> Kids should learn to code IF AND ONLY IF THEY WANT TO, AND ONLY WHEN THEY WANT TO .
Er... I guess they should only learn math, English, history, geography and whatever else IF AND ONLY IF THEY WANT TO as well. Imagine the education cost savings if we only taught children what they wanted to learn!
We teach children what they need to know, and _what we need them to know_ to further our economy. Our future economy needs more children to know how to code, at least as much as they need to know history, geography, biology or chemistry, if not math or English.
> [1] The Dijkstra comment that teaching BASIC should be a criminal offence doesn't really apply to BBC BASIC, which had full support for structured programming, an integrated assembler, and direct access to memory-mapped hardware.
BBC BASIC was good, but even Microsoft BASIC was better than nothing. Saying you shouldn't teach kids how to cook unless you're teaching them fine cuisine is stupid.
When I was 6 (in 1981) my Grade 2 class learned LOGO (at least the turtle graphics part). Of course I had been programming on my TS1000 for a year at that point, and so was mostly helping the other children. But still, pretty much everyone in the class "got it".
Why they stopped (and they did stop, after all) teaching programming to kids that age, I don't know. It was a stupid move. Really stupid.
Although cute, this 'idea' is irrelevant. Even if you made the case that you weren't contravening the letter of the request, you could still be charged with obstruction of justice, should your behaviour alter the conduct of the subject(s) under scrutiny. This puts the onus on you to lie.
In short, good luck with that. They're already way ahead of you. Way, way ahead.
By directing preferences away from the Greens, Wikileaks improves its chances. Only marginally, but I suppose the rationale for the decision was that "every little bit helps."
The surprise here is that they didn't come clean on it, given the irony that creates....and yes, Wikileaks is only assumed to be a left-wing party, which is an error. Libertarianism is right-wing.
Given that the average e-mail user has already accepted that their communications aren't secure, I have a problem visualising how said average user can be convinced that a 'replacement' for traditional e-mail is any more secure than the existing offering, or if said security even matters.
First, there's absolutely no way you can build trust. What are you going to do? Tell them it's secure because of X, Y or Z? The point here is that your average e-mail user doesn't understand encryption, PGP keys or any of that. It just translates as blah, blah, blah; give us your e-mail so we can snoop through it just the same as the other guys do. Oh? You can read the source code and confirm that it's all legit? The average user can't read source code! These claims are all worthless.
Second, if there's already an acceptance that having your e-mail open for analysis somehow prevents your child from being blown-up at a bus stop, you're not going to be very fond of encouraging the adoption of a product that could aid terrorism, let alone use it yourself.
So, if you can't build trust, and your potential user base can be put off your product by the spectre of terrorism, then what's your business model? If the user can't be convinced they'll have any more privacy without the expense of a potential surge in terrorism, there isn't one. You can only preach to a choir that would already be using PGP, etc. if they cared enough to do so.
But you can't even get widespread adoption in the geeks! Most of us use cloud e-mail services, Facebook, etc. and just don't care enough, let alone would ever truly trust your product, regardless of how transparent you attempt to make it.
tl;dr: there are better uses for the developers' time here than building a baseball field nobody will ever play on.
I own a mint condition Apple IIe, with the two disk drives and the colour monitor, and the only game I have for it is Oregon Trail, on an original MECC diskette that still works great.
Once people realised the value of knowing not necessarily what people were doing, but when / where / how they were doing it, and that you can begin to predict their behaviour by comparing that information with that of known models, the world well-and-truly went to Hell.
Seriously, Dropbox doesn't care _what_ data you store on their servers, what they care about is your usage behaviour, data that can then be added to the ever-expanding mountain of statistics used to further refine those already surprisingly accurate profiles increasingly used by savvy advertisers, governments et al. to define you even better than you could likely define yourself.
"Congratulations! We've identified you as person-type 1845194. You're sure to be interested in this product we'll love to sell you, this new television series you're certain to enjoy, this commentary you're sure to agree with. Soon, you'll think the world was made especially for you, since the world we'll continue to show you is tailored to appeal directly to your specific person-type. Enjoy!
"Also, since your person-type is ten times more statistically likely to lie on your tax-return, we're going to suggest the tax department audit you every single year... sorry about that. We all need to pay our fair share. Your person-type also has an increased tendency to..."
Remember, it's not so much what you say, but how you say it...
"Microsoft has just notified both subscribers of MSN TV that the service would be ending..."
Yes, and I imagine the two of them are equally disappointed. (I'm sure someone already made that joke, but I couldn't resist...)
