Google already gets your traffic through other means, they don't need to do something as crude as sniff the network directly. More likely this is a mechanism to try to sell more people on the non-search Google ecosystem, like TV, movies, etc.
This was my first thought too, but it is hard to say for sure. While agencies like this are rife with waste and inefficiency, there must be a point where budget cuts would have an impact on service even if all waste and inefficiency were eliminated. Of course the same can be said of any organization to one degree or another.
My second thought was, if their budget is cut all they have to do is reduce the scope of their mission. It isn't like their victims are going to complain about not being audited. And reduction in tax revenue is meaningless since the government will simply print money to make up the difference.
This is the kind of story I think of when I hear that these agencies need more money. It seems to me they are overstaffed and overfunded if they have time for activities like this.
This is the most effective form of security, and often the hardest. If you have nothing of value, there is no risk. Of course that ideal state is impossible but that doesn't mean opportunities to reduce risk by reducing the impact are overlooked.
You aren't going to appear to hide data if it is part of your data retention practice. If you can say that you were deleting everything over five years old long before any issues came to light, that isn't going to be a problem. Now if you start deleting it the day before you get the subpoena, you've got a problem.
The article seemed a bit overexcited to me. Is it really that surprising that they use 10.x space? It's not like Internet access is widely used in NK. And most of the other items were not what I would call weird, just what you would expect in a regime like this. Still, kudos to the author for doing this analysis.
Speaking of economics, if the government starts providing money for students with 'good grades' to pay tuition, doesn't the college now have a huge incentive to hand out good grades regardless of performance?
Elasticity of supply is a bit questionable in this instance. How elastic is it? It is not like anyone can just open a college, there are all sorts of barriers to entry. Accreditation, etc.
I refuse to update my phone anymore, due in part to what you describe. I've had updates break data access. I've had updates take away root. I've had updates break applications. And then I had to deal with all the pointless UI changes. I will bring a new device up to date, but once I have everything dialed in I will never do a system update. If they supplied security fix only patches that didn't screw around with functionality I would consider applying those.
False negative v. false positive is very relevant here. I don't know what the rates are for a polygraph, but if there are no false positives (i.e. if it says you are lying then you are definitely lying) that would be extremely valuable even if it only works 75% of the time. When combined with other measures especially. Now if it says you are lying when you aren't that is a different story. An employer or gov agency might still be OK if the false negative is extremely low, since at worst you might reject a small percent of viable candidates. But I sure as heck would not want to take one as a criminal suspect if there was a significant chance of a false negative.
It is a lot more than that, the article only covers "direct" male descendants. i.e. son of son of son of son of son of son of son. If you were the son of one of his daughters you wouldn't count. So 17.5 million men should have the same last name as him, if he had one. Maybe someone else can do the math, I wonder what the number would be if you accounted for females, and how that would compare to any other person from the same time period.
I am curious why so many people have such a negative attitude about the present. There are thousands of companies investing in products that might become useless. In fact, thousands of their products do end up being useless. They just aren't necessarily divisions of some large player.
I hate their products since they tend to not do what I want. For example, I have a Sony DVD player (last Sony product I will ever buy) that will not allow me to eject the disk after powering it on until it has finished reading and loading the disk that is already in there. So I have to sit there for a minute waiting just to get the damn drawer to open.
"Increasingly...","any more"...Why be such a downer about the present? Aren't you just describing the way things have always been? Otherwise Europe would have had stirrups long before Jesus
Well to be fair, I could buy the Pythagorean Theorem thing, that could have been discovered and forgotten, only to be dug up later. But the aviation claim is ridiculous, especially when one reads the rest of the claim where the vehicles could visit other planets.
I often book 2 one way trips instead of a round trip since the first airline often does not have a return flight at the time I want. I like to take the red eye flight back home so I will look for the one way trip back with the best (for me) departure time. Flying out at 11 PM gives me an effective extra day at my destination.
Slashdot Mirror
I did not double check, but heard on the radio news this morning the measles vaccine is 97% effective.
Google already gets your traffic through other means, they don't need to do something as crude as sniff the network directly. More likely this is a mechanism to try to sell more people on the non-search Google ecosystem, like TV, movies, etc.
