If you are running e-mail on your own server on your own network, you can also tunnel SMTP and POP3/IMAP through SSH for secure communications -- a big plus, IMHO.
Funny. I read that same comment and though "That's scary, from a security perspective."
If others can act on your behalf without actually logging in as you, what proof is there that e-mails allegedly sent by you were actually sent by you? Or, if you'd rather look at it another way, how can you prove that you weren't the one who sent the e-mail/accepted the meeting/whatever? It completely destroys all accountability. (Yes, I know SMTP isn't authenticated and it is trivial to forge an e-mail address. You can still match up IP addresses in the headers, though).
The problem is, it only takes one player to win. At that point, everyone else (who decided to boycott the game for ethical reasons) loses.
Having said that, yeah, it's pretty lame of Apple to try to patent someone else's ideas. The argument nine-times makes about defensive use of patents is bogus in this case. Even if Microsoft (or anyone else) were to try to patent something like this, all Apple would have to do is show Intellisync's app and claim prior art.
Look, I hate spam as much as anyone else, but this conviction needed to be overturned. The law was written very poorly, and could have been interpreted to convict every "Anonymous Coward" here on/. that resides in Virginia.
This is a bad thing, just in case that's not completely obvious.
Should this guy go to jail? Yep. But first, rewrite the law to get it right. Identity theft is and should be illegal. If James sent even one e-mail that misappropriated someone else's e-mail address, then nail him on that charge. If he sent even one e-mail that advertises a business that is fraudulent, then nail him on fraud/conspiracy to commit fraud.
However, the provision in the law that prohibits sending an e-mail anonymously is not and should not be what delineates a legitimate e-mail from a bogus one. If we follow that logic, then any e-mail that doesn't include some narrow variation on first name and last name (first.last@..., firstInitialLastName@...,etc.) could be interpreted as anonymous. This is not a good thing.
Why not? Ethernet is Ethernet, whether the physical layer is copper, fiber or RF.
If you want to hide a terminal server, then why not make it wireless? After you find the AP, then you know the device is within some radius of the AP, but you can't exactly trace the cable to the device.
I was thinking the same thing. Couldn't you traceroute and show arp tables to find where it is?!?!
Disclaimer: I am a sys admin, but not for the municipality of San Francisco, so my ignorance of their network architecture might be masking something that makes this procedure non-trivial. For the life of me, I can't image what, however.
Name one person who isn't defective in some way, some how.
Fine, that's too generic and too broad. Let me toss out some names of "defectives" who have greatly influenced the world: Beethoven, Hawkings, Keller, Roosevelt...need I go on? This is just off the top of my head in something like 60 seconds.
She votes firmly with the party line. Nary a rebellious thought in her head.
Really?
She has made rooting out corruption in Alaskan politics -- an altogether too common occurrence -- a part of her platform as governor, and that investigation has caused some rather significant ripples in the Republican party here in Alaska (can you say "Senator Stevens"?). She threw down the gauntlet to the good ole boys' network while mayor in Wasilla...and won.
Nary a rebellious thought in her head? Hardly. That's one of the reason she is so well liked as governor here.
Holy crap...that's like one in three hundred Americans on the watch list. Think about that for a second. This means on any given airliner, chances are the government considers at least one of your fellow passengers a person of interest.
Me thinks the signal to noise ratio of this list is mighty, mighty low (not that I expected much, but still, 1:300).
Thus the "In theory at least..." in my post. Sigh...I'm young enough to still be idealistic, but old enough to know the way things are supposed to be and the way things really are don't always match.
Being as stupid as what you're projecting should be illegal.
Either conditions are quite different in Norway (i.e., snow is much wetter, therefore heavier, therefore less affected by air currents), you have been extraordinarily lucky or you simply haven't paid attention in the winter. I have cleared the snow off my car, driven to work, then found snow completely covering my plates, rear bumper, tail lights, etc. by the time I arrived at work (~6 miles/7-8km). It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen.
There is a low pressure area behind a moving vehicle which causes any blowing snow to effectively accumulate on the aft end of said moving vehicle. You *cannot* always keep the car clear of snow in the winter here in Anchorage.
In any case, I was referring to the accumulation of mud on the plates during break-up, when the melting snow and dirt that collects on the roads all winter long mixes into mud and begins to collect on cars. Cars ahead of you splash it on the front of your car and, due to the low pressure area I described above, your own vehicle kicks up enough spray to cover the rear of your vehicle. It is not unusual in Anchorage to use a gallon of windshield washer fluid a week trying to keep your windshield clear enough to see.
