Out of curiosity, do you think that Red Cross employees are aliens from another planet, or do you think that Red Cross employees in Germany might've been Germans and that they might've sympathized with the Nazis?
If you read the link, you'd know that headquarters knew; They were in Switzerland. They remained silent. It wasn't just those "evil germans".
I'm actually thinking that IBM (a non-German company who helped Germany) and BMW (a German company who built weapons for the Nazis) are actually more culpable for harm done during WW2 than the Red Cross is. (I assume you're still boycotting them.)
Yes, actually.
ersonally, I was pretty annoyed that the Red Cross was offering first aid to Jihadi fighters in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Well, the same could be said about Doctors Without Borders; A life is a life. Unless, apparently, you were Jewish or gay. And that's what I have a problem with; Selective application of ideals. Yeah, they say they've learned their lesson... but have they? The Red Cross has been getting caught in too many controversies even recently... google their hatchet job on the 9/11 donations.
It's just irritating that Slashdot collectively missed the point when they modbombed me, which is this: Let me choose which charities get my money... don't shove it down my throat. It's just poor marketing; A good idea but a bad implimentation. It would be trivial to select which charity at checkout and eliminate the problem... but nobody thought of it.
And apparently, if Slashdot is any indication, there's actually resistance to the idea that someone could object to certain charities. I mean, they're all good, right?:/
There are MMORPG players so into it they forget to eat, and actually die.
Not actually true. It takes weeks to months to die from food deprivation, and at least 3-5 days to die from lack of water... and it doesn't matter how "into" it you are... water deprivation is a powerful need that no addiction can get in the way of. What they die from is lack of sleep and pre-existing medical conditions that result in high blood pressure, blood clots, and similar. They die from systemic shock -- stress to their bodies. And their health is almost invariably already suspect.
I'll second that. I'm a heavy pirate, and the only stufff I get anymore is new movie releases and TV shows because for some incomprehensible reason, they are delayed reaching those services by weeks to over a year... or for things they don't carry in their catalog; For example, Babylon 5 is not available for instant viewing on Netflix.
For $10 a month, I've been fairly satisfied with the service; I wish the quality was better, but that is a limitation of crappy internet service that everyone in the country deals with.
Woah, woah, I'm not implicating the Russian government. I'm just saying that Stuxnet infections are common in Russia. Everyone believes the ISS infection was an accident.
Well, that much is obvious. I'm referring to Stuxnet -- you mentioned the russian contractors at the reactors. I don't think you can blame the Russians for Stuxnet. At least not the original -- obviously some russian hackers have dismantled SN since then and re-engineered it.
The Red Cross knew about the concentration camps in Germany during WWII, but did nothing to help them.
What exactly do you expect them to have done? Send one of their armored divisions to overthrow Hitler?
No, I expect them to have gone to the allied powers, who did have armored divisions and tell them what was going on. The allies arrived in Germany weeks after the landing to find bodies rotting in open air, where the Germans had simply locked all the gates and abandoned them to fate. They could have saved those lives -- and they didn't. They made a choice not to. At no point during the war, until the pictures were on the front pages of all the newspapers and the true horror of what had been going on inside Germany's borders had been revealed, did they pop their head in at Geneva and say "oh yeah, we totally knew about that."
they also won't accept [harbus.org] blood donations from gay men.
Because federal law won't let them.
And I see they're fighting real hard to end that discrimination right now too. Oh wait, they aren't. In fact, they petitioned the FDA to continue it; As it is FDA guideline not federal law that is the administrative body behind the rule.
Cite the 0.0000000016%, otherwise I believe you're pulling a number out of your ass.
You mean like the link I provided to you in my original post that you totally ignored? Let me put it up there for you again: The link you missed.
And let me now quote for you directly from that link, since apparently your left mouse button broke:
The FDA consulted its panel of scientific advisers in September of 2000 about revising the policy regarding MSM disqualification to allow MSM to donate if they have been abstinent for five years, and the panel voted 7-6 against revising the standards. Using a series of statistical assumptions, a panel doctor estimated that potentially 1 or 2 infected units of blood per year could reach the blood supply if the policy were relaxed. The U.S. collects approximately 12 million units of blood per year.
