Slashdot Mirror
Virus Scares and False Authority Syndrome
Fifth of Five writes: "Ran across this article on the IS-IT-TRUE.org site regarding False Authority Syndrome and the spread of virus misinformation by the media, users and Folks Who Probably Ought To Know Better. If you've ever watched the TV news and gritted your teeth over what is being presented as 'fact' this may shine some light on just how it got to be like this."
but if the media voluntarily (or involuntarily) f's up the news, whats to say they dont do it on a regular basis to more 'mainstream' news items, either to push a certain agenda, or to appease their friends in the gov't.
Not tryint to flamebait, but it was a pretty well known fact that in the clinton WH press corp, if you asked the pres a tough or 'offtopic' question, guess what, unless you were from one of the big 6, your pass got pulled and good luck getting a interview again.... basically what it boils down to is you can never tell when the press is full of it. hell, they cant even get traffic reports right (accident at main and elm with injuries....right after i just drove by and all i saw was some homeless dude...).... sorry, im ranting now
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
People keep on forgetting that public media is in the attention business ... it is in their economic interest to sensationalise news in order to flog those accompanying ads (a bit of a problem for CNN when there's no major wars going on). As such, manufactured fluff (ie press-releases) is easier to regurgitate than any in-depth research or second-hand opinions (syndicated columns). Historically public media was part and parcel of the lecture circuit (aka rubber chicken show) where you would invite real authorities and experts to come in and air their thoughts in a proper interview. However, two general trends mitigate against this ... the increasing complexity of real-world issues (anyone who thinks Middle-East is a simple case of good-guys/bad-guys is in deep trouble) which limits the potential audiences interested in understanding the issues, and the move to tabloid style audience capture which tends to confuse celebrity with fame. Why should sports-heros and actresses (apart from the convenience of recycling pre-existing studio contracts) be ask to comment on areas way outside their domain? Why should TV shows get people from the entertainment field to present business news (and you wonder why the stock market is irrational). Unfortunately those with real knowhow gained from the school of hard knocks tend to be people who charge for their services ... would you want a surgeon who has never practised on patients before so why are we willing to listen to highly filtered news passed along by talking heads? It's becoming nothing more than a massive Chinese whisper in a global cocktail party.
... the /. ask XYZ is a particularly good way for the plebs to touch some of the people involved in the thick of things.
... ultimately people have to realise there is a cost in misleading/diluted information (e.g. did anyone notice that the bard-wire concentration camp story that helped sparked the Balkans intervention and sundry bombings was filmed on the inside looking out?).
Fortunately we have some countervailing examples
LL
The economic models which are the equivalent of yelling "fire" as loudly as possible to rush people to newsfeeds are creating some really bad incentives
BTW: Code Red, Melissa and SirCam all run on computers therefore they are computer viruses
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I must get warnings for "Wobbler" and "All Seeing Eye" sent to me by my [L]users all the time, but you know what? It's a fair cop.
.vbs files, I warn. And most of all, I know that many here will cringe when they read this, I actively encourage my [L]users to forward me all the warnings they get sent to them.
/dev/null.
I set up filters, I block the sending and receiving of all
Know why? After the 4th one I send back to them with an URL and a "Thanks, but that one was a hoax", they start to catch on (well... many of them do). Some also start to forward any and all messages with attached files to me if they weren't expecting them. Again, many here may cringe, my email box is huge and I spend hours each day weeding through false alarms sometimes. But IMHO it's worth it.
Do you know how many actual FULL outbreaks this company has seen in the last year? One. Back in November of last year. It was Navidad and it was sent to a Hispanic employee (the CFO actually... hehehehe) from a relative, and since it was near Xmas, well, I forgave him. AFTER I made HIM clean out his own machine and then lambasted him in front of the entire company. But when people first saw the SIRCAM virus come in, even users who had not read my warnings yet spotted it instantly and sent it to me. This was before I'd set our mail server to send all messages with "I hope you like the file that I sendo you" in the body to
All things considered, though, seeing as this office is almost entirely Windows, I think my methods work. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it can be annoying. BUT, I rarely have to restore from backup, and we haven't had any major outbreaks.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
As an aside, I'm a little perplexed by the claim that there are few qualified high-tech experts: the field of computers and networks seems to enjoy a huge population, vis-a-vis just about any other (i.e., chemistry, the environment, biology, public health, economics etc.)
