DannyB 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Insists His Emails With The MPAA Are Super Secret

    DannyB ( profile ), 20 May, 2015 @ 07:49am

    Re: not one adversary, but hundreds

    By the time the MPAA realize that it should give customers value for a reasonable price, it will be too late for them.

    By the time the dinosaurs realize they should get out of the tarpit as soon as possible, it will be too late for them.

    Unskippable commercials that were irrelevant ten years ago and even less relevant today.

    Unskippable commercials for upcoming new releases that were released fifteen years ago and are nowhere to be seen today.

    FIB warnings that untruthfully misuse the FBI logo to frighten people with half truths and misstatements.

    Over valuing content when it comes to licensing it for streaming using new technology.

    Realizing that it is technology that would have saved them, and had always done so in the past.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Rightly Overturns NAACP's Successful Attempt To Censor Speech Via Trademark Law

    DannyB ( profile ), 20 May, 2015 @ 12:20pm

    Free Speech is great!

    As long as you can only get it long after it actually matters.

  • On the post: Chris Christie: Your NSA Fears Are Bullshit And Civil Liberties Advocates Are Extremists

    DannyB ( profile ), 20 May, 2015 @ 10:11am

    Not relevant to the article, but . . .

    Chris Christie will close public bridges for petty political reasons.

    What would he do given the power of the presidency?

    Nuclear weapons?

  • On the post: Dept. Of Public Works Finds Watching 20 Hours A Week Of Full-Screen Porn On Work Computers To Be A Bit Too Much

    DannyB ( profile ), 20 May, 2015 @ 05:37am

    The department finds 20 hours to be a bit too much?

    How much too much?

    Is it 5 hours too much? 10 hours too much?

    It will be a long bureaucratic process to determine the appropriate amount.

  • On the post: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Insists His Emails With The MPAA Are Super Secret

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 10:58am

    Re: Re: Why does Hollywood hate Google?

    OK, I take your point.

    But why would anyone want to watch any, let alone every new Hollywood release.

    YouTube has so much more to offer. I'm learning some Hebrew right now (on YouTube). I don't know that I have the discipline to stick with it. But so far I know the alphabet (or aleph-bet) and can pronounce and write them. (I decided not to learn a new programming language this year. This is more challenging.)



    re-release, remake, sequel, sequel of old remake, etc.

  • On the post: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Insists His Emails With The MPAA Are Super Secret

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 10:54am

    Re: 'incriminating information'

    Better translation: Incriminating information.

    Also known as: State's Evidence.

  • On the post: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Insists His Emails With The MPAA Are Super Secret

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 10:52am

    Re: Never interrupt your enemy...

    Stealing* the Pirate Bay's domain names will only result in TPB becoming decentralized. Others can already spin up their own instances of the server. Anywhere.

    This is going to be hilarious to watch as it happens.


    *Stealing is the correct word. Stealing is a more applicable to the taking domain names without compensation than the word would apply to mere copyright infringement.

    Disclaimer: I do not use TPB and never have. But I'm sure that won't stop what's its name.

  • On the post: Pretty Much Anyone With Any Understanding Of Crypto Tells President Obama That Backdooring Crypto Is Monumentally Stupid

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 07:30am

    Re:

    Only the Big Brother divinely appointed by the Administration can pull the Golden Key from the Stone. No other will be able to perform this remarkable act. Only the Administration has the quantum superposition Holy Grail of secure but insecure cryptography. All Subjects of the Administration are henceforth commanded to use only this most worthy form of encryption.

  • On the post: Pretty Much Anyone With Any Understanding Of Crypto Tells President Obama That Backdooring Crypto Is Monumentally Stupid

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 06:18am

    Re:

    You don't need a key. But someone might need such a key. So one should exist. And of course, you can trust the government that it won't be misused.

  • On the post: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Insists His Emails With The MPAA Are Super Secret

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 09:49am

    Why does Hollywood hate Google?

    I can't, right off the top of my head, think of a reason why Hollywood hates Google so much. (Other than their general hatred of technology and progress. Or their propensity to be irrational.)

    How does Google providing a search engine hurt Hollywood?

    Hasn't YouTube bent over backwards to make it easy, in fact way too easy, for Hollywood to get content removed from YouTube?

    There might be a rational reason for the hate. But I am not seeing it.

  • On the post: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood Insists His Emails With The MPAA Are Super Secret

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 09:43am

    Wingate

    In the first paragraph it is not immediately clear who judge Henry Wingate is.

    Unrelated to Microsoft Windows. :-)

  • On the post: AT&T Stops Pouting Over Net Neutrality, Backs Off Network Investment 'Freeze' That Never Was

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 08:52am

    Broadband Suffering

    Broadband already demonstrably suffers from LACK of net neutrality. And lack of effective competition.

    So how could net neutrality make it any worse?

