Not hard at all. Any casual study of science will show that since the scientific method was established the scientific community has at times been as blind to new ideas as the Catholic church was during the Middle Ages:
- Theory of plate tectonics
- Theory of evolution
- Vaccinations (in general, until shown that they worked)
- Particle nature of light
- Currently assumed age of the earth (3.2B years, previously believed to be no more than 150M)
- Big bang theory (even its name was derisively coined by an opponent)
There are also many astrophysics examples which escape me at the moment. I recommend a good book on the subject: A Short History of Nearly Everything (http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171) by Bill Bryson
This is why passwords by themselves are fundamentally unsafe. Anyone typing a password "thinks" about the next character they're about to enter just before they type it. If concrete nouns can be can be scanned while the subject is entering the password, things as basic as the letters of the alphabet and the numeric system would be dead ringers for remote password stealing.
Amazing,/. moderation at its moronic finest. Out of dozens of lame responses someone tries to honestly and openly answer the grandparent post and gets modded -1 for no particular reason other than saying anything pro-religious on/. gets you modded to the celler.
Someone with intellectual reasoning ability please mod the parent post up. As for me, do whatever you want: I've got more karma than you've got mod points.
Disclaimer: I don't post much anymore, but I thought I'd drag out this old gem for one last laugh. Back in the day when/. ran interviews more frequently it seemed to sum up everything neatly. I got an email from Taco saying it should go in the/. hall of fame, but we never did get around to setting that up... (Mods, do your thing please. *fingers crossed*)
Dear/. Reader,
Last week we selected [famous name] as an authority in [field] to answer some of your best and brightest questions. We've included [his/her] responses below:
[the I-think-you-are-cool-and-would-like-to-be-like-you question]
1. How did you choose [field] and how can I get more involved in [field].
[famous name] Well, I really started by [...at this point, [famous name] begins to launch into a short autobiography. The reply to this first question will take up about as much space as the other 9 combined.]
[the multi-part question]
2. I think you are really cool. What are you feelings on [topic]?
and how it relates to telescopes
and how it relates to earth
with regard to North America
with regard to Asia
specifically, India and Pakistan
and how it relates to groundhogs
[famous name] Phew! That sure is a lot to answer. Well I guess you could sum it up neatly by saying that, yes, I do like it all.
[the I-also-like-[other-topic]-do-you-think-it's-relate d-to-your-[field] question]
3. I really like your work and am also interested in the whole Napster-Metallica-MP3 debate. How do you think it relates to your scientific [field]?
[famous name] Well, I, well, uh... [at this point, [famous name] is thinking, "Where in the world did that question come from? Oh well, I'll try to be polite and answer it] I really think that, uh, music should be, uh, heard--yeah, heard!--and I think that, uh, well, Napster provides a service of hearing.
[the really-in-depth question]
4. Dear [famous name],
I have tracked your research into biogenetical ESP CIO medicare research with great interested and wondered if you could clarify a minor point for me: in your estimation, are the EIO levels in a controlled AF/BF reaction substantially higher than the CF/DF state because of genetic-electro-magnetic lunar levels or is it mostly from O2 radiation WRT our helial position?
[famous name] [Recognizes a quality question from a member of [field] and tries to formulate a scientific answer] Well, I believe my research has conclusively show that CD/DF states can be generated from the O2 +7/~3KE100 states of the T1000 with ISA/PCI/FBI catalysts [...launches into such arcane detail that no one outside of his research area has any clue what he's talking about.]
[the Score:5, Funny question]
5. What do you think of Natalie Portman eating hot grits in a Boewulf cluster?
[famous name] Uh, well, I'm not really sure what you mean. Wasn't Natilie Portman that actress in Star Wars or something? [[famous name] is now wondering what he's got himself into, and who exactly are these Slashdot people...]
[the your-work-sucks-I-scoff-at-you question]
6. Hey [famous name's first name], I seen you on CNBC and I gotta tell ya, I don't think it's gonna work. I mean, whose to say that you even gradated from MIT in the 1st place? Are we supose to believe that stuff? If ur so smart, how come you haven't figured it out yet?????!!!!!
