Whoosh..... I'm sorry... I think I pretty much *said* that a country might have the resources to do this... But I'd like to point out one pretty important aspect of somebody trying something like this....
Hijacking another nation state's space assets would be darn close to an act of war. At the very least this would be akin to a navy boarding a foreign flagged ship by force in the open ocean or running a blockade if you do an DOS attack. You might not start a war, but you are taking the risk and will surely get your knuckles wrapped by the international community.
So *could* a foreign state do this? Yep. Is it a huge risk? Unless you are at war or somebody wants to start one, NO. IF you are at war, all bets are off anyway because satellites are easy prey regardless of what software they run.
It sure explains the whole laughing at Trump's refusal to accept the election results sight unseen at the last two debates. They where setting things up, fully expecting a Hillary win. Just like the Comey's pronouncement over Clinton's E-mail thing (twice) was a setup to make the election look legit and insolate Hillary from any further investigations (read his book for that tidbit). Interesting, but I think it puts too much planning on Hillary's shoulders. She lost a major election to a guy running his first national election with personal negatives surpassed only by her own. She's not good at strategy and long in hubris, so I don't think she could conceive and execute such a plan....
Um... Yea, a lot of stuff is POSSIBLE, but the question really is about how practical it is. What's the actual level of risk? Pretty low.
These things are expensive. Older satellites might be vulnerable to exploits launched from the Web, but I've got to believe that such "over the web" control systems are quite well protected and monitored. Disrupting over the AIR (I.E. RF links) are going to require specialized equipment and some specialized knowledge about what you are doing (not all satellites use the same control uplink frequencies), and actually taking CONTROL is like to require insider knowledge of expected modulation techniques, telemetry formats, encryption keys and a lot of other things.
There are a lot of places that have the uplink equipment, though it's not that long of a list and most of that equipment is already being used for commercial applications. An uplink setup is prohibitively expensive for an individual to build and commercial companies that own them like to keep track of when they are used. You could possibly arrange to use one by stealing a mobile unit or breaking into one and using it, but you will get discovered pretty quick.
All this to say, Disruption is easy, so doing a denial of service attack is pretty high risk, you just need to access the right equipment. DOS attacks (and uplink mistakes) happen all the time now. Taking control? Not very likely, very low risk. State actors might have the resources, but apart from that, it's not going to be worth the effort and costs.
A bunch of experts are saying NN's repeal will STILL get you, but the emergency "We are all going to die tomorrow!" hype of the last 6 months was, well, over played? Say it isn't so....
I think somebody is trying to move the political goal posts now, so the people who advocated for the repeal of NN cannot just up and claim "See? Nothing bad happened and it's been 6 months! You where wrong.." Could it be that the truth is someplace between the two extremes? That NN's repeal isn't going to be that big of a deal and that it was trying to solve a pile of problems that don't really exist yet? Could it be that everything will turn out just fine? I think so.
I suspect that we will get parts of NN back over time, but I also think that it is a better regulatory approach to have the FCC work on specific problems as they crop up and not try to fix everything you can imagine at once.
1. Hillary's server "Was likely hacked, but we will never know it" (According to the head of the FBI James Comey). The issue is the original hardware was lost and the drives where bleach bit washed, so no evidence (this side of an admission by a foreign power) exists to prove this happened. However, I find it highly unlikely Comey was wrong about this. Hillary's private mail server was: 1. A well known secret because the domain was in DNS and she used it extensively overseas in hostile places. 2. Running Microsoft's E-mail "exchange" on 3. A windows server. 4. Was not, according to the records available, both hardened, regularly patched and professionally monitored. It was in a bathroom closet for the longest time...
2. We don't know the Russians did this. Assange says he didn't get them from a "state actor" (i.e. a country) and in the absence of evidence to the contrary what can we do? Also, the DNC does NOT have "really good evidence" of anything. They have an "investigation" done by "Cloud strike" and that's it. Comey again speaks to this when he says that the DNC "REFUSED the FBI's help" in this investigation. Why did they do this? So I'm not sure if the Russians did this or not, or if it's a cover story cooked up by Hillary and the DNC to keep the lie alive. We will never know, unless the DNC kept the proof around and allows the FBI to investigate this by doing the forensic analysis of their network to prove it. I don't think they kept the hardware and they already refused the FBI so we have no proof now.
