You are 100% correct. That is the main issue I have with current Patriot Act. I for one would go immediately to the media and a lawyer upon recieving one of these 'secret subpoenas', and likely the public outcry would protect me from harsh penalties.
Unfortunately it is usually companies that recieve these, ISP's in particular, and they will often comply for fear of losing the company and ruining the lives of their employees.
Many posters are trying to come up with explanations as to why the public is not outraged at this Big Brother situation. I would like to provide a very simple and clear reason why the general public does not really care.
The public does not care about these privacy invasions, patriot acts, wiretaps, etc, becuase they hear people whine about how our privacy is being invaded everyday, but it has yet to actually happen.
Let me clarify.
There has yet to be a single major case of someone who wasn't really evil being anything other than mildly inconvienced. If and when some average joe is taken advantage of, or criminally or financially damaged, THEN you will see people upset.
I'm not saying I agree with any of this big brother crap that the government is doing. I'm just saying that so far, they have actually used all of these technologies as they promised to do, and have not targetted anyone innappropriately. Until they do, no real effort to battle these invasions will begin.
Stallman and his various comments have long been a subject of very akward feeling and conversation.
Virtually everyone here has a massive respect for the man's technical genius, but at the same time virtually everyone realizes he's a bit of a lunatic.
I think it would be alot easier on all of us if we just killed him.
We're meeting at the flagpole in an hour. Bring your knives, bats, and decompilers.
With a little stretch of the imagination we could make a much larger theory out of your statement regarding risk/car insurance.
Lets assume everyone (of any age) is fully intelligent and mature, being as intelligent and mature as they are, they would of course take action based on a weighted-risk decision making process.
Now this very intelligent and mature person knows, that in their younger years, they have very little risk. Very little to lose. No mortgage to pay, no kids to take care of, no wife to beat, etc.
Hence the decisions made by these entirely equally intelligent (and mature!) youngsters are perfectly logical. They are able to do things which may seem a bit crazy to the older folk with more to lose, but given their nice young (and simple) circumstances, the decision is quite logical.
Same reason most of your fancy startup companies are coming from kids who dropped out of Stanford... They have very little to lose. Sure, all the super wise older teachers, parents, mentors tell them they are crazy, stupid, and immature... But they aren't crazy, they've just got nothing to lose.
Well said. I agree with you, Conservatives try to make me be a christian, and Liberals try to deny me the right to do so. I am speaking of course in extremes here.
I'd like to be a member of the "Do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want-as-long-as-you-don' t-directly-ruin-anyone-elses-life-or-property" party.
How does this thing work? I understand from the technology side, but how does it work from the business side? Is this company FollowUs making deals/agreements with the cell phone carriers to get this information? Or is it something they are able to access some other way?
Haven't seen something like this site in the US. Probably the response to the first question above will explain way.
Your overall comment may have been a little harsh to the OP, but one line was dead-on.
believe that you are given a magic 'truth/morality compass' by the holy spirit and therefore have the magical ability to determine the rightness of science without resort to arguments or facts
You said it perfectly. It's not just the religious crowd that feel this way, although I'm sure it's much more prevelant among them. Hopefully in the near future this belief you speak of will wear off... Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but it seems it wears a little thinner with each passing day. Then things like I.D. come up and throw us back a few centuries in progress.
Don't suppose you have any ideas on what it takes to facilitate this change?
They are surprisingly detailed in their background check. For instance, someone I know had their clearance revoked because his fiance had been a member of what could be considered a socialist organization while she was in highschool (and she was nearly 50 at the time of the investigation).
They basically are searching for any association between you and various factors that they consider 'signs' of a likelihood that you might betray your country. So if your dad donated money to a political group 20 years ago that they consider anti-american, you'll never have a security clearance.
A problem I had, was that I had an unpaid cable television bill from many years ago, which I suppose to them was a sign that I might have a history of money problems, which might mean that I would accept a bribe for government information. It took me a while before my clearance was approved.