Seriously though, I was responsible for some of the (frankly torturous) menu music in the earlier WebTV firmware (ooh,.MOD files...) which I was never actually paid for because my cheque got lost in the shuffle when Microsoft bought WebTV Networks. I think I'm happier to be able to say that Microsoft stiffed me though (and more proud of that fact than the music I wrote), rather than if I'd actually been paid. It makes for a better story.
Surprised the platform has survived this long though...
> Heaven forbid someone makes a mistake calculating required disk storage for JIRA - if that SuperTurd fills up its disk storage it fails spectacularly and corrupts everything.
Sadly, I've experienced what the AC is talking about =( I mean WTF? The consequences of running out of disk space could / should be better disclosed. (I know, I know... anyone 'worth their salt' should already know better. But still...)
Otherwise, JIRA's not-too-shabby, especially if you're getting it for the really cheap license fee...
> Monitoring and wiretapping aren't the same thing. I expect any decent state intelligence agency to have the ability to go on Twitter and read public tweets.
Exactly -- making the argument that monitoring public information is somehow 'eavesdropping' or 'wiretapping' just because you don't want the authorities to see it is pretty weak. I question the relevance of this article full stop -- it's simple prudence to assume that if you post something in a public feed, anyone -- including the government, cops, whoever -- could be reading / watching / listening.
Suggesting that is somehow 'illegal' is just childish and silly.
They don't _have_ to read / listen to your communication -- it's kind of like a spam filter, the PRISM software assigns a score to the particular piece of information based on the number of keywords that occur in it (a 'blind' answer presumably provided by an API provided by the various 'partners'), where it came from, who you are, etc.
If the score is high enough, they get a warrant and _then_ they read / listen to your communication (assuming you're a Yank, otherwise they just request it.) The problem is that one imagines false-positives to be rather abundant -- and the NSA doesn't just 'forget' if your communication turns out to be of no concern. Indeed, you're liable to discover that, although they were wrong, the fact they got a warrant with your name on it / requested it at all will add additional weight to the scores assigned your future communications, leading to additional warrants / requests.
There's no magic genie here that whispers to the NSA, "hey, look at this!" It's still largely guesswork, and those guesses are likely often wrong. But hey, if you want to stay in the "for the greater good / won't happen to me" camp, then enjoy -- but don't be silly enough to think the system has anything resembling accuracy, and that all those it flags deserve the scrutiny.
I don't think Canadians who travel to the US or abroad through the US would be happy to trade the 'security' of not having their data shared with the DoHS for the extreme amount of inconvenience that would result.
I'm a Canadian living in Australia, and when I travel through LAX, US Customs and Immigration doesn't bat an eyelid, but my Australian partner has to typically get fingerprinted, scanned, searched and grunted at for several minutes just to transit.
I'm not sure too many Canadians would be up for similar treatment given these same officers weren't able to vet them as easily as they do now.
Programs run by the NSA are subject to US secrecy laws -- admitting to participation in the program would be tantamount to treason, and would most certainly lead to imprisonment of a company's executive and / or the possible forfeiture of a company's assets to Uncle Sam.
If they're involved in such a program, they simply _can't_ admit to it, and they _must_ deny it -- even if this eventually places them in legal jeopardy in other contexts. Obviously, given this understanding, any 'assurances' these companies aren't involved are worthless -- and horribly naive.
Aussie IT is a bit Mickey Mouse all around, sadly -- especially in the banks, oddly (you'd expect a higher standard where billions of dollars are concerned, but no...)
As for the researcher, they didn't actually 'hack' into anything, merely scraped their own computer for data, so I wouldn't expect them to face any problems over revealing the exploit. Probably hasn't won them any friends in the banking sector though...
Awesome! If only we could teleport today's knowledge back to 1983! =)
I had been looking for a small demo to include with our Android.TAP-file renderer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.kica.tapdancer, and this will be perfect! (Assuming it's free to distribute -- demos usually are but I'm attempting to clarify this...)
The three to five people you choose as 'Trusted Contacts' are likely to be the 'closest' to you and thus the most likely to share behaviour and preferences with you.
Once you identify those people, Facebook can use their patterns to (presumably) target ads at _you_ better, and charge a premium to advertisers for this 'more accurate' imprint.
Whether this works remains to be seen, but in any case this has nothing to do with convenience and much more to do with monetization.
Slashdot Mirror
> Kids should learn to code IF AND ONLY IF THEY WANT TO, AND ONLY WHEN THEY WANT TO .
Er... I guess they should only learn math, English, history, geography and whatever else IF AND ONLY IF THEY WANT TO as well. Imagine the education cost savings if we only taught children what they wanted to learn!
We teach children what they need to know, and _what we need them to know_ to further our economy. Our future economy needs more children to know how to code, at least as much as they need to know history, geography, biology or chemistry, if not math or English.