[famous name] Well I believe we can make this work. I realize we've spent $80 million in research already, but if you look at the data I think you'll see that our work has some definite promise here. The possibilities for science are almost endless!
.
.
.
[more questions. [famous name]'s answers are g
News organizations constantly report million and billion dollar budgets without providing context. On the radio and on TV, for example, the announcer usually takes exceptional care to pause, then spit out the word as if it's a death-defying number: billion.
No one even *knows* what a billion is. Can you conceptualize one billion things? I don't know what a billion is. I can't even fathom it. Anyone who tells you they can is lying. All we know is that a billion is more than a million and less than a trillion.
So, for context, that $60,000,000,000 dollars that was mentioned was for the USA 2005 budget, which was about $2,400,000,000,000.* That's only 2.5% of the budget, and if you're a citizen of the US you'd better hope and pray that your country is spending at least 2% of the budget on intelligence in these times.
* See, you had to think about it for a second to figure out how big that number is. (In newsspeak, that's $2.4 TRILLLLLIIIIONNNN)
That reminds me of the Stone of Scone, as related by a Scottish friend:
When the English were pillaging the Scottish countryside, they came across a fierce Scottish clan.
"You can take our wives, rape our women, take our children, burn our lands," they said, "But please don't take the Stone of Scone!"
The English looked up to the top of the hill and saw the massive Stone of Scone. They shouted jubilantly, "The Stone of Scone is ours FTW!" and carted it back to England.
As soon as they were out of sight the clan elders called out, "Quick! Roll up another Stone of Scone!"
So Verizon charges its 100,000 users $10,000 to get spam text messages, then wins $200,000 from the company that sent the spam? Sounds like a win/win...for Verizon.
I was surprised from the comments here that no one mentioned Crassus or his defeat at Carrhae as possibilities, then I read TFA and it's right in the article itself!
According to accounts of the battle, of a 30,000 strong force, 10,000 were killed, 10,000 survived and 10,000 were captured and either employed as slaves or mercenary labor:
In the end, the great bulk of the Roman army was hunted down and killed or captured. Nearly 20,000 were killed and another 10,000 captured. Of the original force, only about 5,000 men under Cassius, and the cavalry that departed early, managed to escape. The Parthians meanwhile, settled the Roman prisoners in an eastern territory called Sogdia. Interestingly, the Han Chinese later captured this area and the Roman transplants were likely among the first westerners to meet the Chinese directly.
"they will be calling the modified number, where a friendly automated system will record all their details."
Therein lies the rub. If you don't use the original voice talent the people you're trying to scam will immediately know somthing is up.
Having worked with the voice talent that you hear on some major voicemail systems (Lorrain Nelson, who did Merlin and Audix) these kinds of systems don't come cheap. So to set up a phony system you would need to
a) be in cahoots with the voice talent, who are usually reputable people or they wouldn't've got the first contract (or they're employed by the company you're targeting, which make your job harder)
b) pay them $200/hr to set up your phony system
With the number of takes to get this kind of stuff right you could easily spend tens of thou$ands on just that piece, not including the various hackers and servers you need to pay/buy to set up the system.
This kind of attack would be a lot harder to pull off than the headline makes it sound. The devil is usually in the details, though details don't usually sell as many front page headlines.
Having worked in IT for a while, I've found that everyone's data is "invaluable" until they find out what the cost of recovery is.
I remember one person's drive that failed badly. Naturally, he hadn't saved his files to the server. All his data was "priceless," of course, until we got a quote from the recovery service that was about $1,000. On second thought, he said, maybe we could just keep the old hard drive around in case we need something off of it, and then we could send it in.
As it turned out, there was never anything important enough to warrant sending it in.
I'd like to see a phone that can switch to WiFi when it gets a signal, or peer to peer when I'm close to the person I'm calling. Think the carriers want that? There's no technical reason that phones can't do this today,...
No technical reason? I can think of a few. You're talking about a phone that can seamlessly do background roamnig on cellular networks, 802.11 infrastructure, and 802.11 adhoc networks and you think there aren't technical challenges? And I bet that you expect to do it both ways--e.g., start a call on wifi, walk out of your house and continue it on cellular, or vice versa.
