Reminds of an old Dilbert strip (which, sadly, I cannot find a link to) where a potential customer is talking to Dilbert.
Customer: Well, what's the worst case scenario?
Dilbert: Our product could transform into a giant robot that annhiliates the universe.
PHB: (freaking out the background)
Dilbert: (Later, to Dogbert) Apparently, I don't know what "worst case" means.
At my last job, we had a very interesting password policy. All passwords had to be known to the Admin and could not be changed. Then, all the passwords were printed out, mailed overseas to our corporate headquarters and stored in a safe.
Sadly, since it was such a pain to change passwords (or to retrieve them if one was forgotten) the Admin assigned everyone the same password - the name of the company.
Actually, I believe the reason LISP is preferred in nuclear facilities is because of LISP's ability to modify programs at runtime without stopping them. LISP's eval command allows program patches to be applied on the fly, which is a very Good Thing when you're dealing with a system that absolutely cannot be turned off or rebooted. Leastwise, not without "rebooting" a good portion of the local landscape as well.
Not trying to troll here, I'm just really curious what this has to do with m(Y) (R)ights (O)nline? I now have a right to bags full of silicone while using a computer? Oh, wait, that's been on the net for *ages*...
Boy, this has got "Unintended Consequences" written all over it. Seriously, I hope that this works brilliantly and the thousands of sufferers of Parkinson's disease etc. are able to be helped by this, but it seems like it could be a very shiny wrapper around an all new Pandora's box.
My Mother-in-Law had this same experience with Best Buy. She's pretty IT-savvy, though, so she asked if the warranty would still be valid if she installed XP herself. Best Buy said no. They have to do it. (They won't, but if they did, it'd be under warranty. Unfrickingbelievable.)
Why should a bank or any other online company have to pay for their stupidity or negligence? Why should people have to pay for their ignorance? My parents are both very bright, college educated people who get confused when I browse the net on their machine with Firefox instead of IE. I try to teach them, but the fact is, bright people don't necessarily understand computers. They're not stupid or even negligent. They run an anti-virus, but they don't understand why a "firewall" is something they need. (Try explaining packet filtering to someone whose understanding of the internet begins and ends with "double click the blue 'e'"!)
To use an ever-popular car analogy, should I be held negligent if someone steals my car and runs into someone with it? Sure, there were better door locks available for my car, but I'm not a mechanic and I don't know how to install them.
How much should the average person be required to know before they can go online? Should we start licensing people?
Poisoning could certainly work in some cases, but that's not really prevention. That's just another method of defense. Instead of defense through no signal (e.g. not getting the grocery-tracking-card) it's defense through high noise. That may work fine for a small group of individuals, but you'd need a vast majority of the people in the database to be participating in such tactics to make that kind of data collection unusable by the powers that be.
The AC who responded to you really hit the nail on the head. The problem isn't simply that the data can be collected and collated, but that people will begin to turn it to any purpose they can and some of them may be double-plus ungood! What if spammers could get their hands on the purchasing habits of millions of consumers? On the surface it sounds like it could maybe be ok, after all at least they'd be spamming you with stuff you *may* have an interest in buying. The problem is that if spam begins to have better targeting, it'll also have better success rates, which means more money, which means more spammers. Poisoning the data wouldn't help in this case. You'd just be bringing *more* spam, targeted at people other than yourself - pretty much like today, but with better resources for the spammers.
I agree. It's too easy - with virgin installs on identical machines - to tell which has been tampered with. If they're all identical adding machines (as many here have suggested) would actually make things easier. Just power them all on at (as close to) the same time as possible and watch. As a result, I doubt if Rutkowska will take the challenge - which will probably be construed as a forfeit, rather than simply refusing to play a rigged game.
I think she'd be better served to tell them to drop it to one laptop, which she gets to install any (non-rootkit, but possibly malware) software she wishes in addition to Blue Pill. Then they only win if they can show conclusive proof that what they find is actually Blue Pill (perhaps by "cleaning" it off and then seeing if she's still able to access her root kit).
Evil as this is... can it be prevented?
on
The Internet Of Things
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Technology has been progressing in this direction inexorably for some time now. It seems like every new advance we make is somehow capable of eating away at our privacy. So... even though the ability to tie all of a person's personal data together really seems like a Bad Thing, can it be prevented? Or just defended against on an individual basis, like people now who choose only to use cash so they don't leave a digital paper trail?
I agree... for first person shooters. It's hard to match the accuracy and agility you can get with the mouse/keyboard combo with a couple of thumb sticks (or one thumb stick and a Wiimote). But, I also find that many games (esp. fighting games) work much better on consoles. I think it really just depends on what the game genre was intended for.
FPSes (in their current incarnation. Battlezone[1] doesn't count.) were born on the PC[2] and have evolved to use take advantage of the mouse/keyboard control scheme. OTOH, fighting games (to stick with my example) started out in the arcades[3] and were designed with joysticks in mind. I am a long time gamer and own most of the major consoles from the Atari 2600 to the present and I also have a collection of PC games going back to the original King's Quest[4] series (And yes, I still have an old PC with a 5.25" drive to play them on). I don't think there's any real conflict vis-a-vis PC vs Console games. They're just different platforms with their own strengths and weaknesses.
You do realize that this was how computers originally worked, don't you?
Early computers used non-volatile magnetic memory[1] in the place of RAM, which was really great in some cases. The memory was persistent, so if you lost power, the machine could pick up right where it left off, it was fairly resistant to radiation and/or EMPs, etc. However, if something went wrong in the program (esp. infinite loops), you had to stop the machine, physically remove the memory core (Typically on some kind of heavy drum in those days) and put it in another machine to overwrite the bad code. RAM was designed to be volatile precisely because the odds of some program going nuts (especially in a consumer device) and hosing the machine are relatively high. When that happens, the user needs to be able to recover control of the machine without requiring the use of another device to wipe the non-volatile memory and replace it.
While non-volatile RAM as persistent storage may prove an *excellent* replacement for our slow ferrous-oxide-based hard drives, I'd be very cautious about replacing our good ol' volatile "working-space" RAM just to take advantage of increased boot speed.
with all the advantages it conveys, and all of the disadvantages
I'm just curious, but to what are you referring to as "advantages?" Autism runs in my family and I'm hard pressed to see how it has given them any advantages in life. I have 7 cousins and one uncle with varying degrees of autism. My uncle is an autistic savant[1] with an incredible command of military history and equipment, but the mental maturity of a 6 year old. He has an incredible capability, but his disability leaves him unable to put it to any practical use. As for my cousins, their level of disability runs the gamut, from one who can speak only in single-word bursts to a slightly awkward sufferer of Aspberger's[2] syndrome.
I understand the common conception that people suffering from Autism are just "differently abled." But really, most of them are not. Some, like my cousin with Aspberger's, can function in society, but will always feel alienated. This is not because people just aren't willing to accept them (as with the X-Men) but because they literally are unable to react "normally" to human emotion. This is usually the best quality of life you can people suffering from Autism can hope for. The majority of the sufferers are unable to live independent of live-in care and will never be able to contribute to society.
If I were in the position of choosing whether or not to cure my child of *any* degree of autism, it'd be a no-brainer for me. Bring on the drugs!
*jawdrop* And yet, I'm still not reassured. At least I now know that, though it may be the last thing I want to try, it wouldn't actually be the last thing I did try. 8^)
...What happens in the case of violent turbulence with wings that can bend? If they're flexible enough to be wrapped around to touch above the fuselage, are they also flexible enough to warp or twist? The last thing I want to try is a barrel roll in a passenger jet...
Actually, they didn't announce anything *like* that. This article has more slant than... well the original *very slanted* report. The report this article is referencing is actually trying to make the point that Vista is (according to Microsoft's metrics) teh most secoor OS EVAR!!! The report compares the number of bugs disclosed in the first 6 months of the OS' existence which remained unfixed after 90 days. It seems to me that a more telling metric for security would be the longer term trend of bugs disclosed vs. patched, but hey, I'm not a security researcher.
Having worked as an AI developer for a company which creates autonomous vehicles, I have two major concerns with that... First, I've seen first hand the complexity of the code required to simulate autonomous "thought." There's not going to be a line someplace that says "if(target.isEnemy()) shoot();" It's going to be a massively complicated set of algorithms - and sooner or later it will guess wrong. With the current state of our technology it would be dangerously negligent to place a firearm in the control of any form of AI.
My other concern is that - even if we get autonomous killing machines first - sooner or later they'll be standard issue. You could say that the whole point of war is to kill the other side. Not just smash their expensive gizmos. If ground troops all become droids, wars will find other methods to find and kill humans. I don't think that any kind of technology will be able to save more lives than are taken by developing new war tools.
...my father fell asleep in the theater, watching "some weird space movie" with his best friend. Fortunately, he eventually came around and took me (20 years later) to see all three re-releases.
Not quite the same thing. The documents you're referring to are generally forgeries* (or at least are considered such) and are not used as a basis for the faith. The religion's main religious documents - The Book of Mormon, Bible, Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price - are freely available.
And history has demonstrated that humans are pretty adept at doing the same to other humans. If someone saves your life, you're likely feel very emotionally attached to them. On the other hand, if your mechanic dies, you probably won't notice - other than it seems to be taking longer than usual to get your car back.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_200 4_April/ai_n6137787
In the 50's the Russians were apparently using hollowed coins to pass messages. While the "nanotech" comment reeks of paranoia (as does the idea of Canadians spying on the US... What do we think they want? California?) it's not unheard of for coins and other day-to-day objects to be used for spying.
Slashdot Mirror
Customer: Well, what's the worst case scenario?
Dilbert: Our product could transform into a giant robot that annhiliates the universe.
PHB: (freaking out the background)
Dilbert: (Later, to Dogbert) Apparently, I don't know what "worst case" means.
At my last job, we had a very interesting password policy. All passwords had to be known to the Admin and could not be changed. Then, all the passwords were printed out, mailed overseas to our corporate headquarters and stored in a safe. Sadly, since it was such a pain to change passwords (or to retrieve them if one was forgotten) the Admin assigned everyone the same password - the name of the company.
Actually, I believe the reason LISP is preferred in nuclear facilities is because of LISP's ability to modify programs at runtime without stopping them. LISP's eval command allows program patches to be applied on the fly, which is a very Good Thing when you're dealing with a system that absolutely cannot be turned off or rebooted. Leastwise, not without "rebooting" a good portion of the local landscape as well.
Not trying to troll here, I'm just really curious what this has to do with m(Y) (R)ights (O)nline? I now have a right to bags full of silicone while using a computer? Oh, wait, that's been on the net for *ages*...
Boy, this has got "Unintended Consequences" written all over it. Seriously, I hope that this works brilliantly and the thousands of sufferers of Parkinson's disease etc. are able to be helped by this, but it seems like it could be a very shiny wrapper around an all new Pandora's box.
My Mother-in-Law had this same experience with Best Buy. She's pretty IT-savvy, though, so she asked if the warranty would still be valid if she installed XP herself. Best Buy said no. They have to do it. (They won't, but if they did, it'd be under warranty. Unfrickingbelievable.)
To use an ever-popular car analogy, should I be held negligent if someone steals my car and runs into someone with it? Sure, there were better door locks available for my car, but I'm not a mechanic and I don't know how to install them.
How much should the average person be required to know before they can go online? Should we start licensing people?
That's not a bank error, that's winning the freakin' lottery! Cash it out and move to Thailand, baby!
The AC who responded to you really hit the nail on the head. The problem isn't simply that the data can be collected and collated, but that people will begin to turn it to any purpose they can and some of them may be double-plus ungood! What if spammers could get their hands on the purchasing habits of millions of consumers? On the surface it sounds like it could maybe be ok, after all at least they'd be spamming you with stuff you *may* have an interest in buying. The problem is that if spam begins to have better targeting, it'll also have better success rates, which means more money, which means more spammers. Poisoning the data wouldn't help in this case. You'd just be bringing *more* spam, targeted at people other than yourself - pretty much like today, but with better resources for the spammers.
I think she'd be better served to tell them to drop it to one laptop, which she gets to install any (non-rootkit, but possibly malware) software she wishes in addition to Blue Pill. Then they only win if they can show conclusive proof that what they find is actually Blue Pill (perhaps by "cleaning" it off and then seeing if she's still able to access her root kit).
Technology has been progressing in this direction inexorably for some time now. It seems like every new advance we make is somehow capable of eating away at our privacy. So... even though the ability to tie all of a person's personal data together really seems like a Bad Thing, can it be prevented? Or just defended against on an individual basis, like people now who choose only to use cash so they don't leave a digital paper trail?
