Reluctantly, I am beginning to think that maybe "hacker" will come to mean "black hat" (as a secondary or maybe primary meaning), just through overwhelming usage. After all, most of us in the computer world grew up referring to "data" as a singular, even though we know it's originally a plural.
Indeed. From the Greek meaning a steersman, first widely used after Norbert Wiener wrote a book about cybernetics - the science of control mechanisms.
Second big wave of popularity came when William Gibson - who by his own admission did not know what a modem was at the time - wrote his brilliant SF novel "Neuromancer" which featured "cyberspace" - a kind of imagined virtual reality many years ahead of today's state of the art. Gibson's cyberspace had virtually nothing to do with the Internet or the Web. One nice aspect of Gibson's cyberspace was that security software ("ice") could actually electrocute or otherwise harm users who tried to intrude where they were not allowed while "jacked in".
As gweihir points out, we can be grateful that the use of "cyber-" anything in connection with the Internet or the Web is a reliable clue that the speaker (or writer) knows little about the subject.
"Britain is significantly increasing its ability to wage war in cyberspace..."
Translation: "to fuck up the Internet"
"... with the creation of a new offensive cyber force of up to 2,000 personnel..."
Who will apparently sit at computers and argue (futilely) with anyone they discover telling the truth on the Web. Or, if decision-makers in London are insane enough, try to damage Russian equipment and harm Russian people by screwing with their computer systems.
After all, what's to lose? It would take Russia all of half an hour and up to five per cent of its strategic warheads to render the entire UK permanently uninhabitable.
At least LOC gives us a rough estimate of how much work has been done writing source code. Of course it may be bad code, or completely wasted, and of course it must be calibrated by the language used.
The problem IMHO is not the use of LOC but the foolish assumptions some people make based on that metric.
The win is not just "symbolic", although its benefits are limited.
Of course the court can do nothing to enforce its rulings.
BUT every time a judgment like this is handed down, one more layer of deception and hypocrisy is stripped away from those who like to claim that they operate a "democratic" government, that they "support human rights", and that they "love liberty".
By ignoring such court rulings, they are forced to admit that they care nothing for freedom, democracy, or even the rule of law itself. That they are self-interested, violent, unprincipled bandits.
I wonder how many contributors to this thread are aware that, until the 19th century, China and India were far and away the world's dominant economic powers?
That would certainly help to explain why China remains completely unable to build enormous modern cities, high-speed trains, hypersonic missiles, supercomputers, satellites, etc.
The root cause of almost all the problems of pollution, resource exhaustion and crowding is simple: too many human beings sharing a planet that could comfortably and sustainably support one, or maybe two billion.
It's very easy to wave arms and make facile comments about how foolish Malthus was - but, in principle, he was completely right. Thanks (perhaps) to human ingenuity, we have staved off the moment of crisis for a few decades. But perhaps the final consequence will just be a far worse collapse.
Think. As population grows, the need for food obviously grows with it. So does the amount of manufactured objects and services demanded by the larger population. Which is mainly responsible for higher CO2 levels? It's hard to say; but one thing can be said with certainty. If the human population were still one billion (or three billion even) we would not have most of these problems.
Why are crops getting poorer in vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients? Largely because too many harvests are being taken out of a fixed area under cultivation. The Green Revolution produced much greater yields - with generous application of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides - but the soil can only produce nutrients at a given rate. Quadruple the weight of your annual harvest, and pretty soon you have sucked most of the vitamins and minerals out of the fields. After the food is eaten, anything left over goes down the sewer and is lost. It definitely doesn't go back on the land, as animal and human manure used to.
For a little more information, I suggest reading Philip Lymberry's "Farmageddon" and Richard Manning's "Against the Grain".
How is it, that supposedly grown-up people use childish concepts like being "offended" anyway?
I think that this syndrome is usually misunderstood. It's not really about people's "hurt feelings" - it's about their absolute need to control and dominate other people.
That's one of the primary human instincts, and no matter what laws, customs or conventions are devised, it will spring up right through them like bamboo shoots in a garden.
"Directly Man has his most elementary material wants, the first aspiration of his amiable heart is for the privilege of being able to look down on his neighbours".
- Lord Robert Cecil
The current politically correct prohibition of sexism and racism (as defined by those who claim to be offended) provides perfect examples of how, by a kind of social ju-jitsu, the supposedly weaker manage to assert their power over the supposedly stronger. From the earliest times, sex has always been a form of asymmetric warfare. The men were big, hairy, ugly and smelly, and they had the muscle power. In response, the women developed subtler means of getting what they wanted (or at least some of it), using such methods as "divide and conquer" and shaming.
