Intel ME can be turned off in the Bios (and is shipped to suppliers with it off) on most modern computers,
But turning it off there does not - at least not necessarily - disable all of the things that it does, or close the potential security holes that some of those things represent.
https://puri.sm/learn/avoiding-intel-amt/ and https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/ - while from a group which is explicitly pro-software-freedom and anti-black-box, and as such may be open to accusations of bias - have a few things to say about the subject; the latter includes the claim that some ME features can only be "fused" on or off, and that once they're fused on (as many suppliers do before passing the unit on to the consumer, and as Intel may expect them to generally do), they physically can't be switched off.
Plus no talk of the fact that Intel ships processors with this ability turned off, and you can make the change permanent.
Because Intel ships processors that way to its suppliers, not to the consumer (unless you're buying direct from Intel, maybe), and the supplier can and very well may turn this on in such a way that you can't turn it back off.
There are so many other easier ways to compromise a system than using 'intel's' ME, I would be much more afraid of them,
Just because another way is easier doesn't mean that this way isn't a genuine danger. Yes, it's best to take care of the bigger risks first - but that's not justification for ignoring the smaller ones.
All devices which require specific online services for their functionality should come with service agreements which contain a clause stating (in effect) "if we ever choose to stop providing the service which enables this device to work, we will release all information necessary to enable others to provide a replacement service". The absence of such a clause should be treated as reason to refuse to purchase the device.
(Ideally the absence of such a clause would even be treated as sufficient to invalidate the agreement and require the refund of the purchase price, but it's a bit unlikely that courts would take it that far.)
It wouldn't surprise me if some organizations had explictly replaced this with "...unless you are willing to kill them", which is a significantly lower bar. It would probably explain a few things.
First, this is not my argument, I'm just presenting what I understand the argument to be. I don't think that people who do voluntarily choose to work in the sex trade are trafficked.
Second, I did state that this is how the "keep a prostitute enslaved" thing is done in cases where that happens - and that it does not by any means happen in all cases. No, not "all prostitutes are slaves" - but not all of them are necessarily in the business voluntarily, either.
Third, I don't agree that choosing to do X under threat of loss of livelihood, and the resulting starvation et cetera, constitutes "voluntarily" choosing to do X.
That said, I'm saying that (one part of) the argument is that some of these women are prevented from going to the police, et cetera, by believable threats of the consequences of what will happen if they do. (Exacerbated in some instances by having had their worldviews intentionally limited such that they don't see other options, or don't realize how unlikely some of the consequences may be.)
If you consider choosing to stay with that hanging over their heads to be "voluntarily choos[ing] ... to work as prostitutes" in any meaningful sense, then we have such different definitions of "voluntary" that I don't see any point in us having this discussion.
While I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong... do you remember the "Microsoft tax"?
There was a period where, at least as far as I recall being able to determine, you literally could not buy a prebuilt computer with no OS on it - the manufacturer would insist on shipping it with Windows (and charging you for Windows), reportedly because they got discounts from Microsoft if and only if all their computers shipped with Windows.
I don't know when that period ended, because IIRC I only bought one computer in that time period, and after that everything I've run has been built from parts. I definitely recall its having been a thing, though.
I use LibreOffice on a reasonably regular basis, simply because it's the most comprehensive office suite available for Linux that I know of. It's not exactly ideal in a number of ways, but it does generally suffice.
LibreOffice isn't quite the same thing as OpenOffice (or even OpenOffice.org, as I believe was its last name), but they do descend from the same codebase, and not all that long ago at that.
Re: Re: Re: Isn't kidnapping and slavery already illegal?
If I'm not mistaken, in the cases where it happens (which is by no means all of them), it's done by what is essentially economic coercion - "if you go to the police, even if you manage to get me arrested and avoid getting arrested yourself, you'll be back on the streets with no means of support". Although probably rarely expressed in such explicit terms.
I've seen reports of pimps getting arrested and the "girls", upon being let go, falling promptly under the sway of another pimp - because they simply don't have (or can't conceive of, find, and get into) any place else to go, and it's psychologically (and quite possibly practically) easier to just stick with what they know.
And as long as we even stigmatize them for being in the position they're in, much less criminalize what they do, that's unlikely to change much.
The place to start in changing it is probably education - both of the people who may wind up in that position, to let them know (and help them understand) that they do have these other options, and of the people who could help the former type of people but might instead be inclined to condemn them, to get that latter type of people to the point where they will instead see the former as victims in need of help.
I think saying that Jacobson's comments about the article not meeting the standards for a Letter may be based on a misreading of his intent. I think it's possible to read those two parts of his argument as internally consistent, and indeed, related.