3. Podesta's emails where hacked by a phishing scam. Might it be the Russians? Perhaps... So? Podesta was an idiot to fall for it, but hey... One thing is totally clear, Trump's campaign didn't have anything to do with it.
Finally, the myth that Trump's campaign knew about all this before it got released is false and based largely on some errors in "investigative reports" where the dates on E-mail's where misread by 10 days or so. They found out when the rest of the world did. I suggest you check your facts.
But all this betrays the real issue... What did those hacked E-mails show? Most democrats don't know what these E-mail's actually show. I'm guessing they don't really want to know what kind of people run the DNC and what kinds of schemes they run and attitudes they have. Deep in the bowels of the DNC is some pretty nasty stuff, yet we don't hear about that much....
Yea, Obama's last 6 years didn't count in your view? Nothing got done w/o both parties' consent during that time.
People seem to forget that the Republicans do NOT control the Senate by the current rules. Yea, they could pull out the nuclear option and just go Majority rules if they wanted, I can see folks rioting and crying into their beer over that, really loud..
So, if the democrats wanted, they could get lots of stuff done... They just don't want to. Current democrats, like the republicans under Obama, just want to obstruct.
So drop this "you guys cannot govern" pretense, because both sides have the same problem.
They're serving Wikileaks with discovery? Imagine what they'll find.
Discover will produce Nothing... Wikileaks has no presence in the USA so there is nothing within the jurisdiction of US law enforcement to discover. Same with the majority of the remaining defendants... There will be nothing to the court can do to force discovery.
Of course, that doesn't preclude Wikilieaks from providing information about this voluntarily. Assuage has already discussed how these E-mail's came into Wikileaks hands during a TV interview with Shawn Hannity, but I don't think the Democrats want that information out in the open because it pretty much ends this lawsuit.
Landlines work in a lot of cases where the power's down, at least in the States. Not sure about UK.
My VOIP setup works w/o power just fine. Of course I have a couple of UPS's that keep the network equipment running to make this happen. The wireless phone system won't work though so I keep a wired handset plugged in just in case.
Land Lines work just the same in the UK as in the US and won't depend on the power being on in your house to work. The power to run the phone comes from the central office, assuming you have a wired handset...
Ah yes, we have reached the crux of the matter. Tolerance and intolerance. Are social media platforms going to bow to the intolerance of others?
It is intolerance to take offense and then take it out on the platform and the speaker, where tolerance just walks away. The way platforms deal with this is to allow the virtual version of walking away, not filtering content on their own initiative, but leaving that up to individual users to do themselves.
Platforms can filter content based on clear rules (Say like "No Prorn", "No for sale ads", "No advocating violence on individuals or groups") but other than that, anything goes, but individual users will have the choice to not see stuff they don't like (or cannot handle). The idea is to allow the exercise of tolerance, not just avoidance of offense.
But again... the issue is how tolerance has been redefined by some groups, and how they leverage this to unfairly control the debate...
Is this lack of resilience common in big networks?
Yes, it is. Resilience is conceptually easy to understand, but historically exceptionally hard to implement because it requires rigorous controls on such mundane things as where you plugged that server and network switch in. Because it's so hard to maintain, supposedly resilient systems often are not really. Somebody moved some power cable, switched a network port to another switch or forgot to update the standby system and their data backup scripts... Then the unthinkable happens and you discover some simple mistake that renders all that effort and money spent pointless.
Oh sure the GAS is clean and unobtrusive... The problem is the speed it is released and where it blows.... I've seen what ends up under the raised floors or in the rafters in a data center after a few years in operation and it's not pretty. Imagine all this dirt, dust and trash suddenly flying around.
House keeping! Clean up in the server room!
Then there is the whole, fire alarm pulled, kill the power to limit the damage! Use case. Modern computers do NOT take kindly to having the power yanked out from under them and few take the time to do an orderly shutdown when a fire was reported.
