While the problem does need to be fixed, it's highly unlikely that anyone will die due to a random hacker messing with their device.
Despite the Hollywood movie stereotype of evil hackers who unleash chaos and destruction on the world, the truth is that most hackers are just curious about how things work and have no desire to cause damage, much less kill people. The closest thing that exists to the stereotype are the hackers who are trying to make a profit without regard to the cost to others, but there's no profit in screwing with someone's insulin pump.
The only real danger is if someone you know wants to kill you. If that's the case, however, this is just an additional option for the method and you're still likely to wind up dead even if the security on your insulin pump is fixed.
I'm so tired of hearing this bone-headed phrase repeated by people who haven't taken two seconds to think it through. 100% freedom would mean allowing arson, rape, murder and a thousand other behaviors that we currently ban. You want to go back to prehistoric caveman days? Because that's the only time when that sort of freedom existed.
In order for society to work, you have to recognize the rights of other people and their rights limit your freedom to do whatever you want. We accept lots of limitations on our freedom with the understanding that the other people around us accept those same limitations. The end result is what we call civilization.
Therefore if you say you're "banning memes" you need to specify.
No, in this case you really don't have to specify. The law is a general ban on "any electronic media communication that incites fear or embarrassment" and is not actually specific to image memes. It's a broad law that allows the government to punish anyone that puts anything online that they don't like. It covers both definitions of meme and then some.
The majority of studies show that accident rates go up, not down, when red-light cameras are put in place. Eliminating red-light cameras is the logical response.
This study shows that complaints go down, not up, when police use body cameras. The logical response would be to continue using body cameras and continue studying the results to verify that the effect isn't temporary or isolated.
why not have them first DDOS the websites of political entities you find objectionable?
Because manufacturers don't give a shit about someone else being hit with a DDOS from their products.
Your argument is based on the completely fallacious idea that a manufacturer suffering the consequences of making shoddy products is exactly the same as randomly suppressing someone's political views. It's a stupid argument.
Until not having real security reduces their profit more than the cost of adding security, nothing will happen. Malware that disables the functionality of devices and makes it obvious to end-users that the devices have no real security is one way of accomplishing that goal.
Use the source code to create malware that disables the functionality of the insecure devices. When it becomes apparent that massive numbers of them stop working soon after installation, sales will drop through the floor and that is the only thing that will make manufacturers change their behavior.
While you are correct that the word "open" has been used (some would say misused) that way, the phrase "open source" clearly has a different meaning and refers to making the source available, not just access to an API.
Saudi Arabia has laws banning men from engaging in any form of socializing with any women they aren't married or related to. Public lashing is a common punishment for those offenses, too, so it's not just a few days in jail that he's facing.
The article talks about battery power and long-life food but not climate control, water or sewage.
That's because an entire industry has grown up around scamming survivalists. Whether it's Jim Bakker selling $160 buckets of potato soup (and you can poop in the bucket later!), Glenn Beck's hugely overpriced gold or these guys selling luxury underground bunkers, the goal and method are the same as any other con; gain the mark's confidence using lies and half-truths, then take them for every penny they can get.
Building a bunker that could actually be lived in is secondary to increasing the profit margin, so they skimp on the basic construction and spend a little on cheap frills to hide the deficiencies. That's why the kitchen picture Ultimate Bunker website looks like every piece of shit house that's had superficial improvements done by someone trying to flip it for a profit.
The artwork on Atari 2600 cartridges boxes was never presented as the way the actual game looked and it certainly wasn't a gameplay video that showed things that aren't in the game.
Even the barest minimum fact checking comes up with a Wikipedia article that cites numerous studies:
"Estimates of the total number of humans who have ever lived range in the order of 100 billion. Estimates of this kind cannot hope to give more than the rough order of magnitude, as even modern population estimates are fraught with uncertainties of the order of 3% to 5%. Kapitzka (1996) cites estimates ranging between 80 and 150 billion. Another such estimate was prepared by Haub (1995), updated in 2002 and 2011; the 2011 figure was approximately 107 billion."
But you didn't do even that minimal amount of fact checking, did you?
The President of the United States is not an IT job. Despite your delusions of grandeur, your ability to configure an email server does not translate into competence at governing a nation and governing a nation does not require knowing how to configure a email server.