...has been defined as the art of thrusting oneself into one unintelligible situation after another and subsequently passing oneself off as an expert.
For the first time, I'm replying without reading the article. I can't get through to the server. I'm really responding to the general tenor of comments.
Everyone is blaming the media for not understanding computers. Are you making any effort to help them understand? I know it's popular to be cynical and claim that reporters are idiots/biased/bought, but in reality they are very busy and provide shallow coverage of many domains. Those who take the time to talk to reporters eventually get their ideas and viewpoint represented. Those who just sit there and chuck rotten vegetables will always be excluded.
We seem to be the only group that has not figured out how to communicate with reporters. Retired people, cops, farmers, insurance salesmen, teachers - all of these have taken the effort to establish communications with the press and make sure that their side of the story gets told.
So, if you give a damn, find out who the technology reporter is for your local paper and contact him. But first read some of his stuff so you understand what is and isn't interesting to him. See if you've got material for a story. If not, at least he might contact you for a quote on the next virus scare/whatever.
Is anyone else getting spam with the body "hey. i got the file thanx."? The message doesn't seem to have an attachment, which makes it even more disconcerting.
The shareholder is always right.
Being knowledgable of technical stuff like "what viruses can really do" is the specific domain of knowledge we slashdot readers have. This makes me wonder, not being an expert on many other things, just how much mis-information is propagated through the news. I never watch the news anymore. All you see are disaster reports and attempts to make 40-year-old, middle-class americans paranoid of something.
Possible TV News Headlines:"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
True - the trick is figuring out how to make the media cover the really important stories of our time (DCMA, censorship, etc) in a way that'll benefit us instead of hinder us. If they make $$ covering the really important stuff, cool. Yeah - its a dream , but hey you gotta dream! :)
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Secondly, the fact that they thought they were taking a part in a different experiment is the perfect veil to administer this experiment without their knowledge or suspicion, or without them trying to think around the experiment, thereby skewing their reaction.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
> Tell me, if this discussion had taken place in, say, a business
> board room, and I had suggested that the lack of accountability online
> could be olved by identification trackers, would you have stood up and called me a moron?
Why do you assume that all communications on the Internet needs to conform to business standards of etiquette? If you made such a claim on a street corner, and I resonded by calling you a rude name, would you ask me my name or other personal information? Would you ask me to prove myself if I told you my name? Would you have the right to force me to do so? The simple answer is that accountability in real life is not nearly as complete as you suspect, and identification online is subject to the same limitations as real life. If I want to lie about my identity online, I need only make sure I am careful about how my avatar presents itself, just as I could carry a fake ID in meatspace. Your solution of forcing proof of identity online smacks of the police stopping people on the street with "papers, please" requests, just to be sure everyone is polite enough to suit you.
Asshole.
Virg
...that [insert certification here] doesn't qualify you to deal with every computer problem ever imaginable? *sarcasm off*
m puter-science.
Little wonder the suits are cashing in on such naivte in order to move product.
Seriously, it's little wonder that this is being codified into a syndrome since it seems that Joe Q. Public has it into his head that just because someone knows how to stick a card into a PCI slot, they must be a certifiable computer genius. I know as the most up-to-speed user in my small company, I get a daily barrage of questions about every computer related topic imaginable. While I have no hesitation in letting my coworkers know that I haven't a clue as to what it is they are talking about (which they read off reuters this morning and can never keep the details of straight), they still persist in thinking that the most computer saavy person in the room must be a network-sysadmin-31337-haxor-d00d-MCSE-Ph.d-in-co
You need to take out the "ahVwga1Oq1o" stuff; whenever you do anything on Google involving a URL, they prepend it with a hash string to (I presume) speed up lookups in their database. If you change just the URL, Google will still bring up the original page if you leave that hash in.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Generally, it doesn't bother me if someone claims to be someone that they aren't. I generally don't believe them anyway. Frequently I don't even look. I pay much more attention to the message.
