Topic 'Re: Frightening' in forum '' - dslreports.com

Re: Frightening

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:24:20 EDT

Oh_No posted :

And we vote for the electors. The system works as designed.

Nope. Each state is different. It is up to the state to decide how electors are appointed. Each political party chooses electors. In most states, if their parties candidate wins the states popular vote then their parties chosen electors get to place the official votes. Most states dont list the electors names on the ballots. I think only 5 states have people vote for the candidate/electoral representative.
In most states the electors only vote in line with popular vote out of tradition. Some states have enacted laws that force the electors to vote with that states popular vote.

The electoral college was a compromise from one side that wanted to have congress elect the president and the other side that wanted the people to elect the president.
One reason for the compromise that led them away from the popular votes was issues with slavery between the north and south.
Another reason was small states favored the electoral system as during those times you were a citizen of your state first and country second, so they had a hardon for states power and the felt that a popular vote would give their state less power.

The original argument for compromise (to have congress elect the president) does not exist to day, thus it makes no sense to keep the electoral compromise going.
The only side left with a valid argument in the compromise is the popular vote side. Why keep doing something when there is no reason anymore to justify it??

Re: Frightening

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:16:19 EDT

PaulHikeS2 posted : And we vote for the electors. The system works as designed.
--
Jay: What the @#$% is the internet???

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:11:50 EDT

anon posted : and most those healthcare plans don't even pay for nutrition counseling or mental counseling like psychotherapy. Most common factors that contribute to obesity: bad food, bad eating habits (i.e. long intervals, starving) lack of nutritious choices like fruites, veggies, even stress. Some people have underlying mental conditions (like depression) but they don't even know it but it influences their lifetime choices.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:54:25 EDT

scross posted : I might characterize this as "Better than nothing, but a day late and a dollar short!" The Chinese have long maintained an active but low-key cyber-warfare program against the US (along with an active but low-key spying program utilizing Chinese nationals within US borders), where if nothing else they are conducting industrial espionage - or at least attempting to. This was one of the main topics at an FBI meeting I attended a few months back, where they made it clear that they are finally starting to take this stuff very seriously. I haven't read this report yet, but I'm curious as to what details it gives.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:53:57 EDT

scross posted : n/m

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:40:20 EDT

scross posted : Kind of gives you the warm fuzzies about those folks who are always so concerned about their 2nd Amendment rights, now, doesn't it? :)

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:58:20 EDT

battleop posted : "Not likely."

I agree it's not likely but it's not impossible. As long as there are humans and greed in the process it's always a possibility even it it's an extremely remote possibility.
--
I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:18:50 EDT

Oh_No posted :

said by fifty nine:

said by Angrychair:

The humorous part is that the American government does exactly what they're accusing the Chinese government of doing - intercepting everything and allowing nothing to be private communication. I'm sure it's not a good idea for American interests to use Chinese gear that would spy on them, but for a small potato such as myself I'm not sure I see where it would matter for me.

I'm against both our own Gov't and foreign ones like China, Russia and Israel (yes they spy on us) spying on us. But at least our Government is elected by us... the Chinese, not so much.

The president is not elected by us. If it was Bush would not have been president in 2001.
The electoral college elects the president.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:14:31 EDT

El Quintron posted :

said by BosstonesOwn:

Nope, look at intel microcode updates as a prime example, they had to patch microcode to make up for some die errors at some points in production.

There is always the possability of an asic embedded in there to self destruct circuits and such and all it takes is a magic packet to wake it up.

Self-destruct is bad, but less so than continual harvesting of information. I'm glad someone confirmed that this would be possible.

It lends credence to a "known vendors" argument.
--
Support Bacteria -- It's the Only Culture Some People Have

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:07:15 EDT

BosstonesOwn posted : Nope, look at intel microcode updates as a prime example, they had to patch microcode to make up for some die errors at some points in production.

There is always the possability of an asic embedded in there to self destruct circuits and such and all it takes is a magic packet to wake it up.
--
"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!"

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:26:43 EDT

openbox9 posted : Trusted foundries exist and they don't necessarily need to be in the US. The access to them needs to be broadened to allow access by our critical infrastructure partners (i.e., some of the manufacturers that you mentioned). Yes, it costs money.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:25:39 EDT

fifty nine posted :

said by BF69:

said by fifty nine:

There's really no escape. Since we don't build anything here anymore

If we did people would bitch about high prices. People want these factory jobs back in America at the old $25-$30 an hour wages with full pension and fully paid health care for life, but still want these goods at "made in China" prices. Not realistic.

No one will work for $8-$10 an hour for maybe a 6% match in a 401k( meaning the worker actually has to contribute to his own retirement god forbid :o ) and a health care plan that requires the worker to pay some of that cost and ends when he retires.