I'm certainly no expert on the above issues, but I know enough to know that it's not easy by any means.
How is this managed?
How do you decide when it's safe (because of latency and QoS) to jump off one network onto another?
Which codecs do you choose in which mode?
If one mode supports one codec and you have to change to another codec when you switch networks, will the DSP be able to store multiple codecs or do you have to download them on the fly?
If so, how long will that take?
How about the increased power requirements that will lessen your battery life?
What about the increased chip count on the phones to support all of the above?
And perhaps most importantly, which manufacturers will want to develop and sell a bigger, more expensive phone that gets bad battery life and costs more when they don't have the safety net of a big wireless carrier dangling a purchase order for x million units?
So in short, yeah, I guess there ARE some technical reasons why phones don't do this today.
Was going to mod this insightful until your last sentence. I think I'll jump in here instead...
The problem I have with statements like "withholding freeing knowledge from the populace so that they are more easily controlled" is that they always come up when talking about Tesla. It's like the guy is the ultimate hero of every conspiracy theorist. Whether or not that statement is true isn't my point; my point is that whenever someone brings up Tesla, there's some stereotypical conspiracy theorist who needs to mention that "here was a noble soul who was villaniously downtrodden by the evil corporations of his day."
In some ways it's like the militaristic glorious defeat, or romantic loss. For example, Hannibal's campaign in Italy (and ultimate loss), the Spartan annihlation at Thermopylae, Custer's last stand, etc. There is some set of people that admire losers who lose in romantically noble ways. If Tesla had won at every level and Edisons ideas had lost out, I believe this set of people would post the same theories about Edison instead.
Good. Now maybe people will take these threats seriously. When I started using computers (in the 80's) viruses were a serious threat. People talked about viruses with fear in their voice. These days they're just a nuisance.
Oooh, that virus sends itself to all your buddies in your address book. How TERRIBLE! Wow, a virus pops up windows on your screen even though you didn't ask for it. How NAUGHTY!
When I started using PC's, viruses would wipe out your entire drive. They would delete critical files. They would overwrite your boot sector. They would wipout your FAT table. Now THOSE were some viruses!
Once viruses get back to the level of actual harm, maybe people will stop clicking around willy nilly and will start to invest--on both the corporate and consumer sides--in some real security.
Slashdot Mirror
- Theory of plate tectonics
- Theory of evolution
- Vaccinations (in general, until shown that they worked)
- Particle nature of light
- Currently assumed age of the earth (3.2B years, previously believed to be no more than 150M)
- Big bang theory (even its name was derisively coined by an opponent)
There are also many astrophysics examples which escape me at the moment. I recommend a good book on the subject: A Short History of Nearly Everything (http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171) by Bill Bryson
This is why passwords by themselves are fundamentally unsafe. Anyone typing a password "thinks" about the next character they're about to enter just before they type it. If concrete nouns can be can be scanned while the subject is entering the password, things as basic as the letters of the alphabet and the numeric system would be dead ringers for remote password stealing.
Add &sascs=1 as a POST parameter to the search URL you're on and eBay will remove all the Buy It Now items from the search.
For example:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=palm+vx&category0=&sascs=1
will return a search list with all Palm Vx's on eBay that don't have a Buy It Now option.
Someone with intellectual reasoning ability please mod the parent post up. As for me, do whatever you want: I've got more karma than you've got mod points.
.
As opposed to those videos you saw where someone walked up and pulled out their exploding battery after it caught fire?
Someone mod parent up...hilarious!
Dear /. Reader,
Last week we selected [famous name] as an authority in [field] to answer some of your best and brightest questions. We've included [his/her] responses below:
[the I-think-you-are-cool-and-would-like-to-be-like-you question]
1. How did you choose [field] and how can I get more involved in [field].
[famous name] Well, I really started by [...at this point, [famous name] begins to launch into a short autobiography. The reply to this first question will take up about as much space as the other 9 combined.]
[the multi-part question]
2. I think you are really cool. What are you feelings on [topic]?
and how it relates to groundhogs
[famous name] Phew! That sure is a lot to answer. Well I guess you could sum it up neatly by saying that, yes, I do like it all.