The logic would roughly be:
The difference between a Research Report and a Letter is defined by its subject matter. (Assumption on my part, inferred from an assertion by Jacobson; I have not attempted to find a relevant source to look up any actual definitions.)
The subject matter of the Clack article was such that it would have to be treated as a Letter, rather than as a Research Report. (Assertion by Jacobson, quoted in this article.)
PNAS imposes certain constraints on Letters which it does not impose on Research Reports. (Implied assertion by Jacobson.)
PNAS failed to apply or enforce those constraints on the Clack article. (Assertion by Jacobson.)
Therefore PNAS failed to consistently apply its own policies in regard to this matter. (Conclusion, implied by the above.)
That doesn't really seem to support, or indeed do much of anything for, a claim of defamation. Any wrongdoing it addresses seems to be entirely on the part of PNAS, and to have nothing to do with Clack; also, the failure to apply one's own policies itself does not seem to even occupy the same territory as anything which could be considered defamation.
Online doesn't work that way only because it's a choice in how you have set your site up.
And the sites are set up that way because that's the only possible way to achieve the scale of "content throughput" which is needed to serve that large of an audience without pricing yourself out of existence, at least barring the development of strong AI (which would bring with it ethical concerns related to slavery, but that's another conversation).
I know a number of sites that have 100% moderated comments, and still get plenty of action.
At what scale of "content throughput", i.e., posts-per-second et cetera?
A quick Google search indicates that Twitter, to choose one example, gets about 6,000 posts per second on average. Would the kind of moderation used on the sites you're thinking of scale to that level of throughput?
"You move from a world of permissionless discussion, to only those with the stamp of approval can discuss."
With very basic moderation to avoid linking to bad things, the average site is still wide open and there is no requirement to "approve" discussions.
Do you not see the contradiction here?
The very act of deciding what is and is not "bad things", for the purpose of blocking them under such a system, is itself a granting or denying of permission.
I would note one point: if the ISP let the customer choose a-la-carte which sites would be available, and determined a price based on that site list - rather than having predetermined lists of sites, with a price for each - then that would leave choice with the consumer.
It would still be bad, given the frequency with which new sites appear, the likelihood that people will suddenly get linked to pre-existing sites they've never heard of before, et cetera - but it would at least be better than the pure ISP-picking-winners-and-losers scenario. (If a way to avoid those problems could be found, it might even be a legitimately interesting creative pricing scenario.)
In that the company ("my side", for some values of "me") is labeling those associated with the video game ("your side", similarly) as "terrorists", presumably thereby hoping to see them reflexively condemned, rather than seeking to have reasonable debate on fair basis.
While I agree with you, RMS, I'd also like to note that in this case, the term was used only in an excerpt quoted from another article; this article's author did not use the word incorrectly himself.
IMO editing the quote to correct the usage would be more egregious an offense than the one being fixed thereby. (Although commenting in the article on the incorrect usage could also address the problem without going to that same extreme.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: black or white mentality (not racist either)
No, they host content, which differs from a newspaper which publishes. One involved a company providing a platform for others to post content, the other involves a company choosing which content they want to publish, whether it be their own or content that has been submitted to them. Your continued conflation of the two is not doing you any favors, and at this point I can only assume it's deliberate.
The way I read it (by incorporating his mentions of "business model" in these threads), his argument is that:
Regardless of whether or not YouTube's business model is "provide a platform for other people to post content", it still has the same obligations to society as did any pre-Internet middleman.
One of those obligations is to filter the content made available, so that particular (albeit not fixed) bad things are not made available.
If it is impossible to fulfill these obligations under the chosen business model, that is the company's problem for having chosen this business model; it must either find a way to do that impossible thing, or shut down.
His
The question of volume is one of business models. Are you willing to trade societal norms and responsibility for volume? That seems like a very poor trade.
seems like another way of expressing this same view, and you've already responded to that one.
If the information is being handed over by another agency, that other agency must have already collected it, so collection already took place before the point where this agency receives it.
As long as the other agency also adheres to similar definitions of what constitutes collection, this part of it all holds together just fine. It's just that that condition may be too much to hope for.
On the post: Recent Intel Chipsets Have A Built-In Hidden Computer, Running Minix With A Networking Stack And A Web Server
Re: Use or Not
But turning it off there does not - at least not necessarily - disable all of the things that it does, or close the potential security holes that some of those things represent.
https://puri.sm/learn/avoiding-intel-amt/ and https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/ - while from a group which is explicitly pro-software-freedom and anti-black-box, and as such may be open to accusations of bias - have a few things to say about the subject; the latter includes the claim that some ME features can only be "fused" on or off, and that once they're fused on (as many suppliers do before passing the unit on to the consumer, and as Intel may expect them to generally do), they physically can't be switched off.