Fortunately, most police officers in Anchorage have enough common sense to understand the problem and therefore don't harass drivers unless, as you stated, there is an obvious and intentional neglect of the plates.
So you've been off-roading in your street-legal vehicle, and your car/truck/whatever gets covered in mud. How do you transport it to a car wash to get the mud off the license plates so that it is legal to drive on the roads again?
Or more likely here in Anchorage, it is late spring and the snow is melting, which when mixed with all the sand that was used all winter long to provide traction on the snow and ice makes for a muddy mess. You simply *cannot* wash your car often enough to keep it clean during break-up in Anchorage, and yes, that includes your license plates. It's difficult enough sometimes just to keep your windows and headlights clean enough to see where you are going..
At the very most, it should be a warning ticket that is dismissed after you clean up the plates so that they are legible again.
while a license plate cannot identify a person, they can be used to look up who the vehicle is registered too, and there is a reasonable chance that it would be registered to the one driving it.
In theory at least, and in the U.S., the state is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person accused of committing a crime is actually guilty of the crime. Proving that there is a reasonable chance the accused is guilty is not (again, theoretically) sufficient.
Several years ago here in Anchorage, Alaska, the muni tried to set up radar guns and cameras to catch speeders in school zones. The project lasted a few months and was shut down because every ticket that was contested in court was thrown out. The reason? The courts decided that a photo of the license plate was not sufficient to prove that the registered owner of the car was actually the person driving the car. The courts said that it was the muni's responsibility to prove that the owner of the car was the one speeding in school zones.
Yup. I think you and I are pretty much on the same page. A sufficiently pissed populace *can* overthrow a modern army, although they will suffer great losses. With something like 300 million people in the U.S., there is almost certainly the numbers necessary to overcome the U.S. military. However, unless "random people put to the firing squads in the street sort of bad" happens, I don't think enough people will become sufficiently outraged to take action. We can't even get people to leave their televisions long enough to *vote*; an uprising is almost certainly out of the question.
Having said that, I wouldn't partake in an uprising at this point. Our government is bad -- there is enough unwarranted surveillance and corruption in government right now to make that a given -- but I'm not yet at the point where I want to participate in a violent revolution. I do wish, however, that there was a way to get the voters outraged enough to vote out all the losers in office and replace them with representatives who will actually try to make the U.S. a better place. Unfortunately, there is too much voter apathy and self-interest for that to happen. In my own home state of Alaska, one of our Senators, Ted Stevens, has been indicted on corruption charges. He is currently running for reelection, and I really think he will win, despite the corruption investigation against him. Why? Because Senator Stevens has enough seniority and clout in the Senate to keep bringing money to Alaska, even for projects that Alaskans would have to admit are wasteful and bad for the nation as a whole, if they would look at the issues objectively. However, even though money for many of these projects is bad for the country, they are (arguably) good for Alaska's economy, and so Stevens will probably be reelected this year, sigh. Somehow, I don't think Alaska is terribly unusual in this regard; were it any other state, it would probably be the same.
IANAL, etc., but as I understand, you would only need to release the source code of the software if you release the software. The product you create with the software is incidental. For that matter, I don't believe it makes any difference whether or not you modify any of the GPL'd code that you used -- the modified code was for your use only, and therefore it doesn't have to be re-released (whether or not you *should* at least offer the modifications back to the FOSS community is another story, but the GPL doesn't require it, as I understand).
For that matter, I have pretty much done exactly what you describe: I have a sequencer that lacks an arpeggiator function, so I wrote a perl script (perl being FOSS) on my Linux (also FOSS, being released under the GPL) desktop that would generate a random sequence of notes based upon a pentatonic scale. It's posted on-line at http://soundclick.com/share?songid=5822327 if you are interested in hearing what it sounds like (and it's released under the creative commons non-commercial, share-and-share-alike license, as well).
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If you are running e-mail on your own server on your own network, you can also tunnel SMTP and POP3/IMAP through SSH for secure communications -- a big plus, IMHO.
Funny. I read that same comment and though "That's scary, from a security perspective."
If others can act on your behalf without actually logging in as you, what proof is there that e-mails allegedly sent by you were actually sent by you? Or, if you'd rather look at it another way, how can you prove that you weren't the one who sent the e-mail/accepted the meeting/whatever? It completely destroys all accountability. (Yes, I know SMTP isn't authenticated and it is trivial to forge an e-mail address. You can still match up IP addresses in the headers, though).
