While I understand the philosophy of this approach, the problem I see with it is that without markings then you have removed all indications of who has the right of way. When something does happen, and it will, who is found at fault? What do you say to the person driving down the middle of the road? And if a pedestrian crossing just anywhere on a road does get hit, how do you place blame, or do you just automatically place blame on the driver independent of the situation, like the pedestrian stepping out from between cars into an active road? How about a busier street at commute time with cars trying to enter from a side street who find it almost impossible without jamming their car out in front of someone else, and that causing an accident? That is what signals were designed for. And I don't even want to think what happens near a school at the beginning or end of the school day.
No-IP domains are used 93 percent of the time for Bladabindi-Jenxcus infections, which are the most prevalent among the 245 different types of malware currently exploiting No-IP domains.
[Emphasis Mine]
So, Microsoft is alleging that No-IP is assisting (presumably knowingly) in the distribution of malware and that 93% of No-IP's domains are vehicles for malware distribution. Is this true?
While the wording is a little awkward, I think it says that in 93% of the infection cases No-IP was used by the infection author, not that 93% of No-IP domains are used for malware.
To use a car analogy (all statistics completely made up), it would be more like saying Dodge Chargers are used 25% of the time for drive-by shootings. This doesn't mean that 25% of Dodge Chargers are used in drive-bys.
You are not required to take a drug test to get a clearance, though most or all of the employers that need people with TS clearances have company policies that require a drug test. I think you are confusing who asked for the test and why.
Let me summarize: if you are a federal employee then you are a civil servant and paid according to the GS (General Service) scale. This is what people mean when they say someone is a GS-12 or GS-15. These scales are published by the US Office of Personnel Management and dictated by the President or by Congress. Unfortunately, these pay levels are below what a decent cybersecurity person expects to be paid, and do not compete with private industry. The result is that the cybersecurity people in federal positions are there either because of a sense of duty, or because they didn't cut it in the private sector. This is the classic image of a postal worker. In order to attract better candidates, they need to be paid better which means exempting them from the GS schedule. This is also why a lot of agencies use contractors for these positions because they can pay a contractor a lot more than an employee and thereby get better people in the job.
Yes, I know I have greatly simplified certain details, but that covers the basics of the problem.
I have a concern about the passcode issue. With phones now often using fingerprint readers or facial recognition, it is no longer sufficient to tell the officer "no" when he says give him the unlock code, since he can put your finger on the button or face up to the camera. Viola, the phone is now unlocked anyway.
Banning this is communism!
This is the free market at work.
Standard Oil crushing their competition by offering gas at below cost was "free market". Microsoft refusing to license Windows to a vendor unless they not offer other operating systems was "free market". Stock traders creating derivatives that collapsed the housing market was "free market". Slave traders were "free market". The term "free market" can be interpreted as meaning allowing a person to do any business deal without interference from the government, whether morally right or not. The purpose of the government "interference" is to protect the common good, such as by stopping the sale of humans (slave), prevent competition through unnatural monopolies, and the sale of access to public areas by private parties.
What would you think if a group occupied the entire Waikiki beach area in Hawaii with large towels then told people they would auction off their spaces so others could use the beach? It isn't their beach, it is everyone's, and all they are doing is squatting and blocking other's access to the public land. Is this "free market", and even if it is, is it in the common good to allow it to continue?
Some argue that this app is merely a way for people to give information about an available space (at a price) that aperson is about to leave, but as others have pointed out, it delays the person's departure thereby reducing effective parking availability. It also causes people to use phones while driving which in San Francisco is a crime, so it promotes a criminal act. It also is ripe for abuse by people deliberately seeking out parking spaces then selling them, which is a far cry from what the app developers claim the app was made for. To me, this all spells that this app goes against the common good and is therefore bad. It is also illegal based on current laws according to the City Attorney.
"Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons"
Adding the non-descript "and other reasons" means they have covered their based, but somehow I doubt that mechanical breakdowns, human error, and bad weather account for the causes of most military drone failures in an active combat zone. This is a variant of the age old "statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics", since they gave a highly suggestive list of causes to make the reader think they are the major causes, then add the generic "and other" so they aren't lying. But then again I haven't seen the actual statistics - maybe being constantly shot at and jammed are really minor causes of failure in a war zone (and maybe pigs fly too in a war zone).
I don't think that's necessarily a problem. A computer that had the level of intelligence of a 13-year old boy with poor language skills would still be quite an achievement.
If only it equated to having the "level of intelligence" of a 13 year old.
Except the test was skewed more than just claiming it was a 13 year old with poor language skills. It was claiming it was a child from a different country, with a different culture, different non-overlapping and limited set of life experiences, and a different first language, all in order to prevent many of the kinds of testing the Turing Test was suppose to involve. It is this last aspect why people are using words like cheating. It would be like asking a psychology major to read an engineering thesis and say whether it is good or not. If it is a bad thesis there may be obvious signs, but lacking that, he would have a very limited set of criteria to judge by.