Of course I am not saying there is a problem with the process, as there are very rarely issues with 'leaks' of secret information relative to how many people have access to it.
It really doesn't matter how secure the card system is. Why would I try to crack the card when I could just offer a small sum of money to the nice lady working the security desk, and making the cards?
Or if she's got too much integrity for that, I suppose I could just kidnap her son/daughter? I'm quite confident she'd make me a card then. And I didn't need any technical skills either.
Maybe I just catch all the security guards while they are at lunch and bribe them to go ahead and let me in without a card? I'm quite confident for the right sum of money they would help me out.
The point i'm making is that all these technological means are only to stop the unmotivated criminal, which is why the level of security on them is only marginally important. For anyone that is sufficiently motivated, the card is irrelevant.
Kinda like having locks on all the doors of your house when there are glass windows all the way around. The lock keeps the neighbor kid from wandering into your home, but anyone who actually wanted to go inside could do so with a rock, probably more quickly than you could unlock your door with a key.
They aren't making you do it. You can do it if you want to participate in the government job, which would be a privilege, not a requirement.
For instance, I worked on an Airforce base, and had to get a security clearance, they took plenty of fingerprints and other things, as well as interviewing family, girlfriends, teachers, etc. They also monitor your credit, and other such things.
Of course I was giving up almost privacy, but this was a choice I made to work on a peice of software which was classified as secret. I was not required to do so.
Contrarily, It's fine to design something so it will hold exactly what it needs to stand up against, as long as your aware that what it needs to stand up against is atleast double what you would ever expect it to stand up against.
For those here curious about 'the real world', I will say that my personal experience reflects the numbers provided in the article.
I'm actually in Oklahoma, which is by no means the Tech Capital of the US. Without a college degree I was able to start.net work at about 50k and have moved up to nearly 100k within 18 months. I have had several jobs in the last year or so, and all of them have offered starting salaries greater than 75k for vb.net and c# work.
Also, I wouldn't say i'm some expert at.net development. I would consider myself very well qualified though.
I think perhaps the demand is becuase companies are realizing they can get alot more bang-for-the-buck with.net, as it is such as RAD environment.
There is a problem though, You have alot of silly VB programmers that think they are.net programmers now that vb.net is a real language. Companies have to work hard to sort out the real developers from the VB Junkies that just picked up.net. One way of doing this is to require c# I suppose.
It's likely that in the near future we will continue to see the advances in space exploration/travel move increasingly to the private commercial organizations. A privately run company is always going to be far more efficient than one that must deal with political issues constantly such as NASA.
Unfortunately even the huge amount of private funding available cannot compete with the funding the federal government could offer. Maybe the government should start dumping that money into grants and funding for private space ventures, or even offer NASA for sale to companies that are actually accountable to shareholders to do things effectively.
That being said, NASA's funding is extremely small, most small tech startups have more money to work with.
That is a good link. Thank you. The site seems very interesting I'll have to look at it more later. I did notice however that the US was ranked the highest possible rating in all categories that I could find. Along with about 20 or so other countries.
Interesting to me was Japan's somewhat lower rating, having spent some time there myself I hadn't felt 'non-free'... I'll have to read up on it and see what factors were looked at.
I think the US is a pretty nice place, politically it can seem a bit scary sometimes, but no more so than most other countries. Overall the quality of living is very high.
I think often people get a little too enthusiastic about their political sentiments, or perhaps let some variety of media get them a little jaded, and then start complaining that America is falling apart and a horrible place. Fortunately, the vast majority of people grow out of this reactionary mindset as they grow in maturity and wisdom.
I use cox also, and agree with most of what you said. But I will comment on the business service. In my area atleast, it was significantly more expensive (~$150 a month) and you were required to sign a 1 year contract of use. I signed up for it, wanting the unblocked ports and such, and was getting bad service in my area with frequent disconnects, yet they wouldn't terminate my contract. Now I've got them sending collection agencies after me looking for thousands of dollars for service I never had or used, becuase I stopped paying them after the service was unusable and they refused to terminate the contract.
