It doesn't matter whether you're on ipv4 or ipv6 if you want to have a firewall (on a NAT or not). The only difference security-wise is that ipv6 gives better security through the higher number of ip addresses. Currently, bots performing port scans in the ipv4 space have a reasonably chance of hitting something if they choose a random ip address. That problem doesn't exist in ipv4: the sheer number of possible ip addresses means that servers connected at difficult-to-guess ipv6 addresses are very unlikely to be located by these scattershot approaches.
It's funny how you make a point about how little free software is available for Windows, and then go on to list free software which is available for Linux - but miss the point that all software you mentioned also is available in Windows. For free.
They are certainly not meant to protect against kidnapping, but rather against children wandering off during excursions. I don't think any staff would somehow get the idea that the children now "can't wander off" any longer. It's just another layer to the safety net.
It's really meant to be an additional safety net when groups with young children are out on excursions, e.g. in the forest. Such groups would have a number of adult daycare staff along and the risk that a child would wander off without anybody noticing is very small, but the consequences if it happens could be large. It has happened before, with tragic consequences, both in Sweden and elsewhere. A transmitter, attached to the reflective vest that the child wears (while these transmitters are only tested in very few schools, the use of vests is very common), with an associated mobile application for the staff, could potentially help. It could combine an alarm (if the distance to any of the children was too large), with a method of finding the child again.
I'm all for some kind of system, if it is financially and technically viable. Particularly when it comes to the technical aspects, I'm a bit doubtful at the moment, though - GPS devices tend not to perform so great in heavy forests, which is the type of environment that this would be mostly needed for.
A followup on this: since you gave the budget in £, I assume that you're working in the UK. The national UK computational grid service is called... "national grid service". You can find it here: http://ngs.ac.uk/ . It is a little complicated to get access (you need to visit somebody in order to prove that you are you, so you can get a login certificate), but once you have an account it's easy enough to use. You need to submit requests for CPU time though, and while I never had any problem getting mine through, you may want to quickly check in first to see whether they would expect any problems with granting the kind of CPU time you will need.
Tom Cruise breaks into a vault at CIA with their most important computer, and when presented with a login screen clicks the "override" button on the computer (right next to the "ok" button), which simply logs in without having to enter a password.
I don't get why this has been modded "funny". It's true. Just like monkeys tapping away at keyboards in order to generate the works of Shakespeare, a computer can generate player algorithm patterns that work well in this particular setting. The speed is just boosted by selectively choosing the ones that match whatever it is you want to get at the end.
Last time I reported a bug to Microsoft, they thanked me and let me know that they'd fix it for the next update. I checked it the next time it was updated, and the bug was fixed.
Here's the thing... Why the **** does windows program installation basically require files be installed any place other than locally. That's the entire problem.
For the same reason that most other operating systems, including most flavors of linux, requires admin rights to install software. There are reasons that you want the operating system to be aware of when software is installed. One good advantage of this (in the Windows world) is the add/remove programs section under the control panel, where you can view all installed software, how large they are, and easily uninstall any of them. Another advantage (this time from linux) is system-wide updates of all installed software.
The entire design of windows is to install **** under system32 or program files when it doesn't need to be there. I remember the old days when programs ran under one directory.
Yeah, one directory, like... "Program files"? Every program installs to Program files by default, although the user is free to change this of course.
How does it work in linux? Well, if you install something parts of it can go in/usr/bin, parts go in/etc, parts in/usr/lib, some in/var/.../
You know where everything is. To uninstall is simply to delete. Don't get me started on the registry. REALLY? You're telling me it's "faster" than reading a text file config. Hardly.
I don't know if it's faster - it might be, or not. It probably doesn't matter a great deal anyway - it's not like it's a lot of data. I doubt it's slower, though. The windows registry is a hierarchical system of configuration settings (with parts that are global for the machine and parts that are local to the user), and/etc is a hierarchical system of configuration settings (contained in text files)... Where's the big difference?
Things that need to be done will be done. I am simply saying that government is not always the best one to do it.
No government -> no authority -> anarchy.
Of course, there are a fair bit of people who argue for such societies. It's more than a bit out of scope of this discussion, though.
Strange, I assume that you think your government will be more efficient with the national ID card and mine less efficient without it. Do you think as government becomes more efficient your taxes will go down? USA mean personal income tax <30%, UK personal income tax - mid 30's, Sweden approaches 50%.
I hope you realize that the tax level is influenced by other factors also, beside government efficiency? Such as, you know, their effective spending?
The problem with an ID card is how easy is it for me to get one in your name....
