Posts by BenWilson
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OnPoint: The Gift that Keeps on Making…, in reply to izogi,
If you want to protest their actions, then I think actual protest in a public and open way is far more likely to be effective than playing their game with encryption.
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Henry Barnard,
Dunno about that. If he represents a certain kind, then he represents them. I wouldn't want him having the very top job, but if he plays well with some support then that's not something Labour should be kissing away or demoting. At the end of the day his misdemeanors are really quite minor, they don't even approach being criminal or nasty. Just silly.
Also, I can't help echoing a cry made by others, that the fact no women even put their hands up at all is not something to be blaming the party at large for, or taking steps to correct via quotas, or punishing the sexist twit - it's really an indictment on the courage of the women concerned. It's quite a scary thing to feel that women in the National Party tend to have more actual grit.
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Is it safe to start calling him Sideshow Jones?
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Hard News: Friday Music: Specks of Money…, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
So, paradoxically, we end up with a system of remuneration for musicians that’s far more hostile to the non-omnipresently-popular and mainstream even than the pre-internet music business, even though it’s still largely controlled by the same people. As ever, this is not the shining internet future we were promised.
Well, it's more hostile to them making a living from a mass market. But getting published is definitely way, way easier than it ever was. And if the outcome of the mass market becoming pointless for most musicians is that more musicians end up doing gigs because they have to to pay bills, is that really so terrible? And they can get to their 20,000 fans at minimal cost, their songs are out there, and everyone can watch them any time. I think you have to buy into an idea that the world owes musicians a mass market to think this is the end of days for musicians. It's just that the strange model of the mid thru late 20th century of mass-production making fortunes for a lot of people has collapsed. Now it's a much more tiny number than the tiny number it was in the first place.
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OnPoint: The Gift that Keeps on Making…, in reply to izogi,
All of which is to say that 100% security of data is not possible, and furthermore it's not even really possible to know with any accuracy how safe your data is, because it comes down to how much the intelligence people care about it.
Which neatly segues into a point I've made before. There's really not that much point worrying about what access to your data intelligence services have (unless, of course, you are a spook yourself), because they have the power to coerce from you anything you care to hide. Seen in that light, excessive paranoia about the security of your data is in the best case an entertaining diversion, and in the worst case it is inviting real trouble onto yourself.
It's a good idea to take precautions to protect your data from intrusion by private individuals, so they can't just nick your money or wreck your site, or blackmail you with some foolish photos you kept, or scam one of your friends or family. This really doesn't require particularly high levels of security. But if your purpose is to protect yourself from a body like the NSA, then good luck with that, don't mention me even saying I told you so, the day you get waterboarded for your passwords.
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You just need more pop'lar policy.
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OnPoint: The Gift that Keeps on Making…, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
I love the idea that all the keyboard jockeys still have to wear ties.
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OnPoint: The Gift that Keeps on Making…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
The Five Eyes don’t have a monopoly on theoretical mathematicians.
They don’t, although it is a crying shame that the collective intelligence community does have that monopoly. There’s so much more worthy things they could be doing.
ETA: The mathematicians, I mean. The intelligence people I can scarcely give a damn about, so worthless do I consider them.
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OnPoint: The Gift that Keeps on Making…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
If “they” had found a way to break public-key generally, Suite B would cease to be approved for at least Top Secret material in very short order.
Perhaps, or they might leave it that way for a bit (since only they would know how to crack it), and see if they can discover whether anyone else has cracked it. It would be an absolutely perfect time for counter intelligence, so I don't think you can ever really be anywhere near as confident as you want to be.
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However, despite this being framed as a breach of encryption, the actual process of encryption (the actual “lock”) hasn’t been broken.
As far as we know. Do you really think the first thing they’d do if they really cracked public key encryption would be to tell everyone?
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