nothing (e.g. tell Tor users to go fuck themselves), stop offering the service their customers use and pay them for (e.g. tell their customers to go fuck themselves), or help Tor find a solution to their users' problem.
This story is about them attempting to do the latter, which leaves you, and others like you, to practice a bit of self-love.
It was a Chromebook Pixel. Those start at $1299.00 so they're not exactly cheap.
And they take home paychecks.
It only took 1/4 as long as they spent bitching about Apple not helping with it!
The worst part, if you have phone service as well, is that they don't do POTS+U-Verse, they do U-Verse with Digital Voice. You lose the benefit of a regulated POTS line and probably pay more in the process.
The others are :)
And, in fact, Rhapsody is T-Mobile's music streaming partner; you get a free Rhapsody subscription with T-Mobile's JUMP! service, and that's zero-rated as well. Which, honestly, is fine, because they offer a free zero-rating option to any other music streaming provider who asks.
You missed the "no oversight" part, eh? We already gave them a shit-ton of money for this. We didn't get what we paid for.
It's not like iOS had it from day one, either. In fact, iOS doesn't tell you up-front what permissions an app wants during install; it makes you wait for the app to request them before you find out, so you can't even decide which app to install based on permissions, you have to trial-and-error that shit.
And, now that Android does have this feature, and still provides an up-front listing of requested permissions...
Really, AT&T? You want yet more money from us, with no oversight or guarantee that you're going to use it for the purpose for which we would give it to you?
You think we don't see how poorly that arrangement has worked for us in the past? Kindly fuck off.
I already gave a solution, it's not my fault you missed it. Here it is in your format:
Problem: Zero-rating (can be used to hinder competition)
Solution: Require that no fee be charged for zero-rating and that it be voluntary for all parties involved and open-access for any providers wishing to participate. Bar companies who fail to uphold this standard from using it at all and fine them heavily.
I think we're in agreement on that last bit; your proposal simply lacks resolution. I may be wrong, but I'd ask that you more clearly state your position in that case.
This is just one of the incidents I'm referring to. Shot by a friend of mine (my wife reminded me that this footage existed). What you don't hear in this short clip is the repeated announcements that the train will not enter the station until the yellow tiles are clear; what you don't see is that the train advanced and stopped several times because people kept stepping back onto the tiles once the train wold start moving.
Oh?
You know, maybe they should; but even with the station manager, attendant, or whatever you want to call them, yelling it over the PA and a few dozen pissed off passengers glaring at them, it takes a good couple of minutes and several repetitions of the message for these idiots to move. A recorded message won't fare any better.
Right, but without these things already in place and without the budget to put them in place... I don't think I need to say any more.
That's great, we're talking about BART.
Zero-rating isn't akin to a speed limit; it's akin to changing lanes. We allow changing lanes, of course, with some restrictions; and we fine people for ignoring those restrictions. Let's do the same for zero-rating.
If an ISP wants to offer zero-rating for services fitting a given set of technical specifications (e.g. video streams under 1.5Mbps which can be detected as such) at no cost to participating providers, given the user's ability to enable or disable the service, what's the problem? More to the point, given the user's ability to enable or disable the service, it's user-requested traffic control, something we should be encouraging providers to implement!
Mandate that participation (on both ends) be voluntary and that no fee may be collected (on either end), and call it a day.
I somewhat understand it is "nice" for you because you are a part of the situation.
Then you understand incorrectly; I have unlimited LTE data on two devices and uncapped internet at home. Zero-rating provides literally zero benefit to me.
You said that just telling the provider what you prefer to use, then the provider will lower the cost for you.
No, I said (and specifically relating to T-Mobile, as jbmartin6 had mentioned) to contact the streaming provider you prefer to use and pressure them to participate in T-Mobile's (free and open to any provider who wishes to sign up) Music Freedom program. Currently, there are 40 providers participating, not including personal servers registered by individual users, which are not listed there. Pandora is onle one of those services.
I didn't read the rest of that paragraph, as it is entirely based on a misunderstanding of what I wrote. Go back, re-read what I write, and try again.
You seem to argue based on your current satisfaction.
On the contrary; I'm arguing based on what I feel is fair to others as, as notes above, I have unlimited data, so this does not affect me. You, on the other hand, appear to be arguing based on ignorance and inability to understand the posts you are replying to. For example:
we SHOULD NOT allow things that can be abused
So: water (can be used to drown someone), air (can be used to propel projectiles at high velocities), wood planks (can be used as a weapon), democracy (as we've seen, can certainly be abused)... these are all things you say we should not allow?