It doesn't need to be. I don't know where you're from and what's required from you for getting that card, but I assume that the way you get your passport is secure. Just use the same method for the ID card (around here [in large parts of Europe] the two are mostly equivalent anyway).
"How is a government supposed to do everything it needs to do if it cannot accurately keep track of its citizens?"
Once that statement is accepted, everything you say follows logically. But recheck your initial assumption. What exactly does government "need" to do? I am not asking what is your government currently doing. I ask what does it absolutely need to do. Detecting tax & benefit fraud for instance. If people relied on government for less benefits they would probably pay less taxes. There, I just reduced what your government needs to do by two things.
No, you didn't. Just because people pay a bit less tax or get a bit less benefit doesn't mean that the goverment doesn't neet to keep track of it (unless you're proposing that we get away with tax and social security alltogether?).
I don't live in the UK or Sweden so I don't know everything your government is currently handling. I would be willing to bet that there are many things that your government is doing that could easily be handled better by private industry.
To be honest, I trust my government more than I trust private industry. Goverment is elected, and should be serving its citizens (key here of course is "should" - but this holds well in Sweden, at least). Industry, instead, is driven by monetary incentives.
Privacy and anonymity don't scare me, efficient governments do.
You're scared of an efficient government? Wow, I wouldn't want to be paying taxes in your country. If you would rather that your government run inefficiently, it sounds like you should try to get about a government change. Use your vote, and keep using it until you have a government that you actually trust to run the country. That's what it's there for, you know.
So you're worried that if you get arrested abroad, that information will be available to police authorities in your home country? Why? In my opinion, that's how it should be.
The example you give is hardly something we would want, of course. The problem, however, is not with the data integration - it is with (1) you getting in a "street battle", (2) the police terming you an "environmental terrorist" and (3) your employer firing you on unreasonable grounds (unless you're working in an area where such things actually matter).
Police shouldn't try arresting peaceful demonstrators (because you were peaceful in that battle, weren't you?), said demonstrators shouldn't be termed terrorists and they shouldn't be fired. Those are the real problems in your story.
I completely agree. How is a government supposed to do everything it needs to do if it cannot accurately keep track of its citizens?
In Sweden, where I originally come from (now working in the UK), data is heavily integratated like this. Special, independent, departments oversee the use of the data in order to prevent abuse. And everything just works! Sure, it means that the government has an easier time detecting tax and benefit fraud, but hey... that's not so bad, is it?
Since I came here to the UK, I've really come to appreciate the way those things are handled in Sweden. My girlfriend was unable to get a cell-phone contract, since a credit background check showed that somebody previously living at our address had had problems with debt. The idea of identifying people by their address is utterly absurd as it changes constantly as we move around - but in a country with no effective ID system, it is necessary. I've lost count of how many times I've been asked to bring a gas bill with my name on it to prove where I live - also completely crazy. Keeping accurate track of such information should be trivial. Actually doing it should be a no-brainer.
They are still more focused on a single area (the computer industry, mainly software) than many other companies. A prime example is my own ISP, virgin media. In addition to being an ISP/telco, virgin also operates airlines, train operations, music stores and radio stations.
The fact that Microsoft has quite a diverse range from different types of software to computer peripherals to gaming consoles is not a bad thing.
www.spotify.com, if you're in the UK (or a number of other countries) you can sign up for free. Just try it out - you'll know what it is in a matter of minutes.
Actually, similar systems are in place in most decently large Swedish cities, called "distant heat" (i.e. heat that comes from a distance). However, instead of being used for showering, it is used to heat the buildings (i.e. circulated through radiators). It is very efficient, and any large nearby facility that produces heat can be hooked up to the system.
It's a win-win situation - residents who want warm homes get access to heating, and corporations who want to cool their datacenters/furnaces/whatever get access to cooling. It's both cheap and environmentally very sound.
If the town had evacuated on the day of his prediction, nothing would have happened, and they would have returned to get hit the week after anyway.
That's true. But complete evacuation is just on the extreme end of the range of actions authorities could have performed. Rather than evacuate the whole city for two weeks with naturally is completely impractical, why not only relocate the population living in the 5% structurally weakest buildings? Even milder versions that still could have had a large impact would be to simply place authorities on a higher alert - go over emergency plans, make sure equipment is in order, bring in more rescue equipment and personell if deemed useful, etc, etc. All of these actions could have been performed with no disruption to the general public. As far as I can read, despite the warnings, none were taken.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter whether you're on ipv4 or ipv6 if you want to have a firewall (on a NAT or not). The only difference security-wise is that ipv6 gives better security through the higher number of ip addresses. Currently, bots performing port scans in the ipv4 space have a reasonably chance of hitting something if they choose a random ip address. That problem doesn't exist in ipv4: the sheer number of possible ip addresses means that servers connected at difficult-to-guess ipv6 addresses are very unlikely to be located by these scattershot approaches.