Because Intel ships processors that way to its suppliers, not to the consumer (unless you're buying direct from Intel, maybe), and the supplier can and very well may turn this on in such a way that you can't turn it back off.
Just because another way is easier doesn't mean that this way isn't a genuine danger. Yes, it's best to take care of the bigger risks first - but that's not justification for ignoring the smaller ones.
On the post: Logitech Once Again Shows That In The Modern Era, You Don't Really Own What You Buy
Re: Re: Re: One more time, for the slow learners
On the post: Logitech Once Again Shows That In The Modern Era, You Don't Really Own What You Buy
(Ideally the absence of such a clause would even be treated as sufficient to invalidate the agreement and require the refund of the purchase price, but it's a bit unlikely that courts would take it that far.)
On the post: Deputy Shoots Family's Terrier; Complains About Cost Of The Bullet
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hollowpoint? WTH?
On the post: Will Sheryl Sandberg And Facebook Help Small Websites Threatened By SESTA?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Isn't kidnapping and slavery already illegal?
First, this is not my argument, I'm just presenting what I understand the argument to be. I don't think that people who do voluntarily choose to work in the sex trade are trafficked.
Second, I did state that this is how the "keep a prostitute enslaved" thing is done in cases where that happens - and that it does not by any means happen in all cases. No, not "all prostitutes are slaves" - but not all of them are necessarily in the business voluntarily, either.
Third, I don't agree that choosing to do X under threat of loss of livelihood, and the resulting starvation et cetera, constitutes "voluntarily" choosing to do X.
That said, I'm saying that (one part of) the argument is that some of these women are prevented from going to the police, et cetera, by believable threats of the consequences of what will happen if they do. (Exacerbated in some instances by having had their worldviews intentionally limited such that they don't see other options, or don't realize how unlikely some of the consequences may be.)
If you consider choosing to stay with that hanging over their heads to be "voluntarily choos[ing] ... to work as prostitutes" in any meaningful sense, then we have such different definitions of "voluntary" that I don't see any point in us having this discussion.
On the post: David Boies Accused Of Running Horrifying Spy Operation Against Harvey Weinstein's Accusers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
While I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong... do you remember the "Microsoft tax"?
There was a period where, at least as far as I recall being able to determine, you literally could not buy a prebuilt computer with no OS on it - the manufacturer would insist on shipping it with Windows (and charging you for Windows), reportedly because they got discounts from Microsoft if and only if all their computers shipped with Windows.
I don't know when that period ended, because IIRC I only bought one computer in that time period, and after that everything I've run has been built from parts. I definitely recall its having been a thing, though.
On the post: David Boies Accused Of Running Horrifying Spy Operation Against Harvey Weinstein's Accusers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
LibreOffice isn't quite the same thing as OpenOffice (or even OpenOffice.org, as I believe was its last name), but they do descend from the same codebase, and not all that long ago at that.
On the post: Will Sheryl Sandberg And Facebook Help Small Websites Threatened By SESTA?
Re: Re: Re: Isn't kidnapping and slavery already illegal?
I've seen reports of pimps getting arrested and the "girls", upon being let go, falling promptly under the sway of another pimp - because they simply don't have (or can't conceive of, find, and get into) any place else to go, and it's psychologically (and quite possibly practically) easier to just stick with what they know.
And as long as we even stigmatize them for being in the position they're in, much less criminalize what they do, that's unlikely to change much.
The place to start in changing it is probably education - both of the people who may wind up in that position, to let them know (and help them understand) that they do have these other options, and of the people who could help the former type of people but might instead be inclined to condemn them, to get that latter type of people to the point where they will instead see the former as victims in need of help.
That's an extremely big job, however.
On the post: SLAPP Alert: Professor Sues Another For Defamation Over Competing Academic Papers
Letter vs. research report
I think saying that Jacobson's comments about the article not meeting the standards for a Letter may be based on a misreading of his intent. I think it's possible to read those two parts of his argument as internally consistent, and indeed, related.
The logic would roughly be:
The difference between a Research Report and a Letter is defined by its subject matter. (Assumption on my part, inferred from an assertion by Jacobson; I have not attempted to find a relevant source to look up any actual definitions.)
The subject matter of the Clack article was such that it would have to be treated as a Letter, rather than as a Research Report. (Assertion by Jacobson, quoted in this article.)
