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Comment Re:The grey line of theft (Score 1) 276

Completely beside the point. The point, like lock picks, is that there are legitimate uses for these technologies.

Your view that since there are illegal uses that the technologies should be banned.

BUT with lock picks, where there are significant illegal uses, we still acknowledge the individuals right to own and use them responsibly.

There in lies the key if you will pardon the pun.

Individual responsibility.
You advocate for a course of repressive action that is completely unwarranted as has already been proven.

Comment Re:The grey line of theft (Score 1) 276

What monthly fees ? I am on pay as you go and *only* use free wifi for data thank you very much !

Cost of handset to me : FREE BIRTHDAY GIFT

I do not and will not purchase online, so your crack about 80 "cents" for a song is irrelevant.

I have over 150+ cd's and 40+ DVD's which were purchased at retail in my personal collection. I add one or two each quarter sometimes more if the bargain bin has something interesting.

Like I want to spend a weekend or two ripping that lot myself ?

Again it is NOT the tool, just the uses *some* put them to, no different from lock picks.

Comment Re:The grey line of theft (Score 1) 276

I think you were close with "own moral Geiger counter" but went wayward with "Maybe it's more honest to talk about right and wrong, and then think about the best way to define laws around that."

We already have.

Can you define the difference between a digital lock pick and a physical one ?

I can't so I can see no reason why they should be treated differently.

Comment Re:The grey line of theft (Score 0) 276

"gonna buy a gun and rob a store" rotflma

That is almost exactly what a gunman in America just did ! He couldn't afford heath care, so what did he do ?
He got himself a gun, held up a bank and stole $10. Yes TEN DOLLARS!

As for "does not, or at least should not, own a smart phone"

"should not ?" and why pray tell.. Is earning less than you some kind of a problem ? Do have less rights ?

As for "does not" : Ever hear of gifts?

You know - things people give you when they like you...

My friends and family chose to get me one birthday present instead of lots. The replaced my ageing Nokia 7110 with a refurbished HTC Hero (Android yay) on the "Three" network for £160.

If I choose to use it to acquire a backup of my legally purchased media then that should be my choice.

Once again the tools are not at fault, it is the uses that *some* put them too. This is no different than physical lock picks, only with them we learnt than banning or castigating the creators or owners or lawful users only serves to increase the illegal use. Why we cannot learn from history is beyond me.

Comment Re:The grey line of theft (Score 1) 276

Costs - a random selection :

Source : Toys R Us uk website.
Xbox 360 Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 £42.89
Xbox 360 Disney Pixar Cars 2 £34.89

Amazon uk website:
Case Histories - Series 1 [DVD] £14.99
The Shadow Line [DVD] £14.99
I Am Number Four [DVD] £11.99

You may be rich enough for this to be loose change to you, but I can assure you this not not cheap. Particularly given the actual dvd media costs less than £1.

Breaking DRM and stripping CSS may be easy for you but it is not so much for mere mortal USERS.

I care about the difference between right and wrong, I just don't see how it is right to ban a digital lock pick but not a physical one.

Comment Re:The grey line of theft (Score 2) 276

With the exorbitant cost of physical media, the relative ease with which it can be damaged, and whatever DRM is embedded, I cannot blame people for wanting a cheap no hassle backup.

Anyone blaming the tools is nuts. We have had similarly disruptive tools before and should know that banning or making them illegal does nothing to stop their use.

Think if you will about lock picks. Legal in most of the world to own, to use on your own locks, to carry around in you car, but illegal to use to commit a crime.

What's so different with the digital equivalent ?

Why do governments and people world wide seem so scared of digital lock picks, but are content to have legally available physical ones ?

Comment Re:UK government doesn't have powers over power. (Score 1) 334

Might have something to do with an anticipated fear reaction from the locations populace.

Or a "London" is too big a target to put a new nuclear in fear of "terrorism".

Me - I'd have no problem with a nuclear power station as per the newer and even safer Japanese designs as a neighbour. Not so keen on the French designs we're likely to end up with though.

The Japanese have already done the disaster tests after all, and have a better long term safety record than the French.

I would expect a discount on my electricity bill though.

Comment Best news in years ! (Score 1) 334

IF subsequent governments don't screw it up.

The UK is an island with little in the way of seismic activity or tsunami like events.

The UK already falls short in power generation, requiring imports at peak times through lengthy vulnerable and costly to lay and maintain under sea cables and pipes.