If I get a message that says "Make Millions in your spare time" signed Commander Taco, will I believe this? Not likely. The message is self invalidating.
But more to the point, many quite well identified actual persons on the internet are just as reckless with the truth as any anonymous spammer.
I don't see any virtue in your proposal. I don't see any desireable features. And I see a lot of the others. Telling me that it will protect me from the bogeyman doesn't impress me favorably, either.
(FWIW, my suspicion is that child molesters prefer to live somewhere near their targets. So the internet is pretty much irrelevant, except that it tends to keep kids indoors, where they are a bit less exposed.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
I admit it. I should have checked first. Couldn't edit my post afterwards. *sniff* I'm sorry! =)
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
False Authority Syndrome is hardly limited to computer technology and the Air Force. How many times have we seen some celebrity interviewed in the media or give testimony to congress on some topic that has nothing to do with their area of expertise. Why would anyone think that some actress knows anything about agribusiness because they played a farmer in a movie? Yet, the media eats such "celebrity experts" up. I know most of the sensible congressmen surely know that the celebrity "expert" congressional testimony is just a way to get free publicity for their committee, but why do so many people play along with that?
Scientists giving "expert opinions" outside their field of speciality is anouther common occurance (Carl Sagan comes to mind) in the media; perhaps because it is easier to know a handful of photogenic and cooperative scientists than to make a large number of contacts in different fields of research.
It seems to happen alot on slashdot, too.
Perhaps we should put useful biographical information in our sigs instead of cute sayings so that when someone with a degree in cognitive sciences is arguing with an aerospace engineer over spacecraft problems or adaptive behavior, we know which one to listen to at the time. I guess, perhaps that is what the User Info is for; but it doesn't seem to be used for that very often. Of course, if we get overly focused on "meatspace" identities, that might dampen otherwise productive discussions. Maybe different karma for different topics? Anyone have any ideas on how to minimize False Authority Syndrome on slashdot w/o introducing unneeded complexity or dampening useful dialog? Does it need worrying about?
You know what scares me the most. If the TV news crews can't get the fact straight concerning a simple Virus how can we trust them with other information?
Remember that the subjects of the experiment weren't lead to any actual wrong act. I've always heard this referred to as if it indicated exactly the same thing as it would when someone was really being tortured to death.
Whatever criteria the subjects actually used, the compliant ones came to the correct conclusion that it was okay to keep pressing the buttons. The disobedient ones either came to the incorrect conclusion that they would commit some crime, or the correct conclusion that this is what was truly expected of them from the experimenters. Too little is known to draw any valid conclusions from this, especially since it was obviously a psychological experiment to the subjects themselves (it just wasn't clear which experiment it was).
At any rate, this experiment was torture of its subjects as much as it would be if they were really giving the shocks. "Psychological experiments" like these are crimes, pure and simple, not to mention scientifically invalid smartass cracks about human nature.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Well, both are claims. The 'apology' referenced in the Register story was one that was made under duress, i.e... under threat of being sued.
Redbook standard allows for massive dynamic range: CD's can represent sounds digitally up to about 300dB.
People who mix their own CD's will recognize this fact in that they have to 'normalize' their tracks if they want everything on the CD to play at the same approximate volume.
If a loud-enough, sharp-enough sound is pumped through your speakers, however, they will blow. While I'm certain that it's not common, no it's *not* impossible for 'Cactus' scheme to damage your audio equipment.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
"I can't print" != virus
"This brand new computer is running slow when I open Photoshop, IE, and Excel at the same time" != virus
However
"This .doc file won't open because we need to spend thousands for software we don't need" = virus
See the difference?
There's nothing magical about square waves. Lots of synthpop used a square-wave lead instrument in the 80s. All you're really saying is that if the CD has no dynamic range and is normalized to fill the number space, the player will output a relatively loud signal. And if the downstream electronics are adjusted on the expectation of a quieter signal, you could blow up speakers. If you want to maximize the power level in a digital recording, record white noise rather than square waves.
Before anyone posts some rant along the lines of ["They should have been smarter"|"They should have known better"|"Why are people so stupid as to fall for this all the time"], they should read this essay on Milgram's studies of authority. It's frightening.
BTW, I'm an expert on Slashdotters.
The number was at Los Alamos national laboratory, and I decided that with my shiny new cell-phone with free long distance I would call the number.
Haha, much to my surprise, the woman picked up the phone, and I asked her if the email was true. She said it was and asked me to take the number off the mail if I sent it to anyone, because ever since that mail had gone out her phone had been ringing off the hook.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
ultracrepidarian: (n., adj.) a person who gives opinions beyond his scope of knowledge.
I'll have to add this to my top ten words to use when talking over somebody's head.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
Why does it say "Ran across this article on the IS-IT-TRUE.org site" then the link doesn't point to is-it-true.org, but instead to some server that is not even accepting connections on port 80?
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
The 'exploding water' thing predates the e-mail by a few years. When we got our first microwave (a Toshiba, IIRC) the manual contained a warning that you should make sure that if you were boiling the water, you should vigorously fill the container with water or it may "erupt". In fact, I've seen this happen - boil the water in the microwave, then drop a teabag in and it will erupt (anything from just fizzing like a can of Coke to water being splashed out of the container).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
A long time ago I heard a statement to the effect of "Don't believe everything that you read." I apply that to every bit of television, radio and print media I consume. It bothers me that we, as a society, seem to think we are the most educated people ever to live on this planet, yet we allow ourselves to be suckered by rumor, speculation and guessing.
Be a skeptic. Demand proof and accountability from your information sources.
My sigs always suck.
The truth never stands in the way of a news story!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A friend of mine in High School loved to ride BMX bicycles and worked in the local shop. Lots of young kids used to come in and ask him stupid questions and bug him to try to be cool like they though he was. One day a particular kid was really obnoxious asking all sorts of questions about how he wanted his bike to work just so, to which my friend, getting sick of this kid, finally said, "I know the problem, but we can't fix it. Go to XXX bike shop and tell them there's a nut loose behind the handlebars". Shop XXX was about 3 miles away down very busy roads. The next day he gets a realy nasty call from Shop XXX because apparently the kid didn't catch the joke and went up there to bug those guys.
I'm personally glad about all this. I don't understand why you see it as a problem.
If people keep spreading lies (which they will) then the outcome will be that people recieving advice get fed up with it and will actually have to think for themselves a bit and make a few checks instead of blindly soldiering on doing what they have been told by someone just because they sounded authoritative at the time.
This is a good thing; it will encourage independent thinking.
Who knows.. once people stop blindly believing rambling idiots and learn to think for themselves, maybe they will start to question some of the more experienced liars around on the internet. You know who I mean. The ones who ARE who they say they are, but because of their popularity, idiots just blindly believe everything they say as well.
No. This is not a problem. It is part of the solution to one.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Yeah great the first page.. what about the other 4+ pages?
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
It seems that journalists simply don't know who to ask. They'll ask the first person that seems to have credentials. As we all know, credentials don't really mean much, and can give the journalist a false sense of truth. They may be thinking that they are getting a good insight about computer virii, when in fact it is a confused loudmouth with some personal goal that he/she is interviewing.
In Living Color did a skit about this. It involved a journalist who was covering a shooting and as she was looking for someone to interview, she happened to pick out a street punk who went on to describe a ludicrous sequence of events.
"And there you have it..."
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
The Cluetrain manifesto was talking about individual to individual communication. Talking to the press is centralized to begin with, since the press itself is centralized. The great thing about communication with peers is that it goes both ways and it's always possible to straighten things out if there's misscomunication (which there will be).
With the press that's not possible -- not in any meaningful way, anyway. So sure, have your engineers talk to their engineers, but don't go blabbing to the press because then it's too likely to get out of control.
I am of the opinion that the "general public" already knows reporters are full of shit. Their credibility has spiraled down as they've raced to compete with Jerry Springer and the National Enquirer for ratings.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Hell, for years we were all telling them that you couldn't get a virus from email.
