So what impact would this group have on things such as 'Cyberwar'? A number of the governments mentioned in the article have sunk Billions of dollars into the development of such programs - I doubt they'd be happy to just 'write it off'.
Would this group go after China for hacking the Google servers? Or would it focus on catching nefarious individuals wanted for questioning? (Sorry Interpol - you might do decent things, but you deserve to catch flack for that.)
Would this group ease extradition between countries? If so, aren't there warrants out for the heads of Google and Facebook in Pakistan?
What actual purpose would this working group serve?
If the released reports are biased, the government will give us the whole story, right?
Right?
Wikileaks may have a bias, but they also know their message is destroyed if they are shown to censor data for their effort. The 'Collatoral Murder' fisasco showed that. Even there, they provided the full video but put the focus on where *the issue* was for a short attention span viewing crowd.
Really? This website being taken off-line for a little while actually caused you to feel a sense of terror for your life? Did you become afraid to purchase MoS albums because Anonymous might DDoS you?
This is protest. Big difference. If you agree with it or not, it is not something that is even anywhere close to being in the same league as terrorism.
Apparently the samples are anonymous so linking a blood sample won't work in this case.
Link? No, you are correct. But if your daughter went missing when she was 8. And then 10 years later you found out that a child was born who had her DNA? I could see that being a relief, a ray of hope to a family. Knowing it came from Texas? Texas is big, but a lot smaller than all of the USA/World.
I'm just saying, this could be valuable in such scenarios - regardless of if the donor could be identified.
If I remember correctly, Mitochondrial DNA is from the mother. Therefore, if a child's record happens to match up with, say a kidnap/run-away - it helps to remove the potentiality of a murder, keep the case a missing persons, and provide some possible insight into the general geographic region.
That may be a lot of comfort to a family.
I think it is horrible that these samples are taken without consent, their use obscured, and have deep qualms about any form of DNA database. But, I can see how they could still provide some value.
Another alternative is for a federal law that simply requires each of the states to submit ONE tax rate for the whole state, and accept a set of exemptions designated by that federal law, to be part of the inter-state tax program. One other requirement is, to be a part of it, they treat in-state web retailers exactly the same as out-of-state (e.g. all or nothing).
While it might be a good idea for states to decide on a flat rate tax for internet orders of any type, we are talking about State taxes here. Federal laws have no real weight on that topic, nor should they.
As for who collects the taxes, well, if I recall correctly, most states do actually have a section where people are expected to list their out of state purchases on their tax forms. This sounds like a problem for NY and CA because people might not be as honest as they would like. Then again for the people, if they buy something on a trip, they've already paid taxes on it at the point of sale, so being dunned twice seems rather foolish as well. Yes, mail order and the internet do change people's ability to buy from out of state easily, but if any taxes are to be paid on a purchase (which annoys me almost as much as property taxes), then it should be the taxes charged at the point of sale. i.e. Those within whichever tax jurisdiction is making the sale.
However, your characterization of drunk drivers is just wrong. They ARE incredibly dangerous. They ARE reckless, and while they may not intentionally be seeking out people to mow down, they are showing a tremendous disregard for those same people.
As is the 80 year old whose children don't have the nerve to take his license away. As is the car full of teens joking around and wrestling with each other. As is the soccer mom making 'play-date' plans for her kid on her cell phone.
However of those, at least around D.C., only the drunk driver has a specific set of laws that may well ruin their life, even if they never cause any harm. If they do cause harm, the punishment is considerably worse than for anyone else.
Drunk Driving laws are a prophylactic and perverted form of justice. They punish on the theory that you may hurt someone in the future. Should we accept laws saying 'Because you own a gun, you are probably going to be a murderer'?
Reckless endangerment of life is that always, regardless of if one is drunk, old, young, or scatter-brained.
After reading your post, I have to say that I'm ashamed that you feel doing 'the American thing' is to sue rather than stand up for your rights.
I'll agree, the full story isn't in here on exactly what happened. However every police office has made a choice to 'serve and protect the people'. Not the government of the people, but the people themselves. The militarization of the police; where every traffic stop is treated as a 'Life or Death' situation, is as much a result of the behavior of the police as it is of the risk.
The relevance of the possibility of death is a choice that the officers made, no one forced them to take these jobs. How they choose to interact with the people they are there to defend speaks directly to why the risk is higher.
I admit, I feel odd writing this after reading your.sig.
I wouldn't lay the blame for any of these at the feet of an executive who lacks the power to do more than sign or veto any such laws. Rather highlight that all of these massive expenditures have been approved by our locally elected members of congress.