1.5 divided by 12 million equals... wait for it... 0.0(...)016%
Hey, did you know that, in the past and currently, there were complete asshats that did asshat-like things who were part of the gay community, the church, open-source movement, BSA, childsplay, England, AnimalAid, academia, and/or $YOURFAVORITEORGANIZATION?
Yes, I do. But few organizations have made it an institutional priority to discriminate against them, and for those few that have, I take special care in not supporting them. And for the record, I don't worry about whether or not there's discrimination in the charity money I give away... because I go out on the street, find someone who needs help, and then help them. Myself.
Your link says in no uncertain terms: "Unfortunately, documentary evidence is incomplete and leaves room for uncertainty"
A slightly longer quote: "Unfortunately, documentary evidence is incomplete and leaves room for uncertainty. Some conclusions can nevertheless be drawn from the works of historians[...] And later: "there is no doubt that senior ICRC officials had become aware of the genocide by the summer of 1942." and then "it is known of course that the German Red Cross was itself under Nazi control and that its main leaders took part in the persecution and genocide." And the closer: "These actions are not negligible, since every life saved is priceless, but they cannot obscure the fact that, overall, the ICRC's efforts were a failure."
But thanks for quoting the ONLY HALF OF A SENTENCE to support your cracked out position.
That's not really persecution there... Being able to skip-out on blood drives and ditch military conscription seem like POSITIVES to me.
Perhaps not everyone shares your devotion to avoiding civil service and shirking responsibility?
Ron, let me clue you in: When you transport drugs across state lines, it falls under federal law. They can kick your ass so hard your kids will be born dizzy for that; In California, you can go from clean record to life imprisonment thanks to their whack-ass "three strikes" law, because I can think of at least half a dozen federal laws that are being broken from postal regulations to schedule I drug possesion, back to interstate transportation, and all the way across to "How do you plead?"
And even if it is - wouldn't buyers and sellers take precautions to keep their privacy even from the guys (who are very likely criminals) running Silk Road anyway?
You're asking me if people won't be stupid? Heh. Guess the answer. But even if they did, as has been pointed out before, "anonymous" bit coins... well... they aren't really all that anonymous. And there's still that pesky problem of... where do you ship your drugs to?
Ten percent of all purchases will go to vital causes like American Red Cross,
The Red Cross knew about the concentration camps in Germany during WWII, but did nothing to help them. Yes, there's proof. But besides throwing the Jews under the bus, they also won't accept blood donations from gay men. Wait, I know what you're going to say: it's the government and they're just going along with it. But small problem -- They went far above and beyond. They added an arbitrary list of African countries to their no-fly list (cough) without explanation beyond compliance with the aforementioned federal law. Except there's no federal guidelines on that -- they did that on their own initiative. And double discrimination bonus: Most of the people from those countries? Black. Related -- the current justification by the FDA is that removing this barrier and allowing those groups to donate blood would result in an increase in HIV-positive transfusions in.0000000016% of the blood supply. You be the judge there.
Here's the thing guys... there are some organizations I don't want to donate money to. I know you're thinking being charitable with the game purchase is a noble thing (and it is!), but why not let us choose which ones do, and do not, get our money? I will never donate to the Red Cross, and because of your policy, I will now never buy your games. Which is unfortunate, because I'm sure you have a few worth playing.
Stuxnet was delivered to Iran by slipping it onto the equipment of the Russian contractors building the nuclear plant.
Okay, and some of the parts had Made in China stamped on it, but nobody's accusing them of being behind it. This is blaming the Russian government for something that Russian contractors very probably were unaware of having done! They were mules. There's nothing Russian about that. It'd be like me saying when you think of "too big to fail", "wall street", and "subprime mortgage", you should think of Indians, because Goldman Sachs hired a few of them to program the computers.
he other known variant, Flame, is also not found anywhere near Russia,
Holy shit! A targeted virus not replicating outside the target area? STOP THE PRESSES!
implications that it may've come by accident from an attack targeted at a Russian nuclear plant.
Whoa! Someone implied something. STOP THE PRESSES!... Again!
I'm sorry, but when I think Stuxnet, Russia doesn't figure highly into it, and with good reason: There's no credible evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that the Russians were involved. The only thing the Russians are in the news for lately is telling the USA to pucker up and kiss their ass over Snowden, and parading about their gay as shit president -- who runs around shirtless and bareback on horses while proclaiming gays are evil and must be punished. Yeah, there's plenty of really good Russian hackers, motivated mostly by the really crappy economy up there... but a few good hackers does not a conspiracy theory make.