This was my first thought too, but it is hard to say for sure. While agencies like this are rife with waste and inefficiency, there must be a point where budget cuts would have an impact on service even if all waste and inefficiency were eliminated. Of course the same can be said of any organization to one degree or another.
My second thought was, if their budget is cut all they have to do is reduce the scope of their mission. It isn't like their victims are going to complain about not being audited. And reduction in tax revenue is meaningless since the government will simply print money to make up the difference.
That's an excellent point, thanks for bringing it up. I will bear that in mind before voting for layoffs.
This is the kind of story I think of when I hear that these agencies need more money. It seems to me they are overstaffed and overfunded if they have time for activities like this.
This is the most effective form of security, and often the hardest. If you have nothing of value, there is no risk. Of course that ideal state is impossible but that doesn't mean opportunities to reduce risk by reducing the impact are overlooked.
You aren't going to appear to hide data if it is part of your data retention practice. If you can say that you were deleting everything over five years old long before any issues came to light, that isn't going to be a problem. Now if you start deleting it the day before you get the subpoena, you've got a problem.
I wonder how many people in NK even have access to their national 'intranet' let alone the global Internet.
The article seemed a bit overexcited to me. Is it really that surprising that they use 10.x space? It's not like Internet access is widely used in NK. And most of the other items were not what I would call weird, just what you would expect in a regime like this. Still, kudos to the author for doing this analysis.
Speaking of economics, if the government starts providing money for students with 'good grades' to pay tuition, doesn't the college now have a huge incentive to hand out good grades regardless of performance?
Elasticity of supply is a bit questionable in this instance. How elastic is it? It is not like anyone can just open a college, there are all sorts of barriers to entry. Accreditation, etc.
I refuse to update my phone anymore, due in part to what you describe. I've had updates break data access. I've had updates take away root. I've had updates break applications. And then I had to deal with all the pointless UI changes. I will bring a new device up to date, but once I have everything dialed in I will never do a system update. If they supplied security fix only patches that didn't screw around with functionality I would consider applying those.
The last line should end in "false positive" there.
False negative v. false positive is very relevant here. I don't know what the rates are for a polygraph, but if there are no false positives (i.e. if it says you are lying then you are definitely lying) that would be extremely valuable even if it only works 75% of the time. When combined with other measures especially. Now if it says you are lying when you aren't that is a different story. An employer or gov agency might still be OK if the false negative is extremely low, since at worst you might reject a small percent of viable candidates. But I sure as heck would not want to take one as a criminal suspect if there was a significant chance of a false negative.
It is a lot more than that, the article only covers "direct" male descendants. i.e. son of son of son of son of son of son of son. If you were the son of one of his daughters you wouldn't count. So 17.5 million men should have the same last name as him, if he had one. Maybe someone else can do the math, I wonder what the number would be if you accounted for females, and how that would compare to any other person from the same time period.
I am curious why so many people have such a negative attitude about the present. There are thousands of companies investing in products that might become useless. In fact, thousands of their products do end up being useless. They just aren't necessarily divisions of some large player.
And of course don't forget the unskippable warnings and menu animations. That isn't unique to Sony though.
I hate their products since they tend to not do what I want. For example, I have a Sony DVD player (last Sony product I will ever buy) that will not allow me to eject the disk after powering it on until it has finished reading and loading the disk that is already in there. So I have to sit there for a minute waiting just to get the damn drawer to open.
This is Sony's revenge. At that price no North Korean can afford it.
"Increasingly...","any more"...Why be such a downer about the present? Aren't you just describing the way things have always been? Otherwise Europe would have had stirrups long before Jesus
Well to be fair, I could buy the Pythagorean Theorem thing, that could have been discovered and forgotten, only to be dug up later. But the aviation claim is ridiculous, especially when one reads the rest of the claim where the vehicles could visit other planets.
Any solution would violate net neutrality.
South Africa has 48 million people though
I often book 2 one way trips instead of a round trip since the first airline often does not have a return flight at the time I want. I like to take the red eye flight back home so I will look for the one way trip back with the best (for me) departure time. Flying out at 11 PM gives me an effective extra day at my destination.
I guess this works with carry-on only. Or is there some way to get checked luggage at the layover?