And even in that scenario costs of goods would go up.

Bullshit. If CxOs can making millions and billions we can damn well pay workers a decent wage.

Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and others make cars here. The workers are paid reasonably well and the cars are of good quality. Why can't we do that with electronics?

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:22:38 EDT

fifty nine posted :

said by Angrychair:

I'm against both our own Gov't and foreign ones like China, Russia and Israel (yes they spy on us) spying on us. But at least our Government is elected by us... the Chinese, not so much.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:09:28 EDT

MaynardKrebs posted : So maybe the government says to Cisco, Juniper, HP, etc.... that they WILL manufacture at home in giant shared factories - in order to on-shore manufacturing and reap some economies of scale.

But then those companies will say...."The US market is tiny compared to the rest of the world market, and we can still manufacture cheaper in China so that's where we're going to make our stuff for ALL markets."

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:16:23 EDT

El Quintron posted :

said by KodiacZiller:

It would still have ultimate control and could do all sorts of hard (or impossible) to detect things.

Again I'm not a security expert, but, if I'm running a network and there's a bunch of encrypted layer 2 communications that I'm not familiar with happening on my network I'd be asking questions pretty quickly.

I'd also be communicating with the vendor to plug up those holes ASAP, if the vendor didn't cooperate then I'd be litigating the hell out of them.

Lastly wouldn't firmware updates (which is what I should've said when I was referring to software) resolve this irrespective of the original intent of the hardware?
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Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:06:26 EDT

KodiacZiller posted :

said by El Quintron:

said by Linklist:

The real risk to be worried about isn't phoning home. It is that, in a time of war, a signal could be sent that would cause the Chinese built hardware to self destruct, thereby turning off a huge part of US communications infrastructure.

This assumes that you're asking the same group of people to build both the hardware and software,

Uh, if you have subverted the hardware, then the software is inconsequential. Own the metal, you own the software too. If Intel put a backdoor into their chips, it wouldn't matter if you ran Windows, OSX, Linux, Unix, AIX, IRIX, whatever. It would still have ultimate control and could do all sorts of hard (or impossible) to detect things.
--
Getting people to stop using windows is more or less the same as trying to get people to stop smoking tobacco products. They dont want to change; they are happy with slowly dying inside. -- munky99999

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:59:30 EDT

jseymour posted :

said by Chubbysumo:

Health care plans are an investment in your employees, knowing that 99% will likely never use it, and those that will, will use it to keep themselves healthy, ...

Hahahahahahaha! In the country that invented the obesity epidemic, you claim the people will use their health care plans to "keep themselves healthy?" Hahahahaha!

Most people don't need either an expensive health care plan or expensive (western) medical "care" to "keep themselves healthy." They just need a balanced, nutritious diet and to get a bit of regular exercise. No health care plan in the world, "free" or not, can compensate for failing to do those things.

Jim

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:53:10 EDT

KodiacZiller posted :

said by battleop:

"there are a few targets of interest,"

That's exactly it. If you have ever read about or watched some of the things the US did to the Russians during the cold war you would understand why they are cautious.

The Chinese government doesn't care about the average citizen but there is quite a reward in being able to sniff traffic that may contain data going to and from Obama's special Blackberry.

Not likely. For one, Obama's blackberry is encrypted with Top Secret Type I ciphers. Second, most of our really sensitive systems are not going to be run on such commodity hardware (or even on the public Internet at all). NSA has its own chip manufacturing plant for this reason. I am not worried about really sensitive systems inside the government -- they are going to either manufacture it themselves or strictly oversee contractors who do.

This is more about the Chinese ripping off the Apple's and Microsoft's and Boeing's of the world. Corporate espionage is what they are concerned about. They also worry, of course, about public networks (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) But really, the horse is already out of the barn -- the Chinese have been ripping off American corporate secrets for decades and they haven't needed subverted hardware to do it. They even stole the Stealth fighter from us, FFS.

What's worse is there are ZERO American companies that can make LTE gear. 60 minutes ran a story about this the other day. In their report, they interviewed one guy from Kansas who wanted to expand his town's 4G LTE network. He looked at all American companies (including Cisco). He found out that NONE of them made the 4G gear so he was forced to go to Huawei. A while later he got a visit from guys in dark suits (he wouldn't identity the agency they were with). He said "they were concerned about Huawei." He was pretty ticked off about the whole matter and wouldn't talk in any detail about it.

According to the 60 minutes episode, there are only 3 companies worldwide who make all the gear needed for a 4G network -- Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and Huawei. Swedish, French, Chinese.