OK, so suppose the program claims it is a mentally challenged child with poor grammar, who has lived a very sheltered life with almost no interaction with people. Now perform the same test with a real child with the same attributes. The Turing Test is supposed to be conducted where other similar conversations are also conducted, and where to pass the tester says it sounds like a real person more often than saying the same about a real person. Given these extreme and limiting conditions, would you say the test is a fair test? To me, passing such a test would have almost no meaning, and the test in the article is not much above it.
For those who haven't read the article (I read one yesterday and assume the details are the the same):
The program claimed to be a Ukrainian boy of 13 years old, a non-native English speaker, writing in English to English speakers. This allowed the program to avoid the problem of people using language to make judgements about whether the responses were from a person or a program. Also, since the program was claiming to be a boy instead of an adult, it also greatly reduced what could be expected of the responses, again greatly simplifying the programs parameters and reducing what the testers could use to test. So basically, the Turing Test is supposed to be a test if a person can tell if the program acts like a person, but here the test was rewritten to see if the program acted like a child from a different culture and who was supposed not to be speaking in his native language. Many are apparently crying foul.
Granted, maybe Snowden is lying. But we have no evidence of his lying.
We don't have proof he is lying, nor proof he is telling the truth, just his making an extraordinary claim about actions he claims to have done that if any reasonable person were to plan, would also make sure they documented so they could later prove it. So far we have not seen any such proof. The suspicion of lying by Snowden is predicated upon (1) that he would have great motivation to give such lies if what he were saying was not true given his current situation, and (2) that given his current position and claims he would almost certainly have presented evidence to support it if he had it, yet he has not. This doesn't prove he is lying, but in criminal law it is what is called strong circumstantial evidence.
The Feds said they found an email where he asked a question to clarify a point in some training material regarding the ability of Executive Orders to override statues (the way the material was present implied the two were equal but did not say that). At no point in that email did he bring up anything the NSA was doing or state any objection to NSA actions, and the answer he got said Executive Orders cannot override statutes. If you want to interpret asking a question about how a sentence is phrased as Snowden stating an objection to the NSA's actions, then I guess you are entitled to your opinion, though my interpretation would be different.
As others have said though, Snowden claims to have complained/objected multiple times, yet so far the only thing that has come out is the one document you reference, and that was released by the NSA, not Snowden, and it isn't an objection to NSA's activities. Did Snowden really fail to keep any copies of the documents that would obviously be needed to help him defend his claims about his actions, or does he have copies of whatever he did and for some reason is choosing not to release them despite making claims about them during interviews (this would imply something about them to me, but that would be speculation, though that doesn't seem to stop most on Slashdot)?
Personally, I think part of Snowden feels his actions were justified, but I also feel the way he did it has caused a lot more harm to legitimate interests than he, or his supporters, want to admit. This of course presumes that one believes there is ever a reason to conduct surveillance against enemies and potential enemies in the world we live in - hint, think about the consequence of being the only one who doesn't perform such surveillance, and I mean in the world we have, not the one you want to think should exist.
That being said, in this article's case, it's a fire hydrant. Everywhere I've lived you can't park in front of a fire hydrant. Apparently many New Yorkers don't know that and NYC needs to paint some lines on the ground to tell them.
You really need to look at the pictures. The hydrant isn't in the sidewalk like you normally see, it is in the foilage on the other side of the sidewalk, and it is an unusually wide sidewalk. Additionally, the street striping indicated it was a valid parking area. The setup made it ripe for people either not to see the hydrant, or to think that given its distance it wasn't considered parking in front especially since the city had marked the street as valid parking. In neither case does it mean the "violators" didn't know you couldn't park in front of a hydrant as you imply. Also, there is a difference between no painted lines saying keep away, and painted lines saying please park here when doing so was illegal.
I understand that if they acquired the signing keys they could sign their own package and, presuming the loss of the signing keys was not known, have people accept the new packages as legit. But can possession of the keys allow them to create a fake and apparently correctly signed version 7.1a? If so, then the reason for wanting the keys seems obvious to me, to create a fake version which they can send to targeted people/entities, either through a trojaned download site, or by playing man-in-the-middle and changing what is sent from a legitimate mirror. The target gets the fake version and it passes all the tests so uses it, and the government now has their backdoor in place.
I haven't studied how packages are signed, and am too busy at the moment to go read up on it, so maybe I am just naive. (I am sure there are plenty of posters on Slashdot that will let me know if I am:).
I do not like the way some people attempt to argue by using a variant of hit and run, since their intent is to influence others (not the poster), by attempting to prevent the poster from responding and thereby get the last word, so here is my response:
-> I said: "there are a lot of people who would have access to the true information and can benefit from its release, like certain senators"
-> Your response: "your original theory was based on ideas I already knew to have been proven false - namely that any senator has easy access to internal NSA documents"
-> Comment: I did not say just any senator would have easy access to internal NSA documents, I said "a lot of people would have access" and used an example of specific senators that would have the power to subpoena such documents after learning of them (the latter being implied which I guess you disagree with), so your argument is a strawman, attacking something I didn't say but rephrased to sound similar so as to confuse the listener.