[the I-also-like-[other-topic]-do-you-think-it's-relate d-to-your-[field] question]
3. I really like your work and am also interested in the whole Napster-Metallica-MP3 debate. How do you think it relates to your scientific [field]?
[famous name] Well, I, well, uh... [at this point, [famous name] is thinking, "Where in the world did that question come from? Oh well, I'll try to be polite and answer it] I really think that, uh, music should be, uh, heard--yeah, heard!--and I think that, uh, well, Napster provides a service of hearing.
[the really-in-depth question]
4. Dear [famous name],
I have tracked your research into biogenetical ESP CIO medicare research with great interested and wondered if you could clarify a minor point for me: in your estimation, are the EIO levels in a controlled AF/BF reaction substantially higher than the CF/DF state because of genetic-electro-magnetic lunar levels or is it mostly from O2 radiation WRT our helial position?
[famous name] [Recognizes a quality question from a member of [field] and tries to formulate a scientific answer] Well, I believe my research has conclusively show that CD/DF states can be generated from the O2 +7/~3KE100 states of the T1000 with ISA/PCI/FBI catalysts [...launches into such arcane detail that no one outside of his research area has any clue what he's talking about.]
[the Score:5, Funny question]
5. What do you think of Natalie Portman eating hot grits in a Boewulf cluster?
[famous name] Uh, well, I'm not really sure what you mean. Wasn't Natilie Portman that actress in Star Wars or something? [[famous name] is now wondering what he's got himself into, and who exactly are these Slashdot people...]
[the your-work-sucks-I-scoff-at-you question]
6. Hey [famous name's first name], I seen you on CNBC and I gotta tell ya, I don't think it's gonna work. I mean, whose to say that you even gradated from MIT in the 1st place? Are we supose to believe that stuff? If ur so smart, how come you haven't figured it out yet?????!!!!!
[famous name] Well I believe we can make this work. I realize we've spent $80 million in research already, but if you look at the data I think you'll see that our work has some definite promise here. The possibilities for science are almost endless!
.
.
.
[more questions. [famous name]'s answers are g
News organizations constantly report million and billion dollar budgets without providing context. On the radio and on TV, for example, the announcer usually takes exceptional care to pause, then spit out the word as if it's a death-defying number: billion.
No one even *knows* what a billion is. Can you conceptualize one billion things? I don't know what a billion is. I can't even fathom it. Anyone who tells you they can is lying. All we know is that a billion is more than a million and less than a trillion.
So, for context, that $60,000,000,000 dollars that was mentioned was for the USA 2005 budget, which was about $2,400,000,000,000.* That's only 2.5% of the budget, and if you're a citizen of the US you'd better hope and pray that your country is spending at least 2% of the budget on intelligence in these times.
* See, you had to think about it for a second to figure out how big that number is. (In newsspeak, that's $2.4 TRILLLLLIIIIONNNN)
Yet another type that's already represented? I guess it's not "another type," then.
Maybe he was racing to get his own first post...
That reminds me of the Stone of Scone, as related by a Scottish friend:
When the English were pillaging the Scottish countryside, they came across a fierce Scottish clan.
"You can take our wives, rape our women, take our children, burn our lands," they said, "But please don't take the Stone of Scone!"
The English looked up to the top of the hill and saw the massive Stone of Scone. They shouted jubilantly, "The Stone of Scone is ours FTW!" and carted it back to England.
As soon as they were out of sight the clan elders called out, "Quick! Roll up another Stone of Scone!"
So maybe they should rename it to the Suckustick?
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
- Vonnegut's Blues For America 07 January, 2006 Sunday Herald
Roombas can do stairs. Once. On the way down.
It's actually just the top of the bolt that's holding the planet together. It keeps spinning because the other end is stripped.
Well I for one am really curious to see how they plan on jacking up my body with electronics...
So Verizon charges its 100,000 users $10,000 to get spam text messages, then wins $200,000 from the company that sent the spam? Sounds like a win/win...for Verizon.
One of /.'s best posts ever. No, really.
Papyrus -> Scrolls -> Vellum -> Paper -> Carbon paper -> Electronic printouts -> Electronic displays -> EInk -> Rollable Scrolls
I was surprised from the comments here that no one mentioned Crassus or his defeat at Carrhae as possibilities, then I read TFA and it's right in the article itself!