The problem is, it only takes one player to win. At that point, everyone else (who decided to boycott the game for ethical reasons) loses.
Having said that, yeah, it's pretty lame of Apple to try to patent someone else's ideas. The argument nine-times makes about defensive use of patents is bogus in this case. Even if Microsoft (or anyone else) were to try to patent something like this, all Apple would have to do is show Intellisync's app and claim prior art.
"The ministry of truth, that deals with pretense" --Ozzy Osbourne, "Rock'n'Roll Rebel"
No, I rather suspect it's another alien civilization firing up their equivalent of the LHC.
(yes, in case it isn't blatantly obvious, I *am* just kidding!)
Look, I hate spam as much as anyone else, but this conviction needed to be overturned. The law was written very poorly, and could have been interpreted to convict every "Anonymous Coward" here on /. that resides in Virginia.
This is a bad thing , just in case that's not completely obvious.
Should this guy go to jail? Yep. But first, rewrite the law to get it right. Identity theft is and should be illegal. If James sent even one e-mail that misappropriated someone else's e-mail address, then nail him on that charge. If he sent even one e-mail that advertises a business that is fraudulent, then nail him on fraud/conspiracy to commit fraud.
However, the provision in the law that prohibits sending an e-mail anonymously is not and should not be what delineates a legitimate e-mail from a bogus one. If we follow that logic, then any e-mail that doesn't include some narrow variation on first name and last name (first.last@..., firstInitialLastName@...,etc.) could be interpreted as anonymous. This is not a good thing.
Crap. You're right...sorry.
Why not? Ethernet is Ethernet, whether the physical layer is copper, fiber or RF.
If you want to hide a terminal server, then why not make it wireless? After you find the AP, then you know the device is within some radius of the AP, but you can't exactly trace the cable to the device.
I was thinking the same thing. Couldn't you traceroute and show arp tables to find where it is?!?!
Disclaimer: I am a sys admin, but not for the municipality of San Francisco, so my ignorance of their network architecture might be masking something that makes this procedure non-trivial. For the life of me, I can't image what, however.
...then there is a potential of loss of business if our phone server dies out.
Kinda hard for someone to call you if it's your phone server that just keeled over...
Wonder if troubleshooting, legal challenges, budget cutbacks, etc. will cause them to wait until 2012?
(Just in case it's not completely obvious, yes, I amj/k!)
No, she's from Wasilla. Try finding *anyone* there who hasn't smoked weed....
Name one person who isn't defective in some way, some how.
Fine, that's too generic and too broad. Let me toss out some names of "defectives" who have greatly influenced the world: Beethoven, Hawkings, Keller, Roosevelt...need I go on? This is just off the top of my head in something like 60 seconds.
She votes firmly with the party line. Nary a rebellious thought in her head.
Really?
She has made rooting out corruption in Alaskan politics -- an altogether too common occurrence -- a part of her platform as governor, and that investigation has caused some rather significant ripples in the Republican party here in Alaska (can you say "Senator Stevens"?). She threw down the gauntlet to the good ole boys' network while mayor in Wasilla...and won.
Nary a rebellious thought in her head? Hardly. That's one of the reason she is so well liked as governor here.
Perhaps people (read: corporations) who have an entire army of lawyers at their disposal?
History says no.
Ah...point taken. I will scale my incredulity back a little.
Ugh...a dirty bomb. Those are the worst!
...when the watch list hit 1,000,000 names...
Holy crap...that's like one in three hundred Americans on the watch list. Think about that for a second. This means on any given airliner, chances are the government considers at least one of your fellow passengers a person of interest.
Me thinks the signal to noise ratio of this list is mighty, mighty low (not that I expected much, but still, 1:300).
Thus the "In theory at least..." in my post. Sigh...I'm young enough to still be idealistic, but old enough to know the way things are supposed to be and the way things really are don't always match.
Being as stupid as what you're projecting should be illegal.
Either conditions are quite different in Norway (i.e., snow is much wetter, therefore heavier, therefore less affected by air currents), you have been extraordinarily lucky or you simply haven't paid attention in the winter. I have cleared the snow off my car, driven to work, then found snow completely covering my plates, rear bumper, tail lights, etc. by the time I arrived at work (~6 miles/7-8km). It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen.
There is a low pressure area behind a moving vehicle which causes any blowing snow to effectively accumulate on the aft end of said moving vehicle. You *cannot* always keep the car clear of snow in the winter here in Anchorage.