-> You say "you aren't looking for truth, you are just interested in advocating a point of view"
-> First, I would claim that almost all posts on Slashdot are either by a person advocating a point a view, namely their opinion, or a post by those who simply like to argue, hence their true opinion is irrelevant. Since you take issue with a person sharing an opinion of their reading of the event by arguing, I guess I know which camp you come from. Second, I believe I am an open-minded person who tries to look at and evaluate the available information to reach a reasonable conclusion/opinion. I often change my opinion as more information becomes available. Can you say the same?
You claim I am "trying to obfuscate it with Sheldon Cooperisms," yet my understanding of that TV show is Cooper is a person that makes broad, and often invalid, leaps of logic based on very limited, selective, and non-representative examples. That is how I see your response, namely pointing at one issue that was faced by the oversight committee (both examples you gave relate to the same series of events), and using it as a basis to justify an all-inclusive generalization about all NSA accountability by all parties. So which of us is showing "poor reasoning?"
And then there are these lines: "I'm really not interested in your new theoreis (sic)" and "I recommend that you not waste your time responding. Since I'm not interested in advocacy I'll be closing this tab after this post" which adds some certainty to my opinion of your motive. Somehow I think you will see it, but will not respond, at least while admitting it is you, since I am sure you can understand the hypocrisy that would demonstrate.
A fundamental problem that conspiracy people have is they leap from what is possible to the belief of what is true without looking at what is probable. You can't prove their theory is impossible, or if you can they will dismiss the proof, and so they will use their certainty as their proof, which means it is a pointless discussion since their criteria isn't based in facts or logic.
Now lets look at the situation with Snowden.
- Are the intelligence agencies always forthcoming with damaging information? No, same as with anyone I suppose.
- Are there instances where they have played games - and been caught? Yes.
- Are there times they have played games and not been caught? Obviously this cannot be answered with absolute certainty, but probably yes.
- Does the fact such occurrences exist prove that they are lying now and Snowden isn't lying/fudging/spinning in order to help himself? Namely, Snowden doing the same thing, and for the same kind of reasons, you are claiming the NSA is doing? No, and this is where the flaw lies in the logic of many people. It doesn't PROVE either side is lying, but it does give suggestions of who is.
The reasoning I propose is that the person sitting in Moscow, who would like to live a life not always looking over his shoulder, and has a deep-seated need to be seen as a patriot as opposed to a traitor, has a motive to lie and spin. This is the same logic others present as their proof why it must be the NSA that is lying. Why does it work one way and not the other? Let's look at some more facts.
Snowden says he "repeatedly" objected to the NSA's operations, yet the NSA says all they can find is an email where he submits a question about what he saw as an implication in training material that an Executive Order can override a statute. To me that isn't an objection, it is a question. Others say "see, the NSA said they looked he never raised any objections, but now they admit they lied since here is the email they now seem to be able to find", which of course is also spin since this email isn't an objection, just a question, so again people see what they want to see. As others have said, Snowden kept and has released a lot of documents, so it doesn't make sense that if he really sent the "repeated" objections he claims, he wouldn't also have copies of those that he could also release, yet now that he is being challenged, all he does is claim he did but doesn't present anything to back up his statements. Which sounds more likely, the NSA found multiple emails but chose to only release the one that seemed innocuous, or Snowden did send multiple objections, but despite planning on sabotaging the US Intelligence industry and fleeing the country where he would have to defend himself from afar forgot to keep any copies of the documents he feels support his case?
Also, a few other facts to consider. Snowden deliberately obtained the positions for the purpose of gaining access to the classified information, then released a large quantity of classified documents to foreign reporters which contain a lot more information than just about spying on Americans, but also about US and US allies data collections against other targets around the world. This seems to be contrary to his stated purpose. Also, all the information reveals collection activities by the US and allies, but given the access he had, he also had access to reports and presentations about the detected spying that other countries are doing against the US yet he appears to have chosen NOT to release that information. Why? Here is my theory - Snowden's goal was to harm the US Intelligence agencies, not curb what he saw as overreach by them. He wants the US, but not China, Russia, Iran,..., to lose the ability to collect data about what others are doing, not to reform the system. Why he wants that has too many possibilities for me to guess at.
Unfortunately the intelligence game is an asymmetric system. We didn't
As the AC said, following the airing of the interview, the NSA immediately searched for the "repeated" objections Snowden claimed he had raised, and they say all they found was one email, which they have released, wherein Snowden following reviewing training material asked about whether Executive Orders can override statutes. The GC's response was basically "no", laws trump orders.