According to accounts of the battle, of a 30,000 strong force, 10,000 were killed, 10,000 survived and 10,000 were captured and either employed as slaves or mercenary labor:
From http://www.unrv.com/fall-republic/battle-of-carrha e.php:
In the end, the great bulk of the Roman army was hunted down and killed or captured. Nearly 20,000 were killed and another 10,000 captured. Of the original force, only about 5,000 men under Cassius, and the cavalry that departed early, managed to escape. The Parthians meanwhile, settled the Roman prisoners in an eastern territory called Sogdia. Interestingly, the Han Chinese later captured this area and the Roman transplants were likely among the first westerners to meet the Chinese directly.Therein lies the rub. If you don't use the original voice talent the people you're trying to scam will immediately know somthing is up.
Having worked with the voice talent that you hear on some major voicemail systems (Lorrain Nelson, who did Merlin and Audix) these kinds of systems don't come cheap. So to set up a phony system you would need to
a) be in cahoots with the voice talent, who are usually reputable people or they wouldn't've got the first contract (or they're employed by the company you're targeting, which make your job harder)
b) pay them $200/hr to set up your phony system
With the number of takes to get this kind of stuff right you could easily spend tens of thou$ands on just that piece, not including the various hackers and servers you need to pay/buy to set up the system.
This kind of attack would be a lot harder to pull off than the headline makes it sound. The devil is usually in the details, though details don't usually sell as many front page headlines.
Having worked in IT for a while, I've found that everyone's data is "invaluable" until they find out what the cost of recovery is.
I remember one person's drive that failed badly. Naturally, he hadn't saved his files to the server. All his data was "priceless," of course, until we got a quote from the recovery service that was about $1,000. On second thought, he said, maybe we could just keep the old hard drive around in case we need something off of it, and then we could send it in.
As it turned out, there was never anything important enough to warrant sending it in.
No technical reason? I can think of a few. You're talking about a phone that can seamlessly do background roamnig on cellular networks, 802.11 infrastructure, and 802.11 adhoc networks and you think there aren't technical challenges? And I bet that you expect to do it both ways--e.g., start a call on wifi, walk out of your house and continue it on cellular, or vice versa.
I'm certainly no expert on the above issues, but I know enough to know that it's not easy by any means.
And perhaps most importantly, which manufacturers will want to develop and sell a bigger, more expensive phone that gets bad battery life and costs more when they don't have the safety net of a big wireless carrier dangling a purchase order for x million units?
So in short, yeah, I guess there ARE some technical reasons why phones don't do this today.
Was going to mod this insightful until your last sentence. I think I'll jump in here instead...
The problem I have with statements like "withholding freeing knowledge from the populace so that they are more easily controlled" is that they always come up when talking about Tesla. It's like the guy is the ultimate hero of every conspiracy theorist. Whether or not that statement is true isn't my point; my point is that whenever someone brings up Tesla, there's some stereotypical conspiracy theorist who needs to mention that "here was a noble soul who was villaniously downtrodden by the evil corporations of his day."
In some ways it's like the militaristic glorious defeat, or romantic loss. For example, Hannibal's campaign in Italy (and ultimate loss), the Spartan annihlation at Thermopylae, Custer's last stand, etc. There is some set of people that admire losers who lose in romantically noble ways. If Tesla had won at every level and Edisons ideas had lost out, I believe this set of people would post the same theories about Edison instead.
Good. Now maybe people will take these threats seriously. When I started using computers (in the 80's) viruses were a serious threat. People talked about viruses with fear in their voice. These days they're just a nuisance.
Oooh, that virus sends itself to all your buddies in your address book. How TERRIBLE! Wow, a virus pops up windows on your screen even though you didn't ask for it. How NAUGHTY!
When I started using PC's, viruses would wipe out your entire drive. They would delete critical files. They would overwrite your boot sector. They would wipout your FAT table. Now THOSE were some viruses!
Once viruses get back to the level of actual harm, maybe people will stop clicking around willy nilly and will start to invest--on both the corporate and consumer sides--in some real security.