Anyone in Australia hacking anything in the US should result in criminal charges (not that it'd ever go to trial unless the perpetrator actually found his or her way to US soil). Period. It doesn't matter if the person doing the hacking is a private citizen or the prime minister.
That said, the "hacking" they're talking about seems to have been giving the guy a link a hyperlink. Calling giving someone a hyperlink and them clicking it a "hack" is a stretch, imo, if that hyperlink doesn't do anything other than connect to a web site. If it downloaded malware or something similar, then ok, but it doesn't sound like that's what happened.
They don't even need severe regulation, just a little common sense. If you get a credit card, you get a credit limit. There's a fixed maximum you can actually spend. Why is that not the case on cell phones? Why can't I call up my cell carrier and tell them "Hey guys, ya know what? If I ever rack up charges exceeding, say, 2x my normal bill in one month, I want you to cut me off immediately." Or, put another way, "I do NOT authorize charges over $x/month."
My favorite special character story comes from a friend who works in a call center. She had to help someone not computer literate at all set up an account on something and that service required a special character. She asked the caller what special character they wanted to use. Their response? "Minnie Mouse!"
Some of these questionable policies are driven by business regulations and auditors.
This is absolutely true, but these business regulations should be driven by competent security. That's why things like this are good. Security is still an industry in its diaper-wetting infancy. Somebody took a practice most of us have accepted as good and actually subjected it to scrutiny, actually tested it, and found it to be wrong.
in my experience they can't defend their requirements and simply say things like it's "best practice".
There's no quicker way for someone to convince me they don't know what they're talking about than to resort to the "it's a best practice" argument.
I get it, it just doesn't work in US English. "Going through the motions" doesn't conjure up any reference to the crap (literal or figurative) in the water. "Going through the movements" is just an unusual thing nobody would say. I doubt GP didn't understand. It's just not funny in US English.
The fact that the IOC hasn't stepped in to change the venue tells you everything you need to know about how much the IOC cares about the well being of the athletes.
That's been pretty clear since the 70s, if not earlier.
I've tried expensive noise cancelling headphones and found them pretty useless. They didn't filter out things like conversations at all, just made them tinny-sounding. Still just as distracting. What I find does work is IEMs with triple flange earpieces. They effectively become earplugs with headphones in them. My $50 headphones with those are massively better than the $300+ "noise cancelling" ones I tried.
But the future where they have a lower chance of dying won't happen.
Then like I said, if they aren't safer, we shouldn't allow them on the roads. End of story.
If you think your kids or your kids kids are going to be on roads with mostly automated cars under capitalism, that's quite a pipe dream.
I disagree. Companies with the money and intellectual ability to do this are working on it right now, and at least some people want it. Judging by the number of idiots I see futzing with their cell phones while they drive, a LOT of people want to be able to do other things while they're going from A to B.
But I still contend that their handling is too poor and this would be extremely dangerous because of this. SUVs (all of them) should be limited to about 65mph IMO because of safety (or maybe even 55).
Well, that's just not true. I have a large SUV and it does just fine up to 75 mph. I don't think I've ever driven it faster. I've driven a 28,000+ pound box truck at 75+ and it also handled just fine.
Maybe you're talking about taking turns fast or something, in which case, yeah, I wouldn't put an SUV through a slalom course, but they (and everything else I've ever driven) handles highway speeds just fine.
I have to amend, I didn't understand you were saying 365 HP isn't enough to push a SUV to 140. That seems reasonable to me, but I've never tried, so I have no idea.
The actual car in question was not a SUV, or anything exotic. Typical 90s state trooper car. I don't remember make or model, if I ever bothered to take note of it at the time.
I seriously believe it would. I've been in a stock Ford Escort (110hp or so, I think) over 120 mph. Handling (not that there was much, point straight and keep going) was fine. I don't have any trouble believing 365 HP would get you to 140.
Anyway, I'm just relating what I was told by the trooper. I've never driven a state trooper car (whatever make/model they are) around the parking lot, let alone at speed.
Of course they do. But prospectively, we have the opportunity to be objective. I get to sit here today and look at my family and think "Which future do I prefer? One where they have a lower chance of dying, but if they do it might be at the hands of a faceless algorithm, or one where they have a higher chance of dying, but I'll have someone to blame."
No contest. I suppose there might be someone out there who would rather a greater chance as long as they can blame someone, but I'm going to claim that's a really irrational position to hold.