I foresee people will claim that the government is lying since they are they are the ones claiming that was what they found, and if Snowden is telling the truth they have a motive to cover it up. By definition, a conspiracy claim is difficult or impossible to disprove since any evidence produced to dispute it will be dismissed by the believers as a fabrication/lie, which is what I suspect will happen here too. The trouble is, and why conspiracies theories enjoy such life, is sometimes it is true (but I believe a rare occurrence, not a common one like how they tend to see the world). In this case though, there are a lot of people who would have access to the true information and can benefit from its release, like certain senators, so it doesn't make sense that the NSA would be lying here since they would be caught (cue the deniers who will say they destroyed the real emails so there is nothing to find, or that the all-powerful controlling entities behind the government will sit on their stooges to ensure this won't happen - I live with a conspiracy nut and know that you cannot use facts and reason to argue with them).
And to say that after putting (overly) strict security in place not many bad things happened so it proves the security was unnecessary is specious since it presumes what the situation would have been had the extra effort not been spent, and that the spending didn't affect the outcome. "I built a really strong retaining wall behind my house, and after those torrential rains there wasn't any mudslide, so I must have wasted my money building the wall."
What I do know is based on what Snowden claimed versus what the NSA released, I would give it Snowden 0, government 1.
There is a major problem with this idea, namely "levels of service". Comments a day or two ago tried to build an analogy between the Net and the phone system, and how having common carrier status prevented the phone company from discriminating against specific traffic in order to benefit themselves. The trouble with this analogy is that in the telephone world either there is a connection or there isn't (give or take quality), while in the network world there are levels of how well it works.
Consider this: what if new net neutrality rules says all traffic has to be treated equality, but there are bottlenecks in the network that cause certain streams to suffer. Would labeling ISPs as common carriers legally force them to upgrade such chokepoints, or would they be able to leave these chokepoints as is and allow the result to cause the effect they desire? Now move the clock forward, and consider that networks are always growing in capacity, so even if the chokepoint doesn't exist today, it probably will naturally develop in the nearer future, so ISPs wouldn't need to deliberately create chokepoints, which would flag them as being (more) malicious, but rather just wait until the ones they want to naturally occur. Then when they upgrade equipment and/or lines, they choose the upgrades that help their interests, while leaving the ones they would like to throttle but "legally can't", to languish. It would be like discriminating against people in a ghetto by choosing to never get around to fix the potholes in their streets. You don't need to go out and make potholes, just wait and they make themselves.
So explain to me again how labeling them as common carriers will solve all the net neutrality problems? Without laws forcing ISPs to BUILD AND MAINTAIN infrastructure that treats all customers, traffic type, and peers the same, then just labeling them as common carrier only fixes a smaller part of the problem.
That is missing the point of the justices. They aren't saying the police need to have witnessed the crime, just that a witness must be available to testify that they told the police what they saw. Without such a witness there is no one to charge with lying when the claim is shown to be false. If the tip is truly anonymous then if it is found to have been a false report (as opposed to a mistaken report) there would be no one to go after, while if the report is made through a 911 call the justices reasoned that the recordings that are made along with the telephone record of the phone number that placed the call provide enough non-anonymity to use the information as probable cause.
As a side note, while the issue of faking a call's origin is a problem, as well as calls made from pay phones or burn phones, each of these cases has an analogous situation in the physical world. A faked call origin is similar to a person making a claim while presenting a fake ID or giving a fake/other person's name, and calls from a pay phone or a burn phone are similar to a person deliberately telling an officer something happened that required his immediate response such that he had no time to stop and get the claimant's information then beating it before the officer returned. In each of these cases the police would be acting on what they believed to be reasonable cause, and the courts would back them, even though they would later end up not being able to identify the person who made the claim. It would however open up the police to claims that they invented the witness's statement since no witness is available to corroborate having given it, unlike the 911 call for which there is, by law, a recording.
Except that they just undermined their government's protests and Chinese hacking. Unlike US allegations against China which are pretty thin the Chinese now have concrete evidence of international law-breaking and industrial espionage against them. Expect it to be used against the US at the WTO and whenever the US tries to make any complaints about hacking in the future.
And you just expressed why the one sided leaks of Snowden have done so much damage to the US and the west, not helped them as is often claimed. Snowden has handed the ammo to the very people who have waged the largest hacking campaign against the west for them to continue doing what they have been while allowing them to play the victim. The US has proof of the allegations against China, and others, but revealing them would compromise its ability to continue stopping them (namely reveal what they can detect versus what they didn't), so the US doesn't reveal it unless it is a very major event. I find it very hard to believe that with the documents Snowden had access to he did not also uncover ones documenting the known attacks by actors like the Chinese against the US, yet he has chosen NOT to release THOSE. And of the attacks and breakins the US knows about, there are many fold more that were done against the US that the US doesn't know about (unless of course you buy the theory that the US is all powerful and everyone else is incompetent).
And the argument that it was the journalists that release the docs, not Snowden, is a strawman. Snowden chose which documents to give to the journalists. Claiming it was just a large dump of unreviewed documents that he gave to foreigners, even if he believed they were journalist, is not a responsible act.
The title and summary are clearly slanted by how it describes the case as Apple demanding $40 per Samsung device, then uses that claim to say Apple "is asking for obscenely high patent royalties". If you read the rest of the summary carefully (no, I didn't read the article!), what is happening is an Apple expert witness will be presenting evidence that the patents in use by Samsung are worth (by his judgement) $40 per device.