The rewriting of history is strong with this one.. The ills in Venezuela are NOT from direct US intervention or externally applied policies. They clearly are from the implementation of socialism and government mismanagement of "the means of production" which always happens. The rest of your examples are just as invalid.
Socialism also means: " (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism."
So... The end state of socialism is communism. It's the logical destination. Which is why I used the definition I used. It's the destination you are headed towards. This form of government is responsible for a very large number of deaths and suppression of human rights world wide both in the past and in current events. You need to own that.
Come on, where did these computer things come from and at their "core" how do they work? Why they follow instructions of course. Computers where a step up from mechanical devices "programed" by punched holes in cards to control a loom, and although they are faster and have wider data paths, how they work is conceptually the same as always.
Until we actually arrive at a working artificially intelligent computer that can program its self, humans will be writing "programs" for computers to run. Such programs may be verbally communicated and as simple as "Take me home!" but it's still "programming" in that you are telling the device what to do. Yes we have abstracted away a lot of the details between the program and it's execution, but people are still directing the computers.
Words mean things.. Socialism is a form of government that is, at it's core, the government controlling all resources and doling them out to everybody. "To Each according to their need." and all. Your definition is just the slippery slope that leads to socialism as a form of government.
My point remains, socialism doesn't work because people are going to naturally look out for their own self interest. You can see this in the failed governments of history which where based on socialism. Or even current governments where socialism is being practiced. Such places have a ruling class which grows very rich and a growing population of poor who suffer greatly from lack.
Venezuela is an excellent example of how this progresses. 20 years ago this country was a thriving capitalistic country with a bright future. They had huge natural resource wealth, a vibrant economy and one of the highest standards of living in south America. Now look at where they are. They have a uber rich ruling class and hordes of poor destitute people who have no food, no resources and no prospects. All this in less than 20 years of "socialism" where the government took over private industry "to give it back to the people" and now there is nothing left. The poor are going to suffer greatly, but that's the legacy of socialism. the poor ALWAYS pay the price for bad government.
Capitalism on the other hand, has lifted more people to a higher standard of living than any other kind of economic policy. Take the USA for example, even our poor have a higher standard of living than a frighteningly large fraction of the world's population. This is due in large part to our capitalistic form of government and the ability for such a system to generate wealth. Wealth that lifts all of us to a standard of living which is the envy of the world.
Yet you wish to throw it away on something proven not to work?
I'm sorry but the first skill precludes the second... Why? Well you had to unplug it to make this Privacy skill you speak of work right.
Who in their right mind would put one of these things in their house? Oh right.. The same people who put in those web-available web cams inside their homes...What's a hackable microphone thingy with access to all sorts of devices in your house after that?
Doesn't matter to me how they do it or even if they know or not.. If I don't think their content is worth the effort, they won't be sending me anything..
Socialism is caused by bad parenting and laziness.
Maybe it is.. However I think it's actually a learned behavior which is systematically taught though the public education system and under the guise of "not being selfish" and "fairness".
Kids are born understanding capitalism in it's unbridled form. Just watch a group of 2 year olds interact. They have the base concept engrained in them.... I want MORE than you...
The problem is socialism doesn't work for the very reason why 2 year olds act like they do, folks want more but don't want to work for it. It's human nature and it cannot be suppressed enough for socialism to work. It can work in a capitalistic society though. One just have to add the concept of hard work being the means of getting more and that "fairness" is defined as equal opportunity, not equal results and you are there. Those are concepts that many adults don't understand these days... But time and the wisdom that comes with it may fix that.
Website operator: If you don't like folks blocking your ads, it's perfectly fine for you to refuse to serve them up your data.. It would be nice if you let me know why, but it's up to you.
Browsing user: You are free to decide what to block and what to accept.
I get hit by this all the time... "We detect you are running an add blocker...." Followed by a plea to turn it off... If I want the content from your site, I'll let your ads display.. But my ad blocker stays on by default and if you don't provide enough value to make it worth pausing my blocker for you, I suggest you may not be in business very long anyway.
Why did we need to tie this up in court? It was a waste of time and money doing that.
Just because you don't have to understand enough to produce a source file that get's compiled, linked and then run does NOT mean you are not engaged in "programming" something.
Teaching Alexia a Skill REQUIRES that you understand the necessary sequence required to convey to the device what you are asking it to do. IF you don't follow the sequence, Alexia won't do what you want. Alexia is going to just give you a crash course in how to program it any time it isn't sure what you want. This isn't all that different than what I do all day... Write code, compile code, deal with the errors if any, link and run to see if it works... The only difference is you are just talking and the repertoire Alexia understands is extremely limited.
SO I'm calling BS... You may not know going in how Alexia has to be programed, but if you try, Alexia will TRAIN you how to program, then accept your program once you understand how to say it.
Good thing Linked in and Facebook don't actually have my real information...
I'm no fool... Even if the information these sites have "leaks" they will only be sharing my alter ego's information, not mine. The ONLY time I use any of my real information is when it is legally required, and then only when I've verified who I'm talking to. I also routinely delete my browser cookies, and I don't use the browser to store my passwords... I don't use the same username all over the place and I use a password manager that allows me hugely complex passwords, yet is fully encrypted when it's not open, but only for the junk accounts. Sensitive stuff I keep in my head or in the nondescript notebook kept in the lock box. I've been doing this since before Facebook was invented...
I've never understood the sheeple's who just blindly type in things like their full legal name, birthday, phone number and the like... So what if all my friends wish me "happy birthday" on the wrong day...... Shesh, if you put in all the information that Facebook asks for and expose family relationships, I can guarantee somebody can/will be able to steal your ID. Why not just put it on a billboard?
Slashdot Mirror
Whoosh.. ... I'm sorry... I think I pretty much *said* that a country might have the resources to do this... But I'd like to point out one pretty important aspect of somebody trying something like this....
Hijacking another nation state's space assets would be darn close to an act of war. At the very least this would be akin to a navy boarding a foreign flagged ship by force in the open ocean or running a blockade if you do an DOS attack. You might not start a war, but you are taking the risk and will surely get your knuckles wrapped by the international community.
So *could* a foreign state do this? Yep. Is it a huge risk? Unless you are at war or somebody wants to start one, NO. IF you are at war, all bets are off anyway because satellites are easy prey regardless of what software they run.
Or, perhaps, the ISPs want to avoid a PR disaster. The question is whether or not ISPs can be trusted, and the answer is no.
So which motive is stronger? ISP's wanting to avoid the PR problem or wanting to put one over on their customers? Which is the stronger motive?
Just a thought... IF the PR disaster is enough, then we don't really need federal oversight... I'm not saying it is enough, but you brought it up...
Interesting perspective.
It sure explains the whole laughing at Trump's refusal to accept the election results sight unseen at the last two debates. They where setting things up, fully expecting a Hillary win. Just like the Comey's pronouncement over Clinton's E-mail thing (twice) was a setup to make the election look legit and insolate Hillary from any further investigations (read his book for that tidbit). Interesting, but I think it puts too much planning on Hillary's shoulders. She lost a major election to a guy running his first national election with personal negatives surpassed only by her own. She's not good at strategy and long in hubris, so I don't think she could conceive and execute such a plan....
Still, The whole story is FAKE NEWS (tm)...
Literally... Chicken little has confirmed it!
Um... Yea, a lot of stuff is POSSIBLE, but the question really is about how practical it is. What's the actual level of risk? Pretty low.
These things are expensive. Older satellites might be vulnerable to exploits launched from the Web, but I've got to believe that such "over the web" control systems are quite well protected and monitored. Disrupting over the AIR (I.E. RF links) are going to require specialized equipment and some specialized knowledge about what you are doing (not all satellites use the same control uplink frequencies), and actually taking CONTROL is like to require insider knowledge of expected modulation techniques, telemetry formats, encryption keys and a lot of other things.
There are a lot of places that have the uplink equipment, though it's not that long of a list and most of that equipment is already being used for commercial applications. An uplink setup is prohibitively expensive for an individual to build and commercial companies that own them like to keep track of when they are used. You could possibly arrange to use one by stealing a mobile unit or breaking into one and using it, but you will get discovered pretty quick.
All this to say, Disruption is easy, so doing a denial of service attack is pretty high risk, you just need to access the right equipment. DOS attacks (and uplink mistakes) happen all the time now. Taking control? Not very likely, very low risk. State actors might have the resources, but apart from that, it's not going to be worth the effort and costs.
There are some impossibly crazy folks in this world. Can we PLEASE stop this crazy train? I'm ready to wake up now!
Captcha.. It's only a dream.... A bad dream...
A bunch of experts are saying NN's repeal will STILL get you, but the emergency "We are all going to die tomorrow!" hype of the last 6 months was, well, over played? Say it isn't so....
I think somebody is trying to move the political goal posts now, so the people who advocated for the repeal of NN cannot just up and claim "See? Nothing bad happened and it's been 6 months! You where wrong.." Could it be that the truth is someplace between the two extremes? That NN's repeal isn't going to be that big of a deal and that it was trying to solve a pile of problems that don't really exist yet? Could it be that everything will turn out just fine? I think so.
I suspect that we will get parts of NN back over time, but I also think that it is a better regulatory approach to have the FCC work on specific problems as they crop up and not try to fix everything you can imagine at once.
ACTUALLY.. We don't have what you think..
1. Hillary's server "Was likely hacked, but we will never know it" (According to the head of the FBI James Comey). The issue is the original hardware was lost and the drives where bleach bit washed, so no evidence (this side of an admission by a foreign power) exists to prove this happened. However, I find it highly unlikely Comey was wrong about this. Hillary's private mail server was: 1. A well known secret because the domain was in DNS and she used it extensively overseas in hostile places. 2. Running Microsoft's E-mail "exchange" on 3. A windows server. 4. Was not, according to the records available, both hardened, regularly patched and professionally monitored. It was in a bathroom closet for the longest time...
2. We don't know the Russians did this. Assange says he didn't get them from a "state actor" (i.e. a country) and in the absence of evidence to the contrary what can we do? Also, the DNC does NOT have "really good evidence" of anything. They have an "investigation" done by "Cloud strike" and that's it. Comey again speaks to this when he says that the DNC "REFUSED the FBI's help" in this investigation. Why did they do this? So I'm not sure if the Russians did this or not, or if it's a cover story cooked up by Hillary and the DNC to keep the lie alive. We will never know, unless the DNC kept the proof around and allows the FBI to investigate this by doing the forensic analysis of their network to prove it. I don't think they kept the hardware and they already refused the FBI so we have no proof now.
3. Podesta's emails where hacked by a phishing scam. Might it be the Russians? Perhaps... So? Podesta was an idiot to fall for it, but hey... One thing is totally clear, Trump's campaign didn't have anything to do with it.
Finally, the myth that Trump's campaign knew about all this before it got released is false and based largely on some errors in "investigative reports" where the dates on E-mail's where misread by 10 days or so. They found out when the rest of the world did. I suggest you check your facts.
But all this betrays the real issue... What did those hacked E-mails show? Most democrats don't know what these E-mail's actually show. I'm guessing they don't really want to know what kind of people run the DNC and what kinds of schemes they run and attitudes they have. Deep in the bowels of the DNC is some pretty nasty stuff, yet we don't hear about that much....
Yea, Obama's last 6 years didn't count in your view? Nothing got done w/o both parties' consent during that time.
People seem to forget that the Republicans do NOT control the Senate by the current rules. Yea, they could pull out the nuclear option and just go Majority rules if they wanted, I can see folks rioting and crying into their beer over that, really loud..
So, if the democrats wanted, they could get lots of stuff done... They just don't want to. Current democrats, like the republicans under Obama, just want to obstruct.
So drop this "you guys cannot govern" pretense, because both sides have the same problem.
They're serving Wikileaks with discovery? Imagine what they'll find.
Discover will produce Nothing... Wikileaks has no presence in the USA so there is nothing within the jurisdiction of US law enforcement to discover. Same with the majority of the remaining defendants... There will be nothing to the court can do to force discovery.
Of course, that doesn't preclude Wikilieaks from providing information about this voluntarily. Assuage has already discussed how these E-mail's came into Wikileaks hands during a TV interview with Shawn Hannity, but I don't think the Democrats want that information out in the open because it pretty much ends this lawsuit.