Ouch. That's not a particularly nice title to have these times...
It's funny how you make a point about how little free software is available for Windows, and then go on to list free software which is available for Linux - but miss the point that all software you mentioned also is available in Windows. For free.
They are certainly not meant to protect against kidnapping, but rather against children wandering off during excursions. I don't think any staff would somehow get the idea that the children now "can't wander off" any longer. It's just another layer to the safety net.
It's really meant to be an additional safety net when groups with young children are out on excursions, e.g. in the forest. Such groups would have a number of adult daycare staff along and the risk that a child would wander off without anybody noticing is very small, but the consequences if it happens could be large. It has happened before, with tragic consequences, both in Sweden and elsewhere. A transmitter, attached to the reflective vest that the child wears (while these transmitters are only tested in very few schools, the use of vests is very common), with an associated mobile application for the staff, could potentially help. It could combine an alarm (if the distance to any of the children was too large), with a method of finding the child again. I'm all for some kind of system, if it is financially and technically viable. Particularly when it comes to the technical aspects, I'm a bit doubtful at the moment, though - GPS devices tend not to perform so great in heavy forests, which is the type of environment that this would be mostly needed for.
A followup on this: since you gave the budget in £, I assume that you're working in the UK. The national UK computational grid service is called... "national grid service". You can find it here: http://ngs.ac.uk/ . It is a little complicated to get access (you need to visit somebody in order to prove that you are you, so you can get a login certificate), but once you have an account it's easy enough to use. You need to submit requests for CPU time though, and while I never had any problem getting mine through, you may want to quickly check in first to see whether they would expect any problems with granting the kind of CPU time you will need.
Tom Cruise breaks into a vault at CIA with their most important computer, and when presented with a login screen clicks the "override" button on the computer (right next to the "ok" button), which simply logs in without having to enter a password.
I don't get why this has been modded "funny". It's true. Just like monkeys tapping away at keyboards in order to generate the works of Shakespeare, a computer can generate player algorithm patterns that work well in this particular setting. The speed is just boosted by selectively choosing the ones that match whatever it is you want to get at the end.
It'd be nice if the summary contained at least a sentence describing what the software actually does.
Last time I reported a bug to Microsoft, they thanked me and let me know that they'd fix it for the next update. I checked it the next time it was updated, and the bug was fixed.
"By the time all is said and done, Chinese censorship is little more than mocked by thousands of people like Xiaomi"
Now, let's put that number, "thousands", into perspective: China has a population of about 1.3 billion.
Here's the thing... Why the **** does windows program installation basically require files be installed any place other than locally. That's the entire problem.
For the same reason that most other operating systems, including most flavors of linux, requires admin rights to install software. There are reasons that you want the operating system to be aware of when software is installed. One good advantage of this (in the Windows world) is the add/remove programs section under the control panel, where you can view all installed software, how large they are, and easily uninstall any of them. Another advantage (this time from linux) is system-wide updates of all installed software.
The entire design of windows is to install **** under system32 or program files when it doesn't need to be there. I remember the old days when programs ran under one directory.
Yeah, one directory, like... "Program files"? Every program installs to Program files by default, although the user is free to change this of course. How does it work in linux? Well, if you install something parts of it can go in /usr/bin, parts go in /etc, parts in /usr/lib, some in /var/.../
You know where everything is. To uninstall is simply to delete. Don't get me started on the registry. REALLY? You're telling me it's "faster" than reading a text file config. Hardly.
I don't know if it's faster - it might be, or not. It probably doesn't matter a great deal anyway - it's not like it's a lot of data. I doubt it's slower, though. The windows registry is a hierarchical system of configuration settings (with parts that are global for the machine and parts that are local to the user), and /etc is a hierarchical system of configuration settings (contained in text files)... Where's the big difference?
Things that need to be done will be done. I am simply saying that government is not always the best one to do it.
No government -> no authority -> anarchy. Of course, there are a fair bit of people who argue for such societies. It's more than a bit out of scope of this discussion, though.
Strange, I assume that you think your government will be more efficient with the national ID card and mine less efficient without it. Do you think as government becomes more efficient your taxes will go down? USA mean personal income tax <30%, UK personal income tax - mid 30's, Sweden approaches 50%.
I hope you realize that the tax level is influenced by other factors also, beside government efficiency? Such as, you know, their effective spending?
The problem with an ID card is how easy is it for me to get one in your name ....