Basic trial tactics: ask for x, claim damages are far greater than x, then settle for an amount less than x.
Slashdot Mirror
While I understand the philosophy of this approach, the problem I see with it is that without markings then you have removed all indications of who has the right of way. When something does happen, and it will, who is found at fault? What do you say to the person driving down the middle of the road? And if a pedestrian crossing just anywhere on a road does get hit, how do you place blame, or do you just automatically place blame on the driver independent of the situation, like the pedestrian stepping out from between cars into an active road? How about a busier street at commute time with cars trying to enter from a side street who find it almost impossible without jamming their car out in front of someone else, and that causing an accident? That is what signals were designed for. And I don't even want to think what happens near a school at the beginning or end of the school day.
[Emphasis Mine]
So, Microsoft is alleging that No-IP is assisting (presumably knowingly) in the distribution of malware and that 93% of No-IP's domains are vehicles for malware distribution. Is this true?
While the wording is a little awkward, I think it says that in 93% of the infection cases No-IP was used by the infection author, not that 93% of No-IP domains are used for malware.
To use a car analogy (all statistics completely made up), it would be more like saying Dodge Chargers are used 25% of the time for drive-by shootings. This doesn't mean that 25% of Dodge Chargers are used in drive-bys.
You are not required to take a drug test to get a clearance, though most or all of the employers that need people with TS clearances have company policies that require a drug test. I think you are confusing who asked for the test and why.
Let me summarize: if you are a federal employee then you are a civil servant and paid according to the GS (General Service) scale. This is what people mean when they say someone is a GS-12 or GS-15. These scales are published by the US Office of Personnel Management and dictated by the President or by Congress. Unfortunately, these pay levels are below what a decent cybersecurity person expects to be paid, and do not compete with private industry. The result is that the cybersecurity people in federal positions are there either because of a sense of duty, or because they didn't cut it in the private sector. This is the classic image of a postal worker. In order to attract better candidates, they need to be paid better which means exempting them from the GS schedule. This is also why a lot of agencies use contractors for these positions because they can pay a contractor a lot more than an employee and thereby get better people in the job.
Yes, I know I have greatly simplified certain details, but that covers the basics of the problem.
I have a concern about the passcode issue. With phones now often using fingerprint readers or facial recognition, it is no longer sufficient to tell the officer "no" when he says give him the unlock code, since he can put your finger on the button or face up to the camera. Viola, the phone is now unlocked anyway.
Banning this is communism! This is the free market at work.
Standard Oil crushing their competition by offering gas at below cost was "free market". Microsoft refusing to license Windows to a vendor unless they not offer other operating systems was "free market". Stock traders creating derivatives that collapsed the housing market was "free market". Slave traders were "free market". The term "free market" can be interpreted as meaning allowing a person to do any business deal without interference from the government, whether morally right or not. The purpose of the government "interference" is to protect the common good, such as by stopping the sale of humans (slave), prevent competition through unnatural monopolies, and the sale of access to public areas by private parties.
What would you think if a group occupied the entire Waikiki beach area in Hawaii with large towels then told people they would auction off their spaces so others could use the beach? It isn't their beach, it is everyone's, and all they are doing is squatting and blocking other's access to the public land. Is this "free market", and even if it is, is it in the common good to allow it to continue?
Some argue that this app is merely a way for people to give information about an available space (at a price) that aperson is about to leave, but as others have pointed out, it delays the person's departure thereby reducing effective parking availability. It also causes people to use phones while driving which in San Francisco is a crime, so it promotes a criminal act. It also is ripe for abuse by people deliberately seeking out parking spaces then selling them, which is a far cry from what the app developers claim the app was made for. To me, this all spells that this app goes against the common good and is therefore bad. It is also illegal based on current laws according to the City Attorney.
"Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons"
Adding the non-descript "and other reasons" means they have covered their based, but somehow I doubt that mechanical breakdowns, human error, and bad weather account for the causes of most military drone failures in an active combat zone. This is a variant of the age old "statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics", since they gave a highly suggestive list of causes to make the reader think they are the major causes, then add the generic "and other" so they aren't lying. But then again I haven't seen the actual statistics - maybe being constantly shot at and jammed are really minor causes of failure in a war zone (and maybe pigs fly too in a war zone).
Anti-Aircraft Adventure, or was it Alternative Arcade Action, or was it...
Damn, where is that 80 page FBI acronym cheat sheet when I need it.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem. A computer that had the level of intelligence of a 13-year old boy with poor language skills would still be quite an achievement.
If only it equated to having the "level of intelligence" of a 13 year old.
Except the test was skewed more than just claiming it was a 13 year old with poor language skills. It was claiming it was a child from a different country, with a different culture, different non-overlapping and limited set of life experiences, and a different first language, all in order to prevent many of the kinds of testing the Turing Test was suppose to involve. It is this last aspect why people are using words like cheating. It would be like asking a psychology major to read an engineering thesis and say whether it is good or not. If it is a bad thesis there may be obvious signs, but lacking that, he would have a very limited set of criteria to judge by.