Why do we allow incumbents so much lee-way? Why hasn't there been a strict call for term limits from the people? Why do we tolerate gerrymandering? Why are the campaign laws so difficult that one needs the support of a national party in order to run in a local election? What's the magic of '435' members for the house; why do some represent millions while others thousands?
If we want to be mad about anything, it shouldn't be who signed what in the Oval Office. We should be mad that the people who are supposed to represent us don't.
Now of course, I do not have to do business with a car company that will not allow me to fix my own car. I can, instead choose to support any company that provides such information as necessary.
No, you can't. All the manufacturers keep this info hidden. The only possible exception I can think of are smaller performance car makers, like Ariel or Ascari, but I wouldn't count on it too much. They're also all small trackday cars with face-ripping acceleration and enough room in the trunk for maybe a toothbrush and a small sandwich.
You are correct, all the manufactures do keep this information hidden. Is it a potential factor in a car buying decision? If one vendor, say GM (use Honda, or your manufacturer of preference) opens their protocol, who will mechanics recommend? Will it impact sales in any noticeable amount? This is the question of open vs. closed protocols, not the current practices. Does closed help your sales position, or does opening it up help more?
Or I can search for a brilliant mechanic, computer tech, and electrical engineer who will work together to fix my car and we can open our own business.
Good luck. Reverse engineering laws are hard to get around if you're going to commercialize your work.
So, your argument that laws are good is telling me that identifying a market, investing time, effort, and money is illegal? That is a recipe for success. By your argument, anyone fixing anything without an approval (sanctioned training) would be in the wrong. Is that a world you want?
Or I can buy a car with no computer interfaces at all that I can repair with little more than a hammer. Of course such a car as in the last example would probably fail the state mandated emissions standards - boo state!
Such a shame we don't have widespread smog problems in most major cities.
Those computer interfaces don't just keep emissions down. They're also keeping performance and gas millage up, as well as vastly increasing the durability of engines. In well-built engines, there are almost never any mechanical problems within a car's reasonable lifetime. There's a bunch of sensors helping to keep everything tidy, and a given engine code is almost always the result of one of those sensors going out, not something like a piston connecting rod blowing through your hood.
When people say they used to be able to repair anything on their car with a wrench and a hammer, they're not looking at the full picture.
I agree, but it is none the less a choice I have. Stupid, wrong-headed, and going to cost me way too much money in the long run, but still a choice I HAVE.
The GP was making fun of the open market, I support all of us having a choice. It's closed now, but if one - just one - serious manufacturer opens, they all will have too... eventually.
Now of course, I do not have to do business with a car company that will not allow me to fix my own car. I can, instead choose to support any company that provides such information as necessary. Or I can search for a brilliant mechanic, computer tech, and electrical engineer who will work together to fix my car and we can open our own business. Or I can buy a car with no computer interfaces at all that I can repair with little more than a hammer. Of course such a car as in the last example would probably fail the state mandated emissions standards - boo state!
Let me give a computer analogy. I can buy Microsoft Office, knowing that I have to deal with their document formats as is. Or I can use OpenOffice.org, and if I really want, dig in and make changes as I want. Or I can dedicate my own money, hire people, and build our own document software that works with all the formats out there. Or I can write my own document editor from scratch, and be happy with it - of course, no one else may be able to do anything with the.foo documents I create.
All of these are my rights, and I can choose any of them that I want to. I choose however to support OpenOffice.org, and suggest to everyone that I meet that they do so as well, because OO.o makes my life easier and costs me little. Will it make them bigger than Microsoft? Who knows? But it does mean that Microsoft has lost a paying customer and should look at why. Same goes for auto-makers. That is the Open Market ideal. Huzza!
However, if there was an option for sending letters out at specific times after your demise, that might offer some additional value. Being able to send your kids a message on their significant birthdays, for their (first) marriage, the birth of your first grandchild, etc. Things like that might add some value, of course such letters could sit in the same folder your propose, and wouldn't have to worry about technologies changing, new addresses, or the spam filter, but would be less automated.
Maybe the value is in sending out 'So I'm dead, you win. But I still think your a bastard' messages to folks you don't like.
My gut feeling for the complication is to add more features to help jack up the price per unit.
Figure that each polling station will have at least 3 units, so you're talking about a lot of sales. A simple system, such as you described wouldn't be very expensive, and would be a tough sell.
But if you add in 'Automated security sub-routines', 'Time stamp live validation', 'Heuristic Real-time Networked Vote Tallies', all of which I just made up, but sound semi-decent for a sales pitch, you can charge more.