This will get thrown out....
It will take awhile, to be sure, but it will get tossed by the first judge who actually looks at the lack of evidence.
Remember, you can sue ANYBODY for ANYTHING by walking down to the courthouse and paying the fees.
How long are those libr-clowns going to milk that dead cow?
Until 2025... January 20th 2025, noon eastern.. Then it will end, but not before.
Landlines work in a lot of cases where the power's down, at least in the States. Not sure about UK.
My VOIP setup works w/o power just fine. Of course I have a couple of UPS's that keep the network equipment running to make this happen. The wireless phone system won't work though so I keep a wired handset plugged in just in case.
Land Lines work just the same in the UK as in the US and won't depend on the power being on in your house to work. The power to run the phone comes from the central office, assuming you have a wired handset...
Ah yes, we have reached the crux of the matter. Tolerance and intolerance. Are social media platforms going to bow to the intolerance of others?
It is intolerance to take offense and then take it out on the platform and the speaker, where tolerance just walks away. The way platforms deal with this is to allow the virtual version of walking away, not filtering content on their own initiative, but leaving that up to individual users to do themselves.
Platforms can filter content based on clear rules (Say like "No Prorn", "No for sale ads", "No advocating violence on individuals or groups") but other than that, anything goes, but individual users will have the choice to not see stuff they don't like (or cannot handle). The idea is to allow the exercise of tolerance, not just avoidance of offense.
But again... the issue is how tolerance has been redefined by some groups, and how they leverage this to unfairly control the debate...
Is this lack of resilience common in big networks?
Yes, it is. Resilience is conceptually easy to understand, but historically exceptionally hard to implement because it requires rigorous controls on such mundane things as where you plugged that server and network switch in. Because it's so hard to maintain, supposedly resilient systems often are not really. Somebody moved some power cable, switched a network port to another switch or forgot to update the standby system and their data backup scripts... Then the unthinkable happens and you discover some simple mistake that renders all that effort and money spent pointless.
Oh sure the GAS is clean and unobtrusive... The problem is the speed it is released and where it blows.... I've seen what ends up under the raised floors or in the rafters in a data center after a few years in operation and it's not pretty. Imagine all this dirt, dust and trash suddenly flying around.
House keeping! Clean up in the server room!
Then there is the whole, fire alarm pulled, kill the power to limit the damage! Use case. Modern computers do NOT take kindly to having the power yanked out from under them and few take the time to do an orderly shutdown when a fire was reported.
The rewriting of history is strong with this one.. The ills in Venezuela are NOT from direct US intervention or externally applied policies. They clearly are from the implementation of socialism and government mismanagement of "the means of production" which always happens. The rest of your examples are just as invalid.
Socialism also means: " (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism."
So... The end state of socialism is communism. It's the logical destination. Which is why I used the definition I used. It's the destination you are headed towards. This form of government is responsible for a very large number of deaths and suppression of human rights world wide both in the past and in current events. You need to own that.
Yes, and yes...
Come on, where did these computer things come from and at their "core" how do they work? Why they follow instructions of course. Computers where a step up from mechanical devices "programed" by punched holes in cards to control a loom, and although they are faster and have wider data paths, how they work is conceptually the same as always.
Until we actually arrive at a working artificially intelligent computer that can program its self, humans will be writing "programs" for computers to run. Such programs may be verbally communicated and as simple as "Take me home!" but it's still "programming" in that you are telling the device what to do. Yes we have abstracted away a lot of the details between the program and it's execution, but people are still directing the computers.
Words mean things.. Socialism is a form of government that is, at it's core, the government controlling all resources and doling them out to everybody. "To Each according to their need." and all. Your definition is just the slippery slope that leads to socialism as a form of government.
My point remains, socialism doesn't work because people are going to naturally look out for their own self interest. You can see this in the failed governments of history which where based on socialism. Or even current governments where socialism is being practiced. Such places have a ruling class which grows very rich and a growing population of poor who suffer greatly from lack.
Venezuela is an excellent example of how this progresses. 20 years ago this country was a thriving capitalistic country with a bright future. They had huge natural resource wealth, a vibrant economy and one of the highest standards of living in south America. Now look at where they are. They have a uber rich ruling class and hordes of poor destitute people who have no food, no resources and no prospects. All this in less than 20 years of "socialism" where the government took over private industry "to give it back to the people" and now there is nothing left. The poor are going to suffer greatly, but that's the legacy of socialism. the poor ALWAYS pay the price for bad government.
Capitalism on the other hand, has lifted more people to a higher standard of living than any other kind of economic policy. Take the USA for example, even our poor have a higher standard of living than a frighteningly large fraction of the world's population. This is due in large part to our capitalistic form of government and the ability for such a system to generate wealth. Wealth that lifts all of us to a standard of living which is the envy of the world.
Yet you wish to throw it away on something proven not to work?
I'm sorry but the first skill precludes the second... Why? Well you had to unplug it to make this Privacy skill you speak of work right.
Who in their right mind would put one of these things in their house? Oh right.. The same people who put in those web-available web cams inside their homes...What's a hackable microphone thingy with access to all sorts of devices in your house after that?
Doesn't matter to me how they do it or even if they know or not.. If I don't think their content is worth the effort, they won't be sending me anything..
Socialism is caused by bad parenting and laziness.
Maybe it is.. However I think it's actually a learned behavior which is systematically taught though the public education system and under the guise of "not being selfish" and "fairness".
Kids are born understanding capitalism in it's unbridled form. Just watch a group of 2 year olds interact. They have the base concept engrained in them.... I want MORE than you...
The problem is socialism doesn't work for the very reason why 2 year olds act like they do, folks want more but don't want to work for it. It's human nature and it cannot be suppressed enough for socialism to work. It can work in a capitalistic society though. One just have to add the concept of hard work being the means of getting more and that "fairness" is defined as equal opportunity, not equal results and you are there. Those are concepts that many adults don't understand these days... But time and the wisdom that comes with it may fix that.
Website operator: If you don't like folks blocking your ads, it's perfectly fine for you to refuse to serve them up your data.. It would be nice if you let me know why, but it's up to you.
Browsing user: You are free to decide what to block and what to accept.
I get hit by this all the time... "We detect you are running an add blocker...." Followed by a plea to turn it off... If I want the content from your site, I'll let your ads display.. But my ad blocker stays on by default and if you don't provide enough value to make it worth pausing my blocker for you, I suggest you may not be in business very long anyway.
Why did we need to tie this up in court? It was a waste of time and money doing that.
Not even close....
Just because you don't have to understand enough to produce a source file that get's compiled, linked and then run does NOT mean you are not engaged in "programming" something.
Teaching Alexia a Skill REQUIRES that you understand the necessary sequence required to convey to the device what you are asking it to do. IF you don't follow the sequence, Alexia won't do what you want. Alexia is going to just give you a crash course in how to program it any time it isn't sure what you want. This isn't all that different than what I do all day... Write code, compile code, deal with the errors if any, link and run to see if it works... The only difference is you are just talking and the repertoire Alexia understands is extremely limited.
SO I'm calling BS... You may not know going in how Alexia has to be programed, but if you try, Alexia will TRAIN you how to program, then accept your program once you understand how to say it.
Good thing Linked in and Facebook don't actually have my real information...
I'm no fool... Even if the information these sites have "leaks" they will only be sharing my alter ego's information, not mine. The ONLY time I use any of my real information is when it is legally required, and then only when I've verified who I'm talking to. I also routinely delete my browser cookies, and I don't use the browser to store my passwords... I don't use the same username all over the place and I use a password manager that allows me hugely complex passwords, yet is fully encrypted when it's not open, but only for the junk accounts. Sensitive stuff I keep in my head or in the nondescript notebook kept in the lock box. I've been doing this since before Facebook was invented...
I've never understood the sheeple's who just blindly type in things like their full legal name, birthday, phone number and the like... So what if all my friends wish me "happy birthday" on the wrong day...... Shesh, if you put in all the information that Facebook asks for and expose family relationships, I can guarantee somebody can/will be able to steal your ID. Why not just put it on a billboard?
Don't do it.... It's NOT worth it..