OK, so suppose the program claims it is a mentally challenged child with poor grammar, who has lived a very sheltered life with almost no interaction with people. Now perform the same test with a real child with the same attributes. The Turing Test is supposed to be conducted where other similar conversations are also conducted, and where to pass the tester says it sounds like a real person more often than saying the same about a real person. Given these extreme and limiting conditions, would you say the test is a fair test? To me, passing such a test would have almost no meaning, and the test in the article is not much above it.
For those who haven't read the article (I read one yesterday and assume the details are the the same): The program claimed to be a Ukrainian boy of 13 years old, a non-native English speaker, writing in English to English speakers. This allowed the program to avoid the problem of people using language to make judgements about whether the responses were from a person or a program. Also, since the program was claiming to be a boy instead of an adult, it also greatly reduced what could be expected of the responses, again greatly simplifying the programs parameters and reducing what the testers could use to test. So basically, the Turing Test is supposed to be a test if a person can tell if the program acts like a person, but here the test was rewritten to see if the program acted like a child from a different culture and who was supposed not to be speaking in his native language. Many are apparently crying foul.
I personally agree.
Granted, maybe Snowden is lying. But we have no evidence of his lying.
We don't have proof he is lying, nor proof he is telling the truth, just his making an extraordinary claim about actions he claims to have done that if any reasonable person were to plan, would also make sure they documented so they could later prove it. So far we have not seen any such proof. The suspicion of lying by Snowden is predicated upon (1) that he would have great motivation to give such lies if what he were saying was not true given his current situation, and (2) that given his current position and claims he would almost certainly have presented evidence to support it if he had it, yet he has not. This doesn't prove he is lying, but in criminal law it is what is called strong circumstantial evidence.
The Feds said they found an email where he asked a question to clarify a point in some training material regarding the ability of Executive Orders to override statues (the way the material was present implied the two were equal but did not say that). At no point in that email did he bring up anything the NSA was doing or state any objection to NSA actions, and the answer he got said Executive Orders cannot override statutes. If you want to interpret asking a question about how a sentence is phrased as Snowden stating an objection to the NSA's actions, then I guess you are entitled to your opinion, though my interpretation would be different.
As others have said though, Snowden claims to have complained/objected multiple times, yet so far the only thing that has come out is the one document you reference, and that was released by the NSA, not Snowden, and it isn't an objection to NSA's activities. Did Snowden really fail to keep any copies of the documents that would obviously be needed to help him defend his claims about his actions, or does he have copies of whatever he did and for some reason is choosing not to release them despite making claims about them during interviews (this would imply something about them to me, but that would be speculation, though that doesn't seem to stop most on Slashdot)?
Personally, I think part of Snowden feels his actions were justified, but I also feel the way he did it has caused a lot more harm to legitimate interests than he, or his supporters, want to admit. This of course presumes that one believes there is ever a reason to conduct surveillance against enemies and potential enemies in the world we live in - hint, think about the consequence of being the only one who doesn't perform such surveillance, and I mean in the world we have, not the one you want to think should exist.
That being said, in this article's case, it's a fire hydrant. Everywhere I've lived you can't park in front of a fire hydrant. Apparently many New Yorkers don't know that and NYC needs to paint some lines on the ground to tell them.
You really need to look at the pictures. The hydrant isn't in the sidewalk like you normally see, it is in the foilage on the other side of the sidewalk, and it is an unusually wide sidewalk. Additionally, the street striping indicated it was a valid parking area. The setup made it ripe for people either not to see the hydrant, or to think that given its distance it wasn't considered parking in front especially since the city had marked the street as valid parking. In neither case does it mean the "violators" didn't know you couldn't park in front of a hydrant as you imply. Also, there is a difference between no painted lines saying keep away, and painted lines saying please park here when doing so was illegal.
I understand that if they acquired the signing keys they could sign their own package and, presuming the loss of the signing keys was not known, have people accept the new packages as legit. But can possession of the keys allow them to create a fake and apparently correctly signed version 7.1a? If so, then the reason for wanting the keys seems obvious to me, to create a fake version which they can send to targeted people/entities, either through a trojaned download site, or by playing man-in-the-middle and changing what is sent from a legitimate mirror. The target gets the fake version and it passes all the tests so uses it, and the government now has their backdoor in place.
:).
I haven't studied how packages are signed, and am too busy at the moment to go read up on it, so maybe I am just naive. (I am sure there are plenty of posters on Slashdot that will let me know if I am
Actually I prefer what my wife once yelled during a "discussion" when I pointed out why what she was saying wasn't possible,
"Don't bring facts into this argument!"