Human mating rituals are endlessly fascinating because they are so enormously complex and sophisticated. No wonder the Sheldon Coopers of this world prefer nuclear physics or computing, because they are so much simpler than trying to work out what other people are thinking and feeling, what they want and how they are trying to get it, and how we can use that to get what we want. It's a plausible theory that the "big brain" evolved mainly in order to cope with thorny problems like that - after which inventing fire, cooking, the wheel, writing and other trivial stuff like computers and spaceships looked relatively easy.
But since we all know that the NSA (and presumably other agencies among the alphabet soup) can make any attack look as if it was carried out by any chosen foreign nation, any foreign nation can now attack the USA in the certainty that no one can prove it was them - rather than the NSA trying to frame them with a false flag. (Although of course you could take the US government's word for it, because it never tells lies).
In the first place, all such self-denying laws and regulations are honoured in the breech. They look good to the peasants and the outside world, but the executive agencies simply ignore them when they are inconvenient. For many years there was a presidential policy against assassinating foreign leaders! During which period countless such plots were hatched and carried out - with occasional success.
In the second place, there is only one real deterrent to using any weapon against foreign powers - retaliation. The USA has by far the biggest and most fragile house of cards when it comes to IT infrastructure. Americans are living in the largest, most elaborate glasshouse ever constructed, so it wouldn't be smart for them to start throwing rocks at people who live in mud huts or concrete blockhouses. (And who have plenty of nice big rocks to throw back).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I work as a cyber assistant for a 3 letter agency so the term is well known.
Thanks for confirming our suspicions.
Reluctantly, I am beginning to think that maybe "hacker" will come to mean "black hat" (as a secondary or maybe primary meaning), just through overwhelming usage. After all, most of us in the computer world grew up referring to "data" as a singular, even though we know it's originally a plural.
Indeed. From the Greek meaning a steersman, first widely used after Norbert Wiener wrote a book about cybernetics - the science of control mechanisms.
Second big wave of popularity came when William Gibson - who by his own admission did not know what a modem was at the time - wrote his brilliant SF novel "Neuromancer" which featured "cyberspace" - a kind of imagined virtual reality many years ahead of today's state of the art. Gibson's cyberspace had virtually nothing to do with the Internet or the Web. One nice aspect of Gibson's cyberspace was that security software ("ice") could actually electrocute or otherwise harm users who tried to intrude where they were not allowed while "jacked in".
As gweihir points out, we can be grateful that the use of "cyber-" anything in connection with the Internet or the Web is a reliable clue that the speaker (or writer) knows little about the subject.
https://www.xkcd.com/386/
"Britain is significantly increasing its ability to wage war in cyberspace..."
Translation: "to fuck up the Internet"
"... with the creation of a new offensive cyber force of up to 2,000 personnel..."
Who will apparently sit at computers and argue (futilely) with anyone they discover telling the truth on the Web. Or, if decision-makers in London are insane enough, try to damage Russian equipment and harm Russian people by screwing with their computer systems.
After all, what's to lose? It would take Russia all of half an hour and up to five per cent of its strategic warheads to render the entire UK permanently uninhabitable.
"... Sky News understands..."
Vanishingly unlikely
Corporations don't acknowledge debts, or feel gratitude. Any more than sharks or crocodiles do.
What's a good alternative? Serious answer.
Function points?
At least LOC gives us a rough estimate of how much work has been done writing source code. Of course it may be bad code, or completely wasted, and of course it must be calibrated by the language used.
The problem IMHO is not the use of LOC but the foolish assumptions some people make based on that metric.
http://www.sott.net/image/s15/...
The win is not just "symbolic", although its benefits are limited.
Of course the court can do nothing to enforce its rulings.
BUT every time a judgment like this is handed down, one more layer of deception and hypocrisy is stripped away from those who like to claim that they operate a "democratic" government, that they "support human rights", and that they "love liberty".
By ignoring such court rulings, they are forced to admit that they care nothing for freedom, democracy, or even the rule of law itself. That they are self-interested, violent, unprincipled bandits.
I wonder how many contributors to this thread are aware that, until the 19th century, China and India were far and away the world's dominant economic powers?
They also have more english speakers.
Is that taking into account Chinese speakers' superior grammar, spelling, punctuation, accent and familiarity with English literature?
That would certainly help to explain why China remains completely unable to build enormous modern cities, high-speed trains, hypersonic missiles, supercomputers, satellites, etc.
Those Muslim concentration / re-education camps are well run enough to make Hitler blush in hell.
Have you even one credible source for that smear?
