Stupid Guest Tricks

Actually, we have several space heaters, but there are times they don't spread the heat around too well. The house has floor registers, but there's no heat--it's possible the thermostat is in the other part of the house that is broken up into rooms, but if that's true why aren't the other tenants using it? Perhaps the furnace is out of whack or something. Our apartment is the only one with laundry and a kitchen; the rest of the house is bedrooms and 1 or 2 bathrooms.

Bumping this thread to bring people's attention to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

Some are calling it SOPA 2.0, but it really isn't. In fact, it isn't about censorship or inteleetual property, but rather is about the sharing of information between the government and Web companies. I haven't read enough at this point to have a final opinion, and in general I don't have a problem with some of the goals, but there are a couple of things I have heard (not confirmed) that make me a little nervous.

The basic goal is to share informationi norder to combat cyber-terrorism. Two potential problems I have heard: 1) there is no definition of what information will be shared, so it can include private information ordinarily protected; 2) there is a a blanket FOI exemption so you can't determine what information has been shared.

Does anybody have more detailed information? Also, what do people think?

Here is what someone is doing about this.
http://www.infopackets.com/news/interne ... ooping.htm

WEDFan wrote:Bumping this thread to bring people's attention to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

Does anybody have more detailed information? Also, what do people think?

I'm opposed to it. The privacy invasion is exceedingly broad, and does not appear to have any connection to restricting terrorist activity, much less a proportional relationship. Secret courts can already issue subpoenas to collect this data when there's probable cause.

There also seems to be an inadequate definition of "Internet Service Provider", which might be broad enough to include SGT or your Facebook page, though I've heard conflicting reports on this point.

It is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, the Constitution Project, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and over 470,000 Internet users who have signed an online petition.

More details and links to the actual bills online at Wikipedia.

One of the interesting (not necessarily in a good way) things about CISPA as opposed to SOPA and PIPA is that many of the large Web companies are happy tih it. They fought the previous ones because it would impact them, but for CISPA it can actually make their lives easier. It basically frees them from any liability for sharing your information with the government.

So no big shutdowns of Facebook or others is likely to come in protest to this one.

BTW, Zazu, the only secret courts I know of for this kind of thing are the ones installed under FISA which still require a foreign connection, iinm. The Patriot Acts I and II circumvent the need for courts at all, as would CISPO.

There's a news item on Yahoo that says folks could lose their internet connection in July. Some Estonians put phony servers on the Web, and put malware on hundreds of thousands of personal computers worldwide. The FBI caught them, put new servers online to correct the damage, and they have a site where your computer can be checked for this malware and cleaned.

Story: http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-thousand ... nance.html

Site to check and clean your computer: http://www.dcwg.org

felinefan wrote:There's a news item on Yahoo that says folks could lose their internet connection in July. Some Estonians put phony servers on the Web, and put malware on hundreds of thousands of personal computers worldwide. The FBI caught them, put new servers online to correct the damage, and they have a site where your computer can be checked for this malware and cleaned.

Story: http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-thousand ... nance.html

Site to check and clean your computer: http://www.dcwg.org

DNS Changer. I know a guy involved in aspects of the investigation/bust. Fun stuff...

I finally got through the site, and seconds later, my netbook was declared clean! Good to know! :D: