"If" is a very powerful word. There are many possible "ifs" that can protect against an evil cloud service provider as well (hashed snippets of code, client side verification of updates etc) if we would feel the need.
The point is, it's not possible for a rogue admin at Lastpass to sneak a peek (or copy) user data. At most cloud companies, it's routine.
I'm somewhat amazed this isn't a huge topic for discussion in the SaaS space.
That depends on the type of service. Agree, some cloud services do need to perform manipulation of client data - but not all. Those that don't only need to expose APIs but allow all manipulation to take place client side, with client side decryption (just like lastpass).
Moving from symmetric to asymmetric cipher would increase the amount of services that can be encrypted even further. Yes, it would be computationally more expensive, and storage requirements would increase, but it would at least mean that cloud services (I'm looking at you, Yammer) would be a viable solution to running everything internally.
Correct. http://lastpass.com/ is one of very few cloud services that actually understands that for me to have trust in them they must design the infrastructure accordingly.
There ought to be more than a few people at Slashdot working with cloud companies. I'd love to hear some explanations as to why they believe "oh don't worry, your data can only be seen by our admins and we trust them!" should satisfy the needs of a large corporation:)
(I Am A Mechanical Engineer and Software Engineer)
Software Engineering was a joke from the beginning. Basically it pretended that all software needed to be written like NASA does it, while in reality that should be treated like a special case.
Writing software is a craftsmanship, and open source is most closely likened to basic research.
Software development is as much engineering as social sciences are sciences.
the Global warming changes are happening very fast compared to out evolution.
No.
You might want to start verifying the hyperbole vs scientific facts when it comes to AGW. Most headlines are flat out wrong, and that includes the IPCC "for policymakers"-report. WG1 is barely acceptable, the rest is just non-scientific propaganda.
I guess you haven't tried verifying it yourself - by all means, please do.
AGW does not rest on CO2 absorption - that is logarithmic and at the levels we're at in modern times (280ppm+) the effect of a doubling or tripling will go unnoticed.
The science behind AGW has been shown over and over for a very long time
No. Actually it hasn't been shown a single time as of yet.
Don't mistake the factual absorption spectre of CO2 (logarithmic) with AGW. The latter rests solely on speculated positive feedbacks of which none have been observed in reality. When observations have been made, they've indicated negative feedbacks instead.
As for my "reality has turned out worse than predicted" comment, just look at all the IPCC reports.
Sorry, I'd rather have a look at real science as compared to the latest IPCC reports which are not based on hard science but on opinion reports by environmental groups;)
No, my position is: when you look at the correlation between CO2 and temperature, which records, theories and models suggest to be tied together, and then look at the -huge- increase of CO2 released since the industrial revolution, then you should be worried.
Why? No where before in earth's history has CO2 been a driver of temperature. The whole AGW argument (feel free to read up upon it) is that we currently cannot explain why the temperature has risen over the last 35-or-so years, and thus it must be our fault - and that CO2 for the first time in history is the driver, not the result, of increasing temperatures.
There are, of course, competing hypothesises.
PS: "huge"? Where? The CO2 levels in our atmosphere have been more than an order of magnitude higher before without ill effects ("runaway" scenarios)
So you're assuming that climatologists don't make observations, don't form hypothesis which they then peer review?
No, you're correct that there's lot of real science being done on climate.
There's more to climatology than just "a model"
Again, true. However, when it comes to AGW and the scenarios being reported - and acted upon by politicians - the ONLY data behind those scenarios is the output from models.
As for validation, the models that climatologists have been using have not been correct over time, that's true. Reality, so far, has turned out to be worse than predicted.
Wrong. You're either ignorant or lying deliberately. Why?
Because at a global level you can determine, roughly, what the heat input and output is. And when you take that into account, anything you do from then on is essentially a closed system.
You're assuming we know of all the inputs and outputs to Earth, which we don't. Your position is however the same as the one behind AGW - "something happened and we don't know the cause - it must be due to us!" which is, of course, laughable.
Just last year two previously unknown possible energy transfer methods to Earth were "discovered". If climatology wasn't so extremely infected by a "holier than thou" attitude and if some of its proponents stepped down from their ivory towers (which Phil Jones finally seems to do btw) we might even be able to perform some proper science.
[with regards to the debate about climate change being "over"]
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. - Phil Jones, CRU
Agreed. However, mitigating pollution is something completely different from minimizing carbon output. If we really care about the environment, we need to stop talking about our carbon use immediately. There's nothing stopping a modern carbon based power plant from outputting clean CO2 - the same as us humans - while we take care of the real pollutants that today might be let out in the environment (heavy metals etc).
I do. Science is based on observation, refutation of hypothesis etc. Creating a model and claiming that it's science even though it hasn't been validated in any way (anyone can fit an algorithm to historical data - that's easy) is a sham, however.
Btw, the last part of your post is in error. It's not easier to predict global changes and the world (of which I assume you mean the Earth) is absolutely not a closed system.
Would you trust him more if you lived in the same city, have met on social occasions more than once and where your opinion of him would be highly rated since he's a really nice and bright guy?
Carbon Dioxide is only one of many chemicals which are toxic to humans
No, please no. CO2 is what your breath out. It's want the plants in your home feed on and give you O2 back. When you're inside, you're raising the CO2 levels to 2-3 times what they are outside easily.
CO2 is not toxic. On the contrary, I'd say it's impossible for you to even try to kill yourself with CO2.
You're probably mistaking CO and CO2 for the same thing. They're not.
AC's got the facts straight. There's also good conjecture on the PDO (and other ocean oscillations) being strongly influenced by the sun, where cloud cover is a likely mediation candidate.
While it's possible that we'll create synthetic AGI by trial and error with the components we have today (I belong to the crowd who find it likely) another path is to emulate the computer we know can already do it - the human brain. Whole brain emulation is indeed on a trajectory to be viable in that time frame.
Slashdot Mirror
"If" is a very powerful word. There are many possible "ifs" that can protect against an evil cloud service provider as well (hashed snippets of code, client side verification of updates etc) if we would feel the need.
The point is, it's not possible for a rogue admin at Lastpass to sneak a peek (or copy) user data. At most cloud companies, it's routine.
I'm somewhat amazed this isn't a huge topic for discussion in the SaaS space.
That depends on the type of service. Agree, some cloud services do need to perform manipulation of client data - but not all. Those that don't only need to expose APIs but allow all manipulation to take place client side, with client side decryption (just like lastpass).
Moving from symmetric to asymmetric cipher would increase the amount of services that can be encrypted even further. Yes, it would be computationally more expensive, and storage requirements would increase, but it would at least mean that cloud services (I'm looking at you, Yammer) would be a viable solution to running everything internally.
Feel free to study how it works before replying ;) They have all my passwords - encrypted. They cannot decrypt them.
That's how cloud services should work.
Correct. http://lastpass.com/ is one of very few cloud services that actually understands that for me to have trust in them they must design the infrastructure accordingly.
There ought to be more than a few people at Slashdot working with cloud companies. I'd love to hear some explanations as to why they believe "oh don't worry, your data can only be seen by our admins and we trust them!" should satisfy the needs of a large corporation :)
(I Am A Mechanical Engineer and Software Engineer)
Software Engineering was a joke from the beginning. Basically it pretended that all software needed to be written like NASA does it, while in reality that should be treated like a special case.
Writing software is a craftsmanship, and open source is most closely likened to basic research.
Software development is as much engineering as social sciences are sciences.
the Global warming changes are happening very fast compared to out evolution.
No.
You might want to start verifying the hyperbole vs scientific facts when it comes to AGW. Most headlines are flat out wrong, and that includes the IPCC "for policymakers"-report. WG1 is barely acceptable, the rest is just non-scientific propaganda.
Sorry, but calling a Libertarian "right wing" invalidates pretty much everything you ever want to post ;) Go read up on the political compass.
I'm a Swedish libertarian. Your views on basically anything were falsified when you started spouting US political crap ;)
Linking to opinion pieces on realclimate voids all possible discussion points. Climategate did that.
(The points I wrote are still valid, of course)
:)
I guess you haven't tried verifying it yourself - by all means, please do.
AGW does not rest on CO2 absorption - that is logarithmic and at the levels we're at in modern times (280ppm+) the effect of a doubling or tripling will go unnoticed.
http://brneurosci.org/co2.html (fig. 4)
AGW rests on speculated positive feedbacks, and all the models assume these to be true in their calculations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Positive_feedback_effects
Those positive feedbacks have not been observed, on the contrary, at least one of the speculated feedbacks has instead been observed to be negative.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m2054qq6126802g8/?p=e209f4ac50044f93a421b19e0a636d4b&pi=0
Thus, the existing AGW models have been falsified.
For more information, look up the "scientific method" and read some Popper.
The science behind AGW has been shown over and over for a very long time
No. Actually it hasn't been shown a single time as of yet.
Don't mistake the factual absorption spectre of CO2 (logarithmic) with AGW. The latter rests solely on speculated positive feedbacks of which none have been observed in reality. When observations have been made, they've indicated negative feedbacks instead.
AGW has been falsified.
As for my "reality has turned out worse than predicted" comment, just look at all the IPCC reports.
Sorry, I'd rather have a look at real science as compared to the latest IPCC reports which are not based on hard science but on opinion reports by environmental groups ;)
No, my position is: when you look at the correlation between CO2 and temperature, which records, theories and models suggest to be tied together, and then look at the -huge- increase of CO2 released since the industrial revolution, then you should be worried.
Why? No where before in earth's history has CO2 been a driver of temperature. The whole AGW argument (feel free to read up upon it) is that we currently cannot explain why the temperature has risen over the last 35-or-so years, and thus it must be our fault - and that CO2 for the first time in history is the driver, not the result, of increasing temperatures.
There are, of course, competing hypothesises.
PS: "huge"? Where? The CO2 levels in our atmosphere have been more than an order of magnitude higher before without ill effects ("runaway" scenarios)
So you're assuming that climatologists don't make observations, don't form hypothesis which they then peer review?
No, you're correct that there's lot of real science being done on climate.
There's more to climatology than just "a model"
Again, true. However, when it comes to AGW and the scenarios being reported - and acted upon by politicians - the ONLY data behind those scenarios is the output from models.
As for validation, the models that climatologists have been using have not been correct over time, that's true. Reality, so far, has turned out to be worse than predicted.
Wrong. You're either ignorant or lying deliberately. Why?
Because at a global level you can determine, roughly, what the heat input and output is. And when you take that into account, anything you do from then on is essentially a closed system.
You're assuming we know of all the inputs and outputs to Earth, which we don't. Your position is however the same as the one behind AGW - "something happened and we don't know the cause - it must be due to us!" which is, of course, laughable.
Just last year two previously unknown possible energy transfer methods to Earth were "discovered". If climatology wasn't so extremely infected by a "holier than thou" attitude and if some of its proponents stepped down from their ivory towers (which Phil Jones finally seems to do btw) we might even be able to perform some proper science.
[with regards to the debate about climate change being "over"]
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. - Phil Jones, CRU
Agreed. However, mitigating pollution is something completely different from minimizing carbon output. If we really care about the environment, we need to stop talking about our carbon use immediately. There's nothing stopping a modern carbon based power plant from outputting clean CO2 - the same as us humans - while we take care of the real pollutants that today might be let out in the environment (heavy metals etc).
I do. Science is based on observation, refutation of hypothesis etc. Creating a model and claiming that it's science even though it hasn't been validated in any way (anyone can fit an algorithm to historical data - that's easy) is a sham, however.
Btw, the last part of your post is in error. It's not easier to predict global changes and the world (of which I assume you mean the Earth) is absolutely not a closed system.
Actually the GP is correct. The Swedish law doesn't do technicalities (the US law does, otoh) but focuses on intents.
(I'm assuming we're all Swedish here so please look it up ;)
That's ok, vodka isn't English either.
Would you trust him more if you lived in the same city, have met on social occasions more than once and where your opinion of him would be highly rated since he's a really nice and bright guy?
I do.
Carbon Dioxide is only one of many chemicals which are toxic to humans
No, please no. CO2 is what your breath out. It's want the plants in your home feed on and give you O2 back. When you're inside, you're raising the CO2 levels to 2-3 times what they are outside easily.
CO2 is not toxic. On the contrary, I'd say it's impossible for you to even try to kill yourself with CO2.
You're probably mistaking CO and CO2 for the same thing. They're not.
CO2 takes thousands of years to leave the atmosphere
You're off by orders of magnitude. Estimates from 7 up to about 50 years would be more in line with current state of science.
AC's got the facts straight. There's also good conjecture on the PDO (and other ocean oscillations) being strongly influenced by the sun, where cloud cover is a likely mediation candidate.
the numbers strongly suggest
Numbers from models. Models without predictive power.
Do science.
Thousands of other studies have confirmed that the climate is changing, and that humans are responsible.
No. The question is, why do you believe that there are?
Clearly the more scientists who agree on something, the less true it is!
You mean like the consensus that plate tectonics and continental drift was "Utter, damned rot!" etc?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/are-scientists-always-smart/
While it's possible that we'll create synthetic AGI by trial and error with the components we have today (I belong to the crowd who find it likely) another path is to emulate the computer we know can already do it - the human brain. Whole brain emulation is indeed on a trajectory to be viable in that time frame.
Please read through all other posts by me in this thread. You're mistaken.