    In a situation where you are the only broadband provider in town, how could net neutrality make things any worse? ISP's are already supposed to route my packets to and from me. The source and destination of those packets (eg Netflix) should be irrelevant. Charge me for how much bandwidth I use. Make the cost of bandwidth clear for all to see. Netflix already pays at their end for the bandwidth they use. There is no reason in the 21st century why a reasonably priced broadband service cannot support one or more simultaneous video streams. If it can't then you aren't upgrading your infrastructure. You need to charge enough to build the infrastructure that customers are willing to pay for.

  • On the post: Pretty Much Anyone With Any Understanding Of Crypto Tells President Obama That Backdooring Crypto Is Monumentally Stupid

    DannyB ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 06:20am

    So much feedback sends a strong message

    Hopefully so much feedback from experts will send a strong message to politicians. Predictably, when politicians get so much unified feedback from so many experts, they will give it strong consideration and then do the exact opposite of this good advice.

  • On the post: US Officials Leak Info About ISIS Raid More Sensitive Than Anything Snowden Ever Leaked

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 02:56pm

    Re: There are no such things as good and bad leaks

    Yes there are. See my post below. :-)

    Bad leaks make the public aware that the government is becoming a police state and building the apparatus to do so.

    Good leaks merely compromise capabilities and endanger the lives of operatives while not revealing that the government is becoming a police state.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Gets It Right The Second Time: Actress Had No Copyright Interest In 'Innocence Of Muslims'

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 01:00pm

    Re: Re:

    Moral rights in copyright law is an oxymoron.

  • On the post: Yes, Switching To HTTPS Is Important, And No It's Not A Bad Thing

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 08:14am

    Re: Encourage, don't require

    We force their hands, making back doors to bypass
    > the encryption become mandatory.


    If that's the way it must go, then that is better than what we have now.

    If we're going to make back doors mandatory, then let's get it out in the open in front of God and everybody. None of this sneaking around crap.

    That way, everyone can clearly see how their governments are acting and then judge whether it is in their best interests. That way, everyone, even politicians can see that it is them too who are being spied upon by the state apparatus.

  • On the post: Yes, Switching To HTTPS Is Important, And No It's Not A Bad Thing

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 08:11am

    Re:

    One possibility is that the site might expect the Client (eg, the web browser) to provide a certificate to the server to prove its identity.

  • On the post: Yes, Switching To HTTPS Is Important, And No It's Not A Bad Thing

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 08:08am

    Re: Troublesome certificates...

    Certificates get lost or fall into the wrong hands. And it still doesn't
    > protect you that well against a man-in-the-middle attack.


    Certificates can be revoked.

    There have only been two attempts at a third party abusing CA powers -- and they were both detected early. The ramifications of the discovery were big.

    More and more parties are actively looking for MITM attacks. For example, even though Honest Achmed's Trusty Certificates of Tehran Iran may be recognized by your browser, it would be a dead giveaway if they (or Verizon) were to issue a Google.com certificate.

    There is Certificate Pinning. There are browser extensions that people run to see what CA originally signed every certificate and notice if that ever changes and raise a red flag.

    Despite the imperfections of the CA system, it is a whole lot better than doing nothing. And it can be improved.

  • On the post: Yes, Switching To HTTPS Is Important, And No It's Not A Bad Thing

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 08:04am

    Re: Troublesome certificates...

    The biggest problem is that the lack of knowledge about HTTPS and SSL
    > will increase the vulnerability of specific systems, not decrease them.


    Making HTTPS and SSL more widely used will solve that problem. I remember when I first started using it in a commercial web application about six years ago. I had to learn a lot. But it was worth it.

  • On the post: Yes, Switching To HTTPS Is Important, And No It's Not A Bad Thing

    DannyB ( profile ), 18 May, 2015 @ 08:02am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Troublesome certificates...

    Which only works as long as your browser or app gets updated when the certificate changes...


    I would suspect that browser manufacturers are smarter than you think about this. Paranoid even.

    Here is my unproven hunch. Speculation. I'll just use Chrome as an example. Google could use a private self-signed certificate that nobody else, including Verizon can impersonate. This self signed certificate is not from any CA. Google would have their own private CA. When Google's Chrome browser communicates with the mother ship to get an update, it would check that the update is signed by a certificate from Google's private CA. That way the integrity of updates is completely protected, even from a successful MITM attack against the existing CA infrastructure. The browser would not care that any other CA signed the download. Only Google's private internal CA would be the one that your existing browser on your computer would trust to sign an update before it would be accepted.

    Very similarly I bet Microsoft (and Ubuntu, and others) use this approach to verify the integrity of updates to operating systems.

    If an OS or browser maker were really paranoid, they might build in a list of other apparently unrelated places to check for the availability of an update. That way, it is unlikely that Verizon could block the browser or OS from discovering the availability of an update. That way, the end user would soon be told that the update cannot be obtained because it is being attacked by an MITM.

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