By 2015 it is estimated that the UK will no longer produce sufficient energy for off peak, requiring imports 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

We can ill afford the risks these vulnerabilities pose let alone the 10+ years of money flooding out of our economy for what should be a matter of national security.

Any delays will be costly in so many ways.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Lighter than air ? 2

Question : What is lighter than any known gas ?
Answer : Vacuum

Question : Can we make a rigid "balloon" sufficient to withstand a high enough level of vacuum so as to be lighter than air?
Thinking carbon60 or carbon nanotubes here....
Answer : ?????

Comment Re:Yay (Score 1) 247

Please mod parent up !

Randomly assigned IP addresses can be static or dynamic. You assign one static to each machine and let it generate dynamic addresses on its own. For incoming connections you use the static IP of the machine. For outgoing connections you use one of the dynamic IP addresses of the machine.

Thank you for this, it forced me to re-read the faq (http://www.faqs.org/rfc/rfc3041.txt). I must admit that had been focusing on it's primary declared relationship to "Stateless address autoconfiguration [ADDRCONF]", and failing entirely to grasp the "may also apply to interfaces with other types of globally unique and/or persistent identifiers" part.

Too many people with that attitude is the reason for the mess we have now.

Some of us are either more cautious, or less well informed. I was both, now I am merely cautious. I will gladly and with thanks, move on to basic connectivity testing rather than waiting.

If you have information regarding implementing Security Enhanced Neighbour Discovery please link it as this is now the final hurdle for me.

Comment Re:Yay (Score 1) 247

Did you even watch the video you linked to?

I did, and from it I headed down the path that you are on. That was until I also wanted a firewall as well as randomisation. If you implement a default deny firewall and are running randomised addresses, just how do you open a port ? Or otherwise grant access for inbound connections ?
All the flaws of NAT but without any of the benefits.

I am sure that there is a solution to this problem, it just has yet to be released.

I am just willing to wait for that or until ipv6 reaches critical mass and I am forced.

Comment Re:Yay (Score 1) 247

1) Whether it is an IPv6 address or an IPv4address+DNAT port, the exposure is the same, the outside world has a door into a specific system.

Unless you are running the ipv6 privacy extensions :
http://playground.sun.com/ipv6/specs/ipv6-address-privacy.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfc/rfc3041.txt

My thought is that running an open wifi does not provide plausible deniability. It's more likely that someone will do something malicious behind your gateway and you'll take the blame than vice-versa. *Especially* if you seem technically capable, the fact that you explicitly left your wifi open would be taken as a sign you were *trying* for plausible deniability. Face it, for the residential case, *there is no plausible deniability*, at least with respect to traffic that originates from your residence, *unless* you have a trusted proxy shared with others out there that you *know* won't retain enough data to trace your identity. The only way to have plausible deniability is to find an open-wifi somewhere and hope there's no security camera. If it is some poor sap's house, then they will probably get blamed, if a business, that business may be required to discontinue open wifi under legal pressure.

Here I think we will have to agree to disagree. Particularly when you consider some of the advantages to the privacy extensions. My point is that at present, there is no happy medium. You have a choice between a centralised traditional firewall, and a decentralised randomised more privacy friendly solution.

I think we can agree that ipv6 could be far better than it is with what we know today verses when it was designed 15 years ago. I'm just willing to wait a little longer for my feature set than you are for yours.

Comment Re:Yay (Score 1) 247

How is that different from your NAT today? If you want to accept incoming connections, you must tell your NAT box a port to DNAT map from your external thing to something internal, defined by, surprise surprise, a static entry.

The differences are :
1) A single static ip address in ipv4 can be either a single device or a NAT gateway. In ipv6 it is guaranteed to be a single device.
2) The perception that since a static ipv6 address is just one of the possibilities out of a 64bit subnet, that this renders address scanning useless. This perception is blatantly false, as without address randomisation you leave "footprints" everywhere you go hence the privacy extensions. Who needs to scan for your address when you leave it wherever you go ?

The current implementations of ipv6 leaves you the choice between security and privacy - you cannot have both.
If you choose security you cannot even have plausible deniability by running an open wifi as all ipv6 addresses are unique.
If on the other hand you choose privacy, then you cannot implement a default deny firewall as this would require a whitelist listing all of the allowed ipv6 addresses - something that you cannot provide if you are randomising your ip address as per the privacy rfc.

I will wait until someone figures out how to do both before I consider going live with ipv6.

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