How much wealth are we talking about? If it's enough, I'll be happy to build a "spacecraft" powered by a state of the art ANFO engine, put you in it and "launch" it. I'll need the money up front, of course.
skipping the dealer allows the manufacturer to set the price. and they would never fix the price with a defacto monopoly, right?
Stop using words you don't understand.
Allowing an auto manufacturer to sell directly to customers and set prices without a middleman adding to the cost does not create a de facto monopoly. Allowing all of them to sell directly to customers and set prices would not create a de facto monopoly. That phrase means something completely different than what you seem to think it means.
Besides... Tesla already sells vehicles directly to consumers in many markets and sets the prices. Guess what? They don't have a de facto monopoly in those markets. They also haven't colluded with the several dozen other manufacturers who sell cars in the USA to fix prices.
In your eagerness to dismiss my comment, you may have missed the part where the TSA is already engaged in behavioral profiling despite not having any previous baselines to compare people's behavior to. Of course this means it's useless for detecting the emotions of random people in a TSA screening line, but that hasn't stopped the TSA from putting it in place.
Ultimately this will just be another augment to automated monitoring, for use in any place where there is benefit to knowing people's emotions but a cost associated with having a human watch them all the time.
Like the TSA security check points at airports?
The TSA already tries to do behavioral profiling. I could see them jumping all over this as the latest magic cure-all to make up for the incompetence of their screeners who miss 95% of the things they're supposed to be watching for.
Where they found a battery with enough juice to power a GPS (Radio) device for the months required to cross the ocean
Well, that took 5 seconds. The third result of a Google search for "long life GPS cellular tracking (http://digitalmatter.com/Devices/Remora) is a non-descript device which features a 5 year battery life with once-per-day tracking, which seems more than adequate for this. If you don't like that one, the results of that search are filled with others.
through the hull of a ship
The location while in transit across the ocean isn't relevant to this study, so the device doesn't have to transmit through the hull of the ship. It just has to be able to continue transmitting once it's been offloaded at the destination so that the destination can be identified.
then have the GPS unit pass undetected through customs
We're talking about containers stuffed with used and broken electronics being delivered to countries that accept them as garbage to be recycled, so that raises three questions:
1) What the hell makes you think the destination countries have customs agents thoroughly inspecting tons upon tons of incoming garbage?
2) How would these hypothetical garbage-inspecting customs agents identify one particular electronic device buried in a pile of other electronic devices as something unusual?
3) Finally, assuming that there is some government that's willing to accept electronics waste (and all its hazardous components) for recycling, yet somehow still anal-retentive enough to inspect said electronics and wealthy enough to be able to pay for the metric ass load of customs agents it would take to inspect and identify everything in the shipment and determine that the GPS tracking was not broken and was active and somehow magically determine that it's being listened to, why would they care? Tracking shipments is a normal thing for that shipping companies do on a regular basis.
Because there is little oversight or enforcement, a secondary industry of fake editors has popped up to undercut sustainable editing. These "editors," which advertise themselves as green and sustainable, get paid pennies per post about old TVs, computers, printers, and monitors. Rather than edit them domestically, the editing companies sell them to editors in developing nations, either through middlemen or directly. These foreign editors hire low-wage employees to pick through the few valuable components of often toxic old stories.
The actual text of the bill says: Upon approval of an Attachment Application by an Owner, Pre-Existing Third Party Users shall allow an Attacher, using Preapproved Contractors and at the Attacherâ(TM)s expense, to perform Make Ready by transferring, relocating, rearranging, or altering the Attachments of any Pre-Existing Third Party User to the extent necessary or appropriate to accommodate the Attacherâ(TM)s Attachment.
The law is pro-competition, not just pro-Google. Any company that wants to enter the market gets the exact same benefit. Google is mentioned in the summary only because they're the company trying to enter the market right now.
"Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails."
The guy is already telling the Justice Department what he knows in return for immunity. Reddit isn't accomplishing anything with their amateur-hour 'investigation' other than harassing and stalking stalk one of the key people who is actually helping the investigation.
But I suppose you forgot that part of the summary.
Slashdot Mirror
While the problem does need to be fixed, it's highly unlikely that anyone will die due to a random hacker messing with their device.