> [1] The Dijkstra comment that teaching BASIC should be a criminal offence doesn't really apply to BBC BASIC, which had full support for structured programming, an integrated assembler, and direct access to memory-mapped hardware.
BBC BASIC was good, but even Microsoft BASIC was better than nothing. Saying you shouldn't teach kids how to cook unless you're teaching them fine cuisine is stupid.
When I was 6 (in 1981) my Grade 2 class learned LOGO (at least the turtle graphics part). Of course I had been programming on my TS1000 for a year at that point, and so was mostly helping the other children. But still, pretty much everyone in the class "got it".
Why they stopped (and they did stop, after all) teaching programming to kids that age, I don't know. It was a stupid move. Really stupid.
Although cute, this 'idea' is irrelevant. Even if you made the case that you weren't contravening the letter of the request, you could still be charged with obstruction of justice, should your behaviour alter the conduct of the subject(s) under scrutiny. This puts the onus on you to lie.
In short, good luck with that. They're already way ahead of you. Way, way ahead.
You could meet said nutcase offline just as easily.
Honestly, people just don't put in the effort. They may call you an idiot, or say nasty things, but stcks and stones... no.
99.9% of the time, what's said in the op-ed stays in the op-ed.
That didn't take long, did it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/wikileaks-senate-candidate-leslie-cannold-quits/4903084
By directing preferences away from the Greens, Wikileaks improves its chances. Only marginally, but I suppose the rationale for the decision was that "every little bit helps."
The surprise here is that they didn't come clean on it, given the irony that creates. ...and yes, Wikileaks is only assumed to be a left-wing party, which is an error. Libertarianism is right-wing.
Won't this effectively make the posting of YouTube clips on websites / blogs / social media a felony also?
Sheesh.
Given that the average e-mail user has already accepted that their communications aren't secure, I have a problem visualising how said average user can be convinced that a 'replacement' for traditional e-mail is any more secure than the existing offering, or if said security even matters.
First, there's absolutely no way you can build trust. What are you going to do? Tell them it's secure because of X, Y or Z? The point here is that your average e-mail user doesn't understand encryption, PGP keys or any of that. It just translates as blah, blah, blah; give us your e-mail so we can snoop through it just the same as the other guys do. Oh? You can read the source code and confirm that it's all legit? The average user can't read source code! These claims are all worthless.
Second, if there's already an acceptance that having your e-mail open for analysis somehow prevents your child from being blown-up at a bus stop, you're not going to be very fond of encouraging the adoption of a product that could aid terrorism, let alone use it yourself.
So, if you can't build trust, and your potential user base can be put off your product by the spectre of terrorism, then what's your business model? If the user can't be convinced they'll have any more privacy without the expense of a potential surge in terrorism, there isn't one. You can only preach to a choir that would already be using PGP, etc. if they cared enough to do so.
But you can't even get widespread adoption in the geeks! Most of us use cloud e-mail services, Facebook, etc. and just don't care enough, let alone would ever truly trust your product, regardless of how transparent you attempt to make it.
tl;dr: there are better uses for the developers' time here than building a baseball field nobody will ever play on.
I own a mint condition Apple IIe, with the two disk drives and the colour monitor, and the only game I have for it is Oregon Trail, on an original MECC diskette that still works great.
I'm a pretty big Oregon Trail fan =)
Even if there was a problem with the auto-pilot, AFAIK it's illegal to land on auto in the continental USA...?
WHOIS:
Creation date: 21 May 2012 09:08:00
Expiration date: 21 May 2014 09:08:00
I'd +1 except for the last few days attempts at 'spending' mod points haven't had any effect for me -- anyone else experiencing this problem?
Once people realised the value of knowing not necessarily what people were doing, but when / where / how they were doing it, and that you can begin to predict their behaviour by comparing that information with that of known models, the world well-and-truly went to Hell.
Seriously, Dropbox doesn't care _what_ data you store on their servers, what they care about is your usage behaviour, data that can then be added to the ever-expanding mountain of statistics used to further refine those already surprisingly accurate profiles increasingly used by savvy advertisers, governments et al. to define you even better than you could likely define yourself.
"Congratulations! We've identified you as person-type 1845194. You're sure to be interested in this product we'll love to sell you, this new television series you're certain to enjoy, this commentary you're sure to agree with. Soon, you'll think the world was made especially for you, since the world we'll continue to show you is tailored to appeal directly to your specific person-type. Enjoy!
"Also, since your person-type is ten times more statistically likely to lie on your tax-return, we're going to suggest the tax department audit you every single year... sorry about that. We all need to pay our fair share. Your person-type also has an increased tendency to..."
