Why couldn't a submarine-hunting drone be a small craft, say, 10 feet long? Such a small craft would be an order of magnitude less expensive, and quicker to produce, than a 130-foot-long vessel.
...if it results in the right outcome? Of course, Mattel is in the business of making money. They responded to criticism. Isn't that what the critics wanted? What's so awful about that?
Of course, a business that uses open source software will be most concerned about bugs that affect it. Isn't that natural? So if he wants the other bugs fixed, he can personally contribute his time to the project, and fix the bugs HE wants fixed! This article looks to me like a simple case of a guy who doesn't agree with his company's priorities, and is venting on the Web.
Just because one piece of evidence was tainted, does not mean that all of the evidence in a case was tainted. Most court cases hinge on many pieces of evidence, some of which is DNA evidence. If the DNA evidence is thrown out, the rest of the evidence still might prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Each case would need to be reviewed to determine the strength of the non-DNA evidence before being thrown out entirely.
That would be a good argument, except for one thing: Amazon owns Internet shopping, Apple does not. That's what anti-trust law is all about: making sure that companies that have a dominant position in the market don't abuse their power.
Apple does have a monopoly on the Apple AppStore. So if Apple decided not to allow any apps that Amazon produces (like Amazon Shopping), then that would be a very similar abuse of Apple's power, the other direction.
The point is, the rules change when you dominate a particular segment of the market. When that happens, it's no longer OK to play hardball with your competition.
The article claims that distributing cars to dealers is expensive. Well, yes, of course. But why would it be cheaper to distribute them if dealerships were company-owned?
The Volkswagen debacle reminds me of a question that's been bothering me for a while now.
I wonder if, when you go to one of those bandwidth test sites and perform a speed test, your ISP notices what you are doing and prioritizes your traffic, to make you think you have more bandwidth than you actually do.
If this is true, do you think people will get as upset with their ISPs as they are getting with Volkswagen, for engineering methods to lie on tests?
Remember the wild west, when you could just pull off the Oregon Trail, build yourself a shack, and call it home? Nobody told you how to build your house, or how big your yard could be. But when you had a visit from a thief, there was no police to call, and if you had a fire, you lost everything. It was up to you to defend your own life at all times.
Sure, life might have been simpler back then. But who would want to go back there?
The Internet is the same story. In the good old days, everything was free for the taking, but it was the wild west. Now the city slickers want to put up fences, and the cowboys want to tear them down. Whether we like it or not, the Internet is changing, becoming more regulated, and some people aren't going to be happy about it.
It's not hard to imagine that there are disagreements and rogue elements within China, even within China's government. There certainly are contradicting practices and policies within the United States! Out of one side of our mouth, we say "torture is horrible and should be banned," while out of the other, we refuse to agree to the Geneva conventions on torture. Why wouldn't we expect China to have similar in-fighting and disagreements? To what extent is this hacking endorsed by their government?
One of the many reasons DNA tests from 23andMe, Ancestry, and Family Tree DNA aren't generally used for lawsuits or criminal cases, is chain of custody. For DNA evidence to hold up in court, the witness providing the evidence must generally be able to swear in court that the DNA sample actually belonged to the person in question, and that control of the physical evidence was maintained at all times. Genealogy-related DNA testing sites simply accept their customers' word that the sample being sent in for analysis, is actually from the person the customer says it was from. This trust of customers works for the companies themselves, but might not be so useful in court.
If you've ever watched Star Trek, you know that every strange phenomenon is an indication that the nebula, or asteroid belt, or whatever...is actually a living, sentient being. Maybe THAT'S what's going on here!
I tried it for a while, but it didn't work well. Once you saw an email notification, for example, it would keep showing it to you anyway. You couldn't choose to exclude notification types JUST from the desktop (without affecting your Chrome or Android notifications). Basically, it was always half-baked.
Really? By definition, a zero-day exploit would affect fully patched versions of anything. Duh! If they had time to patch it to fix the exploit, it wouldn't be zero-day any more, would it!
For most studies of any kind, the margin for error is around +/-3%. For example, a study covering the United States population using a sample size of 1000 will yield a margin of error of 3.1%.
