Lent1999

Dear Lent,

I am one of the co-contributers to this article. Thank you for your editing recommendations. I agree with your choice for the first image as it gives a good visual for the system. I edited your caption to relate it to the article and to emphasize that this was a traditional linear Fresnel reflector (it uses only one absorber). I removed your link to and picture of the Fresnel lens. While the system does make use of the Fresnel effect, it uses a Fresnel mirror, not a lens. I instead inserted an in-text link to Fresnel Lenses.

I have also taken the time to link to relevant links with in Wikipedia. Thank you for this advice. If you feel any of these changes are unmerited, I would be happy to discuss them with you further. Thanks and all the best.

-jrkenneyjr

HTTPSing links

Wondering why this is done; I read the edit summaries but I'm not sure on the technicals. Not criticizing, just curious about the specifics. Thanks :). Ryan Norton 10:04, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I have been trying to think of anything I could tell you that is not either published within wikipedia or elsewhere on the web. I have been led to believe that within all countries, the decreases in cost to broadband internet access, data-analysis/mining, and increases in the prevalence of unsecured/wireless networking & botnets-for-hire, illegal eavesdropping & man-in-the-middle attacks have become more common, and more damaging to the victims. I stand by my earlier statements on this issue, published at:Talk:The Pirate Bay#HTTP vs. HTTPS & User talk:Guymacon#HTTPS is preferred (Edit by Guy: I moved it here. See section "HTPPS is prefered" below -- Guy Macon ), and still believe (along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation) that ALL PEOPLE IN ALL COUNTRIES SHOULD ALWAYS USE STRONG ENCRYPTION (including, but not limited to, HTTPS) wherever practicable.
Unfortunately, for no good reason, stated or imaginable as far as I can see, some of my edits of HTTPSing links, to help protect people, have been reverted, discouraging me of future such edits before wikipedia defines policy on this matter.--Lent1999 (talk) 07:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... interesting. Isn't Wikipedia itself subject to man in the middle attacks though between pages anyway? (Unless you are using the almost unheard-of secure.wikimedia.org which has the images on an unsecured server). If you are saying that eavesdropping and such to prevent wikipedia data going to the link being collected that would make sense. Anyway, thank you for the detailed response! Ryan Norton 02:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: "for no good reason, stated or imaginable as far as I can see...", that isn't true. Reasons were stated when you were discussing this on The Pirate Bay talk page. You may not agree with those reasons, but they do exist.

Here are other reasons why we should avoid sending users to HTTPS links:

Some hardware (cell phones and PDAs, early netbooks, MS-DOS users surfing the web with lynx because that's the only OS/browser that works for many blind people using text-to-speech, etc) have severely limited processing power and slow down when attempting to use HTPPS links.

Many people think that HTPPS is the wrong way to go and that encouraging use of HTPPS delays the day when better solutions arrive. See http://ryanlrussell.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-ssl-sucks.html and http://sourcefrog.net/weblog/software/security/ssl-sucks.html for example.

Re: "Isn't Wikipedia itself subject to man in the middle attacks", when you log in the first thing it tells you is "Consider logging in on the secure server."

Guy Macon 08:32, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

HTTPS is preferred

Note: The following is a note that Lent1999 left on my talk page. While I am in basic agreement, I do not have the time to advance this as a Wikipedia policy, and I don't want the info to be lost, so I am moving it here before deleting it. -- Guy Macon

You earlier suggested that someone: "...present this on the policy discussion pages as a proposed guideline."? Excellent idea, I wish I had thought of that. I have just been presuming for some time now that since firewalls and anti-virus programs are mandatory for anyone who likes their computer(s) to work, and continue to work, then they would be using https as preferred nature by now anyway (that being my own behaviour, as I am now using https://secure.wikimedia.org/). But the discussion on Talk:The Pirate Bay#HTTP vs. HTTPS is making me rather hesitant, as they implied that there are serious legal (aiding and abetting)/political/psychological(paranoia) questions at stake (I do not believe there is the slightest bit of truth to any of this, just the opposite in fact, we are limiting criminal behaviour by using https), it just makes the ensuing debate that much more difficult to wade through.

I entirely agree with your suggested rule: "when http and https external links have the same content, https is preferred". I would even go a little bit further by adding: "[...]even if the Server Certificate(s) in use are typically untrusted (eg.have expired, are registered to a similar but slightly different web-address, are self-signed or are signed by an un-recognised authority, no issuer chain was provided etc.) as some authenticated encryption is better than none.", but for some people, (some or all of those) relaxed security exceptions may be going a bit too far.

My arguments were rather rushed, as I wanted to keep the discussion moving within participants minds, while still representing at least some major documents on the matter (I considered reviewing Swiss, Liechtenstein(ian), Spanish, Swedish and Greek privacy/freedom of information law, which I thought might have been helpful). Quote:"You can use most of the same arguments you used above with a bit of cleanup." end-quote. As I have (to the best of my recollection) never commented on, nor even visited any policy discussion page(s), on wikipedia or anywhere, I do not even know where to begin. Would you consider making the contributions on our behalf, or even, if possible, making joint argument(s)/statement(s)?

I believe our central argument is the protecting of people from illegal activity: "eavesdropping (which is almost always illegal) & man-in-the-middle attacks (which are almost always illegal).". The unfortunate part of the debate is that part our evidence in favor of encryption must include that some of this illegal activity is committed by state institutions, with official sanction, paid-for with tax payer money, making populations of whole countries complicit without their knowledge or consent. But I still view this issue as uncontroversial as the difference between trusting our machines to work for us, to do what we bought them for, and not for criminals to aide them in violating any laws or human rights.--Lent1999 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guymacon (talk • contribs) 01:18, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

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