That's really the problem. American manufacturing, while once the best in the world (especially at networking, routers, telco gear, etc.) is now at the bottom of the barrel. America invented packet switching and the Internet and now we can't even manufacture any of it. Sad. And these small towns looking to upgrade 4G are going to use Huawei over Ericsson or Alcatel because they are undoubtedly cheaper.

But the irony in all of this, as has been noted, is how the government is worried so much about backdoors. They know that they themselves are the best in the world at backdooring systems (NSA is notorious for it). So I guess it's kind of like a bank robber giving a course on bank security.

I don't doubt Huawei is spying, but it's just ironic coming from the House Intelligence Committee (who oversees NSA's spying program).
--
Getting people to stop using windows is more or less the same as trying to get people to stop smoking tobacco products. They dont want to change; they are happy with slowly dying inside. -- munky99999

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:39:15 EDT

El Quintron posted :

said by Linklist:

This assumes that you're asking the same group of people to build both the hardware and software, and that they'll be doing all the subsequent support afterwards to cultivate the vulnarability through multiple firmware revisions.

I'm not saying I trust a foreign corporation, with ties to a foreign government to be 100% clean, but it would seem that basic precautions here would eliminate most if not all threats.
--
Support Bacteria -- It's the Only Culture Some People Have

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:38:11 EDT

openbox9 posted :

said by Chubbysumo:

Again, its 99% hype and maybe 1% truth.

I'm guessing it's more than 1% truth.

said by Chubbysumo:

I would more worry about questionable smaller makers rather than larger ones

I'm sure the IC is worried about all of them.

said by Chubbysumo:

but, since most of the stuff we use here is made overseas, this report is nothing but fearmongering.

Or the beginning of a wake up call.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:24:00 EDT

Chubbysumo posted :

said by Joe12345678:

health care should not be part of the job. Now that can save costs as the factory will not need pay for health care.

Health care should be part of every job, just not fully funded by the company. Health care plans are an investment in your employees, knowing that 99% will likely never use it, and those that will, will use it to keep themselves healthy, which means they can work longer and more for you. What really needs to be investigated is the gross overcharging for health care that goes on in the USA. I looked at an itemized list from when I had surgery, and they(the place that did it) charged me $19 for a band-aid. that is why health care is so damn expensive. I could buy 3 boxes of the best on the market bandaids, yet I was charged $19 for a single one, please tell me you think that is just as outrageous as I do.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:20:56 EDT

Chubbysumo posted :

said by openbox9:

said by Chubbysumo:

Why would they(the chinese) want to spy on a majority of the USA customers?

Really? The Chinese aren't hiding their intentions with openly going after intellectual property and various technologies that will further their strategic progress. The Chinese are saving billions of dollars and several years in R&D. The more sensors the government has for gathering this information, the better.

said by Chubbysumo:

but this "committee" would also have to extend this suggestion to mexican telecos and canadian telecos as well(rodgers is in the USA, as well as Tracphone/straightalk/net10 all being owned and operated out of mexico by Carlos Slim).

Do they manufacture the equipment?

said by Chubbysumo:

if the chinese wanted to spy, they would already be doing it, since 99% of tech related stuff in the USA is MADE IN CHINA!!

Now you're catching on ;) Our reliance on foreign designed/manufactured technology is becoming a risk to our national security. This will lead to more expensive goods as our owners/managers of critical infrastructure begin to be required to start leveraging trusted sources for hardware/software.

Again, its 99% hype and maybe 1% truth. I would more worry about questionable smaller makers rather than larger ones, since the larger ones have to withstand more scrutiny, but, since most of the stuff we use here is made overseas, this report is nothing but fearmongering. I wonder what other company is trying to crush their competition?

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:12:09 EDT

Joe12345678 posted : health care should not be part of the job. Now that can save costs as the factory will not need pay for health care.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:06:56 EDT

jseymour posted :

said by fifty nine:

There's really no escape. Since we don't build anything here anymore ...

Bottom line, right there.

Until and unless the U.S. consumer (that incl. the government) is willing to pay the price of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., we will be at the mercy of the governments of every one of these cheap labour countries.

Period.

Americans want to eat their cake and have it, too, as we did for decades. Those days are gone. We exported our technology and labour, and now the countries to which we did that a coming into their own. Now they're going to use what we so cavalierly gave away, and there's every reason to expect they'll use that to their advantage--just as we would were we in their position.

Jim

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:57:39 EDT

rradina posted : The greed isn't all in China. When there's that kind of price disparity, it's probably at many layers between the Chinese slave and the ultimate consumer. For that reason, I believe there's a bit of truth to what both of you say (BF69 and you).

Would costs be different? Probably, but that depends on how much of these costs require labor. A lot of products can be manufactured by mechanized processes that don't need a lot of labor. Sure the labor that is needed would cost more here but the increase in those costs might be offset by time-to-market and paying to put it on a huge container ship.