Of course, with such 'Features' you add complexity to what should be a straight forward system.
Personally, I think they're worried about the court case.
Even if they win, the risk of law changes is pretty big. So I think they are going whole-hog while they can. The VPN? nice side business, and may allow them to keep going with their ideals. The Facebook thing? Spread the joy, make it easier for everyone to pillage while they can. Possibly even get the benefit of mixing Facebook (now a tracker) into the mess.
I hope the guys at PB win this one (and the next as well), because they are the boys on the front line for this fight. But I think they are really working every angle they can, while they can.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but doesn't it make more sense to get everyone trying to fight this virus/bot/whatever early rather than wait?
After April 1st, this thing will be drawing from more domains than can be blocked for future updates. It sounds like it'll be much more entrenched and difficult to combat if that happens. So this advise sounds a lot like 'Well, the gangrene has spread from your foot up to your knee, but it's not a problem'.
[quote]Here's an idea. Let Microsoft keep doing what they're doing and easily choose between default programs, and even allow those programs to prompt the user to alter their default. Because any other option is fraught with favoritism and is just going to cram OEM desktops with more bullshit than ever before, and make the idea of targeting the Windows desktop from a developer or support perspective laughable.[/quote]
The issue which you, while demonstrating the diversity of programs, seemed to have missed is as follows: We do not want multiple installation options. We want the OS to be open to ANY browser.
Defaults are fine, but if I chose to use something other, it should 'integrate' as well as the default. There should not be a behavior inherent in the system which will kick up a program I have chosen not to use. Now I am a Mac semi-fan boy; but Safari never 'just' appears for me. Web docs are Firefox only.
Long and short, as long as a users choice is respected, and that choice is honored system wide, we are okay. Microsoft ignores that covenant, and thus insults it's users.
Slashdot Mirror
So what impact would this group have on things such as 'Cyberwar'? A number of the governments mentioned in the article have sunk Billions of dollars into the development of such programs - I doubt they'd be happy to just 'write it off'.
Would this group go after China for hacking the Google servers? Or would it focus on catching nefarious individuals wanted for questioning? (Sorry Interpol - you might do decent things, but you deserve to catch flack for that.)
Would this group ease extradition between countries? If so, aren't there warrants out for the heads of Google and Facebook in Pakistan?
What actual purpose would this working group serve?
If the released reports are biased, the government will give us the whole story, right?
Right?
Wikileaks may have a bias, but they also know their message is destroyed if they are shown to censor data for their effort. The 'Collatoral Murder' fisasco showed that. Even there, they provided the full video but put the focus on where *the issue* was for a short attention span viewing crowd.
Really? This website being taken off-line for a little while actually caused you to feel a sense of terror for your life? Did you become afraid to purchase MoS albums because Anonymous might DDoS you?
This is protest. Big difference. If you agree with it or not, it is not something that is even anywhere close to being in the same league as terrorism.
Apparently the samples are anonymous so linking a blood sample won't work in this case.
Link? No, you are correct. But if your daughter went missing when she was 8. And then 10 years later you found out that a child was born who had her DNA? I could see that being a relief, a ray of hope to a family. Knowing it came from Texas? Texas is big, but a lot smaller than all of the USA/World.
I'm just saying, this could be valuable in such scenarios - regardless of if the donor could be identified.
If I remember correctly, Mitochondrial DNA is from the mother. Therefore, if a child's record happens to match up with, say a kidnap/run-away - it helps to remove the potentiality of a murder, keep the case a missing persons, and provide some possible insight into the general geographic region.
That may be a lot of comfort to a family.
I think it is horrible that these samples are taken without consent, their use obscured, and have deep qualms about any form of DNA database. But, I can see how they could still provide some value.
Oddly enough, it was 'Bruce Schneier'.
Another alternative is for a federal law that simply requires each of the states to submit ONE tax rate for the whole state, and accept a set of exemptions designated by that federal law, to be part of the inter-state tax program. One other requirement is, to be a part of it, they treat in-state web retailers exactly the same as out-of-state (e.g. all or nothing).
While it might be a good idea for states to decide on a flat rate tax for internet orders of any type, we are talking about State taxes here. Federal laws have no real weight on that topic, nor should they.
As for who collects the taxes, well, if I recall correctly, most states do actually have a section where people are expected to list their out of state purchases on their tax forms. This sounds like a problem for NY and CA because people might not be as honest as they would like. Then again for the people, if they buy something on a trip, they've already paid taxes on it at the point of sale, so being dunned twice seems rather foolish as well. Yes, mail order and the internet do change people's ability to buy from out of state easily, but if any taxes are to be paid on a purchase (which annoys me almost as much as property taxes), then it should be the taxes charged at the point of sale. i.e. Those within whichever tax jurisdiction is making the sale.