To answer your question - one is controlled entirely by exploit/malware authors and other is not.
Yeeeeah... a difference that's sufficiently important why again? Most computer today don't reboot; they hibernate. It could be days to weeks now before they actually wipe it. Weeks during which, it's hoover-vacing every piece of data you put in your browser. Now, let's be honest -- how much do you really do with your computer if your internet is down?
When you see "Russian", "USB key", "malware" and "SCADA" in a sentence you should automatically think Stuxnet, which TFA talks about at length.
Of all the things the Russians have been accused of, Stuxnet isn't high on the list. It's generally regarded as having come from a joint effort between the United States and Israel.
Stuxnet, happily, only attacks centrifuges,
And since a well-studied and highly innovative piece of malware that has been fully reverse-engineered, I'm sure we can all rest easy knowing nobody will ever come up with a variant that does anything different. Unless of course, it did.
That's... Brilliant! (note: If you don't know Doctor Who, first... why are you here? second... you won't get this joke)
If you feel the need to include an explanation of your reference that's longer than the reference itself, you should really consider a different reference.
Silk Road 1.0 didn't just get shut down. The Feds had complete access to it for months. If you use Silk Road 2.0 and end up in jail, it's your own fault.
The better question here is... why do people think this isn't just a honeypot by the government? You know, like the last one.
Disappears on reboot is a limitation, not a feature
The most sophisticated malware in modern times, Stuxnet, had a built in self-destruct. How is it that a feature that disappears after a certain number of days a feature, but after a reboot not a feature?
If you get root you could always remove payload, if it disappears on its own then it is likely limitation of specific sandbox bypass method.
Small comfort to those who enter their credit card data and then wake up to $-300 dollars, two weeks to pay day, rent due, and not enough gas or food to last. People need to stop being so puritanical about exploits... "Oh, it disappears after reboot, big deal!"... If it manages to do damage, it doesn't matter.
Wait, are you saying that a computer virus can't stop lithium hydroxide from chemically absorbing CO2? What a shitty virus.
No, but I can write one that hacks the SCADA systems into overvolting multiple systems and starting dozens of fires in the ISS, creating a choking, venomous fume that forces everyone into the escape pod and ejects... and then deorbit the damn thing into the nearest populated continent.
That's the concern here. It's not the lives up there we're worried about. It's the ones down here if someone decides to turn the ISS into a few hundred tons of flaming death from the sky... though it's more likely it would simply break and have to be abandoned.
I'd suggest the overreaction is caused by the government's actions.
Going crazy because everyone else did is not the most productive thing to do.
I think at this point it's only safe to assume the worst of the government.
For select versions of "safe", I suppose. But I reiterate my previous point: Going crazy never helps.
It seems pretty black and white to them. There seem to be alarmingly few voices inside the government expressing concern over moving to a police state.
It's not their job. It's up to our elected officials to express concern (or not). Their job is to impliment what the elected officials collectively decide is the course of action to take.
Partisan politics as of late have also convinced me that the only way to fight determined zealots is with equally determination in the opposite direction.
You cannot beat violence with violence. That's how the cycle of violence is born, until it deteriorates into a situation where people have forgotten how the fight started, and they're just responding to attacks, without thought of an exit strategy.
Even if it does endanger some people, I can live with that on my conscience better than I can live with allowing big brother to develop.
I'm sorry, but when terrorists run into our cafes and blow people up to make them part of his/her political statement, we shouldn't respond by running into theirs and doing the same. You don't get to endanger the life and well-being of someone for political reasons. Ever. Period. The. Fucking. End. That's terrorism, and as a society we've said no to that.
There are other, better ways to fight back. Martin Luther King. Ghandi. Students for Democratic Society (before the FBI decided to incite some of them to terrorism and then, surprise!, come in and discredit them). The list goes on. We do not abandon our principles in the face of overwhelming opposition; We must fight back with democracy. We must demand it. And if we don't get it, then we stop contributing. No more taxes. No more working. Steal food, shutter the factories, block up the roads, and grind the entire establishment to a halt until we get truly free elections again, until we can freely assemble without government thugs surrounding us, or watching us through hidden or not so hidden cameras and microphones. We need to organize, as a people, in every community, city, state, county, and we just need to push and push until we get what we bargained for: A democratic society, with human rights, and human dignity.