Of course a factory here would have to follow a lot of EPA/OSHA rules and there's cost to that but that's where ultimate greed is revealed. While I'm sure there are probably some EPA rules that are too strict (or not strict enough), we have to manufacture stuff in a reasonably safe manner. It's just the right thing to do. However, since not everyone picks up after their own dog...I have my doubts.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:57:26 EDT

Gami00 posted : that's not china being greedy, that's would be your standard american business.

why lower prices when you can save money getting "made in china" then selling it at normal to high prices.

it's win/win for the business selling to the population.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:50:10 EDT

Linklist posted :

said by fifty nine:

There's really no escape. Since we don't build anything here anymore and are designing less and less of it here, there is a real possibility of equipment being built that phones home and sends our sensitive data back home.

But I think it's just foolish to focus on just two companies.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:46:17 EDT

rradina posted : Regardless of what you think, so far we're free to make such speculative critiques and even call our government names. Sure, there are certainly those in this country that would like to mitigate many of our constitutional freedoms but for now, we still enjoy that freedom. Contrast this with the likes of China and Iran.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:43:54 EDT

nonamesleft posted :

said by BF69:

said by fifty nine:

There's really no escape. Since we don't build anything here anymore

That really is a bunch of crap, I have seen chinese products cost a lot more then made in usa products. Ever look how much a lamp made in china costs...Yeah its a lot! I bought a sealed 12 volt battery that was made in china 90 bucks! I was at fleetfarm last week, battery that almost has nearly the same specs just about 55 bucks! So china is really getting greedy!

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:38:56 EDT

openbox9 posted :

said by Chubbysumo:

Why would they(the chinese) want to spy on a majority of the USA customers?

said by Chubbysumo:

Do they manufacture the equipment?

said by Chubbysumo:

if the chinese wanted to spy, they would already be doing it, since 99% of tech related stuff in the USA is MADE IN CHINA!!

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:38:43 EDT

battleop posted : "there are a few targets of interest,"

That's exactly it. If you have ever read about or watched some of the things the US did to the Russians during the cold war you would understand why they are cautious.

The Chinese government doesn't care about the average citizen but there is quite a reward in being able to sniff traffic that may contain data going to and from Obama's special Blackberry.
--
I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:32:46 EDT

n2jtx posted :

said by Angrychair:

But it is okay for us to do it because we are the good guys and our motives are altruistic (SARCASM).

I read all 47 or so pages (skipped the footnotes) and while it paints a pretty scary picture, I do not see anything going on that we are not doing in conjunction with our Homeland Security Department and the NSA. It isn't much different than the secret rooms set up at various telco's to feed all data directly to the U.S. government.
--
I support the right to keep and arm bears.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:27:01 EDT

Chubbysumo posted :

said by battleop:

I was told by someone at the CTIA expo that if you wanted to provide service to Federal Agencies it was suggested that you steer clear of companies that may be influenced by foreign governments such as Huawei.

This is quite literally the definition of fear mongering, and probably has its roots in AT&T and VZW. Why would they(the chinese) want to spy on a majority of the USA customers? Sure, there are a few targets of interest, but this "committee" would also have to extend this suggestion to mexican telecos and canadian telecos as well(rodgers is in the USA, as well as Tracphone/straightalk/net10 all being owned and operated out of mexico by Carlos Slim). Seriously, there is no more risk here than anywhere else, and this is just like what was done in the McCarthy days with communism. Its all just irrational fear of the unknown/don't personally likes, and they are trying to get the masses to follow the same thing. I say bullshit, since its the same risk of a producer of the equipment that US telecos use right now is mostly in china, if the chinese wanted to spy, they would already be doing it, since 99% of tech related stuff in the USA is MADE IN CHINA!!

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:26:09 EDT

BF69 posted :

said by fifty nine:

There's really no escape. Since we don't build anything here anymore

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:17:27 EDT

battleop posted : I was told by someone at the CTIA expo that if you wanted to provide service to Federal Agencies it was suggested that you steer clear of companies that may be influenced by foreign governments such as Huawei.
--
I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

Re: Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:13:09 EDT

Angrychair posted : The humorous part is that the American government does exactly what they're accusing the Chinese government of doing - intercepting everything and allowing nothing to be private communication. I'm sure it's not a good idea for American interests to use Chinese gear that would spy on them, but for a small potato such as myself I'm not sure I see where it would matter for me.

Frightening

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:06:25 EDT

fifty nine posted : There's really no escape. Since we don't build anything here anymore and are designing less and less of it here, there is a real possibility of equipment being built that phones home and sends our sensitive data back home.

But I think it's just foolish to focus on just two companies.