However, your characterization of drunk drivers is just wrong. They ARE incredibly dangerous. They ARE reckless, and while they may not intentionally be seeking out people to mow down, they are showing a tremendous disregard for those same people.
As is the 80 year old whose children don't have the nerve to take his license away. As is the car full of teens joking around and wrestling with each other. As is the soccer mom making 'play-date' plans for her kid on her cell phone.
However of those, at least around D.C., only the drunk driver has a specific set of laws that may well ruin their life, even if they never cause any harm. If they do cause harm, the punishment is considerably worse than for anyone else.
Drunk Driving laws are a prophylactic and perverted form of justice. They punish on the theory that you may hurt someone in the future. Should we accept laws saying 'Because you own a gun, you are probably going to be a murderer'?
Reckless endangerment of life is that always, regardless of if one is drunk, old, young, or scatter-brained.
After reading your post, I have to say that I'm ashamed that you feel doing 'the American thing' is to sue rather than stand up for your rights.
I'll agree, the full story isn't in here on exactly what happened. However every police office has made a choice to 'serve and protect the people'. Not the government of the people, but the people themselves. The militarization of the police; where every traffic stop is treated as a 'Life or Death' situation, is as much a result of the behavior of the police as it is of the risk.
The relevance of the possibility of death is a choice that the officers made, no one forced them to take these jobs. How they choose to interact with the people they are there to defend speaks directly to why the risk is higher.
I admit, I feel odd writing this after reading your .sig.
I wouldn't lay the blame for any of these at the feet of an executive who lacks the power to do more than sign or veto any such laws. Rather highlight that all of these massive expenditures have been approved by our locally elected members of congress.
Why do we allow incumbents so much lee-way? Why hasn't there been a strict call for term limits from the people? Why do we tolerate gerrymandering? Why are the campaign laws so difficult that one needs the support of a national party in order to run in a local election? What's the magic of '435' members for the house; why do some represent millions while others thousands?
If we want to be mad about anything, it shouldn't be who signed what in the Oval Office. We should be mad that the people who are supposed to represent us don't.
Preface: I hate replying to my own thread.
Now of course, I do not have to do business with a car company that will not allow me to fix my own car. I can, instead choose to support any company that provides such information as necessary.
No, you can't. All the manufacturers keep this info hidden. The only possible exception I can think of are smaller performance car makers, like Ariel or Ascari, but I wouldn't count on it too much. They're also all small trackday cars with face-ripping acceleration and enough room in the trunk for maybe a toothbrush and a small sandwich.
You are correct, all the manufactures do keep this information hidden. Is it a potential factor in a car buying decision? If one vendor, say GM (use Honda, or your manufacturer of preference) opens their protocol, who will mechanics recommend? Will it impact sales in any noticeable amount? This is the question of open vs. closed protocols, not the current practices. Does closed help your sales position, or does opening it up help more?
Or I can search for a brilliant mechanic, computer tech, and electrical engineer who will work together to fix my car and we can open our own business.
Good luck. Reverse engineering laws are hard to get around if you're going to commercialize your work.
So, your argument that laws are good is telling me that identifying a market, investing time, effort, and money is illegal? That is a recipe for success. By your argument, anyone fixing anything without an approval (sanctioned training) would be in the wrong. Is that a world you want?
Or I can buy a car with no computer interfaces at all that I can repair with little more than a hammer. Of course such a car as in the last example would probably fail the state mandated emissions standards - boo state!
Such a shame we don't have widespread smog problems in most major cities.
Those computer interfaces don't just keep emissions down. They're also keeping performance and gas millage up, as well as vastly increasing the durability of engines. In well-built engines, there are almost never any mechanical problems within a car's reasonable lifetime. There's a bunch of sensors helping to keep everything tidy, and a given engine code is almost always the result of one of those sensors going out, not something like a piston connecting rod blowing through your hood.
When people say they used to be able to repair anything on their car with a wrench and a hammer, they're not looking at the full picture.
I agree, but it is none the less a choice I have. Stupid, wrong-headed, and going to cost me way too much money in the long run, but still a choice I HAVE.
The GP was making fun of the open market, I support all of us having a choice. It's closed now, but if one - just one - serious manufacturer opens, they all will have too... eventually.
Way to be a suck up defeatest.
Correct Sir!