But we do not get that through violence. Violence is the last resort. It will always ever be in my book. Until someone pulls out a gun, or a tank, or an aircraft carrier, and points it at me and tries to kill me for excercising my human rights, then I will not cross that line. Not once. Not a little. No. Period. But god help them if they cross the line.
The last defense of our freedom is violence. The last. We don't do it because it'd be easier, or because we're angry, or because we're feeling righteous. We do it only when our back is to the wall. When there is no other option and violence is imminent. Then, and only then, as an act of self-defense, do we fight.
Ever always we must show restraint, cool reasoning, and hold to our principles. You cannot beat the police state by going all Rambo on it. That's surrendering. Hell, that's worse than surrendering -- it's abandoning your own principles. Run if you have to, you can't win every fight. But don't just heave the helve in after the hatchet. Fuck...
Look, the holding containers for the radioactive water will have to be decommissioned and then buried, not recycled into scrap. It won't be dangerous to handle over the short term, but it will be a health and safety hazard. My point is that the same water is filtering into the ocean. Over the course of 50 years, that elevated radioactivity will have an effect on any concrete or metal in the water. It's unlikely given the volumes we're talking about that it would be radioactive enough to require a nuclear-decommissioning -- but, it is possible. It really depends on how close to the coast they put it, and the article didn't provide an exact position, so there's no way right now for me, at least, to correlate that with the ocean water samples taken in the area and hazard a guess. Based on limited data, I'd say there's no better than a 1 in 300 chance of any of the components becoming radioactive enough to breach international thresholds. But this is just an educated guess.
Put it another way: You'd have to anchor hundreds of these in the general vicinity before one of them tested positive. My commentary was sarcasm towards the incompetence of the cleanup effort, couched in an amusing visual image. It's just not plausible for it to actually happen; But not impossible either.
Not subtle enough. All you really need to do is drop the O2 Concentration by 2-3 percent while allowing CO2 to increase. Astronauts then make mistake that
Stop. Please. There are independently-alarmed sensors on the ISS in each compartment that check oxygen and Co2 levels, and there are emergency scrubbers present. All they need to do is go to the storage compartment, pull out the cylinder, twist, and let it float there. It will, via chemical reaction, eat up several days worth of Co2. And these people are given oxygen-deprivation training prior to assignment; They're professionals. They will realize the problem even without all those safeguards.
The risk is not to the people, the risk is to the equipment -- those SCADA systems control much of the automated systems on board, including thrusters that control yaw, roll, solar panel angles, etc. If you fuck with those, you could, say, twist up the solar panels like a cork and snap lines. You could disable the stabilization gyros and send the thing into a spin. Or you could just disable them at a key moment and allow the ISS to hit space debris -- it needs to adjusts its orbit on an irregular basis for just this reason. Even just tilting it so it's broadside with the sun and then disabling everything would be enough to bring it down in a few months if control couldn't be re-established... difficult if the thrusters were set to a mode where they burn fuel off as fast as possible at opposing points across the central axis, for example.
No country down here has the ability to rapidly build, assemble, transport, and launch, required repair supplies in time to salvage it if someone were to do this. The ISS would de-orbit. But the risk to the astronauts lives? Low. Risk of damage to property on the ground? Middleish; The world still is mostly ocean afterall.
So... Japan set up a giant radioactive fan offshore and the Philippines gets hit by an incredibly powerful hurricane...
Actually, given the levels of radioactivity in the ocean in the immediate vicinity of the disaster... eventually the giant fan may literally become radioactive. There is a very small chance it may even reach a level of radioactivity that requires special disposal when it is decommissioned; At least the infrastructure anchoring it. But this all assumes that the power company continues at its present rate of incompetence for the next 50 years, and that the Japanese government also continues at its current level of face-saving over the same time period, and that the international community also continues to show a marked lack of regard for the oceans. Okay, so maybe not a very small chance...
Slashdot Mirror
That doesn't change the fact that being excluded from responsibilities is hardly persecution.
And if you're broke, and everyone else can donate plasma or blood for cash and you can't... That's not discriminatory either.
Out of curiosity, do you think that Red Cross employees are aliens from another planet, or do you think that Red Cross employees in Germany might've been Germans and that they might've sympathized with the Nazis?
