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Comment Re:enigmail/pgp/gpg (Score 1) 470

Nobody mentioned Thunderbird with built-in SMIME capability!

Supports full public key crypto with no extra extensions needed. Generate a self signed certificate, and a big key (it can support 8192 bit RSA).

Now you've got end to end crypto. Use Thunderbird with any ISP including gmail with IMAP and SMTP if you want; they won't have a clue what's being sent through anyway.

For additional security, I think Thunderbird supports storing the crypto on a hardware token (smart card) but I haven't tried this.

Comment What are jail-worthy crimes? (Score 5, Insightful) 1870

Yeah so we've known for some time that running a file sharing site for illegally redistributed content is bad news from a legal liability standpoint ... but I am still surprised by what kinds of activities in our modern age get you jail time.

Is the fundamental issue "loss of money"? Well, the executives of the big banks in the world -- men like Charles Prince (Citigroup), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide - collapsed), Alan Schwartz (Bear Stearns - collapsed) -- have lost far more money. They have lost money for investors, customers, and more recently taxpayers and even your children and your children's children. The damage caused by the systems they were responsible for is far greater han any of these file sharing misdemeanors. This is like comparing an out of control leaf fire in someone's backyard to the carpet bombing of a city.

But what happens to investment bank executives who lost ridiculous sums (we're talking trillions) and ruined the lives of many? Probably nothing... hell, the previous Goldman Sachs CEO was put in charge of the US Treasury Department (Paulson) where he proceeded to redistribute public money to colleagues. Some may argue that men like Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are committing acts of treason by taking money out of the national treasury and diverting it into the hands of the wealthiest elite, the top 1% of society.

But don't expect to see any of these men in jail any time soon. Because in this world, the people who commit the grandest acts of financial theft and destruction are rewarded with lavish salaries and pensions, while the jails are filled with pot smokers, shoplifters, and guys who run file sharing web sites.

Comment Interesting what is illegal and jail-worthy today (Score 1) 2

Yeah so we've known for some time that running a file sharing site for illegally redistributed content is bad news from a legal liability standpoint ... but I am still surprised by what kinds of activities in our modern age get you jail time.

Is the fundamental issue "loss of money"? Well, the executives of the big banks in the world -- men like Charles Prince (Citigroup), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide - collapsed), Alan Schwartz (Bear Stearns - collapsed) -- have lost far more money. They have lost money for investors, customers, and more recently taxpayers and even your children and your children's children. The damage caused by the systems they were responsible for is far greater han any of these file sharing misdemeanors. This is like comparing an out of control leaf fire in someone's backyard to the carpet bombing of a city.

But what happens to investment bank executives who lost ridiculous sums (we're talking trillions) and ruined the lives of many? Probably nothing... hell, the previous Goldman Sachs CEO was put in charge of the US Treasury Department (Paulson) where he proceeded to redistribute public money to colleagues. Some may argue that men like Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are committing acts of treason by taking money out of the national treasury and diverting it into the hands of the wealthiest elite, the top 1% of society.

But don't expect to see any of these men in jail any time soon. Because in this world, the people who commit the grandest acts of financial theft and destruction are rewarded with lavish salaries and pensions, while the jails are filled with pot smokers, shoplifters, and guys who run file sharing web sites.

Comment Asteroid bad for economy. (Score -1, Offtopic) 397

Hopefully it really does burn up totally in the atmosphere. An asteroid colliding with the world right now would make a bad economy worse. Speaking of the economy, do you know how this whole meltdown began? It started in 1977 during good ol' Jimmy Carter's presidency (geez, his presidency just keeps on giving so many years later; giving nothing but damage, that is). They wanted to make sure that poor people would be able to own their own homes. So they made up this law about making it possible for these people to get loans. Then this dude named Barack Obama came along some years later, along with some Acorn thing, and they went around and sued banks into complying. What banks did in order to keep making money while making bad loans was this: They'd bundle together lots of good loans with bad loans and sell these bundles to Freddie Mac and Fannie May. Those two government corporations would then bundle together a bunch of these bundles and sell the resulting bigger bundles to investment bankers. That is, 401k's and stuff like that. Then Bill Clinton came along and encouraged even more of this loan-giving, because you see, it's a pyramid scheme, kind of like Social Security. Well the result of all of this was that people who should never have received a loan (since they couldn't conceivably pay it back) did, homes were purchased, demand went up, supply couldn't keep up, prices skyrocketed, people who wanted loans beyond a home's value could get them since the price would "always" continue to rise, and so forth. It was a huge bubble. And that bubble just burst. And now, in order to "fix" the problem, the government is gonna make up even MORE legislation, even MORE regulations, etc., and the banks and CEOs are going to get punished, and everyone is conveniently forgetting that it's the government that started the whole thing and Barack Obama who, through the threat of litigation, forced banks to make these bad loans, which they knew were bad. In other words, what I'm saying is that the government forced the banks, through this ridiculous legislation, to make these loans. The banks did because they didn't have a choice (and Obama was there to make sure of that). And when it failed, everyone blames greed and banks and whatnot. The government walks away scott free, Obama gets elected because one Jimmy Carter isn't enough for a country this size, and the entire American people are left paying the bill -- which will come out to something like SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS PER TAXPAYER! What would YOU do with $7,000? For these reasons, an asteroid crashing on the Earth and driving stock prices even lower is something we really don't have time for right now. Government regulation out of control. Because when Rome is burning down, play a fiddle.

