The card they use in the video doesn't appear to be a real passport, only the chip (that may or may not have been removed from a password). Even if what they did is illegal, I would be extremely suprised if anyone involved were to end up in prison, although they may be fined, especially if they got the chip out of a real passport (like you suggested).
Actually, the Dutch don't own a little piece of Cuba, so no need to panic. Also, laws are relatively sane, so I doubt the people who did this are going to get in trouble, especially since the copied passpart is so obviously fake, and merely proof-of-concept instead of something to be used in an evil plot to take over the world.
> Most of the malware is set up to trick the user, such as fake e-cards sent on her birthday (which is how my wife got infected with a virus/spambot pack that included the Windows AV 2008 trojan + ransomware - I wonder if the date was harvested from somewhere...)
Might have been harvested, then again, when you spam millions of people, 1 out of every 365 getting infected isn't that bad, so any date will do, and maybe your wife just got 'lucky'.
> Now that I've evenly offended pretty much everyone
I was going to complain about how my country isn't on the list, but then I realized its very omission was offending me, implying it is small and insignificant. Sir, I must congratulate you on finding such an extremely concise way of offending the dutch.
> What do you think of the Chinese practice of executing prisoners with a bullet to the head, so that no vital organs are damaged, allowing them to be transplanted to faithful Party hacks, or people willing to pony up the money for them? Would you be cool with the US government doing the same thing? After all, the guy's going to be killed anyway; It's RECYCLING!!!111eleventy
I don't live in the US so I really don't care either way, but if a criminal who has been sentenced to death is willing to donate his organs, by all means kill him in a way that does not damage the organs. The problem is that when a criminal admits he is willing to donate organs, a jury might be more willing to say he's guilty, especially if they have friends or family who need a new organ... if you know a suspected murderers organs might save your sick child, your 'reasonable doubt' might be less than impressive.
Best avoid situations where people have something to gain by sentencing people to death.
> The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
Either the universe is predictable to some degree, or it isn't. If it is, then it makes sense to collect data and try to use that data to make predictions. If it isn't, then we lose whatever we do. If we don't know wether the universe is predictable, it still makes sense act like it is predictable, since we don't have anything to lose when it isn't, and much to gain if it is.
Off course one can still be wrong. Maybe this universe isn't predictable at all, it only appears to be predictable, and when I hit 'submit', every person who can lick their own nose and is at least 30 years of age is going to transform into a pink balloon (being unable to lick my nose and still in my twenties, I find this risk acceptable...).
I think the rational (assuming rational behavior is to take the optimal course of action based on the available data) thing to do is to try and reach conclusions, based on axioms that appear to hold true (and replace these axioms when better ones are found), even if they might actually be false, or their 'true-ness' can never be known with absolute certainty.
To sit and do nothing because your axioms *might* be false is certainly NOT the optimal course of action.
> There is no such thing as Truth. We all cling to illusions. You just think your illusion is superior to theirs.
You do realise that your statement invalidates itself? If there is no such thing as truth and everything is an illusion, then so is your statement.
Could it be that you are trying to say that we all have models of the world around us and some of those models model the real world more accurately than others, but not one of them is 100% correct? Because having an inaccurate model of the world isn't really a problem when acknowledge that it isn't perfect (and can make a rough estimate of how imperfect it is) and are willing to correct your model when more data is available.
Damn it seems I invented science.
Re:I really want a copy of this...
on
Clean Code
·
· Score: 1
Once again someone proves that a little maths knowledge can have huge advantages.
Yay for making me feel stupid though:(
Re:I really want a copy of this...
on
Clean Code
·
· Score: 1
> Unless you combine it with the theory of evolution and the observation that we are the only intelligent species in the unvierse.
So you combine the theory of evolution with the big bang theory and a nonexistant observation and conclude that we are special? I think you lost me there.
Would you mind explaining why? The big bang theory does not in any way suggest that we are 'special', and it is not in contradiction with any observations as far as I know.
Where I come from we grade from 1.0 to 10. A 6 (usually effectively a 5.5, which gets rounded to a 6) is good enough to pass. The great thing about this system is that you know how much you are failing.
He does appear to out-karma you. If his usual commentary is worse than 'trolling typos', and his comments are better than yours (he has more karma), what does that make you?
Since the students didn't own the computer (actually, the article doesn't mention this (or I missed it), but I guess it is a safe assumption), I can't blame them for not caring about the popups. Also, you can't really go wrong with a popup that only offers clicking 'Ok' as an option. I'd be more worried if the users didn't read popups that DID offer a choice (This webpage is trying to install EVIL.exe, Allow/Deny?) while working on their OWN computers.
> As for false positives - anyone who is ill will show higher-than-normal heat, as will anyone who has gone jogging or exercising.
Surely a terrorist will be able to obtain drugs that reduce stress and/or body temperature? Those things aren't that expensive and you only need to use them once (and, depending on your evil plan, long term health effects may be ignored).
Even if it leaks slowly over the next few million years, global warming over such a period is much easier to adapt to than global warming over the next 100 years.
Slashdot Mirror
The card they use in the video doesn't appear to be a real passport, only the chip (that may or may not have been removed from a password). Even if what they did is illegal, I would be extremely suprised if anyone involved were to end up in prison, although they may be fined, especially if they got the chip out of a real passport (like you suggested).
Actually, the Dutch don't own a little piece of Cuba, so no need to panic. Also, laws are relatively sane, so I doubt the people who did this are going to get in trouble, especially since the copied passpart is so obviously fake, and merely proof-of-concept instead of something to be used in an evil plot to take over the world.