We had to setup a medium sized IPv6 network, as we develop alot of military related software and their GIG (Global Information Grid) is IPv6 based.
It all seems to work pretty well, although there was some learning curve involved on translating between networks and such.
Oh, and it's a real pain in the ass when you are used to being able to memorize many IPv4 addresses in your head.... Although your localhost IP address is now simpler:)
What country in the world would you say has a better record on civil rights? Or instead of a record, a better existing civil rights situation currently?
This is actually really slick. I hate to support Sony nowadays, but this is exactly the sort of utility that will make hardware like the PSP more useful to people. Hopefully in the near future all our PDA's and Cellphones will be able to translate live as we talk.
I hope theres an option to have a talking Paperclip though, I'd feel more at home with that. <sarcasm/>
Let me know when its in a device that will fit in my ear:)
I too have had alot of trouble with getting good performance out of the ATI cards. I have an HP ZD8000 notebook, which comes with a x600 ATI card built in.
I use the ATI provided FGLRX driver, but OpenGL never works right, and while the svideo output works well, i get dropped frames in full screen video.
I assume there is some magical configuration that will get it working better, but i've already put more hours into tweaking my xorg.conf that I would have liked to.
Of course, on the flipside, ATI works great under windows.
For an alternate explanation of his statistics, I'd say that perhaps the families that are members of this Autism society are more likely to be in technical fields as mentioned in the article becuase people who work in these technical fields are likely more wealthy and well educated than average, and thus more likely to have had their child diagnosed by a doctor, treated, and joined the society.
Re:Fuzzing and Obfuscation
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You are 100% correct. That is the main issue I have with current Patriot Act. I for one would go immediately to the media and a lawyer upon recieving one of these 'secret subpoenas', and likely the public outcry would protect me from harsh penalties.
Unfortunately it is usually companies that recieve these, ISP's in particular, and they will often comply for fear of losing the company and ruining the lives of their employees.
For all we know Google has been served with one.
Many posters are trying to come up with explanations as to why the public is not outraged at this Big Brother situation. I would like to provide a very simple and clear reason why the general public does not really care.
The public does not care about these privacy invasions, patriot acts, wiretaps, etc, becuase they hear people whine about how our privacy is being invaded everyday, but it has yet to actually happen.
Let me clarify.
There has yet to be a single major case of someone who wasn't really evil being anything other than mildly inconvienced. If and when some average joe is taken advantage of, or criminally or financially damaged, THEN you will see people upset.
I'm not saying I agree with any of this big brother crap that the government is doing. I'm just saying that so far, they have actually used all of these technologies as they promised to do, and have not targetted anyone innappropriately. Until they do, no real effort to battle these invasions will begin.
Stallman and his various comments have long been a subject of very akward feeling and conversation.
Virtually everyone here has a massive respect for the man's technical genius, but at the same time virtually everyone realizes he's a bit of a lunatic.
I think it would be alot easier on all of us if we just killed him.
We're meeting at the flagpole in an hour. Bring your knives, bats, and decompilers.
The therapist always told me I wasn't responsible for my mothers death, but now I have scientific evidence.
My cells should have been there for her.
If only Google Maps could find me the nearest bridge.
Good Bye Cruel World!
With a little stretch of the imagination we could make a much larger theory out of your statement regarding risk/car insurance.
:).
Lets assume everyone (of any age) is fully intelligent and mature, being as intelligent and mature as they are, they would of course take action based on a weighted-risk decision making process.
Now this very intelligent and mature person knows, that in their younger years, they have very little risk. Very little to lose. No mortgage to pay, no kids to take care of, no wife to beat, etc.
Hence the decisions made by these entirely equally intelligent (and mature!) youngsters are perfectly logical. They are able to do things which may seem a bit crazy to the older folk with more to lose, but given their nice young (and simple) circumstances, the decision is quite logical.