I never reply until I've researched the hoax and/or truth and proven to myself, at least two different ways.
The best way to ruin my credibility is to send out ONE wrong email.
I sign everything I send, including my phone number. If I'm not willing to have my full contact information forwarded to someone else along with my conclusions, it needs more research.
When I don't know the answer, I tell them so. And I recommend they just ignore it.
When I find it's a hoax, I ask them NOT to forward this conclusion until they've done the same research, and are willing to append their own conclusions. The propagation method of all hoaxes is thoughtless, research-free forwarded email.
If it turns out to be true, I make a point of including links to whatever authority I can find.
If it turns out to be false, I include links to at least two web sites that debunk the hoax/myth.
Finally, I almost always recommend that they take a minute to browse the Kumite Virus Hoaxes and Myths web site (seems to be down at the moment but it's a good review of quite a few common hoaxes).
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
(Strange grouping you've got there -- my comments below relate more towards the first three.)
They may know how to, but how often do they bother? CNN, ABC and NBC have all been nailed for various "issues" in their stories, if memory serves; for instance, there was CNN's story claiming that members of US Army SOGs used chemical weapons to kill American defectors in 'Nam, IIRC. The reporters involved were fired.
NBC Dateline got nailed for not only misreporting a story (the CNN SOG bit apparently hinged on selective use and interpretation of interviews), but for basically making one up: they deliberately uncapped the gas tanks of certain GM vehicles for a collision test, in order to help them burst dramatically into flame. Not too many people drive around with their gas tanks open. My memory's telling me that there was also a minor pyrotechnic device involved...
And it might have been ABC's _Prime Time Live_ that got sued (successfully) by _Food Lion_ regarding their investigative practices.
Newspapers aren't untainted; ISTR that the SJ Mercury eventually retracted the CIA-Contra-Cocaine Conspiracy story.
If they're busy finding their own dodgy bits of news to present for the sake of ratings / circulation, then how much time are they spending checking their own?
I wouldn't often associate the news programs with integrity, when it comes to more dramatic stories. When they report that yet another bomb went off in the Middle East or that Bush meets Putin in Genoa or that the DJIA dropped a bit, that's quite possibly correct -- but when they veer off to "beware! beware!" stories, well... beware.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Does the False Authority Syndrome include accepting Slashdot stories as fact too?
Virus' need hosts
Saying "Code Red" was a computer virus is FUD
it's an IIS virus
saying sircam is a computer virus is FUD it's an Outlook virus
saying Melissa is a computer virus is FUD it's an Outlook virus
(notice a vendor commonality?)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
> If a loud-enough, sharp-enough sound is pumped through your speakers,
> however, they will blow. While I'm certain that it's not common, no it's
> *not* impossible for 'Cactus' scheme to damage your audio equipment.
While you're technically correct, the big complaint stems from the spreading of the idea that the Cactus CP scheme can do damage to your set the the data stream itself can't. There are many non-technical people that come to me with concerns that Cactus will use some secret juju to destroy the system, not just by producing a noise level capable of damaging the system, and that's why the story annoyed me. If they had said something like, "Cactus causes interference noise on copied CDs, and if your volume level is set high enough, this noise can overload the speakers" I would have found the story informative. As it was, it seemed calculated to misinform.
Virg
Yet one more reason to use the BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and yes, that'll get you UK-focussed news but they're not just aiming for eyeballs for advertisers. I'm delighted that we have something like this and they're probably my primary news source.
Having said that, they still got some home users worried about Code Red...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
A few days ago, I was involved in a conversation with a computer neophyte after I had been off the net for a few days.
She told me she had heard of a new CD format that was supposed to copy-protect CD's by making them damage your stereo speakers.
Knowing quite a bit about the Red-book standard, I told her that such a format was impossible and that it was almost certainly a hoax.
Once I got back on the net and read about the Macro-vision scheme now in use in thousands of CD's, I had to call her and tell her that I was mistaken.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
"The media is always accurate, except when they're talking about things I know."