> Most of the malware is set up to trick the user, such as fake e-cards sent on her birthday (which is how my wife got infected with a virus/spambot pack that included the Windows AV 2008 trojan + ransomware - I wonder if the date was harvested from somewhere...)
Might have been harvested, then again, when you spam millions of people, 1 out of every 365 getting infected isn't that bad, so any date will do, and maybe your wife just got 'lucky'.
> Now that I've evenly offended pretty much everyone
I was going to complain about how my country isn't on the list, but then I realized its very omission was offending me, implying it is small and insignificant. Sir, I must congratulate you on finding such an extremely concise way of offending the dutch.
I don't support it, but if ones country insists on using it (mine doesn't) one might as well harvest organs.
> infanticide will be our greatest downfall
Elaborate.
> What do you think of the Chinese practice of executing prisoners with a bullet to the head, so that no vital organs are damaged, allowing them to be transplanted to faithful Party hacks, or people willing to pony up the money for them? Would you be cool with the US government doing the same thing? After all, the guy's going to be killed anyway; It's RECYCLING!!!111eleventy
I don't live in the US so I really don't care either way, but if a criminal who has been sentenced to death is willing to donate his organs, by all means kill him in a way that does not damage the organs. The problem is that when a criminal admits he is willing to donate organs, a jury might be more willing to say he's guilty, especially if they have friends or family who need a new organ... if you know a suspected murderers organs might save your sick child, your 'reasonable doubt' might be less than impressive.
Best avoid situations where people have something to gain by sentencing people to death.
You could just have had 1 instead of 3 or 4.
Are there ANY theories that do not rely on axioms, and is an axiom always dogmatic?
How do you define 'rational' and 'a rational theory'?
I'll be expecting the inquisition!
> The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
Either the universe is predictable to some degree, or it isn't. If it is, then it makes sense to collect data and try to use that data to make predictions. If it isn't, then we lose whatever we do. If we don't know wether the universe is predictable, it still makes sense act like it is predictable, since we don't have anything to lose when it isn't, and much to gain if it is.
Off course one can still be wrong. Maybe this universe isn't predictable at all, it only appears to be predictable, and when I hit 'submit', every person who can lick their own nose and is at least 30 years of age is going to transform into a pink balloon (being unable to lick my nose and still in my twenties, I find this risk acceptable...).
I think the rational (assuming rational behavior is to take the optimal course of action based on the available data) thing to do is to try and reach conclusions, based on axioms that appear to hold true (and replace these axioms when better ones are found), even if they might actually be false, or their 'true-ness' can never be known with absolute certainty.
To sit and do nothing because your axioms *might* be false is certainly NOT the optimal course of action.
> There is no such thing as Truth. We all cling to illusions. You just think your illusion is superior to theirs.
You do realise that your statement invalidates itself? If there is no such thing as truth and everything is an illusion, then so is your statement.
Could it be that you are trying to say that we all have models of the world around us and some of those models model the real world more accurately than others, but not one of them is 100% correct? Because having an inaccurate model of the world isn't really a problem when acknowledge that it isn't perfect (and can make a rough estimate of how imperfect it is) and are willing to correct your model when more data is available.
Damn it seems I invented science.
Once again someone proves that a little maths knowledge can have huge advantages.
Yay for making me feel stupid though :(
> int sum(int n) {
> if(!n) return 0;
> return sum(n-1) + n;
> }
Why do people insist on using recursion in stupid places?!
Do something like:
int sum(int n) {
int result = 0;
while(n > 0)
result += n--;
return result;
}
It's way faster since it doesn't have to go crazy with the stack. Also, it isn't harder to understand.
Somewhat related, one of my peeves is using recursion to calculate factorials. Grrrrr.
> Unless you combine it with the theory of evolution and the observation that we are the only intelligent species in the unvierse.
So you combine the theory of evolution with the big bang theory and a nonexistant observation and conclude that we are special? I think you lost me there.
Would you mind explaining why? The big bang theory does not in any way suggest that we are 'special', and it is not in contradiction with any observations as far as I know.
Ah, an expert witness! But sir, I question your impartiality. Dear jury, this man has karma to gain!
Where I come from we grade from 1.0 to 10. A 6 (usually effectively a 5.5, which gets rounded to a 6) is good enough to pass. The great thing about this system is that you know how much you are failing.
There was no 'Yes' option either. There was only 1 button and it said 'Ok'.
http://arstechnica.com/news.media/FakeDialog.png
Actually, since both Allow and Cancel are a non sequitur in that context, they are both equally (in)valid.
He does appear to out-karma you. If his usual commentary is worse than 'trolling typos', and his comments are better than yours (he has more karma), what does that make you?
Since the students didn't own the computer (actually, the article doesn't mention this (or I missed it), but I guess it is a safe assumption), I can't blame them for not caring about the popups. Also, you can't really go wrong with a popup that only offers clicking 'Ok' as an option. I'd be more worried if the users didn't read popups that DID offer a choice (This webpage is trying to install EVIL.exe, Allow/Deny?) while working on their OWN computers.
> As for false positives - anyone who is ill will show higher-than-normal heat, as will anyone who has gone jogging or exercising.
Surely a terrorist will be able to obtain drugs that reduce stress and/or body temperature? Those things aren't that expensive and you only need to use them once (and, depending on your evil plan, long term health effects may be ignored).
Even if it leaks slowly over the next few million years, global warming over such a period is much easier to adapt to than global warming over the next 100 years.