Remember, it's not so much what you say, but how you say it...
"Microsoft has just notified both subscribers of MSN TV that the service would be ending..."
Yes, and I imagine the two of them are equally disappointed. (I'm sure someone already made that joke, but I couldn't resist...)
Seriously though, I was responsible for some of the (frankly torturous) menu music in the earlier WebTV firmware (ooh, .MOD files...) which I was never actually paid for because my cheque got lost in the shuffle when Microsoft bought WebTV Networks. I think I'm happier to be able to say that Microsoft stiffed me though (and more proud of that fact than the music I wrote), rather than if I'd actually been paid. It makes for a better story.
Surprised the platform has survived this long though...
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/edward-snowden-applies-asylum-in-norway-5484164
> Heaven forbid someone makes a mistake calculating required disk storage for JIRA - if that SuperTurd fills up its disk storage it fails spectacularly and corrupts everything.
Sadly, I've experienced what the AC is talking about =( I mean WTF? The consequences of running out of disk space could / should be better disclosed. (I know, I know... anyone 'worth their salt' should already know better. But still...)
Otherwise, JIRA's not-too-shabby, especially if you're getting it for the really cheap license fee...
> Monitoring and wiretapping aren't the same thing. I expect any decent state intelligence agency to have the ability to go on Twitter and read public tweets.
Exactly -- making the argument that monitoring public information is somehow 'eavesdropping' or 'wiretapping' just because you don't want the authorities to see it is pretty weak. I question the relevance of this article full stop -- it's simple prudence to assume that if you post something in a public feed, anyone -- including the government, cops, whoever -- could be reading / watching / listening.
Suggesting that is somehow 'illegal' is just childish and silly.
They don't _have_ to read / listen to your communication -- it's kind of like a spam filter, the PRISM software assigns a score to the particular piece of information based on the number of keywords that occur in it (a 'blind' answer presumably provided by an API provided by the various 'partners'), where it came from, who you are, etc.
If the score is high enough, they get a warrant and _then_ they read / listen to your communication (assuming you're a Yank, otherwise they just request it.) The problem is that one imagines false-positives to be rather abundant -- and the NSA doesn't just 'forget' if your communication turns out to be of no concern. Indeed, you're liable to discover that, although they were wrong, the fact they got a warrant with your name on it / requested it at all will add additional weight to the scores assigned your future communications, leading to additional warrants / requests.
There's no magic genie here that whispers to the NSA, "hey, look at this!" It's still largely guesswork, and those guesses are likely often wrong. But hey, if you want to stay in the "for the greater good / won't happen to me" camp, then enjoy -- but don't be silly enough to think the system has anything resembling accuracy, and that all those it flags deserve the scrutiny.
I don't think Canadians who travel to the US or abroad through the US would be happy to trade the 'security' of not having their data shared with the DoHS for the extreme amount of inconvenience that would result.
I'm a Canadian living in Australia, and when I travel through LAX, US Customs and Immigration doesn't bat an eyelid, but my Australian partner has to typically get fingerprinted, scanned, searched and grunted at for several minutes just to transit.
I'm not sure too many Canadians would be up for similar treatment given these same officers weren't able to vet them as easily as they do now.
Programs run by the NSA are subject to US secrecy laws -- admitting to participation in the program would be tantamount to treason, and would most certainly lead to imprisonment of a company's executive and / or the possible forfeiture of a company's assets to Uncle Sam.
If they're involved in such a program, they simply _can't_ admit to it, and they _must_ deny it -- even if this eventually places them in legal jeopardy in other contexts. Obviously, given this understanding, any 'assurances' these companies aren't involved are worthless -- and horribly naive.
Aussie IT is a bit Mickey Mouse all around, sadly -- especially in the banks, oddly (you'd expect a higher standard where billions of dollars are concerned, but no...)
As for the researcher, they didn't actually 'hack' into anything, merely scraped their own computer for data, so I wouldn't expect them to face any problems over revealing the exploit. Probably hasn't won them any friends in the banking sector though...
Awesome! If only we could teleport today's knowledge back to 1983! =)
I had been looking for a small demo to include with our Android .TAP-file renderer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.kica.tapdancer, and this will be perfect! (Assuming it's free to distribute -- demos usually are but I'm attempting to clarify this...)
The three to five people you choose as 'Trusted Contacts' are likely to be the 'closest' to you and thus the most likely to share behaviour and preferences with you.
Once you identify those people, Facebook can use their patterns to (presumably) target ads at _you_ better, and charge a premium to advertisers for this 'more accurate' imprint.
Whether this works remains to be seen, but in any case this has nothing to do with convenience and much more to do with monetization.
but I'm sure hopeful there are better input methods than this!