(Yes, I paid for it)
I do not like the way some people attempt to argue by using a variant of hit and run, since their intent is to influence others (not the poster), by attempting to prevent the poster from responding and thereby get the last word, so here is my response:
-> I said: "there are a lot of people who would have access to the true information and can benefit from its release, like certain senators"
-> Your response: "your original theory was based on ideas I already knew to have been proven false - namely that any senator has easy access to internal NSA documents"
-> Comment: I did not say just any senator would have easy access to internal NSA documents, I said "a lot of people would have access" and used an example of specific senators that would have the power to subpoena such documents after learning of them (the latter being implied which I guess you disagree with), so your argument is a strawman, attacking something I didn't say but rephrased to sound similar so as to confuse the listener.
-> You say "you aren't looking for truth, you are just interested in advocating a point of view"
-> First, I would claim that almost all posts on Slashdot are either by a person advocating a point a view, namely their opinion, or a post by those who simply like to argue, hence their true opinion is irrelevant. Since you take issue with a person sharing an opinion of their reading of the event by arguing, I guess I know which camp you come from. Second, I believe I am an open-minded person who tries to look at and evaluate the available information to reach a reasonable conclusion/opinion. I often change my opinion as more information becomes available. Can you say the same?
You claim I am "trying to obfuscate it with Sheldon Cooperisms," yet my understanding of that TV show is Cooper is a person that makes broad, and often invalid, leaps of logic based on very limited, selective, and non-representative examples. That is how I see your response, namely pointing at one issue that was faced by the oversight committee (both examples you gave relate to the same series of events), and using it as a basis to justify an all-inclusive generalization about all NSA accountability by all parties. So which of us is showing "poor reasoning?"
And then there are these lines: "I'm really not interested in your new theoreis (sic)" and "I recommend that you not waste your time responding. Since I'm not interested in advocacy I'll be closing this tab after this post" which adds some certainty to my opinion of your motive. Somehow I think you will see it, but will not respond, at least while admitting it is you, since I am sure you can understand the hypocrisy that would demonstrate.
Now lets look at the situation with Snowden.
The reasoning I propose is that the person sitting in Moscow, who would like to live a life not always looking over his shoulder, and has a deep-seated need to be seen as a patriot as opposed to a traitor, has a motive to lie and spin. This is the same logic others present as their proof why it must be the NSA that is lying. Why does it work one way and not the other? Let's look at some more facts.
..., to lose the ability to collect data about what others are doing, not to reform the system. Why he wants that has too many possibilities for me to guess at.
Snowden says he "repeatedly" objected to the NSA's operations, yet the NSA says all they can find is an email where he submits a question about what he saw as an implication in training material that an Executive Order can override a statute. To me that isn't an objection, it is a question. Others say "see, the NSA said they looked he never raised any objections, but now they admit they lied since here is the email they now seem to be able to find", which of course is also spin since this email isn't an objection, just a question, so again people see what they want to see. As others have said, Snowden kept and has released a lot of documents, so it doesn't make sense that if he really sent the "repeated" objections he claims, he wouldn't also have copies of those that he could also release, yet now that he is being challenged, all he does is claim he did but doesn't present anything to back up his statements. Which sounds more likely, the NSA found multiple emails but chose to only release the one that seemed innocuous, or Snowden did send multiple objections, but despite planning on sabotaging the US Intelligence industry and fleeing the country where he would have to defend himself from afar forgot to keep any copies of the documents he feels support his case?
Also, a few other facts to consider. Snowden deliberately obtained the positions for the purpose of gaining access to the classified information, then released a large quantity of classified documents to foreign reporters which contain a lot more information than just about spying on Americans, but also about US and US allies data collections against other targets around the world. This seems to be contrary to his stated purpose. Also, all the information reveals collection activities by the US and allies, but given the access he had, he also had access to reports and presentations about the detected spying that other countries are doing against the US yet he appears to have chosen NOT to release that information. Why? Here is my theory - Snowden's goal was to harm the US Intelligence agencies, not curb what he saw as overreach by them. He wants the US, but not China, Russia, Iran,
Unfortunately the intelligence game is an asymmetric system. We didn't
As the AC said, following the airing of the interview, the NSA immediately searched for the "repeated" objections Snowden claimed he had raised, and they say all they found was one email, which they have released, wherein Snowden following reviewing training material asked about whether Executive Orders can override statutes. The GC's response was basically "no", laws trump orders.
I foresee people will claim that the government is lying since they are they are the ones claiming that was what they found, and if Snowden is telling the truth they have a motive to cover it up. By definition, a conspiracy claim is difficult or impossible to disprove since any evidence produced to dispute it will be dismissed by the believers as a fabrication/lie, which is what I suspect will happen here too. The trouble is, and why conspiracies theories enjoy such life, is sometimes it is true (but I believe a rare occurrence, not a common one like how they tend to see the world). In this case though, there are a lot of people who would have access to the true information and can benefit from its release, like certain senators, so it doesn't make sense that the NSA would be lying here since they would be caught (cue the deniers who will say they destroyed the real emails so there is nothing to find, or that the all-powerful controlling entities behind the government will sit on their stooges to ensure this won't happen - I live with a conspiracy nut and know that you cannot use facts and reason to argue with them).