Same reason most of your fancy startup companies are coming from kids who dropped out of Stanford... They have very little to lose. Sure, all the super wise older teachers, parents, mentors tell them they are crazy, stupid, and immature... But they aren't crazy, they've just got nothing to lose.
But don't listen to me, I'm only 12
Well said. I agree with you, Conservatives try to make me be a christian, and Liberals try to deny me the right to do so. I am speaking of course in extremes here.
' t-directly-ruin-anyone-elses-life-or-property" party.
:)
I'd like to be a member of the "Do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want-as-long-as-you-don
Maybe I'm the one being extreme now though.
To be fair, Microsoft's flaws are alot more serious, so it's only logical they will take longer to fix.
<laugh\>
How does this thing work? I understand from the technology side, but how does it work from the business side? Is this company FollowUs making deals/agreements with the cell phone carriers to get this information? Or is it something they are able to access some other way?
Haven't seen something like this site in the US. Probably the response to the first question above will explain way.
Your overall comment may have been a little harsh to the OP, but one line was dead-on.
believe that you are given a magic 'truth/morality compass' by the holy spirit and therefore have the magical ability to determine the rightness of science without resort to arguments or facts
You said it perfectly. It's not just the religious crowd that feel this way, although I'm sure it's much more prevelant among them. Hopefully in the near future this belief you speak of will wear off... Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but it seems it wears a little thinner with each passing day. Then things like I.D. come up and throw us back a few centuries in progress.
Don't suppose you have any ideas on what it takes to facilitate this change?
That was hilarious btw, not sure what the mods were thinking.
They are surprisingly detailed in their background check. For instance, someone I know had their clearance revoked because his fiance had been a member of what could be considered a socialist organization while she was in highschool (and she was nearly 50 at the time of the investigation).
They basically are searching for any association between you and various factors that they consider 'signs' of a likelihood that you might betray your country. So if your dad donated money to a political group 20 years ago that they consider anti-american, you'll never have a security clearance.
A problem I had, was that I had an unpaid cable television bill from many years ago, which I suppose to them was a sign that I might have a history of money problems, which might mean that I would accept a bribe for government information. It took me a while before my clearance was approved.
Of course I am not saying there is a problem with the process, as there are very rarely issues with 'leaks' of secret information relative to how many people have access to it.
It really doesn't matter how secure the card system is. Why would I try to crack the card when I could just offer a small sum of money to the nice lady working the security desk, and making the cards?
Or if she's got too much integrity for that, I suppose I could just kidnap her son/daughter? I'm quite confident she'd make me a card then. And I didn't need any technical skills either.
Maybe I just catch all the security guards while they are at lunch and bribe them to go ahead and let me in without a card? I'm quite confident for the right sum of money they would help me out.
The point i'm making is that all these technological means are only to stop the unmotivated criminal, which is why the level of security on them is only marginally important. For anyone that is sufficiently motivated, the card is irrelevant.
Kinda like having locks on all the doors of your house when there are glass windows all the way around. The lock keeps the neighbor kid from wandering into your home, but anyone who actually wanted to go inside could do so with a rock, probably more quickly than you could unlock your door with a key.
They aren't making you do it. You can do it if you want to participate in the government job, which would be a privilege, not a requirement.
For instance, I worked on an Airforce base, and had to get a security clearance, they took plenty of fingerprints and other things, as well as interviewing family, girlfriends, teachers, etc. They also monitor your credit, and other such things.
Of course I was giving up almost privacy, but this was a choice I made to work on a peice of software which was classified as secret. I was not required to do so.
Contrarily, It's fine to design something so it will hold exactly what it needs to stand up against, as long as your aware that what it needs to stand up against is atleast double what you would ever expect it to stand up against.
For those here curious about 'the real world', I will say that my personal experience reflects the numbers provided in the article.
.net work at about 50k and have moved up to nearly 100k within 18 months. I have had several jobs in the last year or so, and all of them have offered starting salaries greater than 75k for vb.net and c# work.