So a study says that texting while driving increases your risk of a fatal crash by 23 times. That sounds like a lot! But hold the phone...the overall rate of traffic fatalities is about 10 per 100,000 people, or about 0.01%. Multiply that by 23, and you get 0.23%. A big change, right? But that 0.23% is still well within the margin for error of most any study.
I'm not saying that texting while driving isn't dangerous. I'm just saying it's a lot harder to prove a link than it would seem.
Still, people are wowed by big multipliers, and news writers love to tout dramatic statistics, whether the subject of the study is economics, medicine, or traffic safety. But if you understand statistics, you know that most of these studies don't really tell us much. It's no wonder we keep getting contradictory study results!
The leaders will still be there, they just won't be recognized as such. It's another way to be politically correct, just by not saying certain taboo words.
I'm reminded of a big soccer league in the Houston area, where they officially do not keep score in any of the games. They want everybody to just play for the enjoyment of the game, and no one to feel inferior to others. But the reality is that everybody not only knows the score, but they know the win-loss record of every team. They just aren't allowed to say it officially.
Zappos, I'm sure, has the same kind of thing going on.
Of course, it's unlikely that there would be a high level language available to engineers to make it quite so readable as above - but hopefully the code illustrates the point.
Actually, most embedded devices these days are programmed using C, C++, Java, JavaScript, or Python, so they probably did actually have a nice, high level language like this to work with.
The author did a good job of explaining how EGR reduces efficiency. But it's not clear to me that additional hardware would have been required to make the cheat work.
Because emissions tests have (up to now) been done on a treadmill, it was necessary for many cars to have a "test mode" already, to prevent problems with electronic stability control systems due to two wheels spinning on the treadmill, while two wheels remained stationary. So test detection would have already been present, for legitimate reasons. Likewise, the EGR system would have needed continuous control for normal operation of the engine.
So while I agree with the premise that many people had to have been involved in engineering the cheat, I'm not sure that additional hardware would have been required.
Slashdot Mirror
Why couldn't a submarine-hunting drone be a small craft, say, 10 feet long? Such a small craft would be an order of magnitude less expensive, and quicker to produce, than a 130-foot-long vessel.
...if it results in the right outcome? Of course, Mattel is in the business of making money. They responded to criticism. Isn't that what the critics wanted? What's so awful about that?
Of course, a business that uses open source software will be most concerned about bugs that affect it. Isn't that natural? So if he wants the other bugs fixed, he can personally contribute his time to the project, and fix the bugs HE wants fixed! This article looks to me like a simple case of a guy who doesn't agree with his company's priorities, and is venting on the Web.
Just because one piece of evidence was tainted, does not mean that all of the evidence in a case was tainted. Most court cases hinge on many pieces of evidence, some of which is DNA evidence. If the DNA evidence is thrown out, the rest of the evidence still might prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Each case would need to be reviewed to determine the strength of the non-DNA evidence before being thrown out entirely.
Since Amazon has decided to play hardball, maybe Google and Apple should yank Amazon's Shopping app for the app stores.
That would be a good argument, except for one thing: Amazon owns Internet shopping, Apple does not. That's what anti-trust law is all about: making sure that companies that have a dominant position in the market don't abuse their power.
Apple does have a monopoly on the Apple AppStore. So if Apple decided not to allow any apps that Amazon produces (like Amazon Shopping), then that would be a very similar abuse of Apple's power, the other direction.
The point is, the rules change when you dominate a particular segment of the market. When that happens, it's no longer OK to play hardball with your competition.
The article claims that distributing cars to dealers is expensive. Well, yes, of course. But why would it be cheaper to distribute them if dealerships were company-owned?
The Volkswagen debacle reminds me of a question that's been bothering me for a while now.
I wonder if, when you go to one of those bandwidth test sites and perform a speed test, your ISP notices what you are doing and prioritizes your traffic, to make you think you have more bandwidth than you actually do.
If this is true, do you think people will get as upset with their ISPs as they are getting with Volkswagen, for engineering methods to lie on tests?
Remember the wild west, when you could just pull off the Oregon Trail, build yourself a shack, and call it home? Nobody told you how to build your house, or how big your yard could be. But when you had a visit from a thief, there was no police to call, and if you had a fire, you lost everything. It was up to you to defend your own life at all times.
Sure, life might have been simpler back then. But who would want to go back there?