People are making the predictable error of thinking this very new technology should be perfect. That's not a reasonable expectation. Newsflash: the first truly autonomous vehicles (which this IS NOT) are going to screw up sometimes. They're going to get people killed. They should, as a minimum standard to be allowed for use at all, get fewer people killed, but it's not going to be zero, and it's going to be a different set of people.
It seems to have left all the decisions up to the dumb driver.
A lot of people aren't comfortable with giving up control over their car. While I'm not one of them (the day I never have to drive again, I'll be thrilled!), allowing the driver to make the decisions when they want to may be a requirement of a commercially viable product.
I was chatting with a state trooper after I had an accident (a tree fell across a road in a snowstorm, nobody hurt) and asked him how fast his car could go. He said it had a limiter to keep it under ~130 or so. I forget the exact number, but it was in the 130-140s and matched the speed rating of the tires. The take home for me was that I (still) have never owned a car that they couldn't catch.
From the link: "Today marks the 15th anniversary of one such calamity when media giants AOL and Time Warner combined their businesses in what is usually described as the worst merger of all time."
I think you're right, though. This is very much like TimeWarner + AOL.
Call it what you will, but they are increasing people's rates and trying to tell them they didn't because it technically happened two years ago...
Wait, they're doing what? This is what Netflix sent me:
When we raised prices for new Netflix members in 2014, we kept your price the same for two years. Your special pricing is now ending and as of 8/10/16 your new price will be $9.99 per month.
Looks like they're pretty plainly telling me they're increasing my rate. Which is fine. Sure, I'd rather any service I pay for be cheaper, but is Netflix still worth more than $9.99/month to me? Absolutely.
Except that people did watch it. Religiously. For decades. I wasn't even around for the original run of the series, and I watched it every week when I was a kid.
I've seen the odd complaint about library patrons watching porn over the years. I don't doubt that somebody, in some Starbucks or McDs, somewhere does this.
Still, I have to agree. This is a non-issue. These companies decided to stop providing a free service that nearly nobody uses.
Granted, the robot should have been designed to take little kid craziness into account, but I'm betting the direct cause of the incident was said craziness.
I'm sure that's true, but all that really does is highlight what SHOULD be part of the design spec of that robot. You're going to turn it loose in a mall. It has to avoid running over people, whether they're crazy kids or not, whether the parents are paying attention or not, etc. If you can't do that, don't turn it loose in a mall.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone in Australia hacking anything in the US should result in criminal charges (not that it'd ever go to trial unless the perpetrator actually found his or her way to US soil). Period. It doesn't matter if the person doing the hacking is a private citizen or the prime minister.
That said, the "hacking" they're talking about seems to have been giving the guy a link a hyperlink. Calling giving someone a hyperlink and them clicking it a "hack" is a stretch, imo, if that hyperlink doesn't do anything other than connect to a web site. If it downloaded malware or something similar, then ok, but it doesn't sound like that's what happened.
Too true. Our job should be to make businesses function better by reducing risk, not make them riskier by reducing function.
They don't even need severe regulation, just a little common sense. If you get a credit card, you get a credit limit. There's a fixed maximum you can actually spend. Why is that not the case on cell phones? Why can't I call up my cell carrier and tell them "Hey guys, ya know what? If I ever rack up charges exceeding, say, 2x my normal bill in one month, I want you to cut me off immediately." Or, put another way, "I do NOT authorize charges over $x/month."
My favorite special character story comes from a friend who works in a call center. She had to help someone not computer literate at all set up an account on something and that service required a special character. She asked the caller what special character they wanted to use. Their response? "Minnie Mouse!"
The problem is that people who don't know much about a field like security can't identify those people. They don't know who to listen to.
This is absolutely true, but these business regulations should be driven by competent security. That's why things like this are good. Security is still an industry in its diaper-wetting infancy. Somebody took a practice most of us have accepted as good and actually subjected it to scrutiny, actually tested it, and found it to be wrong.
There's no quicker way for someone to convince me they don't know what they're talking about than to resort to the "it's a best practice" argument.
I get it, it just doesn't work in US English. "Going through the motions" doesn't conjure up any reference to the crap (literal or figurative) in the water. "Going through the movements" is just an unusual thing nobody would say. I doubt GP didn't understand. It's just not funny in US English.
That's been pretty clear since the 70s, if not earlier.