And to say that after putting (overly) strict security in place not many bad things happened so it proves the security was unnecessary is specious since it presumes what the situation would have been had the extra effort not been spent, and that the spending didn't affect the outcome. "I built a really strong retaining wall behind my house, and after those torrential rains there wasn't any mudslide, so I must have wasted my money building the wall."
What I do know is based on what Snowden claimed versus what the NSA released, I would give it Snowden 0, government 1.
There is a major problem with this idea, namely "levels of service". Comments a day or two ago tried to build an analogy between the Net and the phone system, and how having common carrier status prevented the phone company from discriminating against specific traffic in order to benefit themselves. The trouble with this analogy is that in the telephone world either there is a connection or there isn't (give or take quality), while in the network world there are levels of how well it works.
Consider this: what if new net neutrality rules says all traffic has to be treated equality, but there are bottlenecks in the network that cause certain streams to suffer. Would labeling ISPs as common carriers legally force them to upgrade such chokepoints, or would they be able to leave these chokepoints as is and allow the result to cause the effect they desire? Now move the clock forward, and consider that networks are always growing in capacity, so even if the chokepoint doesn't exist today, it probably will naturally develop in the nearer future, so ISPs wouldn't need to deliberately create chokepoints, which would flag them as being (more) malicious, but rather just wait until the ones they want to naturally occur. Then when they upgrade equipment and/or lines, they choose the upgrades that help their interests, while leaving the ones they would like to throttle but "legally can't", to languish. It would be like discriminating against people in a ghetto by choosing to never get around to fix the potholes in their streets. You don't need to go out and make potholes, just wait and they make themselves.
So explain to me again how labeling them as common carriers will solve all the net neutrality problems? Without laws forcing ISPs to BUILD AND MAINTAIN infrastructure that treats all customers, traffic type, and peers the same, then just labeling them as common carrier only fixes a smaller part of the problem.
That is missing the point of the justices. They aren't saying the police need to have witnessed the crime, just that a witness must be available to testify that they told the police what they saw. Without such a witness there is no one to charge with lying when the claim is shown to be false. If the tip is truly anonymous then if it is found to have been a false report (as opposed to a mistaken report) there would be no one to go after, while if the report is made through a 911 call the justices reasoned that the recordings that are made along with the telephone record of the phone number that placed the call provide enough non-anonymity to use the information as probable cause.
As a side note, while the issue of faking a call's origin is a problem, as well as calls made from pay phones or burn phones, each of these cases has an analogous situation in the physical world. A faked call origin is similar to a person making a claim while presenting a fake ID or giving a fake/other person's name, and calls from a pay phone or a burn phone are similar to a person deliberately telling an officer something happened that required his immediate response such that he had no time to stop and get the claimant's information then beating it before the officer returned. In each of these cases the police would be acting on what they believed to be reasonable cause, and the courts would back them, even though they would later end up not being able to identify the person who made the claim. It would however open up the police to claims that they invented the witness's statement since no witness is available to corroborate having given it, unlike the 911 call for which there is, by law, a recording.
They're right, if you are not above the Microsoft bar, you should get out of the business.
This sounds an awful lot like a protection racket:
"That's an awfully nice service you have there, it would be a shame if something bad happened to it!"
Except that they just undermined their government's protests and Chinese hacking. Unlike US allegations against China which are pretty thin the Chinese now have concrete evidence of international law-breaking and industrial espionage against them. Expect it to be used against the US at the WTO and whenever the US tries to make any complaints about hacking in the future.
And you just expressed why the one sided leaks of Snowden have done so much damage to the US and the west, not helped them as is often claimed. Snowden has handed the ammo to the very people who have waged the largest hacking campaign against the west for them to continue doing what they have been while allowing them to play the victim. The US has proof of the allegations against China, and others, but revealing them would compromise its ability to continue stopping them (namely reveal what they can detect versus what they didn't), so the US doesn't reveal it unless it is a very major event. I find it very hard to believe that with the documents Snowden had access to he did not also uncover ones documenting the known attacks by actors like the Chinese against the US, yet he has chosen NOT to release THOSE. And of the attacks and breakins the US knows about, there are many fold more that were done against the US that the US doesn't know about (unless of course you buy the theory that the US is all powerful and everyone else is incompetent).
And the argument that it was the journalists that release the docs, not Snowden, is a strawman. Snowden chose which documents to give to the journalists. Claiming it was just a large dump of unreviewed documents that he gave to foreigners, even if he believed they were journalist, is not a responsible act.
The title and summary are clearly slanted by how it describes the case as Apple demanding $40 per Samsung device, then uses that claim to say Apple "is asking for obscenely high patent royalties". If you read the rest of the summary carefully (no, I didn't read the article!), what is happening is an Apple expert witness will be presenting evidence that the patents in use by Samsung are worth (by his judgement) $40 per device.
Basic trial tactics: ask for x, claim damages are far greater than x, then settle for an amount less than x.