"DARPA announced a $2 billion investment to push the frontier of AI forward".
Well, I suppose it's (maybe) a better investment than staring at goats...
Hello my Russian friend. You should declare your interest as a paid Kremlin sockpuppet before posting here. It's only fair.
Said the AC who was afraid to reveal his own identity - and could be literally anyone.
Yeah. CO2 stimulates faster plant growth, thus accelerating the depletion of the fixed amounts of minerals in the soil.
The root cause of almost all the problems of pollution, resource exhaustion and crowding is simple: too many human beings sharing a planet that could comfortably and sustainably support one, or maybe two billion.
It's very easy to wave arms and make facile comments about how foolish Malthus was - but, in principle, he was completely right. Thanks (perhaps) to human ingenuity, we have staved off the moment of crisis for a few decades. But perhaps the final consequence will just be a far worse collapse.
Think. As population grows, the need for food obviously grows with it. So does the amount of manufactured objects and services demanded by the larger population. Which is mainly responsible for higher CO2 levels? It's hard to say; but one thing can be said with certainty. If the human population were still one billion (or three billion even) we would not have most of these problems.
Why are crops getting poorer in vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients? Largely because too many harvests are being taken out of a fixed area under cultivation. The Green Revolution produced much greater yields - with generous application of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides - but the soil can only produce nutrients at a given rate. Quadruple the weight of your annual harvest, and pretty soon you have sucked most of the vitamins and minerals out of the fields. After the food is eaten, anything left over goes down the sewer and is lost. It definitely doesn't go back on the land, as animal and human manure used to.
For a little more information, I suggest reading Philip Lymberry's "Farmageddon" and Richard Manning's "Against the Grain".
How is it, that supposedly grown-up people use childish concepts like being "offended" anyway?
I think that this syndrome is usually misunderstood. It's not really about people's "hurt feelings" - it's about their absolute need to control and dominate other people.
That's one of the primary human instincts, and no matter what laws, customs or conventions are devised, it will spring up right through them like bamboo shoots in a garden.
"Directly Man has his most elementary material wants, the first aspiration of his amiable heart is for the privilege of being able to look down on his neighbours".
- Lord Robert Cecil
The current politically correct prohibition of sexism and racism (as defined by those who claim to be offended) provides perfect examples of how, by a kind of social ju-jitsu, the supposedly weaker manage to assert their power over the supposedly stronger. From the earliest times, sex has always been a form of asymmetric warfare. The men were big, hairy, ugly and smelly, and they had the muscle power. In response, the women developed subtler means of getting what they wanted (or at least some of it), using such methods as "divide and conquer" and shaming.
Human mating rituals are endlessly fascinating because they are so enormously complex and sophisticated. No wonder the Sheldon Coopers of this world prefer nuclear physics or computing, because they are so much simpler than trying to work out what other people are thinking and feeling, what they want and how they are trying to get it, and how we can use that to get what we want. It's a plausible theory that the "big brain" evolved mainly in order to cope with thorny problems like that - after which inventing fire, cooking, the wheel, writing and other trivial stuff like computers and spaceships looked relatively easy.
Apparently, NSA has hired the TSA to search crotches and anuses of everyone leaving the premises now.
Well, that is their strength.
Mon plaisir. Merci bien! 8-)
Plastic is inert.
So is cyanide. So is arsenic. So is mercury.
What's your point?
In the context of this thread, I meant "any US president".
One good enough reason:
https://chomsky.info/1990____-...
I'll preface this comment by I'm not a huge President Trump supporter.
Anyone who is a huge "President Anyone" supporter needs serious medication.
But since we all know that the NSA (and presumably other agencies among the alphabet soup) can make any attack look as if it was carried out by any chosen foreign nation, any foreign nation can now attack the USA in the certainty that no one can prove it was them - rather than the NSA trying to frame them with a false flag. (Although of course you could take the US government's word for it, because it never tells lies).
They think they're clever, but they're not.
In the first place, all such self-denying laws and regulations are honoured in the breech. They look good to the peasants and the outside world, but the executive agencies simply ignore them when they are inconvenient. For many years there was a presidential policy against assassinating foreign leaders! During which period countless such plots were hatched and carried out - with occasional success.
In the second place, there is only one real deterrent to using any weapon against foreign powers - retaliation. The USA has by far the biggest and most fragile house of cards when it comes to IT infrastructure. Americans are living in the largest, most elaborate glasshouse ever constructed, so it wouldn't be smart for them to start throwing rocks at people who live in mud huts or concrete blockhouses. (And who have plenty of nice big rocks to throw back).