It doesn't need to be. I don't know where you're from and what's required from you for getting that card, but I assume that the way you get your passport is secure. Just use the same method for the ID card (around here [in large parts of Europe] the two are mostly equivalent anyway).
"How is a government supposed to do everything it needs to do if it cannot accurately keep track of its citizens?" Once that statement is accepted, everything you say follows logically. But recheck your initial assumption. What exactly does government "need" to do? I am not asking what is your government currently doing. I ask what does it absolutely need to do. Detecting tax & benefit fraud for instance. If people relied on government for less benefits they would probably pay less taxes. There, I just reduced what your government needs to do by two things.
No, you didn't. Just because people pay a bit less tax or get a bit less benefit doesn't mean that the goverment doesn't neet to keep track of it (unless you're proposing that we get away with tax and social security alltogether?).
I don't live in the UK or Sweden so I don't know everything your government is currently handling. I would be willing to bet that there are many things that your government is doing that could easily be handled better by private industry.
To be honest, I trust my government more than I trust private industry. Goverment is elected, and should be serving its citizens (key here of course is "should" - but this holds well in Sweden, at least). Industry, instead, is driven by monetary incentives.
Privacy and anonymity don't scare me, efficient governments do.
You're scared of an efficient government? Wow, I wouldn't want to be paying taxes in your country. If you would rather that your government run inefficiently, it sounds like you should try to get about a government change. Use your vote, and keep using it until you have a government that you actually trust to run the country. That's what it's there for, you know.
The example you give is hardly something we would want, of course. The problem, however, is not with the data integration - it is with (1) you getting in a "street battle", (2) the police terming you an "environmental terrorist" and (3) your employer firing you on unreasonable grounds (unless you're working in an area where such things actually matter).
Police shouldn't try arresting peaceful demonstrators (because you were peaceful in that battle, weren't you?), said demonstrators shouldn't be termed terrorists and they shouldn't be fired. Those are the real problems in your story.
In Sweden, where I originally come from (now working in the UK), data is heavily integratated like this. Special, independent, departments oversee the use of the data in order to prevent abuse. And everything just works! Sure, it means that the government has an easier time detecting tax and benefit fraud, but hey... that's not so bad, is it?
Since I came here to the UK, I've really come to appreciate the way those things are handled in Sweden. My girlfriend was unable to get a cell-phone contract, since a credit background check showed that somebody previously living at our address had had problems with debt. The idea of identifying people by their address is utterly absurd as it changes constantly as we move around - but in a country with no effective ID system, it is necessary. I've lost count of how many times I've been asked to bring a gas bill with my name on it to prove where I live - also completely crazy. Keeping accurate track of such information should be trivial. Actually doing it should be a no-brainer.
They are still more focused on a single area (the computer industry, mainly software) than many other companies. A prime example is my own ISP, virgin media. In addition to being an ISP/telco, virgin also operates airlines, train operations, music stores and radio stations. The fact that Microsoft has quite a diverse range from different types of software to computer peripherals to gaming consoles is not a bad thing.
www.spotify.com, if you're in the UK (or a number of other countries) you can sign up for free. Just try it out - you'll know what it is in a matter of minutes.
umm.. Chrysler is one of the biggest car companies in the world.
And ExxonMobil is one of the largest companies overall. So what? Chrysler may have financial difficulties - Microsoft certainly hasn't.
Hopefully this will lead to Spotify speeding up their work towards a US launch.
Pretty relevant I'd say, seeing as it's the largest software company in the world.
Actually, similar systems are in place in most decently large Swedish cities, called "distant heat" (i.e. heat that comes from a distance). However, instead of being used for showering, it is used to heat the buildings (i.e. circulated through radiators). It is very efficient, and any large nearby facility that produces heat can be hooked up to the system.
It's a win-win situation - residents who want warm homes get access to heating, and corporations who want to cool their datacenters/furnaces/whatever get access to cooling. It's both cheap and environmentally very sound.
If the town had evacuated on the day of his prediction, nothing would have happened, and they would have returned to get hit the week after anyway.
That's true. But complete evacuation is just on the extreme end of the range of actions authorities could have performed. Rather than evacuate the whole city for two weeks with naturally is completely impractical, why not only relocate the population living in the 5% structurally weakest buildings? Even milder versions that still could have had a large impact would be to simply place authorities on a higher alert - go over emergency plans, make sure equipment is in order, bring in more rescue equipment and personell if deemed useful, etc, etc. All of these actions could have been performed with no disruption to the general public. As far as I can read, despite the warnings, none were taken.
Anyway, the earth will be fine. Humankind is in deep trouble if we don't seriously get moving, but the planet is fine. :)