Comment Re:dot-ca remains in the dark ages (Score 1) 89

In my experience this is not true, I also own .CA domains. I never provided a driver's license to CIRA. Also I did recently update an address in my WHOIS, it was relatively painless. True that you have to log in and confirm through CIRA but otherwise the system has worked fine for me... could be that these bad experiences mentioned are based on older (legacy) registrations, back when there was higher security for different tiers of .CA domains, such as provincial, then national level which required extra checks.
Linux Business

NYSE Moves to Linux 351

blitzkrieg3 writes "The New York Times is reporting on how the NYSE group now feels that Linux is 'mature enough' for the New York Stock Exchange. They are using commodity x86 based Hewlett-Packard hardware and Linux in place of their traditional UNIX machines. From NYSE Euronext CIO Steve Rubinow: 'We don't want to be closely aligned with proprietary Unix. No offense to HP-UX, but we feel the same way about [IBM's] AIX, and we feel the same way to some extent about Solaris. Other reasons cited for the switch were increased flexibility and lower cost.'"
Book Reviews

The History of the Federal Reserve 514

Michael J. Ross writes "Money plays a key role in modern life; in fact, for some people, nothing is more important than acquiring more of it. Yet most people do not know what money really is, how it is created, how its supply is expanded and contracted, and who benefits from those changes. In the United States, the central figure in this ongoing drama, is our central bank, the Federal Reserve, whose history, power, and effects are explored in G. Edward Griffin's fascinating book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.
Privacy

Bugged Canadian Coins? 354

tundra_man writes "CBC has an article about RFID type devices in Canadian coins found on US Contractors. From the article: 'Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.' The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved."
United States

US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI 503

stair69 writes "Since 2004 many visitors to the United States have had 2 fingerprints taken under the US-VISIT scheme. Now there are new plans to extend this scheme — under the proposal all 10 fingerprints will be taken, and they will be stored permanently on the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The fingerprints will also be made available to police forces in other countries. The scheme is due to be introduced by the end of 2008, but it will be trialled in 10 of the bigger airports initially." Of course, it is worth pointing out that given the recent change in Congress, I suspect that a number of countries will get a "bye" on this round,

Global Privacy Rankings Released 215

djmurdoch writes to alert us to the release of Privacy International's privacy ranking of 37 nations. This came out of PI and EPIC's annual Privacy and Human Rights global study, which this year runs to 1,200 pages. From a Globe and Mail article on the rankings: "Germany and Canada are the best defenders of privacy, and Malaysia and China the worst, an international rights group said in a report released Wednesday. Britain was rated as an endemic surveillance society, at No. 33, just above Russia and Singapore... The United States did only slightly better, at No. 30, ranked between Israel and Thailand, with few safeguards and widespread surveillance." PI's study coincided with a report from Britain's information commissioner warning that the UK could "sleep-walk into a surveillance society". The nation now has one CCTV camera for every 14 people.

Comment Re:It is good news ... But ... (Score 1) 310

keep in mind that NTFS remains proprietary and Microsoft can break it for newly written files any time it suits their business purposes to do so. All it takes is one update.

Yes and no -- they must stay backward compatible with the currently deployed versions. That gives a comfortable time window (for instance, if M$ were to decide today to introduce a new filesystem "feature", they would probably give patches for WinXP and 2K3, but not for 2K ; and by the time everybody applies the patch, we can only hope that the Linux NTFS project will catch up with the new "features").

The Cure for Information Overload 94

Ged writes "Those librarian blogerati have done it again: they've just discovered 'The Cure for Information Overload'. It's a very elegant formula if you ask me, with obvious SRU/SRW applications, and maybe even TLA ramifications. I'm not sure about all of the conclusions, but it sure is an interesting theory."

Comment Re:Computer controlled technical invention? (Score 1) 172

The point is not to say 'don't protect people who create things, wheter they are material or immaterial', the point is to say 'tiny bits of immaterial creations cannot be protected under the patent legislation, for it would be just like confiscating words instead of protecting books'.

As far as i know, software are protected by copyrights, or 'droit d'auteurs' in French. There are several differences between national legislations on that point, but hey, this is another problem.

Eventually, your example is extreme, because you imply that a set of algorithms could, without any physical intermediary, produce physical impact. This is, IMO, impossible. If you create a software that takes care of the spare energy of your computer to animate two wings, then ok, but your innovation isn't physical, since you didn't create a new way of using elements, let's say. Your program calculates something and brings this something into a very physical instrument (here, wings, that may have been, though I really don't know, patented).

MR borrows Einstein's idea ; maths cannot be patented ; they belong to the common pool.

Regards,
jdif
Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Dot Slash 3

More and more people seem to be disappointed by ./ editors and editorial management. Yet no other site (except kuro5hin, but it's not that vivid anymore) came into light.
It's funny.  Laugh.

Journal Journal: Mail fortunes 4

Am I the only one to have a mail box that let me store my 1500 mails for free ?

Or is the Hotmail/Yahoo FUD actually working ?

Or is the average geek not able to find a mailbox provider that give you 100 Mb of space for free ?

For one and every situation mentionned above, and especially for the French community, take a look at Freesurf. It's about 100 Mb, and it's free.

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