In any case, I was referring to the accumulation of mud on the plates during break-up, when the melting snow and dirt that collects on the roads all winter long mixes into mud and begins to collect on cars. Cars ahead of you splash it on the front of your car and, due to the low pressure area I described above, your own vehicle kicks up enough spray to cover the rear of your vehicle. It is not unusual in Anchorage to use a gallon of windshield washer fluid a week trying to keep your windshield clear enough to see.
Fortunately, most police officers in Anchorage have enough common sense to understand the problem and therefore don't harass drivers unless, as you stated, there is an obvious and intentional neglect of the plates.
So you've been off-roading in your street-legal vehicle, and your car/truck/whatever gets covered in mud. How do you transport it to a car wash to get the mud off the license plates so that it is legal to drive on the roads again?
Or more likely here in Anchorage, it is late spring and the snow is melting, which when mixed with all the sand that was used all winter long to provide traction on the snow and ice makes for a muddy mess. You simply *cannot* wash your car often enough to keep it clean during break-up in Anchorage, and yes, that includes your license plates. It's difficult enough sometimes just to keep your windows and headlights clean enough to see where you are going..
At the very most, it should be a warning ticket that is dismissed after you clean up the plates so that they are legible again.
while a license plate cannot identify a person, they can be used to look up who the vehicle is registered too, and there is a reasonable chance that it would be registered to the one driving it.
In theory at least, and in the U.S., the state is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person accused of committing a crime is actually guilty of the crime. Proving that there is a reasonable chance the accused is guilty is not (again, theoretically) sufficient.
Several years ago here in Anchorage, Alaska, the muni tried to set up radar guns and cameras to catch speeders in school zones. The project lasted a few months and was shut down because every ticket that was contested in court was thrown out. The reason? The courts decided that a photo of the license plate was not sufficient to prove that the registered owner of the car was actually the person driving the car. The courts said that it was the muni's responsibility to prove that the owner of the car was the one speeding in school zones.
He said he had pulled the power plug, but obviously I didn't see it, so I could be wrong.
Nonetheless, your reply is very interesting; I didn't know the cable company could see the modem if the power switch was off.
Yup. I think you and I are pretty much on the same page. A sufficiently pissed populace *can* overthrow a modern army, although they will suffer great losses. With something like 300 million people in the U.S., there is almost certainly the numbers necessary to overcome the U.S. military. However, unless "random people put to the firing squads in the street sort of bad" happens, I don't think enough people will become sufficiently outraged to take action. We can't even get people to leave their televisions long enough to *vote*; an uprising is almost certainly out of the question.
Having said that, I wouldn't partake in an uprising at this point. Our government is bad -- there is enough unwarranted surveillance and corruption in government right now to make that a given -- but I'm not yet at the point where I want to participate in a violent revolution. I do wish, however, that there was a way to get the voters outraged enough to vote out all the losers in office and replace them with representatives who will actually try to make the U.S. a better place. Unfortunately, there is too much voter apathy and self-interest for that to happen. In my own home state of Alaska, one of our Senators, Ted Stevens, has been indicted on corruption charges. He is currently running for reelection, and I really think he will win, despite the corruption investigation against him. Why? Because Senator Stevens has enough seniority and clout in the Senate to keep bringing money to Alaska, even for projects that Alaskans would have to admit are wasteful and bad for the nation as a whole, if they would look at the issues objectively. However, even though money for many of these projects is bad for the country, they are (arguably) good for Alaska's economy, and so Stevens will probably be reelected this year, sigh. Somehow, I don't think Alaska is terribly unusual in this regard; were it any other state, it would probably be the same.
IANAL, etc., but as I understand, you would only need to release the source code of the software if you release the software. The product you create with the software is incidental. For that matter, I don't believe it makes any difference whether or not you modify any of the GPL'd code that you used -- the modified code was for your use only, and therefore it doesn't have to be re-released (whether or not you *should* at least offer the modifications back to the FOSS community is another story, but the GPL doesn't require it, as I understand).
For that matter, I have pretty much done exactly what you describe: I have a sequencer that lacks an arpeggiator function, so I wrote a perl script (perl being FOSS) on my Linux (also FOSS, being released under the GPL) desktop that would generate a random sequence of notes based upon a pentatonic scale. It's posted on-line at http://soundclick.com/share?songid=5822327 if you are interested in hearing what it sounds like (and it's released under the creative commons non-commercial, share-and-share-alike license, as well).