I can kinda see the appeal of an implanted device, but yeah, there's no reason such a system couldn't be a fob you carry around with you (or somewhat unfortunately more likely, baked into your phone).

Assuming it was based on current public key encryption, even if broken an attacker would still need to harvest private keys from users to make use of it. That's gonna require special equipment (portable reader of some kind) and time.

Sure, damage would be done, but it wouldn't be the apocalypse. I suspect you'd see less impact than you do with current CC theft. AES being broken would be a far bigger deal on the internet where it would be much easier to apply the attack in a wide spread manner.

The problem with this, and biometrics in general, is that there is only one you.

You can't revoke your "vein pattern" any more than you can revoke your fingerprint. Using your same biometric information for everything has the same pitfalls as using the same password for everything, and you are just one sketchy gas station away from someone getting a copy.

If you are going to implant something, why not implant a challenge/response system with a public/private key and strong cryptography, like you know, we've been doing on the internet with a good amount of success. A random very large number is just as good as any biometric information, and at least you can change it.

Or for that matter executed. If we kill hundreds of people, we are killed in turn. A corporation on the other hand gets a slap on telephone wrist settlement or at worst a fine which they recoup from wage cuts, lay offs and customers. So a whole lot of people are punished - oddly the list doesn't include any of the people who actually had the power to stop it (shareholders).

Privacy isn't of great concern to many. It's not even an issue of comprehension. There are people who understand the privacy implications of things like facebook, but still happily participate because the social aspects are more appealing to them.

Social media in general has caught on because a great many people _want_ to share everything about themselves to everyone. Sites like what you linked to do a fairly poor job of convincing such people because they:

- Tend to focus on unrelatable things (like oppression in other countries, or oppression of people at home they can't personally relate to).
- Are written from an opposite viewpoint where privacy is just automatically an important thing that everyone should want. If social media has shown us anything, it's not to many people. The FSF is at the forefront of this too. When you write a blathering piece where you just assume your position from the beginning, people who don't already agree just roll their eyes, and the only ones you convince are those who already agreed.
- Not the case here, but often times focus on rare events where some shared information is used against them.

Very least, going as far as running a server at home, even one that's basically a pre-configured appliance, is a fairly extreme step for most non-geeks to take unless you can make a really compelling argument that doesn't involve dystopian futures and acid mines.

>WTF is the definition of legal person at this point?

Considering that legal personhood is granted to corporations (literally a piece of paper with an official stamp on it - that's what a "corporation" in fact consists of), with no material existence, and "his" decisions made by a bunch of other people who all own a bit of "him", the word has been meaningless for decades.
I don't really see this as causing any major problems - at least, relatively speaking. If this is opening a can of worms, then granting personhood to corporations was a bucket of snakes, I think that remains a higher priority concern.

If a completely abstract entity with no mind at all can be a person, why not an actual living being with a mind that - in IQ tests have gotten scores comparable to young human children (which makes them rather smarter than the average CEO mind you) ?

In the end though - I see more interesting things from this, our days as the only truly sentient beings are numbered - sooner or later there will be others, whether it's highly advanced AI or extra-terestrial life, the day will come when we have to consider what does or does not get human rights like freedom of movement, what we can or cannot legally enslave.
We may as well get some prescedents set and test cases happening, it will be valuable in future.

While we're at it, maybe it's high time we challenge the assertion that a completely abstract legal fiction belongs on that list, or else take it to it's logical extreme. If corporations are persons - then share-holding is slavery and should be banned.

I get that NAT isn't a firewall, but I think it makes a nice second layer.

Lets say I'm using shorewall, and for whatever reason I break my config and don't notice.

Consider: (big bad internet) -- (broken shorewall + nat) -- (internal boxes)

Suddenly you can't get to anything I was forwarding (which I'll probably notice) and yes there are probably effective attacks to get at my internal boxes through the nat, but at least it's not wide open as I imagine it would be in a configuration without nat.

It's compelling arguments like that which will surely convince people to give a shit about ipv6.

Audi wanted to charge me r4000 (about $600) to replace a broken key for my a3 (only the electronics we're damaged). I did a bit of shopping around and found a locksmith who could make and code a replacement electronic key circuit and install it in the key. Been working fine for about 2 years now. R250 including labour.

I doubt they'll go this route, but what would make sense to me would be to give customers the option to request a direct connection.

Between cell phones and people who have no interest in running a server (even unintentionally), there's probably only a small portion of people out there who really need a direct connection, and there are probably plenty of IPs to support them if you put everyone else on CGN.

As someone who's not really a networking guy, this!

I like the extra layer NAT provides. It's no substitute for a firewall of course, but having your internal boxes not publicly addressable at all adds an extra layer of warm and fuzzy.

Is this attitude wrong? Probably. But it is also pervasive.

Trying to smuggly correct "everybody else" for groupthink - and getting the most basic facts wrong.
This is irony.

>In America, it does not make much progress

Oh really now ? You think so ? Forgot about SCO suing IBM ? Or Apple's case against Samsung because they BOTH made tablets that look exactly like PADDs from ST:TNG ?

The may prefer a different branch of bureaucrat (the courts), but the outcome isn't noticeably different.

Where did I say it does ? Where did I say civil disobedience makes it not a crime ? But it can in many cases make a crime justified, and it's often the only way to bring about social change.
Martin Luther King Junior's civil disobedience made him a national hero and got a holiday named after him. What about Rosa Parks ? Or the Boston Tea Party ? Or on an international scale Ghandi or Nelson Mandela ?
Civil disobedience on a just grounds tends to make you a hero - conviction for it, will usually make you a martyr and while that is not much fun - it is a powerful weapon, there is no greater thorn in the side of a bad government than a martyr.

It's also worth noting that corporations are not people, cannot vote and don't have human rights. You can't violate a corporation's rights, they don't HAVE any and even if you accept his ludicrous idea that money == speech so restricting spending on politics is censorship - you can STILL restrict corporate political spending WITHOUT intruding on ANYBODY'S freedom because corporations do not HAVE freedom to intrude upon.
They have whatever privileges society benefits from giving them.

And when it comes to campaign finance, it's about time somebody pulls a Picard: The line must be drawn here, no farther !
Actually, that time was probably about 60 years ago...