3 ms·

Honestly at this point, most people should expect this sort of behavior from any type of telecom company. Yeah, it sucks but it's the name of the game. Take int

by rglover 16y ago

Honestly at this point, most people should expect this sort of behavior from any type of telecom company. Yeah, it sucks but it's the name of the game. Take into consideration that the gov owns the air space/spectrum these companies use, and you'll understand why they're so compliant with releasing information. The only way this will change is if there's a privatization of air space which at this point is seemingly impossible.

bluedanieru 16y ago
I don't know that privatization is a panacea for the government corruption we see here. And you are right that privatization of airspace is impossible (read: undesirable). How about taking steps to curb government corruption?
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  That's pretty pie in the sky too barring an entire reform of our economic system. How about we take steps to get everyone using strong client-side encryption?
  - dublinclontarf 16y ago
    Have you ever tried to get someone to use gpg? Now take that pain, and multiply it by a million or more. I do agree with you, and am using gpg.
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      I've actually actively started to petition clients to use GnuPG since the HBGary hack, but I agree that it's difficult to make progress. Someone has to develop interfaces to make it usable. This is especially needed for web mail clients, the Firefox extension that used to allow this on GMail is no longer maintained. I'm not a browser hacker so I'm not sure if it would be easy or hard to get this integrated, but ideally the browser would have built-in support for crypto on designated input fields, i.e., "encrypt this text box" option on right-click. I'm sure it would be hard, but I bet if Mozilla and Google got together and worked out a common interface that allowed Gmail et al to pass information to the browser (like whose keys should be used), this would eventually get implemented and be awesome. As usual, Microsoft is the biggest roadblock with Outlook. Hopefully if your company is using Outlook it can afford a license for PGP, which afaik is the only complete crypto extension for Outlook.
      - nightpool 16y ago
        Actually, though I've dabbled but little, it seems pretty easy to get arbitrary encryption on firefox. For an example, look at the LeetSpeak addon, which provides a bunch of ways to transform text, both in textboxes and on the page. The real challenge I can see is to provide a good interface for sellecting from the (potentially hundreds of) public keys at you disposal to encrypt with.
nitrogen 16y ago
I would like to know when and how phrases like "that sucks but," "that's just the way it is," and "that's the name of the game" were first introduced to the language. These non-justifications are like a poison that kills our curiosity and our ability to question what's wrong with the world.

by rglover 16y ago

bluedanieru 16y ago

I don't know that privatization is a panacea for the government corruption we see here. And you are right that privatization of airspace is impossible (read: undesirable). How about taking steps to curb government corruption?

cookiecaper 16y ago
That's pretty pie in the sky too barring an entire reform of our economic system. How about we take steps to get everyone using strong client-side encryption?
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  Have you ever tried to get someone to use gpg? Now take that pain, and multiply it by a million or more. I do agree with you, and am using gpg.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    I've actually actively started to petition clients to use GnuPG since the HBGary hack, but I agree that it's difficult to make progress. Someone has to develop interfaces to make it usable. This is especially needed for web mail clients, the Firefox extension that used to allow this on GMail is no longer maintained. I'm not a browser hacker so I'm not sure if it would be easy or hard to get this integrated, but ideally the browser would have built-in support for crypto on designated input fields, i.e., "encrypt this text box" option on right-click. I'm sure it would be hard, but I bet if Mozilla and Google got together and worked out a common interface that allowed Gmail et al to pass information to the browser (like whose keys should be used), this would eventually get implemented and be awesome. As usual, Microsoft is the biggest roadblock with Outlook. Hopefully if your company is using Outlook it can afford a license for PGP, which afaik is the only complete crypto extension for Outlook.
    - nightpool 16y ago
      Actually, though I've dabbled but little, it seems pretty easy to get arbitrary encryption on firefox. For an example, look at the LeetSpeak addon, which provides a bunch of ways to transform text, both in textboxes and on the page. The real challenge I can see is to provide a good interface for sellecting from the (potentially hundreds of) public keys at you disposal to encrypt with.

nitrogen 16y ago

I would like to know when and how phrases like "that sucks but," "that's just the way it is," and "that's the name of the game" were first introduced to the language. These non-justifications are like a poison that kills our curiosity and our ability to question what's wrong with the world.