Despite the Hollywood movie stereotype of evil hackers who unleash chaos and destruction on the world, the truth is that most hackers are just curious about how things work and have no desire to cause damage, much less kill people. The closest thing that exists to the stereotype are the hackers who are trying to make a profit without regard to the cost to others, but there's no profit in screwing with someone's insulin pump.
The only real danger is if someone you know wants to kill you. If that's the case, however, this is just an additional option for the method and you're still likely to wind up dead even if the security on your insulin pump is fixed.
I'm so tired of hearing this bone-headed phrase repeated by people who haven't taken two seconds to think it through. 100% freedom would mean allowing arson, rape, murder and a thousand other behaviors that we currently ban. You want to go back to prehistoric caveman days? Because that's the only time when that sort of freedom existed.
In order for society to work, you have to recognize the rights of other people and their rights limit your freedom to do whatever you want. We accept lots of limitations on our freedom with the understanding that the other people around us accept those same limitations. The end result is what we call civilization.
Therefore if you say you're "banning memes" you need to specify.
No, in this case you really don't have to specify. The law is a general ban on "any electronic media communication that incites fear or embarrassment" and is not actually specific to image memes. It's a broad law that allows the government to punish anyone that puts anything online that they don't like. It covers both definitions of meme and then some.
Facebook is surprisingly profitable.
I think you mean "Oh, Science..."
The majority of studies show that accident rates go up, not down, when red-light cameras are put in place. Eliminating red-light cameras is the logical response.
This study shows that complaints go down, not up, when police use body cameras. The logical response would be to continue using body cameras and continue studying the results to verify that the effect isn't temporary or isolated.
why not have them first DDOS the websites of political entities you find objectionable?
Because manufacturers don't give a shit about someone else being hit with a DDOS from their products.
Your argument is based on the completely fallacious idea that a manufacturer suffering the consequences of making shoddy products is exactly the same as randomly suppressing someone's political views. It's a stupid argument.
Until not having real security reduces their profit more than the cost of adding security, nothing will happen. Malware that disables the functionality of devices and makes it obvious to end-users that the devices have no real security is one way of accomplishing that goal.
Use the source code to create malware that disables the functionality of the insecure devices. When it becomes apparent that massive numbers of them stop working soon after installation, sales will drop through the floor and that is the only thing that will make manufacturers change their behavior.
They're holding it wrong. And charging it wrong. And not paying for the new premium Applecare DoublePlusGood that hasn't been released yet.
While you are correct that the word "open" has been used (some would say misused) that way, the phrase "open source" clearly has a different meaning and refers to making the source available, not just access to an API.
Saudi Arabia has laws banning men from engaging in any form of socializing with any women they aren't married or related to. Public lashing is a common punishment for those offenses, too, so it's not just a few days in jail that he's facing.
The article talks about battery power and long-life food but not climate control, water or sewage.
That's because an entire industry has grown up around scamming survivalists. Whether it's Jim Bakker selling $160 buckets of potato soup (and you can poop in the bucket later!), Glenn Beck's hugely overpriced gold or these guys selling luxury underground bunkers, the goal and method are the same as any other con; gain the mark's confidence using lies and half-truths, then take them for every penny they can get.
Building a bunker that could actually be lived in is secondary to increasing the profit margin, so they skimp on the basic construction and spend a little on cheap frills to hide the deficiencies. That's why the kitchen picture Ultimate Bunker website looks like every piece of shit house that's had superficial improvements done by someone trying to flip it for a profit.
The artwork on Atari 2600 cartridges boxes was never presented as the way the actual game looked and it certainly wasn't a gameplay video that showed things that aren't in the game.
Even the barest minimum fact checking comes up with a Wikipedia article that cites numerous studies:
"Estimates of the total number of humans who have ever lived range in the order of 100 billion. Estimates of this kind cannot hope to give more than the rough order of magnitude, as even modern population estimates are fraught with uncertainties of the order of 3% to 5%. Kapitzka (1996) cites estimates ranging between 80 and 150 billion. Another such estimate was prepared by Haub (1995), updated in 2002 and 2011; the 2011 figure was approximately 107 billion."
But you didn't do even that minimal amount of fact checking, did you?
In other words: Not IT material.
The President of the United States is not an IT job. Despite your delusions of grandeur, your ability to configure an email server does not translate into competence at governing a nation and governing a nation does not require knowing how to configure a email server.