The Internet is the same story. In the good old days, everything was free for the taking, but it was the wild west. Now the city slickers want to put up fences, and the cowboys want to tear them down. Whether we like it or not, the Internet is changing, becoming more regulated, and some people aren't going to be happy about it.
It's not hard to imagine that there are disagreements and rogue elements within China, even within China's government. There certainly are contradicting practices and policies within the United States! Out of one side of our mouth, we say "torture is horrible and should be banned," while out of the other, we refuse to agree to the Geneva conventions on torture. Why wouldn't we expect China to have similar in-fighting and disagreements? To what extent is this hacking endorsed by their government?
One of the many reasons DNA tests from 23andMe, Ancestry, and Family Tree DNA aren't generally used for lawsuits or criminal cases, is chain of custody. For DNA evidence to hold up in court, the witness providing the evidence must generally be able to swear in court that the DNA sample actually belonged to the person in question, and that control of the physical evidence was maintained at all times. Genealogy-related DNA testing sites simply accept their customers' word that the sample being sent in for analysis, is actually from the person the customer says it was from. This trust of customers works for the companies themselves, but might not be so useful in court.
I'll think about trying Edge ONLY after it is supported by AdBlock Plus!
If you've ever watched Star Trek, you know that every strange phenomenon is an indication that the nebula, or asteroid belt, or whatever...is actually a living, sentient being. Maybe THAT'S what's going on here!
I tried it for a while, but it didn't work well. Once you saw an email notification, for example, it would keep showing it to you anyway. You couldn't choose to exclude notification types JUST from the desktop (without affecting your Chrome or Android notifications). Basically, it was always half-baked.
Really? By definition, a zero-day exploit would affect fully patched versions of anything. Duh! If they had time to patch it to fix the exploit, it wouldn't be zero-day any more, would it!
Oh, don't be so sure. They'll get Microsoft to update the Print Screen feature so it obeys the DRM also.
For most studies of any kind, the margin for error is around +/-3%. For example, a study covering the United States population using a sample size of 1000 will yield a margin of error of 3.1%.
So a study says that texting while driving increases your risk of a fatal crash by 23 times. That sounds like a lot! But hold the phone...the overall rate of traffic fatalities is about 10 per 100,000 people, or about 0.01%. Multiply that by 23, and you get 0.23%. A big change, right? But that 0.23% is still well within the margin for error of most any study.
I'm not saying that texting while driving isn't dangerous. I'm just saying it's a lot harder to prove a link than it would seem.
Still, people are wowed by big multipliers, and news writers love to tout dramatic statistics, whether the subject of the study is economics, medicine, or traffic safety. But if you understand statistics, you know that most of these studies don't really tell us much. It's no wonder we keep getting contradictory study results!
The leaders will still be there, they just won't be recognized as such. It's another way to be politically correct, just by not saying certain taboo words.
I'm reminded of a big soccer league in the Houston area, where they officially do not keep score in any of the games. They want everybody to just play for the enjoyment of the game, and no one to feel inferior to others. But the reality is that everybody not only knows the score, but they know the win-loss record of every team. They just aren't allowed to say it officially.
Zappos, I'm sure, has the same kind of thing going on.
Don't you wish!
http://www.howtogeek.com/75470...
Of course he could have done that. But what are the odds?
You must be part of the 1%!
Your article explains that Macs are only used at FBI headquarters.
In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware.
Apple products are used by government agencies only on TV. In real life, it's all Windows, mostly Windows XP.
Of course, it's unlikely that there would be a high level language available to engineers to make it quite so readable as above - but hopefully the code illustrates the point.
Actually, most embedded devices these days are programmed using C, C++, Java, JavaScript, or Python, so they probably did actually have a nice, high level language like this to work with.
The author did a good job of explaining how EGR reduces efficiency. But it's not clear to me that additional hardware would have been required to make the cheat work.
Because emissions tests have (up to now) been done on a treadmill, it was necessary for many cars to have a "test mode" already, to prevent problems with electronic stability control systems due to two wheels spinning on the treadmill, while two wheels remained stationary. So test detection would have already been present, for legitimate reasons. Likewise, the EGR system would have needed continuous control for normal operation of the engine.
So while I agree with the premise that many people had to have been involved in engineering the cheat, I'm not sure that additional hardware would have been required.