It's always a source of amazement to me how many people are capable of maintaining this perspective towards the media. I always try to think back to every single teeth-grinding, knee-gripping instance of media inaccuracy in a tech story whenever I'm exposed to a story on a subject on a topic which is unfamiliar to me.
One word of advice. _Always_ research the problem for yourself before jumping headfirst into an ocean of hysteria. I've had to correct the sysadmin at my former college because of hoaxes that were sent out by them. This didn't happen just once, either. A little common sense and understanding about how computers do (and don't!) work will help you see through almost all of the hysteria and hype.
Why do I say this? I work in a tech center. We do a lot of nifty complicated work usually involving a lot of computers and/or math. It's neat stuff, but not that hard to understand what it is even if you don't understand the details of it. (part prototyping, databases, 3d computer graphics, etc) Because of the kind of work we do, we are something of a showpiece for the company. We get reporters and TV crews coming through all the time. The visits usually go something like this:
Us: Here's this nifty complicated new piece of equipment that is going to help us make widgets faster, better and cheaper.
Then: Uh-huh. Can you turn the lights in the room down and stand over by the blinking lights? We need a picture.
Us: But those lights are the air conditioning system.
Them: Yeah but it looks cool and I didn't understand a word you said anyway.
They also have this peculiar fascination with taking pictures in low light conditions with glowing things. My wife worked in a lab where they used radioactive chemical markers for testing. They wanted to turn the lights down to get a picture of the spectrometer (which wasn't even in use) while showing someone handling radioactive chemicals in the dark. Very safe...
Needless to say, I don't watch the evening news anymore...
I love you google cache!
o :www.vmyths.com/fas/fas1.cfm+&hl=en (remove the space that /. so helpfully adds. ;)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:ahVwga1Oq1
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
The first example given (can't read the rest since the site seems to be /.'ed) does seem to be a situation where the person transmitting the information appears authoritative. But the ways in which the computer store staff person got his information was not far from the traditional rumor mill; it's a long-standing fact of history that truth rarely catches up to rumors!
Energy: time to change the picture.
After all, IPs can be spoofed, so if I trace a Virus e-mail back to the alledged sender and it comes up at an address at McAffee
That only really applies to the sort of people who are usually already clued-up enough to have some idea of what is and isn't real.
The average user has no idea what an IP address is, what spoofing one means, or how to find out who owns one.
What we need is some kind of identification verification procedure online...I'm all for tying real-life identities to online personas because it would mean accountability for actions
It would also mean the possibility for invasion of privacy on a staggering scale. In real life, I could get you arrested for following me around wherever I go, noting down who I speak to, what I look at, etc. Why should it be any different online? Just because I might commit a crime, that it would be harder to catch me for?
There will always be ways to circumvent any sort of identity scheme, if you know how to and want to badly enough. At best, all it'd do would be to remove any last vestage of privacy online for ordinary people, and let you catch the sort of criminals who aren't going to be bright enough to commit any serious crimes anyway. At worst, it would allow people to frame others much more easily, by using their identity to commit crimes online.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Does this ever happen where you work or go to school? I can count on one hand the number of times I have gathered around co-workers (only on one side, wouldn't want to block the camera) while they pointed at a screen. Yet this image has become almost universal in the media's coverage of computers and science!
The Boston Globe did a feature on a place I used to work. They tore the place up, taking pictures and disrupting everything.. and then people read the story thinking they just took candid pictures while everyone was working!
Hmm, being a physicist i even know how that superheated water thing works, you can heat water a little above the boiling point without it becoming steam. Only when you disturb it it will boil. Until then it's in an instable equilibrium state. The effect is even used in Bubble chambers: the disturbance by a charged particle is enough to result in a track of bubbles, thus making the particle visible (but be sure to get the timing of that photo right, or you could as well take a photo of your teapot). In chemistry we even learned to put something with an irregular surface in a testing tube before heating it, because it doesn't need a microwave for the effect, nor water. Any liquid being heated 'carefully' enough (and in a container with smooth enough surfaces e.g. glass) will do.