If you read the link, you'd know that headquarters knew; They were in Switzerland. They remained silent. It wasn't just those "evil germans".
I'm actually thinking that IBM (a non-German company who helped Germany) and BMW (a German company who built weapons for the Nazis) are actually more culpable for harm done during WW2 than the Red Cross is. (I assume you're still boycotting them.)
Yes, actually.
ersonally, I was pretty annoyed that the Red Cross was offering first aid to Jihadi fighters in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Well, the same could be said about Doctors Without Borders; A life is a life. Unless, apparently, you were Jewish or gay. And that's what I have a problem with; Selective application of ideals. Yeah, they say they've learned their lesson... but have they? The Red Cross has been getting caught in too many controversies even recently... google their hatchet job on the 9/11 donations.
It's just irritating that Slashdot collectively missed the point when they modbombed me, which is this: Let me choose which charities get my money... don't shove it down my throat. It's just poor marketing; A good idea but a bad implimentation. It would be trivial to select which charity at checkout and eliminate the problem... but nobody thought of it.
And apparently, if Slashdot is any indication, there's actually resistance to the idea that someone could object to certain charities. I mean, they're all good, right? :/
There are MMORPG players so into it they forget to eat, and actually die.
Not actually true. It takes weeks to months to die from food deprivation, and at least 3-5 days to die from lack of water... and it doesn't matter how "into" it you are... water deprivation is a powerful need that no addiction can get in the way of. What they die from is lack of sleep and pre-existing medical conditions that result in high blood pressure, blood clots, and similar. They die from systemic shock -- stress to their bodies. And their health is almost invariably already suspect.
I'll second that. I'm a heavy pirate, and the only stufff I get anymore is new movie releases and TV shows because for some incomprehensible reason, they are delayed reaching those services by weeks to over a year... or for things they don't carry in their catalog; For example, Babylon 5 is not available for instant viewing on Netflix.
For $10 a month, I've been fairly satisfied with the service; I wish the quality was better, but that is a limitation of crappy internet service that everyone in the country deals with.
Woah, woah, I'm not implicating the Russian government. I'm just saying that Stuxnet infections are common in Russia. Everyone believes the ISS infection was an accident.
Well, that much is obvious. I'm referring to Stuxnet -- you mentioned the russian contractors at the reactors. I don't think you can blame the Russians for Stuxnet. At least not the original -- obviously some russian hackers have dismantled SN since then and re-engineered it.
The Red Cross knew about the concentration camps in Germany during WWII, but did nothing to help them.
What exactly do you expect them to have done? Send one of their armored divisions to overthrow Hitler?
No, I expect them to have gone to the allied powers, who did have armored divisions and tell them what was going on. The allies arrived in Germany weeks after the landing to find bodies rotting in open air, where the Germans had simply locked all the gates and abandoned them to fate. They could have saved those lives -- and they didn't. They made a choice not to. At no point during the war, until the pictures were on the front pages of all the newspapers and the true horror of what had been going on inside Germany's borders had been revealed, did they pop their head in at Geneva and say "oh yeah, we totally knew about that."
they also won't accept [harbus.org] blood donations from gay men.
Because federal law won't let them.
And I see they're fighting real hard to end that discrimination right now too. Oh wait, they aren't. In fact, they petitioned the FDA to continue it; As it is FDA guideline not federal law that is the administrative body behind the rule.
Cite the 0.0000000016%, otherwise I believe you're pulling a number out of your ass.
You mean like the link I provided to you in my original post that you totally ignored? Let me put it up there for you again: The link you missed.
And let me now quote for you directly from that link, since apparently your left mouse button broke:
The FDA consulted its panel of scientific advisers in September of 2000 about revising the policy regarding MSM disqualification to allow MSM to donate if they have been abstinent for five years, and the panel voted 7-6 against revising the standards. Using a series of statistical assumptions, a panel doctor estimated that potentially 1 or 2 infected units of blood per year could reach the blood supply if the policy were relaxed. The U.S. collects approximately 12 million units of blood per year.
1.5 divided by 12 million equals... wait for it... 0.0(...)016%
Hey, did you know that, in the past and currently, there were complete asshats that did asshat-like things who were part of the gay community, the church, open-source movement, BSA, childsplay, England, AnimalAid, academia, and/or $YOURFAVORITEORGANIZATION?