FPSes (in their current incarnation. Battlezone[1] doesn't count.) were born on the PC[2] and have evolved to use take advantage of the mouse/keyboard control scheme. OTOH, fighting games (to stick with my example) started out in the arcades[3] and were designed with joysticks in mind. I am a long time gamer and own most of the major consoles from the Atari 2600 to the present and I also have a collection of PC games going back to the original King's Quest[4] series (And yes, I still have an old PC with a 5.25" drive to play them on). I don't think there's any real conflict vis-a-vis PC vs Console games. They're just different platforms with their own strengths and weaknesses.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_(arcade_game
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Quest
...was a feature, now it's hacking. ;)
Early computers used non-volatile magnetic memory[1] in the place of RAM, which was really great in some cases. The memory was persistent, so if you lost power, the machine could pick up right where it left off, it was fairly resistant to radiation and/or EMPs, etc. However, if something went wrong in the program (esp. infinite loops), you had to stop the machine, physically remove the memory core (Typically on some kind of heavy drum in those days) and put it in another machine to overwrite the bad code. RAM was designed to be volatile precisely because the odds of some program going nuts (especially in a consumer device) and hosing the machine are relatively high. When that happens, the user needs to be able to recover control of the machine without requiring the use of another device to wipe the non-volatile memory and replace it.
While non-volatile RAM as persistent storage may prove an *excellent* replacement for our slow ferrous-oxide-based hard drives, I'd be very cautious about replacing our good ol' volatile "working-space" RAM just to take advantage of increased boot speed.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core_memory
I'm just curious, but to what are you referring to as "advantages?" Autism runs in my family and I'm hard pressed to see how it has given them any advantages in life. I have 7 cousins and one uncle with varying degrees of autism. My uncle is an autistic savant[1] with an incredible command of military history and equipment, but the mental maturity of a 6 year old. He has an incredible capability, but his disability leaves him unable to put it to any practical use. As for my cousins, their level of disability runs the gamut, from one who can speak only in single-word bursts to a slightly awkward sufferer of Aspberger's[2] syndrome.
I understand the common conception that people suffering from Autism are just "differently abled." But really, most of them are not. Some, like my cousin with Aspberger's, can function in society, but will always feel alienated. This is not because people just aren't willing to accept them (as with the X-Men) but because they literally are unable to react "normally" to human emotion. This is usually the best quality of life you can people suffering from Autism can hope for. The majority of the sufferers are unable to live independent of live-in care and will never be able to contribute to society.
If I were in the position of choosing whether or not to cure my child of *any* degree of autism, it'd be a no-brainer for me. Bring on the drugs!
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_savant
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspberger's_Syndrome
*jawdrop* And yet, I'm still not reassured. At least I now know that, though it may be the last thing I want to try, it wouldn't actually be the last thing I did try. 8^)
...What happens in the case of violent turbulence with wings that can bend? If they're flexible enough to be wrapped around to touch above the fuselage, are they also flexible enough to warp or twist? The last thing I want to try is a barrel roll in a passenger jet...
... And like Cthulhu, you have to be a Great Old One yourself to get that joke.
If you want to read the actual report, check out the link to the PDF from this page: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2192615/microsof t-claims-vista-secure/
My other concern is that - even if we get autonomous killing machines first - sooner or later they'll be standard issue. You could say that the whole point of war is to kill the other side. Not just smash their expensive gizmos. If ground troops all become droids, wars will find other methods to find and kill humans. I don't think that any kind of technology will be able to save more lives than are taken by developing new war tools.
...my father fell asleep in the theater, watching "some weird space movie" with his best friend. Fortunately, he eventually came around and took me (20 years later) to see all three re-releases.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann
And history has demonstrated that humans are pretty adept at doing the same to other humans. If someone saves your life, you're likely feel very emotionally attached to them. On the other hand, if your mechanic dies, you probably won't notice - other than it seems to be taking longer than usual to get your car back.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_200 4_April/ai_n6137787
In the 50's the Russians were apparently using hollowed coins to pass messages. While the "nanotech" comment reeks of paranoia (as does the idea of Canadians spying on the US... What do we think they want? California?) it's not unheard of for coins and other day-to-day objects to be used for spying.