Microsoft's Schadenfreude
the company may harvest “performance data to learn whether you experience any difficulties
Since they know about all these difficulties, I can only assume they're created on purpose.
2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
Other countries seriously need to intervene on this or at least have some input.
I'm not sure I'd like China and Turkey, or whomever, to take much control, but in this case it might be good if they weighted in on this one so as to put a bit of fire under the US govt to get some action here. This situation has been going on for a long time and it's as if the behaviour is acceptable. It is not.
and none of that makes any sense to me. Telcos don't want to invest in low profit adventures and they don't want government to do it for them. Sure, I wouldn't mind better service. But it's not going to happen until the Government stands up to the Telcos. I'm obviously not holding my breath.
"but you would still be covered by the same laws that took these out."
As an individual, effectively no. There are lots of laws in Russia, just like anywhere else, but nobody bothers. For example, I have several Russian domain names, and the registration criteria of those appears very strict and complicated. The reality is that nobody cares and as an individual nobody will ever bother you. Anyway, it is dubious that an individual can be forced to keep records of their own activity on their own computers - virtual or not. Also, from my interaction with a few server folk there, Russia is nowhere near what the Western press would portray in regard to government imposing on individuals.
"Recommendations for VPS provider?"
I currently have one in StPetersburg from VirtWire for about 4 bucks a year. Very small and NAT, but the price is right. :) Vstoike.ru is probably 10 times that, but comes highly recommended. There are others if you look around. Perhaps here: http://lowendstock.com/
"They took my phone. They took over my Facebook."
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted by Congress in 1986 and has recently been applied to similar cases. Typically having knowingly accessed a computer without authorisation or exceeding authorised access. Being federal it carries some pretty serious jail time for even the most trivial offence.
"Sorry no, if I see a .ru the alarm bells start going off."
You do know that the tld does not indicate the location nor nationality of the site, right? I'm nowhere near Russia and I use .ru for some sites. I also use .nl because they have a good price and a trustworthy registry. Since I'm in Canada I do use .ca for some local sites. Unfortunately those are relatively expensive. The good thing about the Canadian registry is they use their profits to provide significant grants to those who would promote the internet in Canada.
When you connect to a bank you are completely identified by them and there is no privacy issue there. The problem is security. You don't want anybody else to be able to snoop on your transaction, and what your are doing is not anybody else's business.That is the reason for using Tor for this sort of thing. It is probably the best piece of software available right now for keeping other people from snooping, and by blocking it the Tesco Bank is making a strong statement that they do not endorse strong security when you are dealing with them.
"Dalgetty said the police had been called in and were investigating the attack. Under the circumstances, she said, it would not be appropriate to comment further on the details of the infection."
I doubt the police can do much, but reporting it to them certainly offers a handy excuse for not being questioned further on negligence.
A telephone number is a name. It has permanence (you keep it over time and can move it to other carriers). It is the input to a lookup process -- the carrier switching system that reaches you has an address (location routing number) and that is looked up in a database before the call is delivered. This is transparent to end users but very visible inside the network.
It used to be connected to a physical address in the days of copper. This is no longer the case. The number will map to the owner, which will be either an ILEC or CLEC - not an individual user. What their records look like will vary. You can get a phone number without an address and can often give whatever credentials you like and the best trace will be via payment method - just like with an IP. It is also trivial to forward phone numbers so there is a very long way to go to the end user. By the way, you may have noticed the difficulty of tracing phone solicitors.
"No explanation WHY equating IPs to telephone numbers is bad."
I was wondering too. From what I know about both, they seem quite similar. We have IANA as an authority for address space. They give out blocks of numbers which then get registered to individual ISPs. And in the phone space we have NANP, the North American Numbering Plan which gives out blocks of telephone numbers for use by CLECs and ILECs. Both the end user and the owner in both cases can route these around as they see fit. Yes, there are some differences, but when you start to look at the politics of control, the two systems seem awfully similar.
At least you didn't mention "Telephone Directory", as nobody knows what one of those is nowadays...
You're probably right. However, the telephone directory comparison is actually particularly accurate. Telephone companies make up their own directories and don't include listings from non-incumbents. This is currently the situation with DNS which typically only recognises ICANN listings - despite this being a somewhat political choice, rather than technical.
Canada is seeking to transition from a resource-based economy towards one that is more knowledge-based.
Not in BC it isn't. Our government is firm in its commitment to a resource based economy. I liked the article though.
Canadians just don't seem to want to stand up to the CRTC, or even know that they possibly could. That spirit is completely bred out of us. I doubt we'll see a big improvement of our internet in my lifetime. I'm getting old and (almost) done with that fight. It's up to the younger generation to fight for a better internet, but they're not even turning out to vote let alone showing any fire. Do we even have a "net generation" here? I'm not sure any more. I'd like to see our Pirate Party getting a little more attention.