How much wealth are we talking about? If it's enough, I'll be happy to build a "spacecraft" powered by a state of the art ANFO engine, put you in it and "launch" it. I'll need the money up front, of course.
This is looking more accurate every day
skipping the dealer allows the manufacturer to set the price. and they would never fix the price with a defacto monopoly, right?
Stop using words you don't understand.
Allowing an auto manufacturer to sell directly to customers and set prices without a middleman adding to the cost does not create a de facto monopoly. Allowing all of them to sell directly to customers and set prices would not create a de facto monopoly. That phrase means something completely different than what you seem to think it means.
Besides... Tesla already sells vehicles directly to consumers in many markets and sets the prices. Guess what? They don't have a de facto monopoly in those markets. They also haven't colluded with the several dozen other manufacturers who sell cars in the USA to fix prices.
My guess would be Strawmanitoba.
In your eagerness to dismiss my comment, you may have missed the part where the TSA is already engaged in behavioral profiling despite not having any previous baselines to compare people's behavior to. Of course this means it's useless for detecting the emotions of random people in a TSA screening line, but that hasn't stopped the TSA from putting it in place.
Slashdot reader weedjams adds some commentary
Really? Linking tangentially related articles at the end of the summary wasn't retarded enough? Now we're just adding random comments?
Ultimately this will just be another augment to automated monitoring, for use in any place where there is benefit to knowing people's emotions but a cost associated with having a human watch them all the time.
Like the TSA security check points at airports?
The TSA already tries to do behavioral profiling. I could see them jumping all over this as the latest magic cure-all to make up for the incompetence of their screeners who miss 95% of the things they're supposed to be watching for.
Where they found a battery with enough juice to power a GPS (Radio) device for the months required to cross the ocean
Well, that took 5 seconds. The third result of a Google search for "long life GPS cellular tracking (http://digitalmatter.com/Devices/Remora) is a non-descript device which features a 5 year battery life with once-per-day tracking, which seems more than adequate for this. If you don't like that one, the results of that search are filled with others.
through the hull of a ship
The location while in transit across the ocean isn't relevant to this study, so the device doesn't have to transmit through the hull of the ship. It just has to be able to continue transmitting once it's been offloaded at the destination so that the destination can be identified.
then have the GPS unit pass undetected through customs
We're talking about containers stuffed with used and broken electronics being delivered to countries that accept them as garbage to be recycled, so that raises three questions:
1) What the hell makes you think the destination countries have customs agents thoroughly inspecting tons upon tons of incoming garbage?
2) How would these hypothetical garbage-inspecting customs agents identify one particular electronic device buried in a pile of other electronic devices as something unusual?
3) Finally, assuming that there is some government that's willing to accept electronics waste (and all its hazardous components) for recycling, yet somehow still anal-retentive enough to inspect said electronics and wealthy enough to be able to pay for the metric ass load of customs agents it would take to inspect and identify everything in the shipment and determine that the GPS tracking was not broken and was active and somehow magically determine that it's being listened to, why would they care? Tracking shipments is a normal thing for that shipping companies do on a regular basis.
Because there is little oversight or enforcement, a secondary industry of fake editors has popped up to undercut sustainable editing. These "editors," which advertise themselves as green and sustainable, get paid pennies per post about old TVs, computers, printers, and monitors. Rather than edit them domestically, the editing companies sell them to editors in developing nations, either through middlemen or directly. These foreign editors hire low-wage employees to pick through the few valuable components of often toxic old stories.
Wrong.
The actual text of the bill says:
Upon approval of an Attachment Application by an Owner, Pre-Existing Third Party Users shall allow an Attacher, using Preapproved Contractors and at the Attacherâ(TM)s expense, to perform Make Ready by transferring, relocating, rearranging, or altering the Attachments of any Pre-Existing Third Party User to the extent necessary or appropriate to accommodate the Attacherâ(TM)s Attachment.
The law is pro-competition, not just pro-Google. Any company that wants to enter the market gets the exact same benefit. Google is mentioned in the summary only because they're the company trying to enter the market right now.
"Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails."
The guy is already telling the Justice Department what he knows in return for immunity. Reddit isn't accomplishing anything with their amateur-hour 'investigation' other than harassing and stalking stalk one of the key people who is actually helping the investigation.
But I suppose you forgot that part of the summary.