So i wouldn't have discounted that superheated water story anyway. But that also means, before accepting or discounting such a story one should think if one has expertise on the subject. By dismissing it all as a hoax you became the false authority. It's rather better to say "Well i don't know about that, i have to know more before making a statement", maybe followed by "but i don't believe in it". It's ok to have an opinion about the credibility of a statement, but it should be marked thus.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
*The News* is not necessarily about informing you of anything important. *The News* is about selling your eyeballs to advertisers. *The News* has therefore got to grab your attention and get your eyeballs in front of the advertising. You can always print a 'correction' on page 3, or just nevermind that 'facts' got 'distorted' in the 'reporting'.
It seems to me that this could be used to focus attention on the DMCA and other important, but non-sexy issues. We just have to come up with new wording that grabs attention.. Hm .. I dunno, can you relate the DMCA's limits on reproduction to sex?
air and light and time and space
Or maybe this is that even more insidious virus/worm I've been hearing about, the /. effect...
I got the email about superheated water from your microwave, and how it could explode. Wrote back explaining, "No, mom. It's just another one of those hoaxes I keep telling you about." Sheesh, when will she learn.
Fast forward two weeks, I'm watching TV and see this interesting video ...
Well damn, how about that. [dial dial dial ... ring ... ring ]
Umm yeah, Mom? Sorry. You were right ...
Nope, no sig
A good firewall helps by enforcing protocols, and refusing to pass unknown protocols without explicit configuration by the adminstrators.
The ultimate example of this are the various products which allow you to 'profile' the normal requests and system calls of a product, and will block anything outside of the profile.
By careful enforcement of 'least privledge' and protocol-specific proxies, a firewall can protect against attacks that are not yet known.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The fact that the "teachers" in this experiment thought they were truly inflicting pain
That was exactly what I was calling into question. They hesitated and protested because they thought they might have been causing damage. The fact was that they weren't causing damage, and you can't say with certainty that they believed, in the balance of things, that they were causing damage.
They had many reasons to believe they weren't causing damage. First of all, it's a psychological experiment run by a reputable university. You expect all manner of wierdness, you don't expect maiming and killing; normal standards of recognizing an emergency would be suspended. Secondly, the torture scenario makes no sense at all. If the experimenter wanted to torture the subject, he could simply press the button himself, he didn't need help, and he was certainly in a better position to judge whether the subject was in danger. Evil is not sufficient to explain the situation, it would take a very bizarre, unheard-of form of insanity (have you ever heard of anything remotely like a maniac who hired someone and stood by them and tricked them into activating a device which tortures or kills their victim?); even a practical joke is a thousand times more likely. In the board-operator's mind, we're really looking at a dilemma: it sounds like the person's being hurt, but nothing else about the situation allows the possibility that the person is really being hurt (the readings on the intensity scale are subject to many interpretations; it only sounds ominous because it is presented as such).
However, the root reason to doubt that they believed they were causing damage is that there was no damage. Deception is hard. People take in hundreds of subtle indicators when evaluating the honesty of a claim, and they were taking direction from a person who knew exactly what was going on. The above reasons are just two more particularly obvious flaws of a poorly planned deception, there would unavoidably be many more, when trying to create such a ridiculous perception in the mind of the subjects.
Those who quit didn't do so because they were certain that they would cause serious damage to someone, and decided they didn't want to contribute to it. Instead, they knew something very weird was going on, knew that they were being deceived in one way or another, and didn't want to play along any more.
Note: damage. A little non-damaging pain is not a big deal. We put up with it when we get a needle or when we exercise or for a hundred other routine things. If your doctor told you to hold your child's arm while he inserted the needle, you'd do it, and not worry because it was a little pain for a good reason. If these people could be offended at the idea of causing mere pain in a consenting individual, they would have left as soon as their role was revealed, and the decision to ever press the button would be the big .
This is simply not science. It's a political statement at best, psychological torture at worst.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
> t's been my experience that people who think that online etiquette
> is not required are usually young, immature, and undereducated boys.
> Tell me, do those traits fit you? I bet so.
Over 30, college degree, father of two. You decide whether to pay up on the bet. You should also realize that "not required" and "never appropriate" are not one and the same thing by my argument.
Virg