.net development. I would consider myself very well qualified though.
.net, as it is such as RAD environment.
.net programmers now that vb.net is a real language. Companies have to work hard to sort out the real developers from the VB Junkies that just picked up .net. One way of doing this is to require c# I suppose.
I'm actually in Oklahoma, which is by no means the Tech Capital of the US. Without a college degree I was able to start
Also, I wouldn't say i'm some expert at
I think perhaps the demand is becuase companies are realizing they can get alot more bang-for-the-buck with
There is a problem though, You have alot of silly VB programmers that think they are
It's likely that in the near future we will continue to see the advances in space exploration/travel move increasingly to the private commercial organizations. A privately run company is always going to be far more efficient than one that must deal with political issues constantly such as NASA.
Unfortunately even the huge amount of private funding available cannot compete with the funding the federal government could offer. Maybe the government should start dumping that money into grants and funding for private space ventures, or even offer NASA for sale to companies that are actually accountable to shareholders to do things effectively.
That being said, NASA's funding is extremely small, most small tech startups have more money to work with.
That is a good link. Thank you. The site seems very interesting I'll have to look at it more later. I did notice however that the US was ranked the highest possible rating in all categories that I could find. Along with about 20 or so other countries.
Interesting to me was Japan's somewhat lower rating, having spent some time there myself I hadn't felt 'non-free'... I'll have to read up on it and see what factors were looked at.
I think the US is a pretty nice place, politically it can seem a bit scary sometimes, but no more so than most other countries. Overall the quality of living is very high.
I think often people get a little too enthusiastic about their political sentiments, or perhaps let some variety of media get them a little jaded, and then start complaining that America is falling apart and a horrible place. Fortunately, the vast majority of people grow out of this reactionary mindset as they grow in maturity and wisdom.
I use cox also, and agree with most of what you said. But I will comment on the business service. In my area atleast, it was significantly more expensive (~$150 a month) and you were required to sign a 1 year contract of use. I signed up for it, wanting the unblocked ports and such, and was getting bad service in my area with frequent disconnects, yet they wouldn't terminate my contract. Now I've got them sending collection agencies after me looking for thousands of dollars for service I never had or used, becuase I stopped paying them after the service was unusable and they refused to terminate the contract.
We had to setup a medium sized IPv6 network, as we develop alot of military related software and their GIG (Global Information Grid) is IPv6 based.
:)
It all seems to work pretty well, although there was some learning curve involved on translating between networks and such.
Oh, and it's a real pain in the ass when you are used to being able to memorize many IPv4 addresses in your head.... Although your localhost IP address is now simpler
How is our record on civil rights so shoddy?
What country in the world would you say has a better record on civil rights? Or instead of a record, a better existing civil rights situation currently?
This is actually really slick. I hate to support Sony nowadays, but this is exactly the sort of utility that will make hardware like the PSP more useful to people. Hopefully in the near future all our PDA's and Cellphones will be able to translate live as we talk.
:)
I hope theres an option to have a talking Paperclip though, I'd feel more at home with that. <sarcasm/>
Let me know when its in a device that will fit in my ear
I too have had alot of trouble with getting good performance out of the ATI cards. I have an HP ZD8000 notebook, which comes with a x600 ATI card built in.
I use the ATI provided FGLRX driver, but OpenGL never works right, and while the svideo output works well, i get dropped frames in full screen video.
I assume there is some magical configuration that will get it working better, but i've already put more hours into tweaking my xorg.conf that I would have liked to.
Of course, on the flipside, ATI works great under windows.
ATI for windows, NVidia for Linux.
No, but the free MS SQL has been doing it (with more features) for years.
*Braces for attack*
For an alternate explanation of his statistics, I'd say that perhaps the families that are members of this Autism society are more likely to be in technical fields as mentioned in the article becuase people who work in these technical fields are likely more wealthy and well educated than average, and thus more likely to have had their child diagnosed by a doctor, treated, and joined the society.
Whet if i dunt' maje typos evers?