Yes, I do. But few organizations have made it an institutional priority to discriminate against them, and for those few that have, I take special care in not supporting them. And for the record, I don't worry about whether or not there's discrimination in the charity money I give away... because I go out on the street, find someone who needs help, and then help them. Myself.
Your link says in no uncertain terms: "Unfortunately, documentary evidence is incomplete and leaves room for uncertainty"
A slightly longer quote: "Unfortunately, documentary evidence is incomplete and leaves room for uncertainty. Some conclusions can nevertheless be drawn from the works of historians[...] And later: "there is no doubt that senior ICRC officials had become aware of the genocide by the summer of 1942." and then "it is known of course that the German Red Cross was itself under Nazi control and that its main leaders took part in the persecution and genocide." And the closer: "These actions are not negligible, since every life saved is priceless, but they cannot obscure the fact that, overall, the ICRC's efforts were a failure."
But thanks for quoting the ONLY HALF OF A SENTENCE to support your cracked out position.
That's not really persecution there... Being able to skip-out on blood drives and ditch military conscription seem like POSITIVES to me.
Perhaps not everyone shares your devotion to avoiding civil service and shirking responsibility?
Ron, let me clue you in: When you transport drugs across state lines, it falls under federal law. They can kick your ass so hard your kids will be born dizzy for that; In California, you can go from clean record to life imprisonment thanks to their whack-ass "three strikes" law, because I can think of at least half a dozen federal laws that are being broken from postal regulations to schedule I drug possesion, back to interstate transportation, and all the way across to "How do you plead?"
And even if it is - wouldn't buyers and sellers take precautions to keep their privacy even from the guys (who are very likely criminals) running Silk Road anyway?
You're asking me if people won't be stupid? Heh. Guess the answer. But even if they did, as has been pointed out before, "anonymous" bit coins... well... they aren't really all that anonymous. And there's still that pesky problem of... where do you ship your drugs to?
Ten percent of all purchases will go to vital causes like American Red Cross,
The Red Cross knew about the concentration camps in Germany during WWII, but did nothing to help them. Yes, there's proof. But besides throwing the Jews under the bus, they also won't accept blood donations from gay men. Wait, I know what you're going to say: it's the government and they're just going along with it. But small problem -- They went far above and beyond. They added an arbitrary list of African countries to their no-fly list (cough) without explanation beyond compliance with the aforementioned federal law. Except there's no federal guidelines on that -- they did that on their own initiative. And double discrimination bonus: Most of the people from those countries? Black. Related -- the current justification by the FDA is that removing this barrier and allowing those groups to donate blood would result in an increase in HIV-positive transfusions in .0000000016% of the blood supply. You be the judge there.
Here's the thing guys... there are some organizations I don't want to donate money to. I know you're thinking being charitable with the game purchase is a noble thing (and it is!), but why not let us choose which ones do, and do not, get our money? I will never donate to the Red Cross, and because of your policy, I will now never buy your games. Which is unfortunate, because I'm sure you have a few worth playing.
Stuxnet was delivered to Iran by slipping it onto the equipment of the Russian contractors building the nuclear plant.
Okay, and some of the parts had Made in China stamped on it, but nobody's accusing them of being behind it. This is blaming the Russian government for something that Russian contractors very probably were unaware of having done! They were mules. There's nothing Russian about that. It'd be like me saying when you think of "too big to fail", "wall street", and "subprime mortgage", you should think of Indians, because Goldman Sachs hired a few of them to program the computers.
he other known variant, Flame, is also not found anywhere near Russia,
Holy shit! A targeted virus not replicating outside the target area? STOP THE PRESSES!
implications that it may've come by accident from an attack targeted at a Russian nuclear plant.
Whoa! Someone implied something. STOP THE PRESSES! ... Again!
I'm sorry, but when I think Stuxnet, Russia doesn't figure highly into it, and with good reason: There's no credible evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that the Russians were involved. The only thing the Russians are in the news for lately is telling the USA to pucker up and kiss their ass over Snowden, and parading about their gay as shit president -- who runs around shirtless and bareback on horses while proclaiming gays are evil and must be punished. Yeah, there's plenty of really good Russian hackers, motivated mostly by the really crappy economy up there... but a few good hackers does not a conspiracy theory make.
You can write a virus that does all that? You're good.
Don't I know it. I also make a mean omelette.