Why would you allow them to happen if you already see or know that there can be a problems/abuses/issues in the future? Could you tell me why? A short-term satisfaction, and being screwed later?
How's my attachment to reality strike you as an argument? You know, anything can be abused, so, rather than banning things with legitimate uses, why not ban the illegitimate uses and things without legitimate uses instead? Otherwise, well... we'd be banning literally everything.
That's why prevention is preferred over looking for a solution especially when you already know what issues/problems would happen if allowed.
Give a company the chance to screw up before you punish them (and their customers). If, and only if, they screw up,: by all means, throw the book at them.Bar them from any future participation in whatever activity they were doing (in this case, zero-rating) and fine the living shit out of them. That is prevention; not just a fine, but completely barring them from participating if they screw it up. However, if they operate fairly (as T-Mobile currently does), it does nobody any good to stop them. And I'll point to water again: we know people can drown in it; yet banning it would be far worse for society than allowing it.
If there's no system that lets a train detect foreign objects on the track ahead, then there is no hope at all for self-driving cars.
Such systems exist; the question is whether they exist within the closed-loop that is the BART system. They do not.
Likewise, passengers too close to the edge of theboarding platform can be solved by the same sliding doors that other automated train systems use.
And, again, the question is whether or not these exist within the ART system. And, again, they do not.
That said, if trains stopped short of a station just because someone is standing on the yellow tiles, they'd never get into the stations
And yet, though I've only ridden BART a couple dozen times, I've witnessed this on no less than six occasions.
Well that's part of the problem. Central dispatch should be able to route trains around a disabled train without an operator standing there throw a switch.
And you completely miss the point that I was talking about what is, not what should be. Look at the post I was replying to... I'll make it easy, here it is:
Save money by firing all the "drivers" since they absolutely aren't necessary (the trains are automated; the only reason they keep the driver around is to push the "start" button as a concession to unions). Then reinvest that money in actual maintenance costs.
While most of what you've said here is correct, none of that is relevant to this discussion; the only relevant thing you said also happened to be incorrect.
Excellent post, my friend. Very well done.
Pressing buttons to make the train go is "operating" and I would agree, someone who does that and only that is an "operator. Making in-service repairs and adjusting the ride parameters of individual cars to work around mechanical failures that cannot be repaired in-service goes well beyond "operating".
Given that I've actually witnessed the latter (I was on the car it was being done to, I can authoritatively say that yes, it does happen.
An operator... well... operates a well-functioning device. An engineer or, at least, a technician keeps it functioning; typically, a technician doesn't also operate the device, though. What I've seen BART "operators" do is "engineering". That makes them engineers in my book; though, I suppose when BART calls them operators, it's difficult to argue. Legally, the difference is that the engineer must have a Federal Railroad Administration certification; while they crap they have to know how to deal with in the course of their job is different, the amount and difficulty of said crap is not.
Call me when a diesel engineer has to perform a live repair on a train's 1000VDC electrical system because there is no way to remove power from a train sitting on the track with a connection to the third rail. Oh, wait, diesel engineers don't have to do that, they can kill the generator or pull a disconnect.
Read past the first line and you'll see.
This zero rating can be an anti-competitive move that is unrelated to costs.
Fixed that for you.
In Comcast's case, zero-rating their own services while not upgrading backbone links to allow Netflix traffic was most certainly anti-competitive. In T-Mobile's case, not offering their own streaming services and not collecting a single cent from their zero-rated "partners" (look up how to become a partner; you can enroll your personal media server if it can provide a stream at less than 1.5Mbps), not so much.
Comcast's actions prevented a competitor from providing decent service, with no possible recourse; T-Mobile's actions encourage companies in the music and video streaming markets (not competitors, as T-Mobile is not in that space) to provide better service and sets clear guidelines that any legitimate service should already be following in the first place. The only non-technical requirement is that a provider request to be zero-rated; and one cold argue that to be a technical requirement as T-Mobile can't possibly know of every single provider in existence.
Your argument amounts to "we shouldn't be allowed to have nice things that might be able to be abused, whether or not they're being abused". Apply that elsewhere and see what happens: you can abuse water, for fuck's sake.
We're talking about T-Mobile, here, where becoming a "business partner" takes a phone call, a couple of forms, and the technical ability to provide service at the bitrates allowed when zero-rating. They've yet to charge anyone a single penny for participation, or turn away anyone who met those qualifications.
Call me when that changes.