PNAS imposes certain constraints on Letters which it does not impose on Research Reports. (Implied assertion by Jacobson.)
PNAS failed to apply or enforce those constraints on the Clack article. (Assertion by Jacobson.)
That doesn't really seem to support, or indeed do much of anything for, a claim of defamation. Any wrongdoing it addresses seems to be entirely on the part of PNAS, and to have nothing to do with Clack; also, the failure to apply one's own policies itself does not seem to even occupy the same territory as anything which could be considered defamation.
But it does seem internally consistent.
On the post: How The Internet Association's Support For SESTA Just Hurt Facebook And Its Users
Re: Re: Re: Vague FUD.
And the sites are set up that way because that's the only possible way to achieve the scale of "content throughput" which is needed to serve that large of an audience without pricing yourself out of existence, at least barring the development of strong AI (which would bring with it ethical concerns related to slavery, but that's another conversation).
At what scale of "content throughput", i.e., posts-per-second et cetera?
A quick Google search indicates that Twitter, to choose one example, gets about 6,000 posts per second on average. Would the kind of moderation used on the sites you're thinking of scale to that level of throughput?
Do you not see the contradiction here?
The very act of deciding what is and is not "bad things", for the purpose of blocking them under such a system, is itself a granting or denying of permission.
On the post: UK Terrorism Law Used To Prosecute Actual Terrorist Fighter For Possessing A Copy Of 'The Anarchist Cookbook'
Re: Re: Ambiguous headline...
Unambiguous as far as I can tell, comprehensible, and still valid headline-ese.
Not great as a headline, but not much that reaches that sort of length is going to be.
On the post: Spinoff: Whatever The Reports About Russian Trolls Buying Ads Is Initially, It's Way, Way Worse
Re: The real issue...
"Democracy is the idea that a million men are smarter than one man.
"...Run that one by me again? I missed something."
Which, in its original context, was followed immediately by:
"Dictatorship is the idea that one man is smarter than a million men.
"Take another look at that one, too. Who decides?"
Both quotes from Heinlein, who - while he didn't get everything right, by any means - had many insights which are still applicable in the modern day.
On the post: Portugal Shows The Internet Why Net Neutrality Is Important
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I would note one point: if the ISP let the customer choose a-la-carte which sites would be available, and determined a price based on that site list - rather than having predetermined lists of sites, with a price for each - then that would leave choice with the consumer.
It would still be bad, given the frequency with which new sites appear, the likelihood that people will suddenly get linked to pre-existing sites they've never heard of before, et cetera - but it would at least be better than the pure ISP-picking-winners-and-losers scenario. (If a way to avoid those problems could be found, it might even be a legitimately interesting creative pricing scenario.)
Other than that, well said, and I agree.
On the post: Researcher Still Being Pursued By Russian Bank Over Last Year's Mistaken Trump Connection Story
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I never understood
On the post: Energy Group Labels Creators Of Video Game As 'Eco-Terrorists'
Re: Re: Labeling advocacy
On the post: European Parliament Agrees Text For Key ePrivacy Regulation; Online Advertising Industry Hates It
Re: Re:
On the post: Georgia Election Server Mysteriously Wiped Clean After Lawsuit Highlights Major Vulnerabilities
Re: Re: Misuse of term 'hacker'
That's fine; never mind me, carry on.
On the post: Georgia Election Server Mysteriously Wiped Clean After Lawsuit Highlights Major Vulnerabilities
Re: Misuse of term 'hacker'
IMO editing the quote to correct the usage would be more egregious an offense than the one being fixed thereby. (Although commenting in the article on the incorrect usage could also address the problem without going to that same extreme.)
On the post: Forcing Internet Platforms To Police Content Will Never Work
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: black or white mentality (not racist either)
The way I read it (by incorporating his mentions of "business model" in these threads), his argument is that:
Regardless of whether or not YouTube's business model is "provide a platform for other people to post content", it still has the same obligations to society as did any pre-Internet middleman.
One of those obligations is to filter the content made available, so that particular (albeit not fixed) bad things are not made available.
His
seems like another way of expressing this same view, and you've already responded to that one.
On the post: New Evidence Shows Defense Dep't Abusing Surveillance Procedures To Spy On Americans
Re: whitewashing
Actually, that's reasonable enough.
If the information is being handed over by another agency, that other agency must have already collected it, so collection already took place before the point where this agency receives it.
As long as the other agency also adheres to similar definitions of what constitutes collection, this part of it all holds together just fine. It's just that that condition may be too much to hope for.
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