To answer your question - one is controlled entirely by exploit/malware authors and other is not.
Yeeeeah... a difference that's sufficiently important why again? Most computer today don't reboot; they hibernate. It could be days to weeks now before they actually wipe it. Weeks during which, it's hoover-vacing every piece of data you put in your browser. Now, let's be honest -- how much do you really do with your computer if your internet is down?
o____o
When you see "Russian", "USB key", "malware" and "SCADA" in a sentence you should automatically think Stuxnet, which TFA talks about at length.
Of all the things the Russians have been accused of, Stuxnet isn't high on the list. It's generally regarded as having come from a joint effort between the United States and Israel.
Stuxnet, happily, only attacks centrifuges,
And since a well-studied and highly innovative piece of malware that has been fully reverse-engineered, I'm sure we can all rest easy knowing nobody will ever come up with a variant that does anything different. Unless of course, it did.
That's... Brilliant! (note: If you don't know Doctor Who, first... why are you here? second... you won't get this joke)
If you feel the need to include an explanation of your reference that's longer than the reference itself, you should really consider a different reference.
I am so, so sorry.
*giggles*
Silk Road 1.0 didn't just get shut down. The Feds had complete access to it for months. If you use Silk Road 2.0 and end up in jail, it's your own fault.
The better question here is... why do people think this isn't just a honeypot by the government? You know, like the last one.
Disappears on reboot is a limitation, not a feature
The most sophisticated malware in modern times, Stuxnet, had a built in self-destruct. How is it that a feature that disappears after a certain number of days a feature, but after a reboot not a feature?
If you get root you could always remove payload, if it disappears on its own then it is likely limitation of specific sandbox bypass method.
Small comfort to those who enter their credit card data and then wake up to $-300 dollars, two weeks to pay day, rent due, and not enough gas or food to last. People need to stop being so puritanical about exploits... "Oh, it disappears after reboot, big deal!" ... If it manages to do damage, it doesn't matter.
How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus
The burning question of the hour is... why doesn't he want his 30 day free trial?
That's... Brilliant!
(note: If you don't know Doctor Who, first... why are you here? second... you won't get this joke)
Wait, are you saying that a computer virus can't stop lithium hydroxide from chemically absorbing CO2? What a shitty virus.
No, but I can write one that hacks the SCADA systems into overvolting multiple systems and starting dozens of fires in the ISS, creating a choking, venomous fume that forces everyone into the escape pod and ejects... and then deorbit the damn thing into the nearest populated continent.
That's the concern here. It's not the lives up there we're worried about. It's the ones down here if someone decides to turn the ISS into a few hundred tons of flaming death from the sky... though it's more likely it would simply break and have to be abandoned.
I'd suggest the overreaction is caused by the government's actions.
Going crazy because everyone else did is not the most productive thing to do.
I think at this point it's only safe to assume the worst of the government.
For select versions of "safe", I suppose. But I reiterate my previous point: Going crazy never helps.
It seems pretty black and white to them. There seem to be alarmingly few voices inside the government expressing concern over moving to a police state.
It's not their job. It's up to our elected officials to express concern (or not). Their job is to impliment what the elected officials collectively decide is the course of action to take.
Partisan politics as of late have also convinced me that the only way to fight determined zealots is with equally determination in the opposite direction.
You cannot beat violence with violence. That's how the cycle of violence is born, until it deteriorates into a situation where people have forgotten how the fight started, and they're just responding to attacks, without thought of an exit strategy.
Even if it does endanger some people, I can live with that on my conscience better than I can live with allowing big brother to develop.
I'm sorry, but when terrorists run into our cafes and blow people up to make them part of his/her political statement, we shouldn't respond by running into theirs and doing the same. You don't get to endanger the life and well-being of someone for political reasons. Ever. Period. The. Fucking. End. That's terrorism, and as a society we've said no to that.
There are other, better ways to fight back. Martin Luther King. Ghandi. Students for Democratic Society (before the FBI decided to incite some of them to terrorism and then, surprise!, come in and discredit them). The list goes on. We do not abandon our principles in the face of overwhelming opposition; We must fight back with democracy. We must demand it. And if we don't get it, then we stop contributing. No more taxes. No more working. Steal food, shutter the factories, block up the roads, and grind the entire establishment to a halt until we get truly free elections again, until we can freely assemble without government thugs surrounding us, or watching us through hidden or not so hidden cameras and microphones. We need to organize, as a people, in every community, city, state, county, and we just need to push and push until we get what we bargained for: A democratic society, with human rights, and human dignity.