Now of course, I do not have to do business with a car company that will not allow me to fix my own car. I can, instead choose to support any company that provides such information as necessary. Or I can search for a brilliant mechanic, computer tech, and electrical engineer who will work together to fix my car and we can open our own business. Or I can buy a car with no computer interfaces at all that I can repair with little more than a hammer. Of course such a car as in the last example would probably fail the state mandated emissions standards - boo state!
Let me give a computer analogy. I can buy Microsoft Office, knowing that I have to deal with their document formats as is. Or I can use OpenOffice.org, and if I really want, dig in and make changes as I want. Or I can dedicate my own money, hire people, and build our own document software that works with all the formats out there. Or I can write my own document editor from scratch, and be happy with it - of course, no one else may be able to do anything with the .foo documents I create.
All of these are my rights, and I can choose any of them that I want to. I choose however to support OpenOffice.org, and suggest to everyone that I meet that they do so as well, because OO.o makes my life easier and costs me little. Will it make them bigger than Microsoft? Who knows? But it does mean that Microsoft has lost a paying customer and should look at why. Same goes for auto-makers. That is the Open Market ideal. Huzza!
You are of course correct,
However, if there was an option for sending letters out at specific times after your demise, that might offer some additional value. Being able to send your kids a message on their significant birthdays, for their (first) marriage, the birth of your first grandchild, etc. Things like that might add some value, of course such letters could sit in the same folder your propose, and wouldn't have to worry about technologies changing, new addresses, or the spam filter, but would be less automated.
Maybe the value is in sending out 'So I'm dead, you win. But I still think your a bastard' messages to folks you don't like.
Oh god, can't resist...
Pics or it didn't happen.
Poor NoMachine... now they don't have NoProduct
Fixed that for 'ya.
Or perhaps he's one of them Duke boys I heard about over in Hazard County...
So web developers can cause motion sickness?
Don't get me wrong, that is really impressive, and if it's easy to do, great. But who decided that making a video spin was a good idea?
My gut feeling for the complication is to add more features to help jack up the price per unit.
Figure that each polling station will have at least 3 units, so you're talking about a lot of sales. A simple system, such as you described wouldn't be very expensive, and would be a tough sell.
But if you add in 'Automated security sub-routines', 'Time stamp live validation', 'Heuristic Real-time Networked Vote Tallies', all of which I just made up, but sound semi-decent for a sales pitch, you can charge more.
Of course, with such 'Features' you add complexity to what should be a straight forward system.
I think it's brilliant that they included a survival knife in with the phone. That's innovation!
I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear about Apple signing a deal with Victorinox for their next phone.
In the case of the chihuahua, I'm not so sure the design was even 'Intelligent'....
Personally, I think they're worried about the court case.
Even if they win, the risk of law changes is pretty big. So I think they are going whole-hog while they can. The VPN? nice side business, and may allow them to keep going with their ideals. The Facebook thing? Spread the joy, make it easier for everyone to pillage while they can. Possibly even get the benefit of mixing Facebook (now a tracker) into the mess.
I hope the guys at PB win this one (and the next as well), because they are the boys on the front line for this fight. But I think they are really working every angle they can, while they can.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but doesn't it make more sense to get everyone trying to fight this virus/bot/whatever early rather than wait?
After April 1st, this thing will be drawing from more domains than can be blocked for future updates. It sounds like it'll be much more entrenched and difficult to combat if that happens. So this advise sounds a lot like 'Well, the gangrene has spread from your foot up to your knee, but it's not a problem'.
The is the first 4 rated comment I have ever seen without some sort of classification. I am in awe.
[quote]Here's an idea. Let Microsoft keep doing what they're doing and easily choose between default programs, and even allow those programs to prompt the user to alter their default. Because any other option is fraught with favoritism and is just going to cram OEM desktops with more bullshit than ever before, and make the idea of targeting the Windows desktop from a developer or support perspective laughable.[/quote]
The issue which you, while demonstrating the diversity of programs, seemed to have missed is as follows: We do not want multiple installation options. We want the OS to be open to ANY browser.
Defaults are fine, but if I chose to use something other, it should 'integrate' as well as the default. There should not be a behavior inherent in the system which will kick up a program I have chosen not to use. Now I am a Mac semi-fan boy; but Safari never 'just' appears for me. Web docs are Firefox only.
Long and short, as long as a users choice is respected, and that choice is honored system wide, we are okay. Microsoft ignores that covenant, and thus insults it's users.
Shhhhhhh!!!
I was planing on pitching 'Kingdom of the Colonel: Quest for the 11 Herbs and Spices' to KFC.