I've tried expensive noise cancelling headphones and found them pretty useless. They didn't filter out things like conversations at all, just made them tinny-sounding. Still just as distracting. What I find does work is IEMs with triple flange earpieces. They effectively become earplugs with headphones in them. My $50 headphones with those are massively better than the $300+ "noise cancelling" ones I tried.
Then like I said, if they aren't safer, we shouldn't allow them on the roads. End of story.
I disagree. Companies with the money and intellectual ability to do this are working on it right now, and at least some people want it. Judging by the number of idiots I see futzing with their cell phones while they drive, a LOT of people want to be able to do other things while they're going from A to B.
Well, that's just not true. I have a large SUV and it does just fine up to 75 mph. I don't think I've ever driven it faster. I've driven a 28,000+ pound box truck at 75+ and it also handled just fine.
Maybe you're talking about taking turns fast or something, in which case, yeah, I wouldn't put an SUV through a slalom course, but they (and everything else I've ever driven) handles highway speeds just fine.
I have to amend, I didn't understand you were saying 365 HP isn't enough to push a SUV to 140. That seems reasonable to me, but I've never tried, so I have no idea.
The actual car in question was not a SUV, or anything exotic. Typical 90s state trooper car. I don't remember make or model, if I ever bothered to take note of it at the time.
I seriously believe it would. I've been in a stock Ford Escort (110hp or so, I think) over 120 mph. Handling (not that there was much, point straight and keep going) was fine. I don't have any trouble believing 365 HP would get you to 140.
Anyway, I'm just relating what I was told by the trooper. I've never driven a state trooper car (whatever make/model they are) around the parking lot, let alone at speed.
Of course they do. But prospectively, we have the opportunity to be objective. I get to sit here today and look at my family and think "Which future do I prefer? One where they have a lower chance of dying, but if they do it might be at the hands of a faceless algorithm, or one where they have a higher chance of dying, but I'll have someone to blame."
No contest. I suppose there might be someone out there who would rather a greater chance as long as they can blame someone, but I'm going to claim that's a really irrational position to hold.
People are making the predictable error of thinking this very new technology should be perfect. That's not a reasonable expectation. Newsflash: the first truly autonomous vehicles (which this IS NOT) are going to screw up sometimes. They're going to get people killed. They should, as a minimum standard to be allowed for use at all, get fewer people killed, but it's not going to be zero, and it's going to be a different set of people.
A lot of people aren't comfortable with giving up control over their car. While I'm not one of them (the day I never have to drive again, I'll be thrilled!), allowing the driver to make the decisions when they want to may be a requirement of a commercially viable product.
Personally, I think it's a much greater problem that some people are more concerned with assigning fault than reducing the overall number of deaths.
I was chatting with a state trooper after I had an accident (a tree fell across a road in a snowstorm, nobody hurt) and asked him how fast his car could go. He said it had a limiter to keep it under ~130 or so. I forget the exact number, but it was in the 130-140s and matched the speed rating of the tires. The take home for me was that I (still) have never owned a car that they couldn't catch.
This is more insightful than you may realize.
http://fortune.com/2015/01/10/...
From the link:
"Today marks the 15th anniversary of one such calamity when media giants AOL and Time Warner combined their businesses in what is usually described as the worst merger of all time."
I think you're right, though. This is very much like TimeWarner + AOL.
I guarantee, just like Yahoo is writing down Tumblr now, Verizon will be writing down Yahoo later.
Wait, they're doing what? This is what Netflix sent me:
Looks like they're pretty plainly telling me they're increasing my rate. Which is fine. Sure, I'd rather any service I pay for be cheaper, but is Netflix still worth more than $9.99/month to me? Absolutely.
Except that people did watch it. Religiously. For decades. I wasn't even around for the original run of the series, and I watched it every week when I was a kid.
I've seen the odd complaint about library patrons watching porn over the years. I don't doubt that somebody, in some Starbucks or McDs, somewhere does this.
Still, I have to agree. This is a non-issue. These companies decided to stop providing a free service that nearly nobody uses.
...doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!
But yeah, sometimes you're just paranoid.
I'm sure that's true, but all that really does is highlight what SHOULD be part of the design spec of that robot. You're going to turn it loose in a mall. It has to avoid running over people, whether they're crazy kids or not, whether the parents are paying attention or not, etc. If you can't do that, don't turn it loose in a mall.
Must be one of those really thick leashes that prevent 300 pounds robots from running stuff over. ;-)