But we do not get that through violence. Violence is the last resort. It will always ever be in my book. Until someone pulls out a gun, or a tank, or an aircraft carrier, and points it at me and tries to kill me for excercising my human rights, then I will not cross that line. Not once. Not a little. No. Period. But god help them if they cross the line.
The last defense of our freedom is violence. The last. We don't do it because it'd be easier, or because we're angry, or because we're feeling righteous. We do it only when our back is to the wall. When there is no other option and violence is imminent. Then, and only then, as an act of self-defense, do we fight.
Ever always we must show restraint, cool reasoning, and hold to our principles. You cannot beat the police state by going all Rambo on it. That's surrendering. Hell, that's worse than surrendering -- it's abandoning your own principles. Run if you have to, you can't win every fight. But don't just heave the helve in after the hatchet. Fuck...
Yeah...still won't be that bad.
Look, the holding containers for the radioactive water will have to be decommissioned and then buried, not recycled into scrap. It won't be dangerous to handle over the short term, but it will be a health and safety hazard. My point is that the same water is filtering into the ocean. Over the course of 50 years, that elevated radioactivity will have an effect on any concrete or metal in the water. It's unlikely given the volumes we're talking about that it would be radioactive enough to require a nuclear-decommissioning -- but, it is possible. It really depends on how close to the coast they put it, and the article didn't provide an exact position, so there's no way right now for me, at least, to correlate that with the ocean water samples taken in the area and hazard a guess. Based on limited data, I'd say there's no better than a 1 in 300 chance of any of the components becoming radioactive enough to breach international thresholds. But this is just an educated guess.
Put it another way: You'd have to anchor hundreds of these in the general vicinity before one of them tested positive. My commentary was sarcasm towards the incompetence of the cleanup effort, couched in an amusing visual image. It's just not plausible for it to actually happen; But not impossible either.
Not subtle enough. All you really need to do is drop the O2 Concentration by 2-3 percent while allowing CO2 to increase. Astronauts then make mistake that
Stop. Please. There are independently-alarmed sensors on the ISS in each compartment that check oxygen and Co2 levels, and there are emergency scrubbers present. All they need to do is go to the storage compartment, pull out the cylinder, twist, and let it float there. It will, via chemical reaction, eat up several days worth of Co2. And these people are given oxygen-deprivation training prior to assignment; They're professionals. They will realize the problem even without all those safeguards.
The risk is not to the people, the risk is to the equipment -- those SCADA systems control much of the automated systems on board, including thrusters that control yaw, roll, solar panel angles, etc. If you fuck with those, you could, say, twist up the solar panels like a cork and snap lines. You could disable the stabilization gyros and send the thing into a spin. Or you could just disable them at a key moment and allow the ISS to hit space debris -- it needs to adjusts its orbit on an irregular basis for just this reason. Even just tilting it so it's broadside with the sun and then disabling everything would be enough to bring it down in a few months if control couldn't be re-established... difficult if the thrusters were set to a mode where they burn fuel off as fast as possible at opposing points across the central axis, for example.
No country down here has the ability to rapidly build, assemble, transport, and launch, required repair supplies in time to salvage it if someone were to do this. The ISS would de-orbit. But the risk to the astronauts lives? Low. Risk of damage to property on the ground? Middleish; The world still is mostly ocean afterall.
Okay that's going to cause some confusion, because in Soviet Russia, vacuum sucks you.
That's nothing. In Soviet America internet browses you! And apparently Soviet Britain too, given the post earlier today. :\
So... Japan set up a giant radioactive fan offshore and the Philippines gets hit by an incredibly powerful hurricane...
Actually, given the levels of radioactivity in the ocean in the immediate vicinity of the disaster... eventually the giant fan may literally become radioactive. There is a very small chance it may even reach a level of radioactivity that requires special disposal when it is decommissioned; At least the infrastructure anchoring it. But this all assumes that the power company continues at its present rate of incompetence for the next 50 years, and that the Japanese government also continues at its current level of face-saving over the same time period, and that the international community also continues to show a marked lack of regard for the oceans. Okay, so maybe not a very small chance...